In the gig—the first boat to get away—were seated Mrs. Wylie and Brenda, while the sailor Cobbold steered. Trist followed in the long-boat, steering himself, while the sailor crouched down forward. Between the two men lay, beneath the thwarts, the genial, kind-hearted old sportsman, who would never hear the glad rattle of the reel again, who would no more watch, with keen dancing eyes, the straining line. Never again would he recount his day's adventures in the cosy cabin, giving the salmon his full due, throwing in here and there a merry little detail to his own discomfiture. Now he lay, with his waders slowly drying, his eyes peacefully closed, his brown, weather-beaten hands limply clenched. Trist had reeled in the severed line, divided the useless rod, and laid aside the empty creel, all in his silent, emotionless way, with no look of horror in his soft eyes.
To him the suddenness of Admiral Wylie's death was no shock. He had seen the Reaper at work before, and this was ripe corn, ready for the sickle—a pleasing contrast to the brave young stalks he had seen mown down in thousands. He had a strange, semi-Biblical contempt for death in itself. The mere ceremony of dying was for him, as it was for the Apostles and writers of old, a matter of small interest. They tell of lives, and not of deaths. Trist loved to watch men live and strive and fight; to see them die caused him small emotion; to hear them speak last explanatory words, full of repentance, perhaps, or pharisaical self-exoneration, moved him to gentle pity, but altered in no whit or jot his estimate of the life that was done.
Admiral Wylie's life had been a success. His death had been a worthy finish to a quiet, homely tale—the only dramatic point of interest in a long uneventful course of daily incidents. He died, as Trist said later to an old soldier, in his waders. Most men would prefer to die in their boots; it is a more manly way of taking that last step over the brink into the unfathomable waters of eternity. And waders, sea-boots, or Hessians will hamper no man's tread upon the Silent Shore, if he have only picked his steps through the mud that lies on this side.
In the gig the two women sat without speaking, while the water, surging and bubbling beneath bow and stern, seemed to chatter garrulously. Mrs. Wylie leant back against the cushions with her arms folded beneath her cloak. The rain had ceased, and great white clouds hovered far above the mountains. All around was fresh and fair, like a maiden smiling with tears still on her lashes.
Brenda sat upright, ready, as it were, for anything. She had told Mrs. Wylie simply and straightforwardly that Theo Trist had found the Admiral—dead; and the news had been received quietly and composedly. Mrs. Wylie was one of those rare women who are really and truly independent of outside opinion. She passed through her joys and sorrows as seemed best to her own judgment, and left the world to form its own opinion.
Many there are who have the courage to face a great grief with bold front and unflinching eyes, but they fear to be considered hard and heartless. Happy is the man or woman who can look back to a period of sorrow without having to regret an excess of some description—excess of demonstration or excess of reserve. Mrs. Wylie was not a demonstrative woman. She laughed readily, in her cheery, infectious way, because she found that laughter is wanted in the world; but she rarely wept, because she knew that tears are idle. And so no tears came to her eyes when Brenda laid her soft warm hands upon her arm and told her the news. The two men had stood a little way off, respectfully, so that they were practically alone, but if Mrs. Wylie ever shed tangible, visible tears for her husband, she shed them in solitude, and spoke her thoughts to none.
All through that terrible journey up the fjord (for the wind was light at dawn, as it mostly is in Arctic seas), Brenda waited for those tears that never came—listened for the words that were never spoken. She stared straight in front of her towards the Hermione, and never actually looked into her companion's face; but she knew the expression that was there: the slightly raised lower lids, the close-pressed lips, and the far-off speculation in the eyes.
A little way behind them the longboat was forging through the water. Brenda could hear the plashing of the divided waves round its curved stern; but the sound neither approached nor receded, and she never turned her head to see how it might fare with the mournful freight. For the first time in her life this little maid was realizing that there was earnest work in the world for her to do, that there was a place which, but for her, must needs remain vacant, because none other could fill it. She knew and recognised that Mrs. Wylie needed someone in her great sorrow—needed a woman, needed her—Brenda Gilholme. No one else could satisfy this vague craving for a silent sympathy; not even Theo Trist, with his man's strength and his woman's tact.
And so Brenda was content to be in the house of mourning, because she felt that her rightful place was there, and the feeling quenched in a small degree that feverish thirst to be doing something—some good in the world—which burnt her brave young soul, parched by the acrid after-taste of the fruit of the tree of knowledge.
There was work for Theo Trist—tangible, honest work—and there was also labour for Brenda's hands and heart: a thousand little alleviating attentions, delicate shy sympathies, and a constant companionable courage; none of which she had learnt in Latin, Greek or Hebrew; which cannot be defined by Euclid, summed up by algebra, nor valued by arithmetic. In fact, Brenda Gilholme was verging on the discovery that the most important part of her dainty anatomy was her heart, and not her head.