The Vision of Desire Part 29

"As I told you--you don't really know anything about me. I may"--forcing a smile--"have a perfectly horrid character, for all you can tell."

"You may," he replied indifferently. "It wouldn't worry me in the least if you had." Then, with a strange intensity, he went on: "I shouldn't let anything that had happened in the past stand between me and the woman I wanted--if I wanted her badly enough."

Ann stiffened.

"I think you're talking very funnily," she observed. "I don't understand you at all."

"Don't you?" Once more that swift, searching glance of the brilliant blue eyes. "In plain English, then, it wouldn't matter in the slightest to me what the woman I loved had done in the past. She may have sown her little crop of wild oats if she likes. The past is hers. The future would be mine.

And I'd take care of that"--grimly.

"This is all very interesting, of course," said Ann repressively. "But I don't see how it affects me."

"Do you really mean that?" He rapped out the question sharply--so sharply that she almost jumped.

"Certainly, I mean it," she replied with a slight accession of hauteur that sat rather charmingly upon her. She rose quickly, as a sound of voices heralded the return of the rest of the party. "And I'd prefer you not to talk to me any more--like that," she added.

Forrester's eyes followed her as she moved back into the room and began chatting pleasantly with her returning guests. There was a look of amus.e.m.e.nt in them mingled with a certain unqualified admiration.

"Game little devil!" he muttered to himself.

Soon afterwards the M.F.H.'s wife rose to go, and, graciously offering the Tempests a lift home in her car, swept them away with her. When they had taken their departure Lady Susan declared that Ann was looking tired and that it was high time she and Brett started on their homeward tramp.

"You'll be feeling quite yourself again by next week, my dear," she said.

"Just in time for Brett's party on the _Sphinx_," she added, smiling.

A faint look of hesitation crossed Ann's face. Brett saw it instantly.

"You promised to come," he said swiftly, almost as though he dared her to retract her acceptance.

Ann forced herself to meet his glance. She was conscious of an inward qualm of fear and wished to heaven that she had never accepted the invitation to dine on board his yacht. But she was determined not to show the white feather and faced him coolly. After all, in these enlightened days a man couldn't very well carry you off by force and _compel_ you to marry him!

Though she reluctantly conceded that if any man in the world were likely to attempt such a thing it would be some primitive, lawless male of the type of Brett Forrester.

"Certainly I promised," she told him. "And I've every intention of keeping my promise."

Lady Susan glanced quickly from one to the other of them and her dark brows puckered up humorously.

"What have you been doing to her, Brett?" she demanded, as she and her nephew trudged homeward side by side. "Have you quarrelled?"

"Quarrelled? Certainly not. I've only"--smiling reminiscently--"been giving her a peep into the future. It will be less of a shock when it comes," he added matter-of-factly.

If he had wished to establish himself in Ann's thoughts he had certainly succeeded. Odd s.n.a.t.c.hes of his conversation kept recurring to her mind--his coolly possessive: "_I don't like losing my belongings_," followed by that equally significant: "_The future would be mine_." It was outrageous!

Apparently Brett Forrester had never got beyond the primitive idea of the cave-man who captured his chosen mate by force of his good right arm and club, and subsequently kept her in order by an elaboration of the same simple methods.

No question of other people's rights and privileges ever seemed to enter his head. Splendidly unmoral, he had gone through life driving straight ahead for whatever he wanted, without a back thought as to whether it might be right or wrong. That aspect of the matter simply did not enter into his calculations. And because there was still a great deal of the "little boy"

in him--that "little boy" who never seems to grow up in some men--women had always found excuses and forgiveness for him, and probably always would.

Even Ann could not feel as offended at his audacity as she would like to have done. There was something disarming in the very fact that he never seemed to expect you to feel offended. And though, on that first afternoon she had been allowed downstairs, he had shaken her nerve somewhat, she was inclined to attribute this to the circ.u.mstance that she was still physically a little weak--not quite her usual buoyant self. The impression of sheer dynamic force which he had left with her was very vivid, and might have lingered with her longer, troubling her peace of mind, but for an unexpected happening which served to direct her thoughts into another channel.

It was one afternoon a day or two later, and Ann, was sitting in a sunny corner of the garden, idly dipping into the books which Cara had lent her.

The previous day the weather had been cloudy and rather cool, and Maria, the martinet, had sternly vetoed Ann's modest suggestion that she was now sufficiently recovered to go outdoors again.

"My dear life! And take your death of cold 'pon top of bein' near drowned?"

Maria had demanded witheringly. "I wish the Almighty had weighed you in a bit more common sense when He set about making you, Miss Ann--and no disrespect intended to Him!"

She flounced away indignantly. But on this balmy summer's afternoon not even the kindly old despot of the Cottage could find any objections to such a mild form of dissipation, and accordingly Ann was basking contentedly in the hot sun, thankful at last to be released from the devoted but somewhat exacting ministrations of Maria.

She felt deliciously lazy--too lazy even to concentrate on any of the novels which Cara had brought her. She had no particular craving at the moment either to be thrilled by adventures or harrowed by the partings of lovers. But a slim volume of verse held her attention intermittently. It was more suited to her idle humour, she reflected. You could read one of the brief lyrics and let the book slide down on to your knee and enjoy the quivering blue and gold, and soft, murmurous, chirruping sounds of the summer's day, while your mind played round the idea embodied in the poem.

She turned the pages idly, skimming desultorily through the verses till she came to a brief two-verse lyric which caught and held her interest.

It was a very simple little song, but it appealed to the s.h.i.+ning optimism and belief which was a fundamental part of her own nature--to that brave, st.u.r.dy confidence which had brought her, still buoyant and unspoiled and sweet, through the vicissitudes of a girlhood that might very easily have cradled an embittered woman.

"Beyond the hill there's a garden, Fas.h.i.+oned of sweetest flowers, Calling to you with its voice of gold, Telling you all that your heart may hold, Beyond the hill there's a garden fair-- My garden of happy hours.

"Dream-flowers grow in that garden, Blossom of sun and showers, There, withered hopes may bloom anew, Dreams long forgotten shall all come true, Beyond the hill there's a garden fair-- My garden of happy hours!"

[Footnote: This song, "Dream-Flowers," has been set to music by Margaret Pedler. Published by Edward Schuberth & Co., 11 East 22nd Street, New York.]

Ann's thoughts turned towards Eliot Coventry, the man who had told her he was "old enough to have lost all his illusions." Need one ever be as old as that, she wondered rather wistfully? Surely for each one of us there should be a garden where our dream-flowers grow--dream-flowers which one day we shall pluck and find they have become beautiful realities.

She was reading the verses through for the second time when a shadow seemed to move betwixt her and the sun, darkening the page. She glanced up quickly to find Coventry himself standing beside her.

"I hope I haven't startled you," he said. "Maria told me you were in the garden and left me to find my own way here. I think"--smiling--"some cakes were in imminent danger of burning if she took her eye off them, so to speak."

Ann shook hands and hospitably indicated a garden chair.

"Won't you sit down?" she said, though a trifle nervously. "Or are you in a hurry?" It had startled her to find the man of whom she had at that moment been thinking close beside her.

"I'm in no hurry," he said, sitting down. "I came to inquire how you were getting on."

A spark lit itself in her eyes.

"I wonder you didn't send your groom instead," she flashed out quickly.

"It would have saved you the trouble."

Coventry was silent a moment, while a slow flush rose under his sun-tanned skin.

"I think perhaps I deserved that," he admitted at last. His glance met and held hers. "Will you at any rate try to believe I had a good reason for doing what I did?"

She hesitated.

"But--then why have you come now? What's happened to the 'good reason'?"

"I've sc.r.a.pped it," he said tersely. Then, almost as though he were arguing the matter out with himself, he added: "A man can take risks if he likes--if the game's worth the candle."

"And--is this particular game--worth the candle?"

A sudden smile broke up the gravity of those deep, unhappy eyes of his.

"I can't answer that question--yet."