Then he returned to the saloon. The steward was setting the breakfast-table in the forward part of the cabin near the mainmast, where the dining-room was tacitly understood to be. Further aft were low chairs, a sofa, a piano, and other furniture, constituting a drawing-room.
Trist sank into a low chair, and watched the man’s quick, noiseless movements with perfunctory interest. The steward glanced towards him, and his movements became, if possible, more supernaturally silent than before. Then suddenly his long sallow face relaxed into a satisfied smile, and, for his own edification, he nodded his head in a pleased, told-you-so sort of manner.
Trist was asleep.
IX
A Divided Responsibility
“Theo! Theo! I am sorry to wake you!”
Trist was a man who threw aside the heaviest sleep at a moment’s notice, and was in full possession of his faculties—probably making active use of them—while others were still rubbing their eyes. The touch of a soft, warm little hand upon his wrist had awakened him before the words imprinted themselves upon his brain. Somehow he remembered them afterwards, the syllables themselves, and the manner in which they were uttered.
He looked up with a smile, and met Brenda’s eyes. She was leaning over his chair, and when he looked up she stood erect with her white hands hanging before her against the soft black dress. She had learnt something at Mrs. Wylie’s school of womanliness, for everything about her was as neat and trim and dainty as if there was naught else to think of than the braiding and coiling of the bright brown hair, and the pinning of the snowy collar round her throat.
“I am sorry to disturb you, Theo,” she repeated.
“Not at all,” he said. “Why should you be? It is ten o’clock; I have been asleep two hours. What more could I require?”
“I have kept some breakfast warm for you,” she said, turning towards the table; “but I awakened you because of these. There are four telegrams and a number of letters for you. Hans Olsen brought them off just now. He got them yesterday from the Bergen boat. We are out of the Heimdalfjord now, and Nielsen has gone. I … only hope … it is not war, Theo!”
He stood up and took the telegrams and letters from her hands. Then he crossed the saloon towards the table.
“It looks rather like it,” he said coolly.
He raised the cover of the dish which the steward had just placed upon the table, and Brenda, taking the hint, poured out his coffee.
She walked away from him a little and stood quite motionless, with her back turned towards him, while he tore open the thin white telegraph envelopes. One … two … three … four of them, spreading the paper out upon the tablecloth. Her quick ears caught each sound, and enabled her to picture every movement made by this indifferent man.
“Yes, Brenda, it … is … war!”
She turned slowly and approached the table. Bending over it, she attended to his requirements in a deftly graceful way, grouping round him the toast, butter, and marmalade. He was studying a telegram spread out before him, but his fixed eyes did not appear to be taking in the purport of words written in uneven type. Furtively he looked towards her hands, and then slowly upward, terminating in one scrutinizing glance into her face.
“Where?” she asked, sitting down rather hastily opposite to him.
“Serbia and Montenegro have declared war against Turkey,” he replied, busying himself with his plate.
“And you must go?”
He stirred his coffee very deliberately, and, raising the cup to his lips, took a long critical sip.
“Yes, Brenda. I must go!”
There are few more silent places than the cabin of a sailing yacht on a calm day. In a steamer it is different, for there is the ever-beating throb of life down below, in the engine-room, which is half heard and half felt. But on a sailing yacht, when the rudder-chains are taut and the breeze steady, there is no noise whatever. In the pretty saloon of the Hermione there was a singular absence of sound when Trist finished speaking. He turned again to the telegrams, neglecting his breakfast. Brenda thought that she had never experienced such an utter, breathless silence. Her ears seemed to tingle with the intensity of it, and in her brain there was a sudden vacuous sensation. She could think of nothing to say, although she strained her mind to discover some means of breaking this dreadful pause.
Furtively she raised her eyes, and at the same moment Trist looked across the table in a hurried, shifty way. Their eyes met for a brief agonizing second.
“I hope,” said Brenda sweetly, “that your coffee is not very cold.”
“Oh no! Oh no, thank you! It is very nice,” he replied awkwardly, looking into the cup with absorbing interest.
Her question appeared to call him back from some vague, far-off dream, for he resolutely began to eat; while she hovered round, playing the hostess in a shy, constrained way. Presently he handed the open telegrams across the table to her.
“You may as well read them,” he said conversationally. “They are very characteristic of the man who wrote them.”
She took the papers and read in a semitone:
War—Serbia, Turkey—imminent. Come.
Number two was longer:
Where on earth are you? War. Look sharp. Montenegro is in it, too.
The third was more serious:
Two messages without reply. Are you coming?
Then number four:
They are at it already. It will be a bad business. Come at once.
She returned them without a word; and he, seeing the necessity of saying something, remarked pleasantly:
“It is my misfortune to be required in two places at once, or not at all.”
She stood by the table and looked at the date of the latest telegram. The four messages had been despatched within two days.
“Are you not,” she asked innocently, “too late? It may be all over
