i saw a dream that made me afraid, and the thoughts of my bed and the visions of my head troubled me.—daniel.
under the canopy of stars harry gardiner lay awake thinking of his sins; among which he did not, then or later, include any responsibility for the death of trent. it was a shocking business, of course, and he was sorry, exceedingly sorry, things had turned out as they had; but it was no fault of his. you had to put a stopper on that sort of thing, in the interests of public decency. he even counted it to himself for righteousness that he had reacted so promptly and so vigorously against the flesh and the devil. "i didn't know i had it in me at this time of day to flare up like that!" he reflected ingenuously. besides—and this for gardiner settled the question and finally canonized his conduct—had not denis said that in his shoes he would have done the same? only denis wouldn't have turned coward and told lies.
gardiner was not given to introspection; he did not like himself well enough to think about himself, or stir up his own motives. in denis's company, however, he was forced to think, because the unconscious denis pointed the contrast between them at every turn. video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor. this was the more painful, because gardiner's eye was jaundiced; he saw his own vices very large, his virtues and excuses very small. he knew that the bloom had been rubbed off his sense of honor, but it did not console him in the least to reflect that the rough tumblings he had been through might very well have knocked out of him any sense of honor at all.
[pg 20]
he and denis had been together at school, from which gardiner had run or rather walked away to sea about the time when denis was going up for woolwich. gardiner went, not from any of the usual motives, but because kind friends had offered him a clerkship in one of the dartford banks. he could not refuse to take himself off his father's hands, but he would not be a clerk. so one fine morning he came to town, hung about the surrey commercial dock (not for the first time), and being a likely looking lad got taken on at a pinch on board the s.s. immerwald, bound for south america. he signed on as o.s.; but at the last moment the cook of the immerwald, coming on board very drunk, fell down the companion and had to be left behind in hospital with a broken leg; and gardiner, on the strength of some indiscreet boasts, was turned into the galley in his stead to do his worst. it must be owned that his worst was rather bad. but he was quick and handy, and by the time they reached bahia he was not cursed by the steward after every meal. in bahia he deserted. latin america had always been his goal. his mother was half spanish; he had absorbed the lovely language of castile in his cradle.
in bahia they do not talk spanish, but gardiner was not slow to pick up portuguese; and in his first shore berth, as cook in a sailors' eating-house, he added to his vocabulary a smattering of italian, dutch, and swedish. french and german he had learned at home. he was un-english in his gift for languages; un-english too in other ways, notably in his readiness to take color from his surroundings. during the next five years he generally passed for a spaniard. he wandered over the length and breadth of america, going north to los angeles, west to mollendo, south to santiago de chile: good cooks are in demand everywhere. he was a rolling stone, but he gathered moss, which he dutifully sent home to the kentish rectory where he had been born.
at twenty-two he was in the canaries, where fate, intervening, pushed him into his true vocation. an orotavan[pg 21] fondista, who had come into money and was wild to get home to seville, offered him the goodwill of his place for a song. gardiner accepted for the fun of the thing, and fell in love with his trade. inns kept by a butler or a cook are proverbially prosperous, and he had been butler and cook in one. the tres amigos flourished; gardiner's remittances home became regular and substantial. it seemed that he had found his niche at last.
he stayed in orotava three years. then, without warning, for the first time since his son left home, the rector missed his weekly letter. four months went by, and mr. gardiner nearly fretted himself into his grave. at the end of that time the correspondence was taken up again—from sydney. over his reasons for this quick change to the antipodes gardiner threw an airy veil. "i was plenty sick of the islands, i thought i'd get a move on," he wrote. mr. gardiner accepted the excuse in all good faith. tom, his younger son, a conscientious young cadet, thought it sounded rather fishy; but tom was always a little distrustful of this un-english brother of his.
the truth being that gardiner had been burning his fingers in his first love affair. it was strange, in the life he had led, that he should have kept his innocence so long. he owed that to his mother, who had done what few mothers dare—taken her courage in both hands and told him plainly what to expect. then she set the seal on her counsels by dying during his first voyage. she had been very fair, as well as very wise; her son never forgot her, and found it easier to follow her advice because her beauty and wits had trained his senses to be fastidious. but he had a passionate temperament under his superficial hardness, and, never having fribbled away his feelings in light connections, he came to pilar anguita with all the fire of unspoiled youth. in her pale tropical lily loveliness she seemed to him the incarnation of his dreams, flower of the virgin for whom she was named.
she should have been what he thought her; she belonged to the guarded class, the class that does not allow its [pg 22]daughters to set foot in the streets unattended. her father was a rich man, as riches go in tenerife, her mother had been a countess. nevertheless, this sheltered lily was pleased to run concurrent intrigues with gardiner and with an idle young sprig of nobility from madrid. gardiner, it should be said, had no thought of intrigue; his intentions were strictly honorable, and he would have been content to "pluck the turkey-hen" outside her window in humble adoration till he was in a position to ask for her hand. when he found himself launched into another course he was horrified, conscience-stricken, eager only to make amends. but pilar had no intention of getting married. she preferred to enjoy herself in her own way in her own home, with the connivance of her ama, a latter-day celestina. she ran her brace of lovers till she made the inevitable blunder, and gardiner arrived on an evening dedicated to his rival.
the scene that followed brought the house about their ears, and pilar's career found an abrupt close. she was whisked off to a convent, whence she eloped, a month later, with one of her father's grooms, who, as it then came out, had antedated both his rivals by a year or so.
gardiner did not hear the end of the story till long after. he had found it expedient to leave the islands immediately after his duel with don luis. you may call a bullet in the chest pneumonia, and so long as you do not die nobody can question your assertion. but the very dogs in the streets of orotava knew all about the duel, which was conducted on the american plan of turning both combatants loose on opposite sides of a wood, to shoot at sight. gardiner was out to kill; only luck, and a silver match-box, diverted his bullet from his rival's heart.
he went to sydney to get away from himself. it took him two years. then he came home. england, which he had seen twice only since he was sixteen, amused him at first; but he soon grew tired of it—it was too cramped, he wanted more space, fewer people. still, he could not go far; his father was getting an old man, and clung to him. a winter walking tour discovered his ideal on the semois. he[pg 23] settled his affairs at the easedale with his usual luck and expedition, and was free to start his new life—if only—
since the affair with pilar, gardiner had given women a wide berth. the burnt child dreads the fire, and besides he was mightily distrustful of his own temperament. he did not make the mistake of despising all women for the fault of one; but raptures and revenges, duels and despair did not fit into the scheme of life mapped out by his practical mind. friendships did. he had many friends. he liked middle-aged men, unlucky men, lame dogs of any kind; and his friends were without exception better men than he. a choice which showed that, given the chance, he would grow upwards and not down. and of all his friends denis stood first, partly for old time's sake, but mainly for no other reason than that of all men in the world there was none he respected more.
"dear old ass!" he said to himself, between amusement, affection, and envy, contrasting his own easy code with denis's puritan stiffness. "one of god's dandies, that's what he is, but i wouldn't have him different, no, i wouldn't, though he's putting me in the divvle of a hole with his whimsies. of course he's right, i ought to have owned up at once, it would have been far better in every way. but that unlucky speech of his gave me a loophole, and i jumped at it—i'd have jumped at anything then. i didn't exactly shine on that occasion, and he sees i didn't.... i wonder, would it be better even now to eat my own words and make a clean breast of it? upon my soul, i've half a mind to! ten to one i shall be caught out over this inquest; in fact, i don't see how i'm going to escape, unless mrs. trent is too ill to show up—and i don't desire that, be shot if i do! poor little woman."
a blank supervened. he took his pipe out of his mouth and listened. he was sleeping on the roof, a habit he had learned in orotava, and earlier in the night there had been significant sounds below. all was quiet now, however. "no, i definitely do not want her to be ill," he resumed his meditation. "i haven't sunk to that yet, no matter[pg 24] what it costs me. and what will it cost me? not hanging; denis was talking through his hat there, no jury could possibly bring it in murder. but prison? i'm not sure i wouldn't rather hang."
he stared up at the stars. walls and a roof instead of the limitless freedom of the night. day has its bounds, either a bright blue dome or a ceiling of cloud, but night is open to the infinite. you may lose yourself climbing to the pale moon, you may send out your soul for ever through space beyond the ranges of the stars. there were two men in gardiner. by day he was the prosperous practical innkeeper; by night—even he himself did not know how much he owed to those solitary nights of his, though he did know that he would have hated to have denis spread his mattress on the roof beside him. in cities gardiner was an alien; but trees, mountains, rivers were all alive for him, large calm gracious beings to whom he belonged, with whom he was at ease. loneliness and freedom were the breath of his life; and was he to exchange them for an eight-foot cell with a spy-hole in the door? "decidedly i'd rather hang," he said to himself in a crawling sweat. he faced a new idea. "i believe i funk prison."
fear. it was an unfamiliar feeling. he had never been afraid of men, not even as a boy on the immerwald when the mate had been drinking; he had kept out of the way at such times, but he had grinned indifferent. nor was he afraid of death; he had seen it too often. but this? "i've never had much opinion of men who funk things, but i believe i'd run like a hare if it was a question of prison—well, to all intents and purposes i did. pleasant. i didn't know i was a coward before. hullo! is that that poor little woman again? if she loses her kid, i shall feel like a murderer."
an idea, conceived in his mind hours before, had been growing in secret, and now came suddenly to birth as a resolution. "if she loses her kid through me, i'll hold my tongue about trent's last bit of beastliness," he said, and registered the vow. "i do owe her something, and i'll pay[pg 25] this way. it'll mean a lot to her: i believe nothing, not his death nor even the kid's, would hit her so hard as that last thing he said. probably it didn't in the least represent his normal attitude, but a woman would never see that. she'd feel as i felt when i heard pilar— no, that i'll spare her! yet it'll mean a lot to me too—great heavens, but it will! say i'm committed for trial after this inquest. if i tell the whole truth, i shall probably be acquitted. if i don't i may get—six months? a year? oh, lord! the point is that mine's such a beastly lame story without that speech; i'm throwing away my one excuse.... yet if i speak i shall make a clean sweep of all she has left, after practically robbing her of her husband and child—no, i can't and won't, sea lo que fuere, in common decency i must hold my tongue. well, anyhow, this disposes of any idea of my owning up voluntarily, as denis wants—by the way, i must give him a hint to shut his mouth too. he'll do it to spare a woman, even if it involves sacrificing me. chivalrous is denis; i suspect he'll come a bad cropper one of these days, and it'll hurt him worse than it did me, because he's finer stuff. there's the dawn—i wonder how it looks over the semois at frahan? what a jolly place the world is! and i've an impression that in a manslaughter case they won't allow bail. well, i've done enough soul-searching for the present, and i think i will now go to by-by. amanecerá dios, y medraremos."
five minutes later he was asleep under the paling stars, while the dawn came up in silver over helvellyn, this astute young man who was ready to throw away everything for a romantic scruple, and call it common decency. gardiner was not quite so astute, nor so level-headed, nor so cowardly as he thought himself.
