The Vision of Desire
sweetness of the thoughts which, in the night, had sent little quivering
rivulets of fire racing through her veins, grew dim and uncertain. Had
she misunderstood--mistaken him? The bare idea sent a swift stab of fear
through her whole being. But in a few moments her faith in the man she
loved returned, and with it her serenity. She was ready to laugh at
herself. Probably, she reflected, he had merely been detained by some
unexpected piece of business which had cropped up necessitating his
attention--and, as a matter of fact, this was precisely what had occurred.
So that when at length she and Robin made their way down a shady path and
emerged on to the rectory lawn, dotted about with groups of people, and
she perceived Coventry's tall, lean figure in the distance, leaning rather
moodily against a tree, she reproached herself for having doubted him even
for an instant. While she was greeting Miss Caroline and the rector her
heart seemed to be singing a little pæan of happiness all to itself.
"... so glad to see you." Ann came suddenly down to earth, and tried to
focus her attention on. Miss Caroline's hospitable gabble. "Such a lot of
people here this afternoon, too.... I'm so pleased. And a _beautiful_ day,
isn't it? Even Mr. Coventry has been tempted out of his shell. He'll be
quite a social acquisition to the neighbourhood soon, at this rate."
She turned to envelop Robin in a similar flood of meaningless prattle,
while Ann and Tempest sauntered on together.
"Yes," said the latter, his eyes resting thoughtfully on Eliot's distant
figure. "It's a real joy to me to see Coventry here. He's too much of a
hermit. I'm afraid, though," he admitted with a rueful laugh, "I rather
badgered him into coming. And I expect now he is here he's not exactly
blessing me for my persistency! Will you go and be very nice to him,
Ann"--he had dropped into the friendly usage of her Christian name, and
Ann liked it--"and get me out of hot water?"
"I don't suppose you're in it very deeply," she returned, with some
amusement at his air of apprehension.
"Well, I really _made_ him come," confessed the rector apologetically: "I
simply wouldn't take 'no'."
"And you know perfectly well that nobody ever resents what you 'make'
them do," said Ann, smiling. "'The rector have a way with him,' as Maria
remarked the other day."
Tempest's mouth curved in a responsive smile
"Did she? Nice woman, your Maria Coombe. But I expect the real truth of
the matter is that the rector has a particularly kind and long-suffering
flock."
"A good shepherd makes a good flock, I think," said Ann softly. And for the
hundredth time wondered how so human and lovable a man came to possess a
sister of Miss Caroline's description.
"Ha! There you are, Coventry!" exclaimed Tempest, as they came abreast of
the solitary figure. "I've just been telling Miss Lovell that I fancied you
weren't altogether blessing me for having lured you out of your lair to
this sort of parish pow-wow."
"Not at all. It's very good of people like you and Lady Susan to bother
about me, seeing that, even when I am dug up, I'm afraid I'm very poor
company."
Eliot smiled rather briefly as he answered, but there was a certain
friendly good-humour in his eyes as they rested on the other man's face. As
Ann had remarked, no one ever resented the rector's kindly strategy.
"Have either of you seen the greenhouses?" demanded Tempest presently. "No?
Oh, you must. We're rather conceited over our show of flowers this year."
Accordingly they progressed towards the hot-houses, collecting Lady Susan
and Cara, and one or two other scattered guests, as they went. Ann felt
hemmed in. It began to look rather as though she and Eliot would not get a
moment to themselves throughout the afternoon. Then she found him at her
side, and something in the quickly amused glance of his eyes, as they swept
over the gradually increasing numbers of the party, and then met her own,
served to comfort her.
"The world is too much with us," he murmured.
After that it seemed as though they were companions in distress, linked by
a secret, wordless understanding, and Ann walked on with a lighter heart.
Cara was a few paces ahead, flanked by Robin and the local doctor, who were
each endeavouring to secure her undivided attention. She was looking very
lovely, in an elusive frock of some ephemeral material veiling a delicate
prismatic undertone of colour. She always dressed rather wonderfully,
every detail perfect. There was a kind of frail, worldly charm about her
clothes--the sort of charm you never find in the clothes of a thoroughly
good and virtuous woman, as Lady Susan trenchantly observed one day.
Ann herself was acutely conscious of that faintly languorous, mysterious
atmosphere of charm with which Mrs. Hilyard seemed to be invested, and she
had sometimes wondered how Eliot was able to resist it and treat her with
the same cool detachment which he accorded to other people. To her there
was something magnetic in Cara's personality. Perhaps her very silence
about herself, and the vague background of an unhappy marriage of which Ann
was dimly aware, contributed towards it. She glanced up to see Eliot gazing
straight ahead, apparently supremely oblivious of that slender, gracious
figure in front, moving lightly betwixt Robin and the stooping, rather
clever-looking doctor.
Presently they all trooped into the hot-houses--warm and fragrant with the
smell of freshly-watered earth, and a rather fierce-looking gardener paused
in his work to exhibit this or that particular plant in which he took a
special interest. But the pride of the rectory was the orchid-house, and
insensibly everybody gravitated towards it.
Ann and Eliot were strolling along a little behind the rest, and she paused
a moment to rifle a pot of heliotrope of a spray of clustered blossom.
"Heavenly stuff!" she exclaimed, sniffing it rapturously. "Smell it!" And
she held it out just under Eliot's nose, obviously expecting him to share
her enthusiasm.
Nothing in the world brings back the past so poignantly as remembered
scents--neither sight nor sound. A pictured face, the refrain of
a song, may chance to stir the pulse of memory, but a remembered
fragrance--intangible, unseen--seems to penetrate to the inmost soul
itself, ripping asunder the veil which the years between have woven and
refashioning the dead past for us as vividly as though it had never died.
Even the very atmosphere of the moment rushes back, and thoughts and
feelings we had begun to believe inert and negligible reassert themselves
with the old irresistible force with which they swayed us years ago.
As Ann light-heartedly proffered her sprig of heliotrope, Eliot's face
whitened beneath its tan, and with a swift, almost violent movement he
snatched the spray from her hand and, flinging it on to the ground, set
his foot upon it.
She looked up in astonishment, then shrank back with a low exclamation of
dismay as she saw his face. It was altered almost out of recognition--the
mouth set in a grim straight line of bitterness, the eyes so hard that they
looked cruel.
"What is it?" she faltered. "What have I done?"
With an immense effort he seemed to recover himself.
"Nothing," he returned harshly. "Only reminded me that a man is a double
fool who tempts Providence a second time."
Ann quivered as though he had struck her.
"I--I don't understand," she said, her voice hardly; more than a mere
thread of sound.
He gave a short laugh.
"Don't you? Will you understand if I tell you this--that I'm shut out from
the 'happy garden' by the gates of memory, now and always."
She made no answer. For the moment she was physically unable to reply.
But she understood--oh, yes, she understood quite well. He had repented
that short, poignantly sweet moment of last night, repudiated all that it
implied. He did not trust her--did not believe in her! And he was telling
her in just so many words.
The revulsion of feeling left her stunned and dazed. She had been so
entirely happy--had already given herself in spirit in response to his
unspoken demand, and now with a single roughly uttered phrase he had closed
the gates--those unyielding gates of memory--and thrust her outside.
And then her pride came to her aid. He should never know--never guess--how
he had hurt her. With the pluck that is born of race, she smiled at him
quite naturally.
"Well, you needn't have closed your gates so hard on my wee bit of
heliotrope! Look, you've crushed it completely!" She pointed to where it
lay, broken and bruised, between them.
He picked it up, and tossed it aside--a poor little corpse of heliotrope.
"I'll get you another piece," he said shortly.
"No, no!" she checked him, laughing. "We shall have that alarming-looking
gardener on our track if we steal any more! Mr. Tempest says he doesn't
even allow him to pick his own flowers. Let's join the others, and escape
from the wrath to come."
It was pluckily done, and when they rejoined the rest of the party few
would have suspected from her insouciant manner that she and Eliot Coventry
had been engaged upon anything more heart-searching than a botanical
discussion.
But that night Ann lay wakeful until the pale streamers of dawn fanned out
across the sky, while Eliot Coventry, pacing restlessly to and fro in his
silent study, gibed at himself with a savage irony because, though he had
successfully steeled himself to meet, unmoved, the woman who had violated
all his trust in her, a whiff of the sweet, heady scent of heliotrope had
flooded his whole being with a resurgent bitterness so deep and so
indomitable that it had utterly submerged his dawning faith.
CHAPTER XVIII
A BATTLE OF WILLS
One man sows and another reaps, and sometimes the harvest is a curiously
unexpected one for the reaper. Coventry had sown harshness and distrust,
and Brett reaped a harvest of kindness and favour in the quarter where he
least anticipated it.
Ann, exasperated by his cool impertinence at their last meeting, had merely
vouchsafed him the briefest of greetings when they had met at the rectory
party, and had consistently avoided him for the remainder of the afternoon.
But when, with his usual debonair assurance, he presented himself at
Oldstone Cottage the following day, she received him with unwonted
graciousness and appeared to have entirely forgotten that he had given
her any just cause for offence.
Yesterday she had felt crushed by the magnitude of the blow which
had fallen on her, and in her treatment of Forrester she had almost
mechanically adopted the detached and chilly attitude prompted by her
annoyance with him. But to-day reaction had set in, and, like many another
of her sex, she sought to exorcise the pain which one man had inflicted by
flirting recklessly with another. It is a method which has its risks, more
especially if the second man happens to be dangerously in love, but a woman
hurt as Ann had been hurt does not stop to count risks, but only seeks
blindly for something--anything--that may serve to distract her thoughts
and keep at bay memories of which the smart and sting is too intolerable to
be borne.
Forrester was quick to perceive her altered attitude towards him and to
take advantage of it, although, with a diplomacy foreign to his usual
tactics and perhaps based on Lady Susan's warning counsels, he kept himself
well in hand. Vaguely recognising behind the alteration in Ann's manner
some impulse of which he could not fathom the source, he merely accepted
the fact of the change and set himself to amuse and entertain her--to hold
her interest without frightening her.
During the next few days he was with her almost constantly. One day he