The Vision of Desire
ACCOUNT RENDERED
Dinner was over on board the _Sphinx_, and the whole party were gathered
on deck for coffee. It had been a very perfect little dinner. Forrester
was a confirmed diner-out in London, and no one knew better than he how to
arrange a menu. Lady Susan played hostess charmingly, and under her benign
influence the various unsympathetic elements included in the party had
fused together more pleasantly than might have been anticipated.
Coventry had duly arrived, and although, as luck would have it, he found
himself seated next to Mrs. Halyard, the fact that no one but the two
people most intimately concerned were aware of any particular reason why
they should not sit together enabled them to carry off the situation
without visible effort. It had been a matter of more difficulty to merge
Miss Caroline's personality into the prevailing atmosphere, but every one
helped. They were all used to the fact that if they wanted to enjoy the
rector's company they must be prepared to put up with his sister's, since
the canons of a country neighbourhood forbade inviting the one without the
other, and on this particular evening Forrester had chaffed her into such
good humour that she became quite skittish, and contributed some truly
surprising outbursts of frivolity to the general conversation.
"Rejuvenation while you wait," Robin had murmured to Cara, under cover of
the buzz of talk.
Mrs. Hilyard had laughed that low, pretty laugh of hers which was always
free from the least suspicion of "cattiness." "I defy any one to maintain a
grown-up attitude when Brett decides that they shan't," she made answer.
Thanks to the arrangement of their respective seats at the table, Ann had
been able to avoid holding any conversation with Eliot without provoking
comment. She had dreaded meeting him again, feeling that it would be
difficult to re-establish the merely friendly relations which had existed
between them until one tense, glowing moment had swept aside convention and
pretence and let each see deep into the other's heart.
But the meeting passed off more easily than she had dared to hope. They
exchanged brief greetings on the quay, where Brett Forrester's guests had
collected together and were waiting to board the yacht's dinghy, and during
the short passage across the bay to where the _Sphinx_ lay anchored she
and Cara and Miss Caroline had sat chatting together in the stern of the
boat, leaving the three men to talk amongst themselves. And now, as the
whole party emerged on to the deck for coffee, Ann found herself safely
wedged in between Brett and the rector, with Coventry, much to her relief,
established at the other end of the semicircle of chairs.
It was a glorious evening. The moon--"according to, orders," as Brett
had laughingly reminded her--hung like a great lambent globe in the sky,
throwing a shimmering track of silver across the waters of the bay, and
dappling the ripples of the sea beyond with shifting Jack-o'-Lantern gleams
of light. The deck of the _Sphinx_ shone with an almost dazzling whiteness,
accentuated by the black patches of sharp shadow flung across it.
Ann sat quietly enjoying the peaceful beauty of it all, oblivious to the
hum of conversation around her. For the time being she lost that sense of
fear and dread of the yacht which had so curiously obsessed her yesterday.
Now it seemed but a component part of the beautiful scene--to shoreward, a
ragged string of cottage lights climbing the hill-side, speaking of hearth
and home and of rest after the day's labour, and beyond, the still, calm
moon and tranquil bay, and the yacht, with its whiteness and sharp-cut
shadows, lying motionless like some legendary vessel carved in alabaster.
"What's your opinion, Ann?"
The question startled her, severing the dreaming thread of her thoughts.
She roused herself with a smile.
"My opinion about what? I'm afraid I didn't hear what was being said."
"About pains and penalties," explained Cara,
"They sound unpleasant."
"They are--very," agreed Lady Susan with her jolly laugh. "The question
under discussion is whether we all eventually have to pay up for our
misdeeds--even in this world."
"I think we do--in some form or another," said Tempest quietly. "Only
perhaps we don't always recognise the penalty, _as_ a penalty, when it
comes."
"Then it seems rather a waste, doesn't it?" suggested Brett idly.
The rector's quiet eyes rested on the speaker.
"I don't think so. If we recognised it as a punishment, we should probably
resent it so much that it wouldn't do us any good--just as spanking doesn't
really do a child any good but only rouses its naughty temper. Whereas
when it comes unrecognised, even though it may be the outcome of our own
mistaken actions, it educates and changes us--does, in fact, just what
punishment is really designed to do, acts as a remedial force. I think God
often works like that."
"Only, sometimes, the sinner isn't the only one who pays," threw in
Coventry shortly.
"He's the only one who doesn't pay, generally speaking," answered Brett,
with a grin. "He flourishes like a green bay tree instead. I never dream of
paying for my sins," he added cheerfully.
Tempest smiled--that tolerant, good-humoured smile of his which always took
the sting out of anything he might say.
"You're not at the end of life yet, Mr. Forrester," he observed quietly.
Brett laughed.
"Are you threatening me with an 'account rendered' of all my evil deeds--to
he paid for in a sort of lump sum?"
"Even that might be preferable to having your punishment spread out all
over your life," said Cara, with a faint note of weariness in her voice
which passed unnoticed by all except Coventry, who threw her a quick,
searching glance.
"Like thinly spread butter?" suggested Brett blithely.
"Cara didn't say anything about it being thinly spread," retorted Ann,
laughing. "I should think yours might be rather thick."
Amid the general laughter and chaff which followed the original topic of
conversation was lost sight of, and presently some one suggested a game of
auction. Miss Caroline's blue bead eyes gleamed at the very sound of the
word. She loved a game of bridge, but for parochial reasons adhered firmly
to stakes of not more than a penny a hundred. Tempest had vainly argued
with her that she might equally as well play for a more usual amount, such
as sixpence or a shilling, and this without outraging the susceptibilities
of the parish--that if she played for money at all the principle involved
was precisely the same, but she either could not or would not comprehend.
Bridge at a penny a hundred was apparently an innocent occupation--at
anything higher, an awful example.
"Then we'll play for a penny a hundred," declared Lady Susan
good-humouredly, when Miss Caroline had explained her scruples. "Who'll
play? You will, Mr. Tempest? And you, Robin? That'll make one table. What
about you others?"
"I don't play bridge," said Brett mendaciously, adding _sotto voce_ to Lady
Susan: "A least, I can't afford to play for a penny a hundred, beloved
aunt." Then aloud: "Besides, Ann wants to see all over the boat, so I'm
going to trot her round."
Ann laughed in spite of herself, never having expressed any such desire as
was thus coolly attributed to her. But she submitted good-naturedly enough
to being carried off by Brett on a tour of inspection, whilst Lady Susan
and the rector, accompanied by Robin and Miss Caroline, went below to play
bridge, leaving Mrs. Hilyard and Coventry alone together on deck.
A silence fell between them. Throughout the whole time which had elapsed
since they had both come to live at Silverquay they had never before
been actually alone. By tacit consent they had mutually avoided such a
happening, and now, without any possibility of escape, it seemed to Cara
that they were suddenly enfolded in a solitude which shut out the rest of
the world entirely.
She twisted her fingers nervously together, vibrantly conscious of
Coventry's tall, silent figure beside her, and her breath struggled a
little in her throat at the memory of all that had once linked their lives
together, of which there remained now only an abiding bitterness and
contempt.
The silence seemed to close round her like a pall, suffocating her. She
felt she could not endure it a minute longer.
"I hardly expected to see you here to-night," she said at last, the usual
sweetness of her voice roughened by reason of the effort it cost her to
speak at all.
"No. Dinner-parties aren't quite in my line," returned Eliot dryly. "But,
having been fool enough to say I'd come, I keep my word."
He glanced towards her as he spoke, and she flushed faintly beneath his
scrutiny. The latter part of the speech pricked her like an arrow sped from
the past, though it was difficult to estimate from the man's impassive
face whether or no he had actually intended to imply a deeper significance
than the surface meaning which the words conveyed. Cara felt that she must
know--at any cost she must know.
"Is that meant as a--protest?" she asked, assuming an air of playful
indifference which she was very far from feeling. "Am I intended to take it
as a rebuke?"
Perhaps the light detachment of her manner jangled some long-silent chord,
roused an echo from the past, for his face darkened.
"You can take it so, if you wish," he said curtly.
She was silent. In that brief question and answer she had covertly appealed
for mercy and had received judgment--the same judgment which had been
pronounced against her years ago. She had never thought it possible
that Eliot would learn to care for her again. She knew the man too well
to believe that he would have any love left to give the woman who had
despoiled him of all a man values--broken his faith, destroyed the ideals
that had once been his. Moreover, she had seen clear down into his soul
that day at Berrier Cove, when Ann had come within an ace of death, and she
knew that on the ruins of the old love a new love was building.
But, deep within her, she had hoped that Eliot's savage bitterness towards
her might have softened with the passage of time--that perhaps he had
learned to tincture his contempt for her with a little understanding and
compassion, allowing something in excuse for youth and for the long,
grinding years of poverty which had ground the courage out of her and
driven her into making that one ghastly mistake for which life had exacted
such a heavy penalty. She knew now that she had hoped in vain. He was as
merciless as he had been that day, ten years ago, when he had turned away
and left her alone in an old Italian garden, with the happy sunlight and
the scent of flowers mocking the half-realised despair at her heart.
"Then you haven't ever--forgiven me?" she said at last, haltingly.
He stared at her.
"Isn't that rather a curious question to ask? You killed everything in life
that mattered--damned my chances of happiness once and for always.... No, I
don't think I've forgiven you. I've endeavoured to forget you." He paused,
then added with a brief, ironic laugh: "It was a queer joke for fate to
play--bringing us both to the same neighbourhood."
"I didn't know," said Cara hastily. "You know that, don't you? I
had no idea you lived here when I bought the Priory. Even when I
heard--afterwards--that a Mr. Coventry owned Heronsmere, I never dreamed
it could be you. You see, I was told he was very wealthy--"
"And the Coventry you knew was--poor!"
It was like the thrust of a rapier, and Cara winced under the concentrated
scorn of the bitter speech.
"You are very merciless," she said, her voice shaken and uneven.
"Then leave it at that," he rejoined indifferently. "I've no particular