The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, April 2, 1905, Page 3

FRANCISCO SUNDAY GARL. = . ' et : | 4, Bobbs-Merrill Co, T T T T TrrrrTTIun B D Hindoo, Scandinavian and Hellenie.” As the wheels clattered on Gordon's 3 s the :m»-md mstallment %} e Castaway,” the story of x::in:u running in channeis of dis~ B by Mallie Erminie § “I am ennuye” he thought, “beyond The Castaway,” since 3{ my usual tense of that yawning verb I s wppcarance, has Yapidly am always conjugating. At six-and- to the front 2s one of the § twenty one should be something—and < front as one of the ¥ what am I? Nothing but six-apd- st selling novels of the day. § twenty and the odd months. Six-and- swory will appear complcte 3 twenty years, as they call them—why, five installments 8 I might have been a pasha by this T T T TTrrrrTTTveews. R e s O AMAE ZO) s W&m@é‘ /Vfl&/z‘ From original dr;uflng- by Howard] Chandlk himself to the her and the com- w ruugm .lps. oberer for you.” f sealed misslves You'll certainly nesd e P rest h,.qll_\. vuth a vision flitting rlL. While he was read- was a double knock at the ietcher answered. gure stood on the thres- as Solomon was not in and the figure pushed , with gorgeous disregard of he simpered. vitals, say it's Captain rge Brummell—and be he continued, glasses to. his eye, as he “there he-is his m'dthlp in yet quick about and old Sherry, most obedient! hefe twice this afternoon. come to Watler's Club with me, sir— L1l be sworn, I must be the one to in- You will all favor us, of course, as my guests. hariot is at the door T thank you, Captain,” Gordon an- swered, as he folded the note of invita- tion he had been reading and put it In “but I cannot give myself the pleasure this afternoon. dan and Mr. Moore will doubtless be . I am promised within the hour to dinner—at Lady Melbourne’s,” tch me, you've heard us troduce you! » find yourself hardly felt their hand-clasps congratulatory small- the window almost ran to t open, drawing the cool his Jungs with a great respi- His sieep had been crumpled red by the fall of a walking- =<kling of thin ice will ‘Hpi!e a crowd of skaters, CLLR LT WA G575 A risty. CHAPTER X. The Price of the Bauble. ammell, from his seat in the bowed with empresse- hted from his car- ded the steps of White's rly dinner at Holland admired It becc the dandy, es him as if Th velvet dress buttoned, p..xndan face " observed Pe- i ex sub- t tired doing h Lady Oxford Brummell. Stap my vi- T him because . Treat wo- 11 all worship To the pinnacle this implied, Gordon sen at a leap. He was the idol of nable Londen, the chief topic of boudoir gossip and intellec- tual tablie talk. His person, his travels spangied with romantic tales, his gloom, kis pride, his beauty, and the dazzle of his prodigious success, com- bined to bring him an unheard-of hom- age. His newest book was on every drawing-room table in the kingdom. He was made much of by Lady Jersey. Hostesses quarreled over entertajning hi m, and ladies of every title below the royal asked to be placed next him at dinner. The Regent himself had asked him to Cariton House. Each of his publications since that February day when he woke to fame and when the chariot of the incompar- able Captain Brummell had set him down at Melbourne House, had had a like history. Each had won the same rapt praise, the same wondering hom- age to talent. If they missed the burn- ing fervor of those earlier impassioned lines on Grecian liberty, if they heid, each more clearly, an under-note of ag- nosticism, it was overlooked in delight &t their freedom, their metrical sweep and seethe of feeling, the melancholy sea-surge and fret of their moods. His ancient detractors, whom his success had left breathless, constrained to in- nuendo, had added to his personality tbe tang of the audacious, of bizarre license, of fantastic eccentricity, that beckoned even while it repelled. One would have tlLought Gordon him- self indifferent to praise as to censure. The still dissatisfaction that came to him in the night hours in his tumbled study, when he remem- bered the strength and purpose that had budded in his soul in those early weeks at Newstead, he alcne knew. The convention that had carped at him before his fame he trod under foot. He frequented Manton’s shoot- ing gallery, practiced the broadsword at Angelo’s, sparred with “Gentieman Jackson,” the champion pugiiist, in his rooms in Bond street, and clareted and champagned at the Cocoa Tree with Sheridan and Moore till five in the matin. Other men might conceal their harshest dilloes; Gordon con- cealed n What he did he did frankly, with disdain for appearances. Hypocrisy was-to him the soul's gan- grene. He preferred to have the world think him worse than to think him better than he was. His enemles in time had plucked up courage, revamped old stories and in- . N7 0722777 these seenfed to give him little concern. He not only kept silence but declined to allow his friends, such as ‘Sheridan and Hobhouse, to cham- vented new: pion him. When the Chronicle barbed a sting with a reference to the enor- mous sums he was pocketing from his copyholds, he shrugged his shoulders. John Murray, his publisher, knew that the earning of “The Giaour” had been given to a needy author; that “Zu- leika” had relieved a family from the slavery of debt and sent them, hoperul colonists, to Australia. Gorden passed into the club, bowing to the group in the bow-window with conventioual courtesy, and entered the reading-room. It was September, but the night had turned cool, and he dropped ino a chair before the hearth. “Why does Lady Holland always have that damned screen between the whole room and the fire?” he grum- bled half-humorously. “I who bear cold no better than an antelope, and never yet found 2 sun quite dome to my taste, was absolutely petrified, and couldn’t even shiver. All the rest, too, looked as if they were just un like saimon from an ice basket!™ A lackey in the club’s regalia brought. ) N a tray of letters and set it beside him. Gordon lit a cigar before he examined them. They were the usual collection: a sprinkling of effusions from romartic incognitas; a graver tribute from Wal- ter Scott; a pressing request for that evening from Lady Jersey. “To meet Madame de Stael!” he mused. “I once traveled three thou- sand miles to get among silent people; and this lady writes octavos and talks folios. I have read heér essay against suicide; if I heard her recite it, I might swallow poison.” The final note he lifted ‘was written on blue-bordered paper, its corners em- bossed with tiny cockle-shells, and he opened it with a nettled frown. “Poor Caro!” he muttered. “Why will you persist in Imprudent things? Some day your epistle will fall into the Mon’s jaws, and then I must hold out my iron. I am out of practice. but I won’t go to Manton's now. Besides,” he added with a shrug, “I wouldn’t return his shot. I used to be a famous wafer- splitter, but since I began to feel I had g-dmnwnwmlhuldtofl AN LA A RN NN e e et gl . el O - NN RN Y “. . . Gordom, do you remember that first dinner at Melbourne House— the . day._after your speech in Lords? You gave me a carpa from your buttonhole. You ‘T am told your ladyship all that is new and rare—for the ment!’ Ah, that meeting was not only for the moment with me, you kno that! It has lasted ever since. never heard your'name annot it did not thrill every pu body. I have never heard a venomo word against you that did not sting Gordon held the letter in a candle- flame, and dropped it on the salver. As it crackled to a mass of glo g tinder, a step fell behind him. He looked up to see Moore. “Tom,” he said, his brow clearing, “I am in one of my most vaporish mo- ments.” Moore seated himself on a chair- arm and poked the blackening twist of paper with his walking He smiled an induigent smile of prime and experience. “From which I conclude an- swered sagely, “that you are bound to Drury Lane greenroom instead of to Lady Jersey’s this evening.” Gordon's lips caught the edge of the other’s smile. “You are right. I'm going to let Jane Clermont brighten my meod. She is always . interesting—more so off the stage than on. They are only hothouse roses that will bloom at Lady Jersey Jane is a wild tiger . has all the natural wit of the De Stael—a pity it must be wasted on the pit loungers! Heaven only knows why I ever go to their Ladyships’ infernal functions at all, for I hate bustie as I hate a bishop. Here I am, eternaily stalking to parties where I shan't talk, I can't flatter, and 0 a pretty wom- nmand- ife, it's and covet his neighbor's w But to go ¢ without a of nc ment a all very well the mere herd, pleasure or a pursuit, than a sick butterily—it begi upon my soul!™ Moore's stick was still me poking the charred feil apars, and ner showed—it bore the £ of a cockle-shell. His a Lhuugh!lu‘ whistle. not ads *m_too lazy to shoot myself!” e comfortable medi- cine than tha mile broke into a laugh. “Wedlock, eh? Reading the country newspapers and kissing one’s wife’'s maid! To experience the superlative felicity of those foxes who have cut their tails and would persuade the rest to part with their brushes to kesp them in countenance! All my coupled con- temporaries—save you, Tom—are bald and discontented. Wordsworth and Southey have both lost their hair and good humor. But after all,” he said, rising. “anything is better than these hypochondriac whimsies. In the name of St. Hubert, patron of antlers and hunters, let me be married out of hand. 1 don’t care to whom, so it amuses any- bedy else and doesn’t interfere with me in the day time! By the way, can't you come down to Newstead for the shooting season? Sheridan and Hob- house are to be there, and my cellar is full though my head is empty.- What do you say? You can plague us with songs, Sherry can write a new comedy, and I mean to let my beard grow, and hate you all.” His compgnion accepted with alac- rity. “When shall we start? he in- quired, walking with the other to his “At noon to-morrow,” Gordon re- plied. 'mlthen.mdnlnt. I com- mend you to the care of the gods— time! The coach turned a cormer, and he saw, a little way off, the lighted fromt of Drury Lane Theater. In the shad- ow of its stage door stood a couple his sight did not distinguish. but the keen black eyes of one of them—a vivid, creole-looking giri—had noted with a quick instinctive movement the and mustach- lhlck.ly and “He was in the greenroom last nigh too!” he sald, with angry jealousy. “ saw him S ng the girl you, that T yes, here, and so was Mr. The other’s rhe*( had flushed darkly. “You used to have more time for me, he answ suderll}'. “before you took up theater—when bookshop, and g dandies about e you? Tell her tone Y., Are all the George Gordon in say he himself is his “Corsair? W B " he returned By g = ey f with you, Jane, and-butter life. at .)dwinl smfly lev: He'll be a baromet she can see life. I don't always, n with the playing’ I want gs and see something of Why do you stay here? “hy dvn' you go to sea again? I'm sure I'd like to.” “You know why I dom"t,”” he said, “well enough., I deserted the service once, besides. But I'd like to see the world— you, Jane! not see line that curved her lips, half-scornful, half-pitying, for- his look had fastened omn a figure In a ministerial cloak, who was passing on The figure was Dr. taking his evening unde: rate of St he-West—an especially dy. ith the s Cassidy’'s insect eyes lifted he Oriental face In the doorway with a sud- nterrogative start. He teok a toward it, hesitatingly, but the t of a quotation pause was but s Moorish-look- ompanion had not moved. but his hands had clenched and his face had an ugly expression as Cassidy passed on. semblance.” remarked the lati proceeded. “The man in the doorway there reminded me of an ensign who deserted the Pylades once when we were lying at Bombay.” His hand touched a broad white scar on his cheek. “I trust he may yet be appre- hended—for the good of the service,™ he added softly. Gordon's eyes, as the carriage picked its way, had been on the front of the theater, but they e preoccupied. He did not see the look of dislike from the mustachiced face in the shadow, nor the girl as she vanished through the stage door. Yet, as it happened, the first glimpse of the theater had Brought a thought of her. “Fond, flivpant, wild, elusive, allur- ing—the Jane Ciermo a mew cha, omon’s song. The stage is her av—nnun» she came to it as naturally as a humming-bird to a garden of geraniums. Yet she will never make a Siddons: she lacks pur- pose and she is—mechante. She ap- peals to the elemental, raw sense of the untamed and pic in common with savages. Nature made such women to cure man’s eanui: hey fit his mood. Jane Clermont was bern for fine ladies’ fripperies. ‘What is it she lacks? Balance?—or is it the moral sense? After all. I'm not sure but that lack is what makes her 1 have been attracted passion; have I ever been attracted by sheer purity? Yes—thgre is one. Annabel Milbanke!™ There rose before his mind's eye a vision of the tall stateliness he had so often seen st Melbourne House. He seemed to feel again the touch of cool. ringiess fingers. How infinitely differ- ent she was from others who had been more often in his fanc: She had at- tracted him from his first street glimpse of her—from the first day he looked into her calm virginal eyes across a dinner-table. It was her pla- cidity—the very absence of chaos— that drew him. She represented the one type of which he was not tired. Besides she was beautiful—not with the ripe, red, exotic beauty of Lady Caro- line Lamb or the wilder eccentric charm of Jane Clermont, but with the unalterable serenity of a rain-washed sky, a snowbank. a perfect statue. On his jaded mood the thought of her feil with a salving relief, like rain on a choked highway. A linkboy, throwing open the carriage door, broke his reverie. He looked up. The bright, urfl lan- terns smote him with a new and alien sense of distaste. Bevond the stage- entrance and the long dim passage lay the candk—lxgh:.wm the select coterie that there, ard—Jane Clermont, In Portman Square, In the city’s west end, Lady Jersey was standing by her bower of roses and somewhere in the throng about her moved a tall, spirit-looking girl with calm, lash- shaded eyes. Gordon saw Dboth pletures m as