by Trevallion
"Alix . . ." Anna stretched out a hand and her eyes were soft and regretful, but Alix, with a swift, contemptuous movement, slapped her hand down.
"I don't need your charity," she said savagely. "Keep that for Rick, and anyone else you think will benefit by forgiveness !"
The colour was coming back to Anna's face. She stood up and faced Alix squarely across the bed.
"Rick doesn't need my charity, or my forgiveness," she said gravely, then turned away with a blind, rather lost little movement.
"I think I'd like to go back to the house," she said.
"Yes, dear child, perhaps you would give me your arm across the wasteland," old Mrs. Peveril said, rising stiffly to her feet.
Rick looked directly at Alix across the room and his face was hard and implacable.
"You will be out of here by tomorrow, please," he said briefly, and only then did Alix seem to falter.
"Rick . . ." she said, "you can't . . . you wouldn't turn me away. . . ."
"I should have done it long ago," he replied. "If you aren't out by tomorrow, Alix, I'd get an order of eviction against you, and you wouldn't like that, would you? You'd better get dressed and start packing now." He turned on his heel and, without another glance at her, followed Anna and his grandmother out of the cottage.
They walked slowly back along the worn path to the house, Rick and Anna on each side of the old lady, whose strength seemed now to be failing.
"I must rest," she said, pausing by the ha-ha, and stood, bowed over her stick in the sunlight.
The gentle breeze was warm on Anna's cheeks and the gulls, circling overhead, screamed their harsh calling; the gulls and the sound of the sea, the familiar pattern of Trevallion. Blow the wind southerly. . . . Anna would not meet Rick's eyes and he, for once, seemed at a loss and said nothing.
"Well," said Mrs. Peveril, suddenly brisk, "help me across the ha-ha, both of you."
Although she was a big woman, Rick picked her up and
set her down on the other side of the sunken fence with ease; then held out a hand to help Anna, but she pretended not to see it and scrambled into the ditch and out again, remembering, as she did so, Alix's bold flying leap which took no heed of obstacles.
"I'll never," she said ruefully, "be a true Peveril." Mrs. Peveril patted her shoulder.
"You'll do," she said briefly, and Anna flushed, conscious of Rick, dark and silent, observing them both. She saw Ruth, her spaniel at her heels, coming to meet them, and looked with some concern at the old, witch-like face on a level with her own.
"Are you all right, Mrs. Peveril?" she asked quickly, for the events of the morning, she thought, were beginning to take toll of the indomitable old lady.
"Quite all right, my dear, and—you may call me Grand, if you will." Mrs. Peveril saw the surprise and shy gratitude which sprang swiftly to Anna's clear eyes, and she sighed, impatient, perhaps, at last, of her own long, dogmatic rule.
"I'm tired these days, Anna," she said. "I'll be content to hand over to you, when the time comes. Ah, here's Ruth! She will take me back to the house and my own rooms. You two—go and straighten out your affairs."
Anna took fright. She had one startled look at Rick's dark, suddenly implacable face, and fled across the lawn, her hair flying and the full skirt of her pink frock billowing in the breeze above her long bare legs.
"The correct attitude!" old Mrs. Peveril chuckled, starting slowly to meet her granddaughter. "Woman flees and man pursues. ... Do better this time, Rick. . . ."
He caught her in the topiary. As his hands took and held her she looked round at Birdie's strange beasts and shapes hemming them in, and, for another moment, knew panic again.
"Anna . . ." he said gently, "are you running away from me?"
"Yes . . ." she said breathlessly. ''Yes, I suppose I am." "Why?"
"Because . . . because . . . Rick, was it true—about the letter?"
"Quite true."
"But why—why couldn't you have told me?"
He took her face in his hands, and her fine, fair hair fell softly over his wrists.
"Because, as Grand said, I wasn't sure of you," he said. "Because, perhaps, I was a coward when it came to risking my own happiness. I've written many letters like that to you, Anna, and torn them up. I didn't know for certain, you see, how you felt about me."
"Didn't you, Rick? I always tried so hard not to let you know, but I thought you must have guessed."
"When one loves oneself, my dearest dear, one is always tentative."
"My dearest dear . . ." she said, lingering on the words. "You said that in the letter. Rick—can you really love me after—after Alix?"
The lines in his dark face suddenly hardened.
"Alix was a passion—a fever I had lived with for a long time," he said harshly. "She had nothing to give, and you— well, you have the delicate air—it was the first thing I thought about you."
"How strange," she said. "I shouldn't have thought the Peverils would have any use for delicate airs."
"Wouldn't you? But then, perhaps, you don't know us very well."
"No, I don't. I don't think I know you at all, Rick."
"Probably not. Are you prepared to give me a trial—to offer a little of that charity Alix refused?"
She was very still, standing straight and slender as a wand before him, and he could feel the warm colour rising under his hands.
"Are you sure . . ." she whispered. "Are you sure? Because, Rick, I love you so much that—I was prepared to
marry you, even though you still might want Alix."
"How sweet you are," he said, touching her lips with his own. "Will you bear with me, Anna . . . will you bear with us all—Ruth, Birdie and Grand?"
"Ruth will be married, Birdie living in the cowman's cottage. The house will seem rather big, won't it?" she sounded anxious.
"For a time, perhaps. Grand is very old, you know. She can't last much longer than another few years. Will you bear with her, too, Anna?"
"I like your grandmother," she said shyly, "and I think, now, she likes me. . . ."
It was very still in the topiary. The odd shapes of beasts and strange birds rose, dark and silent, around them. The thick, aromatic smell of yew pervaded the little grass enclosure and the last butterflies of the year flitted lazily from leaf to leaf. A plane flew high overhead, its engines making a faint, insistent drone, and Anna looked up.
"Not forgotten him yet, after all," said Rick with the old mockery, his hands slipping from her face down to her waist, drawing her close.
"Oh, yes—as the man I was going to marry," she said, her face pressed against his breast. "But one doesn't forget the first stirrings of one's emotions. You won't either, Rick. Everything's of value in the end."
"Yes, wise Anna," he said, touching her cheek with his. "Have I got you at last?"
"You've always had me," she said simply. "That was my undoing very early. . . ."
"Your undoing?" For a moment his face creased in lines of pain and naked desire. "Anna, my darling, I want you— more than you can possibly know. If you have any fondness for me, as I once imagined you had, then—then this crazy bargain of ours will be justified, won't it?"
"Yes," she said, touching his face with tentaive hands. "Yes, Rick—everything is justified if one loves. . . ."
They walked back to the house, through the paths of giant
rhododendrons and across the lawns. The house stood waiting for them and on the terrace Ruth's spaniel, stretched in the sun, wagged his tad in welcome.
"No regrets?" said Rick, suddenly swinging her on to the top steps of the terrace.
From that height she stood a little above him, and the soft hair fed forward against her face and touched his cheek.
"No regrets," she said, and ran shy, exploratory fingers round his chin.
"Darling Rick!" she said, laughing, "you need a shave!"