King of the Castle Part 97

The voices died away, as if the speakers had gone back into the dining-room, and the door swung to.

"Ah!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Claude, with a piteous sigh.

"I know what I'm about," came loudly again, followed by the banging of a door and a step in the hall.

"Mary!"

"Claude, dear, you must. He is your husband."

"And I love Chris still with all my heart."

"Claude!" whispered Mary, as the door was thrown open, and Glyddyr strode in.

"Here, Claude, where are you? Why don't you have more lights? Oh, there you are, and our little cousin, eh? Now, woman, you can go."

Sarah Woodham gave her mistress one wild, pitying look, and then left the room.

"Ah, that's better," said Glyddyr, whose face was flushed, but his gait was steady, and there was an insolent smile upon his lips. "Only been obliged to entertain my best man," he said, with a laugh; and he gave his head a shake, and suddenly stretched out a hand to steady himself.

"But kept myself all right."

It was plain to Mary that the man had been drinking heavily, and her spirit rose with indignation and horror, mingled with excitement at her cousin's avowal.

"Mary, don't leave me," whispered Claude.

"Now, then, little one, you go and talk to the other fellows; I want to have a chat with my wife."

He laughed in a low, chuckling way, for he had long ago mastered Gellow's opposition, and been told to drink himself blind if he liked.

And he had drunk till his miserable feeling of abject dread had been conquered for the moment, while, inured as he was to the use of brandy, he only seemed to be unsteady at times.

"Do you hear?" he said sharply. "Why don't you go?"

"Claude, dearest, what shall I do?" whispered Mary.

"Stay with me, Mary, pray," panted Claude. And she looked wildly round for a way of escape, her eyes resting last upon the window, which opened over a steep portion of the cliff.

"Oh! what are you thinking?" said Mary wildly.

"Ah!" exclaimed Glyddyr, with a savage expression crossing his face, "the window? No; he's not there. Curse him! I could shoot him like a dog."

Claude, covered her quivering face with her hands.

"Yes, madam, it's time we came to a little explanation about that, and then we can go on happily. No trifling with me.--Now then," he cried fiercely, "will you go?"

"No," cried Mary, turning upon him so sharply that he dropped the hand he had raised to seize her by the shoulder. "How dare you come into my cousin's presence like this? Shame upon you! She is ill--agitated--not fit to meet you now, and you dare to force your way to her like this-- drunken as one of the quarrymen at his worst."

"What!"

"Is this the gentleman who begged and pleaded and humbled himself to her? You shall not stop here now, master or no master--husband or no husband. She is my dear cousin, and--"

"She is my wife," thundered Glyddyr. "My slave if I like; and as for you--"

"Oh, would that my uncle were alive to see his cruel work!"

Those last words were like a sharp blow in Glyddyr's face, and he stepped back, looked quickly round, and a shudder ran through him as he turned pale. But it was momentary. The potent brandy was strong in its influence still, and he recovered himself.

"Bah! nonsense!" he cried, with the flush coming back into his face.

"I'm not to be fooled like that. There; be off at once."

He took a couple of steps forward.

"Come, Claude; there has been enough of this."

Claude flinched away toward the window, and Mary sprang between them.

"Not while you are like this," she cried.

Glyddyr uttered an angry snarl, seized Mary savagely by the arm, and gripped the frail limb so cruelly that, in spite of her determined courage, she uttered a piercing cry for help.

"Silence, you little vixen.--Hah!"

It was as if the arm of a giant had suddenly interposed, for Glyddyr was seized by John Trevithick, dashed staggering back, to totter three or four yards, catch at a little table to save himself, and drag it over with him in his fall.

"Curse you!" he roared, as he rose to his hands and knees; and then, uttering a wild cry of horror, he backed away from the picture he had dragged with him to the floor, one which had fallen, with its little velvet-covered table-easel to which it had been secured, on end, and close to his face.

It was as if Gartram had come back to him from the dead to interpose between him and his child; and, with that shriek of horror, Glyddyr fell over sidewise, his face contorted, his eyes staring, his teeth gnashing, and the foam gathering upon his lips.

"Take him away! take him away!" he shrieked, and then lay uttering strangely inhuman sounds as he writhed in the agonies of a fit.

Volume Three, Chapter XVI.

HOW JOHN TREVITHICK HUNG ABOUT.

For weeks Parry Glyddyr lay almost at the point of death, and there were times when Sarah Woodham shuddered and left the room, barring the door against all comers, as the poor wretch raved in his delirium about poison, and the dead coming back to torture him and drag him down.

His ravings were so frightful that at times the hard, stern woman was quite unnerved; but she refused all a.s.sistance, and returned to her post, keeping the young wife from being present at all such scenes.

Asher had sternly refused to attend him, after being present during one of Glyddyr's fits of raving. So the rival from the upper part of the little Churchtown took his place, and after a week's attendance laid before Claude and her friends the necessity for calling in further help.

The result was that the young wife insisted upon the presence of an eminent medical man from London, and was present afterwards when the great magnate had been in consultation.

"It is most painful, madam," he said, "to have to speak out before you; but since you insist--"

"Yes; I do insist," said Claude firmly. "Let us all know the truth."

"The truth is this, madam," he said; "Mr Glyddyr--"

He paused, and looked round the drawing-room, where Mary, Trevithick and Gellow were seated.

"--Mr Glyddyr, though apparently naturally of a good const.i.tution, has completely shattered his health by terrible excesses in the use of stimulants. Our friend here, my brother pract.i.tioner, has done everything possible, and has accepted a few suggestions of mine which I hope will have good results."