King of the Castle

“Don’t say cruel things about her, sir. She has suffered deeply.”

“Yes, but – ”

He checked himself, and though Sarah Woodham remained silent and waiting, he did not speak.

“What changes and troubles we have seen, sir, since the happy old days when, quite a boy then, you used to come to the quarry with Miss Claude.”

“Bah! You never seemed to be very happy, Sarah. You were much brighter and happier before you were married.”

The woman glanced at him sharply, and then her eyes grew dreamy and thoughtful again.

“Woodham was a good, kind husband to me, sir,” she said gently.

“Yes; but see what a cold, stern, hard life you lived. He – ”

“Hush, sir, please,” said the woman gently; “he was a good, true man to me, and we all misjudge at times.”

“Is that meant for a cut at me, Sarah?” said Chris cynically.

“Yes, sir,” said the woman naïvely. “I don’t think you ought to be one to cast a stone – at the dead.”

He turned upon her angrily, but she met his sharp look with one so grave and calm that it disarmed him, and, led on by the fact that he had hardly spoken to a soul for weeks, he said —

“Few people have such cause to be bitter as I have.”

“We all think our fate the hardest, sir.”

“Going to preach at me, Sarah?”

“No, sir,” she said, with her eyes lighting up, and a pleasant look softening her face; “I only feel grieved and pained to see the bonnie, handsome boy, who I always thought would naturally be my dear Miss Claude’s husband, drifting away to wreck like one of the ships we often see.”

“Silence, woman!” cried Chris. “For God’s sake don’t talk like that!”

“I will not, sir, if you tell me not,” said Sarah quietly; “but I think you deal hard with poor Miss Claude for what she cannot help.”

“What?”

“She has tried to do her duty – that I know.”

“Yes,” he said bitterly; “every one seems to have tried to do his or her duty by me.”

There was a dead silence, during which the woman stood gazing at him wistfully, and more than once her lips moved, and her hand played restlessly about her shawl, as if she wanted to lay it upon his arm, and say something comforting to one who appeared so lonely and cast out.

“Miss Claude is coming home on Friday, sir,” she said at last; and she saw the fervour of hope and joy which beamed from the young man’s eyes – only to be clouded over directly, as he said bitterly —

“Well, she has a right to. What is it to me?”

“Mr Chris!”

“Oh, don’t talk to me!” he cried passionately. “The world has all gone wrong with me, and I am a cursed and bitter man. God knows that I am, or I could not speak as I do. They’ll find out some day that I am not a murderer and a thief. – I’m losing time, for the fish are rising fast.”

She stood looking after him wistfully as he strode along by the river side, and then walked away with the old dull, agonised look coming back into her face.

“Poor boy!” she said softly. “Poor boy!”

“Coming back on Friday – coming back on Friday!”

Sarah Woodham’s words kept repeating themselves in Chris Lisle’s ears as he walked on up the glen, waving his fishing-rod so that the line hissed and whistled through the air, and at every repetition of the words his heart bounded, and the young blood ran dancing through his veins.

“Coming back on Friday!”

It was as if new life were rushing through him; his step grew more elastic, his eyes brightened, and he leaped from rock to rock, where the brown water came flashing and foaming down.

“Coming back,” he muttered; “coming back.”

The past was going to be dead; the clouds were about to rise from about him, and there was once more going to be something worth living for.

“Bah!” he ejaculated, “I’ve been a morose, bitter, disappointed fool, too ready to give up; but that’s all past now. She is coming back, and all this time of misery and despair is at an end.”

It seemed to be another man who was hurrying along the margin of the river, in and out over the mighty water-worn stones, with the water rushing between, till he was brought up short by the whizzing sound made by his winch, for the hook had caught in a bush, and his rod was bent half double.

“I can’t fish to-day,” he said, turning back, and winding in till he could give the hook a sharp jerk and snap the gut bottom. “I must go home and think.”

He hurried back, with the feeling growing upon him that all the past trouble was at an end. For the moment he felt intoxicated with the new sense of elation which thrilled him, and it was as if all the young hope and joy which were natural to his age, and had been clouded now, had suddenly burst forth like so much sunshine. But this was short lived.

As he reached the bridge, a couple of fishermen whom he had known from boyhood were standing with their backs to the parapet, chatting and smoking, but as soon as they saw him approach they turned round, leaned over the side, and began to stare down at the river.

It was like a cold dark mist blown athwart him, but he strode on.

“Fools!” he muttered; and increasing his pace, he began to note more than ever now that his coming was the signal for people standing at their doors to go inside, and for the fishermen to turn their backs.

All this had occurred every time he had been out of late, but he had grown hardened to it, and laughed in his stubborn contempt; but this day, after the fit of elation he had passed through, – it all looked new, and he hurried on chilled to the heart; the bright, sunshiny day was clouded over again, and all was once more hopeless and blank.

So bitter was the feeling of despair which now sunk deep into his breast, that he shrank from Wimble, who was standing at his door in the act of saying good-day to a customer, both looking hard at him till he had entered the cottage.

Volume Three – Chapter Eleven.

Under the Cloud

“Better go away,” said Chris to himself.

But he stayed, and in contempt of the avoidance of those he met, he was constantly going to and fro during the next twenty-four hours.

Now he was down on the beach, close to the sea; now wandering high up on the moorland, and seeing, from each point of view, trifles which showed that the mistress of the Fort was coming home.

He called himself “idiot,” and asked mentally where his pride had gone, and determined to shut himself up with his books, but the determination was too weak, and he could not rest. It was something, if only to see the home that would soon again contain the woman who held him fast.

“She will meet me again,” he said, with his hopes rising once more toward the evening of the next day. “I’ll go up boldly like a man. My darling! And all this misery will be at an end. Nine weary months has she been away, and it has seemed like years. Why didn’t I write? Why didn’t I crush down all this foolish pride and obstinacy? I ought to have gone to her, instead of letting myself be maddened by that miserable scoundrel, believing she could listen to him, even if it was her father’s wish.”