The Hermit of Far End Part 66

She was still a very lovely woman, and it was easy to realize how well-nigh bewilderingly beautiful she must have been in her youth, easy to imagine how Garth--or Maurice Kennedy, as he must henceforth be recognized--worshipping her with a boy's headlong pa.s.sion, had agreed to let the judgment of the Court remain unchallenged and to shoulder the burden of another man's sin.

Probably he felt that, since he had lost her, nothing else mattered, and, with the reckless chivalry of youth, he never stopped to count the cost. He only knew that the woman he loved, whose beauty pierced him to the very soul, so that his vision was blurred by the sheer loveliness of her, demanded her happiness at his hands and that he must give it to her.

"I suppose you think there was no excuse for what I did," Elisabeth concluded, with something of appeal in her voice. "But I did not realize, then, quite all that I was taking from Maurice. I think that much must be granted me. . . . But I make no excuse for what I did afterwards. There is none. I did it deliberately. Maurice had won the woman Tim wanted, and I hoped that if he were utterly discredited, Sara would refuse to marry him, and thus the way would be open to Tim. So I made public the story of the court-martial which had sentenced Maurice.

Had it not been for that, I should have held my peace for ever about his having been cashiered. I--I owed him that much." She was silent a moment. Presently she raised her head and spoke in harsh, wrung accents.

"But I've been punished! G.o.d saw to that. What do you think it has meant to me to know that my husband--the man I worshipped--had been once a coward? It's true the world never knew it . . . but I knew it."

The agony of pride wounded in its most sacred place, the suffering of love that despises what it loves, yet cannot cease from loving, rang in her voice, and her haunted eyes--the eyes which had guarded their secret so invincibly--seemed to plead for comfort, for understanding.

It was Miles who answered that unspoken supplication.

"I think you need never feel shame again," he said very gently. "Major Durward's splendid death has more than wiped out that one mistake of his youth. Thank G.o.d he never knew it needed wiping out."

A momentary tranquility came into Elisabeth's face.

"No," she answered simply. "No, he never knew." Then the tide of bitter recollection surged over her once more, and she continued pa.s.sionately: "Oh yes, I've been punished! Day and night, day and night since the war began, I've lived in terror that the fear--his father's fear--might suddenly grip Tim out there in Flanders. I kept him out of the Army--because I was afraid. And then the war came, and he had to go.

Thank G.o.d--oh, thank G.o.d!--he never failed! . . . I suppose I am a bad woman--I don't know . . . I fought for my own love and happiness first, and afterwards for my son's. But, at least, I'm not bad enough to let Maurice go on bearing . . . what he has borne . . . now that he has saved Tim's life. He has given me the only thing . . . left to me . .

. of value in the whole world. In return, I can give him the one thing that matters to him--his good name. Henceforth Maurice is a free man."

"_What_ are you saying?"

The sharp, staccato question cut across Elisabeth's quiet, concentrated speech like a rapier thrust, snapping the strained attention of her listeners, who turned, with one accord, to see Kennedy himself standing at the threshold of the room, his eyes fastened on Elisabeth's face.

She met his glance composedly; on her lips a queer little smile which held an indefinable pathos and appeal.

"I am telling them the truth--at last, Maurice," she said calmly. "I have told them the true story of the court-martial."

"You--you have told them _that_?" he stammered. He was very pale. The sudden realization of all that her words implied seemed to overwhelm him.

"Yes." She rose and moved quietly to the door, then face to face with Kennedy, she halted. Her eyes rested levelly on his; in her bearing there was something aloofly proud--an undiminished stateliness, almost regal in its calm inviolability. "They know--now--all that I took from you. I shall not ask your forgiveness, Maurice . . . I don't expect it.

I sinned for my husband and my son--that is my only justification. I would do the same again."

Instinctively Maurice stood aside as she swept past him, her head unbowed, splendid even in her moment of surrender--almost, it seemed, unbeaten to the last.

For a moment there was a silence--palpitant, packed with conflicting emotion.

Then, with a little choking sob, Sara ran across the room to Maurice and caught his hands in hers, smiling whilst the tears streamed down her cheeks.

"Oh, my dear!" she cried brokenly. "Oh, my dear!"

CHAPTER x.x.xIX

HARVEST

"There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before; The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound; What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, So much good more . . ."

BROWNING.

"How can you prove it, Garth--Maurice, I mean?"--Selwyn corrected himself with a smile. "You'll need more than Mrs. Durward's confession to secure official reinstatement by the powers that be."

The clamour of joyful excitement and wonder and congratulation had spent itself at last, the Lavender Lady had shed a few legitimate tears, and now Selwyn voiced the more serious aspect of the matter.

It was Herrick who made answer.

"I have the necessary proofs," he said quietly. He had crossed to a bureau in the corner of the room, and now returned with a packet of papers in his hand.

"These," he pursued, "are from my brother Colin, who is farming in Australia. He was a good many years my senior--and I've always understood that he was a bit of a ne'er-do-well in his younger days.

Ultimately, he enlisted in the Army as a Tommy, and in that sc.r.a.p on the Indian Frontier he was close behind Maurice and saw the whole thing.

He got badly wounded then, and was dangerously ill for some time afterwards, so it happened that he knew nothing about the court-martial till it was all over. When he recovered, he wrote to Maurice, offering his evidence, and"--smiling whimsically across at Kennedy--"received a haughty letter in reply, a.s.suring him that he was mistaken in the facts and that the writer did not dispute the verdict of the court. My brother rather suspected some wild-cat business, so before he went to Australia, some years later, he placed in my hands properly witnessed doc.u.ments containing the true facts of the matter, and it was only when, through Mrs. Durward, we learned that Maurice had been cashiered from the Army, that the connection between that and the Frontier incident flashed into my mind as a possibility. I had heard that the Durwards' name had been originally Lovell--and I began to wonder if Garth Trent's name had not been originally"--with a glint of humour in his eyes--"Maurice Kennedy!

Here's my brother's letter"--pa.s.sing it to Sara, who was standing next him--"and here's the doc.u.ment which he left in my care. I've had 'em both locked away since I was seventeen."

Sara's eyes flew down the few brief lines of the letter.

"Evidently the young fool wishes to be thought guilty," Colin Herrick had written. "Shielding his pal Lovell, I suppose. Well, it's his funeral, not mine! But one never knows how things may pan out, and some day it might mean all the difference between heaven and h.e.l.l to Kennedy to be able to prove his innocence--so I am enclosing herewith a properly attested record of the facts, Miles, in case I should send in my checks while I'm at the other side of the world."

As a matter of fact, however, Colin still lived and prospered in Australia, so that there would be no difficulty in proving Maurice's innocence down to the last detail.

"Do you mean," Sara appealed to Miles incredulously, "do you mean--that there were these proofs--all the time? And you--_you knew_?"

"Herrick wasn't to blame," interposed Maurice hastily, sensing the horrified accusation in her tones. "I forbade him to use those papers."

"But why--why----"

Miles looked at her and a light kindled in his eyes.

"My dear, you're marrying a chivalrous, quixotic fool. Maurice refused to let me show these proofs because, on the strength of his promise to shield Geoffrey Lovell, Elisabeth had married and borne a son. Not even though it meant smashing up his whole life would he go back on his word."

"Garth! Garth!" The name by which she had always known him sprang spontaneously from Sara's lips. Her voice was shaking, but her eyes, likes Herrick's, held a glory of quiet shining. "How could you, dear?

What madness! What idiotic, glorious madness!"

"I don't see how I could have done anything else," said Maurice simply.

"Elisabeth's whole scheme of existence was fashioned on her trust in my promise. I couldn't--afterwards, after her marriage and Tim's birth--suddenly pull away the very foundation on which she had built up her life."

Impulsively Sara slipped her hand into his.

"I'm glad--_glad_ you couldn't, dear," she whispered. "It would not have been my Garth if you could have done."

He pressed her hand in silence. A curious la.s.situde was stealing over him. He had borne the heat and burden of the day, and now that the work was done and there was nothing further to fight for, nothing left to struggle and contend against, he was conscious of a strange feeling of frustration.

It seemed almost as though the long agony of those years of self-immolation had been in vain--a useless sacrifice, made meaningless and of no account by the destined march of events.

He felt vaguely baulked and disillusioned--bewildered that a man's aim and purpose, which in its accomplishing had cost so immeasurable a price--crushing the whole beauty and savour out of life--should suddenly be destroyed and nullified. In the light of the present, the past seemed futile--years that the locust had eaten.

It was a relief when presently some one broke in upon the confused turmoil of his thoughts with a message from Tim. He was asking to see both Sara and Maurice--would they go to him?

Together they went up to his room--Maurice still with that look of grave perplexity upon his face which his somewhat bitter reflections had engendered.