The board room of the hospital of Martha's Vineyard was a large and luxurious chamber, with an oval window at its farther end, and its two side walls panelled with portraits of former chairmen and physicians. In great oaken armchairs, behind ponderous oaken tables, covered with green cloth and furnished with writing pads, the Board of Governors sat in three sides of a square, leaving an open space in the middle. This open space was reserved for patients seeking admission or receiving discharge, and for officers of the hospital presenting their weekly reports.
On a morning in August the matron's report had closed with a startling item. It recommended the immediate suspension of a nurse on the ground of gross impropriety of conduct. The usual course in such a case was for the board of the hospital to depute the matron to act for them in private, but the chairman in this instance was a peppery person, with a stern mouth and a solid under-jaw.
“This is a most serious matter,” he said. “I think—this being a public institution—I really think the board should investigate the case for itself. We ought to assure ourselves that—that, in fact, no other irregularity is going on in the hospital.”
“May it please your lordship,” said a rotund voice from, one of the side tables, “I would suggest that a case like this of grievous moral delinquency comes directly within the dispensation of the chaplain, and if he has done his duty by the unhappy girl (as no doubt he has) he must have a statement to make to the board with regard to her.”
It was Canon Wealthy.
“I may mention,” he added, “that Mr. Storm has now returned to his duties, and is at present in the hospital.”
“Send for him,” said the chairman.
When John Storm entered the board room it was remarked that he looked no better for his holiday. His cheeks were thinner, his eyes more hollow, and there was a strange pallor under his swarthy skin.
The business was explained to him, and he was asked if he had any statement to make with regard to the nurse whom the matron had reported for suspension.
“No,” he said, “I have no statement.”
“Do you mean to tell the board,” said the chairman, “that you know nothing of this matter—that the case is too trivial for your attention—or perhaps that you have never even spoken to the girl on the subject?”
“That is so—I never have,” said John.
“Then you shall do so now,” said the chairman, and he put his hand on the bell beside him, and the messenger appeared.
“You can not intend, sir, to examine the girl here,” said John.
“And why not?”
“Before so many—and all of us men save one. Surely the matron——”
The canon rose to his feet again. “My young brother is naturally sensitive, my lord, but I assure him his delicate feelings are wasted on a girl like this. He forgets that the shame lies in the girl's sin, not in her just and necessary punishment.”
“Bring her in,” said the chairman. The matron whispered to the messenger, and he left the room.
“Pardon me, sir,” said John Storm; “if it is your expectation that I should question the nurse on her sin, as the canon says, I can not do so.”
“Can not?”
“Well, I will not.”
“And is that your idea of your duty as a chaplain?”
“It is the matron's duty, not the chaplain's, to——”
“The matron! The matron! This is your parish, sir—your parish. A great public institution is in danger of a disgraceful scandal, and you who are responsible for its spiritual welfare—really, gentlemen——”
Again the canon rose with a conciliatory smile.
“I think I understand my young friend,” he said, “and your lordship and the hoard will appreciate his feelings, however you may disapprove of his judgment. What generous heart can not sympathize with the sensitive spirit of the youthful clergyman who shrinks from the spectacle of guilt and shame in a young and perhaps beautiful woman? But if it will relieve your lordship from an embarrassing position, I am myself willing——”
“Thank you,” said the chairman; and then the girl was brought into the room in charge of Sister Allworthy.
She was holding her head down and trying to cover her face with her hands.
“Your name, girl?” said the canon.
“Mary Elizabeth Love,” she faltered.
“You are aware, Mary Elizabeth Love, that our excellent and indulgent matron” (here he bowed to a stout lady who sat in the open space) “has been put to the painful duty of reporting you for suspension, which is equivalent to your immediate discharge. Now, I can not hold out a hope that the board will not ratify her recommendation, but it may perhaps qualify the terms of your 'character' if you can show these gentlemen that the unhappy lapse from good conduct which brings you to this position of shame and disgrace is due in any measure to irregularities practised perhaps within this hospital, or to the temptations of any one connected with it.”
The girl began to cry.
“Speak, nurse; if you have anything to say, the gentlemen are willing to hear it.”
The girl's crying deepened into sobs.
“Useless!” said the chairman.
“Impossible!” said the canon.
But some one suggested that perhaps the nurse had a girl friend in the hospital who could throw light on the difficult situation. Then Sister Allworthy whispered to the matron, who said, “Bring her in.”
John Storm's face had assumed a fixed and absent expression, but he saw a girl of larger size than Polly Love enter the room with a gleam, as it were, of sunshine on her golden-red hair. It was Glory.
There was some preliminary whispering, and then the canon began again:
“You are a friend and companion of Mary Elizabeth Love?”
“Yes,” said Glory.
Her voice was full and calm, and a look of quiet courage lit up her girlish beauty.
“You have known her other friends, no doubt, and perhaps you have shared her confidence?”
“I think so.”
“Then you can tell the board if the unhappy condition in which she finds herself is due to any one connected with this hospital.”
“I think not.”
“Not to any officer, servant, or member of any school attached to it?”
“No.”
“Thank you,” said the chairman, “that is quite enough,” and down the tables of the governors there were nods and smiles of satisfaction.
“What have I done?” said Glory.
“You have done a great service to an ancient and honourable institution,” said the canon, “and the best return the board can make for your candour and intelligence is to advise you to avoid such companionship for the future and to flee such perilous associations.”
A certain desperate recklessness expressed itself in Glory's face, and she stepped up to Polly, who was now weeping audibly, and put her arm about the girl's waist.
“What are the girl's relatives?” said the chairman.
The matron replied out of her book. Polly was an orphan, both her parents being dead. She had a brother who had lately been a patient in the hospital, but he was only a lay-helper in the Anglican Monastery at Bishopsgate Street, and therefore useless for present purposes.
There was some further whispering about the tables. Was this the girl who had been recommended to the hospital by the coroner who had investigated a certain notorious and tragic case? Yes.
“I think I have heard of some poor and low relations,” said the canon, “but their own condition is probably too needy to allow them to help her at a time like the present.”
Down to this moment Polly had done nothing but cry, but now she flamed up in a passion of pride and resentment.
“It's false!” she cried. “I have no poor and low relations, and I want nobody's help. My friend is a gentleman—as much a gentleman as anybody here—and I can tell you his name, if you like. He lives in St. James's Street, and he is Lord——”
“Stop, girl!” said the canon, in a loud voice. “We can not allow you to compromise the honour of a gentleman by mentioning his name in his absence.”
John stepped to one of the tables of the governors and took up a pamphlet which lay there. It was the last annual report of Martha's Vineyard, with a list of its governors and subscribers.
“The girl is suspended,” said the chairman, and reaching for the matron's book, he signed it and returned it.
“This,” said the canon, “appears to be a case for Mrs. Callender's Maternity Home at Soho, and with the consent of the board I will request the chaplain to communicate with that lady immediately.”
John Storm had heard, but he made no answer; he was turning over the leaves of the pamphlet.
The canon hemmed and cleared his throat. “Mary Elizabeth Love,” he said, “you have brought a stain upon this honourable and hitherto irreproachable institution, but I trust and believe that ere long, and before your misbegotten child is born, you may see cause to be grateful for our forbearance and our charity. Speaking for myself, I confess it is an occasion of grief to me, and might well, I think, be a cause of sorrow to him who has had your spiritual welfare in his keeping” (here he gave a look toward John), “that you do not seem to realize the position of infamy in which you stand. We have always been taught to think of a woman as sweet and true and pure; a being hallowed to our sympathy by the most sacred associations, and endeared to our love by the tenderest ties, and it is only right” (the canon's voice was breaking), “it is only right, I say, that you should be told at once, and in this place—though tardily and too late—that for the woman who wrongs that ideal, as you have wronged it, there is but one name known among persons of good credit and good report—a hard name, a terrible name, a name of contempt and loathing—the name ofprostitute!”
Crushing the pamphlet in his hand, John Storm had taken a step toward the canon, but he was too late. Some one was there before him. It was Glory. With her head erect and her eyes flashing, she stood between the weeping girl and the black-coated judge, and everybody could see the swelling and heaving of her bosom.
“How dare you!” she cried. “You say you have been taught to think of a woman as sweet and pure. Well,Ihave been taught to think of amanas strong and brave, and tender and merciful to every living creature, but most of all to a woman, if she is erring and fallen. But you are not brave and tender; you are cruel and cowardly, and I despise you and hate you!”
The men at the tables were rising from their seats.
“Oh, you have discharged my friend,” she said, “and you may discharge me, too, if you like—if youdare! But I will tell everybody that it was because I would not let you insult a poor girl with a cruel and shameful name, and trample upon her when she was down. And everybody will believe me, because it is the truth; and anything else you may say will be a lie, and all the world will know it!”
The matron was shambling up also.
“How dare you, miss! Go back to your ward this instant! Do you know whom you are speaking to?”
“Oh, it's not the first time I've spoken to a clergyman, ma'am. I'm the daughter of a clergyman, and the granddaughter of a clergyman, and I know what a clergyman is when he is brave and good, and gentle and merciful to all women, and when he is a man and a gentleman—not a Pharisee and a crocodile!”
“Please take that girl away,” said the chairman.
But John Storm was by her side in a moment.
“No, sir,” he said, “nobody shall do that.”
But now Glory had broken down too, and the girls, like two lost children, were crying on each other's breasts. John opened the door and led them up to it.
“Take your friend to her room, nurse: I shall be with you presently.”
Then he turned back to the chairman, still holding the crumpled pamphlet in his hand, and said calmly and respectfully:
“And now that you have finished with the woman, sir, may I ask what you intend to do with the man?”
“What man?”
“Though I did not feel myself qualified to sit in judgment on the broken heart of a fallen girl, I happen to know the name which she was forbidden to mention, and I find it here, sir—here in your list of subscribers and governors.”
“Well, what of it?”
“You have wiped the girl out of your books, sir. Now I ask you to wipe the man out also.”
“Gentlemen,” said the chairman, rising, “the business of the board is at an end.”
John Storm wrote a letter to Mrs. Callender explaining Polly Love's situation and asking her to call on the girl immediately, and then he went out in search of Lord Robert Ure at the address he had discovered in the report.
He found the man alone on his arrival, but Drake came in soon afterward. Lord Robert received him with a chilly bow; Drake offered his hand coldly; neither of them requested him to sit.
“You are surprised at my visit, gentlemen,” said John, “but I have just now been present at a painful scene, and I thought it necessary that you should know something about it.”
Then he described what had occurred in the board room, and in doing so dwelt chiefly on the abjectness of the girl's humiliation. Lord Robert stood by the window rapping a tune on the window pane, and Drake sat in a low chair with his legs stretched out and his hands in his trousers pockets.
“But I am at a loss to understand why you have thought it necessary to come here to tell that story,” said Lord Robert.
“Lord Robert,” said John, “you understand me perfectly.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Storm, I do not understand you in the least.”
“Then I will not ask you if you are responsible for the girl's position.”
“Don't.”
“But I will ask you a simpler and easier question.”
“What is it?”
“When are you going to marry her?”
Lord Robert burst into ironical laughter and faced round to Drake.
“Well, these men—these curates—their assurance, don't you know... May I ask your reverence what isyourposition in this matter—your standing, don't you know?”
“That of chaplain of the hospital.”
“But you say she has been, turned out of it.”
“Very well, Lord Robert, merely that of a man who intends to protect an injured woman.”
“Oh, I know,” said Lord Robert dryly, “I understand these heroics. I've heard of your sermons, Mr. Storm—your interviews with ladies, and so forth.”
“And I have heard of your doings with girls,” said John. “What are you going to do for this one?”
“Exactly what I please.”
“Take care! You know what the girl is. It's precisely such girls—— At this moment she is tottering on the brink of hell, Lord Robert. If anything further should happen—if you should disappoint her—she is looking to you and building up hopes—if she should fall still lower and destroy herself body and soul——”
“My dear Mr. Storm, please understand that I shall do everything or nothing for the girl exactly as I think well, don't you know, without the counsel or coercion of any clergyman.”
There was a short silence, and then John Storm said quietly: “It is no worse than I expected. But I had to hear it from your own lips, and I have heard it. Good-day.”
He went back to the hospital and asked for Glory. She was banished with Polly to the housekeeper's room. Polly was catching flies on the window (which overlooked the park) and humming, “Sigh no more, ladies.” Glory's eyes were red with weeping. John drew Glory aside.
“I have written to Mrs. Callender, and she will be here presently,” he said.
“It is useless,” said Glory. “Polly will refuse to go. She expects Lord Robert to come for her, and she wants me to call on Mr. Drake.”
“But I have seen the man myself.”
“Lord Robert?”
“Yes. He will do nothing.”
“Nothing!”
“Nothing, or worse than nothing.”
“Impossible!”
“Nothing of that kind is impossible to men like those.”
“They are not so bad as that though, and even if Lord Robert is all you say, Mr. Drake——”
“They are friends and housemates, Glory, and what the one is the other must be also.”
“Oh, no. Mr. Drake is quite a different person.”
“Don't be misled, my child. If there were any real difference between them——”
“But there is; and if a girl were in trouble or wanted help in anything——”
“He would drop her, Glory, like an old lottery ticket that has drawn a blank and is done for.”
She was biting her lip, and it was bleeding slightly.
“You dislike Mr. Drake,” she said, “and that is why you can not be just to him. But he is always praising and excusing you, and when any one——”
“His praises and excuses are nothing to me. I am not thinking of myself. I am thinking——”
He had a look of intense excitement, and his speaking was abrupt and disconnected.
“You were splendid this morning, Glory, and when I think of the girl who defied that Pharisee, being perhaps herself the victim—The man asked me what my standing was, as if that—But if I had really had a right, if the girl had been anything to me, if she had been somebody else and not a light, shallow, worthless creature, do you know what I should have said to him? 'Since things have gone so far, sir, you must marry the girl now, and keep to her and be faithful to her, and love her, or else I——”
“You are flushed and excited, and there is something I do not understand——”
“Promise me, Glory, that you will break off this bad connection.”
“You are unreasonable. I can not promise.”
“Promise that you will never see these men again.”
“But I must see Mr. Drake at once and arrange about Polly.”
“Don't mention the man's name again; it makes my blood boil to hear you speak it!”
“But this is tyranny; and you are worse than the canon; and I can not bear it.”
“Very well; as you will. It's of no use struggling—What is the time?”
“Six o'clock nearly.”
“I must see the canon before he goes to dinner.”
His manner had changed suddenly. He looked crushed and benumbed.
“I am going now.” he said, turning aside.
“So soon? When shall I see you again?”
“God knows!—I mean—I don't know,” he answered in a helpless way.
He was looking around, as if taking a mental farewell of everything.
“But we can not part like this,” she said. “I think you like me a little still, and——”
Her supplicating voice made him look up into her face for a moment. Then he turned away, saying, “Good-bye, Glory.” And with a look of utter exhaustion he went out of the room.
Glory walked to a window at the end of the corridor that she might see him when he crossed the street. There was just a glimpse of his back as he turned the corner with a slow step and his head on his breast. She went back crying.
“I could fancy a fresh herring for supper, dear,” said Polly. “What do you say, housekeeper?”
John Storm went back to the canon's house a crushed and humiliated man. “I can do no more,” he thought. “I will give it up.” His old influence with Glory must have been lost. Something had come between them—something or some one. “Anyhow it is all over and I must go away somewhere.”
To go on seeing Glory would be useless. It would also be dangerous. As often as he was face to face with her he wanted to lay hold of her and say, “You must do this and this, because it is my wish and direction and command, and it isIthat say so!” In the midst of God's work how subtle were the temptations of the devil!
But with every step that he went plodding home there came other feelings. He could see the girl quite plainly, her fresh young face, so strong and so tender, so full of humour and heart's love, and all the sweet beauty of her form and figure. Then the old pain in his breast came back again and he began to be afraid.
“I will take refuge in the Church,” he thought. In prayer and penance and fasting he would find help and consolation. The Church was peace—peace from the noise of life, and strength to fight and to vanquish. But the Church must be the Church of God—not of the world, the flesh, and the devil.
“Ask the canon if he can see me immediately,” said John Storm to the footman, and he stood in the hall for the answer.
The canon had taken tea that day in the study with his daughter Felicity. He was reclining on the sofa, propped up with velvet cushions, and holding the teacup and saucer like the wings of a butterfly in both hands.
“We have been deceived, my dear” (sip, sip), “and we must pay the penalty of the deception. Yet we have nothing to blame ourselves for—nothing whatever. Here was a young man, from Heaven knows where, bent on entering the diocese. True, he was merely the son of a poor lord who had lived the life of a hermit, but he was also the nephew, and presumably the heir, of the Prime Minister of England” (sip, sip, sip). “Well, I gave him his title. I received him into my house. I made him free of my family—and what is the result? He has disregarded my instructions, antagonized my supporters, and borne himself toward me with an attitude of defiance, if not disdain.”
Felicity poured out a second cup of tea for her father, sympathized with him, and set forth her own grievances. The young man had no conversation, and his reticence was quite embarrassing. Sometimes when she had friends, and asked him to come down, his silence—well, really——
“We might have borne with these little deficiencies, my dear, if the Prime Minister had been deeply interested. But he is not. I doubt if he has ever seen his nephew since that first occasion. And when I called at Downing Street, about the time of the sermon, he seemed entirely undisturbed. 'The young man is in the wrong place, my dear canon; send him back to me.' That was all.”
“Then why don't you do it?” said Felicity.
“It is coming to that, my child; but blood is thicker than water, you know, and after all——”
It was at this moment the footman entered the room to ask if the canon could see Mr. Storm.
“Ah, the man himself!” said the canon, rising. “Jenkyns, remove the tray.” Dropping his voice: “Felicity, I will ask you to leave us together. After what occurred this morning at the hospital anything like a scene——” Then aloud: “Bring him in, Jenkyns.—Say something, my dear. Why don't you speak?—Come in, my dear Storm.—You'll see to that matter for me, Felicity. Thanks, thanks! Sorry to send you off, but I'm sure Mr. Storm will excuse you. Good-bye for the present.”
Felicity went out as John Storm came in. He looked excited, and there was an expression of pain in his face.
“I am sorry to disturb you, but I need not detain you long,” he said.
“Sit down, Mr. Storm, sit down,” said the canon, returning to the sofa.
But John did not sit. He stood by the chair vacated by Felicity, and kept beating his hat on the back of it.
“I have come to tell you, sir, that I wish to resign my curacy.”
The canon glanced up with a stealthy expression, and thought: “How clever of him! To resign before he is told plainly that he has to go—that is very clever.”
Then he said aloud: “I am sorry, very sorry. I'm always sorry to part with my clergy. Still—you see I am entirely frank with you—I have observed that you have not been comfortable of late, and I think you are acting for the best. When do you wish to leave me?”
“As soon as convenient—as early as I can be spared.”
The canon smiled condescendingly. “That need not trouble you at all. With a staff like mine, you see—— Of course, you are aware that I am entitled to three months' notice?”
“Yes.”
“But I will waive it; I will not detain you. Have you seen your uncle on the subject?”
“No.”
“When you do so please say that I always try to remove impediments from a young man's path if he is uncomfortable—in the wrong place, for example.”
“Thank you,” said John Storm, and then he hesitated a moment before stepping to the door.
The canon rose and bowed affably. “Not an angry word,” he thought. “Who shall say that blood does not count for something?”
“Believe me, my dear Storm,” he said aloud, “I shall always remember with pride and pleasure our early connection. Perhaps I think you are acting unwisely, even foolishly, but it will continue to be a source of satisfaction to me that I was able to give you your first opportunity, and if your next curacy should chance to be in London, I trust you will allow us to maintain the acquaintance.”
John Storm's face was twitching and his pulses were beating violently, but he was trying to control himself.
“Thank you,” he said; “but it is not very likely——”
“Don't say you are giving up Orders, dear Mr. Storm, or perhaps that you are only leaving our church in order to unite yourself to another. Ah! have I touched on a tender point? You must not be surprised that rumours have been rife. We can not silence the tongues of busybodies and mischief-makers, you know. And I confess, speaking as your spiritual head and adviser, it would be a source of grief to me if a young clergyman, who has eaten the bread of the Establishment, and my own as well, were about to avow himself the subject and slave of an Italian bishop.”
John Storm came back from the door.
“What you are saying, sir, requires that I should be plain spoken. In giving up my curacy I am not leaving the Church of England; I am only leaving you.”
“I am so glad, so relieved!”
“I am leaving you because I can not live with you any longer, because the atmosphere you breathe is impossible to me, because your religion is not my religion, or your God my God!”
“You surprise me. What have I done?”
“A month ago I asked you to set your face as a clergyman against the shameful and immoral marriage of a man of scandalous reputation, but you refused; you excused the man and sided with him. This morning you thought it necessary to investigate in public the case of one of that man's victims, and you sided with the man again—you denied to the girl the right even to mention the scoundrel's name!”
“How differently we see things! Do you know I thought my examination of the poor young thing was merciful to the point of gentleness! And that, I may tell you—notwithstanding the female volcano who came down on me—was the view of the board and of his lordship the chairman.”
“Then I am sorry to differ from them. I thought it unnecessary and unmanly and brutal, and even blasphemous!”
“Mr. Storm! Do you know what you are saying?”
“Perfectly, and I came to say it.”
His eyes were wild, his voice was hoarse; he was like a man breaking the bonds of a tyrannical slavery.
“You called that poor child a prostitute because she had wasted the good gifts which God had given her. But God has given good gifts to you also—gifts of intellect and eloquence with which you might have raised the fallen and supported the weak, and defended the downtrodden and comforted the broken-hearted—and what have you done with them? You have bartered them for benefices, and peddled them for popularity; you have given them in exchange for money, for houses, for furniture, for things like this—and this—and this! You have sold your birthright for a mess of pottage, thereforeyouare the prostitute!”
“You're not yourself, sir; leave me,” and, crossing the room, the canon touched the bell.
“Yes, ten thousand times more the prostitute than that poor fallen girl with her taint of blood and will! There would be no such women as she is to fall victims to evil companionship if there were no such men as you are to excuse their betrayers and to side with them. Who is most the prostitute—the woman who sells her body, or the man who sells his soul?”
“You're mad, sir! But I want no scene——”
“You are the worst prostitute on the streets of London, and yet you are in the Church, in the pulpit, and you call yourself a follower of the One who forgave the woman and shamed the hypocrites, and had not where to lay his head!”
But the canon had faced about and fled out of the room.
The footman came in answer to the bell, and, finding no one but John Storm, he told him that a lady was waiting for him in a carriage at the door.
It was Mrs. Callender. She had come to say that she had called at the hospital for Polly Love, and the girl had refused to go to the home at Soho.
“But whatever's amiss with ye, man?” she said. “You might have seen a ghost!”
He had come out bareheaded, carrying his hat in his hand.
“It's all over,” he said. “I've waited weeks and weeks for it, but it's over at last. It was of no use mincing matters, so I spoke out.”
His red eyes were ablaze, but a great load seemed to be lifted off his mind, and his soul seemed to exult.
“I have told him I must leave him, and I am to go, immediately. The disease was dire, and the remedy had to be dire also.”
The old lady was holding her breath and watching his flushed face with strained attention.
“And what may ye be going to do now?”
“To become a religious in something more than the name; to leave the world altogether with its idleness and pomp and hypocrisy and unreality.”
“Get yoursel' some flesh on your bones first, man. It's easy to see ye've no been sleeping or eating these days and days together.”
“That's nothing—nothing at all. God can not take half your soul. You must give yourself entirely.”
“Eh, laddie, laddie, I feared me this was what ye were coming til. But a man can not bury himself before he is dead. He may bury the half of himself, but is it the better half? What of his thoughts—his wandering thoughts? Choose for yoursel', though, and if you must go—if you must hide yoursel' forever, and this is the last I'm to see of ye—ye may kiss me, laddie—I'm old enough, surely.—Go on, James, man, what for are ye sitting up there staring?”
When John Storm returned to his room he found a letter from Parson Quayle. It was a good-natured, cackling epistle, full of sweet nothings about Glory and the hospital, about Peel and the discovery of ancient ruins in the graveyards of the treen chapels, but it closed with this postscript:
“You will remember old Chalse, a sort of itinerant beggar and the privileged pet of everybody. The silly old gawk has got hold of your father and has actually made the old man believe that you are bewitched! Some one has put the evil eye on you—some woman it would seem—and that is the reason why you have broken away and behaved so strangely! It is most extraordinary. That such a foolish superstition should have taken hold of a man like your father is really quite astonishing, but if it will only soften his rancour against you and help to restore peace we may perhaps forgive the distrust of Providence and the outrage on common sense. All's well that ends well, you know, and we shall all be happy.”
“Martha's.
“Lost, stolen, or strayed—a man, a clergyman, answers to the name of John Storm. Or rather he does not answer, having allowed himself to be written to twice without making so much as a yap or a yowl by way of reply. Last seen six days ago, when he was suffering from the sulks, after being in a de'il of a temper, with a helpless and innocent maiden who 'doesn't know nothin',' that can have given him offence. Any one giving information of his welfare and whereabouts to the said H. and I. M. will be generously and appropriately rewarded.
“But, soberly, my dear John Storm, what has become of you? Where are you, and whatever have you been doing since the day of the dreadful inquisition? Frightful rumours are flying through the air like knives, and they cut and wound a poor girl woefully. Therefore be good enough to reply by return of post—and in person.
“Meantime please accept it as a proof of my eternal regard that after two knock-down blows received in silence I am once more coming up smiling. Know, then, that Mr. Drake has justified all expectations, having compelled Lord Robert to provide for Polly, who is now safely ensconced in her own country castle somewhere in St. John's Wood, furnished to hand with servants and vassals complete. Thus you will be charmed to observe in me the growth of the prophetic instinct, for you will remember my positive prediction that if a girl were in trouble, and the necessity arose, Mr. Drake would be the first to help her. Of course, he had a great deal to say that was as sweet as syrup on the loyalty of my own friendship also, and he expended much beautiful rhetoric on yourself as well. It seems that you are one of those who follow the impulse of the heart entirely, while the rest of us divide our allegiance with the head; and if you display sometimes the severity of a tyrant of our sex, that is only to be set down as another proof of your regard and of the elevation of the pedestal whereon you desire us to be placed. Thus he reconciles me to the harmony of the universe, and makes all things easy and agreeable.
“This being the case, I have now to inform you that Polly's baby has come, having hastened his arrival (it is a man, bless it!) owing either to the tears or the terrors of the crocodile. And being on night duty now, and therefore at liberty from 6.30 to 8.30, I intend to pay him my first call of ceremony this evening, when anybody else would be welcome to accompany me who might be willing to come to his shrine of innocence and love in the spirit of the wise men of the East. But, lest anybodyshouldinquire for me at the hospital at the first of the hours aforesaid, this is to give warning that the White Owl has expressly forbidden all intercourse between the members of her staff and the discharged and dishonoured mother. Set it down to my spirit of contradiction that I intend to disregard the mandate, though I am only too well aware that the poor discharged and dishonoured one has no other idea of friendship than that of a loyalty in which she shares but is not sharing. Of course, woman is born to such selfishness as the sparks fly upward; but if I should ever meet with a man who isn't I will just give myself up to him—body and soul and belongings—unless he has a wife or other encumbrance already and is booked for this world, and in that event I will enter into my own recognisances and be bound over to him for the next. Glory.”
At six-thirty that evening Glory stood waiting in the portico of the hospital, but John Storm did not come. At seven she was ringing at the bell of a little house in St. John's Wood that stood behind a high wall and had an iron grating in the garden door. The bell was answered by a good-natured, slack-looking servant, who was friendly, and even familiar in a moment.
“Are you the young lady from the hospital? The missis told me about you. I'm Liza, and come upstairs—Yes, doing nicely, thank you, both of 'em is—and mind your head, miss.”
Polly was in a little bandbox of a bedroom, looking more pink and white than ever against the linen of her frilled pillow slips. By the bedside a woman of uncertain age in deep mourning, with little twinkling eyes and fat cheeks, was rocking the baby on her knee and babbling over it in words of maudlin endearment.
“Bless it, 'ow it do notice! Boo-loo-loo!”
Glory leaned over the little one and pronounced it the prettiest baby she had ever seen.
“Syme 'ere miss. There ain't sech another in all London! It's jest the sort of baby you can love. Pore little thing, it's quite took to me already, as if it wanted to enkirridge you, my dear.”
“This is Mrs. Jupe,” said Polly, “and she's going to take baby to nurse.”
“Boo-loo-loo-boo! And a nice new cradle's awaiting of it afront of the fire in my little back parlour. Boo-loo!”
“But surely you're never going to part with your baby!” said Glory.
“Why, what do you suppose, dear? Do you think I'm going to be tied to a child all my days, and never be able to go anywhere or do anything or amuse myself at all?”
“Jest that. It'll be to our mootual benefit, as I said when I answered your advertisement.”
Glory asked the woman if she was married and had any children of her own.
“Me, miss? I've been married eleven years, and I've allwiz prayed the dear Lord to gimme childring. Got any? On'y one little girl; but I want to adopt another from the birth, so as to have something to love when my own's growed up.”
Glory supposed that Polly could see her baby at any time, but the woman answered doubtfully:
“Can she see baby? Well, I would rather not, certingly. If I tyke it I want to feel it is syme as my very own and do my dooty by it, pore thing! And if the mother were coming and going I should allwiz feel as she 'ad the first claim.”
Polly showed no interest in the conversation until Mrs. Jupe asked for the name of her “friend,” in lieu of eighty pounds that were to be paid down on delivery of the child.
“Come, myke up your mind, my dear, and let me tyke it away at onct. Give me 'is nyme, that's good enough for me.”
After some hesitation Glory gave Lord Robert's name and address, and the woman prepared the child for its departure.
“Don't tyke on so, my dear. 'Tain't sech a great crime, and many a laidy of serciety 'as done worse.”
At the street door Glory asked Mrs. Jupe for her own address, and the woman gave her a card, saying if she ever wanted to leave the hospital it would be easy to help such a fine-looking young woman as she was to make a bit of living for herself.
Polly recovered speedily from the trouble of the child's departure, and presently assumed an easy and almost patronizing tone toward Glory, pretending to be amused and even a little indignant when asked how soon she expected to be fit for business again, and able to do without Lord Robert's assistance.
“To tell you the truth,” she said, “I was as much to blame as he was. I wanted to escape from the drudgery of the hospital, and I knew he would take me when the time came.”
Glory left early, vowing in her heart she would come no more. When she changed her omnibus at Piccadilly the Circus was very full of women.
“Letter for you, nurse,” said the porter as she entered the hospital. It was from John Storm.
“Dear Glory: I have at length decided to enter the Brotherhood at Bishopsgate Street, and I am to go into the monastery this evening. It is not as a visitor that I am going this time, but as a postulant or novice and in the hope of becoming worthy in due course to take the vows of lifelong consecration. Therefore I am writing to you probably for the last time, and parting from you perhaps forever.
“Since we came up to London together I have suffered many shocks and disappointments, and I seem to have been torn in ribbons. My cherished dreams have proved to be delusions; the palaces I had built up for myself have turned out to be pasteboard, gilt, and rubbish; I have been robbed of all my jewels, or they have shown themselves to be shingle stones. In this condition of shame and disillusionment I am now resolved to escape at the same time from the world and from myself, for I am tired of both alike, and already I feel as if a great weight had been lifted off me.
“But I wish to speak of you. You must have thought me cantankerous, and so I have been sometimes, but always by conviction and on principle. I could not countenance the fashionable morality that is corrupting the manhood of the laity, or endure the toleration that is making the clergy thoroughly wicked; I could not without a pang see you cater to the world's appetites or be drawn into its gaieties and frivolities; and it was agony to me to fear that a girl of your pure if passionate nature might perhaps fall a victim to a gamester in life's follies—an actor indulging a pastime—a mere cheat.
“And what you tell me of your friend's altered circumstances does not relieve me of such anxieties. The man who has deceived a girl once is likely to deceive her again. Short of marriage itself, such connections should be cut off entirely, whatever the price. When they are maintained in relations of liberty the victim is sure to be further victimized, and her last state is always worse than the first.
“However, I do not wish to blame anybody, least of all you, who have done everything for the best, and especially now when I am parting from you forever. You have never realized how much you have been to me, and I doubt if I knew it myself until to-day. You know how I was brought up—with a solitary old man—God be with him!—who tried to be good to me for the sake of his ambitions, and to love me for the sake of his revenge. I never knew my mother, I never had a sister, and I can never have a wife. You were all three to me and yourself besides. There were no women in our household, and you stood for woman in my life. I have never told you this before, but now I tell it as a dying man whispers his secret with his parting breath.
“I have written my letters of farewell—one to my father, asking his forgiveness if I have done him any wrong; one to my uncle, with my love and thanks; and one to your good old grandfather, giving up my solemn and sacred trust of you. My conduct will of course be condemned as weak and foolish from many points of view, but by my departure some difficulties will be removed, and for the rest I have come to see that everything is done by the spirit and nothing by the flesh, and that by prayer and fasting I can help and protect you more than by counsel and advice. Thus everything is for the best.
“The rule under which the Brothers live in community forbids them to write and receive letters without special permission, or even to think too constantly of the world outside; and now that I am on the eve of that new life, memories of the old one keep crowding on me as on a drowning man. But they are all of one period—the days when we were at Peel in your sweet little island, before the vain and cruel world came in between us, when you were a simple, merry girl, and I was little more than a happy boy, and we went plunging and laughing through your bright blue sea together.
“But earth's joys grow very dim and its glories are fading. That also is for the best. I have my Koh-i-noor—my desire to depart and surrender my life to God. John Storm.”
“Anything wrong, nurse? Feeling ill, ain't ye? Only dizzy a bit? Unpleasant news from home, perhaps?”
“No, something else. Let me sit in your room, porter.”
She read the letter again and again, until the words seemed blurred and the lines irregular as a spider's web. Then she thought: “We can not part forever like this. I must see him again whatever happens. Perhaps he has not yet gone.”
It was now half-past eight and time to go on duty, but she went upstairs to Sister Allworthy and asked for an hour's further leave. The request was promptly refused. She went downstairs to the matron and asked for half an hour, only that she might see a friend away on a long journey, and that was refused too. Then she tightened her quivering lips, returned to the porter's room, fixed her bonnet on before the scratched pier-glass, and boldly walked out of the hospital.
It was now quite dark and the fashionable dinner hour of Belgravia, and as she hurried through the streets many crested and coroneted carriages drew up at the great mansions and discharged their occupants in evening dress. The canon's house was brilliantly lighted, and when the door was opened in answer to her knock she could see the canon himself at the head of his own detachment of diners coming downstairs with a lady in white silk chatting affably on his arm.
“Is Mr. Storm at home?”
The footman, in powdered wig and white cotton gloves, answered haltingly. “If it is—er—anything about the hospital, miss, Mr.—er—Golightly will attend.”
“No, it is Mr. Storm himself I wish to see.”
“Gorn!” said the footman, and he shut the door in her face.
She had an impulse to hammer on the door with her hand, and command the flunky to go down on his knees and beg her pardon. But what was the good? She had no time to think of herself now.
As a last resource she would go to Bishopsgate. How dense the traffic seemed to be at Victoria! She had never felt so helpless before.
It was better in the city, and as she walked eastward, in the direction indicated by a policeman, every step brought her into quieter streets. She was now in that part of London which is the world's busiest market-place by day, but is shut up and deserted at night. Her light footsteps echoed against the shutters of the shops. The moon had risen, and she could see far down the empty street.
She found the place at last. It was one of London's weather-beaten old churches, shouldered by shops on either hand, and almost pushed back by the tide of traffic. There was an iron gate at the side, leading by an arched passage to a little courtyard, which was bounded by two high blank walls, by the back wall of the church, and by the front of a large house with a small doorway and many small windows. In the middle of the courtyard there was a tree with a wooden seat round its trunk.
And being there, she felt afraid and almost wished she had not come. The church was dimly lighted, and she thought perhaps the cleaners were within. But presently there was a sound of singing, in men's voices only, and without any kind of musical accompaniment. Just then the clock in the steeple struck nine, and chimes began to play: