The Vision of Desire
Brett got up abruptly. That twisted little smile hiding a supreme agony
touched him as no woman's grief had ever touched him yet.... The low,
toneless confession with its quiet immolation of self.... He put his hand
into his pocket, and, drawing out a packet of loose papers, banded together
with elastic, flung them down on to the table.
"Oh, hang!" he said gruffly. "There are the bills Brabazon gave me. By God,
you've earned them!"
Cara stretched her hand out slowly and touched the packet with hesitating
fingers.
"Do you mean this, Brett?"
"Certainly I mean it."
She stared at him almost incredulously.
"I believe you're--sorry," she said slowly.
But in that she miscalculated. Brett would be an unrepentant sinner to the
end of his days. He laughed and shook his head.
"Not in the way you mean. Frankly and honestly--Oh, yes"--catching the
faint quizzical gleam in her eyes--"I can be both when I want to. The Devil
quoting Scripture, you know! Frankly, then, I'm merely sorry that my plan
miscarried. It was a splendid plan! Its only fault was that it didn't
succeed.... But I know when I'm beaten. And you've beaten me."
A few minutes later they stood together on the deck, waiting for the dinghy
to come alongside.
"Good-night, Brett," she said, holding out her hand.
He lifted it to his lips with audacious grace.
"It will be a bad night--thanks to you!" he returned with a last flash of
mocking humour.
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE VISION FULFILLED
Ann opened her next morning's mail with nervously eager fingers. A couple
of tradesmen's bills, an advertisement for somebody's infallible cure-all,
and a letter from Robin saying that he would reach home the following
day--that was all. Not a line from Brett. Nothing in explanation of his
last evening's telegram.
There is a wise old saw which asserts that "no news is good news," but
Ann could extract no comfort from it. Such hackneyed sayings did not take
into consideration people of Brett Forrester's temperament, she reflected
bitterly. Something had occurred to prevent the carrying out of his plans
for last night, but not for one moment did she imagine that he would allow
anything to divert him permanently from his intention of compelling her to
buy Tony's freedom on the terms he had already fixed. That fact must still
be faced, and the absence of any word from Brett this morning increased
illimitably the sense of strain under which she was labouring. Last evening
she had keyed herself up to the required pitch for the ordeal which awaited
her. And now the whole agony and terror would have to be gone through
again!
She wandered restlessly from the house to the garden and then back again,
her nerves ragged-edged with suspense. If she could only know what had
occurred last night to prompt that wire, what Brett now proposed, what
further troubles there were in store, she felt she could have borne it
better. She was never afraid to face definite difficulties. It was this
terrible inaction and uncertainty which she found so unendurable.
The minutes crawled by on leaden feet. When she returned from feeding her
poultry she was absolutely aghast to hear the church clock only striking
ten! It seemed to her that a whole eternity of time had elapsed since the
moment when the delivery of the morning post, destitute of news from Brett,
had plunged her into this dreadful agony of uncertainty.
Suddenly she heard the gate click. She had been unconsciously listening for
that sound with an intensity of which she was unaware--expecting, hoping,
almost praying for tidings of some kind. Surely, if he did not come
himself, Brett would at least send her a message of some sort!
When at last the click and rattle of the wooden gate, as it swung to, smote
on her ears, she felt powerless to go and meet whoever it might be whose
coming the sound heralded. A curious numbness pervaded all her limbs, and
she leaned against the table, almost holding her breath, while the measured
tread of Maria's sturdy feet resounded along the passage leading from the
kitchen to the front of the house.
Ann heard the opening of the cottage door, followed by the soft murmur of
women's voices instead of by the high treble of the telegraph boy which she
had expected. Then the swish of a skirt, the lifting of a latch, and Cara
came quickly into the room.
The tension of Ann's nerves relaxed, giving place to a spiritless
acceptance of the inevitable. There was no message from Brett, after all!
It was only Cara--Cara who had come to ask the success or failure of her
last night's interview with him. The irony of it!
Ann began to speak at once, anticipating the first question which she knew
the other would be sure to put. It would be better to get it over at once.
"I didn't go to the yacht," she said baldly. "Brett wired me not to come."
Cara nodded.
"I know. But I went," she answered quietly.
"You?" Ann stared at her. "You went--to the yacht!" she repeated in tones
of stupefaction.
"Yes. And I got what I wanted. These are the bills which Tony gave to
Brett--and there's a note for you, as well," she added with a fugitive
smile.
She slid the whole packet on to the table, and Ann picked up one of the
stamped oblong slips of paper and examined it with a curious sense of
detachment.
"'Bill or note.'" She read aloud the words which crowned and footed the
Government stamp. Then she laid the bill back on the top of the others.
"But I don't understand," she said. "How did--you--get these!"
"Sit down, and I'll tell you," replied Cara.
Ann sat down obediently, feeling as though she were living and moving in
a dream. Once she glanced almost apprehensively towards the small heap of
bills on the table. Yes, they were still there. Those narrow strips of
paper which spelt for Tony a fresh chance in life and for herself release
from any future domination of Brett Forrester's. Not yet could she realise
the full wonder and joy of it--all the splendour of life and love which
their mere presence there gave back to her. For the moment she was only
conscious of an extraordinary calm--like the quiescence which succeeds
relief from physical agony, when the senses, dulled by suffering, are for
a short space contented with the mere absence of actual pain.
At first she fixed her eyes almost unseeingly on Cara, as the latter began
to recount the events of the previous evening, but swiftly a look of
attention dawned in them. The realities of life were coming back to her,
and by the time Cara had finished her story--beginning with the sending of
the telegram in Brett's name and ending with the final surrender of the
notes of hand--she had grasped the significance of what had happened.
"And you did this--risked so much--for me?" she said, trembling a little.
"Oh, Cara!"
Cara was silent a moment. Then she leaned forward.
"Not only for you, Ann," she said gently, "Do you remember my telling you
that a woman once--jilted Eliot Coventry?"
Ann's startled eyes met the grave, sorrowful ones of the woman who
bent towards her. But she averted them quickly. Something--some fine,
instinctive understanding forbade that she should look at her just then.
"Yes" she answered, hardly above her breath.
Cara hesitated. Then she spoke, unevenly, and with a slight, difficult
pause now and again between her words.
"I was that woman. I--robbed him of his belief in things--of his chance of
happiness. I didn't realise all I was doing at the time. But afterwards--I
knew.... Ever since then, I've wanted to give it back to him--all that I
robbed him of. I made his life bitter--and I wanted to make it sweet again.
To give him back his happiness.... Last night, I paid my debt."
Ann had been listening with bent head. Now she lifted it, and her eyes held
a terrible questioning. Behind the questioning lay terror--the terror of
one who sees a heaven regained suddenly barred away.
"Then he ... you...." She could not even formulate the aching demand of her
whole soul and body. But Cara understood. Love had taught her all there was
to know of love.
"Eliot's love for me died ten years ago," she said simply.
"And yours?" asked Ann painfully. "Not yours. Or you wouldn't--you
couldn't--have done this--for him."
For an instant Cara closed her eyes. Then she spoke, with white lips, but
with a quiet, steadfast decision that carried absolute conviction.
"I know what you are thinking," she said. "But you are wrong--quite wrong.
There is nothing left between Eliot Coventry and me--nothing--except
remembrance. And for the sake of that remembrance--for the sake of what
was, though it has been, dead these many years--I have done what I have
done."
The question died out of Ann's eyes--answered once and for ever, and Cara
stifled a sigh of relief as she watched the faint colour steal back into
the girl's cheeks.
"I don't know how I could have thought you still cared," said Ann
presently. "It was silly of me--when you are going to marry Robin."
"Yes. Robin and I are going to start a new life together. He knows--what
happened--years ago. And he understands. I hope"--forcing herself to speak
more lightly--"I hope he won't be too shocked at my flight to the yacht
last night to marry me after all!"
Ann laughed.
"I don't think you need be afraid," she answered affectionately. "But
Eliot!" She paused in consternation, then went on quickly: "What did he
think when he found you there, Cara? Do you know what he thought?"
Cara's expression hardened a little.
"Yes, I know," she said shortly.
"And I can guess," returned Ann. She sprang up from her chair with all
her old characteristic impetuosity. "And he's not going to think--that--a
moment longer. I suppose"--her voice seemed to glow and the eyes she bent
on Cara were wonderfully tender--"I suppose you wouldn't explain because
you wanted to keep me out of it?" Then, as Cara nodded assent: "I thought
so! Well, I'm not going to be kept out of it. I'm going straight across to
Heronsmere--now, at once--to tell Eliot the whole truth."
She swept Cara's protest royally aside, and within a few minutes Cara
herself was on her way home and Billy Brewster flinging the harness on the
pony's back at unprecedented speed.
But Dick Turpin was spared the necessity of making the whirlwind rush to
Heronsmere which loomed ahead of him, by the opportune appearance of Eliot
himself at the Cottage gate.
Ann drew him quickly into the house.
"I was just coming over to see you," she told him swiftly. "It's--it's
about last night."
His face darkened.
"About last night?" he repeated. "What about it?"
"You found--Cara--on board Brett's yacht."
"I did--and drew my own conclusions."
"Well, they were wrong ones," said Ann. Then, seeing that he looked quite
unconvinced, she went on quickly lest her courage should fail her. "If it
had not been for Cara, you would have found me there--"
"You? Then it's true--true you actually intended going there? Bradley was
right?"
"Yes, he told you just what he had been ordered to tell you. Brett believed
I was coming--he was expecting me. I promised to go because he held some
bills of Tony's--Tony had borrowed from him far more than he could pay. And
Brett bargained with me that he would give them up if I would go to supper
with him on the _Sphinx_." The whole story came tumbling out in quick,
vivid sentences. In a few moments Eliot was in possession of all the facts
which lay behind his discovery of Cara on the yacht.
"So Cara had taken your place." There was a strange new gentleness in his
voice as he spoke of the woman who had first broken and then built up his
life again.
"Yes. I was afraid--afraid that if you knew I had been there, you would
believe--what you believed once before."