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 circ.u.mstances 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 old Pompey! A shame to keep you standing! All that brute"s fault."
He swung himself into the saddle. "By Jove, though, she"s got some pluck!" he said. "I like a woman with pluck!"
He touched his animal with the spur, and in a moment they were speeding through the gathering dark at a brisk canter. Pompey was as anxious to get home as was his master, and he needed no second urging. He scarcely waited to get within the gates of the Park before he gathered himself together and went like the wind. His rider lay forward in the saddle and yelled encouragement like a wild Indian. Caesar raced behind them like a hare.
The mad trio went like a flash past old Marshall the head-keeper who stood gun on shoulder at the gate of his lodge and looked after them with stern disapproval.
"Drat the boy! What"s he want to ride h.e.l.l-for-leather like that for?" he grumbled. "He"ll go and kill himself one of these days as his father did before him."
It was just twenty-five years since Piers" father had been carried dead into Marshall"s cottage, and Marshall had stumped up the long avenue to bear the news to Sir Beverley. Piers was about the same age now as that other Piers had been, and Marshall had no mind to take part in a similar tragedy. It had been a bitter task, that of telling Sir Beverley that his only son was dead; but to have borne him ill tidings of his grandson would have been infinitely harder. For Sir Beverley had never loved his son through the whole of his brief, tempestuous life; but his grandson was the very core of his existence, as everyone knew, despite his strenuous efforts to disguise the fact.
No, emphatically Marshall had not the faintest desire to have to inform the old man that harm had befallen Master Piers, and his frown deepened as he trudged up his little garden and heard the yelling voice and galloping hoofs grow faint in the distance.
"The boy is madder even than his father was," he muttered darkly. "Bad stock! Bad stock!"
He shook his head over the words, and went within. He was the only man left on the estate who could remember the beautiful young Italian bride whom Sir Beverley had once upon a time brought to reign there. It had been a short, short reign, and no one spoke of it now,--least of all the old, bent man who ruled like a feudal lord at Rodding Abbey, and of whom even the redoubtable Marshall himself stood in awe.
But Marshall remembered her well, and it was upon that dazzling memory that his thoughts dwelt when he gave utterance to his mysterious verdict.
For was not Master Piers the living image of her? Had he not the same imperial bearing and regal turn of the head? Did not the Evesham blood run the hotter in his veins for that pa.s.sionate Southern strain that mingled with it?
Marshall sometimes wondered how Sir Beverley with his harsh intolerance brooked the living likeness of the boy to the woman in whose bitter memory he hated all women. It was scarcely possible that he blinded himself to it. It was too vividly apparent for that. "A perpetual eyesore," Marshall termed it in private. But then there was no accounting for the ways of folk in high places. Marshall did not pretend to understand them. He was, in his own grumpy fashion, sincerely attached to his master, and he never presumed to criticize his doings. He only wondered at them.
As for Master Piers, he had been an unmitigated nuisance to him personally ever since he had learned to walk alone. Marshall had always disapproved of him, and he hated Victor, the French valet, who had brought him up from his cradle. Yet deep in his surly old heart there lurked a certain grudging affection for him notwithstanding. The boy had a winning way with him, and but for his hatred of Victor, who was soft and womanish, but extremely tenacious, Marshall would have liked to have had a hand in his upbringing. As it was, he could only look on from afar and condemn the vagaries of "that dratted boy," prophesying disaster whenever he saw him and hoping that Sir Beverley might not live to see it. Certainly it seemed as if Piers bore a charmed life, for, like his father before him, he risked it practically every day.
With sublime self-confidence, he laughed at caution, ever choosing the shortest cut, whatever it might entail; and it was remarkably seldom that he came to grief.
As he clattered into the stable-yard on that dark November evening, his face was sparkling with excitement as though he had drunk strong wine. The animal he rode was covered with foam, and danced a springy war-dance on the stones. Caesar trotted in behind them with tail erect and a large smile of satisfaction on his spotty face despite the gory streak upon his neck.
"Confound it! I"m late!" said Piers, throwing his leg over his horse"s neck. "It"s all that brute"s fault. Look at him grinning! Better wash him one of you! He can"t come in in that state." He slipped to the ground and stamped his sodden feet. "I"m not much better off myself. What a beastly night, to be sure!"
"Yes, you"re wet, sir!" remarked the groom at Pompey"s head. "Had a tumble, sir?"
"No. Had a jug of water thrown over me," laughed Piers. "Caesar will tell you all about it. He"s been sn.i.g.g.e.ring all the way home." He snapped his fingers in the dog"s complacent face. "By Jove!" he said to him, "I couldn"t grin like that if I"d had the thrashing you"ve had. And I couldn"t kiss the hand that did it either. You"re a gentleman, Caesar, and I humbly apologize. Look after him, Phipps! He"s been a bit mauled.
Good-night! Good-night, Pompey lad! You"ve carried me well." He patted the horse"s foam-flecked neck, and turned away.
As he left the stable-yard, he was whistling light-heartedly, and Phipps glanced at a colleague with a slight flicker of one eyelid.
"Wonder who chucked that jug of water!" he said.
CHAPTER II