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

through?" he said.
"I think so," Wyndham answered. "But it won't be a walk over. She will be ill for a long time."
"I'll take her away somewhere," said Piers. "A quiet time at the sea will soon pick her up."
Maxwell Wyndham said nothing.
Piers glanced at him with quick impatience. "Don't you advise that?"
The green eyes countered his like the turn of a swordblade. "Certainly quiet is essential," said Wyndham enigmatically.
Piers made a chafing movement. "What do you mean?"
"I mean," very calmly came the answer, "that if you really value your wife's welfare, you will let someone else take her away."
It was a straight thrust, and it went home. Piers flinched sharply. But in a moment he had recovered himself. He was on guard. He looked at Wyndham with haughty enquiry.
"Why do you say that?"
"Because her peace of mind depends upon it." Wyndham's answer came with brutal directness. "You will find, when this phase of extreme weakness is past, that your presence is not desired. She may try to hide it from you. That depends upon the kind of woman she is. But the fact will remain--does remain--that for some reason best known to yourself, she shrinks from you. I am not speaking rashly without knowledge. When a woman is in agony she can't help showing her soul. I saw your wife's soul to-day."
Piers was white to the lips. He sat rigid, no longer looking at the doctor, but staring beyond him fixedly at a woman's face on the wall that smiled and softly mocked.
"What did she say to you?" he said, after a moment.
"She said," curtly Wyndham made reply,--"it was at a time when she could hardly speak at all--'Even if I ask for my husband, don't send--don't send!'"
"Yet you fetched me!" Piers' eyes came swiftly back to him; they shone with a fierce glint.
But Wyndham was undismayed. "I fetched you to save her life," he said. "There was nothing else to be done. She was in delirium, and nothing else would calm her."
"And she wanted me!" said Piers. "She begged me to stay with her!"
"I know. It was a passing phase. When her brain is normal, she will have forgotten."
Piers sprang to his feet with sudden violence. "But--damn it--she is my wife!" he cried out fiercely.
Maxwell Wyndham leaned across the table. "She is your wife--yes," he said. "But isn't that a reason for considering her to the very utmost? Have you always done that, I wonder? No, don't answer! I've no right to ask. Only--you know, doctors are the only men in the world who know just what women have to put up with, and the knowledge isn't exactly exhilarating. Give her a month or two to get over this! You won't be sorry afterwards."
It was kindly spoken, so kindly that the flare of anger died out of Piers on the instant, and the sweetness dormant in him--that latent sweetness that had won Avery's heart--came swiftly to the surface.
He threw himself down again, looking into the alert, green eyes with an oddly rueful smile. "All right, doctor!" he said. "I shan't go to her if she doesn't want me. But I've got to make sure she doesn't, haven't I? What?"
There was a wholly unconscious note of pathos in the last word that sent the doctor's mouth up at one corner in a smile that was more pitying than humorous. "I should certainly do that," he said. "But I'm afraid you'll find I've told you the beastly truth."
"For which I am obliged to you," said Piers, with a bow.


CHAPTER XIII
THE HAND OF THE SCULPTOR

During the week that followed, no second summons came to Piers from his wife's room. He hung about the house, aimless, sick at heart, with hope sinking ever lower within him like a fire dying for lack of replenishment.
He could neither sleep nor eat, and Victor watched him with piteous though unspoken solicitude. Victor knew the wild, undisciplined temperament of the boy he had cherished from his cradle, and he lived in hourly dread of some sudden passionate outburst of rebellion, some desperate act that should lead to irremediable disaster. He had not forgotten that locked drawer in the old master's bureau or the quick release it contained, and he never left Piers long alone in its vicinity.
But he need not have been afraid. Piers' thoughts never strayed in that direction. If his six months in Crowther's society had brought him no other comfort, they had at least infused in him a saner outlook and steadier balance. Very little had ever passed between them on the subject of the tragedy that had thrown them together. After the first bitter outpouring of his soul, Piers had withdrawn himself with so obvious a desire for privacy that Crowther had never attempted to cross the boundary thus clearly defined. But his influence had made itself felt notwithstanding. It would have been impossible to have lived with the man for so long without imbibing some of that essential greatness of soul that was his main characteristic, and Piers was ever swift to feel the effect of atmosphere. He had come to look upon Crowther with a reverence that in a fashion affected his daily life. That which Crowther regarded as unworthy, he tossed aside himself without consideration. Crowther had not despised him at his worst, and he was determined that he would show himself to be not despicable. He was moreover under a solemn promise to return to Crowther when he found himself at liberty, and in very gratitude to the man he meant to keep that promise.
But, albeit he was braced for endurance, the long hours of waiting were very hard to bear. His sole comfort lay in the fact that Avery was making gradual progress in the right direction. It was a slow and difficult recovery, as Maxwell Wyndham had foretold, but it was continuous. Tudor assured him of this every day with a curt kindliness that had grown on him of late. It was his own fashion of showing a wholly involuntary sympathy of which he was secretly half-ashamed, and which he well knew Piers would have brooked in no other form. It established an odd sort of truce between them of which each was aware the while he sternly ignored it. They could never be friends. It was fundamentally impossible, but at least they had, if only temporarily, ceased to be enemies.
Little Mrs. Lorimer's sympathy was also of a half-ashamed type. She did not want to be sorry for Piers, but she could not wholly restrain her pity. The look in his eyes haunted her. Curiously it made her think of some splendid animal created for liberty, and fretting its heart out in utter, hopeless misery on a chain.
She longed with all her motherly heart to comfort him, and by the irony of circumstance it fell to her to deal the final blow to what was left of his hope. She wondered afterwards how she ever brought herself to the task, but it was in reality so forced upon her that she could not evade it. Avery, lying awake during the first hours of a still night, heard her husband's feet pacing up and down the terrace, and the mischief was done. She was thrown into painful agitation and wholly lost her sleep in consequence. When Mrs. Lorimer arrived about noon on the following day, she found her alarmingly weak, and the nurse in evident perplexity.
"I am sure there is something worrying her," the latter said to Mrs. Lorimer. "I can't think what it is."
But directly Mrs. Lorimer was alone with Avery, the trouble came out. For she reached out fevered hands to her, saying, "Why, oh, why did you persuade me to come back here? I knew he would come if I did!"
Again the emergency impelled Mrs. Lorimer to a display of common-sense with which few would have credited her.
"Oh, do you mean Piers, dear?" she said. "But surely you are not afraid of him! He has been here all the time--ever since you were so ill."
"And I begged you not to send!" groaned Avery.
"My dear," said Mrs. Lorimer very gently, "it was his right to be here."
"Then that night--that night--" gasped Avery, "he really did come to me--that night after the baby was born."
"My darling, you begged for him so piteously," said Mrs. Lorimer apologetically.
Avery's lip quivered. "That was just what I feared--what I wanted to make impossible," she said. "When one is suffering, one forgets so."
"But surely it was the cry of your heart, darling," urged Mrs. Lorimer tremulously. "And do you know--poor lad--he looks so ill, so miserable."
But Avery's face was turned away. "I can't help it," she said. "I can't--possibly--see him again. I feel as if--as if there were a curse upon us both, and that is why the baby died. Oh yes, morbid, I know; perhaps wrong. But--I have been steeped in sin. I must be free for a time. I can't face him yet. I haven't the strength."
"Dearest, he will never force himself upon you," said Mrs. Lorimer.
Avery's eyes went instinctively to the door that led into the room that Piers had occupied after his marriage. The broken bolt had been removed, but not replaced. A great shudder went through her. She covered her face with her hands.
"Oh, beg him--beg him to go away," she sobbed, "till I am strong enough to go myself!"
Argument was useless. Mrs. Lorimer abandoned it with the wisdom born of close friendship. Instead, she clasped Avery tenderly to her and gave herself to the task of calming her distress.
And when that was somewhat accomplished, she left her to go sadly in search of Piers.
She found him sitting on the terrace with the morning-paper beside him and Caesar pressed close to his legs, his great mottled head resting on his master's knee.
He was not reading. So much Mrs. Lorimer perceived before with a sharp turn of the head he discovered her. He was on his feet in a moment, and she saw his boyish smile for an instant, only for an instant, as he came to meet her. She noted with a pang how gaunt he looked and how deep were the shadows about his eyes. Then he had reached her, and was holding both her hands almost before she realized it.
"I say, you're awfully good to come up every day like this," he said. "I can't think how you make the time. Splendid sun to-day, what? It's like a day in summer, if you can get out of the wind. Come and bask with me!"
He drew her along the terrace to his sheltered corner, and made her sit down, spreading his newspaper on the stone seat for her accommodation. Her heart went out to him as he performed that small chivalrous act. She could not help it. And suddenly the task before her seemed so monstrous that she felt she could not fulfil it. The tears rushed to her eyes.
"What's the matter?" said Piers gently. He sat down beside her, and slipped an encouraging hand through her arm. "Was it something you came out to say? Don't mind me! You don't, do you?"
His voice was softly persuasive. He leaned towards her, his dark eyes searching her face. Mrs. Lorimer felt as if she were about to hurt a child.
She blew her nose, dried her eyes, and took the brown hand very tightly between her own. "My dear, I'm so sorry for you--so sorry for you both!" she said.
A curious little glint came and went in the eyes that watched her. Piers' fingers closed slowly upon hers.
"I've got to clear out, what?" he said.
She nodded mutely; she