_ PART I. THE GATES OF BRASS CHAPTER II. CONCERNING FOOLS
In the huge, oak-panelled hall of the Abbey, Sir Beverley Evesham sat alone.
A splendid fire of logs blazed before him on the open hearth, and the light from a great chandelier beat mercilessly down upon him. His hair was thick still and silvery white. He had the shoulders of a strong man, albeit they were slightly bowed. His face, clean-shaven, aristocratic, was the colour of old ivory. The thin lips were quite bloodless. They had a downward, bitter curve, as though they often sneered at life. The eyes were keen as a bird's, stone-grey under overhanging black brows.
He held a newspaper in one bony hand, but he was not apparently reading, for his eyes were fixed. The shining suits of armour standing like sentinels on each side of the fireplace were not more rigid than he.
There came a slight sound from the other end of the hall, and instantly and very sharply Sir Beverley turned his head.
"Piers!"
Cheerily Piers' voice made answer. He shut the door behind him and came forward as he spoke. "Here I am, sir! I'm sorry I'm late. You shouldn't have waited. You never ought to wait. I'm never in at the right time."
"Confound you, why aren't you then?" burst forth Sir Beverley. "It's easy to say you're sorry, isn't it?"
"Not always," said Piers.
He came to the old man, bent down over him, slid a boyish arm around the bent shoulders. "Don't be waxy!" he coaxed. "I couldn't help it this time."
"Get away, do!" said Sir Beverley, jerking himself irritably from him. "I detest being pawed about, as you very well know. In Heaven's name, have your tea, if you want it! I shan't touch any. It's past my time."
"Oh, rot!" said Piers. "If you don't, I shan't."
"Yes, you will." Sir Beverley pointed an imperious hand towards a table on the other side of the fire. "Go and get it and don't be a fool!"
"I'm not a fool," said Piers.
"Yes, you are--a damn fool!" Sir Beverley returned to his newspaper with the words. "And you'll never be anything else!" he growled into the silence that succeeded them.
Piers clattered the tea-things and said nothing. There was no resentment visible upon his sensitive, olive face, however. He looked perfectly contented. He turned round after a few seconds with a cup of steaming tea in his hand. He crossed the hearth and set it on the table at Sir Beverley's elbow.
"That's just as you like it, sir," he urged. "Have it--just to please me!"
"Take it away!" said Sir Beverley, without raising his eyes.
"It's only ten minutes late after all," said Piers, with all meekness. "I wish you hadn't waited, though it was jolly decent of you. You weren't anxious of course? You know I always turn up some time."
"Anxious!" echoed Sir Beverley. "About a cub like you! You flatter yourself, my good Piers."
Piers laughed a little and stooped over the blaze. Sir Beverley read on for a few moments, then very suddenly and not without violence crumpled his paper and flung it on the ground.
"Of all the infernal, ridiculous twaddle!" he exclaimed. "Now what the devil have you done to yourself? Been taking a water-jump?"
Piers turned round. "No, sir. It's nothing. I shouldn't have come in in this state, only it was late, and I thought I'd better report myself."
"Nothing!" repeated Sir Beverley. "Why, you're drenched to the skin! Go and change! Go and change! Don't stop to argue! Do you hear me, sir? Go and change!"
He shouted the last words, and Piers flung round on his heel with a hint of impatience.
"And behave yourself!" Sir Beverley threw after him. "If you think I'll stand any impertinence from you, you were never more mistaken in your life. Be off with you, you cheeky young hound! Don't let me see you again till you're fit to be seen!"
Piers departed without a backward look. His lips were slightly compressed as he went up the stairs, but before he reached his own room they were softly whistling.
Victor, the valet, who was busily employed in laying out his evening clothes, received him with hands upraised in horror.
_"Ah, mais, Monsieur Pierre_, how you are wet!"
"Yes, I want a bath," said Piers. "Get it quick! I must be down again in ten minutes. So scurry, Victor, my lad!"
Victor was a cheery little rotundity of five-and-fifty. He had had the care of Piers ever since the first fortnight of that young man's existence, and he worshipped him with a whole-hearted devotion that was in its way sublime. In his eyes Piers could do no wrong. He was in fact dearer to him than his own flesh and blood.
He prepared the bath with deft celerity, and hastened back to assist in removing his young master's boots. He exclaimed dramatically upon their soaked condition, but Piers was in too great a hurry to give any details regarding the cause of his plight. He whirled into the bathroom at express speed, and was out again almost before Victor had had time to collect his drenched garments.
Ten minutes after his departure he returned to the hall, the gay whistle still on his lips, and trod a careless measure to its tune as he advanced.
Sir Beverley got up stiffly from his knees on the hearth-rug and turned a scowling face. "Well, are you decent now?"
"Quite," said Piers. He smiled as he said it, a boyish disarming smile. "Have you had your tea, sir? Oh, I say what a brick you are! I didn't expect that."
His eyes, travelling downwards, had caught sight of a cup pushed close to the blaze, and a plate of crumpets beside it.
"Or deserve it," said Sir Beverley grimly.
Piers turned impulsively and took him by the shoulders. "You're a dear old chap!" he said. "Thanks awfully!"
Against its will the hard old mouth relaxed. "There, boy, there! What an infant you are! Sit down and have it for goodness' sake! It'll be dinner-time before you've done."
"You've had yours?" said Piers.
"Oh, yes--yes!" Irritation made itself heard again in Sir Beverley's voice; he freed himself from his grandson's hold, though not urgently. "I'm not so keen on your precious tea," he said, seating himself again. "It's only young milksops like you that have made it fashionable. When I was young--"
"Hullo!" broke in Piers. He had picked up the cup of tea and was sniffing it suspiciously. "You've been doctoring this!" he said.
"You drink it!" ordered Sir Beverley peremptorily. "I'm not going to have you laid up with rheumatic fever if I know it. Drink it, Piers! Do you hear?"
Piers looked for a moment as if he were on the verge of rebellion, then abruptly he raised the cup to his lips and drained it. He set it down with a shudder of distaste.
"You might have let me have it separately," he remarked. "Tea and brandy don't blend well. I shall sleep like a hog after this. Besides, I shouldn't have had rheumatic fever. It's not my way. Anything in the paper to-night?"
"Yes," said Sir Beverley disgustedly. "There's that prize-fight business."
"What's that?" Piers looked up with quick interest.
"Surely you saw it!" returned Sir Beverley. "That fellow Adderley--killed his man in a wrestling-match. A good many people said it was done by a foul."
"Adderley!" repeated Piers. "I know him. He gave me some quite useful tips once. What happened? It's the first I've heard of it."
"Well, he's a murderer," said Sir Beverley. "And he deserves to be hanged. He killed his man,--whether by a foul or not I can't say; but anyway he meant to kill him. It's obvious on the face of it. But they chose to bring it in manslaughter, and he's only got five years; while some brainless fool must needs write an article a column and a half long to protest against the disgraceful practice of permitting wrestling or boxing matches, which are a survival of the Dark Ages and a perpetual menace to our civilization! A survival of your grandmother! A nice set of nincompoops the race will develop into if such fools as that get their way! We're soft enough as it is, Heaven knows. Why couldn't they hang the scoundrel as he deserved? That's the surest way of putting an end to savagery. But to stop the sport altogether! It would be tomfoolery!"
Piers picked up the paper from the floor and smoothed it out. He proceeded to study it with drawn brows, and Sir Beverley sat and watched him with that in his stone-grey eyes which no one was ever allowed to see.
"Eat your crumpets, boy!" he said at last.
"What?" Piers glanced up momentarily. "Oh, all right, sir, in a minute. This is rather an interesting case, what? You see, Adderley was a friend of mine."
"When did you meet him?" demanded Sir Beverley.
"I knew him in my school-days. He spent a whole term in the neighbourhood. It was just before I left for my year of travel. I got to know him rather well. He gave me several hints on wrestling."
"Did he teach you how to break your opponent's neck?" asked Sir Beverley drily.
Piers made a slight, scarcely perceptible movement of one hand. It clenched upon the paper he held. "They were--worth knowing," he said, with his eyes upon the sheet. "But I should have thought he was too old a hand himself to get into trouble."
Sir Beverley grunted. Piers read on. At the end of a lengthy pause he laid the paper aside. "I'm beastly rude," he remarked. "Have a crumpet!"
"Eat 'em yourself!" said Sir Beverley. "I hate 'em!"
Piers picked up the plate and began to eat. He stared at the blaze as he did so, obviously lost in thought.
"Don't dream!" said Sir Beverley sharply.
He turned his eyes upon his grandfather's face--those soft Italian eyes of his so suggestive of hidden fire. "I wasn't--dreaming," he said slowly. "I wonder why you think Adderley ought to be hanged."
"Because he's a murderer," snapped Sir Beverley.
"Yes; but--" said Piers, and became silent as though he were following out some train of thought.
"Go on, boy! Finish!" commanded Sir Beverley. "I detest a sentence left in the middle."
"I was only thinking," said Piers deliberately, "that hanging in my opinion is much the easier sentence of the two. I should ask to be hanged if I were Adderley."
"Would you indeed?" Sir Beverley sounded supremely contemptuous.
But Piers did not seem to notice. "Besides, there are so many murderers in the world," he said, "though it's only the few who get punished. I'm sorry for the few myself. Its damned bad luck, human nature being what it is."
"You don't know what you're talking about," said Sir Beverley.
"All right; let's talk about something else," said Piers. "Caesar had a glorious mill with that Irish terrier brute at the Vicarage this afternoon. I couldn't separate 'em, so I just joined in. We'd have been at it now if we had been left to our own devices." He broke into his sudden boyish laugh. "But a kind lady came out of the Vicarage garden and flung the contents of a bedroom jug over the three of us. Rather plucky of her, what? I'm afraid I wasn't over-complimentary at the moment, but I've had time since to appreciate her tact and presence of mind. I'm going over to thank her to-morrow."
"Who was it?" growled Sir Beverley suspiciously. "Not that little white owl, Mrs. Lorimer?"
"Mrs. Lorimer! Great Scott, no! She'd have squealed and run to the Reverend Stephen for protection. No, this was a woman, not an owl. Her name is Denys--Mrs. Denys she was careful to inform me. They've started a mother's help at the Vicarage. None too soon I should say. Who wouldn't be a mother's help in that establishment?"
Sir Beverley uttered a dry laugh. "Daresay she knows how to feather her own nest. Most of 'em do."
"She knows how to keep her head in an emergency, anyhow," remarked Piers.
"Feline instinct," jeered Sir Beverley.
Piers looked across with a laugh in his dark eyes. "And feline pluck, sir," he maintained.
Sir Beverley scowled at him. He could never brook an argument. "Oh, get away, Piers!" he said. "You talk like a fool."
Piers turned his whole attention to devouring crumpets, and there fell a lengthy silence. He rose finally to set down his empty plate and help himself to some more tea.
"That stuff is poisonous by now," said Sir Beverley.
"It won't poison me," said Piers.
He drank it, and returned to the hearth-rug. "I suppose I may smoke?" he said, with a touch of restraint.
Sir Beverley was lying back in his chair, gazing straight up at him. Suddenly he reached out a trembling hand.
"You're a good boy, Piers," he said. "You may do any damn thing you like."
Piers' eyes kindled in swift response. He gripped the extended hand. "You're a brick, sir!" he said. "Look here! Come along to the billiard-room and have a hundred up! It'll give you an appetite for dinner."
He hoisted the old man out of his chair before he could begin to protest. They stood together before the great fire, and Sir Beverley straightened his stiff limbs. He was half a head taller than his grandson.
"What a fellow it is!" he said half laughing. "Why can't you sit still and be quiet? Don't you want to read the paper? I've done with it."
"So have I," said Piers. He swept it up with one hand as he spoke and tossed it recklessly on to the blaze. "Come along, sir! We haven't much time."
"Now what did you do that for?" demanded Sir Beverley, pausing. "Do you want to set the house on fire? What did you do it for, Piers?"
"Because I was a fool," said Piers with sudden, curious vehemence. "A damn fool sir, if you want to know. But it's done now. Let it burn!"
The paper flared fiercely and crumbled to ashes. Sir Beverley suffered himself to be drawn away.
"You're a queer fellow, Piers," he said. "But, taking 'em altogether, I should say there are a good many bigger fools in the world than you."
"Thank you, sir," said Piers. _