“There’s the jade; an’ ’er lordship with ’er, too!”
“Which is ’im?”
“W’y, ’im with the leg.”
At the gibe which followed Gordon smiled mirthlessly. This blind rabble, egged on by hatred that utilized for its ends the crass dislike of the scum for the refined—what was it to him? He knew its masters!
As Jane took her seat the jeers redoubled. Across the heads between him and the surging entrance of the theater he saw the sneering, heavy-lidded face of William Lamb. The sight roused the truculent demon of stubbornness in him. With a flare of unrecking impertinence, and a racing recollection of a first dinner at Melbourne House, when he had given Lady Caroline Lamb such a blossom from his coat, Gordon drew the carnation from his buttonhole and handed it to Jane Clermont.
The crowd had looked to see him enter with the others; now as the vehicle rolled away, leaving him standing alone, the clamor, sharpened by his nonchalant act and by the smile which they could not translate, rose more derisive, more boldly mixed with insult. They were overcoming that dull inborn fear of the clod for the noble. There was menace in what they said, a foreshadowing of peril that might have fallen but for a diversion.
A coach, adroitly handled, whirled up to the kerbstone, and a man leaped to the pavement. Gordon felt a hand touch his arm.
“The carriage, my lord,” said Fletcher.
The valet, guessing better than his master, had followed him. A sense of the dog-like fidelity of the old servitor smote Gordon and softened the bitter smile on his lips. Only an instant he hesitated before he entered the carriage, and in that instant a hand grasped at the horses’ heads, but the coachman’s whip fell and the plunging animals made an aisle through which the vehicle, hissed and hooted, rolled in safety.
As it drew away, a young man, dark and oriental looking, came through the crowd, staring wonderingly at the excitement. He was one who more than once on that spot had watched Gordon’s approaching carriage with black envy and jealousy—the same who had stood with Jane Clermont on the night Dr. Cassidy’s suspicious gaze had made him draw closer into the shadow of the doorway. At the names the crowd coupled, he started, paled and hurried into the stage-entrance.