The Hermit of Far End Part 19

"Where to place me--whether among the sheep or the goats. You were dissecting my character, weren't you?"

He waited for an answer, but Sara maintained an embarra.s.sed silence. He had divined the subject of her thoughts too nearly.

He laughed.

"The decision has gone against me, I see. Well, I'm not surprised. I've certainly treated you with a rather rough-and-ready kind of courtesy.

You must try to pardon me. A hermit gets little practice at entertaining angels unawares."

Sara, recovering her composure, regarded him placidly.

"You might find many opportunities for practice in Monkshaven," she suggested.

"In Monkshaven? Are you trying to suggest that I should ingratiate myself with the leading lights of local society?"

She nodded.

"Why not?"

He laughed as though genuinely amused.

"Perhaps you've not been here long enough yet to discover that the amiable inhabitants of Monkshaven look upon me as a sort of cross between a madman and a criminal who has eluded justice."

"Whose fault is that?"

"Oh, mine, I suppose"--quickly. "But it doesn't matter--since I regard them as a set of harmless, conventional fools. No, thank you, I've no intention of making friends with the people of Monkshaven."

"They're not all conventional. Some of them are rather interesting--Mrs.

Maynard, for instance, and the Herricks."

He gave her a keen glance.

"Do you know the Herricks?"

"Yes. Why don't you go to see them sometimes? Miles--"

"Oh, Miles Herrick's all right. I know that," he interrupted.

"It's very bad for you to cut yourself off from the rest of the world, as you do," persisted Sara sagely.

He was silent for a while, his eyes intent on the strip of road that stretched in front of him, and when he spoke again it was to draw her attention to the effect of the cloud shadows moving across the sea, exactly as though nothing of greater interest had been under discussion.

She began to recognize as a trick of his this abrupt method of terminating a conversation that for some reason did not please him.

It was as conclusive as when the man at the other end of the 'phone suddenly "rings off" without any preliminary warning.

By this time they had reached the steep hill that approached directly to the Selwyns' house, and a couple of minutes later, Trent brought the car to a standstill at the gate.

"You have nothing to thank me for," he said, curtly dismissing her expression of thanks as they stood together on the path. "It is I who should be grateful to you. My opportunities of social intercourse"--drily--"are somewhat limited."

"Extend them, then, as I advised," retorted Sara.

"Do you wish me to?" he asked swiftly, and his intent eyes sought her face with a sudden hawk-like glance.

Her own eyes fell. She was conscious, all at once, of an inexplicable agitation, a tremulous confusion that made it seem a physical impossibility to reply.

But he still waited for his answer, and, at last, with an effort she mastered the nervousness that had seized her.

"I--I--yes, I do wish it," she said faintly.

CHAPTER X

A MEETING AT ROSE COTTAGE

It had not taken Sara very long to cut a niche for herself in the household at Sunnyside. In a dwelling where the master of the house was away the greater part of the day, the mistress a chronic invalid, and the daughter a beautiful young thing whose mind was intent upon "colour" and "atmosphere," and altogether hazy concerning the practical necessities of housekeeping, the advent of any one possessing even half Sara's intelligent efficiency would have been provocative of many reforms.

d.i.c.k Selwyn, pushed to the uttermost limits of his strength by the demands of his wide practice and by the nervous strain of combating his wife's incessant fretfulness, quickly learned to turn to Sara for that sympathetic understanding which had hitherto been denied him in his home-life.

He had, of course, never again discussed with her his wife's incurable self-absorption, as on the day of her arrival, when the painful scene created by Mrs. Selwyn had practically forced him into some sort of explanation, but Sara's quick grasp of the situation had infinitely simplified matters, and by devoting a considerable amount of her own time to the entertainment of the captious invalid, and thus keeping her in a good humour, she contrived to save Selwyn many a bad half-hour of recrimination and complaint.

Sara was essentially a good "comrade," as Patrick Lovell had recognized in the old days at Barrow Court, and instinctively Selwyn came to share with her the pin-p.r.i.c.k worries that dog a man's footsteps in this vale of woe, learning to laugh at them; and even his apprehensions concerning Molly's ultimate development and welfare were lessened by the knowledge that Sara was at hand.

Molly herself seemed to float through life like a big, beautiful moth, sailing serenely along, and now and then blundering into things, but never learning by experience the dangers of such blunders. One day, in the course of her inconsequent path through life, she would probably flutter too near the attractive blaze of some perilous fire, just as a moth flies against the flame of a candle and singes its frail, soft wings in the process.

It was of this that Sara was inwardly afraid, realizing, perhaps more clearly than the girl's overworked and sometimes absent-minded father, the risks attaching to her temperament.

Of late, Molly had manifested a certain moodiness and irritability very unlike her usual facile sweetness of disposition, and Sara was somewhat nonplussed to account for it. Finally, she approached the matter by way of a direct inquiry.

"What's wrong, Molly?"

Molly was hunched up in the biggest and shabbiest armchair by the fire, smoking innumerable cigarettes and flinging them away half-finished. At Sara's question, she looked up with a shade of defiance in her eyes.

"Why should anything be wrong?" she countered, obviously on the defensive.

"I don't know, I'm sure," responded Sara good-humouredly. "But I'm pretty certain there is something. Come, out with it, you great baby!"

Molly sighed, smoked furiously for a moment, and then tossed her cigarette into the fire.

"Well, yes," she admitted at last. "There is--something wrong." She rose and stood looking across at Sara like a big, perplexed child. "I--I owe some money."

Sara was conscious of a distinct shock.

"How much?" she asked sharply.

"It's--it's rather a lot--twenty pounds!"

"Twenty pounds!" This was certainly a large sum for Molly--whose annual dress allowance totaled very little more--to be in debt. "What on earth have you been up to? Buying a new trousseau? Where do you owe it--Carr & Bishop's?"--mentioning the princ.i.p.al draper's shop in Oldhampton.