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.