THE BURSTING OF THE STORM
Over the great, crow-footed face of London, full of tragedies, a heavy
fog had fallen. Dismal and murky, it lay like a bodiless incubus,
shutting out the shining sun and the sweet smells of spring and
showers. To Gordon, in the house on Piccadilly Terrace, the colorless
dun had seemed to reflect his own feelings. He was numbed. His mind was
stumbling through wastes of dumb protest.
The links of Mrs. Clermont’s forging had held. The story of his wife’s
flight which the _Courier_ had displayed on its front page had been
a masterpiece of dark hints and veiled insinuations. To Gordon, who
had read it with aching eyeballs, it had seemed printed in monstrous
symbols of flame.
It was to prove the opening note of a chorus whose vicious strength
he had not comprehended till the following day, when the avalanche
of abuse broke over him with the morning newspapers. Every personal
grudge, every pygmean hater of success, every cowering enmity that had
sickened under his splendor had roused. He shut himself in the library,
telling Fletcher he was at home to no one, and read grimly the charges
they preferred: he had carried his unprincipled profligacy into his
home and ensconced beneath his own roof a Drury Lane inamorata; he had
persecuted his wife with inhuman cruelties, denied her the offices
of religion, fired pistols in her bedroom to frighten her while she
slept--these were the lightest of their accusations.
Gordon’s mind, racing over the pages, was catching glimpses of
heterogeneous elements which blended in a dim, dread futurity. He saw
suddenly the inertia of Annabel’s passive correctness--saw why his own
name, with its eccentric dazzle, had stood forth blackly against her
even ways, her spotless, conventional pureness. The mute contrast had
always been there, and he had suffered accordingly. To the world she
stood a martyr--a stony pillar, once a woman, who had looked back to
catch some lurid fume from doomed cities sinking under Dead Sea waters.
Could the great world credit these monstrous calumnies? Might
the reiterate malice of the public prints infect his nearer
acquaintances--those at whose tables he had sat almost weekly, the
cliques of the clubs, the gay set at Almack’s, the circle of Melbourne
House?
He drew a sharp breath, for he thought of William Lamb, heir to the
Melbourne title, from whom he had daily expected a _cartel_. He would
leave no path of revenge untrod; nor would Lady Caroline. Could their
disassociate hatred envenom even the few for whose opinion he cared?
The _Courier_ had reserved its bitterest attack. On the second day it
published the stanzas entitled “Fare Thee Well,” signed by Gordon’s
name. He saw them with a strange sensation, his mind grasping for the
cords he felt enmeshing him, his eyes fully opened now to the devilish
ingenuity of his persecution.
But he himself stood appalled at the deadly effect of this attack.
Innuendo was thrown aside; invective took its place. Paragraph,
pamphlet and caricature held the lines up to odium. The hypocrisy of a
profligate! A cheap insincere appeal to mawkish sympathy! A tasteless
vulgar parade of a _poseur_ strumming his heartstrings on the highway!
It came to Gordon with a start that during the past forty-eight hours
he had forgotten his mail. He rang the bell and asked for his letters.
“There are none, my lord.”
No letters? And daily for a year his table had been deluged with tinted
and perfumed billets crested and sealed with signets of great houses.
No letters!
“Who has called to-day?”
Fletcher’s honest eyes could scarcely meet his master’s. “Mr. Hobhouse
called this morning, and Mr. Dallas this afternoon.”
“That is all?”
“Yes, your lordship.”
Gordon went to the fireplace and stared down dazedly into the embers.
He had been a santon; now he was an Ishmaelite, a mark for the
thrust of every scurrillous poetaster who wielded a pen--a chartered
Blue-Beard--another Mirabeau whom the feudalists discovered to be a
monster! The world had learned with pleasure that he was a wretch.
Tom Moore was in Ireland, Sheridan dead. Of all he knew, only two
rallied to his support: Hobhouse, the sturdy, undemonstrative, likable
companion of his early travels, and--Dallas!
Gordon laughed bitterly. He had been London’s favorite. Now, without
justice or reason, it covered him with obloquy and went by on the other
side.
There had followed days and nights of mental agony, of inner crying-out
for reprisal--hours of fierce longing for his child, when he had sought
relief in walking unfrequented streets from dark to dawn, in desultory
composition, more often in the black bottle that lay in the library
drawer. Meager news had reached his sister, and a brave, true message
from her was the only cooling dew that fell into his fiery Sahara of
suffering. A packet left by a messenger roused him to a white fury.
It was from Sir Samuel Romilly, the solicitor under his retainer. Sir
Samuel had reversed his allegiance. His curt note inclosed a draft
of separation proposed by Sir Ralph Milbanke, and though couched in
judicial phrases, voiced a threat unmistakable.
Almost a round of the clock Gordon sat with this paper before him, his
meals untasted. His wife at that moment was with Ada--his child and
hers!--at her father’s house in Seaham. She had read the attacks--knew
their falseness--knew and would not deny. Now he knew why. What she
wanted was written in that document: freedom and her daughter. She
would engulf him in calumny only so the world would justify her in
her self-righteous desertion. And lest he put it to the test, lest he
refuse to be condemned unheard and demand the arbitrament of an open
though prejudiced tribunal, she threatened him with what further veiled
accusations he could not imagine. Good God! Was there anything more to
accuse him of? Better any appeal to publicity now than this step which
shut him from Ada!
Suppose he made this appeal. There was no justice in public opinion.
In his case, it was already poisoned. Already it dubbed him a Nero,
a Caligula, a Richard Third! Add to the present outcry new and more
terrible charges--the formless insinuations of Sir Ralph--and what
might not its verdict be? It would justify his wife, applaud the act
which robbed him of his child! And these dark indictments, though
false, would be no less an evil legacy for that daughter whom he loved
with every fiber of his being.
To consent to lose Ada forever--or to risk both her loss and her
blight. To battle, and jeopardize her life’s happiness perhaps--or to
yield and give tacit admission to the worst the world said of him, her
father!
Night fell. At last he stirred and his square shoulders set. “To wait,”
he said--“to wait and be patient. That is all that is left. Whatever I
must do, the world shall not see me cringe. The celebrity I have wrung
from it has been in the teeth of all opinions and prejudices. I will
show no white feather now!”
He laid the document aside, rose and looked in the glass. His face was
haggard, worn; there were listless lines under his eyes. He summoned
Fletcher and dressed with all his old scrupulousness--such a costume
as he had worn the afternoon he had waked to fame. With a thought,
perhaps, of that day, he drew a carnation through his buttonhole. Then
he left the house and turned his steps toward Drury Lane.
The fog was gone, the air lay warm and pleasant, and a waxing moon
shamed the street lamps. He passed down St. James Street, and came
opposite White’s Club. He had no thought of entering. Lord Petersham
descended the steps as he approached, his dress exquisite, his
walking-stick held daintily between thumb and forefinger like a pinch
of snuff. The fop’s eyes met Gordon’s in a blank stare.
A group of faces showed in the bow-window and for an instant Gordon
hesitated, the old perverse spirit tempting him to enter, but he
resisted it.
The first act was on when he reached Drury Lane Theater, and the lobby
was empty save for the usual loungers and lackeys. The doors of the pit
were open and he stood behind the rustling colors of Fops’ Alley. He
scanned the house curiously, himself unobserved, noting many a familiar
face in the boxes.
Night after night the pit had roused to the veteran actor Kean. Night
after night, Fops’ Alley had furnished its quota of applause for a far
smaller part, played with grace and sprightliness--by Jane Clermont,
the favorite of the greenroom. Her first entrance formed a finish to
the act now drawing to a close. To Gordon’s overwrought senses to-night
there seemed some strange tenseness in the air. Here and there heads
drew together whispering. The boxes were too quiet.
As the final tableau arranged itself, and Jane advanced slowly from
the wings, there was none of the usual signs of approval. Instead a
disturbed shuffle made itself heard. She began her lines smiling. An
ugly murmur overran the pit, and she faltered.
Instantly a man’s form leaned over the edge of a box and hissed. The
watcher, staring from the shadow of the lobby, recognized him with a
quick stab of significance--it was William Lamb. The action seemed a
concerted signal. Some one laughed. An undulate hiss swept over the
house like a nest of serpents. Even some of the boxes swelled its
volume.
Jane shrank, looking frightenedly about her, bewildered, her hands
clutching her gown; for the pit was on its legs now, and epithets were
hurled at the stage. “_Crede Gordon!_” came the derisive shout--a cry
taken up with groans and catcalls--and a walking-stick clattered across
the footlights. The manager rushed upon the stage and the heavy curtain
began to descend.
“The baggage!” said a voice near Gordon with a coarse laugh. “It’s the
one they say he had in his house when his wife left him. Serves her
right!”
Gordon’s breath caught in his throat. So this had been William Lamb’s
way! Not an appeal to the court of ten paces--an assassin in the dark
with a bloodless weapon to slay him in the world’s esteem!
He heard the din rising from the whole house, as he crossed the lobby
and strode down the passageway leading to the greenroom.