"Will you have a drink?"
Brett a.s.sented amicably and established himself in a chair by the fire, the puppy sprawling beatifically across his knees while he pulled its satin-smooth ears with caressing fingers.
"You can never trust red hair," he went on, accepting the drink Coventry had mixed for him. Then, catching the other"s eye, he threw back his head and laughed with that impudent, friendly charm of his that discounted half his deviltries. "Oh, I can guess what you"re thinking! And you"re quite right. I ought to know--because I"m one of the red-headed tribe myself."
"It certainly pa.s.sed through my mind," admitted Eliot.
"Well, you can"t trust "em. It"s true. There"s always a bit of the devil in them. And I happen to know that that demure little person down at your cottage has sown quite a sprinkling of wild oats."
"Wild oats in a woman are a very different thing from wild oats in a man,"
remarked Eliot, pouring himself out a whisky.
"Yes. But they"re a deal more nearly related nowadays than they were before the war. Staying the night at a hotel with a man pal is sailing a trifle near the wind, don"t you think? Anyway, it"s carrying a flirtation rather far."
The syphon, beneath Eliot"s sudden pressure, squirted out a torrent of soda. Brett"s eyes scintillated as he watched the slight accident.
"You"re implying a good deal, Forrester," said Eliot gravely, as he dried his coat with his handkerchief.
"Oh, I know what I"m talking about. I was there, you see, and caught the little limb of Satan red-handed, so to speak--though, of course, she doesn"t know it." Then, as Eliot remained stonily silent, he proceeded loquaciously: "It was last June or thereabouts. I was stopping a night or two at the Hotel de Loup, up in the mountains above Montricheux--know it?"
"Yes, I know it," replied Coventry mechanically.
"There wasn"t a soul in the place except me--out of the season, you know. And one beastly cold night, when I marched into the hotel after a confounded long tramp, who should I see but a man I knew saying good-night to an uncommonly pretty girl at the bottom of the stairs. I kept tactfully out of the way till the good-nights were over, as I thought at first he must have committed matrimony while I"d been abroad and that they were on their honeymoon. I never got the chance to ask him, as he bolted past me down one of the corridors before I had time to speak. So I took a squint at the hotel visitors" book and found they"d registered as "G. Smith and sister"! That settled it. The chap"s name wasn"t Smith, and I happened to know he"d never had a sister--either by that name or any other! So I just chuckled quietly to myself and mentally congratulated him on his good taste--the girl was quite pretty enough to excuse a slight deviation from the strict and narrow path." He paused to light a fresh cigarette, his eyes, between narrowed lids, raking the other man"s impenetrable face.
Throughout the telling of the story Coventry had sat motionless, like a figure carved in stone. Only, as the recital proceeded, his eyes hardened slightly and his closed lips straightened into a stern, inflexible line.
Having lit his cigarette, Forrester airily resumed the thread of his narrative.
"What follows is really rather interesting--the long arm of coincidence with a vengeance! My revered aunt brings me to Oldstone Cottage and sends me into the garden on a voyage of discovery to find Miss Lovell. And I find her asleep in the hammock--the identical young woman I"d seen up at the Dents de Loup with Tony Brabazon."
"_Brabazon!_" The name seemed jerked out of Coventry"s lips without his own volition. A curious greyish pallor had overspread his face, and behind the hardness of his eyes smouldered a savage fire that seemed to wax and wane, struggling for release.
"Yes, Brabazon," replied Brett carelessly. "It seems he and old Sir Philip and Aunt Susan and Miss Lovell were all stopping at Montricheux. I"d no idea my aunt was staying there, or I"d have run down and looked her up. But we hardly ever correspond. My address is always such a doubtful quant.i.ty"--with a laugh. "You see, I"m liable to dash off to the ends of the earth at a moment"s notice, if the spirit moves me." He rose, tucking the puppy under his arm. "Well, I must be getting back. Aunt Susan will be on tenterhooks till she sees this youngster."
Coventry accompanied him to the door and signalled to the groom who was walking Brett"s horse slowly up and down.
"I shouldn"t repeat that story to any one, if I were you, Forrester," he said, speaking with some effort, as they shook hands.
"Good Lord! Not I! What do you take me for?" laughed Brett easily. "I only thought it might amuse you, Lovell being your agent."
The groom brought the horse and trap to a standstill in front of the house door, and touched his hat.
"I"ve kept the horse moving about, sir, as he was a bit hot," he said, addressing Brett.
The latter nodded and tipped the man generously. Meanness, at least, was not included amongst his many faults.
"Quite right," he replied. "Got a basket handy for the pup?"
The man lifted down from the front of the dog-cart a basket he had put there in readiness, and the puppy, wailing pathetically, was deposited inside.
"Never mind, old man," observed Brett, bestowing a final rea.s.suring pat on the small black and tan head. "It"ll soon be over."
A minute later he was driving swiftly down the avenue, an odd expression of mingled triumph and amus.e.m.e.nt in his eyes.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE TEETH OF THE WOLF
The gate clicked and Ann peeped rosily out of her bedroom window. She had been expecting that click all morning--waiting for it with every sense alert and with absurd, delicious little thrills of happiness chasing each other through her veins. Several disappointing clicks had preceded it--one which merely revealed a new baker"s boy who hadn"t troubled to discover whether the Cottage boasted a back-door or not, and another heralding the entry of Billy Brewster, armed with a stout broom and prepared to sweep the flagged path clean of the minutest particle of dust. So that Ann had at last been reluctantly compelled to fall back on the same explanation which had served her once before--that Eliot must have been detained at Heronsmere by unexpected business.
But now the afternoon had brought the desired click of the gate, and she could see his tall, well-knit figure striding up the path below. She leaned out of the window and called to him:
"Coo-ee! I"m up here!"
The charming voice, vibrant with that tender, indescribable inflection which a woman"s voice holds only for the one beloved man, floated down to him, and instinctively he looked up. For an instant his glance lingered, and ever afterwards there remained stamped indelibly upon his memory the impression of her as she leaned there like the Blessed Damozel leaning "out from the gold bar of Heaven."
The sun glinted on her hair, turning it into a nimbus of ruddy gold, and there was something delicately flower-like in the droop of her small bent head on its slender throat. It reminded him of a harebell.
His expression hardened as he fought down the tide of longing which surged up within him at the sight of her, and from some disused corner of his subconscious mind the lines of the old Persian Tentmaker seemed to leap out at him and mock him:
"Heav"n but the Vision of fulfill"d Desire, And h.e.l.l the Shadow from a Soul on fire."
The vision which had been his was shattered, utterly destroyed--destined to be forever unfulfilled.
... But Ann remained joyfully oblivious of anything amiss.
"Walk straight in," she called through the window. "I"m coming down." And with a gay wave of her hand she withdrew into the room. Followed a light sound of footsteps on the stairs, and a minute later the door of the living-room flew open to admit her.
Eliot, who had been standing with his back to the room, staring out of the window, wheeled round as she came towards him with hurrying feet and thrust her eager hands into his.
"You"ve come at last! I thought you"d be here the minute after breakfast,"
she began, her face breaking into smiles. "If you were a story-book hero you would have been!... Oh, I know you"ll say it was business that kept you. But that"s only an old married man"s excuse"--mirthfully. "I shan"t allow you to offer it to me until we"ve been married for years and years!"
Thus far she had run on gaily with her tender nonsense, but now she checked herself suddenly as she read no answering smile on his face and felt her hands lie flaccidly ungripped in his.
"Eliot"--she drew back a little--"why don"t you speak? What is it?" Her hands clutched his spasmodically, and a sudden frightened look blurred the radiance in her eyes. "Oh, my dear! What is it? Have you had bad news?"
Very slowly, but with a strange, deliberate significance, he freed his hands from her clasp and put her away from him.
"Yes," he said quietly, "I"ve had--news." At the frozen calmness of his tones she shrank back as one shrinks from the numbing cold of the still air that hangs above black ice.
"What is it?" she breathed. "Not bad news--for us?"
Her eyes were fastened on his face, searching it wildly. A quick and terrible fear clamoured at her heart. Was there something in the past, something of which she had no knowledge, that could arise--_now_--to separate them from each other? That long-ago episode which had wrecked his youth--had the woman who had figured in it some material hold upon him?
Could she--was it possible she could still come between them in some way?
Ann had heard of such things. It seemed to her as though, betwixt herself and Eliot, there hovered a dim, formless shadow, vague and nebulous--a shadow which had crept silently out from some memory-haunted corner of the past.