Presently the sweet summer dusk, fragrant of herb and flower, enfolded them as they stood together at the Cottage gate. A sudden silence had fallen between them. Ann tried to break it, utter some commonplace, but no words would come. At length he held out his hand, and, as hers slid within it, he spoke with a curiously tender gravity.
"Good-bye," he said. "Don"t let the cynics spoil the world for you. I hope you"ll find your happy garden--whoever doesn"t."
"I hope every one will, some day," she answered rather low. Somehow her voice didn"t seem very manageable. "Even cynics."
"I"m afraid I"ve missed the way there." Still holding her hand in his, he stared down at her with an odd, tense expression in his eyes. "Ann, do you think I shall ever find it again?"
His voice vibrated to some unlooked-for emotion, and Ann, hearing and dimly sensing the demand it held, was suddenly afraid, shrinking back into the reserves of her young, unconquered womanhood. She tried to withdraw her hand from his clasp.
Then, from somewhere above her bent head, she heard a low laugh, half tender, half amused.
"You shall tell me to-morrow, little Ann," he said.
She felt his lips against her palm, and a minute later she was standing alone by the gate with the sound of Eliot"s receding steps coming faintly to her ears through the scented dusk.
CHAPTER XVII
A SPRIG OF HELIOTROPE
The light of a pale young moon filtered in through the c.h.i.n.ks of the blind and crept towards the bed where Ann lay tremulously awake, overwhelmed by the sudden revelation--which had come to her--the revelation of her love for Eliot Coventry.
Too unselfconscious to be much given to introspection, she had never asked herself whither the last few months had been leading her. But now, an hour ago, the touch of Eliot"s lips against her hand and the sudden, pa.s.sionate demand in his voice had torn aside the veil and shown her her own heart.
With a shy, almost childlike sense of wonder, she realised that her love for him was not a thing of new or sudden growth. It had been slumbering deep within her, unrecognised and unacknowledged, ever since that moment when their eyes had first met across the Kursaal terrace at Montricheux.
Like a little closed bud it had lain curled in her heart, to open wide when the sun kissed its petals.
And that Eliot loved her in return she had now no doubt. In that brief, poignant moment of understanding, as they stood together in the warm starlit dusk, he had revealed it. She could still feel his lips crushed suddenly against her palm, and hear his shaken voice: "Ann, do you think I shall find the way?"
The way to the garden of happy hours! They would find it together. He had known many bitter hours, and out of them had learned a dogged scepticism--a cynical mistrust of the thing which is called love. And with all the young, uplifting faith that was in her Ann vowed to herself that what one woman had pulled down, destroyed, she would build up and make live again.
She was no longer frightened of love--not even of a love that by the very nature of things might exact far more from her than from most women. She would never be afraid of the big claims which life might make on her.
Hitherto, whatever had come her way she had met with a gay courage and confidence, and now that the biggest thing of all had come to her, with its shadow of incalculable demands upon her womanhood, she would go to meet that, too, with the same brave steadfastness.
With the unerring instinct of the mother-woman, she realised how Eliot had fought against his love for her, tried to withstand it, utterly distrustful of her s.e.x, and she smiled with a tenderly amused indulgence as she recalled his sudden withdrawals and brusquenesses. His sending down a groom to inquire how she was--it had hurt her badly at the time to think he cared so little. But now she recognised that it was because he cared so much--so much that he had begun to be afraid. So he had hidden behind his groom!
And with the realisation of how much he cared--_must_ care, to have striven so hard to hide and fight it down--she was shaken with a shy, quivering ecstasy, a hesitant sweetness of need and longing that pulsed through every nerve of her. The thought of the morrow almost frightened her. He would come to-morrow--come to tell her all that he had left unsaid, to claim that promise of surrender which a woman both loves and fears to give.
... It was late when at last she slept, and she woke to find the sunlight streaming in through her window, and Maria standing at her bedside, an appetising breakfast-tray in her hands and a world of shrewd suspicion in her twinkling eyes. Last night she had chanced to look out of her kitchen window--which admitted of a slanting glimpse of the Cottage gateway--and had drawn her own deductions accordingly.
"You"ve had a brave sleep, Miss Ann," she observed, as she deposited the tray she was carrying on a small table beside the bed. "Mr. Coventry stayed late, I reckon?"
Ann flushed a little, smiling. She did not resent the kindly inquisitiveness which gleamed at her out of Maria"s sharp old eyes, but she had no mind to gratify it at the moment.
"Not very late. I think he left by about eleven o"clock," she answered, with quite a good a.s.sumption of indifference. "But I expect being out in the fresh air for the first time for several days made me sleep rather soundly. Why didn"t you call me as usual? I"m not an invalid any longer, you know."
"I thought if so be you"d a mind to sleep on, "twouldn"t do you no harm,"
vouchsafed Maria rather grumpily. She was inwardly burning with curiosity, but felt unequal to the task of coping with her young mistress"s facility for eluding tentative inquiries, so she stumped downstairs to the kitchen regions, and left her to consume her breakfast in solitude.
Ann hurried through the meal as quickly as possible. She felt tremendously alive to-day, and the breezy sunshiny morning, the blue sky with white fleecy clouds blowing across it, the wheeling swallows, all seemed curiously in accord with her mood. She rose and, dressing quickly, went about her various household duties with a subconscious desire to get them finished and out of the way as soon as possible, and thus be free for whatever the day might bring forth.
That afternoon she and Robin were due at the rectory for tea. It was what Miss Caroline called her "day," a bi-monthly occasion when she sat in state--and a villainous shade of mauve satin--to receive visitors. During the winter this sacred rite resolved itself chiefly into an opportunity for tea and feminine gossip in a hot, ill-ventilated room, but in the summer it was rather a pleasant little function. Tea was served in the pretty old rectory garden, and the proceedings developed on the lines of an informal garden-party at which most of the neighbours, of both s.e.xes, showed up. For although Miss Caroline was of too inquiring a mind to be very popular, the rector himself was beloved by men and women alike.
The morning hours seemed to Ann interminably long. Insensibly she was keyed up to a delicate pitch of expectancy, her ear nervously alert for the sound of a familiar footstep on the flagged path. And as the leaden moments crawled by, and the warm, sunshiny silence which enfolded the Cottage remained unbroken, a vague sense of apprehension crept into her heart.
The glamour of those moments alone with Eliot at the gate, the pulsating sweetness of the thoughts which, in the night, had sent little quivering rivulets of fire racing through her veins, grew dim and uncertain. Had she misunderstood--mistaken him? The bare idea sent a swift stab of fear through her whole being. But in a few moments her faith in the man she loved returned, and with it her serenity. She was ready to laugh at herself. Probably, she reflected, he had merely been detained by some unexpected piece of business which had cropped up necessitating his attention--and, as a matter of fact, this was precisely what had occurred.
So that when at length she and Robin made their way down a shady path and emerged on to the rectory lawn, dotted about with groups of people, and she perceived Coventry"s tall, lean figure in the distance, leaning rather moodily against a tree, she reproached herself for having doubted him even for an instant. While she was greeting Miss Caroline and the rector her heart seemed to be singing a little paean of happiness all to itself.
"... so glad to see you." Ann came suddenly down to earth, and tried to focus her attention on. Miss Caroline"s hospitable gabble. "Such a lot of people here this afternoon, too.... I"m so pleased. And a _beautiful_ day, isn"t it? Even Mr. Coventry has been tempted out of his sh.e.l.l. He"ll be quite a social acquisition to the neighbourhood soon, at this rate."
She turned to envelop Robin in a similar flood of meaningless prattle, while Ann and Tempest sauntered on together.
"Yes," said the latter, his eyes resting thoughtfully on Eliot"s distant figure. "It"s a real joy to me to see Coventry here. He"s too much of a hermit. I"m afraid, though," he admitted with a rueful laugh, "I rather badgered him into coming. And I expect now he is here he"s not exactly blessing me for my persistency! Will you go and be very nice to him, Ann"--he had dropped into the friendly usage of her Christian name, and Ann liked it--"and get me out of hot water?"
"I don"t suppose you"re in it very deeply," she returned, with some amus.e.m.e.nt at his air of apprehension.
"Well, I really _made_ him come," confessed the rector apologetically: "I simply wouldn"t take "no"."
"And you know perfectly well that n.o.body ever resents what you "make"
them do," said Ann, smiling. ""The rector have a way with him," as Maria remarked the other day."
Tempest"s mouth curved in a responsive smile
"Did she? Nice woman, your Maria Coombe. But I expect the real truth of the matter is that the rector has a particularly kind and long-suffering flock."
"A good shepherd makes a good flock, I think," said Ann softly. And for the hundredth time wondered how so human and lovable a man came to possess a sister of Miss Caroline"s description.
"Ha! There you are, Coventry!" exclaimed Tempest, as they came abreast of the solitary figure. "I"ve just been telling Miss Lovell that I fancied you weren"t altogether blessing me for having lured you out of your lair to this sort of parish pow-wow."
"Not at all. It"s very good of people like you and Lady Susan to bother about me, seeing that, even when I am dug up, I"m afraid I"m very poor company."
Eliot smiled rather briefly as he answered, but there was a certain friendly good-humour in his eyes as they rested on the other man"s face. As Ann had remarked, no one ever resented the rector"s kindly strategy.
"Have either of you seen the greenhouses?" demanded Tempest presently. "No?
Oh, you must. We"re rather conceited over our show of flowers this year."
Accordingly they progressed towards the hot-houses, collecting Lady Susan and Cara, and one or two other scattered guests, as they went. Ann felt hemmed in. It began to look rather as though she and Eliot would not get a moment to themselves throughout the afternoon. Then she found him at her side, and something in the quickly amused glance of his eyes, as they swept over the gradually increasing numbers of the party, and then met her own, served to comfort her.
"The world is too much with us," he murmured.
After that it seemed as though they were companions in distress, linked by a secret, wordless understanding, and Ann walked on with a lighter heart.
Cara was a few paces ahead, flanked by Robin and the local doctor, who were each endeavouring to secure her undivided attention. She was looking very lovely, in an elusive frock of some ephemeral material veiling a delicate prismatic undertone of colour. She always dressed rather wonderfully, every detail perfect. There was a kind of frail, worldly charm about her clothes--the sort of charm you never find in the clothes of a thoroughly good and virtuous woman, as Lady Susan trenchantly observed one day.
Ann herself was acutely conscious of that faintly languorous, mysterious atmosphere of charm with which Mrs. Hilyard seemed to be invested, and she had sometimes wondered how Eliot was able to resist it and treat her with the same cool detachment which he accorded to other people. To her there was something magnetic in Cara"s personality. Perhaps her very silence about herself, and the vague background of an unhappy marriage of which Ann was dimly aware, contributed towards it. She glanced up to see Eliot gazing straight ahead, apparently supremely oblivious of that slender, gracious figure in front, moving lightly betwixt Robin and the stooping, rather clever-looking doctor.