Obediently, she rose and stepped away, while he lifted the limp form, and placed it in a chair.
Slowly Captain Huston opened his eyes. He heaved a deep sigh, and sat gazing into the fire with a hopeless and miserable apathy. Behind him the two stood motionless, watching. Presently he began to mutter incoherently, and Brenda turned away, sickened, from the woeful sight.
'I wonder,' she whispered, 'if this sort of thing is to go on.'
Trist's mobile lips were twisted a little as if he were in bodily pain, while he glanced at her furtively. There was nothing for him to say—no hope to hold out.
They moved away to the window together without speaking, both occupied with thoughts which could not well have been pleasant. Trist's features wore a grave, concentrated expression, totally unlike the philosophical and contemplative demeanour which he usually carried in the face of the world. There was food enough for mental stones to grind, and he was not a man to take the most sanguine view of affairs. His philosophy was of that rare school which is not solely confined to making the best of other folks' troubles. His own checks and difficulties were those treated philosophically; while the griefs of others—more especially, perhaps, of Alice and Brenda—caused him an exaggerated anxiety. It has been the experience of the present writer that women are infinitely better fitted to stand adversity than men. There is a certain brave little smile which our less mobile lips can never frame. But Theodore Trist had lived chiefly among men, and his human speciality was the fighting animal. He knew a soldier as few of his contemporaries knew him; but of sweet woman-militant he was somewhat ignorant.
Perhaps he took this trouble too seriously. Of that I cannot give an opinion, for we all have an individual way of getting over our fences, and we never learn another. Personally, I must confess to a penchant for those men who go steadily, with a cool, clear head, and a firm hand, realizing full well the risk they are about to run—men who do not put a blind faith in luck, nor look invariably for Fortune's smiles.
In Trist's place many would have uttered some trite consolatory or wildly hopeful remark, which would in no wise have deceived a young person of Brenda's austere discrimination. In this, however, he fell lamentably short of his duty. After a thoughtful pause he merely whispered:
'Here we are again, Brenda—in a tight place. There is some fatality which seems to guide our footsteps on to thorny pathways. There is nothing to be done but face it.'
'Is it,' she asked simply, 'a case for action, or must we wait upon events?'
'I would suggest ... action.'