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 humor struggling with dignity, and just behind her, with a look of
blent puzzle and surprise, her stately niece, Annabel Milbanke. Mrs.
Muhl, Gordon’s withered fire-lighter, was hovering in the rear.
It was a tense moment. Gordon’s glance swept Annabel’s face--
distinguished a letter still unopened in her hand--as he came forward
to greet them. A dull red was climbing over Cassidy’s sobering face,
and with something between a gulp and a groan he got down heavily from
his commanding position.
It was Lady Melbourne who broke the pause:
“I fear we intrude. We were driving across to Annesley where there is a
ball to-night, and felt tempted to take your lordship with us. We had
not known of your guests. Dr. Cassidy rode ahead to apprise you of our
call.”
The doctor was mopping his mottled brow. He was far too miserable to
reply.
“I fear our hospitality outran our discretion,” ventured Gordon. “The
doctor perhaps forgot to mention it.”
Lady Melbourne’s quick gaze overran the scene and lingered on the
crosses and the monkish robes with a slow-dawning smile.
Sheridan made a dramatic gesture. “Lo, the first poet of his age in
the depths of one of his abandoned debauches!” He pointed to Mrs. Muhl
who stood in the background, her wrinkled countenance as brown as a
dry toast--“Behold the troop of Paphian damsels, as pictured in the
_Morning Post_! Evasion is no longer possible.”
“I see. And you, Doctor?”
“The doctor,” said Moore, maintaining 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 Gordon protested--“our carriage and
escort are waiting.”
“My dear Lady Melbourne,” interposed Sheridan, “the entire chapter
shall escort you. As abbot, I claim my right,”--and he offered her his
arm. Gordon followed with her niece.
Annabel’s hand fluttered on his sleeve. “We heard 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 golden 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 on to the mole of the drained moat with a cry
of delight: “What a perfect lilac night! It is like Venice. All it
lacks is a gondola and music.”
Gordon and Annabel had lingered at the turn of the parapet. He put out
his hand and touched 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 hesitatingly. For 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
worship which the world gave him fed her pride in the special measure
of his regard. 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 written page to the moonlight. As she
read, a soft mellow note arose. It was Hobhouse’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 found that afternoon among the lily-bulbs.
Gordon looked at the plain gold circlet he handed him. He turned to
Annabel with a strange expression as the man disappeared.
“It is my mother’s wedding-ring,” he said in a low voice. “It was lost
when I was a child.”
“How very odd,” she commented, “to find it--to-day!”
The music had ceased, and Lady Melbourne and her tonsured attendants
were coming toward them.
Annabel’s hand rested on the stone railing and Gordon took it, looking
full into her eyes.
“Shall I put it on?” he asked.
She looked from the ring to his face--her cool fingers trembling in his.
“Yes,” she answered, and he slipped it on her finger.
* * * * *
The noise of the departing carriage-wheels had scarce died away when
Sheridan entered the library, whither Gordon had preceded him. He was
tittering inordinately.
“I’ve been trying to find Cassidy,” he said, “but he’s gone. Went and
got his horse while Hobhouse was fiddling. Poor doctor! If he’d only
been a parson!”
“Look, 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 ink-well Gordon had hurled through
the window had struck full on its brows, and the clear features and
raiment were blackened and befouled with a sinister stain!