He looked at her, as a lover can;She looked at him, as one who awakes.The Statue and the Bust.
He looked at her, as a lover can;She looked at him, as one who awakes.The Statue and the Bust.
He looked at her, as a lover can;She looked at him, as one who awakes.The Statue and the Bust.
He looked at her, as a lover can;
She looked at him, as one who awakes.
The Statue and the Bust.
There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.—Proverbs.
In his salad days, a long time ago, Denis had fallen in love with the daughter of a respectable suburban fishmonger, after tumbling out of the sky on the roof of her house. The young lady's parents were rich but honest; the young lady herself—well, she had an extremely pretty face, which occupied Denis to the exclusion of a blue and yellow sports coat and a large string of pearls. His love dream lasted six weeks; then he fell out of his aeroplane again and broke his handsome nose, or was supposed to have done so, and Miss Tyrrell broke the engagement. "I c-couldn't bear you with a broken nose!" she wept. Whatever Denis broke, it was not his heart. When he looked back on the episode, it was with devout and wondering thankfulness; but he preferred not to look back on it at all.
This was his sole experience of the tender passion. In his single-minded and laborious life there had been no room for more; even Nina Tyrrell had been sandwiched between two flying accidents. Denis was at bottom a simple soul. He had three main interests—his religion, his aeroplanes, his friends; and they were all bound up together by a child-like faith. He believed in others because his own heart was pure. It was this bloom of innocence which Gardiner loved in his friend, and which both he and Lettice were tender to protect; and it was this which made his feeling for Dorothea at once so beautiful, and so vulnerable.
He took the revelation very simply, very seriously, with reverence and awe; among other primitive virtues, Denis had a fine stock of awe. Love was to him a sacrament, a gift direct from heaven; he carried it in his heart like a jewel almost too precious for human hands to touch, and gave humble thanks to God. A good old-fashioned churchman, Denis had been accustomed to "say his prayers" night and morning, walking in a decent English soul-silence the rest of the day; but this new gratitude transcended all rules and overflowed in ceaseless praise. Nobody, he was certain, had ever felt like this before. He was happy—happier than it had ever entered his head to imagine, in sunshine which turned all the gray of life to gold.
All that day he could settle to nothing, but mooned about the house, getting in the way of Miss Simpson, who had planned to turn out his room. Next day, in town, he looked at Wandesforde the married man with new curiosity. He did not in the least want to unbosom himself; but he would have liked to extract confidences from somebody who had been through it all before. Wandesforde, however, was not given to making confidences, and if ever he had been driven into speech his partner was the last man he would have chosen to receive his outpourings. He put down Denis's unusual silence to his liver, and genially advised him to take more exercise—that venerable joke, which always seems so good to the maker and so poor to the recipient!
That night Denis lay awake, building castles in the air. Dorothea had told him all her sad little story as far as her marriage, one squally day when they were sheltering in the hangar; he set up in his heart a shrine of protective love and reverence and worshiped her there, his little lady of the sorrows—Dorothea, with a heart full of black hate! Yet Denis was not blind. He saw one side of her clearly enough, and was ready to own with tender indulgence that she had plenty of endearing imperfections, of small gray faults; but of the other side, the dark half of the moon, she had shown him nothing, and how was he to divine it? With him, indeed, she was what he believed her: true to her true self,since but for her starved girlhood Dorothea would never have learned to hate. He scarcely dared hope she loved him yet, though he had a shy confidence that he would win her in the end; but he meant to ask her at once, that very day when she came for her lesson. He was up and out at six o'clock, among pearly mists, and saw the sun rise in rose and gold over meadows spread with the thin silver of the frost. Then he came in to breakfast, took up his letters, and met his first check. There was a note from Miss Byrd to say they could not come.
She wrote for Dorothea, whose hand was troubling her again; perhaps she had strained it yesterday; at any rate, she thought best not to use it at present. But would Mr. Merion-Smith come to tea with them to-morrow after church instead? She hoped this would be convenient and that they might have the pleasure of his company, and she was his very sincerely, Mary Anne Byrd. Denis's face, which had darkened, cleared again; after all, it was not such a bad thing. Better say what he had to say in a drawing-room than shout it through the hum of a propeller.
He went to afternoon church, and listened to the Evangelical vicar's sermon on Christian evidences, which he seemed to rest mainly on the fact that there have been martyrs for the faith (a proposition over which Denis knit his brows, though he could not imagine that the congregation then present was liable to have its faith upset by faulty logic); and when the choir of little girls recited the General Thanksgiving, he recited it with them, in great seriousness and devotion. Coming out into the sunny white road, with the ink-blue sea on one hand, the grayish cliff grass on the other, he walked down to Dorothea's bungalow—the one bungalow of Bredon, which he already knew sufficiently well, having lived there for several years himself. The car was at the door; he paused to look over it before he rang the bell.
Miss Byrd received him in the drawing-room, and for the first half-hour entertained him alone; a tall, slim woman with a complexion of wrinkled ivory, gentle and dignified and intelligent. As a teacher she had been subject to stormsof nervous anger, for which she was not too proud to apologize, even to a pupil; it was an incident of this sort which had stamped her indelibly in Dorothea's affections. Always a little shy of Denis, to-day she seemed in a state of nervous tremor; her hands were shaking as she arranged and rearranged the cozy, and wondered for the tenth time what could be keeping Dot. Denis, who had one manner for the mighty and another for the humble and meek, set himself to soothe her alarms. He was just succeeding when the door unclosed and the truant swept in.
"Am I very frightfully late?" she inquired unconcernedly. "So sorry; having only one hand makes you awkward, you know. Do you mind doing this for me, Birdie?"
She stood bending her graceful head while Miss Byrd settled the rose point of her collar. She was wearing a velvet dress, very rich, very sumptuous, cut open at the throat and bordered with sable fur. Round her neck went a gold chain, rough links nearly an inch across, hanging to her knees and looking barbarously heavy. She sank into a chair, and there was the gleam of a golden shoe, a Cinderella slipper with jeweled straps crossing on the arch of a silken instep. What a transformation! But the greater change was in her manner.
"Have you been to church?" she asked. "How pious of you! I haven't; but then I'm not pious, you know. I went for a joy-ride instead. My hand? Oh yes, thanks, I managed all right. I generally do manage to do what I want to," she added, spreading out a slender hand with the diamonds upon it which Lettice had admired long ago. She looked up at Denis through her lashes. "No, I didn't want to come yesterday; not particularly; wasn't that sad? But I did want you to come here this afternoon—"
"That's all right, since here I am," Denis interrupted, laughing at her. He put her off for an instant, but only for an instant; she recovered herself, and swept on:
"And I'll tell you why: because I wanted a real heart-to-heart talk, without any aeroplanes or things to interrupt. I've a bone to pick with you."
"A bone to pick, have you?"
"A big, big bone. Another lump of sugar, please, Birdie—yes, that little fella will do; I shan't let you make tea if you don't give me enough sugar. Why didn't you ever tell us that exciting story about Mr. Gardiner?"
She leaned back among her cushions, stirring her cup, watching Denis with those dark eyes full of overt insolence and covert eagerness. But Denis was not noticing subtleties of expression; this time she had got home.
"What excitin' story about Mr. Gardiner?"
It was her turn to laugh. "Oh, you know! About that man he killed, or didn't kill, up in the Lakes somewhere. I really think it was yourdutyto have told—anybody mightn't have cared to stop at his hotel after a thing like that!"
"Who told you anything about it?"
"Louisa, of course. Louisa's always my newsmonger. She had it from the maid of the man's wife—Mrs. Tyne, wasn't her name? No, Trent. I knew it was some river or other. Maids tell each other everything. It only came out yesterday, else I'd have been at you about it before. Louisa swears Mr. Gardiner really did it, and you screened him. Did he? and did you? Do tell! It isn't every day one comes across a thrilling tale like this!"
"There was an inquest," said Denis stiffly. "You can read all about it in the papers, if you choose. It was brought in accidental death."
"Well, I know that, or Mr. Gardiner would have gone to prison, wouldn't he? But what Louisa says is that the whole truth didn't come out at the inquest. He knocked the man down, or something, instead of his tumbling of himself. I can quite believe he would knock a man down, if he lost his temper. Did he really do it, and make you hush it up? I do so want to know!"
"My dear," said Miss Byrd gently, "don't you see you're worrying Mr. Merion-Smith!"
"Am I?" said Dorothea. She shot a cool, leisurely, searching glance at Denis's troubled face. "Well, I'm sureI don't see what there is to worry anybody in what I've been saying—unless, of course, it's true!"
Denis had to say something. He felt for and found his voice, hoping it sounded more natural to her than it did to himself. "It was—rather a bad business," he got out. "I—don't much care for talkin' about it. I don't think Miss O'Connor quite realizes what it meant for us—we saw it, you know; and Mrs. Trent too—" He stuck fast. Was that the best he could do for his friend? The old excuse rose to his lips. "But I can assure you it was an accident!"
"Oh, well, of course I'm sorry if I said what I oughtn't. I only meant it for a joke!" said Dorothea conventionally.
Denis turned away to the window. What evil fiend had prompted her to dig up that story? It was none the sweeter for its long burial. On Dorothea's lips it made him feel sick. He had a passing pain and wonder at her tone, so discordant, so unlike herself. But that was due to shyness, he told himself, the struggles of a wild thing to escape capture, and putting the thought by he went on steadily to his purpose. It was not easy to turn Denis when his mind was made up. He spoke the sentence he had prepared before entering the house.
"Have you seen your back tire?"
"My tire? No! Is it down?"
Out she ran—as he had guessed she would; but it was at any cost to get away from him, not for the car's sake—and that he did not guess. He followed her. Dorothea, pretending to examine her tires, looked up and knew herself caught.
"Why, they're all right," she said, rising from the last of the wheels. "Did you think I had a puncture?"
"No, and I never said I did. I wanted to speak to you," said Denis coolly.
She faced him across the car, as cool as he. "Better not."
"I want to ask you something. I want to know if you will do me the very great honor of becoming my wife."
How quietly he said it, looking at her with his steady eyes! Dorothea shook her head. "Never."
"Ah, but I'm not askin' for an answer at once."
"Never. Never. Never," she repeated with rising emphasis. "Ineverwill—and you wouldn't ask it if you knew!"
"You're not engaged already?"
"Oh, no!" she cried, with a laugh that set his teeth on edge. She turned towards the door. Denis instinctively put out a hand to detain her. She flashed round, quick and dangerous as a cat.
"Don't touch me, don't stop me—you'll be sorry for it if you do!"
Denis was in far too great pain and confusion to obey, or even to take in what she said. "You weren't like this yesterday!" he said, pleading.
"I always was. Always. I had my reasons for pretending to tolerate you for a time, but I always felt the same."
"You said you loved me!"
"It wasn't true, it wasn't true. I hate you."
"But why? What have I done?"
"Told lies, and screened a murderer."
"What?"
"It's your own fault, you would have it," said Dorothea, trembling with passion. "Itoldyou not to stop me, and you would. Saying it was an accident—that old story! I was sure enough before, I know for certain now."
Denis's hand went up to his head. "What are you talking about?"
"About Major Trent, whom Mr. Gardiner killed. He did kill him. He knocked him down with a chisel, and he died. Didn't he?Didn't he?You know you can't deny it!"
He could not, nor could he meet her eyes, so he missed their expression. Certain things are so cruelly hard that they must be carried through at a rush, or not at all. Dorothea's vengeance had turned into a two-edged sword in her hands, and she hewed with it recklessly because it was cutting her to the bone.
"Why, it's not a year yet since he died, and do you think I'dletmyself love a man who—who almost helped to kill him?" she cried with anguish. "Oh, I hate, hate,hateyou, and I always will. Oh, Guy, Guy, do they think I'd forget so soon, and be friends with your murderers? I'd kill myself sooner!"
Sobbing vehemently, she fled into the house.
When Denis got home, he found a belated letter from Lettice, which should have been delivered that morning, but had been carried on by mistake to the next farm. It had come, said Miss Simpson, just after he started; the boy must actually have passed him in the drive.
We took no tearful leaving,'Twas time and time to go;Behind lay dock and Dartmoor,Ahead lay Callao!The Broken Men.
We took no tearful leaving,'Twas time and time to go;Behind lay dock and Dartmoor,Ahead lay Callao!The Broken Men.
We took no tearful leaving,'Twas time and time to go;Behind lay dock and Dartmoor,Ahead lay Callao!The Broken Men.
We took no tearful leaving,
'Twas time and time to go;
Behind lay dock and Dartmoor,
Ahead lay Callao!
The Broken Men.
The hamlet of Woodlands is near Wrotham, in the county of Kent. To reach it you must take the old Chatham and Dover at Victoria and get out at Otford, a sweet-scented village sitting at ease in the wide vale of the Darenth. Leaving that behind, you will turn eastwards by the Pilgrims' Way, which winds along the lower spurs of the Downs, above Kemsing, Ightham, St. Clere, on its way to Canterbury. That too you leave in half-a-mile, and strike into the hills on your left, up a perpendicular lane where the contour lines on the ordnance map jostle each other, four, five, six, seven hundred feet in the width of as many yards, the woods climbing with you, arching your road in a green tunnel. They thin, they dispart, and you are on the summit of the Downs; great rolling fluted hills covered with thymy turf, knots of gorse, noble trees standing singly with a scattering of bracken in their shade, innumerable rabbits tossing up their little white scuts as they bolt into their burrows. Very steep and graceful in their lines, these Kentish hills; very beautiful the green floor of the valley outspread below, the wooded height of River Hill, the hare-bell blue of distant chains, rising half transparent against the sky..
On you go, turning your back on all this, over the ridge, into the heart of the Downs. Your lane twists, dropping into nameless green dells, rising over nameless green knolls, between woods that slope a dozen ways at once, andhedgerows which "the primroses run down to, carrying gold"—even in October. Next you pass a farm, with its warm-scented yellow ricks, its black barns, mossy-thatched, its garden full of milk-white phlox, magenta chrysanthemums, black and yellow sun-flowers, tan and purple snapdragons. You wheel round a corner, you descend another break-neck lane all grass and flints, and here in a green nest among the hills, which rise steep all round, here you will find your journey's end—the hamlet of Woodlands. Half-a-dozen old cottages, a minute school-house, a minute church, and the vicarage.
Gardiner's birthplace was a square white house with a red roof, green jalousies, and bay windows on either side of a pillared porch. In front, a square of lawn was guarded from the road by a laurel hedge, and bisected by a gravel walk leading to the door. Picture the place in October. Those white walls are hidden, partly by Gloire de Dijon roses, still thick with yellow buds and creamy blossoms, for it is warm in this nest among the hills; and partly by creepers, cardinal, carmine, red-rose, fringing out in trails of daffodil green. The borders are full of flowers, roses and chrysanthemums blooming together, yellow and brown nasturtiums among their thin round emerald leaves, Michaelmas daisies, a bank of lilac against the laurels. The woods are full-leaved still and autumn-glorious; there is russet of oaks, orange of hawthorns, lemon-yellow of maples, and here and there, like black-cowled monks at a pageant, the scattered yews which always haunt the line of the Pilgrims' Way. Woods, woods, and woods all round, rising like a golden cup, save only to the north. Here a valley opens, and the unfenced, unmetalled road winds away, between hills of thin grayish-green turf, white-scarred with chalk and dotted with sheep, towards Maplescombe, Farningham, and civilization, represented by the unpleasant town of Dartford.
Two young men were pacing the vicarage lawn. One was slight, short, dark, un-English: Harry Gardiner. The other was tall, broad-shouldered, serious, ultra-correct: his brotherTom, of the Royal Engineers. Tom, though three years the younger, was in the case of the elder brother of the parable, who really had his grievance. He had always been an exemplary son, steady, dutiful, even clever; yet Mr. Gardiner freely proclaimed his preference for the vagabond and runaway. Moreover, though he had worked hard all his life, Tom made barely enough by his profession to keep himself. Harry, the rolling stone, had but to open his hand for the gifts of Fortune to tumble into it, and was able to make his father a comfortable allowance. He was lucky; Tom was not. Tom felt sometimes a little sore; but he acknowledged ruefully that it was nobody's fault, and couldn't be helped. There was a child-like vigor and directness about Mr. Gardiner's feelings which made them wholly insuppressible, and though he was often egregiously unfair, neither of his sons dreamed of resenting it.
"Well, I'm glad you wired for me, false alarm or no. I'd ten times rather you sometimes brought me over when it's not necessary than think you mightn't do it when it was. A wonderful old boy, he really is—but I wish he wouldn't play the divvle with his constitution quite so freely!"
This was Harry, light, quick, decisive. Tom's voice was slower and deeper.
"He let out to-day that the attack came on after he'd been rolling the lawn all the morning."
"No, did he? What a cunning old sinner it is! I must say it's a comfort to me to know that you're so close at hand at Chatham, Tom. By the way, when do you expect to get your step?"
"Not for a couple of years yet," said Tom, with a sigh. "Promotion in the Sappers is so beastly slow!"
Gardiner shot a keen glance at him.
"And you won't marry till you do get it?"
"Can't afford to, unless I'm sent to India," Tom ruefully acknowledged.
"Borrow off me, and settle things up at once."
"Many thanks, but I should never be able to pay you back."
"Don't, then. I'm laying up treasure on earth, which the Prayer Book says I mustn't. There's a couple of hundred lying idle at my bank which you're entirely welcome to, and which would just tide you over the next two years. You ought to be a family man, Thomas, you were cut out for it. Besides, Miss Woodward will get sick of waiting."
Tom continued to shake his obstinate head. "It's very good of you, but I'd rather not do that," he said with some constraint. "You'll want to marry yourself some day."
Gardiner looked at him again, with a faint, faint light of amusement. He could never bring himself to take Tom quite seriously. How annoying that was, to Tom! and how little Gardiner meant to annoy!
"When I find myself in danger of matrimony, maybe I'll start saving," he said lightly. "I suppose it's no use pressing you? No? Well, of course I'd take it myself, if I were in your shoes, but then I haven't your fine sturdy independence, Thomas—also I'm older than you are, and a little less positive about the lines of right and wrong. There are times when you remind me of Denis Merion-Smith, do you know? By the by, I must run down and see him before I go back. Yes, and if I pass through town I can also see—"
His voice trailed off into a meditative whistle, and a spark lighted in his eye.
"Who?" asked Tom with curiosity.
"A young lady friend of mine, who's invited me to call on her. There's a plum for you, Thomas; make the most of it. Hullo, here's daddy."
Mr. Gardiner appeared in the porch, a small wiry figure with a spud in his hand and a Scotch plaid trailing from one shoulder. The top of his head was bald as ivory, but he carefully trained across it certain gray locks which, when he went out without a hat (as he did more often than not), ruffled up on end like a crest. He was making towards the flower-bed when his son came and took the tool away.
"No, daddy, that I really can't allow," he declared, folding the plaid round the little figure. It was rather like trying to wrap up a flea, for Mr. Gardiner made a dive in themiddle to uproot a daisy. "You must remember you're an invalid. You sit on the seat and superintend. Vamos, hombre—that's better. Now, what do you want done?"
"The whole place is in a disgraceful state," said the invalid rebelliously. "Disgraceful. It wants digging over from end to end. Look at the lawn! That's a dandelion, I declare!"
He made another dart, again frustrated by his laughing son. "Here, you come and sit on him, Tom, while I mow the lawn!" Tom rather reluctantly sat down and kept his father anchored by the arm, while Gardiner plied the spud with more energy than skill, earning nothing but abuse from the ungrateful invalid.
"You young folk think you can do everything!" he said irately. "I know you! You'll be getting up into my pulpit next. I'll preach next Sunday, no matter what you say, on the dangers of conceit. Nice incapable pair of sons I have!"
The sun shone, the doves purred in the lime-trees, and Mr. Gardiner scolded his sons with all his energetic soul because they wouldn't let him dig over the asparagus beds. He had prolonged his life to this his sixty-ninth year on cod-liver oil, and was now recovering from an attack of hemorrhage. He had had three in the past four years, but he could never be persuaded to take any precautions. He kept his sons in perpetual anxiety, tempered, at least for Gardiner, by faith in his luck. He had deserved to die a dozen times, but he never had; and Gardiner found it hard to believe he ever would.
You cannot know a man thoroughly till you have seen him in his home. He may be more truly himself away from it; but his relations with his family always contribute something to the sum of his character. Woodlands was Harry Gardiner's home; those woods had been the background and the vicarage the foreground of his childhood. The income of the living was one hundred and seventy pounds, and Mrs. Gardiner had besides sixty pounds a year of her own. After deducting life assurance, expense of collection andrates (which the unhappy parson whose stipend comes from tithe pays on the whole of his income, as well as on the ratable value of his house), there was left about one hundred and forty pounds to live on. That, for four persons, is poverty: not want, but wholesome, bracing poverty. Many a time had Gardiner blessed his early training to endure hardness. He blessed also the memory of his big, breezy, soft-hearted, hot-tempered, quick-witted mother. Two pictures rose in his mind whenever Gardiner thought of her. In one she was chopping suet withLa Hermana San Sulpiciopropped on the kitchen scales before her nose; in the other she was boxing the ears of a choir-boy who sang flat. She was half Spanish, and had been brought up as a Roman Catholic; but she 'verted so completely that she was able to remain a High Churchwoman, and to enjoy hearing Mass from time to time. She died during Harry's first voyage, of measles, caught in Sunday school.
Gardiner lounged on the seat, his labors ended, with an affectionate arm thrown round his father's shoulders. Presently the postman came in sight, and Tom went to take the letters, which were delivered at Woodlands only once a day. There was a moneylender's circular for the vicar, a love letter for himself and a whole sheaf for Harry, sent on from Rochehaut, which he had left at a moment's notice, in answer to Tom's telegram. Tom, absorbed in his charming May, Mr. Gardiner, inveighing against the slackness of the Government, failed to notice, either of them, the startling change in Harry's face as he examined his share of the post.
"Daddy, I'm sorry to say I've got to go."
He was already on his feet, crushing the letter in his hand. Mr. Gardiner looked up.
"Go? You can't go, it's just dinner-time. I never knew anybody so restless as you two boys; you can't be still a moment!" This was indeed Satan rebuking sin. "Where do you want to go to?"
"Can't say. Callao, for choice."
"What?"
"Callao?" echoed Tom, at the same moment. "Why, I thought you were due back at Rochehaut on Saturday!"
"So I am, but I shall have to cut it. Look here, daddy, I'm really most frightfully sorry." He dropped down again beside his father and threw an arm round his neck. "You mustn't worry your dear old head about it, because it's not worth that; but the truth is I've got myself into rather a scrape. I'm wanted by the police, if you please! Silly business, isn't it? Of course it'll all blow over, but in the meantime I have to clear out. I don't want to be had up. There's a train to town at two-thirty, which I shall just catch if I put a sprint on. What, Tom? Oh, it's Merion-Smith who writes me. His letter's been out to Rochehaut, and they kept it there till they heard from me telling them to forward things. That's why I'm in such a divvle of a hurry."
"But, Harry, Harry," cried the old man, clinging to him with the tenacity of age and love, "what is it about? And is it true? Have you done anything? Are you to blame?"
"No, daddy, I'm not." The answer came unhesitatingly. He stooped and kissed his father. "Don't you worry about that. I've done nothing to be ashamed of, I give you my word. I'll write and tell you all about it, and the reason why I can't stay, but I haven't time now. See after him, Tom!"
The son who wasn't wanted tried vainly to console the old man for the loss of the son who was. Mr. Gardiner would have pursued Harry to his room with questions if the nurse had not come out to take him in charge; failing that, he sent Tom to knock at the door. A preoccupied voice told him to come in, and there was Gardiner on his knees, cramming clothes into a suit-case—a contrast, this, to his usual methodical habits.
"I've written a check payable to you for the amount of my balance at the bank," he said without looking up; "it's there on the table. Better cash it at once, and then you canlet father have his money as usual. I may want some myself later on, when I can let you have an address. By the way, have you any ready money on you?"
"Only loose silver."
"Oh, dash!—I'm run short too, and I know daddy hasn't any in the house. Well, I must raise the wind in town somehow. It's an infernal nuisance about the delay of that letter. Nearly ten days since Denis wrote!"
"But look here," said Tom, getting out the question that was burning his tongue, "what's it all about? What are you accused of?"
"Murder; so now you know."
"Good God!"
Gardiner only laughed, and went on with his packing. Tom, after a moment's appalled silence, found words.
"Then in heaven's name, Harry, if you're innocent, why do you bolt? You're giving your case away. You'll never be able to show your face in England again—why, good heavens! it means that father will never see you again! It'll break his heart. Why on earth don't you stay and face it out?"
"Because I did it, my good chap." Gardiner faced his brother for the first time, sitting back on his heels. "Mind you, what I said to father was strictly true. I've done nothing to be ashamed of; nothing I wouldn't do again to-morrow—or you either, you pillar of respectability! If I were at liberty to explain all the circumstances I certainly wouldn't bolt. But I'm not; and there's the rub. Why?—oh, it's a complicated business; there are other people involved. That's why I'm departing in such a hurry. Cheer up, Thomas; it's less scandalous to have a brother in Callao than one dangling at the end of a string in Westby Jail. Better for father too. I can at least write to him."
Tom did not answer. Homicide is homicide, no matter what specious excuses Harry might manufacture; and after hearing his gloss on his downright denial to his father, Tom was not disposed to trust his assertions of innocence.
The room was in the front of the house, giving on the
garden and the road. Tom's eyes became riveted to some object outside.
"There's the Wrotham bobby at the gate, with another man."
"What?"
Gardiner sprang to the window, and then fell back out of sight behind the curtain. "Yes; they're after me. Wired out to Rochehaut, I suppose, and wired back. Keep them off daddy, and stick out to him that I'm innocent. Keep them off me too, if you can, and give me a start. Say I've gone to town. I'll write when I can."
Tom clattered down the stairs behind his lighter-footed brother. At the bottom the passage ran right and left, to front and back. Gardiner turned to the left, but was stopped by a grip on his shoulder. The ties of brotherhood held in the face of danger. Tom was holding out his hand.
"Good-by, Harry—God bless you."
"Good-by, old Tom."
They parted: Tom to the front, to tackle the police; Gardiner to the back,en routefor South America.
Lead such temptations by the head and hair,Reluctant dragons, up to who dares fight,That so he may do battle and have praise.The Ring and the Book.
Lead such temptations by the head and hair,Reluctant dragons, up to who dares fight,That so he may do battle and have praise.The Ring and the Book.
Lead such temptations by the head and hair,Reluctant dragons, up to who dares fight,That so he may do battle and have praise.The Ring and the Book.
Lead such temptations by the head and hair,
Reluctant dragons, up to who dares fight,
That so he may do battle and have praise.
The Ring and the Book.
Gardiner was just one second too late. As he reached the back door the police arrived at the front; and they saw him. The Wrotham man, who had known him as a wicked small boy, raised a sort of view-hallo and dashed into the hall in pursuit. But Tom's broad figure was in the way (not obstructing the police, oh dear, no, nothing further from his mind, just solidly, immovably stupid!); and while Cotterill dodged round him, Gardiner had time to slip through the back door, slam it and turn the key in his pursuer's face.
He was not one of those unready mortals who are flustered by a sudden strain. On the contrary, it braced him. He dragged Tom's bicycle out of the shed, and ran it up the kitchen garden to the gate which led into the glebe; then across the meadow, the mild cows shying and backing with lowered heads as he rushed by to a second gate, giving on the road. Nobody in sight yet, the coast still clear. He heaved his machine over the bars, vaulted them himself and rode for his life.
Woodlands stands at the end of a trident of lanes, whose left arm points towards Otford, its right towards Kingsdown, while the shank leads northwards through Farningham to Dartford. Any one would naturally conclude that a fugitive would choose this last road, which for its first four miles is utterly lonely. Gardiner turned to the right, by the lane which climbs through woods, with many a twist, to join the London road at Kingsdown. How he pedalled upthat hill! But after all, as he told himself, breathless, the gradients were the same for them as for him; and if he was hampered by a strange bicycle, Cotterill was portly.
Level ground at last, and the Portobello inn at the crossroads where the lane cuts the highway. Here the fugitive fell in with the great stream of motorists and cyclists who frequent this road for the pleasure of spinning down Wrotham Hill in one direction, Farningham Hill in the other. On the Dartford road he would have been conspicuous to every one he met; here he was a unit in the crowd. He turned towards London. Down into Farningham, over the bridge, with its magnificent horse chestnut leaning to the Darenth, a tower of gold on a field of emerald; up the opposite slope to Swanley Junction; on through the Crays to Sidcup, where the suburbs begin, shades of the prison-house; and finally, London itself.
On Vauxhall Bridge he halted, to consider his course. It was unlucky, most unlucky that Cotterill had seen him; his description would be all over the country to-morrow. The first thing was to get money. He must borrow; but from whom? Denis was at Bredon, his other male friends were in the ends of the earth. Yet he knew without hesitation where to go. It occurred to him to wonder, as he asked his way of the policeman outside Vauxhall station, what Tom would have said to the idea of borrowing from a girl.
Strange how much of an alien he felt here in London! His imagination, roving always among woods and mountains, a green thought in a green shade, fell choked among bricks and mortar; his sense of smell, keen like that of a wild creature, was offended by the fumes of motor buses, by hot whiffs from restaurants and cook-shops, by the odor of the horses and of asphalt in the sun. Above all, he hated the crowds. City-lovers, city-dwellers all of them, the seedy loafer spitting into the Thames, and the girl in magenta andblanc de perle, who threw him coquettish glances from under her lace veil. "I can do with these people for a few hours, or even for a day or two, but to live here!" he thought. And then came the inevitable corollary: "If I feel like thisnow, what would it be to be boxed up with twelve or fifteen hundred of them, day and night, for years?" He turned his back on that thought. He had to keep a steady hand to ward off panic, which lurked at his heels like a wolf.
He carried himself and his alien feelings across town, and presently arrived at 22 Canning Street. Miss Smith was out. That he had expected, and he came in to wait. The little maid preceded him up seventy-five steps to Lettice's attic. "Oh, them stairs!" she sighed, with a hand at her waist. Gardiner wondered how Lettice liked the climb. She was not so very fond of hills. But when he was left alone, and had looked out of her window far across the roofs, and seen her glimpse of the river and of the Surrey hills, he understood. It was worth it. Here, above the world, Lettice found the breathing-space which she loved as well as he. There was a pot of violets on the table; he put the blossoms aside with one finger, and buried his nose in the moss surrounding them. That was good! That was the breath of the woods; Gardiner would have given all the flower scents in the world for that wet woody fragrance.
Sitting down, he discovered that he was tired, very tired. It is deadly demoralizing to be hunted. Here for the moment he was safe; and in the blessed relief from strain he fell asleep.
Lettice came in from the Museum at six; she had her own key, and as it chanced did not meet the little maid Beatrice. Up the stairs she toiled, with her neat case of papers, came into her room, meticulously noiseless as her pleasure was, and paused by her table, pulling off her gloves, ever so slowly, before she found energy to look round. Then she saw Gardiner asleep in her chair.
It was one of Lettice's principles never to interfere with anybody if she could possibly help it. She saw no reason for waking him; she did not wake him. She set about making tea instead. A spirit stove burns noiseless; crockery deftly handled need not chink. The soft sounds of Lettice's business would not have startled a mouse. She cut bread and butter. She carried a bunch of water-cress tothe tap on the landing and washed it there. She fetched from her cupboard a shape of tongue, a glass of shrimp paste, fresh butter, strawberry jam, bananas—the usual menu of the dweller in rooms. It was not in the bond that she should lay her own meals, but she often did it to save Beatrice's tired legs. Lastly, she made the tea. As she replaced the kettle on the stove, the lid fell off; and Gardiner awoke.
He sat up and stared.
"Tea's ready," Lettice announced, with a benignant smile.
"I never heard you come in!"
"I know," said his hostess, "you werefastasleep. Come along, before the toast gets cold."
She asked no questions, she seemed to want no explanations. Blessed are the people who take things for granted! Gardiner drew up his chair, discovering suddenly that he was hungry. Lettice poured out: soft-toned, placid, soothing Lettice, supplying the needs of his body with maternal care, and sitting there opposite, delicately fresh and neat, with those misleadingly soft, derisive hazel eyes! He liked to watch the slow, accurate movements of her hands, and their funny little flutter of make-believe agitation, when she hastened to supply his request for a piece of sugar.
"I don't believe you've had any lunch," she admonished him, pouring out his third cup.
"Haven't. I came off in a hurry. I don't know that I ever tasted anything quite so good as this tongue of yours. You are a Good Samaritan, you know."
Lettice did not tell him he was eating up her Sunday dinner. She dismissed the subject with her little French shrug.
"And how's Mr. Gardiner?"
"Going strong. I say, would you very much mind if I had a pipe?" Lettice, who loathed tobacco, shook her head. "Sure? You really have all the virtues. By the way, can you lend me some money?"
If that did not startle her, nothing would! It did not startle her. She looked pensive for a moment, then asked: "How much do you want?"
"How much have you?"
"Nine sovereigns, and the change out of another."
"Could you possibly let me have the nine sovereigns?"
Lettice nodded. Getting up without more ado, she unlocked her desk, strung out the sovereigns in a row upon the white cloth beside him, and returned to her seat.
"Well, I'm hanged!" said Gardiner. "Don't you even want to know what I want it for?"
She shook her head as usual, then added a polite but perfunctory "Yes, of course I'm very much interested."
"I want it because the police are after me."
At that she looked up.
"Yes, the old affair at Grasmere. You weren't in time with that letter to Denis. Mrs. Trent's been at Dent-de-lion for the last six weeks—ever since she left Rochehaut; and she's managed to worm the truth out of Denis. What? Oh yes, the truth; I forgot you didn't know. I did knock Trent down. Of course he was simply asking for it; but the fact remains that technically I'm guilty of manslaughter—murder, Mrs. Trent calls it. Does that give you the horrors?"
"No," said Lettice.
Gardiner's eye lit up. "Ah! it did to Tom. It does to Denis, though he'd rather die than own it. But I had a sort of feeling that you wouldn't take it like that.... You know, it gave me the deuce of a twinge when Tom turned chilly!"
Lettice nodded, accepting that unlikely confidence as a matter of course. She reverted to his former speech.
"Did you say she got it out of Denis?"
"She did. How, I don't know. He doesn't say: doesn't say much, in fact. But she knows that if he's put into the witness-box he can't deny it. You know, she played—well, you might fairly call it a shabby trick on me; and I never blamed her. I'm fair game. But Denis is quite another pair of shoes. I don't know how I'm going to forgive her for meddling with him. You see his letter."
Lettice read the few stiff phrases in which Denis ownedthat he had let his friend's secret escape. He said little about Dorothea, not a word about himself.
"I call that one of the most pathetic things I've ever read," said Gardiner, with far more feeling than he had shown for his own misfortune. "I'd have owned up voluntarily, I swear I would, sooner than have this happen. It doesn't do to play tricks of this sort on a fellow like Denis. They cut too deep. It's like ill-treating a child. Oh, it was a beastly thing to do!"
"It was a damnable thing to do."
Strong words, to suit strong feelings. Lettice's soft lips were grim. Gardiner was disposed to feel sorry for Dorothea. But there was nothing to be done, nothing; Lettice laid by her wrath in silence and brought back her mind to Gardiner's case.
"What are you going to do, then?"
"I? Oh, I'm off. Didn't I tell you the police are after me?"
"The police?"
"Chasing me out of Woodlands on bikes. You see this letter of Denis's, which was evidently written post-haste after Mrs. Trent got the truth out of him, is dated Tuesday, the eighth; which was the very day I got Tom's wire calling me home. It must have gone out to Rochehaut and lain there nearly a week, till I wrote for my mail to be forwarded. In the meantime I presume Mrs. Trent took her tale to the police. She can be quite temperate and convincing when she likes; besides, she has an uncle in the Home Office, Sir Thomas Felton, who's no end of a swell—I heard that quite by accident the other day—and he no doubt pulled some wires. The magistrates would grant a warrant; then I imagine a detective started for Rochehaut, found me gone, got my address in England and came straight back. At any rate, this morning, not ten minutes after I'd got Denis's bomb-shell, a couple of bobbies turned up at the vicarage to arrest me. I evaded out of the back door as they came in at the front, and got away on Tom's bike. They don't know I'm riding, so I hope they'll waste time lookingfor a pedestrian. I'll stay here till it's dark if you'll put up with me, bike on to Southampton to-night and work my way out to South America. I'm no amateur, you see—I've done it before."
Lettice's face did not usually express her feelings, but as Gardiner proceeded with his tale, it woke up. She said:
"Then do you mean to say you're running away?"
"Claro.What else would you have me do?"
"You might stay and face it."
He shook his head. "Not good enough. I did knock him down, and he did die. I should pretty certainly be convicted of manslaughter, and might get quite a stiff sentence."
"Not if you explained the provocation."
"I think so, even then." Gardiner could not tell her, as he had told Tom, that on the vital point his tongue was sealed. She knew too much. He temporized. "You see, it was the wrong sort of provocation. All I could say would be that he was telling stories that weren't very pretty, and you'd never get a British jury to sympathize with a fancy scruple of that sort. Besides, I've damaged my own case by not owning up at once. That would tell against me very heavily—very heavily indeed. No, I'm afraid there's nothing for it but to clear out."
Lettice said nothing, but her face continued to express complete and solid disagreement. She rose to clear the table. Gardiner, who had his chair tilted back and his fork balancing on one finger, after one glance at her, proceeded to develop his argument.
"It would, as I say, mean prison; and prison is precisely the one thing I'm not prepared to stand. It's not the hardships—they're luxury compared to what I've put up with in my time—it's the confinement, the restraint, the—the utter beastliness of never being able to get away from somebody's eyes! I assure you it gives me the blue divvles even to think of. I am convinced it would drive me off my head. I should gomust, and brain a warder—no, I think it would be the doctor for choice: I met him once, he was asympathetic little brute as ever stepped. I'd far rather be hanged out of hand."
Lettice, still mute, took away his fork. Gardiner perseveringly glanced up into her small pale face for a change of opinion. The more she disapproved, the more he wanted to win her over to his own way of thinking. He was growing quite absurdly anxious to propitiate this exacting critic.
"Don't you think, in view of all the circumstances—the feelings of my family, the unpleasant scandal, and my own state of blue funk—don't you think the best thing I can do is to clear out?"
Lettice had to speak now, and she spoke.
"If you're afraid of a thing, I should think you'd want to face it and prove to yourself that you aren't."
"Prove to myself that I'm not afraid of prison? But I am!"
"Then that's all the more reason for not running away."
Uncompromising! Lettice, who could bend her supple mind to look through the eyes of tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor or any one else even down to the thief, and could sympathize with all, could not sympathize with Gardiner: could not believe, or even pretend to believe, that cowardice might ever be more expedient for him than courage. It was not so much the immorality of running away, it was the stupidity of it: the fact that he was destroying his own future happiness, making it impossible for himself ever again to live at peace with his own soul. All very well for weaklings to be weak; but Gardiner—she couldn't understand how he could think twice about it! Her dissent was so acute that it made itself felt through all her reticences and evasions. Gardiner stared, his own eyes opening to see his future as she saw it; but he shut them again at once, and willfully turned away.
"Oh, that's idealism," he said, with a short laugh, "and this is a world of compromise. I can't get so high as you. If I'm afraid of a thing, I want quite simply to run away. Talking of which, I'd better be off; it's dark enough now."
He went to the window, and came back. Lettice was sweeping up the crumbs; she moved the nine sovereigns out of her way. Gardiner picked them up and let them slip one by one into his pocket.
"You aren't going to reclaim your loan, then, and force me to face my bogy?"
She shook her head, twice, slowly. Gardiner had singed himself once already at the fire, yet he returned again, fluttering round the dangerous subject. He would have given anything to drag some sort of approval, or even condonation, out of Lettice. It seemed to him that she must be persuaded, if he could only put his case convincingly enough.
"Of course it's just on the cards that I might be hanged for murder, you know," he pointed out—not believing it, but for the sake of argument. "Come now; won't you at least admit for my father's sake it's better not to take that risk?"
Lettice lifted herself, straightening her shoulders. Tray in hand, brush in the other, a domesticated sibyl, she faced him and delivered her final judgment.
"I should think Mr. Gardiner would rather have youhangedthan running away!"