Presently they all trooped into the hot-houses--warm and fragrant with the smell of freshly-watered earth, and a rather fierce-looking gardener paused in his work to exhibit this or that particular plant in which he took a special interest. But the pride of the rectory was the orchid-house, and insensibly everybody gravitated towards it.
Ann and Eliot were strolling along a little behind the rest, and she paused a moment to rifle a pot of heliotrope of a spray of cl.u.s.tered blossom.
"Heavenly stuff!" she exclaimed, sniffing it rapturously. "Smell it!" And she held it out just under Eliot"s nose, obviously expecting him to share her enthusiasm.
Nothing in the world brings back the past so poignantly as remembered scents--neither sight nor sound. A pictured face, the refrain of a song, may chance to stir the pulse of memory, but a remembered fragrance--intangible, unseen--seems to penetrate to the inmost soul itself, ripping asunder the veil which the years between have woven and refashioning the dead past for us as vividly as though it had never died.
Even the very atmosphere of the moment rushes back, and thoughts and feelings we had begun to believe inert and negligible rea.s.sert themselves with the old irresistible force with which they swayed us years ago.
As Ann light-heartedly proffered her sprig of heliotrope, Eliot"s face whitened beneath its tan, and with a swift, almost violent movement he s.n.a.t.c.hed the spray from her hand and, flinging it on to the ground, set his foot upon it.
She looked up in astonishment, then shrank back with a low exclamation of dismay as she saw his face. It was altered almost out of recognition--the mouth set in a grim straight line of bitterness, the eyes so hard that they looked cruel.
"What is it?" she faltered. "What have I done?"
With an immense effort he seemed to recover himself.
"Nothing," he returned harshly. "Only reminded me that a man is a double fool who tempts Providence a second time."
Ann quivered as though he had struck her.
"I--I don"t understand," she said, her voice hardly; more than a mere thread of sound.
He gave a short laugh.
"Don"t you? Will you understand if I tell you this--that I"m shut out from the "happy garden" by the gates of memory, now and always."
She made no answer. For the moment she was physically unable to reply.
But she understood--oh, yes, she understood quite well. He had repented that short, poignantly sweet moment of last night, repudiated all that it implied. He did not trust her--did not believe in her! And he was telling her in just so many words.
The revulsion of feeling left her stunned and dazed. She had been so entirely happy--had already given herself in spirit in response to his unspoken demand, and now with a single roughly uttered phrase he had closed the gates--those unyielding gates of memory--and thrust her outside.
And then her pride came to her aid. He should never know--never guess--how he had hurt her. With the pluck that is born of race, she smiled at him quite naturally.
"Well, you needn"t have closed your gates so hard on my wee bit of heliotrope! Look, you"ve crushed it completely!" She pointed to where it lay, broken and bruised, between them.
He picked it up, and tossed it aside--a poor little corpse of heliotrope.
"I"ll get you another piece," he said shortly.
"No, no!" she checked him, laughing. "We shall have that alarming-looking gardener on our track if we steal any more! Mr. Tempest says he doesn"t even allow him to pick his own flowers. Let"s join the others, and escape from the wrath to come."
It was pluckily done, and when they rejoined the rest of the party few would have suspected from her insouciant manner that she and Eliot Coventry had been engaged upon anything more heart-searching than a botanical discussion.
But that night Ann lay wakeful until the pale streamers of dawn fanned out across the sky, while Eliot Coventry, pacing restlessly to and fro in his silent study, gibed at himself with a savage irony because, though he had successfully steeled himself to meet, unmoved, the woman who had violated all his trust in her, a whiff of the sweet, heady scent of heliotrope had flooded his whole being with a resurgent bitterness so deep and so indomitable that it had utterly submerged his dawning faith.
CHAPTER XVIII
A BATTLE OF WILLS
One man sows and another reaps, and sometimes the harvest is a curiously unexpected one for the reaper. Coventry had sown harshness and distrust, and Brett reaped a harvest of kindness and favour in the quarter where he least antic.i.p.ated it.
Ann, exasperated by his cool impertinence at their last meeting, had merely vouchsafed him the briefest of greetings when they had met at the rectory party, and had consistently avoided him for the remainder of the afternoon.
But when, with his usual debonair a.s.surance, he presented himself at Oldstone Cottage the following day, she received him with unwonted graciousness and appeared to have entirely forgotten that he had given her any just cause for offence.
Yesterday she had felt crushed by the magnitude of the blow which had fallen on her, and in her treatment of Forrester she had almost mechanically adopted the detached and chilly att.i.tude prompted by her annoyance with him. But to-day reaction had set in, and, like many another of her s.e.x, she sought to exorcise the pain which one man had inflicted by flirting recklessly with another. It is a method which has its risks, more especially if the second man happens to be dangerously in love, but a woman hurt as Ann had been hurt does not stop to count risks, but only seeks blindly for something--anything--that may serve to distract her thoughts and keep at bay memories of which the smart and sting is too intolerable to be borne.
Forrester was quick to perceive her altered att.i.tude towards him and to take advantage of it, although, with a diplomacy foreign to his usual tactics and perhaps based on Lady Susan"s warning counsels, he kept himself well in hand. Vaguely recognising behind the alteration in Ann"s manner some impulse of which he could not fathom the source, he merely accepted the fact of the change and set himself to amuse and entertain her--to hold her interest without frightening her.
During the next few days he was with her almost constantly. One day he rowed her over to a distant promontory, when they picnicked together on the brow of the cliffs, afterwards exploring the woods which crowned them.
Another time they motored into Ferribridge, where Ann, long denied the sight of a shop window, revelled in the opportunity to spend her pennies and shopped riotously. Yet another time, on the day preceding that fixed for the dinner-party on board the _Sphinx_, they rode together on the downs--Ann mounted on d.i.c.k Turpin, Brett on a bad-tempered, unruly mare which Lady Susan had bred and which the grooms at White Windows were terrified to back.
Forrester"s horsemanship was superb. He had hands of steel and velvet, and fear was an unknown quant.i.ty to him. Ann watched the ensuing tussle between man and beast with unequivocal admiration. The mare, a big raking bay, with black points and a white blaze, sulkily obeyed her rider"s curbing hands upon the bridle whilst they rode through the lanes, but when they emerged upon the wide, swelling sweep of the downs, she evidently decided that the moment had come to a.s.sert her independence.
She commenced operations by going straight up in the air--so straight that for an instant Ann thought she must surely topple backwards, and wondered with a little breathless thrill of admiration how Brett contrived to keep his seat at all at such an angle. Possibly the mare wondered also, for, coming down once more on all four feet to find the hated inc.u.mbrance still astride her back, she reared again, immediately. Ann had a vision of two black hoofs pawing the air indignantly, then, swift as a flash of light, Brett had flung himself forward on the mare"s neck and brought his crop down on her head between the pointed ears. She came down to earth with a bang, plunged violently, then, giving an evil twist to her whole body, started bucking with all the wicked energy that was in her.
Brett had a magnificent seat, but twice she nearly had him out of the saddle, and it is certain that if he had not been blest with almost inexhaustible staying power, combined with a pliant strength of muscle, he would have come off second best in the contest of wills, for the mare seemed tireless, and looked as though she could go on bucking--and enjoying the process, too--till the crack of doom. Finding, however, that she could not rid herself of Forrester by the same methods which had proved easily successful with the stable lads at White Windows, she uttered a squeal of rage, laid back her ears, and bolted h.e.l.l-for-leather across the downs.
This proved altogether too much for d.i.c.k Turpin"s composure. He was seized with a spirited desire to go and do likewise, and for a moment or two Ann had her hands full. Gradually, however, she steadied his first wild rush to a gallop, then to a canter, and finally, as he eased into a trot, she dared to direct her attention elsewhere and look round to discover what had become of Brett.
She caught her breath with a gasp of dismay. Far ahead she could see the bay mare streaking across the downs, with Brett still square in the saddle, headed straight for the edge of the cliffs. From the way she tore along Ann knew she must be practically out of hand, and, if Brett were unable to turn her, the next few minutes would see horse and rider leap into s.p.a.ce, to fall headlong down on to the rocks two hundred feet below.
Instinctively she urged her cob in pursuit, though subconsciously aware of the utter futility of it--of her absolute helplessness to avert disaster.
Sick with horror, she could see the mare rocketing wildly towards the brink of the cliff. Almost she thought she could hear the thunderous beat of the maddened hoofs racing the beat of her own heart as it thudded in her ears, feel the wind of that reckless rush towards destruction. Nearer ... nearer to the cliff"s edge.... Ann"s whole body stiffened convulsively in antic.i.p.ation of the inevitable catastrophe.
Then, just when it seemed as though the end were come, the mare gave a shrill scream of terror and swerved violently in her stride, with a suddenness that sent her staggering to her knees. She slithered along the turf, then, scrambling to her feet, stood stock still, her head thrust forward, snorting with fright.
What followed was so surprising that Ann, about to urge her pony onward, pulled up in astonishment. In some miraculous way Brett had retained his seat in the saddle, and instead of dismounting, as she expected him to do, he lifted his arm and brought his crop hard down on the mare"s quarters, so that she leaped forward, and the next moment he was sending her along as fast as she could gallop, while his arm rose and fell like a flail, thrashing her unmercifully. They fled past Ann at racing speed, and she watched, dumb with amazement, while Brett steered a huge semicircular course on the downs, keeping the animal he rode at full stretch the whole time. When at last they came back and pulled up, the mare"s breath was sobbing in her throat, while Brett himself, hatless and deadly pale beneath his crop of ruddy hair, was almost reeling in the saddle.
Rather stiffly he dismounted and, slipping the reins loosely over his arm, walked towards Ann, the mare following him meekly, like a beaten child.
He looked f.a.gged out, but his blue eyes still gleamed with their old indomitable fire.
"Brett! How could you?" exclaimed Ann breathlessly, as they approached.
"How could I--what?"
"Gallop the mare like that, just after she"d run away? She might have bolted with you again."
He threw back his head and laughed.
"Not likely! She"ll never try those tricks with me again. Will you, old lady?"--and he rubbed the black velvet muzzle at his side with a kindly hand. To Ann"s astonishment, the mare, dripping with the sweat of sheer exhaustion, her coat striped with the hiding Brett had given her, pushed her head forward, nuzzling his sleeve.
"She bolted the first time for her own amus.e.m.e.nt," he continued. "The second gallop was for mine"--grimly. "Don"t you see, she"d have bolted again whenever the fit took her if I hadn"t punished her. The only cure was to make her gallop till she was dead beat. She knows which of us is master now. And she doesn"t bear me any grudge, either. Do you, old thing?" And he patted the mare"s streaming neck.
"I wonder she doesn"t," said Ann. "Wasn"t it--rather brutal of you?"