CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE FEAST OF RAMAZAN 1
II “MAD, BAD AND DANGEROUS TO KNOW” 9
III THE BOOMERANG 18
IV THE LITTLE BOY IN ABERDEEN 26
V AS ANYTHINGARIAN 34
VI WHAT THE DEAD MAY KNOW 41
VII THE YOUTH IN FLEET PRISON 49
VIII A SAVAGE SPUR 58
IX GORDON WAKES AND FINDS HIMSELF FAMOUS 66
X THE PRICE OF THE BAUBLE 75
XI THE BEATEN PATH 86
XII “MAN’S LOVE IS OF MAN’S LIFE A THING APART” 92
XIII THE SMIRCHED IMAGE 96
XIV WHAT CAME OF THE TREACLE-MOON 100
XV THE PITFALL 112
XVI THE DESPOILING 120
XVII THE BURSTING OF THE STORM 128
XVIII GORDON STANDS AT BAY 135
XIX THE BURNING OF AN EFFIGY 142
XX THE EXILE 152
XXI GORDON SWIMS FOR A LIFE 156
XXII THE FACE ON THE IVORY 162
XXIII THE DEVIL’S DEAL 167
XXIV THE MARK OF THE BEAST 173
XXV TERESA MEETS A STRANGER 180
XXVI A WOMAN OF FIRE AND DREAMS 189
XXVII THE EVIL EYE 197
XXVIII THE HAUNTED MAN 204
XXIX TERESA’S AWAKENING 208
XXX THE PEACE OF PADRE SOMALIAN 218
XXXI AT THE FEET OF OUR LADY OF SORROWS 223
XXXII THE RESTRAINING HAND 235
XXXIII THE PASSING OF JANE CLERMONT 246
XXXIV TITA INTERVENES 252
XXXV IN THE CASA GARDEN 256
XXXVI THE FACE AT THE WINDOW 263
XXXVII TREVANION FINDS AN ALLY 269
XXXVIII THE HEART OF A WOMAN 276
XXXIX BARRIERS BURNED AWAY 283
XL THE OATH ON THE KRISS 290
XLI ASHES OF DENIAL 298
XLII GORDON TELLS A STORY 303
XLIII ONE GOLDEN HOUR 309
XLIV BY ORDER OF THE POPE 316
XLV THE SUMMONS 321
XLVI THE POTION 325
XLVII THE COMPLICITY OF THE GODS 329
XLVIII THE ALL OF LOVE 337
XLIX “YOU ARE AIMING AT MY HEART!” 344
L CASSIDY FINDS A LOST SCENT 348
LI DR. NOTT’S SERMON 352
LII TREVANION IN THE TOILS 359
LIII THE COMING OF DALLAS 363
LIV THE PYRE 372
LV THE CALL 378
LVI THE FAREWELL 386
LVII THE MAN IN THE RED UNIFORM 395
LVIII THE ARCHISTRATEGOS 401
LIX IN WHICH TERESA MAKES A JOURNEY 410
LX TRIED AS BY FIRE 416
LXI THE RENUNCIATION 423
LXII GORDON GOES UPON A PILGRIMAGE 427
LXIII THE GREAT SILENCE 434
LXIV “OF HIM WHOM SHE DENIED A HOME, THE GRAVE” 437
AFTERMATH 439
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[1]
THE CASTAWAY
CHAPTER I
THE FEAST OF RAMAZAN
A cool breeze slipped ahead of the dawn. It blew dim the calm Greek stars, stirred the intricate branches of olive-trees inlaid in the rose-pearl façade of sky, bowed the tall, coral-lipped oleanders lining the rivulets, and crisped the soft wash of the gulf-tide. It lifted the strong bronze curls on the brow of a sleeping man who lay on the sea-beach covered with a goatskin.
George Gordon woke and looked about him: at the pallid, ripple-ridged dunes, the murmuring clusters of reeds; at the dead fire on which a kid had roasted the night before; at the forms stretched in slumber around it—Suliotes in woolen kirtles and with shawl girdles stuck with silver-handled pistols, an uncouth and savage body-guard; at his only English companion, John Hobhouse, who had travelled with him through Albania[2] and to-morrow was to start back to London, asleep now with a saddle for a pillow. While he gazed, day broke effulgent, like light at the first hour, and the sun rose, pouring its crimson wine into the goblet of the sea’s blue crystal.
For a full year Gordon had roughed it in the wilderness, sleeping one night in a pasha’s palace, the next in a cow-shed—a strange choice, it seemed, for a peer of twenty-two, who had taken his seat in the House of Lords and published a book that had become the talk of London. Yet now, as he rose to his feet and threw back his square-set shoulders, his colorless face and deep gray-blue eyes whetted with keen zest.
“This is better than England,” he muttered. “How the deuce could anybody make such a world as that, I wonder? For what purpose were there ordained dandies and kings—and fellows of colleges—and women of a certain age—and peers—and myself, most of all?” His thought held an instant’s thin edge of bitterness as his look fell: his right boot had a thicker sole than the left, and he wore an inner shoe that laced tightly under the shrunken foot.
Stepping gingerly lest he waken his comrade he threaded the prostrate forms to the shambling rock-path that led, through white rushes and clumps of cochineal cactus, to the town. A little way along, it crossed a ledge jutting from the heel of the hill. Under this shelf the water had washed a deep pool of limpid emerald. He threw off his clothing and plunged into the tingling surf. He swam far out into the sea, under the sky’s lightening amethyst, every vein beating with delight.
[3]Before he came from the water, the sunrise had gilded the tops of the mountains; while he dressed on the rock it was kindling golden half-moons on the minarets of Missolonghi, a mile away.
Hallie Erminie Rives (May 2, 1874 – August 16, 1956) was a best-selling popular novelist and wife of the American diplomat Post Wheeler. She was born on May 2, 1874, in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, the daughter of Stephen Turner Rives and Mary Ragsdale. Her father was from a prominent Virginia family. She was a distant cousin of the novelist and poet Amélie Rives Troubetzkoy. An author's biography in one of her books notes that her father, who had fought for the Confederacy during the American Civil War and spent two years in a Northern prison camp, had "made her his little comrade" when she was a child and she was an excellent rifle shot and a bareback rider who was called "the Rives' little wildcat" by outsiders. Her father allowed her to spend so much time outdoors because her mother had been an invalid in the years before she died.
Rives wrote her first novel at age eight, though her writing was not encouraged by her parents. Her first novel was published when she was eighteen. In her novels she addressed politics between the Northern and Southern United States, issues of race, and sex, causing great debate among critics. Among them was Smoking Flax (1897), a novel controversial even at the time, which takes a favorable position on lynching. The novel is about an African American man accused of raping and murdering a white woman who was lynched after the governor commuted his sentence to life. Many of her novels were bestsellers.[4] Other books she wrote were better received by critics than Smoking Flax.[5] Her novel, The Castaway, is noted for being the subject of a Supreme Court copyright case, Bobbs-Merrill v. Straus, in which the US Supreme Court recognized the first sale doctrine, permitting purchasers of copies of books to resell them without seeking permission from the copyright holder.[6]
She married Wheeler in 1906 in Tokyo. A wedding announcement noted that Wheeler initially considered Rives "rather severe on men" in her books and she considered him "none too charitable concerning the faults of women" in his book Reflections of a Bachelor. They met at a reception in New York and began a friendship that eventually led to marriage.[5] She accompanied him to posts across Europe, Asia and South America throughout his career in foreign service. She and her husband co-wrote Dome of Many-Coloured Glass in 1952 about their lives in the United States Foreign Service.[3]
She died on August 16, 1956, in New York City, New York. Her widower died on Christmas Eve, December 23, 1956, at the Frances Convalescent Home in Neptune, New Jersey, just 4 months later.