The Hermit of Far End Part 25

"Garth! Garth!"--his name sprang to her lips spontaneously. "You mustn't go! You mustn't go! . . ."

He wheeled round, and at the sight of her white, strained face a sudden light leapt into his eyes--the light of a great incredulity with, back of it, an unutterable hope and longing. In two strides he was at her side, his hands gripping her shoulders.

"Why, Sara?--G.o.d in heaven!"--the words came hurrying from him, hoa.r.s.e and uneven--"I believe you care!"

For an instant he hesitated, seeming to hold himself in check, then he caught her in his arms, kissing her fiercely on eyes and lips and throat.

"My dear! . . . Oh! My dear! . . ."

She could hear the broken words stammered through his hurried breathing as she lay unresistingly in his arms; then she felt him put her from him, gently, decisively, and she stood alone, swaying slightly. A long shuddering sigh ran through her body.

"Garth!"

She never knew whether the word really pa.s.sed her lips or whether it was only the cry of her inmost being, so importunate, so urgent that it seemed to take on actual sound.

There came no answer. He was gone, and through the light veil of the encroaching mists she could see him shearing his way through the leaden-coloured sea.

She remained motionless, her eyes straining after him. He was swimming easily, with a powerful overhand stroke that carried him swiftly away from the sh.o.r.e. A little sigh of relaxed tension fluttered between her lips. At least, he was a magnificent swimmer--he had that much in his favour.

Then her glance spanned the channel to the further sh.o.r.e, and it seemed as though an interminable waste of water stretched between. And all the time, at every stroke, that mad, racing current was pulling against him, fighting for possession of the strong, sinewy body battling against it.

She beat her hands together in an agony of fear. Why had she let him go?

What did it matter if people talked--what was a tarnished reputation to set against a man's life? Oh! She had been mad to let him go!

The fog grew denser. Strain as she might, she could no longer see the dark head above the water, the rise and fall of his arm like a white flail in the murky light, and she realized that should exhaustion overtake him, or the swift-running current beat him, drawing him under--she would not even know?

A sickening sense of bitter impotence a.s.sailed her. There was nothing she could do but wait--wait helplessly until either his return, or endless hours of solitude, told her whether he had won or lost the fight against that grey, hungry waste of water. A strangled sob burst from her throat.

"Oh, G.o.d! Let him come back to me! Let him come back!"

The creak of straining rowlocks and the even plash of dripping oars, m.u.f.fled by the numbing curtain of the fog, broke through the silence.

Then followed the gentle thudding noise of a boat as it b.u.mped against the jetty and a voice--Garth's voice--calling.

She rose from the ground where she had flung herself and came to him, peering at him with eyes that looked like two dark stains in the whiteness of her face.

"I though you were dead," she said dully. "Drowned. I mean--oh, of course, it's the same thing, isn't it?" And she laughed, the shrill, choking laughter of overwrought nerves.

Garth observed her narrowly.

"No, I've very much alive, thanks," he said, speaking in deliberately cheerful and commonplace accents. "But you look half frozen. Why on earth didn't you put the rug round you? Get into the boat and let me tuck you up."

She obeyed pa.s.sively, and in a few minutes they were slipping over the water as rapidly as the mist permitted.

Sara was very silent throughout the return journey. For hours, for an eternity it seemed, she had been in the grip of a consuming terror, culminating at last in the conviction that Garth had failed to make the further sh.o.r.e. And now, with the knowledge of his safety, the reaction from the tension of acute anxiety left her utterly flaccid and exhausted, incapable of anything more than a half-stunned acceptance of the miracle.

When at last the Selwyns' house was reached, it was with a manifest effort that she roused herself sufficiently to answer Garth's quiet apology for the misadventure of the afternoon.

"If it was your fault that we got stranded on the island," she said, summoning up rather a wan smile, "it is, at all events, thanks to you that I shall be sleeping under a respectable roof, instead of scandalizing half the neighbourhood!" She paused, then went on uncertainly: "'Thank you' seems ludicrously inadequate for all you've done--"

"I've done nothing," he interrupted brusquely.

"You risked your life--"

An impatient exclamation broke from him.

"And if I did? I risked something of no value, I a.s.sure you--to myself, or any one else."

Then he added practically--

"Get Jane Crab to give you some hot soup and go to bed. You look absolutely done."

Sara nodded, smiling more naturally.

"I will," she said. "Good-night, then." She held out her hand a little nervously.

He took it, holding it closely in his, and looking down at her with the strange expression of a man who strives to impress upon his mind the picture of a face he may not see again, so that in a lonely future he shall find comfort in remembering.

"Good-bye!" he said, at last, very gravely. Then a queer little smile, half-bitter, half-tender, curving his lips, he added: "I shall always have this one day for which to thank whatever G.o.ds there be."

CHAPTER XII

A REVOKE

Sara lay long awake that night. Under Jane Crab's bluff and kindly ministrations, her feeling of utter bodily exhaustion had given place to an exquisite sense of mental and physical well-being, and, freed from the shackles of material discomfort, her thoughts flew backward over the events of the day.

All _was_ well--gloriously, blessedly well! There could be no misunderstanding that brief, pa.s.sionate moment when Garth had held her in his arms; and the blinding anguish of those hours which had followed, when she had not known whether he were alive or dead, had shown her her own heart.

Love had come to her--the love which Patrick Lovell had called the one altogether good and perfect gift--and with it came a tremulous unrest, a shy sweetness of desire that crept through all her veins like the burning of a swift flame.

She felt no fear or shame of love. Sara would never be afraid of life and its demands, and it seemed to her a matter of little moment that Garth had made no conventional avowal of his love. She did not, on that account, pretend, even to herself, as many women would have done, that her own heart was untouched, but recognized and accepted the fact that love had come to her with absolute simplicity.

Nor did she doubt or question Garth's feeling for her. She _knew_, in every fibre of her being, that he loved her, and she was ready to wait quite patiently and happily the few hours that must elapse before he could come to her and tell her so.

Yet she longed, with a woman's natural longing, to hear him say in actual words all that his whole att.i.tude towards her had implied, craved for the moment when the beloved voice should ask for that surrender which in spirit she had already made.

She rose early, with a ridiculous feeling that it would bring the time a little nearer, and Jane Crab stared in amazement when she appeared downstairs while yet the preparations for breakfast were hardly in progress.

"You're no worse for your outing, then, Miss Tennant," she observed, adding shrewdly: "I'd as lief think you were the better for it."

Sara laughed, flus.h.i.+ng a little. Somehow she did not mind the humorous suspicion of the truth that twinkled in Jane's small, boot-b.u.t.ton eyes, but she sincerely hoped that the rest of the household would not prove equally discerning.

She need have had no fears on that score. Dr. Selwyn had barely time to swallow a cup of coffee and a slice of toast before rus.h.i.+ng off in response to an urgent summons from a patient, whilst Molly seemed entirely preoccupied with the contents of a letter, in an unmistakably masculine handwriting, which had come for her by the morning's post.

As for Mrs. Selwyn, she was always too much engrossed in a.n.a.lyzing the symptoms of some fresh ailment she believed she had acquired to be sensible of the emotional atmosphere of those around her. Her own sensations--whether she were too hot, or not quite hot enough, whether her new tabloids were suiting her or whether she had not slept as well as usual--occupied her entire horizon.

This morning she was distressed because the hairpins Sara had purchased for her the previous day differed slightly in shape from those she was in the habit of using.