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 antic.i.p.ated. 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 a.s.serted 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 grat.i.tude 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 pa.s.sion 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 amus.e.m.e.nt.
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 rea.s.sured 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.