Lady Cynthia and the Hermit I
 
“My dear Cynthia, you haven’t seen our Hermit yet. He’s quite the show exhibit of the place.”
Lady Cynthia Stockdale yawned and lit a cigarette. Hermits belonged undoubtedly to the class of things in which she was not interested; the word conjured up a mental picture of a dirty individual of great piety, clothed in a sack. And Lady Cynthia loathed dirt and detested piety.
“A hermit, Ada!” she remarked, lazily. “I thought the brand was extinct. Does he feed ravens and things?”
It is to be regretted that theological knowledge was not her strong point, but Ada Laverton, her hostess, did not smile. From beneath some marvellously long eyelashes she was watching the lovely girl lying back in the deck-chair opposite, who was vainly trying to blow smoke rings. A sudden wild idea had come into her brain—so wild as to be almost laughable. But from time immemorial wild ideas anent their girl friends have entered the brains of young married women, especially the lucky ones who have hooked the right man. And Ada Laverton had undoubtedly done that. She alternately bullied, cajoled, and made love to her husband John, in a way that eminently suited that cheerful and easygoing gentleman. He adored her quite openly and ridiculously, and she returned the compliment just as ridiculously, even if not quite so openly.
Moreover, Cynthia Stockdale was her best friend. Before her marriage they had been inseparable, and perhaps there was no one living who understood Cynthia as she did. To the world at large Cynthia was merely a much photographed and capricious beauty. Worthy mothers of daughters, who saw her reproduced weekly in the society papers, sighed inwardly with envy, and commented on the decadence of the aristocracy: the daughters tore out the pictures in a vain endeavour to copy her frocks. But it wasn’t the frocks that made Cynthia Stockdale: it was she who made the frocks. Put her in things selected haphazard from a jumble sale—put her in remnants discarded by the people who got it up, and she would still have seemed the best-dressed woman in the room. It was a gift she had—not acquired, but natural.
Lady Cynthia was twenty-five, and looked four years younger. Since the war she had been engaged twice—once to a man in the Blues, and once to a young and ambitious member of Parliament. Neither had lasted long, and on the second occasion people had said unkind things. They had called her heartless and capricious, and she had scorned to contradict them. It mattered nothing to her what people said: if they didn’t like her they could go away and have nothing to do with her. And since in her case it wasn’t a pose, but the literal truth, people did not go away. Only to Ada Laverton did she give her real confidence: only to Ada Laverton did she show the real soul that lay below the surface.
“I’m trying,” she had said, lying in that same chair a year previously, “I’m trying to find the real thing. I needn’t marry if I don’t want to; I haven’t got to marry for a home and a roof. And it’s got to be the right man. Of course I may make a mistake—a mistake which I shan’t find out till it’s too late. But surely when one has found it out before it’s too late, it’s better to acknowledge it at once. It’s no good making a second worse one by going through with it. I thought Arthur was all right”—Arthur was the member of Parliament—“I’m awfully fond of Arthur still. But I’m not the right wife for him. We jarred on one another in a hundred little ways. And he hasn’t got a sense of humour. I shall never forget the shock I got when I first realised that. He seemed to think that a sense of humour consisted of laughing at humorous things, of seeing a jest as well as anyone else. He didn’t seem to understand me when I told him that the real sense of humour is often closer to tears than laughter. Besides”—she had added inconsequently—“he had a dreadful trick of whistling down my neck when we danced. No woman can be expected to marry a permanent draught. And as for poor old Bill—well Bill’s an angel. I still adore Bill. He is, I think, the most supremely handsome being I’ve ever seen in my life—especially when he’s got his full dress on. But, my dear, I blame myself over Bill. I ought to have known it before I got engaged to him; as a matter of fact I did know it. Bill is, without exception, the biggest fool in London. I thought his face might atone for his lack of brains; I thought that perhaps if I took him in hand he might do something in the House of Lords—his old father can’t live much longer—but I gave it up. He is simply incapable of any coherent thought at all. He can’t spell; he can’t add, and once when I asked him if he liked Rachmaninoff, he thought it was the man who had built the Pyramids.”
This and much more came back to Ada Laverton as she turned over in her mind the sudden wild idea that had come to her. Above all things she wanted to see Cynthia married; she was so utterly happy herself that she longed for her friend to share it too. She knew, as no one else did, what a wonderful wife and pal Cynthia would make to the right man. But it must be the right man; it must be the real thing. And like a blinding flash had come the thought of the Hermit—the Hermit who had come into the neighbourhood six months previously, and taken the little farm standing in the hollow overlooking the sea. For, as she frequently told John, if it hadn’t been for the fact that she was tied to a silly old idiot of a husband, she’d have married the Hermit herself.
“No, he doesn’t feed ravens,” she remarked at length. “Only puppies. He breeds Cairns and Aberdeens. We’ll stroll up and see him after tea.”
“A hermit breeding dogs!” Cynthia sat up lazily. “My dear, you intrigue me.”
“Oh! he’s not a bad young man,” said Ada Laverton, indifferently. “Quite passable looking, D.S.O. and M.C. and that sort of thing. Been all over the world, and is really quite interesting when you can get him to talk.”
“What sort of age?” asked her friend.
“Thirty to thirty-five. You shall see him. But you’re not to go and turn his head; he’s very peaceful and happy as he is.”
Lady Cynthia smiled.
“I don’t think hermits are much in my line. A man’s job is to be up and doing; not to bury himself alive and breed dogs.”
“You tell him so,” said her hostess. “It will do him good.”
II
 
An excited rush of puppies—fat, bouncing, lolloping puppies; a stern order: “Heel, you young blighters, heel!” in a pleasant, cheerful voice; a laughing greeting from Ada Laverton, and Lady Cynthia Stockdale found herself shaking hands with the Hermit. She shook hands as a man shakes hands, with a firm, steady grasp, and she looked the person she was greeting straight in the eyes. To her that first handshake meant, more often than not, the final estimate of a stranger’s character; it always meant the first. And her first estimate of Desmond Brooke was good. She saw a man of clear skin and clear eye. He wore no hat, and his brown hair, curling a little at the temples, was slightly flecked with grey. His face was bronzed and a faint smile hovered in the corners of the eyes that met hers fair and square. His shirt was open at the neck; the sleeves were rolled up, showing a pair of muscular brown arms. He was clean-shaven, and his teeth were very white and regular. So much, in detail, she noticed during that first half-second; then she turned her attention to the puppies.
“What toppers!” she remarked. “What absolute toppers!”
She picked a fat, struggling mixture of legs and ecstatically slobbering tongue out of the mêlée at her feet, and the Hermit watched her gravely. It struck him that in the course of a fairly crowded life he had never seen a more lovely picture than the one made by this tall slender girl with the wriggling puppy in her arms. And another thing struck him also, though he said nothing. Possibly it was accidental, but the puppy she had picked up, and which was now making frantic endeavours to lick her face, was out and away the best of the litter. Almost angrily he told himself that it was an accident, and yet he could not quite banish the thought that it was an accident which would happen every time. Thoroughbred picks thoroughbred; instinctively the girl would pick the best. His mouth set a little, giving him a look of sternness, and at that moment their eyes met over the puppy’s head.
“Is he for sale?” asked the girl.
Undoubtedly he was for sale; Desmond Brooke, though he was in no need of money, did not believe in running anything save on business lines. But now something that he did not stop to analyse made him hesitate. He felt a sudden inconsequent distaste against selling the puppy to her.
“You’ve picked the best, I see,” he said quietly.
“Of course,” she answered, with the faintest trace of hauteur. Insensibly she felt that this man was hostile to her.
“I am afraid that that one is not for sale,” he continued. “You can have any of the others if you like.”
Abruptly she restored the puppy to its mother.
“Having chosen the best, Mr. Brooke,” she said, looking him straight in the face, “I don’t care about taking anything second-rate.”
For a second or two they stared at one another. Ada Laverton had wandered away and was talking shop to the gardener; the Hermit and Lady Cynthia were alone.
“You surprise me,” said the Hermit, calmly.
“That is gratuitously rude,” answered the girl quietly. “It is also extremely impertinent. And lastly it shows that you are a very bad judge of character.”
The man bowed.
“I sincerely hope that your ‘lastly’ is true. Am I to understand, then, that you do not care to buy one of the other puppies?”
And suddenly the girl laughed half-angrily.
“What do you mean by daring to say such a thing to me? Why, you haven’t known me for more than two minutes.”
“That is not strictly true, Lady Cynthia. Anyone who is capable of reading and takes in the illustrated papers can claim your acquaintance weekly.”
“I see,” she answered. “You disapprove of my poor features being reproduced.”
“Personally not at all,” he replied. “I know enough of the world, and am sufficiently broadminded, I trust, to realise how completely unimportant the matter is. Lady Cynthia Stockdale at Ascot, at Goodwood, in her motor-car, out of her motor-car, by the fire, by the gas stove, in her boudoir, out of her boudoir, in the garden, not in the garden—and always in a different frock every time. It doesn’t matter to me, but there are some people who haven’t got enough money to pay for the doctor’s bill when their wives are dying. And it’s such a comfort to them to see you by the fire. To know that half the money you paid for your frock would save the life of the woman they love.”
“You’re talking like a ranting tub-thumper,” she cried, furiously. “How dare you say such things to me? And, anyway, does breeding dogs in the wilderness help them with their doctors’ bills?”
“Touché,” said the man, with a faint smile. “Perhaps I haven’t expressed myself very clearly. You can’t pay the bills, Lady Cynthia—I can’t. There are too many thousands to pay. But it’s the bitter contrast that hits them, and it’s all so petty.” For a while he paused, seeming to seek for his words. “Come with me, Lady Cynthia, and I’ll show you something.”
Almost violently he swung round on his heel and strode off towards the house. For a moment she hesitated, then she followed him slowly. Anger and indignation were seething in her mind; the monstrous impertinence of this complete stranger was almost bewildering. She found him standing in his smoking-room unlocking a drawer in a big writing-desk.
“Well,” she said uncompromisingly from the doorway.
“I have something to show you,” he remarked quietly. “But before I show it to you, I want to tell you a very short story. Three years ago I was in the back of beyond in Brazil. I’d got a bad dose of fever, and the gassing I got in France wasn’t helping matters. It was touch and go whether I pulled through or not. And one day one of the fellows got a two-month-old Tatler. In that Tatler was a picture—a picture of the loveliest girl I have ever seen. I tore it out, and I propped it up at the foot of my bed. I think I worshipped it; I certainly fell in love with it. There is the picture.”
He handed it to her, and she looked at it in silence. It was of herself, and after a moment or two she raised her eyes to his.
“Go on,” she said gently.
“A few months ago I came back to England. I found a seething cauldron of discontent; men out of work—strikes—talk of revolution. And this was the country for which a million of our best had died. I also found—week after week—my picture girl displayed in every paper, as if no such thing as trouble existed. She, in her motor-car, cared for none of these things.”
“That is unjust,” said the girl, and her voice was low.
“I knew it was unjust,” answered the man, “but I couldn’t help it. And if I couldn’t help it—I who loved her—what of these others? It seemed symbolical to me.”
“Nero fiddling,” said the girl, with a faint smile. “You’re rather a strange person, Mr. Brooke. Am I to understand that you’re in love with me?”
“You are not. I’m in love with the you of that picture.”
“I see. You have set up an image. And supposing that image is a true one.”
“Need we discuss that?” said the man, with faint sarcasm.
The girl shrugged her shoulders.
“The supposition is at least as possible as that you are doing any vast amount of good for the seething cauldron of discontent, I think you called it, by breeding Aberdeens in the country. I’m afraid you’re a crank, Mr. Brooke, and not a very consistent one at that. And a crank is to my mind synonymous with a bore.”
The man replaced the picture in his desk.
“Then perhaps we had better join Mrs. Laverton,” he remarked. “I apologise for having wearied you.”
In silence they went out into the garden, to find Ada Laverton wandering aimlessly round looking for them.
“Where have you two been?” she demanded, as she saw them approaching.
“Mr. Brooke has been showing me a relic of his past,” said Lady Cynthia. “Most interesting and touching. Are you ready to go, Ada?”
Mrs. Laverton gave a quick glance at their two faces, and wondered what had happened. Not much, surely, in so short a time—and yet with Cynthia you never could tell. The Hermit’s face, usually so inscrutable, showed traces of suppressed feeling; Cynthia’s was rather too expressionless.
“Are you coming to the ball to-morrow night, Hermit?” she asked.
“I didn’t know there was one on, Mrs. Laverton,” he answered.
“The cricket ball, my good man,” she exclaimed. “It’s been advertised for the last month.&............