Ethel M. Dell

“ Tudor's face was very grave. "Yes, you're pretty bad," he said. "But you've pulled through so far. It's in your favour, that. And look here, you must lie flat on your back always. Do you understand? It's about your only chance."
"Of living?" whispered Piers. "But I don't want to live. I want to die."
"Don't be a fool!" said Tudor.
"I'm not a fool. I hate life!" A tremor of passion ran through the words.
Tudor laid a hand upon him. "Piers, if ever any man had anything to live for, you are that man," he said. ”

“ Crowther said. "I don't see any reason that you should. But the woman you marry—she is different. If you take her into your inner life at all, she is bound to come upon it sooner or later. You must see it, lad. You know it in your heart."
"And you think she will marry me when she knows I'm a—murderer?" Piers uttered the word through clenched teeth. He had the haggard look of a man who has endured long suffering.
There was deep compassion in Crowther's eyes as he watched him. "I don't think—being a woman—she will put it in that way," he said, "not, that is, if she loves you." ”

“ 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!" ”

“ Piers went to the door and fitted the key into the lock. His actions were all grimly deliberate. The volcanic fires which Tudor had seen raging but a few seconds before had sunk very far below the surface. Whatever was happening in the torture-chamber where his soul agonized, it was certain that no human being—save possibly one—would ever witness it. What he suffered he would suffer in proud aloofness and silence. It was only the effect of that suffering that could ever be made apparent, when the soul came forth again, blackened and shrivelled from the furnace. ”

“ The violets that Sir Beverley's bride had planted fifty years ago!
The thought of his grandfather went through him like a stab through the heart. He clenched his hands and held his breath while the spasm passed. Never since the night Victor had summoned Avery to comfort him, had he felt so sick a longing for the old man's presence. For a few lingering seconds it was almost more than he could bear. Then he turned about and faced the chill night-wind and that lighted window, and the anguish of his vigil drove out all other griefs. How long had he yet to wait? How long? How long? ”

“ Avery paused an instant. The memory of Piers' look as he had uttered the words: "Choked with his own chain, poor devil!" seemed to grip her heart. Then: "Yes, dearie," she said softly. "I think as Piers does. I am glad—for poor Mikey's sake—that his troubles are over."
"Then I'll try and be glad too," sobbed poor Gracie. "But it's very, very difficult. Pat and I loved him so, and he—he loved us."
"My dear, that love won't die," Avery said gently.
"The gift immortal," said Crowther. "The only thing that counts." ”

“ She stirred at that, beginning to seek for freedom. "Don't, Piers!" she said. "It—it isn't right of you. It isn't fair."
He knelt swiftly down before her. His voice came quick and passionate in answer. "It can't be wrong to love you," he said. "And you will never be any the worse for my love. Let me love you, Avery! Let me love you!"
The words rushed out tempestuously. His forehead was bowed upon her hands. He became silent, and through the silence she heard his breathing, hard and difficult,—the breathing of a man who faces stupendous odds. ”

“ A smaller man than Crowther might have been at a loss to deal with such distress, but Crowther was ready. He had seen men in extremities of suffering before. He knew how to ease a crushing burden. He sat down on the arm of the chair and thrust a strong hand over Piers' shoulder, saying no word.
Minutes passed ere by sheer violence that bitter anguish wore itself out at last. There came a long, piteous silence, then Piers' hand feeling blindly upwards. Crowther's grip encompassed it like a band of iron, but still for a space no word was spoken. ”

“ It was a night of heavy stillness.
"You ought to go to bed, dear," she said to Jeanie.
"Oh, must I?" said Jeanie wistfully. "I never sleep much on these hot nights. One can't breath so well lying down."
Avery looked at her with quick anxiety, but she had turned to Piers and was leaning against him with a gentle coaxing air.
"Please, dear Piers, would it tire you to play to us?" she begged.
He looked down at her for a moment as if he would refuse; then very gently he laid his hand on her head, pressing back the heavy, clustering hair from her forehead to look into her soft eyes. ”

“ Sir Beverley stood his ground, however, his black brows fiercely drawn. "Get up, Piers!" he ordered, his tone no longer blustering, but curtly peremptory. "Get up, do you hear?" he added with a gleam of humour. "You may as well give in at once, you young mule. You'll have to in the end."
"Shall I?" said Piers.
And then suddenly his own sense of humour was kindled again, and he uttered his boyish laugh.
"We won't quarrel about it, what?" he said, and stretched a wet hand upwards. "Let's consider the incident closed! There's nothing whatever to be fashed about." ”

“ But Avery only shook her head at him, refusing to be drawn. "People—plenty of nice people—have no idea of the utter cruelty of it," she said. "They think that if a dog has never known liberty, he is incapable of desiring it. They don't know, they don't realize, the bitterness of life on a chain."
"Don't know and don't care!" declared Piers. "They deserve to be chained up themselves. One day on a chain would teach your nice people quite a lot. But no one cultivates feeling in this valley of dry bones. It isn't the thing nowadays. Let a dog whine his heart out on a chain! ”

“ Lorimer asked gently.
"Oh yes, I am sure." There was utter hopelessness in Avery's reply. "I have always known that there was something in his past, some cloud of which he would never speak openly. But I never dreamed—never guessed—" She broke off with a sharp shudder. "Besides, he has offered no explanation, no excuse, no denial. He lets me believe the worst, and he doesn't care. He is utterly callous—utterly brutal. That is how I know that the worst is true." She rose abruptly, as if inaction had become torture to her. "Oh, I must leave him!" she cried out wildly. "I am nothing to him. ”

“ But that night Piers' antagonism flared to a deadly hatred. The smouldering fire had leaped to a fierce blaze. Two nights before he had smothered it with the exultant conviction that Tudor's chances with Avery were practically non-existent. He had known with absolute certainty that he was not the type of man to attract her. But to-night his mood had changed. Whether Tudor's chances had improved or not, he scarcely stopped to question, but that other people regarded them as possibly greater than his own was a fact that sent the mad blood to his head. ”

“ She raised her head and looked him straight in the eyes. "Everyone feels like that sometimes," she said. "But Aunt Avery says it's only because we are too little to understand. Won't you begin and pray again? It does make a difference even though we can't see it."
"I can't," said Piers. And then with swift compunction he kissed her face of disappointment. "Never mind, my queen! Don't you bother your little head about me! I shall rub along all right even if I don't come out on top."
"But I want you to be happy," said Jeanie. "I wish I could help you,
Piers,—dear Piers." ”

“ Avery said. She suffered the arms about her, but she stood rigid in their embrace, unyielding, unresponding. "His love is horrible to me! I abhor it!"
"Avery! Your husband!"
"He is a murderer!" Avery cried passionately. "He would murder me too if—if he could bring himself to do without me! He hates me in his soul."
"Avery, hush! You are distraught. You don't know what you are saying." Mrs. Lorimer drew her back to her chair with tender insistence. "Sit down, darling! And try—do try—to be quiet for a little! You are worn out. I don't think you can have had any sleep." ”

“ If anyone could save her, it would be Maxwell Wyndham. So Piers told himself each time he turned in his endless pacing and looked at that lighted window. Tudor believed in him. And—yes, he believed in him also. There had been something in the great man's attitude, something of arrogant self-assurance that had inspired him with confidence almost against his will. He had watched him saunter up the stairs with his hands thrust into his pockets and an air of limitless leisure pervading his every movement, and he had been exasperated by the man's deliberation and subtly comforted at the same time. ”

“ Piers was young, wealthy, handsome,—a catch for any woman; but—fiercely he swore it—he should fall a prey to no schemer. When he married—as marry eventually he must—he should make an alliance of which any man might be proud. The Evesham blood should mix with none but the highest. In Piers he would see the father's false step counteracted. He thanked Heaven that he had never been able to detect in the boy any trace of the piece of cheap prettiness that had given him birth. He might have been his own son, son of the woman who had been the rapture and the ruin of his life. ”

“ It is no more like religion than a penny-terrible is like life. It is a cruel and fantastic distortion of the truth."
She paused. Piers was listening to her with that odd hunger in his eyes that had looked out of them the night before.
"You don't believe in hell then?" he said quietly, after a moment.
"As a place of future torment—no!" she said. "The only real hell is here on earth—here in our hearts when we fall away from God. Hell is the state of sin and all that goes with it—the fiery hell of the spirit. ”

“ CHAPTER IV THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN For a week after Piers' arrival, Jeanie was better, so much better that she was able to be carried downstairs and into the garden where she loved to lie. There was a piano in the sitting-room, and Piers would sit at it by the hour together, playing anything she desired. She loved his music, would listen entranced for any length of time while he led her through a world of delight that she had never explored before. It soothed her restlessness, comforted her in weariness, made her forget her pain. ”

“ He must have known, have fathomed her anguish. For quite suddenly, as if a restraining hand had been laid upon him, he checked that dread torrent of sound. A few bitter chords, a few stray notes that somehow spoke to her of a spirit escaped and wandering alone and naked in a desert of indescribable emptiness, and then silence—a crushing, fearful silence like the ashes of a burnt-out fire.
"And in hell he lift up his eyes." ... Why did those words flash through her brain as though a voice had uttered them? She bowed her head lower, lower, barely conscious of Jeanie's enfolding arms. ”

“ Piers straightened himself with a brief laugh. "Yes, I know that much.
But—I sometimes ask myself if I'm any better than a shirker. Life is
such a beastly farce so far as I am concerned. I never do anything.
There's never anything to do."
"Oh, rats!" said Crowther, and smiled. "There are not many fellows who do half as much. If to-day is a fair sample of your life, I'm damned if it's an easy one."
"I'm used to it," said Piers quickly. "You know, I'm awfully fond of my grandfather—always have been. We suit each other marvellously well—in some ways." ”

“ Lorimer said. She went to Avery and held her tightly, as if she would herself do battle with the evil within. "You are not to say that, Avery. You are not to think it. It is utterly untrue. Suffering may have goaded him into brutality, but he is not wicked at heart. And, my dear, he is in your hands now—to make or to mar. He worships you blindly, and if his worship has become an unholy thing, it is because the thought of losing you has driven him nearly distracted. You can win it back—if you will." ”

“ Crowther was smiling slightly—the smile of a man who has begun to see, albeit afar off, the fulfilment of a beloved project.
"Do you know, old chap," he said, "I expect I seem a fool to you; but it's the fools who confound the wise, isn't it? I believe a thundering lot in prayer. But I didn't always. I prayed without believing for a long time first."
"That seems to me like offering an insult to God," said Piers.
"I don't think He views it in that light," said Crowther, "any more than He blames a blind man for feeling his way. The great thing is to do it—to get started. ”

“ It is perfectly natural that your grandfather should wish you to make a suitable marriage, perfectly natural that he should not want you to run after the wrong woman. You can tell him, Piers, that I absolutely see his point of view, but that so far as I am concerned, he need not be anxious. It is not my intention to marry again."
"All right," said Piers.
He gave her hand a little shake and released it. For a second—only a second—she caught a sparkle in his eyes that seemed to her almost like a gleam of mockery. And then with characteristic suddenness he sprang to his feet. ”

“ And there are some things that even a woman might find it hard to forgive."
He stopped. Piers' eyes were hard and fixed. He scarcely looked as if he heard. From below them there arose the murmur of the moonlit sea. Close at hand the trees in a garden stirred mysteriously as though they moved in their sleep. But Piers made neither sound nor movement. He stood like an image of stone.
Again the silence began to lengthen intolerably, to stretch out into a desert of emptiness, to become fateful with a bitterness too poignant to be uttered. Crowther said no more. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She turned her face once more to the open, and as she did so she heard again in the hut behind her that agonized sound, half-cough, half-whine, of an animal exhausted and in the extremity of mortal fear.
It was enough for Avery. She grasped the situation on the instant, and on the instant she acted. She felt as if a helpless and tortured being had cried to her for deliverance, and all that was great in her responded to the cry.
She seized the crazy shutter that was propped against the wall, put forth her strength, and lifted it out into the open. ”

“ 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. ”