MRS. WYLIE TAKES THE OFFENSIVE.
When Mrs. Wylie returned to the breakfast-room, she found that Brenda
was preparing to write. A blank telegram-form lay on the
blotting-pad in readiness.
'We must telegraph to Alice,' she said briskly, as she dipped a quill
pen into the ink. 'What shall I say?'
Mrs. Wylie noticed the quill pen, and remembered that the girl never
used anything but steel.
'Do not be in a hurry,' she urged rather coolly. 'Let us think what
is best to be done. Let us have some breakfast.'
'I don't think I want any breakfast.'
'I am sure I do not, but I am going to eat some. Breakfast means
_nerve_, Brenda, and we shall want all our nerve for the next few
days.'
Reluctantly the girl took her place at the table. Her companion was
relentless; moreover, she was aggravatingly placid, even to
speculation.
'There are some lives,' she said, 'which seem to be allowed as a
warning and lesson to the rest of us. No doubt it is very
instructive to the onlookers; but I am sometimes a little sorry for
the examples themselves.'
Brenda looked up, and presently resumed her pretence of eating.
'I am afraid,' she said, 'that his was not a very happy life. If he
had the opportunity of living it over again ... I doubt ... whether
he would accept it, I mean.'
'Oh,' returned the elder lady with remarkable conviction, 'none of us
would do that!'
Brenda showed no disposition to stray off into generalities.
'Did you,' she asked quietly, 'really mean what you said just now
about Alice? Is it your honest opinion that she loved Alfred Huston
through it all?'
Mrs. Wylie sipped her tea meditatively.
'There are,' she answered after a pause, '... there are, I am afraid,
some women who go through their lives without ever achieving the
power of loving truly and wholly. It sometimes seems to me that
Alice is one of them. They enjoy as others do, and they endure; but
love is neither enjoyment nor endurance. It is a speciality, and the
women who possess it (though they be called coquettes, flirts,
wantons) are the salt of the earth. Alice came as near loving Alfred
Huston as she will ever be to loving anyone beyond herself.'
'You think so?' in a curious monotone.
'Yes; I do.'
'I ... _don't_,' said Brenda.
'Ah! then you follow the majority, which, by the way, is composed of
mere casual observers?'
'I do not know that I follow the majority; but I am of opinion that
Alice has never loved Alfred Huston, because there was someone else.'
'That _is_ following the majority,' observed Mrs. Wylie complacently.
'And,' continued the girl in a hard voice, 'that other person is Theo
Trist.'
'Majority,' murmured the widow sweetly.
'Even,' continued Brenda after a little pause, 'if things are as you
say, it is horribly sad, and there is no alleviation. It is very
hard that Alice should only realize now that she loved him. The rest
of her life will be ... what _will_ it be?'
'I believe,' answered the older woman, with that practical philosophy
which seems to be a growth of years only, 'that Alice loved him as
much as lay in her nature. I am afraid, my dear, that your sister is
incapable of a great and lasting passion, such as is usually
considered desirable, although it invariably wrecks a life or two.'
'Very few people understand Alice.'
'And fewer still are ready to make her the slightest allowance. She
began life with an initial mistake--namely, that a beautiful girl can
marry any man she may choose. This error is very wide-spread; but,
my dear, I have never watched the career of a beautiful girl without
discovering, sooner or later, that in reality her choice is
remarkably small. After weeding out impossibilities, setting aside
improbabilities, and getting rid of ball-room hacks, there are seldom
more than two men left. If a girl, in the confidence of her own
loveliness as vouched for by elderly bachelors and doting relatives,
is pleased to consider that she can have any man she likes, let her
try. The best men, the ideal husbands, are not to be fished for.
They come of their own accord, or they stay away altogether.'
'I suppose,' said Brenda reflectively, 'that she was spoilt by the
circumstances attending her early life? Her popularity, I mean. But
then people will say that a good nature is, or should be, beyond the
reach of circumstances.'
'We cannot help,' replied the woman of the world, 'what people say.
In the meantime we must just make the best of things as they stand.
Alice is in an awkward position, and it is clearly our duty to get
her out of it as creditably as we can.'
'Of course. I am ready to do all I can.'
Mrs. Wylie rose from the table with her characteristic cheeriness.
For some moments she appeared to be thinking, then she spoke:
'The best way out of it is for me to go down to Cheltenham and bring
her back. There is a train about eleven o'clock; Alice herself went
by it. We can be back by to-night--about dinner-time, I should
think, or a little later.'
To this suggestion Brenda acceded willingly enough. She was rather
dazed by this sudden change in her sister's affairs, and her usually
clear intellect seemed almost benumbed. Her manner was similar to
that of a woman labouring under intense anxiety, or a suspense more
terrible than the most abject fear.
Before leaving Mrs. Wylie telegraphed to Trist, the message being
kept from Brenda's knowledge. She addressed it to his rooms in
Jermyn Street, and without hesitation wrote the following words:
'_I am going to Cheltenham. Keep away from Brenda. Expect me in
Jermyn Street eight o'clock to-night._'
'I think,' she reflected, as her plump white hand pressed the
blotting-paper, 'that the time has really come when I must do
something. These young people are verging on a terrible muddle ...
unless ... unless Theo has some set plan of his own all along. I
sometimes think he has. There _must_ be a motive somewhere.'
As the good lady was descending the stairs at half-past ten on her
way to Paddington Station, a commissionaire came toiling up. He
carried a letter in his hand, and Mrs. Wylie, perceiving it, stopped
him. It was a full account of the accident, written at a club near
at hand by Theodore Trist.
By three o'clock that afternoon Alice Huston learnt her husband's
end. She received the news with a strange apathy. There were times
in this woman's life when the permanence of sorrow was shut out from
her mind. She was like a child in the way in which she took the
punishment God thought fit to administer. It seemed part of her
mental laziness. She had not even the energy to resist, however
useless such a course may be.
There was no time to be lost, and Mrs. Wylie insisted upon an
immediate departure for town. The excuses put forward by Alice were
trivial, or would have been considered trivial in another woman.
They caught the train, however, and reached London at half-past
seven. A long, weary drive in a rattling cab (such a vehicle as
could not be found in any other city) brought them to Suffolk
Mansions.
Brenda was at the door to meet them. She kissed her sister silently,
and then followed the two ladies into the drawing-room. There was a
cheery fire burning briskly in the grate; a single lamp with a pink
shade had a wonderful effect in adding comfort to the appearance of
the room.
Alice lifted her veil and looked round as if expecting to find
someone there. Mrs. Wylie, near the fire, and Brenda, who was
closing the door, were both watching her.
'I think,' she said wearily, 'that Theo might have been here.'
Mrs. Wylie was hungry; perhaps she was also slightly irritated.
'Why?' she asked mercilessly.
Mrs. Huston unbuttoned her gloves speculatively, and, after a short
pause, replied:
'Oh ... I don't know! I thought he would come, that was all.'
Mrs. Wylie made no pretence of concealing a somewhat impatient shrug
of the shoulders.
'You are in your old room,' she said in a voice devoid of sympathy.
'If you take off your bonnet we will have dinner at once. It will
warm us up.'
Brenda conducted her sister to the bedroom assigned to her. They had
not spoken yet, but the girl's attitude was distinctly sympathetic in
its bearing. Women have a silent way of telling us that their hearts
are coming, as it were, towards us. I wonder, my brothers, what some
of us would do without that voiceless sympathy--without the gentle
glance that penetrates and consoles at one time--without the touch of
certain fingers which, though light, is full of sweet heartfelt
pleading to be allowed a share of the burden.
Brenda unpinned her sister's veil, and, hovering round, volunteered
here and there a quick and deft assistance.
'I wonder,' said the beautiful woman at length, with that touch of
helplessness in her tone which would have been better reserved for
male ears, 'why I feel like a whipped child. I do not see that I am
to blame because Alfred chose to be careless. Of _course_ it was an
accident.'
Brenda did not answer at once. Indeed, they were leaving the room
when she said in a reassuring tone:
'Undoubtedly it was an accident.'
There was no mistaking the tone. Whatever Mrs. Huston's faults may
have been, she never sought undue credit; she never pretended to feel
that which had no place in her heart. Her sins were those of
omission rather than of commission. Despite Mrs. Wylie's assurance
to the contrary, Brenda knew then, and never afterwards doubted, that
her sister's love for her husband, if it had ever existed, was dead
at the time of his sudden and untimely end.
As things go in these days, we can hardly blame this beautiful woman
for having loved, and ceasing to love. It is only in novels of
to-day and in records of ancient times that we meet with an enduring
love. The fact is, we see too many of our fellow-creatures to be
constant to a few. We drift together, and we drift apart again. We
vow a little, perhaps, and protest that nothing shall divide; but
presently the streams diverge. There is some little obstruction in
the bed or pathway; the waters part, and never flow together again.
We merrymakers dance here and we dance there; we run down into the
country by an evening train; dine, dance, make love, and come to town
at an early hour. The next night it is just as likely as not that we
go off in some other direction with our dress-clothes in a bag and
our hearts conspicuously on our sleeves 'for one night only.'
It was all very well for those inconsistent old knights (strange
combinations of poetry and brutality) to be faithful to the young
person remaining at home for industrial purposes; it was very easy
for the young person in question to think of none other than the
youth who wore her colours 'twixt armour and heart. These people
never saw other youths and other maidens. If I went to the Holy
Land, I am confident that I should think only of a certain small
person left behind; and, moreover, it is within the bounds of
probability that if she had no tennis parties, bachelors' balls,
bazaars, and race-meetings, she would pine away her youth in thoughts
of me, not to mention executing quite a quantity of unsightly
needlework.
These reflections must, however, remain strictly between us. It
would not do for the general public to get ear of them. Let us
rather pound away at the good old doctrine of true love, following in
the footsteps of romancers since the days of Solomon. Your hand, my
brother! It is best to blind one's self at times.
Brenda was a daughter of the nineteenth century, and as such
conceived it possible that love can bloom and flourish in the human
heart only to die utterly after all. Some of us there are, perhaps,
who, having once loved, carry a small wound with us until the end of
the chapter; but the majority have no time to look back too steadily.
Most assuredly Alice Huston was not one of the former. I believe
honestly that she loved her husband; but I am also convinced that
before his death she had ceased to do so--that the growth had died
down utterly within her heart, leaving no trace, diffusing no odour,
as it were, of better things.
The younger sister realized all this, but her blind affection for the
woman whose existence had been so closely allied to her own made
excuses and propounded explanatory theories as only a woman's love
can. There was in her mind an indefinite feeling of antagonism
against the events of the last few months, but in her own heart she
blamed Alfred Huston. She would not give way to the ever-growing
conviction that her sister was not quite free from the taint of
faultiness in thought or action.