DISILLUSION
“Letters are unsatisfactory things at the best of times, and what we all
want is to have you with us again for a little while. I am sure you must
have had a surfeit of the simple life by this time, so come to us and be
luxurious and exotic in London for a change. Don't disappoint us, Sara!
“Yours ever affectionately,
“ELISABETH.”
Sara, seated at the open window of her room, re-read the last paragraph
of the letter which the morning's post had brought her, and then let it
fall again on to her lap, whilst she stared with sombre eyes across the
bay to where the Monk's Cliff reared itself, stark and menacing, against
the sky.
April had slipped into May, and the blue waters of the Channel flickered
with a myriad dancing points of light reflected from an unclouded sun.
The trees had clothed themselves anew in pale young green, and the whole
atmosphere was redolent of spring--spring as she reaches her maturity
before she steps aside to let the summer in.
Sara frowned a little. She was out of tune with the harmony of things.
You need happiness in your heart to be at one with the eager pulsing
of new life, the reaching out towards fulfillment that is the essential
quality of spring. Whereas Sara's heart was empty of happiness and
hopes, and of all the joyous beginnings that are the glorious appanage
of youth. There could be no beginnings for her, because she had already
reached the end--reached it with such a stupefying suddenness that for
a time she had been hardly conscious of pain, but only of a fierce,
intolerable resentment and of a pride--that “devil's own pride” which
Patrick had told her was the Tennant heritage--which had been wounded to
the quick.
Garth had taken that pride of hers and ground it under his heel. He
had played at love, and she had been fool enough to mistake love's
simulacrum for the real thing. Or, if there had been any genuine spark
of love kindling the fire of passion that had blazed about her for one
brief moment, then he had since chosen deliberately to disavow it.
He had indicated his intention unmistakably. Since the day of the
luncheon party at Greenacres he had shunned meeting her whenever
possible, and, on the one or two occasions when an encounter had been
unavoidable, his manner had been frigidly indifferent and impersonal.
Outwardly she had repaid him in full measure--indifference for
indifference, ice for ice, gallantly matching her woman's pride against
his deliberate apathy, but inwardly she writhed at the remembrance
of that day on the island, when, in the stress of her terror for his
safety, she had let him see into the very heart of her.
Well, it was over now, and done with. The brief vision of love which had
given a new, transcendent significance to the whole of life, had faded
swiftly into bleak darkness, its memory marred by that bitterest of all
knowledge to a woman--the knowledge that she had been willing to give
her love, to make the great surrender, and that it had not been required
of her. All that remained was to draw a veil as decently as might be
over the forgettable humiliation.
The strain of the last fortnight had left its mark on her. The angles of
her face seemed to have become more sharply defined, and her eyes were
too brilliant and held a look of restlessness. But her lips closed as
firmly as ever, a courageous scarlet line, denying the power of fate to
thrust her under.
The Book of Garth--the book of love--was closed, but there were many
other volumes in life's library, and Sara did not propose to go through
the probable remaining fifty or sixty years of her existence uselessly
bewailing a dead past. She would face life, gamely, whatever it might
bring, and as she had already sustained one of the hardest blows ever
likely to befall her, she would probably make a success of it.
But, unquestionably, she would be glad to get away from Monkshaven for
a time, to have leisure to readjust her outlook on life, free from the
ceaseless reminders that the place held for her.
Here in Monkshaven, it seemed as though Garth's personality informed the
very air she breathed. The great cliff where he had his dwelling frowned
at her from across the bay whenever she looked out of her window, his
name was constantly on the lips of those who made up her little circle
of friends, and every day she was haunted by the fear of meeting him.
Or, worse than all else, should that fear materialize, the torment
of the almost hostile relationship which had replaced their former
friendship had to be endured.
The invitation to join the Durwards in London had come at an opportune
moment, offering, as it did, a way of escape from the embarrassments
inseparable from the situation. Moreover, amid the distractions and
bustle of the great city it would be easier to forget for a little her
burden of pain and humiliation. There is so much time for thinking--and
for remembering--in the leisurely tranquillity of country life.
Sara would have accepted the invitation without hesitation, but that
there seemed to her certain reasons why her absence from Sunnyside just
now was inadvisable--reasons based on her loyalty to Doctor Dick and the
trust he had reposed in her.
For the last few weeks she had been perplexed and not a little worried
concerning Molly's apparent accession to comparative wealth. Certain
small extravagances in which the latter had recently indulged must have
been, Sara knew, beyond the narrow limits of her purse, and inquiry had
elicited from Selwyn the fact that she had received no addition to her
usual allowance.
Molly herself had light-heartedly evaded all efforts to gain her
confidence, and Sara had refrained from putting any direct question,
since, after all, she was not the girl's guardian, and her interference
might very well be resented.
She was uneasily conscious that for some reason or other Molly was in
a state of tension, alternating between abnormally high spirits and the
depths of depression, and the recollection of that unpleasant little
episode of her indebtedness to Lester Kent lingered disagreeably in
Sara's mind.
She had seen the man once, in Oldhampton High Street--Molly, at that
time still clothed in penitence, had pointed him out to her--and she had
received an unpleasing impression of a lean, hatchet face with deep-set,
dense-brown eyes, and of a mouth like that of a bird of prey.
She felt reluctant to go away and leave things altogether to chance, and
finally, unable to come to any decision, she carried Elisabeth's letter
down to Selwyn's study and explained the position.
His face clouded over at the prospect of her departure.
“We shall miss you abominably,” he declared. “But of
course”--ruefully--“I can quite understand Mrs. Durward's wanting you
to go back to them for a time, and I suppose we must resign ourselves to
being unselfish. Only you must promise to come back again--you mustn't
desert us altogether.”
She laughed.
“You needn't be afraid of that. I shall turn up again like the
proverbial bad penny.”
“All the same, make it a promise,” he urged.
“I promise, then, you distrustful man! But about Molly?”
“I don't think you need worry about her.” Selwyn laughed a little. “The
sudden accession to wealth is accounted for. It seems that she has sold
a picture.”
“Oh! So that's the explanation, is it?” Sara felt unaccountably
relieved.
“Yes--though goodness knows how she has beguiled any one into buying one
of her daubs!”
“Oh, they're quite good, really, Doctor Dick. It's only that Futurist
Art doesn't appeal to you.”
“Not exactly! She showed me one of her paintings the other day. It
looked like a bad motor-bus accident in a crowded street, and she told
me that it represented the physical atmosphere of a woman who had just
been jilted.”
Sara laughed suddenly and hysterically.
“How--how awfully funny!” she said in an odd, choked voice. Then,
fearful of losing her self-command, she added hastily: “I'll write and
tell Elisabeth that I'll come, then.” And fled out of the room.