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Title: Suspense, Volume I (of 3)

Author: Henry Seton Merriman

Release date: September 23, 2024 [eBook #74460]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Richard Bentley and Son

Credits: Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SUSPENSE, VOLUME I (OF 3) ***







  SUSPENSE


  BY

  HENRY SETON MERRIMAN

  AUTHOR OF 'YOUNG MISTLEY,' 'THE PHANTOM FUTURE'
  ETC.



  IN THREE VOLUMES
  VOL. I.



  LONDON
  RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON
  Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen
  1890

  [_All rights reserved_]




  Some there are who laugh and sing
    While compassed round by sorrow;
  To this ev'ning's gloom they bring
    The sunshine of to-morrow.




  _TO THE
  TRUEST GENTLEMAN I HAVE MET,
  MY FATHER,
  THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED._




  CONTENTS OF VOL. I.


  CHAPTER

  I. ON BOARD THE 'HERMIONE'
  II. THE EXCEPTION
  III. A PROBLEM
  IV. A STORM
  V. THE COMPACT
  VI. A SHADOW
  VII. A SPORTSMAN'S DEATH
  VIII. A JOINT COMMAND
  IX. A DIVIDED RESPONSIBILITY
  X. FJAERHOLM
  XI. A COMMERCIAL TRANSACTION
  XII. BAD NEWS
  XIII. OFF!




SUSPENSE



CHAPTER I.

ON BOARD THE 'HERMIONE.'

'Brenda, what are you thinking about?'

It was hardly a question.  The intonation of Mrs. Wylie's voice was
by no means interrogative, and she returned placidly to the perusal
of her novel without awaiting a reply.  The ladies had been reading
silently for at least an hour, until the younger of the two allowed
her book to lie unheeded on her knee, while the pages fluttered in
the breeze.

The remark called forth by this action was accepted literally and as
a question.

'I was thinking of Theo Trist,' replied the girl gravely.  She did
not meet her companion's gaze, but looked wistfully across the fjord
towards the bleak dismal cliffs.

Mrs. Wylie closed her novel on one white plump finger and drummed
idly upon the back of it with the other hand.  In movement and repose
alike this lady was essentially comfortable.  Her presence suggested
contentment and prosperity amidst the most unpropitious environments.
The _Hermione_, her temporary home, a broad, slow-sailing
schooner-yacht, was, below decks, conducted on the principles of a
luxurious, roomy house.  She had a wonderful way with her, this plump
and smiling lady, of diffusing into the very atmosphere a sense of
readiness to meet all emergencies.  The elements, even, seemed to bow
to her.  Overhead the winds might roar and moan aloud through stay
and rigging--all around the waves might leap and throw themselves
against the staunch low bulwarks of the yacht--but in the cabin was
warm comfort; and with it, dainty womanly ways.  Mrs. Wylie proved
most effectually that at sea, in fair weather and in foul, a woman
can be a woman still.

She now re-opened her book, but instead of reading, sat gazing
thoughtfully at the young girl.  Presently she laughed musically and
turned resolutely to the open page.

'Yes,' she murmured--confessing, as it were, that her thoughts had on
former occasions been drawn in the same direction.  'Yes.  But,
Brenda--I--should not advise you--to--think--of Theo Trist.'

There are in the lives of most of us passing moments which leave a
distinct impression upon the mind.  Of all the million words we hear
there are some trivial remarks which hold fast to the inner sinews of
the great machine we call memory--a machine which rests not by night
or day, in health or sickness, in prosperity or woe.  Often it is a
jest, or some weighty saying spoken in jest.  There is no apparent
reason why some words should be so distinctly remembered while others
pass away from recollection; and yet small observations, interesting
only in the passing moment, catch as it were in the mental wheel,
and, adhering to the spokes, spin round with them, just as a mere
muddy piece of paper may cling to the wheel of an emperor's carriage
and flutter through the cheering crowd, calling for universal
attention.

Brenda Gilholme listened to Mrs. Wylie's laughing caution in a vague
way, and there seemed to come into her mind an indefinite
recollection.  Certain it was that she had never heard the words
before, but yet they were forebodingly familiar.  The semi-bantering
ring of the lady's voice, the soft hum of the breeze through the
rigging overhead, the ripple of the awning stretched tautly, and the
regular plash of tiny wavelets beneath and all around, formed an
entire harmony of sound which was instantaneously graved on her
memory, never to leave it from that day forth.

Mrs. Wylie, having married happily herself, was of the firm opinion
that marriages are made in heaven.  (We of course know better.  The
manufactory is situated, my brothers, in another quarter where fuel
is cheap and steam-power readily obtainable.)  She was too
kind-hearted and too merciful to the human race to think of
interfering in the work.  Perhaps she felt that if heaven turned out
such poor work, hers could not well be satisfactory.  Be that,
however, as it may, Mrs. Wylie was no match-maker.  She held strange
views--alas! too rarely fostered--that if a man be worthy of a woman
and love her truly, he should be able to win her for himself; and
that if he cannot do this unaided he is better without her.  A bold
theory most assuredly, and one worthy of consideration.

Of course she knew that Theo Trist and Brenda were great friends.
She was well aware that in some future time the friendship _might_
turn to something else.  With most young men and maidens the word
'would' could well be substituted for 'might.'  But these two were
not of that human material which is woven upon a common web.  Brenda
Gilholme was not one of the crowd--she had the misfortune of an
intellect.  As existence is managed in these days, a woman with a
mind must not expect too much happiness.  It is lamentable, but true,
that the brain has little to do with earthly joy.  In these æsthetic
days we talk a great quantity of nonsense about 'soul,' and inner
consciousness, and feeling.  In fact, we are getting too clever, and
our minds are running away from our bodies.  Our existence is
material, talk as we may about abstract idealisms; and our joys are
material.  Eating, drinking, working, sleeping--this is human life,
and those among us who perform those functions well are undoubtedly
the happiest.

A superior intellect, more especially in woman, is not conducive to
happiness.  Indeed, it is directly opposed to that impossible state.
It was this possession that made Brenda Gilholme somewhat different
from her fellows.

Theo Trist, again, had his peculiarities, but these must perforce be
allowed to transpire hereafter; and besides such individual matters
there were several facts known to Mrs. Wylie which raised doubts as
to what the end of this friendship might be.  Trist was twenty-eight
and Brenda was nineteen, while both were in manner and appearance
older than their years could warrant.  Also was there another matter
of some weight.  Brenda had a sister, a lovely unscrupulous coquette,
two years older than herself.

Alice Gilholme had been pleased to change her name and state in St.
George's, Hanover Square, earlier in the year, while the _Hermione_
was yet in dry dock.  Three weeks after the wedding, Theo Trist
returned from abroad with his bland broad forehead tanned and brown.
He expressed no surprise.  In fact, he vouchsafed no opinion
whatever.  Had he met Captain Huston, the happy bridegroom?  Oh yes!
They had met in South Africa.  That was all!  He never related
details of that part of a difficult campaign which they had passed
together.  The laconic praise contained in the two words 'good
soldier,' such as had been applied to many of his acquaintances, was
not forthcoming.

From a lady's point of view, Alfred Woodruff Charles Huston was the
beau-ideal of a soldier.  Tall, straight and square shouldered, he
carried his small head erect.  His clear brown eyes were quick
enough, his brown clean-cut face almost perfect in its outline.
Indefatigable at Sandown, Hurlingham, Goodwood, Ascot--in the Grand
Stand _bien entendu_--he had a pleasant way of appearing to know
something about everyone and everything.  But Theo Trist had not met
him at any of these places or in fashionable London drawing-rooms
later in the day.  They had come together in South Africa in the
course of a campaign, when both had laid aside the accessories of
pleasure and were hard at work, each in his chosen groove.  It was
somewhat strange that he should never offer to discuss Captain Huston
as a military man.

'That fellow Huston,' a general officer had once said in an unguarded
moment--'that fellow Huston, Trist, is the biggest duffer in the
British Army!'

And Trist's answer, given after careful consideration, was
laconically severe: 'Yes, I am afraid so.'

But Alice Gilholme omitted to consult the general officer; and after
all, if Captain Huston was no soldier, he was at least a gentleman,
with elegant high-bred ways, and an empty high-bred head, containing
just enough brain to find out the enjoyment of existence.  The happy
couple were now in India, where we will leave them.

Whether the marriage of Alice Gilholme had been a severe blow to Theo
Trist or no, it were hard to say.  Mrs. Wylie even could give no
opinion on the subject, and Brenda never mentioned it.  There was no
perceptible change in the man's strange incongruous face when the
news was broken to him without premonition in a crowded room.  His
life was essentially ruled by chance; good or bad tidings were
therefore no new things to him.

The _Hermione_ rose and fell slightly, almost imperceptibly, to the
waves, and backwards and forwards across the spotless deck Brenda
Gilholme walked pensively.  She was motherless, and her father was
entirely absorbed in political strife, being an English Home Ruler.
This thoughtful girl had grown up in the shade of her sister's
beauty, and, like many a fair young flower, had perhaps suffered from
the contiguity.  She was pleased to consider herself a plain
uninteresting girl, which was a mistake.  Her face, small and proud,
was in profile almost perfect; but her eyes were set too close
together, which caused a peculiar disappointment to those meeting her
face to face.

Perhaps she was a discontented little person.  Her expression
certainly warranted such a belief.  Undoubtedly she thought too
little of herself.  In personal charms she compared unfavourably with
her sister Alice, and in that small fact lay the secret of it all.
Glory of any description unfortunately casts a reflection which is
sure to be unpleasant either to the reflector or to the friends of
that person.  The sister of a celebrated man, his cousins, and also
his aunts, are usually disagreeable people; or, if by chance they be
coloured with the same brush and possess in a slight degree his
talent, they are discontented and unhappy.  The second fiddler will
be found less companionable than the eager time-server who plays the
triangle in the dark corner near the stage-box.

Had Brenda Gilholme been launched upon the troubled waters of society
alone, she would probably have made a better place for herself there
than her sister Alice ever reached; but unfortunately she started the
world as Alice Gilholme's sister.  In a thousand ways clumsy and
well-meaning men allowed her to define her own situation.  With that
sweet charity which warms the fair bosoms of our sisters and female
cousins, girls took every opportunity of lamenting Alice's
backslidings and social sins in the hearing of her sister.  There are
some who will say that these lamentations were the fruit of jealousy
and petty female spite, but this assuredly could not be, because
these same guileless maidens were never tired of praising and
upholding their dear _friend's_ beauty.  Now, would they do that if
they were jealous?  Oh no!

'Brenda,' Admiral Wylie used to say, with a loving twinkle of his
intensely blue eyes, 'Brenda is a brick.'  She was true and loyal; a
devoted sister, and a staunch friend.  Had she loved her sister less,
she would have carried a lighter heart through many a gay ball-room.
She would have suffered less from--let us call it the mistaken
kindness of her sister's friends.  She would have thought more of
herself and less of Alice.  And yet there was in this little maiden a
strange touch of pride.  She carried her neat little head very high,
although she failed to recognise the rare beauty of the brown soft
hair nestling there.  As she walked up and down the deck she trod
firmly, with a certain smooth strength, although she was pleased to
ignore the possession of the daintiest little feet ever shod by
Pinet.  Her small and beautiful person was adorned with a simple
severity which was almost defiant.  It seemed to throw the glove down
before the face of human weakness--to defy opinion.  Alice had always
been the beauty; to her had been relegated the fine dresses and
fascinating hats, and Brenda had played second fiddle.  Now that
Alice had left her life, the little maiden went on her way with
apparent serenity; but beneath the quietly thoughtful exterior,
behind the sad, questioning eyes, there was that curse, the bitter
sorrow of a superior intellect placed within a woman's brain.

Brenda Gilholme knew too much.  Her estimate of human existence at
the age of nineteen was truer and deeper than that of her grandmother
at the age of ninety.  And around us, my brothers, there are many
Brendas--many women and young maidens who know us too well.  Human
nature has been scraped, and probed, and stripped until the gilt and
glamour are quite lost.  Moreover, the fault is chiefly ours.  We
have probed and analyzed with our pens most foolishly.  Urged on by
the spirit of competition, we have searched deeper into man's heart
and woman's motive, each trying to get nearer to the core, until at
last the subject has become almost repulsive.

The analyst soon discovers that many substances are the mere outcome
of a few components variously mingled.  Men and women can no more
bear analysis with dignity than can the common ruck of every-day
food.  There are certain component parts capable of nourishing the
human frame, but we mix them up into many dishes.  He who dissects
his meat will have small appetite, and those who study their fellow
men and women too closely will learn to despise their own parents.

Women are, in this respect, worse off than men.  Their greater
insight and quicker divination enable them to judge mercilessly and
with unfortunate accuracy.  Since they have joined us in the great
work of analysis (with but poor results from a literary point of
view, but mighty profits to the printer), the seamy side has been
held up to inquiring eyes with the veriest shamelessness.  Surely we
know the worst of human nature now, and most certainly those who are
running behind us in the race, those little children and soft-eyed
maidens, can read even as they run.

Brenda Gilholme was a living protest against mental cultivation as it
is understood to-day.  Her exceptionally capable mind was the victim
of over-education and a cheap literature.  Beneath that soft brown
hair was a fund of classical knowledge sufficient for the
requirements of an Oxford professor, theology enough for a deacon,
geometry mixed up with political economy, geography and algebra,
general knowledge, and no arithmetic worth speaking of.  All this,
forsooth, added to a taste for music, and an innate power of making
it very sweetly.  And all for what?  To be wisely forgotten as soon
as possible--let us hope.  The best woman and the truest lady I know
has never seen an examination paper in her life.  At least, I believe
she has not.  Filial respect withholds my question.

It is rather disappointing to come freshly into a world of men and
women and find it sorely wanting.  This Brenda had done.  The women
appeared to her affected and ignorant, because with her they were not
quite at ease by reason of her deep education.  The men were trivial
or narrow.  This one knew more geometry than she did, but of classics
and theology he knew nothing.  Another was well versed in theology,
while of political economy he could speak but haltingly, and so on.
Each was in his narrow sphere; she knew too much for all, and could
apply it to nothing because she was a woman.  She had been taught
that knowledge was power--that the whole world passed the Cambridge
examinations--that women were born to muddle their sweet inconsistent
brains over deep questions relative to semi-preserved languages, to
weary their young eyes over imperfectly printed algebraical problems,
and to learn many things which they are best without.

But with it all Brenda Gilholme was a woman.  Instead of puzzling her
daring brains over questions which have never yet been approached
with safety, she would have done better had she knelt down and
thanked God for that same womanliness.  And being a woman, she weakly
thought that all men are not alike.  She fondly imagined that an
exception had been especially created and placed within her own
sphere.

Presently she stopped walking, and stood beside the low rail,
grasping an awning-stanchion with one hand.  The wistful,
discontented look left her eyes, which were clear and blue, with long
dark lashes, and in its place came an interested, keen expression.

'I think,' she said aloud, 'I see him coming.  There is a small sail
away down the fjord.'

Mrs. Wylie looked up vaguely.

'Yes,' she answered absently; 'I dare say you are right!'




CHAPTER II.

THE EXCEPTION.

The _Hermione_ lay at the head of that small branch of the sea called
the Heimdalfjord.  This long and narrow inlet is an insignificant
branch of a greater fjord where steamers ply their irregular traffic;
where British tourists gaze up with weary eyes at the towering rocks
and bleak cliffs; and where, during the long silent twilight winter,
the winds howl and roar round the bare crags.  On either side of the
Heimdalfjord the gray hopeless cliffs rose a sheer two thousand feet,
while the blue deep water lapped their base with scarce a ripple.
The fjord lay between the mighty barriers with a solemn sense of
profundity in the stillness of its bosom.  One could almost picture
to one's self the continuation of the steep incline into a great dark
valley beneath the superficial ripple, where mighty marine growths
reared their brown branches up towards the dim light, never swaying
to the ocean swell--where strange northern fishes and slow crawling
things lived on unknown, unclassified.

Amid such surroundings, upon the face of so large a nature, the
_Hermione_ looked incongruous.  Her clean long spars, her white
awning, the yellow gleam of her copper beneath the clear water, all
suggested another world where comfort and small refinement live.
Here all is of a rougher, larger stamp.  Here man and his petty
tastes are as nothing.  The bleak and dismal mountains were not
created for his habitation, for nothing grows there, and human
ingenuity, human enterprise, can do naught with such stony chaos.

On the entire Heimdalfjord there are but two boats--mere pinewood
craft heavily tarred.  One is owned by Hans Olsen, who lives far away
at the point where the Sognfjord begins, and the other belongs to
Christian Nielsen, who farms the two acres of poor soil at the head
of the Heimdalfjord.  No steamer has ever churned the still waters;
few yachts have ventured up to the head of the inlet, where there is
no attraction to the sightseer.  But Nielsen looked every year for
the white sails of the _Hermione_, and with native conscientiousness
refrained from netting the river that ran past his brown log-hut.

The river brought him in more money than his farm, and even at this
out-of-the-world corner of the Heimdalfjord money and the lust of it
are the chief movers of men's hearts.  Five hundred crowns a year was
a sum worth thinking about, worth depriving one's self of a little
salmon for, which, after all, was plentiful enough when once the
_Hermione_ had cast anchor.

Four miles down the fjord there was another break in the great wall
of mountains, and a second river danced gaily down its narrow barren
valley to the sea.  From this river-mouth a small boat was now making
its way under sail up the fjord.  A tiny speck of white was all the
girl could distinguish from the deck of the yacht, and she stood
silently watching its approach until the form of the sailor sitting
low in the bow of the small brown craft was discernible.

The sun had set some time before, so that the water was in shadow,
deep and blue; but up on the hills and away to the south upon the
distant snow-clad mountains a warm pink glow lay hazily.  Deep purple
vales of shade broke the line of cliffs abutting the water here and
there.  Where the hills closed together, five miles away (so that the
fjord appeared to be a lake), there was a rich background of blue
transparency through which the broken crags loomed vaguely.  It was
nearly nine o'clock, and this clear twilight was all the darkness
that would come to the Heimdal that July night.

The breeze held its own bravely against the soporific influence of
Arctic sunset, and with full taut sail the dinghy splashed and
gurgled through the waters.  The steersman was invisible by reason of
the reefless sail, but his handiwork was apparent and very good.  A
wonderfully straight course had he steered from the mouth of the
river, such a course as a purposeful man will steer when he is
without companion beyond his own thoughts.

'He's driving her along!' muttered the steward, as he stood for a
moment at the galley-door.

'The driving is like unto the driving of Jehu,' answered old Captain
Barrow, who was smoking his evening pipe upon his own small piece of
deck between the galley and the after-companion.

Captain Barrow rarely missed an opportunity of throwing at the head
of the steward, who (like most good cooks) was a godless person, a
Biblical quotation more or less correct.

Before the silence had again been broken the dinghy came rushing on.
Down went the tiller, and with shivering canvas the little boat swung
round alongside.

Beside the after-rail Brenda stood motionless; her eyes were resting
on the dreary, lifeless scene which was nothing but a still blending
of hazy blues now that the small white sail no longer gave life to
it.  She did not even turn when the sound of wet splashy footsteps
upon the deck came to her ears.  The newcomer had kicked off his
brogues amidships, and was coming aft in wet waders and soaking outer
socks, out of respect for the _Hermione's_ deck.

There was a vague suggestion of respectful familiarity in his
movements.  One could tell instinctively that he had known these
ladies for many years.  Nor did he apologize for the informality of
his pedal attire.

This man was clad _du reste_ disgracefully.  His old tweed coat was
baggy and most lamentably worn.  One sleeve was very wet, while the
other was muddy.  The gray waders were discoloured, and he had
apparently been kneeling in green slime.  And yet withal Theo Trist
was undoubtedly a gentleman--unmistakably, undeniably so.  The manner
in which he set his shoeless feet upon the deck betrayed it.  His
very silence confirmed it.

He came beneath the awning, and raised from his close-cropped head a
most lamentable hat of gray cloth, with a vague brim and no
independent shape.  All round it were gaudy salmon-flies and a coil
of gleaming gut.

As he stood there beneath the awning in the gray twilight with his
head bared, the strange incongruity of his person was very
noticeable.  A sturdy, lightly-built body spoke of great activity.
It was the frame of a soldier.  But the face was of a different type.
In itself it was inconsistent, because the upper part of it had no
sympathy with the lower.  A forehead which receded slightly in a
kindly curve to strong curled hair could only be described as bland,
while beneath straight thick brows there smiled a pair of gray eyes
as meek as human eyes were ever made.  It was in these same meek eyes
that all the world misread this man.  In brow and eyes he was a
soft-hearted philanthropist, such as are easily misled and gulled
with exaggerated tales of woe.  A man to take up some impossible
scheme to alleviate the sorrows of a class or kind, to busy himself
unprofitably in a crusade against class privileges and uphold the
so-called rights of a victimized working population.  But from the
eyes downwards this was all lost, and there were other signs instead.
The nose was straight and somewhat small, while the lips, though
clean-shaven, were entirely devoid of any suggestion of coarseness,
such as one may read upon the mouths of most men past the age of
twenty-five, unless a moustache charitably hide such failing.  The
mouth was almost too severe in its clean curve; in repose it was
Napoleonic, in gaiety it lost all hardness.  The chin, again, was
square and slightly prominent.  To judge from nose and lips and chin,
this new-comer had been intended for a soldier, but the meek eyes
disturbed this theory.

His face was brown, of a complexion which by reason of its
unchangeableness never betrayed thought, emotion, or physical pain.
That his life had been chiefly spent in the open air was discernible
from his bearing and appearance, yet his manner (more especially with
ladies) was that of a polished courtier.  Judging from outward
things, one could not help feeling that Theodore Trist was an
exceptional man in some way or other, in sport or work, in deed or
thought.  His broad pensive brow would seem to indicate a literary or
poetic tendency, while the meek eyes spoke of a great love for Nature
and her unfathomable ways.  The man might easily have been a
naturalist or a vague day-dreamer, dabbling in the writer's art.
Certain it was that he could only be a specialist of some
description.  No universality could exist behind those gentle eyes.
Certain also, it would seem, that he trod in the paths of peace
where'er he went.  His gentle movements, his calm soft speech, were
almost womanlike.  But then these indications ran full tilt against
the soldierly frame and the still hard lips.  The most discerning
physiognomist would not have dared to say that those gentle eyes had
looked upon more bloodshed, than any warrior of the day; that the
brown ears had been torn by more human shrieks of utter agony than
any army-surgeon has ever listened to.  This man of peace was the
finest, ablest, truest chronicler of a battle that ever scribbled
notes amidst the battle smoke.  Few of us find the exact groove for
which we were created, and Trist was no more fortunate than the rest.
Many a good soldier has spent his life in the counting-house, while
there are numbers wearing a red coat to-day whose place is in the
pulpit.  Theodore Trist was a born soldier, if ever man was born with
military genius in his soul.  Had his natural turn of intellect been
in any other direction, he could, in later life, have followed it,
but the British army is constructed upon a system which forces a
child to grasp the sword (metaphorically, if not in deed) before his
fingers have learnt the shape of hilt, or pen, or brush.
Consequently, our forces are officered by a fine stalwart body of
gentlemen, who are, some of them, parsons--some artists, some
farmers, some sailors, some soldiers--and a good many mere idlers.
This is no cheap sarcasm, nor is it the ready complaint of the
British universalist, who writes on the least provocation to the
newspapers, upon subjects of which his knowledge is culled from other
newspapers.  I am not finding fault, nor would I suggest off-hand a
complete scheme for reorganizing what I have always been taught to
consider the finest military force in the world.  It is merely an
observation, made with the view of rendering obvious the reason why
Theodore Trist was not a soldier.  He found out his groove too late
in life, _voilà tout_.  Moreover, he found that it was like the queue
at the pit-door of a French theatre.  One cannot enter in the middle,
and it is of little use taking the last place if the door be open,
and others crowding on in front.

Far from this humble pen be it to libel the gentlemen who have
professed themselves ready to lay down their lives for the rights of
their country.  They are good soldiers, brave men, and what is
tersely called upon the Continent hardy companions; but sometimes I
have found inside a red-coat a parson, an artist, a farmer or a
sailor.  Whatever dreams may have flitted through the boy's head, the
man Theo Trist never spoke of his unfortunate mistake.  It would be
better termed a mishap, because he made no choice of the Church, but
was urged into it by a zealous and short-sighted mother.  He did not,
however, reach ordination.  Before that final step was taken his
mother died, and all Europe stood hushed in the presence of a mighty
war impending.  The war-clouds rolled up and gathered force.  Men
spoke in lowered voices of the future; women trembled and concealed
the newspapers from their children.  A dread thirst for blood seemed
to parch the throats of soldiers, and statesmen hesitated upon the
brink of a terrible responsibility.  Commerce was hindered, and
sailors went to sea with uneasy hearts.  Then arose in the soul of
Theo Trist--the Oxford undergraduate--a strange, burning unrest.  As
a dog raises his head with quick glance and parted fangs at the
approach of game, so leapt this man's heart in his breast.  But no
one knew of this: his benevolent brow and gentle eyes misled them all.

When at last the quick defiance was hurled from one nation to
another, Theodore Trist disappeared.  The sound of battle drew him
away from peaceful England to that fair country by the Rhine where
blood has been sucked into the fertile earth to grow again into
deadly hatred.  The din and roar and fury of battle was this
mild-eyed man's element.  The sulphureous smoke of cannon was the
breath of life to him.  His walk was upon the sodden, slippery field
of blood.  And yet through it all there went the strange incongruity
of his being.  In the wild joy of fighting (which carries men out
from themselves and transforms them into new strange beings), Trist
never lost his gentle demeanour.  The plucky Frenchmen, with whom he
spent that terrible winter, laughed at him, but one and all ended
their merriment with upraised finger and grave, assuring eyes.

'Mais,' they said compensatingly, 'd'un courage...' and the sentence
finished up with a shrug and outspread hands, indicating that the
courage of 'ce drôle Trist' was practically without bounds.

And yet he did not actually fight with sword and rifle.  The pen was
his arm and weapon.  In two languages he wrote through all that
campaign the brave record of a losing fight.  While endeavouring to
give a somewhat unchivalrous enemy his due, he made no denial of
partisanship.  The ease and fluency with which he expressed himself
in French excluded all hope of that, and Trist frankly arrayed
himself on the side of the losing nation.  Finally, he occupied with
perfect serenity the anomalous position of a non-combatant who ran a
soldier's risk--a neutral totally unprotected, and unrecognised as
such--an English war-correspondent who, of his own free will, refused
to lay himself under the obligations entailed by protection.

Thus this half-fledged parson feathered his wings.  Destined to
preach peace, he suddenly turned and taught war.  In two countries
simultaneously he made a brilliant name, proving that if he could not
fight, because the possession of a fighting soul had become known to
him too late in life, he could at least watch others battling as no
man of his age could watch.

When at length Paris had fallen, an emaciated, pale-faced Englishman
turned his back upon the demoralized capital and sought his native
land.  His groove in life had been found.  Theodore Trist was a born
chronicler of battle-fields, a subtle strategist, a lost general--in
three words, an ideal war-correspondent.  His great knowledge of his
subject, his instinctive divination of men's motives, and his
exceptional good-breeding, saved him from the many pitfalls that
usually lie concealed in the path of all who follow an army-corps
without occupying a post therein.  He was never in the way, never
indiscreet, never inquisitive, and, above all, never
self-opinionated.  He watched war as a lover of war, not as a
self-constituted representative of a hypercritical nation.  The
spirit of competition did not with him override the sense of
patriotism, simply because such a spirit in no wise affected him.  He
went his own way, and struck out a line of his own, never seeking to
be before his compeers with news or guesses.  Consequently his
position was unique--midway between a war-correspondent and a warlike
historian, for his writings on the battle-field were nothing less
than history.

So Trist returned to England and found himself famous.  Upon every
bookstall in the kingdom he found a small red volume of his letters
collected from the columns of the journal he had represented during
the great unfinished war.

In the course of a few days he called upon his various friends--Mrs.
Wylie among the first, Alice and Brenda Gilholme, at the residence of
their aunt, Mrs. Gilholme, shortly afterwards.  It was about this
time that Brenda conceived the idea that Theo Trist loved her sister.
He was only one among many, but he was different from the rest, and
the young girl, for the first time, blamed her sister seriously.  She
kept these things in her heart, however, and said nothing, because
there was nothing tangible; nothing to authorize her speaking to
Alice.  If Trist had fallen a victim to the fascinations of the
light-hearted coquette, he certainly concealed his feelings most
jealously.

Brenda fully recognised that the fact of his being less
light-hearted, less cheerful than of old, might easily be accounted
for by the horrors through which he had passed during the late
months; but there was something else.  There was another change which
had come over him since his return.

While she was still watching and wondering, Theo Trist suddenly
vanished, and soon afterwards there broke out a small war in the Far
East.  Like a vulture he had scented blood, and was on the spot by
the time that the news of hostilities had reached England.  He never
wrote private letters, but his work in the new field of battle was
closely watched by the small circle of friends at home.  As usual,
his letters attracted attention, and people talked vaguely of this
wonderful war-correspondent--vaguely because he was personally
unknown.  His individuality was nothing to the warlike host of men
who follow events quietly at home with a half-defined thrill of envy
in their hearts--for every Englishman has a secret love of war, a
well-concealed longing to be fighting something or someone.

When he returned, Alice Gilholme was married, and Brenda had to tell
him of it.  No surprise, no signs of discomfiture were visible in the
man's incongruous face, where strength and weakness were strangely
mixed.  He inquired keenly and practically about settlements,
expressed a gentle hope that Alice would be happy, and changed the
subject.




CHAPTER III.

A PROBLEM.

Trist approached Mrs. Wylie with slow and almost timid steps, yet
there was nothing apologetic in his demeanour, for he was perfectly
self-possessed, and even reposeful, with that quiet assurance which
only comes with innate good-breeding.

In his two hands he carried a fine stout salmon with a sharp snout.
Its dark lips curled upwards with an evil twist, and even in death
its eyes were full of fight.

The lady dropped her book upon her lap, and looked up with a smile.
In her eyes there was a kindly and yet scrutinizing look which was
almost motherly in its discernment.  This young man was evidently
more to her than the rest of his kind.  She knew his impassive face
so well that she could read where others saw an unwritten page.

'Ah,' she said, with some interest (for she was a sportsman's wife),
'that is a good fish, Theo!'

'Yes,' he acquiesced in a soft and rather monotonous voice,
harmonizing with his eyes.  'He is a fine fellow.  We had a desperate
fight!'

As if to prove the severity of the struggle, he looked down at his
knees, which were muddy, and then held out his right hand, which was
streaked with blood.

'Ah, how nasty!' exclaimed Mrs. Wylie pleasantly.  'Is it yours or
his?'

'Mine, I think.  Yes, it must be mine.'

Brenda had approached slowly, and was standing close to him.  She
stooped a little to examine the fish, which he held towards her with
his left hand, and even deigned to poke it critically on the shoulder
with her straight white finger.

'Are you hurt?' she inquired casually, without looking up.

A slow gleam of humour lighted up Trist's soft and melancholy eyes as
he looked down at her.

'He cannot answer for himself,' he said suggestively.  'But I think I
can volunteer the information that he is not hurt now.  He died the
death of a plucky fish, and did not flinch.'

'I meant _you_.'

'I?  Oh no, I am not hurt, thank you.  Only very dirty, very
sanguinary, and quite happy.'

At this moment the steward, a dapper and noiseless man with no
appearance of a sailor, came up and took the fish from Trist's hands.
Mrs. Wylie returned to her book, and the two young people stood
silently in front of her.  Presently they moved away as if with one
accord, farther aft, beside the wheel.  Here Brenda seated herself
sideways with one arm round the white awning-stanchion.

She looked up, and, as he happened to be gazing gently down at her,
their eyes met.  There was no instant withdrawal, no change of
expression.  These two were evidently very old friends, because a
young man and a maiden rarely look into each other's eyes for any
appreciable space of time without some slight change of expression
supervening.

Theo Trist smiled at length, and looked away for a moment.  Then he
glanced down at her face again.

'Well?' he said interrogatively.  'You are going to make one of those
deep remarks which would take away the breath of some people.'

She smiled, but did not turn away in maidenly reserve.  Indeed, she
continued to watch his face, wonderingly and absently.

'What a peculiar man you are, Theo!'

He bowed politely, and slipping the ends of his fingers into either
trouser-pocket, he stood defiantly before her, with his unshod feet
set well apart.

'And you, Brenda ... I have never met anyone in any way like you.'

But she had no intention--this independent little person--of being
led away thus from the original question.

'Sometimes I almost dislike you ... and at other moments I admire
your character very much.'

She was quite grave, and looked up at him anxiously, as if the
character of some third person very near and dear to them both were
under discussion.

'When do you dislike me?' he asked in his monotonous, gentle way.

To this she made no answer for some moments, but sat looking
thoughtfully across the deep-bosomed water, which was now almost
glassy, for the breeze had dropped with the setting sun.  She was
frowning slightly, and leant her chin upon her hand, which action
gave additional thoughtfulness to her well-read face.  She might have
been solving some great problem.  Indeed, she _was_ attempting to
find an explanation to the greatest problem we have to solve.  This
foolish little maiden, with all her great and mistaken learning, her
small experience and deep, searching mind, was trying to explain
human nature.  Not in its entirety, but one small insignificant
example taken from the whole.  She was trying to reduce this man to
an orderly classification of motives, desires, and actions; and he
stood defying her to do so.  She wanted to understand Theo Trist.  In
faith, she did not ask for much!  An educated and refined gentleman,
an experienced and time-hardened man.  A philosopher without a creed.
A soldier without a sword.  A soft heart that sought bloodshed.
Brenda had undertaken a very large task.  She might have begun upon
the simplest, most open-hearted sailor-man in the forecastle, and yet
I am sure that she would have failed.  With Theo Trist she could do
nothing.  Does any one of us understand his brother, his sister, his
mother or his wife?  Scarcely, I think.  This only I know, that I
have never yet _quite_ understood any human being.  There are
some--indeed, there are many--whom I have been pleased to consider as
an open book before my discerning gaze, but Time has changed all
that.  He has proved that I knew remarkably little about the printed
matter in that open book.

Trist repeated his question:

'When do you dislike me, Brenda?'

Her reply was somewhat indirect.

'At times,' she said, without looking towards him, 'you attempt
wilfully to misrepresent yourself, and I cannot quite see why you
should wish to do so.  You said just now that you were very
sanguinary and quite happy.  You meant to convey a deeper meaning, I
know, because you glanced involuntarily towards me to see if I had
caught it.  Now, why _should_ you pretend to be a hard-hearted, cruel
and cold-blooded man?  That is what I do not understand.'

She shook her small head despairingly, and looked up at him with a
very shadowy smile.  There was no question implied in the tone of her
voice.  She showed clearly that she expected no answer.  It was
merely her recital of a difficulty encountered in the study of a
problem.  This problem was the character of the man standing before
her, the only man of her own age, and among her friends, to whose
intellect her own was content to bow.  To him she talked of many
strange undiscussed matters, and together they had waded very deeply
into questions which were opened centuries ago, and are now no nearer
their solution.  It was not that Theo Trist was a supernaturally
grave man, but Brenda felt instinctively that he would never laugh at
her.  He was a good and careful listener; moreover, she had never yet
propounded a question, in her vague, half-wistful way, about which he
did not know something; upon which he could not put forward, in his
gentle and suggestive way, an opinion which was either the result of
his own thoughts or of those of other men.

'Everything is a matter of habit,' said the mild-eyed sportsman
vaguely.

He knew that she was not thinking about salmon-fishing and its
cruelty at all, but of the strange incongruity of his profession.  He
was well aware that Brenda Gilholme, in her brave little heart,
disapproved of his calling.  Of war and its horrors she rarely spoke,
for she felt that his existence was necessarily bound to such things.
It was a gift vouchsafed with a reckless disregard for incongruity
which could only be providential--this gift of a warlike pen.  He
stood alone, far above his compeers, the one man who could write, in
French and English alike, of war; and while respecting his undoubted
intellect, she would fain have brought all the force of her will to
bear upon him and urge him from the exercise of it on the field of
battle.  She was influenced by the strong horror of a refined and
gentle woman for all things akin to violence and bloodshed, and she
could not believe that in his heart of hearts the soft-eyed, quiet
man loved the sight of blood and the smoky grime of battle.

'Yes,' she answered.  'Endurance may be a matter of habit, but why
seek that which requires endurance?'

He attempted to keep the question within the bounds of a sporting
matter.

'Every living thing in creation is by the laws of creation expected
to prey upon some other living thing.  By a merciful provision we men
cannot quite look at the question from the salmon's point of view.
It is a fight--an unfair fight, I admit--but still there is no wanton
cruelty in killing salmon.'

He ceased abruptly, and held up his arm, looking at it critically.
There was a deep scratch across the wrist from which the blood had
trickled in several rivulets and congealed upon the back of his slim
brown hand.  Looking up, he saw that she was gazing at the wounded
limb, and with a slight apologetic smile he put it behind his back so
as to conceal it from her eyes.

'The actual sight of blood,' he continued, 'whether it be cold from
the salmon or warm from one's own veins, is a mere technical
unpleasantness which soon loses its horror ... for men.'

'I was not thinking of salmon-fishing.'

'Nor I,' he replied with cool audacity.

There was another long pause, during which neither moved.  It was
noteworthy that Trist, who had been on his legs in rough water, and
over rocky country, since early morning, showed no sign of fatigue.
If he had so desired, it would have been easy enough for him to bring
forward one of the low chairs standing near the skylight, but he
appeared to prefer standing.

'But in losing that sense of horror,' asked Brenda presently, 'do not
men become brutalized?'

He shrugged his shoulders perceptibly.

'Do you think so?' he inquired significantly.

The question was cleverly thrown back upon her, but Brenda intended
to get her answer.  She looked up with a passing smile, and made him
a little pout with her pretty lips.

'You are no criterion.  You are different altogether.  I was speaking
generally.'

'Speaking generally, I should still be of opinion that men are not
affected in any harmful way by seeing ... unpleasant sights.'

'From a sportsman's point of view only?'

'No.'

'From a war-correspondent's point of view?' she persisted.

'Yes.'

'And if anybody on earth should know,' she murmured half to herself,
'I think you should.'

He turned away a little, and then looked down in an absently
interested manner at the wet impression of his own waders on the
white deck.

'Yes,' he acquiesced with a little checked sigh; 'if anybody on earth
should know, I am the man.'

'I wonder why you do it, Theo?'

'Who knows?  I suppose it is because I cannot help it.  I am a
vulture, Brenda!  The smell of ... of battle draws irresistibly.'

'It is a fault in your character,' she said judicially.

This he denied by a shake of his head.

'It is a fault in human nature.'

She said nothing, but expressed her desire to differ by an
incredulous look.  Her knowledge of mankind was very limited, after
all, or she would never have doubted the truth of his assertion.  She
did not know then (how should she so soon?) that men are naturally
cruel, that women are naturally crueller.  In her innocence she
imagined that the majority of us are brave but gentle, strong but
forbearing, kind, chivalrous, unselfish.  While speaking in
generalities she was making the common foolish mistake we make every
day.  She fondly imagined that her thoughts were general, whereas
they were lamentably individual.  Human nature--the broad
classification so glibly falling from her lips--was nothing more
important, nothing wider in its compass, than the two words Theo
Trist.

'You will admit,' he argued, 'that war is a necessary evil.'

'Yes.'

'Then, so am I.  After my name I ought by rights to put the two
letters N.E.--Theo Trist, necessary evil.'

'But,' she said with unconscious flattery, 'you make it something
more than a necessary evil.  You turn it into a glorious thing.  You
teach that fighting is the noblest calling a man can take up.  You
make men into soldiers against their will, and ... and you make women
long to be men that they might be soldiers.'

A strange look came into the gentle eyes that watched her then--a
look that was almost pain; but it vanished again instantly, and the
bland face was cold and impassive at once.  She was so desperately in
earnest that there was a little thrilling catch in her voice.  She
seemed to be half ashamed of her own sincerity, and did not raise her
eyes.

'I am afraid,' he said, after a short pause, 'that I consider
soldiering the finest life a man can lead.'

'And yet,' she answered with unerring memory, 'you once wrote that a
man is never quite the same again when he has once been under fire.'

Trist moved restlessly.  Whenever she made mention of his work, that
dull restlessness seemed to come over him.  The knowledge that his
writing had remained engraved upon her memory seemed to work some
subtle change in the man.  It would only have been natural for him to
feel some pride in this fact whenever she betrayed it; but this was
not pride: it was nearer akin to pain or regret.

'Yes,' he admitted; 'but I did not insinuate that the change was one
for the worse.  In many cases the effect is distinctly beneficial; in
a few it is brutalizing.  In all it is saddening.  A man who has seen
much war is hardly an acquisition in a drawing-room.'

He moved away a few paces, and leaning out beneath the awning, looked
towards the head of the fjord, where the river came bowling down the
valley past Nielsen's house.

'There is the Admiral,' he said, 'coming off in Nielsen's boat.  I
wonder what sport he has had.'

Brenda also left her seat upon the rail and looked across the water.
In doing so she came nearer to her companion, and her dress touched
his wounded hand.

'Are you sure,' she said, as if reminded of his mishap, 'that you are
not hurt?  Shall I sponge your hand?  I am not afraid of ... of it.'

He laughed in a pleasant and heartless way.

'Oh no, thanks!  I will wash it in the ordinary way.  It is only a
scratch; I ought to have washed it before presenting myself to you.'

She looked at him speculatively, and made a little hopeless movement
with her shoulders.

'You are sometimes most aggravatingly independent.'

'Yes,' he answered, in a hard, practical way.  'Independence is a
necessity.  If I have the gift of it, I cannot cultivate it too
assiduously.  Without independence I should be nowhere.'

'And yet it can be carried to undue excess.  A man should sometimes
pretend, I think, to be a trifle dependent upon others, and
especially upon women.  It is the least he can do for them,
possessing, as he does, the advantage in existence.  One could almost
tell from your little ways and habits of thought, Theo, that your
mother died long ago.'

'You mean that we should ask our women-folk to do little things for
us which we know quite well we could do better ourselves.'

'Yes.'

'And thus,' he suggested, 'satisfy their personal vanity.'

Brenda did not answer him at once.  The question required
consideration.

'Yes,' she replied at length, 'and thus satisfy their personal
vanity.  There is no object to be gained by concealing the fact that
our happiness in life is merely a question of satisfied vanity, from
the very beginning to the very end.'

'From a new pair of woollen boots to a long funeral procession of
empty carriages?' added Trist, with meek interrogation.

'Women do not as a rule go to their graves before a number of bored
coachmen and empty broughams.'

'Most of them would like to.'

'Yes; I am afraid you are right.  But we seem to take it for granted
that men allow us a monopoly of vanity.'

'Oh no!' Trist hastened to correct; 'you only possess the monopoly of
one description.  Yours is a thirsty vanity which knows no slaking;
ours is satisfied.  Of the two, yours, mademoiselle, is less
objectionable.  I suppose independence or self-dependence is my pet
vanity.'

'Yes, Theo, it is.'

'And yours?'

'I am all vanity.'

Trist laughed derisively--a laugh, however, which was inaudible
across the deck.

She turned and walked slowly forward to meet the Admiral, whose boat
was dropping alongside.

'Don't laugh,' she said, almost angrily; 'it is true.'

'Then,' he said gravely, 'I will endeavour to satisfy you by asking
you to sew on the very next button that comes off.'

For a moment she lost her gravity, and was a simple, sweetly
coquettish girl.

'And I will refuse flatly,' she observed saucily.




CHAPTER IV.

A STORM.

The short northern night lay over the peaceful fjord.  There was no
sound in the air except the soft murmurous voice of the river and the
distant prattle of a tiny waterfall.

The _Hermione_, wrapt in utter darkness (for the Admiral would allow
no riding-light, having had enough of red-tape routine during his
service beneath the white ensign), lay motionless upon the glassy
water.

From the open port-holes came light and a sound of music.  In the
comfortable and home-like saloon Brenda was at the piano; Mrs. Wylie
worked placidly, and the two men smoked in restful silence.  That
sweet fatigue and utter sense of peacefulness which is the reward of
a hard, unsparing day had come over them.  The Admiral had caught his
two fish over again, and his pleasant, garrulous voice was still.  He
was now inclining to slumber, lying back drowsily in his deep chair.

Trist, a model of cleanliness, and broadcloth over the whitest linen,
was in a less easy pose, for he was seated at the cabin-table before
a huge volume of travel.  His brown hands lay quiescent upon the open
pages; his eyes were riveted on the printed lines.  Although he was
to all appearances immersed in his study, he was the first to hear a
difference in the sounds of night outside.  He raised his head and
looked towards the port-hole, half hidden by a tiny muslin curtain
scarcely moving in the draught.  Without, in the semi-darkness, there
was now a long continuous whisper, like the voice of a summer breeze
amidst half-formed leaves.  This was the ripple of a new-born breath
upon the waters, and within it there was the hum of air rushing
through taut rigging.  The breeze was a fresh one.  Brenda continued
playing, unconscious of these signs.  Her fingers wandered over the
keys dreamily, while her upright form swayed in no slightest degree
to the rhythm of her music.  It would seem that she could wring from
the old piano plaintive harmonies full of sadness and suggestive
melancholy without becoming in any way affected by their influence.
For a woman she was exceptionally self-contained and undemonstrative.

Trist continued gazing through the open port-hole.  It was now quite
dark outside--darker than the thin veil of night in such a latitude
would account for during July.  Presently the reason of it was
apparent and audible.  There came a rushing sound like the approach
of a train in a deep cutting, and the _Hermione_ was enveloped in it.

'Rain!' exclaimed Brenda, swinging round on the music-stool.  The
Admiral was asleep, and Trist merely nodded his head in acquiescence.
Mrs. Wylie ceased working, and listened.  In a few moments there was
a slight creak of timber, and the small vessel heaved perceptibly
beneath their feet.  The muslin curtains on either side of the small
port-holes fluttered, and the lamp hanging beneath the open skylight
flickered repeatedly.

Trist rose and closed the ports.  His movements awoke Admiral Wylie,
who sat up in his deep chair with a hand on either knee.

'A squall?' he inquired.

'Yes,' returned Trist, without moving away from the port-hole.  'A
squall--rain--and thunder, I think.'

Even while he spoke a green light flashed out and lighted up his face
for a moment.  The thunder soon followed--a long, low growl, dying
away into distant echoes.

'It will be rather fine in this narrow fjord,' suggested Trist to no
one in particular.  'I think I will go on deck.'

Mrs. Wylie looked towards Brenda before replying.

'I prefer something more solid than an awning between me and a
thunderstorm,' she said decisively.

Brenda rose from her seat and looked round for a shawl.  It somehow
occurred that, wherever Mrs. Wylie happened to be, a warm shawl was
invariably to be found somewhere in proximity.

'I think I will go,' said the girl simply.  It did not seem to occur
to her that there could be any reason why she should not go on deck
with Trist, nor did she appear to think it strange that he should
fail to suggest it.

He came to her side and dropped the shawl deftly on to her small,
square shoulders, and then they passed out of the saloon together.
He climbed the narrow companion-way first, and turned to assist her
over the brass-plated combing.  They were welcomed on deck by a
blinding flash, which for a second lighted up every nook and corner
of the fjord.  The darkness that followed was almost stunning in its
utter opaqueness.  Brenda hesitated for a moment, and they stood
side-by-side during the crackle of the thunder.  When the rumble and
echo of it had died away, Trist held out his hand.

'Come,' he said, 'I will guide you--I know all the ring-bolts on the
deck.'

Then, seeing that her two hands were wrapped in the shawl, he took
hold of her wrist through the soft wool and led her aft.  When they
were half-way across the deck towards the skylight, where there was a
seat, there came a tremendous crash.  A blinding yellow flame
appeared to leap from the summit of the mountain above them--a flame
so brilliant, so sudden, and so grand, that it seemed to burn into
their eyes, and for a moment paralyzed their brains.  It was
impossible to indicate the exact spot whence came that wild electric
fire, and whither it went no man could tell.  Simultaneously the
heavy atmosphere burst and vibrated into such a confusion of crackle,
and rumble, and distant roar, that even Theo Trist staggered and
caught his breath convulsively.  The _Hermione_ quivered beneath
their feet, and for some moments they could not hear the steady
reassuring splash of the cold rain.

When Trist recovered himself he found Brenda clinging to him.  She
had abandoned the shawl, and her bare arms were upon his sleeve.

The first sound that she heard was a laugh.  Her first sensation was
one of warmth, as her companion drew the soft wrap round her
shoulders.  The thunder was silent for a moment, but a low murmur
seemed to run through the mountains.  Again Trist laughed in a
reassuring way, as men laugh when they are still standing after the
first volley of an enemy, when the memory of the grim serrated flash
of a thousand rifles is fresh upon their minds.

She made no attempt to help him with the shawl, which fluttered and
flapped audibly in the breeze, but stood with idle, hanging arms
awaiting and dreading a repetition of the wild anger of heaven, while
he held the warm shawl round her throat.

'It is rather grander than we bargained for,' he said at length, and
the sound of his voice awoke her.

She drew the wrap closer round her, and made a little movement as if
to continue their way aft.

'I have never seen or heard anything like that!' she said at length,
half apologetically, when they were seated.

Before he could answer, another peal of thunder broke over the
mountains; and, immediately after, a brilliant flash of lightning
darted down the bare face of the cliff opposite to them.  The sharp,
detonating thunder was simultaneous, and all nature seemed to quiver
and vibrate.  This time Brenda showed no sign of fear, but sat
motionless, with her arms folded beneath the shawl.  Strange to say,
the air was intensely cold, while at short intervals a warmer breath
came roaring down the valley.  With the colder puffs there fell a
torrent of rain, which seethed on the water and beat with a dull,
continuous rattle on the soaked awning.  Where they were seated,
however, no splash or spray could reach them.

And now the storm began to move away down the fjord.  In an
incredibly short space of time the heavy black clouds rolled aside,
and the stars began to twinkle.  There was in the air a subtle scent
of refreshed verdure, and the atmosphere was less variable.  It was a
wonderful sight, to watch the clouds creep along the summits of the
mountains of which the bare, unlovely outline was every now and then
revealed against distant wide-spread lightning.  At intervals there
arose low, subsidiary grumbles, as if the elements were partly
appeased, though still dangerous to trifle with.  The _Hermione_
seemed ridiculously small and helpless amidst these great works of
creation.  Her sturdy spars, standing up boldly in the semi-darkness,
were of no height whatever against such towering cliffs.

At length Brenda spoke.  She was by no means ashamed of her momentary
terror during the first wild assault of the storm.  Her feeling was
nearer akin to surprise than fear, and the act of clinging to her
companion in such a moment did not present itself to her in a very
heinous light.  It was a natural womanly instinct: she was half
blinded by the lightning, almost suffocated by the heavy electricity
of the atmosphere.  Besides, they were such old friends.  In bygone
years they had been as brother and sister, exchanging a fraternal
kiss at meeting or parting; but that was long, long ago.

'Courage,' observed Brenda thoughtfully, 'would be a difficult thing
to define.'

She turned and looked into his face with grave, questioning eyes.
For a few moments he was silent, as if endeavouring to follow out her
train of thought.

'You cannot reduce _that_ to a science,' he said at length
conclusively.

'I think most things in life can be reduced to a science.'

'I know you do--but you are mistaken.  You would reduce life itself
to a science, and make it quite unworth the living.  Courage can no
more be spoken of generally than other strictly human qualities,
because no two minds are quite alike.  I suppose you think that
personal bravery is a mere matter of habit.'

'Not entirely.'

'Scarcely at all, Brenda.  A brave man is a brave man on shore, at
sea, and in a balloon.  A fox-hunter may be nervous in a boat.  If
so, I say he is at heart a coward, despite his fox-hunting.  When a
sailor is uncomfortable in a dogcart he is not naturally a brave man,
though at sea he borrow a false confidence from familiarity with what
landsmen take to be danger.'

'What suggested the idea to me,' said the girl after a pause, 'was
that flash of lightning just now--when we first came on deck.  I was
not really frightened.  I know that one never sees the flash by which
one is struck....'

'Scientific courage,' interrupted Trist gently.

'But I was startled.  You never stirred excepting a mere physical
motion caused by the brilliancy of the flash.  Where was the
difference then?'

'I think that was habit.  It is easy enough to acquire the
self-control necessary to prevent one's self being startled by
anything whatsoever.  It is after the shock of surprise that courage
is required.  I have watched men of different constitutions in
moments of danger, and have found that the mere act of jumping back
or bobbing the head is a physical effect caused by surprise as much
as fear.  I have seen a man who was distinctly startled act, and act
wisely, as well as rapidly, sooner than one who betrayed no sign of
being moved.'

'I have often wondered,' murmured Brenda reflectively, 'how certain
people would act at a crisis.  I have often longed to see you, for
instance, on a battle-field.'

'I cannot return the compliment.  Much as I enjoy your society, I
would much rather not see you on a battlefield.'

The girl laughed at his gravity, and then continued, in her
thoughtful, analytical way:

'I cannot picture you at work--at all!  What are you like?'

He shrugged his shoulders and presently answered, in a slow,
indifferent way, such as most men acquire at sea, where time is of
comparatively small value:

'Just like other men.  Much the same as in a drawing-room.  Men do
not change so much as you imagine.  Not so much perhaps as women.
There is a lamentable monotony about us: we behave at a funeral as at
a wedding.'

'Women don't do that.  They overdo the smiling, and exaggerate the
weeping, while between times they take note of each other's bonnets,
and mentally measure the depth of crape trimmings.'

'There is more good in the world, Brenda, than you are aware of.'

'And,' said the girl, 'more courage.  Excuse my returning to the
subject; but it is one which is full of interest, and I think you
must know something about it.'

He turned and looked at her, and in the twilight his meek eyes were
as soft as any woman's--softer than Brenda's, which were habitually
wistful and much too grave.

'I do,' he said simply.

'And...?' she murmured interrogatively.

'And I think there can be no doubt that there is more courage in the
world now than there has ever been.  We are the bravest generation
that has ever lived--though our bravery is of a different type.  All
brutal attributes are expunged, and it is purely mental.  There is no
excitement in it, and therefore it is pure, independent courage.  The
Crusades were marvellous campaigns: we never try to realize now what
it must have been for those men--most of whom had never even set foot
on the deck of a ship--to go to sea in small ill-found vessels on a
mere wild-goose chase, to a country of which they knew absolutely
nothing.  But the Crusades have been outdone; greater knowledge has
told us of greater dangers, and yet men are ready to face them.'

'Without the incentive of religion.'

'Yes.'

'Then, Theo, you consider that religion has nothing to do with
personal bravery?'

'Absolutely nothing.'

'That is a bold theory.  Do you mean to say that a man will not fight
the better for possessing a strong faith in a future life which will
in every way be better than this--that his present existence will be
of less value owing to the possession of that faith, and that,
therefore, he will be readier to risk losing his life.'

'It is not a theory,' urged the man in his strange gentle way, which
was crudely out of keeping with his words.  'It is an experience.
Fanaticism undoubtedly generates courage; religion does not.  On a
battle-field, and on a sinking ship, I have found that a future
existence, and all the unending questions that it arouses, occupy a
very small place in men's minds.'

'Then of what are they thinking?  What emotion do they show?'

'They are thinking of trifles, which we all do, all through life; and
they generally either laugh or swear!'

'Then I give up attempting to understand human nature!'

'I gave that up years ago, Brenda.'

She did not answer him, but sat gazing across the dark waters with an
unsatisfied expression upon her sweet, intellectual face.  Even as
that gray, hopeless sheet of water, life lay before her--a surface,
and nothing else; a knowledge that there was something beneath that
surface, a hot, fierce thirst to drink deeper of the cup of
knowledge; to know more and find a reason for many things which to
our minds are quite unreasonable: and no means of satisfying what is,
after all, a natural and legitimate craving.

'It is no use,' continued Trist in a lighter tone, 'attempting to
understand anything, because sooner or later you will find yourself
confronted by a great wall which no knowledge can surmount.'

'We either know too much or too little,' said the girl discontentedly.

'Too much,' he affirmed without any hesitation.  'Fortunately, we
have learnt to acquire a mental courage with our knowledge, or else
we never would be able to face life at all.'

After this there was a pause of some duration.  It would be
impossible to hazard a guess at what thoughts were passing through
the man's brain as he sat there blandly indifferent, placid and
utterly inscrutable.  His meek eyes wore no far-off, absent look.  He
seemed merely to be noting the shadows upon the water.

With her it was different.  Plainly, she was thinking of him, for her
eyes were fixed upon his face, endeavouring to decipher something
there.  At last, as with a sudden effort, she spoke, and in the
inconsistency, the utter irrelevancy of her speech, there was the
history of a woman's world.

'Either,' she said in a dull voice, 'you are on the verge of atheism,
or you love Alice.  Only one of those ... calamities could account
for the utter hopelessness of your creed.'

At this moment Mrs. Wylie appeared on deck, and playfully chided them
for staying away so long.

With the utmost unconsciousness of an unanswered question, Trist rose
and crossed the deck to meet her.




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.




CHAPTER VI.

A SHADOW.

The two fishermen went off in opposite directions again the next day,
the Admiral taking the gig and sailing down the fjord to the distant
river, while Trist went ashore in Nielsen's boat to fish the stream
that ran past the little mountain homestead.

It was a dull foreboding day; for the clouds had fallen over the
summits and all was gray.  The gorges were darksome, and over
everything there seemed to have come a sudden gloomy melancholy.
Without actually raining, the gray mist overhead dissolved softly
into a falling dampness which was more subtly penetrating than
driving rain itself.  The sea was of a dull gray, and looked muddy.
Those Arctic fjords can make a wondrous show when the sun shines, and
fleecy white clouds nestle upon the shoulders of the grim mountains,
but when a gray pall hangs motionless one thousand feet above the
sea, there is no more dismal prospect on earth.  It seems as if the
rain would softly fall for ever and a day--as if nothing could ever
brush aside the heavy vaporous veil, and let the gay blue sky peep
through again.

But it was a grand fishing-day, despite a chill breeze too weak to
move the clouds, and the fishermen went off in high feather.  The
ladies stood on deck and waved departing wishes for good luck.
Before the breeze Admiral Wylie scudded away, while Trist's progress
in the heavier boat was slower, owing to the northern deliberation of
Nielsen's movements.  They saw him land, and immediately he was
surrounded by a skipping, dancing bevy of little white-haired
children--merry little boys who begged him in their monotonous Norse
to throw a stone far, far across the sea.  Willingly he obliged them,
while eager hands were outstretched to hold his rod and gaff.  Then
the little maidens had to be attended to, notably one quaint little
figure in a dress made upon the same lines as her mother's, reaching
to her heels, with true golden hair, plaited and pressed close
against her tiny head in gleaming coils, who looked up into his face
with a wondrous pair of blue eyes, which seemed to speak some deep
unearthly language of their own.

This little one went up the path towards the river in triumph,
standing upon the lid of his creel with her little fingers closely
clutching the collar of his coat, while the boys and older girls ran
by his side chattering gaily.

'And that,' said Mrs. Wylie in her semi-sarcastic way as she turned
to go below with the view of consulting the steward about dinner, 'is
the man whose element is war.'

She waited a moment, but Brenda made no reply beyond a short,
mirthless laugh.

During that day the clouds never lifted.  It was twilight from
morning till night.  At times it drizzled in a silent, feathery way,
and occasionally it rained harder.  The temperature grew hot and
cold, unaccountably, at intervals, and the roar of the river was
singularly noticeable.

At six o'clock in the evening Nielsen's boat dropped alongside, and
Trist clambered on board the _Hermione_.  The ladies, having heard
the sound of oars, came on deck to meet him.

'Ah,' said Brenda; 'you are the first home again.'

'Yes.  I have three, so I am content,' was his reply.  'Is there no
sign of the Admiral?'

'Not yet.'

As they spoke they moved aft and stood beneath the awning, looking
down the deserted fjord.  There was no sail, no suggestion of life to
break the monotony of its waters.  Presently Trist took a pair of
binoculars from a small covered box screwed to the after-rail, and
gazed steadily at a certain point on the southern shore where there
was a gap in the bleak wall of mountain.

'The boat,' he said, 'seems to be lying there still; I can just see
something yellow near the large rock overhanging the river.'

Mrs. Wylie looked at her watch.  In half an hour dinner would be
ready, and the boat was five miles away.  Even with a stiff breeze
the Admiral, whose punctuality was proverbial, could not hope to be
in time.  She turned, and, looking forward, perceived the steward
standing at the open galley door, telescope in hand, wearing upon his
keen North-country face a look of holy resignation.

'That old gentleman,' said Mrs. Wylie in an undertone, as she looked
towards the distant boat, 'is going to get himself into trouble.  The
steward is annoyed.'

Presently Trist went below to change his clothes, and when he
returned, twenty minutes later, the ladies were still on deck,
standing near the after-rail, looking down the fjord towards the
river.  It was nothing alarming for a salmon-fisherman to be an hour
late for dinner, and there was no display of anxiety on the part of
Mrs. Wylie.  She was not, as I have endeavoured to explain, a
worrying woman, and she was, moreover, a sailor's wife, endowed with
a brave, cheery heart, and well accustomed to wait for wind, weather,
or mishap.  She appeared to be more afraid of the steward's
displeasure than of anything else, laughing at it with mock
foreboding, after the manner of ladies who feel that they are beloved
by their inferiors.

About half-past seven a fresh breeze sprang up, blowing across the
fjord fitfully, and consequently favourable to sailing either way.
Brenda had been watching Mrs. Wylie and Theo furtively, for she was
of a somewhat anxious temperament, and could not understand the
levity with which they were pleased to treat Admiral Wylie's
prolonged absence.

She now noticed a subtle change in Trist's manner.  His meek eyes
acquired a strange quickness of movement, and for the first time she
saw him glance sideways, or, to be more explicit, she perceived that
he turned his eyes in a certain direction without turning also his
head.  This direction was invariably down the fjord towards the
river.  There was no actual change in his manner, for he walked
backwards and forwards beside them, upright yet humble, firmly yet
softly, as usual; but there seemed to be a new influence in his
presence.  It was one of command.  The girl suddenly and
unaccountably felt that this soft-spoken man was no longer a mere
guest on board the _Hermione_.  In the absence of Admiral Wylie the
actual command of the ship fell upon his shoulders, and in his
gentle, passive way he had assumed the responsibility, almost
unconsciously, without ostentation.

Brenda was in no manner surprised when he presently turned to Mrs.
Wylie and said:

'It is no use waiting any longer.  I think you and Brenda had better
go down to dinner, while I take the longboat and sail down to see
what is delaying them.'

The hostess made no attempt to combat his decision, but amended it
hospitably.

'You must have some dinner first,' she said decisively.  There was no
interchange of anxious doubts, no alleviating suggestions of obvious
worthlessness, such as timid people proffer readily to persons
suffering from suspense; and Brenda felt that there was a great
courage behind the smiling woman's face at her side.

Trist went forward to where Captain Barrow was standing, smoking his
evening pipe just abaft the mainmast.

'Will you get out the long-boat, please,' the ladies heard him say,
'with mast, and sail, and one man?'

Presently he joined them in the saloon, where they were pretending to
dine, and hurriedly drank some soup.  No one spoke, and the sound of
the sailors' movements as they lowered the long-boat was the only
break in an uncomfortable silence.  The steward moved noiselessly and
lithely, as behoved his calling.

'Your oilskins are in your state-room, sir,' he whispered presently
to Trist, who soon afterwards passed through the narrow doorway into
his little apartment.

When he came out he was fully clad against the fine cold rain which
was falling now.  Even in heavy sea-boots he managed to walk smoothly.

The lamp had been lighted in the saloon, and he stood for a moment
within its rays, looking at the two ladies.  It was an incongruous
and unconsciously dramatic picture thus formed in the refined little
saloon, the two gracious women smiling wistfully at the straight,
slim man in gleaming waterproofs.  The very contrast between their
delicate evening-dresses and his seaman-like attire was a shock.  The
white tablecloth, adorned with polished silver and odorous flowers,
seemed a mockery, because there were two empty chairs beside it.

He leant over the back of his chair, and, reaching his wine-glass,
which stood half full, he emptied it.

'Do not be anxious,' he said; 'I expect we shall be back before you
have finished dinner.'

And he passed out of the saloon, swinging his sou'-wester by its
strings.

'We will keep some dinner warm for you both,' called out Mrs. Wylie
cheerfully, and from a distance he answered:

'Thank you!'

While continuing their homeopathic meal they heard the sound of men's
voices, the creak of a block, and immediately afterwards the rush of
the long-boat through the water under heavy sail.

It was very cold that evening, and, owing to the heavy clouds, almost
dark.  Nevertheless the ladies went on deck immediately after the
farce of dinner had been carried to an end.  At first they talked in
a scrappy, strained way, and then lapsed into silence.  Wrapped
closely in their cloaks, they walked side-by-side fore and aft.
Owing to the fine drizzle which blew across the fjord, it was now
impossible to distinguish any object more than a mile away from the
yacht, and the two women were enveloped in a silent gray veil of
suspense.

Until ten o'clock they continued their vigil--alone on the deck
except for the watchful steward standing within the galley-door.
Then Brenda espied a sail looming through the gray mist.

'There is one of the boats,' she said gently, but there was a faint
thrill of dread in her voice.

Mrs. Wylie made no answer, but walked to the after-rail, out from
beneath the awning, into the rain.  Brenda followed, and there they
stood waiting.

'It is the gig,' said the elder woman half to herself, otherwise the
horrible moments passed mutely by.

There was but one man in the boat.  Trist had undoubtedly sent for
help.  Contrary to etiquette, the sailor did not make for the steps
hanging amidships, but came straight beneath the counter of the
_Hermione_, lowering his sail deftly, and standing up to touch his
dripping sou'-wester as the boat fell alongside.

The sailor was young and impulsive.  He did not think much of
yachtsman etiquette just then, but stood up in his boat, holding on
to the rail of the vessel with both hands.

'Please, marm,' he said hurriedly and unevenly, 'I waited at the
mouth of the river as the Admiral told me to do until seven o'clock,
and he never came.  Then I landed, and clambered up a bit to look for
him.  When a' was a bit up I saw the long-boat comin' and Mr. Trist
steering her, so I went down again.  Mr. Trist's gone up the river,
marm, and me and Barker waited for two hours and heard nothin'.  Then
Barker says I'd better come on board an' tell yer, marm.'

'You did quite right, Cobbold,' replied Mrs. Wylie, in a singularly
monotonous voice.  'You had better come on board and get something to
eat; you look tired.'

But the man did not move.  He shook his head.

'No, marm,' he said bashfully, 'I'm not wantin' anything t'eat.  And
I'm not tired ... only I'm a bit ... scared!  I should like to go
back, marm, at once to the river.'

Mrs. Wylie thought for a moment deeply.

'I will go back with you,' she said at length.  Then she went forward
to where Captain Barrow stood with the rest of the crew, now
thoroughly aroused to anxiety, grouped behind him.

'Captain Barrow,' she said, in a tone slightly raised, so that all
might hear her, 'the Admiral has not come back yet.  I am afraid that
he has either hurt himself or is lost in the mist.  I will go back
with Cobbold in the gig.  But ... it will not be necessary to keep
the men up.'

In the meantime, Brenda had not been idle.  She ran down below and
found the steward already in the saloon procuring waterproofs.  He
was kneeling before an open locker when she entered the little cabin,
and, turning his head, he saw her.

'Are you going too, miss?' he asked.

'Yes, Clarke, I am going.'

'Then will you put this flask of brandy into your pocket, miss?  I
don't like to give it to the missus.  It's kinder suggestive like.'

She took the little bottle, and while he helped her on with her
waterproof cloak he spoke again in his kindly Northumbrian
familiarity:

'It's a good thing we've got Mr. Trist with us this night, that it
is!  He's what Captain Barrow would call a strong tower.'

Brenda smiled rather wanly as she hurried away.

'Yes,' she answered; 'I am very glad we have him to rely upon.'

Mrs. Wylie seemed scarcely to notice that Brenda stepped into the
boat and sat down beside her.  The little lady was making a brave
fight against her growing anxiety.  She even laughed when the sail
filled with a loud flap, and nearly precipitated Cobbold into the
water.  Crouching low, the two women sat in silence.  It was now
blowing stiffly, and perhaps Cobbold would have done better to take a
reef in the light sail; but in his anxiety to reach the river without
delay he risked the lives of his two passengers more freely than he
would have dared to do in a cooler moment.  As is usually the case,
his confidence was greater under excitement, and no mishap befell the
little boat.




CHAPTER VII.

A SPORTSMAN'S DEATH.

When they reached the mouth of the river they found the long-boat
lying alongside the huge shelving rock used as a landing-stage on
account of its convenience during all varieties of tide.

The man watching there had heard or seen nothing of Mr. Trist or
Admiral Wylie.  The ladies sat for some time in the stern of the gig,
wrapped in their waterproof cloaks, without speaking.  Then Brenda
begged to be landed.  She was shivering with cold and anxiety.  She
walked slowly up the smooth surface of the rock and disappeared.
Once out of sight of the two boats which lay heaving softly on the
bosom of the rising tide, she quickened her pace, keeping to the
narrow path trodden on the peaty soil by Admiral Wylie and Theo Trist
in turn.  It was probable that the human beings who had passed along
that scarcely visible track, from the days of the Flood down to the
time that this little English maiden pressed her way through the
silver-birch trees, could be counted upon the fingers of two hands.
There was nothing to attract the curious up the deep gorge formed by
this unknown stream.  Far inland, over impassable rocks, lay the
corner of a huge glacier from whence the river received its chill
waters.  There was no natural beauty to draw thither the artist, no
animal life to attract the naturalist, no vast height to tempt the
mountaineer.  Here century after century the trout had lain, head up
stream, to catch what God might send them.  In the lower waters, year
after year, the sturdy salmon had pressed past each other through
rill and whirlpool, with gills flattened to the fresh cool waters of
the snow-field.

In all human probability no woman's footprint had impressed itself
upon that turf before.

The valley took a turn westward round a great sloping forest of pine
and silver-birch, harmoniously mingled, about half a mile from the
sea, and soon afterwards the hills closed menacingly over the noisy
river.  The water here was very rough and broken.  At times a great
smooth pool, half an acre in extent, twenty feet in depth, would lie
at the foot of a series of roaring waterfalls of no great height, but
infinite variety.  Again, there were long broken rapids, which only a
salmon could expect to stem, and here and there smooth runs almost
navigable for a boat.

Regardless of peaty pool and treacherous rivulets running over
brilliant turf, Brenda hurried on.  The mere bodily fatigue was a
comfort to her, the very act of breaking the small branches in her
way a solace.  It was now nearly midnight, and already on the
snowfield above her the pearly pink light of morning crept on its
glistening way.  The twilight was no longer lowering, but full of
fresh promise.  A new day softly smiled upon the silent land which
had known no night; but to the solitary girl it brought little hope.

Suddenly she stopped and listened intently.  A distant crackle of dry
wood beneath a human tread repeated itself.  Someone was approaching
rapidly.

A moment later Theo Trist stood before her, but she scarcely
recognised him.  Her first feeling was one of utter surprise that his
meek eyes could look so resolute.  The man's face was changed, and he
who stood before Brenda was not the well-bred, quiet gentleman, but
the lost soldier.  She did not realize then that he had been fifteen
hours on his feet with hardly any food.  She scarcely noticed that
his clothes were wet, and clinging to his limbs, and that he was
without his waterproof.  All she saw, all she had eyes for, was that
strange incongruous face where resolution dominated so suddenly.

He it was who broke the silence, and he was forced to shout, because
they were so close to the river.

'Where is Mrs. Wylie?' he asked.

'She is at the mouth of the river,' replied Brenda--'in the boat,
waiting.'

'Come away!' he shouted, beckoning with his head, and they moved
through the pine-wood further inland, where the brawl of the stream
was less disagreeable.

Then he took her hand in his, and looked down into her face with
unconscious scrutiny.

'You must go back to her, Brenda,' he said, 'and tell her that
Admiral Wylie is dead.  I found him in a whirlpool about half a mile
above here.'

'When was that?' asked the girl mechanically.

'Oh, an hour ago.  I have been all this time in the water recovering
... getting him ashore.'

'Was he quite dead?'

'Quite dead.  It must have happened early in the day, for his lunch
was still in his creel.'

'Where is he ... now?' whispered Brenda, looking through the trees
from which Trist had emerged.

'Through there, on the bank.  I began carrying him down to the boat,
but had to give it up.'

She said nothing, but moved a step or two towards the spot indicated.
Then he took her hand within his and led the way.  Presently they
came out of the thicker wood on to the rocky ground near the river,
and soon afterwards came into sight of a still form lying on the turf
beneath Trist's waterproof.  There were stones on the corners of the
mackintosh to prevent it being blown away, but the wind penetrated
between them and the stuff rippled with a slight sound.  The upper
part of the body only was covered, and there was, in the wet waders
and misshapen brogues, a suggestion of simple pride.  In bad weather
the Admiral had always fished in an old black sou'-wester, and this
lay by his side with his creel and rod.  The old sportsman had died
in harness, with the quick burr-r-r of the reel sounding in his ears
and a 'taut line' bending his rod; for Trist found the gut broken.

The man who had looked on death so often, who had slept amidst the
groans of the dying and the heartrending cries of the sore-wounded,
now knelt and simply drew back the covering from the still gray face.
Death was so familiar to him that the sight of it brought no shock,
and he scarcely realized what he was doing.  Mechanically Brenda
knelt down on the turf, her dress touching the dead man's hand.  For
some moments she remained thus, while the rosy light of dawn crept
down the mountain side.  Behind her stood Trist, silently watching.
Presently he looked round and noted the increase of daylight; then he
touched her shoulder.

'Come, Brenda,' he said.  'The day is breaking.  We must go.  I will
walk back with you to the boat.'

She rose and shook her head decisively.

'No,' she answered.  'You must stay here--beside him.  I will go back
alone.  It is better for me to tell Mrs. Wylie.'

'You are not afraid?' he inquired.

'No.  I am not afraid.'

She spoke in her simple, quiet way, which was not without a certain
force, despite her gentle voice.  It was no boast of courage that she
was making, but a plain statement of fact.  She was not afraid,
because she felt that it was her duty, and no soldier ever possessed
a clearer, braver sense of duty than did Brenda Gilholme.

Trist walked by her side a few paces.

'I wish,' he said, 'that I could have spared you some of this.'

'Do not think of me,' she replied.  'You seem to consider me, Theo, a
weak, foolish girl, who should be spared every little pain and
trouble.'

'I should like...' he began, and then he stopped abruptly, so much so
as to cause an awkward silence.  'Well,' he added at length in a
different tone, 'I will wait here--but you must not come back.  Send
one of the men--the stronger of the two: Cobbold.'

'I think both the men had better come,' she suggested.  They were now
standing beneath the small, stunted pines upon a silent carpet of
dead sweet-scented needles.  As she spoke, she looked up into his
face with a quiet scrutiny which was full of suggestive anxiety.

'Why?' he asked, with a faint smile.

'Because you must be completely exhausted.  You have been on your
feet for nearly twenty-four hours.  Besides, you are wet through, and
dragged down by the weight of your clothes.'

'I am wet,' he admitted, 'but not tired.  It is my profession to
ignore fatigue.  Send Cobbold, Brenda!  The other man must stay with
you.'

He drew back some branches for her to pass unscratched through the
thicket, but did not offer to accompany her any further.

'Will you not let me come?' he asked again as she passed him.  'This
is a horrible task you have set yourself.'

She stood beside him for a moment beneath his upraised arm, looking
straight in front of her.  Her shoulder was almost touching his wet
coat, which hung loosely.  All around them the trees dripped
mournfully, while, through the low entanglement, the voice of the
mournful river sang its ancient dirge.

'It is only my share of the task,' she answered.  'Why should you
have it all to do--Theo?  Besides ... I never expected life to be all
sunshine.'

He answered nothing, and she went forward slowly, almost reluctantly,
from beneath the branches he was holding up.  To them both there
seemed something pleasant, some vague suggestion of comfort, in her
thought that this was a task they had to perform in common, each
doing a worthy share.  At a later period there came another task for
them to perform, and the mutual trust which was now planted grew into
an upright tree.  They did not know that the burden of it was to fall
chiefly on the weaker shoulders, as they parted, after having tacitly
apportioned the work that lay before them.

The girl went her way, revolving in her quick and capable brain all
that she was so suddenly called upon to do; while the man, left by
the still form that lay upon the turf, was already organizing things
in an experienced, practical way.  It happened that he was never to
carry out his own plans, but he did not suspect this at the time; he
had no presentiment that he was to be called away to other
work--nobler, braver work--leaving this sorrowful task half done in
the hands of her who had volunteered to be his lieutenant.

Before the sun's rays had crept down the bare mountain side to the
sea, the two boats moved away from the rock that seemed to guard the
mouth of the river.

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.

The gig ran alongside, and Brenda, stepping on deck, first said a few
hurried words to Captain Barrow and the steward, who were standing
together at the companion.  Then the smaller boat moved away, and the
long-boat took its place.

'The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away; blessed be the name of the
Lord!' said Captain Barrow, looking severely at the steward, with the
honest salt tears running down his cheeks as the two men received the
cold burden from the arms of Trist and Barker.

Brenda turned slowly and looked into Theo Trist's face, on which
there was even now no sign of fatigue.  He had raised his eyes to
hers on hearing Captain Barrow's simple words, and now they looked at
each other in a strangely wondering way.  Neither had thought of the
Hand whose work this was until that moment.




CHAPTER VIII.

A JOINT COMMAND.

So the joint command of the _Hermione_ lapsed into new hands--the
man's command above decks, and the woman's rule below.

In both regions the new director stepped into the vacant place
quietly, unostentatiously and confidently.  Old Captain Barrow was as
the potter's clay in Trist's gentle yet firm hands.  The young
fellow's strange subtle influence soon made itself felt upon the men.
The Admiral had ruled by genial heartiness, coupled with the force of
past experience implied by his title; the young journalist (who did
not pretend to be a sailor) enforced obedience by the magnetic
attraction of his implacable will.

Mrs. Wylie uttered no complaint, sued for no sympathy--she was simply
stunned--and, in her imperious little way, Brenda took over all the
smaller household duties, assumed all minor responsibilities, and
gave the widow no rest.

She forced her to take an interest in smaller things, and allowed no
time for thought.  She herself literally put her to bed by the light
of the morning sun, and calmly announced her intention of sharing the
state-room.  The Admiral was carried below, and laid on Trist's bed,
and the latter moved, next day, into the room vacated by Brenda.

For him there was no rest that night.  He did not even change the
clothes in which he had been swimming a few hours before, while
bringing ashore the dead man.  By seven o'clock in the morning the
_Hermione_ was ready for sea--awning furled, stanchions stowed away,
and the great sails shaken out.

About this time Brenda came on deck.  She looked round for a moment
in utter surprise at the changed appearance of the ship; then she
walked aft, to where Trist was standing near the rail talking in a
low voice to Nielsen, who, hurriedly summoned, had come on board to
pilot the yacht down the Heimdalfjord.

The Englishman's back was turned towards her, and he did not hear her
light tread upon the deck, but his companion raised his rough sable
hat respectfully, and Trist turned round at once.  Brenda saw that he
noticed her black dress, and involuntarily glanced down at his own
shabby tweed suit, which was discoloured and wrinkled.

'Have you had any rest?' were his first words.

'Yes; thank you.  I slept for at least two hours.'  She smiled a
little as she looked at him, and his glance rested on her
faultlessly-dressed head, her dainty form, and proud little face.

'And Mrs. Wylie?' he inquired softly.

'She is sleeping now.'

He nodded his head, and they both turned, standing side by side,
looking forward to where the men were at work with the anchor.
Nielsen had left them, and was talking to Captain Barrow on the
forecastle.

'Captain Barrow,' he explained, in a tone which in some way implied a
joint-control, 'has got all ready for sea.  The tide begins to run
down at half-past seven, when we will get in the anchor and go.'

She nodded her head wisely and gravely, like a field-officer
receiving a brother-commander's report--receiving it, moreover, with
satisfaction.

'You have been very prompt,' she murmured frankly, as she looked
round and mentally noted the work that had been done.

He turned his head hastily, as if about to begin some lengthy
explanation or to assign a reason for his promptitude, but seemed to
change his mind, for he stood looking at her vaguely for a moment,
and then turned his eyes away.

At this moment the steward came towards them with his gliding,
noiseless steps.  He was carrying two mugs of coffee--not the thin
cups used in the cabin, but rough stout mugs intended for deck use.
Moreover, he brought them in the lid of the biscuit-box, with some
biscuits lying round them, as he brought early coffee every morning
to whosoever might be keeping the last watch.

He stood silently in front of Brenda, and made no attempt to
apologize for the seaman-like roughness of the repast, while she took
her mug and biscuit.

Even when the steward had left them, Trist made no remark respecting
this tacit treatment of Brenda as an officer of the ship; and she it
was who broke the silence, speaking slowly and suggestively, as if
waiting for him to approve or propose an amendment.  It was absurdly
like the report of a junior departmental commander to his senior.

'Oh, Theo,' she said, 'I have moved most of my things into the large
stateroom, as I think it will be better for me to sleep with Mrs.
Wylie.  You can go into my cabin as soon as you like now--the steward
and I have put it all right for you.'

'Thank you!' he said, sipping his coffee.

'Will you not go and change now?  It cannot be good to keep on those
clothes.'

'Not yet,' he answered, with a smile.  'They are quite dry now, and
the sun is shining, so I am warm.  Besides, there are one or two
things I want to ask your opinion about, and we may not have the
chance later on.'

He moved a little, and she, falling into his step, walked by his
side.  Thus they paced backwards and forwards slowly in the early
morning splendour--she neat, trim, and lightsome; he weary, worn,
untidy, but strong and restful--until they had consulted mutually
upon certain points requiring immediate decision.  When they had
finished their coffee and biscuit, each swung the empty mug idly, one
finger curled through the handle, with unconscious youthfulness of
gesture.

'The nearest village,' he began in his meek way, 'is Fjaerholm; we
shall be there by this time to-morrow with a fair breeze.  There is a
church there and a churchyard, although the village itself is a tiny
place, almost surrounded by glaciers, and rarely visited.  It will
hardly do, perhaps, to approach the question yet, but if we can find
out before we leave the Heimdalfjord what Mrs. Wylie's opinion is, it
will simplify matters.  Whether, I mean, we are to make for
Fjaerholm, with the view of burying him there, or to go down the
Sognfjord, catch a steamer to Bergen, and so home.'

There was a short pause when he had finished speaking.  Brenda
appeared to be lost in a reverie.  At length she spoke.

'Which course do you recommend, Theo?' she asked.

'My opinion can be of little value.  It is a matter of personal
feeling which only Mrs. Wylie can decide.'

'Yes.  But she may be in that frame of mind where a decided
opinion--your opinion--might be a comfort to her.'

As she made this suggestion she turned her head and looked up to see
whether he had fully grasped her meaning, and he nodded his head
slightly, admitting that her argument might very well be of value.

'I am afraid, Brenda,' he said apologetically, 'that I am rather hard
and practical in these matters.  My opinion is that Fjaerholm
churchyard is as good as any other.  It would be a horrible journey
home for her and ... for you.'

'I think Fjaerholm would be best.'

'I am sure of it.  Of course, Mrs. Wylie may have decided feelings on
the subject, and if so we must give in, and leave the _Hermione_;
though I think she will be better here among her own surroundings
than on board a crowded passenger steamer--an object of curiosity and
ostentatious sympathy.'

'I do not think,' said the girl, after a short pause, 'that she will
be influenced by any mistaken sentiment.'

'Nor I.  And of course it is mere sentiment.  We English have a way
of leaving our dead all over the world, and no doubt there are more
of us in the sea than of any other nation.'

She looked at him in a vague, wistful way.  At times she failed to
understand him.  There were certain humours which came over him at
odd times--hard practical humours of which the heartlessness seemed
assumed and unnatural--and of these she could not detect the motive.

'I will try,' she said, 'to find out Mrs. Wylie's feelings on the
subject.'

'Yes, Brenda, do!' he murmured, in a way which seemed to imply that
the matter was safe in her hands.

They continued to walk up and down in silence--each wrapt in
individual thought.  There was a little frown on the girl's face, an
almost imperceptible contraction of the eyelids, forming a slight
perpendicular wrinkle which might deepen and grow permanent with
sorrow or years.  The clear, heavenly-blue eyes were wide open and
somewhat restless, and in the whole face there was that intangible,
indescribable presence which we call intellect, because we dare not
call it soul.

Suddenly Trist stopped and looked down at her so persistently that
she was forced to raise her eyes.

'Don't!' he said ambiguously, with his slow, deprecating smile.

She laughed in a short curious tone, and changed colour.

'Don't what?'

'_Don't_ think about me,' he said with sudden earnestness.

For a moment an expression of pain rested in her eyes, and she opened
her lips as if about to speak; but he bade her keep silence with an
admonishing shake of the head, and she stood with slightly parted
lips looking up into his unreadable face.

'Don't!' he murmured again, and moved forward decisively.  They
continued to walk in silence for some moments.

'How did you know that I was thinking of you?' she asked quietly, at
length.

'I can always tell.  There is a peculiar stony silence which comes
over you at times, and I always feel its presence.  Very often you
remain without speaking for some time, but that is a different
silence, and then without looking towards you I feel suddenly that
the other has come--that the other has come ... Brenda, and that you
are thinking about me!'

'You ought to be highly gratified!' she observed with a lamentable
attempt at playfulness.

'And,' he continued in his gently deliberate way, 'when I look at you
the same expression is always there.  You are always striving to say
something which is difficult.  Don't say it, Brenda!  If it is a
question, don't ask it.'

'Why not?'

'Because those things are better left unsaid--those questions are
better left unasked.  The answer cannot be satisfactory.'

'Then you advocate going through life without ever understanding our
fellow-creatures, without ever attempting to enter into each other's
joys and sorrows, without pitying, sympathizing, or admiring?'

'No, I do not go so far as that.  But I have no patience with people
who are constantly fishing for sympathy, constantly confiding
imaginary woes to others who have their own affairs to worry them.
You should never seek trouble, Brenda.  It comes only too naturally
of its own free will,' he said in a quick anxious way, endeavouring
to keep the conversation in a safe and general channel.

'It seems to me,' she answered after a long pause, 'that stoicism is
your aim and creed.  To endure, and simply to endure, is your
estimate of life.  He who endures best, who carries the brightest
face before the world, utters the fewest complaints, and deceives
most successfully his fellow-creatures, has lived the best life.  You
never try to see a meaning in it all--you never seek an ulterior
motive which is only and solely for our good.'

'My dear Brenda,' said Trist with animation, 'am I a cripple?  Am I
blind or dumb, or halt--that I have aught to endure?'

'You have something,' was the grave rejoinder.  'There is something,
but I do not know what it is, and I would sooner see you openly
miserable--cynical, heartless, _anything_ but what you are.'

He laughed aloud, and she shrugged her shoulders with a little smile.

'You should really devote your energies to novel-writing,' he said
gaily.  'You see romance where none exists.  For you, indigestion is
nothing else than a broken heart.  An unfortunate gravity of
demeanour (like mine) means a cankering sorrow, and every smile is
hollow.'

No answering smile came over her face, and she seemed suddenly to
remember that Mrs. Wylie might be awake and requiring her presence.

She moved away a little, and stood watching the men at work forward
at the windlass.  Then she turned and looked past him across the sea.

'I cannot help feeling,' she said, 'that in some way you must owe me
a grudge.  Of course I had nothing to do with it in reality; but she
was my sister, and despite your denial, despite your forbearance and
wonderful charity, you must, in your inmost heart, blame Alice.'

He turned his meek eyes towards her face with a patient smile.

'My dear Brenda,' he said remonstratingly, 'what firm convictions you
have!  Once before--long ago--you hinted at this ... matter, and in
reply I insinuated that Alice was nothing to me.  Her influence has
no weight on my actions; it in no way affects my coming or my going.
Please don't think of me and my affairs.'

She moved away slowly, reluctantly, without replying, gliding across
the deck with noiseless tread, and so the strange interview
terminated with a curious questioning silence on both sides.  There
was something that she did not dare to ask, something he dreaded, for
his eyes were dull with a great suspense as he stood watching her go
away from him.

Then he pushed back from his forehead the black sou'-wester he still
wore, despite the brilliant sunshine, and somewhat wearily wiped his
brow.

There was about this man a strange uncanny quiet.  His calm eyes were
not devoid of intellect, as most calm eyes are; his mouth and chin
were not those of a sensuous, self-indulgent person.  In a word, his
repose was unnatural.  There was in his being a vague suggestion of
endurance, as Brenda had discovered.  Had he been a parson, one would
have said, with that careless, casual judgment of our fellows which
is so often terribly correct, that he was conscious of an utter
unfitness for priesthood.  Had he been a soldier, one would have
assigned to him a nervous hatred towards bloodshed and the means of
shedding blood.  But he had chosen his own profession, and in it had
made a decided mark.  It was one of those peculiar callings for which
peculiar men are specially created by Providence--men endowed with
incongruous talents, and contradictory habits of thought and action.
Into such callings men are never forced: they force their own way, or
they drift into some other means of making a livelihood, and,
possessing no peculiar gifts, make no peculiar impression upon the
moral and mental sands of their time.

Theodore Trist was undoubtedly created for a special purpose, and so
distinct was the destination, that he had, without the aid of
circumstance or environment, drifted into the peculiar line of life
for which his talents were intended.  He was a war-correspondent, and
nothing else (unless it were a soldier, in which profession one most
important gift would have been lost--that of writing critically and
brilliantly).  In a few years he had climbed the unsteady ladder of
fame, and was now firmly planted on its uppermost rungs.  He
possessed health, strength, and energy--there was war brooding in the
East--he was not blind, nor dumb, nor halt, so what could man wish
for more?  Yet Brenda Gilholme told him to his face, in her
thoughtful, convincing way, that there was something in his life that
called for a stoical endurance, and he, failing to laugh scornfully,
denied the accusation with visible discomfort.

After she had left the deck, he continued to pace slowly fore and aft
by himself.  Presently the tide turned, and the anchor came clanking
up from its rocky lodging.  The huge mainsail spread its broad white
bosom to the breeze, and the _Hermione_ began to rise and fall almost
imperceptibly.  The breeze was light, but the vast expanse of sail
caught every passing breath, and steerage-way was soon acquired.
Silently, graciously as she had arrived, the yacht left the little
forgotten corner of this Northern world, rippling through the
foamless waters with stately deliberation.  Trist took no part in the
well-drilled hurry that attended the departure.  He was no sailor:
his command was not the loud-voiced autocracy of the master mariner.
It was subtle, indefinite, immeasurable.

On the bosom of the receding tide the _Hermione_ left those still
waters.  Soon she passed the mouth of the river where Admiral Wylie
had met his sportsman's fate.  So close was she to the high land,
that the flow of the river swung her round a little.  All who were on
deck instinctively ceased their occupations, and stood with idle
hands gazing thoughtfully up the deserted gorge.  They could hear the
breeze whispering among the still pines, murmuring through the fairy
silver birches; and behind, in a perspective of sound, the echoing
laughter of the river in its rocky bed.

Theo Trist stood alone, apparently emotionless, but when the mouth of
the gorge had been shut out of view by the brown slope of a huge
hill, Captain Barrow came and stood beside him.

'And now, Mr. Trist,' said the old sailor, 'you'll need some rest.
There's a time for all things--a time for tears and a time for
laughter, a time for work and a time for sleep.'

Trist looked at the old man in a vague, semi-stupid way.

'And you would suggest that this is a time for sleep, Captain Barrow?'

'Yes--I would that.'

Then he took the young man's arm, and gently forced him to leave the
deck.

Trist found the saloon deserted.  He passed into his new state-room,
and there he mechanically proceeded to make some sort of a toilet.  A
suit of blue serge was the darkest he possessed, and this he donned,
toning it down with a black necktie.  He shaved and bathed in a dull,
dignified way, as a condemned criminal might do upon the morning of
his execution--after a sleepless night.

Then he returned to the saloon.  The steward was setting the
breakfast-table in the forward part of the cabin near the mainmast,
where the dining-room was tacitly understood to be.  Further aft were
low chairs, a sofa, a piano, and other furniture, constituting a
drawing-room.

Trist sank into a low chair, and watched the man's quick, noiseless
movements with perfunctory interest.  The steward glanced towards
him, and his movements became, if possible, more supernaturally
silent than before.  Then suddenly his long sallow face relaxed into
a satisfied smile, and, for his own edification, he nodded his head
in a pleased, told-you-so sort of manner.

Trist was asleep.




CHAPTER IX.

A DIVIDED RESPONSIBILITY.

'Theo!  Theo!  I am sorry to wake you!'

Trist was a man who threw aside the heaviest sleep at a moment's
notice, and was in full possession of his faculties--probably making
active use of them--while others were still rubbing their eyes.  The
touch of a soft, warm little hand upon his wrist had awakened him
before the words imprinted themselves upon his brain.  Somehow he
remembered them afterwards, the syllables themselves, and the manner
in which they were uttered.

He looked up with a smile, and met Brenda's eyes.  She was leaning
over his chair, and when he looked up she stood erect with her white
hands hanging before her against the soft black dress.  She had
learnt something at Mrs. Wylie's school of womanliness, for
everything about her was as neat and trim and dainty as if there was
naught else to think of than the braiding and coiling of the bright
brown hair, and the pinning of the snowy collar round her throat.

'I am sorry to disturb you, Theo,' she repeated.

'Not at all,' he said.  'Why should you be?  It is ten o'clock; I
have been asleep two hours.  What more could I require?'

'I have kept some breakfast warm for you,' she said, turning towards
the table; 'but I awakened you because of these.  There are four
telegrams and a number of letters for you.  Hans Olsen brought them
off just now.  He got them yesterday from the Bergen boat.  We are
out of the Heimdalfjord now, and Nielsen has gone.  I ... only hope
... it is not war, Theo!'

He stood up and took the telegrams and letters from her hands.  Then
he crossed the saloon towards the table.

'It looks rather like it,' he said coolly.

He raised the cover of the dish which the steward had just placed
upon the table, and Brenda, taking the hint, poured out his coffee.

She walked away from him a little and stood quite motionless, with
her back turned towards him, while he tore open the thin white
telegraph envelopes.  One ... two ... three ... four of them,
spreading the paper out upon the tablecloth.  Her quick ears caught
each sound, and enabled her to picture every movement made by this
indifferent man.

'Yes, Brenda, it ... is ... war!'

She turned slowly and approached the table.  Bending over it, she
attended to his requirements in a deftly graceful way, grouping round
him the toast, butter, and marmalade.  He was studying a telegram
spread out before him, but his fixed eyes did not appear to be taking
in the purport of words written in uneven type.  Furtively he looked
towards her hands, and then slowly upward, terminating in one
scrutinizing glance into her face.

'Where?' she asked, sitting down rather hastily opposite to him.

'Servia and Montenegro have declared war against Turkey,' he replied,
busying himself with his plate.

'And you must go?'

He stirred his coffee very deliberately, and, raising the cup to his
lips, took a long critical sip.

'Yes, Brenda.  I must go!'

There are few more silent places than the cabin of a sailing yacht on
a calm day.  In a steamer it is different, for there is the
ever-beating throb of life down below, in the engine-room, which is
half heard and half felt.  But on a sailing yacht, when the
rudder-chains are taut and the breeze steady, there is no noise
whatever.  In the pretty saloon of the _Hermione_ there was a
singular absence of sound when Trist finished speaking.  He turned
again to the telegrams, neglecting his breakfast.  Brenda thought
that she had never experienced such an utter, breathless silence.
Her ears seemed to tingle with the intensity of it, and in her brain
there was a sudden vacuous sensation.  She could think of nothing to
say, although she strained her mind to discover some means of
breaking this dreadful pause.

Furtively she raised her eyes, and at the same moment Trist looked
across the table in a hurried, shifty way.  Their eyes met for a
brief agonizing second.

'I hope,' said Brenda sweetly, 'that your coffee is not very cold.'

'Oh no!  Oh no, thank you!  It is very nice,' he replied awkwardly,
looking into the cup with absorbing interest.

Her question appeared to call him back from some vague, far-off
dream, for he resolutely began to eat; while she hovered round,
playing the hostess in a shy, constrained way.  Presently he handed
the open telegrams across the table to her.

'You may as well read them,' he said conversationally.  'They are
very characteristic of the man who wrote them.'

She took the papers and read in a semi-tone:


'_War--Serbia, Turkey--imminent.  Come._'


Number two was longer:


'_Where on earth are you?  War.  Look sharp.  Montenegro is in it,
too._'


The third was more serious:


'_Two messages without reply.  Are yen coming?_'


Then number four:


'_They are at it already.  It will be a bad business.  Come at once._'


She returned them without a word; and he, seeing the necessity of
saying something, remarked pleasantly:

'It is my misfortune to be required in two places at once, or not at
all.'

She stood by the table and looked at the date of the latest telegram.
The four messages had been despatched within two days.

'Are you not,' she asked innocently, 'too late?  It may be all over
now.'

He glanced up at her in a curious, laughing way.

'No--I am afraid not.  War in these semi-barbaric countries is like
an illness in a young person.  It is only half healed beneath a
deceptive surface, and breaks out in a fresh place.'

Again she took up the telegrams.  It seemed as if there were a
fascination in the flimsy papers which she could not resist.

'This man seems to look upon it as rather a good joke.  He takes the
matter jovially.'

'Yes!  He takes most things in that way.  It is a good thing for him,
you see.  Brings up the circulation of his paper.'

'That,' she said quietly, 'is a very practical way of looking at war.'

Trist appeared to ignore, purposely, the slight reproach conveyed by
her remark.

'War is a practical thing,' he replied.  'This is a splendid chance
for me, and one I should be sorry to miss.  It is not a surprise,
Brenda.  We all knew that it might come at any time, but I did not
mention it, because the knowledge would only have been unsettling,
and I did not think ... then ... that my sudden departure would have
made much difference.'

She looked at him calmly and thoughtfully before replying, with an
indifference which was not quite complimentary:

'You must not allow this ... this calamity to make any difference.  I
quite understand the position you are in.  Of course you are pledged
to this man?...'

Trist nodded a brief acquiescence.

'Then you must go.  I can manage quite well alone.  Mrs. Wylie is
much better this morning, though she is still dull and horribly
apathetic.  We will go home as quickly as we can.'

There was something in her voice, a slight catch, which he could not
understand, and of course he misread it.  The last few words were
spoken in a peculiar monotone, with feverish haste.

'I feel horribly selfish,' he said, 'thinking of my own affairs at
this time.  No, Brenda.  I cannot go and leave you in such a
fix--alone.'

'I want you to go, Theo; I do really.  It would never do for you to
miss this chance.  You are pledged to this man (who sits comfortably
at home), and I would never forgive myself if I thought that you
stayed here on my account.  Besides, you are a sort of public
servant; it is your duty to go.'

'Yes,' he said, catching at the phrase uneasily; 'it is certainly my
duty.  It is my duty ... to go.'

She stood beside him quite still.  Then she moved a step nearer to
him and laid her hand upon his shoulder.

'Theo,' she pleaded, 'you must go.  To please me, pack up and go.'

He smiled suddenly, but did not look up into her face, which was very
pale, while her lips remained red.  There was a slight quiver of her
chin whenever her mouth remained for a second unclenched.  It needed
an effort on her part to prevent his hearing the chattering of her
teeth.  Involuntarily he shrunk a little away from her light touch,
and glanced furtively at the white fingers on his shoulder.

Thus they remained for some moments while the yacht heaved gently
onwards.  The lamps swayed a little, but beyond that there was no
motion in the pretty cabin.  At last Trist reached out his hand and
took the envelope from which he had torn one of the telegrams.  He
bent it over and smoothed it very carefully, while she watched the
movements of his fingers.

'When is there a steamer to England?' she asked suddenly.

'The day after to-morrow, from Bergen, at nine o'clock in the
evening.'

His answer was laconic and concise as Bradshaw.

Brenda knew then that he had expected war all along, and war was his
element; she could not forget that, despite the wild incongruity of
it.

'How can you manage it?' she asked simply and practically.

It would appear that he had foreseen everything, provided for every
possible contingency.  While she moved away from him and sat down
near a small table, he answered her without a moment's thought.

'If we have the funeral to-morrow morning, I can start immediately
afterwards in a small boat, and row or sail to Gudvangen, reaching
there early next morning.  Drive to Vossevangen, and catch the
afternoon train down to Bergen.'

'It sounds very simple, but it means thirty hours without sleep.'

'I can sleep all the way across the North Sea.  Don't think of me,
Brenda; I'm outside the question altogether.'

He stopped, with a worried look upon his face, but did not raise his
eyes.  Had he done so he would inevitably have noticed a heightened
colour in her cheeks, although she turned aside and gazed at nothing
in particular.

'What bothers me,' he continued, 'is you and Mrs. Wylie and the
_Hermione_.  What will you do?'

'I will take the _Hermione_ home,' she said with gentle confidence.
'You can safely leave Mrs. Wylie to me.'

'I know I can, but I do not want to leave you to Mrs. Wylie.  It is
putting too much on your shoulders.'

She shrugged the graceful members in question, and gave a little
short laugh.

'They are strong,' she answered carelessly.  'Besides, there is no
choice in the matter.  I simply must be left in charge because there
is no one else.  It seems to me that the matter in question is...'
she glanced towards the closed door of Trist's late state-room, where
Admiral Wylie kept his silent watch--'is whether Mrs. Wylie will
consent to Fjaerholm or not.'

'Can I see her?'

'No ... no, Theo.  I think it is better not.  She is so strange and
natural that I am afraid the sight of you might have some serious
effect.  Even in her dreams she is constantly recalling the sight of
you ... coming down the little path ... with _him_ in your arms.  You
remember--just beside the big rock where it was too narrow for you
both to carry him.'

'Yes,' he replied in a voice that might well have been rendered
purposely careless.  'Yes, I remember.'

'I have not dared,' the girl continued, 'to say anything about ...
about Fjaerholm.  I have never seen anyone in grief like this before,
Theo, and it frightens me a little.'

He had left the table, forsaking the farce of breakfast, and was now
walking noiselessly backwards and forwards.  At the sound of her
voice, timid and deprecating, when she spoke the last words he
stopped short before her.

'Then I must see her,' he said--'I must see her before I go.  I have
seen a good deal of ... of grief, Brenda--in other people, I
mean--and know its symptoms.  Some people are stunned for a time,
like a man who has been thrown from a gun-carriage, but it ought not
to last very long, not more than twenty-four hours.  And then they
usually become nervously active.  If Mrs. Wylie is like that, you
must employ her somehow.  Tire her out if you can.  But we must take
it upon ourselves, now, to have the Admiral buried at Fjaerholm.  She
is not taking it as I thought she would, and the voyage home, or back
to Bergen even, with him on board would send her mad.  When he is
buried it will be different; she will recover then, under your care.'

'Yes,' replied the girl.  'Yes, we must take it upon ourselves, Theo.
I thought of it before.'

'If at any time,' he murmured in his gently suggestive way, 'the
matter is discussed--when I am away, I mean--you can say that the
whole responsibility rests with me.'

She raised her head and looked at him with a sudden light in her blue
eyes.

'I am not afraid of responsibility,' she said tersely.

'No, I think you are afraid of nothing!'

She received this statement as it was made, simply, half playfully,
and quite without afterthought.

After a pause he rose, collected his letters, and went on deck,
leaving her seated near the small table.  She also had letters, and
there was a packet of magazines and journals lying unopened near at
hand.  But she showed no desire to learn news from the outer world.
All her interests were centred within four wooden walls just then,
and she sat thinking far into the forenoon.  Over her head, on the
lightly-built deck, the regular tread of Theo Trist acted as an
accompaniment to her thoughts.  It was so light, that footstep, and
yet so steady, seeming to tell of a gentle force which never swerved,
never turned back, and never halted.

'I wonder,' she meditated, 'if he would have gone at all events.  I
wonder if I have the slightest influence upon his motives or his
actions.  Sometimes it seems as if anyone could lead him like a
child, and then suddenly there comes a conviction that no human force
can move him.'




CHAPTER X.

FJAERHOLM.

At the upper end of the fjord of the same name lies the small village
of Fjaerholm.  A white wooden church of conventional architecture is
the most prominent, and at the same time the most unsightly, feature
in the landscape.  Around this edifice are clustered a few wooden
houses, mostly painted white or yellow with a sparing brush, because
paint is heavy freight, and can be bought only in Bergen or
Christiania.  Houses and church alike are roofed with red tiles of a
bright and cleanly hue, which will be preserved much longer than the
memory of the tiler.  There is no smoke in Fjaerholm, and a long cold
winter kills any moss-like growth, so everything looks clean and new.

Across the fjord, which is white and milky from the glaciers, is one
farm, or what is by courtesy called a farm--a mere matter of ten
acres or so divided into patches of potato, hay and wheat.
Fjaerholm, like most Norwegian villages, hamlets, and homesteads,
suggests a question.  One cannot help wondering why it ever came
there.  The tillable soil is of sufficient area to nourish a single
family, but no more, and yet a whole village manages to wrest a
frugal sustenance from it.  There is a post-office, and a postmaster
who wears the inevitable spectacles and brown linen jacket; and he
again suggests a question.  With one mail a week, in and out on the
same day--namely, Friday--what employment can he find during the
other six?  Yet he is as grave and busy as a young bank clerk in the
presence of his manager.  He is constantly walking backwards and
forwards across the single unpaved street from his home to his
office, from his office to his home, with two pieces of official
paper held between his finger and thumb, his pen in his mouth, his
elbow officially squared, and his linen jacket fluttering, all with
an air of intense preoccupation.  Poor postmaster!  It is mean to
fire off cheap sarcastic fireworks from a safe distance.  There are
others among us who wear a preoccupied air over nothing, and flourish
our flimsy official papers with intense self-satisfaction.

Theo Trist found him to be the only intelligent man in the village
(with the exception, perhaps, of an absorbed artist whose personal
apparel spoke lamentably clear language upon the monetary prospects
of Scandinavian art), and official dignity was tempered by a kindly,
simple heart full of sympathy for the wandering sailor whose last
resting-place was to be beneath the shadow of the ugly white church.
The old minister, whose bleached and wrinkled face bore a faint and
indefinite resemblance to his own sacerdotal ruff, simply obeyed
Trist and the postmaster in every detail.

The arrival of the _Hermione_ was a matter of no small wonder in this
mountain fastness, but in a few minutes the story was known
throughout the village, for the very good reason that every
inhabitant possessing means of locomotion was on the small wooden
pier to meet Trist and Captain Barrow when they landed.  Norway is a
taciturn country, and the matter was soon talked over in a mumbling,
half-plaintive way.

At mid-day there was a simple funeral.  Four bare-headed sailors bore
their late chief from the pier to the scantily-tenanted churchyard.
The British ensign fluttered for the first time in the cold breeze
that steals down from the glacier into the Fjaerholm Valley, and the
old white-haired minister, clad in his quaint Lutheran robes, read
unintelligible phrases over the coffin.  Then the stony earth fell
heavily, for it was still damp, and Theo Trist turned in his
philosophically calm way and smothered a sigh of relief.

There was something to be written in a book in the vestry of the
church, a few homeopathic fees to be paid, an exchange of names and
addresses to be effected with the preoccupied postmaster, and Admiral
Wylie was left to his rest amidst the simple Northerners.  To-day, as
on that day years ago, the little village stands by the side of the
silent milky fjord with its white church, yellow houses, and clean
red tiles.  The tide steals up as of yore to the very wall of the
churchyard, but in God's garden there are more seeds sown to grow in
peace and holiness till the great spring-tide calls them to flower.
At the head of every short valley round the Fjaerholm fjord there is
still the blue wonder of the glacier which extends in one vast field
of unexplored snow and ice over the broken tableland.  From its edge
the same stream trickles down in white confusion, gaining strength
and volume in its progress, until it runs past the church and beneath
the narrow wooden bridge, a veritable river.  So, even in his sleep,
the old salmon-fisherman may hear perchance the sweet murmurous voice
of running water, the gurgle of the rapid, and the plash of the fall.

The old minister is dead.  Many years ago he joined the silent ones
of Fjaerholm.  The postmaster also has been removed to another
sphere, where, we are told, there are no wrinkled brows, no official
papers, no sealing-wax and weekly mail-bags.  But many there are who
remember and speak still in a wondering way of the beautiful English
vessel which came and went within twelve short hours--the only yacht
whose anchor has stirred up the mud of the fjord.  And among the
wooden crosses, amidst the unlabelled mounds, there stands to-day a
simple marble cross with strange English writing on it.

Soon the story will be forgotten; and perhaps in future years, not so
very far distant, after all, some member of the great wandering
British army, some taciturn mountaineer, or rough-clad fisherman,
will ask in vain how a sea-faring countryman came to be buried here.


There is a picture in a Frenchman's study in Paris--a small untidy
apartment reeking of cigarette-smoke, littered with manuscript and
proof-sheet, for the owner is a giant among journalists.  It is a
rough water-colour drawing of a peculiar school, semi-Parisian,
semi-Scandinavian, and full of a bright hard vigour.  There is a
wonderful strength, a subtle dramatic force, in this rough picture,
which draws one to study it more closely.  The scene is evidently
Scandinavian, but among the figures there are unmistakable
Englishmen--notably one who, standing bareheaded in the foreground,
seems to look into one's face with meek, scrutinizing eyes.

'What is this picture? who is that man?'  Again and again the
journalist has looked up from his table, and laid aside his
discoloured, odorous cigarette-end to answer such questions.

'Ah,' he replies with quick gesture, 'I know not.  But it seems that
it must be a funeral--the funeral of some Englishman in Norway.  I
bought the picture at an exhibition of Scandinavian art, at
Copenhagen; and I bought it on account of the man standing in the
middle--he with the brow of an angel and the mouth of Napoleon.'

'Who is he?'

'I think it must be a man I once knew.  A wonderful fellow.  The
Philosopher, they called him in Plevna.'


The _Hermione_ moved gracefully away while the postmaster stood
hat-in-hand gravely saluting.  A little further back a lean ill-clad
figure leant against a post sketching.  This was the impecunious
artist who had hovered watchfully in the background since Trist and
Captain Barrow first landed.  There was a fair breeze, and all that
day the _Hermione_ crept down the narrow fjord and into broader
waters.  Among the low brown mountain-tops white clouds hung heavily,
but there was blue sky overhead, and the sun shone gaily at
intervals.  The _Hermione_ was the quickest craft in those waters, so
Trist determined to stay on board as long as the breeze held good.
Mrs. Wylie never appeared on deck, and Brenda reported no change.
The cheerful little lady seemed to have lost heart altogether, but
Brenda kept her fears to herself as only women can.  At lunch she
attempted a little cheerfulness, and Trist promptly assisted her, but
cheerfulness _à deux_, when it is forced, cannot be long-lived.  The
solemn steward moved round them with his grave face set at zero, and
the meal was soon despatched.  It was already known on board that the
_Hermione_ was bound for home, and that Mr. Trist was going on by
steamer--called away most inopportunely to an Eastern war.

It needed a cleverer woman than Brenda Gilholme to wear a smiling
face amidst these solemn surroundings.  The very elements were grave
and foreboding, for there is no more melancholy scenery on earth than
a narrow Norwegian fjord.  It has all the grim, patient silence of
the Arctic world without the Polar splendour of light and shade and
colour; unrelieved by Arctic life.  Lifeless, treeless hills, which
rise sheer from the dead water without snow or herbage; a dull sea,
often glassy, never rippling into green and silver shades like open
ocean, and betraying no sign of life within its bosom.

While all goes well, the utter hopelessness is not noticed; but as
soon as illness, or an anxiety, or, worst of all, dread death should
come, the great solitude strikes one with a chill.  All human aid,
human science, human comfort, is so far and so obviously
unattainable.  To this Brenda was about to be left, with feelings
naturally shaken by the Admiral's sudden and lonely death, for she
did not possess a tittle of Theo Trist's superb nerve--a woman
practically alone with men, kind enough, and very willing, but of a
different grade, thinking different thoughts, and endowed with other
feelings.  Added to this, she was about to take upon her shoulders
the sole responsibility of a lady usually cheery and independent, now
apathetic, helpless and incomprehensible.

All this Theo Trist must have recognised as he paced by Brenda's side
when the evening shadows crept down into the deeper valleys.  The sun
was hidden by a high range of hills to the north-west, and everything
on the northern shore of the fjord was softly wrapt in a shimmering
blue haze.  The sea was very dark and lonesome, scarce rippled by the
dying wind.  Heavy gray clouds were catching on the mountain-tops all
round, and seemed to cling sullenly to the land, creeping lower with
the shadows.  It could not be that Trist was ignorant of the girl's
position.  It was not thoughtlessness, because whatever this man's
faults may have been, no one could, or ever did, accuse him of want
of consideration for the feelings of others.  But for some reason he
never uttered one word of sympathy to Brenda.  Already some vague
shadow of war seemed to have fallen over his softer manner.  He had
learnt to respect the call of duty at the best school; in this
respect he was a true soldier, with all a soldier's blind
uncomplaining obedience to orders.

Years afterwards, when Brenda recalled the memory of that evening
(and every detail of it was as clear as day), there came to her an
indefinite understanding.  In her own heart she had knowledge then of
his motive, and she wondered a little over it.  Few men, reflected
she, would have divined that sympathy was the only thing she could
not have borne just then.  That it was not thoughtlessness she knew
at the time, although she moved and lived and acted in a mechanical,
unthinking way, without pausing to seek motives or assign reasons.
There was sufficient evidence of Trist's forethought at every turn,
and silent testimony to his powers of organization.  Captain Barrow
was a good sailor and an honest man--an ideal sailing-master for
Admiral Wylie's yacht--but beyond that the old man's capabilities
were limited.  The clearest brain and brightest male intellect on
board lived behind the steward's grave eyes, and to these two men
Trist gave, in his gentle way, such instructions as he thought they
needed.

During the voyage home Brenda was, so to speak, always running
against Theo Trist.  In her intercourse with Captain Barrow or the
steward, she invariably found herself in some degree forestalled by
the man who was already many miles away.  'Yes, miss, Mr. Trist said
we was to do that if...' etc., etc., or, 'Ay, Miss Brenda, Mr. Trist
thought the same.'  Such remarks were the common reception offered to
her most brilliant strokes of management, and, strange to say, she
did not appear to resent this preconceived interference.  This was
the first vessel she had commanded, and there was a certain sense of
comfort in meeting, as it were, with this opinion which coincided
with her own.  In a sense the responsibility was still shared, and if
the result seemed to insinuate that another course might in some
cases have been wiser, there was always the satisfaction of looking
back and laying a share of the blame upon that silent acquiescence.
This was something of the same spirit (an intensely human one it is)
that prompts the cook to refer triumphantly to the work of Mrs.
Beeton when the pudding turns out a failure.

But Trist did not consider it necessary to tell her of his
arrangements made for her future benefit.  Such reference would
naturally have led to the question of his approaching departure for
the seat of war, and this question was untasteful to him just then.

'And now, Brenda,' he said about eleven o'clock that evening, when
the _Hermione_ was creeping onward between the dismal ranges of bare
hill and rock that border the Sognfjord--'and now, Brenda, go to bed.
You have had a hard time of it since Wednesday.  We cannot reach
Gudvangen before two o'clock to-morrow morning, and it is mere folly
for you to stay up any longer.  Say ... good-bye ... and go to bed!'

In the gray twilight her sweet face changed suddenly.  Her cheeks
lost all colour, and a peculiar ashen-gray hue fell upon her
motionless features, while into her eyes there came such a look of
horror that Trist, seeing it, was struck dumb.  In a peculiar
mechanical way they continued to walk side by side.  She seemed to
experience some difficulty in breathing, for the muscles of her round
white throat moved hurriedly at short intervals.  He stared straight
in front of him with a dull, vacant expression in his eyes, while his
stern mouth was twisted slightly to one side.

At last, just as they were turning amidships to walk aft, she spoke
without raising her eyes, and her articulation was slightly muffled.

'I would rather stay on deck, but ... do you _want_ me to go?'

'No.--Stay!'

After a short silence she spoke again, in quite a different tone.

'I suppose,' she said, 'that you can form no idea yet of what you are
going to--how long it will last, and who will be victorious.'

'Turkey,' he replied guardedly, 'will probably win.  I do not imagine
that there will be much for me to do.  It all depends upon how soon
Turkey gets to work.  What is wanting in strategical skill will be
made up in bloodthirstiness, I should imagine.'

She shuddered, but made no reply.

'I may be back in a fortnight,' he added coolly, 'and if Russia gets
dragged into it, I may not get home for a year or two.'

'At all events, it will be a horrible war.'

'Probably.'

She laughed in a short, sarcastic way.

'You have already assumed the first coat of your mental and moral
war-paint.'

'It is my trade, Brenda.'

'Then do not let us talk shop,' she said sharply.  At times this
learned little person was intensely womanly.  As soon as the words
were spoken she seemed to repent of them, for she added in a softer
tone, 'Though I am afraid I began it.'

He looked down at her with meek, questioning eyes.

'Yes,' he said softly; 'you began it.'

'I had a reason for doing so.'

'I know you had.'

This remark made her laugh in a slightly embarrassed way.

'I wanted,' she then explained, 'to request you to take care of
yourself--Theo.'

'I always do that,' he answered with some gravity; 'I am not the sort
of person to expose myself to unnecessary danger.'

'I am not quite sure of that,' she said in her searching way.  'But,
still, I should like to be able to tell Mrs. Wylie--later--that you
promised to be careful.  You see, her nerves will perhaps be a little
shaken; she may be anxious.'

'I hope not,' he replied.  'It would never do for anyone to be
anxious about me.  It is a thing I have always tried to avoid, and
Mrs. Wylie says that she never troubles about me.  It would spoil my
nerve, Brenda ... if I thought that there was somebody at home
watching and waiting for news.'

She laughed suddenly in an almost defiant way, and the sound of her
laughter was discordant in the silence only broken by a whispering
breeze.

'And you would be nothing without nerve.'

'No,' he answered stupidly; 'I should be nothing without nerve.'

'Although you never expose yourself to unnecessary danger?...'

She turned suddenly and left him.  There was a boat slung high up on
the davits, and, passing round it, she went and stood beside the rail
with her hands resting on it.  The boat hid her from the eyes of
anyone on deck.

Trist walked aft, and stood for a moment beside the steersman in an
indifferent attitude, with his hands in his pockets, looking aloft.

'I am afraid the wind is dropping,' he said.

'Yessir--it's slackening a bit,' replied the man.

Then Trist slowly followed Brenda.

For a moment or two he stood behind her, and there seemed to be a
dull tension in the very atmosphere.  Then at last he spoke, in his
soft, emotionless way.

'The wind is dropping,' he said; 'and we cannot expect it to rise
again before the sun comes up.  Let us be practical and have some
rest.  Go to your stateroom and try to sleep.  I will lie down for a
couple of hours in the saloon.'

She did not answer at once.  Then she turned and passed round the
boat in the other direction, so that he did not see her face.  Moving
towards the companion, she answered him quietly.

'Yes--it will be better.'

No other word passed between them.  She went below, and presently
Trist followed her.  He lay down on the cabin sofa, but did not
sleep.  He took up a novel instead, and read assiduously.




CHAPTER XI.

A COMMERCIAL TRANSACTION.

By three o'clock in the morning Theo Trist was on deck again.  The
sun was already high up in the heavens; the morning air was fresh and
invigorating.

Captain Barrow now did a strange thing.  He took all sail off the
_Hermione_ and allowed her to drift on the rising tide towards
Gudvangen.  There was noticeable about the movements of the men a
singular desire to avoid any noise whatsoever.  Trist and the Captain
moved about among them, here and there, helping noiselessly.  The
Captain gave his orders in a lowered voice.  The carpenter was at his
post forward by the cathead, but he awaited the order to let go the
anchor in vain.  All this was the result of instructions imparted by
Trist to Captain Barrow.

'Put me ashore,' he had said, 'before you let go the anchor.  The
ladies must not be awakened on any account.  Let the men make as
little noise as they can in lowering the boat and taking in sail.'

To a yacht's crew such instructions were easy of comprehension.
These are of different construction to the hardy mariners who man our
passenger steamers.  The latter gentry can not deign to _lay_ a coil
of rope or the brass nozzle of a hose-pipe on the deck, at five a.m.
All such things are cast violently and dragged backwards and forwards
over the heads of the sleeping passengers in a frank, sailor-like
way.  Again, such members of the crew as possess a taste for
mechanical engineering are at perfect liberty to take the cover off
the donkey-engine and indulge in a few experimental and spasmodic
revolutions during the smaller hours of the morning.  These sounds
impart a hearty and nautical feeling to the sleepers below decks, and
serve to remind them that they are nationally of a seafaring turn.
Being of a commercial spirit, I shall some day start a line of
passenger steamers, carrying crews who do not wear sea-boots in
tropical and dry latitudes, who can stoop to lay things down on deck,
and do not work violently from five to six o'clock in the morning, so
that the rest of the day may be spent in graceful leisure.

Captain Barrow had directed his mental researches more towards the
vagaries of fickle ocean and wayward weather than to the question of
human motives.  Through a long and somewhat monotonous life the old
mariner had not hitherto found the necessity of studying his
fellow-men very closely.  Able-bodied seamen are a class of beings
who vary little in mental accomplishment or bias.  Their bodies must
be able; their minds are of secondary importance.  Nevertheless, it
occurred to him that Theo Trist was singularly anxious to get ashore
without disturbing the ladies.

The boat was lowered noiselessly, and into it were thrown the young
fellow's portmanteau, creel and rods.  Then Trist shook hands with
the crew, the steward, and finally with Captain Barrow himself.  This
ceremony being performed with due solemnity, he threw his leg over
the rail and prepared to jump into the boat, which was already
manned.  At this moment Brenda appeared on deck.  She was still
dressed in black, which sombre attire suited her dainty style of face
and form to perfection.  _Du reste_, she looked as bright and fresh
as Aurora.

Captain Barrow glanced beneath his shaggy eyebrows at Trist, and saw
on his face--nothing: absolutely nothing.  The man was simply
impenetrable.

Brenda came towards them with a smile.  She leant over the rail, for
Trist was now in the boat, and held out her small hand steadily.

'Good-bye, Theo.'

'Good-bye ... Brenda.'

And with his own hands he shoved off.

So the _Hermione_ never dropped anchor at Gudvangen.  Before the boat
reached the pier there was a man waiting for her.  In Norway, persons
connected in any way with the hire of horses or carriols do not
appear to sleep at all.  Even in this peaceful land the spirit of
competition disturbs men's rest.

Brenda, standing on the deck of the _Hermione_, saw Trist shake hands
with the boat's crew and climb on to the wooden pier.  Then he
turned, and evidently directed the men to return to the yacht.  The
wind was fair, so Captain Barrow set sail as soon as the boat came
alongside; and before the sails were fairly filled, Brenda saw Trist
mount his carriol and drive away at a smart trot into the narrow,
darksome gorge of the Nerodal.  To her ears came the sound of his
horse's feet upon the hard road, and she turned away with dull
anguish in her eyes.

On the evening of the third day Theo Trist was seated in a train that
glided smoothly into King's Cross Station.  It was five o'clock, and
in three hours the war-correspondent intended to leave London again.
As time goes and new things grow up around us, our constitutions
become more adaptable.  The human frame endures to-day fatigues and
hardships of a description undreamt of three hundred years ago.  I
believe that it would have been hard to find in the reign of Queen
Bess a man ready to undertake an unbroken journey by carriol,
steamer, train, steamer, train, and train again from a Norwegian
station to the pretty little town of Belgrade on the Danube.  To Theo
Trist this undertaking was of no great matter, and there are plenty
of men around who would smile at the hardship.

Whatever speed may be attained by our fastest express the human brain
can outvie.  During the first hour or so our thoughts lag behind, we
are still living the life that is left there, thinking of the people
who dwell there, feeling the emotions experienced there.  But
presently our thoughts come racing along and overtake the material
body.  An interest is taken in passing stations; the scenery acquires
beauty, and for a time mind and body travel together.  After another
space our thoughts start away again, in front this time, and the
coming alteration in daily routine becomes a reality.  We anticipate
the change that is approaching, and thus the shock of it is broken.
Anyone who has made a long and rapid journey will understand me, and
those who have left behind them something dear, some bright period of
their existence, will, with me, bless this wise provision.

To Theo Trist nothing seemed more natural than to find himself amidst
an excited crowd of porters on the platform.  To be hustled on all
sides by human forms, to have to push his way through an over-crowded
humanity, brought to his mind no thought of contrast.  Three days
before he had lived in a world almost devoid of life.  Here he forced
his way through life in a world too small for it.

All around him greetings were being exchanged--hands pressed hands,
and lips touched lips.  In and out, the porters forced their hurried
passage.  Cabmen shouted, and porters called.  Everyone was smiling
at or abusing someone else.  Only Trist was alone.  No one sought his
face amidst the new ones on the platform--no one smiled at him.
Here, as at the edge of the Norwegian river, he was alone, in a
studied, cultivated solitude.  In three hours he would leave Charing
Cross, still alone, still unheeded.  Amidst this noise and confusion
he sought his light baggage, and his was the first cab to leave the
station.

Through the dusty streets he drove, looking calmly on the well-known
sights, listening vaguely to the well-known sounds and cries.  His
life had been a kaleidoscope, and in all places, all situations, and
all circumstances, he unconsciously made a place for himself.

In late July London is supposed to be empty, but as Trist drove
through the narrow thoroughfares down towards Oxford Street, the
pavement was crowded.  Oxford Street was gay, dusty, noisy.  Seven
Dials, in those days, innocent of model-lodging houses, reeked of
fever.  Through all these the war-correspondent drove indifferently;
but when the cab rattled down Wellington Street he sat forward.  In
the Strand he was at home, recognised of many, recognising some.  The
cab drew up before a large stone house, labelled by a single
diminutive brass-plate on the door--and waited.  A minute later Trist
entered a small room at the back of the building.  A gray-haired man
of square build with an enormous head rose to greet him.

'At last!' said this man.  'If you remember, Trist, I did not want
you to go so far away while this Eastern Question was unsettled.'

'I remember perfectly,' said Trist almost inaudibly, as he laid aside
his hat and looked up towards a clock suspended on the wall, with the
air of a man knowing his surroundings well.

'And still you went--you ruffian!' said the other, courteously
indicating a chair and reseating himself.

Trist smiled sweetly and said nothing.

'I suppose,' continued the large-headed man jovially, 'that there was
a distinct and irresistible attraction.'

'There was!' said Trist, with impenetrable gravity.

'And how did you leave that jolly old boy, the Admiral?'

'Dead!'

'Ah!  Dead?'

The editor leant forward and pressed a small white button at the side
of his desk.  Simultaneously the door opened, and a man in livery
stood silently waiting.

'Send Mr. Deacon!'

'Yessir.'

'Dead, is he?' continued the editor, in a different tone.  'I am
sorry to hear that.  It must have been sudden.  Just give me a few
details.'

While speaking he had taken a pencil and paper.  Trist told him in a
few words what had taken place in the Heimdalfjord, and as he spoke
the editor wrote.  A minute later Mr. Deacon, a small man, who looked
incapable of taking the initiative in anything whatsoever, appeared.

'Sudden death of Admiral Wylie,' said the editor in a monotone, as he
held out the paper towards Mr. Deacon, without looking, however, in
his direction.  'Short paragraph--look up details of career.'

'Nothing sensational and nothing very personal,' put in Trist with
gentle severity.

'No,' added his companion, 'nothing of that sort.  Admiral Wylie was
a personal friend of my own.'

Mr. Deacon vanished, and closed the door behind him with scrupulous
noiselessness.

'When can you go?' asked the editor.

'Eight-twenty from Charing Cross,' was the reply, given in Trist's
most soothing way.  He leant back in his deep chair, and passed his
hand round his clean-shaven chin in a thoughtful, almost indolent,
manner.  Then he waited for his companion to continue the
conversation.

'It was rather a risky thing waiting for you; but I heard from
Lloyd's this morning that your boat arrived at Hull in time for you
to be here by five-thirty.  If that boat had been late, my boy, I
should have sent another man.'

Again Trist smiled.

'I very nearly did not come at all.'

This remark appeared to have rather a peculiar effect upon the
editor.  He received it with unsympathetic gravity, and, resting his
heavy arms upon his desk, he leant forward.  While playing with a
pencil in an easy, thoughtful way, he fixed his eyes upon Trist's
face with a kindly scrutiny.  Gray eyes they were, of a shade merging
on green, with at times a suggestion of brown.  Such eyes have a
singular power of expressing kindness of heart, in which they differ
greatly from the gray of a blue shade, such as Trist's, which have
gentleness but no loving-kindness.  It is usual to hold in abhorrence
all shades of green in respect to human orbs, but this is mere
prejudice.  There is no such thing--despite Thackeray--as a green
eye; and the noblest character, the truest gentleman and
kindest-hearted being who has crossed the present writer's path
possesses eyes of a gray shade slightly tinged with green.  Again,
there is another person I know.  She ... well--she is herself; and
her eyes are of a deep gray, which assume at times a distinctly green
hue.

Before speaking the editor shook his massive head incredulously.

'My impression of you, Trist, is that you are a man who never "very
nearly" does _anything_.  While actually reading my telegram you made
up your mind whether you were going or not, and after that no power
on earth would have altered your decision.  Of course, it sometimes
pays (especially with ladies) to appear vacillating, and desirous of
placing the deciding vote in someone else's hands.  No doubt you
practise this amiable fraud at times.  I am sorry, but I don't
believe that you "very nearly" did not come, seeing that you are
here.'

Trist laughed without denying this insinuation.

'And now,' he said, 'that I am here, perhaps it would be wiser to get
to business, and leave my personal failings for discussion behind my
back when I am gone.'

'Yes,' answered the other briskly, 'let us get to business.  You must
leave in two hours.  Now about terms.  Are they to be the same as for
the Franco-Prussian?'

'No!' answered Trist.

'Ah!'

'Your terms were generous for the Franco-Prussian War,' replied the
correspondent, 'but now they would be miserly.'

The editor raised his august eyebrows and waited in quizzical
silence.  He appeared to be amused.

'I was a young man then, and a beginner.  You did me a great
kindness, and I am not going to repay it by such a mean ruse as
working below the market price.  I am worth more now, and I expect
more.  It is only natural that my health will give in some day, or my
reputation may die, in either of which cases I shall have little to
live upon.  During this war and the disturbances of some description
which will undoubtedly follow, I mean to make money.'

The great man laughed aloud.

'Capital!' he exclaimed--'capital!  What a head for business!  My
dear Trist, you are worth four times as much money as we gave you in
'70, and I am authorized to offer you that sum.'

'I think that is _too_ much.'

'Not at all.  It is merely a business-like speculation.  You risk
your life, and we pay you.  Your life goes up in market-value; we pay
you more.  Do you accept?'

'Yes.'

'That is right.  I have the agreement ready in my desk for you to
sign.  Personally speaking, I think they might have offered you more,
but you have the publishers clamouring for a book, and I suppose you
will represent _Le Pays_ as well as ourselves.'

'Yes; I telegraphed to them from Hull.  But I am quite content; in
fact, it is more than I expected.  I will make a good thing out of
it.'

'We shall,' observed the editor, with a keen smile, 'be having you on
the turf when you come back, or launching into ... matrimony.'

'Both amusements,' suggested Trist coolly, 'being so eminently
calculated to forward the career of a special war-correspondent.'

The editor was busy collecting various papers that lay in apparent
disorder on his desk--telegrams, foreign and English; 'flimsies' from
the news agencies and Lloyd's; printed matter and manuscript.

'No, Trist,' he said, without looking up; 'we cannot have you
marrying yet.  The warlike public cannot do without you, my boy.'

'It is wonderful,' murmured Trist ambiguously, 'what we can do
without when we try.  I am not, however, going to do without
something to eat.  I will go along to the club and dine now.  You
will be here when I come back?'

'I shall be here until two in the morning,' returned the journalist.




CHAPTER XII.

BAD NEWS.

If Theo Trist had hoped to pass through London without meeting anyone
except the editor of the mighty journal, from whose coffer he was
soon to draw the income of a Continental prince, he was disappointed.
It would seem, however, that he was upon this point, as on many,
broadly indifferent.  He went to a club, where he was almost certain
of meeting some of his friends--a club of which the members never
leave town because the calendar bids them do so; never quite lay
aside their labour; and appear to sleep when others are awake,
working while others sleep.

He went there because it was conveniently near at hand, and he was
sure of having rapid attention given to his desires.  As he entered
the dining-room a young man rose from one of the small square tables
with dramatic surprise.

'Theodore Trist, by all that's sacred!' exclaimed this youth.  He was
of medium height with a fair moustache, such as lady novelists
delight to write about.  This manly adornment was the prominent thing
about him.  But for it, his face was that of a fair and somewhat
weak-minded girl.  It curled away from either side of his full red
lips (usually moist), with a most becoming languor.  Its golden hue
completed perfectly the harmony of his delicately tinted pink and
white face.  A shade lighter than his hair, it was itself of delicate
texture, and the bewitching curl was in need of constant attention on
the part of a long white finger and thumb.  The top joint of the
finger bent backwards with a greater suppleness than a manly person
would perhaps admire.  There was always an abundance of cuff and deep
turn-down collar, of which the points overlapped the flap of a
wide-cut waistcoat.  In the matter of necktie, a soft silken material
of faded hue rivalled the golden moustache in obtruding itself before
the public gaze.  Dark-blue eyes devoid of depth, and a slightly
aquiline nose, complete the picture.  This man was no ordinary being.
Had he been dressed like an ordinary being--like, let us say, a
tea-broker--men and women would still have looked at him twice.
Kensington lion-hunters would still have kept him in touch, so to
speak, on the chance of his developing from puppyhood into cubhood,
and so on to the maturity of a London lion.  But he made the most of
such personal peculiarities as Providence had thought fit to assign
to him.  His tailor thought him slightly eccentric.  'Bit orf 'is
chump,' that sartorial artist was wont to observe in his terse,
clipping way; and he charged something extra for padded shoulders;
and continuations, baggy from waist to ankle.  Sundry small
singularities of dress purchase a cheap notoriety, and to these the
wise tailor gave his full consent with an eye to advertisement.  It
is an easy matter to trim with silk braid a coat of material usually
worn without trimming, and the effect is most satisfactory to a man
desirous of being looked at in public places.  Again, the additional
cost of a broad braid down the outer seam of one's
dress-unmentionables is trifling, while the possession of it 'stamps
a man, don't cher know.'  Personally I do not know how it stamps a
man, but on good authority I have it.  A peculiar cut of collar is
obtainable for the mere trouble of asking and running up a bill.  But
chiefest of all is a name.  In such a thing there is to-day much more
than in Shakespeare's time, and in this one most aggravating point
the young man who rose to greet Theodore Trist as he entered the club
dining-room failed most ignominiously.  His name was William Hicks.
In order to battle successfully against such a heavy handicap, the
young man was forced, like a good general, to spare no expense in his
outfit.  This most commonplace association of two good English names
cost their possessor as much per annum as would enable a thrifty
maiden lady (or four German clerks) to live comfortably.

He would have given much to be labelled by such a nomenclature as
'Theodore Trist'--a poetic assimilation of letters quite unnecessary
for the war-correspondent, and even wasted upon him.  His work would
have been equally popular if signed William Hicks, whereas the
artist, who was some day going to surprise the old world and make the
spirits of its ancient masters shake in their ethereal shoes, was
dragged down and held back by the drysalting name of Hicks.  For
certain reasons, to which even the unmercenary soul of William was
forced to bow, there was no hope of ever changing it for something
more poetic.  Certain it was (and perhaps the artist knew it) that
there were many houses to which Theodore Trist had an ever-welcome
entry, while he--William Hicks--was excluded.  It could only be the
name that drew this line, and, indeed, it was in many cases nothing
else; for the name of Trist is rare, and in a certain county, far
away from town, very powerful, whereas the milkman who supplies me
with an opaque fluid of more or less nourishing qualities is called
Hicks, and from the number of little Hickses who require everlasting
boots, there is no present fear of the poetic surname becoming
extinct.

Without any great show of cordiality, Trist shook the long, nerveless
hand extended to him.  He even went so far as to nod familiarly over
Hicks' shoulder to a servant who, having drawn back a chair,
fulfilled his immediate duty by waiting.

'Where have you come from, old man?' asked the artist.  'You look as
if you had been sleeping in your shirt for a week.'

Like many of his tribe, Hicks had a great notion of being all things
to all men.  He prided himself exceedingly upon his powers of
adaptability to environment.  With men he was, therefore, slangy;
with women tender and poetic.  With the former he could not be manly,
and for this quality he substituted an inordinate use of language
more descriptive than that usually employed by gentlemen in the
presence of ladies.  Not possessing the slightest vein of humour, he
assumed with women the poetic mantle, and surrounded himself for the
time being with a halo of melancholy.  There are people who, while
endeavouring to be all things, are nothing--while seeking to render
themselves valuable to the many, are of use to none.

'I have not been sleeping much in anything,' replied Trist, 'and just
at the moment a wash is what I require.  After that some dinner.'

This served as an answer to Hicks, and an order to the waiter at the
same time; and with a nod Trist passed on to the dressing-rooms.

'Where will Mr. Trist dine?' asked Hicks, turning to the waiter, and
speaking somewhat sharply, as people do who fear the ridicule of
their inferiors.

'At my table, sir!' with a certain air of possession.

'Then just move my plate ... and things ... to the same, will you?'

When the war-correspondent returned to the dining-room, he found
Hicks established at the table where he invariably sat, and the
waiter holding a chair in readiness for him with a face of the most
complete stolidity.  Without betraying either pleasure or annoyance,
he took the proffered chair and attacked his soup in a business-like
way, which did not promise conversational leisure.

'In a deuce of a hurry, old man!' suggested the artist.

'Yes.  Have to catch a train.'

'Going off to the East, I suppose?' asked Hicks carelessly.

With his shallow blue eyes persistently fixed on Trist's face, he
stroked his moustache daintily.

'Yes.'

'To-night?'

'At eight-twenty,' replied Trist, meeting his gaze with gentle
impatience.

'Ah!  Lady Pearer was asking me the other day if you were there, or
on the way to the seat of war.'

'Lady Pearer?  Don't know her,' observed Trist, with his mouth full
of bread.

'She seemed to know you.'

The suggestion of a smile flickered across Trist's face, but his
entire attention was absorbed just then by a bony piece of turbot.
He made no answer, and silently shelved the subject in a manner which
was not strictly complimentary to Mr. Hicks' fair and aristocratic
friend.

The artist was one of those exceedingly pleasant persons who can
never quite realize that their presence and conversation might,
without serious inconvenience, be dispensed with.  The mere fact of
being seen in friendly intercourse with a person of his social
distinction was, in his own simple heart, worthy of the consideration
of greater men than Theodore Trist.  In recounting the fact later, of
his having dined with the celebrated war-correspondent on the eve of
his departure for Bulgaria, he took exceeding great care to omit the
mention of certain details.  Moreover, he allowed it to be understood
that the farewell feast was organized by Trist, and that there was
some subtle political meaning in the hurried interview thus obtained.

'Trist,' he said, with a suggestion of melancholy, to Lady Pearer and
other of his friends, 'is a strange fellow.  He has a peculiar
repelling manner, which causes people to imagine that he is
indifferent to them.  Now, when I dined with him at the "Press" the
other night,' etc., etc.

Trist continued his dinner with that tranquillity of demeanour which
marked his movements upon all occasions, but more especially,
perhaps, when he was displeased or very much on the alert.  The
silence which followed the collapse of the Lady Pearer incident did
not appear in the least irksome to him, whatever it may have been to
his companion.

Hicks toyed with the rind of his late cheese, and wondered whether
the novel bow of his voluminous dress-tie was straight.

'By the way,' he said at length, 'have you not been in Norway with
the Wylies?'

The young artist had at one time been a protégé of Mrs. Wylie's, but
her protection had been gradually withdrawn.

'The fair Brenda was with them, n'est-ce pas?'

Trist broke his bread with grave deliberation and looked stolid.
After a momentary pause he raised his eyes to his companion's face.

'Eh?' he murmured softly.

'Miss Gilholme,' explained the other, with an involuntary change of
manner.

'Yes, she was there.'

'I thought,' reflected Hicks aloud, as he stroked his moustache
contentedly, 'that I remembered her telling me that she was going to
Norway.  How is she?'

'Very well, thank you.'

'Is she any stouter?' with affectionate interest.

'I don't know,' replied Trist suavely.

'Because,' continued the other in his best
'private-view-of-the-Academy' style, 'that is the only fault I have
to find with her.  Her figure is perfect, except that she is a trifle
too slight--if you understand.'

'Indeed,' very gently.

'From an artistic point of view, of course,' explained Hicks with a
graceful wave of his hand, full of modest deprecation.  For some
unknown reason a sudden sense of discomfort had come over him.

'Ah, I am not an artist ... thank goodness!'

Hicks glanced uneasily across the table at his companion.  There was
something in the calm tone of his voice that was not quite natural, a
peculiar thrill as if of some suppressed emotion which might have
been laughter, but was more probably anger.  William Hicks was not
endowed with that species of brute courage which enables its
possessor to enter boldly into controversy, wordy or otherwise.  He
was eminently a lover of peace, and for its gentle sake was ever
ready to suppress pride, honour, or any other inconvenient passion
likely to prove inimical to its preservation.

He had mixed with men and women of all shades and tastes.  They were
mostly affected, hypocritical, insincere, and utterly wearisome; but
there is one virtue which we cannot help acquiring from contact with
our fellow-beings, however silly, however shallow and profitless,
their influence may be.  This virtue is tact, and William Hicks
possessed a sufficiency of it to smooth his own path through life.
If he failed to use it for the benefit of others, neglected to render
the footsteps of others less stony and less difficult, he was,
perhaps, no worse in such respect than the majority of us.

He now began to perceive that he had taken the wrong road towards
gaining the esteem (or perhaps the toleration) of this plain-spoken,
honest student of war.

Trist was not to be impressed by the social position of this
dilettante dabbler in the fine arts.  Soul, pure unvarnished soul,
had no effect upon his mental epidermis.  Poetry in curious
dress-clothes, behind a singular cambric tie, failed to touch his
inmost being.  Then a brilliant inspiration came to this ambitious
youth who attempted to be all things to all men.  For once he would
be natural.  On this one occasion sincerity should grace his actions
and his wondrous thoughts.

'I say, Trist,' he remarked almost earnestly, 'I met Martin of the
Royal Engineers the other day, and he told me that it is common
mess-room gossip in Ceylon that Alice Huston is having a miserable
life of it out there.'

Trist had almost finished his dinner.  He looked up gravely, and
there was in his eyes a worried expression, which, however, the
artist (who, like most self-satisfied people, was not observant)
failed to see.

'I am sorry to hear that,' quietly, almost indifferently.

'Yes,' continued the other in the perfunctorily sympathetic tone
which we all assume while revelling in the recital of evil tidings.
'They say that Huston drinks, that he is madly jealous and coldly
indifferent by turns.  He always was a brute.  I remember when he was
young he was a gourmand, and professed to be a great judge of claret.
Now a boy who thinks of his interior when he ought to be hardening
his muscles will, in all human probability, turn out a drinker.'

While Hicks was giving the benefit of his opinion, Trist had risen
from the table, and now stood with his two hands upon the back of his
chair looking down thoughtfully at his companion.  The artist was
peeling an early pear with great delicacy of fingering.  Before the
war-correspondent had time to say anything, he continued:

'I suppose,' he said somewhat pathetically, 'that you and I are more
interested in the Gilholmes than most people.  To a certain extent
they rely upon us as old friends.  That is why I tell you this.  I
never repeat gossip, you know.'

The last addition was made in a deprecating way, as if to apologize
for a celebrity which placed certain personal peculiarities within
public reach.  Trist had not heard that reticence was one of his
companion's characteristics, and he treated the remark with silent
contempt.  He did not even smile in response to the sympathetic
glance of the soulless blue eyes.

'If,' he observed, 'they rely upon us, they will expect us to hold
our tongues.  The truest friendship is shown in talking of anything
but one's friends.  I must go now.  Good-night!'

The artist rose and held out his delicate hand.  Within Trist's brown
and sunburnt fingers the shapely limb looked small and frail and very
useless.  The very manner in which Hicks stood was in strong contrast
to the sturdy deportment of his companion.  If Brenda Gilholme should
at any future day be forced to rely upon one of these strikingly
dissimilar men, the choice would surely be no hard task; for one was
all latent energy, quiet, reserved, and manly force, while the other
was a mere creature of drawing-room and boudoir, a lady's knight, a
dandy, an effeminate egoist.

And the stronger man, Theo Trist, went out from the brilliant chamber
down the broad and silent stairs, out of the huge door, wrapt in his
own thoughts as in a cloak which shielded him from men's eyes, for he
saw no one, heard no sound, and was sensible of no definite feeling.

This great stone building was as a home to him--the only home he had
ever known.  The faces of the servants were pleasantly familiar; the
stillness of the vast rooms, the very softness of the rich carpet
beneath his feet, were distinct pleasures, and imparted a pleasant
feeling of homeliness.  And from this he passed out in the bright
August evening alone and absorbed.  To the war he gave no thought,
neither meditated over the ripening fruits of his pen.  There was
before his meek and pensive eyes a vision which would not be cast
aside.  He saw a yacht rolling gently on the still waters of a
northern fjord.  The sails were hastily clewed up or lowered, hanging
idle in the soft breeze.  Away behind, clear and hard in the morning
light, were brown hills rising sheer from the water--bleak rocks of
unlovely contour.  But the soul of the whole picture looked from the
eyes of a slight young girl, clad in sober black, standing
bareheaded, so that the sun gleamed on her soft brown hair, beside
the stern rail, smiling bravely.

He had left Brenda alone in the midst of sorrow, and now he knew that
she was on her way home to England to meet more of it.  There is
nothing so sad in human life as the bitter realization of human
helplessness.  Alice Huston was miserable, and Trist knew that he
could do nothing.  He was fully aware that misery with her meant
misery to others.  She was too impulsive--too selfish, perhaps--to
keep her sorrows to herself, and Brenda would sooner or later be
dragged into the trouble.  He smiled to himself at the remembrance of
William Hicks' words.  The idea of Brenda Gilholme--the gifted, the
capable, the learned--seeking the aid of this _exalté_ artist was
ludicrous, and yet Trist did not smile over it for long.  He wished
that there had been another man--such a man as himself, he
unconsciously decided--near Brenda at this time.

Accustomed as he was to act alone, he perhaps assigned to the spirit
of independence a greater importance in the average nature of men and
women than such spirit really occupies.  Independence or
self-dependence is a quality which, being possessed, brings with it a
certain blindness.  A man such as Theodore Trist, whose every action
and thought receives its motive from a calm, straightforward
independence, cannot quite realize that there are people to whom the
necessity of thinking and acting on their own responsibility is
little short of agony.  He was sensible in a vague manner that Brenda
Gilholme was an exceptional girl in many ways, but he never through
all his life quite understood that she was one in a thousand.  His
life and work brought him into contact with men, and men
exceptionally ignorant of women and their ways.  In his dreamy,
chivalrous way, he gave women credit for a much greater
self-dependence and self-sufficiency than they possess--bless them
all!  In leaving Brenda to bring home Mrs. Wylie, and in a sense to
take command of the _Hermione_, he acted somewhat in the spirit of a
soldier who, leaving his subordinate behind while he goes forth to
other work, feels that his late duties are made over to hands and
brain in all probability as competent as his own, but merely wanting
in opportunity.  And he started on his flying journey across Europe
without the knowledge that Brenda was quietly assuming
responsibilities from which many older women would have shrunk aghast.

Now that this news of further trouble coming to meet her, as it were,
from the East, touched him in passing, he never for one moment
doubted Brenda's capability to meet it, and act in the quickest and
wisest manner.  But there was a vague apprehension, nevertheless, and
he thought with discomfort of the girl's utter loneliness.




CHAPTER XIII.

OFF!

An hour later, Theo Trist was again seated in the editor's room.  The
large-headed man himself was also present at his desk, amidst a chaos
of newspaper-cuttings and manuscripts.

'And now, Trist,' he was saying in his terse, business-like way,
'suppose anything should go wrong.  If you are killed, who shall I
tell, and how shall I tell it?'

The war-correspondent looked pensively into the flame of the gas,
which was already lighted because the editor's room gathered little
light from heaven.  It was a single burner, and a green-glass shade
cast the clear white light down upon the table, leaving the rest of
the room in shadow.  Men who live and work by artificial light must
needs have the appliances perfect.  Trist, however, was within the
radius of illumination, being seated on a low chair.  He raised his
meek eyes, turned his bland, expressionless face towards the editor,
and smiled speculatively.

'There is,' he answered, 'an old gentleman called Trist living at No.
4, The Terrace, Cheltenham.  Will you take down the address?  He is a
very nice old gentleman, and extremely courteous to ladies.  He is my
father, and the news of my untimely demise would cause him
considerable annoyance.  You see, he would not be able to get his
usual rubber in the evening for a few days.'

'No. 4, The Terrace, Cheltenham,' interrupted the journalist somewhat
abruptly.  'How shall I tell him if it is necessary to do so?'

'Regret to announce death of Theodore Trist, your son--or something
of that description.  Don't exceed the shilling's worth.'

The editor passed his strong white hand thoughtfully across his chin
with a rasping sound.

'Is there no one else?' he asked indifferently.

Trist thought deeply for a moment.

'Ye-es,' he murmured, in the manner of a man who makes an effort to
remember some small social debt.

The editor opened again the small leather-bound book wherein he had
noted the address of the nice old gentleman living in the West
Country.  He passed his pen over the page and waited silently.

'Miss Brenda Gilholme,' Trist dictated slowly, in order that his
hearer might write, 'care of Mrs. Wylie, Suffolk Mansions, W., or
Wyl's Hall, Wyvenwich.'

These items having been duly inscribed, the journalist closed the
book methodically and locked it away in a drawer.

'And how,' he inquired, 'shall I break it to ... Miss Brenda
Gilholme?'

'Oh--you need not trouble to beat round the bush.  There will be no
hysterics.'

As he spoke, he rose and looked significantly at his watch.

'But,' he added, after a moment's pause, 'if Mrs. Wylie is in town,
you might, perhaps, go up to Suffolk Mansions yourself.  The little
attention would be kindly taken.'

'I will,' answered the editor heartily.  He rose also, and took his
hat from a peg behind the door.  'But we will, of course, take it for
granted that the necessity will never arise.  I don't like to feel as
if I were sending a fellow where I would not go myself ... and paying
him for it.'

'No,' said Trist in his gently confident way.  'The necessity will
never arise, you need not fear that!  I must be going--the Strand
will be crowded with theatre-goers.'

He held out his hand, but the great journalist waved it aside.

'I am going,' he said, 'to Charing Cross with you.  Unless you
object----?'

'I shall be very glad,' was the unemotional reply, delivered as a
mere matter of mechanical politeness.  At times Theo Trist betrayed
that his indifference to the smaller sentiments of social intercourse
was cultivated and slightly artificial.

'There is no one else going to see you off?' inquired the editor.

'No one.'

'Then I will go with you.'

So these two men passed out of the huge building together.  Each was
in his way a power in the world.  Each stood at the top of his own
particular tree.  Passing through the crowded thoroughfare, they
could not fail to attract some attention, and yet they walked on in
sublime unconsciousness.  Conceit is a growth that flourishes only in
the spring of life, unless it be a singularly noxious and hardy weed.
In summer, and before the autumn, it usually dies down.  Neither of
these men was young--each had, years ago, given up thinking of his
own person.  To both the work placed in their hands was fully
absorbing, and a busy man has little leisure to contemplate his own
manifold advantages and points of superiority over the common herd.

Each was in his sphere a genius, and there is something about genius
that attracts the eye, although the possessor be clad in modesty.  I
have seen genius clad in something much more common than
modesty--namely, rags--and have recognised it with no difficulty.
The editor of the great newspaper was in appearance a somewhat
remarkable man: broad of shoulder, with a massive head and huge
limbs, he was one of those exceptional beings whom men turn in the
streets to look at again.  His companion was less likely to attract
an observant eye.  Although he was taller, he seemed to require less
space to move and breathe in than his companion.  His movements were
smooth and quick, while in passing people on the pavement he touched
no one, and never got in the way, as did the absorbed journalist at
his side.  There was no special physical peculiarity about Theodore
Trist to stamp him in men's minds as some one apart.  As has already
been stated, he carried his head and shoulders with the uprightness
of a soldier, and it was only the keener eyes around that, looking
into his face, detected the incongruity of his physiognomy.

'Where is your luggage?' inquired the editor suddenly, as they walked
along.

From his manner it would appear that he feared that Trist had
forgotten this necessary item.  Under similar circumstances he would
no doubt have done so himself.

'It is waiting for me at the station,' was the reply; 'I went to my
rooms after dinner and packed up.'

'It cannot have taken you long,' abstractedly.

'No; I am not taking much.'

The journalist seemed suddenly to return to practical things.

'But,' he inquired, 'I suppose you are prepared to stay some time if
necessary?'

'Oh yes!'

'How long?'

'As long as I am needed,' replied the war-correspondent very
deliberately.  There was no ring of doubt or hesitation in his voice.

'You are an ideal special,' said the other.

'It is best to be consistent even in trifles,' observed Trist, and
the editor made no reply.  Presently he continued, as if speaking his
own thoughts aloud:

'I don't like the look of things in the East.  Russia is seething;
Turkey is ready, and ... and hell is brewing.'

'Let it brew!' said the philosophic Trist.

'While you stand on the edge of the vat and watch things through the
smoke.'

'Exactly.'

'Then, Trist, mind you do not fall in.  No fighting, my boy.  You
must keep in the background this time.'

'If,' replied the other, 'I kept in the background, you would be the
very first man to recall me.'

'Yes,' meditatively; 'I suppose I should.  But you can duck your head
when you hear things whistling ... when the music begins.'

Trist shrugged his shoulders, and smiled.

'My ducking days are done.  One is just as likely to duck into
bullets as out of their way.  If, as you poetically put it, hell is
brewing, I shall stay out there and watch the process as long as I am
wanted; but if it is all the same to you, I should like to be with
the Turks.'

'I thought you would.  In case of war between Russia and Turkey, I
have secured Steinoff to go with the Russians.  With Steinoff on one
side and you on the other, there will not be a newspaper in the world
to come near us.  The thought of it almost makes one pray for war.'

'I don't think you need do that,' murmured Trist, selecting a fresh
cigar.

The journalist glanced at him with some keenness.

'You think it will come?'

'I do.'

The great journalist smiled slowly, and as Trist did not continue, he
fell into a long reverie which lasted until they reached Charing
Cross Station.

It was Monday night, and the mails were light, but there were a great
many passengers.  Mostly pleasure-seekers, these travellers, hurrying
away from London into clearer atmospheres, and across to lands where
the art of enjoying life is better understood.  The great train was
ready, standing next to that right-hand middle platform we all know
so well--a very ordinary erection of brick covered with large slabs
of sandstone, encumbered with a few heavy wooden seats, backless,
comfortless; lighted (in 1876, when Trist went off to the first
Turkish war) with round-globed lamps.  No spot this for sentiment--no
place for thought.  And yet what scenes have been illuminated by
those round-globed lamps! what tears have fallen unheeded on the
sandstone pavement!  what feet have pressed the dust and covered up
the tears!  Countless men have stepped from that platform, literally,
into a new life.  Here have nameless waifs looked their last upon
London haste, before turning to other lands where they have found
naught else but a nameless grave.  From these dumb stones men have
gone forth unknown, unheeded, unwept, to return even as Theodore
Trist had returned, with their name on all men's lips.  And--saddest
thought--brown-faced wanderers have walked mechanically out of this
same station into a world where they have no friends left.  Returning
from a life misspent in selfish absorption, they have passed out
beneath those three-armed lamps with a faint sickening thought that
this is home--old England at last, with naught but graves and
memories to seek.

Trist soon saw his luggage into the hands of the guard.  The ticket
was taken, and more than one fussy tourist at the booking-office
window turned to look again at the quiet, unobtrusive man whose
destination was so far afield as Bucharest.

The little tragedies of real life differ in one important point from
those represented on the stage for our amusement and instruction.
This point is the lamentable lack of stage management.  On the boards
we have appropriate scenery--a bosky glade, and far away up the stage
a shimmering calm sea with moonlight cleverly thrown upon it.  There
is also slow music--piano, pianissimo--and lowered footlights and
pretty dresses.  But in real life there are none of these
accessories.  In my time I also have dabbled a little in tragedy, as
most of us are, sooner or later, likely to do; and there was no soft
music, no distant shimmering sea, no whispering pine-trees and
sighing glades.  When I look back (with a peculiar sensation in the
region of the collar), there are only memories of railway-stations,
and brief moments at the head of the staircase, in brilliant
ball-rooms, with laughter all round us.  On the platform, in the
midst of hurrying porters and unsentimental trunks, I have no
recollection of neatly punctuated periods or flowery observations
respecting an impossible future.  (Ah, that time-worn platitude about
meeting hereafter, and living an impossible earthly life in heaven,
how sickening it is!)  A quick touch of nervous fingers, an
instantaneous glance full of vague fear, that is all I remember.
There was a singular lack of that hesitating, 'pauseful' eloquence
which makes the well-fed old ladies in the stalls snivel again.  But
if there is fault to be found I must be to blame, because the
histrionic school of pathos appears to be universally accepted.

After Trist had secured his seat and lighted his cigar, there were
still five minutes to spare.  The two men walked backwards and
forwards, smoking placidly, and observing the excited manœuvres of
the British tourist with a slight cynicism.

'I do not,' said the editor, 'see anyone I know.'

'Nor I,' replied Trist; 'and I am not sorry.  Travelling with casual
acquaintances is not an unmixed pleasure.  Besides, I want to read
all the way to Vienna.  My ignorance regarding the political
intricacies of Montenegro, Servia, and Bulgaria is positively
appalling.'

'What a practical beast you are, Trist!'

'In some things.  And even in those it is merely a matter of
exercising common-sense as against popular sentiment.'

The editor raised his thoughtful gray eyes, and looked round him.
There were last greetings in the very atmosphere, and to his ears
came snatches of conversation--promises, most of them, and certain of
unfulfilment, to write and think of those left behind or going
afield; half-shed tears, heaving bosoms, wan smiles, and convulsively
crushed handkerchiefs.

'This sort of thing?' inquired the journalist, with a comprehensive
wave of his cigar.

'Yes; cultivated sorrow.  Tears carefully forced and brought on by
artificial fertilization or cheap sentiment.  With some people, more
especially among women, sorrow is nothing else than a "culte"--almost
a religion.  They look upon it as their bounden duty to spin out to
the utmost limit of agony their farewells and their wearisome
troubles.  All these people would be better employed in reading the
evening paper at home.  They only get in the way of the porters, and
puzzle the ticket-collectors at the barrier.'

The editor laughed in a tolerant way.  He was a much older man than
Trist.

'There seems,' he said suggestively, 'to be more of it round the
third-class carriages than here.'

'The result, perhaps, of cheap port-wine at home.  The poor people
are nowhere in the higher walks of sentiment without port-wine.'

The journalist laughed in a somewhat perfunctory way.

'I suppose,' he said, after a pause, 'that you would, if you were a
railway director, advocate closing the gates of the platform to all
tearful relations?'

'Certainly.  Seeing people off is an amusement which ought never to
have been instituted.'

'Perhaps, then ... I had better go.'

It was Trist's turn to laugh.

'Not at all,' he said, flipping the ash off his cigar with a backward
jerk of the hand--'not at all.  I do not anticipate that you will
stand snivelling at the carriage-window, and, when the train moves
away, wave a limp hand and a damp handkerchief, smiling feebly
through your tears.'

The older man looked up at the clock, of which the pointers now
indicated the hour for starting.

'No,' he answered abstractedly, 'I do not recognise in your pleasing
picture a portrait of myself.  Come! it is time to get in.'

No more words passed between them.  Trist stepped into the carriage
and closed the door after him.  At the same moment the guard
signalled, and the heavy train moved slowly away into the darkness.
All within the great arched roof was light and life; beyond lay
darkness and silence.  A turn in the way could be easily followed by
watching the glowing red light at the rear of the train, and this
presently disappeared.

Then the journalist turned on his heels and walked down the platform.

'That man,' he murmured to himself in his absorbed way, 'is in love.'

Thus, without drum or trumpet, Theodore Trist left England, and set
forth to meet the horrors of a campaign of which the record will in
future history be a red and sanguinary blot upon the good name of a
so-called _civilized_ Continent.



END OF VOL.  I.



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