There was a faint suggestion of movement about the soldier's left leg as if intimating a desire to continue on its way towards St. James's Street; but this was ignored by Hicks in his own inimitable way.
'I caught sight of you the other day,' he said graciously; 'and I also had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Huston at Mrs. Wylie's.'
'Oh yes,' vaguely.
The soldier made a violent effort, pulled himself together, and stepped into the road. The artist stepped with him, and, furthermore, slipped his gloved hand within his companion's arm with a familiar ease which seemed to say that they would live or die together until the passage was safely accomplished.
'HowisMrs. Huston?' inquired he when they had reached the opposite pavement.
That lady's husband looked very stolid as he answered:
'Quite well, thanks.'
He mentally wriggled, poor fellow, and in sympathy his arm became lifeless and repelling. Hicks removed his hand from the unappreciative sleeve.
'Do you know,' he asked pleasantly, 'whether Trist happens to be in town?'
Huston began to feel uncomfortable. He was afraid of this society prig, and honestly wished to save his wife's name from the ready tongue of slander.
'I don't,' he answered abruptly—'why?'
This sudden question in no way disconcerted Hicks, who met the soldier's unsteady, and would-be severe, gaze with bland innocence.
'Because I happen to know a Russian artist who is very anxious to meet him, that is all.'
'Ah! I have seen him since I came home, but I could not say where he is now.'
If Hicks had been a really observant man (such as he devoutly considered himself to be), he would have noticed that his companion raised a gloved finger to his cheek, and tenderly pressed a slight abrasion visible still just on the bone in front of the ear.
'He is generally to be heard of,' said the artist in that innocently-significant tone which may mean much or nothing, according to the acuteness or foreknowledge of the listener, '... he is generally to be heard of at Suffolk Mansions. That is to say, when Brenda is staying there.'
Captain Huston's dull eyes were for a moment actually endowed with life. He stroked his drooping moustache, which was apparently placed there by a merciful Providence for purposes of justifiable concealment, and his moral attitude became visibly milder. He had just begun to realize that his own private affairs might not, after all, be of paramount importance to the whole of society.
'Is there,' he asked with military nonchalance, 'supposed to be something between Trist and Brenda?'
Hicks laughed, and, before replying, waved his hand gracefully to a friend in the stock-jobbing line, who had previously crossed the road in order to be recognised by him in passing.
'Oh no,' he answered cheerfully; 'I did not mean that at all. Now that I think of it, however, you were quite justified in taking it thus. They have always been great friends—that was all I meant. Their mothers were related, I believe.'
Captain Huston looked slightly disappointed. He did not, however, display such eagerness to walk either faster or slower, or in some other direction, now.
'Trist,' he observed as he opened his cigar-case sociably, 'is a queer fellow. Have a cigar?'
'Oh, I never smoke, you know—never. No, thanks.'
The captain grunted, and put his case back with a suppressed sigh. He had not known, but hoped. Then he waited for a reply to his leading and ambiguous remark.
'Yes,' mused Hicks at length; 'he is. I dined with him the night he left for the Servian frontier.'
This detail, interesting as it was, had but slight reference to the general characteristics of Theodore Trist. Huston tried again after he had lighted his cigar.
'One never knows where one has him.'
Hicks looked mildly sympathetic. He even gave the impression of being about to look in his pockets on the chance of finding the war-correspondent there.
'No; he is always on the move. I was once told that the Diplomatic Corps call him the Stormy Petrel, because he arrives before the hurricane.'
'And sits smiling on the top of the waves afterwards, while we poor devils sink,' added the soldier with a disagreeable laugh.
'He has not the reputation of being a coward,' said Hicks, who despised personal courage as a mere brute-like attribute.
The man of arms did not like the turn of the conversation.
'No; I believe not,' he said rather hurriedly, as if no man could be a coward. 'What I don't like about him is a certain air of mystery which he cultivates. It pleases the women, I suppose.'
'That,' suggested the other calmly, 'is probably part of his trade. If he talked much there would be nothing original left in him to write! All these diplomatic fellows get that peculiar reticence of manner—a sort of want of frankness, as it were. That is the great difference between art practised by the tongue, and art stimulated by the eye and created for the pleasure of the eye.'
Huston looked at the burning end of his cigar with bibulous concentration. He knew absolutely nothing about art, and cared less. It is just possible that, in his hideous ignorance, he doubted the purity of the pleasure vouchsafed by the pictorial productions of the artist at his side.
'We,' continued Hicks, with a deprecating wave of the hand, 'can always be frank. The bolder we are, the higher we aim, the ... eh ... the better.'
'Yes ... yes,' murmured Huston. 'But tell me—what made you think that Trist was out of town?'
'Oh, nothing!' airily. 'Nobody stays in town at this time of the year unless they can't help it; that is all! But I suppose these newspaper men hardly think of the seasons. They do not seem to realize the difference between summer and winter—between joyous spring and dismal autumn. I saw a man sketching the other day in a cold east wind on the Thames Embankment. He was only a "black and white" man, you know; but he seemed to know something about drawing. His fingers were blue.'
Like many weak-minded people, Alfred Huston was subject to sudden fits of obstinacy. He felt now that Hicks wished to lead him away from the subject originally under discussion, and in consequence was instigated by a sudden desire to talk and hear more of Theodore Trist.
'That is another thing,' he said, 'about Trist that I do not like. He pretends to despise personal discomfort. It is mere affectation, of course, and on that account, perhaps, all the more aggravating.'
'Carried away by enthusiasm, I suppose?'
The soldier laughed.
'Trist never was carried away by anything. He sits on a box of cartridges, and writes in that beastly note-book of his as if he were at a review. If all his countrymen were being slaughtered round him he would count them with his pencil and take a note of it.'
Hicks gave a few moments' careful attention to the curl of his moustache. Then he glanced curiously at his companion's vacant physiognomy. There was evidently some motive in this sudden attack on Trist. Both these men distrusted the war-correspondent, but were in no way prepared to test the value of that force which is said to arise from union. They distrusted each other more.
Presently they parted, each absorbed in his own selfish fears as before. Here, again, was Vanity and her hideous sister Jealousy. If one of these be not found at the bottom of all human misery, I think you will find the other. With these two men both motives were at work. Each was jealous of Trist, and neither would confess his jealousy to the other; while Vanity was wounded by the war-correspondent's simple silence. He ignored them, and for that they hated him. His own path was apparently mapped out in front of him, and he followed it without ostentation, without seeking comment or approbation.
William Hicks was, as Mrs. Wylie had said, finding his own level. He was beginning to come under the influence of a vague misgiving that his individuality was not such as commands the respect of the better sort of women. In his own circle he was a demi-god; but the gratification to be gathered from the worship of a number of weak-kneed uncomely ladies was beginning to pall. In fact, he had hitherto been intensely satisfied with the interesting creature called William Hicks; but now there was a tiny rift within the lute upon which he always played his own praises. He had not hitherto realized that man is scarcely created for the purpose of being worshipped by the weaker sex, and lately there had been in his mind a vague desire to be of greater account among his fellow-men. Of athletics, sport, or the more manly accomplishments he knew nothing; indeed, he had up to this period despised them as the pastime of creatures possessed of little or no intellect; now he was at times troubled by a haunting thought that it would have been as well had he been able to play lawn-tennis, to ride, or shoot, or row, or drive—or even walk ten miles at a stretch. This was not the outcome of any natural taste for healthy exercise, but a mere calculation that such accomplishments carry with them a certain weight with energetic and well-found young ladies. The curse of jealousy has a singular way of opening our eyes,mes frères, to sundry small shortcomings of which we were not aware before. When I saw Angelina, for instance, dance with young Lightfoot in former days, my own fantastic toes suddenly became conscious of clumsiness. Hicks was jealous of Theodore Trist, and while, in a half-hearted way, despising the sturdy philosopher's soldier-like manliness, he could not help feeling that Brenda Gilholme admired Trist for this same quality. He was fully satisfied that he was in every other way a superior man to the war-correspondent, although the latter had made a deep mark upon the road he had selected to travel; but he wished, nevertheless, that he himself could assume at times the quiet strength of independence that characterized Trist's thoughts and actions.
The young artist was celebrated in his own circle—that is to say, among a certain coterie of would-be artistic souls, whose talents ran more into words than into action. They admired each other aloud, and themselves with a silent adoration wonderful to behold. Most of them possessed sufficient means to live an idle, self-indulgent life in a small way. Such pleasures as they could not afford were conveniently voted unprofitable and earthly. They hung upon the outskirts of the best society, and were past-masters in the art of confusing the terms 'having met' and 'knowing' as applied to living celebrities. Among them were artists who had never exhibited a picture, authors who had never sold a book, and singers who had never faced an audience. The vulgar crowd failed to appreciate them, and those who painted and sold, wrote and published, sang and made money, tolerantly laughed at them. Hicks was clever enough to know that his mind was in reality of a slightly superior order, and weak enough to value its superiority much more highly than it deserved. He was undoubtedly a clever fellow in his way, but a moderate income and a doting mother had combined to kill in him that modicum of ambition which is required to make men push forward continuously in the race of life. Had he been compelled to work for his daily bread, he might have been saved from the clutches of London society; but as a rising young artist, with pleasant manners and some social accomplishments, he was received with open arms, and succumbed to the enervating round of so-called pleasure. He continued to be 'rising,' but never rose.
Hicks did not confess deliberately to himself that he was in love with Brenda Gilholme, but he made no pretence of ignoring the fact that she occupied in his thoughts a place quite apart. He respected her, and in that lay the great difference. The unkempt and strangely-attired damsels who were pleased to throw themselves mentally at his feet were not such as command respect. In his heart he despised them a little; for contempt is invariably incurred by affectation of any description.
And so each went on his way—the idle soldier, the vain artist, and the absorbed journalist, each framing his life for good or evil—pressing upward, or shuffling down, according to his bent; each, no doubt, peering ahead, as sailors peer through rime and mist, striving to penetrate the blessed veil drawn across the future. Ah! Let us, my brothers, thank God that, despite necromancer, astrologer, thought-reader, or chiromancer, we know absolutely nothing of what is waiting for us in the years to come. Could we raise that veil, life would be hell. Could we see the end of all our aims, our ambitions, our hopes, and our 'long, long thoughts,' there would be few of us courageous enough to go on with this strange experiment called human existence. Could we see the end, no faith, no dogma, nofanaticismeven, would have power to prevent us questioning the existence of the Almighty, because we could never reconcile the beginning to that end. The question would rise before us continuously: 'If such was to be the end, why was the beginning made?' And turn this question as you will, explain it as you may, it is ever a question. The only safeguard is suppression. The question is not asked because life is so slow that the beginning is almost forgotten in the climax; and while we live through the earlier chapters, the last volume is inexorably closed.
About ten o'clock on the evening of the third day after the meeting with Captain Huston, William Hicks entered a large and crowded ball-room with his usual pleasant condescension.
The dance was of a semi-parliamentary character, and although the society papers were pleased to announce that all the 'best' people were out of town, there was a crowd of well-dressed men and women round the door when Hicks made his appearance. There were many greetings to be exchanged, a few diplomatic dances to be asked for, and then the artist leisurely stroked his golden moustache as he looked critically round the room.
His smiling face contracted into gravity for a moment, and it was only after a pause that he continued his investigations.
'Trist!' he murmured to himself. 'Tristhere? What is the meaning of that? Is it war, I wonder? Or is Brenda coming? I will find out.'
Presently he moved away, and after some time joined a group of grave-faced elderly men, among whom Theo Trist was standing. There were politicians among these gentlemen, and several faces were of a distinctly foreign type, while more than one language could be heard. Hicks looked a trifle out of his element amidst such surroundings, and the foreign languages troubled him. No one looked towards him invitingly—not even Trist, who was talking with a broad-shouldered little man with a large head, and a peculiar listless manner which stamped him as an Oriental. Hicks did not even know what language they were speaking. It was not European in sound or intonation. Here and there he caught a word or a name.
Once he heard Trist mention the name of a Russian general then scarcely known. Though the pronunciation was rather different from that of most Englishmen, Hicks recognised the word 'Skobeleff,' and, glancing towards the smaller man, he saw upon his long, mournful features a singular look of uneasiness.
There was something fascinating about the man's face which attracted the artist's attention, and he stood gazing with a greater fixity than is usually considered polite. Without looking towards him, the Oriental was evidently aware of his attention, for he spoke to Trist, who turned with deliberate curiosity.
'Ah, Hicks!' he said, 'how do you do?'
Then he turned again to his unemotional companion and made a remark, which was received apathetically.
Hicks had not wished to make his advent so prominent. It now appeared as if he had sought out Trist for some special purpose, to make some important communication which could not brook delay.
Trist evidently read his action thus, for he left the group of statesmen and joined him. Hicks was equal to the occasion.
'You remember,' he said confidentially, as he touched his companion's sleeve and they walked down the room together—'you remember what I once told you about the Hustons?'
Trist's meek eyes rested upon the speaker's face with a persistence which was not encouraging to idle gossip.
'The night I left for Servia?' he inquired.
Hicks nodded his head.
'Yes. I remember.'
The artist paused, and his gloved fingers sought the beauteous moustache. Trist's calm eyes were not easy to meet. They were so unconsciously scrutinizing.
'Well, I saw Huston the other day,' he said at length. 'He has not improved in appearance. In fact, I should say that there is some truth in the story I repeated to you.'
There was no encouragement forthcoming, but Hicks was not lacking in assurance. He was a true son of the pavement—that is to say, an individual radical. His opinion was, in his own mind, worth that of Theodore Trist.
'There are,' he continued, 'other stories going about at present. Do you not think ... Trist ...—I mean, had we not better, for Brenda's sake, settle upon a certain version of the matter and stick to it? You and I, old fellow, are looked upon by the general world as something more than ordinary friends of Alice and Brenda. Mrs. Wylie is not going out just now. They have no one to stick up for them, except us. If you know more than you care to confess, I am sorry if I am forcing your hand....'
He paused again, and again his companion preserved that calm non-committing silence which he knew so well how to assume. He held a hand which could not have been forced by a player possessing ten times the power and ten times the cunning of William Hicks.
'But, Trist, I know what the London world is. Something must be done.'
Trist shrugged his shoulders imperceptibly.
'Silence,' continued Hicks significantly, 'in this case would be a mistake. I don't mind ... your knowing that it is not from mere curiosity that I am doing this. Brenda ... I want to save ... her ... from anything unpleasant.'
At this point Trist appeared to relent. It was not until afterwards that Hicks realized that he had learnt absolutely nothing from him.
'What do you think ought to be done?' he asked gently.
The question remained unanswered for some time, and then it was only met by another.
'Is Brenda coming to-night?'
'Yes.'
'And Alice?'
'No.'
They walked through the brilliant rooms together, each wondering what lay behind the eyes of the other, each striving to penetrate the thoughts of the other, to divine his motives, to reach his heart.
'I really think,' said Hicks at length, 'that it rests with you. You must say what is to be done, what story is to be told, what farce is to be acted. It seems to me that you know more about it than I do. Somehow I have lately dropped out of Mrs. Wylie's confidence, and ... and Brenda has not spoken to me about her sister.'
'But,' said Trist, 'I know nothing of what you refer to as the common gossip of ... of all these.'
He indicated the assembled multitude with a gesture which was scarcely complimentary. Hicks looked uncomfortable, and bit his red lip nervously.
'Don't be hard on us,' he pleaded with an unnatural laugh. 'I am one of them.'
'Tell me,' said Trist with a sudden gravity of manner, '... tell me what they are saying.'
'Well ... it is hardly fair to ask me.'
'Why?'
'Because you will not thank me for having told you. We ... we don't, as a rule, give the benefit of the doubt, you know.'
The elder man turned and looked at his companion with a slow smile.
'My dear Hicks,' he said, 'it is many years since I gave up caring what the world might say, or expecting the benefit of the doubt.'
'For yourself?'
'Yes; for myself. What do you mean?'
'I mean that they are not giving Alice the benefit of the doubt either.'
They happened just then to be near two chairs placed invitingly within an alcove by a soft-hearted hostess who had not yet forgotten her flirting-days.
'Let us sit down,' said Trist, indicating these chairs.
'Now,' he continued in a calm voice when they were seated, 'tell me what the world is saying about Alice.'
Hicks was not devoid of a certain moral courage, and for once in his life he was actuated by a motive which was not entirely selfish.
'They say,' he answered boldly, 'that she ran away from her husband to join you.'
To some natures there is a vague enjoyment in imparting bad news, and the dramatic points in this conversation were by no means lost to William Hicks, who was a born actor. His listener, however, received the news without the slightest indication of surprise or annoyance. He merely nodded his head and murmured:
'Yes; what else?'
'Oh ... nothing much—nothing, at least, that I have heard, except that Huston was supposed to have followed her home and caught her just in time. He is also said to have announced his intention of shooting you at the first convenient opportunity.'
Hicks ceased speaking, and waited for some exclamation of disgust, some heated denial or indignant proof of the utter falseness of the accusations made against Alice Huston. None of these was forthcoming. Theo Trist merely indicated his comprehension of the cruel words, and sat thinking. Beneath that calm exterior the man's brain was very busy, and as he raised his head with a slight pensive frown Hicks recognised for the first time the resemblance to the great Corsican which was currently attributed to the war-correspondent.
'Suppose,' said Trist at length, 'suppose that I were to walk arm-in-arm into this room with Huston. Would that do?'
'Can you manage it?' inquired the artist incredulously.
'I think so; if I can only find him. Suppose Huston were to dance with Brenda, and we were all to give it out that Alice is staying with her father in Cheltenham or somewhere.'
Hicks' first inclination was towards laughter. The proposal was made so simply and so readily that the whole affair appeared for a moment merely ludicrous.
'Yes,' he said vaguely; 'that will do; that will do very well. But ... is Huston invited?'
'I will manage that.'
There was a peaceful sense of capability about this man before which all obstacles seemed to crumble away. Hicks felt slightly dissatisfied. His own part was too small in this social comedy. The conduct of Brenda's affairs was slipping from his grasp, and yet he could do nothing but submit. Trist had unconsciously taken command, and when command is unconscious it is also arbitrary.
'I will go now and bring Huston,' he added presently, and without further words left his seat.
Hicks caressed the golden moustache, and watched him as he moved easily through the gay, heedless throng—a sturdy, strong young figure, full of manhood, full of purpose, the absurdly meek eyes shunning rather than seeking the many glances of recognition that met him on his way.
He went up to his hostess, and with her came apparently straight to the point, for Hicks saw the lady listen attentively and then acquiesce with a ready smile.
Nearly half an hour elapsed before Brenda arrived. She was one of a large party, and her programme had been in other hands before Hicks became possessed of it. He glanced keenly down the column of hieroglyphics. The initials were all genuine, but three dances had been kept by a little cross carefully inserted. Hicks obtained two waltzes, and returned the card with his usual self-satisfied smile. He knew that Brenda expected Trist, although she was not looking round as if in search of anybody. But he was fully convinced that there was some mystery on foot. One dance, he had observed, which was marked with a cross, was a square. Trist and Brenda had met by appointment—not as young men meet maidens every night in the year at dances for purposes of flirtation, or the more serious pastime of love-making, but to discuss some point of mutual interest.
As a rival Hicks had no fear of Theodore Trist, who, he argued, was a very fine fellow in his way, but quite without social accomplishments. He was a good dancer—that point he generously admitted—but beyond that he had nothing to recommend him in the eyes of a clever and experienced girl like Brenda, who had had the advantages of association with some of the most talented men of her day, and intimacy with himself, William Hicks. There was only that trivial matter of athletic and muscular superiority, which really carried no great weight with a refined womanly intellect. In a ball-room Theodore Trist, with his brown, grave face, his absorbed eyes, and his sturdy form, was distinctly out of place. He had not even a white waistcoat, wore three studs in the front of his shirt, and sometimes even forgot to sport a flower in his coat. His very virtues (of an old fashion), such as steadfastness, truth, and honesty, prevented him from shining in society. Fortunately, however, for his own happiness he was without vanity, and therefore unconscious of his own shortcomings. It is just within the scope of possibility that he was moved by no ambition to shine in society.
While the first bars of the waltz were in progress, Hicks found Brenda. He had little difficulty in doing so, because he had been watching her. Moreover, she was dressed in black, which was a rare attire in that room. In choosing this sombre garb she had made no mistake; the style suited exactly her slim, strong young form, and in contrast her neck and arms were dazzling in their whiteness.
They began dancing at once, and Hicks was conscious that there was no couple in the room so perfectly harmonious in movement, so skilled, so intensely refined.
'Trist,' he said presently in a confidential way, 'has been here.'
'Indeed!' was the guarded reply, made with pleasant indifference.
'Yes ... Brenda, he and I had a little talk, and, in consequence, he will be absent for some time, but he is coming back.'
'What,' she inquired calmly, 'did you talk about?'
All this time they were dancing, smoothly and with the indefatigable rhythm of skilled feet.
'It has come to my knowledge,' he replied, 'that gossip has connected the names of Alice and Trist, and there are foolish stories going about concerning Huston, who is said to be searching for Trist with the intention of shooting him. Trist has gone to bring Huston here; they will come into the room arm-in-arm. We arranged it, and I think no further contradiction is required.'
Had she winced he would have been aware of it, because his arm was round her yielding waist, and her hand was within his. She turned her head slightly as if to assist him in steering successfully through a narrow place; and he, glancing down, saw that her face was as white as marble, but her step never faltered. She drew a deep unsteady breath, and spoke in a grateful voice.
'It is very good of you ... both,' she said simply.
They continued dancing for some time before the silence was again broken.
'Some day, Brenda,' whispered Hicks, while preserving with immaculate skill an indifferent face before the world, 'I will tell you why I was forced to interfere even at the risk of displeasing you. Some other time, not now.'
A peculiar contraction seemed to pass over her face, and it was only with an effort that she smiled while acknowledging a passing bow from a girl-acquaintance.
Soon afterwards she began talking cheerily on a safer subject; and despite all his experience, all his cleverness, William Hicks could not bring the conversation round again to the topic she had shelved.
Her spirits seemed to rise as the evening progressed. There was a task before her, the dimensions of which were soon apparent. Almost everyone in the room had heard something of Alice, and the only contradiction possible, until Trist and Huston arrived, lay in the brave carriage of a cheerful face before them all.
There was a clock upon the mantelpiece of a small room where refreshments were set forth, and the merits of this secluded retreat were retailed by her to more than one of her partners. The pointers of the dainty timepiece seemed to crawl—once or twice she listened for the beat of the pendulum. Midnight came, and one o'clock. Still there was no sign of Theodore Trist. At two o'clock her chaperon suggested going home, and Brenda was compelled to apologize laughingly to several grumbling young men, who attempted to cut off her retreat at the door.
The spacious hall was full of departing guests; through the open door came the hoarse confusing shouts of policemen and footmen. Brenda pressed her hands together beneath her opera-cloak and shivered.
Theodore Trist never returned, and his absence passed unnoticed by all except William Hicks, who waited till the end.
END OF VOL. II.
BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.