_ PART II. THE PLACE OF TORMENT
CHAPTER IV. THE PRISONER IN THE DUNGEON
Avery was already dressed when she heard Piers enter his room and say a word to Victor. She stood by her window waiting. It was growing late, but she felt sure he would come to her.
She heard Victor bustling about in his resilient fashion, and again Piers' voice, somewhat curt and peremptory, reached her through the closed door. He was evidently dressing at full speed. She was conscious of a sense of disappointment, though she kept it at bay, reminding herself that they must not keep their guest waiting.
But presently, close upon the dinner-hour, she went herself to the door of her husband's room and knocked.
His voice answered her immediately, but it still held that unwonted quality of irritation in it. "Oh, Avery, I can't let you in. I'm sorry. Victor's here."
Something--a small, indignant spirit--sprang up within her in response. "Send Victor away!" she said. "I want to come in."
"I shall be late if I do," he made answer. "I'm horribly late as it is."
But for once Avery's habitual docility was in abeyance. "Send Victor away!" she reiterated.
She heard Piers utter an impatient word, and then in a moment or two he raised his voice again. "Come in then! What is it?"
She opened the door with an odd unaccustomed feeling of trepidation.
He was standing in his shirt-sleeves brushing his hair vigorously at the table. His back was towards her, but the glass reflected his face, and she saw that his brows were drawn into a single hard black line. His lips were tightly compressed. He looked undeniably formidable.
"Don't you want me, Piers?" she asked, pausing in the doorway.
His eyes flashed up to hers in the glass, glowing with the smouldering fire, oddly fitful, oddly persistent. "Come in!" he said, without turning. "What is it?"
She went forward to him. "Did you go to the Vicarage?" she asked. "Are they in great trouble?"
She thought she saw relief in his face at her words. "Oh yes," he said. "Mrs. Lorimer crying as usual, Jeanie trying to comfort her. I did my best to hearten them up but you know what they are. I say, sit down!"
"No, I am going," she answered gently. "Did you get on all right this afternoon?"
"Oh yes," he said again. "By the way, we must get a wedding-present for Ina Rose and another for Guyes. You'll come to the wedding, Avery?"
"If you wish it, dear," she said quietly.
He threw down his brushes and turned fully to her. "Avery darling, I'm sorry I was bearish this afternoon. You won't punish me for it?"
"Punish you, my own Piers!" she said.
"Because I can't stand it," he said recklessly. "There are certain forms of torture that drive a man crazy. Bear with me--all you can!"
His quick pleading touched her, went straight to her heart. She put her hands on his shoulders, lifting her face for his kiss. "It's all right, dear," she said.
"Is it?" he said. "Is it?" He took her face between his hands, gazing down at her with eyes of passionate craving. "Say you love me!" he urged her suddenly. "Say it!"
Her heart sank within her. She made a movement as if to withdraw herself; but he caught her fiercely to him, his hot lips sought and held her own. She felt as if a flame encompassed her, scorching her, consuming her.
"Say you love me!" he whispered again between those fiery kisses. "Avery, I must have your soul as well. Do more than bear with me! Want me--want me!"
There was more than passion in the words. They came to her like a cry of torment. She braced herself to meet his need, realizing it to be greater than she knew.
"Piers! Piers!" she said. "I am altogether yours. I love you. Don't you know it?"
He drew a deep, quivering breath. "Yes--yes, I do know it," he said. "But--but--Avery, I would go through hell for you. You are my religion, my life, my all. I am not that to you. If--if I were dragged down, you wouldn't follow me in."
His intensity shocked her, but she would not have him know it. She sought to calm his agitation though she possessed no key thereto. "My dear," she said, "you are talking wildly. You don't know what you are to me, and I can't even begin to tell you. But surely--by now--you can take me on trust."
He made a curious sound that was half-laugh, half-groan. "You don't know yourself, Avery," he said.
"But you don't doubt my love, Piers," she protested very earnestly. "You know that it would never fail you."
"Your love is like the moonlight, Avery," he answered. "It is all whiteness and purity. But mine--mine is red like the fire that is under the earth. And though sometimes it scorches you, it never quite reaches you. You stoop to me, but you can't lift me. You are too far above. And the moonlight doesn't always reach to the prisoner in the dungeon either."
"All the same dear, don't be afraid that it will ever fail you!" she said.
He kissed her again, hotly, lingeringly, and let her go. "Perhaps I shall remind you of that one day," he said.
All through dinner his spirits were recklessly high. He talked incessantly, playing the host with a brilliant ease that betrayed no sign of strain. He did not seem to have a care in the world, and Avery marvelled at his versatility.
She herself felt weary and strangely sick at heart. Those few words of his had been a bitter revelation to her. She knew now what was wanting between them. He desired passion from her rather than love. He had no use for spiritual things. And she,--she knew that she shrank inwardly whenever she encountered that fierce, untamed desire of his. It fettered her spirit, it hung upon her like an overpowering weight. She could not satisfy his wild Southern nature. He crushed her love with the very fierceness of his possession and ever cried to her for more. He seemed insatiable. Even though she gave him all she had, he still hungered, still strove feverishly to possess himself of something further.
She felt worn out, body and soul, and she could not hide it. She was unspeakably glad when at length the meal was over and she was able to leave the table.
Crowther opened the door for her, looking at her with eyes of kindly criticism.
"You look tired," he said. "I hope you don't sit up late."
She smiled at him. "Oh no! We will make Piers play to us presently, and then I will say good-night."
"Then we mustn't keep you waiting long," he said. "So Piers is a musician, is he? I didn't know."
"You had better go to bed, Avery; it's late," said Piers abruptly. "I can't play to-night. The spirit doesn't move me." He rose from the table with a careless laugh. "Say good-night to her, Crowther, and let her go! We will smoke in the garden."
There was finality in his tone, its lightness notwithstanding. Again there came to Avery the impulse to rebel, and again instinctively she caught it back. She held out her hand to Crowther.
"I am dismissed then," she said. "Good-night!"
His smile answered hers. He looked regretful, but very kindly. "I am glad to see Piers takes care of you," he said.
She laughed a little drearily as she went away, making no other response.
Crowther turned back to the table with its shaded candles and gleaming wine. He saw that Piers' glass was practically untouched.
Piers himself was searching a cabinet for cigars. He found what he sought, and turned round with the box in his hand.
"I don't know what you generally smoke," he said. "Will you try one of these? It's a hot night. We may as well have coffee in the garden."
He seemed possessed with a spirit of restlessness, just as he had been on that night at the Casino in the spring. Crowther, massive and self-contained, observed him silently.
They went out on to the terrace, and drank their coffee in the dewy stillness. But even there Piers could not sit still. He prowled to and fro eternally, till Crowther set down his cup and joined him, pushing a quiet hand through his arm.
"It's a lovely place you've got here, sonny," he said; "a regular garden of Paradise. I almost envy you."
"Oh, you needn't do that. There's a serpent in every Eden," said Piers, with a mirthless laugh.
He did not seek to keep Crowther at arm's length, but neither did he seem inclined for any closer intimacy. His attitude neither invited nor repelled confidence. Yet Crowther knew intuitively that his very indifference was in itself a barrier that might well prove insurmountable.
He walked in silence while Piers talked intermittently of various impersonal matters, drifting at length into silence himself.
In the western wing of the house a light burned at an upper window, and Crowther, still quietly observant, noted how at each turn Piers' eyes went to that light as though drawn by some magnetic force.
Gently at length he spoke. "She doesn't look altogether robust, sonny."
Piers started sharply as if something had pricked him. "What? Avery do you mean? No, she isn't over and above strong--just now."
He uttered the last two words as if reluctantly, yet as if some measure of pride impelled him.
Crowther's hand pressed his arm, in mute sympathy. "You are right to take care of her," he said simply. "And Piers, my lad, I want to tell you how glad I was to know that you were able to win her after all. I somehow felt you would."
It was his first attempt to pass that intangible barrier, and it failed. Piers disregarded the words as if they had not reached him.
"I don't know if I shall let her stay here through the winter," he said. "I am not sure that the place suits her. It's damp, you know; good hunting and so on, but a bit depressing in bad weather. Besides I'd rather have her under a town doctor. The new heir arrives in March," he said, with a slight laugh that struck Crowther as unconsciously pathetic.
"I'm very pleased to hear it, sonny," said Crowther. "May he be the first of many! What does Avery think about it? I'll warrant she's pleased?"
"Oh yes, she's pleased enough."
"And you, lad?"
"Oh yes, I'm pleased too," said Piers, but his tone lacked complete satisfaction and he added after a moment, "I'd rather have had her to myself a bit longer. I'm a selfish brute, you know, Crowther. I want all I can get--and even that's hardly enough to keep me from starvation."
There was a note of banter in his voice, but there was something else as well that touched Crowther's kindly heart.
"I don't think Avery is the sort of woman to sacrifice her husband to her children," he said. "You will always come first, sonny,--if I know her."
"I couldn't endure anything else," said Piers, with sudden fire. "She is the mainspring of my life."
"And you of hers," said Crowther.
Piers stopped dead in his walk and faced him. "No,--no, I'm not!" he said, speaking quickly, unrestrainedly. "I'm a good deal to her, but I'm not that. She gives, but she never offers. If I went off on a journey round the world to-morrow, she'd see me go quite cheerfully, and she'd wait serenely till I came back again. She'd never fret. Above all, she'd never dream of coming to look for me."
The passionate utterance went into a sound that resembled a laugh, but it was a sound of such bitterness that Crowther was strongly moved.
He put his hand on Piers' shoulder and gave it an admonitory shake. "My dear lad, don't be a fool!" he said, with slow force. "You're consuming your own happiness--and hers too. You can't measure a woman's feelings like that. They are immeasurable. You can't even begin to fathom a woman's restraint--a woman's reserve. How can she offer when you are always demanding? As to her love, it is probably as infinitely great, as infinitely deep, as infinitely selfless, as yours is passionate, and fierce and insatiable. There are big possibilities in you, Piers; but you're not letting 'em grow. It would have done you good to have been kept waiting ten years or more. You're spoilt; that's what's the matter with you. You got your heart's desire too easily. You think this world is your own damn playground. And it isn't. Understand? You're put here to work, not play; to develop yourself, not batten on other people. You won her like a man in the face of desperate odds. You paid a heavy price for her. But even so, you don't deserve to keep her if you forget that she has paid too. By Heaven, Piers, she must have loved you a mighty lot to have done it!"
He paused, for Piers had made a sharp, involuntary movement as of a man in intolerable pain. He almost wrenched himself from Crowther's hand, and walked to the low wall of the terrace. Here he stood for many seconds quite motionless, gazing down over the quiet garden.
Finally he swung round, and looked at Crowther. "Yes," he said, in an odd tone as of one repeating something learned by heart. "I've got to remember that, haven't I? Thanks for--reminding me!" He stopped, seemed to collect himself, moved slowly forward. "You're a good chap, Crowther," he said. "I wonder you've never got married yourself, what?"
Crowther waited for him quietly, in his eyes that look of the man who has gazed for long over the wide spaces of the earth.
"I never married, sonny," he said, "because I had nothing to offer to the woman I cared for, and so--she never knew."
"By gad, old chap, I'm sorry," said Piers impulsively.
Crowther held out a steady hand. "I'm happy enough," he said simply. "I've got--all I want."
"All?" echoed Piers incredulously.
Crowther was smiling. He lifted his face to the night sky. "Yes,--thank God,--all!" he said. _