Elisabeth frowned a little as she perused the letter which she had that morning received from Sara. It contained the information that rooms in her name had been booked at the Cliff Hotel, and further, that Sara was much disappointed that it would be impossible to arrange for her to meet Garth Trent, as he was leaving home on the Wednesday prior to her arrival.
Trent's departure was the last thing Elisabeth desired. Above all things, she wanted to meet the man whom she regarded as the stumbling-block in the path of her son, for if it were possible that anything might yet be done to further the desire of Tim's heart, it could only be if Elisabeth, as thedea ex machina, were acquainted with all the pieces in the game.
She must know what manner of man it was who had succeeded in winning Sara's heart before she could hope to combat his influence, and, if the feet of clay were there, she must see them herself before she could point them out to Sara's love-illusioned eyes. Should she fail of making Trent's acquaintance, she would be fighting in the dark.
Elisabeth pondered the matter for some time. Finally, she dispatched a telegram, prepaying a reply, to the proprietor of the Cliff Hotel, and a few hours later she announced to her husband that she proposed antedating her visit to Monkshaven by three days.
“I shall go down the day after to-morrow—on Monday,” she said.
“Then I'd better send a wire to Sara,” suggested Geoffrey.
“No, don't do that. I intend taking her by surprise.” Elisabeth smiled and dimpled like a child in the possession of a secret. “I shall go down there just in time for dinner, and write to Sara the same evening.”
Major Durward laughed with indulgent amusement.
“What an absurd lady you are still, Beth!” he exclaimed, his honest face beaming adoration. “No one would take you to be the mother of a grown-up son!”
“Wouldn't they?” For a moment Elisabeth's eyes—veiled, enigmatical as ever—rested on Tim's distant figure, where he stood deep in the discussion of some knotty point with the head gardener. Then they came back to her husband's face, and she laughed lightly. “Everybody doesn't see me through the rose-coloured spectacles that you do, dearest.”
“There are no 'rose-coloured spectacles' about it,” protested Geoffrey energetically. “No one on earth would take you for a day more than thirty—if it weren't for the solid fact of Tim's six feet of bone and muscle!”
Elisabeth jumped up and kissed her husband impulsively.
“Geoffrey, you're a great dear,” she declared warmly. “Now I must run off and tell Fanchette to pack my things.”
So it came about that on the following Tuesday, Sara, to her astonishment and delight, received a letter from Elisabeth announcing her arrival at the Cliff Hotel.
“Why, Elisabeth is already here!” she exclaimed, addressing the family at Sunnyside collectively. “She came last night.”
Selwyn looked up from his correspondence with a kindly smile.
“That's good. You will be able, after all, to bring off the projected meeting between Mrs. Durward and your hermit—who, by the way, seems to have deserted his shell nowadays,” he added, twinkling.
And Sara, blissfully unaware that in this instance Elisabeth had abrogated to herself the rights of destiny, responded smilingly—
“Yes. Fate has actually arranged things quite satisfactorily for once.”
Half an hour later she presented herself at the Cliff Hotel, and was conducted upstairs to Mrs. Durward's sitting-room on the first floor.
Elisabeth welcomed her with all her wonted charm and sweetness. There was a shade of gravity in her manner as she spoke of Sara's engagement, but no hint of annoyance. She dwelt solely on Tim's disappointment and her own, exhibiting no bitterness, but only a rather wistful regret that another had succeeded where Tim had failed.
“And now,” she said, drawing Sara out on to the balcony, where she had been sitting prior to the latter's arrival, “and now, tell me about the lucky man.”
Sara found it a little difficult to describe the man she loved to the mother of the man she didn't love, but finally, by dint of skilful questioning, Elisabeth elicited the information she sought.
“Forty-three!” she exclaimed, as Sara vouchsafed his age. “But that's much too old for you, my dear!”
Sara shook her head.
“Not a bit,” she smiled back.
“It seems so to me,” persisted Elisabeth, regarding her with judicial eyes. “Somehow you convey such an impression of youth. You always remind me of spring. You are so slim and straight and vital—like a young sapling. However, perhaps Mr. Trent also has the faculty of youth. Youth isn't a matter of years, after all,” she added contemplatively.
“Now go on,” she commanded, after a moment. “Tell me what he looks like.”
Sara laughed and plunged into a description of Garth's personal appearance.
“And he's got queer eyes—tawny-coloured like a dog's,” she wound up, “with a quaint little patch of blue close to each of the pupils.”
Elisabeth leaned forward, and beneath the soft laces of her gown the rise and fall of her breast quickened perceptibly.
“Patches of blue?” she repeated.
“Yes—it sounds as though the colours had run, doesn't it?” pursued Sara, laughing a little. “But it's really rather effective.”
“And did you say his name was Trent—Garth Trent?” asked Elisabeth. She had gone a little grey about the mouth, and she moistened her lips with her tongue before speaking. There was a tone of incredulity in her voice.
“Yes. It's not a beautiful name, is it?” smiled Sara.
“It's rather a curious one,” agreed Elisabeth with an effort. “I'm really quite longing to meet this odd man with the patchwork eyes and the funny name.”
“You shall see him to-day,” Sara promised. “Audrey Maynard is giving a picnic in Haven Woods, and Garth will be there. You will come with us, won't you?”
“I think I must,” replied Elisabeth. “Although”—negligently—“picnics are not much in my line.”
“Oh, Audrey's picnics aren't like other people's,” rejoined Sara reassuringly. “She runs them just as she runs everything else, on lines of combined perfection and informality! The lunch will be the production of a French chef, and the company a few carefully selected intimates.”
“Very well, I'll come—if you're sure Mrs. Maynard won't object to the introduction of a complete stranger.”
Sara regarded her affectionately.
“Have you ever met any one who 'objected' to you yet?” she asked with some amusement.
Elisabeth made no answer. Instead, she pointed to the Monk's Cliff, where the grey stone of Far End gleamed in the sunlight against its dark background of trees.
“Who lives there?” she asked. Sara's eyes followed the direction of her hand, and she smiled.
“I'mgoing to live there,” she answered. “That's Garth's home.”
“Oh-h!” Elisabeth drew a quick breath. “It's a grim-looking place,” she added, after a moment. “Rather lonely, I should imagine.”
“Garth is fond of solitude,” replied Sara simply, and she missed the swift, searching glance instantly leveled at her by the hyacinth eyes.
When at length she took her departure, it was with a promise to return later on with Molly and Dr. Selwyn, so that they could all four walk out to Haven Woods together—since the doctor had undertaken to get through his morning's rounds in time to join the picnicking party.
Elisabeth accompanied her visitor to the head of the stairs, and then, returning to her room, stepped out on to the balcony once more. For a long time she stood leaning against the balustrade, gazing thoughtfully across the bay to that lonely house on the slope of the cliff.
“Garth Trent!” she murmured. “Trent! . . . And eyes with patches of blue in them! . . . Heavens! Can it possibly be?Canit be?”
There was a curious quality in her voice, a blending of incredulity and distaste, and yet something that savoured of satisfaction—almost of triumph.
Across her mental vision flitted a memory of just such eyes—gay, laughing, love-lit eyes, out of which the laughter had been suddenly dashed.
It was a merry party which had gathered together in the shady heart of Haven Woods. The Selwyns, Sara and Elisabeth, Miles Herrick and the Lavender Lady were all there, and, in addition, there was a large and light-hearted contingent from Greenacres, where Audrey was entertaining a houseful of friends. Only Garth had not yet arrived.
Two young subalterns on leave and a couple of pretty American sisters, all of them staying at Greenacres, were making things hum, nobly seconded in their efforts by Miles Herrick, who had practically recovered from his sprained ankle and one of whose “good days” it chanced to be.
Every one seemed bubbling over with good-humour and high spirits, so that the dell re-echoed to the shouts of jolly laughter, while the birds, flitting nervously hither and thither, wondered what manner of creatures these were who had invaded their quiet sanctuary of the woods. And presently, when the whole party gathered round the white cloth, spread with every dainty that the inspired mind of Audrey's chef had been able to devise, and the popping corks began to punctuate the babble of chattering voices, they took wing and fled incontinently. They had heard similar sharp, explosive sounds before, and had noted them as being generally the harbingers of sudden death.
“Where's that wretched hermit of yours, Sara?” demanded Audrey gaily. “I told him we should lunch at one, and it's already a quarter-past. Ah!”—catching sight of a lean, supple figure advancing between the trees—“Here he is at last!”
A shout greeted Garth's approach, and the uproarious quartette composed of the two subalterns and the girls from New York City pounded joyously with their forks upon their plates, creating a perfect pandemonium of noise, Miles recklessly participating in the clamorous welcome, while the Lavender Lady fluttered her handkerchief, and Sara and Audrey both hurried forward to meet the late comer. In the general excitement nobody chanced to observe the effect which Trent's appearance had had upon one of the party.
Elisabeth had half-risen from the grassy bank on which she had been sitting, and her face was suddenly milk-white. Even her lips had lost their soft rose-colour, and were parted as if an exclamation of some kind had been only checked from passing them by sheer force of will.
Out of her white face, her eyes, seeming so dark that they were almost violet, stared fixedly at Garth as he approached. Their expression was as masked, as enigmatical as ever, yet back of it there gleamed an odd light, and it was as though some curious menace lay hidden in its quiet, slumbrous fire.
The little group composed of Audrey, Sara, and Garth had joined the main party now, and Garth was shaking eager, outstretched hands and laughingly tossing back the shower of chaff which greeted his tardy arrival.
Then Sara, laying her hand on his arm, steered him towards Elisabeth. Some one who had been standing a little in front of the latter, screening her from Trent's view, moved aside as they approached.
“Garth, let me introduce you to Mrs. Durward.”
The smile that would naturally have accompanied the words was arrested ere it dawned, and involuntarily Sara drew back before the instant, startling change in Garth's face. It had grown suddenly ashen, and his eyes were like those of a man who, walking in some pleasant place, finds all at once, that a bottomless abyss has opened at his feet.
For a full moment he and Elisabeth stared at each other in a silence so vital, so pregnant with some terrible significance, that it impacted upon the whole prevailing atmosphere of care-free jollity.
A sudden muteness descended on the party, the laughing voices trailing off into affrighted silence, and in the dumb stillness that followed Sara was vibrantly conscious of the hostile clash of wills between the man and woman who had, in a single instant, become the central figures of the little group.
Then Elisabeth's voice—that amazingly sweet voice of hers—broke the profound quiet.
“Mr.—Trent”—she hesitated delicately before the name—“and I have met before.”
And quite deliberately, with a proud, inflexible dignity, she turned her back upon him and moved away.
Sara never forgot the few moments that followed. She felt as though she were on the brink of some crisis in her life which had been slowly drawing nearer and nearer to her and was now acutely imminent, and instinctively she sought to gather all her energies together to meet it. What it might be she could not guess, but she was sure that this declared enmity between the man she loved and the woman who was her friend preluded some menace to her happiness.
Her eyes sought Garth's in horror-stricken interrogation.
“What is it? What does she mean?” she demanded swiftly, in a breathless undertone, instinctively drawing aside from the rest of the party.
He laughed shortly.
“She means mischief, probably,” he replied. “Mrs. Durward is no friend of mine.”
Sara's eyes blazed.
“She shall explain,” she exclaimed impetuously, and she swung aside, meaning to follow Elisabeth and demand an explanation of the insult. But Garth checked her.
“No,” he said decidedly. “Please do nothing—say nothing. For Audrey's sake we can't have a scene—here.”
“But it's unpardonable——”
“Do as I say,” he insisted. “Believe me, you will only make things worse if you interfere. I will make my apologies to Audrey and go. For my sake, Sara”—he looked at her intently—“go back and face it out. Behave as if nothing had happened.”
Compelled, in spite of herself, by his insistence, Sara reluctantly assented and, leaving him, made her way slowly back to the others.
A disjointed buzz of talk sprayed up against her ears. Every one rushed into conversation, making valiant, if quite fruitless efforts to behave as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred, while, a little apart from the main group, Elisabeth stood alone.
Meanwhile Trent sought out his hostess, and together they moved away, pausing at last beneath the canopy of trees.
“No words can quite meet what has just occurred,” he said formally. “I can only express my regret that my presence here should have occasioned such acontretemps.”
Although the whole brief scene had been utterly incomprehensible to her, Audrey intuitively sensed the bitter hurt underlying the harshly spoken words, and the outraged hostess was instantly submerged in the friend.
“I am so sorry about it, Garth,” she said gently, “although, of course, I don't understand Mrs. Durward's behaviour.”
“That is very kind of you!” he replied, his voice softening. “But please do not visit your very natural indignation upon Mrs. Durward. I alone am to blame, I ought never to have renounced my role of hermit. Unfortunately”—with a brief smile of such sadness that Audrey felt her heart go out to him in a sudden rush of sympathy—“my mere presence is an abuse of my friends' hospitality.”
“No, no!” she exclaimed quickly. “We are all glad to have you with us—we were so pleased when—when at last you came out of your shell, Garth”—with a faint smile.
“Still the fact remains that I am outside the social pale. I had no business to thrust myself in amongst you. However—after this—you may rest assured that I shan't offend again.”
“I decline to rest assured of anything of the kind,” asserted Audrey with determination. “Don't be such a fool, Garth—or so unfair to your friends. Just because you chance to have met a women who, for some reason, chooses to cut you, doesn't alter our friendship for you in the very least. What Mrs. Durward may have against you I don't know—and I don't care either.Ihave nothing against you, and I don't propose to give any pal of mine the go-by because some one else happens to have quarreled with him.”
Trent's eyes were curiously soft as he answered her.
“Thank you for that,” he said earnestly. “All the same, I think you will have to make up your mind to allow your—friend, as you are good enough to call me, to go to the wall. You, and others like you, dragged him out, but, believe me, his place is not in the centre of the room. There are others besides Mrs. Durward who would give you the reason why, if you care to know it.”
“I don't care to know it,” responded Audrey firmly. “In fact, I should decline to recognize any reason against my calling you friend. I don't intend to let you go, nor will Miles, you'll find.”
“Ah! Herrick! He's a good chap, isn't he?” said Trent a little wistfully.
“We all are—once you get to know us,” returned Audrey, persistently cheerful. “And Sara—Sara won't let you go either, Garth.”
His sensitive, bitter mouth twisted suddenly.
“If you don't mind,” he said quickly, “we won't talk about Sara. And I won't keep you any longer from your guests. It was—just like you—to take it as you have done, Audrey. And if, later on, you find yourself obliged to revise your opinion of me—I shall understand. And I shall not resent it.”
“I'm not very likely to do what you suggest.”
He looked at her with a curious expression on his face.
“I'm afraid it is only too probable,” he rejoined simply.
He wrung her hand, and, turning, walked swiftly away through the wood, while Audrey retraced her footsteps in the direction of the dell.
She was feeling extremely annoyed at what she considered to be Mrs. Durward's hasty and inconsiderate action. It was unpardonable of any one thus to spoil the harmony of the day, she reflected indignantly, and then she looked up and met Elisabeth's misty, hyacinth eyes, full of a gentle, appealing regret.
“Mrs. Maynard, I must beg you to try and pardon me,” she said, approaching with a charming gesture of apology. “I have no excuse to offer except that Mr. Trent is a man I—I cannot possibly meet.” She paused and seemed to swallow with some difficulty, and of a sudden Audrey was conscious of a thrill of totally unexpected compassion. There was so evidently genuine pain and emotion behind the hesitating apology.
“I am sorry you should have been distressed,” she replied kindly. “It has been a most unfortunate affair all round.”
Elisabeth bestowed a grateful little smile upon her.
“If you will forgive me,” she said, “I will say good-bye now. I am sure you will understand my withdrawing.”
“Oh no, you mustn't think of such a thing,” cried Audrey hospitably, though within herself she could not but acknowledge that the suggestion was a timely one. “Please don't run away from us like that.”
“It is very kind of you, but really—if you will excuse me—I think I would prefer not to remain. I feel somewhatbouleversee. And I am so distressed to have been the unwitting cause of spoiling your charming party.”
Audrey hesitated.
“Of course, if you would really rather go——” she began.
“I would rather,” persisted Elisabeth with a gentle inflexibility of purpose. “Will you give a message to Sara for me?” Audrey nodded. “Ask her to come and see me to-morrow, and tell her that—that I will explain.” Suddenly she stretched out an impulsive hand. “Oh, Mrs. Maynard! If you knew how much I dread explaining this matter to Sara! Perhaps, however”—her eyes took on a thoughtful expression—“Perhaps, however, it may not be necessary—perhaps it can be avoided.”
A sense of foreboding seemed to close round Audrey's heart, as she met the gaze of the beautiful, enigmatic eyes. What was it that Elisabeth intended to “explain” to Sara? Something connected with Garth Trent, of course, and it was impossible, in view of the attitude Elisabeth had assumed, to hope that it could be aught else than something to his detriment.
“If an explanation can be avoided, Mrs. Durward,” she said rather coldly, “I think it would be much better. The least said, the soonest mended, you know,” she added, looking straight into the baffling eyes.
The two women, all at once antagonistic and suspicious of each other, shook hands formally, and Elisabeth took her way through the woods, while Audrey rejoined her neglected guests and used her best endeavours to convert an entertainment that threatened to become a failure into, at least, a qualified success. By dint of infinite tact, and the loyal cooperation of Miles Herrick, she somehow achieved it, and the majority of the picnickers enjoyed themselves immensely.
Only Sara felt as though a shadow had crept out from some hidden place and cast its grey length across the path whereon she walked, while Miles and Audrey, discerning the shadow with the clear-sighted vision of friendship, were filled with apprehension for the woman whom they had both learned to love.
Judson crossed the hall at Far End and, opening the front door, peered anxiously out into the moonlit night for the third time that evening.
Neither he nor his wife could surmise what had become of their master. He had gone away, as they knew, with the intention of joining a picnic party in Haven Woods, but he had given no instructions that he wished the dinner-hour postponed, and now the beautiful little dinner which Mrs. Judson had prepared and cooked for her somewhat exigent employer had been entirely robbed of its pristine delicacy of flavour, since it had been “keeping hot” in the oven for at least two hours.
“Coming yet?” queried Mrs. Judson, as her husband returned to the kitchen.
The latter shook his head.
“Not a sign of 'im,” he replied briefly.
Ten minutes later, the house door opened and closed with a bang, and Judson hastened upstairs to ascertain his master's wishes. When he again rejoined the wife of his bosom, his face wore a look of genuine concern.
“Something's happened,” he announced solemnly. “Ten years have I been in Mr. Trent's service, and never, Maria, never have I seen him look as he do now.”
“What's he looking like, then?” demanded Mrs. Judson, pausing with a saucepan in her hand.
“Like a man what's been in hell,” replied her husband dramatically. “He's as white as that piece of paper”—pointing to the sheet of cooking paper with which Mrs. Judson had been conscientiously removing the grease from the chipped potatoes. “And his eyes look wild. He's been walking, too—must have walked twenty miles or thereabouts, I should think, for he seems dead beat and his boots are just a mask of mud. His coat's torn and splashed, as well—as if he'd pushed his way through bushes and all, without ever stopping to see where he was going.”
“Then he'll be wanting his dinner,” observed Mrs. Judson practically. “I'll dish it up—'tisn't what you might call actually spoiled as yet.”
“He won't have any. 'Judson,' he says to me, 'bring me a whisky-and-soda and some sandwiches. I don't want nothing else. And then you can lock up and go to bed.'”
“Well, then, bless the man, look alive and get the whisky-and-soda and a tray ready whiles I cut the sandwiches,” exclaimed the excellent Mrs. Judson promptly, giving her bemused spouse a push in the direction of the pantry and herself bustling away to fetch a loaf of bread.
“Right you are. But I was so took aback at the master's appearance, Maria, you could have knocked me down with a feather. I wonder if his young lady's given him his congy?” he added reflectively.
Mrs. Judson did not stay to discuss the question, but set about preparing the sandwiches, and a few minutes later Judson carried into Trent's own particular snuggery an attractive-looking little tray and placed it on a table at his master's elbow.
The man had not been far out in his reckoning when he opined that his master had walked “twenty miles or thereabouts.” When he had quitted Haven Woods, Garth had started off, heedless of the direction he took, and, since then, he had been tramping, almost blindly, up hill and down dale, over hedges, through woods, along the shore, stumbling across the rocks, anywhere, anywhere in the world to get away from the maddening, devil-ridden thoughts which had pursued him since the brief meeting with a woman whose hyacinth eyes recalled the immeasurable anguish of years ago and threatened the joy which the future seemed to promise.
His face was haggard. Heavy lines had graved themselves about his mouth, and beneath drawn brows his eyes glowed like sombre fires.
Judson paused irresolutely beside him.
“Shall I pour you out a whisky, sir?” he inquired.
Trent started. He had been oblivious of the man's entrance.
“No. I'll do it myself—presently. Lock up and go to bed,” he answered brusquely.
But Judson still hesitated. There was an expression of affectionate solicitude on his usually wooden face.
“Better have one at once, sir,” he said persuasively. “And I think you'll find the chicken sandwiches very good, sir, if you'll excuse my mentioning it.”
For a moment a faint, kindly smile chased away the look of intense weariness in Garth's eyes.
“You transparent old fool, Judson!” he said indulgently. “You're like an old hen clucking round. Very well, make me a whisky, if you will, and give me one of those superlative sandwiches.”
Judson waited on him contentedly.
“Anything more to-night, sir? Shall I close the window?” with a gesture towards the wide-open window near which his master sat.
Garth shook his head, and, when at last the manservant had reluctantly taken his departure, he remained for a long time sitting very still, staring out across the moon-washed garden.
Presently he stirred restlessly. Glancing round the room, his eyes fell on his violin, lying upon the table with the bow beside it just as he had laid it down that morning after he had been improvising, in a fit of mad spirits, some variations on the theme of Mendelssohn's Wedding March.
He took up the instrument and struck a few desultory chords. Then, tucking it more closely beneath his chin, he began to play—a broken, fitful melody of haunting sadness, tormented by despairing chords, swept hither and thither by rushing minor cadences—the very spirit of pain itself, wandering, ghost-like, in desert places.
Upstairs Judson turned heavily in his bed.
“Just hark to 'im, Maria,” he muttered uneasily. “He fair makes my flesh creep with that doggoned fiddle of his. 'Tis like a child crying in the dark. I wish he'd stop.”
But the sad strains still went on, rising and falling, while Garth paced back and forth the length of the room and the candles flickered palely in the moonlight that poured in through the open window.
Suddenly, across the lawn a figure flitted, noiseless as a shadow. It paused once, as though listening, then glided forward again, slowly drawing nearer and nearer until at last it halted on the threshold of the room.
Garth, for the moment standing with his back towards the window, continued playing, oblivious of the quiet listener. Then, all at once, the feeling that he was no longer alone, that some one was sharing with him the solitude of the night, invaded his consciousness. He turned swiftly, and as his glance fell upon the silent figure standing at the open window, he slowly drew his violin from beneath his chin and remained staring at the apparition as though transfixed.
It was a woman who had thus intruded on his privacy. A scarf of black lace was twisted, hood-like, about her head, and beneath its fragile drapery was revealed the beautiful face and haunting, mysterious eyes of Elisabeth Durward. She had flung a long black cloak over her evening gown, and where it had fallen a little open at the throat her neck gleamed privet-white against its shadowy darkness.
The mystical, transfiguring touch of the moon's soft light had eliminated all signs of maturity, investing her with an amazing look of youth, so that for an instant it seemed to Trent as though the years had rolled back and Elisabeth Eden, in all the incomparable beauty of her girlhood, stood before him.
He gazed at her in utter silence, and the brooding eyes returned his gaze unflinchingly.
“Good God!”
The words burst from him at last in a low, tense whisper, and, as if the sound broke some spell that had been holding both the man and woman motionless, Elisabeth stepped across the threshold and came towards him.
Trent made a swift gesture—almost, it seemed, a gesture of aversion.
“Why have you come here?” he demanded hoarsely.
She drew a little nearer, then paused, her hand resting on the table, and looked at him with a strange, questioning expression in her eyes.
“This is a poor welcome, Maurice,” she observed at last.
He winced sharply at the sound of the name by which she had addressed him, then, recovering himself, faced her with apparent composure.
“I have no welcome for you,” he said in measured tones. “Why should I have? All that was between us two . . . ended . . . half a life-time ago.”
“No!” she cried out. “No! Not all! There is still my son's happiness to be reckoned.”
“Your son's happiness?” He stared at her amazedly. “What has your son's happiness to do with me?”
“Everything!” she answered. “Everything! Sara Tennant is the woman he loves.”
“And have you come here to blame me for the fact that she does not return his love?”—with an accent of ironical amusement.
“No, I don't blame you. But if it had not been for you she would have married him. They were engaged, and then”—her voice shook a little—“you came! You came—and robbed Tim of his happiness.”
Trent smiled sarcastically.
“An instance of the grinding of the mills of God,” he said lightly. “You robbed me—you'll agree?—of something I valued. And now—inadvertently—I have robbed you in return of your son's happiness. It appears”—consideringly—“an unusually just dispensation of Providence. And the sins of the parents are visited on the child, as is the usual inscrutable custom of such dispensations.”
Elisabeth seemed to disregard the bitter gibe his speech contained. She looked at him with steady eyes.
“I want you—out of the way,” she said deliberately.
“Indeed?” The indifferent, drawling tone was contradicted by the sudden dangerous light that gleamed in the hazel eyes. “You mean you want me—to pay—once more?”
She looked away uneasily, flushing a little.
“I'm afraid it does amount to that,” she admitted.
“And how would you suggest it should be done?” he inquired composedly.
Her eyes came back to his face. There was an eager light in them, and when she spoke the words hurried from her lips in imperative demand.
“Oh, it would be so easy, Maurice! You have only to convince Sara that you are not fit to marry her—or any woman, for that matter! Tell her what your reputation is—tell her why you can never show yourself amongst your fellow men, why you live here under an assumed name. She won't want to marry you when she knows these things, and Tim would have his chance to win her back again.”
“You mean—let me quite understand you, Elisabeth”—Trent spoke with curious precision—“that I am to blacken myself in Sara's eyes, so that, discovering what a wolf in sheep's clothing I am, she will break off our engagement. That, I take it, is your suggestion?”
Beneath his searching glance she faltered a moment. Then—
“Yes,” she answered boldly. “That is it.”
“It's a charming programme,” he commented. “But it doesn't seem to me that you have considered Sara at all in the matter. It will hardly add to her happiness to find that she has given her heart to—what shall we say?”—smiling disagreeably—“to the wrong kind of man?”
“Of, of course, she will be upset,disillusionnee, for a time. She will suffer. But then we all have our share of suffering. Sara cannot hope to be exempt. And afterwards—afterwards”—her eyes shining—“she will be happy. She and Tim will be happy together.”
“And so you are prepared to cause all this suffering, Sara's and mine—though I suppose”—with a bitter inflection—“that last hardly counts with you!—in order to secure Tim's happiness?”
“Yes,” significantly, “I am prepared—to do anything to secure that.”
Trent stared at her in blank amazement.
“Have younoconscience?” he asked at last. “Have you never had any?”
She looked at him a little piteously.
“You don't understand,” she muttered. “You don't understand. I'm his mother. And I want him to be happy.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“I am sorry,” he said, “that I cannot help you. But I'm afraid Tim's happiness isn't going to be purchased at my expense. I haven't the least intention of blackening myself in the eyes of the woman I love for the sake of Tim—or of twenty Tims. Please understand that, once and for all.”
He gestured as though to indicated that she should precede him to the window by which she had entered. But she made no movement to go. Instead she flung back her cloak as though it were stifling her, and caught him impetuously by the arm.
“Maurice! Maurice! For God's sake, listen to me!” Her voice was suddenly shaken with passionate entreaty. “Use some other method, then! Break with her some other way! If you only knew how I hate to ask you this—I who have already brought only sorrow and trouble into your life! But Tim—my son—he must come first!” She pressed a little closer to him, lifting her face imploringly. “Maurice, you loved me once—for the sake of that love, grant me my boy's happiness!”
Quietly, inexorably, he disengaged himself from the eager clasp of her hand. Her beautiful, agonized face, the vehement supplication of her voice, moved him not a jot.
“You are making a poor argument,” he said coldly. “You are making your request in the name of a love that died three-and-twenty years ago.”
“Do you mean”—she stared at him—“that you have not cared—at all—since?” She spoke incredulously. Then, suddenly, she laughed. “And I—what a fool I was!—I used to grieve—often—thinking how you must be suffering!”
He smiled wryly as at some bitter memory.
“Perhaps I did,” he responded shortly. “Death has its pains—even the death of first love. My love for you died hard, Elisabeth—but it died. You killed it.”
“And you will not do what I ask for the sake of the love you—once—gave me?” There was a desperate appeal in her low voice.
He shook his head. “No,” he said, “I will not.”
She made a gesture of despair.
“Then you drive me into doing what I hate to do!” she exclaimed fiercely. She was silent for a moment, standing with bowed head, her mouth working painfully. Then, drawing herself up, she faced him again. There was something in the lithe, swift movement that recalled a panther gathering itself together for its spring.
“Listen!” she said. “If you will not find some means of breaking off your engagement with Sara, then I shall tell her the whole story—tell her what manner of man it is she proposes to make her husband!”
There was a supreme challenge in her tones, and she waited for his answer defiantly—her head flung back, her whole body braced, as it were, to resistance.
In the silence that followed, Trent drew away from her—slowly, repugnantly, as though from something monstrous and unclean.
“You wouldn't—youcouldn'tdo such a thing!” he exclaimed in low, appalled tones of unbelief.
“I could!” she asserted, though her face whitened and her eyes flinched beneath his contemptuous gaze.
“But it would be a vile thing to do,” he pursued, still with that accent of incredulous abhorrence. “Doubly vile foryouto do this thing.”
“Do you think I don't know that—don't realize it?” she answered desperately. “You can say nothing that could make me think it worse than I do already. It would be the basest action of which any woman could be guilty. I recognize that. And yet”—she thrust her face, pinched and strained-looking, into his—“and yet I shall do it. I'd take that sin—or any other—on my conscience for the sake of Tim.”
Trent turned away from her with a gesture of defeat, and for a moment or two he paced silently backwards and forwards, while she watched him with burning eyes.
“Do you realize what it means?” she went on urgently. “You have no way out. You can't deny the truth of what I have to tell.”
“No,” he acknowledged harshly. “As you say, I cannot deny it. No one knows that better than yourself.”
Suddenly he turned to her, and his face was that of a man in uttermost anguish of soul. Beads of moisture rimmed his drawn mouth, and when he spoke his voice was husky and uneven.
“Haven't I suffered enough—paid enough?” he burst out passionately. “You've had your pound of flesh. For God's sake, be satisfied with that! Leave—Garth Trent—to build up what is left of his life in peace!”
The roughened, tortured tones seemed to unnerve her. For a moment she hid her face in her hands, shuddering, and when she raised it again the tears were running down her cheeks.
“I can't—I can't!” she whispered brokenly. “I wish I could . . . you were good to me once. Oh! Maurice, I'm not a bad woman, not a wicked woman . . . but I've my son to think of . . . his happiness.” She paused, mastering, with an effort, the emotion that threatened to engulf her. “Nothing else counts—nothing! If you go to the wall, Tim wins.”
“So I'm to pay—first for your happiness, and now, more than twenty years later, for your son's. You don't ask—very much—of a man, Elisabeth.”
He had himself in hand now. The momentary weakness which had wrenched that brief, anguished appeal from his lips was past, and the dry scorn of his voice cut like a lash, stinging her into hostility once more.
“I have given you the chance to break with Sara yourself—on any pretext you choose to invent,” she said hardly. “You've refused—” She hesitated. “You do—still refuse, Maurice?” Again the note of pleading, of appeal in her voice. It was as though she begged of him to spare them both the consequences of that refusal.
He bowed. “Absolutely.”
She sighed impatiently.
“Then I must take the only other way that remains. You know what that will be.”
He stooped, and, picking up her cloak which had fallen to the floor, held it for her to put on. He had completely regained his customary indifference of manner.
“I think we need not prolong this interview, then,” he said composedly.
Elisabeth drew the cloak around her and moved slowly towards the window. Outside, the tranquil moonlight still flooded the garden, the peaceful quiet of the night remained all undisturbed by the fierce conflict of human wills and passions that had spent itself so uselessly.
“One thing more”—she paused on the threshold as Trent spoke again—“You will not blacken the name of—”
“No!” It was as though she had struck the unuttered word from his lips. “Did you think I should? Those who bear it have suffered enough. There's no need to drag it through the mire a second time.”
With a quick movement she drew her cloak more closely about her, and stepped out into the garden. For a moment Garth watched her crossing the lawns, a slender, upright, swiftly moving shadow. Then a clump of bushes, thrusting its wall of darkness into the silver sea of moonlight, hid her from his sight, and he turned back into the room. Stumblingly he made his way to the chimney-piece, and, resting his arms upon it, hid his face.
For a long time he remained thus, motionless, while the grandfather clock in the corner ticked away indifferently, and one by one the candles guttered down and went out in little pools of grease.
When at last he raised his face, it looked almost ghastly in the moonlight, so lined and haggard was it, and its sternly set expression was that of a man who had schooled himself to endure the supreme ill that destiny may hold in store.