The Vision of Desire
and decisive in her voice that involuntarily he halted. "I have listened to
you," she went on quietly. "Now--you will listen to me."
He retraced his steps to her side, like a man moving without his own
volition, and stood waiting.
"Well?" he said tonelessly. "What is it you wish to say? I am listening."
"It's quite true that I stayed at the Hotel de Loup," she said. "And
it's true that Tony Brabazon was with me. But I have nothing to ask your
forgiveness for." She lifted her head, meeting his gaze with eyes that were
very steady and unashamed. There was something proud and at the same time
infinitely appealing in the gesture. But Eliot regarded her unmoved.
"Do you expect me to believe that?" he asked contemptuously. "I'm not
a blind fool!... Do you remember, I told you that a man asks all of a
woman--past as well as future. Well, you can't give me the past. It belongs
to some one else--to Brabazon. I suppose you meant to marry him. And
then I come along--and I'm worth more. I don't flatter myself I'm more
attractive!"--grimly. "Years ago a woman threw me over because I was poor.
And now another woman is ready to throw over some one else and marry me
because I'm rich. It's the same stale old story. You're not going to ask me
to believe you accepted me from disinterested affection, are you?"
While he spoke, Ann had been standing motionless, every nerve of her taut
and strained to the utmost. Outwardly unflinching, inwardly she felt as
though he were raining blows upon her. It was all so sordid and horrible.
It dragged love through the clinging mire of suspicion and distrust till
its radiant wings were soiled and fouled beyond recognition.
"I'm not going to ask you to believe--anything." She spoke very quietly. A
bitter, tortured pride upheld her. "If you can think--that--of me, it would
be useless asking you to believe anything I might say. Yesterday"--her
voice trembled but she steadied it again--"yesterday you told me that the
essence of love was possession. It isn't, Eliot.... It's faith ... and
trust."
In the silence that followed the man and woman stood gazing dumbly at each
other, and for a brief moment love and faith hung quivering in the balance.
Then the balance tilted. The heavy burden of suspicion weighed it down, and
without another word Eliot turned and left the room.
Ann did not move. She stood quite still, her arms hanging straight down
at her sides. The Dents de Loup--wolf's teeth! Well, the jaws of the wolf
had closed, crushing her happiness for ever between their merciless white
fangs.
She knew now the meaning of that nebulous, distorted shape which had seemed
to come betwixt her and the man she loved. It was the grey shadow of
distrust which had sprung out from the hidden places of the past and now
lay, dark and impenetrable, dividing them for ever.
CHAPTER XXIV
AFTERMATH
"I beg your pardon!"
Instinctively Cara apologised, although actually the collision had been no
fault of hers. The man with whom she had collided had been striding along
with bent head, completely absorbed in his own thoughts, and had awakened
too late to the fact that some one was coming towards him along the narrow
bridle-path through the woods. He lifted his hat mechanically and murmured
some sort of apology, but his eyes remained blank and seemed to look
through and beyond the woman into whom he had just cannoned without seeing
her--certainly without recognising her.
Cara was startled by their expression of strain. They seemed to glare with
a hard, unnatural brilliance, as though the man's vision were focused upon
some terrible inner presentment. She laid a detaining hand on his sleeve,
but he appeared quite unconscious of her touch and she gave his arm a
little shake.
"Eliot!" she said quickly. "Eliot! Are you trying to cut me?"
As though by an immense effort he seemed to come back to the consciousness
of his material environment.
"To cut you?" he repeated dully. He brushed his hand across his forehead.
"No, of course I wasn't trying to cut you."
He looked shockingly ill. His face was grey and lined, and his shoulders
sagged as though he were physically played out. The boots and leggings
he wore were caked with mud, and his coat had little torn ends of wool
sticking up over it, as if he had been walking blindly ahead, careless of
direction, and had forced his way through thickets of bramble rather than
turn aside to seek an easier path.
"What have you been doing with yourself?" she asked rather breathlessly.
In every nerve of her she felt that something terrible had happened. "You
look"--trying to summon up a smile--"as if you'd been having a battle."
"I've been walking."
"Far?"
He gave a sudden laugh.
"To hell and back. I don't know the mileage."
"Eliot, what do you mean?"
He looked down at her, and now that dreadful glare which had so frightened
her had gone out of his eyes. They were human once more, but the naked
misery in them shocked her into momentary silence. She would have liked
to run away--to escape from those eyes. They were the windows of a soul
enduring torture that was almost too intolerable to be borne. It was only
by a strong effort of will that she at last forced her voice to do her
bidding.
"What has happened, Eliot?" she said, speaking very gently. "Can't you tell
me?"
He stared at her a moment. Then:
"Why, yes," he said. "I think I could tell you--part of it. It might amuse
you. I've found you were not the only woman in the world who counts the
shekels. You wouldn't marry me because I was poor. Now another woman is
ready to marry me just because I'm rich. There's only one drawback."
"Drawback?"
"Yes. Quite a drawback. You see, it doesn't appeal to me to be married
because I've a decent income, any more than it appealed to me ten years ago
to be turned, down for the opposite reason."
Cara shrank from this bitter reference to the past.
"You can be very cruel, Eliot," she said unsteadily.
"Cruelty breeds cruelty," he replied with indifference. "Still, I'm
beginning to think I was too hard on you, Cara, in the past. It seems
finance plays an amazingly strong hand in the game of love. But it's taken
two women to teach me the lesson thoroughly"--with a short laugh.
"Two?"
"You--and Ann."
"Ann! I don't believe it!" The words burst from her with impulsive
vehemence.
His face darkened.
"While I can believe no other. In fact"--heavily--"your poor little sin
shows white as driven snow beside--hers."
"You're wrong. I'm sure you're wrong," insisted Cara. "I don't know why
you believe what you do--nor all that you believe. I don't ask to know. It
wouldn't make any difference if you told me. I know Ann. And however black
things looked against her, nothing would ever make me believe she was
anything but dead straight."
"Most touching faith!" jeered Eliot. "Unfortunately, I have a preference in
favour of believing the evidence of my own senses."
She drew nearer to him, her hands pressed tightly together.
"Eliot, you're deliberately going to throw away your happiness if you
distrust Ann," she urged, beseechingly, "I've told you, she's not like me.
She's different."
"She's no better and no worse than other women, I suppose," he returned
implacably. "Ready to take whatever goods the gods provide--and then go on
to the next."
Cara turned aside in despair. She could not tell--could not guess--what had
happened. She only knew that the man whose happiness meant more to her than
her own, and the woman she had learned to love as a friend, had somehow
come to irretrievable misunderstanding and disaster. At last she turned
back again to Eliot.
"Would you have believed this of her--whatever it is you do believe--if it
had not been for me?"
He reflected a moment.
"Perhaps not," he said.
She uttered a cry that was half a sob. So the price of that one terrible
mistake she had made was not yet paid! Fate would go on exacting the
penalty for ever--first the destruction of her own happiness, then that of
Eliot and of Ann. All must be hurled into the bottomless well of expiation.
There was no forgiveness of sins.
It was useless to plead with Eliot--to reason with him. It was she herself
who had poisoned the very springs of life for him, and now she was
powerless to cleanse them. With a gesture of utter hopelessness she turned
and left him, and made her way despondently homeward through the gathering
dusk.
She reached the Priory just in time to encounter Robin coming out of the
gates. He sprang off his horse and greeted her delightedly.
"I came over to bring you a brace of pheasants," he explained. "As you were
out, I deposited them in the care of your parlourmaid."
Cara thanked him cordially, and then, as he still lingered, she added:
"Won't you turn back and come in for a cup of tea? Have you time?"
"I should think I have!" The mercurial rise in Robin's spirits betrayed
itself in the tones of his voice. "I was hoping for an invitation to
tea--so you can imagine my disappointment when I found that you weren't
home."
She laughed, and they walked up to the house together, Robin leading his
horse. A cheery fire burned on the hearth in the square, old-fashioned hall
which Cara had converted into a living-room. As they entered she switched
on the lights, revealing panelled walls, thick dim-hued rugs breaking an
expanse of polished floor, and, by the fire, big, cushioned easy chairs
which seemed to cry aloud for some one to rest weary limbs in their soft,
capacious embrace.
"Ann's always envious of your electric light," remarked Robin. "Being only
cottage folk"--smiling--"we have to content ourselves with lamps, and they
seem prone to do appalling things in the way of smoking and covering the
whole room with greasy soot the moment you take your eye off them."
"I know. They're a frightful nuisance," said Cara, ringing the bell for
tea. "But lamp-light is the most becoming form of illumination, you
know--especially when you're getting on in years, like me!"
Robin helped her off with her coat, lingering a little over the process,
and gazed down at her with adoring eyes.
"Don't--talk--rubbish!" he said, softly and emphatically.
Perhaps he might have gone on to say something more, but at that moment
a trim parlourmaid came in and began to arrange the tea-table beside her
mistress's chair, and for some time afterwards Cara skilfully contrived to
keep the conversation on impersonal lines. It was not until tea was over
that Robin suddenly struck a more intimate note again. He had been watching
her face in silence for a little while, noticing that it looked very small
and pale to-day in its frame of night-dark hair, and that there were faint,
purplish shadows beneath her eyes.
"You look awfully tired!" he remarked with concern. "And sad," he added.
"Is anything bothering you?"
She was silent for a moment, staring into the heart of the fire where the
red and blue flames played flickeringly over the logs.
"I've been taking a look into the past," she said, at last, "It's--it's
rather a dreary occupation."
"I know," he said quietly. "I know." Ignorant of that earlier past of hers,
in which Eliot Coventry had played a part, he was thinking only of her
unhappy married life, about which he had gathered a good deal from other
people and a little--a very little--from Cara herself. But even that little
had let in far more light than she had imagined. Robin's insight was
extraordinarily quick and keen, and a phrase dropped here or there,
even her very silences at times, had enabled him to make a pretty good
conjecture as to the kind of martyrdom she had suffered. It made his blood
boil to think of the mental--and even physical--suffering she must have