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CHAPTER III
Her Wedding Day

I went to London the next morning, something to the astonishment 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.

"I don't like the thought that you are not friends with Hockley," he said, as he came back to me, and laid his hand on my shoulder. "After all, this girl is going out of our lives, and will be nothing to us in the future. That bone of contention is gone, and I want you to meet Hockley. He's got a loose tongue, and he's not over nice in his manners; but he's not a bad sort. Say you'll meet him."

"I'd rather not," I said, with a remembrance of what the man must have said concerning Barbara and myself.

"You will be doing me a service, if you meet him, and treat him fairly," said Fanshawe, impressively. "Come, my dear boy," he pleaded, "I really want you to help me in a difficult matter. Swallow your pride, and meet the man."

"How shall I be helping you in that?" I asked.

"In a certain way – to a slight extent, that is – I am in his power," said my guardian. "Over a matter of speculation," he added hurriedly, "a little money I've lost."

I remembered that demand for money made by Hockley, and his threat when it was refused; I felt that I couldn't very well refuse to help the man who was the only real friend I had in the world. After a moment of hesitation, I grudgingly said that I would meet him, if Jervis Fanshawe wished.

"That's right; that's good of you, Charlie," he exclaimed, with more fervour than I should have expected of him. "We'll have a little dinner together, and you shall see what a good fellow he is, when you really come to know him. And we'll keep off difficult topics," he added reassuringly.

On the evening appointed for the dinner I got to Fanshawe's rooms before Hockley had arrived; and I found my guardian in a strange humour, even for him. He made clumsy attempts to be facetious, and to throw off that rather grave reserved manner he usually wore; clapped me on the shoulder, and generally behaved like the really youngish man he was in years. Before Hockley came in he referred for a moment to that matter we had discussed in my studio; but he only touched upon it lightly.

"You mustn't think anything, Charlie, of what I said the other night about – about a certain subject," he said, standing in front of me, and nervously fingering the lapel of my coat. "I mean about – about Barbara Patton. I was never really in earnest, and you and I have something else to think about in the world beside girls, haven't we?"

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.

Barbara's wedding day! I have thought of it since, over and over again; have watched her, as in a dream, going down the dim little country church in the sunlight, with her head bent, while the man of the good-humoured face waited for her. I have seen them kneel, side by side, and have heard the solemn words pronounced over them; I have seen her come out again on the arm of her husband, pale as death, and with her head bent always, and her eyes seeking no one. Stay, I am wrong; for at the last she raised her head, and looked at me fully, seeming to know, indeed, instinctively where to find me. And with that look something in me broke and died; it was as though I had torn out my heart, and thrown it in the dust at her feet. She went on into the sunlight with her husband; and I presently followed mechanically with the others; hearing about me, as in a dream, the chatter and the laughter of the gay little crowd.

They were all very merry afterwards; I remember that there was an old-fashioned wedding breakfast, and much drinking of toasts, and some speeches. I know that Lucas Savell made rather a good speech in a way, and was very properly modest and grateful for his good fortune; I know, too, that old Patton was prosy and long-winded, and that towards the end of his speech a great many people were chattering together, and paying no attention to him. Then, after a time, it all broke up, and she was going.

I remember at the last I saw her coming down a wide staircase, with her bridesmaids fluttering about her and laughing; I think she had been crying. I know her eyes looked piteous, and her lips were quivering; but perhaps people thought that was quite the proper thing at a wedding, and with a young bride going away from home. Then, as she reached the foot of the stairs, she stopped for a moment to speak specially to one or two friends; and I was among the number. She put her hand in mine for a moment, and her lips formed the words "Good-bye"; but she could not speak. I stood there still as death; I wonder that no one noticed me. Then she was gone, and the crowd had broken up.

I found something in my hand; it was a tiny folded paper. I remember every word of it now; it was burnt in upon my brain, never to be effaced so long as I should live.

"Because I love you and trust you, I give you this, my dear, to read and then to burn. You will do that because I ask it. You have been very brave and very gentle with me; you are going always to be very brave and very gentle, so that I may carry that memory of you in my heart. I have thought of you in secret, although I shall do so no more, as my poor Prince Charlie – wandering alone, far from his kingdom; only, unlike the other poor Prince Charlie, you have no one to comfort you. Good-bye, you are not to think of me; and yet I pray that you may think of me a little. You will be my dream-love always.

Barbara."

I read it over and over until I had got it by heart – until, in fact, I knew every turn and twist of the dear writing; then I burnt it, and destroyed even the ashes. I was vaguely comforted by it; the thing was not so bitter as it might have been, because above all else I held her spirit, and she was mine in that sense, if in no other. And God knows at that time I had no other thought of her; I want that understood clearly, so that it may be understood, too, how little I deserved all that was to happen to me.

I walked about for a long time, and then I went back to the hotel; I had made up my mind to stay there for that night, and then to get to London. I have wished since, often and often, that I had gone straight back to that quiet life in town – that I had never stopped in that place until perforce I must stay the night.

My guardian had asked me earlier in the day about my movements, and I had told him that I intended to stop at Hammerstone Market. He seemed curious as to how I was going to spend the evening – seemed, indeed, anxious about me; so that I was not altogether surprised when he presently appeared in my room, and told me that he had arranged a supper party that night, and that he wanted me to be present.

"I'd rather stay quietly here, thank you," I told him brusquely. "I'm in no mood for supper parties to-night. Leave me alone."

He thrust his thin face close to mine. "You young fool, do you want everybody to be talking about you, and about her?" he demanded. "I was watching you in church to-day, and you looked like death itself. You don't know what these quiet country places are; there'll be whispers afloat to-morrow. Come, my boy – for her sake."

I looked at him in surprise; I had not expected for a moment that he would have thought of that aspect of the case. I began to feel that I had been mistaken in the man, and that there was really something rather fine about him. I suppose he saw the effect of his words, for he shook me rallyingly, and began to drag me out of the room.

"That's right, come along!" he exclaimed. "Keep a brave face, and no one can say a word. Come along!"

"Stop a bit!" I urged, drawing back. "Who's going to be there?"

"Only Hockley beside ourselves," said Fanshawe, examining his nails. "As a matter of fact, I want you to meet him again, and if possible get your revenge. I don't like that money hanging over."

"That's not my fault," I reminded him. "I've asked you again and again – "

"That's all right," he broke in soothingly. "I'll pay the money, and as much more as you like. This is going to be a lucky night for us both, Charlie; we're going to wipe off old scores."

He went down the stairs before me. On the way he glanced up to see that I was following, and it happened that the light from a lamp on the staircase fell on his face. And I remember that I did not like its expression.