That morning, when John Storm went to take seven-o'clock celebration, the knocker-up with his long stick had not yet finished his rounds in the courts and alleys about the church, but the costers with their barrows and donkeys, their wives and their children, were making an early start for Epsom. There were many communicants, and it was eight o'clock before he returned to his rooms. By that time the postman had made his first delivery and there was a letter from the Prime Minister. “Come to Downing Street as soon as this reaches you. I must see you immediately.”
He ate his breakfast of milk and brown bread, said “Good-bye, Brother Andrew, I shall be back for evening service,” whistled to the dog, and set out into the streets. But a sort of superstitious fear had taken hold of him, as if an event of supreme importance in his life was impending, and before answering his uncle's summons he made a round of the buildings in the vicinity which were devoted to the work of his mission. His first visit was to the school. The children had assembled, and they were being marshalled in order by the Sisters and prepared for their hymn and prayer.
“Good-morning, Father.”
“Good-morning, children.”
Many of them had presents for him—one a flower, another a biscuit, another a marble, and yet another an old Christmas card. “God bless them, and protect them!” he thought, and he left the school with a full heart.
His last visit was to the men's shelter which he had established under the management of his former “organ man,” Mr. Jupe. It was a bare place, a shed which had been a stable and was now floored and ceiled. Beds resembling the bunks in the foc's'le of a ship lined the walls. When these were full the lodgers lay on the ground. A blanket only was provided. The men slept in their clothes, but rolled up their coats for pillows. There was a stove where they might cook their food if they had money to buy any. A ha'p'orth of tea and sugar mixed, a ha'p'orth of bread, and a ha'p'orth of butter made a royal feast.
Going through the square in which his church stood he passed a smart gig at the door of a public-house that occupied the corner of a street. The publican in holiday clothes was stepping up to the driver's seat, and a young soldier, smoking a cigarette, was taking the place by his side. “Morning, Father, can you tip us the winner?” said the publican with a grin, while the soldier, with an impudent smile, cried “Ta-ta” over his shoulder to the second story of a tenement house, where a young woman with a bloated and serious face and a head mopped up in curl-papers was looking down from an open window.
It was nine o'clock when John Storm reached the Prime Minister's house. A small crowd of people had followed him to the door. “His lordship is waiting for you in the garden, sir,” said the footman, and John was conducted to the back.
In a shady little inclosure between Downing Street and the Horse Guards Parade the Prime Minister was pacing to and fro. His head was bent, his step was heavy, he looked harassed and depressed. At sight of John's monkish habit he started with surprise and faltered uneasily. But presently, sitting by John's side on a seat under a tree, and keeping his eyes away from him, he resumed their old relations and said:
“I sent for you, my boy, to warn you and counsel you. You must give up this crusade. It is a public danger, and God knows what harm may come of it! Don't suppose I do not sympathize with you. I do—to a certain extent. And don't think I charge you with all the follies of this ridiculous distemper. I have followed you and watched you, and I know that ninety-nine hundredths of this madness is not yours. But in the eye of the public you are responsible for the whole of it, and that is the way of the world always. Enthusiasm is a good thing, my boy; it is the rainbow in the heaven of youth, but it may go too far. It may be hurtful to the man who nourishes it and dangerous to society. The world classes it with lunacy and love and so forth among the nervous accidents of life; and the humdrum healthy-minded herd always call that man a fool and a weakling or else a fanatic and a madman, in whom the grand errors of human nature are due to an effort—may I not say, a vain effort?—to live up to a great ideal.” There were nervous twitchings over the muscles of John's face. “Come, now, come, for the sake of peace and tranquillity, lest there should be disorder and even death, let this matter rest. Think, my boy, think, we are as much concerned for the world's welfare as you can be, and we have higher claims and heavier responsibilities. I can not raise a hand to help you, John. In the nature of things I can not defend you. I sent for you because—because you are your mother's son. Don't cast on me a heavier burden than I can bear. Save yourself and spare me.”
“What do you wish me to do, uncle?”
“Leave London immediately and stay away until this tumult has settled down.”
“Ah, that is impossible, sir.”
“Impossible?”
“Quite impossible, and though I did not make these predictions about the destruction of London, yet I believe we are on the eve of a great change.”
“You do?”
“Yes, and if you had not sent for me I should have called on you, to ask you to set aside a day for public prayer that God may in his mercy avert the calamity that is coming or direct it to the salvation of his servants. The morality of the nation is on the decline, uncle, and when morality is lacking the end is not far off. England is given up to idleness, pomp, dissolute practices, and pleasure—pleasure, always pleasure. The vice of intemperance, the mania for gambling, these are the vultures that are consuming the vitals of our people. Look at the luxury of the country—a ludicrous travesty of national greatness! Look at the tastes and habits of our age—the deadliest enemies of true religion! And then look at the price we are paying in what the devil calls 'the priestesses of society' for the tranquillity of the demon of lust!”
“But my boy, my dear boy——”
“Oh, yes, uncle, yes, I know, I know, many humanitarian schemes are afloat and we think we are not indifferent to the condition of the poor. But contrast the toiling women of East London with the idlers of Hyde Park in a London season. Other nations have professed well with their lips while their hearts have been set on wealth and pleasure. And they have fallen! Yes, sir, in ancient Asia as well as in modern Europe they have always fallen. And unless we unglue ourselves from the vanities which imperil our existence we shall fall too. The lust of pleasure and the lust of wealth bring their own revenges. In the nation as well as the individual the Almighty destroys them as of old.”
“True—true!”
“Then how can I hold my peace or run away while it is the duty of Christians, of patriots, to cry out against this danger? On the soul of every one of us the duty rests, and who am I that I should escape from it? Oh, if the Church only realized her responsibility, if she only kept her eyes open——”
“She has powerful reasons for keeping them closed, my son,” said the Minister, “and always will have until the Establishment is done away with. It is coming to that some day, but meantime have a care. The clergy are not your friends, John. Statesmen know too well the clerical cruelty which shelters itself behind the secular arm. It is an old story, I think, and you may find instances of that also in your ancient Palestine. But beware, my boy, beware——”
“'Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you. Ye know that it hated me before it hated you.'”
The exaltation of John's manner was increasing, and again the Prime Minister became uneasy, as if fearing that the young monk by his side would ask him next to kneel and pray.
“Ah, well,” he said, rising, “I suppose there is no help for it, and matters must take their own course.” Then he broke into other subjects, talked of his brother, John's father, whom he had lately heard from. His health was failing, he could not last very long; a letter from his son now might make all things well.
John was silent, his head was down, but the Prime Minister could see that his words took no effect. Then his bleak old face smiled a wintry smile as he said:
“But you are not mending much in one way, my boy. Do you know you've never once been here since the day you came to tell me you were to be married, and intended to follow in the footsteps of Father Damien?”
John flinched, and the muscles of his face twitched nervously again.
“That was an impossible enterprise, John. No wonder the lady couldn't suffer you to follow it. But she might have allowed you to see a lonely old kinsman for all that.” John's pale face was breaking, and his breath was coming fast. “Well, well,” taking his arm, “I'm not reproaching you, John. There are passions of the soul which eat up all the rest, I know that quite well, and when a man is under the sway of them he has neither father nor uncle, neither kith nor kin. Good-bye! ... Ah, this way out—this way.”
The footman had stepped up to the Minister and whispered something about a crowd in front of the house, and John was passed out of the garden by the back door into the park.
Three hours afterward the frequenters of Epsom racecourse saw a man in a black cassock get up into an unoccupied wagonette and make ready to speak. He was on the breast of “The Hill,” directly facing the Grand Stand, in a close pack of carriages, four-in-hands, landaus, and hansoms, filled with gaily dressed women in pink and yellow costumes, drinking champagne and eating sandwiches, and being waited upon by footmen in livery. It was the interval between two events of the race meeting, and beyond the labyrinth of vehicles there was a line of betting men in outer garments of blue silk and green alpaca, standing on stools under huge umbrellas and calling the odds to motley crowds of sweltering people on foot.
“Men and women,” he began, and five thousand faces seemed to rise at the sound of his voice. The bookmakers kept up their nasal cries of “I lay on the field!” “Five to-one bar one!” But the crowd turned and deserted them. “It's the Father,” “Father Storm,” the people said, with laughter and chuckling, loose jests and some swearing, but they came up to him with one accord until the space about, him, as far as to the roadway by which carriages climbed the hill, was an unbroken pavement of rippling faces.
“Good old Father!” and then laughter. “What abart the end of the world, old gel?” and then references to “the petticoats” and more laughter. “'Ere, I'll 'ave five bob each way, Resurrection,” and shrieks of wilder laughter still.
The preacher stood for some moments silent and unshaken. Then the quiet dignity of the man and the love of fair play in the crowd secured him a hearing. He began amid general silence:
“I don't know if it is contrary to regulations to stand here to speak, but I am risking that for the urgency of the hour and message. Men and women, you are here under false pretences. You pretend to yourselves and to each other that you have come out of a love of sport, but you have not done so, and you know it. Sport is a plausible pleasure; to love horses and take delight in their fleetness is a pardonable vanity, but you are here to practise an unpardonable vice. You have come to gamble, and your gambling is attended by every form of intemperance and immorality. I am not afraid to tell you so, for God has laid upon me a plain message, and I intend to do my duty. These race-courses are not for horse-racing, but for reservoirs of avarice and drunkenness and prostitution. Don't think”—he was looking straight into the painted faces of the women in pink and yellow, who were trying to smile and look amused—“don't think I am going to abuse the unhappy girls who are forced by a corrupt civilization to live by their looks. They are my friends, and half my own life is spent among them. I have known some of them in whose hearts dwelt heavenly purity, and when I think of what they have suffered from men I feel ashamed that I am a man. But, my sisters, for you, too, I have an urgent message. It is full summer with you now, as you sit here in your gay clothes on this bright day; but the winter is coming for every one of you, when there will be no more sunshine, no more luxury and pleasure and flattery, and when the miry wallowers in troughs and stys, who are now taking the best years of your lives from you——”
“Helloa there! Whoop! Tarara-ra-ra-rara!”
A four-in-hand coach was dashing headlong up the hill amid clouds of dust, the rattling of wheels, the shouts of the driver and the blasts of the horn, and the people who covered the roadway were surging forward to make room for it.
“It's Gloria!” said everybody, looking up at the occupants of the coach and recognising one of them.
The spell of the preacher was broken. He paused and turned his head and saw Glory. She was sitting tall and bright and gay on the box-seat by the side of Drake; the rays of the sun were on her and she was smiling up into his face.
The preacher began again, then faltered, and then stopped. A bell at the Grand Stand was ringing. “Numbers goin' up,” said everybody, and before any one could be conscious of what was happening, John Storm was only a cipher in the throng, and the crowd was melting away.
The great carnival completely restored Glory's spirits. She laughed and cried out constantly and lived from minute to minute like a child. Everybody recognised her and nearly everybody saluted her. Drake beamed with pride and delight. He took her about the course, answered her questions, punctuated her jests, and explained everything, leaving Lord Robert to entertain his guests. Who were “those dwellers in tents”? They were the Guards' Club, and the service was also represented by artillery men, king's hussars, and a line regiment from Aldershot. This was called “The Hill,” where jovial rascaldom, usually swarmed, looking out for stray overcoats and the lids of luncheon dishes left unprotected on carriages. Yes, the pickpocket, the card-sharper, the “lumberer,” the confidence man, the blarneying beggar, and the fakir of every description laid his snares on this holy spot. In fact, this is his Sanctuary and he peddles under the eye of the police. “Holy Land?” Ha, ha! “All the patriarchs out of the Bible here?” Oh, the vociferous gentlemen with patriarchal names in velveteen coats under the banners and canvas sign-boards—Moses, Aaron, and so forth? They were the “bookies,” otherwise bookmakers, generally Jews and sometimes Welshers.
“Here, come along, some of you sportsmen! I ain't made the price of my railway fare, s'elp me!” “It's a dead cert, gents.” “Can't afford to buy thick 'uns at four quid apiece!” “Five to one on the field!” “I lay on the field!”
A “thick un?” Oh, that was a sovereign, half a thick un half a sovereign, twenty-five pounds a “pony,” five hundred a “monkey,” flash notes were “stumers,” and a bookmaker who couldn't pay was “a Welsher.” That? That was “the great Brockton,” gentleman and tipster. “Amusement enough!” Yes, niggers, harpists, Christy Minstrels, strong men, acrobats, agile clowns and girls on stilts, and all the ragamuffins from “the Burrer,” bent on “making a bit.” African Jungle? A shooting gallery with model lions and bears. Fine Art Exhibition? A picture of the hanging of recent murderers. Boxing Ring? Yes, for women—they strip to the waist and fight like fiends. Then look at the lady auctioneer selling brass sovereigns a penny apiece.
“Buy one, gentlemen, and see what they're like, so as the 'bookies' can't pawse 'em on ye unawares!”
“Food enough!” Yes, at Margett's, Patton's, Hatton's, and “The Three Brooms,” as well as the barrows for stewed eels, hard-boiled eggs, trotters, coker-nuts, winkles, oysters, cockles, and all the luxuries of the New Cut. Why were they calling that dog “Cookshop”? Because he was pretty sure to go there in the end.
By this time they had ploughed over some quarter of a mile of the hillside, fighting their way among the carriages that stood six deep along the rails and through a seething mass of ruffianism, in a stifling atmosphere polluted by the smell of ale and the reeking breath of tipsy people.
“Whoo! I feel like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego rolled into one,” said Glory.
“Let us go into the Paddock,” said Drake, and they began to cross the race track.
“But wasn't that somebody preaching as we galloped down the hill?”
“Was it? I didn't notice,” and they struggled through.
It was fresh and cool under the trees, and Glory thought it cheap even at ten shillings a head to walk for ten minutes on green grass. Horses waiting for their race were being walked about in clothes with their names worked on the quarter sheets, and breeders, trainers, jockeys, and clerks of the course mingled with gentlemen in silk hats and ladies in smart costumes.
Drake's horse was a big bay colt, very thin, almost gaunt, and with long, high-stepping legs. The trainer was waiting for a last word with his owner. He was cool and confident. “Never better or fitter, Sir Francis, and one of the grandest three-year-olds that ever looked through a bridle. Improved wonderful since he got over his dental troubles, and does justice to the contents of his manger. Capital field, sir, but it's got to run up against summat smart to-day. Favourite, sir? Pooh! A coach horse! Not stripping well—light in the flank and tucked up. But this colt fills the eye as a first-class one should. Whatever beats him will win, sir, take my word for that.”
And the jockey, standing by in his black-and-white-jacket, wagged his head and said in a cheery whisper: “Have what ye like on 'im, Sir Francis. Great horse, sir! Got a Derby in 'im or I'm a Slowcome.”
Drake laughed at their predictions, and Glory patted the creature while it beat its white feet on the ground and the leather of its saddle squeaked. The club stand from there? looked like a sea of foaming laces, feathers, flowers, and sunshades. They turned to go to it, passing first by the judge's box, whereof Drake explained the use, then through the Jockey Club inclosure, which was full of peers, peeresses, judges, members of Parliament, and other turfites, and finally through the betting ring where some hundreds of betting men of the superior class proclaimed their calling in loud voices and loud clothes and the gold letters on their betting books. To one of these pencillers Drake said:
“What's the figure for Ellan Vannin?”
“Ten to one, market price, sir.”
“I'll take you in hundreds,” said Drake, and they struggled through the throng.
Going up the stairs Glory said: “But wasn't the Archdeacon at your office this morning? We saw him coming out of the square with Mr. Golightly.”
“Oh, did you? How hot it is to-day!”
“Isn't it? I feel as if I should like to play Ariel in gossamer—But wasn't it?”
“You needn't trouble about that, Glory. It's an old, story that religious intolerance likes to throw the responsibility of its acts on the civil government.”
“Then John Storm——”
“He is in no danger yet—none whatever.”
“Oh, how glorious!” They had reached the balcony, and Glory was pretending that the change in her voice and manner came of delight at the sudden view. She stood for a moment spellbound, and then leaned over the rail and looked through the dazzling haze that was rising from the vast crowd below. Not a foot of turf was to be seen for a mile around, save where at the jockeys' gate a space was kept clear by the police. It was a moving mass of humanity, and a low, indistinguishable murmur was coming up from it such as the sea makes on the headlands above.
The cloud had died off Glory's face and her eyes were sparkling. “What a wonderfully happy world it must be, after all!” she said.
Just then the standard was hoisted over the royal stand to indicate that the Prince had arrived. Immediately afterward there was a silent movement of hats on the lawns below the boxes, and then somebody down there began to sing God save the Queen. The people on the Grand Stand took up the chorus, then the people on the course joined in, then the people on “The Hill,” until finally the whole multitude sang the national hymn in a voice that was like the voice of an ocean.
Glory's eyes were now full of tears, she was struggling with a desire to cry aloud, and Drake, who was watching her smallest action, stood before her to screen her from the glances of gorgeously attired ladies who were giggling and looking through lorgnettes. The fine flower of the aristocracy was present in force, and the club stand was full of the great ladies who took an interest in sport and even kept studs of their own. Oriental potentates were among them in suits of blue and gold, and the French language was being spoken on all sides.
Glory attracted attention and Drake's face beamed with delight. An illustrious personage asked to be introduced to her, and said he had seen her first performance and predicted her extraordinary success. She did not flinch. There was a slight tremor, a scarcely perceptible twitching of the lip, and then she bore her honours as if she had been born to them. The Prince entertained a party to luncheon, and Drake and Glory were invited to join it. All the smart people were there, and they looked like a horticultural exhibition of cream colour and rose pink and gray. Glory kept watching the great ones of the earth, and she found them very amusing.
“Well, what do you think?” said Drake.
“I think most people at the Derby must have the wrong make-up on. That gentleman, now—he ought to be done up as a stable-boy. And that lady in mauve—she's a ballet girl really, only——”
“Hush, for Heaven's sake!” But Glory whispered, “Let's go round the corner and laugh.”
She sat between Drake and a ponderous gentleman with a great beard like a waterfall.
“What are the odds against the colt, Drake?”
Drake answered, and Glory recalled herself from her studies and said, “Oh, yes, what did you say it was?”
“A prohibitive price—for you.” said Drake.
“Nonsense! I'm going to do a flutter on my own, you know, and plunge against you.”
It was explained to her that only bookmakers bet against horses, but the gentleman with the beard volunteered to reverse positions, and take Glory's ten to one against Ellan Vannin.
“In what?”
“Oh—h'm—in thick 'uns, of course.”
“But what is the meaning of this running after strange gods?” said Drake.
“Never mind, sir! Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, you know——” and then the bell rang for the race of the day, and they scurried back to the Stand. The numbers were going up and a line of fifty policemen abreast were clearing the course. Some of the party had come over from the coach, and Lord Robert was jotting down in a notebook the particulars of betting commissions for his fair companions.
“And am I to be honoured with a commission from the Hurricane?” he asked.
“Yes; what's the price for Ellan Vannin?”
“Come down to five to one, pretty lady.”
“Get me one to five that he's going to lose.”
“But what in the world are you doing, Glory?” said Drake. His eyes were dancing with delight.
“Running a race with that old man in the box which can find a loser first.”
At that moment the horses were sent out for the preliminary canter and parade before the royal stand, and a tingling electrical atmosphere seemed to come from somewhere and set every tongue wagging. It seemed as if something unexpected was about to occur, and countless eyes went up to the place where Drake stood with Glory by his side. He was outwardly calm, but with a proud flush under his pallor; she was visibly excited, and could not stand on the same spot for many seconds together. By this time the noise made by the bookmakers in the inclosure below was like that of ten thousand sea fowl on a reef of rock, and Glory was trying to speak above the deafening clangour.
“Silver and gold have I none, but if I had—what's that?”
A white flag had fallen as signal for the start, there was a hollow roar from the starting post, and people were shouting, “They're off!” Then there was a sudden silence, a dead hush—below, above, around, everywhere, and all eyes, all glasses, all lorgnettes were turned in the direction of the runners.
The horses got well away and raced up the hill like cavalry charging in line; then at the mile post the favourite drew to the front, and the others went after him in an indistinguishable mass. But the descent seemed not to his liking; he twisted a good deal, and the jockey was seen sawing the reins and almost hanging over the horse's head. When the racers swung round Tattenham Corner and came up like mice in the distance, it was seen that another horse had taken advantage of an opening and was overhauling the favourite with a tremendous rush. His colours were white and black. It was Ellan Vannin. From that moment Drake's horse never relinquished his advantage, but came down the straight like a great bird with his wings ceasing to flap, passed the Stand amid great excitement, and won handsomely by a length.
Then in the roar of delight that went up from the crowd Glory, with her hand on Drake's shoulder, was seen to be crying, laughing, and cheering at the same moment.
“Butyou'velost,” said Drake.
“Oh, bother that!” she said, and when the jockey had slipped from his saddle, and Drake had taken his horse into the weighing-room and the “All right!” was shouted, she started the cheering again and said she meant to make a dead heat of it with Tennyson's brook.
“But why did you bet against me?” said Drake.
“You silly boy,” she answered with a crow of happiness and gaiety, “didn't the gipsy tell me I should lose money to-day? And how could I bet on your horse unless you lost the race?”
Drake laughed merrily at her delicious duplicity and could hardly resist an impulse to take her in his arms and kiss her. Meantime his friends were slapping him on the back and people were crushing up to offer him congratulations. He turned to take his horse into the Paddock, and Lord Robert took Glory down after him. The trainer and jockey were there, looking proud and happy, and Drake, with a pale and triumphant face, was walking the great creature about as if reluctant to part with it. It was breathing heavily, and sweat stood in drops on its throat, head, and ears.
“Oh, you beauty! How I should love to ride you!” said Glory.
“But dare you?” said Drake.
“Dare I! Only give me the chance.”
“I will, by——I will, or it won't be my fault.”
Somebody brought champagne and Glory had to drink a bumper to “the best horse of the century, bar none.” Then her glass was filled afresh and she had to drink to the owner, “the best fellow on earth, bar none,” and again she was compelled to drink “to the best bit of history ever made at Epsom, bar none.” With that she was excused while the men drank at Drake's proposal “to the loveliest, liveliest, leeriest little woman in the world, God bless her!” and she hid her face in her hands and said with a merry laugh:
“Tell me when it's over, boys, and I'll come again.”
After Drake had despatched telegrams and been bombarded by interviewers, he led the way back to the coach on the Hill, and the company prepared for their return. The sun had now gone, a thick veil of stagnant clouds had gathered over it, the sky looked sulky, and Glory's head tad begun to ache between the eyes. Rosa was to go home by train in order to reach her office early, and Glory half wished to accompany her. But an understudy was to play her part that night and she had no excuse. The coach wormed its way through the close pack of vehicles at the top of the Hill and began to follow the ebbing tide of humanity back to London.
“But what about my pair of gloves?”
“Oh, you're a hard man, reaping where you have not sowed and gathering——”
“There, then, we're quits,” said Drake, leaning over from the box seat and snatching a kiss of her. It was now clear that he had been drinking a good deal.
Before the race had been run, a solitary man with a dog at his heels had crossed the Downs on his way back to the railway station. Jealousy and rage possessed his heart between them, but he would not recognise these passions; he believed his emotions to be horror and pity and shame. John Storm had seen Glory on the race-course, in Drake's company, under Drake's protection: he proud and triumphant, she bright and gay and happy.
“O Lord, help me! Help me, O Lord!”
“And now, dragging along the road, in his mind's eye he saw her again as the victim of this man, his plaything, his pastime to takeup or leave—no better than any of the women about her, and where they were going she would go also. Some day he would find her where he had found others—outcast, deserted, forlorn, lost; down in the trough of life, a thing of loathing and contempt!
“O Lord, help her! Help her, O Lord!”
There were few passengers by the train going back to London, nearly all traffic at this hour being the other way, and there was no one else in the compartment he occupied. He threw himself down in a corner, consumed with indignation and a strange sense of dishonour. Again he saw her bright eyes, her red lips—the glow of her whole radiant face and a paroxysm of jealousy tore his heart to pieces. Glory was his. Though a bottomless abyss was yawning between them, her soul belonged to him, and a great upheaval of hatred for the man who possessed her body surged up to his throat. Against all this his pride as well as his religion rebelled. He crushed it down, and tried to turn his mind to another current of ideas. How could he save her? If she should go down to perdition, his remorse would be worse to bear than flames of fire and brimstone. The more unworthy she was, the more reason he should strive to rescue her soul from the pangs of eternal torment.
The rattling of the carriage broke in upon these visions, and he got up and paced to and fro like a bear in a cage. And, like a bear with its slow, strong grip, he seemed to be holding her in his wrath and saying: “You shall not destroy yourself; you shall not, you shall not, for I, I, I forbid it!” Then he sank back in his seat, exhausted by the conflict which made his soul a battlefield of spiritual and sensual passions. Every limb shook and quivered. He began to be afraid of himself, and he felt an impulse to fly away somewhere. When he alighted at Victoria his teeth were chattering, although the atmosphere was stifling and the sky was now heavy with black and lowering clouds.
To avoid the eyes of the people who usually followed him in the streets, he cut through a narrow thoroughfare and went back to Brown's Square by way of the park. But the park was like a vast camp. Thousands of people seemed to cover the grass as far as the eye could reach, and droves of workmen, followed by their wives and children, were trudging to other open spaces farther out. It was the panic terror. Afterward it was calculated that fifty thousand persons from all parts of London had quitted the doomed city that day to await the expected catastrophe under the open sky.
The look of fierce passion had faded from his face by the time he reached his church, but there another ordeal awaited him. Though it still wanted an hour of the time of evening service a great crowd had gathered in the square. He tried to escape observation, but the people pressed upon him, some to shake his hand, others to touch his cassock, and many to kneel at his feet and even to cover them with kisses. With a sense of shame and hypocrisy he disengaged himself at length, and joined Brother Andrew in the sacristy. The simple fellow was full of marvellous stories. There had been wondrous manifestations of the workings of the Holy Spirit during the day. The knocker-up, who was a lame man, had shaken hands with the Father on his way home that morning, and now he had thrown away his stick and was walking firmly and praising God.
The church was large and rectangular and plain, and looked a well-used edifice, open every day and all day. The congregation was visibly excited, but the service appeared to calm them. The ritual was full, with procession and incense, but without vestments, and otherwise monastic in its severity. John Storm preached. The epistle for the day had been from First Corinthians, and he took his text from that source also: “Deliver him up to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.”
People said afterward that they had never heard anything like that sermon. It was delivered in a voice that was low and tremulous with emotion. The subject was love. Love was the first inheritance that God had given to his creatures—the purest and highest, the sweetest and best. But man had degraded and debased it, at the temptation of Satan and the lust of the world. The expulsion of our first parents from Eden was only the poetic figure of what had happened through all the ages. It was happening now—and London, the modern Sodom, would as surely pay its penalty as did the cities of the ancient East. No need to think of flood or fire or tempest—of any given day or hour. The judgment that would fall on England, like the plagues that fell on Egypt, would be of a kind with the offence. She had wronged the spirit of love, and who knows but God would punish her by taking out of the family of man the passion by which she fell, lifting it away with all that pertained to it—good and bad, spiritual and sensual, holy and corrupt?
The burning heat clouds of the day seemed to have descended into the church, and in the gathering darkness the preacher, his face just visible, with its eyes full of smouldering fire, drew an awful picture of the world under the effects of such a curse. A place without unselfishness, without self-sacrifice, without heroism, without chivalry, without loyalty, without laughter, and without children! Every man standing alone, isolated, self-centred, self-cursed, outlawed, loveless, marriageless, going headlong to degeneracy and death! Such might be God's punishment on this cruel and wicked city for its sensual sins.
Then the preacher lost control of his imagination and swept his hearers along with him as he fabricated horrible fancies. The people were terror-stricken, and not until the last hymn was given out did they recover the colour of their blanched faces. Then they sang as with one voice, and after the benediction had been pronounced and they were surging down the aisles in close packs, they started the hymn again.
Even when they had left the church they could not disperse. Out in the square were the thousands who had not been able to get inside the doors, and every moment the vast proportions of the crowd were swelled. The ground was covered, the windows round about were thrown up and full of faces, and people had clambered on to the railings of the church, and even on to the roofs of the houses.
Somebody went to the sacristy and told the Father what was happening outside. He was now like a man beside himself, and going out on to the steps of the church where he could be seen by all, he lifted his hands and pronounced a prayer in a sonorous and fervent voice:
“How long, O Lord, how long? From the bosom of God, where thou reposest, look down on the world where thou didst walk as a man. Didst thou not teach us to pray 'Thy kingdom come'? Didst thou not say thy kingdom was near; that some who stood with thee should not taste of death till they had seen it come with power; that when it came the poor should be blessed, the hungry should be fed, the blind should see, the heavy-laden should find rest, and the will of thy Father should be done on earth even as it is done in heaven? But nigh upon two thousand years lave gone, O Lord, and thy kingdom hath not come. In thy name now doth the Pharisee give alms in the streets to the sound of a trumpet going before him. In thy name now doth the Levite pass by on the other side when a man has fallen among thieves. In thy name now doth the priest buy and sell the glad tidings of the kingdom, giving for the gospel of God the commandments of men, living in rich men's houses, faring sumptuously every day, praying with his lips, 'Give us this day our daily bread,' but saying to his; soul: 'Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.' How long, O Lord, how long?”
Hardly had John Storm stepped back when the heavy clouds broke into mutterings of thunder. So low were the sounds at first that in the general tumult they were scarcely noticed; but they came again and again, louder and louder with every fresh reverberation, and then the excitement of the people became intense and terrible. It was as if the heavens themselves had spoken to give sign and assurance of the calamity that had been foretold.
First a woman began to scream as if in the pains of labour. Then a young girl cried out for mercy, and accused herself of countless and nameless offences. Then the entire crowd seemed to burst into sobs and moans and agonizing expressions of despair, mingled with shouts of wild laughter and mad thanksgiving. “Pardon, pardon!” “O Jesus, save me!” “O Saviour of sinners!” “O God, have mercy upon me!” “O my heart, my heart!” Some threw themselves on the ground, stiff and motionless and insensible as dead men. Others stood over the stricken people and prayed for their relief from the power of Satan. Others fell into convulsions, and yet others, with wild and staring eyes, rejoiced in their own salvation.
It was now almost dark and some of the people who had been out to the Derby were returning home in their gigs and coster's carts, laughing, singing, and nearly all of them drunk. There were wild encounters. A young soldier (it was Charlie Wilkes) came upon Pincher the pawnbroker. “Wot tcher, myte? Wot's yer amoosemint now?”
“Silence, you evil liver, you gambler, you son of Belial!”
“Stou thet now—d'ye want a kepple er black eyes or a pench on the nowze?”
At nine o'clock the police of Westminster, being unable to disperse the crowd, seat to Scotland Yard for the mounted constabulary.
Meantime the man who was the first cause of the tumult sat alone in his cell-like chamber under the church, a bare room without carpet or rug, and having no furniture except a block bed, a small washstand, two chairs, a table, a prayer stool and crucifix, and a print of the Virgin and Child. He heard the singing of the people outside, but it brought him neither inspiration nor comfort. Nature could no longer withstand the strain he had put upon it, and he was in deep dejection. It was one of those moments of revulsion which comes to the strongest soul when at the crown or near the crown of his expectations he asks himself, “What is the good?” A flood of tender recollections was coming over him. He was thinking of the past, the happy past, the past of love and innocence which he had spent with Glory, of the little green isle in the Irish Sea, and of all the sweetness of the days they had passed together before she had fallen to the temptations of the world and he had become the victim of his hard if lofty fate. Oh, why had he denied himself the joys that came to all others? To what end had he given up the rewards of life which the poorest and the weakest and the meanest of men may share? Love, woman's love, why had he turned his back upon it? Why had he sacrificed himself? O God, if, indeed, it were all in vain!
Brother Andrew put his head in at the half-open door. His brother, the pawnbroker, was there and had something to say to the Father. Pincher's face looked over Andrew's shoulder. The muscles of the man's eyes were convulsed by religious mania.
“I've just sold my biziness, sir, and we 'aven't a roof to cover us now!” he cried, in the tone of one who had done something heroic.
John asked him what was to become of his mother.
“Lor', sir, ain't it the beginning of the end? That's the gawspel, ain't it? 'The foxes hev 'oles and the birds of the air hev nests——'”
And then close behind the man, interrupting him and pushing him aside, there came another with fixed and staring eyes, crying: “Look 'ere, Father! Look! Twenty years I 'obbled on a stick, and look at me now! Praise the Lawd, I'm cured, en' no bloomin' errer! I'm a brand as was plucked from the burnin' when my werry ends 'ad caught the flames! Praise the Lawd, amen!”
John rebuked them and turned them out of the room, but he was almost in as great a frenzy. When he had shut the door his mind went back to thoughts of Glory. She, too, was hurrying to the doom that was coming on all this wicked city. He had tried to save her from it, but he had failed. What could he do now? He felt a desire to do something, something else, something extraordinary.
Sitting on the end of the bed he began again to recall Glory's face as he had seen it at the race-course. And now it came to him as a shock after his visions of her early girlhood. He thought there was a certain vulgarity in it which, he had not observed before—a slight coarsening of its expression, an indescribable degeneracy even under the glow of its developed beauty. With her full red lips and curving throat and dancing eyes, she was smiling into the face of the man who was sitting by her side. Her smile was a significant smile, and the bright and eager look with which the man answered it was as full of meaning. He could read their thoughts. What had happened? Were all barriers broken down? Was everything understood between them?
This was the final madness, and he leaped to his feet in an outburst of uncontrollable rage. All at once he shuddered with a feeling that something terrible was brewing within him. He felt cold, a shiver was running over his whole body. But the thought he had been in search of had come to him of itself. It came first as a shock, and with a sense of indescribable dread, but it had taken hold of him and hurried him away. He had remembered his text: “Deliver him up to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.”
“Why not?” he thought; “it is in the Holy Book itself. There is the authority of St. Paul for it. Clearly the early Christians countenanced and practised such things.” But then came a spasm of physical pain. That beautiful life, so full of love and loveliness, radiating joy and sweetness and charm! The thing was impossible! It was monstrous! “Am I going mad?” he asked himself.
And then he began to be sorry for himself as well as for Glory. How could he live in the world without her? Although he had lost her, although an impassable gulf divided them, although he had not seen her for six months until today, yet it was something to know she was alive and that he could go at night to the place where she was and look up and think, “She is there.” “It is true, I am going mad,” he thought, and he trembled again.
His mind oscillated among these conflicting ideas, until the more hideous thought returned to him of Drake and the smile exchanged with Glory. Then the blood rushed to his head, and strong emotions paralyzed his reason. When he asked himself if it was right in England and in the nineteenth century to contemplate a course which might have been proper to Palestine and the first century, the answer came instantaneously that itwasright. Glory was in peril. She was tottering on the verge of hell. It would not be wrong, but a noble duty, to prevent the possibility of such a hideous catastrophe. Better a life ended than a life degraded and a soul destroyed.
On this the sophism worked. It was true that he would lose her; she would be gone from him, she who was all his joy, his vision by day, his dream by night. But could he be so selfish as to keep her in the flesh, and thus expose her soul to eternal torment? And after all she would be his in the other world, his forever, his alone. Nay, in this world also, for being dead he would love her still. “But, O God, mustIdo it?” he asked himself at one moment, and at the next came his answer: “Yes, yes, for I am God's minister.”
That sent him back to his text again. “Deliver him up toSatan——” But there was a marginal reference to Timothy, and he turned it up with a trembling hand.Satanagain, but the Revised Version gave “the Lord's servant,” and thus the text should read, “Deliver him up to the Lord's servant for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.” This made him cry out. He drank it in with inebriate delight. The thing was irrevocably decided. He was justified, he was authorized, he was the instrument of a fixed purpose. No other consideration could move him now.
By this time his heart and temples were beating violently, and he felt as if he were being carried up into a burning cloud. Before his eyes rose the vision of Isaiah, the meek lamb converted into an inexorable avenger descending from the summit of Edom. It was right to shed blood at the divine command—nay, it was necessary, it was inevitable. And as God had commanded Abraham to take the life of Isaac, whom he loved, so did God call on him, John Storm, to take the life of Glory that he might save her from the risk of everlasting damnation!
There may have been intervals in which his sense of hearing left him, for it was only now that he became conscious that somebody was calling to him from the other side of the door.
“Is anybody there?” he asked, and a voice replied:
“Dear heart, yes, this five minutes and better, but I didna dare come in, thinking surely there was somebody talking with you. Is there no somebody here then? No?”
It was Mrs. Callender, who was carrying a small glad-stone bag.
“Oh, it's you, is it?”
“Aye, it's myself, and sorry I am to be bringing bad news to you.”
“What is it?” he asked, but his tone betrayed complete indifference.
She closed the door and answered in a whisper: “A warrant! I much misdoubt but there's one made out for you.”
“Is that all?”
“Bless me, what does the man want? But come, laddie, come; you must tak' yoursel' off to some spot till the storm blows over.”
“I have work to do, auntie.”
“Work! You've worked too much already—that's half the botherment.”
“God's work, auntie, and it must be done.”
“Then God will do it himself, without asking the life of a good man, or he's no just what I've been takin' him for. But see,” opening the bag and whispering again, “your auld coat and hat! I found them in your puir auld room that you'll no come back to. You've been looking like another body so long that naebody will ken you when you're like yoursel' again. Come, now, off with these lang, ugly things——”
“I can not go, auntie.”
“Can not?”
“I will not. While God commands me I will do my duty.”
“Eh, but men are kittle cattle! I've often called you my ain son, but if I were your ain mother I ken fine what I'd do with you—I'd just slap you and mak' you. I'll leave the clothes, anyway. Maybe you'll be thinking better of it when I'm gone. Good-night to you. Your puir head's that hot and moidered—-But what's wrang with you, John, man? What's come over ye anyway?”
He seemed to be hardly conscious of her presence, and after standing a moment at the door, looking back at him with eyes of love and pity, she left the room.
He had been asking himself for the first time how he was to carry out his design. Sitting on the end of the bed with his head propped on his hand he felt as if he were in the hold of a great ship, listening to the plash and roar of the stormy sea outside. The excitement of the populace was now ungovernable and the air was filled with groans and cries. He would have to pass through the people, and they would see him and detain him, or perhaps follow him. His impatience was now feverish. The thing he had to do must be done to-night, it must be done immediately. But it was necessary in the first place to creep out unseen. How was he to do it?
When he came to himself he had a vague sense of some one wishing him good-night. “Oh, good-night, good-night!” he cried with an apologetic gesture. But he was alone in the room, and on turning about he saw the bag on the floor, and remembered everything. Then a strange thing happened. Two conflicting emotions took hold of him at once—the first an enthusiastic, religious ecstasy, the other a low, criminal cunning.
Everything was intended. He was only the instrument of a fixed purpose. These clothes were proof of it. They came to his hand at the very moment when they were wanted, when nothing else would have helped him. And Mrs. Callender had been the blind agent in a higher hand to carry out the divine commands. Fly away and hide himself? God did not intend it. A warrant? No matter if it sent him like Cranmer to the stake. But this was a different thing entirely, this was God's will and purpose, this——
Yet even while thinking so he laughed an evil laugh, tore the clothes out of the bag with trembling hands, and made ready to put them on. He had removed his cassock when some one opened the door.
“Who's there?” he cried in a husky growl.
“Only me,” said a timid voice, and Brother Andrew entered, looking pale and frightened.
“Oh, you! Come in; close the door; I've something to say to you. Listen! I'm going out, and I don't know when I shall be back. Where's the dog?”
“In the passage, brother.”
“Chain him up at the back, lest he should get out and follow me. Put this cassock away, and if anybody asks for me say you don't know where I've gone—you understand?”
“Yes; but are you well, Brother Storm? You look as if you had just been running.”
There was a hand-glass on the washstand, and John snatched it up and glanced into it and put it down again instantly. His nostrils were quivering, his eyes were ablaze, and the expression of his face was shocking.
“What are they doing outside? See if I can get away without being recognised,” and Brother Andrew went out to look.
The passage from the chambers under the church was into a dark and narrow street at the back, but even there a group of people had gathered, attracted by the lights in the windows. Their voices could be heard through the door which Brother Andrew had left ajar, and John stood behind it and listened. They were talking of himself—praising him, blessing him, telling stories of his holy life and gentleness.
Brother Andrew reported that most of the people were at the front, and they were frantic with religious excitement. Women were crushing up to the rail which the Father had leaned his head upon for a moment after he had finished his prayer, in order to press their handkerchiefs and shawls on it.
“But nobody would know you now, Brother Storm—even your face is different.”
John laughed again, but he turned off the lights, thinking to drive away the few who were still lingering in the back street. The ruse succeeded. Then the man of God went out on his high errand, crept out, stole out, sneaked out, precisely as if he had been a criminal on his way to commit a crime.
He followed the lanes and narrow streets and alleys behind the Abbey, past the “Bell,” the “Boar's Head,” and the “Queen's Arms”—taverns that have borne the same names since the days when Westminster was Sanctuary. People home from the races were going into them with their red ties awry, with sprigs of lilac in their buttonholes; and oak leaves in their hats. The air was full of drunken singing, sounds of quarrelling, shameful words and curses. There were some mutterings of thunder and occasional flashes of lightning, and over all there was the deep hum of the crowd in the church square.
Crossing the bottom of Parliament Street he was almost run down by a squadron of mounted police who were trotting into Broad Sanctuary. To escape observation he turned on to the Embankment and walked under the walls of the gardens of Whitehall, past the back of Charing Cross station to the street going up from the Temple.
The gate of Clement's Inn was closed, and the porter had to come out of his lodge to open it.
“The Garden House!”
“Garden House, sir? Inner court left-hand corner.”
John passed through. “That will be remembered afterward,” he thought. “But no matter—it will all be over then.”
And coming out of the close streets, with their clatter of traffic, into the cool gardens, with their odour of moistened grass, the dull glow in the sky, and the glimpse of the stars through the tree-tops, his mind went back by a sudden bound to another night, when he had walked over the same spot with Glory. At that there came a spasm of tenderness, and his throat thickened. He could almost see her, and feel her by his side, with her fragrant freshness and buoyant step. “O God! must I do it, must I, must I?” he thought again.
But another memory of that night came back to him; he heard Drake's voice as it floated over the quiet place. Then the same upheaval of hatred which he had felt before he felt again. The man was the girl's ruin; he had tempted her by love of dress, of fame, of the world's vanities and follies of every sort. This made him think for the first time of how he might find her. He might find her withhim. They would come back from the Derby together. He would bring her home, and they would sup in company. The house would be lit up; the windows thrown open; they would be playing and singing and laughing, and the sounds of their merriment would come down to him into the darkness below.
All the better, all the better! He would do it before the man's face. And when it was done, when all was over, when she lay there—lay there—there—he would turn on the man and say: “Look at her, the sweetest girl that ever breathed the breath of life, the dearest, truest woman in all the world! You have done that—you—you—you—and God damn you!”
His tortured heart was afire, and his brain was reeling. Before he knew where he was he had passed from the outer court into the inner one. “Here it is—this is the house,” he thought. But it was all dark. Just a few lights burning, but they had been carefully turned down. The windows were closed, the blinds were drawn, and there was not a sound anywhere! He stood some minutes trying to think, and during that time the mood of frenzy left him and the low cunning came back. Then he rang the bell.
There was no answer, so he rang again. After a while he heard a footstep that seemed to come up from below. Still the door was not opened, and he rang a third time.
“Who's there?” said a voice within.
“It is I—open the door,” he answered.
“Who are you?” said the voice, and he replied impatiently:
“Come, come, Liza, open, and see.”
Then the catch lock was shot back. At the next moment he was in the hall, shutting the door behind him, and Liza was looking up into his face with eyes of mingled fear and relief.
“Lor', sir, whyever didn't you say it was you?”
“Where's your mistress?”
“Gone to the office, and won't be back till morning. And Miss Gloria isn't home from the races yet.”
“I must see her to-night—I'll wait upstairs.”
“You must excuse me, sir—Farver, I mean—but I wouldn't a-known your voice, it seemed so different. And me that sleepy too, being on the go since six in the mornin'——”
“Go to bed, Liza. You sleep in the kitchen, don't you?”
“Yes, sir, thank you, I think I will, too. Miss Gloria can let herself in, anyway, same as comin' from the theatre. But can I git ye anythink? No? Well, you know your wye up, sir, down't ye?”
“Yes, yes; good-night, Liza!”
“Good-night, Farver!”
He had set his foot on the stair to go up to the drawing-room when it suddenly occurred to him that though he was the minister of God he was using the weapons of the devil. No matter! If he had been about to commit a crime it would have been different. But this was no crime, and he was no criminal. He was the instrument of God's mercy to the woman he loved.He was going to slay her body that he might save her soul!