Suspense, Volume I

Suspense, Volume I by Henry Seton Merriman

Suspense opens aboard the yacht Hermione, anchored in a remote Norwegian fjord, where Mrs. Wylie and young Brenda Gilholme pass a quiet afternoon reading on deck. Mrs. Wylie's idle question about what Brenda is thinking draws out the name of Theo Trist, and her gentle warning not to dwell on him establishes the novel's central emotional tension. Brenda, sharp-minded but overshadowed all her life by her beautiful, coquettish elder sister Alice, has grown into a serious, self-doubting young woman despite her considerable education. Alice has recently married the dashing but shallow Captain Huston and gone to India, a match Trist witnessed without visible reaction, though his manner has subtly changed since. Trist himself soon arrives from a day's salmon fishing, muddy and cheerful, carrying his catch to Mrs. Wylie, who is his cousin and something of a surrogate confidante, though never a mother figure by her own insistence. He and Brenda have an old, easy intimacy built on years of searching philosophical conversation—about courage, independence, vanity, war, and human nature—in which Brenda persistently tries to analyze and understand him, and he as persistently deflects her. The narrative pauses to sketch Trist's history: intended for the Church by his mother, he abandoned that path when the Franco-Prussian War broke out and discovered his true vocation as a war correspondent, becoming, through a rare combination of gentle manner and hardened nerve, the finest chronicler of battle of his generation. His mild eyes and soldierly bearing form a deliberate incongruity that no one—least of all Brenda—can fully read. That evening a violent thunderstorm breaks over the fjord. Brenda, briefly startled and clinging to Trist during the worst flash, recovers her composure, and the two continue their probing dialogue on deck, Brenda half-accusing him of hiding either atheism or lingering love for Alice behind his bleak philosophy—a charge he deflects just as Mrs. Wylie interrupts them. The chapter closes on a picture of the three companions' long-standing, unspoken relationships: Mrs. Wylie's tactful, unsentimental affection for her "young men," her particular hope invested in Trist, and the quiet compact she and Trist strike to be of use to one another without acknowledging it. The following day, Admiral Wylie and Trist set off fishing in opposite directions under gray, drizzling skies. When the Admiral fails to return by dinner, Mrs. Wylie and Brenda's calm concern turns to real alarm as night falls; Trist takes charge with quiet authority, organizing a search. Brenda and Mrs. Wylie follow by boat to the river mouth, and Brenda presses on alone through the wilderness to find Trist, transformed and resolute, who tells her he has found Admiral Wylie drowned in a whirlpool, dead for hours. Brenda insists on being the one to return and break the news to Mrs. Wylie, asserting for the first time her own capacity for duty and courage, while Trist organizes the recovery of the body. In the aftermath, command of the yacht splits naturally: Trist takes charge above decks, Brenda below, tending to the stunned, uncharacteristically silent Mrs. Wylie. Trist and Brenda jointly decide, without waiting for explicit instruction, to bury the Admiral at the nearby village of Fjaerholm rather than attempt the long voyage home with his body. The simple funeral takes place there, attended by the ship's crew and curious villagers, and the Admiral is laid to rest in the small Lutheran churchyard beneath a marble cross that will long outlast the memory of how it came there. As the Hermione resumes her voyage, Trist receives forwarded telegrams reporting that war has broken out between Servia, Montenegro, and Turkey—news he had half-expected and that means immediate departure. Despite Brenda's evident distress, both maintain careful composure; she urges him to go, recognizing his duty, and he arranges to leave the yacht quietly before dawn near Gudvangen so as not to wake the sleeping women, sparing Brenda a difficult farewell before witnesses. Their parting is outwardly brief and controlled, masking deep unspoken feeling on both sides. The final chapters follow Trist alone on his rapid journey back to London and onward toward the Balkans. He calls at his newspaper office, negotiates improved terms for covering the new war, and dines at his club, where he endures the shallow chatter of the artist William Hicks, who mentions troubling rumors that Alice's marriage to Huston is already unhappy—news that quietly unsettles Trist on Brenda's behalf. The editor accompanies him to Charing Cross station for his departure, their conversation touching on mortality, professional risk, and Trist's carefully guarded unwillingness to acknowledge the ties—to Brenda above all—that his stoic independence conceals. As the train pulls away toward the coming Balkan war, the editor is left with the quiet observation that Trist is a man in love, closing the volume on the eve of the conflict that will test both Trist's courage and Brenda's newly discovered strength.

By Henry Seton Merriman · First published 1890 · Genre: Literary Fiction, Romance, Character Study · 13 chapters · 43,562 words

First lines

'Brenda, what are you thinking about?'

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

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historical fiction · adventure novel · romance · mystery · political intrigue · British literature · Victorian fiction · European setting · aristocracy · espionage · danger · secrets

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