The gate clicked and Ann peeped rosily out of her bedroom window. She had been expecting that click all morning—waiting for it with every sense alert and with absurd, delicious little thrills of happiness chasing each other through her veins. Several disappointing clicks had preceded it—one which merely revealed a new baker’s boy who hadn’t troubled to discover whether the Cottage boasted a back-door or not, and another heralding the entry of Billy Brewster, armed with a stout broom and prepared to sweep the flagged path clean of the minutest particle of dust. So that Ann had at last been reluctantly compelled to fall back on the same explanation which had served her once before—that Eliot must have been detained at Heronsmere by unexpected business.
But now the afternoon had brought the desired click of the gate, and she could see his tall, well-knit figure striding up the path below. She leaned out of the window and called to him:
“Coo-ee! I’m up here!”
The charming voice, vibrant with that tender, indescribable inflection which a woman’s voice holds only for the one beloved man, floated down to him, and instinctively he looked up. For an instant his glance lingered, and ever afterwards there remained stamped indelibly upon his memory the impression of her as she leaned there like the Blessed Damozel leaning “out from the gold bar of Heaven.”
The sun glinted on her hair, turning it into a nimbus of ruddy gold, and there was something delicately flower-like in the droop of her small bent head on its slender throat. It reminded him of a harebell.
His expression hardened as he fought down the tide of longing which surged up within him at the sight of her, and from some disused corner of his subconscious mind the lines of the old Persian Tentmaker seemed to leap out at him and mock him:
“Heav’n but the Vision of fulfill’d Desire,And Hell the Shadow from a Soul on fire.”
The vision which had been his was shattered, utterly destroyed—destined to be forever unfulfilled.
... But Ann remained joyfully oblivious of anything amiss.
“Walk straight in,” she called through the window. “I’m coming down.” And with a gay wave of her hand she withdrew into the room. Followed a light sound of footsteps on the stairs, and a minute later the door of the living-room flew open to admit her.
Eliot, who had been standing with his back to the room, staring out of the window, wheeled round as she came towards him with hurrying feet and thrust her eager hands into his.
“You’ve come at last! I thought you’d be here the minute after breakfast,” she began, her face breaking into smiles. “If you were a story-book hero you would have been!... Oh, I know you’ll say it was business that kept you. But that’s only an old married man’s excuse”—mirthfully. “I shan’t allow you to offer it to me until we’ve been married for years and years!”
Thus far she had run on gaily with her tender nonsense, but now she checked herself suddenly as she read no answering smile on his face and felt her hands lie flaccidly ungripped in his.
“Eliot”—she drew back a little—“why don’t you speak? What is it?” Her hands clutched his spasmodically, and a sudden frightened look blurred the radiance in her eyes. “Oh, my dear! What is it? Have you had bad news?”
Very slowly, but with a strange, deliberate significance, he freed his hands from her clasp and put her away from him.
“Yes,” he said quietly, “I’ve had—news.” At the frozen calmness of his tones she shrank back as one shrinks from the numbing cold of the still air that hangs above black ice.
“What is it?” she breathed. “Not bad news—for us?”
Her eyes were fastened on his face, searching it wildly. A quick and terrible fear clamoured at her heart. Was there something in the past, something of which she had no knowledge, that could arise—now—to separate them from each other? That long-ago episode which had wrecked his youth—had the woman who had figured in it some material hold upon him? Could she—was it possible she could still come between them in some way? Ann had heard of such things. It seemed to her as though, betwixt herself and Eliot, there hovered a dim, formless shadow, vague and nebulous—a shadow which had crept silently out from some memory-haunted corner of the past.
“Not bad news—for us?” she repeated quiveringly.
“That depends upon how you choose to regard it,” he replied. “Ann”—the ice broke up and he came to the point with a suddenness that was almost brutal—“why haven’t you been straight with me?”
“Straight with you?” she repeated wonderingly. “But I have been straight with you.”
“What a woman would call straight, I suppose!” he flung back. “Which means concealing everything that you think won’t be found out.”
The indignant colour rushed up into her face, then receded, leaving it deadly pale.
“But I have nothing to conceal,” she answered. “Eliot—I don’t understand—”
“Don’t you?” lie said, and the measureless contempt in his voice stung like the lash of a whip. “Think back a bit! Is there nothing you’ve kept from me which I ought to have known—nothing which makes the love you professed only last night no more than a sham?”
For a moment Ann gazed at him in speechless silence. Then a low, passionate denial left her lips.
“Nothing!” she said.
Eliot took two strides towards her, and, gripping her by the shoulders, dragged her closer to the window so that the remorseless sunlight poured down on to her face.
“Repeat that!” he commanded savagely. “Will you dare to repeat that—that unutterable lie?”
His eyes, blazing with a terrible anger that seemed, to scorch her like a flame, searched her face with a scrutiny so pitiless, so implacably incredulous, that it was almost unbearable. But she endured it, and her clear golden eyes met his unflinchingly.
“It was the truth!” she said. Her voice sounded to herself as though it came from a great distance away. It had an odd, tinny sound like cracked metal.
He released her suddenly, almost flinging her from him, and she staggered a little, catching at the back of a chair to steady herself. His roughness roused her spirit.
“Eliot! Are you mad?” she exclaimed.
He stared at her, that burning ferocity of almost uncontrollable anger which had possessed him dying slowly out of his face.
“Mad?” he said grimly. “No, I’m not mad—now. I was mad yesterday—when I believed in you.”
The stark agony in his voice smote her to the heart.
“Eliot”—she moved towards him, her hands held out appealingly—“what have I done? Won’t you tell me? I don’t understand.”
“No?” His lips drew back over his teeth in a grimace that was a dreadful travesty of a smile. “Then I’ll ask you a simple question. Perhaps—after that—you’ll understand. Have you ever stayed at the Hotel de Loup?”
“The Hotel de Loup? Why—” The word “yes” was on the tip of her tongue. But before she could utter it the whole, overwhelming realisation of what he suspected rushed over her, and she checked herself abruptly, stunned into silence. With the amazing speed at which the mind can work in moments of tense excitement, she grasped instantly all that must have happened. Some one—she could not imagine who it was—had found out about that night which she and Tony had been compelled to pass together at the Hotel de Loup, and had made mischief ... told Eliot, putting the worst construction on it ... and he believed ... Oh! What did he not believe? A burning flush bathed her face, mounting to her very temples—a flush of shamed horror, and she fell suddenly silent, staring at him with wide, horrified eyes.
“So you do remember?” he said, his voice like cold steel.
“Yes.” She answered him mechanically—like a doll which says “yes” or “no” when some one touches a spring.
“And you were not there alone, I believe?”
The other spring this time. “No,” answered the doll.
“Brabazon was with you—Tony Brabazon?”
“Yes.” Again the parrot-like reply.
“Then I don’t think there is any need to continue this conversation.” As he spoke, Eliot turned and walked towards the door. Ann watched him without moving. She felt almost as though she were watching something that was happening in a play—something that had nothing whatever to do with her. Then, just as his hand was on the latch of the door, the strange numbness which had held her motionless and silent seemed to melt away.
“Eliot, come back!” she cried out, and there was a note so ringingly clear and decisive in her voice that involuntarily he halted. “I have listened to you,” she went on quietly. “Now—you will listen to me.”
He retraced his steps to her side, like a man moving without his own volition, and stood waiting.
“Well?” he said tonelessly. “What is it you wish to say? I am listening.”
“It’s quite true that I stayed at the Hotel de Loup,” she said. “And it’s true that Tony Brabazon was with me. But I have nothing to ask your forgiveness for.” She lifted her head, meeting his gaze with eyes that were very steady and unashamed. There was something proud and at the same time infinitely appealing in the gesture. But Eliot regarded her unmoved.
“Do you expect me to believe that?” he asked contemptuously. “I’m not a blind fool!... Do you remember, I told you that a man asks all of a woman—past as well as future. Well, you can’t give me the past. It belongs to some one else—to Brabazon. I suppose you meant to marry him. And then I come along—and I’m worth more. I don’t flatter myself I’m more attractive!”—grimly. “Years ago a woman threw me over because I was poor. And now another woman is ready to throw over some one else and marry me because I’m rich. It’s the same stale old story. You’re not going to ask me to believe you accepted me from disinterested affection, are you?”
While he spoke, Ann had been standing motionless, every nerve of her taut and strained to the utmost. Outwardly unflinching, inwardly she felt as though he were raining blows upon her. It was all so sordid and horrible. It dragged love through the clinging mire of suspicion and distrust till its radiant wings were soiled and fouled beyond recognition.
“I’m not going to ask you to believe—anything.” She spoke very quietly. A bitter, tortured pride upheld her. “If you can think—that—of me, it would be useless asking you to believe anything I might say. Yesterday”—her voice trembled but she steadied it again—“yesterday you told me that the essence of love was possession. It isn’t, Eliot.... It’s faith ... and trust.”
In the silence that followed the man and woman stood gazing dumbly at each other, and for a brief moment love and faith hung quivering in the balance. Then the balance tilted. The heavy burden of suspicion weighed it down, and without another word Eliot turned and left the room.
Ann did not move. She stood quite still, her arms hanging straight down at her sides. The Dents de Loup—wolf’s teeth! Well, the jaws of the wolf had closed, crushing her happiness for ever between their merciless white fangs.
She knew now the meaning of that nebulous, distorted shape which had seemed to come betwixt her and the man she loved. It was the grey shadow of distrust which had sprung out from the hidden places of the past and now lay, dark and impenetrable, dividing them for ever.
“I beg your pardon!”
Instinctively Cara apologised, although actually the collision had been no fault of hers. The man with whom she had collided had been striding along with bent head, completely absorbed in his own thoughts, and had awakened too late to the fact that some one was coming towards him along the narrow bridle-path through the woods. He lifted his hat mechanically and murmured some sort of apology, but his eyes remained blank and seemed to look through and beyond the woman into whom he had just cannoned without seeing her—certainly without recognising her.
Cara was startled by their expression of strain. They seemed to glare with a hard, unnatural brilliance, as though the man’s vision were focused upon some terrible inner presentment. She laid a detaining hand on his sleeve, but he appeared quite unconscious of her touch and she gave his arm a little shake.
“Eliot!” she said quickly. “Eliot! Are you trying to cut me?”
As though by an immense effort he seemed to come back to the consciousness of his material environment.
“To cut you?” he repeated dully. He brushed his hand across his forehead. “No, of course I wasn’t trying to cut you.”
He looked shockingly ill. His face was grey and lined, and his shoulders sagged as though he were physically played out. The boots and leggings he wore were caked with mud, and his coat had little torn ends of wool sticking up over it, as if he had been walking blindly ahead, careless of direction, and had forced his way through thickets of bramble rather than turn aside to seek an easier path.
“What have you been doing with yourself?” she asked rather breathlessly. In every nerve of her she felt that something terrible had happened. “You look”—trying to summon up a smile—“as if you’d been having a battle.”
“I’ve been walking.”
“Far?”
He gave a sudden laugh.
“To hell and back. I don’t know the mileage.”
“Eliot, what do you mean?”
He looked down at her, and now that dreadful glare which had so frightened her had gone out of his eyes. They were human once more, but the naked misery in them shocked her into momentary silence. She would have liked to run away—to escape from those eyes. They were the windows of a soul enduring torture that was almost too intolerable to be borne. It was only by a strong effort of will that she at last forced her voice to do her bidding.
“What has happened, Eliot?” she said, speaking very gently. “Can’t you tell me?”
He stared at her a moment. Then:
“Why, yes,” he said. “I think I could tell you—part of it. It might amuse you. I’ve found you were not the only woman in the world who counts the shekels. You wouldn’t marry me because I was poor. Now another woman is ready to marry me just because I’m rich. There’s only one drawback.”
“Drawback?”
“Yes. Quite a drawback. You see, it doesn’t appeal to me to be married because I’ve a decent income, any more than it appealed to me ten years ago to be turned, down for the opposite reason.”
Cara shrank from this bitter reference to the past.
“You can be very cruel, Eliot,” she said unsteadily.
“Cruelty breeds cruelty,” he replied with indifference. “Still, I’m beginning to think I was too hard on you, Cara, in the past. It seems finance plays an amazingly strong hand in the game of love. But it’s taken two women to teach me the lesson thoroughly”—with a short laugh.
“Two?”
“You—and Ann.”
“Ann! I don’t believe it!” The words burst from her with impulsive vehemence.
His face darkened.
“While I can believe no other. In fact”—heavily—“your poor little sin shows white as driven snow beside—hers.”
“You’re wrong. I’m sure you’re wrong,” insisted Cara. “I don’t know why you believe what you do—nor all that you believe. I don’t ask to know. It wouldn’t make any difference if you told me. I know Ann. And however black things looked against her, nothing would ever make me believe she was anything but dead straight.”
“Most touching faith!” jeered Eliot. “Unfortunately, I have a preference in favour of believing the evidence of my own senses.”
She drew nearer to him, her hands pressed tightly together.
“Eliot, you’re deliberately going to throw away your happiness if you distrust Ann,” she urged, beseechingly, “I’ve told you, she’s not like me. She’s different.”
“She’s no better and no worse than other women, I suppose,” he returned implacably. “Ready to take whatever goods the gods provide—and then go on to the next.”
Cara turned aside in despair. She could not tell—could not guess—what had happened. She only knew that the man whose happiness meant more to her than her own, and the woman she had learned to love as a friend, had somehow come to irretrievable misunderstanding and disaster. At last she turned back again to Eliot.
“Would you have believed this of her—whatever it is you do believe—if it had not been for me?”
He reflected a moment.
“Perhaps not,” he said.
She uttered a cry that was half a sob. So the price of that one terrible mistake she had made was not yet paid! Fate would go on exacting the penalty for ever—first the destruction of her own happiness, then that of Eliot and of Ann. All must be hurled into the bottomless well of expiation. There was no forgiveness of sins.
It was useless to plead with Eliot—to reason with him. It was she herself who had poisoned the very springs of life for him, and now she was powerless to cleanse them. With a gesture of utter hopelessness she turned and left him, and made her way despondently homeward through the gathering dusk.
She reached the Priory just in time to encounter Robin coming out of the gates. He sprang off his horse and greeted her delightedly.
“I came over to bring you a brace of pheasants,” he explained. “As you were out, I deposited them in the care of your parlourmaid.”
Cara thanked him cordially, and then, as he still lingered, she added:
“Won’t you turn back and come in for a cup of tea? Have you time?”
“I should think I have!” The mercurial rise in Robin’s spirits betrayed itself in the tones of his voice. “I was hoping for an invitation to tea—so you can imagine my disappointment when I found that you weren’t home.”
She laughed, and they walked up to the house together, Robin leading his horse. A cheery fire burned on the hearth in the square, old-fashioned hall which Cara had converted into a living-room. As they entered she switched on the lights, revealing panelled walls, thick dim-hued rugs breaking an expanse of polished floor, and, by the fire, big, cushioned easy chairs which seemed to cry aloud for some one to rest weary limbs in their soft, capacious embrace.
“Ann’s always envious of your electric light,” remarked Robin. “Being only cottage folk”—smiling—“we have to content ourselves with lamps, and they seem prone to do appalling things in the way of smoking and covering the whole room with greasy soot the moment you take your eye off them.”
“I know. They’re a frightful nuisance,” said Cara, ringing the bell for tea. “But lamp-light is the most becoming form of illumination, you know—especially when you’re getting on in years, like me!”
Robin helped her off with her coat, lingering a little over the process, and gazed down at her with adoring eyes.
“Don’t—talk—rubbish!” he said, softly and emphatically.
Perhaps he might have gone on to say something more, but at that moment a trim parlourmaid came in and began to arrange the tea-table beside her mistress’s chair, and for some time afterwards Cara skilfully contrived to keep the conversation on impersonal lines. It was not until tea was over that Robin suddenly struck a more intimate note again. He had been watching her face in silence for a little while, noticing that it looked very small and pale to-day in its frame of night-dark hair, and that there were faint, purplish shadows beneath her eyes.
“You look awfully tired!” he remarked with concern. “And sad,” he added. “Is anything bothering you?”
She was silent for a moment, staring into the heart of the fire where the red and blue flames played flickeringly over the logs.
“I’ve been taking a look into the past,” she said, at last, “It’s—it’s rather a dreary occupation.”
“I know,” he said quietly. “I know.” Ignorant of that earlier past of hers, in which Eliot Coventry had played a part, he was thinking only of her unhappy married life, about which he had gathered a good deal from other people and a little—a very little—from Cara herself. But even that little had let in far more light than she had imagined. Robin’s insight was extraordinarily quick and keen, and a phrase dropped here or there, even her very silences at times, had enabled him to make a pretty good conjecture as to the kind of martyrdom she had suffered. It made his blood boil to think of the mental—and even physical—suffering she must have endured, tied to the brute and drunken bully which it was common knowledge Dene Hilyard had been.
“Don’t you think,” he went on gently, “that you could try to forget it, Cara? Don’t dwell on the past. Think of the future.”
“I’m afraid that’s rather dreary, too,” she answered, with a sad little smile. “It’s just... going on living... and remembering.”
He leaned over her and suddenly she felt the eager touch of his hand on hers.
“It needn’t be that, Cara,” he said swiftly. “It needn’t be that.” She looked up at him with startled eyes. Her thoughts had been so far away, bridging the gulf between to-day and long-dead yesterday, that she had almost to wrench them back to the present. And now here was Robin, with a new light in his eyes and a new, passionate note in his voice. “Cara—darling—”
With a sudden realisation of what was coming, she drew her hand quickly away from him.
“No—no, Robin—” she began.
But he would not listen.
“Don’t say ‘no’ yet. Hear me out!” he exclaimed. “I love you. But I don’t suppose—I’m not conceited enough to suppose that you love me—yet. Only let me try—let me try to teach you to love me! Don’t judge all men by one. You’ve had a ghastly time. Let me try—some day—to make you happier.”
He was so eager, so humble, so entirely selfless in his devotion, thinking only of her, that she was touched inexpressibly—tempted, even. Ah! If she could only put all the past aside, out of sight, and take this love that Robin offered her and hold it round her like a garment shielding her from the icy blasts of life! But she had nothing to give in return for this splendid, brave first love he was offering her. She must play fair. She dare not take where she could not give. Very gently she put him from her.
“You don’t understand,” she said. “You don’t understand. Robin, I wish—I wish I could say ‘yes.’ But I can’t. It isn’t—Dene—who stands between us. I’m not a coward—I’d take my chance again if I could love again—”
“But you never loved him? Youcouldn’thave loved him!” he protested incredulously.
“My husband? No. But—I loved some one once. And I threw away my happiness—to marry Dene. Oh, it was years ago, Robin—” She broke off and lifted her eyes appealingly to his face. “Must I go on? That’s—that’s really all there is to tell you. Only don’t you see—I—I can’t marry you.”
“No, I don’t see—yet,” returned Robin stoutly, though her words had dashed the quick, eager look of hope from his face. “This—this other man, the one you cared for—is he coming back to marry you?”
“Coming back? No!” For once the sweet voice was hard—bitterly hard. “He has gone out of my life for ever.”
A look of relief came into his eyes. He took her hands into his and held them very gently.
“Then in that case,” he said, “there’s still a chance for me. Not now—not yet. I wouldn’t try to hurry you. But you’ll let me go on loving you, Cara—after all, you can’t stop my doing that!”—with a crooked little smile. “And some day, perhaps, you’ll come to me and let me try and make you happier again. I think I could do that, you know.”
“Ah, no, Robin! I couldn’t come to you—not like that. I couldn’t take all your love—and only give you second best in return. It wouldn’t be fair.”
He laughed a little.
“I think ‘fairness’ just doesn’t come into love at all,” he said, with a great tenderness. “One just loves. And I’d be very glad to take that ‘second best’—if you’ll give it to me, Cara. Oh, my dear, if you only knew, if you only understood! A man can do so much for a woman when he loves her—he can serve her and protect her, and take all the difficult tasks away from her and leave her only the easy ones—the little, pretty, beautiful things, you know. He can stand between her and the prickles and sharp swords of life—and there are such a lot of prickles, and sometimes a terribly sharp sword.... I want to do all these things for you, Cara.”
She shook her head silently. For a moment she could not find her voice. She was too unused to tenderness—out of practice in all the sweet ways of being cared for.
“No—no, Robin,” she said at last. “I’m grateful—I shall always be grateful, and—and happier, I think, because you’ve said these things to me—because you’ve thought of me that way. But you must keep them—keep them for some nice girl who hasn’t wasted all her youth and lost her beliefs—who can give you something better than a bundle of regrets and a second-hand love. You’ll—you’ll meet her some day, Robin. And then you’ll be glad that I didn’t take you at your word.”
But Robin appeared quite unimpressed.
“No, I shan’t. I don’t want any ‘nice girl,’ thank you,” he returned, and his head went up a little. “If I can’t have you, no one else is going to take your place. But I shall never give up hope until you’ve actually married some other man. And meanwhile”—smiling a little—“I shall propose to you regularly and systematically, till you give me a different answer. I suppose”—tentatively—“you couldn’t give it to-day?”
Cara pushed him gently away from her, but she did not withdraw her hands from the strong, kind, comfortable clasp in which he held them.
“Oh, Robin, you’re ridiculous!” she said, a little break in her voice. “I’m speaking for your own good—really I am.”
“And I think I’m the best judge of that,” he answered, regarding her with a quiet humour in his eyes. “But I won’t bother you any more to-night,” he went on. “Only I shall come back.” He lifted the hands he held and kissed them—kissed them with a kind of reverence that made of the slight action an act of homage. “I shall come back,” he repeated, his eyes looking straight into hers.
Then, with a sudden reversion to the commonplace and everyday, he glanced at the clock.
“I must be off!” he exclaimed. “Ann will be wondering what has become of me—and, as soon as she’s quite sure I’m safe and sound, she’ll give me a scolding for being late for dinner,” he added, laughing.
Ann!Cara was conscious of an overwhelming rush of self-reproach. Ann miserable—and alone. And she had been keeping Robin here with her—or, at least, had let him stay. Should she warn him? Prepare him? She hesitated. But her hesitation was only momentary. Whatever had occurred betwixt Ann and the man who loved her, it was Ann’s secret, and she alone had the right to decide whether Robin should be admitted into it or not. But he must go home—now, at once!
“Why, yes,” she said urgently. “You must hurry back, Robin. Ann may be—feeling lonely.”
Half an hour later Robin strode into the living-room at the Cottage to find Ann sitting by the window, curiously still, and staring out impassively into the dusk with blank, unseeing eyes. At sight of her—white and motionless as a statue—a queer sense of foreboding woke in him, and he stepped quickly to her side.
“Ann!” he exclaimed. “Ann, what is it?”
She remained quite still, as if she did not hear him. He touched her shoulder.
“What is it, Ann?” he repeated urgently.
At the touch of his hand she glanced stupidly towards him. Then, shivering a little as though suddenly cold, she got up stiffly out of her chair. But still she did not speak. Robin slipped his arm round her.
“Ann—dear old thing, tell me. What’s happened?” he entreated.
At last she answered him.
“Nothing much,” she said. “Oh, nothing at all, really.” She gave a funny little cracked laugh. “Only—I’m not—engaged any longer.... I told you I was ‘fey’ last night.”
Almost before she had finished speaking, he felt her slight young body suddenly become a dead weight on his arm. She crumpled up against him, and sank into the blessed oblivion of unconsciousness.
The following morning two rather strained young faces confronted each other across the Cottage breakfast table. After Ann had recovered consciousness the previous evening, she had confided to Robin something of what had taken place during the interview between herself and Eliot. He had vainly tried to dissuade her, urging that she was too tired to talk and had much better go to bed and rest.
“I’d rather tell you now—to-night,” she had insisted. “Then we need never speak of it again. And there’s very little to tell. Eliot has broken off his engagement with me because he thinks I’ve deceived him.”
Robin’s anger had been deep but inarticulate. When he spoke again it was reassuringly, soothingly. All else he had kept back.
“Youdeceive him—or any one! If he thinks that, then he doesn’t know you at all, little sister. And what’s more, if he can think that of you, he isn’t good enough for you.”
“The trouble is”—with a pale little smile—“that he thinks I’m not—good enough—for him.”
She would give no reply to Robin’s impetuous demand for an explanation.
“No, dear old boy, don’t ask me,” she had said painfully. “It—it doesn’t bear talking about. He just doesn’t think me good enough. That’s all.”
But the following morning, when he asked her if she would like to leave Silverquay, a look of intense relief overspread her face.
“Would it be possible?” she asked on a low, breathless; note of eagerness. Then her face fell. “Oh, but we can’t think of it! It’s much too good a post for you to throw up.”
Robin made no answer. But in his own mind he resolved that, if it were possible, he would find some other post—one which, while it would not take him entirely out of reach of the Priory, would yet spare Ann the necessity of ever again meeting Eliot Coventry, or of feeling that they were dependent for their livelihood on the man who, he was instinctively aware, had hurt her in some deep, inmost sanctuary of her womanhood—hurt her so unbearably that she could not bring herself to speak of it.
He rode across to Heronsmere as soon as breakfast was over, and it did not require a second glance at Eliot’s haggard face to tell him that Ann was not alone in her intensity of suffering. He was appalled at the change which two days had worked in the man before him, and for an instant sheer pity almost quenched the burning intention of his errand.
“You wanted to see me, Lovell?”
As Eliot turned the grey mask of his face towards him, Robin mentally visioned Ann’s own face as he had last seen it, and his heart hardened.
“Yes,” he said, speaking rather jerkily. “I want to resign my post as your agent.”
A momentary change of expression showed itself on Eliot’s face, fleeting as the passage of a shadow across a pool.
“To resign?” he repeated mechanically.
“As soon as you can find some one to take my place.”
Coventry remained silent, his fingers trifling absently with a small silver calendar that stood on his desk, pushing it backwards and forwards.
“That’s rather a strange request,” he said at last.
“I don’t think so,” answered Robin, quietly, looking at him very directly.
He returned the glance with grave eyes.
“I suppose I understand what you mean,” he said slowly.
“I suppose you do,” returned Robin bluntly. “But we needn’t speak of that. I came merely to ask you to accept my resignation.”
Again Eliot made no immediate response. He was trying to realise it—to visualise the Cottage empty, or occupied by some one who was no more than an ordinary estate agent—just his man of business. To conceive Silverquay void of Ann’s presence, know her no longer there, be ignorant of where she was in the big world ... whether well or ill.... He found that the bare idea wrought an exquisite agony within him. It was like probing a raw wound.
“No!” He spoke very suddenly, his voice so harsh that it seemed to grate on the quiet of the room. “No. You can’t leave, Lovell. Our arrangement was six months’ notice on either side. I claim that notice.”
Robin drew a deep breath.
“I hoped you would consent to waive it,” he said.
“I don’t consent. I claim it”—decisively. “You can’t leave under six months.” Coventry rose from his chair as though to indicate that the interview was at an end, hesitated a moment, then added abruptly: “I’m going abroad. I must have some one in charge whom I can trust. I shall be leaving England to-morrow.”
There are few truer sayings than the one which cautions us that evil is wrought by want of thought as well as want of heart. When you are unlucky enough to get a combination of the two, the evil accomplished is liable to assume considerably increased proportions.
On the morning following Eliot’s visit to the Cottage, want of thought, in addition to a very natural semi-maternal pride, led Maria Coombe into confiding jubilantly into the ear of Mrs. Thorowgood—laundress and purveyor of local gossip—the fact that her Miss Ann and “the Squire up to Heronsmere” were going to make a match of it. Mrs. Thorowgood, not to be outdone, responded to the effect that she had “suspicioned” all along that this was going to be the case, and that when she had heard in the village yesterday that Mr. Coventry had gone straight to the Cottage upon his return that afternoon to Silverquay—with Mr. Lovell away in Ferribridge, too, and all!—she felt sure of it. “So I’m not surprised at your news, Mrs. Coombe,” she concluded triumphantly. “Not surprised at all.”
Having thus successfully taken the wind out of Maria’s sails, she proceeded on her way delivering the clean laundry at various houses in the district, and in the course of a few hours the news of Mr. Coventry’s engagement to Miss Lovell was being glibly discussed in more than one servants’ hall as an accomplished fact. By the afternoon, conveyed thither by the various butchers, bakers, and greengrocers who had acquired the news in the course of their morning rounds, the information had spread to the village.
Meanwhile, during the progress of Brett Forrester’s visit to Heronsmere in search of the puppy his aunt so ardently desired, a prying servant had chanced to pause outside Eliot’s study door, inspired by a fleeting inquisitiveness to learn with whom her master was closeted. A single sentence she overheard sufficed to convert that idle curiosity into a burning thirst for knowledge. So she remained at the key-hole listening post until it was satisfied, and later on, armed with a fine fat piece of gossip, the like of which did not often come her way, she sallied forth to spend her “afternoon out” in the village.
Thus it came about that the two streams of gossip—one emanating in all innocence from Maria Coombe, the other having its origin in the conversation overheard between Eliot and Brett—met and mingled together and were ultimately poured into the ears of Miss Caroline, busily engaged in parochial visitation. An evil fatality appointed that the first person she subsequently encountered should be Mrs. Carberry, the M.F.H.‘s wife, with whom, in a flutter of shocked excitement, she promptly shared the dreadful story she had heard. This, of course, carried then gossip into another stratum of society altogether.
“I can hardly believe it’s true! I’m surprised!” twittered Miss Caroline. “Although, of course, Miss Lovell is certainly rather unconventional, I’ve always looked upon her as quitenice. But to spend a night—like that—at a hotel—” Words failed her, and she had to rely upon an unusual pinkness of her complexion to convey adequately to Mrs. Carberry the scandalised depth of her feelings.
“Perhaps I’m not so surprised as you are,” returned the M.F.H.‘s wife. “I never cared for the girl. After all, she was merely a companion-help.”
“Companion-chauffeuse,” corrected Miss Caroline diffidently.
“Companion-help,” repeated Mrs. Carberry, unmoved. “And no one would have taken her up at all if Lady Susan hadn’t made such a silly fuss of her. It’s absurd, when her brother’s nothing more than Mr. Coventry’s estate agent. I always think it’s a great mistake to take people like that out of their position. One generally regrets it afterwards.”
“Still, I believe the Lovells were quite a good family—West Country people—lost money, you know.” Miss Caroline’s conscience drove her into making this admission. Also, she wanted very much to know how Mrs. Carberry would meet it. Mrs. Carberry took it in her stride.
“That’s just it. They’ve lost money—mixed with the wrong sort of people. Losing money so often involves losing caste, too. If this story proves to be true, I shall be very glad indeed that I never allowed my daughter Muriel to make friends of these Lovells. We shall soon know,” she added, a note of hungry anticipation in her voice. “The part about the engagement is true, without doubt, since it came direct from the Oldstone Cottage cook. Besides, one could see that this Lovell girl was angling to catch Mr. Coventry. If the engagement is broken off, we may feel pretty sure, I think, that the rest of the story’s true, too.”
Privately, she hoped it would prove true, since a man is very often caught at the rebound, and, judiciously managed, it seemed quite possible that Coventry, shocked and disgusted at Ann Lovell’s flightiness of character, might turn with relief and admiration to so modest and well-brought-up a girl as her own daughter. To see dear Muriel installed as mistress of Heronsmere had been her ambition from the first moment of its new owner’s coming to live at Silverquay, and when Miss Caroline had volunteered the news of Ann’s supposed engagement to him, it had come as a rude shock to her plans. But this had been so swiftly followed by the story of Ann’s scandalous behaviour in Switzerland that she had speedily reacted from the shock, and was already briskly weaving fresh schemes to bring about the desirable consummation of a marriage between her daughter and Eliot Coventry. Decidedly, Mrs. Carberry was not likely to help stem the tide of gossip setting against Ann!
The day following, the news that Eliot had left England for an indefinite stay abroad flew like wildfire through the neighbourhood, and, in consequence, substance was immediately given to the stories already circulating. There could be no longer any further doubt as to what had happened—Coventry had asked Miss Lovell to marry him, and then, discovering how she had forfeited her reputation somewhere on the Continent, had broken off the engagement between them the very next day.
Silverquay fairly buzzed with the tale. Everybody jumped to the same conclusion and told each other so with varying degrees of censure and disapprobation. Miss Caroline, eager as a ferret, even paid a special visit to Oldstone Cottage, to obtain confirmation of the dreadful truth. Having previously assured herself that Robin and Ann were both out, she darted into the Cottage on the plea of delivering the monthly parish magazine and, naturally, lingered on the doorstep to chat a little with Maria.
“Surely there’s no truth in this story I hear, Maria?” she opened fire after a few minutes devoted to generalities.
“What story may you be meaning, ma’am?” inquired Maria blandly. She had heard the tale, of course, from half a dozen different sources, and was inwardly fuming with loyal wrath and indignation—the more so in that she dared not mention the matter to her young mistress whose still, pale composure had seemed to fence her round with a barrier which it was beyond Maria’s powers to surmount.
“Why—why—” Miss Caroline fluttered. “The story that she stayed the night at a hotel in the mountains with young Mr. Brabazon when she was on the Continent.”
“And did you suppose ‘twas true?” demanded Maria scornfully, her arms akimbo, her blue eyes gimleting Miss Caroline’s face.
“I—I don’t know what to think,” began Miss Caroline feebly.
Maria looked her up and down—a look beneath which Miss Caroline wilted visibly.
“Well, ‘tis certain sure no one would pass the night with you, miss, on any mountain top,” she observed grimly. “And ‘tis just as sure they wouldn’t with Miss Ann—though there’d be a main diff’rence in the reason why!” And with a snort of defiance she had flounced back into the house, slamming the door in Miss Caroline’s astonished face.
To Ann herself, the sudden cloud of obloquy in which she found herself enveloped heaped an added weight to the burden she already had to bear, and compelled her to take Robin fully into her confidence. It was a mystery to her how the story of the Dents de Loup episode had leaked out in the neighbourhood. She utterly declined to believe that Coventry himself would have shared his knowledge of the incident with any one. But that ithadleaked out was cruelly self-evident, and the worst part of it was that the malicious gossip was founded on so much actual fact that it was difficult—almost impossible, in fact—to combat or refute it. She felt helpless in the face of the detestable scandal which had reared itself upon a foundation of such innocent truth.
“I wish Coventry had accepted my resignation,” fulminated Robin fiercely. “This is a perfectly beastly business. That vile scandal’s all over the place.”
“I know,” assented Ann indifferently. It hurt her that certain people should think ill of her as they did, but after all, the ache in her heart hurt much more. A man stretched on the rack would probably take little notice if you ran a pin into him. The lesser pain would be overwhelmed by the great agony. And although the first realisation of the gossip that had fastened on her name filled Ann with bitter indignation and disgust, it became a relatively small matter in comparison with the total shipwreck of her love and happiness. It did not really matter very much that Mrs. Carberry had cut her pointedly in the middle of Silverquay, or that some of the village girls whispered and pointed at her surreptitiously as she passed. These were all external things, which could be fought down. But the wound that Eliot himself had dealt her had pierced to the very core of her being.
“Well,” Robin resumed thoughtfully after a brief silence. “I’vegotto stay here till the six months are run out. But you needn’t, Ann. You had better look for a post of some kind till I’m free—”
“A post!” She laughed rather bitterly. “I’ve a good recommendation for any post, haven’t I? A story like this would be sure to follow me up somehow, and I should probably be politely requested by my employer to leave.’
“Then go away for a bit. I’ll find the money somehow. I won’t have you baited by all the old tabby-cats in the neighbourhood.”
Ann stood up, her head thrown back proudly on its slim young throat.
“No,” she said with decision. “No, Robin. I’m not going to run away from village gossip. I’m going to face it out.”
Robin sprang up.
“Well done, little sister!” he exclaimed, a ring of wholehearted admiration in his voice. “We’ll stick it out together—stay here and live it down.” He held out his hand and, Ann laying hers within it, they shook hands soberly, just as in earlier days they had so often shaken hands over some childish pact.
The loyalty of Ann’s friends, of Lady Susan and of Cara and the rector, was a very real consolation. Lady Susan had descended on the Cottage the moment the story came to her ears—which happened to be on the very day following Coventry’s departure from Silverquay. Brett, she vouchsafed, had run up to town unexpectedly for a few days. “And he’s just as well out of the way,” she added briskly, “till we’ve got this tangle straight”—little dreaming that her nephew was responsible for the whole knotting of the tangled skein. By kindly probing she elicited the real, grim tragedy which lay behind all the gossip, and her anger against Eliot knew no bounds. But once she had given characteristic expression to her opinion of men in general, and of Eliot in particular, she promptly set to work to try and mend matters.
“Ican explain to Eliot how you came to be at the Hotel de Loup that night,” she asserted. “He won’t presume to doubt me!”
“No. But hehaspresumed to doubt me,” replied Ann bitterly. “So it wouldn’t help in the least if you explained all day.”
“How do you mean—wouldn’t help?”
“Because what matters is whether Eliot himself trusts me—not whether he has everything explained to him,” said Ann. “He must trust me because I’m trustworthy—not because you guarantee me.”
“My dear—that’s the ideal attitude. But”—Lady Susan sighed and smiled in the same breath—“we’ve got to make allowances for poor human nature. We’re all so very far from being ideal in this sinful old world. Be sensible, Ann darling,” she coaxed, “and let me assure Eliot you were up at the Hotel de Loup alone.”
Ann shook her head.
“You can’t, dear Lady Susan. Because—I wasn’t alone. Tony and I were there together.”
Lady Susan turned on her a face of blank astonishment.
“You weren’t alone?” she exclaimed. “But—I don’t understand. Philip told me that Tony ran over to Geneva that day and stayed the night there!”
“Did he?” Ann’s heart grew very soft at the thought of Tony’s boyishly crude effort to protect her from the possible consequence of their night’s sojourn at the hotel. “I’m afraid Tony let him think that on my account—in order to shield me.... I should have told you all about it at the time,” she went on, “only—don’t you remember—you had sprained your ankle, and you were in so much, pain that I just didn’t want to bother you with the matter.”
Lady Susan looked distressed.
“But, my dear, what possessed you to stay the night up there—with Tony? You must have known people would talk if it ever became known.”
“Well, it was just a sheer bit of bad luck,” explained Ann, and forthwith proceeded to recount the whole adventure which had befallen her and Tony at the Dents de Loup. “Wehadto stay there,” she wound up. “We’d absolutely no choice. But we met no one. Not a soul. And I can’t conceive how the story has got out.”
“And now there’s all this wretched tittle-tattle about you!” chafed Lady Susan. “My poor little Ann, it really is a stroke of the most fiendish ill-luck.”
Ann nodded.
“Yes. Don’t you see how impossible it is for me to clear myself? Wewerethere. It’s true.”
“I do see,” replied Lady Susan in a worried tone. “It’s just the kind of coil that’s hardest of all to straighten out. A lot of untrue gossip founded upon actual fact—and there’s nothing more difficult to combat than a half-truth.”
“Oh, well”—Ann jumped up restlessly out of her chair. “It’s smashed up everything for me. And when you’ve crashed I don’t suppose a little ill-natured gossip more or less matters very much. Did you know Mrs. Carberry cut me this morning in the village high-street?” she added with a smile.
“Did she indeed?” said Lady Susan, a grim note in her usually pleasant voice. “Of course, the whole business is nuts to her—she’s aching to plant that prunes-and-prisms daughter of hers on Eliot Coventry. Well, I think I carry weight enough in the neighbourhood to put a stop to that kind of insolence.” She paused reflectively. “I shall open my campaign with a big dinner-party—and you and Robin will come to it. I’ll shoot off the invitations to-morrow. Don’t worry, Ann. If, between us, your friends can’t manage to scotch this kind of dead-set some people are making at you, my name’s not Susan Hallett.” She rose and slipped her arm round Ann’s shoulders in a gesture of unwonted tenderness. “And for the rest, my dear—try and believe things will come straight in the end. You’re in the long lane, now—but you’ll find the turning some day, I feel sure.”
The following morning Brian Tempest arrived at the Cottage. Ann greeted him with a smile, half sad, half bitter.
“Have you come to call down fulminations of wrath on my devoted head?” she asked.
The rector’s kind eyes were puckered round with little creases of distress.
“Did you think that?” he asked.
She smiled—and there was less of bitterness in the smile this time.
“No,” she answered frankly. “I didn’t. I thought you’d come to pay a kindly visit to the outcast.”
“I came,” he said simply, “to tell you—if you need telling—that I don’t believe one word of this ridiculous story which is flying round, and that I’m going to fight it with every bit of influence I can bring to bear.”
“You dear!” replied Ann softly. A wan gleam of amusement flitted across her face. “But it’s true, you know—Tony and I did stay at the Hotel de Loup together.”
No remotest glimmer of doubt, or even of astonishment, showed itself in the steady glance of Tempest’s “heather mixture” eyes.
“Did you?” he returned placidly. “Well, I suppose neither of you has the sole monopoly of any hotel in Europe.”
“Then you’re not shocked?”
“Not in the least. I conjecture that some accidental happening drove you both into an awkward predicament. Feel like telling me about it all?”—with a friendly smile.
Ann felt exactly like it. There was something in Brian Tempest—in his absolute sincerity and his broad, tolerant, humorous outlook on things—which attracted confidence as a magnet attracts steel, and before long he was in possession of the skeleton facts of the story, and had himself, out of his own gifts of observation and sympathetic intuition, clothed those bare bones with tissue.
“And what do you propose to do?” he asked, when Ann ceased speaking.
“Stick it out,” she returned briefly.
Tempest watched the brave fire gather and glow in the golden-brown eyes. He nodded contentedly.
“I was sure you would,” he said. “And don’t worry overmuch.Thinkthat it will come right. Even”—with a kindly significance—“the part that hurts you most—and I know that’s not the general gossip. Don’t let your thoughts waver. There’s no limit to the force of thought, you know.”
“You believe that, too, then?” said Ann quickly.
“I’m sure of it,” he answered quietly. “Thought is the one great miracle-worker. Why”—with a laugh—“if you want immediate proof, it was a bad thought, some one thinking wrongly, that started all this present trouble. So that the right thought—the thought that it will all work out straight, held by you and by all of us who are your friends—is the obvious antidote. God never made a law that only works one-sidedly. If thought forces can work evil, they can assuredly work infinite good.”
“You’re an excellent ‘cheerer-up,’” said Ann, later on, when he was going. “Youhavecheered me, you know,” she added gratefully.
“Have I? I’m glad. And now, I want you to cheer me.”
“You?” Her voice held surprise.
“Yes, me.” He hesitated a moment. “Ann, I’m going to throw myself on your mercy. I know—to my deep shame I know that my sister has been one of the people who have helped to circulate this unfounded story about you. I want you, if you can, to try and forgive her—and me.”
“There’s nothing to forgive you for,” protested Ann.
“She’s my sister. Part of her burden must be mine. Nor have I any excuse to offer for her. Some people look through a window and see God’s sunshine, while others see only the spots on the window-pane. We are as we’re made, they say—but some of us have got a deal of re-making to do before we’re perfected.”
“Don’t worry.” Unconsciously Ann sought to comfort him in the same familiar, everyday language which he himself had used to her. “Don’t worry one bit. I’ve no feeling of ill-will towards Miss Caroline. It’s just her way—one can’t help one’s way of looking at things, you know”—quaintly. “And I’m quite, quite sure she never meant any harm.”
“So that’s the wayyoulook at things?” He smiled down at her, his eyes very luminous and tender. “Thank you, Ann, for the way you look at things—the plucky, generous, splendid way.”
And when he had gone Ann was conscious of a warm glow round about her heart—that gladdening glow of comfort and thanksgiving which the spontaneous, ardent loyalty of real friends can bring even to the heaviest heart.