It was later evening. Gordon sat in the library, the diary in which he had written those lines to Ada open before him.
Since the scene with Annabel whose dark aftermath had been the illness of his old friend, a deeper sense of pain had oppressed him. His marriage had sprung from an inarticulate divining of the infinite need of his nature for such a spiritual influence as he had imagined she possessed. It had ended in failure. A mood of hopelessness was upon him now as he wrote:
“Man is a battle-ground between angel and devil. Tenderness and roughness—sentiment, sensuality—soaring and grovelling, dirt and deity—all mixed in one compound of inspired clay. Marriage is the hostage he gives to his better nature. What if this hostage conspire with his evil side to betray the citadel?
“Nature made me passionate of temper but with an innate tendency to the love of good in my mainspring of mind. I am an atom jarring between these great discords. Sympathy is the divine lifter—the supreme harmonizer. And shall that evade me forever? Where shall I find it? In the cheap intrigue that absorbs half the life of those around me? Shall I turn to the fairest of those blandishments, and, like the drunkard, forget my penury in the hiccough and happiness of intoxication?”
The thought of the delicate coquetry of Jane Clermont and of the ripe beauty of Lady Caroline Lamb flashed across the page, an insistent vision. He saw the latter’s eyes, eager and inviting, as he had so often seen them at Melbourne House, when he had turned from them to a paler beauty. He thought of a past season when the whirlwind of her infatuation had wound their two names in gossip that had never tired. Love with her would have counted all sacrifice cheap, all obstacles gossamer. Could such a passion yield him what he craved? Was he bound to live pent within the palisade a priest’s ceremony had reared about him? Of what virtue were honor and faith to a bond where love was not?
But this picture faded as he wrote across it the answer to its question:
“No! I will not. I will keep the bond. Yet I and the mother of my child are far apart as the two poles! I am a toy of inborn unbeliefs, linked to unemotional goodness, merciless virtue and ice-girdled piety. I am asked to bow down to arcana which to me are bagatelles. As well believe in Roberts the Prophet, or Breslau the Conjurer if he had lived in the reign of Tiberius! The everlasting why which stares me in the face is an unforgivable thing. Yet to yield—to go the broad, easy way of conventional belief and smug morality—to shackle the doubts I feel! To anchor myself to the frozen molehills and write, like other men, glozed comfortable lines on which friend and foe can batten alike, and with which reviewer and reviewee, rhinoceros and elephant, mammoth and megalonyx can lie quietly together!”
He threw down his pen, and leaned his forehead in his hands.
“Would to God I had nothing better in this soul of mine!” he exclaimed. “The rest of the world can game and kiss and besot themselves in peace. Only I—I—must writhe and struggle unsatisfied!”
“There is a carboy outside, your lordship, who wishes to see you.”