The Vision of Desire
and I swore then that I would give no other woman the power to hurt me as
she had hurt me. When I met you I knew, almost at once, that you were a
woman whom--if I allowed myself to--I might grow to love. I think it was
your sincerity, your transparent honesty that won me. You were all I'd
dreamed of in a woman--all that I hadn't found in that other woman. But I
was afraid. So I left Montricheux--went away at once. I didn't want to care
for you. I'd been too badly hit before. Cowardly, you'll say, perhaps--you
were never a coward, were you, Ann? Well, it may have been. Anyhow, I did
go away and I tried to forget all about you. It wasn't easy, God knows, and
then, by a trick of fate, I found you again, at my cottage--living there,
sister of the man with whom I'd just made a pact. After that it was a
struggle between my joy at finding you there and my determination never to
let myself care again for any woman." He paused, but Ann did not speak, and
after a minute he went on again:
"Well, you know how it ended. I was beaten. I loved you and I had to tell
you so. When I yielded, I yielded entirely--gave you my utter love and
faith. I believed in you completely--far more than I knew or even suspected
at the time. And then, close on the top of that, I was told the story of
how you had stayed at the Dents de Loup with Tony Brabazon. Even then I
could hardly credit it. I came and asked you. And you didn't deny it. It
was true. What else could I think? I argued that you had thrown Brabazon
over because I was a better 'catch' from, a worldly point of view--just
as that other woman had thrown me over for a similar reason!--that you'd
deliberately deceived me, that you'd been faithless both to Brabazon and to
me, as you would be faithless to any other man who loved you.... Remember,
it had been your seeming sincerity, your truth, your _straightness_ which
had first attracted me. And just as I had loved you for your truth, so then
I hated you for your falseness--your unbelievable falseness.... Why didn't
you deny it all, Ann? Explain--clear the mists away from my eyes?"
"I was too proud--and hurt," she said quiveringly.
"If you'd only stooped to explain--" He broke off, with a savage gesture.
"Forgive me! What right have I to reproach or blame you? The whole fault
was mine. Well, I believed you as disloyal and disingenuous as I had known
you to be loyal and candid. And I went away. I went down into hell. You've
at least the satisfaction of knowing that I paid for my distrust--paid for
it to the last fraction owing--"
"Ah, don't!" She raised her hand swiftly, imploringly. But he took no
notice. He continued doggedly:
"Then, when I thought I had suffered all that a man could be called upon
to suffer, I met Tony--Tony over head and ears in love with quite another
woman, as unlike you--oh, your very antithesis! He used to talk to me
sometimes. God knows I didn't give him any encouragement! I hated the very
sight of him. But he never guessed it. And one day he came and prattled out
to me the story of an adventure he had had--at the Dents de Loup--how he
got caught up there with a girl. And I knew, then, that it was _your_
adventure, too--though of course he never mentioned your name. But it was
as clear as daylight to me. It was as though scales had fallen from my
eyes.... I knew then what I'd done. I'd pulled down our house of happiness
about our heads. For a time I think I went mad. I could think of nothing
except the fact that I'd made it impossible for me ever to come to you
again--even to ask your forgiveness."
He was silent a moment, leaning his arm on the chimney-piece and shading
his face with his hand. When he again resumed it was with a palpable effort
and his voice roughened.
"Afterwards, when I came to my senses, I saw that I _must_ come to you. I
had destroyed my own life--all that was worth while in it. But I had no
right to destroy yours. So I've come back--to ask your forgiveness, Ann--if
you can give it. And by forgiveness"--he eyed her steadily--"I mean all
that forgiveness can hold--not just a mere form of words. I want the love I
threw away--the right you once gave me to call myself your lover. If you
don't feel you can give it--I shan't complain. I've no right to complain. I
shall just go quietly out of your life. But if you can--now you know all--"
He broke off. "Ann ... shall I go ... or stay?"
He made an involuntary movement towards her, then, checked himself abruptly
and stood looking down at her in silence. From the ball-room there floated
out the strains of the latest fox-trot, sounding curiously cheap and tawdry
as they cut across the deep, almost solemn intensity that prevailed in the
quiet room where a man had just stripped his soul naked to the eyes of the
woman he loved and now stood as one awaiting judgment.
Ann remained silent. Speech seemed for a few moments a physical
impossibility. She had been touched to the quick. Step by step she had gone
with Eliot down into that place of torment where he had been wandering,
suffering an agony of pain of which the keenest pang had taken birth in the
bitter knowledge that it was of his own making, and in every fibre of her
being she ached to give him back all that he had lost--all that he asked
for. Ached to give it back to him complete, whole, unharmed--that love
which had been his and which he had so piteously thrown away.
And she could not. By no mere shibboleth of words, no waving of a wand,
could she restore the past, reconstruct what had been out of what was. Love
she could give him in full measure, the same enduring love which would be
his for ever, believing or unbelieving, living or dead. And his love she
would take again--only she herself knew how gladly! But always their mutual
love must lack something--that fine thread of utter faith and trust which
he himself had cut asunder. It could be knotted together again, it was
true. But one would always feel the knot--know it was there. He believed in
her now--because she had been proved innocent. But she would never know if
his belief in her would withstand the stress of another such test as the
one under which it had gone down. To the end of life there would be a
doubt, an unanswered question in her heart, as to whether he really had
faith in her or no.
She looked up at last to meet his eyes still fixed intently upon her as he
waited for her answer. Her own were rather sad. But her surrender was
complete. She held out her hands.
"Stay!" she said.
Yet even as he gathered her into his arms she was vitally, cruelly
conscious of the absence of the one thing needful to make perfect their
reunion. Not even the swift passion of his kisses could convince her of his
faith in her. She was not sure--could never be sure, now.
It would be bound to come between them sometimes--that terrible
uncertainty. The grey shadow of distrust which had divided them in the past
still followed them from afar--a vague, intangible menace. Would it some
day swing forward, like the dark, remorseless finger of an hour-dial, and
lie once more impassably between them?
CHAPTER XXIX
A PATCH OF SUNLIGHT
The days which followed were very wonderful ones to Ann. She had come
through darkness into light, out of infinite pain into infinite joy, and
perhaps the very fact that in giving herself to Eliot she had forgiven
much--forgiven what many women would have found it impossible to
forgive--added something precious, some sacramental spikenard, to the gift
which flowed back to the giver, deepening the profound sense of peace and
happiness which encompassed her.
Eliot had known how to accept her gift--had taken it with simple
thankfulness and a wondering reverence for the shining ways along which a
woman's love can lead her, and the hour which they had passed together
after Ann had bidden him stay had been, in a sense, sacred--a mutual
revelation to each of them of the secret depths in the other's nature. But
afterwards, once that wonderful hour was past, Eliot strode masterfully
back into his man's kingdom. He was not of the type to remain a penitent,
on his knees indefinitely. Nor would Ann have had it otherwise. She would
have hated a subservient lover.
Eliot was very far from being subservient. Almost before the
neighbourhood's congratulations had ceased to rain about them both he was
demanding that Ann should fix the date of their wedding.
"You impatient man!" she teased him. "Why, we're only just this minute
engaged! We shan't be married for ages and ages yet."
"Oh, shan't we?" he retorted. "We'll be married in May, sweetheart. That's
exactly as long as I'll consent to wait. And I'm only agreeing to that
because a woman always seems to think it's part of the ceremony to buy a
quantity of clothes when she's married--just as though she couldn't buy
them afterwards quite as well as before!"
"In May? Oh, no, Eliot." Ann shook her head with decision. "That's the
unlucky month for marriages."
"You don't mean to say you're superstitious?"
"I don't know." She spoke uncertainly. "But--we've had so much ill-luck. I
don't think I want to tempt Providence by getting married in May."
He shouted with laughter.
"Very well, you absurd baby, it shan't be May," he conceded, adding
cheerfully: "We'll fix it for April then."
"No, no. That's too soon," she protested hastily. "Let's decide on--June."
"April," he repeated firmly.
"June"--with an effort to be equally firm.
"If you say that again," he returned coolly, "I shall make it March. I'd
ever so much rather, too," he wound up boyishly.
"That would be quite impossible," replied Ann triumphantly. "I've promised
to go and stay with the Brabazons in March."
He took her by the shoulders and pulled her towards him.
"Let it be April, then," he said, adding quickly, as he read dissent in her
eyes: "We've wasted such a lot of time, beloved."
She yielded at that.
"Very well, then--April. But I'm afraid you're going to be a dreadfully
self-willed husband, Eliot"--smiling as though the prospect were in no way
distasteful.
"I think I am," he acknowledged, with all a man's supreme egotism. He
laughed down at her, and, lifting her right off the ground into his arms,
kissed her with swift passion.
"You're much too thin," he grumbled discontentedly, as he set her down
again. "You weigh next to nothing."
"And whose fault is that, pray?" she asked gaily.
She was horrified to see his face darken with sudden pain.
"Don't," he said abruptly, in a stifled voice.
"Oh, my dear--" She was back in his arms in an instant, soothing,
comforting, and scolding him all in a breath. "You needn't worry over my
boniness," she assured him cheerfully. "When we're married and settled down
and I've no worries, I expect I shall get appallingly plump and have to
take to one of those anti-fat cures."
"You--fat!" He laughed. "There's about as much danger of that as of Mrs.
Carberry becoming a philanthropist."
Eliot had been furiously angry when he heard of the gossip which had
gathered for a time around Ann's name and of the part Mrs. Carberry had
played in helping to disseminate it, but neither he nor Ann herself had
been able to refrain from laughing at the complete _volte-face_ which that
excellent lady performed when the announcement of their engagement was made
public. She had been one of the first to offer her felicitations, and had
paid a special call at the Cottage--this time accompanied by the modest
Muriel--to offer them in person. "It will be so delightful to have a
chatelaine at Heronsmere at last," she had gushed. Presumably, recognising
that her daughter's chance of acquiring the coveted position was now
reduced, to nil, she had decided--with the promptness of a good general--to