The Hermit of Far End

M >> Margaret Pedler >> The Hermit of Far End


Audrey always declared, afterwards, that it had required the most
blatant encouragement on her part to induce Miles to propose to her, and
that, but for the war--which convinced him that he was of no use to any
one else--he never would have done so.

Presumably she was able to supply the requisite stimulus, for when the
Lavender Lady joined them later on in the afternoon, she found herself
called upon to perform that function of sheer delight to every old maid
of the right sort--namely, to bestow her blessing on a pair of newly
betrothed lovers.

Sara received the news the next morning, and though naturally, by
contrast, it seemed to add a keener edge to her own grief, she was still
able to rejoice whole-heartedly over this little harvesting of joy which
her two friends had snatched from amid the world's dreadful harvesting
of pain and sorrow.

By the same post as the radiant letters from Miles and Audrey came one
from Elisabeth Durward. She wrote distractedly.

"Tim is determined to volunteer," ran her letter. "I can't let him go,
Sara. He is my only son, and I don't see why he should be claimed from
me by this horrible war. I have persuaded him to wait until he has seen
you. That is all he will consent to. So will you come and do what you
can to dissuade him? There is a cord by which you could hold him if you
would."

A transient smile crossed Sara's face as she pictured Tim gravely
consenting to await her opinion on the matter. He knew--none
better!--what it would be, and, without doubt, he had merely agreed to
the suggestion in the hope that her presence might ease the strain and
serve to comfort his mother a little.

Sara telegraphed that she would come to Barrow Court the following day,
and, on her arrival, found Tim waiting for her at the station in his
two-seater.

"Well," he said with a grin, as the little car slid away along the
familiar road. "Have you come to persuade me to be a good boy and stay
at home, Sara?"

"You know I've not," she replied, smiling. "I'm gong to talk sense to
Elisabeth. Oh! Tim boy, how I envy you! It's splendid to be a man these
days."

He nodded silently, but she could read in his expression the tranquil
satisfaction that his decision had brought. She had seen the same look
on other men's faces, when, after a long struggle with the woman-love
that could not help but long to hold them back, the final decision had
been taken.

Arrived at the lodge gates, Tim handed over the car to the chauffeur who
met them there, evidently by arrangement.

"I thought we'd walk across the park," he suggested.

Sara acquiesced delightedly. There was a tender, reminiscent pleasure
in strolling along the winding paths that had once been so happily
familiar, and, hardly conscious of the sudden silence which had fallen
upon her companion, her thoughts slipped back to the old days at Barrow
when she had wandered, with Patrick beside her in his wheeled chair,
along these selfsame paths.

With a little thrill, half pain, half pleasure, she noted each
well-remembered landmark. There was the arbour where they used to
shelter from a shower, built with sloped boards at its entrance so that
Patrick's chair could easily be wheeled into it; now they were passing
the horse-chestnut tree which she herself had planted years ago--with
the head gardener's assistance!--in place of one that had been struck by
lightning. It had grown into a sturdy young sapling by this time. Here
was the Queen's Bench--an old stone seat where Queen Elisabeth was
supposed to have once sat and rested for a few minutes when paying a
visit to Barrow Court. Sara reflected, with a smile, that if history
speaks truly, the Virgin Queen must have spent quite a considerable
portion of her time in visiting the houses of her subjects! And here--

"Sara!" Tim's voice broke suddenly across the recollections that were
thronging into her mind. There was a curious intent quality in his tone
that arrested her attention, filling her with a nervous foreboding of
what he had to say.

"Sara, you know, of course, as well as I do, that I am going to
volunteer. I let mother send for you, because--well, because I thought
you would make it a little easier for her, for one thing. But I had
another reason."

"Had you?" Sara spoke mechanically. They had paused beside the Queen's
Bench, and half-unconsciously she laid her ungloved hand caressingly on
the seat's high back. The stone struck cold against the warmth of her
flesh.

"Yes." Tim was speaking again, still in that oddly direct manner. "I
want to ask you--now, before I go to France--whether there will ever be
any chance for me?"

Sara turned her eyes to his face.

"You mean----"

"I mean that I'm asking you once again if you will marry me? If you
will--if I can go away leaving _my wife_ in England, I shall have
so much the more to fight for. But if you can't give me the answer I
wish--well"--with a curious little smile--"it will make death easier,
should it come--that's all."

The quiet, grave directness of the speech was very unlike the old,
impetuous Tim of former days. It brought with it to Sara's mind a
definite recognition of the fact that the man had replaced the boy.

"No, Tim," she responded quietly. "I made one mistake--in promising to
marry you when I loved another man. I won't repeat it."

"But"--Tim's face expressed sheer wonder and amazement--"you don't still
care for Garth Trent--for that blackguard? Oh!" remorsefully, as he
saw her wince--"forgive me, Sara, but this war makes one feel even more
bitterly about such a thing than one would in normal times."

"I know--I understand," she replied quietly. "I'm--ashamed of loving
him." She turned her head restlessly aside. "But, don't you see, love
can't be made and unmade to order. It just _happens_. And it's happened
to me. In the circumstances, I can't say I like it. But there it is. I
do love Garth--and I can't _unlove_ him. At least, not yet."

"But some day, Sara, some day?" he urged.

She shook her head.

"I shall never marry anybody now, Tim. If--if ever I 'get over' this
fool feeling for Garth, I know how it would leave me. I shall be quite
cold and hard inside--like that stone"--pointing to the Queen's Bench.
"I wish--I wish I had reached that stage now."

Silently Tim held out his hand, and she laid hers within it, meeting his
grave eyes.

"I won't ever bother you again," he said, at last, quietly. "I think I
understand, Sara, and--and, old girl, I'm awfully sorry. I wish I could
have saved you--that."

He stooped his head and kissed her--frankly, as a big brother might, and
Sara, recognizing that henceforth she would find in him only the good
comrade of earlier days, kissed him back.

"Thank you, Tim," she said. "I knew you would understand. And, please,
we won't ever speak of it again."

"No, we won't speak of it again," he answered.

He tucked his arm under hers, and they walked on together in the
direction of the house.

"And now," she said, "let's go to Elisabeth and break it to her that we
are--both--going out to France as soon as we can get there."

He turned to look at her.

"You?" he exclaimed. "You going out? What do you mean?"

"I'm going with Lady Arronby. I want to go--badly. I want to be in
the heart of things. You don't suppose"--with a rather shaky little
laugh--"that I can stay quietly at home in England--and knit, do you?"

"No, I suppose _you_ couldn't. But I don't half like it. The women who
go--out there--have got to face things. I shan't like to think of you
running risks--"

She laughed outright.

"Tim, if you talk nonsense of that kind, I'll revenge myself by urging
Elisabeth to keep you at home," she declared. "Oh! Tim boy, can't you
see that just now I must have something to do--something that will fill
up every moment--and keep me from thinking!"

Tim heard the cry that underlay the words. There was no misunderstanding
it. He squeezed her arm and nodded.

"All right, old thing, I won't try to dissuade you. I can guess a little
of how you're feeling."

Sara's interview with Elisabeth was very different from anything she had
expected. She had anticipated passionate reproaches, tears even, for an
attractive women who has been consistently spoiled by her menkind is, of
all her sex, the least prepared to bow to the force of circumstances.

But there was none of these things. It almost seemed as though in that
first searching glance of hers, which flashed from Sara's face to the
well-beloved one of her son, Elisabeth had recognized and accepted
that, in the short space of time since these two had met, the decision
concerning Tim's future had been taken out of her hands.

It was only when, in the course of their long, intimate talk together,
she had drawn from Sara the acknowledgment that she had once again
refused to be Tim's wife, that her control wavered.

"But, Sara, surely--surely you can't still have any thought of marrying
Garth Trent?" There was a hint of something like terror in her voice.

"No," Sara responded wearily. "No, I shall never marry--Garth Trent."

"Then why won't you--why can't you--"

"Marry Tim?"--quietly. "Because, although I shall never marry Garth now,
I haven't stopped loving him."

"Do you mean that you can still care for him--now that you know what
kind of man he is?"

"Oh! Good Heavens, Elisabeth!"--the irritation born of frayed nerves
hardened Sara's voice so that it was almost unrecognizable--"you can't
turn love on and off as you would a tap! I shall never marry _anybody_
now. Tim understands that, and--you must understand it, too."

There was no mistaking her passionate sincerity. The truth--that Sara
would never, as long as she lived, put another in the place Garth Trent
had held--seemed borne in upon Elisabeth that moment.

With a strangled cry she sank back into her chair, and her eyes, fixed
on Sara's small, stern-set face, held a strange, beaten look. As she sat
there, her hands gripping the chair-arms, there was something about her
whole attitude that suggested defeat.

"So it's all been useless--quite useless!" she muttered in a queer,
whispering voice.

She was not looking at Sara now. Her vision was turned inward, and she
seemed to be utterly oblivious of the other's presence. "Useless!" she
repeated, still in that strange, whispering tone.

"What has been useless?" asked Sara curiously.

Elisabeth started, and stared at her for a moment in a vacant fashion.
Then, all at once, her mind seemed to come back to the present, and
simultaneously the familiar watchful look sprang into her eyes. Sara was
oddly conscious of being reminded of a sentry who has momentarily
slept at his post, and then, awakening suddenly, feverishly resumed his
vigilance.

"What was I saying?" Elisabeth brushed her hand distressfully across her
forehead.

"You said that it had all been useless," repeated Sara. "What did you
mean?"

Elisabeth paused a moment before replying.

"I meant that all my hopes were useless," she explained at last. "The
hopes I had that some day you would be Tim's wife."

"Yes, they're quite useless--if that is what you meant," replied Sara.
But there was a perplexed expression in her eyes. She had a feeling
that Elisabeth was not being quite frank with her--that that whispered
confession of failure signified something other than the simple
interpretations vouchsafed.

The thing worried her a little, nagging at the back of her mind with the
pertinacity common to any little unexplained incident that has caught
one's attention. But, in the course of a few days, the manifold
happenings of daily life drove it out of her thoughts, not to recur
until many months had passed and other issues paved the way for its
resurgence.

Sara remained at Barrow until Tim had volunteered and been accepted, and
the settlement of her own immediate plans synchronizing with this last
event, it came about that it was only two hours after Tim's departure
that she, too, bade farewell to Elisabeth, in order to join up in London
with Lady Arronby's party.

Elisabeth stood at the head of the great flight of granite steps at
Barrow and waved her hand as the car bore Sara swiftly away, and across
the latter's mind flashed the memory of that day, nearly a year ago,
when she herself had stood in the same place, waiting to welcome
Elisabeth to her new home.

The contrast between then and now struck her poignantly. She recalled
Elisabeth as she had been that day--gracious, smiling, queening
it delightfully over her two big men, husband and son, who openly
worshipped her. Now, there remained only a great empty house, and that
solitary figure on the doorstep, standing there with white face and lips
that smiled perfunctorily.

Elisabeth turned slowly back into the house as the car disappeared round
the curve of the drive. For her, the moment was doubly bitter. One by
one, husband, son, and the woman whom she had ardently longed to see
that son's wife, had been claimed from her by the pitiless demands of
the madness men call War.

But there was still more for her to face. There was the utter downfall
of all her hopes, the defeat of all her purposes. She had striven with
the whole force that was in her to assure Tim's happiness. To compass
this, she had torn down the curtain of the past, proclaiming a man's
shame and hurling headlong into the dust the new life he had built
up for himself, and with it had gone a woman's faith, and trust, and
happiness.

And it had all been so futile! Two lives ruined, and the purchase price
paid in tears of blood; and, after all, Tim's happiness was as utterly
remote and beyond attainment as though no torrent of disaster had been
let loose to further it! Elisabeth had bartered her soul in vain.

In the solitude which was all the war had left her, she recognized this,
and, since she was normally a woman of kind and generous impulses, she
suffered in the realization of the spoiled and mutilated lives for which
she was responsible.

Not that she would have acted differently were the same choice presented
to her again. She did not _want_ to hurt people, but the primitive
maternal instinct, which was the pivot of her being, blinded her to the
claims of others if those claims reacted adversely on her son.

Only now, in the bitterness of defeat, as she looked back upon her
midnight interview with Garth Trent, she was conscious of a sick
repugnance. It had not been a pleasant thing, that thrusting of a knife
into an old wound. This, too, she had done for Tim's sake. The pity of
it was that Garth had suffered needlessly--uselessly!

She had thought the issue of events hung solely betwixt him and her son,
and, with her mind concentrated on this idea, she had overlooked the
possibility of any other outcome. But the acceptance of an unexpected
sequence had been forced upon her--Sara would never marry any one now!
Elisabeth recognized that all her efforts had been in vain.

And the supreme bitterness, from which all that was honest and upright
within her shrank with inward shame and self-loathing, lay in the fact
that she, above all others, owed Garth Trent--that which he had begged
of her in vain--the tribute of silence concerning the past.



CHAPTER XXXI

THE FURNACE

As Sara took her seat on board the train for Monkshaven, she was
conscious of that strange little thrill of the wanderer returned which
is the common possession of the explorer and of the school-girl at their
first sight of the old familiar scenes from which they have been exiled.

She could hardly believe that barely a year had elapsed since she had
quitted Monkshaven. So many things had happened--so many changes taken
place. Audrey had been transformed into Mrs. Herrick; Tim had been
given a commission; and Molly, the one-time butterfly, was now become
a working-bee--a member of the V.A.D. and working daily at Oldhampton
Hospital. Sara could scarcely picture such a metamorphosis!

The worst news had been that of Major Durward's death--he had been
killed in action, gallantly leading his men, in the early part of the
year. Elisabeth had written to Sara at the time--a wonderfully brave,
simple letter, facing her loss with a fortitude which Sara, remembering
her adoration for her husband and her curious antipathy to soldiering
as a profession, had not dared to anticipate. There was something rather
splendid about her quiet acceptance of it. It was Elisabeth at her
best--humanly hurt and broken, but almost heroic in her endurance now
that the blow had actually fallen. And Sara prayed that no further
sacrifice might be demanded from her--prayed that Tim might come through
safely. For herself, she mourned Geoffrey Durward as one good comrade
does another. She knew that his death would leave a big gap in the ranks
of those she counted friends.

It had been a wonderful year--that year which she had passed in
France--wonderful in its histories of tragedy and self-sacrifice, and
in its revelation both of the brutality and of the infinite fineness of
humanity. Few could have passed through such an experience and remained
unchanged, certainly no one as acutely sentient and receptive as Sara.

She felt as though she had been pitchforked into a vast melting-pot,
where the cast-iron generalizations and traditions which most people
consider their opinions grew flexible and fluid in the scorching heat
of the furnace, assimilating so much of the other ingredients in the
cauldron that they could never reassume their former unqualified and
rigid state.

And now that year of crowded life and ardent service was over, and she
was side-tracked by medical orders for an indefinite period.

"Go back to England," her doctor had told her, "to the quietest corner
in the country you can find--and try to forget that there _is_ a war!"

This thin, eager-faced young woman, of whom every one on the hospital
staff spoke in such glowing terms, interested him enormously. He could
see that her year's work had taken out of her about double what it would
have taken out of any one less sensitively alive, and he made a shrewd
guess that something over and above the mere hard work accounted for
that curiously fine-drawn look which he had observed in her.

During a hastily snatched meal, before the advent of another batch of
casualties, he had sounded Lady Arronby on the subject. The latter shook
her head.

"I can tell you very little. I believe there was a bad love-affair
just before the war. All I know is that she was engaged and that the
engagement was broken off very suddenly."

"Humph! And she's been living on her reserves ever since. Pack her off
to England--and do it quick."

So October found Sara back in England once again, and as the train
steamed into Monkshaven station, and her eager gaze fell on the little
group of people on the platform, waiting to welcome her return, she felt
a sudden rush of tears to her eyes.

She winked them away, and leaned out of the window. They were all
there--big Dick Selwyn, and Molly, looking like a masquerading Venus
in her V.A.D. uniform, the Lavender Lady and Miles, and--radiant and
well-turned-out as ever--Mile's wife.

The Herrick's wedding had taken place very unobtrusively. About a month
after Sara had crossed to France, Miles and Audrey had walked quietly
into church one morning at nine o'clock and got married.

Monkshaven had been frankly disappointed. The gossips, who had so
frequently partaken of Audrey's hospitality and then discussed her
acrimoniously, had counted upon the lavish entertainment with which,
even in war-time, the wedding of a millionaire's widow might be expected
to be celebrated.

Instead of which, there had been this "hole-and-corner" sort of
marriage, as the disappointed femininity of Monkshaven chose to call
it, and, after a very brief honeymoon, Miles and Audrey had returned
and thrown themselves heart and soul into the work of organizing and
equipping a convalescent hospital for officers, of which Audrey had
undertaken to bear the entire cost.

Henceforth the mouths of Audrey's detractors were closed. She was no
longer "that shocking little widow with the dyed hair," but a woman who
had married into a branch of one of the oldest families in the county,
and whose immense private fortune had enabled her to give substantial
help to her country in its need.

"I think it's simply splendid of you, Audrey," declared Sara warmly, as
they were all partaking of tea at Greenacres, whither Audrey's car had
borne them from the station.

Audrey laughed.

"My dear, what else could I do with my money? I've got such a sickening
lot of it, you see! Besides"--with a bantering glance at her husband--"I
think it was only the prospect of being of some use at my hospital which
induced Miles to marry me! He's my private secretary, you know, and boss
of the commissariat department."

Miles saluted.

"Quartermaster, at your service, miss," he said cheerfully, adding with
a chuckle: "I saw my chance of getting a job if I married Audrey, so of
course I took it."

He was looking amazingly well. The fact of being of some use in the
world had acted upon him like a tonic, and there was no misinterpreting
the glance of complete and happy understanding that passed between him
and his wife.

Glad as she was to see it, it served to remind Sara painfully of all
that she had missed, to stir anew the aching longing for Garth Trent,
which, though struggled against, and beaten down, and sometimes
temporarily crowded out by the thousand claims of each day's labour,
had been with her all through the long months of her absence from
Monkshaven.

It was this which had worn her so fine, not the hard physical work that
she had been doing. Always slender, and built on racing lines, there
was something almost ethereal about her now, and her sombre eyes looked
nearly double their size in her small face of which the contour was so
painfully distinct. Yet she was as vivid and alive as ever; she seemed
to diffuse, as it were, a kind of spiritual brilliance.

"She makes one think of a flame," Audrey told her husband when they were
alone once more. "There is something so _vital_ about her, in spite of
that curiously frail look she has."

Miles nodded.

"She's burning herself out," he said briefly.

Audrey looked startled.

"What do you mean, Miles?"

"Good Heavens! I should think it's self-evident. She's exactly as much
in love with Trent as she was a year ago, and she's fighting against it
every hour of her life. And the strain's breaking her."

"Can't we do something to help?" Audrey put her question with a helpless
consciousness of its futility.

Herrick's eyes kindled.

"Nothing," he answered with quiet decision. "Every one must work out his
own salvation--if it's to be a salvation worth having."

Herrick had delved to the root of the matter when he had declared that
Sara was exactly as much in love as she had been a year ago.

She had realized this for herself, and it had converted life into an
endless conflict between her love for Garth and her shamed sense of
his unworthiness. And now, her return to Monkshaven, to its familiar,
memory-haunted scenes, had quickened the struggle into new vitality.

With the broadened outlook born of her recent experiences, she began to
ask herself whether a man need be condemned, utterly and for ever, for
a momentary loss of nerve--even Elisabeth had admitted that it was
probably no more than that! And then, conversely, her fierce detestation
of that particular form of weakness, inculcated in her from her
childhood by Patrick Lovell, would spring up protestingly, and she would
shrink with loathing from the thought that she had given her love to a
man who had been convicted of that very thing.

Nor was the attitude he had assumed in regard to the war calculated
to placate her. She had learned from Molly that he had abstained from
taking up any form of war-work whatsoever. He appeared to be utterly
indifferent to the need of the moment, and the whole of Monkshaven
buzzed with patriotic disapprobation of his conduct. There were few
idle hands there now. A big munitions factory had been established at
Oldhampton, and its demands, added to the necessities of the hospital,
left no loophole of excuse for slackers.

Sara reflected bitterly that the sole courage of which Garth seemed
possessed was a kind of cold, moral courage--brazen-facedness, the
townspeople termed it--which enabled him to refuse doggedly to be driven
out of Monkshaven, even though the whole weight of public opinion was
dead against him.

And then the recollection of that day on Devil's Hood Island, when he
had deliberately risked his life to save her reputation, would return to
her with overwhelming force--mocking the verdict of the court-martial,
repudiating the condemnation which had made her thrust him out of her
life.

So the pendulum swung, this way and that, lacerating her heart each time
it swept forward or back. But the blind agony of her recoil, when she
had first learned the story of that tragic happening on the Indian
frontier, was passed.

Then, overmastered by the horror of the thing, she had flung violently
away from Garth, feeling herself soiled and dishonoured by the mere fact
of her love for him, too revolted to contemplate anything other than the
severance of the tie between them as swiftly as possible.