Suspense

Preface

“SUSPENSE” is an early and immature attempt which has at some trouble and expense been withdrawn from circulation in England. Seeing that under existing copyright law the book is unprotected in the United States from the unauthorized enterprise of certain publishers, the author finds himself practically forced to issue an edition of this and other

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early works. He does this in full consciousness of a hundred defects which the most careful revision cannot eliminate. The book has been corrected by the author, who now submits it to the generosity of the critic and the good sense of the reader with the assurance that had he been in a position to choose he would not have sought this indulgence.

Henry Seton Merriman.

Contents

Chapter Page

I. On Board the “Hermione” ... i

II. The Exception 12

Chapter I On Board The “ Hermione ”

“ T3 REND A, what are you thinking JD about?"

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

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

“ I was thinking of Theo Trist,” replied

i 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 — -

On Board the “ Hermione ”

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 Board the “ Hermione ”

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. 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.

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.

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 beauideal 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 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 consuit 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 had perhaps suffered from the contiguity. She was pleased to consider herself a plain uninteresting girl, which was a mistake.

Perhaps she was a discontented 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.

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 in the world as Alice Gilholme’s sister. In a thousand ways clumsy and i o Suspense

well-meaning men allowed her to define her own situation.

“ 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.

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.

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 far away down the fjord.”

Mrs. Wylie looked up vaguely.

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

CHAPTER II HE Hermione lay at the head of that

JL 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 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 super-

1 3 ficial 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 Sogn fjord 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.

“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 x7 motionless ; her eyes were resting on the dreary, lifeless scene which was nothing but a still blending of hazy blue 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 new-comer 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 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.

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 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.

That his life had been chiefly spent in the open air was discernible from his bearing and appearance. 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 he 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 armysurgeon 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. Like many, he found his metier by accident. He was leaving Oxford when the first rumour of war between France and Germany startled the world.

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. 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, “dun courage . . and the sentence finished up with a shrug and outspread hands, indicating that the courage of “ce drole 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 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 noncombatant 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.

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. His great knowledge of his subject, his instinctive divination of men’s motives, 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 watched war as a lover of war, not as a selfconstituted representative of a hypercritical nation.

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 house 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. 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.

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 hope that Alice would be happy, and changed the subject.

Trist approached Mrs. Wylie with slow steps. 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 ! ”

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

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

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

“ Mine, I think. Yes, it must be mine.”

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

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

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

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

“ I meant you?

“ I ? Oh no, I am not hurt, thank you. Only very dirty.”

CHAPTER III HE two fishermen went off in oppo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“ Not yet.”

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

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

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