The message was
made public, and it happened that Mr. Gladstone saw it for the
first time in a newspaper, during a country visit. Another of the
guests, who was in the room at the moment, thus describes the
scene: 'He took up the paper, his eye instantly fell on the
telegram, and he read it through. As he read, his face hardened
and whitened, the eyes burned as I have seen them once or twice
in the House of Commons when he was angered-- burned with a deep
fire, as if they would have consumed the sheet on which Gordon's
message was printed, or as if Gordon's words had burned into his
soul, which was looking out in wrath and flame. He said not a
word. For perhaps two or three minutes he sat still, his face all
the while like the face you may read of in Milton--like none
other I ever saw. Then he rose, still without a word, and was
seen no more that morning.'
It is curious that Gordon himself never understood the part that
Mr. Gladstone was playing in his destiny. His Khartoum journals
put this beyond a doubt. Except for one or two slight and jocular
references to Mr. Gladstone's minor idiosyncrasies--the shape of
his collars, and his passion for felling trees, Gordon leaves him
unnoticed while he lavishes his sardonic humour upon Lord
Granville. But in truth Lord Granville was a nonentity. The error
shows how dim the realities of England had grown to the watcher
in Khartoum.
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