CHAPTER XXVII

“Of course, there could be but one ending to it all. The man to whom you have promised yourself—Garth Trent—was court-martialled and cashiered.”

As she finished speaking, Elisabeth's hands, which had been tightly locked together upon her knee, relaxed and fell stiffly apart, cramped with the intensity of their convulsive pressure.

Sara sat silent, staring with unseeing eyes across the familiar bay to that house on the cliff where lived the man whose past history—that history he had guarded so strenuously and completely from the ears of their little world—had just been revealed to her.

Mentally she was envisioning the whole scene of the story which hesitatingly—almost unwilling, it seemed—Elisabeth had poured out. She could see the lonely fort on the Indian Frontier, sparsely held by its indomitable little band of British soldiers, and ringed about on every side by the hill tribes who had so suddenly and unexpectedly risen in open rebellion. In imagination she could sense the hideous tension as day succeeded day and each dawning brought no sign of the longed-for relief forces. Indeed, it was not even known if the messengers sent by the officer in command had got safely through to the distant garrison to deliver his urgent message asking succour. And each evening found those who were besieged within the fort with diminished rations, and diminished hope, and with one or more dead to mark the enemy's unceasing vigilance.

And then had come the mysterious apparent withdrawal of the tribesmen. For hours no sign of the enemy had been seen, nor a single fugitive shot fired when one or other of the besieged had risked themselves at an unguarded aperture, whereas, until that morning, for a man to show himself, even for a moment, had been to court almost certain death.

Could the rebels have received word of the approach of a relieving force, whispers of a punitive expedition on its way, and so stolen stealthily, discreetly away in the silence of the night?

The hearts of the little beleaguered force rose high with hope, but again morning drew to evening without bringing sight or sound of succour. Only the enemy persisted in that strange, unbroken silence, and, at last, a hasty council of war was held within the fort, and Garth Trent, together with a handful of men, had been detailed to make a reconnaissance.

Sara could picture the little party stealing out on their dangerous errand—dangerous, indeed, if the withdrawal of the tribesmen were but a bluff, a scheme devised to lull the besieged into a false sense of security in order to attack them later at a greater disadvantage. And then—the sudden spit of a rifle, a ringing fusillade of shots in the dense darkness! The reconnaissance party had run into an ambuscade!

Sara could guess well the frayed nerves, the low vitality of men who were short of food, short of sleep, and worn with incessant watching night and day. But—Could it be possible that Englishmen had flinched at the crucial moment—lost their nerve and fled in wild disorder? Englishmen—who held the sacred trust of empire in their hands—to show the white feather to a horde of rebel natives! It was inconceivable! Sara, reared in the great tradition by that gallant gentleman, Patrick Lovell, refused to credit it.

She drew a long, shuddering breath.

“I don't believe it,” she said.

Elisabeth looked at her with a pitying comprehension of the blow she had just dealt her.

“I'm afraid,” she said gently, almost deprecatingly, “that there is no questioning the finding of the court-martial. Garth must have lost his head at the unexpectedness of the attack. And panic is a curious, unaccountable kind of thing, you know.”

“I don't believe it,” reiterated Sara stubbornly.

Elisabeth bent forward.

“My dear,” she said, “there is no possibility of doubt. Garth was wounded; they brought him in afterwards—shot in the back! . . . Oh! It was all a horrible business! And the most wretched part of it all was that in reality they were only a few stray tribesmen whom our men had encountered. Perhaps Garth thought they were outnumbered—I don't know. But anyway, coming on the top of all that had gone before, the surprise attack in the darkness broke his nerve completely. He didn't even attempt to make a stand. He simply gave way. What followed was just a headlong scramble as to who could save his skin first! I shall never forget Garth's return after—after the court-martial.” She shuddered a little at the memory. “I—I was engaged to him at the time, Sara, and I had no choice but to break it off. Garth was cashiered—disgraced—done for.”

Sara's drooping figure suddenly straightened.

“You—you—were engaged to Garth?” she said in a queer, high voice.

“Yes”—simply. “I had promised to marry him.”

Sara was silent for a long moment. Then—

“He never told me,” she muttered. “He never told me.”

“No? It was hardly likely he would, was it? He couldn't tell you that without telling you—the rest.”

Sara made no answer. She felt stunned—beaten into helpless silence by the quiet, inexorable voice that, bit by bit, minute by minute, had drawn aside the veil of ignorance and revealed the dry bones and rottenness that lay hidden behind it.

“I don't believe it!” she had cried in a futile effort to convince herself by the sheer reiteration of denial. But shedidbelieve it, nevertheless. The whole miserable story tallied too accurately with the bitterly significant remarks that Garth himself had let fall from time to time.

That day of the dog-fight, for instance. What was it he had said? “A certain amount of allowance must be made for nerves.”

And again: “I suppose no man can be dead sure of himself—always.”

The implication was too horribly clear to be evaded.

He had told her, moreover, that he was a man who had made a shipwreck of his life, that in a moment of folly—a moment of funk she knew now to be the veridical description!—he had flung away the whole chances of his life. The man whom she had loved, and, in her love, idealized, had proved himself, when the test came, that most despicable of things, a coward! The pain of realization was almost unbearable.

Suddenly, across the utter desolation of the moment there shot a single ray of hope. She turned triumphantly to Elisabeth.

“But if it were true that Garth—had shown cowardice, why was he not shot? They shoot men for cowardice”—grimly.

“There are many excuses to be made for him, Sara,” replied Elisabeth gently.

“Excuses! For cowardice!” The low-spoken words were icy with a biting contempt. “I'm afraid I could not find them.”

“The court-martial did, nevertheless. At the trial, the 'prisoner's friend'—in this instance, Garth's colonel, who was very fond of him and had always thought very highly of him—pleaded extenuating circumstances. Garth's youth, his previous good record, the conditions of the moment—the continuous mental and physical strain of the days preceding his sudden loss of nerve—all these things were urged by the 'prisoner's friend,' and the sentence was commuted to one of cashiering.”

“It would have been better if he had been shot,” said Sara dully. Then suddenly she clapped both hands to her mouth. “Ah—h! What am I saying? Garth! . . . Garth! . . .”

She stumbled to her feet, her white, ravaged face turned for a moment yearningly towards Far End, where it stood bathed in the mocking morning sunlight. Then she spun half-round, groping for support, and fell in a crumpled heap on the floor.

When Sara came to herself again, she was lying on the bed in Elisabeth's room at the hotel. Some one had drawn the blinds, shutting out the crude glare of the sunlight, and in the semi-darkness she could feel soft hands about her, bathing her face with something fragrantly cool and refreshing. She opened her eyes and looked up to find Elisabeth's face bent over her—unspeakably kind and tender, like that of some Madonna brooding above her child.

“Are you feeling better?” The sweet, familiar voice roused her to the realization of what had happened. It was the same voice that, before unconsciousness had wrapped her in its merciful oblivion, had been pouring into her ears an unbelievably hideous story—a nightmare tale of what had happened at some far distant Indian outpost.

The details of the story seemed to be all jumbled confusedly together in Sara's mind, but, as gradually full consciousness returned, they began to sort themselves and fall into their rightful places, and all at once, with a swift and horrible contraction of her heart, the truth knocked at the door of memory.

She struggled up on to her elbow, her eyes frantically appealing.

“Elisabeth, was it true? Was it—all true?”

In an instant Elisabeth's hand closed round hers.

“My dear, you must try and face it. And”—her voice shook a little—“you must try and forgive me for telling you. But I couldn't let you marry Garth Trent in ignorance, could I?”

“Then it is true? Garth was court-martialled and—and cashiered?” Sara sank back against her pillows. Still, deep within her, there flickered a faint spark of hope. Against all reason, against all common sense the faith that was within her fought against accepting the bitter knowledge that Garth was guilty of what was in her eyes the one unpardonable sin.

Unpardonable! The word started a new and overwhelming train of thought. She remembered that she had told Garth she did not care what sin he had been guilty of, had forced him to believe that nothing could make any difference to her love for him, to her willingness to become his wife, and share his burden. Yet now, now that the hidden thing in his life had been revealed to her, she found herself shrinking from it in utter loathing! Her promises of faith and loyalty were already crumbling under the strain of her knowledge of the truth.

She flinched from the recognition of the fact, seeking miserably to palliate and excuse it. When she had given Garth that impetuous assurance of her confidence, she had not, in her crudest imaginings, dreamed of anything so hideous and ignoble as the actual truth had proved to be. Vaguely, she had deemed him outcast for some big, reckless sin that by the splendour of its recklessness almost earned its own forgiveness.

And instead—this! This drab-hued, pitiful weakness for which she could find no pardon in her heart.

Through the turmoil of her thoughts she became conscious that Elisabeth was stooping over her, answering her wild incredulous questioning.

“Yes, it is true,” she was saying steadily. “He was court-martialled and cashiered. But, if you still doubt it, ask him yourself, Sara.”

Sara's hands clenched themselves. Her eyes were feverishly brilliant in her white, shrunken face.

“Yes, I'll ask him myself.” She panted a little. “You must be wrong—there must be some horrible mistake somewhere. I've been mad—mad to believe it for a single moment.” She slipped from the bed to her feet, and stood confronting Elisabeth with a kind of desperate defiance. “Do you hear what I say?” she said loudly. “I don't believe it. I will never believe it till Garth himself tells me that it is true.”

“Oh, my dear”—Elisabeth shrank away a little, but her eyes were kind and infinitely pitying. Sara felt frightened of the pitying kindness in those eyes—its rejection of Garth's innocence was so much stronger than any asseveration of mere words. Vaguely she heard Elisabeth's patient voice: “I think you are right. Ask him yourself—but, Sara, he will not be able to deny it.”

“You sent for me, and I am here.”

The brusque, curt speech sounded a knell to the faint hope which Sara had been tending whilst she waited for Garth's coming. His voice, the dogged expression of his face, the chill, brief manner, each held its grievous message for the woman who had learned to recognize the signs of mental stress in the man she loved.

“Yes, I sent for you,” she said. “I—I—Garth, I have seen Elisabeth.”

“Yes?” Just the one brief monosyllable in response, uttered with a slightly questioning inflection. Nothing more.

Sara twisted her hands together. There was something unapproachable about Garth as he stood there—quiet, inflexible, waiting to hear what she had to say to him.

With an effort she began again.

“She has told me of something—something that happened to you, in the past.”

“Yes? Quite a great deal happened—in my past. What was it, in particular, that she told you?”

The mocking quality in his tones stung her into open accusation.

“She told me that you had been court-martialled and cashiered from the Army—for cowardice.” The words came slowly, succinctly.

“Ah—h!” He drew his breath sharply, and a grey shadow seemed to spread itself over his face.

Sara waited—waited with an intensity of longing that was well-nigh unendurable—for either the indignant denial or the easy, mirthful scorn wherewith an innocent man might be expected to answer such a charge.

But there came neither of these. Only silence—an endless, agonizing silence, while Garth stood utterly motionless, looking at her, his face slowly greying.

It was impossible to interpret the expression of his eyes. There was neither anger, nor horror, nor pleading in their cool indomitable stare, but only a hard, bright impenetrability, shuttering the soul behind it from the aching gaze of the woman who waited.

In that silence, Sara's flickering hope that the accusation might prove false went out in blinding darkness. Sheknew, now—knew it as certainly as though Garth had answered her—that he was unable to deny it. Still, she would brace herself to hear it—to endure the ultimate anguish of words.

“Is it true?” she questioned him. “Is it true that you were—cashiered for cowardice?”

At last he spoke.

“Yes,” he said. “It is true.” His voice was altogether passionless, but something had come into his face, into his whole attitude, which denied the calm passivity of his reply. The soul of the man—a soul in ineffable extremity of suffering—was struggling for expression, striving against the rigid bonds of the motionless body in which his iron will constrained it.

Sara could sense it—a tormented flame shut in a casing of steel—and she was swept by a torrent of uttermost pity and compassion.

“Garth! Garth! But there must have been some explanation! . . . You weren't in your right senses at the moment. Ah! Tell me——” She broke off, her voice failing her, her arms outflung in a passion of entreaty.

As she leaned towards him, a tremor seemed to run through his entire body—the tremor of leaping muscles straining against the leash. His hands clenched slowly, the nails biting into the bruised flesh. Then he spoke, and his voice was ringing and assured—arrogantly so. The tortured soul within him had been beaten back once more into its prison-house.

“I was quite in my right senses—that night on the Frontier—never more so, believe me”—and his lips twisted in a curious, enigmatical smile. “And as far as explanations—excuses—are concerned, the court-martial made all that were possible. I—I was not shot, you see!”

There was something outrageous in the open derision of the last words. He flung them at her—as though taunting, gibing at the impulse to compassion which had swayed her, sending her tremulously towards him with imploring, outstretched hands.

“The quality of mercy was not strained in the least,” he continued. “It fell around me like the proverbial gentle rain. I've quite a lot to be thankful for, don't you think?”—brutally.

“I—I don't know what to think!” she burst out. “That you—youshould fall so low—so shamefully low.”

“A man will do a good deal to preserve a whole skin, you know,” he suggested hardily.

“Why do you speak like that?” she demanded in sharpened tones. “Do you want me to think worse of you than I do already?”

He took a step towards her and stood looking down at her with those bright, hard eyes.

“Yes, I do,” he said decidedly. “I want you to think as badly of me as you possibly can. I want you to realize just what sort of a blackguard you had promised to marry, and when you've got that really clear in your mind, you'll be able to forget all about me and marry some cheerful young fool who hasn't been kicked out of the Army.”

“As long as I live I shall never—be able—to forget that I loved—a coward.” The words came haltingly from her lips. Then suddenly her shaking hands went up to her face, as though to shut him from her sight, and a dry, choking sob tore its way through her throat.

He made a swift stride towards her, then checked himself and stood motionless once more, in the utter quiescence of deliberately arrested movement. Only his hands, hanging stiffly at his sides, opened and shut convulsively, and his eyes should have been hidden. God never meant any man's eyes to wear that look of unspeakable torment.

When at last Sara withdrew her hands and looked at him again, his face was set like a mask, the lips drawn back a little from the teeth in a way that suggested a dumb animal in pain. But she was so hurt herself that she failed to recognize his infinitely greater hurt.

“I think—I think I hate you,” she whispered.

His taut muscles seemed to relax.

“I hope you do,” he said steadily. “It will be better so.”

Something in the quiet acceptance of his tone moved her to a softer, more wistful emotion.

“If it had been anything—anything but that, Garth, I think I could have borne it.”

There was a depth of appeal in the low-spoken words. But he ignored it, opposing a reckless indifference to her softened mood.

“Then it's just as well it wasn't 'anything but that.' Otherwise”—sardonically—“you might have felt constrained to abide by your rash promise to marry me.”

His eyes flashed over her face, mocking, deriding. He had struck where she was most vulnerable, accusing where her innate honesty of soul admitted she had no defence, and she winced away from the speech almost as though it had been a blow upon her body.

It was true she had given her promise blindly, in ignorance of the facts, but that could not absolve her. It was not Garth who had forced the promise from her. It was she who had impetuously offered it, never conceiving such a possibility as that he might be guilty of the one sin for which, in her eyes, there could be no palliation.

“I know,” she said unevenly. “I know. You have the right to remind me of my promise. I—I blame myself. It's horrible—to break one's word.”

She was silent a moment, standing with bent head, her instinct to be fair, to play the game, combating the revulsion of feeling with which the knowledge of Garth's act of cowardice had filled her. When she looked up again there was a curious intensity in her expression, wanly decisive.

“Marriage for us—now—could never mean anything but misery.” The effort in her voice was palpable. It was as though she were forcing herself to utter words from which her inmost being recoiled. “But I gave you my promise, and if—if you choose to hold me to it—”

“I don't choose!” He broke in harshly. “You may spare yourself any anxiety on that score. You are free—as free as though we had never met. I'm quite ready to bow to your decision that I'm not fit to marry you.”

A little caught breath of unutterable relief fluttered between her lips. If he heard it, he made no sign.

“And now”—he turned as though to leave her—“I think that's all that need be said between us.”

“It is not all”—in a low voice.

“What? Is there more still?” Again his voice held an insolent irony that lashed her like a whip. “Haven't you yet plumbed the full depths of my iniquity?”

“No. There is still one further thing. You said you loved me?”

“I did—I do still, if such as I may aspire to so lofty an emotion.”

“It was a lie. Even”—her voice broke—“even in that you deceived me.”

It seemed as though the tremulously uttered words pierced through his armour of sneering cynicism.

“No, in that, at least, I was honest with you.” The bitter note of mockery that had rung through all his former speech was suddenly absent—muted, crushed out, and the quiet, steadfast utterance carried conviction even in Sara's reeling faith, shaking her to the very soul.

“But . . . Elisabeth? . . . You loved her once. And love—can't die, Garth.”

“No,” he said gravely. “Love can't die. But what I felt for Elisabeth was not love—not love as you and I understand it. It was the mad passion of a boy for an extraordinarily beautiful woman. She was an ideal—I invested her with all the qualities and spiritual graces that her beauty seemed to promise. But the Elisabeth I loved—didn't exist.” He drew nearer her and, laying his hands on her shoulders, looked down at her with eyes that seemed to burn their way into the inmost depths of her being. “Whatever you may think of me, however low I may have fallen in your sight, believe me in this—that I have loved you and shall always love you, utterly and entirely, with my whole soul and body. It has not been an easy love—I fought against it with all my strength, knowing that it could only carry pain and suffering in its train for both of us. But it conquered me. And when you came to me that day, so courageously, holding out your hands, claiming the love that was unalterably yours—when you came to me like that, a little hurt and wounded because I had been so slow to speak my love—I yielded! Before God, Sara! I had been either more or less than a man had I resisted!”

The grip of his hands upon her shoulders tightened until it was actual pain, and she winced under it, shrinking away from him. He released her instantly, and she stood silently beside him, battling against the longing to respond to that deep, abiding love which neither now, nor ever again in life, would she be able to doubt.

That Garth loved her, wholly and completely, was an incontrovertible fact. She no longer felt the least lingering mistrust, nor even any prick of jealousy that he had once loved before. That boyish passion of the senses for Elisabeth was not comparable with this love which was the maturer growth of his manhood—a love that could only know fulfillment in the mystic union of body, soul, and spirit.

But this merely served to deepen the poignancy of the impending parting—for that she and Garth must part she recognized as inevitable.

Loving each other as men and women love but once in a lifetime, their love was destined to be for ever unconsummated. They were as irrevocably divided as though the seas of the entire world ran between them.

Wearily, in the flat, level tones of one who realizes that all hope is at an end, she stumbled through the few broken phrases which cancelled the whole happiness of life.

“It all seems so useless, doesn't it—your love and mine? . . . You've killed something that I felt for you—I don't quite know what to call it—respect, I suppose, only that sounds silly, because it was much more than that. I wish—I wish I didn't love you still. But perhaps that, too, will die in time. You see, you're not the man I thought I cared for. You're—you're something I'mashamedto love—”

“That's enough!” he interrupted unsteadily. “Leave it at that. You won't beat it if you try till doomsday.”

The pain in his voice pierced her to the heart, and she made an impulsive step towards him, shocked into quick remorse.

“Garth . . . I didn't mean it!”

“Oh yes, you meant it,” he said. “Don't imagine that I'm blaming you. I'm not. You've found me out, that's all. And having discovered exactly how contemptible a person I am, you—very properly—send me away.”

He turned on his heel, giving her no time to reply, and a moment later she was alone. Then came the clang of the house door as it closed behind him. To Sara, it sounded like the closing of a door between two worlds—between the glowing past and the grey and empty future.

The consternation created at Sunnyside by the breaking off of Sara's engagement had spent itself at last. Selwyn had said but little, only his saint's eyes held the wondering, hurt look that the inexplicable sins of humanity always had the power to bring into them. Characteristically, he hated the sin but overflowed in sympathy for the sinner.

“Poor devil!” he said, when the whole story of Trent's transgression and its consequences had been revealed to him. “What a ghastly stone to hang round a man's neck for the term of his natural life! If they'd shot him, it would have been more merciful! That would at least have limited the suffering,” he went on, taking Sara's hand and holding it in his strong, kindly one a moment. “Poor little comrade! Oh, my dear”—as she shrank instinctively—“I'm not going to talk about it—I know you'd rather not. Condolence platitudes were never in my line. But my pal's troubles are mine—just as she once made mine hers.”

Jane Crab's opinions were enunciated without fear or favour, and, in defiance of public opinion, she took her stand on the side of the sinner and maintained it unwaveringly.

“Well, Miss Sara,” she affirmed, “unless you've proof as strong as 'Oly Writ, as they say, I'd believe naught against Mr. Trent. Bluff and 'ard he may be in 'is manner, but after the way he conducted himself the night Miss Molly ran away, I'll never think no ill of 'im, not if it was ever so!”

Sara smiled drearily.

“I wish I could feel as you do, Jane dear. But—Mrs. Durwardknows.”

“Mrs. Durward! Huh! One of them tigris women I calls 'er,” retorted Jane, who had formed her opinion with lightning rapidity when Elisabeth made a farewell visit to Sunnyside before leaving Monkshaven. “Not but what you can't help liking her, neither,” went on Jane judicially. “There's something good in the woman, for all she looks at you like a cat who thinks you're after stealing her kittens. But there! As the doctor—bless the man!—always says, there's good in everybody if so be you'll look for it. Only I'd as lief think that Mrs. Durward was somehow scared-like—too almighty scared to be her natchral self, savin' now and again when she forgets.”

To Mrs. Selwyn, the breaking off of Sara's engagement, and the manner of it, signified very little. She watched the panorama of other people's lives unfold with considerably less sympathetic concern than that with which one follows the ups and downs that befall the characters in a cinema drama, since they were altogether outside the radius of that central topic of unfailing interest—herself.

The only way in which recent events impinged upon her life was in so far as the rupture of Sara's engagement would probably mean the indefinite prolongation of her stay at Sunnyside, which would otherwise have ended with her marriage. And this, from Mrs. Selwyn's egotistical point of view, was all to the good, since Sara had acquired a pleasant habit of making herself both useful and entertaining to the invalid.

Molly's emotions carried her to the other extreme of the compass. Since the night when she had realized that she had narrowly missed making entire shipwreck of her life, thanks to the evil genius of Lester Kent, her character seemed to have undergone a change—to have deepened and expanded. She was no longer so buoyantly superficial in her envisagement of life, and the big things reacted on her in a way which would previously have been impossible. Formerly, their significance would have passed her by, and she would have floated airily along, unconscious of their piercing reality.

Side by side with this increase of vision, there had developed a very deep and sincere affection for both Garth and Sara based, probably, in its inception, on her realization that whatever of good, whatever of happiness, life might hold for her, she would owe it fundamentally to the two who had so determinedly kept her heedless feet from straying into that desert from which there is no returning to the pleasant paths of righteousness. A censorious world sees carefully to that, for ever barring out the sinner—of the weaker sex—from inheriting the earth.

So that to this new and awakened Molly the abrupt termination of Sara's engagement came as something almost too overwhelming to be borne. She did not see how Saracouldbear it, and to her youthful mind, mercifully unwitting that grief is one of the world's commonplaces, Sara was henceforth haloed with sorrow, set specially apart by the tragic circumstances which had enveloped her. Unconsciously she lowered her voice when speaking to her, infusing a certain specific sympathy into every small action she performed for her, shrank from troubling her in any way, and altogether, in her youth and inexperience, behaved rather as though she were in a house of mourning, where the candles yet burned in the chamber of death and the blinds shut out the light of day.

At last Sara rebelled, although compassionately aware of Molly's excellent intentions.

“Molly, my angel, if you persist in treating me as though I had just lost the whole of my relatives in an earthquake or a wreck at sea, I shall explode. I've had a bad knock, but I don't want it continually rubbing into me. The world will go on—even although my engagement is broken off. AndI'mgoing on.”

It was bravely spoken, and though Sara was inwardly conscious that in the last words the spirit, for the moment, outdistanced the flesh, it served to dissipate the rather strained atmosphere which had prevailed at Sunnyside since the rupture of her engagement had become common knowledge.

So, figuratively speaking, the blinds were drawn up and life resumed its normal aspect once again.

It had fallen to the lot of Audrey Maynard to carry the ill-tidings to Rose Cottage. Sara had asked her to acquaint their little circle with the altered condition of affairs, and Audrey had readily undertaken to perform this service, eager to do anything that might spare Sara some of the inevitable pinpricks which attend even the big tragedies of life.

“The whole affair is incomprehensible to me,” said Audrey at last, as she rose preparatory to taking her departure. There seemed no object in lingering to discuss so painful a topic. “It's—oh! It's heart-breaking.”

Miss Livinia departed hastily to do a little weep in the seclusion of her room upstairs. She hardly concerned herself with the enormity of Garth's offence. She was old, and she saw only romance shattered into fragments, youth despoiled of its heritage, love crucified. Moreover, the Lavender Lady had never been censorious.

“What is your opinion, Miles?” asked Audrey, when she had left the room.

Herrick had been rather silent, his brown eyes meditative. Now he looked up quickly.

“About the funking part of it? As I wasn't on the spot when the affair took place, I haven't the least right to venture an opinion.”

Audrey looked puzzled.

“I don't see why not. You can't get behind the verdict of the court-martial.”

“Trials have been known where justice went awry,” said Miles quietly. “There was a trial where Pilate was judge.”

“Do you mean to say you doubt the verdict?”—eagerly.

“No, I was not meaning quite that in this case. But, because the law says a man is a blackguard, when I'd stake my life he's nothing of the kind, it doesn't alter my opinion one hair's-breadth. The verdict may have been—probably, almost certainly,was—the only verdict that could be given to meet the facts of the case. But still, it is possible that it was not a just verdict—labelling as a coward for all time a man who may have had one bad moment when his nerves played him false. There are other men who have had their moment of funk, but, as the matter never came under the official eyes, they have made good since—ended up as V.C.'s, some of 'em. Facts are often very foolish things, to my mind. Motives, and circumstances, even conditions of physical health, are bound to play as big a part as facts, if you're going to administer pure justice. But the army can't consider the super-administration of justice”—smiling. “Discipline must be maintained and examples made. Only—sometimes—it's damn bad luck on the example.”

It was an unusually long speech for Miles to have been guilty of, and Audrey stood looking at him in some surprise.

“Miles, you're rather a dear, you know. I believe you're almost as strongly on Garth's side as Jane Crab.”

“Is Jane?” And Herrick smiled. “She's a good old sport then. Anyhow, I don't propose to add my quota to the bill Trent's got to pay, poor devil!”

Audrey's face softened as she turned to go.

“One can't help feeling pitifully sorry for him,” she admitted. “To have had Sara—and then to have lost her!”

There was a whimsical light in Herrick's eyes as he answered her.

“But, at least,” he said, “hehashad her, if only for a few days.”

Audrey paused with her hand upon the latch of the door.

“I imagine Garth—asked for what he wanted!” she observed, and vanished precipitately through the doorway.

“Audrey!” Miles started up, but, by the time he reached the house door, she was already disappearing through the gateway into the road and beyond pursuit.

“She must haverun!” he commented ruefully to himself as he returned to the sitting-room.

This discovery seemed to afford him food for reflection. For a long time he sat very quietly in his chair, apparently arguing out with himself some knotty point.

Nor had his thoughts, at the moment, any connection with the recent discussion of Garth Trent's affairs. It was only after the Lavender Lady had returned, a little pink about the eyelids, that the recollection of the original object of Mrs. Maynard's visit recurred to him.

Simultaneously, his brows drew together in a sudden concentration of thought, and an inarticulate exclamation escaped him.

Miss Livinia looked up from the delicate piece of cobwebby lace she was finishing.

“What did you say, dear?” she asked absently.

“I didn't say anything,” he smiled back at her. “I was thinking rather hard, that's all, and just remembered something I had forgotten.”

The Lavender Lady looked a trifle mystified.

“I don't think I quite understand, Miles dear.”

Herrick, on his way to the door, stooped to kiss her.

“Neither do I, Lavender Lady. That's just the devil of it,” he answered cryptically.

He passed out of the room and upstairs, presently returning with a couple of letters, held together by an elastic band, in his hand.

They smelt musty as he unfolded them; evidently they had not seen the light of day for a good many years. But Miles seemed to find them of extraordinary interest, for he subjected the closely written sheets to a first, and second, and even a third perusal. Then he replaced the elastic band round them and shut them away in a drawer, locking the latter carefully.

A couple of days later, Garth Trent received a note from Herrick, asking him to come and see him.

“You haven't been near us for days,” it ran. “Remember Mahomet and the mountain, and as I can't come to you, look me up.”

The letter, in its quiet avoidance of any reference to recent events, was like cooling rain falling upon a parched and thirsty earth.

Since the history of the court-martial had become common property, Garth had been through hell. It was extraordinary how quickly the story had leaked out, passing from mouth to mouth until there was hardly a cottage in Monkshaven that was not in possession of it, with lurid and fictitious detail added thereto.

The chambermaid at the Cliff Hotel had been the primary source of information. From the further side of the connecting-door of an adjoining room, she had listened with interest to the conversation which had taken place between Elisabeth and Sara on the day following the Haven Woods picnic, and had proceeded to circulate the news with the avidity of her class. Nor had certain gossipy members of the picnic party refrained from canvassing threadbare the significance of the unfortunate scene which had taken place on that occasion—contributory evidence to the truth of the chambermaid's account of what she had overheard.

The whole town hummed with the tale, and Garth had not long been allowed to remain in ignorance of the fact. Anonymous letters reached him almost daily—for it must be remembered that ten years of an aloof existence at Monkshaven had not endeared him to his neighbours. They had resented what they chose to consider his exclusiveness, and, now that it was so humiliatingly explained, the meaner spirits amongst them took this way of paying off old scores.

It was suggested by one of the anonymous writers that Trent's continued presence in the district was felt to be a blot on the fair fame of Monkshaven; and, by another, that should the rumours now flying hither and thither concerning the imminence of a European war materialize into fact, the French Foreign Legion offered opportunities for such as he.

Garth tore the letters into fragments, pitching them contemptuously into the waste-paper basket; but, nevertheless, they were like so many gnats buzzing about an open wound, adding to its torture.

Black Brady, with a lively recollection of the few days in gaol which Trent had procured him in recompense for his poaching proclivities, was loud in his denunciation.

“Retreated, they calls it,” he observed, with fine scorn. “Runned away's the plain English of it.”

And with this pronouncement all the loafers round the hotel garage cordially agreed, and, subsequently, black looks and muttered comments followed Garth's appearance in the streets.

To all of which Garth opposed a stony indifference—since, after all, these lesser things were of infinitely small moment to a man whose whole life was lying in ruins about him.

“It was good of you to ask me over,” he told Herrick, as they shook hands. “Sure you're not afraid of contamination?”

“Quite sure,” replied Miles, smiling serenely. “Besides, I had a particular reason for wishing to see you.”

“What was that?”

Miles unlocked the drawer where he had laid aside the papers he had perused with so much interest two days ago, and, slipping them out of the elastic bands that held them, handed them to Trent.

“I'd like you to read those documents, if you will,” he said.

There was a short silence while Trent's eyes travelled swiftly down the closely written sheets. When he looked up from their perusal his expression was perfectly blank. Miles could glean nothing from it.

“Well?” he said tentatively.

Garth quietly tendered him back the letters.

“You shouldn't believe everything you hear, Herrick,” was all he vouchsafed.

“Then it isn't true?” asked Miles searchingly.

“It sounds improbable,” replied Trent composedly.

Miles reflected a moment. Then, slowly replacing the papers within the elastic band, he remarked—

“I think I'll take Sara's opinion.”

If he had desired to break down the other's guard of indifference, he succeeded beyond his wildest expectations.

Trent sprang to his feet, his hand outstretched as though to snatch the letters back again. His eyes blazed excitedly.

“No! No! You mustn't do that—you can't do that! It's——Oh! You won't understand—but those papers must be destroyed.”

Herrick's fingers closed firmly round the papers in question, and he slipped them into the inside pocket of his coat.

“They certainly will not be destroyed,” he replied. “I hold them in trust. But, tell me, why should Inotshow them to Sara? It seems to me the one obvious thing to do.”

Trent shook his head.

“No. Believe me, it could do no good, and it might do an infinity of harm.”

Herrick looked incredulous.

“I can't see that,” he objected.

“It is so, nevertheless.”

A silence fell between them.

“Then you mean,” said Herrick, breaking it at last, “that I'm to hold my tongue?”

“Just that.”

“It is very unfair.”

“And if you published that information abroad, it's unfair to Tim. Have you thought of that? He, at least, is perfectly innocent.”

“But, man, it's inconceivable—grotesque!”

“Not at all. I gave Elisabeth Durward my promise, and she has married and borne a son, trusting to that promise. My lips are closed—now and always.”

“But mine are not.”

“They will be, Miles, if I ask it. Don't you see, there's no going back for me now? I can't wipe out the past. I made a bad mistake—a mistake many a youngster similarly circumstanced might have made. And I've been paying for it ever since. I must go on paying to the end—it's my honour that's involved. That's why I ask you not to show those letters.”

Miles looked unconvinced.

“I forged my own fetters, Herrick,” continued Trent. “In a way, I'm responsible for Tim Durward's existence and I can't damn his chances at the outset. After all, he's at the beginning of things. I'm getting towards the end. At least”—wearily—“I hope so.”

Herrick's quick glance took in the immense alteration the last few days had wrought in Trent's appearance. The man had aged visibly, and his face was worn and lined, the eyes burning feverishly in their sockets.

“You're good for another thirty or forty years, bar accidents,” said Herrick at last, deliberately. “Are you going to make those years worse than worthless to you by this crazy decision?”

“I've no alternative. Good Lord, man!”—with savage irritability—“you don't suppose I'm enjoying it, do you? But I'veno way out. I took a certain responsibility on myself—and I must see it through. I can't shirk it now, just because pay-day's come. I can do nothing except stick it out.”

“And what about Sara?” said Herrick quietly. “Has she no claim to be considered?”

He almost flinched from the look of measureless anguish that leapt into the others man's eyes in response.

“For God's sake, man, leave Sara out of it!” Garth exclaimed thickly. “I've cursed myself enough for the suffering I've brought on her. I was a mad fool to let her know I cared. But I thought, as Garth Trent, that I had shut the door on the past. I ought to have known that the door of the past remains eternally ajar.”

Miles nodded understandingly.

“I don't think you were to blame,” he said. “It's Mrs. Durward who has pulled the door wide open. She's stolen your new life from you—the life you had built up. Trent, you owe that woman nothing! Let me show this letter, and the other that goes with it, to Sara!”

Trent shook his head in mute refusal.

“I can't,” he said at last. “Elisabeth must be forgiven. The best woman in the world may lose all sense of right and wrong when it's a question of her child. But, even so, I can't consent to the making public of that letter.” He rose and paced the room restlessly. “Man! Man!” he cried at last, coming to a halt in front of Herrick. “Can't you see—that woman trusted me with her whole life, and with the life of any child that she might bear, when she married on the strength of my promise. And I must keep faith with her. It's the one poor rag of honour left me, Herrick!”—with intense bitterness.

There was a long silence. Then, at last, Miles held out his hand.

“You've beaten me,” he said sadly. “I won't destroy the letters. As I said, they are a trust. But the secret is safe with me, after this. You've tied my hands.”

Trent smiled grimly.

“You'll get used to it,” he commented. “Mine have been tied for three-and-twenty years—though even yet I don't wear my bonds with grace, precisely.”

He had become once more the hermit of old acquaintance—sardonic, harsh, his emotions hidden beneath that curt indifference of manner with which those who knew him were painfully familiar.

The two men shook hands in silence, and a few minutes later, Herrick, left alone, replaced the letters in the drawer whence he had taken them, and, turning the key upon them, slipped it into his pocket.

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