The Vision of Desire Part 63

"Yes. And I got what I wanted. These are the bills which Tony gave to Brett--and there's a note for you, as well," she added with a fugitive smile.

She slid the whole packet on to the table, and Ann picked up one of the stamped oblong slips of paper and examined it with a curious sense of detachment.

"'Bill or note.'" She read aloud the words which crowned and footed the Government stamp. Then she laid the bill back on the top of the others.

"But I don't understand," she said. "How did--you--get these!"

"Sit down, and I'll tell you," replied Cara.

Ann sat down obediently, feeling as though she were living and moving in a dream. Once she glanced almost apprehensively towards the small heap of bills on the table. Yes, they were still there. Those narrow strips of paper which spelt for Tony a fresh chance in life and for herself release from any future domination of Brett Forrester's. Not yet could she realise the full wonder and joy of it--all the splendour of life and love which their mere presence there gave back to her. For the moment she was only conscious of an extraordinary calm--like the quiescence which succeeds relief from physical agony, when the senses, dulled by suffering, are for a short s.p.a.ce contented with the mere absence of actual pain.

At first she fixed her eyes almost unseeingly on Cara, as the latter began to recount the events of the previous evening, but swiftly a look of attention dawned in them. The realities of life were coming back to her, and by the time Cara had finished her story--beginning with the sending of the telegram in Brett's name and ending with the final surrender of the notes of hand--she had grasped the significance of what had happened.

"And you did this--risked so much--for me?" she said, trembling a little.

"Oh, Cara!"

Cara was silent a moment. Then she leaned forward.

"Not only for you, Ann," she said gently, "Do you remember my telling you that a woman once--jilted Eliot Coventry?"

Ann's startled eyes met the grave, sorrowful ones of the woman who bent towards her. But she averted them quickly. Something--some fine, instinctive understanding forbade that she should look at her just then.

"Yes" she answered, hardly above her breath.

Cara hesitated. Then she spoke, unevenly, and with a slight, difficult pause now and again between her words.

"I was that woman. I--robbed him of his belief in things--of his chance of happiness. I didn't realise all I was doing at the time. But afterwards--I knew.... Ever since then, I've wanted to give it back to him--all that I robbed him of. I made his life bitter--and I wanted to make it sweet again.

To give him back his happiness.... Last night, I paid my debt."

Ann had been listening with bent head. Now she lifted it, and her eyes held a terrible questioning. Behind the questioning lay terror--the terror of one who sees a heaven regained suddenly barred away.

"Then he ... you...." She could not even formulate the aching demand of her whole soul and body. But Cara understood. Love had taught her all there was to know of love.

"Eliot's love for me died ten years ago," she said simply.

"And yours?" asked Ann painfully. "Not yours. Or you wouldn't--you couldn't--have done this--for him."

For an instant Cara closed her eyes. Then she spoke, with white lips, but with a quiet, steadfast decision that carried absolute conviction.

"I know what you are thinking," she said. "But you are wrong--quite wrong.

There is nothing left between Eliot Coventry and me--nothing--except remembrance. And for the sake of that remembrance--for the sake of what was, though it has been, dead these many years--I have done what I have done."

The question died out of Ann's eyes--answered once and for ever, and Cara stifled a sigh of relief as she watched the faint colour steal back into the girl's cheeks.

"I don't know how I could have thought you still cared," said Ann presently. "It was silly of me--when you are going to marry Robin."

"Yes. Robin and I are going to start a new life together. He knows--what happened--years ago. And he understands. I hope"--forcing herself to speak more lightly--"I hope he won't be too shocked at my flight to the yacht last night to marry me after all!"

Ann laughed.

"I don't think you need be afraid," she answered affectionately. "But Eliot!" She paused in consternation, then went on quickly: "What did he think when he found you there, Cara? Do you know what he thought?"

Cara's expression hardened a little.

"Yes, I know," she said shortly.

"And I can guess," returned Ann. She sprang up from her chair with all her old characteristic impetuosity. "And he's not going to think--that--a moment longer. I suppose"--her voice seemed to glow and the eyes she bent on Cara were wonderfully tender--"I suppose you wouldn't explain because you wanted to keep me out of it?" Then, as Cara nodded a.s.sent: "I thought so! Well, I'm not going to be kept out of it. I'm going straight across to Heronsmere--now, at once--to tell Eliot the whole truth."

She swept Cara's protest royally aside, and within a few minutes Cara herself was on her way home and Billy Brewster flinging the harness on the pony's back at unprecedented speed.

But d.i.c.k Turpin was spared the necessity of making the whirlwind rush to Heronsmere which loomed ahead of him, by the opportune appearance of Eliot himself at the Cottage gate.

Ann drew him quickly into the house.

"I was just coming over to see you," she told him swiftly. "It's--it's about last night."

His face darkened.

"About last night?" he repeated. "What about it?"

"You found--Cara--on board Brett's yacht."

"I did--and drew my own conclusions."

"Well, they were wrong ones," said Ann. Then, seeing that he looked quite unconvinced, she went on quickly lest her courage should fail her. "If it had not been for Cara, you would have found me there--"

"You? Then it's true--true you actually intended going there? Bradley was right?"

"Yes, he told you just what he had been ordered to tell you. Brett believed I was coming--he was expecting me. I promised to go because he held some bills of Tony's--Tony had borrowed from him far more than he could pay. And Brett bargained with me that he would give them up if I would go to supper with him on the _Sphinx_." The whole story came tumbling out in quick, vivid sentences. In a few moments Eliot was in possession of all the facts which lay behind his discovery of Cara on the yacht.

"So Cara had taken your place." There was a strange new gentleness in his voice as he spoke of the woman who had first broken and then built up his life again.

"Yes. I was afraid--afraid that if you knew I had been there, you would believe--what you believed once before."

A stifled e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n broke from him.

"You thought that?" he said, his voice suddenly roughened by pain. "Oh, my dear, do you think I haven't learned my lesson--yet?"

She looked at him doubtfully.

"How could I know? Oh, Eliot"--with tragic poignancy--"how could I _know_?"

For a moment the man and woman stood looking at each other in silence, separated once more by the grey shadow which had fallen again between them--the shadow of an old distrust. All at once Eliot's pain-wrung face relaxed.

"Didn't you get my note?" he asked eagerly. "Didn't Cara give it you?"

"Your--note?" For an instant Ann was puzzled. Then she remembered. Cara had said there was a note for her. At the time she had a.s.sumed it was a note from Brett, and in listening to the history of all that had taken place upon the yacht she had never given it another thought. She turned to the sheaf of bills still lying on the table. Yes, it was there, hidden beneath the bill which she had picked up to examine, afterwards replacing it on the top of the pile.

She unfolded the note and read it in silence, and, as she read, the grey shadow which had dimmed even the radiance of love itself unfurled its wings and fled away.