And yet he did not actually fight with sword and rifle. The pen was his arm and weapon. In two languages he wrote through all that campaign the brave record of a losing fight. While endeavouring to give a somewhat unchivalrous enemy his due, he made no denial of partisanship. The ease and fluency with which he expressed himself in French excluded all hope of that, and Trist frankly arrayed himself on the side of the losing nation. Finally, he occupied with perfect serenity the anomalous position of a non-combatant who ran a soldier's risk—a neutral totally unprotected, and unrecognised as such—an English war-correspondent who, of his own free will, refused to lay himself under the obligations entailed by protection.
Thus this half-fledged parson feathered his wings. Destined to preach peace, he suddenly turned and taught war. In two countries simultaneously he made a brilliant name, proving that if he could not fight, because the possession of a fighting soul had become known to him too late in life, he could at least watch others battling as no man of his age could watch.
When at length Paris had fallen, an emaciated, pale-faced Englishman turned his back upon the demoralized capital and sought his native land. His groove in life had been found. Theodore Trist was a born chronicler of battle-fields, a subtle strategist, a lost general—in three words, an ideal war-correspondent. His great knowledge of his subject, his instinctive divination of men's motives, and his exceptional good-breeding, saved him from the many pitfalls that usually lie concealed in the path of all who follow an army-corps without occupying a post therein. He was never in the way, never indiscreet, never inquisitive, and, above all, never self-opinionated. He watched war as a lover of war, not as a self-constituted representative of a hypercritical nation. The spirit of competition did not with him override the sense of patriotism, simply because such a spirit in no wise affected him. He went his own way, and struck out a line of his own, never seeking to be before his compeers with news or guesses. Consequently his position was unique—midway between a war-correspondent and a warlike historian, for his writings on the battle-field were nothing less than history.
So Trist returned to England and found himself famous. Upon every bookstall in the kingdom he found a small red volume of his letters collected from the columns of the journal he had represented during the great unfinished war.
In the course of a few days he called upon his various friends—Mrs. Wylie among the first, Alice and Brenda Gilholme, at the residence of their aunt, Mrs. Gilholme, shortly afterwards. It was about this time that Brenda conceived the idea that Theo Trist loved her sister. He was only one among many, but he was different from the rest, and the young girl, for the first time, blamed her sister seriously. She kept these things in her heart, however, and said nothing, because there was nothing tangible; nothing to authorize her speaking to Alice. If Trist had fallen a victim to the fascinations of the light-hearted coquette, he certainly concealed his feelings most jealously.
Brenda fully recognised that the fact of his being less light-hearted, less cheerful than of old, might easily be accounted for by the horrors through which he had passed during the late months; but there was something else. There was another change which had come over him since his return.
While she was still watching and wondering, Theo Trist suddenly vanished, and soon afterwards there broke out a small war in the Far East. Like a vulture he had scented blood, and was on the spot by the time that the news of hostilities had reached England. He never wrote private letters, but his work in the new field of battle was closely watched by the small circle of friends at home. As usual, his letters attracted attention, and people talked vaguely of this wonderful war-correspondent—vaguely because he was personally unknown. His individuality was nothing to the warlike host of men who follow events quietly at home with a half-defined thrill of envy in their hearts—for every Englishman has a secret love of war, a well-concealed longing to be fighting something or someone.
When he returned, Alice Gilholme was married, and Brenda had to tell him of it. No surprise, no signs of discomfiture were visible in the man's incongruous face, where strength and weakness were strangely mixed. He inquired keenly and practically about settlements, expressed a gentle hope that Alice would be happy, and changed the subject.