The Bars of Iron - Ethel May Dell (top novels .txt) 📗

thrust it into Crowther's hand and departed with a careless whistle on his lips. But Crowther did not look at the paper. His eyes followed Piers as long as he was in sight, and then with that look in them as of one who watches from afar turned contemplatively towards the sea. After a little he took his hat off and suffered the morning-breeze to blow across his forehead. He had the serene brow of a child, though the hair above it was broadly streaked with grey.
He was still sitting thus when there came the sound of jerky footsteps on the terrace behind him and an irascible voice addressed him with scarcely concealed impatience.
"Excuse me! I saw you talking to my grandson just now. Do you know where the young fool is gone to?"
Crowther turned in his solid, imperturbable fashion, looked at the speaker, and got to his feet.
"I can," he said, with a smile. "He has gone to procure drinks in my honour. He and I are--old friends."
"Oh!" said Sir Beverley, and looked him up and down in a fashion which another man might have found offensive. "And who may you be?"
"My name is Crowther," said the other with simplicity.
Sir Beverley grunted. "That doesn't tell me much. Never heard of you before."
"I daresay not." Crowther was quite unmoved; there was even a hint of humour in his tone. "Your grandson is probably a man of many friends."
"Why should you say that?" demanded Sir Beverley suspiciously.
"Won't you sit down?" said Crowther.
Sir Beverley hesitated a moment, then abruptly complied with the suggestion. Crowther followed his example, and they faced one another across the little table.
"I say it," said Crowther, "because that is the sort of lad I take him to be."
Sir Beverley grunted again. "And when and where did you make his acquaintance?" he enquired, with a stern, unsparing scrutiny of the calm face opposite.
"We met in Australia," said Crowther. "It must be six years or more ago."
"Australia's a big place," observed Sir Beverley.
Crowther's slow smile appeared. "Yes, sir, it is. It's so mighty big that it makes all the other places of the world seem small. Have you ever been in Queensland--ever seen a sheep-farm?"
"No, I've never been in Queensland," snapped Sir Beverley. "But as to sheep-farms, I've got one of my own."
"How many acres?" asked Crowther.
"Oh, don't ask me! Piers will tell you. Piers knows. Where the devil is the boy? Why doesn't he come?"
"Here, sir, here!" cried Piers, coming up behind him. "I see you have made the acquaintance of my friend. Crowther, let me present you to my grandfather, Sir Beverley Evesham! I've just been to look for you," he added to the latter. "But Victor told me you had gone out, and then I spied you out of the window."
"I told you I was coming out, didn't I?" growled Sir Beverley. "So this is a friend of yours, is it? How is it I've never heard of him before?"
"We lost sight of each other," explained Piers, pulling forward a chair between them and dropping into it. "But that state of affairs is not going to happen again. How long are you over for, Crowther?"
"Possibly a year, possibly more." Again Crowther's eyes were upon him, critical but kindly.
"Going to spend your time in England?" asked Piers.
Crowther nodded. "Most of it, yes."
"Good!" said Piers with satisfaction. "We shall see plenty of you then."
"But I am going to be busy," said Crowther, with a smile.
"Of course you are. You can come down and teach me how to make the Home Farm a success," laughed Piers.
"I shall be very pleased to try," said Crowther, "though," he turned towards Sir Beverley, "I expect you, sir, know as much on that subject as either of us."
Sir Beverley's eyes were upon him with searching directness. He seemed to be trying to discover a reason for his boy's obvious pleasure in his unexpected meeting with this man who must have been nearly twice his age.
"I've never done much in the farming line," he said briefly, in answer to Crowther's observation. "It's been more of a pastime with me than anything else. It's the same with Piers here. He's only putting in time with it till the constituency falls vacant."
"I see," said Crowther, adding with his quiet smile: "There seems to be plenty of time anyhow in the old country, whatever else she may be short of."
Piers laughed as he lifted his glass. "Time for everything but work, Crowther. She has developed beastly loose morals in her old age. Some day there'll come a nasty bust up, and she may pull herself together and do things again, or she may go to pieces. I wonder which."
"I don't," said Crowther.
"You don't?" Piers paused, glass in hand, looking at him expectantly.
"No, I don't." Crowther also raised his glass; he looked Piers straight in the eyes. "Here's to the boys of England, Piers!" he said. "They'll see to it that she comes through."
Sir Beverley also drank, but with a distasteful air. "You've a higher opinion of the young fools than I have," he remarked.
"I've made a study of the breed, sir," said Crowther.
The conversation drifted to indifferent matters, but Piers' interest remained keen. It seemed that all his vitality had reawakened at the coming of this slow-speaking man who had looked so long upon the wide spaces of the earth that his vision seemed scarcely adaptable to lesser things. There was that in his personality that caught Piers' fancy irresistibly. Perhaps it was his utter calmness, his unvarying, rock-like strength. Perhaps it was just the good fellowship that looked out of the steady eyes and sounded in every tone of the leisurely voice. Whatever the cause, his presence had made a vast difference to Piers. His boredom had completely vanished. He even forgot to wonder if there were a letter lying waiting for him inside the hotel.
Crowther excused himself at length and rose to take his leave, whereupon Sir Beverley very abruptly, and to his grandson's surprise and gratification, invited him to dine with them that night. Piers at once seconded the invitation, and Crowther without haste or hesitation accepted it.
Then, square and purposeful, he went away.
"A white man!" murmured Piers half to himself.
"One who knows his own mind anyhow," remarked Sir Beverley drily.
He did not ask Piers for the history of their friendship, and Piers, remembering this later, wondered a little at the omission.


CHAPTER XXIII
A FRIEND'S COUNSEL

When Piers went to dress that night he found two letters laid discreetly upon his table, awaiting perusal.
Victor, busily engaged in laying out his clothes, cast a wicked eye back over his shoulder as his young master pounced upon them, then with a shrug resumed his task, smiling to himself the while.
Both letters were addressed in womanly handwriting, but Piers went unerringly to the one he most desired to read. His hands shook a little as he opened it, but he caught sight of his Christian name at the head of it and breathed a sigh of relief.
"Dear Piers,"--so in clear, decided writing the message ran,--"I have wondered many times if I ought to be angry as well as sorry over that letter of yours. It was audacious, wasn't it? Only I know so well that you did not mean to hurt me when you wrote it. But, Piers, what I said before, you compel me to say again. This thing must stop. You say you are not a boy, so I shall not treat you as such. But indeed you must take my word for it when I tell you that I shall never marry again.
"I want to be quite honest with you, so you mustn't think that my two years of married life were by any means idyllic. They were not. The man I married was a failure, but I loved him, and because I loved him I followed him to the world's end. We were engaged two years before we married. My father disapproved; but when he died I was left lonely, so I followed Eric, whom I had not seen for eighteen months, to Australia. We were married in Sydney. He had work at that time in a shipping-office, but he did not manage to keep it. I did not know why at first. I was young, and I had always led a sheltered life. Then one night I found that he had been drinking, and after that I understood--many things. I think I know what you will say of him when you read this. It looks so crude written. But, Piers, he was not a bad man. He had this one fatal weakness, but he loved me, and he was good to me nearly always."
Piers' teeth closed suddenly and fiercely on his lower lip at this point; but he read on grimly with no other sign of indignation.
"Do you remember how I took upon myself once to warn you against losing your self-control?" The handwriting was not quite so steady here; the letters looked hurried, as if some agitation had possessed the writer. "I felt I had to do it, for I had seen a man's life completely wrecked through it. I know he was one of the many that go under every day, but the tragedy was so near me. I have never quite been able to shake off the dreadful memories of it. He was to all outward appearance a strong-willed man, but that habit was stronger, though he fought and fought against it. When he failed, he seemed to lose everything,--self-respect, self-control, strength of purpose,--everything. But when the demon left him, he always repented so bitterly, so bitterly. I had a little money, enough to live on. He used to urge me to leave him, to go back to England, and live in peace. As if I could have done such a thing! And so we struggled on, making a desperately hard fight for it, till one awful night when he came home in raving delirium. I can't describe that to you. I don't want you to know what it was like. I nursed him through it, but it was terrible. He did not always know what he was doing. At times he was violent."
A drop of blood suddenly ran down Piers' chin; he pulled out his handkerchief sharply and wiped it away, still reading on.
"He got over it, but it broke him. He knew--we both knew--that things were hopeless. We tried for a time to shut our eyes to the fact, but it remained. And then one day very suddenly he roused himself and told me that he had heard of a job up-country and was going to it. I could not stop him. I could not even go with him. And so--for the first time since our marriage--we parted. He promised to come back to me for the birth of our child. But before that happened he was dead, killed in a drunken brawl. It was just what I had always feared--the tragedy that overhung us from the beginning. Piers, that's all. I've told it very badly. But I felt you must know how my romance died; and how impossible it is that I should ever have another. It didn't break my heart. It wasn't sudden enough for that. And now that he is gone, I can see it is best. But the manner of his going--that was the dreadful part. I told you about my baby girl, how she was born blind, and how five years ago she died.
"So now you know my little tragic history from beginning to end. There is no accounting for love. We follow our instincts, I