Always at half-past five in the morning the Father Superior began to awaken the Brotherhood. It took him a quarter of an hour to pass through the house on that errand, for the infirmities of his years were upon him. During this interval John Storm had intended to open the gate to Paul and then return the key to its place in the Father's room. The time was short, and to lose no part of it he had resolved to remain awake the whole night through.
There was little need to make a call on that resolution. With fear and remorse he could not close his eyes, and from hour to hour he heard every sound of the streets. At one o'clock, the voices singing outside were strained and cracked and out of tune; at two, they were brutish and drunken and mingled with shrieks of quarrelling; at three, there was silence; at four, the butchers' wagons were rattling on the stones from the shambles across the river to the meat markets of London, with the carcasses of the thousands of beasts that were slaughtered overnight to feed the body of the mammoth on the morrow; and at five, the postal vans were galloping from the railway stations to the post-office with the millions of letters that were to feed its mind.
At half-past five the Father had come out of his room and passed slowly upstairs, and John Storm was in the courtyard opening the lock of the outer gate. Although there was a feeling of morning in the freezing air it was still quite dark.
“Paul,” he whispered, but there was no answer.
“Brother Paul!” he whispered again, and then waited, but there was no reply.
It was not at first that he realized the tremendous gravity of what had occurred—that Brother Paul had not returned, and that he must go back to the house without him. He kept calling into the darkness until he remembered that the Father would be down in his room again soon and looking for the key where he had left it.
Back in the hall, he reproached himself with his haste, and concluded to return to the gate. There would be time to do it; the Father was still far overhead; his “Benedicamus Domino” was passing from corridor to corridor; and Paul might be coming down the street.
“Paul! Paul!” he cried again, and opening the gate he looked out. But there was no one on the pavement except a drunken man and a girl, singing themselves home in the dead waste of the New Year's morning.
Then the truth fell on him like a thundercloud, and he hurried back to the house for good. By this time the Father was coming down the stairs, and had reached the landing of the first story. Snatching up from the bed in the alcove the book which had been lying there all night unregarded, he crept into the Father's room. He was coming out of it when he came face to face with the Father himself, who was on the point of going in.
“I have been returning the book you lent me,” he said, and then he tried to steal away in his shame. But the Father held him a while in playful remonstrance. The hours were not all saved that were stolen from the night, and his swelled eyes this morning were a testimony to the musty old maxim. Still, with a book like that, his diligence was not to be wondered at, and it would be interesting to hear what he thought of it. He couldn't say as yet. That wasn't to be wondered at either. Somebody had said that a great book was like a great mountain—not to be seen to the top while you were still too near to it.
John's duplicity was choking him. His eyes were averted from the Father's face, for he had lost the power of looking straight at any one, and he could see the key of the gate still shaking from the hook on which his nervous fingers had placed it. When he escaped at length, the Father asked him to ring the bell for Lauds, as Brother Andrew, whose duty it was, had evidently overslept himself.
John rang the bell, and then took his lamp and some tapers from a shelf in the hall and went out to the church to light the candles, for that also was Brother Andrew's duty. As he was crossing the courtyard on his way back to the house, he passed the Father going to open the gate.
“But what has become of your hat?” said the Father, and then, for the first time, John remembered what he had done with it.
“I've lent—that is to say, I've lost it,” he answered, and then stood with his eyes on the ground while the Father reproved him for heedlessness of health, and so forth.
It is part of the perversity of circumstance that while an incident of the greatest gravity is occurring, its ridiculous counterpart is usually taking place by the side of it. When the religious had gathered in the church it was seen that three of the stalls were vacant—Brother Paul's, Brother Andrew's, and the Father Minister's. The service had hardly begun when the bell was heard to ring again, and with a louder clangour than before, whereupon the religious concluded that Brother Andrew had awakened from his sleep, and was remembering with remorse his belated duty.
But it was the Father Minister. That silent and severe person had oftentimes rebuked the lay brother for his sleepiness, and this morning he had himself been overcome by the same infirmity. Awakening suddenly a little after six by the watch that hung by his bed, he had thought, “That lazy fellow is late again—I'll teach him a lesson.” Leaping to his feet (the monk sleeps in his habit), he had hastened to the bell and rung it furiously, and then snatched up a taper and hurried down the stairs to light the candles in the church. When he appeared at the sacristy door with a lighted taper in his hand and confusion on his face, the brothers understood everything at a glance, and not even the solemnity of the service could smother the snufflings of their laughter.
The incident was a trivial one, but it diverted attention for a time from the fact of Paul's absence, and when the religious went back to the house and found Brother Andrew returned to his old duty as doorkeeper, the laughter was renewed, and there was some playful banter.
The monk is so far a child that the least thing happening in the morning is enough to determine the temper of the day, and as late as the hour for breakfast the house was still rippling with the humour of the Father Minister's misadventure. There was one seat vacant in the refectory—Brother Paul's—and the Superior was the first to observe it. With a twinkle in his eye, he said:
“I feel like Boy Blue this morning. Two of my stray sheep have come home, bringing their tails behind them. Will anybody go in search of the third?”
John Storm rose immediately, but a lay brother was before him, so he sat down again with his white cheeks and quivering lips, and made an effort to eat his breakfast.
The reader for the week recited the Scripture for the day, and then took up the book which the brothers were hearing at their meals. It was the Life and Death of Father Ignatius of St. Paul, and the chapter they had come to dealt with certain amusing examples of vanities and foibles. An evil spirit might have selected it with special reference to the incidents of the morning, for at every fresh illustration the Father Minister squirmed on his seat, and the brothers looked across at him and laughed with a spice of mischief, and even a touch of malice.
John's eyes were on the door, and his heart was quivering, but the messenger did not return during breakfast, and when it was over the Superior rose without waiting for him and led the way to the community room.
A fire was burning in the wide grate, and the room was cheerful with reflected sun-rays, for the sun was shining in the courtyard and glistening on the frosty boughs of the sycamore. It was a beautiful New Year's morning, and the Father began to tell some timely stories. In the midst of the laughter that greeted them the lay brother returned and delivered his message. Brother Paul could not be found, and there was not a sign of him anywhere in the house.
“That's strange,” said the religious.
“Perhaps he is in his cell,” said the Father.
“No, he is not there,” said the messenger, “and his bed has not been slept in.”
“Now, that explains something,” said the Father. “I thought he didn't answer when I knocked at his door in the morning, but my ears grow dull and my eyes are failing me, and I told myself perhaps——”
“It's very strange'” said the religious, with looks of astonishment.
“But perhaps he staid all night at his penance in the church,” said the Father.
“Apparently his hat did so at all events,” said one of the brothers. “I saw it lying with his lamp on the stall in front of me.”
There was silence for a moment, and then the Father said with a smile:
“But my children are so amusing in such matters! Only this morning I had to reprove Brother Storm for losing his hat somewhere, and now Brother Paul——”
By an involuntary impulse, obscure to themselves, the brothers turned toward John, who was standing in the recess of one of the windows with his pale face looking out on the sunshine.
John was the first to speak.
“Father,” he said, “I have something to say to you.”
“Come this way,” said the Superior, and they passed out of the room together.
The Father led the way to his room and closed the door behind them. But there was little need for confession; the Father seemed to know everything in an instant. He sat in his wicker chair before the fire and rocked himself and moaned.
“Well, well, God's wrath comes up against the children of disobedience, but we must do our best to bear our punishment.”
John Storm made no excuses. He had stood by the Father's chair and told his story simply, without fear or remorse, only concealing that part of it which concerned himself in relation to Glory.
“Yes, yes,” said the Father, “I see quite plainly how it has been. He was like tinder, ready to take fire at a spark, and you were thinking I had been hard and cruel and in-human.”
It was the truth; John could not deny it; he held down his head and was silent.
“But shall I tell you why I refused that poor boy's petition? Shall I tell you who he was, and how he came to be here? Yes, I will tell you. Nobody in this house has heard it until now, because it was his secret and mine and God's alone—not given me in confession, no, or it would have to be locked in my breast forever. But you have thrust yourself in between us, so you must hear everything, and may the Lord pity and forgive you and help you to bear your burden!”
John felt that a cold damp was breaking out on his forehead, but he clinched his moist hands and made ready to control himself.
“Has he ever spoken of another sister?”
“Yes, he has sometimes mentioned her.”
“Then perhaps you have been told of the painful and tragic event that happened?”
“No,” said John, but something that he had heard at the board meeting at the hospital returned at that moment with a stunning force to his memory.
“His father, poor man, was one of my own people—one of the lay associates of our society in the world outside. But his health gave way, his business failed him, and he died in a madhouse, leaving his three children to the care of a friend. The friend was thought to be a worthy, and even a pious man, but he was a scoundrel and a traitor. The younger sister—the one you know—he committed to an orphanage; the elder one he deceived and ruined. As a sequel to his sin, she lived a life of shame on the streets of London, and died by suicide at the end of it.”
John Storm put up one hand to his head as if his brain was bursting, and with the other hand he held on to the Father's chair.
“That was bad enough, but there was worse to follow. Our poor Paul had grown to be a man by this time, and Satan put it into his heart to avenge his sister's dishonour. 'As the whirlwind passeth, so the wicked are no more.' The betrayer of his trust was found dead in his room, slain by an unknown assassin. Brother Paul had killed him.”
John Storm had fallen to his knees. If hell itself had opened at his feet he could not have been stricken with more horror. In a voice strangled by fear he stammered: “But why didn't you tell me this before? Why have you hidden it until now?”
“Passions, my son, are the same in a monastery as outside of it, and I had too much reason to fear that the saintliest soul in our Brotherhood would have refused to live and eat and sleep in the same house with a murderer. But the poor soul had come to me like a hunted beast, and who was I that I should turn my back upon him? Before that he had tramped through the streets and slept in the parks, under the impression that the police were pursuing him, and thereby he had contracted the lung disease from which he suffers still. What was I to do? Give him up to the law? Who shall tell me how I could have held the balance level? I took him into my house; I sheltered him; I made him a member of our community; Heaven forgive me, I suffered myself to receive his vows. It was for me to comfort his stricken body, for the Church to heal his wounded soul; and as for his crime, that was in God's hands, and God alone could deal with it.”
The Father had risen to his feet, and he spoke the last words with uplifted hand.
“Now you know why I refused that poor boy's petition. I loved him as a son, but neither the disease of his body nor the weakness of his mind could break the firmness of the rule by which I held him. I knew that Satan was dragging him away from me, and I would not give him up to the sufferings and dangers which the Evil One was preparing for him in the world. But how subtle are the temptations of the devil! He found the weak place in my armour at last. He found you, my son—you; and he tempted you by all your love, by all your pity, by all your tenderness, and you fell, and this is the consequence.”
The Father clasped his hands at his breast and walked to and fro in the little room.
“The bitterness of the world against religious houses is great already; but if anything should happen now, if a crime should be committed, if our poor brother, clad in the habit of our Order——”
He stopped and crossed himself and lifted His eyes, and said in a tremulous whisper: “O God, whom have I in heaven but thee? My flesh and my heart faileth; but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”
John had staggered to his feet like a drunken man. “Father,” he said, “send me away from you. I am not fit to live by your side.”
The Father laid both hands on his shoulders. “And shall I lower my flag to the enemy like that? There is only one way to defeat the devil, and that is to defy him. No, no, my son, you shall remain with me to the last.”
“Punish me, then. Give me penance. Let me be the lowest of the low and the meanest of the mean. Only tell me what I am to do and I will do it.”
“Go back to the door and resume your duty as doorkeeper.”
John looked at the Father with an expression of bewilderment.
“I thought you had done with it, my son, but Heaven knew better. And promise that when you are there you will pray for our wandering brother, that he may not be allowed to fulfil the errand on which you sent him out; pray that he may never find his sister, or anybody who knows her and can tell him where she is and what has become of her; pray that she may never cross his path to the last hour of life and the first of death's sundering; promise to pray for this, my son, night and day, morning and evening, with all your soul and strength, as you would pray for God's mercy and your soul's salvation.”
John did not answer; he was like a man in a stupor. “Is it possible?” he said. “Are you sending me back to the door? Can you trust me again?”
The Father stepped to the side of the bed and took the key of the gate from its place under the shelf. “Take this key with you, too, because for the future you are to be the keeper of the gate as well.”
John had taken the key mechanically, hardly hearing what was being said.
“Is it true, then—have you got faith in me still?”
The Father put both hands on his shoulders again and looked into his face. “God has faith in you, my child, and who am I that I should despair?”
When John Storm returned to the door his mind was in a state of stupefaction. Many hours passed during which he was only partly conscious of what was taking place about him. Sometimes he was aware that certain of the brothers had gathered around, with a tingling, electrical atmosphere among them, and that they were asking questions about the escape, and whispering together as if it had been something courageous and almost commendable, and had set their hearts beating. Again, sometimes he was aware that big Brother Andrew was sitting by his side on the form, stroking his arm from time to time, and talking in his low voice and aimless way about his mother and the last he saw of her. “She followed me down the street crying,” he said, “and I have often thought of it since and been tempted to run away.” Also he was aware that the dog was with him always, licking the backs of his stiff hands and poking up a cold snout into his downcast face.
All this time he was doing his duties automatically and apparently without help from his consciousness, opening and closing the door as the brothers passed in and out on their errands to the dead and dying, and saying, “Praise be to God!” when a stranger knocked. It may be that his body was merely answering to the habits of its intellect, and that his soul, which had sustained a terrible blow, was lying stunned and swooning within.
When it revived and he began to know and to feel once more, there was no one with him, for the brothers were asleep in their beds and the dog was in the courtyard, and the house was very quiet, for it was the middle of the night. And then it came back to him, like a dream remembered in the morning, that the Father had asked him to pray for Brother Paul that he might fail in the errand on which he had sent him out into the world, and though with his lips he had not promised, yet in his heart he had undertaken to do so.
And being quite alone now, with no one but God for company, he went down on his knees in his place by the door and clasped his hands together.
“O God,” he prayed, “have pity on Paul, and on me, and on all of us! Keep him from all danger and suffering and from the snares and assaults of the Evil One! Grant that he may never find his sister—or anybody who knows her—or anybody who can tell him where she is and what has become of her——”
But having got so far he could get no farther, for suddenly it occurred to him that this was a prayer which concerned Glory and himself as well. It was only then that he realized the magnitude and awfulness of the task he had undertaken. He had undertaken to ask God that Paul might not find Glory either, and therefore that he on his part might never hear of her again. When he put it to himself like that, the sweat started from his forehead and he was transfixed with fear.
He rose from his knees and sat on the form, and for a long hour he laboured in the thought of a thousand possibilities, telling himself of the many things which might befall a beautiful girl in a cruel and wicked city. But then again he thought of Paul and of his former crime and present temptation, and remembered the shadow that hung over the Brotherhood.
“O God, help me,” he cried; “strengthen me, support me, guide me!”
He tried to frame another prayer, but the words would not come; he tried to kneel as before, but his knees would not bend. How could he pray that Glory also might be lost—that something might have happened to her—that somewhere and in some way unknown to him——
No, no, a thousand times no! The prayer was impossible. Let come what would, let the danger to Paul and to the Brotherhood be what it might, let Satan and all his legions fall on him, yet he could not and would not utter it.
The stars were paling, but the day had not yet dawned, when there came a knock at the door. John started and listened. After an interval the knock was repeated. It was a timid, hesitating tap, as if made with the tips of the fingers low down on the door.
“Praise be to God!” said John, and he drew the slide of the grating. He had expected to see a face outside, but there was nothing there.
“Who is it?” he asked, and there came no answer.
He took up the lamp that was kept burning in the hall and looked out through the bars. There was nothing in the darkness but an icy mist, which appeared to be rising from the ground.
“Only another of my dreams,” he thought, and he laid his hand on the slide to close it.
Then he heard a sigh that seemed to rise out of the ground, and at the same moment the dog uttered a deep bay. He laid hold of the door and pulled it quickly open. At his feet the figure of a man was kneeling, bent double and huddled up.
“Paul!” he cried in an excited whisper.
Brother Paul raised his head. His face was frightfully changed. It was gray and wasted. His eyes wandered, his lips trembled, and he looked like a man who had been flogged.
“Good Lord, what a wreck!” thought John. He helped him to rise and enter. The poor creature's limbs were stiff with cold, and he stumbled from weakness as he crossed the threshold.
“But, thank God, you are back and no harm done!” said John. “How anxious we've been! You must never go out again—never! There, brother, sit there.”
The wandering eyes looked up with a supplicating expression. “Forgive me. Brother Storm——”
But John would not listen. “Hush, brother! what have I to forgive? How cold you are! Your hands are like ice. What can I do? There's no fire in the house at this time of night—even in the kitchen it will be out now. But wait, I can rub you with my hands. See, I'm warm and strong. There's a deal of blood in me yet. That's better, isn't it? Tingling, eh? That's right—that's good! Now for your feet—your feet will be colder still.”
“No, brother, no. I ought to be kissing the feet of everybody in the house and asking the prayers of the community, and yet you——”
“Tut! what nonsense! Let me take off this shoe. Dear me, how it sticks! Why, you've worn it through and through. Look! What a mercy the snow was hard! If there had been thaw, now! How far you must have walked!”
“Yes, I've wandered a long way, brother.”
“You shall tell me all about it. I want to hear everything—every single thing.”
“There's nothing to tell. I've failed in my errand—that's all.”
John, who was on his knees, drew back and looked up. “Do you mean, then—-Have you not seen your sister?”
“No, she's gone, and nobody knows anything about her.”
“Well, perhaps it's for the best, brother. God's will be done, you know. If you had found her—who knows?—you might have been tempted—But tell me everything.”
“I can not do that, I'm so weak, and it's not worth while.”
“But I want to hear all that happened. See, your feet are all right now—I've rubbed them warm again. Though I fast so much and look so thin I've a deal of life in me. And I've been pouring it all into you, haven't I? That's because I want you to revive and be strong and tell me everything. Hush! Speak low; don't waken anybody! Did you find the hospital?”
“Yes.”
“Then Nurse Quayle sees nothing of your sister now? That's the pity of the life she is leading, poor girl! No friends, no future——”
“It wasn' that, brother.”
“What then?”
“The nurse was not there.”
A silence followed, and then John said in another voice: “I suppose she was on a holiday. It was very stupid of me; I didn't think of that. Twice a year a hospital nurse is entitled to a week's holiday, and no doubt——”
“But she was gone.”
“Gone? You mean left the hospital?”
“Yes.”
“Well,” in a husky voice, “that isn't to be wondered at either. A high-spirited girl finds it hard to be bound down to rule and regulation. But the porter—he is an intelligent man—he would tell you where she had gone to.”
“I asked him; he didn't know. All he could say was that she left the hospital on the morning of Lord Mayor's Show-day.”
“That would be the 9th of November—the day we took our vows.”
There was another pause; the big dark eyes were wandering vacantly.
“After all, he is only a porter; you asked for the matron, didn't you?”
“Yes; I thought she might know what had become of my sister. But she didn't. As for Nurse Quayle, she had been dismissed also, and nobody knew anything about her.”
John had seated himself at Paul's side and the form itself was quivering.
“Now that's just like her,” he said hoarsely. “That matron was always a hard woman. And to think that in that great house of love and pity nobody——”
“I'm forgetting something, brother.”
“What is it?”
“The porter told me that the nurse called for her letters from time to time. She had been there that night—not half an hour before.”
“Then you followed her, didn't you? You asked which, way she had gone, and you hurried after her?”
“Yes; but half an hour in London is a week anywhere else. Let anybody cross the street and she is lost—more lost to sight than a ship in a storm on the ocean. And then it was New Year's Eve, and the thoroughfares were crowded, and thousands of women were coming and going—and—what could I do?” he said helplessly.
John answered scornfully: “What could you do? Do you ask me what you could do?”
“What would you have done?”
“I should have tramped every street in London and looked into the face of every woman I met until I had found her. I should have worn my shoes to the welt and my skin to the bone before I should have come crawling home like a snail with my shell broken over my head!
“Don't be hard on me, brother, least of all now, when I have come home like a snail, as you say, with my shell broken. I was very tired and ill and did all I could. If I had been strong like you and brave-hearted I might have struggled longer. Bid Ididtramp the streets and look into the women's faces. She must have been among them, if she's living the life you speak of; but God would not let me find her. Why was it that my search was fruitless? Perhaps there was evil in my heart at first—I don't mind telling you that now—but I swear to you by Him who died for us that at last I only wanted to find my sister that I might save her. But I am such a helpless creature, and——”
John put his arm about Paul's shoulders.
“Forgive me, brother. I was mad to talk to you like that—I who sent you out on that cruel night and staid at home myself. You did what you could——”
“You think that—really?”
“Yes, only at the moment it seemed as if we had changed places somehow, and it was I who had lost a sister and been out to find her, and given up the search too soon, and come home empty and useless and broken-spirited, and——”
Paul was looking up at him with a face full of astonishment.
“Do you really think I did all I could to find her—the nurse, I mean?”
But John had turned his own face away, and there was no answer. Paul tried to say something, but he could not find the words. At last in a choked voice he murmured: “We must keep close together, brother; we are in the same boat now.”
And feeling for John's hand, he took it and held it, and they sat for some minutes with bowed heads, as if a ghost were going by.
“There's nothing but prayer and penance and fasting left to us, is there?”
Still John made no reply, and the broken creature began to comfort him.
“We have peace here at all events, and you wouldn't, think what temptations come to you in the world when you've lost somebody, and there seems to be nothing left to live for. Shall I tell you what I did? It was in the early morning and I was standing in a doorway in Piccadilly. The cabs and the crowds were gone, and only the nightmen were there swilling up the dirt of the pavements with their hose-pipes and water. 'My poor girl is lost,' I thought, 'We shall never see one another again. This wicked city has ruined her, and our mother, who was so holy, was fond of her when she was a little child.' And then my heart seemed to freeze up within me... and I did it. You'll think I was mad—I went to the police station and told them I had committed a crime. Yes, indeed, I accused myself of murder, and began to give particulars. It was only when they noticed my habit that I remembered the Father, and then I refused to answer any more questions. They put me in a cell, and that was where I spent the night, and next morning I denied everything, and they let me go.”
Then, dropping his voice to a hoarse whisper, he said: “That wasn't what brought me back, though. It was the vow. You can't think what a thing the vow is until you've broken it. It's like a hot iron searing your very soul, and if you were dying and at the farthest ends of the earth, and you had to crawl on your hands and knees, you would come back——”
He would have said more, but an attack of coughing silenced him, and when it was over there was a sound of some one moving in the house.
“What is that?”
“It is the Father,” said John. “Our voices have wakened him.”
Paul struggled to his feet.
“It's only a life of penance and suffering you've come back to, my poor lad.”
“That's nothing—nothing at all—But are you sure you think I did everything?”
“You did what you could. Are you going somewhere?”
“Yes, to the Father.”
“God bless you, my lad!”
“And God bless you too, brother!”
Half an hour later, by the order of the Superior, John Storm, with the help of Brother Andrew and the Father Minister, carried Brother Paul to his cell. The bell had been rung for Lauds, and going up the stairs they passed the brothers coming down to service. News of Paul's return had gone through the house like a cutting wind, and certain of the brothers who had gathered in groups on the landings were whispering together, as if the coming back had been a shameful thing which cast discredit on all of them. It wasn't love of rule that had brought the man home again, but broken health and the want of a bed to die upon! Thus they talked under their breath, unconscious of the secret operation of their own hearts. In a monastery, as elsewhere, failure is the worst disgrace.
John Storm returned to the hall with a firm step and eyes full of resolution. Hardly answering the brothers, who plied him with questions, he pushed through them with long strides, and, taking the key of the outer gate from the place in the alcove where he had left it, he turned toward the Father's room.
The day had dawned, and through the darkness which was lifting in the little room he could see the Father rising from his knees.
“Father!” he cried in an excited voice, and his words, like his breath, came in gusts.
“What is it, my son?”
“Take this key back again. The world is calling me, and I can not trust myself at the door any longer. Put me under the rule of silence and solitude, and shut me up in a cell, or I shall break my obedience and run away as sure as heaven is over us!”
Glory awoke on New Year's morning with a little hard lump at her heart, and thought: “How foolish! Am I to give up all my cherished dreams because one man is a scoundrel?”
The struggle might be bitter, but she would not give in. London was the mother of genius. If she destroyed she created also. It was only the weak and the worthless she cast away. The strong she made stronger, the great she made greater. “O God, give me the life I love!” she thought; “give me a chance; only let me begin—no matter how, no matter where!”
She remembered her impulse of the night before to follow Brother Paul, and the little hard lump at her heart grew bitter. John Storm had gone from her, forgotten her, left her to take care of herself. Very well, so be it! What was the use of thinking? “I hate to be sentimental,” she thought.
If Aggie called on Sunday night she would go with her, no matter if it was beginning at the bottom. Others had begun there, and what right had she to expect to begin anywhere else? For the future she would take the world on its own terms and force it to give way. She would conquer this great cruel London, and yet remain a good girl in spite of all.
Such was the mood in which she came down to breakfast, and the first thing that met her eyes was a letter from home. At that her face burned for a moment and her breath came in gusts, but she put the letter into her pocket unopened and tossed her head a little and laughed. “I hate to be so sensitive,” she thought, and then she began to tell Mrs. Jupe what she intended to do.
“The clubs!” cried Mrs. Jupe. “I thought you didn't tyke to the shop because you fancied yerself above present company. But the foreign clubs! My gracious!”
The hissing of Mrs. Jupe's taunting voice followed her about all that day, and late at night, when they were going to bed and the streets were quiet, and there was only the jingle of a passing hansom or a drunken shout or the screech of a concertina, she could hear it again from the other side of the plaster partition, interrupted occasionally by the sound of Mr. Jupe's attempts to excuse and apologize for her. No matter! Anything to escape from the atmosphere of that woman's house, to be free of her and quit of her forever!
Toward eight o'clock on Sunday evening she went up to her bedroom to put on her hat and ulster, and being alone there, and waiting for Aggie, she could not help but open her letter from home.
“Sunday next is your birthday, my dear one,” wrote the parson, “so we send you our love and greetings. This being the first of your twenty-one that you have spent from home, I will be thinking of you all the day through, and when night comes, and I smoke a pipe by the study fire, I know I shall be leaving the blind up that I may see the evening star and remember the happy birthdays long ago, when somebody, who was so petted and spoiled, used to say she had just come down from it, having dressed herself in some strange and grand disguises, and told us she was Phonodoree the fairy. You will be better employed than that, Glory, and as long as my dear one is well and happy and prosperous in the great city where she so loves to be——”
The candle was shaking in Glory's hands, and the little half-lit bedroom seemed to be blinking in and out.
Aunt Anna had added a postscript: “Glad to hear you are enjoying yourself in London, but rather alarmed at your frequent mention of theatres. Take care you don't go too often, child, and mind you send us the name of the vicar of the parish you are living in, for I certainly think grandfather ought to write to him.”
To this again there was a footnote by Aunt Rachel: “You say nothing of Mr. Drake nowadays. Is he one of Mrs. Jupe's visitors? And is it he who takes you to theatres?”
Then there was a New Year's card enclosed, having a picture of an Eastern shepherd at the head of his flock of sheep and bearing the inscription, “Follow in his footsteps.”
But the hissing sound of Mrs. Jupe's voice came up from below, and Glory's tears were dried in an instant. On going downstairs, she found Aggie in her mock sealskin and big black feathers sitting in the parlour at the back of the shop, and Mrs. Jupe talking to her in whispers, with an appearance of knowledge and familiarity. She caught the confused look of the one and the stealthy glances of the other, and the hard lump at her heart grew harder.
“Come on,” said Glory, and a few minutes afterward the girls were walking toward Soho. The little chapels in the quieter streets were dropping out their driblets of people and the lights in the church windows were being extinguished one by one. Aggie had recovered her composure, and was talking of Charlie as she skipped along with a rapid step, swinging her stage-box by her side. Charlie was certain to be at one of the clubs, and he would be sure to see them home. He wasn't out of his time yet, and that was why her father wouldn't allow him about. But he was in an office at a foundry, and his people lived in a house, and perhaps one of these days——
“Did you say that some of the people who are on the stage now began at the clubs?” said Glory.
“Plenty, my dear. There's Betty Bellman for one. She was at a club in Old Compton Street when Mr. Sefton found her out.”
Aggie had to “work a turn” at each of three clubs that night, and the girls were now at the door of the first of them. It stood at the corner of a reputable square, and was like any ordinary house on the outside. But people were coming and going constantly, and the doorkeeper was kept opening and closing the door. In the middle of the hall a clerk stood at a desk, having a great book in front of him, and making a show of challenging everybody as he entered. He recognised Aggie as an artiste, but passed Glory also on the payment of twopence and the signing of her name in the book.
The dining-room of the house had been converted into a bar, with counter and stillage, and after the girls had crushed through the crowds that stood there they came into a large and shabby chamber, which had the appearance of having been built over the space which had once been the backyard. This room had neither windows nor skylights; its walls were decorated with portraits of Garibaldi and Victor Emanuel in faded colours, and there was a stage and proscenium at its farther end.
It was an Italian club that met there on Sunday nights, and some two or three hundred hairdressers and restaurant-keepers of swarthy complexion sat in groups at little round tables with their wives and sweethearts (chiefly English women), smoking and drinking and laughing at the performance on the stage.
Aggie went down to her dressing-room under the floor, and Glory sat at a table with a yellow-haired lady and a dark-eyed man. A negro without the burnt cork was twanging a banjo and cracking the jokes of the corner-man.
“That's my style—a merry touch-and-go,” said the lady. And then glancing at Glory, “Singing to-night, my dear?”
Glory shook her head.
“Thort you might be a pro' p'rhaps. Use ter be myself when I was in the bally at the Lane. Married now, my dear; but I likes to come of a Sunday night when the kids is got to bed.”
Then Aggie danced a skirt dance, and there were shouts of applause for her, and she came back and danced again. When she reappeared in jacket and hat, and with her stage-box in her hand, the girls crushed their way out. Going through the bar they were invited to drink by several of the men who were standing there, but they got into the streets at last.
“They're rather messy, those bars,” said Aggie; “but managers like you to come round and tyke something after you've done your turn—if it's only a cup of cawfy.”
“Do you like this life?” said Glory, taking a long breath.
“Yes, awfully!” said Aggie.
Their next visit was to a Swiss club, which did not greatly differ from the Italian one, except that the hall was more shabby, and that the audience consisted of French and Swiss waiters and skittish young English milliners. The girls had taken their hats and cloaks off and sat dressed like dolls in white muslin with long streamers of bright ribbon. A gentleman sang the “Postman's Knock,” with the character accompaniment of a pot hat and a black-edged envelope, a lady sang “Maud” in silk tights and a cloak, Aggie danced her skirt dance, and then the floor was cleared for a ball.
“They're going to dance the Swiss dance,” said Aggie, “and the M. C. wants me to tyke a place; but I hate these fellows to be hugging me. Will you be my partner, dear?”
“Well—just for a minute or two,” said Glory, with nervous gaiety. And then the dance began.
It proved to be a musical version of odd man out, and Glory soon found herself being snapped up by other partners and addressed familiarly by the waiters and their women. She could feel the moisture of their hands and smell the oil of their hair, and a feeling like a spasm of physical pain came over her.
“Let us go,” she whispered.
“Yes, it's getting lyte,” said Aggie, and they crushed through the crowded bar and out into the street.
The twanging of the fiddles, the thud of the dancing, and the peals of coarse laughter followed them from the stifling atmosphere within, and Glory felt sick and faint.
“Do you say that managers of good places call at these clubs sometimes?”
“Often,” said Aggie, and she hummed a music-hall tune as she skipped and tripped along.
The streets, which had been dark and quiet when they arrived in Soho, were now ablaze with lights in every window, and noisy with people on every pavement. The last club they had to visit was a German one, and as they came near it they saw that a man was standing at the door bareheaded and looking out for somebody.
“It's Charlie,” said Aggie with a little jump of joy. But when they came up to him a scowl darkened his dark face, and he said:
“Lyte as usyal! Two of the bloomin' turns not come, and me looking up and dahn the bloomin' street for you every minute and more!”
The girl's eyes blinked as if he had struck her, but she only tossed her head and stiffened her under lip, and said: “Jawing again, are ye? I'd chuck it for once, Charlie, if it was only for sake of company.”
With that she disappeared to the dressing-room, and Charlie took charge of Glory, crushed a way for her through the refreshment room, offered her a “glaws of somethink,” and with an obvious pride of possession introduced her to admiring acquaintances as “a friend o' mine.” “Like yer style, Charlie,” said one of them. “Oh, yus! Dare say!” said Charlie.
The proscenium was surmounted by the German and English flags intertwined, the walls were adorned with oleograph portraits of the Kaiser, his father and grandfather, Bismarck and Von Moltke, and the audience consisted largely of lively young German Jews and Jewesses in evening dress, some Polish Jews, and a sprinkling of other foreigners.
During Aggie's turn Glory was conscious that two strangers out of another world altogether had entered the club and were standing at the back.
“Toffs,” said Charlie, looking at them over her shoulder, and then, answering to himself the meaning of their looks, “No, my luds! 'Tain't the first we've seen of sech!”
Then Aggie came up with an oily person in a flowered waistcoat and said, “This is my friend, guv'nor, and she wouldn't mind doing a turn if you asked her.”
“If de miss vill oblige,” began the oily one, and then the blood rushed to Glory's face, and before she knew what else had happened, her hat and ulster were in Aggie's hands and she was walking up the steps to the stage.
There was some applause when she went on, but she was in a dazed condition and it all seemed to be taking place a hundred miles away. She heard her own voice saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, with your kind permission I will endeavour to give you an imitation——” and something more. Down to that moment her breath had been coming and going in hot gasps, and she had felt a dryness in her throat; but every symptom of nervousness suddenly disappeared, and she threw up her head like a charger in battle.
Then she sang. It was only a common street song, and everybody had heard it a thousand times. She sang “And her golden hair was hanging down her back” after the manner of a line of factory girls going home from work at night. Arm-in-arm, decked in their Vandyke hats, slashed with red ribbons and crowned with ostrich feathers, with their free step, their shrill voices—they were there before everybody's eyes, everybody could see them, everybody could recognise them, and before the end of the first verse there were shouts and squeals of laughter.
Glory felt dizzy yet self-possessed; she gave a little audible laugh while she stood bowing between the verses. In a few minutes the song was finished and the people were stamping, whistling, uttering screeching cat-calls, and shouting “Brayvo!” But Glory was sitting at the foot of the stage by this time with a face contorted as in physical pain. After the first thrill of success the shame of it all came over her and she saw how low she had fallen, and felt horrified and afraid. The clamour, the clapping of hands, the vulgar faces, the vulgar laughter, the vulgar song, Sunday night, her own birthday! It all passed before her like the incidents in some nightmare, and at the back of it came other memories—Glenfaba, the sweet and simple household, the old parson smoking by the study fire and looking up at the evening star, and then John Storm and the church chimes at Bishopsgate! One moment she sat there with her burning face, staring helplessly before her, while people crowded round to shake hands with her and cried into her ears above the deafening tumult, “You'll have to tyke another turn, dear”; and then she burst into passionate weeping.
“Stand avay! De lady's not fit to sing again,” said some one, and she opened her eyes.
It was one of the two gentlemen who had been standing at the back.
“Ach Gott! Is it you? Don't you know me, nurse?”
It was Mr. Koenig, the organist.
“My gracious! Vot are you doing here, my child? Two monts ago I haf ask for you at de hospital, and haf write to de matron, but you vere gone. Since den I haf look for you all over London. Vhere do you lif?”
Glory told him, and he wrote down the address.
“Ugh! A genius, and lif in a tobacco shop! My vife vill call on you and fetch you avay. She is a goot woman, and vhatever she tell you to do you must do it; but not musical and clever same like as you. Bless mine soul! Singing in a Sunday club! Do you know, my child, you haf a voice, and talents, great talents! Vants training—yes. But vhat vould you haf? Here am I, Carl Koenig! I speak ver' bad de Englisch, but I know ver' goot to teach music. I vill teach you same like I teach oder ladies who pay me many dollare. Do you know vhat I am?”
Yes, she knew what he was—he was the organist at All Saints', Belgravia.
“Pooh! I am a composer as veil. I write songs, and all your countrymen and countryvomen sing dem. I haf a choral company, too, and it is for dat I vant you. I go to de first houses in de land, de lords, de ministers, de princes. You shall come vith me. Your voice is soprano—no, mezzo-soprano—and it vill grow. I vill pitch it, and vhen it is ready I vill bring you out. But now get away from dis place and naivare come back, or I vill be more angry as before.”
Then Glory rose, and he led her to the door. Her heart felt big and her eyes were glistening. Aggie was in the refreshment-room. Having finished for the night, the girl had resumed her outdoor costume without removing her make-up, and was laughing merrily among a group of men and playing them off against Charlie, who was still in the sulks and drinking at the bar. When Glory appeared, Aggie fidgeted with her glove and said, “Aren't you going to see us home, Charlie?”
“No,” said Charlie.
“Where are you going to?”
“Nowhere as you can come.”
Aggie's eyes watered, and she wrenched a button off, but she only laughed and answered, “Don't think as we're throwing ourselves atyourhead, my man! We only wanted toknow. Ta-ta!”
It was now midnight, and the streets were thin of people, but sounds of music and dancing came from nearly every open window and door.
Aggie was crying. “That's the worst of the clubs,” she said, “they lead 'em to the gambling hells. And then a young man always knows when he can tyke advantage.”
As they returned past the Swiss club somebody who was being thrown out into the street was shouting in a gurgling voice, “Let go o' my throat or I'll corpse ye!” And farther on two or three girls in their teens, with their arms about the necks of twice as many men, were reeling along the pavement and singing in a tuneless wail.