Chris Lisle sat at the table, over his breakfast, but nothing was good.
He had all that money lying at his bank, and after trying all kinds of
subterfuges to satisfy his conscience that he had as good a right to it
as anybody--that if he had not won it some one else would--that people
who gambled deserved no sympathy--that all was fair in money wars, as he
dubbed gaming--and that he would do more good with the money than any
one else--and the like, his conscience refused to be bamboozled and told
him constantly that he had won that money by a clever piece of
dishonourable sharping, and that he ought to be ashamed of himself.
And he was.
That was one non-appetiser; the other was his interview with the
gardener the previous night, and over this, after waking with it ready
to confront him, he had been metaphorically gnashing his teeth.
"How I could have made myself such an ass! How I could have been such
an idiot as to run such risks! It is like dragging her down to be the
common talk and gossip of the place. Why, I shall always be that
scoundrel's slave. What an idiot he must have thought me!"
No wonder the coffee tasted bitter, and that the bacon was too salt,
while he thrust the butter away as rancid, and the bread as being dry.
"If it were not for one thing I'd--Well, Mrs Sarson?"
The landlady had run in hastily, looking pale and excited, and then
stood speechless before him.
"Is anything the matter?" exclaimed Chris, the blood rising to his
cheeks, as with boyish dread he seemed to read in his landlady's eyes
the fact that she knew of the past night's escapade.
"Matter, indeed, sir! Then you have not heard?"
"Heard what?"
"Mr Gartram, sir--dead!"
"What!"
Chris Lisle sprang from his chair and stood feeling as if the room was
swimming round him, while the landlady went on hurriedly.
"I've just this minute heard, sir. There was a dinner party; Doctor
Asher and that Mr Glyddyr, who has the yacht, were there; and they say
he was taken bad about eleven. Doctor Asher stopped, and, in the middle
of the night, the new doctor was fetched, too."
"Oh, it can't be true," cried Chris, and dashing out of the room he
seized his hat and hurried along the street, but had not gone far before
he was conscious of the fact that groups of people were standing about
talking.
Further on he saw that shutters were closed; and as he reached the
harbour there, lying off some distance was Glyddyr's yacht, with a flag
up, half-mast high, while, as soon as he came in sight of the Fort--
Gartram's pride--in place of the bright glistening windows, every
opening had a dull dead look, and appeared to be staring at him blankly.
There was no doubt now--every blind was drawn down.
Chris uttered a groan.
"My poor darling, it will break her heart! Poor old fellow! Cut off
like that."
Resentment, bitterness, died out in this great sorrow; and Chris could
only see now the fine-looking, masterful, elderly man, who had always
been his friend, till ambition had led him astray, and he had discarded
the suitor who had grown up to love his child.
It seems too horrible! One of these terrible fits.
He was on his way up to ask to see Claude, and try to administer some
consolation, but he paused. It would be an outrage to go now. It would
be indecent to force his way there in disobedience to the wishes of the
man who was lying blank and cold--blank and cold as the edifice he had
so proudly reared with the money he had fought for so long.
"No," thought Chris. "I must go back and write."
In the manly frankness of his disposition, up to that moment, no thought
of obstacle removed, or the future that lay before him, had come across
his brain, till just then he caught sight of the gardener coming quickly
along the town street, when, like a flash, came back to him the scene of
the past night, and his discovery. Then, with the incongruity of human
nature, there came a feeling of satisfaction in the thought that Gartram
could never now sting him with contemptuous allusions to his wretched
escapade, and that now he need not fear this man.
Momentary thoughts, which he chased away with a feeling of indignation
against himself as he stopped the gardener.
"Is it--true?"
"Yes, sir. It's true enough. He was a hard master, one as come down
upon you awful if he see a weed; but I'd give that there right hand to
have him alive and well before me now."
Chris bowed his head and walked slowly back, to start aside and gaze
fiercely in the eyes of the man whom he encountered a few yards farther
on, for, as he was approaching the post-office, Glyddyr came out
suddenly with a telegraph form in his hand.
The two young men paused as if arrested by some power over which they
had no control, and as they stood gazing at each other, Chris, waiting
for Glyddyr to speak, a crowd of thoughts flashed through his brain.
Claude--alone--her own mistress, what of your triumph now!
Very different were Glyddyr's thoughts. Claude was somehow mixed up
with them, but he read in his rival's eye distrust, suspicion, and a
hidden knowledge of his latest acts; and they passed on rapidly through
his mind, till he saw Chris Lisle denouncing him as a murderer and about
to seize him then.
Neither spoke, and after the long, intense gaze of eye into eye had
lasted some moments, each went his way, one back to his yacht to try and
make up his mind whether he ought to call at once, the other home to sit
down and write to Claude, and tell her that he was always hers, and that
in this, her terrible hour of affliction, he was longing to try and
share her pain.
"And if I said that," thought Chris, as he slowly tore up the letter,
"she would think it an insult, and that I am triumphing over the dead."
So Chris's letter, full of the tender love he felt, never reached
Claude's hand.
Volume Two, Chapter XIII.