The Vision of Desire
The wish she had expressed to Maria concerning her brother's then unknown
employer--that she hoped he wouldn't make a habit of dropping in at the
Cottage during the mornings--had certainly been very literally fulfilled.
Rarely did Eliot Coventry put in an appearance at Oldstone Cottage at all,
and if the exigencies of business matters took him there on any occasion
when Robin chanced to be out, he usually contrived only to leave a note or
message for him with Maria. More often than not, however, he would merely
send word to him, asking him to come up and see him at Heronsmere. To Ann,
puzzled and secretly somewhat piqued, it seemed as though he were
studiously avoiding her. Once she mentioned the subject to Robin,
introducing it casually into the conversation as though it were a matter of
no moment--as is the way of women in regard to anything which touches them
closely. Robin had dismissed it easily.
"Oh, you mustn't think anything of that," he assured her. "I told
you--women don't enter much into Coventry's life. He's a bit of a recluse
as far as your sex is concerned."
"He was quite friendly that first morning he came here," objected Ann.
It was that which puzzled her--the apparently causeless change in his
attitude. It was true that upon, first recognising in his agent's sister
the girl he had rescued from her difficulties on the night of the Fête des
Narcisses he had appeared disconcerted and by no means pleased to renew the
acquaintance. But afterwards he had thawed considerably, and had even
suggested that they should be friends. And now he was behaving as though he
had repented the suggestion and were determined to show her that he had. It
was not that he was a snob. She was absolutely certain that the fact that
the unknown heroine of the lake episode had proved to be merely the sister
of his estate agent would not have the most fractional weight with Eliot
Coventry. And as she sat swinging idly in the hammock, letting her thoughts
stray back over her few brief meetings with him, she felt utterly baffled
to interpret his behaviour.
Rather irritably she tried to dismiss the matter from her thoughts, but it
persisted in occupying the foreground of her mind, and at last, in
desperation, she picked up her discarded book and began to read. For a few
moments she succeeded in concentrating her attention. Then gradually, as
the sunlight, piercing through the branches overhead, flickered dazzlingly
on the surface of the paper, the black and white of the printed page ran
together in a blur of grey and her eyes closed drowsily. With an effort she
forced them open, although lifting her eyelids seemed like raising leaden
shutters.
_"The rain was now coming down in torrents"_ was the first sentence which
met her glance. She read the phrase over two or three times as though it
were some abstruse statement in mathematics. Its incongruousness annoyed
her. It was nonsense for any one to write like that. Why, it was so hot...
so hot that... The book, falling from her hand, slipped over the side of
the hammock and dropped almost soundlessly on to the thick turf below.
The next thing of which she was conscious was of waking suddenly to the
sound of a crisp masculine voice remarking succinctly and on a note of
intense astonishment:
"Well, I'm hanged!"
Ann stirred and rather unwillingly opened her eyes to find herself gazing
straight up into other eyes so vividly blue as to be almost startling. They
were looking down at her with a mixture of amusement and unmistakable
admiration.
"I've been asleep," she said unnecessarily, still hardly thoroughly awake.
"You have," agreed the owner of the blue eyes. "And I very nearly took the
usual privilege accorded to the prince who's told off to waken the sleeping
beauty."
At that Ann woke up very completely. The speech savoured of impertinence,
and she resented it accordingly, yet it had been so gaily uttered, with a
sort of confiding audacity which appeared to take it for granted that she
would not be offended, that she found it difficult to feel as righteously
indignant as the occasion merited.
"Who are you?" she demanded, sitting up hastily and eyeing the intruder
with extreme disfavour. He was hatless, and the sun glinted on dark red
locks of the same warm, burnished hue as the skin of a horse-chestnut. The
intensely blue eyes gleamed at her from under dominant, strongly-marked
brows, and the beaky, high-bridged nose, long-lipped mouth, and stubborn
chin all connoted the same arrogant virility.
"I'm Forrester--Brett Forrester, and very much at your service," he replied
cheerfully.
So this was Lady Susan's "scapegrace nephew"! This gay, confident person
who strode forcefully into your garden without so much as a
"by-your-leave," and who conveyed the impression that he would stride
forcefully into your life, equally without permission, if it so pleased
him. Ann was aware of something extraordinarily vital about the man that
attracted her in spite of her first instinctive feeling of aversion.
"And what are you doing in my garden?" she asked.
His blue eyes swept the girl's slim, supple figure as she lay in the
hammock with a long, raking glance that missed nothing and then came back
to her face.
"If I answered that question truthfully you'd pretend to be offended," he
said.
"I shouldn't pretend--anything," she retorted. "Please tell me why you're
here."
"Oh, that's quite a different proposition! I can answer that one. I'm here
as the emissary of my respected Aunt Susan."
"Lady Susan?"
"Yes. We've just walked over from White Windows, and when we arrived and
found you were out, and that the delightful old Devonshire party who opened
the door to us could supply no recent data concerning your whereabouts,
Aunt Susan collapsed into a comfortable chair and sent me to spy out the
land."
Ann sprang up out of the hammock.
"How good of her to have walked over in all this heat!" she said, preparing
to lead the way back to the house.
"It was my doing," he replied with an air of complacency, as they walked on
together. "I only arrived yesterday and she talked so much about you that I
was consumed with a quite pardonable anxiety to meet you."
"I hope you found it worth the three-mile walk," commented Ann dryly.
"Oh, quite," he returned with conviction. "I always like making new
friends."
The cool assurance of the assertion annoyed her.
"We've hardly got to that stage yet," she observed distantly.
"No. But we shall do"--confidently. "Perhaps further than that,
ultimately."
She threw him a quick glance and encountered his eyes fixed on her with a
kind of gay bravado--like that of a small boy experimenting how far he dare
go. It irritated her--this sanguine assumption of his that he was going to
count for something in her life. She walked on more quickly.
"Aren't you rather a conceited person?" she asked mildly.
"I'd prefer to call it having decided ideas," he returned.
"Well, you must know you can't force your ideas on other people."
"Can't I?" He halted in the middle of the path and faced her. "Do you
really think that?"
Ann avoided meeting his glance, but she felt it playing over her like
lightning over a summer sky. It was as though he had flung down a challenge
and dared her to pick it up. She temporised.
"Do I think--what? I've almost forgotten what we were talking about."
"No, you haven't," he returned bluntly. "You're merely evading the
question--as every woman does when she's afraid to answer."
"I'm not afraid!" exclaimed Ann indignantly. "I certainly shouldn't be
afraid of you," she added, emphasising the final pronoun pointedly.
"Shouldn't you?" He looked down at her with an odd intentness. "Do you
know, I think I should rather like to make you--afraid of me."
In spite of herself Ann shrank a little inwardly. She was suddenly
conscious of a sense of the man's force, of the dogged tenacity of purpose
of which he might be capable. He had not been dowered with that conquering
nose and those dare-devil, reckless eyes for nothing! She could imagine him
riding rough-shod over anything and any one in order to attain his ends.
She contrived a laugh.
"I hope you won't attempt such a thing," she said, endeavouring to speak
lightly. "If you do, I shall appeal to Lady Susan for protection."
"That wouldn't help you any," he assured her. "Aunt Susan would let you
down quite shamelessly. She keeps a permanently soft spot in her heart for
disreputable characters--like me."
When they reached the house they discovered Lady Susan located in the
easiest chair she could find, placidly smoking a cigarette, her
gold-knobbed ebony stick--inseparable companion of her walks
abroad--propped up beside her. From outside the front door could be heard
sundry scratchings and appealing whines, punctuated by an occasional
hopeful bark, which emanated from the bunch of dogs without whom she was
rarely to be seen in Silverquay. They went by the generic name of the
Tribes of Israel--a gentle reference to their tendency to multiply, and
they ran the whole gamut of canine rank, varying in degree from a pedigree
prize-winner to a mongrel Irish terrier which Lady Susan had picked up in a
half-starved condition in a London side-street and had promptly adopted.
The last-named was probably her favourite, since, as Forrester had
remarked, she had a perennially soft spot in her heart for disreputable
characters.
"My dear," she said, as Ann stooped and kissed her, "I do hope and pray
that your adorable Maria Coombe is at this moment concerning herself with
the making of tea. Much as I love you, I shouldn't have toiled over here in
this appalling heat but for this graceless nephew of mine, who would give
me no peace till I did. So I chose the lesser evil."
Forrester seemed supremely unrepentant, but Ann noticed that when tea
appeared he waited rather charmingly on Lady Susan, anticipating her wants
even down to the particular brand of cigarette she preferred to smoke when,
after swallowing three cups of scaldingly hot tea _à la Russe_, she
pronounced her thirst satisfactorily assuaged. There was a certain
half-humorous, half-tender indulgence in his manner towards her, and Ann
could imagine that he would know very well how to spoil the woman he loved.
But he would master her completely first. Of that she felt sure.
It appeared that he had descended upon White Windows unexpectedly. He had
been cruising round the coast and, without troubling to apprise Lady Susan
of his intention, had suddenly elected to pay her a visit, and his yacht,
the _Sphinx_, was now lying at anchor in Silverquay Bay.
"And even now I don't know how long he proposes staying!" smiled his aunt.
"How long?" He smiled back at her. "The question is, how long will you put
up with me? I don't think--now"--with a swift, audacious glance which Ann
refused to meet--"that I can do better than throw myself on the hospitality
of White Windows for the remainder of the summer."
"My dear boy"--Lady Susan beamed. "Will you really? I should love to have
you; you know that. And, after all"--with a twinkle--"Silverquay has its
amusements. We take tea with each other, and boat, and bathe--"
"I can do all those things," said Forrester modestly. He turned suddenly to
Ann. "Can you swim?"
"I can keep up for about two strokes," she replied, smiling. "After that,
overcome by my own prowess, I sink like a stone."
"Then I'll teach you," he said. "We'll begin to-morrow. What time and where
do you generally bathe?"
Ann raised one or two feeble objections, but they were promptly overruled,
and before she quite knew how it had happened she found herself committed
to a promise that she would be at Berrier Cove the following morning,