“Would you go if there were another war?” she asked.
“Yes,” he replied coolly.
She made no comment, and the subject was dropped. She had made this visit with the full intention of coming to a definite knowledge of facts with Trist. Her chief desire had been to find out whether there was any understanding between Alice Huston and himself such as the world assigned; but in this she had failed. Theo would tell her nothing more than he chose, and she recognised in him a match in the matter of social diplomacy. His motives were a puzzle to her; she could not even come to a reasonable conclusion concerning his feelings. It was possible that he loved Alice Huston, but it was also possible that he loved Brenda. Again, she had no definite reason for supposing that he loved either of them, because his manner to both was that of a friend. However, the clear object of her visit had been attained—namely, that Trist should absent himself for some time, and with this she was content, looking to further enlightenment in the future.
V
Southward
Theodore Trist had not overestimated his powers in informing Brenda that he had some influence with the newspapers. The story of Captain Huston’s sudden death never became public property; indeed, there was no mention made of the inquest. The result of an accident was all detail vouchsafed to the public. There was, by the way, some virtuous indignation expressed in the columns of a halfpenny weekly publication possessing a small circulation in the neighbourhood of the West India Dock Road. This just wrath was excited by the evident suppression of detail, and the scant courtesy with which their representative had been received by a gentleman—himself a journalist—who was closely connected with the disgraceful death of this British officer. In cheap type, upon a poor quality of paper, and in vile English, this self-constituted representative of the thirsting British public demanded further details. He expressed himself surprised that an enlightened nation should stand idly by while the aristocracy of the overburdened land deliberately plotted to screen its own debauched proceedings from public censure. The enlightened nation either failed to spend a halfpenny foolishly (thus neglecting its own interests), or it preferred to continue standing by. Moreover, the debauched aristocracy showed no signs of quailing beneath the lash of a relentless press. It is just possible, however, that they had neither seen the newspaper in question nor heard of its existence.
The demand for further details must have failed to reach the delinquents concerned. At all events, there was no reply, the error was never repaired, and the Times failed to take up the cudgels and fight for their common rights side by side with its powerful contemporary.
So Alfred Woodruff Charles Huston was laid, not with his own, but with the forefathers of someone else in Willesden Cemetery. Poor fellow! he came from a military stock, brave men and true, who had fought and drunk and finally deposited their bones in many parts of the globe. I am not by habit a sentimental person—moonlight over water, for instance, or the whisper of the pine-trees, has a certain quieting effect upon me, though it does not make me drivel; but I see the great silent pathos of our huge graveyards. If I never pitied Alfred Huston when he was alive, I pity him now in his narrow bed—one of many—an insignificant volume in God’s bookshelf. Thus the Almighty is pleased to shelve us in rows. Sometimes He classifies us, and we are labelled with a title somewhat similar to that on the stones near at hand; but nowadays we stray away from the original corner of the library, and when the end comes we find ourselves among strangers. In some country churchyard it is sad enough to see a cluster of mouldering stones all bearing the same name, but infinitely more pathetic is it to wander through the serried ranks of the dead at Brookwood, Willesden, or Brompton. It is like a “sundry” shelf, where all odd volumes are hastily thrust and soon forgotten; for poetry is side by side with commerce, fame elbows obscurity, youth lies by age. We scan the names, and find no connection. Truly these are among strangers—they sleep not with their fathers. And the shelves fill up, showing nought but titles. The books are closed, the tale is told, and so it moulders until the leaves shall flutter again beneath the searching finger of the Almighty. Sooner be buried in the common ditch beneath a weight of red-coated humanity than amidst these unknown thousands—sooner, a thousand times sooner, lie in patient solitude on untrodden rocks beneath the wave!
Alfred Huston’s name is doubtless to be found in Willesden Cemetery today, though I do not know of anyone who will care to seek it. His wife caused it to be recorded in imperishable letters of lead, as if, mes frères, it had not as well been writ in water. It stands, moreover, in the State archives amidst a long record of heroes who drew their pay with remarkable regularity, and did little else. It was very good of her to go to the expense of those leaden letters, considering what an enormous number of mourning garments she was absolutely compelled to buy. The thought even is worthy of praise, because her mind was fully occupied with questions of crape and caps. Let
