The Hermit of Far End | Page 4

to wait in vain.
Once she bent forward and touched the little finger of her left hand,
which bore, at its base, a slight circular depression such as comes from
the constant wearing of a ring. She rubbed it softly with the forefinger
of the other hand.
"He will come," she muttered. "He promised he would come if ever I
sent the little pearl ring."
Then she leaned back once more, resuming her former attitude of
patient waiting, and the insistent silence, momentarily broken by her
movement, settled down again upon the room.
Presently the long rays of the westering sun crept round the edge of
some projecting eaves and, slanting in suddenly through the window,
rested upon the quiet figure in the chair.
Even in their clear, revealing light it would have been difficult to
decide the woman's age, so worn and lined was the mask-like face
outlined against the shabby cushion. She looked forty, yet there was
something still girlish in the pose of her black-clad figure which
seemed to suggest a shorter tale of years. Raven dark hair, lustreless
and dull, framed a pale, emaciated face from which ill-health had
stripped almost all that had once been beautiful. Only the immense dark
eyes, feverishly bright beneath the sunken temples, and the still lovely
line from jaw to pointed chin, remained unmarred, their beauty mocked
by the pinched nostrils and drawn mouth, and by the scraggy, almost
fleshless throat.
It might have been the face of a dead woman, so still, so waxen was it,
were it not for the eager brilliance of the eyes. In them, fixed

watchfully upon the closed door, was concentrated the whole vitality of
the failing body.
Beyond that door, flight upon flight of some steps dropped seemingly
endlessly one below the other, leading at last to a cement-floored
vestibule, cheerless and uninviting, which opened on to the street.
Perhaps there was no particular reason why the vestibule should have
been other than it was, seeing that Wallater's Buildings had not been
designed for the habitual loiterer. For such as he there remains always
the "luxurious entrance-hall" of hotel advertisement.
As far as the inhabitants of "Wallater's" were concerned, they clattered
over the cement flooring of the vestibule in the mornings, on their way
to work, without pausing to cast an eye of criticism upon its general
aspect of uncomeliness, and dragged tired feet across it in an evening
with no other thought but that of how many weary steps there were to
climb before the room which served as "home" should be attained.
But to the well-dressed, middle-aged man who now paused, half in
doubt, on the threshold of the Buildings, the sordid-looking vestibule,
with its bare floor and drab-coloured walls, presented an epitome of
desolation.
His keen blue eyes, in one of which was stuck a monocle attached to a
broad black ribbon, rested appraisingly upon the ascending spiral of the
stone stairway that vanished into the gloomy upper reaches of the
Building.
Against this chill background there suddenly took shape in his mind the
picture of a spacious room, fragrant with the scent of roses--a room full
of mellow tints of brown and gold, athwart which the afternoon
sunlight lingered tenderly, picking out here the limpid blue of a bit of
old Chinese "blue-and-white," there the warm gleam of polished copper,
or here again the bizarre, gem-encrusted image of an Eastern god. All
that was rare and beautiful had gone to the making of the room, and
rarer and more beautiful than all, in the eyes of the man whose memory
now recalled it, had been the woman to whom it had belonged, whose
loveliness had glowed within it like a jewel in a rich setting.
With a mental jolt his thoughts came back to the present, to the bare,
commonplace ugliness of Wallater's Buildings.
"My God!" he muttered. "Pauline--here!"
Then with swift steps he began the ascent of the stone steps, gradually

slackening in pace until, when he reached the summit and stood facing
that door behind which a woman watched and waited, he had perforce
to pause to regain his breath, whilst certain twinges in his right knee
reminded him that he was no longer as young as he had been.
In answer to his knock a low voice bade him enter, and a minute later
he was standing in the quiet little room, his eyes gazing levelly into the
feverish dark ones of the woman who had risen at his entrance.
"So!" she said, while an odd smile twisted her bloodless lips. "You
have come, after all. Sometimes--I began to doubt if you would. It is
days--an eternity since I sent for you."
"I have been away, he replied simply. "And my mail was not forwarded.
I came directly