“Dear Grandfather Of Me, And Everybody At Glenfaba: Here I am at last, dears, at the end of my Pilgrim's Progress, and the evening and the morning' are the first day. It is now eleven o'clock at night, and I am about to put myself to bed in my own little room at the hospital of Martha's Vineyard, Hyde Park, London, England.
“The captain was quite right; the morning was as fresh as his flattery, and before we got far beyond the Head most of the passengers were spread out below like the three legs of Man. Being an old sea-doggie myself, I didn't give it the chance to make me sick, but went downstairs and lay quiet in my berth and deliberated great things. I didn't go up again until we got into the Mersey, and then the passengers were on deck, looking like sour buttermilk spilt out of the churn.
“What a glorious sight! The ships, the docks, the towers, the town! I couldn't breathe for excitement until we got up to the landing-stage. Mr. Storm put me into a cab, and for the sake of experience I insisted on paying my own way. Of course he tried to trick me, but a woman's a woman for a' that. As we drove up to Lime Street station there befell—a porter. He carried my big trunk on his head (like a mushroom), and when I bought my ticket he took me to the train while Mr. Storm went for a newspaper. Being such a stranger, he was very kind, so I flung the responsibility on Providence and gave him sixpence.
“There were two old ladies in the carriage beside ourselves, and the train we travelled by was an express. It was perfectly delightful, and for all the world like plunging into a stiff sou'wester off the rocks at Contrary. But the first part of the journey was terrible. That tunnel nearly made me shriek. It was a misty day too at Liverpool, and all the way to Edge Hill they let off signals with a noise like battering-rams. My nerves were on the rack; so taking advantage of the darkness of the carriage, I began to sing. That calmed me, but it nearly drove the old ladies out of their wits.Theyscreamed if I didn't; and just as I was summoning the Almighty to attend to me a little in the middle of that inferno, out we came as innocent as a baby. There was another of these places just before getting into London. I suppose they are purgatories through which you have to pass to get to these wonderful cities. Only if I had been consulted in the making of the Litany ('from sudden death, good Lord, deliver us') I should have made an exception for people in tunnels.
“You never knew what an absolute ninny Glory is! I was burning with such impatience to see London that when we came near it I couldn't see anything for water under the brain. Approaching a great and mighty city for the first time must be like going into the presence of majesty. Only Heaven save me from such palpitation the day I become songstress to the Queen!
“Mercy! what a roar and boom—a deep murmur as of ten hundred million million moths humming away on a still evening in autumn! On a nearer view it is more like a Tower-of-Babel concern, with its click and clatter. The explosion of voices, the confused clamour, the dreadful disorder—cars, wagons, omnibuses—it makes you feel religious and rather cold down the back. What a needle in a haystack a poor girl must be here if there is nobody above to keep track of her!
“Tell Aunt Rachel they are wearing another kind of bonnet in London—more pokey in front—and say if I see the Queen I'll be sure to tell her all about it.
“We didn't get to the hospital until nine, so I've not seen much of it yet. The housekeeper gave me tea and told me I might go over the house, as I wouldn't be wanted to begin duty before morning. So for an hour I went from ward to ward like a female Wandering Jew. Such silence! I'm afraid this hospital nursing is going to be a lockjaw business. And now I'm going to bed—well, not homesick, you know, but just 'longing a lil bit for all.' To-morrow morning I'll waken up to new sounds and sights, and when I draw my blind I'll see the streets where the cars are forever running and rattling. Then I'll think of Glenfaba and the birds singing and rejoicing.
“Dispense my love throughout the island. Say that I love everybody just the same now I'm a London lady as when I was a mere provincial girl, and that when I'm a wonderful woman, and have brought the eyes of England upon me, I'll come back and make amends. I can hear what grandfather is saying: 'Gough bless me, what a girl, though!' Glory.
“P. S.—I've not said much about Mr. Storm. He left me at the door of the hospital and went on to the house of his vicar, for that is where he is to lodge, you know. On the way up I expended much beautiful poetry upon him on the subject of love. The old girlies having dozed off, I chanced to ask him if he liked to talk of it, but he said no, it was a profanation. Love was too sacred, it was a kind of religion. Sometimes it came unawares, sometimes it smouldered like fire under ashes, sometimes it was a good angel, sometimes a devil, making you do things and say things, and laying your life waste like winter. But I told him it was just charming, and as for religion, there was nothing under heaven like the devotion of a handsome and clever man to a handsome and clever woman, when he gave up all the world for her, and his body and his soul and everything that was his. I think he saw there was something in that, for though he said nothing, there came a wonderful light into his splendid eyes, and I thought if he wasn't going to be a clergyman—but no matter. So long, dear!”
John Storm was the son of Lord Storm (a peer in his own right), and nephew of the Prime Minister of England, the Earl of Erin. Two years before John's birth the brothers had quarrelled about a woman. It was John's mother. She had engaged herself to the younger brother, and afterward fallen in love with the elder one. The voice of conscience told her that it was her duty to carry out her engagement, and she did so. Then the voice of conscience took sides with the laws of life and told the lovers that they must renounce each other, and they both did that as well. But the poor girl found it easier to renounce life than love, and after flying to religion as an escape from the conflict between conjugal duty and elemental passion she gave birth to her child and died. She was the daughter of a rich banker, who had come from the soil, and she had been brought up to consider marriage distinct from love. Exchanging wealth for title, she found death in the deal.
Her husband had never stood in any natural affinity to her. On his part, their marriage had been a loveless and selfish union, based on the desire for an heir that he might found a family and cancel the unfair position of a younger son. But the sin he committed against the fundamental law, that marriage shall be founded only in love, brought its swift revenge.
On hearing that the wife was dead, the elder brother came to attend the funeral. The night before that event the husband felt unhappy about the part he had played. He had given no occasion for scandal, but he had never disguised, even from the mother of his son, the motives of his marriage. The poor girl was gone; he had only trained himself for the pursuit of her dowry, and the voice of love had been silent. Troubled by such thoughts, he walked about his room all night long, and somewhere in the first dead gray of dawn he went down to the death chamber that he might look upon her face again. Opening the door, he heard the sound of half-stifled sobs. Some one was leaning over the white face and weeping like a man with a broken heart. It was his brother.
From that time forward Lord Storm considered himself the injured person. He had never cared for his brother, and now he designed to wipe him out. His son would do it. He was the heir to the earldom, for the earl had never married. But a posthumous revenge was too trivial. The earl had gone into politics and was making a name. Lord Storm had missed his own opportunities, though he had got himself called to the Upper House, but his son should be brought up to eclipse everything.
To this end the father devoted his life to the boy's training. All conventional education was wrong in principle. Schools and colleges and the study of the classics were drivelling folly, with next to nothing to do with life. Travel was the great teacher. “You shall travel as far as the sun,” he said. So the boy was taken through Europe and Asia and learned something of many languages. He became his father's daily companion, and nowhere the father went was it thought wrong for the boy to go also. Conventional morality was considered mawkish. The chief aim of home training was to bring children up in total ignorance, if possible, of the most important facts and functions of life. But it wasnotpossible, and hence suppression, dissimulation, lying, and, under the ban of secret sin, one half the world's woe. So the boy was taken to the temples of Greece and India, and even to Western casinos and dancing gardens. Before he was twenty he had seen something of nearly everything the world has in it.
When the time came to think of his career England was in straits about her colonial empire. The vast lands over sea wanted to take care of themselves. It was the moment of the “British North America Act,” and that gave the father his cue for action. While his brother the earl was fiddling the country to the tune of limited self-government for Crown colonies, the father of John Storm conceived the daring idea of breaking up the entire empire, including the United Kingdom, into self-governing states. They were to be the “United States of Great Britain.”
This was to be John Storm's policy, and to work it out Lord Storm set up a house in the Isle of Man where he might always look upon his plan in miniature. There he established a bureau for the gathering of the data that his son would need to use hereafter. Newspapers came to him in his lonely retreat from all quarters of the globe, and he cut out everything relating to his subject. His library was a dusty room lined all around with brown-paper pockets, which were labelled with the names of colonies and counties.
“It will take us two generations to do it, my boy, but we'll alter the history of England.”
At fifty he was iron-gray, and had a head like a big owl.
Meanwhile the object of these grand preparations, the offspring of that loveless union, had a personality all his own. It seemed as if he had been built for a big man every way, and Nature had been arrested in the making of him. When people looked at his head they felt he ought to have been a giant, but he was far from rivalling the children of Anak. When they listened to his conversation they thought he might turn out to be a creature of genius, but perhaps he was only a man of powerful moods. The best strength of body and mind seemed to have gone into his heart. It may be that the sorrowful unrest of his mother and her smothered passion had left their red stream in John Storm's soul.
When he was a boy he would cry at a beautiful view in Nature, at a tale of heroism, or at any sentimental ditty sung excruciatingly in the streets. Seeing a bird's nest that had been robbed of its eggs he burst into tears; but when he came upon the bleeding, broken shells in the path, the tears turned to fierce wrath and mad rage, and he snatched up a gun out of his father's room and went out to take the life of the offender.
On coming to the Isle of Man he noticed as often as he went to church that a little curly red-headed girl kept staring at him from the vicar's pew. He was a man of two-and-twenty, but the child's eyes tormented him. At any time of day or night he could call up a vision of their gleaming brightness. Then his father sent him to Canada to watch the establishment of the Dominion, and when he came back he brought a Canadian canoe and an American yacht, and certain democratic opinions.
The first time he sailed the yacht in Manx waters he sighted a disabled boat and rescued two children. One of them was the girl of the vicar's pew, grown taller and more winsome. She nestled up to him when he lifted her into the yacht, and, without knowing why, he kept his arms about her.
After that he called his yacht theGloria, in imitation of her name, and sometimes took the girl out on the sea. Notwithstanding the difference of the years between them, they had their happy boy and girl days together. In her white jersey and stocking-cap she looked every inch a sailor. When the wind freshened and the boat plunged she stood to the tiller like a man, and he thought her the sweetest sight ever seen in a cockpit. And when the wind saddened and the boom came aboard she was the cheeriest companion in a calm. She sang, and so did he, and their voices went well together. Her favourite song was “Come, Lasses and Lads”; his was “John Peel”; and they would sing them off and on for an hour at a spell. Thus on a summer evening, when the bay was lying like a tired monster asleep, and every plash of an oar was echoing on the hills, the people on the land would hear them coming around the castle rock with their—
“D'ye ken John Peel, with his coat so gay?D'ye ken John Peel at the break of day?D'ye ken John P-e-e-l....”
For two years he amused himself with the child, and then realized that she was a child no longer. The pity of the girl's position took hold of him. This sunny soul with her sportfulness, her grace of many gifts, with her eyes that flashed and gleamed like lightning, with her voice that was like the warble of a bird, this golden-headed gipsy, this witch, this fairy—what was the life that lay before her? Pity gave place to a different feeling, and then he was aware of a pain in the breast when he thought of the girl. As often as her eyes lasted upon him he felt his face tingle and burn. He began to be conscious of an imprisoned side to his nature, the passionate side, and he drew back afraid. This wild power, this tempest, this raging fire within, God only knew whither it was to lead him. And then he had given a hostage to fortune, or his father had for him.
From his father's gloomy house at Knockaloe, where the winds were ever droning in the trees, he looked over to Glenfaba, and it seemed to him like a little white cloud lit up by the sunshine. His heart was forever calling to the sunny spot over there, “Glory! Glory!” The pity of it was that the girl seemed to understand everything, and to know quite well what kept them apart. She flushed with shame that he should see her wearing the same clothes constantly, and with head aside and furtive glances she talked of the days when he would leave the island for good, and London would take him and make much of him, and he would forget all about his friends in that dead old place. Such talk cut him to the quick. Though he had seen a deal of the world, he did not know much about the conversation of women.
The struggle was brief. He began to wear plainer clothes—an Oxford tweed coat and a flannel shirt—to talk about fame as an empty word, and to tell his father that he was superior to all stupid conventions.
His father sent him to Australia. Then the grown-up trouble of his life began.
He passed through the world now with eyes open for the privations of the poor, and he saw everything in a new light. Unconsciously he was doing in another way what his mother had done when she flew to religion from stifled passion. He had been brought up as a sort of imperialist democrat, but now he bettered his father's instructions. England did not want more Parliaments, she wanted more apostles. It was not by giving votes to a nation, but by strengthening the soul of a nation, that it became great and free. The man for the hour was not he who revolved schemes for making himself famous, but he who was ready to renounce everything, and if he was great was willing to become little, and if he was rich to become poor. There was room for an apostle—for a thousand apostles—who, being dead to the world's glory, its money or its calls, were prepared to do all in Christ's spirit, and to believe that in the renunciation, which was the “secret” of Jesus, lay the only salvation remaining for the world.
He tramped through the slums of Melbourne and Sydney, and afterward through the slums of London, returned to the Isle of Man a Christian Socialist, and announced to his father his intention of going into the Church.
The old man did not fume and fly out. He staggered back to his room like a bullock to its pen after it has had its death-blow in the shambles. In the midst of his dusty old bureau, with its labelled packets full of cuttings, he realized that twenty years of his life had been wasted. A son was a separate being, of a different growth, and a father was only the seed at the root that must decay and die.
Then he made some show of resistance.
“But with your talents, boy, surely you are not going to throw away your chances of a great name?”
“I care nothing for a great name, father,” said John. “I shall win a greater victory than any that Parliament can give me.”
“But, my boy, my dear boy! one must either be the camel or the camel-driver; and then society——”
“I hate society, and society would hate me. It is only for the sake of the few godly men that God spares it as he spared Sodom for Lot's sake.”
Having braved this ordeal and nearly broken the heart of his old father, he turned for his reward to Glory. He found her at her usual haunt on the headlands.
“I was blushing when you came up, wasn't I?” she said. “Shall I tell you why?”
“Why?”
“It was this,” she said, with a sweep of her hand across her bosom.
He looked puzzled.
“Don't you understand? This old rag—it's the one I was wearing before you went away.”
He wanted to tell her how well she looked in it—better than ever now that her bosom showed under its seamless curves, and her figure had grown so lithe and shapely. But though she was laughing he saw she was ashamed of her poverty, and he thought to comfort her.
“I'm to be a poor man myself in future, Glory. I've quarrelled with my father. I'm going to take Orders.”
Her face fell. “Oh, I didn't think anybody would be poor who could help it. To be a clergyman is all right for a poor man, perhaps, but I hate to be poor; it's horrid.”
Then darkness fell upon his eyes and he felt sad and sick. Glory had disappointed him. She was vain, she was worldly, she was incapable of the higher things; she would never know what a sacrifice he had made for her; she would think nothing of him now; but he would go on all the same, the more earnestly because the devil had drawn a bow at him and the arrow had gone in up to the feathers.
“With God's help I shall nail my colours to the mast,” he said.
Thus he made up his mind to follow the unrolling of the scroll. He had the strength called character. The Church had been his beacon before, but now it was to be his refuge.
He found no difficulty in making the necessary preparations. For a year he read the Anglican divines—Jeremy Taylor, Hooker, Butler, Waterland, Pearson, and Pusey—and when the time came for his ordination his uncle, the Earl of Erin, who was now Prime Minister, obtained him a title to a curacy under the popular and influential Canon Wealthy of All Saints, Belgravia. The Bishop of London gave letters dimissory to the Bishop of Sodor and Man, by whom he was examined and ordained.
On the morning of his departure for London his father, with whom there had in the meantime been trying scenes, left him this final word of farewell: “As I understand that you intend to lead the life of poverty, I presume that you do not need your mother's dowry, and I shall hold myself at liberty to dispose of it elsewhere,unlessyou require it for the use of the young lady who is, I hear, to go up with you.”
“I will be a poor man among poor men,” said John Storm to himself as he drove to his vicar's house in Eaton Place, but he awoke next morning in a bedroom that did not answer to his ideas of a life of poverty. A footman came with hot water and tea, and also a message from the canon overnight saying he would be pleased to see Mr. Storm in the study after breakfast.
The study was a sumptuous apartment immediately beneath, with soft carpets on which his feet made no noise, and tiger-skins over the backs of chairs. As he entered it a bright-faced man in middle life, clean-shaven, wearing a gold-mountedpince-nez, and bubbling over with politeness, stepped forward to receive him.
“Welcome to London, my dear Mr. Storm. When the letter came from the Prime Minister I said to my daughter Felicity—you will see her presently—I trust you will be good friends—I said, 'It is a privilege, my child, to meet any wish of the dear Earl of Erin, and I am proud to be in at the beginning of a career that is sure to be brilliant and distinguished.'”
John Storm made some murmur of dissent.
“I trust you found your rooms to your taste, Mr. Storm?”
John Storm had found them more than he expected or desired.
“Ah, well, humble but comfortable, and in any case please regard them as your own, to receive whom you please therein, and to dispense your own hospitalities. This house is large enough. We shall not meet oftener than we wish, so we can not quarrel. The only meal we need take together is dinner. Don't expect too much. Simple but wholesome—that's all we can promise you in a clergyman's family.”
John Storm answered that food was an indifferent matter to him, and that half an hour after dinner he never knew what he had eaten. The canon laughed and began again.
“I thought it best you should come to us, being a stranger in London, though I confess I have never had but one of my clergy residing with me before. He is here now. You'll see him by-and-bye. His name is Golightly, a simple, worthy young man, from one of the smaller colleges, I believe. Useful, you know, devoted to me and to my daughter, but of course a different sort of person altogether, and—er——”
It was a peculiarity of the canon that whatever he began to talk about, he always ended by talking of himself.
“I sent for you this morning, not having had the usual opportunity of meeting before, that I might tell you something of our organization and your own duties.... You see in me the head of a staff of six clergy.”
John Storm was not surprised; a great preacher must be followed by flocks of the poor; it was natural that they should wish him to help them and to minister to them.
“We have no poor in my parish, Mr. Storm.”
“No poor, sir?”
“On the contrary, her Majesty herself is one of my parishioners.”
“That must be a great grief to you, sir?”
“Oh, the poor! Ah, yes, certainly. Of course, we have our associated charities, such as the Maternity Home, founded in Soho by Mrs. Callender—a worthy old Scotswoman—odd and whimsical, perhaps, but rich, very rich and influential. My clergy, however, have enough to do with the various departments of our church work. For instance, there is the Ladies' Society, the Fancy Needlework classes, and the Decorative Flower Guild, not to speak of the daughter churches and the ministration in hospitals, for I always hold—er——”
John Storm's mind had been wandering, but at the mention of the hospital he looked up eagerly.
“Ah, yes, the hospital. Your own duties will be chiefly concerned with our excellent hospital of Martha's Vineyard. You will have the spiritual care of all patients and nurses—yes, nurses also—within its precincts, precisely as if it were your parish. 'This is my parish,' you will say to yourself, and treat it accordingly. Not yet being in full Orders, you will be unable to administer the sacrament, but you will have one service daily in each of the wards, taking the wards in rotation. There are seven wards, so there will be one service in each ward once a week, for I always say that fewer——”
“Is it enough?” said John. “I shall be only too pleased——”
“Ah, well, we'll see. On Wednesday evenings we have service in the church, and nurses not on night duty are expected to attend. Some fifty of them altogether, and rather a curious compound. Ladies among them? Yes, the daughters of gentlemen, but also persons of all classes. You will hold yourself responsible for their spiritual welfare. Let me see—this is Friday—say you take the sermon on Wednesday next, if that is agreeable. As to views, my people are of all shades of colour, so I ask my clergy to take strictlyvia mediaviews—strictlyvia media. Do you intone?”
John Storm had been wandering again, but he recovered himself in time to say he did not.
“That is a pity; our choir is so excellent—two violins, a viola, clarinet, 'cello, double bass, the trumpets and drums, and of course the organ. Our organist himself——”
At that moment a young clergyman came into the room, making apologies and bowing subserviently.
“Ah, this is Mr. Golightly—the-h'm—Hon. and Rev. Mr. Storm.—You will take charge of Mr. Storm and bring him to church on Sunday morning.”
Mr. Golightly delivered his message. It was about the organist. His wife had called to say that he had been removed to the hospital for some slight operation, and there was some difficulty about the singer of Sunday morning's anthem.
“Most irritating! Bring her up.” The curate went out backward. “I shall ask you to excuse me, Mr. Storm. My daughter, Felicity—ah, here she is.”
A tall young woman in spectacles entered.
“This is our new housemate, Mr. Storm, nephew of dear Lord Erin. Felicity, my child, I wish you to drive Mr. Storm round and introduce him to our people, for I always say a young clergyman in London——”
John Storm mumbled something about the Prime Minister.
“Going to pay your respects to your uncle now? Very good and proper. Next week will do for the visits. Yes, yes. Come in, Mrs. Koenig.”
A meek, middle-aged woman had appeared at the door. She was dark, and had deep luminous eyes with the moist look to be seen in the eyes of a tired old terrier.
“This is the wife of our organist and choir master. Good day! Kindest greetings to the Prime Minister.... And, by the way, let us say Monday for the beginning of your chaplaincy at the hospital.”
The Earl of Erin, as First Lord of the Treasury, occupied the narrow, unassuming brick house which is the Treasury residence in Downing Street. Although the official head of the Church, with power to appoint its bishops and highest dignitaries, he was secretly a sceptic, if not openly a derider of spiritual things. For this attitude his early love passage had been chiefly accountable. That strife between duty and passion which had driven the woman he loved to religion had driven him in the other direction and left a broad swath of desolation in his soul. He had seen little of his brother since that evil time, and nothing whatever of his brother's son. Then John had written, “I am soon to be bound by the awful tie of the priesthood,” and he had thought it necessary to do something for him. When John was announced he felt a thrill of tender feeling to which he had long been a stranger. He got up and waited. The young man with his mother's face and the eyes of an enthusiast was coming down the long corridor.
John Storm saw his uncle first in the spacious old cabinet room which looks out on the little garden and the Park. He was a gaunt old man with, meagre mustache and hair, and a face like a death's head. He held out his hand and smiled. His hand was cold and his smile was half tearful and half saturnine.
“You are like your mother, John.”
John never knew her.
“When I saw her last you were a child in arms and she was younger than you are now.”
“Where was that, uncle?”
“In her coffin, poor girl.”
The Prime Minister shuffled some papers and said, “Well, is there anything you wish for?”
“Nothing. I've come to thank you for what you've done already.”
The Prime Minister made a deprecatory gesture.
“I almost wish you had chosen another career, John. Still, the Church has its opportunities and its chances, and if I can ever——”
“I am satisfied; more than satisfied,” said John. “My choice is based, I trust, on a firm vocation. God's work is great, sir; the greatest of all in London. That is why I am so grateful to you. Think of it, sir——”
John was leaning forward in his chair with one arm stretched out.
“Of the five millions of people in this vast city, not one million cross the threshold of church or chapel. And then remember their condition. A hundred thousand live in constant want, slowly starving to death, every day and hour, and a quarter of the old people of London die as paupers. Isn't it a wonderful scene, sir? If a man is willing to be spiritually dead to the world—to leave family and friends—to go forth never to return, as one might go to his execution——”
The Prime Minister listened to the ardent young man who was talking to him there with his mother's voice, and then said—
“I'm sorry.”
“Sorry?”
“I'm afraid I've made a mistake.”
John Storm looked puzzled.
“I've sent you to the wrong place, John. When you wrote, I naturally supposed you were thinking of the Church as a career, and I tried to put you in the way of it. Do you know anything of your vicar?”
John knew that fame spoke of him as a great preacher—one of the few who had passed through their Pentecost and come out with the gift of tongues.
“Precisely!” The Prime Minister gave a bitter little laugh. “But let me tell you something about him. He was a poor curate in the country where the lord of the manor chanced to be a lady. He married the lady of the manor. His wife died and he bought a London parish. Then, by the help of an old actor who gave lessons in elocution, he—well, he set up his Pentecost. Since then he has been a fashionable preacher and frequents the houses of great people. Ten years ago he was made an honorary canon, and, when he hears of an appointment to a bishopric, he says in a tearful voice, 'I don't know what the dear Queen has got against me.'”
“Well, sir?”
“Well, if I had known you felt like that I should scarcely have sent you to Canon Wealthy. And yet I hardly know where else a young man of your opinions ... I'm afraid the Church has a good many Canon Wealthys in it.”
“God forbid!” said John. “No doubt there are Pharisees in these days just as in the days of Christ, but the Church is still the pillar of the State——”
“The caterpillar, you mean, boy—eating out its heart and its vitals.”
The Prime Minister gave another bitter little laugh, then looked quickly into John's flushed face and said:
“But it's poor work for an old man to sap away a young man's enthusiasm.”
“You can't do that, uncle,” said John, “because God is the absolute ruler of all things, good and bad, and he governs both to his glory. Let him only give us strength to endure our exile——”
“I don't like to hear you talk like that, John. I think I know what the upshot will be. There's a gang of men about—Anglican Catholics they call themselves; well, remember the German proverb, 'Every priestling hides a popeling.' ... And if youareto be in the Church, John, is there any reason why you shouldn't marry and be reasonable? To tell you the truth, I'm rather a lonely old man, whatever I may seem, and if your mother's son would give me a sort of a grandson—eh?”
The Prime Minister was pretending to laugh again.
“Come, John, come, it seems a pity—a fine young fellow like you, too. Are there no sweet young girls about in these days? Or are they all dead and gone since I was a young fellow? I could give you a wide choice, you know, for when a man stands high enough ... in fact, you would find me reasonable—you might have anybody you liked, rich or poor, dark or fair.——”
John Storm had been sitting in torment, and now he rose to go. “No, uncle,” he said, in a thicker voice, “I shall never marry. A clergyman who is married is bound to life by too many ties. Even his affection for his wife is a tie. And then there is her affection for the world, its riches, its praise, its honours.——”
“Well, well, we'll say no more. After all, it's better than running wild, and that's what most young men seem to be doing nowadays. But then your long education abroad—and your poor father left to look after himself! Good-day to you. Come and see me now and then. How like your mother you are sometimes! Good-day!”
When the door of the cabinet room closed on John Storm the Prime Minister thought, “Poor boy, he's laying up for himself a big heartache one of these fine days!”
And John Storm, going down the street with uncertain step, said to himself: “How strange he should talk like that! But, thank God, he didn't produce a flicker in me. I died to all that a year ago.”
Then he lifted his head and his footstep lightened, and deep in some secret place the thought came proudly, “She shall see that to renounce the world is to possess the world—that a man may be poor and have all the kingdom of the world at his feet.”
He went back by the Underground from Westminster Bridge. It was midday, and the train was crowded. His spirits were high and he talked with every one near him. Getting out at Victoria, he came upon his vicar on the platform and saluted him rather demonstratively. The canon responded with some restraint and then stepped into a first-class carriage.
On turning into Eaton Place he came upon a group of people standing around something that lay on the pavement. It was an old woman, a tattered, bedraggled creature with a pinched and pallid face. “Is it an accident?” a gentleman was saying, and somebody answered, “No, sir, she's gorn off in a faint.” “Why doesn't some one take her to the hospital?” said the gentleman, and then, like the Levite, he passed by on the other side. The butcher's cart drew up at the curb, and the butcher jumped down, saying, “There neverisno p'lice about when they're wanted for anythink.”
“But they aren't wanted here, friend,” said somebody from the outside. It was John Storm, and he was pushing his way through the crowd.
“Will somebody knock at that door, please?” He lifted the old thing in his arms and carried her toward the canon's house. The footman looked aghast. “Let me know when the canon returns,” said John, and then marched up the carpeted stairs to his rooms.
An hour afterward the old woman opened her eyes and said: “Anythink gorn wrong? Wot's up? Is it the work'us?”
It was a clear case of destitution and collapse. John Storm began to feed the old creature with the chicken and milk sent up for his own lunch.
Some time in the afternoon he heard the voice and step of the vicar in the room below. Going down to the study, he was about to knock; but the voice continued in varying tones, now loud, now low. During a pause he rapped, and then, with noticeable irritation, the voice cried, “Come in!”
He found the vicar, with a manuscript in hand, rehearsing his Sunday's sermon. It was a shock to John, but it helped him to understand what his uncle had said about the canon's Pentecost.
The canon's brow was clouded. “Ah, is it you? I was sorry to see you getting out of a third-class carriage to-day, Mr. Storm.”
John answered that it was the poor man's class, and therefore, he thought, it ought to be his.
“You do yourself an injustice, Mr. Storm. Besides, to tell you the truth, I don't choose that my assistant clergy——”
John looked ashamed. “If that is your view, sir,” he said, “I don't know what you'll say to what I've been doing since.”
“I've heard of it, and I confess I'm not pleased. Whatever your oldprotégéemay be, my house is no place for her. I help to maintain charitable institutions for such cases, and I will ask you to lose no time in having her removed to the hospital.”
John was crushed. “Very well, sir, if that is your wish; only I thought you said my rooms——Besides, the poor old thing fills her place as well as Queen Victoria, and perhaps the angels are watching the one as much as the other.”
Next day John Storm called to see the old woman at Martha's Vineyard, and he saw the matron, the house doctor, and a staff nurse as well. His adventure was known to everybody at the hospital. Once or twice he caught looks of amused compassion, and heard a twitter of laughter. As he stood by the bed, the old woman muttered: “I knoo ez it wuzn't the work'us, my dear. He spoke to me friendly and squeedged my 'and.”
Coming through the wards he had looked for a face he could not see; but just then he was aware of a young woman, in the print dress and white apron of a nurse, standing in silence at the bed-head. It was Glory, and her eyes were wet with tears.
“You mustn't do such things,” she said hoarsely; “I can't bear it,” and she stamped her foot. “Don't you see that these people——”
But she turned about and was gone before he could reply. Glory was ashamed for him. Perhaps she had been taking his part! He felt the blood mounting to his face, and his cheeks tingling. Glory! His eyes were swimming, and he dared not look after her; but he could have found it in his heart to kiss the old bag of bones on the bed.
That night he wrote to the parson in the island: “Glory has left off her home garments, and now looks more beautiful than ever in the white simplicity of the costume of the nurse. Her vocation is a great one. God grant she may hold on to it!” Then something about the fallacy of ceremonial religion and the impossibility of pleasing God by such religious formalities. “But if we have publicans and Pharisees now, even as they existed in Christ's time, all the more service is waiting for that man for whom life has no ambitions, death no terrors. I thank God I am in a great measure dead to these things.... I will fulfil my promise to look after Glory. My constant prayer is against Agag. It is so easy for him to get a foothold in a girl's heart here. This great new world, with its fashions, its gaieties, its beauty, and its brightness—no wonder if a beautiful young girl, tingling with life and ruddy health, should burn with impatience to fling herself into the arms of it. Agag is in London, and as insinuating as ever.”
On Sunday morning his fellow-curate came to his room to accompany him to church. The Rev. Joshua Golightly was a little man with a hook nose, small keen eyes, scanty hair, and a voice that was something between a whisper and a whistle. He bowed subserviently, and made meek little speeches.
“I do trust you will not be disappointed with our church and service. We do all we can to make them worthy of our people.”
As they walked down the streets he talked first of the church officers—there were honorary wardens, gentlemen sidesmen, and lady superintendents of floral decorations; then of the choir, which consisted of organist and choir master, professional members, voluntary members, and choir secretary. The anthem was sung by a professional singer, generally the tenor from the opera; the canon could always get such people—he was a great favourite with artistes and “the profession.” Of course, the singers were paid, and the difficulty this week had been due to the exorbitant fee demanded by the Italian barytone from Covent Garden.
Disappointment and disenchantment were falling on John Storm at every step.
All Saints' was a plain, dark structure with a courtyard in front. The bells were ringing, and a line of carriages was drawing up at the portico as at the entrance to a theatre, discharging their occupants and passing on. Vergers in yellow and buff, with knee-breeches, silk stockings, and powdered wigs, were receiving the congregation at the doors.
“Let us go in by the west door—I should like you to see the screen to advantage,” said Mr. Golightly.
The inside of the church was gorgeous. As far up as the clerestory every wall was frescoed, and every timber of the roof was gilded. At the chancel end there was a wrought-iron screen of delicate tracery, and the altar was laden with gold candlesticks. Above the altar and at either side of it were stained glass windows. The morning sun was shining through them and filling the chancel with warm splashes of light. Ladies in beautiful spring dresses were following the vergers up the aisles.
“This way,” the curate whispered, and John Storm entered the sacristy by a low doorway like the auditorium entrance to a stage. There he met some six others of his fellow-curates. They nodded to him and went on arranging their surplices. The choir were gathering in their own quarters, where the violins were tuning up and the choir boys were laughing and behaving after their kind.
The bell slackened and stopped, and the organ began to play. When all were ready they stepped into a long corridor and formed in line with their faces to the chancel and their backs to a little door, at which a verger in blue stood guard.
“The canon's room,” whispered Mr. Golightly.
A prayer was said by some one, the choir sang the response, and then they walked in procession to their places in the chancel, the choir boys first, the canon last. Seen through the tracery of the screen, the congregation appeared to fill every sitting in the church with a blaze of light and colour, and the atmosphere was laden with delicate perfume.
The service was choral. An anthem was sung at the close of the sermon, the collection being made during the hymn before it. The professional singer looked like any other chorister in his surplice, save for his swarthy face and heavy mustache.
The canon preached. He wore his doctor's hood of scarlet cloth. His sermon was eloquent and literary, and it was delivered with elocutionary power. There were many references to great writers, painters, and musicians, including a panegyric on Michael Angelo and a quotation from Browning. The sermon concluded with a passage from Dante in the original.
John Storm was dazed and perplexed. When the service was over he came out alone, returning down the nave, which was now empty but still fragrant. Among other notices pasted on a board in the porch he found this one: “The vicar and wardens, having learned with regret that purses have been lost on leaving the church, recommend the congregation to bring only such money as they may need for the offertory.”
Had he been to the house of God? No matter! God ruled the world in righteousness and wrought out everything to his own glory.
Next morning he began duty as chaplain at the hospital, and when he had finished the reading of his first prayers he could see that he had lived down some of the derision due to his adventure with the old woman. That poor old bag of bones was sinking and could not last much longer.
Going out by way of the dispensary, he saw Glory again, and heard that she had been at church the day before. It was lovely. All those hundreds of nice-looking people in gay colours, with the rustle of silk and the hum of voices—it was beautiful—it reminded her of the sea in summer. He asked her what she thought of the sermon, and she said, “Well, it wasn't religion exactly—not what I call religion—not a 'reg'lar rousing rampage for sowls,' as old Chalse used to say, but——”
“Glory,” he said impetuously, “I'm to preach my first sermon on Wednesday.”
He did not ask her to come, but inquired if she was on night duty. She answered No, and then somebody called her.
“She'll be there,” he told himself, and he walked home with uplifted head. He would look for her; he would catch her eye; she would see that it was not necessary to be ashamed of him again.
And then close behind, very close, came recollections of her appearance. He could reconstruct her new dress by memory—her face was easy to remember. “After all, beauty is a kind of virtue,” he thought. “And all natural friendship is good for the progress of souls if it is built upon the love of God.”
He wrote nothing and learned nothing by heart. The only preparation he made for his sermon was thought and prayer. When the Wednesday night came he was very nervous. But the church was nearly empty, and the vergers, who were in their everyday clothes, had only partially lit up the nave. The canon had done him the honour to be present; his fellow-curates read the prayers and lessons.
As he ascended the pulpit he thought he saw the white bonnets of a group of nurses in the dim distance of one of the aisles, but he did not see Glory and he dared not look again. His text was, “My kingdom is not of this world.” He gave it out twice, and his voice sounded strange to himself—so weak and thin in that hollow place.
When he began to speak his sentences seemed awkward and difficult. The things of the world were temporal and the nations of the world were out of harmony with God. Men were biting and devouring each other who ought to live as brothers. “Cheat or be cheated” was the rule of life, as the modern philosopher had said. On the one side were the many dying of want, on the other side the few occupied with poetry and art, writing addresses to flowers, and peddling—in the portraiture of the moods and methods of love, living lives of frivolity, taking pleasure in mere riches and the lusts of the eye, while thousands of wretched mortals were grovelling in the mire.... Then where was our refuge? ... The Church was the refuge of God's people ... from Christ came the answer—the answer—the——
His words would not flow. He fought hard, threw out another passage, then stammered, began again, stammered again, felt hot, made a fresh effort, flagged, rattled out some words he had fixed in his mind, perspired, lost his voice, and finally stopped in the middle of a sentence and said, “And now to God the Father—” and came down from the pulpit.
His sermon had been a failure, and he knew it. On going back to the sacristy the Reverend Golightly congratulated him with a simper and a vapid smile. The canon was more honest but more vain. He mingled lofty advice with gentle reproof. Mr. Storm had taken his task too lightly. Better if he had written his sermon and read it. Whatever might serve for the country, congregations in London—at All Saints' especially—expected culture and preparation.
“For my own part I confess—nay, I am proud to declare—my watchword is Rehearse! Rehearse! Rehearse!”
As for the doctrine of the sermon it was not above question. It was necessary to live in thenineteenthcentury, and it was impossible to apply to its conditions the rules of life that had been proper to the first.
John Storm made no resistance. He slept badly that night. As often as he dozed off he dreamed that he was trying to do something he could not do, and when he awoke he became hot as with the memory of a disgrace. And always at the back of his shame was the thought of Glory.
Next morning he was alone in his room and fumbling the toast on his breakfast table, when the door opened and a cheery voice cried, “May I no come in, laddie?”
An elderly lady entered. She was tall and slight and had a long, fine face, with shrewd but kindly eyes, and nearly snow-white hair.
“I'm Jane Callender,” she said, “and I couldna wait for an introduction or sic bother, but must just come and see ye. Ay, laddie, it was a bonnie sermon yon! I havena heard the match of it since I came frae Edinburgh and sat under the good Doctor Guthrie. Nowhewas nae slavish reader neither—none of your paper preachers was Thomas. My word, but you gave us the right doctrine, too! They're given over to the worship of Beelzebub—half these church-going folks! Oh, these Pharisees! They are enough to sour milk. I wish they had one neck and somebody would just squeeze it. Now, where did ye hear that, Jane? But no matter! And the lasses are worse than the men, with their fashions and foldololls. They love Jesus, but they like him best in heaven, not bothering down in Belgravia. But I must be going my ways. I left James on the street, and there's nae living with the man if you keep his horses waiting. Good-morning til ye! But eh, laddie, I'm afraid for ye! I'm thinking—I'm thinking ... but come and see me at Victoria Square. Good-morning!”
She had rattled this off at a breath, and had hardly given time for a reply, when her black silk was rustling down the stairs.
John Storm remembered that the canon had spoken of her. She was the good woman who kept the home for girls at Soho.
“The good creature only came to comfort me,” he thought. But Glory! What was Glory thinking? That morning after prayers at the hospital he went in search of her in the out-patient department, but she pretended to be overwhelmed with work, and only nodded and smiled and excused herself.
“I haven't got a moment this morning either for the king or his dog. I'm up to my eyes in bandages, and have fourteen plasters on my conscience, and now I must run away to my little boy whose leg was amputated on Saturday.”
He understood her, but he came back in the evening and was resolved to face it out.
“What did you think of last night, Glory?” Then she put on a look of blank amazement.
“Why, what happened? Oh, of course, the sermon! How stupid of me! Do you know I forgot all about it?”
“You were not there, then?”
“Don't ask me. Really, I'm ashamed; after my promise to grandfather, too! But Wednesday doesn't count anyway, does it? You'll preach on Sunday—and then!”
His feeling of relief was followed by a sense of deeper humiliation. Glory had not even troubled herself to remember. Evidently he was nothing to her, nothing; while she——
He walked home through St. James's Park, and under the tall trees the peaceful silence of the night came down on him. The sharp clack of the streets was deadened to a low hum as of the sea afar off. Across the gardens he could see the clock in the tower of Westminster, and hear the great bell strike the quarters. London! How little and selfish all personal thoughts were in the contemplation of the mighty city! He had been thinking only of himself and his own little doings. It was all so small and pitiful!
“Did my shame at my failure in the pulpit proceed solely from fear of losing the service of God, or did it proceed from wounded ambition, from pride, from thoughts of Glory——”
But the peaceful stars were over him. It was a majestic night.