“Letters are unsatisfactory things at the best of times, and what we all want is to have you with us again for a little while. I am sure you must have had a surfeit of the simple life by this time, so come to us and be luxurious and exotic in London for a change. Don't disappoint us, Sara!
“Yours ever affectionately,
“ELISABETH.”
Sara, seated at the open window of her room, re-read the last paragraph of the letter which the morning's post had brought her, and then let it fall again on to her lap, whilst she stared with sombre eyes across the bay to where the Monk's Cliff reared itself, stark and menacing, against the sky.
April had slipped into May, and the blue waters of the Channel flickered with a myriad dancing points of light reflected from an unclouded sun. The trees had clothed themselves anew in pale young green, and the whole atmosphere was redolent of spring—spring as she reaches her maturity before she steps aside to let the summer in.
Sara frowned a little. She was out of tune with the harmony of things. You need happiness in your heart to be at one with the eager pulsing of new life, the reaching out towards fulfillment that is the essential quality of spring. Whereas Sara's heart was empty of happiness and hopes, and of all the joyous beginnings that are the glorious appanage of youth. There could be no beginnings for her, because she had already reached the end—reached it with such a stupefying suddenness that for a time she had been hardly conscious of pain, but only of a fierce, intolerable resentment and of a pride—that “devil's own pride” which Patrick had told her was the Tennant heritage—which had been wounded to the quick.
Garth had taken that pride of hers and ground it under his heel. He had played at love, and she had been fool enough to mistake love's simulacrum for the real thing. Or, if there had been any genuine spark of love kindling the fire of passion that had blazed about her for one brief moment, then he had since chosen deliberately to disavow it.
He had indicated his intention unmistakably. Since the day of the luncheon party at Greenacres he had shunned meeting her whenever possible, and, on the one or two occasions when an encounter had been unavoidable, his manner had been frigidly indifferent and impersonal.
Outwardly she had repaid him in full measure—indifference for indifference, ice for ice, gallantly matching her woman's pride against his deliberate apathy, but inwardly she writhed at the remembrance of that day on the island, when, in the stress of her terror for his safety, she had let him see into the very heart of her.
Well, it was over now, and done with. The brief vision of love which had given a new, transcendent significance to the whole of life, had faded swiftly into bleak darkness, its memory marred by that bitterest of all knowledge to a woman—the knowledge that she had been willing to give her love, to make the great surrender, and that it had not been required of her. All that remained was to draw a veil as decently as might be over the forgettable humiliation.
The strain of the last fortnight had left its mark on her. The angles of her face seemed to have become more sharply defined, and her eyes were too brilliant and held a look of restlessness. But her lips closed as firmly as ever, a courageous scarlet line, denying the power of fate to thrust her under.
The Book of Garth—the book of love—was closed, but there were many other volumes in life's library, and Sara did not propose to go through the probable remaining fifty or sixty years of her existence uselessly bewailing a dead past. She would face life, gamely, whatever it might bring, and as she had already sustained one of the hardest blows ever likely to befall her, she would probably make a success of it.
But, unquestionably, she would be glad to get away from Monkshaven for a time, to have leisure to readjust her outlook on life, free from the ceaseless reminders that the place held for her.
Here in Monkshaven, it seemed as though Garth's personality informed the very air she breathed. The great cliff where he had his dwelling frowned at her from across the bay whenever she looked out of her window, his name was constantly on the lips of those who made up her little circle of friends, and every day she was haunted by the fear of meeting him. Or, worse than all else, should that fear materialize, the torment of the almost hostile relationship which had replaced their former friendship had to be endured.
The invitation to join the Durwards in London had come at an opportune moment, offering, as it did, a way of escape from the embarrassments inseparable from the situation. Moreover, amid the distractions and bustle of the great city it would be easier to forget for a little her burden of pain and humiliation. There is so much time for thinking—and for remembering—in the leisurely tranquillity of country life.
Sara would have accepted the invitation without hesitation, but that there seemed to her certain reasons why her absence from Sunnyside just now was inadvisable—reasons based on her loyalty to Doctor Dick and the trust he had reposed in her.
For the last few weeks she had been perplexed and not a little worried concerning Molly's apparent accession to comparative wealth. Certain small extravagances in which the latter had recently indulged must have been, Sara knew, beyond the narrow limits of her purse, and inquiry had elicited from Selwyn the fact that she had received no addition to her usual allowance.
Molly herself had light-heartedly evaded all efforts to gain her confidence, and Sara had refrained from putting any direct question, since, after all, she was not the girl's guardian, and her interference might very well be resented.
She was uneasily conscious that for some reason or other Molly was in a state of tension, alternating between abnormally high spirits and the depths of depression, and the recollection of that unpleasant little episode of her indebtedness to Lester Kent lingered disagreeably in Sara's mind.
She had seen the man once, in Oldhampton High Street—Molly, at that time still clothed in penitence, had pointed him out to her—and she had received an unpleasing impression of a lean, hatchet face with deep-set, dense-brown eyes, and of a mouth like that of a bird of prey.
She felt reluctant to go away and leave things altogether to chance, and finally, unable to come to any decision, she carried Elisabeth's letter down to Selwyn's study and explained the position.
His face clouded over at the prospect of her departure.
“We shall miss you abominably,” he declared. “But of course”—ruefully—“I can quite understand Mrs. Durward's wanting you to go back to them for a time, and I suppose we must resign ourselves to being unselfish. Only you must promise to come back again—you mustn't desert us altogether.”
She laughed.
“You needn't be afraid of that. I shall turn up again like the proverbial bad penny.”
“All the same, make it a promise,” he urged.
“I promise, then, you distrustful man! But about Molly?”
“I don't think you need worry about her.” Selwyn laughed a little. “The sudden accession to wealth is accounted for. It seems that she has sold a picture.”
“Oh! So that's the explanation, is it?” Sara felt unaccountably relieved.
“Yes—though goodness knows how she has beguiled any one into buying one of her daubs!”
“Oh, they're quite good, really, Doctor Dick. It's only that Futurist Art doesn't appeal to you.”
“Not exactly! She showed me one of her paintings the other day. It looked like a bad motor-bus accident in a crowded street, and she told me that it represented the physical atmosphere of a woman who had just been jilted.”
Sara laughed suddenly and hysterically.
“How—how awfully funny!” she said in an odd, choked voice. Then, fearful of losing her self-command, she added hastily: “I'll write and tell Elisabeth that I'll come, then.” And fled out of the room.
As Sara stepped out of the train at Paddington, the first person upon whom her eyes alighted was Tim Durward. He hastened up to her.
“Tim!” she exclaimed delightedly. “How dear of you to come and meet me!”
“Didn't you expect I should?” He was holding her hand and joyfully pump-handling it up and down as though he would never let it go, while the glad light in his eyes would indubitably have betrayed him to any passer-by who had chanced to glance in his direction.
Sara coloured faintly and withdrew her hands from his eager clasp.
“Oh, well, you might conceivably have had something else to do,” she returned evasively.
For an instant the blue eyes clouded.
“I never had anything to do,” he said shortly. “You know that.”
She laughed up at him.
“Now, Tim, I won't be growled at the first minute of my arrival. You can pour out your grumbles another day. First now, I want to hear all the news. Remember, I've been vegetating in the country since the beginning of March!”
She drew him tactfully away from the old sore subject of his enforced idleness, and, while the car bore them swiftly towards the Durwards' house on Green Street, she entertained him with a description of the Selwyn trio.
“I should think your 'Doctor Dick' considers himself damned lucky in having got you there—seeing that his house seems all at sixes and sevens,” commented Tim rather glumly.
“He does. Oh! I'm quite appreciated, I assure you.”
Tim made no reply, but stared out of the window. The car rounded the corner into Park Lane; in another moment they would reach their destination. Suddenly he turned to her, his face rather strained-looking.
“And—the other man? Have you met him yet—at Monkshaven?”
There was no mistaking his meaning. Sara's eyes met his unflinchingly.
“If you mean has any one asked me to marry him—no, Tim. No one has done me that honour,” she answered lightly.
“Thank God!” he muttered below his breath.
Sara looked troubled.
“Haven't you—got over that, yet?” she said, hesitatingly. “I—I hoped you would, Tim.”
“I shall never get over it,” he asserted doggedly. “And I shall never give you up till you are another man's wife.”
The quiet intensity of his tones sounded strangely in her ears. This was a new Tim, not the boyish Tim of former times, but a man with all a man's steadfast purpose and determination.
She was spared the necessity of reply by the fact that they had reached their journey's end. The car slid smoothly to a standstill, and almost simultaneously the house-door opened, and behind the immaculate figure of the Durwards' butler Sara descried the welcoming faces of Geoffrey and Elisabeth.
It was good to see them both again—Geoffrey, big and debonair as ever, his jolly blue eyes beaming at her delightedly, and Elisabeth, still with that same elusive atmosphere of charm which always seemed to cling about her like the fragrance of a flower.
They were eager to hear Sara's news, plying her with questions, so that before the end of her first evening with them they had gleaned a fairly accurate description of her life at Sunnyside and of the new circle of friends she had acquired.
But there was one name she refrained from mentioning—that of Garth Trent, and none of Elisabeth's quietly uttered comments or inquiries sufficed to break through the guard of her reticence concerning the Hermit of Far End.
“It sounds rather a manless Eden—except for the nice, lame Herrick person,” said Elisabeth at last, and her hyacinth eyes, with their curiously veiled expression, rested consideringly on Sara's face, alight with interest as she had vividly sketched the picture of her life at Monkshaven.
“Yes, I suppose it is rather,” she admitted. Her tone was carelessly indifferent, but the eager light died suddenly out of her face, and Elisabeth, smiling faintly, adroitly turned the conversation.
Sara speedily discovered that she would have even less time for the fruitless occupation of remembering than she had anticipated. The Durwards owned a host of friends in town with whom they were immensely popular, and Sara found herself caught up in a perpetual whirl of entertainment that left her but little leisure for brooding over the past.
She felt sometimes as though the London season had opened and swallowed her up, as the whale swallowed Jonah, and when she declared herself breathless with so much rushing about, Tim would coolly throw over any engagement that chanced to have been made and carry her off for a day up the river, where a quiet little lunch, in the tranquil shade of overhanging trees, and the cosy, intimate talk that was its invariable concomitant, seemed like an oasis of familiar, homely pleasantness in the midst of the gay turmoil of London in May.
Tim had developed amazingly. He seemed instinctively to recognize her moods, adapting himself accordingly, and in his thought and care for her there was a half-playful, half-tender element of possessiveness that sometimes brought a smile to her lips—and sometimes a sigh, as the inevitable comparison asserted itself between Tim's gentle ruling and the brusque, forceful mastery that had been Garth's. But, on the whole, the visit to the Durwards was productive of more smiles than sighs, and Sara found Tim's young, chivalrous devotion very soothing to the wound her pride had suffered at Garth's hands.
She overflowed in gratitude to Elisabeth.
“You're giving me a perfectly lovely time,” she told her. “And Timissuch a good playfellow!”
Elisabeth's face seemed suddenly to glow with that inner radiance which praise of her beloved Tim alone was able to inspire.
“Only that, Sara?” she said very quietly. Yet somehow Sara knew that she meant to have an answer to her question.
“Why—why——” she stammered a little. “Isn't that enough?”—trying to speak lightly.
Elisabeth shook her head.
“Tim wants more than a playfellow. Can't you give him what he wants, Sara?”
Sara was silent a moment.
“I didn't know he had told you,” she said, at last, rather lamely.
“Nor has he. Tim is loyal to the core. But a mother doesn't need telling these things.” Elisabeth's beautiful voice deepened. “Tim is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh—and he's soul of my soul as well. Do you think, then, that I shouldn't know when he is hurt?”
Sara was strangely moved. There was something impressive in the restrained passion of Elisabeth's speech, a certain primitive grandeur in her envisagement of the relationship of mother and son.
“I expect,” pursued Elisabeth calmly, “that you think I'm going too far—farther than I have any right to. But it's any mother's right to fight for her son's happiness, and I'm fighting for Tim's. Why won't you marry him, Sara?” The question flashed out suddenly.
“Because—why—oh, because I'm not in love with him.”
A gleam of rather sardonic mirth showed in Elisabeth's face.
“I wish,” she observed, “that we lived in the good old days when you could have been carried off by sheer force andcompelledto marry him.”
Sara laughed outright.
“I really believe you mean it!” she said with some amusement.
Elisabeth nodded.
“I do. I shouldn't have hesitated.”
“And what about me? You wouldn't have considered my feelings at all in the matter, I suppose?” Sara was still smiling, yet she had a dim consciousness that, preposterous as it sounded, Elisabeth would have had no scruples whatever about putting such a plan into effect had it been in any way feasible.
“No.” Elisabeth replied with the utmost composure. “Tim comes first. But”—and suddenly her voice melted to an indescribable sweetness—“You would be almost one with him in my heart, because you had brought him happiness.” She paused, then launched her question with a delicate hesitancy that skillfully concealed all semblance of the probe. “Tell me—is there any one else who has asked of you what Tim asks? Perhaps I have come too late with my plea?”
Sara shook her head.
“No,” she said flatly, “there is no one else.” With a sudden bitter self-mockery she added: “Tim's is the only proposal of marriage I have to my credit.”
The repressed anxiety with which Elisabeth had been regarding her relaxed, and a curious look of content took birth in the hyacinth eyes. It was as though the bitterness of Sara's answer in some way reassured her, serving her purpose.
“Then can't you give Tim what he wants? You will be robbing no one. Sara”—her low voice vibrated with the urgency of her desire—“promise me at least that you will think it over—that you will not dismiss the idea as though it were impossible?”
Sara half rose; her eyes, wide and questioning, were fixed upon Elisabeth's.
“But why—why do you ask me this?” she faltered.
“Because I think”—very softly—“that Tim himself will ask you the same thing before very long. And I can't face what it will mean to him if you send him away. . . . You would be happy with him, Sara. No woman could live with Tim and not grow to love him—certainly no woman whom Tim loved.”
The depth of her conviction imbued her words with a strange force of suggestion. For the first time the idea of marriage with Tim presented itself to Sara as a remotely conceivable happening.
Hitherto she had looked upon his love for her as something which only touched the outer fringe of her life—a temporary disturbance of the good-comradely relations that had existed between them. With the easy optimism of a woman whose heart has always been her own exclusive property she had hoped he would “get over it.”
But now Elisabeth's appeal, and the knowledge of the pain of love, which love itself had taught her, quickened her mind to a new understanding. Perhaps Elisabeth felt her yield to the impression she had been endeavoring to create, for she rose and came and stood quite close to her, looking down at her with shining eyes.
“Give my son his happiness!” she said. And the eternal supplication of all motherhood was in her voice.
Sara made no answer. She sat very still, with bent head. Presently there came the sound of light footsteps as Elisabeth crossed the room, and, a moment later, the door closed softly behind her.
She had thrust a new responsibility on Sara's shoulders—the responsibility of Tim's happiness.
“Give my son his happiness!” The poignant appeal of the words rang in Sara's ears.
After all, why not? As Elisabeth had said, she would be robbing no one by so doing. The man for whom had been reserved the place in the sacred inner temple of her heart had signified very clearly that he had no intention of claiming it.
No other would ever enter in his stead; the doors of that innermost sanctuary would be kept closed, shutting in only the dead ashes of remembrance. But if entrance to the outer courts of the temple meant so much to Tim, why should she not make him free of them? That other had come and gone again, having no need of her, while Tim's need was great.
Life, at the moment stretched in front of her very vague and purposeless, and she knew that by marrying Tim she would make three people whom she loved, and who mattered most to her in the whole world—Tim, and Elisabeth, and Geoffrey—supremely happy. No one need suffer except herself—and for her there was no escape from suffering either way.
So it came about that when, as her visit drew towards its close, Tim came to her and asked her once again to be his wife, she gave him an answer which by no stretch of the imagination could she have conceived as possible a short three weeks before.
She was very frank with him. She was determined that if he married her, it must be open-eyed, recognizing that she could only give him honest liking in return for love. Upon a foundation of sincerity some mutual happiness might ultimately be established, but there should be no submerged rock of ignorance and misunderstanding on which their frail barque of matrimonial happiness might later founder in a sea of infinite regret.
“Are you willing to take me—like that?” she asked him. “Knowing that I can only give you friendship? I wish—I wish I could give you what you ask—but I can't.”
Tim's eyes searched hers for a long moment.
“Is there some one else?” he asked at last.
A wave of painful colour flooded her face, then ebbed away, leaving it curiously white and pinched-looking, but her eyes still met his bravely.
“There is—no one who will ever want your place, Tim,” she said with an effort.
The sight of her evident distress hurt him intolerably.
“Forgive me!” he exclaimed quickly. “I had no right to ask that question.”
“Yes, you had,” she replied steadily, “since you have asked me to be your wife.”
“Well, you've answered it—and it doesn't make a bit of difference. I want you. I'll take what you can give me, Sara. Perhaps, some day, you'll be able to give me love as well.”
She shook her head.
“Don't count on that, Tim. Friendship, understanding, the comradeship which, after all, can mean a good deal between a man and woman—all these I can give you. And if you think those things are worth while, I'll marry you. But—I'm not in love with you.”
“You will be—I'm sure it's catching,” he declared with the gay, buoyant confidence which was one of his most endearing qualities.
Sara smiled a little wistfully.
“I wish it were,” she said. “But please be serious, Tim dear—”
“How can I be?” he interrupted joyfully. “When the woman I love tells me that she'll marry me, do you suppose I'm going to pull a long face about it?”
He caught her in his arms and kissed her with all the impetuous fervour of his two-and-twenty years. At the touch of his warm young lips, her own lips whitened. For an instant, as she rested in his arms, she was stabbed through and through by the memory of those other arms that had held her as in a vice of steel, and of stormy, passionate kisses in comparison with Tim's impulsive caress, half-shy, half-reverent, seemed like clear water beside the glowing fire of red wine.
She drew herself sharply out of his embrace. Would she never forget—would she be for ever remembering, comparing? If so, God help her!
“No,” she said quietly. “You needn't pull a long face over it. But—but marriage is a serious thing, Tim, after all.”
“My dear”—he spoke with a sudden gentle gravity—“don't misunderstand me. Marriage with you is the most serious and wonderful and glorious thing that could ever happen to a man. When you're my wife, I shall be thanking God on my knees every day of my life. All the jokes and nonsense are only so many little waves of happiness breaking on the shore. But behind them there is always the big sea of my love for you—the still waters, Sara.”
Sara remained silent. The realization of the tender, chivalrous, worshiping love this boy was pouring out at her feet made her feel very humble—very ashamed and sorry that she could give so little in return.
Presently she turned and held out her hands to him.
“Tim—my Tim,” she said, and her voice shook a little. “I'll try not to disappoint you.”
The Durwards received the news of their son's engagement to Sara with unfeigned delight. Geoffrey was bluffly gratified at the materialization of his private hopes, and Elisabeth had never appeared more captivating than during the few days that immediately followed. She went about as softly radiant and content as a pleased child, and even the strange, watchful reticence that dwelt habitually in her eyes was temporarily submerged by the shining happiness that welled up within them.
She urged that an early date should be fixed for the wedding, and Sara, with a dreary feeling that nothing really mattered very much, listlessly acquiesced. Driven by conflicting influences she had burned her boats, and the sooner all signs of the conflagration were obliterated the better.
But she opposed a quiet negative to the further suggestion that she should accompany the Durwards to Barrow Court instead of returning to Monkshaven.
“No, I can't do that,” she said with decision. “I promised Doctor Dick I would go back.”
Elisabeth smiled airily. Apparently she had no scruples about the keeping of promises.
“That's easily arranged,” she affirmed. “I'll write to your precious doctor man and tell him that we can't spare you.”
As far as personal inclination was concerned, Sara would gladly have adopted Elisabeth's suggestion. She shrank inexpressibly from returning to Monkshaven, shrouded, as it was, in brief but poignant memories, but she had given Selwyn her word that she would go back, and, even in a comparatively unimportant matter such as this appeared, she had a predilection in favour of abiding by a promise.
Elisabeth demurred.
“You're putting Dr. Selwyn before us,” she declared, candidly amazed.
“I promised him first,” replied Sara. “In my position, you'd do the same.”
Elisabeth shook her head.
“I shouldn't,” she replied with energy. “The people I love come first—all the rest nowhere.”
“Then I'm glad I'm one of the people you love,” retorted Sara, laughing. “And, let me tell you, I think you're a most unmoral person.”
Elisabeth looked at her reflectively.
“Perhaps I am,” she acknowledged. “At least, from a conventional point of view. Certainly I shouldn't let any so-called moral scruples spoil the happiness of any one I cared about. However, I suppose you would, and so we're all to be offered up on the altar of this twopenny-halfpenny promise you've made to Dr. Selwyn?”
Sara laughed and kissed her.
“I'm afraid you are,” she said.
If anything could have reconciled her to the sacrifice of inclination she had made in returning to Monkshaven, it would have been the warmth of the welcome extended to her on her arrival. Selwyn and Molly met her at the station, and Jane Crab, resplendent in a new cap and apron donned for the occasion, was at the gate when at last the pony brought the governess-cart to a standstill outside. Even Mrs. Selwyn had exerted herself to come downstairs, and was waiting in the hall to greet the wanderer back.
“It will be a great comfort to have you back, my dear,” she said with unwonted feeling in her voice, and quite suddenly Sara felt abundantly rewarded for the many weary hours upstairs, trying to win Mrs. Selwyn's interest to anything exterior to herself.
“You're looking thinner,” was Selwyn's blunt comment, as Sara threw off her hat and coat. “What have you been doing with yourself?”
She flushed a little.
“Oh, racketing about, I suppose. I've been living in a perfect whirl. Never mind, Doctor Dick, you shall fatten me up now with your good country food and your good country air. Good gracious!”—as he closed a big thumb and finger around her slender wrist and shook his head disparagingly—“Don't look so solemn! I was always one of the lean kine, you know.”
“I don't think that London has agreed with you,” rumbled Selwyn discontentedly. “Your pulse is as jerky as a primitive cinema film. You'd better not be in such a hurry to run away from us again. Besides, we can't do without you, my dear.”
With a mental jolt Sara recollected the fact of her approaching marriage. How on earth should she break it to these good friends of hers, who counted so much on her remaining with them, that within three months—the longest period Elisabeth would consent to wait—she would be leaving them permanently? It was manifestly impossible to pour such a douche of cold water into the midst of the joyful warmth of their welcome; and she decided to wait, at least until the next day, before acquainting them with the fact of her engagement.
When morning came, the same arguments held good in favour of a further postponement, and, as the days slipped by, it became increasingly difficult to introduce the subject.
Moreover, amid the change of environment and influence, Sara experienced a certain almost inevitable reaction of feeling. It was not that she actually regretted her engagement, but none the less she found herself supersensitively conscious of it, and she chafed against the thought of the congratulations and all the kindly, well-meant “fussation” which its announcement would entail.
She told herself irritably that this was only because she had not yet had time to get used to the idea of regarding herself as Tim's future wife; that, later on, when she had grown more accustomed to it, the prospect of her friends' felicitations would appear less repugnant. She had to face the ultimate fact that marriage, for her, did not mean the crowning fulfillment of life; marriage with Tim would never be anything more than a substitute, a next best thing.
With these thoughts in her mind, she finally decided to say nothing about her engagement for the present, but to pick up the threads of life at Sunnyside as though that crowded month in London, with its unexpected culmination, had never been.
Once taken, the decision afforded her a curious sense of respite and relief. It was very pleasant to drop back into the old habits of managing the Sunnysideménage—making herself indispensable to Selwyn, humouring his wife, and keeping a watchful eye on Molly.
The latter, Sara found, was by far the most difficult part of her task, and the vague apprehensions she had formed, and to some extent shared with Selwyn before her visit to London, increased.
From an essentially lovable, inconsequent creature, with a temper of an angel and the frankness of a child, Molly had become oddly nervous and irritable, flushing and paling suddenly for no apparent cause, and guardedly uncommunicative as to her comings and goings. She was oddly resentful of any manifestation of interest in her affairs, and snubbed Sara roundly when the latter ventured an injudicious inquiry as to whether Lester Kent were still in the neighbourhood.
“How on earth should I know?” The golden-brown eyes met Sara's with a look of nervous defiance. “I'm not his keeper.” Then, as though slightly ashamed of her outburst, she added more amiably: “I haven't been down to the Club for weeks. It's been so hot—and I suppose I've been lazy. But I'm going to-morrow. I shall be able to gratify your curiosity concerning Lester Kent when I come home.”
“To-morrow?” Sara looks surprised. “But we promised to go to tea with Audrey to-morrow.”
Molly flushed and looked away.
“Did we?” she said vaguely. “I'd forgotten.”
“Can't you arrange to go to Oldhampton the next day instead?” continued Sara.
Molly frowned a little. At last—
“I tell you what I'll do,” she said agreeably. “I'll come back by the afternoon train and meet you at Greenacres.” And with this concession Sara had to be content.
Tea at Greenacres resolved itself into a kind of rarefied picnic, and, as Sara crossed the cool green lawns in the wake of a smart parlourmaid, she found that quite a considerable number of Audrey's friends—and enemies—were gathered together under the shade of the trees, partaking of tea and strawberries and cream. Theeliteof the neighbourhood might find many disagreeable things to say concerning Mrs. Maynard, but they were not in the least averse to accepting her hospitality whenever the opportunity presented itself.
Sara's heart leapt suddenly as she descried Trent's lean, well-knit figure amongst those dotted about on the lawn. She had tried very hard to accustom herself to meet him with composure, but at each encounter, although outwardly quite cool, her pulses raced, and to-day, the first time she had seen him since her return from London, she felt as though all her nerves were outside her skin instead of underneath it.
He was talking to Miles Herrick. The latter, lying back luxuriously in a deck-chair, proceeded to wave and beckon an enthusiastic greeting as soon as he caught sight of Sara, and rather reluctantly she responded to his signals and made her way towards the two men.
“I feel like a bloated sultan summoning one of the ladies of the harem to his presence,” confessed Miles apologetically when he had shaken hands. “I've added a sprained ankle to my other disabilities,” he continued cheerfully. “Hence my apparent laziness.”
Sara commiserated appropriately.
“How did you manage to get here?” she asked.
Miles gestured towards Trent.
“This man maintained that it was bad for my mental and moral health to brood alone at home while Lavinia went skipping off into society unchaperoned. So he fetched me along in his car.”
Sara's eyes rested thoughtfully on Trent's face a moment.
It was odd how kindly and considerate he always showed himself towards Miles Herrick. Perhaps somewhere within him a responsive chord was touched by the evidence of the other man's broken life.
“Miss Tennant is thinking that it's a case of the blind leading the blind for me to act as a cicerone into society,” remarked Trent curtly.
Sara winced at the repellent hardness of his tone, but she declined to take up the challenge.
“I am very glad you persuaded Miles to come over,” was all she said.
Trent's lips closed in a straight line. It seemed as though he were trying to resist the appeal of her gently given answer; and Miles, conscious of the antagonism in the atmosphere, interposed with some commonplace question concerning her visit to London.
“You're looking thinner than you were, Sara,” he added critically.
She flushed a little as she felt Trent's hawk-like glance sweep over her.
“Oh, I've been leading too gay a life,” she said hastily. “The Durwards seem to know half London, so that we crowded about a dozen engagements into each day—and a few more into the night.”
“Durward?” The word sprang violently from Trent's lips, almost as though jerked out of him, and Sara, glancing towards him in some astonishment, surprised a strange, suddenly vigilant expression in his face. It was immediately succeeded by a blank look of indifference, yet beneath the assumption of indifference his eyes seemed to burn with a kind of slumbering hostility.
“Yes—the people I have been staying with,” she explained. “Do you know them, by any chance?”
“I really can't say,” he replied carelessly. “Durward is not a very uncommon name, is it?”
“Their name was originally Lovell—they only acquired the Durward with some property. Mrs. Durward is an extraordinarily beautiful woman. I believe in her younger days she had half London in love with her.”
Sara hardly knew why she felt impelled to supply so many particulars concerning the Durwards. After that first brief exclamation, Trent seemed to have lost interest, and appeared to be rather bored by the recital than otherwise. He made no comment when she had finished.
“Then you don't know them?” she asked at last.
“I?” He started slightly, as though recalled to the present by her question. “No. I haven't the pleasure to be numbered amongst Mrs. Durward's friends,” he said quietly. “I have seen her, however.”
“She is very beautiful, don't you think?” persisted Sara.
“Very,” he replied indifferently. And then, quite deliberately, he directed the conversation into another channel, leaving Sara feeling exactly as though a door had been slammed in her face.
It was his old method of putting an end to a discussion that failed to please him—this arrogantly abrupt transition to another subject—and, though it served its immediate purpose, it was a method that had its weaknesses. If you deliberately hide behind a hedge, any one who catches you in the act naturally wonders why you are doing it.
Even Miles looked a trifle astonished at Trent's curt dismissal of the Durward topic, and Sara, who had observed the strange expression that leaped into his eyes—half-guarded, half inimical—felt convinced that he knew more about the Durwards than he had chosen to acknowledge.
She could not imagine in what way they were connected with his life, nor why he should have been so averse to admitting his knowledge of them. But there were many inexplicable circumstances associated with the man who had chosen to live more or less the life of a recluse at Far End; and Sara, and the little circle of intimates who had at last succeeded in drawing him into their midst, had accustomed themselves to the atmosphere of secrecy that seemed to envelope him.
From his obvious desire to eschew the society of his fellow men and women, and from the acid cynicism of his outlook on things in general, it had been gradually assumed amongst them that some happenings in the past had marred his life, poisoning the springs of faith, and hope, and charity at their very fount, and with the tact of real friendship they never sought to discover what he so evidently wished concealed.
“Where is Molly to-day?” Miles's pleasant voice broke across the awkward moment, giving yet a fresh trend to the conversation that was languishing uncomfortably.
Sara's gaze ranged searchingly over the little groups of people sprinkled about the lawn.
“Isn't she here yet?” she asked, startled. “She was coming back from Oldhampton by the afternoon train, and promised to meet me here.”
Miles looked at his watch.
“The attractions of Oldhampton have evidently proved too strong for her,” he said a little drily. “If she had come by the afternoon train, she would have been here an hour ago.”
Sara looked troubled.
“Oh, but shemustbe here—somewhere,” she insisted rather anxiously.
“Shall I see if I can find her for you?” suggested Trent stiffly.
Sara, sensing his wish to be gone and genuinely disturbed at Molly's non-appearance, acquiesced.
“I should be very glad if you would,” she answered. Then turning to Miles, she went on: “I can't think where she can be. Somehow, Molly has become rather—difficult, lately.”
Herrick smiled.
“Don't look so distressed. It is only a little ebullition ofla jeunesse.”
Sara turned to him swiftly.
“Then you've noticed it, too—that she is different?”
He nodded.
“Lookers-on see most of the game, you know. And I'm essentially a looker-on.” He bit back a quick sigh, and went on hastily: “But I don't think you need worry about our Molly's vagaries. She's too soundau fondto get into real mischief.”
“She wouldn't mean to,” conceded Sara. “But she is——” She hesitated.
“Youthfully irresponsible,” suggested Miles. “Let it go at that.”
Sara looked at him affectionately, reflecting that Trent's black cynicism made a striking foil to the serene and constant charity of Herrick's outlook.
“You always look for the best in people, Miles,” she said appreciatively.
“I have to. Don't you see, people are my whole world. I'm cut off from everything else. If I didn't look for the best in them, I should want to kill myself. And I'm pretty lucky,” he added, smiling humorously. “I generally find what I'm looking for.”
At this moment Trent returned with the news that Molly was nowhere to be found. It was evident she had not come to Greenacres at all.
Sara rose, feeling oddly apprehensive.
“Then I think I shall go home and see if she has arrived there yet,” she said. She smiled down at Miles. “Even irresponsibility needs checking—if carried too far.”