King of the Castle

“Oh, Mary, you are insufferable. You think of nothing else but lovers.”

“Well, why not, Claudie?” said the girl with a sigh, and a peculiarly pinched look coming about her mouth, as her clear, white forehead wrinkled up, and her fine eyes seemed full of trouble. “One always longs for the unattainable. Nobody will ever love me, so why shouldn’t I enjoy seeing somebody love you?”

“Mary, darling, I love you dearly.”

“Yes, pet, like the dearest, sweetest old sister that ever was. You worship poor old humpty dumpty?”

“Don’t ridicule yourself. Mary dear.”

“Why not? But I meant no nice, handsome Christopher Lisle will ever want to look in my eyes and say – ”

“Will you be quiet, Mary? Why will you be always bringing up Mr Christopher Lisle? I never tease you about Mr Gullick.”

“Because – because – because – ” She did not finish her speech, but burst out into a loud, ringing laugh, full of teasing, malicious mirth, till she saw Claude’s flushed face, and then she stopped short.

“There, I’ve done. Which way shall we go?”

“I don’t care. I feel as if I’d rather stay at home now.”

“No, no; I won’t tease. Shall we go as far as the town?”

“No; anywhere you like.”

“Say somewhere.”

“Not I. You’ll only tease me, and say I had some reason. I’ll only go where you choose.”

“Then you shall, dear. We’ll go up the east glen to the fall, and then cross over the hill and come back by the west glen, and you shall tease me as much as you like.”

“I don’t want to tease you.”

Mary made a grimace as she looked sidewise at herself, but she coloured a little, and was silent for a time.

They were already some hundred yards from the great, grey granite mansion, which stood upon a bald bluff of cliff, built within the past thirty years, and by the fancy of its architect made to resemble a stronghold of the Norman times, with its battlements, towers, frowning gateway, moat and drawbridge crossing the deep channel, kept well filled by a spring far up in one of the glens at the back, while the front of the solid-looking, impregnable edifice frowned down upon the glittering sea.

“See how grand Castle Dangerous looks from here,” said Mary Dillon, as they were about to turn up the glen. “Don’t you often feel as if we were two forlorn maidens – I mean,” she cried merrily, “a forlorn maiden and a half – shut up in that terrible place waiting for a gallant knight and a half to come and rescue us from the clutches of ogre-like Uncle Gartram?”

“Mary, darling,” said Claude affectionately, “if you knew how you hurt me, you would cease these mocking allusions to your affliction.”

“Then I will not hurt you any more, pet. But I am such a sight.”

“No, you are not. You have, when in repose, the sweetest, cleverest face I ever saw.”

“Let’s be in repose, then.”

“And you know you are brilliant in intellect, where I am stupid.”

“Oh! if I could be as stupid!”

“And you have the sweetest voice possible. See what gifts these are.”

“Oh, yes, I suppose so, Claudie, but I don’t care for them a bit – not a millionth part as much as having your love. There, don’t let’s talk nonsense. Come along.”

She hurried her companion over a bridge and towards a path roughly made beside the babbling stream which supplied the moat at the Fort, and then in and out among the rocks, and beneath the pensile birches which shed a dappled shade over the path, while every here and there in gardens great clumps of fuchsias and hydrangeas showed the moist warmth of the sheltered nook.

They walked quickly, Claude urged on by her companion, who climbed the steep path with the agility of a goat, till they reached a fall, where the water came tumbling over the hoary, weather-stained rocks, and the path forked, one track going over the stream behind the fall, and the other becoming a rough stairway right up the side of the glen.

“Hadn’t we better go this way?” said Claude timidly, indicating the route to the left.

“No; too far round,” said Mary peremptorily. “Come along,” and she began to skip from rock to rock and rough step to step, up the side of the glen, Claude following her with more effort till they reached the rugged top of the cliff, and continued their walk onward among heather bloom and patches of beautifully fine grass, with here and there broken banks, where the wild thyme made the air fragrant with its scent.

“This is ten times as nice as going through the woods,” cried Mary. “You seem to get such delicious puffs of the sea breeze. Vorwarts!”

She hurried her companion on for about a mile, when the track turned sharply off to the right, and a steep descent led them to the banks of another stream which was gradually converging towards the one they had left, so that the two nearly joined where they swept down their rocky channels into the sea.

“This is ten times as good a way, Claudie. I always think it is the prettiest walk we have. Look what a colour the fir trees are turning, with those pale green tassels at the tips; and how beautiful those patches of gorse are. I wish one could get such a colour in paintings.”

She chatted on merrily as they descended the stream, with its many turns and zigzags, through the deep chasm along which it ran; and whenever Claude appeared disposed to speak, Mary always had some familiar object to which she could draw her companion’s attention. In fact, it seemed as if she would not give her time to think, as she noted that a quick, nervous look was directed at the stream from time to time.

A stranger might have thought Claude was nervous about the risks of the path as it went round some pool, with the rocks coming down perpendicularly to the deep, dark water. Or that she was in dread of encountering graver difficulties in the lonely ravine, whose almost perpendicular sides were clothed with growth of a hundred tints. Far beneath them, flashing, foaming, and hurrying on with a deep, murmuring sound, ran the little river, from rapid to fall, and from fall to deep, dark, sluggish-looking hole; while in places the trees, which had contrived to get a footing in some crevice of the rock, overhung the river, and threw the water beneath into the deepest shade.

They reached, at length, a more open part, where the sun shone down brightly, and their way lay through a patch of moss-grown hazel stubbs, which after a few steps made a complete screen from the sun’s rays, and they walked over a verdant carpet which silenced every footfall.

“We shall have plenty of time,” said Mary, as they reached the farther edge of the hazel clump, “and we may as well sit down on the rocks and read.”

“No, not now,” said Claude hastily. Then in an agitated whisper, as a peculiar whizzing noise was heard: “Oh, Mary, this is too cruel. Why have you brought me here?”

“Because it was not considered good for Adam to live alone in Paradise. There’s poor Adam alone and disconsolate, fishing to pass time away. Paradise in the glen is very pretty, but dull. Enter Eve. Now, Claude, dear, show yourself worthy of the name of woman. Go on!”

Volume One – Chapter Two.

Things go Crooked

Norman Gartram returned to his seat, looking rigid and scowling as he gazed fiercely at the workman.

“Well?” he said sharply.

“Don’t believe she can be his bairn,” said the workman to himself, as he returned his employers angry stare.

“I said Well!”

“I heard you, master. Needn’t shout.”

“What do you want?”

“Come about the big block at the corner. Time it was blasted down.”

“Then blast it down; and how many more times am I to tell you to say sir to me?”