Charles Rex - Ethel May Dell (i love reading .TXT) 📗

but with the air of having something more to say. Toby waited silently.
It came with a jerk and a grimace, as if some inner force compelled. "I can't talk pi-jaw--on this subject or any other. You see--I'm a rotter myself."
"You, sir!" Toby lifted his head suddenly and stared at him with eyes that blazed passionately blue in the starlight. "Don't believe it!" he said. "It isn't true."
Saltash grinned a little. His face had the dreary look of something lost that a monkey's sometimes wears. "You needn't believe it, son, if you don't want to," he said. "But it's true all the same. That's why I gave you that licking, see? Just to emphasize the difference between us."
"It isn't true!" Toby asserted again almost fiercely. "I'd kill anyone else that said so."
"Oh, you needn't do that!" said Saltash, with kindly derision. "Thanks all the same, my turkey-cock! If I ever need your protection I'll be sure to ask for it." He flicked the young face with his finger. "But you're not to follow my example, mind. You've got to run straight. You're young enough to make it worth while, and--I'll see you have a chance."
"But you'll keep me with you, sir," said Toby swiftly. "You'll keep me--always--with you!"
"Ah!" Saltash's brows twisted oddly for a second. He seemed to ponder the matter. "I can't say off-hand what I'm going to do with you," he said. "You're--a bit of a problem, you know, Toby."
"Yes, sir. I know. I know." Toby's voice was quick with agitation. "But you won't send me away from you! Promise you won't send me away!"
"Can't promise anything," said Saltash. "Look here! I think there's been enough of this. You'd better go to bed."
But Toby was clinging fast to his hand. He spoke between quivering lips. "Please, sir, you said you'd bought me body and soul. You can't mean to chuck me away--after that! Please, sir, I'll do anything--anything under the sun--for you. And you--you can kick me--do anything to me--and I'll never say a word. I'm just yours--for as long as I live. Please, sir--please, sir--don't send me away! I--I'd rather die than that."
He laid his head suddenly down upon the hand he held so tenaciously and began to sob, fighting desperately to stifle all sound.
Saltash sat for a few moments in utter silence and immobility. Then, abruptly, in a tense whisper, he spoke:
"Toby, you little fool, stop it--stop it, do you hear?--and go below!"
The words held a queer urgency. He raised himself as he uttered them, seeking to free his hand though with all gentleness from the clinging clasp.
"Get up, boy!" he said. "Get up and go to bed! What? Oh, don't cry! Pull yourself together! Toby, do you hear?"
Toby lifted a white, strained face. His eyes looked enormous in the dim light. "Yes, sir. All right, sir," he jerked out, and stumbled trembling to his feet. "I know I'm a fool, sir. I'm sorry. I can't help it. No one was ever decent to me--till you came. I--shall just go under now, sir."
"Oh, stop it!" Saltash spoke almost violently. "Can't you see--that's just what I want to prevent? You don't want to go to the devil, I suppose?"
Toby made a passionate gesture that was curiously unboylike. "I'd go to hell and stay there for ever--if you were there!" he said.
"Good God!" said Saltash.
He got up in his sudden fashion and moved away, went to the rail and stood there for a space with his face to the rippling sheen of water. Finally he turned and looked at the silent figure waiting beside his chair, and a very strange smile came over his dark features. He came back, not without a certain arrogance, and tapped Toby on the shoulder.
"All right," he said. "Stay with me and be damned if you want to! I daresay it would come to the same thing in the end."
Toby drew himself together with a swift movement. "That means you'll keep me, sir?"
His eyes, alight and eager, looked up to Saltash with something that was not far removed from adoration in their shining earnestness.
The strange smile still hovered about Saltash's face; a smile in which cynicism and some vagrant, half-stifled emotion were oddly mingled.
"Yes, I'll keep you," he said, and paused, looking at him oddly.
Toby's eyes, very wide open, intensely bright, looked straight back. "For good, sir?" he said anxiously.
And Saltash laughed, a brief, mocking laugh. "For better, for worse, my Toby!" he said. "Now--go!"
He smote him a light friendly blow on the shoulder and flung round on his heel.
Toby went, very swiftly, without looking back.


CHAPTER VI
THE ABYSS

They sighted the English shore a few days later on an evening of mist and rain. The sea was grey and dim, the atmosphere cold and inhospitable.
"Just like England!" said Saltash. "She never gushes over her prodigals."
He was dining alone in the saloon with Toby behind his chair, Larpent being absent on the bridge.
"Don't you like England, sir?" said Toby.
"I adore her," said Saltash with his most hideous grimace. "But I don't go to her for amusement."
Toby came forward to fill his glass with liqueur. "Too strait-laced, sir?" he suggested with the suspicion of a smile.
Saltash nodded with a sidelong glance at the young face bent over the decanter. "Too limited in many ways, my Toby," he said. "But at the same time useful in certain emergencies. A stern mother perhaps, but a wise one on the whole. You, for instance--she will be the making of you."
A slight tremor went through Toby. He set down the decanter and stepped back. "Of me, sir?" he said.
Saltash nodded again. He was fingering the stem of his glass, his queer eyes dancing a little. "We've got to make a respectable citizen of you--somehow," he said.
"Do you think that matters, sir?" said Toby.
Saltash raised his glass. "You won't always be a boy of sixteen, you know, Toby," he said lightly. "We've got to think of the future--whether we want to or not."
"I don't see why, sir," said Toby.
"You see, you're young," said Saltash, and drank with the air of one who drinks a toast.
Suddenly he turned in his chair, the glass still in his hand.
"Our last night on board!" he said, with a royal gesture of invitation. "You shall drink with me."
Toby's face flushed burningly. He hung back. "Not--not--from your glass, sir!" he said. "Not--liqueur!"
"Why not? Afraid?" mocked Saltash.
Toby was silent. His hand closed involuntarily upon the back of his master's chair. The flush died out of his face.
Saltash sat and looked at him for a few seconds, still with that dancing gleam in his eyes. Then abruptly he moved, rose with one knee upon the chair, lifted the glass to Toby's lips.
"Afraid?" he said again, speaking softly as one speaks to a frightened child.
Toby raised a hand that sought to take the glass but closed instead nervously upon Saltash's wrist. He drank in response to Saltash's unspoken insistence, looking straight at him the while.
Then oddly he smiled. "No, not afraid, sir," he said. "Only--lest I might not bring you luck."
"Oh, don't fret yourself on that account!" said Saltash. "I'm not used to any luck."
Toby's eyes widened. "I thought you had--everything, sir," he said.
Saltash laughed and set down the empty glass. "_Au contraire, mon cher_," he said. "I am no richer than you are. Like Tantalus, I can never quench my thirst. Like many a better man than I, I see the stars, but I never reach them."
"Does anybody?" said Toby in the tone of one not expecting an answer.
Saltash laughed briefly, enigmatically. "I believe some people soar. But they generally come down hard in the end. Whereas those who always crawl on the earth haven't far to fall. Now look here, Toby, you and I have got to have a talk."
"Yes, sir," said Toby, blinking rather rapidly.
Saltash was watching him with a faint smile in his eyes, half-derisive and half-tender. "What are you going to be, Toby?" he said. "It all turns on that."
Toby's hand still gripped the back of his chair. He stood up very straight, facing him. "That is for you to decide, sir," he said.
"Is it?" said Saltash, and again his eyes gleamed a little. "Is it for me to decide?"
"Yes, sir. For you alone." There was no flinching in Toby's look now. His eyes were wide and very steady.
Saltash's mouth twitched as if he repressed some passing emotion. "You mean--just that?" he asked, after a moment.
"Just that, sir," said Toby, with a slight quickening of the breath. "I mean I am--at your disposal alone."
Saltash took him suddenly by the shoulder and looked at him closely. "Toby!" he said. "Aren't you making--rather a fool of yourself?"
"No, sir!" Swiftly, with unexpected vehemence, Toby made answer. "I'm doing--the only thing possible. But if you--if you--if you--"
"Well?" Saltash said. "If I what?"
"If you want to get rid of me--at any time," Toby said, commanding himself with fierce effort, "I'll go, sir--I'll go!"
"And where to?" Saltash's eyes were no longer derisive; they held something that very few had ever seen there.
Toby made a quick gesture of the hands, and dropped them flat at his sides. "I'll get rid of myself--then, sir," he said, with sudden chill pride. "That won't be very difficult. And I'll do it--so that you won't even know."
Saltash stood up abruptly. "Toby, you are quite unique!" he said. "Superb too in your funny little way. Your only excuse is that you're young. Does it never occur to you that you've attached yourself to the wrong person?"
"No, sir," breathed Toby.
"You're not afraid to stake all you've got on a bad card?" pursued Saltash, still curiously watching him.
"No, sir," he said again; and added with his faint, unboyish smile, "I haven't much to lose anyway."
Saltash's hand tightened upon him. He was smiling also, but the gleam in his eyes had turned to leaping, fitful flame. "Well," he said slowly, "I have never yet refused--a gift from the gods."
And there he stopped, for suddenly, drowning all speech, there arose a din that seemed to set the whole world rocking; and in a moment there came a frightful shock that pitched them both headlong to the floor.
Saltash fell as a monkey falls, catching at one thing after another to save himself, landing eventually on his knees in pitch darkness with one hand still gripped upon Toby's thin young arm. But Toby had struck his head against a locker and had gone down stunned and helpless.
The din of a siren above them filled the world with hideous clamour as Saltash recovered himself. "Damn them!" he ejaculated savagely. "Do they want to deafen us as well as send us to perdition?"
Then very suddenly it stopped, leaving a void that was instantly filled with lesser sounds. There arose a confusion of voices, of running feet, a hubbub of escaping steam, and a great rush of water.
Saltash dragged himself up in the darkness, sought to drag Toby also, found him a dead weight, stooped and lifted him with wiry strength. He trod among broken glass and plates as he straightened himself. The noise above them was increasing. He flung the limp form over his shoulder and began desperately to claw his way up a steep slant towards the saloon-door and the companion-way. Sound and instinct guided him, for the darkness was complete. But he was not the man to die like a trapped animal while the most slender way of escape remained. Hampered as he was, he made for the open with set teeth and terrible foreign oaths of which he was