These characteristics the widow now began to see developing subtly in the soul of Brenda Gilholme, and a keen study of the girl during this trying time only confirmed her suspicions. She began to feel nervously sure that the companionship of Mrs. Huston was bad for her, and with this knowledge to urge her she calmly forced her way in between the two sisters.
If Brenda lacked enthusiasm (which failure is characteristic of this calculating and practical generation), she atoned for the want by a wondrous steadfastness. By word, and deed, and silence, she demonstrated continuously her intention to stand by her sister and do for her all that lay in her power. In this spirit of dumb devotion Mrs. Wylie was pleased to see a suggestion of Theo Trist's soldierly obedience to the call of duty in which there was no question of personal inclination. She may have been right. Women see deeper into these subtle human influences than men. There are many small powers at work in every-day life, guiding our social barque, withholding us or urging us on, dictating, commanding, approving, or disapproving; and the motive of these is woman's will. The eye that guides is a woman's heart; the brake that checks is a woman's instinct. Mrs. Wylie was probably, therefore, quite right in her supposition; for it is such men as Theo Trist who leave the impress of their individuality upon those who come in contact with them—men who speak little and listen well, who think deeply and never speak of their thoughts. It is not your talkative man with a theory for every emergency, with a most wonderful and universal knowledge, who rules the world. The influence of these is comparatively small. Their experience is too vast to be personal, and thus loses weight. Their theories are too indefinite, too sweeping, and too general for practical application to human affairs, which are things not to be generally treated at all. We are a sheepish generation. Our thoughts are held in common; we theorize in crowds and hold principles in a multitude, but God's grand individuality is not dead yet. It lives somewhere in our hearts, and at strange odd moments we still act unaccountably, according to the dictates of that enfeebled organ.
There is a subtle difference between the male and female intellects respecting anxiety. Most women can conceal it better than their brothers and husbands when the necessity for concealment arises, but they suffer no less on that account. In fact, the weight of it is greater and more wearing, because in solitude they brood over it more than men. They have not the same power of laying it aside and taking up a book or occupation with the deliberate intention of courting absorption, as possessed by us.
Brenda was apparently immersed in the pages of an intellectual monthly review, but at times her sweet innocent eyes wandered from the lines and rested meditatively on the glowing fire. The girl was restless. She moved each time she turned a page, glancing sometimes at the small clock on the mantelpiece, sometimes towards the window, whence an ever-waning light fell gloomily upon her.
There was in her soul a vague sense of discomfort, which was as near an approach to imaginative anxiety as her strong nature could compass; and to this she was gradually giving way. Her interest in the magazine upon her lap had never been else than perfunctory, and now she could not take in the meaning of the carefully rounded and somewhat affected phrases.
Alice Huston had been a week in Mrs. Wylie's chambers, and there was no positive reason now to suppose that her husband was not in London. But the beautiful woman possessed little sense of responsibility, and none of consideration for others. She simply refused to leave town until the following Monday, because, she argued, the sound of wheels, the gay whirl of life, was so intensely refreshing to her. Mrs. Wylie would scarcely interfere, because she was not quite certain that Captain Huston was unfit to take care of his wife. She could not decide whether it was better to keep them apart or to allow Alice to run into the danger of being followed and claimed by her husband. The widow had very successfully followed a placid principle of non-interference all through her life, and now she applied it to the calamitous affairs of Captain and Mrs. Huston. She recognised very clearly that the man had made as evil a bargain as the woman. In both there was good material, capable of being wrought into good results by advantageous circumstances. The circumstance of their coming together and contracting a life-long alliance was disadvantageous to the last degree, voilà tout. It was a matter for themselves to settle. There are some people who, in a crisis, form themselves into a reserve—not necessarily out of range, but beyond the din and confusion of the melée: of these was Mrs. Wylie. If necessity demanded it, she was capable of leading an assault or withstanding an attack, but as a clear-headed, watchful commander of reserves she was incomparable.
Brenda knew this. She had an analytical way of studying such persons as influenced her daily life, and in most cases she arrived at a very accurate result. That Mrs. Wylie was watching events, but would not influence them, she was well aware, and, moreover, she now felt that someone was needed who would calmly step to the front and act with a bold acceptance of responsibility. That she herself was the person to take this position seemed undeniable. There could be no one else. No other could be expected to assume the task.
But there was another, and Brenda would not confess, even indefinitely in her own thoughts, that she knew it.
At length she laid her book down, and sat gazing softly into the fire. When the bell rang at the end of the long passage beside the kitchen-door, she never moved. When the maid opened the drawing-room door, with the mumbled announcement of a name to whose possessor no door of Mrs. Wylie's was ever shut, Brenda failed to hear the name, and half turned her head without much welcome in her eyes.
She was preparing to rise politely from her seat when a dark form passed between the window and herself. There, upon the hearthrug, within touch of her black skirt, stood Theo Trist! Theo—quiet, unemotional, strong as ever; Theo—with a brown face, and his bland, high forehead divided into two portions of white and of mahogany, where the fez had rested, keeping off the burning sun, but casting no shadow; Theo—to the fore, as usual, in his calm, reliable individuality, just at the moment when he was required.