There was a short pause when he had finished speaking. Brenda appeared to be lost in a reverie. At length she spoke.
“Which course do you recommend, Theo?” she asked.
“My opinion can be of little value. It is a matter of personal feeling which only Mrs. Wylie can decide.”
“Yes. But she may be in that frame of mind where a decided opinion—your opinion—might be a comfort to her.”
As she made this suggestion she turned her head and looked up to see whether he had fully grasped her meaning, and he nodded his head slightly, admitting that her argument might very well be of value.
“I am afraid, Brenda,” he said apologetically, “that I am rather hard and practical in these matters. My opinion is that Fjaerholm churchyard is as good as any other. It would be a horrible journey home for her and … for you.”
“I think Fjaerholm would be best.”
“I am sure of it. Of course, Mrs. Wylie may have decided feelings on the subject, and if so we must give in, and leave the Hermione; though I think she will be better here among her own surroundings than on board a crowded passenger steamer—an object of curiosity and ostentatious sympathy.”
“I do not think,” said the girl, after a short pause, “that she will be influenced by any mistaken sentiment.”
“Nor I. And of course it is mere sentiment. We English have a way of leaving our dead all over the world, and no doubt there are more of us in the sea than of any other nation.”
She looked at him in a vague, wistful way. At times she failed to understand him. There were certain humours which came over him at odd times—hard practical humours of which the heartlessness seemed assumed and unnatural—and of these she could not detect the motive.
“I will try,” she said, “to find out Mrs. Wylie’s feelings on the subject.”
“Yes, Brenda, do!” he murmured, in a way which seemed to imply that the matter was safe in her hands.
They continued to walk up and down in silence—each wrapt in individual thought. There was a little frown on the girl’s face, an almost imperceptible contraction of the eyelids, forming a slight perpendicular wrinkle which might deepen and grow permanent with sorrow or years. The clear, heavenly-blue eyes were wide open and somewhat restless, and in the whole face there was that intangible, indescribable presence which we call intellect, because we dare not call it soul.
Suddenly Trist stopped and looked down at her so persistently that she was forced to raise her eyes.
“Don’t!” he said ambiguously, with his slow, deprecating smile.
She laughed in a short curious tone, and changed colour.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t think about me,” he said with sudden earnestness.
For a moment an expression of pain rested in her eyes, and she opened her lips as if about to speak; but he bade her keep silence with an admonishing shake of the head, and she stood with slightly parted lips looking up into his unreadable face.
“Don’t!” he murmured again, and moved forward decisively. They continued to walk in silence for some moments.
“How did you know that I was thinking of you?” she asked quietly, at length.
“I can always tell. There is a peculiar stony silence which comes over you at times, and I always feel its presence. Very often you remain without speaking for some time, but that is a different silence, and then without looking towards you I feel suddenly that the other has come—that the other has come … Brenda, and that you are thinking about me!”
“You ought to be highly gratified!” she observed with a lamentable attempt at playfulness.
“And,” he continued in his gently deliberate way, “when I look at you the same expression is always there. You are always striving to say something which is difficult. Don’t say it, Brenda! If it is a question, don’t ask it.”
“Why not?”
“Because those things are better left unsaid—those questions are better left unasked. The answer cannot be satisfactory.”
“Then you advocate going through life without ever understanding our fellow-creatures, without ever attempting to enter into each other’s joys and sorrows, without pitying, sympathizing, or admiring?”
“No, I do not go so far as that. But I have no patience with people who are constantly fishing for sympathy, constantly confiding imaginary woes to others who have their own affairs to worry them. You should never seek trouble, Brenda. It comes only too naturally of its own free will,” he said in a quick anxious way, endeavouring to keep the conversation in a safe and general channel.
“It seems to me,” she answered after a long pause, “that stoicism is your aim and creed. To endure, and simply to endure, is your estimate of life. He who endures best, who carries the brightest face before the world, utters the fewest complaints, and deceives most successfully his fellow-creatures, has lived the best life. You never try to see a meaning in it all—you never seek an ulterior motive which is only and solely for our good.”
“My dear Brenda,” said Trist with animation, “am I a cripple? Am I blind or dumb, or halt—that I have aught to endure?”
“You have something,” was the grave rejoinder. “There is something, but I do not know what it is, and I would sooner see you openly miserable—cynical, heartless, anything but what you are.”
He laughed aloud, and she shrugged her shoulders with a little smile.
“You should really devote your energies
