CHAPTER V.

THE COMPACT.

'It has blown over,' said Trist softly, as the little lady came towards him.

'Yes,' replied Mrs. Wylie with obvious abstraction. She was not thinking of the weather at all. In Trist's monotonous voice there had been an almost imperceptible catch. Slight though it had been, the acute little matron detected it, and she looked keenly through the semi-darkness into her companion's face. His meek eyes met hers, softly, suavely, aggravatingly innocent as usual.

'And,' she added as an after-thought, 'how beautifully fresh it is now!'

She took a seat beside Brenda, glancing at her face as she did so. The girl welcomed her with a little smile, but said nothing. The silence was characteristic. Most young maidens would have considered it necessary to make an inane remark about the weather, just to show, as it were, that that subject had been under discussion before the arrival of this third person.

There was something very pleasant and home-like in the very movements of Mrs. Wylie's arms and hands, as she settled herself and drew her shawl closer round her. Trist seated himself on the rail near at hand, and relighted his pipe. Thus they remained for some time in silence.

'What a strange couple they are!' the matron was reflecting, as she looked slowly from one unconscious face to the other.

'There were one or two terrible flashes of lightning,' she said aloud in a conversational way; 'I was quite nervous, but the Admiral slept placidly through it all.'

Trist moved slightly, and shook the ash from his pipe over the side.

'Brenda was terrified,' he said resignedly.

'I was startled,' admitted the girl, 'that was all. And the result was a very learned discourse on courage, its source and value, by Theo.'

'I always thought,' said he to Mrs. Wylie, in a mildly disappointed tone, 'that she was plucky.'

Mrs. Wylie laughed, and then with sudden gravity nodded her head significantly.

'So she is--very plucky.'

'I think,' suggested Brenda, 'that it would be better taste, and more natural, perhaps, to discuss me behind my back.'

Trist laughed.

'I never discuss anyone,' he said. 'That is a lady's privilege and monopoly. Men are usually fully occupied in talking about themselves, and have no time to devote to the study of their surroundings.'

'I generally find that men say either too much or too little about themselves,' observed Mrs. Wylie. 'There is no medium between the super-egotistical and the hyper-reserved. Among my young men, and I have a great number, there are some who tell me everything, and others who tell me nothing. The former appear to think that the universe revolves round them, that they are superlatively interesting, and that their relations are the same in ratio to the closeness of their connection with the axis of the social world--that is, to themselves. Consequently I hear all sorts of confidences, and many totally pointless stories.'

'Which,' suggested Trist, 'never go any further.'

'Which never go any further, because their specific gravity is of such trifling importance that they make absolutely no impression upon the tenderest of sympathetic hearts.'

Brenda, who had been listening in a semi-interested way, now made a remark. She was not a brilliant conversationalist, this thoughtful little person, and rarely contributed anything striking or witty to a general intercourse. Her ideas needed the security of a _tête-à-tête_ to coax them forth.

'I think,' she said to Mrs. Wylie, 'that you must be gifted with a wonderful amount of patience, or you would never bother with your young men. The obligation and the pleasure must be all on their side.'

'It is,' put in Trist cynically, 'a sort of mother's agency. We ought to issue a circular for the benefit of provincial parents: "Young men's morals looked after; confidences received and kindly forgotten. Youths without dull female relatives preferred. Address, Mrs. Wylie, Suffolk Mansions, London, and Wyl's Hall, Wyvenwich."'

Mrs. Wylie laughed comfortably.

'I must confess,' she said, 'that the female relatives are a drawback. There are a good many stories to be listened to about hopelessly dull sisters and incapable mothers; but my young men are not so bad on the whole, and I know I do a little good occasionally. Of course there are some who require snubbing at times, and some who are not interesting; but the silent ones are my favourites, and there is only one type of talkative I really object to--a young Scotchman with hard lashless eyes, a square bony jaw, a very small nose, no complexion, and an accent.'

'I know the type,' said Trist; 'he has a theory for everything, including life. Is a hard business man, a keen arguer, and never makes a good soldier.'

'Altogether a most pleasing and fascinating young man,' interrupted Brenda, with a low laugh. 'You are both terribly cynical, I believe, beneath a gentle suavity. It only comes to the surface when you get together and lay aside the social mask. I never met this ideal Scotchman at your house, Mrs. Wylie.'

'No, my dear,' was the decisive reply, 'and I do not think you ever will.'

'You prefer young men who take but do not grab,' suggested Trist.

'Mine,' replied the lady, with tolerant complacency, 'are not brilliant youths. Some of them may get in front of the crowd, but they will do so in a quiet and gentlemanly way, without elbowing or pushing too obviously, and without using other men's shoulders as levers to help themselves forward.'

She looked straight into the young fellow's face with her pleasantly keen smile, for he was the first and the foremost of her young men, and she was justly proud of him. He had passed beyond the dense mediocrity of the crowd, and stood alone in a place which he had won unaided. He was one of those who said too little--one of the silent ones whom she loved above the others who told her everything. In her cheery, careless way, with all her assumed worldliness, she did a vast deal of good amongst these unattached young men who were in the habit of dropping in during their spare evenings at the cosy little drawing-room on the second-floor of Suffolk Mansions.

There was usually some connecting-link, some vague and distant introduction between the young men and the cheerful, worldly, childless lady who chose to make all waifs and stragglers welcome. These were generally provincial men living in chambers and working out their apprenticeships under the different styles of their different professions. Articled clerks, medical students, art students, somethings in the City, and a journalist or so. She never invited them to come, and so they came when they wanted to, often to find her out, for she was a gay little soul, and then they came again. There was always a box of cigarettes on the mantelpiece, and the broad polished table was invariably littered with the latest magazines, books, and periodicals. Mrs. Wylie was always broad awake, and the Admiral usually fell asleep as soon as the conversation waxed personal.

In the matter of confidences Mrs. Wylie possessed real genius. She forgot things so conveniently, and never smiled when given to understand that some youthful heart was broken for the third time in one season. She never preached and rarely advised, but merely listened sympathetically. There were men who came to her and never mentioned themselves, sought no advice, made no confidences, and these she made most welcome, for she loved to study them, and wonder indefinitely over their projects, their ambitions, and their motives. Above all, she loved to watch Theo Trist. This young man was a mine of human interest to her, and with Brenda Gilholme she sought to discover its inmost depths. I believe there is a delicate instrument which betrays the presence of precious metals in the earth when brought into proximity with its surface. Mrs. Wylie had perhaps heard of such an instrument, but whether that be so or no, she deliberately used Brenda to detect the good that lay in Theo Trist. You will say that this was matchmaking pure and simple; but such it certainly could not be, for Mrs. Wylie knew full well that Brenda Gilholme and Theo Trist were people who knew their own minds, who would never be forced into anything by a third person. And treating the great question generally, she was of the comforting opinion that each individual is best left to manage his or her own affairs unaided. The matchmaker--the third person, in fact--has remarkably little to do with most marriages, though many of us are pleased to remember after the event that we had something to do with its earlier career.

If it was not match-making, Mrs. Wylie's conduct was, to say the least of it, unscrupulous; but then, my brothers, who amongst us knows a perfectly scrupulous woman? Not I, _par Dieu_. Charming, intelligent, fascinating, superior (ahem!), but scrupulous--no. I have not yet met her. Be it the shape of a hat or the heart of a lover, she will get it, taking it as a German clerk will take your business from you, by the means that are surest of success, without stopping to consider the silly question of an overstrained point of honour.

Trist was not, strictly speaking, merely one of Mrs. Wylie's young men. His mother was her first cousin, and she it was who had gone down to Windsor to bring home a little round-faced Eton boy to the house of sickness when Mrs. Trist's earthly pilgrimage was thought to be at an end. Since that day she had never quite lost sight of the boy, and years later she chaperoned Alice and Brenda Gilholme through an Oxford Commemoration at the undergraduate's request.

It was at her house, and through her instrumentality, that the friendship between these motherless young people was chiefly kept up. The respective fathers knew nothing of each other, and cared likewise. One was a Parliamentary monomaniac; the other a worn-out Indian Civil-servant, tottering on his last legs at Cheltenham. There had never been an interchange of pretty sentiments; such things were not in Mrs. Wylie's line of country at all. She had not wept silent tears over Brenda's bowed head, and promised to fill the place of that vague and shadowy mother whom the girl had never known. Tears of any description were unfamiliar to the comfortable, brave little lady. Some of us profess, and some there are who act without professing: of these latter was Mrs. Wylie. It is so easy to talk of filling that vacant place, and so utterly impossible to cast the faintest shadow upon the walls of the empty chamber.

With Trist it had been the same. Unquestioned he had come and gone, only to come again. Mrs. Wylie never sought to entice confidences by a kindly show of interest, and what he chose to tell (which was little enough) she listened to with small comment. If she had in any slight degree influenced his strangely-blended character, her influence had been all and entirely beneficial.

Such, briefly, was the social relationship existing between these three persons brought together upon the deck of the _Hermione_ beneath the magic of an Arctic night. Amidst such vast and grandiose scenery the trim yacht looked petty and insignificant; but these three persons had no appearance of being out of place. They were of that adaptable material which appears to yield to its environments and takes the shape of the receptacle in which it finds itself. Yet is it, like certain boneless marine animals, independent of its surroundings, having a perfect shape of its own, into which it invariably returns when left alone.

A brilliantly capable woman, an intellectual girl, and a gifted man could not well be in their social element in a deserted fjord, amidst gloomy mountains which weigh down men's minds and keep back all mental growth; but there was no sign of discomfort, no suspicion of boredom. This world was theirs, and with it they were content.

The stillness that had come over them was broken at length by the voice of Admiral Wylie, raised in the cabin below and heard through the open skylight.

'Brenda--little woman! Brenda--ahoy! Come and play to me!' cried the pleasantly raucous tones.

The girl rose from her seat at once, and passed down the little stairway with a light responsive laugh, leaving the other occupants of the deck in silence.

Presently the sound of her playing reached them. It was characteristic of herself: so perfectly trained, so technically faultless, and yet as innately and pathetically sweet, was it.

Trist moved restlessly at the sound of it, and Mrs. Wylie, watching him, saw the blue puffs of smoke follow each other with unnatural rapidity from his lips. She leant back, and drew her shawl cosily around her.

At length Trist spoke, busying himself with his pipe and giving it his full attention.

'Brenda,' he remarked conversationally, 'has been lecturing me upon the evils attending an excessive spirit of independence.'

'I have no doubt that her remarks were worthy of your consideration.'

'They were. Brenda's remarks generally are worthy of consideration.'

'Were they of a personal nature?' inquired Mrs. Wylie, with a slight suggestion of mischief in her tone.

'Decidedly so. She has a pleasant way of telling me my faults. But I like it, because she is invariably right. Perfect sincerity is a rare thing in these times.'

Mrs. Wylie did not reply to this melancholy truth. She was looking past her companion across the glassy water, with her eyelids slightly contracted and her rather thin lips pressed closely together. It was an expression very familiar to Theo Trist, and he waited silently. Presently she made a little movement, and looked at him with a faint suggestion of surprise, as if she had just landed on firm earth after a long, long mental voyage.

'She was quite right, Theo!' was the result.

He smiled vaguely, and looked obstinate.

'If,' said Mrs. Wylie in an explanatory way, 'I were a different sort of woman to what I am, I should consider myself very much ill-used at being deprived of a fuller confidence. I should strive, and nag, and persist until I had wormed out of you your ambitions, your joys, your sorrows, and your possible motives. That is what Brenda means, I think. Theoretically, she is right; practically and personally she is wrong.'

'Is it not,' suggested the young fellow in self-defence, 'the height of egoism to inflict thoughtlessly upon other people one's petty, temporary, and often imaginary woes?'

'Not always, Theo. There is one case where it is real kindness to be a little selfish, and to speak openly of one's feelings and thoughts. I once had a little boy of my own, though it was years ago, when I was quite a different person to ... to what I am now, so I can hardly pretend to know much of a mother's feelings; but I am convinced that it is truer kindness to tell one's mother too much than too little. She knows--her mere natural instinct tells her--that there is something wrong, and in the intensity of her love and anxiety she exaggerates things unduly.

They were both speaking lightly and only half gravely, but there was something pathetic in their ignorance, however indifferent and conversational their tones might be. Both were speaking vaguely and speculatively of something they had never known, something they never could know from personal experience.

'Perhaps it is better....' Trist began, and then he stopped suddenly, withheld by a quick remembrance of the utter misery that weighed down the heart of the little Eton boy who had gazed stupidly out of the cab window as he passed over Windsor bridge fifteen years ago. He could hear again the rattle of the shaky wheels, the vibration of the windows; and again the sound of this kindly woman's voice, lovingly lowered, came to his recollection.

'No,' he said, correcting himself, 'it cannot be better, but as things have turned out, perhaps it is as well that there is no one at home listening too eagerly to the cry of the paper-boy when I am away.'

'You forget poor me,' said Mrs. Wylie merrily. She had a wonderful way of slipping round a grave subject.

'Not at all. But I should imagine that you generally look at the births, deaths, and marriages before studying the list of killed and wounded.'

'Invariably. I look upon you as a person eminently capable of taking care of himself. And I should hope that if there were anything wrong you would have the good grace to let me know before the penny papers shriek it forth to the world.'

'That sounds inconsistent.'

'Nevertheless, it is not so. I am not an anxious person, Theo. I never lie awake on stormy nights at Wyl's Hall and think of you--probably sleeping peaceably in tropic calms--but I like to hear occasionally of your movements, and I like to hear people talk of you, because I can say, "I know him"--that is all.'

'Then.... Brenda is wrong?' murmured Trist with a suggestion of relief in his manner.

'Yes, Brenda is wrong, because I am not your mother, and have no desire to pretend to that doubtful felicity. It is an honour which I distinctly decline.'

'I am sorry....'

'Oh, don't mention it. You are hardly to blame. But I imagine that you would make a very bad son.'

Trist laughed and rose to his feet. His pipe was empty, and having knocked the ashes out against the rail, he dropped it into his pocket. Then he stood before her waiting until she should make a movement to go below.

'Nevertheless,' said Mrs. Wylie casually, without looking up as she drew her shawl comfortably around her previous to rising'--nevertheless, I should like you to understand that if ever I can be of use to you (for an old woman might on occasions be useful to the most independent of young men, Theo), I am ready to do anything for you. Any little odd maternal jobs without pretending to the maternal honour, you understand.'

She rose and stepped to the side of the vessel, looking round the fjord and over the mountains in a practical, weather-wise way. Trist followed her, and stood a little behind, in his still unemotional manner, with his meek eyes raised to a distant snowfield, where the pink reflection of the north-western sky hovered yet.

'It need not be a one-sided transaction,' he said in the same worldly, hopelessly every-day tone of voice. 'There may be little odd filial jobs without acknowledging the filial ties, you understand.'

Mrs. Wylie laughed her easy, flowing laugh, and walked briskly forward; for the Admiral was calling her now in his genial, tyrannical autocracy.

'Yes,' she said cheerily. 'It may be so.'

And so this compact was made at last--a compact of which his share was to be commenced rudely and suddenly within twenty-four hours, while hers was harder perhaps, and infinitely sadder, extending into years yet unopened and unthought of.