The Vision of Desire
She bent her head, conscious of the sudden flush that came and went quickly
in her face.
"Yes. Robin and I are going."
"In that case"--there was an infinitesimal pause and, although she would
not look up, she was sensitively aware of the intentness of his gaze--"in
that case, I shall change my mind and go, too."
"You'll meet plenty of friends there," replied Ann. "Lady Susan, of course,
and the Tempests, and Mrs. Hilyard."
"Acquaintances only," he returned shortly.
"Well, at least you'll admit that Mrs. Hilyard is an 'auld acquaintance',"
she said, laughing. "And she's so pretty! I do love people who are nice to
look at, don't you?"
"Yes." Just the bare monosyllable, rather grudgingly uttered--nothing more.
"Don't you think she's very beautiful?" asked Ann in some astonishment at
the lack of enthusiasm in his tones.
"Yes. But, after all, that's only the outside of the cup and platter. It's
the soul inside the shell that matters."
"Well, I should think Cara has a beautiful soul, too," replied Ann loyally.
"Probably you know her better than I do," he said indifferently. Then, as
though to change the subject: "What book have you been reading?" He picked
it up from her lap, where it lay face downward, open at the lyric which had
been occupying her thoughts when he joined her. "Oh, verse?"
"I felt too lazy to begin a novel," she explained.
His eyes travelled down the brief lines of the little song she had been
reading, his face hardening as he read.
"Charmingly optimistic," he observed ironically, as he closed the book.
"I'm afraid, however, that the 'garden of happy hours' is a purely
imaginary one for most of us."
"Of course it's bound to be--if you don't believe in it. You've got to
_have_ dream-flowers first, or naturally they can't materialise."
"I suppose all of us have had our dream-flowers at one time or another," he
replied quietly. "And then the frost has come along and scotched them. But
I forgot!"--with a short laugh. "You're one of the people who believe that
if you think and believe them hard enough, your dreams will come true,
aren't you? I remember your flinging that bit of philosophy in my face the
first time we met--at the Kursaal."
"Yes," she acquiesced. "But if you haven't any, they can't come true, can
they?"
"I don't imagine that what we hope or think makes any perceptible
difference," he said shortly.
"That's because you're a cynic! I think it makes _all_ the difference.
Robin and I are a concrete example of it. We've always wanted to live
together--we hung on to the thought in our minds all the time circumstances
kept us apart. And now, you see, here we are--doing precisely what we
wanted to do."
"I see that you're a very good advocate," he replied smiling. And then
Robin came out of the house and joined them and the conversation drifted
away on to more general lines.
It was late in the afternoon before Coventry finally proposed taking his
way homeward--so late that Robin suggested he might as well make it still
later and stay to dinner with them. Rather to Ann's surprise he consented,
and, in spite of his assertion, earlier on, that he "preferred his own
company," he seemed thoroughly to enjoy the little home-like _dîner à
trois_. There was something about the cosy room and the gay, good-humoured
chaff and laughter of brother and sister which conveyed a sense of
welcome--partaking of that truest kind of hospitality which creates no
special atmosphere of ceremony for a guest but encompasses him with a
frank, informal friendliness.
Perhaps, as Maria moved briskly in and out, changing the plates and dishes,
and not forbearing to smile benignly upon her young master and mistress if
she chanced to catch the eye of one or other of them, some swift perception
of the pleasant, simple homeliness of it all woke Eliot to comparisons, for
just as he was leaving he said with characteristic abruptness:
"Thank you both immensely. To-night's been a great contrast to my usual
evenings in that great empty barrack of a dining-room at Heronsmere."
Unconsciously he spoke out of a great loneliness, and Ann's heart ached for
this supremely hurt and bitter soul which sought security from further hurt
behind the iron barriers of a self-imposed reserve and solitude.
Presently the sweet summer dusk, fragrant of herb and flower, enfolded them
as they stood together at the Cottage gate. A sudden silence had fallen
between them. Ann tried to break it, utter some commonplace, but no words
would come. At length he held out his hand, and, as hers slid within it, he
spoke with a curiously tender gravity.
"Good-bye," he said. "Don't let the cynics spoil the world for you. I hope
you'll find your happy garden--whoever doesn't."
"I hope every one will, some day," she answered rather low. Somehow her
voice didn't seem very manageable. "Even cynics."
"I'm afraid I've missed the way there." Still holding her hand in his, he
stared down at her with an odd, tense expression in his eyes. "Ann, do you
think I shall ever find it again?"
His voice vibrated to some unlooked-for emotion, and Ann, hearing and dimly
sensing the demand it held, was suddenly afraid, shrinking back into the
reserves of her young, unconquered womanhood. She tried to withdraw her
hand from his clasp.
Then, from somewhere above her bent head, she heard a low laugh, half
tender, half amused.
"You shall tell me to-morrow, little Ann," he said.
She felt his lips against her palm, and a minute later she was standing
alone by the gate with the sound of Eliot's receding steps coming faintly
to her ears through the scented dusk.
CHAPTER XVII
A SPRIG OF HELIOTROPE
The light of a pale young moon filtered in through the chinks of the blind
and crept towards the bed where Ann lay tremulously awake, overwhelmed by
the sudden revelation--which had come to her--the revelation of her love
for Eliot Coventry.
Too unselfconscious to be much given to introspection, she had never asked
herself whither the last few months had been leading her. But now, an hour
ago, the touch of Eliot's lips against her hand and the sudden, passionate
demand in his voice had torn aside the veil and shown her her own heart.
With a shy, almost childlike sense of wonder, she realised that her love
for him was not a thing of new or sudden growth. It had been slumbering
deep within her, unrecognised and unacknowledged, ever since that moment
when their eyes had first met across the Kursaal terrace at Montricheux.
Like a little closed bud it had lain curled in her heart, to open wide when
the sun kissed its petals.
And that Eliot loved her in return she had now no doubt. In that brief,
poignant moment of understanding, as they stood together in the warm
starlit dusk, he had revealed it. She could still feel his lips crushed
suddenly against her palm, and hear his shaken voice: "Ann, do you think I
shall find the way?"
The way to the garden of happy hours! They would find it together. He had
known many bitter hours, and out of them had learned a dogged scepticism--a
cynical mistrust of the thing which is called love. And with all the young,
uplifting faith that was in her Ann vowed to herself that what one woman
had pulled down, destroyed, she would build up and make live again.
She was no longer frightened of love--not even of a love that by the very
nature of things might exact far more from her than from most women. She
would never be afraid of the big claims which life might make on her.
Hitherto, whatever had come her way she had met with a gay courage and
confidence, and now that the biggest thing of all had come to her, with its
shadow of incalculable demands upon her womanhood, she would go to meet
that, too, with the same brave steadfastness.
With the unerring instinct of the mother-woman, she realised how Eliot had
fought against his love for her, tried to withstand it, utterly distrustful
of her sex, and she smiled with a tenderly amused indulgence as she
recalled his sudden withdrawals and brusquenesses. His sending down a groom
to inquire how she was--it had hurt her badly at the time to think he cared
so little. But now she recognised that it was because he cared so much--so
much that he had begun to be afraid. So he had hidden behind his groom!
And with the realisation of how much he cared--_must_ care, to have striven
so hard to hide and fight it down--she was shaken with a shy, quivering
ecstasy, a hesitant sweetness of need and longing that pulsed through every
nerve of her. The thought of the morrow almost frightened her. He would
come to-morrow--come to tell her all that he had left unsaid, to claim that
promise of surrender which a woman both loves and fears to give.
... It was late when at last she slept, and she woke to find the sunlight
streaming in through her window, and Maria standing at her bedside, an
appetising breakfast-tray in her hands and a world of shrewd suspicion in
her twinkling eyes. Last night she had chanced to look out of her kitchen
window--which admitted of a slanting glimpse of the Cottage gateway--and
had drawn her own deductions accordingly.
"You've had a brave sleep, Miss Ann," she observed, as she deposited the
tray she was carrying on a small table beside the bed. "Mr. Coventry stayed
late, I reckon?"
Ann flushed a little, smiling. She did not resent the kindly
inquisitiveness which gleamed at her out of Maria's sharp old eyes, but
she had no mind to gratify it at the moment.
"Not very late. I think he left by about eleven o'clock," she answered,
with quite a good assumption of indifference. "But I expect being out in
the fresh air for the first time for several days made me sleep rather
soundly. Why didn't you call me as usual? I'm not an invalid any longer,
you know."
"I thought if so be you'd a mind to sleep on, 'twouldn't do you no harm,"
vouchsafed Maria rather grumpily. She was inwardly burning with curiosity,
but felt unequal to the task of coping with her young mistress's facility
for eluding tentative inquiries, so she stumped downstairs to the kitchen
regions, and left her to consume her breakfast in solitude.
Ann hurried through the meal as quickly as possible. She felt tremendously
alive to-day, and the breezy sunshiny morning, the blue sky with white
fleecy clouds blowing across it, the wheeling swallows, all seemed
curiously in accord with her mood. She rose and, dressing quickly, went
about her various household duties with a subconscious desire to get them
finished and out of the way as soon as possible, and thus be free for
whatever the day might bring forth.
That afternoon she and Robin were due at the rectory for tea. It was what
Miss Caroline called her "day," a bi-monthly occasion when she sat in
state--and a villainous shade of mauve satin--to receive visitors. During
the winter this sacred rite resolved itself chiefly into an opportunity for
tea and feminine gossip in a hot, ill-ventilated room, but in the summer
it was rather a pleasant little function. Tea was served in the pretty old
rectory garden, and the proceedings developed on the lines of an informal
garden-party at which most of the neighbours, of both sexes, showed up. For
although Miss Caroline was of too inquiring a mind to be very popular, the
rector himself was beloved by men and women alike.
The morning hours seemed to Ann interminably long. Insensibly she was keyed
up to a delicate pitch of expectancy, her ear nervously alert for the sound
of a familiar footstep on the flagged path. And as the leaden moments
crawled by, and the warm, sunshiny silence which enfolded the Cottage
remained unbroken, a vague sense of apprehension crept into her heart.
The glamour of those moments alone with Eliot at the gate, the pulsating