The Hermit of Far End

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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 heard 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.