The Bars of Iron - Ethel May Dell (top novels .txt) 📗

adventurous eyes. As she had told Piers, she was not a bit afraid. After the briefest pause she held out her hand with charming _insouciance_.
"How do you do?" she said.
Sir Beverley slowly took the hand, and pulled her towards him, gazing at her from under his black brows with a piercing scrutiny that would have terrified a more timid child.
Timidity however was not one of Gracie's weaknesses. She gave him a friendly smile, and waited without the smallest sign of uneasiness for him to speak.
"What have you come here for?" he demanded gruffly at length.
"I'll tell you," said Gracie readily. She went close to him, confidingly close, looking straight into the formidable grey eyes. "You see, it was my idea. Pat didn't want to come, but I made him."
"Forward young minx!" commented Sir Beverley.
Gracie laughed at the compliment.
Piers, smoking his cigarette behind her, stood ready to take her part, but quite obviously she was fully equal to the occasion.
"Yes, I know," she agreed, with disarming amiability. "But it wouldn't have mattered a bit if you hadn't found out who it was. You won't tell anyone, will you?"
"Why not?" demanded Sir Beverley.
Gracie pulled down her red lips, and cast up her dancing eyes. "There'd be such a scandal," she said.
Piers broke into an involuntary laugh, and Sir Beverley's thin lips twitched in a reluctant smile.
"You're a saucy little baggage!" he observed. "Well, get on! Let's hear what you've come for! Cadging money, I'll be bound."
Gracie nodded in eager confirmation of this suggestion. "That's just it!" she said. "And that's where the scandal would come in if you told. You see, poor children can go round squalling carols to their hearts' content for pennies, but children like us who want pennies just as much haven't any way of getting them. We mayn't carry hand-bags, or open carriage-doors, or turn cart-wheels, or--or do anything to earn a living. It's hard luck, you know."
"Beastly shame!" said Piers.
Sir Beverley scowled at him. "You needn't stick your oar in. Go and shut the window, do you hear? Now, child, let's have the truth, so far as any female is capable of speaking it! You've come here for pennies, you say. Don't you know that's a form of begging? And begging is breaking the law."
"I often do that," said Grade, quite undismayed. "So would you, if you were me. I expect you did too when you were young."
"I!" Sir Beverley uttered a harsh laugh, and released the child's hand. "So you break the law, do you?" he said. "How often?"
Gracie's laugh followed his like a silvery echo. "I shan't tell you 'cos you're a magistrate. But we weren't really begging, Pat and I. At least it wasn't for ourselves."
"Oh, of course not!" said Sir Beverley.
She looked at him with her clear eyes, unconscious of irony. "No. We wanted to buy a pair of gloves for someone for Christmas. And nice gloves cost such a lot, don't they? And we hadn't got more than tenpence-halfpenny among us. So I said I'd think of a plan to get more. And--that was the plan," ended Grade, with her sweetest smile.
"I see," said Sir Beverley, with his eyes still fixed immovably upon her. "And what made you come here?"
"Oh, we came here just because of Piers," said Grade, without hesitation. "You see, he's a great friend of ours."
"Is he?" said Sir Beverley. "And so you think you'll get what you can out of him, eh?"
"Sir!" said Piers sharply.
"Be quiet, Piers!" ordered his grandfather testily. "Who spoke to you? Well, madam, continue! How much do you consider him good for?"
Piers pulled a coin impetuously from his pocket and slapped it down on the table in front of Grade. "There you are, Pixie!" he said. "I'm good for that."
Gracie stared at the coin with widening eyes, not offering to touch it.
"Oh, Piers!" she said, with a long indrawn breath. "It's a whole sovereign! Oh no!"
He laughed a reckless laugh, while over her head his eyes challenged his grandfather's. "That's all right, Piccaninny," he said lightly. "Put it in your pocket! And I'll come round with the car to-morrow and run you into Wardenhurst to buy those gloves."
But Gracie shook her head. "Gloves don't cost all that," she said practically. "And besides, you won't have any left for yourself. Fancy giving away a whole sovereign at a time!" She addressed Sir Beverley. "It seems almost a tempting of Providence, doesn't it!"
"The deed of a fool!" said Sir Beverley.
But Piers, with a sudden hardening of the jaw, stooped over Gracie. "Take it!" he said. "I wish it."
She looked up at him. "No, Piers; I mustn't really. It's ever so nice of you." She rubbed her golden head against his shoulder caressingly. "Please don't be cross! I do thank you--awfully. But I don't want it. Really, I don't."
"Rot!" said Piers. "Do as I tell you! Take it!"
Gracie turned to Sir Beverley. "I can't, can I? Tell him I can't!"
But Piers was not to be thwarted. With a sudden dive he seized the coin and without ceremony swept Gracie's hair from her shoulders and dropped it down the back of her neck.
"There!" he said, slipping his hands over her arms and holding her while she squealed and writhed. "It's quite beyond reach. You can't in decency return it now. It's no good wriggling. You won't get it up again unless you stand on your head."
"You're horrid--horrid!" protested Gracie; but she reached back and kissed him notwithstanding. "Thank you ever so much. I hope I shan't lose it. But I don't know what I shall do with it all. It's quite dreadful to think of. Please don't be cross with him!" she said to Sir Beverley. "It's--awfully--kind."
Sir Beverley smiled sardonically. "And whom are the gloves for? Some other kind youth?"
"Oh no!" she laughed. "Only Aunt Avery. She tore hers all to bits this afternoon. I expect it was over a dog fight or something, but she wouldn't tell us what. They were nice gloves too. She isn't a bit rich, but she always wears nice gloves."
"Being a woman!" growled Sir Beverley.
"Don't you like women?" asked Gracie sympathetically. "I like men best too as a rule. But Aunt Avery is so very sweet. No one could help loving her, could they, Piers?"
"Have an orange!" said Piers, pulling the dish towards him.
"Oh, thank you, I mustn't stop," Gracie turned to Sir Beverley and lifted her bright face. "Good-bye! Thank you for being so kind."
There was no irony in her thanks, and even he could scarcely refuse the friendly offer of her lips. He stooped and grimly received her farewell salute on his cheek.
Piers loaded her with as many oranges as she could carry, and they finally departed through the great hall which Gracie surveyed with eyes of reverent admiration.
"It's as big as a church," she said, in an awed whisper.
Sir Beverley followed them to the front-door, and saw them out into the night. Gracie waved an ardent farewell from her perch on Piers' shoulder, and he heard the merry childish laugh more than once after they had passed from sight.
The night air was chilly, and he turned inwards at length with an inarticulate growl, and shut the door.
Heavily he tramped across to the old carved settle before the fire, and dropped down upon it, his whole bearing expressive of utter weariness.
David came in with stealthy footfall and softly replenished the fire.
"Shall I bring the coffee, Sir Beverley?" he asked him.
"No," said Sir Beverley. "I'll ring."
And David effaced himself without sound.
Half an hour passed, and Sir Beverley still sat there motionless as a statue, with thin lips drawn in a single bitter line, and eyes that gazed aloofly at the fire. The silence was intense. The hall seemed desolate as a vault. Over in a corner a grandfather's clock ticked the seconds away--slowly, monotonously, as though very weary of its task.
Suddenly in the distance there came a faint sound, the opening of a door; and a breath of night-air, pure and cold, blew in across the stillness. In a moment there followed a light, elastic step, and Piers came into view at the other end of the hall. He moved swiftly as though he trod air. His head was thrown back, his face rapt and intent as though he saw a vision. He did not see the lonely figure sitting there before the hearth, but turned aside ere he neared it and entered an unlighted room, shutting himself gently in.
Again the silence descended, but only for a few seconds. Then softly it was dispelled, as through it there stole the tender, passionate-sweet harmonies of a Chopin nocturne.
At the first note Sir Beverley started, almost winced as at the sudden piercing of a nerve. Then as the music continued, he leaned rigidly back again and became as still as before.
Very softly the music thrilled through the silence. It might have come from somewhere very far away. There was something almost unearthly about it, a depth and a mystery that seemed to spread as it were invisible wings, filling the place with dim echoes of the Divine.
It died away at last into a silence like the hush of prayer. And then the still figure of the old man before the fire became suddenly vitalized. He sat up abruptly and seized with impatience a small hand-bell from the table beside him.
David made his discreet appearance with the coffee almost at the first tinkle.
"Coffee!" his master flung at him. "And fetch Master Piers!"
David set down the tray at his master's elbow, and turned to obey the second behest. But the door of the drawing-room opened ere he reached it, and Piers came out. His dark eyes were shining. He whistled softly as he came.
David stood respectfully on one side, and Piers passed him like a man in a dream. He came to his grandfather, and threw himself on to the settle by his side in silence.
"Well?" said Sir Beverley. "You took that chattering monkey back, I suppose?"
Piers started and seemed to awake. "Oh yes, I got her safely home. We had to dodge the Reverend Stephen. But it was all right. She and the boy got in without being caught."
He stirred his coffee thoughtfully, and fell silent again.
"You'd better go to bed," said Sir Beverley abruptly.
Piers looked up, meeting the hard grey eyes with the memory of his dream still lingering in his own.
Slowly the dream melted. He began to smile. "I think I'd better," he said. "I'm infernally sleepy, and it's getting late." He drank off his coffee and rose. "You must be pretty tired yourself, sir," he remarked. "Time you trotted to bed too."
He moved round to the back of the settle and paused, looking down at the thick white hair with a curious expression of hesitancy in his eyes.
"Oh, go on! Go on!" said Sir Beverley irritably. "What are you waiting for?"
Piers stooped impulsively in response, his hand on the old man's shoulder, and kissed him on the forehead.
"Good-night, sir!" he said softly.
The action was purely boyish. It pleaded for tolerance. Sir Beverley jerked his head impatiently, but he did not repulse him.
"There! Be off with you!" he said. "Go to bed and behave yourself! Good-night, you scamp! Good-night!"
And Piers went from him lightfooted, a smile upon his lips. He knew that his tacit overture for peace had been accepted for the time at least.


CHAPTER XIII
THE VISION

It was growing very dark in the little church, almost too dark to see the carving of the choir-stalls, and Avery gave