Sir Beverley ceased his tirade in momentary astonishment. Such violence from Piers was unusual.

Instantly Piers went on speaking, his voice quick and low, quivering with the agitation that he had no time to subdue. "I won't hear another word on that subject! You hear me, sir? Not one word! It is sacred, and as such I will have it treated."

But the check upon Sir Beverley was but brief, and the flame of his anger burned all the more fiercely in consequence of it. He broke in upon those few desperate words of Piers' with redoubled fury.

"You will have this, and you won't have that! Confound you! What the devil do you mean? Are you master in this house, or am I?"

"I am master where my own actions are concerned," threw back Piers. "And what I do--what I decide to do--is my affair alone."

Swiftly he uttered the words. His breathing came quick and short as the breathing of a man hard pressed. He seemed to be holding back every straining nerve with a blind force that was physical rather than mental.

He drew himself suddenly erect as he spoke. He had flung down the gauntlet of his independence at last, and with clenched hands he waited for the answer to his challenge.

It came upon him like a whirlwind. Sir Beverley uttered an oath that fell with the violence of a blow, and after it a tornado of furious speech against which it was futile to attempt to raise any protest. He could only 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 att.i.tude. He was striving desperately to keep his self-control. He had been within an ace of losing it, as the blood that oozed over his closed fist testified; but, for the sake of that manhood which he was seeking to a.s.sert, he made a t.i.tanic effort to command himself.

And Sir Beverley, feeling the dumb strength that opposed him, resenting the forbearance with which he was confronted, infuriated by the unexpected force of the boy's resistance, turned with a snarl to seize and desecrate that which he had been warned was holy.

"As for this designing woman, I tell you, she is not for you,--not, that is, in any honourable sense. If you choose to make a fool of her, that's your affair. I suppose you'll sow the usual crop of wild oats before you've done. But as to marrying her--"

"By G.o.d, sir!" broke in Piers pa.s.sionately. "Do you imagine that I propose to do anything else?"

The words came from him like a cry wrung from a man in torture, and as he uttered them the last of his self-control slipped from his grasp. With a face gone suddenly devilish, he strode round the table and stood before his grandfather, furiously threatening.

"I have warned you!" he said, and his voice was low, sunk almost to a whisper. "You can say what you like of me. I'm used to it. But--if you speak evil of her--I'll treat you as I would any other blackguard who dared to insult her. And now that we are on the subject, I will tell you this. If I do not marry this woman whom I love--I swear that I will never marry at all! That is my final word!"

He hurled the last sentence in Sir Beverley's face, and with it he would have swung round upon his heel; but something in that face detained him.

Sir Beverley's eyes were shining with an icy, intolerable sparkle. His thin lips were drawn in the dreadful semblance of a smile. He was half-a-head taller than Piers, and he seemed to tower above him in that moment of conflict.

"Wait a minute!" he said. "Wait a minute!"

His right hand was feeling along the leathern surface of the writing-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--a silence more fraught with violence than any speech.

Then, with a slight jerk, Sir Beverley leaned towards Piers. "So," he said, "you defy me, do you?"

His voice was as grim as his look. A sudden, odd sense of fear went through Piers. Sharply the thought ran through his mind that the same Evesham devil possessed them both. It was as if he had caught a glimpse of the monster gibing at his elbow, goading him, goading them, both.

He made a sharp, involuntary movement; he almost flinched from those pitiless, stony eyes.

"Ha!" Sir Beverley uttered a brief and very bitter laugh. "You've begun to think better of it, eh?"

"No, sir." Curtly Piers made answer, speaking because he must. "I meant what I said, and I shall stick to it. But it wasn't for the sake of defying you that I said it. I have a better reason than that."

He was still quivering with anger, yet because of that gibing devil at his elbow he strove to speak temperately, strove to hold back the raging flood of fierce resentment that threatened to overwhelm him.

As for Sir Beverley, he had never attempted to control himself in moments such as these, and he did not attempt to do so now. Before Piers' words were 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, with eyes that literally flamed in his white face, sprang straight at his grandfather, and closed with him.

There was a brief--a very brief--struggle, then a gasping oath from Sir Beverley as the ruler was torn from his grasp. The next moment he was free and tottering blindly. Piers, with an awful smile, swung the weapon back as if he would strike him down with it. Then, as Sir Beverley clutched instinctively at the nearest chair for support, he flung savagely round on his heel, altering his purpose. There followed the loud crack of rending wood as he broke the ruler pa.s.sionately across his knee, putting forth all his strength, and the clatter of the falling fragments as he hurled them violently from him.

And then in a silence more dreadful than any speech, he strode to the door and went out, crashing it furiously shut behind him.

Sir Beverley, grown piteously feeble, sank down in the chair, and remained there huddled and gasping for many dragging minutes.

CHAPTER XXIX

A WATCH IN THE NIGHT

He came at last out of what had almost been a stupor of inertia, sat slowly up, turned his brooding eyes upon the door through which Piers had pa.s.sed. A tremor of anger crossed his face, and was gone. A grim smile took its place. He still panted spasmodically; but he found his voice.

"Egad!" he said. "The fellow's as strong as a young bear. He's hugged--all the wind--out of my vitals."

He struggled to his feet, straightening his knees with difficulty, one hand pressed hard to his labouring heart.

"Egad!" he gasped again. "He's getting out of hand--the cub! But he'll come to heel,--he'll come to heel! I know the rascal!"

He stumbled to the bell and rang it.

David appeared with a prompt.i.tude that seemed to indicate a certain uneasiness.

"Coffee!" growled his master. "And liqueur!"

David departed at as high a rate of speed as decorum would permit.

During his absence Sir Beverley set himself rigidly to recover his normal demeanour. The encounter had shaken him, shaken him badly; but he was not the man to yield to physical weakness. He fought it with angry determination.

Before David's reappearance he had succeeded in controlling his gasping breath, though the hand with which he helped himself shook very perceptibly.

There were two cups on the tray. David lingered.

"You can go," said Sir Beverley.

David c.o.c.ked one eyebrow in deferential enquiry. "Master Piers in the garden, sir?" he ventured. "Shall I find him?"

"No!" snapped Sir Beverley.

"Very good, sir." David turned regretfully to the door. "Shall I keep the coffee hot, Sir Beverley?" he asked, as he reached it, with what was almost a pleading note in his voice.