"Well--perhaps not worrying. But unsettled in mind," conceded Ann. "What"s Tony teen doing?"--shrewdly.
"Getting engaged--or trying to."
She laughed.
"Pooh! I guessed that--months ago. And I think Lady Doreen"s a dear. So you"d better be getting out your consent and furbishing it up so as to give it prettily as soon as it"s required. You know you"re pleased--really."
By this time the guests were arriving, and very soon Ann was swept away from Sir Philip on a tide of eager young men, anxious to inscribe their names on her programme. She was an excellent dancer, but although she was physically too young and healthy not to find a certain enjoyment in the sheer delight of rhythmic motion, she was conscious as the evening progressed of a certain quality of superficiality in the pleasure she experienced. There was a sameness about it all that palled. What was there in it, after all? One of your partners knew a priceless new glide or shuffle which he forthwith imparted to you, or else you initiated him into some step hitherto unfamiliar to him, and after that you both went on one-stepping or fox-trotting round the room in the wake of a number of other people doing likewise.
Ann, in the arms of a tall young officer from the Ferribridge barracks, caught herself up quickly at this stage of her unprofitable train of thought. This was not the first time lately that she had found herself impressed with the utter staleness of things--she who had been wont to find life so full of interest--and she knew that thoughts such as these were best dismissed as soon as possible. They linked up too closely with searing memories. She made a determined effort to steady herself, and pulled herself together so successfully that the young Guardsman from Ferribridge told quite a number of people that Miss Lovell was a "topping little sport all round--good dancer and jolly good fun to talk to."
She danced several times with Tony, and left him completely nonplussed by her uncanny discernment when, after he had stumbled through the revelation of his engagement to Doreen Neville, during one of the intervals, she promptly told him she had antic.i.p.ated it long ago and wished him luck.
"And--and you and I?" he had queried with a certain wistful embarra.s.sment.
"Pals, Tony," she answered frankly. "Same as always. You must let me meet Lady Doreen when she comes back from Switzerland, and"--smiling--"I"ll hand over my charge to her. Have you been good lately, by the way?"
He flushed, and his eyes grew restless.
"I lost a bit at Monte," he admitted. "I was winning pots of money at first, and then all at once my luck turned and I lost the lot."
"And more, too, I suppose?" suggested Ann rather wearily.
He nodded.
"I shall get it all back at cards, though," he a.s.sured her.
"Have you got any of it back yet?" she asked pointedly.
"No, But it stands to reason my run of bad luck must turn sooner or later.
Come on back to the ball-room and let"s dance this, Ann--don"t lecture me any more, there"s a dear."
She yielded to those persuasive, long-lashed eyes of his, and they returned to the ball-room and finished the remainder of the dance. But her conversation with Tony had added to the oppression of her spirits. She felt sure, from the way he shirked the subject, that he was getting himself into financial difficulties again, and if the matter came to Sir Philip"s ears she was afraid that this time it might end in an irreparable cleavage between uncle and nephew. The former had paid Tony"s debts so often, and on the last occasion he had warned him very definitely that he would never do so again. And Ann was fain to acknowledge that one could hardly blame the old man if by this time he had really reached the limits of his patience--and his purse.
She was still brooding rather unhappily over Tony"s affairs when Robin came to claim her for a dance. He, too, seemed rather preoccupied and distrait, and as they swung out into the room together Ann cast about in her mind for some explanation of his unwonted gloom. A minute later she caught an illuminating glimpse of Cara, sitting alone by the big fire which still smouldered redly at the far end of the room, and a queer little smile of understanding curved her lips.
"You"ve only danced with Cara once this evening, Robin," she observed.
"Have you been squabbling?"
He laughed.
"Not likely. But Lady Susan caught me and trotted me round for some duty dances, and by the time those were fixed Cara had booked up a lot and we couldn"t make our programmes fit."
On a quick, sympathetic impulse Ann pulled up near one of the doorways, drawing him aside out of the throng of dancers with a light touch on his arm.
"Then go and ask her for this," she said hastily. "She"s not dancing it.
And I--I"m really rather tired. I"d love a few minutes" rest." She gave him a little push, and before he could say yea or nay she had vanished through the doorway, leaving him free to secure at least one more dance with Mrs.
Hilyard.
A good many couples were sitting about outside, partaking of ices and other forms of refreshment, and Ann made her way quickly through the hall and bent her steps in the direction of the library where, earlier in the evening, she had caught sight of a cosy fire. As she pa.s.sed, she heard the ring of a bell, followed by the sound of some late-comer being admitted.
She did not see who it was, and with a fleeting thought that whoever had chosen to arrive so late would have small chance of securing good partners, she slipped quietly into the library.
The fire had burnt down and she stirred it into a blaze before she settled herself in a low chair beside it. She was genuinely glad to be alone for a few minutes--glad of the peaceful quiet of the comfortable room with its silent, book-lined walls and padded easy chairs. She had lost the real spirit of enjoyment. Her old-time zest for dancing seemed to have deserted her entirely, and the daily necessity of playing up in public, of pretending to the world at large that all was well with her, was becoming an increasing strain.
In addition to this, she was conscious to-night of a vague sense of regret.
In another few weeks the term of Robin"s six months" notice would have expired and they would both be going away from Silverquay. He had heard of several suitable posts, but so far he had not definitely accepted any one of them. Probably within the next fortnight his decision would be made, and Ann realised that leaving Silverquay would be somewhat of a wrench. She had known both great happiness and great grief there, and a full measure of those unreckoned hours of everyday fun and laughter and enjoyment which we are all p.r.o.ne to accept so easily and without any very great grat.i.tude, only realising for how much they counted When they are suddenly taken from us. But now, as the inevitable day of departure drew nearer, Ann found herself face to face with the fact that, although she might leave Silverquay itself behind, memories both sweet and bitter would forever hold out their hands to her from the little sea-girt village. Sometimes she would not be able to evade them. However fast she might hurry through life, they would reach out and touch her, and she would feel those straining hands against her heart.
And then, across her bitter-sweet musings, came the creak of the door as some one pushed it quietly open, and entered the room.
"Ann!"
At the sound of that voice she felt as though every drop of blood in her body had rushed to her heart and were throbbing there in one great hammering pulse. Her hands gripped the arm of her chair convulsively, and slowly and fearfully she turned her head in the direction whence came the voice. Coventry was standing on the threshold of the room. A strangled cry broke from her, and she sat staring at him with wild, incredulous eyes.
For a moment the room seemed to fill with a grey, swirling mist, blurring the outlines of the furniture and the figure of the man who stood there silently in the doorway. Then the mist cleared away, and she could see his eyes bent on her with an expression of such stark bitterness and despair and longing that it hurt her to look at him. Was this her lover--who had left her in such fierce scorn and anger only a few short months ago? This man whose face was worn and ravaged with an intensity of suffering such as she had not dreamed possible! If she had grown thin in paying for that bitter parting, then he must have paid a hundredfold to be so terribly marred and altered.
"Eliot!" The word came stammeringly from her lips--hushed as one hushes the voice only in the presence of a great grief or of death itself. She bent her head, unwilling to look again on that soul"s agony so nakedly revealed.
"Yes. I have come back," he said tonelessly.
Closing the door behind him, he advanced into the room and came and stood beside her.
"Look up!" he exclaimed suddenly, almost violently. "Lift up your face, and let me see what these months have done to you."
She lifted her face mechanically, and for a full minute he stood looking down at it, reading it feature by feature, line by line--the proud, weary droop of the mouth, the quiet acceptance of pain which had lain so long in the gold-brown eyes. Then, with a groan he dropped suddenly and knelt beside her, holding his arms close round her, and laid his head against her knees. His face was hidden, and hesitatingly, with a half-shy, half-maternal gesture Ann touched the dark head pressed against her.
Moments pa.s.sed and he neither stirred nor spoke. At last she stooped over him.
"Eliot," she said quietly, "tell me why you have come back?"
Even then he did not move at once, but at last he raised his head from her knees and met her eyes.
"I"ve come back," he said slowly, "because, though I"ve doubted you, I can"t live without you. I"ve come back to ask your forgiveness--if it is still possible for you to forgive me." Then, as she would have spoken, he checked her: "No, don"t decide--don"t say anything yet. Hear what I have to tell you first."
She yielded to a curious strained insistence in his voice.
"Very well," she said gently, "you shall tell me just what you will."
He left his place by her side and went over and stood by the chimneypiece, looking down at her while he spoke, and as she listened it seemed as though all that he had fought against, believed and disbelieved, suffered and endured, was made clear to her in the terse, difficult sentences that fell one by one from his lips.
"You knew that I"d once been deceived by a woman," he said. "Her name doesn"t matter. She deceived me, and my love for her died--as surely as a man dies if you stab him to the heart. She stabbed my love--and it died, 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, G.o.d 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 h.e.l.l. 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: