The Bars of Iron by Ethel May Dell (page 5)

There was no mistaking his sincerity, or the completeness of his surrender. Crowther could but take the extended hand, and, in silent astonishment, treat the incident as closed.

He even wondered as he went away if he had not possibly exaggerated the whole matter, though at the heart of him he knew that this was only what Piers himself desired him to believe. He could not but feel convinced, however, that the danger was past for the time at least. In his own inimitable fashion Piers had succeeded in reassuring him. He was fully satisfied that the boy would keep his word, for his faith in him was absolute. But he felt the victory that was his to be a baffling one. He had conquered merely because Piers of his own volition had ceased to resist. He did not understand that sudden submission. Like Sir Beverley, he was puzzled by it. There was about it a mysterious quality that eluded his understanding. He would have given a good deal for a glimpse of the motive that lay behind.

But he had to go without it. Piers was in no expansive mood. Perhaps he might have found it difficult to explain himself even had he so desired.

Whatever the motive that had urged him, it urged him no longer, or it had been diverted into a side-channel. For almost as soon as he was alone, he threw himself down and scribbled a careless line to Ina Rose, advising her to accompany her father to Mentone, and adding that he believed she would not be bored there.

When he had despatched Victor with the letter, he flung his window wide and leaned out of it with his eyes wide opened on the darkness, and on his lips that smile that was not good to see.

CHAPTER XXVI

SUBSTANCE

It was a blustering spring day, and Avery, caught in a sudden storm of driving sleet, stood up against the railings of the doctor’s house, sheltering as best she might. She was holding her umbrella well in the teeth of the gale, and trying to protect an armful of purchases as well.

She was alone, Gracie, the black sheep, having been sent to school at the close of the Christmas holidays, and Jeanie being confined to the house with a severe cold. Olive, having become more and more her father’s constant companion, disdained shopping expeditions. The two elder boys and Pat were all at a neighbouring school as weekly boarders, and though she missed them Avery had it not in her heart to regret the arrangement. The Vicarage might at times seem dreary, but it had become undeniably an abode of peace.

Mrs. Lorimer was gradually recovering her strength, and Avery’s care now centred more upon Jeanie than her mother. Though the child had recovered from her accident, she had not been really well all the winter, and the cold spring seemed to tax her strength to the uttermost. Tudor still dropped in at intervals, but he said little, and his manner did not encourage Avery to question him. Privately she was growing anxious about Jeanie, and she wished that he would be more communicative. He had absolutely forbidden book-work, a fiat to which Mr. Lorimer had yielded under protest.

“The child will grow up a positive dunce,” he had declared.

To which Tudor had brusquely rejoined, “What of it?”

But his word was law so far as Jeanie was concerned, and Mr. Lorimer had relinquished the point with the sigh of one submitting to the inevitable. He did not like Lennox Tudor, but for some reason he always avoided an open disagreement with him.

It was of Jeanie that Avery was thinking as she stood there huddled against the railings while the sleet beat a fierce tattoo on her levelled umbrella and streamed from it in rivers on to the ground. She even debated with herself if it seemed advisable to turn and enter the doctor’s dwelling, and try to get him to speak frankly of the matter as he had spoken once before.

She dismissed the idea, however, reflecting that he would most probably be out, and she was on the point of collecting her forces to make a rush for another sheltered spot further on when the front door opened unexpectedly behind her, and Tudor himself came forth bareheaded into the rain.

“What are you doing there, Mrs. Denys?” he said. “Why don’t you come inside?”

He opened the gate for her, and took her parcels without waiting for a reply. And Avery, still with her umbrella poised against the blast, smiled her thanks and passed in.

The hair grew far back on Tudor’s forehead, it was in fact becoming scanty on the top of his head; and the raindrops glistened upon it as he entered behind Avery. He wiped them away, and then took off his glasses and wiped them also.

“Come into the dining-room!” he said. “You are just in time to join me at tea.”

“You’re very kind,” Avery said. “But I ought to hurry back the moment the rain lessens.”

“It won’t lessen yet,” said Tudor. “Take off your mackintosh, won’t you? I expect your feet are wet. There’s a fire to dry them by.”

Certainly the storm showed no signs of abating. The sky was growing darker every instant. Avery slipped the streaming mackintosh from her shoulders and entered the room into which he had invited her.

The blaze on the hearth was cheering after the icy gale without. She went to it, stretching her numbed hands to the warmth.

Tudor pushed forward a chair. “I believe you are chilled to the bone,” he said.

She laughed at that. “Oh no, indeed I am not! But it is a cold wind, isn’t it? Have you finished your work for to-day?”

Tudor foraged in a cupboard for an extra cup and saucer. “No. I’ve got to go out again later. I’ve just come back from Miss Whalley’s. She’s got a touch of jaundice.”

“Oh, poor thing!” said Avery.

“Yes; poor thing!” echoed Tudor grimly. “She is very sorry for herself, I can assure you; but as full of gossip as ever.” He paused.

Avery, with her face to the fire, laughed a little. “Anything new?”

“Miss Whalley,” said Tudor deliberately, “always gets hold of something new. Never noticed that?”

“Wouldn’t you like me to pour out?” suggested Avery.

“No. You keep your feet on the fender. Do you want to hear the latest tittle-tattle–or not?”

There was a wary gleam behind Tudor’s glasses; but Avery did not turn her eyes from the fire. A curious little feeling of uneasiness possessed her, a sensation that scarcely amounted to dread yet which quickened the beating of her heart in a fashion that she found vaguely disconcerting.

“Don’t tell me anything ugly!” she said gently, still not looking at him.

Tudor uttered a short laugh. “There’s nothing especially venomous about it that I can see.” He lifted the teapot and began to pour. “Have you heard from young Evesham lately?”

The question was casually uttered; but Avery’s hands made a slight involuntary movement over the fire towards which she leaned.

“No,” she said.

At the same moment the cup that Tudor was filling overflowed, and he whispered something under his breath and set down the tea-pot.

Avery turned towards him instinctively, to see him dabbing the table with his handkerchief.

“It’s almost too dark to see what one is doing,” he said.

“It is,” she assented gravely, and turned back quietly to the fire, not offering to assist. A soft veil of reserve seemed to have descended upon her. She did not speak again until he had remedied the disaster and brought her some tea. Then, with absolute composure, she raised her eyes to his.

“You were going to tell me something about Piers Evesham,” she said.

His eyes looked back into hers with a certain steeliness, as though they sought to penetrate her reserve.

“I was,” he said, after a moment, “though I don’t suppose it will interest you very greatly. I had it from Miss Whalley, but I was not told the source of her information. Rumour says that the young man is engaged to Miss Ina Rose of Wardenhurst.”

“Oh, really?” said Avery. She took the cup he offered her with a hand that was perfectly steady, though she was conscious of the fact that her face was pale. “They are abroad, I think?”

“Yes, in the Riviera.” Tudor’s eyes fell away from hers abruptly. “At least they have been. Someone said they were coming home.” He stooped to put wood on the fire, and there fell a silence.

Avery spoke after a moment. “No doubt he will be happier married.”

“I wonder,” said Tudor. “I should say myself that he has the sort of temperament that is never satisfied. He’s too restless for that. I don’t think Miss Ina Rose is greatly to be envied.”

“Unless she loves him,” said Avery. She spoke almost under her breath, her eyes upon the fire. Tudor, standing beside her with his elbow on the mantelpiece, was still conscious of that filmy veil of reserve floating between them. It chafed him, but it was too intangible a thing to tear aside.

He waited therefore in silence, watching her face, the tender lines of her mouth, the sweet curves that in childhood must have made a perfect picture of happiness.

She raised her eyes at length. “Dr. Tudor!”

And then she realized his scrutiny, and a soft flush rose and overspread her pale face. She lifted her straight brows questioningly.

And all in a moment Tudor found himself speaking,–not of his own volition, not the words he had meant to speak, but nervously, stammeringly, giving utterance to the thoughts that suddenly welled over from his soul. “I’ve been wanting to speak for ages. I couldn’t get it out. But it’s no good keeping it in, is it? I don’t get any nearer that way. I don’t want to vex you, make you feel uncomfortable. No one knows better than I that I haven’t much to offer. But I can give you a home and–and all my love, if you will have it. It may seem a small thing to you, but it’s bigger than the calf-love of an infant like young Evesham. I know he dared to let his fancy stray your way, and you see now what it was worth. But mine–mine isn’t fancy.”

And there he stopped; for Avery had risen and was facing him in the firelight with eyes of troubled entreaty.

“Oh, please,” she said, “please don’t go on!”

He stood upright with a jerk. The distress on her face restored his normal self-command more quickly than any words. Half-mechanically he reached out and took her tea-cup, setting it down on the mantelpiece before her.

“Don’t be upset!” he said. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I shan’t go on, if it is against your wish.”

“It is,” said Avery. She spoke tremulously, locking her hands fast together. “It must be my own fault,” she said, “I’m dreadfully sorry. I hoped you weren’t–really in earnest.”

He smiled at that with a touch of cynicism. “Did you think I was amusing myself–or you? Sit down again, won’t you? There is no occasion whatever for you to be distressed. I assure you that you are in no way to blame.”

“I am dreadfully sorry,” Avery repeated.

“That’s nice of you. I had scarcely dared to flatter myself that you would be–glad. So you see, you have really nothing to reproach yourself with. I am no worse off than I was before.”

She put out her hand to him with a quick, confiding gesture. “You are very kind to put it in that way. I value your friendship so much, so very much. Yes, and I value your love too. It’s not a small thing to me. Only, you know–you know–” she faltered a little–“I’ve been married before, and–though I loved my husband–my married life was a tragedy. Oh yes, he loved me too. It wasn’t that sort of misery. It was–it was drink.”

“Poor girl!” said Tudor.

He spoke with unwonted gentleness, and he held her hand with the utmost kindness. There was nothing of the rejected lover in his attitude. He was man enough to give her his first sympathy.

Avery’s lips were quivering. She went on with a visible effort. “He died a violent death. He was killed in a quarrel with another man. I was told it was an accident, but it didn’t seem like that to me. And–it had an effect on me. It made me hard–made me bitter.”

“You, Avery!” Tudor’s voice was gravely incredulous.

She turned her face to the fire, and he saw on her lashes the gleam of tears. “I’ve never told anyone that; but it’s the truth. It seemed to me that life was cruel, mainly because of men’s vices. And women were created only to go under. It was a horrid sort of feeling to have, but it has never wholly left me. I don’t think I could ever face marriage a second time.”

“Oh yes, you could,” said Tudor, quietly, “if you loved the man.”

She shook her head. “I am too old to fall in love. I have somehow missed the romance of life. I know what it is, but it will never come to me now.”

“And you won’t marry without?” he said.

“No.”

There fell a pause; then, still with the utmost quietness, he relinquished her hand. “I think you are right,” he said. “Marriage without love on both sides is a ship without ballast. Yet, I can’t help thinking that you are mistaken in your idea that you have lost the capacity for that form of love. You may know what it is. Most women do. But I wonder if you have ever really felt it.”

“Not to the full,” Avery answered, her voice very low. “Then I was too young. Mine was just a child’s rapture and it was simply extinguished when I came to know the kind of burden I had to bear. It all faded so quickly, and the reality was so terribly grim. Now–now I look on the world with experienced eyes. I am too old.”

“You think experience destroys romance?” said Tudor.

She looked at him. “Don’t you?”

“No,” he said. “If it did, I do not think you would be afraid to marry me. Don’t think I am trying to persuade you! I am not. But are you sure that in refusing me you are not sacrificing substance to shadow?”

“I don’t quite understand you,” she said.

He shrugged his shoulders slightly. “I can’t be more explicit. No doubt you will follow your own instincts. But allow me to say that I don’t think you are the sort of woman to go through life unmated; and though I may not be romantic, I am sound. I think I could give you a certain measure of happiness. But the choice is yours. I can only bow to your decision.”

There was a certain dignity in his speech that gave it weight. Avery listened in silence, and into silence the words passed.

Several seconds slipped away, then without effort Tudor came back to everyday things. “Sit down, won’t you? Your tea is getting cold.”

Avery sat down, and he handed it to her, and after a moment turned aside to the table.

“As a matter of fact,” he said, “I have just come back from the Vicarage.”

“Oh, have you?” Avery looked round quickly. “You went to see Jeanie?”

“Yes.” Tudor spoke gravely. “I also saw the Vicar. I told him the child must go away. That cough of hers is tearing her to pieces. She ought to go to the South Coast. I told him so.”

“Oh! What did he say?” Avery spoke with eagerness. She had been longing to suggest that very proposal for some time past.

Tudor smiled into his cup. “He said it was a total impossibility. That was the starting-point. At the finish it was practically decided that you should take her away next week.”

“I!” said Avery.

“Yes, you. Mrs. Lorimer will manage all right now. The nurse can look after her and the little ones without assistance. And the second girl–Olive isn’t it?–can look after the Reverend Stephen. It’s all arranged in fact, unless it fails to meet with your approval, in which case of course the whole business must be reconsidered.”

“But of course I approve,” Avery said. “I would do anything that lay in my power. But I don’t quite like the idea of leaving Mrs. Lorimer.”

“She will be all right,” Tudor asserted again. “She wouldn’t be happy away from her precious husband, and she would sooner have you looking after Jeanie than anyone. She told me so.”

“She always thinks of others first,” said Avery.

“So does someone else I know,” rejoined Tudor. “It’s just a habit some women have,–not always a good habit from some points of view. We may regard it as settled then, may we? You really have no objections to raise?”

“None,” said Avery. “I think the idea is excellent. I have been feeling troubled about Jeanie nearly all the winter. This last cold has worn her out terribly.”

Tudor nodded. “Yes.”

He drank his tea thoughtfully, and then spoke again. “I sounded her this afternoon. The left lung is not in a healthy condition. She will need all the attention you can give her if she is going to throw off the mischief. It has not gone very far at present, but–to be frank with you–I am very far from satisfied that she can muster the strength.” He got up and began to pace the room. “I have not said this plainly to anyone else. I don’t want to frighten Mrs. Lorimer before I need. The poor soul has enough to bear without this added. Possibly the change will work wonders. Possibly she will pull round. Children have marvellous recuperative powers. But I have seen this sort of thing a good many times before, and–” he came back to the hearth–“it doesn’t make me happy.”

“I am glad you have told me,” Avery said.

“I had to tell you. I believe you more than half suspected it.” Tudor spoke restlessly; his thoughts were evidently not of his companion at that moment. “There are of course a good many points in her favour. She is a good, obedient child with a placid temperament. And the summer is before us. We shall have to work hard this summer, Mrs. Denys.” He smiled at her abruptly. “It is like building a sea-wall when the tide is out. We’ve got to make it as strong as possible before the tide comes back.”

“You may rely on me to do my very best,” Avery said earnestly.

He nodded. “Thank you. I know I may. I always do. Hence my confidence in you. May I give you some more tea?”

He quitted the subject as suddenly as he had embarked upon it. There was something very friendly in his treatment of her. She knew with unquestioning intuition that for the future he would keep strictly within the bounds of friendship unless he had her permission to pass beyond them. And it was this knowledge that emboldened her at parting to say, with her hand in his: “You are very, very good to me. I would like to thank you if I could.”

He pressed her hand with the kindness of an old friend. “No, don’t thank me!” he said, smiling at her in a way that somehow went to her heart. “I shall always be at your service. But I’d rather you took it as a matter of course. I feel more comfortable that way.”

Avery left him at length and trudged home through the mud with a curious feeling of uncertainty in her soul. It was as though she had been vouchsafed a far glimpse of destiny which had been too fleeting for her comprehension.

CHAPTER XXVII

SHADOW

The preparations that must inevitably precede a departure for an indefinite length of time kept Avery from dwelling overmuch on what had passed on that gusty afternoon when she had taken shelter in the doctor’s house.

Whether or not she believed the rumour concerning Piers she scarcely asked herself. For some reason into which she did not enter she was firmly resolved to exclude him from her mind, and she welcomed the many occupations that kept her thoughts engrossed. No word from him had reached her since that daring letter written nearly three months before, just after his departure. It seemed that he had accepted her answer just as she had meant him to accept it, and that he had nothing more to say. So at least she viewed the matter, not suffering any inward question to arise.

She saw Lennox Tudor several times before the last day arrived. He did not seek her out. It simply came about in the ordinary course of things. He was plainly determined that neither in public nor private should there be any secret sense of embarrassment between them. And for this also she was grateful, liking him for his blunt consideration for her better than she had ever liked him before.

It was on the evening of the day preceding her departure with Jeanie that she ran down in the dusk to the post at the end of the lane with a letter. Her Australian friend had written to propose a visit, and she had been obliged to put him off.

There was a bitter wind blowing, but she hastened along hatless, with a cloak thrown round her shoulders. Past the church with its sheltering yew-trees she ran, intent only upon executing her errand in as short a time as possible.

Her hair blew loose about her face, and before she reached her goal she was ashamed of her untidiness, but it was not worth while to return for a hat, and she pressed on with a girl’s impetuosity, hoping that she would meet no one.

The hope was not to be fulfilled. She reached the box and deposited her letter therein, but as she turned from doing so, there came the fall of a horse’s hoofs along the road at the end of the lane.

She caught the sound, and was pierced by a sudden, quite unaccountable suspicion. Swiftly she gathered her cloak more securely about her, and hastened away.

Instantly it seemed to her that the hoof-beats quickened. The lane was steep, and she realized in a moment that if the rider turned up in her wake, she must very speedily be overtaken. She slackened her pace therefore, and walked on more quietly, straining her ears to listen, not venturing to look back.

Round the corner came the advancing animal at a brisk trot. She had known in her heart that it would be so. She had known from the first moment of hearing those hoof-beats, that Fate, strong and relentless, was on her track.

How she had known it she could not have said, but the wild clamour of her heart stifled any reasoning that she might have tried to form. Her breath came and went like the breath of a hunted creature. She could not hurry because of the trembling of her knees. Every instinct was urging her to flee, but she lacked the strength. She drew instead nearer to the wall, hoping against hope that in the gathering darkness he would pass her by.

Nearer and nearer came the hammering hoofs. She could hear the horse’s sharp breathing, the creak of leather. And then suddenly she found she could go no further. She stopped and leaned against the wall.

She saw the animal pulled suddenly in, and knew that she was caught. With a great effort she lifted a smiling face, and simulated surprise.

“You! How do you do?”

“You knew it was me,” said Piers rather curtly.

He dropped from the saddle with the easy grace that always marked his movements, and came to her, leaving the animal free.

“Why were you running away from me?” he said. “Did you want to cut me?”

He must have felt the trembling of her hand, for all in a moment his manner changed. His fingers closed upon hers with warm assurance. He suddenly laughed into her face.

“Don’t answer either of those questions!” he said. “Didn’t you expect to see me? We came home yesterday, thank the gods! I’m deadly sick of being away.”

“Haven’t you enjoyed yourself?” Avery managed to ask.

He laughed again somewhat grimly. “I wasn’t out for enjoyment. I’ve been–amusing myself more or less. But that’s not the same thing, is it? I should have drowned myself if I’d stayed out there much longer.”

“Don’t talk nonsense!” said Avery.

She spoke with a touch of sharpness. Her agitation had passed leaving her vexed with herself and with him.

He received the admonition with a grimace. “Have you heard about my engagement yet?” he enquired irrelevantly, after a moment.

Avery looked at him very steadily through the falling dusk. She had a feeling that he was trying to hoodwink her by some means not wholly praiseworthy.

“Are you engaged?” she asked him, point-blank.

He made a careless gesture. “Everybody says so.”

“Are you engaged?” Avery repeated with resolution.

She freed her hand as she uttered the question the second time. She was standing up very straight against the churchyard wall sternly determined to check all trifling.

Piers straightened himself also. From the pride of his attitude she thought that he was about to take offence, but his voice held none as he made reply.

“I am not.”

She felt as if some constriction at her heart, of which till that moment she had scarcely been aware, had suddenly slackened. She drew a long, deep breath.

“Sorry, what?” suggested Piers.

He began to tap a careless tattoo with his whip on the toe of his boot. He did not appear to be regarding her very closely. Yet she did not feel at her ease. That sudden sense as of strain relaxed had left her curiously unsteady.

She ignored his question and asked another. “Why is everybody saying that you are engaged?”

He lifted his shoulders. “Because everybody is more or less of a gossiping fool, I should say. Still,” he threw up his head with a laugh, “notions of that sort have their uses. My grandfather for instance is firmly of the opinion that I have come home to be married. I didn’t undeceive him.”

“You let him believe–what wasn’t true?” said Avery slowly.

He looked straight at her, with his head flung back. “I did. It suited my purpose. I wanted to get home. He thought it was because the Roses had returned to Wardenhurst. I let him think so. It certainly was deadly without them.”

It was then that Avery turned and began quietly to walk on up the hill. He linked his arm in Pompey’s bridle, and walked beside her.

She spoke after a few moments with something of constraint. “And how have you been–amusing yourself?”

“I?” Carelessly he made reply. “I have been playing around with Ina Rose chiefly–to save us both from boredom.”

There sounded a faint jeering note behind the carelessness of his voice. Avery quickened her pace almost unconsciously.

“It’s all right,” said Piers. “There’s been no damage done.”

“You don’t know that,” said Avery, without looking at him.

“Yes, I do. She’ll marry Dick Guyes. I told her she would the night before they left, and she didn’t say she wouldn’t. He’s a much better chap than I am, you know,” said Piers, with an odd touch of sincerity. “And he’s head over ears in love with her into the bargain.”

“Are you trying to excuse yourself?” said Avery.

He laughed. “What for? For not marrying Ina Rose? I assure you I never meant to marry her.”

“For trifling with her.” Avery’s voice was hard, but he affected not to notice.

“A game’s a game,” he said lightly.

Avery stopped very suddenly and faced round upon him. “That sort of game,” she said, and her voice throbbed with the intensity of her indignation, “is monstrous–is contemptible–a game that none but blackguards ever stoop to play!”

Piers stood still. “Great Scott!” he said softly.

Avery swept on. Once roused, she was ruthless in her arraignment.

“Men–some men–find it amusing to go through life breaking women’s hearts just for the sport of the thing. They regard it as a pastime, in the same light as fox-hunting or cards or racing. And when the game is over, they laugh among themselves and say what fools women are. And so they may be, and so they are, many of them. But is it honourable, is it manly, to take advantage of their weakness? I never thought you were that sort. I thought you were at least honest.”

“Did you?” said Piers.

He was holding himself very straight and stiff, just as he had held himself on that day in the winter when she had so indignantly intervened to save his dog from his ungovernable fury. But he did not seem to resent her attack, and in spite of herself Avery’s own resentment began to wane. She suddenly remembered that her very protest was an admission of intimacy of which he would not scruple to avail himself if it suited his purpose, and with this thought in her mind she paused in confusion.

“Won’t you finish?” said Piers.

She turned to leave him. “That’s all I have to say.”

He put out a restraining hand. “Then may I say something?”

The request was so humbly uttered that she could not refuse it. She remained where she was.

“I should like you to know,” said Piers, “that I have never given Miss Rose or any other girl with whom I have flirted the faintest shadow of a reason for believing that I was in earnest. That is the truth–on my honour.”

“I wonder if–they–would say the same,” said Avery.

He shrugged his shoulders. “No one ever before accused me of being a lady-killer. As to your other charge against me, it was not I who deceived my grandfather. It was he who deceived himself.”

“Isn’t that a distinction without a difference?” said Avery, in a low voice.

She was beginning to wish that she had not spoken with such vehemence. After all, what were his delinquencies to her? She almost expected him to ask the question; but he did not.

“Do you mind explaining?” he said.

With an effort she made response. “You can’t say it was honourable to let your grandfather come home in the belief that you wanted to become engaged to Miss Rose.”

“Have I said so?” said Piers.

Avery paused. She had a sudden feeling of uncertainty as if he had kicked away a foothold upon which she had rashly attempted to rest.

“You admit that it was not?” she said.

He smiled a little. “I admit that it was not strictly honest, but I didn’t see much harm in it. In any case it was high time we came home, and it gave him the impetus to move.”

“And when are you going to tell him the truth?” said Avery.

Piers was silent.

Looking at him through the dusk, she was aware of a change in his demeanour, though as to its nature she was slightly doubtful.

“And if I don’t tell him?” said Piers at length.

“You will,” she said quickly.

“I don’t know why I should.” Piers’ voice was dogged. “He’ll know fast enough–when she gets engaged to Guyes.”

“Know that you have played a double game,” said Avery.

“Well?” he said. “And if he does?”

“I think you will be sorry–then,” she said.

Somehow she could not be angry any longer. He had accepted her rebuke in so docile a spirit. She did not wholly understand his attitude. Yet it softened her.

“Why should I be sorry?” said Piers.

She answered him quickly and impulsively. “Because it isn’t your nature to deceive. You are too honest at heart to do it and be happy.”

“Happy!” said Piers, an odd note of emotion in his voice. “Do you suppose I’m ever that–or ever likely to be?”

She recoiled a little from the suppressed vehemence of his tone, but almost instantly he put out his hand again to her with a gesture of boyish persuasion.

“Don’t rag me, Avery! I’ve had a filthy time lately. And when I saw you cut and run at sight of me–I just couldn’t stand it. I’ve been wanting to answer your letter, but I couldn’t.”

“But why should you?” Avery broke in gently. “My letter was the answer to yours.”

She gave him her hand, because she could not help it.

He held it in a hungry clasp. “I know–I know,” he said rather incoherently. “It–it was very decent of you not to be angry. I believe I let myself go rather–what? Thanks awfully for being so sweet about it!”

“My dear boy,” Avery said, “you thank me for nothing! The matter is past. Don’t let us re-open it!”

She spoke with unconscious appeal. His hand squeezed hers in instant response. “All right. We won’t. And look here,–if you want me to tell my grandfather that he has been building his castle in the air,–it’ll mean a row of course, but–I’ll do it.”

“Will you?” said Avery.

He nodded. “Yes–as you wish it. And may I come to tea with Jeanie to-morrow?”

His dark eyes smiled suddenly into hers as he dropped her hand. She had a momentary feeling of uncertainty as she met them–a sense of doubt that disquieted her strangely. It was as if he had softly closed a door against her somewhere in his soul.

With a curious embarrassment she answered him. “Jeanie has not been well all the winter. Dr. Tudor has ordered a change, and we are going–she and I–to Stanbury Cliffs to-morrow.”

“Are you though?” He opened his eyes. “Just you and she, eh? What a cosy party!”

“The other children will probably join us for the Easter holidays,” Avery said. “It’s a nice place, they say. Do you know it?”

“I should think I do. Victor and I used to go there regularly when I was a kid. It was there I learnt to swim.”

“Who is Victor?” asked Avery, beginning to walk on up the hill.

“Victor? Oh, he’s my French nurse–the best chap who ever walked. We are great pals,” laughed Piers. “And so you’re off to-morrow, are you? Hope you’ll have a good time. Give my love to the kiddie! She isn’t really ill, what?”

“Dr. Tudor is not satisfied about her,” Avery said.

“Oh, Tudor!” Piers spoke with instant disparagement. “I don’t suppose he’s any good. What does he say anyway?”

“He is afraid of lung trouble,” Avery said. “But we hope the change is going to do wonders for her. Do you know, I think I must run in now? I have several little jobs still to get through this evening.”

Piers stopped at once. “Good-bye!” he said. “I’m glad I saw you. Take care of yourself, Avery! And the next time you see me coming–don’t run away!”

He set his foot in the stirrup and swung himself up into the saddle. Pompey immediately began to execute an elaborate dance in the roadway, rendering further conversation out of the question. Piers waved his cap in careless adieu, and turned the animal round. In another moment he was tearing down the lane at a gallop, and Avery was left looking after him still with that curious sense of doubt lying cold at her heart.

The sight of a black, clerical figure emerging from the churchyard caused her to turn swiftly and pursue her way to the Vicarage gate. But the sounds of those galloping hoofs still wrought within her as she went. They beat upon her spirit with a sense of swift-moving Destiny.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE EVESHAM DEVIL

“Confound the boy!” said Sir Beverley.

He rose up from the black oak settle in the hall with a jerky movement of irritation, and tramped to the front-door.

It had been one of those strange soft days that sometimes come in the midst of blustering March storms, and though the sun had long gone down the warmth still lingered. It might have been an evening in May.

He opened the great door with an impatient hand. What on earth was the boy doing? Had he gone love-making to Wardenhurst? A grim smile touched the old man’s grim lips as this thought occurred to him. That he was not wasting his time nearer home he was fairly convinced; for only that morning he had heard from Lennox Tudor that the mother’s help at the Vicarage, over whom in the winter Piers had been inclined to make a fool of himself, had taken one of the children away for a change. It seemed more than probable by this time that Piers’ wandering fancy had wholly ceased to stray in her direction, but the news of her absence had caused Sir Beverley undoubted satisfaction. He hoped his boy would not encounter that impertinent, scheming woman again until he was safely engaged to Ina Rose. That this engagement was imminent Sir Beverley was fully convinced. His only wonder was that it had not taken place sooner. The two had been thrown together almost daily during the sojourn of Colonel Rose and his daughter at Mentone, and they had always seemed to enjoy each other’s society. Of course Sir Beverley did not like the girl. He actively disliked the whole female species. But she belonged to the county, and she seemed moreover to be a normal healthy young woman who would be the mother of normal healthy children. And this was the sort of wife Piers wanted. For Piers–drat the boy!–was not normal. He inherited a good deal of his Italian grandmother’s temperament as well as her beauty. And life was not likely to be a very easy matter for him in consequence.

But an ordinary young English wife of his own rank would be a step in the right direction. So reasoned Sir Beverley, who had taken that fatal step in the wrong one in his youth and had never recovered the ground thus lost.

Standing there at the open door, he dwelt upon his boy’s future with a kind of grim pleasure that was not unmixed with heartache. He and his wife would have to go and live at the Dower House of course. No feminine truck at the Abbey for him! But the lad should continue to manage the estate with him. That would bring them in contact every day. He couldn’t do without that much. The evenings would be lonely enough. He pictured the long silent dinners with a weary frown. How infernally lonely the Abbey could be!

The steady tick of the clock in the corner forced itself upon his notice. He swore at it under his breath, and went out upon the steps.

At the same instant a view-halloo from the dark avenue greeted him, and in spite of himself his face softened.

“Hullo, you rascal!” he shouted back. “What the devil are you up to?”

Piers came running up, light-footed and alert. “I’ve been unlucky,” he explained. “Had two punctures. I left the car at the garage and came on as quickly as I could. I say, I’m awfully sorry. I’ve been with Dick Guyes.”

Sir Beverley growled inarticulately, and turned inwards. So he had not been to the Roses’ after all!

“Get along with you!” he said. “And dress as fast as you can!”

And Piers bounded past him and went up the stairs in three great leaps. He seemed to have grown younger during the few days that had elapsed since their return, more ardent, more keenly alive. The English spring seemed to exhilarate him; but for the first time Sir Beverley began to have his doubts as to the reason for his evident pleasure in returning. What on earth had he been to see Guyes for? Guyes of all people–who was well-known as one of Miss Ina’s most devoted adorers!

It was evident that the news he desired to hear would not be imparted to him that night, and Sir Beverley considered himself somewhat aggrieved in consequence. He was decidedly short with Piers when he reappeared–a fact which in no way disturbed his grandson’s equanimity. He talked cheery commonplaces throughout dinner without effort, regardless of Sir Beverley’s discouraging attitude, and it was not till dessert was placed upon the table that he allowed his conversational energies to flag.

Then indeed, as David finally and ceremoniously withdrew, did he suddenly seem to awake to the fact that conversation was no longer a vital necessity, and forthwith dropped into an abrupt, uncompromising silence.

It lasted for a space of minutes during which neither of them stirred or uttered a syllable, becoming at length ominous as the electric stillness before the storm.

They came through it characteristically, Sir Beverley staring fixedly before him under the frown that was seldom wholly absent from his face; Piers, steady-eyed and intent, keenly watching the futile agonies of a night-moth among the candles. There was about him a massive, statuesque look in vivid contrast to the pulsing vitality of a few minutes before.

It was Sir Beverley who broke the silence at last with a species of inarticulate snarl peculiarly his own. Piers’ dark eyes were instantly upon him, but he said nothing, merely waiting for the words to which this sound was the preface.

Sir Beverley’s brow was thunderous. He looked back at Piers with a piercing grim regard.

“Well?” he said. “What fool idea have you got in your brain now? I suppose I’ve got to hear it sooner or later.”

It was not a conciliatory speech, yet Piers received it with no visible resentment. “I don’t know that I want to say anything very special,” he said, after a moment’s thought.

“Oh, don’t you?” growled Sir Beverley. “Then what are you thinking about? Tell me that!”

Piers leaned back in his chair. “I was thinking about Dick Guyes,” he said. “He is dining at the Roses’ to-night.”

“Oh!” said Sir Beverley shortly.

A faint smile came at the corners of Piers’ mouth. “He wants to propose to Ina for about the hundred and ninetieth time,” he said, “but doesn’t know if he can screw himself up to it. I told him not to be such a shy ass. She is only waiting for him to speak.”

“Eh?” said Sir Beverley.

A queer little dancing gleam leaped up in Piers’ eyes–the gleam that had invariably heralded some piece of especial devilry in the days of his boyhood.

“I told him she was his for the asking, sir,” he said coolly, “and promised not to flirt with her any more till they were safely married.”

“Damn you!” exclaimed Sir Beverley violently and without warning.

He had a glass of wine in front of him, and with the words his fingers gripped the stem. In another second he would have hurled the liquid full in Piers’ face; but Piers was too quick for him. Quick as lightning, his own hand shot out across the corner of the table and grasped the old man’s wrist.

“No, sir! No!” he said sternly.

They glared into each other’s eyes, and Sir Beverley uttered a furious oath; but after the first instinctive effort to free himself he did no more.

At the end of possibly thirty seconds Piers took his hand away. He pushed back his chair in the same movement and rose.

“Shall we talk in the library?” he said. “This room is hot.”

Sir Beverley raised the wine-glass to his lips with a hand that shook, and drained it deliberately.

“Yes,” he said then, “We will–talk in the library.”

He got up with an agility that he seldom displayed, and turned to the door. As he went he glanced up suddenly at the softly mocking face on the wall, and a sharp spasm contracted his harsh features. But he scarcely paused. Without further words he left the room; and Piers followed, light of tread, behind him.

The study windows stood wide open to the night. Piers crossed the room and quietly closed them. Then, without haste and without hesitation, he came to the table and stopped before it.

“I never intended to marry Ina Rose,” he said. “I was only amusing myself–and her.”

“The devil you were!” ejaculated Sir Beverley.

Piers went on with the utmost steadiness. “We are not in the least suited to one another, and we have the sense to realize it. The next time Guyes asks her, I believe she will have him.”

“Sense!” roared Sir Beverley. “Do you dare to talk to me of sense, you–you blind fool? Mighty lot of sense you can boast of! And what the devil does it matter whether you suit one another–as you call it–or not, so long as you keep the whip-hand? You’ll tell me next that you’re not–in love with her, I suppose?”

The bitterness of the last words seemed to shake him from head to foot. He looked at Piers with the memory of a past torment in his eyes. And because of it Piers turned away his own.

“It’s quite true, sir,” he said, in a low voice. “I am not–in love with her. I never have been.”

Sir Beverley’s fist crashed down upon the table. “Love!” he thundered. “Love! Do you want to make me sick? I tell you, sir, I would sooner see you in your coffin than married to a woman with whom you imagined yourself in love. Oh, I know what you have in your mind. I’ve known for a long time. You’re caught in the toils of that stiff-necked, scheming Judy at the Vicarage, who–“

“Sir!” blazed forth Piers.

He leaned across the table with a face gone suddenly white, and struck his own fist upon the polished oak with a passionate force that compelled attention.

Sir Beverley ceased his tirade in momentary astonishment. Such violence from Piers was unusual.

Instantly Piers went on speaking, his voice quick and low, quivering with the agitation that he had no time to subdue. “I won’t hear another word on that subject! You hear me, sir? Not one word! It is sacred, and as such I will have it treated.”

But the check upon Sir Beverley was but brief, and the flame of his anger burned all the more fiercely in consequence of it. He broke in upon those few desperate words of Piers’ with redoubled fury.

“You will have this, and you won’t have that! Confound you! What the devil do you mean? Are you master in this house, or am I?”

“I am master where my own actions are concerned,” threw back Piers. “And what I do–what I decide to do–is my affair alone.”

Swiftly he uttered the words. His breathing came quick and short as the breathing of a man hard pressed. He seemed to be holding back every straining nerve with a blind force that was physical rather than mental.

He drew himself suddenly erect as he spoke. He had flung down the gauntlet of his independence at last, and with clenched hands he waited for the answer to his challenge.

It came upon him like a whirlwind. Sir Beverley uttered an oath that fell with the violence of a blow, and after it a tornado of furious speech against which it was futile to attempt to raise any protest. He could only stand as it were at bay, like an animal protecting its own, fiery-veined, quivering, yet holding back from the spring.

Not for any insult to himself would he quit that attitude. He was striving desperately to keep his self-control. He had been within an ace of losing it, as the blood that oozed over his closed fist testified; but, for the sake of that manhood which he was seeking to assert, he made a Titanic effort to command himself.

And Sir Beverley, feeling the dumb strength that opposed him, resenting the forbearance with which he was confronted, infuriated by the unexpected force of the boy’s resistance, turned with a snarl to seize and desecrate that which he had been warned was holy.

“As for this designing woman, I tell you, she is not for you,–not, that is, in any honourable sense. If you choose to make a fool of her, that’s your affair. I suppose you’ll sow the usual crop of wild oats before you’ve done. But as to marrying her–“

“By God, sir!” broke in Piers passionately. “Do you imagine that I propose to do anything else?”

The words came from him like a cry wrung from a man in torture, and as he uttered them the last of his self-control slipped from his grasp. With a face gone suddenly devilish, he strode round the table and stood before his grandfather, furiously threatening.

“I have warned you!” he said, and his voice was low, sunk almost to a whisper. “You can say what you like of me. I’m used to it. But–if you speak evil of her–I’ll treat you as I would any other blackguard who dared to insult her. And now that we are on the subject, I will tell you this. If I do not marry this woman whom I love–I swear that I will never marry at all! That is my final word!”

He hurled the last sentence in Sir Beverley’s face, and with it he would have swung round upon his heel; but something in that face detained him.

Sir Beverley’s eyes were shining with an icy, intolerable sparkle. His thin lips were drawn in the dreadful semblance of a smile. He was half-a-head taller than Piers, and he seemed to tower above him in that moment of conflict.

“Wait a minute!” he said. “Wait a minute!”

His right hand was feeling along the leathern surface of the writing-table, but neither his eyes nor Piers’ followed the movement. They held each other in a fixed, unalterable glare.

There followed several moments of complete and terrible silence–a silence more fraught with violence than any speech.

Then, with a slight jerk, Sir Beverley leaned towards Piers. “So,” he said, “you defy me, do you?”

His voice was as grim as his look. A sudden, odd sense of fear went through Piers. Sharply the thought ran through his mind that the same Evesham devil possessed them both. It was as if he had caught a glimpse of the monster gibing at his elbow, goading him, goading them, both.

He made a sharp, involuntary movement; he almost flinched from those pitiless, stony eyes.

“Ha!” Sir Beverley uttered a brief and very bitter laugh. “You’ve begun to think better of it, eh?”

“No, sir.” Curtly Piers made answer, speaking because he must. “I meant what I said, and I shall stick to it. But it wasn’t for the sake of defying you that I said it. I have a better reason than that.”

He was still quivering with anger, yet because of that gibing devil at his elbow he strove to speak temperately, strove to hold back the raging flood of fierce resentment that threatened to overwhelm him.

As for Sir Beverley, he had never attempted to control himself in moments such as these, and he did not attempt to do so now. Before Piers’ words were fairly uttered, he had raised his right hand and in it a stout, two-foot ruler that he had taken from the writing-table.

“Take that then, you young dog!” he shouted, and struck Piers furiously, as he stood. “And that! And that!”

The third blow never fell. It was caught in mid-air by Piers who, with eyes that literally flamed in his white face, sprang straight at his grandfather, and closed with him.

There was a brief–a very brief–struggle, then a gasping oath from Sir Beverley as the ruler was torn from his grasp. The next moment he was free and tottering blindly. Piers, with an awful smile, swung the weapon back as if he would strike him down with it. Then, as Sir Beverley clutched instinctively at the nearest chair for support, he flung savagely round on his heel, altering his purpose. There followed the loud crack of rending wood as he broke the ruler passionately across his knee, putting forth all his strength, and the clatter of the falling fragments as he hurled them violently from him.

And then in a silence more dreadful than any speech, he strode to the door and went out, crashing it furiously shut behind him.

Sir Beverley, grown piteously feeble, sank down in the chair, and remained there huddled and gasping for many dragging minutes.

CHAPTER XXIX

A WATCH IN THE NIGHT

He came at last out of what had almost been a stupor of inertia, sat slowly up, turned his brooding eyes upon the door through which Piers had passed. A tremor of anger crossed his face, and was gone. A grim smile took its place. He still panted spasmodically; but he found his voice.

“Egad!” he said. “The fellow’s as strong as a young bear. He’s hugged–all the wind–out of my vitals.”

He struggled to his feet, straightening his knees with difficulty, one hand pressed hard to his labouring heart.

“Egad!” he gasped again. “He’s getting out of hand–the cub! But he’ll come to heel,–he’ll come to heel! I know the rascal!”

He stumbled to the bell and rang it.

David appeared with a promptitude that seemed to indicate a certain uneasiness.

“Coffee!” growled his master. “And liqueur!”

David departed at as high a rate of speed as decorum would permit.

During his absence Sir Beverley set himself rigidly to recover his normal demeanour. The encounter had shaken him, shaken him badly; but he was not the man to yield to physical weakness. He fought it with angry determination.

Before David’s reappearance he had succeeded in controlling his gasping breath, though the hand with which he helped himself shook very perceptibly.

There were two cups on the tray. David lingered.

“You can go,” said Sir Beverley.

David cocked one eyebrow in deferential enquiry. “Master Piers in the garden, sir?” he ventured. “Shall I find him?”

“No!” snapped Sir Beverley.

“Very good, sir.” David turned regretfully to the door. “Shall I keep the coffee hot, Sir Beverley?” he asked, as he reached it, with what was almost a pleading note in his voice.

Sir Beverley’s frown became as menacing as a thunder-cloud. “No!” he shouted.

David nodded in melancholy submission and withdrew.

Sir Beverley sat down heavily in his chair and slowly drank his coffee. Finally he put aside the empty cup and sat staring at the closed door, his brows drawn heavily together.

How had the young beggar dared to defy him so? He must have been getting out of hand for some time by imperceptible degrees. He had always vowed to himself that he would not spoil the boy. Had that resolution of his become gradually relaxed? His frown grew heavier. He had never before contemplated the possibility that Piers might some day become an individual force utterly beyond his control.

His eye fell upon a fragment of the broken ruler lying under the table and again grimly he smiled.

“Confound the scamp! He’s got some muscle,” he murmured.

Again his look went to the door. Why didn’t the young fool come back and apologize? How much longer did he mean to keep him waiting?

The minutes dragged away, and the silence of emptiness gathered and brooded in the great room and about the master of the house who sat within it, with bent head, waiting.

It was close upon ten o’clock when at length he rose and irritably rang the bell.

“See if you can find Master Piers!” he said to David. “He can’t be far away. Look in the drawing-room! Look in the garden! Tell him I want him!”

David withdrew upon the errand, and again the oppressive silence drew close. For a long interval Sir Beverley sat quite motionless, still staring at the door as though he expected Piers to enter at any moment. But when at length it opened, it was only to admit David once more.

“I’m sorry to say I can’t find Master Piers anywhere in the house or garden, Sir Beverley,” he said, looking straight before him and blinking vacantly at the lamp. “I’m inclined to believe, sir, that he must have gone into the park.”

Sir Beverley snarled inarticulately and dismissed him.

During the hour that followed, he did not move from his chair, and scarcely changed his position. But at last, as the stable-clock was tolling eleven, he rose stiffly and walked to the window. It was fastened; he dragged at the catch with impatient fingers.

His face was haggard and grey as he finally thrust up the sash, and leaned out with his hands on the sill.

The night was very still all about him. It might have been a night in June. Only very far away a faint breeze was stirring, whispering furtively in the bare boughs of the elm trees that bordered the park. Overhead the stars shone dimly behind a floating veil of mist, and from the garden sleeping at his feet there arose a faint, fugitive scent of violets.

The old man’s face contracted as at some sudden sense of pain as that scent reached his nostrils. His mouth twitched with a curious tremor, and he covered it with his hand as though he feared some silent watcher in that sleeping world might see and mock his weakness. That violet-bed beneath the window had been planted fifty years before at the whim of a woman.

“We must have a great many violets,” she had said. “They are sweeter than all the roses in the world. Next year I must have handfuls and handfuls of sweetness.”

And the next year the violets had bloomed in the chosen corner, but her hands had not gathered them. And they had offered their magic ever since, year after year–even as they offered it tonight–to a heart that was too old and too broken to care.

Fifty years before, Sir Beverley had stood at that same window waiting and listening in the spring twilight for the beloved footfall of the woman who was never again to enter his house. They had had a disagreement, he had spoken harshly, he had been foolishly, absurdly jealous; for her wonderful beauty, her quick, foreign charm drew all the world. But, returning from a long ride that had lasted all day, he had entered with the desire to make amends, to win her sweet and gracious forgiveness. She had forgiven him before. She had laughed with a sweet, elusive mockery and passed the matter by as of no importance. It had seemed a foregone conclusion that she would forgive him again, would reassure him, and set his mind at rest. But he had come back to an empty house–every door gaping wide and the beloved presence gone.

So he had waited for her, expecting her every moment, refusing to believe the truth that nevertheless had forced itself upon him at the last. So now he waited for her grandson–the boy with her beauty, her quick and generous charm, her passionate, emotional nature–to come back to him. And yet again he waited in vain.

Piers had gone forth in fierce anger, driven by that devil that had descended to him through generations of stiff-necked ancestors; and for the first time in all his hot young life he had not returned repentant.

“I treated him like a dog, egad,” murmured Sir Beverley into the shielding hand. “But he’ll come back. He always comes back, the scamp.”

But the minutes crawled by, the night-wind rustled and passed; and still Piers did not come.

It was hard on midnight when Sir Beverley suddenly raised both hands to his mouth and sent a shrill, peculiar whistle through them across the quiet garden. It had been his special call for Piers in his childhood. Even as he sent it out into the darkness, he seemed to see the sturdy, eager little figure that had never failed to answer that summons with delight racing headlong towards him over the dim, dewy lawn.

But to-night it brought no answer though he repeated it again and yet again; and as twelve o’clock struck heavily upon the stillness he turned from the window and groaned aloud. The boy had gone, gone for good, as he might have known he would go. He had driven him forth with blows and bitter words, and it was out of his power to bring him back again.

Slowly he crossed the room and rang the bell. He was very cold, and he shivered as he moved.

It was Victor who answered the summons, Victor with round, vindictive eyes that openly accused him for a moment, and then softened inexplicably and looked elsewhere.

“You ask me for _Monsieur Pierre_?” he said, spreading out his hands, “_Mais–_”

“I didn’t ask for anything,” growled Sir Beverley. “I rang the bell to tell you and all the other fools to lock up and go to bed.”

“But–me!” ejaculated Victor, rolling his eyes upwards in astonishment.

“Yes, you! Where’s the sense of your sitting up? Master Piers knows how to undress himself by this time, I suppose?”

Sir Beverley scowled at him aggressively, but Victor did not even see the scowl. Like a hen with one chick, and that gone astray, he could think of naught beside.

“_Mais Monsieur Pierre_ is not here! Where then is _Monsieur Pierre?_” he questioned in distress.

“How the devil should I know?” snarled Sir Beverley. “Stop your chatter and be off with you! Shut the window first, and then go and tell David to lock up! I shan’t want anything more to-night.”

Victor shrugged his shoulders in mute protest, and went to the window. Here he paused, looking forth with eyes of eager searching till recalled to his duty by a growl of impatience from his master. Then with a celerity remarkable in one of his years and rotundity, he quickly popped in his head and closed the window.

“Leave the blind!” ordered Sir Beverley. “And the catch too! There! Now go! _Allez-vous-en!_? Don’t let me see you again to-night!”

Victor threw a single shrewd glance at the drawn face, and trotted with a woman’s nimbleness to the door. Here he paused, executed a stiff bow; then wheeled and departed. The door closed noiselessly behind him, and again Sir Beverley was left alone.

He dragged a chair to the window, and sat down to watch.

Doubtless the boy would return when he had walked off his indignation. He would be sure to see the light in the study, and he would come to him for admittance. He himself would receive him with a gruff word or two of admonition and the whole affair should be dismissed. Grimly he pictured the scene to himself as, ignoring the anxiety that was growing within him, he settled himself to his lonely vigil.

Slowly the night dragged on. A couple of owls were hooting to one another across the garden, and far away a dog barked at intervals. Old Sir Beverley never stirred in his chair. His limbs were rigid, his eyes fixed and watchful. But his face was grey–grey and stricken and incredibly old. He had the look of a man who carried a burden too heavy to be borne.

One after another he heard the hours strike, but his position never altered, his eyes never varied, his face remained as though carved in granite–a graven image of despair. Unspeakable weariness was in his pose, and yet he did not relax or yield a hair’s breadth to the body’s importunity. He suffered too bitterly in the spirit that night to be aware of physical necessity.

Slowly the long hours passed. The night began to wane. A faint grey glimmer, scarcely perceptible, came down from a mist-veiled sky. The wind that had sunk to stillness came softly back and wandered to and fro as though to rouse the sleeping world. Behind the mist the stars went out, and from the rookery in the park a hoarse voice suddenly proclaimed the coming day.

The grey light grew. In the garden ghostly shapes arose, phantoms of the dawn that gradually resolved into familiar forms of tree and shrub. From the rookery there swelled a din of many raucous voices. The dog in the distance began to bark again with feverish zest, and from the stables came Caesar’s cheery answering yell.

The mist drifted away from the face of the sky. A brightness was growing there. Stiffly, painfully, Sir Beverley struggled up from his chair, stood steadying himself–a figure tragic and forlorn–with his hands against the wood of the window-frame, then with a groaning effort thrust up the sash.

Violets! Violets! The haunting scent of them rose to greet him. The air was full of their magic fragrance. For a second he was aware of it; he almost winced. And then in a moment he had forgotten. He stood there motionless–a desolate old man, bowed and shrunken and grey–staring blindly out before him, unconscious of all things save the despair that had settled in his heart.

The night had passed and his boy had not returned.

CHAPTER XXX

THE CONFLICT

Stanbury Cliffs was no more than a little fishing-town at the foot of the sandy cliff–a sheltered nest of a place in which the sound of the waves was heard all day long, but which no bitter wind could reach. The peace of it was balm to Avery’s spirit. She revelled in its quiet.

Jeanie loved it too. She delighted in the freedom and the warmth, and almost from the day of their arrival her health began to improve.

They had their quarters in what was little more than a two-storey cottage belonging to one of the fishermen, and there was only a tiny garden bright with marigolds between them and the shore. Day after day they went through the little wicket gate down a slope of loose sand to the golden beach where they spent the sunny hours in perfect happiness. The waves that came into the bay were never very rough, though they sometimes heard them raging outside with a fury that filled the whole world with its roaring. Jeanie called it “the desired haven,” and confided to Avery that she was happier than she had ever been in her life before.

Avery was happy too, but with a difference; for she knew in her secret heart that the days of her tranquillity were numbered. She knew with a woman’s sure instinct that the interval of peace would be but brief, that with or without her will she must soon be drawn back again into the storm and stress of life. And knowing it, she waited, strengthening her defences day by day, counting each day as a respite while she devoted herself to the child and rejoiced to see the change so quickly wrought in her. Tudor’s simile of the building of a sea-wall often recurred to her. She told herself that the foundation thereof should be as secure as human care could make it, so that when the tide came back it should stand the strain.

The Vicar would have been shocked beyond words by the life of complete indulgence led by his small daughter. She breakfasted in bed every day, served by Avery who was firm as to the amount of nourishment taken but comfortably lax on all other points. When the meal was over, Avery generally went marketing while Jeanie dressed, and they then went to the shore. If there were no marketing to be done, Avery would go down to the beach alone and wait for her there. There was a sheltered corner that they both loved where, protected by towering rocks, they spent many a happy hour. It was just out of reach of the sea, exposed to the sun and sheltered from the wind–an ideal spot; and here they brought letters, books, or needlework, and were busy or idle according to their moods.

Jeanie was often idle. She used to lie in the soft sand and dream, with her eyes on the far horizon; but of what she dreamed she said no word even to Avery. But she was always happy. Her smile was always ready, the lines of her mouth were always set in perfect content. She seemed to have all she desired at all times. They did not often stray from the shore, for she was easily tired; but they used to roam along it and search the crevices of the scattered rocks which held all manner of treasures. They spent the time in complete accord. It was too good to last, Avery told herself. The way had become too easy.

It was on a morning about a week after their arrival that she went down at an early hour to their favourite haunt. There had been rain in the night, and a brisk west wind was blowing; but she knew that in that sheltered spot they would be protected, and Jeanie was pledged to join her there as soon as she was ready. The tide was coming in, and the sun shone amidst scudding white clouds. It was a morning on which to be happy for no other reason than lightness of heart; and Avery, with her work-bag on her arm, sang softly to herself as she went.

As usual she met no one. It was a secluded part of the shore. The little town was out of sight on the other side of a rocky promontory, and the place was lonely to desolation.

But Avery did not feel the loneliness. She had had a letter only that morning from Crowther, the friend of those far-off Australian days, and he expressed a hope of being able to pay her a flying visit at Stanbury Cliffs before settling down to work in grim earnest for the accomplishment of his life’s desire. She would have welcomed Edmund Crowther at any time. He was the sort of friend whose coming could never bring anything but delight.

She wondered as she walked along which day he would choose. She was rather glad that he had not fixed a definite date. It was good to feel that any day might bring him.

Nearing her destination she became aware of light feet running on the firm sand behind her. She glanced over her shoulder, but the sun shone full in her eyes, and she only managed to discern vaguely a man’s figure drawing near. He could not be pursuing her, she decided, and resumed her walk and her thoughts of Crowther–the friend who had stood by her at a time when she had been practically friendless.

But the running feet came nearer and nearer. She suddenly realized that they meant to overtake her, and with the knowledge the old quick dread pierced her heart. She wheeled abruptly round and stood still.

He was there, not a dozen yards from her. He hailed her as she turned.

She clenched her hands with sudden determination and went to meet him.

“Piers!” she said, and in her voice reproach and severity were oddly mingled.

But Piers was unabashed. He ran swiftly up to her, and caught her hands into his with an impetuous rush of words. “Here you are at last! I’ve been waiting for you for hours. But I was in the water when you first appeared, and I hadn’t any towels, or I should have caught you up before.”

He was laughing as he spoke, but it seemed to Avery that there was something not quite normal about him. His black hair lay in a wet plaster on his forehead, and below it his eyes glittered oddly, as if he were putting some force upon himself.

“How in the world did you get here?” she said.

He laughed again between his teeth. “I tell you, I’ve been here for hours. I came last night. But I couldn’t knock you up at two in the morning. So I had to wait. How are you and Jeanie getting on?”

Avery gravely withdrew her hands, and turned to pursue her way towards her rocky resting-place. “Jeanie is better,” she said, in a voice that did not encourage any further solicitude on either Jeanie’s behalf or her own.

Piers marched beside her, a certain doggedness in his gait. The laughter had died out of his face. He looked pale and stern, and fully as determined as she.

“Why didn’t you tell us to expect you?” Avery asked at last.

“Were you not expecting me?” he returned, and his voice had the sharpness of a challenge.

She looked at him steadily for a moment or two, meeting eyes that flung back her scrutiny with grim defiance.

“Of course I was not expecting you,” she said.

“And yet you were not–altogether–surprised to see me,” he rejoined, a faint jeering echo in his voice.

Avery walked on till she reached her sheltered corner. Then she laid her work-bag down in the accustomed place, and very resolutely turned and faced him.

“Tell me why you have come!” she said.

He gazed at her for a moment fiercely from under his black brows; then suddenly and disconcertingly he seized her by the wrists.

“I’ll tell you,” he said, speaking rapidly, with feverish utterance. “I’ve come because–before Heaven–I can’t keep away. Avery, listen to me! Yes, you must listen. I’ve come because I must, because you are all the world to me and I want you unutterably. I don’t believe–I can’t believe–that I am nothing to you. You can’t with honesty tell me so. I love you with all my soul, with all there is of me, good and bad. Avery–Avery, say you love me too!”

Just for an instant the arrogance went out of his voice, and it sank to pleading. But Avery stood mute before him, very pale, desperately calm. She made not the faintest attempt to free herself, but her hands were hard clenched. There was nothing passive in her attitude.

He was aware of strong resistance, but it only goaded him to further effort. He lifted the clenched hands and held them tight against his heart.

“You needn’t try to cast me off,” he said, “for I simply won’t go. I know you care. You wouldn’t have taken the trouble to write that letter if you didn’t. And so listen! I’ve come now to marry you. We can go up to town to-day,–Jeanie too, if you like. And to-morrow–to-morrow we will be married by special licence. I’ve thought it all out. You can’t refuse. I have money of my own–plenty of money. And you belong to me already. It’s no good trying to deny it any more. You are my mate–my mate; and I won’t try to live without you any longer!”

Wildly the words rushed out, spending themselves as it were upon utter silence. Avery’s hands were no longer clenched. They lay open against his breast, and the mad beating of his heart thrilled through and through her as she stood.

He bent towards her eagerly, passionately. His hands reached out to clasp her; yet he paused. “Avery! Avery!” he whispered very urgently.

Her eyes were raised to his, grey and steady and fearless. Not by the smallest gesture did she seek to escape him. She suffered the hands upon her shoulders. She suffered the fiery passion of his gaze.

Only at last very clearly, very resolutely, she spoke. “Piers–no!”

His face was close to hers, glowing and vital and tensely determined. “I say ‘Yes,'” he said, with brief decision.

Avery was silent. His hands were drawing her, and still she did not resist; but in those moments of silent inactivity she was stronger than he. Her personality was at grips with his, and if she gained no ground at least she held her own.

“Avery!” he said suddenly and sharply. “What’s the matter with you? Why don’t you speak?”

“I am waiting,” she said.

“Waiting!” he echoed. “Waiting for what?”

“Waiting for you to come to yourself, Piers,” she made steadfast answer.

He laughed at that, a quick, insolent laugh. “Do you think I don’t know what I’m doing, then?”

“I am quite sure,” she answered, “that when you know, you will be more ashamed than any honourable man should ever have reason to be.”

He winced at the words. She saw the hot blood surge in a great wave to his forehead, and she quailed inwardly though outwardly she made no sign. His grip was growing every instant more compelling. She knew that he was bracing himself for one great effort that should batter down the strength that withstood him. His lips were so close to hers that she could feel his breath, quick and hot, upon her face. And still she made no struggle for freedom, knowing instinctively that the instant her self-control yielded, the battle was lost.

Slowly the burning flush died away under her eyes. His face changed, grew subtly harder, less passionate. “So,” he said, with an odd quietness, “I’m not to kiss you. It would be dishonourable, what?”

She made unflinching reply. “It would be despicable and you know it–to kiss any woman against her will.”

“Would it be against your will?” he asked.

“Yes, it would.” Firmly she answered him, yet a quiver of agitation went through her. She felt her resolution begin to waver.

But in that moment something in Piers seemed to give way also. He cried out to her as if in sudden, intolerable pain. “Avery! Avery! Are you made of stone? Can’t you see that this is life or death to me?”

She answered him instantly; it was almost as if she had been waiting for that cry of his. “Yes, but you must get the better of it. You can if you will. It is unworthy of you. You are trying to take what is not yours. You have made a mistake, and you are wronging yourself and me.”

“What?” he exclaimed. “You don’t love me then!”

He flung his arms wide upon the words, with a gesture of the most utter despair, and turned from her. A moment he stood swaying, as if bereft of all his strength; and then with abrupt effort he began to move away. He stumbled blindly, heavily, as he went, and the crying of the wheeling sea-gulls came plaintively through a silence that could be felt.

But ere that silence paralysed her, Avery spoke, raising her voice, for the urgency was great.

“Piers, stop!”

He stopped instantly, but he did not turn, merely stood tensely waiting.

She collected herself and went after him. She laid a hand that trembled on his arm.

“Don’t leave me like this!” she said.

Slowly he turned his head and looked at her, and the misery of that look went straight to her heart. All the woman’s compassion in her throbbed up to the surface. She found herself speaking with a tenderness which a moment before no power on earth would have drawn from her.

“Piers, something is wrong; something has happened. Won’t you tell me what it is?”

“I can’t,” he said.

His lower lip quivered unexpectedly and she saw his teeth bite savagely upon it. “I’d better go,” he said.

But her hand still held his arm. “No; wait!” she said. “You can’t go like this. Piers, what is the matter with you? Tell me!”

He hesitated. She saw that his self-control was tottering. Abruptly at length he spoke. “I can’t. I’m not master of myself. I–I–” He broke off short and became silent.

“I knew you weren’t,” she said, and then, acting upon an impulse which she knew instinctively that she would never regret, she gave him her other hand also. “Let us forget all this!” she said.

It was generously spoken, so generously that it could not fail to take effect. He looked at her in momentary surprise, began to speak, stopped, and with a choked, unintelligible utterance took her two hands with the utmost reverence into his own, and bowed his forehead upon them. The utter abandonment of the action revealed to her in that moment how completely he had made her the dominating influence of his life.

“Shall we sit down and talk?” she said gently.

She could not be other than gentle with him. The appeal of his weakness was greater than any display of strength. She could not but respond to it.

He set her free and dropped down heavily upon a rock, leaning his head in his hands.

She waited a few moments beside him; then, as he remained silent, she bent towards him.

“Piers, what is it?”

With a sharp movement he straightened himself, and turned his face to the sea.

“I’m a fool,” he said, speaking with an odd, unsteady vehemence. “Fact is, I’ve been out all night on this beastly shore. I’ve walked miles. And I suppose I’m tired.”

He made the confession with a shamefaced laugh, still looking away to the horizon.

“All night!” Avery repeated in astonishment. “But, Piers!”

He nodded several times, emphatically. “And those infernal sea-birds have been squawking along with those thrice-accursed crows ever since day-break. I’d like to wring their ugly necks, every jack one of ’em!”

Avery laughed in spite of herself. “We all feel peevish sometimes,” she said, as one of the offenders sailed over-head with a melancholy cry. “But haven’t you had any breakfast? You must be starving.”

“I am!” said Piers. “I feel like a wolf. But you needn’t be afraid to sit down. I shan’t gobble you up this time.”

She heard the boyish appeal in his voice and almost unconsciously she yielded to it. She sat down on the rock beside him, but he instantly slipped from it and stretched himself in a dog-like attitude at her feet.

His chin was propped in his hands, his face turned to the white sand on which he lay. She looked down at his black head with more than compassion in her eyes. It was horribly difficult to snub this boy-lover of hers.

She sat and waited silently for him to speak.

He dropped one hand at length and began to dig his brown fingers into the powdery sand with irritable energy; but a minute or more passed before very grumpily he spoke.

“I’ve had a row with my grandfather. We both of us behaved like wild beasts. In the end, he thought he was going to give me a caning, and that was more than I could stand. I smashed his ruler for him and bolted. I should have struck him with it if I hadn’t. And after that, I cleared out and came here. And I’m not going back.”

So with blunt defiance he made the announcement, and as he did so, it came to Avery suddenly and quite convincingly that she had been the cause of the quarrel. A shock of dismay went through her. She had not anticipated this. She felt that the suspicion must be verified or refuted at once.

“Piers,” she said quickly, “why did you quarrel with your grandfather? Was it because of your affair with Miss Rose?”

“I never had an affair with Miss Rose,” said Piers rather sullenly. He dug up a small stone, and flung it with vindictive force at the face of the cliff. “Ask her, if you don’t believe me!”

He paused a moment, then went on in a dogged note: “I told him–of a certain intention of mine. He tackled me about it first, was absolutely intolerable. I just couldn’t hold myself in. And then somehow we got violent. It was his fault. Anyway, he began it.”

“You haven’t told me–yet–what you quarrelled about,” said Avery, with a sinking heart.

He shrugged his shoulders without looking at her. “It doesn’t matter, does it?”

She made answer with a certain firmness. “Yes, I think it does.”

“Well, then,”–abruptly he raised himself and faced round, his dark eyes raised to hers,–“I told him, Avery, that if I couldn’t marry the woman I loved, I would never marry at all.”

There was no sullenness about him now, only steadfast purpose. He looked her full in the face as he said it, and she quivered a little before the mastery of his look.

He laid a hand upon her knee as she sat above him in sore perplexity. “Would you have me do anything else?” he said.

She answered him with a conscious effort. “I want you to love–and marry–the right woman.”

He uttered a queer, unsteady laugh and leaned his head against her. “Oh, my dear,” he said, “there is no other woman but you in all the world.”

Something fiery that was almost like a dart of pain went through Avery at his words. She moved instinctively, but it was not in shrinking. After a moment she laid her hand upon his.

“Piers,” she said, “I can’t bear hurting you.”

“You wouldn’t hurt a fly,” said Piers.

She smiled faintly. “Not if I could help it. But that doesn’t prove that I am fond of flies. And now, Piers, I am going to ask a very big thing of you. I wonder if you will do it.”

“I wonder,” said Piers.

He had not moved at her touch, yet she felt his fingers close tensely as they lay upon her knee, and she guessed that he was still striving to control the inner tumult that had so nearly overwhelmed him a few minutes before.

“I know it is a big thing,” she said. “Yet–for my sake if you like–I want you to do it.”

“I will do anything for your sake,” he made passionate answer.

“Thank you,” she said gently. “Then, Piers, I want you–please–to go back to Sir Beverley at once, and make it up.”

He withdrew his hand sharply from hers, and sat up, turning his back upon her. “No!” he said harshly. “No!”

“Please, Piers!” she said very earnestly.

He locked his arms round his knees and sat in silence, staring moodily out to sea.

“Please, Piers!” she said again, and lightly touched his shoulder with her fingers.

He hunched the shoulder away from her with a gesture of boyish impatience, and then abruptly, as if realizing what he had done, he turned back to her, caught the hand, and pressed it to his lips.

“I’m a brute, dear. Forgive me! Of course–if you wish it–I’ll go back. But as to making it up, well–” he gulped once or twice–“it doesn’t rest only with me, you know.”

“Oh, Piers,” she said, “you are all he has. He couldn’t be hard to you!”

Piers smiled a wry smile, and said nothing.

“Besides,” she went on gently, “there is really nothing for you to quarrel about,–that is, if I am the cause of the trouble. It is perfectly natural that your grandfather should wish you to make a suitable marriage, perfectly natural that he should not want you to run after the wrong woman. You can tell him, Piers, that I absolutely see his point of view, but that so far as I am concerned, he need not be anxious. It is not my intention to marry again.”

“All right,” said Piers.

He gave her hand a little shake and released it. For a second–only a second–she caught a sparkle in his eyes that seemed to her almost like a gleam of mockery. And then with characteristic suddenness he sprang to his feet.

“Well, I’d better be going,” he said in a voice that was perfectly normal and free from agitation. “I can’t stop to see the kiddie this time. I’m glad she’s going on all right. I wonder when you’ll be back again.”

“Not at present, I think,” said Avery, trying not to be disconcerted by his abruptness.

He looked down at her whimsically. “You’re a good sort, Avery,” he said. “I won’t be so violent next time.”

“There mustn’t be a next time,” she said quickly. “Please Piers, that must be quite understood!”

“All right,” he said again. “I understand.”

And with that very suddenly he left her, so suddenly that she sat motionless on her rock and stared after him, not believing that he was really taking his leave.

He did not turn his head, however, and very soon he passed round the jutting headland, and was gone from her sight. Only when that happened did she draw a long, long breath and realize how much of her strength had been spent to gain what after all appeared to be but a very barren victory.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE RETURN

“_Ah! C’est Monsieur Pierre enfin!_” Eagerly Victor greeted the appearance of his young master. He looked as if he would have liked to embrace him.

Piers’ attitude, however, did not encourage any display of tenderness. He flung himself gloomily down into a chair and regarded the man with sombre eyes.

“Where’s Sir Beverley?” he said.

Victor spread forth expressive hands. _”Mais_, Sir Beverley, he sit up all the night attending you, _mon petit monsieur. Et moi_, I sit up also. _Mais Monsieur Pierre! Monsieur Pierre!”_

He began to shake his head at Piers in fond reproof, but Piers paid no attention.

“Sat up all night, what?” he said. “Then where is he now? In bed?”

There was a deep line between his black brows; all the gaiety and sparkle had gone from his eyes. He looked tired out.

It was close upon the luncheon-hour, and he had tramped up from the station. There were refreshments in front of him, but he bluntly refused to touch them.

“Why can’t you speak, man?” he said irritably. “Tell me where he is!”

“He has gone for his ride as usual,” Victor said, speaking through pursed lips. “But he is very, very feeble to-day, _Monsieur Pierre_. We beg him not to go. But what would you? He is the master. We could not stop him. But he sit in his saddle–like this.”

Victor’s gesture descriptive of the bent, stricken figure that had ridden forth that morning was painfully true to life.

Piers sprang to his feet. “And he isn’t back yet? Where on earth can he be? Which way did he go?”

Victor raised his shoulders. “He go down the drive–as always. _Apres cela, je ne sais pas._”

“Confusion!” ejaculated Piers, and was gone.

He had returned by a short cut across the park, but now he tore down the long avenue, running like a trained athlete, head up and elbows in, possessed by the single purpose of reaching the lodge in as brief a time as possible. They would know at the lodge which way his grandfather had gone.

He found Marshall just turning in at his gate for the midday meal, and hailed him without ceremony.

The old man stopped and surveyed him with sour disapproval. The news of Piers’ abrupt disappearance on the previous night had spread.

No, Marshall could give him no news as to the master’s whereabouts; he had been out all the morning.

“Well, find Mrs. Marshall!” ordered Piers impatiently. “She’ll know something. She must have opened the gate.”

Mrs. Marshall, summoned by a surly yell from her husband, stood in the door-way, thin-lipped and austere, and announced briefly that Sir Beverley had gone down towards the Vicarage; she didn’t know no more than that.

It was enough for Piers. He was gone again like a bird on the wing. The couple at the lodge looked after him with a species of unwilling admiration. His very arrogance fed their pride in him, disapprove though they might of his wild, foreign ways. Whatever the mixture in his veins, the old master’s blood ran there, and they would always be loyal to that.

That run to the Vicarage taxed even Piers’ powers. The steep hill at the end made him aware that his strength had its limits, and he was forced to pause for breath when he reached the top. He leaned against the Vicarage gate-post with the memory of that winter evening in his mind when Avery had come swift-footed to the rescue, and had cooled his fury with a bucket of cold water.

A step in the garden made him straighten himself abruptly. He turned to see a tall, black-coated figure emerge. The Reverend Stephen Lorimer came up with dignity and greeted him.

“Were you about to enter my humble abode?” he enquired.

“Is my grandfather here?” asked Piers.

Mr. Lorimer smiled benignly. He liked to imagine himself upon terms of intimacy with Sir Beverley though the latter did very little to justify the idea.

“Well, no,” he said, “I have not had the pleasure of seeing him here to-day. Did he express the intention of paying me a visit?”

“No, sir, no!” said Piers impatiently. “I only thought it possible, that’s all. Good-bye!”

He swung round and departed, leaving the worthy Vicar looking after him with a shrewd and not over-friendly smile at the corners of his eyes.

Beyond the Vicarage the road wound round again to the park, and Piers followed it. It led to a gate that opened upon a riding which was a favourite stretch for a gallop with both Sir Beverley and himself. Through this he passed, no longer running, but striding over the springy, turf between the budding beech saplings at a pace that soon took him into the heart of the woodland.

Pressing on, he came at length to a cross-riding, and here on boggy ground he discovered recent hoof-marks. There were a good many of them, and he was puzzled for a time as to the direction they had taken. The animal seemed to have wandered to and fro. But he found a continuous track at length and followed it.

It led to an old summer-house perched on a slope that overlooked the scene of Jeanie’s accident in the winter. A cold wind drove down upon him as he ascended. The sky was grey with scurrying clouds. The bare downs looked indescribably desolate.

Piers hastened along with set teeth. The dread he would not acknowledge hung like a numbing weight upon him. Somehow, inexplicably, he knew that he was nearing the end of his quest.

The long moan of the wind was the only sound to be heard. It seemed to fill the world. No voice of bird or beast came from near or far. He seemed to travel through a vast emptiness–the only living thing astir.