WANTED
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, and hedgerows 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 brother Tom, 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 the middle 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 and rates (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 with _La Hermana San Sulpicio_ propped 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 can let 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 route_ for South America.