THE EXILE
Fletcher was watching anxiously for his master’s return that night.
When he entered, there were new lines in his face--the stigmata of some
abrupt and fearful mental recoil.
“Order the coach to be got ready at once,” Gordon directed, “and pack
my portmanteau.”
He went heavily into the library, gazing at the book-shelves with eyes
listless and dull. Presently, with the same nerveless movements, he
unlocked a drawer and took therefrom several small articles: a lock
of Ada’s hair--a little copy of “Romeo and Juliet” given him years
before by his sister--and the black bottle. He thrust these into his
great-coat pocket.
Amid the litter of papers on his desk a document met his eye: it was
the draft of separation submitted by Sir Samuel Romilly. Through his
mind flitted vaguely his struggle as he had sat with that paper before
him. The struggle was ended; justice was impossible. It remained only
to sign this, the death-warrant of his fatherhood. He wrote his name
without a tremor, franked it for the post and laid it in plain view, as
Fletcher entered to announce the carriage.
The deep lines were deeper on Gordon’s face as he went to the pavement;
he moved like a sleep-walker, his body obeying mechanically the mandate
of some hidden, alert purpose working independently of eye and brain.
An inner voice rather than his own seemed to give the direction--a
direction that made the coachman stare, made Fletcher with a look of
dismay seize coat and hat and climb hurriedly to the box beside him.
Gordon did not see this--he saw nothing, knew nothing, save the rush of
the coach through the gloom.
* * * * *
When the worn night was breaking into purple fringes of dawn, Gordon
stood on the deck of a packet outbound for Ostend, looking back over
the wine-dark water where the dissolving fog, hung like a fume of
silver-gray against the white Dover cliffs, built a glittering city
of towers and banners. Under the first beams the capricious vapors
seemed the ghosts of dead ideals shrouding a harbor of hate. His youth,
his dreams, his triumphs, his bitterness, his rebellion, his grief,
all blended, lay there smarting, irreparable. Before him stretched
wanderings and regrets and broken longings.
“Your coffee, my lord!”--a familiar voice spoke. Fletcher stood
behind him, tray in hand, trepidation and resolve struggling in his
countenance.
Gordon took the coffee mechanically. “How did you come here?”
“With the coach, my lord.”
“Where are you going?”
The valet’s hand shook, and he swallowed hard. “Your lordship knows
best,” he said huskily.
Gordon gazed a moment out across the misty channel. When he set down
the cup his face had a look that brought to the other’s eyes a sudden
gladness and utter devotion.
“Thank you, Fletcher,” he said gently, and turned his gaze away.
Presently, as the light quickened, he drew paper from his pocket,
put the copy of “Romeo and Juliet” beneath it for support, and with
the book resting on the rail, began to write. What he wrote--strange
that chance should have furnished for his tablet now a story of such
deathless love!--was a letter to Annabel:
“A few final words--not many. Answer I do not expect, nor does it
import. But you will at least hear me. I leave in England but one
being whom you have left me to part with--my sister. Wherever I may
go--and I may go far--you and I can never meet in this world. Let
this fact content or atone, and if accident occurs to me, be kind to
her; or if she is then also nothing, to her children. For never has
she acted or spoken toward you but as your friend. You once promised
me this much. Do not deem the promise cancelled--for it was not a vow.
“Whatever I may have felt, I assure you that at this moment I
bear you no resentment. If you have injured me, this forgiveness
is something; If I have injured you, it is something more still.
Remember that our feelings will have one rallying-point so long
as our child lives. Teach Ada not to hate me. I do not ask for
justification to her--this is probably beyond the power of either
of us to give--but let her not grow up believing I am a deserving
outcast from my kind, or lying dead In some forgotten grave. For the
one would sadden her young mind no less than the other. Let her one
day read what I have written, and so judge me. And recollect that
though now it may be an advantage to you, yet it may sometime come
to be a sorrow to her to have the waters or the earth between her and
her father.
“Whether the offense that has parted us has been solely on my side or
reciprocal, or on yours chiefly, I have ceased now to reflect upon
any but two things--that you are the mother of my child, and that we
shall never meet again.”