"Ah!" said Crowther. "I thought I knew the signs."

He rose with the words, and instantly Piers sprang up also. "Yes, let's go! I can't breathe here. Come down to the sh.o.r.e for a breath of air, and I'll tell you all about it!"

He linked his arm again in Crowther's, obviously glad to be gone; but when they had left the glittering place behind them, he still talked inconsequently about a thousand things till in his calm fashion Crowther turned him back.

"I don't want you to tell me anything personal," he said, "save one thing. This girl whom you hope to marry--I gather you are pretty sure of her?"

Piers threw back his head with a gesture that defied the world. "I am quite sure of her," he said; and a moment later, with impulsive confidence: "She has just taken the trouble to write at length and tell me why she can't have me."

"Ah?" Crowther's tone held curiosity as well as kindly sympathy. "A sound reason?"

"No reason at all," flung back Piers, still with his face to the stars.

"She knows that as well as I do. I tell you, Crowther, I know the way to that woman's heart, and I could find it blindfold. She is mine already."

"And doesn't know it?" suggested Crowther.

"Yes, she does in her heart of hearts,--or soon will. I shall send her a post-card to-morrow and sum up the situation."

"On a post-card?"

Crowther sounded puzzled, and Piers broke into a laugh and descended to earth.

"Yes, in one expressive word--'Rats!' No one else will understand it, but she will."

"A little abrupt!" commented Crowther.

"Yes, I'm going to be abrupt now," said Piers with imperial confidence.

"I'm going to storm the position."

"And you are sure you will carry it?"

"Quite sure." Piers' voice held not the faintest shade of doubt.

"I hope you will, lad," said Crowther kindly. "And--that being the case--may I say what I set out to say?"

"Oh, go ahead!" said Piers.

"It's only this," said Crowther, in his slow, quiet way. "Only a word of advice, sonny, which I shouldn't give if I didn't know that your life's happiness hangs on your taking it. You're young, but there's a locked door in your past. Open that door just once before you marry the woman you love, and show her what is behind it! It'll give her a shock maybe.

But it'll be better for you both in the end. Don't let there be any locked doors between you and your wife! You're too young for that. And if she's the right sort, it won't make a pin's difference to her love. Women are like that, thank G.o.d!"

He spoke with the utmost earnestness. He was evidently keenly anxious to gain his point. But his words went into utter silence. Ere they were fully spoken Piers' hand was withdrawn from his arm. His careless, swinging stride became a heavy, slackening tramp, and at last he halted altogether. They stood side by side in silence with their faces to the moon-silvered water. And there fell a long, long pause, as though the whole world stopped and listened.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE PROMISE

After all, it was Crowther who broke that tragic silence; perhaps because he could bear it no longer. The path on which they stood was deserted. He laid a very steady hand upon Piers' shoulder with a compa.s.sionate glance at the stony young face which a few minutes before had been so full of abounding life.

"It comes hard to you, eh, lad?" he said.

Piers stirred, almost made as if he would toss the friendly hand away; but in the end he suffered it, though he would not meet Crowther's eyes.

"You owe it to her," urged Crowther gently. "Tell her, lad! She's bound to be up against it sooner or later if you don't."

"Yes," Piers said. "I know."

He spoke heavily; all the youth seemed to have gone out of him. After a moment, as Crowther waited he turned with a gesture of hopelessness and faced him. "I'm like a dog on a chain," he said. "I drag this way and that, and eat my heart out for freedom. But it's all no use. I've got to live and die on it." He clenched his hands in sudden pa.s.sionate rebellion. "But I'm d.a.m.ned if I'm going to tell anybody! It's h.e.l.l enough without that!"

Crowther's hand closed slowly and very steadily on his shoulder. "It's just h.e.l.l that I want to save you from, sonny," he said. "It may seem the hardest part to you now, but if you shirk it you'll go further in still.

I know very well what I'm saying. And it's just because you're man enough to feel this thing and not a brute beast to forget it, that it's hurt you so infernally all these years. But it'll hurt you worse, lad, it'll wring your very soul, if you keep it a secret between you and the woman you love. It's a big temptation, but--if I know you--you're going to stand up to it. She'll think the better of you for it in the end. But it'll be a shadow over both your lives if you don't. 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. He had had his say. He waited with unswerving patience for the result.

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. You know that as well as I do."

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 d.a.m.ned 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." He paused a moment, then, with an effort, "I never told him either, Crowther. I never told a soul."

"No," 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 compa.s.sion 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."

"How else could she put it?" demanded Piers harshly. "Is there any other way of putting it? I killed the man intentionally. I told you so at the time. The fellow who taught me the trick warned me that it would almost certainly be fatal to a heavy man taken unawares. Why, he himself is now doing five years' penal servitude for the very same thing. Oh, I'm not a humbug, Crowther. I bolted from the consequences. You made me bolt. But I've often wished to heaven since that I'd stayed and faced it out. It would have been easier in the end, G.o.d knows."

"My dear fellow," Crowther said, "you will never convince me of that as long as you live. There was nothing to gain by your staying and all to lose. Consequences there were bound to be--and always are. But there was no good purpose to be served by wrecking your life. You were only a boy, and the luck was against you. I couldn't have stood by and seen you dragged under."

Piers groaned. "I sometimes wish I was dead!" he said.

"My dear chap, what's the good of that?" 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.