The Hermit of Far End

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


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
_soigne_ 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.