Volume Two—Chapter Five.
Approaching a Crisis.
“Here I am again, Glyddyr. How are your old chap?”
Glyddyr was seated in the cabin of his yacht, thinking over his position, and of how long it would be before Claude would consent to the marriage taking place.
He had no fear of his ultimate success, for he had seen enough of Gartram to know that his will was law, and that, even if Claude were thoroughly opposed to the match, she would be obliged to consent.
But he could not conceal from himself the fact that it might be a long time first, press it on how he might; and till then he would be the abject slave of the man in whose clutches he had placed himself.
He had not seen the boat leave the shore, where his men had gone to obtain stores, and, taking advantage of its being at the harbour, Gellow had stepped in, had himself rowed on board, and, walking along the deck giving the little crew a supercilious look, he had gone down to where Glyddyr was seated, and addressed him.
“What do you want?” was the reply, delivered in a surly voice.
“What do I want? Why, as the little ragged boy said in Punch, ‘heverythink.’ In my case, specially money.”
Glyddyr made an impatient movement.
“Oh, it’s a fact, dear boy. Times have not been rosy lately, and I’ve got low in the banking account. So, as my dear old friend Glyddyr has had his little slice of luck, I said I’d run down and tap him.”
“What do you mean—what slice of luck?”
“The wind that blows no one any good, dear boy; but the ill wind must have blown you a lot of good.”
“What do you mean?”
“What did you put on her?”
“Nothing.”
“What?”
“I said nothing.”
“Oh, yes. You said so, and you didn’t mean it.”
“I tell you I did not back the horse.”
“But I sent you the last tip—one worth a hundred thousand pounds. I was thinking of sending it to the Marquis, but he’s a mean cuss, and I knew you’d stump up handsome afterwards to the man who helped you. Come—between friends, you know—what did you land?”
“I tell you I did not back the horse.”
“Get along with you! None of your games. Come along, old fellow, let’s have it. What did you pocket?”
“Nothing.”
“Glyddyr, my dear boy, don’t say that you didn’t get the telegram in time.”
“No; I got it in time.”
“Oh, come, that’s right; and you did back it. Get out with your talking like that. You gave me a cold chill all down my back.”
“Hang it, man, how many more times am I to speak? I tell you I did not back the horse.”
“What! You let such a chance go by? You actually fooled away money like that!”
“I don’t know what you mean by fooled away money.”
“Why, it is fooling away money to let such a chance as that go by you.”
“How was I to know it was a good chance?” cried Glyddyr savagely.
“Why, didn’t I send it to you?”
“Yes; and how many times have you sent me tips which have turned out frauds, and I’ve lost my money?”
“Well, but nobody can be sure, that’s a certainty.”
“No! Yours never were.”
“Oh, but this is absurd. No. I see through your game. You’re gammoning me. You did work it all right.”
“Hark, here,” cried Glyddyr; “if you wish me to kick you out of my cabin, say that again.”
Gellow blew out his cheeks, and quickly sucked them in. Then he threw his right leg over his left, and then he threw his left over his right, balanced his ivory-handled crutch-stick, and ended by bringing the end down upon the cabin floor in the attempt.
“Oh, very well,” he said coldly, and the man’s manner completely changed. “I won’t brave you to kick me out of my own cabin, Mr Glyddyr. You see I could just sign a paper or two, and then I could kick you out.”
“What!”
“Without lifting my foot, sir. I’ve always been a gentleman to you, Mr Glyddyr, and you’ve always been a bully to me. I wanted to be friends, and I’ve helped you with money till I’ve pinched myself, and I’ve helped you to throw your wife off the scent.”
“She is not my wife.”
“I don’t know anything about that. Out of politeness one is bound to believe a lady, and she says she is your wife, sir.”
“It is false.”
“Ah, well, that’s nothing to me, sir. That’s your own affair. Settle it between you. Why, I consider that I’ve put two fortunes in your way, sir. You’ve kicked over one; what are you going to do with the other?”
Glyddyr scowled at him.
“Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr Glyddyr. Like my confounded impudence to ask. I’m off back to town. No message for Madame Denise, I suppose?”
“No.”
“Very good, very good, sir. Good day.”
“Good day,” said Glyddyr shortly, and his visitor walked to the door of the tiny saloon, set his hat jauntily on one side, and then turned and came back, and rested his hands upon the back of the nearest seat.
“Oh, by the way, Mr Glyddyr, I think I did hint that I was rather short of the ready. Be good enough to write me a cheque for a thou, on account.”
Glyddyr winced.
“I have no money in hand,” he said abruptly.
“All nonsense, my dear sir; don’t trifle with a man. You must be rolling in coin. One thou, please.”
“I tell you I have no money.”
“Very well, then, my dear sir, very well; be good enough to get it. I shall rely upon you, for I must have some within a week.”
He turned right round and walked to the door again, and then turned and said smilingly—
“Sorry to trouble you, but may your men row me ashore?”
“Yes, of course. But stop. Look here, Gellow.”
“Very sorry to have worried you, Mr Glyddyr. One thou, please, within seven days.”
“But it will be inconvenient. I can’t raise the money in the time. I—look here. Why, confound the man! Here, Gellow!”
There was no reply, and angry, mortified, humbled by his impecunious position, Glyddyr hurried on to the deck, and found that his visitor was already in the boat, and several yards away from the yacht’s side.
“Look here, Gellow,” he cried.
“Eh? Please write. Can’t stop. Be just able to catch the next train and get in by to-morrow morning. Pull away, my lads; a shilling a-piece for beer if you look sharp.”
Glyddyr ground his teeth with rage as he gazed after his spider, and felt how thoroughly he had been bound up like a fly of fashion in the wretched schemer’s web.
He could have yelled after him to come back, but his men were on deck and in the boat which bore his tyrant away; and in those moments the man seemed to live a life of repentance for having placed himself in the power of such a creature as this. As it was, he could only stand looking at the receding boat in a nonchalant manner, and then turn slowly round, and descend to the cabin.
“What am I to do?” he said to himself. “I must write to him apologetically, and ask for time. No; I can’t do it. I’d sooner suffer anything than be humbled further by the wretched cad!”
He flung himself in an easy-chair, and began to agitate it to and fro, grinding his teeth the while with rage.
“If I could only borrow the money! If I could only get hold of enough to clear myself from this brute, I could—”
He stopped short, and sat staring before him through one of the little open round port windows over the glittering sea, at the Fort, which stood up clearly cut and grey in the vivid sunshine; and as he gazed at the great castellated building, a strange idea came to him, one which made him picture the interior of that study as it appeared to him on the occasion of his entering through the window to find Gartram lying there insensible upon the floor.
“A thousand within seven days,” he muttered to himself, and once more he glanced sharply round to see whether he was overheard.
He rose and paced the little cabin, only a few strides and a turn, but no idea came.
One moment he was for following Gellow, and pleading to him for time, the next the thought seemed too degrading, and he shrank from having to plead and humble himself before the common, insolent man who had him in his power.
“If he would only leave me alone I should soon be in a position to clear myself off, for Gartram is as rich as Croesus.”
As that thought came to him, he saw again the interior of the study and the open safe.
“And of course that is a mere nothing,” he thought; “the eccentric old fellow would not have much of his money there. A thousand pounds. Why, it would be a trifle to him, and if I asked him he would lend it in an instant.”
Glyddyr stopped short in his argument there.
“Would he lend it in an instant?”
“No,” said Glyddyr to himself directly afterwards. “He is too keen and hard a man. His idea is that I am above all money troubles, and if I try him it will be like killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. No; it would be ruin to attempt that and destroy all.”
With the impression upon him, though, that, he would get out of his dilemma by Gellow repenting, knowing as he did that the sharp, sordid money-maker would calculate his chances of repayment too accurately to run any risks, Glyddyr returned on deck, to find that the gig had just returned from the shore after landing his incubus.
Springing in, he signed to the men to give way, and had himself rowed across to the rough pier, where he hesitated for a few minutes as to what he should do.
The sight of Chris Lisle striding along the cliff road decided him. A malicious look came into his face, and, thrusting his hands down in his pockets, he began to saunter along the pier, taking the short cut which led to Gartram’s private path, cut in a zig-zag up the cliff face, a direction which would only be taken by one going up to the Fort.
It was meant for Chris to see, and he saw it, suffering just as his rival intended, for there was a painful sting in the thought that this stranger should be free to come and go, while he, who had had the run of the place from boyhood, should be forbidden to approach.
Chris was no dissembler, there was no diplomatic concealment of the feelings in his actions; he suffered, and he showed that he did as he encountered Glyddyr at the intersection of their ways, and retorted with a fierce look of anger when Glyddyr passed him with a supercilious smile full of contempt.
“How I could enjoy wringing that dog’s neck!” said Chris to himself. “He is going up there to the Fort to be made welcome and caressed, and treated as if he belonged to them, and—Oh, it does make me feel savage!”
He turned up into the stiff slope running away to the cliff top, and in a short time was where he could look down on the Fort and get glimpses of the garden, where, to his infinite rage and pain, he soon after caught the glint of a white dress, then of one of the palest blue, and directly after there was a third party to form a trio, which sauntered up and down till he could bear it no longer, and walked right on.
“It’s of no use,” he said to himself; “I must see Claude and ask her what it all means. I can’t go on like this, seeing that man go to and fro as if he were accepted. It is too hard to be borne.”
He threw himself down at the top of the cliff, and lay gazing out to sea as he tried to settle his next proceedings. One thing was certain; he must see Claude, and come to a thorough understanding about their future. Then perhaps he could wait.
But how was he to obtain an interview?
Mary Dillon.
No; she had refused point blank to act against her uncle’s wishes, though she sympathised with both of them.
Claude would not meet him, nor yet correspond, but had told him to wait.
“And who can wait at a time like this?” he cried. “If she only would not be quite so obedient,” he continued, though all the time he knew in his heart that he loved her the more for her fulfilment of her fathers commands.
No; it was of no use to think that she would consent to meet him by appointment, and there was no one person whom he cared to trust.
“It is so degrading,” he said, “to have to place yourself and her at the mercy of some common, vindictive kind of creature, who has to be paid.”
He was out of sight of the garden now, and its occupants, for he shrunk from watching Claude and her companion; but he was still well within view of a portion of the Fort and its defences.
“It is all very well,” he thought, as he threw himself back, with his straw hat off, and his hands behind his head; “but if a clever, resolute burglar made up his mind to get into the old man’s stronghold after all was locked up, how easy it would be. Why, I could climb up the sea-face quickly enough, and over the south wall, and then there is nothing to hinder one but the moat, across which a man might wade in a pair of fishing-stockings.”
A curious tingling sensation here attacked Chris Lisle, and the colour mounted into his cheek at the thoughts which came rushing through his brain.
Suppose he played the part of burglar, not to obtain any of the old man’s hoarded-up coin, but that which was the sole desire of his life? Claude would never consent to a meeting, but if he took her by surprise, and once more clasped her in his arms, she could not really be so very angry, for she loved him; of that there could, after all, be no doubt, and for the sake of that sweet delight he would risk her displeasure. It would only be right, for he would be showing her how his heart was hers, and hers alone.
The cliff face? A bit dangerous, but he could do it easily, even the wall. Bah! he could climb a higher wall than that, while as to the drop of water in Gartram’s moat, if he couldn’t have waded it, he could have swam it, and would a thousand times so as to be once more near her.
“It’s a puzzle,” said Chris aloud. “Why, I ought to have done it long enough ago. How was it I didn’t think of it before?”
There was no mental answer to this, and his thoughts took another direction. He was comparatively a rich man now, but somehow he did not feel disposed to go and speak out again to Gartram, whose first question would be, “And, pray, how did you get this money?”
The cash had in each case been paid over to him the settling day with quite commercial promptitude, and lay at his bankers at Toxeter; but somehow Chris felt no richer, and the exultation he had expected was not there. Forty thousand pounds all his own, but he did not feel proud of it, and had sat up a night in his own room thinking of how little difference it made to a man, and, on the whole, feeling rather disappointed than otherwise at the result of his speculation.
But when was it to be? That night? The next night?
“I’ll try till I do meet her, and if the old man sees me, and flies at me—
“I wonder whether he keeps that revolver loaded?” said Chris, half aloud, as he rose and began to descend the cliff. “Bah! If he does, he couldn’t hit me in the dark, and hurry of his aim.”
All the same, though, his active imagination was hard at work, showing him a series of dissolving views, in one of which a gallant youth was wading a deep fosse, with an irate parent standing on the bank, firing shot after shot, till in the dim light there was a fall and a splash as the aforesaid gallant youth fell back into the moat as he was crawling out, and not found until the next day.
Would Claude weep and break her heart? Would—
“A fellow of my age, with an ordinary share of brains, to go on dreaming and mooning over such sentimental nonsense!” cried Chris, half aloud. “He’d better shoot at me. If he does, hang me if I wait. I’ll coax her into coming right away.
“By Jove! I’ll try to-night. I wonder whether Mary would help me if she knew?”