Charles Rex Part 72

She never even began to trust me. I was far too heavily handicapped for that. And so--as soon as the wind changed--the boat capsized."

"What made the wind change?" Maud asked gently.

He looked across at her, the baffling smile still in his eyes. "The G.o.ds played a jest with us," he said. "It was only a small jest, but it turned the scale. She fled. That was how I came to realize I couldn't hold her.

I had travelled too fast as usual, and she couldn't keep up. Well," he unlocked his hands and straightened himself, "it's up to Bunny now. I'll let her go--to him."

"My dear!" Maud said.

He laughed at her with the old half-caressing ridicule. "That shocks you?

But why--if they love each other? Haven't I heard you preach the gospel of love as the greatest thing on earth? Didn't you once tell me that I had yet to learn the joy--" his smile twisted again--"the overwhelming joy--of setting the happiness of another before one's own? This thing can be done quite simply and easily--as I suggested to you long ago. She has only to go away with him, and I do the rest. A moral crime--no more. Yes, it is against your code of course. But consider! I only stand to lose that which I have never possessed. For the first time in my life, I commit a crime in the name of--love!"

He laughed over the word; yet even through the scoffing sound there came a ring of pain. His face had a drawn look--the wistfulness of the monkey that has seen its prize irrevocably s.n.a.t.c.hed away.

Maud rose quickly. There was something in his att.i.tude or expression that she could not bear. "Oh, you are wrong! You are wrong!" she said. "You have the power to make her love you. And you love her. Charlie, this thing has not been given you to throw away. You can't! You can't!"

He made a sharp gesture that checked her. "My dear Maud," he said, "there are a good many things I can't do, and one of them is this. I can't hold any woman against her will--no, not if she were my wife ten times over. I wouldn't have let her go to Spentoli. But Bunny is a different matter. I have Jake's word for it that he will make her a better husband than I shall. If Bunny wants to know all about her past--her parentage--he can come to me and I can satisfy him. Tell him that! But if he really loves her--he won't care a d.a.m.n--any more than I do."

"Ah!" Maud said.

She stood a moment, looking at him, and in her eyes was that mother-look of a love that understands. She held out her hand to him.

"Thank you for telling me, Charlie," she said. "Good-bye!"

He held her hand. "What have I told you?" he asked abruptly.

She shook her head. "Never mind now! You have just made me understand, that's all. I will give your message to Bunny--to them both. Good-bye!"

He stooped in his free, gallant way to kiss her hand. "After all," he said, "I return to my old allegiance. It was you, _chere reine_, who taught me how to love."

She gently freed her hand and turned to go. "No," she said. "I think it was G.o.d who taught you that."

For the second time Charles Rex failed to utter the scoffing laugh she half-expected. The odd eyes looked after her with a kind of melancholy irony.

"To what purpose?" he said.

CHAPTER XI

THE GIFT OF THE G.o.dS

A chill wind blew across the ramparts bringing with it the scent and the sound of the sea. There was no moon in the sky tonight, only the clouds flying over the stars, obscuring and revealing them alternately, making their light weirdly vague and fitful. Across the park an owl called persistently, its eerie hoot curiously like the cry of a human voice through the rustling night. The trees were murmuring together down by the lake as though some mysterious news were pa.s.sing to and fro among them.

And once more, alone on his castle walls, Saltash paced restlessly up and down.

It was his last night at Burchester, so he told himself, for many a year to come. The fever for change was upon him. He had played his last card and lost. It was characteristic of the man to turn his back upon his losses and be gone. His soul had begun to yearn for the wide s.p.a.ces, and it was in answer to the yearning that he had come up to this eagle's eyrie a second time. He could not be still, and the feeling of walls around him was somehow unbearable. But he expected no vision tonight. He walked in darkness.

Down in the harbour his yacht was waiting, and he wondered cynically what whim kept him from joining her. Why was he staying to drain the cup to the dregs--he who had the whole world to choose from? He had sent his message, he had made his sacrifice--at what a cost not even Maud would ever know. It was the first voluntary sacrifice he had ever made, he reflected ironically, and he marvelled at himself to find that he cared so much. For, after all, what was it he had sacrificed? Nothing worth having, so he told himself. He had possessed her childish adoration, but her love--never! And, very curiously, it was her love that he had wanted.

Actually, for the first time in his life, no lesser thing had appealed to him. Jaded and weary with long experience, he owned now to a longing for that at which all his life long he had scoffed. The longing was not to be satisfied. He was to go empty away. But yet the very fact that he had known it had in some inexplicable fashion purified him from earthly desires. He had as it were reached up and touched the spiritual, and that which was not spiritual had crumbled away below him. He looked back upon the desert through which all his life he had travelled, and saw only sand.

The sound of the turret-door banging behind him recalled him to his surroundings. He awoke to the fact that the wind was chill, and that a drift of rain was coming in from the sea. With an impatient shrug he turned. Why was he lingering here like a drunken reveller at a table of spilt wine? He would go down to his yacht and find Larpent--Larpent who had also loved and lost. They would go out on the turn of the tide--the two losers in the game of life--and leave the spilt wine behind them.

Impulsively he strode back along the ramparts. The game was over, and he would never play again; but at least he would face the issue like a man.

No one, not even Larpent, should ever see him flinch. So he reached the turret-door, and came abruptly to a halt.

It was no vision that showed her to him, standing there in her slender fairness, wrapt in a cloak that glimmered vaguely blue in the glimmering starlight. Her face was very pale, and he saw her frightened eyes as she stood before him. Her hands were tightly clasped together, and she spoke no word at all.

The door was shut behind her, and he saw that she was trembling from head to foot.

He stood motionless, within reach of her, but not touching her. "Well?"

he said.

She made a curious gesture with her clasped hands, standing before him as she had stood on board his yacht on that night in the Mediterranean when she had come to him for refuge.

"I've come," she said, in a voice that quivered uncontrollably, "to tell you something."

Saltash did not stir. His face was in shadow, but there was a suggestion of tension about his att.i.tude that was not rea.s.suring. "Well?" he said again.

She wrung her hands together with a desperate effort to subdue her agitation, and began again, "I've come--to tell you something."

"Something I don't know?" he questioned cynically.

She nodded. "Some--some--something you don't want to know. It--it was Maud made me come."

That moved him a little. That piteous stammer of hers had always touched his compa.s.sion. "Don't fret yourself, _ma chere_!" he said. "I know all there is to know--all about Rozelle--all about Larpent--all about Spentoli."

"You--you don't know this," said Toby. "You--you--you don't know--why I ran away from you--in Paris!"

"Don't I?" he said, and she heard the irony of his voice. "I have an agile brain, my child. I can generally jump the gaps pretty successfully."

She shook her head with vehemence. "And how do you know about Spentoli?"

she demanded suddenly. "Who told you that?"

"The man himself," said Saltash.

"Ah! And what did he tell you?" A note of fierceness sounded in her voice. She seemed to gather herself together like a cornered animal preparing to make a wild dash for freedom.

Saltash made her a queer, abrupt bow, and in so doing he blocked the way before her so that she could only flee by the way she had come. "He told me nothing that I did not know before," he said, "nothing that your own eyes had not told me long ago."

"What do you mean?" breathed Toby, pressing her clasped hands tightly to her breast. Her eyes were still upraised to his; they glittered in the dimness.

Saltash answered her more gently than was his wont. "I mean that I know the sort of inferno your life had been--a perpetual struggle against odds that were always overwhelming you. If it hadn't been so, you would never have come to me for shelter. Do you think I ever flattered myself that that was anything but a last resource--the final surrender to circ.u.mstance? If I had failed you--"

"Wait!" Toby broke in tensely. "You're right in some things. You're wrong there. It's true I was always running away--as soon as I was old enough to realize the rottenness of life. Spentoli tried to ruin me, but I dodged him, and then--when he trapped me--the h.e.l.l-hound--I did my best--to murder him!" The breath suddenly whistled through her teeth. "I tried to stab him to the heart. G.o.d knows I tried! But--I suppose it wasn't in the right place, for I didn't get there. I left him for dead--I thought he was dead--till that day in Paris. And ever since--it's been just a nightmare fight for life--and safety. I'd have tried some other dodge if you hadn't found me. I was not quite down and out. But you--you made all the difference. I had to go to you."

"And why?" said Charles Rex.

She rushed on regardless of question. The flood-gates were open; she was hiding nothing from him now.