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 compassionate 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 passionate
rebellion. "But I'm damned if I'm going to tell anybody! It's hell enough
without that!"
Crowther's hand closed slowly and very steadily on his shoulder. "It's
just hell 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 damned 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 compassion 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, God 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.
They walked on for a space in silence, till turning they began to ascend
the winding path that led up to the hotel,--the path which Piers had
watched Crowther ascend that morning.
Side by side they mounted, till half-way up Crowther checked their
progress. "Piers," he said, "I'm grateful to you for enduring my
interference in this matter."
"Pshaw!" said Piers, "I owe you that much anyhow."
"You owe me nothing," said Crowther emphatically. "What I did for you, I
did for myself. I've rather a weakness--it's a very ordinary one too--for
trying to manage other people's concerns. And there's something so fine
about you that I can't bear to stand aside and see you mess up your own.
So, sonny,--for my satisfaction,--will you promise me not to take a wrong
turning over this?"
He spoke very earnestly, with a pleading that could not give offence.
Piers' face softened almost in spite of him. "You're an awfully good
chap," he said.
"Promise me, lad!" pleaded Crowther, still holding his arm in a friendly
grasp; then as Piers hesitated: "You know, I'm an older man than you
are. I can see further. You'll be making your own hell if you don't."
"But why should I promise?" said Piers uneasily.
"Because I know you will keep a promise--even against your own judgment."
Simply, with absolute conviction, Crowther made reply. "I shan't feel
happy about you--unless you promise."
Piers smiled a little, but the lines about his mouth were grim. "Oh, all
right," he said, after a moment, "I promise;--for I think you are right,
Crowther. I think too that I should probably have to tell her--whether I
wanted to or not. She's that sort--the sort that none but a skunk could
deceive. But--" his voice altered suddenly; he turned brooding eyes upon
the sleeping sea--"I wonder if she will forgive me," he said.
"I--wonder."
"Does she love you?" said Crowther.
Piers' eyes flashed round at him. "I can make her love me," he said.
"You are sure?"
"I am sure."
"Then, my son, she'll forgive you. And if you want to play a straight
game, tell her soon!" said Crowther.
And Piers, with all the light gone out of his eyes, answered soberly,
"I will."