when men shall say, peace, and all things are safe, then shall sudden destruction come upon them, as sorrow cometh upon a woman travailing with child, and they shall not escape.
at the entrance of a green valley, where the easedale beck came down from easedale tarn, scattering its silver tresses loose over the rocks at sour milk gill, and hurrying to join the rotha at goody bridge, stood a wayside hostelry: a spruce gray villa, overflowing with flowers under white and green sun-blinds and a glass piazza. not by any means a grand place, but attractive; the hesitating traveler might guess that the comforts inside would answer to the trimness outside, nor would he be wrong. within its limits, the easedale hotel was that rarity, a thoroughly well-run english inn.
the proprietor of the place and only begetter of its prosperity was reposing on the veranda in an easy attitude, with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the grasmere road. spidering, he called it; which meant that he was looking out for possible guests. he liked to make a play of his work. harry gardiner, the son of a country parson, was a slight young man of middle height, and very brown—olive-brown, sun-brown. he did not look wholly english; a quarter part of spanish blood ran in his veins. he had dark eyes and a small head, small hands and wiry muscles, small features and a thin mouth. he was quick in all he thought and said and did, shrewd at a bargain, fond of[pg 2] money, but fonder still of liberty. after being pitchforked by circumstances into his odd trade, he had stuck to it for love and made it pay; he had already progressed from a humble fonda in the canaries to a boarding-house in sydney, and from the boarding-house to the easedale hotel. but he was a rolling stone, and would never stay long enough in any one place to reap the full fruit of his toil.
he turned at the sound of a step behind him, and his eyes laughed.
"hullo, denis! got into all your glad rags? you'll scare my people—they aren't used to such visions."
"you'd not have me sit down to dinner without washin' my hands, would you?" inquired the new-comer in a voice which his best efforts could never rid of a trace of soft irish brogue. he was wearing ordinary evening clothes, not very new, but in some subtle way he did contrive to give the impression of being point device in every detail. denis merion-smith was partner in an aeroplane firm; but he had once been in the royal engineers, and though it was years since he had resigned his commission, he still carried his handsome nose in the air and looked down on inferior mortals through a single eyeglass.
gardiner laughed. "why not? my crowd mostly do. but we're going up in the social scale. i began with travelers, i went on to artists, i've attained the church, and i live in hopes of even rising to the army some day. you didn't happen to look into the dining-room on your way down?"
"i did not."
"i wasn't suggesting that you were nosing out the dinner," gardiner explained. "i thought you might have noticed the flowers. they're rather special. i did 'em myself. that's the way to work it. ginger up the servants all round, and add flowers to choice. sweet-peas i recommend for the table, blue lobelia and pink geranium for window-boxes. the english tourist can't resist window-boxes. i could write the innkeeper's vademecun. it's a great game."
"i can't think how you do it!" said denis in disgust.[pg 3] "i can't think how you ever took it on! kotowing to all these beastly people and licking their boots—"
"no, no. the boy does that—spits on them, anyhow. we can't all be in the sappers, denis." denis snorted. "my trade suits me all right, though it wouldn't you," said gardiner more seriously. "i like it, you know. i like taking over a disreputable pigsty of a place like this was, and turning it out in a couple of years blooming like the rose. this easedale's quite a decent little pub now. i shall be half sorry to leave it."
denis paused, with a lighted match in his hand. "you're never thinking of givin' it up?"
"i've already done so."
"you've given up the easedale?"
"así es, se?or. the place is sold, and i clear out in october."
"well!" said denis, after a vain struggle with the householder's distrust of the nomad, "you know your own business, i suppose; but i should have thought this was good enough for you. are you never goin' to settle down?"
"you're so beastly impatient!" said gardiner, with a laugh. he waited to light a cigarette, cherishing it between his palms, and then jerking the match with a quick gesture across the road. "i've been searching for my ideal; you wouldn't have me hurry over that, would you? i've tried the canaries, and i've tried austrylier, and i've tried england, and they're all vanity and vexation of spirit. but i think i've got the real thing at last."
"where?"
"on the semois. you never heard of it? quite. nobody has. the semois is a river, a ravishing river who ties herself into complicated knots round forest-covered mountains. on the map she looks like a bedivvled corkscrew. i don't know where the charm lies—i've seen fifty places more conventionally beautiful, but i tell you, denis, i've got that river in my bones! figure to yourself a young mountain, with the river plumb before it, in a gorge. you look[pg 4] down into that gorge, and beyond it over the tops of hills and hills and hills, range behind range, getting bluer, and dimmer, and blurrier, till they're a mere wash of cobalt against the sky—"
"hills—!" said denis. "i've asked you: where is this place?"
"the ardennes. belgian luxemburg. close to the french frontier and twenty miles from sedan."
"well, i suppose you know your own business best," said denis for the second time—it was plain he supposed nothing of the kind—"but i'd not settle there if you paid me."
"why on earth not? oh ah, of course! the german menace, isn't it? well, if they come, i shall suffer with my adopted country, that's all."
"if you'd spent a year in germany, as i have, and seen what i did, you'd not laugh," said denis, patiently and obstinately. the german danger was one of his hobbies. it was surprising that, with so many hoary prejudices, he should ever have taken up with a new-fangled science like aeronautics; but who is consistent?
"i'm not laughing, my dear chap. you know more about it than i do, and if you say it's on the cards i believe you. but they're not coming to-day, are they? and ma?ana es otro día. meanwhile i go ahead with my bellevue (that's to be the name of it: beautifully banal, what?) and trust to luck. it hasn't served me badly so far. besides, i don't stand to lose much. i like money all right, but i'm not a slave to that or anything else. if i lose every penny to-morrow i shouldn't put myself about—except for daddy's sake; and after all he's not actually dependent on me, i only supply the amenities. yes; bar accidents, i can pretty well defy fate."
he stretched himself complacently, as if rejoicing in his freedom. denis preserved silence.
"i suppose you wouldn't say a thing like that?" asked gardiner, looking at him curiously.
"i would not."
[pg 5]
"irishman!"
"i hate boastin'," said denis shortly.
"i thought you believed in an overruling providence, which orders everything for us from the cradle to the grave?"
"it's not incompatible. and i wish you'd settle down," said denis, who was a person of few and simple ideas.
"well, if you're good perhaps i will."
"but not in belgium, harry! belgium's such a rotten hole. and the people are half dagoes. why can't you be content with england?"
gardiner laughed. "because i ain't english, old son—nor irish neither. i'm a bit of a dago myself, for that matter. b' the powers, here's a car coming! you sit tight now, and see me do the fascinating landlord."
the car, an expensive touring model, drew up at the gate. the driver was a big man with dark gray eyes, regular features and a dark mustache. it was a handsome head, but not wholly pleasant; in the accepted phrase, he had evidently lived hard. denis with unerring fastidiousness put him down as a bounder. beside him sat a lady, muffled up in a long dust-cloak and a veil, and there was a maid behind.
"how far on is it to keswick?" asked the driver, leaning out to address gardiner with careless incivility.
"nine miles."
"nine, eh? are you the proprietor of this place?" he looked the young man up and down with cursory interest. "well, we may want rooms for the night. can you do us?"
"the house is rather full, but i can show you what i have."
"what do you say, dot? we can't get on to keswick to-night on this confounded tire. might as well stop, do you think? of course it's a wretched little hole, but we haven't much choice." the aside was wholly audible both to gardiner and to denis.
"i don't care, provided it's clean," said the girl. her[pg 6] features were invisible behind her veil, but the voice sounded young.
"what? oh yes, i should say it's fairly clean. yes, we'll stay," he added, turning to the owner of the fairly clean hotel. "no, never mind the rooms, we'll have dinner at once. here, and send some one round to see after my car, will you? that tire's punctured."
"very good, sir," said gardiner, standing aside for the lady to pass in. her husband followed, and they were lost to view. denis remained fuming on the veranda. it was one thing to put on airs himself, another to see them on somebody else. besides, denis was always scrupulously courteous to inferiors; he considered it bad form to hit a man who was debarred from hitting back. he hoped the new-comers would not stay; but time passed, and nobody appeared except a man to take the rolls-royce to the garage; and presently the gong sounded, and denis went in.
at the back of the hotel two wings jutted out from the main block, forming three sides of a quadrangle; and in the right wing, just at the corner, gardiner had his den. it looked, of course, directly across the garden into the windows opposite, but the house did not shut out all the view. sitting sideways, one could see the broad green vale running westwards and narrowing swiftly to a gorge, down which the stream tumbled, white as milk. dark gray the hills were, slate-gray, almost purple, with emerald verdure worn thin in places and showing the naked rock—helm crag, seat sandal, dollywagon pike, st. sunday crag, silver how, what names of romance! a sweet and pleasant scene, in this summer twilight; mists upstealing along the brook, and a half-transparent moon sharpening into silver as she sank into the lemon-colored west. when the sounds of the house for a moment lulled, one could hear the murmur of the cascade which seemed to hang motionless against the rock, flattened out like a skein of white wool.
the room was small, it had a big window in the left wall, a fireplace opposite, and a table between, on which stood a packing-case in a litter of straw. gardiner had[pg 7] been opening a case of whisky for denis, who liked to fancy himself a connoisseur.
"do you trot round after everybiddy as you did with those people to-night?" he asked gloomily. dinner had passed since the scene on the terrace, but it had not buried his resentment.
"not as a rule i don't. miss marvin, my housekeeper, who's a real treasure, she's supposed to see to visitors. but i do it when i want to. is it the trents rankling still? i rather enjoyed them."
"is his name trent?"
"his name is trent. major trent, d.s.o., and wife, of thurlow park, surrey; he inscribed it in the visitors' book. that's him you hear overhead; they dined upstairs. i've had to put them in the old part of the house, every other corner is full. i don't know what'll happen when he sees his bedroom."
"a line regiment, of course," said denis, gloomily scornful. "no decent corps would stand him. i wish you'd kick him out."
"that, my young friend, is not the spirit in which one runs a successful hotel. do you know he's paying me upwards of three guineas a day? besides, he didn't mean to be rude, he was simply talking over my head. what am i to him? the landlord of a third-rate inn. i'd give myself airs too if i had a place in surrey and a 1912 rolls-royce."
"insufferable bounder!" said denis. gardiner laughed.
"no, no; that he's not. rather a fine head—a good man gone wrong. oddly enough, i believe tom knew him in india. if it's the same man, he got his d.s.o. in south africa, a very gallant piece of work, and then had to send in his papers because of some row about a woman—a subaltern's wife, to make things pleasant all round. tom rather liked him, bar his little weakness for the sex. but he must have come into money since—through his wife, i wouldn't mind betting, and that's why he's so civil to her. for he's the sort who's usually more civil to other people's wives."
[pg 8]
"i can't think how you can bring yourself to speak to him!" said denis. he was one of those who find it hard to understand how others can act differently from themselves. gardiner laughed more than ever.
"we can't all be idealists, my good denis. i've my bread and butter to earn. i had all my fine feelings knocked out of me long ago. yes, miss marvin, what is it?"
miss marvin, a comely, capable woman of forty, seemed a little flustered.
"i'm sorry to disturb you, sir, but it's the gentleman in no. 18. he's been at me about his room, and i think"—her voice dropped—"i think he isn't quite himself. if you wouldn't mind speaking to him—"
"what the devil do you mean by putting me to sleep in a hay-loft?"
miss marvin jumped, for the gentleman from no. 18 had followed uninvited and was talking over her shoulder. he stretched an arm across the door to bar her escape. "no, you don't. i don't know which of you two is responsible here, but i am going to have an answer out of somebody. i pay a decent price, i expect a decent room, and you put me in a garret that stinks like a rabbit hutch, and nearly brains me if i walk across the floor! why, i wouldn't put a nigger to sleep in such a hole! what do you mean by it, i want to know?"
"one moment," said gardiner. "miss marvin, may i trouble you for that register? thanks. here we are. i had to give you no. 18 because it was absolutely the last unoccupied room in the house. if you look, you can see for yourself that i'm speaking the truth."
a little checked, trent bent his handsome head over the page. he was not drunk; but he had been drinking. gardiner, sitting by the window on the far side of the table, leaned across, pointing out the entries with a small, brown, well-kept forefinger.
"these are my best rooms. they're occupied now by a leeds fishmonger, but i can't very well turn him out for that. if i'd known you were coming—but as it was i[pg 9] simply had to put you where i could. there's not a corner anywhere else."
"the place stinks," said trent.
"of apples. my predecessor used to store them there."
"well, you should have warned me, then."
"i did," said gardiner. "if you remember, i told you i was full, and wanted to show you the rooms, and you declined."
"that's right enough," said trent. he swept up his thick, dark lashes and looked steadily at gardiner, summing him up. traveling on, his eyes met and fixed on a photograph that hung on the wall. "hullo, i know that face," he said in a totally different tone, getting up and going towards it.
"my brother," said gardiner.
"your brother? tom gardiner of the sappers is your brother? why the deuce couldn't you say so before? here, my good woman—" he held out half-a-crown to miss marvin, who nearly dropped it in her indignation, and was only restrained by an imperative sign from gardiner which sent her out of the room. "mhow: yes, i was actually with him when this was taken," trent continued, with the frame in his hand. "i used to see a lot of him in those days. nice youngster; only a mania for church-goin', and couldn't or wouldn't play bridge. and so you're his brother! what on earth do you want to keep a pot-house for?"
"it's a way of earning your living, like another."
"leads to misunderstandings, though. didn't he ever mention me?"
"yes; but i couldn't be sure you were the same man."
"well, i wouldn't say i am; times have changed since then," said trent. he replaced the frame and established himself on the rug, squaring his broad shoulders against the mantelpiece, apparently settling down for a comfortable gossip. "i was a bit of a fire-eater in those days. i remember one time we were out riding—"
the tale he told was one of those which modest men leave[pg 10] their friends to tell for them. it seemed to concern him no more than a casual newspaper paragraph about a casual stranger. "i couldn't do that now, you know," was his comment. he had quite forgotten his anger; indeed, he seemed to have worn out all power of sustained feeling, to be without shame as without vanity. he rambled on from story to story; presently he was pouring into their ears the tale of the scandal that had led to his retirement. out it all came, in a curious mixture of indifference and maudlin self-pity. "that was the end of me," he said, staring at gardiner with hazy, apathetic eyes. "i wasn't a bad sort of feller before—did one or two things a man might be proud of; but it was all up when i had to leave the old regiment. and just for the sake of a little devil who didn't care a rap about me—not a rap, i swear she didn't! yes! it's the women who've been my ruin."
it was a melancholy exhibition. one might gather that he still presented a decent front to the world; whisky had loosened his tongue to-night, making him a traitor to himself, but he did not habitually drink. he said so, with unblushing candor. "it wasn't wine with me, you know; that was never my vice." he was, as gardiner said, a good man gone wrong; but he had gone very far wrong. there was something cruel in the way the young man led him on to expose himself. charity would have covered his sins, but cynicism drew them all out to look at. denis's instincts were more healthy.
"why don't you kick him out?" he said in an angry whisper.
"i'm not done with him yet. he amuses me."
"he makes me sick. it's beastly, harry! you've no business to do it!"
"think not? now, he strikes me as fair game," said gardiner, contemplating his guest with a complete absence of pity.
"he's drinking himself drunk on your whisky, and that girl waiting for him upstairs! if you don't think of him, you might of her!"
[pg 11]
"true. i'd forgotten his wife," said gardiner. he drew the decanter over to his side of the table and looked up, ready to break in. unluckily trent had caught the last word, and it started him off on a new tack.
"neither of you young chaps married? lucky dogs! you've the chances! i knew a little girl in chatham once—"
gardiner had kept his friend just a few minutes too long. he had now found his peculiar vein, and he grew eloquent. denis had a clean life behind him, and a clean mind; gardiner felt rather than saw him stirring in his chair, and held up a hand to keep him quiet. he himself was less fastidious, but even he did not much like what he had called up. there are things a man may say, and others he may not, and it was these last that trent said. he was morally rotten. still, gardiner did not want a row.
"funny tale, very," he said, when trent had finished with the little girl at chatham. "and now, i don't want to hurry you, but isn't it getting rather late? i'm afraid we shall be keeping mrs. trent up."
"my wife?" said trent. he had just come to the table to fill up his glass from the decanter which gardiner was keeping under his hand. looking up with a smile, he added another sentence. simultaneously, denis sprang to his feet, the blood rushing into his face, and gardiner caught up the first thing that came to his hand—the chisel that had opened the packing-case—and flung it at the speaker's head.
"get out, you filthy swine!"
it took him in the middle of his forehead, and knocked him over. he fell without an effort to save himself, flat on the whole length of his back with his head in the fender. there he lay. denis raised the lamp on high; gardiner stooped over him—and recoiled.
"good lord!" he said, "the man's dead!"
