Charles Rex Part 54

"Thanks!" said Saltash, and briefly laughed. "You place my friendship at a pretty high figure then. Tell me what you're going to do!"

"What is it to you what I do?" A quick gleam shone for an instant in Bunny's eyes, dispelling the look of stricken misery. "I'm not asking you to help me."

"I've grasped that," said Saltash. "But even so, I may be able to lend a hand. As you say, there is not much point in our quarrelling. There's nothing to quarrel about that I can see--except that you've called me a liar for no particular good reason!"

"Do you object to that?" said Bunny.

Saltash made a careless gesture. "Perhaps---as you say--it isn't worth it. All the same, I've a certain right to know what you propose to do, since, I gather, I have not managed to satisfy you."

"A right!" flashed Bunny.

"Yes, a right." Saltash's voice was suddenly and suavely confident. "You may forget--or possibly you may remember--that I gave my protection to Nonette on the day she came to me for it, and I have never withdrawn it since. What matters to her--matters to me."

"I see." Bunny stood stiffly facing him. "I am responsible to you, am I?"

"That is what I am trying to convey," said Saltash.

The fire in Bunny's eyes leapt high for a moment or two, then died down again. Had Jake been his opponent, he would have flung an open challenge, but somehow Saltash, with whom he had never before striven in his life, was less easy to resist. In some subtle fashion he seemed able to evade resistance and yet to gain his point.

He gained his point on this occasion. Almost before he knew it, Bunny had yielded.

"I am going to her," he said, "to ask her for the whole truth--about her past."

"Is any woman capable of telling the truth to that extent?" questioned Saltash.

"I shall know if she doesn't," said Bunny doggedly.

"And will that help?" The note of mockery that was never long absent from his voice sounded again. "Isn't it possible--sometime--to try to know too much? There is such a thing as looking too closely, _mon ami_. And then we pay the price."

"Do you imagine I could ever be satisfied not knowing?" said Bunny.

Saltash shrugged his shoulders. "I merely suggested that you are going the wrong way to satisfy yourself. But that is your affair, not mine. The G.o.ds have sent you a gift, and because you don't know what it is made of, you are going to pull it to pieces to find out. And presently you will fling it away because you cannot fit it together again. You don't realize--you never will realize--that the best things in life are the things we never see and only dimly understand."

A vein of sincerity mingled with the banter in his voice, and Bunny was aware of a curious quality of reverence, of something sacred in a waste place.

It affected him oddly. Convinced though he was that in one point at least Saltash had sought to deceive him it yet influenced him very strongly in Saltash's favour. Against his judgment, against his will even, he saw him as a friend.

"Do you mean to tell me," he said, speaking slowly, his eyes upon the swarthy, baffling countenance, "that you have never even tried to know where she came from--what she is?"

Saltash made a quick gesture as of remonstrance. "_Mon ami_, the last I have always known. The first I have never needed to know."

"Then," Bunny spoke with difficulty, but his look never wavered, "tell me--as before G.o.d--tell me what you believe her to be!"

"What I know her to be," corrected Saltash, "I will tell you--certainly.

She is a child who has looked into h.e.l.l, but she is still--a child."

"What do you mean?" questioned Bunny.

Saltash's eyes, one black, one grey, suddenly flashed a direct challenge into his own. "I mean," he said, "that the flame has scorched her, but it has never actually touched her."

"You know that?" Bunny's voice was hoa.r.s.e. There was torture in his eyes.

"Man--for G.o.d's sake--the truth!"

"It is the truth," Saltash said.

"How do you know it? You've no proof. How can you be sure?" He could not help the anguish of his voice. The words fell harsh and strained.

"How do I know it?" Saltash echoed the words sharply. "What proof? Bunny, you fool, do you know so little of the world--of women--as that? What proof do you need? Just--look into her eyes!"

A queer note of pa.s.sion sounded in his own voice, and it told Bunny very clearly that he was grappling with the naked truth at last. It arrested him in a moment. He suddenly found that he could go no further. There was no need.

Impulsively, with an inarticulate word of apology, he thrust out his hand. Saltash's came to meet it in a swift, hard grip.

"Enough?" he asked, with that odd, smiling grimace of his that revealed so little.

And, "Yes, enough!" Bunny said, looking him straight in the face.

They parted almost without words a few minutes later. There was no more to be said.

CHAPTER XIV

THE LAST CARD

Saltash dined alone that night. He was in a restless mood and preoccupied, scarcely noticing what was put before him, pushing away the wine untasted. In the end he rose from the table almost with a gesture of disgust.

"I'm going to smoke on the ramparts," he said to the decorous butler who waited upon him. "If anyone should call to see me, let them wait in the music-room!"

"Very good, my lord! And where would you like to take coffee?" enquired the man sedately.

Saltash laughed. "Not on the ramparts--emphatically. I'll have mercy on you to that extent. Put it on the spirit-lamp in the music-room, and leave it! You needn't sit up, any of you. I'll put out the lights."

"Very good, my lord."

The man withdrew, and Saltash chose a cigar. An odd grimace drew his features as he lighted it. He had the look of a man who surveys his last card and knows himself a loser. Though he went out of the room and up the great staircase to the music-room with his head up and complete indifference in his carriage, his eyelids were slightly drawn. He did not look as if he had enjoyed the game.

A single red lamp lighted the music-room, and the long apartment looked dim and ghostly. He stood for a moment as he entered it and looked round, then with a scarcely perceptible lift of the shoulders he pa.s.sed straight through to the curtain that hung before the door leading to the turret.

The darkness of the place gaped before him, and he turned back with a muttered word and recrossed the room. There were Persian rugs upon the floor, and his feet made no sound. He went to the mantel-piece and, feeling along it, found a small electric torch. The light of it flared before him as he returned. The door yielded to his touch and swung shut behind him. He pa.s.sed into vault-like silence.

The stone steps gave back the sound of his tread as he mounted, with eerie, wandering echoes. The grey walls glimmered with a ghostly desolation around him. Halfway up, he stopped to flick the ash from his cigar, and laughed aloud. But the echoes of his laughter sounded like voices crying in the darkness. He went on more swiftly, like a phantom imprisoned and seeking escape. The echoes met him and fell away behind him. The loneliness was like a curse. The very air felt dead.

He reached the top of the turret at last, and the heavy door that gave upon the ramparts. With a sound that was almost a gasp, he pushed it open, and pa.s.sed out into the open air.

A full moon was shining, and his acres lay below him--a wonderful picture in black and silver. He came to the first gap in the battlements, mounted the parapet, and stood there with a hand resting on each side.