CHAPTER III.
ONLY BROTHER WILL.
It was a dull raw day in late autumn, especially dull and raw near the sea, where there was an evil-looking sky to the eastward. Ulfar Fenwick stood at a window in Castle Fenwick which commanded the black, white-frilled surges. He was watching anxiously the point at which the pale gray wall of fog was thickest, a wall of inconceivable height, resting on the sea, reaching to the clouds, when suddenly there emerged from it a beautifully built schooner-yacht. 78 She cut her way through the mysterious barrier as if she had been a knife, and came forward with short, stubborn plunges.
All over the North Sea there are desolate places full of the cries of parting souls, but nowhere more desolate spaces than around Fenwick Castle; and as the winter was approaching, Ulfar was anxious to escape its loneliness. His yacht had been taking in supplies; she was making for the pier at the foot of Fenwick Cliff, and he was dressed for the voyage and about to start upon it. He was going to the Mediterranean, to Civita Vecchia, and his purpose was the filial one of bringing home the remains of the late baronet. He had promised faithfully to see them laid with those of his fore-elders on the windy Northumberland coast; and he felt that this duty must be done, ere he could comfortably travel the westward route he had so long desired.
He was slowly buttoning his pilot-coat, when he heard a heavy step upon the flagged passage. Many such steps had 79 been up and down it that hour, but none with the same fateful sound. He turned his face anxiously to the door, and as he did so, it was flung open, as if by an angry man, and William Anneys walked in, frowning and handling his big walking-stick with a subdued passion that filled the room as if it had been suddenly charged with electricity. The two men looked steadily at each other, neither of them flinching, neither of them betraying by the movement of an eyelash the emotion that sent the blood to their faces and the wrath to their eyes.
“William Anneys! What do you want?”
“I want you to set your wedding-day. It must not be later than the fifteenth of this month.”
“Suppose I refuse to do so? I am going to Italy for my father’s body.”
“You shall not leave England until you marry my sister.”