"What do you mean?" demanded Piers.
It was a challenge, albeit spoken in an undertone. He stood like a man transfixed as he uttered it. There came to Avery a quick hot impulse to intervene, to protect him from some hidden danger, she knew not what, that had risen like a serpent in his path. But before she could take any action, the critical moment was passed. Piers had recovered himself.
He stepped forward. "All right. I will come," he said.
She watched him move away in the direction of the vestry with that free, proud gait of his, and a great coldness came down upon her, wrapping her round, penetrating to her very soul. Who was that man with the shifty eyes? Why had he stared at Piers so? Above all, why had Piers stood with that stiff immobility of shock as though he had been stabbed in the back?
A voice spoke close to her. "Lady Evesham, come and wait by the door!There is more air there."
She turned her head mechanically, and looked at Lennox Tudor with eyes that saw not. There was a singing in her ears that made the crashing chords of the organ sound confused and jumbled.
His hand closed firmly, sustainingly, upon her elbow.
"Come with me!" he said.
She went with him blindly, unconscious of the curious eyes that watched her go.
He led her quietly down the church and into the porch. The air from outside, albeit hot and sultry, was less oppressive than within. She drew great breaths of relief as it reached her. The icy grip at her heart seemed to relax.
Tudor watched her narrowly. "What madness brought you here?" he said presently, as she turned at last and mustered a smile of thanks.
She countered the question. "I might ask you the same," she said.
His eyes contracted behind the shielding glasses. "So you might," he said briefly. "Well,—I came on the chance of meeting you."
"Of meeting me!" She looked at him in surprise.
He nodded. "Just so. I want a word with you; but it can't be said here.Give me an opportunity later if you can!"
His hand fell away from her elbow, he drew back. The bridal procession was coming down the church.
Ina was flushed and laughing. Dick Guyes still obviously nervous, but, also obviously, supremely happy. They went by Avery into a perfect storm of rose-leaves that awaited them from the crowd outside. Yet for one moment the eyes of the bride rested upon Avery, meeting hers almost as if they would ask her a question. And behind her—immediately behind her—came Piers.
His eyes also found Avery, and in an instant with a haughty disregard of Tudor, he had swept her forward with him, his arm thrust imperially through hers. They also weathered the storm of rose-leaves, and as they went Avery heard him laugh,—the laugh of the man who fights with his back to the wall.
They were among the first to offer congratulations to the bride and bridegroom, and again Avery was aware of the girl's eyes searching hers.
"I haven't forgotten you," she said, as they shook hands. "I knew you would be Lady Evesham sooner or later after that day when you kept the whole Hunt at bay."
Avery felt herself flush. There seemed to her to be a covert insinuation in the remark. "I was very grateful to you for taking my part," she said.
"It was rather generous certainly," agreed the bride coolly. "Dick, do get off my train! You're horribly clumsy to-day."
The bridegroom hastened to remove himself to a respectful distance, while Ina turned her pretty cheek to Piers. "You may salute the bride," she said graciously. "It's the only opportunity you will ever have."
Piers kissed the cheek as airily as it was proffered, his dark eyes openly mocking. "Good luck to you, Ina!" he said lightly. "I wish you the first and best of all that's most worth having."
Her red lips curled in answer. "You are superlatively kind," she said.
Other guests came crowding round with congratulations, and they moved on.
Piers knew everyone there, and presented one after another to his wife till she felt absolutely bewildered. He did not present the best man, who to her relief seemed disposed to keep out of their way. She wondered greatly if anything had passed between him and Piers, though by the latter at least the incident seemed to be wholly forgotten. He was in his gayest, most sparkling mood, and she could not fail to see that he was very popular whichever way he turned. People kept claiming his attention, and though he tried to remain near her he was drawn away at last by the bridegroom himself.
Avery looked round her then for a quiet corner where Tudor might find her if he so desired, but while she was searching she came upon Tudor himself.
He joined her immediately, with evident relief. "For Heaven's sake, let us get away from this gibbering crowd!" he said. "They are like a horde of painted monkeys. Come alone to the library! I don't think there are many people there."
Avery accompanied him, equally thankful to escape. They found the library deserted, and Tudor made her sit down by the window in the most comfortable chair the room contained.
"You look about as fit for this sort of show as Mrs. Lorimer," he observed drily. "She had the sense to stay away."
"I couldn't," Avery said.
"For goodness' sake," he exclaimed roughly, "don't let that young ruffian tyrannize over you! You will never know any peace if you do."
Avery smiled a little and was silent.
"Why are you so painfully thin?" he pursued relentlessly. "What's the matter with you? When I saw you in church just now I had a positive shock."
She put out her hand to him. "I am quite all right," she assured him, still faintly smiling. "I should have sent for you if I hadn't been."
"It's high time you sent for me now," said Tudor.
He looked at her searchingly through his glasses, holding her hand firmly clasped in his.
"Are you happy?" he asked her suddenly.
She started at the question, started and flushed. "Why—why do you ask me that?" she said in confusion.
"Because you don't look it," he said plainly. "No, don't be vexed with me! I speak as a friend—a friend who desires your happiness more than anything else on earth. And do you know, I think I should see a doctor pretty soon if I were you. If you don't, you will probably regret it. Get Piers to take you up to town! Maxwell Wyndham is about the best man I know. Go to him!"
"Thank you," Avery said. "Perhaps I will."
It was at this point that a sudden uproarious laugh sounded from below the window near which they sat, Avery looked round startled, and Tudor frowned.
"It's that little brute of a best man—drunk as a lord. He's some sort of cousin of Guyes', just home from Australia; and the sooner he goes back the better for the community at large, I should say."
"Piers knows him!" broke almost involuntarily from Avery.
And with that swiftly she turned her head to listen, for the man outside had evidently gathered to himself an audience at the entrance of a tent that had been erected for refreshments, and was declaiming at the top of his voice.
"Eric Denys was the name of the man. He was a chum of mine. Samson we used to call him. This Evesham fellow killed him in the first round. I've never forgotten it. I recognized him the minute I set eyes on him, though it's years ago now. And he recognized me! I wish you'd seen his face." Again came the uncontrolled, ribald laughter. "A bully sort of squire, eh? I suppose he's a justice of the peace now, a law-giver, eh? Damn funny, I call it!"
Tudor was on his feet. He looked at Avery, but she sat like a statue, making no sign.
Another man was speaking in a lower tone, as though he were trying to restrain the first; but his efforts were plainly useless, for the best man had more to say.
"Oh, I can tell you a Queensland crowd is no joke. He'd have been manhandled if he hadn't bolted. Mistaken? Not I! Could anyone mistake a face like that? Go and ask the man himself, if you don't believe me! You'll find he won't deny it!"
"Shall we go?" suggested Tudor brusquely.
Avery made a slight movement, wholly mechanical; but she did not turn her head. Her whole attitude was one of tense listening.
"I think I'll go in any case," said Tudor, after a moment. "That fellow will make an exhibition of himself if someone doesn't interfere."
He went to the door, but before he reached it Avery turned in her chair and spoke.
"He has gone inside for another drink. You had better let him have it."
There was that in her voice that he had never heard before. He stopped short, looking back at her.
"Let him have it!" she reiterated. "Let him soak himself with it! You won't quiet him any other way."
Even as she spoke, that horrible, half-intoxicated laugh came to them, insulting the beauty of the summer afternoon. Avery shivered from head to foot.
"Don't go!" she said. "Please!"
She rose as Tudor came back, rose and faced him, her face like death.
"I think I must go home," she said. "Will you find the car? No, I am not ill. I—" She paused, seemed to grope for words, stopped, and suddenly a bewildered look came into her face. Her eyes dilated. She gave a sharp gasp. Tudor caught her as she fell.
The bride and bridegroom departed amid a storm of rice and good wishes, Ina's face still wearing that slightly contemptuous smile to the last. Piers, in the foremost of the crowd, threw a handful straight into her lap as the car started, but only he and Dick Guyes saw her gather it up with sudden energy and fling it back in his face.
Piers dropped off the step laughing. "Ye gods! What fun for DickGuyes!" he said.
A hand grasped his shoulder, and he turned and saw Lennox Tudor.
"Hullo!" he said, sharply freeing himself.
"I want a word with you," said Tudor briefly.
A wary look came into Piers' face on the instant. He looked at Tudor with the measuring eye of a fencer.
"What about?" he asked.
"I can't tell you here. Will you walk back with me? Lady Evesham has already gone in the car."
Piers' black brows went up, "Why was that? Wasn't she well?"
"No," said Tudor curtly.
"But she will send the car back," said Piers, stubbornly refusing to betray himself.
"No, she won't. I told her we would walk."
"The devil you did!" said Piers.
He turned his back on Tudor, and went into the house.
But Tudor was undaunted. In a battle of wills, he was fully a match forPiers. He kept close behind.
Eventually, Piers turned upon him. "Look here! I'll give you five minutes in the library. I'm not going to walk three miles with you in this blazing heat. It would be damned unhealthy for us both. Moreover, I've promised to spend the evening with Colonel Rose."
It was the utmost he could hope for, and Tudor had the sense to accept what he could get. He followed him to the library in silence.
They found it empty, and Tudor quietly turned the key.
"What's that for?" demanded Piers sharply.
"Because I don't want to be disturbed," returned Tudor.
He moved forward into the middle of the room and faced Piers.
"I have an unpleasant piece of news for you," he said, in a grim, emotionless voice. "That cousin of Guyes'—you have met him before, I think? He claims to know something of your past, and he has been talking—somewhat freely."
"What has he been saying?" said Piers.
He stood up before Tudor with the arrogance of a man who mocks defeat, but there was a gleam of desperation in his eyes—something of the cornered animal in his very nonchalance.
A queer touch of pity moved Tudor from his attitude of cold informer. There was an undercurrent of something that was almost sympathy in his voice as he made reply.
"The fellow was more or less drunk, but I am afraid he was rather circumstantial. He recognized in you a man who had killed some chum of his years ago, in Queensland."
"Well?" said Piers.
Just the one word, uttered like a command! Tudor's softer impulse passed.
"He was bawling it out at the top of his voice. A good many people must have heard him. I was in this room with Lady Evesham. We heard also."
"Well?" Piers said again.
He spoke without stirring an eyelid, and again, involuntarily, Tudor was moved, this time with a species of unwilling admiration. The fellow was no coward at least.
He went on steadily. "It was impossible not to hear what the beast said. He mentioned names also,—your name and the name of the man whom he alleged you had killed. Lady Evesham heard it. We both heard it."
He paused. Piers had not moved. His face was like a mask in its composure, but it was a dreadful mask. Tudor had a feeling that it hid unutterable things.
"What was the man's name?" Piers asked, after a moment.
"Denys—Eric Denys."
Piers nodded, as one verifying a piece of information. His next question came with hauteur and studied indifference.
"Lady Evesham heard, you say? Did she pay any attention to these maudlin revelations?"
"She fainted," said Tudor shortly.
"Oh? And what happened then?"
It was maddeningly cold-blooded; but it was the mask that spoke. Tudor recognized that.
"I brought her round," he made answer. "No one else was present. She begged me to let her go home alone. I did so."
"She also asked you to make full explanation to me?" came in measured tones from Piers.
"She did." Tudor paused a moment as though he found some difficulty in forming his next words. But he went on almost at once with resolution. "She said to me at parting: 'I must be alone. I must think. Beg Piers to understand! Beg him not to see me again to-day! I will talk to him in the morning!' I promised to deliver the message exactly as she gave it."
"Thank you," said Piers. He turned with the words, moved away to the window, and looked forth at the now deserted marquee.
Tudor stood mutely waiting; he felt as if it had been laid upon him to wait.
Suddenly Piers jerked his head round and glanced at the chair in whichAvery had been sitting, then abruptly turned himself and looked at Tudor.
"What were you—and my wife—doing in here?" he said.
Tudor frowned impatiently at the question. "Oh, don't be a fool,Evesham!" he said with vehemence.
"I'm not a fool." Piers left the window with the gait of a prowling animal; he stood again face to face with the other man. But though his features were still mask-like, his eyes shone through the mask; and they were eyes of leaping flame. "Oh, I am no fool, I assure you," he said, and in his voice there sounded a deep vibration that was almost like a snarl. "I know you too well by this time to be hoodwinked. You would come between us if you could."
"You lie!" said Tudor.
He did not raise his voice or speak in haste. His vehemence had departed.He simply made the statement as if it had been a wholly impersonal one.
Piers' hands clenched, but they remained at his sides. He looked at Tudor hard, as if he did not understand him.
After a moment Tudor spoke again. "I am no friend of yours, and I never shall be. But I am the friend of your wife, and—whether you like it or not—I shall remain so. For that reason, whatever I do will be in your interests as well as hers. I have not the smallest intention or desire to come between you. And if you use your wits you will see that I couldn't if I tried. Your marriage with her tied my hands."
"What proof have I of that?" said Piers, his voice low and fierce.
Tudor made a slight gesture of disgust. "I am dealing with facts, not proofs," he said. "You know as well as I do that though you obtained her love on false pretences, still you obtained it. Whether you will keep it or not remains to be seen, but she is not the sort of woman to solace herself with anyone else. If you lose it, it will be because you failed to guard your own property—not because anyone deprived you of it."
"Damnation!" exclaimed Piers furiously, and with the word the storm of his anger broke like a fiery torrent, sweeping all before it, "are you taking me to task, you—you—for this accursed trick of Fate? How was I to know that this infernal little sot would turn up here? Why, I don't so much as know the fellow's name! I had forgotten his very existence! Where the devil is he? Let me find him, and break every bone in his body!" He whirled round to the door, but in a moment was back again. "Tudor! Damn you! Where's the key?"
"In my pocket," said Tudor quietly. "And, Piers, before you go—since I am your ally in spite of myself—let me warn you to keep your head! There's no sense in murdering another man. It won't improve your case. There's no sense in running amok. Sit down for Heaven's sake, and review the situation quietly!"
The calm words took effect. Piers stopped, arrested in spite of himself by the other's steady insistence. He looked at Tudor with half-sullen respect dawning behind his ungoverned fury.
"Listen!" Tudor said. "The fellow has gone. I packed him off myself. It was a piece of sheer ill-luck that brought him home in time for this show. He starts for Americaen routefor Australia in less than a week, and it is utterly unlikely that either you or any of your friends will see or hear anything more of him. Guyes himself is by no means keen on him and only had him as best man because a friend failed him at the last minute. If you behave rationally the whole affair will probably pass off of itself. Everyone knows the fellow was intoxicated, and no one is likely to pay any lasting attention to what he said. Treat the matter as unworthy of notice, and you will very possibly hear no more of it! But if you kick up a row, you will simply court disaster. I am an older man than you are. Take my word for it,—I know what I am talking about."
Piers listened in silence. The heat had gone from his face, but his eyes still gleamed with a restless fire.
Tudor watched him keenly. Not by his own choice would he have ranged himself on Piers' side, but circumstances having placed him there he was oddly anxious to effect his deliverance. He was fighting heavy odds, and he knew it, but there was a fighting strain in his nature also. He relished the odds.
"For Heaven's sake don't be a fool and give the whole show away!" he urged. "You have no enemies. No one will want to take the matter up if you will only let it lie. No one wants to believe evil of you. Possibly no one will."
"Except yourself!" said Piers, with a smile that showed his set teeth.
"Quite so." Tudor also smiled, a grim brief smile. "But then I happen to know you better than most. You gave yourself away so far as I am concerned that night in the winter. I knew then that once upon a time in your career—you had—killed a man."
"And you didn't tell Avery!" The words shot out unexpectedly. Piers was plainly astonished.
"I'm not a woman!" said Tudor contemptuously. "That affair was between us two."
"Great Scott!" said Piers.
"At the same time," Tudor continued sternly, "if I had known what I know now, I would have told her everything sooner than let her ruin her happiness by marrying you."
Piers made a sharp gesture that passed unexplained. He had made no attempt at self-defence; he made none then. Perhaps his pride kicked at the idea; perhaps in the face of Tudor's shrewd grip of the situation it did not seem worth while.
He held out his hand. "May I have that key?"
Tudor gave it to him. He was still watching narrowly, but Piers' face told him nothing. The mask had been replaced, and the man behind it was securely hidden from scrutiny. Tudor would have given much to have rent it aside, and have read the thoughts and intentions it covered. But he knew that he was powerless. He knew that he was deliberately barred out.
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.
Yet ere he left Tudor, some impulse moved him to look back.
He met Tudor's gaze with brooding eyes which nevertheless held a faint warmth like the dim reflection of a light below the horizon.
"I am obliged to you," he said, and was gone before Tudor could speak again.
Up and down, up and down, in a fever of restlessness, Avery walked. She felt trapped. The gloomy, tapestried room seemed to close her in like a prison. The whole world seemed to have turned into a monstrous place of punishment. One thing only was needed to complete the anguish of her spirit, and that was the presence of her husband.
She could not picture the meeting with him. Body and soul recoiled from the thought. It would not be till the morning; that was her sole comfort. By the morning this fiery suffering would have somewhat abated. She would be calmer, more able to face him and hear his defence—if defence there could be. Somehow she never questioned the truth of the story. She knew that Tudor had not questioned it either. She knew moreover that had it been untrue, Piers would have been with her long ago in vehement indignation and wrath.
No, the thing was true. He was the man who had wrecked her life at its beginning, and now—now he had wrecked it again. He was the man whose hands were stained with her husband's blood. He had done the deed in one of those wild tempests of anger with which she was so familiar. He had done the deed, possibly unintentionally, but certainly with murderous impulse; and then deliberately cynically, he had covered it up, and gone his arrogant way.
He had met her, he had desired her; with a few, quickly-stifled qualms he had won her, trusting to luck that his sin would never find him out. And so he had made her his own, his property, his prisoner, the slave of his pleasure. She was bound for ever to her husband's murderer.
Again body and soul shrank in quivering horror from the thought, and a wild revolt awoke within her. She could not bear it. She must break free. The bare memory of his passion sickened her. For the first time in her life hatred, fiery, intense, kindled within her. The thought of his touch filled her with a loathing unutterable. He had become horrible to her, a thing unclean, abominable, whose very proximity was pollution. She felt as if the blood on his hands had stained her also—the blood of the man she had once loved. For a space she became like a woman demented. The thing was too abhorrent to be endured.
And then by slow degrees her brain began to clear again. She grew a little calmer. Monstrous though he was, he was still human. He was, in a fashion, at her mercy. He had sinned, but it was in her hands that his punishment lay.
She was stronger than he. She had always known it. But she must keep her strength. She must not waste it in futile resentment. She would need it all. He had entered her kingdom by subtlety; but she would drive him forth in the strength of a righteous indignation. To suffer him to remain was unthinkable. It would be to share his guilt.
Her thoughts tried to wander into the future, but she called them resolutely back. The future would provide for itself. Her immediate duty was all she now needed to face. When that dreaded interview was over, when she had shut him out finally and completely then it would be time enough to consider that. Probably some arrangement would have to be made by which they would meet occasionally, but as husband and wife—never, never more.
It was growing late. The dinner-gong had sounded, but she would not go down. She rang for Victor, and told him to bring her something on a tray. It did not matter what.
He looked at her with keen little eyes of solicitude, and swiftly obeyed her desire. He then asked her if the dinner were to be kept forMonsieur Pierre, who had not yet returned. She did not know what to say, but lest he should wonder at her ignorance of Piers' doings, she answered in the negative, and Victor withdrew.
Then, again lest comment should be made, she forced herself to eat and drink, though the food nauseated her. A feeling of sick suspense was growing upon her, a strange, foreboding fear that hung leaden about her heart. What was Piers doing all this time? What effect had that message, delivered by Tudor, had upon him? Why had he not returned?
Time passed. The evening waned and became night. A full moon rose red and wonderful out of a bank of inky cloud, lighting the darkness with an oddly tropical effect. The night was tropical, breathless, terribly still. It seemed as if a storm must be upon its way.
She began to undress at last there in the moonlight. The heat was too intense to veil the windows, and she would not light the candles lest bats or moths should be attracted. At another time the eerieness of the shadowy room would have played upon her nerves, but to-night she was not even aware of it. The shadows within were too dark, too sinister.
A great weariness had come upon her. She ached for rest. Her body felt leaden, and her brain like a burnt-out furnace. The very capacity for thought seemed to have left her. Only the horror of the day loomed gigantic whichever way she turned, blotting out all beside. Prayer was an impossibility to her. She felt lost in a wilderness of doubt, forsaken and wandering, and terribly alone.
If she could rest, if she could sleep, she thought that strength might return to her—the strength to grapple with and overthrow the evil that had entered into and tainted her whole life. But till sleep should come to her, she was impotent. She was heavy and numb with fatigue.
She lay down at length with a vague sense of physical relief beneath her crushing weight of trouble. How unutterably weary she was! How tired—how tired of life!
Time passed. The moon rose higher, filling the room with its weird cold light. Avery lay asleep.
Exhaustion had done for her what no effort of will could have accomplished, closing her eyes, drawing a soft veil of oblivion across her misery.
But it was only a temporary lull. The senses were too alert, too fevered, for true repose. That blessed interval of unconsciousness was all too short. After a brief, brief respite she began to dream.
And in her dream she saw a man being tortured in a burning, fiery furnace, imprisoned behind bars of iron, writhing, wrestling, agonizing, to be free. She saw the flames leaping all around him, and in the flames were demon-faces that laughed and gibed and jested. She saw his hands all blistered in the heat, reaching out to her, straining through those cruel bars, beseeching her vainly for deliverance. And presently, gazing with a sick horror that compelled, she saw his face….
With a gasping cry she awoke, started up with every nerve stretched and quivering, her heart pounding as if it would choke her. It was a dream—it was a dream! She whispered it to herself over and over again, striving to control those awful palpitations. Surely it was all a dream!
Stay! What was that? A sound in the room beyond—a movement—a step! She sprang up, obeying blind impulse, sped softly to the intervening door, with hands that trembled shot the bolt. Then, like a hunted creature, almost distracted by the panic of her dream, she slipped back to the gloomy four-poster, and cowered down again.
Lying there, crouched and quivering, she began to count those hammering heart-beats, and wondered wildly if the man on the other side of the door could hear them also. She was sure that he had been there, sure that he had been on the point of entering when she had shot the bolt.
He would not enter now, she whispered to her quaking heart. She would not have to meet him before the morning. And by then she would be strong. It was only her weariness that made her so weak to-night!
She grew calmer. She began to chide herself for her senseless panic—she the bearer of other people's burdens, who prided herself upon her steady nerve and calmness of purpose. She had never been hysterical in her life before. Surely she could muster self-control now, when her need of it was so urgent, so imperative.
And then, just as a certain measure of composure had returned to her, something happened. Someone passed down the passage outside her room and paused at the outer door. Her heart stood still, but again desperately she steadied herself. That door was bolted also.
Yes, it was bolted, but there was a hand upon it,—a hand that felt softly for the lock, found the key outside, softly turned it.
Then indeed panic came upon Avery. Lying there, tense and listening, she heard the quiet step return along the passage and enter her husband's room, heard that door also close and lock, and knew herself a prisoner.
"Avery!"
Every pulse leapt, every nerve shrank. She started up, wide-eyed, desperate.
"I will talk to you in the morning, Piers," she said, steadying her voice with difficulty. "Not now! Not now!"
"Open this door!" he said.
There was dear command in his voice, and with it the old magnetic force reached her, quick, insistent, vital. She threw a wild look round, but only the dazzling moonlight met her eyes. There was no escape for her—no escape.
She turned her face to the door behind which he stood. "Piers, please, not to-night!" she said beseechingly.
"Open the door!" he repeated inexorably.
Again that force reached her. It was like an electric current suddenly injected into her veins. Her whole body quivered in response. Almost before she knew it, she had started to obey.
And then horror seized her—a dread unutterable. She stopped.
"Piers, will you promise—"
"I promise nothing," he said, in the same clear, imperious voice, "except to force this door unless you open it within five seconds."
She stood in the moonlight, trembling, unnerved. He did not sound like a man bereft of reason. And yet—and yet—something in his voice appalled her. Her strength was utterly gone. She was just a weak, terrified woman.
"Avery," his voice came to her again, short and stern, "I don't wish to threaten you; but it will be better for us both if I don't have to force the door."
She forced herself to speak though her tongue felt stiff and dry. "I can't let you in now," she said. "I will hear what you have to say in the morning."
He made no reply. There was an instant of dead silence. Then there came a sudden, hideous shock against the panel of the door. The socket of the bolt gave with the strain, but did not wholly yield. Avery shrank back trembling against the shadowy four-poster. She felt as if a raging animal were trying to force an entrance.
Again came that awful shock. The wood splintered and rent, socket and bolt were torn free; the door burst inwards.
There came a brief, fiendish laugh, and Piers broke in upon her.
He recovered himself with a sharp effort, and stood breathing heavily, looking at her. The moonlight was full upon him, showing him deadly pale, and in his eyes there shone the red glare of hell.
"Did you really think—a locked door—would keep me out?" he said, speaking with an odd jerkiness, with lips that twitched.
She drew herself together with an instinctive effort at self-control. "I thought you would respect my wish," she said, her voice very low.
"Did you?" said Piers. "Then why did you lock the door?"
He swung it closed behind him and came to her.
"Listen to me, Avery!" he said. "You are not your own any longer—to give or to take away. You are mine."
She faced him with all the strength she could muster, but she could not meet those awful eyes that mocked her, that devoured her.
"Piers," she said, almost under her breath, "remember,—what happens to-night we shall neither of us ever forget. Don't make me hate you!"
"Haven't you begun to hate me then?" he demanded. "Would you have locked that door against me if you hadn't?"
She heard the rising passion in his voice, and her heart fainted within her. Yet still desperately she strove for strength.
"I don't want to do anything violent or unconsidered. I must have time to think. Piers, you have me at your mercy. Be merciful!"
He made a sharp movement. "Are you going to be merciful to me?" he said.
She hesitated. There was something brutal in the question, yet it pierced her. She knew that he had divined all that had been passing within her during that evening of misery. She did not answer him, for she could not.
"Listen!" he said again. "What has happened has happened by sheer ill-luck. The past is nothing to you. You have said so yourself. The future shall not be sacrificed to it. If you will give me your solemn promise to put this thing behind you, to behave as if it had never been, I will respect your wishes, I will do my utmost to help you to forget. But if you refuse—" He stopped.
"If I refuse—" she repeated faintly.
He made again that curious gesture that was almost one of helplessness."Don't ask for mercy!" he said.
In the silence that followed there came to her the certain knowledge that he was suffering, that he was in an inferno of torment that goaded him into fierce savagery against her, like a mad animal that will wreak its madness first upon the being most beloved. It was out of his torment that he did this thing. She saw him again agonizing in the flames.
If he had had patience then, that divine pity of hers might have come to help them both; but he read into her silence the abhorrence which a little earlier had possessed her soul; and the maddening pain of it drove him beyond all bounds.
He seized her suddenly and savagely between his hands. "Are you any the less my wife," he said, speaking between his teeth, "because you have found out what manner of man I am?"
She resisted him, swiftly, instinctively, her hands against his breast, pressing him back. "I may be your wife," she said gaspingly. "I am not—your slave."
He laughed a fiendish laugh. Her resistance fired him. He caught her fiercely to him. He covered her face, her throat, her arms, her hands, with kisses that burned her through and through, seeming to sear her very soul.
He crushed her in a grip that bruised her, that suffocated her. He pressed his lips, hot with passion, to hers.
"And now!" he said. "And now!"
She lay in his arms spent and quivering and helpless. The cruel triumph of his voice silenced all appeal.
He went on deeply, speaking with his lips so close that she felt his breath scorch through her like the breath of a fiery furnace.
"You are bound to me for better—for worse, and nothing will ever set you free. Do you understand? If you will not be my wife, you shall be—my slave."
Quiveringly, through lips that would scarcely move she spoke at last. "I shall never forgive you."
"I shall never ask your forgiveness," he said.
So the gates of hell closed upon Avery also. She went down into the unknown depths. And in an agony of shame she learned the bitterest lesson of her life.
"Why, Avery dear, is it you? Come in!" Mrs. Lorimer looked up with a smile of eager welcome on her little pinched face and went forward almost at a run to greet her.
The brown holland smock upon which she had been at work fell to the ground. It was Avery who, after a close embrace, stooped to pick it up.
"Who is this for? Baby Phil? You must let me lend a hand," she said.
"Ah, my dear, I do miss you," said Mrs. Lorimer wistfully. "The village girl who comes in to help is no good at all at needlework, and you know how busy Nurse always is. Jeanie does her best, and is a great help in many ways. But she is but a child. However," she caught herself up, "I mustn't start grumbling the moment you enter the house. Tell me about yourself, dear! You are looking very pale. Does the heat try you?"
"A little," Avery admitted.
She was spreading out the small garment on her knee, looking at it critically, with eyes downcast. She certainly was pale that morning. The only colour in her face seemed concentrated in her lips.
Mrs. Lorimer looked at her uneasily. There was something not quite normal about her, she felt. She had never seen Avery look so statuesque. She missed the quick sweetness of her smile, the brightness and animation of her glance.
"It is very dear of you to come and see me," she said gently, after a moment. "Did you walk all the way? I hope it hasn't been too much for you."
"No," Avery said. "It did me good."
She was on the verge of saying something further, but the words did not come.
She continued to smooth out the little smock with minute care, while Mrs.Lorimer watched her anxiously.
"Is all well, dear?" she ventured at last.
Avery raised her brows slightly, but her eyes remained downcast. "I went to the wedding yesterday," she said, after a momentary pause.
"Oh, did you, dear? Stephen went, but I stayed at home. Did you see him?"
"Only from a distance," said Avery.
"It was a very magnificent affair, he tells me." Mrs. Lorimer was becoming a little nervous. She had begun to be conscious of something tragic in the atmosphere. "And did you enjoy it, dear? Or was the heat too great?"
"It was hot," Avery said.
Again she seemed to be about to say something more, and again she failed to do so. Her lips closed.
Mrs. Lorimer remained silent also for several seconds. Then softly she rose, went to Avery, put her arms about her.
"My darling!" she said fondly.
That was all. No further questioning, no anxious probing, simply her love poured out in fullest measure upon the altar of friendship! And it moved Avery instantly and overwhelmingly, shattering her reserve, sweeping away the stony ramparts of her pride.
She turned and hid her face upon Mrs. Lorimer's breast in an anguish of tears.
It lasted for several minutes, that paroxysm of weeping. It was the pent misery of hours finding vent at last. All she had suffered, all the humiliation, the bitterness of desecrated love, the utter despair of her soul, was in those tears. They shook her being to the depths. They seemed to tear her heart asunder.
At last in broken whispers she began to speak. Still with those scalding tears falling between her words, she imparted the whole miserable story; she bared her fallen pride. There was no other person in the world to whom she could thus have revealed that inner agony, that lacerating shame. But Mrs. Lorimer, the despised, the downtrodden, was as an angel from heaven that day. A new strength was hers, born of her friend's utter need. She held her up, she sustained, her, through that the darkest hour of her life, with a courage and a steadfastness of which no one had ever deemed her capable.
When Avery whispered at length, "I can never, never go back to him!" her answer was prompt.
"My dear, you must. It will be hard, God knows. But He will give you strength. Oh Avery, don't act for yourself, dear! Let Him show the way!"
"If He will!" sobbed Avery, with her burning face hidden against her friend's heart.
"He will, dearest, He will," Mrs. Lorimer asserted with conviction. "He is much nearer to us in trouble than most of us ever realize. Only let Him take the helm; He will steer you through the storm."
"I feel too wicked," whispered Avery, "too—overwhelmed with evil."
"My dear, feelings are nothing," said the Vicar's wife, with a decision that would have shocked the Reverend Stephen unspeakably. "We can't help our feelings, but we can put ourselves in the way of receiving help. Oh, don't you think He often lets us miss our footing just because He wants us to lean on Him?"
"I don't know," Avery said hopelessly. "But I think it will kill me to go back. Even if—if I pretended to forgive him—I couldn't possibly endure to—to go on as if nothing had happened. Eric—my first husband—will always stand between us now."
"Dear, are you sure that what you heard was not an exaggeration?" Mrs.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. My feelings are less than nothing. He doesn't really want me. Any woman could fill my place with him equally well!"
"Hush!" Mrs. 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."
"I don't want to win it back!" 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."
"Sleep!" Avery almost laughed, and then again those burning, blinding tears rushed to her eyes. "Oh, you don't know what I've been through!" she sobbed. "You don't know! You don't know!"
"God knows, darling," whispered Mrs. Lorimer.
Minutes later, when Avery was lying back exhausted, no longer sobbing, only dumbly weeping, there came a gentle knock at the door.
Mrs. Lorimer went to it quickly, and met her eldest daughter upon the point of entering. Jeanie looked up at her enquiringly.
"Is anyone here?"
"Yes, dear. Avery is here. She isn't very well this morning. Run and fetch her a glass of milk!"
Jeanie hastened away. Mrs. Lorimer returned to Avery.
"My darling," she said, "do you know I think I can see a way to help you?"
Avery's eyes were closed. She put out a trembling hand. "You are very good to me."
"I wonder how often I have had reason to say that to you," said Mrs.Lorimer softly. "Listen, darling! You must go back. Yes, Avery, you must!You must! But—you shall take my little Jeanie with you."
Avery's eyes opened. Mrs. Lorimer was looking at her with tears in her own.
"I know I may trust her to you," she said. "But oh, you will take care of her! Remember how precious she is—and how fragile!"
"But, my dear—you couldn't spare her!" Avery said.
"Yes, I can,—I will!" Mrs. Lorimer hastily rubbed her eyes and smiled—a resolute smile. "You may have her, dear. I know she will be happy with you. And Piers is so fond of her too. She will be a comfort to you—to you both, please God. She comforts everyone—my little Jeanie. It seems to be herrôlein life. Ah, here she comes! You shall tell her, dear. It will come better from you."
"May I come in?" said Jeanie at the door.
Her mother went to admit her. Avery sat up, and pushed her chair back against the window-curtain.
Jeanie entered, a glass of milk in one hand and a plate in the other. "Good morning, dear Avery!" she said, in her gentle, rather tired voice. "I've brought you a hot cake too—straight out of the oven. It smells quite good." She came to Avery's side, and stood within the circle of her arm; but she did not kiss her or look into her piteous, tearstained face. "I hope you like currants," she said. "Baby Phil calls them flies. Have you seen Baby Phil lately? He has just cut another tooth. He likes everybody to look at it."
"I must see it presently," Avery said, with an effort.
She drank the milk, and broke the cake, still holding Jeanie pressed to her side.
Jeanie, gravely practical, held the plate. "I saw Piers ride by a little while ago," she remarked. "He was on Pompey. But he was going so fast he didn't see me. He always rides fast, doesn't he? But I think Pompey likes it, don't you?"
"I don't know." There was an odd frozen note in Avery's voice. "He has to go—whether he likes it or not."
"But he is very fond of Piers," said Jeanie. "And so is Caesar." She gave a little sigh. "Poor Mikey! Do you remember how angry he used to be when Caesar ran by?"
Avery suppressed a shiver. Vivid as a picture flung on a screen, there rose in her brain the memory of that winter evening when Piers and Mike and Caesar had all striven together for the mastery. Again she seemed to hear those savage, pitiless blows. She might have known! She might have known!
Sharply she wrenched herself back to the present. "Jeanie darling," she said, "your mother says that you may come and stay at the Abbey for a little while. Do you—would you—like to come?"
Her voice was unconsciously wistful. Jeanie turned for the first time and looked at her.
"Oh, Avery!" she said. "Stay with you and Piers?"
Her eyes were shining. She slid a gentle arm round Avery's neck.
"You would like to?" Avery asked, faintly smiling.
"I would love to," said Jeanie earnestly. She looked across at her mother. "Shall you be able to manage, dear?" she asked in her grown-up way.
Mrs. Lorimer stifled a sigh. "Oh yes, Jeanie dear. I shall do all right.Gracie will help with the little ones, you know."
Jeanie smiled at that. "I think I will go and talk to Gracie," she said, quietly releasing herself from Avery's arm.
But at the door she paused. "I hope Father won't mind," she said. "But he did say I wasn't to have any more treats till my Easter holiday-task was finished."
"I will make that all right, dear," said Mrs. Lorimer.
"Thank you," said Jeanie. "Of course I can take it with me. I expect I shall get more time for learning it at the Abbey. You might tell him that, don't you think?"
"I will tell him, darling," said Mrs. Lorimer.
And Jeanie smiled and went her way.
"Hullo!" said Piers. "Has the Queen of all good fairies come to call?"
He strode across the garden with that high, arrogant air of his as of one who challenges the world, and threw himself into the vacant chair by the tea-table at which his wife sat.
The blaze of colour that overspread her pale face at his coming faded as rapidly as it rose. She glanced at him momentarily, under fluttering lids.
"Jeanie has come to stay," she said, her voice very low.
His arm was already round Jeanie who had risen to meet him. He pulled her down upon his knee.
"That is very gracious of her," he said. "Good Heavens, child! You are as light as a feather! Why don't you eat more?"
"I am never hungry," explained Jeanie. She kissed him and then drew herself gently from him, sitting down by his side with innate dignity. "Have you been riding all day?" she asked. "Isn't Pompey tired?"
"Caesar and Pompey are both dead beat," said Piers. "And I—" he looked deliberately at Avery, "—am as fresh as when I started."
Again, as it were in response to that look, her eyelids fluttered; but she did not raise them. Again the colour started and died in her cheeks.
"Have you had anything to eat?" she asked.
"Nothing," said Piers.
He took the cup she offered him, and drained it. There was a fitful gleam in his dark eyes as of a red, smouldering fire.
But Jeanie's soft voice intervening dispelled it. "How very hungry you must be!" she said in a motherly tone. "Will bread and butter and cake be enough for you?"
"Quite enough," said Piers. "Like you, Jeanie, I am not hungry." He handed back his cup to be filled again. "But I have a lively thirst," he said.
"It has been so hot to-day," observed Avery.
"It is never too hot for me," he rejoined. "Hullo! Who's that?"
He was staring towards the house under frowning brows. A figure had just emerged upon the terrace.
"Dr. Tudor!" said Jeanie.
Again Piers' eyes turned upon his wife. He looked at her with a sombre scrutiny. After a moment she lifted her own and resolutely returned the look.
"Won't you go and meet him?" she said.
He rose abruptly, and strode away.
Avery's eyes followed him, watching narrowly as the two men met. Lennox Tudor, she saw, offered his hand, and after the briefest pause, Piers took it. They came back slowly side by side.
Again, unobtrusively, Jeanie rose. Tudor caught sight of her almost before he saw Avery.
"Hullo!" he said. "What are you doing here?"
Jeanie explained with her customary old-fashioned air of responsibility:"I have come to take care of Avery, as she isn't very well."
Tudor's eyes passed instantly and very swiftly to Avery's face. He bent slightly over the hand she gave him.
"A good idea!" he said brusquely. "I hope you will take care of each other."
He joined them at the tea-table, and talked of indifferent things. Piers talked also with that species of almost fierce gaiety with which Avery had become so well acquainted of late. She was relieved that there was no trace of hostility apparent in his manner.
But, notwithstanding this fact, she received a shock of surprise when at the end of a quarter of an hour he got up with a careless: "Come along, my queen! We'll see if Pompey has got the supper he deserves."
Even Tudor looked momentarily astonished, but as he watched Piers saunter away with his arm round Jeanie's thin shoulders his expression changed. He turned to her abruptly. "How are you feeling to-day?" he enquired. "I had to come in and ask."
"It was very kind of you," she answered.
He smiled in his rather grim fashion. "I came more for my own satisfaction than for yours," he observed. "You are better, are you?"
She smiled also. "There is nothing the matter with me, you know."
He gave her a shrewd look through his glasses. "No," he said. "I know."
He said no more at all about her health, nor did he touch upon any other intimate subject, but she had a very distinct impression that he did not cease to observe her closely throughout their desultory conversation. She even tried to divert his attention, but she knew she did not succeed.
He remained with her until they saw Piers and Jeanie returning, and then somewhat suddenly he took his leave. He joined the two on the lawn, sent Jeanie back to her, and walked away himself with his host.
What passed between them she did not know and could not even conjecture, for she did not see Piers again till they met in the hall before dinner. Jeanie was with her, looking delicately pretty in her white muslin frock, and it was to her that Piers addressed himself.
"Come here, my queen! I want to look at you."
She went to him readily enough. He took her by the shoulders.
"Are you made of air, I wonder? I should be ashamed of you, Jeanie, if you belonged to me."
Jeanie looked up into the handsome, olive face with eyes that smiled love upon him. "I expect it's partly because you are so big and strong," she said.
"No, it isn't," said Piers. "It's because you're so small and weak. Avery will have to take you away to the sea again, what? You'd like that."
"And you too!" said Jeanie.
"I? Oh no, you wouldn't want me. Would you, Avery?"
He deliberately addressed her for the first time that day. Over the child's head his eyes flashed their mocking message. She felt as if he had struck her across the face.
"Would you?" he repeated, with arrogant insistence.
She tried to turn the question aside. "Well, as we are not going—"
"But you are going," he said. "You and Jeanie. How soon can you start?To-morrow?"
Avery looked at him in astonishment. "Are you in earnest?"
"Of course I'm in earnest," he said, with a frown that was oddly boyish. "You had better go to Stanbury Cliffs. It suited you all right in the spring. Fix it up with Mrs. Lorimer first thing in the morning, and go down in the afternoon!"
He spoke impatiently. Opposition or delay always set him chafing.
Jeanie looked at him with wonder in her eyes. "But you, Piers!" she said. "What will you do?"
"I? Oh, I shall be busy," he said. "I've got a lot on hand just now. Besides," again the gibing note was in his voice, "you'll get along much better without me. Avery says so."
"She didn't!" exclaimed Jeanie, with a sudden rare touch of indignation.
"All right. She didn't," laughed Piers. "My mistake!" He flicked the child's cheek teasingly, and then abruptly stooped and kissed it. "Don't be angry, Queen of the fairies! It isn't worth it."
She slipped her arm round his neck on the instant. "I'm not, dear Piers. I'm not angry. But we shouldn't want to go away and leave you alone. We shouldn't really."
He laughed again, carelessly, without effort. "No, but you'd get on all right without me. You and Avery are such pals. What do you say to it, Avery? Isn't it a good idea?"
"I think perhaps it is," she said slowly, her voice very low.
He straightened himself, and looked at her, and again that vivid, painful blush covered her face and neck as though a flame had scorched her. She did not meet his eyes.
"Very well then. It's settled," he said jauntily. "Now let's go and have some dinner!"
He kept up his light attitude throughout the meal, save that once he raised his wine-glass mockingly to the woman on the wall. But his mood was elusive. Avery felt it. It was as if he played a juggling game on the edge of the pit of destruction, and she watched him with a leaden heart.
She rose from the table earlier than usual, for the atmosphere of the dining-room oppressed her almost unbearably. 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.
"What do you want me to play?" he said.
She made a wide gesture of the hands and let them fall. "Something big," she said. "Something to take to bed with us and give us happy dreams."
His lips—those mobile, sensitive lips—curved in a smile that made Avery avert her eyes with a sudden hot pang. He released Jeanie, and turned away to the door.
"I'll see what I can do," he said. "You had better go into the garden—you and Avery."
They went, though Jeanie looked as if she would have preferred to accompany him to the music-room. It was little cooler on the terrace than in the house. The heat brooded over all, dense, black, threatening.
"I hope it will rain soon," said Jeanie, drawing her chair close to Avery's.
"There will be a storm when it does," Avery said.
"I like storms, don't you?" said Jeanie.
Avery shook her head. "No, dear."
She was listening in tense expectancy, waiting with a dread that was almost insupportable for the music that Piers was about to make. They were close to the open French window of the music-room, but there was no light within. Piers was evidently sitting there silent in the darkness. Her pulses were beating violently. Why did he sit so still? Why was there no sound?
A flash of lightning quivered above the tree-tops and was gone. Jeanie drew in her breath, saying no word. Avery shrank and closed her eyes. She could hear her heart beating audibly, like the throbbing of a distant drum. The suspense was terrible.
There came from far away the growl and mutter of the rising storm. The leaves of the garden began to tremble. And then, ere that roll of distant thunder had died away, another sound came through the darkness—a sound that was almost terrifying in its suddenness, and the grand piano began to speak.
What music it uttered, Avery knew not. It was such as she had never heard before. It was unearthly, it was devilish, a fiendish chorus that was like the laughter of a thousand demons—a pandemonium that shocked her unutterably.
Just as once he had drawn aside for her the veil that shrouded the Holy Place, so now he rent open the gates of hell and showed her the horrors of the prison-house, forcing her to look upon them, forcing her to understand.
She clung to Jeanie's hand in nightmare fear. The anguish of the revelation was almost unendurable. She felt as if he had caught her quivering soul and was thrusting it into an inferno from which it could never rise again. Through and above that awful laughter she seemed to hear the crackling of the flames, to feel the blistering heat that had consumed so many, to see the red glare of the furnace gaping wide before her.
She cried out without knowing it, and covered her face. "O God," she prayed wildly, "save us from this! Save us! Save us!"
The man at the piano could not have heard her cry. Of that she was certain. But their souls were in more subtle communion than any established by bodily word or touch. 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. She was as one in the presence of a vision, hearing words that were spoken to her alone.
"And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments…."
She waited quivering. Surely there was more to come. She listened for it even while she shrank in every nerve.
It came at length slowly, heavily, like a death-sentence uttered within her. "Between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence."
The words were spoken, the vision passed. Avery sat huddled in her chair as one stricken to the earth, rapt in a trance of dread foreboding from which Jeanie was powerless to rouse her.
The lightning flashed again, and the thunder crashed above them like the clanging of brazen gates. From the room behind them came the sound of a man's laugh, but it was a laugh that chilled her to the soul.
Again there came the sound of the piano,—a tremendous chord, then a slow-swelling volume of harmony, a muffled burst of music like the coming of a great procession still far away.
Avery sprang upright as one galvanized into action by an electric force."I cannot bear it!" she cried aloud, "I cannot bear it!"
She almost thrust Jeanie from her. "Oh, go, child, go! Tell him—tell him—" Her voice broke, went into a gasping utterance more painful than speech, finally dropped into hysterical sobbing.