'But I never pretended to understand women,' he murmured, with his gentle smile.
Women would have declared that they did not understand him either, using the phrase with a bitter intention foreign to the Reverend Algernon's lips and temper. His good points were so purely intellectual – lucidity of thought, temperance of opinion, tolerance, humour, appreciation of things which deserved it. These gifts would, with women, have pleaded their rarity in vain against the more ordinary endowments of willingness to work and a capacity for thinking, even occasionally, about other people. Men liked him – so long as they had no business relations with him. But women are moralists, from the best to the worst of them. If he had lived, Trix would probably have scorned to avail herself of his counsels. Yet they might well have been useful to her in after days; he was a good taster of men. As it was, he died soon after Vesey, having caught a chill and refused to drink hot grog. That was his doctor's explanation. Mr. Trevalla's dying smile accused the man of cloaking his own ignorance by such an excuse; he prized his virtue too much to charge it with his death. He was sorry to leave his rooms at Brighton; other very strong feeling about his departure he had none. Certainly his daughter did not come between him and his preparations for hereafter, nor the thought of her solitude distract his fleeting soul.
In the general result life seemed ended for Trix Trevalla at twenty-two, and, pending release from it in the ordinary course, she contemplated an impatient and provisional existence in Continental pensions– establishments where a young and pretty woman could not be suspected of wishing to reap any advantage from prettiness or youth. Hundreds of estimable ladies guarantee this security, and thereby obtain a genteel and sufficient company round their modest and inexpensive tables. It was what Trix asked for, and for two years she got it. During this period she sometimes regretted Vesey Trevalla, and sometimes asked whether vacancy were not worse than misery, or on what grounds limbo was to be preferred to hell. She could not make up her mind on this question – nor is it proposed to settle it here. Probably most people have tried both on their own account.
One evening she arrived at Paris rather late, and the isolation ward (metaphors will not be denied sometimes) to which she had been recommended was found to be full. Somewhat apprehensive, she was driven to an hotel of respectability, and, rushing to catch the flying coat-tails of table d'hôte, found herself seated beside a man who was apparently not much above thirty. This unwonted propinquity set her doing what she had not done for years in public, though she had never altogether abandoned the practice as a private solace: as she drank her cold soup, she laughed. Her neighbour, a shabby man with a rather shaggy beard, turned benevolently inquiring eyes on her. A moment's glance made him start a little and say, 'Surely it's Mrs. Trevalla?'
'That's my name,' answered Trix, wondering greatly, but thanking heaven for a soul who knew her. In the pensions they never knew who you were, but were always trying to find out, and generally succeeded the day after you went away.
'That's very curious,' he went on. 'I daresay you'll be surprised, but your photograph stands on my bedroom mantel-piece. I knew you directly from it. It was sent to me.'
'When was it sent you?' she asked.
'At the time of your marriage.' He grew grave as he spoke.
'You were his friend?'
'I called myself so.' Conversation was busy round them, yet he lowered his voice to add, 'I don't know now whether I had any right.'
'Why not?'
'I gave up very soon.'
Trix's eyes shot a quick glance at him and she frowned a little.
'Well, I ought to have been more than a friend, and so did I,' she said.
'It would have been utterly useless, of course. Reason recognises that, but then conscience isn't always reasonable.'
She agreed with a nod as she galloped through her fish, eager to overtake the menu.
'Besides, I have – ' He hesitated a moment, smiling apologetically and playing nervously with a knife. 'I have a propensity myself, and that makes me judge him more easily – and myself not so lightly.'
She looked at his pint of ordinaire with eyebrows raised.
'Oh, no, quite another,' he assured her, smiling. 'But it's enough to teach me what propensities are.'
'What is it? Tell me.' She caught eagerly at the strange luxury of intimate talk.
'Never! But, as I say, I've learnt from it. Are you alone here, Mrs. Trevalla?'
'Here and everywhere,' said Trix, with a sigh and a smile.
'Come for a stroll after dinner. I'm an old friend of Vesey's, you know.' The last remark was evidently thrown in as a concession to rules not held in much honour by the speaker. Trix said that she would come; the outing seemed a treat to her after the pensions.
They drank beer together on the boulevards; he heard her story, and he said many things to her, waving (as the evening wore on) a pipe to and fro from his mouth to the length of his arm. It was entirely owing to the things which he said that evening on the boulevards that she sat now in the flat over the river, her mourning doffed, her guaranteed pensions forsaken, London before her, an unknown alluring sea.
'What you want,' he told her, with smiling vehemence, 'is a revenge. Hitherto you've done nothing; you've only had things done to you. You've made nothing; you've only been made into things yourself. Life has played with you; go and play with it.'
Trix listened, sitting very still, with eager eyes. There was a life, then – a life still open to her; the door was not shut, nor her story of necessity ended.
'I daresay you'll scorch your fingers; for the fire burns. But it's better to die of heat than of cold. And if trouble comes, call at 6A Danes Inn.'
'Where in the world is Danes Inn?' she asked, laughing.
'Between New and Clement's, of course.' He looked at her in momentary surprise, and then laughed. 'Oh, well, not above a mile from civilisation – and a shilling cab from aristocracy. I happen to lodge there.'
She looked at him curiously. He was shabby yet rather distinguished, shaggy but clean. He advised life, and he lived in Danes Inn, where an instinct told her that life would not be a very maddening or riotous thing.
'Come, you must live again, Mrs. Trevalla,' he urged.
'Do you live, as you call it?' she asked, half in mockery, half in a genuine curiosity.
A shade of doubt, perhaps of distress, spread over his face. He knocked out his pipe deliberately before answering.
'Well, hardly, perhaps.' Then he added eagerly, 'I work, though.'
'Does that do instead?' To Trix's new-born mood the substitute seemed a poor one.
'Yes – if you have a propensity.'
What was his tone? Sad or humorous, serious or mocking? It sounded all.
'Oh, work's your propensity, is it?' she cried gaily and scornfully, as she rose to her feet. 'I don't think it's mine, you know.'
He made no reply, but turned away to pay for the beer. It was a trifling circumstance, but she noticed that at first he put down three sous for the waiter, and then returned to the table in order to make the tip six. He looked as if he had done his duty when he had made it six.
They walked back to the hotel together and shook hands in the hall.
'6A