“That is my affair!” he muttered roughly. “You have no business to stand between man and wife. If you persist in doing so, it must be at your own risk, and I tell you plainly that you run a chance of being roughly handled.”
As he spoke he advanced a pace menacingly. Still she never betrayed Trist’s presence by the merest glance in his direction. He, however, moved slightly, without making any sound.
Huston looked slowly round the room with bloodshot, horrible eyes.
“Tell me!” he hissed, thrusting forward his face so that she drew back—not from fear, but to avoid a faint aroma of stale cigar-smoke.
“No!” she answered.
“Deny that Trist loved Alice—if you dare!” he continued, in the same whistling voice.
Still she never called for Trist’s assistance. She was very pale, and the last words seemed to strike her in the face as a blow.
“I deny nothing!”
“Tell me,” he shouted hoarsely, “where Alice is!”
“No!”
“Then take that, you …”
He struck her with his clenched fist on the shoulder—but she had seen his intention, and by stepping back avoided the full force of the blow. She staggered a pace or two and recovered herself.
Without a sound Trist sprang forward, and the same instant saw Huston fall to the ground. He rolled over and over, a shapeless mass with limbs distended. As he rolled, Trist kicked him as he never would have kicked a dog.
“Oh … h … h … !” shrieked the soldier. “Who is that?”
“It is Trist … you brute!”
But Huston lay motionless, with limp hands and open mouth. He was insensible.
Leaving him, Trist turned to Brenda, who was already holding him back with a physical force which even at that moment caused him a vague surprise.
“Theo! Theo!” she cried, “what are you doing?”
He looked into her face sharply, almost fiercely—and she caught her breath convulsively at the sight of his eyes. They literally flashed with a dull blue gleam, which was all the more ghastly in so calm a face; for though he was ashen-gray in colour, his features were unaltered by any sign of passion. Even in his wild rage this man was incongruous.
“Has he hurt you?” he asked in a dull, hollow voice; and, while he spoke, his fingers skilfully touched her shoulder in a quick, searching way never learnt in drawing-rooms.
“No—no!” she cried impatiently. “But you have killed him!”
She broke away from him and knelt on the floor, bending over the prostrate form of the soldier. Her bosom heaved from time to time with a bravely suppressed sob.
“Don’t touch him,” said Trist, in an unconsciously commanding tone. “He is all right.”
Obediently, she rose and stepped away, while he lifted the limp form, and placed it in a chair.
Slowly Captain Huston opened his eyes. He heaved a deep sigh, and sat gazing into the fire with a hopeless and miserable apathy. Behind him the two stood motionless, watching. Presently he began to mutter incoherently, and Brenda turned away, sickened, from the woeful sight.
“I wonder,” she whispered, “if this sort of thing is to go on.”
Trist’s mobile lips were twisted a little as if he were in bodily pain, while he glanced at her furtively. There was nothing for him to say—no hope to hold out.
They moved away to the window together without speaking, both occupied with thoughts which could not well have been pleasant. Trist’s features wore a grave, concentrated expression, totally unlike the philosophical and contemplative demeanour which he usually carried in the face of the world. There was food enough for mental stones to grind, and he was not a man to take the most sanguine view of affairs. His philosophy was of that rare school which is not solely confined to making the best of other folks’ troubles. His own checks and difficulties were those treated philosophically; while the griefs of others—more especially, perhaps, of Alice and Brenda—caused him an exaggerated anxiety. It has been the experience of the present writer that women are infinitely better fitted to stand adversity than men. There is a certain brave little smile which our less mobile lips can never frame. But Theodore Trist had lived chiefly among men, and his human speciality was the fighting animal. He knew a soldier as few of his contemporaries knew him; but of sweet woman-militant he was somewhat ignorant.
Perhaps he took this trouble too seriously. Of that I cannot give an opinion, for we all have an individual way of getting over our fences, and we never learn another. Personally, I must confess to a penchant for those men who go steadily, with a cool, clear head, and a firm hand, realizing full well the risk they are about to run—men who do not put a blind faith in luck, nor look invariably for Fortune’s smiles.
In Trist’s place many would have uttered some trite consolatory or wildly hopeful remark, which would in no wise have deceived a young person of Brenda’s austere discrimination. In this, however, he fell lamentably short of his duty. After a thoughtful pause he merely whispered:
“Here we are again, Brenda—in a tight place. There is some fatality which seems to guide our footsteps on to thorny pathways. There is nothing to be done but face it.”
“Is it,” she asked simply, “a case for action, or must we wait upon events?”
“I would suggest … action.”
“Yes …” she said, in little more than a whisper, after a pause, “I think so too—more especially now … that you suggest it. Your natural bias is, as a rule, in the direction of masterly inactivity.”
He smiled slowly.
“Perhaps … so!”
“Therefore your conviction that action is necessary must be very strong before you would suggest it.”
“I feel,” he said, with some deliberation, “that it will be better to keep them apart in the meantime.”
A strange, uneasy look passed across the girl’s face. It happened that there was only one man on all the broad earth whom she trusted implicitly—the man at her side—and for a second that one
