There was a gravity almost amounting to solemnity in the war-correspondent’s demeanour as he sat awaiting his gracious visitor.
“I am afraid,” he reflected, with characteristic calmness, “that the good lady is not pleased with me.”
This fear no doubt interfered to some extent with his enjoyment of a French newspaper, which he had just freed from its small coloured wrapper. He did not appear to be deeply interested in the Echos de Paris, of which the wit failed to call a smile into his solemn eyes. It is, in fact, a matter of conjecture to me whether he had read anything at all (with understanding) when the rarely-used front-door bell tinkled dimly in the beetle-haunted basement. Trist laid aside the newspaper, and opened the door of his room just as the stairs began to creak under the comfortable step of Mrs. Wylie.
“Well, Theo,” said the good lady cheerily. “Good evening!”
Trist shook hands very gravely. He was at the moment deeply immersed in doubts as to whether his visitor should be shown to his bedroom with a view of removing her bonnet before his shaving-glass, or whether she would prefer keeping her outdoor apparel with her. As might have been expected, Mrs. Wylie was equal to the occasion, and settled the question at once.
“I will just open my sealskin,” she said, suiting the action to the word. “It is bitterly cold outside. What a nice fire, but … what a bare room, Theo! Have you no sense of comfort?”
“Bare!” replied Trist, looking round in amazement; “I never noticed it.”
“Naturally you would not. As long as it looks like a barrack-room, and the furniture suggests the luxuries of camp-life, you are happy, I suppose?”
Trist laughed in a fill-up-the-gap style, and busied himself with a teapot, once the property of his landlady’s grandmother, and correspondingly ugly. This versatile man’s ways were not new to Mrs. Wylie; but she smiled to herself, in the way people smile when they are busy collecting materials for a good story, as she watched him pour out the tea and manoeuvre the kettle. It did not seem to enter his head that four men out of five would have asked the lady’s assistance in such a case. Perhaps (for women note such things) she also remembered afterwards that he had no need to inquire after her taste respecting cream and sugar, but acted boldly, yet unobtrusively, upon knowledge previously acquired.
“And now,” she said in a determined way when the cups were filled, “light your pipe.”
“I do not think,” answered he with mock hesitation, “that such a proceeding would be strictly approved of by the laws of etiquette.”
“It is etiquette, my friend, to do exactly what a lady may wish. I would rather you smoked, because I want to talk to you seriously—a pastime I rarely indulge in—and I think tobacco would assist a contemplative attention on your part. I almost wish I could smoke myself. It would facilitate matters.”
In ratio to the increase of the lady’s gravity her companion’s spirits seemed to rise.
“After that,” he replied gaily, “I am dumb, and … light my strongest pipe.”
This threat he carried out to the letter. While Mrs. Wylie sipped her excellent tea and appeared to be searching in her mind for a suitable manner of beginning that which she had to say, he continued to puff softly, preserving a characteristic silence, and vouchsafing that contemplative attention which she had desired.
“Theo,” said Mrs. Wylie at length with an intonation upon the single word which, by some subtle means, caused him to lay aside all attempts at hilarity.
“Yes?” he replied, removing the pipe from his lips and looking across the table at her with meek inquiry.
Most people would have thought from his tone and manner that he was ready and willing to accede at once to any proposition, to follow any course of action, to obey without complaint or hesitation; but, as hinted on a previous page, Mrs. Wylie knew the ways of this man.
She did not meet his glance, but continued to gaze in a practically-abstracted way into the fender, while with one hand she smoothed a corner of her sealskin jacket.
“You will admit,” she continued at length with apparent irrelevance, “that every action, or every course of action, is liable to several constructions.”
His reply was ready at once—a fact worth noticing in a man whose exterior habits would have led most observers to a belief that his mental method was slow.
“Yes; but the various constructions could not well be taken into account in anticipation. The attempt would be a deathblow to all action.”
The astute lady knew that she was understood, so she moved on in the same drift.
“I admit that,” she said; “but … in a course of procedure, the construction put upon the first actions should be allowed to carry some weight in subsequent proceedings. If … I mean … it is deleterious to others, the course might well be amended.”
Trist acknowledged the ability of this argument without enthusiasm.
“Nevertheless,” he said after a pause, “people have mapped out for themselves a course of action, have held to it despite adverse criticism, and have in the end been triumphant.”
Mrs. Wylie now looked up rather keenly.
“Then,” she said significantly, “yours is a course of action, and not mere idle drifting with the tide.”
Trist shrugged his shoulders, and met her glance with calm, impenetrable eyes. He was in a corner, because silence was naught but confession.
“Am I,” he inquired imperturbably, “the sort of man to drift?”
“No,” said Mrs. Wylie; “you are not. But, Theo, are you sure that you are doing right? I don’t want to interfere in the slightest degree with your action so long as it concerns only yourself. You are quite capable of looking after your own affairs, I know, quite sure of yourself, utterly reliant upon your own strength of purpose; but I want you to remember
