CHAPTER XXTHE 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 itmay 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.”
“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 itmay 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.”