The Project Gutenberg eBook of Suspense, Volume I (of 3), by Henry Seton Merriman

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

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.

CHAPTER I.

ON BOARD THE 'HERMIONE.'

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.'

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.

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.

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? 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.

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.

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.

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.

'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.

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?'

'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.'

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?'

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.

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

'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.'

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

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.

'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.'

'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.

'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,' 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.'

'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.'

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.

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

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.

'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.'

'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.

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.

'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.'

'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....'

'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:

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.'

'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.

'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.'

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

'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.'

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

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.'

'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.

'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.

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.'

'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.'

'I think,' suggested Brenda, 'that it would be better taste, and more natural, perhaps, to discuss me behind my back.'

'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 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."'

'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.'

'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.'

'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.

'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.'

'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.'

'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.

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.'

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.

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

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.'

'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.'

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

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.'

'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.'

'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.

'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.'

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.

'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.'

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

'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.'

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

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.

'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.

'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.

'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.

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.'

'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.

'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 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.

'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.

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.

'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.'

'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.'

'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.'

'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 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.

CHAPTER IX.

A DIVIDED RESPONSIBILITY.

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.

'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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

'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.'

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?...'

'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.

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.

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.

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.'

'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.'

'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.'

'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 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.'

'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 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.'

'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.'

'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.'

'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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

'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.

'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.'

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.

'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.'

'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?'

'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.'

'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.'

'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?'

'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?'

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

'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?'

'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.'

'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.

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.

'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.

'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.

'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.'

'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.

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.

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.'

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

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

'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.'

'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.'

'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.'

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.

'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.'

'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.'

'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.'

'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.'

'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.

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.

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Suspense, Volume 1 (of 3)

SUSPENSE

CHAPTER I.

ON BOARD THE 'HERMIONE.'

CHAPTER II.

THE EXCEPTION.

CHAPTER III.

A PROBLEM.

CHAPTER IV.

A STORM.

CHAPTER V.

THE COMPACT.

CHAPTER VI.

A SHADOW.

CHAPTER VII.

A SPORTSMAN'S DEATH.

CHAPTER VIII.

A JOINT COMMAND.

CHAPTER IX.

A DIVIDED RESPONSIBILITY.

CHAPTER X.

FJAERHOLM.

CHAPTER XI.

A COMMERCIAL TRANSACTION.

CHAPTER XII.

BAD NEWS.

CHAPTER XIII.

OFF!

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Suspense, Volume 1 (of 3)

SUSPENSE

CHAPTER I. ON BOARD THE 'HERMIONE.'

CHAPTER II. THE EXCEPTION.

CHAPTER III. A PROBLEM.

CHAPTER IV. A STORM.

CHAPTER V. THE COMPACT.

CHAPTER VI. A SHADOW.

CHAPTER VII. A SPORTSMAN'S DEATH.

CHAPTER VIII. A JOINT COMMAND.

CHAPTER IX. A DIVIDED RESPONSIBILITY.

CHAPTER X. FJAERHOLM.

CHAPTER XI. A COMMERCIAL TRANSACTION.

CHAPTER XII. BAD NEWS.

CHAPTER XIII. OFF!

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

CHAPTER I.

ON BOARD THE 'HERMIONE.'

CHAPTER II.

THE EXCEPTION.

CHAPTER III.

A PROBLEM.

CHAPTER IV.

A STORM.

CHAPTER V.

THE COMPACT.

CHAPTER VI.

A SHADOW.

CHAPTER VII.

A SPORTSMAN'S DEATH.

CHAPTER VIII.

A JOINT COMMAND.

CHAPTER IX.

A DIVIDED RESPONSIBILITY.

CHAPTER X.

FJAERHOLM.

CHAPTER XI.

A COMMERCIAL TRANSACTION.

CHAPTER XII.

BAD NEWS.

CHAPTER XIII.

OFF!