John Storm's enemies had succeeded. He was committed for sedition, and there was the probability that when brought up again he would be charged with complicity in manslaughter. Throughout the proceedings at the police court he maintained a calm and dignified silence. Supported by an exalted faith, he regarded even death with composure. When the trial was over and the policeman who stood at the back of the dock tapped him on the arm, he started like a man whose mind had been occupied by other issues.
“Eh?”
“Come,” said the policeman, and he was taken back to the cells.
Next day he was removed to Holloway, and there he observed the same calm and silent attitude. His bearing touched and impressed the authorities, and they tried by various small kindnesses to make his imprisonment easy. He encouraged them but little.
On the second morning an officer came to his cell and said, “Perhaps you would care to look at the newspaper, Father?”
“Thank you, no,” he answered. “The newspapers were never much to me even when I was living in the world—they can not be necessary now that I am going out of it.”
“Oh, come, you exaggerate your danger. Besides, now that the papers contain so much about yourself——”
“That is a reason why I should not see them.”
“Well, to tell you the truth, Father, this morning's paper has something about somebody else, and that was why I brought it.”
“Eh?”
“Somebody near to you—very near and—— But I'll leave it with you——Nothing to complain of this morning—no?”
But John Storm was already deep in the columns of the newspaper. He found the news intended for him. It was the death of his father. The paragraph was cruel and merciless. “Thus the unhappy man who was brought up at Bow Street two days ago is now a peer in his own right and the immediate heir to an earldom.”
The moment was a bitter and terrible one. Memories of past years swept over him—half-forgotten incidents of his boyhood when his father was his only friend and he walked with his hand in his—memories of his father's love for him, his hopes, his aims, his ambitions, and all the vast ado of his poor delusive dreams. And then came thoughts of the broken old man dying alone, and of himself in his prison cell. It had been a strangely familiar thought to him of late that if he left London at seven in the morning he could speak to his father at seven the same night. And now his father was gone, the last opportunity was lost, and he could speak to him no more.
But he tried to conquer the call of blood which he had put aside so long, and to set over against it the claims of his exalted mission and the spirit of the teaching of Christ. What had Christ said? “Call no man your father upon the earth; for one is your Father which is in heaven!”
“Yes,” he thought, “that's it—'for one is your Father which is in heaven.'”
Then he took up the newspaper again, thinking to read with a calmer mind the report of his father's death and burial, but his eye fell on a different matter.
“ANOTHER MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE.—Hardly has the public mind recovered from the perplexity attending the disappearance of a well-known clergyman from Westminster, when the news comes of a no less mysterious disappearance of a popular actress from a West-End theatre.”
It was Glory!
“Although a recent acquisition to the stage and the latest English actress to come into her heritage of fame, she was already a universal favourite, and her sudden and unaccountable disappearance is a shock as well as a surprise. To the disappointment of the public she had not played her part for nearly a week, having excused herself on the ground of indisposition, but there was apparently nothing in the state of her health to give cause for anxiety or to prepare her friends for the step she has taken. What has become of her appears to be entirely beyond conjecture, but her colleagues and associates are still hoping for the hest, though the tone of a letter left behind gives only too much reason to fear a sad and perhaps fatal sequel.”
When the officer entered the cell again an hour after his first visit, John Storm was pallid and thin and gray. The sublime faith he had built up for himself had fallen to ruins, a cloud had hidden the face of the Father which was in heaven, and the death he had waited for as the crown of his life seemed to be no better than an abject end to a career that had failed.
“Cheer up,” said the officer; “I've some good news for you, at all events.”
The prisoner smiled sadly and shook his head.
“Bail was offered and accepted at Bow Street this morning, and you will be at liberty to leave us to-day.”
“When?” said John, and his manner changed immediately.
“Well, not just yet, you know.”
“For the love of God, sir, let me go at once! I have something to do-somebody to look for and find.”
“Still, for your own security, Father——”
“But why?”
“Then you don't know that the mob sent a dog out in search of you 2”
“No, I didn't know that; but if all the dogs of Christendom——”
“There are worse dogs waiting for you than any that go on four legs, you know.”
“That's nothing, sir, nothing at all; and if bail has been accepted, surely it is your duty to liberate me at once. I claim—I demand that you should do so!”
The officer raised his eyes in astonishment. “You surprise me, Father. After your calmness and patience and submission to authority too!”
John Storm remained silent for a moment, and then he said, with a touching solemnity: “You must forgive me, sir. You are very good—everybody is good to me here. Still, I am not afraid, and if you can let me go——”
The officer left him. It was several hours before he returned. By this time the long summer day had closed in, and it was quite dark.
“They think you've gone. You can leave now. Come this way.”
At the door of the office some minutes afterward John Storm paused with the officer's hand in his, and said:
“Perhaps it is needless to ask who is my bail” (he was thinking of Mrs. Callender), “but if you can tell me——”
“Certainly. It was Sir Francis Drake.”
John Storm bowed gravely and turned away. As he passed out of the yard his eyes were bent on the ground and his step was slow and feeble.
At that moment Drake was on his way to the Corinthian Club. Early in the afternoon he had seen this letter in the columns of an evening paper:
“The Mysterious Disappearances.—Is it not extraordinary that in discussing 'the epidemic of mystery' which now fills the air of London it has apparently never occurred to any one that the two mysterious disappearances which are the text of so many sermons may be really one disappearance only, that the 'man of God' and the 'woman of the theatre' may have acted in collusion, from the same impulse and with the same expectation, and that the rich and beneficent person who (according to the latest report) has come to the rescue of the one, and is an active agent in looking for the other, is in reality the foolish though well-meaning victim of both?—R. U.”
For three hours Drake had searched for Lord Robert with flame in his eyes and fury in his looks. Going first to Belgrave Square, he had found the blinds down and the house shut up. Mrs. Macrae was dead. She had died at a lodging in the country, alone and unattended. Her wealth had not been able to buy the devotion of one faithful servant at the end. She had left nothing to her daughter except a remonstrance against her behaviour, but she had made Lord Robert her chief heir and sole executor.
That amiable mourner had returned to London with all possible despatch as soon as the breath was out of his mother-in-law's body and arrangements were made for its transit. He was now engaged in relieving the tension of so much unusual emotion by a round of his nightly pleasures. Drake had come up with him at last.
The Corinthian Club was unusually gay that night, “Hello there!” came from every side. The music in the ballroom was louder than ever, and, judging by the numbers of the dancers, the attraction of “Tra-la-la” was even greater than before. There was the note of yet more reckless license everywhere, as if that little world whose life was pleasure had been under the cloud of a temporary terror and was determined to make up for it by the wildest folly. The men chaffed and laughed and shouted comic songs and kicked their legs about; the women drank and giggled.
Lord Robert was in the supper-room with three guests—the “three graces.” The women were in full evening dress. Betty was wearing the ring she had taken from Polly “just to remember her by, pore thing,” and the others were blazing in similar brilliants. The wretched man himself was half drunk. He had been talking of Father Storm and of his own wife in a jaunty tone, behind which there was an intensity of hatred.
“But this panic of his, don't you know, was the funniest thing ever heard of. Going home that night I counted seventeen people on their knees in the streets—'pon my soul I did! Eleven old women of eighty, two or three of seventy, and one or two that might be as young as sixty-nine. Then the epidemic of piety in high life too! Several of our millionaires gave sixpence apiece to beggars—were seen to do it, don't you know. One old girl gave up playing baccarat and subscribed to 'Darkest England.' No end of sweet little women confessed their pretty weaknesses to their husbands, and now that the world is wagging along as merrily as before, they don't know what the devil they are to do—— But look here!”
Out of his trousers pockets at either side he tugged a torn and crumpled assortment of letters and proceeded to tumble them on to the table.
“These are a few of the applications I had from curates-in-charge and such beauties for the care of the living in Westminster while the other gentleman lay in jail. It's the Bishop's right to appoint the creature, don't you know, but they think a patron's recommendation—— Oh, they're a sweet team! Listen to this: 'May it please your lordship——'”
And then in mock tones, flourishing one hand, the man read aloud amid the various noises of the place—the pop of champagne bottles and the rumble of the dancing in the room below—the fulsome letters he had received from clergymen. The wretched women in their paint and patches shrieked with laughter.
It was at that moment Drake came up, looking pale and fierce.
“Hello there! Is it you? Sit down and take a glass of fizz.”
“Not at this table,” said Drake. “I prefer to drink with friends.”
Lord Robert's eyes glistened, and he tried to smile.
“Really? Thought I was counted in that distinguished company, don't you know.”
“So you were, but I've come to see that a friend who is not a friend is always the worst enemy.”
“What do you mean?”
“What does that mean?” said Drake, throwing the paper on to the table.
“Well, what of it?”
“The initials to that letter are yours, and all the men I meet tell me that you have written it.”
“They do, do they? Well?”
“I won't ask you if you did or if you didn't.”
“Don't, dear boy.”
“But I'll require you to disown it, publicly and at once.”
“And if I won't—what then?”
“Then I'll tell the public for myself that it's a lie, a cowardly and contemptible lie, and that the man who wrote it is a cur!”
“Oho! So it's like that, is it?” said Lord Robert, rising to his feet as if putting himself on guard.
“Yes, itislike that, Lord Robert Ure, because the woman who is slandered in that letter is as innocent as your own wife, and ten thousand times as pure as those who are your constant company.”
Lord Robert's angular and ugly face glistened with a hateful smile. “Innocent!” he cried hoarsely, and then he laughed out aloud. “Go on! It's rippin' to hear you, dear boy! Innocent, by God! Just as innocent as any other ballet girl who is dragged through the stews of London, and then picked up at last by the born fool who keeps her for another man.”
“You liar!” cried Drake, and like a flash of light he had shot his fist across the table and struck the man full in the face. Then laying hold of the table itself, he swept it away with all that was on it, and sprang at Lord Robert and took him by the throat.
“Take that back, will you? Take it back!”
“I won't!” cried Lord Robert, writhing and struggling in his grip.
“Then take that—and that—and that—damn you!” cried Drake, showering blow after blow, and finally flinging the man into thedébrisof what had fallen from the table with a crash.
The women were screaming by this time and all the house was in alarm. But Drake went out with long strides and a ferocious face, and no one attempted to stop him.
Returning to St. James's Street, Drake found John Storm waiting in his rooms. The men had changed a good deal since they last met, and the faces of both showed suffering.
“Forgive me for this visit,” said Storm. “It was my first duty to call and thank you for what you've done.”
“That's nothing—nothing at all,” said Drake.
“I had also another object. You'll know what that is.”
Drake bowed his head.
“She is gone, it seems, and there is no trace left of her.”
“None?”
“Thenyouknow nothing?”
“Nothing! And you?”
“Nothing whatever!”
Drake bowed his head again. “I knew it was a lie—that she had gone after you—I never believed that story.”
“Would to God she had!” said Storm fervently, and Drake flinched, but bore himself bravely. “When did she go?”
“Two days ago, apparently.”
“Has anybody looked for her?”
“Ihave—everywhere—everywhere I can think of. But this London——”
“Yes, yes; I know—I know!”
“For two days I have never rested, and all last night.”
Storm's eyes were watching the twitchings of Drake's face. He had been sitting uneasily on his chair, and now he rose from it.
“Are you going already?” said Drake.
“Yes,” said Storm. Then in a husky voice he added: “I don't know if we shall ever meet again, you and I. When death breaks the link that binds people——”
“For God's sake don't say that!”
“But itisso, isn't it?”
“Heaven knows! Certainly the letter she left behind—the letter to Rosa—— Poor child, she was such a creature of joy—so bright, so brilliant! And then to think of her—— I was much to blame—I came between you. But if I had once realized——”
Drake stopped, and the men fixed their eyes on each other for a moment, and then turned their heads away.
“I'm afraid I've done you a great injustice, sir,” said Storm.
“Me?”
“I thought she was only your toy, your plaything. But perhaps” (his voice was breaking)—“perhaps you loved her too.”
Drake answered, almost inaudibly, “With all my heart and soul!”
“Then—then we havebothlost her!”
“Both!”
There was silence for a moment. The hands of the two men met and clasped and parted.
“I must go,” said Storm, and he moved across the room with a look of utter weariness.
“But where are you going to?”
“I don't know—anywhere—nowhere—it doesn't matter now.”
“Well——”
“Good-night!”
“Good-night!”
Drake stood at the door below until the slow, uncertain footsteps had turned the corner of the street and died away.
John Storm was sure now. Overwhelmed by his own disgrace, ashamed of his downfall, and perhaps with a sense of her own share in it, Glory had destroyed herself.
Strange contradiction! Much as he had hated Glory's way of life, there came to him at the moment a deep remorse at the thought that he had been the means of putting an end to it. And then her gay and happy spirit clouded by his own disasters! Her good name stained by association with his evil one! Her pure soul imperilled by his sin and fall!
But it was now very late and he began to ask himself where he was to sleep. At first he thought of his old quarters under the church, and then he told himself that Brother Andrew would be gone by this time, and that everything connected with the parish must be transferred to other keeping. Going by a hotel in Trafalgar Square he stepped in and asked for a bed.
“Certainly, sir,” said the clerk, who was polite and deferential.
“Can I have something to eat, too?”
“Coffee-room to the left, sir. Luggage coming, sir?”
“I have no luggage to-night,” he answered, and then he saw that the clerk looked at him doubtfully.
The coffee-room was empty and only half lit up, for dinner was long over and the business of the day was done. John was sitting at his meal, eating his food with his eyes down and hardly conscious of what was going on around, when he became aware that from time to time people opened the room door and looked across at him, then whispered together and passed out. At length the clerk came up to him with awkward manners and a look of constraint.
“I beg your pardon, sir, but—are you Father Storm?”
John bent his head.
“Then I'm sorry to say we can not accommodate you—we dare not—we must request you to leave.”
John rose without a word, paid his bill, and left the place.
But where was he to go to? What house would receive him? If one hotel refused him, all other hotels in London would do the same. Then he remembered the shelter which he had himself established for the undeserving poor. The humiliation of that moment was terrible. But no matter! He would drink the cup of God's anger to the dregs.
The lamp was burning in the clock tower of the Houses of Parliament, and as John passed by the corner of Palace Yard two Bishops came out in earnest conversation, and walked on in front of him.
“The State and the Church are as the body and soul,” said one, “and to separate them would be death to both.”
“Just that,” said the other, “and therefore we must fight for the Church's temporal possessions as we should contend for her spiritual rights; and so these Benefice Bills——”
The shelter was at the point of closing, and Jupe was putting out the lamp over the door as John stepped up to him.
“Who is it?” said Jupe in the dark.
“Don't you know me, Jupe?” said John.
“Father Jawn Storm!” cried the man in a whisper of fear.
“I want shelter for the night, Jupe. Can you put me up anywhere?”
“You, sir?”
The man was staggered and the long rod in his hand shook like a reed. Then he began to stammer something about the Bishop and the Archdeacon and his new orders and instructions—how the shelter had been taken over by other authorities, and he was now——
“But d—- it all!” he said, stopping suddenly, putting his foot down firmly, and wagging his head to right and left like a man making a brave resolution, “I'll tyke ye in, sir, and heng it!”
It was the bitterest pill of all, but John swallowed it, and stepped into the house. As he did so he was partly aware of some tumult in a neighbouring street, with the screaming of men and women and the barking of dogs.
The blankets had been served out for the night and the men in the shelter were clambering up to their bunks. In addition to the main apartment there was a little room with a glass front which hung like a cage near to the ceiling at one end and was entered by a circular iron stair. This was the keeper's own sleeping place, and Jupe was making it ready for John, while John himself sat waiting with the look of a crushed and humiliated man, when the tumult in the street came nearer and at last drew up in front of the house.
“Wot's thet?” the men asked each other, lifting their heads, and Jupe came down and went to the door. When he returned his face was white, the sweat hung on his forehead, and a trembling shook his whole body.
“For Gawd's sake, Father, leave the house at onct!” he whispered in great agitation. “There's a gang outside as'll pull the place dahn if I keep you.”
There was silence for a moment, save for the shouting outside, and then John said, with a sigh and a look of resignation, “Very well, let me out, then,” and he turned to the door.
“Not that wy, sir—this wy,” said Jupe, and at the next moment they were stepping into a dark and narrow lane at the back. “Turn to the left when ye get ter the bottom, Father—mind ye turn ter the left.”
But John Storm had scarcely heard him. His heart had failed him at last. He saw the baseness and ingratitude of the people whom he had spent himself to relieve and uplift and succour and comfort, and he repented himself of the hopes and aims and efforts which had come to this bankruptcy in the end.
“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
Yes, yes, that was it! It was not this poor vile race merely, this stupid and ungrateful humanity—it was God! God used one man's ignorance, and another man's anger, and another man's hatred, and another man's spite, and worked out his own ends through it all. And God had rejected him, refused him, turned a deaf ear to his prayer and his repentance, robbed him of friends, of affection, of love, and cast him out of the family of man!
Very well! So be it! What should he do? He would go back to prison and say: “Take me in again—there is no room left for me in the world. I am alone, and my heart is dead within me!”
He was at the end of the dark lane by this time, and forgetting Jupe's warning, and seeing a brightly lighted street running off to his right, he swung round to it and walked boldly along. This was Old Pye Street, and he had come to the corner at which it opens into Brown's Square when his absent mind became conscious of the loud baying of a dog. At the next moment the dog was at his feet, bounding about him with frantic delight, leaping up to him as if trying to kiss him, and uttering meanwhile the most tender, the most true, the most pitiful cries of love.
It was his own dog, the bloodhound Don!
His unworthy thoughts were, chased away at the sight of this one faithful friend remaining, and he was stooping to fondle the great creature, to pull at the long drapery of its ears and the pendulous folds of its glorious forehead, when a short, sharp cry caused him to lift his head.
“Thet's 'im!” said somebody, and then he was aware that a group of men with evil faces had gathered round. He knew them in a moment: the publican with his bandaged head, Sharkey, who had served his time and been released from prison, and Pincher and Hawkins, who were out on bail. They had all been drinking. The publican, who carried a stick, was drunk, and the “knocker-up” was staggering on a crutch.
Then came a hideous scene. The four men began to taunt John Storm, to take off their hats and bow to him in mock honour. “His Lordship, I believe '” said one. “His Reverend Lordship, if you please!” said another.
“Leave me; for God's sake, leave me!” said John.
But their taunts became more and more menacing. “Wot abart the end uv the world, Father?” “Didn't ye tell me to sell my bit uv biziness?” “And didn't ye say you'd cured me? and look at me now!”
“Don't, I tell you, don't!” cried John, and he moved away.
They followed and began to push him. Then he stopped and cried in a loud voice of struggle and agony: “Do you want to raise the devil in me? Go home! Go home!”
But they only laughed and renewed their torment. His hat fell off and he snatched at it to recover it. In doing so his hand struck somebody in the face. “Strike a cripple, will ye?” said the publican, and he raised his stick and struck a heavy blow on John's shoulder. At the next moment the dog had leaped upon the man, and he was shrieking on the ground. The “knocker-up” lifted his crutch and with the upper end of it he battered at the dog's brains.
“Stop, man! stop, stop!—Don! Don!”
But the dog held on, and the man with the crutch continued to strike at it, until Pincher, who had run to the other side of the street, came back with a clasp knife and plunged it into the dog's neck. Then with a growl and a whine and a pitiful cry the creature let go its hold and rolled over, and the publican got on to his feet.
It was the beginning of the end. John Storm looked down at the dog in its death-throes, and all the devil in his heart came up and mastered him. There was a shop at the corner of the square, and some heavy chairs were standing on the pavement. He took up one of these and swung it round him like a toy, and the men fell on every side.
By this time the street was in commotion, and people were coming from every court and yard and alley crying:
“A madman!” “Police!” “Lay hold of him!” “He'll kill somebody!” “Down with him!”
John Storm was also shouting at the top of his voice, when suddenly he felt a dull, stunning pain, without exactly knowing where. Then he felt himself moving up, up, up—he was in a train, the train was going through a tunnel, and the guards were screaming; then it was hot and at the next moment it was cold, and still he was floating, floating; and then he saw Glory—he heard her say something—and then he opened his eyes, and lo! the dark sky was above him, and some women were speaking in agitated voices over his face.
“Who is it?”
“It's Father Storm. The brutes! The beasts! And the pore dog, too!”
“Oh, dear! Where's the p'lice? What are we goin' to do with 'im, Aggie?”
“Tyke 'im to my room, thet's what.”
Then he heard Big Ben strike twelve, and then—— It was a long, long journey, and the tunnel seemed to go on and on.
Half an hour afterward there came to the door of the Orphanage the single loud thud that is the knock of the poor. An upper window was opened, and a tremulous voice from the street below cried, “Glory! Miss Gloria!”
It was Agatha Jones. Glory hastened downstairs and found the girl in great agitation. One glance at her face in the candlelight seemed to tell all.
“You've found him?”
“Yes; he's hurt. He's——”
“Be calm, child; tell me everything,” said Glory, and Aggie delivered her message.
Since leaving Holloway, Father Storm had been followed and found by means of the dog. The crowd had set on him and knocked him down and injured him. He was now lying in Aggie's room. There had been nowhere else to take him to, for the men had disappeared the moment he was down, and the women were afraid to take him in. The police had come at last and they were now gone for the parish doctor. Mrs. Pincher was with the Father, and the poor dog was dead.
Glory held her hand over her heart while Aggie told her story. “I follow you,” she said. “Did you tell him I was here? Did he send you to fetch me?”
“He didn't speak,” said Aggie.
“Is he unconscious?”
“Yes.”
“I'll go with you at once.”
Hurrying across the streets by Glory's side, Aggie apologized for her room again. “I down't live thet wy now, you know,” she said. “It may seem strange to you, but while my little boy was alive I couldn't go into the streets to save my life—I couldn't do it. And when 'is pore father died lahst week——”
The stone stairs to the tenement house were thronged with women. They stood huddled together in groups like sheep in a storm. There was not a man anywhere visible, except a drunken sailor, who was coming down from an upper story whistling and singing. The women silenced him. Had he no feelings?
“The doctor's came, Sister,” said a woman standing by Aggie's door. Then Glory entered the room.
The poor disordered place was lit by a cheap lamp, which threw splashes of light and left tracts of shadow. John lay on the bed, muttering words that were inaudible. His coat and waistcoat had been removed, and his shirt was open at the neck. The high wall of his forehead was marble white, but his cheeks were red and feverish. One of his arms lay over the side of the bed and Glory took it up and held it. Her great eyes were moist, but she did not cry, neither did she speak or move. The doctor was bathing a wound at the back of the head, and he looked up and nodded as Glory entered. At the other side of the bed an elderly woman in a widow's cap was wiping her eyes with her apron.
When the doctor was going away, Glory followed him to the door.
“Is he seriously injured, doctor?”
“Very.” The doctor was a young man—quick, brusque, and emphatic.
“Not dange——”
“Yes. The brutes have done for him, nurse, though you needn't tell his friends so.”
“Then—there is—no chance—whatever?”
“Not a ghost of a chance. By the way, you might try to find out where his friends are, and send a line to them. I'll be here in the morning. Good-night!”
Glory staggered back to the room, with her hand pressed hard over her heart, and the young doctor, going downstairs two steps at a stride, met a police sergeant and a reporter coming up. “Cruel business, sir!” “Yes, but just one of those things that can't easily be brought home to anybody.” “Sad, though!” “Very sad!”
The short night seemed as if it would never end. When daylight came the cheerless place was cleared of its refuse—its withered roses, its cigarette ends and its heaps of left-off clothing. Toward eight o'clock Glory hurried back to the Orphanage, leaving Aggie and Mrs. Pincher in charge. John had been muttering the whole night, through, but he had never once moved and he was still unconscious.
“Good-morning, Sister!”
“Good-morning, children!”
The little faces, fresh and bright from sleep, were waiting for their breakfast. When the meal was over Glory wrote by express to Mrs. Callender and to the Father Superior of the Brotherhood, then put on her bonnet and cloak and turned toward Downing Street.
The Prime Minister had held an early Cabinet Council that morning. It was observed by his colleagues that he looked depressed and preoccupied. When the business of the day was done he rose to his feet rather feebly and said:
“My lords and gentlemen, I have long had it in mind to say something—something of importance—and I feel the impulse to say it now. We have been doing our best with legislation affecting the Church, to give due reality and true life to its relation with the State. But the longer I live the more I feel that that relation is in itself a false one, injurious and even dangerous to both alike. Never in history, so far as I know, and certainly never within my own experience, has it been possible to maintain the union of Church and State without frequent adultery and corruption. The effort to do so has resulted in manifest impostures in sacred things, in ceremonies without spiritual significance, and in gross travesties of the solemn, worship of God. Speaking of our own Church, I will not disguise my belief that, but for the good and true men who are always to be found within its pale, it could not survive the frequent disregard of principles which lie deep in the theory of Christianity. Its epicureanism, its regard for the interests of the purse, its tendency to rank the administrator above the apostle, are weeds that spring up out of the soil of its marriage with the State. And when I think of the anomalies and inequalities of its internal government, of its countless poor clergy, and of its lords and princes, above all when I remember its apostolic pretensions and the certainty that he who attempts to live within the Church the real life of the apostles will incur the risk of that martyrdom which it has always pronounced against innovators, I can not but believe that the consciences of many Churchmen would be glad to be relieved of a burden of State temptation which they feel to be hurtful and intolerable—to render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's. Be that as it may, I have now to tell you that feeling this question to be paramount, yet despairing of dealing with it in the few years that old age has left to me, I have concluded to resign my office. It is for some younger statesman to fight this battle of the separation between the spiritual and the temporal in the interests of true religion and true civilization. God grant he may be a Christian man, and God speed and bless him!”
The cabinet broke up with many unwonted expressions of affection for the old leader, and many requests that he should “think again” over the step he contemplated. But every one knew that he had set his heart on an impossible enterprise, and every one felt that behind it lay the painful impulse of an incident reported at length in the newspapers that morning.
Left alone in the cabinet room, the Prime Minister drew up his chair before the empty grate and gave way to tender memories. He thought of John Storm and the wreck his life had fallen to; of John's mother and her brave renunciation of love; and finally of himself and his near retirement. A spasm of the old lust of power came over him, and he saw himself—to-morrow, next day, next week—delivering up his seals of office to the Queen, and then—the next day after that—getting up from this chair for the last time and going out of this room to return to it no more—his work done, his life ended.
It was at that moment the footman came to say that a young lady in the dress of a nurse was waiting in the hall. “A messenger from John,” he thought. And, as he rose to receive her, heavily, wearily, and with the burden of his years upon him, Glory came into the room with her quivering face and two great tear-drops standing in her eyes, but glowing with youth and health and courage.
“Sit down, sit down. But——” looking at her again, “have you been here before?”
“Never, my lord.”
“I have seen you somewhere.”
“I was an actress once. And I am a friend of John's.”
“Of John's? Then you are——”
“I am Glory.”
“Glory! And so we meet at last, dear lady! But Ihaveseen you before. When he spoke of you, but did not bring you to see me, I took a stolen glance at the theatre myself——”
“I have left it, my lord.”
“Left it?”
And then she told him what she had done. His old eyes glistened and his head sank into his breast.
“It wasn't that I came to talk about, my lord, but another and more painful matter.”
“Can I relieve you of the burden of your message, my child? It has reached me already. It is in all the morning newspapers.”
“I didn't think of that. Still the doctor told me to——”
“What does the doctor say about him?”
“He says——”
“Yes?”
“He says we are going to lose him.”
“I have sent for a great surgeon—But no doubt it is past help. Poor boy! It seems only yesterday he came up to London so full of hope and expectation. I can see him now with his great eyes, sitting in that chair you occupy, talking of his plans and purposes. Poor John! To think he should come to this! But these tumultuous souls whose hearts are battlefields, when the battle is over what can be left but a waste?”
Glory's eyes had dried of themselves and she was looking at the old man with an expression of pain, but he went on without observing her:
“It is one of the dark riddles of the inscrutable Power which rules over life that the good man can go under like that, while the evil one lives and prospers.”
He rose and walked to and fro before the fireplace. “Ah, well! The years bring me an ever-deepening sadness, an ever-increasing sense of our impotence to diminish, the infinite sorrow of the world.”
Then he looked down at Glory and said: “But I can hardly forgive him that he has thrown away so much for so little. And when I think of you, my child, and of all that might have been, and then of the bad end he has come to——”
“But I don't call it coming to a bad end, sir,” said Glory in a quivering voice.
“No? To be torn and buffeted and trampled down in the streets?”
“What of it? He might have died of old age in his bed and yet come to a worse end than that.”
“True, but still——”
“If that is coming to a bad end I shall have to believe that my father, who was a missionary, came to a bad end too when he was killed by the fevers of Africa. Every martyr comes to a bad end if that is a bad ending. And so does everybody who is brave and true and does good to humanity and is willing to die for it. But it isn't bad. It's glorious! I would rather be the daughter of a man who died like that than be the daughter of an earl, and if I could have been the wife of one who was torn and trampled down, in the streets by the very people——”
But her face, which had been aflame, broke into tears again and her voice failed her. The old man could not speak, and there was silence for a moment. Then she recovered herself and said quietly:
“I came to ask you if you could do something for me.”
“What is it?”
“You may have heard that John wished me to marry him?”
“Would to God you had done so!”
“That was when everybody was praising him.”
“Well?”
“Everybody is abusing him now, and railing at him and insulting him.”
“Well?”
“I want to marry him at last if there is a way—if you think it is possible and can be managed.”
“But you say he is a dying man!”
“That's why! When he comes to himself he will be thinking as you think, that his life has been a failure, and I want somebody to be there and say: 'It isn't, it is only beginning, it is the grain of mustard seed thatmustdie, but it will live in the heart of humanity for ages and ages to come; and I would rather take up your name, injured and insulted as it is, than win all the glory the world has in it.'”
The tears were coursing down the old man's face, and for some minutes he did not attempt to speak. Then he said:
“What you propose is quite possible. It will be a canonical marriage, but it will take some little time to arrange. I must send across to Lambeth Palace. Toward evening I can go down to where he lies and take the license with me. Meantime speak to a clergyman and have everything in readiness.”
He walked with Glory down the long corridor to the door, and there he kissed her on the forehead and said:
“I've long known that a woman can be brave, but meeting you this morning has taught me something else, my child. Time and again I thought John's love of you was near to madness. He was ready to give up everything for it—everything! And he was right! Love like yours is the pearl of pearls, and he who wins it is a prince of princes!”
Later the same day, when the Prime Minister was sitting alone in his room, a member of his cabinet brought him an evening paper containing an article which was making a deep impression in London. It was understood to be written by a journalist of Jewish extraction:
“'HIS BLOOD BE ON US AND ON OUR CHILDREN.'
“This prediction has been for eighteen hundred years the expression of an historical truth. That the whole Jewish nation, and not Pilate or the rabble of Jerusalem, killed Jesus is a fact which every Jew has been made to feel down to the present day. But let the Christian nation that is without sin toward the Founder of Christianity first cast a stone at the Jews. If it is true, as Jesus himself said, that he who offers a cup of cold water to the least of his little ones offers it to him, then it is also true that he who inflicts torture and death on his followers crucifies him afresh. The unhappy man who has been miserably murdered in the slums of Westminster was a follower of Jesus if ever there lived one, and whosoever the actual persons may be who are guilty of his death, the true culprit is the Christian nation which has inflicted mockeries and insults on everybody who has dared to stand alone under the ensign of Christ.
“Let us not be led away by sneers. This man, whatever his errors, his weaknesses, his self-delusions, and his many human failings, was a Christian. He was the prophet of woman in relation to humanity as hardly any one since Jesus has ever been. And he is hounded out of life. Thus, after nineteen centuries, Christianity presents the same characteristics of frightful tyranny which disfigured the old Jewish law. 'We have a law, and by our law he ought to die.' Such is the sentence still pronounced on reformers in a country where civil and religious laws are confounded. God grant the other half of that doom may not also come true—'His blood be on us and on our children!'”