Part 73 (1/2)

”I am dismissed then,” she said. ”Good-night!”

His smile answered hers. He looked regretful, but very kindly. ”I am glad to see Piers takes care of you,” he said.

She laughed a little drearily as she went away, making no other response.

Crowther turned back to the table with its shaded candles and gleaming wine. He saw that Piers' gla.s.s was practically untouched.

Piers himself was searching a cabinet for cigars. He found what he sought, and turned round with the box in his hand.

”I don't know what you generally smoke,” he said. ”Will you try one of these? It's a hot night. We may as well have coffee in the garden.”

He seemed possessed with a spirit of restlessness, just as he had been on that night at the Casino in the spring. Crowther, ma.s.sive and self-contained, observed him silently.

They went out on to the terrace, and drank their coffee in the dewy stillness. But even there Piers could not sit still. He prowled to and fro eternally, till Crowther set down his cup and joined him, pus.h.i.+ng a quiet hand through his arm.

”It's a lovely place you've got here, sonny,” he said; ”a regular garden of Paradise. I almost envy you.”

”Oh, you needn't do that. 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 att.i.tude 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.

In the western wing of the house a light burned at an upper window, and Crowther, still quietly observant, noted how at each turn Piers' eyes went to that light as though drawn by some magnetic force.

Gently at length he spoke. ”She doesn't look altogether robust, sonny.”

Piers started sharply as if something had p.r.i.c.ked him. ”What? Avery do you mean? No, she isn't over and above strong--just now.”

He uttered the last two words as if reluctantly, yet as if some measure of pride impelled him.

Crowther's hand pressed his arm, in mute sympathy. ”You are right to take care of her,” he said simply. ”And Piers, my lad, I want to tell you how glad I was to know that you were able to win her after all. I somehow felt you would.”

It was his first attempt to pa.s.s that intangible barrier, and it failed.

Piers disregarded the words as if they had not reached him.

”I don't know if I shall let her stay here through the winter,” he said.

”I am not sure that the place suits her. It's damp, you know; good hunting and so on, but a bit depressing in bad weather. Besides I'd rather have her under a town doctor. The new heir arrives in March,” he said, with a slight laugh that struck Crowther as unconsciously pathetic.

”I'm very pleased to hear it, sonny,” said Crowther. ”May he be the first of many! What does Avery think about it? I'll warrant she's pleased?”

”Oh yes, she's pleased enough.”

”And you, lad?”

”Oh yes, I'm pleased too,” said Piers, but his tone lacked complete satisfaction and he added after a moment, ”I'd rather have had her to myself a bit longer. I'm a selfish brute, you know, Crowther. I want all I can get--and even that's hardly enough to keep me from starvation.”

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.”