GORDON GOES UPON A PILGRIMAGE
Easter afternoon and all Missolonghi was on the streets. But there were
no festivities, no firing of guns nor decorations. A pall had settled
on the town, a pall reflected in a sky dun-colored and brooding storm.
To-day had been fixed upon for the march against Lepanto, but now war
was forgotten. The wheels of movement had stopped like those of some
huge machine whose spring of action has lost its function. Silent
soldiers patrolled the empty bazaar and the deserted docks. The crowds
that thronged the pavements--Suliotes, their wild faces softened by
grief unconcealed, gloomy officers of infantry and artillery, weeping
women, and grave priests of the Greek church--conversed in low tones.
Even the arrival of a new vessel in the harbor had gone unnoticed.
Observation centered on the stone building fronting the shallows, from
whose guarded precincts from time to time an aide issued with news
which spread speedily through the desponding populace--the military
headquarters where the foreign _archistrategos_ lay sick unto death.
Through the crowds, from the wharf, three figures passed in haste. One
was a gigantic Venetian servant, staggering beneath the burden of an
iron-bound chest. Small wonder its weight taxed even his herculean
strength, for besides bills of exchange for the sum nine times over,
it contained ten thousand pounds in English sovereigns. His huge form
made a way for the two who followed him: a venerable Armenian friar,
bareheaded and sandalled, and a woman heavily veiled, whose every nerve
was strung with voiceless suffering.
Mercifully a portion of the truth had come to Teresa at Zante, and in
the few intervening hours, an eternity of suspense, she had gained
an unnatural self-control. Up to the last moment of possibility she
had fought the dread sense of the inevitable that was rising to
shut out her whole horizon of future; but before the ominous hush
of the multitudes, hope had died within her. She seemed to hear
Mary Shelley crying through the voice of that Pisan storm: “O, I am
afraid--afraid--afraid!”
Yet, even in her despair, as she threaded the press with the friar, she
felt an anguished pride and thankfulness. The man on whose life these
awe-struck thousands trembled--the all that he had been to her! And she
had not come too late.
* * * * *
In the cheerless stone room, Mavrocordato, Pietro Gamba and the men of
medicine watched beside the conch on which Gordon lay. After a long
period of unconsciousness he had opened his eyes.
A moment he looked about the familiar apartment, slowly realizing. He
saw the tears on Gamba’s cheeks, the grave sorrow that moulded the
prince’s face. In that moment he did not deceive himself.
His look drew Mavrocordato--a look in which was a question, but no
fear.
The other bent over him. “An hour, they think,” he said gently.
Gordon closed his eyes. Such a narrow span between this life and the
unbridged gulf, between the old questioning and the great solution. An
hour, and he should test the worth of Dallas’ creed, should know if the
friar of San Lazzarro had been right. An hour, and life would be behind
him, with its errors ended, its longings quenched.
Its largest endeavor had been defeated: that was the closest sting.
In his weakness all else sank away beside the thought that he had
tried--and failed. Even the one blow he might not strike. The nation
was in straits, the loan delayed, the campaign unopened. He caught the
murmurs of the crowds in the courtyard. His lips framed words: “My poor
Greece! Who shall lead you now?”
Yet he had done his best, given his all, even his love. She, Teresa,
would know and hold his effort dear because she loved him. But there
was another woman--in England--who had hated and despised him. He had
piled upon her the mountain of his curse, and that curse had been
forgiveness. Must her memory of him be always bitterness? In the
fraying fringe of life past resentments were worn pitifully small.
Should he go without one tenderer word to Annabel?
He tried to lift himself. “Fletcher!” he said aloud.
The old valet, shaken with emotion, came forward as the others turned
away.
“Listen, Fletcher. You will go back to England. Go to my wife--you will
see Ada--tell my sister--say--”
His voice had become indistinct and the phrases ran together. Only
fragmentary words could be distinguished: “Ada”--“my child”--“my
sister”--“Hobhouse.” His speech flashed into coherence at last as he
ended: “Now I have told you all.”
“My dear lord,” sobbed the valet, “I have not understood a word!”
Pitiful distress overspread Gordon’s features. “Not understood?” he
said with an effort. “Then it is too late!” He sank back. Fletcher,
blind with grief, left the room.
A subdued commotion rose unwontedly beneath the windows. Mavrocordato
spoke hurriedly to an orderly who had just come to the door. “Have they
not been told?” he whispered. “What is the matter?”
Through the closing darkness, Gordon’s ear caught a part of the low
reply. “What did he say?” he asked.
Mavrocordato approached the couch. “Some one has come in a vessel
bringing a vast fortune for Greece.”
The dimming eyes flared up with joyful exultation. The cause was not
lost then. The armament could go on--the fleet be strengthened, the
forces held together, till the loan came--till another might take his
place.
A sound of footsteps fell on the stair--there was a soft knock. The
orderly’s voice demanded the password.
If there was reply, none of the watchers heard it. Gordon had
lifted himself on his elbow, his head turned with a sudden, strange
expectancy. “The password?” he said distinctly,--“it is here!” He laid
his hand upon his heart.
A sobbing cry answered, and a woman crossed swiftly to the couch and
knelt beside it.
A great light came to Gordon’s countenance. “Teresa!” he gasped.
“Teresa--my love!”
The effort had brought exhaustion. He sank back, feeling his head
pillowed upon her breast. He smiled and closed his eyes.
A friar had followed her into the room. Mavrocordato beckoned the
wondering surgeons to the door. They passed out, and young Gamba, after
one glance at his sister, followed. The friar drew near the couch,
crucifix in hand, his lips moving silently. The door closed.
After the one cry which had voiced that beloved name, Teresa had made
no sound. She cradled Gordon’s head in her arms, watching his face
with a fearful tenderness. From the court came the hushed hum of many
people, from the stair low murmur of voices; behind her she heard Padre
Somalian’s breathed prayer. Her heart was bleeding with a bitter pain.
Now and again she touched the damp brow, like blue-veined marble, and
warmed the cold hands between her own as she had done in that direful
ride when her arms had held that body, bleeding from a kriss.
The day was declining and the air filled with shadows. The storm that
had hung in the sky had begun to mutter in rolling far-off thunder,
and the sun, near to setting, made a lurid flame at the horizon-bars.
Gordon stirred and muttered, and at length opened his eyes upon the red
glare. He heard the echoes of the clouds, like distant artillery.
With the energy of delirium he sat up. He began to talk wildly, in a
singular jumble of languages: “Forward! Forward! Courage--strike for
Greece! It is victory!”
The hallucination of weakness had given him his supreme desire. He was
leading the assault on Lepanto.
“My son,”--the friar’s voice spoke--“there are other victories than of
war. There is that of the agony and the cross.”
The words seemed to strike through the delirium of the fevered
fantasies and calm them. The dying man’s eyes fastened on the speaker
with a vague inquiry. There was silence for a moment, while outside the
chamber a grizzled servant knelt by a group of officers, his seamed
face wet with tears, and from the courtyard rose the plaintive howl of
a dog.
Through the deepening abyss of Gordon’s senses the crumbling memory was
groping for an old recollection that stirred at the question. Out of
the maze grew sentences which a voice like that had once said: “Every
man bears a cross of despair to his Calvary. He who bore the heaviest
saw beyond. What did He say?--”
The failing brain struggled to recall. What did He say? He saw dimly
the emblem which the friar’s hand held--an emblem that had hung always
somewhere, somewhere in a fading Paradise of his. It expanded, a sad
dark Calvary against olive foliage gray as the ashes of the Gethsemane
agony--the picture of the eternal suffering of the Prince of Peace.
“Not--my will, but--Thine!”
The words fell faintly from the wan lips, scarce a murmur in the
stirless room. Gordon’s form, in Teresa’s clasp, seemed suddenly to
grow chill. She did not see the illumination that transformed the
friar’s face, nor hear the door open to her brother and Mavrocordato.
She was deaf to all save the moan of her stricken love, blind to all
save that face that was slipping from life and her.
Gordon’s hand fumbled in his breast, and drew something forth that fell
from his nerveless fingers on to the bed--a curling lock of baby’s
hair and a worn fragment of paper on which was a written prayer. She
understood, and, lifting them, laid them against his lips.
His eyes smiled once into hers and his face turned wholly to her,
against her breast.
“Now,” he whispered, “I shall go--to sleep.”
A piteous cry burst from Teresa’s heart as the friar leaned forward.
But there was no answer. George Gordon’s eternal pilgrimage had begun.