A week later Glory made her first visit to the theatre. Her companions were Drake, who was charmed with hernaïveté; Lord Robert, who was amused by it; and Polly Love, who was annoyed and ashamed, and uttered little peevish exclamations.
As they entered the box which they were to occupy, the attendant drew back the curtain, and at sight of the auditorium she cried, “Oh!” and then checked herself and coloured deeply. With her eyes down she sat where directed in one of the three seats in front, Polly being on her right and Drake on her left, and Lord Robert at the back of the lace curtain. For some minutes she did not smile or stir, and when she spoke it was always in whispers. A great awe seemed to have fallen upon her, and she was behaving as she behaved in church.
Drake began to explain the features of the theatre. Down there were the stalls, and behind the stalls was the pit. The body? Well, yes—the body, so to speak. And the three galleries were the dress circle, the family circle, and the gallery proper. The organ loft? No, there was no organ, but that empty place below was the well for the orchestra.
“And what is this little vestry?” she said.
“Oh, this is a private box where we can sit by ourselves and talk!” said Drake.
At every other explanation she had made little whispered cries of astonishment and delight; but when she heard that conversation was not forbidden she was entirely happy. She thought a theatre was even more beautiful than a church, and supposed an actor must have a wonderful living.
The house was filling rapidly, and as the people entered she watched them intently.
“What a beautiful congregation!” she whispered—“audience, I mean!”
“Do you think so?” said Polly; but Glory did not hear her.
It was delightful to see so many lovely faces and listen to the low hum of their conversation. She felt happy among them already and quite kind to everybody, because they had all come together to enjoy themselves. Presently she bowed to some one in the stall with a face all smiles, and then said to Polly:
“How nice of her! A lady moved, to me from the body. How friendly they are in theatres!”
“But it was to Mr. Drake,” said Polly; and then Glory could have buried her face in her confusion.
“Never mind, Glory,” said Drake; “that's a lady who will like you the better for the little mistake.—Rosa,” he added, with a look toward Lord Robert, who smoothed his mustache and bent his head.
Polly glanced up quickly at the mention of the name; and Drake explained that Rosa was a friend of his own—a lady journalist, Miss Rosa Macquarrie, a good and clever woman. Then, turning back to Glory, he said:
“She has been standing up for your friend Mr. Storm this week. You know there have been attacks upon him in the newspapers?”
“Has she?” said Glory, recovering herself and looking down again. “Which pew—stall, I mean——”
But the people were clapping their hands and turning their faces to the opposite side of the theatre. Some great personage was entering the royal box.
“My chief, the Home Secretary,” said Drake; and, when the applause had subsided and the party were seated, the great man recognised his secretary and bowed to him; whereupon it seemed to Glory that every face in the theatre turned about and looked at her.
She did not flinch, but bore herself bravely. There was a certain thrill and a slight twitching of the head, such as a charger makes at the first volley in battle—nothing more, not even the quiver of an eyelid. This was the atmosphere in which Drake lived, and she felt a vague gratitude to him for allowing her to move in it.
“Isn't it beautiful!” she whispered, turning toward Polly; but Polly's face was hidden behind the curtain.
The orchestra was coming in, and Glory leaned forward and counted the fiddles, while Drake talked with Lord Robert across her shoulder.
“I found him reading Rosa's article this morning, and it seems he was present himself and heard the sermon,” said Drake.
“And what's his opinion?” asked Lord Robert.
“Much the same as your own. Affectation—the man is suffering from the desire to be original—more egotism than love of truth, and so forth.”
“Right, too, dear boy. All this vapouring is as much as to say: 'Look at me! I am the Hon. and Rev. Mr. Thingamy, nephew of the Prime Minister; and yet——'”
“I don't at all agree with the chief,” said Drake, “and I told him so. The man has enthusiasm, and that's the very salt of the earth at present. We are all such pessimists in these days! Thank God for anybody who will warm us up with a little faith, say I!”
Glory's bosom heaved, and she was just about to speak, when, there was a sudden clap as of thunder, and she leaped up in her seat. But it was only the beginning of the overture, and she sat down laughing. There was a tender passage in the music; and after it was over she was very quiet for a while, and then whispered to Polly that she hoped little Johnnie wasn't worse to-night, and it seemed wicked to enjoy one's self when any one was so poorly.
“Who is that?” said Drake.
“My little boy whose leg was amputated,” said Glory.
“This Glory is so funny!” said Polly. “Fancy talking of that here!”
“Hush!” said Lord Robert; “the curtain is going up.” And at the next moment Glory was laughing because they were all in the dark.
The play was Much Ado about Nothing, and Glory whispered to Drake that she had never seen it before, but she had read Macbeth, and knew all about Shakespeare and the drama. The first scene took her breath away, being so large and so splendid. It represented the outside of a gentleman's house, and she thought what a length of time it must have taken to build it, considering it was to last only a single night. But hush! The people were going indoors. No; they preferred to talk in the street. Oh, we were in Italy? Yes, indeed, that was different.
Leonato delivered his first speeches forcibly, and was rewarded with applause. Glory clapped her hands also, and said he was a very good actor for such a very old gentleman.
Then Beatrice made her entrance, and was greeted with cheers, whereupon Glory looked perplexed.
“It's Terry,” whispered Polly; and Drake said, “Ellen Terry”; but Glory still looked puzzled.
“They are calling her 'Beatrice,'” she said. Then, mastering the situation, she looked wise and said: “Of course—the actress—I quite understand; but why do they applaud her—she has done nothing yet?”
Drake explained that the lady playing Beatrice was a great favourite, and that the applause of the audience had been of the nature of a welcome to a welcome guest, as much as to say they had liked her before, and were glad to see her again. Glory thought that was beautiful, and, looking at the gleaming eyes that shone out of the darkness, she said:
“How lovely to be an actress!”
Then she turned back to the stage, where all was bright and brilliant, and said, “What a lovely frock, too!”
“Only a stage costume, my dear,” said Polly.
“And what beautiful diamonds!”
“Paste,” said Lord Robert,
“Hush!” said Drake; and then Benedick entered, and the audience received him with great cheering. “Irving,” whispered Drake; and Glory looked more perplexed than before and said:
“But you told me it was Mr. Irving's theatre, and I thought it would have been his place to welcome——”
The vision of Benedick clapping his hands at his own entrance set Lord Robert laughing in his cold way: but Drake said, “Be quiet, Robert!”
Glory, like a child, had ears for no conversation except her own, and she was immersed in the play in a moment. The merry war of Beatrice and Benedick had begun, and as she watched it her face grew grave.
“Now, that's very foolish of her,” she said; “and if, as you say, she's a great actress, she shouldn't do such things. To talk like that to a man is to let everybody see that she likes him better than anybody else, though she's trying her best to hide it. The silly girl—he'll find her out!”
But the curtain had gone down on the first act, the lights had suddenly gone up, and her companions were laughing at her. Then she laughed also.
“Of course, it's only a play,” she said largely, “and I know all about plays and about acting, and I can act myself, too.”
“I'm sure you can,” said Polly, lifting her lip. But Glory took no notice.
Throughout the second act she put on the same airs of knowledge, watching the masked ball intently, but never once uttering a laugh and hardly ever smiling. The light, the colour, the dresses, the gay young faces enchanted her; but she struggled to console herself. It was only her body that was up there, leaning over the front of the box with lips twitching and eyes gleaming; her soul was down on the stage, clad in a lovely gown, and carrying a mask and laughing and joking with Benedick; but she held herself in, and when the curtain fell she began to talk of the acting.
She was still of the opinion that Leonato was excellent for such an elderly gentleman, and when Polly praised Claudio she agreed that he was good too.
“But Benedick is my boy for all,” she said. In some way she had identified herself with Beatrice, and hardly ever spoke of her.
During the third act this air of wisdom and learning broke down badly. In the middle of the ballad, “Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,” she remembered Johnnie, and whispered to Drake how ill he had been when they left the hospital. And when it was over, and Benedick protested that the song had been vilely sung, she sat back in her seat and said she didn't know how Mr. Irving could say such a thing, for she was sure the boy had sung it beautifully.
“But that's the author,” whispered Drake; and then she said wisely:
“Oh, yes, I know—Shakespeare, of course.”
Then came the liming of the two love-birds, and she declared that everybody was in love in plays of that sort, and that was why she liked them; but as for those people playing the trick, they were very simple if they thought Beatrice didn't know she loved Benedick. Claudio fell woefully in her esteem in other respects also, and when he agreed to spy on Hero she said he ought to be ashamed of himself anyhow.
“How ridiculous you are!” said Polly. “It's the author, isn't it?”
“Then the author ought to be ashamed of himself, also, for it is unjust and cruel and unnecessary,” said Glory.
The curtain had come down again by this time, and the men were deep in an argument about morality in art, Lord Robert protesting that art had no morality, and Drake maintaining that what Glory said was right, and there was no getting to the back of it.
But the fourth act witnessed Glory's final vanquishment. When she found the scene was the inside of a church and they were to be present at a wedding, she could not keep still on her seat for delight; but when the marriage was stopped and Claudio uttered his denunciation of Hero, she said it was just like him, and it would serve him right if nobody believed him.
“Hush!” said somebody near them.
“But they are believing him,” said Glory quite audibly.
“Hush! Hush!” came from many parts of the theatre.
“Well, that's shameful—her father, too——” began Glory.
“Hush, Glory!” whispered Drake; but she had risen to her feet, and when Hero fainted and fell she uttered a cry.
“What a girl!” whispered Polly. “Sit down—everybody's looking!”
“It's only a play, you know,” whispered Drake; and Glory sat down and said:
“Well, yes; of course, it's only a play. Did you suppose——”
But she was lost in a moment. Beatrice and Benedick were alone in the church now; and when Beatrice said, “Kill Claudio,” Glory leaped up again and clapped her hands. But Benedick would not kill Claudio, and it was the last straw of all. That wasn't what she called being a great actor, and it was shameful to “sit and listen to such plays. Lots of disgraceful scenes happened in life, but people didn't come to the theatre to see such things, and she would go.
“How ridiculous you are!” said Polly; but Glory was out in the corridor, and Drake was going after her.
She came back at the beginning of the fifth act with red eyes and confused smiles, looking very much ashamed. From that moment onward she cried a good deal, but gave no other sign until the green curtain came down at the end, when she said:
“It's a wonderful thing! To make people forget it's not true is the most wonderful thing in the world!”
Lord Robert, standing behind the curtain at the back of Polly's chair, had been laughing at Glory with his long owlish drawl, and making cynical interjections by way of punctuating her enthusiasm; and now he said, “Would you like to have a nearer view of your wonderful world, Glory?”
Glory looked perplexed, and Drake muttered, “Hold your tongue, Robert!” Then, turning to Glory, he said shortly: “He only asked if you would like to go behind the scenes; but I don't think——”
Glory uttered a cry of delight. “Like it? Better than anything in the world!”
“Then I must take you to a rehearsal somewhere,” said Lord Robert; “and you'll both come to tea at the chambers afterward.”
Drake made some show of dissent; but Polly, with her most voluptuous look upward, said it would be perfectly charming, and Glory was in raptures.
The girls, by their own choice, went home without escort by the Hammersmith omnibus. They sat on opposite sides and hardly talked at all. Polly was humming idly. “Sigh no more, ladies.”
Glory was in a trance. A great, bright, beautiful world had that night swum into her view, and all her heart was yearning for it with vague and blind aspirations. It might be a world of dreams, but it seemed more real than reality, and when the omnibus passed the corner of Piccadilly Circus she forgot to look at the women who were crowding the pavement.
The omnibus drew up for them at the door of the hospital, and they took long breaths as they went up the steps.
In the corridor to the surgical ward they came upon John Storm. His head was down and his step was long and measured, and he seemed to be trying to pass them in his grave silence; but Glory stopped and spoke, while Polly went on to her cubicle.
“You here so late?” she said.
He looked steadily into her face and answered, “I was sent for—some one was dying.”
“Was it little Johnnie?”
“Yes.”
There was not a tear now, not a quiver of an eyelid.
“I don't think I care for this life,” she said fretfully. “Death is always about you everywhere, and a girl can never go out to enjoy herself but——”
“It is true woman's work,” said John hotly, “the truest, noblest work a woman can have in all the world!”
“Perhaps,” said Glory, swinging on her heel. “All the same——”
“Good-night!” said John, and he turned on his heel also.
She looked after him and laughed. Then with a little hard lump at her heart she took herself off to bed.
Polly Love, in the next cubicle, was humming as she undressed:
Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,Men were deceivers ever.
That night Glory dreamed that she was back at Peel. She was sitting up on the Peel hill, watching the big ships as they weighed anchor in the bay beyond the old dead castle walls, and wishing she were going out with them to the sea and the great cities so far away.
John Storm was sitting in his room next morning fumbling the leaves of a book and trying to read, when a lady was announced. It was Miss Macrae, and she came in with a flushed face, a quivering lip, and the marks of tears in her eyes. She held his hand with the same long hand-clasp as before, and said in a tremulous voice:
“I am ashamed of coming, and mother does not know that I am here; but I am very unhappy, and if you can not help me——”
“Please sit down,” said John Storm.
“I have come to tell you——” she said, and then her sad eyes moved about the room and came back to his face. “It is about Lord Robert Ure, and I am very wretched.”
“Tell me everything, dear lady, and if there is anything I can do——”
She told him all. It was a miserable story. Her mother had engaged her to Lord Robert Ure (there was no other way of putting it) for the sake of his title, and he had engaged himself to her for the sake of her wealth. She had never loved him, and had long known that he was a man of scandalous reputation; but she had been taught that to attach weight to such considerations would be girlish and sentimental, and she had fought for a while and then yielded.
“You will reproach me for my feebleness,” she said, and he answered haltingly:
“No, I do not reproach you—I pity you!”
“Well,” she said, “it is all over now, and if I am ruined, and if my mother——”
“You have told her you can not marry him!”
“Yes.”
“Then who am I to reproach you?” he said; and rising to his feet, he threw down his book.
Her dark eyes wandered about the room, and came back to his face again and shone with a new lustre.
“I heard your sermon on Sunday, Mr. Storm, and I felt as if there were nobody else in the church, and you were speaking to me alone. And last night at the theatre——”
“Well?”
He had been tramping the room, but he stopped.
“I saw him in a box with his friend and two—two ladies.”
“Were they nurses from the hospital?”
She made a cry of surprise and said, “Then you know all about it, and the sermonwasmeant for me?”
He did not speak for a moment, and then he said with a thick utterance:
“You wish me to help you to break off this marriage, and I will try. But if I fail—no matter what has happened in the past, or what awaits you in the future——”
“Oh,” she said, “if I had your strength beside me I should be brave—I should be afraid of nothing.”
“Good-bye, dear lady,” said John Storm; and before he could prevent her she had stooped over his hand and kissed it.
John Storm had returned to his book and was clutching it with nervous fingers, when his fellow-curate came with a message from the canon to request his presence in the study.
“Tell him I was on the point of going down,” said John. And the Reverend Golightly coughed and bowed himself out.
The canon had also had a visitor that morning. It was Mrs. Macrae herself. She sat on a chair covered with a tiger skin, sniffed at her scented handkerchief, and poured out all her sorrows.
Mercy had rebelled against her authority, and it was entirely the fault of the new curate, Mr. Storm. She had actually refused to carry out her engagement with Lord Robert, and it all came of that dreadful sermon on Sunday. It was dishonourable, it was unprincipled, and it was a pretty thing to teach girls to indulge their whims without regard to the wishes of parents!
“Here have I been two years in London, spending a fortune on the girl and trying to do my best for her, and the moment I fix her in one of the first English families, this young man—this curate—this—— Upon my honour, it's real wicked, it's shameful!” And the handkerchief steeped in perfume went up from the nose to the eyes.
The canon swung hispince-nez. “Don't put yourself about, my dear Mrs. Macrae. Leave the matter to me. Miss Macrae will give up her objections, and——”
“Oh, you mustn't judge her by her quietness, canon. You don't know her character. She's real stubborn when her mind's made up. But I'll be as stubborn as she is—I'll take her back to America—I'll never spend another penny——”
“And as for Mr. Storm,” continued the canon, “I'll make everything smooth in that quarter. You mustn't think too much about the unhappy sermon—a little youthfulesprit fort—we all go through it, you know.”
When Mrs. Macrae had gone, he rang twice for Mr. Golightly and said, “Tell Mr. Storm to come down to me immediately.”
“With pleasure, sir,” said the little man; and then he hesitated.
“What is it?” said the canon, adjusting his glasses.
“I have never told you, sir, how I found him the night you sent me to the hospital.”
“Well, how?”
“On his knees to a Catholic priest who was visiting a patient.”
The canon's glasses fell from his eyes and his broad face broke into strange smiles.
“I thought the Sorceress of Rome was at the bottom of it,” he said. “His uncle shall know of this, and unless I am sadly deceived—but fetch him down.”
John Storm was wearing his flannel shirt that morning, and he came downstairs with a heavy tread and swung himself, unasked, into the chair that had just before been occupied by Mrs. Macrae.
The perpendicular wrinkles came between the canon's eyebrows and he said: “My dear Mr. Storm, I have postponed as long as possible a most painful interview. The fact is, your recent sermon has given the greatest offence to the ladies of my congregation, and if such teaching were persisted in we should lose our best people. Now, I don't want to be angry with you, quite the contrary, but I wish to put it to you, as your spiritual head and adviser, that your idea of religion is by no means agreeable to the needs and necessities of the nineteenth century. There is no freedom in such a faith, and St. Paul says, 'Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.' But the theory of your religion is not more unscriptural than its application is unwholesome. Yours is a gloomy faith, my dear Storm, and what did Luther say of a gloomy faith?—that the devil was very apt to be lurking behind it. As for himself he married, you may remember; he had children, he played chess, he loved to see young people dancing——”
“I don't object to the dancing, sir,” said John Storm. “I only object to the tune.”
“What do you mean?” said the canon, not without insolence, and the perpendicular wrinkles became large and heavy.
“I mean, sir,” said John Storm, “that half the young people nowadays—the young women in the west of London especially—are asked to dance to the Dead March.”
And then he spoke of the infamous case of Mercy Macrae, how she was being bought and sold, and how scandalous was the reputation of the man she was required to marry.
“That was what I was coming down to speak about, sir—to ask you to save this innocent girl from such a mockery of holy wedlock. She is not a child, and the law can not help her, but you can do so, because the power of the Church is at your back. You have only to set your face against this infamy, and say——”
“My dear Mr. Storm,” the canon was smiling condescendingly and swinging his glasses, “the business of the Church is to solemnize marriages, not to make them. But if the young lady comes to me I will say: 'My dear young lady, the conditions you complain of are more common than you suppose; put aside all foolish, romantic notions, make a nest for yourself as comfortably as you can, and come back in a year to thank me.'”
John Storm was on his feet; the blood was mounting to his face and tingling in his fingers.
“And so these men are to make their wives of the daughters of the poor first, and then ask the Church to solemnize their polygamy——”
But the canon had lifted his hand to silence him.
“My dear young friend, a policy like yours would decimate the House of Commons and abolish the House of Lords. Practical religion has a sweet reasonableness. We are all human, even if we are all gentlemen; and while silly young things——”
But John Storm was out in the hall and putting on his hat to see Glory.
Glory had not yet awakened from her trance. While others were living in to-day she was still going about in yesterday. The emotion of the theatre was upon her, and the world of reality took the tone and colour of drama. This made her a tender woman, but a bad nurse.
She began the day in the Outpatient Department, and a poor woman came with a child that had bitten its tongue. Its condition required that it should remain in the house a day or two. “Let me put the pore thing to bed; she's allus used to me,” said the woman piteously. “Are you the mother?” said the Sister. “No, the grandmother.” “The mother is the only person who can enter the wards except on visiting day.” The poor woman began to cry. Glory had to carry the child to bed, and she whispered to the grandmother, “Come this way,” and the woman followed her. When they came to the surgical ward, she said to the nurse in charge, “This is the child's mother, and she has come to put the poor little thing to bed.”
Later in the morning she was sent up to help in the same ward. A patient in great pain called to her and said, “Loosen this bandage for me, nurse; it is killing me!” And she loosened it.
But the glamour of the theatre was upon her as well as its sentiment and emotion, and in the space before the bed of one of the patients, at a moment when the ward Sister was away, she began to make imitations of Beatrice and Benedick and the singer of “Sigh no more, ladies.” The patient was Koenig, the choirmaster of “All Saints',” a little fat German with long mustaches, which he waxed and curled as he lay in bed. Glory had christened him “the hippopotamus,” and at her mimicry he laughed so much that he rolled and pitched and dived among the bedclothes.
“Ach, Gott!” he cried, “vot a girl! Never—I haf never heard any one so goot on de stage. Vot a voice, too! A leetle vork under a goot teacher, and den, mein Gott! Vot is it de musicians say?—the genius has a Cremona inside of him on which he first composes his immortal vorks. You haf the Cremona, my dear, and I will help you to bring it out. Vot you tink?”
It was the hour of the morning when the patients who can afford it have their newspapers brought up to them, but the newspapers were thrown aside; every eye was on Glory, and there was much noisy laughter and even some clapping of hands.
Ward Sister Allworthy entered with the house doctor.
“What's the meaning of this?” she demanded. Glory told the truth, and was reproved.
“Who has loosened this bandage?” said the doctor. The patient tried to prevaricate, but Glory told the truth again, and was reproved once more.
“And who permitted this woman to come into the ward?” said the nurse.
“I did,” said Glory.
“You're not fit to be a nurse, miss, and I shall certainly report you as unfit for duty.”
Glory laughed in the Sister's face.
It was at this moment that John Storm arrived after his interview with the canon. He drew Glory into the corridor and tried to pacify her.
“Oh, don't suppose I'm going to do hospital nursing all my life,” she said. “It may be good womanly work, but I want to be a human being with a heart, and not a machine called Duty. How I hate and despise my surroundings! I'll make an end of them one of these days. Sooner or later it must come to that.”
“Your life has been deranged, Glory, and that is why you disdain your surroundings. You were at the theatre last night.”
“Who told you that? Well, what of it? Are you one of those who think the theatre——”
“I don't object to the theatre, Glory. It is the derangement of your life I am thinking of; and if anybody is responsible for that he is your enemy, not your friend.”
“You will make me angry again, as you did before,” and she began to bite her quivering lip.
“I did not come to make you angry, Glory. I came to ask you—even to entreat you—to break off this hateful connection.”
“Because you know nothing of this—this connection, as you say—you call it hateful.”
“I know what I am talking about, my child. The life these men live is worse than hateful; and it makes my heart bleed to see you falling a victim to it.”
“You are degrading me again; you are always degrading me. Other men try to be agreeable to me, but you—— Besides, I can not hear my friends abused. Yes, theyaremy friends. Iwasat the theatre with them last night, and I am going to take tea at their chambers on my next holiday. So please——”
“Glory!”
With one plunge of his arm he had gripped her by the wrist.
“You are hurting me.”
“You are never to set foot in the rooms of those men!”
“Let me go!”
“You are as inexperienced as a child, Glory, and it is my duty to protect you against yourself.”
“Let go, I say!”
“Don't destroy yourself. Think while there's time—think of your good name, your character!”
“I shall do as I please.”
“Listen! If I have chosen to be a clergyman, it's not because I've lived all my life in cotton wool. Let me tell you what the lives of such men really are—the best of them, the very best. He gets up at noon, walks in the park, takes tea with some one, grunts and groans that he must go to somebody's dinner party, escapes to the Gaiety Theatre, sups at a so-called club——”
“You mean Lord Robert. But what right have you to say——”
“The right of one who knows him to be as bad as this, and worse—ten times worse! Such a man thinks he has a right to play with a girl if she is poor. She may stake her soul, her salvation, but he risks nothing. To-day he trifles with her; to-morrow he marries another, and flings her to the devil!”
“There's something else in this. What is it?”
But John Storm had swung about and left her.
As soon as she was at liberty she went in search of Polly Love, expecting to find her in her cubicle, but the cubicle was empty. Coming out of the little room she saw a piece of paper lying on the floor. It was a letter, carefully folded. She picked it up, unfolded it, and read it, hardly knowing what she was doing, for her head was dizzy and her eyes were swimming in unshed tears. It ran:
“You ask, Do I mean to adopt entirely? Yes; to bring up just the same as if it were born to me. I hope yours will be a strong and healthy boy; but if it is a girl——”
Glory could not understand what she was reading. Whose letter could it be? It was addressed “X. Y. Z., Office ofMorning Post.”
There was a hurried footstep approaching, and Polly came in, with her eyes on the ground as if looking for something she had dropped. At the next moment she had snatched the letter out of Glory's hand, and was saying:
“What are you doing in my room? Has your friend the chaplain told you to spy upon me?”
The expression on her face was appalling, and Glory, who had flushed up with shame, turned away without a word.
When John Storm got back to his room he found the following letter from the canon on his table:
“Since our interview of this morning (so strangely abridged) I have had the honour to visit your dear uncle, the Prime Minister, and he agrees with me that the strain of your recent examinations and the anxieties of a new occupation have probably disturbed your health, and that it will be prudent of you to take a short vacation. I have therefore the greatest pleasure in assuring you that you are free from duty for a week, a fortnight, or a month, as your convenience may determine; and during your much-regretted absence I will do my best to sustain the great loss of your invaluable help.”
On reading the message, John Storm flung himself into a chair and burst into a long peal of bitter laughter. But when the laughter was spent there came a sense of great loneliness. Then he remembered Mrs. Callender, and went across to her little house in Victoria Square, and showed her the canon's letter and told her everything.
“Lies, lies, lies!” she said. “Ah, laddie, laddie! to lie, to know you lie, to be known to lie, and yet to go on lying—that is the whole art of life with these fashionable shepherds and their fashionable flock. As for that woman—ugh! She was separated from her husband for two years before his death; and he died in a hotel abroad without kith or kin to comfort him: and now she wears his hair in a gold locket on her bosom—that's what she is! But all's well that ends well, laddie. Thehollywill do ye good, for you were killing yerself with work. You'll no be spending it in your little island, now, eh?”
John Storm was sitting with one leg across the other, and his head on his hand and his elbow on his knee.
“I shall spend it,” he said, “in Retreat at the Brotherhood in Bishopsgate.”
“God bless me, man! is that the change of air ye'll be going to gie yoursel'? It may be well enough for men with water in their veins; but you have blood, laddie—blood! Tak' care, tak' care!”
“Still at Martha's.
“Quite right, dear Aunt Anna, the terms 'authority' and 'obedience' must be known and honoured. Only, when it is a case of put a penny in the slot and out comes the word of command, you can't exactly feel that way. The board of directors put the penny into the slot of this institution, and the word of command, so far as I am concerned, comes out of the mouth of Ward Sister Allworthy. I call her the White Owl. She is five feet ten, and has big round cheeks which sometimes I should dearly love to slap—as mothers slap their 'childers' when they administer a humiliating punishment.
“So you think you notice 'a certain want of aptitude'? Well, I don't think I am naturally a bad nurse, Aunt Anna. The patients like me, and they don't die of the dumps when I am about. Only I can't practise nursing by the rule of three, and as a consequence I get myself reported. Sister Allworthy has reported me three times, bless her! Thrice the brinded cat hath mewed, and now she threatens to have me up before the matron. That dear soul has difficulties of locomotion, being buried under the Pelion on Ossa of a mountain of fat. She inhabits a cave of Adullam on the edge of the Inferno—i. e., the 'theatre'—below stairs, and has a small dog with a bad heart and broken wind always nagging on her knee. I call her the Chief Broker in Breakages and Head Dealer in Diseases, and she is only seen once a day when she comes round to take stock. You have to be nice with her Majesty,' for she can haul you up at the weekly board, and put a score against you in the black book, and send you away without a certificate. If that happens, a girl who expects to earn her living as a nurse has never any particular need to pray, 'In all time of our wealth, good Lord deliver us.'
“But, oh, my dear grandfather, what do you think of our John Storm now? After uttering the lamentations of Jeremiah and predicting all the plagues of Egypt, he has gone off to hold his peace—that is to say, he has gone to make his 'Retreat,' which, being interpreted, means praying without ceasing, and also without speaking, eighteen hours a day, six days at a spell, and sometimes sixty. When he comes back reeking with all that holiness I shall feel myself such a miserable sinner——
“Soberly, I could cry to think of it, though, and when I remember that perhaps I was partly to blame——
“It was this way: In that 'ter'ble discoorse' I told you he had scotched the snake, not killed it, and his vicar (I call him Mr. Worldly Wiseman), finding that his ladies and nobility went out like the Pharisees, one by one, told our poor John he was ill and stood in need of instant rest. It looked like it certainly, and the trouble must have been a sort of human rabies in which the poor victim bites at his best friends first. He came here with his lower lip hanging like an old dog's, and I was so stupid as not to see that he was being hunted like a dog too, and only told myself how ugly and untidy he had grown of late. But the Sister had just before been showing me her tusks again, and being possessed with a fury, I gave it him world without end. He was very unreasonable though, and seemed to say that I must have no friends and no amusements that were not of his choosing, and that after spending my days walking through the inside of this precious hospital I must spend my nights walking round the outside of it. Being a woman of like passions with himself, I had a 'ter'ble dust' with him on the subject, and the next I heard was that he was going to make Retreat in a kind of English-church monastery somewhere in the city, where he would 'try to disentangle' himself 'from the world' and see what he 'ought to do next.' He sent me his blessing with this message, and I sent him back mine—a less holy one, but he'll make it do.
“I thought you would remember Mr. Drake's mother, dear Auntie Rachel. Yes, he is fair also, and wears his hair brushed across his forehead, much as you see in the portraits of Napoleon. In fact, he is a sort of fair-haired Napoleon in nature as well.
“He took me to the theatre the other evening, and that was the great event I intended to tell you about. It was quite a proper sort of place, and nobody behaved badly except Glory, who kept talking and preaching and going silly with excitement all the evening through, with the result that everybody was staring mewards and wanting to turn me out.
“Since then Mr. Drake's friend, Lord Bob, who knows all the actors on earth seemingly, has taken us 'behind,' and we have seen a rehearsal. Things don't look quite the same behind as before, but nothing in the world does that, and I wasn't a bit disenchanted. In fact, I found everything delightfully romantic and amusing, and really I do not think itcanbe so very wicked to be an actress. Do you?
“My friend Polly Love was with us. Polly is a probationer also, and sleeps in the cubicle next to mine, and after the rehearsal we went to the gentlemen's chambers to tea. I can hear what Aunt Anna is saying: 'Goodness gracious! you didn't do that, girl?' Well, yes, I did though. In the interest of my sex I wanted to see how two boys could live in rooms all by themselves, and it's perfectly shocking how well they get on without a woman. Of course I wasn't such a silly as to let wit about that, but after I had examined their sitting-room and cross-examined its owners on its numerous photographs (chiefly feminine) and tried how it feels to hold their big pipes between one's teeth, I whipped off my hat at once and began to put things straight for them, and then I made the tea.
“By this time the gentlemen had changed into their jackets, and I sent them flying around for cups and saucers and sugar basins. It turned out that they had only one teaspoon in the place, and when anybody wanted to stir her tea she said, 'Will you oblige me withspoonplease?' What fun it was! We laughed until we cried—at least one of us did—and eventually we managed to break the teapot and a slop basin and to overturn a standing lamp. It was perfectly delightful!
“But the best sport was after tea was over, and Glory was called on for imitations of the people we had seen at the theatre. Of course she couldn't imitate a man when she was in a woman's frock, so being as bright as diamonds that night and twice 'as impudent as a white stone,' [* A Manx proverb] she actually conceived the idea of dressing up in man's clothes. Naturally the gentlemen were enchanted, so I hope Auntie Rachel isn't terribly shocked. Mr. Drake lent me his knickerbockers and a velvet jacket, and Polly and I went into the bedroom, where she helped me to find the way to put them on. With my own blouse and my own hat (I am wearing a felt one now with a broad brim and a feather), andof coursemy own slippers and stockings, I made a bogh of a boy, I can tell you. I thought Polly would have died of delight in the bedroom, but when we came out she kept covering her face and crying, 'Glory, howcanyou!'
“I'm afraid I sang and talked more than was good for the soul, but it was all Mr. Drake's doing. He declared I was such a marvellous mimic that it was simply a waste of time and the good gifts of God to go on hospital nursing any longer. And I do believe that if anything happened, and the need arose, he would——
“Only fancy Glory a public person, and all the world and his wife going down on their knees to her! But then it's fearful to think of being an actress, isn't it?
“After all such glorious 'outs' I have to go 'in' to the hospital, and then comes my fit again. Do you remember my little boy who said he was going to the angels, and he would get lots of gristly pork up there? He has gone, and I don't think I like nursing children now. Oh, how I long to go out into the world! I want to shine in it. I want to become great and glorious. I could do it too, I know I could. I have got it in me, I am sure I have. Yet here I am in a little dark corner crying for the sunshine!
“How silly this is, isn't it? It sounds like madness. My dears, allow me to introduce you to some one—
“Glory Quayle, 'March Hare and Madwoman.'”