The castaway

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.