The Vision of Desire
occasion had been merely his sister! She felt oddly pleased and contented
at this solution of a matter which had nagged her curiosity more than a
little at the time.
"Mrs. Coventry--the mother--was utterly selfish, and insisted upon her
own way in everything." Cara was pursuing her recollections in a quiet,
retrospective fashion which gave Ann the impression that they had no very
deep or poignant interest for her. "If she _didn't_ get it--well, there
were fireworks!"--smiling. "Once, I remember, Eliot crossed her wishes over
something and she flew into a perfect frenzy of temper. There was a small
Italian dagger lying on a table near, and she snatched it up and flung it
straight at him. It struck him just below one of his eyes; that's how he
came by that scar on his cheekbone. She might have blinded him," she added,
and for a moment there was a faint tremor in her voice.
"What a brute she must have been!" exclaimed Ann in horror.
"Yes," agreed Cara. "He was unlucky in his mother." After a pause she went
on: "And he was unlucky in the woman he loved. He wasn't at all well-off in
those days, and she threw him over--broke off the engagement and married a
very wealthy man instead."
Ann felt her heart contract.
"I suppose that's what makes him so bitter, then," she said in a low voice.
"Probably--he still cares for her."
"No." Cara shook her head. "Eliot Coventry isn't the sort of man to go on
caring for a woman who'd proved herself unworthy. I think--I think he'd
just wipe her clean out of his life."
"It would be what she deserved," asserted Ann rather fiercely.
"Yes, I suppose it would. But one can feel a little sorry for her. She
spoilt her own life, too."
"Did you know her, then?"
"Yes, I knew her. I think the only excuse to be made for her is that she
was very young when it all happened."
"I'm young," said Ann grimly, "but I hope I wouldn't be as mean as that."
"You?" Cara's eyes rested with a wistful kind of tenderness on the flushed
face against the pillows. "But, my dear, there's a world of difference
between you and the girl Eliot Coventry was in love with."
She got up and, moving across to the window, stood looking out. Below, the
pleasant, happy-go-lucky garden rambled desultorily away to the corner
where stood the ancient oak supporting Ann's hammock--a garden of odd,
unexpected nooks and lawns, with borders of old English flowers, without
definite form and looking as if it had grown of its own sweet will into its
present comeliness. But the garden conjured up before Cara's mental vision
was a very different one--a stately, formal garden entered through an arch
of jessamine, with a fountain playing in its centre, tinkling coolly into a
marble basin, and a high-backed, carved stone bench set beneath the shade
of scented trees. Above all pulsated the deep, sapphire blue of an Italian
sky.
The pictured garden faded and Cara turned slowly back into the room. Her
eyes looked sad.
"Poor Eliot!" she said. "It's all ancient history now. But one wishes it
was possible to give him back his happiness."
When she had gone, Ann lay thinking over the story she had just heard.
So it was all true, then--the tale that Eliot had been jilted years ago!
It threw a vivid flash of illumination on the many complexities she had
come up against in his character. The two women who should mean most in a
man's life had both failed him. He bore on his body a scar which surely he
must never see reflected in the mirror without recalling the travesty of
motherhood that was all he had ever known. And scored into his soul, hidden
beneath a bitter reticence and unforgiving cynicism, lay the still deeper
scar of that hurt which the woman who was to have been his wife had dealt
him.
Ann's annoyance with him because he hadn't troubled to call personally to
ascertain how she was melted away in a rush of pitying comprehension. She
was conscious of an intense anger against that unknown woman who had so
marred his life. She hoped she was being made to pay for it, suffer for it
in some way!
And then, all at once, came the realisation that if she had remained
faithful, Eliot would probably have been married years ago ... she herself
would never have met him.... A burning flush mounted to her very temples,
and she hid her face in her hands, trying to shut out the swift, unbidden
thought which had wakened within her a strange tumult of emotion. When at
last she uncovered her face, her eyes held the wondering, startled look of
a young fawn.
She was very young and whole-hearted, utterly innocent of that great
miracle which transforms the world, as yet unrecognising of the voice of
love--the Voice which, once heard, can never again be muted and forgotten.
And now something stirred within her--something new and disturbing and a
little frightening.
It was as though she had heard some distant call which she but half
understood and, only partly understanding, feared.
CHAPTER XVI
DREAM-FLOWERS
The news of Mrs. Hilyard's visit to the Cottage soon spread abroad, and the
following day, when she was allowed downstairs for the first time, Ann held
quite a small reception.
Lady Susan, escorted by Forrester and the ubiquitous Tribes of Israel, was
the first to arrive. Afterwards came the rector and Miss Caroline, and
even Mrs. Carberry, a somewhat consequential dame whose husband was Master
of the Heronsfoot Foxhounds, and who had hitherto held rather aloof from
anything approaching intimacy and merely paid a stately first call on the
Cottage people, unbent sufficiently to take tea informally with the
invalid.
She did not, however, bring her daughter, a girl of Ann's own age, with
her. A shrewd, rather calculating woman, she had fully recognised the
possible attraction that might lie in Robin's steady, grey-green eyes. And
since her plans for her daughter's future most certainly did not include
marriage with any one so unimportant--and probably hard up--as a young
estate agent, she judged it wiser to run no risks. She extracted from Ann
a full, true, and particular account of her bathing adventure, and the
information that it had been the owner of Heronsmere who had come to the
rescue did not appear to afford her much pleasure.
"He's not here this afternoon?" She glanced quickly round the party of
friends who had gathered in the pretty, low-ceiled room. "But I suppose he
has called already to make sure that you're safe and sound?" There was a
kind of acrid sweetness in her tones.
"Oh, no," replied Ann, sensing the woman's latent antagonism. "Why should
he?"
"Why, indeed?" Mrs. Carberry laughed dryly. "After all, he can't really
feel very grateful to you for procuring him a soaking, can he? A man does
so hate to be made a fool of."
"I really don't know what he felt," retorted Ann sweetly, but with
heightened colour. "You see, I was unconscious."
"Just as well for you, perhaps." Again that unpleasant little dry laugh.
"One feels so _draggled_, doesn't one, with one's hair all lank and wet?"
Miss Caroline's maidenly mind seemed chiefly oppressed with the immodesty
of being rescued from drowning by a member of the other sex.
"How unfortunate it was that Mrs. Hilyard couldn't reach you!" she said,
when she got Ann to herself for a few moments. "You must have felt very
uncomfortable."
"Uncomfortable?" Ann's clear eyes met Miss Caroline's blue bead ones
inquiringly.
"_Dreadfully_ uncomfortable, I should think"--with sympathy. "You--you had
nothing on, I suppose"--lowering her voice impressively--"but your
bathing-gown?"
"Nothing at all," answered Ann, maintaining her gravity with difficulty.
"One hasn't usually, you know--to go into the water."
"But you had to be carried _out_ of the water, hadn't you? You must have
found it most embarrassing! Most embarrassing!"
"I don't think I did," said Ann.
"Not?"--chidingly. "Oh, Miss Lovell, I can't believe that! Any nice-minded
girl--I'm sure, if it had been me I should have fainted out of pure shame
at finding myself in a man's arms--without a _peignoir_!"
"Well, that was just it, you see. I _had_ fainted. So"--the corners of
her mouth trembling in spite of herself--"I wasn't able to put on my
_peignoir_."
"I see." Miss Caroline looked slightly relieved. "Then you didn't really
know any more about it than one does when having a tooth out under gas?
What a good thing! Dear me! What a good thing! And I'm sure Mr. Coventry
will try to forget all about it. Any gentleman would. Really, such a--a
contretemps makes one feel one ought almost to be fully clothed for
bathing, doesn't it?"
She hopped up like a hungry little bird that has just been fed and flitted
across the room to talk to Mrs. Carberry, and Ann wondered dryly if she
were confiding in the M.F.H.'s wife particulars of the kind of costume she
deemed suitable to the occasion when drowning.
Brett Forrester took her vacated seat at Ann's side.
"I'm really very much obliged to Coventry," he remarked, by way of opening
the conversation.
"Are you?" she replied innocently. "What for?"
"Why, for saving you for me, of course. I couldn't possibly have got there
in time myself. And I don't like losing my belongings"--placidly.
She stared at him.
"If you're referring to me," she said aloofly, "I'm not your 'belongings.'"
His bright blue eyes flashed over her, and for a moment his face seemed to
wake up as he responded swiftly:
"But you will be--some day. So"--with a resumption of his former
placidity--"as I said, I'm very much obliged to Coventry for saving you
for me."
"Brett, don't be so ridiculous! It isn't even funny to make jokes like
that," she answered with some impatience.
He remained quite unperturbed.
"I didn't intend to be funny. And I'm not joking. I'm perfectly serious."
"Then you were never more mistaken in your life."
"Mistaken?"--with childlike inquiry.
"In what you said just now."
Forrester's eyes danced wickedly.
"I say such a lot of things," he complained. "If you can specify which
particular thing, now?"
"You know which I mean, perfectly well," protested Ann indignantly. "That
I--that you--what you said just now about 'belonging'!" She brought it out
with a rush.
"I meant it."
They were alone in the room. The others, conducted by Robin, had all
trooped out to inspect what Lady Susan gaily insisted upon referring to as
the "Cottage Poultry Farm," and distantly through the open window came the
fluttered cackling of the White Leghorns and Rhode Island Reds, resentful
of this unaccountable intrusion of strangers into their domain.
Brett laid his hand suddenly on Ann's arm and thrust his face near hers.
"I meant it," he repeated, and his voice roughened oddly. "I've meant it
ever since the day I found you fast asleep in the hammock."
She drew back a little. The nearness of his arrogant, suddenly passionate
face to hers filled her with a sense of panic. His eyes were like blue
fire, scorching her.
"Don't! Don't be absurd, Brett," she said hastily. "Why--why"--seeking for
some good reason to set against his abruptly declared determination--"you
hardly know me! Only just on the surface, that is."
"I know all I need to, thank you. I know you're the woman I want to marry.
No"--checking with a gesture the impulsive negative with which she was
about to respond--"you needn't bother about refusing me. I'm not asking you
to marry me--not at this moment."
Ann took a fresh hold of herself.
"That's just as well," she said, trying to match his coolness with her own.
"As I told you--you don't really know anything about me. I may"--forcing a
smile--"have a perfectly horrid character, for all you can tell."
"You may," he replied indifferently. "It wouldn't worry me in the least