CHAPTER XIII
[I FACE THE WORLD AGAIN]
Of all that I must write of my life, as it faced me after those tragic happenings, certain pictures rise up in my mind, not easily to be effaced. I who write this am poor and old, yet not broken nor downcast any more. For, by the great grace of God, I am not alone; there is one with me, whose tender loving eyes look always at me, with no remembrance of any defects or frailties—with no recollection of anything I may have done that would have been so much better left undone.
Of the pictures that rise before me as I look back, the first is that of being absolutely alone in London, with the fear of death upon me. The fear of death—because the man Jervis Fanshawe had killed lay hidden behind a frail wooden door, that might at any moment be broken down; thereafter I was to expect search to be made for a certain servant named Tinman, sometime Charles Avaline, condemned to death twenty years before for murder.
Yet, strangely enough, that never happened. I have the memory before me now of a day when I walked the streets, and was faced suddenly by a newspaper placard, flaring with the announcement—"Murder of an unknown man in Lincoln's Inn Fields." Thereafter I saw other placards—this one startlingly vivid with a clue, this one hopeless. And I even had the temerity to stand in a little stuffy Coroner's court, what time twelve good men and true brought in a verdict of murder against some person or persons unknown. More than that, I stood one bitter winter evening beside a pauper grave in a cemetery, and knew that the newly turned earth covered all that was mortal of Murray Olivant.
Another picture rises in my mind—so near to the other that it seems to be part of it. I remember that on this occasion I was in a poor eating-house in a poor neighbourhood of London; I was looking through the columns of a newspaper that was a day or two old. A man as poor as I was is necessarily a little behind the times; news filters through to him slowly enough. And looking down the columns of this paper I came across an item of news that was startling:—
"Loss of a British steamer. Only one survivor.—The S.S. Eaglet, concerning the fate of which so many rumours have been rife of late, is now known to have gone on the rocks off Ushant, and to have become a total wreck. The fate of the vessel would probably never have been known, but for the fact that a sailor was washed ashore, and after being tended by the good people there, was able to give some particulars as to the wreck. It appears that the vessel went on the rocks in one of those dense fogs peculiar to that coast, and broke up within a very few minutes. There is not the slightest doubt that this sailor, whose name is given as Henry Howard, is the sole survivor of the ill-fated vessel. It may be mentioned that among the passengers was a young gentleman of fortune—a Mr. Murray Olivant—who was travelling to the Mediterranean on a pleasure cruise."
I sat with the soiled paper in my hands; I read so much more into the paragraph than any one else could have done. The real Murray Olivant lay in that pauper's grave beside which I had stood, and yet was buried as a man unknown; and here he was proclaimed as having been lost in the wreck of the vessel on which he was supposed to have sailed. More than that; for the hungry sea had claimed as a victim that man Jervis Fanshawe of the haunted eyes, who had killed him, and had gone on that voyage in his place. Justice has a long arm.
My memories after that are confused; I think I must have suffered greatly during that winter, when I was alone and friendless in London. In my recollections of that time there is always a great roar and rush of traffic in my ears, and I seem always to be standing in the rain, or with the bitter wind ruffling my garments; at other times I am crouching over fires in small lodging houses, in the company of other forlorn wretches—outcasts like myself. I am always hungry, and I do not seem to understand what reason I have for living at all. And I find myself, like some uneasy ghost that has been forgotten, wandering about old familiar places, and going over again scenes that only I remember, and that belong only to the past.
I find myself again in Lincoln's Inn Fields—unable now to remember clearly where a certain Gavin Hockley is—or whether I killed him, or someone else; wondering vaguely what he had to do with a certain Murray Olivant who died long ago—or was he drowned at sea? I find myself—an old man, with the rain beating upon me, and the wind driving at me—sitting on the steps of a house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and wondering if I dare climb the stairs, to find what is hidden behind a locked door.
Another picture rises in my mind: I am in a great clean place of many beds, and I am ill. They talk of want and exposure, and then try to find out who I am, and whether I have any friends. I remember one thing, and one only: that my name is "Tinman"; I am glad to think that I have no friends, and that it may happen that this is the end of my poor life, and that I may finish here in peace.