The Hermit of Far End Part 6

Everything in the house seemed to present her grief to her anew, from some fresh angle, forcing comparison of what had been with what was--the wheeled chair, standing vacant in one of the lobbies, the tobacco jar perched upon the chimney-piece, the pot of heliotrope--Patrick's favourite blossom--scenting the library with its fragrance.

And now his room--empty, swept, and garnished like any one of the score or so of spare bedrooms in the house!

With an effort, Sara forced herself to enter it. Crossing to the window, she pulled a chair up to the Chippendale bureau and unlocked it.

Then she drew out the sliding desk supports and laid back the flap of polished mahogany that served as a writing-table. She was conscious of a fleeting sense of admiration for the fine-grained wood and for the smooth "feel" of the old bra.s.s handles, worn by long usage, then her whole attention was riveted by the three things which were all the contents of the desk--a packet of letters, stained and yellowing with age and tied together with a broad, black ribbon, a jeweller's velvet case stamped with faded gilt lettering, and an envelope addressed to herself in Patrick's handwriting.

Very gently, with that tender reverence we accord to the sad little possessions of our dead, Sara gathered them up and carried them to her own sitting-room. She felt she could not stay to examine them in that strangely empty, lifeless room that had been Patrick's; the terrible, chill silence of it seemed to beat against the very heart of her.

Laying aside the jeweller's case and the package of letters, she opened the envelope which bore her name and drew out a folded sheet of paper, covered with Patrick's small, characteristic writing. Impulsively she brushed it with her lips, then, leaning back in her chair, began to read, her expression growing curiously intent as she absorbed the contents of the letter. Once she smiled, and more than once a sudden rush of unbidden tears blurred the closely written lines in front of her.

"When you receive this, little pal Sara"--ran the letter--"I shall have done with this world. Except that it means leaving you, my dear, I shall be glad to go, for I'm a very tired man. So, when it comes, you must try not to grudge me my 'long leave.' But there are several things you ought to know, and which I want you to know, yet I have never been able to bring myself to speak of them to you. To tell you about them meant digging into the past--and very often there is a hot coal lingering in the heart of a dead fire that is apt to burn the fingers of whoever rakes out the ashes. Frankly, then, I funked it. But now the time has come when I can't put it off any longer.

"Little old pal, have you ever wondered why I loved you so much--why you stood so close to my heart? I used to tease you and say it was because we were no relation to each other, didn't I? If you had been really my niece, proper respect (on your part, of course, for your aged uncle!) and the barrier of a generation would have set us the usual miles apart.

But there was never anything of that with us, was there? I bullied you, I know, when you needed it, but we were always comrades. And to me, you were something more than a comrade, something almost sacred and always adorable--the child of the woman I loved.

"For we should have been married, Sara, your mother and I, had I not been a poor man. We were engaged, but at that time, I was only a younger son, with a younger son's meager portion, and the prospect of my falling heir to Barrow seemed of all things the most improbable. And Pauline Malincourt, your mother, had been taught to abhor the idea of living on small means--trained to regard her beauty and breeding as marketable a.s.sets, to go to the highest bidder. For, although her parents came of fine old stock--there's no better blood in England than the Malincourt strain, my dear--they were deadly hard-up. So hard-up, that when they died--as the result of a carriage accident which occurred a week after Pauline's marriage--they left nothing behind them but debts which your father liquidated.

"Of your father, Caleb Tennant, the millionaire, I will not write, seeing that, after all, you are his child. It is enough to say that he was a hard man, and that he and your mother led a very unhappy life together, so unhappy that at last she left him, choosing rather to live in utter poverty than remain with him. He never forgave her for leaving him, and when he died, he willed every penny he possessed to some scoundrelly cousin of his--who is presumably enjoying the inheritance which should have been yours.

"That is your family history, my dear, and it is right that you should know it--and know what you have to fight against. To be a Malincourt is at once to have a curse and a blessing hung round your neck. The Malincourts were originally of French extraction--descendants of the _haute n.o.blesse_ of old France--cursed with the devil's own pride and pa.s.sionate self-will, and blessed with looks and brains and charm above the average. They never bend; they break sooner. And I think you've got the lot, Sara--the full inheritance.

"Your mother was a true Malincourt. She could not bend, and when things went awry, she broke.

"You must never think hardly of her, for she had been brought up in that atmosphere of almost desperate pride which is too frequently the curse of the poverty-stricken aristocrat. She made a ghastly mistake, and paid for it afterwards every day of her life. And she was urged into it by her father, who declined to recognize me in any way, and by her mother, who made her life at home a simple h.e.l.l--as a clever society woman can make of any young girl's life if she chooses.

"Just before she died, she sent for me and gave you into my care, begging me to s.h.i.+eld you from spoiling your life as she had spoiled hers.

"I've done what I could. You are at least independent. No one can drive you with the spur of poverty into selling yourself, as she was driven.

But there are a hundred other rocks in life against which you may wreck your happiness, and remember, in the long run, you sink or swim by your own force of character.

"And when love comes to you, _as it will come_,--for no woman with your eyes and your mouth ever yet lived a loveless life!--never forget that it is the biggest thing in the world, the one altogether good and perfect gift. Don't let any twopenny-halfpenny considerations of worldly advantage influence you, nor the t.i.ttle-tattle of other folks, and even if it seems that something insurmountable lies between you and the fulfillment of love, go over it, or round it, or through it! If it's a real love, your faith must be big enough to remove the mountains in the way--or to go over them.

"The package of letters you will find in the bureau were those your mother wrote to me during the few short weeks we belonged to each other.

I'm a sentimental old fool, and I've never been able to bring myself to burn them. Will you do this for me?

"In the little velvet case you will find her miniature, which I give to you. It is very like her--and like you, too, for you resemble her wonderfully in appearance. Often, to look at you has made my heart ache; sometimes it almost seemed as if the years had rolled back and Pauline herself stood before me.

"And now that the order for release is on its way to me, it is rather wonderful to reflect that in a few weeks--a few days, perhaps--I shall be seeing her again. . . .

"Good-bye, little pal of mine. We've had some good times together, haven't we?

"Your devoted, PATRICK."

Sara sat very still, the letter clasped in her hand. She had always secretly believed that some long-dead romance lay behind Patrick's bachelorhood, but she had never suspected that her own mother had been the woman he had loved.

The knowledge illumined all the past with a fresh light, investing it with a tender, reminiscent sentiment. It was easy now to understand the almost idyllic atmosphere Patrick had infused into their life together.

Sara recognized it as the outcome of a love and fidelity as beautiful and devoted as it is rare. Patrick's love for her mother had partaken of the enduring qualities of the great pa.s.sions of history. Paolo and Francesca, Abelard and Heloise--even they could have known no deeper, no more lasting love than that of Patrick Lovell for Pauline.

The love-letters of the dead woman lay on Sara's lap, still tied together with the black ribbon which Patrick's fingers must have knotted round them. There were only six of them--half-a-dozen memories of a love that had come hopelessly to grief--tangible memories which her lover had never had the heart to destroy.

Sara handled them caressingly, these few, pathetic records of a bygone pa.s.sion, and at length, with hands that shook a little, she removed the ribbon that bound them together. Where it had lain, preserving the strip of paper beneath it from contact with the dust, bands of white traversed the faint discoloration which time had worked upon the outermost envelopes--mutely witnessing to the long years that had pa.s.sed away since the letters had been penned in the first rapturous glow of hot young love.

Slowly, with a rather wistful sense of regret that it must needs be done, Sara dropped them one by one, unread, into the fire, and watched them flare up with a sudden spurt of flame, then curl and shrivel into dead, grey ash--those last links with the romance of his youth which Patrick had treasured so long and faithfully.

She wondered what manner of woman her mother could have been to inspire so great a love that even her own unfaith had failed to sour it.

Her childish recollection, blurred by the pa.s.sage of years, was of a white-faced, rather haggard-looking woman with deep-set, haunted eyes and a bitter mouth, but whose rare smile, when it came, was so enchanting that it wiped out, for the moment, all remembrance of the harsh lines which hardened her face when in repose.

With eager hands the girl picked up the little velvet case that held the miniature, and snapped open the lid. The painting within, rimmed in old paste, was of a girl in her early twenties. The face was oval, with a small, pointed chin and a vivid red mouth, curling up at the corners.

There was little colour in the cheeks, and the black hair and extraordinarily dark eyes served to enhance the creamy pallor of the skin. It was not altogether an English face; the cheek-bones were too high, and there was a definiteness of colouring, a decisive sharpness of outline in the piquant features, not often found in a purely English type.

Seen thus, the face looked strangely familiar to Sara, and yet no memory of hers could recall her mother as she must have been at the time this portrait was painted.

The miniature still in her hand, she moved hesitatingly to a mirror, so placed that the light from the window fell full upon her as she faced it. In a moment the odd sense of familiarity was explained. There, looking back at her from the mirror, was the same sharply angled face, the same warm ivory pallor of complexion, accentuated by raven hair and black, sombre eyes. What was it Patrick had written? "_No woman with your eyes and your mouth ever yet lived a loveless life._"

With a curious deliberation, Sara examined the features in question. The eyes were long, and the lids, opaquely white and fringed with jet-black lashes, slanted downwards a little at the outer corners, bestowing a curiously intense expression, such as one sometimes sees in the eyes of an actor, and the mouth was the same vividly scarlet mouth of the face in the miniature, at once pa.s.sionate and sensitive.

The French strain in the Malincourt family had reproduced itself indubitably, both in the appearance of Pauline and of Pauline's daughter. Would the mother's tragedy, fruit of her singular charm and of a pride which had accorded love but a secondary place in her scheme of life, also be re-enacted in the case of the daughter? It seemed almost as though Patrick must have had pre-vision of some like fiery ordeal though which his "little old pal" might have to pa.s.s, so urgent had been the warning he had uttered.

Sara s.h.i.+vered, as if she, too, felt a prescience of coming disaster. It was as though a shadow had fallen across her path, a shadow of which the substance lay hidden, shrouded in the mists which veil the future.

CHAPTER IV

ELISABETH--AND HER SON

The entrance to Barrow Court was somewhat forbidding. A flight of shallow granite steps, flanked by bal.u.s.trades of the same austere substance, terminating in huge, rough-hewn pillars, led up to an enormous door of ancient oak, studded with nails--destined, it would seem, to resist the onslaught of an armed mult.i.tude. The sternness of its aspect, when the great door was closed, seemed to add an increased warmth to the suggestion of welcome it conveyed when, as now, it was swung hospitably open, emitting a ruddy glow of firelight from the hall beyond.

Sara was standing at the top of the granite steps, waiting to greet the Durwards, whose approach was already heralded by the humming of a motor far down the avenue.

A faint regret disquieted her. This was the last--the very last--time she would stand at the head of those stairs in the capacity of a hostess welcoming her guests; and even now her position there was merely an honorary one! In a few minutes, when Mrs. Durward should step across the threshold, it was she who would be transformed into the hostess, while Sara would have to take her place as a simple guest in the house which for twelve years had been her home.

Thrusting the thought determinedly aside, she watched the big limousine swing smoothly round the curve of the drive and pull up in front of the house, and there was no trace of reluctance in the smile of greeting which she summoned up for Major Durward's benefit as he alighted and came towards her with outstretched hand.

"But where are the others?" asked Sara, seeing that the chauffeur immediately headed the car for the garage.

"They're coming along on foot," explained Durward. "Elisabeth declared they should see nothing of the place cooped up in the car, so they got out at the lodge and are walking across the park."

Sara preceded him into the hall, and they stood chatting together by the tea-table until the sound of voices announced the arrival of the rest of the party.

"Here they are!" exclaimed Durward, hurrying forward to meet them, while Sara followed a trifle hesitatingly, conscious of a sudden accession of shyness.

Notwithstanding the charming letter she had received from Mrs. Durward, begging her to remain at Barrow Court exactly as long as it suited her, now that the moment had come which would actually install the new mistress of the Court, she began to feel as though her continued presence there might be regarded rather in the light of an intrusion.

Mrs. Durward's letter might very well have been dictated only by a certain superficial politeness, or, even, solely at the instance of her husband, and it was conceivable that the writer would be none too pleased that her invitation had been so literally interpreted.

In the course of a few seconds of time Sara contrived to work herself up into a condition bordering upon panic. And then a very low contralto voice, indescribably sweet, and with an audacious ripple of laughter running through it, swept all her scruples into the rubbish heap. There was no doubting the sincerity of the speaker.

"It was so nice of you not to run away, Miss Tennant." As she spoke, Mrs. Durward shook hands cordially. "Poor Geoffrey couldn't help being the heir, you know, and if you'd refused to stay, he'd have felt just like the villain in a cinema film. You've saved us from becoming the crawling, self-reproachful wretches." Then she turned and beckoned to her son. "This is Tim," she said simply, but the quality of her voice was very much as though she had announced: "This is the sun, and moon, and stars."