CHAPTER XIII.

CROSS-PURPOSES.

Mrs. Wylie had undertaken the task of reconciling Alice Huston and her husband without any great hope of success. The widow's married life had been an exceptionally happy one, but even in her case there had been small drawbacks, mostly arising, it is true, from the untoward work of fate, but, nevertheless, undoubted drawbacks, and undeniably appertaining to married life.

It would have been hard to find two people less calculated to assimilate satisfactorily than Alice and Alfred Huston; and yet there was love between them.

The weak-minded soldier undoubtedly loved his wife: as for her, it would be hard to give a reliable opinion. She was, I honestly believe, one of those beautiful women who go through life without ever knowing what love really is.

With another woman for his helpmate, Huston might reasonably have been expected to reform his ways. With another husband, Alice might have made a good and dutiful wife.

Assuredly the task that had fallen upon Mrs. Wylie's handsome shoulders was not overburdened with hope. She was, however, of an evenly sanguine temperament, and I think that it is such women as she who help us men along in life--women who trust for the best, and work for the best, without any high-flown ideals, without poetic notions respecting woman's influence and woman's aid; who, in fact, are desperately practical, and make a point of expecting less than they might reasonably get.

Mrs. Wylie was by no means ignorant of the fact that a reconciliation between such a couple as Mr. and Mrs. Huston was not calculated to be of a very permanent or deeply-rooted character; but she had lived a good many years in a grade of society which delights to watch the inner life of others. She had seen and heard of so many unsuitable matches, which, having been consummated, had proved the wonderful power of love. It is only the very young and inexperienced who shake their heads upon hearing of an engagement, and prophesy unhappiness. No man can tell to what end love is working. The wise are silent in such matters, because there are some mistakes which lead to good, and some wise actions of which the result is unmitigated woe.

The widow therefore held her peace, and set to work as if there could be but one result to her efforts. She communicated with Alice Huston in her hiding-place, with Captain Huston at the club of which he was still a member, and with Trist by word of mouth. Brenda was, so to speak, in the enemy's country. Her reports were therefore to be received, but no acknowledgment could be made. In this respect she was like a spy, because she was without instruction from headquarters, and, nevertheless, had to act and report her action.

Her first and, indeed, only communication reached Mrs. Wylie the morning after her interviews with Theo Trist and Captain Huston. It was only a few words scribbled on the back of a visiting card, and slipped into an envelope previously addressed and stamped:

'Whatever you do, keep Theo and Alice apart.'

Mrs. Wylie turned the card over and read the neatly-engraved name on the other side. Then she read the words aloud, slowly and thoughtfully, once more:

'Whatever you do, keep Theo and Alice apart.'

'Brenda knows,' reflected the practical woman of the world, 'that Huston is jealous of Theo. She also knows that I am quite aware of this jealousy. It would be unnecessary to warn me of it; therefore this means that Brenda has discovered a fresh reason.'

She broke off her meditations at this point by rising almost hurriedly, and walking to the window. For a considerable time she watched the passing traffic; then she returned to the fire-place.

'Poor Brenda!' she murmured--'my poor Brenda! And ... Alice is so silly!'

The connection between these two observations may be a trifle obscure to the ordinary halting male intellect; but I think I know what Mrs. Wylie meant.

Later on in the day she sent a note to Captain Huston, requesting him to come and see her, and by the same messenger despatched a few words to Theo Trist--her reserve force--forbidding him to come near.

'My reserves,' she said to herself as she closed the envelope energetically, 'are thus rendered useless; but Brenda is reliable. I must do as she tells me.'

Captain Huston received the widow's note at his club. It was only eleven o'clock, and, consequently, there was plenty of time before he need put in an appearance at Suffolk Mansions. He was an idle man, and, like all idle men, fond of lounging about the streets gazing abstractedly into shops, and getting generally into the way of such foot-passengers as might have an object in their walk.

There is no haven for loungers in London except Piccadilly in the morning, and to this spot the soldier turned his steps. After inspecting the wares of a sporting tailor, he was preparing to cross the road with a view of directing his course down St. James's Street, when someone touched him on the shoulder.

Huston turned with rather more alacrity than is usually displayed by a British gentleman with a clear conscience, and for some seconds gazed in a watery manner at a fair, insipid face, ornamented by a wondrous moustache. There was a peculiarity about this moustache worth mentioning. Although an essentially masculine adornment, it, in some subtle way, suggested effeminacy.

'Mr. ... eh ... Hicks,' murmured Huston vaguely, and without much interest.

Hicks forgave magnanimously this Philistine want of appreciation.

'Yes, Captain Huston. How are you?'

'I? ... Oh! I'm all right, thanks.'

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.

'How _is_ Mrs. 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, no _fanaticism_ even, 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.