"You cad! you cad! you bloody cad!"
4
The moment that the blow was struck I felt that lives would be lost before we parted. Beresford had come to the house clamorous for blood, I will admit at once that I had wrapped a taunt round every word that I had spoken, and for weeks Grayle had been in a state only describable as eruptive. I found time, however, with that curious detachment which a brain shews when it is working with twice its usual clarity and speed to reflect what an absurd and incongruous trio we made; Beresford dying of consumption, all skin and bones held together by will-power—lame, shabby, ill-groomed, with two blazing eyes in a parchment-coloured face; Grayle towering over the pair of us, blue-eyed, pink-cheeked—with a thread of blood running from one corner of his mouth,—yellow-haired, like some giant's child in uniform; and, if I could have seen myself, I should have looked on a plump, middle-aged man with, I believe, a benevolent expression, a good many wrinkles on the forehead and round the eyes and a thick crop of prematurely white hair.
Beresford's action was so unexpected and sudden that we—and I include him—were temporarily paralysed. After the brief outburst there followed a silence in which we seemed to be waiting for the end of the world to be proclaimed. Then Grayle put his hand to his face and brought it away wet. I watched him raise his eyebrows at the sight, walk to the door opening on to the garden, turn the key and pocket it. (I suddenly remembered being bullied at Eton.)
"He brought this on himself," he observed quietly to me; and, before I had leisure to guess what he intended or see what he was doing, he had gripped Beresford by the collar, lifted him off his feet and was belabouring him with his stick until the ribs cracked like dry wood in a hot fire. At the end of six swift blows the stick broke in two, and he looked round for another weapon. A round office ruler met our gaze at the same moment, and from opposite sides we pounced on it simultaneously and simultaneously caught hold of it. I had two hands to his one, however, and with a wrench I contrived to twist it out of his grasp.
"Drop him!" I cried, but Grayle only looked round for means to renew the attack. "I'll break your arm, if you don't."
His grip on Beresford, who was still dangling and writhing in the air with his face purple and his feet rapping out a tattoo on the oil-cloth, never relaxed. I raised the ruler above my head and brought it down on Grayle's forearm with all the strength that I could muster. I had aimed at his wrist, but a plunge by Beresford spoiled my aim. Grayle gave some body-twist, which I was too much preoccupied to see, and an instant later I felt his powerful fingers inside my collar and my head being savagely bumped against Beresford's. Every other time my ear was crushed against his fleshless skull, and the pain was excruciating. I made ineffectual backward sweeps with the ruler, hitting Beresford as often as I hit Grayle; I battered on his fingers and tried to drag them away from his collar, but every effort that I made and every new injury that I inflicted made him the drunker with lust of battle. The side of my head felt bruised to pulp, and, when I put my hand up to protect it, Grayle only laughed like a maniac and changed his hold so that he could avoid the buffer and bang us on our unprotected brows.
Beresford was limp and crowing, I breathless and sweating before it occurred to me to use my feet. Exploring for Grayle's shins with my heel, I made sure of my mark and lashed out and up as hard as I could kick. It is to be presumed that I caught him on his injured knee, for I heard a gasp of pain, we were jerked abruptly backwards, and Grayle slowly subsided, like a wounded bull in the ring, dragging us on top of him. For a moment we lay motionless; then I heard Beresford's struggles for breath beginning again with feverish, rumbling acceleration. He had fallen on the mat in front of the fire, and his face was pressed so close to the bars that the heat must have been blinding and insupportable. I saw him trying to make a screen of his hands and heard a diabolical laugh from Grayle. The sound gave me new strength, and I tugged at my collar till it burst away from the stud and remained emptily in Grayle's hands while I struggled to my feet.
I had always imagined that, however desperate my plight, I should refrain from some methods of warfare, yet now I struck again and again at the wounded knee, I kicked him in the wind and, if this last had not sent him rolling and gasping on to his side, I believe I might have tried to gouge his eyes out. It was the only time that I had ever had to fight for my life; the instinct to live was stronger and more resourceful than I had imagined.