“Just like other men. Much the same as in a drawing-room. Men do not change so much as you imagine. Not so much perhaps as women. There is a lamentable monotony about us: we behave at a funeral as at a wedding.”
“Women don’t do that. They overdo the smiling, and exaggerate the weeping, while between times they take note of each other’s bonnets, and mentally measure the depth of crape trimmings.”
“There is more good in the world, Brenda, than you are aware of.”
“And,” said the girl, “more courage. Excuse my returning to the subject; but it is one which is full of interest, and I think you must know something about it.”
He turned and looked at her, and in the twilight his meek eyes were as soft as any woman’s—softer than Brenda’s, which were habitually wistful and much too grave.
“I do,” he said simply.
“And … ?” she murmured interrogatively.
“And I think there can be no doubt that there is more courage in the world now than there has ever been. We are the bravest generation that has ever lived—though our bravery is of a different type. All brutal attributes are expunged, and it is purely mental. There is no excitement in it, and therefore it is pure, independent courage. The Crusades were marvellous campaigns: we never try to realize now what it must have been for those men—most of whom had never even set foot on the deck of a ship—to go to sea in small ill-found vessels on a mere wild-goose chase, to a country of which they knew absolutely nothing. But the Crusades have been outdone; greater knowledge has told us of greater dangers, and yet men are ready to face them.”
“Without the incentive of religion.”
“Yes.”
“Then, Theo, you consider that religion has nothing to do with personal bravery?”
“Absolutely nothing.”
“That is a bold theory. Do you mean to say that a man will not fight the better for possessing a strong faith in a future life which will in every way be better than this—that his present existence will be of less value owing to the possession of that faith, and that, therefore, he will be readier to risk losing his life.”
“It is not a theory,” urged the man in his strange gentle way, which was crudely out of keeping with his words. “It is an experience. Fanaticism undoubtedly generates courage; religion does not. On a battlefield, and on a sinking ship, I have found that a future existence, and all the unending questions that it arouses, occupy a very small place in men’s minds.”
“Then of what are they thinking? What emotion do they show?”
“They are thinking of trifles, which we all do, all through life; and they generally either laugh or swear!”
“Then I give up attempting to understand human nature!”
“I gave that up years ago, Brenda.”
She did not answer him, but sat gazing across the dark waters with an unsatisfied expression upon her sweet, intellectual face. Even as that gray, hopeless sheet of water, life lay before her—a surface, and nothing else; a knowledge that there was something beneath that surface, a hot, fierce thirst to drink deeper of the cup of knowledge; to know more and find a reason for many things which to our minds are quite unreasonable: and no means of satisfying what is, after all, a natural and legitimate craving.
“It is no use,” continued Trist in a lighter tone, “attempting to understand anything, because sooner or later you will find yourself confronted by a great wall which no knowledge can surmount.”
“We either know too much or too little,” said the girl discontentedly.
“Too much,” he affirmed without any hesitation. “Fortunately, we have learnt to acquire a mental courage with our knowledge, or else we never would be able to face life at all.”
After this there was a pause of some duration. It would be impossible to hazard a guess at what thoughts were passing through the man’s brain as he sat there blandly indifferent, placid and utterly inscrutable. His meek eyes wore no far-off, absent look. He seemed merely to be noting the shadows upon the water.
With her it was different. Plainly, she was thinking of him, for her eyes were fixed upon his face, endeavouring to decipher something there. At last, as with a sudden effort, she spoke, and in the inconsistency, the utter irrelevancy of her speech, there was the history of a woman’s world.
“Either,” she said in a dull voice, “you are on the verge of atheism, or you love Alice. Only one of those … calamities could account for the utter hopelessness of your creed.”
At this moment Mrs. Wylie appeared on deck, and playfully chided them for staying away so long.
With the utmost unconsciousness of an unanswered question, Trist rose and crossed the deck to meet her.
V
The Compact
“It has blown over,” said Trist softly, as the little lady came towards him.
“Yes,” replied Mrs. Wylie with obvious abstraction. She was not thinking of the weather at all. In Trist’s monotonous voice there had been an almost imperceptible catch. Slight though it had been, the acute little matron detected it, and she looked keenly through the semidarkness into her companion’s face. His meek eyes met hers, softly, suavely, aggravatingly innocent as usual.
“And,” she added as an afterthought, “how beautifully fresh it is now!”
She took a seat beside Brenda, glancing at her face as she did so. The girl welcomed her with a little smile, but said nothing. The silence was characteristic. Most young maidens would have considered it necessary to make an inane remark about the weather, just to show, as it were, that that subject had been under discussion before the arrival of this third person.
There was something very pleasant and homelike in the very movements of Mrs. Wylie’s arms and hands, as she settled herself and drew her shawl closer round her. Trist seated himself on the rail near at hand, and relighted his pipe. Thus
