The Hermit of Far End Part 46

"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 s.h.i.+ning--"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 you _no_ conscience?" 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 G.o.d's sake, listen to me!" Her voice was suddenly shaken with pa.s.sionate 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--you _couldn't_ do such a thing!" he exclaimed in low, appalled tones of unbelief.

"I could!" she a.s.serted, 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 for _you_ to 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 pa.s.sionately.

"You've had your pound of flesh. For G.o.d'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 pa.s.sions 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.