He looked at her keenly, with some concern.
“Have you had bad news—”
“No—”
“—about Barbara?”
“No, no, I am only faint. I have not been well these last few days.” And she crumpled the letter in her hands.
As he crossed the room he heard her give a curious, shivering cry, and when he turned again she was sitting with her face hidden in her hands, swaying slightly from side to side, her whole body shaken by some convulsive storm of tears. John Gore looked at her helplessly. Experience had not taught him to deal with an hysterical woman of forty.
Seizing the most discreet impulse, he moved toward the door and nearly pushed against Mrs. Jael as he opened it. He stood aside, and nodded her into the room, feeling that only a woman could deal with a woman in such a case. What the woe was he could only conjecture; perhaps some woman’s affair that made her emotions passionate and uncertain.
The spirit of unrest that seemed in the blood of every man that year might well have entered into John Gore’s mood as he wandered without purpose in the park after leaving my Lady Anne to Mrs. Jael’s ministrations. To a man who had led an active and adventurous life the court world seemed a trivial world, unless he were a libertine, a gambler, or a dabbler in ambitious schemes. John Gore felt himself out of touch with all these people, for after a three years’ voyage a man may be more ignorant of the political passions of the moment than a ploughboy who can catch the village gossip in a tavern. There were causes and interests to be served, and numberless back-stair intrigues to enthrall those who loved crooked pleasures and the mystery of some plot. John Gore realized that his father had plunged both hands into some secret undertaking, yet even the glamour of the Mazarin’s private salon did not lure him to mingle an amour with intrigues. The times seemed sinister, and full of violent yet treacherous motives. The life about him appeared vague, elusive, and unsatisfying. Even my Lady Purcell, so plump and buxom of yore, seemed to have fallen under the spell of some secret panic, to judge by her sickly look, and the strange emotion she had betrayed that morning. He found himself wondering what she had read in my lord’s letter, for the suddenness of her distress could hardly be explained by a fit of the vapors. For Anne Purcell had always appeared to him to be a thoughtless and selfishly cheerful woman, affectionate toward those who pleased her, but not one who would suffer greatly for the sake of others. The thought haunted him that the news had concerned Barbara, and that she had concealed the truth from him with a spasm of motherly pity.
His mood was of restlessness and discontent that morning—the restlessness of a man who lacks a purpose for the moment, and who longs for something to grapple with and overcome. My Lord Gore had counted on this adventurous spirit in the son, believing that it would lure him into the angry intrigues of the hour, and that he would forget that which my lord wished heartily to be forgotten. The fascinations of Hortense might have won many a man’s sword, and her splendor have dimmed the feeble and romantic glimmer of a distant face. To forego such plunder for a sulky girl whose mouth did not seem to be made for kisses! My lord’s worldliness scoffed at the chance. Hortense would disenchant him for any such sickly whim, and with a pout of her red lips or a touch of the hand, turn him aside from stupid melancholy. Yet Stephen Gore misunderstood the nature of the man, for though the vicissitudes of life make most folk fickle, there are some fanatics who grow more obstinate when threatened by fate.
John Gore passed by the Duke of Albemarle’s rooms, and entered the street by Holbein’s Gate. He walked under the windows of the Banqueting Hall, over the place where a king’s head had fallen, and turned in at the Palace Gate. He was strolling across the first court with the air of a man who wishes the whole world with the devil, when at the entry of the passage that ran past the Great Hall and the Chapel to Whitehall Stairs, he cannoned against an equally preoccupied person who came out by a side alley with a couple of books under his arm.