CHAPTER III.

A PROBLEM.

Trist approached Mrs. Wylie with slow and almost timid steps, yet there was nothing apologetic in his demeanour, for he was perfectly self-possessed, and even reposeful, with that quiet assurance which only comes with innate good-breeding.

In his two hands he carried a fine stout salmon with a sharp snout. Its dark lips curled upwards with an evil twist, and even in death its eyes were full of fight.

The lady dropped her book upon her lap, and looked up with a smile. In her eyes there was a kindly and yet scrutinizing look which was almost motherly in its discernment. This young man was evidently more to her than the rest of his kind. She knew his impassive face so well that she could read where others saw an unwritten page.

'Ah,' she said, with some interest (for she was a sportsman's wife), 'that is a good fish, Theo!'

'Yes,' he acquiesced in a soft and rather monotonous voice, harmonizing with his eyes. 'He is a fine fellow. We had a desperate fight!'

As if to prove the severity of the struggle, he looked down at his knees, which were muddy, and then held out his right hand, which was streaked with blood.

'Ah, how nasty!' exclaimed Mrs. Wylie pleasantly. 'Is it yours or his?'

'Mine, I think. Yes, it must be mine.'

Brenda had approached slowly, and was standing close to him. She stooped a little to examine the fish, which he held towards her with his left hand, and even deigned to poke it critically on the shoulder with her straight white finger.

'Are you hurt?' she inquired casually, without looking up.

A slow gleam of humour lighted up Trist's soft and melancholy eyes as he looked down at her.

'He cannot answer for himself,' he said suggestively. 'But I think I can volunteer the information that he is not hurt now. He died the death of a plucky fish, and did not flinch.'

'I meant _you_.'

'I? Oh no, I am not hurt, thank you. Only very dirty, very sanguinary, and quite happy.'

At this moment the steward, a dapper and noiseless man with no appearance of a sailor, came up and took the fish from Trist's hands. Mrs. Wylie returned to her book, and the two young people stood silently in front of her. Presently they moved away as if with one accord, farther aft, beside the wheel. Here Brenda seated herself sideways with one arm round the white awning-stanchion.

She looked up, and, as he happened to be gazing gently down at her, their eyes met. There was no instant withdrawal, no change of expression. These two were evidently very old friends, because a young man and a maiden rarely look into each other's eyes for any appreciable space of time without some slight change of expression supervening.

Theo Trist smiled at length, and looked away for a moment. Then he glanced down at her face again.

'Well?' he said interrogatively. 'You are going to make one of those deep remarks which would take away the breath of some people.'

She smiled, but did not turn away in maidenly reserve. Indeed, she continued to watch his face, wonderingly and absently.

'What a peculiar man you are, Theo!'

He bowed politely, and slipping the ends of his fingers into either trouser-pocket, he stood defiantly before her, with his unshod feet set well apart.

'And you, Brenda ... I have never met anyone in any way like you.'

But she had no intention--this independent little person--of being led away thus from the original question.

'Sometimes I almost dislike you ... and at other moments I admire your character very much.'

She was quite grave, and looked up at him anxiously, as if the character of some third person very near and dear to them both were under discussion.

'When do you dislike me?' he asked in his monotonous, gentle way.

To this she made no answer for some moments, but sat looking thoughtfully across the deep-bosomed water, which was now almost glassy, for the breeze had dropped with the setting sun. She was frowning slightly, and leant her chin upon her hand, which action gave additional thoughtfulness to her well-read face. She might have been solving some great problem. Indeed, she _was_ attempting to find an explanation to the greatest problem we have to solve. This foolish little maiden, with all her great and mistaken learning, her small experience and deep, searching mind, was trying to explain human nature. Not in its entirety, but one small insignificant example taken from the whole. She was trying to reduce this man to an orderly classification of motives, desires, and actions; and he stood defying her to do so. She wanted to understand Theo Trist. In faith, she did not ask for much! An educated and refined gentleman, an experienced and time-hardened man. A philosopher without a creed. A soldier without a sword. A soft heart that sought bloodshed. Brenda had undertaken a very large task. She might have begun upon the simplest, most open-hearted sailor-man in the forecastle, and yet I am sure that she would have failed. With Theo Trist she could do nothing. Does any one of us understand his brother, his sister, his mother or his wife? Scarcely, I think. This only I know, that I have never yet _quite_ understood any human being. There are some--indeed, there are many--whom I have been pleased to consider as an open book before my discerning gaze, but Time has changed all that. He has proved that I knew remarkably little about the printed matter in that open book.

Trist repeated his question:

'When do you dislike me, Brenda?'

Her reply was somewhat indirect.

'At times,' she said, without looking towards him, 'you attempt wilfully to misrepresent yourself, and I cannot quite see why you should wish to do so. You said just now that you were very sanguinary and quite happy. You meant to convey a deeper meaning, I know, because you glanced involuntarily towards me to see if I had caught it. Now, why _should_ you pretend to be a hard-hearted, cruel and cold-blooded man? That is what I do not understand.'

She shook her small head despairingly, and looked up at him with a very shadowy smile. There was no question implied in the tone of her voice. She showed clearly that she expected no answer. It was merely her recital of a difficulty encountered in the study of a problem. This problem was the character of the man standing before her, the only man of her own age, and among her friends, to whose intellect her own was content to bow. To him she talked of many strange undiscussed matters, and together they had waded very deeply into questions which were opened centuries ago, and are now no nearer their solution. It was not that Theo Trist was a supernaturally grave man, but Brenda felt instinctively that he would never laugh at her. He was a good and careful listener; moreover, she had never yet propounded a question, in her vague, half-wistful way, about which he did not know something; upon which he could not put forward, in his gentle and suggestive way, an opinion which was either the result of his own thoughts or of those of other men.

'Everything is a matter of habit,' said the mild-eyed sportsman vaguely.

He knew that she was not thinking about salmon-fishing and its cruelty at all, but of the strange incongruity of his profession. He was well aware that Brenda Gilholme, in her brave little heart, disapproved of his calling. Of war and its horrors she rarely spoke, for she felt that his existence was necessarily bound to such things. It was a gift vouchsafed with a reckless disregard for incongruity which could only be providential--this gift of a warlike pen. He stood alone, far above his compeers, the one man who could write, in French and English alike, of war; and while respecting his undoubted intellect, she would fain have brought all the force of her will to bear upon him and urge him from the exercise of it on the field of battle. She was influenced by the strong horror of a refined and gentle woman for all things akin to violence and bloodshed, and she could not believe that in his heart of hearts the soft-eyed, quiet man loved the sight of blood and the smoky grime of battle.

'Yes,' she answered. 'Endurance may be a matter of habit, but why seek that which requires endurance?'

He attempted to keep the question within the bounds of a sporting matter.

'Every living thing in creation is by the laws of creation expected to prey upon some other living thing. By a merciful provision we men cannot quite look at the question from the salmon's point of view. It is a fight--an unfair fight, I admit--but still there is no wanton cruelty in killing salmon.'

He ceased abruptly, and held up his arm, looking at it critically. There was a deep scratch across the wrist from which the blood had trickled in several rivulets and congealed upon the back of his slim brown hand. Looking up, he saw that she was gazing at the wounded limb, and with a slight apologetic smile he put it behind his back so as to conceal it from her eyes.

'The actual sight of blood,' he continued, 'whether it be cold from the salmon or warm from one's own veins, is a mere technical unpleasantness which soon loses its horror ... for men.'

'I was not thinking of salmon-fishing.'

'Nor I,' he replied with cool audacity.

There was another long pause, during which neither moved. It was noteworthy that Trist, who had been on his legs in rough water, and over rocky country, since early morning, showed no sign of fatigue. If he had so desired, it would have been easy enough for him to bring forward one of the low chairs standing near the skylight, but he appeared to prefer standing.

'But in losing that sense of horror,' asked Brenda presently, 'do not men become brutalized?'

He shrugged his shoulders perceptibly.

'Do you think so?' he inquired significantly.

The question was cleverly thrown back upon her, but Brenda intended to get her answer. She looked up with a passing smile, and made him a little pout with her pretty lips.

'You are no criterion. You are different altogether. I was speaking generally.'

'Speaking generally, I should still be of opinion that men are not affected in any harmful way by seeing ... unpleasant sights.'

'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 women-folk 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 was inaudible across the deck.

She turned and walked slowly forward to meet the Admiral, whose boat was dropping alongside.

'Don't laugh,' she said, almost angrily; 'it is true.'

'Then,' he said gravely, 'I will endeavour to satisfy you by asking you to sew on the very next button that comes off.'

For a moment she lost her gravity, and was a simple, sweetly coquettish girl.

'And I will refuse flatly,' she observed saucily.