King of the Castle

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.”