young man suggested. Perhaps the mere act of thinking about that drove me into the dream I presently had; for I remember that I thought presently I was standing in a room, and that Hockley was before me, with that grin upon his face; in that dream I felt that some one put a weapon into my hand. Dreams are but intangible things, and this was a confused one, with only the face of Hockley grinning at me from out of it, and the knowledge in my own mind that I held a weapon of some sort gripped in my right hand. And then the face was gone, and I seemed to wake up, to see him at my feet, with blood upon him. I woke, trembling and shuddering, and glad to see the calm moon staring in at me from the little street outside. It took me a little time to shake off the horror of the thing. But I was young, and youth needs sleep; so that I presently slept until morning.
Strangely enough, that dream haunted me—sprang up before me even in the sunlight of the streets, and would not be shaken off. Seeing that I had no earthly concern with Hockley, it was at least curious that I should so persistently think of him; now as I had seen him swaggering on the steps of the house, and staring insolently over my head; now as I remembered him lounging at the table, and apparently overawing my guardian; and now again, as in my dream, with his grinning face watching me—and then lying at my feet, with blood upon him. I was too young for such horrors, and yet I could not clear my brain of them.
That Tuesday arrived on which I was to travel down to Hammerstone Market with Mr. Jervis Fanshawe. I had had a note from him the night before, appointing the time of the train, and requesting me to meet him at the railway station; and I was eager enough for the expedition. Although I did not like Fanshawe, and felt that I never could, there was yet in my heart a natural feeling of regard for him, as being the one person intimately connected with me, and, above all, the man who had looked after my interests during the years that I had been growing up. I set it down deliberately here that I wanted to please him, and that, above all things, I was anxious to win his approval. In a sense I was glad to think that he wanted my company, although I wondered a little what was going to happen at this place to which we were going.
In the train he set the matter fairly and clearly before me. "I am going to this place, Charlie, on a matter of business," he said in a low tone, and without looking at me. "Old Patton, as we call him in the business, likes to make a friend of me as much as possible; I have been down here frequently. It gives me a certain position with him—smooths business generally. I can't say exactly how long I shall stop at his house; he does not come up to the office as frequently as he used to do, and there are certain matters he wants to discuss with me."
"It is very kind of you to take me with you," I said; but with a grim smile he broke in on my enthusiasm.
"Oh, I'm not taking you to the house," he said, "I shall have to leave you at the George. I intend, if possible, to get an invitation for you to dinner one night—or perhaps to a luncheon; but at the moment I merely want Patton to know that you are there, and who you are. He will probably like to know that I am your guardian, and"—he hesitated for a moment as though casting about in his mind for the right word—"and responsible for you."
I have since come to think that whatever scheme was in the mind of the man then, and whatever he meant to do, his real object in taking me there, to begin with, was no deeper than that. I think he felt that it would look well that he should have the responsibility of me upon his shoulders—that it would give him an air of stability, and would cause people to think well of him—much as though he held before himself the record of a good deed as a species of shield, and cried—"This have I done—and that; judge me in the light of it."
So it came about that I was left at the George in the little town of Hammerstone Market, while Jervis Fanshawe went on to the house of Mr. Patton, which lay a little outside the town. The country round about seemed to be very pretty, and I was free to do as I liked until such time as my guardian should call upon me to go back to London, or to visit him at the house of his patron. I liked the look of the little old-fashioned hotel, and I liked the prospect of this new freedom, as I unpacked my bag that first night, in my room that overlooked the sleepy little High Street of the town.
Yet that prospect was blurred and made hideous in the morning by the sudden incursion into it all of that heavy young man named Gavin Hockley. I had had my breakfast (and a hearty one at that) in the old low-roofed coffee-room, and was just making up my mind to sally forth and do a long day's work, when the door was thrust open lumberingly and brutally, and Hockley strode in. Whether or not he knew from my guardian that I was there it is impossible to say; he looked over me, or through me, as on the occasion of our first meeting, and lumbered out again, slamming the door behind him. Remembering all that I had thought about him, and remembering my dream, I was too much upset by his sudden entry into the room even to be able to speak to him; he was gone before I had made up my mind what to do.
When I came out into the little hall of the place, I saw him lounging with one elbow on the low counter at one side, talking to the girl who stood among the bottles and glasses behind it; and one heavy hand was on his hip, and in that hand was his stick, just as it had been when he stood on the steps and looked down at me. The little place seemed full of him—poisoned by him; I was glad to get out into the sweet air of the little town, and further than that into the woods and the fields.
I like to think of that morning now: I have seen myself, in imagination, going so often down a long, dusty road, with my easel and colour box slung across my shoulders; I believe I sang softly to myself as I went. For the spring was in my heart and in my blood, and life was very, very beautiful. I see myself leaving the road behind me, and turning into a little wood near at hand, and sitting down to sketch the glories that stretched before me. But I was like a butterfly that morning, in that all was so beautiful that nothing wholly pleased me; I went deeper on into the wood, and started again to paint. And lost myself in my work and in a waking dream, until I was aroused by the sound of a young girl singing.
(I lay down my pen here for a moment or two, because my eyes are dim, and I cannot go on. The sunlight and the trees and all the mystery and the beauty of the woods are with me again, and the dear voice of the woman I was to love through all my life floats to me again, and stirs something within my sad heart that was stirred that morning, never to be still again. I close my eyes for a moment, and cover them with my hands; and I am back there once more, looking at her wonderingly as she comes towards me through the trees.)
I will not try to describe her; I only know that she was very, very fair, and that she seemed almost a spirit of beauty, coming out of the wood towards me. She was Nature—and Love—and Life—and Laughter—all embodied; I could only sit and watch her; it did not occur to me even to ask myself who she was.
She did not see me until she was quite close, and then she stopped, and looked at me, quite unafraid. She was quite young—only eighteen, as I knew afterwards—and she looked little more than a child. As I stumbled to my feet, she looked shyly at me, and smiled; and it seemed then as though I knew her, and as though she knew me. Afterwards, when we came at another time to talk about it, she told me that it had seemed as though she had come there to meet me out of some other life that was left behind with that moment; and indeed, I cannot better express my own feelings than in that way. Perhaps Youth called to Youth; or perhaps all that was to be was written down in some grim Book of Fate, of which we did not hold the key.
She shyly looked at my work, and asked questions about it; begged that I would go on with it—and perhaps wondered why I could not, with her distracting draperies fluttering against me almost, as she stood. Like a child, and with a child's confidence in me, she offered to show me a spot in the woods more beautiful than that I had chosen; I left my easel, and we walked side by side among the trees, talking. I do not know now of what we talked, but we seemed to speak of everything vital and important in heaven and earth. And then, surprisingly, she told me her name.
"I am Barbara Patton. I ought to have told you."
"Patton?" I said, remembering my guardian's mention of that name, and of the house at which he was living.
"Yes; Mr. Patton, up at the house there, is my father. And you?"
I gave her my name, and we laughed a little consciously at the thought that now we should know each other perfectly, and that all