An hour later, Theo Trist was again seated in the editor's room. The large-headed man himself was also present at his desk, amidst a chaos of newspaper-cuttings and manuscripts.
'And now, Trist,' he was saying in his terse, business-like way, 'suppose anything should go wrong. If you are killed, who shall I tell, and how shall I tell it?'
The war-correspondent looked pensively into the flame of the gas, which was already lighted because the editor's room gathered little light from heaven. It was a single burner, and a green-glass shade cast the clear white light down upon the table, leaving the rest of the room in shadow. Men who live and work by artificial light must needs have the appliances perfect. Trist, however, was within the radius of illumination, being seated on a low chair. He raised his meek eyes, turned his bland, expressionless face towards the editor, and smiled speculatively.
'There is,' he answered, 'an old gentleman called Trist living at No. 4, The Terrace, Cheltenham. Will you take down the address? He is a very nice old gentleman, and extremely courteous to ladies. He is my father, and the news of my untimely demise would cause him considerable annoyance. You see, he would not be able to get his usual rubber in the evening for a few days.'
'No. 4, The Terrace, Cheltenham,' interrupted the journalist somewhat abruptly. 'How shall I tell him if it is necessary to do so?'
'Regret to announce death of Theodore Trist, your son—or something of that description. Don't exceed the shilling's worth.'
The editor passed his strong white hand thoughtfully across his chin with a rasping sound.
'Is there no one else?' he asked indifferently.
Trist thought deeply for a moment.
'Ye-es,' he murmured, in the manner of a man who makes an effort to remember some small social debt.
The editor opened again the small leather-bound book wherein he had noted the address of the nice old gentleman living in the West Country. He passed his pen over the page and waited silently.
'Miss Brenda Gilholme,' Trist dictated slowly, in order that his hearer might write, 'care of Mrs. Wylie, Suffolk Mansions, W., or Wyl's Hall, Wyvenwich.'
These items having been duly inscribed, the journalist closed the book methodically and locked it away in a drawer.
'And how,' he inquired, 'shall I break it to ... Miss Brenda Gilholme?'
'Oh—you need not trouble to beat round the bush. There will be no hysterics.'
As he spoke, he rose and looked significantly at his watch.
'But,' he added, after a moment's pause, 'if Mrs. Wylie is in town, you might, perhaps, go up to Suffolk Mansions yourself. The little attention would be kindly taken.'
'I will,' answered the editor heartily. He rose also, and took his hat from a peg behind the door. 'But we will, of course, take it for granted that the necessity will never arise. I don't like to feel as if I were sending a fellow where I would not go myself ... and paying him for it.'
'No,' said Trist in his gently confident way. 'The necessity will never arise, you need not fear that! I must be going—the Strand will be crowded with theatre-goers.'
He held out his hand, but the great journalist waved it aside.
'I am going,' he said, 'to Charing Cross with you. Unless you object——?'
'I shall be very glad,' was the unemotional reply, delivered as a mere matter of mechanical politeness. At times Theo Trist betrayed that his indifference to the smaller sentiments of social intercourse was cultivated and slightly artificial.
'There is no one else going to see you off?' inquired the editor.
'No one.'
'Then I will go with you.'
So these two men passed out of the huge building together. Each was in his way a power in the world. Each stood at the top of his own particular tree. Passing through the crowded thoroughfare, they could not fail to attract some attention, and yet they walked on in sublime unconsciousness. Conceit is a growth that flourishes only in the spring of life, unless it be a singularly noxious and hardy weed. In summer, and before the autumn, it usually dies down. Neither of these men was young—each had, years ago, given up thinking of his own person. To both the work placed in their hands was fully absorbing, and a busy man has little leisure to contemplate his own manifold advantages and points of superiority over the common herd.
Each was in his sphere a genius, and there is something about genius that attracts the eye, although the possessor be clad in modesty. I have seen genius clad in something much more common than modesty—namely, rags—and have recognised it with no difficulty. The editor of the great newspaper was in appearance a somewhat remarkable man: broad of shoulder, with a massive head and huge limbs, he was one of those exceptional beings whom men turn in the streets to look at again. His companion was less likely to attract an observant eye. Although he was taller, he seemed to require less space to move and breathe in than his companion. His movements were smooth and quick, while in passing people on the pavement he touched no one, and never got in the way, as did the absorbed journalist at his side. There was no special physical peculiarity about Theodore Trist to stamp him in men's minds as some one apart. As has already been stated, he carried his head and shoulders with the uprightness of a soldier, and it was only the keener eyes around that, looking into his face, detected the incongruity of his physiognomy.
'Where is your luggage?' inquired the editor suddenly, as they walked along.
From his manner it would appear that he feared that Trist had forgotten this necessary item. Under similar circumstances he would no doubt have done so himself.
'It is waiting for me at the station,' was the reply; 'I went to my rooms after dinner and packed up.'
'It cannot have taken you long,' abstractedly.
'No; I am not taking much.'
The journalist seemed suddenly to return to practical things.
'But,' he inquired, 'I suppose you are prepared to stay some time if necessary?'
'Oh yes!'
'How long?'
'As long as I am needed,' replied the war-correspondent very deliberately. There was no ring of doubt or hesitation in his voice.
'You are an ideal special,' said the other.
'It is best to be consistent even in trifles,' observed Trist, and the editor made no reply. Presently he continued, as if speaking his own thoughts aloud:
'I don't like the look of things in the East. Russia is seething; Turkey is ready, and ... and hell is brewing.'
'Let it brew!' said the philosophic Trist.
'While you stand on the edge of the vat and watch things through the smoke.'
'Exactly.'
'Then, Trist, mind you do not fall in. No fighting, my boy. You must keep in the background this time.'
'If,' replied the other, 'I kept in the background, you would be the very first man to recall me.'
'Yes,' meditatively; 'I suppose I should. But you can duck your head when you hear things whistling ... when the music begins.'
Trist shrugged his shoulders, and smiled.
'My ducking days are done. One is just as likely to duck into bullets as out of their way. If, as you poetically put it, hell is brewing, I shall stay out there and watch the process as long as I am wanted; but if it is all the same to you, I should like to be with the Turks.'
'I thought you would. In case of war between Russia and Turkey, I have secured Steinoff to go with the Russians. With Steinoff on one side and you on the other, there will not be a newspaper in the world to come near us. The thought of it almost makes one pray for war.'
'I don't think you need do that,' murmured Trist, selecting a fresh cigar.
The journalist glanced at him with some keenness.
'You think it will come?'
'I do.'
The great journalist smiled slowly, and as Trist did not continue, he fell into a long reverie which lasted until they reached Charing Cross Station.
It was Monday night, and the mails were light, but there were a great many passengers. Mostly pleasure-seekers, these travellers, hurrying away from London into clearer atmospheres, and across to lands where the art of enjoying life is better understood. The great train was ready, standing next to that right-hand middle platform we all know so well—a very ordinary erection of brick covered with large slabs of sandstone, encumbered with a few heavy wooden seats, backless, comfortless; lighted (in 1876, when Trist went off to the first Turkish war) with round-globed lamps. No spot this for sentiment—no place for thought. And yet what scenes have been illuminated by those round-globed lamps! what tears have fallen unheeded on the sandstone pavement! what feet have pressed the dust and covered up the tears! Countless men have stepped from that platform, literally, into a new life. Here have nameless waifs looked their last upon London haste, before turning to other lands where they have found naught else but a nameless grave. From these dumb stones men have gone forth unknown, unheeded, unwept, to return even as Theodore Trist had returned, with their name on all men's lips. And—saddest thought—brown-faced wanderers have walked mechanically out of this same station into a world where they have no friends left. Returning from a life misspent in selfish absorption, they have passed out beneath those three-armed lamps with a faint sickening thought that this is home—old England at last, with naught but graves and memories to seek.
Trist soon saw his luggage into the hands of the guard. The ticket was taken, and more than one fussy tourist at the booking-office window turned to look again at the quiet, unobtrusive man whose destination was so far afield as Bucharest.
The little tragedies of real life differ in one important point from those represented on the stage for our amusement and instruction. This point is the lamentable lack of stage management. On the boards we have appropriate scenery—a bosky glade, and far away up the stage a shimmering calm sea with moonlight cleverly thrown upon it. There is also slow music—piano, pianissimo—and lowered footlights and pretty dresses. But in real life there are none of these accessories. In my time I also have dabbled a little in tragedy, as most of us are, sooner or later, likely to do; and there was no soft music, no distant shimmering sea, no whispering pine-trees and sighing glades. When I look back (with a peculiar sensation in the region of the collar), there are only memories of railway-stations, and brief moments at the head of the staircase, in brilliant ball-rooms, with laughter all round us. On the platform, in the midst of hurrying porters and unsentimental trunks, I have no recollection of neatly punctuated periods or flowery observations respecting an impossible future. (Ah, that time-worn platitude about meeting hereafter, and living an impossible earthly life in heaven, how sickening it is!) A quick touch of nervous fingers, an instantaneous glance full of vague fear, that is all I remember. There was a singular lack of that hesitating, 'pauseful' eloquence which makes the well-fed old ladies in the stalls snivel again. But if there is fault to be found I must be to blame, because the histrionic school of pathos appears to be universally accepted.
After Trist had secured his seat and lighted his cigar, there were still five minutes to spare. The two men walked backwards and forwards, smoking placidly, and observing the excited manœuvres of the British tourist with a slight cynicism.
'I do not,' said the editor, 'see anyone I know.'
'Nor I,' replied Trist; 'and I am not sorry. Travelling with casual acquaintances is not an unmixed pleasure. Besides, I want to read all the way to Vienna. My ignorance regarding the political intricacies of Montenegro, Servia, and Bulgaria is positively appalling.'
'What a practical beast you are, Trist!'
'In some things. And even in those it is merely a matter of exercising common-sense as against popular sentiment.'
The editor raised his thoughtful gray eyes, and looked round him. There were last greetings in the very atmosphere, and to his ears came snatches of conversation—promises, most of them, and certain of unfulfilment, to write and think of those left behind or going afield; half-shed tears, heaving bosoms, wan smiles, and convulsively crushed handkerchiefs.
'This sort of thing?' inquired the journalist, with a comprehensive wave of his cigar.
'Yes; cultivated sorrow. Tears carefully forced and brought on by artificial fertilization or cheap sentiment. With some people, more especially among women, sorrow is nothing else than a "culte"—almost a religion. They look upon it as their bounden duty to spin out to the utmost limit of agony their farewells and their wearisome troubles. All these people would be better employed in reading the evening paper at home. They only get in the way of the porters, and puzzle the ticket-collectors at the barrier.'
The editor laughed in a tolerant way. He was a much older man than Trist.
'There seems,' he said suggestively, 'to be more of it round the third-class carriages than here.'
'The result, perhaps, of cheap port-wine at home. The poor people are nowhere in the higher walks of sentiment without port-wine.'
The journalist laughed in a somewhat perfunctory way.
'I suppose,' he said, after a pause, 'that you would, if you were a railway director, advocate closing the gates of the platform to all tearful relations?'
'Certainly. Seeing people off is an amusement which ought never to have been instituted.'
'Perhaps, then ... I had better go.'
It was Trist's turn to laugh.
'Not at all,' he said, flipping the ash off his cigar with a backward jerk of the hand—'not at all. I do not anticipate that you will stand snivelling at the carriage-window, and, when the train moves away, wave a limp hand and a damp handkerchief, smiling feebly through your tears.'
The older man looked up at the clock, of which the pointers now indicated the hour for starting.
'No,' he answered abstractedly, 'I do not recognise in your pleasing picture a portrait of myself. Come! it is time to get in.'
No more words passed between them. Trist stepped into the carriage and closed the door after him. At the same moment the guard signalled, and the heavy train moved slowly away into the darkness. All within the great arched roof was light and life; beyond lay darkness and silence. A turn in the way could be easily followed by watching the glowing red light at the rear of the train, and this presently disappeared.
Then the journalist turned on his heels and walked down the platform.
'That man,' he murmured to himself in his absorbed way, 'is in love.'
Thus, without drum or trumpet, Theodore Trist left England, and set forth to meet the horrors of a campaign of which the record will in future history be a red and sanguinary blot upon the good name of a so-calledcivilizedContinent.
END OF VOL. I.
BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.