Tinman. Gallon Tom
had yet done. "What for?" he asked.
"I'm thinking of going down – for the fishing," replied Hockley; and as I looked at him I saw that his face was creased in a grin, and that he was watching Fanshawe. "That is, of course," he added, with a guffaw, "my sort of fishing."
"You won't be welcome," said my guardian sourly; and the other man responded with an oath that he could find his welcome anywhere.
After we had left the table, I saw Jervis Fanshawe take the other man aside, and begin talking to him in a low voice, as though impressing something upon him. But Hockley shook him off, and answered whatever had been said aloud.
"I tell you I'm going – and the best thing you can do is to go with me. If it comes to that, you know what I am when I get a bit excited; I might need your restraining hand. You'd better make up your mind when you'll go, and I'll make my arrangements accordingly."
My guardian said nothing, and the other man threw himself into a large armchair, and began to smoke. It was quite late, and I had already begun to think about going, when he got up, and went off without so much as a word of farewell to either of us. Only at the door, with his hat on the back of his head, he came back to demand an answer to the question he had put at least an hour before.
"What date will suit you – next week?" he asked.
Jervis Fanshawe did not look at him; he was nervously twisting his hands together behind his back. "I shall go down on Tuesday to Hammerstone Market," he said, "and I shall stay at the house."
"Good. I shall stay at the George." Hockley lurched out of the doorway, and we heard him slam the outer door of the house as he went away.
And instantly there came a remarkable change over my guardian. In all my life I never remember to have seen a man so suddenly become a wild beast in a moment as Jervis Fanshawe did then. He ran to the door, and pulled it open, and spluttered out blasphemies into the darkness of the staircase; slammed the door, and came back into the room again, and raged up and down there, saying horrible things about Hockley until my blood seemed to run cold. And all the time taking not the faintest notice of me at all.
Presently he sat down at the table, pulling at his lips with his long fingers, and still muttering and breathing hard; it was like the gradual dying away of a storm. After a time I ventured to speak to him, and to wish him good-night; I believe I muttered some thanks for my entertainment. As he took no notice of me, I went to the door, and found my way to the place where my hat was; I was going out, when I heard his voice calling to me sharply. I went back, and found him waiting there, with a face that was comparatively calm.
"I don't know much about you artist fellows," he said, without looking at me – "but I believe you sketch – paint out of doors – don't you?" As I murmured that we did sometimes do that kind of thing, he went on hurriedly: "I know a place where you would probably find some good bits to sketch; you'd better go down with me. It's the place that fellow spoke of just now – Hammerstone Market. I've got to go down there – on business; old Patton lives there."
"Patton?" I asked vaguely; for I seemed to have seen the name somewhere.
"Yes, yes," he replied impatiently. "Patton & Co.: the people for whom I am manager. You were in their place to-day. He has a country house – down there – and I go down when I like. We'll go on Tuesday; pack your things; I want you to make a bit of a splash down there – play the gentleman. Do you understand?"
"Not quite," I said.
"I want to take the wind out of this fellow's sails – this beast Hockley," he said. "I'd grind him to powder, if I had the chance – crush him to nothing. You and I will play our own game, Charlie" – (it was the first time he had called me by that name, and I was a little surprised) – "and make him put his tail between his legs. There – we won't talk any more about it; good-night!"
I walked home to the rooms Mr. Jervis Fanshawe had taken for me with my head in a whirl. I know that I fell asleep that night, with a vague idea that in some extraordinary fashion my guardian was in the power of Gavin Hockley, and was obliged, in a sense, to do what that young man suggested. Perhaps the mere act of thinking about that drove me into the dream I presently had; for I remember that I thought presently I was standing in a room, and that Hockley was before me, with that grin upon his face; in that dream I felt that some one put a weapon into my hand. Dreams are but intangible things, and this was a confused one, with only the face of Hockley grinning at me from out of it, and the knowledge in my own mind that I held a weapon of some sort gripped in my right hand. And then the face was gone, and I seemed to wake up, to see him at my feet, with blood upon him. I woke, trembling and shuddering, and glad to see the calm moon staring in at me from the little street outside. It took me a little time to shake off the horror of the thing. But I was young, and youth needs sleep; so that I presently slept until morning.
Strangely enough, that dream haunted me – sprang up before me even in the sunlight of the streets, and would not be shaken off. Seeing that I had no earthly concern with Hockley, it was at least curious that I should so persistently think of him; now as I had seen him swaggering on the steps of the house, and staring insolently over my head; now as I remembered him lounging at the table, and apparently overawing my guardian; and now again, as in my dream, with his grinning face watching me – and then lying at my feet, with blood upon him. I was too young for such horrors, and yet I could not clear my brain of them.
That Tuesday arrived on which I was to travel down to Hammerstone Market with Mr. Jervis Fanshawe. I had had a note from him the night before, appointing the time of the train, and requesting me to meet him at the railway station; and I was eager enough for the expedition. Although I did not like Fanshawe, and felt that I never could, there was yet in my heart a natural feeling of regard for him, as being the one person intimately connected with me, and, above all, the man who had looked after my interests during the years that I had been growing up. I set it down deliberately here that I wanted to please him, and that, above all things, I was anxious to win his approval. In a sense I was glad to think that he wanted my company, although I wondered a little what was going to happen at this place to which we were going.
In the train he set the matter fairly and clearly before me. "I am going to this place, Charlie, on a matter of business," he said in a low tone, and without looking at me. "Old Patton, as we call him in the business, likes to make a friend of me as much as possible; I have been down here frequently. It gives me a certain position with him – smooths business generally. I can't say exactly how long I shall stop at his house; he does not come up to the office as frequently as he used to do, and there are certain matters he wants to discuss with me."
"It is very kind of you to take me with you," I said; but with a grim smile he broke in on my enthusiasm.
"Oh, I'm not taking you to the house," he said, "I shall have to leave you at the George. I intend, if possible, to get an invitation for you to dinner one night – or perhaps to a luncheon; but at the moment I merely want Patton to know that you are there, and who you are. He will probably like to know that I am your guardian, and" – he hesitated for a moment as though casting about in his mind for the right word – "and responsible for you."
I have since come to think that whatever scheme was in the mind of the man then, and whatever he meant to do, his real object in taking me there, to begin with, was no deeper than that. I think he felt that it would look well that he should have the responsibility of me upon his shoulders – that it would give him an air of stability, and would cause people to think well of him – much as though he held before himself the record of a good deed as a species of shield, and cried – "This have I done – and that; judge me in the light of it."
So it came about that I was left at the George in the little town of Hammerstone Market, while Jervis Fanshawe went on to the house of Mr. Patton, which lay a little outside the town. The country round about seemed to be very pretty, and I was free to do as I liked until such time as my guardian should call upon me to go back to London, or to visit him at the house of his patron. I liked the look of the little old-fashioned hotel, and I liked the prospect of this new freedom, as I unpacked my bag that first night, in my room that overlooked the sleepy little High Street of the town.
Yet that prospect was blurred and made hideous in the