it was evening at the friary, and in the garden under the cypresses and oaks gabriel watched the sun sink towards the sea. there was great bitterness in the man’s heart, the bitterness of one whom the world had wronged.
by all reasonable law moral bankruptcy should have overwhelmed gabriel that day. public obloquy had been loosed upon his head; saltire would point the finger of scorn at him; the mob would jeer and squeak over his shame. he was to be an outcast, an adam driven by the saltire seraphs from their fair eden of charity and truth.
yet the outcast was discovering his manhood amid the anathemas of his neighbors. he was one of those souls who are never stirred to the higher courage save by the heavier scourgings of misfortune. luxury had enervated him, and as a sybarite he had forfeited his own manhood. battle had set the strong blood spinning in his heart, and he had sufficient of the norse spirit left in him to set sail and dare the storm.
his thoughts that evening were for joan and the dishonor that had descended upon her name. though her heroism had pardoned him, he had no pardon for his own heart. his father’s iconoclasm had been no great doom to him. he had foreshadowed the worst after his last parley with his wife. it was the future that troubled him that evening, the future streaked with foam like a stormy sea. joan’s heart was his. it was gabriel’s thought that night how best he could casket this treasure against the world.
as the west darkened he entered the library by the garden window, and lit the lamp with his own hands. the immediate purpose to abandon saltire was as iron in his mind. his needs should not be beholden for a day to his father’s exchequer. the two hundred pounds he would reserve for a season, but he would refund the sum when the chance served him.
he unlocked his desk, sorted his letters, bound joan’s in a bundle and laid them against his heart. as for the minor records of mammon, he set them in order, a sinister legacy dedicated to his father’s care. he constructed a list of his small possessions, his books, his personal belongings, the presents of his friends. he had determined to claim but little as his own. lastly, he took ophelia’s letters from their drawer, tore them in fragments, burned them as a sacrifice to the future good of his soul.
the night was calm and placid, the sky ablaze with stars. a great silence pervaded the house, a silence figurative of gabriel’s fortune. he was utterly alone, nor did the solitude grieve him, for he had his thoughts. joan, in the spirit, stood ever at his elbow. on the morrow he would ride towards rilchester and speak with her. together they would take counsel of the great father and their own hearts, that love might show to them the dawn-star of the future.
it was verging on midnight, and gabriel was still writing at his desk when he heard a sound as of footsteps on the gravel-path. he straightened in his chair and listened. the french window stood open, showing a faint, silvery sky and the deep gloom of the summer garden. a shadow stole suddenly into the stream of light. the man started up and moved towards the window. a figure dawned to him out of the dusk, the tall, slim figure of joan gildersedge.
gabriel gave a sudden cry.
“joan!”
she came in to him, a cloak over her shoulders, her hat carried in her hand. the light glimmered on her hair. her dress was damp with dew, her face white and strained, her eyes full of a strange despair.
“joan!”
she tottered in as though weary even to death. gabriel sprang to her, thrust forward a chair. she sank into it, her hands hanging limply over her knees, her head thrown back so that her white throat showed to the collar of her dress.
“what has happened?”
he bent over her with a great gesture of tenderness and gazed into her face.
“gabriel!”
“speak!”
she caught her breath, pressed a hand over her heart, spoke hurriedly and huskily, like one faint with suffering.
“to-night my father had a letter,” she said, “a letter with a great red seal. what was in it, heaven only can declare. ah! he was furious, mad—he raved at me—”
she faltered and drooped. gabriel bent to her; his arm went about her shoulders, his face overhung hers.
“yes, yes!”
“he raved at me, such words i cannot speak them nor understand—”
“joan!”
“he turned me from the house.”
“joan!”
“i have come to you.”
the man stood back from her, white to the lips, his eyes strangely bright as he stared out into the gloom of the garden. a thousand clarions seemed sounding in his brain, a thousand roses burning in the night. the silence between them was as the calm before some passionate burst of song.
joan was the first to speak again.
“gabriel!” she said.
“ah!”
“you will not fail me?”
the blood flooded to gabriel’s face; he strode forward, held out both his hands. the girl rose and came to him with a great light shining in her eyes. her cloak fell from her shoulders as she hung in the man’s arms.
“gabriel, what could i do?”
“this is god’s desire.”
“you will not turn me away?”
“my life, are you not mine? we will face the world together.”
she lay heavy in his arms, as though her whole soul hung upon his strength. presently she turned her face to his and he kissed her upon the lips. for a while there was silence between them. then gabriel lifted up his hand like one who makes a vow to heaven.
“god judge me,” he said—“i had not worked for this. the world has outraged us; so be it; i defy the world! henceforth i fling away my rotten reputation and my friends. let all the fantasies of fools be dust! lover and beloved, we will go out together into the night!”
