The Vision of Desire
their honeymoon. I never got the chance to ask him, as he bolted past me
down one of the corridors before I had time to speak. So I took a squint
at the hotel visitors' book and found they'd registered as 'G. Smith and
sister'! That settled it. The chap's name wasn't Smith, and I happened to
know he'd never had a sister--either by that name or any other! So I just
chuckled quietly to myself and mentally congratulated him on his good
taste--the girl was quite pretty enough to excuse a slight deviation from
the strict and narrow path." He paused to light a fresh cigarette, his
eyes, between narrowed lids, raking the other man's impenetrable face.
Throughout the telling of the story Coventry had sat motionless, like a
figure carved in stone. Only, as the recital proceeded, his eyes hardened
slightly and his closed lips straightened into a stern, inflexible line.
Having lit his cigarette, Forrester airily resumed the thread of his
narrative.
"What follows is really rather interesting--the long arm of coincidence
with a vengeance! My revered aunt brings me to Oldstone Cottage and sends
me into the garden on a voyage of discovery to find Miss Lovell. And I find
her asleep in the hammock--the identical young woman I'd seen up at the
Dents de Loup with Tony Brabazon."
"_Brabazon!_" The name seemed jerked out of Coventry's lips without his own
volition. A curious greyish pallor had overspread his face, and behind the
hardness of his eyes smouldered a savage fire that seemed to wax and wane,
struggling for release.
"Yes, Brabazon," replied Brett carelessly. "It seems he and old Sir Philip
and Aunt Susan and Miss Lovell were all stopping at Montricheux. I'd
no idea my aunt was staying there, or I'd have run down and looked her
up. But we hardly ever correspond. My address is always such a doubtful
quantity"--with a laugh. "You see, I'm liable to dash off to the ends of
the earth at a moment's notice, if the spirit moves me." He rose, tucking
the puppy under his arm. "Well, I must be getting back. Aunt Susan will be
on tenterhooks till she sees this youngster."
Coventry accompanied him to the door and signalled to the groom who was
walking Brett's horse slowly up and down.
"I shouldn't repeat that story to any one, if I were you, Forrester," he
said, speaking with some effort, as they shook hands.
"Good Lord! Not I! What do you take me for?" laughed Brett easily. "I only
thought it might amuse you, Lovell being your agent."
The groom brought the horse and trap to a standstill in front of the house
door, and touched his hat.
"I've kept the horse moving about, sir, as he was a bit hot," he said,
addressing Brett.
The latter nodded and tipped the man generously. Meanness, at least, was
not included amongst his many faults.
"Quite right," he replied. "Got a basket handy for the pup?"
The man lifted down from the front of the dog-cart a basket he had put
there in readiness, and the puppy, wailing pathetically, was deposited
inside.
"Never mind, old man," observed Brett, bestowing a final reassuring pat on
the small black and tan head. "It'll soon be over."
A minute later he was driving swiftly down the avenue, an odd expression of
mingled triumph and amusement in his eyes.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE TEETH OF THE WOLF
The gate clicked and Ann peeped rosily out of her bedroom window. She had
been expecting that click all morning--waiting for it with every sense
alert and with absurd, delicious little thrills of happiness chasing each
other through her veins. Several disappointing clicks had preceded it--one
which merely revealed a new baker's boy who hadn't troubled to discover
whether the Cottage boasted a back-door or not, and another heralding the
entry of Billy Brewster, armed with a stout broom and prepared to sweep the
flagged path clean of the minutest particle of dust. So that Ann had at
last been reluctantly compelled to fall back on the same explanation which
had served her once before--that Eliot must have been detained at
Heronsmere by unexpected business.
But now the afternoon had brought the desired click of the gate, and she
could see his tall, well-knit figure striding up the path below. She leaned
out of the window and called to him:
"Coo-ee! I'm up here!"
The charming voice, vibrant with that tender, indescribable inflection
which a woman's voice holds only for the one beloved man, floated down to
him, and instinctively he looked up. For an instant his glance lingered,
and ever afterwards there remained stamped indelibly upon his memory the
impression of her as she leaned there like the Blessed Damozel leaning "out
from the gold bar of Heaven."
The sun glinted on her hair, turning it into a nimbus of ruddy gold, and
there was something delicately flower-like in the droop of her small bent
head on its slender throat. It reminded him of a harebell.
His expression hardened as he fought down the tide of longing which surged
up within him at the sight of her, and from some disused corner of his
subconscious mind the lines of the old Persian Tentmaker seemed to leap out
at him and mock him:
"Heav'n but the Vision of fulfill'd Desire,
And Hell the Shadow from a Soul on fire."
The vision which had been his was shattered, utterly destroyed--destined
to be forever unfulfilled.
... But Ann remained joyfully oblivious of anything amiss.
"Walk straight in," she called through the window. "I'm coming down." And
with a gay wave of her hand she withdrew into the room. Followed a light
sound of footsteps on the stairs, and a minute later the door of the
living-room flew open to admit her.
Eliot, who had been standing with his back to the room, staring out of the
window, wheeled round as she came towards him with hurrying feet and thrust
her eager hands into his.
"You've come at last! I thought you'd be here the minute after breakfast,"
she began, her face breaking into smiles. "If you were a story-book hero
you would have been!... Oh, I know you'll say it was business that kept
you. But that's only an old married man's excuse"--mirthfully. "I shan't
allow you to offer it to me until we've been married for years and years!"
Thus far she had run on gaily with her tender nonsense, but now she checked
herself suddenly as she read no answering smile on his face and felt her
hands lie flaccidly ungripped in his.
"Eliot"--she drew back a little--"why don't you speak? What is it?" Her
hands clutched his spasmodically, and a sudden frightened look blurred the
radiance in her eyes. "Oh, my dear! What is it? Have you had bad news?"
Very slowly, but with a strange, deliberate significance, he freed his
hands from her clasp and put her away from him.
"Yes," he said quietly, "I've had--news." At the frozen calmness of his
tones she shrank back as one shrinks from the numbing cold of the still air
that hangs above black ice.
"What is it?" she breathed. "Not bad news--for us?"
Her eyes were fastened on his face, searching it wildly. A quick and
terrible fear clamoured at her heart. Was there something in the past,
something of which she had no knowledge, that could arise--_now_--to
separate them from each other? That long-ago episode which had wrecked his
youth--had the woman who had figured in it some material hold upon him?
Could she--was it possible she could still come between them in some way?
Ann had heard of such things. It seemed to her as though, betwixt herself
and Eliot, there hovered a dim, formless shadow, vague and nebulous--a
shadow which had crept silently out from some memory-haunted corner of the
past.
"Not bad news--for us?" she repeated quiveringly.
"That depends upon how you choose to regard it," he replied. "Ann"--the
ice broke up and he came to the point with a suddenness that was almost
brutal--"why haven't you been straight with me?"
"Straight with you?" she repeated wonderingly. "But I have been straight
with you."
"What a woman would call straight, I suppose!" he flung back. "Which means
concealing everything that you think won't be found out."
The indignant colour rushed up into her face, then receded, leaving it
deadly pale.
"But I have nothing to conceal," she answered. "Eliot--I don't
understand--"
"Don't you?" lie said, and the measureless contempt in his voice stung like
the lash of a whip. "Think back a bit! Is there nothing you've kept from
me which I ought to have known--nothing which makes the love you professed
only last night no more than a sham?"
For a moment Ann gazed at him in speechless silence. Then a low, passionate
denial left her lips.
"Nothing!" she said.
Eliot took two strides towards her, and, gripping her by the shoulders,
dragged her closer to the window so that the remorseless sunlight poured
down on to her face.
"Repeat that!" he commanded savagely. "Will you dare to repeat that--that
unutterable lie?"
His eyes, blazing with a terrible anger that seemed, to scorch her like
a flame, searched her face with a scrutiny so pitiless, so implacably
incredulous, that it was almost unbearable. But she endured it, and her
clear golden eyes met his unflinchingly.
"It was the truth!" she said. Her voice sounded to herself as though it
came from a great distance away. It had an odd, tinny sound like cracked
metal.
He released her suddenly, almost flinging her from him, and she staggered
a little, catching at the back of a chair to steady herself. His roughness
roused her spirit.
"Eliot! Are you mad?" she exclaimed.
He stared at her, that burning ferocity of almost uncontrollable anger
which had possessed him dying slowly out of his face.
"Mad?" he said grimly. "No, I'm not mad--now. I was mad yesterday--when I
believed in you."
The stark agony in his voice smote her to the heart.
"Eliot"--she moved towards him, her hands held out appealingly--"what have
I done? Won't you tell me? I don't understand."
"No?" His lips drew back over his teeth in a grimace that was a dreadful
travesty of a smile. "Then I'll ask you a simple question. Perhaps--after
that--you'll understand. Have you ever stayed at the Hotel de Loup?"
"The Hotel de Loup? Why--" The word "yes" was on the tip of her tongue. But
before she could utter it the whole, overwhelming realisation of what he
suspected rushed over her, and she checked herself abruptly, stunned into
silence. With the amazing speed at which the mind can work in moments of
tense excitement, she grasped instantly all that must have happened. Some
one--she could not imagine who it was--had found out about that night which
she and Tony had been compelled to pass together at the Hotel de Loup, and
had made mischief ... told Eliot, putting the worst construction on it ...
and he believed ... Oh! What did he not believe? A burning flush bathed her
face, mounting to her very temples--a flush of shamed horror, and she fell
suddenly silent, staring at him with wide, horrified eyes.
"So you do remember?" he said, his voice like cold steel.
"Yes." She answered him mechanically--like a doll which says "yes" or "no"
when some one touches a spring.
"And you were not there alone, I believe?"
The other spring this time. "No," answered the doll.
"Brabazon was with you--Tony Brabazon?"
"Yes." Again the parrot-like reply.
"Then I don't think there is any need to continue this conversation." As he
spoke, Eliot turned and walked towards the door. Ann watched him without
moving. She felt almost as though she were watching something that was
happening in a play--something that had nothing whatever to do with her.
Then, just as his hand was on the latch of the door, the strange numbness
which had held her motionless and silent seemed to melt away.
"Eliot, come back!" she cried out, and there was a note so ringingly clear