Before the silence had again been broken the dinghy came rushing on. Down went the tiller, and with shivering canvas the little boat swung round alongside.
Beside the after-rail Brenda stood motionless; her eyes were resting on the dreary, lifeless scene which was nothing but a still blending of hazy blues now that the small white sail no longer gave life to it. She did not even turn when the sound of wet splashy footsteps upon the deck came to her ears. The newcomer had kicked off his brogues amidships, and was coming aft in wet waders and soaking outer socks, out of respect for the Hermione’s deck.
There was a vague suggestion of respectful familiarity in his movements. One could tell instinctively that he had known these ladies for many years. Nor did he apologize for the informality of his pedal attire.
This man was clad du reste disgracefully. His old tweed coat was baggy and most lamentably worn. One sleeve was very wet, while the other was muddy. The gray waders were discoloured, and he had apparently been kneeling in green slime. And yet withal Theo Trist was undoubtedly a gentleman—unmistakably, undeniably so. The manner in which he set his shoeless feet upon the deck betrayed it. His very silence confirmed it.
He came beneath the awning, and raised from his close-cropped head a most lamentable hat of gray cloth, with a vague brim and no independent shape. All round it were gaudy salmon-flies and a coil of gleaming gut.
As he stood there beneath the awning in the gray twilight with his head bared, the strange incongruity of his person was very noticeable. A sturdy, lightly-built body spoke of great activity. It was the frame of a soldier. But the face was of a different type. In itself it was inconsistent, because the upper part of it had no sympathy with the lower. A forehead which receded slightly in a kindly curve to strong curled hair could only be described as bland, while beneath straight thick brows there smiled a pair of gray eyes as meek as human eyes were ever made. It was in these same meek eyes that all the world misread this man. In brow and eyes he was a softhearted philanthropist, such as are easily misled and gulled with exaggerated tales of woe. A man to take up some impossible scheme to alleviate the sorrows of a class or kind, to busy himself unprofitably in a crusade against class privileges and uphold the so-called rights of a victimized working population. But from the eyes downwards this was all lost, and there were other signs instead. The nose was straight and somewhat small, while the lips, though clean-shaven, were entirely devoid of any suggestion of coarseness, such as one may read upon the mouths of most men past the age of twenty-five, unless a moustache charitably hide such failing. The mouth was almost too severe in its clean curve; in repose it was Napoleonic, in gaiety it lost all hardness. The chin, again, was square and slightly prominent. To judge from nose and lips and chin, this newcomer had been intended for a soldier, but the meek eyes disturbed this theory.
His face was brown, of a complexion which by reason of its unchangeableness never betrayed thought, emotion, or physical pain. That his life had been chiefly spent in the open air was discernible from his bearing and appearance, yet his manner (more especially with ladies) was that of a polished courtier. Judging from outward things, one could not help feeling that Theodore Trist was an exceptional man in some way or other, in sport or work, in deed or thought. His broad pensive brow would seem to indicate a literary or poetic tendency, while the meek eyes spoke of a great love for Nature and her unfathomable ways. The man might easily have been a naturalist or a vague daydreamer, dabbling in the writer’s art. Certain it was that he could only be a specialist of some description. No universality could exist behind those gentle eyes. Certain also, it would seem, that he trod in the paths of peace where’er he went. His gentle movements, his calm soft speech, were almost womanlike. But then these indications ran full tilt against the soldierly frame and the still hard lips. The most discerning physiognomist would not have dared to say that those gentle eyes had looked upon more bloodshed, than any warrior of the day; that the brown ears had been torn by more human shrieks of utter agony than any army-surgeon has ever listened to. This man of peace was the finest, ablest, truest chronicler of a battle that ever scribbled notes amidst the battle smoke. Few of us find the exact groove for which we were created, and Trist was no more fortunate than the rest. Many a good soldier has spent his life in the countinghouse, while there are numbers wearing a red coat today whose place is in the pulpit. Theodore Trist was a born soldier, if ever man was born with military genius in his soul. Had his natural turn of intellect been in any other direction, he could, in later life, have followed it, but the British army is constructed upon a system which forces a child to grasp the sword (metaphorically, if not in deed) before his fingers have learnt the shape of hilt, or pen, or brush. Consequently, our forces are officered by a fine stalwart body of gentlemen, who are, some of them, parsons—some artists, some farmers, some sailors, some soldiers—and a good many mere idlers. This is no cheap sarcasm, nor is it the ready complaint of the British universalist, who writes on the least provocation to the newspapers, upon subjects of which his knowledge is culled from other newspapers. I am not finding fault, nor would I suggest offhand a complete scheme for reorganizing what I have always
