The Vision of Desire
then, one day, shortly before the weak flame of her life flickered out into
the darkness, she had sent for Ann, and solemnly, appealingly, confided the
boy to her care.
"I hate leaving him, Ann," she had said between the long bouts of coughing
which shook her thin frame so that speech was at times impossible. "He's
so--alone. Philip represents nothing to him but an autocrat he is bound to
obey. And Tony resents it. Any one who loves him can steady him--but no one
will ever drive him. When I'm gone, will you do what you can for him--for
him and for me?"
And Ann, holding the sick woman's feverish hands in her own cool ones, had
promised.
"I will do all that I can," she said steadily.
"And if he _does_ get into difficulties?" persisted Virginia, her eager
eyes searching the girl's face.
Ann smiled down at her reassuringly.
"Don't worry," she had answered. "If he does, why, then I'll get him out of
them if it's in any way possible."
Two days later, Ann had stood beside the bed where Virginia lay, straight
and still in the utter peace and tranquillity conferred by death. Her last
words had been of Tony.
"I've 'bequeathed' him to you, Ann," she had whispered. Adding, with a
faint, humorous little smile: "I'm afraid I'm leaving you rather a
troublesome legacy."
And now, nearly four years later, Ann had thoroughly realised that the
task of keeping Tony out of mischief was by no means an easy one. Here,
at Montricheux, however, she had felt that she could relax her vigilance
somewhat. There was no temptation to back "a certainty" of which some
racing friend had apprised him, and, as Tony himself discontentedly
declared, the stakes permitted at the Kursaal tables were so small that
if he gambled every night of the week he ran no risk of either making or
losing a fortune.
The chief danger, she reflected, was that he might become bored and
irritable--she could see that he was tending that way--and then trouble
would be sure to arise between him and his uncle, with whom he was staying
at the Hotel Gloria. She recalled his hesitation when she had asked him if
he had been getting into mischief. Was trouble brewing already?
"Tony," she demanded shrewdly. "Have you been quarrelling with Sir Philip
again? There's generally some disturbing cause when you feel driven into
asking me to marry you."
"Well, why won't you? He'd be satisfied then."
"He? Do you mean your uncle?"--with some astonishment.
Tony nodded.
"Yes. Didn't you know he wanted it more than anything? Just as I do," he
added with the quick, whimsical smile which was one of his charms.
Ann shook her head.
"You haven't answered my question," she persisted.
"Well," admitted Tony unwillingly, "he and I did have a bit of a dust-up
this morning. I'm sick of doing nothing. I told him I wanted to be an
architect."
"Well?"
"It was anything but well! He let me have it good and strong. No Brabazon
was going to take up planning houses as a profession if he knew it! I'd got
my duty to the old name and estate and the tenants, et cetera, et cetera.
All the usual tosh."
Ann's face clouded. She devoutly wished that Sir Philip _would_ allow
his nephew to take up some profession--never mind which, so long as it
interested him and gave him definite occupation. To keep him idling about
between Lorne and the Brabazon town house in Audley Square was the worst
thing in the world for him. Privately she determined to approach her
godfather on the subject at the very next opportunity, though she could
make a very good, guess at the reason for his refusal. It was a purely
selfish one. He liked to have the boy with him. Bully him and browbeat him
as he might, Tony was in reality the apple of the old man's eye--the one
thing in the whole world for which he cared.
There would be nothing gained, however, by letting Tony know her thoughts,
so she answered him with trenchant disapproval.
"It's not tosh. After all, your first duty is to Lorne and to the tenants.
A good landlord is quite as useful a member of society as a good
architect."
"Oh, if I were doing the actual managing, it would be a different thing,"
acknowledged Tony. "But I don't. He decides everything and gives all the
orders--without consulting me. I just have to see that what he orders is
carried out, and trot about with him, and do the noble young heir stunt for
the benefit of the tenants on my birthday. It's absolutely
sickening!"--savagely.
"Well, don't quarrel with your bread-and-butter," advised Ann. "Or with Sir
Philip. He's not a bad sort in his way."
"Oh, isn't he?"--grimly. "You try living with him! Thank the powers that
be, I shall get a 'day off' to-morrow. He's going over to Evian by the
midday boat. The St. Keliers--blessed be their name!--have asked him to
dine with them--to meet some exiled Russian princess or other."
"Lady Susan is going, too. She's staying the night there. Is Sir Philip?"
"Yes. There's no getting back the same night. This is topping, Ann." Tony's
face had brightened considerably. "Suppose you and I go up to the Dents
de Loup for the afternoon, and then have a festive little dinner at the
Gloria. Will you? Don't have an attack of common sense and say 'no'!"
His eyes entreated her gaily. They were extremely charming eyes, of some
subtly blended colour that was neither slate nor violet, but partook a
little of both, and shaded by absurdly long lashes which gave them an
almost womanish softness. A certain shrewd old duchess, who knew her world,
had once been heard to observe that Tony Brabazon's eyes would get him in
and out of trouble as long as he lived.
Ann smiled.
"That's quite a brain-wave, Tony," she replied. "I won't say no. And if
you're very good we'll go down to the Kursaal afterwards, and I'll let
you have a little innocent flutter at the tables." Ann had no belief in
the use of too severe a curb. She felt quite sure that if Tony's gambling
propensities were bottled up too tightly, they would only break out more
strongly later on--when he might chance to be in a part of the world where
he could come to bigger grief financially than was possible at Montricheux.
She glanced down at the watch on her wrist and, seeing that the time had
slipped by more quickly than she imagined, proceeded to gather up her
gloves. "I think it's time I went back to Villa Mon Rêve, now," she said
tentatively, fearing a burst of opposition.
But, having got his own way over the arrangements for the morrow, Tony
consented to be amenable for once. Together they took their way up the
pleasant street and at the gates of the villa he made his farewells.
"I shall drop into the club for a rubber, I think," he vouchsafed, "before
going home like a good little boy."
"Don't play high," cautioned Ann good-humouredly.
She could detect the underlying note of resentment in his voice,
and she entered the house meditating thoughtfully upon the amazing
short-sightedness evinced by elderly gentlemen in regard to the upbringing
of their heirs.
CHAPTER II
THE BRABAZONS OF LORNE
"Ann's the best pal Tony could possibly have, so, for goodness' sake, be
content with that and don't get addling your brains by trying to marry her
off to him. Match-making isn't a man's job. A female child of twelve could
beat the cleverest man that's hatched at the game."
Lady Susan Hallett fired off her remarks, as was her wont, with the vigour
and precision of a machine-gun. There was always a delightful definiteness
both about her ideas and the expression of them.
The man she addressed was standing with his back to the open French window
of the pretty salon, angrily oblivious of the blue waters of Lac Léman
which lapped placidly against the stone edges of the _quai_ below. He was a
tall, fierce-looking old man, with choleric blue eyes and an aristocratic
beak of a nose that jutted out above a bristling grey moustache. A single
eyeglass dangled from a broad, black ribbon round his neck. "One of the
old school" was written all over him--one of the old, autocratic school
which believed that "a man should be master in his own house, b'gad!" By
which--though he would never have admitted it--Sir Philip Brabazon inferred
a kind of divinely appointed dictatorship over the souls and bodies of the
various members of his household which even included the right to arrange
and determine their lives for them, without reference to their personal
desires and tastes.
It was odd, therefore, that his chief friend and confidante--and the
woman he would have married thirty years ago if she would only have had
him--should be Lady Susan, as tolerant and modern in her outlook as he
was archaic.
She was a tall, sturdily built woman of the out-of-door, squiress type. Her
fine-shaped head was crowned by a wealth of grey hair, simply coiled in a
big knot on the nape of her neck and contrasting rather attractively with
her very black, arched eyebrows and humorous dark eyes. Those same eyes
were now regarding Sir Philip with a quizzical expression of amusement.
"Besides," she pursued. "Ann wouldn't have half as much pull with him if
she _were_ his wife, let me tell you."
"You think not?"
"I'm sure. A man will let himself be lectured and generally licked into
shape by the woman he wants to marry--but after marriage he usually prefers
to do all the lecturing that's required himself."
The old man shot a swift glance at her from under a pair of shaggy brows.
"How do you know?" he demanded rudely. "You're not married."
Lady Susan nodded.
"That's why."
"Do you mean--do you mean--" he began stormily, then, meeting her quiet,
humorous gaze, stammered off into silence. Presently he fixed his monocle
in one of his fierce old eyes and surveyed her from behind it as from
behind a barricade.
"Do you mean me to understand that that's the reason you declined to marry
me?"
She laughed a little.
"I think it was. I didn't want to be browbeaten into submission--as you
browbeat poor Virginia, and as you would Tony if he hadn't got a good dash
of the Brabazon devil in him. You're a confirmed bully, you know."
"I shouldn't have bullied you." There was an odd note of wistfulness in
the harsh voice, and for a moment the handsome, arrogant old face softened
incredibly. "I shouldn't have bullied you, Susan."
"Yes, you would. You couldn't have helped it. You'd like to bully my little
Ann into marrying Tony if you dared--monster!"
The grim mouth beneath the clipped moustache relaxed into an unwilling
smile.
"I believe I would," he admitted. "Hang it all, Susan, it would settle the
boy if he were married. He wants a wife to look after him."
"To look after him?"--with a faintly ironical inflection.
"That's what I said"--irritably. "That's--that's what wife's for, dammit!
Isn't it?"
"Oh, no." She shook her head regretfully. "That idea's extinct as the dodo.
Antiquated, Philip--very."
He glared at her ferociously.
"Worth more than half your modern ideas put together," he retorted. "Women,
don't know their duty nowadays. If they'd get married and have babies and
keep house in the good, old-fashioned way, instead of trying to be doctors
and barristers and the Lord knows what, the world would be a lot better
off. A good wife makes a good man--and that's job enough for any woman."
"I should think it might be," agreed Lady Susan meditatively. "But it
sounds a trifle feeble, doesn't it? I mean, on the part of the good man.
It's making a sort of lean-to greenhouse of him, isn't it?"
"You're outrageous, Susan! I'm not a 'lean-to' anything, but do you suppose
I'd be the bad-tempered old ruffian I am--at least, you say I am--if you'd
married me thirty years ago?"
"Twenty times worse, probably," she replied promptly. "Because, like most
wives, I should have spoiled you."