The Bars of Iron, Ethel May Dell [my reading book .TXT] 📗

and the animal broke into a trot.
When Tudor spoke again, it was upon a totally different matter. His voice was slightly aggressive as he said: "That Evesham boy seems to be for ever turning up at the Vicarage now. He's an ill-mannered cub. I wonder you encourage him."
"Do I encourage him?" Avery asked.
He made a movement of irritation. "He would scarcely be such a constant visitor if you didn't."
Avery smiled faintly and not very humorously in the darkness. "It is Jeanie he comes to see," she observed.
"Oh, obviously." Tudor's retort was so ironical as to be almost rude.
She received it in silence, and after a moment he made a half-grudging amendment.
"He never showed any interest in Jeanie before, you know. I don't think she is the sole attraction."
"No?" said Avery.
Her response was perfectly courteous, but so vague that it sounded to Lennox Tudor as if she were thinking of something else. He clenched his hand hard upon the handle of his whip.
"People tolerate him for the sake of his position," he said bitterly. "But to my mind he is insufferable. His father was a scapegrace, as everyone knows. His mother was a circus girl. And his grandmother--an Italian--was divorced by Sir Beverley before they had been married two years."
"Oh!" Avery emerged from her vagueness and turned towards him. "Lady Evesham was Italian, was she? That accounts for his appearance, doesn't it? That air of the old Roman patrician about him; you must have noticed it?"
"He's handsome enough," admitted Tudor.
"Oh, very handsome," said Avery. "I should say that for that type his face was almost faultless. I wondered where he got it from. Sir Beverley is patrician too, but in a different way." She stopped to bow to a tall, gaunt lady at the side of the road. "That is Miss Whalley. Didn't you see her? I expect she has just come from the Vicarage. She was going to discuss the scheme for the Christmas decorations with the Vicar."
"She's good at scheming," growled Tudor.
Avery became silent again. At the Vicarage gates however very suddenly and sweetly she spoke. "Dr. Tudor, forgive me,--but isn't it rather a pity to let oneself get intolerant? It does spoil life so."
He looked at her. "There's not much in my life that could spoil," he said gloomily.
She laughed a little, but not derisively. "But there's always something, isn't there? Have you no sense of humour?"
He pulled up at the Vicarage gates. "I have a sense of the ridiculous," he said bluntly. "And I detest it in the person of Miss Whalley."
"I believe you detest a good many people," Avery said, as she descended.
He laughed himself at that. "But I am capable of appreciating the few," he said. "Mind the step! And don't trouble to wait for me! I've got to tie this animal up."
He stopped to do so, and Avery opened the gate and walked slowly up the path.
At the porch she paused to await him, and turned her face for a moment to the darkening sky. But the Star of Hope was veiled.


CHAPTER XII
A PAIR OF GLOVES

"Piers! Where the devil are you, Piers?"
There was loud exasperation in the query as Sir Beverley halted in the doorway of his grandson's bedroom.
There was a moment's pause; then Victor the valet came quickly forward.
"But, _Monsieur Pierre_, he bathe himself," he explained, with beady eyes running over the gaunt old figure in the entrance.
Sir Beverley growled at him inarticulately and turned away.
A moment later he was beating a rousing tattoo on the bathroom-door. "Piers! Let me in! Do you hear? Let me in!"
The vigorous splashing within came to a sudden stop. "That you, sir?" called Piers.
"Of course it's me!" shouted back Sir Beverley, shaking the door with fierce impatience. "Damn it, let me in! I'll force the door if you don't."
"No, don't, sir; don't! I'm coming!"
There came the sound of a splashing leap, and bare feet raced across the bathroom floor. The door was wrenched from Sir Beverley's grasp, and flung open. Piers, quite naked, stood back and bowed him in with elaborate ceremony.
Sir Beverley entered and glared at him.
Piers shut the door and took a flying jump back into the bath. The room was dense with steam.
"You don't mind if I go on with my wash, do you?" he said. "I shall be late for dinner if I don't."
"What in thunder do you want to boil yourself like this for?" demanded Sir Beverley.
Piers, seated with his hands clasped round his knees, looked up with the smile of an infant. "It suits my constitution, sir," he said. "I freeze myself in the morning and boil myself at night--always. By that means I am rendered impervious to all atmospheric changes of temperature."
"You're a fool, Piers," said Sir Beverley.
Piers laughed, a gay, indifferent laugh. "That all?" he said lightly.
"No, it isn't all." Sir Beverley's voice had a curious forced ring, almost as if he were stern in spite of himself. "I came to ask--and I mean to know--" He broke off. "What the devil have you done to your shoulders?"
Piers' hands unlocked as if at the touch of a spring. He slipped down backwards into the bath and lay with the water lapping round his black head. His eyes, black also, and very straight and resolute, looked up at Sir Beverley.
"Look here, sir; if there's anything you want to know I'll tell you after dinner. I thought--possibly--you'd come to shake hands, or I shouldn't have been in such a hurry to let you in. As it is,--"
"Confound you, Piers!" broke in Sir Beverley. "Don't preach to me! Sit up again! Do you hear? Sit up, and let me look at you!"
But Piers made no movement to comply. "No, sir; thanks all the same. I don't want to be looked at. Do you mind going now? I'm going to splash."
His tone was deliberately jaunty, but it held undoubted determination. He kept his eyes unswervingly on his grandfather's face.
Sir Beverley stood his ground, however, his black brows fiercely drawn. "Get up, Piers!" he ordered, his tone no longer blustering, but curtly peremptory. "Get up, do you hear?" he added with a gleam of humour. "You may as well give in at once, you young mule. You'll have to in the end."
"Shall I?" said Piers.
And then suddenly his own sense of humour was kindled again, and he uttered his boyish laugh.
"We won't quarrel about it, what?" he said, and stretched a wet hand upwards. "Let's consider the incident closed! There's nothing whatever to be fashed about."
Sir Beverley's thin lips twitched a little. He pulled at the hand, and slowly Piers yielded. The water dripped from his shoulders. They gleamed in the strong light like a piece of faultless statuary, godlike, superbly strong. But it was upon no splendour of form that Sir Beverley's attention was focussed.
He spoke after a moment, an odd note of contrition in his voice. "I didn't mean to mark you like that, boy. It was your own doing of course. You shouldn't have interfered with me. Still--"
"Oh, rats!" said Piers, beginning to splash. "What's a whacking more or less when you're used to 'em?"
His dark eyes laughed their impudent dismissal to the old man. It was very evident that he desired to put an end to the matter, and after a moment Sir Beverley grunted and withdrew.
He had not asked what he wanted to know; somehow it had not been possible. He had desired to put his question in a whirl of righteous indignation, but in some fashion Piers had disarmed him and it had remained unuttered.
The very sight of the straight, young figure had quenched the fire of his wrath. Confound the boy! Did he think he could insult him as he had insulted him only that afternoon and then twist him round his little finger? He would have it out with him presently. He would have the truth and no compromise, if he had to wring it out of him. He would--Again the vision of those strong young shoulders, with red stripes crossing their gleaming white surface, rose before Sir Beverley. He swore a strangled oath. No, he hadn't meant to punish the boy to that extent, his infernal impudence notwithstanding. It wasn't the first time he had thrashed him, and, egad, it mightn't be the last. But he hadn't meant to administer quite such a punishment as that. It was decent of the young rascal not to sulk after it, though he wasn't altogether sure that he approved of the light fashion with which Piers had elected to treat the whole episode. It looked as if he had not wholly taken to heart the lesson Sir Beverley had intended to convey, and if that were the case--again Sir Beverley swore deep in his soul--he was fully equal to repeating it, ay, and again repeating it, until the youngster came to heel. He never had endured any nonsense from Piers, and, by Gad, he never would!
With these reflections he stumped downstairs, and seated himself on the black, oaken settle in the hall to await the boy's advent.
The fire blazed cheerily, flinging ruddy gleams upon the shining suits of armour, roaring up the chimney in a sheet of flame. Sir Beverley sat facing the stairs, the grim lines hardened to implacability about his mouth, his eyes fixed in a stare that had in it something brutal. He was seeing again that slim, straight figure of womanhood standing in his path, with arms outstretched, and white, determined face upraised, barring the way.
"Curse her!" he growled. "Curse 'em all!"
The vision grew before his gaze of hate; and now she was no longer standing between him and a mere, defenceless animal. But there, on his own stairs, erect and fearless, she withstood him, while behind her, descending with a laugh on his lips and worship in his eyes, came Piers.
The stone-grey eyes became suffused; for a few, whirling moments of bewilderment and fury, they saw all things red. Then, gradually, the mist cleared, and the old man dropped back in a lounging posture with an ugly sound in his throat that was like a snarl. Doubtless that was her game; doubtless--doubtless! He had always known that a day would come when something of the kind would happen. Piers was young, wealthy, handsome,--a catch for any woman; but--fiercely he swore it--he should fall a prey to no schemer. When he married--as marry eventually he must--he should make an alliance of which any man might be proud. The Evesham blood should mix with none but the highest. In Piers he would see the father's false step counteracted. He thanked Heaven that he had never been able to detect in the boy any trace of the piece of cheap prettiness that had given him birth. He might have been his own son, son of the woman who had been the rapture and the ruin of his life. There were times when Sir Beverley almost wished he had been, albeit in the bitterness of his soul he had never had any love for the child she had borne him.
He had never wanted to love Piers either, but somehow the matter had not rested with him. From the arms of Victor, Piers had always yearned to his grandfather, wailing lustily till he found himself held to the hard old heart that had nought but harshness and intolerance for all the world beside. He had as it were taken that unwilling heart by storm, claiming it as his right before he was out of his cradle. And later the attachment between them had grown and thriven, for Piers had never relinquished the