A PATCH OF SUNLIGHT
The days which followed were very wonderful ones to Ann. She had come
through darkness into light, out of infinite pain into infinite joy, and
perhaps the very fact that in giving herself to Eliot she had forgiven
much--forgiven what many women would have found it impossible to
forgive--added something precious, some sacramental spikenard, to the gift
which flowed back to the giver, deepening the profound sense of peace and
happiness which encompassed her.
Eliot had known how to accept her gift--had taken it with simple
thankfulness and a wondering reverence for the shining ways along which a
woman's love can lead her, and the hour which they had passed together
after Ann had bidden him stay had been, in a sense, sacred--a mutual
revelation to each of them of the secret depths in the other's nature. But
afterwards, once that wonderful hour was past, Eliot strode masterfully
back into his man's kingdom. He was not of the type to remain a penitent,
on his knees indefinitely. Nor would Ann have had it otherwise. She would
have hated a subservient lover.
Eliot was very far from being subservient. Almost before the
neighbourhood's congratulations had ceased to rain about them both he was
demanding that Ann should fix the date of their wedding.
"You impatient man!" she teased him. "Why, we're only just this minute
engaged! We shan't be married for ages and ages yet."
"Oh, shan't we?" he retorted. "We'll be married in May, sweetheart. That's
exactly as long as I'll consent to wait. And I'm only agreeing to that
because a woman always seems to think it's part of the ceremony to buy a
quantity of clothes when she's married--just as though she couldn't buy
them afterwards quite as well as before!"
"In May? Oh, no, Eliot." Ann shook her head with decision. "That's the
unlucky month for marriages."
"You don't mean to say you're superstitious?"
"I don't know." She spoke uncertainly. "But--we've had so much ill-luck. I
don't think I want to tempt Providence by getting married in May."
He shouted with laughter.
"Very well, you absurd baby, it shan't be May," he conceded, adding
cheerfully: "We'll fix it for April then."
"No, no. That's too soon," she protested hastily. "Let's decide on--June."
"April," he repeated firmly.
"June"--with an effort to be equally firm.
"If you say that again," he returned coolly, "I shall make it March. I'd
ever so much rather, too," he wound up boyishly.
"That would be quite impossible," replied Ann triumphantly. "I've promised
to go and stay with the Brabazons in March."
He took her by the shoulders and pulled her towards him.
"Let it be April, then," he said, adding quickly, as he read dissent in her
eyes: "We've wasted such a lot of time, beloved."
She yielded at that.
"Very well, then--April. But I'm afraid you're going to be a dreadfully
self-willed husband, Eliot"--smiling as though the prospect were in no way
distasteful.
"I think I am," he acknowledged, with all a man's supreme egotism. He
laughed down at her, and, lifting her right off the ground into his arms,
kissed her with swift passion.
"You're much too thin," he grumbled discontentedly, as he set her down
again. "You weigh next to nothing."
"And whose fault is that, pray?" she asked gaily.
She was horrified to see his face darken with sudden pain.
"Don't," he said abruptly, in a stifled voice.
"Oh, my dear--" She was back in his arms in an instant, soothing,
comforting, and scolding him all in a breath. "You needn't worry over my
boniness," she assured him cheerfully. "When we're married and settled down
and I've no worries, I expect I shall get appallingly plump and have to
take to one of those anti-fat cures."
"You--fat!" He laughed. "There's about as much danger of that as of Mrs.
Carberry becoming a philanthropist."
Eliot had been furiously angry when he heard of the gossip which had
gathered for a time around Ann's name and of the part Mrs. Carberry had
played in helping to disseminate it, but neither he nor Ann herself had
been able to refrain from laughing at the complete _volte-face_ which that
excellent lady performed when the announcement of their engagement was made
public. She had been one of the first to offer her felicitations, and had
paid a special call at the Cottage--this time accompanied by the modest
Muriel--to offer them in person. "It will be so delightful to have a
chatelaine at Heronsmere at last," she had gushed. Presumably, recognising
that her daughter's chance of acquiring the coveted position was now
reduced, to nil, she had decided--with the promptness of a good general--to
accept the fact and adapt her tactics to the altered situation. With
mathematical foresight she argued that when Coventry was married Heronsmere
would undoubtedly become the centre of a considerable amount of
entertaining, and from every point of view it would therefore be wise to be
on friendly terms there. After all, there were as good fish in the sea as
ever came out of it, and the prospective hospitality which she anticipated
would emanate from Heronsmere in the near future should provide excellent
opportunities for fishing.
Apart from Mrs. Carberry, everybody seemed genuinely delighted at the
engagement--even Miss Caroline. She confusedly mingled regrets "for any
misunderstanding" with her congratulations, and Ann, too happy herself to
wish any one else to be unhappy, forgave her whole-heartedly. Lady Susan
was overflowingly pleased.
"Though, of course," as she characteristically informed Sir Philip just
before he and Tony returned to London, "Eliot's been blessed far beyond his
deserts--like most men. Anyhow, Philip, you may as well make up your mind
to accept Doreen as a _pis otter_ for Tony--and do it gracefully, my dear
man! Mark my words, marriage will be the making of the boy. Every man ought
to be married."
"I wish you'd held that opinion thirty years ago, Susan," retorted Sir
Philip. "I suppose"--he hesitated, his eyes curiously soft--"it's too late
in the day now?"
"Much too late," replied Lady Susan promptly, though her eyes, too, were
unwontedly soft. "Besides, I could never bear to be parted from the Tribes
of Israel--and you know you can't stand a dog about the house."
"Drat the man!" she muttered crossly to herself, as the train bearing the
Brabazons Londonwards steamed out of the station. She brushed her hand
across her eyes as she hopped briskly into the car which had brought them
to the station, giving the chauffeur the order "Home!" in a sharper voice
than she usually employed towards her servants. "Drat the man! It looks as
though a single engagement has demoralised the lot of us."
It was certainly destined to be followed by far-reaching consequences as
regards two, at least, of the other people in the neighbourhood. Robin's
notice to give up his post as Eliot's agent had, of course, been suitably
buried, a brief understanding handshake between the two men its only
tombstone, and Robin had gone straight from his interview with Eliot to the
Priory. He found Cara, surrounded by a small army of vases, arranging
flowers, of which a great sheaf, freshly sent in by the gardener from the
hot-houses, lay on the table.
"Aren't they lovely?" she said, when she and Robin had exchanged greetings.
"Do you want a buttonhole?"
He looked at the deep-red carnation which she held out to him and shook his
head.
"No, thank you," he said politely. "I want a wife."
Cara gasped a little.
"Robin!" she exclaimed faintly.
A lovely colour flooded her face. It had been a much happier face
latterly--since Ann's engagement. The look of settled sadness had gone out
of her eyes. She felt now--now that everything was made straight betwixt
Ann and Eliot--as though the heavy burden she had carried all these years
had been suddenly loosed from her shoulders. Eliot had found happiness, at
last, and that terrible sense of responsibility for his maimed and broken
life was taken from her. Of the existence of the grey shadow she could not
know, or guess.
So she turned to Robin with a sweet hesitancy that brought him swiftly to
her side.
"Cara!" he said eagerly. "Cara, are you going to give me that
'second-best,' after all?"
Still she hesitated.
"It doesn't seem fair, Robin," she faltered. "I'm older than you are, for
one thing."
"One year--or two, is it?" he mocked joyfully.
"Half a century, I think!"--with a quick sigh.
"You'll grow younger," he suggested optimistically. "And anyway, can you
bear to think of me living all alone at the Cottage after Ann is married? I
should probably commit suicide."
Cara stood twisting a spray of maidenhair fern round and round her fingers
till the tiny pale green leaves shrivelled up and dropped off and only the
wiry stem remained.
"When is--Ann going to be married?" she asked slowly, at last.
"In April. It's all fixed. But the thing that matters is when are _we_
going to be married?"
April! Eliot was to be married in April! Cara was conscious of a muffled
stab of pain. But she felt no active rebellion. With a wistful sense of
resignation she recognised that his life and hers were separate and apart.
She herself had sundered them more than ten years ago. But now, at last,
Eliot had won through to happiness! She thanked God for that. And there was
still something she could give Robin in return for his eager worship--good
comradeship, and that second love which, though it bears but a faint
semblance to the rushing ecstasy of young, passionate, first love, yet
holds, perhaps, a deeper, more selfless tenderness and understanding.
She turned to the man waiting so eagerly for her answer.
"Are you quite sure you want me, Robin?" she asked.
"Quite sure," he answered gravely.
"Then, if you're really sure, I'll marry you whenever you like--after Ann
is married."
He kissed her with a deep, grave passion, holding her closely in his arms.
"You shall forget the past, dearest--I promise you, you shall forget all
the things that hurt you," he said with tender reassurance. Presently, when
the first few minutes were passed, he smiled down at her, a gleam of mirth
in his eyes.
"I shall see to it that Ann and Eliot don't postpone their wedding--if it
means postponing ours! You said 'after,' you know."
She nodded.
"Yes. I can't possibly commandeer Ann's natural protector"--smiling--"until
she's safely bestowed in some one else's care."
But though she jested about the stipulation she had made, it was the
outcome of a curiously definite idea. Since it was through her that Eliot's
happiness had once been wrecked, she felt as though, until this new-found
happiness which had come to him were assured--secure beyond any shadow of
doubt--she was not free to take her own. It was in a sense an expiation, a
pathetic little human effort to propitiate fate and turn aside any blow;
aimed at Eliot's happiness by those jealous gods who exact payment to the
very last farthing.
* * * * *
Ann was overjoyed when she heard of Robin's engagement. To know that her
adored brother would not be left lonely by her marriage, and to see Cara,
whose former experience of matrimony had proved such a ghastly failure,
with a new, brooding gladness in her eyes, added the last drop to her cup
of happiness.
"_Dear_ Robin, I'm so pleased!" she told him. "If I'd been choosing a wife
for you myself I couldn't have chosen any one nicer than Cara!"
"Glad you're pleased," Robin returned gruffly--the gruffness being merely
the cloak to conceal his own riotous felicity which every Englishman in
similar circumstances thinks it necessary to assume. But Ann saw through
it, and was not to be deterred from frank rejoicing.
"It will be perfectly lovely to have my best friend married to my best
brother," she continued. "Where shall you live? At the Priory or the
Cottage?"
"We haven't got as far as making such world-shaking decisions as that," he
grinned. "Perhaps we might live at the Priory and week-end at the
Cottage"--whimsically.
Ann found a further cause for rejoicing in the continued absence of Brett
Forrester. She had never seen him again since the morning when, with an
intense feeling of relief, she had watched the _Sphinx_ steam out from
Silverquay harbour. Lady Susan was much too incensed against him to invite
him to White Windows, and Ann rested fairly secure in the hope that she
would never see him again, or, at least, not until she was Eliot's wife.
After that, she felt she would not be afraid to meet him. He could work her
no more harm then.
So that it was with a light Heart that she finally started on her journey
to London to stay with the Brabazons. Eliot saw her off at the station.
"If you stop a day longer than a fortnight I shall come and fetch you
back," he informed her despotically. "I'm not going to spare my girl to any
one for more than two weeks. And I grudge even that."
And Ann, leaning out of the carriage window and waving her hand to the
tall, beloved figure on the platform, felt no premonition, was conscious of
no ominous foreboding that the train which was bearing her so swiftly away
from him was actually carrying her straight towards the very danger from
which she felt so sure she had escaped.
In the patch of brilliant sunshine which lay all about her, the grey shadow
had paled until it had become almost imperceptible. But it was still
there--only waiting for the sun to move a little in the heavens to fling
itself blackly across her path once more.