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The Hermit of Far End

by Margaret Pedler · English · Gutenberg #3159 · 599,174 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Hermit of Far End

Author: Margaret Pedler


        
Release date: April 6, 2006 [eBook #3159]
                Most recently updated: April 29, 2018

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3159

Credits: Produced by Dagny; John Bickers; David Widger


*** START OF THE 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, mis

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