Involuntarily Ann laughed outright at the palpable truth of the statement, and with that spontaneous laughter was borne away much of the hurt pride and resentment which had been galling her. It was, after all, absurd to take an irresponsible being like Brett Forrester too seriously.
"I don"t altogether envy Brett"s wife," pursued Lady Susan judicially.
"Still, she"d never find life monotonous, whatever else. He"d probably beat her and drag her round by the hair when he was in a rage. But he"d know how to play the lover, my dear--don"t make any mistake about that!"
"I may be old-fashioned," said Ann demurely. "But I don"t think I feel particularly attracted by the prospect of being beaten and dragged around by the hair."
Lady Susan"s dark eyes twinkled.
"All the same, I don"t fancy Brett will allow a little prejudice like that to stand in his way. If I know my nephew--and I think I do--he won"t meekly accept his _conge_ and run away and play like a good little boy."
"Oh, I think he quite understands," replied Ann a trifle breathlessly.
Lady Susan shook her head.
"My dear," she said, "Brett is delightful, and I"m ridiculously fond of him. But I"m bound to admit that he hasn"t any principles whatever. And he never understands anything he doesn"t want to."
CHAPTER XXI
THE RETURN
The October sunshine slanted across Berrier Cove, flinging a broad ribbon of light athwart the water and over the wet, shining sands left bare by the outgoing tide. Its furthermost point reached almost to Ann"s feet, where she sat in a crook of the rocks, resting after a five-mile tramp along the sh.o.r.e before she tackled the steep climb up to the Cottage.
The sea was wonderfully calm to-day--placid and tranquil as some inland lake, and edged with baby wavelets which came creeping tentatively upward to curl over on the sand like a fringe of downy feathers. Ann could not help vividly recalling the day when she had so nearly lost her life at that very spot. It seemed incredible that this quiet sea, with its gentle, crooning voice no louder than a rhythmic whisper, could be one and the same with the turbulent, thunderous monster which had almost beaten the breath out of her body.
And then her thoughts turned involuntarily to Brett Forrester. He was not unlike the sea, she reflected, in his sudden, unexpected changes of mood--with the buoyant charm he could exert when he chose, and that contrasting turbulence of his which left whoever ventured to oppose him feeling altogether breathless and battered.
Latterly, Ann had been finding it very difficult to understand him. Since the night of the dinner on board the _Sphinx_ he had studiously refrained from the slightest attempt to make love to her. Sometimes, indeed, she was almost tempted to ask herself if that violent scene on the yacht could really have occurred between them or whether she had only dreamt it. It seemed so entirely incompatible with the easy att.i.tude of friendliness which he had adopted towards her ever since. She would have liked to interpret this as signifying that he had accepted her refusal as final, but some inward prompting warned her that Brett was not the man to be so easily turned aside from his purpose. Meanwhile, however, it was a relief to be free from the subtle sense of importunity, of imperious demand, of which, when he chose, he could make her so acutely conscious.
Thinking over all that had pa.s.sed between them on the yacht, she wondered curiously why he had so persistently referred to Tony. It seemed almost as though he were jealous of the boy--regarded him as some one who might prove an obstacle to the accomplishment of his own desires. Yet she could not recall anything which might have given him that impression. There had been nothing in the least loverlike in Tony"s att.i.tude towards her during his visit to the Cottage.
On the contrary, she had been inwardly congratulating herself upon the fact that he had evidently determined to abide by the answer she had given him that night in Switzerland, as they came down from the Roche d"Or--although she would not have been the true woman she was if she had not secretly wondered a little at the apparent ease with which he had adapted himself to the altered relations between them! Pride had counted for a good deal.
That she guessed. But, since Tony"s departure, she had begun to speculate whether there might not perhaps be some other reason which would better account for his submitting without further protest to her decision. And in a brief sentence, contained in a letter she had received from him only that morning, she thought she had discovered the key to the mystery.
_"Uncle Philip and I depart to Mentone next week,"_ he had written.
_"Naturally, he hates the idea of my being anywhere in the vicinity of Monte Carlo, but as he doesn"t seem able to throw off the effects of a chill he caught out shooting, our local saw-bones--in whom, he has the most touching faith--has decreed Mentone. So Mentone it is. Lady Doreen Neville and her mother will also be there, at their villa, as Lady Doreen is ordered to winter in the south of France. Afterwards the doctors hope she will be quite strong."_
It was in the name Neville that Ann thought she detected a clue to Tony"s altered demeanour. She recollected having met Lady Doreen on one occasion, about a year ago, when she herself had been paying a flying visit to the Brabazons at their house in Audley Square--a frail slip of a girl with immense grey eyes and hair like an aureole of reddish gold. She had been barely seventeen at that time, slim and undeveloped, and her delicacy had added rather than otherwise to her look of extreme youth. Ann had regarded her as hardly more than a child. But she knew that a year can effect an enormous alteration in a girl in her late teens--sometimes seeming to transform her all at once from immature girlhood into gracious and charming womanhood. Lady Doreen had "come out" since Ann had met her, made her curtsy at Court and taken part in her first London season, and it was not difficult to imagine her, delicate though she might be, as extremely attractive and invested with a certain ethereal grace and charm peculiarly her own.
And that Tony had seen a good deal of her in town last July Ann was aware.
He had mentioned her name more than once during his visit to the Cottage, and it seemed to Ann quite likely that, sore because of her own definite refusal of him, he had sought and found consolation in the company of Lady Doreen.
Looking back, she fancied she remembered a certain shy embarra.s.sment in Tony"s manner when he had spoken of her. She had thought nothing about it at the time, being preoccupied with her own affairs, but now, in the light of this new idea which had presented itself to her, she felt convinced that there was something behind the slight hesitation Tony had evinced when referring to the Nevilles.
A little smile, almost maternal in its tenderness, curved her lips. She had always hoped that Tony"s love for her might prove to be only a red-hot boyish infatuation, grounded on propinquity and friendship, which the pa.s.sage of time would cure, and if, now, man"s love was being born in him and she could keep the old friendship, it would give her complete happiness. But she questioned rather anxiously whether Doreen Neville was possessed of a strong enough character to keep him straight. She was so sweet and fragile--the kind of woman to be petted and cossetted and taken care of by some big, kind-hearted man, not in the least the type to steady a headstrong young fool, bent upon blundering on to the rocks.
Tony"s letter was in the pocket of her coat, and, pulling it out, she ran through it again. There was no further mention of Doreen Neville, but she found that there was a postscript scribbled in a corner, in Tony"s most illegible scrawl, which she had overlooked when reading the letter at breakfast time.
_"Much as you disapprove, little Puritan Ann, do wish me luck at the tables! Such, luck as we had that night at Montricheux. Do you remember?"_
Ann"s heart contracted suddenly. Was she ever likely to forget--to forget that day when, for the first time, Eliot Coventry"s grey, compelling eyes had met and held her own? Since then she had touched heights and depths of happiness and despair which had changed her whole outlook on life. Love had come to her--and gone again, and only through sheer pluck and a pride that refused to break had she been able to face the fact and hide her hurt from the world at large.
Eliot"s sudden disappearance from Silverquay last month had made things a little easier for her. He had left home the day following that of the dinner-party on board the _Sphinx_, and the knowledge that there was no danger of meeting him had helped to lessen the strain, she was enduring.
Previously she had been strung up to a high nervous tension by the ever-present fear of running across him unexpectedly, and it had brought her infinite relief when she learned that he had gone away. Since then a strange numbness seemed to have taken possession of her. It was as though some one had closed the door on the past, very quietly and carefully.
Dully she recalled the night after Eliot had shown her he had no intention of claiming her love as a succession of interminable hours of mental and physical agony. But now she was hardly conscious of pain--only of a stupefied sense of loss. She felt as if her life were finished, as though all the days and years that lay ahead of her were entirely empty and purposeless. Sometime or other, she supposed, she would come alive again, be able to feel and realise things once more. But she dreaded the coming of that time. Better this apathy, like the stupor of one drugged, than a repet.i.tion of the anguish she had already suffered.
It seemed as if she were endowed with a species of double consciousness--an outward, everyday self which laughed and talked quite readily with the people she knew, walked and rode, read and wrote letters just like any one else, and a strange inner self which led a dumb, dreaming existence, drearily remote from everything that made life keen and sentient.
Suddenly a tremor of wind ran between the great boulders of the cove, whining eerily. It savoured of coming autumn, and Ann watched the quiet sea bunch itself up into small, angry tufts of foam as the breeze which seemed to have sprung up from nowhere fled across it. Then, feeling suddenly chilled, she rose from where she was sitting and turned rather wearily homeward.
Her way lay through the village, and as she climbed the steep hill which rose abruptly from the bay, in first one cottage, then another, lights twinkled into being, like bright, inquisitive eyes peering through the falling dusk. Absorbed in her thoughts, she had lingered on the sh.o.r.e longer than she intended, and when she reached the top of the hill she instinctively quickened her pace and hastened along the somewhat lonely stretch of road which led to the Cottage.
Just as she was within a short distance of the gate, she caught the sound of footsteps coming from the opposite direction. There were few people abroad in the lanes, as a rule, at this hour of the evening, and the idea that the approaching pedestrian might prove to be a tramp leaped quickly to Ann"s mind. She was seized with a sudden nervousness, born of the dusk and loneliness of the road and of her own bodily fatigue, and she broke into a run, hoping to reach the Cottage gate before the supposed tramp should turn the corner. But the steps drew nearer--striding, purposeful steps, not in the least like those of a tramp--and an instant later the figure of Eliot Coventry rounded the bend in the road and loomed into view.
Ann"s heart gave a sudden leap, then started beating at racing speed. The meeting was so utterly unlooked-for that for a moment a feeling akin to terror laid hold of her. Taking the last few yards which still intervened betwixt her and the safety of the Cottage at a rush, she almost fell against the gate, seeking with blind, groping fingers for the latch. But it seemed to be wedged in some way, and she tore at it unavailingly.
"Let me open that for you."
Eliot"s voice, rather grave but with the ghost of a quiver in it which might have betokened some inward amus.e.m.e.nt, sounded above her head. Then, as she still struggled vainly to move the recalcitrant latch, he went on quietly:
"Are you trying to run away from me--or what?"
Ann straightened herself and made a s.n.a.t.c.h at her fugitive dignity.
"No--oh, no," she said, endeavouring to steady her flurried tones. Her heart was still playing tricks, throbbing jerkily in her side, and her breath came unevenly. "Only you startled me. I thought you were a tramp."
She fancied he concealed a smile in the darkness.
"Not very complimentary of you," he answered composedly.
"It wasn"t, was it? I"m so sorry," she agreed in eager haste. "Have you come to see Robin? I"m afraid he"s out. He said he should be back rather late to-night."
"No," he replied evenly, "I"ve not come to see Robin." Then, with a sudden leap in his voice: "I came to see you, Ann."
"To see me?" she murmured confusedly.
"Yes. Am I to tell you all about it out here in the cold, or may I come in?"
Without waiting for her answer, he quietly lifted the latch which had refused to move for her trembling fingers, and silently, half in a dream, she led the way into the house.
There was no light in the living-room other than that yielded by the logs which burned on the open hearth, but even by their flickering glow she could discern how much he had altered since she had last seen him. He was thinner, and his face had the worn look of a man who has recently pa.s.sed through some stern mental and spiritual conflict. There were furrows of weariness deeply graven on either side the mouth, and Ann felt her heart swell within her in an overwhelming impulse of tenderness and longing to smooth away those new lines from the beloved face. Before she knew it, that imperative inner need had manifested in unconscious gesture. Her hands went out to him as naturally and instinctively as the hands of a mother go out to her hurt child.
But he did not take them in his. Instead, he seemed almost to draw away from her, his hands slowly clenching as though the man were putting some immense compulsion of restraint upon himself.
"I"ve come back, Ann," he said slowly. "I"ve come back."