CHAPTER XII
“MAN’S LOVE IS OF MAN’S LIFE A THING APART”

What he saw as he emerged from the hall was Saturnalia indeed.

Sheridan, his robe thrown open from his capacious frame, sat with knees wide apart, his chair tilted back, his face crumpling with amusement. Hobhouse sat cross-legged on the stone coffin. Others, robed and tonsured, were grouped about the board, and on it was perched a stooped and ungainly figure in a somber dress of semi-clerical severity.

“Sunburn me, it’s Dr. Cassidy,” muttered Gordon, with a grim smile. “And without his tracts! What’s he doing at Newstead? The rascals—they’ve got him fuddled!”

The hospitality offered in the host’s absence had in truth proved too much for the doctor. Now, as he balanced on his gaitered feet among the overturned wine-bottles, he looked a very unclerical figure indeed. His neck-cloth was awry, and his flattish eyes had a look of comical earnestness and unaccustomed good-fellowship. He held a wine-glass and waved it in uncertain gestures, his discourse punctured by frequent and unstinted applause:

“What was the Tree of Knowledge doing in the garden, you ask. Why not planted on the other side of the wall? Human reason, enlightened by inspiration, finds no answer in the divine Word. Theology is our only refuge. Adam was predestined to sin. All created things are contingent on omnipotent volition. Sin being predestined, the process leading to that sin must be predestined, too. See? Sin—Adam. Garden—snake. The law of the divine Will accomplished.”

Hobhouse wiped his eyes with his handkerchief. “Who could contemplate the picture,” he groaned, “without tears? Poor fallen man! I weep for him.”

The remark struck the lecturer with pathos. The look of stern satisfaction with which he had so eloquently justified the eternal tragedy melted into a compassionate expression which had a soft tinge of the romantic. He smiled—a smile of mingled burgundy and benevolence.

“Herein, gentlemen, appears our lesson of infinite pity. Man expelled from Eden, but still possessing Eve. Justice tempered with mercy. Love of woman compensating for the loss of earthly Paradise.”

“True, true,” murmured Hobhouse. “‘There’s heaven on earth in woman’s love,’ as Mr. Moore, here, sings. A prime subject for another toast, Doctor. We’ve drunk to the navy and to theology; now for a glass to her eternal ladyship!—Egad! Here’s Gordon!”

The final word brought a shout, and the glasses were refilled. “Gordon’s toast!” they insisted as they opened ranks. “A toast, or a new poem!”

Some disturbance out of doors had roused the animals kennelled at the hall entrance and a battery of growls mingled with the importunities.

Sheridan pounded with his great fist on the jingling board till the uproar stilled. “The lord of the manor speaks!” he proclaimed.

Gordon approached the table and picked up the skull-cup. In the blaze of candle-light, his face showed markedly its singular and magnetic beauty. He glanced about him an instant—at Sheridan’s waggish, rough-hewn countenance, at the circle of younger flushed and uproarious ones, and at the labored solemnity and surprise of the central figure on the table. The doctor’s answering stare was full of a fresh bewilderment; he was struggling to recall a message he had brought to some one—he had forgotten to whom—which in the last half-hour had slipped like oil from his mind.

In Gordon’s brain verses yet unwritten had been grouping themselves that afternoon—verses that not for long were to be set in type—and he spoke them now; not flippantly, but with a note of earnestness and of feeling, a light flush in his cheek tingeing the colorless white of his face, and his gray-blue eyes darkened to violet.

“Woman! though framed in weakness, ever yet
Her heart reigns mistress of man’s varied mind.
And she will follow where that heart is set
As roll the waves before the settled wind.
Her soul is feminine nor can forget—
To all except love’s image, fondly blind.
And she can e’en survive love’s fading dim,
And bear with life, to love and pray for him!”

It was an odd thing to see this compelling figure, standing in the midst of these monkish roisterers, all in celibate robes and beads, declaiming lines of such passionate beauty and in a voice flexible and appealing. An odd toast to drink from such a goblet!

“Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart,
’Tis woman’s whole existence; man may range
The court, camp, church, the vessel and the mart,
Sword, gown, gain, glory offer in exchange.
Pride and ambition may o’errun his heart,
And few there are whom these cannot estrange.
Woman knows but one refuge, if love err—
To draw him from these baubles, back to her!”

There was an instant of dead silence when he paused, broken by the doctor’s hiccough and a voice behind them.

Sheridan saw Gordon set down the skull-cup as the spot of color faded from his cheek. He turned to the entrance.

“Curse catch me!” gasped the wit, springing to his feet. “Lady Melbourne and Miss Milbanke!”