The Admirable Tinker Part 4

Till Tinker was six years old they were playmates. Then, little by little, Sir Tancred found himself drifting into the position of general instructor, and after a while began to give serious thought to the matter. It was not, perhaps, a sound education that he gave the child.

The cla.s.sical side of it and the commercial were alike neglected; the historical was forgotten. The spelling was weak, and the handwriting was very bad. But, riding, fencing, and boxing were very carefully cultivated, with the result that Tinker, though he lacked the lumps of muscle which disfigured that eminent ancient, might very well have vied in strength and agility with the child Hercules.

In the matter of languages, by dint of spending some of each year in the different European capitals, he learned to speak better French than he did English, for his father enjoyed far better society on the Continent than he did in London. In the same way, by sojourning in the land, he learned to make himself understood in German; and two months at Rome gave him a fair Italian. It must be admitted that he was as bad at spelling in all three of those languages as he was in his own.

Again, his geography was hardly of the ornamental kind; he was entirely and happily ignorant of the whereabouts of Leeds and Crim Tartary; it is doubtful whether the Balearic Isles, which most boys of the Western World could point you out on a map, were even a name to him. But by the time he was ten he could so deal with continental or English Bradshaw that in five or six minutes he could tell you the quickest or the most comfortable way of reaching any town in which a self-respecting person would care to find himself, and his knowledge of steamer-routes and the Great American railways was no less sound.

Besides these accomplishments he was acquiring a wide knowledge of the world. By his eleventh birthday, though inexperienced in Lestrygons and Lotos-eaters, he had seen the cities of more men than that way-worn wanderer Ulysses at the end of his voyages, and he had no mean understanding of their disposition. Besides, as the years went on, Sir Tancred's debts increased. To live the really strenuous London life, you need a great deal of money; and though Fortune, so cruel to him in love, was kind at Bridge, her kindness was not continuous; and sometimes the ungracious importunities of his creditors drove him into retirement in the country. During these times of exile Tinker was, for the most part, his only companion, save for brief visits from Lord Crosland; and since Sir Tancred made a point of talking to him as his equal in age and experience, he gained from these times of close intimacy a yet wider knowledge of the world. These retirements never lasted long, not long enough indeed for Tinker, who was always happy enough in the country. Sir Tancred after a while grew impatient for the distractions of which he had acquired so deep-rooted a habit.

Moreover, in the country, out of a well-filled country house or shooting-box, he might at any time fall into the old, sorrowful brooding on his lost happiness.

The most uncommon part of Tinker's education was the careful cultivation of his faculty of observation. Sir Tancred himself had a natural gift of understanding his fellow-creatures, which, along with his finer brain, little by little placed him in the n.o.ble but unenviable position of being the first person to whom his friends flew to be extricated from their sc.r.a.pes. He had found that his gift stood him in such good stead in his varying fortunes that he spared no pains to equip Tinker with the faculty even more finely developed.

In forming Tinker's manners he was at once aided and hindered by many women. The faithful Selina, with all the best-hearted intentions in the world of spoiling the child, was foiled, partly by Sir Tancred's watchfulness, and partly by the uncertainty of her own temper. She was liable to the sudden, gusty rages of her cla.s.s; and one of these rages undid the harm of many days' indulgence. When, however, Tinker was nine, she resigned with many misgivings, tears, and upbraidings of conscience, her charge of him, to marry a middle-aged Parisian hairdresser of Scotch nationality and the name of Angus McNeill. Sir Tancred had far more trouble with the women who fell in love with him; and many women fell in love with him or thought themselves in love with him, for his handsome, melancholy face, his reputation for recklessness, and above all for his cold insensibility to their charm.

In ten years of the strenuous, smart life, his name was never coupled with that of any woman. All and each of these made a pet of Tinker, since they found it the surest way to abate his father's coldness. On the other hand the great ladies of the Faubourg de St. Germain petted him because his seraph's face and delightful manners charmed them; while any nice woman petted him because she could not help it.

Fortunately Tinker did not like being petted; his sentiments, indeed, on the matter of being kissed by the effusive verged on the ungallant.

He liked to be a nice woman's familiar friend; his att.i.tude toward her could be almost avuncular; but if a woman would pet him, he endured it with the exquisite patience with which his father forever taught him to treat the s.e.x. In weaker hands than those of his father, he would doubtless have become a precocious and irritating monkey, always and painfully in evidence. But Sir Tancred and his creditors saw to it that his life in the world was broken by spells of healthy, boyish life, and he remained modest enough and simple-hearted.

As to his nerves, though they were always high-strung, the effects of his cruel treatment as a baby wore little by little and slowly away, until there was left only a faint dread, or rather dislike, of being alone in the dark, and a tendency to awake once in a month or so, crying out from a bad dream.

CHAPTER FIVE

TINKER'S BIRTHDAY BLOODHOUND

Hildebrand Anne came out of the long gla.s.s doors of the morning room of the Refuge, as Sir Tancred had happily named the cottage at Farndon-Pryze, which he had bought soon after Jeddah won the Derby at a hundred to one, and whither he retired when he was at loggerheads with Fortune, or Hildebrand Anne began to look f.a.gged by London life. His father was reading a newspaper at the end of the lawn, and he walked across to him.

Sir Tancred looked up from his paper, and said with a sigh:

"I'm afraid there's no birthday present for you, Tinker."

"That's all right, sir," said Tinker cheerfully.

Father and son made an admirable pair, a pair of an extraordinary distinction. Reckless pride and sorrow had impressed on Sir Tancred's dark, sombre face much of the look of Lucifer, Son of the Morning; Tinker was very fair with close-cropped golden curls cl.u.s.tering round his small head, features as finely cut as those of his father, sunny blue eyes, lips curved like Cupid's bow, and the air of a seraph. The name had clung to him from its perfect inappropriateness. A tinker is but a gritty sight, and Hildebrand Anne had grown up, to the eye, an angel child, of a cleanliness uncanny in a small boy.

"Even if there were anything to buy in Farndon-Pryze, our fortunes are at a low ebb," said Sir Tancred with faint sorrow.

Tinker heaved a sympathetic sigh, and said again, "Oh, that's all right, sir."

"And the papers offer no suggestions for a new campaign," and Sir Tancred, looking with some contempt at the score of grey, pink, yellow, and green sheets which littered the gra.s.s around his long cane chair, fanned himself with his panama; for, though the month was May, the morning was hot.

"We shall have lots of money soon," said Tinker cheerily.

"Well, I hope so. It is no use my reading these wretched rags, unless they put me in the way of a coup."

"We always do," said Tinker with conviction; and he strolled away, pondering idly the question of riches.

From the end of the garden of the Refuge, Tinker scanned the country round with dissatisfied eyes. None of the low hills was hollowed by a pirates', or brigands', or even a smugglers' cave with its buried h.o.a.rd, no ruin tottered above a secret treasure-chamber. For himself he did not mind; it was all one to him whether he hunted his prey in the Champs Elysees or the long, straggling street of Farndon-Pryze.

There were men in both places; and, though the methods of enraging them were different, they grew crimson to much the same fieriness. He found, indeed, an angry Frenchman more entertaining than an angry Englishman, but he was no epicure in sensations: only, he liked them exciting. But he would fain have discovered treasure for the sake of his father who, as he well knew, did not find in Farndon-Pryze the entertainment which satisfied his simpler, boyish heart.

As he scanned the unsatisfactory landscape, he heard the sound of hoofs, and looking round, saw James Alloway, a young farmer of the neighbourhood, riding along the highway. His face brightened; the coast was clear; it was the very morning to play toreador. In a breath he was through the hedge, and on the way to the village. He approached it after the manner of a red Indian, only pausing to cut a switch from a hedge. He had a score to settle with Josiah Wilby, a boy whose talebearing had procured him his last, well-earned whacking. Fortune favoured him: he spied his prey playing in careless security with two other boys on the village green; crept between two cottages; and was out on him or ever he was aware of the coming of an avenger. At the sight of Tinker, Josiah bolted for home; but he had not gone twenty yards before the stinging switch was curling round him. He ran the harder, howling and roaring; and Tinker accompanied him to the door of his father's cottage. As the roaring Josiah rushed in, the infuriated Mrs. Wilby rushed out, and Tinker withdrew. From a convenient distance, he raised his hat, and protested his regret at having had to instruct her son in the first principles of honour. Mrs. Wilby took his politeness as an insult, and with a rustic disregard of his pretty manners called him a limb, and threatened him with merciless punishment on the return of her husband. Tinker shrugged his shoulders, spread out his hands, gestures he had acquired in France, and hurried off on his main errand.

He came swiftly to a small field in which there browsed a large and solitary ram, by name Billy, Tinker's playfellow in the game of bull-fighting. With a somewhat unfair casting of the star part, Tinker always played the matador, Billy played the bull.

Drawing a stout wooden sword, the handiwork of Sir Tancred, who never dreamed of the purpose it served, from its hiding-place in the hedge, Tinker slipped over the gate. Billy greeted his playfellow with an ill-conditioned grunt expressive of no joy at all. Tinker saluted, walked up to within ten yards, and waved his hat at him. Billy watched him with a wicked eye, affected to graze, and of a sudden charged with all his speed. Tinker sprang aside as the ram's head went down to b.u.t.t, and as he hurtled past, prodded him with the sword behind the shoulder.

Billy pulled himself up as soon as he could check his momentum, and turned and stood blinking. Twice he rapped the ground hard with his forefoot. Tinker again drew to within ten yards of him; again Billy charged; and again he was prodded behind the shoulder. It was a beautiful game, and Tinker's lightness of foot, quickness of eye, and coolness of head did every credit to the education he had received from his father.

It was, indeed, a fine game, but as dangerous as it was fine; if Billy had once downed the boy, he would never have left him till he had ground the life out of him. This Tinker did not know, so that he did not draw all the excitement out of the game he would have done. It had grown more and more dangerous, also; for, by dint of playing it, Billy, who had started as a fat, clumsy, and sulky beast, had grown thin, nimble, and vicious. Alloway, indeed, often declared that he did not know what ailed the ram; his food never seemed to be doing him any good, and neither man, woman, nor child dare cross the field in which he browsed.

The game lasted some twenty minutes; and Tinker's skill, sureness, and lightness of movement was the prettiest sight. Sometimes, with a snorting bleat, Billy would turn sharply at the end of his charge, and charge again; then the concentration on the matter in hand, which his father had so carefully cultivated in Tinker, proved a most fortunate possession: he was never caught off his guard. But he was beginning to think that he had had enough of it, and Billy was sure that he had, when there came a roar from the road, and there sat Alloway on his horse. Or rather, he was no longer sitting on his horse, he was throwing himself off it.

Without one word of thanks to his playfellow for the pleasant game he had enjoyed with him, Tinker bolted for the further hedge, Billy after him, and Alloway after both. Tinker knew the ground, ran for a post and rails which filled a gap, and skipped over them a few yards ahead of his energetic playfellow, who stood gazing after him with a rueful vindictiveness. Alloway came rus.h.i.+ng up, and took no heed of the disappointed ram, who b.u.t.ted his right leg against the rails with great prompt.i.tude and violence. Alloway emulated his violence not only in his language, but by cutting him as hard as he could with the whip he carried, and rushed on after Tinker. Tinker could run at an admirable pace for a boy of eleven, and he was used to keeping it up longer than the rustic wind would last. But Alloway was brisker than a farm hand, or a keeper, and at the end of a couple of fields he began to gain.

Tinker was soon aware of the painful fact, and knew that retribution was on him. But, though he could not escape, he could postpone; and his quick mind leaped to the fact that the more done Alloway was, the less vigorously would he ply his whip; besides, there was a chance that he might suddenly collapse.

At the entrance to the village there was a bare fifty yards between them. As he came up to the smithy, Blazer, the blacksmith's dog, the terror of the village, began to bark; and Tinker's saving idea came to him. He ran into the yard, and walked quietly up to Blazer, who barked and strained at his chain with every advertis.e.m.e.nt of savage fury.

Tinker knew a good deal about dogs; he came quietly up to him, and tried to pat his head. Blazer caught at the hand, and Tinker left it pa.s.sive in his teeth. Blazer's teeth bruised the skin, but did not pierce: and suddenly he realised that he did not know what to do with it.

With a sheepish air he let it go, and resumed his barking. Tinker stepped right up to his kennel, and the barking Blazer danced about him in an agony of indecision. Alloway rushed into the yard, and crying, "I've got you, you young devil! Have I?" made for Tinker.

Blazer saw a happy way out of his awkward uncertainty, and bit Alloway's leg.

Alloway jumped back with a roar; and, las.h.i.+ng at Blazer, hopped about.

The blacksmith ran out of the smithy, and took in the situation at a glance.

"Take away your dog, Green! Take him away!" shouted Alloway. "I'm going to warm the young gentleman's jacket! He's been worriting my ram!"

Alloway was a good customer; but Tinker was a familiar friend, and the astute blacksmith scratched his head at great length before he said slowly, "If zo be as you've 'it Blaazer, you'll 'av ter tak 'im away yoursel'. I dussn't go near 'im; no, not wuz it ever so."

"I'm going to larrup the young limb!" cried Alloway obstinately.

"You'll 'ave to wait, then, till Blaazer gits quiet. I dussn't meddle with 'im; an' I'm shoeing Mr. 'Utton's graay maare." And with a natural, untrained diplomacy the blacksmith retired quickly into the smithy.

For a minute or two Alloway cursed and Blazer barked. Then Tinker sat quietly down on the threshold of the kennel, and fanned himself with his hat. The empurpled Alloway grew purpler at the sight of a coolness he did not share.

"You young rip!" he roared, dancing lightly in his exasperation, "I'll larrup you if I stay here till to-morrow morning!"

"If you're speaking to me, Mr. Alloway, you needn't speak so loud. I'm not deaf," said Tinker with gentle severity.

Mr. Alloway in his violent, rustic way, uttered a good many remarks quite unfit for boyish ears.

Tinker paid no heed to him, but chirrupped to Blazer, who came to him in a wondering sulkiness, and with many protesting growls suffered himself to be patted. Alloway put his hands in his pockets, and stood stolidly with his legs wide apart, a picture of florid manliness and grim, but whiskered determination. Some small boys, heavy with their midday meal, came to the gate of the yard, and in an idle repletion exhausted themselves in conjectures as to the true inwardness of Tinker's relation with Blazer, and Alloway's absorption in it. Twice the blacksmith came to the smithy door, and a large, slow grin spread painfully over his bovine face.

Tinker continued to pet Blazer till the surprised and mollified dog sat down between his feet, and put his head on his knee. Then Tinker began to apply that power of concentration in which he had been trained by his father to the discovery of a method of final escape. Presently Alloway went to the gate, and, climbing onto it, sat waiting for his triumph in a stubborn doggedness.

After a while Tinker said gently, "That's a good horse you ride, Mr.

Alloway."