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

he said. "But it isn't enough. I want you to promise me personally, so that--I shall always feel--quite sure of you. You see, Avery," his words came with difficulty, his upturned face seemed to beseech her, "I'm not--the sort of impossible, chivalrous knight that Jeanie thinks me. I'm horribly bad. I sometimes think I've got a devil inside me. And I've done things--I've done things--" His voice shook suddenly; he ended abruptly, with heaving breath. "Before I ever met you, I--wronged you."
He would have let her go then, but it was her hands that held. She stooped lower to him, divinely tender, her love seeming to spread all about him like wings, folding him in.
"My dear," she said softly, "whatever there is of bad in you,--remember, the best is mine!"
He caught at the words. "The best--the best! You shall always have that, Avery. But, my darling,--you understand--you do understand--how utterly unworthy that best is of you? You must understand that before--before--"
Again his voice went into silence; but she saw his eyes glow suddenly, hotly, in the gloom, and her heart gave a quick hard throb that caught her breath and held it for the moment suspended, waiting.
He went on after a second, mastering himself with obvious effort. "What I am trying to say is this. It's easier--or at least not impossible--to forfeit what you've never had. But afterwards--afterwards--" His hands closed tightly upon hers again; his voice sounded half-choked. "Avery, I--couldn't let you go--afterwards," he said.
"But, my own Piers," she whispered, "haven't you said that there is no reason--no earthly reason--"
He broke in upon her almost fiercely. "There is no reason--none whatever--I swear it! You said yourself that the past was nothing to you. You meant it, Avery. Say you meant it!"
"But of course I meant it!" she told him. "Only, Piers, there is no secret chamber in my life that you may not enter. Perhaps some day, dear, when you come to realize that I am older than Jeanie, you will open all your doors to me!"
There was pleading in her voice, notwithstanding its note of banter; but she did not stay to plead. With the whispered words she stooped and softly kissed him. Then ere he could detain her longer she gently released herself and was gone.
He saw her light figure flit ghost-like across the dim stretch of grass and vanish into the shadows. And he started to his feet as if he would follow or call her back. But he did neither. Be only stood swaying on his feet with a face of straining impotence--as of a prisoner wrestling vainly with his iron bars--until she had gone wholly from his sight. And then with a stifled groan he dropped down again into his chair and covered his face.
He had paid a heavy price to enter the garden of his desire; but already he had begun to realize that the fruit he gathered there was Dead Sea Fruit.


CHAPTER II
THAT WHICH IS HOLY

No bells had rung at the young Squire's wedding. It had been conducted with a privacy which Miss Whalley described as "almost indecent." But there was no privacy about his return, and Miss Whalley was shocked afresh at the brazen heartlessness of it after his recent bereavement. For Sir Piers and his wife motored home at the end of July through a village decked with flags and bunting and under a triumphant arch that made Piers' little two-seater seem absurdly insignificant; while the bells in the church-tower clanged the noisiest welcome they could compass, and Gracie--home for the holidays--mustered the school-children to cheer their hardest as the happy couple passed the schoolhouse gate.
Avery would fain have stopped to greet the child, but Piers would not be persuaded.
"No, no! To-morrow!" he said. "The honeymoon isn't over till after to-night."
So they waved and were gone, at a speed which made Miss Whalley wonder what the local police could be about.
Once past the lodge-gates and Marshall's half-grudging, half-pleased smile of welcome, the speed was doubled. Piers went like the wind, till Avery breathlessly cried to him to stop.
"You'll kill us both before we get there!" she protested. In answer to which Piers moderated the pace, remarking as he did so, "But you would like to die by my side, what?"
Victor was on the steps to receive them, Victor dancing with impatience and delight. For his young master's prolonged honeymoon had represented ten weeks of desolation to him.
Old David was also present, inconspicuous and dignified, waiting to pour out tea for the travellers.
And Caesar the Dalmatian who had mourned with Victor for his absent deity now leapt upon him in one great rush of ecstatic welcome that nearly bore him backwards.
It was a riotous home-coming, for Piers was in boisterous spirits. They had travelled far that day, but he was in a mood of such restless energy that he seemed incapable of feeling fatigue.
Avery on her part was thoroughly weary, but she would not tell him so, and they spent the whole evening in wandering about house and gardens, discussing the advisability of various alterations and improvements. In the end Piers awoke suddenly to the fact that she was looking utterly exhausted, and with swift compunction piloted her to her room.
"What a fool I am!" he declared. "You must be dead beat. Why didn't you say you wanted to rest?"
"I didn't, dear," she answered simply. "I wanted to be with you."
He caught her hand to his lips. "You are happy with me then?"
She uttered a little laugh that said more than words. "My own boy, you give me all that the most exacting woman could possibly desire and then ask me that!"
He laughed too, his arm close about her. "I would give you the world if I had it. Avery, I hate to think we've come home--that the honeymoon is over--and the old beastly burdens waiting to be shouldered--" He laid his forehead against her neck with a gesture that made her fancy he did not wish her to see his face for the moment. "P'r'aps I'm a heartless brute, but I never missed the old chap all the time I was away," he whispered. "It's like being dragged under the scourge again--just when the old scars were beginning to heal--to come back to this empty barrack."
She slid a quick arm round his neck, all the woman's heart in her responding to the cry from his.
"The place is full of him," Piers went on; "I meet him at every corner. I see him in his old place on the settle in the hall, where he used to wait for me, and--and row me every night for being late." He gave a broken laugh. "Avery, if it weren't for you, I--I believe I should shoot myself."
"Come and sit down!" said Avery gently. She drew him to a couch, and they sat down locked together.
During all the ten weeks of their absence he had scarcely even mentioned his grandfather. He had been gay and inconsequent, or fiercely passionate in his devotion to her. But of his loss he had never spoken, and vaguely she had known that he had shut it out of his life with that other grim shadow that dwelt behind the locked door she might not open. She had not deemed him heartless, but she had regretted that deliberate shirking of his grief. She had known that sooner or later he would have to endure the scourging of which he spoke and that it would not grow the lighter with postponement.
And now as she held him against her heart, she was in a sense relieved that it had come at last, thankful to be there with him while he stripped himself of all subterfuge and faced his sorrow.
He could not speak much as he sat there clasped in her arms. One or two attempts he made, and then broke down against her breast. But no words were needed. Her arms were all he desired for consolation, and if they waked in him the old wild remorse, he stifled it ere it could take full possession.
Finally, when the first bitterness had passed, they sat and talked together, and he found relief in telling her of the life he had lived in close companionship with the old man.
"We quarrelled a dozen times," he said. "But somehow we could neither of us keep it up. I don't know why. We were violent enough at times. There's an Evesham devil somewhere in our ancestry, and he has a trick of cropping up still in moments of excitement. You've met him more than once. He's a formidable monster, what?"
"I am not afraid of him," said Avery, with her cheek against his black head.
He gave a shaky laugh. "You'd fling a bucket of water over Satan himself! I love you for not being afraid. But I don't know how you manage it, and that's a fact. Darling, I'm a selfish brute to wear you out like this. Send me away when you can't stand any more of me!"
"Would you go?" she said, softly stroking his cheek.
He caught her hand again and kissed it hotly, devouringly, in answer. "But I mustn't wear you out," he said, a moment later, with an odd wistfulness. "You mustn't let me, Avery."
She drew her hand gently away from the clinging of his lips. "No, I won't let you," she said, in a tone he did not understand.
He clasped her to him. "It's because I worship you so," he whispered passionately. "There is no one else in the world but you. I adore you! I adore you!"
She closed her eyes from the fiery worship that looked forth from his. "Piers," she said, "wait, dear, wait!"
"Why should I wait?" he demanded almost fiercely.
"Because I ask you. Because--just now--to be loved like that is more than I can bear. Will you--can you--kiss me only, once, and go?"
He held her in his arms. He gazed long and burningly upon her. In the end he stopped and with reverence he kissed her. "I am going, Avery," he said.
She opened her eyes to him. "God bless you, my own Piers!" she murmured softly, and laid her cheek for a moment against his sleeve ere he took his arm away.
As for Piers, he went from her as if he feared to trespass, and her heart smote her a little as she watched him go. But she would not call him back. She went instead to one of the great bay windows and leaned against the framework, gazing out. He was very good to her in all things, but there were times when she felt solitude to be an absolute necessity. His vitality, his fevered desire for her, wore upon her nerves. His attitude towards her was not wholly natural. It held something of a menace to her peace which disquieted her vaguely. She had a feeling that though she knew herself to be all he wanted in the world, yet she did not succeed in fully satisfying him. He seemed to be perpetually craving for something further, as though somewhere deep within him there burned a fiery thirst that nothing could ever slake. Her lightest touch seemed to awake it, and there were moments when his unfettered passion made her afraid.
Not for worlds would she have had him know it. Her love for him was too deep to let her shrink; and she knew that only by that love did she maintain her ascendancy, appealing to his higher nature as only true love can appeal. But the perpetual strain of it told upon her, and that night she felt tired in body and soul.
The great bedroom behind her with its dark hangings and oak