The Hermit of Far End

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


Brady, however, was not optimistic.

"There'll be no opshun of a fine, miss," he told her. "I've a-been up
before the gen'lemen too many times"--grinning. "But if so be you'd
give an eye to Bessie here, whiles I'm in quod, I'd take it very kind of
you."

His forecast summed up the situation with lamentable accuracy. No option
of a fine was given, and during the brief space that the prison doors
closed upon him, Sara saw to the welfare of his invalid wife, thereby
winning the undying devotion of Black Brady's curiously composite soul.

When he again found himself at liberty, she induced the frankly
unwilling proprietor of the Cliff Hotel--the only hotel of any
pretension to which Monkshaven could lay claim--to take him into his
employment as an odd-job man. How she accomplished this feat it is
impossible to say, but the fact remains that she did accomplish it, and
perhaps Jane Crab delved to the root of the matter in the terse comment
which the circumstances elicited from her: "Miss Tennant has a way with
her that 'ud make they stone sphinxes gallop round the desert if so be
she'd a mind they should."

Apparently, however, the sphinx of Far End was compounded of even more
adamantine substance than his feminine prototype, for he exhibited
a mulish aversion to budging an inch--much less galloping--in the
direction Sara had indicated as desirable.

The two quarreled vehemently over the matter, and a glacial atmosphere
of hostility prevailed between them during the period of Black Brady's
incarceration.

Garth, undeniably the victor, was the first to open peace negotiations,
and a few days subsequent to Brady's release from prison, he waylaid
Sara in the town.

She was preoccupied with numerous small, unnecessary commissions to be
executed for Mrs. Selwyn at half-a-dozen different shops, and she would
have passed him by with a frosty little bow had he not halted in front
of her and deliberately held out his hand.

"Good-morning!" he said, blithely disregarding the coolness of his
reception. "Am I still in disgrace? Brady's been restored to the bosom
of his family for at least five days now, you know."

Overhead, the sun was shining gloriously in an azure sky flecked with
little bunchy white clouds like floating pieces of cotton-wool, while
an April breeze, fragrant of budding leaf and blossom, rollicked up the
street. It seemed almost as though the frolicsome atmosphere of spring
had permeated even the shell of the hermit and got into his system,
for there was something incorrigibly boyish and youthful about him this
morning. His cheerful smile was infectious.

"Can't I be restored, too?" he asked

"Restored to what?" asked Sara, trying to resist the contagion of his
good humour.

"Oh, well"--a faint shadow dimmed the sparkle in his eyes--"to the same
old place I held before our squabble over Brady--just friends, Sara."

For a moment she hesitated. He had pitted his will against hers and won,
hands down, and she felt distinctly resentful. But she knew that in a
strange, unforeseen way their quarrel had hurt her inexplicably. She had
hated meeting the cool, aloof expression of his eyes, and now, urged
by some emotion of which she was, as yet, only dimly conscious, she
capitulated.

"That's good," he said contentedly. "And you might just as well give in
now as later," he added, smiling.

"All the same," she protested, "you're a bully."

"I know I am--I glory in it! But now, just to show that you really do
mean to be friends again, will you let me row you across to Devil's Hood
Island this afternoon? You told me once that you wanted to go there."

Sara considered the proposition for a moment, then nodded consent.

"Yes, I'll come," she said, "I should like to."

Devil's Hood Island was a chip off the mainland which had managed to
keep its head above water when the gradually encroaching sea had stolen
yet another mile from the coast. Sandy dunes, patched here and there
with clumps of coarse, straggling rushes, sloped upward from the
rock-strewn shore to a big crag that crowned its further side--a curious
natural formation which had given the island its name.

It was shaped like a great overhanging hood, out of which, crudely
suggested by the configuration of the rock, peered a diabolical face,
weather-worn to the smoothness of polished marble.

April was still doing her best to please, with blue skies and soft
fragrant airs, when Garth gave a final push-off to the _Betsy Anne_, and
bent to his oars as she skimmed out over the top of the waves with her
nose towards Devil's Hood Island.

Sara, comfortably ensconced amid a nest of cushions in the stern of
the boat, pointed to a square-shaped basket of quite considerable
dimensions, tucked away beneath one of the seats.

"What's that?" she asked curiously.

Trent's eyes followed the direction of her glance.

"That? Oh, that's our tea. You didn't imagine I was going to starve
you, did you? I think we shall find that Mrs. Judson has provided all we
want."

Sara laughed across at him.

"What a thoughtful man you are!" she said gaily. "Fancy a hermit
remembering a woman's crucial need of tea."

"Don't credit me with too much self-effacement!" he grinned. "I
enjoyed the last occasion when you were my guest, so I'm repeating the
prescription."

"Still, even deducting for the selfish motive, you're progressing," she
answered. "I see you developing into quite an ornament to society in
course of time."

"God forbid!" he ejaculated piously.

Sara looked entertained.

"Apparently your ambitions don't lie in that direction?" she rallied
him.

"There is no question of such a catastrophe occurring. I've told you
that society--as such--and I have finished with each other."

His face clouded over, and for a while he sculled in silence, driving
the _Betsy Anne_ through the blue water with strong, steady strokes.

Sara was vividly conscious of the suggestion of supple strength conveyed
by the rippling play of muscle beneath the white skin of his arms,
bared to the elbow, and by the pliant swing of his body to each sure,
rhythmical stroke.

She recollected that one of her earliest impressions concerning him had
been of the sheer force of the man--the lithe, flexible strength like
that of tempered steel--and she wondered whether this were entirely due
to his magnificent physique or owed its impulse, in part, to some
mental quality in him. Her eyes travelled reflectively to the lean,
square-jawed face, with its sensitive, bitter-looking mouth and its fine
modeling of brow and temple, as though seeking there the answer to her
questionings, and with a sudden, intuitive instinct of reliance, she
felt that behind all his cynicism and surface hardness, there lay a
quiet, sure strength of soul that would not fail whoever trusted it.

Yet he always spoke as though in some way his life had been a
failure--as though he had met, and been defeated, by a shrewd blow of
fate.

Sara found it difficult to associate the words failure and defeat with
her knowledge of his dominating personality and force of will, and the
natural curiosity which had been aroused in her mind by his strange
mode of life, with its deliberate isolation, and by the aroma of mystery
which seemed to cling about him, deepened.

Her brows drew together in a puzzled frown, as she inwardly sought for
some explanation of the many inconsistencies she had encountered even in
the short time that she had known him.

His abrupt alterations from reticence to unreserved; his avowed dislike
of women and the contradictory enjoyment which he seemed to find in
her society; his love of music and of beautiful surroundings--alike
indicative of a cultivated appreciation and experience of the good
things of this world--and the solitary, hermit-like existence which he
yet chose to lead--all these incongruities of temperament and habit wove
themselves into an enigma which she found impossible to solve.

"Here we are!"

Garth's voice recalled her abruptly from her musings to find that the
_Betsy Anne_ was swaying gently alongside a little wooden landing-stage.

"But how civilized!" she exclaimed. "One does not expect to find a jetty
on a desert-island."

Trent laughed grimly.

"Devil's Hood is far from being a desert island in the summer, when the
tourists come this way. They swarm over it."

Whilst he was speaking, he had made fast the painter, and he now stepped
out on to the landing-stage. Sara prepared to follow him. For a moment
she stood poised with one foot on the gunwale of the boat, then, as
an incoming wave drove the little skiff suddenly against the wooden
supports of the jetty, she staggered, lost her balance, and toppled
helplessly backward.

But even as she fell, Garth's arms closed round her like steel bars,
and she felt herself lifted clean up from the rocking boat on to the
landing-stage. For an instant she knew that she rested a dead weight
against his breast; then he placed her very gently on her feet.

"All right?" he queried, steadying her with his hand beneath her arm.
"That was a near shave."

His queer hazel eyes were curiously bright, and Sara, meeting their
gaze, felt her face flame scarlet.

"Quite, thanks," she said a little breathlessly, adding: "You must be
very strong."

She moved her arm as though trying to free it from his clasp, and he
released it instantly. But his face was rather white as he knelt down to
lift out the tea-basket, and he, too, was breathing quickly.

Somewhat silently they made their way up the sandy slope that stretched
ahead of them, and presently, as they mounted the last rise, the
malignant, distorted face beneath the Devil's Hood leaped into view,
granite-grey and menacing against the young blue of the April sky.

"What a perfectly horrible head!" exclaimed Sara, gazing at it aghast.
"It's like a nightmare of some kind."

"Yes, it's not pretty," admitted Garth. "The mouth has a sort of
malevolent leer, hasn't it?"

"It has, indeed. One can hardly believe that it is just a natural
formation."

"It's always a hotly debated point whether the devil and his hood are
purely the work of nature or not. My own impression is that to a certain
extent they are, but that someone--centuries ago--being struck by the
resemblance of the rock to a human face, added a few touches to complete
the picture."

"Well, whoever did it must have had a bizarre imagination to perpetuate
such a thing."

"The handiwork--if handiwork it is--is attributed to Friar Anselmo--the
Spanish monk who broke his vows and escaped to Monkshaven, you know."

Sara looked interested.

"No, I don't know," she said. "Tell me about him. He sounds quite
exciting."

"You don't meant to say no one has enlightened you as to the gentleman
whose exploit gave the town its name of Monkshaven?"

"No. I'm afraid my education as far as local history is concerned has
been shamefully neglected. Do make good the deficiencies"--smiling.

Garth laughed a little.

"Very well, I will. I always have a kind of fellow-feeling for Friar
Anselmo. But I propose we investigate the tea-basket first."

They established themselves beneath the shelter of a big boulder, Garth
first spreading a rug which he had brought from the boat for Sara to sit
on. Then he unstrapped the tea-basket, and it became evident either that
Mrs. Judson had a genius for assembling together the most fascinating
little cakes and savoury sandwiches, accompanied by fragrant tea, hot
from a thermos flask, or else that she had acted under instructions from
some one to whom the cult of afternoon tea as sublimated by Rumpelmayer
was not an unknown quantity. Sara, sipping her tea luxuriously, decided
in favour of the latter explanation.

"For a confirmed misogynist," she observed later on, when, the
feast over, he was repacking the basket, "you have a very complete
understanding of a woman's weakness for tea."

"It's a case of cause and effect. A misogynist"--caustically--"is the
product of a very complete understanding of most feminine weaknesses."

Sara's slender figure tautened a little.

"Do you think," she said, speaking a little indignantly, "that it
is quite nice of you to invite me out to a picnic and then to launch
remarks of that description at my head?"

"No, I don't," he acknowledged bluntly. "It's making you pay some one
else's bill." His lean brown hand closed suddenly over hers. "Forgive
me, Sara!"

The abrupt intensity of his manner was out of all proportion to the
merely surface friction of the moment; and Sara, sensing something
deeper and of more significance behind it, hurriedly switched the
conversation into a less personal channel.

"Very well," she said lightly, disengaging her hand. "I'll forgive you,
and you shall tell me about Friar Anselmo." She lifted her eyes to
the leering, sinister face that protruded from the Devil's Hood. "As,
presumably, from his choice of a profession, he, too, had no love for
women, you ought to enjoy telling his story," she added maliciously.

Garth's eyes twinkled.

"As a matter of fact, it was love o' women that was Anselmo's undoing,"
he said. "In spite of his vows, he fell in love--with a very beautiful
Spanish lady, and to make matters worse, if that were possible, the
lady was possessed of a typically jealous Spanish husband, who, on
discovering how the land lay, killed his wife, and would have killed
Anselmo as well, but that he escaped to England. The vessel on which he
sailed was wrecked at the foot of what has been called, ever since,
the Monk's Cliff; but Anselmo himself succeeded in swimming ashore, and
spent the remainder of his life at Monkshaven, doing penance for the
mistakes of his earlier days."

"He chose a charming place to repent in," said Sara, her eyes wandering
to the distant bay, where the quaint little town straggled picturesquely
up the hill that sloped away from the coast.

"Yes," responded Garth slowly, "it's not a bad place--to repent in. . . .
It would be a better place still--to love and be happy in."

There was a brooding melancholy in his tones, and Sara, hearing it,
spoke very gently.

"I hope you will find it--like that," she said.

"I?" He laughed hardly. "No! Those gifts of the gods are not for such as
I. The husks are my portion. If it were not so"--his voice deepened to a
sudden urgent note that moved her strangely--"if it were not so--"

As though in spite of himself, his arms moved gropingly towards her.
Then, with a muttered exclamation, he turned away and sprang hastily to
his feet.

"Let us go back," he said abruptly, and Sara, shaken by his vehemence,
rose obediently, and they began to retrace their steps.

It had grown much colder. The sun hung low in the horizon, and the
deceptive warmth of mid-afternoon had given place to the chill dampness
in the atmosphere. Half unconsciously, feeling that the time must have
slipped away more rapidly than she had suspected, Sara quickened her
steps, Garth striding silently at her side. Presently the little wooden
jetty came into view once more. It bore a curiously bare, deserted
aspect, the waves riding and falling sluggishly on either side of
its black, tarred planking, Sara stared at it incredulously, then an
exclamation of sheer dismay burst from her lips.

"The boat! Look! It's gone!"

"_Gone?_" Garth's eyes sought the landing-stage, then swept the vista of
grey-water ahead of them.

"_Damn!_" he ejaculated forcibly. "She's got adrift!"

A brown speck, bobbing maddeningly up and down in the distance and
momentarily drifting further and further out to sea on the ebbing tide,
was all that could be seen of the _Betsy Anne_.

An involuntary chuckle broke from Sara.

"Marooned!" she exclaimed. "How amusing!"

"Amusing?" Trent looked at her with a concerned expression. "It might
be, if it were eleven o'clock in the morning. But it's the wrong end of
the day. It will be dark before long." He paused, then asked swiftly:
"Does any one at Sunnyside know where you are this afternoon?"

"No. The doctor and Molly were both out to lunch--and you know we only
planned this trip this morning. I haven't seen them since. Why do you
ask?"

"Because, if they know, they'd send over in search of us if we didn't
turn up in the course of the next hour or so. But if they don't know
where you are, we stand an excellent chance of spending the night here."

The gravity of what had first struck her as merely an amusing
_contretemps_ suddenly presented itself to Sara.

"Oh!--!" She drew her breath in sharply. "What--what on earth shall we
do?"

"Do?" Garth spoke with grim force. "Why, you must be got off the island
somehow. If not, you're fair game for every venomous tongue in the
town."

"Would any one hear us from the shore if we shouted?" she suggested.

He shook his head.

"No. The sound would carry in the opposite direction to-day."

"Then what _can_ we do?"

By this time the manifest anxiety in Trent's face was reflected in her
own. The possibility that they might be compelled to spend the night
on Devil's Hood Island was not one that could be contemplated with
equanimity, for Sara had no illusions whatever as to the charitableness
of the view the world at large would take of such an episode--however
accidental its occurrence. Unfortunately, essential innocence is
frequently but a poor tool wherewith to scotch a scandal.

"There is only one thing to be done," said Garth at last, after
fruitlessly scanning the waters for any stray fishing-boat that might be
passing. "I must swim across, and then row back and take you off."

"Swim across?" Sara regarded the distance between the island and the
shore with consternation. "You couldn't possibly do it. It's too far."

"Just under a mile."

"But you would have the tide against you," she urged. The current off
the coast ran with dangerous rapidity between the mainland and the
island, and more than one strong swimmer, as Sara knew, had lost his
life struggling against it.

She looked across to the further shore again, and all at once it seemed
impossible to let Garth make the attempt.

"No! no! You can't go!" she exclaimed.

"You wouldn't be nervous at being alone here?" he asked doubtfully.

She stamped her foot.

"No! Of course not! But--oh! Don't you see? It's madness to think of
swimming across with the tide against you! You could never do it. You
might get cramp--Oh! Anything might happen! You shan't go!"

She caught his arm impetuously, her eyes dilating with the sudden terror
that had laid hold of her. But he was obdurate.

"Look there," he said, pointing to a faint haze thickening the
atmosphere. "Do you see the mist coming up? Very soon it will be all
over us, like a blanket, and there'd be no possibility of swimming
across at all. I must go at once."

"But that only adds to the danger," she argued desperately. "The fog
may come down sooner than you expect, and then you'd lose your bearings
altogether."

"I must risk that," he answered grimly. "Don't you realize that it's
impossible--_impossible_ for us to remain here?"

"No, I don't," she returned stubbornly. "It isn't worth such a frightful
risk. Some one is sure to look for us eventually."

"'Eventually' might mean to-morrow morning"--drily--"and that would be
just twelve hours too late. It's worth the risk fifty times over."

"It's not!"--passionately. "Do you suppose I care two straws for the
gossip of a parcel of spiteful old women?"

"Not at the moment, perhaps, but later you wouldn't be able to help
it. What people think of you, what they say of you, can make all the
difference between heaven and hell." He spoke heavily, as though his
words were weighted with some deadening memory. "And do you think I
could bear to feel that I--_I_ had given people a handle for gossiping
about you? I'd cut their tongues out first!" he added savagely.

He stripped off his coat, and, sitting down on a rock, began removing
his boots, while Sara stood watching him in silence with big, sombre
eyes.

Presently he stood up, bareheaded and barefooted. Below the lean, tanned
face the column of his throat showed white as a woman's, while the thin
silk of his vest revealed the powerful line of shoulder at its base. His
keen eyes were gazing steadily across to the opposite shore, as though
measuring the distance he must traverse, and as a chance shaft from
the westering sun rested upon him, investing him momentarily in its
radiance, there seemed something rather splendid about him--something
very sure and steadfast and utterly without fear.

A sharp cry broke from Sara.

"Garth! Garth!"--his name sprang to her lips spontaneously. "You mustn't
go! You mustn't go! . . ."

He wheeled round, and at the sight of her white, strained face a sudden
light leapt into his eyes--the light of a great incredulity with, back
of it, an unutterable hope and longing. In two strides he was at her
side, his hands gripping her shoulders.

"Why, Sara?--God in heaven!"--the words came hurrying from him, hoarse
and uneven--"I believe you care!"

For an instant he hesitated, seeming to hold himself in check, then
he caught her in his arms, kissing her fiercely on eyes and lips and
throat.

"My dear! . . . Oh! My dear! . . ."

She could hear the broken words stammered through his hurried breathing
as she lay unresistingly in his arms; then she felt him put her from
him, gently, decisively, and she stood alone, swaying slightly. A long
shuddering sigh ran through her body.

"Garth!"

She never knew whether the word really passed her lips or whether it
was only the cry of her inmost being, so importunate, so urgent that it
seemed to take on actual sound.

There came no answer. He was gone, and through the light veil of
the encroaching mists she could see him shearing his way through the
leaden-coloured sea.

She remained motionless, her eyes straining after him. He was swimming
easily, with a powerful overhand stroke that carried him swiftly away
from the shore. A little sigh of relaxed tension fluttered between her
lips. At least, he was a magnificent swimmer--he had that much in his
favour.

Then her glance spanned the channel to the further shore, and it seemed
as though an interminable waste of water stretched between. And all the
time, at every stroke, that mad, racing current was pulling against him,
fighting for possession of the strong, sinewy body battling against it.

She beat her hands together in an agony of fear. Why had she let him go?
What did it matter if people talked--what was a tarnished reputation to
set against a man's life? Oh! She had been mad to let him go!

The fog grew denser. Strain as she might, she could no longer see the
dark head above the water, the rise and fall of his arm like a white
flail in the murky light, and she realized that should exhaustion
overtake him, or the swift-running current beat him, drawing him
under--she would not even know?

A sickening sense of bitter impotence assailed her. There was nothing
she could do but wait--wait helplessly until either his return, or
endless hours of solitude, told her whether he had won or lost the fight
against that grey, hungry waste of water. A strangled sob burst from her
throat.

"Oh, God! Let him come back to me! Let him come back!"



The creak of straining rowlocks and the even plash of dripping oars,
muffled by the numbing curtain of the fog, broke through the silence.
Then followed the gentle thudding noise of a boat as it bumped against
the jetty and a voice--Garth's voice--calling.

She rose from the ground where she had flung herself and came to
him, peering at him with eyes that looked like two dark stains in the
whiteness of her face.

"I though you were dead," she said dully. "Drowned. I mean--oh, of
course, it's the same thing, isn't it?" And she laughed, the shrill,
choking laughter of overwrought nerves.

Garth observed her narrowly.

"No, I've very much alive, thanks," he said, speaking in deliberately
cheerful and commonplace accents. "But you look half frozen. Why on
earth didn't you put the rug round you? Get into the boat and let me
tuck you up."

She obeyed passively, and in a few minutes they were slipping over the
water as rapidly as the mist permitted.

Sara was very silent throughout the return journey. For hours, for an
eternity it seemed, she had been in the grip of a consuming terror,
culminating at last in the conviction that Garth had failed to make the
further shore. And now, with the knowledge of his safety, the reaction
from the tension of acute anxiety left her utterly flaccid and
exhausted, incapable of anything more than a half-stunned acceptance of
the miracle.

When at last the Selwyns' house was reached, it was with a manifest
effort that she roused herself sufficiently to answer Garth's quiet
apology for the misadventure of the afternoon.

"If it was your fault that we got stranded on the island," she said,
summoning up rather a wan smile, "it is, at all events, thanks to
you that I shall be sleeping under a respectable roof, instead
of scandalizing half the neighbourhood!" She paused, then went on
uncertainly: "'Thank you' seems ludicrously inadequate for all you've
done--"