The Hermit of Far End Part 61

"Forgive you?" He smiled. "What else could you have done, sweetheart? I don't know, even now, why you believe in me," he added wonderingly.

"Just because--" she began, and fell silent, realizing that her belief had no reason, but was founded on the intuitive knowledge of a love that has suffered and won out on the other side.

When next she spoke it was with the simple, frank directness characteristic of her.

"Thank G.o.d that I can prove that I do trust you--absolutely. When will you marry me, Garth?"

"When will I marry you?" He repeated the words slowly, as though they conveyed no meaning to him.

"Yes. I want every one to know, to see that I believe in you. I want to stand at your side--go shares. Do you remember, once, how we settled that married life meant going shares in everything--good and bad?"

She smiled a little at the remembrance drawn from the small store of memories that was all her few days of unclouded love had given her. "I want--my share, Garth."

For a moment he was silent. Then he spoke, and the quiet finality of his tones struck her like a blow.

"We can never marry, Sara."

"Never--marry!" she repeated dazedly. Quick fear seized her, and she rushed on impetuously: "Then you haven't forgiven me, after all--you don't believe that I trust you! Oh! How can I make you _know_ that I do?

Garth--"

"Oh, my dear," he interrupted swiftly. "Don't misunderstand me. I know that you believe in me now--and I thank G.o.d for it! And as for forgiveness, as I told you, I have nothing to forgive. You'd have had need of the faith that removes mountains"--Sara started at the repet.i.tion of Patrick's very words--"to have believed in me under the circ.u.mstances." He paused a moment, and when he spoke again there was something triumphant in his tones--a serene gladness and contentment.

"You and I, beloved, are right with each other--now and always. Nothing can ever again come between us to divide us as we have been divided this last year. But, none the less," and his voice took on a steadfast note of resolve, "I cannot marry you. I thought I could--I thought the past had sunk into oblivion, and that I might take the gift of love you offered me. . . . But I was wrong."

"No! No! You were not wrong!" She was clinging to him in a sudden terror that even now their happiness was slipping from them. "The past has nothing to say to you and me. It can't come between us. . . . You have only to take me, Garth"--tremulously. "Let me _show_ that my love is stronger than ill repute. Let me come to you and stand by you as your wife. The past can't hurt us, then!"

He shook his head.

"The past never loses its power to hurt," he answered. "I've learned that. As far as the world you belong to is concerned, I'm finished, and I won't drag the woman I love through the same h.e.l.l I've been through.

That's what it would mean, you know. You would be singled out, pointed at, as the wife of a man who was chucked out of the Service. There would be no place in the world for you. You would be ostracized--because you were my wife."

"I shouldn't care," she urged. "Surely I can bear--what you have borne?

. . . I shouldn't mind--anything--so long as we were together."

He drew her close to him, his lips against her hair.

"Beloved!" he said, a great wonder in his voice. "Oh! Little _brave_ thing! What have I ever done that you should love me like that?"

Sara winked away a tear, and a rather tremulous smile hovered round her mouth.

"I don't know, I'm sure," she acknowledged a little shakily. "But I do.

Garth, you _will_ marry me?"

He lifted his bent head, his eyes gazing straight ahead of him, as though envisioning the lonely future and defying it.

"No," he said resolutely. "No. G.o.d helping me, I will never marry you, Sara. I have--no right to marry. It could only bring you misery. Dear, I must s.h.i.+eld you, even from yourself--from your own big, generous impulses which would let you join your life to mine. . . . Love is denied to us--denied through my own act of long ago. But if you'll give me friends.h.i.+p. . . ." She could sense the sudden pa.s.sionate entreaty behind the words. "Sara! Friends.h.i.+p is worth while--such friends.h.i.+p as ours would be! Are you brave enough, strong enough, to give me that--since I may not ask for more?"

There was a long silence, while Sara lay very still against his breast, her face hidden.

In that silence, her spirit met and faced the ultimate issue--for there was that in Garth's voice which told her that his decision not to marry her was immutable. Could she--oh G.o.d!--could she give him what he asked?

Give only part to the man to whom she longed to give all that a woman has to give? It would be far easier to go away--to put him out of her life for ever.

And yet--he asked this of her! He needed something that she could still give--the comrades.h.i.+p which was all that they two might ever know of love. . . .

When at last she raised her face to his, it was ashen, but her small chin was out-thrust, her eyes were like stars, and the grip of her slim hands on his shoulders was as iron.

"I'm strong enough to give you anything that you want," she said quietly.

She had made the supreme sacrifice; she was ready to be his friend.

A sad and wistful gravity hung about their parting. Their lips met and clung together, but it was in a kiss of renunciation, not of pa.s.sion.

He held her in his arms a moment longer.

"Never forget I'm loving you--always," he said steadily. "Call me your friend--but remember, in my heart I shall always be your lover."

Her eyes met his, unflinching, infinitely faithful.

"And I--I, too, shall be loving you," she answered, simply. "Always, Garth--always."

CHAPTER x.x.xV

OUT OF THE NIGHT

Tim was home on sick leave, and, after two perfect weeks of reunion, Elisabeth had written to ask if he might come down to Sunnyside, suggesting that the sea-breezes might advance his convalescence.

"I wonder Mrs. Durward cares to spare him," commented Selwyn in some surprise. "It seems out of keeping with her general att.i.tude. However, we shall be delighted to have him here. Write and say so, will you, Sara?"

Sara acquiesced briefly, flus.h.i.+ng a little. She thought she could read the motive at the back of Elisabeth's proposal--the spirit which, putting up a gallant fight even in the very face of defeat, could make yet a final effort to secure success by throwing Tim and the woman he loved together in the dangerously seductive intimacy of the same household.

But Sara had no fear that Tim would avail himself of the opportunity thus provided in the way Elisabeth doubtless hoped he might. That matter had been finally settled between herself and him before he went to France, and she knew that he would never again ask her to be his wife.

So she wrote to him serenely, telling him to come down to Monkshaven as soon as he liked; and a few days later found him installed at Sunnyside, nominally under Dr. Selwyn's care.

He was the same unaffected, spontaneous Tim as of yore, and hugely embarra.s.sed by any reference to his winning of the Military Cross, firmly refusing to discuss the manner of it, even with Sara.

"I just got on with my job--like dozens of other fellows," was all he would say.

It was from a brother officer that Sara learned, later, than Tim had "got on with his job" under a h.e.l.lish enemy fire, in spite of being twice wounded; and had thus saved the immediate situation in his vicinity--and, incidentally, the lives of many of his comrades.

He seemed to Sara to have become at once both older and younger than in former days. He had all the hilarious good spirits evinced by nine out of ten of the boys who came home on leave--the cheery capacity to laugh at the hards.h.i.+ps and dangers of the front, to poke good-natured fun at "old Fritz" and to make a jest of the German sh.e.l.ls and the Flanders mud, treating the whole great adventure of war as though it were the finest game invented.

Yet back of the mirth and laughter in the blue eyes lurked something new and strange and grave--inexpressibly touching--that indefinable something which one senses shrinkingly in the young eyes of the boys who have come back.

It hurt Sara somehow--that look of which she caught glimpses now and then, in quiet moments, and she set herself to drive it away, or, at least, to keep it at bay as much as possible, by filling every available moment with occupation or amus.e.m.e.nt.

"I don't want him to think about what it was like--out there," she told Molly. "His eyes make my heart ache, sometimes. They're too young to have seen--such things. Suggest something we can play at to-day!"