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

level. "I haven't killed him really, have I?"
No one answered him. They were crowding round the fallen man, stooping over him with awe-struck whispering, straightening the crumpled, inert limbs, trying to place the heavy frame in a natural posture.
The boy pressed forward to look, but abruptly his supporter caught him by the shoulder and pulled him back.
"No, no!" he said in a sharp undertone. "You're no good here. Get out of it! Put on your clothes and--go!"
He spoke urgently. The boy stared at him, suffering the compelling hand. All the fight had gone completely out of him. He was passive with the paralysis of a great horror.
The farmer helped him into his clothes, and himself removed the blood-stain from the lad's dazed face. "Don't be a fool!" he urged. "Pull yourself together and clear out! This thing was an accident. I'll engineer it."
"Accident!" The boy straightened himself sharply with the movement of one brought roughly to his senses. "I suppose the throw broke his neck," he said. "But it was no accident. I did it on purpose. I told him I should probably kill him, but he would have it." He turned and squarely faced the other. "I don't know what I ought to do," he said, speaking more collectedly. "But I'm certainly not going to bolt."
The farmer nodded with brief comprehension. He had the steady eyes of a man accustomed to the wide spaces of the earth. "That's all right," he said, and took him firmly by the arm. "You come with me. My name is Crowther. We'll have a talk outside. There's more room there. You've got to listen to reason. Come!"
He almost dragged the boy away with the words. No one intercepted or spoke a word to delay them. Together they passed back through the empty drinking-saloon--the boy with his colourless face and set lips, the man with his resolute, far-seeing eyes--and so into the dim roadway beyond.
They left the lights of the reeking bar behind. The spacious night closed in upon them.


PART I
THE GATES OF BRASS


CHAPTER I
A JUG OF WATER

It was certainly not Caesar's fault. Caesar was as well-meaning a Dalmatian as ever scampered in the wake of a cantering horse. And if Mike in his headlong Irish fashion chose to regard the scamper as a gross personal insult, that was surely not a matter for which he could reasonably be held responsible. And yet it was upon the luckless Caesar that the wrath of the gods descended as a consequence of Mike's wrong-headed deductions.
It began with a rush and a snarl from the Vicarage gate and it had developed into a set and deadly battle almost before either of the combatants had fully realized the other.
The rider drew rein, yelling furiously; but his yells were about as effectual as the wail of an infant. Neither animal was so much as aware of his existence in those moments of delirious warfare. They were locked already in that silent, swaying grip which every fighting dog with any knowledge of the great game seeks to establish, to break which mere humans may put forth their utmost strength in vain.
The struggle was a desperate and a bloody one, and it speedily became apparent to the rider that he would have to dismount if he intended to put an end to it.
Fiercely he flung himself off his horse and threw the reins over the Vicarage gate-post. Then, riding-crop in hand, he approached the swaying fighting animals. It was like a ghastly wrestling-match. Both were on their feet, struggling to and fro, each with jaws hard gripped upon the other's neck, each silent save for his spasmodic efforts to breathe.
"Stop it, damn you!" shouted the rider, slashing at them with the zeal of unrestrained fury. "Caesar, you infernal brute, stop it, will you? I'll kill you if you don't!"
But Caesar was deaf to all threats and quite unconscious of the fact that his master and not his enemy was responsible for the flail-like strokes of the whirling lash. They shifted from beneath it instinctively, but they fought deliriously on.
And at that the man with the whip completely lost his self-control. He set to work to thrash and thrash the fighting animals till one or other of them--or himself--should become exhausted.
It developed into a horrible competition organized and conducted by the man's blind fury, and in what fashion it would have ended it would be hard to say. But, luckily for all three, there came at length an interruption. Someone--a woman--came swiftly out of the Vicarage garden carrying a bedroom jug. She advanced without a pause upon the seething, infuriated group.
"It's no good beating them," she said, in a voice which, though somewhat hurried, was one of clear command. "Get out of the way, and be ready to catch your dog when they come apart!"
The man glanced round for an instant, his face white with passion. "I'll kill the brutes!" he declared.
"Indeed you won't," she returned promptly. "Stand away now or you will be drenched!"
As she spoke she raised her jug above the struggling animals. Her face also shone white in the wintry dusk, but her actions denoted unwavering resolution.
"Now!" she said; and, since he would not move, she flung the icy water without compunction over the dogs and him also.
"Damnation!" he cried violently. But she broke in upon him. "Quick! Quick! Now's the time! Grab your dog! I'll catch Mike!"
The urgency of the order compelled compliance. Almost in spite of himself he stooped to obey. And so it came to pass that five seconds later, Caesar was being mercilessly thrashed by his enraged master, while the real culprit was being dragged, cursing breathlessly, from the scene.
It was a brutal thrashing and wholly undeserved. Caesar, awaking to the horror of it, howled his anguish; but no amount of protest on his part made the smallest impression upon the wielder of the whip. It continued to descend upon his writhing body with crashing force till he rolled upon the ground in agony.
Even then the punishment would not have ceased, but for a second interruption. It was the woman from the Vicarage garden again; but she burst upon the scene this time with something of the effect of an avalanche. She literally whirled between the man and his victim. She caught his upraised arm.
"Oh, you brute!" she cried. "You brute!"
He stiffened in her hold. They stood face to face. Caesar crept whining and shivering to the side of the road.
Slowly the man's arm fell to his side, still caught in that quivering grasp. He spoke in a voice that struggled boyishly between resentment and shame. "The dog's my own."
Her hold relaxed. "Even a dog has his rights," she said. "Give me that whip, please!"
He looked at her oddly in the growing darkness. She was trembling as she stood, but she held her ground.
"Please!" she repeated with resolution.
With an abrupt movement he put the weapon into her hand. "Are you going to give me a taste?" he asked.
She uttered a queer little gasping laugh. "No. I--I'm not that sort. But--it's horrible to see a man lose control of himself. And to thrash a dog--like that!"
She turned sharply from him and went to the Dalmatian who crouched quaking on the path. He wagged an ingratiating tail at her approach. It was evident that in her hand the whip had no terrors for him. He crept fawning to her feet.
She stooped over him, fondling his head. "Oh, poor boy! Poor boy!" she said.
The dog's master came and stood beside her. "He'll be all right," he said, in a tone of half-surly apology.
"I'm afraid Mike has bitten him," she said. "See!" displaying a long, dark streak on Caesar's neck.
"He'll be all right," repeated Caesar's master. "I hope your dog is none the worse."
"No, I don't think so," she said. "But don't you think we ought to bathe this?"
"I'll take him home," he said. "They'll see to him at the stables."
She stood up, a slim, erect figure, the whip still firmly grasped in her hand. "You won't thrash him any more, will you?" she said.
He gave a short laugh. "No, you have cooled me down quite effectually. I'm much obliged to you for interfering. And I'm sorry I used language, but as the circumstances were exceptional, I hope you will make allowances."
His tone was boyish still, but all the resentment had gone out of it. There was a touch of arrogance in his bearing which was obviously natural to him, but his apology was none the less sincere.
The slim figure on the path made a slight movement of dismay. "But you must be drenched to the skin!" she said. "I was forgetting. Won't you come in and get dry?"
He hunched his shoulders expressively. "No, thanks. It was my own fault, as you kindly omit to mention. I must be getting back to the Abbey. My grandfather is expecting me. He fidgets if I'm late."
He raised a hand to his cap, and would have turned away, but she made a swift gesture of surprise, which arrested him. "Oh, you are young Mr. Evesham!--I beg your pardon--you are Mr. Evesham! I thought I must have seen you before!"
He stopped with a laugh. "I am commonly called 'Master Piers' in this neighbourhood. They won't let me grow up. Rather a shame, what? I'm nearly twenty-five, and the head-keeper still refers to me in private as 'that dratted boy.'"
She laughed for the first time. Possibly he had angled for that laugh. "Yes, it is a shame!" she agreed. "But then Sir Beverley is rather old, isn't he? No doubt it's the comparison that does it."
"He isn't old," said Piers Evesham in sharp contradiction. "He's only seventy-four. That's not old for an Evesham. He'll go for another twenty years. There's a saying in our family that if we don't die violently, we never die at all." He pulled himself up abruptly. "I've given you my name and history. Won't you tell me yours?"
She hesitated momentarily. "I am only the mother's help at the Vicarage," she said then.
"By Jove! I don't envy you." He looked at her with frank interest notwithstanding. "I suppose you do it for a living," he remarked. "Personally, I'd sooner sweep a crossing than live in the same house with that mouthing parson."
"Hush!" she said, but her lips smiled as she said it, a small smile that would not be denied. "I must go in now. Here you are!" She gave him back his whip. "Good-bye! Get home quick--and change!"
He turned half-reluctantly; then paused. "You might tell me your name anyway," he said.
She had begun to move away, light-footed, swift as a bird. She also paused.
"My name is Denys," she said.
He put his hand to his cap again. "Miss Denys?"
"No. Mrs. Denys. Good-bye!"
She was gone. He heard the light feet running up the wet gravel drive and then the quick opening of a door. It closed again immediately, with decision, and he stood alone in the wintry dusk.
Caesar crept to him and grovelled abjectly in the mud. The young man stood motionless, staring at the Vicarage gates, a slight frown between his brows. He was not tall, but he had the free pose of an athlete and the bearing of a prince.
Suddenly he glanced down at his cringing companion and broke into a laugh. "Get up, Caesar, you fool! And think yourself lucky that you've got any sound bones left! You'd have been reduced to a jelly by this time if I'd had my way."
He bent with careless good-nature, and patted the miscreant; then turned towards his horse.
"Poor