'We're better friends than ever now. She got a divorce from me two years ago. Just incompatibility. I didn't put in any defence. Well, well, well, Hamp, this is certainly a funny dugout you've built here. But you always were a hero of fiction. Seems like you'd have been the very one to strike Edith's fancy. Maybe you did--but it's the bank - roll that catches 'em, my boy--your caves and whiskers won't do it. Honestly, Hamp, don't you think you've been a darned fool?'
The hermit smiled behind his tangled beard. He was and always had been so superior to the crude and mercenary Binkley that even his vulgarities could not anger him. Moreover, his studies and meditations in his retreat had raised him far above the little vanities of the world. His little mountain-side had been almost an Olympus, over the edge of which he saw, smiling, the bolts hurled in the valleys of man below. Had his ten years of renunciation, of thought, of devotion to an ideal, of living scorn of a sordid world, been in vain? Up from the world had come to him the youngest and beautifulest--fairer than Edith--one and three-seventh times lovelier than the seven-years-served Rachel. So the hermit smiled in his beard.
When Binkley had relieved the hermitage from the blot of his presence and the first faint star showed above the pines, the hermit got the can of baking-powder from his cupboard. He still smiled behind his beard.
There was a slight rustle in the doorway. There stood Edith Carr, with all the added beauty and stateliness and noble bearing that ten years had brought her.
She was never one to chatter. She looked at the hermit with her large, thinking, dark eyes. The hermit stood still, surprised into a pose as motionless as her own. Only his subconscious sense of the fitness of things caused him to turn the baking-powder can slowly in his hands until its red label was hidden against his bosom.
'I am stopping at the inn,' said Edith, in low but clear tones. 'I heard of you there. I told myself that I must see you. I want to ask your forgiveness. I sold my happiness for money. There were others to be provided for--but that does not excuse me. I just wanted to see you and ask your forgiveness. You have lived here ten years, they tell me, cherishing my memory! I was blind, Hampton. I could not see then that all the money in the world cannot weigh in the scales against a faithful heart. If--but it is too late now, of course.'
Her assertion was a question clothed as best it could be in a loving woman's pride. But through the thin disguise the hermit saw easily that his lady had come back to him--if he chose. He had won a golden crown--if it pleased him to take it. The reward of his decade of faithfulness was ready for his hand--if he desired to stretch it forth.
For the space of one minute the old enchantment shone upon him with a reflected radiance. And then by turns he felt the manly sensations of indignation at having been discarded, and of repugnance at having been--as it were--sought again. And last of all--how strange that it should have come at last!--the pale-blue vision of the beautifulest of the Trenholme sisters illuminated his mind's eye and left him without a waver.
'It is too late,' he said, in deep tones, pressing the baking-powder can against his heart.
Once she turned after she had gone slowly twenty yards down the path. The hermit had begun to twist the lid off his can, but he hid it again under his sacking robe. He could see her great eyes shining sadly through the twilight; but he stood inflexible in the doorway of his shack and made no sign.
Just as the moon rose on Thursday evening the hermit was seized by the world-madness.
Up from the inn, fainter than the horns of elf-land, came now and then a few bars of music played by the casino band. The Hudson was broadened by the night into an illimitable sea--those lights, dimly seen on its opposite shore, were not beacons for prosaic trolley- lines, but low-set stars millions of miles away. The waters in front of the inn were gay with fireflies--or were they motor-boats, smelling of gasoline and oil? Once the hermit had known these things and had sported with Amaryllis in the shade of the red-and-white-striped awnings. But for ten years he had turned a heedless ear to these far- off echoes of a frivolous world. But to-night there was something wrong.
The casino band was playing a waltz--a waltz. What a fool he had been to tear deliberately ten years of his life from the calendar of existence for one who had given him up for the false joys that wealth- -'tum ti tum ti tum ti'--how did that waltz go? But those years had not been sacrificed--had they not brought him the star and pearl of all the world, the youngest and beautifulest of-- 'But do not come on Thursday evening,' she had insisted. Perhaps by now she would be moving slowly and gracefully to the strains of that waltz, held closely by West-Pointers or city commuters, while he, who had read in her eyes things that had recompensed him for ten lost years of life, moped like some wild animal in its mountain den. Why should--'
'Damn it,' said the hermit, suddenly, 'I'll do it!'
He threw down his Marcus Aurelius and threw off his gunny-sack toga. he dragged a dust-covered trunk from a corner of the cave, and with difficulty wrenched open its lid.
Candles he had in plenty, and the cave was soon aglow. Clothes--ten years old in cut--scissors, razors, hats, shoes, all his discarded attire and belongings, were dragged ruthlessly from their renunciatory rest and strewn about in painful disorder.
A pair of scissors soon reduced his beard sufficiently for the dulled razors to perform approximately their office. Cutting his own hair was beyond the hermit's skill. So he only combed and brushed it backward as smoothly as he could. Charity forbids us to consider the heartburnings and exertions of one so long removed from haberdashery and society.
At the last the hermit went to an inner corner of his cave and began to dig in the soft earth with a long iron spoon. Out of the cavity he thus made he drew a tin can, and out of the can three thousand dollars in bills, tightly rolled and wrapped in oiled silk. He was a real hermit, as this may assure you.
You may take a brief look at him as he hastens down the little mountain-side. A long, wrinkled black frock- coat reached to his calves. White duck trousers, unacquainted with the tailor's goose, a pink shirt, white standing collar with brilliant blue butterfly tie, and buttoned congress gaiters. But think, sir and madam--ten years! >From beneath a narrow-brimmed straw hat with a striped band flowed his hair. Seeing him, with all your shrewdness you could not have guessed him. You would have said that he played Hamlet--or the tuba--or pinochle--you would never have laid your hand on your heart and said: 'He is a hermit who lived ten years in a cave for love of one lady--to win another.'
The dancing pavilion extended above the waters of the river. Gay lanterns and frosted electric globes shed a soft glamour within it. A hundred ladies and gentlemen from the inn and summer cottages flitted in and about it. To the left of the dusty roadway down which the hermit had tramped were the inn and grill-room. Something seemed to be on there, too. The windows were brilliantly lighted, and music was playing--music different from the two-steps and waltzes of the casino band.
A negro man wearing a white jacket came through the iron gate, with its immense granite posts and wrought-iron lamp-holders.
