ELISABETH INTERVENES
As Sara stepped out of the train at Paddington, the first person upon
whom her eyes alighted was Tim Durward. He hastened up to her.
“Tim!” she exclaimed delightedly. “How dear of you to come and meet me!”
“Didn't you expect I should?” He was holding her hand and joyfully
pump-handling it up and down as though he would never let it go, while
the glad light in his eyes would indubitably have betrayed him to any
passer-by who had chanced to glance in his direction.
Sara coloured faintly and withdrew her hands from his eager clasp.
“Oh, well, you might conceivably have had something else to do,” she
returned evasively.
For an instant the blue eyes clouded.
“I never had anything to do,” he said shortly. “You know that.”
She laughed up at him.
“Now, Tim, I won't be growled at the first minute of my arrival. You can
pour out your grumbles another day. First now, I want to hear all the
news. Remember, I've been vegetating in the country since the beginning
of March!”
She drew him tactfully away from the old sore subject of his enforced
idleness, and, while the car bore them swiftly towards the Durwards'
house on Green Street, she entertained him with a description of the
Selwyn trio.
“I should think your 'Doctor Dick' considers himself damned lucky in
having got you there--seeing that his house seems all at sixes and
sevens,” commented Tim rather glumly.
“He does. Oh! I'm quite appreciated, I assure you.”
Tim made no reply, but stared out of the window. The car rounded
the corner into Park Lane; in another moment they would reach
their destination. Suddenly he turned to her, his face rather
strained-looking.
“And--the other man? Have you met him yet--at Monkshaven?”
There was no mistaking his meaning. Sara's eyes met his unflinchingly.
“If you mean has any one asked me to marry him--no, Tim. No one has done
me that honour,” she answered lightly.
“Thank God!” he muttered below his breath.
Sara looked troubled.
“Haven't you--got over that, yet?” she said, hesitatingly. “I--I hoped
you would, Tim.”
“I shall never get over it,” he asserted doggedly. “And I shall never
give you up till you are another man's wife.”
The quiet intensity of his tones sounded strangely in her ears. This
was a new Tim, not the boyish Tim of former times, but a man with all a
man's steadfast purpose and determination.
She was spared the necessity of reply by the fact that they had reached
their journey's end. The car slid smoothly to a standstill, and almost
simultaneously the house-door opened, and behind the immaculate figure
of the Durwards' butler Sara descried the welcoming faces of Geoffrey
and Elisabeth.
It was good to see them both again--Geoffrey, big and debonair as ever,
his jolly blue eyes beaming at her delightedly, and Elisabeth, still
with that same elusive atmosphere of charm which always seemed to cling
about her like the fragrance of a flower.
They were eager to hear Sara's news, plying her with questions, so that
before the end of her first evening with them they had gleaned a fairly
accurate description of her life at Sunnyside and of the new circle of
friends she had acquired.
But there was one name she refrained from mentioning--that of Garth
Trent, and none of Elisabeth's quietly uttered comments or inquiries
sufficed to break through the guard of her reticence concerning the
Hermit of Far End.
“It sounds rather a manless Eden--except for the nice, lame Herrick
person,” said Elisabeth at last, and her hyacinth eyes, with their
curiously veiled expression, rested consideringly on Sara's face, alight
with interest as she had vividly sketched the picture of her life at
Monkshaven.
“Yes, I suppose it is rather,” she admitted. Her tone was carelessly
indifferent, but the eager light died suddenly out of her face, and
Elisabeth, smiling faintly, adroitly turned the conversation.
Sara speedily discovered that she would have even less time for the
fruitless occupation of remembering than she had anticipated. The
Durwards owned a host of friends in town with whom they were immensely
popular, and Sara found herself caught up in a perpetual whirl of
entertainment that left her but little leisure for brooding over the
past.
She felt sometimes as though the London season had opened and swallowed
her up, as the whale swallowed Jonah, and when she declared herself
breathless with so much rushing about, Tim would coolly throw over any
engagement that chanced to have been made and carry her off for a day
up the river, where a quiet little lunch, in the tranquil shade of
overhanging trees, and the cosy, intimate talk that was its invariable
concomitant, seemed like an oasis of familiar, homely pleasantness in
the midst of the gay turmoil of London in May.
Tim had developed amazingly. He seemed instinctively to recognize her
moods, adapting himself accordingly, and in his thought and care for
her there was a half-playful, half-tender element of possessiveness
that sometimes brought a smile to her lips--and sometimes a sigh, as the
inevitable comparison asserted itself between Tim's gentle ruling and
the brusque, forceful mastery that had been Garth's. But, on the whole,
the visit to the Durwards was productive of more smiles than sighs, and
Sara found Tim's young, chivalrous devotion very soothing to the wound
her pride had suffered at Garth's hands.
She overflowed in gratitude to Elisabeth.
“You're giving me a perfectly lovely time,” she told her. “And Tim _is_
such a good playfellow!”
Elisabeth's face seemed suddenly to glow with that inner radiance which
praise of her beloved Tim alone was able to inspire.
“Only that, Sara?” she said very quietly. Yet somehow Sara knew that she
meant to have an answer to her question.
“Why--why----” she stammered a little. “Isn't that enough?”--trying to
speak lightly.
Elisabeth shook her head.
“Tim wants more than a playfellow. Can't you give him what he wants,
Sara?”
Sara was silent a moment.
“I didn't know he had told you,” she said, at last, rather lamely.
“Nor has he. Tim is loyal to the core. But a mother doesn't need telling
these things.” Elisabeth's beautiful voice deepened. “Tim is bone of
my bone and flesh of my flesh--and he's soul of my soul as well. Do you
think, then, that I shouldn't know when he is hurt?”
Sara was strangely moved. There was something impressive in the
restrained passion of Elisabeth's speech, a certain primitive grandeur
in her envisagement of the relationship of mother and son.
“I expect,” pursued Elisabeth calmly, “that you think I'm going too
far--farther than I have any right to. But it's any mother's right to
fight for her son's happiness, and I'm fighting for Tim's. Why won't you
marry him, Sara?” The question flashed out suddenly.
“Because--why--oh, because I'm not in love with him.”
A gleam of rather sardonic mirth showed in Elisabeth's face.
“I wish,” she observed, “that we lived in the good old days when you
could have been carried off by sheer force and _compelled_ to marry
him.”
Sara laughed outright.
“I really believe you mean it!” she said with some amusement.
Elisabeth nodded.
“I do. I shouldn't have hesitated.”
“And what about me? You wouldn't have considered my feelings at all
in the matter, I suppose?” Sara was still smiling, yet she had a dim
consciousness that, preposterous as it sounded, Elisabeth would have had
no scruples whatever about putting such a plan into effect had it been
in any way feasible.
“No.” Elisabeth replied with the utmost composure. “Tim comes first.
But”--and suddenly her voice melted to an indescribable sweetness--“You
would be almost one with him in my heart, because you had brought him
happiness.” She paused, then launched her question with a delicate
hesitancy that skillfully concealed all semblance of the probe. “Tell
me--is there any one else who has asked of you what Tim asks? Perhaps I
have come too late with my plea?”
Sara shook her head.
“No,” she said flatly, “there is no one else.” With a sudden bitter
self-mockery she added: “Tim's is the only proposal of marriage I have
to my credit.”
The repressed anxiety with which Elisabeth had been regarding her
relaxed, and a curious look of content took birth in the hyacinth eyes.
It was as though the bitterness of Sara's answer in some way reassured
her, serving her purpose.
“Then can't you give Tim what he wants? You will be robbing no one.
Sara”--her low voice vibrated with the urgency of her desire--“promise
me at least that you will think it over--that you will not dismiss the
idea as though it were impossible?”
Sara half rose; her eyes, wide and questioning, were fixed upon
Elisabeth's.
“But why--why do you ask me this?” she faltered.
“Because I think”--very softly--“that Tim himself will ask you the same
thing before very long. And I can't face what it will mean to him if you
send him away. . . . You would be happy with him, Sara. No woman could
live with Tim and not grow to love him--certainly no woman whom Tim
loved.”
The depth of her conviction imbued her words with a strange force of
suggestion. For the first time the idea of marriage with Tim presented
itself to Sara as a remotely conceivable happening.
Hitherto she had looked upon his love for her as something which only
touched the outer fringe of her life--a temporary disturbance of the
good-comradely relations that had existed between them. With the easy
optimism of a woman whose heart has always been her own exclusive
property she had hoped he would “get over it.”
But now Elisabeth's appeal, and the knowledge of the pain of love, which
love itself had taught her, quickened her mind to a new understanding.
Perhaps Elisabeth felt her yield to the impression she had been
endeavoring to create, for she rose and came and stood quite close to
her, looking down at her with shining eyes.
“Give my son his happiness!” she said. And the eternal supplication of
all motherhood was in her voice.
Sara made no answer. She sat very still, with bent head. Presently there
came the sound of light footsteps as Elisabeth crossed the room, and, a
moment later, the door closed softly behind her.
She had thrust a new responsibility on Sara's shoulders--the
responsibility of Tim's happiness.
“Give my son his happiness!” The poignant appeal of the words rang in
Sara's ears.
After all, why not? As Elisabeth had said, she would be robbing no one
by so doing. The man for whom had been reserved the place in the sacred
inner temple of her heart had signified very clearly that he had no
intention of claiming it.
No other would ever enter in his stead; the doors of that innermost
sanctuary would be kept closed, shutting in only the dead ashes of
remembrance. But if entrance to the outer courts of the temple meant so
much to Tim, why should she not make him free of them? That other had
come and gone again, having no need of her, while Tim's need was great.
Life, at the moment stretched in front of her very vague and
purposeless, and she knew that by marrying Tim she would make three
people whom she loved, and who mattered most to her in the whole
world--Tim, and Elisabeth, and Geoffrey--supremely happy. No one need
suffer except herself--and for her there was no escape from suffering
either way.
So it came about that when, as her visit drew towards its close, Tim
came to her and asked her once again to be his wife, she gave him an
answer which by no stretch of the imagination could she have conceived
as possible a short three weeks before.
She was very frank with him. She was determined that if he married her,
it must be open-eyed, recognizing that she could only give him honest
liking in return for love. Upon a foundation of sincerity some mutual
happiness might ultimately be established, but there should be no
submerged rock of ignorance and misunderstanding on which their frail
barque of matrimonial happiness might later founder in a sea of infinite
regret.
“Are you willing to take me--like that?” she asked him. “Knowing that I
can only give you friendship? I wish--I wish I could give you what you
ask--but I can't.”
Tim's eyes searched hers for a long moment.
“Is there some one else?” he asked at last.
A wave of painful colour flooded her face, then ebbed away, leaving it
curiously white and pinched-looking, but her eyes still met his bravely.
“There is--no one who will ever want your place, Tim,” she said with an
effort.
The sight of her evident distress hurt him intolerably.
“Forgive me!” he exclaimed quickly. “I had no right to ask that
question.”
“Yes, you had,” she replied steadily, “since you have asked me to be
your wife.”
“Well, you've answered it--and it doesn't make a bit of difference.
I want you. I'll take what you can give me, Sara. Perhaps, some day,
you'll be able to give me love as well.”
She shook her head.
“Don't count on that, Tim. Friendship, understanding, the comradeship
which, after all, can mean a good deal between a man and woman--all
these I can give you. And if you think those things are worth while,
I'll marry you. But--I'm not in love with you.”
“You will be--I'm sure it's catching,” he declared with the gay, buoyant
confidence which was one of his most endearing qualities.
Sara smiled a little wistfully.
“I wish it were,” she said. “But please be serious, Tim dear--”
“How can I be?” he interrupted joyfully. “When the woman I love tells me
that she'll marry me, do you suppose I'm going to pull a long face about
it?”
He caught her in his arms and kissed her with all the impetuous fervour
of his two-and-twenty years. At the touch of his warm young lips, her
own lips whitened. For an instant, as she rested in his arms, she was
stabbed through and through by the memory of those other arms that had
held her as in a vice of steel, and of stormy, passionate kisses in
comparison with Tim's impulsive caress, half-shy, half-reverent, seemed
like clear water beside the glowing fire of red wine.
She drew herself sharply out of his embrace. Would she never
forget--would she be for ever remembering, comparing? If so, God help
her!
“No,” she said quietly. “You needn't pull a long face over it. But--but
marriage is a serious thing, Tim, after all.”
“My dear”--he spoke with a sudden gentle gravity--“don't misunderstand
me. Marriage with you is the most serious and wonderful and glorious
thing that could ever happen to a man. When you're my wife, I shall
be thanking God on my knees every day of my life. All the jokes and
nonsense are only so many little waves of happiness breaking on the
shore. But behind them there is always the big sea of my love for
you--the still waters, Sara.”
Sara remained silent. The realization of the tender, chivalrous,
worshiping love this boy was pouring out at her feet made her feel very
humble--very ashamed and sorry that she could give so little in return.
Presently she turned and held out her hands to him.
“Tim--my Tim,” she said, and her voice shook a little. “I'll try not to
disappoint you.”