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

with a merciless hand, and then with whip and spur set him full at the stream.
It was a dangerous leap, for the ground on both banks was yielding and slippery. Avery stood transfixed to watch the result.
The horse made a great effort to obey his master's behests. It almost seemed as if he were furious too, Avery thought, as he pounded forward to clear the obstacle. His leap was superb, clearing the stream by a good six feet, but as he landed among the primroses disaster overtook him. It must have been a rabbit-hole, Avery reflected later; for he blundered as he touched the ground, plunged forward, and fell headlong.
There followed a few moments of sickening confusion during which the horrified spectators had time to realize that Sir Beverley was pinned under the kicking animal; then with a savage effort the great brute rolled over and struggled to his feet.
With a promptitude that spoke well for his nerve, Julian sprang forward and caught the dangling bridle. The creature tried to jib back upon his prostrate master, but he dragged him forward and held him fast.
Old Sir Beverley lay prone on the ground, in an awful stillness, with his white face turned to the sky. His eyes were fast shut, his arms flung wide, one hand still grasping the whip which he had wielded so fiercely a few seconds before.
"Is he dead?" whispered Jeanie, clinging close to Avery.
Avery gently released herself and moved forward. "No, dear, no! He--he is only stunned."
She knelt beside Sir Beverley, overcoming a horrible sensation of sickness as she did so. The whole catastrophe had been of so sudden and so violent a nature that she felt almost stunned herself.
She slipped an arm under the old man's head, and it hung upon her like a leaden weight.
"Oh, Avery, how dreadful!" exclaimed Gracie, aghast.
"Take my handkerchief!" said Avery quickly. "Run down and soak it in the stream! Mind how you go! It's very steep."
Gracie went like the wind.
Avery began with fingers that shook in spite of her utmost resolution, to try to loosen Sir Beverley's collar.
"Let me!" said Ronald, gently.
She glanced up gratefully and relinquished the task to him. Ronald was neat in all his ways.
The return of Gracie with the wet handkerchief gave her something to do, and she tenderly moistened the stark, white face. But the children's fears were crowding thick in her own heart. That awful inertness looked so terribly like death.
And then suddenly the grim lips parted and a quivering sigh passed through them.
The next moment abruptly the grey eyes opened and gazed full at Avery with a wide, glassy stare.
"What the--what the--" stammered Sir Beverley, and broke off with a hard gasp.
Avery sought to raise him higher, but his weight was too much for her even with Ronald assisting.
"Find my--flask!" jerked out Sir Beverley, with panting breath.
Ronald began to search in his pockets and finally drew it forth. He opened it and gave it to Avery who held it to the twitching lips.
Sir Beverley drank and closed his eyes. "I shall be--better soon," he said, in a choked whisper.
Avery waited, supporting him as strongly as she could, listening to the short laboured breathing with deep foreboding.
"Couldn't I run down to the Abbey for help?" suggested Julian, who had succeeded at length in tying the chafing animal to a tree.
Avery considered. "I don't know. How far is it?"
"Not more than a mile. P'r'aps I should find Piers there. I'm sure I'd better go," the boy urged, with his eyes on the deathly face.
And after a moment Avery agreed with him. "Yes, I think perhaps you'd better. Gracie and Pat might go for Dr. Tudor meanwhile. I do hope you will find Piers. Tell him to bring two men, and something that they can carry him on. Jeanie dear, you run home to your mother and tell her how it is that we shall be late for tea. You won't startle her, I know."
They fell in with her desires at once. There was not one of them who would not have done anything for her. And so they scattered, departing upon their several missions, leaving Ronald only to share her vigil by the old Squire's side.
For a long time after their departure, there was no change in Sir Beverley's state. He lay propped against Avery's arm and Ronald's knee breathing quickly, with painful effort, through his parted lips. He kept his eyes closed, but they knew that he was conscious by the heavy frown that drew his forehead. Once Avery offered him more brandy, but he refused it impatiently, and she desisted.
The deathly pallor had, however, begun to give place to a more natural hue, and as the minutes passed his breathing gradually grew less distressed. Once more his eyes opened, and he stared into Avery's face.
"Help me--to sit up!" he commanded.
They did their best, he struggling with piteously feeble efforts to help himself. Finally he managed to drag himself to a leaning position on one elbow, though for several seconds thereafter his gasping was terrible to hear.
Avery saw his lips move several times before any sound came from them. At length, "Send--that boy--away!" he gasped out.
Avery and Ronald looked at each other, and the boy got to his feet with an undecided air.
"Do you hear? Go!" rapped out Sir Beverley.
"Shall I, Avery?" whispered Ronald.
She nodded. "Yes, just a little way! I'll call you if I want you."
And half-reluctantly Ronald obeyed.
"Has he gone?" asked Sir Beverley.
"Yes." Avery remained on her knees beside him. He looked as if he might collapse at any moment.
For awhile he lay struggling for breath with his face towards the ground; then very suddenly his strength seemed to return. He raised his head and regarded her piercingly.
"You," he said curtly, "are the young woman who refused to marry my grandson."
The words were so totally unexpected that Avery literally gasped with astonishment. To be taken to task on this subject was an ordeal for which she was wholly unprepared.
"Well?" he said irritably. "That is so, I believe? You did refuse to marry him?"
"Yes," Avery admitted, feeling the hot colour flood her face under the merciless scrutiny of the stone-grey eyes.
"But--but--"
"Well?" he said again, still more irritably. "But what?"
"Oh, need we discuss it?" she said appealingly. "I would so much rather not."
"I desire to discuss it," said Sir Beverley autocratically. "I desire to know--what objection you have to my grandson. Many women, let me tell you, of far higher social standing than yourself would jump at such a chance. But you--you take upon yourself to refuse it. I desire to know why."
He spoke with a stubbornness that overbore all bodily weakness. He would be a tyrant to his last breath.
But Avery could not bring herself to answer him. She felt as if he were trying to force his way into a place which regarded as peculiarly sacred, from which in some fashion she owed it to Piers as well as to herself to bar him out.
"I am sorry," she said gently after a moment, "but I am afraid that is just what I can't tell you."
She saw Sir Beverley's chin thrust out at just the indomitable angle with which Piers had made her familiar, and she realized that he had no intention of abandoning his point.
"You told him, I suppose?" he demanded gruffly.
A faint sense of amusement arose within her, her anxiety notwithstanding. It struck her as ludicrous that she should be browbeaten on this point.
She made answer with more assurance. "I told him that the idea was unsuitable, out of the question, that he ought to marry a girl of his own age and station--not a middle-aged widow like me."
"Pshaw!" exclaimed Sir Beverley impatiently. "You belong to the same generation, don't you? What more do you want?"
If he had slapped her face, Avery would scarcely have felt more amazed, She gazed at him in silence, wondering if she could have heard aright.
Sir Beverley frowned upon her fiercely, the iron will of him scorning and surmounting his physical weakness.
"You've got nothing against the boy, I suppose?" he pursued, with the evident determination to get at the truth despite all opposition. "He has never given you any cause for complaint? He's behaved himself like a gentleman, hey?"
"Oh, of course, of course!" Avery said in distress. "It's not that!"
Sir Beverley frowned still more heavily. "Then--what the devil is it?" he demanded. "Don't you like him well enough? Aren't you--in love with him?" His lips curled ironically over the words; they sounded inexpressibly bitter.
Avery's eyes fell before his pitiless stare. She began with fingers that trembled to pluck the primroses that grew in a large tuft close to her, saying no word.
"Well?" said Sir Beverley, with growing impatience.
She kept her eyes lowered, for she felt she could not meet his look as she made reluctant answer. "No, it is not either. In fact, if I were a girl--I had not been married before--I think I should say Yes. But--but--" she paused, searching for words, striving to restrain a rising agitation, "as it is, I don't think it would be quite fair to him. I don't know if I could make him happy. I am not young enough, fresh enough, gay enough. I can't offer him a girl's first love, and that is what he ought to have. I so want him to have the best. I so want him to be happy."
The words were out with a rush, almost before she was aware of uttering them, and suddenly her eyes were full of tears, tears that caught her off her guard, so that she had neither time nor strength to check them. She turned quickly from him, fighting for self-control.
Sir Beverley uttered a grunt that might have denoted either surprise or disgust, and there followed a silence that she found peculiarly difficult to bear.
"So," he said at last, in a tone that was strictly devoid of feeling, "you care for him too much to marry him? Is that it?"
It sounded preposterous, but she was still too near tears for any sense of humour to penetrate her distress. She felt as if he had remorselessly wrested from her and dragged to light a treasure upon which she herself had scarcely dared to look. She continued feverishly to pluck the pale flowers that grew all about them, her eyes fixed upon her task.
With a growling effort, Sir Beverley raised himself, thrust forward a quivering hand and gripped hers.
Startled, she turned towards him, meeting not hostility but a certain grim kindliness in the hard old eyes.
"Will you honour me with your attention for a moment?" he asked, with ironical courtesy.
"I am attending," she answered meekly.
"Then," he said, dropping all pretence at courtesy without further ceremony, "permit me to say that if you don't marry my grandson, you'll be a bigger fool than I take you for. And in my opinion, a sober-minded woman like you who will see to his comfort and be faithful to him is more likely to make him happy than any of your headlong, flighty girls."
He stopped; but he did not relinquish his hold upon her. There was to Avery something oddly pathetic in the close grasp of those unsteady fingers. It was as if they made an appeal which he would have scorned to utter.
"You really wish me to marry him?" she said.
He snarled at her like a surly dog. "Wish it? I! Good Heavens above, if I had my way I'd never let him marry at all! But unfortunately circumstances demand it; and the boy