The Red Redmaynes | Page 2

of
knowledge.
A man in this receptive mood is not asked as a rule to wait long for the
needful response; but Brendon was old-fashioned and the women born
of the war attracted him not at all. He recognized their fine qualities
and often their distinction of mind; yet his ideal struck backward to
another and earlier type--the type of his own mother who, as a widow,
had kept house for him until her death. She was his feminine
ideal--restful, sympathetic, trustworthy--one who always made his
interests hers, one who concentrated upon his life rather than her own
and found in his progress and triumphs the salt of her own existence.
Mark wanted, in truth, somebody who would be content to merge
herself in him and seek neither to impress her own personality upon his,
nor develop an independent environment. He had wit to know a
mother's standpoint must be vastly different from that of any wife, no
matter how perfect her devotion; he had experience enough of married
men to doubt whether the woman he sought was to be found in a
post-war world; yet he preserved and permitted himself a hope that the
old-fashioned women still existed, and he began to consider where he
might find such a helpmate.
He was somewhat overweary after a strenuous year; but to Dartmoor he

always came for health and rest when opportunity offered, and now he
had returned for the third time to the Duchy Hotel at Princetown--there
to renew old friendships and amuse himself on the surrounding trout
streams through the long days of June and July.
Brendon enjoyed the interest he awakened among other fishermen and,
though he always went upon his expeditions alone, usually joined the
throng in the smoking-room after dinner. Being a good talker he never
failed of an audience there. But better still he liked an hour sometimes
with the prison warders. For the convict prison that dominated that grey
smudge in the heart of the moors known as Princetown held many
interesting and famous criminals, more than one of whom had been
"put through" by him, and had to thank Brendon's personal industry and
daring for penal servitude. Upon the prison staff were not a few men of
intelligence and wide experience who could tell the detective much
germane to his work. The psychology of crime never paled in its
intense attraction for Brendon and many a strange incident, or obscure
convict speech, related without comment to him by those who had
witnessed, or heard them, was capable of explanation in the visitor's
mind.
He had found an unknown spot where some good trout dwelt and on an
evening in mid-June he set forth to tempt them. He had discovered
certain deep pools in a disused quarry fed by a streamlet, that harboured
a fish or two heavier than most of those surrendered daily by the Dart
and Meavy, the Blackabrook and the Walkham.
Foggintor Quarry, wherein lay these preserves, might be approached in
two ways. Originally broken into the granite bosom of the moor for
stone to build the bygone war prison of Princetown, a road still
extended to the deserted spot and joined the main throughfare half a
mile distant. A house or two--dwellings used by old-time
quarrymen--stood upon this grass-grown track; but the huge pit was
long ago deserted. Nature had made it beautiful, although the
wonderful place was seldom appreciated now and only wild creatures
dwelt therein.
Brendon, however, came hither by a direct path over the moors.

Leaving Princetown railway station upon his left hand he set his face
west where the waste heaved out before him dark against a blaze of
light from the sky. The sun was setting and a great glory of gold, fretted
with lilac and crimson, burned over the distant earth, while here and
there the light caught crystals of quartz in the granite boulders and
flashed up from the evening sobriety of the heath.
Against the western flame appeared a figure carrying a basket. Mark
Brendon, with thoughts on the evening rise of the trout, lifted his face
at a light footfall. Whereupon there passed by him the fairest woman he
had ever known, and such sudden beauty startled the man and sent his
own thoughts flying. It was as though from the desolate waste there had
sprung a magical and exotic flower; or that the sunset lights, now
deepening on fern and stone, had burned together and became incarnate
in this lovely girl. She was slim and not very tall. She wore no hat and
the auburn of her hair, piled high above her forehead, tangled the warm
sunset beams and burned like a halo round her head. The colour was
glorious, that rare but perfect reflection of the richest hues that autumn
brings