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

Everywhere were tiger skins, on the floor and on a deep low settee by the table which was the only other furniture the room possessed. Toby was clinging to the arm that held her, clinging very closely. There was unspoken entreaty in her hold. For there was something about Saltash at the moment, something unfamiliar and unfathomable that frightened her. His careless drollery, his two-edged ironies, were nought to her; but his silence was a barrier unknown that she could not pass. She could only cling voicelessly to the support he had not denied her.
He brought her to the settee and stood still. His face was strangely grim.
"Well--Toby?" he said.
She twisted in his hold and faced him, but she kept his arm wound close about her, her hand tight gripped on his. "Are you--angry with me for coming?" she asked him quiveringly. "I--had to come."
He looked down into her eyes. "_Bien, petite!_ Then you need--a friend," he said.
Her answering look was piteous. "I need--you," she said.
One of the old gay smiles flashed across his face. He seemed to challenge her to lightness. The grimness went out of his eyes like a shadow.
"And so you have come, _ma mignonette_, at the dead of night--at the risk of your reputation--and mine--"
Toby made an excruciating grimace, and broke impulsively in upon him. "It wasn't the dead of night when I started. I've been waiting hours--hours. But it doesn't matter. I've found you--at last. And you can't send me away now--like you did before--because--because--well, I've no one to go to. You might have done it if you'd come down earlier. But you can't do it--now." Her voice thrilled on a high note of triumph. "You've got to keep me--now. I've come--to stay."
"What?" said Saltash. He bent towards her, looking closely into her face. "Got to keep you, have I? What's that mean? Has Bunny been a brute to you? I could have sworn I'd made him understand."
She laughed in answer. "Bunny! I didn't wait to see him!"
"What?" Saltash said again.
She reached up a quick, nervous hand and laid it against his breast. Her eyes, wide and steadfast, never flinched from his. "I've come--to stay," she repeated. And then, after a moment, "It's all right. I left a note behind for Bunny. I told him I wasn't going back."
He caught her hand tightly into his. His hold was drawing her, and she yielded herself to it still with that quivering laughter that was somehow more eloquent than words, more piteous than tears.
Saltash spoke, below his breath. "What am I going to do with you?" he said.
Her arms reached up to him suddenly. Perhaps it was that for which she had waited. "You're going--to keep me--this time," she told him tremulously. "Oh, why did you ever send me away--when I belonged to you--and to no one else? You meant to give me my chance? What chance have I of anything but hell and damnation away from you? No, listen! Let me speak! Hear me first!" She uttered the words with passionate insistence. "I'm not asking anything of you--only to be with you. I'll be to you whatever you choose me to be--always--always. I will be your valet, your slave, your--plaything. I will be--the dust under your feet. But I must be with you. You understand me. No one else does. No one else ever can."
"Are you sure you understand yourself?" Saltash said.
His arms had closed about her. He was holding her in a vital clasp. But his restless look did not dwell upon her. It seemed rather to be seeking something beyond.
Toby's hands met and gripped each other behind his neck. She clung to him with an almost frenzied closeness.
"You can't send me away!" she told him brokenly. "If you do, I shall die. And I'm asking such a little--such a very little."
"You don't know what you're asking, child," he said, and though he held her fast pressed to him his voice had the sombre ring of a man who battles with misgiving. "You have never known. That's the hell of it."
"I do know!" she flung back almost fiercely. "I know--all I need to know--of most things. I know--very well--" her breath came quickly, but still her eyes remained upraised--"what would have happened--what was bound to happen--if the yacht had never gone down. I wasn't afraid then. I'm not now. You're the only man on this earth that I'd say it to. I hate men--most men! But to you--to you--" a sudden sob caught her voice, she paused to steady it--"to you I just want to be whatever you're needing most in life. And when I can't be that to you any longer--I'll just drop out--as I promised--and you--you shall never know a thing about it. That I swear."
His look came swiftly to her. The blue eyes were swimming in tears. He made a sudden gesture as of capitulation, and the strain went out of his look. His arms tightened like springs about her. He spoke lightly, jestingly.
"_Bien!_ Shall I tell what you shall be to me, _mignonne_?" he said, and smiled down at her with his royal air of confidence.
She trembled a little and was silent, realizing that he had suddenly leapt to a decision, fearing desperately what that decision might be. His old baffling mask of banter had wholly replaced the sombreness, but she was aware of a force behind it that gripped her irresistibly. She could not speak in answer.
"I will tell you," he said, and his dark, face laughed into hers with a merriment half-mischievous, half-kindly. "I am treading the path of virtue, _mignonne_, and uncommon lonely I'm finding it. You shall relieve the monotony. We will be virtuous together--for a while. You shall be--my wife!"
He stooped with the words and ere she knew it his lips were on her own. But his kiss, though tender, was as baffling as his smile. It was not the kiss of a lover.
She gasped and shrank away. "Your--wife! You--you--you're joking! How could I--I--be your wife?"
"You and none other!" he declared gaily. "Egad, it's the very thing for us! Why did I never think of it before? I will order the state-coach at once. We will go to town--elope and be married before the world begins to buzz. What are you frightened at, sweetheart? Why this alarm? Wouldn't you rather be my wife than--the dust beneath my feet?"
"I--I don't know," faltered Toby, and hid her face from the dancing raillery in his eyes.
His hold was close and sheltering, but he laughed at her without mercy. "Does the prospect make you giddy? You will soon get over that. You will take the world by storm, _mignonne_. You will be the talk of the town."
"Oh, no!" breathed Toby. "No, I couldn't!"
"What?" he jested. "You are going to refuse my suit?"
She turned and clung to him with a passionate, even fierce intensity, but she did not lift her face again to his. Her voice came muffled against his breast. "I could never refuse you--anything."
"_Eh, bien!_ Then all is well!" he declared. "My bride will hold her own wherever she goes, save with her husband. And to him she will yield her wifely submission at all times. Do you know what they will say--all of them--when they hear that Charles Rex is married at last?"
"What?" whispered Toby apprehensively.
He bent his head, still laughing. "Shall I tell you? Can't you guess?"
"No. Tell me!" she said.
He touched the soft ringlets of her hair with his lips. "They will say, 'God help his wife!' _mignonne_. And I--I shall answer 'Amen'."
She lifted her face suddenly and defiantly, her eyes afire. "Do you know what I shall say if they do?" she said.
"What?" said Saltash, his own eyes gleaming oddly.
"I shall tell them," said Toby tensely, "to--to--to go to blazes!"
He grimaced his appreciation. "Then they will begin to pity the husband, _cherie_."
She held up her lips to his, childishly, lovingly. "I will be good," she said. "I will be good. I will never say such things again."
He kissed the trembling lips again, lightly, caressingly. "Oh, don't be too good!" he said. "I couldn't live up to it. You shall say what you like--do what you like. And--you shall be my queen!"
She caught back another sob. Her clinging arms tightened. "And you will be--what you have always been," she said--"my king--my king--my king!"
In the silence that followed the passionate words, Charles Rex very gently loosened the clinging arms, and set her free.


PART IV


CHAPTER I
THE WINNING POST

"I never thought it would be like this," said Toby.
She spoke aloud, though she was alone. She stood at an immense window on the first floor of a busy Paris hotel and stared down into the teeming courtyard below. Her fair face wore a whimsical expression that was half of amusement and half of discontent. She looked absurdly young, almost childish; but her blue eyes were unmistakably wistful.
Below her seethed a crowd of vehicles of every description and the babel that came up to her was as the roar of a great torrent. It seemed to sweep away all coherent thought, for she smiled as she gazed downwards and her look held interest in the busy scene even though the hint of melancholy lingered. There was certainly plenty to occupy her, and it was not in her nature to be bored.
But yet at the opening of a door in the room behind her, she turned very swiftly, and in a moment her face was alight with ardent welcome.
"Ah! Here you are!" she said.
He came forward in his quick, springy fashion, his odd eyes laughing their gay, unstable greeting into hers. He took the hands she held out to him, and bending, lightly kissed them.
"Have you been bored? _Mais non!_ I have not been so long gone. Why are you not still resting, _cherie_, as I told you?"
She looked at him, and still--though her eyes laughed their gladness--the wistfulness remained. "I am--quite rested, _monseigneur_. And the tiredness--quite gone. And now you are going to take me to see the sights of Paris?"
"Those of them you don't know?" suggested Saltash.
She nodded. "I don't know very many. I never went very far. I was afraid."
He twisted his hand through her arm, and his fingers closed upon her wrist. "You are not afraid--with me?" he questioned.
Her eyes answered him before her voice. "Never, _monseigneur_."
"Why do you call me that?" said Saltash.
She coloured at the abrupt question. "It suits you."
He made his monkeyish grimace, and suddenly dropped his eyes to the blue-veined wrist in his grasp. "Are you happy, _mignonne_?" he asked her, still obviously in jesting mood.
Toby's eyes dropped also. She mutely nodded.
"The truth, Nonette?" His look flashed over her; his tone was imperious.
She nodded again. "I always tell you--the truth."
He began to laugh. "_Mais vraiment_! I had not thought that likely. Then you do not want to leave me--yet?"
"Leave you!" Her eyes came up to his in wide amazement. "I!"
"We have been married three days," he reminded her, with comically working brows. "And I--have I not already begun to leave you--to neglect you?"
"I--I--I never expected--anything else," stammered Toby, suddenly averting her face.
He patted her cheek with careless kindliness. "How wise of you, my dear! How wise! Then you are not yet--sufficiently _ennuyee_ to desire to leave me?"
"Why--why do you ask?" questioned Toby.
There was a species of malicious humour about him that made her uneasy. Saltash in a mischievous mood was not always easy to restrain. He did not immediately reply to her question, and she turned with a hint of panic and tightly clasped his