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: