The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, April 2, 1905, Page 4

he paused, his foot on the carriage step. he spoke to the coachman: v Jersey’'s,” he said, and re- CHAPTER XL The Beaten Path. ying the lake beside ns across the moor ewstead, and the 1 rein to every very day they into the ight s on the n The grotesquerie 1 enthusiasm and wi he nd to the ssion, the and hol warm the wc ge standing dark- , god- ireside. It seem- k ith a peculiar To the Romans that r hearthstone— ld conven sch as enshrine . her round her. had a vision re moving about the € watching citude, and 3 nd the begin- in his brain. The ose would be like ss, beautiful as the open window. He the Kne ¥ a woman, as flawless and as lovely—one, and one onl His thought, unweighted by purpoge, had 1 ved her since that July afternoon when she guinea ir had handed him the golden exchange for his book. She was not in London now. At that mo- she was in Mansfield, a sharp op across the Newstead moor. If had ever had a dream of feminine srfectness, she was its embodiment. Would marriage with such a one fet- ter him? In the great clanging world that teased and worried him, would it not be a refuge? sudden recollection came to him, of the dust of a past year—a recol- lection of a youth with bright eyes tangled hair, in the Fleet Prison. rere had been an hour, before suc- ad bitten him, when he had ised himself that fame's fox-fire d mnot lure him, that he woula herish his sopg and rid his soul of the petty things that dragged it down. How had that promise been fylfilleq? With poor adventure, and empty in- trigue and flickering rushlight amours to which that restiess something in im had driven him on, an enchorless craft in the cross-tides of passion! “Home!” he mused. “To pursue no will-o'-the-wisp of fancy! To shut out all vagrant winds and prolong that spark of celestial fire!” He drew a quick sibilant breath, sat down at the writing-table and wrote hastily but unerringly, a letter, clean- ctched and unembellished, a simgle statement and a question. He signed it, laughing aloud as a sense of wild incongruity gushed over him. Through the heavy oaken doors could hear mingled laughter and uproar. A stentorian bass was rum- biing a drinking-song. What a chi nging antithesis! Lava and snow—erratic comet and chaste moon—jungle passions and the calp of a Northern landscape! A proposal of marriage written at such a time and place, with a drinking-stave shout- ed in the next room! And what would be her answer? The daring grew brighter in his eye. He sealed the letter with a'coin from his waistcoat pocket, sprang up and jerked the bellrope. The footman en- tered. “Rushton, have Selim saddled at and take this note to Mansfield. like the devil. Do you hear?” “Yes, my lord.” The boy looked at ¥ the superscrivtion, put the note in his and was gone. rdon laughed again—a burst of sty excitement—and seized the full inkwell into which he had dipped his “ avE jco! mE FOAMED. 'es J2E, BEIIERE” <> > pen. it snail serve no lesser pur- pose,” he exclaimed, and hurled it straight through the open window. Then he threw open the door and walked hastily toward the hilarity of the great dining-room. CHAPT! XIr. “Man’s Love Is of Man's Life a Thing Apart.” What he saw as he emerged from the hall was Saturnalia indeed. Sheridan, his'robe thrown open from his capacious frame, sat with knees wide apart, his chair tilted back, his face crumpling with amusement. Hob- house sat cross-legged on the stone coffin. Others, robed and tonsured, were grouped about the board, and on it was perched a stooped and ungainly m:ursi in a somber dress of semi-clerical severity. Sunburn me, it's Dr. Cassidy,” mut- tered Gordon, with a grim smile. “And without his tracts! What's he doing at Newstead? The rascals—they’ve got him fuddled!” The hospitality offered in the host's absence had in truth proved too much for the doctor. Now as he balanced on his gaitered feet among the over- turned winebottles he looked a very unclerical figure indeed. His neckcloth was awry and his flattish eyes had a look of comical earnestness and unac- i THE SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY CALL. e e 's up your tiresome of versi. s Bins? . customed good-fellowship. He held a wine glass and waved it in uncertain gestures, his discourse punctured by frequent and unstinted applause: “What was the Tree of Knowledge doing in the garden, you ask. Why not planted on the other side of the wall? Human reason, enlightened by inspira- tion, finds no answer in the divine word. Theology is our only refuge. Adam was predestined to.sin. All created things are contingent on om- nipotent volition. Sin being predes- tined, the process leading to that sin must be predestined, too. See? Sin— Adam. Garden—snake. The law of the divine will accomplished.” Hobhouse wiped his eyes with his bhandkerchief. ‘Who could contem- plate the picture,” he groaned, “‘with- out tears? Poor fallen man! for him.” The remark struck the lecturer with pathos. The look of stern satisfaction with which he had so eloquently jus- tified the eternal tragedy melted into a compassionate expression which had a soft tinge of the romantic. He smiled —a smile of mingled burgundy and be- nevolence, “Herein, gentlemen, appears our les- son of infinite pity. Man expelled from Eden, but still possessing Eve. Justice tempered with mercy. Love of woman - compensating for the loss of earthly Paradise.” “True, true,” murmured ~Hobhouse. <> " ' “There’s heaven on earth in woman's love,’ as Mr. Moore, here, sings. A prime subject for another toast, doctor. We've drunk to the navy and to the- ology; now for a glass to her eternal ladyship!—-Egad! Here's Gordon!” The final word brought a shout, and the glasses were refilled. “Gordon’s toast!” they insisted as they opened ranks. “A toast or a new poem!” Some disturbance out of doors had roused the animals kenneled at the hall entrance and a battery of growls min- gled with the importunities. Sheridan pounded with his great fist on the jingling board till the uproar stilled. “The lord of the manor speaks!” he proclaimed. Gordon approached the table and picked up the skull-cup. In the blaze of candlelight his face showed marked- ly its singular and magnetic beauty. He glanced about him an instant—at Sheridan’s waggish, rough-hewn coun- tenance, at the circle of younger flushed and uproarious ones, and at the labored solemnity and surprise of the central figure on the table. The doctor’s answering stare was full of a fresh bewilderment; he was struggling to recall a nyessage he had b “to some one—he forgotten to whom— which in the last half-hour had slipped like oil from his mind. In Gordon's brain verses yet unwrit- ten had been grouping themselves that I weep ;a_volce flexible and appealing. afternoon—verses that not ' for long were to be set in type—and he spoke them now; not flippantly, but with a note of earnestness and of feeling, a light flush in his cheek tingeing the col- orless white of his face, and his gray- blue eyes darkened to violet. ‘Woman! though t ness, ever yet Her ri;:‘aln“fa.;-"n mistrens of mai's varied mind: And she will follow where that heart is set As roll the waves before the settled wind. Her soul {s feminine nor can forget— To all except love’s image, fondly blind, And ghe can e'en survive love's fading dim, And bear With lite, to love and pray for him! It was an odd thing to see this com- pelling figure, standing in the midst of these monkish roisterers, all iIn celibate robes and beads, declaiming lines of such passionate beauty and Ain n fd{cll toast to drink from such a gob- e Man's Tove in of man's lite & thing aparl, "Iis woman's whole existence; man may reuge The uu& camp, church, the vesssl and the mart, Sword, gown_ galn, glory offer in exchange. Pride and ambition o'errun his heart, Ard few there are whom these can not es- i trange. Woman knows but one refuge, If love err— To draw him from these baubles, baclk to her!” There was an instant of dead si- lence when he paused, broken by the doctor’s hiccough and a voice behind them. Sheridag saw Gordon set down the skull-cup as the spot of color faded from his cheek. He turned to the en- trance. ‘“‘Curse catch me!” gasped the wit, springing yto his feet. - “Lady Mel- bourne and Miss Milbanke!” CHAPTER XIIL The Smirched Image. All turned astonished faces. Just inside the “oaken door, swung wide open to the night, stood her ladyship, her features expressing a sense of hu- mor struggling with dignity, and just behind her, with a look of blent puz- zle and surprise, her stately niece, Annabel Milbanke. Mrs.. Muhl, Gor- don’s withered fire-lighter, was hov- ‘ering in the rear. It was a tense moment. Gordon's glance swept Annabel’s face—distin- guished a letter still unopened in her hand—as he came forward to greet them. A dull red was climbing over Cassidy’s sobered face, something between a gulp and a groan he got down heavily from his com- manding position. It was Lady Melbourne who broke ause: g pause: “I fear we intrude. ‘We were driv- ‘ing across to Aunesley, where there is 2 ball to-night, and felt tempted to take your Lordship with us. We had not known of your guests. Dr. Cas- and with! lldf de ahead to apprise you of our call.” The doctor was mopping his mot- tled brow. He was far too miserable to renly. “I fear our hospitality. outran our discretion,” ventured Gordon. “The doctor perhaps forgot to mention it.” Lady Melbourne’s quick gaze over- ran the scene and lingered on the crosses and the monkish robes with a siow dawning smile. Sheridan made a dramatic gesture. “Lo, the first poet of his age in the depths of one of his abandoned de- bauches!” He pointed to Mrs. Muhl, who stood in the background, her wrinkled countenance as brown as & dry toast—‘Behold the troop of Pa- phian damsels, as pictured in the Morning Post! Evasion is no longer possible.” “I spe. And you, doctor “The doctor,” said Moore, maintain- ing his gravity, “had just read us his latest tract.” “I regret we missed it.” She turned to Gordon. ‘“We will not linger. Good night, gentlemen. No——" as Gor- don protested—‘“our carriage and escort are waliting. “My dear Lady Melbourne,” inter- posed Sheridan, “the entire chapter shall escort you. As abbott I claim my right”—and 'he offered her his arm. Gordon followed with her niece. Annabel's hand fluttered on his sleeve. “We heara your toast,” she said. “I did not dream it of you.” On the threshold a tide of rich light met them. The moon had risen and was lifting above the moor beyond a belt of distant beechwood, bathing the gclden flanks of the hills, flooding the long lake with soft yellow luster and turning the gray ruins of the priory to dull silver. Lady Melbourne led the way out to the mele of the drained moat with a cry of delight: “What a perfect lilac night! It 1s like Venice. All it lacks is a gondola and music.” Gorden and Annabel had lingered at the turn of the parapet. He put out his hand and iouched the letter she held with. his forefinger. ‘“You have not opened it.” “No. Your footman met us coming in the lodge gate.” ‘‘Read. it." She looked at him a moment hesitat- ingly. TFor a long time she had not been ignorant of her interest in George Gordon. She admired him also, as every woman admires talent and achievement, and the excess of wor- ship which the world gave him fed her pride in the special measure of his re- gard. She saw something new in his look to-night—something more genuine, yet illusive, “Read it,” he repeated. She broke the seal and held the writ- ten page to the moonlight. As she read a soft mellow note arose. It was Hob- house’s violoncello, playing an aria of Rossini’s—a haunting melody that matched the night. The notes were still throbbing when her eyes lifted.’ Gordon had taken a golden guinea from-his pocket; he leaned forward and laid it on the letter's waxen seal. It fitted the impression. “It was a gift,” he said. “It is the one you gave me that day at the book- shop.” She felt a sudden tremor of heart— or of nerves. “Oh,” she exclaimed, thrilled for a brief moment; “and you kept it?” At that instant a figure ‘approached ‘them across the terrace, doffing his cap awkwardly. It was the under- gardener, bringing a trinket he had {tfi:: that afternoon among the lily- Gordon looked at the plain - “cir- clet he handed him. He turned to An- nabel with a strange expression as the man disappeared. W ring.” he “It was lost when “It is my mother” sald in a low voice. a child.” 4 5 "":E;.ow very 0dd,” she commented, “to d it—to-day!” n"i‘he music had ceased, and Lady Mel- bourne and he;‘;:n:gred attendants ing to’ lem. wi’;n?b!:l’-.hand rested on the stone ralling and Gordon took it, looking full into her eves. “Shall I put it on?” he asked. She looked from t.hebll;ln‘g ‘t: r}:ll: face ool fingers tremblin, . he'rst," ahe‘ answered, and he slipped her finger. > “'.l?;x‘e nolse of the departing carriage- wheels had scarce died away when Sheridan entered, the library, whither Gordon had prec:lded him. He was tering inordinately. F ut"Ie'rv:l ieen trying to find Cassidy,” he said, “but he’s gone. Went and got his horse while liohhnm was fiddling. Poor doctor! If he'd only been a par- I ”prok. look!” cried Gordon. He was pointing to the window. Sheridan stared. The unwavering moonlight fell on the image of Vesta— no longer marble-white. The inkwell Gordon had hurled through the window had struck full on its brows, and the clear features and raiment were blick: ened and befouled with a sinister stain! CHAPTER XIV. ‘What Came of the Treacle-Moon. “The treacle-moon is over. I am awake and find myself marrfed.” Gordon read the lines in the dlary he held, by the fading daylight. He sat in the primrose garden of his town house on Piccadilly Terrace, beside a wicker teatable. The day was at its amber hour. The curtains of the open windows behind him waved lazily in the breeze and the fragrance of haw- thorn clung like a caress across the twilight. What he read had been the last entry in the book. He smiled grimly, remembering the _night he had written it. It was at Sea- ham, the home of his wife's girlhood, the final day of their stay—the end of that saverless month of sameness and stagnation, of eating fruit and saun- tering, playing dull games at cards, yawning, reading old Annual Registers and daily papers, listening to monologue that his elderly father-in- law called conversation, and watching the growth of stunted gooseberry bushes —the month in which he had eaten of the bitter fruit of the Tree of Knowl- edge. To-day he recalled the trenchant features of that visit distinctly; the prim, austere figure of Lady Noel, his wife’s mother, presiding at the table; Sir Ralph opposite, mumbling for the third time, over a little huddle of de- canters which' could neither interrupt nor fall asleep, the speech he had made at a recent taxmeeting; his own wife with eyes that so seldom warmed to his, but grew keener each day to glance cold disapproval; and Mrs. Clermont, Lady Noel's companion and confidante, blackgowned, bloodless, with noiseless gliding step and observ- ant gaze—Jane Clermont’s aunt, as he had incidentally learned. “The treacle-mecon is over!” And that satiric comment had been penned almost a year ago! Gordon moved his shoulders with a quick gesture, as though dismissing an unpleasant reflection, and took from his pocket a little black phial. He measured out a minute quantity of the dark liquid into a glass and poured it full of water. He drank the dull, cloudy mixture at a draft. “How strange that mind should need this!* he said to himself. “My brain is full of images—rare, beautiful, dream- like—but they are meaningless, inco- hérent, unattached. A few drops of this elixir and they coalesce, crystal- lize, transform themselves—and I have a poem. I have only to write it down. 1 wrote ‘Lara’ in three evenings while I was undressing from the opera. It shan’t master me as it has De Quincey either. Why, all my life I have de- nied myself even meat. My soul shall not be the slave of any appetite!” He smiled whimsically as he set down the glass: “What nonsense it is to talk of soul,” he muttered, “when a cloud makes it melancholy and wine makes it mad!"” He paused, listening intently. A low sound, an infant’s cry, had caught his ear. His eyes grew darker violet. His look changed. “Ada! Ada!” he said in a whisper. in his voice was a singular vibrant accent—intense, eager, yet the words had the quality of a sacrament and a «consecration. | He rose, thrust the diary into his pocket and went into the house, ascend- ing the stair to a small room at the end of the hall. The door was ajar and a dim light showed within. He listened, then pushed the door wider and enter- ed. A white nursery bed stood in one corner, and Gordon nojselessly placed a chair beside it and sat down, his el- bow on his knee and his chin in his hand, looking at the little face against the pillow, the tiny fist lying on the coverlid. Gazing, his deeply carved lips molded softly, a sense of the overwhelming miracle of life possessed him. This small fabric was woven of his own flesh. He saw his own curving mouth, his full chin, his brow. Some day those hands would cling to his, these lips would frame the word “father.” What of life’s pitfalls, of its tragedies, await- ed this new being he had brought into the world? : He sighed, and as if In anawer, the baby sighed, too. The sound smote him strangely. Was there some occult sympathy between them? Her birth- right was not only of flesh, but of spirit. Had she also share in his iso- lated heart, his wayward impulses, his passionate pride? At length he took out the diary and opening it on his knee, began to write —lines whose feeling swelled from some great wave of tenderness: Ada! my one sweet daughter! if g name Dearer and purer were, it should be thine. Whate'er of earth divide us I shall clalm Not tears, but tenderness to answer mine: Go where I will, to me thou art the same— A loved regret which I would mot resign. There are but two things in my destiny— A world to roam through, and a home with thee. I can reduce all feelings but this one: And that I would mot—for at length I ses Such scenes as those wherein my life begun. The earliest—even the only paths for me— Had I but sooner learned the crown to shun, I had been better than I now can be; The passions which bave torn me would died;, 1+ I had not suffered, and thou hadst mot sighed. have I feel almost at times as I have feit In happy childhood; trees, and flowers and b rooks Which do remember me of whers I dwelt Ere my young mind was sacrificed to books, Come as of yore upon me and can melt My heart with recognition of their looks; Till even at moments I have thought to ses Some living thing to love—but none like thes. With false ambition what had I to do? Little with love, and least of all with fame. And yet they came unsought. and with me srow, And made me all Which they can make—a name. Yet this was not the end T did pursue; Surely I once beheld a nobler aim. - Yet it thou help me find it—even so Shall I be glad that I have purchased woe! The door of the room adjoining opened and a figure dressed in white appeared. He rose and passed throug! “You wished me, Annabel?” “1 do not wish Ada disturbed. *As you know, I am starting with her to Seahf.m to-morrow, and she needs the “I was very quiet,” he said, almost apoldgetically, and a little wearily. Her critical eye had wandeced to the book and pencil in his hand. The look was cold—glacially.so—and dis- approving, as she asked with quiet point: “My lord, when dg you intend to the , the point of least response. He stared at her. In all her lack of understanding, she had at least spared him this. Yet this was really what she thought! At heart she de- spised him for the only thing that to him made life endurable. She took no pride In his poetry, wished him a man like others of her circle—a dull, church-going, speech-reading, tea- drinking, partridge-hunting clod! A flush blurred his vision. “Surely,” a thin edge of contempt cutting in her words, “you do not in- tend always to de only this? You are a peer, you have a seat in the Lords. You might be anything you choose.” “But if I am—what I choose?” he said difficultly. A chill anger lay behind her con- strained manner. Her lips were pressed tight together. During the whole time of their marriage he had never seen her display more feeling than In that brief moment on the terrace at Newstead when he had put his mother’s ring upon her finger For a long time he had watched for some sign—each day feeling his heart, too savage of vitality, contract and harden under that colorless restraint— till he had come to realize that the untroubled gentleness was only passiv- ity, the calm strength but complacency as cold as the golden guinea he had treasured, that the flower he had chos- en for its white fragrance was a sculp- tured altar-llly. Now her mind seemed gted from its conventional groove. e fact was that the constant flings of his enemies, which he noted with sovereign contempt, had pilerced her deeply, wounding that love of the world’s opinion so big in her. And a venomous review which her mother had brought her that day had mingled its abuse with a strain of pity for her, and pity she could not bear. “Why do you not choose to live like other men?” she broke out. “Thers is something so selfish, so unnatural in your engrossed silences, your change- able moods, your disregard of ordinary customs. You belleve nothing that other men believe.” His face had grown weirdly white. The sudden outburst haa startled him. He was struggling with resentment. “Cassidy’s doctrinal tracts, for in- stance?” The query had a tinges of sarcasm. She bit her lips. “You have no idea of reverence for anything. I might have guessed it that night at Newstead and how you treated him! You speak your views on religion—views that I hate—openly, anywhere. You write and write and print them, too, In verse!™ “You are frank,” he said; “let me be the same. What my brain conceives my hand shall write. If I valued fame, I should flatter received opinions. That I have never dome! I cannot and will not give the lie to my doubts, come what may.” “What right have you to have those doubts?” Her anger was rising full- fledged, and bitter-winged with malice. “Why do you set yourself against all that is best? What do you believe In that is good, I should like to know?" “I abhor books of religion,” he re- sponded steadily, “and the blasphe- mous notions of sectaries. I have no belief in their absurd heresies and Thirty-nine Articles. I feel joy in all beautiful and sublime things. But I hate convention and cant and lay- figure virtue, and shall go on hating them to the end of the chapter.” “To the end of the chapter!” she echoed. “You mean two do nothing more—to think of nothing but scrib- bling pretty lines on paper and making & mystery of yourself! What is our lrire,mgelher? ‘What did you marry me or?”’ “Bella!” The word was almost a cry. “I married you for faith, not for creeds! I am as I have always been—I have concealed nothing. I married you for sympathy and understanding! I know I am not like other men—but L tried to make you love and understand me— I tried! Why did you marry me?” For an instant the real pain in the appeal seemed to cleave through her icy demeanor and she made an involun- tary movement. But as she hesitated, Fletcher knocked at the door: “Mr. Sheridan, my lord, come to take you to Drury Lane.” The words congealed the softer feel~ ing. As the valct withdrew, she tdrmed upon her husband. “Sheridan! and Drury Lane! That is the kind of company you prefer to keep! A doddering old man who falls asleep over his negus in White’s bow- window, coming and going here at all hours, and littering the library with his palsied snuff-taking.” A doddering old man! It was The soul of White’s and Brookes’, the first table wit and vivant of the king- dom, the companion of a royal prince— he, “Sherry,” who all his life had never known ache or pain, not even the gout, who had out-dandied and out-bumperea the youngest of them—had lived beyond his time. The welcome of the gay world had dwindled to a pa- tronage. Gordon had more than once of late come between him and s low sponging-house or the debtors’ prison. Yet at his wife's tone, a .gleam of anger shot into his eyes—anger that made them steely-blue as sword blades. “Sheridan was my friend.” he sald “My friend from the first, when others snarled. He is old now—old and fafling —but he is still my friend. Is a man to pay no regard to loyalty or friend- ship?™” “He should have regard first to his own reputation. Do you? Even Brum- mell and Petersham and your choice fops of the Cocoa-Tree tavern and Drury Lane committee have some thought for the world’s opinfon. But you have none. You care nothing for what it thinks of you or of your mor- ality.” “Morality!” he repeated slowly. “I never heard the word before from any- body who was not a rascal that used it for a purpose!"” “Why will you sit :ilent,” she comn- tinued, “and hear yourself defamed everywhere without a word? Why will you not defend yourself?” He shrugged his shoulders, the flash of indignation past. She had touched The shrug angered her even more than his satirie reply: “What man can bear refutation?” “You seem to think it beneath your dignity to deny slander,” she went on. “You always did. I thought it would be different after we were married. But it has grown worse. The papers print more and more horrible things of you, and you do not care—either for yourself or for me!™ He gazed at her with a curious in- tentness. “Surely you pay no heed to such ir- responsible tales?” “If they were all! Do you suppose I do not hear what people say besides? They do not spare my ears! Do you 1 do not know the stories—what they used to say of your bachelor af- fairs—with Lady Oxford, and Lady Frances Wedderburn Webster—and Caro Lamb?” “Is there none ‘more recent?” A bit- ter smile had appeared, called by the veiled insinuation in her tone. Another name flew to her tongue, for malicious rumor had credited him with a footlight amour. “Yes—Jane Cler- mont!"” A frown of incredulity and annoy hung blackly on his brow an instant. _Had this baseless gratuitous fling gone the circle of Drury Lane go- sipers? Had it even reached his wife's ears? Aloud he said: “Really, I can scarcely hold myselt responsible for silly chatterers “vho are determined to Rochefoucauld my mo- tives. I seem to be fast the moral Aesop of the community. am judged by what I presume Dr. Cassidy 1