The Vision of Desire by Margaret Pedler

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THE VISION OF DESIRE

BY MARGARET PEDLER

AUTHOR OF
THE HERMIT OF FAR END,
THE MOON OUT OF REACH, ETC.

_"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

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER

I ANN'S LEGACY

II THE BRABAZONS OF LORNE

III ON THE TOP OF THE WORLD

IV RATS IN A TRAP

V THE VISITORS' BOOK

VI THE MAN WITH THE SCAR

VII A QUESTION OF ILLUSIONS

VIII A LETTER FROM ENGLAND

IX OLDSTONE COTTAGE

X A DISCOVERY

XI THE LADY FROM THE PRIORY

XII A NEW ACQUAINTANCE

XIII "FRIENDSHIP IMPLIES TRUST"

XIV THE ETERNAL TRIANGLE

XV ANCIENT HISTORY

XVI DREAM-FLOWERS

XVII A SPRIG OF HELIOTROPE

XVIII A BATTLE OF WILLS

XIX ACCOUNT RENDERED

XX REFUSAL

XXI THE RETURN

XXII WILD OATS

XXIII THE TEETH OF THE WOLF

XXIV AFTERMATH

XXV THE HALF-TRUTH

XXVI ENLIGHTENMENT

XXVII THE TRUTH

XXVIII THE GREY SHADOW

XXIX A PATCH OF SUNLIGHT

XXX THE KEEPING OF A PROMISE

XXXI A BARGAIN

XXXII ON BOARD THE "SPHINX"

XXXIII THE VISION FULFILLED

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.

NOTE:--Musical setting by Margaret Pedler. Published by Edward Schuberth &
Co., 11 East 22nd Street, New York.

THE VISION OF DESIRE

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 good-bye, 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 I

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 to-day," 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.

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