Convict B 14: A Novel

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 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. "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, señor._ 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 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 mañana 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."

"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."