'I will think,' he said to himself, 'how it is to be broken to everybody to-morrow.' And with great serenity he went to bed.
Sleep soon came to him despite the incidents crowded into the last few hours. It is a habit with some people to lie awake at night and ponder over their woes. They regard this as a solemn duty, a homage to be paid to the Goddess of Tears; and they never fail to mention their melancholy vigil to someone or other more or less connected with the trouble next morning. It is merely habit, and of no more value than the custom of mentioning with lowered voice the name of one who had been dead twenty years, and whose memory can after that space of time assuredly be awakened without such poignant grief as is considered its due.
Trist was not one of these. He valued human life at no very great price, and as (after all has been said and done, believed and repudiated) Death is the greatest sorrow we have to face, he was perhaps a little callous. He made no pretence of disguising the fact that Captain Huston's sudden, and what is usually denominated 'shocking,' demise was little short of a release for all concerned with his existence; and he did not even fall into the common error of looking upon all past sins as cleansed away by the very ordinary and easy method of terminating their career. It is just as well for some of us, methinks, that the good old Egyptian custom, of inscribing upon the lid or side of our sarcophagus a full and authentic history of the life terminating therein, has died out. They had a nasty habit too, those tactless ancients, of sculpturing a speaking likeness upon the lid, or erecting a statue near at hand, so that at the Great Judgment the wandering soul could single out without trouble its rightful body.
Death, however sudden, could not in those days endow with many virtues, many charms, and great personal comeliness, as it endows us now. I sometimes think of those old Egyptian spirits with a gentle sympathy. How disappointed some of them will be when they stand face to face with the true likeness of the body in which they played out their brief innings three thousand years ago! When, too, they read the uncompromising hieroglyphs, there will be unpleasant awakenings and perhaps a little scoffing from those who have drawn cleaner sarcophagi.
So Trist slept peacefully, with a philosophic reflection that Huston would never have done much good in the world. The present writer once heard a man, in all sincerity and all faith, console himself with the thought that if he was not fit to die, the probabilities were that he never would be fitter. This philosopher was a godless sailor, and he made the remark in answer to a chaffing observation advanced by a more fortunate mate that he would certainly be drowned because he possessed no life-belt. The ship was sinking, the boats were smashed, and there were other things to do just then than weigh this philosophy in the scales of reason; but having more leisure at a later period, I came to think over it, and have come to the conclusion that there was much within that reflection that is worth consideration. Let us, however, avoid the quicksands of a theological controversy.
* * * *
It has not hitherto been mentioned that Mrs. Wylie possessed one or two vices of a comparatively harmless description. The most prominent of these was unpunctuality at the breakfast-table. This is a most comfortable vice, and quite in keeping with the placid and easy-going nature of the lady. The best woman I have ever known is invariably late for breakfast; her hair is white now, but long may she continue arriving after time! There is someone else who is most lamentably unpunctual any time before ten o'clock antemeridian. She is not a woman yet, but she has begun well. I may mention that I do not at all object to pouring out my own coffee.
Brenda, being of a more active nature, was usually down first, and the fact of having been out to a ball the night before rarely acted as a deterrent. It thus came about that she was alone at the breakfast-table when Trist was announced. It was a dainty, womanly little meal set out on the snowy cloth, and as yet untouched. Brenda was in the act of opening the newspaper when Trist entered the room. She did not remember until afterwards that, as he shook hands, he took the journal from her and laid it aside. Perhaps she noted the action at the time, but he was never in the habit of acting just like other men, and the peculiarity of this little movement did not strike her sufficiently to remain upon her memory as a distinct incident.
'Ah!' she said gaily; 'you think it prudent to strike while the iron is hot -I being the iron. I am not red-hot, but quite warm enough to be unpleasant, and just too hard to be struck. Please explain why you never claimed the three dances you asked me to keep?'
Trist smiled in his gravest way—a mere reflection of her bright gaiety.