King of the Castle

The woman drew her breath hard, but did not speak; only sat frowning, her brow a maze of wrinkles, her lips drawn to a thin pink line, and her teeth set fast, gazing once more straight before her at the drawn-down blind.

“Hah!” she ejaculated at last. “It has all come to an end.”

Claude started, and looked up in the woman’s face, the words were spoken in so strange and hard a tone.

“I don’t like to talk to you about the future, and hope,” Claude said at last; “it seems such a vain kind of way to comfort any one in affliction.”

“Yes; life is all affliction,” said the woman bitterly; and she frowned now at the kneeling girl.

“No, no; you must not look at things like that, Sarah. But it is hard to bear. How well I remember coming to see your home directly you were married.”

“Don’t talk about it, child,” said the woman hoarsely.

“No, we’ll talk about something else; or will it not be kinder if I sit with you only, and stay as long as I can?”

“No,” said the woman harshly. “Rennals will take poor Isaac’s place. How soon will it be?”

“How soon?”

“Yes; how soon shall I have to turn out of my poor old home?”

“Don’t talk about it now, Sarah,” said Claude gently. “It will be terribly painful for you, I know.”

“Painful!” said the woman, with a bitter laugh, “to go out once more into the cruel world. But a way will open,” she added to herself; “the time will come.”

Her face grew more stony of aspect moment by moment, as she gazed through her nearly closed eyelids straight before her, heedless of the fact that Claude had risen from her knees, and was holding one of her hands.

“Don’t talk of the world so bitterly, Sarah, dear,” said Claude gently. “I must go now.”

“Yes,” said the woman, in a harsh voice.

“Mary is sitting with papa till I go back, or she would have come with me. She sent her kindest and most sympathetic wishes to you. She is coming to see you soon.”

“Yes,” said the woman again, in the same strange, harsh way.

“You know you have many friends and well-wishers who will be only too glad to help you.”

“Yes; Norman Gartram, whose first thought is to turn me out of the home we have shared so long.”

“Don’t be unjust, Sarah, dear. Papa speaks harshly sometimes, but he has the welfare of all his people at heart.”

“And casts me out on to the high road.”

“Nonsense, dear,” said Claude gently. “Don’t speak in that bitter way, when we are all trying so hard to soften your terrible loss. Papa’s business must go on; and Rennals, naturally, takes poor Woodham’s place. I thought it all over this morning, and I felt that you would consent.”

“To give up the house? Of course; it is not mine.”

“And would be of no use to you now.”

“No; – but a way will open to me yet,” she added to herself.

“Sarah, dear old friend, you could not live alone. You will come back to your own old place with us?”

“What?”

The woman sprang to her feet as if she had received some shock, then reeled, and would have fallen, but for Claude’s quick aid.

“I have been too sudden. I ought to have waited, but I thought it would set your mind at rest.”

“Say that again,” whispered the woman, with her eyes closed.

“There is nothing to say. Papa will agree with me that it would be best to have our dear old servant back again; and, as soon as you can, you will come.”

“No, no; no, no; it is impossible,” cried the woman, with a shudder. “I could not return.”

“You think so now; but papa will consent, and I shall insist, too. But there will be no need to insist. It will be like coming back home.”

“No, I tell you,” cried the woman excitedly; and it was as if a wild fit of delirium had suddenly attacked her. “No, no, Isaac, darling, I cannot, I dare not do this thing.”

“My poor old nurse,” said Claude affectionately; “we will not talk about it now. You must wait, and think how it will be for the best.”

“Be for the best!” she cried, in a wild strange way. “You do not know – you do not know.”

“Oh, yes; better than you do, I am sure. Come, I will leave you now. Don’t look so wildly at me. There, good-bye, dear old nurse – my dear old nurse. Kiss me, as you used when I was quite a child, and try to reconcile yourself to coming to us. It is fate.”

Claude kissed her tenderly, and then, not daring to say more, she hurried from the darkened room, to walk swiftly back, glad that the loneliness of the cliff road enabled her to let tears have their free course for a time.

Could she have seen the interior of the cottage, she would have stared in wonder and dread, for, sobbing wildly and tearing at her breast, with all the unbridled grief of one of her class, Sarah Woodham was walking hurriedly to and fro, like some imprisoned creature trying to escape from the bars which hemmed it in.

“His child,” – she cried, – “his poor, innocent child to draw me there. What did she say? It is fate. Yes, it is fate; and we are but the instruments to work His will.”

She stopped, gazing wildly towards the inner chamber, pausing irresolutely for a few moments before rushing in and flinging herself upon her knees by the dead.

It was an hour after that she came tottering out, to stand by the chair she had occupied, and by which she found a handkerchief Claude had dropped; and, catching it up, she pressed it to her lips.

“His poor, innocent child to lead me there to execute judgment on the evil doer. And I have prayed so hard – so hard – in vain – in vain. Yes, she is right. We are but instruments; and it is my fate.”

She stood with her hands pressed to her brow, as if to keep her throbbing brain from bursting its bonds. Then a strangely-weird, despairing look came across her darkening face, and she let herself sink, as if it were vain to combat more; and there was a terrible silence in the place, as she seemed to be looking forward into the future.

Once again she broke that silence as the turn of her thoughts was made manifest, but her voice sounded harsh and broken, as if the words would hardly come.

“His innocent child – the girl I loved as if she had been my own flesh and blood;” and her voice rose to a wail. Then, after a few moments’ silence: “Yes, I must go. I swore to the dead, and the way is opened now. It is my fate.”

Volume One – Chapter Nine.

The Beggar

Christopher Lisle sat in his snug, bachelor room at Danmouth, tying a fly with a proper amount of dubbing, hackle, and tinsel, for the deluding of some unfortunate salmon. The breakfast things were still on the table, and there was a cloud over his head, and another cloud in his brain.

The room was bright and pleasant, overlooked the sea, and was just such a place as a bachelor in comfortable circumstances, with a love for outdoor sports, would have called a snuggery. For it was just so tidy as not to be very untidy, with fishing and shooting gear in all directions; pipes in a rack, tobacco jars and cigar boxes on shelves; natural history specimens in trays and cabinets, from pinned beetles up to minerals and fossils; and under a table, in a case, lay Chris Lisle’s largest salmon, carefully cast and painted to fairly resemble life.

The tying of that fly did not progress, and after a good many stoppages it was thrown down impatiently.

“Confound the hook,” cried Chris. “That’s four times I’ve pricked my finger. Everything seems to go wrong. Now, what had I better do? He ought to be well enough to see me now, and so better get it over. I’d no business to go on as I did; but who could help it, bless her, holding her in my arms like that, and loving her as I do? Wrong. Oh, it was honest human nature; and any other fellow would have done the same.

“I suppose I ought to have spoken to the old man first. Though who in the world could think of him at a time like that. But how black he looked; and then there was that confounded good-looking yachtsman there.”

This was a point in the business which required thinking out; and to do this thoroughly Chris Lisle took up a black pipe, filled it, and after lighting it daintily with a good deal of toying with the flame, he threw himself back in his chair, and began to frown and smoke.

“No,” he said aloud, after a long pause. “Nonsense; the old fellow might think something of it, but my darling little Claude – never. And she’s not the girl to flirt and play with any one. No; I know her too well for that – far too well. I frightened her, I was so sudden. A woman is so different to a man, and that wasn’t put on; it was sheer timidity – poor little darling! How I do long to apologise, and ask her to forgive me. I must have seemed terribly awkward and boorish in her eyes, for I pulled up quite sulkily after that facer I got from Mary Dillon. The nasty, spiteful little minx. It was too bad. Fortune-hunter! Why, I’d marry Claudie without a penny, and be glad of the chance. Hang the old man’s money. What do two young people, who love each other dearly, want with money?”

The idea seemed to be absurd, and he sat smoking dreamily for some minutes.

“I’ll serve the spiteful, sharp-tongued little thing out for this,” he said at last. “No, I will not. Rubbish! She didn’t mean it. But I’ll go up and hear how the old man is. He ought to be able to see me this morning, and I’ll speak out plainly this time, and get it over.”

Chris Lisle was not the man to hesitate. He threw aside his pipe, rang for the breakfast things to be cleared away, glanced at the looking-glass to see if he appeared decent, and stuck a straw hat on his crisp, curly hair.

“Not half such a good-looking chap as the yachtsman,” he said, with a half laugh. “Glad of it. Wouldn’t be such a smooth-looking dandy for the world. Why, hang it!” he said with a laugh, as he strode along by the rocky beach in the full tide of his manly vigour, “I could eat a fellow like that. I never thought of it before,” he continued to himself, as he walked on. “Fortune-hunter! I can’t be called a poor man. Two hundred and fifty a year. Why, I never felt short of money in my life. Always seemed to be enough for everything I wanted. Bah! nobody but little midges up there could ever say such a thing as that.”

A peculiar change seemed just then to be taking place in Chris Lisle. The moment before he was swinging easily along, giving a friendly nod here and there to fishermen and loungers, who saluted him with a smile and a “Morn, Mr Chris, sir,” the next he had grown stiff and rigid, as he saw a dingy pulled in to the landing-place some distance ahead, and Glyddyr leap out, the distance fitting so that the young men had to pass each other, which they did with a short nod of recognition.

“Swell!” muttered Chris contemptuous, as he strode on.

“Bumpkin!” thought Glyddyr, as he went in the other direction, and he laughed softly to himself.

A short distance farther along the cliff road Chris came suddenly upon a figure in deep mourning, and he stopped short, with his whole manner changing once more.

“Ah, Mrs Woodham,” he said, in a low voice full of commiseration, “I have not been up to the quarry, but I had not forgotten an old friend. Can I be of any service to you?”

The woman shook her head.

“Don’t do that,” he said kindly. “They will not keep you, but recollect, Sarah, that we are very old friends, and I shall be hurt if you want money and don’t come to me.”

“God bless you, Master Chris,” said the woman hoarsely; “but don’t keep me now.”

She hurried away, and he stood looking after her for a few moments.

“Poor thing!” he said, as he went on. “What trouble to have to bear. Hang it all, I wouldn’t change places with Gartram if I could.”

He went on, thinking deeply about Glyddyr.

“The old man seems to have quite taken to that fellow, and did from the first time he came here with his yacht. Regular sporting chap. Wins heavily on the turf. Bound to say he loses, too. Three hundred thousand pounds, they say, he had when his father died. Well, good luck to him! I hadn’t when mine passed away.”

Chris began to whistle softly as he went on, stopping once to pick a flower from out of a niche where the water trickled down from a crack in the granite, and, farther on, taking out a tiny lens to inspect a fly. Then another botanical specimen took his attention, and was transferred to a pocket-book, and by that time he was up at the castellated gateway and bridge over the well-filled moat of the Fort.

He went up to the entrance, with its nail-studded oaken door, just as he had been hundreds of times before since boyhood, rang, and walked into the hall before the servant had time to answer the bell.

“Anybody at home?” he said carelessly.

“Yes, sir; master’s in the study, and the ladies are in the drawing-room.”

“Mr Gartram well enough to see me, I suppose?”

“Oh, yes, sir. Doctor Asher was here to breakfast, and master’s going out.”

“All right; I’ll go in.”

There was no announcing. Chris Lisle felt quite at home there, and he crossed the stone-paved hall, gave a sharp tap at the study door, and walked in.

“Morning, sir,” he cried cheerily. “Very glad to hear you are so much better.”

“Thankye,” said Gartram sourly; “but I’m not so much better.”

“Get out,” said Chris.

“What?”

“I mean in the open air.”

“Oh. Well, Mr Lisle, what do you want – money?”

“I? No, sir. Well, yes, I do.”

“Then you had better go to a lawyer. I have done all I could with your father’s estate as your trustee, and if you want to raise money don’t come to me.”

“Well,” said Chris, laughing, “I don’t want to raise money, and I do come to you.”

“What for, sir?”

“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Chris, speaking on the spur of the moment, for an idea had occurred to him. “But suppose we drop the ‘sir’-ing. It doesn’t seem to fit after having known me all these years.”

“Go on. I’m not well. Say what you want briefly. I’m going out.”

“I won’t keep you long, but it may be for your benefit. Look here, guardian, you know what I have a year?”

“Perfectly – two hundred and fifty, if you haven’t been mortgaging.”

“Well, I haven’t been mortgaging. It is not one of my pastimes. But it has occurred to me that I lead a very idle life.”

“Bless my soul!” cried Gartram sarcastically. “When did you discover that?”

“And,” continued Chris, “it seems to me that, as you are growing older – ”

Gartram’s face twitched.

“Your health is not anything like what it should be.”

Gartram ground his teeth, but Chris was so intent upon his new idea that he noticed nothing, and went on in a frank, blundering, earnest way.

“Worse still, you have just lost, by that terrible accident, poor Woodham, who was your right-hand man. It would not be a bad thing for you, and it would be a capital thing for me, if you would take me on to be a sort of foreman or superintendent at the quarries. Of course, I don’t mean to go tamping and blasting, but to see that the men did their work properly, that the stones were taken to the wharf, and generally to see to things when you were not there or wanted a rest.”

“At a salary?”

“Salary? Well, I hadn’t thought of that – But yes: at a salary. A labourer’s worthy of his hire. It would make you more independent, and me too. Of course, I am not clever in your business, but I’ve watched the men from a boy, and I know pretty well how things ought to be done; and of course you could trust me as you could yourself.”

Gartram’s face was a study. His illness had exacerbated his temper, and over and over again, as the young man went on in his frank, blundering, honest fashion, he seemed on the point of breaking out. But Chris realised nothing of this. He only grew more sanguine as his new idea seemed to be brighter and more feasible the more he developed it, feeling the while that he was untying an awkward knot, and that his proposals would benefit all.

There was not a gleam of selfishness in his mind, and if Gartram had said: “I like your proposal, and I’ll give you fourteen shillings a week to begin with,” he would have accepted the paltry sum, and felt pleased.

“You see,” he continued, “it would be the very thing; you want a superintendent who would take all the petty worries off your mind.”

“And by-and-by,” said Gartram, suffocating with wrath, “you would like me to offer you a partnership?”

Chris’s eyes flashed.

“Yes, Mr Gartram, I should like that dearly. I never felt till just now that I was a poor man; my wants have been so simple. Yes, by-and-by, you might offer me a partnership if you found me worthy, and you should, sir; I swear you should.”

“And with it my daughter’s hand?”

“I was coming to that, Mr Gartram,” said Chris flushing, and with a proud, happy look in his eyes, as he sat gazing straight out of the window to sea. “I felt, naturally, a shrinking about speaking of that, but Claude and I were boy and girl together. I always liked her, and that liking has grown into a man’s honest, true love. I should have come to you before to explain about what you saw in the glen, but of course, I felt how out of place anything would be from me at a time when you were in trouble and ill, and so I waited till this morning.”

“Yes,” said Gartram hoarsely; “go on.”

“I know I ought not to have spoken to Claude as I did without first speaking to you, but it slipped out without thought, and I ought to say I am sorry, sir; but, feeling as I do, I can only say that I am glad.”

“One moment,” said Gartram, speaking perfectly calmly, but with a voice that sounded as if it were iced; “let us perfectly understand one another – you propose that I should engage you as my foreman?”

“Yes, Mr Gartram,” said Chris quietly. “I have had the education of a gentleman – well, I may say it – my father was a gentleman. I am a gentleman, but I am not proud. I quite agree with you that a man should lead a useful life. I wish to lead a useful life.”

“Exactly,” continued Gartram; “to be my foreman at a salary, with a view to future partnership and my daughter’s hand?”

“Yes, Mr Gartram; and I will make your interests my study. What do you say?”

“Say?” cried Gartram, in a voice of thunder. “Damn your impudence!”

“What!”

“You miserable, insolent, conceited young hound! You come here with such a proposition, after daring, on the strength of the freedom I gave you of my house – for your father’s sake – to insult my daughter as you did up that glen.”

“Miss Gartram has not said I insulted her?” cried Chris.

“I say insulted her with your silly, impudent talk about your love. Why, confound it, sir, what are you – a fool, an idiot, or a conceited, presumptuous, artful beggar?”

“Mr Gartram! – No, I will not be angry,” said Chris, subduing the indignant rage which was in him. “You have been ill and are irritable. I have badly chosen my time. Don’t speak to me like that, sir. I have always looked up to you as a guardian ever since I was left alone in the world. You don’t mean those words, sir. Say you don’t mean them, for Claude’s sake.”

“Silence, sir! For Claude’s sake, indeed. Confound you! How dare you! You must be mad to raise your eyes to her. You contemptible, artful, fortune-hunting scoundrel!”

“Mr Gartram!” cried Chris, flushing with anger now. “How dare you speak to me like this?”

“Because I am in my own house, sir. Because a miserable, mad-brained jackanapes has dared to make an attack upon me and upon my child. Silence – ”

“Silence, sir, yourself!” raged Chris.

“What? You insolent dog, I’ll have you turned out of the house. I’ll have you horse-whipped. Dare so much as to speak to my child again. Dare so much as to look at her. Dare to come upon my premises again, and damme, sir, I’ll – I’ll shoot you!”

“You don’t mean it. You shall not mean it,” cried Chris hotly.

“Out of my house, sir!”

“Mr Gartram,” cried Chris, as the old man, half mad with rage and excitement consequent upon the reaction from his fit, strode close up to where his visitor stood.

“I say out of my house, sir, before I have you horse-whipped as I would a dog.”

As he spoke, he gave the young man a thrust, half blow, across the chest, just as the door opened, and the servant announced Mr Glyddyr, stood with open mouth, staring for a moment at the scene, and then, as the new visitor entered, ran back, without stopping to close the door, to announce to Claude and Mary that master was going to have another fit.

“Hah!” cried Gartram, as his eyes lit upon Glyddyr; “you, is it? Look here,” he roared, in a voice choked with passion, “this beggarly, insolent upstart – this puppy that I have helped to rear – has had the audacity to propose for my daughter’s hand.”

“What?” cried Glyddyr, taking his tone from Gartram; and, turning upon Chris, he darted a look mingled of incredulity, threatening and contempt.

“Yes; I am weak from illness, or I’d ask no man’s help. You are young and strong. Take him by the collar, and bundle the insolent scoundrel neck and crop out of the place. That’s right: quick!”

Glyddyr advanced straight to where Chris stood, with a blank look of rage and despair upon his countenance, crushed, drooping, half broken-hearted, as he felt how ingenuous he had been to speak as he had to the hard, grasping man of the world before him; but as Glyddyr laid his hand upon his collar, he uttered a low, hoarse sound, like the growl of an angry beast.

“Now, sir, out you go,” cried Glyddyr, with a mocking, sneering look in his countenance, full of triumph. “Out with you before you are kicked out.”

“Take away your hand,” said Chris, in a low, husky whisper.

“What! No insolence. Out with you!”

“Take away your hand.”

“Do you hear me? Now then, out.”

“Curse you, you will have it, then,” cried Chris, shaking himself free; and then, as Glyddyr recovered himself, and tried to seize him again, Chris’s left fist darted out from his shoulder, there was a low, dull sound, and Glyddyr staggered back for a couple of yards, to fall with a heavy crash, just as, with a shriek of horror, Claude, closely followed by Mary, rushed into the room.

“Chris Lisle, what have you done?” cried Claude, while Mary, whom fate had made the busy help of the family, hurried to Glyddyr’s side, and helped him to rise to a sitting position. He did not attempt to get upon his feet.

“Lost my temper, I suppose,” said Chris, who began to calm down as he saw the effect of his blow. “But it was his own doing. I warned him to keep his hands off.”

“Leave my house, ruffian, before I send for the police.”

“You’ll be sorry for all this, Mr Gartram,” said Chris. “Claude – ”

“Silence!” shouted Gartram. “Recollect, my girl, that henceforth this man and we are strangers. Everything between us is at an end. Once more, sir, will you leave my house?”

“Yes, I’ll go,” replied Chris slowly, as his eyes rested on Claude’s. “Don’t think ill of me,” he said to her huskily. “I have done nothing wrong.”

Gartram came between them, and, feeling that time alone could heal the terrible breach, Chris made a gesticulation and walked slowly to the door, where he turned.

“Mr Gartram,” he said, “you’ll bitterly repent this. But don’t think that I shall give up. I’ll go now. One of these days, when you have thought all over, you will ask me to come back, and we shall be friends again. Claude – Mary, all this was not my seeking. Good-bye.”

“Not his seeking!” cried Gartram, sinking into a chair and dabbing his face with his handkerchief. “He wants to kill me: that’s what he’s trying to do. How are you now, Glyddyr? Pray forgive me for bringing this upon you. The scoundrel must be mad.”

“Getting better now, sir,” said Glyddyr; and, as his enemy had gone, beginning with a great show of suffering and effort to suppress it, as his eyes sought sympathy from Claude. He found none, so directed his eyes at Mary, who offered him her hand as he made slowly for the nearest easy chair. “I suppose I was a bit stunned. Not hurt much, I think.”

“I don’t know how to apologise enough,” cried Gartram; “and you two girls, have you nothing to say? An outrageous assault on my guest! But he shall smart for it. I’ll have him summoned.”

“No, no, Mr Gartram, I’m getting all right fast,” said Glyddyr, quickly seizing the opportunity to be magnanimous in Claudes eyes. “Mr Lisle was excited, and he struck me. A blow like that is nothing.”

“Mr Christopher Lisle will find out that a blow such as you’ve received means a great deal more than he thinks, sir. Claude, ring the bell. Have the spirit stand and soda-water brought in. Are you sure you are not seriously hurt, Glyddyr?”