“I’ve turned up again like a bad penny, you see.”
Brett, ushered into the living-room at the Cottage by a very depressed-looking Maria, made the announcement with his usual debonair assurance.
“So I see,” replied Ann, shaking hands without enthusiasm. “How are you?”
He looked at her critically—at her face, paler than its wont, her shadowed eyes, the slight lines of her figure—grown slighter even during the brief span of a week.
“I’mall right,” he returned pointedly. “But I can’t say as much for you. What have you been doing in my absence? Pining?”—quizzically.
“Not exactly,” she answered dryly. “I’ve had—oh, various worries. Nothing to do with you, though.”
“I’m not so sure,” replied Brett, with a flash of sardonic humour, the significance of which was lost on Ann.
“Then I’m afraid you’ll have to take my word for it,” she responded indifferently.
“Are you worrying about this slur on your fair name?” he demanded next, as airily as though he were inquiring if she was worrying about the trimming of a new hat. “My revered aunt has told me all the news, you see.”
Ann winced.
“Brett, how can you speak like that?” Her voice trembled. “It—it isn’t anything to laugh at. It’s horrible!”
He regarded her in silence. Then:
“No. It isn’t anything to laugh at,” he said suddenly. “It’s my chance.”
He took a quick step towards her and she retreated involuntarily.
“Your chance?” she replied. “What do you mean?”
“My chance to prove that I’m a better lover than Coventry. I understand he’s so shocked that he’s bolted out of England”—sneeringly. “Well, I’m not. I’ve come back to ask you to marry me.”
Ann quivered at his mention of Eliot’s name, but with an effort she forced herself to answer him composedly.
“I can only give you the same answer as before—no, Brett.”
“Do explain why,” he returned irrepressibly. “I don’t care tuppence what people say. In fact, if they dared to say anything after we were married I should jolly well break their heads for them. So that’s that. But surely I’m as good a fellow as Coventry—who’s apparently cried off at the first sign of storm. I suppose that’s what’s happened, isn’t it?”
She turned and faced him, a spark of anger in her eyes.
“Whatever it is that has happened between Eliot and me, it has nothing to do with you,” she said haughtily.
His eyes flickered over her face.
“But I can guess!” he replied imperturbably.
“You?—Guess? How—” She broke off, shaken, as so often before, by his air of complete assurance.
He looked at her with quizzical eyes.
“Shall I tell you?” he said tantalisingly. “Yes, I think I will.” He paused, then finished quietly: “I happened to be in Switzerland last spring—when you were.”
There was no misunderstanding the intentional significance with which he spoke—no evading the impression that some definitely evil menace lay behind the brief statement of commonplace fact. To Ann it seemed as though some horror, lurking in the shadows of the fire-lit room, had suddenly stirred and were creeping stealthily towards her—impalpable but deadly, nauseous as the poisonous miasma rising from some dark and fetid pool. She shrank back, instinctively putting out her hand as though to ward off whatever threatened.
“You—you?” she stammered.
“Even I”—blandly. His gaze fastened on her face. “I spent a couple of nights—at the Hotel de Loup.” Then, as she shrank still further away from him, he added lightly: “Dickens of a lonely place, too!”
“Then—then—” Ann’s throat felt dry and constricted, but she struggled for utterance. “Then it was you who told—”
“Yes,” he cut in quickly. “It was I who told Coventry about your little escapade up there with Tony Brabazon.”
“Ah—!” A choked cry broke from her lips, and she leaned helplessly against the wall behind her.
“It was all quite simple,” went on Brett coolly. “You see, I read the entry in the hotel register—and I happened to know that Brabazon had no sister.” He rattled glibly on, recounting the episode of the Hotel de Loup with much the same air of inward entertainment with which he had narrated it to Coventry himself. When he had finished he looked across at her with a kind of triumph, no whit ashamed of himself.
There was a long silence. Ann swallowed once or twice, trying to relieve the dreadful feeling of tightness in her throat.
“I suppose,” she said at last, speaking with difficulty, “I suppose you told Eliot—on purpose—to separate us?”
She was staring at him with incredulous, horror-stricken eyes. This thing which he had done seemed to her unspeakable—treacherous and contemptible beyond all description. She had the same dazed appearance as some one who has just witnessed a terrible catastrophe—so terrible and unlooked-for as to be almost beyond credence. For an instant her stricken expression and slow, painful utterance brought the faintest possible look of shame to Brett’s face. But it was only momentary and passed as swiftly as it had come.
“Well,” he confessed, “I didn’t want you to marry Coventry, so I tried to stop it—naturally. As I told you—I want you to marry me.”
“And you could still want to marry me—thinking what you thought?”
“Certainly I could”—promptly. “Don’t you remember, I’ve told you more than once that the past doesn’t count—that nothing a woman might have done would matter to me if I wanted her? I thought you would understand.”
“Understand?” Ann laughed mirthlessly. “How should I understand? Tony and I were trapped up there—at the Dents de Loup. It was a pure accident. Hasn’t Lady Susan told you? Oh!”—with a quick, tortured movement. “What have I ever done that you could think of me like that?”
“I know—” Once again a fleeting look of shame clouded the blue eyes. “It seems mad—now. Now that it’s all explained. But any man might have thought the same. And do me this justice—I loved you well enough to forgive you that, or anything else.”
“You loved me!” The contempt in her voice was like a lash across the face. “You to speak of love! Why, you don’t know the first meaning of it! No man who loved me would have deliberately set out to destroy my happiness. Did you imagine for one moment that I would marry you after what you’ve done? Never! Even if I absolutelyhatedEliot I wouldn’t marry you. Oh!”—smiting her hands together—“I couldn’t have believed that any man—even you!”—with blazing scorn—“could have been so wicked—so utterly devoid of anything decent or honest or straight. Have you no feeling, Brett—no mercy, or charity, that you could do such a thing?”
“I’ve the kind of charity that begins at home,” he returned, unabashed. “All’s fair in love and war, you know.”
“Fair! Surely you’re not trying to pretend that you’ve been fair?”
“I think it was a perfectly legitimate thing to do—in the circumstances,” he answered coolly.
She gazed at him, appalled. Lady Susan had indeed been right when she declared that Brett had no principles, and against his unshakable sang-froid Ann felt as helpless to make any impression as a wave beating at the foot of some granite rock.
“When you want something very badly,” he explained with the utmost simplicity, “the only way to get it is to forge straight ahead. You can’t afford to be squeamish over trifles. And I want you!”—his voice deepening to a sudden intensity.
The old, familiar fear and dread of him rushed over her afresh. She felt sick—sick and terrified.
“Oh, go—go away!” she exclaimed desperately.
“All right, I’ll go. But you’ll kiss me first.”
He took a step towards her. She could not retreat. The wall was immediately behind her. With a sudden sideways movement she twisted and tried to escape him. But it was useless. With incredible swiftness he caught her as she turned, and she felt his arms close round her in a grip of steel. He stooped his head.
“No—no!” she implored piteously. “Brett, let me go! Please—pleaselet me go!” She struggled frantically against him. Then, finding herself helpless in his grasp, she covered her face with her hands, pressing them hard against her cheeks. But she might as well have tried to pit her puny strength against an avalanche. In a moment he had forced down her shielding hands, bending her slender body backwards so that her face lay just below his lips—shelterless and at his mercy. And then she felt his mouth crushed savagely on hers and the turbulence of his passion swept over her as the hot wind sweeps across the desert—scorching and resistless.
When at last he released her she swayed unsteadily.
“Oh, go—go!” she whispered, her hand against her bruised lips.
For a moment he stared at her without speaking.
“All right. I’ll go,” he said sullenly, at last. “But I shall come back. You’ll marry me, Ann—I swear it!”
Vaguely she heard him go—the closing of the door behind him, and, a minute later, the sound of the latch of the gate falling into its socket. Came the trampling of a restive horse on the road outside, followed by the rhythmic beat of cantering hoofs. Then silence.
How long she remained where Brett had left her she never knew. She was oblivious of the passage of time, conscious only of a vast grey sea of misery which seemed to have hemmed her in on every side and which had now risen suddenly and closed over her head. But at last, with a quivering, long-drawn breath, she moved stumblingly across towards the window. The room appeared to her stiflingly hot. Her face burned, and her temples throbbed as though a couple of relentless hammers were beating inside her head. With fumbling, nerveless fingers she unfastened the catch of the window and threw it open, letting in the cool autumnal breeze. She leaned out thankfully, drawing in deep breaths of the clean, salt-laden air. It seemed to lave her face, washing away the hated touch of Forrester’s lips on hers, and pressing lightly, like a cool hand, against her aching temples.
For some time she stood there, her mind almost a blank, content just to know that she was alone—freed from the presence of the man whom at this moment she felt she loathed more than any one on earth—and to drink in great draughts of the chill, revivifying air. But presently her thoughts began to stir once more. She grew conscious of her surroundings—of her body, which felt suddenly cold. With a shiver, she closed the window and went over to the fire. She crouched down on the hearthrug, and gradually, as her mind became clearer, she began to piece together all that had happened.
It was a bitter realisation. Her whole happiness had been ruined—utterly and remorselessly, because she and Tony had missed the train at the Dents de Loup. It seemed incredible! Such a trivial, unimportant small happening to have brought the whole fabric of a man’s and woman’s happiness toppling headlong to the ground! A little hysterical sound—half laugh, half sob—escaped her. And Brett— She could hardly endure to think of him. It was past belief that any man who loved her—and within herself Ann acknowledged that in his own selfish, masterful way, Brett did love her—could have so ruthlessly flung everything aside—chivalry, honour, and a woman’s happiness—in his fierce determination to obtain his ends. Past belief, indeed! Yet it had actually happened, and the consequences would roll on, like the wheels of some dreadful machine, crushing out hope and joy and faith.
Faith!Ann’s thoughts checked at the word. That was the one and only thing which could have saved the whole terrible situation. If Eliot had only trusted her, had had faith in her, then neither the unlucky accident at the Dents de Loup nor the treacherous misuse which Brett had made of it could have availed to hurt their love or to destroy their happiness. For a moment a tide of bitterness against her lover for his lack of trust swelled up within her, then her inherent sense of justice drove it back. He had learned distrust—learned it from bitter experience. The entire burden of catastrophe lay actually on the shoulders of the woman who, years ago, had taken a boy’s love and faith and broken them like toys between her hands.
Dully Ann wondered who the woman was—wondered whether she would be a little sorry if she could know that another woman was paying so heavily for the wrong which she had done. And then a dreary smile crossed her face. It wouldn’t make any difference if that other woman did know. There was nothing she could do to repair the harm she had worked. It was all hopeless—wheel within wheel, link added to link.
Well, it was over—finished. Ann tried to face the fact without blenching. Love had come, for a brief moment transmuting her whole world, and now love had gone again, and it only remained to take up the burden of life once more. Perhaps it would be easier soon. Some day, she supposed, this pain at her heart would cease, just as everything good, bad, and indifferent, comes to an end in time. But no power on earth could alter things—put back the clock. Even if Eliot, driven by the desperate hunger of love, came back to her, nothing would ever be the same again. He had distrusted her, and that distrust would lie between them now and always.
Night came, but Ann could not sleep. She tossed restlessly from side to side, her thoughts going round and round in an endless weary circle. Tony and Brett and Eliot, three men who had loved and desired her, each in his own way, and between them they had managed to crush out every atom of happiness that life could hold for her.
Towards morning, utterly worn out, she dropped into an uneasy slumber, from which—it seemed to her—Maria roused her almost at once, and with the return of consciousness the whole deadening weight of recollection fell on her once more. She raised herself wearily on her elbow.
“Is it really time to get up?” she asked languidly. “I feel as if I’d only just gone to sleep.”
Maria, bustling about the room pulling up the blinds and drawing back the curtains, paused and looked at the slender figure lying in the bed with eyes full of concern. They were like the faithful, yearning eyes of a dog who senses that you are in trouble but is powerless to help. He can do nothing—only love you. And Maria knew that her adored young mistress was in sore trouble, and that she could do nothing to help—only love her.
“There, drink your cup o’ tea, miss, and you’ll feel better,” she said hearteningly. “A body feels different with a cup o’ tea inside. I suppose you’ve heard the news—since Mr. Forrester himself was here only yesterday?”
Ann set down her tea-cup sharply, her heart beating apprehensively. What was she going to hear now? Something else that would hurt her afresh? She glanced shrinkingly towards Maria.
“No. What news?” she faltered. She did not want to be hurt any more. She felt as though she wouldn’t be able to bear it.
“Why, ‘twas the milkman told me. Mr. Forrester’s off from White Windows to-day. Going away quite sudden like in that thereMinxof his.” She nodded in the direction of the bay.
The ghost of a smile flitted across Ann’s tired face.
“In theSphinx, you mean,” she suggested.
“Yes, miss, jes’ what I said, wasn’t it?” agreed Maria. “You can see ‘em all on board this morning—busy as bees in a hive.”
Ann stepped out of bed and went to the window. It was quite true. Far below in the bay she could see the shiningSphinx, and there were signs of unmistakable activity on board. She drew a long breath. If Brett were going, it was good news—not bad! She had always been secretly afraid of him. Now—now that she was aware of the part he had played in the destruction of her happiness, she knew that she would never again be able to see him without recalling all that she had lost. He seemed to her to embody the whole tragedy which had befallen her.
And the yacht—his yacht—waiting, waiting always in the bay, like a cat at a mousehole....
Two hours later Ann stood on the cliff and watched theSphinxsteam slowly out to sea, and with the last gleam of the yacht’s white stern it seemed to her as though some inexplicable, still lingering menace were removed.
“Café noir? Bien, m’sieu.”
The alert French waiter shot away like a stone from a catapult, leaving Coventry to lapse back into the reverie from which he had roused himself to order his coffee. He had dined rather early with a view to escaping the chattering crowd which thronged the hotel, and now he was sitting alone in a windowed corner of thesalle, his eyes resting absently on the curving line of coast and sea.
Set like a round silver shield in the midst of the starry sky hung a full moon, rippling a shining highway across the deep night-blue of the Mediterranean and turning the common-place walks of the hotel garden below into silvern paths of mystery. But Eliot remained unmoved by the exquisite beauty of the scene. It hardly seemed to penetrate his consciousness. He was musing with a grim, sardonic humour on the strange chance which had brought him, after nearly three months’ solitary wandering through Europe, to the identical hotel at Mentone where Tony Brabazon and his uncle happened to be staying. It seemed as though fate had deliberately mocked him—perpetrating a bitter jest at his expense. Ever since he had quitted Silverquay he had been roving from place to place, seeking forgetfulness, and had at last turned his steps toward Monte Carlo, hoping that in the keen concentration and excitement of pitting his wits against the god of chance he might temporarily drown the memories that pursued him. And then, who should he encounter on the very first night of his arrival but Tony Brabazon!
The boy had been seated at the next table to the one allotted to Coventry himself, dining in company with a haughty, irascible old gentleman whom he had introduced as his uncle, Sir Philip Brabazon. One of the most ironical touches of the whole queer jumble of events, Eliot reflected, had been the jolly, friendly way in which, the instant Tony caught sight of him, he had jumped up from the table to greet him, joyfully inquiring for all the friends he had made at Silverquay and, in particular, for Ann.
Eliot had been conscious of a curious intermingling of feeling. The very sight of Tony, bringing with it, as it did, a quickened rush of torturing remembrance, filled him with a kind of insensate fury. He wanted to strike the friendly, good-humoured smile off the boy’s face. And yet, underneath the burning anger and resentment which he felt, he was fain to acknowledge the rank injustice of it. Tony had done him no deliberate wrong, and, ignorant of the fact that indirectly his was the agency which had brought Eliot’s happiness crashing to the ground, his open-hearted attitude of friendliness was the most natural thing in the world. Moreover, Eliot admitted to himself that had things been otherwise he would have felt quite disposed to reciprocate Tony’s evident good-fellowship. The boy had a distinct charm of his own, and he had liked what little he had seen of him at Silverquay. But, circumstances being as they were, he opposed a quiet indifference to Tony’s friendly overtures, although with characteristic obstinacy he declined to be driven out of Mentone by the fact of the other man’s presence there.
Sometimes the Brabazons had visitors—Lady Doreen, Neville and her mother, and on these occasions Eliot derived a certain misanthropic amusement out of watching the incipient love affair which was obviously budding between the two young people—a development which, he could see, was clearly a source of satisfaction to at least one of their respective elderly relatives. Doreen’s mother was all smiles. She had other daughters coming on.
That Tony and Doreen Neville were rapidly drifting towards the condition known as being in love was unmistakable, and Eliot envied the pliant facility of youth which can put the past behind and embark so soon upon a new adventure. Surely a man who had once believed himself in love with Ann—Ann, with her warm vitality and pluck and humour—could never be satisfied with the frail beauty and helpless, clinging sweetness which was all that Lady Doreen had to offer! Ann was not an easy person to forget, as Eliot knew to his own most bitter cost. Yet Brabazon seemed able to forget. God! If only the faculty of forgetting were purchasable!...
The waiter sped swiftly forward and deposited Eliot’s coffee on the table by his side, rousing him out of his bitter reflections with a jolt.
“You’ve been an unconscionable time!” he flung at the man irritably, and then smiled wryly at his own irritability. His nerve must be going! A French newspaper lay on the table at his elbow. Drawing it towards him he deliberately immersed himself in its pages to the exclusion of the thoughts which were torturing him.
It was thus that Tony found him an hour later when he strolled into thesalle, looking somewhat at a loose end and rather sorry for himself.
“Going to the tables to-night?” he asked, pausing irresolutely at Eliot’s side.
Eliot glanced up.
“No. Are you? You do most nights, don’t you?” He recollected having seen Tony’s flushed, eager face opposite him at one or other of the tables on a good many occasions.
“No. Feel off it to-night. Besides”—with a frown—“I’ve dropped an awful lot of money at it lately. May I sit down?” he added, laying his hand on the back of a chair.
Coventry put down his newspaper. It was obvious the boy wanted to talk, to unburden himself of something. Better let him get it over and have done with it, he reflected. A word of encouragement and the whole story came out. Tony, it appeared, was feeling hipped. The Nevilles were leaving Mentone, a new doctor who had been consulted having advised a more bracing climate for Lady Doreen, and simultaneously Sir Philip had announced his decision to return to London—a combination of events which had succeeded in reducing Tony to unplumbed depths of despondency.
“It’s rather a break-up, you see,” he explained, “after nearly three months here together. We made a topping foursome”—ingenuously. “And now it’s all over, I feel rather like a kid going back to school after the holidays.”
Eliot found himself sympathising against his will. It was as difficult to maintain an inimical attitude towards Tony as to resist the spontaneous advances of a confiding puppy.
“Couldn’t you persuade your uncle that a more bracing climate might suit him, too?” suggested Eliot, with a faint smile.
Tony flashed him a quick glance from under his long lashes—half laughing, half deprecating.
“That’s just it,” he admitted frankly. “I can’t budge him. Doreen and I are—well, half engaged, you know—”
“Half-engaged?” asked Eliot, lifting his brows.
Tony nodded, suddenly moody.
“Yes. Depending on her health and my good conduct”—rather bitterly. “So they’re swishing her off to the Swiss mountains for the one and my uncle is removing me from the temptations of Monte Carlo for the other.”
“What part of Switzerland are the Nevilles going to?” inquired Eliot, more for the sake of saying something than because the subject held the remotest interest for him. “Davos?”
“No. Somewhere up above Montricheux.”
“Montricheux?” The word left Eliot’s lips involuntarily.
“Yes. You know it, don’t you?”
“I’ve been there”—briefly.
“I had the adventure of my life there,” volunteered Tony. “I’ve never forgotten it, by Jove! Up at a place called the Dents de Loup.”
Had he been looking he would have seen a sudden smouldering fire wake in the keen grey eyes of the man beside him. But he was occupied in lighting a cigarette at the moment, and, failing to observe the change in Eliot’s expression, he pursued reminiscently:
“Yes. I was up there with a girl I’d known ever since I was a kid—we’d almost been brought up together. And the first thing I did was to go and skid down the side of a ravine.” He puffed futilely at his cigarette. “Blow! It’s gone out.”
He paused to relight it, while Eliot sat rigidly still, waiting in tense silence for the rest of the story. It all came out quite naturally and with a blissful unconsciousness on Tony’s part that the tale could have any particular significance for the man beside him.
“She was the pluckiest girl I know,” he wound up loyally. “Took it like a real sport and never blamed me in the least. Most women would have clamoured for my blood.”
“Yes. I think they would.” Eliot replied quite mechanically. He was hardly conscious that he had made any answer, and when, soon afterwards, Tony took himself off with a friendly: “Well, so long. See you in the morning, perhaps?” he responded once more like an automaton.
He was aware of only one thing. His whole consciousness concentrated on it. Ann was innocent—utterly and entirely innocent! There was no longer any question in his mind. Tony’s transparent simplicity and candour in recounting his adventure at the Dents de Loup and its immediate consequences was too self-evident to doubt, and although he had refrained from mentioning the name of the girl who had been his companion—the “pluckiest girl he knew”—it was equally clear that he had been narrating the mountain episode in which Ann had been concerned and for which she had paid so dearly.
Grimly, with a ruthless resolution, Eliot faced the facts. He had completely and very terribly wronged the woman he loved. His suspicions had been absolutely unjustified. With his own hand he had pulled down his happiness—his own and Ann’s, too—in ruins about them.
And there could be no going back—no undoing of what had been done. A man cannot doubt a woman, as he had doubted Ann, and then, when she is proved transcendently innocent, go back and tell her that he believes in her. If he did, she would be quite justified in flinging his tardy assurances of faith back in his face and thanking him for something of very trifling value. Even if out of the limitless tenderness of her woman’s heart Ann forgave him—as, God knows, women are forgiving men every day that dawns!—still their love would be robbed of something infinitely precious—tarnished by an ugly and abiding memory. What was it Ann herself had said about love? “It’s faith... and trust, Eliot.” He remembered her grave, steadfast eyes and groaned in spirit, realising that he himself had despoiled love of its very pith and marrow, its deepest inner significance. There was no way out—no atonement possible.
Motionless, sunk in the inferno of his own thoughts, Eliot remained where Tony had left him until one of the hotel employés, who had several times glanced uneasily in the direction of the silent Englishman occupying the seat by the window, finally plucked up courage to begin switching off the lights for the night.
“Pardon, m’sieu”. he murmured deprecatingly as he passed by the still figure in the course of his tour of the room.
Eliot stared at the man with blank, incurious eyes. Then he rose slowly to his feet and walked out of the hotel—moving with a peculiar precision like one who walks in a trance. After that he lost count of time. He went down into the depths and the dark waters of a grief and agony that was nigh to madness submerged him.
When he came to himself it was to find that it was late afternoon and that he was back again in his room at the hotel. He could not have given the faintest account of how he had passed the hours which had intervened since he had walked out of the hotel into the moonlit night—whether he had eaten or drunken or where he had been. He had a vague recollection of wandering aimlessly about the streets, and then of diverging from the town into the country because he had twice encountered the samegendarmeand on the second occasion the man had followed him for a few yards suspiciously. Beyond that he remembered nothing. He was only conscious of a physical fatigue so intense, so racking in every nerve and sinew and fibre of his body that for the time being it deadened even the mental torture he had been enduring. He flung himself down on his bed and slept till the noonday sun was high in the heavens, flooding his room with light.
When he resumed the normal usages of life once more and reappeared downstairs, he found that the Brabazons and Lady Doreen Neville and her mother had all gone their several ways. They were the only people with whom he had any acquaintance, and in an odd, indefinable way he missed their presence. He spent almost all his time at the Casino, working out and experimenting with different systems. He had come to no decision as to how he should order his future life, and until he had formulated some scheme he found that he could only stop the hideous treadmill of his thoughts by focussing his whole attention on the crazy gyrations of the spinning ball.
And then one day, about a month later, a letter was put into his hand, bearing the Silverquay postmark. The writing was unfamiliar, and its unfamiliarity woke in him a sudden horrible fear and dread of what the letter might contain. Had some one written to tell him—what Ann could no longer write and tell him herself? He slit the envelope and his eyes raced down the lines of the sheet it had enclosed.
“Dear Mr. Coventry,” ran the letter, written in Lady Susan’scharacteristically big, generous hand. “Probably you’ll think mean interfering old woman. I daresay I am. But try and remember thatI was young once and that just now I’m looking at life for you andAnn through young eyes—and thinking what a long, weary lot of itthere is still to be lived through if you each remain at oppositeends of the pole. The time will go a deal quicker if you aretogether—it’s like dividing by two, you know.“I hear you ran across Tony Brabazon in Mentone, and I think thatby now you probably know as much about what happened up at theDents de Loup as I or any one, and are probably cursing yourself.Don’t. It’s a waste of time and happiness. Come to my partyinstead.”
Attached to this characteristic document was a card of invitation to a dance to be given at White Windows by Lady Susan Hallett on February the seventh.... And to-day was the sixth! But it could be done. By travelling all night, catching the morning boat and then the midday train to Silverquay, Eliot realised that he could reach White Windows in time.
A bell stood on a table near by—one of those shiny metal bells with a button on the top which you press down sharply to induce the thing to ring. Eliot thumped it, and continued thumping till a half-demented waiter came flying towards him in response.
“Bring me a time-table,” he roared. “And bring it quick.”
The ball-room at White Windows was all in readiness for the forthcoming dance. The floor, waxed and polished till it was as smooth as a sheet of gleaming ice, caught and held the tremulous reflections of a hundred flickering lights, whilst from above, where the orchestra was snugly tucked away in the gallery behind a bank of flowers, came faint pizzicato sounds of fiddles tuning up, alternating with an occasional little flourish or tentative roulade of notes.
The dance was not timed to begin for half an hour or more, but the members of the house-party had congregated together at the upper end of the room and were chatting desultorily. Sir Philip Brabazon and Tony were included amongst them, in addition to a couple of pretty girls, nieces of Lady Susan, and three or four stray men who had been invited down to swell the ranks.
“And how’s Ann?” demanded Sir Philip of his hostess.
“Ann? Oh, you’ll find her a trifle thinner, I think, that’s all,” responded Lady Susan discreetly. To her own eyes Ann seemed to have altered wofully in the course of the last few months, but she reasoned that Sir Philip was no more observant than the majority of men and that if she prepared him for the fact that Ann was somewhat thinner than of old he would accept the change quite naturally and not worry the girl herself with tiresome questions as to the cause of such a falling off.
It had been a very difficult winter, but Lady Susan had the satisfaction of knowing that she and the rector between them had triumphantly routed Ann’s detractors, and although it was well-nigh impossible to utterly stamp out of a country district such as Silverquay the hydra-headed monster called scandal, they had certainly succeeded in drawing his fangs. But if Lady Susan had been successful in her campaign against the tittle-tattle of the neighbourhood, she had been powerless to restore that sheer joy and happiness in living which had been so peculiarly Ann’s gift until the day when Eliot Coventry went out of her life, taking from her, as he went, everything except the courage to endure.
Lady Susan had never forgiven Brett for his share in the work of destroying Ann’s happiness, and she chafed bitterly against her own inability to help matters. It was only through the merest accident that she had at last seen the possibility of being of service. She had been up in town a few days prior to the date fixed for the dance and had encountered Tony shopping in the Army and Navy Stores. He happened to mention that he had run across Coventry at Mentone, and a chance remark elicited the fact that he had regaled him with the history of the Dents de Loup adventure.
Perhaps Lady Susan’s face had expressed more than she knew, for Tony, perceiving that she attached some special importance to the matter, looked suddenly anxious.
“I say, I’ve not been giving Ann away, have I?” he demanded in honest consternation. “I made sure she’d told you all about it by this time. I never thought—”
“Don’t worry,” Lady Susan reassured him hastily. “You’re not giving her away. She did tell me—all about it.”
When she returned home she had taken her courage in both hands and written to Eliot asking him to come back. And to-night, doubtful whether her letter had reached him in time to allow of his returning for the dance, totally ignorant of the reception it would receive, and uncertain even as to how Ann would welcome him if he actually did return, she was on tenterhooks of nervousness and anxiety.
“You do grow thinner in the winter, you know,” she continued airily to Sir Philip, unwisely elaborating her comment upon Ann’s appearance.
“You don’t,” contradicted the old man with his usual acerbity. “You grow fatter if you’ve any sense—to keep the cold out.” He glared at her, then demanded abruptly: “How do you think Tony’s looking?”
Lady Susan’s dark eyes rested thoughtfully a moment on Tony’s face before she answered.
“Not too well,” she admitted. “He looks a little strained and keyed up. Have you been bullying him, Philip?”
“Not more than usual”—grimly. “I’ve told him I’ll pay no more debts for him. And a good thing, too! I fancy he’s been keeping within his allowance since I put my foot down. Anyhow, he hasn’t come to me again, begging for money.” He paused and shot a swift glance of inquiry at her, obviously seeking her approval, but Lady Susan preserved a strictly non-committal silence. She thought Tony exhibited decided symptoms of nervous strain. His eyes were restless, and his mouth wore a dissatisfied, thwarted expression.
“It’s love,” pursued Sir Philip, as she made no response. “That’s what’s the matter with the boy. He doesn’t know; whether he’s on his head or his heels.”
“Love?”
“Yes. He’s in love with that slip of a Doreen Neville. And because I brought him back to Audley Square instead of careering all over Europe after her and her mother he’s as sulky as a young bear.”
“Doreen Neville?” Lady Susan felt that her replies were hopelessly inadequate, but she was too genuinely taken aback by the news to think of anything to say.
“I said so, didn’t I?”—crustily. “I suppose I shall have to let him marry her in the end. She’s all right, of course, as regards family. But a bit of a swear-stick—melt in a storm, probably. Confound the boy!”—irritably. “Why couldn’t he have remained in love with Ann?”
“I’m very glad he didn’t,” returned Lady Susan quietly. “It was only calf-love. Besides, he would haveleanton Ann—she’s such a stalwart little soldier, you know”—with a smile.
Sir Philip nodded.
“Yes. She’d have kept him straight,” he said gloomily. “Whereas Doreen Neville’s the hot-house plant type—just the opposite. No good to Tony at all.”
“I’m not so sure, Philip. Sometimes the need to care for and protect some one weaker than himself helps to steady a man down more than anything else. Ah!” Lady Susan broke off, her face brightening. “Here is Ann—with Robin. I told them to come early.”
Sir Philip put up his monocle and glared in the direction of the new-comers. Yes, Ann was certainly thinner—too thin, perhaps—though, as far as appearances were concerned, he thought the change had only served to accentuate the charming angles of her face and give an additional grace to the boyishly slender lines of her figure.
Any one less like a love-lorn maiden than Ann looked at that moment could hardly be imagined. She was wearing a charming frock the colour of a pool of deep green sea-water, with a handful of orange-golden poppies clustered at the waist, and as the lights flickered over her, from the swathed gold-brown of her hair to the tips of her small gold shoes, she was as detail-perfect as a woman who hadn’t a single care in life. The simple, appealing black frock generally adopted by the heroine in fiction who has been crossed in love did not allure Ann in the very least. Whatever happened to her, she would always confront the world with a brave face. And even if her small, individual barque of life were hopelessly foundered she would at least go down with colours flying.
Nevertheless, to the discerning eye the alteration in her was very palpable. In repose her mouth fell into lines of quiet endurance, and her eyes held a look of deep sadness. But, fortunately for most of us, the discerning eye is a rarity, and in public Ann rarely allowed herself to lapse into one of those moments of abstracted thought when the unguarded expression of the face gives away the secrets of the heart.
She greeted Sir Philip with all her old gaiety, and, when he told her she was much too thin, laughed at him gently.
“Don’t be a fuss-pot, dear godparent,” she adjured him. “I was never one of the fat kine, and really I’m very glad of it. You can dress ever so much more economically when you’re thin, you know, and that’s quite a consideration these days.”
“Are you—do you mean—look here, Ann,” he floundered awkwardly. “Are you hard up?”
She laughed outright.
“No, of course not. Robin gets a topping good screw, and I’m doing quite a millionaire business in the poultry line.”
“Humph!” Sir Philip grunted. “Got any clothes fit for London?”
She nodded.
“Lots. Put away where moth and rust shan’t corrupt their morals.”
“Well, get’m out and come up to Audley Square for a bit. You look—I don’t know the word I want—peeked.”
“It’s no use shelving it on to me like that,” said Ann teasingly. “What you really mean is that you and Tony are getting awfully bored with each other alone!”
A smile glimmered in the depths of the fierce old eyes.
“Perhaps that’s it. Will you come?”
“I’d love to. But you may just as well tell me what’s worrying you.”
“You’re an impudent girl! Who said I was worrying?”
“Well—perhaps not worrying. But unsettled in mind,” conceded Ann. “What’s Tony been doing?”—shrewdly.
“Getting engaged—or trying to.”
She laughed.
“Pooh! I guessed that—months ago. And I think Lady Doreen’s a dear. So you’d better be getting out your consent and furbishing it up so as to give it prettily as soon as it’s required. You know you’re pleased—really.”
By this time the guests were arriving, and very soon Ann was swept away from Sir Philip on a tide of eager young men, anxious to inscribe their names on her programme. She was an excellent dancer, but although she was physically too young and healthy not to find a certain enjoyment in the sheer delight of rhythmic motion, she was conscious as the evening progressed of a certain quality of superficiality in the pleasure she experienced. There was a sameness about it all that palled. What was there in it, after all? One of your partners knew a priceless new glide or shuffle which he forthwith imparted to you, or else you initiated him into some step hitherto unfamiliar to him, and after that you both went on one-stepping or fox-trotting round the room in the wake of a number of other people doing likewise.
Ann, in the arms of a tall young officer from the Ferribridge barracks, caught herself up quickly at this stage of her unprofitable train of thought. This was not the first time lately that she had found herself impressed with the utter staleness of things—she who had been wont to find life so full of interest—and she knew that thoughts such as these were best dismissed as soon as possible. They linked up too closely with searing memories. She made a determined effort to steady herself, and pulled herself together so successfully that the young Guardsman from Ferribridge told quite a number of people that Miss Lovell was a “topping little sport all round—good dancer and jolly good fun to talk to.”
She danced several times with Tony, and left him completely nonplussed by her uncanny discernment when, after he had stumbled through the revelation of his engagement to Doreen Neville, during one of the intervals, she promptly told him she had anticipated it long ago and wished him luck.
“And—and you and I?” he had queried with a certain wistful embarrassment.
“Pals, Tony,” she answered frankly. “Same as always. You must let me meet Lady Doreen when she comes back from Switzerland, and”—smiling—“I’ll hand over my charge to her. Have you been good lately, by the way?”
He flushed, and his eyes grew restless.
“I lost a bit at Monte,” he admitted. “I was winning pots of money at first, and then all at once my luck turned and I lost the lot.”
“And more, too, I suppose?” suggested Ann rather wearily.
He nodded.
“I shall get it all back at cards, though,” he assured her.
“Have you got any of it back yet?” she asked pointedly.
“No, But it stands to reason my run of bad luck must turn sooner or later. Come on back to the ball-room and let’s dance this, Ann—don’t lecture me any more, there’s a dear.”
She yielded to those persuasive, long-lashed eyes of his, and they returned to the ball-room and finished the remainder of the dance. But her conversation with Tony had added to the oppression of her spirits. She felt sure, from the way he shirked the subject, that he was getting himself into financial difficulties again, and if the matter came to Sir Philip’s ears she was afraid that this time it might end in an irreparable cleavage between uncle and nephew. The former had paid Tony’s debts so often, and on the last occasion he had warned him very definitely that he would never do so again. And Ann was fain to acknowledge that one could hardly blame the old man if by this time he had really reached the limits of his patience—and his purse.
She was still brooding rather unhappily over Tony’s affairs when Robin came to claim her for a dance. He, too, seemed rather preoccupied and distrait, and as they swung out into the room together Ann cast about in her mind for some explanation of his unwonted gloom. A minute later she caught an illuminating glimpse of Cara, sitting alone by the big fire which still smouldered redly at the far end of the room, and a queer little smile of understanding curved her lips.
“You’ve only danced with Cara once this evening, Robin,” she observed. “Have you been squabbling?”
He laughed.
“Not likely. But Lady Susan caught me and trotted me round for some duty dances, and by the time those were fixed Cara had booked up a lot and we couldn’t make our programmes fit.”
On a quick, sympathetic impulse Ann pulled up near one of the doorways, drawing him aside out of the throng of dancers with a light touch on his arm.
“Then go and ask her for this,” she said hastily. “She’s not dancing it. And I—I’m really rather tired. I’d love a few minutes’ rest.” She gave him a little push, and before he could say yea or nay she had vanished through the doorway, leaving him free to secure at least one more dance with Mrs. Hilyard.
A good many couples were sitting about outside, partaking of ices and other forms of refreshment, and Ann made her way quickly through the hall and bent her steps in the direction of the library where, earlier in the evening, she had caught sight of a cosy fire. As she passed, she heard the ring of a bell, followed by the sound of some late-comer being admitted. She did not see who it was, and with a fleeting thought that whoever had chosen to arrive so late would have small chance of securing good partners, she slipped quietly into the library.
The fire had burnt down and she stirred it into a blaze before she settled herself in a low chair beside it. She was genuinely glad to be alone for a few minutes—glad of the peaceful quiet of the comfortable room with its silent, book-lined walls and padded easy chairs. She had lost the real spirit of enjoyment. Her old-time zest for dancing seemed to have deserted her entirely, and the daily necessity of playing up in public, of pretending to the world at large that all was well with her, was becoming an increasing strain.
In addition to this, she was conscious to-night of a vague sense of regret. In another few weeks the term of Robin’s six months’ notice would have expired and they would both be going away from Silverquay. He had heard of several suitable posts, but so far he had not definitely accepted any one of them. Probably within the next fortnight his decision would be made, and Ann realised that leaving Silverquay would be somewhat of a wrench. She had known both great happiness and great grief there, and a full measure of those unreckoned hours of everyday fun and laughter and enjoyment which we are all prone to accept so easily and without any very great gratitude, only realising for how much they counted when they are suddenly taken from us. But now, as the inevitable day of departure drew nearer, Ann found herself face to face with the fact that, although she might leave Silverquay itself behind, memories both sweet and bitter would forever hold out their hands to her from the little sea-girt village. Sometimes she would not be able to evade them. However fast she might hurry through life, they would reach out and touch her, and she would feel those straining hands against her heart.
And then, across her bitter-sweet musings, came the creak of the door as some one pushed it quietly open, and entered the room.
“Ann!”
At the sound of that voice she felt as though every drop of blood in her body had rushed to her heart and were throbbing there in one great hammering pulse. Her hands gripped the arm of her chair convulsively, and slowly and fearfully she turned her head in the direction whence came the voice. Coventry was standing on the threshold of the room. A strangled cry broke from her, and she sat staring at him with wild, incredulous eyes. For a moment the room seemed to fill with a grey, swirling mist, blurring the outlines of the furniture and the figure of the man who stood there silently in the doorway. Then the mist cleared away, and she could see his eyes bent on her with an expression of such stark bitterness and despair and longing that it hurt her to look at him. Was this her lover—who had left her in such fierce scorn and anger only a few short months ago? This man whose face was worn and ravaged with an intensity of suffering such as she had not dreamed possible! If she had grown thin in paying for that bitter parting, then he must have paid a hundredfold to be so terribly marred and altered.
“Eliot!” The word came stammeringly from her lips—hushed as one hushes the voice only in the presence of a great grief or of death itself. She bent her head, unwilling to look again on that soul’s agony so nakedly revealed.
“Yes. I have come back,” he said tonelessly.
Closing the door behind him, he advanced into the room and came and stood beside her.
“Look up!” he exclaimed suddenly, almost violently. “Lift up your face, and let me see what these months have done to you.”
She lifted her face mechanically, and for a full minute he stood looking down at it, reading it feature by feature, line by line—the proud, weary droop of the mouth, the quiet acceptance of pain which had lain so long in the gold-brown eyes. Then, with a groan he dropped suddenly and knelt beside her, holding his arms close round her, and laid his head against her knees. His face was hidden, and hesitatingly, with a half-shy, half-maternal gesture Ann touched the dark head pressed against her. Moments passed and he neither stirred nor spoke. At last she stooped over him.
“Eliot,” she said quietly, “tell me why you have come back?”
Even then he did not move at once, but at last he raised his head from her knees and met her eyes.
“I’ve come back,” he said slowly, “because, though I’ve doubted you, I can’t live without you. I’ve come back to ask your forgiveness—if it is still possible for you to forgive me.” Then, as she would have spoken, he checked her: “No, don’t decide—don’t say anything yet. Hear what I have to tell you first.”
She yielded to a curious strained insistence in his voice.
“Very well,” she said gently, “you shall tell me just what you will.”
He left his place by her side and went over and stood by the chimneypiece, looking down at her while he spoke, and as she listened it seemed as though all that he had fought against, believed and disbelieved, suffered and endured, was made clear to her in the terse, difficult sentences that fell one by one from his lips.
“You knew that I’d once been deceived by a woman,” he said. “Her name doesn’t matter. She deceived me, and my love for her died—as surely as a man dies if you stab him to the heart. She stabbed my love—and it died, and I swore then that I would give no other woman the power to hurt me as she had hurt me. When I met you I knew, almost at once, that you were a woman whom—if I allowed myself to—I might grow to love. I think it was your sincerity, your transparent honesty that won me. You were all I’d dreamed of in a woman—all that I hadn’t found in that other woman. But I was afraid. So I left Montricheux—went away at once. I didn’t want to care for you. I’d been too badly hit before. Cowardly, you’ll say, perhaps—you were never a coward, were you, Ann? Well, it may have been. Anyhow, I did go away and I tried to forget all about you. It wasn’t easy, God knows, and then, by a trick of fate, I found you again, at my cottage—living there, sister of the man with whom I’d just made a pact. After that it was a struggle between my joy at finding you there and my determination never to let myself care again for any woman.” He paused, but Ann did not speak, and after a minute he went on again:
“Well, you know how it ended. I was beaten. I loved you and I had to tell you so. When I yielded, I yielded entirely—gave you my utter love and faith. I believed in you completely—far more than I knew or even suspected at the time. And then, close on the top of that, I was told the story of how you had stayed at the Dents de Loup with Tony Brabazon. Even then I could hardly credit it. I came and asked you. And you didn’t deny it. It was true. What else could I think? I argued that you had thrown Brabazon over because I was a better ‘catch’ from, a worldly point of view—just as that other woman had thrown me over for a similar reason!—that you’d deliberately deceived me, that you’d been faithless both to Brabazon and to me, as you would be faithless to any other man who loved you.... Remember, it had been your seeming sincerity, your truth, yourstraightnesswhich had first attracted me. And just as I had loved you for your truth, so then I hated you for your falseness—your unbelievable falseness.... Why didn’t you deny it all, Ann? Explain—clear the mists away from my eyes?”
“I was too proud—and hurt,” she said quiveringly.
“If you’d only stooped to explain—” He broke off, with a savage gesture. “Forgive me! What right have I to reproach or blame you? The whole fault was mine. Well, I believed you as disloyal and disingenuous as I had known you to be loyal and candid. And I went away. I went down into hell. You’ve at least the satisfaction of knowing that I paid for my distrust—paid for it to the last fraction owing—”
“Ah, don’t!” She raised her hand swiftly, imploringly. But he took no notice. He continued doggedly:
“Then, when I thought I had suffered all that a man could be called upon to suffer, I met Tony—Tony over head and ears in love with quite another woman, as unlike you—oh, your very antithesis! He used to talk to me sometimes. God knows I didn’t give him any encouragement! I hated the very sight of him. But he never guessed it. And one day he came and prattled out to me the story of an adventure he had had—at the Dents de Loup—how he got caught up there with a girl. And I knew, then, that it wasyouradventure, too—though of course he never mentioned your name. But it was as clear as daylight to me. It was as though scales had fallen from my eyes.... I knew then what I’d done. I’d pulled down our house of happiness about our heads. For a time I think I went mad. I could think of nothing except the fact that I’d made it impossible for me ever to come to you again—even to ask your forgiveness.”
He was silent a moment, leaning his arm on the chimney-piece and shading his face with his hand. When he again resumed it was with a palpable effort and his voice roughened.
“Afterwards, when I came to my senses, I saw that Imustcome to you. I had destroyed my own life—all that was worth while in it. But I had no right to destroy yours. So I’ve come back—to ask your forgiveness, Ann—if you can give it. And by forgiveness”—he eyed her steadily—“I mean all that forgiveness can hold—not just a mere form of words. I want the love I threw away—the right you once gave me to call myself your lover. If you don’t feel you can give it—I shan’t complain. I’ve no right to complain. I shall just go quietly out of your life. But if you can—now you know all—” He broke off. “Ann ... shall I go ... or stay?”
He made an involuntary movement towards her, then, checked himself abruptly and stood looking down at her in silence. From the ball-room there floated out the strains of the latest fox-trot, sounding curiously cheap and tawdry as they cut across the deep, almost solemn intensity that prevailed in the quiet room where a man had just stripped his soul naked to the eyes of the woman he loved and now stood as one awaiting judgment.
Ann remained silent. Speech seemed for a few moments a physical impossibility. She had been touched to the quick. Step by step she had gone with Eliot down into that place of torment where he had been wandering, suffering an agony of pain of which the keenest pang had taken birth in the bitter knowledge that it was of his own making, and in every fibre of her being she ached to give him back all that he had lost—all that he asked for. Ached to give it back to him complete, whole, unharmed—that love which had been his and which he had so piteously thrown away.
And she could not. By no mere shibboleth of words, no waving of a wand, could she restore the past, reconstruct what had been out of what was. Love she could give him in full measure, the same enduring love which would be his for ever, believing or unbelieving, living or dead. And his love she would take again—only she herself knew how gladly! But always their mutual love must lack something—that fine thread of utter faith and trust which he himself had cut asunder. It could be knotted together again, it was true. But one would always feel the knot—know it was there. He believed in her now—because she had been proved innocent. But she would never know if his belief in her would withstand the stress of another such test as the one under which it had gone down. To the end of life there would be a doubt, an unanswered question in her heart, as to whether he really had faith in her or no.
She looked up at last to meet his eyes still fixed intently upon her as he waited for her answer. Her own were rather sad. But her surrender was complete. She held out her hands.
“Stay!” she said.
Yet even as he gathered her into his arms she was vitally, cruelly conscious of the absence of the one thing needful to make perfect their reunion. Not even the swift passion of his kisses could convince her of his faith in her. She was not sure—could never be sure, now.
It would be bound to come between them sometimes—that terrible uncertainty. The grey shadow of distrust which had divided them in the past still followed them from afar—a vague, intangible menace. Would it some day swing forward, like the dark, remorseless finger of an hour-dial, and lie once more impassably between them?