Tinman. Gallon Tom
a dozen times before?"
"For the love of God, keep him quiet!" I cried to my guardian; for I felt that my head was bursting, and my throat was dry. I seemed then to be praying to the only saint I knew for strength and for confidence; I only wanted to get out of the room, before I struck the man dead. My guardian did nothing; he stood still, watching us both; and after a moment Hockley went on. I had a dim feeling, as he began to speak again, that people were moving outside the door; I think the place had been disturbed by the overturning of the table.
"That makes you wince, doesn't it?" he demanded; for I think he felt secure, now that other people were near at hand. "I tell you she was for any man that cared – "
I sprang straight at him then, and had him by the throat. I was young, and my muscles were tough; more than that, I was in finer condition than he, with all his drinking and his late nights and his vices, could hope to be. We went down together, he screaming out something that sounded like a cry for help; and I tore and raged at him as though I were mad.
When I came to myself, I was being held by three or four of them, and he was leaning against the overturned table, breathing heavily, and trying to arrange his collar and tie; his face was ghastly. After a moment he pointed a shaking hand at me, and gasped out —
"He tried to murder me; he meant to murder me. We were – we were joking, gentlemen – and he – he tried to murder me."
"Yes, I tried to murder you," I said. "And I'll try again, with more success, when I get the chance, unless you take back what you've said."
"Charlie – Charlie – come away!" exclaimed my guardian, putting his hands on my breast, and pushing me back. "I'm sorry to have disturbed all you good people," he added, turning to the landlord, who was staring at us with a scared face; "but this is only a matter of hot blood. They'll shake hands in the morning; they'll be friends again."
They were dragging me away, while I strove to break from them; I called out again to Hockley. "You shall take back what you said; I'll make you eat your lie, or I'll kill you."
I do not think I quite understood what I was saying; even the shocked scared faces about me could not make me understand the gravity of it all. I found myself outside the closed doors of the room, panting and almost weeping with excitement, with the stout landlord holding me on one side, and a waiter on the other. My guardian was speaking – not to me, but to the landlord.
"Very well, since you insist, he shall not stop in the house," said Jervis Fanshawe. "I'll take him away to Mr. Patton's place; I can secure a bed for him there. Yes – yes – I quite understand, and I'm sorry you've been disturbed; it shall all be put right. Tell Mr. Hockley that I've gone home."
They got me out of the house; locked the door on me, in fact. I stood under the stars with Fanshawe, staring before me down the road, and panting heavily; for I knew that this was but the beginning. I seemed to see the foul lips of the man for ever breathing out lies about her – lies that must be stopped and killed now in their birth. That was what I must do, and quickly. This thing would be spread; I seemed to see the man whispering it here, there, and everywhere, with shrugs and leers and winks. Yes, I would kill it.
As in a sort of dream I heard my guardian talking to me. "Yes, my dear boy; I know it's abominable – shameful; but what can you do? Any one who knows you and knows her must know that it is all a lie from beginning to end. There – there – come away. I suppose if we lived in any other century, you might strike a man down for this; I think I should strike him down myself, if I were as young and strong as you are." He was glancing at me curiously as we stood there in the utter silence of the night; there seemed a challenge in his eyes. And his suggestion about any other century had brought back again to my mind the remembrance that I was her pure knight, pledged to do battle for her. I began to walk rapidly away in the direction of the house of the Pattons, with my guardian walking beside me, and putting in a word here and there that was meant to be soothing, and yet that only served to inflame my passion.
"I ought not to have said that about striking him down, Charlie; that would be murder," he went on. "And one may not murder another man, however much one may be tempted, or however richly the man may deserve death. But the worst of it is, of course, that one doesn't know how to stop him; he'll go on saying those things about that sweet girl, and people will begin to believe – to say there's no smoke without fire, and horrible things of that sort. What had we better do, Charlie?"
"You can leave it to me," I said. "You can safely leave it to me."
He seemed to be able to do what he liked at the house of the Pattons. A manservant let us in; my guardian seemed to whisper something to him to account for my dishevelled appearance, and for the fact that I had no hat. The man got a light in one of the lower rooms, and presently brought in a decanter and some glasses; then, at a further whispered suggestion from Fanshawe, retired and left us alone together. My guardian was hovering about me anxiously – now murmuring what a shame it was that such things should be said openly about such a girl as Barbara – now muttering what he would do if he were a younger man – now urging me feebly to forget all about it, and leave the man alone.
"Above all, Charlie – no violence," he said. "I shudder to think what you might have done if I had not prevented you to-night. You won't mend things that way; we must think of some other method."
I said nothing; I drank mechanically what he put into my hand; I acquiesced in his suggestion that I should go to bed. My last recollection of him was when he came into my room, looking thinner and more gaunt than ever in a dark dressing gown, and hovered over me with a candle, and hoped that I would sleep.
But sleep was not for me that night; I had other things to think about. The lie faced me, like a grey haunting shadow, in the night; had become more horrible with the first streaks of dawn. The more I strove to control myself – the more I told myself that what such a creature as Hockley might say could not matter – the more my passion grew. And it was a worse passion now, because there was growing up in it a method that was greater than the madness of the night before. In that long night, wherein I lay and thought the thing over, the boyish part of me seemed to have lived far back in another age; it was a new Charles Avaline that rose with the morning, and dressed and went out.
I know that I walked into the hotel at Hammerstone Market quietly enough; I was half way up the stairs leading to my room before the startled landlord came out, and called after me to know where I was going. I turned, and faced him on the stairs.
"I'm going to my room to put my things together," I answered. "Is Mr. Hockley up yet?" I steadied my voice, and made the question as careless as I could.
"Mr. Hockley's gone, sir," said the man, in what was evidently a tone of satisfaction.
I came down the stairs, and faced him for a moment in silence. "That's not true," I said quietly; "he's afraid to meet me, and you're hiding him."
"Thank the Lord, sir, he's gone," said the man earnestly. "I didn't like the look of you last night, sir; and I like the look of you still less this morning. No offence, sir, but I'll be glad when you're out of my 'ouse."
I packed my bag, and arranged for it to be sent to the station; then I tramped back to find my guardian. I found him seated at breakfast, quite alone; Mr. Patton had not yet come down. I told him that I had been to the hotel, and that Hockley was gone. I think he seemed surprised, and a little taken aback at the news.
"Well, what are you going to do?" he asked, after a silence, during which he had been twisting his long fingers about over each other nervously. "Are you going to let the matter drop, or what are you going to do?"
"I'm going to follow him; I'm going to find him," I said. "You know where he lives in London; you must give me the address."
"I won't do that," he replied instantly; "I'll have no hand in this business. Let him say what he likes, or do what he likes; it's no affair of mine, and it should be no affair of yours. I wash my hands of it."
He went on with his breakfast again, muttering to himself something about young hot-headed fools; I waited patiently. I brushed aside his suggestion that I should have some breakfast; I was impatient to be gone. I told him again that I must have Hockley's address.
"Look here,