Charles Rex Part 11

"I'll live--or die--for your sake!" the trembling voice told him. "I'm just--yours."

Saltash stopped abruptly and laid his face for a moment against the shorn, golden head. Just for that moment a hint of emotion showed in his strange eyes, but it was gone instantly.

He raised himself again with a grimace of self-ridicule. "Well, look here! Don't forget to play the game! Larpent--your daddy--is knocked out, remember. He is unconscious for the present, but the doctor chap seems to think he'll be all right. A nasty suspicious person that doctor, so watch out! And let me see! What is Toby short for? I'd better know."

"Antoinette," whispered the lips that still caressed his hand.

"Antoinette!" Saltash's hand closed softly upon the pointed chin, softly lifted it. "I think _Mignonette_ would suit you better," he said, in his quick, caressing way. "It's time I chose a name for you, _ma chere_. I shall call you that."

"Or just Nonette of Nowhere," breathed the red lips, piteously smiling.

"That would suit me--best of all."

"No--no!" said Saltash, and gently relinquished his hold. "Don't forget that you are a favourite of the G.o.ds! That counts for something, my Toby.

They don't take up with everybody."

"They haven't done much for me so far," said Toby, suddenly rebellious.

"Hus.h.!.+" said Saltash, with semi-comic warning. "You are too young to say that."

"I am--older than you think, sir," said Toby, colouring painfully and turning from his look.

"No, you're not!" Swiftly, with a certain arrogance, Saltash made answer.

"I know--how old you are, child. It is written in your eyes. They have always told me--all I need to know." Then, very tenderly, as Toby's hands covered them from his look: "_Mais, Mignonette_, they have never told me anything that you could wish me not to know."

He slipped his arm again about the slender shoulders and pressed them closely for a moment. Then he stood up and turned to go.

He was smiling as he pa.s.sed out--the smile of the gambler who knows that he holds a winning card.

PART II

CHAPTER I

JAKE BOLTON

It was a week after the sinking of _The Night Moth_ that Saltash, very immaculately dressed, with field-gla.s.ses slung over his shoulder, made his first appearance since the disaster at a meeting on the Graydown Race-course, a few miles from his ancient castle of Burchester. He was looking very well pleased with himself and certainly none the worse for the adventure as he sauntered among his friends, of whom a good many were present. His ugly face and wiry figure were well-known at Graydown, and he seemed sure of his welcome wherever he went.

There had been a time years before when he had kept his own stud, and racing had been his hobby. It had not held him for long. He was not the man to pursue any one object for any length of time. With characteristic volatility he had thrown up this amus.e.m.e.nt to follow others, but he had never wholly abandoned his interest in the stud which had once been his.

It was owned by one, Jake Bolton, a man of rugged exterior whose integrity had become a proverb on the Turf. This man was Saltash's erstwhile trainer, and a very curious bond existed between them. Utterly unlike in every respect, the one as subtle as the other was simple, yet the two men were friends. How it had come about neither of them quite knew. When Saltash had been his employer, Jake Bolton had distrusted and despised him, but by some means this att.i.tude of his had become very materially modified. He greeted Saltash now with the hand of friends.h.i.+p which Saltash on his part was always ready to accept with a baffling smile that was not wholly without irony. He was wont to say that any man could make an enemy of him, but no man could keep him as such. Perhaps it was that very volatility of his which made anything of the nature of prolonged enmity an impossibility. He possessed also that maddening sense of humour that laughs at deadly things. A good many people had tried to take him seriously and had failed. He was never serious. As he used to say with his mocking laugh, life was difficult enough without complications of that sort. All he ever asked of it was a certain mead of enjoyment. It was utterly unreasonable to expect anything else.

Happiness! What was it. A bursting bubble, no more. No lasting joy had ever come his way, and he was fain to believe that such a thing did not exist outside the covers of a book.

Jake Bolton could have told him otherwise, but he and Saltash never spoke of abstract things. Saltash might have seen the deep content in the man's eyes, but if he had, he would probably have scoffed at it. In any case there was certainly no denying that he and Bolton had been cast in different moulds, and that which gave life-long satisfaction to the latter would have held the former for possibly but a very brief period.

As a woman friend who knew him well had once said of him, Charles Rex was too rapid a traveller to gather much upon the way. For though keen for pleasure, he was too restless for its enjoyment when attained. But even that friend had not fathomed all the possibilities of that strange personality. Perhaps there was only one woman in the world who would ever do that.

It was a showery spring day, and the turf of the race-course shone with a fresh greenness. Saltash strolled through the paddock to find Jake Bolton, whistling a careless air as he went. Several stable-boys saluted him as he pa.s.sed, and finally a man he knew, Sam Vickers, Bolton's right-hand man, came up and accosted him.

"Are you looking for Mr. Bolton, my lord? He's round by the boxes with Sir Bernard Brian. We've got our best two-year-old round there--Prince Charlie his name is. He's by the old Hundredth Chance and Queen of the Earth. Your lords.h.i.+p ought to see him. He is a royalty and no mistake; tame as a dog too, and that knowing--well, there, you'd hardly believe it, but we have to talk in French sometimes so as he shan't know what we say!"

Saltash chuckled. "You must let me hear you, Sam. All right. I'll go round. Ah! Here is Sir Bernard! Hullo, Bunny, my boy! You, is it? Where's the boss?"

A black-haired, black-eyed lad of about three-and-twenty, handsome, spare, and very upright, had come suddenly round the corner of a building. He greeted Saltash with enthusiasm.

"Why, Charlie! I'm awfully pleased to see you! We all thought you were done for. How are you, I say? It was rotten luck for you to lose the poor old _Night Moth_ like that. Hope she was decently insured. And you're none the worse?"

"Not a mite!" laughed Saltash. "How are you? As skimpy a bag of bones as ever?"

"Oh, dash it! I've grown!" protested Bunny. "I'm as tall as you are anyway."

"Oh, you're long enough," chaffed Saltash. "But you're too d.a.m.n slim! I should think Maud could get you through her wedding-ring if she tried."

"Shut up!" growled Bunny who was somewhat sensitive on the point of physical shortcomings. "I'm well enough, so what does it matter? Are you coming round to see Maud when this show is over?"

"Depends," grinned Saltash.

"What's it depend on?" Bunny linked an arm in his and drew him forward; they were friends of many years' standing.

Saltash looked at him with his odd eyes that always seemed to be speculating like a monkey's, as to how far his next jump would carry him.

"Depends upon Jake of course. Your good brother-in-law doesn't always invite the wolf into the fold, _mon cher_."

"As if you needed an invitation!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Bunny impatiently. "Well, I invite you anyway. I know Maud will be awfully disappointed if you don't come and tell her all about your adventure. We were talking about you only this morning."

"Really!" said Saltash. "Would it be rude to ask what you were saying?"

Bunny's thin face flushed. "You're welcome to know so far as I'm concerned," he said bluntly. "I always stick up for you, Charlie."

"Do you? _Mais vraiment!_" protested Saltash. "I am touched beyond words.

And what says Brother Jake to that?"

"Oh, Jake says I'm an a.s.s, but he's quite decent about you, Charlie,--rather fond of you in fact. Don't run away with that idea!"

begged Bunny, turning still redder. "Only people jaw a lot about you, you know. No one ever can be content to mind their own business."

"He'd be a fool who was," said Saltash. "There's no such thing as independent action in this world. We all hang to each other like swarming bees. So you've been sticking up for me, have you? And what says Sister Maud?"

Bunny broke into a sudden laugh. "Oh, she's decided to reserve judgment.

You'll have to come and see her. You really must. And the kids too--four of 'em now. The eldest is a darling."

"Eileen! Oh, I know Eileen," said Saltash. "I was actually allowed to have her to tea once at the Castle. I am not supposed to have such a venomous effect upon quite small girls as upon young men of two or three and twenty."

"Oh, shut up!" Bunny growled again. "There's Jake, look! Come and speak to him!"

There was nothing ornamental about Jake Bolton. Short, thick-set, powerful as a bull and with something of a bull's unswerving contempt for all obstacles in his path, with red-brown eyes that were absolutely level in their regard and mercilessly keen, such was the man who had married Maud Brian eight years before, practically in the teeth of Saltash who had wooed her in her girlhood. There was no feud between them. Their enmity was long since dead and buried. Saltash could be intolerably malicious and even vindictive when the mood took him, but his moods never lasted. And as for Bolton, since he had won and still possessed his heart's desire, he could afford to be generous.