John Gore asked few questions that night, but went to his room with a
silent and impenetrable air that refused to betray any inward bleeding
of the heart. His reserve challenged my lord to decide whether the son
was really unconcerned, or whether he hid what he might feel beneath a
casual surface. For Stephen Gore had spoken with great pathos of this
“maid’s tragedy,” and had tempted his son with a display of sympathy to
make some sentimental confession of faith.
But John Gore had knocked his pipe out against the hood of the
fireplace, pulled off his heavy boots, and pretended that he was sleepy
after a forty-mile ride and a good supper. He had taken one of the
candles from the table and gone to his room, leaving his father no wiser
as to what the son felt or what he knew.
John Gore did not sleep that night, despite the September wind over the
open country and the dust that had been blown into his eyes. He had left
my lord that he might be alone, and escape that parental curiosity and
concern that grated upon the raw surface of his consciousness. For,
strong man that he was, he had felt sick at heart over the news of the
girl’s madness; it had come as a shock at the end of a day of dreams;
sudden as a musket-ball lodged beneath the ribs, making him faint with
the pain of it and with an inward flow of blood. In those few seconds,
when his father had spoken to him, he had realized how deeply he had
pledged himself to that mystery of mysteries. It had laid bare the truth
to him as a knife lays bare the bleeding heart of a pomegranate.
John Gore left the candle burning and sat at the open window, his arms
crossed upon the window-ledge. It was the attitude of one whose eyes
gazed out into the night with sadness and great awe, while the soul went
down into the deeps to drink bitterness bravely to the dregs and gain
new strength thereby. He was still there, fully dressed, when the candle
guttered in the candlestick, throwing up spasmodic gleams of light
before dying into the dark. The dawn came up and found him there, like
one who has kept watch all night on the deck of a great ship before a
battle.
With men who live the life of action the coming of each new day brings a
fresh impulse and fresh inspiration. John Gore seemed to throw off the
stupor of the night as the grayness of the dawn deepened into bands of
blue and gold across the east. He shook himself, dashed cold water over
his head and face, and, putting on fresh linen and new clothes, went
down into the house before a servant so much as stirred. Opening the
street door, he met the dewy breath of the morning and all the silent
and gradual glamour of the dawn. He was not the man to mope and write
sonnets in a corner, or to surrender a strenuous will to feeble
speculation. Wandering down to the river, he hired a waterman who
happened to be industriously early with a pot of paint down by Charing
Stairs, and, making the man row him into mid-stream, he stripped and
plunged, and swam a good half-mile with the tide, feeling the fitter for
it in body and heart.
Returning, he breakfasted alone, and, inquiring from the man Rogers,
learned that my lord had rung for his morning cup of chocolate, which he
always drank in bed. He heard also the account of how Sparkin had been
sent to school some days ago, for John Gore had entered the youngster as
a boarder at St. Paul’s. He had been packed off, as Mr. Rogers described
it, like a pressed man to a king’s ship, swearing that he would desert
at the first chance, and cut the servant’s throat who had had the
insolence to drag him schoolward by the collar. But Rogers, who had been
sent by my lord to inquire after the child, confessed that he had found
Sparkin more resigned to his fate. He had fought three fights in as many
days, and been royally licked in the last encounter. Defeat seemed to
have decided Mr. Sparkin to remain, in order to be avenged as honor and
the prestige of the past demanded.
My lord was luxuriously at his ease, leaning against a pile of pillows
in the four-post bed, when his son paid him a morning call. He lost a
little of his dignity in a silk nightcap and a black velvet bed-gown as
elaborately belaced as some priestly vestment. But Stephen Gore was
still the great gentleman, the man of affairs, the dispenser of favors,
as the litter on the quilt testified—letters, pamphlets, a needy poet’s
new book of poems, bills, petitions, and what not. The man Rogers was
laying out shirts, stockings, and silk underwear—preparing for that
most solemn ceremonial, the sacrament of the toilet.
“You can leave us, Rogers, for half an hour. If any of my people call,
keep them waiting till I ring.”
John Gore had opened the window, and stood looking down into the little
garden at the back of the house.
“My dear Johann, I am not seasoned, like you, to sea breezes. Please
pity my gray hairs, my son. I allow no draughts till I have gotten me my
periwig. Hum—ha, what’s this! Will your honor put such and such a
matter before the Duke of York? Yes, of course, dirty work, as usual.
Let it bide. I hope you have got rid of the saddle-ache, Jack, my
fellow. My business hour—this; look at all this infernal paper; it is
an amazing pity that so many people should learn to write.”
He was picking up letters and papers, and tossing them aside, stopping
now and again to scribble notes upon his tablets.
“I had a secretary, Jack, for a year, but I distrust the tribe. I find
that they are always selling one’s secrets behind one’s back. Is this a
filial visit, or am I to include it among my business?”
John Gore was watching his father with those dark, intent eyes of his.
“I want to speak to you about Barbara Purcell.”
My lord threw his tablets upon the bed, and looked at his son with
questioning keenness. It was still of vital interest to him to discover
whether this sea-rover had lost his heart or no.
“Tell me one thing first, Jack. Had you any strong fancy for the girl?”
“It is four months since I smelled the sea, sir.”
“Then she had some flavor for you—beyond the mere scent of a
petticoat?”
“Yes, a good deal more than that.”
His father regarded him with sympathetic solemnity. Yet my lord’s
attitude betrayed the fact that even a clever man of the world may prove
shallowly pompous in dealing with a son.
“I gave you all the information I have, Jack, last night. If you care to
see the pistol-mark the poor child made on me, the coat is hanging in
that cupboard.”
John Gore kept his place.
“You said, sir, that she believed that you knew the name of her father’s
murderer.”
“Some such madness, Jack. But I can assure you that it was a most
unholy, startling incident. I can see her now standing like a young
figure of Fate, with a pistol in her hand and her eyes like two live
coals. I told her to go to bed, and then she fired at me. Southern
blood—Southern blood! Not that I bear any malice against the poor
thing, John, though she was so near sending me to my account with all my
sins upon my head. What more do you want to know?”
“Where she is.”
My lord pushed some of the papers aside with a trace of impatience.
“Safe, and well cared for, Jack. Dr. Hemstruther’s commands. We applied
to the Chancery—”
“Where, sir, did you say?”
“The child has everything that can make life easy.”
“You have not told me yet, sir, where she is.”
My lord swung to one side of the bed, and, putting an arm round the
carved corner-post, looked straight into his son’s face.
“You want to know the one thing, Jack, that I have not the least
intention of telling you.”
“And why not, sir?”
“Why not!” And Stephen Gore threw himself back again upon the pillows
with some of the dramatic action that he could make appear so natural.
“Look you, most obstinate of bulkheads, do you care one brass culverin
for the girl? Answer me that.”
There was no need for the answer; my lord galloped on.
“Do you want her to come by her reason and her right mind again? You
will protest that you do. Of course. Once more, John, my son, would you
like to see your love making mouths at you, gnawing her bib, and perhaps
shouting like a fish-wife? You will protest, perhaps, that you do not.”
John Gore stood very still about two paces from his father’s bed. His
eyes had a gleam of fierceness in them, for even the possible truth
filled him with an impulse to strike the man who uttered it. My lord,
who was watching him as a swordsman watches his enemy’s eye, changed his
tactics abruptly, and held out an appealing hand like an orator pleading
for a reasonable understanding.
“Don’t glare at me, Jack, my boy, as though I had called some one a bona
roba. If I have struck hard, it is for your good. Understand that I am
not an old fool, and that I have some sense. You are one of those men
who love a woman with the same headlong fierceness with which you would
board an enemy’s ship. Look at the matter through my eyes. You would
only harm the girl by seeing her, for, by God’s providence, she may
recover if we rest her as we rest inflamed eyes in the dark. It would
only hurt your heart, Jack, if you were to see her as she is now. That
is why I am minded to keep temptation out of your way.”
He threw himself back again upon the pillows, for he had been leaning
forward like a preacher over a pulpit rail.
“You must trust me, my son. Some day you may thank me for this. I may be
pardoned for wishing the best in life for you, for though you may think
me a wild old worldling, even a courtier, Jack, may have a heart.”
He spoke with such a burst of manliness and emotion that John Gore bent
over his father’s hand.
“You are in the right, sir, and I thank you.”
And he went out from my lord’s room touched to the heart, and awed a
little by the sudden fervor of this great gentleman of the court whose
flippant splendor had so much of the simpler, braver manhood.
Yet so strange and mercurial a thing is temperament that Stephen Gore
lay back upon his pillows when his son had gone with the drawn look of a
man caught by some spasm of a faltering heart. He forgot for the moment
to ring for Rogers, but sat staring straight before him, his hands
moving amid the papers on the quilt. For my Lord Gore, like many a man
embarked on crooked courses, was very human, as such men often are. He
could not forever be callous in hypocrisy, and a touch of tenderness
lurks like a faint red glow amid the cold embers of every heart.
Stephen Gore felt a sudden pity for his son that morning. Something drew
him toward that silent, brown-faced man, so strong and yet so simple—so
wise, and yet so ready to believe. Yet what was the use of soliloquizing
over broken pitchers and squandered wine? He had entered an alley in
which there was no turning, and those who hindered him must be brushed
aside. To hesitate would only plunge all those concerned into bitterer
complexities, and perhaps into deeper guilt. And yet he could not forget
that look in his son’s eyes, for the man trusted him, and the man was
his own son.
“Crooked corners are best left crooked,” he said to himself, at last, as
he reached out a hand toward the bell-rope. “After all, he need not make
an Arabella Stewart of the girl; there are handsomer and better-tempered
women by the score.—Come along, Rogers; I am late as it is. Put my
plum-colored suit out. And have you stropped those razors properly? They
were beginning to bite like files.”
Rogers bustled forward with hot water, scented napkins, and a phial of
perfumes.
“Yes, sir, they are as sharp as your own wit, sir.”
“Give me the glass, Rogers. I feel yellow this morning. Do I look it?”
“A little tired, sir, perhaps. Nothing more.”