Christmas had come and gone at the Brotherhood, and yet the project was unfulfilled. John himself had delayed its fulfilment from one trivial cause after another. The night was too dark or not dark enough; the moon shone or was not shining. His real obstacle was his superstitious fear. The scheme was very easy of execution, and the Father himself had made it so. This, and the Father's trust in him, had almost wrecked the enterprise. Only his own secret anxieties, which were interpreted to his consciousness by the sight of Brother Paul's wasting face, sufficed to sustain his purpose.
“The man's dying. It can not be unpleasing to God.”
He said this to himself again and again, as one presses the pain in one's side to make sure it is still there. Under the shadow of the crisis his character was going to ruin. He grew cunning and hypocritical, and could do nothing that was not false in reality or appearance. When the Father passed him he would drop his head, and it was taken for contrition, and he was commended for humility.
It was now the last day of the year, and therefore the last of his duty at the door.
“It must be to-night,” he whispered, as Paul passed him.
Paul nodded. Since the plan of escape had been projected he had lost all will of his own and become passive and inert.
How the day lingered! And when the night came it dragged along with feet of lead! It seemed as if the hour of evening recreation would never end. Certain of the brothers who had been away on preaching missions throughout the country had returned for the Feast of the Circumcision, and the house was bright with fresh faces and cheerful voices. John thought he had never before heard so much laughter in the monastery.
But the bell rang for Compline, and the brothers passed into church. It was a cold night, the snow was trodden hard, and the wind was rising. The service ended, and the brothers returned to the house with clasped hands and passed up to their cells in silence, leaving Brother Paul at his penance in the church.
Finally the Father put up his hood and went out to lock the gate, and the dog, who took this for his signal, shambled up and followed him. When he returned he shuddered and shrugged his shoulders.
“A bitter night, my son,” he said. “It's like courting death to go out in it. Heaven help all homeless wanderers on a night like this!”
He was wiping the snow from his slippers.
“So this is the last day of your penance, Brother Storm, and to-morrow morning you will join us in the community room. You have done well; you have fought a good fight and resisted the assaults of Satan. Good-night to you, my son, and God bless you!”
He took a few steps forward and then stopped. “By the way, I promised you the Life of Père Lacordaire, and you might come to my room and fetch it.”
The Father's room was on the ground floor to the left of the staircase, and it was entered from a corridor which cut the house across the middle. The rooms that opened out of this corridor to the front looked on the courtyard, and those to the back looked across the City in the direction of the Thames. The Father's room opened to the back. It was as bare of ornament as any of the cells, but it had a small fire, and a writing-table on which a lamp was burning.
As they entered the room together the Father hung the key of the gate on one of many hooks above the bed. It was the third hook from the end nearest the window, and the key was an old one with very few wards. John watched all this, and even observed that there were books on the floor, and that a man might stumble if he did not walk warily. The Father picked up one of them.
“This is the book, my son. A most precious document, the very mirror of a living human soul. What touched me most, perhaps, were the Father's references to his mother. A monk may not have his mother to himself, and if the love of woman is much to him he is miserable indeed until he has fixed his eyes on the most blessed among women. But the religious life does not destroy natural affection. It only kills in order to bring forth new life. The corn of wheat dies that it may live again. That is the true Christian asceticism, my son, and so it is with our vows. Goodnight!”
As John was coming out of the Father's room, he met Brother Andrew going into it, with clean linen over one arm and a ewer of water in the other hand. He threw on his bed in the alcove the book which the Father had given him, and sat down on the form at the door and tried to strengthen himself in his purpose.
“The man is dying for the sight of his sister. He can save her soul if he can only see her. It can not be displeasing to the Almighty.”
When he lifted his head the house was silent, except for the wind that whistled outside its walls. Presently there was a scarcely perceptible click, as of a door closing, and Brother Andrew came from the direction of the Superior's room. John called to him and he stepped up on tip-toe, for the monk hates noise as an evil spirit. The sprawling features of the big fellow were all smiles.
“Has the Father gone to bed?” said John.
“Yes.”
“Just gone?”
“No; half an hour ago.”
“Then he will be asleep by this time.”
“He was asleep before I left him.”
“So he doesn't lock his door on the inside?”
“No, never.”
“Does the Father sleep soundly?”
“Sometimes he does, and sometimes a cat would waken him.”
“Brother Andrew——”
“Yes.”
“Would you do something for me if I wanted, it very much?”
“You know I would.”
“Even if you had to run some risk?”
“I'm not afraid of that”
“And if I got you into trouble, perhaps?”
“But you wouldn't.Youwouldn't get anybody into trouble.”
John could go no further. The implicit trust in the simple face was too much for him.
“What is it?” said Brother Andrew.
“Oh, nothing—nothing at all,” said John. “I was only trying you, but you are too good to be tempted, and I am ashamed. You must go to bed now.”
“Can I put out the lights for you?”
“No, I'm not ready yet. Ugh! what a cruel wind! A cold night for Brother Paul in the church.”
“Tell me, Brother Storm, what is the matter with Brother Paul? He makes me think of my mother, I don't know why.”
John made no answer, and the lay brother began to go upstairs. Two steps up he stopped and whispered:
“Won't you let me do something for you, then?”
“Not to-night, Brother Andrew.”
“Good-night, Brother Storm.”
“Good-night, my lad.”
John listened to his footsteps until they stopped far overhead, and then all was quiet. Only the whistling of the wind broke the stillness of the peaceful house. He slid back the grating and looked out. All was darkness except for the tiny gleam of coloured light that came from the church, where Brother Paul sat to say his Rosary.
This fortified his courage, and he got up to put out the lamps in the staircase and corridors. He began at the top, and as he came down he listened on every landing and looked carefully around. There was no sound anywhere except the light fall of his own deadened footstep. His superstitious fears came back upon him, and his restless conscience created terrors. The old London mansion, with its mystic cells, seemed full of strange shadows, and the wind howled around it like a fiend. One by one he extinguished the lamps. The last of them hung in the hall under the picture of Christ in his crown of thorns. As he put it out he thought the eyes looked at him, and he shuddered.
It was now half-past ten, and time to carry out his project. The back of his neck was aching and his breath was coming quick. With noiseless steps he walked to the door of the Father's room and listened again. Hearing nothing, he opened the door wide and stepped into the room.
The fire was slumbering out, but it cast a faint red glow on the ceiling and on the bed. A soft light rested on the Father's face, and he was sleeping peacefully. There was no sound except the wind in the chimney and a whistle sounding from a steamer in the river.
To reach the key, where it hung above the bed, it was necessary to step between the fire and the sleeping man. As John did so his black shadow fell on the Father's face. He stretched out his hand for the key and found that a bunch of other keys were now hanging over it. When he removed them they jingled slightly, and then his heart stood still, but the Father did not stir, and he took the key of the gate off the hook, put the other keys back in their place, and turned to go.
The dog began to howl—somebody was playing music in the street—and the open door made the wind to roar in the chimney. The Father sighed, and John stood with a quivering heart and looked over his shoulder. But it was only a deep human sigh uttered in sleep.
At the next moment John had returned to the corridor and closed the door behind him. His throat was parched, his eyelids were twitching, and his temples were beating like drums. He went gliding along like a thief, and as he passed the picture of Christ in the darkness the wind seemed to be crying “Judas!”
Back in the hall he dropped on to the form, for his knees could support him no longer. Love and conscience, humanity and religion clamoured loud in his heart and tore him in pieces. “Traitor!” cried one. “But the man's dying!” cried another. “Judas!” “She is hovering on the brink of hell and he may save her soul from death and damnation!” When the struggle was over, conscience and religion were worsted, and he was more cunning than before.
Then the clock chimed the three quarters, and he raised his head. The streets, usually so quiet at that hour, were becoming noisy with traffic. There were the shuffling of many feet on the hard snow and the sharp crack of voices.
He opened the great door of the house with as little noise as possible and stepped out into the courtyard. The bloodhound started from its quarters and began to growl, but he silenced it with a word, and the creature came up and licked his hand. He crossed the court with quick and noiseless footsteps, lifted the latch of the sacristy and pushed through into the church.
There was a low, droning sound in the empty place. It ran a space and was then sucked in like the sound of the sea at the harbour steps. Brother Paul was sitting in the chancel with a lamp on the stall by his side. His head leaned forward, his eyes were closed, and the light on his thin face made it look pallid and lifeless. John called to him in a whisper.
“Paul!”
He rose quickly and followed John into the courtyard, looking wild and weak and lost.
“But the lamp—I've forgotten it,” he said. “Shall I go back and put it out?”
“How simple you are!” said John. “Somebody may be lying awake in the house. Do you want him to see that you've left your penance an hour too soon?”
“True.”
“Come this way—quietly.”
They passed on tip-toe to the passage leading to the street, where some flickering gleams of the light without fell over them.
“Where's your hat?” said John.
“I forgot that too—I left it in the church.”
“Take mine,” said John, “and put up your hood and button your cassock—it's a cruel night.”
“But I'm afraid,” said Paul.
“Afraid of what?”
“Now that the time has come I'm afraid to learn the truth about her. After all uncertainty is hope, you know, and then——”
“Tut! Be a man! Don't give way at the last moment. Here, tie my handkerchief about your neck! How helpless you are, though! I've half a mind to go myself instead.”
“But you don't know what I want to say, and if you did you couldn't say it.”
“Then listen! Are you listening?”
“Yes.”
“Go to the hospital where your sister used to be a nurse.”
“Martha's Vineyard?”
“Ask for Nurse Quayle—will you remember?”
“Nurse Quayle.”
“If she is on night duty she will see you at once. But if she is on day duty she may be in bed and asleep, and in that case——”
“What?”
“Here, take this letter. Have you got it?”
“Yes.”
“Give it to the porter. Tell him it comes from the former chaplain—you remember. Say it concerns a matter of great importance, and ask him to send it up to the dormitories immediately. Then——”
“Well?”
“Thenshemust tell you what to do next.”
“But if she is out?”
“She may be-this is New Year's Eve.”
“Ah!”
“Wait in the porch till she comes in again.”
John's impetuous will was carrying everything before it, and the helpless creature began to overwhelm him with grateful blessings.
“Pooh! We'll not talk of that.... Have you any money?”
“No.”
“Neither have I. I brought nothing here except the little in my purse, and I gave that up on entering.”
“I don't want any—I can walk.”
“It will take you an hour then.”
A clock was striking somewhere. “Hush! One, two, three ... eleven o'clock. It will be midnight when you get there. Now go!”
The key was grating in the lock of the gate. “Remember Lauds at six in the morning.”
“I'll be back at five.”
“And I'll open the gate at 5.30. Only six hours to do everything.”
“Good-night, then.”
“Wait!”
“What is it?”
Paul was in the street, but John was in the darkness of the passage.
“Very likely you'll cross London in a cab with her.”
“My sister?”
“Your sister went to live somewhere in St. John's Wood, I remember.”
“St. John's Wood?”
“Tell her”—John was striving to keep his voice firm—“tell her I am happy—and cheerful—and looking strong and well, you know.”
“But you're not. You're too good, and you're wearing away in my——”
“Tell her I am often thinking of her, and if she has anything to say—anything to send—any word—any message ... it can't be displeasing to the Almighty.... But no matter! Go, go!”
The key had grated in the lock again, the lay brother was gone, and John was left alone.
“God pity and forgive me!” he muttered, and then he turned away.
The traffic in the streets was increasing every moment, and as he stumbled across the courtyard a drunken man going by the gate stopped and cried into the passage, “Helloa, there! I'm a-watchin' of ye!” The bloodhound leaped up and barked, but John hurried into the house and clashed the door.
He sat on the form and tried to compose himself. He thought of Paul as he had seen him at the last moment—the captured eagle with the broken wing scudding into the night, the night of London, but free, free!
In his mind's eye he followed him through the streets—down Bishopsgate Street into Threadneedle Street and along Cheapside to St. Paul's churchyard. Crowds of people would be there to-night waiting for the striking of the clock at midnight that they might raise a shout and wish each other a happy New Year.
That made him think of Glory. She would be there too, for she loved a rich and abounding life. He could see her quite plainly in the midst of the throng with her sparkling eyes and bounding step. It would be so new to her, so human and so beautiful! Glory! Always Glory!
He thought he must have been dreaming, for suddenly the clocks were all striking, first the clock in the hall, then the clocks of the churches round about, and finally the great clock of the cathedral. Almost at the same moment there was a distant sound like the rattle of musketry, and then the church bells began to ring.
The noises in the street were now tumultuous. People were shouting and laughing. Some of them were singing. At one moment it was the Salvation chorus, at the next a music-hall ditty. First “At the Cross, at the Cross,” then “Mr. 'enry 'awkins,” and then an unfamiliar ditty. With measured steps over the hardened snow of the pavement there came tramping along a line of boys and girls, crying:
D'ye ken John Peel with his coat so gay?D'ye ken John Peel at the break of day?D'ye ken John P-e-e-l——
Their shrill trebles broke like a rocket on the topmost note, and there was loud laughter.
Glory again! Always, always Glory!
Then the scales fell from his eyes and he saw himself as he was, a self-deluded man and a cheat. The impulses that had prompted him to this night's work had really centred in Glory. It had been Glory first and Glory last, and his pity for Brother Paul and his fear for the fate of Polly had been only a falsehood and pretence.
The night wind was still howling about the house. Its noise mingled with the peal of the church bells, and together they seemed to utter the voices of mocking fiends: Judas! Traitor! Fool! Fool! Traitor! Judas!
He covered his ears with his hands and his head fell into his breast.
“The Little Turnstile,
“New Year's Eve.
“Hooraa! hooraa!
“Feeling like bottled yeast this evening and liable to go off, I thank my stars I have three old babies at home to whom I am bound to tell everything. So lizzen, lizzen for all! Know ye then, all men (and women) by these presents that there is a gentleman in London who predicts wonderful things for Glory. His name is Sefton, and I came to know him through three ladies—I call them the Three Graces—whose acquaintance I have made by coming to live here. He is only an old mushroom with a bald, white head; and if I believed everything their ladyships say I should conclude that he is one of those who never sin except twice a year, and that is all the time before Christmas and all the time after it. But their Graces belong to that saintly sisterhood who would take away the devil's character if they needed it (they don't), and though the mushroom's honour were as scarce as the middle cut in salmon, yet in common loyalty Glory would have to believe in it.
“It is all about my voice. Hearing it by accident when I was humming about the house like a blue-bottle, he asked me to let him hear it again in a place where he could judge of it to more advantage. That turned out to be a theatre—yes, indeed, a theatre—but it was the middle of the morning, and nobody was there except ourselves and a couple of cleaners, so Aunt Anna needn't be afraid. Yes, the chief of the orchestra was present, and he sat before a piano on the edge of the maelstrom, in what we should call the High Bailiff's pews—but they call them the stalls—while the mushroom himself went back to the cavernous depths of the body, which in a theatre they have properly christened the pit, and this morning it looked like the bottomless one.
“Lor'-a-massey! Ever see the inside of a theatre in the daytime? Of course you've not, my dears. It is what the world itself was the day before the first day—without form and void, and darkness is on the face of the deep. Not a ray of daylight anywhere, except the adulterated kind that comes mooching round corridors and prowling in at half-open doors, and floating through the sepulchral gloom like the sleepy eyes of the monsters that terrified me in the caves at Gob-ny-Deigan when I used to play pirate, you remember.
“The gentlemen had left me alone on the stage with five or six footlights—which they ought to call face-lights—flashing in my eyes, and when the pianist began to vamp and I to sing it was like pitching my voice into a tunnel, and I became so dreadfully nervous that I was forced to laugh. That seemed to vex my unseen audience, who thought me 'rot'; so I said, 'Let there be more light then.' and there was more light, 'and let the piano cease from troubling,' and it was so. Then I just stiffened my back and gave them one of mother's French songs, and after the first verse I called out to the manager at the back,” Can you hear me?' and he called back, 'Go on; it's splendid!' So I did 'Mylecharaine' in the Manx, and I suppose I acted both of my songs; but I was only beginning to be aware that my voice in that great place was a little less like a barrel-organ than usual when suddenly there came a terrific clatter, such as comes with the seventh wave on the shingle, and my two dear men in the dark were clapping the skin of their hands off!
“Oh, my dears! my dears! If you only knew how for weeks and weeks I had been moaning and lamenting that it was because I wasn't clever that people took no notice of me, you would forgive a vain creature when she said to herself, 'My daughter, you are really somebody, after all—you, you, you!' It was a beautiful moment, though, and when the old mushroom came back to the stage saying: 'What a voice! What expression! What nature!' I felt like falling on his bald head and kissing it, not being able to speak for lumps in the throat and feeling like the Methodist lady who poured out whisky for the class leaders after they had presented her with a watch, and then told the reporters to say she had suitably responded.
“Heigho! I have talked about the fashionable people I meet in London, but I don't want to be one of them. They do nothing but rush about, dress, gossip, laugh, love, and plunge into all the delights of life. That is not my idea of existence. I am ambitious. I want to do something. I am tired in my soul of doing nothing. Yes, ithasbeen that all along, though I didn't like to tell you so before. There are people who are born in the midst of greatness and they don't know how to use it. But to be one of the world's celebrities, that is so different! To have won the heart of the world, so that the world knows you and thinks of you and loves you! Say it is by your voice you do it and that your world is the concert hall, or even the music hall—what matter? You needn'tlivemusic hall, whatever the life inside of it. And then that great dark void peopled with faces; that laugh or cry just as you please to make them—confess; that it would be magnificent, my dear ones!
“I am to go again to-night to hear what Mr. Sefton has to propose, but already this dingy little bedroom smiles upon me, and even the broken tiles in the backyard might be the pavement of paradise! If it is true what he tells me—-Well, he that hath the bride is the bridegroom, and if my doings hereafter don't make your hair curl I will try to show the inhabitants of this stupid old earth what a woman can do in spite of every disadvantage. I shall not be sorry to leave this place either. The rats in these old London houses (judging by their cries of woe) hold a nightly carnival for the eating up of the younger members of the family. And then Mrs. Jupe and Mr. Jupe—Mr. Dupe I call him—she deceives him so dreadfully with her gadding about——But anon, anon, good people!
“It is New Year's Eve to-day, and nearly nine months since I came up to London.Tempus fugit!In facttempusisfugit-ing most fearfully, considering that I am twenty-one on Sunday next, you know, and that I haven't begun to do anything really. The snowdrops must be making a peep at Glenfaba by this time, and Aunt Rachel will be cutting slips of the rose trees and putting them in pots. Yandher place must heurromassy[* Out of mercy.] nice though, with snow on the roof and the sloping lawn, and the windows glistening with frost—just like a girl in her confirmation veil as she stands hack to look at herself in the glass. I intend to see the New Year in this time on the outside of St. Paul's Cathedral, where people congregate in thousands as twelve o'clock approaches to carry on the beautiful fiction that there is still only one clock in London, and they have to hold their noses in the air to watch for the moment when it is going to strike. But in the midst of the light and life of this splendid city I know my heart will go back with a tender twinge to the little dark streets on the edge of the sea, where the Methodist choirs will be singing, 'Hail, smiling morn,' preparatory to coffee and currant cake.
“Who will be your 'first foot' this year, I wonder? It was John Storm last year, you remember, and being as dark as a gipsy, he made a perfectqualtagh. [* Manx for “first foot.”] And how we laughed when, disguised in the snow that was falling at the time, he pretended to be a beggar and came in just as grandfather was reading the bit about the Good Shepherd, and how he loved his lambs—and then I found him out! Ah me!
“I am looking perfectly dazzling in a new hat to-day, having been going about hitherto in one of those little frights that used to be cocked up on the top of your hair like a hen on a cornstack. But now I am carrying about the Prince of Wales's feathers, and if he could only see me himself in them!——
“You see what a scatter-brained creature I am! Leaving the hospital has made me grow so much younger every day that I am almost afraid I may come to contemplate short frocks. But really it's the first time I've looked nice for an eternity, and now I entirely retract and repent me of all I said about wishing to be a man. Being a girl, I'll put up with it, and if all the old mushroom says on that head also is true—— But then men are such funny things, bless them! Glory.
“P.S.—No word from John Storm yet. Apparently he never thinks of us now—of me at all events—and I suppose he has resigned himself and taken the vows. That's one kind of religion, I dare say, but I can't understand it; and I don't know how a dog, even, can be nailed up to a wall and not go mad. In the night lying in bed I sometimes think of him. A dark cell, a bench for a bed, a crucifix, and no other furniture, praying with trembling limbs and chattering teeth—No; such things are too high for me; I can not reach to them.
“It seems impossible thathecan be in London too. What a place this London is! Such a mixture! Fashion, religion, gaiety, devotion, pride, depravity, wealth, poverty! I find that for a girl to succeed in London her moral colour must be heightened a little.Pinjane[* Manx dish, like Devonshire junket] alone won't do. Give her a slush ofpissaves[* Preserves] and she'll go down sweeter. Angels are not wanted here at all. The only angels there are in London are kept framed in the church windows, and I half suspect that even they were women once, and liked bread and butter. And then Nell Gwynne's flag floats from the steeple of St. Martin's in the Fields, and now and again they ring the bells for her!”
At eleven o'clock that night Glory was putting on her hat and cloak to return home when the call-boy came to the dressing-room door to say that the stage manager was waiting to see her. With a little catch, in her breath, and then with a tightening of the heart-strings, she followed him to the stage manager's office. It was a stuffy place over the porter's lodge, approached by a flight of circular iron stairs and lumbered with many kinds of theatrical property.
“Come in, my dear,” said the stage manager, and pushing away some models of scenery he made room for her on a sofa which stood by a fast-dying fire. Then shutting the door, he bobbed his head at her and winked with both eyes, and said in a familiar whisper:
“It's all right, my dear. I've settled that little matter for you.”
“Do you mean——” began Glory, and then she waited with parted lips.
“It's as good as done, my dear. Sit down.” Glory had risen in her excitement. “Sit down and I'll tell you everything.”
He had spoken to his management. “Gentlemen,” he had said, “unless I'm mistaken I've found a prize.” They had laughed. He was always finding prizes. But he knew what he was talking about, and they had given himcarte blanche.
“You think there is really some likelihood, then——” began Glory, with the catch in her breath again, for her throat was thick and her breast was heaving.
“Sit down, now do sit down, my dear, and listen.”
He was suave, he was flattering, he was intimate, he was, coaxing. She was to leave everything to him. Of course, there was much to be done yet. She had a wonderful voice; it was finer than music. She had style as well; it was astonishing how she had come by it. Only a dresser, too—not even in the chorus. But stars were never turned out by Nature. She had many things to learn, and would have to be coached up carefully before she could be brought out. He had done it for others, though, and he could do it for her; and if——
Glory's eyes were shining and her heart was beating like a drum.
“Then you think that eventually—if I work hard—after years perhaps——”
“You can't do it on your own, my dear, so leave yourself in my hands entirely, and don't whisper a word about it yet.”
“Ah!” It was like a dream coming true; she could scarcely believe in it. The stage manager became still more suave and flattering and familiar. If she “caught on,” there was no knowing what he might not get for her—ten pounds a week—fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, even fifty perhaps.
Glory's palpitation was becoming painful, and at the bottom of her heart there was a certain fear of this sudden tide of fortune, as if Providence had somehow made a mistake and would as suddenly find it out. To appease her conscience she began to think of home and how happy she might make everybody there if God was really going to be so good to her. They should want for nothing; they should never know a poor day again.
Meantime the stage manager was painting another picture. A girl didn't go a-begging if he once took her up. There was S——. She was only an “auricomous” damsel, serving in a tobacconist's shop in the Haymarket when he first found her, and now where was she?
“Of course, I've no interest of my own to serve, my dear—none whatever. And there'll be lots of people to tempt you away from me when your name is made.”
Glory uttered some vehement protest, and then was lost in her dreams again.
“Well, well, we'll see,” said the stage manager. He was looking at her with glittering eyes.
“Do you know, my dear, you are a very fine-looking young woman?”
Glory's head was down, her face was flushed, and she was turning her mother's pearl ring around her finger. He thought she was overwhelmed by his praises, and coming closer, he said:
“Dare say you've got a good stage figure too, eh? Pooh! Only business, you know! But you mustn't be shy with me, my dear. And besides, if I am to do all this for you, you must do something for me sometimes.”
She hardly heard him. Her eyes were still glistening with the far-off look of one who gazes on a beautiful vision.
“You are so good,” she said. “I don't know what to say, or how to thank you.”
“This way,” he whispered, and leaning over to her he lifted her face and kissed her.
Then her poor dream of glory and grandeur and happiness was dispelled in a moment, and she awoke with a sense of outrage and shame. The man's praises were flattery; his predictions were a pretence; he had not really meant it at all, and she had been so simple as to believe everything.
“Oh!” she said, with the feeble, childish cry of one who has received a pistol wound in battle. And then she rose and turned to go. But the stage manager, who was laughing noisily out of his hot red face, stepped between her and the door.
“My dear child, you can't mean—a trifle like that—!”
“Open the door, please,” she said in her husky voice.
“But surely you don't intend—In this profession we think nothing, you know——”
“Open the door, sir!”
“Really—upon my word——”
When she came to herself again she was out in the dark back street, and the snow was hard and dirty under foot, and the wind was high and cold, and she was running along and crying like a disappointed child.
The bitterest part of it all was the crushing certainty that she had no talents and no chances of success, and that the man had only painted up his fancy picture as a means of deceiving her. Oh, the misery of being a woman! Oh, the cruelty of this great, glorious, devilish London, where a girl, if she was poor and alone, could live only by her looks!
With God knows what lingering remnant of expectation, but feeling broken and beaten after her brave fight for life, and with the weak woman uppermost at last, she had turned toward the hospital. It was nearly half-past eleven when she got there, and Big Ben was chiming the half hour as she ascended the steps. Bracing herself up, she looked in at the porter's door with a face that was doing its best to smile.
“Any letters to-night, porter?”
“Not to-night, miss.”
“No? Well—none to get, none to answer, you know. Happy New Year to you!”
But there was a sob in her laughter, and the man said: “I'd be sorry to miss your face, nurse, but if you'll leave your address I'll send your letters on and save you the journey so late at night.”
“Oh, no-no, there'll be no more letters now, porter, and—I'll not come again. Here!”
“No, no, miss.”
“Yes, yes, you must.”
She forced a shilling into the porter's hand in spite of his protests, and then fled from the look in his face which seemed to her to say that he would like to return her sixpence.
John Storm was lost to her. It was foolishness to go on expecting to hear from him. Had he not told her that the rule under which the brothers lived in community forbade them to write and receive letters except by special permission? But she had expected that something would happen—some accident, some miracle, she hardly knew what. That dream was over now; she was alone; it was no use deceiving herself any longer.
She went home by the back streets, for people were peering into her face, and she thought perhaps she had been crying. Late as it was, being New Year's Eve, there were groups about every corner, and in some of the flagged courts and alleys little girls were dancing to the music of the Italian organ man or turning catherine-wheels. As she was going down Long Acre a creachy voice saluted her.
“Evening, miss! Going home early, ain't ye?”
It was a miserable-looking woman in clothes that might have been stolen from a scarecrow.
“Market full to-night, my dear? Look as if the dodgers had been at ye. Live? I live off of the lane. But lor' bless ye, I've lived in a-many places! Seen the day I lived in Soho Square. I was on the 'alls then. Got a bit quisby on my top notes, you know, and took the scarlet fever—soldier, I mean, my dear. But what's the use of frettin'?
“I likes to be jolly, and I allwiz is. Doing now? Selling flowers outside the theatres—police is nasty if you've got nothink. Ain't I going home? Soon as I get a drain of white satin. Wish you luck, my dear!”
As she came up to the shop in the Turnstile she could hear that it was noisy with the voices of men and girls, so she turned back through Lincoln's-Inn Fields and passed down to Fleet Street. It was approaching twelve o'clock by this time, and streams of people were flowing in the direction of St. Paul's Cathedral. Glory turned eastward also and allowed herself to be carried along with the current which babbled and talked like a river in the night.
Immediately in front of her there was a line of girls walking arm-in-arm across the width of the pavement. They were factory girls in big hats with ostrich feathers, and as they skipped along with their free step they sang snatches of Salvation hymns and music-hall songs. All at once they gave a shrill peal of laughter, and one of them cried, “Tell me what it is and I'll give it a nyme.” At the next moment a strange figure was forging past their line, going westward with long strides. It was a man in the habit of a monk, with long black cassock and broad-brimmed hat. Glory caught a glimpse of his face as he passed her. It was a hungry, eager face, with big, melancholy eyes, and it seemed to her that she must have seen it before somewhere. The wind was very cold, and the great cross on the dome of the cathedral stood out like a beacon against flying clouds.
St. Paul's churchyard was thronged with noisy, happy people, and down to the last minute before the hour they shouted and joked and laughed. Then there was a hush, the great crowds seemed to hold their breath as if they had been a single living creature, and every face was turned upward to the clock. The clock struck, the bells of the cathedral began to ring, the people cheered and saluted each other and shook hands on every side, and then the dense mass broke up.
Glory could have cried for joy of it all—it was so simple, so human, so childlike. But she listened to the laughter and salutations of the people about her and felt more lonely than the Bedouin in the desert; she remembered the bubbling hopes that had carried her through the day, and her heart fell low; she thought of the letter which she had posted home on her way to the theatre, and two great tears came rolling from her eyes.
The face of the monk tormented her, and suddenly she bethought herself whose face it must have been. It must have been the face of Polly Love's brother. He belonged to the Bishopsgate Fathers, and had once been a patient in the hospital, and perhaps he was going there now on some errand or urgent message—to the doctors or to——
“It was foolish not to leave my address when the porter asked me,” she thought. She would go back and do so. There could be no harm in that; and if anything had really happened, if John——
“Happy New Year to you, my dear!”
Somebody in the drifting crowd was standing before her and blocking the way. It was Agatha Jones in a mock seal-skin coat and big black hat surmounted by black feathers, and with Charlie Wilkes (with his diminutive cap pushed back from his oily fringe and pimpled forehead) leaning heavily on her arm.
“Well, I never! Who'd have thought of meeting you in St. Paul's churchyawd!”
Glory tried to laugh and to return the salutation over the noises of the people and the clangour of the bells. And then Aggie put her face close, as women do who are accustomed to talking in the streets, and said: “Thought we'd seen the lahst of you, my dear, when you went off that night sudden. Selling programmes somewhere else now?”
“Something of that sort,” said Glory.
“I'm not. I've been left the old red church this fortnight and more. Charlie's got me on the clubs. But my word!” turning to Charlie, “it's her as oughter be there, my dear!”
“She cheeks me out,” said Charlie, “as you'll knock the stuffing out of Betty Bellman 'erself if you once myke a stawt.”
And Aggie said: “I might get you to do a turn almost any Sunday, if you like, my dear. There's always somebody as down't come, and they're glad of an extra turn to tyke the number if she's only clever enough to get a few 'ands. Going 'ome, dear?”
“Yes,” said Glory.
“Where d'ye live?” said Aggie, and Glory told her.
“I'll call for you Sunday night at eight, and if you down't tyke your chawnce when you get it, you're a foolisher woman than I thought you were, that's stright! By-bye!”