THE CASTAWAY
[Illustration:
“_Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart,
’Tis woman’s whole existence_....” _p. 95._]
THE
CASTAWAY
THREE GREAT MEN RUINED IN
ONE YEAR--A KING, A CAD AND
A CASTAWAY
_By_
HALLIE ERMINIE RIVES
Author of Hearts Courageous, A Furnace of Earth, etc., etc.
_Illustrated by_
HOWARD CHANDLER CHRISTY
INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT 1904
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
MAY
The price of this book at retail is One Dollar net. No dealer is
licensed to sell it at a less price, and a sale at a less price will
be treated as an infringement of the copyright.
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY.
PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.
TO
POST WHEELER, LITT. D.
My history will furnish materials for a pretty little Romance which
shall be entitled and denominated the loves of Lord B.
_Byron, 1804_
I hate things all fiction; and therefore the Merchant and Othello
have no great associations to me; but Pierre has. There should
always be some foundation of fact for the most airy fabric, and pure
invention is but the talent of a liar.
_Byron, 1817_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE FEAST OF RAMAZAN 1
II “MAD, BAD AND DANGEROUS TO KNOW” 9
III THE BOOMERANG 18
IV THE LITTLE BOY IN ABERDEEN 26
V AS ANYTHINGARIAN 34
VI WHAT THE DEAD MAY KNOW 41
VII THE YOUTH IN FLEET PRISON 49
VIII A SAVAGE SPUR 58
IX GORDON WAKES AND FINDS HIMSELF FAMOUS 66
X THE PRICE OF THE BAUBLE 75
XI THE BEATEN PATH 86
XII “MAN’S LOVE IS OF MAN’S LIFE A THING APART” 92
XIII THE SMIRCHED IMAGE 96
XIV WHAT CAME OF THE TREACLE-MOON 100
XV THE PITFALL 112
XVI THE DESPOILING 120
XVII THE BURSTING OF THE STORM 128
XVIII GORDON STANDS AT BAY 135
XIX THE BURNING OF AN EFFIGY 142
XX THE EXILE 152
XXI GORDON SWIMS FOR A LIFE 156
XXII THE FACE ON THE IVORY 162
XXIII THE DEVIL’S DEAL 167
XXIV THE MARK OF THE BEAST 173
XXV TERESA MEETS A STRANGER 180
XXVI A WOMAN OF FIRE AND DREAMS 189
XXVII THE EVIL EYE 197
XXVIII THE HAUNTED MAN 204
XXIX TERESA’S AWAKENING 208
XXX THE PEACE OF PADRE SOMALIAN 218
XXXI AT THE FEET OF OUR LADY OF SORROWS 223
XXXII THE RESTRAINING HAND 235
XXXIII THE PASSING OF JANE CLERMONT 246
XXXIV TITA INTERVENES 252
XXXV IN THE CASA GARDEN 256
XXXVI THE FACE AT THE WINDOW 263
XXXVII TREVANION FINDS AN ALLY 269
XXXVIII THE HEART OF A WOMAN 276
XXXIX BARRIERS BURNED AWAY 283
XL THE OATH ON THE KRISS 290
XLI ASHES OF DENIAL 298
XLII GORDON TELLS A STORY 303
XLIII ONE GOLDEN HOUR 309
XLIV BY ORDER OF THE POPE 316
XLV THE SUMMONS 321
XLVI THE POTION 325
XLVII THE COMPLICITY OF THE GODS 329
XLVIII THE ALL OF LOVE 337
XLIX “YOU ARE AIMING AT MY HEART!” 344
L CASSIDY FINDS A LOST SCENT 348
LI DR. NOTT’S SERMON 352
LII TREVANION IN THE TOILS 359
LIII THE COMING OF DALLAS 363
LIV THE PYRE 372
LV THE CALL 378
LVI THE FAREWELL 386
LVII THE MAN IN THE RED UNIFORM 395
LVIII THE ARCHISTRATEGOS 401
LIX IN WHICH TERESA MAKES A JOURNEY 410
LX TRIED AS BY FIRE 416
LXI THE RENUNCIATION 423
LXII GORDON GOES UPON A PILGRIMAGE 427
LXIII THE GREAT SILENCE 434
LXIV “OF HIM WHOM SHE DENIED A HOME, THE GRAVE” 437
AFTERMATH 439
THE CASTAWAY
CHAPTER I
THE FEAST OF RAMAZAN
A cool breeze slipped ahead of the dawn. It blew dim the calm Greek
stars, stirred the intricate branches of olive-trees inlaid in the
rose-pearl façade of sky, bowed the tall, coral-lipped oleanders lining
the rivulets, and crisped the soft wash of the gulf-tide. It lifted
the strong bronze curls on the brow of a sleeping man who lay on the
sea-beach covered with a goatskin.
George Gordon woke and looked about him: at the pallid, ripple-ridged
dunes, the murmuring clusters of reeds; at the dead fire on which a
kid had roasted the night before; at the forms stretched in slumber
around it--Suliotes in woolen kirtles and with shawl girdles stuck with
silver-handled pistols, an uncouth and savage body-guard; at his only
English companion, John Hobhouse, who had travelled with him through
Albania and to-morrow was to start back to London, asleep now with a
saddle for a pillow. While he gazed, day broke effulgent, like light
at the first hour, and the sun rose, pouring its crimson wine into the
goblet of the sea’s blue crystal.
For a full year Gordon had roughed it in the wilderness, sleeping one
night in a pasha’s palace, the next in a cow-shed--a strange choice, it
seemed, for a peer of twenty-two, who had taken his seat in the House
of Lords and published a book that had become the talk of London. Yet
now, as he rose to his feet and threw back his square-set shoulders,
his colorless face and deep gray-blue eyes whetted with keen zest.
“This is better than England,” he muttered. “How the deuce could
anybody make such a world as that, I wonder? For what purpose were
there ordained dandies and kings--and fellows of colleges--and women of
a certain age--and peers--and myself, most of all?” His thought held
an instant’s thin edge of bitterness as his look fell: his right boot
had a thicker sole than the left, and he wore an inner shoe that laced
tightly under the shrunken foot.
Stepping gingerly lest he waken his comrade he threaded the prostrate
forms to the shambling rock-path that led, through white rushes and
clumps of cochineal cactus, to the town. A little way along, it crossed
a ledge jutting from the heel of the hill. Under this shelf the water
had washed a deep pool of limpid emerald. He threw off his clothing and
plunged into the tingling surf. He swam far out into the sea, under the
sky’s lightening amethyst, every vein beating with delight.
Before he came from the water, the sunrise had gilded the tops of
the mountains; while he dressed on the rock it was kindling golden
half-moons on the minarets of Missolonghi, a mile away.
As his eyes wandered over the scene--the strange stern crags, the
nearer fields broidered with currant-bushes, the girdling coast steeped
in the wild poignant beauty of an Ionian October--they turned with a
darker meaning to the town, quiet enough now, though at sunset it had
blazed with Mussulman festivity, while its Greek citizens huddled in
shops and houses behind barred doors. It was the feast of Ramazan--a
time for the Turks of daily abstinence and nightly carousal, a long
fast for lovers, whose infractions were punished rigorously with
_bastinado_ and with the fatal sack. Till the midnight tolled from
the mosques the shouts and muskets of the faithful had blasted the
solitude. And this land was the genius-mother of the world, in the grip
of her Turkish conqueror, who defiled her cities with his Moslem feasts
and her waters with the bodies of his drowned victims!
Would it always be so? Gordon thought of a roll of manuscript in
his saddle-bag--verses written on the slopes of those mountains and
in the fiery shade of these shores. Into the pages he had woven all
that old love for this shackled nation which had been one of the pure
enthusiasms of his youth and had grown and deepened with his present
sojourn. Would the old spirit of Marathon ever rearise?
He went back to the sandy beach, sat down, and drawing paper from his
pocket, began to write, using his knee for a desk. The spell of the
place and hour was upon him. Lines flowed from his pencil:
“The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,--
Where Delos rose, and Phœbus sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet,
But all, except their sun, is set.
The mountains look on Marathon--
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone,
I dreamed that Greece might still be free;
For, standing on the Persians’ grave,
I could not deem myself a slave.”
His gaze fell on the figures about the dead fire, wrapped in rough
_capotes_--rugged descendants of a once free race, hardier than their
great forefathers, but with ancient courage overlaid, cringing now from
the wands of Turkish pashas. A somber look came to his face as he wrote:
“’Tis something, in the death of fame,
Though linked among a fettered race,
To feel at least a patriot’s shame,
Even as I sing, suffuse my face;
For what is left the poet here?
For Greeks a blush--for Greece a tear.
Must _we_ but weep o’er days more blessed?
Must _we_ but blush? Our fathers bled.
Earth! Render back from out thy breast
A remnant of the Spartan dead!
Of the three hundred grant but three
To make a new Thermopylæ!”
He looked up. The crescents on the spires of the town were dazzling
points of light in the gold-blue air, the morning full-blown, clean and
fragrant with scents of sun and sea. In the midst of its warmth and
beauty he shivered. An odd prescient sensation had come to him like a
gelid breath from the upper ether. He started at a voice behind him:
“More poetry, I’ll lay a guinea!”
Gordon did not smile. The chill was still creeping in his veins. He
thrust the paper into his pocket as Hobhouse threw himself down by his
side.
The latter noticed his expression. “What is it?” he asked.
“Only one of my moods, I fancy. But just before you spoke I had a
curious feeling; it was as though this spot--that town yonder--were
tangled in my destiny.”
The barbaric servants had roused now and a fire was crackling.
“There’s a simple remedy for that,” the other said. “Come back to
London with me. I swear I hate to start to-morrow without you.”
Gordon shook his head. He replied more lightly, for the eerie
depression had vanished as swiftly as it had come:
“Not I! You’ll find it the same hedge-and-ditch old harridan of a
city--wine, women, wax-works and weather-cocks--the coaches in Hyde
Park, and man milliners promenading of a Sunday. I prefer a clear sky
with windy mare’s-tails, and a fine savage race of two-legged leopards
like this,”--he pointed to the fire with its picturesque figures. “I’ll
have another year of it, Hobhouse, before I go back.”
“You’ll have spawned your whole quarto by then, no doubt!”
“Perhaps. I am like the tiger; if I miss the first spring I go growling
back to my jungle. I must take the fit as it offers. Composition comes
over me in a kind of frenzy, and if I don’t write to empty my mind, I
go mad. Poetry is the lava of the imagination, whose eruption prevents
an earthquake. Much the little envious knot of parson-poets who rule
the reviews know about it!” he continued half satirically.
Hobhouse smiled quizzically. The man beside him had had a short
and sharp acquaintance with England’s self-constituted authorities
in poetic criticism. Two years before, fresh from college, he had
published a slender volume of verses. In quality these had been
indifferent enough, but the fact that their author was a peer offered
an attractive text for the gibes of the reviewers. Their ridicule
pierced him. His answer had been immediate and stunning--a poetical
Satire, keen as a rapier, polished as a mirror, pitiless as the
Inquisition, which flayed his detractors one by one for the laughter of
London. The book had been the talk of the year, but while at the very
acme of popularity, the youthful author had withdrawn it, and, still
smarting from the sneers which had been its inspiration, had sailed for
the Levant. A thought of this sensitiveness was in Hobhouse’s mind as
Gordon continued:
“When I get home I’ll decide whether to put it into the fire or to
publish. If it doesn’t make fuel for me it will for the critics.”
“You gave them cause enough. You’ll admit that.”
“They should have let me alone.” Gordon’s voice under its lightness
hid a note of unaffected feeling, and his eyes gathered spots of fire
and brown. “It wasn’t much--that first poor little college book of
mine! But no! I was a noble upstart--a young fool of a peer that needed
taking down! So they loosed their literary mountebanks to snap at me!
Is it any wonder I hit back? Who wouldn’t?”
“At least,” averred Hobhouse, “very few would have done it so well.
There was no quill-whittler left in the British Isles when you finished
that Satire of yours. None of the precious penny-a-liners will ever
forgive you.”
The other laughed. “I was mad, I tell you--mad!” he said with humorous
ferocity. “I wrote in a passion and a sirocco, with three bottles
of claret in my head and tears in my eyes. Besides, I was two years
younger then. Before I sailed I suppressed it. I bought up the plates
and every loose volume in London. Ah well,” he added, “one’s youthful
indiscretions will pass. When I come back, I’ll give the rascals
something better.”
He paused, his eyes on the stony bridle-path that led from the town.
“What do you make of that?” he queried.
Hobhouse looked. Along the rugged way was approaching a strange
procession. In advance walked an officer in a purple coat, carrying the
long wand of his rank. Following came a file of Turkish soldiers. Then
a group of servants, wearing the uniform of the Waywode--the town’s
chief magistrate--and leading an ass, across whose withers was strapped
a bulky brown sack. After flocked a rabble of all degrees, Turks and
Greeks.
“Queer!” speculated Hobhouse. “It’s neither a funeral nor a wedding.
What other of their hanged ceremonials can it be?”
The procession halted on the rock-shelf over the deep pool. The
soldiers began to unstrap the ass’s brown burden. A quick flash
of horrified incredulity had darted into Gordon’s eyes. The ass
balked, and one of the men pounded it with his sword-scabbard.
While it flinched and scrambled, a miserable muffled wail came from
somewhere--seemingly from the air.
Gordon stiffened. His hand flew to the pistol in his belt. He leaped to
his feet and dashed up the scraggy path toward the rock, shouting in a
voice of strained, infuriate energy:
“_By God, Hobhouse, there’s a woman in that sack!_”