The dinner party at the Home Secretary's took place on Wednesday, in the week after Easter. It had rained during the day, but cleared up toward night. Glory and Koenig had taken an omnibus to Waterloo Place, and then walked up the wide street that ends with the wide steps going down to the park. Two lines of lofty stone houses go off to right and left, and the house they were going to was in one of them.
A footman received them with sombre but easy familiarity. The artistes? Yes. They were shown into the library, and light refreshments were brought in to them on a tray. Three other members of the choral company were there already. Glory was seeing it all for the first time, and Koenig was describing and explaining everything in broken whispers.
A band was playing in the well of the circular staircase, and a second footman stood in an alcove behind an outwork of hats and overcoats. The first footman reappeared. Were the artistes ready to go to the drawing-room?
They followed him upstairs. The band had stopped, and there was the distant hum of voices and the crackle of plates. Waiters were coming and going from the dining-room, and the butler stood at the door giving instructions. At one moment there was a glimpse within of ladies in gorgeous dresses, and a table laden with silver and bright with fairy-lamps. When the door opened the voices grew louder, when it closed the sounds were deadened.
The upper landing opened on to asalonwhich had three windows down to the ground, and half of each stood open. Outside there was a wide terrace lit up by Chinese and Moorish lanterns. Beyond was the dark patch of the park, and farther still the towers of the Abbey and the clock of Westminster, but the great light was not burning to-night.
“De House naivare sits on Vednesday night,” said Koenig.
They passed into the drawing-room, which was empty. The standing lamps were subdued by coverings of yellow-silk lace. There was a piano and an organ.
“Ve'll stay here,” said Koenig, opening the organ, and Glory stood by his side.
Presently there were ripples of laughter, sounds of quick, indistinguishable voices, waves of heliotrope, and the rustle of silk dresses on the stairs. Then the ladies entered. Two or three of them who were elderly leaned their right hands on the arms of younger women, and walked with ebony sticks in their left. An old lady wearing black satin and a large brooch came last. Koenig rose and bowed to her. Glory prepared to bow also, but the lady gave her a side inclination of the head as she sat in a well-cushioned chair under a lamp, and Glory's bow was abridged.
The ladies sat and talked, and Glory tried to listen. There were little nothings, punctuated by trills of feminine laughter. She thought the conversation rather silly. More than once the ladies lifted their lorgnettes and looked at her. She set her lips hard and looked back without flinching.
A footman brought tea on a tray, and then there was the tinkle of cup and saucer, and more laughter. The lady in satin looked round at Koenig, and he began to play the organ. He played superbly, but nobody seemed to listen. When he finished there was a pause, and everybody said: “Oh, thank you; we're all—er——” and then the talk began again. The vocal soloist sang some ballad of Schumann, and as long as it lasted an old lady with an ear-trumpet sat at the foot of the piano, and a young girl spoke into it. When it was over, everybody said, “Ah, that dear old thing!” Then there was an outbreak of deeper voices from the stairs, with lustier laughter and heavier steps.
The gentlemen appeared, talking loudly as they entered. Koenig was back at the organ and playing as if he wished it were the 'cello and the drum and the whole brass band. Glory was watching everything; it was beginning to be very funny. Suddenly it ceased to be so. One of the gentlemen was saying, in a tired drawl: “Old Koenig again! How the old boy lasts! Seem to have been hearing—him since the Flood, don't you know.”
It was Lord Robert Ure. Glory caught one glimpse of him, then looked down at her slipper and pawed at the carpet. He put his glass in his eye, screwed up the left side of his face, and looked at her.
An elderly man with a leonine head came up to the organ and said: “Got anything comic, Mr. Koenig? All had the influenza last winter, you know, and lost our taste for the classical.”
“With pleasure, sir,” said Koenig, and then turning to Glory he touched her wrist. “How's de pulse? Ach Gott! beating same like a child's! Now is your turn.”
Glory made a step forward, and the talk grew louder as she was observed. She heard fragments of it. “Who is she?” “Is she a professional?” “Oh, no—a lady.” “Sing, does she, or is it whistling?” “No, she's a professional; we had her last year; she does conjuring.” And then the voice she had heard before said, “By Jove, old fellow, your young friend looks like a red standard rose!” She did not flinch. There was a nervous tremor of the lip, a scarcely perceptible curl of it, and then she began.
It was Mylecharaine, a Manx ballad in the Anglo-Manx, about a farmer who was a miser. His daughter was ashamed of him because he dressed shabbily and wore yellow stockings; but he answered that if he didn't the stocking wouldn't be yellow that would be forthcoming for her dowry.
She sang, recited, talked, acted, lived the old man, and there was not a sound until she finished, except laughter and the clapping of hands. Then there was a general taking of breath and a renewed outbreak of gossip. “Really, really! How—er—natural!” “Natural—that's it, natural. I never—er——” “Rather good, certainly; in fact, quite amusing.” “What dialect is it?” “Irish, of course.” “Of course, of course,” with many nods and looks of knowledge, and a buzz and a flutter of understanding. “Hope she'll do something else.” “Hush! she's beginning.”
It was Ny Kiree fo Niaghtey, a rugged old wail of how the sheep were lost on the mountains in a great snowstorm; but it was full of ineffable melancholy. The ladies dropped their lorgnettes, the men's glasses fell from their eyes and their faces straightened, the noisy old soul with the ear-trumpet sitting under Glory's arm was snuffling audibly, and at the next moment there was a chorus of admiring remarks. “'Pon my word, this is something new, don't you know!” “Fine girl too!” “Fine! Irish girls often run to it.” “That old miser—you could see him!”
“What's her next piece?—something funny, I hope.”
Koenig's pride was measureless, and Glory did not get off lightly. He cleared the floor for her, and announced that with the indulgence, etc., the young artiste would give an imitation of common girls singing in the street.
The company laughed until they screamed, and when the song was finished Glory was being overwhelmed with congratulations and inquiries, “Charming! All your pieces are charming! But really, my dear young lady, you must be more careful about our feelings. Those sheep now—it was really quite too sad.” The old lady with the ear-trumpet asked Glory whether she could go on for the whole of an afternoon, and if she felt much fatigued sometimes, and didn't often catch cold.
But the lady in satin came to her relief at last. “You will need some refreshment,” she said. “Let me see now if I can not——” and she lifted her glass and looked round the room. At the next moment a voice that made a shudder pass over her said:
“PerhapsImay have the pleasure of taking Miss Quayle down.”
It was Drake. His eyes were as blue and boyish as before, but Glory observed at once that he had grown a mustache, and that his face and figure were firmer and more manlike. A few minutes afterward they had passed through one of the windows on to the terrace and were walking to and fro.
It was cool and quiet out there after the heat and hubbub of the drawing-room. The night was soft and still. Hardly a breath of wind stirred the leaves of the trees in the park below. The rain had left a dewy moistness in the air, and a fragrant mist was lying over the grass. The stars were out, and the moon had just risen behind the towers of Westminster.
Glory was flushed with her success. Her eyes sparkled and her step was light and free. Drake touched her hand as it lay on his arm and said:
“And now that I've got you to myself I must begin by scolding you.”
They looked at one another and smiled. “Have I displeased you so much to-night?” she said.
“It's not that. Where have you been all this time?”
“Ah, if you only knew!” She had stopped and was looking into the darkness.
“Iwantto know. Why didn't you answer my letter?”
“Your letter?” She was clutching at the lilies of the valley in her bosom.
He tapped her hand lightly and said, “Well, we'll not quarrel this time, only don't do it again, you know, or else——”
She recovered herself and laughed. Her voice had a silvery ring, and he thought it was an enchanting smile that played upon her face. They resumed their walk.
“And now about to-night. You have had a success, of course.”
“Why of course?”
“Because I always knew you must have.”
She was proud and happy. He began to be grave and severe.
“But the drawing-room after dinner is no proper scene for your talents. The audience is not in the right place or the right mood. Guests and auditors—their duties clash. Besides, to tell you the truth, art is a dark continent to people like these.”
“They were kind to me, at all events,” said Glory.
“To-night, yes. The last new man—the last new monkey——”
She was laughing again and swinging along on his arm as if her feet hardly touched the ground.
“What is the matter with you?”
“Nothing; I am only thinking how polite you are,” and then they looked at each other again and laughed together.
The mild radiance of the stars was dying into the brighter light of the moon. A bird somewhere in the dark trees below had mistaken the moonlight for the dawn, and was making its early call. The clock at Westminster was striking eleven, and there was the deep rumble of traffic from the unseen streets round about.
“How beautiful!” said Glory. “It's hard to believe that this can be the same London that is so full of casinos and clubs and-monasteries.”
“Why, what does a girl like you know about such places?”
She had dropped his arm and was looking over the balcony. The sound of voices came from the red windows behind them. Then the soloist began to sing again. His second ballad was the Erl King:
Du liebes Kind, komm' geh' mit mir!Gar schöne Spiele spiel' ich mit dir.
“Any news of John Storm?” said Drake.
“Not that I know of.”
“I wonder if you would like him to come out again—now?”
“I wonder!”
At that moment there was a step behind them, and a soft voice said, “I want you to introduce me, Mr. Drake.”
It was a lady of eight or nine and twenty, wearing short hair brushed upward and backward in the manner of a man.
“Ah, Rosa—Miss Rosa Macquarrie,” said Drake. “Rosa is a journalist, and a great friend of mine, Glory. If you want fame, she keeps some of the keys of it, and if you want friendship—— But I'll leave you together.”
“My dear,” said the lady, “I want you to let me know you.”
“But I've seen you before—and spoken to you,” said Glory.
“Why, where?”
Glory was laughing awkwardly. “Never mind now! Some other time perhaps.”
“The people inside are raving about your voice. 'Where does it come from?' they are saying—'from a palace or Ratcliffe Highway?' But I thinkIknow. It comes from your heart, my dear. You have lived and and loved and suffered—and so have I. Here we are in our smart frocks, dear, but we belong to another world altogether and are the only working women in the company. Perhaps I can help you a little, and you have helped me already. I may know you, may I not?”
There was a deep light in Glory's eyes and a momentary quiver of her eyelids. Then without a word she put her arms about Rosa's neck and kissed her,
“I was sure of you,” said Rosa. Her voice was low and husky. “Your name is Glory, isn't it? It wasn't for nothing you were given that name. God gave it you!”
The party was breaking up and Koenig came for “his star.” “I vill give you an engagement for one, two, tree year, upon my vord I vill,” he said as they went downstairs. While the butler took him back to the library to sign his receipt and receive his cheque, Glory stood waiting by the billiard table in the hall and Drake and Lord Robert stepped up to her.
“Until when?” said Drake with a smile, but Glory pretended not to understand him. “I dare say you thought me cynical to-night, Glory. I only meant that if you are to follow this profession I want you to make the best of it. Why not look for a wider scene? Why not go directly to the public?”
“But de lady is engaged to me for tree year,” said Koenig, coming up.
Drake looked at Glory, who shook her head, and then Koenig made an effort at explanation. It was an understood thing. He had taught her, taken her into his house, found her in a Sunday——
But Drake interrupted him. If they could help Miss Quayle to a better market for her genius Mr. Koenig need be no loser by the change. Then Koenig was pacified, and Drake handed Glory to a cab.
“We're good friends again, aren't we?” he said, touching her hand lightly.
“Yes,” she answered.
There was a letter from Aunt Rachel waiting for her at the Priory. Aunt Anna didn't like these frequent changes, and she had no faith in music or musicians either, but the Parson thought Anna too censorious, and as for Mr. Koenig's Sunday evening companies, he had no doubt they were of Germans chiefly, and that they came to talk of Martin Luther and to sing his hymn. Sorry to say his infirmities were increasing; the burden of his years was upon him, and he was looking feeble and old.
Glory slept little that night. On going to her room she threw up the window and sat in front of it, that the soft night breeze might play on her hot lips and cheeks. The moon was high and the garden was slumbering under its gentle light. Everything around was hushed, and there was no sound anywhere except the far-off rumble of the great city, as of the wind in distant trees. She was thinking of a question which Drake had put to her.
“I wonder if I should?” she murmured.
And through the silence there was the unheard melody of the German song:
Du liebes Kind, komm' geh' mit mir!Gar schöne Spiele spiel' ich mit dir.
“The Priory—May Day.
“Dear Aunt Rachel: The great evening is over! Such dresses, such diamonds—you never saw the like! The smart folks are just like other human beings, and I was not the tiniest bit afraid of them. My own part of the programme went off pretty well, I think. Mr. Koenig had arranged the harmonies and accompaniments of some of our old Manx songs, so I sang Mylecharaine, and they listened and clapped, and then Ny Kiree fo Niaghtey, and they cried (and so did I), and then I imitated some work-girls singing in the streets, and they laughed and laughed until I laughed too, and then they laughed because I was laughing, and we all laughed together. It was over and done before I knew where I was, and everybody was covering me with—well, no, not kisses, as grandfather used to do, but the society equivalent—ices and jellies—which the gentlemen were rushing about wildly to get for me.
“But all this is as nothing compared to what is to happen next. I mustn't whisper a word about it yet, so false face must hide what the false heart doth know. You'llhaveto forgive me if I succeed, for nothing is wicked in this world except failure, you know, and a little sin must be a great virtue if it has grown to be big enough, you see. There! How sagacious of me! You didn't know what a philosopher you had in the family, did you, my dears?
“It is to be on the 24th of May. That will be the Queen's birthday over again; and when I think of all that has happened since the last one I feel as romantic as a schoolgirl and as sentimental as a nursery maid. Naturally I am in a fearful flurry over the whole affair, and, to tell the truth, I have hied me to the weird sisters on the subject—that is to say, I have been to a fortune-teller, and spent a 'goolden' half-sovereign on the creature at one fell swoop. But she predicts wonderful things for me, so I am satisfied. The newspapers are to blaze with my name; I am to have a dazzling success and become the idol of the hour—all of which is delightful and entrancing, and quite reasonable at the money. Grandfather will reprove me for tempting Providence, and, of course, John Storm, if he knew it, would say that I shouldn't do such things under any circumstances; yet to tell me I oughtn't to do this and I oughtn't to do that is like saying I oughtn't to have red hair and I oughtn't to catch the measles. I can't help it! I can't help it! so what's the good of breaking one's heart about it?
“But I hadn't got to wait forHecate et ciefor what related to the newspapers. You must know, dear Aunt Rachel, that Ididmeet Mr. Drake at the house of the Home Secretary, and he introduced me to a Miss Rosa Macquarrie, who is no longer very young or beautiful, but a dear for all that! and she, being a journalist, has bruited my praises abroad, with the result that all the world is ringing with my virtues. Listen, all men and women, while I sound mine own glory out of a column as long as the Duke of York's:
“'She is young and tall, and has auburn hair' (always thought it was red myself) 'and large gray eyes, one of which seems at a distance to be brown' (it squints), 'giving an effect of humour and coquetry and power rarely, if ever, seen in any other face.... Her voice has startling varieties of tone, being at one moment soft, cooing, and liquid, and at another wild, weird, and plaintive; and her face, which is not strictly beautiful' (oh!), 'but striking and unforgetable, has an extraordinary range of expression.... She sings, recites, speaks, laughs, and cries (literally), and some of her selections are given in a sort of Irishpatois' (oh, my beloved Manx!) 'that comes from her girlish lips with charming vivacity and drollness.' All of which, though it is quite right, and no more than my due,of course, made me sob so long and loud that my good little hippopotamus came upstairs to comfort me, but, finding me lying on the floor, he threw up his hands and cried, 'AchGott! I t'ought it vas a young lady, but vhatever is it?'
“Yet wae's me! Sometimes I think how many poor girls there must be who have never had a chance, while I have had so many and such glorious ones; who can not get anybody to listen to them, while I am so pampered and praised; who live in narrow alleys and serve in little dark shops, where men and men-things talk to them as they can't talk to their sisters and wives, while I am held aloft in an atmosphere of admiration and respect: who earn their bread in clubs and casinos, where they breathe the air of the hotbeds of hell, while I am surrounded by everything that ennobles and refines! O God, forgive me if I am a vain, presumptuous creature, laughing at everything and everybody, and sometimes forgetting that many a poor girl who is being tossed about in London is just as good as me, and as clever and as brave.
“But hoot! 'I likes to be jolly and I allus is.' So Aunt Anna doesn't like this Wandering Jew existence! Well, do you know I always thought I should love a gipsy life. It has a sense of movement that must be delightful, and then I love going fast. Do you remember the days when 'Caesar' used to take the bit in his teeth and bolt with me! Lo, there was little me, cross-legged on his bare back, with nothing to trust to but Providence and a pair of rope reins; but, oh my! I couldn't breathe for excitement and delight! Dear old maddest of created 'Caesars,' I feel as if I were whacking at him yet! What do you think of me? But we 'that be females are the same craythurs alwis', as old Chalse used to say, and what a woman is in the cradle she continues to be to the end. There again! I wonder who told you that, young lady!
“But to tell you the truth at last, dear Aunt Rachel, there is something I have kept back until now, because I couldn't bear the thought of any of you being anxious on my account, especially grandfather, who thinks of Glory so much too often as things are. Can't you guess what it is? I couldn't help taking up my life of Wandering Jew, because I was dismissed from the hospital! Didn't you understand that, my dears? I thought I was telling you over and over again. Yes, dismissed as unfit to be a nurse, and so I was, according to the order of the institution first, and human love and pity last. But all's well that ends well, you know, and now that my wanderings seem to be over and I am in my right place at length, I feel like one who is coming out of a long imprisonment, a great peril, a darkness deeper even than John Storm's cell. And if I ever become a famous woman, and good men will listen to me, I will tell them to be tender and merciful to poor girls who are trying to live in London and be good and strong, and that the true chivalry is to band themselves together against the other men who are selfish and cruel and impure. Oh, this great, glorious, devilish, divine London! It must stand to the human world as the seething, boiling, bubbling waters of Niagara do to the world of Nature. Either a girl floats over its rapids like a boat, and in that case she draws her breath and thanks God, or she is tossed into its whirlpool like a dead body and goes round and round until she finds the vortex and is swallowed up!
“There! I have blown off my steam, and now to business. Mr. Drake is to give a luncheon party in his rooms on the twenty-fourth, in honour of my experiment, but the great event itself will not come off until nearly half-past nine that night. By that time the sun will have set over the back of the sea at Peel, the blackbird will have given you his last 'guy-smook,' and all the world will be dropping asleep. Now, if you'll only remember to say just then, 'God bless Glory!' I'll feel strong and big and brave.
“Your poor, silly, sentimental girlie, Glory.”
Some weeks had passed, and it was the morning of the last day of John Storm's residence at Bishopsgate Street. After calling the Brotherhood, the Father had entered John's room and was resting on the end of the bed.
“You are quite determined to leave us?”
“Quite determined, Father.”
The Father sighed deeply, and said in broken sentences: 'Our house is passing through terrible trials, my son. Perhaps we did wrong to come here. There is no cross in our foundations, and we have built on a worldly footing. 'Unless the Lord build the house—' It was good of you to delay the execution of your purpose, but now that the time has come—I had set my heart on you, my son. I am an old man now, and something of the affection of the natural father——”
“Father, if you only knew——”
“Yes, yes; I know, I know. You have suffered, and it is not for me to reproach you. The novitiate has its great joys, but it has its great trials also. Self has to be got rid of, faith has to be exerted, obedience has to be learned, and, above all, the heart has to be detached from its idols in the world—a devoted mother, it may be; a dear sister; perhaps a dearer one still.”
There was silence for a moment. John's head was down; he could not speak.
“That you wish to return to the world only shows that you came before you heard the call of God. Some other voice seemed to speak to you, and you listened and thought it was God's voice. But God's voice will come to you yet, and you will hear it and answer it and not another—— Have you anywhere to go to when you leave this house?”
“Yes, the home of a good woman. I have written to her—I think she will receive me.”
“All that you brought with you will be returned, and if you want money——”
“No, I came to you as a beggar—let me leave you as a beggar too.”
“There is one thing more, my son.”
“What is it, Father?”
The old man's voice was scarcely audible. “You are breaking obedience by leaving us before the end of your novitiate, and the community must separate itself from you, though you are only a novice, as from one who has violated his vow and cast himself off from grace. This will have to be done before you cross our threshold. It is our duty to the Brotherhood—it is also our duty to God. You understand that?”
“Yes.”
“It will be in the church, a few minutes before midday service.”
The Father rose to go. “Then that is all?”
“That is all.”
The Father's voice was breaking. “Good-bye, my son.”
“Good-bye, Father, and God forgive me!”
A leather trunk which John had brought with him on the day he came to the Brotherhood was returned to his room, containing the clothes he had worn in the outer world, as well as his purse and watch and other belongings. He dressed himself in his habit as a clergyman, and put the cassock of the society over it, for he knew that to remove that must be part of the ordeal of his expulsion. Then the bell rang for breakfast, and he went down to the refectory.
The brothers received him in silence, hardly looking up as he entered, though by their furtive glances he could plainly see that he was the only subject that occupied their thoughts. When the meal was over he tried to mingle among them, that he might say farewell to as many as were willing that he should do so. Some gave him their hands with prompt good will, some avoided him, some turned their backs upon him altogether.
But if his reception in the refectory was chilling, his welcome in the courtyard was warm enough. At the first sound of his footsteps on the paved way the dog came from his quarters under the sycamore. One moment the creature stood and looked at him with its sad and bloodshot eyes; then, with a bound, it threw its fore paws on his breast, and then plunged around him and uttered deep bays that were like the roar of thunder.
He sat on the seat and caressed the dog, and his heart grew full and happy. The morning was bright with sunshine, the air was fragrant with the leafage of spring, and birds were singing and rejoicing in the tree.
Presently Brother Andrew came and sat beside him. The lay brother, like a human dog, had been following him about all the morning, and now in his feeble way he began to talk of his mother, and to wonder if John would ever see her. Her name was Pincher, and she was a good woman. She lived in Crook Lane, Crown Street, Soho, and kept house for his brother, who was a pawnbroker. But his brother, poor fellow! was much given to drink, and perhaps that had been a reason why he himself had left home. John promised to call on her, and then Brother Andrew began to cry. The sprawling features of the great fellow were almost laughable to look upon.
The bell rang for Terce. While the brothers were at prayers, John took his last look over the house. With the dog at his heels—the old thing seemed determined to lose sight of him no more—he passed slowly through the hall and into the community room and up the stairs and down the top corridor. He looked again at every inscription on the walls, though he knew them all by heart and had read them a hundred times. When he came to his own cell he was touched by a strange tenderness. Place where he had thought so much, prayed so much, suffered so much—it was dear to him, after all! He went up on to the tower. How often he had been drawn there as by a devilish fascination! The great city looked innocent enough now under its mantle of sunlight, dotted over with green, but how dense, how difficult! Then the bell rang for midday service, though it was not yet noon, and he went down to the hall. The brothers were there preparing to go into the church. The order of the procession was the same as on the day of his dedication, except that Brother Paul was no longer with them—Brother Andrew going first with the cross, then the lay brothers, then the religious, then the Father, and John Storm last of all.
Though the courtyard was full of sunshine, the church looked dark and gloomy. Curtains were drawn across the windows, and the altar was draped as for a funeral. As soon as the brothers had taken their places in the choir the Father stood on the altar steps and said:
“If any member of this community has one unfaithful thought of going back to the outer world, I charge him to come to this altar now. But woe to him through whom the offence cometh! Woe to him who turns back after taking up the golden plough!”
John was kneeling in his place in the second row of the choir. The eyes of the community were upon him. He hesitated a moment, then rose and stepped up to the altar.
“My son,” said the Father, “it is not yet too late. I see your fate as plainly as I see you now. Shall I tell you what it is? Can you bear to hear it? I see you going out into a world which has nothing to satisfy the cravings of your soul. I see you foredoomed to failure and suffering and despair. I see you coming back to us within a year with a broken and bleeding heart. I see you taking the vows of lifelong consecration. Can you face that future?”
“I must.”
The Father drew a long breath. “It is inevitable,” he said; and, taking a book from the altar, he read the awful service of the degradation:
“By the authority of God Almighty, Father [Symbol: Patée], Son, and Holy Ghost, and by our own authority, we, the members of the Society of the Holy Gethsemane, do take away from thee the habit of our Order, and depose and degrade and deprive thee of all rights and privileges in the spiritual goods and prayers which, by the grace of God, are done among us.”
“Amen! Amen!” said the brothers.
During the reading of the service John had been kneeling. The Father motioned to him to rise, and proceeded to remove the cord with which he had bound him at his consecration. When this was done, he signalled to Brother Andrew to take off the cassock.
The bell was tolled. The Father dropped on his knees. The brothers, hoarse and husky, began to singIn exitu Israel de Aegypto. Their heads were down, their voices seemed to come up out of the earth.
It was all over now. John Storm turned about, hardly able to see his way. Brother Andrew went before him to open the door of the sacristy. The lay brother was crying audibly.
The sun was still shining in the courtyard, and the birds were still singing and rejoicing. The first thing of which John was conscious was that the dog was licking his rigid fingers.
A moment later he was in the little covered passage to the street, and Brother Andrew was opening the iron gate.
“Good-bye, my lad!”
He stretched out his hand, then remembered that he was an excommunicated man, and tried to draw it back; but the lay brother had snatched at it and lifted it to his lips.
The dog was following him into the street.
“Go back, old friend.”
He patted the old creature on the head, and Brother Andrew laid hold of it by the loose skin at its neck. A hansom was waiting for him with his trunk on the top.
“Victoria Square, Westminster,” he called. The cab was moving off, when there was a growl and a lurch—the dog had broken away and was running after it.
How crowded the streets were! How deafening was the traffic! The church bell was ringing for midday service. What a thin tinkle it made out there, yet how deep was its boom within! Stock Exchange men with their leisurely activity were going in by their seven doorways to their great market place in Capel Court.
He began to feel a boundless relief. How his heart was beating! With what a strange and deep emotion he found himself once more in the world! Driving in the dense and devious thoroughfares was like sailing on a cross sea outside a difficult headland. He could smell the brine and feel the flick of the foam on his lips and cheeks. It was liberty, it was life!
Feeling anxious about the dog, he drew up the cab for a moment. The faithful creature was running under the driver's seat. Before the cab could start again a line of sandwich men had passed in front of it. Their boards contained a single word. The word was “GLORIA.”
He saw it, yet it barely arrested his consciousness. Somehow it seemed like an echo from the existence he had left behind.
The noises of life were as wine in his veins now. He was burning with impatience to overtake his arrears of knowledge, to see what the world had gone through in his absence. Leaning over the door of the hansom, he read the names of the streets and the signs over the shops, and tried to identify the houses which had been rebuilt and the thoroughfares which had been altered. But the past was the past, and the clock would turn back for no man. These men and women in the streets knew all that had happened. The poorest beggar on the pavement knew more than he did. Nearly a year of his life was gone—in prayer, in penance, in fasting, in visions, in dreams—dropped out, left behind, and lost forever.
Going by the Bank, the cab drew up again to allow a line of omnibuses to pass into Cheapside. Every omnibus had its board for advertisements, and nearly every board contained the word he had seen before—“GLORIA.”
“Only the name of some music-hall singer,” he told himself. But the name had begun to trouble him. It had stirred the fibres of memory, and made him think of the past—of his yacht, of Peel, of his father, and finally of Glory—and again of Glory—and yet again of Glory.
He saw that flags were flying on the Mansion House and on the Bank, and, pushing up the trap of the hansom, he asked if anything unusual was going on.
“Lawd, down't ye know what day it is terday, sir? It's the dear ole laidy's birthday. That's why all the wimming's going abart in their penny carridges. Been through a hillness, sir?”
“Yes, something of that sort.”
“Thort so, sir.”
When the cab started afresh he began to tell himself what he was going to do in the future. He was going to work among the poor and the outcast, the oppressed and the fallen. He was going to search for them and find them in their haunts of sin and misery. Nothing was to be too mean for him. Nothing was to be common or unclean. No matter about his own good name! No matter if he was only one man in a million! The kingdom of heaven was like a grain of mustard seed.
When he came within sight of St. Paul's the golden cross on the dome was flashing like a fiery finger in the blaze of the midday sun. That was the true ensign! It was a monstrous and wicked fallacy, a gloomy and narrow formula, that religion had to do with the affairs of the other world only. Work was religion! Work was prayer! Work was praise! Work was the love of man and the glory of God!
Glorious gospel! Great and deathless symbol!
Behind Buckingham Palace there is a little square of modest houses standing back from the tide of traffic and nearly always as quiet as a cloister. At one angle of the square there is a house somewhat larger than the rest but just as simple and unassuming. In the dining-room of this house an elderly lady was sitting down to lunch alone, with the covers laid for another at the opposite end of the table.
“Hae ye the spare room ready, Emma?”
“Yes, ma'am,” said the maid.
“And the sheets done airing? And baith the pillows? And the pillow-slips—and everything finished?”
The maid was answering “Yes” to each of these questions when a hansom cab came rattling up to the front of the house, and the old lady leaped out of her seat.
“It's himself!” she cried, and she ran like a girl to the hall.
The door had been opened before she got there, and a deep voice was saying, “Is Mrs. Callender——”
“It's John! My gracious! It's John Storm!” the old woman cried, and she lifted both hands as if to fling herself into his arms.
“My guidness, laddie, but you gave poor auld Jane sic a start! Expected ye? To be sure we expected you, and terribly thrang we've been all morning making ready. Only my daft auld brain must have been a wee ajee. But,” smiling through her tears, “has a body never a cheek, that you must be kissing at her hand? And is this your dog?” looking down at the bloodhound. “Welcome? Why, of course it's welcome. What was I saying the day, Emma? 'I'd like fine to have a dog,' didn't I? and here it is to our hand.—Away with ye, James, man, and show Mr. Storm to his room, and then find a bed for the creature somewhere. Letters for ye, laddie? Letters enough, and you'll find them on the table upstairs. Only, mind ye, the lunch is ready, and your fish is getting cold.”
John Storm opened his letters in his room. One of them was from his uncle, the Prime Minister: “I rejoice to hear of your most sensible resolution. Come and dine with me at Downing Street this day week at seven o'clock. I have much to say and much to ask, and I expect to be quite alone.”
Another was from his father: “I am not surprised at your intelligence, but if anything could exceed the folly of going into a monastery it is the imbecility of coming out of it. The former appears to be a subject of common talk in this island already, and no doubt the latter will soon be so.”
John flinched as at a cut across the face and then smiled a smile of relief. Apparently Glory was writing home wherever she was, and there was good news in that, at all events. He went downstairs.
“Come your way in, laddie, and let me look at ye again. Man, but your face is pale and your bonnie eyes are that sunken. But sit ye down and eat. They've been starving ye, I'm thinking, and miscalling it religion. It's enough to drive a reasonable body to drink. Carnal I am, laddie, and I just want to put some flesh on your bones. Monks indeed! And in this age of the world too! Little Jack Horners sitting in corners and saying, 'Oh, what a good boy am I!'”
John defended his late brethren. They were holy men; they lived a holy life; he had not been good enough for their company. “But I feel like a sailor home from sea,” he said; “tell me what has happened.”
“Births, marriages, and deaths? I suppose ye're like the lave of the men, and think nothing else matters to a woman. But come now, more chicken? No? A wee bitty? Aye, but ye're sair altered, laddie! Weel, where can a body begin?”
“The canon—how is he?”
“Fine as fi'pence. Guid as ever in the pulpit? Aye, but it's a pity he doesna' bide there, for he's naething to be windy of when he comes out of it. Deacon now, bless ye, or archdeacon, and some sic botherment, and his daughter is to be married to yon slip of a curate with the rabbit mouth and the heather legs. Weel, she wasna for all markets, ye ken.”
“And Mrs. Macrae?”
“Gone over to the angels. Dead? Nae, ye're too expecting altogether. She's got religion though, and holds missionary meetings in her drawing-room of a Monday, and gives lunches to actor folk of a Sunday, and now a poor woman that's been working for charity and Christianity all her days has no chance with her anyway.”
“And Miss Macrae?”
“Poor young leddy, they're for marrying her at last! Aye, to that Ure man, that lord thing with the eyeglass. I much misdoubt but her heart's been somewhere else, and there's ane auld woman would a hantle rather have heard tell of her getting the richt man than seeing the laddie bury hisel' in a monastery. She's given in at last though, and it's to be a grand wedding they're telling me. Your Americans are kittle cattle—just the Jews of the West seemingly, and they must do everything splendiferously. There are to be jewels as big as walnuts, and bouquets five feet in diameter, and a rope of pearls for a necklace, and a rehearsal of the hale thing in the church. Aye, indeed, a rehearsal, and the 'deacon, honest man, in the middle of the magnificence.”
John Storm's pale face was twitching. “And the hospital,” he said, “has anything happened there—?”
“Nothing.”
“No other case such as the one——”
“Not since yon poor bit lassie.”
“Thank God!”
“It was the first ill thing I had heard tell of her for years, and the nurses are good women for all that. High-spirited? Aye; but dear, bright, happy things, to think what they have to know and to be present at! Lawyers, doctors, and nurses see the worst of human nature, and she'd be a heartless woman who'd no make allowances for them, poor creatures!”
John Storm had risen from the table with a flushed face, making many excuses. He would step round to the hospital; he had questions to ask there, and it would be a walk after luncheon.
“Do,” said Mrs. Callender, “but remember dinner at six. And hark ye, hinny, this house is to be your hame until you light on a better one, so just sleep saft in it and wake merrily. And Jane Callender is to be your auld auntie until some ither body tak's ye frae her, and then it'll no be her hand ye'll be kissing for fear of her wrinkles, I'm thinking.”
The day was bright, the sun was shining, and the streets were full of well-groomed horses in gorgeous carriages with coachmen in splendid liveries going to the drawing-room in honour of the royal birthday. As John went by the palace the approaches to it were thronged, the band of the Household Cavalry was playing within the rails, and officers in full-dress uniform, members of the diplomatic service with swords and cocked hats, and ladies in gorgeous brocades carrying bouquets of orchids and wearing tiaras of diamonds and large white plumes were filing through the gate toward the throne-room.
The hospital looked strangely unfamiliar after so short an absence, and there were new faces among the nurses who passed to and fro in the corridors. John asked for the matron, and was received with constrained and distant courtesy. Was he well? Quite well. They had a resident chaplain now, and being in priest's orders he had many opportunities where death was so frequent. Was he sure he had not been ill? John understood—it was almost as if he had come out of some supernatural existence, and people looked at him as if they were afraid.
“I came to ask if you could tell me anything of Nurse Quayle?”
The matron could tell him nothing. The girl had gone; they had been compelled to part with her. Nothing serious? No, but totally unfit to be a nurse. She had some good qualities certainly—cheerfulness, brightness, tenderness—and for the sake of these, and his own interest in the girl, they had put up with inconceivable rudeness and irregularities. What had become of her? She really could not say. Nurse Allworthy might know—and the matron took up her pen.
John found the ward Sister with the house doctor at the bed of a patient. She was short, even curt, said over her shoulder she knew nothing about the girl, and then turned back to her work. As John passed out of the ward the doctor followed him and hinted that perhaps the porter might be able to tell him something.
The porter was difficult at first, but seeing his way clearer after a while he admitted to receiving letters for the nurse and delivering them to her when she called. That was long ago, and she had not been there since New Year's Eve. Then she had given him a shilling and said she would trouble him no more.
John gave him five shillings and asked if anybody ever called for her. Yes, once. Who was it? A gentleman. Had he left his name? No, but he had said he would write. When was that? A day or two before she was there the last time.
Drake! There could not be a shadow of a doubt of it. John Storm looked at the clock. It was 3:45. Then he buttoned his coat and crossed the street to the park with his face in the direction of St. James's Street.
Horatio Drake had given a luncheon in his rooms that day in honour of Glory's first public appearance. The performance was to come off at night, but in the course of the morning there had been a dress rehearsal in thesalonof the music hall. Twenty men and women, chiefly journalists and artists, had assembled there to get a first glimpse of thedébutante, and cameras had lurked behindportièresand in alcoves to catch her poses, her expressions, her fleeting smiles, and humorous grimaces. Then the company had adjourned to Drake's chambers. The luncheon was now over, the last guest had gone, and the host was in his dining-room alone.
Drake was standing by the chimney-piece holding at arm's length a pencil sketch of a woman's beautiful face and lithe figure. “Like herself—alive to the fingertips,” he thought, and then he propped it against the pier-glass.
There was a sound of the opening and closing of the outer door downstairs, and Lord Robert entered the room. He looked heated, harassed, and exhausted. Shaking out his perfumed pocket handkerchief, he mopped his forehead, drew a long breath, and dropped into a chair.
“I've done it,” he said; “it's all over.”
Polly Love had lunched with the company that day, and Lord Robert had returned home with her in order to break the news of his approaching marriage. While the girl had been removing her hat and jacket he had sat at the piano and thumbed it, hardly knowing how to begin. All at once he had said, “Do you know, my dear, I'm to be married on Saturday?” She had said nothing at first, and he had played the piano furiously. Heavens, what a frame of mind to be in! Why didn't the girl speak? At last he had looked round at her, and there she stood grinning, gasping, and white as a ghost. Suddenly she had begun to cry. Good God, such crying! Yes, it was all over. Everything had been settled somehow.
“But I'll be in harder condition before I tackle such a job again.”
There was silence for a moment. Drake was leaning on the mantelpiece, his legs crossed, and one foot beating on the hearth-rug. The men were ashamed, and they began to talk of indifferent things. Smoke? Didn't mind. Those Indian cigars were good. Not bad, certainly.
At length Drake said in a different voice, “Cruel but necessary, Robert—necessary to the woman who is going to be your wife, cruel to the poor girl who has been.”
Lord Robert rose to his feet impatiently, stretched his arm, and shot out his striped cuff and walked to and fro across the room.
“Pon my soul, I believe I should have stuck to the little thing but for the old girl, don't you know. She's made such a good social running lately—and then she's started this evangelical craze too. No, Polly wouldn't have suited her book anyhow.”
Silence again, and then further talk on indifferent things.
“Wish Benson wouldn't sweep the soda water off the table.” “Ring for it.” “The little thing really cares for me, don't you know. And it isn't my fault, is it? I had to hedge. Frank, dear boy, you're always taunting me with the treadmill we have to turn for the sake of society, and so forth, but with debts about a man's neck like a millstone, what could one do——”
“I don't mean that you're worse than others, old fellow, or that sacrificing this one poor child is going to mend matters much——”
“No, it isn't likely to improve my style of going, is it?”
“But that man John Storm was not so far wrong, after all, and for this polygamy of our 'lavender-glove tribe' the nation itself will be overtaken by the judgment of God one of these days.”
Lord Robert broke into a peal of derisive laughter. “Go on,” he cried. “Go on, dear boy! It's funny to hear you, though—after to-day's proceedings too”; and he glanced significantly around the table.
Drake brought down his fist with a thump on to the mantelpiece. “Hold your tongue, Robert! How often am I to tell you this is a different thing entirely? Because I discover a creature of genius and try to help her to the position she deserves——”
“You hypocrite, if it had been a man instead of a charming little woman with big eyes, don't you know——”
But there had been a ring at the outer door, and Benson came in to say that a clergyman was waiting downstairs.
“Little Golightly again!” said Lord Robert wearily. “Are these everlasting arrangements never——”
The man stopped him. It was not Mr. Golightly; it was a stranger; would not give his name; looked like a Catholic priest; had been there before, he thought.
“Can it be—-Talk of the devil——”
“Ask him up,” said Drake. And while Drake bit his lip and clinched his hands, and Lord Robert took up a scent bottle and sprayed himself with eau de cologne, they saw a man clad in the long coat of a priest come into the room—calm, grave, self-possessed, very pale, with hollow and shaven cheeks and dark and sunken eyes, which burned with a sombre fire, and head so closely cropped as to seem to be almost bald.
John Storm's anger had cooled. As he crossed the park the heat of his soul had turned to fear, and while he stood in the hall below, with an atmosphere of perfume about him, and even a delicate sense of a feminine presence, his fear had turned to terror. On that account he had refused to send up his name, and on going up the staircase, lined with prints, he had been tempted to turn about and fly lest he should come upon Glory face to face. But finding only the two men in the room above, his courage came back and he hated himself for his treacherous thought of her.
“You will forgive me for this unceremonious visit, sir,” he said, addressing himself to Drake.
Drake motioned to him to be seated. He bowed, but continued to stand.
“Your friend will remember that I have been here before.”
Lord Robert bent his head, and went on trifling with the spray.
“It was a painful errand relating to a girl who had been nurse at the hospital. The girl was nothing to me, but she had a companion who was very much.”
Drake nodded and his lips stiffened, but he did not speak.
“You are aware that since then I have been away from the hospital. I wrote to you on the subject; you will remember that.”
“Well?” said Drake.
“I have only just returned, and have come direct from the hospital now.”
“Well?”
“I see you know what I mean, sir. My young friend has gone. Can you tell me where to find her?”
“Sorry I can not,” said Drake coldly, and it stung him to see a look of boundless relief cross the grave face in front of him.
“Then you don't know——”
“I didn't say that,” said Drake, and then the lines of pain came back.
“At the request of her people I brought her up to London. Naturally they will look to me for news of her, and I feel responsible for her welfare.”
“If that is so, you must pardon me for saying you've taken your duty lightly,” said Drake.
John Storm gripped the rail of the chair in front of him, and there was silence for a moment.
“Whatever I may have to blame myself with in the past, it would relieve me to find her well and happy and safe from all harm.”
“Sheiswell and happy, and safe too—I can tell you that much.”
There was another moment of silence, and then John Storm said in broken sentences and in a voice that was struggling to control itself: “I have known her since she was a child, sir—-You can not think how many tender memories—-It is nearly a year since I saw her, and one likes to see old friends after an absence.”
Drake did not speak, but he dropped his head, for John's eyes had begun to fill.
“We were good friends too. Boy and girl comrades almost. Brother and sister, I should say, for that was how I liked to think of myself—her elder brother bound to take care of her.”
There was a little trill of derisive laughter from the other side of the room, where Lord Robert had put the spray down noisily and turned to look out into the street. Then John Storm drew himself up and said in a firm voice:
“Gentlemen, why should I mince matters? I will not do so. The girl we speak of is more to me than anybody else in the world besides. Perhaps she was one of the reasons why I went into that monastery. Certainly she is the reason I have come out of it. I have come to find her. Ishallfind her. If she is in difficulty or danger I intend to save her. Will you tell me where she is?”
“Mr. Storm,” said Drake, “I am sorry, very sorry, but what you say compels me to speak plainly. The lady is well and safe and happy. If her friends are anxious about her she can reassure them for herself, and no doubt she has already done so. But in the position she occupies at present you are a dangerous man. It might not be her wish, and it would not be to her advantage, to meet with you, and I can, not allow her to run the risk.”
“Has it come to that? Have you a right to speak for her, sir?”
“Perhaps I have——” Drake hesitated, and then said with a rush, “the right to protect her against a fanatic.”
John Storm curbed himself; he had been through a long schooling. “Man, be honest,” he said. “Either your interest is good or bad, selfish or unselfish. Which is it?”
Drake made no answer.
“But it would be useless to bandy words. I didn't come here to do that. Will you tell me where she is?”
“No.”
“Then it is to be a duel between us—is that so? You for the girl's body and I for her soul? Very well, I take your challenge.”
There was silence once more, and John Storm's eyes wandered about the room. They fixed themselves at length on the sketch by the pier-glass.
“On my former visit I met with the same reception. The girl could take care of herself. It was no business of mine. How that relation has ended I do not ask. But this one——”
“This one is an entirely different matter,” said Drake, “and I will thank you not to——”
But John Storm was making the sign of the cross on his breast, and saying, as one who was uttering a prayer, “God grant it is and always may be!”
At the next moment he was gone from the room. The two men stood where he had left them until his footsteps had ceased on the stairs and the door had closed behind him. Then Drake cried, “Benson—a telegraph form! I must telegraph to Koenig at once.”
“Yes, he'll follow her up on the double quick,” said Lord Robert. “But what matter? His face will be enough to frighten the girl. Ugh! It was the face of a death's head!”
At dinner that night John Storm was more than usually silent. To break in upon his gravity, Mrs. Callender asked him what he intended to do next.
“To take priest's orders without delay,” he said.
“And what then?”
“Then,” he said, lifting a twitching and suffering face “to make an attack on the one mighty stronghold of the devil's kingdom whereof woman is the direct and immediate victim; to tell Society over again it is an organized hypocrisy for the pursuit and demoralization of woman, and the Church that bachelorhood is not celibacy, and polygamy is against the laws of God; to look and search for the beaten and broken who lie scattered and astray in our bewildered cities, and to protect them and shelter them whatever they are, however low they have fallen, because they are my sisters and I love them.”
“God bless ye, laddie! That's spoken like a man,” said the old woman, rising from her seat.
But John Storm's pale face had already flushed up to the eyes, and he dropped his head as one who was ashamed.