The Crowned Skull | Page 7

not for sale. It means, Oswald, that I will marry you whenever you like.'
'It means also,' broke in Bowring, perfectly composed, 'that if you do not obey your father and marry my son, Sir Hannibal Trevick, baronet as he is, will be disgraced.'
'Disgraced! What do you mean?'
'I advise you to ask your father that,' said Bowring sarcastically. 'You will find that he is on my side, and is anxious to call Morgan his son-in-law. For the rest, I can wait. He pulled out his watch and glanced at it. 'Five o'clock; I must go. I'll return to-morrow to see if your conversation with your father has modified your attitude. Good-day!'
When the millionaire had gone Dericka stared after him in consternation.
'What does he mean?' she asked.
'Blackmail,' said Forde quietly. 'My legal experience tells me that much. Your father was in South Africa and apparently got into some scrape. This man knows all about it, and unless you marry this Morgan Bowring he will tell all the world something, which your father would rather keep concealed.'
'Oswald,' said Dericka rapidly, 'my father is weak and foolish in many ways. But I do not believe that he has done, or would do, anything disgraceful.'
'Then why is this man so certain that you will marry at his bidding?'
Dericka passed her hand across her forehead with a weary air.
'I do not know,' she said. 'This Morgan Bowring is half an idiot--a most dreadful person to look upon. Were he sane I would not marry him, much less when I know, what all St. Ewalds knows, that the man is not responsible for his actions in a great measure. My father would never consent to my marrying him. I am sure of that.'
Forde was silent. He knew that Sir Hannibal was a selfish man, and probably had pages in his past life which he would not like read by the world. To save himself from a single pang he would sacrifice Dericka without a moment's hesitation. But he did not tell this to the girl for obvious reasons, and remained awkwardly silent. It was the girl who first recovered her speech.
'I shall see my father at once,' she said decisively, 'and confront him with Mr. Bowring before he leaves this place.'
Forde acquiesced, but a search for the master of the house was in vain. Sir Hannibal was not to be found in any of the rooms, nor in the gardens. People, having exhausted the pleasures of the fete, were already leaving, and Dericka, with Forde at her heels, went down to the gates thinking to find her father there, saying farewell to some of his visitors. Instead she found Mr. Bowring getting into a 50-hp. Hadrian machine, more like a racer than a simple motor-car for travelling country roads. Bowring addressed her:
'I cannot find my old friend Sir Hannibal,' he said with something like a sneer, 'or I should have told him of our conversation. But I'll come again to-morrow. Good evening.' And as the chauffeur placed his hands on the wheel the motor swung off with a powerful hum, like a gigantic bee.
Dericka stared after the machine, but found nothing to say. Then she went back with Forde to again search for Sir Hannibal, and again was unsuccessful.
What Bowring thought of the girl's defiance it is impossible to say. He sat thinking deeply, sometimes with a grim smile, and again with a frown corrugating his brows. The chauffeur, a quiet, fair young fellow called Donalds, engineered the racer--for the Hadrian certainly was that, from the speed she was going at--up the High Street of St. Ewalds and out into the open country. Many people stopped to look at that low, rakish form painted grey, and looking uncanny, which ran up the steep ascent of the street like a fly up a wall. Everyone knew Bowring, and envied him the wealth which could command such a vehicle.
But when the steep ascent was mounted the machine ran smoothly along a level road until she topped the next and slid round a sloping curve, which dropped her into a valley. Then again came a rise, and she slipped forward humming into wild waste lands.
On all sides stretched the naked moorland, covered with heather and gorse, and huge grey stones lying here and there as though a Cornish giant had dropped a handful of pebbles from his pocket. On either side, here and there rose rounded hills, topped with cromlechs and rocking-stones, and streaked with purple lights. The west flared with the vivid colours of the sunset, delicately pink, and melting on the horizon into sheets of shimmering gold. To the left were the bleak hills bathed in the imperial purple of the setting sun; to the right the cold blue of the trembling ocean, with white waves near shore