Anthony Lyveden Part 57

Anthony's fine const.i.tution and the open-air life which he had led at Gramarye stood him in splendid stead. So much so, that when, upon St.

George's Day, Patch came trotting with a red rose in his mouth, he found the bed empty and his master sitting cheerfully upon a sofa before the fuss and worry of a bright wood fire. It was clear that a new era had begun. Patch dropped the rose and fairly hurled himself at a small log lying conveniently in a corner beside an old _prie-Dieu_.

A mischievous look came into Valerie's eyes.

"You haven't heard a word," she said, bubbling, "of what I've been saying. You know you haven't."

Anthony laughed guiltily.

"Yes, I have," he protested. "You were saying you'd half a mind to give up having hydrangeas and--and--er--not have them at all," he concluded lamely.

Valerie uttered a little crow of triumph.

"Scandalous," she said. "Simply scandalous. It's no good pretending.

I know perfectly well what you were thinking about. You were thinking of Gramarye. That old dream of yours ..."

Mark, sirs, how the mighty may fall and how familiarity may breed contempt. Gramarye had lost her sting. Spoiled of her puissance, she had sunk to the level of "Boney"--fare for the ears of children, food for a jest.

"No, I wasn't," said Anthony, smiling. "At least, not directly. I was thinking of an argument the Monseigneur put up about my dream."

"What did he say?"

"Well, his contention was this. You know, if, for instance, a bell rings when you're asleep and dreaming, as likely as not the noise is introduced--not necessarily in the same form--into your dream, isn't it? Very well. That shows the senses are working. The message arrives distorted, but it arrives. Well, he said that in his opinion practically everything that came to pa.s.s in my dream was originally suggested by some outside influence. Water being poured into a basin suggests a brook. A sewing-machine becomes a train. The hiss of a burning log escaping steam. So much for the ears. Now for the eyes.

A maid helps the nurse to move a sofa--I see timber being hauled. The doctor shakes his thermometer, and there's Winchester wielding an axe.... It's a pretty theory, and the more you study it, the sounder it seems." He crossed his legs and started to fill a pipe. "All the same, I must have a fertile imagination. I think I always had. As a child I was left alone a great deal, and I fancy that helped."

It was a lazy Sunday morning--the fourth in the month of May. John Forest had been gone a month, and Lady Touchstone was properly at church. Greenwich would have told you that it was ten o'clock, and the gorgeous tapestry of Summer was still wrought with the brilliant embroidery of a heavy dew. Lawns, flower-borders, and stiff box charactery sparkled and shone in the hot sunshine. The sky was cloudless: a haze kept to itself the distant promise of the park: there was no wind. The sleepy hum of insects, a rare contented melody, tilted the hat of Silence over that watchman's eyes. The wandering scent of hawthorns offered the faultless day a precious b.u.t.ton-hole.

Sitting easily among the cushions of a teak-wood chair, Anthony let his eyes ramble luxuriously over the prospect. In a _chaise longue_ by his side Valerie was engaged in the desultory composition of a letter to her uncle in Rome. Stretched blinking upon the warm flags, Patch watched the two vigilantly for any sign of movement.

"Did I ever have a red-haired nurse?" said Anthony suddenly.

Valerie shook her head.

"No," she said. "You had the same two all the time. Why?"

"I dreamed of a red-haired girl." Valerie sat very still. "Andre, her name was. I met her first in the road... I remember she knew me.

She'd been hunting and looked like a Baccha.n.a.l. She turned up again later on--one night. I was just going to bed." He frowned at the recollection. "I wonder I didn't chatter about that. I was worried to blazes...."

"That--that's the worst of dreams," said Valerie slowly. "You're impotent."

With a shock she realized that she had written ANDRe in capitals in the middle of her letter, and, below it again, BACCHa.n.a.l. Casually she scratched out the words till her pen ploughed up the sodden paper.

"It's a wretched feeling," said Anthony. "I dreamt she--cared for me.

And I--I never got there. She had to tell me right out.... Oh, Valerie, it was awful."

Miss French felt as though her heart had stopped beating. She could have screamed to Anthony to go on. Instead--

"Poor old chap," she said gently.

She had her reward.

"When she saw there was nothing doing, she went.... And then Winchester appeared with Patch, as I was putting her into her car. I remember he called her 'Andre'--that's how I knew her name.... And then he cursed me, because she was his _fiancee_, and she fairly tore him up. Then she chucked down his ring and drove off. There must have been a car leaving Bell Hammer just then. I can hear her changing the gears now." He pa.s.sed a hand over his eyes. "I can't remember any more, except that Winchester was shouting...."

For a long moment the two sat very still. Then Valerie scrambled to her feet and put her head on one side. Her eyes were just dancing.

"You and your red-haired sirens," she said reproachfully. "And now come along, and I'll pick you a b.u.t.tonhole."

The cloud poor Peter Every had found so menacing had discharged rain of pure gold. Love had emerged from the shower, refreshed, glistening.

The two could not know that, while they pa.s.sed down the steps into the sunlit flower-garden, a girl with auburn hair was pushing a frantic three-year-old through the Scotch mist of Donegal, and wondering at every bank whether she would have the good fortune to break her neck.

Still, though their rain be golden, clouds beget shadows. If Lyveden responded to Valerie's invitation, he did not rise to her mood. The throwback to Gramarye had set him thinking....

"Valerie," he said slowly, knitting his brows.

The girl had been upon the point of stopping to pick a rose. His serious tone, however, made her look up. The bloom was spared.

"Yes."

"When I went down--in November--there was something wrong. I mean, we were at variance."

With difficulty the girl repressed a shiver.

For a while she had hourly dreaded an allusion to the grim episode.

Then, when the weeks went by and none was made, she began, at first feebly, to hope that it was buried. Gradually the hope had swelled into belief. Lately she had made sure that upon the first day, when Anthony had wept in her arms, he and she had been treading upon its grave. And now here it was--like a river full in their path, a swift-flowing treacherous stream which they must ford together. She would have given anything for a moment to collect her thoughts, but Anthony had started across. Already he was up to his knees....

To be frank, she was in a tight place. The issues she had to deal with were clogged. Her treatment of them was to be governed by ruthless premises. Finally, if she made a false step, her fortunes and those of Anthony would be again in the melting-pot.

For an instant her brain zig-zagged. The next moment she had it in hand.

"Yes," she said slowly, "we were. I hoped you'd forgotten. You see, I'm very much ashamed. And, when my eyes were opened, I was just terrified. I felt as if I'd committed murder."

As she spoke, her brain fairly flashed through the rules which must govern this talk.

Everything hinged upon one mighty postulate--that _Anthony had collapsed precisely at one-fifteen upon the 16th of November_. He had, of course, done nothing of the sort. But that did not matter.

_From that hour, for four months and a half, he had lain in a trance_.

This was the second article, which except Anthony believed, he could not be saved.

Anthony's memory, however, was a faithful servant--not to be tampered with. To reconcile the servant's report with the articles of his faith, a third tenet became essential. This was that _what Anthony remembered was the burthen of a dream_.

There go the governing principles.

Now for the issues.

Her sudden--perhaps excusable--jealousy of Anne Alison, her barbarous dismissal of Anthony, her quite inexcusable failure to give any reason for such treatment, her subsequent enlightenment by Anne herself--there is the skeleton whose dry bones he and she are to pick over--a gruesome business _which has already been dispatched_ ... upon the twentieth day of February, gentlemen, up in the Cotswold Hills. They both remember it perfectly. Yet Valerie must forget it, while Anthony must think it was a dream ... _must_....

Neither by word nor look must Valerie suggest that the highly delicate ground she knows so well has ever been broken before.