Tinman. Gallon Tom
of my guardian, who protested feebly that there was nothing to take me away, and suggested that he needed my presence in the country. But I felt that my life, so far as Hammerstone Market was concerned, was closed; I did not ever wish to see the place again.
Let it not be thought for a moment, on account of my youth, that this was a mere boyish infatuation, out of which I should in time naturally have grown, remembering it at the best as only a tender boyish romance. It was never that; it had set its roots too deeply in the very fibres of my soul ever to be rooted up. I have heard that there are men like that, to whom love, coming early, comes cruelly – bending and twisting and torturing them, and creeping into their hearts, to cling there for ever. Such a case was mine; I have never been able to shake off that first impression, nor to forget all that her eyes seemed to say to me, on the terrace under the stars, when I kissed her hands, and bade her that mute farewell.
So I came to London, and went to my rooms, and set myself to work. I had fully made up my mind that this should not change my life; I had a purpose in view, in that I felt it was vitally necessary I should justify myself in her eyes, and justify her love for me. If I had sunk then in my own estimation, or had fallen away from the high ideals I had set up, so I felt must I have sunk before her, and fallen away from her. She was never to be anything to me, but she should feel that I had at least been worthy.
It must have been about a week after my return to London when my guardian came to me. My rooms were in a narrow street off Holborn, at the very top of a house; the chief room had a great skylight stretching over nearly half of it, making it a very excellent studio. I was at work there, getting the last of the light of the dying day, when he came in, and stood for a moment watching me, before I laid down my palette and went to greet him. I thought he looked thinner and more haggard even than before, and I thought that that nervous eager intensity in his face had increased. He just touched my hand with his, and then stood for a minute or so looking at the canvas. But when he spoke it was not of the picture.
"Have you seen anything of Hockley?" he asked abruptly, without looking at me.
"No; what should I see of him?" I asked in reply. "I have seen no one."
He gave a grim chuckle, and bent forward to look at the canvas more closely. Yet still he did not speak of the picture.
"He's left Hammerstone Market," he went on. "Made it a bit too hot to hold him, I fancy. And he's been saying mad things about me – and about you." He turned his head sharply, and looked at me, and repeated the words – "About you."
"It will not trouble me very much, whatever he says," I retorted.
"Don't be too sure; he's a dangerous man," said my guardian. "He'll talk about any one, and it's all lies. I shouldn't be surprised" – he turned to the picture again, and examined it – "I shouldn't be a bit surprised if he didn't say something more about me one of these days."
"I remember that I heard him threaten to talk," I remarked. "But surely a man in your position can afford to laugh at him and his threats?"
"That's where you're wrong," broke in Fanshawe quickly. "It's the men in my position that can have lies told about them, lies which they dare not refute. I tell you he's a dangerous man. More than that, he has been talking about – about somebody else."
He walked the length of the room, keeping his back to me, and examined another of my sketches. I felt my throat beginning to swell, and knew that the blood was rising to my face; controlling my voice as well as I could, I asked a question. "Who is – who is the somebody else?"
He turned round, and came towards me, keeping his hands locked behind him. "About Barbara – Barbara Patton," he said. "It seems he saw you that day in the woods – the day I was there. And Hockley is not the man to talk nicely about those things."
Jervis Fanshawe fell back a step or two as I came straight up to him; indeed, he unlocked his hands, and put up one of them as though to guard against a blow. "What did he say?" I asked; and my voice sounded unnatural.
He shook his head. "I'm not going to tell you; I'm the last man in the world to make mischief," he said. "You're a hot-headed boy, and I ought not to have told you. You'll get nothing more from me."
"Then I'll get it from him," I said, with a little grim laugh.
"That's your own affair entirely," said my guardian; and I thought he smiled in a peculiar way as he spoke.
As I strove to master my indignation, and so gradually calmed myself a little, I came to the conclusion that Fanshawe had something more to say, and was seeking an opportunity to say it. He pottered about the studio for a time, stopping every now and then as if about to speak, and then moving on again; at last he spoke to me over his shoulder.
"They're hurrying on the wedding a bit; special licence, and all that kind of thing." Then, as I did not answer, he turned and asked sharply, "Do you hear what I say?"
"Yes, I hear," I responded. "When is it to be?"
"In about a fortnight's time. It's a whim of old Patton's to get the girl settled, and to know that she is safe. You'll be asked to go. You'll get a formal invitation, but I was to tell you from the old man that you were expected. Only a quiet wedding, of course."
Once again he started that ceaseless rambling round the studio; once again he stopped. "You don't say anything about it," he exclaimed querulously. "I thought you were sweet in that quarter?"
I looked at him quietly; after a moment he dropped his eyes, and turned away. "You told me once," I reminded him, "that you intended to marry Miss Patton yourself."
"That was a business scheme that came to nothing; I was forestalled. You were forestalled, too," he added. "I have not thought any more about it; it was only a whim."
There was silence between us for a minute or two; then I remembered something else, and spoke again. "You said it would mean red ruin to you if you did not marry her."
"Did I?" He looked at me as though he did not see me, and as though he were thinking of something else. "I don't remember it; at any rate, I didn't mean it in the sense you mean." He hesitated again, and then went on more passionately, with a rising inflection in his voice that startled me, as it had startled me once before with this extraordinary man. "On that day you met her in the woods, when she came to you, singing and with smiles, and walked and talked with you – oh, my God! – I had spoken to her in the same place – before you came at all."
The passion that consumed him was frightful; the recollection of what he had gone through, and what he had suppressed, shook and tore him like a storm. He clenched and unclenched his hands, and moistened his lips, and strove to speak; fought down that rising devil in him, and got himself calm again.
"She – she laughed at me." He beat the air before him, and swallowed hard, and stamped his foot, in a rage at himself that he could not control himself more easily. "I did not make – make love to her; I am not a boy. I told her that I wanted her, that I wanted to marry her. And then she – she laughed."
I could imagine the scene; and yet I think, if she had known all the deadly things that were to spring out of her light laughter in the wood that day – the lives that were to be shattered, and the souls brought into the dust – she might not have done it. She was but a child, and she did not know the man she had to deal with; he had meant to humble her, and she had humbled him too much.
He turned away, choking; although I despised the man, and although I remembered my own sorrow, I yet sorrowed for him. When he went on again he had got himself into some condition of calmness.
"Then I saw you in the woods, and I wondered that she should meet you as she did, because I knew you had not met before. It was your cursed youth," he broke out, his violence showing again for a moment – "you could speak to her with a voice that was not mine, and that I did not understand. That's all there is to say; I shall never speak of it again."
I did not know what to say, and so I thought it best to say nothing. Once more he made the circuit of the room, and once more he came back to me. Although I was silent, simply from lack of words, I knew instinctively that he felt himself to be a meaner thing than I was, because of his weakness and his rage, and that he hated me for that knowledge.
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