Mrs. Wylie did not reply to this melancholy truth. She was looking past her companion across the glassy water, with her eyelids slightly contracted and her rather thin lips pressed closely together. It was an expression very familiar to Theo Trist, and he waited silently. Presently she made a little movement, and looked at him with a faint suggestion of surprise, as if she had just landed on firm earth after a long, long mental voyage.
“She was quite right, Theo!” was the result.
He smiled vaguely, and looked obstinate.
“If,” said Mrs. Wylie in an explanatory way, “I were a different sort of woman to what I am, I should consider myself very much ill-used at being deprived of a fuller confidence. I should strive, and nag, and persist until I had wormed out of you your ambitions, your joys, your sorrows, and your possible motives. That is what Brenda means, I think. Theoretically, she is right; practically and personally she is wrong.”
“Is it not,” suggested the young fellow in self-defence, “the height of egoism to inflict thoughtlessly upon other people one’s petty, temporary, and often imaginary woes?”
“Not always, Theo. There is one case where it is real kindness to be a little selfish, and to speak openly of one’s feelings and thoughts. I once had a little boy of my own, though it was years ago, when I was quite a different person to … to what I am now, so I can hardly pretend to know much of a mother’s feelings; but I am convinced that it is truer kindness to tell one’s mother too much than too little. She knows—her mere natural instinct tells her—that there is something wrong, and in the intensity of her love and anxiety she exaggerates things unduly.”
They were both speaking lightly and only half gravely, but there was something pathetic in their ignorance, however indifferent and conversational their tones might be. Both were speaking vaguely and speculatively of something they had never known, something they never could know from personal experience.
“Perhaps it is better. …” Trist began, and then he stopped suddenly, withheld by a quick remembrance of the utter misery that weighed down the heart of the little Eton boy who had gazed stupidly out of the cab window as he passed over Windsor bridge fifteen years ago. He could hear again the rattle of the shaky wheels, the vibration of the windows; and again the sound of this kindly woman’s voice, lovingly lowered, came to his recollection.
“No,” he said, correcting himself, “it cannot be better, but as things have turned out, perhaps it is as well that there is no one at home listening too eagerly to the cry of the paperboy when I am away.”
“You forget poor me,” said Mrs. Wylie merrily. She had a wonderful way of slipping round a grave subject.
“Not at all. But I should imagine that you generally look at the births, deaths, and marriages before studying the list of killed and wounded.”
“Invariably. I look upon you as a person eminently capable of taking care of himself. And I should hope that if there were anything wrong you would have the good grace to let me know before the penny papers shriek it forth to the world.”
“That sounds inconsistent.”
“Nevertheless, it is not so. I am not an anxious person, Theo. I never lie awake on stormy nights at Wyl’s Hall and think of you—probably sleeping peaceably in tropic calms—but I like to hear occasionally of your movements, and I like to hear people talk of you, because I can say, ‘I know him’—that is all.”
“Then. … Brenda is wrong?” murmured Trist with a suggestion of relief in his manner.
“Yes, Brenda is wrong, because I am not your mother, and have no desire to pretend to that doubtful felicity. It is an honour which I distinctly decline.”
“I am sorry. …”
“Oh, don’t mention it. You are hardly to blame. But I imagine that you would make a very bad son.”
Trist laughed and rose to his feet. His pipe was empty, and having knocked the ashes out against the rail, he dropped it into his pocket. Then he stood before her waiting until she should make a movement to go below.
“Nevertheless,” said Mrs. Wylie casually, without looking up as she drew her shawl comfortably around her previous to rising’—nevertheless, I should like you to understand that if ever I can be of use to you (for an old woman might on occasions be useful to the most independent of young men, Theo), I am ready to do anything for you. Any little odd maternal jobs without pretending to the maternal honour, you understand.”
She rose and stepped to the side of the vessel, looking round the fjord and over the mountains in a practical, weather-wise way. Trist followed her, and stood a little behind, in his still unemotional manner, with his meek eyes raised to a distant snowfield, where the pink reflection of the northwestern sky hovered yet.
“It need not be a one-sided transaction,” he said in the same worldly, hopelessly everyday tone of voice. “There may be little odd filial jobs without acknowledging the filial ties, you understand.”
Mrs. Wylie laughed her easy, flowing laugh, and walked briskly forward; for the Admiral was calling her now in his genial, tyrannical autocracy.
“Yes,” she said cheerily. “It may be so.”
And so this compact was made at last—a compact of which his share was to be commenced rudely and suddenly within twenty-four hours, while hers was harder perhaps, and infinitely sadder, extending into years yet unopened and unthought of.
VI
A Shadow
The two fishermen went off in opposite directions again the next day, the Admiral taking the gig and sailing down the fjord to the distant river, while Trist went ashore in Nielsen’s boat to fish the stream that ran past the little mountain homestead.
It was a dull foreboding day; for the clouds had fallen over the summits and all was gray.
