My Brave and Gallant Gentleman Part 7

Slowly he pushed the point of his rapier through my coat-sleeve. It p.r.i.c.ked into my arm and I felt a few drops of warm blood trickle. I did not wince.

"Stop this infernal fooling," I cried angrily.

He bent forward, in the att.i.tude of fence with which he was so familiar.

"Fooling, did you say? 'Gad! then, is this fooling?"

He turned the rapier against my breast, ripping my s.h.i.+rt and lancing my flesh to the bone. I staggered back with a gasp.

It was the act of a madman; and I knew in that moment that I was face to face with death by violence for the second time in a few hours. I slowly backed from him, but he followed me, step for step,

As I came up against and sought the wall behind me for support, my hand came in contact with something hard. I closed my fingers over it. It was the handle of an old highland broadsword and the feel of it was not unpleasant. It lent a fresh flow to my blood. I tore the sword from its fastenings, and, in a second, I was standing facing my brother on a more equal, on a more satisfactory footing, determined to defend myself, blow for blow, against his inhuman, insane conduct.

"Ho! ho!" he yelled. "A duel in the twentieth century. 'Gad! wouldn't this set London by the ears? The Corsican Brothers over again!

"Come on, with your battle-axe, farmer Giles, Let's see what stuff you're made of--blood or sawdust."

Twice he thrust at me and twice I barely avoided his dextrous onslaughts. I parried as he thrust, not daring to venture a return.

Our strange weapons rang out and re-echoed, time and again, in the dread stillness of the isolated armoury.

My left arm was smarting from the first wound I had received, and a few drops of blood trickled down over the back of my hand, splas.h.i.+ng on the floor.

"You bleed!--just like a human being, George. Who would have thought it?" gloated Harry with a taunt.

He came at me again.

My broadsword was heavy and, to me, unwieldy, while Harry's rapier was light and pliable. I could tell that there could be only one ending, if the unequal contest were prolonged,--I would be wounded badly, or killed outright. At that moment, I had no very special desire for either happening.

Harry turned and twisted his weapon with the clever wrist movement for which he was famous in every fencing club in Britain; and every time I wielded my heavy weapon to meet his light one I thought I should never be in time to meet his counter-stroke, his recovery was so very much quicker than mine.

He played with me thus for a time which seemed an eternity. My breath began to come in great gasps. Suddenly he lunged at me with all his strength, throwing the full weight of his body recklessly behind his stroke, so sure was he, evidently, that it would find its mark. I sprang aside just in time, bringing my broadsword down on his rapier and sending six inches of the point of it clattering to the floor.

"d.a.m.n the thing!" he bl.u.s.tered, taking a firmer grip of what steel remained in his hand.

"Aren't you satisfied? Won't you stop this madness?" I panted, my voice sounding loud and hollow in the stillness around us.

For answer he grazed my cheek with his jagged steel, letting a little more blood and hurting sufficiently to cause me to wince.

"Got you again, you see," he chuckled, pus.h.i.+ng up his sleeves and pulling his tie straight. "George, dear boy, I'll have you in mincemeat before I get at any of your well-covered vitals."

A blind fury seized me. I drove in on him. He turned me aside with a grin and thrust heavily at me in return. I darted to the left, making no endeavour to push aside his weapon with my own but relying only on the agility of my body. With an oath, he floundered forward, and before he could recover I brought the flat of my heavy broadsword cras.h.i.+ng down on the top of his head. His arm went up with a nervous jerk and his rapier flew from his hand, shattering against a high window and sending the broken gla.s.s rattling on to the cement walk below.

Harry sagged to the floor like a sack of flour and lay motionless on his face, his arms and legs spread out like a spider's.

I was bending down to turn him over, when I heard my father's voice on the other side of the door.

"Stand back! I'll see to this," he cried, evidently addressing the frightened servants.

I turned round. The door swung on its immense hinges and my father stood there, with staring eyes and pallid face, taking in the situation deliberately, looking from me to Harry's inert body beside which I knelt. Slowly he came into the centre of the room.

Full of anxiety, I looked at him. But there was no opening in that stern, old face for any explanations. He did not a.s.sail me with a torrent of words nor did he burst into a paroxysm of grief and anger.

His every action was calculated, methodical, remorseless.

He turned to the open door.

"Go!" he commanded sternly. "Leave us,--leave Brammerton. I never wish to see you again. You are no son of mine."

His words seared into me. I held out my hands.

"Go!" he repeated quietly, but, if anything, more firmly.

"Good G.o.d! father,--won't you hear what I have to say in explanation?"

I cried in vexatious desperation.

He did not answer me except with his eyes--those eyes which could say so much.

My anger was still hot within me. My inborn sense of fairness deeply resented this conviction on less than even circ.u.mstantial evidence; and, at the back of all that, I,--as well as he, as well as Harry,--was a Brammerton, with a Brammerton's temperament.

"Do you mean this, father?" I asked.

"Go!" he reiterated. "I have nothing more to say to such an unnatural son, such an unnatural brother as you are."

I bowed, pulled my jacket together with a shrug and b.u.t.toned it up.

After all,--what mattered it? I was in the right and I knew it.

"All right, father! Some day, I know you will be sorry."

I turned on my heel and left the armoury.

The servants were cl.u.s.tering at the end of the corridor, with frightened eyes and pale faces. They opened up and shuffled uneasily as I pa.s.sed through.

"William," I said to the butler, "you had better go in there. You may be needed."

"Yes, sir! yes, sir!" he answered, and hurried to obey.

Upstairs, in my own room, my knapsack was lying in a corner, ready for my proposed week-end tour. Beside it, stood my golf clubs. These will do, I found myself thinking: a knapsack with a change of linen and a bag of golf clubs,--not a bad outfit to start life with.

I opened my purse:--fifty pounds and a few s.h.i.+llings. Not much, but enough! In fact, nothing would have been plenty.

Suddenly I remembered that, before I went, I had a duty to perform.

From my inside pocket, I took the letter which Harry had written to little, forlorn Peggy Darrol. I went to my writing desk and addressed an envelope to Lady Rosemary Granton. I inserted Harry's letter and sealed the envelope. As to the bearer of my message, that was easy. I pushed the b.u.t.ton at my bedside and, in a second, sweet little Maisie Brant came to the door.

Maisie always had been my special favourite, and, on account of my having pulled her out of the river when she was only seven years old, I was hers. She had never forgotten. I cried to her in an easy, bantering way in order to rea.s.sure her.

"Neat little Maisie, sweet little Maisie; Only fifteen and as fresh as a Daisy."

She smiled, but behind her smile was a look of concern.