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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Hermit of Far End, by Margaret Pedler
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Hermit of Far End
+
+Author: Margaret Pedler
+
+Release Date: April 5, 2006 [EBook #3159]
+Last Updated: March 16, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HERMIT OF FAR END ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dagny; John Bickers; David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE HERMIT OF FAR END
+
+By Margaret Pedler
+
+
+First Published 1920.
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE
+
+It was very quiet within the little room perched high up under the
+roof of Wallater's Buildings. Even the glowing logs in the grate burned
+tranquilly, without any of those brisk cracklings and sputterings which
+make such cheerful company of a fire, while the distant roar of London's
+traffic came murmuringly, dulled to a gentle monotone by the honeycomb
+of narrow side streets that intervened between the gaunt, red-brick
+Buildings and the bustling highways of the city.
+
+It seemed almost as though the little room were waiting for
+something--some one, just as the woman seated in the low chair at the
+hearthside was waiting.
+
+She sat very still, looking towards the door, her folded hands lying
+quietly on her knees in an attitude of patient expectancy. It was as if,
+although she found the waiting long and wearisome, she were yet quite
+sure she would not have to wait in vain.
+
+Once she bent forward and touched the little finger of her left hand,
+which bore, at its base, a slight circular depression such as comes from
+the constant wearing of a ring. She rubbed it softly with the forefinger
+of the other hand.
+
+“He will come,” she muttered. “He promised he would come if ever I sent
+the little pearl ring.”
+
+Then she leaned back once more, resuming her former attitude of patient
+waiting, and the insistent silence, momentarily broken by her movement,
+settled down again upon the room.
+
+Presently the long rays of the westering sun crept round the edge of
+some projecting eaves and, slanting in suddenly through the window,
+rested upon the quiet figure in the chair.
+
+Even in their clear, revealing light it would have been difficult
+to decide the woman's age, so worn and lined was the mask-like face
+outlined against the shabby cushion. She looked forty, yet there was
+something still girlish in the pose of her black-clad figure which
+seemed to suggest a shorter tale of years. Raven dark hair, lustreless
+and dull, framed a pale, emaciated face from which ill-health had
+stripped almost all that had once been beautiful. Only the immense dark
+eyes, feverishly bright beneath the sunken temples, and the still lovely
+line from jaw to pointed chin, remained unmarred, their beauty mocked
+by the pinched nostrils and drawn mouth, and by the scraggy, almost
+fleshless throat.
+
+It might have been the face of a dead woman, so still, so waxen was
+it, were it not for the eager brilliance of the eyes. In them, fixed
+watchfully upon the closed door, was concentrated the whole vitality of
+the failing body.
+
+Beyond that door, flight upon flight of some steps dropped seemingly
+endlessly one below the other, leading at last to a cement-floored
+vestibule, cheerless and uninviting, which opened on to the street.
+
+Perhaps there was no particular reason why the vestibule should have
+been other than it was, seeing that Wallater's Buildings had not been
+designed for the habitual loiterer. For such as he there remains always
+the “luxurious entrance-hall” of hotel advertisement.
+
+As far as the inhabitants of “Wallater's” were concerned, they clattered
+over the cement flooring of the vestibule in the mornings, on their way
+to work, without pausing to cast an eye of criticism upon its general
+aspect of uncomeliness, and dragged tired feet across it in an evening
+with no other thought but that of how many weary steps there were to
+climb before the room which served as “home” should be attained.
+
+But to the well-dressed, middle-aged man who now paused, half in doubt,
+on the threshold of the Buildings, the sordid-looking vestibule,
+with its bare floor and drab-coloured walls, presented an epitome of
+desolation.
+
+His keen blue eyes, in one of which was stuck a monocle attached to a
+broad black ribbon, rested appraisingly upon the ascending spiral of
+the stone stairway that vanished into the gloomy upper reaches of the
+Building.
+
+Against this chill background there suddenly took shape in his mind the
+picture of a spacious room, fragrant with the scent of roses--a room
+full of mellow tints of brown and gold, athwart which the afternoon
+sunlight lingered tenderly, picking out here the limpid blue of a bit of
+old Chinese “blue-and-white,” there the warm gleam of polished copper,
+or here again the bizarre, gem-encrusted image of an Eastern god. All
+that was rare and beautiful had gone to the making of the room, and
+rarer and more beautiful than all, in the eyes of the man whose memory
+now recalled it, had been the woman to whom it had belonged, whose
+loveliness had glowed within it like a jewel in a rich setting.
+
+With a mental jolt his thoughts came back to the present, to the bare,
+commonplace ugliness of Wallater's Buildings.
+
+“My God!” he muttered. “Pauline--here!”
+
+Then with swift steps he began the ascent of the stone steps, gradually
+slackening in pace until, when he reached the summit and stood facing
+that door behind which a woman watched and waited, he had perforce to
+pause to regain his breath, whilst certain twinges in his right knee
+reminded him that he was no longer as young as he had been.
+
+In answer to his knock a low voice bade him enter, and a minute later he
+was standing in the quiet little room, his eyes gazing levelly into the
+feverish dark ones of the woman who had risen at his entrance.
+
+“So!” she said, while an odd smile twisted her bloodless lips. “You
+have come, after all. Sometimes--I began to doubt if you would. It is
+days--an eternity since I sent for you.”
+
+“I have been away,” he replied simply. “And my mail was not forwarded. I
+came directly I received the ring--at once, as I told you I should.”
+
+“Well, sit down and let us talk”--impatiently--“it doesn't
+matter--nothing matters since you have come in time.”
+
+“In time? What do you mean? In time for what? Pauline, tell
+me”--advancing a step--“tell me, in God's Name, what are you doing in
+this place?” He glanced significantly round the shabby room with its
+threadbare carpet and distempered walls.
+
+“I'm living here--”
+
+“_Living here? You?_”
+
+“Yes. Why not? Soon”--indifferently--“I shall be dying here. It is, at
+least, as good a place to die in as any other.”
+
+“Dying?” The man's pleasant baritone voice suddenly shook. “Dying?
+Oh, no, no! You've been ill--I can see that--but with care and good
+nursing--”
+
+“Don't deceive yourself, my friend,” she interrupted him remorselessly.
+“See, come to the window. Now look at me--and then don't talk any more
+twaddle about care and good nursing!”
+
+She had drawn him towards the window, till they were standing together
+in the full blaze of the setting sun. Then she turned and faced him--a
+gaunt wreck of splendid womanhood, her fingers working nervously, whilst
+her too brilliant eyes, burning in their grey, sunken, sockets, searched
+his face curiously.
+
+“You've worn better than I have,” she observed at last, breaking the
+silence with a short laugh, “you must be--let me see--fifty. While I'm
+barely thirty-one--and I look forty--and the rest.”
+
+Suddenly he reached out and gathered her thin, restless hands into his,
+holding them in a kind, firm clasp.
+
+“Oh, my dear!” he said sadly. “Is there nothing I can do?”
+
+“Yes,” she answered steadily. “There is. And it's to ask you if you will
+do it that I sent for you. Do you suppose”--she swallowed, battling with
+the tremor in her voice--“that I _wanted_ you to see me--as I am now?
+It was months--months before I could bring myself to send you the little
+pearl ring.”
+
+He stooped and kissed one of the hands he held.
+
+“Dear, foolish woman! You would always be--just Pauline--to me.”
+
+Her eyes softened suddenly.
+
+“So you never married, after all?”
+
+He straightened his shoulders, meeting her glance squarely--almost
+sternly.
+
+“Did you imagine that I should?” he asked quietly.
+
+“No, no, I suppose not.” She looked away. “What a mess I made of things,
+didn't I? However, it's all past now; the game's nearly over, thank
+Heaven! Life, since that day”--the eyes of the man and woman met again
+in swift understanding--“has been one long hell.”
+
+“He--the man you married--”
+
+“Made that hell. I left him after six years of it, taking the child with
+me.”
+
+“The child?” A curious expression came into his eyes, resentful, yet
+tinged at the same time with an oddly tender interest. “Was there a
+child?”
+
+“Yes--I have a little daughter.”
+
+“And did your husband never trace you?” he asked, after a pause.
+
+“He never tried to”--grimly. “Afterwards--well, it was downhill all the
+way. I didn't know how to work, and by that time I had learned my health
+was going. Since then, I've lived on the proceeds of the pawnshop--I
+had my jewels, you know--and on the odd bits of money I could scrape
+together by taking in sewing.”
+
+A groan burst from the man's dry lips.
+
+“Oh, my God!” he cried. “Pauline, Pauline, it was cruel of you to keep
+me in ignorance! I could at least have helped.”
+
+She shook her head.
+
+“I couldn't take--_your_ money,” she said quietly. “I was too proud
+for that. But, dear friend”--as she saw him wince--“I'm not proud any
+longer. I think Death very soon shows us how little--pride--matters; it
+falls into its right perspective when one is nearing the end of things.
+I'm so little proud now that I've sent for you to ask your help.”
+
+“Anything--anything!” he said eagerly.
+
+“It's rather a big thing that I'm going to ask, I'm afraid. I want you,”
+ she spoke slowly, as though to focus his attention, “to take care of my
+child--when I am gone.”
+
+He stared at her doubtfully.
+
+“But her father? Will he consent?” he asked.
+
+“He is dead. I received the news of his death six months ago. There is
+no one--no one who has any claim upon her. And no one upon whom she has
+any claim, poor little atom!”--smiling rather bitterly. “Ah! Don't
+deny me!”--her thin, eager hands clung to his--“don't deny me--say that
+you'll take her!”
+
+“Deny you? But, of course I shan't deny you. I'm only thankful that you
+have turned to me at last--that you have not quite forgotten!”
+
+“Forgotten?” Her voice vibrated. “Believe me or not, as you will,
+there has never been a day for nine long years when I have not
+remembered--never a night when I have not prayed God to bless you----”
+ She broke off, her mouth working uncontrollably.
+
+Very quietly, very tenderly, he drew her into his arms. There was no
+passion in the caress--for was it not eventide, and the lengthening
+shadows of night already fallen across her path?--but there was infinite
+love, and forgiveness, and understanding. . . .
+
+“And now, may I see her--the little daughter?”
+
+The twilight had gathered about them during that quiet hour of reunion,
+wherein old hurts had been healed, old sins forgiven, and now at last
+they had come back together out of the past to the recognition of all
+that yet remained to do.
+
+There came a sound of running footsteps on the stairs outside--light,
+eager steps, buoyant with youth, that evidently found no hardship in the
+long ascent from the street level.
+
+“Hark!” The woman paused, her head a little turned to listen. “Here she
+comes. No one else on this floor”--with a whimsical smile--“could take
+the last flight of those awful stairs at a run.”
+
+The door flew open, and the man received an impressionist picture of
+which the salient features were a mop of black hair, a scarlet jersey,
+and a pair of abnormally long black legs.
+
+Then the door closed with a bang, and the blur of black and scarlet
+resolved itself into a thin, eager-faced child of eight, who paused
+irresolutely upon perceiving a stranger in the room.
+
+“Come here, kiddy,” the woman held out her hand. “This”--and her eyes
+sought those of the man as though beseeching confirmation--“is your
+uncle.”
+
+The child advanced and shook hands politely, then stood still, staring
+at this unexpectedly acquired relative.
+
+Her sharp-pointed face was so thin and small that her eyes, beneath
+their straight, dark brows, seemed to be enormous--black, sombre eyes,
+having no kinship with the intense, opaque brown so frequently miscalled
+black, but suggestive of the vibrating darkness of night itself.
+
+Instinctively the man's glance wandered to the face of the child's
+mother.
+
+“You think her like me?” she hazarded.
+
+“She is very like you,” he assented gravely.
+
+A wry smile wrung her mouth.
+
+“Let us hope that the likeness is only skin-deep, then!” she said
+bitterly. “I don't want her life to be--as mine has been.”
+
+“If,” he said gently, “if you will trust her to me, Pauline, I swear
+to you that I will do all in my power to save her from--what you've
+suffered.”
+
+The woman shrugged her shoulders.
+
+“It's all a matter of character,” she said nonchalantly.
+
+“Yes,” he agreed simply. Then he turned to the child, who was standing
+a little distance away from him, eyeing him distrustfully. “What do you
+say, child! You wouldn't be afraid to come and live with me, would you?”
+
+“I am never afraid of people,” she answered promptly. “Except the man
+who comes for the rent; he is fat, and red, and a beast. But I'd rather
+go on living with Mumsy, thank you--Uncle.” The designation came after a
+brief hesitation. “You see,” she added politely, as though fearful that
+she might have hurt his feelings, “we've always lived together.” She
+flung a glance of almost passionate adoration at her mother, who turned
+towards the man, smiling a little wistfully.
+
+“You see how it is with her?” she said. “She lives by her
+affections--conversely from her mother, her heart rules her head. You
+will be gentle with her, won't you, when the wrench comes?”
+
+“My dear,” he said, taking her hand in his and speaking with the quiet
+solemnity of a man who vows himself before some holy altar, “I shall
+never forget that she is your child--the child of the woman I love.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+A MORNING ADVENTURE
+
+The dewy softness of early morning still hung about the woods, veiling
+their autumn tints in broken, drifting swathes of pearly mist, while
+towards the east, where the rising sun pushed long, dim fingers of light
+into the murky greyness of the sky, a tremulous golden haze grew and
+deepened.
+
+Little, delicate twitterings vibrated on the air--the sleepy chirrup
+of awakening birds, the rustle of a fallen leaf beneath the pad of some
+belated cat stealing back to the domestic hearth, the stir of a rabbit
+in its burrow.
+
+Presently these sank into insignificance beside a more definite
+sound--the crackle of dry leaves and the snapping of twigs beneath a
+heavier footfall than that of any marauding Tom, and through a clearing
+in the woods slouched the figure of a man, gun on shoulder, the secret
+of his bulging side-pockets betrayed by the protruding tail feathers of
+a cock-pheasant.
+
+He was not an attractive specimen of mankind. Beneath the peaked cap,
+crammed well down on to his head, gleamed a pair of surly, watchful
+eyes, and, beneath these again, the unshaven, brutal, out-thrust jaw
+offered little promise of better things.
+
+Nor did his appearance in any way belie his reputation, which was
+unsavory in the extreme. Indeed, if report spoke truly, “Black Brady,”
+ as he was commonly called, had on one occasion only escaped the
+gallows thanks to the evidence of a village girl--one who had loved him
+recklessly, to her own undoing. Every one had believed her evidence to
+be false, but, as she had stuck to what she said through thick and thin,
+and as no amount of cross-examination had been able to shake her, Brady
+had contrived to slip through the hands of the police.
+
+Conceiving, however, that, after this episode, the air of his native
+place might prove somewhat insalubrious for a time, he had migrated
+thence to Fallowdene, establishing himself in a cottage on the outskirts
+of the village and finding the major portion of his sustenance by
+skillfully poaching the preserves of the principal landowners of the
+surrounding district.
+
+On this particular morning he was well content with his night's work. He
+had raided the covers of one Patrick Lovell, the owner of Barrow Court,
+who, although himself a confirmed invalid and debarred from all manner
+of sport, employed two or three objectionably lynx-eyed keepers to
+safeguard his preserves for the benefit of his heirs and assigns.
+
+No covers were better stocked than those of Barrow Court, but Brady
+rarely risked replenishing his larder from them, owing to the extreme
+wideawakeness of the head gamekeeper. It was therefore not without a
+warm glow of satisfaction about the region of his heart that he made
+his way homeward through the early morning, reflecting on the ease with
+which last night's marauding expedition had been conducted. He even
+pursed his lips together and whistled softly--a low, flute-like sound
+that might almost have been mistaken for the note of a blackbird.
+
+But it is unwise to whistle before you are out of the wood, and Brady's
+triumph was short-lived. Swift as a shadow, a lithe figure darted out
+from among the trees and planted itself directly in his path.
+
+With equal swiftness, Brady brought his gunstock to his shoulder. Then
+he hesitated, finger on trigger, for the lion in his path was no burly
+gamekeeper, as, for the first moment, he had supposed. It was a woman
+who faced him--a mere girl of twenty, whose slender figure looked
+somehow boyish in its knitted sports coat and very short, workmanlike
+skirt. The suggestion of boyishness was emphasized by her attitude, as
+she stood squarely planted in front of Black Brady, her hands thrust
+deep into her pockets, her straight young back very flat, and her head a
+little tilted, so that her eyes might search the surly face beneath the
+peaked cap.
+
+They were arresting eyes--amazingly dark, “like two patches o' the sky
+be night,” as Brady described them long afterwards to a crony of his,
+and they gazed up at the astonished poacher from a small, sharply angled
+face, as delicately cut as a cameo.
+
+“Put that gun down!” commanded an imperious young voice, a voice that
+held something indescribably sweet and thrilling in its vibrant quality.
+“What are you doing in these woods?”
+
+Brady, recovering from his first surprise, lowered his gun, but answered
+truculently--
+
+“Never you mind what I'm doin'.”
+
+The girl pointed significantly to his distended pockets.
+
+“I don't need to ask. Empty out your pockets and take yourself off. Do
+you hear?” she added sharply, as the man made no movement to obey.
+
+“I shan't do nothin' o' the sort,” he growled. “You go your ways and
+leave me to go mine--or it'll be the worse for 'ee.” He raised his gun
+threateningly.
+
+The girl smiled.
+
+“I'm not in the least afraid of that gun,” she said tranquilly. “But you
+are afraid to use it,” she added.
+
+“Am I?” He wheeled suddenly, and, on the instant, a deafening report
+shattered the quiet of the woods. Then the smoke drifted slowly aside,
+revealing the man and the girl face to face once more.
+
+But although she still stood her ground, dark shadows had suddenly
+painted themselves beneath her eyes, and the slight young breast beneath
+the jaunty sports coat rose and fell unevenly. Within the shelter of her
+coat-pockets her hands were clenched tightly.
+
+“That was a waste of a good cartridge,” she observed quietly. “You only
+fired in the air.”
+
+Black Brady glared at her.
+
+“If I'd liked, I could 'ave killed 'ee as easy as knockin' a bird off a
+bough,” he said sullenly.
+
+“You could,” she agreed. “And then I should have been dead and you would
+have been waiting for a hanging. Of the two, I think my position would
+have been the more comfortable.”
+
+A look of unwilling admiration spread itself slowly over the man's face.
+
+“You be a cool 'and, and no mistake,” he acknowledged. “I thought to
+frighten you off by firin'.”
+
+The girl nodded.
+
+“Well, as you haven't, suppose you allow that I've won and that it's up
+to me to dictate terms. If my uncle were to see you--”
+
+“I'm not comin' up to the house--don't you think it, win or no win,”
+ broke in Brady hastily.
+
+The girl regarded him judicially.
+
+“I don't think we particularly want you up at the house,” she remarked.
+“If you'll do as I say--empty your pockets--you may go.”
+
+The man reluctantly made as though to obey, but even while he hesitated,
+he saw the girl's eyes suddenly look past him, over his shoulder, and,
+turning suspiciously, he swung straight into the brawny grip of the
+head keeper, who, hearing a shot fired, had deserted his breakfast and
+hurried in the direction of the sound and now came up close behind him.
+
+“Caught this time, Brady, my man,” chuckled the keeper triumphantly.
+“It's gaol for you this journey, as sure's my name's Clegg. Has the
+fellow been annoying you, Miss Sara?” he added, touching his hat
+respectfully as he turned towards the girl, whilst with his other hand
+he still retained his grip of Brady's arm.
+
+She laughed as though suddenly amused.
+
+“Nothing to speak of, Clegg,” she replied. “And I'm afraid you mustn't
+send him to prison this time. I told him if he would empty his pockets
+he might go. That still holds good,” she added, looking towards Brady,
+who flashed her a quick look of gratitude from beneath his heavy brows
+and proceeded to turn out the contents of his pockets with commendable
+celerity.
+
+But the keeper protested against the idea of releasing his prisoner.
+
+“It's a fair cop, miss,” he urged entreatingly.
+
+“Can't help it, Clegg. I promised. So you must let him go.”
+
+The man obeyed with obvious reluctance. Then, when Brady had hastened to
+make himself scarce, he turned and scrutinized the girl curiously.
+
+“You all right, Miss Sara? Shall I see you up to the house?”
+
+“No, thanks, Clegg,” she said. “I'm--I'm quite all right. You can go
+back to your breakfast.”
+
+“Very good, miss.” He touched his hat and plunged back again into the
+woods.
+
+The girl stood still, looking after him. She was rather white, but she
+remained very erect and taut until the keeper had disappeared from view.
+Then the tense rigidity of her figure slackened, as a stretched wire
+slackens when the pull on it suddenly ceases, and she leaned helpless
+against the trunk of a tree, limp and shaking, every fine-strung nerve
+ajar with the strain of her recent encounter with Black Brady. As she
+felt her knees giving way weakly beneath her, a dogged little smile
+twisted her lips.
+
+“You are a cool 'and, and no mistake,” she whispered shakily, an
+ironical gleam flickering in her eyes.
+
+She propped herself up against the friendly tree, and, after a few
+minutes, the quick throbbing of her heart steadied down and the colour
+began to steal back into her lips. At length she stooped, and, picking
+up her hat, which had fallen off and lay on the ground at her feet,
+she proceeded to make her way through the woods in the direction of the
+house.
+
+Barrow Court, as the name implied, was situated on the brow of a hill,
+sheltered from the north and easterly winds by a thick belt of pines
+which half-encircled it, for ever murmuring and whispering together as
+pine-trees will.
+
+To Sara Tennant, the soft, sibilant noise was a beloved and familiar
+sound. From the first moment when, as a child, she had come to live
+at Barrow, the insistent murmur of the pines had held an extraordinary
+fascination for her. That, and their pungent scent, seemed to be
+interwoven with her whole life there, like the thread of some single
+colour that persists throughout the length of a woven fabric.
+
+She had been desperately miserable and lonely at the time of her advent
+at the Court; and all through the long, wakeful vigil of her first
+night, it had seemed to her vivid, childish imagination as though
+the big, swaying trees, bleakly etched against the moonlit sky, had
+understood her desolation and had whispered and crooned consolingly
+outside her window. Since then, she had learned that the voice of
+the pines, like the voice of the sea, is always pitched in a key that
+responds to the mood of the listener. If you chance to be glad, then the
+pines will whisper of sunshine and summer, little love idylls that one
+tree tells to another, but if your heart is heavy within you, you will
+hear only a dirge in the hush of their waving tops.
+
+As Sara emerged from the shelter of the woods, her eyes instinctively
+sought the great belt of trees that crowned the opposite hill, with
+the grey bulk of the house standing out in sharp relief against their
+eternal green. A little smile of pure pleasure flitted across her face;
+to her there was something lovable and rather charming about the very
+architectural inconsistencies which prevented Barrow Court from being,
+in any sense of the word, a show place.
+
+The central portion of the house, was comparatively modern, built of
+stone in solid Georgian fashion, but quaintly flanked at either end by a
+massive, mediaeval tower, survival of the good old days when the Lovells
+of Fallowdene had held their own against all comers, not even excepting,
+in the case of one Roderic, his liege lord and master the King, the
+latter having conceived a not entirely unprovoked desire to deprive him
+of his lands and liberty--a desire destined, however, to be frustrated
+by the solid masonry of Barrow.
+
+A flagged terrace ran the whole length of the long, two-storied house,
+broadening out into wide wings at the base of either tower, and, below
+the terrace, green, shaven lawns, dotted with old yew, sloped down
+to the edge of a natural lake which lay in the hollow of the valley,
+gleaming like a sheet of silver in the morning sunlight.
+
+Prim walks, bordered by high box hedges, intersected the carefully
+tended gardens, and along one of these Sara took her way, quickening her
+steps to a run as the booming summons of a gong suddenly reverberated on
+the air.
+
+She reached the house, flushed and a little breathless, and, tossing
+aside her hat as she sped through the big, oak-beamed hall, hurried into
+a pleasant, sunshiny room, where a couple of menservants were moving
+quietly about, putting the finishing touches to the breakfast table.
+
+An invalid's wheeled chair stood close to the open window, and in it,
+with a rug tucked about his knees, was seated an elderly man of some
+sixty-two or three years of age. He was leaning forward, giving animated
+instructions to a gardener who listened attentively from the terrace
+outside, and his alert, eager, manner contrasted oddly with the
+helplessness of limb indicated by the necessity for the wheeled chair.
+
+“That's all, Digby,” he said briskly. “I'll go through the hot-houses
+myself some time to-day.”
+
+As he spoke, he signed to one of the footmen in the room to close the
+window, and then propelled his chair with amazing rapidity to the table.
+
+The instant and careful attention accorded to his commands by both
+gardener and servant was characteristic of every one in Patrick Lovell's
+employment. Although he had been a more or less helpless invalid for
+seven years, he had never lost his grip of things. He was exactly as
+much master of Barrow Court, the dominant factor there, as he had been
+in the good times that were gone, when no day's shooting had been too
+long for him, no run with hounds too fast.
+
+He sat very erect in his wheeled chair, a handsome, well-groomed
+old aristocrat. Clean-shaven, except for a short, carefully trimmed
+moustache, grizzled like his hair, his skin exhibited the waxen pallor
+which so often accompanies chronic ill-health, and his face was furrowed
+by deep lines, making him look older than his sixty-odd years. His vivid
+blue eyes were extraordinarily keen and penetrating; possibly they, and
+the determined, squarish jaw, were answerable for that unquestioning
+obedience which was invariably accorded him.
+
+“Good-morning, uncle mine!” Sara bent to kiss him as the door closed
+quietly behind the retreating servants.
+
+Patrick Lovell screwed his monocle into his eye and regarded her
+dispassionately.
+
+“You look somewhat ruffled,” he observed, “both literally and
+figuratively.”
+
+She laughed, putting up a careless hand to brush back the heavy tress of
+dark hair that had fallen forward over her forehead.
+
+“I've had an adventure,” she answered, and proceeded to recount her
+experience with Black Brady. When she reached the point where the man
+had fired off his gun, Patrick interrupted explosively.
+
+“The infernal scoundrel! That fellow will dangle at the end of a rope
+one of these days--and deserve it, too. He's a murderous ruffian--a
+menace to the countryside.”
+
+“He only fired into the air--to frighten me,” explained Sara.
+
+Her uncle looked at her curiously.
+
+“And did he succeed?” he asked.
+
+She bestowed a little grin of understanding upon him.
+
+“He did,” she averred gravely. Then, as Patrick's bushy eyebrows came
+together in a bristling frown, she added: “But he remained in ignorance
+of the fact.”
+
+The frown was replaced by a twinkle.
+
+“That's all right, then,” came the contented answer.
+
+“All the same, I really _was_ frightened,” she persisted.
+“It gave me quite a nasty turn, as the servants say. I don't
+think”--meditatively--“that I enjoy being shot at. Am I a funk, my
+uncle?”
+
+“No, my niece”--with some amusement. “On the contrary, I should
+define the highest type of courage as self-control in the presence of
+danger--not necessarily absence of fear. The latter is really no more
+credit to you than eating your dinner when you're hungry.”
+
+“Mine, then, I perceive to be the highest type of courage,” chuckled
+Sara. “It's a comforting reflection.”
+
+It was, when propounded by Patrick Lovell, to whom physical fear was
+an unknown quantity. Had he lived in the days of the Terror, he would
+assuredly have taken his way to the guillotine with the same gay,
+debonair courage which enabled the nobles of France to throw down their
+cards and go to the scaffold with a smiling promise to the other players
+that they would continue their interrupted game in the next world.
+
+And when Sara had come to live with Patrick, a dozen years ago, he had
+rigorously inculcated in her youthful mind a contempt for every form of
+cowardice, moral and physical.
+
+It had not been all plain sailing, for Sara was a highly strung child,
+with the vivid imagination that is the primary cause of so much that is
+carelessly designated cowardice. But Patrick had been very wise in his
+methods. He had never rebuked her for lack of courage; he had simply
+taken it for granted that she would keep her grip of herself.
+
+Sara's thoughts slid back to an incident which had occurred during their
+early days together. She had been very much alarmed by the appearance
+of a huge mastiff who was permitted the run of the house, and her uncle,
+noticing her shrinking avoidance of the rather formidable looking beast,
+had composedly bidden her take him to the stables and chain him up. For
+an instant the child had hesitated. Then, something in the man's quiet
+confidence that she would obey had made its claim on her childish pride,
+and, although white to the lips, she had walked straight up to the great
+creature, hooked her small fingers into his collar, and marched him off
+to his kennel.
+
+Courage under physical pain she had learned from seeing Patrick contend
+with his own infirmity. He suffered intensely at times, but neither
+groan nor word of complaint was ever allowed to escape his set lips.
+Only Sara would see, after what he described as “one of my damn bad
+days, m'dear,” new lines added to the deepening network that had so aged
+his appearance lately.
+
+At these times she herself endured agonies of reflex suffering and
+apprehension, since her attachment to Patrick Lovell was the moving
+factor of her existence. Other girls had parents, brothers and sisters,
+and still more distant relatives upon whom their capacity for loving
+might severally expend itself. Sara had none of these, and the whole
+devotion of her intensely ardent nature lavished itself upon the man
+whom she called uncle.
+
+Their mutual attitude was something more than the accepted relationship
+implied. They were friends--these two--intimate friends, comrades on an
+equal footing, respecting each other's reserves and staunchly loyal to
+one another. Perhaps this was accounted for in a measure by the very
+fact that they were united by no actual bond of blood. That Sara was
+Patrick's niece by adoption was all the explanation of her presence at
+Barrow Court that he had ever vouchsafed to the world in general, and
+it practically amounted to the sum total of Sara's own knowledge of the
+matter.
+
+Hers had been a life of few relationships. She had no recollection of
+any one who had ever stood towards her in the position of a father, and
+though she realized that the one-time existence of such a personage must
+be assumed, she had never felt much curiosity concerning him.
+
+The horizon of her earliest childhood had held but one figure, that of
+an adored mother, and “home” had been represented by a couple of
+meager rooms at the top of a big warren of a place known as Wallater's
+Buildings, tenanted principally by families of the artisan class.
+
+Thus debarred by circumstances from the companionship of other children,
+Sara's whole affections had centred round her mother, and she had
+never forgotten the sheer, desolating anguish of that moment when the
+dreadful, unresponsive silence of the sheeted figure, lying in the
+shabby little bedroom they had shared together, brought home to her the
+significance of death.
+
+She had not cried, as most children of eight would have done, but she
+had suffered in a kind of frozen silence, incapable of any outward
+expression of grief.
+
+“Unfeelin', I call it!” declared the woman who lived on the same floor
+as the Tennants, and who had attended at the doctor's behest, to
+a friend and neighbour who was occupied in boiling a kettle over a
+gas-ring. “Must be a cold-'earted child as can see 'er own mother lyin'
+dead without so much as a tear.” She sniffed. “'Aven't you got that cup
+o' tea ready yet? I can allus drink a cup o' tea after a layin'-out.”
+
+Sara had watched the two women drinking their tea with brooding eyes,
+her small breast heaving with the intensity of her resentment. Without
+being in any way able to define her emotions, she felt that there was
+something horrible in their frank enjoyment of the steaming liquid,
+gulped down to the cheerful accompaniment of a running stream of
+intimate gossip, while all the time that quiet figure lay on the narrow
+bed--motionless, silent, wrapped in the strange and immense aloofness of
+the dead.
+
+Presently one of the women poured out a third cup of tea and pushed
+it towards the child, slopping in the thin, bluish-looking milk with a
+generous hand.
+
+“'Ave a cup, child. It's as good a drop o' tea as ever I tasted.”
+
+For a moment Sara stared at her speechlessly; then, with a sudden
+passionate gesture, she swept the cup on to the floor.
+
+The clash of breaking china seemed to ring through the chamber of death,
+the women's voices rose shrilly in reproof, and Sara, fleeing into
+the adjoining room, cast herself face downwards upon the floor,
+horror-stricken. It was not the raucous anger of the women which she
+heeded; that passed her by. But she had outraged some fine, instinctive
+sense by reverence that lay deep within her own small soul.
+
+Still she did not cry. Only, as she lay on the ground with her face
+hidden, she kept repeating in a tense whisper--
+
+“You know I didn't mean it, God! You know I didn't mean it!”
+
+It was then that Patrick Lovell had appeared, coming in response to she
+knew not what summons, and had taken her away with him. And the tendrils
+of her affection, wrenched from their accustomed hold, had twined
+themselves about this grey-haired, blue-eyed man, set so apart by every
+_soigné_ detail of his person from the shabby, slip-shod world which
+Sara had known, but who yet stood beside the bed on which her mother
+lay, with a wrung mouth beneath his clipped moustache and a mist of
+tears dimming his keen eyes.
+
+Sara had loved him for those tears.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE PASSING OF PATRICK LOVELL
+
+Autumn had given place to winter, and a bitter northeast wind was
+tearing through the pines, shrieking, as it fled, like the cry of a lost
+soul. The eerie sound of it served in some indefinable way to emphasise
+the cosy warmth and security of the room where Sara and her uncle were
+sitting, their chairs drawn close up to the log fire which burned on the
+wide, old-fashioned hearth.
+
+Sara was engrossed in a book, her head bent low above its pages,
+unconscious of the keen blue eyes that had been regarding her
+reflectively for some minutes.
+
+With the passage of the last two months, Patrick's face seemed to
+have grown more waxen, worn a little finer, and now, as he sat quietly
+watching the slender figure on the opposite side of the hearth, it wore
+a curious, inscrutable expression, as though he were mentally balancing
+the pros and cons of some knotty point.
+
+At last he apparently came to a decision, for he laid aside the
+newspaper he had been reading a few moments before, muttering half
+audibly:
+
+“Must take your fences as you come to 'em.”
+
+Sara looked up abstractedly.
+
+“Did you say anything?” she asked doubtfully.
+
+Patrick gave his shoulders a grim shake.
+
+“I'm going to,” he replied. “It's something that must be said, and,
+as I've never been in favour of postponing a thing just because its
+disagreeable, we may as well get it over.”
+
+He had focused Sara's attention unmistakably now.
+
+“What is it?” she asked quickly. “You haven't had bad news?”
+
+An odd smile crossed his face.
+
+“On the contrary.” He hesitated a moment, then continued: “I had a
+longish talk with Dr. McPherson yesterday, and the upshot of it is that
+I may be required to hand in my checks any day now. I wanted you to
+know,” he added simply.
+
+It was characteristic of the understanding between these two that
+Patrick made no effort to “break the news,” or soften it in any way. He
+had always been prepared to face facts himself, and he had trained Sara
+in the same stern creed.
+
+So that now, when he quietly stated in plain language the thing which
+she had been inwardly dreading for some weeks--for, though silent on
+the matter, she had not failed to observe his appearance of increasing
+frailty--she took it like a thorough-bred. Her eyes dilated a little,
+but her voice was quite steady as she said:
+
+“You mean----”
+
+“I mean that before very long I shall put off this vile body.” He
+glanced down whimsically at his useless legs, cloaked beneath the
+inevitable rug. “After all,” he continued, “life--and death--are both
+fearfully interesting if one only goes to meet them instead of running
+away from them. Then they become bogies.”
+
+“And what shall I do . . . without you?” she said very low.
+
+“Aye.” He nodded. “It's worse for those who are left behind. I've been
+one of them, and I know. I remember--” He broke off short, his blue
+eyes dreaming. Presently he gave his shoulders the characteristic little
+shake which presaged the dismissal of some recalcitrant secret thought,
+and went on in quick, practical tones.
+
+“I don't want to go out leaving a lot of loose ends behind me--a tangle
+for you to unravel. So, since the fiat has gone forth--McPherson's a
+sound man and knows his job--let's face it together, little old pal. It
+will mean your leaving Barrow, you know,” he added tentatively.
+
+Sara nodded, her face rather white.
+
+“Yes, I know. I shan't care--then.”
+
+“Oh yes, you will”--with shrewd wisdom. “It will be an extra drop in
+the bucket, you'll find, when the time comes. Unfortunately, however,
+there's no getting round the entail, and when I go, my cousin, Major
+Durward, will reign in my stead.”
+
+“Why does the Court go to a Durward?” asked Sara listlessly. “Aren't
+there any Lovells to inherit?”
+
+“He is a Lovell. His father and mine were brothers, but his godfather,
+old Timothy Durward left him his property on condition that he adopted
+the name. Geoffrey Durward has a son called Timothy--after the old man.”
+
+“The Durwards have never been here since I came to live with you,”
+ observed Sara thoughtfully. “Don't you care for him--your cousin, I
+mean?”
+
+“Geoffrey? Yes, he's a charming fellow, and he's been a rattling good
+soldier--got his D.S.O. in the South African campaign. But he and his
+wife--she was a Miss Eden--were stationed in India so many years, I
+rather lost touch with them. They came home when the Durward
+property fell in to them--about seven or eight years ago. She, I
+think”--reminiscently--“was one of the most beautiful women I've ever
+seen.”
+
+The shadow in Sara's eyes lifted for a moment.
+
+“Is that the reason you've always remained a bachelor?” she asked,
+twinkling.
+
+“God bless my soul, no! I never wanted to marry Elisabeth Eden--though
+there were plenty of men who did.” He regarded Sara with an odd smile.
+“Some day, you'll know--why I never wanted to marry Elisabeth.”
+
+“Tell me now.”
+
+He shook his head.
+
+“No. You'll know soon enough--soon enough.”
+
+He was silent, fallen a-dreaming once again; and again he seemed to
+pull himself up short, forcing himself back to the consideration of the
+practical needs of the moment.
+
+“As I was saying, Sara, sooner or later you'll have to turn out of the
+old Court. It's entailed, and the income with it. But I've a clear four
+hundred a year, altogether apart from the Barrow moneys, and that, at my
+death, will be yours.”
+
+“I don't want to hear about it!” burst out Sara passionately. “It's
+hateful even talking of such things.”
+
+Patrick smiled, amused and a little touched by youth's lack of worldly
+wisdom.
+
+“Don't be a fool, my dear. I shan't die a day sooner for having made
+my will--and I shall die a deal more comfortably, knowing that you are
+provided for. I promised your mother that, as far as lay in my power,
+I would shield you from wrecking your life as she wrecked hers. And
+money--a secure little income of her own--is a very good sort of
+shield for a women. Four hundred's not enough to satisfy a mercenary
+individual, but it's enough to enable a woman to marry for love--and
+not for a home!” He spoke with a kind of repressed bitterness, as though
+memory had stirred into fresh flame the embers of some burnt-out passion
+of regret, and Sara looked at him with suddenly aroused interest.
+
+But apparently Patrick did not sense the question that troubled on her
+lips, or, if he did, had no mind to answer it, for he went on in lighter
+tones:
+
+“There, that's enough about business for the present. I only wanted
+you to know that, whatever happens, you will be all right as far as
+bread-and-cheese are concerned.”
+
+“I believe you think that's all I should care about!” exclaimed Sara
+stormily.
+
+Patrick smiled. He had not been a citizen of the world for over
+sixty years without acquiring the grim knowledge that neither intense
+happiness nor deep grief suffice to deaden for very long the pinpricks
+of material discomfort. But the worldly-wise old man possessed a broad
+tolerance for the frailties of human nature, and his smile held
+nothing of contempt, but only a whimsical humour touched with kindly
+understanding.
+
+“I know you better than that, my dear,” he answered quietly. “But I
+often think of what I once heard an old working-woman, down in the
+village, say. She had just lost her husband, and the rector's wife was
+handing out the usual platitudes, and holding forth on the example
+of Christian fortitude exhibited by a very wealthy lady in the
+neighbourhood, who had also been recently widowed. 'That's all very
+well, ma'am,' said my old woman drily, 'but fat sorrow's a deal easier
+to bear than lean sorrow.' And though it may sound unromantic, it's the
+raw truth--only very few people are sincere enough to acknowledge it.”
+
+In the weeks that followed, Patrick seemed to recover a large measure
+of his accustomed vigour. He was extraordinarily alert and cheerful--so
+_alive_ that Sara began to hope Dr. McPherson had been mistaken in his
+opinion, and that there might yet remain many more good years of the
+happy comradeship that existed between herself and her guardian.
+
+Such buoyancy appeared incompatible with the imminence of death, and one
+day, driven by the very human instinct to hear her optimism endorsed,
+she scoffed a little, tentatively, at the doctor's verdict.
+
+Patrick shook his head.
+
+“No, my dear, he's right,” he said decisively. “But I'm not going to
+whine about it. Taken all round, I've found life a very good sort of
+thing--although”--reflectively--“I've missed the best it has to offer a
+man. And probably I'll find death a very good sort of thing, too, when
+it comes.”
+
+And so Patrick Lovell went forward, his spirit erect, to meet death
+with the same cheerful, half-humorous courage he had opposed to the
+emergencies of life.
+
+It was a few days after this, on Christmas Eve, that Sara, coming into
+his special den with a gay little joke on her lips and a great bunch of
+mistletoe in her arms, was arrested by the sudden, chill quiet of the
+little room.
+
+The familiar wheeled chair was drawn up to the window, and she could see
+the back of Patrick's head with its thick crop of grizzled hair, but he
+did not turn or speak at the sound of her entrance.
+
+“Uncle, didn't you hear me? Are you asleep? . . . _Uncle!_” Her voice
+shrilled on to a sharp staccato note, then cracked and broke suddenly.
+
+There came no movement from the chair. The silence remained unbroken
+save for the ticking of a clock and the loud beating of her own heart.
+The two seemed to merge into one gigantic pulse . . . deafening . . .
+overwhelming . . . like the surge of some immense, implacable sea.
+
+She swayed a little, clutching at the door for support. Then the
+throbbing ceased, and she was only conscious of a solitude so intense
+that it seemed to press about her like a tangible thing.
+
+Swiftly, on feet of terror, she crossed the room and stood looking down
+at the motionless figure of her uncle. His face was turned towards the
+sun, and wore an expression of complete happiness and content, as though
+he had just found something for which he had been searching. He had
+looked like that a thousand times, when, seeking for her, he had come
+upon her, at last, hidden in some shady nook in the garden or swinging
+in her hammock. She could almost hear the familiar “Oh, there you are,
+little pal!” with which he would joyously acclaim her discovery.
+
+She lifted the hand that was resting quietly on his knee. It lay in
+hers, flaccid and inert, its dreadful passivity stinging her into
+realization of the truth. Patrick was dead. And, judging from his
+expression, he had found death “a very good sort of thing,” just as he
+had expected.
+
+For a little while Sara remained standing quietly beside the still
+figure in the chair. They would never be alone together any more--not
+quite like this, Patrick sitting in his accustomed place, wearing
+his beloved old tweeds, with an immaculate tie and with his single
+eyeglass--about which she had so often chaffed him--dangling across his
+chest on its black ribbon.
+
+Her mouth quivered. “Stand up to it!” . . . The voice--Patrick's
+voice--seemed to sound in her ear . . . “Stand up to it, little old
+pal!”
+
+She bit back the sob that climbed to her throat, and stood silently
+facing the enemy, as it were.
+
+This was the end, then, of one chapter of her existence--the chapter of
+sheltered, happy life at Barrow, and in these quiet moments, alone for
+the last time with Patrick Lovell, Sara tried to gather strength and
+courage from her memories of his cheery optimism to face gamely whatever
+might befall her in the big world into which she must so soon adventure.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+A SHEAF OF MEMORIES
+
+It was over. The master of Barrow had been carried shoulder-high to the
+great vault where countless Lovells slept their last sleep, the blinds
+had been drawn up, letting in the wintry sunlight once again, and the
+mourners had gone their ways. Only the new owner of the Court still
+lingered, and even he would be leaving very soon now.
+
+Sara, her slim, boyish build, with its long line of slender hip,
+accentuated by the clinging black of her gown, moved listlessly across
+the hall to where Major Durward was standing smoking by the big open
+fire, waiting for the car which was to take him to the station.
+
+He made as though to throw his cigarette away at her approach, but she
+gestured a hasty negative.
+
+“No, don't,” she said. “I like it. It seems to make things a little more
+natural. Uncle Pat”--with a wan smile--“was always smoking.”
+
+Her sombre eyes were shadowed and sad, and there was a pinched, drawn
+look about her nostrils. Major Durward regarded her with a concerned
+expression on his kindly face.
+
+“You will miss him badly,” he said.
+
+“Yes, I shall miss him,”--simply. She returned his glance frankly. “You
+are very like him, you know,” she added suddenly.
+
+It was true. The big, soldierly man beside her, with his jolly blue
+eyes, grey hair, and short-clipped military moustache, bore a striking
+resemblance to the Patrick Lovell of ten years ago, before ill-health
+had laid its finger upon him, and during the difficult days that
+succeeded her uncle's death Sara had unconsciously found a strange kind
+of comfort in the likeness. She had dreaded inexpressibly the advent of
+the future owner of Barrow, but, when he had arrived, his resemblance
+to his dead cousin, and a certain similarity of gesture and of voice,
+common enough in families, had at once established a sense of
+kinship, which had deepened with her recognition of Durward's genuine
+kind-heartedness and solicitude for her comfort.
+
+He had immediately assumed control of affairs, taking all the inevitable
+detail of arrangement off her shoulders, yet deferring to her as though
+she were still just as much mistress of the Court as she had been before
+her uncle's death. In every way he had tried to ease and smooth matters
+for her, and she felt proportionately grateful to him.
+
+“Then, if you think I'm like him,” said Durward gently, “will you let me
+try to take his place a little? I mean,” he explained hastily, fearing
+she might misunderstand him, “that you will miss his guardianship and
+care of you, as well as the good pal you found in him. Will you let
+me try to fill in the gaps, if--if you should want advice, or
+service--anything over which a male man can be a bit useful? Oh----”
+ breaking off with a short, embarrassed laugh--“it is so difficult to
+explain what I do mean!”
+
+“I think I know,” said Sara, smiling faintly. “You mean that now that
+Uncle Pat has gone, you don't want me to feel quite adrift in the
+world.”
+
+The big man, hampered by his masculine shyness of a difficult situation,
+smiled back at her, relieved.
+
+“Yes, that's it, that's it!” he agreed eagerly. “I want you to regard me
+as a--a sort of sheet-anchor upon which you can pull in a storm.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Sara. “I will. But I hope there won't be storms of
+such magnitude that I shall need to pull very hard.”
+
+Durward smoked furiously for a moment. Then he burst forth--
+
+“You can't imagine what a brute I feel for turning you out of the Court.
+I wish it need not be. But the Lovells have always lived at the old
+place, and my wife--”
+
+“Naturally.” She interrupted him gently. “Naturally, she wishes to live
+here. I owe you no grudge for that,” smiling. “When--how soon do you
+think of coming? I will make my arrangements accordingly.”
+
+“We should like to come as soon as possible, really,” he admitted
+reluctantly. “I have the chance of leasing Durward Park, if the tenant
+can have what practically amounts to immediate possession. And of
+course, in the circumstances, I should be glad to get the Durward
+property off my hands.”
+
+“Of course you would.” Sara nodded understandingly. “If you could let me
+have a few days in which to find some rooms--”
+
+“No, no,” he broke in eagerly. “I want you still to regard Barrow as
+your headquarters--to stay on here with us until you have fixed some
+permanent arrangement that suits you.”
+
+She was touched by the kindly suggestion; nevertheless, she shook her
+head with decision.
+
+“It is more than kind of you to think of such a thing,” she said
+gratefully. “But it is quite out of the question. Why, I am not even a
+cousin several times removed! I have no claim at all. Mrs. Durward--”
+
+“Will be delighted. She asked me to be sure and tell you so. Please,
+Miss Tennant, don't refuse me. Don't”--persuasively--“oblige us to feel
+more brutal interlopers than we need.”
+
+Still she hesitated.
+
+“If I were sure--” she began doubtfully.
+
+“You may be--absolutely sure. There!”--with a sigh of relief--“that's
+settled. But, as I can see you're the kind of person whose conscientious
+scruples will begin to worry you the moment I'm gone”--he smiled--“my
+wife will write to you. Promise not to run away in the meantime?”
+
+“I promise,” said Sara. She held out her hand. “And--thank you.” Her
+eyes, suddenly misty, supplemented the baldness of the words.
+
+He took the outstretched hand in a close, friendly grip.
+
+“Good. That's the car, I think,” as the even purring of a motor sounded
+from outside. “I must be off. But it's only _au revoir_, remember.”
+
+She walked with him to the door, and stood watching until the car was
+lost in sight round a bend of the drive. Then, as she turned back into
+the hall, the emptiness of the house seemed to close down about her all
+at once, like a pall.
+
+Amid the manifold duties and emergencies of the last few days she had
+hardly had time to realize the immensity of her loss. Practical matters
+had forcibly obtruded themselves upon her consideration--the necessity
+of providing accommodation for the various relatives who had attended
+the funeral, the frequent consultations that Major Durward, to all
+intents and purposes a stranger to the ways of Barrow, had been obliged
+to hold with her, the reading of the will--all these had combined
+to keep her in a state of mental and physical alertness which had
+mercifully precluded retrospective thought.
+
+But now the necessity for _doing_ anything was past; there were no
+longer any claims upon her time, nothing to distract her, and she had
+leisure to visualize the full significance of Patrick's death and all
+that it entailed.
+
+Rather languidly she mounted the stairs to her own room, and drawing up
+a low chair to the fire, sat staring absently into its glowing heart.
+
+Virtually, she was alone in the world. Even Major Durward, who had been
+so infinitely kind, was not bound to her by any ties other than those
+forged of his own friendly feelings. True, he had been Patrick's cousin.
+But Patrick, although he had made up Sara's whole world, had been
+entirely unrelated to her.
+
+Her heart throbbed with a sudden rush of intense gratitude towards the
+man who had so amply fulfilled his trust as guardian, and she glanced
+up wistfully at the big photograph of him which stood upon the
+chimney-piece.
+
+Propped against the photo-frame was a square white envelope on which
+was written: _To be given to my ward, Sara Tennant, after my death_.
+The family solicitor had handed it to her the previous day, after the
+reading of the will, but the demands upon her time and attention had
+been so many, owing to the number of relatives who temporarily filled
+the house, that she had laid it on one side for perusal when she should
+be alone once more.
+
+The sight of the familiar handwriting brought a swift mist of tears to
+her eyes, and she hesitated a little before opening the sealed envelope.
+
+It was strange to realize that here was some message for her from
+Patrick himself, but that no matter what the envelope might contain,
+she would be able to give back no answer, make no reply. The knowledge
+seemed to set him very far away from her, and for a few moments she
+sobbed quietly, feeling utterly solitary and alone.
+
+Presently she brushed the tears from her eyes and slit open the flap of
+the envelope. Inside was a half-sheet of notepaper wrapped about a small
+old-fashioned key, and on the outer fold was written: “_The key of the
+Chippendale bureau_.” That was all.
+
+For an instant Sara was puzzled. Then she remembered that amongst
+Patrick's personal bequests to her had been that of the small mahogany
+bureau which stood near the window of his bedroom. It had not occurred
+to her at the time that its contents might have any interest for her; in
+fact, she had supposed it to be empty. But now she realized that there
+was evidently something within it which Patrick must have valued, seeing
+he had guarded the key so carefully and directed its delivery to her
+through the reliable hands of his solicitor.
+
+Rather glad of anything that might help to occupy her thoughts, she
+decided to investigate the bureau at once, and accordingly made her way
+to Patrick's bedroom.
+
+On the threshold she paused, her heart contracting painfully as the
+spick and span aspect of the room, its ordered absence of any trace of
+occupation, reminded her that its one-time owner would never again have
+any further need of it.
+
+Everything in the house seemed to present her grief to her anew, from
+some fresh angle, forcing comparison of what had been with what was--the
+wheeled chair, standing vacant in one of the lobbies, the tobacco
+jar perched upon the chimney-piece, the pot of heliotrope--Patrick's
+favourite blossom--scenting the library with its fragrance.
+
+And now his room--empty, swept, and garnished like any one of the score
+or so of spare bedrooms in the house!
+
+With an effort, Sara forced herself to enter it. Crossing to the window,
+she pulled a chair up to the Chippendale bureau and unlocked it.
+Then she drew out the sliding desk supports and laid back the flap of
+polished mahogany that served as a writing-table. She was conscious of
+a fleeting sense of admiration for the fine-grained wood and for the
+smooth “feel” of the old brass handles, worn by long usage, then her
+whole attention was riveted by the three things which were all the
+contents of the desk--a packet of letters, stained and yellowing with
+age and tied together with a broad, black ribbon, a jeweller's velvet
+case stamped with faded gilt lettering, and an envelope addressed to
+herself in Patrick's handwriting.
+
+Very gently, with that tender reverence we accord to the sad little
+possessions of our dead, Sara gathered them up and carried them to her
+own sitting-room. She felt she could not stay to examine them in that
+strangely empty, lifeless room that had been Patrick's; the terrible,
+chill silence of it seemed to beat against the very heart of her.
+
+Laying aside the jeweller's case and the package of letters, she opened
+the envelope which bore her name and drew out a folded sheet of paper,
+covered with Patrick's small, characteristic writing. Impulsively she
+brushed it with her lips, then, leaning back in her chair, began to
+read, her expression growing curiously intent as she absorbed the
+contents of the letter. Once she smiled, and more than once a sudden
+rush of unbidden tears blurred the closely written lines in front of
+her.
+
+“When you receive this, little pal Sara”--ran the letter--“I shall have
+done with this world. Except that it means leaving you, my dear, I shall
+be glad to go, for I'm a very tired man. So, when it comes, you must try
+not to grudge me my 'long leave.' But there are several things you ought
+to know, and which I want you to know, yet I have never been able to
+bring myself to speak of them to you. To tell you about them meant
+digging into the past--and very often there is a hot coal lingering
+in the heart of a dead fire that is apt to burn the fingers of whoever
+rakes out the ashes. Frankly, then, I funked it. But now the time has
+come when I can't put it off any longer.
+
+“Little old pal, have you ever wondered why I loved you so much--why you
+stood so close to my heart? I used to tease you and say it was because
+we were no relation to each other, didn't I? If you had been really my
+niece, proper respect (on your part, of course, for your aged uncle!)
+and the barrier of a generation would have set us the usual miles apart.
+But there was never anything of that with us, was there? I bullied you,
+I know, when you needed it, but we were always comrades. And to me, you
+were something more than a comrade, something almost sacred and always
+adorable--the child of the woman I loved.
+
+“For we should have been married, Sara, your mother and I, had I not
+been a poor man. We were engaged, but at that time, I was only a younger
+son, with a younger son's meager portion, and the prospect of my falling
+heir to Barrow seemed of all things the most improbable. And Pauline
+Malincourt, your mother, had been taught to abhor the idea of living
+on small means--trained to regard her beauty and breeding as marketable
+assets, to go to the highest bidder. For, although her parents came of
+fine old stock--there's no better blood in England than the Malincourt
+strain, my dear--they were deadly hard-up. So hard-up, that when they
+died--as the result of a carriage accident which occurred a week after
+Pauline's marriage--they left nothing behind them but debts which your
+father liquidated.
+
+“Of your father, Caleb Tennant, the millionaire, I will not write,
+seeing that, after all, you are his child. It is enough to say that
+he was a hard man, and that he and your mother led a very unhappy life
+together, so unhappy that at last she left him, choosing rather to live
+in utter poverty than remain with him. He never forgave her for leaving
+him, and when he died, he willed every penny he possessed to some
+scoundrelly cousin of his--who is presumably enjoying the inheritance
+which should have been yours.
+
+“That is your family history, my dear, and it is right that you should
+know it--and know what you have to fight against. To be a Malincourt
+is at once to have a curse and a blessing hung round your neck. The
+Malincourts were originally of French extraction--descendants of the
+_haute noblesse_ of old France--cursed with the devil's own pride and
+passionate self-will, and blessed with looks and brains and charm above
+the average. They never bend; they break sooner. And I think you've got
+the lot, Sara--the full inheritance.
+
+“Your mother was a true Malincourt. She could not bend, and when things
+went awry, she broke.
+
+“You must never think hardly of her, for she had been brought up in that
+atmosphere of almost desperate pride which is too frequently the curse
+of the poverty-stricken aristocrat. She made a ghastly mistake, and paid
+for it afterwards every day of her life. And she was urged into it by
+her father, who declined to recognize me in any way, and by her mother,
+who made her life at home a simple hell--as a clever society woman can
+make of any young girl's life if she chooses.
+
+“Just before she died, she sent for me and gave you into my care,
+begging me to shield you from spoiling your life as she had spoiled
+hers.
+
+“I've done what I could. You are at least independent. No one can drive
+you with the spur of poverty into selling yourself, as she was driven.
+But there are a hundred other rocks in life against which you may wreck
+your happiness, and remember, in the long run, you sink or swim by your
+own force of character.
+
+“And when love comes to you, _as it will come_,--for no woman with your
+eyes and your mouth ever yet lived a loveless life!--never forget
+that it is the biggest thing in the world, the one altogether good and
+perfect gift. Don't let any twopenny-halfpenny considerations of worldly
+advantage influence you, nor the tittle-tattle of other folks, and
+even if it seems that something insurmountable lies between you and the
+fulfillment of love, go over it, or round it, or through it! If it's a
+real love, your faith must be big enough to remove the mountains in the
+way--or to go over them.
+
+“The package of letters you will find in the bureau were those your
+mother wrote to me during the few short weeks we belonged to each other.
+I'm a sentimental old fool, and I've never been able to bring myself to
+burn them. Will you do this for me?
+
+“In the little velvet case you will find her miniature, which I give
+to you. It is very like her--and like you, too, for you resemble her
+wonderfully in appearance. Often, to look at you has made my heart ache;
+sometimes it almost seemed as if the years had rolled back and Pauline
+herself stood before me.
+
+“And now that the order for release is on its way to me, it is rather
+wonderful to reflect that in a few weeks--a few days, perhaps--I shall
+be seeing her again. . . .
+
+“Good-bye, little pal of mine. We've had some good times together,
+haven't we?
+
+“Your devoted, PATRICK.”
+
+Sara sat very still, the letter clasped in her hand. She had always
+secretly believed that some long-dead romance lay behind Patrick's
+bachelorhood, but she had never suspected that her own mother had been
+the woman he had loved.
+
+The knowledge illumined all the past with a fresh light, investing it
+with a tender, reminiscent sentiment. It was easy now to understand the
+almost idyllic atmosphere Patrick had infused into their life together.
+Sara recognized it as the outcome of a love and fidelity as beautiful
+and devoted as it is rare. Patrick's love for her mother had partaken
+of the enduring qualities of the great passions of history. Paolo and
+Francesca, Abelard and Heloise--even they could have known no deeper, no
+more lasting love than that of Patrick Lovell for Pauline.
+
+The love-letters of the dead woman lay on Sara's lap, still tied
+together with the black ribbon which Patrick's fingers must have knotted
+round them. There were only six of them--half-a-dozen memories of a love
+that had come hopelessly to grief--tangible memories which her lover had
+never had the heart to destroy.
+
+Sara handled them caressingly, these few, pathetic records of a bygone
+passion, and at length, with hands that shook a little, she removed the
+ribbon that bound them together. Where it had lain, preserving the strip
+of paper beneath it from contact with the dust, bands of white traversed
+the faint discoloration which time had worked upon the outermost
+envelopes--mutely witnessing to the long years that had passed away
+since the letters had been penned in the first rapturous glow of hot
+young love.
+
+Slowly, with a rather wistful sense of regret that it must needs be
+done, Sara dropped them one by one, unread, into the fire, and watched
+them flare up with a sudden spurt of flame, then curl and shrivel into
+dead, grey ash--those last links with the romance of his youth which
+Patrick had treasured so long and faithfully.
+
+She wondered what manner of woman her mother could have been to inspire
+so great a love that even her own unfaith had failed to sour it.
+Her childish recollection, blurred by the passage of years, was of a
+white-faced, rather haggard-looking woman with deep-set, haunted
+eyes and a bitter mouth, but whose rare smile, when it came, was so
+enchanting that it wiped out, for the moment, all remembrance of the
+harsh lines which hardened her face when in repose.
+
+With eager hands the girl picked up the little velvet case that held the
+miniature, and snapped open the lid. The painting within, rimmed in old
+paste, was of a girl in her early twenties. The face was oval, with a
+small, pointed chin and a vivid red mouth, curling up at the corners.
+There was little colour in the cheeks, and the black hair and
+extraordinarily dark eyes served to enhance the creamy pallor of the
+skin. It was not altogether an English face; the cheek-bones were too
+high, and there was a definiteness of colouring, a decisive sharpness
+of outline in the piquant features, not often found in a purely English
+type.
+
+Seen thus, the face looked strangely familiar to Sara, and yet no memory
+of hers could recall her mother as she must have been at the time this
+portrait was painted.
+
+The miniature still in her hand, she moved hesitatingly to a mirror, so
+placed that the light from the window fell full upon her as she faced
+it. In a moment the odd sense of familiarity was explained. There,
+looking back at her from the mirror, was the same sharply angled face,
+the same warm ivory pallor of complexion, accentuated by raven hair and
+black, sombre eyes. What was it Patrick had written? “_No woman with
+your eyes and your mouth ever yet lived a loveless life._”
+
+With a curious deliberation, Sara examined the features in question. The
+eyes were long, and the lids, opaquely white and fringed with jet-black
+lashes, slanted downwards a little at the outer corners, bestowing a
+curiously intense expression, such as one sometimes sees in the eyes of
+an actor, and the mouth was the same vividly scarlet mouth of the face
+in the miniature, at once passionate and sensitive.
+
+The French strain in the Malincourt family had reproduced itself
+indubitably, both in the appearance of Pauline and of Pauline's
+daughter. Would the mother's tragedy, fruit of her singular charm and of
+a pride which had accorded love but a secondary place in her scheme of
+life, also be re-enacted in the case of the daughter? It seemed almost
+as though Patrick must have had pre-vision of some like fiery ordeal
+though which his “little old pal” might have to pass, so urgent had been
+the warning he had uttered.
+
+Sara shivered, as if she, too, felt a prescience of coming disaster. It
+was as though a shadow had fallen across her path, a shadow of which the
+substance lay hidden, shrouded in the mists which veil the future.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+ELISABETH--AND HER SON
+
+The entrance to Barrow Court was somewhat forbidding. A flight of
+shallow granite steps, flanked by balustrades of the same austere
+substance, terminating in huge, rough-hewn pillars, led up to an
+enormous door of ancient oak, studded with nails--destined, it would
+seem, to resist the onslaught of an armed multitude. The sternness of
+its aspect, when the great door was closed, seemed to add an increased
+warmth to the suggestion of welcome it conveyed when, as now, it was
+swung hospitably open, emitting a ruddy glow of firelight from the hall
+beyond.
+
+Sara was standing at the top of the granite steps, waiting to greet the
+Durwards, whose approach was already heralded by the humming of a motor
+far down the avenue.
+
+A faint regret disquieted her. This was the last--the very last--time
+she would stand at the head of those stairs in the capacity of a hostess
+welcoming her guests; and even now her position there was merely an
+honorary one! In a few minutes, when Mrs. Durward should step across the
+threshold, it was she who would be transformed into the hostess, while
+Sara would have to take her place as a simple guest in the house which
+for twelve years had been her home.
+
+Thrusting the thought determinedly aside, she watched the big limousine
+swing smoothly round the curve of the drive and pull up in front of the
+house, and there was no trace of reluctance in the smile of greeting
+which she summoned up for Major Durward's benefit as he alighted and
+came towards her with outstretched hand.
+
+“But where are the others?” asked Sara, seeing that the chauffeur
+immediately headed the car for the garage.
+
+“They're coming along on foot,” explained Durward. “Elisabeth declared
+they should see nothing of the place cooped up in the car, so they got
+out at the lodge and are walking across the park.”
+
+Sara preceded him into the hall, and they stood chatting together by the
+tea-table until the sound of voices announced the arrival of the rest of
+the party.
+
+“Here they are!” exclaimed Durward, hurrying forward to meet them, while
+Sara followed a trifle hesitatingly, conscious of a sudden accession of
+shyness.
+
+Notwithstanding the charming letter she had received from Mrs. Durward,
+begging her to remain at Barrow Court exactly as long as it suited
+her, now that the moment had come which would actually install the
+new mistress of the Court, she began to feel as though her continued
+presence there might be regarded rather in the light of an intrusion.
+
+Mrs. Durward's letter might very well have been dictated only by a
+certain superficial politeness, or, even, solely at the instance of
+her husband, and it was conceivable that the writer would be none too
+pleased that her invitation had been so literally interpreted.
+
+In the course of a few seconds of time Sara contrived to work herself
+up into a condition bordering upon panic. And then a very low contralto
+voice, indescribably sweet, and with an audacious ripple of laughter
+running through it, swept all her scruples into the rubbish heap. There
+was no doubting the sincerity of the speaker.
+
+“It was so nice of you not to run away, Miss Tennant.” As she spoke,
+Mrs. Durward shook hands cordially. “Poor Geoffrey couldn't help being
+the heir, you know, and if you'd refused to stay, he'd have felt just
+like the villain in a cinema film. You've saved us from becoming the
+crawling, self-reproachful wretches.” Then she turned and beckoned to
+her son. “This is Tim,” she said simply, but the quality of her voice
+was very much as though she had announced: “This is the sun, and moon,
+and stars.”
+
+As mother and son stood side by side, Sara's first impression was that
+she had never seen two more beautiful people. They were both tall, and a
+kind of radiance seemed to envelope them--a glory imparted by the sheer
+force of perfect symmetry and health--and, in the case of the former of
+the two, there was an added charm in a certain little air of stateliness
+and distinction which characterized her movements.
+
+Patrick's reminiscent comment on Elisabeth Durward recalled itself to
+Sara's mind: “I think she was one of the most beautiful women I have
+ever seen,” and she recognized that almost any one might have truthfully
+subscribed to the same opinion.
+
+Mrs. Durward must have been at least forty years of age--arguing from
+the presence of the six foot of young manhood whom she called son--but
+her appearance was still that of a woman who had not long passed her
+thirtieth milestone. The supple lines of her figure held the merest
+suggestion of maturity in their gracious curves, and the rich chestnut
+hair, swathed round her small, fine head, gleamed with the sheen which
+only youth or immense vitality bestows. Her skin was of that almost
+dazzling purity which is so often found in conjunction with reddish
+hair, and the defect of over-light brows and lashes, which not
+infrequently mars the type, was conspicuously absent. Her eyes were
+arresting. They were of a deep, hyacinth blue, very luminous and soft,
+and quite beautiful. But they held a curiously veiled expression--a
+something guarded and inscrutable--as though they hid some secret inner
+knowledge sentinelled from the world at large.
+
+Sara, meeting their still, enigmatic gaze, was subtly conscious of an
+odd sense of repulsion, almost amounting to dread, and then Elisabeth,
+making some trivial observation as she moved nearer to the fire,
+smiled across at her, and, in the extraordinary charm of her smile, the
+momentary sensation of fear was forgotten.
+
+Nevertheless, it was with a feeling of relief that Sara encountered the
+gay, frank glance of the son.
+
+Tim Durward, though dowered to the full with his mother's beauty,
+had yet been effectually preserved from the misfortune of being an
+effeminate repetition of her. In him, Elisabeth's glowing auburn
+colouring had sobered to a steady brown--evidenced in the crisp, curly
+hair and sun-tanned skin; and the misty hyacinth-blue of her eyes had
+hardened in the eyes of her son into the clear, bright azure of the
+sea, whist the beautiful contours of her face, repeated in his, had
+strengthened into a fine young virility.
+
+“I can't cure mother of introducing me as if I were the Lord Mayor,” he
+murmured plaintively to Sara as they sat down to tea. “I suppose it's
+the penalty of being an only son.”
+
+“Nothing of the sort,” asserted Elisabeth composedly. “Naturally I'm
+pleased with you--you're so absurdly like me. I always look upon you in
+the light of a perpetual compliment, because you've elected to grow up
+like me instead of like Geoffrey”--nodding towards her husband. “After
+all, you had us both to choose from.”
+
+Tim shouted with delight.
+
+“Listen to her, Miss Tennant! And for years I've been mistaking mere
+vulgar female vanity for maternal solicitude.”
+
+“Anyway, you're a very poor compliment,” threw in Major Durward, with an
+expressive glance at his wife's beautiful face. It was obvious that he
+worshipped her, and she smiled across at him, blushing adorably, just
+like a girl of sixteen.
+
+Tim turned to Sara with a grimace.
+
+“It's a great trial, Miss Tennant, to be blessed with two parents--”
+
+“It's quite usual,” interpolated Geoffrey mildly.
+
+“Two parents,” continued Tim, firmly ignoring him, “who are hopelessly,
+besottedly in love with each other. Instead of being--as I ought to
+be--the apple of their eye--of both their eyes--I'm merely the shadowy
+third.”
+
+Sara surveyed his goodly proportions consideringly.
+
+“No one would have suspected it,” she assured him; and Tim grinned
+appreciatively.
+
+“If you stay with us long,” he replied, “as I hope”--impressively--“you
+will, you'll soon perceive how utterly I am neglected. Perhaps”--his
+face brightening--“you may be moved to take pity on my solitude--quite
+frequently.”
+
+“Tim, stop being an idiot,” interposed his mother placidly, holding out
+her cup, “and ask Miss Tennant to give me another lump of sugar.”
+
+
+
+The advent of the Durwards, breaking in upon her enforced solitude,
+helped very considerably to arouse Sara from the natural depression into
+which she had fallen after Patrick's death. With their absurdly large
+share of good looks, their charmingly obvious attachment to each other,
+and their enthusiastic, unconventional hospitality towards such an utter
+stranger as herself, devoid of any real claim upon them, she found the
+trio unexpectedly interesting and delightful. They had hailed her as a
+friend, and her frank, warm-hearted nature responded instantly, speedily
+according each of them a special niche in her regard. She felt as though
+Providence had suddenly endowed her with a whole family--“all complete
+and ready for use,” as Tim cheerfully observed--and the reaction from
+the oppressive consciousness of being entirely alone in the world acted
+like a tonic.
+
+The first brief sentiment of aversion which she had experienced towards
+Elisabeth melted like snow in sunshine under the daily charm of her
+companionship; and though the hyacinth eyes held always in their depths
+that strange suggestion of mystery, Sara grew to believe it must be
+merely some curious effect incidental to the colour and shape of the
+eyes themselves, rather than an indication of the soul that looked out
+of them.
+
+There was something perennially captivating about Elisabeth. An
+atmosphere of romance enveloped her, engendering continuous interest
+and surmise, and Sara found it wholly impossible to view her from an
+ordinary prosaic standpoint. Occasionally she would recall the fact that
+Mrs. Durward was in reality a woman of over forty, mother of a grown-up
+son who, according to all the usages of custom, should be settling down
+into the drab and placid backwater of middle age, but she realized that
+the description went ludicrously wide of the mark.
+
+There was nothing in the least drab about Elisabeth, nor would there
+ever be. She was full of colour and brilliance, reminding one of a great
+glowing-hearted rose in its prime.
+
+Part of her charm, undoubtedly, lay in her attitude towards husband and
+son. She was still as romantically in love with Major Durward as any
+girl in her teens, and she adored Tim quite openly.
+
+Inevitably, perhaps, there was a touch of the spoilt woman about her,
+since both men combined to indulge her in every whim. Nevertheless,
+there was nothing either small or petty in her willfulness. It was
+rather the superb, stately arrogance of a queen, and she was kindness
+itself to Sara.
+
+But the largest share of credit in restoring the latter to a more normal
+and less highly strung condition was due to Tim, who gravitated towards
+her with the facility common to natural man when he finds himself for
+any length of time under the same roof with an attractive young person
+of the opposite sex. He had an engaging habit of appearing at the door
+of Sara's sitting-room with an ingratiating: “I say, may I come in for a
+yarn?” And, upon receiving permission, he would establish himself on
+the hearth-rug at her feet and proceed to prattle to her about his own
+affairs, much as a brother might have done to a favourite sister,
+and with an equal assurance that his confidences would be met with
+sympathetic interest.
+
+“What are you going to do with yourself, Tim?” asked Sara one day, as
+he sprawled in blissful indolence on the great bearskin in front of her
+fire, pulling happily at a beloved old pipe.
+
+“Do with myself?” he repeated. “What do you mean? I'm doing very
+comfortably just at present”--glancing round him appreciatively.
+
+“I mean--what are you going to be? Aren't you going to enter any
+profession?”
+
+Tim sat up suddenly, removing his pipe from his mouth.
+
+“No,” he said shortly.
+
+“But why not? You can't slack about here for ever, doing nothing.
+I should have thought you would have gone into the Army, like your
+father.”
+
+His blue eyes hardened.
+
+“That's what I wanted to do,” he said gruffly. “But the mother wouldn't
+hear of it.”
+
+Sara could sense the pain in his suddenly roughened tones.
+
+“But why? You'd make a splendid soldier, Tim”--eyeing his long length
+affectionately.
+
+“I should have loved it,” he said wistfully. “I wanted it more than
+anything. But mother worried so frightfully whenever I suggested the
+idea that I had to give it up. I'm to learn to be a landowner and squire
+and all that sort of tosh instead.”
+
+“But that could come later.”
+
+Tim shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“Of course it could. But mother refused point-blank to let me go to
+Sandhurst. So now, unless a war crops up--and it doesn't look as though
+there's much chance of that!--I'm out of the running. But if it ever
+does, Sara”--he laid his hand eagerly on her knee--“I swear I'll be one
+of the first to volunteer. I was a fool to give in to the mother over
+the matter, only she was simply making herself ill about it, and, of
+course, I couldn't stand that.”
+
+Sara wondered why Mrs. Durward should have interfered to prevent her son
+from following what was obviously his natural bent. It would have seemed
+almost inevitable that, as a soldier's son, he should enter one or other
+of the Services, and instead, here he was, stranded in a little country
+backwater, simply eating his heart out. Mentally she determined to
+broach the subject to Elisabeth as soon as an opportunity presented
+itself; but for the moment she skillfully drew the conversation away
+from what was evidently a sore subject, and suggested that Tim should
+accompany her into Fallowdene, where she had an errand at the post
+office. He assented eagerly, with a shake of his broad shoulders as
+though to rid himself of the disagreeable burden of his thoughts.
+
+From the window of his wife's sitting-room Major Durward watched the two
+as they started on their way to the village, evidently on the best of
+terms with one another, a placid smile spreading beneficently over his
+face as they vanished round the corner of the shrubbery.
+
+“Anything in it, do you think?” he asked, seeing that Elisabeth's gaze
+had pursued the same course.
+
+“It's impossible to say,” she answered quietly. “Tim imagines himself
+to be falling in love, I don't doubt; but at twenty-two a boy imagines
+himself in love with half the girls he meets.”
+
+“I didn't,” declared Geoffrey promptly. “I fell in love with you at the
+mature age of nineteen--and I never fell out again.”
+
+Elisabeth flashed him a charming smile.
+
+“Perhaps Tim may follow in your footsteps, then,” she suggested
+serenely.
+
+“Well, would you be pleased?” persisted her husband, jerking his head
+explanatorily in the direction in which Sara and Tim had disappeared.
+
+“I shall always be pleased with the woman who makes Tim happy,” she
+answered simply.
+
+Durward was silent a moment; then he returned to the attack.
+
+“She's a very pretty young woman, don't you think?”
+
+“Sara? No, I shouldn't call her exactly pretty. Her face is too thin,
+and strong, and eager. But she is a very uncommon type--like a black and
+white etching, and immensely attractive.”
+
+It was several days before Sara was able to introduce the topic of Tim's
+profession, but she contrived it one afternoon when she and Elisabeth
+were sitting together awaiting the return of the two men for tea.
+
+“It will be profession enough for Tim to look after the property,”
+ Elisabeth made answer. “He can act as agent for his father to some
+extent, and relieve him of a great deal of necessary business that has
+to be transacted.”
+
+She spoke with a certain finality which made it difficult to pursue
+the subject, but Sara, remembering Tim's suddenly hard young eyes,
+persisted.
+
+“It's a pity he cannot go into the Army--he's so keen on it,” she
+suggested tentatively.
+
+A curious change came over Elisabeth's face. It seemed to Sara as
+though a veil had descended, from behind which the inscrutable eyes were
+watching her warily. But the response was given lightly enough.
+
+“Oh, one of the family in the Service is enough. I should see so little
+of my Tim if he became a soldier--only an occasional 'leave.'”
+
+“He would make a very good soldier,” said Sara. “To my mind, it's the
+finest profession in the world for any man.”
+
+“Do you think so?” Elisabeth spoke coldly. “There are many risks
+attached to it.”
+
+Sara experienced a revulsion of feeling; she had not expected Elisabeth
+to be of the fearful type of woman. Women of splendid physique and
+abounding vitality are rarely obsessed by craven apprehensions.
+
+“I don't think the risks would count with Tim,” she said warmly. “He has
+any amount of pluck.” And then she stared at Elisabeth in amazement.
+A sudden haggardness had overspread the elder woman's face, the faint
+shell-pink that usually flushed her cheeks draining away and leaving
+them milk-white.
+
+“Yes,” she replied in stifled tones. “I don't suppose Tim's a coward.
+But”--more lightly--“I think I am. I--don't think I care for the Army as
+a profession. Tim is my only child,” she added self-excusingly. “I can't
+let him run risks--of any kind.”
+
+As she spoke, an odd foreboding seized hold of Sara. It was as though
+the secret dread of _something_--she could not tell what--which held the
+mother had communicated itself to her.
+
+She shivered. Then, the impression fading as quickly as it had come, she
+spoke defiantly, as if trying to reassure herself.
+
+“There aren't many risks in these piping times of peace. Soldiers don't
+die in battle nowadays; they retire on a pension.”
+
+“Die in battle! Did you think I was afraid of that?” There was a sudden
+fierce contempt in Elisabeth's voice.
+
+Sara looked at her with astonishment.
+
+“Weren't you?” she said hesitatingly.
+
+Elisabeth seemed about to make some passionate rejoinder. Then, all
+at once, she checked herself, and again Sara was conscious of that
+curiously secretive expression in her eyes, as though she were on guard.
+
+“There are many things worse than death,” she said evasively, and
+deliberately turned the conversation into other channels.
+
+During the days that followed, Sara became aware of a faintly
+perceptible difference in her relations with Elisabeth. The latter was
+still just as charming as ever, but she seemed, in some inexplicable
+way, to have set a limit to their intimacy--defined a boundary line
+which she never intended to be overstepped.
+
+It was as though she felt that she had allowed Sara to approach too
+nearly some inner sanctum which she had hitherto guarded securely
+from all intrusion, and now hastened to erect a barricade against a
+repetition of the offence.
+
+More than once, lately, Sara had broached the subject of her impending
+departure from Barrow, only to have the suggestion incontinently brushed
+aside by Major Durward, who declared that he declined to discuss any
+such disagreeable topic. But now, sensitively conscious that she had
+troubled Elisabeth's peace in some way, she decided to make definite
+arrangements regarding her immediate future.
+
+She was agreeably surprised, when she propounded her idea, to find Mrs.
+Durward seemed quite as unwilling to part with her as were both her
+husband and son. Apparently the alteration in her manner, with its
+curiously augmented reticence, was no indication of any personal
+antipathy, and Sara felt proportionately relieved, although somewhat
+mystified.
+
+“We shall all miss you,” averred Elisabeth, and there was absolute
+sincerity in her tones. “I don't see why you need be in such a hurry to
+run away from us.” And Geoffrey and Tim chorused approval.
+
+Sara beamed upon them all with humid eyes.
+
+“It's dear of you to want me to stay with you,” she declared. “But,
+don't you see, I _must_ live my own life--have a roof-tree of my own? I
+can't just sit down comfortably in the shade of yours.”
+
+“Pushful young woman!” chaffed Geoffrey. “Well, I can see your mind is
+made up. So what are your plans? Let's hear them.”
+
+“I thought of taking rooms for a while with some really nice
+people--gentlefolk who wanted to take a paying guest--”
+
+“Poor but honest, in fact,” supplemented Geoffrey.
+
+Sara nodded.
+
+“Yes. You see”--smiling--“you people have spoiled me for living alone,
+and as I'm really rather a solitary individual, I must find a little
+niche for myself somewhere.” She unfolded a letter she was holding. “I
+thought I should like to go near the sea--to some quite tiny country
+place at the back of beyond. And I think I've found just the thing. I
+saw an advertisement for a paying guest--of the female persuasion--so
+I replied to it, and I've just had an answer to my letter. It's from a
+doctor man--a Dr. Selwyn, at Monkshaven--who has an invalid wife and one
+daughter, and he writes such an original kind of epistle that I'm sure I
+should like him.”
+
+Geoffrey held out his hand for the letter, running his eyes down its
+contents, while his wife, receiving an assenting nod from Sara in
+response to her “May I?” looked over his shoulder.
+
+Only Tim appeared to take no interest in the matter, but remained
+standing rather aloof, staring out of the window, his back to the trio
+grouped around the hearth.
+
+“'Household . . . myself, wife, one daughter,'” muttered Geoffrey.
+“Um-um--'quarter of a mile from the sea'--um----'As you will have
+guessed from the fact of my advertising'”--here he began to read
+aloud--“'we are not too lavishly blessed with this world's goods. Our
+house is roomy and comfortable, though abominably furnished. But I
+can guarantee the climate, and there are plenty of nicer people than
+ourselves in the neighbourhood. It wouldn't be fitting for me to blow
+our own particular household trumpet--nor, to tell the truth, is it
+always calculated to give forth melodious sounds; but if the other
+considerations I have mentioned commend themselves to you, I suggest
+that you come down and make trial of us.'”
+
+“Don't you think he sounds just delightful?” queried Sara.
+
+Manlike, Geoffrey shook his head disapprovingly.
+
+“No, I don't,” he said decisively. “That's the most unbusinesslike
+letter I've ever read.”
+
+“_I_ like it very much,” announced Elisabeth with equal decision. “The
+man writes just as he thinks--perfectly frankly and naturally. I should
+go and give them a trial as he suggests. Sara, if I were you.”
+
+“That's what I feel inclined to do,” replied Sara. “I thought it a
+delicious letter.”
+
+Geoffrey shrugged his shoulders resignedly.
+
+“Then, of course, if you two women have made up your minds that the
+man's a natural saint, I may as well hold my peace. What's the fellow's
+address?--I'll look him up in the Medical Directory. Richard Selwyn,
+Sunnyside, Monkshaven--that right?”
+
+He departed to the library in search of Dr. Selywn's credentials,
+presently returning with a somewhat rueful grin on his face.
+
+“He seems all right--rather a clever man, judging by his degrees and the
+appointments he has held,” he acknowledged grudgingly.
+
+“I'm sure he's all right, asserted Sara firmly.
+
+“Although I don't understand why such a good man at his job should
+be practicing in a little one-horse place like Monkshaven,” retorted
+Geoffrey maliciously.
+
+“Probably he went there on account of his wife's health,” suggested
+Elisabeth. “He says she is an invalid.”
+
+“Oh, well”--Geoffrey yielded unwillingly--“I suppose you'll go, Sara.
+But if the experiment isn't a success you must come back to us at once.
+Is that a bargain?”
+
+Sara hesitated.
+
+“Promise,” commanded Geoffrey. “Or”--firmly--“I'm hanged if we let you
+go at all.”
+
+“Very well,” agreed Sara meekly. “I'll promise.”
+
+
+
+“I hope the experiment will be an utter failure,” observed Tim, later
+on, when he and Sara were alone together. He spoke with an oddly
+curt--almost inimical--inflection in his voice.
+
+“Now that's unkind of you, Tim,” she protested smilingly. “I thought
+you were a good enough pal not to want to chortle over me--as I know
+Geoffrey will--should the thing turn out a frost!”
+
+“Well, I'm not, then,” he returned roughly.
+
+The churlish tones were so unlike Tim that Sara looked up at him in
+some amazement. He was staring down at her with a strange, _awakened_
+expression in his eyes; his face was very white and his mouth working.
+
+With a sudden apprehension of what was impending, she sprang up,
+stretching out her hand as though to ward it off.
+
+“No--no, Tim. It isn't--don't say it's that----”
+
+He caught her hand and held it between both his.
+
+“But it _is_ that,” he said, speaking very fast, the serenity of his
+face all broken up by the surge of emotion that had gripped him. “It is
+that. I love you. I didn't know it till you spoke of going away. Sara--”
+
+“Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!” She broke in hastily. “Don't say any more,
+Tim--please don't!”
+
+In the silence that followed the two young faces peered at each
+other--the one desperate with love, the other full of infinite regret
+and pleading.
+
+At last--
+
+“It's no use, then?” said Tim dully. “You don't care?”
+
+“I'm afraid I don't--not like that. I thought we were friends--just
+friends, Tim,” she urged.
+
+Tim lifted his head, and she saw that somehow, in the last few minutes,
+he had grown suddenly older. His gay, smiling mouth had set itself
+sternly; the beautiful boyish face had become a man's.
+
+“I thought so, too,” he said gently. “But I know now that what I feel
+for you isn't friendship. It's”--with a short, grim laugh--“something
+much more than that. Tell me, Sara--will there ever be any chance for
+me?”
+
+She hesitated. She was so genuinely fond of him that she hated to give
+him pain. Looking at him, standing before her in his splendid young
+manhood, she wondered irritably why she _didn't_ love him. He was
+pre-eminently loveable.
+
+He caught eagerly at her hesitation.
+
+“Don't answer me now!” he said swiftly. “I'll wait--give me a chance.
+I can't take no . . . I won't take it!” he went on masterfully. “I love
+you!” Impetuously he slipped his strong young arms about her and kissed
+her on the mouth.
+
+The previous moment she had been all softness and regret, but now,
+at the sudden passion in his voice, something within her recoiled
+violently, repudiating the claim his love had made upon her.
+
+Sara was the last woman in the world to be taken by storm. She was too
+individual, her sense of personal independence too strongly developed,
+for her ever to be swept off her feet by a passion to which her
+own heart offered no response. Instead, it roused her to a definite
+consciousness of opposition, and she drew herself away from Tim's eager
+arms with a decision there was no mistaking.
+
+“I'm sorry, Tim,” she said quietly. “But it's no good pretending I'm in
+love with you. I'm not.”
+
+He looked at her with moody, dissatisfied eyes.
+
+“I've spoken too soon,” he said. “I should have waited. Only I was
+afraid.”
+
+“Afraid?”
+
+“Yes.” He spoke uncertainly. “I've had a feeling that if I let you go,
+you'll meet some man down there, at Monkshaven, who'll want to marry you
+. . . And I shall lose you! . . . Oh, Sara! I don't ask you to say
+you love me--yet. Say that you'll marry me . . . I'd teach you the
+rest--you'd learn to love me.”
+
+But that fierce, unpremeditated kiss--the first lover's kiss that she
+had known--had endowed her with a sudden clarity of vision.
+
+“No,” she answered steadily. “I don't know much about love, Tim, but I'm
+very sure it's no use trying to manufacture it to order, and--listen,
+Tim, dear,” the pain in his face making her suddenly all tenderness
+again--“if I married you, and afterwards you _couldn't_ teach me as you
+think you could, we should only be wretched together.”
+
+“I could never be wretched if you were my wife,” he answered doggedly.
+“I've love enough for two.”
+
+She shook her head.
+
+“No, Tim. Don't let's spoil a good friendship by turning it into a
+one-sided love-affair.”
+
+He smiled rather grimly.
+
+“I'm afraid it's too late to prevent that,” he said drily. “But I won't
+worry you any more now, dear. Only--I'm not going to accept your answer
+as final.”
+
+“I wish you would,” she urged.
+
+He looked at her curiously. “No man who loves you, Sara, is going to
+give you up very easily,” he averred. Then, after a moment: “you'll let
+me write to you sometimes?”
+
+She nodded soberly.
+
+“Yes--but not love-letters, Tim.”
+
+“No--not love-letters.”
+
+He lifted her hands and kissed first one and then the other. Then, with
+his head well up and his shoulders squared, he went away.
+
+But the sea-blue eyes that had been wont to look out on the world so
+gaily had suddenly lost their care-free bravery. They were the eyes of
+a man who has looked for the first time into the radiant, sorrowful face
+of Love, and read therein all the possibilities--the glory and the pain
+and the supreme happiness--which Love holds.
+
+And Sara, standing alone and regretful that the friend had been lost in
+the lover, never guessed that Tim's love was a thread which was destined
+to cross and re-cross those other threads held by the fingers of Fate
+until it had tangled the whole fabric of her life.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE MAN IN THE TRAIN
+
+“Oldhampton! Oldhampton! Change here for Motchley and Monkshaven!”
+
+It was with a sigh of relief that Sara, in obedience to the warning
+raucously intoned by a hurrying porter, vacated her seat in the railway
+compartment in which she had travelled from Fallowdene. Her companions
+on the journey had been an elderly spinster and her maid, and as the
+former had insisted upon the exclusion of every breath of outside air,
+Sara felt half-suffocated by the time they ran into Oldhampton
+Junction. The Monkshaven train was already standing in the station, and,
+commissioning a porter to transfer her luggage, she sauntered leisurely
+along the platform, searching vainly for an empty compartment, where the
+regulation of the supply of oxygen would not depend upon the caprice of
+an old maid.
+
+The train appeared to be very full, but at last she espied a first-class
+smoking carriage which boasted but a single occupant--a man in the far
+corner, half-hidden behind the newspaper he was holding--and, tipping
+her porter, she stepped into the compartment and busied herself
+bestowing her hand-baggage in the rack.
+
+The man in the corner abruptly lowered his newspaper.
+
+“This be a smoker,” he remarked significantly.
+
+Sara turned at the sound of his voice. The unwelcoming tones made it
+abundantly clear that the remainder of his thought ran: “And you've no
+business to get into it.” A spark of amusement lit itself in her eyes.
+
+“The railway company indicate as much on the window,” she replied
+placidly, with a glance towards the _Smoking Carriage_ label pasted
+against the pane.
+
+There came no response, unless an irritated crackling of newspaper could
+be regarded as such--and the next moment, to the accompaniment of much
+banging of doors and a final shout of: “Stand away there!” the train
+began to move slowly out of the station.
+
+Sara sat down with a sigh of relief that she had escaped her former
+travelling companions, with their unpleasant predilection for a vitiated
+atmosphere, and her thoughts wandered idly to the consideration of
+the man in the corner, to whom she was obviously an equally unwelcome
+fellow-passenger.
+
+He had retired once more behind his newspaper, and practically all that
+was offered for her contemplation consisted of a pair of knee-breeches
+and well-cut leather leggings and two strong-looking, sun-tanned hands.
+These latter intrigued Sara considerably--their long, sensitive fingers
+and short, well-kept nails according curiously with their sunburnt
+suggestion of great physical strength and an outdoor life. She wished
+their owner would see fit to lower his newspaper once more, since her
+momentary glimpse of his face had supplied her with but little idea of
+his personality. And the hands, so full of contradictory suggestion,
+aroused her interest.
+
+As though in response to her thoughts, the newspaper suddenly crackled
+down on to its owner's knees.
+
+“I have every intention of smoking,” he announced aggressively. “This is
+a smoking carriage.”
+
+Sara, supported by the recollection of a dainty little gold and
+enamel affair in her hand-bag, filled with some very special Russian
+cigarettes, smiled amiably.
+
+“I know it is,” she replied in unruffled tones. “That's why I got in. I,
+too, have every intention of smoking.”
+
+He stared at her in silence for a moment, then, without further comment,
+produced a pipe and tobacco pouch from the depths of a pocket, and
+proceeded to fill the former, carefully pressing down the tobacco with
+the tip of one of those slender, capable-looking fingers.
+
+Sara observed him quickly. As he lounged there indolently in his corner,
+she was aware of a subtle combination of strength and fine tempering
+in the long, supple lines of his limbs--something that suggested the
+quality of steel, hard, yet pliant. He had a lean, hard-bitten face,
+tanned by exposure to the sun and wind, and the clean-shaven lips met
+with a curious suggestion of bitter reticence in their firm closing. His
+hair was brown--“plain brown” as Sara mentally characterized it--but it
+had a redeeming kink in it and the crispness of splendid vitality. The
+eyes beneath the straight, rather frowning brows were hazel, and, even
+in the brief space of time occupied by the inimical colloquy of a few
+moments ago, Sara had been struck by the peculiar intensity of their
+regard--an odd depth and brilliance only occasionally to be met with,
+and then preferably in those eyes which are a somewhat light grey in
+colour and ringed round the outer edge of the iris with a deeper tint.
+
+The flare of a match roused her from her half-idle, half-interested
+contemplation of her fellow-passenger, and, as he lit his pipe, she was
+sharply conscious that his oddly luminous eyes were regarding her with a
+glint of irony in their depths.
+
+Instantly she recalled his hostile reception of her entrance into the
+compartment, and the defiantly given explanation she had tendered in
+return.
+
+Very deliberately she extracted her cigarette-case from her bag and
+selected a cigarette, only to discover that she had not supplied herself
+with a matchbox. She hunted assiduously amongst the assortment of odds
+and ends the bag contained, but in vain, and finally, a little nettled
+that her companion made no attempt to supply the obvious deficiency, she
+looked up to find that he was once more, to all appearances, completely
+absorbed in his newspaper.
+
+Sara regarded him with indignation; in her own mind she was perfectly
+convinced that he was aware of her quandary and had no mind to help
+her out of it. Evidently he had not forgiven her intrusion into his
+solitude.
+
+“Boor!” she ejaculated mentally. Then, aloud, and with considerable
+acerbity:
+
+“Could you oblige me with a match?”
+
+With no show of alacrity, and with complete indifference of manner, he
+produced a matchbox and handed it to her, immediately reverting to his
+newspaper as though considerably bored by the interruption.
+
+Sara flushed, and, having lit her cigarette, tendered him his matchbox
+with an icy little word of thanks.
+
+Apparently, however, he was quite unashamed of his churlishness, for he
+accepted the box without troubling to raise his eyes from the page
+he was reading, and the remainder of the journey to Monkshaven was
+accomplished in an atmosphere that bristled with hostility.
+
+As the train slowed up into the station, it became evident to Sara that
+Monkshaven was also the destination of her travelling companion, for he
+proceeded with great deliberation to fold up his newspaper and to hoist
+his suit-case down from the rack. It did not seem to occur to him
+to proffer his service to Sara, who was struggling with her own
+hand-luggage, and the instant the train came to a standstill he opened
+the door of the compartment, stopped out on to the platform, and marched
+away.
+
+A gleam of amusement crossed her face.
+
+“I wonder who he is?” she reflected, as she followed in the wake of
+a porter in search of her trunks. “He certainly needs a lesson in
+manners.”
+
+Within herself she registered a vindictive vow that, should the
+circumstances of her residence in Monkshaven afford the opportunity, she
+would endeavour to give him one.
+
+Monkshaven was but a tiny little station, and it was soon apparent that
+no conveyance of any kind had been sent to meet her.
+
+“No, there would be none,” opined the porter of whom she inquired. “Dr.
+Selwyn keeps naught but a little pony-trap, and he's most times using it
+himself. But there's a 'bus from the Cliff Hotel meets all trains, miss,
+and”--with pride--“there's a station keb.”
+
+In a few minutes Sara was the proud--and thankful--occupant of the
+“station keb,” and, after bumping over the cobbles with which the
+station yard was paved, she found herself being driven in leisurely
+fashion through the high street of the little town, whilst her driver,
+sitting sideways on his box, indicated the points of interest with his
+whip as they went along.
+
+Presently the cab turned out of the town and began the ascent of a steep
+hill, and as they climbed the winding road, Sara found that she could
+glimpse the sea, rippling greyly beyond the town, and tufted with little
+bunches of spume whipped into being by the keen March wind. The town
+itself spread out before her, an assemblage of red and grey tiled roofs
+sloping downwards to the curve of the bay, while, on the right, a bold
+promontory thrust itself into the sea, grimly resisting the perpetual
+onslaught of the wave. Through the waning light of the winter's
+afternoon, Sara could discern the outline of a house limned against
+the dark background of woods that crowned it. Linked to the jutting
+headland, a long range of sea-washed cliffs stretched as far as the eyes
+could reach.
+
+“That be Monk's Cliff,” vouchsafed the driver conversationally. “Bit of
+a lonesome place for folks to choose to live at, ain't it?”
+
+“Who lives there?” asked Sara with interest.
+
+“Gentleman of the name of Trent--queer kind of bloke he must be, too,
+if all's true they say of 'im. He's lived there a matter of ten years or
+more--lives by 'imself with just a man and his wife to do for 'im. Far
+End, they calls the 'ouse.”
+
+“Far End,” repeated Sara. The name conveyed an odd sense of remoteness
+and inaccessibility. It seemed peculiarly appropriate to a house built
+thus on the very edge of the mainland.
+
+Her eyes rested musingly on the bleak promontory. It would be a fit
+abode, she thought, for some recluse, determined to eschew the society
+of his fellow-men; here he could dwell, solitary and apart, surrounded
+on three sides by the grey, dividing sea, and protected on the fourth
+by the steep untempting climb that lay betwixt the town and the lonely
+house on the cliff.
+
+“'Ere you are, miss. This is Dr. Selwyn's.”
+
+The voice of her Jehu roused her from her reflections to find that the
+cab had stopped in front of a white-painted wooden gate bearing the
+legend, “Sunnyside,” painted in black letters across its topmost bar.
+
+“I'll take the keb round to the stable-yard, miss; it'll be more
+convenient-like for the luggage,” added the man, with a mildly
+disapproving glance towards the narrow tiled path leading from the gate
+to the house-door.
+
+Sara nodded, and, having paid him his fare, made her way through the
+white gateway and along the path.
+
+There seemed a curious absence of life about the place. No sound of
+voices broke the silence, and, although the front door stood invitingly
+open, there was no sign of any one hovering in the background ready to
+receive her.
+
+Vaguely chilled--since, of course, they must be expecting her--she rang
+the bell. It clanged noisily through the house but failed to produce
+any more important result than the dislodging of some dust from a ledge
+above which the bell-wire ran. Sara watched it fall and lie on the floor
+in a little patch of fine, greyish powder.
+
+The hall, of which the open door gave view, though of considerable
+dimensions, was poorly furnished. The wide expanse of colour-washed
+wall was broken only by a hat-stand, on which hung a large assortment of
+masculine hats and coats, all of them looking considerably the worse
+for wear, and by two straight-backed chairs placed with praiseworthy
+exactitude at equal distances apart from the aforesaid rather
+overburdened piece of furniture. The floor was covered with linoleum
+of which the black and white chess-board pattern had long since
+retrogressed with usage into an uninspiring blur. A couple of threadbare
+rugs completed a somewhat depressing “interior.”
+
+Sara rang the bell a second time, on this occasion with an irritable
+force that produced clangour enough, one would have thought, to awaken
+the dead. It served, at all events, to arouse the living, for presently
+heavy footsteps could be heard descending the stairs, and, finally, a
+middle-aged maidservant, whose cap had obviously been assumed in haste,
+appeared, confronting Sara with an air of suspicion that seemed rather
+to suggest that she might have come after the spoons.
+
+“The doctor's out,” she announced somewhat truculently. Then, before
+Sara had time to formulate any reply, she added, a thought more
+graciously: “Maybe you're a stranger to these parts. Surgery hour's not
+till six o'clock.”
+
+She was evidently fully prepared for Sara to accept this as a dismissal,
+and looked considerably astonished when the latter queried meekly:
+
+“Then can I see Miss Selwyn, please? I understand Mrs. Selwyn is an
+invalid.”
+
+“You're right there. The mistress isn't up for seeing visitors. And Miss
+Molly, she's not home--she's away to Oldhampton.”
+
+“But--but----” stammered Sara. “They're expecting me, surely? I'm Miss
+Tennant,” she added by way of explanation.
+
+“Miss Tennant! Sakes alive!” The woman threw up her hands, staring
+at Sara with an almost comic expression, halting midway between
+bewilderment and horror. “If that isn't just the way of them,” she went
+on indignantly, “never mentioning that 'twas to-day you were coming--and
+no sheets aired to your bed and all! The master, he never so much as
+named it to me, nor Miss Molly neither. But please to come in, miss--”
+ her outraged sense of hospitality infusing a certain limited cordiality
+into her tones.
+
+The woman led the way into a sitting-room that opened off the hall,
+standing aside for Sara to pass in, then, muttering half-inaudibly,
+“You'll be liking a cup of tea, I expect,” she disappeared into the back
+regions of the house, whence a distant clattering of china shortly gave
+indication that the proffered refreshment was in course of preparation.
+
+Sara seated herself in a somewhat battered armchair and proceeded to
+take stock of the room in which she found herself. It tallied accurately
+with what the hall had led her to expect. Most of the furniture had been
+good of its kind at one time, but it was now all reduced to a drab level
+of shabbiness. There were a few genuine antiques amongst it--a couple
+of camel-backed Chippendale chairs, a grandfather's clock, and some
+fine old bits of silver--which Sara's eye, accustomed to the rare and
+beautiful furnishings of Barrow Court, singled out at once from the
+olla podrida of incongruous modern stuff. These alone had survived the
+general condition of disrepair; but, even so, the silver had a neglected
+appearance and stood badly in need of cleaning.
+
+This latter criticism might have been leveled with equal justice at
+almost everything in the room, and Sara, mindful of her reception,
+reflected that in such an oddly conducted household, where the advent of
+an expected, and obviously much-needed, paying guest could be
+completely overlooked, it was hardly probable that smaller details of
+house-management would receive their meed of attention.
+
+Instead of depressing her, however, the forlorn aspect of the room
+assisted to raise her spirits. It looked as though there might very
+well be a niche in such a household that she could fill. Mentally she
+proceeded to make a tour of the room, duster in hand, and she had just
+reached the point where, in imagination, she was about to place a great
+bowl of flowers in the middle desert of the table, when the elderly
+Abigail re-appeared and dumped a tea-tray down in front of her.
+
+Sara made a wry face over the tea. It tasted flat, and she could well
+imagine the long-boiling kettle from which the water with which it had
+been made was poured.
+
+“I'm sure that tea's beastly!”
+
+A masculine voice sounded abruptly from the doorway, and, looking up,
+Sara beheld a tall, eager-faced man, wearing a loose shabby coat and
+carrying in one hand a professional-looking doctor's bag. The bag,
+however, was the only professional-looking thing about him. For the
+rest, he might have been taken to be either an impoverished country
+squire and sportsman, or a Roman Catholic dignitary, according
+to whether you assessed him by his broad, well-knit figure and
+weather-beaten complexion, puckered with wrinkles born of jolly
+laughter, or by the somewhat austere and controlled set of his mouth and
+by the ardent luminous grey eyes, with their touch of the visionary and
+fanatic.
+
+Sara set down her cup hastily.
+
+“And I'm sure you're Dr. Selwyn,” she said, a flicker of amusement at
+his unconventional greeting in her voice.
+
+“Right!” he answered, shaking hands. “How are you, Miss Tennant? It
+was plucky of you to decide to risk us after all, and I hope--” with a
+slight grimace--“you won't find we are any worse than I depicted. I was
+very sorry I had to be out when you came,” he went on genially, “but I
+expect Molly has looked after you all right? By the way”--glancing round
+him in some perplexity--“where _is_ Molly?”
+
+“I understood,” replied Sara tranquilly, “that she had gone in to
+Oldhampton.”
+
+Dr. Selwyn's expression was not unlike that of a puppy caught in the
+unlawful possession of his master's slipper.
+
+“What did I warn you?” he exclaimed with a rueful laugh. “We're quite
+a hopeless household, I'm afraid. And Molly's the most absent-minded of
+beings. I expect she has clean forgotten that you were coming to-day.
+She's by way of being an artist--art-student, rather”--correcting
+himself with a smile. “You know the kind of thing--black carpets and
+Futurist colour schemes in dress. So you must try and forgive her. She's
+only seventeen. But Jane--I hope Jane did the honours properly? She is
+our stand-by in all emergencies.”
+
+Sara's eyes danced.
+
+“I'm afraid I came upon Jane entirely in the light of an unpleasant
+surprise,” she responded mildly.
+
+“What! Do you mean to say she wasn't prepared for you? Oh, but this is
+scandalous! What must you think of us all?” he strode across the room
+and pealed the bell, and, when Jane appeared in answer to the summons,
+demanded wrathfully why nothing was in readiness for Miss Tennant's
+arrival.
+
+Jane surveyed him with the immovable calm of the old family servant, her
+arms akimbo.
+
+“And how should it be?” she wanted to know. “Seeing that neither you nor
+Miss Molly named it to me that the young lady was coming to-day?”
+
+“But I asked Miss Molly to make arrangements,” protested Selwyn feebly.
+
+“And did you expect her to do so, sir, may I ask?” inquired Jane with
+withering scorn.
+
+“Do you mean to tell me that Miss Molly gave you no orders about
+preparing a room?” countered the doctor, skillfully avoiding the point
+raised?
+
+“No, sir, she didn't. And if I'm kep' here talking much longer, there
+won't _be_ one prepared, neither! 'Tis no use crying over spilt milk.
+Let me get on with the airing of my sheets, and do you talk to the young
+lady whiles I see to it.”
+
+And Jane departed forthwith about her business.
+
+“Jane Crab,” observed Selwyn, twinkling, “has been with us
+five-and-twenty years. I had better do as she tells me.” He threw a
+doleful glance at the unappetizing tea in Sara's cup. “I positively
+dare not order you fresh tea--in the circumstances. Jane would probably
+retaliate with an ultimatum involving a rigid choice between tea and
+the preparation of your room, accompanied by a pithy summary of the
+capabilities of one pair of hands.”
+
+“Wouldn't you like some tea yourself?” hazarded Sara.
+
+“I should--very much. But I see no prospect of getting any while Jane
+maintains her present attitude of mind.”
+
+“Then--if you will show me the kitchen--_I'll_ make some,” announced
+Sara valiantly.
+
+Selwyn regarded her with a pitying smile.
+
+“You don't know Jane,” he said. “Trespassers in the kitchen are
+not--welcomed.”
+
+“And Jane doesn't know _me_,” replied Sara firmly.
+
+“On your own head be it, then,” retorted the doctor, and led the way to
+the sacrosanct domain presided over by Jane Crab.
+
+How Sara managed it Selwyn never knew, but she contrived to invade
+Jane's kitchen and perform the office of tea-making without offending
+her in the very least. Nay, more, by some occult process known only to
+herself, she succeeded in winning Jane's capacious heart, and from
+that moment onwards, the autocrat of the kitchen became her devoted
+satellite; and later, when Sara started to make drastic changes in the
+slip-shod arrangements of the house, her most willing ally.
+
+“Miss Tennant's the only body in the place as has got some sense in her
+head,” she was heard to observe on more than one occasion.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE SKELETON IN SELWYN'S CUPBOARD
+
+After tea, Selwyn escorted Sara upstairs and introduced her to his wife.
+Mrs. Selwyn was a slender, colourless woman, possessing the remnants of
+what must at one time have been an ineffective kind of prettiness. She
+was a determinedly chronic invalid, and rarely left the rooms which
+had been set aside for her use to join the other members of the family
+downstairs.
+
+“The stairs try my heart, you see,” she told Sara, with the martyred air
+peculiar to the hypochondriac--the genuine sufferer rarely has it.
+“It is, of course, a great deprivation to me, and I don't think either
+Dick”--with an inimical glance at her husband--“or Molly come up to see
+me as often as they might. Stairs are no difficulty to _them_.”
+
+Selwyn, who invariably ran up to see his wife immediately on his return
+from no matter how long or how tiring a round of professional visits,
+bit his lip.
+
+“I come as often as I can, Minnie,” he said patiently. “You must
+remember my time is not my own.”
+
+“No, dear, of course not. And I expect that outside patients are much
+more interesting to visit than one's own wife,” with a disagreeable
+little laugh.
+
+“They mean bread-and-butter, anyway,” said Selwyn bluntly.
+
+“Of course they do.” She turned to Sara. “Dick always thinks in terms of
+bread-and-butter, Miss Tennant,” she said sneeringly. “But money means
+little enough to any one with my poor health. Beyond procuring me a few
+alleviations, there is nothing it can do for me.”
+
+Sara was privately of the opinion that it had done a good deal for her.
+Looking round the luxuriously furnished room with its blazing fire, and
+then at Mrs. Selwyn herself, elegantly clad in a rest-gown of rich silk,
+she could better understand the poverty-stricken appearance of the rest
+of the house, Dick's shabby clothes, and his willingness to receive a
+paying guest whose contribution towards the housekeeping might augment
+his slender income.
+
+Here, then, was where his hard-earned guineas went--to keep in luxury
+this petulant, complaining woman whose entire thoughts were centred
+about her own bodily comfort, and whom Patrick Lovell, with his lucid
+recognition of values, would have contemptuously described as “a
+parasite woman, m'dear--the kind of female I've no use for.”
+
+“Oh, Dick”--Mrs. Selwyn had been turning over the pages of a price-list
+that was lying on her knee--“I see the World's Store have just brought
+out a new kind of adjustable reading-table. It's a much lighter make
+than the one I have. I think I should find it easier to use.”
+
+Selwyn's face clouded.
+
+“How much does it cost, dear?” he asked nervously. “These mechanical
+contrivances are very expensive, you know.”
+
+“Oh, this one isn't. It's only five guineas.”
+
+“Five guineas is rather a lot of money, Minnie,” he said gravely.
+“Couldn't you manage with the table you have for a bit longer?”
+
+Mrs. Selwyn tossed the price-list pettishly on to the floor.
+
+“Of, of course!” she declared. “That's always the way. 'Can't I manage
+with what I have? Can't I make do with this, that, and the other?'
+I believe you grudge every penny you spend on me!” she wound up
+acrimoniously.
+
+A dull red crept into Selwyn's face.
+
+“You know it's not that, Minnie,” he replied in a painfully controlled
+voice. “It's simply that I _can't afford_ these things. I give you
+everything I can. If I were only a rich man, you should have everything
+you want.”
+
+“Perhaps if you were to work a little more intelligently you'd make more
+money,” she retorted. “If only you'd keep your brains for the use of
+people who can _pay_--and pay well--I shouldn't be deprived of every
+little comfort I ask for! Instead of that, you've got half the poor of
+Monkshaven on your hands--and if you think they can't afford to pay, you
+simply don't send in a bill. Oh, _I_ know!”--sitting up excitedly in her
+chair, a patch of angry scarlet staining each cheek--“I hear what
+goes on--even shut away from the world as I am. It's just to curry
+popularity--you get all the praise, and I suffer for it! _I_ have to go
+without what I want--”
+
+“Oh, hush! Hush!” Selwyn tried ineffectually to stem the torrent of
+complaint.
+
+“No, I won't hush! It's 'Doctor Dick this,' and 'Doctor Dick that'--oh,
+yes, you see, I know their name for you, these slum patients of
+yours!--but it's Doctor Dick's wife who really foots the bills--by going
+without what she needs!”
+
+“Minnie, be quiet!” Selwyn broke in sternly. “Remember Miss Tennant is
+present.”
+
+But she had got beyond the stage when the presence of a third person,
+even that of an absolute stranger, could be depended upon to exercise
+any restraining effect.
+
+“Well, since Miss Tenant's going to live here, the sooner she knows how
+things stand the better! She won't be here long without seeing how I'm
+treated”--her voice rising hysterically--“set on one side, and denied
+even the few small pleasures my health permits----”
+
+She broke off in a storm of angry weeping, and Sara retreated hastily
+from the room, leaving husband and wife alone together.
+
+She had barely regained the shabby sitting-room when the front door
+opened and closed with a bang, and a gay voice could be heard calling--
+
+“Jane! Jane! Come here, my pretty Jane! I've brought home some shrimps
+for tea!”
+
+“Hold your noise, Miss Molly, now do!”
+
+Sara could hear Jane's admonitory whisper, and there followed a murmured
+colloquy, punctuated by exclamations and gusts of young laughter,
+calling forth renewed remonstrance from Jane, and then the door of the
+room was flung open, and Molly Selwyn sailed in and overwhelmed Sara
+with apologies for her reception, or rather, for the lack of it. She was
+quite charming in her penitence, waving dimpled, deprecating hands, and
+appealing to Sara with a pair of liquid, disarming, golden-brown eyes
+that earned her forgiveness on the spot.
+
+She was a statuesque young creature, compact of large, soft, gracious
+curves and swaying movements--with her nimbus of pale golden hair, and
+curiously floating, undulating walk, rather reminding one of a stray
+goddess. Always untidy with hooks lacking at important junctures, and
+the trimmings of her hats usually pinned on with a casualness that
+occasionally resulted in their deserting the hat altogether, she could
+still never be other than delightful and irresistibly desirable to look
+upon.
+
+Her red, curving mouth of a child, cleft chin, and dimpled, tapering
+hands all promised a certain yieldingness of disposition--a tendency
+to take always the line of least resistance--but it was a charming,
+appealing kind of frailty which most people--the sterner sex,
+certainly--would be very ready to condone.
+
+It is a wonderful thing to be young. Molly poured herself out a cup
+of hideously stewed tea and drank it joyously to an accompaniment of
+shrimps and bread-and-butter, and when Sara uttered a mild protest, she
+only laughed and declared that it was a wholesome and digestible diet
+compared with some of the “studio teas” perpetrated by the artists'
+colony at Oldhampton, of which she was a member.
+
+She chattered away gaily to Sara, giving her vivacious thumb-nail
+portraits of her future neighbours--the people Selwyn had described as
+being “much nicer than ourselves.”
+
+“The Herricks and Audrey Maynard are our most intimate friends--I'm
+sure you'll adore them. Mrs. Maynard is a widow, and if she weren't so
+frightfully rich, Monkshaven would be perennially shocked at her. She
+is ultra-fashionable, and smokes whenever she chooses, and swears
+when ordinary language fails her--all of which things, of course,
+are anathema to the select circles of Monkshaven. But then she's a
+millionaire's widow, so instead of giving her the cold shoulder, every
+one gushes round her and declares 'Mrs. Maynard is such a thoroughly
+_modern_ type, you know!'”--Molly mimicked the sugar-and-vinegar
+accents of the critics to perfection--“and privately Audrey shouts with
+laughter at them, while publicly she continues to shock them for the
+sheer joy of the thing.”
+
+“And who are the Herricks?” asked Sara, smiling. “Married people?”
+
+“No.” Molly shook her head. “Miles is a bachelor who lives with a maiden
+aunt--Miss Lavinia. Or, rather, she lives with him and housekeeps for
+him. 'The Lavender Lady,' I always call her, because she's one of those
+delightful old-fashioned people who remind one of dimity curtains, and
+pot-pourri, and little muslin bags of lavender. Miles is a perfect pet,
+but he's lame, poor dear.”
+
+Sara waited with a curious eagerness for any description which might
+seem to fit her recent fellow-traveller, but none came, and at last she
+threw out a question in the hope of eliciting his name.
+
+“He was horribly ungracious and rude,” she added, “and yet he didn't
+look in the least the sort of man who would be like that. There was no
+lack of breeding about him. He was just deliberately snubby--as
+though I had no right to exist on the same planet with
+him--anyway”--laughing--“not in the same railway compartment.”
+
+Molly nodded sagely.
+
+“I believe I know whom you mean. Was he a lean, brown, grim-looking
+individual, with the kind of eyes that almost make you jump when they
+look at you suddenly?”
+
+“That certainly describes them,” admitted Sara, smiling faintly.
+
+“Then it was the Hermit of Far End,” announced Molly.
+
+“The Hermit of Far End?”
+
+“Yes. He's a queer, silent man who lives all by himself at a house built
+almost on the edge of Monk's Cliff--you must have seen it as you drove
+up?”
+
+“Oh!” exclaimed Sara, with sudden enlightenment. “Then his name is
+Trent. The cabman presented me with that information,” she added, in
+answer to Molly's look of surprise.
+
+“Yes--Garth Trent. It's rather an odd name--sounds like a railway
+collision, doesn't it? But it suits him somehow”--reflectively.
+
+“Have you met him?” prompted Sara. It was odd how definite an interest
+her brief encounter with him had aroused in her.
+
+“Yes--once. He treated me”--giggling delightedly--“rather as if I
+_wasn't there_! At least”--reminiscently--“he tried to.”
+
+“It doesn't sound as though he had succeeded?” suggested Sara, amused.
+
+Molly looked at her solemnly.
+
+“He told some one afterwards--Miles Herrick, the only man he ever speaks
+to, I think, without compulsion--that I was 'the Delilah type of woman,
+and ought to have been strangled at birth.'”
+
+“He must be a charming person,” commented Sara ironically.
+
+“Oh, he's a woman-hater--in fact, I believe he has a grudge against the
+world in general, but woman in particular. I expect”--shrewdly--“he's
+been crossed in love.”
+
+At this moment Selwyn re-entered the room, his grave face clearing a
+little as he caught sight of his daughter.
+
+“Hullo, Molly mine! Got back, then?” he said, smiling. “Have you made
+your peace with Miss Tennant, you scatterbrained young woman?”
+
+“It's a hereditary taint, Dad--don't blame _me_!” retorted Molly with
+lazy impudence, pulling his head down and kissing him on the top of his
+ruffled hair.
+
+Selwyn grinned.
+
+“I pass,” he submitted. “And who is it that's been crossed in love?”
+
+“The Hermit of Far End.”
+
+“Oh”--turning to Sara--“so you have been discussing our local enigma?”
+
+“Yes. I fancy I must have travelled down with him from Oldhampton. He
+seemed rather a boorish individual.”
+
+“He would be. He doesn't like women.”
+
+“Monk's Cliff would appear to be an appropriate habitation for him,
+then,” commented Sara tartly.
+
+They all laughed, and presently Selwyn suggested that his daughter
+should run up and see her mother.
+
+“She'll be hurt if you don't go up, kiddy,” he said. “And try and be
+very nice to her--she's a little tired and upset to-day.”
+
+When she had left the room he turned to Sara, a curious blending of
+proud reluctance and regret in his eyes.
+
+“I'm so sorry, Miss Tennant,” he said simply, “that you should have seen
+our worst side so soon after your arrival. You--you must try and pardon
+it--”
+
+“Oh, please, please don't apologize,” broke in Sara hastily. “I'm so
+sorry I happened to be there just then. It was horrible for you.”
+
+He smiled at her wistfully.
+
+“It's very kind of you to take it like that,” he said. “After
+all”--frankly--“you could not have remained with us very long without
+finding out our particular skeleton in the cupboard. My wife's state of
+health--or, rather, what she believes to be her state of health--is a
+great grief to me. I've tried in every way to convince her that she is
+not really so delicate as she imagines, but I've failed utterly.”
+
+Now that the ice was broken, he seemed to find relief in pouring out the
+pitiful little tragedy of his home life.
+
+“She is comparatively young, you know, Miss Tennant--only thirty-seven,
+and she willfully leads the life of a confirmed invalid. It has grown
+upon her gradually, this absorption in her health, and now, practically
+speaking, Molly has no mother and I no wife.”
+
+“Oh, Doctor Dick”--the little nickname, that had its origin in his
+slum patients' simple affection for the man who tended them, came
+instinctively from her lips. It seemed, somehow, to fit itself to the
+big, kindly man with the sternly rugged face and eyes of a saint. “Oh,
+Doctor Dick, I'm so sorry--so very sorry!”
+
+Perhaps something in the dainty, well-groomed air of the woman beside
+him helped to accentuate the neglected appearance of the room, for
+he looked round in an irritated kind of way, as though all at once
+conscious of its deficiencies.
+
+“And this--this, too,” he muttered. “There's no one at the helm. . . .
+The truth is, I ought never to have let you come here.”
+
+Sara shook her head.
+
+“I've very glad I came,” she said simply. “I think I'm going to be very
+happy here.”
+
+“You've got grit,” he replied quietly. “You'd make a success of your
+life anywhere. I wish”--thoughtfully--“Molly had a little of that same
+quality. Sometimes”--a worried frown gathered on his face--“I get afraid
+for Molly. She's such a child . . . and no mother to hold the reins.”
+
+“Doctor Dick, would you consider it impertinent if--if I laid my hands
+on the reins--just now and then?”
+
+He whirled round, his eyes shining with gratitude.
+
+“Impertinent! I should be illimitably thankful! You can see how things
+are--I am compelled to be out all my time, my wife hardly ever leaves
+her own rooms, and Molly and the house affairs just get along as best
+they can.”
+
+“Then,” said Sara, smiling, “I shall put my finger in the pie. I've--I've
+no one to look after now, since Uncle Patrick died,” she added. “I
+think, Doctor Dick, I've found my job.”
+
+“It's absurd!” he exclaimed, regarding her with unfeigned delight. “Here
+you come along, prepared, no doubt, to be treated as a 'guest,' and the
+first thing I do is to shovel half my troubles on to your shoulders.
+It's absurd--disgraceful! . . . But it's amazingly good!” He held out
+his hand, and as Sara's slim fingers slid into his big palm, he muttered
+a trifle huskily: “God bless you for it, my dear!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+TRESPASS
+
+Sara stood on the great headland known as Monk's Cliff, watching with
+delight the white-topped billows hurling themselves against its mighty
+base, only to break in a baulked fury of thunder and upflung spray.
+
+She had climbed the steep ascent thither on more than one day of storm
+and bluster, reveling in the buffeting of the gale and in the pungent
+tang of brine from the spray-drenched air. The cry of the wind,
+shrieking along the face of the sea-bitten cliff, reminded her of
+the scream of the hurricane as it tore through the pinewoods at
+Barrow--shaking their giant tops hither and thither as easily as a
+child's finger might shake a Canterbury bell.
+
+Something wild and untamed within her responded to the savage movement
+of the scene, and she stood for a long time watching the expanse
+of restless, wind-tossed waters, before turning reluctantly in the
+direction of home. If for nothing else than for this gift of glorious
+sea and cliff, she felt she could be content to pitch her tent in
+Monkshaven indefinitely.
+
+Her way led past Far End, the solitary house perched on the sloping side
+of the headland, and, as she approached, she became aware of a curious
+change of character in the sound of the wind. She was sheltered now
+from its fiercest onslaught, and it seemed to her that it rose and
+fell, moaning in strange, broken cadences, almost like the singing of a
+violin.
+
+She paused a moment, thinking at first that this was due to the wind's
+whining through some narrow passage betwixt the outbuildings of the
+house, then, as the chromatic wailing broke suddenly into vibrating
+harmonies, she realized that some one actually _was_ playing the violin,
+and playing it remarkably well, too.
+
+Instinctively she yielded to the fascination of it, and, drawing
+nearer to the house, leaned against a sheltered wall, all her senses
+subordinate to that of hearing.
+
+Whoever the musician might be, he was a thorough master of his
+instrument, and Sara listened with delight, recognizing some of the
+haunting melodies of the wild Russian music which he was playing--music
+that even in its moments of delirious joy seemed to hold always an
+underlying _bourdon_ of tragedy and despair.
+
+“Hi, there!”
+
+She started violently. Entirely absorbed in the music, she had failed
+to observe a man, dressed in the style of an indoor servant, who had
+appeared in the doorway of one of the outbuildings and who now addressed
+her in peremptory tones.
+
+“Hi, there! Don't you know you're trespassing?”
+
+Jerked suddenly out of her dreamy enjoyment, Sara looked round vaguely.
+
+“I didn't know that Monk's Cliff was private property,” she said after a
+pause.
+
+“Nor is it, that I know of. But you're on the Far End estate now--this
+is a private road,” replied the man disagreeably. “You'll please to take
+yourself off.”
+
+A faint flush of indignation crept up under the warm pallor of Sara's
+skin. Then, a sudden thought striking her, she asked--
+
+“Who is that playing the violin?”
+
+Mentally she envisioned a pair of sensitive, virile hands, lean and
+brown, with the short, well-kept nails that any violinist needs must
+have--the contradictory hands which had aroused her interest on the
+journey to Monkshaven.
+
+“I don't hear no one playing,” replied the man stolidly. She felt
+certain he was lying, but he gave her no opportunity for further
+interrogation, for he continued briskly--
+
+“Come now, miss, please to move off from here. Trespassers aren't
+allowed.”
+
+Sara spoke with a quiet air of dignity.
+
+“Certainly I'll go,” she said. “I'm sorry. I had no idea that I was
+trespassing.”
+
+The man's truculent manner softened, as, with the intuition of his kind,
+he recognized in the composed little apology the utterance of one of his
+“betters.”
+
+“Beggin' your pardon, miss,” he said, with a considerable accession of
+civility, “but it's as much as my place is worth to allow a trespasser
+here on Far End.”
+
+Sara nodded.
+
+“You're perfectly right to obey orders,” she said, and bending her steps
+towards the public road from which she had strayed to listen to the
+unseen musician, she made her way homewards.
+
+“Your mysterious 'Hermit' is nothing if not thorough,” she told Doctor
+Dick and Molly on her return. “I trespassed on to the Far End property
+to-day, and was ignominiously ordered off by a rather aggressive person,
+who, I suppose, is Mr. Trent's servant.”
+
+“That would be Judson,” nodded Selwyn. “I've attended him once or twice
+professionally. The fellow's all right, but he's under strict orders, I
+believe, to allow no trespassers.”
+
+“So it seems,” returned Sara. “By the way, who is the violinist at Far
+End? Is it the 'Hermit' himself?”
+
+“It's rumoured that he does play,” said Molly. “But no one has ever been
+privileged to hear him.”
+
+“Their loss, then,” commented Sara shortly. “I should say he is a
+magnificent performer.”
+
+Molly nodded, an expression of impish amusement in her eyes.
+
+“On the sole occasion I met him, I asked him why no one was ever allowed
+to hear him play,” she said, chuckling. “I even suggested that he might
+contribute a solo to the charity concert we were getting up at the
+time!”
+
+“And what did he say?” asked Sara, smiling.
+
+“Told me that there was no need for a man to exhibit his soul to the
+public! So I asked him what he meant, and he said that if I understood
+anything about music I would know, and that if I didn't, it was a waste
+of his time trying to explain. Do _you_ know what he meant?”
+
+“Yes,” said Sara slowly, “I think I do.” And recalling the passionate
+appeal and sadness of the music she had heard that afternoon, she was
+conscious of a sudden quick sense of pity for the solitary hermit of Far
+End. He was _afraid_--afraid to play to any one, lest he should reveal
+some inward bitterness of his soul to those who listened!
+
+The following day, Molly carried Sara off to Rose Cottage to make the
+acquaintance of “the Lavender Lady” and her nephew.
+
+Miss Herrick--or Miss Lavinia, as she was invariably addressed--looked
+exactly as though she had just stepped out of the early part of last
+century. She wore a gown of some soft, silky material, sprigged with
+heliotrope, and round her neck a fichu of cobwebby lace, fastened at
+the breast with a cameo brooch of old Italian workmanship. A coquettish
+little lace cap adorned the silver-grey hair, and the face beneath the
+cap was just what you would have expected to find it--soft and very
+gentle, its porcelain pink and white a little faded, the pretty old eyes
+a misty, lavender blue.
+
+She was alone when the two girls arrived, and greeted Sara with a
+humorous little smile.
+
+“How kind of you to come, Miss Tennant! We've been all agog to meet you,
+Miles and I. In a tiny place like Monkshaven, you see, every one knows
+every one else's business, so of course we have been hearing of you
+constantly.”
+
+“Then you might have come to Sunnyside to investigate me personally,”
+ replied Sara, smiling back.
+
+Miss Lavinia's face sobered suddenly, a shadow falling across her kind
+old eyes.
+
+“Miles is--rather difficult about calling,” she said hesitatingly. “You
+will understand--his lameness makes him a little self-conscious with
+strangers,” she explained.
+
+Sara looked distressed.
+
+“Oh! Perhaps it would have been better if I had not come?” she suggested
+hastily. “Shall I run away and leave Molly here?”
+
+Miss Lavinia flushed rose-pink.
+
+“My dear, I hope Miles knows how to welcome a guest in his own house as
+befits a Herrick,” she said, with a delicious little air of old-world
+dignity. “Indeed, it is an excellent thing for him to be dragged out of
+his shell. Only, please--will you remember?--treat him exactly as though
+he were not lame--never try to help him in any way. It is that which
+hurts him so badly--when people make allowances for his lameness. Just
+ignore it.”
+
+Sara nodded. She could understand that instinctive man's pride which
+recoiled from any tolerant recognition of a physical handicap.
+
+“Was his lameness caused by an accident?” she asked.
+
+“It came through a very splendid deed.” Little Miss Lavinia's eyes
+glowed as she spoke. “He stopped a pair of runaway carriage-horses. They
+had taken fright at a motor-lorry, and, when they bolted, the coachman
+was thrown from the box, so that it looked as if nothing could save the
+occupants of the carriage. Miles flung himself at the horses' heads, and
+although, of course, he could not actually stop them single-handed, he
+so impeded their progress that a second man, who sprang forward to help,
+was able to bring them to a standstill.”
+
+“How plucky of him!” exclaimed Sara warmly. “You must be very proud of
+your nephew, Miss Lavinia!”
+
+“She is,” interpolated Molly affectionately. “Aren't you, dear Lavender
+Lady?”
+
+Miss Lavinia smiled a trifle wistfully.
+
+“Ah! My dear,” she said sadly, “splendid things are done at such a cost,
+and when they are over we are apt to forget the splendour and remember
+only the heavy price. . . . My poor Miles was horribly injured--he had
+been dragged for yards, clinging to the horses' bridles--and for weeks
+we were not even sure if he would live. He has lived--but he will walk
+lame to the end of his life.”
+
+The little instinctive silence which followed was broken by the sound of
+voices in the hall outside, and, a minute later, Miles Herrick himself
+came into the room, escorting a very fashionably attired and distinctly
+attractive woman, whom Sara guessed at once to be Audrey Maynard.
+
+She was not in the least pretty, but the narrowest of narrow skirts in
+vogue in the spring of 1914 made no secret of the fact that her figure
+was almost perfect. Her face was small and thin and inclined to be
+sallow, and beneath upward-slanting brows, to which art had undoubtedly
+added something, glimmered a pair of greenish-grey eyes, clear like
+rain. Nor was there any mistaking the fact that the rich copper-colour
+of the hair swathed beneath the smart little hat had come out of a
+bottle, and was in no way to be accredited to nature. It was small
+wonder that primitive Monkshaven stood aghast at such flagrant tampering
+with the obvious intentions of Providence.
+
+But notwithstanding her up-to-date air of artificiality, there was
+something immensely likeable about Audrey Maynard. Behind it all, Sara
+sensed the real woman--clever, tactful, and generously warm-hearted.
+
+Woman, when all is said and done, is frankly primitive in her instincts,
+and the desire to attract--with all its odd manifestations--is really
+but the outcome of her innate desire for home and a mate. It is
+this which lies at the root of most of her little vanities and
+weaknesses--and of all the big sacrifices of which she is capable as
+well. So she may be forgiven the former, and trusted to fall short but
+rarely of the latter when the crucial test comes.
+
+“Miles and I have been--as usual--squabbling violently,” announced Mrs.
+Maynard. “Sugar, please--lots of it,” she added, as Herrick handed her
+her tea. “It was about the man who lives at Far End,” she continued
+in reply to the Lavender Lady's smiling query. “Miles has been very
+irritating, and tried to smash all my suggested theories to bits. He
+insists that the Hermit is quite a commonplace, harmless young man--”
+
+“He must be at least forty,” interposed Herrick mildly.
+
+Audrey frowned him into silence and continued--
+
+“Now that's so dull, when half Monkshaven believes him to be a villain
+of the deepest dye, hiding from justice--or, possibly, a Bluebeard with
+an unhappy wife imprisoned somewhere in that weird old house of his.”
+
+Sara listened with undignified interest. It was strange how the
+enigmatical personality of the owner of Far End kept cropping up across
+her path.
+
+“And what is your own opinion, Mrs. Maynard?” she asked.
+
+Audrey flashed her a keen glance from her rain-clear eyes.
+
+“I think he's a--sphinx,” she said slowly.
+
+“The Sphinx was a lady,” objected Herrick pertinently.
+
+“Mr. Trent's a masculine re-incarnation of her, then,” retorted Mrs.
+Maynard, undefeated.
+
+Herrick smiled tolerantly. He was a tall, slenderly built man, with
+whimsical brown eyes and the half-stern, half-sweet mouth of one who has
+been through the mill of physical pain.
+
+“_Homme incompris_,” he suggested lightly. “Give the fellow his due--he
+at least supplies the feminine half of Monkshaven with a topic of
+perennial interest.”
+
+Audrey took up the implied challenge with enthusiasm, and the two of
+them wrangled comfortably together till tea was over. Then she demanded
+a cigarette--and another cushion--and finally sent Miles in search of
+some snapshots they had taken together and which he had developed since
+last they had met. She treated him exactly as though he suffered no
+handicap, demanding from him all the little services she would have
+asked from a man who was physically perfect.
+
+Sara herself, accustomed to anticipating every need of Patrick Lovell's,
+would have been inclined to feel somewhat compunctious over allowing a
+lame man to wait upon her, yet, as she watched the eager way in which
+Miles responded to the visitor's behests, she realized that in reality
+Audrey was behaving with supreme tact. She let Miles feel himself a man
+as other men, not a mere “lame duck” to whom indulgence must needs be
+granted.
+
+And once, when her hair just brushed his cheek, as he stooped over her
+to indicate some special point in one of the recently developed photos,
+Sara surprised a sudden ardent light in his quiet brown eyes that set
+her wondering whether possibly, the incessant sparring between Herrick
+and the lively, impulsive woman who shocked half Monkshaven, did not
+conceal something deeper than mere friendship.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE UNWILLING HOST
+
+It was one of those surprisingly warm days, holding a foretaste of
+June's smiles, which March occasionally vouchsafes.
+
+The sun blazed down out of a windless, cloudless sky, and Sara, making
+her way leisurely through the straggling woods that intervened betwixt
+the Selwyns' house and Monk's Cliff, felt the salt-laden air wafted
+against her face, as warmly mellow as though summer were already come.
+
+Molly had gone to Oldhampton--since the artists' colony there would be
+certain to take advantage of this gift of a summer's day to arrange a
+sketching party, and, as the morning's post had brought Sara a letter
+from Elisabeth Durward which had occasioned her considerable turmoil of
+spirit, she had followed her natural bent by seeking the solitude of a
+lonely tramp in order to think the matter out.
+
+From her earliest days at Barrow she had always carried the small
+tangles of childhood to a remote corner of the pine-woods for solution,
+and the habit had grown with her growth, so that now, when a rather
+bigger tangle presented itself, she turned instinctively to the solitude
+of the cliffs at Monkshaven, where the murmur of the sea was borne
+in her ears, plaintively reminiscent of the sound of the wind in her
+beloved pine trees.
+
+Spring comes early in the sheltered, southern bay of Monkshaven, and
+already the bracken was sending up pushful little shoots of young green,
+curled like a baby's fist, while the primroses, bunched together in
+clusters, thrust peering faces impertinently above the green carpet of
+the woods. Sara stopped to pick a handful, tucking them into her belt.
+Then, emerging from the woods, she breasted the steep incline that led
+to the brow of the cliff.
+
+A big boulder, half overgrown with moss and lichen, offered a tempting
+resting-place, and flinging herself down on the yielding turf beside it,
+she leaned back and drew out Elisabeth's letter.
+
+She had sometimes wondered whether Elisabeth had any suspicion of the
+fact that, before leaving Barrow, she had refused to marry Tim. The
+friendship and understanding between mother and son was so deep that it
+was very possible that Tim had taken her into his confidence. And
+even if he had not, the eyesight of love is extraordinarily keen, and
+Elisabeth would almost inevitably have divined that something was amiss
+with his happiness.
+
+If this were so, as Sara admitted to herself with a wry smile, there was
+little doubt that she would look askance at the woman who had had the
+temerity to refuse her beautiful Tim!
+
+And now, although her letter contained no definite allusion to the
+matter, reading between the lines, the conviction was borne in upon Sara
+that Elisabeth knew all that there was to know, and had ranged herself,
+heart and soul, on the side of her son.
+
+It was obvious that she thought of the whole world in terms of Tim, and,
+had she been a different type of woman, the simile of a hen with one
+chick would have occurred to Sara's mind.
+
+But there was nothing in the least hen-like about Elisabeth Durward.
+Only, whenever Tim came near her, her face, with its strangely
+inscrutable eyes, would irradiate with a sudden warmth and tenderness
+of emotion that was akin to the exquisite rapture of a lover when
+the beloved is near. To Sara, there seemed something a little
+frightening--almost terrible--in her intense devotion to Tim.
+
+The letter itself was charmingly written--expressing the hope that Sara
+was happy and comfortable at Monkshaven, recalling their pleasant time
+at Barrow together, and looking forward to other future visits from
+her--“_which would be a fulfillment of happiness to us all_.”
+
+It was this last sentence, combined with one or two other phrases into
+which much or little meaning might equally as easily be read, which had
+aroused in Sara a certain uneasy instinct of apprehension. Dimly she
+sensed a vague influence at work to strengthen the ties that bound her
+to Barrow, and to all that Barrow signified.
+
+She faced the question with characteristic frankness. Tim had his own
+place in her heart--secure and unassailable. But it was not the place
+in that sacred inner temple which is reserved for the one man, and she
+recognized this with a limpid clearness of perception rather uncommon in
+a girl of twenty. She also recognized that it was within the bounds of
+possibility that the one man might never come to claim that place, and
+that, if she gave Tim the answer he so ardently desired, they would
+quite probably rub along together as well as most married folk--better,
+perhaps, than a good many. But she was very sure that she never intended
+to desecrate that inner temple by any lesser substitute for love.
+
+Thus she reasoned, with the untried confidence of youth, which is so
+pathetically certain of itself and of its ultimate power to hold to its
+ideals, ignorant of the overpowering influences which may develop to
+push a man or woman this way or that, or of the pain that may turn
+clear, definite thought into a welter of blind anguish, when the soul
+in its agony snatches at any anodyne, true or false, which may seem to
+promise relief.
+
+A little irritably she folded up Elisabeth's letter. It was disquieting
+in some ways--she could not quite explain why--and just now she felt
+averse to wrestling with disturbing ideas. She only wanted to lie
+still, basking in the tranquil peace of the afternoon, and listen to the
+murmuring voice of the sea.
+
+She closed her eyes indolently, and presently, lulled by the drowsy
+rhythm of the waves breaking at the foot of the cliff, she fell asleep.
+
+She woke with a start. An ominous drop of rain had splashed down on to
+her cheek, and she sat up, broad awake in an instant and shivering a
+little. It had turned much colder, and a wind had risen which whispered
+round her of coming storm, while the blue sky of an hour ago was hidden
+by heavy, platinum-coloured clouds massing up from the south.
+
+Another and another raindrop fell, and, obeying their warning, Sara
+sprang up and bent her steps in the direction of home. But she was too
+late to avoid the storm which had been brewing, and before she had gone
+a hundred yards it had begun to break in drifting scurries of rain,
+driven before the wind.
+
+She hurried on, hoping to gain the shelter of the woods before the
+threatened deluge, but within ten minutes of the first heralding drops
+it was upon her--a torrent of blinding rain, sweeping across the upland
+like a wet sheet.
+
+She looked about her desperately, in search of cover, and perceiving,
+on the further side of a low stone wall, what she took to be a wooden
+shelter for cattle, she quickened her steps to a run, and, nimbly
+vaulting the wall, fled headlong into it.
+
+It was not, however, the cattle shed she had supposed it, but a roughly
+constructed summer-house, open on one side to the four winds of heaven
+and with a wooden seat running round the remaining three.
+
+Sara guessed immediately that she must have trespassed again on the Far
+End property, but reflecting that neither its owner nor his lynx-eyed
+servant was likely to be abroad in such a downpour as this, and that,
+even if they were, and chanced to discover her, they could hardly object
+to her taking refuge in this outlying shelter, she shook the rain from
+her skirts and sat down to await the lifting of the storm.
+
+As always in such circumstances, the time seemed to pass inordinately
+slowly, but in reality she had not been there more than a quarter of an
+hour before she observed the figure of a man emerge from some trees, a
+few hundred yards distant, and come towards her, and despite the fact
+that he was wearing a raincoat, with the collar turned up to his ears,
+and a tweed cap pulled well down over his head, she had no difficulty
+in recognizing in the approaching figure her fellow-traveller of the
+journey to Monkshaven.
+
+Evidently he had not seen her, for she could hear him whistling softly
+to himself as he approached, while with the fingers of one hand he
+drummed on his chest as though beating out the rhythm of the melody he
+was whistling--a wild, passionate refrain from Wieniawski's exquisite
+_Legende_. It sounded curiously in harmony with the tempest that raged
+about him.
+
+For himself, he appeared to regard the storm with indifference--almost
+to welcome it, for more than once Sara saw him raise his head as though
+he were glad to feel the wind and rain beating against his face.
+
+She drew back a little into the shadows of the summer-house, hoping he
+might turn aside without observing her, since, from all accounts,
+Garth Trent was hardly the type of man to welcome a trespasser upon his
+property.
+
+But he came straight on towards her, and an instant later she knew that
+her presence was discovered, for he stopped abruptly and peered through
+the driving rain in the direction of the summer-house. Then, quickening
+his steps, he rapidly covered the intervening space and halted on the
+threshold of the shelter.
+
+“What the devil----” he began, then paused and stared down at her with
+an odd glint of amusement in his eyes. “So it's you, is it?” he said at
+last, with a short laugh.
+
+Once again Sara was conscious of the extraordinary intensity of his
+regard, and now, as a sudden ragged gleam of sunlight pierced the
+clouds, falling athwart his face, she realized what it was that induced
+it. In both eyes the clear hazel of the iris was broken by a tiny,
+irregularly shaped patch of vivid blue, close to the pupil, and its
+effect was to give that curious depth and intentness of expression which
+Molly had tried to describe when she had said that Garth Trent's were
+the kind of eyes which “make you jump if he looked at you suddenly.”
+
+Sara almost jumped now; then, supported by her indignant recollection of
+the man's churlishness on a former occasion, she bowed silently.
+
+He continued to regard her with that lurking suggestion of amusement
+at the back of his eyes, and she was annoyed to feel herself flushing
+uncomfortably beneath his scrutiny. At last he spoke again.
+
+“You seem to have a faculty for intrusion,” he remarked drily.
+
+Sara's eyes flashed.
+
+“And you, a fancy for solitude,” she retorted.
+
+“Exactly.” He bowed ironically. “Perhaps you would oblige me by
+considering it?” And he drew politely aside as though to let her pass
+out in front of him.
+
+Sara cast a dismayed glance at the rain, which was still descending in
+torrents. Then she turned to him indignantly.
+
+“Do you mean that you're going to insist on my starting out in this
+storm?” she demanded.
+
+“Don't you know that you've no right to be here at all--that you're
+trespassing?” he parried coolly.
+
+“Of course I know it! But I didn't expect that any one in the world
+would object to my trespassing in the circumstances!”
+
+“You must not judge me by other people,” he replied composedly. “I am
+not--like them.”
+
+“You're not, indeed,” agreed Sara warmly.
+
+“And your tone implies 'thanks be,'” he supplemented with a faint
+smile. “Oh, well,” he went on ungraciously, “stay if you like--so long
+as you don't expect me to stay with you.”
+
+Sara hastily disclaimed any such desire, and, lifting his cap, he turned
+and strode away into the rain.
+
+Another ten minutes crawled by, and still the rain came down as
+persistently as though it intended never to cease again. Sara fidgeted,
+and walked across impatiently to the open front of the summer-house,
+staring up moodily at the heavy clouds. They showed no signs of
+breaking, and she was just about to resume her weary waiting on the
+seat within the shelter, when quick steps sounded to her left, and Garth
+Trent reappeared, carrying an umbrella and with a man's overcoat thrown
+over his arm.
+
+“It's going to rain for a good two hours yet,” he said abruptly. “You'd
+better come up to the house.”
+
+Sara gazed at him in silent amazement; the invitation was so totally
+unexpected that for the moment she had no answer ready.
+
+“Unless,” he added sneeringly, misinterpreting her silence, “you're
+afraid of the proprieties?”
+
+“I'm far more afraid of taking cold,” she replied promptly, preparing to
+evacuate the summer-house.
+
+“Here, put this on,” he said gruffly, holding out the coat he had
+brought with him. “There's no object in getting any wetter than you
+must.”
+
+He helped her into the coat, buttoning it carefully under her chin, his
+dexterous movements and quiet solicitude contrasting curiously with the
+detachment of his manner whilst performing these small services. He was
+so altogether business-like and unconcerned that Sara felt not unlike a
+child being dressed by a conscientious but entirely disinterested nurse.
+When he had fastened the last button of the long coat, which came down
+to her heels, he unfurled the umbrella and held it over her.
+
+“Keep close to me, please,” he said briefly, nor did he volunteer any
+further remark until they had accomplished the journey to the house, and
+were standing together in the old-fashioned hall which evidently served
+him as a living room.
+
+Here Trent relieved her of the coat, and while she stood warming her
+feet at the huge log-fire, blazing half-way up the chimney, he rang for
+his servant and issued orders for tea to be brought, as composedly as
+though visitors of the feminine persuasion were a matter of everyday
+occurrence.
+
+Sara, catching a glimpse of Judson's almost petrified face of
+astonishment as he retreated to carry out his master's instructions, and
+with a vivid recollection of her last encounter with him, almost laughed
+out loud.
+
+“Please sit down,” said Trent. “And”--with a glance towards her
+feet--“you had better take off those wet shoes.”
+
+There was something in his curt manner of giving orders--rather as
+though he were a drill-sergeant, Sara reflected--that aroused her to
+opposition. She held out her feet towards the blaze of the fire.
+
+“No, thank you,” she replied airily. “They'll dry like this.”
+
+As she spoke, she glanced up and encountered a sudden flash in his eyes
+like the keen flicker of a sword-blade. Without vouchsafing any answer,
+he knelt down beside her and began to unlace her shoes, finally drawing
+them off and laying them sole upwards, in front of the fire to dry. Then
+he passed his hand lightly over her stockinged feet.
+
+“Wringing wet!” he remarked curtly. “Those silk absurdities must come
+off as well.”
+
+Sara sprang up.
+
+“No!” she said firmly. “They shall not!”
+
+He looked at her, again with that glint of mocking amusement with which
+he had first greeted her presence in his summer-house.
+
+“You'd rather have a bad cold?” he suggested.
+
+“Ever so much rather!” retorted Sara hardily.
+
+He gave a short laugh, almost as though he could not help himself, and,
+with a shrug of his shoulders, turned and marched out of the room.
+
+Left alone, Sara glanced about her in some surprise at the evidences of
+a cultivated taste and love of beauty which the room supplied. It was
+not quite the sort of abode she would have associated with the grim,
+misanthropic type of man she judged her host to be.
+
+The old-fashioned note, struck by the huge oaken beams supporting the
+ceiling and by the open hearth, had been retained throughout, and every
+detail--the blue willow-pattern china on the old oak dresser, the
+dimly lustrous pewter perched upon the chimney-piece, the silver
+candle-sconces thrusting out curved, gleaming arms from the paneled
+walls--was exquisite of its kind. It reminded her of the old hall at
+Barrow, where she and Patrick had been wont to sit and yarn together on
+winter evenings.
+
+The place had a well-tended air, too, and Sara, who waged daily war
+against the slovenly shabbiness prevalent at Sunnyside, was all at once
+sensible of how desperately she had missed the quiet perfection of the
+service at Barrow. The nostalgia for her old home--the unquenchable,
+homesick longing for the _place_ that has held one's happiness--rushed
+over her in a overwhelming flood.
+
+Wishing she had never come to this house, which had so stirred old
+memories, she got up restlessly, driven by a sudden impulse to escape,
+just as the door opened to re-admit Garth Trent.
+
+He gave her a swift, searching glance.
+
+“Sit down again,” he commanded. “There”--gravely depositing a towel and
+a pair of men's woolen socks on the floor beside her--“dry your feet and
+put those socks on.”
+
+He moved quickly away towards the window and remained there, with his
+back turned studiously towards her, while she obeyed his instructions.
+When she had hung two very damp black silk stockings on the fire-dogs to
+dry, she flung a somewhat irritated glance at him over her shoulder.
+
+“You can come back,” she said in a small voice.
+
+He came, and stood staring down at the two woolly socks protruding from
+beneath the short, tweed skirt. The suspicion of a smile curved his
+lips.
+
+“They're several sizes too large,” he observed. “Odd creatures you women
+are,” he went on suddenly, after a brief silence. “You shy wildly at the
+idea of letting a man see the foot God gave you, but you've no scruples
+at all about letting any one see the selfishness that the devil's put
+into your hearts.”
+
+He spoke with a kind of savage contempt; it was as though the speech
+were tinged with some bitter personal memory.
+
+Sara's eyes surveyed him calmly.
+
+“I've no intention of making an exhibit of my heart,” she observed
+mildly.
+
+“It's wiser not, probably,” he retorted disagreeably, and at that moment
+Judson came into the room and began to arrange the tea-table beside his
+master's chair.
+
+“Put it over there,” directed Trent sharply, indicating with a gesture
+that the table should be placed near his guest, and Judson, his face
+manifesting rather more surprise than is compatible with the wooden mask
+demanded of the well-trained servant, hastened to comply.
+
+When he had readjusted the position of the tea-table, he moved quietly
+about the room, drawing the curtains and lighting the candles in their
+silver sconces, so that little pools of yellow light splashed down on to
+the smooth surface of the oak floor--waxed and polished till it gleamed
+like black ivory.
+
+As he withdrew unobtrusively towards the door, Trent tossed him a
+further order.
+
+“I shall want the car round in a couple of hours--at six,” he said, and
+smiled straight into Sara's startled eyes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE HERMIT'S SHELL
+
+Sara paused with the sugar-tongs poised above the Queen Anne bowl.
+
+“Sugar?” she queried.
+
+Trent regarded her seriously.
+
+“One lump, please.”
+
+She handed him his cup and poured out another for herself. Then she said
+lightly:
+
+“I heard you order your car. Is this quite a suitable afternoon for
+joy-riding?”
+
+“More so than for walking,” he retaliated. “I'm going to drive you
+home.”
+
+“At six o'clock?”
+
+“At six o'clock.”
+
+“And suppose I wish to leave before then?”
+
+He cast an expressive glance towards the windows, where the rain could
+be heard beating relentlessly against the panes.
+
+“It's quite up to you . . . to walk home.”
+
+Sara made a small grimace of disgust.
+
+“Otherwise,” she said tentatively, “I am going to stay here, whether I
+will or no?”
+
+He nodded.
+
+“Yes. It's my birthday, and I'm proposing to make myself a present of an
+hour or two of your society,” he replied composedly.
+
+Sara regarded him with curiosity. He had been openly displeased to find
+her trespassing on his estate--which was only what current report
+would have led her to expect--yet now he was evincing a desire for her
+company, and, in addition, a very determined intention to secure it. The
+man was an enigma!
+
+“I'm surprised,” she said lightly. “I gathered from a recent remark of
+yours that you didn't think too highly of women.”
+
+“I don't,” he replied with uncompromising directness.
+
+“Then why--why----”
+
+“Perhaps I have a fancy to drop back for a brief space into the life I
+have renounced,” he suggested mockingly.
+
+“Then you really are what they call you--a hermit?”
+
+“I really am.”
+
+“And feminine society is taboo?”
+
+“Entirely--as a rule.” If, for an instant, the faintest of smiles
+modified the grim closing of his lips, Sara failed to notice it.
+
+The cold detachment of his answer irritated her. It was as though
+he intended to remain, hermit-like, within his shell, and she had a
+suspicion that behind this barricade he was laughing at her for her
+ineffectual attempts to dig him out of it with a pin.
+
+“I suppose some woman didn't fall into your arms just when you wanted
+her to?” she hazarded.
+
+She had not calculated the result of this thrust. His eyes blazed for
+a moment. Then, a shade of contempt blending with the former cool
+insouciance of his tone, he said quietly:
+
+“You don't expect an answer to that question, do you?”
+
+The snub was unmistakable, and Sara's cheeks burned. She felt heartily
+ashamed of herself, and yet, incongruously, she was half inclined to
+lay the blame for her impertinent speech on his shoulders. He had almost
+challenged her to deal a blow that should crack that impervious shell of
+his.
+
+She glanced across at him beneath her lashes, and in an instant all
+thought of personal dignity was wiped out by the look of profound pain
+that she surprised in his face. Her shrewd question, uttered almost
+unthinkingly in the cut-and-thrust of repartee, had got home somewhere
+on an old wound.
+
+“Oh, I'm sorry!” she exclaimed contritely.
+
+She could only assume that he had not heard her low-voiced apology, for,
+when he turned to her again, he addressed her exactly as though she had
+not spoken.
+
+“Try some of these little hot cakes,” he said, tendering a plateful.
+“They are quite one of Mrs. Judson's specialties.”
+
+With amazing swiftness he had reassumed his mask. The bright, hazel eyes
+were entirely free from any hint of pain, and his voice held nothing
+more than conventional politeness. Sara meekly accepted one of the cakes
+in question, and for a little while the conversation ran on stereotyped
+lines.
+
+Presently, when tea was over, he offered her a cigarette.
+
+“I have not forgotten your tastes, you see,” he said, smiling.
+
+“I do smoke,” she admitted. “But”--the confession came with a rush, and
+she did not quite know what impelled her to make it--“I smoked--that day
+in the train--out of sheer defiance.”
+
+“I was sure of it,” he responded in amused tones. “But now”--striking
+a match and holding it for her to light her cigarette--“you will smoke
+because you really like it, and because it would be a friendly action
+and condone the fact that you are being held a prisoner against your
+will.”
+
+Sara smiled.
+
+“It is a very charming prison,” she said, contemplating the harmony of
+the room with satisfied eyes.
+
+“You like it?” he asked eagerly.
+
+She looked at him in surprise. What could it matter to him whether she
+liked it or not?
+
+“Why, of course, I like it,” she replied. “Who wouldn't? You see,” she
+added a little wistfully, “I have no home of my own now, so I have to
+enjoy other people's.”
+
+“I have no home, either,” he said shortly.
+
+“But--but this----”
+
+“Is the house in which I live. One wants more than a few sticks of
+furniture to make a home.”
+
+Sara was struck by the intense bitterness in his tone. Truly this man,
+with his lightning changes from boorish incivility to whole-hearted
+hospitality, from apparently impenetrable reserve to an almost desperate
+outspokenness, was as incomprehensible as any sphinx.
+
+She hastily steered the conversation towards a less dangerous channel,
+and gradually they drifted into the discussion of art and music;
+and Sara, not without some inward trepidation--remembering Molly's
+experience--touched on his own musicianship.
+
+“It was surely you I herd?” she queried a trifle hesitatingly. “You
+were playing some Russian music that I knew. Your man ordered me off the
+premises”--smiling a little--“so I didn't hear as much as I should have
+liked.”
+
+“Is that a hint?” he asked whimsically.
+
+“A broad one. Please take it.”
+
+He hesitated a moment. Then--
+
+“Very well,” he said abruptly.
+
+He rose and led the way into an adjoining room.
+
+Like the hall they had just quitted, it was pleasantly illumined by
+candles in silver sconces, and had evidently been arranged to serve
+exclusively as a music-room, for it contained practically no furniture
+beyond a couple of chairs, and a beautiful mahogany cabinet, of which
+the doors stood open, revealing sliding shelves crammed full of musical
+scores.
+
+A grand piano was so placed that the light from either window or candles
+would fall comfortably upon the music-desk; and on a stool beside it
+rested a violin case.
+
+Trent opened the case, and, lifting the violin from is cushiony bed of
+padded satin, fingered it caressingly.
+
+“Can you read accompaniments?” he asked, flashing the question at her
+with his usual abruptness.
+
+“Yes.” Sara's answer came simply, minus the mock-modest tag: “A little,”
+ or “I'll do my best,” which most people seem to think it incumbent on
+them to add, in the circumstances.
+
+It is one of the mysteries of convention why, when you are perfectly
+aware that you can do a thing, and do it well, you are expected to
+depreciate your capability under penalty of being accounted overburdened
+with conceit should you fail to do so.
+
+“Good.” Trent pulled out an armful of music from the cabinet and looked
+through it rapidly.
+
+“We'll have some of these.” (“These” being several suites for violin and
+piano.)
+
+Sara's lips twitched. He was testing her rather highly, since the
+pianoforte score of the suites in question was by no means easy. But,
+thanks to the wisdom of Patrick Lovell, who had seen to it that she
+studied under one of the finest masters of the day, she was not
+a musician by temperament alone, but had also a surprisingly good
+technique.
+
+At the close of the second suite, Trent turned to her enthusiastically,
+his face aglow. For the moment he was no longer the hermit, aloof
+and enigmatical, but an eager comrade, spontaneously appealing to a
+congenial spirit.
+
+“That went splendidly, didn't it?” he exclaimed. “The pianoforte score
+is a pretty stiff one, but I was sure”--smilingly--“from the downright
+way you answered my question about accompaniments, that you'd prove
+equal to it.”
+
+Sara smiled back at him.
+
+“I didn't think it necessary to make any conventional professions of
+modesty--to you,” she said. “You don't--wrap things up much--yourself.”
+
+He leaned against the piano, looking down at her.
+
+“No. Nothing I say can make things either better or worse for me, so I
+have at least gained freedom from the conventions. That is one of my few
+compensations.”
+
+“Compensations for what?” The question escaped her almost before she
+was aware, and she waited for the snub which she felt would inevitably
+follow her second indiscretion that afternoon.
+
+But it did not come. Instead, he fenced adroitly.
+
+“Compensation for the limitations of a hermit's life,” he said lightly.
+
+“The life is your own choice,” she flashed back at him.
+
+“Oh, no, we're not always given a choice, you know. This world isn't a
+kind of sublimated children's party.”
+
+She regarded him thoughtfully.
+
+“I think,” she said gravely, “we always get back out of life just what
+we put into it.”
+
+His mouth twisted ironically.
+
+“That's a charming doctrine, but I'm afraid I can't subscribe to it. I
+put in--all my capital. And I've drawn a blank.”
+
+His tone implied a kind of strange, numb acceptance of an inimical
+destiny, and Sara was conscious of a rush of intense pity towards this
+man whose implacably cynical outlook manifested itself in almost every
+word he uttered. It was no mere pose on his part--of that she felt
+assured--but something ingrained, grafted on to his very nature by the
+happenings of life.
+
+Rather girlishly she essayed to combat it.
+
+“You're not at the end of life yet.”
+
+He smiled at her--a sudden, rare smile of extraordinary sweetness.
+Her intention was so unmistakable--so touchingly ingenious, as are all
+youth's attempts to heal a bitterness that lies beyond its ken.
+
+“There are no more lucky dips left in life's tub for me, I'm afraid,” he
+said gently.
+
+Sara seized upon the opening afforded.
+
+“Of course not--if you persist in keeping to the role of looker-on,” she
+retorted.
+
+He regarded her gravely.
+
+“Unfortunately, I've no longer any right to dip my head into the tub.
+Even if I chanced to draw a prize--I should only have to put it back
+again.”
+
+The quiet irrevocableness of his answer shook her optimism.
+
+“I--don't understand,” she said hesitatingly.
+
+“No?”--his tones hardened suddenly. “It's just as well you shouldn't,
+perhaps.”
+
+The abrupt alteration in his manner took her by surprise. All at once,
+he seemed to have retreated into his shell, to have become again the
+curt, ironic individual of their first meeting.
+
+“I think,” he went on, tranquilly ignoring the mixture of chagrin and
+amazement in her face, “I think I hear the car coming round. You had
+better put on your shoes and stockings again--they'll be dry now--and
+then we can start. It's no longer raining.”
+
+Sara felt as though she had been suddenly relegated to a position of
+utter unimportance. He was showing her that, as far as he was concerned,
+she was a person of not the slightest consequence, treating her like an
+inquisitive child. Their recent conversation, during which his mantle of
+reserve had slipped a little aside, the music they had shared, when for
+a brief time they had walked together in the pleasant paths of mutual
+understanding, all seemed to have receded an immense distance away. As
+she took her place in the car, she could almost have believed that the
+incidents of the afternoon were a dream, and nothing more.
+
+Trent sat silently beside her, his attention apparently concentrated on
+the driving of the car. Once he asked her if she were warm enough, and,
+upon her replying in the affirmative, lapsed again into silence.
+
+Gaining security from his abstraction, Sara ventured to steal a
+side-glance at his face. It was a curiously contradictory face, hard
+and bitter-looking, yet the reckless mouth curved sensitively at the
+corners, and the tolerant, humorous lines about the eyes seemed to
+combat the impression of almost brutal force conveyed by the frowning
+brows and square, dominant chin.
+
+Always acutely sensible of temperament, Sara felt as though the man
+beside her might be capable of any extreme of action. Whatever decision
+he might adopt over any given matter, he would hold by it, come what
+may, and she was aware of an odd reflex consciousness of feminine
+inadequacy. To influence Garth Trent against his convictions would be
+like trying to deflect the course of a river by laying a straw across
+its track.
+
+The primitive woman in her thrilled a little, responsively, and she
+wondered whether or no her sex had played much part in his life. He was
+a woman-hater--so Molly had told her--yet Sara could imagine him in a
+very different role. Of one thing she was sure--that the woman who was
+loved by Garth Trent would anchor in no placid back-water. Life, for
+her, would hold something breathless, vital, exultant . . .
+
+
+
+“Well, have you decided yet?”
+
+The ironical voice broke sharply into the midst of her fugitive
+thoughts, and Sara jumped violently, flushing scarlet as she found
+Trent's eyes surveying her with a quietly quizzical expression.
+
+“Decided what?” she asked defensively.
+
+“Where to place me--whether among the sheep or the goats. You were
+dissecting my character, weren't you?”
+
+He waited for an answer, but Sara maintained an embarrassed silence. He
+had divined the subject of her thoughts too nearly.
+
+He laughed.
+
+“The decision has gone against me, I see. Well, I'm not surprised. I've
+certainly treated you with a rather rough-and-ready kind of courtesy.
+You must try to pardon me. A hermit gets little practice at entertaining
+angels unawares.”
+
+Sara, recovering her composure, regarded him placidly.
+
+“You might find many opportunities for practice in Monkshaven,” she
+suggested.
+
+“In Monkshaven? Are you trying to suggest that I should ingratiate
+myself with the leading lights of local society?”
+
+She nodded.
+
+“Why not?”
+
+He laughed as though genuinely amused.
+
+“Perhaps you've not been here long enough yet to discover that the
+amiable inhabitants of Monkshaven look upon me as a sort of cross
+between a madman and a criminal who has eluded justice.”
+
+“Whose fault is that?”
+
+“Oh, mine, I suppose”--quickly. “But it doesn't matter--since I regard
+them as a set of harmless, conventional fools. No, thank you, I've no
+intention of making friends with the people of Monkshaven.”
+
+“They're not all conventional. Some of them are rather interesting--Mrs.
+Maynard, for instance, and the Herricks.”
+
+He gave her a keen glance.
+
+“Do you know the Herricks?”
+
+“Yes. Why don't you go to see them sometimes? Miles--”
+
+“Oh, Miles Herrick's all right. I know that,” he interrupted.
+
+“It's very bad for you to cut yourself off from the rest of the world,
+as you do,” persisted Sara sagely.
+
+He was silent for a while, his eyes intent on the strip of road that
+stretched in front of him, and when he spoke again it was to draw her
+attention to the effect of the cloud shadows moving across the sea,
+exactly as though nothing of greater interest had been under discussion.
+
+She began to recognize as a trick of his this abrupt method of
+terminating a conversation that for some reason did not please him.
+It was as conclusive as when the man at the other end of the 'phone
+suddenly “rings off” without any preliminary warning.
+
+By this time they had reached the steep hill that approached directly to
+the Selwyns' house, and a couple of minutes later, Trent brought the car
+to a standstill at the gate.
+
+“You have nothing to thank me for,” he said, curtly dismissing her
+expression of thanks as they stood together on the path. “It is I
+who should be grateful to you. My opportunities of social
+intercourse”--drily--“are somewhat limited.”
+
+“Extend them, then, as I advised,” retorted Sara.
+
+“Do you wish me to?” he asked swiftly, and his intent eyes sought her
+face with a sudden hawk-like glance.
+
+Her own eyes fell. She was conscious, all at once, of an inexplicable
+agitation, a tremulous confusion that made it seem a physical
+impossibility to reply.
+
+But he still waited for his answer, and, at last, with an effort she
+mastered the nervousness that had seized her.
+
+“I--I--yes, I do wish it,” she said faintly.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+A MEETING AT ROSE COTTAGE
+
+It had not taken Sara very long to cut a niche for herself in the
+household at Sunnyside. In a dwelling where the master of the house was
+away the greater part of the day, the mistress a chronic invalid, and
+the daughter a beautiful young thing whose mind was intent upon
+“colour” and “atmosphere,” and altogether hazy concerning the practical
+necessities of housekeeping, the advent of any one possessing even
+half Sara's intelligent efficiency would have been provocative of many
+reforms.
+
+Dick Selwyn, pushed to the uttermost limits of his strength by the
+demands of his wide practice and by the nervous strain of combating his
+wife's incessant fretfulness, quickly learned to turn to Sara for that
+sympathetic understanding which had hitherto been denied him in his
+home-life.
+
+He had, of course, never again discussed with her his wife's incurable
+self-absorption, as on the day of her arrival, when the painful scene
+created by Mrs. Selwyn had practically forced him into some sort of
+explanation, but Sara's quick grasp of the situation had infinitely
+simplified matters, and by devoting a considerable amount of her own
+time to the entertainment of the captious invalid, and thus keeping her
+in a good humour, she contrived to save Selwyn many a bad half-hour of
+recrimination and complaint.
+
+Sara was essentially a good “comrade,” as Patrick Lovell had recognized
+in the old days at Barrow Court, and instinctively Selwyn came to share
+with her the pin-prick worries that dog a man's footsteps in this vale
+of woe, learning to laugh at them; and even his apprehensions concerning
+Molly's ultimate development and welfare were lessened by the knowledge
+that Sara was at hand.
+
+Molly herself seemed to float through life like a big, beautiful moth,
+sailing serenely along, and now and then blundering into things, but
+never learning by experience the dangers of such blunders. One day, in
+the course of her inconsequent path through life, she would probably
+flutter too near the attractive blaze of some perilous fire, just as
+a moth flies against the flame of a candle and singes its frail, soft
+wings in the process.
+
+It was of this that Sara was inwardly afraid, realizing, perhaps more
+clearly than the girl's overworked and sometimes absent-minded father,
+the risks attaching to her temperament.
+
+Of late, Molly had manifested a certain moodiness and irritability very
+unlike her usual facile sweetness of disposition, and Sara was somewhat
+nonplussed to account for it. Finally, she approached the matter by way
+of a direct inquiry.
+
+“What's wrong, Molly?”
+
+Molly was hunched up in the biggest and shabbiest armchair by the fire,
+smoking innumerable cigarettes and flinging them away half-finished. At
+Sara's question, she looked up with a shade of defiance in her eyes.
+
+“Why should anything be wrong?” she countered, obviously on the
+defensive.
+
+“I don't know, I'm sure,” responded Sara good-humouredly. “But I'm
+pretty certain there is something. Come, out with it, you great baby!”
+
+Molly sighed, smoked furiously for a moment, and then tossed her
+cigarette into the fire.
+
+“Well, yes,” she admitted at last. “There is--something wrong.” She rose
+and stood looking across at Sara like a big, perplexed child. “I--I owe
+some money.”
+
+Sara was conscious of a distinct shock.
+
+“How much?” she asked sharply.
+
+“It's--it's rather a lot--twenty pounds!”
+
+“Twenty pounds!” This was certainly a large sum for Molly--whose annual
+dress allowance totaled very little more--to be in debt. “What on earth
+have you been up to? Buying a new trousseau? Where do you owe it--Carr &
+Bishop's?”--mentioning the principal draper's shop in Oldhampton.
+
+“No. I--don't owe it to a shop at all. It's--it's a bridge debt!” The
+confession came out rather hurriedly.
+
+Sara's face grew grave.
+
+“But, Molly, you little fool, you've no business to be playing bridge.
+Where have you been playing?”
+
+“Oh, we play sometimes at the studios--when the light's too bad to go on
+painting, you know”--airily.
+
+“You mean,” said Sara, “the artists' club people play?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+Sara frowned. She knew that Molly was one of the youngest members of
+this club of rather irresponsible and happy-go-lucky folk, and privately
+considered that Selwyn had made a great mistake in ever allowing her to
+join it. It embodied, as she had discovered by inquiry, some of the
+most rapid elements of Oldhampton's society, and was, moreover, open to
+receive as temporary members artists who come from other parts of the
+country to paint in the neighbourhood. More than one well-known name had
+figured in the temporary membership list, and, in addition, the name of
+certain _dilettanti_ to whom the freedom from convention of the artistic
+life signified far more that art itself.
+
+“I don't understand,” said Sara slowly, “how they let you go on playing
+until you owed twenty pounds. Don't you square up at the end of the
+afternoon's play?”
+
+“Yes. But I'd--I'd been losing badly, and--and some one lent me the
+money.”
+
+Molly flushed a bewitching rose-colour and appealed with big, pathetic
+eyes. It was difficult to be righteously wroth with her, but Sara
+steeled her heart.
+
+“You'd no right to borrow,” she said shortly.
+
+“No. I know I hadn't. But, don't you see, I thought I should be sure
+to win it all back? I couldn't ask Dad for it. Every penny he can spare
+goes on something that mother can't possibly do without,” added the girl
+with unwonted bitterness.
+
+The latter fact was incontrovertible, and Sara remained silent. In her
+own mind she regarded Mrs. Selwyn as a species of vampire, sucking out
+all that was good, and sweet, and wholesome from the lives of those
+about her--even that of her own daughter. Did the woman realize, she
+wondered, that instead of being the help all mothers were sent into the
+world to be, she was nothing but a hindrance and a stumbling-block?
+
+“I don't know what to do, I simply don't.” Molly's humble, dejected
+tones broke through the current of Sara's thoughts. “You see, the worst
+of it is”--she blushed even more bewitchingly than before--“that I owe
+it to a _man_. It's detestable owing money to a man!”--with suppressed
+irritation.
+
+Two fine lines drew themselves between Sara's level brows. This was
+worse than she had imagined.
+
+“Who is it?” she asked, at last, quietly.
+
+“Lester Kent.”
+
+“And who--or what--is Lester Kent?”
+
+“He's--he's an artist--by choice. I mean,” stumbled Molly, “that he's
+quite well off--he only paints for pleasure. He often runs down from
+town for a month or two at a time and takes out a temporary membership
+for our club.”
+
+“And he has lent you this money?”
+
+“Yes”--rather shamefacedly.
+
+“Well, he must be paid back at once. At once, do you understand? I will
+give you the twenty pounds--you're not to bother your father about it.”
+
+“Oh, Sara! You are a blessed duck!”
+
+In an instant Molly's cares had slipped from her shoulders, and she
+beamed across at her deliverer with the most disarming gratitude.
+
+“Wait a moment,” continued Sara firmly. “You must never borrow from Mr.
+Kent--or any one else--again.”
+
+“Oh, I won't! Indeed, I won't!” Molly was fervent in her assurances.
+“I've been wretched over this. Although”--brightening--“Lester Kent was
+really most awfully nice about it. He said it didn't matter one bit.”
+
+“Did he indeed?” Sara spoke rather grimly. “And how old is this Lester
+Kent?”
+
+“How old? Oh”--vaguely--“thirty-five--forty, perhaps. I really don't
+know. Somehow he's not the sort of person whose age one thinks about.”
+
+“Anyway, he's old enough to know better than to be lending you money
+to play bridge with,” commented Sara. “I wish you'd give up playing,
+Molly.”
+
+“Oh, I couldn't!” coaxingly. “We play for very small stakes--as a
+rule. But it _is_ amusing, Sara. And, you know this place is as dull
+as ditchwater unless one does _something_. But I won't get into debt
+again--I really won't.”
+
+Molly had all the caressing charm of a nice kitten, and now that the
+pressing matter of her indebtedness to Lester Kent was settled, she
+relapsed into her usual tranquil, happy-go-lucky self. She rubbed her
+cheek confidingly against Sara's.
+
+“You are a pet angel, Sara, my own,” she said. “I'm so glad you adopted
+us. Now I can go to the Herricks' tea-party this afternoon without
+having that twenty pounds nagging at the back of my mind all the time. I
+suppose”--glancing at the clock--“it's time we put on our glad rags. The
+Lavender Lady said she expected us at four.”
+
+Half-an-hour later, Molly reappeared, looking quite impossibly lovely
+in a frock of the cheapest kind of material, “run up” by the local
+dressmaker, and very evidently with no other thought “at the back of her
+mind” than of the afternoon's entertainment.
+
+The tea-party was a small one, commensurate with the size of the rooms
+at Rose Cottage, and included only Sara and Molly, Mrs. Maynard, and, to
+Sara's surprise, Garth Trent.
+
+As she entered the room, he turned quietly from the window where he had
+been standing looking out at the Herricks' charming garden.
+
+“Mr. Trent”--Miss Lavinia fluttered forward--“let me introduce you to
+Miss Tennant.”
+
+The Lavender Lady's pretty, faded blue eyes beamed benevolently on him.
+She was so _very_ glad that “that poor, lonely fellow at Far End” had at
+last been induced to desert the solitary fastnesses of Monk's Cliff,
+but as she was simply terrified at the prospect of entertaining him
+herself--and Audrey Maynard seemed already fully occupied, chatting with
+Miles--she was only too thankful to turn him across to Sara's competent
+hands.
+
+“We've met before, Miss Lavinia,” said Trent, and over her head his
+hazel eyes met Sara's with a gamin amusement dancing in them. “Miss
+Tennant kindly called on me at Far End.”
+
+“Oh, I didn't know.” Little Miss Lavinia gazed in a puzzled fashion from
+one to the other of her guests. “Sara, my dear, you never told me that
+you and Dr. Selwyn had called on Mr. Trent.”
+
+Sara laughed outright.
+
+“Dear Lavender Lady--we didn't. Neither of us would have dared to insult
+Mr. Trent by doing anything so conventional.” The black eyes flashed
+back defiance at the hazel ones. “I got caught in a storm on the
+Monk's Cliff, and Mr. Trent--much against his will, I'm
+certain”--maliciously--“offered me shelter.”
+
+“Now that was kind of him. I'm sure Sara must have been most grateful to
+you.” And the kind old face smiled up into Trent's dark, bitter one so
+simply and sincerely that it seemed as though, for the moment, some of
+the bitterness melted away. Not even so confirmed a misanthrope as the
+hermit of Far End could have entirely resisted the Lavender Lady, with
+her serene aroma of an old-world courtesy and grace long since departed
+from these hurrying twentieth-century days.
+
+She moved away to the tea-table, leaving Trent and Sara standing
+together in the bay of the window.
+
+“So you are overcoming your distaste for visiting,” said Sara a little
+nervously. “I didn't expect to meet you here.”
+
+His glance held hers.
+
+“You wished it,” he answered gravely.
+
+A sudden colour flamed up into the warm pallor of her skin.
+
+“Are you suggesting I invited you to meet me here?” she responded,
+willfully misinterpreting him. She shook her read regretfully. “You must
+have misunderstood me. I should never have imposed such a strain on your
+politeness.”
+
+His eyes glinted.
+
+“Do you know,” he said quietly, “that I should very much like to shake
+you?”
+
+“I'm glad,” she answered heartily. “It's a devastating feeling! You made
+me feel just the same the day I travelled with you. So now we're quits.”
+
+“Won't you--please--try to forget that day in the train?” he said
+quickly. “I behaved like a bore. I'm afraid I've no real excuse to
+offer, except that I'd been reminded of something that happened long
+ago--and I wanted to be alone.”
+
+“To enjoy the memory in solitude?” hazarded Sara flippantly. She was
+still nervous and talking rather at random, scarcely heeding what she
+said.
+
+A look of bitter irony crossed his face.
+
+“Hardly that,” he said shortly, and Sara knew that somehow she had again
+inadvertently laid her hand upon an old hurt. She spoke with a sudden
+change of voice.
+
+“Then, as the train doesn't hold pleasant memories for either of us,
+let's forget it,” she suggested gently.
+
+“Do you know what that implies?” he asked. “It implies that you are
+willing to be friends. Do you mean that?”--incisively.
+
+She nodded silently, not trusting herself to speak.
+
+“Thank you,” he said curtly, and then Audrey Maynard's gay voice broke
+across the tension of the moment.
+
+“Mr. Trent, I simply cannot allow Sara to monopolize you any longer. Now
+that we _have_ succeeded in dragging the hermit out of his shell, we all
+want a share of his society, please.”
+
+Trent turned instantly, and Sara slipped across the room and took the
+place Audrey had vacated by Miles's couch. He greeted her coming with a
+smile, but there were shadows of fatigue beneath his eyes, and his lips
+were rather white and drawn-looking.
+
+“This is a lazy way to receive visitors, isn't it?” he said
+apologetically. “But my game leg's given out to-day, so you must forgive
+me.”
+
+Sara's glance swept his face with quick sympathy.
+
+“You oughtn't to be at the 'party' at all,” she said. “You look far too
+tired to be bothered with a parcel of chattering women.”
+
+He smiled.
+
+“Do you know,” he whispered humorously, “that, although you're quite the
+four nicest women I know, the shameful truth is that I'm really here on
+behalf of the one man! I met him yesterday in the town and booked him
+for this afternoon, and, having at last dislodged him from his lone
+pinnacle, I hadn't the heart to leave him unsupported.”
+
+“No. I'm glad you dug him out, Miles. It was clever of you.”
+
+“It will give Monkshaven something to talk about, anyway”--whimsically.
+
+“I suppose”--the toe of Sara's narrow foot was busily tracing a pattern
+on the carpet--“I suppose you don't know why he shuts himself up like
+that at Far End?”
+
+“No, I don't,” he answered. “But I'd wager it's for some better reason
+than people give him credit for. Or it may be merely a preference for
+his own society. Anyway, it is no business of ours.” Then, swiftly
+softening the suggestion of reproof contained in his last sentence, he
+added: “Don't encourage me to gossip, Sara. When a man's tied by the
+leg, as I am, it's all he can do to curb a tendency towards tattling
+village scandal like some garrulous old woman.”
+
+It was evident that the presence of visitors was inflicting a
+considerable strain on Herrick's endurance, and, as though by common
+consent, the little party broke up shortly after tea.
+
+Molly expressed her intention of accompanying Mrs. Maynard back to
+Greenacres--the beautiful house which the latter had had built to her
+own design, overlooking the bay--in order to inspect the pretty widow's
+recent purchase of a new motor-car.
+
+Trent turned to Sara with a smile.
+
+“Then it devolves on me to see you safely home, Miss Tennant, may I?”
+
+She nodded permission, and they set off through the high-hedged lane,
+Sara hurrying along at top speed.
+
+For a few minutes Trent strode beside her in silence. Then:
+
+“Are you catching a train?” he inquired mildly. “Or is it only that you
+want to be rid of my company in the shortest possible time?”
+
+She coloured, moderating her pace with an effort. Once again the odd
+nervousness engendered by his presence had descended on her. It was
+as though something in the man's dominating personality strung all
+her nerves to a high tension of consciousness, and she felt herself
+overwhelmingly sensible of his proximity.
+
+He smiled down at her.
+
+“Then--if you're not in any hurry to get home--will you let me take you
+round by Crabtree Moor? It's part of a small farm of mine, and I want a
+word with my tenant.”
+
+Sara acquiesced, and, Trent, having speedily transacted the little
+matter of business with his tenant, they made their way across a stretch
+of wild moorland which intersected the cultivated fields lying on either
+hand.
+
+In the dusk of the evening, with the wan light of the early moon
+deepening the shadows and transforming the clumps of furze into strange,
+unrecognizable shapes of darkness, it was an eerie enough place. Sara
+shivered a little, instinctively moving closer to her companion. And
+then, as they rounded a furze-crowned hummock, out of the hazy twilight,
+loping along on swift, padding feet, emerged the figure of a man.
+
+With a muttered curse he swerved aside, but Trent's arm shot out, and,
+catching him by the shoulder, he swung him round so that he faced them.
+
+“Leggo!” he muttered, twisting in Trent's iron grasp. “Leggo, can't
+you?”
+
+“I can, but I'm not going to,” said Trent coolly. “At least, not till
+you've explained your presence here. This is private property. What are
+you doing on it?”
+
+“I'm doing no harm,” growled the man sullenly.
+
+“No?” Trent passed his free hand swiftly down the fellow's body,
+feeling the bulge of his coat. “Then what's the meaning of those rabbits
+sticking out under your coat? Now, look here, my man, I know you. You're
+Jim Brady, and it's not the first, nor the second, time I've caught you
+poaching on my land. But it's the last. Understand that? This time the
+Bench shall deal with you.”
+
+The man was silent for a moment. Then suddenly he burst out:
+
+“Look here, sir, pass it over this time. My missus is ill. She's mortal
+bad, God's truth she is, and haven't eaten nothing this three days past.
+An' I thought mebbe a bit o' stewed rabbit 'ud tempt 'er.”
+
+“Pshaw!” Trent was beginning contemptuously, when Sara leaned forward,
+peering into the poacher's face.
+
+“Why,” she exclaimed. “It's Brady--Black Brady from Fallowdene.”
+
+Ne'er-do-well as he was, the mere fact that he came from Fallowdene
+warmed her heart towards him.
+
+“Yes, miss, that's so,” he answered readily. “And you're the young lady
+what used to live at Barrow Court.”
+
+“Do you know this man?” Trent asked her.
+
+“'Bout as well as you do, sir,” volunteered Brady with an impudent
+grin. “Catched me poachin' one morning. Fired me gun at 'er, too, I did,
+to frighten 'er,” he continued reminiscently. “And she never blinked.
+You're a good-plucked 'un, miss,”--with frank admiration.
+
+Sara looked at the man doubtfully.
+
+“I didn't know you lived here,” she said.
+
+“It's my native village, miss, Monks'aven is. But I didn't think 'twas
+too 'healthy for me down here, back along”--grinning--“so I shifted to
+Fallowdene, where me grandmother lives. I came back here to marry Bessie
+Windrake' she've stuck to me like a straight 'un. But I didn't mean to
+get collared poachin' again. Me and Bess was goin' to live respectable.
+'Twas her bein' ill and me out of work w'at did it.”
+
+“Let him go,” said Sara, appealing to Trent. But he shook his head.
+
+“I can't do that,” he answered with decision.
+
+“Not 'im, miss, 'e won't,” broke in Brady. “'E's not the soft-'earted
+kind, isn't Mr. Trent.”
+
+Trent's brows drew together ominously.
+
+“You won't mend matters by impudence, Brady,” he said sharply. “Get
+along now”--releasing his hold of the man's arm--“but you'll hear of
+this again.”
+
+Brady shot away into the darkness like an arrow, probably chortling
+to himself that his captor had omitted to relieve him of the brace of
+rabbits he had poached; and Sara, turning again to Trent, renewed her
+plea for clemency.
+
+But Trent remained adamant.
+
+“Why shouldn't he stand his punishment like any other man?” he said.
+
+“Well, if it's true that his wife is ill, and that he has been out of
+work--”
+
+“Are you offering those facts as an excuse for dishonesty?” asked Trent
+drily.
+
+Sara smiled.
+
+“Yes, I believe I am,” she acknowledged.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“Like nine-tenths of your sex, you are fiercely Tory in theory and a
+rank socialist in practice,” he grumbled.
+
+“Well, I'm not sure that that isn't a very good working basis to go on,”
+ she retorted.
+
+As they stood in the porch at Sunnyside, she made yet one more effort
+to smooth matters over for the evil-doer, but Trent's face still showed
+unrelenting in the light that streamed out through the open doorway.
+
+“Ask me something else,” he said. “I would do anything to please you,
+Sara, except”--with a sudden tense decision--“except interfere with the
+course of justice. Let every man pay the penalty for his own sin.”
+
+“That's a hard creed,” objected Sara.
+
+“Hard?” He shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps it is. But”--grimly--“it's
+the only creed I believe in. Good-night”--he held out his hand abruptly.
+“I'm sorry I can't do as you ask about Jim Brady.”
+
+Before Sara could reply, he was striding away down the path, and a
+minute later the darkness had hidden him from view.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+TWO ON AN ISLAND
+
+Sara's conviction that Garth Trent would not be easily turned from any
+decision that he might take had been confirmed very emphatically over
+the matter of Black Brady.
+
+Notwithstanding the fact that the man's story of his wife's illness
+proved to be perfectly genuine, Trent persisted that he must take his
+punishment, and all that Sara could do by way of mitigation was to
+promise Brady that she would pay the amount of any fine which might be
+imposed.
+
+Brady, however, was not optimistic.
+
+“There'll be no opshun of a fine, miss,” he told her. “I've a-been up
+before the gen'lemen too many times”--grinning. “But if so be you'd
+give an eye to Bessie here, whiles I'm in quod, I'd take it very kind of
+you.”
+
+His forecast summed up the situation with lamentable accuracy. No option
+of a fine was given, and during the brief space that the prison doors
+closed upon him, Sara saw to the welfare of his invalid wife, thereby
+winning the undying devotion of Black Brady's curiously composite soul.
+
+When he again found himself at liberty, she induced the frankly
+unwilling proprietor of the Cliff Hotel--the only hotel of any
+pretension to which Monkshaven could lay claim--to take him into his
+employment as an odd-job man. How she accomplished this feat it is
+impossible to say, but the fact remains that she did accomplish it, and
+perhaps Jane Crab delved to the root of the matter in the terse comment
+which the circumstances elicited from her: “Miss Tennant has a way with
+her that 'ud make they stone sphinxes gallop round the desert if so be
+she'd a mind they should.”
+
+Apparently, however, the sphinx of Far End was compounded of even more
+adamantine substance than his feminine prototype, for he exhibited
+a mulish aversion to budging an inch--much less galloping--in the
+direction Sara had indicated as desirable.
+
+The two quarreled vehemently over the matter, and a glacial atmosphere
+of hostility prevailed between them during the period of Black Brady's
+incarceration.
+
+Garth, undeniably the victor, was the first to open peace negotiations,
+and a few days subsequent to Brady's release from prison, he waylaid
+Sara in the town.
+
+She was preoccupied with numerous small, unnecessary commissions to be
+executed for Mrs. Selwyn at half-a-dozen different shops, and she would
+have passed him by with a frosty little bow had he not halted in front
+of her and deliberately held out his hand.
+
+“Good-morning!” he said, blithely disregarding the coolness of his
+reception. “Am I still in disgrace? Brady's been restored to the bosom
+of his family for at least five days now, you know.”
+
+Overhead, the sun was shining gloriously in an azure sky flecked with
+little bunchy white clouds like floating pieces of cotton-wool, while
+an April breeze, fragrant of budding leaf and blossom, rollicked up the
+street. It seemed almost as though the frolicsome atmosphere of spring
+had permeated even the shell of the hermit and got into his system,
+for there was something incorrigibly boyish and youthful about him this
+morning. His cheerful smile was infectious.
+
+“Can't I be restored, too?” he asked
+
+“Restored to what?” asked Sara, trying to resist the contagion of his
+good humour.
+
+“Oh, well”--a faint shadow dimmed the sparkle in his eyes--“to the same
+old place I held before our squabble over Brady--just friends, Sara.”
+
+For a moment she hesitated. He had pitted his will against hers and won,
+hands down, and she felt distinctly resentful. But she knew that in a
+strange, unforeseen way their quarrel had hurt her inexplicably. She had
+hated meeting the cool, aloof expression of his eyes, and now, urged
+by some emotion of which she was, as yet, only dimly conscious, she
+capitulated.
+
+“That's good,” he said contentedly. “And you might just as well give in
+now as later,” he added, smiling.
+
+“All the same,” she protested, “you're a bully.”
+
+“I know I am--I glory in it! But now, just to show that you really do
+mean to be friends again, will you let me row you across to Devil's Hood
+Island this afternoon? You told me once that you wanted to go there.”
+
+Sara considered the proposition for a moment, then nodded consent.
+
+“Yes, I'll come,” she said, “I should like to.”
+
+Devil's Hood Island was a chip off the mainland which had managed to
+keep its head above water when the gradually encroaching sea had stolen
+yet another mile from the coast. Sandy dunes, patched here and there
+with clumps of coarse, straggling rushes, sloped upward from the
+rock-strewn shore to a big crag that crowned its further side--a curious
+natural formation which had given the island its name.
+
+It was shaped like a great overhanging hood, out of which, crudely
+suggested by the configuration of the rock, peered a diabolical face,
+weather-worn to the smoothness of polished marble.
+
+April was still doing her best to please, with blue skies and soft
+fragrant airs, when Garth gave a final push-off to the _Betsy Anne_, and
+bent to his oars as she skimmed out over the top of the waves with her
+nose towards Devil's Hood Island.
+
+Sara, comfortably ensconced amid a nest of cushions in the stern of
+the boat, pointed to a square-shaped basket of quite considerable
+dimensions, tucked away beneath one of the seats.
+
+“What's that?” she asked curiously.
+
+Trent's eyes followed the direction of her glance.
+
+“That? Oh, that's our tea. You didn't imagine I was going to starve
+you, did you? I think we shall find that Mrs. Judson has provided all we
+want.”
+
+Sara laughed across at him.
+
+“What a thoughtful man you are!” she said gaily. “Fancy a hermit
+remembering a woman's crucial need of tea.”
+
+“Don't credit me with too much self-effacement!” he grinned. “I
+enjoyed the last occasion when you were my guest, so I'm repeating the
+prescription.”
+
+“Still, even deducting for the selfish motive, you're progressing,” she
+answered. “I see you developing into quite an ornament to society in
+course of time.”
+
+“God forbid!” he ejaculated piously.
+
+Sara looked entertained.
+
+“Apparently your ambitions don't lie in that direction?” she rallied
+him.
+
+“There is no question of such a catastrophe occurring. I've told you
+that society--as such--and I have finished with each other.”
+
+His face clouded over, and for a while he sculled in silence, driving
+the _Betsy Anne_ through the blue water with strong, steady strokes.
+
+Sara was vividly conscious of the suggestion of supple strength conveyed
+by the rippling play of muscle beneath the white skin of his arms,
+bared to the elbow, and by the pliant swing of his body to each sure,
+rhythmical stroke.
+
+She recollected that one of her earliest impressions concerning him had
+been of the sheer force of the man--the lithe, flexible strength like
+that of tempered steel--and she wondered whether this were entirely due
+to his magnificent physique or owed its impulse, in part, to some
+mental quality in him. Her eyes travelled reflectively to the lean,
+square-jawed face, with its sensitive, bitter-looking mouth and its fine
+modeling of brow and temple, as though seeking there the answer to her
+questionings, and with a sudden, intuitive instinct of reliance, she
+felt that behind all his cynicism and surface hardness, there lay a
+quiet, sure strength of soul that would not fail whoever trusted it.
+
+Yet he always spoke as though in some way his life had been a
+failure--as though he had met, and been defeated, by a shrewd blow of
+fate.
+
+Sara found it difficult to associate the words failure and defeat with
+her knowledge of his dominating personality and force of will, and the
+natural curiosity which had been aroused in her mind by his strange
+mode of life, with its deliberate isolation, and by the aroma of mystery
+which seemed to cling about him, deepened.
+
+Her brows drew together in a puzzled frown, as she inwardly sought for
+some explanation of the many inconsistencies she had encountered even in
+the short time that she had known him.
+
+His abrupt alterations from reticence to unreserved; his avowed dislike
+of women and the contradictory enjoyment which he seemed to find in
+her society; his love of music and of beautiful surroundings--alike
+indicative of a cultivated appreciation and experience of the good
+things of this world--and the solitary, hermit-like existence which he
+yet chose to lead--all these incongruities of temperament and habit wove
+themselves into an enigma which she found impossible to solve.
+
+“Here we are!”
+
+Garth's voice recalled her abruptly from her musings to find that the
+_Betsy Anne_ was swaying gently alongside a little wooden landing-stage.
+
+“But how civilized!” she exclaimed. “One does not expect to find a jetty
+on a desert-island.”
+
+Trent laughed grimly.
+
+“Devil's Hood is far from being a desert island in the summer, when the
+tourists come this way. They swarm over it.”
+
+Whilst he was speaking, he had made fast the painter, and he now stepped
+out on to the landing-stage. Sara prepared to follow him. For a moment
+she stood poised with one foot on the gunwale of the boat, then, as
+an incoming wave drove the little skiff suddenly against the wooden
+supports of the jetty, she staggered, lost her balance, and toppled
+helplessly backward.
+
+But even as she fell, Garth's arms closed round her like steel bars,
+and she felt herself lifted clean up from the rocking boat on to the
+landing-stage. For an instant she knew that she rested a dead weight
+against his breast; then he placed her very gently on her feet.
+
+“All right?” he queried, steadying her with his hand beneath her arm.
+“That was a near shave.”
+
+His queer hazel eyes were curiously bright, and Sara, meeting their
+gaze, felt her face flame scarlet.
+
+“Quite, thanks,” she said a little breathlessly, adding: “You must be
+very strong.”
+
+She moved her arm as though trying to free it from his clasp, and he
+released it instantly. But his face was rather white as he knelt down to
+lift out the tea-basket, and he, too, was breathing quickly.
+
+Somewhat silently they made their way up the sandy slope that stretched
+ahead of them, and presently, as they mounted the last rise, the
+malignant, distorted face beneath the Devil's Hood leaped into view,
+granite-grey and menacing against the young blue of the April sky.
+
+“What a perfectly horrible head!” exclaimed Sara, gazing at it aghast.
+“It's like a nightmare of some kind.”
+
+“Yes, it's not pretty,” admitted Garth. “The mouth has a sort of
+malevolent leer, hasn't it?”
+
+“It has, indeed. One can hardly believe that it is just a natural
+formation.”
+
+“It's always a hotly debated point whether the devil and his hood are
+purely the work of nature or not. My own impression is that to a certain
+extent they are, but that someone--centuries ago--being struck by the
+resemblance of the rock to a human face, added a few touches to complete
+the picture.”
+
+“Well, whoever did it must have had a bizarre imagination to perpetuate
+such a thing.”
+
+“The handiwork--if handiwork it is--is attributed to Friar Anselmo--the
+Spanish monk who broke his vows and escaped to Monkshaven, you know.”
+
+Sara looked interested.
+
+“No, I don't know,” she said. “Tell me about him. He sounds quite
+exciting.”
+
+“You don't meant to say no one has enlightened you as to the gentleman
+whose exploit gave the town its name of Monkshaven?”
+
+“No. I'm afraid my education as far as local history is concerned has
+been shamefully neglected. Do make good the deficiencies”--smiling.
+
+Garth laughed a little.
+
+“Very well, I will. I always have a kind of fellow-feeling for Friar
+Anselmo. But I propose we investigate the tea-basket first.”
+
+They established themselves beneath the shelter of a big boulder, Garth
+first spreading a rug which he had brought from the boat for Sara to sit
+on. Then he unstrapped the tea-basket, and it became evident either that
+Mrs. Judson had a genius for assembling together the most fascinating
+little cakes and savoury sandwiches, accompanied by fragrant tea, hot
+from a thermos flask, or else that she had acted under instructions from
+some one to whom the cult of afternoon tea as sublimated by Rumpelmayer
+was not an unknown quantity. Sara, sipping her tea luxuriously, decided
+in favour of the latter explanation.
+
+“For a confirmed misogynist,” she observed later on, when, the
+feast over, he was repacking the basket, “you have a very complete
+understanding of a woman's weakness for tea.”
+
+“It's a case of cause and effect. A misogynist”--caustically--“is the
+product of a very complete understanding of most feminine weaknesses.”
+
+Sara's slender figure tautened a little.
+
+“Do you think,” she said, speaking a little indignantly, “that it
+is quite nice of you to invite me out to a picnic and then to launch
+remarks of that description at my head?”
+
+“No, I don't,” he acknowledged bluntly. “It's making you pay some one
+else's bill.” His lean brown hand closed suddenly over hers. “Forgive
+me, Sara!”
+
+The abrupt intensity of his manner was out of all proportion to the
+merely surface friction of the moment; and Sara, sensing something
+deeper and of more significance behind it, hurriedly switched the
+conversation into a less personal channel.
+
+“Very well,” she said lightly, disengaging her hand. “I'll forgive you,
+and you shall tell me about Friar Anselmo.” She lifted her eyes to
+the leering, sinister face that protruded from the Devil's Hood. “As,
+presumably, from his choice of a profession, he, too, had no love for
+women, you ought to enjoy telling his story,” she added maliciously.
+
+Garth's eyes twinkled.
+
+“As a matter of fact, it was love o' women that was Anselmo's undoing,”
+ he said. “In spite of his vows, he fell in love--with a very beautiful
+Spanish lady, and to make matters worse, if that were possible, the
+lady was possessed of a typically jealous Spanish husband, who, on
+discovering how the land lay, killed his wife, and would have killed
+Anselmo as well, but that he escaped to England. The vessel on which he
+sailed was wrecked at the foot of what has been called, ever since,
+the Monk's Cliff; but Anselmo himself succeeded in swimming ashore, and
+spent the remainder of his life at Monkshaven, doing penance for the
+mistakes of his earlier days.”
+
+“He chose a charming place to repent in,” said Sara, her eyes wandering
+to the distant bay, where the quaint little town straggled picturesquely
+up the hill that sloped away from the coast.
+
+“Yes,” responded Garth slowly, “it's not a bad place--to repent in. . . .
+It would be a better place still--to love and be happy in.”
+
+There was a brooding melancholy in his tones, and Sara, hearing it,
+spoke very gently.
+
+“I hope you will find it--like that,” she said.
+
+“I?” He laughed hardly. “No! Those gifts of the gods are not for such as
+I. The husks are my portion. If it were not so”--his voice deepened to a
+sudden urgent note that moved her strangely--“if it were not so--”
+
+As though in spite of himself, his arms moved gropingly towards her.
+Then, with a muttered exclamation, he turned away and sprang hastily to
+his feet.
+
+“Let us go back,” he said abruptly, and Sara, shaken by his vehemence,
+rose obediently, and they began to retrace their steps.
+
+It had grown much colder. The sun hung low in the horizon, and the
+deceptive warmth of mid-afternoon had given place to the chill dampness
+in the atmosphere. Half unconsciously, feeling that the time must have
+slipped away more rapidly than she had suspected, Sara quickened her
+steps, Garth striding silently at her side. Presently the little wooden
+jetty came into view once more. It bore a curiously bare, deserted
+aspect, the waves riding and falling sluggishly on either side of
+its black, tarred planking, Sara stared at it incredulously, then an
+exclamation of sheer dismay burst from her lips.
+
+“The boat! Look! It's gone!”
+
+“_Gone?_” Garth's eyes sought the landing-stage, then swept the vista of
+grey-water ahead of them.
+
+“_Damn!_” he ejaculated forcibly. “She's got adrift!”
+
+A brown speck, bobbing maddeningly up and down in the distance and
+momentarily drifting further and further out to sea on the ebbing tide,
+was all that could be seen of the _Betsy Anne_.
+
+An involuntary chuckle broke from Sara.
+
+“Marooned!” she exclaimed. “How amusing!”
+
+“Amusing?” Trent looked at her with a concerned expression. “It might
+be, if it were eleven o'clock in the morning. But it's the wrong end of
+the day. It will be dark before long.” He paused, then asked swiftly:
+“Does any one at Sunnyside know where you are this afternoon?”
+
+“No. The doctor and Molly were both out to lunch--and you know we only
+planned this trip this morning. I haven't seen them since. Why do you
+ask?”
+
+“Because, if they know, they'd send over in search of us if we didn't
+turn up in the course of the next hour or so. But if they don't know
+where you are, we stand an excellent chance of spending the night here.”
+
+The gravity of what had first struck her as merely an amusing
+_contretemps_ suddenly presented itself to Sara.
+
+“Oh!--!” She drew her breath in sharply. “What--what on earth shall we
+do?”
+
+“Do?” Garth spoke with grim force. “Why, you must be got off the island
+somehow. If not, you're fair game for every venomous tongue in the
+town.”
+
+“Would any one hear us from the shore if we shouted?” she suggested.
+
+He shook his head.
+
+“No. The sound would carry in the opposite direction to-day.”
+
+“Then what _can_ we do?”
+
+By this time the manifest anxiety in Trent's face was reflected in her
+own. The possibility that they might be compelled to spend the night
+on Devil's Hood Island was not one that could be contemplated with
+equanimity, for Sara had no illusions whatever as to the charitableness
+of the view the world at large would take of such an episode--however
+accidental its occurrence. Unfortunately, essential innocence is
+frequently but a poor tool wherewith to scotch a scandal.
+
+“There is only one thing to be done,” said Garth at last, after
+fruitlessly scanning the waters for any stray fishing-boat that might be
+passing. “I must swim across, and then row back and take you off.”
+
+“Swim across?” Sara regarded the distance between the island and the
+shore with consternation. “You couldn't possibly do it. It's too far.”
+
+“Just under a mile.”
+
+“But you would have the tide against you,” she urged. The current off
+the coast ran with dangerous rapidity between the mainland and the
+island, and more than one strong swimmer, as Sara knew, had lost his
+life struggling against it.
+
+She looked across to the further shore again, and all at once it seemed
+impossible to let Garth make the attempt.
+
+“No! no! You can't go!” she exclaimed.
+
+“You wouldn't be nervous at being alone here?” he asked doubtfully.
+
+She stamped her foot.
+
+“No! Of course not! But--oh! Don't you see? It's madness to think of
+swimming across with the tide against you! You could never do it. You
+might get cramp--Oh! Anything might happen! You shan't go!”
+
+She caught his arm impetuously, her eyes dilating with the sudden terror
+that had laid hold of her. But he was obdurate.
+
+“Look there,” he said, pointing to a faint haze thickening the
+atmosphere. “Do you see the mist coming up? Very soon it will be all
+over us, like a blanket, and there'd be no possibility of swimming
+across at all. I must go at once.”
+
+“But that only adds to the danger,” she argued desperately. “The fog
+may come down sooner than you expect, and then you'd lose your bearings
+altogether.”
+
+“I must risk that,” he answered grimly. “Don't you realize that it's
+impossible--_impossible_ for us to remain here?”
+
+“No, I don't,” she returned stubbornly. “It isn't worth such a frightful
+risk. Some one is sure to look for us eventually.”
+
+“'Eventually' might mean to-morrow morning”--drily--“and that would be
+just twelve hours too late. It's worth the risk fifty times over.”
+
+“It's not!”--passionately. “Do you suppose I care two straws for the
+gossip of a parcel of spiteful old women?”
+
+“Not at the moment, perhaps, but later you wouldn't be able to help
+it. What people think of you, what they say of you, can make all the
+difference between heaven and hell.” He spoke heavily, as though his
+words were weighted with some deadening memory. “And do you think I
+could bear to feel that I--_I_ had given people a handle for gossiping
+about you? I'd cut their tongues out first!” he added savagely.
+
+He stripped off his coat, and, sitting down on a rock, began removing
+his boots, while Sara stood watching him in silence with big, sombre
+eyes.
+
+Presently he stood up, bareheaded and barefooted. Below the lean, tanned
+face the column of his throat showed white as a woman's, while the thin
+silk of his vest revealed the powerful line of shoulder at its base. His
+keen eyes were gazing steadily across to the opposite shore, as though
+measuring the distance he must traverse, and as a chance shaft from
+the westering sun rested upon him, investing him momentarily in its
+radiance, there seemed something rather splendid about him--something
+very sure and steadfast and utterly without fear.
+
+A sharp cry broke from Sara.
+
+“Garth! Garth!”--his name sprang to her lips spontaneously. “You mustn't
+go! You mustn't go! . . .”
+
+He wheeled round, and at the sight of her white, strained face a sudden
+light leapt into his eyes--the light of a great incredulity with, back
+of it, an unutterable hope and longing. In two strides he was at her
+side, his hands gripping her shoulders.
+
+“Why, Sara?--God in heaven!”--the words came hurrying from him, hoarse
+and uneven--“I believe you care!”
+
+For an instant he hesitated, seeming to hold himself in check, then
+he caught her in his arms, kissing her fiercely on eyes and lips and
+throat.
+
+“My dear! . . . Oh! My dear! . . .”
+
+She could hear the broken words stammered through his hurried breathing
+as she lay unresistingly in his arms; then she felt him put her from
+him, gently, decisively, and she stood alone, swaying slightly. A long
+shuddering sigh ran through her body.
+
+“Garth!”
+
+She never knew whether the word really passed her lips or whether it
+was only the cry of her inmost being, so importunate, so urgent that it
+seemed to take on actual sound.
+
+There came no answer. He was gone, and through the light veil of
+the encroaching mists she could see him shearing his way through the
+leaden-coloured sea.
+
+She remained motionless, her eyes straining after him. He was swimming
+easily, with a powerful overhand stroke that carried him swiftly away
+from the shore. A little sigh of relaxed tension fluttered between her
+lips. At least, he was a magnificent swimmer--he had that much in his
+favour.
+
+Then her glance spanned the channel to the further shore, and it seemed
+as though an interminable waste of water stretched between. And all the
+time, at every stroke, that mad, racing current was pulling against him,
+fighting for possession of the strong, sinewy body battling against it.
+
+She beat her hands together in an agony of fear. Why had she let him go?
+What did it matter if people talked--what was a tarnished reputation to
+set against a man's life? Oh! She had been mad to let him go!
+
+The fog grew denser. Strain as she might, she could no longer see the
+dark head above the water, the rise and fall of his arm like a white
+flail in the murky light, and she realized that should exhaustion
+overtake him, or the swift-running current beat him, drawing him
+under--she would not even know?
+
+A sickening sense of bitter impotence assailed her. There was nothing
+she could do but wait--wait helplessly until either his return, or
+endless hours of solitude, told her whether he had won or lost the fight
+against that grey, hungry waste of water. A strangled sob burst from her
+throat.
+
+“Oh, God! Let him come back to me! Let him come back!”
+
+
+
+The creak of straining rowlocks and the even plash of dripping oars,
+muffled by the numbing curtain of the fog, broke through the silence.
+Then followed the gentle thudding noise of a boat as it bumped against
+the jetty and a voice--Garth's voice--calling.
+
+She rose from the ground where she had flung herself and came to
+him, peering at him with eyes that looked like two dark stains in the
+whiteness of her face.
+
+“I though you were dead,” she said dully. “Drowned. I mean--oh, of
+course, it's the same thing, isn't it?” And she laughed, the shrill,
+choking laughter of overwrought nerves.
+
+Garth observed her narrowly.
+
+“No, I've very much alive, thanks,” he said, speaking in deliberately
+cheerful and commonplace accents. “But you look half frozen. Why on
+earth didn't you put the rug round you? Get into the boat and let me
+tuck you up.”
+
+She obeyed passively, and in a few minutes they were slipping over the
+water as rapidly as the mist permitted.
+
+Sara was very silent throughout the return journey. For hours, for an
+eternity it seemed, she had been in the grip of a consuming terror,
+culminating at last in the conviction that Garth had failed to make the
+further shore. And now, with the knowledge of his safety, the reaction
+from the tension of acute anxiety left her utterly flaccid and
+exhausted, incapable of anything more than a half-stunned acceptance of
+the miracle.
+
+When at last the Selwyns' house was reached, it was with a manifest
+effort that she roused herself sufficiently to answer Garth's quiet
+apology for the misadventure of the afternoon.
+
+“If it was your fault that we got stranded on the island,” she said,
+summoning up rather a wan smile, “it is, at all events, thanks to
+you that I shall be sleeping under a respectable roof, instead
+of scandalizing half the neighbourhood!” She paused, then went on
+uncertainly: “'Thank you' seems ludicrously inadequate for all you've
+done--”
+
+“I've done nothing,” he interrupted brusquely.
+
+“You risked your life--”
+
+An impatient exclamation broke from him.
+
+“And if I did? I risked something of no value, I assure you--to myself,
+or any one else.”
+
+Then he added practically--
+
+“Get Jane Crab to give you some hot soup and go to bed. You look
+absolutely done.”
+
+Sara nodded, smiling more naturally.
+
+“I will,” she said. “Good-night, then.” She held out her hand a little
+nervously.
+
+He took it, holding it closely in his, and looking down at her with the
+strange expression of a man who strives to impress upon his mind the
+picture of a face he may not see again, so that in a lonely future he
+shall find comfort in remembering.
+
+“Good-bye!” he said, at last, very gravely. Then a queer little smile,
+half-bitter, half-tender, curving his lips, he added: “I shall always
+have this one day for which to thank whatever gods there be.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+A REVOKE
+
+Sara lay long awake that night. Under Jane Crab's bluff and kindly
+ministrations, her feeling of utter bodily exhaustion had given place
+to an exquisite sense of mental and physical well-being, and, freed from
+the shackles of material discomfort, her thoughts flew backward over the
+events of the day.
+
+All _was_ well--gloriously, blessedly well! There could be no
+misunderstanding that brief, passionate moment when Garth had held her
+in his arms; and the blinding anguish of those hours which had followed,
+when she had not known whether he were alive or dead, had shown her her
+own heart.
+
+Love had come to her--the love which Patrick Lovell had called the one
+altogether good and perfect gift--and with it came a tremulous unrest,
+a shy sweetness of desire that crept through all her veins like the
+burning of a swift flame.
+
+She felt no fear or shame of love. Sara would never be afraid of life
+and its demands, and it seemed to her a matter of little moment that
+Garth had made no conventional avowal of his love. She did not, on that
+account, pretend, even to herself, as many women would have done, that
+her own heart was untouched, but recognized and accepted the fact that
+love had come to her with absolute simplicity.
+
+Nor did she doubt or question Garth's feeling for her. She _knew_, in
+every fibre of her being, that he loved her, and she was ready to wait
+quite patiently and happily the few hours that must elapse before he
+could come to her and tell her so.
+
+Yet she longed, with a woman's natural longing, to hear him say in
+actual words all that his whole attitude towards her had implied, craved
+for the moment when the beloved voice should ask for that surrender
+which in spirit she had already made.
+
+She rose early, with a ridiculous feeling that it would bring the time
+a little nearer, and Jane Crab stared in amazement when she appeared
+downstairs while yet the preparations for breakfast were hardly in
+progress.
+
+“You're no worse for your outing, then, Miss Tennant,” she observed,
+adding shrewdly: “I'd as lief think you were the better for it.”
+
+Sara laughed, flushing a little. Somehow she did not mind the humorous
+suspicion of the truth that twinkled in Jane's small, boot-button eyes,
+but she sincerely hoped that the rest of the household would not prove
+equally discerning.
+
+She need have had no fears on that score. Dr. Selwyn had barely time
+to swallow a cup of coffee and a slice of toast before rushing off
+in response to an urgent summons from a patient, whilst Molly seemed
+entirely preoccupied with the contents of a letter, in an unmistakably
+masculine handwriting, which had come for her by the morning's post.
+As for Mrs. Selwyn, she was always too much engrossed in analyzing
+the symptoms of some fresh ailment she believed she had acquired to
+be sensible of the emotional atmosphere of those around her. Her own
+sensations--whether she were too hot, or not quite hot enough, whether
+her new tabloids were suiting her or whether she had not slept as well
+as usual--occupied her entire horizon.
+
+This morning she was distressed because the hairpins Sara had purchased
+for her the previous day differed slightly in shape from those she was
+in the habit of using.
+
+Sara explained that they were the only ones obtainable.
+
+“At Bloxham's, you mean, dear. Oh, well, of course, you couldn't get
+any others, then. Perhaps if you had tried another shop--” Mrs. Selwyn
+paused, to let this suggestion sink in, then added brightly: “But,
+naturally, I couldn't expect you to spend your whole morning going from
+shop to shop looking for my particular kind of hairpin, could I?”
+
+Sara, who had expended a solid hour over that very occupation, was
+perfectly conscious of the reproach implied. She ignored it, however.
+Like every one else in close contact with Mrs. Selwyn, she had learned
+to accept the fact that the poor lady seriously believed that her whole
+life was spent in bearing with admirable patience the total absence of
+consideration accorded her.
+
+When she descended from Mrs. Selwyn's room Sara was amazed to find that
+the hands of the clock only indicated half-past ten. Surely no morning
+had ever dragged itself away so slowly!
+
+At two o'clock she and Molly were both due to lunch with Mrs. Maynard
+at Greenacres, and she was radiantly aware that Garth Trent would be
+included among the guests. Between them, Audrey, and the Herricks, and
+Sara had succeeded in enticing the hermit within the charmed circle of
+their friendship, and he could now be depended upon to join their little
+gatherings--“provided,” as he had bluntly told Audrey, “that you can put
+up with my manners and morals.”
+
+Mrs. Maynard had only laughed.
+
+“I'm not in the least likely to find fault with your manners,” she said
+cheerfully. “They're really quite normal, and as for your morals, they
+are your own affair, my dear man. Anyway, there is at least one bond
+between us--Monkshaven heartily disapproves of both of us.”
+
+Greenacres was a delightful place, built rather on the lines of a French
+country house, with the sitting-rooms leading one into the other and
+each opening in its turn on to a broad wooden verandah. The latter
+ran round three sides of the house, and in summer the delicate pink of
+Dorothy Perkins fought for supremacy with the deeper red of the Crimson
+Rambler, converting it into a literal bower of roses.
+
+Audrey was on the steps to greet the two girls when they arrived,
+looking, as usual, as though she had just quitted the hands of an expert
+French maid. It was in a great measure to the ultra-perfection of
+her toilette that she owed the critical attitude accorded her by the
+feminine half of Monkshaven. To the provincial mind, the fact that she
+dyed her hair, ordered her frocks from Paris, and kept a French chef to
+cook her food, were all so many indications of an altogether worldly and
+abandoned character--and of a wealth that was secretly to be envied--and
+the more venomous among Audrey's detractors lived in the perennial hope
+of some day unveiling the scandal which they were convinced lay hidden
+in her past.
+
+Audrey was perfectly aware of the gossip of which she was the
+subject--and completely indifferent to it.
+
+“It amuses them,” she would say blithely, “and it doesn't hurt me in the
+least. If Mr. Trent and I both left the neighbourhood, Monkshaven would
+be at a loss for a topic of conversation--unless they decided, as they
+probably would, that we had eloped together!”
+
+She herself was quite above the petty meanness of envying another
+woman's looks or clothes, and she beamed frank admiration over Molly's
+appearance as she led the way into the house.
+
+“Molly, you're too beautiful to be true,” she declared, pausing in the
+hall to inspect the girl's young loveliness in its setting of shady
+hat and embroidered muslin frock. Big golden poppies on the hat, and a
+girdle at her waist of the same tawny hue, emphasized the rare colour of
+her eyes--in shadow, brown like an autumn leaf, gold like amber when the
+sunlight lay in them--and the whole effect was deliciously arresting.
+
+“You've been spending your substance in riotous purple and fine
+linen,” pursued Audrey relentlessly. “That frock was never evolved in
+Oldhampton, I'm positive.”
+
+Molly blushed--not the dull, unbecoming red most women achieve, but a
+delicate pink like the inside of a shell that made her look even more
+irresistibly distracting than before.
+
+“No,” she admitted reluctantly, “I sent for this from town.”
+
+Sara glanced at her with quick surprise. Entirely absorbed in her own
+thoughts, she had failed to observe the expensive charm of Molly's
+toilette and now regarded it attentively. Where had she obtained the
+money to pay for it? Only a very little while ago she had been in debt,
+and now here she was launching out into expenditure which common sense
+would suggest must be quite beyond her means.
+
+Sara frowned a little, but, recognizing the impossibility of probing
+into the matter at the moment, she dismissed it from her mind, resolving
+to elucidate the mystery later on.
+
+Meanwhile, it was impossible to do other than acknowledge the results
+obtained. Molly looked more like a stately young empress than an
+impecunious doctor's daughter as she floated into the room, to be
+embraced and complimented by the Lavender Lady and to receive a generous
+meed of admiration, seasoned with a little gentle banter, from Miles
+Herrick.
+
+Sara experienced a sensation of relief on discovering Miss Lavinia and
+Herrick to be the only occupants of the room. Garth Trent had not yet
+come. Despite her longing to see him again, she was conscious of a
+certain diffidence, a reluctance at meeting him in the presence of
+others, and she wished fervently that their first meeting after the
+events of the previous day could have taken place anywhere rather than
+at this gay little lunch party of Audrey's.
+
+As it fell out, however, she chanced to be entirely alone in the room
+when Trent was at length ushered in by a trim maidservant, the rest of
+the party having gradually drifted out on to the verandah, while she had
+lingered behind, glad of a moment's solitude in which to try and steady
+herself.
+
+She had never conceived it possible that so commonplace an emotion as
+mere nervousness could find place beside the immensities of love itself,
+yet, during the interminable moment when Garth crossed the room to her
+side, she was supremely aware of an absurd desire to turn and flee, and
+it was only by a sheer effort of will that she held her ground.
+
+The next moment he had shaken hands with her and was making some
+tranquil observation upon the lateness of his arrival. His manner was
+quite detached, every vestige of anything beyond mere conventional
+politeness banished from it.
+
+The coolly neutral inflections of his voice struck upon Sara's keyed-up
+consciousness as an indifferent finger may twang the stretched strings
+of a violin, producing a shuddering violation of their harmony.
+
+She hardly knew how she answered him. She only knew, with a sudden
+overwhelming certainty, that the Garth who stood beside her now was a
+different man, altered out of all kinship with the man who had held
+her in his arms on Devil's Hood Island. The lover was gone; only the
+acquaintance remained.
+
+She stammered a few halting words by way of response, and--was she
+mistaken, or did a sudden look of understanding, almost, it seemed, of
+compunction, leap for a moment into his eyes, only to be replaced by the
+brooding, bitter indifference habitual to them?
+
+The opportune return of Audrey and her other guests, heralded by a gust
+of cheerful laughter, tided over the difficult moment, and Garth turned
+away to make his apologies to his hostess, blaming some slight mishap to
+his car for the tardiness of his appearance.
+
+Throughout lunch Sara conversed mechanically, responding like an
+automaton when any one put a penny in the slot by asking her a question.
+She felt utterly bewildered, stunned by Garth's behaviour.
+
+Had their meeting been exchanged under the observant eyes of the rest of
+the party, it would have been intelligible to her, for he was the last
+man in the world to wear his heart upon his sleeve. But they had been
+quite alone for the moment, and yet he had permitted no acknowledgment
+of the new relations between them to appear either in word or look. He
+had greeted her precisely as though they were no more to each other than
+the merest acquaintances--as though the happenings of the previous day
+had been wiped out of his mind. It was incomprehensible!
+
+Sara felt almost as if some one had dealt her a physical blow, and it
+required all her pluck and poise to enable her to take her share of the
+general conversation before wending their several ways homeward.
+
+“. . . And we'll picnic on Devil's Hood Island.”
+
+Audrey's high, clear voice, as she chattered to Molly,
+characteristically propounding half-a-dozen plans for the immediate
+future, floated across to Sara where she stood waiting on the lowest
+step, impatient to be gone. As though drawn by some invisible magnet,
+her eyes encountered Garth's, and the swift colour rushed into her
+cheeks, staining them scarlet.
+
+His expression was enigmatical. The next moment he bent forward and
+spoke, in a low voice that reached her ear alone.
+
+“Much maligned place--where I tasted my one little bit of heaven!” Then,
+after a pause, he added deliberately: “But a black sheep has no business
+with heaven. He'd be turned away from the doors--and quite rightly, too!
+That's why I shall never ask for admittance.” He regarded her steadily
+for a moment, then quietly averted his eyes.
+
+And Sara realized that in those few words he had revoked--repudiating
+all that he had claimed, all that he had given, the day before.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+DISILLUSION
+
+“Letters are unsatisfactory things at the best of times, and what we all
+want is to have you with us again for a little while. I am sure you must
+have had a surfeit of the simple life by this time, so come to us and be
+luxurious and exotic in London for a change. Don't disappoint us, Sara!
+
+“Yours ever affectionately,
+
+“ELISABETH.”
+
+Sara, seated at the open window of her room, re-read the last paragraph
+of the letter which the morning's post had brought her, and then let it
+fall again on to her lap, whilst she stared with sombre eyes across the
+bay to where the Monk's Cliff reared itself, stark and menacing, against
+the sky.
+
+April had slipped into May, and the blue waters of the Channel flickered
+with a myriad dancing points of light reflected from an unclouded sun.
+The trees had clothed themselves anew in pale young green, and the whole
+atmosphere was redolent of spring--spring as she reaches her maturity
+before she steps aside to let the summer in.
+
+Sara frowned a little. She was out of tune with the harmony of things.
+You need happiness in your heart to be at one with the eager pulsing
+of new life, the reaching out towards fulfillment that is the essential
+quality of spring. Whereas Sara's heart was empty of happiness and
+hopes, and of all the joyous beginnings that are the glorious appanage
+of youth. There could be no beginnings for her, because she had already
+reached the end--reached it with such a stupefying suddenness that for
+a time she had been hardly conscious of pain, but only of a fierce,
+intolerable resentment and of a pride--that “devil's own pride” which
+Patrick had told her was the Tennant heritage--which had been wounded to
+the quick.
+
+Garth had taken that pride of hers and ground it under his heel. He
+had played at love, and she had been fool enough to mistake love's
+simulacrum for the real thing. Or, if there had been any genuine spark
+of love kindling the fire of passion that had blazed about her for one
+brief moment, then he had since chosen deliberately to disavow it.
+
+He had indicated his intention unmistakably. Since the day of the
+luncheon party at Greenacres he had shunned meeting her whenever
+possible, and, on the one or two occasions when an encounter had been
+unavoidable, his manner had been frigidly indifferent and impersonal.
+
+Outwardly she had repaid him in full measure--indifference for
+indifference, ice for ice, gallantly matching her woman's pride against
+his deliberate apathy, but inwardly she writhed at the remembrance
+of that day on the island, when, in the stress of her terror for his
+safety, she had let him see into the very heart of her.
+
+Well, it was over now, and done with. The brief vision of love which had
+given a new, transcendent significance to the whole of life, had faded
+swiftly into bleak darkness, its memory marred by that bitterest of all
+knowledge to a woman--the knowledge that she had been willing to give
+her love, to make the great surrender, and that it had not been required
+of her. All that remained was to draw a veil as decently as might be
+over the forgettable humiliation.
+
+The strain of the last fortnight had left its mark on her. The angles of
+her face seemed to have become more sharply defined, and her eyes were
+too brilliant and held a look of restlessness. But her lips closed as
+firmly as ever, a courageous scarlet line, denying the power of fate to
+thrust her under.
+
+The Book of Garth--the book of love--was closed, but there were many
+other volumes in life's library, and Sara did not propose to go through
+the probable remaining fifty or sixty years of her existence uselessly
+bewailing a dead past. She would face life, gamely, whatever it might
+bring, and as she had already sustained one of the hardest blows ever
+likely to befall her, she would probably make a success of it.
+
+But, unquestionably, she would be glad to get away from Monkshaven for
+a time, to have leisure to readjust her outlook on life, free from the
+ceaseless reminders that the place held for her.
+
+Here in Monkshaven, it seemed as though Garth's personality informed the
+very air she breathed. The great cliff where he had his dwelling frowned
+at her from across the bay whenever she looked out of her window, his
+name was constantly on the lips of those who made up her little circle
+of friends, and every day she was haunted by the fear of meeting him.
+Or, worse than all else, should that fear materialize, the torment
+of the almost hostile relationship which had replaced their former
+friendship had to be endured.
+
+The invitation to join the Durwards in London had come at an opportune
+moment, offering, as it did, a way of escape from the embarrassments
+inseparable from the situation. Moreover, amid the distractions and
+bustle of the great city it would be easier to forget for a little her
+burden of pain and humiliation. There is so much time for thinking--and
+for remembering--in the leisurely tranquillity of country life.
+
+Sara would have accepted the invitation without hesitation, but that
+there seemed to her certain reasons why her absence from Sunnyside just
+now was inadvisable--reasons based on her loyalty to Doctor Dick and the
+trust he had reposed in her.
+
+For the last few weeks she had been perplexed and not a little worried
+concerning Molly's apparent accession to comparative wealth. Certain
+small extravagances in which the latter had recently indulged must have
+been, Sara knew, beyond the narrow limits of her purse, and inquiry had
+elicited from Selwyn the fact that she had received no addition to her
+usual allowance.
+
+Molly herself had light-heartedly evaded all efforts to gain her
+confidence, and Sara had refrained from putting any direct question,
+since, after all, she was not the girl's guardian, and her interference
+might very well be resented.
+
+She was uneasily conscious that for some reason or other Molly was in
+a state of tension, alternating between abnormally high spirits and the
+depths of depression, and the recollection of that unpleasant little
+episode of her indebtedness to Lester Kent lingered disagreeably in
+Sara's mind.
+
+She had seen the man once, in Oldhampton High Street--Molly, at that
+time still clothed in penitence, had pointed him out to her--and she had
+received an unpleasing impression of a lean, hatchet face with deep-set,
+dense-brown eyes, and of a mouth like that of a bird of prey.
+
+She felt reluctant to go away and leave things altogether to chance, and
+finally, unable to come to any decision, she carried Elisabeth's letter
+down to Selwyn's study and explained the position.
+
+His face clouded over at the prospect of her departure.
+
+“We shall miss you abominably,” he declared. “But of
+course”--ruefully--“I can quite understand Mrs. Durward's wanting you
+to go back to them for a time, and I suppose we must resign ourselves to
+being unselfish. Only you must promise to come back again--you mustn't
+desert us altogether.”
+
+She laughed.
+
+“You needn't be afraid of that. I shall turn up again like the
+proverbial bad penny.”
+
+“All the same, make it a promise,” he urged.
+
+“I promise, then, you distrustful man! But about Molly?”
+
+“I don't think you need worry about her.” Selwyn laughed a little. “The
+sudden accession to wealth is accounted for. It seems that she has sold
+a picture.”
+
+“Oh! So that's the explanation, is it?” Sara felt unaccountably
+relieved.
+
+“Yes--though goodness knows how she has beguiled any one into buying one
+of her daubs!”
+
+“Oh, they're quite good, really, Doctor Dick. It's only that Futurist
+Art doesn't appeal to you.”
+
+“Not exactly! She showed me one of her paintings the other day. It
+looked like a bad motor-bus accident in a crowded street, and she told
+me that it represented the physical atmosphere of a woman who had just
+been jilted.”
+
+Sara laughed suddenly and hysterically.
+
+“How--how awfully funny!” she said in an odd, choked voice. Then,
+fearful of losing her self-command, she added hastily: “I'll write and
+tell Elisabeth that I'll come, then.” And fled out of the room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+ELISABETH INTERVENES
+
+As Sara stepped out of the train at Paddington, the first person upon
+whom her eyes alighted was Tim Durward. He hastened up to her.
+
+“Tim!” she exclaimed delightedly. “How dear of you to come and meet me!”
+
+“Didn't you expect I should?” He was holding her hand and joyfully
+pump-handling it up and down as though he would never let it go, while
+the glad light in his eyes would indubitably have betrayed him to any
+passer-by who had chanced to glance in his direction.
+
+Sara coloured faintly and withdrew her hands from his eager clasp.
+
+“Oh, well, you might conceivably have had something else to do,” she
+returned evasively.
+
+For an instant the blue eyes clouded.
+
+“I never had anything to do,” he said shortly. “You know that.”
+
+She laughed up at him.
+
+“Now, Tim, I won't be growled at the first minute of my arrival. You can
+pour out your grumbles another day. First now, I want to hear all the
+news. Remember, I've been vegetating in the country since the beginning
+of March!”
+
+She drew him tactfully away from the old sore subject of his enforced
+idleness, and, while the car bore them swiftly towards the Durwards'
+house on Green Street, she entertained him with a description of the
+Selwyn trio.
+
+“I should think your 'Doctor Dick' considers himself damned lucky in
+having got you there--seeing that his house seems all at sixes and
+sevens,” commented Tim rather glumly.
+
+“He does. Oh! I'm quite appreciated, I assure you.”
+
+Tim made no reply, but stared out of the window. The car rounded
+the corner into Park Lane; in another moment they would reach
+their destination. Suddenly he turned to her, his face rather
+strained-looking.
+
+“And--the other man? Have you met him yet--at Monkshaven?”
+
+There was no mistaking his meaning. Sara's eyes met his unflinchingly.
+
+“If you mean has any one asked me to marry him--no, Tim. No one has done
+me that honour,” she answered lightly.
+
+“Thank God!” he muttered below his breath.
+
+Sara looked troubled.
+
+“Haven't you--got over that, yet?” she said, hesitatingly. “I--I hoped
+you would, Tim.”
+
+“I shall never get over it,” he asserted doggedly. “And I shall never
+give you up till you are another man's wife.”
+
+The quiet intensity of his tones sounded strangely in her ears. This
+was a new Tim, not the boyish Tim of former times, but a man with all a
+man's steadfast purpose and determination.
+
+She was spared the necessity of reply by the fact that they had reached
+their journey's end. The car slid smoothly to a standstill, and almost
+simultaneously the house-door opened, and behind the immaculate figure
+of the Durwards' butler Sara descried the welcoming faces of Geoffrey
+and Elisabeth.
+
+It was good to see them both again--Geoffrey, big and debonair as ever,
+his jolly blue eyes beaming at her delightedly, and Elisabeth, still
+with that same elusive atmosphere of charm which always seemed to cling
+about her like the fragrance of a flower.
+
+They were eager to hear Sara's news, plying her with questions, so that
+before the end of her first evening with them they had gleaned a fairly
+accurate description of her life at Sunnyside and of the new circle of
+friends she had acquired.
+
+But there was one name she refrained from mentioning--that of Garth
+Trent, and none of Elisabeth's quietly uttered comments or inquiries
+sufficed to break through the guard of her reticence concerning the
+Hermit of Far End.
+
+“It sounds rather a manless Eden--except for the nice, lame Herrick
+person,” said Elisabeth at last, and her hyacinth eyes, with their
+curiously veiled expression, rested consideringly on Sara's face, alight
+with interest as she had vividly sketched the picture of her life at
+Monkshaven.
+
+“Yes, I suppose it is rather,” she admitted. Her tone was carelessly
+indifferent, but the eager light died suddenly out of her face, and
+Elisabeth, smiling faintly, adroitly turned the conversation.
+
+Sara speedily discovered that she would have even less time for the
+fruitless occupation of remembering than she had anticipated. The
+Durwards owned a host of friends in town with whom they were immensely
+popular, and Sara found herself caught up in a perpetual whirl of
+entertainment that left her but little leisure for brooding over the
+past.
+
+She felt sometimes as though the London season had opened and swallowed
+her up, as the whale swallowed Jonah, and when she declared herself
+breathless with so much rushing about, Tim would coolly throw over any
+engagement that chanced to have been made and carry her off for a day
+up the river, where a quiet little lunch, in the tranquil shade of
+overhanging trees, and the cosy, intimate talk that was its invariable
+concomitant, seemed like an oasis of familiar, homely pleasantness in
+the midst of the gay turmoil of London in May.
+
+Tim had developed amazingly. He seemed instinctively to recognize her
+moods, adapting himself accordingly, and in his thought and care for
+her there was a half-playful, half-tender element of possessiveness
+that sometimes brought a smile to her lips--and sometimes a sigh, as the
+inevitable comparison asserted itself between Tim's gentle ruling and
+the brusque, forceful mastery that had been Garth's. But, on the whole,
+the visit to the Durwards was productive of more smiles than sighs, and
+Sara found Tim's young, chivalrous devotion very soothing to the wound
+her pride had suffered at Garth's hands.
+
+She overflowed in gratitude to Elisabeth.
+
+“You're giving me a perfectly lovely time,” she told her. “And Tim _is_
+such a good playfellow!”
+
+Elisabeth's face seemed suddenly to glow with that inner radiance which
+praise of her beloved Tim alone was able to inspire.
+
+“Only that, Sara?” she said very quietly. Yet somehow Sara knew that she
+meant to have an answer to her question.
+
+“Why--why----” she stammered a little. “Isn't that enough?”--trying to
+speak lightly.
+
+Elisabeth shook her head.
+
+“Tim wants more than a playfellow. Can't you give him what he wants,
+Sara?”
+
+Sara was silent a moment.
+
+“I didn't know he had told you,” she said, at last, rather lamely.
+
+“Nor has he. Tim is loyal to the core. But a mother doesn't need telling
+these things.” Elisabeth's beautiful voice deepened. “Tim is bone of
+my bone and flesh of my flesh--and he's soul of my soul as well. Do you
+think, then, that I shouldn't know when he is hurt?”
+
+Sara was strangely moved. There was something impressive in the
+restrained passion of Elisabeth's speech, a certain primitive grandeur
+in her envisagement of the relationship of mother and son.
+
+“I expect,” pursued Elisabeth calmly, “that you think I'm going too
+far--farther than I have any right to. But it's any mother's right to
+fight for her son's happiness, and I'm fighting for Tim's. Why won't you
+marry him, Sara?” The question flashed out suddenly.
+
+“Because--why--oh, because I'm not in love with him.”
+
+A gleam of rather sardonic mirth showed in Elisabeth's face.
+
+“I wish,” she observed, “that we lived in the good old days when you
+could have been carried off by sheer force and _compelled_ to marry
+him.”
+
+Sara laughed outright.
+
+“I really believe you mean it!” she said with some amusement.
+
+Elisabeth nodded.
+
+“I do. I shouldn't have hesitated.”
+
+“And what about me? You wouldn't have considered my feelings at all
+in the matter, I suppose?” Sara was still smiling, yet she had a dim
+consciousness that, preposterous as it sounded, Elisabeth would have had
+no scruples whatever about putting such a plan into effect had it been
+in any way feasible.
+
+“No.” Elisabeth replied with the utmost composure. “Tim comes first.
+But”--and suddenly her voice melted to an indescribable sweetness--“You
+would be almost one with him in my heart, because you had brought him
+happiness.” She paused, then launched her question with a delicate
+hesitancy that skillfully concealed all semblance of the probe. “Tell
+me--is there any one else who has asked of you what Tim asks? Perhaps I
+have come too late with my plea?”
+
+Sara shook her head.
+
+“No,” she said flatly, “there is no one else.” With a sudden bitter
+self-mockery she added: “Tim's is the only proposal of marriage I have
+to my credit.”
+
+The repressed anxiety with which Elisabeth had been regarding her
+relaxed, and a curious look of content took birth in the hyacinth eyes.
+It was as though the bitterness of Sara's answer in some way reassured
+her, serving her purpose.
+
+“Then can't you give Tim what he wants? You will be robbing no one.
+Sara”--her low voice vibrated with the urgency of her desire--“promise
+me at least that you will think it over--that you will not dismiss the
+idea as though it were impossible?”
+
+Sara half rose; her eyes, wide and questioning, were fixed upon
+Elisabeth's.
+
+“But why--why do you ask me this?” she faltered.
+
+“Because I think”--very softly--“that Tim himself will ask you the same
+thing before very long. And I can't face what it will mean to him if you
+send him away. . . . You would be happy with him, Sara. No woman could
+live with Tim and not grow to love him--certainly no woman whom Tim
+loved.”
+
+The depth of her conviction imbued her words with a strange force of
+suggestion. For the first time the idea of marriage with Tim presented
+itself to Sara as a remotely conceivable happening.
+
+Hitherto she had looked upon his love for her as something which only
+touched the outer fringe of her life--a temporary disturbance of the
+good-comradely relations that had existed between them. With the easy
+optimism of a woman whose heart has always been her own exclusive
+property she had hoped he would “get over it.”
+
+But now Elisabeth's appeal, and the knowledge of the pain of love, which
+love itself had taught her, quickened her mind to a new understanding.
+Perhaps Elisabeth felt her yield to the impression she had been
+endeavoring to create, for she rose and came and stood quite close to
+her, looking down at her with shining eyes.
+
+“Give my son his happiness!” she said. And the eternal supplication of
+all motherhood was in her voice.
+
+Sara made no answer. She sat very still, with bent head. Presently there
+came the sound of light footsteps as Elisabeth crossed the room, and, a
+moment later, the door closed softly behind her.
+
+She had thrust a new responsibility on Sara's shoulders--the
+responsibility of Tim's happiness.
+
+
+
+“Give my son his happiness!” The poignant appeal of the words rang in
+Sara's ears.
+
+After all, why not? As Elisabeth had said, she would be robbing no one
+by so doing. The man for whom had been reserved the place in the sacred
+inner temple of her heart had signified very clearly that he had no
+intention of claiming it.
+
+No other would ever enter in his stead; the doors of that innermost
+sanctuary would be kept closed, shutting in only the dead ashes of
+remembrance. But if entrance to the outer courts of the temple meant so
+much to Tim, why should she not make him free of them? That other had
+come and gone again, having no need of her, while Tim's need was great.
+
+Life, at the moment stretched in front of her very vague and
+purposeless, and she knew that by marrying Tim she would make three
+people whom she loved, and who mattered most to her in the whole
+world--Tim, and Elisabeth, and Geoffrey--supremely happy. No one need
+suffer except herself--and for her there was no escape from suffering
+either way.
+
+So it came about that when, as her visit drew towards its close, Tim
+came to her and asked her once again to be his wife, she gave him an
+answer which by no stretch of the imagination could she have conceived
+as possible a short three weeks before.
+
+She was very frank with him. She was determined that if he married her,
+it must be open-eyed, recognizing that she could only give him honest
+liking in return for love. Upon a foundation of sincerity some mutual
+happiness might ultimately be established, but there should be no
+submerged rock of ignorance and misunderstanding on which their frail
+barque of matrimonial happiness might later founder in a sea of infinite
+regret.
+
+“Are you willing to take me--like that?” she asked him. “Knowing that I
+can only give you friendship? I wish--I wish I could give you what you
+ask--but I can't.”
+
+Tim's eyes searched hers for a long moment.
+
+“Is there some one else?” he asked at last.
+
+A wave of painful colour flooded her face, then ebbed away, leaving it
+curiously white and pinched-looking, but her eyes still met his bravely.
+
+“There is--no one who will ever want your place, Tim,” she said with an
+effort.
+
+The sight of her evident distress hurt him intolerably.
+
+“Forgive me!” he exclaimed quickly. “I had no right to ask that
+question.”
+
+“Yes, you had,” she replied steadily, “since you have asked me to be
+your wife.”
+
+“Well, you've answered it--and it doesn't make a bit of difference.
+I want you. I'll take what you can give me, Sara. Perhaps, some day,
+you'll be able to give me love as well.”
+
+She shook her head.
+
+“Don't count on that, Tim. Friendship, understanding, the comradeship
+which, after all, can mean a good deal between a man and woman--all
+these I can give you. And if you think those things are worth while,
+I'll marry you. But--I'm not in love with you.”
+
+“You will be--I'm sure it's catching,” he declared with the gay, buoyant
+confidence which was one of his most endearing qualities.
+
+Sara smiled a little wistfully.
+
+“I wish it were,” she said. “But please be serious, Tim dear--”
+
+“How can I be?” he interrupted joyfully. “When the woman I love tells me
+that she'll marry me, do you suppose I'm going to pull a long face about
+it?”
+
+He caught her in his arms and kissed her with all the impetuous fervour
+of his two-and-twenty years. At the touch of his warm young lips, her
+own lips whitened. For an instant, as she rested in his arms, she was
+stabbed through and through by the memory of those other arms that had
+held her as in a vice of steel, and of stormy, passionate kisses in
+comparison with Tim's impulsive caress, half-shy, half-reverent, seemed
+like clear water beside the glowing fire of red wine.
+
+She drew herself sharply out of his embrace. Would she never
+forget--would she be for ever remembering, comparing? If so, God help
+her!
+
+“No,” she said quietly. “You needn't pull a long face over it. But--but
+marriage is a serious thing, Tim, after all.”
+
+“My dear”--he spoke with a sudden gentle gravity--“don't misunderstand
+me. Marriage with you is the most serious and wonderful and glorious
+thing that could ever happen to a man. When you're my wife, I shall
+be thanking God on my knees every day of my life. All the jokes and
+nonsense are only so many little waves of happiness breaking on the
+shore. But behind them there is always the big sea of my love for
+you--the still waters, Sara.”
+
+Sara remained silent. The realization of the tender, chivalrous,
+worshiping love this boy was pouring out at her feet made her feel very
+humble--very ashamed and sorry that she could give so little in return.
+
+Presently she turned and held out her hands to him.
+
+“Tim--my Tim,” she said, and her voice shook a little. “I'll try not to
+disappoint you.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE NAME OF DURWARD
+
+The Durwards received the news of their son's engagement to Sara with
+unfeigned delight. Geoffrey was bluffly gratified at the materialization
+of his private hopes, and Elisabeth had never appeared more captivating
+than during the few days that immediately followed. She went about as
+softly radiant and content as a pleased child, and even the strange,
+watchful reticence that dwelt habitually in her eyes was temporarily
+submerged by the shining happiness that welled up within them.
+
+She urged that an early date should be fixed for the wedding, and Sara,
+with a dreary feeling that nothing really mattered very much, listlessly
+acquiesced. Driven by conflicting influences she had burned her boats,
+and the sooner all signs of the conflagration were obliterated the
+better.
+
+But she opposed a quiet negative to the further suggestion that she
+should accompany the Durwards to Barrow Court instead of returning to
+Monkshaven.
+
+“No, I can't do that,” she said with decision. “I promised Doctor Dick I
+would go back.”
+
+Elisabeth smiled airily. Apparently she had no scruples about the
+keeping of promises.
+
+“That's easily arranged,” she affirmed. “I'll write to your precious
+doctor man and tell him that we can't spare you.”
+
+As far as personal inclination was concerned, Sara would gladly have
+adopted Elisabeth's suggestion. She shrank inexpressibly from returning
+to Monkshaven, shrouded, as it was, in brief but poignant memories, but
+she had given Selwyn her word that she would go back, and, even in
+a comparatively unimportant matter such as this appeared, she had a
+predilection in favour of abiding by a promise.
+
+Elisabeth demurred.
+
+“You're putting Dr. Selwyn before us,” she declared, candidly amazed.
+
+“I promised him first,” replied Sara. “In my position, you'd do the
+same.”
+
+Elisabeth shook her head.
+
+“I shouldn't,” she replied with energy. “The people I love come
+first--all the rest nowhere.”
+
+“Then I'm glad I'm one of the people you love,” retorted Sara, laughing.
+“And, let me tell you, I think you're a most unmoral person.”
+
+Elisabeth looked at her reflectively.
+
+“Perhaps I am,” she acknowledged. “At least, from a conventional point
+of view. Certainly I shouldn't let any so-called moral scruples spoil
+the happiness of any one I cared about. However, I suppose you
+would, and so we're all to be offered up on the altar of this
+twopenny-halfpenny promise you've made to Dr. Selwyn?”
+
+Sara laughed and kissed her.
+
+“I'm afraid you are,” she said.
+
+If anything could have reconciled her to the sacrifice of inclination
+she had made in returning to Monkshaven, it would have been the warmth
+of the welcome extended to her on her arrival. Selwyn and Molly met her
+at the station, and Jane Crab, resplendent in a new cap and apron donned
+for the occasion, was at the gate when at last the pony brought the
+governess-cart to a standstill outside. Even Mrs. Selwyn had exerted
+herself to come downstairs, and was waiting in the hall to greet the
+wanderer back.
+
+“It will be a great comfort to have you back, my dear,” she said with
+unwonted feeling in her voice, and quite suddenly Sara felt abundantly
+rewarded for the many weary hours upstairs, trying to win Mrs. Selwyn's
+interest to anything exterior to herself.
+
+“You're looking thinner,” was Selwyn's blunt comment, as Sara threw off
+her hat and coat. “What have you been doing with yourself?”
+
+She flushed a little.
+
+“Oh, racketing about, I suppose. I've been living in a perfect whirl.
+Never mind, Doctor Dick, you shall fatten me up now with your good
+country food and your good country air. Good gracious!”--as he closed
+a big thumb and finger around her slender wrist and shook his head
+disparagingly--“Don't look so solemn! I was always one of the lean kine,
+you know.”
+
+“I don't think that London has agreed with you,” rumbled Selwyn
+discontentedly. “Your pulse is as jerky as a primitive cinema film.
+You'd better not be in such a hurry to run away from us again. Besides,
+we can't do without you, my dear.”
+
+With a mental jolt Sara recollected the fact of her approaching
+marriage. How on earth should she break it to these good friends of
+hers, who counted so much on her remaining with them, that within three
+months--the longest period Elisabeth would consent to wait--she would
+be leaving them permanently? It was manifestly impossible to pour such
+a douche of cold water into the midst of the joyful warmth of their
+welcome; and she decided to wait, at least until the next day, before
+acquainting them with the fact of her engagement.
+
+When morning came, the same arguments held good in favour of a further
+postponement, and, as the days slipped by, it became increasingly
+difficult to introduce the subject.
+
+Moreover, amid the change of environment and influence, Sara experienced
+a certain almost inevitable reaction of feeling. It was not that she
+actually regretted her engagement, but none the less she found herself
+supersensitively conscious of it, and she chafed against the thought of
+the congratulations and all the kindly, well-meant “fussation” which its
+announcement would entail.
+
+She told herself irritably that this was only because she had not yet
+had time to get used to the idea of regarding herself as Tim's future
+wife; that, later on, when she had grown more accustomed to it, the
+prospect of her friends' felicitations would appear less repugnant. She
+had to face the ultimate fact that marriage, for her, did not mean the
+crowning fulfillment of life; marriage with Tim would never be anything
+more than a substitute, a next best thing.
+
+With these thoughts in her mind, she finally decided to say nothing
+about her engagement for the present, but to pick up the threads of life
+at Sunnyside as though that crowded month in London, with its unexpected
+culmination, had never been.
+
+Once taken, the decision afforded her a curious sense of respite
+and relief. It was very pleasant to drop back into the old habits of
+managing the Sunnyside _ménage_--making herself indispensable to Selwyn,
+humouring his wife, and keeping a watchful eye on Molly.
+
+The latter, Sara found, was by far the most difficult part of her task,
+and the vague apprehensions she had formed, and to some extent shared
+with Selwyn before her visit to London, increased.
+
+From an essentially lovable, inconsequent creature, with a temper of an
+angel and the frankness of a child, Molly had become oddly nervous
+and irritable, flushing and paling suddenly for no apparent cause, and
+guardedly uncommunicative as to her comings and goings. She was oddly
+resentful of any manifestation of interest in her affairs, and snubbed
+Sara roundly when the latter ventured an injudicious inquiry as to
+whether Lester Kent were still in the neighbourhood.
+
+“How on earth should I know?” The golden-brown eyes met Sara's with a
+look of nervous defiance. “I'm not his keeper.” Then, as though slightly
+ashamed of her outburst, she added more amiably: “I haven't been down to
+the Club for weeks. It's been so hot--and I suppose I've been lazy.
+But I'm going to-morrow. I shall be able to gratify your curiosity
+concerning Lester Kent when I come home.”
+
+“To-morrow?” Sara looks surprised. “But we promised to go to tea with
+Audrey to-morrow.”
+
+Molly flushed and looked away.
+
+“Did we?” she said vaguely. “I'd forgotten.”
+
+“Can't you arrange to go to Oldhampton the next day instead?” continued
+Sara.
+
+Molly frowned a little. At last--
+
+“I tell you what I'll do,” she said agreeably. “I'll come back by the
+afternoon train and meet you at Greenacres.” And with this concession
+Sara had to be content.
+
+Tea at Greenacres resolved itself into a kind of rarefied picnic, and,
+as Sara crossed the cool green lawns in the wake of a smart parlourmaid,
+she found that quite a considerable number of Audrey's friends--and
+enemies--were gathered together under the shade of the trees, partaking
+of tea and strawberries and cream. The _elite_ of the neighbourhood
+might find many disagreeable things to say concerning Mrs. Maynard, but
+they were not in the least averse to accepting her hospitality whenever
+the opportunity presented itself.
+
+Sara's heart leapt suddenly as she descried Trent's lean, well-knit
+figure amongst those dotted about on the lawn. She had tried very hard
+to accustom herself to meet him with composure, but at each encounter,
+although outwardly quite cool, her pulses raced, and to-day, the first
+time she had seen him since her return from London, she felt as though
+all her nerves were outside her skin instead of underneath it.
+
+He was talking to Miles Herrick. The latter, lying back luxuriously in
+a deck-chair, proceeded to wave and beckon an enthusiastic greeting as
+soon as he caught sight of Sara, and rather reluctantly she responded to
+his signals and made her way towards the two men.
+
+“I feel like a bloated sultan summoning one of the ladies of the harem
+to his presence,” confessed Miles apologetically when he had shaken
+hands. “I've added a sprained ankle to my other disabilities,” he
+continued cheerfully. “Hence my apparent laziness.”
+
+Sara commiserated appropriately.
+
+“How did you manage to get here?” she asked.
+
+Miles gestured towards Trent.
+
+“This man maintained that it was bad for my mental and moral health
+to brood alone at home while Lavinia went skipping off into society
+unchaperoned. So he fetched me along in his car.”
+
+Sara's eyes rested thoughtfully on Trent's face a moment.
+
+It was odd how kindly and considerate he always showed himself towards
+Miles Herrick. Perhaps somewhere within him a responsive chord was
+touched by the evidence of the other man's broken life.
+
+“Miss Tennant is thinking that it's a case of the blind leading the
+blind for me to act as a cicerone into society,” remarked Trent curtly.
+
+Sara winced at the repellent hardness of his tone, but she declined to
+take up the challenge.
+
+“I am very glad you persuaded Miles to come over,” was all she said.
+
+Trent's lips closed in a straight line. It seemed as though he were
+trying to resist the appeal of her gently given answer; and Miles,
+conscious of the antagonism in the atmosphere, interposed with some
+commonplace question concerning her visit to London.
+
+“You're looking thinner than you were, Sara,” he added critically.
+
+She flushed a little as she felt Trent's hawk-like glance sweep over
+her.
+
+“Oh, I've been leading too gay a life,” she said hastily. “The Durwards
+seem to know half London, so that we crowded about a dozen engagements
+into each day--and a few more into the night.”
+
+“_Durward_?” The word sprang violently from Trent's lips, almost
+as though jerked out of him, and Sara, glancing towards him in some
+astonishment, surprised a strange, suddenly vigilant expression in his
+face. It was immediately succeeded by a blank look of indifference, yet
+beneath the assumption of indifference his eyes seemed to burn with a
+kind of slumbering hostility.
+
+“Yes--the people I have been staying with,” she explained. “Do you know
+them, by any chance?”
+
+“I really can't say,” he replied carelessly. “Durward is not a very
+uncommon name, is it?”
+
+“Their name was originally Lovell--they only acquired the Durward with
+some property. Mrs. Durward is an extraordinarily beautiful woman. I
+believe in her younger days she had half London in love with her.”
+
+Sara hardly knew why she felt impelled to supply so many particulars
+concerning the Durwards. After that first brief exclamation, Trent
+seemed to have lost interest, and appeared to be rather bored by the
+recital than otherwise. He made no comment when she had finished.
+
+“Then you don't know them?” she asked at last.
+
+“I?” He started slightly, as though recalled to the present by her
+question. “No. I haven't the pleasure to be numbered amongst Mrs.
+Durward's friends,” he said quietly. “I have seen her, however.”
+
+“She is very beautiful, don't you think?” persisted Sara.
+
+“Very,” he replied indifferently. And then, quite deliberately, he
+directed the conversation into another channel, leaving Sara feeling
+exactly as though a door had been slammed in her face.
+
+It was his old method of putting an end to a discussion that failed to
+please him--this arrogantly abrupt transition to another subject--and,
+though it served its immediate purpose, it was a method that had its
+weaknesses. If you deliberately hide behind a hedge, any one who catches
+you in the act naturally wonders why you are doing it.
+
+Even Miles looked a trifle astonished at Trent's curt dismissal of the
+Durward topic, and Sara, who had observed the strange expression that
+leaped into his eyes--half-guarded, half inimical--felt convinced that
+he knew more about the Durwards than he had chosen to acknowledge.
+
+She could not imagine in what way they were connected with his life, nor
+why he should have been so averse to admitting his knowledge of them.
+But there were many inexplicable circumstances associated with the man
+who had chosen to live more or less the life of a recluse at Far End;
+and Sara, and the little circle of intimates who had at last succeeded
+in drawing him into their midst, had accustomed themselves to the
+atmosphere of secrecy that seemed to envelope him.
+
+From his obvious desire to eschew the society of his fellow men and
+women, and from the acid cynicism of his outlook on things in general,
+it had been gradually assumed amongst them that some happenings in the
+past had marred his life, poisoning the springs of faith, and hope, and
+charity at their very fount, and with the tact of real friendship they
+never sought to discover what he so evidently wished concealed.
+
+“Where is Molly to-day?” Miles's pleasant voice broke across the
+awkward moment, giving yet a fresh trend to the conversation that was
+languishing uncomfortably.
+
+Sara's gaze ranged searchingly over the little groups of people
+sprinkled about the lawn.
+
+“Isn't she here yet?” she asked, startled. “She was coming back from
+Oldhampton by the afternoon train, and promised to meet me here.”
+
+Miles looked at his watch.
+
+“The attractions of Oldhampton have evidently proved too strong for
+her,” he said a little drily. “If she had come by the afternoon train,
+she would have been here an hour ago.”
+
+Sara looked troubled.
+
+“Oh, but she _must_ be here--somewhere,” she insisted rather anxiously.
+
+“Shall I see if I can find her for you?” suggested Trent stiffly.
+
+Sara, sensing his wish to be gone and genuinely disturbed at Molly's
+non-appearance, acquiesced.
+
+“I should be very glad if you would,” she answered. Then turning to
+Miles, she went on: “I can't think where she can be. Somehow, Molly has
+become rather--difficult, lately.”
+
+Herrick smiled.
+
+“Don't look so distressed. It is only a little ebullition of _la
+jeunesse_.”
+
+Sara turned to him swiftly.
+
+“Then you've noticed it, too--that she is different?”
+
+He nodded.
+
+“Lookers-on see most of the game, you know. And I'm essentially a
+looker-on.” He bit back a quick sigh, and went on hastily: “But I don't
+think you need worry about our Molly's vagaries. She's too sound _au
+fond_ to get into real mischief.”
+
+“She wouldn't mean to,” conceded Sara. “But she is----” She hesitated.
+
+“Youthfully irresponsible,” suggested Miles. “Let it go at that.”
+
+Sara looked at him affectionately, reflecting that Trent's black
+cynicism made a striking foil to the serene and constant charity of
+Herrick's outlook.
+
+“You always look for the best in people, Miles,” she said
+appreciatively.
+
+“I have to. Don't you see, people are my whole world. I'm cut off from
+everything else. If I didn't look for the best in them, I should want
+to kill myself. And I'm pretty lucky,” he added, smiling humorously. “I
+generally find what I'm looking for.”
+
+At this moment Trent returned with the news that Molly was nowhere to be
+found. It was evident she had not come to Greenacres at all.
+
+Sara rose, feeling oddly apprehensive.
+
+“Then I think I shall go home and see if she has arrived there yet,”
+ she said. She smiled down at Miles. “Even irresponsibility needs
+checking--if carried too far.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE FLIGHT
+
+The first person Sara encountered on her return to Sunnyside was Jane
+Crab, unmistakably bursting to impart some news.
+
+“The doctor's going away, miss,” she announced, flinging her bombshell
+without preliminary.
+
+“Going away?” Sara's surprise was entirely gratifying, and Jane
+continued volubly--
+
+“Yes, miss. A telegram came for him early in the afternoon, while he was
+out on his rounds, asking him to go to a friend who is lying at death's
+door, as you may say. And please, miss, Dr. Selwyn said he would be glad
+to see you as soon as you came in.”
+
+“Very well, I'll go to him at once. Where is Miss Molly? Has she come
+back yet?”
+
+“Come and gone again, miss. The doctor asked her to send off a wire for
+him.”
+
+“I see.” Sara nodded somewhat abstractly. She was still wondering
+confusedly why Molly had failed to put in any appearance at Greenacres.
+“What time did she come in?”
+
+“About a quarter of an hour ago, miss. She missed the early train back
+from Oldhampton.”
+
+Sara's instant feeling of relief was tempered by a mild element of
+self-reproach. She had been agitating herself about nothing--allowing
+her uneasiness about Molly to become a perfect obsession, leading her
+into the wildest imaginings. Here had she been disquieting herself the
+entire afternoon because Molly had not turned up as arranged, and after
+all, the simple, commonplace explanation of the matter was that she had
+missed her train!
+
+Smiling over the groundlessness of her fears, Sara hastened away to
+Selwyn's study, and found him, seated at his desk, scribbling some
+hurried motes concerning various cases among his patients for the
+enlightenment of the medical man who was taking charge of the practice
+during his absence.
+
+“Oh, there you are, Sara!” he exclaimed, laying down his pen as
+she entered. “I'm glad you have come back before I go. I'm off in
+half-an-hour. Did Jane tell you?”
+
+“Yes. I'm very sorry your friend is so ill.”
+
+Selwyn's face clouded over.
+
+“I'd like to see him again,” he answered simply. “We haven't met for
+some years--not since my wife's health brought me to Monkshaven--but we
+were good pals at one time, he and I. Luckily, I've been able to arrange
+with Dr. Mitchell to include my patients in his round, and if you'll
+take charge of everything here at home, Sara, I shall have nothing to
+worry about while I'm away.”
+
+“Of course I will. It's very nice of you to entrust your family to my
+care so confidently.”
+
+“Quite confidently,” he replied. “I'm not afraid of anything going wrong
+if you're at the helm.”
+
+“How long do you expect to be away?” asked Sara presently.
+
+“A couple of days at the outside. I hope to get back the day after
+to-morrow.”
+
+Denuded of Selwyn's big, kindly presence, the house seemed curiously
+silent. Even Jane Crab appeared to feel the effect of his absence, and
+strove less forcefully with her pots and pans--which undoubtedly made
+for an increase of peace and quiet--while Molly was frankly depressed,
+stealing restlessly in and out of the rooms like some haunting shadow.
+
+“What on earth's the matter with you?” Sara asked her laughingly.
+“Hasn't your father ever been away from home before? You're wandering
+about like an uneasy spirit!”
+
+“I _am_ an uneasy spirit,” responded Molly bluntly. “I feel as though
+I'd a cold coming on, and I always like Dad to doctor me when I'm ill.”
+
+“I can doctor a cold,” affirmed Sara briskly. “Put your feet in hot
+water and mustard to-night and stay in bed to-morrow.”
+
+Molly considered the proposed remedies in silence.
+
+“Perhaps I _will_ stay in bed to-morrow,” she said, at last,
+reluctantly. “Should you mind? We were going down to see the Lavender
+Lady, you remember.”
+
+“I'll go alone. Anyway”--smiling--“if you're safely tucked up in bed,
+I shall know you're not getting into any mischief while Doctor Dick's
+away! But very likely the hot water and mustard will put you all right.”
+
+“Perhaps it will,” agreed Molly hopefully.
+
+The next morning, however, found her in bed, snuffling and complaining
+of headache, and pathetically resigned to the idea of spending the day
+between the sheets. Obviously she was in no fit state to inflict her
+company on other people, so, in the afternoon, after settling her
+comfortably with a new novel and a box of cigarettes at her bedside,
+Sara took her solitary way to Rose Cottage.
+
+There she found Garth Trent, sitting beside Herrick's couch and deep in
+an enthusiastic discussion of amateur photography. But, immediately on
+her entrance, the eager, interested expression died out of his face,
+and very shortly after tea he made his farewells, nor could any soft
+blandishments on the part of the Lavender Lady prevail upon him to
+remain longer.
+
+Sara felt hurt and resentful. Since the day of the expedition to Devil's
+Hood Island, Trent had punctiliously avoided being in her company
+whenever circumstances would permit him to do so, and she was perfectly
+aware that it was her presence at Rose Cottage which was responsible for
+his early departure this afternoon.
+
+A gleam of anger flickered in the black depths of her eyes as he shook
+hands.
+
+“I'm sorry I've driven you away,” she flashed at him beneath her breath,
+with a bitterness akin to his own. He made no answer, merely releasing
+her hand rather quickly, as though something in her words had flicked
+him on the raw.
+
+“What a pity Mr. Trent had to leave so soon,” remarked Miss Lavinia,
+with innocent regret, when he had gone. “I'm afraid we shall never
+persuade him to be really sociable, poor dear man! He seems a little
+moody to-day, don't you think?”--hesitating delicately.
+
+“He's a bore!” burst out Sara succinctly.
+
+Miles shook his head.
+
+“No, I don't think that,” he said. “But he's a very sick man. In my
+opinion, Trent's had his soul badly mauled at some time or other.”
+
+“He needn't advertise the fact, then,” retorted Sara, unappeased. “We
+all get our share of ill-luck. Garth behaves as if he had the monopoly.”
+
+“There are some scars which can't be hidden,” replied Miles quietly.
+
+Sara smiled a little. There was never any evading Herrick's broad
+tolerance of human nature.
+
+
+
+It was nearly an hour later when at last she took her way homewards,
+carrying in her heart, in spite of herself, something of the gentle
+serenity that seemed to be a part of the very atmosphere at Rose
+Cottage.
+
+Outside, the calm and fragrance of a June evening awaited her. Little,
+delicate, sweet-smelling airs floated over the tops of the hedges from
+the fields beyond, and now and then a few stray notes of a blackbird's
+song stole out from a plantation near at hand, breaking off suddenly and
+dying down into drowsy, contented little cluckings and twitterings.
+
+Across the bay the sun was dipping towards the horizon, flinging along
+the face of the waters great shafts of lambent gold and orange, that
+split into a thousand particles of shimmering light as the ripples
+caught them up and played with them, and finally tossed them back again
+to the sun from the shining curve of a wave's sleek side.
+
+It was all very tranquil and pleasant, and Sara strolled leisurely
+along, soothed into a half-waking dream by the peaceful influences of
+the moment. Even the manifold perplexities and tangles of life seemed
+to recede and diminish in importance at the touch of old Mother
+Nature's comforting hand. After all, there was much, very much, that was
+beautiful and pleasant still left to enjoy.
+
+It is generally at moments like these, when we are sinking into a placid
+quiescence of endurance, that Fate sees fit to prod us into a more
+active frame of mind.
+
+In this particular instance destiny manifested itself in the unassuming
+form of Black Brady, who slid suddenly down from the roadside hedge,
+amid a crackling of branches and rattle of rubble, and appeared in front
+of Sara's astonished eyes just as she was nearing home.
+
+“Beg pardon, miss”--Brady tugged at a forelock of curly black hair--“I
+was just on me way to your place.”
+
+“To Sunnyside? Why, is Mrs. Brady ill again?” asked Sara kindly.
+
+“No, miss, thank you, she's doing nicely.” He paused a moment as
+though at a loss how to continue. Then he burst out: “It's about Miss
+Molly--the doctor bein' away and all.”
+
+“About Miss Molly?” Sara felt a sudden clutch at her heart. “What do you
+mean? Quick, Brady, what is it?”
+
+“Well, miss, I've just seed 'er go off 'long o' Mr. Kent in his big
+motor-car. They took the London road, and”--here Brady shuffled his feet
+with much embarrassment--“seein' as Mr. Kent's a married man, I'll be
+bound he's up to no good wi' Miss Molly.”
+
+Sara could have stamped with vexation. The little fool--oh! The
+utter little _fool_--to go off joy-riding in an evening like that! A
+break-down of any kind, with a consequent delay in returning, and all
+Monkshaven would be buzzing with the tale!
+
+For the moment, however, there was nothing to be done except to put
+Black Brady in his place and pray for Molly's speedy return.
+
+“Well, Brady,” she said coldly, “I imagine Mr. Kent's a good enough
+driver to bring Miss Selwyn back safely. I don't think there's anything
+to worry about.”
+
+Brady stared at her out of his sullen eyes.
+
+“You haven't understood, miss,” he said doggedly. “Mr. Kent isn't for
+bringing Miss Molly back again. They'd their luggage along wi' 'em in
+the car, and Mr. Kent, he stopped at the 'Cliff' to have the tank filled
+up and took a matter of another half-dozen cans o' petrol with 'im.”
+
+In an instant the whole dreadful significance of the thing leaped into
+Sara's mind. Molly had bolted--run away with Lester Kent!
+
+It was easy enough now, in the flashlight kindled by Brady's slow,
+inexorable summing up of detail, to see the drift of recent happenings,
+the meaning of each small, disconcerting fact that added a fresh link to
+the chain of probability.
+
+Molly's unwonted secretiveness; her strange, uncertain moods; her
+embarrassment at finding she was expected at Greenacres when she had
+presumably agreed to meet Lester Kent in Oldhampton; and, last of all,
+the sudden “cold” which had developed coincidentally with her father's
+absence from home and which had secured her freedom from any kind
+of supervision for the afternoon. And the opportunity of clinching
+arrangements--probably already planned and dependent only on a
+convenient moment--had been provided by her errand to the post office to
+send off her father's telegram--it being as easy to send two telegrams
+as one.
+
+The colour ebbed slowly from Sara's face as full realization dawned
+upon her, and she swayed a little where she stood. With rough kindliness
+Brady stretched out a grimy hand and steadied her.
+
+“'Ere, don't' take on, miss. They won't get very far. I didn't, so to
+speak, _fill_ the petrol tank”--with a grin--“and there ain't more than
+two o' they cans I slipped aboard the car as 'olds more'n air. The rest
+was empties”--the grin widened enjoyably--“which I shoved in well to
+the back. Mr. Kent won't travel eighty miles afore 'e calls a 'alt, I
+reckon.”
+
+Sara looked at Brady's cunning, kindly face almost with affection.
+
+“Why did you do that?” she asked swiftly.
+
+“I've owed Mr. Lester Kent summat these three years,” he answered
+complacently. “And I never forgets to pay back. I owed you summat,
+too, Miss Tennant. I haven't forgot how you spoke up for me when I was
+catched poachin'.”
+
+Sara held out her hand to him impulsively, and Brady sheepishly extended
+his own grubby paw to meet it.
+
+“You've more than paid me back, Brady,” she said warmly. “Thank you.”
+
+Turning away, she hurried up the road, leaving Brady staring alternately
+at his right hand and at her receding figure.
+
+“She's rare gentry, is Miss Tennant,” he remarked with conviction, and
+then slouched off to drink himself blind at “The Jolly Sailorman.”
+ Black Brady was, after all, only an inexplicable bundle of good and bad
+impulses--very much like his betters.
+
+Arrived at the house, Sara fled breathlessly upstairs to Molly's room.
+Jane Crab was standing in the middle of it, staring dazedly at all the
+evidences of a hasty departure which surrounded her--an overturned chair
+here, an empty hat-box there, drawers pulled out, and clothes tossed
+heedlessly about in every direction. In her hand she held a chemist's
+parcel, neatly sealed and labeled; she was twisting it round and round
+in her trembling, gnarled old fingers.
+
+At the sound of Sara's entrance, she turned with an exclamation of
+relief.
+
+“Oh, Miss Sara! I'm main glad you've come! Whatever's happened? Miss
+Molly was here in bed not three parts of an hour ago!” Then, her
+boot-button eyes still roving round the room, she made a sudden dart
+towards the dressing-table. “Here, miss, 'tis a note she's left for
+you!” she exclaimed, snatching it up and thrusting it into Sara's hands.
+
+Written in Molly's big, sprawling, childish hand, the note was a
+pathetic mixture of confession and apology--
+
+“I feel a perfect pig, Sara mine, leaving you behind to face Father, but
+it was my only chance of getting away, as I know Dad would have refused
+to let me marry for years and years. He never _will_ realize that I'm
+grown-up. And Lester and I couldn't wait all that time.
+
+“I felt an awful fraud last night, letting you fuss over my supposed
+'cold,' you dear thing. Do forgive me. And you must come and stay with
+us the minute we get back from our honeymoon. We are to be married
+to-morrow morning. “--MOLLY.
+
+“P.S.--Don't worry--it's all quite proper and respectable. I'm to go
+straight to the house of one of Lester's sisters in London.
+
+“P.P.S.--I'm frantically happy.”
+
+Sara's eyes were wet when she finished the perusal of the hastily
+scribbled letter. “We are to be married to-morrow morning!” The blind,
+pathetic confidence of it! And if Black Brady had spoken the truth, if
+Lester Kent were already a married man, to-morrow morning would convert
+the trusting, wayward baby of a woman, with her adorable inconsistencies
+and her big, generous heart, into something Sara dared not contemplate.
+The thought of the look in those brown-gold eyes, when Molly should know
+the truth, brought a lump into her throat.
+
+She turned to Jane Crab.
+
+“Listen to me, Jane,” she said tersely. “Miss Molly's run away with
+Mr. Lester Kent. She thinks he's going to marry her. But he can't--he's
+married already----”
+
+“Sakes alive!” Just that one brief exclamation, and then suddenly Jane's
+lower lip began to work convulsively, and two tears squeezed themselves
+out of her little eyes, and her whole face puckered up like a baby's.
+
+Sara caught her by the arm and shook her.
+
+“Don't cry!” she said vehemently. “You haven't time! We've got to save
+her--we've got to get her back before any one knows. Do you understand?
+Stop crying at once!”
+
+Jane reacted promptly to the fierce imperative, and sniffingly choked
+back her tears. Suddenly her eyes fell on the little package from the
+chemist which she still held clutched in her hand.
+
+“The artfulness of her!” she ejaculated indignantly. “Asking me to go
+along to the chemist's and bring her back some aspirin for her headache!
+And me, like a fool, suspecting nothing, off I goes! There's the
+stuff!”--viciously flinging the chemist's parcel on to the floor. “Eh!
+Miss Molly'll have more than a headache to face, I'm thinking!”
+
+“But she _mustn't_, Jane! We've got to get her back, somehow.”
+
+Though Sara spoke with such assured conviction, she was inwardly racked
+with anxiety. What _could_ they do--two forlorn women? And to whom could
+they turn for help? Miles? He was lame. He was no abler to help than
+they themselves. And Selwyn was away, out of reach!
+
+“We must get her back,” she repeated doggedly.
+
+“And how, may I ask, Miss Sara?” inquired Jane bitterly. “Be you goin'
+to run after the motor-car, mayhap?”
+
+For a moment Sara was silent. The sarcastic query had set the spark to
+the tinder, and now she was thinking rapidly, some semblance of a plan
+emerging at last from the chaotic turmoil of her mind.
+
+Garth Trent! He could help her! He had a car--Sara did not know its
+pace, but she was certain Trent could be trusted to get every ounce
+out of it that was possible. Between them--he and she--they would bring
+Molly back to safety!
+
+She turned swiftly to Jane Crab.
+
+“Come to the stable and help me put in the Doctor's pony, Jane. You know
+how, don't you?”
+
+“Yes, miss, I've helped the master many a time. But you ain't going to
+catch no motor with old Toby, Miss Sara.”
+
+“No, I don't expect to. I'm gong to drive across to Far End. Mr. Trent
+will help us. Don't worry, Jane”--as the two made their way to the
+stable and Jane strangled a sob--“we'll bring Miss Molly back. And,
+listen! Mrs. Selwyn isn't to hear a word of this. Do you understand? If
+she asks you anything, tell her that Miss Molly and I are dining out.
+That'll be true enough, too,” added Sara grimly, “if we dine at all!”
+
+Jane sniffed, and swallowed loudly.
+
+“Yes, miss,” she said submissively. “You and Miss Molly are dining out.
+I won't forget.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THEY WHO PURSUED
+
+Selwyn's pony had rarely before found himself hustled along at the
+pace at which Sara drove him. She let him take his time up the hills,
+knowing, as every good horse-woman knows, that if you press your horse
+against the hill, he will only flag the sooner and that you will lose
+more than you gain. But down the hills and along the flat, Sara, with
+hands and whip, kept Toby going at an amazing pace. Perhaps something
+of her own urgency communicated itself to the good-hearted beast, for
+he certainly made a great effort and brought her to Far End in a shorter
+time than she had deemed possible.
+
+Exactly as she pulled him to a standstill, the front door opened and
+Garth himself appeared. He had heard the unwonted sound of wheels on
+the drive, and now, as he recognized his late visitor, an expression of
+extreme surprise crossed his face.
+
+“Miss Tennant!” he exclaimed in astonished tones.
+
+“Yes. Can your man take my pony? And, please may I come in? I--I must
+see you alone for a few minutes.”
+
+Trent glanced at her searchingly as his ear caught the note of strain in
+her voice.
+
+Summoning Judson to take charge of the pony and trap, he led the
+way into the comfortable, old fashioned hall and wheeled forward an
+armchair.
+
+“Sit down,” he said composedly. “Now”--as she obeyed--“tell me what is
+the matter.”
+
+His manner held a quiet friendliness. The chill indifference he had
+accorded her of late--even earlier that same day at Rose Cottage--had
+vanished, and his curiously bright eyes regarded her with sympathetic
+interest.
+
+To the man as he appeared at the moment, it was no difficult matter for
+Sara to unburden her heart, and a few minutes later he was in possession
+of all the facts concerning Molly's flight.
+
+“I don't know whether Mr. Kent is really a married man or not,” she
+added in conclusion. “Brady declares that he is.”
+
+“He is,” replied Trent curtly. “Very much married. His first wife
+divorced him, and, since then, he has married again.”
+
+“Oh----!” Sara half-rose from her seat, her face blanching. Not till
+that moment did she realize how much in her inmost heart she had been
+relying on the hope that Garth might be able to contradict Black Brady's
+statement.
+
+“Don't worry.” Garth laid his hands on her shoulders and pushed her
+gently back into her chair again. “Don't worry. Thanks to Brady's stroke
+of genius about the petrol--I've evidently underestimated the man's good
+points--I think I can promise you that you shall have Miss Molly safely
+back at Sunnyside in the course of a few hours. That is, if you are
+willing to trust me in the matter.”
+
+“Of course I will trust you,” she answered simply. Somehow it seemed as
+though a great burden had been lifted from her shoulders since she had
+confided her trouble to Garth.
+
+“Thank you,” he said quietly. “Now, while Judson gets the car round, you
+must have a glass of wine.”
+
+“No--oh, no!”--hastily--“I don't want anything.”
+
+“Allow me to know better than you do in this case,” he replied, smiling.
+
+He left the room, presently returning with a bottle of champagne and a
+couple of glasses.
+
+“Oh, please--I'd so much rather start at once,” she protested. “I really
+don't want anything. Do let us hurry!”
+
+“I'm sorry, but I've no intention of starting until you have drunk
+this”--filling and handing one of the glasses to her.
+
+Rather than waste time in further argument, she accepted it, only to
+find that her hand was shaking uncontrollably, so that the edge of the
+glass chattered against her teeth.
+
+“I--I can't!” she gasped helplessly. Now that she had shared her burden
+of responsibility, the demands of the last half-hour's anxiety and
+strain were making themselves felt.
+
+With a swift movement Garth took the glass from her, and, supporting her
+with his other arm, held it to her lips.
+
+“Drink it down,” he said authoritatively. Then, as she paused: “All of
+it!”
+
+In a few minutes the wine had brought the colour back to her face, and
+she felt more like herself again.
+
+“I'm all right, now,” she said. “I'm sorry I was such a fool. But--but
+this business about Molly has given me rather a shock, I suppose.”
+
+“Naturally. Now, if you're ready, we'll make a start.”
+
+She rose, and he surveyed her slight figure in its thin muslin gown with
+some amusement.
+
+“Not quite a suitable costume for motoring by night,” he remarked. He
+picked up one of the two big fur coats Mrs. Judson had brought into the
+room. “Here, put this on.” Then, when he had fastened it round her
+and turned the collar up about her neck, he stood looking at her for a
+moment in silence.
+
+The whole of her slender form was hidden beneath the voluminous folds
+of the big coat, which had been originally designed to fit Garth's own
+proportions, and against the high fur collar her delicate cameo face,
+with its white skin and scarlet lips and its sombre, night-black eyes,
+emerged like some vivid flower from its sheath.
+
+Trent laughed shortly.
+
+“Beauty--in the garment of the Beast,” he commented. Then, briskly:
+“Come along. Judson will have the car ready by now.”
+
+Sara stepped into the car and he tucked the rugs carefully round
+her. Then, directing Judson to drive the Selwyn pony and trap back to
+Sunnyside, he took his place at the wheel and the car slid noiselessly
+away down the broad drive.
+
+“The surprising discovery of the doctor's pony and trap at Far End
+to-morrow morning would require explanation,” he observed grimly to
+Sara. She blessed his thoughtfulness.
+
+“What about Judson?” she asked. “Is he reliable? Or do you think he
+will--talk?”
+
+“Judson,” replied Garth, “has been in my service long enough to know the
+meaning of the word 'discretion.'”
+
+Trent drove the car steadily enough through town, but, as soon as they
+emerged on to the great London main road, he let her out and they swept
+rapidly along through the lingering summer twilight.
+
+“Are you nervous?” he asked. “Do you mind forty or fifty miles an hour
+when we've a clear stretch ahead of us?”
+
+“Eighty, if you like,” she replied succinctly.
+
+She felt the car leap forward like a living thing beneath them as it
+gathered speed.
+
+“Do you think--is it possible that we can overtake them?” she asked
+anxiously.
+
+“It's got to be done,” he answered, and she was conscious of the quiet
+driving-force that lay behind the speech--the stubborn resolution of
+the man which she had begun to recognize as his most dominant
+characteristic.
+
+She wondered, as she had so often wondered before, whether any one had
+ever yet succeeded in turning Garth Trent aside from his set purpose,
+whatever it might chance to be. She could not imagine his yielding to
+either threats or persuasions. However much it might cost him, he would
+carry out his intention to the bitter end, even though its fulfillment
+might involve the shattering of the whole significance of life.
+
+“Besides,”--his voice cut across the familiar tenor of her
+thoughts--“Kent will probably stop to dine at some hotel _en route_. We
+shan't. We'll feed as we go.”
+
+“Oh--h!” A gasp of horrified recollection escaped her. “I never thought
+of it! Of course you've had no dinner!”
+
+He laughed. “Have you?” he asked amusedly.
+
+“No, but that's different.”
+
+“Well, we'll even matters up by having some sandwiches together
+presently. Mrs. Judson has packed some in.”
+
+Sara was silent, inwardly dwelling on the fact that no least detail
+ever seemed to escape Garth's attention. Even in the hurry of their
+departure, and with the whole scheme of Molly's rescue to envisage, he
+had yet found time to order due provision for the journey.
+
+An hour later they pulled up at the principal hotel of the first big
+town on the route, and Garth elicited the fact that a car answering to
+the description of Lester Kent's had stopped there, but only for a bare
+ten minutes which had enabled its occupants to snatch a hasty meal.
+
+“They've been here and gone straight on,” he reported to Sara.
+“Evidently Kent's taking no chances”--grimly. And a moment later they
+were on their way once more.
+
+Dusk deepened into dark, and the car's great headlights cut out a
+blazing track of gold in front of them as they rushed along the pale
+ribbon of road that stretched ahead--mile after interminable mile.
+
+On either side, dark woods merged into the deeper darkness of the
+encroaching night, seeming to slip past them like some ghostly marching
+army as the car tore its way between the ranks of shadowy trunks.
+Overhead, a few stars crept out, puncturing the expanse of darkening
+sky--pale, tremulous sparks of light in contrast with the steady, warmly
+golden glow that streamed from the lights of the car.
+
+Presently Garth slackened speed.
+
+“Why are you stopping?” Sara's voice, shrilling a little with anxiety,
+came to him out of the darkness.
+
+“I'm not stopping. I'm only slowing down a bit, because I think it's
+quite feeding time. Do you mind opening those two leather attachments
+fixed in front of you? Such nectar and ambrosia as Mrs. Judson has
+provided is in there.”
+
+Sara leaned forward, and unbuckling the lid of a flattish leather case
+which, together with another containing a flask, was slung just opposite
+her, withdrew from within it a silver sandwich-box. She snapped open the
+lid and proffered the box to Garth.
+
+“Help yourself. And--do you mind”--he spoke a little uncertainly and
+the darkness hid the expression of his face from her--“handing me my
+share--in pieces suitable for human consumption? This is a bad bit of
+road, and I want both hands for driving the car.”
+
+In silence Sara broke the sandwiches and fed him, piece by piece, while
+he bent over the wheel, driving steadily onward.
+
+The little, intimate action sent a curious thrill through her. It seemed
+in some way to draw them together, effacing the memory of those weeks of
+bitter indifference which lay behind them. Such a thing would have
+been grotesquely impossible of performance in the atmosphere of studied
+formality supplied by their estrangement, and Sara smiled a little to
+herself under cover of the darkness.
+
+“One more mouthful!” she announced as she halved the last sandwich.
+
+An instant later she felt his lips brush her fingers in a sudden,
+burning kiss, and she withdrew her hand as though stung.
+
+She was tingling from head to foot, every nerve of her a-thrill, and
+for a moment she felt as though she hated him. He had been so kind, so
+friendly, so essentially the good comrade in this crisis occasioned by
+Molly's flight, and now he had spoilt it all--playing the lover once
+more when he had shown her clearly that he meant nothing by it.
+
+Apparently he sensed her attitude--the quick withdrawal of spirit which
+had accompanied the more physical retreat.
+
+“Forgive me!” he said, rather low. “I won't offend again.”
+
+She made no answer, and presently she felt the car sliding slowly to a
+standstill. A sudden panic assailed her.
+
+“What is it? What are you doing?” she asked, quick fear in her sharply
+spoken question.
+
+He laughed shortly.
+
+“You needn't be afraid--” he began.
+
+“I'm not!” she interpolated hastily.
+
+“Excuse me,” he said drily, “but you are. You don't trust me in the
+slightest degree. Well”--she could guess, rather than see, the shrug
+which accompanied the words--“I can't blame you. It's my own fault, I
+suppose.”
+
+He braked the car, and she quivered to a dead stop, throbbing like a
+live thing in the darkness.
+
+“You must forgive me for being so material,” he went on composedly, “but
+I want a drink, and I'm not acrobat enough to manage that, even with
+your help, while we're doing thirty miles an hour.”
+
+He lifted out the flask, and, when they had both drunk, Sara meekly took
+it from him and proceeded to adjust the screw cap and fit the silver cup
+back into its place over the lower half of the flask.
+
+Simultaneously she felt the car begin to move forward, and then, quite
+how it happened she never knew, but, fumbling in the darkness, she
+contrived to knock the cup sharply against the flask, and it flew out
+of her hand and over the side of the car. Impulsively she leaned out,
+trying to snatch it back as it fell, and, in the same instant, something
+seemed to give way, and she felt herself hurled forward into space. The
+earth rushed up to meet her, a sound as of many waters roared in her
+ears, and then the blank darkness of unconsciousness swallowed her up.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE REVELATION OF THE NIGHT
+
+“Thank God, she's only stunned!”
+
+The words, percolating slowly through the thick, blankety mist that
+seemed to have closed about her, impressed themselves on Sara's mind
+with a vague, confused suggestion of their pertinence. It was as though
+some one--she wasn't quite sure who--had suddenly given voice to her own
+immediate sensation of relief.
+
+At first she could not imagine for what reason she should feel so
+specially grateful and relieved. Gradually, however, the mists began to
+clear away and recollection of a kind returned to her.
+
+She remembered dropping something--she couldn't recall precisely what it
+was that she had dropped, but she knew she had made a wild clutch at
+it and tried to save it as it fell. Then--she was remembering more
+distinctly now--something against which she had been leaning--she
+couldn't recall what that was, either--gave way suddenly, and for the
+fraction of a second she had known she was going to fall and be killed,
+or, at the least, horribly hurt and mutilated.
+
+And now, it seemed, she had not been hurt at all! She was in no pain;
+only her head felt unaccountably heavy. But for that, she was really
+very comfortable. Some one was holding her--it was almost like lying
+back in a chair--and against her cheek she could feel the soft warmth of
+fur.
+
+“Sara--beloved!”
+
+It was Garth's voice, quite close to her ear. He was holding her in his
+arms.
+
+Ah! She knew now! They were on the island together, and he had just
+asked her if she cared. Of course she cared! It was sheer happiness
+to lie in his arms, with closed eyes, and hear his voice--that deep,
+unhappy voice of his--grow suddenly so incredibly soft and tender.
+
+“You're mine, now, sweet! Mine to hold just for this once, dear of my
+heart!”
+
+No, that couldn't be right, after all, because it wasn't Garth who loved
+her. He had only pretended to care for her by way of amusing himself. It
+must be Tim who was talking to her--Tim, whom she was going to marry.
+
+Then, suddenly, the mists cleared quite away, and Sara came back to
+full consciousness and to the knowledge of where she was and of what had
+happened.
+
+Her first instinct, to open her eyes and speak, was checked by a swift,
+unexpected movement on the part of Garth. All at once, he had gathered
+her up into his arms, and, holding her face pressed close against his
+own, was pouring into her ears a torrent of burning, passionate words
+of love--love triumphant, worshipping, agonizing, and last of all,
+brokenly, desperately abandoning all right or claim.
+
+“And I've got to live without you . . . die without you . . . My God,
+it's hard!”
+
+In the darkness and solitude of the night--as he believed, alone with
+the unconscious form of the woman he loved in his arms--Garth bared his
+very soul. There was nothing hidden any longer, and Sara knew at last
+that even as she herself loved, so was she loved again.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE JOURNEY'S END
+
+Sara stirred a little and opened her eyes. Deep within herself she was
+ashamed of those brief moments of assumed unconsciousness--those moments
+which had shown her a strong man's soul stripped naked of all pride and
+subterfuge--his heart and soul as he alone knew them.
+
+But, none the less, she felt gloriously happy. Nothing could ever hurt
+her badly again. Garth loved her!
+
+Since, for some reason, he himself would never have drawn aside the
+veil and let her know the truth, she was glad--glad that she had peered
+unbidden through the rent which the stress of the moment had torn in his
+iron self-command and reticence. Just as she had revealed herself to
+him on the island, in a moment of equal strain, so he had now revealed
+himself to her, and they were quits.
+
+“I'm all right,” she announced, struggling into a sitting position. “I'm
+not hurt.”
+
+“Sit still a minute, while I fetch you some brandy from the car.” Garth
+spoke in a curiously controlled voice.
+
+He was back again in a moment, and the raw spirit made her catch her
+breath as it trickled down her throat.
+
+“Thank God we had only just begun to move,” he said. “Otherwise you must
+have been half-killed.”
+
+“What happened?” she asked curiously. “How did I fall out?”
+
+“The door came open. That damned fool, Judson, didn't shut it properly.
+Are you sure you're not hurt?”
+
+“Quite sure. My head aches rather.”
+
+“That's very probable. You were stunned for a minute or two.”
+
+Suddenly the recollection of their errand returned to her.
+
+“Molly! Good Heavens, how much time have we wasted? How long has this
+silly business taken?” she demanded, in a frenzy of apprehension.
+
+Garth surveyed her oddly in the glow of one of the car's side-lights,
+which he had carried back with him when he fetched the brandy.
+
+“Five minutes, I should think,” he said, adding under his breath: “Or
+half eternity!”
+
+“Five minutes! Is that all? Then do let's hurry on.”
+
+She took a few steps in the direction of the car, then stopped and
+wavered. She felt curiously shaky, and her legs seemed as though they
+did not belong to her.
+
+In a moment Garth was at her side, and had lifted her up in his arms.
+He carried her swiftly across the few yards that intervened between them
+and the car, and settled her gently into her seat.
+
+“Do you feel fit to go on?” he asked.
+
+“Of course I do. We must--bring Molly back.” Even her voice refused to
+obey the dictates of her brain, and quavered weakly.
+
+“Well, try to rest a little. Don't talk, and perhaps you'll go to
+sleep.”
+
+He restarted the car, and, taking his seat once more at the wheel, drove
+on at a smooth and easy pace.
+
+Sara leaned back in silence at his side, conscious of a feeling of utter
+lassitude. In spite of her anxiety about Molly, a curious contentment
+had stolen over her. The long strain of the past weeks had ended--ended
+in the knowledge that Garth loved her, and nothing else seemed to matter
+very much. Moreover, she was physically exhausted. Her fall had shaken
+her badly, and she wanted nothing better than to lie back quietly
+against the padded cushions of the car, lulled by the rhythmic throb of
+the engine, and glide on through the night indefinitely, knowing that
+Garth was there, close to her, all the time.
+
+Presently her quiet, even breathing told that she slept, and Garth,
+stooping over her to make sure, accelerated the speed, and soon the car
+shot forward through the darkness at a pace which none but a driver very
+certain of his skill would have dared to attempt.
+
+When, an hour later, Sara awoke, she felt amazingly refreshed. Only a
+slight headache remained to remind her of her recent accident.
+
+“Where are we?” she asked eagerly. “How long have I been asleep?”
+
+“Feeling better?” queried Garth, reassured by the stronger note in her
+voice.
+
+“Quite all right, thanks. But tell me where we are?”
+
+“Nearly at our journey's end, I take it,” he replied grimly, suddenly
+slackening speed. “There's a stationary car ahead there on the left, do
+you see? That will be our friends, I expect, held up by petrol shortage,
+thanks to Jim Brady.”
+
+Sara peered ahead, and on the edge of the broad ribbon of light that
+stretched in front of them she could discern a big car, drawn up to one
+side of the road, its headlights shut off, its side-lights glimmering
+warningly against its dark bulk.
+
+Exactly as they drew level with it, Garth pulled up to a standstill.
+Then a muttered curse escaped him, and simultaneously Sara gave vent to
+an exclamation of dismay. The car was empty.
+
+Garth sprang out and flashed a lamp over the derelict.
+
+“Yes,” he said, “that's Kent's car right enough.”
+
+Sara's heart sank.
+
+“What can have become of them?” she exclaimed. She glanced round her
+as though she half suspected that Kent and Molly might be hiding by the
+roadside.
+
+Meanwhile Garth had peered into the tank and was examining the petrol
+cans stowed away in the back of the deserted car.
+
+“Run dry!” he announced, coming back to his own car. “That's what has
+happened.”
+
+“And what can we do now?” asked Sara despondently.
+
+He laughed a little.
+
+“Faint heart!” he chided. “What can we do now? Why, ask ourselves what
+Kent would naturally have done when he found himself landed high and
+dry?”
+
+“I don't know what he _could_ do--in the middle of nowhere?” she
+answered doubtfully.
+
+“Only we don't happen to be in the middle of nowhere! We're just about a
+couple of miles from a market town where abides a nice little inn whence
+petrol can be obtained. Kent and Miss Molly have doubtless trudged there
+on foot, and wakened up mine host, and they'll hire a trap and drive
+back with a fresh supply of oil. By Jove!”--with a grim laugh--“How Kent
+must have cursed when he discovered the trick Brady played on him!”
+
+Ten minutes later, leaving their car outside, Garth and Sara walked
+boldly up to the inn of which he had spoken. The door stood open, and
+a light was burning in the coffee-room. Evidently some one had just
+arrived.
+
+Garth glanced into the room, then, standing back, he motioned Sara to
+enter.
+
+Sara stepped quickly over the threshold and then paused, swept by an
+infinite compassion and tenderness almost maternal in its solicitude.
+
+Molly was sitting hunched up in a chair, her face half hidden against
+her arm, every drooping line of her slight young figure bespeaking
+weariness. She had taken off her hat and tossed it on to the table, and
+now she had dropped into a brief, uneasy slumber born of sheer fatigue
+and excitement.
+
+“Molly!”
+
+At the sound of Sara's voice she opened big, startled eyes and stared
+incredulously.
+
+Sara moved swiftly to her.
+
+“Molly dear,” she said, “I've come to take you home.”
+
+At that Molly started up, broad awake in an instant.
+
+“You? How did you come here?” she stammered. Then, realization waking
+in her eyes: “But I'm not coming back with you. We've only stopped for
+petrol. Lester's outside, somewhere, seeing about it now. We're driving
+back to the car.”
+
+“Yes, I know. But you're not going on with Mr. Kent”--very
+gently--“you're coming home with us.”
+
+Molly drew herself up, flaring passionate young defiance, talking glibly
+of love, and marriage, and living her own life--all the beautiful,
+romantic nonsense that comes so readily to the soft lips of youth, the
+beckoning rose and gold of sunrise--and of mirage--which is all youth's
+untrained eyes can see.
+
+Sara was getting desperate. The time was flying. At any moment Kent
+might return. Garth signaled to her from the doorway.
+
+“You must tell her,” he said gruffly. “If Kent returns before we go, we
+shall have a scene. Get her away quick.”
+
+Sara nodded. Then she came back to Molly's side.
+
+“My dear,” she said pitifully. “You can never marry Lester Kent,
+because--because he has a wife already.”
+
+“I don't believe it!” The swift denial leaped from Molly's lips.
+
+But she did believe it, nevertheless. No one who knew Sara could have
+looked into her eyes at that moment and doubted that she was speaking
+not only what she believed to be, but what she _knew_ to be, the ugly
+truth.
+
+Suddenly Molly crumpled up. As, between them, Garth and Sara hurried her
+away to the car, there was no longer anything of the regal young goddess
+about her. She was just a child--a tired, frightened child whose eyes
+had been suddenly opened to the quicksands whereon her feet were set,
+and, like a child, she turned instinctively and clung to the dear,
+familiar people from home, who were mercifully at hand to shield
+her when her whole world had suddenly grown new and strange and very
+terrible. . . .
+
+
+
+On, on through the night roared the big car, with Garth bending low over
+the wheel in front, while, in the back-seat Molly huddled forlornly into
+the curve of Sara's arm.
+
+A few questions had elicited the whole foolish story of Lester Kent's
+infatuation, and of the steps he had taken to enmesh poor simple-hearted
+Molly in the toils--first, by lending her money, then, when he found
+that the loan had scared her, by buying her pictures and surrounding
+her with an atmosphere of adulation which momentarily blinded her from
+forming any genuine estimate either of the value of his criticism or of
+the sincerity of his desire to purchase.
+
+Once the head resting against Sara's shoulder was lifted, and a
+wistfully incredulous voice asked, very low--
+
+“You are sure he is married, Sara,--_quite sure_?”
+
+“Quite sure, Molly,” came the answer.
+
+And later, as they were nearing home, Molly's hardly-bought philosophy
+of life revealed itself in the brief comment: “It's very easy to make a
+fool of oneself.”
+
+“Probably Mr. Kent has found that out--by this time,” replied Sara with
+a grim flash of humour.
+
+A faint, involuntary chuckle in response premised that ultimately Molly
+might be able to take a less despondent view of the night's proceedings.
+
+It was between two and three in the morning when at length the travelers
+climbed stiffly out of the car at the gateway of Sunnyside and made
+their way up the little tiled path that led to the front door. The
+latter opened noiselessly at their approach and Jane, who had evidently
+been watching for them, stood on the threshold.
+
+Her small, beady eyes were red-rimmed with sleeplessness--and with the
+slow, difficult tears that now and again had overflowed as hour after
+hour crawled by, bringing no sign of the wanderers' return--and the
+shadows of fatigue that had hollowed her weather-beaten cheeks wrung
+a sympathetic pang from Sara's heart as she realized what those long,
+inactive hours of helpless anxiety must have meant to the faithful soul.
+
+Jane's glance flew to the drooping, willowy figure clinging to Garth's
+arm.
+
+“My lamb! . . . Oh! Miss Molly dear, they've brought 'ee back!”
+ Impulsively she caught hold of Garth's coat-sleeve. “Thank God you've
+brought them back, sir, and now there's none as need ever know aught but
+that they've been in their beds all the blessed night!” Her lips were
+shaking, drawn down at the corners like those of a distressed child, but
+her harsh old voice quivered triumphantly.
+
+A very kindly gleam showed itself in Garth's dark face as he patted the
+rough, red hand that clutched his coat-sleeve.
+
+“Yes, I've brought them back safely,” he said. “Put them to bed, Jane.
+Miss Sara's fallen out of the car and Miss Molly has tumbled out of
+heaven, so they're both feeling pretty sore.”
+
+But Sara's soreness was far the easier to bear, since it was purely
+physical. As she lay in bed, at last, utterly weary and exhausted, the
+recollection of all the horror and anxiety that had followed upon
+the discovery of Molly's flight fell away from her, and she was only
+conscious that had it not been for that wild night-ride which Molly's
+danger had compelled, she would never have known that Garth loved her.
+
+So, out of evil, had come good; out of black darkness had been born the
+exquisite clear shining of the dawn.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE SECOND BEST
+
+Sara laid down her pen and very soberly re-read the letter she had just
+written. It was to Tim Durward, telling him the engagement between them
+must be at an end, and its accomplishment had been a matter of sore
+embarrassment and mental struggle. Sara hated giving pain, and she
+knew that this letter, taking from Tim all--and it was so painfully
+little--that she had ever given him, must bring very bitter pain to the
+man to whom, as friend and comrade, she was deeply attached.
+
+It was barely a month since she had promised to marry him, and it was a
+difficult, ungracious task, and very open to misapprehension, to write
+and rescind that promise.
+
+Yet it was characteristic of Sara that no other alternative presented
+itself to her. Now that she was sure Garth cared for her--whether their
+mutual love must remain for ever unfulfilled, unconsummated, or not--she
+knew that she could never give herself to any other man.
+
+She folded and sealed the letter, and then sat quietly contemplating
+the consequences that it might entail. Almost inevitably it would mean
+a complete estrangement from the Durwards. Elisabeth would be very
+unlikely ever to forgive her for her treatment of Tim; even kindly
+hearted Major Durward could not but feel sore about it; and since Garth
+had not asked her to marry him--and showed no disposition to do any such
+thing--they would almost certainly fail to understand or sympathize with
+her point of view.
+
+Sara sighed as she dropped her missive into the letter-box. It meant an
+end to the pleasant and delightful friendship which had come into her
+life just at the time when Patrick Lovell's death had left it very empty
+and desolate.
+
+Two days of suspense ensued while she restlessly awaited Tim's reply.
+Then, on the third day, he came himself, his eyes incredulous, his face
+showing traces of the white night her letter had cost him.
+
+He was very gentle with her. There was no bitterness or upbraiding, and
+he suffered her explanation with a grave patience that hurt her more
+than any reproaches he could have uttered.
+
+“I believed it was only I who cared, Tim,” she told him. “And so I felt
+free to give you what you wanted--to be your wife, if you cared to
+take me, knowing I had no love to give. I thought”--she faltered a
+little--“that I might as well make _someone_ happy! But now that I know
+he loves me as I love him, I couldn't marry any one else, could I?”
+
+“And are you going to marry him--this man you love?”
+
+“I don't know. He has not asked me to marry him.”
+
+“Perhaps he is married already?”
+
+Sara met his eyes frankly.
+
+“I don't know even that.”
+
+Tim made a fierce gesture of impatience.
+
+“Is it playing fair--to keep you in ignorance like that?” he demanded.
+
+Sara laughed suddenly.
+
+“Perhaps not. But somehow I don't mind. I am sure he must have a good
+reason--or else”--with a flash of humour--“some silly man's reason that
+won't be any obstacle at all!”
+
+“Supposing”--Tim bent over her, his face rather white--“supposing you
+find--later on--that there is some real obstacle--that he can't marry
+you, would you come to me--then, Sara?”
+
+She shook her head.
+
+“No, Tim, not now. Don't you see, now that I know he cares for
+me--everything is altered. I'm not free, now. In a way, I belong to
+him. Oh! How can I explain? Even though we may never marry, there is a
+faithfulness of the spirit, Tim. It's--it's the biggest part of love,
+really----”
+
+She broke off, and presently she felt Tim's hands on her shoulders.
+
+“I think I understand, dear,” he said gently. “It's just what I should
+expect of you. It means the end of everything--everything that matters
+for me. But--somehow--I would not have you otherwise.”
+
+He did not stay very long after that. They talked together a little,
+promising each other that their friendship should still remain unbroken
+and unspoilt.
+
+“For,” as Tim said, “if I cannot have the best that the world can
+give--your love, Sara, I need not lose the second best--which is your
+friendship.”
+
+And Sara, watching him from the window as he strode away down the little
+tiled path, wondered why love comes so often bearing roses in one hand
+and a sharp goad in the other.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE PITILESS ALTAR
+
+Elisabeth was pacing restlessly up and down the broad, flagged terrace
+at Barrow, impatiently awaiting Tim's return from Monkshaven.
+
+She knew his errand there. He had scarcely needed to tell her the
+contents of Sara's letter, so swiftly had she summed up the immediate
+connection between the glimpse she had caught of Sara's handwriting and
+the shadow on the beloved face.
+
+She moved eagerly to meet him as she heard the soft purr of the motor
+coming up the drive.
+
+“Well?” she queried, slipping her arm through his and drawing him
+towards the terrace.
+
+Tim looked at her with troubled eyes. He could guess so exactly what her
+attitude would be, and he was not going to allow even Elisabeth to say
+unkind things about the woman he loved. If he could prevent it, she
+should not think them.
+
+Very gently, and with infinite tact, he told her the result of his
+interview with Sara, concealing so far as might be his own incalculable
+hurt.
+
+To his relief, his mother accepted the facts with unexpected tolerance.
+He could not see her expression, since her eyes veiled themselves with
+down-dropped lids, but she spoke quite quietly and as though trying
+to be fair in her judgment. There was no outward sign by which her son
+might guess the seething torrent of anger and resentment which had been
+aroused within her.
+
+“But if, as you tell me, Sara doesn't expect to marry this man she cares
+for, surely she had been unduly hasty? If he can never be anything to
+her, need she set aside all thought of matrimony?”
+
+Tim stared at his mother in some surprise. There was a superficial
+worldly wisdom in the speech which he would not have anticipated.
+
+“It seems to me rather absurd,” she continued placidly. “Quixotic--the
+sort of romantic 'live and die unwed' idea that is quite exploded. Girls
+nowadays don't wither on their virgin stems if the man they want doesn't
+happen to be in a position to marry them. They marry some one else.”
+
+Tim felt almost shocked. From his childhood he had invested his mother
+with a kind of rarefied grace of mental and moral qualities commensurate
+with her physical beauty, and her enunciation of the cynical creed of
+modern times staggered him. It never occurred to him that Elisabeth was
+probing round in order to extract a clear idea of Sara's attitude in
+the whole matter, and he forthwith proceeded innocently to give her
+precisely the information she was seeking.
+
+“Sara isn't like that, mother,” he said rather shortly. “It's just
+the--the crystal purity of her outlook which makes her what she is--so
+absolutely straight and fearless. She sees love, and holds by what she
+believes its demands to be. I wouldn't wish her any different,” he added
+loyally.
+
+“Perhaps not. But if--supposing the man proves to have a wife already?
+He might be separated from her; Sara doesn't seem to know much about
+him. Or he may have a wife in a lunatic asylum who is likely to live for
+the next forty years. What then? Will Sara never marry if--if there were
+a circumstance like that--a really insurmountable obstacle?”
+
+“No, I don't believe she will. I don't think she would wish to. If
+he loves her and she him, spiritually they would be bound to one
+another--lovers. And just the circumstance of his being tied to another
+woman would make no difference to Sara's point of view. She goes beyond
+material things--or the mere physical side of love.”
+
+“Then there is no chance for you unless Sara learns to _unlove_ this
+man?”
+
+Tim regarded her with faint amusement.
+
+“Mother, do you think you could learn to unlove me--or my father?”
+
+She laughed a little.
+
+“You have me there, Tim,” she acknowledged. “But”--hesitating a
+little--“Sara knows so little of the man, apparently, that she may have
+formed a mistaken estimate of his character. Perhaps he is not really
+the--the ideal individual she has pictured him.”
+
+Tim smiled.
+
+“You are a very transparent person, mother mine,” he said indulgently.
+“But I'm afraid your hopes of finding that the idol has feet of clay are
+predestined to disappointment.”
+
+“Have you met the man?” asked Elisabeth sharply.
+
+“I do not even know his name. But I should imagine him a man of big,
+fine qualities.”
+
+“Since you don't know him, you can hardly pronounce an opinion.”
+
+A whimsical smile, touched with sadness, flitted across Tim's face.
+
+“I know Sara,” was all he said.
+
+“Sara is given to idealizing the people she cares for,” rejoined
+Elisabeth.
+
+She spoke quietly, but her expression was curiously intent. It was
+as though she were gathering together her forces, concentrating them
+towards some definite purpose, veiled in the inscrutable depths of those
+strange eyes of hers.
+
+“I find it difficult to forgive her,” she said at last.
+
+“That's not like you, mother.”
+
+“It is--just like me,” she responded, a tone of half-tender mockery in
+her voice. “Naturally I find it difficult to forgive the woman who has
+hurt my son.”
+
+Tim answered her out of the fullness of the queer new wisdom with which
+love had endowed him.
+
+“A man would rather be hurt by the woman he loves than humoured by the
+woman he doesn't love,” he said quietly.
+
+And Elisabeth, understanding, held her peace.
+
+She had been very controlled, very wise and circumspect in her dealing
+with Tim, conscious of raw-edged nerves that would bear but the lightest
+of handling. But it was another woman altogether who, half-an-hour
+later, faced Geoffrey Durward in the seclusion of his study.
+
+The two moving factors in Elisabeth's life had been, primarily, her love
+for her husband, and, later on, her love for Tim, and into this later
+love was woven all the passionately protective instinct of the maternal
+element. She was the type of woman who would have plucked the feathers
+from an archangel's wing if she thought they would contribute to her
+son's happiness; and now, realizing that the latter was threatened by
+the fact that his love for Sara had failed to elicit a responsive fire,
+she felt bitterly resentful and indignant.
+
+“I tell you, Geoffrey,” she declared in low, forceful tones, “she
+_shall_ marry Tim--_she shall_! I will not have his beautiful young life
+marred and spoilt by the caprices of any woman.”
+
+Major Durward looked disturbed.
+
+“My dear, I shouldn't call Sara in the least a capricious woman. She
+knows her own heart--”
+
+“So does Tim!” broke in Elisabeth. “And, if I can compass it, he shall
+have his heart's desire.”
+
+Her husband shook his head.
+
+“You cannot force the issue, my dear.”
+
+“Can I not? There's little a woman _cannot_ do for husband or child! I
+tell you, Geoffrey--for you, or for Tim, to give you pleasure, to buy
+you happiness, I would sacrifice anybody in the world!”
+
+She stood in front of him, her beautiful eyes glowing, and her voice was
+all shaken and a-thrill with the tumult of emotion that had gripped
+her. There was something about her which suggested a tigress on the
+defensive--at bay, shielding her young.
+
+Durward looked at her with kind, adoring eyes.
+
+“That's beautiful of you, darling,” he replied gently. “But it's
+a dangerous doctrine. And I know that, really, you're far too
+tender-hearted to sacrifice a fly.”
+
+Elisabeth regarded him oddly.
+
+“You don't know me, Geoffrey,” she said very slowly. “No man knows a
+woman, really--not all her thoughts.” And had Major Durward, honest
+fellow, realized the volcanic force of passion hidden behind the tense
+inscrutability of his wife's lovely face, he would have been utterly
+confounded. We do not plumb the deepest depths even of those who are
+closest to us.
+
+Civilisation had indeed forced the turgid river to run within the narrow
+channels hewn by established custom, but, released from the bondage of
+convention, the soul of Elisabeth Durward was that of sheer primitive
+woman, and the pivot of all her actions her love for her mate and for
+the man-child she had borne him.
+
+Once, years ago, she had sacrificed justice, and honour, and a man's
+faith in womanhood on that same pitiless altar of love. But the story of
+that sacrifice was known only to herself and one other--and that other
+was not Durward.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+LOVE'S SACRAMENT
+
+A full week had elapsed since the night of that eventful journey in
+pursuit of Molly, and from the moment when Garth had given Sara into the
+safe keeping of Jane Crab till the moment when he came upon her by the
+pergola at Rose Cottage, perched on the top of a ladder, engaged in
+tying back the exuberance of a Crimson Rambler, they had not met.
+
+And now, as he halted at the foot of the ladder, Sara was conscious that
+her spirits had suddenly bounded up to impossible heights at the sight
+of the lean, dark face upturned to her.
+
+“The Lavender Lady and Miles are pottering about in the greenhouse,” she
+announced explanatorily, waving her hand in the direction of a
+distant glimmer of glass beyond the high box hedge which flanked the
+rose-garden.
+
+“Are they?” Trent, thus arrested in the progress of his search for his
+host and hostess, seemed entirely indifferent as to whether it were ever
+completed or not. He leaned against one of the rose-wreathed pillars of
+the pergola and gazed negligently in the direction Sara indicated.
+
+“How is Miss Molly?” he asked.
+
+Sara twinkled.
+
+“She is just beginning to discard sackcloth and ashes for something more
+becoming,” she informed him gravely.
+
+“That's good. Are you--are you all right after your tumble? I'm making
+these kind inquiries because, since it was my car out of which you
+elected to fall, I feel a sense of responsibility.”
+
+Sara descended from the ladder before she replied. Then she remarked
+composedly--
+
+“It has taken precisely seven days, apparently, for that sense of
+responsibility to develop.”
+
+“On the contrary, for seven days my thirst for knowledge has been only
+restrained by the pointings of conscience.”
+
+“Then”--she spoke rather low--“was it conscience pointing you--away from
+Sunnyside?”
+
+His hazel eyes flashed over her face.
+
+“Perhaps it was--discretion,” he suggested. “Looking in at shop
+windows when one has an empty purse is a poor occupation--and one to be
+avoided.”
+
+“Did you want to come?” she persisted gently.
+
+Half absently he had cut off a piece of dead wood from the rose-bush
+next him and was twisting it idly to and fro between his fingers. At her
+words, the dead wood stem snapped suddenly in his clenched hand. For
+an instant he seemed about to make some passionate rejoinder. Then he
+slowly unclenched his hand and the broken twig fell to the ground.
+
+“Haven't I made it clear to you--yet,” he said slowly, “that what I want
+doesn't enter into the scheme of things at all?”
+
+The brief speech held a sense of impending finality, and, in the silence
+which followed, the eyes of the man and woman met, questioned each other
+desperately, and answered.
+
+There are moments when modesty is a false quantity, and when the big
+happinesses of life depend on a woman's capacity to realize this and her
+courage to act upon it. To Sara, it seemed that such a moment had come
+to her, and the absolute sincerity of her nature met it unafraid.
+
+“No,” she said quietly. “You have only made clear to me--what you want,
+Garth. Need we--pretend to each other any longer?”
+
+“I don't understand,” he muttered.
+
+“Don't you?” She drew a littler nearer him, and the face she lifted to
+his was very white. But her eyes were shining. “That night--when I fell
+from the car--I--I wasn't unconscious.”
+
+For an instant he stared at her, incredulous. Then he swung aside a
+little, his hand gripping the pillar against which he had been leaning
+till his knuckles showed white beneath the straining skin.
+
+“You--weren't unconscious?” he repeated blankly.
+
+“No--not all the time. I--heard--what you said.”
+
+He seemed to pull himself together.
+
+“Oh, Heaven only knows what I may have said at a moment like that,” he
+answered carelessly, but his voice was rough and hoarse. “A man talks
+wild when the woman he's with only misses death by a hair's breath.”
+
+Sara's lips upturned at the corners in a slow smile--a smile that was
+neither mocking, nor tender, nor chiding, but an exquisite blending
+of all three. She caught her breath quickly--Trent could hear its soft
+sibilance. Then she spoke.
+
+“Will you marry me, please, Garth?”
+
+He drew back from her, violently, his underlip hard bitten. At last,
+after a long silence--
+
+“No!” he burst out harshly. “No! I can't!”
+
+For an instant she was shaken. Then, buoyed up by the memory of that
+night when she had lain in his arms and when the agony of the moment had
+stripped him of all power to hide his love, she challenged his denial.
+
+“Why not?” Her voice was vibrant. “You love me!”
+
+“Yes . . . I love you.” The words seemed torn from him.
+
+“Then why won't you marry me?”
+
+It did not seem to her that she was doing anything unusual or unwomanly.
+The man she loved had carried his burden single-handed long enough. The
+time had come when for his own sake as well as for hers, she must wring
+the truth from him, make him break through the silence which had long
+been torturing them both. Whatever might be the outcome, whether pain or
+happiness, they must share it.
+
+“Why won't you marry me, Garth?”
+
+The little question, almost voiceless in its intensity, clamoured loudly
+at his heart.
+
+“Don't tempt me!” he cried out hoarsely. “My God! I wonder if you know
+how you are tempting me?”
+
+She came a little closer to him, laying her hand on his arm, while her
+great, sombre eyes silently entreated him.
+
+As though the touch of her were more than he could bear, his hard-held
+passion crashed suddenly through the bars his will had set about it.
+
+He caught her in his arms, lifting her sheer off her feet against his
+breast, whilst his lips crushed down upon her mouth and throat, burned
+against her white, closed lids, and the hard clasp of his arms about
+her was a physical pain--an exquisite agony that it was a fierce joy to
+suffer.
+
+“Then--then you do love me?” She leaned against him, breathless, her
+voice unsteady, her whole slender body shaken with an answering passion.
+
+“Love you?” The grip of his arms about her made response. “Love you?
+I love you with my soul and my body, here and through whatever comes
+Hereafter. You are my earth and heaven--the whole meaning of things--”
+ He broke off abruptly, and she felt his arms slacken their hold and
+slowly unclasp as though impelled to it by some invisible force.
+
+“What was I saying?” The heat of passion had gone out of his voice,
+leaving it suddenly flat and toneless. “'The whole meaning of things?'”
+ He gave a curious little laugh. It had a strangled sound, almost like
+the cry of some tortured thing. “Then things _have_ no meaning----”
+
+Sara stood staring at him, bewildered and a little frightened.
+
+“Garth, what is it?” she whispered. “What has happened?”
+
+He turned, and, walking away from her a few paces, stood very still with
+his head bent and one hand covering his eyes.
+
+Overhead, the sunshine, filtering in through the green trellis of leafy
+twigs, flaunted gay little dancing patches of gold on the path below,
+as the leaves moved flickeringly in the breeze, and where the twisted
+growth of a branch had left a leafless aperture, it flung a single shaft
+of quivering light athwart the pergola. It gleamed like a shining sword
+between the man and woman, as though dividing them one from the other
+and thrusting each into the shadows that lay on either hand.
+
+“Garth----”
+
+At the sound of her voice he dropped his hand to his side and came
+slowly back and stood beside her. His face was almost grey, and the
+tortured expression of his eyes seemed to hurt her like the stab of a
+knife.
+
+“You must try to forgive me,” he said, speaking very low and rapidly. “I
+had no earthly right to tell you that I cared, because--because I can't
+ask you to marry me. I told you once that I had forfeited my claim to
+the good things in life. That was true. And, having that knowledge, I
+ought to have kept away from you--for I knew how it was going to be
+with me from the first moment I saw you. I fought against it in the
+beginning--tried not to love you. Afterwards, I gave in, but I never
+dreamed that--you--would come to care, too. That seemed something quite
+beyond the bounds of human possibility.”
+
+“Did it? I can't see why it should?”
+
+“Can't you?” He smiled a little. “If you were a man who has lived under
+a cloud for over twenty years, who has nothing in the world to recommend
+him, and only a tarnished reputation as his life-work, you, too, would
+have thought it inconceivable. Anyway, I did, and, thinking that, I
+dared to give myself the pleasure of seeing you--of being sometimes in
+your company. Perhaps”--grimly--“it was as much a torture as a joy on
+occasion. . . . But still, I was near you. . . . I could see you--touch
+your hand--serve you, perhaps, in any little way that offered. That was
+all something--something very wonderful to come into a life that, to
+all intents and purposes, was over. And I thought I could keep myself in
+hand--never let you know that I cared--”
+
+“You certainly tried hard enough to convince me that you didn't,” she
+interrupted ruefully.
+
+“Yes, I tried. And I failed. And now, all that remains is for me to go
+away. I shall never forgive myself for having brought pain into your
+life--I, who would so gladly have brought only happiness. . . . God
+in Heaven!”--he whispered to himself as though the thought were almost
+blinding in the promise of ecstasy it held--“To have been the one to
+bring you happiness! . . .” He fell silent, his mouth wrung and twisted
+with pain.
+
+Presently her voice came to him again, softly supplicating. “I shall
+never forgive you--if you go away and leave me,” she added. “I can't do
+without you now--now that I know you care.”
+
+“But I _must_ go! I can't marry you--you haven't understood--”
+
+“Haven't I?” She smiled--a small, wise, wonderful smile that began
+somewhere deep in her heart and touched her lips and lingered in her
+eyes.
+
+“Tell me,” she said. “Are you married, Garth?”
+
+He started.
+
+“Married! God forbid!”
+
+“And if you married me, would you be wronging any one?”
+
+“Only you yourself,” he answered grimly.
+
+“Then nothing else matters. You are free--and I'm free. And I love you!”
+
+She leaned towards him, her hands outheld, her mouth still touched with
+that little, mystic smile. “Please--tell me all over again now much you
+love me.”
+
+But no answering hands met hers. Instead, he drew away from her and
+faced her, stern-lipped.
+
+“I must make you understand,” he said. “You don't know what it is that
+you are asking. I've made shipwreck of my life, and I must pay the
+penalty. But, by God, I'm not going to let you pay it, too! And if you
+married me, you would have to pay. You would be joining your life to
+that of an outcast. I can never go out into the world as other men
+may. If I did”--slowly--“if I did, sooner or later I should be driven
+away--thrust back into my solitude. I have nothing to offer--nothing
+to give--only a life that has been cursed from the outset. Don't
+misunderstand me,” he went on quickly. “I'm not complaining, bidding
+for your sympathy. If a man's a fool, he must be prepared to pay for his
+folly--even though it means a life penalty for a moment's madness. And
+I shall have to pay--to the uttermost farthing. Mine's the kind of debt
+which destiny never remits.” He paused; then added defiantly: “The woman
+who married me would have to share in that payment--to go out with me
+into the desert in which I lie, and she would have to do this without
+knowing what she was paying for, or why the door of the world is locked
+against me. My lips are sealed, nor shall I ever be able to break the
+seal. _Now_ do you understand why I can never ask you, or any other
+woman to be my wife?”
+
+Sara looked at him curiously; he could not read the expression of her
+face.
+
+“Have you finished?” she asked. “Is that all?”
+
+“All? Isn't it enough?”--with a grim laugh.
+
+“And you are letting this--this folly of your youth stand between us?”
+
+“The world applies a harder word than folly to it!”
+
+“I don't care anything at all about the world. What do _you_ call it?”
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“I call it folly to ask the criminal in the dock whether he approves the
+judge's verdict. He's hardly likely to!”
+
+For a moment she was silent. Then she seemed to gather herself together.
+
+“Garth, do you love me?”
+
+The words fell clearly on the still, summer air.
+
+“Yes”--doggedly--“I love you. What then?”
+
+“What then? Why--this! I don't care what you've done. It doesn't matter
+to me whether you are an outcast or not. If you are, then I'm willing
+to be an outcast with you. Oh, Garth--My Garth! I've been begging you to
+marry me all afternoon, and--and----” with a broken little laugh--“you
+can't _keep on_ refusing me!”
+
+Before her passionate faith and trust the barriers he had raised between
+them came crashing down. His arms went round her, and for a few moments
+they clung together and love wiped out all bitter memories of the past
+and all the menace of the future.
+
+But presently he came back to his senses. Very gently he put her from
+him.
+
+“It's not right,” he stammered unsteadily. “I can't accept this from
+you. Dear, you must let me go away. . . . I can't spoil your beautiful
+life by joining it to mine!”
+
+She drew his arm about her shoulders again.
+
+“You will spoil it if you go away. Oh! Garth, you dear, foolish man!
+When will you understand that love is the only thing that matters?
+If you had committed all the sins in the Decalogue, I shouldn't care!
+You're mine now”--jealously--“my lover. And I'm not going to be thrust
+out of your life for some stupid scruple. Let the past take care of
+itself. The present is ours. And--and I love you, Garth!”
+
+It was difficult to reason coolly with her arms about him, her lips so
+near his own, and his great love for her pulling at his heart. But he
+made one further effort.
+
+“If you should ever regret it, Sara?” he whispered. “I don't think I
+could bear that.”
+
+She looked at him with steady eyes.
+
+“You will not have it to bear,” she said. “I shall never regret it.”
+
+Still he hesitated. But the dawn of a great hope grew and deepened in
+his face.
+
+“If you could be content to live here--at Far End . . . It is just
+possible!” He spoke reflectively, as though debating the matter with
+himself. “The curse has not followed me to this quiet little corner of
+the earth. Perhaps--after all . . . Sara, could you stand such a life?
+Or would you always be longing to get out into the great world? As I've
+told you, the world is shut to me. There's that in my past which blocks
+the way to any future. Have you the faith--the _courage_--to face that?”
+
+Her eyes, steadfast and serene, met his.
+
+“I have courage to face anything--with you, Garth. But I haven't courage
+to face living without you.”
+
+He bent his head and kissed her on the mouth--a slow, lingering kiss
+that held something far deeper and more enduring than mere passion. And
+Sara, as she kissed him back, her soul upon her lips, felt as though
+together they had partaken of love's holy sacrament.
+
+“Beloved”--Garth's voice, unspeakably tender, came to her through the
+exquisite silence of the moment--“Beloved, it shall be as you wish.
+Whether I am right or wrong in taking this great gift you offer me--God
+knows! If I am wrong--then, please Heaven, whatever punishment there be
+may fall on me alone.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+A SUMMER IDYLL
+
+The summer, of all seasons of the year, is very surely the perfect time
+for lovers, and to Sara the days that followed immediately upon her
+engagement to Garth Trent were days of unalloyed happiness.
+
+These were wonderful hours which they passed together, strolling
+through the summer-foliaged woods, or lazing on the sun-baked sands, or,
+perhaps, roaming the range of undulating cliffs that stretched away to
+the west from the headland where Far End stood guard.
+
+During those hours of intimate companionship, Sara began to learn the
+hidden deeps of Garth's nature, discovering the almost romantic delicacy
+of thought that underlay his harsh exterior.
+
+“You're more than half a poet, my Garth!” she told him one day.
+
+“A transcendental fool, in other words,” he amended, smiling.
+“Well”--looking at her oddly--“perhaps you're right. But it's too late
+to improve me any. As the twig is bent, so the tree grows, you know.”
+
+“I don't want to improve you,” Sara assured him promptly. “I shouldn't
+like you to be in the least bit different from what you are. It wouldn't
+be my Garth, then, at all.”
+
+So they would sit together and talk the foolish, charming nonsense
+that all lovers have talked since the days of Adam and Eve, whilst
+from above, the sun shone down and blessed them, and the waves, lapping
+peacefully on the shore, murmured an _obbligato_ to their love-making.
+
+Looking backward, in the bitter months that followed when her individual
+happiness had been caught away from her in a whirlwind of calamity, and
+when the whole world was reeling under the red storm of war, Sara could
+always remember the utter, satisfying peace of those golden days of
+early July--an innocent, unthinking peace that neither she nor the
+world would ever quite regain. Afterwards, memory would always have her
+scarred and bitter place at the back of things.
+
+Sara found no hardship now in receiving the congratulations of her
+friends--and they fell about her like rain--while in the long, intimate
+talks she had with Garth the fact that he would never speak of the
+past weighed with her not at all. She guessed that long ago he had been
+guilty of some mad, boyish escapade which, with his exaggerated sense
+of honour and the delicate idealism that she had learned to know as an
+intrinsic part of his temperamental make-up, he had magnified into a
+cardinal sin. And she was content to leave it at that and to accept the
+present, gathering up with both hands the happiness it held.
+
+She had written to Elisabeth, telling her of her engagement, and, to her
+surprise, had received the most charming and friendly letter in return.
+
+“Of course,” wrote Elisabeth in her impulsive, flowing hand with its
+heavy dashes and fly-away dots, “we cannot but wish that it had been
+otherwise--that you could have learned to care for Tim--but you know
+better than any one of us where your happiness lies, and you are right
+to take it. And never think, Sara, that this is going to make any
+difference to our friendship. I could read between the lines of your
+letter that you had some such foolish thought in your mind. So little do
+I mean this to make any break between us that--as I can quite realize
+it would be too much to ask that you should come to us at Barrow just
+now--I propose coming down to Monkshaven. I want to meet the lucky
+individual who has won my Sara. I have not been too well lately--the
+heat has tried me--and Geoffrey is anxious that I should go away to
+the sea for a little. So that all things seem to point to my coming to
+Monkshaven. Does your primitive little village boast a hotel? Or, if
+not, can you engage some decent rooms for me?”
+
+The remainder of the letter dealt with the practical details concerning
+the proposed visit, and Sara, in a little flurry of joyous excitement,
+had hurried off to the Cliff Hotel and booked the best suite of rooms it
+contained for Elisabeth.
+
+On her way home she encountered Garth in the High Street, and forthwith
+proceeded to acquaint him with her news.
+
+“I've just been fixing up rooms at the 'Cliff' for a friend of mine who
+is coming down here,” she said, as he turned and fell into step beside
+her. “A woman friend,” she added hastily, seeing his brows knit darkly.
+
+“So much the better! But I could have done without the importation
+of any friends of yours--male or female--just now. They're entirely
+superfluous”--smiling.
+
+“Well, I'm glad Mrs. Durward is coming, because--”
+
+“_Who_ did you say?” broke in Garth, pausing in his stride.
+
+“Mrs. Durward--Tim's mother, you know,” she explained. She had confided
+to him the history of her brief engagement to Tim.
+
+Trent resumed his walk, but more slowly; the buoyancy seemed suddenly
+gone out of his step.
+
+“Don't you think,” he said, speaking in curiously measured tones, “that,
+in the circumstances, it will be a little awkward Mrs. Durward's coming
+here just now?”
+
+Sara disclaimed the idea, pointing out that it was the very completeness
+of Elisabeth's conception of friendship which was bringing her to
+Monkshaven.
+
+“When does she come?” asked Trent.
+
+“On Thursday. I'm very anxious for you to meet her, Garth. She is so
+thoroughly charming. I think it is splendid of her not to let my broken
+engagement with Tim make any difference between us. Most mothers would
+have borne a grudge for that!”
+
+“And you think Mrs. Durward has overlooked it?”--with a curious smile.
+
+Sara enthusiastically assured him that this was the case.
+
+“I wonder!” he said meditatively. “It would be very unlike Elis--unlike
+any woman”--he corrected himself hastily--“to give up a fixed idea so
+easily.”
+
+“Well”--Sara laughed gaily. “Nowadays you can't _compel_ a person to
+marry the man she doesn't want--nor prevent her from marrying the man
+she does.”
+
+“I don't know. A determined woman can do a good deal.”
+
+“But Elisabeth isn't a bit the determined type of female you're
+evidently imagining,” protested Sara, amused. “She is very beautiful and
+essentially feminine--rather a wonderful kind of person, I think. Wait
+till you see her!”
+
+“I'm afraid,” said Trent slowly, “that I shall not see your charming
+friend. I have to run up to Town next week on--on business.”
+
+“Oh!” Sara's disappointment showed itself in her voice. “Can't you put
+it off?”
+
+He halted outside a tobacconist's shop. “Do you mind waiting a moment
+while I go in here and get some baccy?”
+
+He disappeared into the shop, and Sara stood gazing idly across the
+street, watching a jolly little fox-terrier enjoying a small but meaty
+bone he had filched from the floor of a neighbouring butcher's shop.
+
+His placid enjoyment of the stolen feast was short-lived. A minute later
+a lean and truculent Irish terrier came swaggering round the corner,
+spotted the succulent morsel, and, making one leap, landed fairly on
+top of the smaller dog. In an instant pandemonium arose, and the quiet
+street re-echoed to the noise of canine combat.
+
+The little fox-terrier put up a plucky fight in defence of his prior
+claim to the bone of contention, but soon superior weight began to tell,
+and it was evident that the Irishman was getting the better of the fray.
+The fox-terrier's owner, very elegantly dressed, watched the battle from
+a safe distance, wringing her hands and calling upon all and sundry of
+the small crowd which had speedily collected to save her darling from
+the lions.
+
+No one, however, seemed disposed to relieve her of this office--for the
+Irishman was an ugly-looking customer--when suddenly, like a streak of
+light, a slim figure flashed across the road, and flung itself into
+the _melee_, whist a vibrating voice broke across the uproar with an
+imperative: “Let _go_, you brute!”
+
+It was all over in a moment. Somehow Sara's small, strong hands had
+separated the twisting, growling, biting heap of dog into its
+component parts of fox and Irish, and she was standing with the little
+fox-terrier, panting and bleeding profusely, in her arms, while one
+or two of the bystanders--now that all danger was past--drove off the
+Irishman.
+
+“Oh! But how _brave_ of you!” The owner of the fox-terrier rustled
+forward. “I can't ever thank you sufficiently.”
+
+Sara turned to her, her black eyes blazing.
+
+“Is this your dog?” she asked.
+
+“Yes. And I'm sure”--volubly--“he would have been torn to pieces by that
+great hulking brute if you hadn't separated them. I should never have
+_dared_!”
+
+Garth, coming out of the tobacconist's shop across the way, joined the
+little knot of people just in time to hear Sara answer cuttingly, as she
+put the terrier into its owner's arms--
+
+“You've no business to _have_ a dog if you've not got the pluck to look
+after him!”
+
+As she and Trent bent their steps homeward, Sara regaled him with
+the full, true, and particular account of the dog-fight, winding up
+indignantly--
+
+“Foul women like that ought not to be allowed to take out a dog licence.
+I hate people who shirk their responsibilities.”
+
+“You despise cowards?” he asked.
+
+“More than anything on earth,” she answered heartily.
+
+He was silent a moment. Then he said reflectively--
+
+“And yet, I suppose, a certain amount of allowance must be made
+for--nerves.”
+
+“It seems to me it depends on what your duty demands of you at the
+moment,” she rejoined. “Nerves are a luxury. You can afford them when
+it makes no difference to other people whether you're afraid or not--but
+not when it does.”
+
+“And from what deeps did you draw such profound wisdom?” he asked
+quizzically.
+
+Sara laughed a little.
+
+“I had it well rubbed into me by my Uncle Patrick,” she replied. “It was
+his _Credo_.”
+
+“And yet, I can understand any one's nerves cracking suddenly--after a
+prolonged strain.”
+
+“I don't think yours would,” responded Sara contentedly, with a vivid
+recollection of their expedition to the island and its aftermath.
+
+“Possibly not. But I suppose no man can be dead sure of
+himself--always.”
+
+“Will you come in?” asked Sara as they paused at Sunnyside gate.
+
+“Not to-day, I think. I had better begin to accustom myself to doing
+without you, as I am going away so soon”--smiling.
+
+“I wish you were not going,” she rejoined discontentedly. “I so wanted
+you and Elisabeth to meet. _Must_ you go?”
+
+“I'm afraid I must. And it's better that I should go, on the whole.
+I should only be raging up and down like an untied devil because Mrs.
+Durward was taking up so much of your time! Let her have you to herself
+for a few days--and then, when I come back, I shall have you to _myself_
+again.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+PATCHES OF BLUE
+
+Elisabeth frowned a little as she perused the letter which she had that
+morning received from Sara. It contained the information that rooms in
+her name had been booked at the Cliff Hotel, and further, that Sara was
+much disappointed that it would be impossible to arrange for her to
+meet Garth Trent, as he was leaving home on the Wednesday prior to her
+arrival.
+
+Trent's departure was the last thing Elisabeth desired. Above
+all things, she wanted to meet the man whom she regarded as the
+stumbling-block in the path of her son, for if it were possible that
+anything might yet be done to further the desire of Tim's heart, it
+could only be if Elisabeth, as the _dea ex machina_, were acquainted
+with all the pieces in the game.
+
+She must know what manner of man it was who had succeeded in winning
+Sara's heart before she could hope to combat his influence, and, if
+the feet of clay were there, she must see them herself before she could
+point them out to Sara's love-illusioned eyes. Should she fail of making
+Trent's acquaintance, she would be fighting in the dark.
+
+Elisabeth pondered the matter for some time. Finally, she dispatched a
+telegram, prepaying a reply, to the proprietor of the Cliff Hotel, and
+a few hours later she announced to her husband that she proposed
+antedating her visit to Monkshaven by three days.
+
+“I shall go down the day after to-morrow--on Monday,” she said.
+
+“Then I'd better send a wire to Sara,” suggested Geoffrey.
+
+“No, don't do that. I intend taking her by surprise.” Elisabeth smiled
+and dimpled like a child in the possession of a secret. “I shall go down
+there just in time for dinner, and write to Sara the same evening.”
+
+Major Durward laughed with indulgent amusement.
+
+“What an absurd lady you are still, Beth!” he exclaimed, his honest face
+beaming adoration. “No one would take you to be the mother of a grown-up
+son!”
+
+“Wouldn't they?” For a moment Elisabeth's eyes--veiled, enigmatical
+as ever--rested on Tim's distant figure, where he stood deep in the
+discussion of some knotty point with the head gardener. Then they came
+back to her husband's face, and she laughed lightly. “Everybody doesn't
+see me through the rose-coloured spectacles that you do, dearest.”
+
+“There are no 'rose-coloured spectacles' about it,” protested Geoffrey
+energetically. “No one on earth would take you for a day more than
+thirty--if it weren't for the solid fact of Tim's six feet of bone and
+muscle!”
+
+Elisabeth jumped up and kissed her husband impulsively.
+
+“Geoffrey, you're a great dear,” she declared warmly. “Now I must run
+off and tell Fanchette to pack my things.”
+
+So it came about that on the following Tuesday, Sara, to her
+astonishment and delight, received a letter from Elisabeth announcing
+her arrival at the Cliff Hotel.
+
+“Why, Elisabeth is already here!” she exclaimed, addressing the family
+at Sunnyside collectively. “She came last night.”
+
+Selwyn looked up from his correspondence with a kindly smile.
+
+“That's good. You will be able, after all, to bring off the projected
+meeting between Mrs. Durward and your hermit--who, by the way, seems to
+have deserted his shell nowadays,” he added, twinkling.
+
+And Sara, blissfully unaware that in this instance Elisabeth had
+abrogated to herself the rights of destiny, responded smilingly--
+
+“Yes. Fate has actually arranged things quite satisfactorily for once.”
+
+Half an hour later she presented herself at the Cliff Hotel, and was
+conducted upstairs to Mrs. Durward's sitting-room on the first floor.
+
+Elisabeth welcomed her with all her wonted charm and sweetness. There
+was a shade of gravity in her manner as she spoke of Sara's engagement,
+but no hint of annoyance. She dwelt solely on Tim's disappointment and
+her own, exhibiting no bitterness, but only a rather wistful regret that
+another had succeeded where Tim had failed.
+
+“And now,” she said, drawing Sara out on to the balcony, where she had
+been sitting prior to the latter's arrival, “and now, tell me about the
+lucky man.”
+
+Sara found it a little difficult to describe the man she loved to the
+mother of the man she didn't love, but finally, by dint of skilful
+questioning, Elisabeth elicited the information she sought.
+
+“Forty-three!” she exclaimed, as Sara vouchsafed his age. “But that's
+much too old for you, my dear!”
+
+Sara shook her head.
+
+“Not a bit,” she smiled back.
+
+“It seems so to me,” persisted Elisabeth, regarding her with judicial
+eyes. “Somehow you convey such an impression of youth. You always remind
+me of spring. You are so slim and straight and vital--like a young
+sapling. However, perhaps Mr. Trent also has the faculty of youth. Youth
+isn't a matter of years, after all,” she added contemplatively.
+
+“Now go on,” she commanded, after a moment. “Tell me what he looks
+like.”
+
+Sara laughed and plunged into a description of Garth's personal
+appearance.
+
+“And he's got queer eyes--tawny-coloured like a dog's,” she wound up,
+“with a quaint little patch of blue close to each of the pupils.”
+
+Elisabeth leaned forward, and beneath the soft laces of her gown the
+rise and fall of her breast quickened perceptibly.
+
+“Patches of blue?” she repeated.
+
+“Yes--it sounds as though the colours had run, doesn't it?” pursued
+Sara, laughing a little. “But it's really rather effective.”
+
+“And did you say his name was Trent--Garth Trent?” asked Elisabeth. She
+had gone a little grey about the mouth, and she moistened her lips
+with her tongue before speaking. There was a tone of incredulity in her
+voice.
+
+“Yes. It's not a beautiful name, is it?” smiled Sara.
+
+“It's rather a curious one,” agreed Elisabeth with an effort. “I'm
+really quite longing to meet this odd man with the patchwork eyes and
+the funny name.”
+
+“You shall see him to-day,” Sara promised. “Audrey Maynard is giving a
+picnic in Haven Woods, and Garth will be there. You will come with us,
+won't you?”
+
+“I think I must,” replied Elisabeth. “Although”--negligently--“picnics
+are not much in my line.”
+
+“Oh, Audrey's picnics aren't like other people's,” rejoined Sara
+reassuringly. “She runs them just as she runs everything else, on lines
+of combined perfection and informality! The lunch will be the production
+of a French chef, and the company a few carefully selected intimates.”
+
+“Very well, I'll come--if you're sure Mrs. Maynard won't object to the
+introduction of a complete stranger.”
+
+Sara regarded her affectionately.
+
+“Have you ever met any one who 'objected' to you yet?” she asked with
+some amusement.
+
+Elisabeth made no answer. Instead, she pointed to the Monk's Cliff,
+where the grey stone of Far End gleamed in the sunlight against its dark
+background of trees.
+
+“Who lives there?” she asked. Sara's eyes followed the direction of her
+hand, and she smiled.
+
+“_I'm_ going to live there,” she answered. “That's Garth's home.”
+
+“Oh-h!” Elisabeth drew a quick breath. “It's a grim-looking place,” she
+added, after a moment. “Rather lonely, I should imagine.”
+
+“Garth is fond of solitude,” replied Sara simply, and she missed the
+swift, searching glance instantly leveled at her by the hyacinth eyes.
+
+When at length she took her departure, it was with a promise to return
+later on with Molly and Dr. Selwyn, so that they could all four walk out
+to Haven Woods together--since the doctor had undertaken to get through
+his morning's rounds in time to join the picnicking party.
+
+Elisabeth accompanied her visitor to the head of the stairs, and then,
+returning to her room, stepped out on to the balcony once more. For a
+long time she stood leaning against the balustrade, gazing thoughtfully
+across the bay to that lonely house on the slope of the cliff.
+
+“Garth Trent!” she murmured. “_Trent_! . . . And eyes with patches of
+blue in them! . . . Heavens! Can it possibly be? _Can_ it be?”
+
+There was a curious quality in her voice, a blending of incredulity and
+distaste, and yet something that savoured of satisfaction--almost of
+triumph.
+
+Across her mental vision flitted a memory of just such eyes--gay,
+laughing, love-lit eyes, out of which the laughter had been suddenly
+dashed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE CUT DIRECT
+
+It was a merry party which had gathered together in the shady heart
+of Haven Woods. The Selwyns, Sara and Elisabeth, Miles Herrick and the
+Lavender Lady were all there, and, in addition, there was a large and
+light-hearted contingent from Greenacres, where Audrey was entertaining
+a houseful of friends. Only Garth had not yet arrived.
+
+Two young subalterns on leave and a couple of pretty American sisters,
+all of them staying at Greenacres, were making things hum, nobly
+seconded in their efforts by Miles Herrick, who had practically
+recovered from his sprained ankle and one of whose “good days” it
+chanced to be.
+
+Every one seemed bubbling over with good-humour and high spirits, so
+that the dell re-echoed to the shouts of jolly laughter, while the
+birds, flitting nervously hither and thither, wondered what manner of
+creatures these were who had invaded their quiet sanctuary of the woods.
+And presently, when the whole party gathered round the white cloth,
+spread with every dainty that the inspired mind of Audrey's chef had
+been able to devise, and the popping corks began to punctuate the babble
+of chattering voices, they took wing and fled incontinently. They had
+heard similar sharp, explosive sounds before, and had noted them as
+being generally the harbingers of sudden death.
+
+“Where's that wretched hermit of yours, Sara?” demanded Audrey gaily.
+“I told him we should lunch at one, and it's already a quarter-past.
+Ah!”--catching sight of a lean, supple figure advancing between the
+trees--“Here he is at last!”
+
+A shout greeted Garth's approach, and the uproarious quartette composed
+of the two subalterns and the girls from New York City pounded joyously
+with their forks upon their plates, creating a perfect pandemonium of
+noise, Miles recklessly participating in the clamorous welcome, while
+the Lavender Lady fluttered her handkerchief, and Sara and Audrey both
+hurried forward to meet the late comer. In the general excitement nobody
+chanced to observe the effect which Trent's appearance had had upon one
+of the party.
+
+Elisabeth had half-risen from the grassy bank on which she had been
+sitting, and her face was suddenly milk-white. Even her lips had lost
+their soft rose-colour, and were parted as if an exclamation of some
+kind had been only checked from passing them by sheer force of will.
+
+Out of her white face, her eyes, seeming so dark that they were almost
+violet, stared fixedly at Garth as he approached. Their expression was
+as masked, as enigmatical as ever, yet back of it there gleamed an odd
+light, and it was as though some curious menace lay hidden in its quiet,
+slumbrous fire.
+
+The little group composed of Audrey, Sara, and Garth had joined the
+main party now, and Garth was shaking eager, outstretched hands and
+laughingly tossing back the shower of chaff which greeted his tardy
+arrival.
+
+Then Sara, laying her hand on his arm, steered him towards Elisabeth.
+Some one who had been standing a little in front of the latter,
+screening her from Trent's view, moved aside as they approached.
+
+“Garth, let me introduce you to Mrs. Durward.”
+
+The smile that would naturally have accompanied the words was arrested
+ere it dawned, and involuntarily Sara drew back before the instant,
+startling change in Garth's face. It had grown suddenly ashen, and his
+eyes were like those of a man who, walking in some pleasant place, finds
+all at once, that a bottomless abyss has opened at his feet.
+
+For a full moment he and Elisabeth stared at each other in a silence
+so vital, so pregnant with some terrible significance, that it impacted
+upon the whole prevailing atmosphere of care-free jollity.
+
+A sudden muteness descended on the party, the laughing voices trailing
+off into affrighted silence, and in the dumb stillness that followed
+Sara was vibrantly conscious of the hostile clash of wills between the
+man and woman who had, in a single instant, become the central figures
+of the little group.
+
+Then Elisabeth's voice--that amazingly sweet voice of hers--broke the
+profound quiet.
+
+“Mr.--Trent”--she hesitated delicately before the name--“and I have met
+before.”
+
+And quite deliberately, with a proud, inflexible dignity, she turned her
+back upon him and moved away.
+
+Sara never forgot the few moments that followed. She felt as though
+she were on the brink of some crisis in her life which had been slowly
+drawing nearer and nearer to her and was now acutely imminent, and
+instinctively she sought to gather all her energies together to meet
+it. What it might be she could not guess, but she was sure that this
+declared enmity between the man she loved and the woman who was her
+friend preluded some menace to her happiness.
+
+Her eyes sought Garth's in horror-stricken interrogation.
+
+“What is it? What does she mean?” she demanded swiftly, in a breathless
+undertone, instinctively drawing aside from the rest of the party.
+
+He laughed shortly.
+
+“She means mischief, probably,” he replied. “Mrs. Durward is no friend
+of mine.”
+
+Sara's eyes blazed.
+
+“She shall explain,” she exclaimed impetuously, and she swung aside,
+meaning to follow Elisabeth and demand an explanation of the insult. But
+Garth checked her.
+
+“No,” he said decidedly. “Please do nothing--say nothing. For Audrey's
+sake we can't have a scene--here.”
+
+“But it's unpardonable----”
+
+“Do as I say,” he insisted. “Believe me, you will only make things worse
+if you interfere. I will make my apologies to Audrey and go. For my
+sake, Sara”--he looked at her intently--“go back and face it out. Behave
+as if nothing had happened.”
+
+Compelled, in spite of herself, by his insistence, Sara reluctantly
+assented and, leaving him, made her way slowly back to the others.
+
+A disjointed buzz of talk sprayed up against her ears. Every one rushed
+into conversation, making valiant, if quite fruitless efforts to behave
+as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred, while, a little
+apart from the main group, Elisabeth stood alone.
+
+Meanwhile Trent sought out his hostess, and together they moved away,
+pausing at last beneath the canopy of trees.
+
+“No words can quite meet what has just occurred,” he said formally. “I
+can only express my regret that my presence here should have occasioned
+such a _contretemps_.”
+
+Although the whole brief scene had been utterly incomprehensible to her,
+Audrey intuitively sensed the bitter hurt underlying the harshly spoken
+words, and the outraged hostess was instantly submerged in the friend.
+
+“I am so sorry about it, Garth,” she said gently, “although, of course,
+I don't understand Mrs. Durward's behaviour.”
+
+“That is very kind of you!” he replied, his voice softening. “But please
+do not visit your very natural indignation upon Mrs. Durward. I alone
+am to blame, I ought never to have renounced my role of hermit.
+Unfortunately”--with a brief smile of such sadness that Audrey felt her
+heart go out to him in a sudden rush of sympathy--“my mere presence is
+an abuse of my friends' hospitality.”
+
+“No, no!” she exclaimed quickly. “We are all glad to have you with
+us--we were so pleased when--when at last you came out of your shell,
+Garth”--with a faint smile.
+
+“Still the fact remains that I am outside the social pale. I had no
+business to thrust myself in amongst you. However--after this--you may
+rest assured that I shan't offend again.”
+
+“I decline to rest assured of anything of the kind,” asserted Audrey
+with determination. “Don't be such a fool, Garth--or so unfair to your
+friends. Just because you chance to have met a women who, for some
+reason, chooses to cut you, doesn't alter our friendship for you in the
+very least. What Mrs. Durward may have against you I don't know--and I
+don't care either. _I_ have nothing against you, and I don't propose
+to give any pal of mine the go-by because some one else happens to have
+quarreled with him.”
+
+Trent's eyes were curiously soft as he answered her.
+
+“Thank you for that,” he said earnestly. “All the same, I think you will
+have to make up your mind to allow your--friend, as you are good enough
+to call me, to go to the wall. You, and others like you, dragged him
+out, but, believe me, his place is not in the centre of the room. There
+are others besides Mrs. Durward who would give you the reason why, if
+you care to know it.”
+
+“I don't care to know it,” responded Audrey firmly. “In fact, I should
+decline to recognize any reason against my calling you friend. I don't
+intend to let you go, nor will Miles, you'll find.”
+
+“Ah! Herrick! He's a good chap, isn't he?” said Trent a little
+wistfully.
+
+“We all are--once you get to know us,” returned Audrey, persistently
+cheerful. “And Sara--Sara won't let you go either, Garth.”
+
+His sensitive, bitter mouth twisted suddenly.
+
+“If you don't mind,” he said quickly, “we won't talk about Sara. And I
+won't keep you any longer from your guests. It was--just like you--to
+take it as you have done, Audrey. And if, later on, you find yourself
+obliged to revise your opinion of me--I shall understand. And I shall
+not resent it.”
+
+“I'm not very likely to do what you suggest.”
+
+He looked at her with a curious expression on his face.
+
+“I'm afraid it is only too probable,” he rejoined simply.
+
+He wrung her hand, and, turning, walked swiftly away through the wood,
+while Audrey retraced her footsteps in the direction of the dell.
+
+She was feeling extremely annoyed at what she considered to be Mrs.
+Durward's hasty and inconsiderate action. It was unpardonable of any
+one thus to spoil the harmony of the day, she reflected indignantly, and
+then she looked up and met Elisabeth's misty, hyacinth eyes, full of a
+gentle, appealing regret.
+
+“Mrs. Maynard, I must beg you to try and pardon me,” she said,
+approaching with a charming gesture of apology. “I have no excuse to
+offer except that Mr. Trent is a man I--I cannot possibly meet.” She
+paused and seemed to swallow with some difficulty, and of a sudden
+Audrey was conscious of a thrill of totally unexpected compassion. There
+was so evidently genuine pain and emotion behind the hesitating apology.
+
+“I am sorry you should have been distressed,” she replied kindly. “It
+has been a most unfortunate affair all round.”
+
+Elisabeth bestowed a grateful little smile upon her.
+
+“If you will forgive me,” she said, “I will say good-bye now. I am sure
+you will understand my withdrawing.”
+
+“Oh no, you mustn't think of such a thing,” cried Audrey hospitably,
+though within herself she could not but acknowledge that the suggestion
+was a timely one. “Please don't run away from us like that.”
+
+“It is very kind of you, but really--if you will excuse me--I think I
+would prefer not to remain. I feel somewhat _bouleversee_. And I am so
+distressed to have been the unwitting cause of spoiling your charming
+party.”
+
+Audrey hesitated.
+
+“Of course, if you would really rather go----” she began.
+
+“I would rather,” persisted Elisabeth with a gentle inflexibility of
+purpose. “Will you give a message to Sara for me?” Audrey nodded.
+“Ask her to come and see me to-morrow, and tell her that--that I will
+explain.” Suddenly she stretched out an impulsive hand. “Oh, Mrs.
+Maynard! If you knew how much I dread explaining this matter to Sara!
+Perhaps, however”--her eyes took on a thoughtful expression--“Perhaps,
+however, it may not be necessary--perhaps it can be avoided.”
+
+A sense of foreboding seemed to close round Audrey's heart, as she met
+the gaze of the beautiful, enigmatic eyes. What was it that Elisabeth
+intended to “explain” to Sara? Something connected with Garth Trent,
+of course, and it was impossible, in view of the attitude Elisabeth
+had assumed, to hope that it could be aught else than something to his
+detriment.
+
+“If an explanation can be avoided, Mrs. Durward,” she said rather
+coldly, “I think it would be much better. The least said, the soonest
+mended, you know,” she added, looking straight into the baffling eyes.
+
+The two women, all at once antagonistic and suspicious of each other,
+shook hands formally, and Elisabeth took her way through the woods,
+while Audrey rejoined her neglected guests and used her best endeavours
+to convert an entertainment that threatened to become a failure into,
+at least, a qualified success. By dint of infinite tact, and the loyal
+cooperation of Miles Herrick, she somehow achieved it, and the majority
+of the picnickers enjoyed themselves immensely.
+
+Only Sara felt as though a shadow had crept out from some hidden place
+and cast its grey length across the path whereon she walked, while
+Miles and Audrey, discerning the shadow with the clear-sighted vision
+of friendship, were filled with apprehension for the woman whom they had
+both learned to love.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+A MIDNIGHT VISITOR
+
+Judson crossed the hall at Far End and, opening the front door, peered
+anxiously out into the moonlit night for the third time that evening.
+
+Neither he nor his wife could surmise what had become of their master.
+He had gone away, as they knew, with the intention of joining a picnic
+party in Haven Woods, but he had given no instructions that he wished
+the dinner-hour postponed, and now the beautiful little dinner which
+Mrs. Judson had prepared and cooked for her somewhat exigent employer
+had been entirely robbed of its pristine delicacy of flavour, since it
+had been “keeping hot” in the oven for at least two hours.
+
+“Coming yet?” queried Mrs. Judson, as her husband returned to the
+kitchen.
+
+The latter shook his head.
+
+“Not a sign of 'im,” he replied briefly.
+
+Ten minutes later, the house door opened and closed with a bang, and
+Judson hastened upstairs to ascertain his master's wishes. When he again
+rejoined the wife of his bosom, his face wore a look of genuine concern.
+
+“Something's happened,” he announced solemnly. “Ten years have I been in
+Mr. Trent's service, and never, Maria, never have I seen him look as he
+do now.”
+
+“What's he looking like, then?” demanded Mrs. Judson, pausing with a
+saucepan in her hand.
+
+“Like a man what's been in hell,” replied her husband dramatically.
+“He's as white as that piece of paper”--pointing to the sheet of cooking
+paper with which Mrs. Judson had been conscientiously removing the
+grease from the chipped potatoes. “And his eyes look wild. He's been
+walking, too--must have walked twenty miles or thereabouts, I should
+think, for he seems dead beat and his boots are just a mask of mud. His
+coat's torn and splashed, as well--as if he'd pushed his way through
+bushes and all, without ever stopping to see where he was going.”
+
+“Then he'll be wanting his dinner,” observed Mrs. Judson practically.
+“I'll dish it up--'tisn't what you might call actually spoiled as yet.”
+
+“He won't have any. 'Judson,' he says to me, 'bring me a whisky-and-soda
+and some sandwiches. I don't want nothing else. And then you can lock up
+and go to bed.'”
+
+“Well, then, bless the man, look alive and get the whisky-and-soda and
+a tray ready whiles I cut the sandwiches,” exclaimed the excellent Mrs.
+Judson promptly, giving her bemused spouse a push in the direction of
+the pantry and herself bustling away to fetch a loaf of bread.
+
+“Right you are. But I was so took aback at the master's appearance,
+Maria, you could have knocked me down with a feather. I wonder if his
+young lady's given him his congy?” he added reflectively.
+
+Mrs. Judson did not stay to discuss the question, but set about
+preparing the sandwiches, and a few minutes later Judson carried into
+Trent's own particular snuggery an attractive-looking little tray and
+placed it on a table at his master's elbow.
+
+The man had not been far out in his reckoning when he opined that his
+master had walked “twenty miles or thereabouts.” When he had quitted
+Haven Woods, Garth had started off, heedless of the direction he took,
+and, since then, he had been tramping, almost blindly, up hill and down
+dale, over hedges, through woods, along the shore, stumbling across the
+rocks, anywhere, anywhere in the world to get away from the maddening,
+devil-ridden thoughts which had pursued him since the brief meeting with
+a woman whose hyacinth eyes recalled the immeasurable anguish of years
+ago and threatened the joy which the future seemed to promise.
+
+His face was haggard. Heavy lines had graved themselves about his mouth,
+and beneath drawn brows his eyes glowed like sombre fires.
+
+Judson paused irresolutely beside him.
+
+“Shall I pour you out a whisky, sir?” he inquired.
+
+Trent started. He had been oblivious of the man's entrance.
+
+“No. I'll do it myself--presently. Lock up and go to bed,” he answered
+brusquely.
+
+But Judson still hesitated. There was an expression of affectionate
+solicitude on his usually wooden face.
+
+“Better have one at once, sir,” he said persuasively. “And I think
+you'll find the chicken sandwiches very good, sir, if you'll excuse my
+mentioning it.”
+
+For a moment a faint, kindly smile chased away the look of intense
+weariness in Garth's eyes.
+
+“You transparent old fool, Judson!” he said indulgently. “You're like
+an old hen clucking round. Very well, make me a whisky, if you will, and
+give me one of those superlative sandwiches.”
+
+Judson waited on him contentedly.
+
+“Anything more to-night, sir? Shall I close the window?” with a gesture
+towards the wide-open window near which his master sat.
+
+Garth shook his head, and, when at last the manservant had reluctantly
+taken his departure, he remained for a long time sitting very still,
+staring out across the moon-washed garden.
+
+Presently he stirred restlessly. Glancing round the room, his eyes fell
+on his violin, lying upon the table with the bow beside it just as he
+had laid it down that morning after he had been improvising, in a fit
+of mad spirits, some variations on the theme of Mendelssohn's Wedding
+March.
+
+He took up the instrument and struck a few desultory chords. Then,
+tucking it more closely beneath his chin, he began to play--a broken,
+fitful melody of haunting sadness, tormented by despairing chords, swept
+hither and thither by rushing minor cadences--the very spirit of pain
+itself, wandering, ghost-like, in desert places.
+
+Upstairs Judson turned heavily in his bed.
+
+“Just hark to 'im, Maria,” he muttered uneasily. “He fair makes my flesh
+creep with that doggoned fiddle of his. 'Tis like a child crying in the
+dark. I wish he'd stop.”
+
+But the sad strains still went on, rising and falling, while Garth paced
+back and forth the length of the room and the candles flickered palely
+in the moonlight that poured in through the open window.
+
+Suddenly, across the lawn a figure flitted, noiseless as a shadow. It
+paused once, as though listening, then glided forward again, slowly
+drawing nearer and nearer until at last it halted on the threshold of
+the room.
+
+Garth, for the moment standing with his back towards the window,
+continued playing, oblivious of the quiet listener. Then, all at once,
+the feeling that he was no longer alone, that some one was sharing with
+him the solitude of the night, invaded his consciousness. He turned
+swiftly, and as his glance fell upon the silent figure standing at
+the open window, he slowly drew his violin from beneath his chin and
+remained staring at the apparition as though transfixed.
+
+It was a woman who had thus intruded on his privacy. A scarf of black
+lace was twisted, hood-like, about her head, and beneath its fragile
+drapery was revealed the beautiful face and haunting, mysterious eyes
+of Elisabeth Durward. She had flung a long black cloak over her evening
+gown, and where it had fallen a little open at the throat her neck
+gleamed privet-white against its shadowy darkness.
+
+The mystical, transfiguring touch of the moon's soft light had
+eliminated all signs of maturity, investing her with an amazing look of
+youth, so that for an instant it seemed to Trent as though the years had
+rolled back and Elisabeth Eden, in all the incomparable beauty of her
+girlhood, stood before him.
+
+He gazed at her in utter silence, and the brooding eyes returned his
+gaze unflinchingly.
+
+“Good God!”
+
+The words burst from him at last in a low, tense whisper, and, as if
+the sound broke some spell that had been holding both the man and woman
+motionless, Elisabeth stepped across the threshold and came towards him.
+
+Trent made a swift gesture--almost, it seemed, a gesture of aversion.
+
+“Why have you come here?” he demanded hoarsely.
+
+She drew a little nearer, then paused, her hand resting on the table,
+and looked at him with a strange, questioning expression in her eyes.
+
+“This is a poor welcome, Maurice,” she observed at last.
+
+He winced sharply at the sound of the name by which she had addressed
+him, then, recovering himself, faced her with apparent composure.
+
+“I have no welcome for you,” he said in measured tones. “Why should I
+have? All that was between us two . . . ended . . . half a life-time
+ago.”
+
+“No!” she cried out. “No! Not all! There is still my son's happiness to
+be reckoned.”
+
+“Your son's happiness?” He stared at her amazedly. “What has your son's
+happiness to do with me?”
+
+“Everything!” she answered. “Everything! Sara Tennant is the woman he
+loves.”
+
+“And have you come here to blame me for the fact that she does not
+return his love?”--with an accent of ironical amusement.
+
+“No, I don't blame you. But if it had not been for you she would
+have married him. They were engaged, and then”--her voice shook a
+little--“you came! You came--and robbed Tim of his happiness.”
+
+Trent smiled sarcastically.
+
+“An instance of the grinding of the mills of God,” he said lightly.
+“You robbed me--you'll agree?--of something I valued. And
+now--inadvertently--I have robbed you in return of your son's happiness.
+It appears”--consideringly--“an unusually just dispensation of
+Providence. And the sins of the parents are visited on the child, as is
+the usual inscrutable custom of such dispensations.”
+
+Elisabeth seemed to disregard the bitter gibe his speech contained. She
+looked at him with steady eyes.
+
+“I want you--out of the way,” she said deliberately.
+
+“Indeed?” The indifferent, drawling tone was contradicted by the sudden
+dangerous light that gleamed in the hazel eyes. “You mean you want
+me--to pay--once more?”
+
+She looked away uneasily, flushing a little.
+
+“I'm afraid it does amount to that,” she admitted.
+
+“And how would you suggest it should be done?” he inquired composedly.
+
+Her eyes came back to his face. There was an eager light in them, and
+when she spoke the words hurried from her lips in imperative demand.
+
+“Oh, it would be so easy, Maurice! You have only to convince Sara that
+you are not fit to marry her--or any woman, for that matter! Tell
+her what your reputation is--tell her why you can never show yourself
+amongst your fellow men, why you live here under an assumed name. She
+won't want to marry you when she knows these things, and Tim would have
+his chance to win her back again.”
+
+“You mean--let me quite understand you, Elisabeth”--Trent spoke with
+curious precision--“that I am to blacken myself in Sara's eyes, so that,
+discovering what a wolf in sheep's clothing I am, she will break off our
+engagement. That, I take it, is your suggestion?”
+
+Beneath his searching glance she faltered a moment. Then--
+
+“Yes,” she answered boldly. “That is it.”
+
+“It's a charming programme,” he commented. “But it doesn't seem to me
+that you have considered Sara at all in the matter. It will hardly add
+to her happiness to find that she has given her heart to--what shall we
+say?”--smiling disagreeably--“to the wrong kind of man?”
+
+“Of, of course, she will be upset, _disillusionnee_, for a time. She
+will suffer. But then we all have our share of suffering. Sara cannot
+hope to be exempt. And afterwards--afterwards”--her eyes shining--“she
+will be happy. She and Tim will be happy together.”
+
+“And so you are prepared to cause all this suffering, Sara's and
+mine--though I suppose”--with a bitter inflection--“that last hardly
+counts with you!--in order to secure Tim's happiness?”
+
+“Yes,” significantly, “I am prepared--to do anything to secure that.”
+
+Trent stared at her in blank amazement.
+
+“Have you _no_ conscience?” he asked at last. “Have you never had any?”
+
+She looked at him a little piteously.
+
+“You don't understand,” she muttered. “You don't understand. I'm his
+mother. And I want him to be happy.”
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“I am sorry,” he said, “that I cannot help you. But I'm afraid Tim's
+happiness isn't going to be purchased at my expense. I haven't the least
+intention of blackening myself in the eyes of the woman I love for the
+sake of Tim--or of twenty Tims. Please understand that, once and for
+all.”
+
+He gestured as though to indicated that she should precede him to the
+window by which she had entered. But she made no movement to go. Instead
+she flung back her cloak as though it were stifling her, and caught him
+impetuously by the arm.
+
+“Maurice! Maurice! For God's sake, listen to me!” Her voice was suddenly
+shaken with passionate entreaty. “Use some other method, then! Break
+with her some other way! If you only knew how I hate to ask you this--I
+who have already brought only sorrow and trouble into your life! But
+Tim--my son--he must come first!” She pressed a little closer to him,
+lifting her face imploringly. “Maurice, you loved me once--for the sake
+of that love, grant me my boy's happiness!”
+
+Quietly, inexorably, he disengaged himself from the eager clasp of her
+hand. Her beautiful, agonized face, the vehement supplication of her
+voice, moved him not a jot.
+
+“You are making a poor argument,” he said coldly. “You are making your
+request in the name of a love that died three-and-twenty years ago.”
+
+“Do you mean”--she stared at him--“that you have not cared--at
+all--since?” She spoke incredulously. Then, suddenly, she laughed. “And
+I--what a fool I was!--I used to grieve--often--thinking how you must be
+suffering!”
+
+He smiled wryly as at some bitter memory.
+
+“Perhaps I did,” he responded shortly. “Death has its pains--even the
+death of first love. My love for you died hard, Elisabeth--but it died.
+You killed it.”
+
+“And you will not do what I ask for the sake of the love you--once--gave
+me?” There was a desperate appeal in her low voice.
+
+He shook his head. “No,” he said, “I will not.”
+
+She made a gesture of despair.
+
+“Then you drive me into doing what I hate to do!” she exclaimed
+fiercely. She was silent for a moment, standing with bowed head, her
+mouth working painfully. Then, drawing herself up, she faced him again.
+There was something in the lithe, swift movement that recalled a panther
+gathering itself together for its spring.
+
+“Listen!” she said. “If you will not find some means of breaking off
+your engagement with Sara, then I shall tell her the whole story--tell
+her what manner of man it is she proposes to make her husband!”
+
+There was a supreme challenge in her tones, and she waited for his
+answer defiantly--her head flung back, her whole body braced, as it
+were, to resistance.
+
+In the silence that followed, Trent drew away from her--slowly,
+repugnantly, as though from something monstrous and unclean.
+
+“You wouldn't--you _couldn't_ do such a thing!” he exclaimed in low,
+appalled tones of unbelief.
+
+“I could!” she asserted, though her face whitened and her eyes flinched
+beneath his contemptuous gaze.
+
+“But it would be a vile thing to do,” he pursued, still with that accent
+of incredulous abhorrence. “Doubly vile for _you_ to do this thing.”
+
+“Do you think I don't know that--don't realize it?” she answered
+desperately. “You can say nothing that could make me think it worse than
+I do already. It would be the basest action of which any woman could
+be guilty. I recognize that. And yet”--she thrust her face, pinched
+and strained-looking, into his--“_and yet I shall do it_. I'd take that
+sin--or any other--on my conscience for the sake of Tim.”
+
+Trent turned away from her with a gesture of defeat, and for a moment or
+two he paced silently backwards and forwards, while she watched him with
+burning eyes.
+
+“Do you realize what it means?” she went on urgently. “You have no way
+out. You can't deny the truth of what I have to tell.”
+
+“No,” he acknowledged harshly. “As you say, I cannot deny it. No one
+knows that better than yourself.”
+
+Suddenly he turned to her, and his face was that of a man in uttermost
+anguish of soul. Beads of moisture rimmed his drawn mouth, and when he
+spoke his voice was husky and uneven.
+
+“Haven't I suffered enough--paid enough?” he burst out passionately.
+“You've had your pound of flesh. For God's sake, be satisfied with that!
+Leave--Garth Trent--to build up what is left of his life in peace!”
+
+The roughened, tortured tones seemed to unnerve her. For a moment she
+hid her face in her hands, shuddering, and when she raised it again the
+tears were running down her cheeks.
+
+“I can't--I can't!” she whispered brokenly. “I wish I could . . . you
+were good to me once. Oh! Maurice, I'm not a bad woman, not a wicked
+woman . . . but I've my son to think of . . . his happiness.” She
+paused, mastering, with an effort, the emotion that threatened to engulf
+her. “Nothing else counts--_nothing_! If you go to the wall, Tim wins.”
+
+“So I'm to pay--first for your happiness, and now, more than twenty
+years later, for your son's. You don't ask--very much--of a man,
+Elisabeth.”
+
+He had himself in hand now. The momentary weakness which had wrenched
+that brief, anguished appeal from his lips was past, and the dry scorn
+of his voice cut like a lash, stinging her into hostility once more.
+
+“I have given you the chance to break with Sara yourself--on any
+pretext you choose to invent,” she said hardly. “You've refused--” She
+hesitated. “You do--still refuse, Maurice?” Again the note of pleading,
+of appeal in her voice. It was as though she begged of him to spare them
+both the consequences of that refusal.
+
+He bowed. “Absolutely.”
+
+She sighed impatiently.
+
+“Then I must take the only other way that remains. You know what that
+will be.”
+
+He stooped, and, picking up her cloak which had fallen to the floor,
+held it for her to put on. He had completely regained his customary
+indifference of manner.
+
+“I think we need not prolong this interview, then,” he said composedly.
+
+Elisabeth drew the cloak around her and moved slowly towards the window.
+Outside, the tranquil moonlight still flooded the garden, the peaceful
+quiet of the night remained all undisturbed by the fierce conflict of
+human wills and passions that had spent itself so uselessly.
+
+“One thing more”--she paused on the threshold as Trent spoke again--“You
+will not blacken the name of--”
+
+“_No_!” It was as though she had struck the unuttered word from his
+lips. “Did you think I should? Those who bear it have suffered enough.
+There's no need to drag it through the mire a second time.”
+
+With a quick movement she drew her cloak more closely about her, and
+stepped out into the garden. For a moment Garth watched her crossing
+the lawns, a slender, upright, swiftly moving shadow. Then a clump of
+bushes, thrusting its wall of darkness into the silver sea of moonlight,
+hid her from his sight, and he turned back into the room. Stumblingly
+he made his way to the chimney-piece, and, resting his arms upon it, hid
+his face.
+
+For a long time he remained thus, motionless, while the grandfather
+clock in the corner ticked away indifferently, and one by one the
+candles guttered down and went out in little pools of grease.
+
+When at last he raised his face, it looked almost ghastly in the
+moonlight, so lined and haggard was it, and its sternly set expression
+was that of a man who had schooled himself to endure the supreme ill
+that destiny may hold in store.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+J'ACCUSE!
+
+“Of course, there could be but one ending to it all. The man to whom
+you have promised yourself--Garth Trent--was court-martialled and
+cashiered.”
+
+As she finished speaking, Elisabeth's hands, which had been tightly
+locked together upon her knee, relaxed and fell stiffly apart, cramped
+with the intensity of their convulsive pressure.
+
+Sara sat silent, staring with unseeing eyes across the familiar bay to
+that house on the cliff where lived the man whose past history--that
+history he had guarded so strenuously and completely from the ears of
+their little world--had just been revealed to her.
+
+Mentally she was envisioning the whole scene of the story which
+hesitatingly--almost unwilling, it seemed--Elisabeth had poured out. She
+could see the lonely fort on the Indian Frontier, sparsely held by its
+indomitable little band of British soldiers, and ringed about on every
+side by the hill tribes who had so suddenly and unexpectedly risen in
+open rebellion. In imagination she could sense the hideous tension as
+day succeeded day and each dawning brought no sign of the longed-for
+relief forces. Indeed, it was not even known if the messengers sent by
+the officer in command had got safely through to the distant garrison to
+deliver his urgent message asking succour. And each evening found
+those who were besieged within the fort with diminished rations, and
+diminished hope, and with one or more dead to mark the enemy's unceasing
+vigilance.
+
+And then had come the mysterious apparent withdrawal of the tribesmen.
+For hours no sign of the enemy had been seen, nor a single fugitive
+shot fired when one or other of the besieged had risked themselves at
+an unguarded aperture, whereas, until that morning, for a man to show
+himself, even for a moment, had been to court almost certain death.
+
+Could the rebels have received word of the approach of a relieving
+force, whispers of a punitive expedition on its way, and so stolen
+stealthily, discreetly away in the silence of the night?
+
+The hearts of the little beleaguered force rose high with hope, but
+again morning drew to evening without bringing sight or sound of
+succour. Only the enemy persisted in that strange, unbroken silence,
+and, at last, a hasty council of war was held within the fort, and
+Garth Trent, together with a handful of men, had been detailed to make a
+reconnaissance.
+
+Sara could picture the little party stealing out on their dangerous
+errand--dangerous, indeed, if the withdrawal of the tribesmen were but
+a bluff, a scheme devised to lull the besieged into a false sense of
+security in order to attack them later at a greater disadvantage. And
+then--the sudden spit of a rifle, a ringing fusillade of shots in the
+dense darkness! The reconnaissance party had run into an ambuscade!
+
+Sara could guess well the frayed nerves, the low vitality of men who
+were short of food, short of sleep, and worn with incessant watching
+night and day. But--Could it be possible that Englishmen had flinched
+at the crucial moment--lost their nerve and fled in wild disorder?
+Englishmen--who held the sacred trust of empire in their hands--to show
+the white feather to a horde of rebel natives! It was inconceivable!
+Sara, reared in the great tradition by that gallant gentleman, Patrick
+Lovell, refused to credit it.
+
+She drew a long, shuddering breath.
+
+“I don't believe it,” she said.
+
+Elisabeth looked at her with a pitying comprehension of the blow she had
+just dealt her.
+
+“I'm afraid,” she said gently, almost deprecatingly, “that there is no
+questioning the finding of the court-martial. Garth must have lost
+his head at the unexpectedness of the attack. And panic is a curious,
+unaccountable kind of thing, you know.”
+
+“I don't believe it,” reiterated Sara stubbornly.
+
+Elisabeth bent forward.
+
+“My dear,” she said, “there is no possibility of doubt. Garth was
+wounded; they brought him in afterwards--_shot in the back_! . . . Oh!
+It was all a horrible business! And the most wretched part of it all was
+that in reality they were only a few stray tribesmen whom our men had
+encountered. Perhaps Garth thought they were outnumbered--I don't know.
+But anyway, coming on the top of all that had gone before, the surprise
+attack in the darkness broke his nerve completely. He didn't even
+attempt to make a stand. He simply gave way. What followed was just a
+headlong scramble as to who could save his skin first! I shall never
+forget Garth's return after--after the court-martial.” She shuddered a
+little at the memory. “I--I was engaged to him at the time, Sara, and I
+had no choice but to break it off. Garth was cashiered--disgraced--done
+for.”
+
+Sara's drooping figure suddenly straightened.
+
+“_You--you_--were engaged to Garth?” she said in a queer, high voice.
+
+“Yes”--simply. “I had promised to marry him.”
+
+Sara was silent for a long moment. Then--
+
+“He never told me,” she muttered. “He never told me.”
+
+“No? It was hardly likely he would, was it? He couldn't tell you that
+without telling you--the rest.”
+
+Sara made no answer. She felt stunned--beaten into helpless silence
+by the quiet, inexorable voice that, bit by bit, minute by minute,
+had drawn aside the veil of ignorance and revealed the dry bones and
+rottenness that lay hidden behind it.
+
+“I don't believe it!” she had cried in a futile effort to convince
+herself by the sheer reiteration of denial. But she _did_ believe it,
+nevertheless. The whole miserable story tallied too accurately with the
+bitterly significant remarks that Garth himself had let fall from time
+to time.
+
+That day of the dog-fight, for instance. What was it he had said? “_A
+certain amount of allowance must be made for nerves_.”
+
+And again: “_I suppose no man can be dead sure of himself--always_.”
+
+The implication was too horribly clear to be evaded.
+
+He had told her, moreover, that he was a man who had made a shipwreck of
+his life, that in a moment of folly--a moment of funk she knew now to be
+the veridical description!--he had flung away the whole chances of
+his life. The man whom she had loved, and, in her love, idealized, had
+proved himself, when the test came, that most despicable of things, a
+coward! The pain of realization was almost unbearable.
+
+Suddenly, across the utter desolation of the moment there shot a single
+ray of hope. She turned triumphantly to Elisabeth.
+
+“But if it were true that Garth--had shown cowardice, why was he not
+shot? They shoot men for cowardice”--grimly.
+
+“There are many excuses to be made for him, Sara,” replied Elisabeth
+gently.
+
+“Excuses! For cowardice!” The low-spoken words were icy with a biting
+contempt. “I'm afraid I could not find them.”
+
+“The court-martial did, nevertheless. At the trial, the 'prisoner's
+friend'--in this instance, Garth's colonel, who was very fond of him
+and had always thought very highly of him--pleaded extenuating
+circumstances. Garth's youth, his previous good record, the conditions
+of the moment--the continuous mental and physical strain of the days
+preceding his sudden loss of nerve--all these things were urged by
+the 'prisoner's friend,' and the sentence was commuted to one of
+cashiering.”
+
+“It would have been better if he had been shot,” said Sara dully. Then
+suddenly she clapped both hands to her mouth. “Ah--h! What am I saying?
+Garth! . . . Garth! . . .”
+
+She stumbled to her feet, her white, ravaged face turned for a moment
+yearningly towards Far End, where it stood bathed in the mocking morning
+sunlight. Then she spun half-round, groping for support, and fell in a
+crumpled heap on the floor.
+
+
+
+When Sara came to herself again, she was lying on the bed in Elisabeth's
+room at the hotel. Some one had drawn the blinds, shutting out the crude
+glare of the sunlight, and in the semi-darkness she could feel soft
+hands about her, bathing her face with something fragrantly cool and
+refreshing. She opened her eyes and looked up to find Elisabeth's face
+bent over her--unspeakably kind and tender, like that of some Madonna
+brooding above her child.
+
+“Are you feeling better?” The sweet, familiar voice roused her to the
+realization of what had happened. It was the same voice that, before
+unconsciousness had wrapped her in its merciful oblivion, had been
+pouring into her ears an unbelievably hideous story--a nightmare tale of
+what had happened at some far distant Indian outpost.
+
+The details of the story seemed to be all jumbled confusedly together in
+Sara's mind, but, as gradually full consciousness returned, they began
+to sort themselves and fall into their rightful places, and all at once,
+with a swift and horrible contraction of her heart, the truth knocked at
+the door of memory.
+
+She struggled up on to her elbow, her eyes frantically appealing.
+
+“Elisabeth, was it true? Was it--all true?”
+
+In an instant Elisabeth's hand closed round hers.
+
+“My dear, you must try and face it. And”--her voice shook a little--“you
+must try and forgive me for telling you. But I couldn't let you marry
+Garth Trent in ignorance, could I?”
+
+“Then it is true? Garth was court-martialled and--and cashiered?” Sara
+sank back against her pillows. Still, deep within her, there flickered
+a faint spark of hope. Against all reason, against all common sense the
+faith that was within her fought against accepting the bitter knowledge
+that Garth was guilty of what was in her eyes the one unpardonable sin.
+
+Unpardonable! The word started a new and overwhelming train of thought.
+She remembered that she had told Garth she did not care what sin he had
+been guilty of, had forced him to believe that nothing could make any
+difference to her love for him, to her willingness to become his wife,
+and share his burden. Yet now, now that the hidden thing in his life
+had been revealed to her, she found herself shrinking from it in utter
+loathing! Her promises of faith and loyalty were already crumbling under
+the strain of her knowledge of the truth.
+
+She flinched from the recognition of the fact, seeking miserably
+to palliate and excuse it. When she had given Garth that impetuous
+assurance of her confidence, she had not, in her crudest imaginings,
+dreamed of anything so hideous and ignoble as the actual truth had
+proved to be. Vaguely, she had deemed him outcast for some big, reckless
+sin that by the splendour of its recklessness almost earned its own
+forgiveness.
+
+And instead--_this_! This drab-hued, pitiful weakness for which she
+could find no pardon in her heart.
+
+Through the turmoil of her thoughts she became conscious that Elisabeth
+was stooping over her, answering her wild incredulous questioning.
+
+“Yes, it is true,” she was saying steadily. “He was court-martialled and
+cashiered. But, if you still doubt it, ask him yourself, Sara.”
+
+Sara's hands clenched themselves. Her eyes were feverishly brilliant in
+her white, shrunken face.
+
+“Yes, I'll ask him myself.” She panted a little. “You must be
+wrong--there must be some horrible mistake somewhere. I've been mad--mad
+to believe it for a single moment.” She slipped from the bed to her
+feet, and stood confronting Elisabeth with a kind of desperate defiance.
+“Do you hear what I say?” she said loudly. “I don't believe it. I will
+never believe it till Garth himself tells me that it is true.”
+
+“Oh, my dear”--Elisabeth shrank away a little, but her eyes were kind
+and infinitely pitying. Sara felt frightened of the pitying kindness in
+those eyes--its rejection of Garth's innocence was so much stronger than
+any asseveration of mere words. Vaguely she heard Elisabeth's patient
+voice: “I think you are right. Ask him yourself--but, Sara, he will not
+be able to deny it.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+RED RUIN
+
+“You sent for me, and I am here.”
+
+The brusque, curt speech sounded a knell to the faint hope which Sara
+had been tending whilst she waited for Garth's coming. His voice, the
+dogged expression of his face, the chill, brief manner, each held its
+grievous message for the woman who had learned to recognize the signs of
+mental stress in the man she loved.
+
+“Yes, I sent for you,” she said. “I--I--Garth, I have seen Elisabeth.”
+
+“Yes?” Just the one brief monosyllable in response, uttered with a
+slightly questioning inflection. Nothing more.
+
+Sara twisted her hands together. There was something unapproachable
+about Garth as he stood there--quiet, inflexible, waiting to hear what
+she had to say to him.
+
+With an effort she began again.
+
+“She has told me of something--something that happened to you, in the
+past.”
+
+“Yes? Quite a great deal happened--in my past. What was it, in
+particular, that she told you?”
+
+The mocking quality in his tones stung her into open accusation.
+
+“She told me that you had been court-martialled and cashiered from the
+Army--for cowardice.” The words came slowly, succinctly.
+
+“Ah--h!” He drew his breath sharply, and a grey shadow seemed to spread
+itself over his face.
+
+Sara waited--waited with an intensity of longing that was well-nigh
+unendurable--for either the indignant denial or the easy, mirthful scorn
+wherewith an innocent man might be expected to answer such a charge.
+
+But there came neither of these. Only silence--an endless, agonizing
+silence, while Garth stood utterly motionless, looking at her, his face
+slowly greying.
+
+It was impossible to interpret the expression of his eyes. There was
+neither anger, nor horror, nor pleading in their cool indomitable stare,
+but only a hard, bright impenetrability, shuttering the soul behind it
+from the aching gaze of the woman who waited.
+
+In that silence, Sara's flickering hope that the accusation might
+prove false went out in blinding darkness. She _knew_, now--knew it as
+certainly as though Garth had answered her--that he was unable to deny
+it. Still, she would brace herself to hear it--to endure the ultimate
+anguish of words.
+
+“Is it true?” she questioned him. “Is it true that you were--cashiered
+for cowardice?”
+
+At last he spoke.
+
+“Yes,” he said. “It is true.” His voice was altogether passionless, but
+something had come into his face, into his whole attitude, which
+denied the calm passivity of his reply. The soul of the man--a soul
+in ineffable extremity of suffering--was struggling for expression,
+striving against the rigid bonds of the motionless body in which his
+iron will constrained it.
+
+Sara could sense it--a tormented flame shut in a casing of steel--and
+she was swept by a torrent of uttermost pity and compassion.
+
+“Garth! Garth! But there must have been some explanation! . . . You
+weren't in your right senses at the moment. Ah! Tell me----” She broke
+off, her voice failing her, her arms outflung in a passion of entreaty.
+
+As she leaned towards him, a tremor seemed to run through his entire
+body--the tremor of leaping muscles straining against the leash. His
+hands clenched slowly, the nails biting into the bruised flesh. Then
+he spoke, and his voice was ringing and assured--arrogantly so. The
+tortured soul within him had been beaten back once more into its
+prison-house.
+
+“I was quite in my right senses--that night on the Frontier--never more
+so, believe me”--and his lips twisted in a curious, enigmatical smile.
+“And as far as explanations--excuses--are concerned, the court-martial
+made all that were possible. I--I was not shot, you see!”
+
+There was something outrageous in the open derision of the last words.
+He flung them at her--as though taunting, gibing at the impulse to
+compassion which had swayed her, sending her tremulously towards him
+with imploring, outstretched hands.
+
+“The quality of mercy was not strained in the least,” he continued. “It
+fell around me like the proverbial gentle rain. I've quite a lot to be
+thankful for, don't you think?”--brutally.
+
+“I--I don't know what to think!” she burst out. “That you--_you_ should
+fall so low--so shamefully low.”
+
+“A man will do a good deal to preserve a whole skin, you know,” he
+suggested hardily.
+
+“Why do you speak like that?” she demanded in sharpened tones. “Do you
+want me to think worse of you than I do already?”
+
+He took a step towards her and stood looking down at her with those
+bright, hard eyes.
+
+“Yes, I do,” he said decidedly. “I want you to think as badly of me as
+you possibly can. I want you to realize just what sort of a blackguard
+you had promised to marry, and when you've got that really clear in
+your mind, you'll be able to forget all about me and marry some cheerful
+young fool who hasn't been kicked out of the Army.”
+
+“As long as I live I shall never--be able--to forget that I loved--a
+coward.” The words came haltingly from her lips. Then suddenly her
+shaking hands went up to her face, as though to shut him from her sight,
+and a dry, choking sob tore its way through her throat.
+
+He made a swift stride towards her, then checked himself and stood
+motionless once more, in the utter quiescence of deliberately arrested
+movement. Only his hands, hanging stiffly at his sides, opened and shut
+convulsively, and his eyes should have been hidden. God never meant any
+man's eyes to wear that look of unspeakable torment.
+
+When at last Sara withdrew her hands and looked at him again, his face
+was set like a mask, the lips drawn back a little from the teeth in a
+way that suggested a dumb animal in pain. But she was so hurt herself
+that she failed to recognize his infinitely greater hurt.
+
+“I think--I think I hate you,” she whispered.
+
+His taut muscles seemed to relax.
+
+“I hope you do,” he said steadily. “It will be better so.”
+
+Something in the quiet acceptance of his tone moved her to a softer,
+more wistful emotion.
+
+“If it had been anything--anything but that, Garth, I think I could have
+borne it.”
+
+There was a depth of appeal in the low-spoken words. But he ignored it,
+opposing a reckless indifference to her softened mood.
+
+“Then it's just as well it wasn't 'anything but that.'
+Otherwise”--sardonically--“you might have felt constrained to abide by
+your rash promise to marry me.”
+
+His eyes flashed over her face, mocking, deriding. He had struck where
+she was most vulnerable, accusing where her innate honesty of soul
+admitted she had no defence, and she winced away from the speech almost
+as though it had been a blow upon her body.
+
+It was true she had given her promise blindly, in ignorance of the
+facts, but that could not absolve her. It was not Garth who had forced
+the promise from her. It was she who had impetuously offered it, never
+conceiving such a possibility as that he might be guilty of the one sin
+for which, in her eyes, there could be no palliation.
+
+“I know,” she said unevenly. “I know. You have the right to remind me of
+my promise. I--I blame myself. It's horrible--to break one's word.”
+
+She was silent a moment, standing with bent head, her instinct to be
+fair, to play the game, combating the revulsion of feeling with which
+the knowledge of Garth's act of cowardice had filled her. When she
+looked up again there was a curious intensity in her expression, wanly
+decisive.
+
+“Marriage for us--now--could never mean anything but misery.” The effort
+in her voice was palpable. It was as though she were forcing herself
+to utter words from which her inmost being recoiled. “But I gave you my
+promise, and if--if you choose to hold me to it--”
+
+“I don't choose!” He broke in harshly. “You may spare yourself any
+anxiety on that score. You are free--as free as though we had never met.
+I'm quite ready to bow to your decision that I'm not fit to marry you.”
+
+A little caught breath of unutterable relief fluttered between her lips.
+If he heard it, he made no sign.
+
+“And now”--he turned as though to leave her--“I think that's all that
+need be said between us.”
+
+“It is not all”--in a low voice.
+
+“What? Is there more still?” Again his voice held an insolent irony that
+lashed her like a whip. “Haven't you yet plumbed the full depths of my
+iniquity?”
+
+“No. There is still one further thing. You said you loved me?”
+
+“I did--I do still, if such as I may aspire to so lofty an emotion.”
+
+“It was a lie. Even”--her voice broke--“even in that you deceived me.”
+
+It seemed as though the tremulously uttered words pierced through his
+armour of sneering cynicism.
+
+“No, in that, at least, I was honest with you.” The bitter note of
+mockery that had rung through all his former speech was suddenly
+absent--muted, crushed out, and the quiet, steadfast utterance carried
+conviction even in Sara's reeling faith, shaking her to the very soul.
+
+“But . . . Elisabeth? . . . You loved her once. And love--can't die,
+Garth.”
+
+“No,” he said gravely. “Love can't die. But what I felt for Elisabeth
+was not love--not love as you and I understand it. It was the mad
+passion of a boy for an extraordinarily beautiful woman. She was an
+ideal--I invested her with all the qualities and spiritual graces that
+her beauty seemed to promise. But the Elisabeth I loved--didn't exist.”
+ He drew nearer her and, laying his hands on her shoulders, looked down
+at her with eyes that seemed to burn their way into the inmost depths of
+her being. “Whatever you may think of me, however low I may have fallen
+in your sight, believe me in this--that I have loved you and shall
+always love you, utterly and entirely, with my whole soul and body. It
+has not been an easy love--I fought against it with all my strength,
+knowing that it could only carry pain and suffering in its train for
+both of us. But it conquered me. And when you came to me that day,
+so courageously, holding out your hands, claiming the love that was
+unalterably yours--when you came to me like that, a little hurt and
+wounded because I had been so slow to speak my love--I yielded! Before
+God, Sara! I had been either more or less than a man had I resisted!”
+
+The grip of his hands upon her shoulders tightened until it was actual
+pain, and she winced under it, shrinking away from him. He released
+her instantly, and she stood silently beside him, battling against the
+longing to respond to that deep, abiding love which neither now, nor
+ever again in life, would she be able to doubt.
+
+That Garth loved her, wholly and completely, was an incontrovertible
+fact. She no longer felt the least lingering mistrust, nor even any
+prick of jealousy that he had once loved before. That boyish passion of
+the senses for Elisabeth was not comparable with this love which was the
+maturer growth of his manhood--a love that could only know fulfillment
+in the mystic union of body, soul, and spirit.
+
+But this merely served to deepen the poignancy of the impending
+parting--for that she and Garth must part she recognized as inevitable.
+
+Loving each other as men and women love but once in a lifetime, their
+love was destined to be for ever unconsummated. They were as irrevocably
+divided as though the seas of the entire world ran between them.
+
+Wearily, in the flat, level tones of one who realizes that all hope is
+at an end, she stumbled through the few broken phrases which cancelled
+the whole happiness of life.
+
+“It all seems so useless, doesn't it--your love and mine? . . . You've
+killed something that I felt for you--I don't quite know what to call
+it--respect, I suppose, only that sounds silly, because it was much more
+than that. I wish--I wish I didn't love you still. But perhaps that,
+too, will die in time. You see, you're not the man I thought I cared
+for. You're--you're something I'm _ashamed_ to love--”
+
+“That's enough!” he interrupted unsteadily. “Leave it at that. You won't
+beat it if you try till doomsday.”
+
+The pain in his voice pierced her to the heart, and she made an
+impulsive step towards him, shocked into quick remorse.
+
+“Garth . . . I didn't mean it!”
+
+“Oh yes, you meant it,” he said. “Don't imagine that I'm blaming you.
+I'm not. You've found me out, that's all. And having discovered exactly
+how contemptible a person I am, you--very properly--send me away.”
+
+He turned on his heel, giving her no time to reply, and a moment later
+she was alone. Then came the clang of the house door as it closed
+behind him. To Sara, it sounded like the closing of a door between two
+worlds--between the glowing past and the grey and empty future.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+DIVERS OPINIONS
+
+The consternation created at Sunnyside by the breaking off of Sara's
+engagement had spent itself at last. Selwyn had said but little, only
+his saint's eyes held the wondering, hurt look that the inexplicable
+sins of humanity always had the power to bring into them.
+Characteristically, he hated the sin but overflowed in sympathy for the
+sinner.
+
+“Poor devil!” he said, when the whole story of Trent's transgression and
+its consequences had been revealed to him. “What a ghastly stone to hang
+round a man's neck for the term of his natural life! If they'd shot him,
+it would have been more merciful! That would at least have limited the
+suffering,” he went on, taking Sara's hand and holding it in his strong,
+kindly one a moment. “Poor little comrade! Oh, my dear”--as she shrank
+instinctively--“I'm not going to talk about it--I know you'd rather not.
+Condolence platitudes were never in my line. But my pal's troubles are
+mine--just as she once made mine hers.”
+
+Jane Crab's opinions were enunciated without fear or favour, and, in
+defiance of public opinion, she took her stand on the side of the sinner
+and maintained it unwaveringly.
+
+“Well, Miss Sara,” she affirmed, “unless you've proof as strong as 'Oly
+Writ, as they say, I'd believe naught against Mr. Trent. Bluff and 'ard
+he may be in 'is manner, but after the way he conducted himself the
+night Miss Molly ran away, I'll never think no ill of 'im, not if it was
+ever so!”
+
+Sara smiled drearily.
+
+“I wish I could feel as you do, Jane dear. But--Mrs. Durward _knows_.”
+
+“Mrs. Durward! Huh! One of them tigris women I calls 'er,” retorted
+Jane, who had formed her opinion with lightning rapidity when Elisabeth
+made a farewell visit to Sunnyside before leaving Monkshaven. “Not
+but what you can't help liking her, neither,” went on Jane judicially.
+“There's something good in the woman, for all she looks at you like
+a cat who thinks you're after stealing her kittens. But there! As the
+doctor--bless the man!--always says, there's good in everybody if so be
+you'll look for it. Only I'd as lief think that Mrs. Durward was somehow
+scared-like--too almighty scared to be her natchral self, savin' now and
+again when she forgets.”
+
+To Mrs. Selwyn, the breaking off of Sara's engagement, and the manner
+of it, signified very little. She watched the panorama of other people's
+lives unfold with considerably less sympathetic concern than that with
+which one follows the ups and downs that befall the characters in a
+cinema drama, since they were altogether outside the radius of that
+central topic of unfailing interest--herself.
+
+The only way in which recent events impinged upon her life was in so far
+as the rupture of Sara's engagement would probably mean the indefinite
+prolongation of her stay at Sunnyside, which would otherwise have ended
+with her marriage. And this, from Mrs. Selwyn's egotistical point of
+view, was all to the good, since Sara had acquired a pleasant habit of
+making herself both useful and entertaining to the invalid.
+
+Molly's emotions carried her to the other extreme of the compass. Since
+the night when she had realized that she had narrowly missed making
+entire shipwreck of her life, thanks to the evil genius of Lester Kent,
+her character seemed to have undergone a change--to have deepened and
+expanded. She was no longer so buoyantly superficial in her envisagement
+of life, and the big things reacted on her in a way which would
+previously have been impossible. Formerly, their significance would have
+passed her by, and she would have floated airily along, unconscious of
+their piercing reality.
+
+Side by side with this increase of vision, there had developed a very
+deep and sincere affection for both Garth and Sara based, probably, in
+its inception, on her realization that whatever of good, whatever of
+happiness, life might hold for her, she would owe it fundamentally to
+the two who had so determinedly kept her heedless feet from straying
+into that desert from which there is no returning to the pleasant paths
+of righteousness. A censorious world sees carefully to that, for ever
+barring out the sinner--of the weaker sex--from inheriting the earth.
+
+So that to this new and awakened Molly the abrupt termination of Sara's
+engagement came as something almost too overwhelming to be borne.
+She did not see how Sara _could_ bear it, and to her youthful mind,
+mercifully unwitting that grief is one of the world's commonplaces, Sara
+was henceforth haloed with sorrow, set specially apart by the tragic
+circumstances which had enveloped her. Unconsciously she lowered her
+voice when speaking to her, infusing a certain specific sympathy into
+every small action she performed for her, shrank from troubling her in
+any way, and altogether, in her youth and inexperience, behaved rather
+as though she were in a house of mourning, where the candles yet burned
+in the chamber of death and the blinds shut out the light of day.
+
+At last Sara rebelled, although compassionately aware of Molly's
+excellent intentions.
+
+“Molly, my angel, if you persist in treating me as though I had just
+lost the whole of my relatives in an earthquake or a wreck at sea, I
+shall explode. I've had a bad knock, but I don't want it continually
+rubbing into me. The world will go on--even although my engagement is
+broken off. And _I'm_ going on.”
+
+It was bravely spoken, and though Sara was inwardly conscious that in
+the last words the spirit, for the moment, outdistanced the flesh, it
+served to dissipate the rather strained atmosphere which had prevailed
+at Sunnyside since the rupture of her engagement had become common
+knowledge.
+
+So, figuratively speaking, the blinds were drawn up and life resumed its
+normal aspect once again.
+
+
+
+It had fallen to the lot of Audrey Maynard to carry the ill-tidings to
+Rose Cottage. Sara had asked her to acquaint their little circle with
+the altered condition of affairs, and Audrey had readily undertaken to
+perform this service, eager to do anything that might spare Sara some of
+the inevitable pinpricks which attend even the big tragedies of life.
+
+“The whole affair is incomprehensible to me,” said Audrey at last, as
+she rose preparatory to taking her departure. There seemed no object
+in lingering to discuss so painful a topic. “It's--oh! It's
+heart-breaking.”
+
+Miss Livinia departed hastily to do a little weep in the seclusion of
+her room upstairs. She hardly concerned herself with the enormity of
+Garth's offence. She was old, and she saw only romance shattered into
+fragments, youth despoiled of its heritage, love crucified. Moreover,
+the Lavender Lady had never been censorious.
+
+“What is your opinion, Miles?” asked Audrey, when she had left the room.
+
+Herrick had been rather silent, his brown eyes meditative. Now he looked
+up quickly.
+
+“About the funking part of it? As I wasn't on the spot when the affair
+took place, I haven't the least right to venture an opinion.”
+
+Audrey looked puzzled.
+
+“I don't see why not. You can't get behind the verdict of the
+court-martial.”
+
+“Trials have been known where justice went awry,” said Miles quietly.
+“There was a trial where Pilate was judge.”
+
+“Do you mean to say you doubt the verdict?”--eagerly.
+
+“No, I was not meaning quite that in this case. But, because the law
+says a man is a blackguard, when I'd stake my life he's nothing of the
+kind, it doesn't alter my opinion one hair's-breadth. The verdict may
+have been--probably, almost certainly, _was_--the only verdict that
+could be given to meet the facts of the case. But still, it is possible
+that it was not a just verdict--labelling as a coward for all time a man
+who may have had one bad moment when his nerves played him false. There
+are other men who have had their moment of funk, but, as the matter
+never came under the official eyes, they have made good since--ended up
+as V.C.'s, some of 'em. Facts are often very foolish things, to my mind.
+Motives, and circumstances, even conditions of physical health, are
+bound to play as big a part as facts, if you're going to administer
+pure justice. But the army can't consider the super-administration of
+justice”--smiling. “Discipline must be maintained and examples made.
+Only--sometimes--it's damn bad luck on the example.”
+
+It was an unusually long speech for Miles to have been guilty of, and
+Audrey stood looking at him in some surprise.
+
+“Miles, you're rather a dear, you know. I believe you're almost as
+strongly on Garth's side as Jane Crab.”
+
+“Is Jane?” And Herrick smiled. “She's a good old sport then. Anyhow,
+I don't propose to add my quota to the bill Trent's got to pay, poor
+devil!”
+
+Audrey's face softened as she turned to go.
+
+“One can't help feeling pitifully sorry for him,” she admitted. “To have
+had Sara--and then to have lost her!”
+
+There was a whimsical light in Herrick's eyes as he answered her.
+
+“But, at least,” he said, “he _has_ had her, if only for a few days.”
+
+Audrey paused with her hand upon the latch of the door.
+
+“I imagine Garth--asked for what he wanted!” she observed, and vanished
+precipitately through the doorway.
+
+“Audrey!” Miles started up, but, by the time he reached the house door,
+she was already disappearing through the gateway into the road and
+beyond pursuit.
+
+“She must have _run_!” he commented ruefully to himself as he returned
+to the sitting-room.
+
+This discovery seemed to afford him food for reflection. For a long time
+he sat very quietly in his chair, apparently arguing out with himself
+some knotty point.
+
+Nor had his thoughts, at the moment, any connection with the recent
+discussion of Garth Trent's affairs. It was only after the Lavender Lady
+had returned, a little pink about the eyelids, that the recollection of
+the original object of Mrs. Maynard's visit recurred to him.
+
+Simultaneously, his brows drew together in a sudden concentration of
+thought, and an inarticulate exclamation escaped him.
+
+Miss Livinia looked up from the delicate piece of cobwebby lace she was
+finishing.
+
+“What did you say, dear?” she asked absently.
+
+“I didn't say anything,” he smiled back at her. “I was thinking rather
+hard, that's all, and just remembered something I had forgotten.”
+
+The Lavender Lady looked a trifle mystified.
+
+“I don't think I quite understand, Miles dear.”
+
+Herrick, on his way to the door, stooped to kiss her.
+
+“Neither do I, Lavender Lady. That's just the devil of it,” he answered
+cryptically.
+
+He passed out of the room and upstairs, presently returning with a
+couple of letters, held together by an elastic band, in his hand.
+
+They smelt musty as he unfolded them; evidently they had not seen the
+light of day for a good many years. But Miles seemed to find them of
+extraordinary interest, for he subjected the closely written sheets to
+a first, and second, and even a third perusal. Then he replaced the
+elastic band round them and shut them away in a drawer, locking the
+latter carefully.
+
+
+
+A couple of days later, Garth Trent received a note from Herrick, asking
+him to come and see him.
+
+“You haven't been near us for days,” it ran. “Remember Mahomet and the
+mountain, and as I can't come to you, look me up.”
+
+The letter, in its quiet avoidance of any reference to recent events,
+was like cooling rain falling upon a parched and thirsty earth.
+
+Since the history of the court-martial had become common property, Garth
+had been through hell. It was extraordinary how quickly the story had
+leaked out, passing from mouth to mouth until there was hardly a
+cottage in Monkshaven that was not in possession of it, with lurid and
+fictitious detail added thereto.
+
+The chambermaid at the Cliff Hotel had been the primary source of
+information. From the further side of the connecting-door of an
+adjoining room, she had listened with interest to the conversation which
+had taken place between Elisabeth and Sara on the day following the
+Haven Woods picnic, and had proceeded to circulate the news with the
+avidity of her class. Nor had certain gossipy members of the picnic
+party refrained from canvassing threadbare the significance of the
+unfortunate scene which had taken place on that occasion--contributory
+evidence to the truth of the chambermaid's account of what she had
+overheard.
+
+The whole town hummed with the tale, and Garth had not long been allowed
+to remain in ignorance of the fact. Anonymous letters reached him almost
+daily--for it must be remembered that ten years of an aloof existence
+at Monkshaven had not endeared him to his neighbours. They had resented
+what they chose to consider his exclusiveness, and, now that it was so
+humiliatingly explained, the meaner spirits amongst them took this way
+of paying off old scores.
+
+It was suggested by one of the anonymous writers that Trent's continued
+presence in the district was felt to be a blot on the fair fame of
+Monkshaven; and, by another, that should the rumours now flying hither
+and thither concerning the imminence of a European war materialize into
+fact, the French Foreign Legion offered opportunities for such as he.
+
+Garth tore the letters into fragments, pitching them contemptuously into
+the waste-paper basket; but, nevertheless, they were like so many gnats
+buzzing about an open wound, adding to its torture.
+
+Black Brady, with a lively recollection of the few days in gaol which
+Trent had procured him in recompense for his poaching proclivities, was
+loud in his denunciation.
+
+“Retreated, they calls it,” he observed, with fine scorn. “Runned away's
+the plain English of it.”
+
+And with this pronouncement all the loafers round the hotel garage
+cordially agreed, and, subsequently, black looks and muttered comments
+followed Garth's appearance in the streets.
+
+To all of which Garth opposed a stony indifference--since, after all,
+these lesser things were of infinitely small moment to a man whose whole
+life was lying in ruins about him.
+
+“It was good of you to ask me over,” he told Herrick, as they shook
+hands. “Sure you're not afraid of contamination?”
+
+“Quite sure,” replied Miles, smiling serenely. “Besides, I had a
+particular reason for wishing to see you.”
+
+“What was that?”
+
+Miles unlocked the drawer where he had laid aside the papers he had
+perused with so much interest two days ago, and, slipping them out of
+the elastic bands that held them, handed them to Trent.
+
+“I'd like you to read those documents, if you will,” he said.
+
+There was a short silence while Trent's eyes travelled swiftly down
+the closely written sheets. When he looked up from their perusal his
+expression was perfectly blank. Miles could glean nothing from it.
+
+“Well?” he said tentatively.
+
+Garth quietly tendered him back the letters.
+
+“You shouldn't believe everything you hear, Herrick,” was all he
+vouchsafed.
+
+“Then it isn't true?” asked Miles searchingly.
+
+“It sounds improbable,” replied Trent composedly.
+
+Miles reflected a moment. Then, slowly replacing the papers within the
+elastic band, he remarked--
+
+“I think I'll take Sara's opinion.”
+
+If he had desired to break down the other's guard of indifference, he
+succeeded beyond his wildest expectations.
+
+Trent sprang to his feet, his hand outstretched as though to snatch the
+letters back again. His eyes blazed excitedly.
+
+“No! No! You mustn't do that--you can't do that! It's----Oh! You won't
+understand--but those papers must be destroyed.”
+
+Herrick's fingers closed firmly round the papers in question, and he
+slipped them into the inside pocket of his coat.
+
+“They certainly will not be destroyed,” he replied. “I hold them in
+trust. But, tell me, why should I _not_ show them to Sara? It seems to
+me the one obvious thing to do.”
+
+Trent shook his head.
+
+“No. Believe me, it could do no good, and it might do an infinity of
+harm.”
+
+Herrick looked incredulous.
+
+“I can't see that,” he objected.
+
+“It is so, nevertheless.”
+
+A silence fell between them.
+
+“Then you mean,” said Herrick, breaking it at last, “that I'm to hold my
+tongue?”
+
+“Just that.”
+
+“It is very unfair.”
+
+“And if you published that information abroad, it's unfair to Tim. Have
+you thought of that? He, at least, is perfectly innocent.”
+
+“But, man, it's inconceivable--grotesque!”
+
+“Not at all. I gave Elisabeth Durward my promise, and she has married
+and borne a son, trusting to that promise. My lips are closed--now and
+always.”
+
+“But mine are not.”
+
+“They will be, Miles, if I ask it. Don't you see, there's no going back
+for me now? I can't wipe out the past. I made a bad mistake--a mistake
+many a youngster similarly circumstanced might have made. And I've been
+paying for it ever since. I must go on paying to the end--it's my honour
+that's involved. That's why I ask you not to show those letters.”
+
+Miles looked unconvinced.
+
+“I forged my own fetters, Herrick,” continued Trent. “In a way, I'm
+responsible for Tim Durward's existence and I can't damn his chances
+at the outset. After all, he's at the beginning of things. I'm getting
+towards the end. At least”--wearily--“I hope so.”
+
+Herrick's quick glance took in the immense alteration the last few days
+had wrought in Trent's appearance. The man had aged visibly, and his
+face was worn and lined, the eyes burning feverishly in their sockets.
+
+“You're good for another thirty or forty years, bar accidents,” said
+Herrick at last, deliberately. “Are you going to make those years worse
+than worthless to you by this crazy decision?”
+
+“I've no alternative. Good Lord, man!”--with savage irritability--“you
+don't suppose I'm enjoying it, do you? But I've _no way out_. I took
+a certain responsibility on myself--and I must see it through. I can't
+shirk it now, just because pay-day's come. I can do nothing except stick
+it out.”
+
+“And what about Sara?” said Herrick quietly. “Has she no claim to be
+considered?”
+
+He almost flinched from the look of measureless anguish that leapt into
+the others man's eyes in response.
+
+“For God's sake, man, leave Sara out of it!” Garth exclaimed thickly.
+“I've cursed myself enough for the suffering I've brought on her. I was
+a mad fool to let her know I cared. But I thought, as Garth Trent, that
+I had shut the door on the past. I ought to have known that the door of
+the past remains eternally ajar.”
+
+Miles nodded understandingly.
+
+“I don't think you were to blame,” he said. “It's Mrs. Durward who has
+pulled the door wide open. She's stolen your new life from you--the life
+you had built up. Trent, you owe that woman nothing! Let me show this
+letter, and the other that goes with it, to Sara!”
+
+Trent shook his head in mute refusal.
+
+“I can't,” he said at last. “Elisabeth must be forgiven. The best woman
+in the world may lose all sense of right and wrong when it's a question
+of her child. But, even so, I can't consent to the making public of that
+letter.” He rose and paced the room restlessly. “Man! Man!” he cried at
+last, coming to a halt in front of Herrick. “Can't you see--that woman
+trusted me with her whole life, and with the life of any child that she
+might bear, when she married on the strength of my promise. And I
+must keep faith with her. It's the one poor rag of honour left me,
+Herrick!”--with intense bitterness.
+
+There was a long silence. Then, at last, Miles held out his hand.
+
+“You've beaten me,” he said sadly. “I won't destroy the letters. As
+I said, they are a trust. But the secret is safe with me, after this.
+You've tied my hands.”
+
+Trent smiled grimly.
+
+“You'll get used to it,” he commented. “Mine have been tied for
+three-and-twenty years--though even yet I don't wear my bonds with
+grace, precisely.”
+
+He had become once more the hermit of old acquaintance--sardonic, harsh,
+his emotions hidden beneath that curt indifference of manner with which
+those who knew him were painfully familiar.
+
+The two men shook hands in silence, and a few minutes later, Herrick,
+left alone, replaced the letters in the drawer whence he had taken them,
+and, turning the key upon them, slipped it into his pocket.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+DEFEAT
+
+In remote country districts that memorable Fourth of August, when
+England declared war on Germany, came and went unostentatiously.
+
+People read the news a trifle breathlessly, reflected with a sigh of
+contentment on the invincible British Navy, and with a little gust
+of prideful triumph upon the Expeditionary force--ready to the last
+burnished button of each man's tunic--and proceeded quietly with their
+usual avocations.
+
+Then came the soaring Bank Rate, and business men on holiday raced back
+to London to contend with the new financial conditions and assure their
+credit. That was all that happened--at first.
+
+Few foresaw that the gaunt, grim Spectre of War had come to dwell in
+their very midst, nor that soon he would pass from house to house,
+palace and cottage alike, touching first this man, then that, on the
+shoulder, with the single word “Come!” on his lips, until gradually the
+nations, one by one, left their tasks of peace and rose and followed
+him.
+
+Monkshaven, in common with other seaside towns, witnessed the sudden
+exodus of City men when the climbing Bank Rate sounded its alarm.
+Beyond that, the war, for the moment, reacted very little on its daily
+processes of life. There was no disorganization of amusements--tennis,
+boating, and bathing went on much as usual, and clever people, proud
+of their ability to add two and two together and make four of them,
+announced that it was all explained now why certain young officers in
+the neighbourhood had been hurriedly recalled a few days previously, and
+their leave cancelled.
+
+Then came the black news of that long, desperate retreat from Mons,
+shaking the nation to its very soul, and in the wave of high courage and
+endeavour that swept responsively across the country, the smaller things
+began to fall into their little place.
+
+To Sara, stricken by her own individual sorrow, the war came like a
+rushing, mighty wind, rousing her from the brooding, introspective habit
+which had laid hold of her and bracing her to take a fresh grip upon
+life. Its immense demands, the illimitable suffering it carried in its
+train, lifted her out of the contemplation of her own personal grief
+into a veritable passion of pity for the world agony beating up around
+her.
+
+And, with Sara, to compassionate meant to succour. Nor did it require
+more than the first few weeks of war to demonstrate where such help as
+she was capable of giving was most sorely needed.
+
+She had been through a course of First Aid and held her certificate,
+and, thanks to a year in France when she was seventeen--a much-grudged
+year, at the time, since it had separated her from her beloved
+Patrick--and to a natural facility for the language, inherited from her
+French forbears, she spoke French almost as fluently as she did English.
+
+In France they were crying out for nurses, for at that period of the war
+there was work for any woman who had even a little knowledge plus the
+grit to face the horrors of those early days, and it was to France that
+Sara forthwith determined to go.
+
+She had heard that an old friend of Patrick Lovell's, Lady Arronby by
+name, proposed equipping and taking over to France a party of nurses,
+and she promptly wrote to her, begging that she might be included in the
+little company.
+
+Lady Arronby, who had been a sister at a London hospital before her
+marriage, recollected her old friend's ward very clearly. Sara rarely
+failed to make a definite impression, even upon people who only knew her
+slightly, and Lady Arronby, who had known her from her earliest days at
+Barrow, answered her letter without hesitation.
+
+“I shall be delighted to have you with me,” she had written. “Even
+though you are not a trained nurse, there's work out there for women of
+your caliber, my dear. So come. It will be a week or two yet before we
+have all our equipment, but I am pushing things on as fast as I can, so
+hold yourself in readiness to come at a day's notice.”
+
+Meanwhile, Sara's earliest personal encounter with the reality of the
+war came in a few hurried lines from Elisabeth telling her that Major
+Durward had rejoined the Army and would be going out to France almost
+immediately.
+
+Sara thrilled, and with the thrill came the answering stab of the sword
+that was to pierce her again and again through the long months ahead.
+Garth Trent--the man she loved--could have no part nor lot in this
+splendid service of England's sons for England! The country wanted brave
+men now--not men who faltered when faltering meant failure and defeat.
+
+She had not seen Garth since that day--a million years ago it
+seemed--when she had sent him from her, and he had gone, admitting the
+justice of her decision.
+
+There was no getting behind that. She would have defied Elisabeth,
+defied a whole world of slanderous tongues, had they accused him, if he
+himself had denied the charge. But he had not been able to deny it. It
+was true--a deadly, official truth, tabulated somewhere in the records
+of her country, that the man she loved had been cashiered for cowardice.
+
+The knowledge almost crushed her, and she sometimes wondered if there
+could be a keener suffering, in the whole gamut of human pain, than that
+which a woman bears whose high pride in her lover has been laid utterly
+in the dust.
+
+The dread of danger, separation--even death itself--were not comparable
+with it. Sara envied the women whose men were killed in action. At
+least, they had a splendid memory to hold which nothing could ever soil
+or take away.
+
+Sometimes her thoughts wandered fugitively to Tim. Surely here was his
+chance to break from the bondage his mother had imposed upon him! He had
+not written to her of late, but she felt convinced that she would have
+heard from Elisabeth had he volunteered. She was a little puzzled over
+his silence and inaction. He had seemed so keen last winter at Barrow,
+when together they had discussed this very subject of soldiering. Could
+it be that now, when the opportunity offered, Tim was--evading it? But
+the thought was dismissed almost as swiftly as it had arisen, and Sara
+blushed scarlet with shame that the bare suspicions should have crossed
+her mind, even for an instant, recognizing it as the outcrop of that
+bitter knowledge which had cut at the very roots of her belief in men's
+courage.
+
+And there were men around her whose readiness to make the great
+sacrifice combated the poison of one man's failure. Daily she heard of
+this or that man whom she knew, either personally or by name, having
+volunteered and been accepted, and very often she had to listen to Miles
+Herrick's fierce rebellion against the fact that he was ineligible, and
+endeavour to console him.
+
+But it was Audrey Maynard who plumbed the full depths of bitterness
+in Herrick's heart. She had been teaching him to knit, and he was
+floundering through the intricacies of turning his first heel when one
+day he surprised her by hurling the sock, needles and all, to the other
+end of the room.
+
+“There's work for a man when his country's at war! My God! Audrey,
+I don't know how I'm going to bear it--to lie here on my couch,
+knitting--_knitting!_--when men are out there dying! Why won't they take
+a lame man? Can't a lame man fire a gun--and then die like the rest of
+'em?”
+
+Audrey looked at him pitifully.
+
+“My dear, war takes only the best--the youngest and the fittest. But
+there's plenty of work for the women and men at home.”
+
+“For the women and crocks?” countered Miles bitterly.
+
+She smiled at him suddenly.
+
+“Yes--for the crocks, too.”
+
+He shook his head.
+
+“No, Audrey, I'm an utterly useless person--a cumberer of the ground.”
+
+“Not in my eyes, Miles,” she answered quietly.
+
+He met her glance, and read, at last, what--as she told him later--he
+might have read there any time during the last six months, had he chosen
+to look for it.
+
+“Do you mean that, Audrey?” he asked, suddenly gripping her hands hard.
+“All of it--all that it implies?”
+
+She slipped to her knees beside his couch.
+
+“Oh, my dear!” she said, between laughing and crying. “I've been meaning
+it--'all of it'--for ever so long. Only--only you won't ask me to marry
+you!”
+
+“How can I? A lame man, and not even a rich one?”
+
+“I believe,” said Audrey composedly, “we've argued both those points
+before--from a strictly impersonal point of view! Couldn't you--couldn't
+you get over your objection to coming to live with me at Greenacres,
+dear?”
+
+Audrey always declared, afterwards, that it had required the most
+blatant encouragement on her part to induce Miles to propose to her, and
+that, but for the war--which convinced him that he was of no use to any
+one else--he never would have done so.
+
+Presumably she was able to supply the requisite stimulus, for when the
+Lavender Lady joined them later on in the afternoon, she found herself
+called upon to perform that function of sheer delight to every old maid
+of the right sort--namely, to bestow her blessing on a pair of newly
+betrothed lovers.
+
+Sara received the news the next morning, and though naturally, by
+contrast, it seemed to add a keener edge to her own grief, she was still
+able to rejoice whole-heartedly over this little harvesting of joy which
+her two friends had snatched from amid the world's dreadful harvesting
+of pain and sorrow.
+
+By the same post as the radiant letters from Miles and Audrey came one
+from Elisabeth Durward. She wrote distractedly.
+
+“Tim is determined to volunteer,” ran her letter. “I can't let him go,
+Sara. He is my only son, and I don't see why he should be claimed from
+me by this horrible war. I have persuaded him to wait until he has seen
+you. That is all he will consent to. So will you come and do what you
+can to dissuade him? There is a cord by which you could hold him if you
+would.”
+
+A transient smile crossed Sara's face as she pictured Tim gravely
+consenting to await her opinion on the matter. He knew--none
+better!--what it would be, and, without doubt, he had merely agreed to
+the suggestion in the hope that her presence might ease the strain and
+serve to comfort his mother a little.
+
+Sara telegraphed that she would come to Barrow Court the following day,
+and, on her arrival, found Tim waiting for her at the station in his
+two-seater.
+
+“Well,” he said with a grin, as the little car slid away along the
+familiar road. “Have you come to persuade me to be a good boy and stay
+at home, Sara?”
+
+“You know I've not,” she replied, smiling. “I'm gong to talk sense to
+Elisabeth. Oh! Tim boy, how I envy you! It's splendid to be a man these
+days.”
+
+He nodded silently, but she could read in his expression the tranquil
+satisfaction that his decision had brought. She had seen the same look
+on other men's faces, when, after a long struggle with the woman-love
+that could not help but long to hold them back, the final decision had
+been taken.
+
+Arrived at the lodge gates, Tim handed over the car to the chauffeur who
+met them there, evidently by arrangement.
+
+“I thought we'd walk across the park,” he suggested.
+
+Sara acquiesced delightedly. There was a tender, reminiscent pleasure
+in strolling along the winding paths that had once been so happily
+familiar, and, hardly conscious of the sudden silence which had fallen
+upon her companion, her thoughts slipped back to the old days at Barrow
+when she had wandered, with Patrick beside her in his wheeled chair,
+along these selfsame paths.
+
+With a little thrill, half pain, half pleasure, she noted each
+well-remembered landmark. There was the arbour where they used to
+shelter from a shower, built with sloped boards at its entrance so that
+Patrick's chair could easily be wheeled into it; now they were passing
+the horse-chestnut tree which she herself had planted years ago--with
+the head gardener's assistance!--in place of one that had been struck by
+lightning. It had grown into a sturdy young sapling by this time. Here
+was the Queen's Bench--an old stone seat where Queen Elisabeth was
+supposed to have once sat and rested for a few minutes when paying a
+visit to Barrow Court. Sara reflected, with a smile, that if history
+speaks truly, the Virgin Queen must have spent quite a considerable
+portion of her time in visiting the houses of her subjects! And here--
+
+“Sara!” Tim's voice broke suddenly across the recollections that were
+thronging into her mind. There was a curious intent quality in his tone
+that arrested her attention, filling her with a nervous foreboding of
+what he had to say.
+
+“Sara, you know, of course, as well as I do, that I am going to
+volunteer. I let mother send for you, because--well, because I thought
+you would make it a little easier for her, for one thing. But I had
+another reason.”
+
+“Had you?” Sara spoke mechanically. They had paused beside the Queen's
+Bench, and half-unconsciously she laid her ungloved hand caressingly on
+the seat's high back. The stone struck cold against the warmth of her
+flesh.
+
+“Yes.” Tim was speaking again, still in that oddly direct manner. “I
+want to ask you--now, before I go to France--whether there will ever be
+any chance for me?”
+
+Sara turned her eyes to his face.
+
+“You mean----”
+
+“I mean that I'm asking you once again if you will marry me? If you
+will--if I can go away leaving _my wife_ in England, I shall have
+so much the more to fight for. But if you can't give me the answer I
+wish--well”--with a curious little smile--“it will make death easier,
+should it come--that's all.”
+
+The quiet, grave directness of the speech was very unlike the old,
+impetuous Tim of former days. It brought with it to Sara's mind a
+definite recognition of the fact that the man had replaced the boy.
+
+“No, Tim,” she responded quietly. “I made one mistake--in promising to
+marry you when I loved another man. I won't repeat it.”
+
+“But”--Tim's face expressed sheer wonder and amazement--“you don't still
+care for Garth Trent--for that blackguard? Oh!” remorsefully, as he
+saw her wince--“forgive me, Sara, but this war makes one feel even more
+bitterly about such a thing than one would in normal times.”
+
+“I know--I understand,” she replied quietly. “I'm--ashamed of loving
+him.” She turned her head restlessly aside. “But, don't you see, love
+can't be made and unmade to order. It just _happens_. And it's happened
+to me. In the circumstances, I can't say I like it. But there it is. I
+do love Garth--and I can't _unlove_ him. At least, not yet.”
+
+“But some day, Sara, some day?” he urged.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+“I shall never marry anybody now, Tim. If--if ever I 'get over' this
+fool feeling for Garth, I know how it would leave me. I shall be quite
+cold and hard inside--like that stone”--pointing to the Queen's Bench.
+“I wish--I wish I had reached that stage now.”
+
+Silently Tim held out his hand, and she laid hers within it, meeting his
+grave eyes.
+
+“I won't ever bother you again,” he said, at last, quietly. “I think I
+understand, Sara, and--and, old girl, I'm awfully sorry. I wish I could
+have saved you--that.”
+
+He stooped his head and kissed her--frankly, as a big brother might, and
+Sara, recognizing that henceforth she would find in him only the good
+comrade of earlier days, kissed him back.
+
+“Thank you, Tim,” she said. “I knew you would understand. And, please,
+we won't ever speak of it again.”
+
+“No, we won't speak of it again,” he answered.
+
+He tucked his arm under hers, and they walked on together in the
+direction of the house.
+
+“And now,” she said, “let's go to Elisabeth and break it to her that we
+are--both--going out to France as soon as we can get there.”
+
+He turned to look at her.
+
+“You?” he exclaimed. “You going out? What do you mean?”
+
+“I'm going with Lady Arronby. I want to go--badly. I want to be in
+the heart of things. You don't suppose”--with a rather shaky little
+laugh--“that I can stay quietly at home in England--and knit, do you?”
+
+“No, I suppose _you_ couldn't. But I don't half like it. The women who
+go--out there--have got to face things. I shan't like to think of you
+running risks--”
+
+She laughed outright.
+
+“Tim, if you talk nonsense of that kind, I'll revenge myself by urging
+Elisabeth to keep you at home,” she declared. “Oh! Tim boy, can't you
+see that just now I must have something to do--something that will fill
+up every moment--and keep me from thinking!”
+
+Tim heard the cry that underlay the words. There was no misunderstanding
+it. He squeezed her arm and nodded.
+
+“All right, old thing, I won't try to dissuade you. I can guess a little
+of how you're feeling.”
+
+Sara's interview with Elisabeth was very different from anything she had
+expected. She had anticipated passionate reproaches, tears even, for an
+attractive women who has been consistently spoiled by her menkind is, of
+all her sex, the least prepared to bow to the force of circumstances.
+
+But there was none of these things. It almost seemed as though in that
+first searching glance of hers, which flashed from Sara's face to the
+well-beloved one of her son, Elisabeth had recognized and accepted
+that, in the short space of time since these two had met, the decision
+concerning Tim's future had been taken out of her hands.
+
+It was only when, in the course of their long, intimate talk together,
+she had drawn from Sara the acknowledgment that she had once again
+refused to be Tim's wife, that her control wavered.
+
+“But, Sara, surely--surely you can't still have any thought of marrying
+Garth Trent?” There was a hint of something like terror in her voice.
+
+“No,” Sara responded wearily. “No, I shall never marry--Garth Trent.”
+
+“Then why won't you--why can't you--”
+
+“Marry Tim?”--quietly. “Because, although I shall never marry Garth now,
+I haven't stopped loving him.”
+
+“Do you mean that you can still care for him--now that you know what
+kind of man he is?”
+
+“Oh! Good Heavens, Elisabeth!”--the irritation born of frayed nerves
+hardened Sara's voice so that it was almost unrecognizable--“you can't
+turn love on and off as you would a tap! I shall never marry _anybody_
+now. Tim understands that, and--you must understand it, too.”
+
+There was no mistaking her passionate sincerity. The truth--that Sara
+would never, as long as she lived, put another in the place Garth Trent
+had held--seemed borne in upon Elisabeth that moment.
+
+With a strangled cry she sank back into her chair, and her eyes, fixed
+on Sara's small, stern-set face, held a strange, beaten look. As she sat
+there, her hands gripping the chair-arms, there was something about her
+whole attitude that suggested defeat.
+
+“So it's all been useless--quite useless!” she muttered in a queer,
+whispering voice.
+
+She was not looking at Sara now. Her vision was turned inward, and she
+seemed to be utterly oblivious of the other's presence. “Useless!” she
+repeated, still in that strange, whispering tone.
+
+“What has been useless?” asked Sara curiously.
+
+Elisabeth started, and stared at her for a moment in a vacant fashion.
+Then, all at once, her mind seemed to come back to the present, and
+simultaneously the familiar watchful look sprang into her eyes. Sara was
+oddly conscious of being reminded of a sentry who has momentarily
+slept at his post, and then, awakening suddenly, feverishly resumed his
+vigilance.
+
+“What was I saying?” Elisabeth brushed her hand distressfully across her
+forehead.
+
+“You said that it had all been useless,” repeated Sara. “What did you
+mean?”
+
+Elisabeth paused a moment before replying.
+
+“I meant that all my hopes were useless,” she explained at last. “The
+hopes I had that some day you would be Tim's wife.”
+
+“Yes, they're quite useless--if that is what you meant,” replied Sara.
+But there was a perplexed expression in her eyes. She had a feeling
+that Elisabeth was not being quite frank with her--that that whispered
+confession of failure signified something other than the simple
+interpretations vouchsafed.
+
+The thing worried her a little, nagging at the back of her mind with the
+pertinacity common to any little unexplained incident that has caught
+one's attention. But, in the course of a few days, the manifold
+happenings of daily life drove it out of her thoughts, not to recur
+until many months had passed and other issues paved the way for its
+resurgence.
+
+Sara remained at Barrow until Tim had volunteered and been accepted, and
+the settlement of her own immediate plans synchronizing with this last
+event, it came about that it was only two hours after Tim's departure
+that she, too, bade farewell to Elisabeth, in order to join up in London
+with Lady Arronby's party.
+
+Elisabeth stood at the head of the great flight of granite steps at
+Barrow and waved her hand as the car bore Sara swiftly away, and across
+the latter's mind flashed the memory of that day, nearly a year ago,
+when she herself had stood in the same place, waiting to welcome
+Elisabeth to her new home.
+
+The contrast between then and now struck her poignantly. She recalled
+Elisabeth as she had been that day--gracious, smiling, queening
+it delightfully over her two big men, husband and son, who openly
+worshipped her. Now, there remained only a great empty house, and that
+solitary figure on the doorstep, standing there with white face and lips
+that smiled perfunctorily.
+
+Elisabeth turned slowly back into the house as the car disappeared round
+the curve of the drive. For her, the moment was doubly bitter. One by
+one, husband, son, and the woman whom she had ardently longed to see
+that son's wife, had been claimed from her by the pitiless demands of
+the madness men call War.
+
+But there was still more for her to face. There was the utter downfall
+of all her hopes, the defeat of all her purposes. She had striven with
+the whole force that was in her to assure Tim's happiness. To compass
+this, she had torn down the curtain of the past, proclaiming a man's
+shame and hurling headlong into the dust the new life he had built
+up for himself, and with it had gone a woman's faith, and trust, and
+happiness.
+
+And it had all been so futile! Two lives ruined, and the purchase price
+paid in tears of blood; and, after all, Tim's happiness was as utterly
+remote and beyond attainment as though no torrent of disaster had been
+let loose to further it! Elisabeth had bartered her soul in vain.
+
+In the solitude which was all the war had left her, she recognized this,
+and, since she was normally a woman of kind and generous impulses, she
+suffered in the realization of the spoiled and mutilated lives for which
+she was responsible.
+
+Not that she would have acted differently were the same choice presented
+to her again. She did not _want_ to hurt people, but the primitive
+maternal instinct, which was the pivot of her being, blinded her to the
+claims of others if those claims reacted adversely on her son.
+
+Only now, in the bitterness of defeat, as she looked back upon her
+midnight interview with Garth Trent, she was conscious of a sick
+repugnance. It had not been a pleasant thing, that thrusting of a knife
+into an old wound. This, too, she had done for Tim's sake. The pity of
+it was that Garth had suffered needlessly--uselessly!
+
+She had thought the issue of events hung solely betwixt him and her son,
+and, with her mind concentrated on this idea, she had overlooked the
+possibility of any other outcome. But the acceptance of an unexpected
+sequence had been forced upon her--Sara would never marry any one now!
+Elisabeth recognized that all her efforts had been in vain.
+
+And the supreme bitterness, from which all that was honest and upright
+within her shrank with inward shame and self-loathing, lay in the fact
+that she, above all others, owed Garth Trent--that which he had begged
+of her in vain--the tribute of silence concerning the past.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+THE FURNACE
+
+As Sara took her seat on board the train for Monkshaven, she was
+conscious of that strange little thrill of the wanderer returned which
+is the common possession of the explorer and of the school-girl at their
+first sight of the old familiar scenes from which they have been exiled.
+
+She could hardly believe that barely a year had elapsed since she had
+quitted Monkshaven. So many things had happened--so many changes taken
+place. Audrey had been transformed into Mrs. Herrick; Tim had been
+given a commission; and Molly, the one-time butterfly, was now become
+a working-bee--a member of the V.A.D. and working daily at Oldhampton
+Hospital. Sara could scarcely picture such a metamorphosis!
+
+The worst news had been that of Major Durward's death--he had been
+killed in action, gallantly leading his men, in the early part of the
+year. Elisabeth had written to Sara at the time--a wonderfully brave,
+simple letter, facing her loss with a fortitude which Sara, remembering
+her adoration for her husband and her curious antipathy to soldiering
+as a profession, had not dared to anticipate. There was something rather
+splendid about her quiet acceptance of it. It was Elisabeth at her
+best--humanly hurt and broken, but almost heroic in her endurance now
+that the blow had actually fallen. And Sara prayed that no further
+sacrifice might be demanded from her--prayed that Tim might come through
+safely. For herself, she mourned Geoffrey Durward as one good comrade
+does another. She knew that his death would leave a big gap in the ranks
+of those she counted friends.
+
+It had been a wonderful year--that year which she had passed in
+France--wonderful in its histories of tragedy and self-sacrifice, and
+in its revelation both of the brutality and of the infinite fineness of
+humanity. Few could have passed through such an experience and remained
+unchanged, certainly no one as acutely sentient and receptive as Sara.
+
+She felt as though she had been pitchforked into a vast melting-pot,
+where the cast-iron generalizations and traditions which most people
+consider their opinions grew flexible and fluid in the scorching heat
+of the furnace, assimilating so much of the other ingredients in the
+cauldron that they could never reassume their former unqualified and
+rigid state.
+
+And now that year of crowded life and ardent service was over, and she
+was side-tracked by medical orders for an indefinite period.
+
+“Go back to England,” her doctor had told her, “to the quietest corner
+in the country you can find--and try to forget that there _is_ a war!”
+
+This thin, eager-faced young woman, of whom every one on the hospital
+staff spoke in such glowing terms, interested him enormously. He could
+see that her year's work had taken out of her about double what it would
+have taken out of any one less sensitively alive, and he made a shrewd
+guess that something over and above the mere hard work accounted for
+that curiously fine-drawn look which he had observed in her.
+
+During a hastily snatched meal, before the advent of another batch of
+casualties, he had sounded Lady Arronby on the subject. The latter shook
+her head.
+
+“I can tell you very little. I believe there was a bad love-affair
+just before the war. All I know is that she was engaged and that the
+engagement was broken off very suddenly.”
+
+“Humph! And she's been living on her reserves ever since. Pack her off
+to England--and do it quick.”
+
+So October found Sara back in England once again, and as the train
+steamed into Monkshaven station, and her eager gaze fell on the little
+group of people on the platform, waiting to welcome her return, she felt
+a sudden rush of tears to her eyes.
+
+She winked them away, and leaned out of the window. They were all
+there--big Dick Selwyn, and Molly, looking like a masquerading Venus
+in her V.A.D. uniform, the Lavender Lady and Miles, and--radiant and
+well-turned-out as ever--Mile's wife.
+
+The Herrick's wedding had taken place very unobtrusively. About a month
+after Sara had crossed to France, Miles and Audrey had walked quietly
+into church one morning at nine o'clock and got married.
+
+Monkshaven had been frankly disappointed. The gossips, who had so
+frequently partaken of Audrey's hospitality and then discussed her
+acrimoniously, had counted upon the lavish entertainment with which,
+even in war-time, the wedding of a millionaire's widow might be expected
+to be celebrated.
+
+Instead of which, there had been this “hole-and-corner” sort of
+marriage, as the disappointed femininity of Monkshaven chose to call
+it, and, after a very brief honeymoon, Miles and Audrey had returned
+and thrown themselves heart and soul into the work of organizing and
+equipping a convalescent hospital for officers, of which Audrey had
+undertaken to bear the entire cost.
+
+Henceforth the mouths of Audrey's detractors were closed. She was no
+longer “that shocking little widow with the dyed hair,” but a woman who
+had married into a branch of one of the oldest families in the county,
+and whose immense private fortune had enabled her to give substantial
+help to her country in its need.
+
+“I think it's simply splendid of you, Audrey,” declared Sara warmly, as
+they were all partaking of tea at Greenacres, whither Audrey's car had
+borne them from the station.
+
+Audrey laughed.
+
+“My dear, what else could I do with my money? I've got such a sickening
+lot of it, you see! Besides”--with a bantering glance at her husband--“I
+think it was only the prospect of being of some use at my hospital which
+induced Miles to marry me! He's my private secretary, you know, and boss
+of the commissariat department.”
+
+Miles saluted.
+
+“Quartermaster, at your service, miss,” he said cheerfully, adding with
+a chuckle: “I saw my chance of getting a job if I married Audrey, so of
+course I took it.”
+
+He was looking amazingly well. The fact of being of some use in the
+world had acted upon him like a tonic, and there was no misinterpreting
+the glance of complete and happy understanding that passed between him
+and his wife.
+
+Glad as she was to see it, it served to remind Sara painfully of all
+that she had missed, to stir anew the aching longing for Garth Trent,
+which, though struggled against, and beaten down, and sometimes
+temporarily crowded out by the thousand claims of each day's labour,
+had been with her all through the long months of her absence from
+Monkshaven.
+
+It was this which had worn her so fine, not the hard physical work that
+she had been doing. Always slender, and built on racing lines, there
+was something almost ethereal about her now, and her sombre eyes looked
+nearly double their size in her small face of which the contour was so
+painfully distinct. Yet she was as vivid and alive as ever; she seemed
+to diffuse, as it were, a kind of spiritual brilliance.
+
+“She makes one think of a flame,” Audrey told her husband when they were
+alone once more. “There is something so _vital_ about her, in spite of
+that curiously frail look she has.”
+
+Miles nodded.
+
+“She's burning herself out,” he said briefly.
+
+Audrey looked startled.
+
+“What do you mean, Miles?”
+
+“Good Heavens! I should think it's self-evident. She's exactly as much
+in love with Trent as she was a year ago, and she's fighting against it
+every hour of her life. And the strain's breaking her.”
+
+“Can't we do something to help?” Audrey put her question with a helpless
+consciousness of its futility.
+
+Herrick's eyes kindled.
+
+“Nothing,” he answered with quiet decision. “Every one must work out his
+own salvation--if it's to be a salvation worth having.”
+
+Herrick had delved to the root of the matter when he had declared that
+Sara was exactly as much in love as she had been a year ago.
+
+She had realized this for herself, and it had converted life into an
+endless conflict between her love for Garth and her shamed sense of
+his unworthiness. And now, her return to Monkshaven, to its familiar,
+memory-haunted scenes, had quickened the struggle into new vitality.
+
+With the broadened outlook born of her recent experiences, she began to
+ask herself whether a man need be condemned, utterly and for ever, for
+a momentary loss of nerve--even Elisabeth had admitted that it was
+probably no more than that! And then, conversely, her fierce detestation
+of that particular form of weakness, inculcated in her from her
+childhood by Patrick Lovell, would spring up protestingly, and she would
+shrink with loathing from the thought that she had given her love to a
+man who had been convicted of that very thing.
+
+Nor was the attitude he had assumed in regard to the war calculated
+to placate her. She had learned from Molly that he had abstained from
+taking up any form of war-work whatsoever. He appeared to be utterly
+indifferent to the need of the moment, and the whole of Monkshaven
+buzzed with patriotic disapprobation of his conduct. There were few
+idle hands there now. A big munitions factory had been established at
+Oldhampton, and its demands, added to the necessities of the hospital,
+left no loophole of excuse for slackers.
+
+Sara reflected bitterly that the sole courage of which Garth seemed
+possessed was a kind of cold, moral courage--brazen-facedness, the
+townspeople termed it--which enabled him to refuse doggedly to be driven
+out of Monkshaven, even though the whole weight of public opinion was
+dead against him.
+
+And then the recollection of that day on Devil's Hood Island, when he
+had deliberately risked his life to save her reputation, would return to
+her with overwhelming force--mocking the verdict of the court-martial,
+repudiating the condemnation which had made her thrust him out of her
+life.
+
+So the pendulum swung, this way and that, lacerating her heart each time
+it swept forward or back. But the blind agony of her recoil, when she
+had first learned the story of that tragic happening on the Indian
+frontier, was passed.
+
+Then, overmastered by the horror of the thing, she had flung violently
+away from Garth, feeling herself soiled and dishonoured by the mere fact
+of her love for him, too revolted to contemplate anything other than the
+severance of the tie between them as swiftly as possible.
+
+Now, with the widened sympathies and understanding which the past year
+of intimacy with human nature at its strongest, and at its weakest, had
+brought her, new thoughts and new possibilities were awaking within her.
+
+The furnace--that fiercely burning furnace of life at its intensest--had
+done its work.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+ON CRABTREE MOOR
+
+“Tim is wounded, and has been recommended for the Military Cross.”
+
+Sara made the double announcement quite calmly. The two things so often
+went together--it was the grey and gold warp and waft of war with which
+people had long since grown pathetically familiar.
+
+“How splendid!” Molly enthused with sparkling eyes, adding quickly, “I
+hope he's not very badly wounded?”
+
+“Elisabeth doesn't give any particulars in her letter. I can't
+understand her,” Sara continued, her brows contracting in a puzzled
+fashion. “She seems so calm about it. She has always hated the idea of
+Tim's soldiering, yet now, although she's lost her husband and her son
+is wounded, she's taking it finely.”
+
+Selwyn looked up from filling his pipe.
+
+“She's answering to the call--like every one else,” he observed quietly.
+
+“No.” Sara shook her head. “I don't feel as though it were that. It's
+something more individual. Perhaps”--thoughtfully--“it's pride of a
+kind. The sort of impression I have is that she's so proud--so proud of
+Geoffrey's fine death, and of Tim's winning the Military Cross, that it
+has compensated in some way.”
+
+“The war's full of surprises,” remarked Molly reflectively. “I never
+was so astonished in my life as when I found that Lester Kent's
+wife believed him to be a model of all the virtues! I wrote and told
+you--didn't I, Sara?--that he was sent to Oldhampton Hospital? He got
+smashed up, driving a motor ambulance, you know.”
+
+“Yes, you wrote and said that he died in hospital.”
+
+“Well, his wife came to see him, with her little boy. She was the
+sweetest thing, and so plucky. 'My dear,' she said to me, after it was
+all over, 'I hope you'll find a husband as dear and good. He was so
+loyal and true--and now that he's gone, I shall always have that to
+remember!'” Molly's eyes had grown very big and bright. “Oh! Sara,” she
+went on, catching her breath a little, “supposing you hadn't brought
+me home--that night, she would have had no beautiful memory to help her
+now.”
+
+“And yet the memory is an utterly false one--though I suppose it will
+help her just the same! It's knowing the truth that hurts, sometimes.”
+ And Sara's lips twisted a little. “What a droll world it is--of shame
+and truth all mixed up--the ugly and the beautiful all lumped together!”
+
+“And just now,” put in Selwyn quietly, “it's so full of beauty.”
+
+“Beauty?” exclaimed both girls blankly.
+
+Selwyn nodded, his eyes luminous.
+
+“Isn't heroism beautiful--and self-sacrifice?” he said. “And this war's
+full of it. Sometimes, when I read the newspapers, I think God Himself
+must be surprised at the splendid things the men He made have done.”
+
+Sara turned away, swept by the recollection of one man she knew who had
+nothing splendid, nothing glorious, to his credit. Almost invariably,
+any discussion of the war ended by hurting her horribly.
+
+“I'll take that basket of flowers across to the 'Convalescent' now, I
+think,” she said, rising abruptly from her seat by the fire.
+
+Selwyn nodded, mentally anathematizing himself for having driven
+her thoughts inward, and Molly, who had developed amazingly of late,
+tactfully refrained from offering to accompany her.
+
+The Convalescent Hospital, situated on the crest of a hill above
+the town, was a huge mansion which had been originally built by a
+millionaire named Rattray, who, coming afterwards to financial grief,
+had found himself too poor to live in it when it was completed. It had
+been frankly impossible as a dwelling for any one less richly dowered
+with this world's goods, and, in consequence, when the place was thrown
+on the market, no purchaser would be found for it--since Monkshaven
+offered no attraction to millionaires in general.
+
+Since then it had been known as Rattray's Folly, and it was not until
+Audrey cast covetous eyes upon it for her convalescent soldiers that the
+“Folly” had served any purpose other than that of a warning to people
+not to purchase boots too big for them.
+
+A short cut from Sunnyside to the hospital lay through Crabtree Moor,
+and as Sara took her way across the rough strip of moorland, dotted with
+clumps of gorse and heather, her thoughts flew back to that day when
+she and Garth had encountered Black Brady there, and to the ridiculous
+quarrel which had ensued in consequence of Garth's refusal to condone
+the man's offence. For days they had not spoken to each other.
+
+Looking backward, how utterly insignificant seemed that petty
+disagreement now! Had she but known the bitter separation that must
+come, she would have let no trifling difference, such as this had been,
+rob her of a single precious moment of their friendship.
+
+She wondered if she and Garth would ever meet again. She had been back
+in Monkshaven for some weeks now, but he had studiously avoided meeting
+her, shutting himself up within the solitude of Far End.
+
+And then, with her thoughts still centred round the man she loved, she
+lifted her eyes and saw him standing quite close to her. He was leaning
+against a gate which gave egress from the moor into an adjacent pasture
+field towards which her steps were bent. His arms, loosely folded,
+rested upon the top of the gate, and he was looking away from her
+towards the distant vista of sea and cliff. Evidently he had not heard
+her light footsteps on the springy turf, for he made no movement, but
+remained absorbed in his thoughts, unconscious of her presence.
+
+Sara halted as though transfixed. For an instant the whole world seemed
+to rock, and a black mist rose up in front of her, blotting out that
+solitary figure at the gateway. Her heart beat in great, suffocating
+throbs, and her throat ached unbearably, as if a hand had closed upon
+it and were gripping it so tightly that she could not breathe. Then
+her senses steadied, and her gaze leapt to the face outlined in profile
+against the cold background of the winter sky.
+
+Her searching eyes, poignantly observant, sensed a subtle difference in
+it--or, perhaps, less actually a difference than a certain emphasizing
+of what had been before only latent and foreshadowed. The lean face was
+still leaner than she had known it, and there were deep lines about the
+mouth--graven. And the mouth itself held something sternly sweet and
+austere about the manner of its closing--a severity of self-discipline
+which one might look to see on the lips of a man who has made the
+supreme sacrifice of his own will, bludgeoning his desires into
+submission in response to some finely conceived impulse.
+
+The recognition of this, of the something fine and splendid that had
+stamped itself on Garth's features, came to Sara in a sudden blazoning
+flash of recognition. This was not--could not be the face of a weak man
+or a coward! And for one transcendent moment of glorious belief sheer
+happiness overwhelmed her.
+
+But, in the same instant, the damning facts stormed up at her--the
+verdict of the court-martial, the details Elisabeth had supplied,
+above all, Garth's own inability to deny the charge--and the light of
+momentary ecstasy flared and went out in darkness.
+
+An inarticulate sound escaped her, forced from her lips by the pang of
+that sudden frustration of leaping hope, and, hearing it, Garth turned
+and saw her.
+
+“Sara!” The name rushed from his lips, shaken with a tumult of emotion.
+And then he was silent, staring at her across the little space that
+separated them, his hand gripping the topmost bar of the gate as though
+for actual physical support.
+
+The calm of his face, that lofty serenity which had been impressed upon
+it, was suddenly all broken up.
+
+“Sara!” he repeated, a ring of incredulity in his tones.
+
+“Yes,” she said flatly. “I've come back.”
+
+She moved towards him, trying to control the trembling that had seized
+her limbs.
+
+“I--I've just come back from France,” she added, making a lame attempt
+to speak conventionally.
+
+It was an effort to hold out her hand, and, when his closed around it,
+she felt her whole body thrill at his touch, just as it had been wont to
+thrill in those few, short, golden days when their mutual happiness had
+been undarkened by any shadow from the past. Swiftly, as though all at
+once afraid, she snatched her hand from his clasp.
+
+“What have you been doing in France?” he asked.
+
+“Nursing,” she answered briefly. “Did you think I could stay here and
+do--nothing, at such a time as this?”
+
+There was accusation in her tone, but if he felt that her speech
+reflected in any way upon himself, he showed no sign of it. His eyes
+were roving over her, marking the changes wrought in the year that had
+passed since they had met--the sharpened contour of her face, the too
+slender body, the white fragility of the bare hand which grasped the
+handle of the basket she was carrying.
+
+“You are looking very ill,” he said, at last, abruptly.
+
+“I'm not ill,” she replied indifferently. “Only a bit over-tired. As
+soon as I have had a thorough rest I am going back to France.”
+
+“You won't go back there again?” he exclaimed sharply. “You're not fit
+for such work!”
+
+“Certainly I shall go back--as soon as ever Dr. Selwyn will let me. It's
+little enough to do for the men who are giving--everything!” Suddenly,
+the pent-up indignation within her broke bounds. “Garth, how can you
+stay here when men are fighting, dying--out there?” Her voice vibrated
+with the sense of personal shame which his apathy inspired in her.
+“Oh!”--as though she feared he might wound her yet further by advancing
+the obvious excuse--“I know you're past military age. But other
+men--older men than you--have gone. I know a man of fifty who bluffed
+and got in! There are heaps of back doors into the Army these days.”
+
+“And there's a back door out of it--the one through which I was kicked
+out!” he retorted, his mouth setting itself in the familiar bitter
+lines.
+
+The scoffing defiance of his attitude baffled her.
+
+“Don't you want to help your country?” she pleaded. It was horrible to
+her that he should stand aside--inexplicable except in terms of that
+wretched business on the Indian Frontier, in the hideous truth of which
+only his own acknowledgment had compelled her to believe.
+
+He looked at her with hard, indifferent eyes.
+
+“My country made me an outcast,” he replied. “I'll remain such.”
+
+Somehow, even in her shamed bewilderment and anger, she sensed the hurt
+that lay behind the curt speech.
+
+“Men who have been cashiered, men who are too old--they're all going
+back,” she urged tremulously, snatching at any weapon that suggested
+itself.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“Let them!”
+
+She stared at him in silence. She felt exactly as though she had been
+beating against a closed door. With a gesture of hopelessness she turned
+away, recognizing the futility of pleading with him further.
+
+“One moment”--he stepped in front of her, barring her path. “I want an
+answer to a question before you go.”
+
+There was something of his old arrogance in the demand--the familiar,
+dominating quality which had always swayed her. Despite herself, she
+yielded to it now.
+
+“Well?” she said unwillingly. “What is it you wish to know?”
+
+“I want to know if you are engaged to Tim Durward.”
+
+For an instant the colour rushed into Sara's white face; then it ebbed
+away, leaving it paler than before.
+
+“No,” she said quietly. “I am not.” She lifted her eyes, accusing,
+passionately reproachful, to his. “How could you--even ask me that?
+Did you ever believe I loved you?” she went on fiercely. “And if I
+did--could I care for any one else?”
+
+A look of triumph leapt into his eyes.
+
+“You care still, then?” he asked, and in his voice was blent all the
+exultation, and the wonder, and the piercing torment of love itself.
+
+Sara felt herself slipping, knew that she was losing her hold of
+herself. Soon she would be a-wash in a sea of love, helpless to resist
+as a bit of driftwood, and then the waters would close over her head and
+she would be drawn down into the depths of shame which yielding to her
+love for Garth involved.
+
+She must go--leave him while she had the power. Summoning up her
+strength, she faced him.
+
+“I do,” she answered steadily. “But I pray God every night of my life
+that I may soon cease to care.”
+
+And with those few words, limitless in their scorn--for him, and for
+herself because she still loved him--she turned to go.
+
+But their contempt seemed to pass him by. His eyes burned.
+
+“So Elisabeth has played her stake--and lost!” he muttered to himself.
+“Ah! Pardon!” he drew aside as she almost brushed past him in her sudden
+haste to escape--to get away--and stood, with bared head, his eyes fixed
+on her receding figure.
+
+Soon a bend in the path through the fields hid her from his sight. But,
+long after she had disappeared, he remained leaning, motionless, against
+the gateway through which she had passed, his face immobile, twisted
+and drawn so that it resembled some sculptured mask of Pain, his eyes
+staring straight in front of him, blank and unseeing.
+
+
+
+“Hullo, Trent!”
+
+Miles Herrick, returning from the town to the hospital and taking, like
+every one else, the short cut across the fields, waved a friendly arm as
+he caught sight of Garth's figure silhouetted against the sky-line.
+
+Then he drew nearer, and the set, still face of the other filled him
+with a sudden sense of dismay. There was a new look in it, a kind of
+dogged hopelessness. It entirely lacked that suggestion of austere
+sweetness which had made it so difficult to reconcile his smirched
+reputation with the man himself.
+
+“What is it, Garth?” Instinctively Miles slipped into the more familiar
+appellation.
+
+Trent looked at him blankly. It seemed as though he had not heard the
+question, or, at any rate, had not taken in its meaning.
+
+“What did you say?” he muttered, his brows contracting painfully.
+
+Miles slung the various packages with which he was burdened on to
+the ground, and leaned up leisurely against the gatepost. It was
+characteristic of him that, although the day was never long enough for
+the work he crowded into it, he could always find time to give a helping
+hand to a pal with his back against the wall.
+
+“Out with it, man!” he said. “What's up?”
+
+Slowly recognition came back in the other's eyes.
+
+“What I might have anticipated,” he answered, at last, in a curious flat
+voice, devoid of expression. “I've sunk a degree or two lower in Sara's
+estimation since the war broke out.”
+
+Miles regarded him quietly for a moment, a queer, half-humorous glint in
+his eyes.
+
+“I suppose she doesn't know you've half-beggared yourself, helping on
+the financial side?”
+
+“A man could hardly do less, could he?” he returned awkwardly. “But if
+she did know--which she doesn't--it would make no earthly difference.”
+
+“Then--it's because you're not soldiering?”
+
+“Exactly. I've not volunteered.”
+
+“Well”--composedly--“why don't you?”
+
+Trent laughed shortly.
+
+“That's my affair.”
+
+“With your physique you could wangle the age limit,” pursued Miles
+imperturbably.
+
+“I should have to 'wangle' a good deal more than that,”--harshly. “Have
+you forgotten that I was chucked from the Army?”
+
+“There's such a thing as enlisting under another name.”
+
+“There is--and then of running up against one of the old crowd and being
+recognized! It isn't so easy to lose your identity. I've had my lesson
+on that.”
+
+Miles looked away quickly. The hard, implacable stare of the other man's
+eyes, with the blazing defiance, hurt him. It spoke too poignantly of a
+bitterness that had eaten into the heart. But he had put his hand to the
+plough, and he refused to turn back.
+
+“Wouldn't it”--he spoke with a sudden gentleness, the gentleness of the
+surgeon handling a torn limb--“wouldn't it help to straighten things out
+with Sara?”
+
+“If it did, it would only make matters worse. No. Take it from me,
+Herrick, that soldiering is the one thing of all others I can't do.”
+
+He turned away as though to signify that the discussion was at an end.
+
+“I don't see it,” persisted Miles. “On the contrary, it's the one thing
+that might make her believe in you. In spite of that Indian Frontier
+business.”
+
+Garth swung suddenly round, a dull, dangerous gleam in his eyes. But
+Miles bore the savage glance serenely. He had applied the spur with
+intention. The other was suffering--suffering intolerably--in a dumb
+silence that shut him in alone with his agony. That silence must be
+broken, no matter what the means.
+
+“You'd wipe out the stigma of cowardice, if you volunteered,” he went on
+deliberately.
+
+Garth laughed derisively.
+
+“Cut it out, Herrick,” he flung back. “I'm not a damned story-book hero,
+out for whitewash and the V.C.”
+
+But Miles continued undeterred.
+
+“And you'd convince Sara,” he finished quietly.
+
+A stifled exclamation broke from Garth.
+
+“To what end?” he burst out violently. “Can't you realize that's
+just the one thing in the world forbidden me? Sara is--oh, well, it's
+impossible to say what she is, but I suppose most good women are half
+angel. And if I gave her the smallest chance, she'd begin to believe
+in me again--to ask questions I cannot answer. . . . What's the use?
+I can't get away from the court-martial and all that followed. I can't
+clear myself. And I could never offer Sara anything more than a name
+that has been disgraced--a miserable half-life with a man who can't hold
+up his head amongst his fellows! Yes”--answering the unspoken question
+in Herrick's eyes--“I know what you're thinking--that I was willing to
+marry her once. But I believed, then, that--Garth Trent had cut himself
+free from the past. Now I know”--more quietly--“that there is no such
+thing as getting away from the mistakes one has made. . . . I'm tied
+hand and foot--every way! And it's better Sara should continue to
+think the worst of me. Then, in the future, she may find some sort of
+happiness--with Durward, perhaps.” His lips greyed a little, but he went
+on. “The worse she thinks me, the easier it will be for her to cut me
+out of her life.”
+
+“Then do you mean”--Miles spoke very slowly--that you
+are--deliberately--holding back from soldiering?”
+
+“Quite deliberately!” It was like the snap of a tormented animal,
+baited beyond bearing. “If I could go with a clean name, as other men
+can----Good God, man! Do you think I haven't thought it out--knocked my
+head against every stone wall in the whole damned business?”
+
+Miles was silent. There was so much of truth in all Garth said, so much
+of warped vision, biased by the man's profound bitterness of soul, that
+he could find no answer.
+
+After a moment Garth spoke again, jerkily, as though under pressure.
+
+“There's my promise to Elisabeth, as well. That binds me if I were
+recognized and taxed with my identity. I should have to hold my
+peace--and stick it all over again! . . . There's a limit to a man's
+endurance.”
+
+Then, after a pause: “If I could go--and be sure of not
+returning”--grimly--“I'd go to-morrow--the Foreign Legion, anyway. But
+sometimes a man hasn't even the right to get himself neatly killed out
+of the way.”
+
+“What are you driving at now?”
+
+“I should think it's plain enough! Don't you see what it would mean to
+Sara if--that--happened? She'd never believe--afterwards--that I'm as
+black as I'm painted, and I should saddle her with an intolerable burden
+of self-reproach. No, the Army is a closed door for me. . . . Damn
+it, Herrick!” with the sudden nervous violence of a man goaded past
+endurance. “Can't you understand? I ought never to have come into her
+life at all. I've only messed things up for her--damnably. The least I
+can do is to clear out of it so that she'll never regret my going. . . .
+I've gone under, and a man who's gone under had better stay there.”
+
+Both men were silent--Trent with the bitter, brooding silence of a man
+who has battered uselessly against the bars that hem him in, and who at
+last recognizes that they can never be forced asunder, Herrick trying to
+focus his vision to that of the man beside him.
+
+“No”--Garth spoke with a finality there was no disputing--“I've been
+buried three-and-twenty years, and my resurrection hasn't been exactly a
+success. There's no place in the world for me unless some one else
+pays the price. It's better for every one concerned that I should--stay
+buried.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+OVER THE MOUNTAINS
+
+“He didn't do it!”
+
+Suddenly, Sara found herself saying the words aloud in the darkness and
+solitude of the night.
+
+Since her meeting with Garth, on her way to the hospital, every hour had
+been an hour of conflict. That brief, strained interview had shaken her
+to the depths of her being, and, unable to sleep when night came,
+she had lain, staring wide-eyed into the dark, struggling against its
+influence.
+
+Little enough had been said. It had been the silences, the dumb,
+passion-filled silences, vibrant with all that must not be spoken,
+which had tried her endurance to the utmost, and she had fled, at last,
+incontinently, because she had felt her resolution weakening each moment
+she and Garth remained together--because, with him beside her, the love
+against which she had been fighting for twelve long months had wakened
+into fierce life again, beating down her puny efforts to withstand it.
+
+The mere sound of his voice, the lightest touch of his hand, had power
+to thrill her from head to foot, to rock those barriers which his own
+act had forced her to build up between them.
+
+The recollection of that one perfect moment, when the serene austerity
+of his face had given the lie to that of which he was accused, lingered
+with her, a faint elusive thread of hope which would not leave her,
+urging, suggesting, combating the hard facts to which he himself had
+given ruthless confirmation.
+
+Almost without her cognizance, Sara's characteristic, vehement belief
+in whomsoever she loved--stunned at the first moment of Elisabeth's
+revelation--had been gradually creeping back to feeble, halting life,
+weakened at times by the mass of evidence arrayed against it, yet still
+alive--growing and strengthening secretly within her as an unborn babe
+grows and strengthens.
+
+And since that moment on the moor, when her eyes had searched Garth's
+face--his face with the mask off--the dormant belief within her had
+sprung into conscious knowledge.
+
+Throughout the long hours of the night she had fought against it,
+deeming it but the passionate outcome of her love for the man himself.
+She _wanted_ to believe him innocent; it was only her love for him which
+had raised this phantom doubt of the charges brought against him; the
+wish had been father to the thought. So she told herself, struggling
+conscientiously against that to which she longed to yield.
+
+And then, making a mockery of the hateful thing of which he had
+been accused, her individual knowledge of Garth himself rose up and
+confronted her accusingly.
+
+Nothing that she had ever known of him had pointed to any lack of
+courage. It had been on no sudden, splendid impulse of a moment that he
+had plunged into the sea and fought that treacherous, racing tide off
+Devil's Hood Island. Quite composedly, deliberately, he had calculated
+the risks--and taken them!
+
+Once more, she recalled the vision of his face as she had seen it
+yesterday, in that instant before he had perceived her nearness to
+him--strong and steadfast, imprinted with a disciplined nobility--and
+the repudiation of his dishonour leapt spontaneously from her lips.
+
+“He didn't do it!”
+
+She had spoken involuntarily, the thought rushing into words before she
+was aware, and the sound of her own voice in the darkness startled her.
+It seemed almost like a voice from some Otherwhere, authoritatively
+assuring her of all she had ached to believe.
+
+She lay back on her pillows, smiling a little at the illusion. But
+the sense of peace, of blessed assuredness, remained with her. She had
+struggled through the darkness of those bitter months of unbelief, and
+now she had come out into the light on the other side. She felt dreamily
+contented and at rest, and presently she fell asleep, trustfully, as a
+little child may sleep, the smile still on her lips.
+
+
+
+With morning came reaction--blank, sordid reaction, depressing her
+unutterably.
+
+Amid the score of trifling details incidental to the day's arrangements,
+with the usual uninspiring conversation prevalent at the breakfast-table
+going on around her, the mood of the previous night, informed, as it had
+been, with that triumphant sense of exaltation, slipped from her like a
+garment.
+
+Supposing she were to tell them--to tell Selwyn and Molly--that, without
+any further evidence, she was convinced of Garth's innocence? Why, they
+would think she had gone mad! Regretfully, with infinite pain it might
+be, but still none the less conclusively, they had accepted the fact of
+his guilt. And indeed, what else could be expected of them, seeing that
+he had himself acknowledged it?
+
+And yet--that inner feeling of belief which had stirred into new life
+refused to be repressed.
+
+Mechanically she went about the small daily duties which made up life
+at Sunnyside--interviewed Jane Crab, read the newspapers to Mrs. Selwyn,
+accomplished the necessary shopping in the town, each and all with a
+mind that was only superficially concerned with the matter in hand,
+while, behind this screen of commonplace routine, she felt as though her
+soul were struggling impotently to release itself from the bonds which
+had bound it in a tyranny of anguish for twelve long months.
+
+In the afternoon, she paid a visit to the Convalescent Hospital. She
+made a practice of going there at least once a day and giving what
+assistance she could. Frequently she relieved Miles of part of his
+secretarial work, or checked through with him the invoices of goods
+received. There were always plenty of odd jobs to be done, and, after
+her strenuous work in France, she found it utterly impossible to settle
+down to the life of masterly inactivity which Selwyn had prescribed for
+her.
+
+Audrey greeted her with a little flurry of excitement.
+
+“Do you know that there was a Zepp over Oldhampton last night?” she
+asked, as they went upstairs together. “Did you hear it?”
+
+Sara shook her head. The memory of the previous night surged over her
+like the memory of a vivid dream--the absolute assurance it had brought
+her of Garth's innocence, an assurance which had grown vague and
+doubtful with the daylight, just as the happenings of a dream grow
+blurred and indistinct.
+
+“No, I didn't hear anything,” she replied absently. “Did they do much
+damage? I suppose they were after the munitions factory?”
+
+“Yes. They dropped one bomb, that's all. It fell in a field, luckily.
+But goodness knows how they got over without any one's spotting
+them! Everybody's asking where our search-lights were. As for our
+anti-aircraft guns, they've never had the opportunity yet to do
+anything more than try our nerves by practicing! And last night a golden
+opportunity came and went unobserved.”
+
+“The milkman was babbling to Jane about Zeppelins this morning, but I
+thought it was probably only the result of overnight potations at 'The
+Jolly Sailorman.'”
+
+“No, it was the real thing--'made in Germany,'” smiled Audrey. “I begin
+to feel as if we were quite the hub of the universe, now that the Zepps
+have acknowledged our existence.”
+
+They paused outside the door of the room allotted to her husband's
+activities.
+
+“Miles will be glad to see you to-day,” she pursued. “He's bemoaning
+a new manifestation of war-fever among the feminine population of
+Monkshaven. Go in to him, will you? I must run off--I've got a million
+things to see to. You're not looking very fit to-day”--suddenly
+observing the other's white face and shadowed eyes. “Are you feeling up
+to work?”
+
+Sara nodded indifferently.
+
+“Quite,” she said. “I shouldn't have come otherwise.”
+
+Miles welcomed her joyfully.
+
+“Bless you, my dear!” he exclaimed. “You're the very woman I wanted
+to see. I'm snowed under with fool letters from females anxious to
+entertain 'our poor, brave, wounded officers.' Head 'em off, will you?”
+ He thrust a bundle of letters into her hands. Then, as she moved toward
+the windows, and the cold, searching light of the wintry sunshine fell
+full on her face, his voice altered. “What is it? What has happened,
+Sara?” he asked quickly.
+
+She looked at him dumbly. Her lips moved, but no sound came. The sudden
+question, accompanied by the swift, penetrating glance of Miles's brown
+eyes, had taken her off her guard.
+
+He limped across to her.
+
+“Not a stroke of work for you to-day,” he said decisively, taking the
+bundle of letters out of her hands. “Now tell me what's wrong?”
+
+She looked away from him, a slow, shamed red creeping into her face. At
+last--
+
+“I've seen Garth,” she said very low.
+
+Herrick nodded. He knew what that meeting had meant to one of these two
+friends of his. Now he was to see the reverse of the medal. He waited,
+his silence sympathetic and far more helpful than any eager, probing
+question, however well-intentioned.
+
+“Miles,” she burst out suddenly, “I'm--I'm wretched!”
+
+“How's that?” He did not make the mistake of attributing her outburst to
+a transient mood of depression. Something deeper lay behind it.
+
+“Since I saw Garth yesterday I've been asking myself whether--whether
+I've been doing him a ghastly injustice”--she moistened her dry
+lips--“whether he was really guilty of--running away.”
+
+“Ah!” Miles stuffed his hands in his pockets and limped the length
+of the room and back. In that moment, he realized something of the
+maddening, galling restraint of the bondage under which Garth Trent had
+lived for years--the bondage of silence, and, within his pockets, his
+hands were clenched when he halted again at Sara's side.
+
+“Why?” he shot at her.
+
+She hesitated. Then she caught her breath a little hysterically.
+
+“Why--because--because I just can't believe it! . . . I've seen a lot
+since I went away. I've seen brave men--and I've seen men . . . who
+were afraid.” She turned her head aside. “They--the ones who were
+afraid--didn't look . . . as Garth looks.”
+
+Herrick made no comment. He put a question.
+
+“What are you going to do?”
+
+“I don't know. I expect you think I'm a fool? I've nothing to go on--on
+the contrary, I've Garth's own admission that--that he _was_ cashiered.
+And yet----Oh! Miles, if he were only doing anything--now--it would be
+easier to believe in him! But--he holds absolutely aloof. It's as though
+he _were_ afraid--still.”
+
+“Have you ever thought”--Herrick spoke slowly, without looking at
+her--“what this year of war must have meant to a man who has been
+a soldier--and is one no longer?” His eyes came back to her face
+meditatively.
+
+“How--what do you mean?” she whispered.
+
+“You've only got to look at the man to know what I mean. I think--since
+the war broke out--that Trent has been through the bitterness of death.”
+
+“But--but he could have enlisted--got in somehow--under another name,
+had he _wanted_ to fight. Or he might have gone out and driven an
+ambulance car--as Lester Kent did.”
+
+Sara was putting to Herrick the very arguments which had arisen in
+her own mind to confound the intuitive belief of which she had
+been conscious since that moment of inward revelation on Crabtree
+Moor--putting them forward in all their repulsive ugliness of fact, in
+the desperate hope that Herrick might find some way to refute them.
+
+“Some men might have done, perhaps,” answered Miles quietly. “But not
+a man of Trent's temperament. Some trees bend in a storm--and when the
+worst of it is past, they spring erect again. Some _can't_; they break.”
+
+The words recalled to Sara's mind with sudden vividness the last letter
+Patrick Lovell had ever written her--the one which he had left in the
+Chippendale bureau for her to receive after his death. He had applied
+almost those identical words to the Malincourt temperament, of which he
+had recognized the share she had inherited. And she realized that her
+guardian and Miles Herrick had been equally discerning. Though
+differing in its effect upon each of them, consequent upon individual
+idiosyncrasy, the fact remained that she and Garth were both “breaking”
+ beneath the strain which destiny had imposed on them.
+
+With the memory of Patrick's letter came an inexpressible longing
+for the man himself--for the kindly, helping hand which he would have
+stretched out to her in this crisis of her life. She felt sure that, had
+he been beside her now, his shrewd counsel would have cleared away the
+mists of doubt and indecision which had closed about her.
+
+But since he was no longer there to be appealed to, she had turned
+instinctively to Herrick, and, somehow, he had failed her. He had not
+given her a definite expression of his own belief. She had been humanly
+craving to hear that he, too, believed in Garth, notwithstanding the
+evidence against him--that he had some explanation to offer of that
+ghastly tragedy of the court-martial episode. And instead, he had only
+hazarded some tolerant suggestions--sympathetic to Garth, it is true,
+but not carrying with them the vital, unqualified assurance she had
+longed to hear.
+
+In spite of this, she knew that Herrick's friendship with Garth had
+remained unbroken by the knowledge of the Indian Frontier story. The
+personal relations of the two men were unchanged, and she felt as though
+Miles were withholding something from her, observing a reticence
+for which she could find no explanation. He had been very kind and
+understanding--it would not have been Miles had he been otherwise--but
+he had not helped her much. In some curious way she felt as though he
+had thrown the whole onus of coming to a decision, unaided by advice,
+upon her shoulders.
+
+She returned to Sunnyside oppressed with a homesick longing for Patrick.
+The two years which had elapsed since his death had blunted the edge of
+her sorrow--as time inevitably must--but she still missed the shrewd,
+kindly, worldly-wise old man unspeakably, and just now, thrown back upon
+herself in some indefinable way by Miles's attitude, her whole heart
+cried out for that other who was gone.
+
+She wondered if he knew how much she needed him. She almost believed
+that he must know--wherever he might be now, she felt that Patrick would
+never have forgotten the child of the woman whom, in this world, he had
+loved so long and faithfully.
+
+With an instinctive craving for some tangible memory of him, she
+unlocked the leather case which held her mother's miniature, together
+with the last letter which Patrick had ever written; and, unfolding the
+letter, began to read it once again.
+
+Somehow, there seemed comfort in the very wording of it, in every
+little characteristic phrase that had been Patrick's, in the familiar
+appellation, “Little old pal,” which he had kept for her alone.
+
+All at once her fingers gripped the letter more tightly, her attentions
+riveted by a certain passage towards the end.
+
+“. . . And when love comes to you, never forget that it is the biggest
+thing in the world, the one altogether good and perfect gift. Don't let
+any twopenny-halfpenny considerations of worldly advantage influence
+you, or the tittle-tattle of other folks, and even if it seems that
+something unsurmountable lies between you and the fulfillment of love,
+go over it, or round it, or through it! If it's real love, your faith
+must be big enough to remove the mountains in the way--or to go over
+them.”
+
+Had Patrick foreseen the exact circumstances in which his “little old
+pal” would one day find herself, he could not have written anything more
+strangely applicable.
+
+Sara sat still, every nerve of her taut and strung. She felt as though
+she had laid bare the whole of her trouble, revealed her inmost soul in
+all its anguished perplexity, to those shrewd blue eyes which had been
+wont to see so clearly through externals, piercing infallibly to the
+very heart of things.
+
+Patrick had always possessed that supreme gift of being able to separate
+the grain from the chaff--to distinguish unerringly between essentials
+and non-essentials, and now, in the quiet, wise counsel of an old
+letter, Sara found an answer to all the questionings that had made so
+bitter a thing of life.
+
+It was almost as if some one had torn down a curtain from before her
+eyes, rent asunder a veil which had been distorting and obscuring the
+values of things.
+
+Mountains! There were mountains indeed betwixt her and Garth--and there
+was no way round them or through them! But now--now she would go over
+them--go straight ahead, unregarding of the mountains between, to where
+Garth and love awaited her.
+
+No man is all angel--or all devil. Supposing Garth _had_ been guilty of
+cowardice, had had his one moment of weakness? She no longer cared! He
+was hers, her lover, alike in his weakness and in his strength. She had
+known men in France shrink in terror at the evil droning of a shell, and
+then die selflessly that others might live.
+
+“Your faith must be big enough to remove the mountains in the way--or to
+go over them,” Patrick had written.
+
+And Sara, hiding her face in her hands, thanked God that now, at last,
+her faith was big enough, and that love--“the one altogether good and
+perfect gift”--was still hers if she would only go over the mountains.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE
+
+“GARTH TRENT, COWARD.”
+
+The words, in staring white capital letters, had been chalked up by some
+one on the big wooden double-doors that shut the world out from Far End.
+
+Sara stood quite still, gazing at them fixedly, and a tense white-heat
+of anger flared up within her. Who had dared to put such an insult upon
+the man she loved?
+
+“_Coward_!” No one had ever actually applied that term to Garth in her
+hearing. They had skirted delicately round it, or wrapped up its meaning
+in some less harsh-sounding tangle of phrases, and although she had
+bitterly used the word herself, now that the opprobrious expression
+publicly confronted her, writ large by some unfriendly hand, she
+was swept by a sheer fury of indignant denial. It roused in her the
+immediate instinct to defend, to range herself unmistakably on Garth's
+side against a world of traducers.
+
+With a faint smile of self-mockery, she realized that had this flagrant
+insult been leveled at him in the beginning, had her first knowledge of
+the black shadow which hung over him been thus brutally flung at her,
+instead of diffidently, reluctantly broken to her by Elisabeth, she
+would probably, with the instinctive partisanship of woman for her mate,
+have utterly refused to credit it--against all reason and all proof.
+
+She wondered who could have done this thing, nailed this insult to
+Garth's very door. The illiterate characters stamped it as the work of
+some one in the lower walks of life, and, with a frown of annoyance,
+Sara promptly--and quite correctly--ascribed it to Black Brady.
+
+“I never forgits to pay back,” he had told her once, belligerently.
+Probably this was his notion of getting even with the man who had
+prosecuted him for poaching. But had Brady realized that, in retaliating
+upon Trent, he would be giving pain to his beloved Sara, whom he had
+grown to regard with a humble, dog-like devotion, he would certainly
+have refrained from recording his vengeance upon Garth's gateway.
+
+Surmising that Garth could not have seen the offending legend--or it
+would scarcely have been left for all who can to read--Sara whipped out
+her handkerchief and set to work to rub it off. He should not see it if
+she could help it!
+
+But Black Brady had done his work very thoroughly, and she was still
+diligently scrubbing at it with an inadequate piece of cambric when she
+heard steps behind her, and wheeling round, found herself confronted by
+Garth himself.
+
+His eyes rested indifferently and without surprise upon the chalked-up
+words, then turned to Sara's face inquiringly.
+
+“Why are you doing that?” he asked. “Is--cleaning gates the latest form
+of war-work?”
+
+Sara, her face scarlet, answered reluctantly.
+
+“I didn't want you to see it.”
+
+A curious expression flashed into his eyes.
+
+“I saw it--two hours ago.”
+
+“And you left it there?”--with amazement.
+
+“Why not? It's true, isn't it?”
+
+And in that moment the long struggle in Sara's heart ended, and she
+answered out of the fullness of the faith that was in her.
+
+“No! It is _not_ true! I've been a fool to believe it for an instant.
+But I'm one no longer. I don't believe it.” She paused, then, very
+deliberately and steadily, she put her question.
+
+“Garth--tell me, were you ever guilty of cowardice?”
+
+“The court-martial thought so.”
+
+Sara's foot tapped impatiently on the ground.
+
+“Please answer my question,” she said quickly.
+
+But he remained unmoved.
+
+“Elisabeth Durward has surely supplied you with all the information on
+that subject which you require,” he said in expressionless tones, and
+Sara was conscious anew of the maddening feeling of impotence with which
+a contest of wills between herself and Garth never failed to imbue her.
+
+“Garth”--there was appeal in her voice, yet it was still very steady and
+determined--“I want to know what _you_ say about it. What Elisabeth--or
+any one else--may say, doesn't matter any longer.”
+
+Something in the quiet depth of emotion in her voice momentarily broke
+through his guard. He made an involuntary movement towards her, then
+checked himself, and, with an effort, resumed his former detached
+manner.
+
+“More important than anything either I, or Elisabeth, can say, is the
+verdict of the court,” he answered.
+
+The deadly calm of his voice ripped away her last remnant of composure.
+
+“The verdict of the court!” she burst out. “_Damn_ the verdict of the
+court!”
+
+“I have done--many a time!”--bitterly.
+
+“Garth,” she came a step nearer to him and her sombre eyes blazed into
+his. “I _will_ have an answer! For God's sake, don't fence with me
+any longer! . . . There have been misunderstandings enough, reticences
+enough, between us. For this once, let us be honest with each other. I
+pretended I didn't care--I pretended I could go on living, believing you
+to be what--what they have called you. And I can't! . . . I can't go
+on. . . . I can't bear it any longer. You must answer me! _Were you
+guilty?_”
+
+He was white to the lips by the time she had finished, and his eyes held
+a look of dumb torture. Twice he essayed to answer her, but no sound
+came.
+
+At last he turned away, as though the passionate question in her
+face--the eager, hungry longing to hear her faith confirmed--were more
+than he could bear.
+
+“I cannot deny it.” The words came hoarsely, almost whispered.
+
+Her eyes never left his face.
+
+“I didn't ask you to deny it,” she persisted doggedly. “I asked
+you--were you guilty?”
+
+Again there fell as heavy silence. Then, reluctantly, as if the
+admission were dragged from him, he spoke.
+
+“I'm afraid I can give you no other answer to that question.”
+
+A light like the tender, tremulous shining of dawn broke across Sara's
+face.
+
+“Then you _weren't_ guilty!” she exclaimed, and there was a deep,
+surpassing joy in her shaken tones. “I knew it! I was sure of it. Oh!
+Garth, Garth, what a fool I've been! And oh! My dear, why did you do
+it? Why did you let me go on thinking you--what it almost killed me to
+think?”
+
+He stared down at her with wondering, uncertain eyes.
+
+“But I've just told you that I can't deny it!”
+
+She smiled at him--a smile of absolute content, with a gleam of humour
+at the back of it.
+
+“I didn't ask you to deny it. I asked you to own to it; I tried to make
+you--every way. And you can't!”
+
+“But--”
+
+She laid her hand across his mouth--laughing the tender, triumphant
+laughter of a woman who has won, and knows that she has.
+
+“You needn't blacken yourself any longer on my account, Garth. I shall
+never again believe anything that you may say against--the man I love.”
+
+She stood leaning a little towards him, surrender in every line of her
+slender body, and her face was like a white flame--transfigured, radiant
+with some secret, mystic glory of love's imparting.
+
+With an inarticulate cry he opened wide his arms and she went to
+him--swiftly, unerringly, like a homing bird--and, as he folded her
+close against his breast and laid his lips to hers, all the hunger and
+the longing of the empty past was in his kiss. For the moment, pain and
+bitterness and regret were swept away in that ecstasy of reunion.
+
+
+
+Presently, with a little sigh of spent rapture, she leaned away from
+him.
+
+“To think we've wasted a whole year,” she said regretfully. “Garth, I
+wish I had trusted you better!” There was a sweet humility of repentance
+in her tones.
+
+“I don't see why you should trust me now,” he rejoined quietly. “The
+facts remain as before.”
+
+“Only that the verdict of the court-martial was wrong,” she said
+swiftly. “There was some horrible mistake. I am sure of it--I know it!
+Garth!”--after a moment's pause--“are you going to tell me everything? I
+have the right to know--haven't I?--now that I'm going to be your wife.”
+
+She felt the clasp of his arms relax, and, looking up quickly, she
+saw his face suddenly revert to its old lines of weariness. Slowly,
+reluctantly, he drew away from her.
+
+“Garth!” There was a shrilling note of apprehension in her voice.
+“Garth! What is it? Why do you look like that?”
+
+It was a full minute before he answered. When he did, he spoke heavily,
+as one who knows that his next words will dash all the joy out of life.
+
+“Because,” he said quietly, “I can no more tell you anything now than I
+could before. I can't clear myself, Sara!”
+
+Her eyes were fixed on his.
+
+“Do you mean--you will _never_ be able to?” she asked incredulously.
+
+“Yes, I mean that.”
+
+“Answer me one more question, Garth. Is it that you _cannot_--or _will
+not_ clear yourself?”
+
+“I _must_ not,” he replied steadily. “I am not the only one concerned
+in the matter. There is some one to whom I owe it to be silent. Honour
+forbids that I should even try to clear myself. Now you know all--all
+that I can ever tell you.”
+
+“Who is it?” The question leaped from her, and Garth's answer came with
+an irrevocability of refusal there was no combating.
+
+“That I cannot tell you--or any one.”
+
+Sara's mouth twitched. Her face was very white, but her eyes were
+shining.
+
+“And you have borne this--all these years?” she said. “You have known
+that you could clear yourself and have refrained?”
+
+“There was no choice,” he answered quietly. “I took on a certain
+liability--years ago, and because it has turned out to be a much heavier
+liability than I anticipated gives me no excuse for repudiating it now.”
+
+For a moment Sara hid her face in her hands. When she uncovered it again
+there was something almost akin to awe in her eyes.
+
+“Will you ever forgive me, Garth, for doubting you?” she whispered.
+
+“Forgive you?” He smiled. “What else could you have done, sweetheart? I
+don't know, even now, why you believe in me,” he added wonderingly.
+
+“Just because--” she began, and fell silent, realizing that her belief
+had no reason, but was founded on the intuitive knowledge of a love that
+has suffered and won out on the other side.
+
+When next she spoke it was with the simple, frank directness
+characteristic of her.
+
+“Thank God that I can prove that I do trust you--absolutely. When will
+you marry me, Garth?”
+
+“When will I marry you?” He repeated the words slowly, as though they
+conveyed no meaning to him.
+
+“Yes. I want every one to know, to see that I believe in you. I want
+to stand at your side--go shares. Do you remember, once, how we settled
+that married life meant going shares in everything--good and bad?”
+ She smiled a little at the remembrance drawn from the small store of
+memories that was all her few days of unclouded love had given her. “I
+want--my share, Garth.”
+
+For a moment he was silent. Then he spoke, and the quiet finality of his
+tones struck her like a blow.
+
+“We can never marry, Sara.”
+
+“Never--marry!” she repeated dazedly. Quick fear seized her, and she
+rushed on impetuously: “Then you haven't forgiven me, after all--you
+don't believe that I trust you! Oh! How can I make you _know_ that I do?
+Garth--”
+
+“Oh, my dear,” he interrupted swiftly. “Don't misunderstand me. I
+know that you believe in me now--and I thank God for it! And as for
+forgiveness, as I told you, I have nothing to forgive. You'd have
+had need of the faith that removes mountains”--Sara started at the
+repetition of Patrick's very words--“to have believed in me under the
+circumstances.” He paused a moment, and when he spoke again there was
+something triumphant in his tones--a serene gladness and contentment.
+“You and I, beloved, are right with each other--now and always. Nothing
+can ever again come between us to divide us as we have been divided this
+last year. But, none the less,” and his voice took on a steadfast note
+of resolve, “I cannot marry you. I thought I could--I thought the past
+had sunk into oblivion, and that I might take the gift of love you
+offered me. . . . But I was wrong.”
+
+“No! No! You were not wrong!” She was clinging to him in a sudden terror
+that even now their happiness was slipping from them. “The past has
+nothing to say to you and me. It can't come between us. . . . You have
+only to take me, Garth”--tremulously. “Let me _show_ that my love is
+stronger than ill repute. Let me come to you and stand by you as your
+wife. The past can't hurt us, then!”
+
+He shook his head.
+
+“The past never loses its power to hurt,” he answered. “I've learned
+that. As far as the world you belong to is concerned, I'm finished, and
+I won't drag the woman I love through the same hell I've been through.
+That's what it would mean, you know. You would be singled out, pointed
+at, as the wife of a man who was chucked out of the Service. There would
+be no place in the world for you. You would be ostracized--because you
+were my wife.”
+
+“I shouldn't care,” she urged. “Surely I can bear--what you have borne?
+. . . I shouldn't mind--anything--so long as we were together.”
+
+He drew her close to him, his lips against her hair.
+
+“Beloved!” he said, a great wonder in his voice. “Oh! Little _brave_
+thing! What have I ever done that you should love me like that?”
+
+Sara winked away a tear, and a rather tremulous smile hovered round her
+mouth.
+
+“I don't know, I'm sure,” she acknowledged a little shakily. “But I do.
+Garth, you _will_ marry me?”
+
+He lifted his bent head, his eyes gazing straight ahead of him, as
+though envisioning the lonely future and defying it.
+
+“No,” he said resolutely. “No. God helping me, I will never marry you,
+Sara. I have--no right to marry. It could only bring you misery. Dear,
+I must shield you, even from yourself--from your own big, generous
+impulses which would let you join your life to mine. . . . Love is
+denied to us--denied through my own act of long ago. But if you'll give
+me friendship. . . .” She could sense the sudden passionate entreaty
+behind the words. “Sara! Friendship is worth while--such friendship
+as ours would be! Are you brave enough, strong enough, to give me
+that--since I may not ask for more?”
+
+There was a long silence, while Sara lay very still against his breast,
+her face hidden.
+
+In that silence, her spirit met and faced the ultimate issue--for there
+was that in Garth's voice which told her that his decision not to marry
+her was immutable. Could she--oh God!--could she give him what he asked?
+Give only part to the man to whom she longed to give all that a woman
+has to give? It would be far easier to go away--to put him out of her
+life for ever.
+
+And yet--he asked this of her! He needed something that she could still
+give--the comradeship which was all that they two might ever know of
+love. . . .
+
+When at last she raised her face to his, it was ashen, but her small
+chin was out-thrust, her eyes were like stars, and the grip of her slim
+hands on his shoulders was as iron.
+
+“I'm strong enough to give you anything that you want,” she said
+quietly.
+
+She had made the supreme sacrifice; she was ready to be his friend.
+
+
+
+A sad and wistful gravity hung about their parting. Their lips met and
+clung together, but it was in a kiss of renunciation, not of passion.
+
+He held her in his arms a moment longer.
+
+“Never forget I'm loving you--always,” he said steadily. “Call me your
+friend--but remember, in my heart I shall always be your lover.”
+
+Her eyes met his, unflinching, infinitely faithful.
+
+“And I--I, too, shall be loving you,” she answered, simply. “Always,
+Garth--always.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+OUT OF THE NIGHT
+
+Tim was home on sick leave, and, after two perfect weeks of reunion,
+Elisabeth had written to ask if he might come down to Sunnyside,
+suggesting that the sea-breezes might advance his convalescence.
+
+“I wonder Mrs. Durward cares to spare him,” commented Selwyn in some
+surprise. “It seems out of keeping with her general attitude. However,
+we shall be delighted to have him here. Write and say so, will you,
+Sara?”
+
+Sara acquiesced briefly, flushing a little. She thought she could
+read the motive at the back of Elisabeth's proposal--the spirit which,
+putting up a gallant fight even in the very face of defeat, could make
+yet a final effort to secure success by throwing Tim and the woman
+he loved together in the dangerously seductive intimacy of the same
+household.
+
+But Sara had no fear that Tim would avail himself of the opportunity
+thus provided in the way Elisabeth doubtless hoped he might. That matter
+had been finally settled between herself and him before he went to
+France, and she knew that he would never again ask her to be his wife.
+So she wrote to him serenely, telling him to come down to Monkshaven as
+soon as he liked; and a few days later found him installed at Sunnyside,
+nominally under Dr. Selwyn's care.
+
+He was the same unaffected, spontaneous Tim as of yore, and hugely
+embarrassed by any reference to his winning of the Military Cross,
+firmly refusing to discuss the manner of it, even with Sara.
+
+“I just got on with my job--like dozens of other fellows,” was all he
+would say.
+
+It was from a brother officer that Sara learned, later, than Tim had
+“got on with his job” under a hellish enemy fire, in spite of being
+twice wounded; and had thus saved the immediate situation in his
+vicinity--and, incidentally, the lives of many of his comrades.
+
+He seemed to Sara to have become at once both older and younger than in
+former days. He had all the hilarious good spirits evinced by nine out
+of ten of the boys who came home on leave--the cheery capacity to laugh
+at the hardships and dangers of the front, to poke good-natured fun at
+“old Fritz” and to make a jest of the German shells and the Flanders
+mud, treating the whole great adventure of war as though it were the
+finest game invented.
+
+Yet back of the mirth and laughter in the blue eyes lurked something
+new and strange and grave--inexpressibly touching--that indefinable
+something which one senses shrinkingly in the young eyes of the boys who
+have come back.
+
+It hurt Sara somehow--that look of which she caught glimpses now and
+then, in quiet moments, and she set herself to drive it away, or, at
+least, to keep it at bay as much as possible, by filling every available
+moment with occupation or amusement.
+
+“I don't want him to think about what it was like--out there,” she told
+Molly. “His eyes make my heart ache, sometimes. They're too young to
+have seen--such things. Suggest something we can play at to-day!”
+
+So they threw themselves, heart and soul, into the task of entertaining
+Tim, and, since he was very willing to be entertained, the weeks at
+Sunnyside slipped by in a little whirl of gaiety, winding up with a
+badminton tournament, at which Tim--whose right arm had not yet quite
+recovered from the effects of the German bullet it had stopped--played
+a left-handed game, and triumphantly maneuvered himself and his partner
+into the semi-finals.
+
+Probably--leniently handicapped, as they were, in the
+circumstances--they would have won the tournament, but that, unluckily,
+in leaping to reach a shuttle soaring high above his head, Tim
+somehow missed his footing and came down heavily, with his leg twisted
+underneath him.
+
+“Broken ankle,” announced Selwyn briefly, when he had made his
+examination.
+
+Tim opened his eyes--he had lost consciousness, momentarily, from the
+pain.
+
+“Damn!” he observed succinctly. “That'll make it the very devil of a
+time before I can get back to France!” Then, to Sara, who could be heard
+murmuring something about writing to Elisabeth: “Not much, old thing,
+you don't! She'd fuss herself, no end. Just write--and say--it's a
+sprain.” And he promptly fainted again.
+
+They got him back to Sunnyside while he was still unconscious, and when
+he returned to an intelligent understanding of material matters, he
+found himself in bed, with a hump-like excrescence in front of him
+keeping the weight of the bedclothes from the injured limb.
+
+“Did I faint?” he asked morosely.
+
+“Yes. Lucky you did, too,” responded Sara cheerfully. “Doctor Dick
+rigged your ankle up all nice and comfy without your being any the
+wiser.”
+
+“Fainted--like a girl--over a broken ankle, my hat!”--with immense
+scorn.
+
+Sara was hard put to it not to laugh outright at his face of disgust.
+
+“You might remember that you're not strong yet,” she suggested
+soothingly.
+
+They talked for a little, and presently Tim, whose eyelids had been
+blinking somnolently for some time, gave vent to an unmistakable yawn.
+
+“I'm--I'm confoundedly sleepy,” he murmured apologetically.
+
+“Then go to sleep,” came promptly from Sara. “It's quite the best
+thing you can do. I'll run off and write a judicious letter to
+Elisabeth--about your sprain”--smiling.
+
+With a glance round to see that he had candle, matches, and a hand-bell
+within reach, she turned out the lamp and slipped quietly away. Tim was
+asleep almost before she had quitted the room.
+
+
+
+It was several hours later when Sara sat up in bed, broad awake, in
+response to the vigorous shaking that some one was administering to her.
+
+She opened her eyes to the yellow glare of a candle. Behind the
+glare materialized a vision of Jane Crab, attired in a red flannel
+dressing-gown, and with her hair tightly strained into four skimpy
+plaits which stuck out horizontally from her head like the surviving
+rays of a badly damaged halo.
+
+“Miss Sara! Miss Sara!” She apostrophized the rudely awakened sleeper in
+a sibilant whisper, as though afraid of being overheard. “Get up, quick!
+They 'Uns is 'ere!”
+
+“_Who_ is here?” exclaimed Sara, somewhat startled.
+
+“The Zepps, miss--the Zepps! The guns are firing off every minute or
+two. There!”--as the blurred thunder of anti-aircraft guns boomed in the
+distance. “There they go again!”
+
+Sara leaped out of bed in an instant, hastily pulling on a fascinating
+silk kimono and thrusting her bare feet into a pair of scarlet Turkish
+slippers.
+
+“One may as well die tidy,” she reflected philosophically. Then, turning
+to Jane--
+
+“Where's the doctor?” she demanded.
+
+“Trying to get the mistress downstairs. She's that scared, she won't
+budge from her bed.”
+
+Sara giggled--Jane's face was very expressive.
+
+“Well, I'm going into Mr. Durward's room,” she announced. “We shall see
+better there.”
+
+Jane's little beady eyes glittered.
+
+“Aye, I'd like to see them at their devil's work,” she allowed fondly,
+with a threatening “Just-let-me-catch-them-at-it!” intonation in her
+voice.
+
+Sara laughed, and they both repaired to Tim's room, encountering Molly
+on the way and sweeping her along in their train. They found Tim volubly
+cursing his inability to get up and “watch the fun.”
+
+“Look out and tell me if you can see the blighters,” he commanded.
+
+As Sara threw open the window, a dull, thudding sound came up to them
+from the direction of Oldhampton. There was a sullen menace in the
+distance-dulled reverberation.
+
+Molly gurgled with the nervous excitement of a first experience under
+fire.
+
+“That's a bomb!” she whispered breathlessly.
+
+She, and Sara, and Jane Crab wedged themselves together in the open
+window and leaned far out, peering into the moonless dark. As they
+watched, a search-light leapt into being, and a pencil of light moved
+flickeringly across the sky. Then another and another--sweeping hither
+and thither like the blind feelers of some hidden octopus seeking its
+prey. There was something horribly uncanny in those long, straight
+shafts of light wavering uncertainly across the dense darkness of the
+night sky.
+
+“Can you see the Zepp?” demanded Tim, with lively interest, from his
+bed.
+
+“No, it's pitch black--too dark to see a thing,” replied Sara.
+
+Exactly as she spoke, a brilliant light hung for a moment suspended
+in the dark arch of the sky, then shivered into a blaze of garish
+effulgence, girdling the countryside and illuminating every road and
+building, every field, and tree, and ditch, as brightly as though it
+were broad daylight.
+
+“A star-shell!” gasped Molly. “What a beastly thing!
+Positively”--giggling nervously--“I believe they can see right inside
+this room!”
+
+“'Tisn't decent!” fulminated Jane indignantly, clutching with modest
+fingers at her scanty dressing-gown and straining it tightly across
+her chest whilst she backed hastily from the vicinity of the window.
+“Lightin' up sudden like that in the middle of the night! I feel for
+all the world as though I hadn't got a stitch on me! Come away from the
+window, do, miss----”
+
+The light failed as suddenly as it had flared, and a warning crash,
+throbbing up against their ears, startled her into silence.
+
+“That's a trifle too near to be pleasant,” exclaimed Tim sharply. “Go
+downstairs, you three! Do you hear?”
+
+Simultaneously, Selwyn shouted from below--
+
+“Come downstairs! Come down at once! Quick, Sara! I'm coming up to carry
+Tim down--and Minnie won't stay alone. Come _on_!”
+
+Obedient to something urgent and imperative in the voices of both
+men--something that breathed of danger--the three women hastened from
+the room. Jane's candle flared and went out in the draught from the
+suddenly opened door, and in the smothering darkness they stumbled
+pell-mell down the stairs.
+
+A dim light burning in the hall showed them Mrs. Selwyn cowering against
+her husband, her face hidden, sobbing hysterically, and in a moment Sara
+had taken Dick's place, wrapping her strong arms about the shuddering
+woman.
+
+“Go on!” she whispered to him. “Go and get Tim down!”
+
+He nodded, releasing himself with gentle force from his wife's clinging
+fingers, which had closed upon his arm like a vise.
+
+Immediately she lifted up her voice in a thin, querulous shriek--
+
+“No! Dick, Dick--don't leave me! _Dick_”--
+
+
+
+. . . And then it came--sped from that hovering Hate which hung
+above--dropping soundlessly, implacable through the utter darkness of
+the night and crashing into devilish life against a corner of the house.
+
+Followed by a terrible flash and roar--a chaos of unimaginable sound.
+It seemed as though the whole world had split into fragments and were
+rocketing off into space; and, in quick succession, came the rumble of
+falling beams and masonry, and the dense dust of disintegrated plaster
+mingling with the fumes of high explosive.
+
+Sara was conscious of being shot violently across the hall, and then
+everything went out in illimitable black darkness.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+“FROM SUDDEN DEATH----”
+
+“Sara! Sara! For God's sake, open your eyes!”
+
+The anguished tones pierced through the black curtain which had suddenly
+cut away the outer world from Sara's consciousness, and she opened her
+eyes obediently, to find herself looking straight into Garth's face bent
+above her--a sickly white in the yellow glare of the hurricane lamp he
+was holding.
+
+“Are you hurt?” His voice came again insistently, sharp with hideous
+fear.
+
+She sat up, breathing rather fast.
+
+“No,” she said, as though surprised. “I'm not hurt--not the least bit.”
+
+With Garth's help, she struggled to her feet and stood upright--rather
+shakily, it is true, but still able to accomplish the feat without much
+difficulty. She began to laugh weakly--a little helplessly.
+
+“I think--I think I've only had my wind knocked out,” she said. Then,
+as gradually the comprehension of events returned to her: “The others?
+Who's hurt? Oh, Garth! Is any one--_killed_?”
+
+“No, no one, thank God!” He reassured her hastily. His arm went
+round her, and for a moment their lips met in a silent passion of
+thanksgiving.
+
+“But you--how did you come here?” she asked, as they drew apart once
+more. “You . . . weren't . . . here?”--her brows contracting in a
+puzzled frown as she endeavoured to recall the incidents immediately
+preceding the bombing of the house. “We'd--we'd just gone to bed.”
+
+“I was dining with the Herricks. The raid began just as I was leaving
+them, so Judson and I drove straight on here instead of going home.”
+
+Sara pressed his hand.
+
+“Bless you, dear!” she whispered quickly. Then, recollection returning
+more completely: “Tim? Is Tim safe?”
+
+“Tim?”--sharply.
+
+“He was upstairs. Where is Doctor Dick? Did he--”
+
+“I'm not far off,” came Selwyn's voice, from the mouth of a dark
+cavity that had once been the study doorway. “Come over here--but step
+carefully. The floor's strewn with stuff.”
+
+Garth piloted Sara skillfully across the debris that littered the floor,
+and they joined the group of shadowy figures huddled together in the
+doorless study.
+
+“'Ware my arm!” warned Selwyn, as they approached. “It's broken,
+confound it!” He seemed, for the moment, oblivious of the pain.
+
+Meanwhile, Mrs. Selwyn, finding herself physically intact, was keeping
+up an irritating moaning, interspersed with pettish diatribes against
+a Government that could be so culpably careless as to permit her to be
+bombed out of house and home; whilst Jane Crab, who had found and lit
+a candle, and recklessly stuck it to the table in its own grease, was
+bluffly endeavouring to console her.
+
+For once Selwyn's saint-like patience failed him.
+
+“Oh, shut up whining, Minnie!” he exclaimed forcefully. “It would be
+more to the point if you got down on your knees and said thank you to
+some one or something instead of grousing like that!”
+
+He turned hurriedly to Garth, who was flashing his lantern hither and
+thither, locating the damage done.
+
+“Look here,” he said. “Young Durward's upstairs. We must get him down.”
+
+“Where does he sleep? One side of the house is staved in.”
+
+“He's not that side, thank Heaven! But the odds are he's badly hurt.
+And, anyway, he's helpless. I was just going up to carry him down when
+that damned bomb got us.”
+
+Garth swung out into the hall and sent a ringing shout up through the
+house. An instant later Tim's answer floated down to them.
+
+“All serene! Can't move!”
+
+Again Garth sent his voice pealing upwards--
+
+“Hold on! We'll be with you in a minute.”
+
+He turned to Selwyn.
+
+“I'll go up,” he said. “You can't do anything with that arm of yours.”
+
+“I can help,” maintained Dick stoutly.
+
+Garth shook his head.
+
+“No. If you slipped amongst the mess there'll be up there, I'd have two
+cripples on my hands instead of one. You stay here and look after the
+women--and get one of them to fix you up a temporary splint.”
+
+The two men moved forward, the women pressing eagerly behind them;
+then, as the light from Garth's lantern steamed ahead there came an
+instantaneous outcry of dismay.
+
+The whole stairway was twisted and askew. It had a ludicrously drunken
+look, as though it were lolling up against the wall--like a staircase in
+a picture of which the perspective is all wrong.
+
+“It isn't safe!” exclaimed Selwyn quickly. “You can't go up. We shall
+have to wait till help comes.”
+
+“I'm going up--now,” said Garth quietly.
+
+“But it isn't safe, man! Those stairs won't bear you!”
+
+“They'll have to”--laconically. “That top story may go at any minute. It
+would collapse like a pack of cards if another bomb fell near enough for
+us to feel the concussion. And young Durward would have about as much
+chance as a rat in a trap.”
+
+A silence descended on the little group of anxious people as he finished
+speaking. The gravity of Tim's position suddenly revealed itself--and
+the danger involved by an attempt at rescue.
+
+Sara drew close to Garth's side.
+
+“_Must_ you go, Garth?” she asked. “Wouldn't it be safe to wait till
+help comes?”
+
+“Tim isn't _safe_ there, actually five minutes. The floors may hold--or
+they mayn't! I must go, sweet.”
+
+She caught his hand and held it an instant against her cheek. Then--
+
+“Go, dear,” she whispered. “Go quickly. And oh!--God keep you!”
+
+He was gone, picking his way gingerly, treading as lightly as a cat,
+so that the wrenched stairway hardly creaked beneath his swift, lithe
+steps.
+
+Once there came the sudden rattle of some falling scrap of broken
+plaster, and Sara, leaning with closed eyes and white, set face, against
+the framework of a doorway, shivered soundlessly.
+
+Soon he had disappeared round the distorted head of the staircase, and
+those who were watching could only discern the bobbing glimmer of the
+light he carried mounting higher and higher.
+
+Then--after an interminable time, it seemed--there came the sound of
+voices . . . he had found Tim . . . a pause . . . then again a short,
+quick speech and the word “Right?” drifted faintly down to the strained
+ears below.
+
+Unconsciously Sara's hands had clenched themselves, and the nails were
+biting into the flesh of her palms. But she felt no pain. Her whole
+being seemed concentrated into the single sense of hearing as she waited
+there in the candle-lit gloom, listening for every tiny sound, each
+creak of a board, each scattering of loosened plaster, which might
+herald danger.
+
+Another eternity crawled by before, at length, Garth reappeared once
+more round the last bend of the staircase. Tim was lying across his
+shoulder, his injured leg hanging stiffly down, and in his hand he
+grasped the lantern, while both Garth's arms supported him.
+
+Sara's eyes had opened now and fixed themselves intently on the burdened
+figure of the man she loved, as, with infinite caution, he began the
+descent of the last flight of stairs.
+
+There was a double strain now upon the dislocated boards and joists--the
+weight of two men where one had climbed before with lithe, light,
+unimpeded limbs--and it seemed to Sara's tense, set vision as if a
+slight tremor ran throughout the whole stairway.
+
+In an agony of terror she watched Garth's steady, downward progress. She
+felt as though she must scream out to him to hurry--_hurry_! Yet she
+bit back the scream lest it should startle him, every muscle of her body
+rigid with the effort that her silence cost her.
+
+Seven stairs more! Six!
+
+Sara's lips were moving voicelessly. She was whispering rapidly over and
+over again--
+
+“God! God! God! Keep him safe! . . . You can do it. . . . Don't let him
+fall. . . .”
+
+Five! Only five steps more!
+
+“Hold up the stairs! . . . God! _Don't_ let them give way! . . .
+Don't----”
+
+Again there came the familiar thudding sound of an explosion. Somewhere
+another bomb, hurled from the cavernous dark that hid the enemy, had
+fallen, and almost simultaneously, it seemed, a warning thunder rumbled
+overhead like the menacing growl of a wild beast suddenly let loose.
+
+At the first low mutter of that threat of imminent disaster, Garth
+sprang.
+
+Gripping Tim firmly in his arms, he leaped from the quaking staircase,
+falling awkwardly, prone beneath the burden of the other's helpless
+body, as he landed.
+
+And even as he reached the ground, the upper story of the house, with a
+roar that shook the whole remaining fabric of the building, crashed to
+earth in an avalanche of stone and brick and flying slates, whilst the
+stairway upon which he had been standing gave a sickening lurch, rocked,
+and fell out sideways into the hall in a smother of dust and plaster.
+
+Stumblingly, those who had been watching groped their way through the
+powdery cloud, as it swirled and eddied, towards the dark blotch at the
+foot of the stairs which was all that could be distinguished of Trent
+and his burden.
+
+To Sara, the momentary silence that ensued was in infinity of nameless
+dread. Then--
+
+“We're all right,” gasped Trent reassuringly, and choked violently as he
+inhaled a mouthful of grit-laden air.
+
+In the same instant, across the murk shot a broad beam of light from
+the open doorway. Behind it Sara could discern white faces peering
+anxiously--Audrey's and Miles's, and, behind them again, loomed the
+heads and shoulders of others who had hurried to the scene of the
+catastrophe.
+
+Then Herrick's voice rang out, high-pitched with gathering apprehension.
+
+“Are you all safe?”
+
+And when the reassuring answer reached the little throng upon the
+threshold, a murmur of relief went up, culminating in a ringing cheer
+as the news percolated through to the crowd which had collected in the
+roadway.
+
+In an amazingly short time, so it seemed to Sara, she found herself
+comfortably tucked into the back seat of Garth's car, between him and
+Molly. Judson, with Jane beside him, took the wheel, and they were soon
+speeding swiftly away towards Greenacres, where Audrey had insisted
+that the homeless household must take refuge--the remainder of the party
+following in the Herricks' limousine.
+
+It had been a night of adventure, but it was over at last, and, as Jane
+Crab remarked with stolid conviction--
+
+“The doctor--blessed saint!--was never intended to be killed by one of
+they 'Uns, so they might as well have saved theirselves the trouble of
+trying it--and we'd all have slept the easier in our beds!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+THE RECKONING
+
+Elisabeth came slowly out of the room where her son was lying.
+
+She had reached Greenacres--in response to Sara's letter, posted on the
+eve of the raid--late in the afternoon of the following day, and Audrey
+had at once taken her upstairs to see Tim and left them together.
+And now, as she closed the door of his room behind her, she leaned
+helplessly against the wall and her lips moved in a whispered cry of
+poignant misery.
+
+“Maurice! . . . Maurice saved him! . . . Oh, my God!”
+
+Her eyes--the beautiful, hyacinth eyes--stared strickenly in front of
+her, wide and horrified like the eyes of a hunted thing, and her hands
+were twisted and wrung beneath the stress of the overwhelming knowledge
+which Tim had so joyously prattled out to her. She could hear him
+now, boyishly enthusiastic, extolling Garth with the eager, unstinted
+hero-worship of youth, and every word he said had pierced her like the
+stab of a knife.
+
+“If ever a chap deserved the V.C., Trent does, by Jove! It was the
+bravest thing I've ever known, mother mine, for he told me afterwards,
+he never expected that the top story would hold out till he got me away.
+He'd seen it from the outside first, you know! And there was I, held
+up with this confounded ankle, _and_ with a whole heap of plaster and a
+brick or two sitting on my chest I thought I'd gone west that time, for
+a certainty!”
+
+And Tim chuckled delightedly, blissfully unconscious that with each
+word he spoke he was binding upon his mother's shoulders an insuperable
+burden of remorse.
+
+It was Garth Trent who had saved her son--Garth Trent, to whom she owed
+all the garnered happiness of her married life, yet whose own life's
+fabric she had pulled down about his ears! And now, to the already
+overwhelming magnitude of her debt to him, he had added this--this final
+act of sacrifice.
+
+With an almost superhuman effort, Elisabeth had forced herself to listen
+quietly to Tim's account of his rescue from the shattered upper story of
+the Selwyn's house--to listen precisely as though Garth's share in the
+matter held no particular significance for her beyond the splendid one
+it must inevitably hold for any mother.
+
+But now, safe from the clear-sighted glance of Tim's blue eyes, she let
+the mask slip from her and crouched against his door in uncontrollable
+agony of spirit.
+
+The sin which she had sinned in secret--which, sometimes, she had almost
+come to believe was not a sin, so beautiful had been its fruit--revealed
+itself to her now in all its naked ugliness.
+
+Looking backward, down the vista of years, the whole structure of her
+happiness appeared in its true perspective, reared upon a lie--upon
+that same lie which had blasted Garth Trent's career and sent him out,
+dishonoured, from the company of his fellows.
+
+And this man from whom she had taken faith, and hope, and good
+repute--everything, in fact, that makes a man's life worth having--had
+given her the life of her son!
+
+She dropped her face between her hands with a low moan. It was
+horrible--horrible.
+
+Then, afraid that Tim might hear her, she passed stumblingly into
+her own room at the end of the corridor, and there, in solitude and
+darkness, she fought out the battle between her desire still to preserve
+the secret she had guarded three-and-twenty years, and the impulse
+toward atonement which was struggling into life within her.
+
+Like a scourge the knowledge of her debt to Garth drove her before it,
+beating her into the very depths of self-abasement, but, even so, her
+pride of name, and the mother-love which yearned to shield her son from
+all that it must involve if she should now confess the sin of her youth,
+urged her to let the present still keep the secrets of the past.
+
+The habit of years, the very purpose for which she had worked, and lied,
+and fought, must be renounced if she were to make atonement. A tale that
+was unbelievably shameful must be revealed--and Tim would have to know
+all that there was to be known.
+
+To Elisabeth, this was the most bitter thing she had to face--the fact
+that Tim, for whose sake she had so strenuously guarded her secret, must
+learn, not only what was written on that turned-down page of life,
+but also what kind of woman his mother had proved herself--how totally
+unlike the beautiful conception which his ardent boyish faith in her had
+formed.
+
+Would he understand? Would he ever understand--and forgive?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+VINDICATION
+
+Meanwhile, the Herricks and their guests--“Audrey's refugees,” as Molly
+elected to describe the latter, herself included--had gathered round the
+fire in the library, and were chatting desultorily while they awaited
+Elisabeth's return from her visit to Tim's sick-room.
+
+The casualties of the previous evening had been found to be augmented by
+two, since Mrs. Selwyn had remained in bed throughout the day, under
+the impression that she was suffering from shock, whilst Garth Trent was
+discovered to have dislocated his shoulder, and had been compelled to
+keep his room by medical orders.
+
+In endeavouring to shield Tim, as they crashed to the ground together
+from the tottering staircase, Trent had fallen undermost, receiving the
+full brunt of the fall; and a dislocated shoulder and a severe shaking,
+which had left him bruised and sore from head to foot, were the
+consequences.
+
+Characteristically, he had maintained complete silence about his injury,
+composedly accompanying Sara back to Greenacres in his car, and he had
+just been making his way out of the house when he had quietly fainted
+away on to the floor. After which, the Herricks had taken over command.
+
+“I think,” remarked Molly pertinently, “you might as well turn
+Greenacres into an annexe to the 'Convalescent,' Audrey. You've got four
+cases already.”
+
+The Lavender Lady glanced up smilingly from one of the khaki socks
+which, in these days, dangled perpetually from her shining needles, and
+into which she knitted all the love, and pity, and tender prayers of her
+simple old heart.
+
+“Mr. Trent is better,” she announced with satisfaction. “I had tea
+upstairs with him this afternoon.”
+
+“Yes,” supplements Selwyn, “I fancy one of your patients has struck,
+Audrey. Trent intends coming down this evening. Judson has just come
+back from Far End with some fresh clothes for him.”
+
+Audrey turned hastily to her husband.
+
+“Good Heavens, Miles! We can't let him come down! Mrs. Durward will be
+here with us.”
+
+“Well?”--placidly from Herrick.
+
+“Well! It will be anything but well!” retorted Audrey significantly.
+“Have you forgotten what happened that day in Haven Woods? I'm not going
+to have Garth hurt like that again! He may have been cashiered a hundred
+times--I don't care whether he was or not!--he's a man!”
+
+A very charming smile broke over Miles's face.
+
+“I've always known it,” he said quietly. “And--I should think Mrs.
+Durward knows it now.”
+
+“Yes. I know it now.”
+
+The low, contralto tones that answered were Elisabeth's. Unnoticed, she
+had entered the room and was standing just outside the little group of
+people clustered round the hearth--her slim, black-robed figure, with
+its characteristic little air of stateliness, sharply defined in the
+ruddy glow of the firelight.
+
+A sudden tremor of emotion seemed to ripple through the room. The
+atmosphere grew tense, electric--alert as with some premonition of
+coming storm.
+
+The two men had risen to their feet, but no one spoke, and the brief
+rustle of movement, as every one turned instinctively towards that
+slender, sable figure, whispered into blank silence.
+
+To Miles, infinitely compassionate, there seemed something symbolical in
+the figure of the woman standing there--isolated, outside the friendly
+circle of the fireside group, standing solitary at the table as a
+prisoner stands at the bar of judgment.
+
+The firelight, flickering across her face, revealed its pallor and
+the burning fever of her eyes, and drew strange lights from the heavy
+chestnut hair that swathed her head like a folded banner of flame.
+
+For a long moment she stood silently regarding the ring of startled
+faces turned towards her. Then at last she spoke.
+
+“I have something to tell you,” she said, addressing herself primarily,
+it seemed, to Miles.
+
+Perhaps she recognized the compassionate spirit of understanding which
+was his in so great a measure and appealed to it unconsciously. Selwyn,
+with sensitive perception, turned as though to leave the room, but she
+stopped him.
+
+“No, don't go,” she said quickly. “Please stay--all of you. I--I wish
+you all to hear what I have to say.” She spoke very composedly, with a
+curious submissive dignity, as though she had schooled herself to meet
+this moment. “It concerns Garth Trent--at least, that is the name by
+which you know him. His real name is Maurice--Maurice Kennedy, and he
+is my cousin, Lord Grisdale's younger son. He has lived here under
+an assumed name because--because”--her voice trembled a little, then
+steadied again to its accustomed even quality--“because I ruined his
+life. . . . The only way in which I can make amends is by telling you
+the true facts of the Indian Frontier episode which led to Maurice's
+dismissal from the Army. He--ought never to have been--cashiered for
+cowardice.”
+
+She paused, and with a sudden instinctive movement Sara grasped Selwyn's
+arm, while the sharp sibilance of her quick-drawn breath cut across the
+momentary silence.
+
+“No,” Elisabeth repeated. “Maurice ought never to have been cashiered.
+He was absolutely innocent of the charge against him. The real offender
+was Geoffrey . . . my husband. It was he--Geoffrey, not Maurice--who was
+sent out in charge of the reconnaissance party from the fort--and it was
+he whose nerve gave way when surprised by the enemy. Maurice kept his
+head and tried to steady him, but, at the time, Geoffrey must have been
+mad--caught by sudden panic, together with his men. Don't judge him too
+hardly”--her voice took on a note of pleading--“you must remember that
+he had been enduring days and nights of frightful strain, and that the
+attack came without any warning . . . in the darkness. He had no time to
+think--to pull himself together. And he lost his head. . . . Maurice did
+his best to save the situation. Realizing that for the moment Geoffrey
+was hardly accountable, he deliberately shot him in the leg, to
+incapacitate him, and took command himself, trying to rally the men.
+But they stampeded past him, panic-stricken, and it was while he was
+storming at them to turn round and put up a fight that--that he was shot
+in the back.” She faltered, meeting the measureless reproach in Sara's
+eyes, and strickenly aware of the hateful interpretation she had put
+upon the same incident when describing it to her on a former occasion.
+
+For the first time, she seemed to lose her composure, rocking a little
+where she stood and supporting herself by gripping the edge of the table
+with straining fingers.
+
+But no one stirred. In poignant silence they awaited the continuance
+of the tale which each one sensed to be developing towards a climax of
+inevitable calamity.
+
+“Afterwards,” pursued Elisabeth at last, “at the court-martial, two of
+the men gave evidence that they had seen Geoffrey fall wounded at the
+beginning of the skirmish--they did not know that it was Maurice who had
+disabled him intentionally--so that he was completely exonerated from
+all blame, and the Court came to the conclusion that, the command
+having thus fallen to Maurice, he had lost his nerve and been guilty
+of cowardice in face of the enemy. Geoffrey himself knew nothing of the
+actual facts--either then or later. He had gone down like a log when
+Maurice shot him, striking his head as he fell, and concussion of the
+brain wiped out of his mind all recollection of what had occurred in the
+fight prior to his fall. The last thing he remembered was mustering
+his men together in readiness to leave the fort. Everything else was a
+blank.”
+
+Out of the shadows of the fire-lit room came a muttered question.
+
+“Yes.” Elisabeth bent her head in answer. “There was--other evidence
+forthcoming. But not then, not at the time of the trial. Then Maurice
+was dismissed from the Army.”
+
+She seemed to speak with ever-increasing difficulty, and her hand
+went up suddenly to her throat. It was obvious that this self-imposed
+disclosure of the truth was taking her strength to its uttermost limit.
+
+“I had better tell you the whole story--from the beginning,” she said,
+at last, haltingly, and, after a moment's hesitation, she resumed in the
+hard, expressionless voice of intense effort.
+
+“Before Maurice went out to India, he and I were engaged to be married.
+On my part, it would have been only a marriage of convenience, for I
+was not in love with him, although I had always been fond of him in a
+cousinly way. There was another man whom I loved--the man I afterwards
+married, Geoffrey Lovell--” for an instant her eyes glowed with a sudden
+radiance of remembrance--“and he and I became secretly engaged, in spite
+of the fact that I had already promised to marry Maurice. I expect you
+think that was unforgivable of me,” she seemed to search the intent
+faces of her little audience as though challenging the verdict she might
+read therein; “but there was some excuse. I was very young, and at the
+time I promised myself to Maurice I did not know that Geoffrey cared for
+me. And then--when I knew--I hadn't the courage to break with Maurice.
+He and Geoffrey were both going out to India--they were in the same
+regiment--and I kept hoping that something might happen which would
+make it easier for me. Maurice might meet and be attracted by some other
+woman. . . . I hoped he would.”
+
+She fell silent for a moment, then, gathering her remaining strength
+together, as it seemed, she went on relentlessly--
+
+“Something did happen. Maurice was cashiered from the Army, and I had a
+legitimate reason for terminating the engagement between us. . . .
+Then, just as I thought I was free, he came to tell me his case would
+be reopened; there was an eye-witness who could prove his innocence, a
+private in his own regiment. I never knew who the man was”--she turned
+slightly at the sound of a sudden brusque movement from Miles Herrick,
+then, as he volunteered no remark, continued--“but it appeared he had
+been badly wounded and had only learned the verdict of the court-martial
+after his recovery. He had then written to Maurice, telling him that he
+was in a position to prove that it was not he, but Geoffrey Lovell who
+had been guilty of cowardice. When I understood this, and realized what
+it must mean, I confessed to Maurice that Geoffrey was the man I loved,
+and I begged and implored him to take the blame--to let the verdict of
+the court-marital stand. It was a horrible thing to do--I know that . . .
+but think what it meant to me! It meant the honour and welfare of the
+man I loved, as opposed to the honour and welfare of a man for whom I
+cared comparatively little. Maurice was not easy to move, but I made him
+understand that, whatever happened now, I should never marry him--that
+I should sink or swim with Geoffrey, and at last he consented to do the
+thing I asked. He accepted the blame and went away--to the Colonies, I
+believe. Afterwards, as you all know, he returned to England and lived
+at Far End under the name of Garth Trent.”
+
+Such was the tale Elisabeth unfolded, and the hushed listeners, keyed
+up by its tragic drama, could visualize for themselves the scene of that
+last piteous interview between Elisabeth and the man who had loved her
+to his own utter undoing.
+
+She was still a very lovely woman, and it was easy to realize how
+well-nigh bewilderingly beautiful she must have been in her youth,
+easy to imagine how Garth--or Maurice Kennedy, as he must henceforth be
+recognized--worshipping her with a boy's headlong passion, had agreed
+to let the judgment of the Court remain unchallenged and to shoulder the
+burden of another man's sin.
+
+Probably he felt that, since he had lost her, nothing else mattered,
+and, with the reckless chivalry of youth, he never stopped to count the
+cost. He only knew that the woman he loved, whose beauty pierced him to
+the very soul, so that his vision was blurred by the sheer loveliness
+of her, demanded her happiness at his hands and that he must give it to
+her.
+
+“I suppose you think there was no excuse for what I did,” Elisabeth
+concluded, with something of appeal in her voice. “But I did not
+realize, then, quite all that I was taking from Maurice. I think that
+much must be granted me. . . . But I make no excuse for what I did
+afterwards. There is none. I did it deliberately. Maurice had won the
+woman Tim wanted, and I hoped that if he were utterly discredited, Sara
+would refuse to marry him, and thus the way would be open to Tim. So I
+made public the story of the court-martial which had sentenced Maurice.
+Had it not been for that, I should have held my peace for ever about
+his having been cashiered. I--I owed him that much.” She was silent a
+moment. Presently she raised her head and spoke in harsh, wrung accents.
+“But I've been punished! God saw to that. What do you think it has meant
+to me to know that my husband--the man I worshipped--had been once a
+coward? It's true the world never knew it . . . but I knew it.”
+
+The agony of pride wounded in its most sacred place, the suffering of
+love that despises what it loves, yet cannot cease from loving, rang in
+her voice, and her haunted eyes--the eyes which had guarded their secret
+so invincibly--seemed to plead for comfort, for understanding.
+
+It was Miles who answered that unspoken supplication.
+
+“I think you need never feel shame again,” he said very gently. “Major
+Durward's splendid death has more than wiped out that one mistake of his
+youth. Thank God he never knew it needed wiping out.”
+
+A momentary tranquility came into Elisabeth's face.
+
+“No,” she answered simply. “No, he never knew.” Then the tide of bitter
+recollection surged over her once more, and she continued passionately:
+“Oh yes, I've been punished! Day and night, day and night since the
+war began, I've lived in terror that the fear--his father's fear--might
+suddenly grip Tim out there in Flanders. I kept him out of the
+Army--because I was afraid. And then the war came, and he had to go.
+Thank God--oh, thank God!--he never failed! . . . I suppose I am a bad
+woman--I don't know . . . I fought for my own love and happiness first,
+and afterwards for my son's. But, at least, I'm not bad enough to let
+Maurice go on bearing . . . what he has borne . . . now that he has
+saved Tim's life. He has given me the only thing . . . left to me . .
+. of value in the whole world. In return, I can give him the one thing
+that matters to him--his good name. Henceforth Maurice is a free man.”
+
+“_What_ are you saying?”
+
+The sharp, staccato question cut across Elisabeth's quiet, concentrated
+speech like a rapier thrust, snapping the strained attention of her
+listeners, who turned, with one accord, to see Kennedy himself standing
+at the threshold of the room, his eyes fastened on Elisabeth's face.
+
+She met his glance composedly; on her lips a queer little smile which
+held an indefinable pathos and appeal.
+
+“I am telling them the truth--at last, Maurice,” she said calmly. “I
+have told them the true story of the court-martial.”
+
+“You--you have told them _that_?” he stammered. He was very pale. The
+sudden realization of all that her words implied seemed to overwhelm
+him.
+
+“Yes.” She rose and moved quietly to the door, then face to face with
+Kennedy, she halted. Her eyes rested levelly on his; in her bearing
+there was something aloofly proud--an undiminished stateliness, almost
+regal in its calm inviolability. “They know--now--all that I took from
+you. I shall not ask your forgiveness, Maurice . . . I don't expect it.
+I sinned for my husband and my son--that is my only justification. I
+would do the same again.”
+
+Instinctively Maurice stood aside as she swept past him, her head
+unbowed, splendid even in her moment of surrender--almost, it seemed,
+unbeaten to the last.
+
+For a moment there was a silence--palpitant, packed with conflicting
+emotion.
+
+Then, with a little choking sob, Sara ran across the room to Maurice
+and caught his hands in hers, smiling whilst the tears streamed down her
+cheeks.
+
+“Oh, my dear!” she cried brokenly. “Oh, my dear!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+     HARVEST
+
+     “There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live
+           as before;
+     The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound;
+     What was good, shall be good, with, for evil,
+           So much good more . . .”
+
+     BROWNING.
+
+“How can you prove it, Garth--Maurice, I mean?”--Selwyn corrected
+himself with a smile. “You'll need more than Mrs. Durward's confession
+to secure official reinstatement by the powers that be.”
+
+The clamour of joyful excitement and wonder and congratulation had spent
+itself at last, the Lavender Lady had shed a few legitimate tears, and
+now Selwyn voiced the more serious aspect of the matter.
+
+It was Herrick who made answer.
+
+“I have the necessary proofs,” he said quietly. He had crossed to a
+bureau in the corner of the room, and now returned with a packet of
+papers in his hand.
+
+“These,” he pursued, “are from my brother Colin, who is farming
+in Australia. He was a good many years my senior--and I've always
+understood that he was a bit of a ne'er-do-well in his younger days.
+Ultimately, he enlisted in the Army as a Tommy, and in that scrap on the
+Indian Frontier he was close behind Maurice and saw the whole thing.
+He got badly wounded then, and was dangerously ill for some time
+afterwards, so it happened that he knew nothing about the court-martial
+till it was all over. When he recovered, he wrote to Maurice, offering
+his evidence, and”--smiling whimsically across at Kennedy--“received a
+haughty letter in reply, assuring him that he was mistaken in the facts
+and that the writer did not dispute the verdict of the court. My brother
+rather suspected some wild-cat business, so before he went to Australia,
+some years later, he placed in my hands properly witnessed documents
+containing the true facts of the matter, and it was only when, through
+Mrs. Durward, we learned that Maurice had been cashiered from the Army,
+that the connection between that and the Frontier incident flashed into
+my mind as a possibility. I had heard that the Durwards' name had been
+originally Lovell--and I began to wonder if Garth Trent's name had not
+been originally”--with a glint of humour in his eyes--“Maurice Kennedy!
+Here's my brother's letter”--passing it to Sara, who was standing next
+him--“and here's the document which he left in my care. I've had 'em
+both locked away since I was seventeen.”
+
+Sara's eyes flew down the few brief lines of the letter.
+
+“Evidently the young fool wishes to be thought guilty,” Colin Herrick
+had written. “Shielding his pal Lovell, I suppose. Well, it's his
+funeral, not mine! But one never knows how things may pan out, and some
+day it might mean all the difference between heaven and hell to Kennedy
+to be able to prove his innocence--so I am enclosing herewith a properly
+attested record of the facts, Miles, in case I should send in my checks
+while I'm at the other side of the world.”
+
+As a matter of fact, however, Colin still lived and prospered in
+Australia, so that there would be no difficulty in proving Maurice's
+innocence down to the last detail.
+
+“Do you mean,” Sara appealed to Miles incredulously, “do you mean--that
+there were these proofs--all the time? And you--_you knew_?”
+
+“Herrick wasn't to blame,” interposed Maurice hastily, sensing the
+horrified accusation in her tones. “I forbade him to use those papers.”
+
+“But why--why----”
+
+Miles looked at her and a light kindled in his eyes.
+
+“My dear, you're marrying a chivalrous, quixotic fool. Maurice refused
+to let me show these proofs because, on the strength of his promise to
+shield Geoffrey Lovell, Elisabeth had married and borne a son. Not
+even though it meant smashing up his whole life would he go back on his
+word.”
+
+“Garth! Garth!” The name by which she had always known him sprang
+spontaneously from Sara's lips. Her voice was shaking, but her eyes,
+likes Herrick's, held a glory of quiet shining. “How could you, dear?
+What madness! What idiotic, glorious madness!”
+
+“I don't see how I could have done anything else,” said Maurice simply.
+“Elisabeth's whole scheme of existence was fashioned on her trust in
+my promise. I couldn't--afterwards, after her marriage and Tim's
+birth--suddenly pull away the very foundation on which she had built up
+her life.”
+
+Impulsively Sara slipped her hand into his.
+
+“I'm glad--_glad_ you couldn't, dear,” she whispered. “It would not have
+been my Garth if you could have done.”
+
+He pressed her hand in silence. A curious lassitude was stealing over
+him. He had borne the heat and burden of the day, and now that the work
+was done and there was nothing further to fight for, nothing left to
+struggle and contend against, he was conscious of a strange feeling of
+frustration.
+
+It seemed almost as though the long agony of those years of
+self-immolation had been in vain--a useless sacrifice, made meaningless
+and of no account by the destined march of events.
+
+He felt vaguely baulked and disillusioned--bewildered that a man's
+aim and purpose, which in its accomplishing had cost so immeasurable a
+price--crushing the whole beauty and savour out of life--should suddenly
+be destroyed and nullified. In the light of the present, the past seemed
+futile--years that the locust had eaten.
+
+It was a relief when presently some one broke in upon the confused
+turmoil of his thoughts with a message from Tim. He was asking to see
+both Sara and Maurice--would they go to him?
+
+Together they went up to his room--Maurice still with that look of
+grave perplexity upon his face which his somewhat bitter reflections had
+engendered.
+
+The eager, boyish face on the pillow flushed a little as they entered.
+
+“Mother has told me everything,” he said simply, going straight to the
+point. “It's--it's been rather a facer.”
+
+Maurice pointed to the narrow ribbon--the white, purple, white of
+the Military Cross--upon the breast of the khaki tunic flung across a
+chair-back--a rather disheveled tunic, rescued with other odds and ends
+from the wreckage of Tim's room at Sunnyside.
+
+“It needn't be, Tim,” he said, “with that to your credit.”
+
+Tim's eyes glowed.
+
+“That's just it--that's what I wanted to see you for,” he said. “I hope
+you won't think it cheek,” he went on rather shyly, “but I wanted you
+to know that--that what you did for my mother--assuming the disgrace,
+I mean, that wasn't yours--hasn't been all wasted. What little I've
+done--well, it would never have been done had I known what I know now.”
+
+“I think it would,” Maurice dissented quietly.
+
+Tim shook his head.
+
+“No. Had my father been cashiered--for cowardice”--he stumbled a
+little over the words--“the knowledge of it would have knocked all the
+initiative out of me. I should have been afraid of showing the white
+feather. . . . The fear of being afraid would have been always at the
+back of me.” He paused, then went on quickly: “And I think it would have
+been the same with Dad. It--it would have broken him. He could never
+have fought as he did with that behind him. You've . . . you've given
+two men to the country. . . .”
+
+He broke off, boyishly embarrassed, a little overwhelmed by his own big
+thoughts.
+
+And suddenly to Maurice, all that had been dark and obscure grew clear
+in the white shining of the light that gleamed down the track of those
+lost years.
+
+A beautiful and ordered issue was revealed. Out of the ruin and bleak
+suffering of the past had sprung the flaming splendour of heroic life
+and death--a glory of achievement that, but for those arid years of
+silence, had been thwarted and frustrated by the deadening knowledge of
+the truth.
+
+Kindling to the recognition of new and wonderful significances, his eyes
+sought those of the woman who loved him, and in their quiet radiance he
+read that she, too, had understood.
+
+For her, as for him, the dark places had been made light, and with
+quickened vision she perceived, in all that had befallen, the fulfilling
+of the Divine law.
+
+“Sara----”
+
+Her hands went out to him, and the grave happiness deepened in her eyes.
+
+“Oh, my dear, no love--no sacrifice is ever wasted!”
+
+She spoke very simply, very confidently.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Hermit of Far End, by Margaret Pedler
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