King of the Castle. Fenn George Manville
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he saw that Claude was coming toward him, but stopped short, and it was Mary Dillon’s hand that was laid upon his arm, and her voice which was asking how he was.
Volume One – Chapter Twelve.
The Gift of a White Card
A hasty note had been despatched to the Fort by Glyddyr, announcing that a friend had come down from town, and that to entertain him he was going to take him for a short cruise in his yacht. Then there were the customary hopes that Gartram was better, and with kindest regards to Miss Gartram, Glyddyr remained his very sincerely.
“I don’t like going off like this,” grumbled Glyddyr; “it looks as if I were being scared away.”
“Well, that is curious,” said Gellow, with mock seriousness.
“And it’s like retreating from the field and leaving it to Lisle.”
“Who the deuce is Lisle?”
“Eh? A man I know. Had a bit of a quarrel with him,” said Glyddyr hastily.
“Quarrel? What about?”
“Oh, nothing, nothing.”
Gellow talked in a light, bantering strain, but behind the mask of lightness he assumed, a keen observer would have noticed that he was all on the strain to notice everything, and he noted that there was something under Glyddyrs careless way of turning the subject aside.
“Rival, of course,” thought Gellow.
They were walking down toward the pier, and as they neared the sea Glyddyrs pace grew slower, and his indecision more marked.
“I can’t afford to trifle with this affair,” he said. “I don’t think I’ll go.”
“Well, don’t go. Stop and order a nice piquant delicate little dinner in case Madame Denise comes, something of the Trois Frères Provençaux style, and I’ll stop and dine with you, play gooseberry, and keep you from quarrelling.”
“Come along,” said Glyddyr sharply; “we’ll go, but I believe she will not come. No, I won’t go. Suppose she does come down, and I’m not here, and she begins to make inquiries?”
“Bosh! If she comes and finds you are not here, the first inquiry she makes will be for when you went away, the second, for where you went.”
“Possibly.”
“Then let drop to some one that you are going to Redport, or Rainsbury, and she’ll make at once for there.”
“Confound you!” cried Glyddyr sharply. “Nature must have meant you for a fox.”
“You said a rat just now, dear boy. I never studied Darwin. Have it your own way. That our boat?”
“That’s my boat,” said Glyddyr sharply, as they reached the end of the pier.
“In with you, then,” cried Gellow; and then, in a voice loud enough to be heard on the nearest brig in the harbour, “Think the wind will hold good for Redport?”
Glyddyr growled, and followed his companion into the boat, which was pushed off directly.
“I don’t believe she’ll come down,” he whispered to Gellow, as the two sailors bent to their oars, and the boat began to surge through the clear water.
“Not likely,” said Gellow. “Look!”
Glyddyr gave a hasty glance back, and saw that which made him sit fast staring straight before him, and say, in a quick low voice, —
“Give way, my lads; I want to get on board.”
Then followed the excited appearance of the lady at the end of the pier, the cries to them to stop, and the plunge into the water.
“Well, she is a tartar,” whispered Gellow.
“Don’t look back, man.”
“Oh, all right. Water isn’t deep, I suppose?”
“Look, sir,” cried one of the sailors. “Shall we row back?”
“No; go on.”
“Water’s ten foot deep, sir, and the tide’s running like mad,” cried the man excitedly.
“Some one will help the lady out,” said Glyddyr hastily. “Plenty of hands there.”
“Hooray!” cried one of the men, as Chris leaped off the pier.
“Tell them to back water,” whispered Gellow excitedly. “It’s murder, man.”
Glyddyr made no reply, but seemed as if stricken with paralysis, as he looked back with a strangely confused set of thoughts struggling together in his brain, foremost among which, and mastering all the others, was one that seemed to suggest that fate was saving him from endless difficulties, for if the woman whom he could see being swept away by the swift current sank, to rise no more, before his boat reached her, his future would be assured.
He made a feeble effort, though, to save the drowning pair, giving orders in a half-hearted way, trembling violently the while, and unable to crush the hope that the attempt might be unsuccessful.
The men backed water rapidly, and Gellow raised the boat-hook, holding it well out over the stern in time to make the sharp snatch, which took effect in Chris’s back, and holding on till more help came and they reached the pier.
“It’s all over,” whispered Glyddyr bitterly, as willing hands dragged Chris and his insensible companion up the steps.
“Not it,” was whispered back. “Will you leave yourself in my hands?”
“I am in them already.”
“Don’t fool,” said Gellow quickly. “You have got to marry that girl for your own sake.”
“And for yours.”
“Call it so if you like; but will you trust me to get you out of this scrape?”
“Yes, curse you: do what you like.”
“Bless you, then, my dear boy; off you go.”
“What do you mean?”
“Be off to the yacht, set sail, and don’t come back to Danmouth till I tell you it’s safe.”
“Do you mean this?”
“Of course. But keep me posted as to your whereabouts.”
“Here?”
“No; in town.”
“But what are you going to do?”
“Fight for your interests, and mine. That woman’s my wife, come down after me, and I’m going to take her home. See?”
“Not quite.”
“Then stop blind. Be off, quick.”
This hurried colloquy took place in the boat by the rough granite stairs, the attention of those about being taken up by the two half-drowned people on the pier, the excited talk making the words inaudible save to those concerned.
“Now, then,” whispered Gellow, “you’ll leave it to me?”
“Yes,” said Glyddyr, hesitating.
“Carte blanche?”
“You’ll do nothing – ”
He did not finish the sentence.
“Carte blanche?” said Gellow again.
“Well, yes.”
“Right; and every lie I tell goes down to your account, dear boy. Bye-bye. Off you go,” he said aloud, as he sprang on the stones. “I’m very sorry, Glyddyr; I apologise. If I had known she would follow me, I wouldn’t have come.”
“Give way,” said Glyddyr, thrusting the boat from the steps; and he sank down in the stern, heedless of the dripping seat, and thinking deeply as the pier seemed to slip away from him, and with it the woman who had for years been, as he styled it, his curse.
He