Tom Gallon - Tinman

I laughed a little foolishly, but made no direct reply. He went on with the subject eagerly.

"I've come to the conclusion that I've been taking life too seriously, Charlie; I've been too grave and careful. I'll blossom out a bit; we'll both blossom out." He laughed in an unnatural fashion, and clapped me on the shoulder again.

"By the way," I said, as a sudden thought occurred to me, "I've been wanting to talk to you a little about my affairs – money matters, you know. I'm getting hard up, and I don't quite know how I stand in regard to such things. My income ought to be a substantial one, but I want to know exactly how much it is."

He always had an irritating way of speaking to any one over his shoulder, with his back to them and his head half turned; he adopted that method now. "Why should you trouble about your income?" he asked, a little sourly. "Don't you trust me? – don't you think you're safe in my hands?"

"Of course I trust you," I replied, a little indignantly. "But I want to know how much I can spend, that's all."

"Spend as little as possible," he said. "As a matter of fact, I've tied up your money in various ways, so that it may be safe; there's not much of it that can be handled at the moment. You shall have what you want – of course, within reason; but you must be careful – for your own sake."

I had no suspicion of him then; no doubt of him entered my mind. I knew nothing of business matters, and up to that time had always been supplied with the small sums necessary for my individual expenses, while all bills had, I believed, been sent to him. Nothing more was said about the matter then, because the entrance of Hockley drove everything else from my mind.

My guardian certainly seemed anxious to do all in his power to bring Hockley and me to a better understanding. He insisted on our shaking hands to begin with; and we performed that ceremony briefly and distrustfully. He hovered about us, and talked about our individual tastes, and wondered openly why we did not meet, or go about together.

"Two men like yourselves, with money and leisure, you ought to be friends," he asserted. "A poor devil like myself must be tied to his office chair willy-nilly; but you both are free. As for you, Hockley, why don't you take Charlie under your wing, and show him life and London?"

"I've precious little time to give to other people," said Gavin Hockley.

"I have plenty to occupy my days," I said firmly.

Even that rebuff did not discourage my guardian; he went at us again at the earliest opportunity. He was quite merry at dinner, as we sat at that round table of his; and I noticed that he plied Hockley with wine on every possible occasion. For my own part, I usually drank but little; but that night I was in a reckless defiant mood, and I drank all that was given me. My head was spinning, and I was scarcely master of myself, when we got up from the table, and went into Jervis Fanshawe's sitting-room to smoke.

And there, something to my surprise, my guardian produced cards, and flicked them audaciously before the face of Hockley. I saw the man's eyes light up, as he snatched at the pack, and began to shuffle the cards.

"I thought you'd given up playing – at all events before the child," I heard him say, in a low tone.

I sprang up from my chair. "Who are you speaking of?" I demanded hotly.

"I wasn't talking to you," said Hockley, shuffling the cards slowly, and looking at me with those dull eyes of his. "If you chance to overhear what isn't meant for you to hear, that's not my fault."

"Now, gentlemen – gentlemen; I will not have it!" interposed Fanshawe hurriedly. "A joke's a joke, and should be taken as such; I won't have you flying at each other's throats in this fashion. We'll have a friendly game, and see if it won't mend our tempers."

I do not know what game we played; I knew only the simplest games at cards, and this was a complicated thing of which I knew nothing. My guardian laughingly assisted me when I got into muddles, and showed me how to score; but it seemed always that Gavin Hockley won. At all events he won from me, because presently I found, bitterly enough, that my pockets were empty. I saw the sneer that flitted across Hockley's face as my guardian thrust some money into my hand; I could cheerfully have killed him then.

We played until it was quite late, or rather early in the morning; and I lost everything. I know at the last my guardian dropped out of the game, declaring that he could not go on; but he urged me to have my revenge, and to see if the luck would turn. But it would not turn, and Hockley calmly pocketed all I had. I got up at last, with my head swimming and my eyes burning; and I faced him shamefacedly enough.

"You're in my debt, young Avaline," he said, coolly making a note on a slip of paper. "A small matter of thirty pounds odd."

I turned to my guardian; but he laughingly shook his head. "You've cleaned me out, Charlie," he said; "give our friend an I.O.U., and square up with him another time."

Humiliated and shamed, and inwardly raging, I wrote the thing, and tossed it over to Hockley. He laughed, and folded it up, and put it in his pocket-book. Even then the brutal mind of the man prompted him to have a further fling at me.

"I'm surprised you didn't win," he said. "You know the old saying 'Lucky at cards – ' – well, I won't finish it."

I moved a step nearer to him. "What do you mean? I don't know any old sayings," I exclaimed, although I knew it well. "Explain yourself."

"The old saying is" – he grinned at me, and yet was watching me warily, I thought – "'Lucky at cards, unlucky in love.'" Fanshawe sprang between us just as I flew at my man; wound his long arms about me, and thrust me back by main force. "I tell you I won't have it," he cried. "As for you, Hockley, you've got your money; you can hold your tongue."

"The point is that I haven't got my money," said Hockley. "And I'm not quite sure that I ever shall get it."

A hot retort sprang to my tongue, but I checked it. I was in a false position; I could not talk with this man until I had paid him what I owed. That should be to-morrow, when my guardian gave me what was due to me.

But it was to happen that to-morrow was to dawn, and other to-morrows, and Hockley was not to be paid. For Jervis Fanshawe put me off with one excuse and another: now he was too busy to go into the matter of my accounts; and now he had no ready money; and now he was engaged at his office, and I could not see him. In the miserable days that followed he doled out to me a sovereign or two, sufficient to keep me going; but I got nothing else. My pride was up in arms, and I was maddened at the thought that Hockley had the laugh of me, horrified at the construction he would put upon my silence. I did not realize then, as I have realized since, how the thin and subtle net was closing in upon me, drawn tighter each day by the man who held the threads of it. I walked blindly towards a sure and certain goal, and never saw that goal until it was too late.

I do not now know what took me to Hammerstone Market for Barbara's wedding. Every instinct within me, as it seemed, fought against it; I wanted to forget that I had ever been to the place at all, even while I jealously hugged the memory of the few precious minutes I had spent with her. Perhaps it was the thought that she was going for ever out of my life, and into the life of another man, that drew me down there for the last time; perhaps it was a sort of despairing hope that there might yet be a chance that we could stand together, hand in hand, and cry out the truth of our love, and defy those who were setting us asunder. That I knew, in my own mind, was impossible; because I was bound wholly by her, and knew, as surely as her eyes had told me, that our cause was hopeless. But I went down with my guardian; perhaps he had something to do indirectly with my final decision to go, because I knew that the fact of my presence there would for ever silence his tongue.