John Storm went back to Victoria Square with a bright and joyful face and found Mrs. Callender waiting for him, grim as a judge. He could see that her eyes were large and red with weeping, but she fell on him instantly with withering scorn.
“So you're here at last, are ye? A pretty senseless thing this is, to be sure! What are you dreaming about? Are you bewitched or what? Do you suppose things can be broken off in this way? You to go to the leper islands indeed!”
“I'm called, auntie, and when God calls a man, what can he do but answer with Samuel——”
“Tut! Don't talk sic nonsense. Besides, Samuel had some sense. He waited to be called three times, and I havena heard this is your third time of calling.”
John Storm laughed, and that provoked her to towering indignation. “Good God, what are you thinking of, man? There's that puir lassie—you're running away from her, too, aren't you? It's shameful, it's disgraceful, it's unprincipled, andyouto do it too!”
“You needn't trouble about that, auntie,” said John; “she is going with me.”
“What?” cried Mrs. Callender, and her face expressed boundless astonishment.
“Yes,” said John, “you women are brimful of courage, God bless you! and she's the bravest of you all.”
“But you'll no have the assurance to tak' that puir bit lassie to yonder God-forsaken spot?”
“She wants to go—at least she wants to leave London.”
“What does she? Weel, weel! But didn't I say she was nought but one of your Sisters or sic-like?—And you're going to let a slip of a girl tak' you away frae your ain work and your ain duty—and you call yourself a man!”
He began to coax and appease her, and before long the grim old face was struggling between smiles and tears.
“Tut! get along wi' ye! I've a great mind, though—I'd be liking fine to see her anyway. Now, where does she bide in London?”
“Why do you want to know that, auntie?”
“What's it to you, laddie? Can't a body call to say 'Good-bye' to a lassie, and tak' her a wee present before going away, without asking a man's permission?”
“I shouldn't do it, though, if I were you.”
“And why not, pray?”
“Because she's as bright as a star and as quick as a diamond, and she'd see through you in a twinkling. Besides, I shouldn't advise——”
“Keep your advice like your salt till you're asked for it, my man—and to think of any reasonable body giving up his work in London for that—that——”
“Good men have gone out to the mission field, auntie.”
“Mission fiddlesticks! Just a barber's chair, fit for every comer.”
“And then this isn't the mission field exactly either.”
“Mair's the pity, and then you wouldna be running bull-neck on your death before your time.”
“None of us can do that, auntie, for heaven is over all.”
“High words off an empty stomach, my man, so you can just keep them to cool your parridge. But oh, dear—oh, dear! You'll forget your puir auld Jane Callender, anyway.”
“Never, auntie!”
“Tut! don't tell me!”
“Never!”
“It's the last I'm to see of you, laddie. I'm knowing that fine—and me that fond of you too, and looking on you as my ain son.”
“Come, auntie, come; you mustn't take it so seriously.”
“And to think a bit thing like that can make all this botherment!”
“Nay, it's my own doing—absolutely mine.”
“Aye, aye, man's the head, but woman turns it.”
They dined together and then got into the carriage for Soho. John talked continually, with an impetuous rush of enthusiasm; but the old lady sat in gloomy silence, broken only by a sigh. At the corner of Downing Street he got out to call on the Prime Minister, and sent the carriage on to the clergy-house.
A newsboy going down Whitehall was calling an evening paper. John bought a copy, and the first thing his eye fell upon was the mention of his own name: “The announcement in another column that Father Storm of Soho intends to take up the work which the heroic Father Damien has just laid down will be received by the public with mingled joy and regret—joy at the splendid heroism which prompts so noble a resolve, regret at the loss which the Church in London will sustain by the removal of a clergyman of so much courage, devotion, independence, and self-sacrifice.... That the son of a peer and heir to an earldom should voluntarily take up a life of poverty in Soho, one of the most crowded, criminal, and neglected corners of Christendom, was a fact of so much significance——”
John Storm crushed the paper in his hand and threw it into the street; but a few minutes afterward he saw another copy of it in the hands of the Prime Minister as he came to the door of the Cabinet room to greet him. The old man's face looked soft, and his voice had a faint tremor.
“I'm afraid you are bringing me bad news, John.”
John laughed noisily. “Do I look like it, uncle? Bad news, indeed! No, but the best news in the world.”
“What is it, my boy?”
“I am about to be married. You've often told me I ought to be, and now I'm going to act on your advice.”
The bleak old face was smiling. “Then the rumour I see in the papers isn't true, after all?”
“Oh, yes, it's true enough, and my wife is to go with me.”
“But have you considered that carefully? Isn't it a terrible demand to make of any woman? Women are more religious than men, but they are more material also. Under the heat of religious impulse a woman is capable of sacrifices—great sacrifices—but when it has cooled——”
“No fear of that, uncle,” said John; and then he told the Prime Minister what he had told Mrs. Callender—that it was Glory's proposal that they should leave London, and that without this suggestion he might not have thought of his present enterprise. The bleak face kept smiling, but the Prime Minister was asking himself: “What does this mean? Has sheher ownreasons for wishing to go away?”
“Do you know, my boy, that with all this talk you've not yet told me who she is?”
John told him, and then a faint and far-off rumour out of another world seemed to flit across his memory.
“An actress at present, you say?”
“So to speak, but ready to give up everything for this glorious mission.”
“Very brave, no doubt, very beautiful; but what of your present responsibilities—your responsibilities in London?”
“That's just what I came to speak about,” said John; and then his rapturous face straightened, and he made some effort to plunge into the practical aspect of his affairs at Soho. There was his club for girls and his home for children. They were to be turned out of the clergy-house tomorrow, and he had taken a shelter at Westminster. But the means to support them were still deficient, and if there was anything coming to him that would suffice for that purpose—if there was enough left—if his mother's money was not all gone——
The Prime Minister was looking into John's face, watching the play of his features, but hardly listening to what he said. “What does this mean?” he was asking himself, in the old habitual way of the man whose business it is to read the motives that are not revealed.
“So you are willing to leave London, after all, John?”
“Why not, uncle? London is nothing to me in itself, less than nothing; and if that brave girl to whom it is everything——”
“And yet six months ago I gave you the opportunity of doing so, and then——”
“Then my head was full of dreams, sir. Thank God, they are gone now, and I am awake at last!”
“But the Church—I thought your duty and devotion to the Church——”
“The Church is a chaos, uncle, a wreck of fragments without unity, principle, or life. No man can find foothold in it now without accommodating his duty and his loyalty to his chances of a livelihood. It is a career, not a crusade. Once I imagined that a man might live as a protest against all this, but it was a dream, a vain and presumptuous dream.”
“And then your woman movement——”
“Another dream, uncle! A whole standing army marshalled and equipped to do battle against the world's sins toward woman could never hope for victory. Why? Because the enemy is ourselves, and only God can contend against a foe like that. He will, too! For the wrongs inflicted on woman by this wicked and immoral London God will visit it with his vengeance yet. I see it coming, it is not far off, and God help those——”
“But surely, my boy, surely it is not necessary to fly away from the world in order to escape from your dreams? Just when it is going to be good to you, too. It was kicking and cuffing and laughing at you only yesterday——”
“And to-morrow it would kick and cuff and laugh at me again. Oh, it is a cowardly and contemptible world, uncle, and happy is the man who wants nothing of it! He is its master, its absolute master, and everybody else is its wretched slave. Think of the people who are scrambling for fame and titles and decorations and invitations to court! They'll all be in their six feet by two feet some-day. And then think of the rich men who hire detectives to watch over their children lest they should be stolen for sake of a ransom, while they themselves, like human mill-horses, go tramping round and round the safes which contain their securities! Oh, miserable delusion, to think that because a nation is rich it is therefore great! Once I thought the Church was a refuge from this worst of the spiritual dangers of the age, and so it would have been if it had been built on the Gospel. But it isn't; it loves the thrones of the world and bows down to the golden calf. Poverty! Give me poverty and let me renounce everything. Jesus, our blessed Jesus, he knew well what he was doing in choosing to be poor, and even as a man he was the greatest being that ever trod upon the earth.”
“But this leper island mission is not poverty merely, my dear John—it is death, certain death, sooner or later, and God knows what news the next mail may bring us!”
“As to that I feel I am in God's hands, sir, and he knows best what is good for us. People talk about dying before their time, but no man ever did or ever will or ever can do so, and it is blasphemy to think of it. Then which of us can prolong our lives by one day or hour or minute? But God can do everything. And what a grand inspiration to trust yourself absolutely to him, to raise the arms heavenward which the world would pinion to your side and cry, 'Do with me as thou wilt, I am ready for anything—anything.'”
A tremor passed over the wrinkles about the old man's eyes, and he thought: “All this is self-deception. He doesn't believe a word of it. Poor boy! his heart alone is leading him, and he is the worst slave of us all.”
Then he said aloud: “Things haven't fallen out as I expected, John, and I am sorry, very sorry. The laws of life and the laws of love don't always run together—I know that quite well.”
John flinched, but made no protest.
“I shall feel as if I were losing your mother a second time when you leave me, my boy. To tell you the truth, I've been watching you and thinking of you, though you haven't known it. And you've rather neglected the old man. I thought you might bring your wife to me some day, and that I might live to see your children. But that's all over now, and there seems to be no help for it. They say the most noble and beautiful things in the world are done in a state of fever, and perhaps this fever of yours—-H'm. As for the money, it is ready for you at any time.”
“There can't be much left, uncle. I have gone through most of it.”
“No, John, no; the money you spent was my money—your own is still untouched.”
“You are too good, uncle, and if I had once thought you wished to see more of me——”
“Ah, I know, I know. It was a wise man who said it was hard to love a woman and do anything else, even to love God himself.”
John dropped his head and turned to go.
“But come again before you leave London—if you do leave it—and now good-bye, and God bless you!”
The news of John Storm's intention to follow Father Damien had touched and thrilled the heart of London, and the streets and courts about St. Mary Magdalene's were thronged with people. In their eyes he was about to fulfil a glorious mission, and ought to be encouraged and sustained. “Good-bye, Father!” cried one. “God bless you!” cried another. A young woman with timid eyes stretched out her hand to him, and then everybody attempted to do the same. He tried to answer cheerfully, but was conscious that his throat was thick and his voice was husky. Mrs. Pincher was at the door of the clergy-house, crying openly and wiping her eyes. “Ain't there lepers enough in London, sir, without goin' to the ends of the earth for 'em?” He laughed and made an effort to answer her humorously, but for some reason both words and ideas failed him.
The club-room was crowded, and among the girls and the Sisters there were several strange faces. Mrs. Callender sat at one end of the little platform, and she was glowering across at the other end, where the Father Superior stood in his black cassock, quiet and watchful, and with the sprawling, smiling face of Brother Andrew by his side. The girls were singing when John entered, and their voices swelled out as they saw him pushing his way through. When the hymn ended there was silence for a moment as if it was expected that he would speak, but he did not rise, and the lady at the harmonium began again. Some of the young mothers from the shelter above had brought down their little ones, and the thin, tuneless voices could be heard among the rest:
There's a Friend for little childrenAbove the bright blue sky.
John had made a brave fight for it, but he was beginning to break down. Everybody else had risen, he could not rise. An expression of fear and at the same time of shame had come into his face. Vaguely, half-consciously, half-reproachfully, he began to review the situation. After all, he was deserting his post, he was running away. This was his true scene, his true work, and if he turned his back upon it he would be pursued by eternal regrets. And yet he must go, he must leave everything—that alone he understood and felt.
All at once, God knows why, he began to think of something which had happened when he was a boy. With his father he was crossing the Duddon Sands. The tide was out, far out, but it had turned, it was galloping toward them, and they could hear the champing waves on the beach behind. “Run, boy, run! Give me your hand and run!”
Then he resumed the current of his former thoughts. “What was I thinking about?” he asked himself; and when he remembered, he thought, “I will give my hand to the heavenly Father and go on without fear.” At the second verse he rallied, rose to his feet, and joined in the singing. It was said afterward that his deep voice rang out above all the other voices, and that he sang in rapid and irregular time, going faster and faster at every line.
They had reached the last verse but one, when he saw a young girl crushing her way toward him with a letter. She was smiling, and seemed proud to render him this service. He was about to lay the letter aside when he glanced at it, and then he could not put it down. It was marked “Urgent,” and the address was in Glory's handwriting. The champing waves were in his ears again. They were coming on and on.
A presentiment of evil crept over him and he opened the letter and read it. Then his life fell to wreck in a moment. Its nullity, its hopelessness, its futility, its folly, the world with its elusive joys, love with its deceptions so cruel and so sweet-all, all came sweeping up on him like the sea-wrack out of a storm. In an instant the truth appeared to him, and he understood himself at last. For Glory's sake he had sacrificed everything and deceived himself before God and man. And yet she had failed him and forsaken him, and slipped out of his hands in the end. The tide had overtaken and surrounded him, and the voices of the girls and the children were like the roar of the waters in his ears.
But what was this? Why had they stopped singing? All at once he became aware that everybody else was seated, and that he was standing alone on the edge of the platform with Glory's letter in his hand.
“Hush! hush!” There was a strained silence, and he tried to recollect what it was that he was expected to do. Every eye was on his face. Some of the strangers opened note-books and sat ready to write. Then, coming to himself, he understood what was before him, and tried to control his voice and begin.
“Girls,” he said, but he was hardly able to speak or breathe. “Girls,” he said again, but his strong voice shook, and he tried in vain to go on.
One of the girls began to sob. Then another and another. It was said afterward that nobody could look on his drawn face, so hopeless, so full of the traces of suffering and bitter sadness, without wanting to cry aloud. But he controlled himself at length.
“My good friends all, you came to-night to bid me Godspeed on a long journey and I came to bid you farewell. But there is a higher power that rules our actions, and it is little we know of our own future, or our fate or ourselves. God bids me tell you that my leper island is to be London, and that my work among you is not done yet.”
After saying this he stood a moment as if intending to say more, but he said nothing. The letter crinkled in his fingers, he looked at it, an expression of helplessness came into his face, and he sat down. And then the Father came up to him and sat beside him, and took his hand and comforted it as if he had been a little child.
There was another attempt to sing, but the hymn made no headway this time, for some of the girls were crying, they hardly knew why, and others were whispering, and the strangers were leaving the room. Two ladies were going down the stairs.
“I felt sure he wouldn't go,” said one.
“Why so?” said the other.
“I can't tell you. I had my private reasons.”
It was Rosa Macquarrie. Going down the dark lane she came upon a woman who had haunted the outside of the building during the past half hour, apparently thinking at one moment of entering and at the next of going away. The woman hurriedly lowered her veil as Rosa approached her, but she was too late to avoid recognition.
“Glory! Is it you?”
Glory covered her face with her hands and sobbed.
“Whatever are you doing here?”
“Don't ask me, Rosa. Oh, I'm a lost woman! Lord forgive me, what have I done?”
“My poor child!”
“Take me home, Rosa. And don't leave me to-night, dear—not to-night, Rosa.”
And Rosa took her by the arm and led her back to Clement's Inn.
Next morning before daybreak the brothers of the Society of the Holy Gethsemane had gathered in their church in Bishopsgate Street for Lauds and Prime. Only the chancel was lighted up, the rest of the church was dark, but the first gleams of dawn, were now struggling through the eastern window against the candlelight on the altar and the gaslight on the choir.
John Storm was standing on the altar steps and the Father was by his side. He was wearing the cassock of the Brotherhood, and the cord with the three knots was bound about his waist. All was silent round about, the city was still asleep, the current of life had not yet awakened for the day. Lauds and Prime were over, the brothers were on their knees, and the Father was reading the last words of the dedication service.
“Amen! Amen!”
There was a stroke of the bell overhead, a door somewhere was loudly slammed, and then the organ began to play:
Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty.
The brothers rose and sang, their voices filled the dark place, and the quivering sounds of the organ swelled up to the unseen roof.
Holy, Holy, Holy! Merciful and Mighty,God in Three Persons, Blessed Trinity!
The Father's cheeks were moist, but his eyes were shining and his face was full of a great joy. John Storm was standing with bowed head. He had made the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and surrendered his life to God.
Six months passed, and a panic terror had seized London. It was one of those epidemic frenzies which have fallen upon great cities in former ages of the world. The public mind was filled with the idea that London was threatened with a serious danger; that it was verging on an awful crisis; that it was about to be destroyed.
The signs were such as have usually been considered preparatory to the second coming of the Messiah—a shock of earthquake which threw down a tottering chimney (somewhere in Soho), and the expected appearance of a comet. But this was not to be the second Advent; it was to be a disaster confined to London.
God was about to punish London for its sins. The dishonour lay at its door of being the wickedest city in the world. Side by side with the development of mechanical science lifting men to the power and position of angels, there was a moral degeneration degrading them to the level of beasts. With an apparent aspiration after social and humanitarian reform, there was a corruption of the public conscience and a hardening of the public heart. London was the living picture of this startling contrast. Impiety, iniquity, impurity, and injustice were at their height here, and either England must forfeit her position among the nations, or the Almighty would interpose. The Almighty was about to interpose, and the consummation of London's wickedness was near.
By what means the destruction of London would come to pass was a matter on which there were many theories, and the fear and consternation of the people took various shapes. One of them was that of a mighty earthquake, in which the dome of St. Paul's was to totter and the towers of Westminster Abbey to rock and fall amid clouds of dust. Another was that of an avenging fire, in which the great city was to light up the whole face of Europe and burn to ashes as a witness of God's wrath at the sins of men. A third was that of a flood, in which the Thames was to rise and submerge the city, and tens of thousands of houses and hundreds of thousands of persons were to be washed away and destroyed.
Concerning the time of the event, the popular imagination had attained to a more definite idea. It was to occur on the great day of the Epsom races. Derby Day was the national day. More than any day associated with political independence, or with victory in battle, or yet with religious sanctity, the day devoted to sport and gambling and intemperance and immorality was England's day. Therefore the Almighty had selected that day for the awful revelation by which he would make his power known to man.
Thus the heart of London was once more stormed, and shame and panic ran through it like an epidemic. The consequences were the usual ones. In vain the newspapers published articles in derision of the madness, with accounts of similar frenzies which had laid hold of London before. There was a run on the banks, men sold their businesses, dissolved their partnerships, transferred their stocks, and removed to houses outside the suburbs. Great losses were sustained in all ranks of society, and the only class known to escape were the Jews on the Exchange, who held their peace and profited by their infidelity.
When people asked themselves who the author and origin of the panic was they thought instantly and with one accord of a dark-eyed, lonely man, who walked the streets of London in the black cassock of a monk, with the cord and three knots which were the witness of life vows. No dress could have shown to better advantage his dark-brown face and tall figure. Something majestic seemed to hang about the man. His big lustrous eyes, his faint smile with its sad expression always behind it, his silence, his reserve, his burning eloquence when he preached—seemed to lay siege to the imagination of the populace, and especially to take hold as with a fiery grip of the impassioned souls of women.
A certain mystery about his life did much to help this extraordinary fascination. When London as a whole became conscious of him it was understood that he was in some sort a nobleman as well as a priest, and had renounced the pleasures and possessions of the world and given up all for God. His life was devoted to the poor and outcast, especially to the Magdalenes and their unhappy children. Although a detached monk still and living in obedience to the rule of one of the monastic brotherhoods of the Anglican Church, he was also vicar of a parish in Westminster. His church was a centre of religious life in that abandoned district, having no fewer than thirty parochial organizations connected with it, including guilds, clubs, temperance societies, savings banks, and, above all, shelters and orphanages for the girls and their little ones, who were the vicar's especial care.
His chief helpers were a company of devoted women, drawn mainly from the fashionable fringe which skirted his squalid district and banded together as a Sisterhood. For clerical help he depended entirely on the brothers of his society, and the money saved by these voluntary agencies he distributed among the poor, the sick, and the unfortunate. Money of his own he had none, and his purse was always empty by reason of his free-handedness. Rumour spoke of a fortune of many thousands which had been spent wholly on others in the building or maintenance of school and hospital, shelter and refuge. He lived a life of more than Christian simplicity, and was seen to treat himself with constant disregard of comfort and convenience. His only home was two rooms (formerly assigned to the choir) on the ground floor under his church, and it was understood that he slept on a hospital bed, wrapped in the cloak which in winter he wore over his cassock. His personal servant in these cell-like quarters was a lay brother from his society—a big ungainly boy with sprawling features who served him and loved him and looked up to him with the devotion of a dog. A dog of other kind he had also—a bloodhound, whose affection for him was a terror to all who awakened its jealousy or provoked its master's wrath. People said he had learned renunciation and was the most Christlike man they had ever known. He was called “The Father.”
Such was the man with whom the popular imagination associated the idea of the panic, but what specific ground there was for laying upon him the responsibility of the precise predictions which led to it none could rightly say. It was remembered afterward that every new folly had been ascribed to him. “The Father says so and so,” or “The Father says such and such will come to pass,” and then came prophecies which were the remotest from his thoughts. No matter how wild or extravagant the assertion, if it was laid upon him there were people ready to believe it, so deep was the impression made on the public mind by this priest in the black cassock with the bloodhound at his heels, so strong was the assurance that he was a man with the breath of God in him.
What was known with certainty was that the Father preached against the impurities and injustices of the age with a vehemence never heard before, and that when he spoke of the wickedness of the world toward woman, of the temptations that were laid before her—temptations of dress, of luxury, of false work and false fame—and then of the cruel neglect and abandonment of woman when her summer had gone and her winter had come, his lips seemed to be touched as by a live coal from the altar and his eyes to blaze as with Pentecostal fire. Cities and nations which countenanced and upheld such corruptions of a false civilization would be overtaken by the judgment of God. That judgment was near, it was imminent; and but for the many instances in which the life of the rich, the great, and the powerful was redeemed by the highest virtue, this pitiful farce of a national existence would have been played out already; but for the good men still found in Sodom, the city of abominations must long since have been destroyed. People there were to laugh at these predictions, but they were only throwing cold water on lime; the more they did so the more it smoked.
Little by little a supernatural atmosphere gathered about the Father as a man sent from God. One day he visited a child who was sick with a bad mouth, and touching the child's mouth he said, “It will be well soon.” The child recovered immediately, and the idea started that he was a healer. People waited for him that they might touch his hand. Sometimes after service he had to stand half an hour while the congregation filed past him. Hard-headed persons, sane and acute in other relations of life, were heard to protest that on shaking hands with him an electric current passed through them. Sick people declared themselves cured by the sight of him, and charlatans sold handkerchiefs on pretence that he had blessed them. He repeatedly protested that it was not necessary to touch or even to see him. “Your faith alone can make you whole.” But the frenzy increased, the people crowded upon him and he was followed through the streets for his blessing.
Somebody discovered that he was born on the 25th of December, and was just thirty-three years of age. Then the madness reached its height. A certain resemblance was observed in his face and head to the traditional head and face of Christ, and it was the humour of the populace to discover some mystical relations between him and the divine figure. Hysterical women kissed his hand and even hailed him as their Saviour. He protested and remonstrated, but all to no purpose. The delusion grew, and his protestations helped it.
As the day approached that was to be big with the fate of London, his church, which had been crowded before, was now besieged. He was understood to preach the hope that in the calamity to befall the city a remnant would be saved, as Israel was saved from the plagues of Egypt. Thousands who were too poor to leave London had determined to spend the night of the fateful day in the open air, and already they were going out into the fields and the parks, to Hampstead, Highgate, and Blackheath. The panic was becoming terrible and the newspapers were calling upon the authorities to intervene. A danger to the public peace was threatened, and the man who was chiefly to blame for it should be dealt with at once. No matter that he was innocent of active sedition, no matter that he was living a life devoted to religious and humanitarian reforms, no matter that his vivid faith, his trust in God, and his obedience to the divine will were like a light shining in a dark place, no matter that he was not guilty of the wild extravagance of the predictions of his followers—“the Father” was a peril, he was a panic-maker, and he should be arrested and restrained.
The morning of Derby Day broke gray and dull and close. It was one of those mornings in summer which portend a thunderstorm and great heat. In that atmosphere London awoke to two great fevers—the fever of superstitious fear and the fever of gambling and sport.
But London is a monster with many hearts; it is capable of various emotions, and even at that feverish time it was at the full tide of a sensation of a different kind entirely. This was a new play and a new player. The play was “risky”; it was understood to present the fallen woman in her naked reality, and not as a soiled dove or sentimental plaything. The player was the actress who performed this part. She was new to the stage, and little was known of her, but it was whispered that she had something in common with the character she personated. Her success had been instantaneous: her photograph was in the shop windows, it had been reproduced in the illustrated papers, she had sat to famous artists, and her portrait in oils was on the line at Burlington House.
The play was the latest work of the Scandinavian dramatist, the actress was Glory Quayle.
At nine o'clock on the morning of Derby Day Glory was waiting in the drawing-room of the Garden House, dressed in a magnificent outdoor costume of pale gray which seemed to wave like a ripe hayfield. She looked paler and more nervous than before, and sometimes she glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece and sometimes looked away in the distance before her while she drew on her long white gloves and buttoned them. Rosa Macquarrie came upstairs hurriedly. She was smartly dressed in black with red roses and looked bright and brisk and happy.
“He has sent Benson with the carriage to ask us to drive down,” said Rosa. “Must have some engagement surely. Let us be off, dear. No time to lose.”
“Shall I go, I wonder?” said Glory, with a strange gravity.
“Indeed yes, dear. Why not? You've not been in good spirits lately, and it will do you good. Besides, you deserve a holiday after a six months' season. And then it's such a great day forhim, too——”
“Very well, I'll go,” said Glory, and at that moment a twitch of her nervous fingers broke a button off one of the gloves. She drew it off, threw both gloves on to a side table, took up another pair that lay there, and followed Rosa downstairs. An open carriage was waiting for them in the outer court of the inn, and ten minutes afterward they drew up in a narrow street off Whitehall under a wide archway which opened into the large and silent quadrangle leading to the principal public offices. It was the Home Office; the carriage had come for Drake.
Drake had seen changes in his life too. His father was dead and he had succeeded to the baronetcy. He had also inherited a racing establishment which the family had long upheld, and a colt which had been entered for the Derby nearly three years ago was to run in the race that day. Its name was Ellan Vannin, and it was not a favourite. Notwithstanding the change in his fortunes, Drake still held his position of private secretary to the Secretary of State, but it was understood that he was shortly to enter public life under the wing of the Government, and to stand for the first constituency that became vacant. Ministers predicted a career for him; there was nothing he might not aspire to, and hardly anything he might not do.
Parliament had adjourned in honour of the day on which the “Isthmian games” were celebrated, and the Home Secretary, as leader of the Lower House, had said that horse-racing was “a noble and distinguished sport deserving of a national holiday.” But the Minister himself, and consequently his secretary, had been compelled to put in an appearance at their office for all that. There was urgent business demanding prompt attention.
In the large green room of the Home Office overlooking the empty quadrangle, the Minister, dressed in a paddock coat, received a deputation of six clergymen. It included Archdeacon Wealthy, who served as its spokesman. In a rotund voice, strutting a step and swinging his glasses, the Archdeacon stated their case. They had come, most reluctantly and with a sense of pain and grief and humiliation, to make representations about a brother clergyman. It was the notorious Mr. Storm—“Father” Storm, for he was drawing the people into the Roman obedience. The man was bringing religion into ridicule and contempt, and it was the duty of all who loved their mother Church——
“Pardon me, Mr. Archdeacon, we have nothing to do with that,” said the Minister. “You should go to your Bishop. Surely he is the proper person——”
“We've been, sir,” said the Archdeacon, and then followed an explanation of the Bishop's powerlessness. The Church provided no funds to protect a Bishop from legal proceedings in inhibiting a vicar guilty of this ridiculous kind of conduct. “But the man comes within the power of the secular authorities, sir. He is constantly inciting people to assemble unlawfully to the danger of the public peace.”
“How? How?”
“Well, he is a fanatic, a lunatic, and has put out monstrous and ridiculous predictions about the destruction of London, causing disorderly crowds to assemble about his church. The thoroughfares are blocked, and people are pushed about and assaulted. Indeed, things have come to such a pass that now—to-day——”
“Pardon me again, Mr. Archdeacon, but this seems to be a simple matter for the police. Why didn't you go to the Commissioner at Scotland Yard?”
“We did, sir, but he said—you will hardly believe it, but he actually affirmed—that as the man had been guilty of no overt act of sedition——”
“Precisely—that would be my view too.”
“And are we, sir, to wait for a riot, for death, for murder, before the law can be put in motion? Is there no precedent for proceeding before anything serious—I may say alarming——”
“Well, gentlemen,” said the Minister, glancing impatiently at his watch, “I can only promise you that the matter shall have proper attention. The Commissioner shall be seen, and if a summons——”
“It is too late for that now, sir. The man is a dangerous madman and should be arrested and put under restraint.”
“I confess I don't quite see what he has done; but if——”
The Archdeacon drew himself up. “Because a clergyman is well connected—has high official connections indeed——But surely it is better that one man should be put under control, whoever he is, than that the whole Church and nation should be endangered and disgraced.”
“Ah——H'm!——H'm! I think I've heard that sentiment before somewhere, Mr. Archdeacon. But I'll not detain you now. If a warrant is necessary——” and with vague promises and plausible speeches the Minister bowed the deputation out of the room. Then he pisht and pshawed, swung a field glass across his shoulder, and prepared to leave for the day.
“Confound them! How these Christians love each other! I leave it with you, Drake. When the matter was mentioned at Downing Street the Prime Minister told us to act without regard to his interest in the young priest. If there's likely to be a riot let the Commissioner get his warrant—Heigho! Ten-thirty! I'm off! Good-day!”
Some minutes afterward Drake himself, having written to Scotland Yard, followed his chief down the private staircase to the quadrangle, where Glory and Rosa were waiting in the carriage under the arch.
In honour of the event in which his horse was to play a part, Drake had engaged a coach to take a party of friends to the Downs. They assembled at a hotel in the Buckingham Palace Road. Lord Robert was there, dressed in the latest fashion, with boots of approved Parisian shape and a necktie of crying colours. Betty Bellman was with him, in a red and white dress and a large red hat. There was a lady in pale green with a light bonnet, another in gray and white, and another in brightest blue. They were a large, smart, and even gorgeous company, chiefly theatrical. Before eleven o'clock they were spinning along the Kennington Road on their way to Epsom.
Drake himself drove and Glory occupied the seat of honour by his side. She was looking brighter now, and was smiling and laughing and making little sallies in response to her companion's talk. He was telling her all about the carnival. The Derby was the greatest race the world over. It was run for about six thousand sovereigns, but the total turnover of the meeting was probably a million of money. Thus on its business side alone it was a great national enterprise, and the puritans who would abolish it ought to think of that. A race-horse cost about three hundred a year to keep, but of course nobody maintained his racing establishment on his winnings. Nearly everybody had to bet, and gambling was not so great an offence as some people supposed. The whole trade of the world was of the nature of a gamble, life itself was a gamble, and the race-course was the only market in the world where no man could afford to go bankrupt, or be a defaulter and refuse to pay.
They were now going by Clapham Common with an unbroken stream of vehicles of every sort—coaches with outriders, landaus, hansom cabs, omnibuses, costers' spring carts and barrows. Every coach carried its horn, and every horn was blown at the approach to every village. The sun was hot, and the roads were rising to the horses' fetlocks in dust. Drake was pointing out some of their travelling companions. That large coach going by at a furious gallop was the coach of the Army and Navy Club; that barouche with its pair of grays and its postilion belonged to a well-known wine merchant; that carriage with its couple of leaders worth hundreds apiece was the property of a prosperous publican; that was the coach which usually ran between Northumberland Avenue and Virginia Water, and its seats were let out at so much apiece, usually to clerks who practised innocent frauds to escape from the city; those soldiers on the omnibus were from Wellington Barracks on “Derby leave”; and those jolly tars with their sweethearts, packed like herrings in a car, were the only true sportsmen on the road and probably hadn't the price of a glass of rum on any race of the day. Going by road to the Derby was almost a thing of the past; smart people didn't often do it, but it was the best fun anyway, and many an old sport tooled his team on the road still.
Glory grew brighter at every mile they covered. Everything pleased or amused or astonished her. With the charm born of a vivid interest in life she radiated happiness over all the company. Some glimpses of the country girl came back, her soul thrilled to the beauty of the world around, and she cried out like a child at sight of the chestnut and red hawthorn, and at the scent of spring with which the air was laden. From time to time she was recognised on the road, people raised their hats to her, and Drake made no disguise of his beaming pride. He leaned back to Rosa, who was sitting on the seat behind, and whispered, “Like herself to-day, isn't she?”
“Why shouldn't she be? With all the world at her feet and her future on the knees of the gods!” said Rosa.
But a shade of sadness came over Glory's face, as if the gay world and its amusements had not altogether filled a void that was left somewhere in her heart. They were drawing up to water the horses at the old “Cock” at Sutton, and a brown-faced woman with big silver earrings and a monster hat and feather came up to the coach to tell the “quality” their fortunes.
“Oh, let us, Glo,” cried Betty. “I'd love it of all things, doncher know.”
The gipsy had held out her hand to Glory. “Let me look at your palm, pretty lady.”
“Am I to cross it with silver first?”
“Thank you kindly! But must I tell you the truth, lady?”
“Why yes, mother. Why not?”
“Then you're going to lose money to-day, lady; but never mind, you shall be fortunate in the end, and the one you love shall be yours.”
“That's all right,” cried the gentlemen in chorus. The ladies tittered, and Glory turned to Drake and said, “A pair of gloves against Ellan Vannin.”
“Done,” said Drake, and there was general laughter.
The gipsy still held Glory's hand, and looking up at Drake out of the corner of her eyes, she said: “I won't tell you what colour he is, pretty lady, but he is young and tall, and, though he is a gorgio, he is the kind a Romany girl would die for. Much trouble you'll have with him, and because of his foolishness and your own unkindness you'll put seven score miles between you. You like to live your life, lady, and as men drown their sorrows in drink, so do you drown yours in pleasure. But it will all come right at last, lady, and those who envy and hate you now will kiss the ground you walk on.”
“Glo,” said Betty, “I'm surprised at ye, dearest, listenin' to such clipperty clapper.”
Glory did not recover her composure after this incident until they came near the Downs. Meantime the grooms had blown their horns at many villages hidden in the verdure of charming hollows, and the coaches had overtaken the people who had left London earlier in the day to make the journey afoot. Boy tramps, looking tired already—“Wish ye luck, gentlemen”; fat sailors and mutilated colliers playing organs—'Twas in Trafalgar Bay, and Come Whoam to thee Childer and Me; tatterdemalions selling the C'rect Card-“on'y fourpence, and I've slep' out on the Downs last night, s'elp me”—and all the ragged army of the maimed and the miserable who hang on the edge of a carnival.
Among this wreckage, as they skimmed over it on the coach, there was one figure more grotesque than the rest, a Polish Jew in his long kaftan and his worn Sabbath hat, going along alone, triddle-traddle, in his slippers without heels. Lord Robert was at the moment teasing Betty into a pet by christening her “The Elephant,” in allusion to her stoutness. But somebody called his attention to the Jew, and he screwed his glass to his eye and cried, “Father Storm, by Jove!”
The nickname was taken up by other people on the coach, and also by people on other coaches, and “Father Storm!” was thrown at the poor scarecrow as a missile from twenty quarters at once. Glory's colour was rising to her ears, and Drake was humming a tune to cover her confusion. But Betty was asking, “Who was Father Storm, if you please?” and Lord Robert was saying, “Bless my stars, this is something new, don't you know! Here's somebody who doesn't know Father Storm! Father Storm, my dear Elephant, is the prophet, the modern Jonah, who predicts that Nineveh—that is to say, London—is to be destroyed this very day!”
“He must be balmy!” said Betty, and the lady in blue went into fits of laughter.
“Yes,” said Lord Robert, “and all because wicked men like ourselves insist on enjoying ourselves on a day like this with pretty people like you.”
“Well, heisa cough-drop!” said Betty. The lady in blue asked what was “balmy” and a “cough-drop,” and Lord Robert said:
“Betty means that the good Father is crazy—silly—stupid—cracked in the head in short——”
But Glory could bear no more. It was an insult to John Storm to be sat upon in judgment by such a woman. With a fiery jet of temper she turned about and said, “Pity there are not more heads cracked, then, if it would only let a little of the light of heaven into them.”
“Oh, if it's like that——” began Betty, looking round significantly, and Lord Robert said, “Itislike that, dear Elephant, and if our charming hurricane will pardon me, I'm not surprised that the man has broken out as a Messiah, and if the authorities don't intervene——”
“Hold your tongue, Robert!” cried Drake. “Listen, everybody!”
They were climbing on to the Downs and could hear the deep hum of the people on the course. “My!” said Betty. “Well!” said the lady in blue. “It's like a beehive with the lid off,” said Glory.
As they passed the railway station the people who had come by train poured into the road and the coach had to slow down. “They must have come from the four winds of heaven,” said Glory.
“Wait, only wait!” said Drake.
Some minutes afterward everybody drew breath. They were on the top of the common and had a full view of the course. It was a vast sea of human beings stretched as far as the eye could reach—a black moving ocean without a glimpse of soil or grass. The race track itself was a river of people: the Grand Stand, tier on tier, was black from its lawns at the bottom to its sloping gallery on top; and the “Hill” opposite was a rocky coast of carriages, booths, carts, and clustering crowds. Glory's eyes seemed to leap out of her head. “It's a nation!” she said with panting breath. “An empire!”
They were diving into these breaking, plashing, plunging waters of human life with their multitudinous voices of laughter and speech, and Glory was looking at a dark figure in the hollow below which seemed to stand up above the rest, when Drake cried:
“Sit hard, everybody! We'll take the hill at a gallop.”
Then to the crack of the whip, the whoop of the driver, and the blast of the horn, the horses flew down like the wind. Betty screamed, Rosa groaned, and Glory laughed and looked up at Drake in her delight. When the coach drew up on the other side of the hollow, the bell was ringing at the Grand Stand as signal for another race, and the dark figure had disappeared.