A NEW ACQUAINTANCE
August had come in on a wave of such breathless heat that each day the
weather-wise foretold a thunderstorm. But, although the heavy, sultry air
and lowering skies seemed pregnant with impending tempest, with every
evening would come a clearer atmosphere and all signs of thunder disappear
until the following day, when the stifling heat closed down once more like
an invisible pall.
The pleasantest spot in the vicinity of Oldstone Cottage was undoubtedly a
certain corner of the garden where stood a venerable oak whose interlacing
branches spread themselves into a cool green canopy, and here, in a hammock
slung from one great limb of the tree to another, Ann had taken refuge. A
book lay open on her knee, but, yielding to the languor induced by the
oppressive heat, she had ceased to make even a pretence at reading and
leaned back in the hammock, hands clasped behind her head, idly reviewing
the happenings of the last few weeks.
The realisation that actually no more than a month had elapsed since her
arrival at Silverquay amazed her. It seemed almost incredible, so swiftly
and surely had the new life built itself up round her, with quick, deft
touches--a friend here, an adopted custom there, new interests and
occupations that had already become an accepted part of the day's routine.
Ann was the last person in the world to recognise how much of this was due
to her own individual personality. That eager vitality of hers went
half-way to meet life. She did not wait supinely for things to happen, but
instinctively looked round to see what she could herself accomplish. As she
had laughingly told Eliot Coventry, she was not in the least an idle
person--and the newly-wired chicken-run and hen-coops already established
in a corner of a field adjoining the Cottage garden testified to the
veracity of the statement. It was a small thing, perhaps, but its prompt
achievement was characteristic.
Equally characteristic were the new friendships she was forming. Where some
people would find only neighbours, Ann's spontaneous, warm-hearted nature
discovered friends. Brian Tempest already counted as one, and her
acquaintance with Cara Hilyard, begun so unconventionally, was rapidly
deepening into a pleasant intimacy.
She had discarded her original theory that some long-ago romance linked
Eliot Coventry and Mrs. Hilyard together. Neither of them appeared to her
to be in the least thrilled by the fact of the other's proximity in the
neighbourhood, nor did either make any obvious effort to avoid or cultivate
the other's society. If they chanced to meet they exchanged civilities as
the merest acquaintances might do, and gradually Ann came to believe that
their knowledge of each other was based on nothing more profound than a
slight friendship of many years ago, which had more or less petered out
with the passage of time.
Cara, for all her quick sympathy and eager friendship, was reticent as
regards the past, and Ann's attitude towards her held an element of that
loyal, enthusiastic devotion which an older woman not infrequently inspires
in one considerably younger than herself--a devotion which accepts things
as they are and has no wish to pry into the secrets of the past.
One circumstance of Cara's former life had come to Ann's knowledge
unavoidably--the fact that her husband, Dene Hilyard, had ill-treated her.
A most trifling accident had served to reveal it. She and Ann had been
gathering roses together in the Priory garden, and, in straining up to
reach a particularly lovely bloom that hung from the roof of the pergola,
Cara's thin muslin sleeve had caught on a projecting nail which had ripped
it apart from shoulder to elbow. As the torn sleeve fell hack it revealed a
trickle of blood where the nail's sharp point had scored the skin, and
above that, marring the whiteness of the upper arm, an ugly, discoloured
scar. Cara made a hasty movement to conceal it, catching the gaping edges
of the sleeve together with her hand. Then, realising that it was too late,
she let them fall apart again and met Ann's horrified eyes with a long,
inscrutable gaze.
"Yes, it's ugly, isn't it?" she said bitterly. "All my married life
was--ugly."
"What do you mean?" Ann's voice shook. She felt as though she knew what was
coming--the story of how Cara came by that dreadful scar--and fought
against the knowledge with incredulous horror.
"Dene... my husband... he'd been reading a book which described how they
branded a woman... and he tried..." She broke off, shivering violently.
"No--_no_!" Urgently the denial sprang from Ann's stricken lips, as though
she sought by the sheer imperative violence of her disclaimer to make this
horrible thing untrue.
Cara nodded her head slowly.
"It's quite true... he used to drink... he was half mad at times. That was
one of them."
She had never again referred to the matter, nor to any other episode of her
unhappy married life, but since that day Ann had always the consciousness
of something unspeakably hideous which had lain in the background of Cara
Hilyard's life, marring it utterly, and the intense sympathy it aroused
within her had quickened the growth of the friendship between them.
One circumstance which had assisted greatly in the "settling down" process,
as far as Ann was concerned, had been Lady Susan's unexpectedly early
return from Paris. The end of the first fortnight of July had found her
back at White Windows.
"The heat was intolerable, my dear!" she told Ann. "And the dust. Not even
for the sake of a new rig-out could I endure it. I thought of cool little
Silverquay with the nice clean sea washing its doorstep every morning--and
I bolted. Madame Antoinette has probably been, wringing her hands over my
half-completed garments ever since!"
She was immensely entertained when Ann acquainted her with the identity of
the man who had come to her assistance on the night of the Venetian fête,
and chuckled enjoyably.
"Poor man! He must be frightfully bored at finding you here--established on
his very threshold, so to speak! Confirmed misogynists should never indulge
in the rescuing stunt--it's so liable to involve them in unexpected
consequences. How does he bear up under the discovery?"
"Not at all well," acknowledged Ann ruefully. "Sometimes I think he almost
regrets he didn't let me drown comfortably in the lake while he had the
chance!"
The wish she had expressed to Maria concerning her brother's then unknown
employer--that she hoped he wouldn't make a habit of dropping in at the
Cottage during the mornings--had certainly been very literally fulfilled.
Rarely did Eliot Coventry put in an appearance at Oldstone Cottage at all,
and if the exigencies of business matters took him there on any occasion
when Robin chanced to be out, he usually contrived only to leave a note or
message for him with Maria. More often than not, however, he would merely
send word to him, asking him to come up and see him at Heronsmere. To Ann,
puzzled and secretly somewhat piqued, it seemed as though he were
studiously avoiding her. Once she mentioned the subject to Robin,
introducing it casually into the conversation as though it were a matter of
no moment--as is the way of women in regard to anything which touches them
closely. Robin had dismissed it easily.
"Oh, you mustn't think anything of that," he assured her. "I told
you--women don't enter much into Coventry's life. He's a bit of a recluse
as far as your sex is concerned."
"He was quite friendly that first morning he came here," objected Ann.
It was that which puzzled her--the apparently causeless change in his
attitude. It was true that upon, first recognising in his agent's sister
the girl he had rescued from her difficulties on the night of the Fête des
Narcisses he had appeared disconcerted and by no means pleased to renew the
acquaintance. But afterwards he had thawed considerably, and had even
suggested that they should be friends. And now he was behaving as though he
had repented the suggestion and were determined to show her that he had. It
was not that he was a snob. She was absolutely certain that the fact that
the unknown heroine of the lake episode had proved to be merely the sister
of his estate agent would not have the most fractional weight with Eliot
Coventry. And as she sat swinging idly in the hammock, letting her thoughts
stray back over her few brief meetings with him, she felt utterly baffled
to interpret his behaviour.
Rather irritably she tried to dismiss the matter from her thoughts, but it
persisted in occupying the foreground of her mind, and at last, in
desperation, she picked up her discarded book and began to read. For a few
moments she succeeded in concentrating her attention. Then gradually, as
the sunlight, piercing through the branches overhead, flickered dazzlingly
on the surface of the paper, the black and white of the printed page ran
together in a blur of grey and her eyes closed drowsily. With an effort she
forced them open, although lifting her eyelids seemed like raising leaden
shutters.
_"The rain was now coming down in torrents"_ was the first sentence which
met her glance. She read the phrase over two or three times as though it
were some abstruse statement in mathematics. Its incongruousness annoyed
her. It was nonsense for any one to write like that. Why, it was so hot...
so hot that... The book, falling from her hand, slipped over the side of
the hammock and dropped almost soundlessly on to the thick turf below.
The next thing of which she was conscious was of waking suddenly to the
sound of a crisp masculine voice remarking succinctly and on a note of
intense astonishment:
"Well, I'm hanged!"
Ann stirred and rather unwillingly opened her eyes to find herself gazing
straight up into other eyes so vividly blue as to be almost startling. They
were looking down at her with a mixture of amusement and unmistakable
admiration.
"I've been asleep," she said unnecessarily, still hardly thoroughly awake.
"You have," agreed the owner of the blue eyes. "And I very nearly took the
usual privilege accorded to the prince who's told off to waken the sleeping
beauty."
At that Ann woke up very completely. The speech savoured of impertinence,
and she resented it accordingly, yet it had been so gaily uttered, with a
sort of confiding audacity which appeared to take it for granted that she
would not be offended, that she found it difficult to feel as righteously
indignant as the occasion merited.
"Who are you?" she demanded, sitting up hastily and eyeing the intruder
with extreme disfavour. He was hatless, and the sun glinted on dark red
locks of the same warm, burnished hue as the skin of a horse-chestnut. The
intensely blue eyes gleamed at her from under dominant, strongly-marked
brows, and the beaky, high-bridged nose, long-lipped mouth, and stubborn
chin all connoted the same arrogant virility.
"I'm Forrester--Brett Forrester, and very much at your service," he replied
cheerfully.
So this was Lady Susan's "scapegrace nephew"! This gay, confident person
who strode forcefully into your garden without so much as a
"by-your-leave," and who conveyed the impression that he would stride
forcefully into your life, equally without permission, if it so pleased
him. Ann was aware of something extraordinarily vital about the man that
attracted her in spite of her first instinctive feeling of aversion.
"And what are you doing in my garden?" she asked.
His blue eyes swept the girl's slim, supple figure as she lay in the
hammock with a long, raking glance that missed nothing and then came back
to her face.
"If I answered that question truthfully you'd pretend to be offended," he
said.
"I shouldn't pretend--anything," she retorted. "Please tell me why you're
here."
"Oh, that's quite a different proposition! I can answer that one. I'm here
as the emissary of my respected Aunt Susan."
"Lady Susan?"
"Yes. We've just walked over from White Windows, and when we arrived and
found you were out, and that the delightful old Devonshire party who opened
the door to us could supply no recent data concerning your whereabouts,
Aunt Susan collapsed into a comfortable chair and sent me to spy out the
land."
Ann sprang up out of the hammock.
"How good of her to have walked over in all this heat!" she said, preparing
to lead the way back to the house.
"It was my doing," he replied with an air of complacency, as they walked on
together. "I only arrived yesterday and she talked so much about you that I
was consumed with a quite pardonable anxiety to meet you."
"I hope you found it worth the three-mile walk," commented Ann dryly.
"Oh, quite," he returned with conviction. "I always like making new
friends."
The cool assurance of the assertion annoyed her.
"We've hardly got to that stage yet," she observed distantly.
"No. But we shall do"--confidently. "Perhaps further than that,
ultimately."
She threw him a quick glance and encountered his eyes fixed on her with a
kind of gay bravado--like that of a small boy experimenting how far he dare
go. It irritated her--this sanguine assumption of his that he was going to
count for something in her life. She walked on more quickly.
"Aren't you rather a conceited person?" she asked mildly.
"I'd prefer to call it having decided ideas," he returned.
"Well, you must know you can't force your ideas on other people."
"Can't I?" He halted in the middle of the path and faced her. "Do you
really think that?"
Ann avoided meeting his glance, but she felt it playing over her like
lightning over a summer sky. It was as though he had flung down a challenge
and dared her to pick it up. She temporised.
"Do I think--what? I've almost forgotten what we were talking about."
"No, you haven't," he returned bluntly. "You're merely evading the
question--as every woman does when she's afraid to answer."
"I'm not afraid!" exclaimed Ann indignantly. "I certainly shouldn't be
afraid of you," she added, emphasising the final pronoun pointedly.
"Shouldn't you?" He looked down at her with an odd intentness. "Do you
know, I think I should rather like to make you--afraid of me."
In spite of herself Ann shrank a little inwardly. She was suddenly
conscious of a sense of the man's force, of the dogged tenacity of purpose
of which he might be capable. He had not been dowered with that conquering
nose and those dare-devil, reckless eyes for nothing! She could imagine him
riding rough-shod over anything and any one in order to attain his ends.
She contrived a laugh.
"I hope you won't attempt such a thing," she said, endeavouring to speak
lightly. "If you do, I shall appeal to Lady Susan for protection."
"That wouldn't help you any," he assured her. "Aunt Susan would let you
down quite shamelessly. She keeps a permanently soft spot in her heart for
disreputable characters--like me."
When they reached the house they discovered Lady Susan located in the
easiest chair she could find, placidly smoking a cigarette, her
gold-knobbed ebony stick--inseparable companion of her walks
abroad--propped up beside her. From outside the front door could be heard
sundry scratchings and appealing whines, punctuated by an occasional
hopeful bark, which emanated from the bunch of dogs without whom she was
rarely to be seen in Silverquay. They went by the generic name of the
Tribes of Israel--a gentle reference to their tendency to multiply, and
they ran the whole gamut of canine rank, varying in degree from a pedigree
prize-winner to a mongrel Irish terrier which Lady Susan had picked up in a
half-starved condition in a London side-street and had promptly adopted.
The last-named was probably her favourite, since, as Forrester had
remarked, she had a perennially soft spot in her heart for disreputable
characters.
"My dear," she said, as Ann stooped and kissed her, "I do hope and pray
that your adorable Maria Coombe is at this moment concerning herself with
the making of tea. Much as I love you, I shouldn't have toiled over here in
this appalling heat but for this graceless nephew of mine, who would give
me no peace till I did. So I chose the lesser evil."
Forrester seemed supremely unrepentant, but Ann noticed that when tea
appeared he waited rather charmingly on Lady Susan, anticipating her wants
even down to the particular brand of cigarette she preferred to smoke when,
after swallowing three cups of scaldingly hot tea _à la Russe_, she
pronounced her thirst satisfactorily assuaged. There was a certain
half-humorous, half-tender indulgence in his manner towards her, and Ann
could imagine that he would know very well how to spoil the woman he loved.
But he would master her completely first. Of that she felt sure.
It appeared that he had descended upon White Windows unexpectedly. He had
been cruising round the coast and, without troubling to apprise Lady Susan
of his intention, had suddenly elected to pay her a visit, and his yacht,
the _Sphinx_, was now lying at anchor in Silverquay Bay.
"And even now I don't know how long he proposes staying!" smiled his aunt.
"How long?" He smiled back at her. "The question is, how long will you put
up with me? I don't think--now"--with a swift, audacious glance which Ann
refused to meet--"that I can do better than throw myself on the hospitality
of White Windows for the remainder of the summer."
"My dear boy"--Lady Susan beamed. "Will you really? I should love to have
you; you know that. And, after all"--with a twinkle--"Silverquay has its
amusements. We take tea with each other, and boat, and bathe--"
"I can do all those things," said Forrester modestly. He turned suddenly to
Ann. "Can you swim?"
"I can keep up for about two strokes," she replied, smiling. "After that,
overcome by my own prowess, I sink like a stone."
"Then I'll teach you," he said. "We'll begin to-morrow. What time and where
do you generally bathe?"
Ann raised one or two feeble objections, but they were promptly overruled,
and before she quite knew how it had happened she found herself committed
to a promise that she would be at Berrier Cove the following morning,
prepared to take a first lesson in the art of swimming.
"It's really a very sensible idea," approved Lady Susan. "If you'd actually
tipped over into Lac Léman that night, you'd certainly have gone to the
bottom if you'd had to depend on your own unaided efforts."
"What happened?" asked Forrester with interest, and Lady Susan embarked on
a graphic account of Ann's adventure during the progress of the Venetian
fête at Montricheux, and of the way in which Eliot Coventry had come to her
rescue.
"Coventry? Is that the morose-looking individual who lives at Heronsmere?"
inquired Brett.
Ann glanced up in some surprise.
"Oh, have you met him already?"
"We came across him with Brian Tempest on our way here," explained Lady
Susan. "The two men are rather a study in contrasts," she added. "Brian is
really a great dear. I always think it's so clever of him to have preserved
his faith in human nature when he's condemned to live with that
oil-and-vinegar sister of his. It may be very unchristian of me"--with a
small schoolboy grin--"but I simply can't abide Caroline Tempest!"
Shortly afterwards she professed herself sufficiently rested to essay the
return journey to White Windows.
"I shall certainly come down to the Cove to-morrow and watch you disporting
yourselves in the briny," she said, as she kissed Ann good-bye. "Does Robin
bathe with you?"
"When he has time. But Cara Hilyard is sure to be there. She swims like a
fish."
"That's the lovely lady who lives at the Priory, isn't it? You'll have to
meet her, Brett."
"If she is a Mrs. Dene Hilyard, I know her already," he answered. "I used
to meet her with her husband in London sometimes--and a pretty brute he
was! I nearly ran away with her just to get her out of his clutches," he
added lightly.
"Well, she's out of them now, poor soul, for keeps," said Lady Susan.
Later, as they walked home together across the fields, accompanied by the
now jubilant Tribes of Israel, she returned to the subject.
"If you'll promise not to discredit me by running away with her, Brett,
we'll go over to see your friend at the Priory. I should have to call, in
any case, before long."
"You needn't be afraid. There's not the remotest danger of my wanting to
run off with her."
"She's rather a beautiful person," warned Lady Susan laughingly. "You'll
probably lose your heart to her within half an hour."
"I've only done such a thing once in my life," he replied coolly. "I'm not
likely to do it again."
"When was that, Brett?" she asked with some curiosity. She had never heard
of his having any serious love-affair.
"To-day," he replied unexpectedly.
Lady Susan paused and surveyed him with unfeigned astonishment.
"Ann?" she cried. "Do you mean you've fallen in love with my little
Ann--already?"
"I mean rather more than that," he said deliberately. "I mean that I'm
going to marry your little Ann."
His aunt regarded him with a gleam of amusement.
"Ann Lovell is a young woman with a very decided mind of her own," she
observed. "It's just conceivable she might refuse you."
Forrester returned her glance with eyes like blue steel.
"It wouldn't make a bit of difference if she did," he said laconically.