Glory's letter and its inclosure fell on John Storm like rain in the face of a man on horseback—he only whipped up and went faster.
“How can I find words,” he wrote, “to express what I feel at your mournful news? Yet why mournful? His life's mission was fulfilled, his death was a peaceful victory, and we ought to rejoice that he was so easily released. I trust you will not mourn too heavily for him, or allow his death to stop your life. It would not be right. No trouble came near his stainless heart, no shadow of sin; his old age was a peaceful day which lasted until sunset. He was a creature that had no falsetto in a single fibre of his being, no shadow of affectation. He kept like this through all our complicated existence in this artificial world, absolutely unconscious of the hollowness and pretension and sham that surrounded him—tolerant, too, and kind to all. Then why mourn for him? He is gathered in—he is safe.
“His letter was touching in its artful simplicity. It was intended to ask me to apply for his living. But my duty is here, and London must make the best of me. Yet more than ever now I feel my responsibility with regard to yourself. The time is not ripe to advise you. I am on the eve of a great effort. Many things have to be tried, many things attempted. It is a gathering of manna—a little every day. To God's keeping and protection meantime I commit you. Comfort your aunts, and let me know if there is anything that can be done for them.”
The ink of this letter was hardly dry when John Storm was in the middle of something else. He was in a continual fever now. Above all, his great scheme for the rescue and redemption of women and children possessed him. He called it Glory's scheme when he talked of it to himself. It might be in the teeth of nineteenth-century morality, but what matter about that? It was on the lines of Christ's teaching when he forgave the woman and shamed the hypocrites. He would borrow for it, beg for it, and there might be conditions under which he would steal for it too.
Mrs. Callender shook her head.
“I much misdoubt there'll be scandal, laddie. It's a woman's work, I'm thinking.”
“'Be thou as chaste as ice,' auntie, 'as pure as snow' ... but no matter! I intend to call out the full power of a united Church into the warfare against this high wickedness. Talk of the union of Christendom! If we are in earnest about it we'll unite to protect and liberate our women.”
“But where's the siller to come frae, laddie?”
“Anywhere—everywhere! Besides, I have a bank I can always draw on, auntie.”
“You're no meaning the Prime Minister again, surely?”
“I mean the King of Kings. God will provide for me, in this, as in everything.”
Thus his reckless enthusiasm bore down everything, and at the back of all his thoughts was the thought of Glory. He was preparing a way for her; she was coming back to a great career, a glorious mission; her bright soul would shine like a star; she would see that he had been right, and faithful, and then—then——But it was like wine coursing through his veins—he could not think of it.
Three thousand pounds had to be found to buy or build homes with, and he set out to beg for the money. His first call was at Mrs. Macrae's. Going up to the house, he met the lady's poodle in a fawn-coloured wrap coming out in charge of a footman for its daily walk round the square.
He gave the name of “Father Storm,” and after some minutes of waiting he was told that the lady had a headache and was not receiving that day.
“Say the nephew of the Prime Minister wishes to see her,” said John.
Before the footman had returned again there was the gentle rustle of a dress on the stairs, and the lady herself was saying: “Dear Mr. Storm, come up. My servants are real tiresome, they are always confusing names.”
Time had told on her; she was looking elderly, and the wrinkles about her eyes could no longer be smoothed out. But her “front” was curled, and she was still saturated in perfume.
“I heard of your return, dear Mr. Storm,” she said, in the languid voice of the great lady, but the accent of St. Louis, as she led the way to the drawing-room. “My daughter told me about it. She was always interested in your work, you know.... Oh, yes, quite well, and having a real good time in Paris. Of course, you know she has been married. A great loss to me naturally, but being God's will I felt it was my duty as a mother——” and then a pathetic description of her maternal sentiments, consoled by the circumstance that her son-in-law belonged to “one of the best families,” and that she was constantly getting newspapers from “the other side” containing full accounts of the wedding and of the dresses that were worn at it.
John twirled his hat in his hand and listened.
“And what are your dear devoted people doing down there in Soho?”
Then John told of his work for working girls, and the great lady pretended to be deeply interested. “Why, they'll soon be better than the upper classes,” she said.
John thought it was not improbable, but he went on to tell of his scheme, and how small was the sum required for its execution.
“Only three thousand! That ought to be easily fixed up. Why, certainly!”
“Charity is the salt of riches, madam, and if rich people would remember that their wealth is a trust——”
“I do—I always do. 'Lay not up for yourselves treasure on earth'—what a beautiful textthatis!”
“I'm glad to hear you say so, madam. So many Christian people allow that God is the God of the widow and fatherless, while the gods they really worship are the gods of silver and gold.”
“But I love the dear children, and I like to go to the institution to see them in their nice white pinafores making their curtsies. But what you say is real true, Mr. Storm; and since I came from Sent Louis I've seen considerable people who are that silly about cats——” and then a long story of the folly of a lady friend who once had a pet Persian, but it died, and she wore crape for it, and you could never mention a cat in her hearing afterward.
At that moment the poodle came back from its walk, and the lady called it to her, fondled it affectionately, said it was a present from her poor dear husband, and launched into an account of her anxieties respecting it, being delicate and liable to colds, notwithstanding the trousseau (it was a lady poodle) which the fashionable dog tailor in Regent Street had provided for it.
John got up to take his leave. “May I then count on your kind support on behalf of our poor women and children of Soho?”
“Ah, of course, that matter—well, you see the Archdeacon kindly comes to talk 'City' with me—in fact, I'm expecting him to-day—and I never do anything without asking his advice, never, in my present state of health—I have a weak heart, you know,” with her head aside and her saturated pocket-handkerchief at her nose. “But has the Prime Minister done anything?”
“He has advanced me two thousand pounds.”
“Really?” rising and kicking back her train. “Well, as I say, we ought to fix it right away. Why not hold a meeting in my drawing-room? All denominations, you say? I don't mind—not in a cause like that,” and she glanced round her room as if thinking it was always possible to disinfect it afterward.
Somebody was coughing loudly in the hall as John stepped downstairs. It was the Archdeacon coming in. “Ah,” he exclaimed, with a flourish of the hand, greeting John as if they had parted yesterday and on the best of terms. Yes, therehadbeen changes, and he was promoted to a sphere of higher usefulness. True, his good friends had looked for something still higher, but it was the premier archdeaconry at all events, and in the Church, as in life generally, the spirit of compromise ruled everything. He asked what John was doing, and on being told he said, with a somewhat more worldly air, “Be careful, my dear Storm, don't encourage vice. For my part, I am tired of the 'fallen sister.' To tell you the truth, I deny the name. The painted Jezebel of the Piccadilly pavement is no sister of mine.”
“We don't choose our relations, Archdeacon,” said John. “If God is our Father, then all men are our brothers, and all women are our sisters whether we like it or not.”
“Ah! The same man still, I see. But we will not quarrel about words. Seen the dear Prime Minister lately? Notverylately? Ah, well”—with a superior smile—“the air of Downing Street—it's so bad for the memory, they say,” and coughing loudly again, he stepped upstairs.
John Storm went home that day light-handed but with a heavy heart.
“Begging is an ill trade on a fast day, laddie,” said Mrs. Callender. “Sit you down and tak' some dinner.”
“How dare these people pray, 'Our Father which art in heaven?' It's blasphemy! It's deceit!”
“Aye, and they would deceive God about their dividends if he couldn't see into their safes.”
“Their money is the meanest thing Heaven gives them. If I asked them for their health or their happiness, Lord God, what would they say?”
On the Sunday night following John Storm preached to an overflowing congregation from the text, “This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth and honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.”
But a few weeks afterward his face was bright and his voice was cheery, and he was writing another letter to Glory:
“In full swing at last, Glory. To carry out my new idea I had to get three thousand pounds more of my mother's money from my uncle. He gave it up cheerfully, only saying he was curious to see what approach to the Christian ideal the situation of civilization permitted. But Mrs. Callender isdour, and every time I spend sixpence of my own money on the Church she utters withering sarcasms about being only a 'daft auld woman hersel',' and then I have to caress and coax her.
“The newspapers were facetious about my 'Baby Houses' until they scented the Prime Minister at the back of them, and now they call them the 'Storm Shelters,' and christen my nightly processions 'The White-cross Army.' Even the Archdeacon has begun to tell the world how he 'took an interest' in me from the first and gave me my title. I met him again the other day at a rich woman's house, where we had only one little spar, and yesterday he wrote urging me to 'organize my great effort,' and have a public dinner in honour of its inauguration. I did not think God's work could be well done by people dining in herds and drinking bottles of champagne, but I showed no malice. In fact, I agreed to hold a meeting in the lady's drawing-room, to which clergymen, laymen, and members of all denominations are being invited, for this is a cause that rises above all differences of dogma, and I intend to try what can be done toward a union of Christendom on a social basis. Mrs. Callender is dour on that subject too, reminding me that where the carcass is there will the eagles be gathered together. The Archdeacon thinks we must have the meeting before the twelfth of August, or not until after the middle of September, and Mrs. Callender understands this to mean that 'the Holy Ghost always goes to sleep in the grouse season.'
“Meantime my Girls' Club goes like a forest fire. We are in our renovated clergy-house at last, and have everything comfortable. Two hundred members already, chiefly dressmakers and tailors, and girls out of the jam and match factories. The bright, merry young things, rejoicing in their brief blossoming time between girlhood and womanhood. I love to be among them and to look at their glistening eyes! Mrs. Callender blows withering blasts on this head also, saying it is no place for a 'laddie,' whereupon I lie low and think much but say nothing.
“Our great night is Sunday night after service. Yes, indeed, Sunday! That's just when the devil's houses are all open round about us, and why should God's house be shut up? It is all very well for the people who have only one Sabbath in the week to keep it wholly holy—I have seven, being a follower of Jesus, not of Moses. But the rector of the parish has begun to complain of my 'intrusion,' and to tell the Bishop I ought to be 'mended or ended.' It seems that my 'doings' are 'indecent and unnecessary,' and my sermons are 'a violation of all the sanctities, all the modesties of existence.' Poor dumb dog, teaching the Gospel of Don't! The world has never been reformed by 'resignation' to the evils of life, or converted by 'silence' either.
“How I wish you were here, in the midst of it all! And—who knows?—perhaps you will be some day yet. Do not trouble to answer this—I will write again soon, and may then have something practical to say to you.Au revoir!”
On the day of the drawing-room meeting a large company gathered in the hall at Belgrave Square. Lady Robert Ure, back from the honeymoon, received the guests for her mother, whose weak heart and a headache kept her upstairs. Her husband stood aside, chewing the end of his mustache and looking through his eyeglass with a gleam of amused interest in his glittering eye. There were many ladies, all fashionably dressed, and one of them wore a seagull's wing in her hat, with part of the root left visible and painted red to show that it had been torn out of the living bird. The men were nearly all clergymen, and the cut of their cloth and the fashions of their ties indicated the various complexions of their creeds. They glanced at each other with looks of embarrassment, and Mrs. Callender, who came in like a breeze off a Scottish moor, said audibly that she had never seen “sae many craws on one tree before.” The Archdeacon was there with his head up, talking loudly to Lady Robert. She stood motionless in her place, never turning her head toward John Storm, though it was plain that she was looking at him constantly. More than once he caught an expression of pain in her face, and felt pity for her as one of the brides who had acted the lie of marrying without love. But his spirits were high. He welcomed everybody, and even bantered Mrs. Callender when she told him she “objected to the hale thing,” and said, “Weel, weel, wait a wee.”
The Archdeacon gave the signal and led the way with Lady Robert to the drawing-room, where Mrs. Macrae, redolent of perfume, was reclining on a sofa with the “lady poodle” by her side. As soon as the company were seated the Archdeacon rose and coughed loudly.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “we have no assurance of a blessing except 'Ask and ye shall receive.' Therefore, before we go further, it is our duty, as brethren of a common family in Christ, to ask the blessing of Almighty God on this enterprise.”
There was a subdued rustle of drooping hats and bonnets, when suddenly a thin voice was heard to say, “Mr. Archdeacon, may I inquire first who is to ask the blessing?”
“I thought of doing so myself,” said the Archdeacon with a meek smile.
“In that case, as a Unitarian, I must object to an invocation in which I do not believe.”
There was a half-suppressed titter from the wall at the back, where Lord Robert Ure was standing with his face screwed up to his eyeglass.
“Well, if the name of our Lord is a stumbling block to our Unitarian, brother, no doubt the prayer in this instance would be acceptable without the customary Christian benediction.”
“That's just like you,” said a large man near the door, with whiskers all round his face. “You've been trimming all your life, and now you are going to trim away the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
“If our Low-Church brother thinks he can do better——”
But John Storm intervened. He had looked icy cold, though the twitching of his lower lip showed that he was red hot within.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said in a quavering voice, “I apologize for bringing you together. I thought if we were in earnest about the union of Christendom we might at least unite in the real contest with evil. But I find it is a dream; we have only been trifling with ourselves, and there is not one of us who wants the union of Christendom, except on the condition that his rod shall be like Aaron's rod which swallowed up all the rest. It was a mistake, and I beg your pardon.”
“Yes, sir,” said the Archdeacon, “itwasa mistake; and if you had taken my advice from the first, and asked the blessing of God through good High Churchmen alone——”
“God doesn't wait for any asking,” said John, now flushing up to the eyes. “He gives freely to High Churchmen, Low Churchmen, and No Churchmen alike.”
“If that is your opinion, sir, you are no better than some of your friends, and for my part I will never darken your door again!”
“Darkenis a good word for it, Archdeacon,” said John, and with that the company broke up.
Mrs. Macrae looked like a thunder-cloud as John bowed to her on passing out, but Mrs. Callender cried out in a jubilant voice, “Be skipper of your ain ship, laddie!” and added (being two yards behind the Archdeacon's broad back going down the stairs), “If some folks are to be inheritors of the kingdom of heaven there'll be a michty crush at the pearly gates, I'm thinking!”
John Storm went back to Soho with a heavy heart. Going up Victoria Street he passed a crowd of ragged people who were ploughing their way through the carriages. Two constables were taking a man and woman to the police court in Rochester Row. The prisoners were Sharkey, the keeper of the gambling house, and his wife the baby-farmer.
But within a week John Storm, in greater spirits than ever, was writing to Glory again:
“The Archdeacon has deserted me, but no matter! My uncle has advanced me another thousand of my mother's money, so the crusade isself-supporting in one sense at all events. What a fool I am! Ask Aunt Anna her opinion of me, or say old Chalse or the village natural—but never mind! Folly and wisdom are relative terms, and I don't envy the world its narrow ideas of either. You would be amused to see how the women of the West End are taking up the movement—Lady Robert Ure among the rest! They have banded themselves into a Sisterhood, and christened our clergy-house a 'Settlement.' One of my Greek owners came in the other evening to see the alterations. His eyes glistened at the change, and he asked leave to bring a friend. I trust you are well and settling things comfortably, and that Miss Macquarrie has gone. It is raining through a colander here, but I have no time to think of depressing weather. Sometimes when I cross our great squares, where the birds sing among the yellowing leaves, my mind goes off to your sweet home in the sunshine; and when I drop into the dark alleys and lanes, where the pale-faced children play in their poverty and rags, I think of a day that is coming, and, God willing, is now so near, when a ministering angel of tenderness and strength will be passing through them like a gleam. But I am more than ever sure that you do well to avoid for the present the pompous joys of life in London, where for one happy being there are a thousand pretenders to happiness.”
On the Sunday night following, Crook Lane, outside the clergy-house, was almost blocked with noisy people of both sexes. They were a detachment of the “Skeletons,” and the talk among them was of the trial of the Sharkeys, which had taken place the day before. “They've 'ed six menths,” said one. “And it's all along o' minjee parsons,” said another; and Charlie Wilkes, who had a certain reputation for humour, did a step-dance and sang some doggerel beginning—
Father Storm is a werry good man,'E does you all the 'arm 'e can.
Through this crowd two gentlemen pushed their way to the clergy-house, which was brilliantly lit up. One of them was the Greek owner, the other was Lord Robert Ure. Entering a large room on the ground floor, they first came upon John Storm, in cassock and biretta, standing at the door and shaking hands with everybody who came in and went out. He betrayed no surprise, but greeted them respectfully and then passed them on. Every moment of his time was occupied. The room was full of the young girls of the district, with here and there a Sister out of another world entirely. Some were reading, some conversing, some laughing, some playing a piano, and some singing. Their voices filled the air like the chirping of birds, and their faces were bright and happy. “Good-evening, Father,” they said on entering, and “Good-night, Father,” as they went away.
The two men stood some minutes and looked round the room. It was observed that Lord Robert did not remove his hat. He kept chewing the end of a broken cigarette, whereof the other end hung down his chin. One of the Sisters heard him say, “It will do with a little alteration, I think.” Then he went off alone, and the Greek owner stepped up to John Storm.
It was not at first that John could attend to him, and when he was able to do so he began to rattle on about his own affairs. “See,” he said with a delighted smile and a wave of the arm, “see how crowded we are! We'll have to think of taking in the next door soon.”
“Father Storm,” said the Greek, “I have something serious to say, though the official notification will of course reach you by another channel.”
John's face darkened as a ripe cornfield does when the sun dies away from it.
“I am sorry to tell you that the trustees, having had a favourable offer for this property——”
“Well?” His great staring eyes had stopped the man.
“——have decided to sell.”
“Sell? Did you say se——? To whom? What?”
“To tell you the truth, to the syndicate of a music hall.”
John staggered back, breathing audibly. “Now if a man had to believe that—Do you know if I thought such a thingcouldhappen——”
“I'm sorry you take the matter so seriously, Father Storm. It's true you've spent money on the property, but, believe me, the trustees will derive no profit——”
“Profit? Money? Do you suppose I'm thinking of that, and not of the desecration, the outrage, the horror? But who are they? Is that man—Lord——”
The Greek had nodded his head, and John flung open the door. “Out of this! Out of it, you Judas!” And almost before the Greek had crossed the threshold the door was banged at his back.
The incident had been observed, and there was dead silence in the club-room, but John only cried, “Let's sing something, girls,” and when a Sister struck up his favourite Nazareth there was no voice so loud as his.
But he had realized everything. “Gloria” was coming back, and the work of months was overthrown!
When he was going home groups of the girls were talking in whispers in the hall, and Mrs. Pincher, who was wiping her eyes at the door, said, “I wonder you don't drown yourself—I do!”
At the corner of the lane Mr. Jupe was waiting for him to beg his pardon and to ask his advice. What he had said of Mrs. Jupe had turned out to be true. The Sharkeys had “split” on her and she had been arrested. “It was all in the evenin' pipers last night,” the weak creature whimpered, “and to-day my manager told me I 'ad best look out for another place. Oh, my poor Lidjer! What am I to do?”
“Do? Cut her off like a rotten bough!” said John scornfully, and with that he strode down the street. The human sea roared around him, and he felt as if he wanted to fling himself into the midst of it and be swallowed up.
On reaching Victoria Square he told Mrs. Callender the news—flung it out at her with a sort of triumphant shout. His church had been sold over his head, and being only “Chaplain to the Greek-Turks,” he was to be turned into the streets. Then he laughed wildly, and by some devilish impulse began to abuse Glory. “The next chaplain is to be a girl,” he cried, “one of those creatures who throw kisses at gaping crowds and sweep curtsies for their dirty crusts.”
But all at once he turned white as a ghost and sat down trembling. Mrs. Callender's face was twitching, and to prevent herself from crying she burst into scorching satire. “There!” she said, sitting in her rocking-chair and rocking herself furiously, “I ken'd weel what it would come til! Adversity mak's a man wise, they say, if it doesna mak' him rich. But it's the Prime Minister I blame for this. The auld dolt! he must be fallen to his dotage. It's enough to mak' a reasonable body go out of her mind to think of sic wise asses. I told you what to expect, but you were always miscalling me for a suspicious auld woman. Oh, it's a thing ye'd no suspect; but Jane Callender is only a daft auld fool, ye see, and doesna ken what she's saying!”
But at the next moment she had jumped up and flung her arms about John's neck, and was crying over him like a girl. “Oh, my son! my ain son! And is it for me to fling out at ye? Aye, aye, it's a heartless world, laddie!”
He kissed the old woman, and then she tried to coax him to eat. “Come, come, a wee bittie, just a wee bittie. We must eat our supper anyway.”
“God seems dead and heaven a long way off!” he murmured.
“And a drap o' whisky will do no harm—a wee drappie.”
“There's only one thing clear—God sees I'm unfit for the work, so he has taken it away from me.”
She turned aside from the table, and the supper was left untouched.
The first post next morning brought a letter from Glory.
“The Garden House,
“Clement's Inn, W. C.
“Forgive me! I have returned to town! I couldn't help it, I couldn't, I couldn't! London dragged me back. What was I to do after everything was settled and the aunties provided for?—assist in a dame's school and wage war with pothooks and hangers? Oh! I was dying of weariness—dying, dying, dying!
“And then they made me such tempting offers. Not the music hall—don't think that. I dare say you were quite right there. No, but the theatre, the regular theatre! Mr. Drake has bought some broken-down old place, and is to turn it into a beautiful theatre expressly for me. I am to play Juliet. Only think—Juliet!—and in my own theatre! Already I feel like a liberated slave who has crossed her Red Sea.
“And don't think a woman's mourning is like the silly old laws which lasted but three days.Heis buried in my heart, not in the earth, and I shall love him and revere him always! And then didn't you tell me yourself it would not be right to allow his death to stop my life?
“Write and say you forgive me, John. Reply by return, and make yourself your own postman—registered. You'll find me here at Rosa's. Come, come, come! I'll never forgive you if you don't come soon—never, never!
“Glory.”
A fortnight had passed, and John Storm had not yet visited Glory. Nevertheless, he had heard of her from day to day through the medium of the newspapers. Every morning he had glanced down the black columns for the name that stood out from them as if its letters had been printed in blood. The reports had been many and mysterious. First, the brilliant young artiste, who had made such an extraordinary impression some months before, had returned to London and would shortly resume the promising career which had been interrupted by illness and family bereavement. Next, the forthcoming appearance would be on the regular stage, and in a Shakespearian character, which was always understood to be a crucial test of histrionic genius. Then, the revival of Romeo and Juliet, which had formerly been in contemplation, would probably give way to the still more ambitious project of an entirely new production by a well-known Scandinavian author, with a part peculiarly fitted to the personality and talents of thedébutante. Finally, a syndicate was about to be formed for the purchase of some old property, with a view to its reconstruction as a theatre, in the interests of the new play and the new player.
John Storm laughed bitterly. He told himself that Glory was unworthy of the least of his thoughts. It was his duty to go on with his work and think of her no more.
He had received his official notice to quit. The church was to be given up in a month, the clergy-house in two months, and he believed himself to be immersed in preparations for the rehousing of the club and home. Twenty young mothers and their children now lived in the upper rooms, under obedience to the Sisterhood, but Polly's boy had remained with Mrs. Pincher. From time to time he had seen the little one tethered to a chair by a scarf about its waist, creeping by the wall to the door, and there gazing out on the world with looks of intelligence, and babbling to it in various inarticulate noises. “Boo-loo! Lal-la! Mum-um!” The little dark face had the eyes of its mother, but it represented Glory for all that. John Storm loved to see it. He felt that he could never part with it, and that if Lord Robert Ure himself came and asked for it he would bundle him out of doors.
But a carriage drew up at Mrs. Callender's one morning, and Lady Robert Ure stepped out. Her pale and patient face had the feeble and nervous smile of the humiliated and unloved.
“Mr. Storm,” she said in her gentle voice, “I have come on a delicate errand. I can not delay any longer a duty I ought to have discharged before.”
It was about Polly's baby. She had heard of what had happened at the hospital; and the newspapers which had followed her to Paris, with reports of her wedding, had contained reports of the girl's death also. Since her return she had inquired about the child, and discovered that it had been rescued by him and was now in careful keeping.
“But it is for me to look after it, Mr. Storm, and I beg of you to give it up to me. Something tells me that God will never give me children of my own, so I shall be doing no harm to any one, and my husband need never know whose child it is I adopt. I promise you to be good to it. It shall never leave me. And if it should live to be a man, and grow to love me, that will help me to forget the past and to forgive myself for my own share in it. Oh, it is little I can do for the poor girl who is gone—for, after all, she loved him and I took him from her. But this is my duty, Mr. Storm, and I can not sleep at night or rest in the day until it is begun.”
“I don't know if it is your duty, dear lady, but if you wish for the child it is your right,” said John Storm, and they got into the carriage and drove to Soho.
“Boo-loo! Lal-la! Mum-um!” The child was tethered to the chair as usual and talking to the world according to its wont. When it was gone and the women on the doorsteps could see no more of the fine carriage of the great lady who had brought the odour of perfume and the rustle of silk into the dingy court, and Mrs. Pincher had turned back to the house with red eyes and her widow's cap awry, John Storm told himself that everything was for the best. The last link with Glory was broken! Thank God for that! He might go on with his work now and need think of her no more!
That day he called at Clement's Inn.
The Garden House was a pleasant dwelling, fronting on two of its sides to the garden of the ancient Inn of Chancery, and cosily furnished with many curtains and rugs. The Cockney maid who answered the door was familiar in a moment, and during the short passage from the hall to the floor above she communicated many things. Her name was Liza; she had heard him preach; he had made her cry; “Miss Gloria” had known her former mistress, and Mr. Drake had got her the present place.
There was a sound of laughter from the drawing-room. It was Glory's voice. When the door opened she was standing in the middle of the floor in a black dress and with a pale face, but her eyes were bright and she was laughing merrily. She stopped when John Storm entered and looked confused and ashamed. Drake, who was lounging on the couch, rose and bowed to him, and Miss Macquarrie, who was correcting long slips of printer's proofs at a desk by the window, came forward and welcomed him. Glory held his hand with her long hand-clasp and looked steadfastly into his eyes. His face twitched and her own blushed deeply, and then she talked in a nervous and jerky way, reproaching him for his neglect of her.
“I have been busy,” he began, and then stopped with a sense of hypocrisy. “I mean worried and tormented,” and then stopped again, for Drake had dropped his head.
She laughed, though there was nothing to laugh at, and proposed tea, rattling along in broken sentences that were spoken with a tremulous trill, which had a suggestion of tears behind it. “Shall I ring for tea, Rosa? Oh, youhaverung for tea! Ah, here it comes!—Thank you, Liza. Set it here,” seating herself. “Now who says the 'girl'? Remember?” and then more laughter.
At that moment there was another arrival. It was Lord Robert Ure. He kissed Rosa's hand, smiled on Glory, saluted Drake familiarly, and then settled himself on a low stool by the tea-table, pulled up the knees of his trousers, relaxed the congested muscles of one half of his face, and let fall his eyeglass.
Drake was handing out the cups as Glory filled them. He was looking at her attentively, vexed at the change in her manner since John Storm entered. When he returned to his seat on the sofa he began to twitch the ear of her pug, which lay coiled up asleep beside him, calling it an ugly little pestilence, and wondering why she carried it about with her. Glory protested that it was an angel of a dog, whereupon he supposed it was now dreaming of paradise—listen!—and then there were audible snores in the silence, and everybody laughed, and Glory screamed.
“I declare, on my honour, my dear,” said Drake with a mischievous look at John, “the creature is uglier than the beast that did the business on the day we eloped.”
“Eloped!” cried Rosa and Lord Robert together.
“Why, did you never hear that Glory eloped with me?”
Glory was trying to drown his voice with hollow laughter.
“She was seven and I was six and a half, and she had proposed to me in the orchard the day before!”
“Anybody have more tea? No? Some sally-lunn, perhaps?” and then more laughter.
“Hold your tongue, Glory! Nobody wants your tea! Let us hear the story,” said Rosa.
“Why, yes, certainly,” said Lord Robert, and everybody laughed again.
“She was all for travel and triumphal processions in those days——”
Glory stopped her ears and began to sing:
Willy, Willy Wilkin,Kissed the maid a-milkin'!Fa, la la!
“There were so many things people could do if they wouldn't waste so much time working——”
Willy, Willy WilkinKissed the maid——
“Glory, if you don't be quiet we'll turn you out!” and Rosa got up and nourished her proofs.
“I had brought my dog, and when I called her a——”
But Glory had leaped to her feet and fled from the room. Drake had leaped up also, and now, putting his back against the door, he raised his voice and went on with his story.
“Somebody saved us, though, and she lay in his arms and kissed him all the way home again.”
Glory was strumming on the door and singing to drown his voice. When the story was ended and she was allowed to come back she was panting and gasping with laughter, but there were tears in her eyes for all that, and Lord Robert was saying, with a sidelong look toward John Storm, “Really, this ought to be a scene in the new Sigurdsen, don't you know!”
John had retired within himself during this nonsense. He had been feeling an intense hatred of the two men, and was looking as gloomy as deep water. “All acting, sheer acting,” he thought, and then he told himself that Glory was only worthy of his contempt. What could attract her in the society of such men? Only their wealth, and their social station. Their intellectual and moral atmosphere must weary and revolt her.
Rosa had to go to her newspaper office, and Drake saw her to the door. John rose at the same time, and Glory said, “Going already?” but she did not try to detain him. She would see him again; she had much to say to him. “I suppose you were surprised to hear that I had returned to London?” she said, looking up at his knitted brows.
He did not answer immediately, and Lord Robert, who was leaning against the chimney-piece, said in his cold drawl, “Your friend ought to be happy that you have returned to London, seems to me, my dear, instead of wasting your life in that wilderness.”
John drew himself up. “It's not London I object to,” he said; “that was inevitable, I dare say.”
“What then?”
“The profession she has come back to follow.”
“Why, what's amiss with the profession?” said Lord Robert, and Drake, who returned to the room at the moment, said: “Yes, what's amiss with it? Some of the best men in the world have belonged to it, I think.”
“Tell me the name of one of them, since the world began, who ever lived an active Christian life.”
Lord Robert made a kink of laughter, and, turning to the window, began to play a tune with his finger tips on the glass of a pane. Drake struggled to keep a straight face, and answered, “It is not their rôle, sir.”
“Very well, if that's too much to ask, tell me how many of them have done anything in real life, anything for the world, for humanity—anything whatever, I don't care what it is.”
“You are unreasonable, sir,” said Drake, “and such objections could as properly apply to the professions of the painter and the musician. These are the children of joy. Their first function is to amuse. And surely amusement has its place in real life, as you say.”
“On the contrary,” said John, following his own thought, for he had not listened, “how many of them have lived lives of reckless abandonment, self-indulgence, and even scandalous license!”
“Those are abuses that apply equally to other professions, sir. Even the Church is not free from them. But in the view of reasonable beings one clergyman of evil life—nay, one hundred—would not make the profession of the clergy bad.”
“A profession,” said John, “which appeals above all to the senses, and lives on the emotions, and fosters jealousy and vanity and backbiting, and develops duplicity, and exists on lies, and does nothing to encourage self-sacrifice or to help suffering humanity, is a bad profession and a sinful one!”
“If a profession is sinful,” said Drake, “in proportion as it appeals to the senses, and lives on the emotions, and develops duplicity, then the profession of the Church is the most sinful in the world, for it offers the greatest temptations to lying, and produces the worst hypocrites and impostors!”
“That,” said John, with eyes flashing and passion vibrating in his voice—“that, sir, is the great Liar's everlasting lie—and you know it!”
Glory was between them with uplifted hands. “Peace, peace! Blessed is the peacemaker! But tea! Will nobody take more tea? Oh, dear! oh, dear! Why can't we have tea over again?”
“I know what you mean, sir,” said Drake. “You mean that I have brought Glory back to a life of danger and vanity, and sloth and sensuality. Very well. I deny your definition. But call it what you will, I have brought her back to the only life her talents are fit for, and if that's all——”
“Would you have done the same for your own sister?”
“How dare you introduce my sister's name in this connection?”
“And how dare you resent it? What's good for one woman is good for another.”
Glory was turning aside, and Drake was looking ashamed. “Of course—naturally—all I meant,” he faltered—“if a girl has to earn her living, whatever her talents, her genius—that is one thing. But the upper classes, I mean the leisured classes——”
“Damn the leisured classes, sir!” said John, and in the silence that followed the men looked round, but Glory was gone from the room.
Lord Robert, who had been whistling at the window, said to Drake in a cynical undertone: “The man is hipped and sore. He has lost his challenge, and we ought to make allowances for him, don't you know.”
Drake tried to laugh. “I'm willing to make allowances,” he said lightly; “but when a man talks to me as if—as if I meant to——” but the light tone broke down, and he faced round upon John and burst out passionately: “What right have you to talk to me like this? What is there in my character, in my life, that justifies it? What woman's honour have I betrayed? What have I done that is unworthy of the character of an English gentleman?”
John took a stride forward and came face to face and eye to eye with him. “What have you done?” he said. “You have used a woman as your decoy to win your challenge, as you say, and you have struck me in the face with the hand of the woman I love! That's what you've done, sir, and if it's worthy of the character of an English gentleman, then God help England!”
Drake put his hand to his head and his flushed face turned pale. But Lord Robert Ure stepped forward and said with a smile: “Well, and if you've lost your church so much the better. You are only an outsider in the ecclesiastical stud anyway. Who wants you? Your rector doesn't want you; your Bishop doesn't want you. Nobody wants you, if you ask me.”
“I don't ask you, Lord Robert,” said John. “But there's somebody who does want me for all that. Shall I tell you who it is? It's the poor and helpless girl who has been deceived by the base and selfish man, and then left to fight the battle of life alone, or to die by suicide and go shuddering down to hell! That's who wants me, and, God willing, I mean to stand by her.”
“Damme, sir, if you meanme, let me tell you whatyouare,” said Lord Robert, screwing up his eyeglass. “You”—shaking his head right and left—“you are a man who takes delicately nurtured ladies out of sheltered homes and sends them into holes and hovels in search of abandoned women and their misbegotten children! Why”—turning to Drake-“what do you think has happened? My wife has fallen under this gentleman's influence—the poor simpleton!—and not one hour before I left my house she brought home a child which he had given her to adopt. Think of it!—out of the shambles of Soho, and God knows whose brat and bastard!”
The words were hardly out of the man's mouth when John Storm had taken him by both shoulders. “Goddoesknow,” he said, “and so do I! Shall I tell you whose child that is? Shall I? It's yours!” The man saw it coming and turned white as a ghost. “Yours! and your wife has taken up the burden of your sin and shame, for she's a good woman, and you are not fit to live on the earth she walks upon!”
He left the two men speechless and went heavily down the stairs. Glory was waiting for him at the door. Her eyes were glistening after recent tears.
“You will come no more?” she said. She could read him like a book. “I can see that you intend to come no more.”
He did not deny it, and after a moment she opened the door and he passed out with a look of utter weariness. Then she went back to her room and flung herself on the bed, face downward.
The men in the drawing-room were beginning to recover themselves. Lord Robert was humming a tune, Drake pacing to and fro.
“Buying up his church to make a theatre for Glory was the very refinement of cruelty!” said Drake. “Good heavens! what possessed me?”
“Original sin, dear boy!” said Lord Robert, with a curl of the lip.
“Original? A bad plagiarism, you mean!”
“Very well. IfIhelped you to do it, shall I help you to give it up? Withdraw the prospectus and return the deposits on shares—the dear Archdeacon's among the rest.”
Drake took up his hat and left the house. Lord Robert followed him presently. Then the drawing-room was empty, and the hollow sound of sobbing came down to it from the bedroom above.
Father Storm read prayers in church that night with a hard and absent heart. A terrible impulse of hate had taken hold of him. He hated Drake, he hated Glory, he hated himself most of all, and felt as if seven devils had taken possession of him, and he was a hypocrite, and might fall dead at the altar.
“But what a fate the Almighty has saved me from!” he thought. Glory would have been a drag on his work for life. He must forget her. She was only worthy of his contempt. Yet he could not help but remember how beautiful she had looked in her mourning dress, with that pure pale face and its signs of suffering! Or how charming she had seemed to him even in the midst of all that deception! Or how she had held him as by a spell!
Going home he came upon a group of men in the Court. One of them planted himself full in front and said with an insolent swagger: “Me and my mytes thinks there's too many parsons abart 'ere. What do you think, sir?”
“I think there are more gamblers and thieves, my lad,” he answered, and at the next instant the man had struck him in the face. He closed with the ruffian, grappled him by the throat, and flung him on his back. One moment he held him there, writhing and gasping, then he said, “Get up, and get off, and let me see no more of you!”
“No, sir, not this time,” said a voice above his back. The crowd had melted away and a policeman stood beside them. “I've been waiting for this one for weeks, Father,” he said, and he marched the man to jail.
It was Charlie Wilkes. At the trial of Mrs. Jupe that morning, Aggie, being a witness, had been required to mention his name. It was all in the evening papers, and he had been dismissed from his time-keeping at the foundry.