CHAPTER XXVIII
THE EVESHAM DEVIL
"Confound the boy!" said Sir Beverley.
He rose up from the black oak settle in the hall with a jerky movement ofirritation, and tramped to the front-door.
It had been one of those strange soft days that sometimes come in themidst of blustering March storms, and though the sun had long gone downthe warmth still lingered. It might have been an evening in May.
He opened the great door with an impatient hand. What on earth was theboy doing? Had he gone love-making to Wardenhurst? A grim smile touchedthe old man's grim lips as this thought occurred to him. That he was notwasting his time nearer home he was fairly convinced; for only thatmorning he had heard from Lennox Tudor that the mother's help at theVicarage, over whom in the winter Piers had been inclined to make a foolof himself, had taken one of the children away for a change. It seemedmore than probable by this time that Piers' wandering fancy had whollyceased to stray in her direction, but the news of her absence had causedSir Beverley undoubted satisfaction. He hoped his boy would not encounterthat impertinent, scheming woman again until he was safely engaged to InaRose. That this engagement was imminent Sir Beverley was fully convinced.His only wonder was that it had not taken place sooner. The two had beenthrown together almost daily during the sojourn of Colonel Rose and hisdaughter at Mentone, and they had always seemed to enjoy each other'ssociety. Of course Sir Beverley did not like the girl. He activelydisliked the whole female species. But she belonged to the county, andshe seemed moreover to be a normal healthy young woman who would be themother of normal healthy children. And this was the sort of wife Pierswanted. For Piers--drat the boy!--was not normal. He inherited a gooddeal of his Italian grandmother's temperament as well as her beauty. Andlife was not likely to be a very easy matter for him in consequence.
But an ordinary young English wife of his own rank would be a step inthe right direction. So reasoned Sir Beverley, who had taken that fatalstep in the wrong one in his youth and had never recovered the groundthus lost.
Standing there at the open door, he dwelt upon his boy's future with akind of grim pleasure that was not unmixed with heartache. He and hiswife would have to go and live at the Dower House of course. No femininetruck at the Abbey for him! But the lad should continue to manage theestate with him. That would bring them in contact every day. He couldn'tdo without that much. The evenings would be lonely enough. He picturedthe long silent dinners with a weary frown. How infernally lonely theAbbey could be!
The steady tick of the clock in the corner forced itself upon his notice.He swore at it under his breath, and went out upon the steps.
At the same instant a view-halloo from the dark avenue greeted him, andin spite of himself his face softened.
"Hullo, you rascal!" he shouted back. "What the devil are you up to?"
Piers came running up, light-footed and alert. "I've been unlucky,"he explained. "Had two punctures. I left the car at the garage andcame on as quickly as I could. I say, I'm awfully sorry. I've beenwith Dick Guyes."
Sir Beverley growled inarticulately, and turned inwards. So he had notbeen to the Roses' after all!
"Get along with you!" he said. "And dress as fast as you can!"
And Piers bounded past him and went up the stairs in three great leaps.He seemed to have grown younger during the few days that had elapsedsince their return, more ardent, more keenly alive. The English springseemed to exhilarate him; but for the first time Sir Beverley began tohave his doubts as to the reason for his evident pleasure in returning.What on earth had he been to see Guyes for? Guyes of all people--who waswell-known as one of Miss Ina's most devoted adorers!
It was evident that the news he desired to hear would not be imparted tohim that night, and Sir Beverley considered himself somewhat aggrieved inconsequence. He was decidedly short with Piers when he reappeared--a factwhich in no way disturbed his grandson's equanimity. He talked cheerycommonplaces throughout dinner without effort, regardless of SirBeverley's discouraging attitude, and it was not till dessert was placedupon the table that he allowed his conversational energies to flag.
Then indeed, as David finally and ceremoniously withdrew, did he suddenlyseem to awake to the fact that conversation was no longer a vitalnecessity, and forthwith dropped into an abrupt, uncompromising silence.
It lasted for a space of minutes during which neither of them stirred oruttered a syllable, becoming at length ominous as the electric stillnessbefore the storm.
They came through it characteristically, Sir Beverley staring fixedlybefore him under the frown that was seldom wholly absent from his face;Piers, steady-eyed and intent, keenly watching the futile agonies of anight-moth among the candles. There was about him a massive, statuesquelook in vivid contrast to the pulsing vitality of a few minutes before.
It was Sir Beverley who broke the silence at last with a species ofinarticulate snarl peculiarly his own. Piers' dark eyes were instantlyupon him, but he said nothing, merely waiting for the words to which thissound was the preface.
Sir Beverley's brow was thunderous. He looked back at Piers with apiercing grim regard.
"Well?" he said. "What fool idea have you got in your brain now? Isuppose I've got to hear it sooner or later."
It was not a conciliatory speech, yet Piers received it with no visibleresentment. "I don't know that I want to say anything very special," hesaid, after a moment's thought.
"Oh, don't you?" growled Sir Beverley. "Then what are you thinking about?Tell me that!"
Piers leaned back in his chair. "I was thinking about Dick Guyes," hesaid. "He is dining at the Roses' to-night."
"Oh!" said Sir Beverley shortly.
A faint smile came at the corners of Piers' mouth. "He wants to proposeto Ina for about the hundred and ninetieth time," he said, "but doesn'tknow if he can screw himself up to it. I told him not to be such a shyass. She is only waiting for him to speak."
"Eh?" said Sir Beverley.
A queer little dancing gleam leaped up in Piers' eyes--the gleam thathad invariably heralded some piece of especial devilry in the days ofhis boyhood.
"I told him she was his for the asking, sir," he said coolly, "andpromised not to flirt with her any more till they were safely married."
"Damn you!" exclaimed Sir Beverley violently and without warning.
He had a glass of wine in front of him, and with the words his fingersgripped the stem. In another second he would have hurled the liquid fullin Piers' face; but Piers was too quick for him. Quick as lightning, hisown hand shot out across the corner of the table and grasped the oldman's wrist.
"No, sir! No!" he said sternly.
They glared into each other's eyes, and Sir Beverley uttered afurious oath; but after the first instinctive effort to free himselfhe did no more.
At the end of possibly thirty seconds Piers took his hand away. He pushedback his chair in the same movement and rose.
"Shall we talk in the library?" he said. "This room is hot."
Sir Beverley raised the wine-glass to his lips with a hand that shook,and drained it deliberately.
"Yes," he said then, "We will--talk in the library."
He got up with an agility that he seldom displayed, and turned to thedoor. As he went he glanced up suddenly at the softly mocking face on thewall, and a sharp spasm contracted his harsh features. But he scarcelypaused. Without further words he left the room; and Piers followed, lightof tread, behind him.
The study windows stood wide open to the night. Piers crossed the roomand quietly closed them. Then, without haste and without hesitation, hecame to the table and stopped before it.
"I never intended to marry Ina Rose," he said. "I was only amusingmyself--and her."
"The devil you were!" ejaculated Sir Beverley.
Piers went on with the utmost steadiness. "We are not in the leastsuited to one another, and we have the sense to realize it. The next timeGuyes asks her, I believe she will have him."
"Sense!" roared S
ir Beverley. "Do you dare to talk to me of sense,you--you blind fool? Mighty lot of sense you can boast of! And what thedevil does it matter whether you suit one another--as you call it--ornot, so long as you keep the whip-hand? You'll tell me next that you'renot--in love with her, I suppose?"
The bitterness of the last words seemed to shake him from head to foot.He looked at Piers with the memory of a past torment in his eyes. Andbecause of it Piers turned away his own.
"It's quite true, sir," he said, in a low voice. "I am not--in love withher. I never have been."
Sir Beverley's fist crashed down upon the table. "Love!" he thundered."Love! Do you want to make me sick? I tell you, sir, I would sooner seeyou in your coffin than married to a woman with whom you imaginedyourself in love. Oh, I know what you have in your mind. I've known for along time. You're caught in the toils of that stiff-necked, scheming Judyat the Vicarage, who--"
"Sir!" blazed forth Piers.
He leaned across the table with a face gone suddenly white, and struckhis own fist upon the polished oak with a passionate force that compelledattention.
Sir Beverley ceased his tirade in momentary astonishment. Such violencefrom Piers was unusual.
Instantly Piers went on speaking, his voice quick and low, quivering withthe agitation that he had no time to subdue. "I won't hear another wordon that subject! You hear me, sir? Not one word! It is sacred, and assuch I will have it treated."
But the check upon Sir Beverley was but brief, and the flame of hisanger burned all the more fiercely in consequence of it. He broke in uponthose few desperate words of Piers' with redoubled fury.
"You will have this, and you won't have that! Confound you! What thedevil do you mean? Are you master in this house, or am I?"
"I am master where my own actions are concerned," threw back Piers. "Andwhat I do--what I decide to do--is my affair alone."
Swiftly he uttered the words. His breathing came quick and short as thebreathing of a man hard pressed. He seemed to be holding back everystraining nerve with a blind force that was physical rather than mental.
He drew himself suddenly erect as he spoke. He had flung down thegauntlet of his independence at last, and with clenched hands he waitedfor the answer to his challenge.
It came upon him like a whirlwind. Sir Beverley uttered an oath that fellwith the violence of a blow, and after it a tornado of furious speechagainst which it was futile to attempt to raise any protest. He couldonly stand as it were at bay, like an animal protecting its own,fiery-veined, quivering, yet holding back from the spring.
Not for any insult to himself would he quit that attitude. He wasstriving desperately to keep his self-control. He had been within an aceof losing it, as the blood that oozed over his closed fist testified;but, for the sake of that manhood which he was seeking to assert, he madea Titanic effort to command himself.
And Sir Beverley, feeling the dumb strength that opposed him, resentingthe forbearance with which he was confronted, infuriated by theunexpected force of the boy's resistance, turned with a snarl to seizeand desecrate that which he had been warned was holy.
"As for this designing woman, I tell you, she is not for you,--not, thatis, in any honourable sense. If you choose to make a fool of her, that'syour affair. I suppose you'll sow the usual crop of wild oats beforeyou've done. But as to marrying her--"
"By God, sir!" broke in Piers passionately. "Do you imagine that Ipropose to do anything else?"
The words came from him like a cry wrung from a man in torture, and as heuttered them the last of his self-control slipped from his grasp. With aface gone suddenly devilish, he strode round the table and stood beforehis grandfather, furiously threatening.
"I have warned you!" he said, and his voice was low, sunk almost to awhisper. "You can say what you like of me. I'm used to it. But--if youspeak evil of her--I'll treat you as I would any other blackguard whodared to insult her. And now that we are on the subject, I will tell youthis. If I do not marry this woman whom I love--I swear that I willnever marry at all! That is my final word!"
He hurled the last sentence in Sir Beverley's face, and with it he wouldhave swung round upon his heel; but something in that face detained him.
Sir Beverley's eyes were shining with an icy, intolerable sparkle. Histhin lips were drawn in the dreadful semblance of a smile. He washalf-a-head taller than Piers, and he seemed to tower above him in thatmoment of conflict.
"Wait a minute!" he said. "Wait a minute!"
His right hand was feeling along the leathern surface of thewriting-table, but neither his eyes nor Piers' followed the movement.They held each other in a fixed, unalterable glare.
There followed several moments of complete and terrible silence--asilence more fraught with violence than any speech.
Then, with a slight jerk, Sir Beverley leaned towards Piers. "So," hesaid, "you defy me, do you?"
His voice was as grim as his look. A sudden, odd sense of fear wentthrough Piers. Sharply the thought ran through his mind that the sameEvesham devil possessed them both. It was as if he had caught a glimpseof the monster gibing at his elbow, goading him, goading them, both.
He made a sharp, involuntary movement; he almost flinched from thosepitiless, stony eyes.
"Ha!" Sir Beverley uttered a brief and very bitter laugh. "You've begunto think better of it, eh?"
"No, sir." Curtly Piers made answer, speaking because he must. "I meantwhat I said, and I shall stick to it. But it wasn't for the sake ofdefying you that I said it. I have a better reason than that."
He was still quivering with anger, yet because of that gibing devil athis elbow he strove to speak temperately, strove to hold back the ragingflood of fierce resentment that threatened to overwhelm him.
As for Sir Beverley, he had never attempted to control himself in momentssuch as these, and he did not attempt to do so now. Before Piers' wordswere fairly uttered, he had raised his right hand and in it a stout,two-foot ruler that he had taken from the writing-table.
"Take that then, you young dog!" he shouted, and struck Piers furiously,as he stood. "And that! And that!"
The third blow never fell. It was caught in mid-air by Piers who, witheyes that literally flamed in his white face, sprang straight at hisgrandfather, and closed with him.
There was a brief--a very brief--struggle, then a gasping oath from SirBeverley as the ruler was torn from his grasp. The next moment he wasfree and tottering blindly. Piers, with an awful smile, swung the weaponback as if he would strike him down with it. Then, as Sir Beverleyclutched instinctively at the nearest chair for support, he flungsavagely round on his heel, altering his purpose. There followed the loudcrack of rending wood as he broke the ruler passionately across his knee,putting forth all his strength, and the clatter of the falling fragmentsas he hurled them violently from him.
And then in a silence more dreadful than any speech, he strode to thedoor and went out, crashing it furiously shut behind him.
Sir Beverley, grown piteously feeble, sank down in the chair, andremained there huddled and gasping for many dragging minutes.