Tinman

I had no fear that any one would recognize me; the mere thought of that was absurd. Indeed, there was but one disturbing thought in my mind – the fear of meeting the new Barbara, and so of coming face to face with that figure, cut, as it were, out of the life I had once lived in that very place; I feared I should not be able to trust myself or my voice at that time. For the rest, I only knew dimly that I should probably have to see much that might goad me almost to madness, and yet that I must say nothing; I was in a sense fumbling in the dark, with only my memories to guide me.

The door was opened at last, and I stepped, as it were, straight back into that night when I had first come to this house with my guardian – twenty years before. Nothing was changed, save only that everything seemed to have dwindled in the years, and that the furniture was shabbier and meaner looking. I felt my heart beating fast as I looked towards that broad staircase down which I had once seen the Barbara who was dead coming, with tears in her eyes, and with her laughing bridesmaids surrounding her. It seemed almost as though she might at any moment turn the corner of the staircase, and come down towards me.

An elderly woman in a dingy black dress took my letter, and bade me stay where I was. She appeared to be a servant; and I watched her as she climbed the stairs slowly, and went away, leaving me standing in the hall. I was looking about me when I heard above a quick, light footstep; looking up, I saw Barbara coming down the stairs, with one hand lightly resting on the rail, and with her eyes turned straight towards me. I stood there watching her; I wondered vaguely what she would have thought had she known who I was, and under what circumstances I had last stood in that place, twenty years before.

When she came up to me she spoke with her mother's tongue, and with a little quick smile that had belonged to the dead woman. "My father sent me to you; he is not – not very well to-night. He understands, of course, that Mr. Olivant is coming down" – the smile died from her lips, and she seemed to draw herself up a little stiffly – "everything shall be got ready for him. You are strange here; you won't know your room. Your name is Tinman?"

I acknowledged the ridiculous title, and at her suggestion carried the luggage up into a room that was evidently to be prepared for Murray Olivant; it was a large room on the first floor. My own was at the top of the house – a little meagre room, with odds and ends of furniture in it. I saw that she was looking at me curiously as I stood in this little room; I had a dreadful fear for the moment – ridiculous though it was – that she must know my real name.

"I have given you a lot of trouble, miss," I said, for the want of something better to say.

She shook her head. "Oh, I don't mind," she replied. "You see, in these days, Tinman, we have no servants – at least, only the woman you saw, and a young girl. Not that it matters much, because there is only my father and myself. He wants to see you; will you come down, please?"

I was following her down the half-lighted staircase in that silent house when she turned suddenly, and waited for me; dropped her hand on my arm, and spoke in a whisper. "Have you ever seen ghosts, Tinman?"

"Yes," I faltered, staring at her, and beginning to shake.

"There are ghosts in this house," she whispered, glancing about her quickly. "I hear them rustling on the stairs, and in the old rooms that are shut up, and at night among the trees. You needn't be afraid; they're nothing to do with you."

There were ghosts enough for me in that place, Heaven knows; they were everywhere about me that night. For I was a boy again, dreaming the hopeless dreams of the past, and seeing everywhere the Barbara I had lost in this Barbara of the silent house. I found that Lucas Savell had lost his good-humoured look, and carried a face of fretful melancholy; his hands shook and trembled as he stood looking at me, and holding the letter I had brought.

"Mr. Murray Olivant gives his orders – and we obey," he said bitterly, as the letter crackled in his fingers. "We make welcome those he brings or sends to us; we have no choice in the matter." Then, as Barbara laid a light hand on his, he seemed to recollect the part he had to play, and smiled and nodded, and changed his tone. "Of course, he's always welcome – and any one he sends is sure of a welcome," he said. "He comes to-morrow? I'm glad – very glad."

I was left to my own devices that night, after I had had a meal that was provided for me by the woman who had first admitted me to the house. She was a morose, sullen sort of creature, and she asked no questions and gave me no information. As soon as I could escape I went out into the grounds, and walked about there for a time in the long-neglected paths, and on the terrace where long ago I had stood with Barbara on the night she bade me farewell. And presently from the lighted room within the sound of music came, and the new Barbara's voice floated out to me.

I was standing there listening, when I became suddenly alive to the fact that I was not alone on the terrace. I had been standing with half-closed eyes, drinking in the melody, when I became aware that out of the shadows of the garden one shadow had detached itself, and was creeping noiselessly towards the lighted windows. At first the thing was so impalpable, and was, moreover, so unlikely, that I took no notice of it; but presently it stopped just beyond the broad track of light from the windows, and I saw that it was a woman, dressed in black. In that neglected place, and outside that house of ghosts, it was so strange that I felt my hair rise, and a curious tingling sensation in my throat. And for a long time, as it seemed, I remained staring at it, until, just as I was gaining courage to move towards it, I found that it had melted into the other shadows of the garden, and was gone. My courage had returned by that time, and I went quickly after it; but, though I looked in all directions, I saw nothing.

I went back to the house, and entered just in time to see Barbara crossing the hall with a tray in her hands, on which was a decanter and a glass; some old instinct made me step forward to relieve her of it; she smiled, and shook her head, but I persisted, and took the tray from her.

"It's very good of you, Tinman," she said; "it's for my father."

I carried the tray into that room that overlooked the terrace, and set it down at Lucas Savell's elbow. He stared at me in surprise for a moment, but said nothing; his daughter, coming after me, asked that I would draw the curtains; I had a pleasant feeling for a moment that she liked to have me there. I moved across to the windows, to fasten the shutters before drawing the curtains; and as I did so glanced back for a moment over my shoulder at her. She was bending over her father, with an arm about his shoulders; she seemed to be pleading with him, and he petulantly setting her aside.

I turned quickly to the window, with the shutter in my hand, and was confronted with a face, staring in. I was so astounded for a moment that I stood there, staring in turn; my eyes seemed to hold the eyes in the white face outside. Then, as I gave a sort of frightened cry, the face was gone, so suddenly that I might never have seen it at all. I fumbled with the window, and got it open, and stepped out on to the terrace. There was no one there.

"Did you speak, Tinman?" asked the girl; and then, as I did not reply, she came near to me. "What's the matter?"

"I thought – thought I saw some one – something," I replied blunderingly.

She laughed as she helped me with the shutters.

"You're seeing the ghosts, Tinman," she whispered.

CHAPTER IV

The Coming of the Wolves

I slept but badly that night; it seemed so strange that I should be under that roof in these days of ruin and disaster – hiding, as it were, from the sight of men, and striving to plot, in my own feeble futile way, against forces that must in time inevitably overwhelm and sweep me away. I had been a poor prisoner for so many years; I was like a child in the world now, with whatever powers I had once had dulled and blunted. Passionately I desired to help this girl, who already smiled at me with the eyes of her dead mother, and whose speaking of that absurd name of mine – Tinman – was like a caress. Yet what could I do? – how could I help her or the boy she loved?

I thought, too, more than once of that shadowy figure I had seen on the terrace, hovering like a lost soul outside the house – of that face that had stared in at me from the darkness outside into the room where the father and daughter were. Unless by any chance I had been deceived, who was this woman who moved silently about the grounds at night, and what was her interest in the girl? I tried to dismiss from my mind the whole thing as a mere hallucination – a something bred of all the dreams that once had been mine in that house; but I could not shut out that face that had stared in at me. I remembered how the eyes had held mine for one long moment before I cried out; I remembered in a puzzled way that there had been something curiously familiar about them – as though that figure, too, had come out of the dreams of the past to haunt me. I remembered what the girl had said on the staircase about the ghosts in the great dreary house; I found myself sitting up in bed in the dark room, with my hands clasped round my knees, thinking about it all, and asking myself over and over again what I should do. Almost I wished myself back in my cell in prison, with the certain knowledge upon me that nothing could ever disturb me there, and that the world outside was dead. I hated the thought that I had been dragged out again into such a tangle as this.

Better resolves came with the morning; the wintry sunlight seemed to warm me, and to warm any faint resolution that was beginning to shape itself in my mind. I would be strong and watchful; I held a power here that no one suspected, because I knew so much, and had loved so strongly, and was, after all, only a poor creature with whom fate had done its worst and could do no more. Yes – I would be strong.

There was, of course, nothing for me to do, save to kill time; I was allowed to wander about as I liked. Yet there was in me an insane desire to see the girl – to watch this new Barbara that was to me the old Barbara come alive again. I hung about, foolishly enough, on the chance of seeing her – watched her when presently she went out of the house and started for a walk. She was so much to me, and I desired so strongly to watch over her, that I found myself following, perhaps with the fear that some harm might come to her, and that I might be able to prevent it.

I had meant, of course, to keep out of her way; I had not intended that she should see me. But as I was going on eagerly to turn the corner of a wall round which she had gone, I came face to face with her; she was turning back, and so had met me. I stood shamed and foolish before her.

"Tinman! Were you following me?"

I could not lie to her; I raised my eyes pleadingly to hers, and stammered that I had followed her from the house.

"But why? Were you spying upon me?" She drew herself up, and looked at me scornfully; I trembled before her like a beaten dog. "I should have remembered that you are the servant of that man," she said.

I had almost flung myself at her feet; I know that I stretched out my hands to her, and clasped them in my frantic eagerness to make her understand. "Don't think that – don't believe it!" I exclaimed. "You don't understand – and I may not tell you; but I am your friend. If I could tell you what is in this poor bruised and broken heart of mine, you would understand, and would pity me and trust me. I am your friend – and his."

"His?" She looked at me with a sudden frown of astonishment.

"The boy you love – the boy who meets you sometimes in secret – "

"Ah! you have been spying, then!" she cried, drawing away from me.

"No – no – no; indeed I have not. It was by the merest accident I saw you meet him in the woods, and no living soul knows of that but myself. If I could only make you trust me!"

She came nearer to me – looked at me closely. "Who are you, or what were you?" she asked in a whisper. "You are no servant; you speak like a gentleman. Who are you – and what have you to do with me, or – or with any one else that concerns me?"

"I am one who died long, long ago," I said to her. "If you think of me at all, think of me as some one who long ago touched such a story as yours – such a story of love and hope and faith, all broken and cast in the dust. Think of me as some one who loved – and lost what I loved; think of me as some one who, seeing you as young and fair and bright as the woman I loved, would give the very heart out of me to see you happy. As God's above me, I'm your friend!"

She looked at me in wonder, but I saw that she believed me; I think she was half inclined for a moment to confide in me. If she had done so then, much of the horror and tragedy and despair that were to come upon us both and upon others might have been averted. But I suppose she remembered that I was only Tinman, the servant of the man who had that power over her father and herself; she shook her head perplexedly, and turned away.

"You must not follow me," she said.

"I will not again," I assured her. "But you are the only creature on earth that has spoken gently to me for many, many years; I only followed you as a dog might do, to see that you were safe. Besides, you look at me out of the eyes of a woman I loved – a woman who is dead."

I turned, and went away quickly on the road back to the house. In a moment I heard her calling after me, and I turned about and faced her. "Indeed, I do trust you," she whispered, "and I know that you are my friend. Some day you may have a chance to prove that," she added.

"I pray God the time may come soon," I answered fervently, as I took her little hands in my rough ones, and raised them to my lips. It was as though I stood again on that terrace outside the house – a boy of twenty – and bowed my head over the hands of the woman I loved.

I got back to the house in time to see the boy of whom I had been speaking striding towards it. He was but a little in advance of me, and he turned his head sharply on hearing my feet crushing the dead leaves; then waited for me to come up to him. When I reached him he looked me over quickly; I remember that I longed to tell him where Barbara had gone, that he might run to overtake her. But I felt that I had plunged far enough into the story for one day.

"I haven't seen your face before," he said, not ungently. "Do you belong here?"

"Yes, sir – for the present," I replied. "My name is Tinman; I am Mr. Olivant's servant."

He looked at me frowningly for a moment, as we stood together watching each other. "Is my brother here – Mr. Olivant, I mean?"

"He comes to-day, sir, I believe," I replied.

As if in confirmation of my words, I heard the sound of wheels at that moment, and stepped back with young Millard as the fly from the station drove past us towards the house. Murray Olivant was in it; he turned for a moment, and waved a hand towards the young man; me he regarded with a scowl. Arnold Millard walked on quickly after the vehicle, and I followed. The boy was younger and quicker than I was, and he reached the house some few moments before I did. When I got to the door and passed into the hall I saw the pair of them talking – Olivant seated, with his hat on the back of his head, on an oak chest, with his long legs stretched out before him, and the boy facing him. I was obliged to pass them to go into the house; I was slipping past when Olivant called to me.

"Tinman, I want you." He turned to his brother, and spoke insolently enough. "That's the last word I have to say about the matter; I can't do anything for you at the moment. You shall have your money all in good time, but you mustn't be so deuced sudden about it. Where are you staying? I didn't know you were down here at all."

"I'm staying at the George," said the boy. "But I tell you, you must let me have some money to go on with; I'm nearly penniless. And, after all, Murray, it isn't as if it were your money; you're only holding it for me."

"I know that; I don't need reminding of my responsibilities," retorted the other. "I can't talk about it now," he added, getting up as though to put an end to the conversation. "Come up here to-night – dine here, if you like – and I'll tell you what I'm prepared to do. I can't say more than that. Will you come?"

The boy's face had flushed darkly red; there was a pleased look in his eyes. "Of course I'll come, Murray – if Mr. Savell will have me," he replied eagerly.

Murray Olivant laughed. "Oh, it's nothing to do with Mr. Savell; I do as I like in this house. Dinner at eight; we'll talk business afterwards. Now, Tinman, just come and attend to me, will you?"

He strode away up the stairs, and I meekly followed him; it did not seem at all necessary that he should be announced in that house as having arrived. He curtly told me to unpack his things; cursed me a little because I had forgotten that important duty before. While I unstrapped the luggage, and knelt beside it to take the things out, he seated himself in an easy-chair, and watched me, and asked questions. He seemed to be in a good temper, and inclined to be indulgent with me.

"Well, my faithful one, and how do you like coming back among the ghosts?" he asked. Then, as I glanced up at him with what I suppose was a scared look in my eyes, he went on gaily: "There – there – you needn't look so frightened; I won't give the game away. But tell me – what do you think of the place – and the people? – how do you like it all?"

"I have not yet had time to notice anything," I said, without looking up.

"Nonsense; you can't fool me in that fashion. You've been keenly watching everything – eager to find out all you can. What of Savell?"

"He seems much broken and changed," I replied reluctantly.

"Bah! – he's a fool – and a whining fool at that," he exclaimed violently. "He's no good to himself or any one else; he muddles himself with drink night after night; one of these days he'll go off suddenly – snuffed out like a candle in a draught. What of the others?"

"The – others?" I looked up at him stupidly.

"Well, the other, if you like," he retorted. "The child – Barbara. What of her?"

"She is very beautiful – and very sweet – and kind," I faltered, bending low over my work.

"Kind, is she?" he said, with a laugh. "So you've begun already to screw your way into her good graces, have you? That's right, Tinman; that's what you're down here for, you old rascal. Watch all she does – follow her about – pounce on any letters that may chance to come for her, and let me see them first. Spy on her, you dog – find out all about her."

I did not answer; I was glad to think that this brute could have so little knowledge of me as to suppose that I should do it. He was evidently satisfied with my silence; after a moment or two he went on talking again.

"You're going to see company, Tinman. I've got a friend coming down here to stay – man named Dawkins. He's a sly devil, and I may want him; incidentally, you can watch him too. Fanshawe also is coming."

"Jervis Fanshawe?" I looked up at him quickly in surprise.

"Yes, but not here. He'll lie low in the town; I'm going to get a lodging for him. Stirring times, Tinman – eh?"

He got up, and strode about the room, rubbing his hands and laughing; I did not dare ask what was going to happen. Presently he stopped, and faced me as I knelt beside a portmanteau. "Look up at me, Tinman, and speak the truth, if you can. You saw that young man downstairs just now?"

I nodded slowly. "I saw him coming up to the house," I replied truthfully; "he asked who I was, and whether you had arrived."

"Ever seen him before?" he demanded. "Look up at me; I want no lies."

I looked up at him, but I lied nevertheless. "Never," I replied steadily.

"The young fool thinks he's in love with the girl, and believes that she's in love with him. It's all right while he thinks so; but I don't mean to have any nonsense. He's another one to be watched, Tinman; if by any chance you should discover them meeting, or whispering together, or any such nonsense as that – let me know. Do you hear?" He kicked me softly on the leg as he asked the question.

"I hear," I replied.

"Very well then – see that you do it. And don't forget, at all times when you may be tempted to do anything against my interests, that I've taken you out of the gutter, and that I'll kick you back there again, to starve, if you don't behave yourself. I don't do dirty work myself; I employ men like you to do it for me. Understand that?" He kicked me softly again, and laughed.

"Yes, I understand," I replied.

"Good. See that you remember it," he retorted. "Understand also that in this house I do as I like, and that my word is law. Above all things, be meek and humble with me, Tinman; I want no fiery words or looks from you. Your fiery youth is gone past, and is done with."

"I know that," I said, almost in a whisper.

"Yet you killed a man once, Tinman, so I've been told," he added musingly. "It doesn't seem possible, when one looks at you now, that you had hot blood in you to that extent. What did it feel like – to kill the man?"

"I have forgotten," I told him. Yet I thought then, as I knelt and looked up at him, that it might be possible that I should know what it felt like again, if he drove me too hard or goaded me too much. The shabby garment of my slavery was slipping off me, rag by rag, and leaving me something of what I had been before; I began to be dimly afraid of myself, and to what my inborn recklessness might drive me. For I, who had died once, had no fear of any consequences. I wondered if he thought of that, or remembered it.

He put an added torture upon me that night; he made me wait at table. I don't know how it was arranged that I should do that; I only know that at the last moment I was told that I must be there to hand the dishes – above all, to stand behind his chair, and wait upon him specially. And so I stood in that room where I had once been a guest, and waited upon him and the others humbly enough.

At one end of the table sat Lucas Savell, with his trembling hands fluttering about his plate and his glass; at the other end – defiant, intolerant, insolent, – sat Murray Olivant, talking loudly, and generally dominating the occasion. At one side of the table, at his right hand, sat Barbara, and next to her the man Dawkins – a man who may best be described as one having a perpetual smile. He even seemed to smile as he ate; the most commonplace remark addressed to him was met always with that smile, which seemed indeed a part of the man. It was a smile that became absolutely slavish whenever Murray Olivant threw a word to him; but it was a veiled insolence when Lucas Savell ventured a remark.

On the other side of the table young Arnold Millard was seated, watching the girl. I saw ghosts again then, when I saw Barbara with eyes downcast, and when I watched the boy's hungry glances at her; I – the servant who waited, and was unknown in that house save to one man – saw myself watching hopelessly enough the Barbara who was dead; my heart ached for the boy, as it had ached years before for poor Charlie Avaline.

The insolence of Olivant grew as the meal progressed. I saw him once stretch out his arm, and lay a hand strongly on the hand of the girl as it rested on the table. "Now, my pretty Barbara," he said, "let's have a word from you. You shouldn't be dumb at your father's table."

"Is it my father's table?" she asked him, as she raised her white face for a moment to his.

"Oh, don't let's talk business, for the Lord's sake!" he exclaimed. "At least, you might try to cheer our friend opposite here," he went on, indicating the boy; "he's as glum as you are. What's the matter, Arnold? – are you in love?"

"I should scarcely talk about it, if I were," replied the boy, with a glance at Olivant, and another at the imprisoned hand of the girl.

"Of course you're in love," went on Olivant, still holding that little hand tightly, and glancing from one to the other across the table. "I wonder what she's like; I wonder what sort of beauty would most attract you. Come, Dawkins, let's have your opinion."