“Ding, dong, dended,My tale's ended.”
“And was it there you met Mr. Drake again?”
She replied with a nod.
“Never having seen him in the meantime?”
She pursed her lips and shook her head. “That's all over now, and what matter? I likes to be jolly and I allwis is!”
“But is it all over?” he said, and he looked at her again with the deep look that had cut into her heart.
“He's going to say something,” she thought, and she began to laugh, but with a faint tremor, and giving the dog her parasol to carry in his mouth, she took off her hat, swung it in her hand by the brim, and set off to run.
There was the light shimmer of a pool at a level below, where the water had drained to a bottom and was inclosed by beeches. The trees seemed to hang over it with outstretched wings, like birds about to alight, and round its banks there were plots of violets which filled the air with their fragrance. It was a God-blest bit of ground, and when he came up with her she was standing at the edge of the marshy mere panting and on the point of tears, and saying, in a whisper, “Oh, how beautiful!”
“But however am I to get across?” she cried, looking with mock terror on the two inches of water that barely covered the grass, and at the pretty red shoes that peeped from under her dress.
Then something extraordinary occurred. She hardly knew what was happening until it was over. Without a word, without a smile, he lifted her up in his arms and carried her to the other side. She felt helpless like a child, as if suddenly she belonged to herself no longer. Her head had fallen on his shoulder and her heart was beating against his breast. Or was ithisheart that was beating? When he put her down she was afraid she was going to cry, so she began to laugh and to say they mustn't lose that 7.30 to London or the “rag” would be rolling up without her and the “stage damager” would be using “cuss words.”
They had to pass the old church of Stoke Pogis on the way back to the town, and after looking at its timber belfry and steeple John suggested that they should see the inside. The sexton was found working in the garden at the side of the house, and he went indoors for the keys. “Here they be, sir, and you being a pa'son I'll bide in the orchet. You and your young missus can look at the church without me. 'A b'lieve 'a hev seed it afore,” he said with a twinkle.
The church was dark and cool. There was a window representing an angel ascending to heaven against a deep blue sky, and a squire's pew furnished like a box at the theatre, with a carpet and even a stove. The chairs in the front bore family crests, and behind them were inferior chairs, without crests, for the servants. John had opened the little modern organ and begun to play. After a while he began to sing. He sang Nazareth, and his voice filled the empty church and went up into the gloom of the roof, and echoed and returned, and it was almost as if another voice were singing there.
Glory stood by his side and listened; a wonderful peace had come down on her. Then the emotion that vibrated in his deep voice made something surge up to her throat. “Life for evermore! Life for evermore!” All at once she began to weep, to sob, and to laugh in a breath, and he stopped.
“How ridiculous I am to-day! You'll think me a maniac,” she said. But he only took her hand as if she had been a child and led her out of the church.
Insensibly the day had passed into evening, and the horizontal rays of the sun were dazzling their eyes as they returned to the hotel for tea. In giving orders for this meal they had left the illustrated weekly behind, and it was now clear from the easy smiles that greeted them that the paper had been looked at and Glory identified. The room was ready, with the table laid, the window closed, and a fire of wood in the dog grate, for the chill of the evening was beginning to be felt. And to make him forget what had happened at the church she put on a look of forced gaiety and talked rapidly, frivolously, and at random. The fresh air had given her such a colour that they would 'fairly eat her to-night.' How tired she was, though! But a cup of tea would exhilarate her “like a Johnnie's first whisky and soda in bed.”
He looked at her with his grave face; every word was cutting him like a knife. “So you didn't tell the old folks at Glenfaba about the hospital until later?”
“No. Have a cup of the 'girl'? They call champagne 'the boy' at 'the back,' so I call tea 'the girl,' you know.”
“And when did you tell them about the music hall?”
“Yesterday. 'Muffins?'” and as she held out the plate she waggled the wrist of her other hand, and mimicked the cry of the muffin man.
“Not until yesterday?”
She began to excuse herself. What was the use of taking people by surprise? And then good people were sometimes so easily shocked! Education and upbringing, and prejudices and even blood——
“Glory,” he said, “if you are ashamed of this life, believe me it is not a right one.”
“Ashamed? Why should I be ashamed? Everybody is saying how proud I should be.”
She spoke feverishly, and by a sudden impulse she plucked up the paper, but as suddenly let it drop again, for, looking at his grave face, her little fame seemed to shrivel up. “But give a dog a bad name you know——You were there on Monday night. Did you see anything, now—anything in the performance——”
“I saw the audience, Glory; that was enough for me. It is impossible for a girl to live long in an atmosphere like that and be a good woman. Yes, my child, impossible' God forbid that I should sit in judgment on any man, still less on any woman!—but the women of the music hall, do they remain good women? Poor souls, they are placed in a position so false that it would require extraordinary virtue not to become false along with it! And the whiter the soul that is dragged through that—that mire, the more the defilement. The audiences at such places don't want the white soul, they don't want the good woman, they want the woman who has tasted of the tree of good and evil. You can see it in their faces, and hear it in their laughter, and measure it in their applause. Oh, I'm only a priest, but I've seen these places all the world over, and I know what I'm saying, and I know it's true and you know it's true, Glory——”
Glory leaped up from the table and her eyes seemed to emit fire. “I know it's hard and cruel and pitiless, and, since you were there on Monday and saw how kind the audience was tome, it's personal and untrue as well.”
But her voice broke and she sat down again and said in another tone: “But, John, it's nearly a year, you know, since we saw each other last, and isn't it a pity? Tell me, where are you living now? Have you made your plans for the future? Oh, who do you think was with me just before you called yesterday? Polly—Polly Love, you remember! She's grown stout and plainer, poor thing, and I was so sorry——Her brother was in your Brotherhood, wasn't he? Is he as strangely fond of her as ever? Is he? Eh? Don't you understand? Polly's brother, I mean?”
“He's dead, Glory. Yes, dead. He died a month ago. Poor boy, he died broken-hearted! He had come to hear of his sister's trouble at the hospital. I was to blame for that. He never looked up again.”
There was silence; both were gazing into the fire, and Glory's mouth was quivering. All at once she said: “John—John Storm, why can't you understand that it's not the same with me as with other women? There seem to be two women in me always. After I left the hospital I went through a good deal. Nobody will ever know how much I went through. But even at the worst, somehow I seemed to enjoy and rejoice in everything. Things happened that made me cry, but there was another me that was laughing. And that's how it is with the life I am living now. It is not I myself that go through this—this mire, as you call it, it's only my other self, my lower self, if you like, but I am not touched by it at all. Don't you see that? Don't you, now?”
“There are professions which are a source of temptation, and talents that are a snare, Glory——”
“I see, I see what you mean. There are not many ways a woman can succeed in—that's the cruelty of things. But there are a few, and I've chosen the one I'm fit for. And now, now that I've escaped from all that misery, that meanness, and have brought the eyes of London upon me, and the world is full of smiles for me, and sunshine, and I am happy, you come at last, you that I couldn't find when I wanted you so much—oh, so much!—because you had forgotten me; you come to me out of a darkness like the grave and tell me to give it all up. Yes, yes, yes, that's what you mean—give it all up! Oh, it's cruel!”
She covered her face with her hands and sobbed. He bent over her with a sorrowful face and said, “My child, if I have come out of a darkness as of the grave it is because I hadnotforgotten you there, but was thinking of you every day and hour.”
Her sobbing ceased, but the tears still flowed through her fingers.
“Before that poor lad abandoned hope he came out into the world too-stole out-thinking to find his lost one. I told him to look for you first, and he went to the hospital.”
“I saw him.”
“You!”
“It was on New Year's Eve. He passed me in the street.”
“Ah!—Well, he came back anyway, and said you were gone, and all trace of you was lost. Did I forget you after that, Glory?”
His husky voice broke off suddenly, and he rose with a look of wretchedness. “You are right, there are two selves in you, and the higher self is so pure, so strong, so unselfish, so noble—Oh, I am sure of it, Glory! Only there's no one to speak to it, no one. I try, but I can not.”
She was still crying behind her hands.
“And meanwhile the lower self—there are only too many to speak tothat——”
Her hands came down from her disordered face and she said, “I know whom you mean.”
“I mean the world.”
“No, indeed, you mean Mr. Drake. But you are mistaken. Mr. Drake has been a good friend to me, but he isn't anything else, and doesn't want to be. Can't you see that when you think of me and talk of me as you would of some other women you hurt me and degrade me, and I can not bear it? You see I am crying again—goodness knows why. But I sha'n't give up my profession. The idea of such a thing! It's ridiculous! Think of Glory in a convent! One of the poor Clares perhaps!”
“Hush!”
“Or back in the island serving out sewing at a mothers' meeting! Give it up! Indeed I won't!”
“You shall and you must!”
“Who'll make me?”
“Iwill!”
Then she laughed out wildly, but stopped on the instant and looked up at him with glistening eyes. An intense blush came over her face, and her looks grew bright as his grew fierce. A moment afterward the waiting maid, with an inquisitive expression, was clearing the table and keeping a smile in reserve for “the lovers' quarrel!”
Some of the Guardsmen were in the train going back, and at the next station they changed to the carriage in which Glory and John were sitting. Apparently they had dined before leaving their club at Maidenhead, and they talked at Glory with covert smiles. “Going to the Colosseum tonight?” said one. “If there's time,” said another. “Oh, time enough. The attraction doesn't begin till ten, don't you know, and nobody goes before.” “Tell me she's rippin'.” “Good—deuced good.”
Glory was sitting with her back to the engine drumming lightly on the window and looking out at the setting sun. At first she felt a certain shame at the obvious references, but, piqued at John's silence, she began to take pride in them, and shot glances at him from under half-closed eyelids. John was sitting opposite with his arms folded. At the talk of the men he felt his hands contract and his lips grow cold with the feeling that Glory belonged to everybody now and was common property. Once or twice he looked at them and became conscious of an impression, which had floated about him since he left the Brotherhood, that nearly every face he saw bore the hideous stamp of self-indulgence and sensuality.
But the noises of the train helped him not to hear, and he looked out for London. It lay before them under a canopy of smoke, and now and then a shaft from the setting sun lit up a glass roof and it glittered like a sinister eye. Then there came from afar, over the creaking and groaning of the wheels and the whistle of the engine, the deep, multitudinous murmur of that distant sea. The mighty tide was rising and coming up to meet them. Presently they were dashing into the midst of it, and everything was drowned in the splash and roar.
The Guardsmen, being on the platform side, alighted first, and on going off they bowed to Glory with rather more than easy manners. A dash of the devil prompted her to respond demonstratively, but John had risen and was taking off his hat to the men, and they were going away discomfited. Glory was proud of him—he was a man and a gentleman.
He put her into a hansom under the lamps outside the station, and her face was lit up, but she patted the dog and said: “You have vexed me and you needn't come to see me again. I shall not sing properly this evening or sleep tonight at all, if that is any satisfaction to you, so you needn't trouble to inquire.”
When he reached home Mrs. Callender told him of a shocking occurrence at the fashionable wedding at All Saints' that morning. A young woman had committed suicide during the ceremony, and it turned out to be the poor girl who had been dismissed from the hospital.
John Storm remembered Brother Paul. “I must bury her,” he thought.
Glory sang that night with extraordinary vivacity and charm and was called back again and again. Going home in the cab she tried to live through the day afresh—every step, every act, every word, down to that triumphant “Iwill.” Her thoughts swayed as with the swaying of the hansom, but sometimes the thunderous applause of the audience broke in, and then she had to remember where she had left off. She could feel that beating against her breast still, and even smell the violets that grew by the pool. He had told her to give up everything, and there was an exquisite thrill in the thought that perhaps some day she would annihilate herself and all her ambitions, and—who knows what then?
This mood lasted until Monday morning, when she was sitting in her room, dressing very slowly and smiling at herself in the glass, when the Cockney maid came in with a newspaper which her master had sent up on account of its long report of the wedding.
“The Church of All Saints' was crowded by a fashionable congregation, among whom were many notable persons in the world of politics and society, including the father of the bridegroom, the Duke of —— and his brother, the Marquis of ——. An arch of palms crossed the nave at the entrance to the chancel, and festoons of rare flowers were suspended from the rails of the handsome screen. The altar and the table of the commandments were almost obscured by the wreaths of exotics that hung over them, and the columns of the colonnade, the font and offertory boxes were similarly buried in rich and lovely blossom.
“Thanks to an informal rehearsal some days before, the ceremony went off without a hitch. The officiating clergy were the Venerable Archdeacon Wealthy, D. D., assisted by the Rev. Josiah Golightly and other members of the numerous staff of All Saints'. The service, which was fully choral, was under the able direction of the well-known organist and choirmaster, Mr. Carl Koenig, F. R. C. O., and the choir consisted of twenty adult and forty boy voices. On the arrival of the bride a procession was formed at the west entrance and proceeded up to the chancel, singing 'The voice that breathed o'er Eden——”
“Poor Polly!” thought Glory.
“The bride wore a duchess satin gown trimmed with chiffon and Brussels lace, and having a long train hung from the shoulders. Her tulle veil was fastened with a ruby brooch and with sprays of orange blossom sent specially from the Riviera, and her necklace consisted of a rope of graduated pearls fully a yard long, and understood to have belonged to the jewel case of Catharine of Russia. She carried a bouquet of flowers (the gift of the bridegroom) brought from Florida, the American home of her family. The bride's mother wore—— The bridesmaids were dressed——Mr. Horatio Drake acted as best man——”
Glory drew her breath as with a spasm and threw down the newspaper. How blind she had been, how vain, how foolish! She had told John Storm that Drake was only a good friend to her, meaning him to understand that thus far she allowed him to go and no farther. But there was a whole realm of his life into which he did not ask her to enter. The “notable persons in politics and society,” “the bridesmaids,” these made up his real sphere, his serious scene. Other women were his friends, companions, equals, intimates, and when he stood in the eye of the world it was they who stood beside him. And she? She was his hobby. He came to her in his off hours. She filled up the under side of his life.
With a crushing sense of humiliation she was folding up the newspaper to send it downstairs when her eye was arrested by a paragraph in small type in the corner. It was headed “Shocking occurrence at a fashionable wedding.”
“Oh, good gracious!” she cried. A glance had shown her what it was. It was a report of Polly's suicide.
“At a fashionable wedding at a West-End church on Saturday” (no names) “a young woman who had been sitting in the nave was seen to rise and attempt to step into the aisle, as if with the intention of crushing her way out, when she fell back in convulsions, and on being removed was found to be dead. Happily, the attention of the congregation was at the moment directed to the bride and bridegroom, who were returning from the vestry with the bridal party behind them, and thus the painful incident made no sensation among the crowded congregation. The body was removed to the parish mortuary, and from subsequent inquiries it transpired that death had been due to poison self-administered, and that the deceased was Elizabeth Anne Love (twenty-four), of no occupation, but formerly a nurse—a circumstance which had enabled her to procure half a grain of liquor strychninae on her own signature at a chemist's where she had been known.”
“O God! O God!” Glory understood everything now. “I've a great mind to go to All Saints' and shame them—Oh, it isn't the police I'm afraid of.” Polly's purpose was clear. She had intended to fall dead at the feet of the bride and bridegroom and make them walk over her body. Poor, foolish, ineffectual Polly! Her very ghost must be ashamed of the failure of her revenge. Not a ripple of sensation on Saturday, and this morning only a few obscure lines in little letters!
Oh, it was hideous! The poor thing's vengeance was theatrical and paltry, but what of the man, wherever he was? What did he think of himself now, with his millions and his murder? Yes, his murder, for what else was it?
An hour later Glory was ringing the bell of a little house in St. John's Wood whereof the upper blinds were drawn. The grating of the garden door slid back and an untidy head looked out.
“Well, ma'am?”
“Don't you remember me, Liza?”
“Lawd, yus, miss!” and the door was opened immediately; “but I was afeard you was one o' them reportin' people, and my orders is not to answer no questions.”'
“Hashebeen here, then?”
“Blesh ye, no, miss! He's on 'is way to the Continents. But 'is friend 'as, and he's settled everything 'andsome—I will say that for the gentleman.”
Glory felt her gall rising; there was something degrading, almost disreputable, even in the loyalty of Drake's friendship.
“Fancy Liza not knowing you, miss, and me at the moosic 'all a Tuesday night! I 'ope you'll excuse the liberty, but Ididlaugh, and I won't say but I shed a few tears too. Arranged? Yes, the jury and the coroner and every-think. It's to be at twelve o'clock, so you may think I've 'ad my 'ands full. But you'll want to look at 'er, pore thing! Go up, miss, and mind yer 'ead; there's nobody but 'er friends with 'er now.”
The friends proved to be Betty Belmont and her dressing-room companions. When Glory entered they showed no surprise. “The pore child told us all about you,” said Betty; and the little one said: “It's your nyme that caught on, dear. The minute I heard it I said what a top-line for a, bill!”
It was the same little bandbox of a bedroom, only now it was darkened and Polly's troubles were over. There was a slightly convulsed look about the mouth, but the features were otherwise calm and childlike, for all the dead are innocent.
The three women with demure faces were sipping Benedictine and talking among themselves, and Polly's pug dog was coiled up on the bare bolster and snoring audibly.
“Pore thing! I don't know how she could 'a done it. But there, that's the worst of this life! It's all in the present and leads to nothing and ain't got no future.” “What could the pore thing do? She wasn't so wonderful pretty; and then men like——” “She was str'ight with him, say what yer like. Only she ought to been more patienter, and she needn't 'a been so hard on the lady, neither.” “She had everything the heart could wish. Look at her rooms! I wonder who'll——”
Carriages were heard outside, and two or three men came in to do the last offices. Glory had turned her face away, but behind her the women were still talking. “Wait a minute, mister! ... What a lovely ring! ... I wish I had a keepsake to remember her by.” “Well, and why not? She won't want——”
Glory felt as if she was choking, but Polly's pug dog had been awakened by the commotion and was beginning to howl, so she took up the little mourner and carried it out. An organ-man somewhere near was playing Sweet Marie.
The funeral was at Kensal Green, and the four girls were the only followers. The coroner's verdict beingfelo-de-se, the body was not taken into the chapel, but a clergyman met it at the gate and led the way to the grave. Walking with her head down and the dog under her arm, Glory had not seen him at first, but when he began with the tremendous words, “I am the resurrection and the life,” she caught her breath and looked up. It was John Storm.
While they were in the carriage the clouds had been gathering, and now some spots of rain were falling. When the bearers had laid down their burden the spots were large and frequent, and all save one of the men turned and went back to the shelter of the porch. The three women looked at each other, and one of them muttered something about “the dead and the living,” and then the little lady stole away. After a moment the tall one followed her, and from shame of being ashamed the third one went off also.
By this time the rain was falling in a sharp shower, and John Storm, who was bareheaded, had opened his book and begun to read: “Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear sister here departed——”
Then he saw that Glory was alone by the graveside, and his voice faltered and almost failed him. It faltered again, and he halted when he came to the “sure and certain hope,” but after a moment it quivered and filled out and seemed to say, “Which of us can sound the depths of God's design?” After the “maimed rites” were over, John Storm went back to the chapel to remove his surplice, and when he returned to the grave Glory was gone.
She sang as usual at the music hall that night, but with a heavy heart. The difference communicated itself to the audience, and the unanimous applause which had greeted her before frayed off at length into separate hand-claps. Crossing the stage to her dressing-room she met Koenig, who came to conduct for her, and he said:
“Not quite yourself to-night, my dear, eh?”
Going home in the hansom, Polly's dog coddled up with the old sympathy to the new mistress, and seemed to be making the best of things. The household was asleep, and Glory let herself in with a latch-key. Her cold supper was laid ready, and a letter was lying under the turned-down lamp. It was from her grandfather, and had been written after church on Sunday night:
“It is now so long—more than a year—since I saw my runaway and truant that, notwithstanding the protests of Aunt Anna and the forebodings of Aunt Rachel, I have determined to give my old legs a journey and my old eyes a treat. Therefore take warning that I intend to come up to London forthwith, that I may see the great city for the first time in my life, and—which is better—my little granddaughter among all her new friends and in the midst of her great prosperity.”
At the foot of this there was a postscript from Aunt Rachel, hastily scrawled in pencil:
“Take no notice of this. He is far too weak to travel, and indeed he is really failing; but your letter, which reached us last night, has so troubled him ever since that he can't take rest for thinking of it.”
It was the last straw. Before finishing the letter or taking off her hat, Glory took up a telegraph form and wrote, “Postpone journey—am returning home to-morrow.” Then she heard Koenig letting himself into the house, and going downstairs she said:
“Will you take this message to the telegraph office for me, please?”
“Vhy, of course I vill, and den ve'll have supper togeder—look!” and he laughed and opened a paper and drew out a string of sausages.
“Mr. Koenig,” she said, “you were right. I was not myself to-night. I want a rest, and I propose to take one.”
As Glory returned upstairs she heard stammerings, sputterings, and swearings behind her about managers, engagements, announcements, geniuses, children, and other matters. Back in her room she lay down on the floor, with her face in her hands, and sobbed. Then Koenig appeared, panting and saying: “Dere! I knew vhat vould happen! Here's a pretty ting! And dat's vhy Mr. Drake told me to deny you to de man. De brute, de beast, de dirty son of a monk!”
But Glory had leaped up with eyes of fire, and was crying: “How dare you, sir? Out of my room this instant!”
“Mein Gott! It's a divil!” Koenig was muttering like a servant as he went downstairs. He went out to the telegraph office and came back, and then Glory heard him frying his sausages on the dining-room fire.
The night was far gone when she pushed aside her untouched supper, and, wiping her eyes, that she might see properly, sat down to write a letter.
“Dear John Storm (monk, monster, or whatever it is!): I trust it will be counted to me for righteousness that I am doing your bidding and giving up my profession—for the present.
“Between a woman's 'yes' and 'no'There isn't room for a pin to go,
which is very foolish of her in this instance, considering that she is earning various pounds a night and has nothing but Providence to fall back upon. I have told my jailer I must have my liberty, and, being a man of like passions with yourself, he has been busy blaspheming in the parlour downstairs. I trust virtue will be its own reward, for I dare say it is all I shall ever get. If I were Narcissus I should fall in love with myself to-day, having shown an obedience to tyranny which is beautiful and worthy of the heroic age. But to-morrow morning I go back to the 'oilan,' and it will be so nice up there without anybody and all alone!”
She was laughing softly to herself as she wrote, and catching her breath with a little sob at intervals.
“A letter now and then is profitable to the soul of man—and—woman; but you must not expect to hear fromme, and as for you, though youhaveresurrected yourself, I suppose a tyrant of your opinions will continue the Benedictine rule which compels you to hold your peace—and other things. I am engaged to breakfast with a nice girl named Glory Quayle to-morrow morning—that is to say,thismorning—at Euston Station at a quarter to seven, but happily this letter won't reach you until 7.30, so I'll just escape interruption.”
The house was still and the streets were quiet, not even a cab going along.
“Good-bye! I've realized—a dog! It's a pug, and therefore, like somebody else, it always looks black at me, though I suspect its father married beneath him, for it talks a good deal, and evidently hasn't been brought up in a Brotherhood. Therefore, being a 'female,' I intend to call it Aunt Anna—except when the original is about. Aunt Anna has been hopping up and down the room at my heels for the last hour, evidently thinking that a rational woman would behave better if she went to bed. Perhaps I shall take a leaf out of your book and 'comb her hair,' when I get her all alone in the train to-morrow, that she may be prepared for the new sphere to which it has pleased Providence to call her.
“Good-bye again! I see the lamps of Euston running after each other, only it's theotherway this time. I find there is something that seizes you with a fiercer palpitation than comingintoa great and wonderful city, and that is going out of one. Dear old London! After all, it has been very good to me. No one, it seems to me, loves it as much as I do. Only somebody thinks—well, never mind! Goodbye 'for all!' Glory.”
At seven next morning, on the platform at Euston, Glory was standing with melancholy eyes at the door of a first-class compartment watching the people sauntering up and down, talking in groups and hurrying to and fro, when Drake stepped up to her. She did not ask what had brought him—she knew. He looked fresh and handsome, and was faultlessly dressed.
“You are doing quite right, my dear,” he said in a cheerful voice. “Koenig telegraphed, and I came to see you off. Don't bother about the theatre; leave everything to me. Take a rest after your great excitement, and come back bright and well.”
The locomotive whistled and began to pant, the smoke rose to the roof, the train started, and before Glory knew she was going she was gone.
Then Drake walked to his club and wrote this postscript to a letter to Lord Robert Ure, at the Grand Hotel, Paris: “The Parson has drawn first blood, and Gloria has gone home!”
On the Sunday evening after Glory's departure John Storm, with the bloodhound running by his side, made his way to Soho in search of the mother of Brother Andrew. He had come to a corner of a street where the walls of an ugly brick church ran up a narrow court and turned into a still narrower lane at the back. The church had been for some time disused, and its facade was half covered with boardings and plastered with placards: “Brighton and Back, 3s.”; “Lloyd's News”; “Coals, 1s. a cwt.”; and “Barclay's Sparkling Ales.”
There was a tumult in the court and lane. In the midst of a close-packed ring of excited people, chiefly foreigners, shouting in half the languages of Europe, a tall young Cockney, with bloated face and eyes aflame with drink, was writhing and wrestling and cursing. Sometimes he escaped from the grasp of the man who held him, and then he flung himself against the closed door of a shop which stood opposite, with the three balls of the pawnbroker suspended above it. Somebody within the shop was howling for help. It was a woman's voice, and the louder she screamed the more violent were the man's efforts to beat down the door between them.
As John Storm stood a moment looking on, some one on the street beside him said, “It's a d—— shyme.” It was a man with a feeble, ineffectual face and the appearance of a waiter. Seeing he had been overheard, the man stammered: “Beg parding, sir; but they may well say 'when the Devil can't come hisself 'e sends 'is brother Drink.'” Having said this he began to move along, but stopped suddenly on seeing what the clergyman with the dog was doing.
John Storm was pushing his way through the crowd, and his black figure in that writhing ring of undersized foreigners looked big and commanding. “What's this?” he was saying in a husky voice that rose clear above the clamour. The shouting and swearing subsided, all save the howling from the inside of the shop, and the tumult settled down in a moment to mutterings and gnashings and a broken and irregular silence.
Then somebody said, “It's nothink, sir.” And somebody else said, “'Es on'y drunk, and wantin' to pench 'is mother.” Without listening to this explanation John Storm had laid hold of the young man by the collar and was dragging him, struggling and fuming, from the door.
“What's going on?” he demanded. “Will nobody speak?”
Then a poor swaggering imitation of a man came up out of the cellar of a house that stood next to the disused church, and a comely young woman carrying a baby followed close behind him. He had a gin bottle in his hands, and with a wink he said: “A christenin'—that's what's going on. 'Ave a kepple o' pen'orth of 'ollands, old gel?”
At this sally the crowd recovered its audacity and laughed, and the drunken man began to say that he could “knock spots out of any bloomin' parson, en' now bloomin' errer.”
But the young fellow with the gin bottle broke in again. “What's yer gime, mister? Preach the gawspel? Give us trecks? This is my funeral, down't ye know, and I'd jest like to hear.”
The little foreigners were enjoying the parson-baiting, and the drunken man's courage was rising to fever heat. “I'll give 'im one-two between the eyes if 'e touches me again.” Then he flung himself on the pawnshop like a battering ram, the howling inside, which had subsided, burst out afresh, and finally the door was broken down.
Half a minute afterward the crowd was making a wavering dance about the two men. “Look out, ducky!” the young fellow shouted to John. The warning came too late—John went reeling backward from a blow.
“Now, my lads, who says next?” cried the drunken ruffian. But before the words were out of his mouth there was a growl, a plunge, a snarl, and he was full length on the street with the bloodhound's muzzle at his throat.
The crowd shrieked and began to fly. Only one person seemed to remain. It was an elderly woman, with dry and straggling gray hair. She had come out of the pawnshop and thrown herself on the dog in an effort to rescue the man underneath, crying: “My son—oh, my son! It'll kill him! Tyke the beast away!”
John Storm called the dog off, and the man got up unhurt, and nearly sober. But the woman continued to moan over the ruffian and to assail John and his dog with bitter insults. “We want no truck with parsons 'ere,” she shouted.
“Stou thet, mother. It was my fault,” said the sobered man, and then the woman began to cry. At the next minute John Storm was going with mother and son into the shut-up pawnshop, and the unhinged door was being propped behind them.
The crowd was trailing off when he came out again half an hour afterward, and the only commotion remaining was caused by a belated policeman asking, “Wot's bin the matter 'ere?” and by the young fellow with the gin bottle performing a step-dance on the pavement before the entrance to the cellar. The old woman stood at her door wiping her eyes on her apron, and her son was behind with a face that was now red from other causes than drink and rage.
“Good-bye, Mrs. Pincher; I may see you again soon.”
Hearing this, the young swaggerer stopped his step-dancing and cried: “What cheer, myte? Was it a blowter and a cup of cawfy?”
“For shynie, Charlie!” cried the girl with a baby, and the young fellow answered, “Shut yer 'ead, Aggie!”
The waiter was still at the corner of the court, and when John came up he spoke again. “There must be sem amoosement knockin' women abart, but I can't see it myself.” Then in a simple way he began to talk about his “missis,” and what a good creature she was, and finally announced himself “gyme” to help a parson “as stood up to that there drunken blowke for sake of a woman.”
“What's your name?” said John.
“Jupe,” said the man, and then something stirred in John's memory.
On the following day John Storm dined with his uncle at Downing Street. The Prime Minister was waiting in the library. In evening dress, with his back to the fireplace and his hands enlaced behind him, he looked even more thin and gaunt than before. He welcomed John with a few familiar words and a smile. His smile was brief and difficult, like that which drags across the face of an invalid. Dinner was announced immediately, and the old man took the young one's arm and they passed into the dining-room.
The panelled chamber looked cold and cheerless. It was lighted by a single lamp in the middle of the table. They took their seats at opposite sides. The statesman's thin hair shone on his head like streaks of silver. John exercised a strong physical influence upon him, and all through the dinner his bleak face kept smiling.
“I ought to apologize for having nobody to meet you, but I had something to say—something to suggest—and I thought perhaps——”
John interrupted with affectionate protestations, and a tremor passed over the wrinkles about the old man's eyes.
“It is a great happiness to me, my dear boy, that you have turned your back on that Brotherhood, but I presume you intend to adhere to the Church?”
John intended to take priest's orders without delay, and then go on with his work as a clergyman.
“Just so, just so”—the long, tapering fingers drummed on the table—“and I should like to do something to help you.”
Then sipping at his wine-glass of water, the Prime Minister, in his slow, deep voice and official tone, began to detail his scheme. There was a bishopric vacant. It was only a colonial one—the Bishopric of Colombo. The income was small, no more than seventeen hundred pounds, the work was not light, and there were fifty clergy. Then a colonial bishopric was not usually a stepping-stone to preferment at home, yet still——
John interrupted again. “You are most kind, uncle, but I am only looking forward to living the life of a poor priest, out of sight of the world and the Church.”
“Surely Colombo is sufficiently out of sight, my boy?”
“But I see no necessity to leave London.”
The Prime Minister glanced at him steadily, with the concentrated expression of a man who is accustomed to penetrate the thoughts and feelings of another.
“Why then—why did you——”
“Why did I leave the monastery, uncle? Because I had come to see that the monastic system was based on a faulty ideal of Christianity, which had been tried for the greater part of nineteen hundred years and failed. The theory of monasticism is that Christ died to redeem our carnal nature, and all we have to do is to believe and pray. But it is not enough that Christ died once. He must be dying always—every day—and in every one of us. God is calling on us in this age to seek a new social application of the Gospel, or, shall I say, to go back to the old one?”
“And that is——?”
“To present Christ in practical life as the living Master and King and example, and to apply Christianity to the life of our own time.”
The Prime Minister had not taken his eyes off him. “What does this mean?” he had asked himself, but he only smiled his difficult smile and began to talk lightly. If this creed applied to the individual it applied also to the State; but think of a cabinet conducting the affairs of a nation on the charming principle of “taking no thought for the morrow,” and “loving your enemies,” and “turning the other cheek,” and “selling all and giving to the poor”!
John stuck to his guns. If the Christian religion could not be the ultimate authority to rule a Christian nation, it was only because we lacked faith and trusted too much to mechanical laws made by statesmen rather than to moral laws made by Christ. “Either the life of Christ, as the highest standard and example, means something or it means nothing. If something, let us try to follow it; but if nothing, then for God's sake let us put it away as a cruel, delusive, and damnable mummery!”
The Prime Minister continued to ask himself, “What is the key to this?” and to look at John as he would have looked at a problem that had to be solved, but he only went on smiling and talking lightly. It was true we said a prayer and took an oath on the Bible in the Houses of Parliament, but did anybody think for a moment that we intended to trust the nation to the charming romanticism of the politics of Jesus? As for the Church, it was founded on acts of Parliament, it was endowed and established by the State, its head was the sovereign, its clergy were civil servants who went to levées and hung on the edge of drawing-rooms and troubled the knocker of No. 10 Downing-Street. And as for Christ's laws—in this country they were interpreted by the Privy Council and were under the direct control of a State department. Still, it was a harmless superstition that we were a Christian nation. It helped to curb the masses of the people, and if that was what John was thinking of——
The Prime Minister paused and stopped.
“Tell me, my boy,” touching John's arm, “do you intend yourself to live—in short, the—well, after the example of the life of Christ?”
“As far as my weak and vain and sinful nature will permit, uncle!”
“And in what way would you propose to apply your new idea of Christianity?”
“My experiment would be made on a social basis, sir, and first of all in relation to women.” John was hot all over, and his face had flushed up to the eyes.
The Prime Minister glanced stealthily across the table, passed his thin hand across his forehead, and thought, “So that's how it is!” But John was deep in his theme and saw nothing. The present position of women was intolerable. Upon the well-being of women, especially of working women, the whole welfare of society rested. Yet what was their condition? Think of it—their dependence on man, their temptations, their rewards, their punishments! Three halfpence an hour was the average wage of a working woman in England!—and that in the midst of riches, in the heart of luxury, and with one easy and seductive means of escape from poverty always open. Ruin lay in wait for them, and was beckoning them and enticing them in the shape of dancing houses and music halls and rich and selfish men.
“Not one man in a million, sir, would come through such an ordeal unharmed. And yet what do we do?—what does the Church do for these brave creatures on whose virtue and heroism the welfare of the nation depends? If they fall it cuts them off, and there is nothing before them but the streets or crime or the Union or suicide. And meanwhile it marries the men who have tempted them to the snug and sheltered darlings for whose wealth or rank or beauty they have been pushed aside. Oh, uncle, when I walk down Regent Street in the daytime I am angry, but when I walk down Regent Street at night I am ashamed. And then to think of the terrible solitude of London to working girls who want to live pure lives—the terrible spiritual loneliness!”
John's voice was breaking, but the Prime Minister had almost ceased to hear. Thinking he had realized the truth at last, his own youth seemed to be sitting before him and he felt a deep pity.
“Coffee here or in the library, your lordship?” said the man at his elbow.
“The library,” he answered, and taking John's arm again he returned to the other room. There was a fire burning now, and a book lay under the lamp on a little table, with a silver paper-cutter through the middle to mark the page.
“How you remind me of your mother sometimes, John! That was just like her voice, do you know—just!”
Two hours afterward he led John Storm down the long corridor to the hall. His bleak face looked soft and his deep voice had a slight tremor. “Good-night, my dear boy, and remember your money is always waiting for you. Until your Christian social state is established you are only an advocate of socialism, and may fairly use your own. If yours is the Christianity of the first century it has to exist in the nineteenth, you know. You can't live on air or fly without wings. I shall be curious to see what approach, to the Christian ideal the condition of civilization admits of. Yet I don't know what your religious friends and the humdrum herd will think of you—mad probably, or at least weak and childish and perhaps even a hunter after easy popularity. But good-night, and God bless you in, your people's church and Devil's Acre!”
John was flushed and excited. He had been talking of his plans, his hopes, his expectations. God would provide for him in this as in everything, and then God's priest ought to be God's poor. Meantime two gentlemen in plush waited for him at the door. One handed him his hat, the other his stick and gloves.
Then with regular steps, and his hands behind him, the Prime Minister paced back through the quiet corridors. Returning to the library, he took up his book and tried to read. It was a novel, but he could not attend to the incidents in other people's lives. From time to time he said to himself: “Poor boy! Will he find her? Will he save her?” One pathetic idea had fixed itself on his mind—John Storm's love of God was love of a woman, and she was fallen and wrecked and lost.
A fortnight later John wrote to Glory:
“Fairly under weigh at last, dear Glory! Taken priest's orders, got the Bishop's 'license to officiate,' and found myself a church. It is St. Mary Magdalene's, Crown Street, Soho, a district that has borne for three hundred years the name of the 'Devil's Acre,' bears it still, and deserves it. The church is an old proprietary place, licensed, not consecrated, formerly belonging to Greek, or Italian, or French, or some other refugees, but long shut up and now much out of repair. Present owners, a company of Greek merchants, removed from Soho to the City, and being too poor (as trustees) to renovate the structure, they have forced me to get money for that purpose from my uncle, the Prime Minister. But the money is my own, apparently, my uncle having in my interest demanded from my father ten thousand pounds out of my mother's dowry, and got it. And now I am spending two thousand on the repair of my church buildings, notwithstanding the protests of the Prime Minister, who calls me 'chaplain to the Greek-Turks,' and of Mrs. Callender, who has discovered that I am a 'maudlin, sentimental, daft young spendthrift.' Dare say I am all that and a good deal more, as the wise world counts wisdom—but it matters little!
“Have not waited for the workmen, though, to begin operations. Took first services last Sunday. No organist, no choir, no clerk, and next to no congregation. Just the church cleaner, a good, simple old soul named Pincher, her son, a reformed drunkard and pawnbroker, and another convert who is a club waiter. Nevertheless, I went through the whole service, morning and evening, prayers, psalms, and sermon. God will be the more glorified.
“Have started my new crusade on behalf of women, too, and made various processions of three persons through the streets of Soho. First, my pawnbroker bearing the banner (a white cross, the object of various missiles), next my waiter carrying a little harmonium, and familiarly known as the 'organ man,' and finally myself in my cassock. Last mentioned proves to be a highly popular performance, being generally understood to be a man in a black petticoat. We have had a nightly accompaniment of a much larger procession, though, calling themselves 'Skellingtons,' otherwise the 'Skeletons,' an army of low women and roughs; who live vulture lives on this poor, soiled, grimy, forgotten world. Thank God, the ground of evil-doers is in danger, and they know it!
“Behind my church, in a dark, unwholesome alley called. Crook Lane, we have a clergy house, at present let out in tenements, the cellar being occupied as a gin shop. As soon as these premises can be cleared of their encumbrances I shall turn them into a club for working girls. Why not? In the old days the Church came to the people: let it come to the people now. Here we are in the midst of this mighty stronghold of the devil's kingdom of sin and crime. Foreign clubs, casinos, dancing academies, and gambling houses are round about us. What are we to do? Put up a forest of props (as at the Abbey) and keep off touch and contamination? God forbid! Let us go down into these dens of moral disease and disinfect them. The poor working girls, of Soho want their Sunday: give it them. They want music and singing: give it them. They want dancing: give them that also, for God's sake, give it them in your churches, or the devil will give it them in his hells!
“Expect to be howled at of course. Some good people will think I am either a fanatic or an artful schemer, while the clerical place-seekers, who love the flesh-pots of Egypt and have their eyes on the thrones of the Church and the world, will denounce my 'secularity' and tell me I am feeding the 'miry troughs' of the publican and sinner. No matter, if only God is pleased to vouchsafe 'signs following.' And one weary-faced lonely girl, grown fresh of countenance and happy of mien, or one bright little woman, snatched from the brink of perdition, will be a better fruit, of religion than some of them have seen for many a year.
“As soon as the workmen have cleared out I am going to establish a daily service and keep the church open always. Still at Mrs. Callender's, you see; but I am refusing all invitations, except as a priest, and already I don't seem to, have time to draw my breath. No income connected with St. Mary Magdalene's, or next to none, just enough to pay the caretaker; but I must not complain of that, for it is the accident to which I owe my church, nobody else wanting it under the circumstances. I had begun to think my time in the monastery wasted, but God knew better. It will help me to live the life of poverty, of purity, of freedom from the world.
“Love to the grandfather and the ladies. How I wish you were with me in the thick of the fight! Sometimes I dream you are, too, and I fancy I see you in the midst of these bright young things with their flowers and feathers—they will make beautiful Christians yet! Oddly enough, on the day you travelled to the island, every hour that took you farther away seemed to bring you nearer. Greetings!”