“Read it, Shelley,” he said in a strangled voice. “Read it and know London, the most ineffable centaur ever begotten of hypocrisy and a nightmare! Read what its wretched lepers are saying! There is a place in Michael Angelo’s ‘Last Judgment’ in the Sistine Chapel that was made for their kind, and may the like await them in that of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ—Amen!”
With this fearful imprecation he flung away from their startled faces along the winding vineyarded lane, on into the dusk, lost to a sense of direction, to everything save the blackness in his own soul.
The night fell, odorous with grape-scents, and the moon stained the terraces to amber. It shone on Gordon as he sat by the little wharf where the skiff rocked in the ripples, his eyes viewless, looking straight before him across the lake.
For him there was no sanctuary in time or in distance. The passage he had read at Newstead Abbey in his mother’s open Bible, beside her body, flashed through his mind: And among these nations shall thou find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest.... In the morning thou shalt say, Would God it were even! and at even thou shalt say, Would God it were morning! He had found—should find—no ease nor rest! The captive of Chillon had been bound only with fetters of iron to stone pillars. He was chained with fiery links of hate to the freezing walls of the world’s contumely!
Footsteps went by along the shadowy lane. Shelley’s voice spoke: “He will come back soon, and we must comfort him if we can.”
The words came distinctly as the footsteps died away.
Something clutched tangibly at Gordon’s soul. In that instant his gaze, lifted, rested on a white square in the moonlight. It was a familiar enough object, but now it appeared odd and outré. He rose and approached it. It had been a sign-post bearing an arrow and the words “Villa Diodati.” Now malice had painted out the name and replaced it with new and staring characters.
“Atheist and Fool.” It glared level at him with a baleful malevolence that chilled the moment’s warmer softening into ice. Atheist! Without God. What need, then, had he for man? Let the moralists have it so, since they stickled so lustily for endless brimstone. Fool? He would be so, then! His brain should lie fallow and untilled—he would write no more!
With a quick gesture he drew from his pocket his commonplace-book. He laid it against the disfigured sign-board, pencilled a few words on its cover and, turning, hurled it far from him into the shrubbery.
A twig snapped. He looked around. Jane Clermont stood near him, her eyes smiling into his, fringed with intoxication and daring.