It was one of those surprisingly warm days, holding a foretaste of June's smiles, which March occasionally vouchsafes.
The sun blazed down out of a windless, cloudless sky, and Sara, making her way leisurely through the straggling woods that intervened betwixt the Selwyns' house and Monk's Cliff, felt the salt-laden air wafted against her face, as warmly mellow as though summer were already come.
Molly had gone to Oldhampton—since the artists' colony there would be certain to take advantage of this gift of a summer's day to arrange a sketching party, and, as the morning's post had brought Sara a letter from Elisabeth Durward which had occasioned her considerable turmoil of spirit, she had followed her natural bent by seeking the solitude of a lonely tramp in order to think the matter out.
From her earliest days at Barrow she had always carried the small tangles of childhood to a remote corner of the pine-woods for solution, and the habit had grown with her growth, so that now, when a rather bigger tangle presented itself, she turned instinctively to the solitude of the cliffs at Monkshaven, where the murmur of the sea was borne in her ears, plaintively reminiscent of the sound of the wind in her beloved pine trees.
Spring comes early in the sheltered, southern bay of Monkshaven, and already the bracken was sending up pushful little shoots of young green, curled like a baby's fist, while the primroses, bunched together in clusters, thrust peering faces impertinently above the green carpet of the woods. Sara stopped to pick a handful, tucking them into her belt. Then, emerging from the woods, she breasted the steep incline that led to the brow of the cliff.
A big boulder, half overgrown with moss and lichen, offered a tempting resting-place, and flinging herself down on the yielding turf beside it, she leaned back and drew out Elisabeth's letter.
She had sometimes wondered whether Elisabeth had any suspicion of the fact that, before leaving Barrow, she had refused to marry Tim. The friendship and understanding between mother and son was so deep that it was very possible that Tim had taken her into his confidence. And even if he had not, the eyesight of love is extraordinarily keen, and Elisabeth would almost inevitably have divined that something was amiss with his happiness.
If this were so, as Sara admitted to herself with a wry smile, there was little doubt that she would look askance at the woman who had had the temerity to refuse her beautiful Tim!
And now, although her letter contained no definite allusion to the matter, reading between the lines, the conviction was borne in upon Sara that Elisabeth knew all that there was to know, and had ranged herself, heart and soul, on the side of her son.
It was obvious that she thought of the whole world in terms of Tim, and, had she been a different type of woman, the simile of a hen with one chick would have occurred to Sara's mind.
But there was nothing in the least hen-like about Elisabeth Durward. Only, whenever Tim came near her, her face, with its strangely inscrutable eyes, would irradiate with a sudden warmth and tenderness of emotion that was akin to the exquisite rapture of a lover when the beloved is near. To Sara, there seemed something a little frightening—almost terrible—in her intense devotion to Tim.
The letter itself was charmingly written—expressing the hope that Sara was happy and comfortable at Monkshaven, recalling their pleasant time at Barrow together, and looking forward to other future visits from her—“which would be a fulfillment of happiness to us all.”
It was this last sentence, combined with one or two other phrases into which much or little meaning might equally as easily be read, which had aroused in Sara a certain uneasy instinct of apprehension. Dimly she sensed a vague influence at work to strengthen the ties that bound her to Barrow, and to all that Barrow signified.
She faced the question with characteristic frankness. Tim had his own place in her heart—secure and unassailable. But it was not the place in that sacred inner temple which is reserved for the one man, and she recognized this with a limpid clearness of perception rather uncommon in a girl of twenty. She also recognized that it was within the bounds of possibility that the one man might never come to claim that place, and that, if she gave Tim the answer he so ardently desired, they would quite probably rub along together as well as most married folk—better, perhaps, than a good many. But she was very sure that she never intended to desecrate that inner temple by any lesser substitute for love.
Thus she reasoned, with the untried confidence of youth, which is so pathetically certain of itself and of its ultimate power to hold to its ideals, ignorant of the overpowering influences which may develop to push a man or woman this way or that, or of the pain that may turn clear, definite thought into a welter of blind anguish, when the soul in its agony snatches at any anodyne, true or false, which may seem to promise relief.
A little irritably she folded up Elisabeth's letter. It was disquieting in some ways—she could not quite explain why—and just now she felt averse to wrestling with disturbing ideas. She only wanted to lie still, basking in the tranquil peace of the afternoon, and listen to the murmuring voice of the sea.
She closed her eyes indolently, and presently, lulled by the drowsy rhythm of the waves breaking at the foot of the cliff, she fell asleep.
She woke with a start. An ominous drop of rain had splashed down on to her cheek, and she sat up, broad awake in an instant and shivering a little. It had turned much colder, and a wind had risen which whispered round her of coming storm, while the blue sky of an hour ago was hidden by heavy, platinum-coloured clouds massing up from the south.
Another and another raindrop fell, and, obeying their warning, Sara sprang up and bent her steps in the direction of home. But she was too late to avoid the storm which had been brewing, and before she had gone a hundred yards it had begun to break in drifting scurries of rain, driven before the wind.
She hurried on, hoping to gain the shelter of the woods before the threatened deluge, but within ten minutes of the first heralding drops it was upon her—a torrent of blinding rain, sweeping across the upland like a wet sheet.
She looked about her desperately, in search of cover, and perceiving, on the further side of a low stone wall, what she took to be a wooden shelter for cattle, she quickened her steps to a run, and, nimbly vaulting the wall, fled headlong into it.
It was not, however, the cattle shed she had supposed it, but a roughly constructed summer-house, open on one side to the four winds of heaven and with a wooden seat running round the remaining three.
Sara guessed immediately that she must have trespassed again on the Far End property, but reflecting that neither its owner nor his lynx-eyed servant was likely to be abroad in such a downpour as this, and that, even if they were, and chanced to discover her, they could hardly object to her taking refuge in this outlying shelter, she shook the rain from her skirts and sat down to await the lifting of the storm.
As always in such circumstances, the time seemed to pass inordinately slowly, but in reality she had not been there more than a quarter of an hour before she observed the figure of a man emerge from some trees, a few hundred yards distant, and come towards her, and despite the fact that he was wearing a raincoat, with the collar turned up to his ears, and a tweed cap pulled well down over his head, she had no difficulty in recognizing in the approaching figure her fellow-traveller of the journey to Monkshaven.
Evidently he had not seen her, for she could hear him whistling softly to himself as he approached, while with the fingers of one hand he drummed on his chest as though beating out the rhythm of the melody he was whistling—a wild, passionate refrain from Wieniawski's exquisiteLegende. It sounded curiously in harmony with the tempest that raged about him.
For himself, he appeared to regard the storm with indifference—almost to welcome it, for more than once Sara saw him raise his head as though he were glad to feel the wind and rain beating against his face.
She drew back a little into the shadows of the summer-house, hoping he might turn aside without observing her, since, from all accounts, Garth Trent was hardly the type of man to welcome a trespasser upon his property.
But he came straight on towards her, and an instant later she knew that her presence was discovered, for he stopped abruptly and peered through the driving rain in the direction of the summer-house. Then, quickening his steps, he rapidly covered the intervening space and halted on the threshold of the shelter.
“What the devil——” he began, then paused and stared down at her with an odd glint of amusement in his eyes. “So it's you, is it?” he said at last, with a short laugh.
Once again Sara was conscious of the extraordinary intensity of his regard, and now, as a sudden ragged gleam of sunlight pierced the clouds, falling athwart his face, she realized what it was that induced it. In both eyes the clear hazel of the iris was broken by a tiny, irregularly shaped patch of vivid blue, close to the pupil, and its effect was to give that curious depth and intentness of expression which Molly had tried to describe when she had said that Garth Trent's were the kind of eyes which “make you jump if he looked at you suddenly.”
Sara almost jumped now; then, supported by her indignant recollection of the man's churlishness on a former occasion, she bowed silently.
He continued to regard her with that lurking suggestion of amusement at the back of his eyes, and she was annoyed to feel herself flushing uncomfortably beneath his scrutiny. At last he spoke again.
“You seem to have a faculty for intrusion,” he remarked drily.
Sara's eyes flashed.
“And you, a fancy for solitude,” she retorted.
“Exactly.” He bowed ironically. “Perhaps you would oblige me by considering it?” And he drew politely aside as though to let her pass out in front of him.
Sara cast a dismayed glance at the rain, which was still descending in torrents. Then she turned to him indignantly.
“Do you mean that you're going to insist on my starting out in this storm?” she demanded.
“Don't you know that you've no right to be here at all—that you're trespassing?” he parried coolly.
“Of course I know it! But I didn't expect that any one in the world would object to my trespassing in the circumstances!”
“You must not judge me by other people,” he replied composedly. “I am not—like them.”
“You're not, indeed,” agreed Sara warmly.
“And your tone implies 'thanks be,'” he supplemented with a faint smile. “Oh, well,” he went on ungraciously, “stay if you like—so long as you don't expect me to stay with you.”
Sara hastily disclaimed any such desire, and, lifting his cap, he turned and strode away into the rain.
Another ten minutes crawled by, and still the rain came down as persistently as though it intended never to cease again. Sara fidgeted, and walked across impatiently to the open front of the summer-house, staring up moodily at the heavy clouds. They showed no signs of breaking, and she was just about to resume her weary waiting on the seat within the shelter, when quick steps sounded to her left, and Garth Trent reappeared, carrying an umbrella and with a man's overcoat thrown over his arm.
“It's going to rain for a good two hours yet,” he said abruptly. “You'd better come up to the house.”
Sara gazed at him in silent amazement; the invitation was so totally unexpected that for the moment she had no answer ready.
“Unless,” he added sneeringly, misinterpreting her silence, “you're afraid of the proprieties?”
“I'm far more afraid of taking cold,” she replied promptly, preparing to evacuate the summer-house.
“Here, put this on,” he said gruffly, holding out the coat he had brought with him. “There's no object in getting any wetter than you must.”
He helped her into the coat, buttoning it carefully under her chin, his dexterous movements and quiet solicitude contrasting curiously with the detachment of his manner whilst performing these small services. He was so altogether business-like and unconcerned that Sara felt not unlike a child being dressed by a conscientious but entirely disinterested nurse. When he had fastened the last button of the long coat, which came down to her heels, he unfurled the umbrella and held it over her.
“Keep close to me, please,” he said briefly, nor did he volunteer any further remark until they had accomplished the journey to the house, and were standing together in the old-fashioned hall which evidently served him as a living room.
Here Trent relieved her of the coat, and while she stood warming her feet at the huge log-fire, blazing half-way up the chimney, he rang for his servant and issued orders for tea to be brought, as composedly as though visitors of the feminine persuasion were a matter of everyday occurrence.
Sara, catching a glimpse of Judson's almost petrified face of astonishment as he retreated to carry out his master's instructions, and with a vivid recollection of her last encounter with him, almost laughed out loud.
“Please sit down,” said Trent. “And”—with a glance towards her feet—“you had better take off those wet shoes.”
There was something in his curt manner of giving orders—rather as though he were a drill-sergeant, Sara reflected—that aroused her to opposition. She held out her feet towards the blaze of the fire.
“No, thank you,” she replied airily. “They'll dry like this.”
As she spoke, she glanced up and encountered a sudden flash in his eyes like the keen flicker of a sword-blade. Without vouchsafing any answer, he knelt down beside her and began to unlace her shoes, finally drawing them off and laying them sole upwards, in front of the fire to dry. Then he passed his hand lightly over her stockinged feet.
“Wringing wet!” he remarked curtly. “Those silk absurdities must come off as well.”
Sara sprang up.
“No!” she said firmly. “They shall not!”
He looked at her, again with that glint of mocking amusement with which he had first greeted her presence in his summer-house.
“You'd rather have a bad cold?” he suggested.
“Ever so much rather!” retorted Sara hardily.
He gave a short laugh, almost as though he could not help himself, and, with a shrug of his shoulders, turned and marched out of the room.
Left alone, Sara glanced about her in some surprise at the evidences of a cultivated taste and love of beauty which the room supplied. It was not quite the sort of abode she would have associated with the grim, misanthropic type of man she judged her host to be.
The old-fashioned note, struck by the huge oaken beams supporting the ceiling and by the open hearth, had been retained throughout, and every detail—the blue willow-pattern china on the old oak dresser, the dimly lustrous pewter perched upon the chimney-piece, the silver candle-sconces thrusting out curved, gleaming arms from the paneled walls—was exquisite of its kind. It reminded her of the old hall at Barrow, where she and Patrick had been wont to sit and yarn together on winter evenings.
The place had a well-tended air, too, and Sara, who waged daily war against the slovenly shabbiness prevalent at Sunnyside, was all at once sensible of how desperately she had missed the quiet perfection of the service at Barrow. The nostalgia for her old home—the unquenchable, homesick longing for theplacethat has held one's happiness—rushed over her in a overwhelming flood.
Wishing she had never come to this house, which had so stirred old memories, she got up restlessly, driven by a sudden impulse to escape, just as the door opened to re-admit Garth Trent.
He gave her a swift, searching glance.
“Sit down again,” he commanded. “There”—gravely depositing a towel and a pair of men's woolen socks on the floor beside her—“dry your feet and put those socks on.”
He moved quickly away towards the window and remained there, with his back turned studiously towards her, while she obeyed his instructions. When she had hung two very damp black silk stockings on the fire-dogs to dry, she flung a somewhat irritated glance at him over her shoulder.
“You can come back,” she said in a small voice.
He came, and stood staring down at the two woolly socks protruding from beneath the short, tweed skirt. The suspicion of a smile curved his lips.
“They're several sizes too large,” he observed. “Odd creatures you women are,” he went on suddenly, after a brief silence. “You shy wildly at the idea of letting a man see the foot God gave you, but you've no scruples at all about letting any one see the selfishness that the devil's put into your hearts.”
He spoke with a kind of savage contempt; it was as though the speech were tinged with some bitter personal memory.
Sara's eyes surveyed him calmly.
“I've no intention of making an exhibit of my heart,” she observed mildly.
“It's wiser not, probably,” he retorted disagreeably, and at that moment Judson came into the room and began to arrange the tea-table beside his master's chair.
“Put it over there,” directed Trent sharply, indicating with a gesture that the table should be placed near his guest, and Judson, his face manifesting rather more surprise than is compatible with the wooden mask demanded of the well-trained servant, hastened to comply.
When he had readjusted the position of the tea-table, he moved quietly about the room, drawing the curtains and lighting the candles in their silver sconces, so that little pools of yellow light splashed down on to the smooth surface of the oak floor—waxed and polished till it gleamed like black ivory.
As he withdrew unobtrusively towards the door, Trent tossed him a further order.
“I shall want the car round in a couple of hours—at six,” he said, and smiled straight into Sara's startled eyes.
Sara paused with the sugar-tongs poised above the Queen Anne bowl.
“Sugar?” she queried.
Trent regarded her seriously.
“One lump, please.”
She handed him his cup and poured out another for herself. Then she said lightly:
“I heard you order your car. Is this quite a suitable afternoon for joy-riding?”
“More so than for walking,” he retaliated. “I'm going to drive you home.”
“At six o'clock?”
“At six o'clock.”
“And suppose I wish to leave before then?”
He cast an expressive glance towards the windows, where the rain could be heard beating relentlessly against the panes.
“It's quite up to you . . . to walk home.”
Sara made a small grimace of disgust.
“Otherwise,” she said tentatively, “I am going to stay here, whether I will or no?”
He nodded.
“Yes. It's my birthday, and I'm proposing to make myself a present of an hour or two of your society,” he replied composedly.
Sara regarded him with curiosity. He had been openly displeased to find her trespassing on his estate—which was only what current report would have led her to expect—yet now he was evincing a desire for her company, and, in addition, a very determined intention to secure it. The man was an enigma!
“I'm surprised,” she said lightly. “I gathered from a recent remark of yours that you didn't think too highly of women.”
“I don't,” he replied with uncompromising directness.
“Then why—why——”
“Perhaps I have a fancy to drop back for a brief space into the life I have renounced,” he suggested mockingly.
“Then you really are what they call you—a hermit?”
“I really am.”
“And feminine society is taboo?”
“Entirely—as a rule.” If, for an instant, the faintest of smiles modified the grim closing of his lips, Sara failed to notice it.
The cold detachment of his answer irritated her. It was as though he intended to remain, hermit-like, within his shell, and she had a suspicion that behind this barricade he was laughing at her for her ineffectual attempts to dig him out of it with a pin.
“I suppose some woman didn't fall into your arms just when you wanted her to?” she hazarded.
She had not calculated the result of this thrust. His eyes blazed for a moment. Then, a shade of contempt blending with the former cool insouciance of his tone, he said quietly:
“You don't expect an answer to that question, do you?”
The snub was unmistakable, and Sara's cheeks burned. She felt heartily ashamed of herself, and yet, incongruously, she was half inclined to lay the blame for her impertinent speech on his shoulders. He had almost challenged her to deal a blow that should crack that impervious shell of his.
She glanced across at him beneath her lashes, and in an instant all thought of personal dignity was wiped out by the look of profound pain that she surprised in his face. Her shrewd question, uttered almost unthinkingly in the cut-and-thrust of repartee, had got home somewhere on an old wound.
“Oh, I'm sorry!” she exclaimed contritely.
She could only assume that he had not heard her low-voiced apology, for, when he turned to her again, he addressed her exactly as though she had not spoken.
“Try some of these little hot cakes,” he said, tendering a plateful. “They are quite one of Mrs. Judson's specialties.”
With amazing swiftness he had reassumed his mask. The bright, hazel eyes were entirely free from any hint of pain, and his voice held nothing more than conventional politeness. Sara meekly accepted one of the cakes in question, and for a little while the conversation ran on stereotyped lines.
Presently, when tea was over, he offered her a cigarette.
“I have not forgotten your tastes, you see,” he said, smiling.
“I do smoke,” she admitted. “But”—the confession came with a rush, and she did not quite know what impelled her to make it—“I smoked—that day in the train—out of sheer defiance.”
“I was sure of it,” he responded in amused tones. “But now”—striking a match and holding it for her to light her cigarette—“you will smoke because you really like it, and because it would be a friendly action and condone the fact that you are being held a prisoner against your will.”
Sara smiled.
“It is a very charming prison,” she said, contemplating the harmony of the room with satisfied eyes.
“You like it?” he asked eagerly.
She looked at him in surprise. What could it matter to him whether she liked it or not?
“Why, of course, I like it,” she replied. “Who wouldn't? You see,” she added a little wistfully, “I have no home of my own now, so I have to enjoy other people's.”
“I have no home, either,” he said shortly.
“But—but this——”
“Is the house in which I live. One wants more than a few sticks of furniture to make a home.”
Sara was struck by the intense bitterness in his tone. Truly this man, with his lightning changes from boorish incivility to whole-hearted hospitality, from apparently impenetrable reserve to an almost desperate outspokenness, was as incomprehensible as any sphinx.
She hastily steered the conversation towards a less dangerous channel, and gradually they drifted into the discussion of art and music; and Sara, not without some inward trepidation—remembering Molly's experience—touched on his own musicianship.
“It was surely you I herd?” she queried a trifle hesitatingly. “You were playing some Russian music that I knew. Your man ordered me off the premises”—smiling a little—“so I didn't hear as much as I should have liked.”
“Is that a hint?” he asked whimsically.
“A broad one. Please take it.”
He hesitated a moment. Then—
“Very well,” he said abruptly.
He rose and led the way into an adjoining room.
Like the hall they had just quitted, it was pleasantly illumined by candles in silver sconces, and had evidently been arranged to serve exclusively as a music-room, for it contained practically no furniture beyond a couple of chairs, and a beautiful mahogany cabinet, of which the doors stood open, revealing sliding shelves crammed full of musical scores.
A grand piano was so placed that the light from either window or candles would fall comfortably upon the music-desk; and on a stool beside it rested a violin case.
Trent opened the case, and, lifting the violin from is cushiony bed of padded satin, fingered it caressingly.
“Can you read accompaniments?” he asked, flashing the question at her with his usual abruptness.
“Yes.” Sara's answer came simply, minus the mock-modest tag: “A little,” or “I'll do my best,” which most people seem to think it incumbent on them to add, in the circumstances.
It is one of the mysteries of convention why, when you are perfectly aware that you can do a thing, and do it well, you are expected to depreciate your capability under penalty of being accounted overburdened with conceit should you fail to do so.
“Good.” Trent pulled out an armful of music from the cabinet and looked through it rapidly.
“We'll have some of these.” (“These” being several suites for violin and piano.)
Sara's lips twitched. He was testing her rather highly, since the pianoforte score of the suites in question was by no means easy. But, thanks to the wisdom of Patrick Lovell, who had seen to it that she studied under one of the finest masters of the day, she was not a musician by temperament alone, but had also a surprisingly good technique.
At the close of the second suite, Trent turned to her enthusiastically, his face aglow. For the moment he was no longer the hermit, aloof and enigmatical, but an eager comrade, spontaneously appealing to a congenial spirit.
“That went splendidly, didn't it?” he exclaimed. “The pianoforte score is a pretty stiff one, but I was sure”—smilingly—“from the downright way you answered my question about accompaniments, that you'd prove equal to it.”
Sara smiled back at him.
“I didn't think it necessary to make any conventional professions of modesty—to you,” she said. “You don't—wrap things up much—yourself.”
He leaned against the piano, looking down at her.
“No. Nothing I say can make things either better or worse for me, so I have at least gained freedom from the conventions. That is one of my few compensations.”
“Compensations for what?” The question escaped her almost before she was aware, and she waited for the snub which she felt would inevitably follow her second indiscretion that afternoon.
But it did not come. Instead, he fenced adroitly.
“Compensation for the limitations of a hermit's life,” he said lightly.
“The life is your own choice,” she flashed back at him.
“Oh, no, we're not always given a choice, you know. This world isn't a kind of sublimated children's party.”
She regarded him thoughtfully.
“I think,” she said gravely, “we always get back out of life just what we put into it.”
His mouth twisted ironically.
“That's a charming doctrine, but I'm afraid I can't subscribe to it. I put in—all my capital. And I've drawn a blank.”
His tone implied a kind of strange, numb acceptance of an inimical destiny, and Sara was conscious of a rush of intense pity towards this man whose implacably cynical outlook manifested itself in almost every word he uttered. It was no mere pose on his part—of that she felt assured—but something ingrained, grafted on to his very nature by the happenings of life.
Rather girlishly she essayed to combat it.
“You're not at the end of life yet.”
He smiled at her—a sudden, rare smile of extraordinary sweetness. Her intention was so unmistakable—so touchingly ingenious, as are all youth's attempts to heal a bitterness that lies beyond its ken.
“There are no more lucky dips left in life's tub for me, I'm afraid,” he said gently.
Sara seized upon the opening afforded.
“Of course not—if you persist in keeping to the role of looker-on,” she retorted.
He regarded her gravely.
“Unfortunately, I've no longer any right to dip my head into the tub. Even if I chanced to draw a prize—I should only have to put it back again.”
The quiet irrevocableness of his answer shook her optimism.
“I—don't understand,” she said hesitatingly.
“No?”—his tones hardened suddenly. “It's just as well you shouldn't, perhaps.”
The abrupt alteration in his manner took her by surprise. All at once, he seemed to have retreated into his shell, to have become again the curt, ironic individual of their first meeting.
“I think,” he went on, tranquilly ignoring the mixture of chagrin and amazement in her face, “I think I hear the car coming round. You had better put on your shoes and stockings again—they'll be dry now—and then we can start. It's no longer raining.”
Sara felt as though she had been suddenly relegated to a position of utter unimportance. He was showing her that, as far as he was concerned, she was a person of not the slightest consequence, treating her like an inquisitive child. Their recent conversation, during which his mantle of reserve had slipped a little aside, the music they had shared, when for a brief time they had walked together in the pleasant paths of mutual understanding, all seemed to have receded an immense distance away. As she took her place in the car, she could almost have believed that the incidents of the afternoon were a dream, and nothing more.
Trent sat silently beside her, his attention apparently concentrated on the driving of the car. Once he asked her if she were warm enough, and, upon her replying in the affirmative, lapsed again into silence.
Gaining security from his abstraction, Sara ventured to steal a side-glance at his face. It was a curiously contradictory face, hard and bitter-looking, yet the reckless mouth curved sensitively at the corners, and the tolerant, humorous lines about the eyes seemed to combat the impression of almost brutal force conveyed by the frowning brows and square, dominant chin.
Always acutely sensible of temperament, Sara felt as though the man beside her might be capable of any extreme of action. Whatever decision he might adopt over any given matter, he would hold by it, come what may, and she was aware of an odd reflex consciousness of feminine inadequacy. To influence Garth Trent against his convictions would be like trying to deflect the course of a river by laying a straw across its track.
The primitive woman in her thrilled a little, responsively, and she wondered whether or no her sex had played much part in his life. He was a woman-hater—so Molly had told her—yet Sara could imagine him in a very different role. Of one thing she was sure—that the woman who was loved by Garth Trent would anchor in no placid back-water. Life, for her, would hold something breathless, vital, exultant . . .
“Well, have you decided yet?”
The ironical voice broke sharply into the midst of her fugitive thoughts, and Sara jumped violently, flushing scarlet as she found Trent's eyes surveying her with a quietly quizzical expression.
“Decided what?” she asked defensively.
“Where to place me—whether among the sheep or the goats. You were dissecting my character, weren't you?”
He waited for an answer, but Sara maintained an embarrassed silence. He had divined the subject of her thoughts too nearly.
He laughed.
“The decision has gone against me, I see. Well, I'm not surprised. I've certainly treated you with a rather rough-and-ready kind of courtesy. You must try to pardon me. A hermit gets little practice at entertaining angels unawares.”
Sara, recovering her composure, regarded him placidly.
“You might find many opportunities for practice in Monkshaven,” she suggested.
“In Monkshaven? Are you trying to suggest that I should ingratiate myself with the leading lights of local society?”
She nodded.
“Why not?”
He laughed as though genuinely amused.
“Perhaps you've not been here long enough yet to discover that the amiable inhabitants of Monkshaven look upon me as a sort of cross between a madman and a criminal who has eluded justice.”
“Whose fault is that?”
“Oh, mine, I suppose”—quickly. “But it doesn't matter—since I regard them as a set of harmless, conventional fools. No, thank you, I've no intention of making friends with the people of Monkshaven.”
“They're not all conventional. Some of them are rather interesting—Mrs. Maynard, for instance, and the Herricks.”
He gave her a keen glance.
“Do you know the Herricks?”
“Yes. Why don't you go to see them sometimes? Miles—”
“Oh, Miles Herrick's all right. I know that,” he interrupted.
“It's very bad for you to cut yourself off from the rest of the world, as you do,” persisted Sara sagely.
He was silent for a while, his eyes intent on the strip of road that stretched in front of him, and when he spoke again it was to draw her attention to the effect of the cloud shadows moving across the sea, exactly as though nothing of greater interest had been under discussion.
She began to recognize as a trick of his this abrupt method of terminating a conversation that for some reason did not please him. It was as conclusive as when the man at the other end of the 'phone suddenly “rings off” without any preliminary warning.
By this time they had reached the steep hill that approached directly to the Selwyns' house, and a couple of minutes later, Trent brought the car to a standstill at the gate.
“You have nothing to thank me for,” he said, curtly dismissing her expression of thanks as they stood together on the path. “It is I who should be grateful to you. My opportunities of social intercourse”—drily—“are somewhat limited.”
“Extend them, then, as I advised,” retorted Sara.
“Do you wish me to?” he asked swiftly, and his intent eyes sought her face with a sudden hawk-like glance.
Her own eyes fell. She was conscious, all at once, of an inexplicable agitation, a tremulous confusion that made it seem a physical impossibility to reply.
But he still waited for his answer, and, at last, with an effort she mastered the nervousness that had seized her.
“I—I—yes, I do wish it,” she said faintly.
It had not taken Sara very long to cut a niche for herself in the household at Sunnyside. In a dwelling where the master of the house was away the greater part of the day, the mistress a chronic invalid, and the daughter a beautiful young thing whose mind was intent upon “colour” and “atmosphere,” and altogether hazy concerning the practical necessities of housekeeping, the advent of any one possessing even half Sara's intelligent efficiency would have been provocative of many reforms.
Dick Selwyn, pushed to the uttermost limits of his strength by the demands of his wide practice and by the nervous strain of combating his wife's incessant fretfulness, quickly learned to turn to Sara for that sympathetic understanding which had hitherto been denied him in his home-life.
He had, of course, never again discussed with her his wife's incurable self-absorption, as on the day of her arrival, when the painful scene created by Mrs. Selwyn had practically forced him into some sort of explanation, but Sara's quick grasp of the situation had infinitely simplified matters, and by devoting a considerable amount of her own time to the entertainment of the captious invalid, and thus keeping her in a good humour, she contrived to save Selwyn many a bad half-hour of recrimination and complaint.
Sara was essentially a good “comrade,” as Patrick Lovell had recognized in the old days at Barrow Court, and instinctively Selwyn came to share with her the pin-prick worries that dog a man's footsteps in this vale of woe, learning to laugh at them; and even his apprehensions concerning Molly's ultimate development and welfare were lessened by the knowledge that Sara was at hand.
Molly herself seemed to float through life like a big, beautiful moth, sailing serenely along, and now and then blundering into things, but never learning by experience the dangers of such blunders. One day, in the course of her inconsequent path through life, she would probably flutter too near the attractive blaze of some perilous fire, just as a moth flies against the flame of a candle and singes its frail, soft wings in the process.
It was of this that Sara was inwardly afraid, realizing, perhaps more clearly than the girl's overworked and sometimes absent-minded father, the risks attaching to her temperament.
Of late, Molly had manifested a certain moodiness and irritability very unlike her usual facile sweetness of disposition, and Sara was somewhat nonplussed to account for it. Finally, she approached the matter by way of a direct inquiry.
“What's wrong, Molly?”
Molly was hunched up in the biggest and shabbiest armchair by the fire, smoking innumerable cigarettes and flinging them away half-finished. At Sara's question, she looked up with a shade of defiance in her eyes.
“Why should anything be wrong?” she countered, obviously on the defensive.
“I don't know, I'm sure,” responded Sara good-humouredly. “But I'm pretty certain there is something. Come, out with it, you great baby!”
Molly sighed, smoked furiously for a moment, and then tossed her cigarette into the fire.
“Well, yes,” she admitted at last. “There is—something wrong.” She rose and stood looking across at Sara like a big, perplexed child. “I—I owe some money.”
Sara was conscious of a distinct shock.
“How much?” she asked sharply.
“It's—it's rather a lot—twenty pounds!”
“Twenty pounds!” This was certainly a large sum for Molly—whose annual dress allowance totaled very little more—to be in debt. “What on earth have you been up to? Buying a new trousseau? Where do you owe it—Carr & Bishop's?”—mentioning the principal draper's shop in Oldhampton.
“No. I—don't owe it to a shop at all. It's—it's a bridge debt!” The confession came out rather hurriedly.
Sara's face grew grave.
“But, Molly, you little fool, you've no business to be playing bridge. Where have you been playing?”
“Oh, we play sometimes at the studios—when the light's too bad to go on painting, you know”—airily.
“You mean,” said Sara, “the artists' club people play?”
“Yes.”
Sara frowned. She knew that Molly was one of the youngest members of this club of rather irresponsible and happy-go-lucky folk, and privately considered that Selwyn had made a great mistake in ever allowing her to join it. It embodied, as she had discovered by inquiry, some of the most rapid elements of Oldhampton's society, and was, moreover, open to receive as temporary members artists who come from other parts of the country to paint in the neighbourhood. More than one well-known name had figured in the temporary membership list, and, in addition, the name of certaindilettantito whom the freedom from convention of the artistic life signified far more that art itself.
“I don't understand,” said Sara slowly, “how they let you go on playing until you owed twenty pounds. Don't you square up at the end of the afternoon's play?”
“Yes. But I'd—I'd been losing badly, and—and some one lent me the money.”
Molly flushed a bewitching rose-colour and appealed with big, pathetic eyes. It was difficult to be righteously wroth with her, but Sara steeled her heart.
“You'd no right to borrow,” she said shortly.
“No. I know I hadn't. But, don't you see, I thought I should be sure to win it all back? I couldn't ask Dad for it. Every penny he can spare goes on something that mother can't possibly do without,” added the girl with unwonted bitterness.
The latter fact was incontrovertible, and Sara remained silent. In her own mind she regarded Mrs. Selwyn as a species of vampire, sucking out all that was good, and sweet, and wholesome from the lives of those about her—even that of her own daughter. Did the woman realize, she wondered, that instead of being the help all mothers were sent into the world to be, she was nothing but a hindrance and a stumbling-block?
“I don't know what to do, I simply don't.” Molly's humble, dejected tones broke through the current of Sara's thoughts. “You see, the worst of it is”—she blushed even more bewitchingly than before—“that I owe it to aman. It's detestable owing money to a man!”—with suppressed irritation.
Two fine lines drew themselves between Sara's level brows. This was worse than she had imagined.
“Who is it?” she asked, at last, quietly.
“Lester Kent.”
“And who—or what—is Lester Kent?”
“He's—he's an artist—by choice. I mean,” stumbled Molly, “that he's quite well off—he only paints for pleasure. He often runs down from town for a month or two at a time and takes out a temporary membership for our club.”
“And he has lent you this money?”
“Yes”—rather shamefacedly.
“Well, he must be paid back at once. At once, do you understand? I will give you the twenty pounds—you're not to bother your father about it.”
“Oh, Sara! You are a blessed duck!”
In an instant Molly's cares had slipped from her shoulders, and she beamed across at her deliverer with the most disarming gratitude.
“Wait a moment,” continued Sara firmly. “You must never borrow from Mr. Kent—or any one else—again.”
“Oh, I won't! Indeed, I won't!” Molly was fervent in her assurances. “I've been wretched over this. Although”—brightening—“Lester Kent was really most awfully nice about it. He said it didn't matter one bit.”
“Did he indeed?” Sara spoke rather grimly. “And how old is this Lester Kent?”
“How old? Oh”—vaguely—“thirty-five—forty, perhaps. I really don't know. Somehow he's not the sort of person whose age one thinks about.”
“Anyway, he's old enough to know better than to be lending you money to play bridge with,” commented Sara. “I wish you'd give up playing, Molly.”
“Oh, I couldn't!” coaxingly. “We play for very small stakes—as a rule. But itisamusing, Sara. And, you know this place is as dull as ditchwater unless one doessomething. But I won't get into debt again—I really won't.”
Molly had all the caressing charm of a nice kitten, and now that the pressing matter of her indebtedness to Lester Kent was settled, she relapsed into her usual tranquil, happy-go-lucky self. She rubbed her cheek confidingly against Sara's.
“You are a pet angel, Sara, my own,” she said. “I'm so glad you adopted us. Now I can go to the Herricks' tea-party this afternoon without having that twenty pounds nagging at the back of my mind all the time. I suppose”—glancing at the clock—“it's time we put on our glad rags. The Lavender Lady said she expected us at four.”
Half-an-hour later, Molly reappeared, looking quite impossibly lovely in a frock of the cheapest kind of material, “run up” by the local dressmaker, and very evidently with no other thought “at the back of her mind” than of the afternoon's entertainment.
The tea-party was a small one, commensurate with the size of the rooms at Rose Cottage, and included only Sara and Molly, Mrs. Maynard, and, to Sara's surprise, Garth Trent.
As she entered the room, he turned quietly from the window where he had been standing looking out at the Herricks' charming garden.
“Mr. Trent”—Miss Lavinia fluttered forward—“let me introduce you to Miss Tennant.”
The Lavender Lady's pretty, faded blue eyes beamed benevolently on him. She was soveryglad that “that poor, lonely fellow at Far End” had at last been induced to desert the solitary fastnesses of Monk's Cliff, but as she was simply terrified at the prospect of entertaining him herself—and Audrey Maynard seemed already fully occupied, chatting with Miles—she was only too thankful to turn him across to Sara's competent hands.
“We've met before, Miss Lavinia,” said Trent, and over her head his hazel eyes met Sara's with a gamin amusement dancing in them. “Miss Tennant kindly called on me at Far End.”
“Oh, I didn't know.” Little Miss Lavinia gazed in a puzzled fashion from one to the other of her guests. “Sara, my dear, you never told me that you and Dr. Selwyn had called on Mr. Trent.”
Sara laughed outright.
“Dear Lavender Lady—we didn't. Neither of us would have dared to insult Mr. Trent by doing anything so conventional.” The black eyes flashed back defiance at the hazel ones. “I got caught in a storm on the Monk's Cliff, and Mr. Trent—much against his will, I'm certain”—maliciously—“offered me shelter.”
“Now that was kind of him. I'm sure Sara must have been most grateful to you.” And the kind old face smiled up into Trent's dark, bitter one so simply and sincerely that it seemed as though, for the moment, some of the bitterness melted away. Not even so confirmed a misanthrope as the hermit of Far End could have entirely resisted the Lavender Lady, with her serene aroma of an old-world courtesy and grace long since departed from these hurrying twentieth-century days.
She moved away to the tea-table, leaving Trent and Sara standing together in the bay of the window.
“So you are overcoming your distaste for visiting,” said Sara a little nervously. “I didn't expect to meet you here.”
His glance held hers.
“You wished it,” he answered gravely.
A sudden colour flamed up into the warm pallor of her skin.
“Are you suggesting I invited you to meet me here?” she responded, willfully misinterpreting him. She shook her read regretfully. “You must have misunderstood me. I should never have imposed such a strain on your politeness.”
His eyes glinted.
“Do you know,” he said quietly, “that I should very much like to shake you?”
“I'm glad,” she answered heartily. “It's a devastating feeling! You made me feel just the same the day I travelled with you. So now we're quits.”
“Won't you—please—try to forget that day in the train?” he said quickly. “I behaved like a bore. I'm afraid I've no real excuse to offer, except that I'd been reminded of something that happened long ago—and I wanted to be alone.”
“To enjoy the memory in solitude?” hazarded Sara flippantly. She was still nervous and talking rather at random, scarcely heeding what she said.
A look of bitter irony crossed his face.
“Hardly that,” he said shortly, and Sara knew that somehow she had again inadvertently laid her hand upon an old hurt. She spoke with a sudden change of voice.
“Then, as the train doesn't hold pleasant memories for either of us, let's forget it,” she suggested gently.
“Do you know what that implies?” he asked. “It implies that you are willing to be friends. Do you mean that?”—incisively.
She nodded silently, not trusting herself to speak.
“Thank you,” he said curtly, and then Audrey Maynard's gay voice broke across the tension of the moment.
“Mr. Trent, I simply cannot allow Sara to monopolize you any longer. Now that wehavesucceeded in dragging the hermit out of his shell, we all want a share of his society, please.”
Trent turned instantly, and Sara slipped across the room and took the place Audrey had vacated by Miles's couch. He greeted her coming with a smile, but there were shadows of fatigue beneath his eyes, and his lips were rather white and drawn-looking.
“This is a lazy way to receive visitors, isn't it?” he said apologetically. “But my game leg's given out to-day, so you must forgive me.”
Sara's glance swept his face with quick sympathy.
“You oughtn't to be at the 'party' at all,” she said. “You look far too tired to be bothered with a parcel of chattering women.”
He smiled.
“Do you know,” he whispered humorously, “that, although you're quite the four nicest women I know, the shameful truth is that I'm really here on behalf of the one man! I met him yesterday in the town and booked him for this afternoon, and, having at last dislodged him from his lone pinnacle, I hadn't the heart to leave him unsupported.”
“No. I'm glad you dug him out, Miles. It was clever of you.”
“It will give Monkshaven something to talk about, anyway”—whimsically.
“I suppose”—the toe of Sara's narrow foot was busily tracing a pattern on the carpet—“I suppose you don't know why he shuts himself up like that at Far End?”
“No, I don't,” he answered. “But I'd wager it's for some better reason than people give him credit for. Or it may be merely a preference for his own society. Anyway, it is no business of ours.” Then, swiftly softening the suggestion of reproof contained in his last sentence, he added: “Don't encourage me to gossip, Sara. When a man's tied by the leg, as I am, it's all he can do to curb a tendency towards tattling village scandal like some garrulous old woman.”
It was evident that the presence of visitors was inflicting a considerable strain on Herrick's endurance, and, as though by common consent, the little party broke up shortly after tea.
Molly expressed her intention of accompanying Mrs. Maynard back to Greenacres—the beautiful house which the latter had had built to her own design, overlooking the bay—in order to inspect the pretty widow's recent purchase of a new motor-car.
Trent turned to Sara with a smile.
“Then it devolves on me to see you safely home, Miss Tennant, may I?”
She nodded permission, and they set off through the high-hedged lane, Sara hurrying along at top speed.
For a few minutes Trent strode beside her in silence. Then:
“Are you catching a train?” he inquired mildly. “Or is it only that you want to be rid of my company in the shortest possible time?”
She coloured, moderating her pace with an effort. Once again the odd nervousness engendered by his presence had descended on her. It was as though something in the man's dominating personality strung all her nerves to a high tension of consciousness, and she felt herself overwhelmingly sensible of his proximity.
He smiled down at her.
“Then—if you're not in any hurry to get home—will you let me take you round by Crabtree Moor? It's part of a small farm of mine, and I want a word with my tenant.”
Sara acquiesced, and, Trent, having speedily transacted the little matter of business with his tenant, they made their way across a stretch of wild moorland which intersected the cultivated fields lying on either hand.
In the dusk of the evening, with the wan light of the early moon deepening the shadows and transforming the clumps of furze into strange, unrecognizable shapes of darkness, it was an eerie enough place. Sara shivered a little, instinctively moving closer to her companion. And then, as they rounded a furze-crowned hummock, out of the hazy twilight, loping along on swift, padding feet, emerged the figure of a man.
With a muttered curse he swerved aside, but Trent's arm shot out, and, catching him by the shoulder, he swung him round so that he faced them.
“Leggo!” he muttered, twisting in Trent's iron grasp. “Leggo, can't you?”
“I can, but I'm not going to,” said Trent coolly. “At least, not till you've explained your presence here. This is private property. What are you doing on it?”
“I'm doing no harm,” growled the man sullenly.
“No?” Trent passed his free hand swiftly down the fellow's body, feeling the bulge of his coat. “Then what's the meaning of those rabbits sticking out under your coat? Now, look here, my man, I know you. You're Jim Brady, and it's not the first, nor the second, time I've caught you poaching on my land. But it's the last. Understand that? This time the Bench shall deal with you.”
The man was silent for a moment. Then suddenly he burst out:
“Look here, sir, pass it over this time. My missus is ill. She's mortal bad, God's truth she is, and haven't eaten nothing this three days past. An' I thought mebbe a bit o' stewed rabbit 'ud tempt 'er.”
“Pshaw!” Trent was beginning contemptuously, when Sara leaned forward, peering into the poacher's face.
“Why,” she exclaimed. “It's Brady—Black Brady from Fallowdene.”
Ne'er-do-well as he was, the mere fact that he came from Fallowdene warmed her heart towards him.
“Yes, miss, that's so,” he answered readily. “And you're the young lady what used to live at Barrow Court.”
“Do you know this man?” Trent asked her.
“'Bout as well as you do, sir,” volunteered Brady with an impudent grin. “Catched me poachin' one morning. Fired me gun at 'er, too, I did, to frighten 'er,” he continued reminiscently. “And she never blinked. You're a good-plucked 'un, miss,”—with frank admiration.
Sara looked at the man doubtfully.
“I didn't know you lived here,” she said.
“It's my native village, miss, Monks'aven is. But I didn't think 'twas too 'healthy for me down here, back along”—grinning—“so I shifted to Fallowdene, where me grandmother lives. I came back here to marry Bessie Windrake' she've stuck to me like a straight 'un. But I didn't mean to get collared poachin' again. Me and Bess was goin' to live respectable. 'Twas her bein' ill and me out of work w'at did it.”
“Let him go,” said Sara, appealing to Trent. But he shook his head.
“I can't do that,” he answered with decision.
“Not 'im, miss, 'e won't,” broke in Brady. “'E's not the soft-'earted kind, isn't Mr. Trent.”
Trent's brows drew together ominously.
“You won't mend matters by impudence, Brady,” he said sharply. “Get along now”—releasing his hold of the man's arm—“but you'll hear of this again.”
Brady shot away into the darkness like an arrow, probably chortling to himself that his captor had omitted to relieve him of the brace of rabbits he had poached; and Sara, turning again to Trent, renewed her plea for clemency.
But Trent remained adamant.
“Why shouldn't he stand his punishment like any other man?” he said.
“Well, if it's true that his wife is ill, and that he has been out of work—”
“Are you offering those facts as an excuse for dishonesty?” asked Trent drily.
Sara smiled.
“Yes, I believe I am,” she acknowledged.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Like nine-tenths of your sex, you are fiercely Tory in theory and a rank socialist in practice,” he grumbled.
“Well, I'm not sure that that isn't a very good working basis to go on,” she retorted.
As they stood in the porch at Sunnyside, she made yet one more effort to smooth matters over for the evil-doer, but Trent's face still showed unrelenting in the light that streamed out through the open doorway.
“Ask me something else,” he said. “I would do anything to please you, Sara, except”—with a sudden tense decision—“except interfere with the course of justice. Let every man pay the penalty for his own sin.”
“That's a hard creed,” objected Sara.
“Hard?” He shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps it is. But”—grimly—“it's the only creed I believe in. Good-night”—he held out his hand abruptly. “I'm sorry I can't do as you ask about Jim Brady.”
Before Sara could reply, he was striding away down the path, and a minute later the darkness had hidden him from view.