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 Hell 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.
"Not bad news--for us?" she repeated quiveringly.
"That depends upon how you choose to regard it," he replied. "Ann"--the
ice broke up and he came to the point with a suddenness that was almost
brutal--"why haven't you been straight with me?"
"Straight with you?" she repeated wonderingly. "But I have been straight
with you."
"What a woman would call straight, I suppose!" he flung back. "Which means
concealing everything that you think won't be found out."
The indignant colour rushed up into her face, then receded, leaving it
deadly pale.
"But I have nothing to conceal," she answered. "Eliot--I don't
understand--"
"Don't you?" lie said, and the measureless contempt in his voice stung like
the lash of a whip. "Think back a bit! Is there nothing you've kept from
me which I ought to have known--nothing which makes the love you professed
only last night no more than a sham?"
For a moment Ann gazed at him in speechless silence. Then a low, passionate
denial left her lips.
"Nothing!" she said.
Eliot took two strides towards her, and, gripping her by the shoulders,
dragged her closer to the window so that the remorseless sunlight poured
down on to her face.
"Repeat that!" he commanded savagely. "Will you dare to repeat that--that
unutterable lie?"
His eyes, blazing with a terrible anger that seemed, to scorch her like
a flame, searched her face with a scrutiny so pitiless, so implacably
incredulous, that it was almost unbearable. But she endured it, and her
clear golden eyes met his unflinchingly.
"It was the truth!" she said. Her voice sounded to herself as though it
came from a great distance away. It had an odd, tinny sound like cracked
metal.
He released her suddenly, almost flinging her from him, and she staggered
a little, catching at the back of a chair to steady herself. His roughness
roused her spirit.
"Eliot! Are you mad?" she exclaimed.
He stared at her, that burning ferocity of almost uncontrollable anger
which had possessed him dying slowly out of his face.
"Mad?" he said grimly. "No, I'm not mad--now. I was mad yesterday--when I
believed in you."
The stark agony in his voice smote her to the heart.
"Eliot"--she moved towards him, her hands held out appealingly--"what have
I done? Won't you tell me? I don't understand."
"No?" His lips drew back over his teeth in a grimace that was a dreadful
travesty of a smile. "Then I'll ask you a simple question. Perhaps--after
that--you'll understand. Have you ever stayed at the Hotel de Loup?"
"The Hotel de Loup? Why--" The word "yes" was on the tip of her tongue. But
before she could utter it the whole, overwhelming realisation of what he
suspected rushed over her, and she checked herself abruptly, stunned into
silence. With the amazing speed at which the mind can work in moments of
tense excitement, she grasped instantly all that must have happened. Some
one--she could not imagine who it was--had found out about that night which
she and Tony had been compelled to pass together at the Hotel de Loup, and
had made mischief ... told Eliot, putting the worst construction on it ...
and he believed ... Oh! What did he not believe? A burning flush bathed her
face, mounting to her very temples--a flush of shamed horror, and she fell
suddenly silent, staring at him with wide, horrified eyes.
"So you do remember?" he said, his voice like cold steel.
"Yes." She answered him mechanically--like a doll which says "yes" or "no"
when some one touches a spring.
"And you were not there alone, I believe?"
The other spring this time. "No," answered the doll.
"Brabazon was with you--Tony Brabazon?"
"Yes." Again the parrot-like reply.
"Then I don't think there is any need to continue this conversation." As he
spoke, Eliot turned and walked towards the door. Ann watched him without
moving. She felt almost as though she were watching something that was
happening in a play--something that had nothing whatever to do with her.
Then, just as his hand was on the latch of the door, the strange numbness
which had held her motionless and silent seemed to melt away.
"Eliot, come back!" she cried out, and there was a note so ringingly clear
and decisive in her voice that involuntarily he halted. "I have listened to
you," she went on quietly. "Now--you will listen to me."
He retraced his steps to her side, like a man moving without his own
volition, and stood waiting.
"Well?" he said tonelessly. "What is it you wish to say? I am listening."
"It's quite true that I stayed at the Hotel de Loup," she said. "And
it's true that Tony Brabazon was with me. But I have nothing to ask your
forgiveness for." She lifted her head, meeting his gaze with eyes that were
very steady and unashamed. There was something proud and at the same time
infinitely appealing in the gesture. But Eliot regarded her unmoved.
"Do you expect me to believe that?" he asked contemptuously. "I'm not
a blind fool!... Do you remember, I told you that a man asks all of a
woman--past as well as future. Well, you can't give me the past. It belongs
to some one else--to Brabazon. I suppose you meant to marry him. And
then I come along--and I'm worth more. I don't flatter myself I'm more
attractive!"--grimly. "Years ago a woman threw me over because I was poor.
And now another woman is ready to throw over some one else and marry me
because I'm rich. It's the same stale old story. You're not going to ask me
to believe you accepted me from disinterested affection, are you?"
While he spoke, Ann had been standing motionless, every nerve of her taut
and strained to the utmost. Outwardly unflinching, inwardly she felt as
though he were raining blows upon her. It was all so sordid and horrible.
It dragged love through the clinging mire of suspicion and distrust till
its radiant wings were soiled and fouled beyond recognition.
"I'm not going to ask you to believe--anything." She spoke very quietly. A
bitter, tortured pride upheld her. "If you can think--that--of me, it would
be useless asking you to believe anything I might say. Yesterday"--her
voice trembled but she steadied it again--"yesterday you told me that the
essence of love was possession. It isn't, Eliot.... It's faith ... and
trust."
In the silence that followed the man and woman stood gazing dumbly at each
other, and for a brief moment love and faith hung quivering in the balance.
Then the balance tilted. The heavy burden of suspicion weighed it down, and
without another word Eliot turned and left the room.
Ann did not move. She stood quite still, her arms hanging straight down
at her sides. The Dents de Loup--wolf's teeth! Well, the jaws of the wolf
had closed, crushing her happiness for ever between their merciless white
fangs.
She knew now the meaning of that nebulous, distorted shape which had seemed
to come betwixt her and the man she loved. It was the grey shadow of
distrust which had sprung out from the hidden places of the past and now
lay, dark and impenetrable, dividing them for ever.