King of the Castle

Fenn George Manville

King of the Castle

Volume One – Chapter One.

Part of the Garrison

“Hullo, Claude, going for a walk?”

“Yes, papa.”

“Alone?”

“No: Mary is going with me.”

“Humph! If you were as giddy as Mary, I’d – I’d – ”

“What, papa?”

“Don’t know; something bad. But, Claude, my girl.”

“Yes, dear?”

“Why the dickens don’t you dress better? Look at you!”

The girl admonished turned merrily round, and stood facing an old bevelled-glass cabinet in the solid-looking, well-furnished library, and saw her reflection – one which for some reason made her colour slightly; perhaps with pleasure at seeing her handsome oval face with soft, deep brown hair, and large dark, well-shaded eyes – a face that needed no more display to set it off than the plain green cloth well-fitting dress, held at the throat by a dead gold brooch of Roman make.

“Well, papa,” she said, as she altered the sit of her natty, flat-brimmed straw hat, “what is the matter with my dress?”

The big-headed, grey-haired man addressed gave his stiff, wavy locks an impatient rub, wrinkled his broad forehead, and then smiled in a happy, satisfied way, his dark eyes lighting up, and his smile driving away the hard, severe look which generally rested upon his brow.

“The matter?” he said, drawing the girl on to his knee and kissing her. “I don’t understand such things; but your dress seems too common and plain.”

“But one can’t wear silks and satins and muslins to scramble among the rocks and go up the glen.”

“Well, there, don’t bother me. But dress better. If you want more money you can have it. You ought to take the lead here, and there were ladies on some of the yachts and on the pier yesterday who quite left you behind. – Yes! What is it?”

“Isaac Woodham, from the quarry, sir, would like to see you,” said a servant.

“Confound Isaac Woodham! Send him in.”

The servant retired, leaving his master muttering.

“Wants to spend money in some confounded new machinery or something. I made all my money without machinery, Claude, but these people want to waste it with their new-fangled plans.”

“But, papa dear, do speak more gently to them.”

“What! let them be masters and eat me out of house and home? Not such a fool.”

“But, papa – ”

“Hold your tongue. Weak little goose. You don’t know them; I do. They must be ruled – ruled. There: be off, and get your walk. Seen Mr Glyddyr to-day?”

The girl flushed scarlet.

“Hallo, pussy; that brings the colour to your cheeks.”

“No, papa; indeed I – ”

“Yes, I know. I say, Claudie, fine handsome fellow, eh? Bit too pale for a yachtsman. But what a yacht! Do you know he came in for three hundred and fifty thousand when his father died?”

“Indeed, papa?” said the girl carelessly.

“Yes! Old Glyddyr was not like your grandfather, confound him.”

“Papa!”

“Con – found him! Didn’t I speak plain? Glyddyr left his boys a slate quarry in Wales for the eldest, and three hundred and fifty for the younger. Parry’s the younger. Eh? Nice fortune for a handsome young yachtsman, Claudie. There, go and have your walk, and keep Mary out of mischief. – Well?”

This was to a hard, heavy-looking man in working clothes, covered with earth stains and stone dust, who was ushered into the room, and who, ignoring the speaker’s presence, stood bowing awkwardly, cap in hand, and changing it from right to left and back.

“Quite well, thank ye, miss, and sent her dooty to you.”

“I’m very glad, Woodham. Remember me kindly to Sarah, and tell her I shall call at the cottage soon.”

“Yes, yes,” said the old man impatiently, following his daughter to the door; “go on now. I have business with Woodham. Don’t be so familiar with the work-people,” he whispered, as he closed the door after the girl, who ran lightly to the foot of the great carved oak staircase, to call out merrily, —

“Not ready, Mary?”

“Yes; coming, coming, coming,” and a quaint, mischievous-looking little body came tripping down the stairs, halting slightly as if from some form of lameness, which her activity partly concealed. But no effort or trick of dress could hide the fact that she was deformed, stunted in proportion, and with her head resting closely between her shoulders, which she had a habit of shrugging impatiently when addressed.

“Oh, do make haste, Mary, or we shall have no time before lunch.”

“Yes, I know. You’ve seen him go by.”

“For shame, Mary!” said Claude, flushing. “You are always thinking of such things. It is not true.”

“Yes, it is; and I don’t think more of such things than you do. ‘Oh, ’tis love, ’tis love, ’tis love that makes the world go round,’” she sang, in a singularly sweet, thrilling soprano voice, her pretty but thin keen face lighting up with a malicious smile. But the old song was checked by Claude’s hand being clapped sharply over her mouth.

“Be quiet, and come along. Papa will hear you.”

“Well, I daresay he wants to see his darling married. Take away your hand, or I’ll bite it.”

“You’re in one of your mocking moods this morning, Mary, and you really make me hate you.”

“Don’t tell fibs,” said the deformed girl, throwing her arms lovingly about her companion. “You couldn’t hate anybody, you dear old pet; and why shouldn’t you have a true, handsome lover?”

“Oh, Mary, you are insufferable. You think of nothing else but lovers.”

“Well, why not, Claudie?” said the girl with a sigh, and a peculiarly pinched look coming about her mouth, as her clear, white forehead wrinkled up, and her fine eyes seemed full of trouble. “One always longs for the unattainable. Nobody will ever love me, so why shouldn’t I enjoy seeing somebody love you?”

“Mary, darling, I love you dearly.”

“Yes, pet, like the dearest, sweetest old sister that ever was. You worship poor old humpty dumpty?”

“Don’t ridicule yourself. Mary dear.”

“Why not? But I meant no nice, handsome Christopher Lisle will ever want to look in my eyes and say – ”

“Will you be quiet, Mary? Why will you be always bringing up Mr Christopher Lisle? I never tease you about Mr Gullick.”

“Because – because – because – ” She did not finish her speech, but burst out into a loud, ringing laugh, full of teasing, malicious mirth, till she saw Claude’s flushed face, and then she stopped short.

“There, I’ve done. Which way shall we go?”

“I don’t care. I feel as if I’d rather stay at home now.”

“No, no; I won’t tease. Shall we go as far as the town?”

“No; anywhere you like.”

“Say somewhere.”

“Not I. You’ll only tease me, and say I had some reason. I’ll only go where you choose.”

“Then you shall, dear. We’ll go up the east glen to the fall, and then cross over the hill and come back by the west glen, and you shall tease me as much as you like.”

“I don’t want to tease you.”

Mary made a grimace as she looked sidewise at herself, but she coloured a little, and was silent for a time.

They were already some hundred yards from the great, grey granite mansion, which stood upon a bald bluff of cliff, built within the past thirty years, and by the fancy of its architect made to resemble a stronghold of the Norman times, with its battlements, towers, frowning gateway, moat and drawbridge crossing the deep channel, kept well filled by a spring far up in one of the glens at the back, while the front of the solid-looking, impregnable edifice frowned down upon the glittering sea.

“See how grand Castle Dangerous looks from here,” said Mary Dillon, as they were about to turn up the glen. “Don’t you often feel as if we were two forlorn maidens – I mean,” she cried merrily, “a forlorn maiden and a half – shut up in that terrible place waiting for a gallant knight and a half to come and rescue us from the clutches of ogre-like Uncle Gartram?”

“Mary, darling,” said Claude affectionately, “if you knew how you hurt me, you would cease these mocking allusions to your affliction.”

“Then I will not hurt you any more, pet. But I am such a sight.”

“No, you are not. You have, when in repose, the sweetest, cleverest face I ever saw.”

“Let’s be in repose, then.”

“And you know you are brilliant in intellect, where I am stupid.”

“Oh! if I could be as stupid!”

“And you have the sweetest voice possible. See what gifts these are.”

“Oh, yes, I suppose so, Claudie, but I don’t care for them a bit – not a millionth part as much as having your love. There, don’t let’s talk nonsense. Come along.”

She hurried her companion over a bridge and towards a path roughly made beside the babbling stream which supplied the moat at the Fort, and then in and out among the rocks, and beneath the pensile birches which shed a dappled shade over the path, while every here and there in gardens great clumps of fuchsias and hydrangeas showed the moist warmth of the sheltered nook.

They walked quickly, Claude urged on by her companion, who climbed the steep path with the agility of a goat, till they reached a fall, where the water came tumbling over the hoary, weather-stained rocks, and the path forked, one track going over the stream behind the fall, and the other becoming a rough stairway right up the side of the glen.

“Hadn’t we better go this way?” said Claude timidly, indicating the route to the left.

“No; too far round,” said Mary peremptorily. “Come along,” and she began to skip from rock to rock and rough step to step, up the side of the glen, Claude following her with more effort till they reached the rugged top of the cliff, and continued their walk onward among heather bloom and patches of beautifully fine grass, with here and there broken banks, where the wild thyme made the air fragrant with its scent.

“This is ten times as nice as going through the woods,” cried Mary. “You seem to get such delicious puffs of the sea breeze. Vorwarts!”

She hurried her companion on for about a mile, when the track turned sharply off to the right, and a steep descent led them to the banks of another stream which was gradually converging towards the one they had left, so that the two nearly joined where they swept down their rocky channels into the sea.

“This is ten times as good a way, Claudie. I always think it is the prettiest walk we have. Look what a colour the fir trees are turning, with those pale green tassels at the tips; and how beautiful those patches of gorse are. I wish one could get such a colour in paintings.”

She chatted on merrily as they descended the stream, with its many turns and zigzags, through the deep chasm along which it ran; and whenever Claude appeared disposed to speak, Mary always had some familiar object to which she could draw her companion’s attention. In fact, it seemed as if she would not give her time to think, as she noted that a quick, nervous look was directed at the stream from time to time.

A stranger might have thought Claude was nervous about the risks of the path as it went round some pool, with the rocks coming down perpendicularly to the deep, dark water. Or that she was in dread of encountering graver difficulties in the lonely ravine, whose almost perpendicular sides were clothed with growth of a hundred tints. Far beneath them, flashing, foaming, and hurrying on with a deep, murmuring sound, ran the little river, from rapid to fall, and from fall to deep, dark, sluggish-looking hole; while in places the trees, which had contrived to get a footing in some crevice of the rock, overhung the river, and threw the water beneath into the deepest shade.

They reached, at length, a more open part, where the sun shone down brightly, and their way lay through a patch of moss-grown hazel stubbs, which after a few steps made a complete screen from the sun’s rays, and they walked over a verdant carpet which silenced every footfall.

“We shall have plenty of time,” said Mary, as they reached the farther edge of the hazel clump, “and we may as well sit down on the rocks and read.”

“No, not now,” said Claude hastily. Then in an agitated whisper, as a peculiar whizzing noise was heard: “Oh, Mary, this is too cruel. Why have you brought me here?”

“Because it was not considered good for Adam to live alone in Paradise. There’s poor Adam alone and disconsolate, fishing to pass time away. Paradise in the glen is very pretty, but dull. Enter Eve. Now, Claude, dear, show yourself worthy of the name of woman. Go on!”

Volume One – Chapter Two.

Things go Crooked

Norman Gartram returned to his seat, looking rigid and scowling as he gazed fiercely at the workman.

“Well?” he said sharply.

“Don’t believe she can be his bairn,” said the workman to himself, as he returned his employers angry stare.

“I said Well!”

“I heard you, master. Needn’t shout.”

“What do you want?”

“Come about the big block at the corner. Time it was blasted down.”

“Then blast it down; and how many more times am I to tell you to say sir to me?”

“You’re my master, and pay me my wage, and I earn it honest. That’s all there is between us, for the Lord made all men equal, and – ”

“Look here, Isaac Woodham, once for all I will not have any of your Little Bethel cant in my presence. Now about this block; let it be deeply tamped, and the powder put well home.”

“I’m going to blast it down with dinnymite.”

The elder man flushed up scarlet, and the veins in his forehead swelled up into knotted network.

“Once for all – ” he thundered.

“There, don’t get in a way, master,” said the man coolly. “If you go on like that you’ll be having another fit, and I’m sure you oughtn’t to cut short such a life as yours.”

“Isaac Woodham, one of these days you’ll tempt me to knock you down. Insolent brute! And now, look here; I’ve told you before that I would not have dynamite used in my quarry. I’ll have my work done as it always has been done – with powder. The first man who uses a charge of that cursed stuff I’ll discharge.”

“It’s better, and does its work cleaner,” grumbled the man sullenly; and he gave his superior a morose look from under his shaggy brows.

“I don’t care if it’s a hundred times better. Go and blast the block down with powder, as it always has been done, I tell you again. I want my men; and there’s no trusting that other stuff, or they’re not fit to be trusted with it. Now go, and don’t come here again without being summoned.”

“Too grand for the likes o’ me, eh, Master Gartram?”

“Will you have the goodness to recollect that you are speaking to a gentleman, sir?”

“I’m speaking to another man, I being a man,” said Woodham sturdily. “I don’t know nothing about no gentlemen. I’m speaking to Norman Gartram, quarry-owner, who lives here in riches and idleness upon what we poor slaves have made for him by the sweat of our brows.”

“What does this mean?” cried the old man. “Have you turned Socialist?”

“I’ve turned nowt. But as a Christian man I warn you, Norman Gartram, that for all your fine house and your bags of money, and company and purple and fine linen, ‘the Lord gave, and the Lord taketh away.’”

“You – ”

“There, I’m going to do my work honest, master, and earn my wages.”

“And blast that granite down with powder, sir.”

“I know my work,” grumbled the man, and he backed out of the room without another word.

Norman Gartram – the King of the Castle, as he was called at Danmouth – stood listening to the man’s footsteps, at first heavy and dull as they passed over the carpet, and then loud and echoing as he reached the granite paving outside, till they died away, and then, with his face still flushed, he laid his hand gently on his temples.

“A little hot,” he muttered. “A fit? Enough to give any man a fit to be spoken to like that by the canting scum. They’re spoiled, that’s what it is – spoiled. Claude is always fooling and petting them, and the more there is done for them the worse they work, and the more exacting they grow. I believe they think one’s capital is to be sunk solely to benefit them. What the deuce do you want now?”

This to the servant, who had timidly opened the door.

“I beg your pardon, sir.”

“If it’s some one from the quarry, tell him I’m engaged.”

“Mr Glyddyr, sir.”

“Why didn’t you say so before? Where is he?”

“In the drawing-room, sir.”

Norman Gartram sprung at once from his chair, hurriedly crossed the room, stepped out of the window on to the granite paving, which did duty in his garden for a gravel walk, carefully closed the French casement, and locked it with a small pass-key he carried in his pocket, and walked round to the verandah in front of the house, entering by the French window of the drawing-room, where a tall, handsome man of about thirty was leaning against a table, apparently admiring the brown leather shoes which formed part of his yachting costume.

“Ah, Mr Glyddyr, glad to see you. Kept your word, then?”

“Oh, yes; I always do that,” said the visitor, shaking hands warmly. “Not come at an inconvenient time, have I – not too busy?”

“Never too busy to receive friends,” said Gartram. “Sit down, sit down.”

“Miss Gartram none the worse for her visit to the yacht?”

“Oh, by no means; enjoyed it thoroughly.”

“I could see that little Miss Dillon did, but I thought Miss Gartram seemed rather bored.”

“Oh dear, no; nothing of the kind; but you’ll have something?”

“Eh? No, thanks. Too early.”

“A cigar?”

“Cigar? Oh, come, I can’t refuse that.”

“Come into my room, then. Obliged to obey the female tyranny of my household, Mr Glyddyr. I’m supposed to be master, but woman rules, sir, woman rules. My daughter does what she pleases with me.”

“Happy man!”

“Eh?”

“I say happy man, sir, to be ruled by such a queen.”

Norman Gartram gave him a keen look.

“Don’t pay compliments, sir – society compliments. We are out of all society. I’ve kept my daughter out of it. Only a tradesman.”

“Lord Gartram’s brother a tradesman, sir?”

“Yes; why not? Why shouldn’t he be? My father left my brother and me with a few hundred pounds a-piece, and the prestige of being nobleman’s sons, sir. I had to consider what I should do – loaf about through drawing-rooms as a beggarly aristocrat, always in debt till I could cajole a rich girl into making me her poodle; or take off my coat and go to work like a man. Be a contemptible hanger-on, too poor to dress well, or a sturdy, hardworking human being.”

“And your choice, sir?” said the visitor, inquiring for what he knew by heart.

“The latter, sir. I bit my nails down to the quick till I had an idea – sitting out on this very coast. I was yonder smoking a bad cigar which my brother had given me. I couldn’t afford to buy cigars, neither could he, but he bought them all the same. I sat smoking that cigar and thought out what I was sitting upon – granite – and went back to the hotel where we were staying, and told my brother what I had thought out. He called me a fool, and went his way. I, being a fool, went mine.”

“Yes, sir?”

“My brother,” said Gartram, “married a shrewish, elderly woman with some money. I spent all I had in buying a few acres of the cliff land by the side of this coast. Brother Fred said I must be mad. Perhaps I am; but my cliff quarry has supplied granite for some of the finest buildings in England. It has made me a rich man, while my Lord Gartram has to ask his wife for every shilling he wants to spend – when he does not ask me. But here, come along; I never know when to stop if I begin talking about myself. This way.”

He led the visitor into his study, unlocked an oaken door in the wall with a bright key, and it swung open heavily, showing that the oak covered a slab of granite, and that the closet was formed of the same glittering stone.

“Curious place to keep cigars, eh? All granite, sir. I believe in granite. Take one of these,” he continued, as he carelessly placed a couple of cedar boxes on the table. “Light up. I’ll have one too. Bad habit at this time in the morning, but one can’t be always at work, eh?”

“No, sir; and you work too hard, if report is correct.”

“Hang report!” said the old man, taking a cigar, throwing himself back in a chair, and gazing at his visitor through his half-closed eyes. “That a good one?”

“Delicious!” said the visitor laconically, and there was silence.

“What do you think of my place, eh?”

“Solid. Quite stand a siege.”

“I meant it to, sir. There isn’t a spot where I could use granite instead of wood that it is not used. Granite arches instead of beams everywhere. When I have my gate locked at night, I can laugh at all the burglars in Christendom.”

“Yes; I should think you are pretty safe here.”

There was another pause, broken by Gartram saying suddenly, in a loud, sharp voice, —

“Well?”

The visitor was a cool man about town, but the query was so sudden and unexpected that he started.

“Well, Mr Gartram?”

“Why did you come this morning?”

“You asked me to look in – a friendly call.”

“Won’t do. If you had meant a friendly call you would have come in the afternoon. You don’t want to borrow money?”

“Good heavens, sir! No.”

“Then out with it, lad. You are not a boy now. I am an old man of the world; speak out frankly, and let’s get it done.”

“You guess the object of my visit, then, sir?”

“No; I can feel it. Besides, I’m not blind.”

Parry Glyddyr looked at his host with a half-amused, half-vexed expression of countenance.

“No,” he said thoughtfully, in reference to Gartram’s last remark; “I suppose not, sir. Well, it is an awkward thing to do, and I may as well get it over. I will be frank.”

“Best way, sir, if you wish to get on with me.”

Glyddyr cleared his throat, became deeply interested in the ash of his cigar, and lolled back in his easy chair, quite conscious of the fact that his host was scanning him intently.

“I can sail my yacht as well as the master, Mr Gartram; I have a good seat in the hunting field, and I don’t funk my hedges; I am a dead shot; you know I can throw a fly; and I am not a bad judge of a horse; but over a talk like this I am a mere faltering boy.”

“Glad to hear it, sir, and hope it is your first essay. Go on.”

“Well, I came here nine months ago to repair damages after a storm, and you did me several pleasant little services.”

“Never mind them.”

“I came again at the end of another three months in fine weather.”

“And you have been here several times since. Go on.”

“Yes, sir,” said Glyddyr, smiling; “but are all fathers like you?”

“No,” said Gartram, with a hoarse laugh; “I am the only one of my kind. There, we have had enough preamble, Parry Glyddyr. Out with it.”

“I will, sir. You say you are not blind. You know, then, that I was deeply impressed by Miss Gartram the first time we met. I treated it as a temporary fancy, but the feeling has grown upon me, till I can only think of doing one thing – coming to you as a gentleman, telling you frankly I love Miss Gartram, and asking your permission to visit here regularly as her accepted suitor.”

“What does Claude say to this?”

“Miss Gartram?” said Glyddyr, raising his eyebrows, and removing the grey ash from the end of his cigar; “nothing, sir. How could I be other than the ordinary acquaintance without your sanction?”

“Quite right,” said Gartram, looking at him searchingly, “how, indeed?” and he remained gazing at the unshrinking countenance before him, full of candour and surprise at his ignorance of etiquette till he covered his own eyes. “Then Claude knows nothing of this?”

“I hope and believe, sir, that she knows a great deal, but not from my lips. Women, I believe, are very quick in knowing when they are admired.”

“Humph! And you like my daughter, Mr Glyddyr?” said Gartram, exhaling a huge cloud of smoke.

“I love Miss Gartram very dearly, sir,” said the visitor frankly; “so well that I dare not even think of the consequence of a refusal.”

“Broken heart, suicide and that sort of thing, eh?”

“I hope I should never make a fool of myself, Mr Gartram,” said Glyddyr coldly.

“So do I. Now look here, sir. I gave up society to become a business man – slave driver some people politely call me; but as a tradesman I have been so tricked and swindled by everybody, even my banker, that I have grown suspicious.”