Convict B 14: A Novel

by R. K. Weekes

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 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 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 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."