The Hermit of Far End Part 56

Her searching eyes, poignantly observant, sensed a subtle difference in it--or, perhaps, less actually a difference than a certain emphasizing of what had been before only latent and foreshadowed. The lean face was still leaner than she had known it, and there were deep lines about the mouth--graven. And the mouth itself held something sternly sweet and austere about the manner of its closing--a severity of self-discipline which one might look to see on the lips of a man who has made the supreme sacrifice of his own will, bludgeoning his desires into submission in response to some finely conceived impulse.

The recognition of this, of the something fine and splendid that had stamped itself on Garth's features, came to Sara in a sudden blazoning flash of recognition. This was not--could not be the face of a weak man or a coward! And for one transcendent moment of glorious belief sheer happiness overwhelmed her.

But, in the same instant, the d.a.m.ning facts stormed up at her--the verdict of the court-martial, the details Elisabeth had supplied, above all, Garth's own inability to deny the charge--and the light of momentary ecstasy flared and went out in darkness.

An inarticulate sound escaped her, forced from her lips by the pang of that sudden frustration of leaping hope, and, hearing it, Garth turned and saw her.

"Sara!" The name rushed from his lips, shaken with a tumult of emotion.

And then he was silent, staring at her across the little s.p.a.ce that separated them, his hand gripping the topmost bar of the gate as though for actual physical support.

The calm of his face, that lofty serenity which had been impressed upon it, was suddenly all broken up.

"Sara!" he repeated, a ring of incredulity in his tones.

"Yes," she said flatly. "I've come back."

She moved towards him, trying to control the trembling that had seized her limbs.

"I--I've just come back from France," she added, making a lame attempt to speak conventionally.

It was an effort to hold out her hand, and, when his closed around it, she felt her whole body thrill at his touch, just as it had been wont to thrill in those few, short, golden days when their mutual happiness had been undarkened by any shadow from the past. Swiftly, as though all at once afraid, she s.n.a.t.c.hed her hand from his clasp.

"What have you been doing in France?" he asked.

"Nursing," she answered briefly. "Did you think I could stay here and do--nothing, at such a time as this?"

There was accusation in her tone, but if he felt that her speech reflected in any way upon himself, he showed no sign of it. His eyes were roving over her, marking the changes wrought in the year that had pa.s.sed since they had met--the sharpened contour of her face, the too slender body, the white fragility of the bare hand which grasped the handle of the basket she was carrying.

"You are looking very ill," he said, at last, abruptly.

"I'm not ill," she replied indifferently. "Only a bit over-tired. As soon as I have had a thorough rest I am going back to France."

"You won't go back there again?" he exclaimed sharply. "You're not fit for such work!"

"Certainly I shall go back--as soon as ever Dr. Selwyn will let me. It's little enough to do for the men who are giving--everything!" Suddenly, the pent-up indignation within her broke bounds. "Garth, how can you stay here when men are fighting, dying--out there?" Her voice vibrated with the sense of personal shame which his apathy inspired in her.

"Oh!"--as though she feared he might wound her yet further by advancing the obvious excuse--"I know you're past military age. But other men--older men than you--have gone. I know a man of fifty who bluffed and got in! There are heaps of back doors into the Army these days."

"And there's a back door out of it--the one through which I was kicked out!" he retorted, his mouth setting itself in the familiar bitter lines.

The scoffing defiance of his att.i.tude baffled her.

"Don't you want to help your country?" she pleaded. It was horrible to her that he should stand aside--inexplicable except in terms of that wretched business on the Indian Frontier, in the hideous truth of which only his own acknowledgment had compelled her to believe.

He looked at her with hard, indifferent eyes.

"My country made me an outcast," he replied. "I'll remain such."

Somehow, even in her shamed bewilderment and anger, she sensed the hurt that lay behind the curt speech.

"Men who have been cas.h.i.+ered, men who are too old--they're all going back," she urged tremulously, s.n.a.t.c.hing at any weapon that suggested itself.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Let them!"

She stared at him in silence. She felt exactly as though she had been beating against a closed door. With a gesture of hopelessness she turned away, recognizing the futility of pleading with him further.

"One moment"--he stepped in front of her, barring her path. "I want an answer to a question before you go."

There was something of his old arrogance in the demand--the familiar, dominating quality which had always swayed her. Despite herself, she yielded to it now.

"Well?" she said unwillingly. "What is it you wish to know?"

"I want to know if you are engaged to Tim Durward."

For an instant the colour rushed into Sara's white face; then it ebbed away, leaving it paler than before.

"No," she said quietly. "I am not." She lifted her eyes, accusing, pa.s.sionately reproachful, to his. "How could you--even ask me that?

Did you ever believe I loved you?" she went on fiercely. "And if I did--could I care for any one else?"

A look of triumph leapt into his eyes.

"You care still, then?" he asked, and in his voice was blent all the exultation, and the wonder, and the piercing torment of love itself.

Sara felt herself slipping, knew that she was losing her hold of herself. Soon she would be a-wash in a sea of love, helpless to resist as a bit of driftwood, and then the waters would close over her head and she would be drawn down into the depths of shame which yielding to her love for Garth involved.

She must go--leave him while she had the power. Summoning up her strength, she faced him.

"I do," she answered steadily. "But I pray G.o.d every night of my life that I may soon cease to care."

And with those few words, limitless in their scorn--for him, and for herself because she still loved him--she turned to go.

But their contempt seemed to pa.s.s him by. His eyes burned.

"So Elisabeth has played her stake--and lost!" he muttered to himself.

"Ah! Pardon!" he drew aside as she almost brushed past him in her sudden haste to escape--to get away--and stood, with bared head, his eyes fixed on her receding figure.

Soon a bend in the path through the fields hid her from his sight. But, long after she had disappeared, he remained leaning, motionless, against the gateway through which she had pa.s.sed, his face immobile, twisted and drawn so that it resembled some sculptured mask of Pain, his eyes staring straight in front of him, blank and unseeing.

"Hullo, Trent!"

Miles Herrick, returning from the town to the hospital and taking, like every one else, the short cut across the fields, waved a friendly arm as he caught sight of Garth's figure silhouetted against the sky-line.

Then he drew nearer, and the set, still face of the other filled him with a sudden sense of dismay. There was a new look in it, a kind of dogged hopelessness. It entirely lacked that suggestion of austere sweetness which had made it so difficult to reconcile his smirched reputation with the man himself.

"What is it, Garth?" Instinctively Miles slipped into the more familiar appellation.