He had left Brenda alone in the midst of sorrow, and now he knew that she was on her way home to England to meet more of it. There is nothing so sad in human life as the bitter realization of human helplessness. Alice Huston was miserable, and Trist knew that he could do nothing. He was fully aware that misery with her meant misery to others. She was too impulsive—too selfish, perhaps—to keep her sorrows to herself, and Brenda would sooner or later be dragged into the trouble. He smiled to himself at the remembrance of William Hicks' words. The idea of Brenda Gilholme—the gifted, the capable, the learned—seeking the aid of this exalté artist was ludicrous, and yet Trist did not smile over it for long. He wished that there had been another man—such a man as himself, he unconsciously decided—near Brenda at this time.
Accustomed as he was to act alone, he perhaps assigned to the spirit of independence a greater importance in the average nature of men and women than such spirit really occupies. Independence or self-dependence is a quality which, being possessed, brings with it a certain blindness. A man such as Theodore Trist, whose every action and thought receives its motive from a calm, straightforward independence, cannot quite realize that there are people to whom the necessity of thinking and acting on their own responsibility is little short of agony. He was sensible in a vague manner that Brenda Gilholme was an exceptional girl in many ways, but he never through all his life quite understood that she was one in a thousand. His life and work brought him into contact with men, and men exceptionally ignorant of women and their ways. In his dreamy, chivalrous way, he gave women credit for a much greater self-dependence and self-sufficiency than they possess—bless them all! In leaving Brenda to bring home Mrs. Wylie, and in a sense to take command of the Hermione, he acted somewhat in the spirit of a soldier who, leaving his subordinate behind while he goes forth to other work, feels that his late duties are made over to hands and brain in all probability as competent as his own, but merely wanting in opportunity. And he started on his flying journey across Europe without the knowledge that Brenda was quietly assuming responsibilities from which many older women would have shrunk aghast.
Now that this news of further trouble coming to meet her, as it were, from the East, touched him in passing, he never for one moment doubted Brenda's capability to meet it, and act in the quickest and wisest manner. But there was a vague apprehension, nevertheless, and he thought with discomfort of the girl's utter loneliness.
CHAPTER XIII.
OFF!
An hour later, Theo Trist was again seated in the editor's room. The large-headed man himself was also present at his desk, amidst a chaos of newspaper-cuttings and manuscripts.
'And now, Trist,' he was saying in his terse, business-like way, 'suppose anything should go wrong. If you are killed, who shall I tell, and how shall I tell it?'
The war-correspondent looked pensively into the flame of the gas, which was already lighted because the editor's room gathered little light from heaven. It was a single burner, and a green-glass shade cast the clear white light down upon the table, leaving the rest of the room in shadow. Men who live and work by artificial light must needs have the appliances perfect. Trist, however, was within the radius of illumination, being seated on a low chair. He raised his meek eyes, turned his bland, expressionless face towards the editor, and smiled speculatively.
'There is,' he answered, 'an old gentleman called Trist living at No. 4, The Terrace, Cheltenham. Will you take down the address? He is a very nice old gentleman, and extremely courteous to ladies. He is my father, and the news of my untimely demise would cause him considerable annoyance. You see, he would not be able to get his usual rubber in the evening for a few days.'
'No. 4, The Terrace, Cheltenham,' interrupted the journalist somewhat abruptly. 'How shall I tell him if it is necessary to do so?'