The Hermit of Far End Part 24

"Very well," she said lightly, disengaging her hand. "I'll forgive you, and you shall tell me about Friar Anselmo." She lifted her eyes to the leering, sinister face that protruded from the Devil's Hood. "As, presumably, from his choice of a profession, he, too, had no love for women, you ought to enjoy telling his story," she added maliciously.

Garth's eyes twinkled.

"As a matter of fact, it was love o' women that was Anselmo's undoing,"

he said. "In spite of his vows, he fell in love--with a very beautiful Spanish lady, and to make matters worse, if that were possible, the lady was possessed of a typically jealous Spanish husband, who, on discovering how the land lay, killed his wife, and would have killed Anselmo as well, but that he escaped to England. The vessel on which he sailed was wrecked at the foot of what has been called, ever since, the Monk's Cliff; but Anselmo himself succeeded in swimming ash.o.r.e, and spent the remainder of his life at Monkshaven, doing penance for the mistakes of his earlier days."

"He chose a charming place to repent in," said Sara, her eyes wandering to the distant bay, where the quaint little town straggled picturesquely up the hill that sloped away from the coast.

"Yes," responded Garth slowly, "it's not a bad place--to repent in. . . .

It would be a better place still--to love and be happy in."

There was a brooding melancholy in his tones, and Sara, hearing it, spoke very gently.

"I hope you will find it--like that," she said.

"I?" He laughed hardly. "No! Those gifts of the G.o.ds are not for such as I. The husks are my portion. If it were not so"--his voice deepened to a sudden urgent note that moved her strangely--"if it were not so--"

As though in spite of himself, his arms moved gropingly towards her.

Then, with a muttered exclamation, he turned away and sprang hastily to his feet.

"Let us go back," he said abruptly, and Sara, shaken by his vehemence, rose obediently, and they began to retrace their steps.

It had grown much colder. The sun hung low in the horizon, and the deceptive warmth of mid-afternoon had given place to the chill dampness in the atmosphere. Half unconsciously, feeling that the time must have slipped away more rapidly than she had suspected, Sara quickened her steps, Garth striding silently at her side. Presently the little wooden jetty came into view once more. It bore a curiously bare, deserted aspect, the waves riding and falling sluggishly on either side of its black, tarred planking, Sara stared at it incredulously, then an exclamation of sheer dismay burst from her lips.

"The boat! Look! It's gone!"

"_Gone?_" Garth's eyes sought the landing-stage, then swept the vista of grey-water ahead of them.

"_d.a.m.n!_" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed forcibly. "She's got adrift!"

A brown speck, bobbing maddeningly up and down in the distance and momentarily drifting further and further out to sea on the ebbing tide, was all that could be seen of the _Betsy Anne_.

An involuntary chuckle broke from Sara.

"Marooned!" she exclaimed. "How amusing!"

"Amusing?" Trent looked at her with a concerned expression. "It might be, if it were eleven o'clock in the morning. But it's the wrong end of the day. It will be dark before long." He paused, then asked swiftly: "Does any one at Sunnyside know where you are this afternoon?"

"No. The doctor and Molly were both out to lunch--and you know we only planned this trip this morning. I haven't seen them since. Why do you ask?"

"Because, if they know, they'd send over in search of us if we didn't turn up in the course of the next hour or so. But if they don't know where you are, we stand an excellent chance of spending the night here."

The gravity of what had first struck her as merely an amusing _contretemps_ suddenly presented itself to Sara.

"Oh!--!" She drew her breath in sharply. "What--what on earth shall we do?"

"Do?" Garth spoke with grim force. "Why, you must be got off the island somehow. If not, you're fair game for every venomous tongue in the town."

"Would any one hear us from the sh.o.r.e if we shouted?" she suggested.

He shook his head.

"No. The sound would carry in the opposite direction to-day."

"Then what _can_ we do?"

By this time the manifest anxiety in Trent's face was reflected in her own. The possibility that they might be compelled to spend the night on Devil's Hood Island was not one that could be contemplated with equanimity, for Sara had no illusions whatever as to the charitableness of the view the world at large would take of such an episode--however accidental its occurrence. Unfortunately, essential innocence is frequently but a poor tool wherewith to scotch a scandal.

"There is only one thing to be done," said Garth at last, after fruitlessly scanning the waters for any stray fishing-boat that might be pa.s.sing. "I must swim across, and then row back and take you off."

"Swim across?" Sara regarded the distance between the island and the sh.o.r.e with consternation. "You couldn't possibly do it. It's too far."

"Just under a mile."

"But you would have the tide against you," she urged. The current off the coast ran with dangerous rapidity between the mainland and the island, and more than one strong swimmer, as Sara knew, had lost his life struggling against it.

She looked across to the further sh.o.r.e again, and all at once it seemed impossible to let Garth make the attempt.

"No! no! You can't go!" she exclaimed.

"You wouldn't be nervous at being alone here?" he asked doubtfully.

She stamped her foot.

"No! Of course not! But--oh! Don't you see? It's madness to think of swimming across with the tide against you! You could never do it. You might get cramp--Oh! Anything might happen! You shan't go!"

She caught his arm impetuously, her eyes dilating with the sudden terror that had laid hold of her. But he was obdurate.

"Look there," he said, pointing to a faint haze thickening the atmosphere. "Do you see the mist coming up? Very soon it will be all over us, like a blanket, and there'd be no possibility of swimming across at all. I must go at once."

"But that only adds to the danger," she argued desperately. "The fog may come down sooner than you expect, and then you'd lose your bearings altogether."

"I must risk that," he answered grimly. "Don't you realize that it's impossible--_impossible_ for us to remain here?"

"No, I don't," she returned stubbornly. "It isn't worth such a frightful risk. Some one is sure to look for us eventually."

"'Eventually' might mean to-morrow morning"--drily--"and that would be just twelve hours too late. It's worth the risk fifty times over."

"It's not!"--pa.s.sionately. "Do you suppose I care two straws for the gossip of a parcel of spiteful old women?"

"Not at the moment, perhaps, but later you wouldn't be able to help it. What people think of you, what they say of you, can make all the difference between heaven and h.e.l.l." He spoke heavily, as though his words were weighted with some deadening memory. "And do you think I could bear to feel that I--_I_ had given people a handle for gossiping about you? I'd cut their tongues out first!" he added savagely.

He stripped off his coat, and, sitting down on a rock, began removing his boots, while Sara stood watching him in silence with big, sombre eyes.

Presently he stood up, bareheaded and barefooted. Below the lean, tanned face the column of his throat showed white as a woman's, while the thin silk of his vest revealed the powerful line of shoulder at its base. His keen eyes were gazing steadily across to the opposite sh.o.r.e, as though measuring the distance he must traverse, and as a chance shaft from the westering sun rested upon him, investing him momentarily in its radiance, there seemed something rather splendid about him--something very sure and steadfast and utterly without fear.

A sharp cry broke from Sara.