“From a sportsman’s point of view only?”
“No.”
“From a war-correspondent’s point of view?” she persisted.
“Yes.”
“And if anybody on earth should know,” she murmured half to herself, “I think you should.”
He turned away a little, and then looked down in an absently interested manner at the wet impression of his own waders on the white deck.
“Yes,” he acquiesced with a little checked sigh; “if anybody on earth should know, I am the man.”
“I wonder why you do it, Theo?”
“Who knows? I suppose it is because I cannot help it. I am a vulture, Brenda! The smell of … of battle draws irresistibly.”
“It is a fault in your character,” she said judicially.
This he denied by a shake of his head.
“It is a fault in human nature.”
She said nothing, but expressed her desire to differ by an incredulous look. Her knowledge of mankind was very limited, after all, or she would never have doubted the truth of his assertion. She did not know then (how should she so soon?) that men are naturally cruel, that women are naturally crueller. In her innocence she imagined that the majority of us are brave but gentle, strong but forbearing, kind, chivalrous, unselfish. While speaking in generalities she was making the common foolish mistake we make every day. She fondly imagined that her thoughts were general, whereas they were lamentably individual. Human nature—the broad classification so glibly falling from her lips—was nothing more important, nothing wider in its compass, than the two words Theo Trist.
“You will admit,” he argued, “that war is a necessary evil.”
“Yes.”
“Then, so am I. After my name I ought by rights to put the two letters N.E.—Theo Trist, necessary evil.”
“But,” she said with unconscious flattery, “you make it something more than a necessary evil. You turn it into a glorious thing. You teach that fighting is the noblest calling a man can take up. You make men into soldiers against their will, and … and you make women long to be men that they might be soldiers.”
A strange look came into the gentle eyes that watched her then—a look that was almost pain; but it vanished again instantly, and the bland face was cold and impassive at once. She was so desperately in earnest that there was a little thrilling catch in her voice. She seemed to be half ashamed of her own sincerity, and did not raise her eyes.
“I am afraid,” he said, after a short pause, “that I consider soldiering the finest life a man can lead.”
“And yet,” she answered with unerring memory, “you once wrote that a man is never quite the same again when he has once been under fire.”
Trist moved restlessly. Whenever she made mention of his work, that dull restlessness seemed to come over him. The knowledge that his writing had remained engraved upon her memory seemed to work some subtle change in the man. It would only have been natural for him to feel some pride in this fact whenever she betrayed it; but this was not pride: it was nearer akin to pain or regret.
“Yes,” he admitted; “but I did not insinuate that the change was one for the worse. In many cases the effect is distinctly beneficial; in a few it is brutalizing. In all it is saddening. A man who has seen much war is hardly an acquisition in a drawing-room.”
He moved away a few paces, and leaning out beneath the awning, looked towards the head of the fjord, where the river came bowling down the valley past Nielsen’s house.
“There is the Admiral,” he said, “coming off in Nielsen’s boat. I wonder what sport he has had.”
Brenda also left her seat upon the rail and looked across the water. In doing so she came nearer to her companion, and her dress touched his wounded hand.
“Are you sure,” she said, as if reminded of his mishap, “that you are not hurt? Shall I sponge your hand? I am not afraid of … of it.”
He laughed in a pleasant and heartless way.
“Oh no, thanks! I will wash it in the ordinary way. It is only a scratch; I ought to have washed it before presenting myself to you.”
She looked at him speculatively, and made a little hopeless movement with her shoulders.
“You are sometimes most aggravatingly independent.”
“Yes,” he answered, in a hard, practical way. “Independence is a necessity. If I have the gift of it, I cannot cultivate it too assiduously. Without independence I should be nowhere.”
“And yet it can be carried to undue excess. A man should sometimes pretend, I think, to be a trifle dependent upon others, and especially upon women. It is the least he can do for them, possessing, as he does, the advantage in existence. One could almost tell from your little ways and habits of thought, Theo, that your mother died long ago.”
“You mean that we should ask our womenfolk to do little things for us which we know quite well we could do better ourselves.”
“Yes.”
“And thus,” he suggested, “satisfy their personal vanity.”
Brenda did not answer him at once. The question required consideration.
“Yes,” she replied at length, “and thus satisfy their personal vanity. There is no object to be gained by concealing the fact that our happiness in life is merely a question of satisfied vanity, from the very beginning to the very end.”
“From a new pair of woollen boots to a long funeral procession of empty carriages?” added Trist, with meek interrogation.
“Women do not as a rule go to their graves before a number of bored coachmen and empty broughams.”
“Most of them would like to.”
“Yes; I am afraid you are right. But we seem to take it for granted that men allow us a monopoly of vanity.”
“Oh no!” Trist hastened to correct; “you only possess the monopoly of one description. Yours is a thirsty vanity which knows no slaking; ours is satisfied. Of the two, yours, mademoiselle, is less objectionable. I suppose independence or self-dependence is my pet vanity.”
“Yes, Theo, it is.”
“And yours?”
“I am all vanity.”
Trist laughed derisively—a laugh, however, which
