Charles Rex, Ethel May Dell [find a book to read txt] 📗

PART I


CHAPTER I
ENNUI

"I shall go to sea to-morrow," said Saltash, with sudden decision. "I'm tired of this place, Larpent,--fed up on repletion."
"Then by all means let us go, my lord!" said Larpent, with the faint glimmer of a smile behind his beard, which was the only expression of humour he ever permitted himself.
"Believe you're fed up too," said Saltash, flashing a critical look upon him.
Captain Larpent said nothing, deeming speech unnecessary. All time spent ashore was wasted in his opinion.
Saltash turned and surveyed the sky-line over the yacht's rail with obvious discontent on his ugly face. His eyes were odd, one black, one grey, giving a curiously unstable appearance to a countenance which otherwise might have claimed to possess some strength. His brows were black and deeply marked. He had a trick of moving them in conjunction with his thoughts so that his face was seldom in absolute repose. It was said that there was a strain of royal blood in Saltash, and in the days before he had succeeded to the title when he had been merely Charles Burchester, he had borne the nickname of "the merry monarch." Certain wild deeds in a youth that had not been beyond reproach had seemed to warrant this, but of later years a friend had bestowed a more gracious title upon him, and to all who could claim intimacy with him he had become "Charles Rex." The name fitted him like a garment. A certain arrogance, a certain royalty of bearing, both utterly unconscious and wholly unfeigned, characterized him. Whatever he did, and his actions were often far from praiseworthy, this careless distinction of mien always marked him. He received an almost involuntary respect where he went.
Captain Larpent who commanded his yacht _The Night Moth_--most morose and unresponsive of men--paid him the homage of absolute acquiescence. Whatever his private opinions might be, he never expressed them unless invited to do so by his employer. He never criticized by word or look. Saltash was wont to say that if he decided to turn pirate he believed that Larpent would continue at his post without the smallest change of front. To raise a protest of any sort would have been absolutely foreign to his nature. He was made to go straight ahead, to do his duty without question and with perfect self-reliance.
On the present occasion, having cruised from port to port in the Mediterranean for nearly six weeks, it was certainly no ill news to him to hear that Saltash had at last had enough. The weather was perfect, too perfect for a man of his bull-dog instincts. He was thoroughly tired of the endless spring sunshine and of the chattering, fashionable crowds that Saltash was wont to assemble on the yacht. He was waiting with an iron patience for the word that should send them forth over the great Atlantic rollers, with the ocean spray bursting over their bows and the sting of the ocean wind in their faces. That was the sort of life that appealed to him. He had no use for civilization; the froth of society had no attraction for him. He preferred a deeper draught.
Saltash was thoroughly cosmopolitan in his tastes; he liked amusement, but he abhorred boredom. He declared that for him it was the root of all evil. He was never really wicked unless he was bored. And then--_que voulez-vous_? He did not guide the star of destiny.
"Yes," he said, after a thoughtful silence, "we will certainly put to sea to-morrow--unless--" he turned his head and threw a merry grin at his companion--"unless Fortune has any tricks up her sleeve for me, for I am going ashore for one more fling to-night."
Larpent smoked on immovably, his blue-grey eyes staring out to the vivid sky-line, his sunburnt face quite imperturbable.
"We shall be ready to start as soon as you come aboard, my lord," he said.
"Good!" said Saltash lightly. "I may be late, or--more probably--very early. Leave the gangway for me! I'll let you know when I'm aboard."
He got up as if he moved on springs and leaned against the rail, looking down quizzically at the man who sat stolidly smoking in the deck-chair. No two people could have formed a stronger contrast--the yacht's captain, fair-bearded, with the features of a Viking--the yacht's owner, dark, alert, with a certain French finesse about him that gave a strange charm to a personality that otherwise might have been merely fantastic.
Suddenly he laughed. "Do you know, Larpent, I often think to myself what odd tricks Fate plays? You for instance--you, the captain of a private yacht when you ought to be roving the high seas in a Flying Dutchman! You probably were a few generations ago."
"Ah!" Larpent said, through a cloud of smoke. "Life isn't what it was."
"It's an infernal fraud, most of it," said Saltash. "Always promising and seldom fulfilling!"
"No good expecting too much," said Larpent.
"True!" said Saltash. "On the other hand it isn't always wise to be too easily satisfied." His look became suddenly speculative. "Have you ever been in love, Larpent?"
The big man in the deck-chair made a sharp movement and spilt some cigar-ash on his coat. He sat up deliberately and brushed it off. Saltash watched him with mischievous eyes.
"Well?" he said.
Larpent leaned back again, puffing forth a thick cloud of smoke. "Once," he said briefly.
"Only once?" gibed Saltash. "Man alive! Why, I've had the disease scores of times, and you are half a generation older than I am!"
"I know," Larpent's eyes dwelt unblinking upon the sparkling blue of the water beyond the rail. "You've had it so often that you take it lightly."
Saltash laughed. "You apparently took it like the plague."
"I didn't die of it," said Larpent grimly.
"Perhaps the lady did!" suggested Saltash.
"No. She didn't die either." Larpent's eyes came slowly upwards to the mocking eyes above them. "For all I know she may be living now," he said.
Saltash's grin became a grimace. "Oh, heavens, Larpent! And you've had indigestion ever since? How long ago is it? Twenty years?"
"About that," said Larpent.
"Heavens!" said Saltash again. "I should like to see the woman who could hold me after twenty years!"
"So should I," said Larpent dryly.
Saltash snapped his fingers. "She doesn't exist, my good fellow! But if she did--by Jove, what a world it would be!"
Larpent grunted sardonically. "It wouldn't be large enough to hold you, my lord."
Saltash stretched his arms wide. "Well, I'm going ashore to-night. Who knows what the gods may send? Wish me luck!"
Larpent surveyed the restless figure with a sort of stony humour. "I wish you a safe return," he said.
Saltash laughed and went away along the deck with a monkey-like spring that was curiously characteristic of him. There was nothing of the sailor's steady poise about him.
The little Italian town that clung to the slopes that rose so steeply from the sea shone among its terraced gardens like a many-coloured jewel in the burning sunset. The dome of its Casino gleamed opalescent in its centre--a place for wonder--a place for dreams. Yet Saltash's expression as he landed on the quay was one of whimsical discontent. He had come nearly a fortnight ago to be amused, but somehow the old pleasures had lost their relish and he was only bored.
"I'm getting old," he said to himself with a grimace of disgust.
But he was not old. He was barely six-and-thirty. He had had the world at his feet too long, that was all.
There was to be a water-side _fete_ that night at Valrosa, and the promenade and bandstand were wreathed with flowers and fairy-lights. It was getting late in the season, and it would probably be the last. Saltash surveyed the preparations with very perfunctory interest as he sauntered up to the hotel next to the Casino where he proposed to dine.
A few people he knew were staying there, and he looked forward to a more or less social evening. At least he could count on a welcome and a rubber of bridge if he felt so inclined. Or there was the Casino itself if the gambling mood should take him. But he did not feel much like gambling. He wanted something new. None of the old stale amusements appealed to him tonight. He was feeling very ancient and rather dilapidated.
He went up the steps under the cypress-trees that led from terrace to terrace, pausing at each landing-place to look out over the wonderful sea that was changing every moment with the changing glow of the sunset. Yes, it was certainly a place for dreams. Even old Larpent felt the charm--Larpent who had fallen in love twenty years ago for the first and last time!
An irrepressible chuckle escaped him. Funny old Larpent! The wine of the gods had evidently been too strong a brew for him. It was obvious that he had no desire to repeat the dose.
At his last halting-place he stood longer to drink in the beauty of the evening before entering the hotel. The sea had the pearly tint shot with rose of the inside of an oyster-shell. The sky-line was receding, fading into an immense calm. The shadows were beginning to gather. The sun had dipped out of sight.
The tinkle of a lute rose from one of the hidden gardens below him. He stood and listened with sentimental eyes and quizzically twitching mouth. Everything in this wonder-world was ultra-sweet to-night. And yet--and yet--
Suddenly another sound broke through the stillness, and in a moment he had sprung to alertness. It was a cry--a sharp, wrung cry from the garden close to him, the garden of the hotel, and instantly following it a flood of angry speech in a man's voice and the sound of blows.
"Damnation!" said Saltash, and sprang for a narrow wooden door in the stone wall a few yards higher up.
It opened to his imperious hand, and he found himself in a dark little shrubbery behind an arbour that looked out to the sea. It was in this arbour that the scuffle was taking place, and in a second he had forced his way through the intervening shrubs and was at the entrance.
"Damnation!" he burst forth again furiously. "What are you doing? Leave that boy alone!"
A man in evening-dress was gripping a fair-haired lad, who wore the hotel-livery, by the back of his neck and raining merciless blows upon his uncovered head. He turned, sharply straightening himself, at Saltash's tempestuous entrance, and revealed to the newcomer the deeply-suffused countenance of the hotel-manager.
Their recognition was mutual. He flung the boy into a corner and faced his patron, breathing hard, his black eyes still fiercely gleaming.
"Ah! It is milord!" he said, in jerky English, and bowed punctiliously though he was still shaking with rage. "What can I do for you, milord?"
"What the devil is the matter?" said Saltash, sweeping aside all ceremony. "What are you hammering that unfortunate boy for? Can't you find a man your own size to hammer?"
The Italian flung a fierce glance over his shoulder at his crouching victim. "He is worthless!" he declared. "I give him a trial--_bueno_, but he is worthless. Milord will pardon me, he is--English. And the English are--no good for work--no good at all."
"Oh, rotten to the core!" agreed Saltash, with a humorous lift of the brows. "But you needn't murder him for that, Antonio. It's his misfortune--not his fault."
"Milord, I have not murdered him," the manager protested with nervous vehemence. "I have only punished him. I have not hurt him.