“OF HIM WHOM SHE DENIED A HOME, THE GRAVE”
Greece was nevermore a vassal of the Turk. In the death of the
_archistrategos_ who had so loved her cause, the chieftains put aside
quarrels and buried private ambitions--all save one. In the stone
chamber at Missolonghi wherein that shrouded form had lain, the Suliote
chiefs swore fealty to Mavrocordato and the constitutional government
as they had done to George Gordon.
Another had visited that chamber before them. This was a dark-bearded
man in Suliote dress, who entered it unobserved while the body of
the man he had so hated lay in state in the Greek church. Trevanion
forced the sealed door of the closet and examined the papers it
contained. When he took horse for Athens, he bore with him whatever
of correspondence and memoranda might be fuel for the conspiracy of
Ulysses--and a roll of manuscript, the completion of “Don Juan,” which
he tore to shreds and scattered to the four winds on a flat rock above
a deep pool a mile from the town. He found Ulysses a fugitive, deserted
by his faction, and followed him to his last stronghold, a cavern in
Mount Parnassus.
But fast as Trevanion went, one went as fast. This was a young Greek
who had ridden from Salona to Missolonghi with one Lambro, primate of
Argos. Beneath the beard and Suliote attire he recognized Trevanion,
and his brain leaped to fire with the memory of a twin sister and the
fearful fate of the sack to which she had once been abandoned. From an
ambush below the entrance of Ulysses’ cave, he shot his enemy through
the heart.
On the day Trevanion’s sullen career was ended, along the same highway
which Gordon had traversed when he rode to Newstead on that first black
home-coming, a single carriage followed a leaden casket from London to
Nottinghamshire.
In its course it passed a noble country-seat, the hermitage of a woman
who had once burned an effigy before a gay crowd in Almack’s Assembly
Rooms. Lady Caroline Lamb, diseased in mind as in body, discerned the
procession from the terrace. As the hearse came opposite she saw the
crest upon the pall. She fainted and never again left her bed.
The cortège halted at Hucknall church, near Newstead Abbey, and there
the earthly part of George Gordon was laid, just a year from the hour
he had bidden farewell to Teresa in the Pisan garden, where now a
lonely woman garnered her deathless memories.
At the close of the service the two friends who had shared that last
journey--Dallas, now grown feeble, and Hobhouse, recently knighted and
risen to political prominence--stood together in the lantern-lighted
porch.
“What of the Westminster chapter?” asked Dallas. “Will they grant the
permission?”
A shadow crossed the other’s countenance. Popular feeling had undergone
a great revulsion, but clerical enmity was outspoken and undying. He
thought of a bitter philippic he had heard in the House of Lords from
the Bishop of London. His voice was resentful as he answered:
“The dean has refused. The greatest poet of his age and country is
denied even a tablet on the wall of Westminster Abbey!”
The kindly eyes under their white brows saddened. Dallas looked out
through the darkness where gloomed the old Gothic towers of Newstead,
tenantless, save for their raucous colonies of rooks.
“The greatest poet of his age and country!” he repeated slowly. “After
all, we can be satisfied with that.”
* * * * *
AFTERMATH
Springs quickened, summers sped their hurrying blooms, autumns hung
scarlet flags in the coppice, winters fell and mantled glebe and moor.
Yet the world did not forget.
There came an April day when the circumstance of a sudden shower set
down from an open carriage at the porch of Newstead Abbey a slender
girl of seventeen, who had been visiting at near-by Annesley.
Waiting, in the library, the passing of the rain, the visitor picked up
a book from the table. It was “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.”
For a time she read with tranquil interest--then suddenly startled:
“Is thy face like thy mother’s, my fair child!
Ada! sole daughter of my house and heart?
When last I saw thy young blue eyes they smiled,
And then we parted,--not as now we part,
But with a hope.--”
She looked for the name of its author and paled. Thereafter she sat
with parted lips and tremulous, long breathing. The master of the house
entered to find an unknown guest reading in a singular rapt absorption.
Her youth and interest beckoned his favorite topic. He had been one
of the strangers who, year by year in increasing numbers, visited
the little town of Hucknall--travelers who, speaking the tongue in
which George Gordon had written, trod the pave of the quiet church
with veneration. He had purchased Newstead and had taken delight in
gathering about him in those halls mementoes of the man whose youth had
been spent within them.
While the girl listened with wide eyes on his face, he told her of the
life and death of the man who had written the book. He marvelled while
he talked, for it appeared that she had been reared in utter ignorance
of his writings, did not know that he had lived beneath that very roof,
nor that he lay buried in the church whose spire could be seen from
the mole. He waxed eloquent as he told her how the gilded rank and
fashion of London had found comfort in silence--how Tom Moore, long
since become one of its complacent satellites, had read its wishes
well: how he had stood in a locked room and given the smug seal of his
approbation while secret flame destroyed the self-justification of a
dead man’s name, the Memoirs which had been a last bequest to a living
daughter.
The shower passed, the sun came out rejoicing--still the master of the
Abbey talked. When he had finished he showed his listener a portrait,
painted by the American, Benjamin West. When she turned from this, her
face was oddly white; she was thinking of another portrait hidden by a
curtain, which had been one of the unsolved mysteries of her childhood.
On her departure her host drove with her to Hucknall church, and
standing in the empty chancel she read the marble tablet set into the
wall:
IN THE VAULT BENEATH
LIE THE REMAINS OF
GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON
THE AUTHOR OF “CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE”.
HE WAS BORN IN LONDON ON THE 22nd OF
JANUARY, 1788.
HE DIED AT MISSOLONGHI IN WESTERN GREECE,
ON THE 19th OF APRIL, 1824,
ENGAGED IN THE GLORIOUS ATTEMPT TO
RESTORE THAT
COUNTRY TO HER ANCIENT FREEDOM AND
RENOWN.
HIS SISTER PLACED THIS TABLET TO HIS
MEMORY.
A long time the girl stood silent, her features quivering with some
strange emotion of reproach and pain. Behind her she heard her escort’s
voice. He was repeating lines from the book she had been reading an
hour before:
“My hopes of being remembered are entwined
With my land’s language: if too fond and far
These aspirations in their scope inclined--
If my fame should be, as my fortunes are,
Of hasty blight, and dull Oblivion bar
My name from out the temple where the dead
Are honored by the nations--let it be--
And light the laurels on a loftier head!
Meantime, I seek no sympathies, nor need;
The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree
I planted. They have torn me--and I bleed.
My task is done--my song hath ceased--my theme
Has died into an echo; it is fit
The spell should break of this protracted dream.
The torch shall be extinguished which hath lit
My midnight lamp--and what Is writ, is writ.
Farewell! a word that must be, and hath been--
A sound which makes us linger;--yet--farewell
Ye! who have traced the Pilgrim to the scene
Which is his last, if in your memories dwell
A thought which once was his, if on ye swell
A single recollection, not in vain
He wore his sandal-shoon, and scallop-shell!”
Could he whose ashes lay beneath that recording stone have seen the
look on the girl’s face as she listened--could he have seen her shrink
that night from a woman’s contained kiss--he would have known that his
lips had been touched with prophecy when he said:
“The smiles of her youth have been her mother’s, but the tears of her
maturity shall be mine!”
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.