Chapter V: An Allegation

“That’s a very neat and dainty little girl, the harbour-master’s daughter,” remarked the doctor to his friend as, half an hour later, they were seated together in the narrow little saloon of the _Mercur_, having a cigarette prior to turning in. For a month the black old steamer, with its odoriferous cargo of dried fish, whale oil, and cod liver oil had been their home, and their stomachs had long ago grown used to the flavour. To the uninitiated, however, the effluvia was poisonous, especially in a rough sea.

Dick Jervoise agreed, but remained unusually thoughtful. Truth to tell, the sweet face of Thyra Berentsen had so impressed him that he could think of nothing else. Those soft grey eyes, that slim, dainty figure, and that musical speech in three or four languages, had charmed him. Was it not entirely and utterly unexpected to find up there, so far north beyond civilisation, amid that rough, hard-handed fisher-folk, a girl so perfectly beautiful, so sweet and so child-like?

“By Jove!” declared Owen Odd, “she’d make a sensation even in the park in town! Fancy a girl like that being doomed to live in this awful place, where codfish is the sole and staple food and industry. When we started, Dick, I never thought we’d get into so high a latitude as this.”

“Well, we’ve taken Martin’s advice,” replied his friend. “He said if we rounded the North Cape we’d get into a part of the world that, though bleak and rugged, would interest us.”

“It interests you, my dear fellow, because you’ve been such a traveller; but for myself, who’ve had to stay at home grinding at hospital for my degree, I confess I’d prefer a warm climate with palms and oranges and girls in black mantillas. You’re too _blase_ for that, I know. You spend every winter on the Riviera, or in the south of Spain, while I’m forced to practise medicine among the poor of Hammersmith.”

Dick Jervoise was still staring straight before him, hardly conscious of what his friend the young doctor was saying.

“Well,” he exclaimed at last, with a faint smile, “the air up here is a bit fresher than in King Street, Hammersmith, isn’t it? Why, they say that along this coast, though the wind is so keen and the climate so terrible, there are no cases of consumption.”

“Because all the weaklings here die young, my dear old chap. Only the tough ones can survive. Fancy spending the winter here—three months of perpetual night—ugh!”

Dick, his mind still fixed upon the girl to whom the captain had that evening introduced him, said:

“I don’t know, Owen, whether it struck you to-night the same as myself, but somehow the face of Thyra Berentsen is, to me, a face of tragedy.”

“Tragedy!” laughed the young doctor from Hammersmith. “I don’t quite follow you, Dick.”

“Well, I scarcely know how to explain myself,” was the other’s reply. “In the countenance of some people I find their destiny portrayed quite distinctly. Perhaps other people do not possess the same faculty of—well, divination, shall we call it? But in the rare cases in which I have discerned the future in a person’s face I have seldom been in error.”

“That’s curious,” exclaimed Odd, suddenly interested. “And so you foretell tragedy and unhappiness for the pretty Thyra, eh?”

“Yes. I fear, alas! that unhappiness will be her lot, even though she’s now so merry and light-hearted.”

The young medical man shrugged his shoulders. He was used to the quaint ideas, and sometimes rather eccentric whims, of his old friend.

To him it seemed a quaint conceit to be able to foretell a girl’s future by her face. A woman’s past may often be read in her eyes, but to divine the future was something novel.

Both men smoked on in silence.

They had been at Eton together, and afterwards at Oxford. Subsequently, however, their ways in life had parted. Owen Odd, the fair-haired, thick-set young man, had studied medicine at Edinburgh, where he had taken his M. D. degree. He then expended what little capital he had in the purchase of a partnership in Exeter, but this did not turn out well. His partner bolted, and died abroad, and Odd, until he could pull himself together, had to be content with the not very lucrative post of assistant to a doctor living in Bridge Avenue, Hammersmith.

With Richard Jervoise it had been different. For him life held all the sweets and but few of the sorrows. The second son of Sir James Jervoise, Baronet, ex-Lord Mayor of London and underwriter at Lloyd’s, his lot had always been cast in pleasant places. When he was twenty-two his father, who had amassed a fortune in the City, had died, leaving the snug little Hertfordshire estate to Richard’s elder brother James, who of course, also succeeded to the baronetcy, and to him bequeathed property which brought him in a clear two thousand a year.

It was not much, as money goes nowadays, but it had enabled him to lead a life of easy luxury, travelling hither and thither just where his fancy willed, and now, at thirty-five, he found himself already a thorough-going cosmopolitan.

He was of a quiet, studious nature, almost the exact opposite to his elder brother, James, who had married a vain, giddy little woman six years before and was generally believed to have run through the greater portion of his inheritance. In order to be near his friend Odd, Dick Jervoise occupied a cosy little flat in Castelnau Mansions, Barnes, that big red-brick building which lies just across Hammersmith Bridge, commanding a wide sweep of the Thames. When he was at home, but few evenings passed that they did not sit together smoking and gossiping.

Owen’s practice lay mostly among the struggling poor in the back streets of Hammersmith, for his principal held the post of parish doctor, and often when he would relate some tale of distress—a sick widow with half a dozen hungry little ones, or an ailing father with a motherless family—Dick’s hand went instinctively to his pocket and never withdrew without a little gift for them.

Though of such a wandering, restless disposition, and though he spent much of his time at the gay Continental resorts, the dark-haired, good-looking man’s chief hobby was the study of folk-lore, a book upon which he intended one day to write.

Owen and he had long planned a trip together, but the absence of a doctor’s assistant for long periods is always difficult. At last, however, it had been arranged, a _locum tenens_ had been provided, and already the pair had been away from London seven weeks—weeks that had been extremely enjoyable, even though they were sailing that stormy Arctic sea.

If the truth were told, the fair-haired Thyra had charmed both men, even though neither of them was very impressionable where the fair sex were concerned. Both had already had their little affairs of the heart long ago. That of Dick Jervoise had been a somewhat painful one, and in consequence he had, like so many other men before him, made a solemn vow of celibacy. His friend knew some of the facts though not all. They were unpleasant facts, hence he never mentioned or recalled them. He knew of the unfortunate affair and, with a true friend’s solicitude, he was careful always to avoid any reference whatsoever to the subject.

He recollected Dick’s silent grief and unspoken bitterness; he remembered the great change that had been wrought in him by the now-buried episode.

Thus were they smoking in silence when John Martin entered the little saloon, and taking down his long Norwegian pipe, slowly began to fill it, asking in his broken English:

“Well, what do you think of Vardo, eh?”

“Interesting for half a day, captain,” Jervoise replied; “but a terrible place.”

“Yes,” admitted the captain, with a laugh. “Not much amusement here, is there? Poor old Berentsen! He must find it pretty dull, after his active life. But there, he’s an Arctic sailor, body and soul.”

“Pretty hard on his daughter, to be doomed to live here,” the doctor remarked. “She told me she was at school at Christiania, and finds it deadly dull after the capital.”

“I should think she does,” replied the captain as he lit his big pipe. “You should be up here in the long night. You’d never forget it.”

“But what do the people do all the winter?” asked Dick.

“Do? Well, they just manage to exist, and that’s about all,” was Martin’s reply. “Of course, a good many Lapps come down to the coast yonder, but beyond that all is still, and the place, five or six feet deep in snow, is silent as the grave.”

“It’s really a shame that such a pretty girl should be buried in such a hole as this!” declared Jervoise.

Instantly a strange look crossed the fair-haired captain’s face, and he stroked his yellow moustache. Then, a few moments later, he said:

“Well, perhaps she’s better here than down in Christiania, after all. I’ve taken her backwards and forwards several times, and we’ve had some merry music on that piano. She’s a splendid player, you know.”

“Why is she better here than in the capital, captain?” inquired Owen, his curiosity aroused.

“Oh, for certain reasons,” Martin answered, with a smile. “After leaving school she lived with an aunt for a year, and tasted the social delights of the capital.”

“You’re growing mysterious,” laughed Jervoise. “What’s the reason she is better here, in this awful place?”

But the captain only puffed at his long pipe, while the curl of his lip betrayed that he knew more than he intended to tell.

“Ah, a love affair, of course!” exclaimed Owen.

“As an old friend of the family I happen to know the truth,” replied the captain, suddenly growing serious; “but I’m not permitted to tell you why she was not allowed by her father to remain in Christiania.”

“A secret!” exclaimed Dick, bending towards the captain, very much interested. “Was it some schoolgirl love affair?”

“Mr. Jervoise,” replied the Arctic skipper, in a tone of slight reproach, “that question is really not a fair one. Captain Berentsen and his daughter are my friends, remember, and I have no right to discuss their private affairs.”

“Oh, pardon me,” Dick cried quickly. “I know I’m too inquisitive, only—well, the fact is that she’s delightful, and the mystery about her had only increased our interest.”

“Let the mystery rest, Mr. Jervoise. It’s far best, I assure you,” declared Martin. “No good is ever served by raking up the past, especially where a woman is concerned.”

The two Englishmen exchanged swift glances. What did the captain mean?

The past? Surely that young girl with the grey eyes and sweet, innocent face could not have had “a past!”

“Well,” remarked Owen, “whatever may be the reason of the girl’s recall from the south, certainly it’s very hard upon her that she should be exiled in this dreadful hole.”

“Best for her, doctor, best for her, I assure you,” declared the captain emphatically, his pipe between his teeth.

“Why?”

“For reasons which, as I have already told you, are secret,” he replied, his face, still sphinx-like. “The story is a curious one, I admit. I’m sorry I’m not permitted to tell it to you. If I did it would certainly surprise you both.”

“Why don’t you tell us, captain?” urged Jervoise persuasively. “You’re always so ready to explain everything. And we will both regard what you tell us as a confidence.”

“No, I cannot tell you the reason of Thyra Berentsen’s return to Vardo,” responded Martin firmly. “Please, please don’t press your question. It’s a secret—you understand—one that I am not permitted to divulge. Captain Berentsen is one of my best friends.”

Both the Englishmen were sadly disappointed. There was a reason—some strong reason, they realised—why the merry, easy-going Norwegian captain, who was always so merry and careless of everything, had so suddenly become obdurate, refusing to tell them anything.

The secret concerning the pretty Thyra was—well, it seemed that it was not altogether creditable. What, they wondered, could it be?

No explanation was forthcoming, therefore they both wished the captain good night and went along to their respective cabins.