Farewell, thou world of sorrow,Unrest, and schism and strife!I leave thee on the thresholdOf the celestial life.
It was the occasion of Brother Paul's life vows also, and as John stood back from the altar steps the lay brother was brought up to them. He was very pale and nervous, and he would have stumbled but for the help of the Father Minister and Brother Andrew, who walked on either side of him.
Then the same ceremony was gone through again, but with yet more solemn accessories. The burial service was read, the De Profundis was sung, the bell was tolled, the Ecce quam bonum was intoned, and finally the chant was chanted:
Dead to Him, then death is over,Dead and gone are death's dark fears.
John Storm was profoundly stirred. The heavens seemed to open and all the earth to pass away. It was difficult to believe that he was still in the flesh.
When he was able to collect himself he was on the tower again, but in his cassock now and gripping the cord by which it was tied. The frosty air of the morning had thickened to a fog, the fog-signals were sounding, and the mighty monster below seemed to be puffing fire from a thousand nostrils and bellowing from a thousand throats.
Some one had come up to him. It was Brother Paul. He was talking nervously and even pretending to laugh a little.
“I am so happy to see you here. And I am glad the silence is at an end and I am able to tell you so.”
“Thank you,” said John, and he tried to pass him.
“I always knew you would come to us—that is to say, after the night I heard you at the hospital—the night of the Nurses' Ball, you remember, and the Father's visit, you know. Still, I trust there was nothing wrong—nothing at the hospital, I mean——”
John was fumbling for the door to the dormer.
“Everybody loved you too—the patients and the nurses and everybody! How they will miss you there! I trust you left everybody well—and happy and—eh?”
“Good-night,” said John from the head of the stair.
There was silence for a moment, and then the brother said, in another voice:
“Yes, I understand you. I know quite well what you mean. It is a fault to speak of the outer world except on especial need. We have taken the vows, too, and are pledged for life—I am, at all events. Still, if you could have told me anything—— But I am much to blame. I must confess my fault and do my penance.”
John was diving down the stair and hurrying into his room.
“God help him!” he thought. “And me too! God help both of us! How am I to live if I have to hide this secret? Yet how is he to live if he learns it?”
He sat on the bed and tried to compose himself. Yes, Brother Paul was an object for pity. In all the moral universe there was no spectacle more pitiable than that of a man who had left the world while his heart was still in it. What was he doing here? What had brought him? What business had such a one in such a place? And then his pitiful helplessness for all the uses of life and duty! Could it be right, could it be necessary, could it be God's wish and will?
Here was a man whose sister was in the world. She was young and vain, and the world was gay and seductive. Without a hand to guide and guard her, what evils might not befall? She was sunk already in shame and degradation, and he had put it out of his power to save her. Whatever had happened in the past, whatever might happen in the future, he was lost to her forever. The captured eagle with the broken wing was now chained to the wall as well. But prayer! Prayer was the bulwark of chastity, and God was in need of no man's efforts.
John fell on his knees before the crucifix. With the broken logic of reverie he was thinking of Glory, and Brother Paul, and Polly and Drake. They crossed his brain and weighed upon it and went out and returned. The night was cold, but the sweat stood on his brow in beads. In the depths of his soul something was speaking to him, and he was trying not to listen. He was like a blind man who had stumbled to the edge of a precipice, and could hear the waves breaking on the rocks beneath.
When he said his last prayer that night he omitted the petition for Glory (as duty seemed to require of him), and then found that all life and soul and strength had gone out of it. In the middle of the night he awoke with a sense of fright. Was it only a dream that he was dead and buried? He raised his head in the darkness and stretched out his hand. No, it was true. Little by little he pieced together the incidents of the previous day. Yes, it had really happened.
“After all, I am not like Paul—I am not bound for life,” he told himself, and then he lay back like a child and was comforted.
He was ashamed, but he could not help it; he was feeling already as if he were a prisoner in a dungeon looking forward to his release.
“5a Little Turnstile, High Holborn, London, W. C., November 9, 18—.
“Oh yiz, oh yiz, oh yiz! This is to announce to you with due pomp and circumstance that I, Glory Quayle, am no longer at the hospital—for the present. Did I never tell you? Have you never noticed it in the regulations? Every half-year a nurse is entitled to a week's holiday, and as I have been exactly six months to-day at Martha's Vineyard, and as a week is too short a time for a trip to the 'oilan,' [* Island.] and as a good lady whose acquaintance I have made here had given me a pressing invitation to visit her—— See?
“Being the first day since I came up to London that I have been sole mistress of my will and pleasure, I have been letting myself loose, like Caesar does the moment his mad hoofies touch the grass. I must tell you all about it. The day began beautifully. After a spell of laughing and crying weather, and all the world sneezing and blowing its nose, there came a frosty morning with the sun shining and the air as bright as diamonds. I left the hospital between, eleven and twelve o'clock, and crossing the park by Birdcage Walk I noticed that flags were flying on Buckingham Palace and church bells ringing everywhere. It turned out to be the birthday of the Prince of Wales, and the Lord Mayor's Day as well, and by the time I got to Storey's Gate bands of music were playing and people were scampering toward the Houses of Parliament. So I ran, too, and from the gardens in front of Palace Yard I saw the Lord Mayor's Show.
“Do you know what that is, good people? It is a civic pageant. Once a year the City King makes a royal procession through the streets with his soldiers and servants and keepers and pipers and retainers, bewigged and bepowdered and bestockinged pretty much as they used to be in the days before the flood. There have been seven hundred of him in succession, and his particular vanity is to show that he is wearing the same clothes still. But it was beautiful altogether, and I could have cried with delight to see those grave-looking signiors forgetting themselves for once and pretending they were big boys over again.
“Such a sight! Flags were flying everywhere and festoons were stretched across the streets with mottoes and texts, such as 'Unity is strength' and 'God save the Queen,' and other amiable if not original ideas. Traffic was stopped in the main thoroughfares, and the 'buses were sent by devious courses, much to the astonishment of the narrow streets. Then the crowds, the dense layers of potted people with white, upturned faces, for all the world like the pictures of the round stones standing upright at the Giant's Causeway—it was wonderful!
“And then the fun! Until the procession arrived the policemen were really obliging in that way. The one nearest me was as fat as Falstaff, and a slim young Cockney in front kept addressing intimate remarks to him and calling him Robert. The young impudence himself was just as ridiculous, for he wore a fringe which was supported by hair-oil and soap, and rolled carefully down the right side of his forehead so that he could always keep his left eye on it. And he did, too.
“But the pageant itself! My gracious! how we laughed at it! There were Epping Forest verderers, and beef-eaters from the Tower, and pipers of the Scots Guards, and ladies of the ballet shivering on shaky stools and pretending to be 'Freedom' and 'Commerce,' and last of all the City King himself, smiling and bowing to all his subjects, and with his liegemen behind him in yellow coats and red silk stockings. Perhaps the most popular character was a Highlander in pink tights, where his legs ought to have been, walking along as solemnly as if he thought it was a sort of religious ceremony and he was an idol out for an airing.
“And then the bands! There must have been twenty of them, both brass and fife, and they all played the Washington Post, but no two had the luck to fall on the same bar at the same moment. It was a medley of all the tunes in music, an absolute kaleidoscope of sounds, and meantime there was the clash of bells from the neighbouring belfries in honour of the Prince's birthday, and the rattle of musketry from the Guards, so that when the double event was over I felt like the man whose wife presented him with twins—I wouldn't have lost either of them for a million of money, but I couldn't have found it in my heart to give a bawbee for another one.
“The procession took half an hour to pass, and when it was gone, remembering the ladies in lovely dresses who had rolled by in their gorgeous carriages, looking not a bit cleverer or handsomer than other people, I turned away with a little hard lump at my heart and a limp in my left foot—the young Cockney with the fringe had backed on to my toe. I suppose they are feasting with the lords and all the nobility at the Guildhall to-night, and no doubt the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table will go in pies and cakes to the alleys and courts where hunger walks, and I dare say little Lazarus in the Mile End Road is dreaming at this very moment of Dick Whittington and the Lord Mayor of London.
“It must have been some waking dream of that sort which took possession of me also, for what do you suppose I did? Shall I tell you? Yes, I will. I said to myself: 'Glory, my child, suppose you were nearly as poor as he was in this great, glorious, splendid London; suppose—only suppose—you had no home and no friends, and had left the hospital, or perhaps even been turned away from it, and hadn't a good lady's door standing open to receive you, what would you do first, my dear?' To all which I replied promptly, 'You would first get yourself lodgings, my child, and then you would just go to work to show this great, glorious London what a woman can do to bring it to her little feet.'
“I know grandfather is saying, 'Gough bless me, girl! you didn't try it, though?' Well, yes, I did—just for fun, you know, and out of the spirit of mischief that's born in every daughter of Eve. Do you remember that Manx cat that wouldn't live in the house, notwithstanding all the bribes and corruption of Aunt Rachel's new milk and softened bread, but went off by the backyard wall to join the tribe of pariah pussies that snatch a living how they may? Well, I felt like Rumpy for once, having three 'goolden sovereigns' in my pocket and a mind superior to fate.
“It was glorious fun altogether, and the world is so amusing that I can't imagine why anybody should go out of it before he must. I hadn't gone a dozen yards in my new character as Dick Whittingtonfillebefore a coachman as fat as an elephant was shouting, 'Where d'ye think yer going ter?' and I was nearly run down in the Broad Sanctuary by a carriage containing two brazen women in sealskin jackets, with faces so thick with powder and paint that you would have thought they had been quarrelling on washing day and thrown the blue bag at each other's eyes. I recognised one of them as a former nurse who had left the hospital in disgrace, but happily she didn't see me, for the little hard lump at my heart was turning as bitter as gall at that moment, so I made some philosophical observations to myself and passed on.
“Oh, my gracious, these London landladies! They must be female Shylocks, for the pound of flesh is the badge of all their tribe. The first one I boarded asked two guineas for two rooms, and lights and fires extra. 'By the month?' says I. 'Yus, by the month if ye like,' says she. 'Two guineas a month?' says I. Marry come up! I was out of that house in a twinkling.
“Then I looked out a group of humbler thoroughfares, not far from the Houses of Parliament, where nearly every house had a card fixed up on a little green blind. At last I found a place that would do—for my week, only my week, you know. Ten shillings and no extras. 'I'll take them,' said I with a lofty air, and thereupon the landlady, a grim person, with the suspicion of a mustache, began to cross-examine me. Was I married? Oh, dear, no! Then what was my business? Fool that I was, I said I had none, being full of my Dick Whittingtonism, and not choosing to remember the hospital, for I was wearing my private clothes, you know. But hoot! She didn't take unmarried young ladies without businesses, and I was out in the street once more.
“I didn't mind it, not I indeed, and it was only for fun after all; but since people objected to girls without businesses, I made up my mind to be a singer if anybody asked me the question again. My third landlady had only one room, and it was on the second floor back, but before I got the length of mounting to this eyry I went through my examination afresh. 'In the profession, miss?' 'What profession?' 'The styge, of course.' 'Well, ye—yes, something of that sort.' 'Don't tyke anybody that's on the styge.'
“Oh, dear! Oh, dear! I could have screamed, it was so ridiculous; but time was getting on, Big Ben was striking four, and the day was closing in. Then I saw the sign, 'Home for Girls.' 'Wonder if it is a charity?' thinks I; but no, it didn't look like that, so in I went as bold as brass, and inquired for the manageress. 'Is it the matron you mean, miss?' 'Very well, the matron then,' said I, and presently she came up—no, not smiling, for she wasn't an amiable-looking Christian, but I thought she would smother me with mysterious questions. 'Tired of the life, are you, my dear? Itisa cruel one, isn't it?' I stood my ground for some minutes, and then, feeling dreadfully thick in the throat, and cold down the back, I asked her what she was talking about, whereupon she looked bewildered and inquired if I was a good girl, and being told that I hoped so, she said she couldn't take me in there, and then pointed to a card oh the wall which, simpleton that I was, I hadn't read before: 'A home and rescue is offered to women who desire to leave a life of misery and disgrace.'
“Ididscream that time, the world was so nonsensical. At one place, being 'on the styge' I was not good enough to be taken in, at another I was not bad enough, and what in the name of all that was ridiculous was going to happen next? But it was quite dark by this time, the air was as black as a northwest gale, and I was 'aweary for all my wings,' so forgetting Dick Whittingtonfille, and only remembering the good female Samaritan who had asked me to stay with her, I made a dart for Victoria Street and jumped into the first 'bus that came along, just as the hotels and the clubs and the great buildings were putting' out the Prince of Wales's feathers as sign and symbol of the usual rejoicings within.
“It was an 'Atlas' omnibus, and it took me to Piccadilly Circus, and that being the wrong direction, I had to change. But a fog had come down in the meanwhile, and lo, there I was in the middle of it!
“O Ananias, Azarias, and Misael! Do you know what a London fog is? It's smoke, it's soot, it's sulphur. It is darker than night, for it extinguishes the lights, and denser than the mist on the Curragh, and filthier than the fumes of the brick-kiln. It makes you think the whole round earth must be a piggery copper and that London has lifted the lid off. In the midst of this inferno the cabs crawl and the 'buses creep, and foul fiends, who turn out to be men merely, go flitting about with torches, and you grope and croak and cough, and the most innocent faces come puffing and snorting down on you like the beasts in the Apocalypse.
“I thought it good fun at first, but presently I could only keep from crying by having a good laugh, and I was doing that, and asking somebody the way to the Holborn omnibus, when a policeman pushed me and said: 'Come, move on; none of yer lyterin' abart here!'
“I could have choked, but remembering something I had seen on that very spot on the night of my first day out, I dived across the street and ran in spite of curses and collisions. But the 'somebody,' whoever he was, had followed me, and he put me into the right 'bus, so I got here at last. It took two mortal hours to do it, and after that spell of purgatory this house is like a blessed paradise, peopled with angels of mercy and grace, as paradise ought to be.
“The good Samaritan was very kind, and she made tea for me in a twinkling and slaughtered the fatted calf in the shape of a pot of raspberry jam. Her name is Mrs. Jupe, and her husband is something in a club, and she has one child of eleven, whose bedfellow I am to be, and here I am now with Miss Slyboots in our little bedroom feeling safe and sound and monarch of all I survey.
“Good-night, good people! Half an hour hence I'll be going through a mad march of the incidents of the day, turned topsy-turvy according to the way of dreams. But wae's me! wae's me! If it had all been true—if I had been really homeless and friendless and penniless, instead of having three 'goolden' pounds in my purse, and Providence in the person of Mrs. Jupe, to fall back upon! When I grow to be a wonderful woman and have brought the eyes of all the earth upon me, I am going to be good to poor girls who have no anchorage in London. John Storm was right: this great, glorious, brilliant, delightful London can be very cruel to them sometimes. It calls to them, beckons to them, smiles on them, makes them think there must be joy in the blaze of so much light and luxury and love by the side of so many palaces, and then——
“But perhaps the mischief lies deeper down; and though I'm not going to cut my hair and wear a waistcoat and stand up for the equal rights of the sexes, I feel at this moment that if I were only a man I should be the happiest woman in the world, God bless me! Not that I am afraid of London, not I indeed; and to show you how I long to take a header into its turbulent tides, I hereby warn and apprize and notify you that perhaps I may use my week's holiday to find a more congenial employment than that of deputy White Owl at the hospital. I am not in my right place yet, Aunt Anna, notwithstanding, so look out for revelations! 'To be or not to be? that is the question.' Just say the word and I'll leave it to Providence, which is always a convenient legatee, and in any case—but wait, only wait and see what a week will bring forth!
“Greet the island for me to the inmost core of its being. The dear little 'oilan!' Now that I am so far away, I go over it in my mind's eye with the idiotic affection of a mother who knows every inch of her baby's body and would like to gobble it. The leaves must be down by this time, and there can be nothing on the bare boughs but the empty nests where the little birdies used to woo and sing. My love to them and three tremendous kisses for yourselves!
“Glory.
“P.S.—Oh, haven't I given you the 'newses' about John Storm? There are so many things to think about in a place like London, you see. Yes, he has gone into a monastery—communication cut off—wires broken down by the 'storm,' etc. Soberly, he has gone for good seemingly, and to talk of it lightly is like picking a penny out of a blind man's hat. Of course, it was only to be expected that a man with an upper lip like that should come to grief with all those married old maids and elderly women of the opposite sex. Canons to right of him, canons to left of him, canons in front of him—but rumour says it was John himself who volleyed and thundered. He wrote me a letter when he was on the point of going, saying how London had shocked and disappointed him, and how he longed to escape from it and from himself at the same time, that he might dedicate his life to God. It was right and true, no doubt; but wherefore could not I pronounce Amen? He also mentioned something about myself, how much I had been to him; for he had never known his mother, and had never had a sister, and could never have a wife. All which was excellent, but a mere woman like Glory doesn't want to read that sort of thing in a letter, and would rather have five minutes of John Storm the man than a whole eternity of John Storm the saint. His letter made me think of Christian on his way to the eternal city; but that person has always seemed to me a doubtful sort of hero anyway, taking Mrs. Christian into account and the various little Christians, and I can't pity him a pin about his bundle, for he might just as well have left behind him what he couldn't enjoy of God's providence himself.
“But this is like hitting a cripple with his crutch, John being gone and past all defending himself, and when I think of it in the streets I have to run to keep myself from doing something silly, and then people think I'm chasing an omnibus, when I'm really only chasing my tears. I can't tell you much about the Brotherhood. It looks like a cross between a palace and a penitentiary, and it appears that ritualism has gone one better than High-Churchmanship, and is trying to introduce the monastic system, which, to an ordinary woman of the world, seems well enough for the man in the moon, though the man in the moon might have a different way of looking at things. They say the brothers are all celibates and live in cells, but I think I've seen a look in John Storm's eyes that warns me that he wasn't intended for 'the lek o' that' exactly. To tell you the truth, I half blame myself for what has happened, and I am ashamed when I remember how jauntily I took matters all the time our poor John was fighting with beasts at Ephesus. But I am vexed with him too; and if only he had waited patiently before taking such a serious step in order to hearmyarguments—— But no matter. A jackdaw isn't to be called a religious bird because it keeps a-cawing on the steeple, and John Storm won't make himself into a monk by shutting himself up in a cell. Good-night.”
The house to which Glory had fled out of the fog was a little dingy tobacconist's shop opening on a narrow alley that runs from Holborn into Lincoln's-Inn Fields. It was kept by the baby farmer whom she had met at the house of Polly Love, and the memory of the address thrust upon her there had been her only resource on that day of crushing disappointment and that night of peril. Mrs. Jupe's husband, a waiter at a West End club, was a simple and helpless creature, very fond of his wife, much deceived by her, and kept in ignorance of the darker side of her business operations. Their daughter, familiarly called “Booboo,” a silent child with cunning eyes and pasty cheeks, was being brought up to help in the shop and to dodge the inspector of the school board.
On coming downstairs next morning to the close and dingy parlour at the back, Glory had looked about her as one who had expected something she did not see, whereupon Mrs. Jupe, who was at breakfast with her husband, threw up her little twinkling eyes and said:
“Now I know what she's a-lookin' for; it's the byeby.”
“Where is it?” said Glory.
“Gorn, my dear.”
“Surely you don't mean——”
“No, not dead, but I 'ad to put it out, pore thing!”
“Ye see, miss,” said Mr. Jupe with his mouth full, “my missus couldn't nurse the byeby and 'tend to the biziniss as well, so as reason was——”
“It brikes my 'eart to think it; but it made such a n'ise, pore darling!”
“Does the mother know?” said Glory.
“That wasn't necessary, my dear. It's gorn to a pusson I can trust to tyke keer of it, and I'm trooly thenkful——”
“It jest amarnts to this, miss: the biziness is too much for the missus as things is——”
“I wouldn't keer if my 'ealth was what it used to be, in the dyes when I 'ad Booboo.”
“But it ain't, and she's often said as how she'd like a young laidy to live with her and 'elp her with the shop.”
“A nice-lookin' girl might 'ave a-many chawnces in a place syme as this, my dear.”
“Lawd, yus; and when I seen the young laidy come in at the door, 'Strike me lucky!' thinks I, 'the very one!'”
“Syme 'ere, my dear. I reckkernized ye the minute I seen ye; and if ye want to leave the hospital and myke a stawt, as you were saying—last night——”
Glory stopped them. They were on the wrong trace entirely. She had merely come to lodge with them, and if that was not agreeable——
“Well, and so ye shell, my dear; and if ye don't like the shop all at onct, there's Booboo, she wants lessons——”
“But I can pay,” said Glory, and then she was compelled to say something of her plans. She wanted to become a singer, perhaps an actress, and to tell them the truth she might not be staying long, for when she got engagements——
“Jest as you like, my dear; myke yerself at 'ome. On'y don't be in a 'urry about engygements. Good ones ain't tots picked up by the childring in the streets these dyes.”
Nevertheless it was agreed that Glory was to lodge at the tobacconist's, and Mr. Jupe was to bring her box from the hospital on coming home that night from his work. She was to pay ten shillings a week, all told, so that her money would last four or five weeks, and leave something to spare. “But I shall be earning long before that,” she thought, and her resources seemed boundless. She started on her enterprise instantly, knowing no more of how to begin than that it would first be necessary to find the office of an agent. Mr. Jupe remembered one such place.
“It's in a street off of Waterloo Road,” he said, “and the name on the windows is Josephs.”
Glory found this person in a fur-lined coat and an opera hat, sitting in a room which was papered with photographs, chiefly of the nude and the semi-nude, intermingled with sheafs of playbills that hung from the walls like ballads, from the board of the balladmonger.
“Vell, vot's yer line?” he asked.
Glory answered nervously and indefinitely.
“Vot can you do then?”
She could sing and recite and imitate people.
The man shrugged his shoulders. “My terms are two guineas down and ten per cent on salary.”
Glory rose to go. “That is impossible. I can not——”
“Vait a minute. How much have you got?”
“Isn't that my business, sir?”
“Touchy, ain't ye, miss? But if you mean bizness, I'll tyke a guinea and give you the first chawnce what comes in.”
Reluctantly, fearfully, distrustfully, Glory paid her guinea and left her address.
“Daddle doo,” said the agent.
Then she found herself in the street.
“Two weeks less for lodgings,” she thought, as she returned to the tobacconist's. But Mrs. Jupe seemed entirely satisfied.
“What did I tell ye, my dear? Good engygements ain't chasing nobody abart the streets these dyes, and there's that many girls now as can do a song and a dance and a recitashing——”
Three days passed, four days, five days, six days, a week, and still no word from Mr. Josephs. Glory called on him again. He counselled patience. It was the dead season at the theatres and music halls, but if she only waited——
She waited a week longer and then called again, and again, and yet again. But she brought nothing back except her mimicry of the man's manner. She could hit him off to a hair—his raucous voice, his guttural utterance, and the shrug of his shoulders that told of the Ghetto.
Mrs. Jupe shrieked with laughter. That lady's spirits were going up as Glory's came down. At the end of the third week she said, “I can't abear to tyke yer money no longer, my dear, you not doing nothink.”
Then she hinted at a new arrangement. She had to be much from home. It was necessary; her health was poor—an obvious fiction. During her absence she had to leave Booboo in charge.
“It ain't good for the child, my dear, and it ain't good for the shop; but if anybody syme as yerself would tyke a turn behind the counter——”
Having less than ten shillings in her pocket, Glory was forced to submit.
There was a considerable traffic through the little turnstile. Lying between Bedford Row and Lincoln's Inn, it was the usual course of lawyers and lawyers' clerks passing to and fro from the courts. They were not long in seeing that a fresh and beautiful face was behind the counter of the dingy little tobacco-shop. Business increased, and Mrs. Jupe became radiant.
“What did I tell ye, my dear? There's more real gentlemen a-mooching rahnd here in a day than a girl would have a chawnce of meeting in a awspital in a twelvemonth.”
Glory's very soul was sickening. The attentions of the men, their easy manners, their little liberties, their bows, their smiles, their compliments—it was gall and wormwood to the girl's unbroken spirit. Nevertheless she was conscious of a certain pleasure in the bitterness. The bitterness was her own, the pleasure some one else's, so to speak, who was looking on and laughing. She felt an unconquerable impulse to sharpen her wit on Mrs. Jupe's customers, and even to imitate them to their faces. They liked it, so she was good for business both ways.
But she remembered John Storm and felt suffocated with shame. Her thoughts turned to him constantly, and she called at the hospital to ask if there were any letters. There were two, but neither of them was from Bishopsgate Street. One was from Aunt Anna. Glory was not to dream of leaving the hospital. With tithes going down every year, and everything else going up, how could she think of throwing away a salary and adding to their anxieties? The other was from her grandfather:
“Glad to hear you have had a holiday, dear Glory, and trust you are feeling the better for the change. Must confess to being a little startled by the account of your adventure on Lord Mayor's Day, with the wild scheme for cutting adrift from the hospital and taking London by storm. But it was just like my little witch, my wandering gipsy, and I knew it was all nonsense; so when Aunt Anna began to scold I took my pipe and went upstairs. Sorry to hear that John Storm has gone over to Popery, for that is what it comes to, though he is not under the Romish obedience. I am the more concerned because I failed to make his peace with his father. The old man seems to blame me for everything, and has even taken to passing me on the road. Give my best respects to Mrs. Jupe, when you see her again, with my thanks for taking care of you. And now that you are alone in that great and wicked Babylon, take good care of yourself, my dear one. To know that my runaway is well and happy and prosperous is all I have left to reconcile me to her absence. Yes, the harvest is over and threshed and housed, and we have fires in the parlour nearly every day, which makes Anna severe sometimes, coals being so dear just now, and the turf no longer allowed to us.”
It was ten days overdue. That night, in her little bedroom, with its low ceiling and sloping floor, Glory wrote her answer:
“But it isn't nonsense, my dear grandfather, and I really have left the hospital. I don't know if it was the holiday and the liberty or what, but I felt like that young hawk at Glenfaba—do you remember it?—the one that was partly snared and came dragging the trap on to the lawn by a string caught round its leg. I had to cut it away, I had to, I had to! But you mustn't feel one single moment's uneasiness about me. An able-bodied woman like Glory Quayle doesn't starve in a place like London. Besides, I am provided for already, so you see my bow abides in strength. The first morning after my arrival Mrs. Jupe told me that if I cared to take to myself the style and title of teacheress to her little Slyboots I had only to say the word and I should be as welcome as the flowers in May. It isn't exactly first fiddling, you know, and it doesn't bring an ambassador's salary, but it may serve for the present, and give me time to look about. You mustn't pay too much attention to my lamentations about being compelled by Nature to wear a petticoat. Things being so arranged in this world I'll make them do. But it does make one's head swim and one's wings droop to see how hard Nature is on a woman compared to a man. Unless she is a genius or a jelly-fish there seems to be only one career open to her, and that is a lottery, with marriage for the prizes, and for the blanks—oh dear, oh dear! Not that I have anything to complain of, and I hate to be so sensitive. Life is wonderfully interesting, and the world is such an amusing place that I've no patience with people who run away from it, and if I were a man—but wait, only wait, good people!”
John Storm had made one other friend at Bishopsgate Street—the dog of the monastery. It was a half-bred bloodhound, and nobody seemed to know whence he came and why he was there. He was a huge, ungainly, and most forbidding creature, and partly for that reason, but chiefly because it was against rule to fix the affections on earthly things, the brothers rarely caressed him. Unnoticed and unheeded, he slept in the house by day and prowled through the court by night, and had hardly ever been known to go out into the streets. He was the strictest monk in the monastery, for he eyed every stranger as if he had been Satan himself, and howled at all music except the singing in the church.
On seeing John for the first time, he broadened his big flews and stiffened his thick stern, according to his wont with all intruders, but in this instance the intruder was not afraid. John patted him on the peaked head and rubbed him on the broad nose, then opened his mouth and examined his teeth, and finally turned him on his back and tickled his chest, and they were fast friends and comrades forever after.
Some weeks after the dedication they were in the courtyard together, and the dog was pitching and plunging and uttering deep bays which echoed between the walls like thunder at play. It was the hour of morning recreation, between Terce and Sext, and the religious were lolling about and talking, and one lay brother was sweeping up the leaves that had fallen from the tree, for the winter had come and the branches were bare. The lay brother was Brother Paul, and he made sidelong looks at John, but kept his head down and went on with his work without speaking. One by one the brothers went back to the house, and John made ready to follow them, but Paul put himself in his way. He was thinner than before, and his eyes were red and his respiration difficult. Nevertheless, he smiled in a childlike way, and began to talk of the dog. What life there was in the old creature still! and nobody had known, there was so much play in it.
“You are not feeling so well, are you?” said John.
“Not quite so well,” he answered.
“The day is cold, and this penance is too much for you.”
“No, it's not that. I asked for it, you know, and I like it. It's something else. To tell you the truth, I'm very foolish in some ways. When I've got anything on my mind I'm always thinking. Day and night it's the same with me, and even work——”
His breathing was audible, but he tried to laugh.
“Do you know what it is this time? It's what you said on the roof on the night of the vows, you remember. What you didn't say, I mean—and that's just the trouble. It was wrong to talk of the world without great necessity, but if you had been able to say 'Yes' when I asked if everybody was well you would have done it, wouldn't you?”
“We'll not talk of that now,” said John.
“No, it would be the same fault as before. Still——”
“How keen the air is! And your asthma is so troublesome! You must really let me speak to the Father.”
“Oh, that's nothing. I'm used to it. But if you know yourself what it is to be always thinking of anybody——”
John called to the dog, and it capered about him. “Good-morning, Brother Paul.” And he went into the house. The lay brother leaned on his besom and drew a long sigh that seemed to come from the depths of his chest.
John had hastened away, lest his voice should betray him.
“Awful!” he thought. “It must be awful to be always thinking of somebody, and in fear of what has happened to her. Poor little Polly! She's not worthy of it, but what does that matter? Blood is blood and love is love, and only God is stronger.”
A few days afterward the air darkened and softened, and snow began to fall. Between Vespers and Evensong John went up to the tower to see London under its mantle of white. It was like an Eastern city now under an Eastern moonlight, and he was listening to the shouts and laughter of people snowballing in the streets when he heard a laboured step on the stair behind him. It was Brother Paul coming up with a spade to shovel away the snow. His features were pinched and contracted, and his young face was looking old and worn.
“You really must not do it,” said John. “To work like this is not penance, but suicide. I'll speak to the Father, and he'll——”
“Don't; for mercy's sake, don't! Have some pity, at all events! If you only knew what a good thing work is for me—how it drives away thoughts, and stifles——”
“But it's so useless, Brother Paul. Look! The snow is still falling, and there's more to come yet.”
“All the same, it's good for me. When I'm very tired I can sleep sometimes. And then God is good to you if you don't spare yourself. Some day perhaps he'll tell me something.”
“He'll tell us everything in his own good time, Brother Paul.”
“It's easy to counsel patience. If I were like you I should be counting the days until my time was over, and that would help me to bear things. But when you are dedicated for life——”
He stopped at his work and looked over the parapet, and seemed to be gazing into the weary days to come.
“Have you anybody of your own out there?”
“You mean any——”
“Any relative—any sister?”
“No.”
“Then you don't know what it is; that's why you won't give me an answer.”
“Don't ask me, Brother Paul.”
“Why not?”
“It might only make you the more uneasy if I told you what——”
The lay brother let his spade fall, then slowly, very slowly, picked it up again and said:
“I understand. You needn't say any more. I shall never ask you again.”
The bell rang for Evensong, and John hurried away. “If it were only some one who was deserving of it!” he thought—“some one who was worthy that a man should risk his soul to save her!”
At supper and in church he saw Brother Paul going about like a man in a waking dream, and when he went up to bed he heard him moving restlessly in the adjoining cell. The fear of betraying himself was becoming unbearable, and he leaped up and stepped out into the corridor, intending to ask the Superior to give him another room elsewhere. But he stopped and came back. “It's not brave,” he thought, “it's not kind, it's not human,” and, saying this again and again, as one whistles when going by a haunted house, he covered his ears and fell asleep.
In the middle of the night, while it was still quite dark, he was awakened by a light on his face and the sense of some one looking down on him in his sleep. With a shudder he opened his eyes and saw Brother Paul, candle in hand, standing by the bed. His eyes were red and swollen, and when he spoke his voice was full of tears.
“I know it's a fault to come into anybody else's cell,” he said, “but I would rather do my penance than endure this torture. Something has happened—I can see that quite well; but I don't know what it is, and the suspense is killing me. The certainty would be easier to bear; and I swear to you by Him who died for us that if you tell me I shall be satisfied! Is she dead?”
“Not that,” said John by a sudden impulse, and then there was an awful silence.
“Not dead!” said Paul. “Then would to God that she were dead, for it must be something worse, a thousand times worse!”
John felt as if the secret had been stolen from him in his sleep; but it was gone, and he could say nothing. Brother Paul's lips trembled, his respiration quickened, and he turned away and smote his head against the wall and sobbed.
“I knew it all the time,” he said. “Her sister went the same way, and I could see that she was going too, and that was why I was so anxious. Oh, my poor mother! my poor mother!”
For two days after that John saw no more of Brother Paul. “He is doing his penance somewhere,” he thought.
Meanwhile the snow was still falling, and when the brothers went out to Lauds at 6 A.M. they passed through a cutting of snow which was banked up afresh every morning, though the day had not then dawned. On the third day John was the first to go down to the hall, and there he met Brother Paul, with his spade in his hands, coming out of the courtyard. He looked like a man who was melting before a fire as surely as a piece of wax.
“I am sorry now that I told you,” said John.
Brother Paul hung his head.
“It is easy to see that you are suffering more than ever; and it is all my fault. I will go to the Father and confess.”
Between breakfast and Terce John carried out this intention. The Superior was sitting before a handful of fire, in a little room that was darkened by leather-bound books and by the flakes of snow which were falling across the window panes.
“Father,” said John, “I am a cause of offence to another brother, and it is I who should be doing his penance.” And then he told how he had broken the observance which forbids any one to talk of his relations with the world without
The Father listened with great solemnity.
“My son,” he said, “your temptation is a testimony to the reality of the religious life. Satan's rage against the home of consecrated souls is terrible, and he would fain break in upon it if he could with worldly thoughts and cares and passions. But we must conquer him by his own weapons. Your penance, my son, shall be of the same kind with your offence. Go to the door and take the place of the doorkeeper, and stay there day and night until the end of the year. Thus shall the evil one be made aware that you are the guardian of our house, to be tampered with no more.”
Brother Andrew was troubled when John took his place at the door that night, but John himself was unconcerned. He was doorkeeper to the household, so he began on the duties of his menial position. As the brothers passed in and out on their mission-errands he opened the door and closed it. If any one knocked he answered, “Praise be to God!” then slid back the little grating in the middle panel of the door and looked out at the stranger. The hall was a chill place, with a stone floor, and he sat on a form that stood against one of its walls. His bed was in an alcove which had formerly been the cloak-room, and a card hung over it with the inscription, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord.” He had no company except big Brother Andrew, who stole down sometimes to cheer him with his speechless presence, and the dog, which was always hanging about.