The hot flush died out of Piers' face; he went slowly white. But the blaze of wrath in his eyes leaped higher. For the moment he looked scarcely sane.

"If you don't clear out of my path, I shall throw you!" he said, speaking very quietly, but with a terrible distinctness that made misunderstanding impossible.

Crowther, level-browed and determined, remained where he was. "I don't think you will," he said.

"Don't you?" A faint smile of derision twisted Piers' lips. He gathered up the coat he carried, and threw it across his shoulder.

Crowther watched him with eyes that never varied. "Piers!" he said.

"Well?" Piers looked at him, still with that slight, grim smile.

Crowther stood like a rock. "I will let you pa.s.s, sonny, if you can tell me--on your word of honour as a gentleman--that the tables are all you have in your mind."

Piers tossed back his head with the action of an angry beast. "What the devil has that to do with you?"

"Everything," said Crowther.

He moved at last, quietly, ma.s.sively, and took Piers by the shoulders.

"My son," he said, "I know where you are going. I've been there myself.

But in G.o.d's name, lad, don't--don't go! There are some stains that never come out though one would give all one had to be rid of them."

"Let me go!" said Piers.

He was breathing quickly; his eyes gazed fiercely into the elder man's face. He made no violent movement, but his whole body was tensely strung to resist.

Crowther's hands tightened upon him. "Not to-night!" he said.

"Yes, now!" Something of electricity ran through Piers; there came as it were the ripple of muscles contracting for a spring. Yet still he stood motionless, menacing but inactive.

"I will not!" Sudden and hard Crowther's answer came; his hold became a grip. By sheer unexpectedness of action, he forced Piers back against the door behind him.

It gave inwards, and they stumbled into the darkness of the bedroom.

"You fool!" said Piers. "You fool!"

Yet he gave ground, scarcely resisting, and coming up against the bed sat down upon it suddenly as if spent.

There fell a brief silence, a tense, hard-breathing pause. Then Piers reached up and freed himself.

"Oh, go away, Crowther!" he said. "You're a kind old a.s.s, but I don't want you. And you needn't spend the night in the corridor either. See?

Just go to bed like a Christian and let me do the same!"

The struggle was over; so suddenly, so amazingly, that Crowther stood dumbfounded. He had girded himself to wrestle with a giant, but there was nothing formidable about the boy who sat on the edge of his bed and laughed at him with easy ridicule.

"Why don't you switch on the light," he jeered, "and have a good look round for the devil? He was here a minute ago. What? Don't you believe in devils? That's heresy. All good parsons--" He got up suddenly and went to the switch. In a second the room was flooded with light. He returned to Crowther with the full flare on his face, and the only expression it wore was one of careless friendliness. He held out his hand. "Good-night, dear old fellow! Say your prayers and go to bed! And you needn't have any more nightmares on my account. I'm going to turn in myself directly."

There was no mistaking his sincerity, or the completeness of his surrender. Crowther could but take the extended hand, and, in silent astonishment, treat the incident as closed.

He even wondered as he went away if he had not possibly exaggerated the whole matter, though at the heart of him he knew that this was only what Piers himself desired him to believe. He could not but feel convinced, however, that the danger was past for the time at least. In his own inimitable fashion Piers had succeeded in rea.s.suring him. He was fully satisfied that the boy would keep his word, for his faith in him was absolute. But he felt the victory that was his to be a baffling one. He had conquered merely because Piers of his own volition had ceased to resist. He did not understand that sudden submission. Like Sir Beverley, he was puzzled by it. There was about it a mysterious quality that eluded his understanding. He would have given a good deal for a glimpse of the motive that lay behind.

But he had to go without it. Piers was in no expansive mood. Perhaps he might have found it difficult to explain himself even had he so desired.

Whatever the motive that had urged him, it urged him no longer, or it had been diverted into a side-channel. For almost as soon as he was alone, he threw himself down and scribbled a careless line to Ina Rose, advising her to accompany her father to Mentone, and adding that he believed she would not be bored there.

When he had despatched Victor with the letter, he flung his window wide and leaned out of it with his eyes wide opened on the darkness, and on his lips that smile that was not good to see.

CHAPTER XXVI

SUBSTANCE

It was a bl.u.s.tering spring day, and Avery, caught in a sudden storm of driving sleet, stood up against the railings of the doctor's house, sheltering as best she might. She was holding her umbrella well in the teeth of the gale, and trying to protect an armful of purchases as well.

She was alone, Gracie, the black sheep, having been sent to school at the close of the Christmas holidays, and Jeanie being confined to the house with a severe cold. Olive, having become more and more her father's constant companion, disdained shopping expeditions. The two elder boys and Pat were all at a neighbouring school as weekly boarders, and though she missed them Avery had it not in her heart to regret the arrangement.

The Vicarage might at times seem dreary, but it had become undeniably an abode of peace.

Mrs. Lorimer was gradually recovering her strength, and Avery's care now centred more upon Jeanie than her mother. Though the child had recovered from her accident, she had not been really well all the winter, and the cold spring seemed to tax her strength to the uttermost. Tudor still dropped in at intervals, but he said little, and his manner did not encourage Avery to question him. Privately she was growing anxious about Jeanie, and she wished that he would be more communicative. He had absolutely forbidden book-work, a fiat to which Mr. Lorimer had yielded under protest.

"The child will grow up a positive dunce," he had declared.

To which Tudor had brusquely rejoined, "What of it?"

But his word was law so far as Jeanie was concerned, and Mr. Lorimer had relinquished the point with the sigh of one submitting to the inevitable.

He did not like Lennox Tudor, but for some reason he always avoided an open disagreement with him.

It was of Jeanie that Avery was thinking as she stood there huddled against the railings while the sleet beat a fierce tattoo on her levelled umbrella and streamed from it in rivers on to the ground. She even debated with herself if it seemed advisable to turn and enter the doctor's dwelling, and try to get him to speak frankly of the matter as he had spoken once before.

She dismissed the idea, however, reflecting that he would most probably be out, and she was on the point of collecting her forces to make a rush for another sheltered spot further on when the front door opened unexpectedly behind her, and Tudor himself came forth bareheaded into the rain.

"What are you doing there, Mrs. Denys?" he said. "Why don't you come inside?"

He opened the gate for her, and took her parcels without waiting for a reply. And Avery, still with her umbrella poised against the blast, smiled her thanks and pa.s.sed in.

The hair grew far back on Tudor's forehead, it was in fact becoming scanty on the top of his head; and the raindrops glistened upon it as he entered behind Avery. He wiped them away, and then took off his gla.s.ses and wiped them also.

"Come into the dining-room!" he said. "You are just in time to join me at tea."

"You're very kind," Avery said. "But I ought to hurry back the moment the rain lessens."

"It won't lessen yet," said Tudor. "Take off your mackintosh, won't you?

I expect your feet are wet. There's a fire to dry them by."

Certainly the storm showed no signs of abating. The sky was growing darker every instant. Avery slipped the streaming mackintosh from her shoulders and entered the room into which he had invited her.

The blaze on the hearth was cheering after the icy gale without. She went to it, stretching her numbed hands to the warmth.