The Vision of Desire
Across the little room Robin's eyes laughed into hers.
"Perhaps I'll tell you some other time--when I know you better," he said.
At that moment Ann returned from speeding the Tempests on their way. Mrs.
Hilyard rose.
"I must be going, too, I think," she said. "But I don't want you to trouble
about driving me back, Miss Lovell. I'll walk."
"It's no trouble at all," Ann assured her. "Tell Billy to bring the cart
round, will you, Robin?"
He nodded, and held out his hand to Mrs. Hilyard.
"Good-bye," he said. "I'd ask you to let me drive you back, but that I've
made an appointment to see one of Mr. Coventry's tenants."
A few minutes later Dick Turpin, somewhat annoyed at being taken out of his
stall just as feeding-time approached, was bearing Ann and her new
acquaintance swiftly along the road towards the Priory.
Mrs. Hilyard was very silent during the first part of the drive. She
appeared absorbed in her own thoughts, and from the expression of her face
one might have hazarded a guess that she was inwardly debating some moot
point. All at once she seemed to come to a decision.
"I think," she said in a quiet, clear voice, "that I must have met this Mr.
Coventry who lives at Heronsmere. I knew an Eliot Coventry--once."
She did not look at Ann as she spoke, but gazed straight ahead as though
the strip of bare, lonely road which stretched in front of them were of
peculiarly vital interest.
"What--is he like?" she went on. Any one observing her at the moment would
have gathered the impression that she was forcing herself to speak with
composure--that it was not easy for her. But Ann, preoccupied with Dick
Turpin's vagaries, was not looking at her.
"Oh, he's tall," she made answer. "And has grey eyes. There's a little
white scar just under one of them."
The woman beside her drew a quick breath.
"Ah"--the sweet, _trâinante_ voice was a fraction uneven. "Then it _is_ the
man I've met."
The ralli-cart swung round a corner into a narrow lane, and a quick
exclamation broke from Ann as she recognised in the tall, striding figure
approaching from the opposite direction the man of whom they had just been
speaking. A beautiful thoroughbred collie bounded along beside him, looking
up at his master every now and again with adoring eyes.
"Why, here _is_ Mr. Coventry!" she exclaimed. "Shall I pull up?"
Without waiting for an answer she brought the cob to a standstill exactly
as Eliot, catching sight of them, halted instinctively.
"Good afternoon," she called out gaily, as he lifted his hat. "We were just
speaking of you. Here is an old acquaintance of yours."
Eliot's glance travelled swiftly from her face to that of her companion.
His expression was quite impenetrable--mask-like in its impassivity. Mrs.
Hilyard bent forward, holding out her hand.
"Have you forgotten me, Mr. Coventry?"
For an instant the man and woman looked deep into each other's eyes, as
though to bridge the time which had passed since last they met--questioning
what the intervening years had brought to each of them. But Eliot made no
attempt to take the outheld hand. He did not appear to see it, and Mrs.
Hilyard let it drop slowly down again on to her lap.
"Forgotten Cara Daintree?" he said lightly. "Is it likely I should?"
"Cara Hilyard, now." She corrected him a shade nervously.
"Oh, yes. Hilyard, isn't it? Of course."
His glance flashed over her face, searching and cold as a hawk's. She
winced under it, but faced him gallantly, though a flush crept up under her
clear skin.
"I hear we are near neighbours. I hope"--she forced herself to meet those
hard, unflinching eyes--"I hope you will come and see me, Mr. Coventry."
He bowed stiffly.
"Thanks," was all he said. Then, laying his hand on the cob's shining
flank, he deliberately addressed himself to Ann: "Is Dick Turpin still
behaving himself properly?"
She nodded.
"He's a perfect cherub," she assured him warmly. "Any one could manage
him--even when he has an attack of high spirits. He's got a mouth like
velvet."
"There's something to be said for the driver's hands, possibly," suggested
Coventry, with a smile. "Light hands make a light mouth. Still, I'm glad to
know he suits you."
He whistled up his dog, who came racing to heel, then, with a grave bow
which briefly included Mrs. Hilyard, lifted his hat and resumed his way
along the lane.
Ann drove on, and ten minutes later pulled her horse up at the Priory
doors. Mrs. Hilyard stepped lightly out of the trap. She moved beautifully,
with a deer-like ease and grace.
"Now when will you and your brother come over to lunch?" she asked, as she
shook hands. "He promised--for you both--to come and help me with advice
about arranging my rooms. You must go on as you've begun--being
neighbourly, you know," she added quaintly.
"But we shall be cut out now by an older friend," said Ann, when they had
fixed a day for the lunch appointment.
"Oh, no"--quickly. "No man can take the place of a woman friend--and I hope
you're going to be that?"
Ann smiled down into the lovely upraised face with frank comradeship.
"I hope so, too," she returned heartily. "Still, it's jolly for you finding
an old friend like Mr. Coventry living next door, so to speak, isn't it?"
For a moment Mrs. Hilyard hesitated. Then:
"Very jolly," she replied, with a brief, enigmatic smile.
CHAPTER XII
A NEW ACQUAINTANCE
August had come in on a wave of such breathless heat that each day the
weather-wise foretold a thunderstorm. But, although the heavy, sultry air
and lowering skies seemed pregnant with impending tempest, with every
evening would come a clearer atmosphere and all signs of thunder disappear
until the following day, when the stifling heat closed down once more like
an invisible pall.
The pleasantest spot in the vicinity of Oldstone Cottage was undoubtedly a
certain corner of the garden where stood a venerable oak whose interlacing
branches spread themselves into a cool green canopy, and here, in a hammock
slung from one great limb of the tree to another, Ann had taken refuge. A
book lay open on her knee, but, yielding to the languor induced by the
oppressive heat, she had ceased to make even a pretence at reading and
leaned back in the hammock, hands clasped behind her head, idly reviewing
the happenings of the last few weeks.
The realisation that actually no more than a month had elapsed since her
arrival at Silverquay amazed her. It seemed almost incredible, so swiftly
and surely had the new life built itself up round her, with quick, deft
touches--a friend here, an adopted custom there, new interests and
occupations that had already become an accepted part of the day's routine.
Ann was the last person in the world to recognise how much of this was due
to her own individual personality. That eager vitality of hers went
half-way to meet life. She did not wait supinely for things to happen, but
instinctively looked round to see what she could herself accomplish. As she
had laughingly told Eliot Coventry, she was not in the least an idle
person--and the newly-wired chicken-run and hen-coops already established
in a corner of a field adjoining the Cottage garden testified to the
veracity of the statement. It was a small thing, perhaps, but its prompt
achievement was characteristic.
Equally characteristic were the new friendships she was forming. Where some
people would find only neighbours, Ann's spontaneous, warm-hearted nature
discovered friends. Brian Tempest already counted as one, and her
acquaintance with Cara Hilyard, begun so unconventionally, was rapidly
deepening into a pleasant intimacy.
She had discarded her original theory that some long-ago romance linked
Eliot Coventry and Mrs. Hilyard together. Neither of them appeared to her
to be in the least thrilled by the fact of the other's proximity in the
neighbourhood, nor did either make any obvious effort to avoid or cultivate
the other's society. If they chanced to meet they exchanged civilities as
the merest acquaintances might do, and gradually Ann came to believe that
their knowledge of each other was based on nothing more profound than a
slight friendship of many years ago, which had more or less petered out
with the passage of time.
Cara, for all her quick sympathy and eager friendship, was reticent as
regards the past, and Ann's attitude towards her held an element of that
loyal, enthusiastic devotion which an older woman not infrequently inspires
in one considerably younger than herself--a devotion which accepts things
as they are and has no wish to pry into the secrets of the past.
One circumstance of Cara's former life had come to Ann's knowledge
unavoidably--the fact that her husband, Dene Hilyard, had ill-treated her.
A most trifling accident had served to reveal it. She and Ann had been
gathering roses together in the Priory garden, and, in straining up to
reach a particularly lovely bloom that hung from the roof of the pergola,
Cara's thin muslin sleeve had caught on a projecting nail which had ripped
it apart from shoulder to elbow. As the torn sleeve fell hack it revealed a
trickle of blood where the nail's sharp point had scored the skin, and
above that, marring the whiteness of the upper arm, an ugly, discoloured
scar. Cara made a hasty movement to conceal it, catching the gaping edges
of the sleeve together with her hand. Then, realising that it was too late,
she let them fall apart again and met Ann's horrified eyes with a long,
inscrutable gaze.
"Yes, it's ugly, isn't it?" she said bitterly. "All my married life
was--ugly."
"What do you mean?" Ann's voice shook. She felt as though she knew what was
coming--the story of how Cara came by that dreadful scar--and fought
against the knowledge with incredulous horror.
"Dene... my husband... he'd been reading a book which described how they
branded a woman... and he tried..." She broke off, shivering violently.
"No--_no_!" Urgently the denial sprang from Ann's stricken lips, as though
she sought by the sheer imperative violence of her disclaimer to make this
horrible thing untrue.
Cara nodded her head slowly.
"It's quite true... he used to drink... he was half mad at times. That was
one of them."
She had never again referred to the matter, nor to any other episode of her
unhappy married life, but since that day Ann had always the consciousness
of something unspeakably hideous which had lain in the background of Cara
Hilyard's life, marring it utterly, and the intense sympathy it aroused
within her had quickened the growth of the friendship between them.
One circumstance which had assisted greatly in the "settling down" process,
as far as Ann was concerned, had been Lady Susan's unexpectedly early
return from Paris. The end of the first fortnight of July had found her
back at White Windows.
"The heat was intolerable, my dear!" she told Ann. "And the dust. Not even
for the sake of a new rig-out could I endure it. I thought of cool little
Silverquay with the nice clean sea washing its doorstep every morning--and
I bolted. Madame Antoinette has probably been, wringing her hands over my
half-completed garments ever since!"
She was immensely entertained when Ann acquainted her with the identity of
the man who had come to her assistance on the night of the Venetian fête,
and chuckled enjoyably.
"Poor man! He must be frightfully bored at finding you here--established on
his very threshold, so to speak! Confirmed misogynists should never indulge
in the rescuing stunt--it's so liable to involve them in unexpected
consequences. How does he bear up under the discovery?"
"Not at all well," acknowledged Ann ruefully. "Sometimes I think he almost
regrets he didn't let me drown comfortably in the lake while he had the
chance!"