The Vision of Desire
hair glimmered with strange, lurking lights. Wavering gold of hair and eyes
and scarlet line of lips--they roused the devil in him. His mouth crushed
down on hers once more.
"You may hate me--but, all the same, you'll marry me! I swear it!" he said
with grim assurance.
"I wouldn't marry you if you were the last man on earth."
It was very quietly uttered, but the absolute conviction of her answer
seemed to arrest him. He loosened his clasp of her body, but with the--same
movement his fingers slid to her wrist, prisoning it.
"Who would you marry?" he demanded.
She stood perfectly still, unresisting to the grip of his hand on her
wrist. There was a mute suggestion of scorn in this very surrender to
physical coercion, a poise that asserted an utter freedom of spirit--a
freedom of which he could not rob her.
"You don't expect an answer to that question, do you?" she returned.
"Is it young Brabazon--Tony Brabazon?" he pursued, ignoring her reply and
speaking with an odd kind of eagerness.
Ann was silent. The instinct of her sex was working in her--the instinct to
conceal her real hurt, to throw dust in the eyes of the man who was seeking
to tear her secret from her. So she remained silent, and the sudden gleam
in Brett's eyes showed that he believed he was answered.
"Then you have thought of marrying--Tony Brabazon?" he said searchingly.
"Perhaps I have," she admitted, reflecting with a brief flash of humour
that, in this particular instance, the simple truth was quite the most
misleading thing imaginable.
Brett regarded her with a peculiar expression in which resentment and a
certain need of indulgence were strangely mingled.
"And you've thought better of it?" he continued, rather as though he were
stating a fact of which he had some intrinsic knowledge. Ann felt a trifle
puzzled. He and Tony were only card-room acquaintances, and it seemed
unlikely that the latter would have confided in him. Yet Brett certainly
spoke as though his cognisance of how matters stood betwixt herself and
Tony were based on something more substantial than mere guesswork.
"That, also, is possible," she answered non-committally.
"And just as well," commented Brett. "He's a harum-scarum rake of a boy.
All the same, as I told you once before, the past doesn't matter to me.
It's the future that counts."
He paused, as though he expected her to volunteer some reply. But she
merely eyed him with a look of steady indifference.
"You understand, Ann?" he said, with a species of urgency in his tones.
"It sounds quite simple," she replied shortly. "I think I understand plain
English--though what you say doesn't interest me. Do you mind releasing my
wrist, now?"
"You won't run away if I do?"
She shrugged her shoulders.
"Where could I run to--on the yacht? Besides, I've no wish for every one to
know about this ridiculous scene," she added scornfully, with a downward
glance at her prisoned wrist.
His eyes glinted as he released his hold, but he allowed the contemptuous
speech to pass without remark. She lifted her arm, frictioning her wrist
where his grip had scored a red mark round it. A tumult of anger against
him seethed inside her. Her lips felt soiled and she put up her hand and
rubbed them distastefully. He interpreted the action with lightning
swiftness.
"No," he said, a note of grim triumph in his voice. "You can't undo it."
"I wish," she said with quiet intensity, "I wish I'd never set foot on
board your yacht."
"It wouldn't have made a bit of difference," he assured her unconcernedly.
"If it hadn't happened here, it would have happened somewhere else. Just as
it doesn't matter in the least your refusing me--by the way, I suppose I'm
to understand you _have_ refused me?"--mockingly.
"Certainly I've refused you."
"Very good. But even that won't make an atom of difference. You're going to
marry me, you know, in the long run."
"I'm not--" she began, then checked herself wearily. "Oh, don't let's go
over it all again!" She was very pale, and there were dark shadows of
fatigue beneath her eyes.
"We won't," he replied amicably. "We'll go down and see how those reckless
penny-a-hundred gamblers are getting on, instead."
With one of the amazingly sudden transitions of which Ann had already
discovered he was capable, he dismissed the whole matter as though it
were of no importance, and, gathering up her wraps, preceded her in the
direction of the companion-way. Here they were met by the bridge players.
Their game finished, they were all coming up on deck, laughing and talking
as they came. Ann drew back, nervously unprepared for the sudden encounter,
but Brett covered her momentary confusion by genial inquiries as to who had
won.
"I've won two and fivepence," announced Miss Caroline in satisfied tones.
She appeared supremely contented with the evening's harvest.
"These tiresome people are talking of going, Brett," complained Lady Susan.
"Do stop them."
"Of course I'll stop them," he replied promptly. "They've all got to drink
my health and good luck to the _Sphinx_ before they go. It's her birthday,
to-day, by the way," he went on, addressing everybody collectively, "and I
insist upon the occasion being properly honoured."
He continued pouring out a stream of light-hearted nonsense, focussing
every one's attention on himself, and thus giving Ann time to recover her
poise. When, finally, she joined in the general conversation, she was quite
composed once more, although she still looked somewhat pale and tired.
The scene with Brett had exhausted her more than she knew. The man's sheer
vitality and force were overwhelming, and his efforts to impose his will on
hers, to force from her some response to the flaming ardour of his passion,
had left her feeling mentally and spiritually sore and bruised, just as,
physically, she had ached all over after the buffeting she had received
from the waves at Berrier Cove. She longed inexpressibly for the peace and
quiet of her own room, and she felt thankful when at length the moment for
departure actually arrived.
Lady Susan glanced keenly at her once or twice as they were rowed across
the bay to the now deserted quay, but she refrained from making any comment
on the girl's appearance of fatigue. It was only as they were walking up
the tarred planking of the jetty together, somewhat behind the rest of the
party, that she asked with a queer mixtures of tenderness and humour:
"May I guess, Ann?"
"There's--nothing--to guess," said Ann bluntly.
Lady Susan came to a standstill and stood looking down at her with eyes
that laughed.
"So you've turned him down?" she queried.
Ann nodded silently.
"Well"--incisively--"it will do him a whole heap of good. He's much too
inclined to think the entire world is his for the taking."
Involuntarily Ann laughed outright at the palpable truth of the statement,
and with that spontaneous laughter was borne away much of the hurt pride
and resentment which had been galling her. It was, after all, absurd to
take an irresponsible being like Brett Forrester too seriously.
"I don't altogether envy Brett's wife," pursued Lady Susan judicially.
"Still, she'd never find life monotonous, whatever else. He'd probably beat
her and drag her round by the hair when he was in a rage. But he'd know how
to play the lover, my dear--don't make any mistake about that!"
"I may be old-fashioned," said Ann demurely. "But I don't think I feel
particularly attracted by the prospect of being beaten and dragged around
by the hair."
Lady Susan's dark eyes twinkled.
"All the same, I don't fancy Brett will allow a little prejudice like that
to stand in his way. If I know my nephew--and I think I do--he won't meekly
accept his _congé_ and run away and play like a good little boy."
"Oh, I think he quite understands," replied Ann a trifle breathlessly.
Lady Susan shook her head.
"My dear," she said, "Brett is delightful, and I'm ridiculously fond of
him. But I'm bound to admit that he hasn't any principles whatever. And he
never understands anything he doesn't want to."
CHAPTER XXI
THE RETURN
The October sunshine slanted across Berrier Cove, flinging a broad ribbon
of light athwart the water and over the wet, shining sands left bare by the
outgoing tide. Its furthermost point reached almost to Ann's feet, where
she sat in a crook of the rocks, resting after a five-mile tramp along the
shore before she tackled the steep climb up to the Cottage.
The sea was wonderfully calm to-day--placid and tranquil as some inland
lake, and edged with baby wavelets which came creeping tentatively upward
to curl over on the sand like a fringe of downy feathers. Ann could not
help vividly recalling the day when she had so nearly lost her life at that
very spot. It seemed incredible that this quiet sea, with its gentle,
crooning voice no louder than a rhythmic whisper, could be one and the same
with the turbulent, thunderous monster which had almost beaten the breath
out of her body.
And then her thoughts turned involuntarily to Brett Forrester. He was
not unlike the sea, she reflected, in his sudden, unexpected changes
of mood--with the buoyant charm he could exert when he chose, and that
contrasting turbulence of his which left whoever ventured to oppose him
feeling altogether breathless and battered.
Latterly, Ann had been finding it very difficult to understand him. Since
the night of the dinner on board the _Sphinx_ he had studiously refrained
from the slightest attempt to make love to her. Sometimes, indeed, she was
almost tempted to ask herself if that violent scene on the yacht could
really have occurred between them or whether she had only dreamt it. It
seemed so entirely incompatible with the easy attitude of friendliness
which he had adopted towards her ever since. She would have liked to
interpret this as signifying that he had accepted her refusal as final, but
some inward prompting warned her that Brett was not the man to be so easily
turned aside from his purpose. Meanwhile, however, it was a relief to be
free from the subtle sense of importunity, of imperious demand, of which,
when he chose, he could make her so acutely conscious.
Thinking over all that had passed between them on the yacht, she wondered
curiously why he had so persistently referred to Tony. It seemed almost as
though he were jealous of the boy--regarded him as some one who might prove
an obstacle to the accomplishment of his own desires. Yet she could not
recall anything which might have given him that impression. There had been
nothing in the least loverlike in Tony's attitude towards her during his
visit to the Cottage.
On the contrary, she had been inwardly congratulating herself upon the fact
that he had evidently determined to abide by the answer she had given him
that night in Switzerland, as they came down from the Roche d'Or--although
she would not have been the true woman she was if she had not secretly
wondered a little at the apparent ease with which he had adapted himself
to the altered relations between them! Pride had counted for a good deal.
That she guessed. But, since Tony's departure, she had begun to speculate
whether there might not perhaps be some other reason which would better
account for his submitting without further protest to her decision. And in
a brief sentence, contained in a letter she had received from him only that
morning, she thought she had discovered the key to the mystery.
_"Uncle Philip and I depart to Mentone next week,"_ he had written.
_"Naturally, he hates the idea of my being anywhere in the vicinity
of Monte Carlo, but as he doesn't seem able to throw off the
effects of a chill he caught out shooting, our local saw-bones--in