Charles Rex Part 8

"But you'll keep me with you, sir," said Toby swiftly. "You'll keep me--always--with you!"

"Ah!" Saltash's brows twisted oddly for a second. He seemed to ponder the matter. "I can't say off-hand what I'm going to do with you," he said.

"You're--a bit of a problem, you know, Toby."

"Yes, sir. I know. I know." Toby's voice was quick with agitation. "But you won't send me away from you! Promise you won't send me away!"

"Can't promise anything," said Saltash. "Look here! I think there's been enough of this. You'd better go to bed."

But Toby was clinging fast to his hand. He spoke between quivering lips.

"Please, sir, you said you'd bought me body and soul. You can't mean to chuck me away--after that! Please, sir, I'll do anything--anything under the sun--for you. And you--you can kick me--do anything to me--and I'll never say a word. I'm just yours--for as long as I live. Please, sir--please, sir--don't send me away! I--I'd rather die than that."

He laid his head suddenly down upon the hand he held so tenaciously and began to sob, fighting desperately to stifle all sound.

Saltash sat for a few moments in utter silence and immobility. Then, abruptly, in a tense whisper, he spoke:

"Toby, you little fool, stop it--stop it, do you hear?--and go below!"

The words held a queer urgency. He raised himself as he uttered them, seeking to free his hand though with all gentleness from the clinging clasp.

"Get up, boy!" he said. "Get up and go to bed! What? Oh, don't cry! Pull yourself together! Toby, do you hear?"

Toby lifted a white, strained face. His eyes looked enormous in the dim light. "Yes, sir. All right, sir," he jerked out, and stumbled trembling to his feet. "I know I'm a fool, sir. I'm sorry. I can't help it. No one was ever decent to me--till you came. I--shall just go under now, sir."

"Oh, stop it!" Saltash spoke almost violently. "Can't you see--that's just what I want to prevent? You don't want to go to the devil, I suppose?"

Toby made a pa.s.sionate gesture that was curiously unboylike. "I'd go to h.e.l.l and stay there for ever--if you were there!" he said.

"Good G.o.d!" said Saltash.

He got up in his sudden fas.h.i.+on and moved away, went to the rail and stood there for a s.p.a.ce with his face to the rippling sheen of water.

Finally he turned and looked at the silent figure waiting beside his chair, and a very strange smile came over his dark features. He came back, not without a certain arrogance, and tapped Toby on the shoulder.

"All right," he said. "Stay with me and be d.a.m.ned if you want to! I daresay it would come to the same thing in the end."

Toby drew himself together with a swift movement. "That means you'll keep me, sir?"

His eyes, alight and eager, looked up to Saltash with something that was not far removed from adoration in their s.h.i.+ning earnestness.

The strange smile still hovered about Saltash's face; a smile in which cynicism and some vagrant, half-stifled emotion were oddly mingled.

"Yes, I'll keep you," he said, and paused, looking at him oddly.

Toby's eyes, very wide open, intensely bright, looked straight back. "For good, sir?" he said anxiously.

And Saltash laughed, a brief, mocking laugh. "For better, for worse, my Toby!" he said. "Now--go!"

He smote him a light friendly blow on the shoulder and flung round on his heel.

Toby went, very swiftly, without looking back.

CHAPTER VI

THE ABYSS

They sighted the English sh.o.r.e a few days later on an evening of mist and rain. The sea was grey and dim, the atmosphere cold and inhospitable.

"Just like England!" said Saltash. "She never gushes over her prodigals."

He was dining alone in the saloon with Toby behind his chair, Larpent being absent on the bridge.

"Don't you like England, sir?" said Toby.

"I adore her," said Saltash with his most hideous grimace. "But I don't go to her for amus.e.m.e.nt."

Toby came forward to fill his gla.s.s with liqueur. "Too strait-laced, sir?" he suggested with the suspicion of a smile.

Saltash nodded with a sidelong glance at the young face bent over the decanter. "Too limited in many ways, my Toby," he said. "But at the same time useful in certain emergencies. A stern mother perhaps, but a wise one on the whole. You, for instance--she will be the making of you."

A slight tremor went through Toby. He set down the decanter and stepped back. "Of me, sir?" he said.

Saltash nodded again. He was fingering the stem of his gla.s.s, his queer eyes dancing a little. "We've got to make a respectable citizen of you--somehow," he said.

"Do you think that matters, sir?" said Toby.

Saltash raised his gla.s.s. "You won't always be a boy of sixteen, you know, Toby," he said lightly. "We've got to think of the future--whether we want to or not."

"I don't see why, sir," said Toby.

"You see, you're young," said Saltash, and drank with the air of one who drinks a toast.

Suddenly he turned in his chair, the gla.s.s still in his hand.

"Our last night on board!" he said, with a royal gesture of invitation.

"You shall drink with me."

Toby's face flushed burningly. He hung back. "Not--not--from your gla.s.s, sir!" he said. "Not--liqueur!"

"Why not? Afraid?" mocked Saltash.

Toby was silent. His hand closed involuntarily upon the back of his master's chair. The flush died out of his face.

Saltash sat and looked at him for a few seconds, still with that dancing gleam in his eyes. Then abruptly he moved, rose with one knee upon the chair, lifted the gla.s.s to Toby's lips.

"Afraid?" he said again, speaking softly as one speaks to a frightened child.