Prisoners and Captives.

Evening Star, Issue 9739, 22 June 1895, Page 1 (Supplement)

Prisoners and Captives.

BY HENRY SET ON MERRIMAN (Author of ‘Young Mistlcy,’ ‘The Phantom ' Future,’ ‘ Suspense ’). i VOLUME 11. i CHAPTER I. | BROTHER AND SISTER. j Admiral Grace rather prided himself on his dinner parties. Like most elderly men I ho gave place to no one in the matter of port wine. The rest he left to Helen, in which he showed great wisdom, for she had inherited the power of making things run smoothly which had been transmitted also by a clever mother to Oswin. ‘ There was question of a big dinner parly in the early weeks of December, and the admiral took a lively interest in the proceedings. As Oswiu was at home it had been decided..that a younger element should be introdmiM, Helen had never thought of oomplatai|g on her own account, but when it of a naval lieutenant at tabled Tth old salts she spoke up. Miss j '"Winter was invited, of course. Helen would face nothing without her. The old sailors had wives, one of them possessed a daughter. These living arguments led to the thoughts of suitable men to meet them. The question was opened at the breakfast table one morning, and it struck Os win that his sister was singularly devoid of ideas. Hho could not think of one man suitable for the occasion. The suggestion lay with Oswiu. Ho said at once that he had two men—both friends of Mias Winter’s—both friends of his own. Helen busied herself with the understructure of a small kettle simmering over a spirit-lamp. “ Claud Tyars,” said Oswin, calmly, “ and a man called Easton—an American.” “An AmeEcin,” echoed the admiral, looking as it were into tire recesses of his memory. “If he is a gentleman let us have him. I like American,v. I was once at Washington in an otliciul capacity, and I may say that I never encountered a rude word or au evil glance, although the old country was not very popular them. What is this man ?” Oswin hesitated. “ Well,"’ lie said, “I cannot exactly tell you. lie is like many Americans, bavin" many tastes, and following them ailpossessing many talents, and making good use of none--expert in many callings, and following each in turn. He is what is called a lilteralenr. He writes—when the spirit moves him. He Ims some sort of an appointment in London. He has a greatmany irons in the fire, but no one iron is pushed home.” “Is he educated?” inquired Helen. “So few Americans are.” “ Harvard,” replied Oswin, tersely, “ and languages, French, German, and Ru ” He slopped himself just in time, and went on quickly with some presence of mind. “ He is a bit of an' athlete too—a sailiii"canoe champion, and a proverbial cox. Little man.” Helen thought of the small man she and Miss Winter had watched from that lady’s drawing room window. “Let us have him by all means,” she said. “ And what about another man ?” Again the spirit-lamp beneath the silver kettle was out of order. “Claud Tyars,” said Oswin, decisively, reaching the butler. “I rather like that young L-llow,” said the admiral, after a pause of some length, during which Oswin had munched toast m a dogged way. “He and Agues Winter seemed to get on very well together. Let us have him too.” “ I will write to them," said Oswin, and the matter was settled. When the admiral grumbled oIT with his j newspaper to the den he called his study the brother and sister remained at the tabic without reason. Neither was eating, and neither spoke for some time. At length Oswin rose and took up his station upon the hearthrug, where instead of standing, he walked backwards and for varus with a peculiar action which might have suggested a caged animal to such persons as were unacquainted with the narrow deck of a slavecatcher. “ It must have been,” he paid, oracularly, “frightfully slow for you during the last two years. I suppose you had no one under sixty years of age in the house . . . except—of course—Agnes Winter';'' j Helen laughed with that tolerance which! seems to forsake women as they grow older I —as they begin to recognise that life, as lived day by day, is really a mortal permanency, and not a period leading to better things. “ Well,” »he answered, “ wc have scarcely been gay at home ; Ihi I then I have been out a great deal, and Agnes has always plenty of people about her.” Oswin was trying experiments on iho burning coals with the toe of his boot. “Ah! What sort of people?” lie inquired, in a dull voice. Helen raised her head and directed a quick glance towards the broad back of her brother. “Oh,” she answered, indifferently, “her old school friends, who are mostly married, and some of their husbands—not all.” “Is she,” inquired the tailor, abruptly, “ going to live on in that house alone ?” “In the meantime. She is unsettled still. It is not so very long since her father died.” “ Has she no relations,” pursued Oswin, “ except those west-country people who are half Quakers ?” “No near relations,” answered Helen: “no one with any right to advise or interfere.” There was a short silence, during which Helen continued to sit sideways on her chair near the table, gazing abstractedly at her brother’s sturdy form. Suddenly he wheeled round and encountered her glance. “ Why does she not marry?” he asked, slowly. j The girl shrugged her shoulders, and with j that reply he was forced to content himself, i “She is,” he continued, “just the person | for matrimony. She has money and a very * nice house. It would be so convenient.” ' j “1 do not suppose that Agnes would] relinquish her liberty for the sake of con- | venience,” said Helen, rising and taking up i a newspaper which had just come in. Her brother watched her attentively. j “ It is a pity,” ho said at length, quietly, ’ “ that she does nob marry.” j The paper crackled as if held in unsteady ' hands. Helen turned a page, murmuring ! vaguely “ Yes.” - i When she hid looked all through the ' journal she glanced up and said : ; “ Who is Mr Easton ?” ( It was rather a singular coincidence, this 1 mention of Easton’s name immediately after j a conversation respecting Agnes Winter. Helen remembered it a long time afterwards, when her brother was not by her side to share the recollection. He did not answer the question directly. “I -want,” he said, “to make things a '' little more cheerful for you. Therefore I bring my friends. It is not good for you to ; associate with none but old fogies—especially j old naval fogies. You will like Easton ; lie ' is amusing and original.” “But is lie all right? Von. know how ' particular papa is.” “Ob, ho is all right; you need not be afraid of that. The guv’nor thinks that no man can be a gentleman unless he has worn the Queen’s uniform, and is at least sixty years of age. Easton is a friend of Tyars.” At this point Helen changed the subject somewhat hastily, and other details of the approaching festivity were discussed. It is not always easy to discover the sequence of one’s thoughts. From the first mention of the name Helen had no doubts of the identity of Matthew Mark Easton, She divined at once, and by no process of reasoning, but by unconscious intuition, that the American was no other than the third person in the short colloquy which she had witnessed from her friend’s window. Whatever the girl’s thoughts may have been respecting the extension of her father’s hospitality to Claud Tyars, whether these were of pleasure or distrust, they -were for the time set in the background by the reappearance of a man whom she had only seen once for a few moments at a considerable distance. There are sensations working in our hearts, flitting through our brains, which we never have time to put into definite shape |n our own thoughts. We are barely con-

cious of them, and although their influence s sometimes to be detected by others in glance and action, wo frequently pass on our way unaware of this influence—ignorant of its immediate consequence, and unsuspicious of its possible results. Thus a personal dislike is sometimes known to others, and even suspected by its object, l.e.orc the feeling ia : fully developed in our own thoughts, before it has a definite place in our bruin. This does not apply to a feeling of sympathy or affection, for these are of slower growth. Our likes develop slowly, our dislikes spring into life at one bound. A wise man would not care to bo loved at first sight. Such a love may be poetic, romantic, and interesting, but human life is in reality none of these three—its sorrows have no poetry, its joys no romance. It is a great mistake to attempt making human life into anything else than a work-a-day, hard and fast span of years ; and to ba in keeping our joys must be commonplace—prosaic. Of course there is a beginning to sympathy, though it bs less tangible than tire first sense of antipathy. We cun usually look back to the commencement of a friendship and detect the sequence of the links ultimately woven into chain.

When Helen had stood beside Miss Winter, looking down into the street, her first sight of Matthew Mark Eistou was in some degree an event. .She felt indefinitely then that this little man was destined to enter into the radius of her existence. This feeling is difficult to define, but most of us have felt it for ourselves ; most of us have given wav to tne momentary weakness of admitting that there is some influence at work among us draws some souls together and erects a uarrier between others. All our neighbors (using the word in its broadest sense) may be divided into two classes—those who interest us, and those to whom we are indifferent. These two classes are independent of personal affection or dislike. Some we love without interest; others whom we dislike interest us despite ourselves. _ Helen was interested in Matthew Mark Easton without knowing whether her feeling was one of pure curiosity or of sympathy. Doubtless she felt that there were new influences at work upon her brother’s life, and in all probability’ she, as well as Miss Winter, suspected the American to bs the fountainhead from whence these influences flowed. Very few women are moral cowards. The best of them—the typical English girl in fact—is afraid »f very few things ; she has a superb faith in her own steadfastness of purpose, and in her own sense of right and wrong. If Matthew Mark Exston was a common adventurer, Helen' Grace would sooner have trusted herself into his clutches than her brother. Tin’s is a mistake very often made by young girls. It was therefore with a certain thrill of pleasure that she looked forward to meeting a man whose influence upon her brother was not yet measurable or comprehensible, ali hough she was; certain enough of its existence. Oswin aroused her from those meditations by a question repeated for the third time. “Helen, he said, “what do you think of Claud Tyars ?” She looked at him with a frankly puzzled smile. “ I do not know,” she answered ; “ I have not got anywhere near him yet.” “ Then,”' persisted her brother, “ what do you think of him from a distance ?” She nimbly avoided the question. “is he,” she asked, “a professional mystery ?” The inquiry was made in good enough faith. In the course of her one or two seasons in Loudon she had met more than one professional mystery—men who were nothing else than ball room hades, ready to accept invitations here, there, and everywhere ; nineteenth-century soldiers of fortune, living by their toes, the cheap perfection of their dress, and the cheaper currency of a shallow politeness. . Oswin knew wli.it she uraii!, and resented idle iniiiKUilioii. He was under the influence of a true maritime contempt for all carpetknights. “ No,” he answered, “lie is certainly’not that. The log-book of the Martial could prove as much, and besides, I have another proof. Tyars has never called since he dined Imre two months ago.” “ No,” murmured Helen, “ he has not." “ A man who envelops himself in mystery for the purpose of exciting interest in the fair sex would have called before ciiis, just to keep up the interest.” “ But v/e have met him at other houses —in theatre?, and at concerts.” “None of tiie meetings,” argued Oswin, “ were of his own seeking.” “ Then you think,” said Helen, “that flic mystery is merely indiHorence ?” “Well, not exactly indifference, hut a diversity of interest. Our friends do not interest him, our world is not his v.orid. lie is not a ladies’ man ; but I see nothing mysterious about him. Where does the mystery come in ?” Helen laughed, and when she spoke her (one was lighter. This matter was evidently not worthy of serious discussion. “Only in his reserve,” she answered. “He is one of the few young men I have mot who can talk of other things than their own individuality’. 1 expect it is the rarity that strikes me as so peculiar.” “ Ho does not volunteer much information about himself,” admitted Oswin. “ My dear boy, he volunteers absolutely nothing.” Oswin seemed to pull himself up. “I do not see,” he said, rather constrainedly, “that we need trouble about that. After all, his own affairs concern himself alone. It is not our business.” “No-o-o,” said Helen, vaguely. She was watching her brother very keenly with that unobtrusive watchfulness of which some of us are conscious by our own firesides. These wives and mothers and sisters of onrs—bless them I—there is no escaping their gentle grasp. When we are in bodily pain no smile deceives them, no feeble joke turns aside their scrutiny ; and when we attempt to.hold something from them they scent out its presence. The best of them' refrain from mere inquisition, bub they’ all alike know that there is something which we arc clumsily-attempting to screen. When a man is not absolutely’ cleverer than a woman he has no chance ; .with equal intellectual power the balance sways unerringly in favor of the woman. Oswin Grace was a good sailor—an exceptionally good sailor—but in intellectual power, in subtlety of mind, lie was no match for his sister. Helen knew well enough that there was some factor in this friendship between her brother, Claud Tyars, and Matthew Mark Eastou which was being carefully withheld from her by all three men. It w’as moreover only owing to his sister’s scruples that Oswin succeeded in preserving so profound a secrecy. Helen thought it her duty to refrain from meddling in any 1 way with her brother’s affairs. Miss Winter was not so scrupulous—few women of her years seller from an over-sensitive conscience. CHAPTER 11. TYARS RAYS A CALL. Claud Tyars had taken up his abode in a residential club in London. This change had been dictated by motives of economy. ; He said that he found chambers in the ! Albany too expensive for- a man who was seldom in London. No one to whom he . made this statement -was posted as to the extent of his income, and the excuse passed readily enough. He was certainly freer in his new quarters —free to come and go when the spirit, moved him, and to sonic extent he look advantage of Ids newly - established liberty’. His absences were frequent, but he was seldom away from London for more than a night or two. He frequently ran down to Glasgow, and once to Peterhead, where he spent two nights. One morning in early December he was partaking of a very hearty breakfast at the wanderers’ club, where ho had temporarily taken rooms, when Matthew’ Mark Eastou was shown in. The American was also a member of this club, which was singularly enough composed of members of some . university or another, duly qualified by the power and means to satisfy the cravings of a roaming spirit, i There was usually something original in the manner of Easton’s arrival or departure. In this case, as in many others, he came straight to the point without palaver or explanation. He had a way of letting one ’know at once in what way one could be useful to him which was at times (if candid) almost startling. Without a word he threw down upon the breakfast table a letter of which the en-

velope had been torn. Tyars was quite f? Ua r! 16 ■^ mer * can in quickness of thought. Preserving the same stoic silence, he tossed across the table another envelope identical in every way, and addressed by the same hand. Then lie continued his breakfast. . .?J as |'. on nssnred himself that his cigar was still alight, and spoke the two words : “ Wednesday week ?” “ Yes; Wednesday week.” . “’F iie ™B ht >” sa -M Easton, “ that we fixed for Guy Fawkes.” “Yes. We must have the meeting on Tuesday night. We must go to this.” Tyars laid his hand on the letter. The American’s quick little eyes were dancing over his whole person, even to the tips of the quiescent brown fingers. “Must we? ’ he inquired. Tyars looked up sharply, “ 1 do not believe,” he said, “ that you appreciate the importance of Oswin Grace.” “Good sailor man !” answered the American, “ bub too many women-folk. They will give us trouble.” ‘Grace is worth it. He is somethin" more than a good sailor.” ; ° Easton screwed up his quaint little face into the picture of interrogation. “What?” he inquired. 0 “I don’t know,” answered Tyars, in the calm tone of a man who is not accustomed to hesitation. “I cannot define it, but he has something which makes him- just the man I want.” Easton was silent. He had a great respect for this big calm Englishman; the sort of respect that one has for anything larger than oneself in the way of an animal. Standing, for instance, beside au elephant, we cannot help feeling that within such a vast cranium there must he a brain four or five times the size of our own—that brain must be doing something. The elephant is thinking of us while we are contemplating him, and cannot help wondering what he is thinking about. .Easton’s feeling towards this man, who supplied all that there was of Force in the human combination of which he, himself, was the founder and chief, was one of respect untinged by fear, but slightly flavored with wonder. He was by nature a voluble man, although he kept a certain hold upon himself—a hold which had for result a telegraphic form of conversation. The desire to talk

was there, but a cheek was put upon it by limiting the supply of pronouns and other conversational adjuncts. Tyars was, on the contrary, a reserved man little given to moments of expansion. This was a necessary part of his character. One never hears of a voluble commander. It is the silent men to whom one renders homage. Easton was ostensibly the leader in the undertaking which"had brought these two men together, and as the plot thickened he rose to the occasion with characteristic elasticity, but (as has been mentioned elsewhere) he was not a born leader of men. He occupied cheerfully and readily the position forced on him by circumstances, but such men as Claud Tyars and Sergius Pavloski are not to be led. Easton felt rather like one who is driving a pair of powerful horses down a long hill without a brake to his vehicle. He was perched upon the box and held the reins, but the limit of his control was very doubtful. But if he lacked the genius of command he possessed a very excellent substitute—namely, tact. By tact a weak man may sometimes direct the mind of a stronger than himself. Although he was nob fully satisfied that Oswiu Grace was exactly the man required for the post, he refrained from saying anything more, and never subsequently raised the question. “Well then,” he said, “we will go. I shall call the meeting on Tuesday week at my rooms as before. It is the last full meeting wc shall ever have. I think I shall stand champagne and ah oyster or so; they lighten the heart.”. With that he rose and held out his hand.

When he was gone Claud Tyurs turned to Ins breakfast again. There was a calm method in his deportment. He.propped up his newspaper against the cruet stand and read while he finished a singularly hearty repast. It is to be regretted that he failed to soliloquise aloud, and addressed no farreaching questions as to the desirability or otherwise of human life to the toast-rack. This is to be regretted, because no one is more fully aware than the novel writer that the modern hero always soliloquises aloud, and that the said soliloquies should be reported verbatim. It is such a, simple method of taking the patient reader straightway inside the hero’s mind. We all must confess to having accompanied the modern lady-novelist inside many an heroic mind, and when there have looked with due edification, of course. The reader of these

lines will however la 6 compelled to find his - way - into vGland mind alone, because tHe recorder has never been there himself,'and Cannot undertake to guide others. v

It is not such an easy matter, you must understand, to make-one’s way into the secret mental chambers of a man like this. He never, as Helen Grace told her brother, volunteered anylhiDg' and he was a strongly characteristic speciihenrof the typical modern British aristocrat. That is'say, a man who cultivates [ad. nauseam almost) the art of minding his own business, and at the same lime teaches other people most plainly to mind theirs. - / - His actions and his words as serving to indicate the .workings of his mind may be studied. From the narration of these the intelligent reader will no doubt gather as much edification as he has humbly gathered in the footsteps of the. uiociern lady-novelist, trotting meekly after her through mazes most extraordinary, until the fact that this medley was the mind of a fellow-man seemed totally incredible. Such men may exist, but it does not fall to the lot of us poor males to meet them, though indeed we should scarcely appreciate .them if we did.

Nor would it materially assist matters if the immediate environments of Claud Tyars were minutely described. There was nothing singular about the room he occupied—merely a comfortable club-tike room with a few papers lying about, heavily furnished, sci upulously clean. The onlypsrsonal object to be seen - was a square tin box, technically called a deed-box, and in this were secured sundry documents and letters. A man with a memory like a ledger requires neither pigeon-holes nor note-books. In direct defiance of precedent, I shall omit to record whether Tyars helped himself to marmalade with a spoon or with his buttery knife ; moreover, posterity must eke out its existence without the knowledge of what he had for breakfast.

When he rose from the table and lighted a cigarette his first care was to collect his letters and throw them all into the fire. This was a daily custom. He seemed to a delight in heaping fresh responsibilities upon his memory. He spent the morning, at the docks, and in the. afternoon returned to'his rooms tired and rather dirty. In a few minutes all signs of fatigue and work were removed, and he

set off on foot to call at Brook street, one of the best-dressed men in Piccadilly. There was a sailor-like frankness in the way in which Salter, the admiral’s butler, opened the door when the visitor was fortunate enough to find anyone at home. The formal threshold question was dispensed with by the genial welcome or the heartfelt sorrow expressed by the man’s brown and furrowed face.

He welcomed Tyars with a special grin and an ill-concealed desire to grab at a forelock now brushed' scrupulously back. Salter had always endeavored through life to adapt himself ungrudgingly to circumstances, and he succeeded fairly well in remembering on most occasions that he was a butler, but his love for all mariners was a thing he never fully managed to Copceal, Land-lubbers he tolerated now, and he liked a soldier, but his honest dog-like heart went out to all who, like himself, loved a breeze of wind and-the sweet keen smell of spray. There is a bond in mutual love, whether it be of dog or horse, of sport or work, of land or sea, and Tyars always felt an inclination to shake honest John Salter by the hand when he saw him.

To these feelings of sympathy must be attributed the fact that Tyars forgot toinquire whether the admiral were at home. That someone was to be found upstairs in the drawing room was obvious enough from Salter’s beaming countenance, but the maritime butler omitted to give particulars. Thus it happened that the surprise was mutual when Tyars and Helen Grace found themselves face to face alone in the drawing room.

She had been seated at a small table near the window, and she rose to receive him, without however moving towards the door. He came forward without appearing to notice a slight movement of embarrassment on her part and shook hands. Most men would have launched into unnecessary explanations respecting . his presence, his motive for coming, and his firm resolve to leave again at once. But Claud Tyars occasionally took it upon himself to ignore the usages of bis fellows.' ;/ “I have much pleasure,” he said, with grave jocularity, “in accepting your kind invitation to dine oh Wednesday week, and I am y ours truly, Claud Tyars. ” Helen laughingly her pleasure that he was able to come, and returned, to her chair beside the little; table. She was quite her gentle, contained self again. The

signs of embarrassment, if such they were, had quite disappeared, and she asked to, find a chair for himself with just that modicum of''familiarity' which one allows onest-lf towards the intimate friend'of a brother or sister. This,he did, franklv bringing a seat nearer to the slnall table. “If,” he continued, “it will be any satisfaction to your hospitable mind,-I will disclose the fact that my friend Easton is also able to avail himself of your kindness.” “I am glad,” she said, glancing across at him with those gravely questioning eyes of hers, which somehow conjured up thoughts of olden times, of quieter days when there was time to think and live and loVe. They possessed the directness of gaze noticed in •Oswin Grace, but softened to a great degree, and this very softness was misleading. It disarmed one, for we all judge too freely from a mere turn of eyelid. It has been my own experience that mild and gentle eyes see just as much as those smaller orbs of which the upper and lower lid would lead one to look for great keenness of observation. Miss Winter would perhaps have been surprised to learn that Claud Tyars and Oswin—also Matthew Mark Easton later on —dreaded the glance and question of Helen Grace infinitely more than the inquisition of such an experienced woman of the world as herself. \Ve all know* the difference between outwitting a-keen diplomatist and deceiving a harmless, unsuspecting young girl. There is an unpleasant and pathetic self-z-eproach in worsting a foe unworthy of one’s steel. .Claud Tyars enjoyed a spar with Miss Winter, while he quailed inwardly before Helen’s soft eyes. Providence has placed in the hands of the guileless defensive arms of which those possessing the knowledge of good and evil have no suspicion. .Miss Winter began by suspecting Claud Tyars of some secret purpose, and in her intercourse with him this suspicion would have been obvious to a much less observant man. The trifling gestures, glances, words that betrayed this feeling would have been retained in an ordinary mind, while to a memory like his the links of the chain were each one evident. Miss Winter treated him as a conspirator and as a possible enemy ; Helen took an infinitely cleverer course she treated him frankly as a friend. ' To us who watch these people from one side it cannot be otherwise than manifest that this treatment was hard to cope with.

Whatever Claud Tyars might be at heart, villain or hero (and I set him up as neither), this girl’s method of taking him as she found him—namely, as a friend—could not fail to (ouch the best and manliest instincts of his heart.

If any of us, and doubly so if a young and lovely maiden, persistently and methodically treat a traitor as a friend, the chances are very much against the survi% r al of treachery. However subtle, however deep may be the traitor’s villainy, human nature lives somewhere in his black heart, and that one touch which is said to make the whole world kin can only be imparted by the hand of Faith. The way to make men trustworthy is to trust in them. And Helen Grace, in giving way to the intuition that drew tier towards this self-contained gentleman, assumed at one bound a power over him far and away stronger than that possessed by any other man or woman. After her words of politeness there -was a short silence, and as she looked at her companion across the little table a glow slowly rose over her throat and face. Then, as if giving way to a sudden impulse, she spoke. ( To be con tinued.)