The Vision of Desire E-Book

Margaret Pedler

• Herausgeber: Classica Libris
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Eliot gets jilted and he loses faith in women and renounces them forever but then he meets Ann. But can he trust her enough to risk his heart again?

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Leseprobe

Copyright

First published in 1922

Copyright © 2022 Classica Libris

Dedication

“Heaven but the Vision of fulfill’d Desire

And Hell the Shadow from a Soul on Fire.”

—THE RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM

TO BUNTY

(F. MABEL WARHURST)

WITH MY LOVE

DREAM-FLOWERS

Beyond the hill there’s a garden,

Fashioned 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 come true.

Beyond the hill there’s a garden fair—

My garden of happy hours!

MARGARET PEDLER

PROLOGUE

… It’s no use pretending any longer. I can’t marry you, I don’t suppose you will ever understand or forgive me. No man would. But try to believe that I haven’t come to this decision hurriedly or without thinking. I seem to have done nothing but think, lately!

 I want you to forget last night, Eliot. We were both a little mad, and there was moonlight and the scent of roses… But it’s goodbye, all the same—it must be. Please don’t try to see, me again. It could do no good and would only hurt us both.

Very deliberately the man read this letter through a second time. At first reading it had seemed to him incredible, a hallucination. It gave him a queer feeling of unreality—it was all so impossible, so wildly improbable!

“I want you to forget last night.” Last night! When the woman who had written those cool words of dismissal had lain in his arms, exquisite in her passionate surrender. His mouth set itself grimly. Whatever came next, whatever the future might hold, he knew that neither of them would be able to forget. There are some things that cannot be forgotten, and the moment when a man and woman first give their love utterance in words is one of them.

He crushed the note slowly in his hand till it was nothing more than a crumpled ball of paper, and raised his arm to fling it away. Then suddenly his lips relaxed in a smile and a light of relief sprang into his eyes. It was all nonsense, of course—just some foolish, woman’s whim or fancy, some ridiculous idea she had got into her head which five minutes’ talk between them would dispel. He had been a fool to take it seriously. He unclenched his hand and smoothed out the crumpled sheet of paper. Tearing it into very small pieces, he tossed them into the garden below the veranda where he was sitting and watched them circle to the ground like particles of fine white snow.

As they settled his face cleared. The tension induced by the perusal of the letter had momentarily aged it, affording a fleeting glimpse of the man as he might be ten years hence if things should chance to go awry with him—hard and relentless, with more than a suggestion of cruelty. But now, the strain lessened, his face revealed that charm of boyishness which is always curiously attractive in a man who has actually left his boyhood behind him. The mouth above the strong, clean-cut chin was singularly sweet, the grey eyes, alight and ardent, meeting the world with a friendly gaiety of expression that seemed to expect and ask for friendliness in return.

As the last scrap of paper drifted to earth he stretched out his arms, drawing a great breath of relief. His tea, brought to him at the same time as the letter he had just destroyed, still stood untasted on a rustic table beside him. He poured some out and drank it thirstily; his mouth felt dry. Then, setting down the cup, he descended from the veranda and made his way quickly through the hotel garden to the dusty white road beyond its gates.

It was very hot. The afternoon sun still flamed in the vividly blue Italian sky, and against the shimmer of azure and gold the tall, dark poplars ranked beside the road struck a sombre note of relief. But the man himself seemed unconscious of the heat. He covered the ground with the lithe, long-limbed stride of youth and supple muscles, and presently swung aside into a garden where, betwixt the spread arms of chestnut and linden and almond tree, gleamed the pink-stuccoed walls of a half-hidden villa.

Skirting the villa, he went on unhesitatingly, as one to whom the way was very familiar, following a straight, formal path which led between parterres of flowers, ablaze with colour. Then, through an archway dripping jessamine, he emerged into a small, enclosed garden—an inner sanctuary of flower-encircled greensward, fragrant with the scent of mignonette and roses, while the headier perfume of heliotrope and oleander hung like incense on the sun-warmed air.

A fountain plashed in the centre of the velvet lawn, an iridescent mist of spray upflung from its marble basin, and at the farther end a stone bench stood sheltered beneath the leafy shade of a tree.

A woman was sitting on the bench. She was quite young—not more than twenty at the outside—and there was something in the dark, slender beauty of her which seemed to harmonise with the southern scents and colour of the old Italian garden. She sat very still, her round white chin cupped in her palm. Her eyes were downcast, the lowered lids, with their lashes lying like dusky fans against the ivory-tinted skin beneath, screening her thoughts.

The man’s footsteps made no sound as he crossed the close-cut turf, and he paused a moment to gaze at her with ardent eyes. The loveliness of her seemed to take him by the throat, so that a half-stifled sound escaped him. Came an answering sound—a sharp-caught breath of fear as she realised an intruder’s presence in her solitude. Then, her eyes meeting the eager, worshipping ones fixed on her, she uttered a cry of dismay.

“You? You?” she stammered, rising hastily.

In a stride he was beside her.

“Yes. Didn’t you expect me? You must have known I should come.”

He laughed down at her triumphantly and made as though to take her in his arms, but she shrank back, pressing him away from her with urgent hands.

“I told you not to come. I told you not to come,” she reiterated. “Oh!” turning aside with nervous desperation, “why didn’t you stay away?”

He stared at her.

“Why didn’t I? Do you suppose any man on earth would have stayed away after receiving such a letter? Why did you write it?” rapidly. “What did you mean?”

She looked away from him towards the distant mountains rimming the horizon.

“I meant just what I said. I can’t marry you,” she answered mechanically.

“But that’s absurd! You’ve known I cared—you’ve cared, too—all these weeks. And last night you promised—you said—”

“Last night!” She swung round and faced him. “I tell you we’ve got to forget last night—count it out. It—it was just an interlude—”

She broke off, blenching at the abrupt change in his expression. Up till now his face had been full of an incredulous, boyish bewilderment, half tender, half chiding. Within himself he had refused to believe that there was any serious intent behind her letter. It was fruit of some foolish misunderstanding or shy feminine withdrawal, and he was here to straighten it all out, to reassure her. But that word “interlude”! Had she been deliberately playing with him after all? Women did such things—sometimes. His features took on a sudden sternness.

“An interlude?” he repeated quietly. “I’m afraid I don’t understand. Will you explain?”

Her shoulders moved resentfully.

“Why do you want to force me into explanations?” she burst out. “Surely—surely you understand? We can’t marry—we haven’t money enough!”

There was a long pause before he spoke again.

“I’ve enough money to marry on, if it comes to that,” he said at last, slowly. “Though we should certainly be comparatively poor. What you mean is that I’m not rich enough to satisfy you, I suppose?”

She nodded.

“Yes. I’m sick—sick of being poor! I’ve been poor all my life—always having to skimp and save and do things on the cheap—go without this and make shift with that. I’m tired of it! This last two months with Aunt Elvira—all this luxury and beauty,” she gestured eloquently towards the villa standing like a gem in its exquisite Italian setting, “the car, the perfect service, as many frocks as I want—Oh! I’ve loved it all! And I can’t give it up. I can’t go back to being poor again!”

She paused, breathless, and her eyes, passionately upbraiding, beseeching understanding, sought his face.

“Don’t you understand?” she added, twisting her hands together.

His eyes glinted.

“Yes, I’m beginning to,” he returned briefly. “But how are you going to compass what you want—as a permanency? Your visit to Lady Templeton can’t extend indefinitely.”

She was silent, evading his glance. Her foot beat nervously on the flagged path where they stood.

“Is there some one else?” he asked incisively. “Another man—who can give you all these things?”

A dull, shamed red flushed her cheek. With an effort she forced herself to answer him.

“Yes,” she said very low. “There is—some one else.”

“I wonder if he realises his luck!”

The palpable sneer in his voice cut like a lash. She winced under it.

“One more question—I’d like to know the answer out of sheer curiosity.” His voice was clear and hard—like ice, “You knew you were going to do this to me—last night?”

Her lips moved but no words came. She gestured mutely—imploringly.

“Answer me, please.”

His implacable insistence whipped her into a sudden flare of defiance. She was like a cornered animal.

“Yes, then, if you must have it—I did know!” she flung at him in a low tone of furious anger.

Involuntarily he stepped back from her a pace, like a man suddenly smitten and stunned.

“While for me last night was sacred!” he muttered under his breath.

Before the utter scorn and repugnance in the low-breathed words her defiance crumbled to pieces.

“And for me, too! Eliot, I wasn’t pretending. I do love you. I never meant you to know, but last night—I couldn’t help it. I’d promised to marry the—the other man, and then you came, and we were alone—and—Oh!” desperately, lifting a wrung face to his. “Why won’t you understand?”

But the beautiful, imploring face failed to move him one jot. Something had died suddenly within him—the something that was young and eager and blindly trusting. When she ceased speaking he was only conscious that he wanted to take her and break her between his two hands—destroy her as he had destroyed the letter she had written. The blood was drumming in his temples. His hands clenched and unclenched spasmodically. She was so slender a thing that it would be very easy… very easy with those iron muscles of his… And then she would be dead. She was so beautiful and so rotten at the core that she would be better dead…

It was only by a supreme effort that he mastered his overwhelming need of some physical outlet for the passion of disgust and anger which swept him bare of any gentler emotion as the incoming tide sweeps the shore bare of sign or footprint. His body grew taut and rigid with the pressure he was putting on himself. When at last he spoke his voice was almost unrecognisable.

“I do understand,” he said. “I understand thoroughly. You’ve made—everything—perfectly clear.”

And with that he turned swiftly, leaving her standing alone in a flickering patch of shadow, and strode away across the grass. As he went, a little breeze ran through the garden, wafting the caressing, over-sweet perfume of heliotrope to his nostrils. It sickened him. He knew that he would loathe the scent of heliotrope henceforth.

Chapter 1

ANN’S LEGACY

The sunshine romped down the Grand’ Rue at Montricheux, flickering against the panes of the shop-windows and calling forth a hundred provocative points of light from the silver and jewels, the shining silks and embroidery, with which the shrewd Swiss shopkeeper seeks to open the purse of the foreigner. It seemed to chase the gaily blue-painted trams as they sped up and down the centre of the town, bestowing upon them a fictitious gala air, and danced tremulously on the round, shiny yellow tops of the tea-tables temptingly arranged on the pavement outside the pastrycook’s.

It was still early afternoon, but already small groups of twos and threes were gathered round the little tables. At one a merry knot of English girl-tourists were enjoying an al fresco tea, at another staid Swiss habitues solemnly imbibed the sweet pink or yellow sirop which they infinitely preferred to tea, while a vivid note of colour was added to the scene by the picturesque uniforms of a couple of officers of an Algerian regiment who were consuming unlimited cigarettes and Turkish coffee, and commenting cynically in fluent French on the paucity of pretty women to be observed in the streets of Montricheux that afternoon.

Typically aloof, a solitary young Englishman was sitting at a table apart. He was evidently waiting for some one, for every now and again he leaned forward and glanced impatiently up the street, then, apparently disappointed, settled himself discontentedly to the perusal of the Continental edition of the Daily Mail.

He was rather an arresting type. His lean young face looked older than his five-and-twenty years would warrant. It held a certain recklessness, together with a decided hint of temper, and he was much too good-looking to have escaped being more or less spoiled by every other woman with whom he came in contact. Like many another boy, Tony Brabazon had been rushed headlong from a public school into the four years’ grinding mill of the war, thereby acquiring a man’s freedom without the gradual preparation of any transition period—a fact which, with his particular temperament, had served to complicate life.

Physically, however, he had come through unscathed, and his white flannels revealed a lithe, careless grace of figure. When he lifted his head to look up the street there was a certain arrogance in the movement—a hint of impetuous self-will that was attractively characteristic. The irritable drumming of long, sensitive fingers on the table-top, while he scanned the head-lines of the paper, was characteristic, too.

Suddenly a cool little hand descended on his restless one.

“You can stop beating the devil’s tattoo on that table, Tony,” said an amused voice. “Here I am at last.”

He sprang up, regarding the new-comer with a mixture of satisfaction and resentment.

“You may well say ‘at last’!” he grumbled. Then the satisfaction completely swamping the resentment, he went on eagerly: “Sit down and tell me why I’ve been deprived of your company for the whole of this blessed day.”

Ann Lovell sat down obediently.

“You’ve been deprived of my society,” she replied with composure, “by some one who had a better right to it.”

“Lady Susan, I suppose?” in resigned tones.

She assented smilingly.

“Yes. A companion-chauffeuse isn’t always at liberty to play about with the scapegrace young men of her acquaintance, you know. And this morning my employer was seized with a sudden desire to visit Aigle, so we drove over and lunched at a quaint old inn there. We’ve only just returned.”

As she spoke Ann stripped off her gloves, revealing a pair of slender hands that hardly looked as though they would be competent to manipulate the steering-wheel of a car. Yet there was more than one keen-eyed, red-tabbed soldier whom she had driven during the war who could testify to the complete efficiency of those same slim members.

“I’m dying for some tea, Tony,” she announced, tossing her gloves on to the table. “Let’s go in and choose cakes.”

Tony nodded, and they dived into the interior of the shop, and, arming themselves with a plate and fork each, proceeded to spear up such as most appealed to them of the delectable patisseries arranged in tempting rows along shining trays. Then, giving an order for their tea to be served outside, they emerged once more into the sunlit street.

One of the Algerian officers followed Ann’s movements with an appreciative glance. Had she been listening she might have caught his murmured, “V’la une jolie anglaise, hein?” But she was extremely unselfconscious, and took it very much for granted that she had been blessed with russet hair which gave back coppery gleams to the sunlight, and with a pair of changeful hazel eyes that looked sometimes clearly golden and sometimes like the brown, gold-flecked heart of a pansy. She was almost boyishly slender in build, and there was a sense of swift vitality about all her movements that reminded one of the free, untrammelled grace of a young panther.

Tony Brabazon watched her consideringly while she poured out tea.

“Montricheux has been like a confounded desert today,” he remarked gloomily. He was obviously feeling very much ill-used. “Tell Lady Susan she’ll drive me to take the downward path if she monopolises you like this.”

“Tony, you’ve not been getting into mischief?”

Ann spoke lightly, but a faint expression of anxiety flitted across her face as she paused, the teapot poised above her cup, for his answer.

He hesitated a moment, his eyes sullen, then laughed shortly.

“How could I get into mischief—my particular kind of mischief—in Montricheux, with the stakes at the tables limited to five measly francs? If we were at Monte, now—”

If Ann noticed his hesitation she made no comment on it. She finished pouring out her tea.

“I’m very glad we’re not,” she said with decision. “You’d be too big a handful for me to manage there.”

“I’ve told you how you can manage me—if you want to,” he returned swiftly. “I’d be like wax in your hands if you’d marry me, Ann.”

“I shouldn’t care for a husband who was like wax in my hands, thank you,” she retorted promptly. “Besides, I’m not in the least in love with you.”

“That’s frank, anyway.”

“Quite frank. And what’s more, you’re not really in love with me.”

Tony stiffened.

“I should think I’m the best judge of that,” he said, haughtily.

“Not a bit. You’re too young to know,” coolly.

A look of temper flashed into his face, but it was only momentary. Then he laughed outright. Like most people, he found it difficult to be angry with Ann; she was so transparently honest and sincere.

“I’m three years your senior, I’d have you remember,” he observed.

“Which is discounted by the fact that you’re only a man. All women are born with at least three years’ more common sense in their systems than men.”

Tony demurred, and she allowed herself to be led into a friendly wrangle, inwardly congratulating herself upon having successfully side-tracked the topic of matrimony. The subject cropped up intermittently in their intercourse with each other and, from long experience, Ann had brought the habit of steering him away from it almost to a fine art.

He had been more or less in love with her since he was nineteen, but she had always refused to take him seriously, believing it to be only the outcome of conditions which had thrown them together all their lives in a peculiarly intimate fashion rather than anything of deeper root. But now that the boy had merged into the man, she had begun to ask herself, a little apprehensively, whether she were mistaken in her assumption, and she sometimes wondered if fate had not contrived to enmesh her in a web from which it would be difficult to escape. Tony was a very persistent lover, and unfortunately she was not free to send him away from her as she might have sent away any other man.

Fond as she was of him, she didn’t in the least want to marry him. She didn’t want to marry any one, in fact. But circumstances had combined to give her a very definite sense of responsibility concerning Tony Brabazon.

His father had been the younger son of Sir Percy Brabazon of Lorne, and, like many other younger sons, had inherited all the charm and most of the faults, and very little of the money that composed the family dower. Philip, the heir, and much the elder of the two, pursued a correct and uneventful existence, remained a bachelor, and in due course came into the title and estates. Whereas Dick, lovable and hot-headed, and with the gambling blood of generations of dicing, horse-racing ancestors running fierily in his veins, fell in love with beautiful but penniless Virginia Dale, and married her, spent and wagered his small patrimony right royally while it lasted, and borrowed from all and sundry when it was squandered. Finally, he ended a varied but diverting existence in a ditch with a broken neck, while the horse that should have retrieved his fortunes galloped first past the winning-post—riderless.

Sir Philip Brabazon let fly a few torrid comments on the subject of his brother’s career, and then did the only decent thing—took Virginia and her son, now heir to the title, to live with him.

It was then that Ann Lovell, who was a godchild of Sir Philip’s, had learned to know and love Tony’s mother. Motherless herself, she had soon discovered that the frailly beautiful, sad-faced woman who had come to live with her somewhat irascible godparent, filled a gap in her small life of which, hitherto, she had been only dimly conscious. With the passing of the years came a clearer understanding of how much Virginia’s advent had meant to her, and ultimately no bond between actual mother and daughter could have been stronger than the bond which had subsisted between these two.

It was to Ann that Virginia confided her inmost fears lest Tony should follow in his father’s footsteps. From Sir Philip, choleric and tyrannical, she concealed them completely—and many of Tony’s youthful escapades as well, paying some precocious card-losses he sustained while still in his early teens out of her own slender dress allowance in preference to rousing his uncle’s ire by a knowledge of them. But with Ann, she had been utterly frank.

“Tony’s a born gambler,” she told her. “But he has a stronger will than his father, and if he’s handled properly he may yet make the kind of man I want him to be. Only—Philip doesn’t know how to handle him.”

The last two years of her life she had spent on a couch, a confirmed invalid, and oppressed by a foreboding as to Tony’s ultimate future. And then, one day, shortly before the weak flame of her life flickered out into the darkness, she had sent for Ann, and solemnly, appealingly, confided the boy to her care.

“I hate leaving him, Ann,” she had said between the long bouts of coughing which shook her thin frame so that speech was at times impossible. “He’s so—alone. Philip represents nothing to him but an autocrat he is bound to obey. And Tony resents it. Any one who loves him can steady him—but no one will ever drive him. When I’m gone, will you do what you can for him—for him and for me?”

And Ann, holding the sick woman’s feverish hands in her own cool ones, had promised.

“I will do all that I can,” she said steadily.

“And if he does get into difficulties?” persisted Virginia, her eager eyes searching the girl’s face.

Ann smiled down at her reassuringly.

“Don’t worry,” she had answered. “If he does, why, then I’ll get him out of them if it’s in any way possible.”

Two days later, Ann had stood beside the bed where Virginia lay, straight and still in the utter peace and tranquillity conferred by death. Her last words had been of Tony.

“I’ve ‘bequeathed’ him to you, Ann,” she had whispered. Adding, with a faint, humorous little smile: “I’m afraid I’m leaving you rather a troublesome legacy.”

And now, nearly four years later, Ann had thoroughly realised that the task of keeping Tony out of mischief was by no means an easy one. Here, at Montricheux, however, she had felt that she could relax her vigilance somewhat. There was no temptation to back “a certainty” of which some racing friend had apprised him, and, as Tony himself discontentedly declared, the stakes permitted at the Kursaal tables were so small that if he gambled every night of the week he ran no risk of either making or losing a fortune.

The chief danger, she reflected, was that he might become bored and irritable—she could see that he was tending that way—and then trouble would be sure to arise between him and his uncle, with whom he was staying at the Hotel Gloria. She recalled his hesitation when she had asked him if he had been getting into mischief. Was trouble brewing already?

“Tony,” she demanded shrewdly. “Have you been quarrelling with Sir Philip again? There’s generally some disturbing cause when you feel driven into asking me to marry you.”

“Well, why won’t you? He’d be satisfied then.”

“He? Do you mean your uncle?” with some astonishment.

Tony nodded.

“Yes. Didn’t you know he wanted it more than anything? Just as I do,” he added with the quick, whimsical smile which was one of his charms.

Ann shook her head.

“You haven’t answered my question,” she persisted.

“Well,” admitted Tony unwillingly, “he and I did have a bit of a dust-up this morning. I’m sick of doing nothing. I told him I wanted to be an architect.”

“Well?”

“It was anything but well! He let me have it good and strong. No Brabazon was going to take up planning houses as a profession if he knew it! I’d got my duty to the old name and estate and the tenants, et cetera, et cetera. All the usual tosh.”

Ann’s face clouded. She devoutly wished that Sir Philip would allow his nephew to take up some profession—never mind which, so long as it interested him and gave him definite occupation. To keep him idling about between Lorne and the Brabazon town house in Audley Square was the worst thing in the world for him. Privately she determined to approach her godfather on the subject at the very next opportunity, though she could make a very good, guess at the reason for his refusal. It was a purely selfish one. He liked to have the boy with him. Bully him and browbeat him as he might, Tony was in reality the apple of the old man’s eye—the one thing in the whole world for which he cared.

There would be nothing gained, however, by letting Tony know her thoughts, so she answered him with trenchant disapproval.

“It’s not tosh. After all, your first duty is to Lorne and to the tenants. A good landlord is quite as useful a member of society as a good architect.”

“Oh, if I were doing the actual managing, it would be a different thing,” acknowledged Tony. “But I don’t. He decides everything and gives all the orders—without consulting me. I just have to see that what he orders is carried out, and trot about with him, and do the noble young heir stunt for the benefit of the tenants on my birthday. It’s absolutely sickening!” savagely.

“Well, don’t quarrel with your bread-and-butter,” advised Ann. “Or with Sir Philip. He’s not a bad sort in his way.”

“Oh, isn’t he?” grimly. “You try living with him! Thank the powers that be, I shall get a ‘day off’ tomorrow. He’s going over to Evian by the midday boat. The St. Keliers—blessed be their name!—have asked him to dine with them—to meet some exiled Russian princess or other.”

“Lady Susan is going, too. She’s staying the night there. Is Sir Philip?”

“Yes. There’s no getting back the same night. This is topping, Ann.” Tony’s face had brightened considerably. “Suppose you and I go up to the Dents de Loup for the afternoon, and then have a festive little dinner at the Gloria. Will you? Don’t have an attack of common sense and say ‘no’!”

His eyes entreated her gaily. They were extremely charming eyes, of some subtly blended colour that was neither slate nor violet, but partook a little of both, and shaded by absurdly long lashes which gave them an almost womanish softness. A certain shrewd old duchess, who knew her world, had once been heard to observe that Tony Brabazon’s eyes would get him in and out of trouble as long as he lived.

Ann smiled.

“That’s quite a brain-wave, Tony,” she replied. “I won’t say no. And if you’re very good we’ll go down to the Kursaal afterwards, and I’ll let you have a little innocent flutter at the tables.” Ann had no belief in the use of too severe a curb. She felt quite sure that if Tony’s gambling propensities were bottled up too tightly, they would only break out more strongly later on—when he might chance to be in a part of the world where he could come to bigger grief financially than was possible at Montricheux. She glanced down at the watch on her wrist and, seeing that the time had slipped by more quickly than she imagined, proceeded to gather up her gloves. “I think it’s time I went back to Villa Mon Reve, now,” she said tentatively, fearing a burst of opposition.

But, having got his own way over the arrangements for the morrow, Tony consented to be amenable for once. Together they took their way up the pleasant street and at the gates of the villa he made his farewells.

“I shall drop into the club for a rubber, I think,” he vouchsafed, “before going home like a good little boy.”

“Don’t play high,” cautioned Ann good-humouredly.

She could detect the underlying note of resentment in his voice, and she entered the house meditating thoughtfully upon the amazing short-sightedness evinced by elderly gentlemen in regard to the upbringing of their heirs.

Chapter 2

THE BRABAZONS OF LORNE

“Ann’s the best pal Tony could possibly have, so, for goodness’ sake, be content with that and don’t get addling your brains by trying to marry her off to him. Match-making isn’t a man’s job. A female child of twelve could beat the cleverest man that’s hatched at the game.”

Lady Susan Hallett fired off her remarks, as was her wont, with the vigour and precision of a machine-gun. There was always a delightful definiteness both about her ideas and the expression of them.

The man she addressed was standing with his back to the open French window of the pretty salon, angrily oblivious of the blue waters of Lac Leman which lapped placidly against the stone edges of the quai below. He was a tall, fierce-looking old man, with choleric blue eyes and an aristocratic beak of a nose that jutted out above a bristling grey moustache. A single eyeglass dangled from a broad, black ribbon round his neck. “One of the old school” was written all over him—one of the old, autocratic school which believed that “a man should be master in his own house, b’gad!” By which—though he would never have admitted it—Sir Philip Brabazon inferred a kind of divinely appointed dictatorship over the souls and bodies of the various members of his household which even included the right to arrange and determine their lives for them, without reference to their personal desires and tastes.

It was odd, therefore, that his chief friend and confidante—and the woman he would have married thirty years ago if she would only have had him—should be Lady Susan, as tolerant and modern in her outlook as he was archaic.

She was a tall, sturdily built woman of the out-of-door, squiress type. Her fine-shaped head was crowned by a wealth of grey hair, simply coiled in a big knot on the nape of her neck and contrasting rather attractively with her very black, arched eyebrows and humorous dark eyes. Those same eyes were now regarding Sir Philip with a quizzical expression of amusement.

“Besides,” she pursued. “Ann wouldn’t have half as much pull with him if she were his wife, let me tell you.”

“You think not?”

“I’m sure. A man will let himself be lectured and generally licked into shape by the woman he wants to marry—but after marriage he usually prefers to do all the lecturing that’s required himself.”

The old man shot a swift glance at her from under a pair of shaggy brows.

“How do you know?” he demanded rudely. “You’re not married.”

Lady Susan nodded.

“That’s why.”

“Do you mean—do you mean—” he began stormily, then, meeting her quiet, humorous gaze, stammered off into silence. Presently he fixed his monocle in one of his fierce old eyes and surveyed her from behind it as from behind a barricade.

“Do you mean me to understand that that’s the reason you declined to marry me?”

She laughed a little.

“I think it was. I didn’t want to be browbeaten into submission—as you browbeat poor Virginia, and as you would Tony if he hadn’t got a good dash of the Brabazon devil in him. You’re a confirmed bully, you know.”

“I shouldn’t have bullied you.” There was an odd note of wistfulness in the harsh voice, and for a moment the handsome, arrogant old face softened incredibly. “I shouldn’t have bullied you, Susan.”

“Yes, you would. You couldn’t have helped it. You’d like to bully my little Ann into marrying Tony if you dared—monster!”

The grim mouth beneath the clipped moustache relaxed into an unwilling smile.

“I believe I would,” he admitted. “Hang it all, Susan, it would settle the boy if he were married. He wants a wife to look after him.”

“To look after him?” with a faintly ironical inflection.

“That’s what I said” irritably. “That’s—that’s what wife’s for, dammit! Isn’t it?”

“Oh, no.” She shook her head regretfully. “That idea’s extinct as the dodo. Antiquated, Philip—very.”

He glared at her ferociously.

“Worth more than half your modern ideas put together,” he retorted. “Women, don’t know their duty nowadays. If they’d get married, have babies, and keep house in the good, old-fashioned way, instead of trying to be doctors and barristers and the Lord knows what, the world would be a lot better off. A good wife makes a good man—and that’s job enough for any woman.”

“I should think it might be,” agreed Lady Susan meditatively. “But it sounds a trifle feeble, doesn’t it? I mean, on the part of the good man. It’s making a sort of lean-to greenhouse of him, isn’t it?”

“You’re outrageous, Susan! I’m not a ‘lean-to’ anything, but do you suppose I’d be the bad-tempered old ruffian I am—at least, you say I am—if you’d married me thirty years ago?”

“Twenty times worse, probably,” she replied promptly. “Because, like most wives, I should have spoiled you.”

Sir Philip looked out of the window.

“I’ve missed that spoiling, Susan,” he said. Once again that incongruous little note of wistfulness sounded in his voice. But, an instant later, Lady Susan wondered if her ears had deceived her, for he swung round and snapped out in his usual hectoring manner: “Then you won’t help me in this?”

“Help you to marry off Ann to Tony? No, I won’t. For one thing, I don’t want to spare her. And if ever I have to, it’s going to be to some one who’ll look after her—and take jolly good care of her, too!”

“Obstinate woman! Well—well” irritably. “What am I to do, then?”

“Can’t you manage your own nephew?”

“No, I can’t, confound it! Told me this morning he wanted to be an architect. An architect!” He spoke as though an architect were something that crawled. “Imagine a Brabazon of Lorne turning architect!”

“Well, why not?” placidly. “It’s better than being nothing but a gambler—like poor Dick. Tony always did love making plans. Don’t you remember, when he was about eight, he made a drawing of heaven, with seating accommodation for the angels—cherubim and seraphim, and so on—in tiers? The general effect was rather like a plan of the Albert Hall” smiling reminiscently. “Seriously, though, Philip, if the boy wants work, in the name of common sense, let him have it.”

“There’s plenty of work for him at Lorne” stubbornly. “Let him learn to manage the property. That’s what I want—and what I’ll have. God bless my soul! What have I brought the boy up for? To be a comfort in my old age, of course, and a credit to the name. Architect be hanged!”

As he spoke there came the sound of footsteps in the hall outside—light, buoyant steps—and Lady Susan’s face brightened.

“That will be Ann,” she said. Adding quickly, as though to conclude the subject they had been discussing: “I warn you, Philip, you’re driving the boy on too tight a rein.”

Sir Philip greeted Ann good-humouredly. In spite of the fact that she showed no disposition to fall in with his wishes and marry Tony, he was extremely fond of her. She was one of the few people who had never been afraid of him. She even contradicted him flatly at times, and, like most autocrats, he found her attitude a refreshing change from that of the majority of people with whom he came in contact.

“Seen Tony in the town?” he demanded. It was evident the boy was hardly ever out of his thoughts.

“Yes. We’ve just been having tea together.”

Sir Philip nodded approvingly.

“Excellent, excellent. Keep him out of mischief, like a good girl.”

Ann laughed, a shade scornfully, but vouchsafed no answer, and soon afterwards Sir Philip took his departure.

“The twelve-thirty steamer tomorrow, then, Susan,” he said as he shook hands. “I’ll call for you in the car on my way to the debarcadere.”

When he had gone Lady Susan and Ann exchanged glances.

“I’ve been telling him he drives Tony on too tight a rein,” said the former, answering the unspoken question in the girl’s eyes.

“It’s absurd of him,” declared Ann indignantly. “He tries to keep him tied to his apron-strings as if he were a child. And he’s not! He’s a man. He’s been through that beastly war. Probably he knows heaps more about life—the real things of life—than Sir Philip himself, who wants to dictate everything he may or may not do.”

“Probably he does. And that’s just the trouble. When you get a terribly experienced younger generation and a hide-bound older one there are liable to be fireworks.”

“All I can say is that if Sir Philip won’t let him have a little more freedom, he’ll drive Tony just the way he doesn’t want him to go.”

Lady Susan’s keen glance scrutinised the girl’s troubled face.

“You can’t help it, you know,” she remarked briefly.

“That’s just it,” answered Ann uncertainly. “I sometimes wonder if I could—ought to—” She broke off, leaving her sentence unfinished.

Lady Susan, apparently not noticing her embarrassment, gathered up her belongings preparatory to leaving the room.

“Marrying to reform a rake never pays,” she said in level tones. “It’s like rolling a stone uphill.”

“But Tony isn’t a rake!” protested Ann, flushing quickly. “There’s any amount of good in him, and he might—might steady down if he were married.”

“Let him steady down before marriage, not after” grimly. “A woman may throw her whole life’s happiness into the scales and still fail to turn the balance. Without love—the love that can forgive seventy times seven and then not be tired—she’ll certainly fail. And you don’t love Tony.”

It was an assertion rather than a question, yet Ann felt that Lady Susan was waiting for an answer.

“N-no,” she acknowledged at last. “But I feel as though he belongs to me in a way. You see, Virginia ‘left’ him to me.”

“You’re not called upon to marry a legacy,” retorted Lady Susan.

Ann smiled.

“No, I suppose not.” She was silent a moment. “I wish Sir Philip didn’t lead him such a life. It’s more than any man could be expected to stand.”

Lady Susan paused in the doorway.

“Well, my dear, don’t vex your soul too much about it all. However badly people mismanage our affairs for us, things have a wonderful way of working out all right in the long run.”

Left alone, Ann strolled out on to the balcony which overlooked the lake, and, leaning her arms on the balustrade, yielded to the current of her thoughts. Notwithstanding Lady Susan’s cheery optimism, she was considerably worried about Tony. She could see so exactly what it was that fretted him—this eternal dancing attendance on Sir Philip, who insisted on the boy’s accompanying him wherever he went, and she felt a sudden angry contempt for the selfishness of old age which could so obstinately bind eager, straining youth to its chariot wheels. It seemed to her that the older generation frequently fell very far short of its responsibility towards the younger.

With a flash of bitterness she reflected that her own father had failed in his duty to the next generation almost as signally as old Sir Philip, although in a totally different manner. Archibald Lovell had indeed been curiously devoid of any sense of paternal responsibility. Connoisseur and collector of old porcelain, he had lived a dreamy, dilettante existence, absorbed in his collection and paying little or no heed to the comings and goings of his two children, Ann and her brother Robin. And less heed still to their ultimate welfare. He neglected his estate from every point of view, except the one of raising mortgages upon it so that he might have the wherewithal to add to his store of ceramic treasures. He lived luxuriously, employing a high-priced chef and soft-footed, well-trained servants to see to his comfort, because anything short of perfection grated on his artistic sensibilities. And when an intrusive influenza germ put a sudden end to his entirely egotistical activities, his son and daughter found themselves left with only a few hundred pounds between them. Lovell Court was perforce sold at once to pay off the mortgages, and to meet the many other big outstanding debts the contents of the house had to be dispersed without reserve. The collection of old porcelain to which Archibald Lovell had sacrificed most of the human interests of life was soon scattered amongst the dealers in antiques, who, in many instances, bought back at bargain prices the very pieces they had sold to him at an extravagantly high cost. Every one went away from the Lovell sale well-pleased, except the two whose fortunes were most intimately concerned—the son and daughter of the dead man. They were left to face the problem of continued existence.

For the time being the circumstances of the war had acted as a solvent. Robin, home on sick leave, had returned to the front, while Ann, who possessed the faculty of getting the last ounce out of any car she handled, very soon found war work as a motor-driver. But, with the return of peace, the question of pounds, shillings and pence had become more acute, and at present Robin was undertaking any odd job that turned up pending the time when he should find the ideal berth which would enable him to make a home for Ann, while the latter, thanks to the good offices of Sir Philip Brabazon, had for the last six months filled the post of companion-chauffeuse to Lady Susan Hallett.

The entire six months had been passed at Mon Reve, Lady Susan’s villa at Montricheux, and with a jerk Ann emerged from her train of retrospective thought to the realisation that her lines had really fallen in very pleasant places, after all.

It seemed as though there were some truth in Lady Susan’s assertion that things had a way of working out all right in the end. But for her father’s mismanagement of his affairs—and the affairs of those dependent on him—Ann recognised that she might very well have been still pursuing the rather dull, uneventful life which obtained at Lovell Court, without the prospect of any vital change or happening to relieve its tedium, whereas the catastrophe which had once seemed to threaten chaos had actually opened the door of the world to her.

Chapter 3

ON THE TOP OF THE WORLD

The rack-and-pinion railway from Montricheux to the Dents de Loup wound upward like a single filament flung round the mountains by some giant spider. The miniature train, edging its way along the track, appeared no more than a mere speck as it crept tortuously up towards the top. At its rear puffed a small engine, built in a curious tilted fashion, so that as it laboured industriously behind the coaches of the train it reminded one ridiculously of a baby elephant on its knees.

Ann was leaning against the windowless framework of the railway carriage, watching the valleys drop away, curve by curve, as the train climbed. Far below lay the lake, a blue rift glimmering between pine-clad heights. Then a turn of the track and the lake was swept suddenly out of sight, while the mountains closed round—shoulder after green-clad shoulder, with fields of white narcissus flung across them like fairy mantles. The air was full of the fragrance of narcissus mingling with the pungent scent of fir and pine. Ann sniffed luxuriously and glanced round to where Tony was sitting.

“Doesn’t it smell clean and delicious?” she said, drawing in great breaths of the pine-laden air. “When I come up to the mountains I always wonder why on earth we ever live anywhere else.”

Tony smiled.

“You’d be the first to get bored if you didn’t live somewhere else—now that the winter sports are over,” he returned. “After all,” mundanely, “you can’t derive more than a limited amount of enjoyment from scenery, however fine. Besides, you must know this route by heart.”

“I do. But I love it! It’s different every time I come up here. I think,” knitting her brows, “that’s what is so fascinating about the Swiss mountains; they change so much. Sometimes they look all misty and unreal—almost like a mirage, and then, the very next day, perhaps, they’ll have turned back into hard-edged, solid rock and you can’t imagine their ever looking like dream-mountains again.”

Gradually, as they mounted, they left the verdant valleys, with their sheltered farms and chalets, behind. The pine-woods thinned, and now and again a wedge of frozen snow, lodged under the projecting corner of a rock, appeared beside the track. The wind grew keener, chill from the eternal snows over which it had swept, and sheer, rocky peaks, bare of tree or herbage, thrust upward against the sky.

Presently, with a warning shriek, the train glided into a tunnel cut clean through the base of a mighty rock. The sides dripped moisture and the icy air tore through the narrow passage like a blast of winter. Ann shivered in the sudden cold and darkness and drew her furs closer round her. She had a queer dread of underground places; they gave her a feeling of captivity, and she was thankful when the train emerged once more into daylight and ran into the mountain station. Tony helped her out on to the small platform.

“Which is it to be?” he asked, glancing towards where a solitary hotel stood like a lonely outpost of civilisation. “Tea first, or a walk?”

Ann declared in favour of the walk.

“Let’s go straight up to the Roche d’Or. I always feel as if I’d reached the top of the world there. It’s certainly as near the top as I shall ever get!” she added laughing. “I don’t feel drawn towards mountaineering, so I shall probably never ascend beyond the limits of the rack-and-pinion.”

The Roche d’Or was a steep upward slope, culminating in a rocky promontory from which was visible the vast expanse of the Bernese Oberland. A railed-in platform capped the promontory, for it was a recognised viewpoint. Opposite, across a shallow valley, the Dents de Loup cut the sky-line—two menacing, fang-shaped peaks like the teeth of a wolf, and beyond them a seemingly endless range of mountains stretched away to the far horizon, pinnacle after pinnacle towering upwards with sombre, sharp-edged shadows veiling the depths between. Along immense ridged scarps lay the plains of everlasting snow, infinitely bleak and desolate till a burst of sunlight suddenly transformed them, clothing the great flanks of the mountains in cloth of silver.

Ann stood still, absorbing the sheer beauty of it all.

“It’s heavenly, isn’t it?” she said at last, a little sigh of ecstasy escaping her.

Tony looked, not at the hills, but at the young, eager face just level with his shoulder.

“It’s probably as near heaven as I shall ever get,” he answered. “Anyway, just for the moment, I don’t feel I’ve anything particular to complain of.”

“I suppose I’m to take that as a compliment,” replied Ann. “Anyway,” mimicking him, “I don’t really think you have very much to complain of at any time. You’re one of the idle rich, you know. How would you like it if you were obliged to keep your nose to the grindstone—like Robin and me?”

“I shouldn’t mind,” curtly, “if I could choose my grindstone.”

“But that’s just it! Robin can’t—choose his grindstone, I mean. He’s just got to keep slogging away at anything that turns up.”

Her face shadowed a little. They were very devoted to each other, she and Robin. From their earliest childhood their father had counted for so little in either of their lives that they had inevitably drawn closer to each other than most brothers and sisters, and the enforced separation of the last few years had been a sore trial to both of them.

“You’re very fond of Robin,” observed Tony. There was a note of envy in his voice.

“Of course I am. If we could only afford to live together, I think I should be absolutely happy.”

He glanced at her quickly.

“Aren’t you happy with Lady Susan?”

“Oh, yes, yes! No one could be kinder to me than she is. But—I miss Robin,” rather wistfully. “You see, we’ve always been everything to each other.”

“I see. And what will happen if one day you—or Robin—should get married?”

Ann skirted the topic dexterously.

“Oh, don’t let’s think about possible calamities on a day like this. Look!” She touched his arm, drawing his attention to a girl who had also climbed the Roche d’Or hill to see the view and had halted near them, a sheaf of freshly-gathered wild-flowers in her hand. “Aren’t those blue gentians lovely?”

Tony glanced at the few vividly blue flowers the girl was jealously clasping. She had walked far in search of them and valued them accordingly.

“Do you want some?” he asked eagerly.

Ann nodded.

“Isn’t it getting rather late in the year to find them, though?” she said doubtfully.

The girl with the flowers, overhearing, turned to her with a friendly smile.

“There are very few left,” she vouchsafed. “I’ve been hunting everywhere for them. But you may find one or two over there.” She pointed to a distant slope.

Tony’s eyes followed her gesture. Then he glanced down at Ann inquiringly.

“Are you game for so long a walk?” he asked.

“I’m game for anything up in this air,” she assured him with conviction.

But, as was not infrequently the case, Ann’s spirit outstripped her physical strength. The slope indicated was much farther away than it appeared and “the going was bad,” as Tony phrased it. Blue gentians proved tantalisingly elusive, and at length, rather disheartened by their unprofitable search, Ann came to a standstill.

“I think I’m beginning to feel a keener interest in tea than gentians, Tony,” she confessed at last, ruefully. “It’s very contemptible of me, I own. But when I contemplate the distance we’ve already got to cover before we reach the hotel again, I feel distinctly disinclined to add to it.”

“I’ve let you walk too far!” Tony was overwhelmed with compunction. “Look here, sit down in this little hollow and rest for a few minutes before we turn back, while I just go a bit further and see if I can find you a gentian.”

He stripped off his overcoat as he spoke and rolled it together to make a cushion for her.

“No, no, I don’t want your coat,” she protested. “I don’t need it—really!”

But Tony was suddenly masterful.

“You’ll do as you’re told,” he asserted. And somewhat to her own surprise she found herself meekly obeying him.

He strode away, disappearing quickly from sight over the brow of a hill, and with a small sigh of contentment she tucked her feet under her on the improvised cushion and lit a cigarette. She had had a busy morning, and was really more tired than she knew. First of all there had been the car to clean, then there were flowers to be arranged for the house, and after that various small shopping errands had cropped up, so that Ann had found herself very fully occupied until at length, accompanied by Sir Philip, Lady Susan had departed for Evian. She wondered fugitively how the pair were enjoying themselves.

It was very pleasant sitting there. The huge boulder against which she leant sheltered her from the wind and the spot was bathed in brilliant sunshine. She finished her cigarette and lapsed into a brown study provoked by Tony’s sudden question: “What will happen if one day you—or Robin—should get married?” She had never asked herself that question. It was so much an understood thing between brother and sister that, as soon as Robin found a sufficiently remunerative post, they should live together, that any alternative had not entered her head.

But now she came to think of it, of course it was quite possible that Robin might some day meet the woman whom he would want to marry. Her mouth twisted in a little wry grimace of distaste. She was sure she should detest any woman who robbed her of her brother. And if such a thing happened, she would certainly take herself off and live somewhere else. Nothing would ever induce her to remain in a married brother’s house—an unwanted third.

There would always be one avenue of escape open to her, she reflected ironically—by way of her own marriage with Tony. She wished it were possible to fall in love to order! It would simplify things so much. As Tony’s wife she felt sure she could keep him straight and so fulfil the trust Virginia had imposed on her. He had always shown himself sensitively responsive to her influence—like a penitent boy if she scolded him, radiant if he had won her approval. And he had a very special niche of his own in her heart. Next to Robin, there was no one she loved more.