King of the Castle

“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?”