No answering smile came over her face, and she seemed suddenly to remember that Mrs. Wylie might be awake and requiring her presence.
She moved away a little, and stood watching the men at work forward at the windlass. Then she turned and looked past him across the sea.
“I cannot help feeling,” she said, “that in some way you must owe me a grudge. Of course I had nothing to do with it in reality; but she was my sister, and despite your denial, despite your forbearance and wonderful charity, you must, in your inmost heart, blame Alice.”
He turned his meek eyes towards her face with a patient smile.
“My dear Brenda,” he said remonstratingly, “what firm convictions you have! Once before—long ago—you hinted at this … matter, and in reply I insinuated that Alice was nothing to me. Her influence has no weight on my actions; it in no way affects my coming or my going. Please don’t think of me and my affairs.”
She moved away slowly, reluctantly, without replying, gliding across the deck with noiseless tread, and so the strange interview terminated with a curious questioning silence on both sides. There was something that she did not dare to ask, something he dreaded, for his eyes were dull with a great suspense as he stood watching her go away from him.
Then he pushed back from his forehead the black sou’-wester he still wore, despite the brilliant sunshine, and somewhat wearily wiped his brow.
There was about this man a strange uncanny quiet. His calm eyes were not devoid of intellect, as most calm eyes are; his mouth and chin were not those of a sensuous, self-indulgent person. In a word, his repose was unnatural. There was in his being a vague suggestion of endurance, as Brenda had discovered. Had he been a parson, one would have said, with that careless, casual judgment of our fellows which is so often terribly correct, that he was conscious of an utter unfitness for priesthood. Had he been a soldier, one would have assigned to him a nervous hatred towards bloodshed and the means of shedding blood. But he had chosen his own profession, and in it had made a decided mark. It was one of those peculiar callings for which peculiar men are specially created by Providence—men endowed with incongruous talents, and contradictory habits of thought and action. Into such callings men are never forced: they force their own way, or they drift into some other means of making a livelihood, and, possessing no peculiar gifts, make no peculiar impression upon the moral and mental sands of their time.
Theodore Trist was undoubtedly created for a special purpose, and so distinct was the destination, that he had, without the aid of circumstance or environment, drifted into the peculiar line of life for which his talents were intended. He was a war-correspondent, and nothing else (unless it were a soldier, in which profession one most important gift would have been lost—that of writing critically and brilliantly). In a few years he had climbed the unsteady ladder of fame, and was now firmly planted on its uppermost rungs. He possessed health, strength, and energy—there was war brooding in the East—he was not blind, nor dumb, nor halt, so what could man wish for more? Yet Brenda Gilholme told him to his face, in her thoughtful, convincing way, that there was something in his life that called for a stoical endurance, and he, failing to laugh scornfully, denied the accusation with visible discomfort.
After she had left the deck, he continued to pace slowly fore and aft by himself. Presently the tide turned, and the anchor came clanking up from its rocky lodging. The huge mainsail spread its broad white bosom to the breeze, and the Hermione began to rise and fall almost imperceptibly. The breeze was light, but the vast expanse of sail caught every passing breath, and steerageway was soon acquired. Silently, graciously as she had arrived, the yacht left the little forgotten corner of this Northern world, rippling through the foamless waters with stately deliberation. Trist took no part in the well-drilled hurry that attended the departure. He was no sailor: his command was not the loud-voiced autocracy of the master mariner. It was subtle, indefinite, immeasurable.
On the bosom of the receding tide the Hermione left those still waters. Soon she passed the mouth of the river where Admiral Wylie had met his sportsman’s fate. So close was she to the high land, that the flow of the river swung her round a little. All who were on deck instinctively ceased their occupations, and stood with idle hands gazing thoughtfully up the deserted gorge. They could hear the breeze whispering among the still pines, murmuring through the fairy silver birches; and behind, in a perspective of sound, the echoing laughter of the river in its rocky bed.
Theo Trist stood alone, apparently emotionless, but when the mouth of the gorge had been shut out of view by the brown slope of a huge hill, Captain Barrow came and stood beside him.
“And now, Mr. Trist,” said the old sailor, “you’ll need some rest. There’s a time for all things—a time for tears and a time for laughter, a time for work and a time for sleep.”
Trist looked at the old man in a vague, semi-stupid way.
“And you would suggest that this is a time for sleep, Captain Barrow?”
“Yes—I would that.”
Then he took the young man’s arm, and gently forced him to leave the deck.
Trist found the saloon deserted. He passed into his new stateroom, and there he mechanically proceeded to make some sort of a toilet. A suit of blue serge was the darkest he possessed, and this he donned, toning it down with a black necktie. He shaved and bathed
