“Who is the man you borrowed from?” she asked.
Tony preserved an embarrassed silence.
“Who is it?” she repeated. “I must know, Tony. We can’t plan anything to help if you’re not absolutely frank.”
“Well, if you must know—it’s Brett Forrester,” he said wretchedly. “It’s beastly, I know, his being a friend of yours.”
Brett Forrester! Ann remained very silent, with bent head, absorbing the full significance of this confession. It seemed suddenly to have thrown an immense burden of responsibility upon her. Brett! As Tony said, he was a friend of hers. And desired to be much more than a friend, if Tony but knew! Were it not for this, it would have been simple enough for her to go and use her influence with Brett—ask him out of sheer friendliness to her to give Tony a chance—to grant him time in which to pay. It would have to be a very long time, she reflected. But perhaps, when she was Eliot’s wife... Eliot was generous ... he would not think twice about paying twelve hundred pounds to give happiness to the woman he loved—to purchase peace of mind for her. And she would economise in her own personal expenses and so try to balance matters. Eliot had told her that one of his earliest presents to her was to be a new and very perfectly equipped car for her own special use. She would forego the car—ask him to pay Tony’s debts instead. Her thoughts raced along.
But all this presupposed that Brett would be willing to wait a little for his money. If there had been only friendship between herself and Brett, Ann felt she could so easily have begged a chance for Tony. But to approach the man who had desired to marry her so much that he had been willing to go to almost any length to force her into marriage with him, this man whom she had defied and scorned at their last meeting—to ask a boon, a favour from him, seemed of all things the most impossible. To do so would be to strangle her pride, to walk deliberately through the valley of humiliation. Oh, she couldn’t do it! She couldn’t do it!
Virginia’s sad, entreating voice seemed to plead in her ear: “Ann, will you do what you can for him—for him and for me?” It was almost as though she were there in the room, an invisible presence, beseeching, supplicating mercy for her son—claiming the fulfilment of the promise Ann had made so many years ago. “‘If it’s in any way possible,’ Ann,” the voice seemed to urge. “‘In any way’’ you said. And it is possible. You could save Tony if you would.”
After what appeared to Tony an interminable time, Ann lifted her bent head. Her face was white to the lips, but her eyes were strangely bright—like golden stars, he thought. They looked almost unearthly.
“Don’t worry, Tony,” she said. Familiar little comforting phrase! “Don’t worry, old boy. Leave it all to me. I’m sure I can put things straight. I’ll talk to Brett—I’m certain he’ll do what I ask and give you time to pay.”
“Time?” Tony laughed harshly. “If I had all the time until eternity I couldn’t produce twelve hundred pounds!”