King of the Castle Part 61

Chris uttered a groan.

"My poor darling, it will break her heart! Poor old fellow! Cut off like that."

Resentment, bitterness, died out in this great sorrow; and Chris could only see now the fine-looking, masterful, elderly man, who had always been his friend, till ambition had led him astray, and he had discarded the suitor who had grown up to love his child.

It seems too horrible! One of these terrible fits.

He was on his way up to ask to see Claude, and try to administer some consolation, but he paused. It would be an outrage to go now. It would be indecent to force his way there in disobedience to the wishes of the man who was lying blank and cold--blank and cold as the edifice he had so proudly reared with the money he had fought for so long.

"No," thought Chris. "I must go back and write."

In the manly frankness of his disposition, up to that moment, no thought of obstacle removed, or the future that lay before him, had come across his brain, till just then he caught sight of the gardener coming quickly along the town street, when, like a flash, came back to him the scene of the past night, and his discovery. Then, with the incongruity of human nature, there came a feeling of satisfaction in the thought that Gartram could never now sting him with contemptuous allusions to his wretched escapade, and that now he need not fear this man.

Momentary thoughts, which he chased away with a feeling of indignation against himself as he stopped the gardener.

"Is it--true?"

"Yes, sir. It's true enough. He was a hard master, one as come down upon you awful if he see a weed; but I'd give that there right hand to have him alive and well before me now."

Chris bowed his head and walked slowly back, to start aside and gaze fiercely in the eyes of the man whom he encountered a few yards farther on, for, as he was approaching the post-office, Glyddyr came out suddenly with a telegraph form in his hand.

The two young men paused as if arrested by some power over which they had no control, and as they stood gazing at each other, Chris, waiting for Glyddyr to speak, a crowd of thoughts flashed through his brain.

Claude--alone--her own mistress, what of your triumph now!

Very different were Glyddyr's thoughts. Claude was somehow mixed up with them, but he read in his rival's eye distrust, suspicion, and a hidden knowledge of his latest acts; and they pa.s.sed on rapidly through his mind, till he saw Chris Lisle denouncing him as a murderer and about to seize him then.

Neither spoke, and after the long, intense gaze of eye into eye had lasted some moments, each went his way, one back to his yacht to try and make up his mind whether he ought to call at once, the other home to sit down and write to Claude, and tell her that he was always hers, and that in this, her terrible hour of affliction, he was longing to try and share her pain.

"And if I said that," thought Chris, as he slowly tore up the letter, "she would think it an insult, and that I am triumphing over the dead."

So Chris's letter, full of the tender love he felt, never reached Claude's hand.

Volume Two, Chapter XIII.

GLYDDYR COMMUNES WITH SELF.

Glyddyr gave the orders to unmoor and make sail, after a great deal of hesitation, and then countermanded those orders, and went down into his cabin. There he made the man who acted as steward and valet open for him a pint of champagne, which he tossed off as if suffering from a burning thirst.

That seemed to do him good. His hand ceased to shake, and the peculiar sensation of sinking pa.s.sed off for the time as he sat by the cabin window, lit a cigar, and let it out again while he watched the Fort, with its drawn-down blinds, and thought over the last night's proceedings.

"It was an accident," he said to himself, "a terrible mistake, and all in vain. Good heavens! who could have thought that a little drop of clear white-looking stuff could have done that; and him so used to taking it."

He shrank away from the window, dashed away his cigar and sat down there in the cabin, with his face buried in his hands.

"I ought to have summoned help when I saw how strange and cold he turned. It would have saved him, poor old fellow! I wouldn't for all the world that it should have happened, it seems impossible, and I can't even believe it yet."

With a start of childish disbelief, he straightened himself and looked out of the cabin window, as if he had half-expected to see the blinds drawn up, and the Fort looking as usual.

But there was no change, and, with a groan of agony, he turned away and stamped his foot with impatient rage.

"Just like my cursed luck," he cried. "Any one but me would have made a pot of money over Simoom. I could have made enough to free me from this wretched bondage, but now it's just as if something always stood between me and success, and baulked all my plans."

He let his head sink upon his hands, and sat thinking again, but only to raise himself in an angry fas.h.i.+on and ring the bell.

"You ring, sir?" said the steward at the end of a minute.

"Of course, I rang," said Glyddyr with petulant rage. "You heard me ring, and knew I rang, or you wouldn't have come. Well, where is it?"

"I beg pardon, sir?"

"I say, where is it?"

"Where is what, sir?"

"The pint of champagne I told you to bring."

"Beg pardon, sir, I did bring it and you drank it."

"What?" roared Glyddyr. "Yes, of course, so I did. I had forgotten.

Bring me another."

"Guv'nor on the house?" said one of the sailors.

"Hold your row. Upset over that affair up at the toyshop," said the steward in a whisper, and he took in the fresh pint of wine.

"Set it down."

"Yes, sir."

The steward beat a retreat, and Glyddyr tossed off another gla.s.s, poured out the remainder, and sat gazing at it vacantly for a few minutes before taking it up, his hand once more trembling violently.

"If I weren't such a cursed coward," he said, "I could get on. He must have had a lot before, and that's what did it. By George, it gives me the horrors!"

He tossed off the wine.

"No," he muttered as he set down the gla.s.s; "it wasn't what I gave him.

It wasn't enough, and to think now that there was all that lying ready to my hand, without my having the pluck to take what I wanted. I must have been a fool. I must have been mad."

"Curse these bottles!" he cried, after a pause. "Pint? They don't hold half--a wretched swindle. I believe there are thousands lying there; and I might have borrowed what I wanted, and all would have been well; but I was such a fool."

"No, I wasn't," he cried, as if apostrophising someone. "How could I get it with that woman coming in and out, and the feeling on me that one of the girls might open the door at any moment. They'd have thought I meant to steal the cursed stuff. Then, too, it seemed as if he might wake up at any moment. Bah! How upset I do feel. That stuff's no better than water."

He rose angrily, and opened a locker, from which he took out a brandy decanter, and placed it on the table. "Let's have a nip of you. I seem to want something to steady my nerves."

He poured out a goodly dram and tossed it off.

"Ah, that's better! One can taste you. Seems to take off this horrible feeling of sinking.--Poor old fellow! Seemed as if he would wake up.