Crowther

“ 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. ”

“ After the first bitter outpouring of his soul, Piers had withdrawn himself with so obvious a desire for privacy that Crowther had never attempted to cross the boundary thus clearly defined.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. ”

“ He spoke at length out of a long silence. "Did your grandfather say
Rodding Abbey just now?"
"Yes," said Piers, waking up.
"It's near a place called Wardenhurst?" pursued Crowther.
"Yes," said Piers again. "Ever been there?"
"No," Crowther spoke slowly, as though considering his words. "Someone I know lives there, that's all."
"Someone you know?" Piers stood still. He looked at Crowther sharply through the dimness.
"I don't suppose you have ever met her, lad," said Crowther quietly. "From what I know of society in the old country you wouldn't move in the same circle. ”

“ Piers watched him with an odd, half-scoffing smile about his lips. "Do you never drink when you are by yourself?" he asked.
"Not when I'm working," said Crowther.
"I see! Work is sacred, what?"
Crowther looked at him. The mockery of the tone had been scarcely veiled; but there was no consciousness of the fact in Crowther's quiet reply. "Yes; just that, sonny."
Piers laughed again, a bitter, gibing laugh. "I suppose it's more to you than your own soul—or anyone else's," he said. ”

“ Crowther poured one out for him in silence. Somehow he could not speak. There was something about Piers that stirred him too deeply for speech just then. He lifted his own glass with no more than a gesture of goodwill.
"I say, don't be so awfully jolly about it!" laughed Piers. "I tell you it's going to end all right. Life is like that."
His voice was light, but it held an appeal to which Crowther could not fail to respond.
"God bless you, my son!" he said. "Life is such a mighty big thing that even what we call failure doesn't count in the long run. You'll win through somehow." ”

“ He spoke with an odd boyishness, and Crowther's lips relaxed in a smile that had in it something of a maternal quality. "So long as I can help you, you can count on me," he said.
"You're the only man in the world who can help me," Piers said impulsively. "At least—" he smiled himself—"I couldn't take it from anyone else. But I'm not taking this from you, Crowther. You've got your own pet job on hand, and I'm not going to hinder it."
Crowther was setting his writing-table in order. He did not speak for a few seconds. Then: "I am a man under authority, sonny," he said. ”

“ Side by side they mounted, till half-way up Crowther checked their progress. "Piers," he said, "I'm grateful to you for enduring my interference in this matter."
"Pshaw!" said Piers, "I owe you that much anyhow."
"You owe me nothing," said Crowther emphatically. "What I did for you, I did for myself. I've rather a weakness—it's a very ordinary one too—for trying to manage other people's concerns. And there's something so fine about you that I can't bear to stand aside and see you mess up your own. ”

“ You say you're not going to settle in England?"
"I am not," said Crowther, and again he was looking out ahead of him with eyes that spanned the far distance. "No; I'm going back again to the old haunts. There's a thundering lot to do there. It's more than a one-man job. But, please God, I'll do what I can. I know I can do a little. It's a hell of a place, sonny. You saw the outside edge of it yourself."
Piers nodded without speaking. It had been in a sense his baptism of fire.
"It's the new chums I want to get hold of," Crowther said. "They get drawn in so devilishly easily. ”

“ Miss Crowther, square shouldered and bony, in a black confection by Worth, with a bloated diamond heart making a mirage upon a desert waste of chest, it being a point of honour with thin girls to be more décoletées than their plumper sisters. ”

“ There's a serpent in every Eden," said Piers, with a mirthless laugh.
He did not seek to keep Crowther at arm's length, but neither did he seem inclined for any closer intimacy. His attitude neither invited nor repelled confidence. Yet Crowther knew intuitively that his very indifference was in itself a barrier that might well prove insurmountable.
He walked in silence while Piers talked intermittently of various impersonal matters, drifting at length into silence himself. ”

“ There was a note of banter in his voice, but there was something else as well that touched Crowther's kindly heart.
"I don't think Avery is the sort of woman to sacrifice her husband to her children," he said. "You will always come first, sonny,—if I know her."
"I couldn't endure anything else," said Piers, with sudden fire. "She is the mainspring of my life."
"And you of hers," said Crowther.
Piers stopped dead in his walk and faced him. "No,—no, I'm not!" he said, speaking quickly, unrestrainedly. "I'm a good deal to her, but I'm not that. She gives, but she never offers. ”

“ It was such a relief to think that she would see Vansittart Crowther no more, that she could wander where she pleased without the hazard of meeting that satyr-like countenance, those pale protruding eyes, with malevolent stare—such a relief to know that she would be in a new country, where no one would know anything about her, or have any inclination to gossip about her. Something of her old gaiety and interest in life revived at the prospect of those new surroundings. ”

“ Crowther paused in the act of pouring out. "Now what do you mean?" he said.
His eyes, direct and level, looked full at Piers. They held no anger, no indignation, only calm enquiry.
Piers faced the look with open mockery. "I mean, my good friend," he said, "that if I asked you to chuck it all and go round the world with me—you'd see me damned first."
Crowther's eyes dropped gravely to the job in hand. "Say when!" he said.
Piers made a restless movement. "Oh, that's enough! Strong drink is not my weakness. Why don't you answer my question?" ”

“ She shook her head. "No, not many. Nearly all the big people have gone to Scotland. Piers says they will come later, but I shall not mind them so much then. I shall feel less like an interloper by that time."
"I don't know why you should feel like that," said Crowther. Avery smiled. "Well, all the little people think that I set out to catch Piers for his money and his title."
"Does what the little people think have any weight with you?" asked Crowther.
She flushed faintly under the kindly directness of his gaze. ”

“ Piers spoke at last, and there was a queer note of humour in his
voice,—humour that was tragic. "So I've got to go back again, have I?
Back to my valley of dry bones! There's no climbing the heights for me,
Crowther, never will be. Somehow or other, I am always tumbled back."
"You're wrong," Crowther said, with quiet decision. "It's the only way out. Take it like a man, and you'll win through! Shirk it and—well, sonny, no shirker ever yet got anything worth having out of life. ”

“ He spoke very earnestly, with a pleading that could not give offence. Piers' face softened almost in spite of him. "You're an awfully good chap," he said.
"Promise me, lad!" pleaded Crowther, still holding his arm in a friendly grasp; then as Piers hesitated: "You know, I'm an older man than you are. I can see further. You'll be making your own hell if you don't." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The sleeves of his overcoat, owing to some defect in the lining, were difficult to manage, and this gave him time to protest. He had come, he declared, with no other intention than that of giving patronage to an establishment which he remembered, with affection, in the time of Crowther's mother, and to enjoy a talk over the past; if, in the course of conversation, he had over-stepped the mark, no one regretted it more acutely than himself. A plain man, accustomed to speaking his mind, he often found that he gave offence where none was intended. ”

“ 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." ”

“ On the veranda, with his chair pushed back from the débris of breakfast, Crowther was engaged in the rather more protracted and infinitely less accommodating reflections of middle age. Mata was sixteen. Sixteen was a fairly advanced age for a child, wasn't it? And what was it that he had sworn to himself should occur on her sixteenth birthday—and on her fifteenth, and fourteenth, for the matter of that? He pretended that it was an effort to remember, though, as a fact the thing had hovered over him like a cloud for some time past. ”

“ Crowther slipped his hand from his shoulder to his arm, and drew him quietly forward. "You've suffered infernally, but it's made a man of you. Don't forget that! It's the Sculptor and the Clay, lad. He knows how best to fashion a good thing. It isn't for the clay to cry out."
"Is that your point of view?" Piers spoke with reckless bitterness. "It isn't mine."
"You'll come to it," said Crowther gently.
They walked on for a space in silence, till turning they began to ascend the winding path that led up to the hotel,—the path which Piers had watched Crowther ascend that morning. ”

“ Crowther's eyes were gazing beyond Avery. He spoke with a curious deliberation as if he were describing a vision that hung before him.
"He himself was more shocked by the man's death than anyone I have ever seen. He accepted the responsibility at once. There is a lot of nobility at the back of that man's soul. He wanted to give himself up. ”

“ There was a queer, intangible species of mockery in Piers' attitude, as though he set the whole world at defiance.
And yet he did not look like a man who had been stunned by an unexpected, sledge-hammer blow of Fate. He was keenly, fiercely alive to his surroundings. He seemed to be gibing rather at a blow that had glanced aside. Uneasily Crowther wondered.
It was he who finally suggested a move. It was growing late.
"So it is!" said Piers. "You ought to be turning in if you really mean to make an early start."
He stood still in the hall and held out his hand. "Good-night, old chap! ”

“ Life isn't long enough. On my soul, do you know it's like coming into sanctuary to enter a place like this? I feel as if I'd shut my own particular devil on the other side of the door. But he'll wait for me all right. We shan't lose each other on that account."
He uttered a laugh that testified more to the utter weariness of his soul than its bitterness.
"Where are you staying?" said Crowther.
"At Marchmont's. At least I've got a room there. I haven't any definite plans at present."
"Unless you go round the world with me," said Crowther.
Piers' eyes travelled upwards sharply. "No, old chap. ”

“ Your piperly hounds, with their two-bottle magnum, think themselves magnificent nowadays; why, in my time they 'd have been laughed to scorn!”
“They were glorious times indeed,” cried Crowther, with mad enthusiasm.
“Glorious times to beggar a nation, to prostitute public honor and private virtue,” broke in Curtis, passionately; “to make men heartless debauchees first, that they might become shameless scoundrels after; to teach them a youth of excess and an old age of venality. ”

“ Piers thrust out an impulsive hand. "You may be right and you may not; but you've been a brick to me, old fellow," he said, a note of deep feeling in his voice,—"several kinds of a brick, and I'm not likely to forget it. If you ever get into the Church, you'll be known as the parson who doesn't preach, and it'll be a reputation to be proud of."
Crowther's answering grip was the grip of a giant. There was a great tenderness in the far-seeing grey eyes as he made reply. ”