Kitabı oku: «Tinman», sayfa 12

CHAPTER VI
Love with the Veiled Face

I crouched there on the floor, with my arms securely pinioned behind me, and unable to cry out. The man Dawkins had seated himself, after making certain that he had secured me; Murray Olivant had finished his perusal of the note, and was standing tapping his lips with it, evidently deep in thought. He pulled out his watch and looked at it; slipped the watch back into his pocket, and turned again to the note. He read it aloud – with interpolations of his own.

"My Dearest (like his impudence, I must say!), —

"That good fellow Tinman (oh, you sly devil!) will tell you what I have decided to do. I will be waiting at the path that leads into the wood at about eight o'clock; you are to come with Tinman without fear (brave, sweet, kind Tinman, so very useful in a crisis!). He will bring you to me, and after that you will have nothing to trouble about. Trust me as much as I know you love me, and all will be well. Until we meet in an hour or two,

"Ever your own,

"Arnold."

He twisted up the note, and came slowly across the room to where I crouched waiting. While he talked to me, in that hard deadly level voice of his, he launched a kick at me every now and then to punctuate what he said.

"You thought I was safely out of the way." – A kick. – "You meant to play me false, and send this boy flying, with love for company – eh?" – Another kick. – "You dog! – do you think you're likely to win in such a game as this, when you're fighting against me?" – Another kick more savage than the others. – "Look at him, Dawkins; see how brave he is now!"

If I could have got my hands free, I know that I should have made a fight for it, and that in my despair I might have killed or maimed one or other of the men. But I was too tightly bound to be able to move; Dawkins had most skilfully knotted a long bath towel about my elbows, so that my shoulders ached with the strain upon them. I struggled to my feet, and leant against the wall, glancing from one man to the other, and wondering what they meant to do.

"I set you to watch, my dear Tinman," said Murray Olivant between his teeth; "and the better to be sure of you, I had you watched also. You've interested yourself a little too much in regard to this young lady, who, at the present moment I expect, is waiting in the cold and the darkness for you. That's a pleasant thought, isn't it? There they stand – the pair of them; the girl, impatient to hear your footstep; the boy, shivering at the edge of the wood, waiting for you both. Think of that, Tinman; they so near together, and never by any chance to meet."

I stood there, with the sweat dropping off me, straining vainly at my bonds, and striving to work the gag loose with my teeth. Olivant laughed at my struggles; flicked the note at me, and went on derisively —

"Our friend Dawkins here gave me the tip this morning, and I decided that it might be a good idea to make you believe that you'd got the day and the night to yourself. I didn't get into the train, and my luggage is still at the station. I came back, after a decent interval, and waited for you, Tinman. Now the only thing to be decided – and we have just ten minutes in which to decide it, unless we are to keep the lady waiting in the cold – is what to do in regard to these two people, who stand so far apart, longing for you to bring them together. I can't remove your gag, Tinman, or you might shout; but I should like to know what you would do if the choice rested with you."

I stood there, enduring a torture greater than any I had endured yet. I seemed to see Arnold Millard standing at the edge of the wood, waiting and longing and hoping; saw the girl watching the house in which I was held prisoner, and miserably blaming me in her heart for having turned traitor. The two men in the room with me must have guessed what was passing in my mind; they were whispering together, and shaking with laughter.

"But you shan't go disappointed, Tinman; that wouldn't be fair," exclaimed Olivant after a pause. "You may not go yourself to meet the lady, but you shall send a letter to her; we must be polite at all costs. You shall explain that you are unavoidably detained; more than that, you shall send some one in your place. Dawkins shall take up the tale you have begun; Dawkins is quite the ladies' man at a pinch – aren't you, Dawkins?"

"I'm always for a bit of sport," exclaimed Mr. Dawkins, grinning.

Murray Olivant went across to a window, and pulled aside the curtain; he looked cautiously out into the grounds. After a moment he turned, and jerked his head, as a sign to the other man to join him.

"There she is, Dawkins – there by the gate," he said, in a low voice. "See how patiently she waits – how certain she is that the faithful Tinman will not fail her in this hour of need! You can see the moonlight on her, Dawkins – and mighty pretty she looks!"

I went across the room suddenly, and fell upon my knees before the man, and raised my face to his. I could not speak, but I tried to throw into my expression the prayer to him that was in my heart. He watched me as he might have watched some one with whom he was not concerned at all; touched the man Dawkins on the arm, to call his attention to me. Then suddenly his manner changed; he bent down and looked into my eyes, and spoke in a hoarse whisper.

"You have set your puny strength against mine, and have learnt your lesson," he said. "Now you shall hear what I mean to do – you shall understand what you and the impudent dog who pretends to love her have brought upon her. I meant to marry her; that was part of the plan I had formed, if she had behaved properly and as her father wished. But her kisses have been for her lover, and for that she shall pay. I'll have her taken away to-night under false pretences – I'll drag her down through the mud; she shall crawl to my feet, and beg me to kill her for very shame of what she is. And then I'll send her back to the boy she set before me. And you, Tinman – you, my jail-bird – you will have done it!"

I knelt there in agony, praying madly and vainly that God would set me free or strike me dead. Olivant had turned to Dawkins; together they were examining the note they had found upon me.

"It's scarcely likely that she knows this fellow's writing," said Olivant, indicating me with a glance. "If you're careful you can take a note to her that will seem to come from him; you're a plausible rascal, Dawkins, and she may fall into the trap. You know where the boy's waiting; we'll tell her the plan's been changed, and she's to go in the other direction. Take her to London, and wait instructions there. Now for a little forgery in a gentle cause."

They chuckled together over the note that was to be signed with my name. It was short enough, and they brought it to me that I might hear it read.

"I am suspected, and dare not leave the house. I have had to change the plan at the last moment, but have been lucky enough to find a good friend to help you and Mr. Millard. I thought he was a friend only of Mr. Olivant, but in that I was mistaken. Trust him completely; he will take you straight to Mr. Millard. This is the only way in which it can be managed; if I left the house now I should be followed.

"Tinman."

"By Jove – that's devilish clever!" exclaimed Mr. Dawkins, looking at it in admiration. "The only thing is – I'm afraid the lady may be suspicious."

"That's quite unlikely," said Murray Olivant impatiently. "The mere fact of your carrying a note signed by Tinman shows that you must know all about the business, and you can only have known all about it from him. To London with her; I'll join you in twenty-four hours, after I've decided what to do with this fellow and with my worthy half-brother. I must tread warily, for I have two desperate men to settle accounts with." He laughed, and kicked me softly again.

Dawkins shook hands with him, and went out of the room, closing the door after him. Olivant turned the key in the door, as though he feared I might run out, bound and gagged as I was, to try to stop her; and indeed that thought had been in my mind. Then he took up his position at the window, and with a mocking smile on his face began to describe what was happening.

"She starts and turns her head, Tinman, when she hears his step," he began. "Now she comes slowly towards him; they meet, and she is listening intently. Now she reads the note; in the politest way, my dear Tinman, he has lighted a match, and is shading it with his hands while she reads. I know you're praying hard, Tinman, that she may suspect, and refuse to go; I'm praying hard that she may be fool enough to believe, and to trust herself to Dawkins. I wonder which prayer will avail?"

I was indeed praying hard, but there was no hope in my heart that my prayer would be answered. He looked again out of the window, and laughed, and nodded at me.

"She has hesitated but for a moment," he said. "They move towards the gate; he opens it for her. She looks back at the house for a moment – see, I kiss my fingers to her, although she does not know it! – now they are passing out. The gate shuts. They are gone."

He left the window, and dropped into a chair, and burst into a shout of laughter. I crouched on the floor at his feet, with my arms bound behind me, and with my head bowed on my breast.

"I know your story, Tinman," he said at last, when his mirth had subsided a little; "Fanshawe told me something of it. You were a Quixote, I believe; you killed a man because he spoke ill of a woman, or would have done her harm. Look at you now! – a broken worn-out thing, with all your bombast and bravado gone; all your threats and your heroics mere words blown away by the wind. And if you were free – what would you not do? – what doughty deeds of heroism – eh? And behold, the excellent Dawkins is on his way to London, with a trusting girl for company; behold also – I shall follow very shortly. Bow your head, Tinman, for you are indeed a ghastly failure!"

After that for a time he busied himself about the room, casting a word at me now and then over his shoulder. I had got to my feet, and was sitting dejectedly enough on a chair, thinking miserably of what I had done; I no longer felt the discomfort of the gag or the ache in my shoulders; I was past physical suffering of any kind. After what seemed a long time, Olivant went across to the door and unlocked it; stood for a moment there, looking back at me contemptuously.

"You'll be safe here for a time, Tinman," he said. "A little later I'll come and release you. I'm sorry for your young friend, shivering in the wood and waiting hopelessly; but some one had to suffer. And when I see that other friend of yours – sweet little Barbara – in London, I'll exonerate you, and explain to her that it wasn't really your fault. Make yourself as comfortable as you can, Tinman, under disagreeable circumstances."

He took the key out of the lock, and transferred it to the outside of the door; then went away, locking me in. It did not seem to matter; I had failed hopelessly, and I did not mind what became of me. I had striven to do so much – had flung myself into this business with the ardour of a youth; but my youth was a thing of the past, and I was only a tired old man, easily beaten in an unequal struggle.

I sat there for a long time, picturing horribly enough to myself all that might be happening to those in whom I was interested. I saw the boy waiting among the trees, and listening for every sound that floated to him – now certain that I was coming with the girl fast along the road to him – now blaming me bitterly because by carelessness or intentionally I had betrayed him. I saw the girl, too, in the hands of the scoundrel with whom she had so willingly set off on a journey that must end in disaster; and I ground my teeth on the gag that had been forced between them, in bitter despairing rage at the man who seemed to hold us all in the hollow of his hand.

Slowly the shame and degradation of the thing seemed to drop into my soul like a subtle poison. In a world that should be fair and bright – a world made for lovers – it was horrible and unnatural to think that such a creature as Murray Olivant should triumph over love and beauty and purity. Poor sorry knight that I was, for ever tilting at such monsters as himself, I had already been worsted once in the battle, and rendered, as it seemed, for ever useless; and now again, when I would be taking up the fight with fresh vigour, I had been flung at the first encounter, and my enemy triumphed. What a poor sorry spectacle I had made of myself, and how little good I had really done!

I began to have again that bitter rage in my heart that had been in it twenty years before, and had meant the death of a man. I found myself saying, over and over again, as I sat bound and helpless, that this man should die, no matter what the penalty might be – that I would wipe him off the face of the fair earth on which he crawled, and would leave the way clear for this new Barbara, and for the boy who had striven bravely to carry the flag I once had borne. Nothing could happen to me worse than had already happened; I felt in that hour almost as though God had brought me from my prison, and set me here to do this thing. And I had been chosen because no worse evil could befall me than I had already suffered; I had touched the depths, and could go no lower. Yes, I was a thing apart, and the way before me was as clear as it had been twenty years before.

I set to work systematically to free myself of my bonds. Getting to my feet, I stumbled stiffly towards the dressing-table in the room, and on the sharp edge at one corner of it began to saw the towel that held me, backwards and forward, until I had torn a hole in it. After that I worked frantically – up and down and across and across – until I felt it giving in places, and until I had torn a great jagged hole in it. It took a long time, but presently I was able to feel that the towel was gradually giving way; then at last, as I worked, I was suddenly flung forward, as the last strand started, and my hands fell to my sides. The rest was an easy matter, and I was presently able to get rid of my gag.

The door was locked, and I dared not break it down; I did not know whether Olivant was still in the house. I pulled back the curtain at the window, and looked out, after first extinguishing the light in the room. The room was on the first floor, and the drop to the ground not an alarming one; I crawled on to the broad window-ledge, and worked myself over it, gripping with my hands. After hanging there for a moment I let go, and dropped, and fell without damage to the ground below.

At first I did not know what to do. On an impulse I was for setting out for the woods, there to find Arnold Millard, and acquaint him with what had happened. But in the very act of doing that I drew back, trembling; for I seemed to know what must inevitably happen then. Living, as I seemed to do, in the intimate thoughts and hopes and hatreds of the boy, I knew that what must happen would be an encounter between Murray Olivant and the younger man; and whatever punishment must be meted out to Olivant must, I felt, be left to me, and not to the boy. Before I stirred at all in the matter I must have time to think, and I must, above all, find out whether Murray Olivant was still in the house.

I could not, of course, get into the house again in the ordinary way; I must needs creep about the grounds, and watch. I went round to the terrace, and drew near enough to look in at the windows, and to see Lucas Savell sitting alone in the room, with his hands folded on his lap, and his head nodding to slumber. I tried gently to unfasten one of the long French windows, but in vain; and I was just turning away, when I saw him wake up, and shake his head, and blink his eyelids, and look about him. I saw him go to the door of the room, and apparently call out to some one in the house; then come back, closing the door after him. He made straight for the windows, and I was only just in time to draw back out of the way. After fumbling for a moment or two with the fastenings, he got the window open, and called out into the dark garden —

"Barbara! Barbara! What's become of you?"

There was no answer, and he stood for a moment fretfully muttering to himself. I was so close to him that I heard him say that no one ever attended to his wants, and that he was a poor neglected creature, and he wished that he was dead. While he stood there, the door of the room was opened, and Olivant came in.

"What are you bawling about?" I heard him ask.

Savell turned away from the window, leaving it open. "I want Barbara," he said peevishly. "She knows I want her at this time; there are lots of things she has to attend to that no one else can attend to. I'm actually left here – a poor invalid – with nothing to drink. It's a shame!"

"You're not likely to see your precious Barbara again – at all events for a long time," said Murray Olivant, leaning against a table, and looking at the other man. "So make up your mind to that."

"Eh?" Savell stared at him, with a frightened look on his face. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that the lady has taken matters into her own hands, and has run away with that scoundrelly half-brother of mine – young Millard," said Olivant slowly. "He's been hanging about here for a long time – before ever he came to dinner at all – and I've been afraid that something of this sort would happen. It's a pity; because I had a better fate in store for the girl, as you know."

"Yes – yes – of course I know that," said Savell feebly. "But can't they be stopped? – can't something be done?"

"I intend to do something – to-morrow," said Olivant. "It's too late to do anything to-night," he added, glancing at his watch. "Make your mind easy, my friend; I'll see that sweet Barbara comes to no harm. And if by any chance young Millard should come here, you'll understand that that's only a ruse on his part, to throw you off the scent. You'll very properly have him kicked out of the house."

I had been so intent upon what was happening in the room, and upon the words that passed between the two men, that I had been totally unaware of the fact that once again, as on another night I remembered, a shadow had detached itself from the shadows of the garden, and that what seemed to be a woman was leaning forward eagerly at the further end of the terrace, watching and listening. She had not seen me; she had crept forward step by step, and was staring into the lighted room. As Murray Olivant moved with a shiver towards the window as if to close it, she dropped back into the shadows, and was gone.

For a moment I stood there, staring after her, and vaguely calling to mind the fashion in which I had seen her before, and the white face I had seen looking into the room. Then, recovering myself, I started off quickly in pursuit – hearing her moving swiftly over the dead leaves on her way out of the grounds. Getting further away from the house, I ventured to call to her to stop; but she hastened on more quickly, breaking at last into a run, and finally disappearing among the trees. I ran on blindly, and just when I thought I had lost her stumbled against a figure standing quite still, and grasped it, and held to it. But this was not a woman; it was a man, who cried out feebly to me to let him go, and struggled in my grasp. It was Jervis Fanshawe.

"Some one ran past you – not a moment ago," I gasped. "A woman."

His face in the moonlight was ghastly white; I felt that he was trembling from head to foot. "Did you see it too?" he gasped, holding to me, and staring into my face.

I nodded. "Yes," I replied quickly. "Who was it?"

He shivered, and covered his face with his hands. "The dead come alive!" he whispered.

I thought at first that he had been scared by the hurried flight of the woman, or by my own calling to her in the darkness; above all, I was too anxious concerning what I had to do, and concerning the fugitive, to take much note of him. With an impatient exclamation I thrust him aside, and ran on quickly out of the grounds; but when I came to the road outside I saw that it lay like a grey streak under the light of the moon, and was empty. A little frightened and shaken, I determined then and there that there was but one thing to be done; I must find the boy, and must tell him what had happened in regard to Barbara.

But even as I started on that errand I heard footsteps behind me, and saw Fanshawe – a mere tottering shadow of a man – coming along the road after me, calling to me feebly to wait. But I ran on, taking no notice of him, and presently came to the end of the path that led into the wood. I dropped down there, calling to the boy softly as I went.

He stepped out to confront me at once, and I shall remember to my dying day the look upon his face when he saw that I was alone. He held to me for a moment in the silence of the wood; then shook me roughly, and flung me aside.

"Where is she?" he demanded, staring about him like one distracted.

"Gone!" I replied, clinging to him, in dreadful fear that he might break away from me when he heard the news, and make for the house. "Spirited away to London."

He stood quite still, with his hand pressed against his forehead, staring at me dreadfully while I went on to explain what had happened, and how I had been tricked. Then, with a laugh that was almost a sob, he broke away from me, and sprang for the road. I caught him as he went, and struggled with him.

"Where are you going?" I panted.

Even before he answered the question I heard the shuffling running footsteps of Jervis Fanshawe go past us on the road above; the man was still gaspingly calling my name. The footsteps died away, and I became aware that young Millard was speaking.

"I'm going to find Murray Olivant," said the boy between his teeth. "Let me go!"

"You're too late," I lied to him. "He's gone too." For I knew that at that time it would have been madness to let him go to the house in search of his brother.

He suddenly turned from me, with all the courage gone out of him as it seemed, and broke down utterly. He leant his arm against a tree, and his head on his arm, and wept as though his heart would break; I trembled to see how the great sobs shook and rent him. I stood wringing my hands, and pleading with him in whispers to be calm, even while at the same time I was so shaken myself that I could scarcely get out the words. When presently that fit of despair had passed, he spoke to me like a man suddenly grown old.

"I shall go to London to find her," he said slowly. "If he has harmed her, then by the mother that bore us both I'll kill him. Life can be nothing to me then, and I shall not mind what happens. Look at that hand, Tinman" – he stretched it out before him, and I saw that it was still and steady as a rock – "and take note that I do not speak in any boyish anger. If he has harmed her, it will be worse than if he had killed her, for he will have killed her soul; it'll be a small vengeance to kill his body. Don't try to stop me; I shall know where to find him in London."

He sprang out on to the road, and set off at a great pace towards the town. For a few moments I strove to keep up with him, trotting by his side, and pleading brokenly with him that he would at least take time to think. But he paid no heed to anything I said; he walked straight on, staring in front of him with that set deadly look in his eyes. And after a time I was compelled from sheer exhaustion to drop behind, and to see him go on steadily before me until he was lost to sight.

I walked on feebly for a little time, perhaps with some faint hope that he might repent of his purpose, and turn back. Presently on the road before me I saw a man standing, and for a moment the wild hope sprang up in my mind that this was Arnold Millard, already hesitating; as I ran up to him, however, I saw that it was Fanshawe, who had evidently run himself to a standstill. He was muttering to himself like one possessed, laughing and trembling, and standing still to look about him and to listen. As I went up to him he took me by the arm, and spoke again those mad words he had used in the grounds of the house.

"The dead come alive, Charlie," he whispered. "As I hope for Heaven, I saw the face – there – going past me like a face in a dream. I saw her, I tell you."

"Who?" I asked, with my mind full of something else.

"Barbara," he whispered. "Not the child – but your Barbara —my Barbara! She went past me like a spirit!"

Horrified at the mere thought, I clapped my hand upon his lips, and looked about me fearfully; for all at once it seemed almost possible that on that night of disaster the spirit of the dead woman might have come back, in the vain hope to save her child. I shuddered in the wintry wind that swept about us both on the deserted road; I peered into the shadows, awed and afraid.

"Fool!" I muttered savagely, to hide my own fears. "You don't know what you're talking about. It's the new Barbara – the child – about which we're concerned to-night. She's gone."

"And the old Barbara come back," he said; and stood there shuddering, with his face hidden in his hands.

I left him, and went back towards the house. It seemed as though I was shaken to my very soul, as though something mysterious and wonderful was in the very air itself, threatening me. I pushed open the gate leading into the grounds, and peered in, like a little child afraid of the dark; then I went in, picking my way cautiously through the ruined and neglected garden, with my eyes fixed upon the terrace. Coming to it, I crept among the shadows, and peered in.

Murray Olivant was no longer there; but in his usual chair, with the decanter and a glass beside him, sat Lucas Savell in the lighted room in a heavy slumber. And once again from that opposite end of the terrace I saw the shadowy woman creep forward, and look into the room. With my very hair rising, as it seemed, and my limbs trembling, I took a step towards her, and called her name —

"Barbara!"

After a moment she came slowly towards me, and by the light that came from the room I looked into her eyes. Then with a great cry I fell at her feet, feeling that I held in mine warm hands of flesh and blood.

"Barbara!"

"I've come back – my dear – my dear – to save my child," said the voice of the Barbara I had loved and lost twenty years before.

Inside the lighted room the man whose name she bore started, and shook himself, and fell asleep again; outside in the cold and the darkness I knelt at the feet of the woman I loved, and bowed my face upon her hands, as I had done twenty years before in the same spot.