The journey home from the Derby had been a long one, but Glory had enjoyed it. When she had settled down to the physical discomfort of the blinding and choking dust, the humours of the road became amusing. This endless procession of good-humoured ruffianism sweeping through the most sacred retreats of Nature, this inroad of every order of the Stygiandemi-mondeon to the slopes of Olympus, was intensely interesting. Men and women merry with drink, all laughing, shouting, and singing; some in fine clothes and lounging in carriages, others in striped jerseys and yellow cotton dresses, huddled up on donkey barrows; some smoking cigarettes and cigars and drinking champagne, others smoking clay pipes with the bowls downward, and flourishing bottles of ale; some holding rhubarb leaves over their heads for umbrellas, and pelting the police withconfetti; others wearing executioners' masks, false mustaches, and red-tipped noses, and blowing bleating notes out of penny trumpets—but all one family, one company, one class.
There were ghastly scenes as well as humorous ones—an old horse, killed by the day's work and thrown into the ditch by the roadside, axletrees broken by the heavy loads and people thrown out of their carts and cut, boy tramps dragging along like worn-out old men, and a Welsher with his clothes torn to ribbons, stealing across the fields to escape a yelping and infuriated crowd.
But the atmosphere was full of gaiety, and Glory laughed at nearly everything. Lord Robert, with his arm about Betty's waist, was chaffing a coster who had a drunken woman on his back seat. “Got a passenger, driver?” “Yuss, sir, and I'm agoin' 'ome to my wife to-night, and thet's more nor you dare do.” A young fellow in pearl buttons was tramping along with a young girl in a tremendous hat. He snatched her hat off, she snatched off his; he kissed her, she smacked his face; he put her hat on his own head, she put on his hat; and then they linked arms and sang a verse of the Old Dutch.
Glory reproduced a part of this love-passage in pantomime, and Drake screamed with laughter.
It was seven o'clock before they reached the outskirts of London. By that time a hamper on the coach had been emptied and the bottles thrown out; the procession had drawn up at a dozen villages on the way; the perspiring tipsters, with whom “things hadn't panned out well,” had forgotten their disappointments and “didn't care a tinker's! cuss”; every woman in a barrow had her head-gear in confusion, and she was singing in a drunken wail. Nevertheless Drake, who was laughing and talking constantly, said it was the quietest Derby night he had ever seen, and he couldn't tell what things were coming to.
“Must be this religious mania, don't you know,” said lord Robert, pointing to a new and very different scene which they had just then come upon.
It was an open space covered with people, who had lit fires as if intending to camp out all night, and were now gathered in many groups, singing hymns and praying. The drunken wails from the procession stopped for a moment, and there was nothing heard but the whirring wheels and the mournful notes of the singers. Then “Father Storm!” rose like the cry of a cormorant from a thousand throats at once. When the laughter that greeted the name had subsided, Betty said:
“'Pon my honour, though, that man must be off his dot,” and the lady in blue went into convulsions of hysterical giggling. Drake looked uneasy, and Lord Robert said, “Who cares what an Elephant says?” But Glory took no notice now, save that for a moment the smile died off her face.
It had been agreed, when they cracked the head off the last bottle, that the company should dine together at the Cafè Royal or Romano's, so they drove first to Drake's chambers to brush the dust off and to wash and rest. Glory was the first to be ready, and while waiting for the others she sat at the organ in the sitting-room and played something. It was the hymn they had heard in the suburbs. At this there was laughter from the other side of the wall, and Drake, who seemed unable, to lose sight of her, came to the door of his room in his shirt sleeves. To cover up her confusion she sang a “coon” song. The company cheered her, and she sang another, and yet another. Finally she began My Mammie, but floundered, broke down, and cried.
“Rehearsal, ten in the morning,” said Betty.
Then everybody laughed, and while Drake busied himself putting Glory's cloak on her shoulders, he whispered: “What's to do, dear? A bit off colour to-night, eh?”
“Be a good boy and leave me alone,” she answered, and then she laughed also.
They were on the point of setting out when somebody said, “But it's late for dinner now—why not supper at the Corinthian Club?” At that the other ladies cried “Yes” with one voice. There was a dash of daring and doubtful propriety in the proposal.
“But are you game for it?” said Drake, looking at Glory.
“Why not?” she replied, with a merry smile, whereupon he cried “All right,” and a look came into his eyes which she had never seen there before.
The Corinthian Club was in St. James's Square, a few doors from the residence of the Bishop of London. It was now dark, and as they passed through Jermyn Street a line of poor children stood by the poulterer's shop at the corner waiting for the scraps that are thrown away at closing time. York Street was choked with hansoms, but they reached the door at last. There were the sounds of music and dancing within. Officials in uniform stood in a hall examining the tickets of membership and taking the names of guests. The ladies removed their cloaks, the men hung up their coats and hats, a large door was thrown open, and they looked into the ballroom. The room was full of people as faultlessly dressed as at a house in Grosvenor Square. But the women were all young and pretty, and the men had no surnames. A long line of gilded youths in dress clothes occupied the middle of the floor. Each held by the waist the young man before him as if he were going to play leap-frog. “Hello there!” shouted one of them, and the band struck up. Then the whole body kicked out right and left, while all sang a chorus, consisting chiefly of “Tra-la-la-la-la-la!” One of them was a lord, another a young man who had lately come into a fortune, another a light comedian, another belonged to a big firm on the Stock Exchange, another was a mystery, and another was one of “the boys” and lived by fleecing all the rest. They were executing a dance from the latest burlesque. “Hello, there!” the conductor shouted again, and the band stopped.
Lord Robert led the way upstairs. Pretty women in light pinks and blues sat in every corner of the staircase. There was a balcony from which you could look down on the dancers as from the gallery of a playhouse. Also there was an American bar where women smoked cigarettes. Lord Robert ordered supper, and when the meal was announced they went into the supper-room.
“Hello there!” greeted them as they entered. At little tables lit up by pink candles sat small groups of shirt fronts and butterfly ties with fair heads and pretty frocks. Waiters were coming and going with champagne and silver dishes; there was a clatter of knives and forks, and a jabber of voices and laughter. And all the time there came the sounds of the band, with the “Tra-la-la” from the ballroom below.
Glory sat by Drake. She realized that she had lowered herself in his eyes by coming there. He was drinking a good deal and paying her endless compliments. From time to time the tables about them were vacated and filled again by similar shirt fronts and fair heads. People were arriving from the Derby, and the talk was of the day's racing. Some of the new arrivals saluted Drake, and many of them looked at Glory. “A rippin' good race, old chappie. Didn't suit my book exactly, but the bookies will have smiling faces at Tattersall's on Monday.”
A man with a big beard at the next table pulled down his white waistcoat, lifted his glass, and said, “To Gloria!” It was her acquaintance of the race-course.
“Who is Blue Beard?” she asked in a whisper.
“They call him the Faro King,” said Drake. “Made all his money by gambling in Paris, and now he is a squire with a living in his gift.”
Then over the laughter and voices, the band and the singing, with an awful suddenness there came a crash of thunder. The band and the comic song stopped, and there was a hush for a moment. Then Lord Robert said:
“Wonder if this is the dreadful storm that is to overwhelm the nation, don't you know!”
That fell on the house of frivolity like a second thunderbolt, and people began to look up with blanched faces.
“Well, it isn't the first time thestormhas howled; it's been howling all along,” said Lord Robert, but nobody laughed.
Presently the company recovered itself, the bands and the singing were heard again, louder and wilder than before, the men shouted for more champagne, and nicknamed every waiter “Father Storm.”
Glory was ashamed. With her head on her hand she was looking at the people around when the “Faro King,” who had been making eyes at her, leaned over her shoulder and said in a confidential whisper, “And what is Gloria looking for?”
“I am looking fora man,” she answered. And as the big beard turned away with “Oh, confound it!” she became aware that Drake and Lord Robert were at high words from opposite sides of the table.
“No, I tell you no, no,no!” said Drake. “Call him a weakling and a fool and an ass, if you will, but does that explain everything? This is one of the men with the breath of God in him, and you can't judge of him by ordinary standards.”
“Should think not, indeed, dear chap,” said Lord Robert, “Common sense laughs at the creature.”
“So much the worse for common sense. When it judges of these isolated beings by the standards of the common herd then common sense is always the greatest nonsense.”
“Oho! oho!” came in several voices, but Drake paid no attention.
“Jesus Christ himself was mocked at and ridiculed by the common sense of his time, by his own people, and even his own family, and his family and people and time have been gibbeted by all the centuries that have come after them. And so it has been with every ardent soul since who has taken up his parable and introduced into the world a new spirit. The world has laughed at him and spat upon him, and, only for its fear of the sublime banner he has borne, it would have shut him up in a mad-house.”
They were strange words in a strange place. Everybody listened.
“But these sombre giants are the leaders of the world for all that, and one hour of their Divine madness is worth more to humanity than a cycle of our sanity. And yet we deny them friendship and love, and do our best to put them out of the pale of the human family! We have invented a new name for them too—degenerates—pygmies and pigs as we are, who ought to go down on our knees to them with our faces buried in the dirt! Gentlemen,” he cried, filling his glass and rising to his feet, “I give you a toast—the health of Father Storm!”
Glory had sat trembling all over, breathing hard, blushing, and wide-eyed until he had done. Then she leaped up to where he stood beside her, threw her arms about his neck, and kissed him.
“And now you ring down quick, my dear,” said Betty, and everybody laughed a little.
Drake was laughing with the rest, and Glory, who had dropped back to her seat in confused embarrassment, was trying to laugh too.
“Another bottle of fizz anyway,” cried Drake. He had mistaken the meaning of Glory's kiss, and was utterly intoxicated by it. She could have cried with shame and rage, seeing he thought such conduct came naturally to her and perhaps imagined it wasn't the first time she had done as much. But to carry off the situation she laughed a good deal with him, and when the wine came they jingled glasses.
“I'm going to see you home to-night,” he whispered, smiling slyly and looking her full in the eyes. She shook her head, but that only provoked him to fresh effort.
“I must, I will—youshallallow me,” and he began to play with her hand and ruffle up the lace that covered her round arm.
Just then his man Benson, looking hot and excited, came up to him with a message. Glory overheard something about “the office,” “the Secretary,” and “Scotland Yard.” Then Drake turned to her with a smile, over a look of vexation, and said: “I'm sorry, dear—very—I must go away for a while. Will you stay here until I return, or——”
“Take me out and put me in a cab,” said Glory. Their getting up attracted attention, and Lord Robert said:
“Is it, perhaps, something about that——”
“It's nothing,” said Drake, and they left the room.
The band in the ballroom was still playing the dance out of the burlesque, and half a hundred voices were shouting “Tra-la-la-la” as Glory stepped into a hansom.
“I'll follow on, though,” whispered Drake with a merry smile.
“We shall all be in bed, and the house locked up—— How magnificent you were to-night!”
“I couldn't see the man trodden on when he was down—— But how lovely you've looked to-day, Glory! I'll get in to-night if I have to ring up Liza or break down the door for it!”
As the cab crossed Trafalgar Square it had to draw up for a procession of people coming up Parliament Street singing hymns. Another and more disorderly procession of people, decorated with oak leaves and hawthorns and singing a music-hall song, came up and collided with it. A line of police broke up both processions; and the hansom passed through.
On entering the drawing-room John Storm was seized with a weird feeling of dread. The soft air seemed to be filled with Glory's presence and her very breath to live in it. On the side-table a lamp was burning under a warm red shade. A heap of petty vanities lay about—articles of silver, little trinkets, fans, feathers, and flowers. His footsteps on the soft carpet made no noise. It was all so unlike the place he had come from, his own bare chamber under the church!
He could have fancied that Glory had that moment left the room. The door of a little ebony cabinet stood half open and he could see inside. Its lower shelves were full of shoes and little dainty slippers, some of them of leather, some of satin, some black, some red, some white. They touched him with an indescribable tenderness and he turned his eyes away. Under the lamp lay a pair of white gloves. One of them was flat and had not been worn, but the other was filled out with the impression of a little hand. He took it up and laid it across his own big palm, and another wave of tenderness broke over him.
On the mantelpiece there were many photographs. Most of them were of Glory and some were very beautiful, with their gleaming and glistening eyes and their curling and waving hair. One looked even voluptuous with its parted lips and smiling mouth; but another was different—it was so sweet, so gay, so artless. He thought it must belong to an earlier period, for the dress was such as she used to wear in the days when he knew her first, a simple jersey and a sailor's stocking cap. Ah, those days that were gone, with their innocence and joy! Glory! His bright, his beautiful Glory!
His emotion was depriving him of the free use of his faculties, and he began to ask himself why he was waiting there. At the next instant came the thought of the awful thing he had come to do and it seemed monstrous and impossible. “I'll go away,” he told himself, and he turned his face toward the door.
On a what-not at the door side of the room another photograph stood in a glass stand. His back had been to it, and the soft light of the lamp left a great part of the room in obscurity, but he saw it now, and something bitter that lay hidden at the bottom of his heart rose to his throat. It was a portrait of Drake, and at the sight of it he laughed savagely and sat down.
How long he sat he never knew. To the soul in torment there is no such thing as time; an hour is as much as, eternity and eternity is no more than an hour. His head was buried in his arms on the table and he was a prey to anguish and doubt. At one time he told himself that God did not send men to commit murder; at the next that this was not murder but sacrifice. Then a mocking voice in his ears seemed to say, “But the world will call it murder and the law will punish you.” To that he answered in his heart: “When I leave this house I will deliver myself up. I will go to the nearest police court and say 'Take me, I have done my duty in the eye of God, but committed a crime in the eye of my country.'” And when the voice replied, “That will only lead to your own death also,” he thought, “Death is a gain to those who die for their cause, and my death will be a protest against the degradation of women, a witness against the men who make them the creatures of their pleasure, their playthings, their victims, and their slaves.” Thinking so, he found a strange thrill in the idea that all the world would hear of what he had done. “But I will say a mass for her soul in the morning,” he told himself, and a chill came over him and his heart grew cold as a stone.
Then he lifted his head and listened. The room was quiet, there was not a sound in the gardens of the Inn, and, through a window which was partly open, he could hear the monotonous murmur of the streets outside. A great silence seemed to have fallen on London—a silence more awful than all the noise and confused clamour of the evening. “It must be late,” he thought; “it must be the middle of the night.” Then the thought came to him that perhaps, Glory would not come home that night at all, and in a sudden outburst of pent-up feeling his heart cried, “Thank God! Thank God!”
He had said it aloud and the sound of his voice in the silent room—awakened all his faculties. Suddenly he was aware of other sounds outside. There was a rumble of wheels and the rattle of a hansom. The hansom came nearer and nearer. It stopped in the outside courtyard. There was the noise of a curb-chain as if the horse were shaking its head. The doors of the hansom opened with a creak and banged back on their spring. A voice, a woman's voice, said “Good-night!” and another voice, a man's voice, answered, “Good-night and thank you, miss!” Then the cab wheels turned and went off. All his senses seemed to have gone into his ears, and in the silence of that quiet place he heard everything. He rose to his feet and stood waiting.
After a moment there was the sound of a key in the lock of the door below; the rustle of a woman's dress coming up the stairs, an odour of perfume in the air, an atmosphere of freshness and health, and then the door of the room which had been ajar was swung open and there on the threshold with her languid and tired but graceful movements was she herself, Glory. Then his head turned giddy and he could neither hear nor see.
When Glory saw him standing by the lamp, with his deadly pale face, she stood a moment in speechless astonishment, and passed her hand across her eyes as if to wipe out a vision. After that she clutched at a chair and made a faint cry.
“Oh, is it you?” she said in a voice which she strove to control. “How you frightened me! Whoever would have thought of seeing you here!”
He was trying to answer, but his tongue would not obey him, and his silence alarmed her.
“I suppose Liza let you in—whereisLiza?”
“Gone to bed,” he said in a thick voice.
“And Rosa—have you seen Rosa?”
“No.”
“Of course not! How could you? She must be at the office, and won't be back for hours. So you see we are quite alone!”
She did not know why she said that, and, in spite of the voice which she tried to render cheerful, her lip trembled. Then she laughed, though there was nothing to laugh at, and down at the bottom of her heart she was afraid. But she began moving about, trying to make herself easy and pretending not to be alarmed.
“Well, won't you help me off with my cloak? No? Then I must do it for myself I suppose.”
Throwing off her outer things, she walked across the room and sat down on the sofa near to where he stood.
“How tired I am! It's been such a day! Once is enough for that sort of thing, though! Now where do you think I've been?”
“I know where you've been, Glory—I saw you there.”
“You? Really? Then perhaps itwasyou who——Was it you in the hollow?”
“Yes.”
He had moved to avoid contact with her, but now, standing by the mantelpiece looking into her face, he could not help recognising in the fashionable woman at his feet the features of the girl once so dear to him, the brilliant eyes, the long lashes, the twitching of the eyelids, and the restless movement of the mouth. Then the wave of tenderness came sweeping over him again and he felt as if the ground were slipping beneath his feet.
“Will you say your prayers to-night. Glory?” he said,
“Why not?” she answered, trying to laugh.
“Then why not say them now, my child?”
“But why?”
He had made her tremble all over, but she got up, walked straight across to him, looked intently into his face for a moment, and then said: “What is the matter? Why are you so pale? You are not well, John!”
“No, I'm not well either.” he answered.
“John, John, what does it all mean? What are you thinking of? Why have you come here to-night?”
“To save your soul, my child. It is in great, great peril.”
At first she took this for the common, everyday language of the devotee, but another look into his face banished that interpretation, and her fear rose to terror. Nevertheless she talked lightly, hardly knowing what she said. “Am I, then, so very wicked? Surely Heaven doesn't want me yet, John. Some day I trust—I hope——”
“To-night, to-night—now!”
Then her cheeks turned pale and her lips became white and bloodless. She had returned to the sofa, and half rose from it, then sat back, stretching out one hand as if to ward off a blow, but still keeping her eyes riveted on his face. Once she looked round to the door and tried to cry out, but her voice would not answer her.
This speechless fright lasted only a moment. Then she was herself again, and looked fearlessly up at him. She had the full use of her intellect, and her quick instinct went to the root of things. “This is the madness of jealousy,” she thought. “There is only one way to deal with it. If I cry out—if I show that I am afraid—if I irritate him, it will soon, be over.” She told herself in a moment that she must try gentleness, tenderness, reason, affection, love.
Trembling from head to foot, she stepped up to him again, and began softly and sweetly trying to explain herself. “John, dear John, if you see me with certain people and in certain places you must not think from that——”
But he broke in upon her with a torrent of words. “I can't think of it at all, Glory. When I look ahead I see nothing but shame and misery and degradation for you in the future. That man is destroying you body and soul. He is leading you on to the devil and hell and damnation, and I can not stand by and see it done!”
“Believe me, John, you are mistaken, quite mistaken.” But, with a look of sombre fury, he cried, “Can you deny it?”
“I can protect and care for myself, John.”
“With that man's words in your ears, still can you deny it?”
Suddenly she remembered Drake's last whisper as she got into the hansom, and she covered her face with her hands.
“You can't! It is the truth! The man is following you to ruin you, and you know it. You've known it from the first, therefore you deserve all that can ever come to you. Do you know what you are guilty of? You are guilty of soul-suicide. What is the suicide of the body to the suicide of the soul? What is the crime of the poor broken creature who only chooses death and the grave before starvation or shame, compared to the sin of the wretched woman who murders her soul for sake of the lusts and vanities of the world? The law of man may punish, the one, but the vengeance of God is waiting for the other.”
She was crying behind her hands, and, in spite of the fury into which he had lashed himself, a great pity took hold of him. He felt as if everything were slipping away from him, and he was trying to stand on an avalanche. But he told himself that he would not waver, that he would hold to his purpose, that he would stand firm as a rock. Heaving a deep sigh, he walked to and fro across the room.
“O Glory, Glory! Can't you understand what it is to me to be the messenger of God's judgment?”
She gasped for breath, and what had been a vague surmise became a certainty—thinking he was God's avenger, yet with nothing but a poor spasm of jealousy in his heart, he had come with a fearful purpose to perform.
“I did what I could in other ways and it was all in vain. Time after time I tried to save you from these dangers, but you would not listen. I was ready for any change, any sacrifice. Once I would have given up all the world for you, Glory—you know that quite well—friends, kinsmen, country, everything, even my work and my duty, and, but for the grace of God, God himself!”
But his tenderness broke again into a headlong torrent of reproach. “You failed me, didn't you? At the last moment, too—the very last! Not content with the suicide of your own soul, you must attempt to murder the soul of another. Do you know what that is? That is the unpardonable sin! You are crying, aren't you? Why are you crying?” But even while he said this something told him that all he was waiting for was that her beautiful eyes should be raised and their splendid light flash upon him again.
“But that is all over now. It was a blunder, and the breach between us is irreparable. I am better as I am—far, far better. Without friends or kin or country, consecrated for life, cut off from the world, separate, alone!”
She knew that her moment had come, and that she must vanquish this man and turn him from his purpose, whatever it was, by the only weapon a woman could use—his love of her. “I do not deny that you have a right to be angry with me,” she said, “but don't think that I have not given up something too. At the time you speak of, when I chose this life and refused to go with you to the South Seas, I sacrificed a good deal—I sacrificed love. Do you think I didn't realize what that meant? That whatever the pleasure and delight my art might bring me, and the flattery, and the fame, and the applause, there were joys I was never to know—the happiness that every poor woman may feel, though she isn't clever at all, and the world knows nothing about her—the happiness of being a wife and a mother, and of holding her place in life, however humble she is and simple and unknown, and of linking the generations each to each. And, though the world has been so good to me, do you think I have ever ceased to regret that? Do you think I don't remember it sometimes when the house rises at me, or when I am coming home, or perhaps when I awake in the middle of the night? And notwithstanding all this success with which the world has crowned me, do you think I don't hunger sometimes for what success can never buy—the love of a good man who would love me with all his soul and his strength and everything that is his?”
Out of a dry and husky throat John Storm answered: “I would rather die a thousand, thousand deaths than touch a hair of your head, Glory.... But God's will is his will!” he added, quivering and trembling. The compulsion of a great passion was drawing him, but he struggled hard against it. “And then this success—you cling to it nevertheless!” he cried, with a forced laugh.
“Yes, I cling to it,” she said, wiping away the tears that had begun to fall. “I can not give it up, I can not, I can not!”
“Then what is the worth of your repentance?”
“It is not repentance—it is what you said it was—in this room—long ago.... We are of different natures, John—that is the real trouble between us, now and always has been. But whether we like it or not, our lives are wrapped up together for all that. We can't do without each other. God makes men and women like that sometimes.”
There was a piteous smile on his face. “I never doubted your feeling for me, Glory. No, not even when you hurt me most.”
“And if God made us so——”
“I shall never forgive myself, Glory, though Heaven itself forgives me!”
“If God makes us love each other in spite of every barrier that divides us——”
“I shall never know another happy hour in this life. Glory—never!”
“Then why should we struggle? It is our fate and we can not conquer it. You can't give up your life, John, and I can't give up mine; but our hearts are one.”
Her voice sang like music in his ears, and something in his aching heart was saying: “What are the laws we make for ourselves compared to the laws God makes for us?” Suddenly he felt something warm. It was Glory's breath on his hand. A fragrance like incense seemed to envelop him. He gasped as if suffocating, and sat down on the sofa.
“You are wrong, dear, if you think I care for the man you speak of. He has been very good to me and helped me in my career, but he is nothing to me—nothing whatever—But we are such old friends, John? It seems impossible to remember a time when we were not old chums, you and I! Sometimes I dream of those dear old days in the 'lil oilan'! Aw, they were ter'ble—just ter'ble! Do you remember the boat—theGloria—do you remember her?” (He clinched his hands as though to hold on to his purpose, but it was slipping through his fingers like sand.) “What times they were! Coming round the castle of a summer evening when the bay and the sky were like two sheets of silvered glass looking into each other, and you and I singing 'John Peel'” (in a quavering voice she sang a bar or two): “'D'ye ken John Peel with his coat so gay? D'ye ken John Peel'—-Do you remember it, John?”
She was sobbing and laughing by turns. It was her old self, and the cruel years seemed to roll back. But still he struggled. “What is the love of the body to the love of the soul?” he told himself.
“You wore flannels then, and I was in a white jersey—like this, see,” and she snatched up from the mantelpiece the photograph he had been looking at. “I got up my first act in imitation of it, and sometimes in the middle of a scene—such a jolly scene, too—my mind goes back to that sweet old time and I burst out crying.”
He pushed the photograph away. “Why do you remind me of those days?” he said. “Is it only to make me realize the change in you?” But even at that moment the wonderful eyes pierced him through and through.
“Am I so much changed, John? Am I? No, no, dear! It is only my hair done differently. See, see!” and with trembling fingers she tore her hair from its knot. It fell in clusters over her shoulders and about her face. He wanted to lay his hand on it, and he turned to her and then turned away, fighting with himself as with an enemy.
“Or is it this old rag of lace that is so unlike my jersey? There—there!” she cried, tearing the lace from her neck, and throwing it on the floor and trampling upon it. “Look at me now, John—look at me? Am I not the same as ever? Why don't you look?”
She was fighting for her life. He started to his feet and came to her with his teeth set and his pupils fixed. “This is only the devil tempting me. Say your prayers, child!”
He grasped her left hand with his right. His grip almost overtaxed her strength and she felt faint. In an explosion of emotion the insane frenzy for destroying had come upon him again. He longed to give his feelings physical expression.
“Say them, say them!” he cried, “God sent me to kill you, Glory!”
A sensation of terror and of triumph came over her at once. She half closed her eyes and threw her other arm around his neck. “No, but to love me!—Kiss me, John!”
Then a cry came from him like that of a man flinging himself over a precipice. He threw his arms about her, and her disordered hair fell over his face.
“I thought it was God's voice—it was the devil's!”
John Storm was creeping like a thief through the streets of London in the dark hours before the dawn. It was a peaceful night after the thunderstorm of the evening before. A few large stars had come out, a clear moon, was shining, and the air was quiet after the cries, the crackling tumult, and all the fury of human throats. There was only the swift rattling of mail cars running to the Post Office, the heavy clank of country carts crawling to Covent Garden, the measured tread of policemen, and the muddled laughter of drunken men and women by the coffee stands at the street corners. “'Ow's the deluge, myte? Not come off yet? Well, give us a cup of cawfee on the strength of it.”
It seemed as if eyes looked down on him from the dark sky and pierced him through and through. His whole life had been an imposture from the first—his quarrel with his father, his taking Orders, his entering the monastery and his leaving it, his crusade in Soho, his intention of following Father Damien, his predictions at Westminster—all, all had been false, and the expression of a lie! He was a sham, a mockery, a whited sepulchre, and had grossly sinned against the light and against God.
But the spiritual disillusion had come at last, and it had revealed him to himself at an awful depth of self-deception. Thinking in his pride and arrogance he was the divine messenger, the avenger, the man of God, he had set out to shed blood like any wretched criminal, any jealous murderer who was driven along by devilish passion. How the devil had played with him too!—with him, who was dedicated by the most solemn and sacred vows! And he had been as stubble before the wind—as chaff that the storm carrieth away!
With such feelings of poignant anguish he plodded through the echoing streets. Mechanically he made his way back to Westminster. By the time he got there the moon and stars had gone and the chill of daybreak was in the air. He saw and heard nothing, but as he crossed Broad Sanctuary a line of mounted police trotted past him with their swords clanking.
It was not yet daylight when he knocked at the door of his chambers under the church.
“Who's there?” came in a fierce whisper.
“Open the door,” he said in a spiritless voice.
The door was opened, and Brother Andrew, with the affectionate whine of a dog who has been snarling at his master in the dark, said: “Oh, is it you, Father? I thought you were gone. Did you meet them? They've been searching for you everywhere all night long.”
He still spoke in whispers, as if some one had been ill. “I can't light up. They'd be sure to see and perhaps come back. They'll come in the morning in any case. Oh, it's terrible! Worse than ever now! Haven't you heard what has happened? Somebody has been killed!”
John was struggling to listen, but everything seemed to be happening a long way off.
“Well, not killed exactly, but badly hurt, and taken to the hospital.”
It was Charlie Wilkes. He had insulted the name of the Father, and Pincher, the pawnbroker, had knocked him down. His head had struck against the curb, and he had been picked up insensible. Then the police had come and Pincher had been taken off to the police station.
“But it's my mother I'm thinking of,” said Brother Andrew, and he brushed his sleeve across his eyes. “You must get away at once, Father. They'll lay everything on you. What's to be done? Let me think! Let me think! How my head is going round and round! There's a train from Euston to the north at five in the morning, isn't there? You must catch that. Don't speak, Father! Don't say you won't.”
“I will go,” said John with a look of utter dejection.
The change that had come over him since the night before startled the lay brother. “But I suppose you've been out all night. How tired you look! Can I get you anything?”
John did not answer, and the lay brother brought some brown bread and coaxed him to eat a little of it. The day was beginning to dawn.
“Now you must go, Father.”
“And you, my lad?”
“Oh, I can take care of myself.”
“Go back to the Brotherhood; take the dog with you——”
“The dog!” Brother Andrew seemed to be about to say something; but he checked himself, and with a wild look he muttered: “Oh, I know whatI'lldo. Good-bye!”
“Good-bye!” said John, and then the broken man was back in the streets.
His nervous system had been exhausted by the events of the night, and when he entered the railway station he could scarcely put one foot before another. “Looks as ifhe'dhad enough,” said somebody behind him. He found an empty carriage and took his seat in the corner. A kind of stupor had come over his faculties and he could neither think nor feel.
Three or four young men and boys were sorting and folding newspapers at a counter that stood on trestles before the closed-up bookstall. A placard slipped from the fingers of one of them and fell on to the floor. John saw his own name in monster letters, and he began to ask himself what he was doing. Was he running away? It was cowardly, it was contemptible! And then it was so useless! He might go to the ends of the earth, yet he could not escape the only enemy it was worth while to fly from. That enemy was himself.
Suddenly he remembered that he had not taken his ticket, and he got out of the train. But instead of going to the ticket office he stood aside and tried to think what he ought to do. Then there was confusion and noise, people were hurrying past him, somebody was calling to him, and finally the engine whistled and the smoke rose to the roof. When he came to himself the train was gone and he was standing on the platform alone.
“But what am I to do?” he asked himself.
It was a lovely summer morning and the streets were empty and quiet. Little by little they became populous and noisy, and at length he was walking in a crowd. It was nine o'clock by this time, and he was in the Whitechapel road, going along with a motley troop of Jews, Polish Jews, Germans, German Jews, and all the many tribes of Cockneydom. Two costers behind him were talking and laughing.
“Lor' blesh you, it's jest abart enneff to myke a corpse laugh.”
“Ain't it? An acquyntince uv mine—d'ye know Jow 'Awkins? Him as kep' the frahd fish shop off of Flower and Dean. Yus? Well, he sold his bit uv biziness lahst week for a song, thinkin' the world was acomin' to a end, and this mornin' I meets 'im on the 'Owben Viadeck lookin' as if 'e'd 'ad the smallpox or semthink!”
John Storm had scarcely heard them. He had a strange feeling that everything was happening hundreds of miles away.
“What am I to do?” he asked himself again. Between twelve and one o'clock he was back in the city, walking aimlessly on and on. He did not choose the unfrequented thoroughfares, and when people looked into his face he thought, “If anybody asks me who I am I'll tell him.” It was eight hours since he had eaten anything, and he felt weak and faint. Coming upon a coffee-house, he went in and ordered food. The place was full of young clerks at their midday meal. Most of them were reading newspapers which they had folded and propped up on the tables before them, but two who sat near were talking.
“These predictions of the end of the world are a mania, a monomania, which recurs at regular intervals of the world's history,” said one. He was a little man with a turned-up nose.
“But the strange thing is that people go on believing them,” said his companion.
“That's not strange at all. This big, idiotic, amphorous London has no sense of humour. See how industriously it has been engaged for the last month in the noble art of making a fool of itself!” And then he looked around at John Storm, as if proud of his tall language.
John did not listen. He knew that everybody was talking about him, yet the matter did not seem to concern him now, but to belong to some other existence which his soul had had.
At length an idea came to him and he thought he knew what he ought to do. He ought to go to the Brotherhood and ask to be taken back. But not as a son this time, only as a servant, to scour and scrub to the end of his life. There used to be a man to sweep out the church and ring the church bell—he might be allowed to do menial work like that. He had proved false to his ideal, he had not been able to resist the lures of earthly love, but God was merciful. He would not utterly reject him.
His self-abasement was abject, yet several hours had passed before he attempted to carry out this design. It was the time of Evensong when he reached the church, and the brothers were singing their last hymn: