The Bars of Iron Part 81

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 b.u.t.ter 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, un.o.btrusively, 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 pa.s.sed 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 gla.s.ses. "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 pa.s.sed 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?"