The Vision of Desire Part 46

To Ann herself, the sudden cloud of obloquy in which she found herself enveloped heaped an added weight to the burden she already had to bear, and compelled her to take Robin fully into her confidence. It was a mystery to her how the story of the Dents de Loup episode had leaked out in the neighbourhood. She utterly declined to believe that Coventry himself would have shared his knowledge of the incident with any one. But that it _had_ leaked out was cruelly self-evident, and the worst part of it was that the malicious gossip was founded on so much actual fact that it was difficult--almost impossible, in fact--to combat or refute it. She felt helpless in the face of the detestable scandal which had reared itself upon a foundation of such innocent truth.

"I wish Coventry had accepted my resignation," fulminated Robin fiercely.

"This is a perfectly beastly business. That vile scandal's all over the place."

"I know," a.s.sented Ann indifferently. It hurt her that certain people should think ill of her as they did, but after all, the ache in her heart hurt much more. A man stretched on the rack would probably take little notice if you ran a pin into him. The lesser pain would be overwhelmed by the great agony. And although the first realisation of the gossip that had fastened on her name filled Ann with bitter indignation and disgust, it became a relatively small matter in comparison with the total s.h.i.+pwreck of her love and happiness. It did not really matter very much that Mrs.

Carberry had cut her pointedly in the middle of Silverquay, or that some of the village girls whispered and pointed at her surrept.i.tiously as she pa.s.sed. These were all external things, which could be fought down. But the wound that Eliot himself had dealt her had pierced to the very core of her being.

"Well," Robin resumed thoughtfully after a brief silence. "I've _got_ to stay here till the six months are run out. But you needn't, Ann. You had better look for a post of some kind till I'm free--"

"A post!" She laughed rather bitterly. "I've a good recommendation for any post, haven't I? A story like this would be sure to follow me up somehow, and I should probably be politely requested by my employer to leave.'

"Then go away for a bit. I'll find the money somehow. I won't have you baited by all the old tabby-cats in the neighbourhood."

Ann stood up, her head thrown back proudly on its slim young throat.

"_No_," she said with decision. "No, Robin. I'm not going to run away from village gossip. I'm going to face it out."

Robin sprang up.

"Well done, little sister!" he exclaimed, a ring of wholehearted admiration in his voice. "We'll stick it out together--stay here and live it down." He held out his hand and, Ann laying hers within it, they shook hands soberly, just as in earlier days they had so often shaken hands over some childish pact.

The loyalty of Ann's friends, of Lady Susan and of Cara and the rector, was a very real consolation. Lady Susan had descended on the Cottage the moment the story came to her ears--which happened to be on the very day following Coventry's departure from Silverquay. Brett, she vouchsafed, had run up to town unexpectedly for a few days. "And he's just as well out of the way,"

she added briskly, "till we've got this tangle straight"--little dreaming that her nephew was responsible for the whole knotting of the tangled skein. By kindly probing she elicited the real, grim tragedy which lay behind all the gossip, and her anger against Eliot knew no bounds. But once she had given characteristic expression to her opinion of men in general, and of Eliot in particular, she promptly set to work to try and mend matters.

"_I_ can explain to Eliot how you came to be at the Hotel de Loup that night," she a.s.serted. "He won't presume to doubt me!"

"No. But he _has_ presumed to doubt me," replied Ann bitterly. "So it wouldn't help in the least if you explained all day."

"How do you mean--wouldn't help?"

"Because what matters is whether Eliot himself trusts me--not whether he has everything explained to him," said Ann. "He must trust me because I'm trustworthy--not because you guarantee me."

"My dear--that's the ideal att.i.tude. But"--Lady Susan sighed and smiled in the same breath--"we've got to make allowances for poor human nature. We're all so very far from being ideal in this sinful old world. Be sensible, Ann darling," she coaxed, "and let me a.s.sure Eliot you were up at the Hotel de Loup alone."

Ann shook her head.

"You can't, dear Lady Susan. Because--I wasn't alone. Tony and I were there together."

Lady Susan turned on her a face of blank astonishment.

"You weren't alone?" she exclaimed. "But--I don't understand. Philip told me that Tony ran over to Geneva that day and stayed the night there!"

"Did he?" Ann's heart grew very soft at the thought of Tony's boyishly crude effort to protect her from the possible consequence of their night's sojourn at the hotel. "I'm afraid Tony let him think that on my account--in order to s.h.i.+eld me.... I should have told you all about it at the time,"

she went on, "only--don't you remember--you had sprained your ankle, and you were in so much, pain that I just didn't want to bother you with the matter."

Lady Susan looked distressed.

"But, my dear, what possessed you to stay the night up there--with Tony?

You must have known people would talk if it ever became known."

"Well, it was just a sheer bit of bad luck," explained Ann, and forthwith proceeded to recount the whole adventure which had befallen her and Tony at the Dents de Loup. "We _had_ to stay there," she wound up. "We'd absolutely no choice. But we met no one. Not a soul. And I can't conceive how the story has got out."

"And now there's all this wretched t.i.ttle-tattle about you!" chafed Lady Susan. "My poor little Ann, it really is a stroke of the most fiendish ill-luck."

Ann nodded.

"Yes. Don't you see how impossible it is for me to clear myself? We _were_ there. It's true."

"I do see," replied Lady Susan in a worried tone. "It's just the kind of coil that's hardest of all to straighten out. A lot of untrue gossip founded upon actual fact--and there's nothing more difficult to combat than a half-truth."

"Oh, well"--Ann jumped up restlessly out of her chair. "It's smashed up everything for me. And when you've crashed I don't suppose a little ill-natured gossip more or less matters very much. Did you know Mrs.

Carberry cut me this morning in the village high-street?" she added with a smile.

"Did she indeed?" said Lady Susan, a grim note in her usually pleasant voice. "Of course, the whole business is nuts to her--she's aching to plant that prunes-and-prisms daughter of hers on Eliot Coventry. Well, I think I carry weight enough in the neighbourhood to put a stop to that kind of insolence." She paused reflectively. "I shall open my campaign with a big dinner-party--and you and Robin will come to it. I'll shoot off the invitations to-morrow. Don't worry, Ann. If, between us, your friends can't manage to scotch this kind of dead-set some people are making at you, my name's not Susan Hallett." She rose and slipped her arm round Ann's shoulders in a gesture of unwonted tenderness. "And for the rest, my dear--try and believe things will come straight in the end. You're in the long lane, now--but you'll find the turning some day, I feel sure."

The following morning Brian Tempest arrived at the Cottage. Ann greeted him with a smile, half sad, half bitter.

"Have you come to call down fulminations of wrath on my devoted head?" she asked.

The rector's kind eyes were puckered round with little creases of distress.

"Did you think that?" he asked.

She smiled--and there was less of bitterness in the smile this time.

"No," she answered frankly. "I didn't. I thought you'd come to pay a kindly visit to the outcast."

"I came," he said simply, "to tell you--if you need telling--that I don't believe one word of this ridiculous story which is flying round, and that I'm going to fight it with every bit of influence I can bring to bear."

"You dear!" replied Ann softly. A wan gleam of amus.e.m.e.nt flitted across her face. "But it's true, you know--Tony and I did stay at the Hotel de Loup together."

No remotest glimmer of doubt, or even of astonishment, showed itself in the steady glance of Tempest's "heather mixture" eyes.

"Did you?" he returned placidly. "Well, I suppose neither of you has the sole monopoly of any hotel in Europe."

"Then you're not shocked?"

"Not in the least. I conjecture that some accidental happening drove you both into an awkward predicament. Feel like telling me about it all?"--with a friendly smile.

Ann felt exactly like it. There was something in Brian Tempest--in his absolute sincerity and his broad, tolerant, humorous outlook on things--which attracted confidence as a magnet attracts steel, and before long he was in possession of the skeleton facts of the story, and had himself, out of his own gifts of observation and sympathetic intuition, clothed those bare bones with tissue.

"And what do you propose to do?" he asked, when Ann ceased speaking.

"Stick it out," she returned briefly.

Tempest watched the brave fire gather and glow in the golden-brown eyes. He nodded contentedly.

"I was sure you would," he said. "And don't worry overmuch. _Think_ that it will come right. Even"--with a kindly significance--"the part that hurts you most--and I know that's not the general gossip. Don't let your thoughts waver. There's no limit to the force of thought, you know."