The Hermit of Far End Part 22

"It's my native village, miss, Monks'aven is. But I didn't think 'twas too 'healthy for me down here, back along"--grinning--"so I shifted to Fallowdene, where me grandmother lives. I came back here to marry Bessie Windrake' she've stuck to me like a straight 'un. But I didn't mean to get collared poachin' again. Me and Bess was goin' to live respectable.

'Twas her bein' ill and me out of work w'at did it."

"Let him go," said Sara, appealing to Trent. But he shook his head.

"I can't do that," he answered with decision.

"Not 'im, miss, 'e won't," broke in Brady. "'E's not the soft-'earted kind, isn't Mr. Trent."

Trent's brows drew together ominously.

"You won't mend matters by impudence, Brady," he said sharply. "Get along now"--releasing his hold of the man's arm--"but you'll hear of this again."

Brady shot away into the darkness like an arrow, probably chortling to himself that his captor had omitted to relieve him of the brace of rabbits he had poached; and Sara, turning again to Trent, renewed her plea for clemency.

But Trent remained adamant.

"Why shouldn't he stand his punishment like any other man?" he said.

"Well, if it's true that his wife is ill, and that he has been out of work--"

"Are you offering those facts as an excuse for dishonesty?" asked Trent drily.

Sara smiled.

"Yes, I believe I am," she acknowledged.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Like nine-tenths of your s.e.x, you are fiercely Tory in theory and a rank socialist in practice," he grumbled.

"Well, I'm not sure that that isn't a very good working basis to go on,"

she retorted.

As they stood in the porch at Sunnyside, she made yet one more effort to smooth matters over for the evil-doer, but Trent's face still showed unrelenting in the light that streamed out through the open doorway.

"Ask me something else," he said. "I would do anything to please you, Sara, except"--with a sudden tense decision--"except interfere with the course of justice. Let every man pay the penalty for his own sin."

"That's a hard creed," objected Sara.

"Hard?" He shrugged his shoulders. "Perhaps it is. But"--grimly--"it's the only creed I believe in. Good-night"--he held out his hand abruptly.

"I'm sorry I can't do as you ask about Jim Brady."

Before Sara could reply, he was striding away down the path, and a minute later the darkness had hidden him from view.

CHAPTER XI

TWO ON AN ISLAND

Sara's conviction that Garth Trent would not be easily turned from any decision that he might take had been confirmed very emphatically over the matter of Black Brady.

Notwithstanding the fact that the man's story of his wife's illness proved to be perfectly genuine, Trent persisted that he must take his punishment, and all that Sara could do by way of mitigation was to promise Brady that she would pay the amount of any fine which might be imposed.

Brady, however, was not optimistic.

"There'll be no opshun of a fine, miss," he told her. "I've a-been up before the gen'lemen too many times"--grinning. "But if so be you'd give an eye to Bessie here, whiles I'm in quod, I'd take it very kind of you."

His forecast summed up the situation with lamentable accuracy. No option of a fine was given, and during the brief s.p.a.ce that the prison doors closed upon him, Sara saw to the welfare of his invalid wife, thereby winning the undying devotion of Black Brady's curiously composite soul.

When he again found himself at liberty, she induced the frankly unwilling proprietor of the Cliff Hotel--the only hotel of any pretension to which Monkshaven could lay claim--to take him into his employment as an odd-job man. How she accomplished this feat it is impossible to say, but the fact remains that she did accomplish it, and perhaps Jane Crab delved to the root of the matter in the terse comment which the circ.u.mstances elicited from her: "Miss Tennant has a way with her that 'ud make they stone sphinxes gallop round the desert if so be she'd a mind they should."

Apparently, however, the sphinx of Far End was compounded of even more adamantine substance than his feminine prototype, for he exhibited a mulish aversion to budging an inch--much less galloping--in the direction Sara had indicated as desirable.

The two quarreled vehemently over the matter, and a glacial atmosphere of hostility prevailed between them during the period of Black Brady's incarceration.

Garth, undeniably the victor, was the first to open peace negotiations, and a few days subsequent to Brady's release from prison, he waylaid Sara in the town.

She was preoccupied with numerous small, unnecessary commissions to be executed for Mrs. Selwyn at half-a-dozen different shops, and she would have pa.s.sed him by with a frosty little bow had he not halted in front of her and deliberately held out his hand.

"Good-morning!" he said, blithely disregarding the coolness of his reception. "Am I still in disgrace? Brady's been restored to the bosom of his family for at least five days now, you know."

Overhead, the sun was shining gloriously in an azure sky flecked with little bunchy white clouds like floating pieces of cotton-wool, while an April breeze, fragrant of budding leaf and blossom, rollicked up the street. It seemed almost as though the frolicsome atmosphere of spring had permeated even the sh.e.l.l of the hermit and got into his system, for there was something incorrigibly boyish and youthful about him this morning. His cheerful smile was infectious.

"Can't I be restored, too?" he asked

"Restored to what?" asked Sara, trying to resist the contagion of his good humour.

"Oh, well"--a faint shadow dimmed the sparkle in his eyes--"to the same old place I held before our squabble over Brady--just friends, Sara."

For a moment she hesitated. He had pitted his will against hers and won, hands down, and she felt distinctly resentful. But she knew that in a strange, unforeseen way their quarrel had hurt her inexplicably. She had hated meeting the cool, aloof expression of his eyes, and now, urged by some emotion of which she was, as yet, only dimly conscious, she capitulated.

"That's good," he said contentedly. "And you might just as well give in now as later," he added, smiling.

"All the same," she protested, "you're a bully."

"I know I am--I glory in it! But now, just to show that you really do mean to be friends again, will you let me row you across to Devil's Hood Island this afternoon? You told me once that you wanted to go there."

Sara considered the proposition for a moment, then nodded consent.

"Yes, I'll come," she said, "I should like to."

Devil's Hood Island was a chip off the mainland which had managed to keep its head above water when the gradually encroaching sea had stolen yet another mile from the coast. Sandy dunes, patched here and there with clumps of coa.r.s.e, straggling rushes, sloped upward from the rock-strewn sh.o.r.e to a big crag that crowned its further side--a curious natural formation which had given the island its name.

It was shaped like a great overhanging hood, out of which, crudely suggested by the configuration of the rock, peered a diabolical face, weather-worn to the smoothness of polished marble.

April was still doing her best to please, with blue skies and soft fragrant airs, when Garth gave a final push-off to the _Betsy Anne_, and bent to his oars as she skimmed out over the top of the waves with her nose towards Devil's Hood Island.

Sara, comfortably ensconced amid a nest of cushions in the stern of the boat, pointed to a square-shaped basket of quite considerable dimensions, tucked away beneath one of the seats.