The Vision of Desire
real!"
And turning to give herself to him again, she hid her face against his
shoulder, whispering:
"Oh, you know--you know I do!"
* * * * *
Half an hour later found them still together, sitting by the big,
old-fashioned hearth which Eliot had plied with logs till the flames roared
up the chimney. Robin had not yet come back; he had ridden into Ferribridge
early in the afternoon, leaving word that he would probably be late in
returning. Once Maria had looked into the room to ask if she should light
the lamps, and the lovers had started guiltily apart, Ann replying with
hastily assumed indifference that they did not require them yet. Old Maria,
whose eyesight was still quite keen enough to distinguish love, even from
the further side of a room lit only by the lambent firelight, retired to
her own quarters, chuckling to herself. "So 'tez the squire as was courtin'
the chiel, after all. An' me thinkin' all along as how 'twas young Master
Tony! Aw, well, tez more suitin' like, for sure--him with his millions
and my Miss Ann." Maria's ideas as to the riches with which the owner of
Heronsmere was providentially endowed might be hazy, but at least she did
not err on the side of underestimating them.
Meanwhile, Eliot and Ann, placidly believing that Maria was none
the wiser for her brief entrance into the room--all newly-acknowledged
lovers being apparently blessed with an ostrich-like quality of
self-deception--continued talking together by the firelight.
"That first day I saw you," Eliot was saying. "It was at the Kursaal. Do
you remember?"
Ann laughed and blushed a little.
"I'm not likely to forget," she said mirthfully. "You were so frightfully
rude."
"Rude? I?" He looked honestly astonished.
"Yes. Didn't you mean to be? I was sympathising with you so nicely over
losing at the tables--and you nearly bit my head off! You looked down your
nose--it's rather a nice nose, by the way!"--impertinently--"and observed
loftily: 'Pray don't waste your sympathy'!"
Eliot laughed outright.
"Did I, really? What a boor you must have thought me!"
"Oh, I did"--fervently. "And then there was the day of the Fêtes des
Narcisses, when I hit you with a rosebud by mistake. You glared at me as
if I'd committed one of the seven deadly sins."
"So you had--if occupying the thoughts of a 'confirmed misogynist' who had
forsworn women and all their ways counts as one of them!"
A silence fell between them. The lightly uttered speech suddenly recalled
the past, and each was vividly conscious of the bitter root from which it
sprang. The man's face darkened as though he would push aside the memory.
"But that's past," said Ann at last, very softly.
He turned to her curiously.
"So you know, then?"
She flushed.
"Yes, I know--I heard. People talk. But I've not been gossiping,
Eliot--truly."
A brief smile crossed his face.
"You--gossiping! That's good. But I might have guessed you would hear all
about it. Even one's own particular rack and thumbscrew aren't private
property nowadays"--bitterly. "I wonder how much you know. What have you
heard?"
"Oh, very little--" she began confusedly, her heart aching for the
bitterness which still lingered in his voice.
"Tell me," he insisted authoritatively. "I'd rather you knew the truth than
some garbled version of it."
Very reluctantly Ann repeated what she had learned from Mrs. Hilyard--the
bare facts of that unhappy episode in his life which had turned him into a
soured, embittered man.
"Anything more? Do you know who the woman was--her name?"
"No. Only that she was very young"--pitifully.
"I believe," he said, cupping her face in his hand and turning it up to
his, "I believe you are actually _sorry_ for her?"
"Yes, I am. I'm sorry for any one who makes a dreadful mistake and loses
their whole happiness through it," she answered heartily.
"I'm afraid I don't take such a broad-minded view of things," he returned
grimly. "I haven't a forgiving disposition, and I believe in people getting
what they deserve. You'd better remember that"--smiling briefly--"if ever
you feel tempted to try how far you can go."
"Do you know, I think you're going to prove rather an autocratic lover,
Eliot?" she said, laughing gently.
"All good lovers are," he answered, drawing her into his arms once more
with a sudden, swift jealousy. "Don't you know that? It's the very essence
of love--possession, A man asks everything of the woman he loves--past,
present, and future. He will he satisfied with nothing less."
The words, uttered with an undercurrent of deep passion, struck a familiar
chord in Ann's mind. They were like, and yet unlike, something she had
heard before. For a moment she puzzled over it, the connection eluding
her. Then, all at once, it flashed over her, and she remembered how Brett
Forrester had said: _"The past doesn't matter to me. It's the future that
counts."_ These two men, Eliot and Brett, loved very differently, she
thought! With Brett, love meant a passionate determination to possess the
woman he desired whether she surrendered willingly or with every fibre of
her spirit in revolt. But to Eliot, love signified something deeper and
more enduring. He wanted all of the woman he would make his wife--soul as
well as body, past as well as future, the supreme gift which only a woman
who loves perfectly can give and which only a man whose love is on the same
high plane should dare to ask.
"I should never be content with less," Eliot went on. "I think if you were
ever to fail me, Ann--" He broke off abruptly, as though the bare idea were
torture.
"But I shan't fail you!" she replied confidently. "I love you"--simply.
"And when one loves, one doesn't fail."
His arms tightened their clasp about her till she could feel the hard
beating of his heart against her own.
"Heart's dearest!" he murmured, his lips against her throat.
Presently she lifted her head from his shoulder and regarded him with
questioning eyes.
"You didn't tell me what would happen to me if I _did_ fail you?"
"Don't speak of it!" he said sharply.
"But it's just as well to know the worst," she persisted laughingly. She
felt so sure--so safe--with his arms round her that she could afford to
joke a little about something that could never happen. "Would you cut off
my head--as Bluebeard cut off the heads of his wives?"
For a moment he made no answer. Then:
"I should simply wipe you out of my life. That's all."
He spoke very evenly, but with such a note of absolute finality in his
quiet voice that Ann quivered a little as she lay in his arms--as one might
wince if any one laid the keen edge of a naked blade against one's throat,
no matter how lightly.
"Ah! Don't let's talk of such things!" she cried hastily. "Don't let's
spoil our first day, Eliot. Do you realise"--with a radiant smile--"that
this is the first--the very first--day we have really belonged to each
other?"
So they talked of other things--the foolish, sweet, and tender things which
lovers have always talked and probably always will--things which are of
no moment to the busy material-minded world as it bustles on its way, but
which are the frail filaments out of which men and women fashion for
themselves dear memories that shall sweeten all their lives.
But time will not wait, even for lovers, and Eliot had been gone over an
hour when at last Robin returned from Ferribridge.
"Cast a shoe and had to wait an unconscionable time to get my horse shod,"
he explained briefly.
"You must be starving," commiserated Ann, "I'll tell Maria to bring you
in some supper at once. I've had mine." But she omitted to add she had
hardly eaten anything at the little solitary meal which succeeded Eliot's
departure.
Maria's indignation as she carried out the half-touched dishes had been
tinctured with a certain philosophic indulgence. "Ah, well!" she commented.
"They do say folks that be mazed wi' love can't never fancy their victuals.
Seems like tez true." In response to which Ann had merely laughed and
kissed her weather-beaten old cheek.
In true masculine fashion, it was not until the cravings of his inner
man were satisfied that Robin began to observe anything unusual in the
atmosphere. But when at last he had finished supper, and was filling
his beloved pipe preparatory to enjoying that best of all smokes which
follows a long day's riding and a cosy meal, it dawned upon him that there
was something unaccustomed in Ann's air of suppressed radiance. She was
hovering about him, waiting to strike a match for him to light up by, when
the idea struck him. He regarded her attentively for a minute or two with
his nice grey-green eyes and finally inquired in a tone of mild amusement:
"What is it, sister mine? Has some one left us a fortune, or what? There's
something odd about you to-night--an air of--_je ne sais quoi!_"--with an
expansive wave of his hand.
"'I'm engaged to be married, sir, she said,'" remarked Ann demurely.
"Engaged? Great Scott! Who to?" Robin manifested all the unflattering
amazement common to successive generations of brothers when confronted
with the astounding fact that the apparently quite ordinary young woman
whom they have hitherto regarded merely as a sisterly adjunct to life has
suddenly become the pivot upon which some other man's entire happiness will
henceforth turn.
But afterwards, when he had had time to assimilate the unexpected news, he
was ready to enter whole-heartedly into Ann's happiness--just as throughout
all their lives he had been always ready to share with her either happiness
or pain, like the good comrade he was.
"I shall miss you abominably," he declared. "In fact, I shall forbid the
banns if Coventry wants to carry you off too soon."
"You absurd person!" She laughed and kissed him. "Why, living at
Heronsmere, I shall be able to look after you both. Little brother shan't
be neglected, I promise you!"
They sat over the fire talking till the grandfather's clock in the corner
struck twelve warning strokes. Robin knocked out the ashes of his pipe.
"We'd better be thinking of turning in, old thing," he observed. "Even
newly-engaged people require a modicum of sleep, I suppose"--smiling across
at her.
"We're not telling people we're engaged, yet," Ann. cautioned him.
Robin looked up.
"No? Why not?" he asked laconically.
"I wanted--I thought it would be nice to have a few days just to
ourselves," she replied uncertainly.
"That's not the only reason."
Ann hesitated.
"No," she acknowledged at last. "It isn't. Perhaps I'm 'fey' to-night. I
don't feel quite material Ann yet"--with a faint smile. "And--somehow--I'd
rather no one knew for a little while."
CHAPTER XXII
WILD OATS
Lady Susan came briskly into the morning-room at White Windows, and the
four privileged members of the Tribes of Israel who, being allowed the run
of the house, were basking in front of a cheery fire, rose in a body and
rushed towards her, jealously clamouring for attention. She patted them all
round with a beautiful impartiality, cuffed the Great Dane for trampling on
a minute Pekingese, settled a dispute between the truculent Irish terrier
and an aristocratic Chow, and proceeded to greet her nephew.
"I've got an errand for you this morning, Brett," she remarked, as she
poured out coffee.
Forrester, who was lifting the covers of the hot dishes on the sideboard,
glanced round over his shoulder.
"At your service, most revered aunt. What particular job is it? Which will
you have? Bacon and eggs, or fish?"
"Bacon. I want you to go over to Heronsmere, if you will, and bring back
that pedigree pup Mr. Coventry promised me."
Brett surveyed the privileged classes on the hearth-rug with a ruminative
eye.