The Vision of Desire
accept the fact and adapt her tactics to the altered situation. With
mathematical foresight she argued that when Coventry was married Heronsmere
would undoubtedly become the centre of a considerable amount of
entertaining, and from every point of view it would therefore be wise to be
on friendly terms there. After all, there were as good fish in the sea as
ever came out of it, and the prospective hospitality which she anticipated
would emanate from Heronsmere in the near future should provide excellent
opportunities for fishing.
Apart from Mrs. Carberry, everybody seemed genuinely delighted at the
engagement--even Miss Caroline. She confusedly mingled regrets "for any
misunderstanding" with her congratulations, and Ann, too happy herself to
wish any one else to be unhappy, forgave her whole-heartedly. Lady Susan
was overflowingly pleased.
"Though, of course," as she characteristically informed Sir Philip just
before he and Tony returned to London, "Eliot's been blessed far beyond his
deserts--like most men. Anyhow, Philip, you may as well make up your mind
to accept Doreen as a _pis otter_ for Tony--and do it gracefully, my dear
man! Mark my words, marriage will be the making of the boy. Every man ought
to be married."
"I wish you'd held that opinion thirty years ago, Susan," retorted Sir
Philip. "I suppose"--he hesitated, his eyes curiously soft--"it's too late
in the day now?"
"Much too late," replied Lady Susan promptly, though her eyes, too, were
unwontedly soft. "Besides, I could never bear to be parted from the Tribes
of Israel--and you know you can't stand a dog about the house."
"Drat the man!" she muttered crossly to herself, as the train bearing the
Brabazons Londonwards steamed out of the station. She brushed her hand
across her eyes as she hopped briskly into the car which had brought them
to the station, giving the chauffeur the order "Home!" in a sharper voice
than she usually employed towards her servants. "Drat the man! It looks as
though a single engagement has demoralised the lot of us."
It was certainly destined to be followed by far-reaching consequences as
regards two, at least, of the other people in the neighbourhood. Robin's
notice to give up his post as Eliot's agent had, of course, been suitably
buried, a brief understanding handshake between the two men its only
tombstone, and Robin had gone straight from his interview with Eliot to the
Priory. He found Cara, surrounded by a small army of vases, arranging
flowers, of which a great sheaf, freshly sent in by the gardener from the
hot-houses, lay on the table.
"Aren't they lovely?" she said, when she and Robin had exchanged greetings.
"Do you want a buttonhole?"
He looked at the deep-red carnation which she held out to him and shook his
head.
"No, thank you," he said politely. "I want a wife."
Cara gasped a little.
"Robin!" she exclaimed faintly.
A lovely colour flooded her face. It had been a much happier face
latterly--since Ann's engagement. The look of settled sadness had gone out
of her eyes. She felt now--now that everything was made straight betwixt
Ann and Eliot--as though the heavy burden she had carried all these years
had been suddenly loosed from her shoulders. Eliot had found happiness, at
last, and that terrible sense of responsibility for his maimed and broken
life was taken from her. Of the existence of the grey shadow she could not
know, or guess.
So she turned to Robin with a sweet hesitancy that brought him swiftly to
her side.
"Cara!" he said eagerly. "Cara, are you going to give me that
'second-best,' after all?"
Still she hesitated.
"It doesn't seem fair, Robin," she faltered. "I'm older than you are, for
one thing."
"One year--or two, is it?" he mocked joyfully.
"Half a century, I think!"--with a quick sigh.
"You'll grow younger," he suggested optimistically. "And anyway, can you
bear to think of me living all alone at the Cottage after Ann is married? I
should probably commit suicide."
Cara stood twisting a spray of maidenhair fern round and round her fingers
till the tiny pale green leaves shrivelled up and dropped off and only the
wiry stem remained.
"When is--Ann going to be married?" she asked slowly, at last.
"In April. It's all fixed. But the thing that matters is when are _we_
going to be married?"
April! Eliot was to be married in April! Cara was conscious of a muffled
stab of pain. But she felt no active rebellion. With a wistful sense of
resignation she recognised that his life and hers were separate and apart.
She herself had sundered them more than ten years ago. But now, at last,
Eliot had won through to happiness! She thanked God for that. And there was
still something she could give Robin in return for his eager worship--good
comradeship, and that second love which, though it bears but a faint
semblance to the rushing ecstasy of young, passionate, first love, yet
holds, perhaps, a deeper, more selfless tenderness and understanding.
She turned to the man waiting so eagerly for her answer.
"Are you quite sure you want me, Robin?" she asked.
"Quite sure," he answered gravely.
"Then, if you're really sure, I'll marry you whenever you like--after Ann
is married."
He kissed her with a deep, grave passion, holding her closely in his arms.
"You shall forget the past, dearest--I promise you, you shall forget all
the things that hurt you," he said with tender reassurance. Presently, when
the first few minutes were passed, he smiled down at her, a gleam of mirth
in his eyes.
"I shall see to it that Ann and Eliot don't postpone their wedding--if it
means postponing ours! You said 'after,' you know."
She nodded.
"Yes. I can't possibly commandeer Ann's natural protector"--smiling--"until
she's safely bestowed in some one else's care."
But though she jested about the stipulation she had made, it was the
outcome of a curiously definite idea. Since it was through her that Eliot's
happiness had once been wrecked, she felt as though, until this new-found
happiness which had come to him were assured--secure beyond any shadow of
doubt--she was not free to take her own. It was in a sense an expiation, a
pathetic little human effort to propitiate fate and turn aside any blow;
aimed at Eliot's happiness by those jealous gods who exact payment to the
very last farthing.
* * * * *
Ann was overjoyed when she heard of Robin's engagement. To know that her
adored brother would not be left lonely by her marriage, and to see Cara,
whose former experience of matrimony had proved such a ghastly failure,
with a new, brooding gladness in her eyes, added the last drop to her cup
of happiness.
"_Dear_ Robin, I'm so pleased!" she told him. "If I'd been choosing a wife
for you myself I couldn't have chosen any one nicer than Cara!"
"Glad you're pleased," Robin returned gruffly--the gruffness being merely
the cloak to conceal his own riotous felicity which every Englishman in
similar circumstances thinks it necessary to assume. But Ann saw through
it, and was not to be deterred from frank rejoicing.
"It will be perfectly lovely to have my best friend married to my best
brother," she continued. "Where shall you live? At the Priory or the
Cottage?"
"We haven't got as far as making such world-shaking decisions as that," he
grinned. "Perhaps we might live at the Priory and week-end at the
Cottage"--whimsically.
Ann found a further cause for rejoicing in the continued absence of Brett
Forrester. She had never seen him again since the morning when, with an
intense feeling of relief, she had watched the _Sphinx_ steam out from
Silverquay harbour. Lady Susan was much too incensed against him to invite
him to White Windows, and Ann rested fairly secure in the hope that she
would never see him again, or, at least, not until she was Eliot's wife.
After that, she felt she would not be afraid to meet him. He could work her
no more harm then.
So that it was with a light Heart that she finally started on her journey
to London to stay with the Brabazons. Eliot saw her off at the station.
"If you stop a day longer than a fortnight I shall come and fetch you
back," he informed her despotically. "I'm not going to spare my girl to any
one for more than two weeks. And I grudge even that."
And Ann, leaning out of the carriage window and waving her hand to the
tall, beloved figure on the platform, felt no premonition, was conscious of
no ominous foreboding that the train which was bearing her so swiftly away
from him was actually carrying her straight towards the very danger from
which she felt so sure she had escaped.
In the patch of brilliant sunshine which lay all about her, the grey shadow
had paled until it had become almost imperceptible. But it was still
there--only waiting for the sun to move a little in the heavens to fling
itself blackly across her path once more.
CHAPTER XXX
THE KEEPING OF A PROMISE
Her first two or three days at the tall grey house in Audley Square
sufficed to indicate to Ann that all was not going well there, Sir Philip
had welcomed her warmly enough, and when she descended to breakfast on the
morning after her arrival she found an envelope on her plate containing his
cheque for two hundred pounds, together with a brief intimation that it was
intended to "help towards the trousseau." But, apart from the bestowal of
this signal mark of favour, Ann found her godfather's behaviour extremely
difficult to understand.
It was usually his custom to treat her with a species of crusty amiability,
but, on this occasion, after the first warmth of his welcome had
evaporated, she found that the crustiness became much more in evidence and
the amiability conspicuously lacking. The old man was extraordinarily
irritable, both towards her and towards Tony. It was as though he were
labouring under a secret strain--prey to some anxiety which he was
stubbornly bent on keeping to himself. Tony also, Ann observed, seemed to
be living at high pressure of some kind. He was moody and restless, and
unless some theatre or other plan had been proposed by his uncle he usually
disappeared soon after dinner, and she saw him no more until the following
morning.
It was all very unlike any previous visit which she had paid to the house
at Audley Square. Formerly, if Sir Philip had felt disinclined to go out in
an evening, Tony had always been eager with suggestions for their visitor's
amusement, and many had been the occasions on which he and Ann had dined
gaily at some little restaurant and gone on afterwards to a dance or
theatre alone together.
But now the change was noticeable. Tony seemed entirely preoccupied with
his own thoughts, and to judge by his manner, they were anything but
pleasant ones. Sometimes he would sit in moody silence for an hour at a
time, making a pretence at reading a magazine. Or he would get up suddenly
when they were all three sitting together, and, without a word to any one,
put on his hat and go out of the house. He never volunteered any
information as to where he spent his evenings, and although Sir Philip
would peer after him with angry, suspicious eyes when he took his
departure, it seemed as if pride--or was it fear of what the answer might
be?--kept the old man from questioning him. When eleven o'clock came,
bringing no Tony, he would get up abruptly, fold his newspaper, and remark
curtly to Ann: "Time we went to bed. No need to wait up for Tony. He has
his latch-key." It was always the same formula, and the next day at
breakfast uncle and nephew would exchange a brief greeting, and no further
reference would be made to the previous evening. It was as though a kind of
armed neutrality prevailed between them.