Sara laid down her pen and very soberly re-read the letter she had just written. It was to Tim Durward, telling him the engagement between them must be at an end, and its accomplishment had been a matter of sore embarrassment and mental struggle. Sara hated giving pain, and she knew that this letter, taking from Tim all—and it was so painfully little—that she had ever given him, must bring very bitter pain to the man to whom, as friend and comrade, she was deeply attached.
It was barely a month since she had promised to marry him, and it was a difficult, ungracious task, and very open to misapprehension, to write and rescind that promise.
Yet it was characteristic of Sara that no other alternative presented itself to her. Now that she was sure Garth cared for her—whether their mutual love must remain for ever unfulfilled, unconsummated, or not—she knew that she could never give herself to any other man.
She folded and sealed the letter, and then sat quietly contemplating the consequences that it might entail. Almost inevitably it would mean a complete estrangement from the Durwards. Elisabeth would be very unlikely ever to forgive her for her treatment of Tim; even kindly hearted Major Durward could not but feel sore about it; and since Garth had not asked her to marry him—and showed no disposition to do any such thing—they would almost certainly fail to understand or sympathize with her point of view.
Sara sighed as she dropped her missive into the letter-box. It meant an end to the pleasant and delightful friendship which had come into her life just at the time when Patrick Lovell's death had left it very empty and desolate.
Two days of suspense ensued while she restlessly awaited Tim's reply. Then, on the third day, he came himself, his eyes incredulous, his face showing traces of the white night her letter had cost him.
He was very gentle with her. There was no bitterness or upbraiding, and he suffered her explanation with a grave patience that hurt her more than any reproaches he could have uttered.
“I believed it was only I who cared, Tim,” she told him. “And so I felt free to give you what you wanted—to be your wife, if you cared to take me, knowing I had no love to give. I thought”—she faltered a little—“that I might as well makesomeonehappy! But now that I know he loves me as I love him, I couldn't marry any one else, could I?”
“And are you going to marry him—this man you love?”
“I don't know. He has not asked me to marry him.”
“Perhaps he is married already?”
Sara met his eyes frankly.
“I don't know even that.”
Tim made a fierce gesture of impatience.
“Is it playing fair—to keep you in ignorance like that?” he demanded.
Sara laughed suddenly.
“Perhaps not. But somehow I don't mind. I am sure he must have a good reason—or else”—with a flash of humour—“some silly man's reason that won't be any obstacle at all!”
“Supposing”—Tim bent over her, his face rather white—“supposing you find—later on—that there is some real obstacle—that he can't marry you, would you come to me—then, Sara?”
She shook her head.
“No, Tim, not now. Don't you see, now that I know he cares for me—everything is altered. I'm not free, now. In a way, I belong to him. Oh! How can I explain? Even though we may never marry, there is a faithfulness of the spirit, Tim. It's—it's the biggest part of love, really——”
She broke off, and presently she felt Tim's hands on her shoulders.
“I think I understand, dear,” he said gently. “It's just what I should expect of you. It means the end of everything—everything that matters for me. But—somehow—I would not have you otherwise.”
He did not stay very long after that. They talked together a little, promising each other that their friendship should still remain unbroken and unspoilt.
“For,” as Tim said, “if I cannot have the best that the world can give—your love, Sara, I need not lose the second best—which is your friendship.”
And Sara, watching him from the window as he strode away down the little tiled path, wondered why love comes so often bearing roses in one hand and a sharp goad in the other.
Elisabeth was pacing restlessly up and down the broad, flagged terrace at Barrow, impatiently awaiting Tim's return from Monkshaven.
She knew his errand there. He had scarcely needed to tell her the contents of Sara's letter, so swiftly had she summed up the immediate connection between the glimpse she had caught of Sara's handwriting and the shadow on the beloved face.
She moved eagerly to meet him as she heard the soft purr of the motor coming up the drive.
“Well?” she queried, slipping her arm through his and drawing him towards the terrace.
Tim looked at her with troubled eyes. He could guess so exactly what her attitude would be, and he was not going to allow even Elisabeth to say unkind things about the woman he loved. If he could prevent it, she should not think them.
Very gently, and with infinite tact, he told her the result of his interview with Sara, concealing so far as might be his own incalculable hurt.
To his relief, his mother accepted the facts with unexpected tolerance. He could not see her expression, since her eyes veiled themselves with down-dropped lids, but she spoke quite quietly and as though trying to be fair in her judgment. There was no outward sign by which her son might guess the seething torrent of anger and resentment which had been aroused within her.
“But if, as you tell me, Sara doesn't expect to marry this man she cares for, surely she had been unduly hasty? If he can never be anything to her, need she set aside all thought of matrimony?”
Tim stared at his mother in some surprise. There was a superficial worldly wisdom in the speech which he would not have anticipated.
“It seems to me rather absurd,” she continued placidly. “Quixotic—the sort of romantic 'live and die unwed' idea that is quite exploded. Girls nowadays don't wither on their virgin stems if the man they want doesn't happen to be in a position to marry them. They marry some one else.”
Tim felt almost shocked. From his childhood he had invested his mother with a kind of rarefied grace of mental and moral qualities commensurate with her physical beauty, and her enunciation of the cynical creed of modern times staggered him. It never occurred to him that Elisabeth was probing round in order to extract a clear idea of Sara's attitude in the whole matter, and he forthwith proceeded innocently to give her precisely the information she was seeking.
“Sara isn't like that, mother,” he said rather shortly. “It's just the—the crystal purity of her outlook which makes her what she is—so absolutely straight and fearless. She sees love, and holds by what she believes its demands to be. I wouldn't wish her any different,” he added loyally.
“Perhaps not. But if—supposing the man proves to have a wife already? He might be separated from her; Sara doesn't seem to know much about him. Or he may have a wife in a lunatic asylum who is likely to live for the next forty years. What then? Will Sara never marry if—if there were a circumstance like that—a really insurmountable obstacle?”
“No, I don't believe she will. I don't think she would wish to. If he loves her and she him, spiritually they would be bound to one another—lovers. And just the circumstance of his being tied to another woman would make no difference to Sara's point of view. She goes beyond material things—or the mere physical side of love.”
“Then there is no chance for you unless Sara learns tounlovethis man?”
Tim regarded her with faint amusement.
“Mother, do you think you could learn to unlove me—or my father?”
She laughed a little.
“You have me there, Tim,” she acknowledged. “But”—hesitating a little—“Sara knows so little of the man, apparently, that she may have formed a mistaken estimate of his character. Perhaps he is not really the—the ideal individual she has pictured him.”
Tim smiled.
“You are a very transparent person, mother mine,” he said indulgently. “But I'm afraid your hopes of finding that the idol has feet of clay are predestined to disappointment.”
“Have you met the man?” asked Elisabeth sharply.
“I do not even know his name. But I should imagine him a man of big, fine qualities.”
“Since you don't know him, you can hardly pronounce an opinion.”
A whimsical smile, touched with sadness, flitted across Tim's face.
“I know Sara,” was all he said.
“Sara is given to idealizing the people she cares for,” rejoined Elisabeth.
She spoke quietly, but her expression was curiously intent. It was as though she were gathering together her forces, concentrating them towards some definite purpose, veiled in the inscrutable depths of those strange eyes of hers.
“I find it difficult to forgive her,” she said at last.
“That's not like you, mother.”
“It is—just like me,” she responded, a tone of half-tender mockery in her voice. “Naturally I find it difficult to forgive the woman who has hurt my son.”
Tim answered her out of the fullness of the queer new wisdom with which love had endowed him.
“A man would rather be hurt by the woman he loves than humoured by the woman he doesn't love,” he said quietly.
And Elisabeth, understanding, held her peace.
She had been very controlled, very wise and circumspect in her dealing with Tim, conscious of raw-edged nerves that would bear but the lightest of handling. But it was another woman altogether who, half-an-hour later, faced Geoffrey Durward in the seclusion of his study.
The two moving factors in Elisabeth's life had been, primarily, her love for her husband, and, later on, her love for Tim, and into this later love was woven all the passionately protective instinct of the maternal element. She was the type of woman who would have plucked the feathers from an archangel's wing if she thought they would contribute to her son's happiness; and now, realizing that the latter was threatened by the fact that his love for Sara had failed to elicit a responsive fire, she felt bitterly resentful and indignant.
“I tell you, Geoffrey,” she declared in low, forceful tones, “sheshallmarry Tim—she shall! I will not have his beautiful young life marred and spoilt by the caprices of any woman.”
Major Durward looked disturbed.
“My dear, I shouldn't call Sara in the least a capricious woman. She knows her own heart—”
“So does Tim!” broke in Elisabeth. “And, if I can compass it, he shall have his heart's desire.”
Her husband shook his head.
“You cannot force the issue, my dear.”
“Can I not? There's little a womancannotdo for husband or child! I tell you, Geoffrey—for you, or for Tim, to give you pleasure, to buy you happiness, I would sacrifice anybody in the world!”
She stood in front of him, her beautiful eyes glowing, and her voice was all shaken and a-thrill with the tumult of emotion that had gripped her. There was something about her which suggested a tigress on the defensive—at bay, shielding her young.
Durward looked at her with kind, adoring eyes.
“That's beautiful of you, darling,” he replied gently. “But it's a dangerous doctrine. And I know that, really, you're far too tender-hearted to sacrifice a fly.”
Elisabeth regarded him oddly.
“You don't know me, Geoffrey,” she said very slowly. “No man knows a woman, really—not all her thoughts.” And had Major Durward, honest fellow, realized the volcanic force of passion hidden behind the tense inscrutability of his wife's lovely face, he would have been utterly confounded. We do not plumb the deepest depths even of those who are closest to us.
Civilisation had indeed forced the turgid river to run within the narrow channels hewn by established custom, but, released from the bondage of convention, the soul of Elisabeth Durward was that of sheer primitive woman, and the pivot of all her actions her love for her mate and for the man-child she had borne him.
Once, years ago, she had sacrificed justice, and honour, and a man's faith in womanhood on that same pitiless altar of love. But the story of that sacrifice was known only to herself and one other—and that other was not Durward.
A full week had elapsed since the night of that eventful journey in pursuit of Molly, and from the moment when Garth had given Sara into the safe keeping of Jane Crab till the moment when he came upon her by the pergola at Rose Cottage, perched on the top of a ladder, engaged in tying back the exuberance of a Crimson Rambler, they had not met.
And now, as he halted at the foot of the ladder, Sara was conscious that her spirits had suddenly bounded up to impossible heights at the sight of the lean, dark face upturned to her.
“The Lavender Lady and Miles are pottering about in the greenhouse,” she announced explanatorily, waving her hand in the direction of a distant glimmer of glass beyond the high box hedge which flanked the rose-garden.
“Are they?” Trent, thus arrested in the progress of his search for his host and hostess, seemed entirely indifferent as to whether it were ever completed or not. He leaned against one of the rose-wreathed pillars of the pergola and gazed negligently in the direction Sara indicated.
“How is Miss Molly?” he asked.
Sara twinkled.
“She is just beginning to discard sackcloth and ashes for something more becoming,” she informed him gravely.
“That's good. Are you—are you all right after your tumble? I'm making these kind inquiries because, since it was my car out of which you elected to fall, I feel a sense of responsibility.”
Sara descended from the ladder before she replied. Then she remarked composedly—
“It has taken precisely seven days, apparently, for that sense of responsibility to develop.”
“On the contrary, for seven days my thirst for knowledge has been only restrained by the pointings of conscience.”
“Then”—she spoke rather low—“was it conscience pointing you—away from Sunnyside?”
His hazel eyes flashed over her face.
“Perhaps it was—discretion,” he suggested. “Looking in at shop windows when one has an empty purse is a poor occupation—and one to be avoided.”
“Did you want to come?” she persisted gently.
Half absently he had cut off a piece of dead wood from the rose-bush next him and was twisting it idly to and fro between his fingers. At her words, the dead wood stem snapped suddenly in his clenched hand. For an instant he seemed about to make some passionate rejoinder. Then he slowly unclenched his hand and the broken twig fell to the ground.
“Haven't I made it clear to you—yet,” he said slowly, “that what I want doesn't enter into the scheme of things at all?”
The brief speech held a sense of impending finality, and, in the silence which followed, the eyes of the man and woman met, questioned each other desperately, and answered.
There are moments when modesty is a false quantity, and when the big happinesses of life depend on a woman's capacity to realize this and her courage to act upon it. To Sara, it seemed that such a moment had come to her, and the absolute sincerity of her nature met it unafraid.
“No,” she said quietly. “You have only made clear to me—what you want, Garth. Need we—pretend to each other any longer?”
“I don't understand,” he muttered.
“Don't you?” She drew a littler nearer him, and the face she lifted to his was very white. But her eyes were shining. “That night—when I fell from the car—I—I wasn't unconscious.”
For an instant he stared at her, incredulous. Then he swung aside a little, his hand gripping the pillar against which he had been leaning till his knuckles showed white beneath the straining skin.
“You—weren't unconscious?” he repeated blankly.
“No—not all the time. I—heard—what you said.”
He seemed to pull himself together.
“Oh, Heaven only knows what I may have said at a moment like that,” he answered carelessly, but his voice was rough and hoarse. “A man talks wild when the woman he's with only misses death by a hair's breath.”
Sara's lips upturned at the corners in a slow smile—a smile that was neither mocking, nor tender, nor chiding, but an exquisite blending of all three. She caught her breath quickly—Trent could hear its soft sibilance. Then she spoke.
“Will you marry me, please, Garth?”
He drew back from her, violently, his underlip hard bitten. At last, after a long silence—
“No!” he burst out harshly. “No! I can't!”
For an instant she was shaken. Then, buoyed up by the memory of that night when she had lain in his arms and when the agony of the moment had stripped him of all power to hide his love, she challenged his denial.
“Why not?” Her voice was vibrant. “You love me!”
“Yes . . . I love you.” The words seemed torn from him.
“Then why won't you marry me?”
It did not seem to her that she was doing anything unusual or unwomanly. The man she loved had carried his burden single-handed long enough. The time had come when for his own sake as well as for hers, she must wring the truth from him, make him break through the silence which had long been torturing them both. Whatever might be the outcome, whether pain or happiness, they must share it.
“Why won't you marry me, Garth?”
The little question, almost voiceless in its intensity, clamoured loudly at his heart.
“Don't tempt me!” he cried out hoarsely. “My God! I wonder if you know how you are tempting me?”
She came a little closer to him, laying her hand on his arm, while her great, sombre eyes silently entreated him.
As though the touch of her were more than he could bear, his hard-held passion crashed suddenly through the bars his will had set about it.
He caught her in his arms, lifting her sheer off her feet against his breast, whilst his lips crushed down upon her mouth and throat, burned against her white, closed lids, and the hard clasp of his arms about her was a physical pain—an exquisite agony that it was a fierce joy to suffer.
“Then—then you do love me?” She leaned against him, breathless, her voice unsteady, her whole slender body shaken with an answering passion.
“Love you?” The grip of his arms about her made response. “Love you? I love you with my soul and my body, here and through whatever comes Hereafter. You are my earth and heaven—the whole meaning of things—” He broke off abruptly, and she felt his arms slacken their hold and slowly unclasp as though impelled to it by some invisible force.
“What was I saying?” The heat of passion had gone out of his voice, leaving it suddenly flat and toneless. “'The whole meaning of things?'” He gave a curious little laugh. It had a strangled sound, almost like the cry of some tortured thing. “Then thingshaveno meaning——”
Sara stood staring at him, bewildered and a little frightened.
“Garth, what is it?” she whispered. “What has happened?”
He turned, and, walking away from her a few paces, stood very still with his head bent and one hand covering his eyes.
Overhead, the sunshine, filtering in through the green trellis of leafy twigs, flaunted gay little dancing patches of gold on the path below, as the leaves moved flickeringly in the breeze, and where the twisted growth of a branch had left a leafless aperture, it flung a single shaft of quivering light athwart the pergola. It gleamed like a shining sword between the man and woman, as though dividing them one from the other and thrusting each into the shadows that lay on either hand.
“Garth——”
At the sound of her voice he dropped his hand to his side and came slowly back and stood beside her. His face was almost grey, and the tortured expression of his eyes seemed to hurt her like the stab of a knife.
“You must try to forgive me,” he said, speaking very low and rapidly. “I had no earthly right to tell you that I cared, because—because I can't ask you to marry me. I told you once that I had forfeited my claim to the good things in life. That was true. And, having that knowledge, I ought to have kept away from you—for I knew how it was going to be with me from the first moment I saw you. I fought against it in the beginning—tried not to love you. Afterwards, I gave in, but I never dreamed that—you—would come to care, too. That seemed something quite beyond the bounds of human possibility.”
“Did it? I can't see why it should?”
“Can't you?” He smiled a little. “If you were a man who has lived under a cloud for over twenty years, who has nothing in the world to recommend him, and only a tarnished reputation as his life-work, you, too, would have thought it inconceivable. Anyway, I did, and, thinking that, I dared to give myself the pleasure of seeing you—of being sometimes in your company. Perhaps”—grimly—“it was as much a torture as a joy on occasion. . . . But still, I was near you. . . . I could see you—touch your hand—serve you, perhaps, in any little way that offered. That was all something—something very wonderful to come into a life that, to all intents and purposes, was over. And I thought I could keep myself in hand—never let you know that I cared—”
“You certainly tried hard enough to convince me that you didn't,” she interrupted ruefully.
“Yes, I tried. And I failed. And now, all that remains is for me to go away. I shall never forgive myself for having brought pain into your life—I, who would so gladly have brought only happiness. . . . God in Heaven!”—he whispered to himself as though the thought were almost blinding in the promise of ecstasy it held—“To have been the one to bring you happiness! . . .” He fell silent, his mouth wrung and twisted with pain.
Presently her voice came to him again, softly supplicating. “I shall never forgive you—if you go away and leave me,” she added. “I can't do without you now—now that I know you care.”
“But Imustgo! I can't marry you—you haven't understood—”
“Haven't I?” She smiled—a small, wise, wonderful smile that began somewhere deep in her heart and touched her lips and lingered in her eyes.
“Tell me,” she said. “Are you married, Garth?”
He started.
“Married! God forbid!”
“And if you married me, would you be wronging any one?”
“Only you yourself,” he answered grimly.
“Then nothing else matters. You are free—and I'm free. And I love you!”
She leaned towards him, her hands outheld, her mouth still touched with that little, mystic smile. “Please—tell me all over again now much you love me.”
But no answering hands met hers. Instead, he drew away from her and faced her, stern-lipped.
“I must make you understand,” he said. “You don't know what it is that you are asking. I've made shipwreck of my life, and I must pay the penalty. But, by God, I'm not going to let you pay it, too! And if you married me, you would have to pay. You would be joining your life to that of an outcast. I can never go out into the world as other men may. If I did”—slowly—“if I did, sooner or later I should be driven away—thrust back into my solitude. I have nothing to offer—nothing to give—only a life that has been cursed from the outset. Don't misunderstand me,” he went on quickly. “I'm not complaining, bidding for your sympathy. If a man's a fool, he must be prepared to pay for his folly—even though it means a life penalty for a moment's madness. And I shall have to pay—to the uttermost farthing. Mine's the kind of debt which destiny never remits.” He paused; then added defiantly: “The woman who married me would have to share in that payment—to go out with me into the desert in which I lie, and she would have to do this without knowing what she was paying for, or why the door of the world is locked against me. My lips are sealed, nor shall I ever be able to break the seal.Nowdo you understand why I can never ask you, or any other woman to be my wife?”
Sara looked at him curiously; he could not read the expression of her face.
“Have you finished?” she asked. “Is that all?”
“All? Isn't it enough?”—with a grim laugh.
“And you are letting this—this folly of your youth stand between us?”
“The world applies a harder word than folly to it!”
“I don't care anything at all about the world. What doyoucall it?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“I call it folly to ask the criminal in the dock whether he approves the judge's verdict. He's hardly likely to!”
For a moment she was silent. Then she seemed to gather herself together.
“Garth, do you love me?”
The words fell clearly on the still, summer air.
“Yes”—doggedly—“I love you. What then?”
“What then? Why—this! I don't care what you've done. It doesn't matter to me whether you are an outcast or not. If you are, then I'm willing to be an outcast with you. Oh, Garth—My Garth! I've been begging you to marry me all afternoon, and—and——” with a broken little laugh—“you can'tkeep onrefusing me!”
Before her passionate faith and trust the barriers he had raised between them came crashing down. His arms went round her, and for a few moments they clung together and love wiped out all bitter memories of the past and all the menace of the future.
But presently he came back to his senses. Very gently he put her from him.
“It's not right,” he stammered unsteadily. “I can't accept this from you. Dear, you must let me go away. . . . I can't spoil your beautiful life by joining it to mine!”
She drew his arm about her shoulders again.
“You will spoil it if you go away. Oh! Garth, you dear, foolish man! When will you understand that love is the only thing that matters? If you had committed all the sins in the Decalogue, I shouldn't care! You're mine now”—jealously—“my lover. And I'm not going to be thrust out of your life for some stupid scruple. Let the past take care of itself. The present is ours. And—and I love you, Garth!”
It was difficult to reason coolly with her arms about him, her lips so near his own, and his great love for her pulling at his heart. But he made one further effort.
“If you should ever regret it, Sara?” he whispered. “I don't think I could bear that.”
She looked at him with steady eyes.
“You will not have it to bear,” she said. “I shall never regret it.”
Still he hesitated. But the dawn of a great hope grew and deepened in his face.
“If you could be content to live here—at Far End . . . It is just possible!” He spoke reflectively, as though debating the matter with himself. “The curse has not followed me to this quiet little corner of the earth. Perhaps—after all . . . Sara, could you stand such a life? Or would you always be longing to get out into the great world? As I've told you, the world is shut to me. There's that in my past which blocks the way to any future. Have you the faith—thecourage—to face that?”
Her eyes, steadfast and serene, met his.
“I have courage to face anything—with you, Garth. But I haven't courage to face living without you.”
He bent his head and kissed her on the mouth—a slow, lingering kiss that held something far deeper and more enduring than mere passion. And Sara, as she kissed him back, her soul upon her lips, felt as though together they had partaken of love's holy sacrament.
“Beloved”—Garth's voice, unspeakably tender, came to her through the exquisite silence of the moment—“Beloved, it shall be as you wish. Whether I am right or wrong in taking this great gift you offer me—God knows! If I am wrong—then, please Heaven, whatever punishment there be may fall on me alone.”
The summer, of all seasons of the year, is very surely the perfect time for lovers, and to Sara the days that followed immediately upon her engagement to Garth Trent were days of unalloyed happiness.
These were wonderful hours which they passed together, strolling through the summer-foliaged woods, or lazing on the sun-baked sands, or, perhaps, roaming the range of undulating cliffs that stretched away to the west from the headland where Far End stood guard.
During those hours of intimate companionship, Sara began to learn the hidden deeps of Garth's nature, discovering the almost romantic delicacy of thought that underlay his harsh exterior.
“You're more than half a poet, my Garth!” she told him one day.
“A transcendental fool, in other words,” he amended, smiling. “Well”—looking at her oddly—“perhaps you're right. But it's too late to improve me any. As the twig is bent, so the tree grows, you know.”
“I don't want to improve you,” Sara assured him promptly. “I shouldn't like you to be in the least bit different from what you are. It wouldn't be my Garth, then, at all.”
So they would sit together and talk the foolish, charming nonsense that all lovers have talked since the days of Adam and Eve, whilst from above, the sun shone down and blessed them, and the waves, lapping peacefully on the shore, murmured anobbligatoto their love-making.
Looking backward, in the bitter months that followed when her individual happiness had been caught away from her in a whirlwind of calamity, and when the whole world was reeling under the red storm of war, Sara could always remember the utter, satisfying peace of those golden days of early July—an innocent, unthinking peace that neither she nor the world would ever quite regain. Afterwards, memory would always have her scarred and bitter place at the back of things.
Sara found no hardship now in receiving the congratulations of her friends—and they fell about her like rain—while in the long, intimate talks she had with Garth the fact that he would never speak of the past weighed with her not at all. She guessed that long ago he had been guilty of some mad, boyish escapade which, with his exaggerated sense of honour and the delicate idealism that she had learned to know as an intrinsic part of his temperamental make-up, he had magnified into a cardinal sin. And she was content to leave it at that and to accept the present, gathering up with both hands the happiness it held.
She had written to Elisabeth, telling her of her engagement, and, to her surprise, had received the most charming and friendly letter in return.
“Of course,” wrote Elisabeth in her impulsive, flowing hand with its heavy dashes and fly-away dots, “we cannot but wish that it had been otherwise—that you could have learned to care for Tim—but you know better than any one of us where your happiness lies, and you are right to take it. And never think, Sara, that this is going to make any difference to our friendship. I could read between the lines of your letter that you had some such foolish thought in your mind. So little do I mean this to make any break between us that—as I can quite realize it would be too much to ask that you should come to us at Barrow just now—I propose coming down to Monkshaven. I want to meet the lucky individual who has won my Sara. I have not been too well lately—the heat has tried me—and Geoffrey is anxious that I should go away to the sea for a little. So that all things seem to point to my coming to Monkshaven. Does your primitive little village boast a hotel? Or, if not, can you engage some decent rooms for me?”
The remainder of the letter dealt with the practical details concerning the proposed visit, and Sara, in a little flurry of joyous excitement, had hurried off to the Cliff Hotel and booked the best suite of rooms it contained for Elisabeth.
On her way home she encountered Garth in the High Street, and forthwith proceeded to acquaint him with her news.
“I've just been fixing up rooms at the 'Cliff' for a friend of mine who is coming down here,” she said, as he turned and fell into step beside her. “A woman friend,” she added hastily, seeing his brows knit darkly.
“So much the better! But I could have done without the importation of any friends of yours—male or female—just now. They're entirely superfluous”—smiling.
“Well, I'm glad Mrs. Durward is coming, because—”
“Whodid you say?” broke in Garth, pausing in his stride.
“Mrs. Durward—Tim's mother, you know,” she explained. She had confided to him the history of her brief engagement to Tim.
Trent resumed his walk, but more slowly; the buoyancy seemed suddenly gone out of his step.
“Don't you think,” he said, speaking in curiously measured tones, “that, in the circumstances, it will be a little awkward Mrs. Durward's coming here just now?”
Sara disclaimed the idea, pointing out that it was the very completeness of Elisabeth's conception of friendship which was bringing her to Monkshaven.
“When does she come?” asked Trent.
“On Thursday. I'm very anxious for you to meet her, Garth. She is so thoroughly charming. I think it is splendid of her not to let my broken engagement with Tim make any difference between us. Most mothers would have borne a grudge for that!”
“And you think Mrs. Durward has overlooked it?”—with a curious smile.
Sara enthusiastically assured him that this was the case.
“I wonder!” he said meditatively. “It would be very unlike Elis—unlike any woman”—he corrected himself hastily—“to give up a fixed idea so easily.”
“Well”—Sara laughed gaily. “Nowadays you can'tcompela person to marry the man she doesn't want—nor prevent her from marrying the man she does.”
“I don't know. A determined woman can do a good deal.”
“But Elisabeth isn't a bit the determined type of female you're evidently imagining,” protested Sara, amused. “She is very beautiful and essentially feminine—rather a wonderful kind of person, I think. Wait till you see her!”
“I'm afraid,” said Trent slowly, “that I shall not see your charming friend. I have to run up to Town next week on—on business.”
“Oh!” Sara's disappointment showed itself in her voice. “Can't you put it off?”
He halted outside a tobacconist's shop. “Do you mind waiting a moment while I go in here and get some baccy?”
He disappeared into the shop, and Sara stood gazing idly across the street, watching a jolly little fox-terrier enjoying a small but meaty bone he had filched from the floor of a neighbouring butcher's shop.
His placid enjoyment of the stolen feast was short-lived. A minute later a lean and truculent Irish terrier came swaggering round the corner, spotted the succulent morsel, and, making one leap, landed fairly on top of the smaller dog. In an instant pandemonium arose, and the quiet street re-echoed to the noise of canine combat.
The little fox-terrier put up a plucky fight in defence of his prior claim to the bone of contention, but soon superior weight began to tell, and it was evident that the Irishman was getting the better of the fray. The fox-terrier's owner, very elegantly dressed, watched the battle from a safe distance, wringing her hands and calling upon all and sundry of the small crowd which had speedily collected to save her darling from the lions.
No one, however, seemed disposed to relieve her of this office—for the Irishman was an ugly-looking customer—when suddenly, like a streak of light, a slim figure flashed across the road, and flung itself into themelee, whist a vibrating voice broke across the uproar with an imperative: “Letgo, you brute!”
It was all over in a moment. Somehow Sara's small, strong hands had separated the twisting, growling, biting heap of dog into its component parts of fox and Irish, and she was standing with the little fox-terrier, panting and bleeding profusely, in her arms, while one or two of the bystanders—now that all danger was past—drove off the Irishman.
“Oh! But howbraveof you!” The owner of the fox-terrier rustled forward. “I can't ever thank you sufficiently.”
Sara turned to her, her black eyes blazing.
“Is this your dog?” she asked.
“Yes. And I'm sure”—volubly—“he would have been torn to pieces by that great hulking brute if you hadn't separated them. I should never havedared!”
Garth, coming out of the tobacconist's shop across the way, joined the little knot of people just in time to hear Sara answer cuttingly, as she put the terrier into its owner's arms—
“You've no business tohavea dog if you've not got the pluck to look after him!”
As she and Trent bent their steps homeward, Sara regaled him with the full, true, and particular account of the dog-fight, winding up indignantly—
“Foul women like that ought not to be allowed to take out a dog licence. I hate people who shirk their responsibilities.”
“You despise cowards?” he asked.
“More than anything on earth,” she answered heartily.
He was silent a moment. Then he said reflectively—
“And yet, I suppose, a certain amount of allowance must be made for—nerves.”
“It seems to me it depends on what your duty demands of you at the moment,” she rejoined. “Nerves are a luxury. You can afford them when it makes no difference to other people whether you're afraid or not—but not when it does.”
“And from what deeps did you draw such profound wisdom?” he asked quizzically.
Sara laughed a little.
“I had it well rubbed into me by my Uncle Patrick,” she replied. “It was hisCredo.”
“And yet, I can understand any one's nerves cracking suddenly—after a prolonged strain.”
“I don't think yours would,” responded Sara contentedly, with a vivid recollection of their expedition to the island and its aftermath.
“Possibly not. But I suppose no man can be dead sure of himself—always.”
“Will you come in?” asked Sara as they paused at Sunnyside gate.
“Not to-day, I think. I had better begin to accustom myself to doing without you, as I am going away so soon”—smiling.
“I wish you were not going,” she rejoined discontentedly. “I so wanted you and Elisabeth to meet.Mustyou go?”
“I'm afraid I must. And it's better that I should go, on the whole. I should only be raging up and down like an untied devil because Mrs. Durward was taking up so much of your time! Let her have you to herself for a few days—and then, when I come back, I shall have you tomyselfagain.”