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 [Pg 130]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[Pg 131] 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."
 
[Pg 132]
 
"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[Pg 133] 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............