The Bars of Iron, Ethel May Dell [my reading book .TXT] 📗

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 her _role_ in 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.


CHAPTER IX
THE GREAT GULF

"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."