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

to a dog?" He broke off with a laugh that rang defiantly. "Now it's your turn!" he said.
"My turn?" Avery glanced at his dark, handsome face with a touch of curiosity.
He met her eyes with his own as if he would beat them back. "Aren't you generous enough to remind me that but for your timely interference I should have beaten my own dog to death only yesterday? You were almost ready to flog me for it at the time."
"Oh, that!" Avery said, looking away again. "Yes, of course I might remind you of that if I wanted to be personal; but, you see,--I don't."
"Why not!" said Piers stubbornly. "You were personal enough yesterday."
The dimple, for which Avery was certainly not responsible, appeared suddenly near her mouth. "I am afraid I lost my temper yesterday," she said.
"How wrong of you!" said Piers. "I hope you confessed to the Reverend Stephen."
She glanced at him again and became grave. "No, I didn't confess to anyone. But I think it's a pity ever to lose one's temper. It involves a waste of power."
"Does it?" said Piers.
"Yes." She nodded with conviction. "We need all the strength we can muster for other things. How is your dog to-day?"
Piers ignored the question. "What other things?" he demanded.
She hesitated.
"Go on!" said Piers imperiously.
Avery complied half-reluctantly. "I meant--mainly--the burdens of life. We can't afford to weaken ourselves by any loss of self-control. The man who keeps his temper is immeasurably stronger than the man who loses it."
Piers was frowning; his dark eyes looked almost black. Suddenly he turned upon her. "Mrs. Denys, I have a strong suspicion that your temper is a sweet one. If so, you're no judge of these things. Why didn't you leather me with my own whip yesterday? You had me at your mercy."
Avery smiled. Plainly he was set upon a personal encounter, and she could not avoid it. "Well, frankly, Mr. Evesham," she said, "I was never nearer to striking anyone in my life."
"Then why did you forbear? You weren't afraid to souse me with cold water."
"Oh no," she said. "I wasn't afraid."
"I believe you were," maintained Piers. "You're afraid to speak your mind to me now anyway."
She laughed a little. "No, I'm not. I really can't explain myself to you. I think you forget that we are practically strangers."
"You talk as if I had been guilty of familiarity," said Piers.
"No, no! I didn't mean that," Avery coloured suddenly, and the soft glow made her wonderfully fair to see. "You know quite well I didn't mean it," she said.
"It's good of you to say so," said Piers. "But I really didn't know. I thought you had decided that I was a suitable subject for snubbing. I'm not a bit. I'm so accustomed to it that I don't care a--" he paused with a glance of quizzical daring, and, as she managed to look severe, amended the sentence--"that I am practically indifferent to it. Mrs. Denys, I wish you had struck me yesterday."
"Really?" said Avery.
"Yes, really. I should then have had the pleasure of forgiving you. It's a pleasure I don't often get. You see, I'm usually the one that's in the wrong."
She looked at him then with quick interest; she could not help it. But the dark eyes triumphed over her so shamelessly that she veiled it on the instant.
Piers laughed. "Mrs. Denys, may I ask a directly personal question?"
"I don't know why you should," said Avery.
They were nearing the pillar-box at the end of the Vicarage lane, and she was firmly determined that at that box their ways should separate.
"I know you think I'm bold and bad," said Piers. "Some kind friend has probably told you so. But I'm not. I've been brought up badly, that's all. I think you might bear with me. I'm quite willing to be bullied." There was actual pathos in the declaration.
Again the fleeting dimple hovered near Avery's mouth. "Please don't take my opinion for granted in that way!" she said. "I have hardly had time to form one yet."
"Then I may ask my question?" said Piers.
She turned steady grey eyes upon him. "Yes; you may."
Piers' face was perfectly serious. "Are you really married?" he asked.
The level brows went up a little. "I have been a widow for six years," said Avery very quietly.
He stared at her in surprise unfeigned. "Six years!"
She replied in the same quiet voice. "I lost my husband when I was twenty-two."
"Great Heavens above!" ejaculated Piers. "But you're not--not--I say, forgive me, I must say it--you can't be as old as that!"
"I am twenty-nine," said Avery faintly smiling.
They had reached the letter-box. She dropped in her letters one by one. Piers stood confounded, looking on.
Suddenly he spoke. "And you've been doing this mothers'-helping business for six years?"
"Oh no!" she said.
She turned round from the box and faced him. The red winter sunset glowed softly upon her. Her grey eyes looked straight into it.
"No!" she said again. "I had my little girl to take care of for the first six months. You see, she was born blind, soon after her father's death, and she needed all the care I could give her."
Piers made a sharp movement--a gesture that was almost passionate; but he said nothing.
Avery withdrew her eyes from the sunset, and looked at him. "She died," she said, "and that left me with nothing to do. I have no near relations. So I just had to set to work to find something to occupy me. I went into a children's hospital for training, and spent some years there. Then when that came to an end, I took a holiday; but I found I wanted children. So I cast about me, and finally answered Mr. Lorimer's advertisement and came here." She began to smile. "At least I have plenty of children now."
"Oh, I say!" broke in Piers. "What a perfectly horrible life you've had! You don't mean to say you're happy, what?"
Avery laughed. "I'm much too busy to think about it. And now I really must run back. I've promised to take charge of the babies this afternoon. Good-bye!" She held out her hand to him with frank friendliness, as if she divined the sympathy he did not utter.
He gripped it hard for a moment. "Thanks awfully for being so decent as to tell me!" he said, looking back at her with eyes as frank as her own. "I'm going on down to the home farm. Good-bye!"
He raised his cap, and abruptly strode away. And in the moment of his going Avery found she liked him better than she had liked him throughout the interview, for she knew quite well that he went only in deference to her wish.
She turned to retrace her steps, feeling puzzled. There was something curiously attractive about the young man's personality, something that appealed to her, yet that she felt disposed to resist. That air of the ancient Roman was wonderfully compelling, too compelling for her taste, but then his boyishness counteracted it to a very great degree. There was a hint of sweetness running through his arrogance against which she was not proof. Audacious he might be, but it was a winning species of audacity that probably no woman could condemn. She thought to herself as she returned to her charges that she had never seen a face so faultlessly patrician and yet so vividly alive. And following that thought came another that dwelt longer in her mind. Deprived of its animation, it would not have been a happy face.
Avery wondered why.


CHAPTER VI
THE RACE

"Hooray! No more horrid sums for a whole month!" Gracie Lorimer's arithmetic-book soared to the ceiling and came down with a bang while Gracie herself pivoted, not ungracefully, on her toes till sheer giddiness and exhaustion put an end to her rhapsody. Then she staggered to Avery who was darning the family stockings by the window and flung ecstatic arms about her neck.
"Dear Mrs. Denys, aren't you glad it's holidays?" she gasped. "We'll give you such a lovely time!"
"I'm sure you will, dear," said Avery. "But do mind the needle!"
She kissed the brilliant childish face that was pressed to hers. She and Gracie were close friends. Gracie was eleven, and the prettiest madcap of them all. It was a perpetual marvel to Avery that the child managed to be so happy, for she was continually in trouble. But she seemed to possess a cheery knack of throwing off adversity. She was essentially gay of heart.
"Do put away those stupid old stockings and come out with us!" she begged, still hanging over Avery. "Don't you hate darning? I do. We had to do our own before you came. I was very naughty one day last summer. I went out and played in the garden instead of mending my stockings, and Father found out." Gracie cast up her eyes dramatically. "He sent me in to do them, and went off to one of his old parish parties; and I just sneaked out as soon as his back was turned and went on with the game. But there was no luck that day. He came back to fetch something and caught me. And then--just imagine!" Again Gracie was dramatic, though this time unconsciously. "He sent me to bed and--what do you think? When he came home to tea, he--whipped me!"
Avery threaded her needle with care. She said nothing.
"I think it was rather a shame," went on Gracie unconcernedly. "Because he never whips Jeanie or Olive. But then, he can make them cry without, and he can't make me. I 'spect that's what made him do it, don't you?"
"I don't know, dear," said Avery rather shortly.
Gracie peered round into her face. "Mrs. Denys, you don't like Father, do you?" she said.
"My dear, that's not a nice question to ask," said Avery, with her eyes on her work.
"I don't know why not," said Gracie. "I don't like him myself, and he knows I don't. He'd whip me again if he got the chance, but I'm too jolly careful now. I was pleased that you got Ronnie and Julian off the other day. He never suspected, did he? I thought I should have burst during prayers. It was so funny."
"My dear!" protested Avery.
"Yes, I know," said Gracie. "But you aren't really shocked, dear, kind Mrs. Denys! You know you aren't. I can see your sweet little dimple. No, I can't! Yes, I can! I do love your dimple. It goes in and out like the sun."
Avery leaned back abruptly in her chair. "Oh, foolish one!" she said, and gathered the child to her with a warmth to which the ardent Gracie was swift to respond.
"And you are coming out with us, aren't you? Because it's so lovely and cold. I want to go up on that big hill in Rodding Park, and run and run and run till I just can't run any longer. Ronnie and Julian are coming too. And Jeanie and Olive and Pat. We ought to begin and collect holly for the church decorations. You'll be able to help this year, won't you? Miss Whalley always bosses things. Have you met Miss Whalley yet? She's quite the funniest person in Rodding. She was the daughter of the last Vicar, and she has never forgotten it. So odd of her! As if there were anything in it! I often wish I weren't a parson's daughter. I'd much rather belong to someone who had to go up to town every day. There would be much more fun for everybody then."
Avery was laying her mending together. She supposed she