Tinman

"Lucky you've come," she said, in a sort of hoarse whisper. "'E's bin carryin' on like mad, blamin' me for it, of all fings. I made sure you'd cut yer lucky."

I guessed dimly that my guardian had wondered at my absence; I went quickly up the stairs. I opened the door, and went eagerly into the room, with my tale at my very lips; but I stopped short when I saw that another man was seated at the table from which Fanshawe had risen.

"So you've come back, have you?" sneered my guardian, looking me over with no very favourable eye. "And by the look of you, I should think you've been out of doors a little."

I became suddenly aware how deplorably muddy and dirty I was. Like a scolded child, I pulled off my hat, and stood there with bowed head, unable to say a word. I raised my head when I heard the other man speak to Fanshawe.

"Is this the fellow?"

It was a curiously hard voice, a cold metallic voice. I looked at the speaker, and saw a man a little over thirty years of age, with a strong, rather heavy face; I noticed that his dark hair grew low on his forehead, and rather forward at the temples. He was very well-dressed – so well-dressed, in fact, that his being in that place at all on friendly terms with the shabby Jervis Fanshawe seemed incongruous in itself.

"Yes, this is the fellow," said Fanshawe, taking me by the sleeve and drawing me forward. "You can speak to him yourself."

The man lounging at the table looked up at me contemptuously enough – studied me as he might have studied a dog he meant to buy if he approved of it.

"You've been in prison?" he said at last.

I bowed my head, and dropped my eyes. "A long time," I replied.

"And now are thrown on the world, with a living to get if possible, and with no trade at your fingers' ends – eh? Well, I may be able to help you. We are friends here, and so I can speak freely. You killed a man?"

"A long time ago," I said, without raising my eyes.

"There's nothing to be ashamed of," he retorted, with a disagreeable laugh – "in fact, you're a man to know. I've been talking to Fanshawe here about you, and I think you may serve my purpose."

"In a word, Charlie," broke in Fanshawe excitedly, "there's a chance for you to get back a little payment for what you have suffered – to pay off old scores – to get a little cheap revenge. Don't stare at me like that; pull your wits together, and listen."

"To pay off old scores? Revenge?" I stared at him, wondering if he knew what I had seen in that old place of my dreams – wondering what he would say next.

"You have served a long term of imprisonment – your life has been broken and spoilt and ruined," went on the man at the table, setting my guardian aside. "Naturally you hate those who have drawn you into that; naturally your mind is filled with the desire to get even with them – to settle that old account."

"I don't understand," I murmured, looking from one to the other.

Jervis Fanshawe seized my arm, and shook me fiercely. "Years ago you suffered, like a fool, for the sake of a woman; she cared nothing for you, and married another man. Do you remember that?"

"Yes. Her name was Barbara," I replied slowly.

Fanshawe turned to the stranger. "You see he remembers something," he said. Then he turned again impatiently to me. "I have already told you that a new Barbara has sprung up in her place – a child – a girl."

Glancing at the face of the stranger at the table, I decided to hide my knowledge of what I had seen; I said nothing. Perhaps here I was to be shown the way to do what was in my mind; perhaps I was to be helped, as I had never expected to be helped at all.

"You understand, Avaline," went on the stranger, in his deadly voice, "that I take an interest in this new Barbara, who is like the Barbara you so mistakenly loved twenty years ago. In other words, for her own sake it is necessary that I should see much of her – communicate with her often. That is difficult without a third person, because the lady herself is a little obdurate. Do you follow me?"

"Yes," I replied, looking at him for a moment, and then turning to my guardian. "I begin to understand."

"So that if I can introduce to her some one she does not know – some one who is bound, by reasons of policy, to do what he is told, without thought of the consequences – I am a gainer," went on the man at the table. "You have reason to hate a girl, so unfortunately formed in the image of the woman who deceived you, and brought disaster upon you; you have reason to be loyal to me, because I can keep you from starving, and can give you clothes and shelter. You're a poor broken worn-out thing, and I take pity on you. Now do you understand the situation?"

I understood it so well that my mind, for the first time since I had stepped out from the prison gates, was clear, and I was fully alive. I looked eagerly from one to the other; I told the man brokenly that I would do all he asked; I think I suggested that I would be his slave. He might tell me to do anything; I was eager to take up that old story that I had been compelled to lay down.

"For your revenge?" he asked, with a grin.

"For my revenge!" I said; and burst into a shout of laughter.

"Don't take any notice of him," I heard my guardian whisper. "The poor fool is only half-witted; his years of prison life have told upon him. But he's the man you want!"

CHAPTER III

I Enter upon Servitude

While I stood in the room watching the two men, and eager to know what work was to be given me to do that would enable me to touch again the life I had left, Fanshawe and the stranger discussed me in low voices, as they might have discussed some piece of furniture they contemplated putting in some particular place. I caught one or two of their remarks; I listened with the humility that years had bred in me to what they said of me.

"You can kick or bully him into anything," I heard Fanshawe say, as he looked over his shoulder at me contemptuously. "For the sake of his bread and butter he'll do what he's told, and he'll do it humbly. If any feeling of revenge is left in him, it will act as a spur; but I don't think the spur will be needed. If he gets troublesome, you can always kick him into the road; he'll crawl back to you, and lick your hand, like the shabby dog he is."

"We must give him a name," said the stranger, looking at me with a thoughtful frown. "We can't send him among those people with his old label attached to him."

"No – no – you won't do that," I pleaded; for the thought of that had not occurred to me before. "Give me any name you like."

"Oh, we won't shame you, Mr. Charles Avaline," sneered Fanshawe; "you needn't be afraid of that. What name would you like?"

"What were you in prison – I mean, what work did you do?" demanded the other suddenly.

"I worked in the tinsmith's shop for the most part," I said. "They told me I made a good workman; they showed my work to visitors sometimes; and then they would call my number – 145 was my number – and point me out, and whisper."

"That will do as well as anything else," said the other man, who was evidently paying no attention to my remarks. "We'll christen you 'Tinman'; that shall be your name from this time forward. See that you answer to it." He got up and sauntered to the door, with a careless nod to Jervis Fanshawe; stopped there, and turned round, slapping the side of his leg with a light cane he carried. I remember that he reminded me in a strange haunting fashion of another man I had seen, who had stood with his arms akimbo, and with a light cane resting on one hip and under his hand.

"And by the way, Tinman, you'd better know your new master's name. I am Murray Olivant; keep that name in your mind, because you'll have to remember it. Fanshawe will tell you what to do, and when I want you."

He sauntered out of the room, banging the door behind him. Jervis Fanshawe turned to me, rubbing his lean hands together, and grinning delightedly.

"Now, Charlie, perhaps you'll know in future who your best friend is," he said. "This is only the beginning; it all rests in your hands to make the most of this opportunity, for both our sakes. Olivant's rich – very rich indeed; it'll go hard with us if we don't dip our fingers into his pockets more deeply than he suspects. Jail-birds both, Charlie," he added, tapping me on the breast with his lean forefinger; "it won't do for us to have any scruples, will it?"

"I suppose not," I answered him. "But what will he want me to do. Be patient with me," I pleaded, "because I'm not used to the ways of the world yet; I'm afraid of everything. Be patient with me."

"I'll be patient with you, dolt!" he exclaimed wrathfully. "In the first place, I suppose you understand that our friend Mr. Murray Olivant happens to take a very deep interest in matters in which you and I once interested ourselves, but with which we now have nothing further to do. In other words, as I have explained to you partly already, there is a new generation grown up in the place you knew; and our friend Olivant knows that generation well. More than that, he knows one at least of the old generation."

I knew to what he referred; I remembered the new Barbara I had seen – so like her mother, and so unconsciously living again, as it seemed, her mother's story. It was so clear to me now that I was almost prepared for the next words Fanshawe said, and they did not come upon me with any real shock.

"And the new generation that is growing up is rather like what the old one was, and is represented by a girl. They call her Barbara. That makes you jump – eh?" he demanded vindictively. "And our friend Murray Olivant takes a deep interest in this Barbara – in other words – loves her."

It was all coming true – it was all happening as I knew instinctively in my own mind it must happen. Fate was marching on grimly enough, and I saw that not only was there a new Barbara and a new Charlie Avaline, but that here, menacing them, was a new Gavin Hockley. I was afraid, and I suppose the terror that was growing up in me showed itself in my face. At all events my guardian saw it, but mistook the reason for it.

"There's nothing for you to be frightened about," he said scornfully; "I don't suppose any one is likely to recognize you. You'll only be poor Tinman, the hanger-on and servant; no one is likely to ask questions about you. I don't doubt Murray Olivant will give you plenty of dirty work to do; and you must do it with a smiling face, and be thankful that you've found some one to keep you out of the workhouse. By the way," he added suddenly, as the thought occurred to him – "where have you been last night and to-day?"

"Oh, just wandering about," I replied vaguely; for I did not mean to tell him that I had taken that surprising plunge back into the past. "I have not seen London for so long," I added lamely.

"Well, that's all right; but don't try that game again," he said. "You'll be landing some of us into difficulties, to say nothing of yourself, if you wander about in your present muddle-headed condition. Stay where you can be looked after, and do as you're told."

I meekly promised that I would obey; I ventured presently, as we sat there with the table between us, to put a question or two about the past.

"I want you to tell me," I said – "I want to know what has happened down at Hammerstone Market in all these years. You tell me that a new Barbara has grown up to take the place of the old, but what of the old one?" It was all absurd and impossible, and I was a poor shabby broken grey-haired man, to whom love should mean nothing; but my voice trembled as I asked the question.

"Your old flame?" he sneered. "Dead these many years."

"Dead!" I sprang to my feet and stared at him wildly; I remember that he hurriedly pushed his chair back as though to avoid me. "Dead!"

"What is there to get excited about?" he cried. "She couldn't live for ever – and besides, she treated you none too well."

"Dead!" I said again, for that thought had never occurred to me before. I had seen her always young and fresh and unchanged; the curious thing was that I seemed to see her so still, even though this other girl had grown up in her image.

"And the new Barbara – the bit of a girl that our friend Murray Olivant is so interested in – is like the old Barbara come to life again," said Jervis Fanshawe, speaking as if to himself, and with his lips set in a straight bitter line. "I hate her! – I loathe the sight of her. She stands there" – in his excitement he had risen to his feet, and had flung one thin arm above his head – "with the same devilish childish beauty her mother had – that mother that laughed at me, and sent you to rot for twenty years in a prison. I tell you, Charlie" – he dropped into his chair again and leaned across the table, staring at me with wild eyes – "I tell you that I have lain behind a hedge down in that place where she lives – so close to her that I could have risen up and seized her, and crushed the life out of her before she could cry out. Yes – and with these hands!"

"She never harmed you," I reminded him.

"No, but she lives in the image of the woman who laughed at me, and set me aside as something not to be reckoned with. And I've waited, Charlie – by God! – I've waited!"

I did not guess then what was in his mind; I did not realize that the deadly hatred of the man for the one woman he had failed to possess could pass on through all those years, and grow again, stronger for the waiting, and rise up stark and strong against the child. I had not understood that any man could live for that and that only; could wait in the snow outside my prison to seize me as an instrument ready to his hand. I did not even then understand the man.

"The Barbara who died – the Barbara I loved," I said gently – "won't you tell me about her?"

"She died at sea," he replied. "Her child had been born, and they said that the mother was not strong; that she had never been the same woman after her marriage. Perhaps she fretted after you" – this with a grin and a kick at me under the table that was meant to be facetious. "At all events, the husband was persuaded to take her on a sea voyage, and the child went with them. She fell into a sort of fever – the mother, I mean – and they had to watch her constantly, because it almost seemed that she would take her own life. Then one day her cabin was found to be empty; the ship was searched; but she was gone. A little later the husband found a note written by her; she had made up her mind to end her life, and was only watching for an opportunity to throw herself overboard. She commended the child to his care. And that was the end of her."

Barbara dead! It did not seem possible to my mind, even then when I had chapter and verse for it; I could not set aside that vision I had always had of her – as the bright young girl who had met me in the wood twenty years before. I realized bitterly enough that in that, as in all other things, I had been tricked; that while I dreamed of her in my prison cell, and hugged that dear remembrance to myself, she had been in the depths of the sea, dead and forgotten. I woke now to the consciousness that the cruel voice of Jervis Fanshawe was still talking to me.

"As for the father – Lucas Savell – he has become a thing of no account. When old Patton died he left the business to Savell – principally, I think, for the sake of the child; and Savell has let it go to rack and ruin. He was a poor creature always – and I think the loss of Barbara finished him. At any rate, he has gone down and down, and they say he drinks. So far as the business is concerned" – Fanshawe shrugged his shoulders and laughed – "well – that's where Murray Olivant comes in."

"In what way?" I asked.

"Oh, he's a keen blade, is Olivant," said Fanshawe, shaking his head at an imaginary Murray Olivant, and chuckling. "He's always had money – and he always will have it; he's like a bird of prey, ready to stick his talons into the choicest morsels he sees round him. He saw Lucas Savell and the business; he advanced money; and so got a hold here and a hold there, until at last the thing was his. It is supposed to belong to Savell – but he dare not call his soul his own. You needn't look surprised; it has all been a process of years, so gradual that others have not noticed it. Lucas Savell is like a sucked orange, and can be cast aside at any moment."

"Why do you hate them so – I mean, apart from Barbara?" I asked.

Always it seemed that when his supposed wrongs were referred to a sort of semi-madness came upon Jervis Fanshawe, so that he lost control of himself, and was at first unable to speak. Such a madness was upon him now; he had to gasp and open his lips once or twice, and to stretch out a hand towards me, and even clutch at his throat a little before he was able to speak at all. And when he did at last, his voice was hoarse and unnatural with excitement.

"They – they ruined me; they stood me in the dock on charges of forgery and fraud; they forgot all my years of service. I had had to get the money from somewhere to satisfy that beast Hockley; I got it from them, meaning to pay it back when the luck changed. It never did change, and Hockley's death finished me. Then, when I came out of prison, old Patton was dead and Savell was established. And I found another man taking my revenge from me, and robbing Savell, and draining him dry. And I wormed myself in with that man, and made myself useful to him – just as you will do, Charlie – just as you're going to do from to-night. He's a fine fellow, this Murray Olivant; he'll break them up, and make a beggar of Savell – and he'll get the girl. Think of that, Charlie; the Barbara for whom you've worn out your heart and your life in prison is dead, and the new Barbara shall be at the beck and call of this man – who won't treat her any too well, I'll warrant. There's a revenge for you!"

I was afraid to ask any direct question as to the boy I had seen with this new Barbara in the wood; I feared that Fanshawe must know at once if I did that I had been down to spy out the land. But I asked, a little wistfully perhaps, a question that artfully concealed what I already knew.

"Is it not possible that this girl – this other Barbara – loves some one else?"

"And what if she does?" he snapped at me; "they've all got fads and fancies, and so much the worse for them. This little fool, for instance, believes herself to be in love with a boy who hasn't a penny – just such a young jackanapes as you were twenty years ago. In fact, he paints, as you tried to do. He's a starveling dog – just as you were."

"Who is he?" I asked.

"He's half-brother to our friend Olivant, whose mother married again, and died when she gave the boy to the world. They call him Arnold Millard, and he's dependent on his half-brother for the clothes he wears and the food he eats. And yet, forsooth, has the cheek to step in and pretend to be in love with the girl destined for the other man."

"But her father – Lucas Savell – what does he say?"

"He dare not say anything; it's not in his hands. Our friend Olivant can turn him out neck and crop at a moment's notice, and he knows it. Oh, I can tell you Murray Olivant's a man to be looked up to; he rules every one and everything. Keep in his good books, Charlie, and you'll never starve; but you mustn't offend him. I don't know what would have become of me," he added plaintively, "if I hadn't happened to stumble across him. True, I've done some shady things for him; but he's been very good to me."

I remember that I strove hard for the next day or two, while I awaited orders from my new master, to thrash out in my mind the complicated thing that was before me, that I might work out the pitiful story to the advantage of those in whom I was so passionately interested. For, think of my position! It was my fate to see again two helpless beings striving hard to work out their love story, just as I had striven with Barbara in the old days, and beset on all hands by enemies. This Barbara, who had risen, as it were, from the ashes of her dead mother to take up the burden that mother had laid down, was alone in the world, save for the helpless boy who loved her; and I knew inevitably that stronger forces than any she could combat would bear upon them and drive them asunder. That was inevitable, unless I could do something to help them; and I was an old and broken man, degraded and useless, with my soul stained with murder, and with the record of twenty wasted years behind me. I was in despair when I thought about it; it seemed impossible that I could do anything.

Two days later I was told by Jervis Fanshawe that he had received a message from Olivant saying that I was to present myself to that gentleman at once, and take my orders. The better to be sure of me, Fanshawe went with me; he took me to a great house in a fashionable quarter of the town, where I found that Murray Olivant lived in great style in a beautifully furnished flat, with a highly respectable manservant to attend upon him. I know that the man looked at me contemptuously enough as he left us in the hall of the place; my guardian he seemed to know, and told him that Mr. Olivant would see him at once. I was left standing in the hall, when presently Fanshawe was conducted into the presence of his patron; they kept me waiting quite a long time before the manservant appeared again, after a bell had been rung, and told me I was wanted.

"You're to go in there," said the man, jerking his head towards a door at the other side of the hall.

I went in, and found Murray Olivant lounging in a deep chair before the fire; Jervis Fanshawe stood at a little distance from him, a shabby figure indeed in contrast to the other man. Olivant was smoking a big cigar, which he was nervously turning over and over between his teeth, the while he frowned at me through the smoke. I did not speak; I waited again while they discussed what was to be done with me, in that fashion they had used before, quite as though I were a piece of furniture that had been purchased, and for which a place had to be found.

"You'll have to get him some clothes – something dark and respectable," said Olivant. "Get them to-day; he must go down to Hammerstone Market to-night, taking my luggage. Also he'll take a letter from me to Savell; I shall follow to-morrow. Does he remember where the place is, do you think? You Tinman," he called to me; "do you know where Hammerstone Market is?"

"I remember it, sir," I replied.

"You'll have enough money given you to take you down there; you will remember that you are Tinman, my personal servant. You'll have no difficulty about it; they'll put you up at the house. Fanshawe will take you out now, and rig you up properly; you'll be back here by six o'clock. Your train leaves at a few minutes to seven." He turned to Jervis Fanshawe, and spoke impatiently. "Do you think the idiot understands?"

"Perfectly," was the reply. "You don't want him too sharp, you know."

"You're doing splendidly," said Fanshawe, when we were outside the place again. "I can see that you'll be just the very man to do the work he wants; you'll play the dumb dog, and do what you're told, and ask no questions, won't you?"

"Of course," I replied; but I think he was a little disappointed that I should appear to take so little interest in this new life that was being mapped out for me.

Some clothing was bought for me at a second-hand dealer's, and I was rigged out cheaply to fit my new position. I did not see Murray Olivant when I went back to his rooms; his manservant pointed to the luggage that had been packed, and gave me a letter addressed to Lucas Savell, and some money. At the last moment before opening the door the man plucked me by the sleeve, and drew me back, and whispered —

"I say, who are you? and what are you supposed to be? Hang me if I can make you out."

"It isn't necessary," I replied; "I don't know myself." I went out of the place, carrying some of the luggage, and leaving him to follow with the rest.

A cab was called, and I started; my last vision of the servant was seeing him standing on the pavement outside the house, scratching his chin and staring perplexedly after me. But, in my deeper anxiety as to what was going to happen to me in that strange house at Hammerstone Market, I forgot his very existence by the time the cab had turned the corner.

I reached Hammerstone Market without adventure, took a fly from the station, and drove to the house. Darkness had long since set in, and I could see nothing of the grounds when presently the vehicle turned in at the gates; I could only judge, by the sound of the churning wheels, that we were driving through masses of dead leaves that must have lain there for many past years. Coming to the house at last, I was deposited with the luggage outside the door, and the fly drove away. I stood there in the darkness, hearing a great bell clang somewhere in the distance, and wondering what would be said to me when the door should presently open.