The Hermit of Far End Part 38

"Perhaps not. But if--supposing the man proves to have a wife already?

He might be separated from her; Sara doesn't seem to know much about him. Or he may have a wife in a lunatic asylum who is likely to live for the next forty years. What then? Will Sara never marry if--if there were a circ.u.mstance like that--a really insurmountable obstacle?"

"No, I don't believe she will. I don't think she would wish to. If he loves her and she him, spiritually they would be bound to one another--lovers. And just the circ.u.mstance of his being tied to another woman would make no difference to Sara's point of view. She goes beyond material things--or the mere physical side of love."

"Then there is no chance for you unless Sara learns to _unlove_ this man?"

Tim regarded her with faint amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Mother, do you think you could learn to unlove me--or my father?"

She laughed a little.

"You have me there, Tim," she acknowledged. "But"--hesitating a little--"Sara knows so little of the man, apparently, that she may have formed a mistaken estimate of his character. Perhaps he is not really the--the ideal individual she has pictured him."

Tim smiled.

"You are a very transparent person, mother mine," he said indulgently.

"But I'm afraid your hopes of finding that the idol has feet of clay are predestined to disappointment."

"Have you met the man?" asked Elisabeth sharply.

"I do not even know his name. But I should imagine him a man of big, fine qualities."

"Since you don't know him, you can hardly p.r.o.nounce an opinion."

A whimsical smile, touched with sadness, flitted across Tim's face.

"I know Sara," was all he said.

"Sara is given to idealizing the people she cares for," rejoined Elisabeth.

She spoke quietly, but her expression was curiously intent. It was as though she were gathering together her forces, concentrating them towards some definite purpose, veiled in the inscrutable depths of those strange eyes of hers.

"I find it difficult to forgive her," she said at last.

"That's not like you, mother."

"It is--just like me," she responded, a tone of half-tender mockery in her voice. "Naturally I find it difficult to forgive the woman who has hurt my son."

Tim answered her out of the fullness of the queer new wisdom with which love had endowed him.

"A man would rather be hurt by the woman he loves than humoured by the woman he doesn't love," he said quietly.

And Elisabeth, understanding, held her peace.

She had been very controlled, very wise and circ.u.mspect in her dealing with Tim, conscious of raw-edged nerves that would bear but the lightest of handling. But it was another woman altogether who, half-an-hour later, faced Geoffrey Durward in the seclusion of his study.

The two moving factors in Elisabeth's life had been, primarily, her love for her husband, and, later on, her love for Tim, and into this later love was woven all the pa.s.sionately protective instinct of the maternal element. She was the type of woman who would have plucked the feathers from an archangel's wing if she thought they would contribute to her son's happiness; and now, realizing that the latter was threatened by the fact that his love for Sara had failed to elicit a responsive fire, she felt bitterly resentful and indignant.

"I tell you, Geoffrey," she declared in low, forceful tones, "she _shall_ marry Tim--_she shall_! I will not have his beautiful young life marred and spoilt by the caprices of any woman."

Major Durward looked disturbed.

"My dear, I shouldn't call Sara in the least a capricious woman. She knows her own heart--"

"So does Tim!" broke in Elisabeth. "And, if I can compa.s.s it, he shall have his heart's desire."

Her husband shook his head.

"You cannot force the issue, my dear."

"Can I not? There's little a woman _cannot_ do for husband or child! I tell you, Geoffrey--for you, or for Tim, to give you pleasure, to buy you happiness, I would sacrifice anybody in the world!"

She stood in front of him, her beautiful eyes glowing, and her voice was all shaken and a-thrill with the tumult of emotion that had gripped her. There was something about her which suggested a tigress on the defensive--at bay, s.h.i.+elding her young.

Durward looked at her with kind, adoring eyes.

"That's beautiful of you, darling," he replied gently. "But it's a dangerous doctrine. And I know that, really, you're far too tender-hearted to sacrifice a fly."

Elisabeth regarded him oddly.

"You don't know me, Geoffrey," she said very slowly. "No man knows a woman, really--not all her thoughts." And had Major Durward, honest fellow, realized the volcanic force of pa.s.sion hidden behind the tense inscrutability of his wife's lovely face, he would have been utterly confounded. We do not plumb the deepest depths even of those who are closest to us.

Civilisation had indeed forced the turgid river to run within the narrow channels hewn by established custom, but, released from the bondage of convention, the soul of Elisabeth Durward was that of sheer primitive woman, and the pivot of all her actions her love for her mate and for the man-child she had borne him.

Once, years ago, she had sacrificed justice, and honour, and a man's faith in womanhood on that same pitiless altar of love. But the story of that sacrifice was known only to herself and one other--and that other was not Durward.

CHAPTER XXII

LOVE'S SACRAMENT

A full week had elapsed since the night of that eventful journey in pursuit of Molly, and from the moment when Garth had given Sara into the safe keeping of Jane Crab till the moment when he came upon her by the pergola at Rose Cottage, perched on the top of a ladder, engaged in tying back the exuberance of a Crimson Rambler, they had not met.

And now, as he halted at the foot of the ladder, Sara was conscious that her spirits had suddenly bounded up to impossible heights at the sight of the lean, dark face upturned to her.

"The Lavender Lady and Miles are pottering about in the greenhouse," she announced explanatorily, waving her hand in the direction of a distant glimmer of gla.s.s beyond the high box hedge which flanked the rose-garden.

"Are they?" Trent, thus arrested in the progress of his search for his host and hostess, seemed entirely indifferent as to whether it were ever completed or not. He leaned against one of the rose-wreathed pillars of the pergola and gazed negligently in the direction Sara indicated.

"How is Miss Molly?" he asked.

Sara twinkled.

"She is just beginning to discard sackcloth and ashes for something more becoming," she informed him gravely.

"That's good. Are you--are you all right after your tumble? I'm making these kind inquiries because, since it was my car out of which you elected to fall, I feel a sense of responsibility."