The clever effrontery of the deception showed how deep was that hatred. Gordon understood now how Tita had heard of his presence at the osteria before he had entered it. The farceur inside did not know the man he impersonated was in Ravenna to-night. This, then, was not the only caravansary at which the burlesque had been played. Nor were these tourists smirking in the tap-room, or listening open-mouthed outside to the clumsy farrago, the only ones to return to England with clacking tongues. This was how the London papers had bristled with garbled inventions! This scene was only a step in a consistent plan to blacken his name anew throughout the highways of continental travel!
A guttural whisper escaped his lips. It would be another bar between him and possession of Allegra. And Teresa? If these post-house tales reached her ears! A crimson mist grew before his eyes.
A more reckless and profane emphasis had come now to the carouser within. He had risen and approached the porch window, simulating as he walked an awkward limp.
“Take a greeting to England, you globe-trotters! Greeting from Venice, the sea-Sodom, to London! Hell is not paved with its good intentions. Slabs of lava, with its parsons’ damned souls for cement, make a better causeway for Satan’s corso!”
Again he turned to his fellows in the tap-room: “When I shuffle off it will be like the rascals to dump me into Westminster Abbey. If they do, I’ll save them the trouble of the epitaph. I’ve written it myself:
“George Gordon lies here, peer of Nottinghamshire,
Wed, parted and banished inside of a year.
The marriage he made, being too much for one,
He could not carry off—so he’s now carri-on!”
“Westminster Abbey!” said a man’s bass in disgust.