CHAPTER VIII.

HICKS' SECRET.

When Mrs. Wylie returned home about five o'clock she found the drawing-room still in darkness. The maid had offered to light the gas, but Brenda told her to leave it. In the pleasant glow of the firelight the widow found her young friend sitting in her favourite chair with interlocked fingers in her lap.

Mrs. Wylie closed the door before she spoke.

'This is bad,' she said.

'What is bad?'

'I believe,' replied Mrs. Wylie in her semi-serious, semi-cheerful way, 'that I have warned you already against the evil practice of sitting staring into the fire.'

Brenda laughed softly, and met the kind gaze of the gray eyes that were searching her face.

'It has always seemed to me,' she said, 'that your philosophy is wanting in courage. It is the philosophy of a moral coward. It is braver and better to think out all thoughts--good and bad, sad and gay--as they come.'

Mrs. Wylie loosened her bonnet-strings, unhooked her sealskin jacket, and sat down.

'No,' she answered argumentatively. 'It is not the creed of a coward, no more than it is cowardly to avoid temptation. A practical man, however brave he may be, will do well to avoid temptation. A sensible woman will avoid thought.'

'I was thinking,' replied the girl diplomatically, 'of tea!'

From the expression of the widow's face it would seem that she accepted this statement with reservations. She made, however, no remark.

After a little pause she looked across at Brenda in a speculative way, and no doubt appreciated the grace and beauty of that fire-lit picture.

'Willie Hicks,' she said, 'has been here?'

'Yes. How did you know?' inquired Brenda rather sharply.

'Emma told me.'

'Ah!'

'Brenda,' said the widow in a softer tone, after a pause of some duration.

'Yes!'

'I have constructed a little fable for myself, in some part founded upon fact. Would you like to hear it?'

'Yes,' replied the girl with a slightly exaggerated moue of indifference; 'tell me.'

'Shortly after I arrived at the Hicks', Willie went out. I happened to know this, because I was near the window in the drawing-room and saw him. I also noticed that his gait was slightly furtive. I thought, "That young man does not want me to know that he has gone out." On my way home I met him going in the contrary direction. He avoided seeing me, and did it remarkably well, as might have been expected. But there was a change in his gait, and even in his attitude. The strange thought came into my head that he had been here to see you. Then I began to wonder what had caused the change I detected. It seemed as if William Hicks had passed through some experience--had received a lesson. The final flight of my imagination was this: that you, Brenda, had given him that lesson.'

Mrs. Wylie ceased speaking and leant back comfortably. Brenda was sitting forward now with her two hands clasped around her knees. She was looking towards her companion, and her eyes glowed in the ruddy light.

'I think,' she said, 'we should respect his secret. Naturally he would prefer that we were silent.'

'We are neither of us talkative.... Then ... then my fable was true?'

Brenda nodded her head.

'I am glad,' murmured the widow after a short silence, 'that he has brought matters to an understanding at last. It is probable that he will turn out a fine fellow when he has found his level. He is finding it now. His walk was different as he returned home. All young men are objectionable until they have failed signally in something or other. Then they begin to settle down into manhood.'

'He misrepresents himself,' said Brenda gently. 'When he lays aside his artistic affectation he is very nice.'

'But,' added Mrs. Wylie with conviction, 'he is not half good enough for you.'

Brenda smiled a little wistfully and rose to preside at the tea-tray, which the maid brought in at that moment.

And so William Hicks was tacitly laid aside. People who live together--husband and wife, brother and sister, woman and woman--soon learn the art of deferring a subject which can gain nothing by discussion. There are perforce many such topics in our daily life--subjects which are best ignored, explanations which are best withheld, details best suppressed.

During their simple tea and the evening that followed there were other things to talk of, and it was only after dinner, when they were left alone with their work and their books, that Mrs. Wylie made reference to the afternoon's proceedings.

'On my way back from the Hicks',' she said conversationally, 'I met Sir Edward.'

'Ah! Indeed!

Brenda looked up from the heavy volume on her lap and waited with some interest. Mrs. Wylie paused some time before continuing. She leant to one side and took up a large work-basket, in which she searched busily for something.

'Yes,' she murmured at length, with her face literally in the basket; 'and ... Theo is in St. Petersburg!'

'St. Petersburg!' repeated Brenda slowly. 'In the winter. I rather envy him!'

'I do not imagine,' said Mrs. Wylie, still occupied with the dishevelled contents of her work-basket, 'that he is there on pleasure.'

Brenda laughed lightly.

'Theo,' she observed in a casual way, 'is not much given to pleasure in an undiluted state.'

'I like a man who takes life and his life's work seriously.'

'So do I,' assented Brenda indifferently.

She knew that Mrs. Wylie was studying her face with kindly keenness, and so she smiled in a friendly way at the fire, which seemed to dance and laugh in reply.

'Is it generally known that he is in St. Petersburg?' she asked with some interest.

'Oh no! Sir Edward told me in confidence. He says that it does not matter much, but that he and Theo would prefer it not being talked about.'

'Why has he gone?' asked the girl.

Mrs. Wylie laid aside the basket and looked across at her companion with a curious, baffled smile.

'I don't know,' she answered. 'I had not the ... the...'

'Cheek?'

'Cheek to ask.'

Brenda returned to her book.

'I suppose,' she said presently, as she turned a page, 'that it means war.'

The widow shrugged her shoulders.

'We must not get into the habit,' she suggested, 'of taking it for granted that every action of Theo's means that.'

'He lives for war,' said the girl wearily as she bent over her book with decision.

Mrs. Wylie worked on in silence. She had no desire to press the subject, and Brenda's statement was undeniable.

They now returned to their respective occupations, but Brenda knew that at times her companion's eyes wandered from the work towards her own face. Mrs. Wylie was evidently thinking actively--not passively, as was her wont. The result was not long in forthcoming.

'My dear,' she said energetically, 'I have been thinking. Let us go down to Wyl's Hall.'

Brenda pondered for a few seconds before replying. It was the first time that there had been any mention of the old Suffolk house since its master's sudden death. Mrs. Wylie had never crossed the threshold of this, the birthplace of many Wylies (all good sailors and true men), since she returned in the _Hermione_ to Wyvenwich a childless widow. All this Brenda knew, and consequently attached some importance to the suggestion. During the last six months they had lived on in an unsettled way from day to day. Both had, perhaps, been a little restless. There was a want of homeliness about the chambers in Suffolk Mansions; not so much, perhaps, in the rooms themselves as in the stairs, the common door with its civil porter, and the general air of joint proprietorship. What we call vaguely 'home' is nothing but a combination of small things with their individual associations. The milkman with his familiar cry, the well-known bang of the front door, the creaking of the wooden stairs; such trifles as these make up our home, form the frame in which our life is placed, and each little change is noted. The present writer first realized the true meaning of death by noting the absence of a small vase from the nursery mantelpiece. It was a trifling little thing of brown ware, shaped quaintly, and round the bowl of it was a little procession of Egyptian figures following each other in stately angularity. One day it was broken, and I have never forgotten the feeling with which I first looked at the mantelpiece and sought in vain the familiar little jar.

To women these small associations are, perhaps, dearer than they are to us men. No doubt they love to be known and greeted by their neighbours, rich or poor, while we are often indifferent. The want of human sympathy, of human interest and mutual aid is the most prominent feature in town life. Men live and die, rejoice and grieve, laugh and weep almost under the same roof, and never share their laughter or mingle their tears. Faces may grow familiar, but hearts remain estranged, because perforce each man must fight for himself on the pavement, and there is no time to turn aside and lend a helping hand.

Brenda did not lose sight of the possibility that Mrs. Wylie might be longing for the familiar faces and pleasant voices of the humble dwellers in Wyvenwich; but the proposal to return to Wyl's Hall was apparently unpremeditated, and therefore the girl doubted its sincerity.

'Not on my account?' she inquired doubtfully, without looking up.

'No. On my own. I am longing for the old place, Brenda. This fog and gloom makes one think of the brightness of Wyvenwich and the sea, which is always lovely in a frost. Let us go at once--to-morrow or the next day. The winter is by no means over yet, and London is detestable. Even if we are snowed up at Wyl's Hall, it does not matter much, for it is always bright and cheery despite its loneliness. We will take plenty of books and work.'

The girl made no further demur, and presently caught the infection of her companion's cheerful enthusiasm. Mrs. Wylie possessed the pleasant art of making life a comfortable thing under most circumstances, and for such as her a sudden move has no fears. While Trist adapted himself to circumstances, Mrs. Wylie seemed to adapt circumstances to herself, which is, perhaps, the more difficult art.

The good lady seemed somewhat relieved when the move was finally decided upon and arranged; nevertheless, there was a look of anxiety on her round face when she sought her room that night.

'I wish,' she observed to her own reflection in the looking-glass, 'that I knew what to do. I must be a terrible coward. It would be so very easy to ask Brenda outright ... though ... I know what the answer would be ... poor child! And I might just as well have spoken out boldly when I went to see him that night. It is a difficult predicament, because--they are both so strong!'