Suspense

Suspense by Henry Seton Merriman

Suspense opens on the schooner-yacht Hermione, anchored at the head of the Heimdalfjord in Norway, where the kindly Mrs. Wylie and the intellectual nineteen-year-old Brenda Gilholme wait for Theo Trist to return from salmon fishing. Brenda, a clever girl who has grown up in the shadow of her lovely, coquettish sister Alice, thinks of Trist, and Mrs. Wylie gently warns her against doing so. Alice has since married Captain Huston, a handsome soldier whom Trist, who served with him in South Africa, privately considers a duffer; the couple are now in India. Trist is twenty-eight, a gentle-eyed man with a soldier's frame and a severe mouth. Pushed toward the Church by his mother, he instead found his true calling as a war-correspondent, first in the Franco-Prussian war and then in a small Eastern campaign, and he is famous for it. Brenda cannot understand him, disapproves of his trade, and suspects that some hidden sorrow lies behind his calm, possibly his feeling for Alice, which he denies. After a thunderstorm in which Brenda clings to him in fright, they discuss courage and religion, and Mrs. Wylie, who is Trist's cousin and cherishes him almost as a son, makes a half-joking pact with him to do any odd maternal jobs for him if he will accept filial ones in return. The next day Admiral Wylie fails to return from fishing. Trist takes the longboat upriver, and Mrs. Wylie and Brenda follow in the gig. Brenda meets Trist in the pinewood at dawn, and he tells her that the Admiral is dead, found drowned in a whirlpool with his line broken. Brenda breaks the news to Mrs. Wylie, who is stunned and silent. Trist takes command above decks and Brenda below. They decide to bury the Admiral at the village of Fjaerholm, and the funeral is held that midday. Telegrams then arrive saying that Serbia and Montenegro have declared war on Turkey. Trist must go, and Brenda, white-faced but resolute, urges him to leave her in charge of Mrs. Wylie and the yacht. At Gudvangen, before dawn, he goes ashore without waking the ladies, and their farewell is a brief handshake. In London he agrees new terms with his editor, names his father in Cheltenham and Brenda as the people to be told if he dies, and dines at his club, where the vain artist William Hicks gossips that Alice Huston is wretched in Ceylon because her husband drinks. Trist leaves from Charing Cross with the editor, who remarks to himself that Trist is in love. Later that autumn, a steamer from the East approaches England. Its captain, who knows Trist, draws out the beautiful and apathetic Mrs. Huston, who colours when he mentions Trist's name. At Plymouth, Alice, who has left her husband and fears he will follow, meets Brenda, now in mourning for the Admiral. Alice suggests telegraphing Trist for help, but Brenda firmly refuses and says she would rather work alone. At Suffolk Mansions, Mrs. Wylie, who keeps a scrapbook of every word Trist has printed, awaits the sisters.

By Henry Seton Merriman · First published 1890 · Genre: Romance, War fiction, Historical fiction · 42 chapters · 132,984 words

First lines

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

"Brenda, what are you thinking about?"

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Norway · Heimdalfjord · fjord landscape · schooner yacht · salmon fishing · war correspondent · Franco-Prussian War · late nineteenth century · Victorian novel · English literature · sibling rivalry · female intellect

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Suspense is listed on Textopian as a novel by Henry Seton Merriman, dated 1890 CE.

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