Jane’s glance had followed his and she saw the figure at the door for the first time, as Gordon spoke:
“Cowards!” he said. “Cowards!”—a shrivelling rage was making his speech thick. “A thousand against one! It is I they hate, and they vent their hatred of me upon a woman! Such is the chivalry of this puddle of water-worms they call London!”
A sudden admiration swept the girl. “You dare them, too! You are not afraid!” She turned on the manager passionately. “I wouldn’t play for them again for all London! I despise you all, in front of the curtain and behind it. Liars—all liars! Come, Bysshe, I will go with you!”
Shelley held out his hand to Gordon with an open, friendly, “Good-by, my lord.”
“AYE, GO!” HE FOAMED. “THE QUICKER THE BETTER!” p. [136].
Gordon had been looking at him steadily—looking, but with a strange irrelevance, seeing really himself, standing in his own room at a long-ago dawn, a goblet of brandy in his hand, and in his heart a determination rising anew—a wish to be like the youth whose clasp now met his own, with a like serenity and purpose, a soul to which fame meant least, truth and right all! In that year of dazzle before his marriage he had quenched that determination. He had worshiped the Great Beast. He had lived the world’s life and played its games and accepted its awards. Now he suffered its punishments!
Malicious faces were peering in at the street entrance. The pit had overflowed into the lobby, the lobby into the street, and the numbers swelled from the hordes of the pave whose jargon banter flew back and forth. The jeering voices came plainly down the brick passageway.
“I will see you to your carriage,” said Gordon, and went out with them.
They passed to the vehicle—from which Mary Shelley’s frightened face looked out—through a vociferous human lane, that groaned and whistled in gusto.