The Vision of Desire
see the light from the rose-shaded burners run redly along its barrel like
a thin stream of blood. In the fraction of a second she had fled across the
room and grasped his wrist.
"Tony! What are you doing?" she cried hoarsely.
She felt his arm jerk against her hold, resisting it, but she clung
determinedly to his wrist with her small strong fingers.
"Give it to me! Give it to me!" she whispered hurryingly, hardly conscious
of what she was saying.
His instinctive resistance ceased. She felt his muscles relax, and he
allowed her to take the pistol from him. He stared down at her curiously.
"Pity you didn't come two minutes later," he observed laconically.
Without reply, she proceeded to unload the revolver. He watched her with a
faint, apathetic amusement.
"Shouldn't have thought you knew how to do that," he said.
"I learned how to handle a revolver during the war," she returned grimly.
She crossed the room and very softly closed the door. "Now, Tony," she went
on, turning back and forcing herself to speak composedly, "you're going to
tell me all about it. Things must be pretty bad for you to have thought
of--this." She glanced down with shrinking repugnance at the weapon which
she still held. All at once the apathy which seemed to have possessed him
vanished. He turned on her with sudden violence.
"Why did you come? If you hadn't, I should be safely out of it all!... Out
of it all!... Oh, my God!..."
He dropped into a chair, burying his face in his hands, and the utter
despair in his voice tore at Ann's heart. What had happened--what could
have happened that Tony should seek to take his own life? Mechanically
she stooped to replace the revolver in the opened drawer from which he
had evidently taken it. A few loose cartridges still lay there, together
with some torn scraps of paper and a blank cheque. Almost unconsciously
her glance took in the contents of the drawer. Then suddenly it
checked--concentrated. She caught her breath sharply and looked at Tony, a
horrified, incredulous question in her eyes. But he was still sitting with
his head buried in his hands, silent and motionless.
Very slowly, as though she approached her hand to something nauseous and
abhorrent, Ann reached out and withdrew one of the torn sheets of paper and
stared at it. It was covered with repeated copyings of a single
name--sometimes the whole name, sometimes only one or other of the initial
letters to it. And the name which some one was taking such pains to learn
to write was that of her godfather, Philip Brabazon... Philip Brabazon...
the sheet was covered with it, and some of the signatures were a very fair
imitation of the old man's handwriting.
Ann snatched up the blank cheque. It was one that had been torn from Sir
Philip's cheque-book. She could see that at a glance--remembered so clearly
noticing the same heading on the cheque which he had given her towards her
trousseau--the Watchester and Loamshire Bank. She held out to Tony the two
pieces of paper--the sheet of scribbled signatures and the blank cheque.
"Tony," she said, her voice cracking a little. "What--what are these?"
The tense, vibrating horror in her tones roused him. He looked up wearily.
Then, as he saw what she held, a dull red flush mounted slowly to his face.
For a moment he did not speak. When he did, his voice sounded dead--flat
and toneless.
"Those," he said, "are attempts on my part to forge my uncle's signature."
She stared at him speechlessly. Then, a sudden new fear shaking her, she
went quickly to his side, thrusting the blank cheque under his eyes.
"Tony--you haven't done it before?... This--this isn't.... How many cheques
of his have you had?"
"One," he said. "That one"--nodding towards the narrow pink slip she held.
Ann gave, a gasp of relief. "Yes," he went on, "I found I couldn't do it.
The old man's been decent to me, after all. He'd have hated the old name
muddied by--by forgery."
"And do you think he'd like it stained by suicide?" she demanded fiercely.
"Oh, Tony, you coward! You coward!"
It was as if she had struck him across the face. He sprang up, his eyes
blazing.
"How dare you say that?" he cried stormily.
"I say it because it's true," she returned, her voice quivering. "Thank God
you haven't committed forgery! And thank God I was in time to stop your
taking this cowardly--utterly cowardly--way out of things. You've got
into a mess, and you wanted to get out of it--the easiest way. Did you
ever stop to think of us--afterwards? Of your uncle, and me, or of Doreen
Neville--all of us who cared for you? Oh! I wouldn't have believed it of
you, Tony!"
"You don't know how bad things are," he said desperately. "You've _got_ to
be hurt--you, and uncle, and--and Doreen." His voice broke, then steadied
again. "I've got myself in such a mess that a bullet was the best way
out--for everybody."
"I don't believe it," answered Ann, with stubborn courage. "There's some
other way. There always is--only we've got to look for it--find it."
Suddenly her heart overflowed in pity for this white-faced, haggard boy who
must have suffered so bitterly, must have gone down into the veriest depths
of despair, before he had been driven to seek that short and terrible way
out of life. She held out her hands to him. "Tony, let me help! Let's look
for a way out together. I'm your pal. I've always been your pal. Why did
you bear all this alone instead of letting me share?"
At the touch of her strong, kind little hands he broke down for a moment.
Turning aside, he leaned his arms on the chimneypiece and hid his face. A
hard, stifled sob tore its way through his throat and his shoulders shook.
Ann remained silent, giving him time in which to recover his self-command.
Her heart was full almost to breaking-point with that eager, mothering
tenderness which a woman instinctively feels for a man in trouble. She is
the eternal mother, then--he the eternal child.
When at last Tony lifted his head from his arms he was very pale, but his
eyes held a look of resolution.
"I'll tell you," he said jerkily.
Bit by bit the painful story came out--the same familiar story, only
infinitely aggravated, of high play, losses, then still higher play
in a desperate hope of recovery, and finally, the confession of heavy
borrowings, of notes of hand given and accepted--and now falling due.
"That's the devil of it--the time's up and they're due for payment," wound
up Tony hoarsely. "Payment! And I haven't twenty pounds in the world."
As Ann listened to the stumbling recital, her face paled and grew very
grave. This was worse--far worse than she had anticipated.
"How much, do you owe--altogether, Tony?" she asked at last, when he had
finished speaking.
"Twelve hundred."
"Twelve hundred pounds!" The largeness of the amount left her momentarily
aghast, and the vague idea she had been harbouring that Robin and she might
scrape up a hundred or two between them and so put matters straight
crumbled to atoms.
Twelve hundred pounds! In her wildest imaginings she had never dreamed of
Tony's owing such a sum. She shivered a little, partly from nerves, partly
from sheer physical cold. The fire had smouldered to black ash long ere
this, and the chill air which precedes the dawn was creeping into the room.
Even the necessity of conducting the entire conversation in lowered tones,
in order not to disturb the sleeping household, added to the aguish,
strained feeling of which she was conscious.
"There is only one thing to do, Tony," she said at last. "You must tell Sir
Philip."
A sharp ejaculation escaped him, hastily stifled as she raised a warning
finger enjoining silence.
"Sh! Don't make a noise! We mustn't wake any one," she cautioned him. "You
_must_ tell Sir Philip," she resumed. "There's simply nothing else to be
done."
"It would be utterly useless," he replied with quiet conviction. "He
wouldn't pay. He said he wouldn't, last time. And he meant it.... You'd
better have let me blow out my brains while I was about it, Ann"--with, a
mirthless laugh.
"Don't talk rot," she returned succinctly.
"It's not rot. Don't you see I'm done for--gone in? A man who borrows,
as I've done, and _can't pay_, is finished. Outside the pale. You don't
suppose they'll let Doreen marry me after this, do you?"
Ann shook her head voicelessly. She could see--only too clearly--all the
consequences which must inevitably follow if the matter became public.
It signalled the end of things for Tony. It meant a ruined life--love,
happiness, a clean name, all would go down in the general crash.
"The only thing I can do," he resumed hopelessly, "is to emigrate. Bolt,
and start fresh somewhere."
Ann set her teeth.
"You're not going to bolt," she said doggedly. She was silent for a moment,
thinking feverishly. There must he some way out--some way, if she could
only come upon it.
"Whom do you owe this money to?" she demanded at last. "Several different
people, I suppose?"
"No. One man offered to be my banker till--till my luck came round again,"
confessed Tony. "And I let him. But I didn't know I'd borrowed so much. It
seemed to mount up all in a moment."
"'In a moment!'" There was a tiny edge of contempt to Ann's voice. "How
long have you been borrowing from this man?"
"Oh, for a goodish time--on and off. I've paid back some. I'd have paid it
all back if I'd only had a stroke of luck. But I've been losing every night
for the last month."
Luck! The weak man's eternal excuse for failure Ann felt as though she
loathed the very word.
"Who is the man you borrowed from?" she asked.
Tony preserved an embarrassed silence.
"Who is it?" she repeated. "I must know, Tony. We can't plan anything to
help if you're not absolutely frank."
"Well, if you must know--it's Brett Forrester," he said wretchedly. "It's
beastly, I know, his being a friend of yours."
Brett Forrester! Ann remained very silent, with bent head, absorbing the
full significance of this confession. It seemed suddenly to have thrown
an immense burden of responsibility upon her. Brett! As Tony said, he was
a friend of hers. And desired to be much more than a friend, if Tony but
knew! Were it not for this, it would have been simple enough for her to go
and use her influence with Brett--ask him out of sheer friendliness to her
to give Tony a chance--to grant him time in which to pay. It would have
to be a very long time, she reflected. But perhaps, when she was Eliot's
wife... Eliot was generous ... he would not think twice about paying twelve
hundred pounds to give happiness to the woman he loved--to purchase peace
of mind for her. And she would economise in her own personal expenses and
so try to balance matters. Eliot had told her that one of his earliest
presents to her was to be a new and very perfectly equipped car for her own
special use. She would forego the car--ask him to pay Tony's debts instead.
Her thoughts raced along.
But all this presupposed that Brett would be willing to wait a little for
his money. If there had been only friendship between herself and Brett, Ann
felt she could so easily have begged a chance for Tony. But to approach the
man who had desired to marry her so much that he had been willing to go to
almost any length to force her into marriage with him, this man whom she
had defied and scorned at their last meeting--to ask a boon, a favour
from him, seemed of all things the most impossible. To do so would be to
strangle her pride, to walk deliberately through the valley of humiliation.
Oh, she couldn't do it! She couldn't do it!
Virginia's sad, entreating voice seemed to plead in her ear: "_Ann, will
you do what you can for him--for him and for me?_" It was almost as though