GORDON STANDS AT BAY
Jane Clermont had reached it before him, her eyes a storm of anger. She
tore the silver ornaments from her costume, and dashed them at the feet
of the manager. “How dare they! How dare they!” she flamed.
“Don’t talk!” he snapped. “I must go on with the play or they will be
in here in five minutes. Don’t wait to change your dress--go! go, I
tell you! Do you think I want my theater tumbled about my ears?”
He cursed as the dulled uproar came from beyond the dropped curtain.
Curious eyes had turned to Gordon, faces zestful, relishing, as he
paused in the doorway. The girl had not seen him. But at that moment
hurried steps came down the passage--a youth darted past Gordon and
threw an arm about her.
“Jane!” he cried, “we were there--Mary and I--we saw it all! It is
infamous!”
A flash of instant recollection deepened the vivid fire in Gordon’s
look as it rested on the boyish, beardless figure, whose quaint dress
and roving eyes, bright and wild like a deer’s, seemed as incongruous
in that circle of paint and tinsel as in the squalor of the Fleet
Prison. Shelley went on rapidly through Jane’s incoherent words:
“Jane, listen! We’re not poor now. We came to the play to-night to tell
you the news. Old Sir Bysshe, my grandfather, is dead and the entail
comes to me. We sail for the continent at daybreak. Mary is waiting in
the carriage. Come with us, Jane, and let England go.”
On the manager’s face drops of perspiration had started. “Aye, go!” he
foamed. “The quicker the better! His lordship is waiting--”
He shrank back, the sneer throttled on his lips, for there was that in
Gordon’s colorless features, his sparkling eyes, at which the man’s
tongue clove to the roof of his mouth.
“George Gordon!” exclaimed Shelley under his breath.
Jane’s glance had followed his and she saw the figure at the door for
the first time, as Gordon spoke:
“Cowards!” he said. “Cowards!”--a shrivelling rage was making his
speech thick. “A thousand against one! It is I they hate, and they vent
their hatred of me upon a woman! Such is the chivalry of this puddle of
water-worms they call London!”
A sudden admiration swept the girl. “You dare them, too! You are not
afraid!” She turned on the manager passionately. “I wouldn’t play for
them again for all London! I despise you all, in front of the curtain
and behind it. Liars--all liars! Come, Bysshe, I will go with you!”
Shelley held out his hand to Gordon with an open, friendly, “Good-by,
my lord.”
[Illustration: “AYE, GO!” HE FOAMED. “THE QUICKER THE BETTER!” _p.
136._]
Gordon had been looking at him steadily--looking, but with a strange
irrelevance, seeing really himself, standing in his own room at
a long-ago dawn, a goblet of brandy in his hand, and in his heart a
determination rising anew--a wish to be like the youth whose clasp now
met his own, with a like serenity and purpose, a soul to which fame
meant least, truth and right all! In that year of dazzle before his
marriage he had quenched that determination. He had worshiped the Great
Beast. He had lived the world’s life and played its games and accepted
its awards. Now he suffered its punishments!
Malicious faces were peering in at the street entrance. The pit had
overflowed into the lobby, the lobby into the street, and the numbers
swelled from the hordes of the pave whose jargon banter flew back and
forth. The jeering voices came plainly down the brick passageway.
“I will see you to your carriage,” said Gordon, and went out with them.
They passed to the vehicle--from which Mary Shelley’s frightened face
looked out--through a vociferous human lane, that groaned and whistled
in gusto.
“There’s the jade; an’ ’er lordship with ’er, too!”
“Which is ’im?”
“W’y, ’im with the leg.”
At the gibe which followed Gordon smiled mirthlessly. This blind
rabble, egged on by hatred that utilized for its ends the crass dislike
of the scum for the refined--what was it to him? He knew its masters!
As Jane took her seat the jeers redoubled. Across the heads between
him and the surging entrance of the theater he saw the sneering,
heavy-lidded face of William Lamb. The sight roused the truculent demon
of stubbornness in him. With a flare of unrecking impertinence, and a
racing recollection of a first dinner at Melbourne House, when he had
given Lady Caroline Lamb such a blossom from his coat, Gordon drew the
carnation from his buttonhole and handed it to Jane Clermont.
The crowd had looked to see him enter with the others; now as the
vehicle rolled away, leaving him standing alone, the clamor, sharpened
by his nonchalant act and by the smile which they could not translate,
rose more derisive, more boldly mixed with insult. They were overcoming
that dull inborn fear of the clod for the noble. There was menace in
what they said, a foreshadowing of peril that might have fallen but for
a diversion.
A coach, adroitly handled, whirled up to the kerbstone, and a man
leaped to the pavement. Gordon felt a hand touch his arm.
“The carriage, my lord,” said Fletcher.
The valet, guessing better than his master, had followed him. A sense
of the dog-like fidelity of the old servitor smote Gordon and softened
the bitter smile on his lips. Only an instant he hesitated before he
entered the carriage, and in that instant a hand grasped at the horses’
heads, but the coachman’s whip fell and the plunging animals made an
aisle through which the vehicle, hissed and hooted, rolled in safety.
As it drew away, a young man, dark and oriental looking, came through
the crowd, staring wonderingly at the excitement. He was one who more
than once on that spot had watched Gordon’s approaching carriage with
black envy and jealousy--the same who had stood with Jane Clermont on
the night Dr. Cassidy’s suspicious gaze had made him draw closer into
the shadow of the doorway. At the names the crowd coupled, he started,
paled and hurried into the stage-entrance.
In an instant he emerged, breathing hard, heard the jeers of the crowd
directed at the moving carriage, and, his fingers clenching, rushed
into the street and gazed after it. It turned into Long Acre, going
toward Piccadilly. He plunged into the network of side streets opposite
and hastened rapidly in the direction it had taken.
It was not far to the house on Piccadilly Terrace, and he outstripped
the coach. From the shadow he saw it stop, saw the man it carried
dismount--alone.
“Where is she?” he muttered. “He took her from the theater--damn him!
Where has he left her?”
* * * * *
The same bitter smile with which he had faced the clamor outside the
theater was on Gordon’s white face as he entered the house. In the hall
he opened a single note of invitation, read it and laughed.
Rushton met him. “Mr. Dallas is in the library, your lordship.”
Gordon strode into the room. Dallas saw that though he was smiling
oddly, his face was deeply lined, and his eyes were glittering like
those of a man with a fever.
“George,” cried Dallas, “I was bound to see you! Why,--you are ill!”
“Not I, Dallas. I have been to Drury Lane to-night. All society was
there, divorced and divorceable, intrigants and Babylonians of quality.
Lady Holland, like a hippopotamus in the face, and William Lamb with
the very manner of the ursine sloth!”
There was genuine anxiety in Dallas’ tone. “Come with me to Stratford
for a few days,” he besought. “Come now--to-night!”
“Not this week, old friend. I have social engagements to fill!”
Gordon tossed him the note he held. “See! Lady Jersey, the loveliest
tyrant that shakes the cap and bells of fashion’s fools!--the despot
of Almack’s--the patroness-in-chief of the Dandy Ball, invites the
reprobate, the scapegrace, to that sumptuous conclave! She dares the
frown and risks pollution! Would you have me disappoint my only woman
apologist in London? Shall I not reward such unparagoned courage with
the presence of its parlor lion, its ball-room bard, its hot-pressed
darling?”
He laughed wildly, sardonically, and jerked the bell.
“Fletcher, a bottle of brandy,” he commanded, “and I shall not want you
again to-night.”
The valet set the bottle down with an anxious look at his master--a
half-appealing one toward Dallas.
As the door closed, Gordon, sitting on the table-edge, began to sing
with perfect coolness, without a quaver in the metallic voice:
“The Devil returned to hell by two,
And he stayed at home till five;
He dined on a dowager done _ragout_
And a peer boiled down in an Irish stew
And, quoth he, ‘I’ll take a drive!
I walked this morning. I’ll ride to-night--
In darkness my children take delight--
And I’ll see how my favorites thrive!’”
“Laddie!” Dallas’ cry was full of pity and entreaty. “I beg of
you--stop!” He went over and touched the other’s arm.
“Listen, Dallas--
“The Devil he lit on the London pave
And he found his work done well.
For it ran so red from the slandered dead
That it blushed like the waves of hell!
Then loudly and wildly and long laughed he--
‘Methinks they have here little need of me!’”