Suddenly there sprang out to Glory the charm and fascination of the life she was putting away. Trying to be true to her altered relations with John Storm, she did not go to rehearsal the next morning—, but not yet having the courage of her new position, she did not tell Rosa her true reason for staying away. The part was exhausting—it tried her very much; a little break would do no harm. Rosa wrote to apologize for her on the score of health, and thus the first cloud of dissimulation rose up between them.
Two days passed, and then a letter came from the manager: “Trust you are rested and will soon be back. The prompter read your lines, but everything has gone to pieces. Slack, slovenly, spiritless, stupid, nobody acting, and nobody awake, it seems to me. 'All right at night, governor,' and the usual nonsense. Shows how much we want you. But envious people are whispering that you are afraid of the part. The blockheads! If you succeed this time you'll be made for life, my dear. And youwillsucceed! Yours merrily,” etc.
With this were three letters addressed to the theatre. One of them was from a press-cutting agency asking to be allowed to supply all newspaper articles relating to herself, and inclosing a paragraph as a specimen: “A little bird whispers that 'Gloria,' as 'Gloria,' is to be a startling surprise. Those who have seen her rehearse——But mum's the word—an' we could an' we would,” etc. Another of the letters was from the art editor of an illustrated weekly asking for a sitting to their photographer for a full-page picture; and the third inclosed the card of an interviewer on an evening paper. Only three days ago Glory would have counted all this as nothing, yet now she could not help but feel a thrilling, joyous excitement.
Drake called after the absence of a fortnight. He had come to speak of his last visit. His face was pale and serious, not fresh and radiant as usual, his voice was shaking and his manner nervous. Glory had never seen him exhibit so much emotion, and Rosa looked on in dumb astonishment.
“I was to blame,” he said, “and I have come to say so. It was a cowardly thing to turn the man out of his church, and it was worse than cowardly to use you in doing it. Everything is fair, they say, in——” But he flushed up like a girl and stopped, and then faltered: “Anyhow, I'm sorry—very sorry; and if there is anything I can do——”
Glory tried to answer him, but her heart was beating violently, and she could not speak.
“In fact, I've tried to make amends already. Lord Robert has a living vacant in Westminster, and I've asked him to hand it over to the Bishop, with the request that Father Storm——”
“But will he?”
“I've told him he must. It's the least we can do if we are to have any respect for ourselves. And anyhow, I'm about tired of this anti-Storm uproar. It may be all very well far men like me to object to the man—I deny his authorities, and think him a man out of his century and country—but for these people with initials, who write in the religious papers, to rail at him, these shepherds who live on five thousand a year and pretend to follow One who hadn't a home or a second coat, and whose friends were harlots and sinners, though he was no sinner himself—it's infamous, it's atrocious, it raises my gorge against their dead creeds and paralytic churches. Whatever his faults, he is built on a large plan, he has the Christ idea, and he is a man and a gentleman, and I'm ashamed that I took advantage of him. That's all over now, and there's no help for it; but if I might hope that you will forgive—and forget——”
“Yes,” said Glory in a low voice, and then there was silence, and when she lifted her head Drake was gone and Rosa was wiping her eyes.
“It was all for love of you, Glory. A woman can't hate a man when he does wrong for love of herself.”
John Storm came in later the same day, when Rosa had gone out and Glory was alone. He was a different man entirely. His face looked round and his dark eyes sparkled. The clouds of his soul seemed to have drifted away, and he was boiling over with enthusiasm. He laughed constantly, and there was something almost depressing in the lumbering attempts at humour of the serious man.
“What do you think has happened? The Bishop sent for me and offered me a living in Westminster. It turns out to being the gift of Lord Robert Ure; but no thanks to him for it. Lady Robert was at the bottom of everything. She had called on the Bishop. He remembered me at the Brotherhood, and told me all about it. St. Jude's, Brown's Square, on the edge of the worst quarter in Christendom! It seems the Archdeacon expected it for Golightly, his son-in-law. The Reverend Joshua called on me this morning and tried to bully me, but I soon bundled him off to Botany Bay. Said the living had been promised to him—a lie, of course. I soon found that out. A lie is well named, you know—it hasn't a leg—to stand upon. Ha, ha, ha!”
Nothing would serve but that they should go to look at the scene of their future life, and with Don—he had brought his dog; it had to be held back from the pug under the table—they set off immediately. It was Saturday night, and as they dipped down into the slums that lie under the shadow of the Abbey, Old Pye Street, Peter's Street, and Duck Lane were aflare with the coarse lights of open naphtha lamps, and all but impassable with costers' barrows. There were the husky voices of the street hawkers, the hoarse laughter, the quarrelling, the oaths, the rasping shouts of the butcher selling chunks of dark joints by auction, the screeches of the roast-potato man, and the smell of stale vegetables and fried fish. “Jow, 'ow much a pound for yer turmaters?” “Three pence; I gave mor'n that for 'em myself.” “Garn!” “S'elp me, Gawd, I did, mum!”
“Isn't it a glorious scene?” said John; and Glory, who felt chilled and sickened, recalled herself from some dream of different things altogether and said, “Isn't it?”
“Sanctuary, too! What human cats we are! The poor sinners cling to the place still!”
He took her into the alleys and courts that score and wrinkle the map of Westminster like an old man's face, and showed her the “model” lodging-houses and the gaudily decorated hells where young girls and soldiers danced and drank.
“What's the use of saying to these people, 'Don't drink; don't steal'? They'll answer, 'If you lived in these slums you would drink too.' But we'll show them that we can live here and do neither—that will be the true preaching.”
And then he pictured a life of absolute self-sacrifice, which she was to share with him. “You'll manage all money matters, Glory. You can't think how I'm swindled. And then I'm such a donkey as far as money goes—that's not far with me, you know. Ha, ha, ha! Who's to find it? Ah, God pays his own debts. He'll see to that.”
They were to live under the church itself; to give bread to the hungry and clothes to the naked; to set up their Settlement in the gaming-house of the Sharkeys, now deserted and shut up; to take in theundeserving poor-the people who had nothing to say for themselves, precisely those; and thus they were to show that they belonged neither to the publicans and sinners nor to the Scribes and Pharisees.
“Only let us get rid of self. Only let us show that self-interest never enters our head in one single thing we do——” and meantime Glory, who had turned her head aside with a lump in her throat, heard some one behind them saying:
“Lawd, Jow, that's the curick and his dorg—'im as got pore Sharkey took! See—'im with the laidy?”
“S'elp me, so it is! Another good man gorn to 'is gruel, and all 'long of a bloomin' dorg.”
They walked round by the church. John was talking—rapturously at every step, and Glory was dragging after him like a criminal going to the pillory. At last they came out by Great Smith Street, and he cried: “See, there's the house of God under its spider's web of scaffolding, and here's the Broad Sanctuary—broad enough in all conscience! Look!”
A crowd of girls and men were trooping out of a place of entertainment opposite, and there were screams and curses. “Look at 'im!” cried a woman's voice. “There 'e is, the swine! And 'e was the ruin of me; and now 'e's 'listed for a soldier and going off with another woman!”
“You're bleedin' drunk, that's what you are!” said a man's voice, “and if you down't take kear I'll send ye 'ome on a dawer!”
“Strike me, will ye, ye dog? Do it! I dare you!”
“She ain't worth it, soldier—come along,” said another female voice, whereupon the first broke into a hurricane of oaths; and a little clergyman going by at the moment—it was the Rev. J. Golightly—said: “Dear, dear! Are there no policemen about?” and so passed on, with his tall wife tucked under his arm.
John Storm pressed through the crowd and came between the two who were quarrelling. By the light of the lamp he could see them. The man was Charlie Wilkes, in the uniform of a soldier; the woman, with the paint running on her face, her fringe disordered, and her back hair torn down, was Aggie Jones.
“We down't want no religion 'ere,” said Charlie, sneering.
“You'll get some, though, if you're not off quick!” said John. The man looked round for the dog and a moment afterward he had disappeared.
Glory came up behind. “O Aggie, woman, is it you?” she said, and then the girl began to cry in a drunken sob.
“Girls is cruel put upon, mum,” said one of the women; and another cried, “Nix, the slops!” and a policeman came pushing his way and saying: “Now, then, move on! We ain't going to stand 'ere all night.”
“Call a cab, officer,” said John.
“Yes sir—certainly, Father. Four-wheel-er!”
“Where do you live, Aggie?” said Glory; but the girl, now sobbing drunk, was too far gone to follow her.
“She lives in Brown's Square, sir,” said the woman who had spoken before, and when the cab came up she was asked to get in with the other three.
It was a tenement house, fronting to one facade of St. Jude's, and Aggie's room was on the second story. She was helpless, and John carried her up the stairs. The place was in hideous disorder, with clothing lying about on chairs, underclothing scattered on the floor, the fire out, many cigarette ends in the fender, a candle stuck in a beer bottle, and a bunch of withered roses on the table.
As John laid the girl on the bed she muttered, “Lemme alone!” and when he asked what was to happen to her when she grew old if she behaved like this when young, she mumbled: “Don't want to be old. Who's goin' to like me then, d'ye think?”
Half an hour afterward Glory and John were passing through the gates into Clement's Inn, with its moonlight and silence, its odour of moistened grass, its glimpse of the stars, and the red and white blinds of its windows lit up round about. John was still talking rapturously. He was now picturing the part which Glory was to play in the life they were to live together. She was to help and protect their younger sisters, the child-women, the girls in peril, to enlist their loyalty and filial tenderness for the hour of temptation.
“Won't it be glorious? To live the life, the real life of warfare with the world's wickedness and woe! Won't it be magnificent? You'll do it too! You'll go down into those slums and sloughs which I've shown you to-night—they are the cradle of shame and sin, Glory, and this wicked London rocks it!—you'll go down into them like a ministering angel to raise the fallen and heal the wounded! You'll live in them, revel in them, rejoice in them, they'll be your battlefield. Isn't that better, far better, a thousand times better, thanplayingat life, and all its fashions and follies and frivolities?”
Glory struggled to acquiesce, and from time to time in a trembling voice she said “Yes,” and “Oh, yes,” until they came to the door of the Garden House, and then a strange thing happened. Somebody was singing in the drawing-room to the music of the piano. It was Drake. The window was open and his voice floated over the moonlit gardens;
Du liebes Kind, komm' geh mit mir!Gar schöne Spiele spiel' ich mit dir.
Suddenly it seemed to Glory that two women sprang into life in her—one who loved John Storm and wished to live and work beside him, the other who loved the world and felt that she could never give it up. And these two women were fighting for her heart, which should have it and hold it and possess it forever.
She looked up at John, and he was smiling triumphantly, “Are you happy?” she asked.
“Happy! I know a hundred men who are a hundred times as rich as I, but not one who is a hundredth part as happy!”
“Darling!” she whispered, holding back her tears. Then looking away from him she said, “And do you really think I'm good enough for a life of such devotion and self-sacrifice?”
“Good enough!” he cried, and for a moment his merry laughter drowned the singing overhead.
“But will the world think so?”
“Assuredly. But who cares what the world thinks?”
“We do, dear—we must!”
And then, while the song went on, she began to depreciate herself in a low voice and with a creeping sense of hypocrisy—to talk of her former life in London as a danger, of the tobacco-shop, the foreign clubs, the music hall, and all the mire and slime with which she had been besmirched. “Everything is known now, dear. Have you never thought of this? It is your duty to think of it.”
But he only laughed again with a joyous voice. “What's the odds?” he said. “The world is made up for the most part of low, selfish, sensual beings, incapable of belief in noble aims. Every innovator in such a world exposes himself to the risk of being slandered or ridiculed, or even shut up in a lunatic asylum. But who wouldn't rather be St. Theresa in her cell than Catharine of Russia on her throne? And in your case, what does it come to anyway? Only that you've gone through the fiery furnace and come out unscathed. All the better—you'll be a living witness, a proof that it is possible to pass through this wicked Babylon unharmed and untouched.”
“Yes, if I were a man—but with a woman it is so different! It is an honour to a man to have conquered the world, but a disgrace to a woman to have fought with it. Yes, believe me, I know what I'm saying. That's the cruel tragedy in a woman's life, do what you will to hide it. And then you are so much in the eye of the world; and besides your own position there is your family's, your uncle's. Think what it would be if the world pointed the finger of scorn at your—at your mission—at your high and noble aims—and all on account of me! You would cease to love me-and I—I——”
“Listen!” He had been shuffling restlessly on the pavement before her. “Here I stand! Here are you! Let the waves of public opinion dash themselves against us—we stand or fall together!” “Oh, oh, oh!”
She was crying on his breast, but with what mixed and conflicting feelings! Joy, pain, delight, dread, hope, disappointment. She had tried to dishonour herself in his eyes, and it would have broken her heart if she had succeeded. But she had failed and he had triumphed, and that was harder still to bear.
From overhead they heard the last lines of the song:
Erreicht den Hof mit Müh und NothIn seinen Armen das Kind war todt.
“Good-night,” she whispered, and fled into the house. The lights in the dining-room were lowered, but she found a telegram that was waiting on the mantelpiece. It was from Sefton, the manager: “Author arrived in London today. Hopes to be at rehearsal Monday. Please be there certain.”
The world was seizing her again, the imaginary Gloria was dragging her back with visions of splendour and success. But she crept upstairs and went by the drawing-room on tip-toe. “Not to-night,” she thought. “My face is not fit to be seen to-night.”
There was a dying fire in her bedroom, and her evening gown had been laid out on a chair in front of it. She put the gown away in a drawer, and out of a box which she drew from beneath the bed she took a far different costume. It was the nurse's outdoor cloak, which she had bought for use at the hospital. She held it a moment by the tips of her fingers and looked at it, and then put it back with a sigh.
“Gloria! is that you?” Rosa called up the stairs; and Drake's cheery voice cried, “Won't our nightingale come down and give us a stave before I go?”
“Too late! Just going to bed. Good-night,” she answered. Then she lit a candle and sat down to write a letter.
“It's no use, dear John, I can not! It would be like putting bad money into the offertory to put me into that holy work. Not that I don't admire it, and love it, and worship it. It is the greatest work in the world, and last week I thought I could count everything else as dross, only remembering that I loved you and that nothing else mattered. But now I know that this was a vain and fleeting sentiment, and that the sights and scenes of your work repel me on a nearer view, just as the hospital repelled me in the early mornings when the wards were being cleaned and the wounds dressed, and before the flowers were laid about.
“Oh, forgive me, forgive me! But if I am fit to join your life at all it can not be in London. That 'old serpent called the devil and Satan' would be certain to torment me here. I could not live within sight and sound of London and go on with the life you live. London would drag me back. I feel as if it were an earlier lover, and I must fly away from it. Is that possible? Can we go elsewhere? It is a monstrous demand, I know. Say you can not agree to it. Say so at once—it will serve me right.”
The stout watchman of the New Inn was calling midnight when Glory stole out to post her letter. It fell into the letter-box with a thud, and she crept back like a guilty thing.
Next morning Mrs. Callender heard John Storm singing to himself before he left his bedroom, and she was standing at the bottom of the stairs when he came down three steps at a time.
“Bless me, laddie,” she said, “to see your face shining a body would say that somebody had left ye a legacy or bought ye a benefice instead of taking your church frae ye!”
“Why, yes, and better than both, and that's just what I was going to tell you.”
“You must be in a hurry to do it, too, coming downstairs like a cataract.”
“You came down like a cataract yourself once on a time, auntie; I'll lay my life on that.”
“Aye, did I, and not sae lang since neither. And fools and prudes cried 'Oh!' and called me a tomboy. But, hoots; I was nought but a body born a wee before her time. All the lasses are tomboys now, bless them, the bright heart-some things!”
“Auntie,” said John softly, seating himself at the breakfast table, “what d'ye think?”
She eyed him knowingly. “Nay, I'm ower thrang working to be bothered thinking. Out with it, laddie.”
He looked wise. “Don't you remember saying—that work like mine wanted a woman's hand in it?”
Her old eyes blinked. “Maybe I did, but what of it?”
“Well, I've taken your advice, and now a woman's hand is coming into it to guide it and direct it.”
“It must be the right hand, though, mind that.”
“Itwillbe the right hand, auntie.”
“Weel, that's grand,” with another twinkle. “I thought it might be theleft, ye see, and ye might be putting a wedding-ring on it!” And then she burst into a peal of laughter.
“However did you find it out?” he said, with looks of astonishment.
“Tut, laddie, love and a cough can not be hidden. And to think a woman couldna see through you, too! But come,” tapping the table with both hands, “who is she?”
“Guess.”
“Not one of your Sisters—no?” with hesitation.
“No,” with emphasis.
“Some other simpering thing, na doot-they're all alike these days.”
“But didn't you say the girls were all tomboys now?”
“And if I did, d'ye want a body to be singing the same song always? But come, what like is she? When I hear of a lassie I like fine to know her colour first. What's her complexion?”
“Guess again.”
“Is she fair? But what a daft auld dunce I am!—to be sure she's fair.”
“Why, how did you know that, now?”
“Pooh! They say a dark man is a jewel in a fair woman's eye, and I'll warrant it's as true the other way about. But what's her name?”
John's face suddenly straightened and he pretended not to hear.
“What's her name?” stamping with both feet.
“Dear me, auntie, what an ugly old cap you're wearing!”
“Ugly?” reaching up to the glass. “Who says it's ugly?”
“I do.”
“Tut! you're only a bit boy, born yesterday. But, man, what's all this botherment about telling a lassie's name?”
“I'll bring her to see you, auntie.”
“I should think you will, indeed! and michty quick, too!”
This was on Sunday, and by the first post on Monday John Storm received Glory's letter. It fell on him like a blast out of a cloud in the black northeast, and cut him to the heart's core. He read it again, and being alone he burst into laughter. He took it up a third time, and when he had finished there was something at his throat that seemed to choke him. His first impulse was fury. He wanted to rush off to Glory and insult her, to ask her if she was mad or believed him to be so. Because she was a coward herself, being slave-bound to the world and afraid to fight it face to face, did she wish to make a coward of him also—to see him sneak away from the London that had kicked him, like a cur with its tail between its legs?
After this there came an icy chill and an awful consciousness that mightier forces were at work than any mere human weakness. It was the world itself, the great pitiless world, that was dividing them again as it had divided them before, but irrevocably now-not as a playful nurse that puts petted children apart, but as a torrent that tears the cliffs asunder. “Leave the world, my son, and return to your unfinished vows.” Could it be true that this was only another reminder of his broken obedience?
Then came pity. If Glory was slave-bound to the world, which of us was not in chains to something? And the worst slavery of all was slavery to self. But that was an abyss he dared not look into; and he began to think tenderly of Glory, to tell himself how much she had to sacrifice, to remember his anger and to be ashamed.
A week passed, and he went about his work in a helpless way, like a derelict without rudder or sail and with the sea roaring about it. Every afternoon when he came home from Soho Mrs. Callender would trip into the hall wearing a new cap with a smart bow, and finding that he was alone she would say, “Not to-day, then?”
“Not to-day,” he would answer, and they would try to smile. But seeing the stamp of suffering on his face, she said at last, “Tut, laddie! they love too much who die for love.”
On the Sunday afternoon following he turned again toward Clement's Inn. He had come to a decision at last, and was calm and even content, yet his happiness was like a gourd which had grown up in a day, and the morrow's sun had withered it.
Glory had been to rehearsal every day that week. Going to the theatre on Monday night she had said to herself, “There can be no harm in rehearsing—I'm not compelled to play.” Notwithstanding her nervousness, the author had complimented her on her passion and self-abandonment, and going home she had thought: “I might even go through the first performance and then give it all up. If I had a success, that would be beautiful, splendid, almost heroic—it would be thrilling to abandon everything.” Not hearing from John, she told herself he must be angry, and she felt sorry for him. “He doesn't know yet how much I am going to do.” Thus the other woman in her tempted and overcame her, and drew her on from day to day.
Mrs. Macrae sent Lord Robert to invite her to luncheon on Sunday. “There can be no harm in going there,” she thought. She went with Rosa, and was charmed with the lively, gay, and brilliant company. Clever and beautiful women, clever and handsome men, and nearly all of them of her own profession. The mistress of the mansion kept open house after church parade on Sunday, and she sat at the bottom of her table, dressed in black velvet, with the Archdeacon on her right and a famous actor on her left. Lord Robert sat at the head and talked to a lady whose remarks were heard all over the room; but Lady Robert was nowhere to be seen; there was a hush when her name was mentioned, and then a whispered rumour that she had differences with her husband, and had scandalized her mother by some act of indiscretion.
Glory's face beamed, and for the first half-hour she seemed to be on the point of breaking into a rapturous “Well!” Nearly opposite to her at the table sat a lady whose sleepy look and drowsy voice and airs of languor showed that she was admired, and that she knew it. Glory found her very amusing, and broke into little trills of laughter at her weary, withering comments. This drew the attention of some of the men; they found the contrast interesting. The conversation consisted first of hints, half signs, brilliant bits of by-play, and Glory rose to it like a fish to the May-fly. Then it fell upon bicycling and the costumes ladies wore for it. The languid one commented upon the female fetich, the skirt, and condemned “bloomers,” whereupon Glory declared that they were just charming, and being challenged (by a gentleman) for her reasons she said, “Because when a girl's got them on she feels as if she's an understudy for a man, and may even have a chance of playing the part itself in another and a better world.”
Then there was general laughter, and the gentleman said, “You're in the profession yourself now, aren't you?”
“Just a stranger within your gates,” she answered; and when the talk turned on a recent lawsuit, and the languid one said it was inconceivable that the woman concerned could have been such a coward in relation to the man, Glory protested that it was just as natural for a woman to be in fear of a man (if she loved him) as to be afraid of a mouse or to look under the bed.
“Ma chère,” said a dainty little lady sitting next but one (she had come to London to perform in a silent play), “they tells me you's half my countrywoman. All right. Will you not speak de French to poor me?” And when Glory did so the little one clapped her hands and declared she had never heard the English speak French before.
“Say French-cum-Irish,” said Glory, “or, rather, French which begat Irish, which begat Manx!”
“Original, isn't she?” said somebody who was laughing.
“Like a sea-gull among so many pigeons!” said somebody else, and the hothouse airs of the languid lady were lost as in a fresh gust from the salt sea.
But her spirits subsided the moment she had recrossed the threshold. As they were going home in the cab, past the hospital and down Piccadilly. Rosa, who was proud and happy, said: “There! All society isn't stupid and insipid, you see; and there are members of your own profession who try to live up to the ideal of moral character attainable by a gentleman in England even yet.”
“Yes, no doubt... But, Rosa, there's another kind of man altogether, whose love has the reverence of a religion, and if I ever meet a man like that—one who is ready to trample all the world under his feet for me—I think—yes, I really think I shall leave everything behind and follow him.”
“Leave everything behind, indeed! Thatwouldbe pretty! When everything yields before you, too, and all the world and his wife are waiting to shout your praises!”
Rosa had gone to her office, and Glory was turning over some designs for stage costumes, when Liza came in to say that the “Farver” was coming upstairs.
“He has come to scold me,” thought Glory, so she began to hum, to push things about, and fill the room with noise. But when she saw his drawn face and wide-open eyes she wanted to fall on his neck and cry.
“You have come to tell me you can't do what I suggested?” she said. “Of course you can't.”
“No,” he said slowly, very slowly. “I have thought it all over, and concluded that I can—that I must. Yes, I am willing to go away, Glory, and when you are ready I shall be ready too.”
“But where—where—?”
“I don't know yet; but I am willing to wait for the unrolling of the scroll. I am willing to follow step by step, not knowing whither. I am willing to go where God wills, for life or death.”
“But your work in London—your great, great work——”
“God will see to that, Glory. He can do without any of us. None of us can do without him. The sun will set without any assistance, you know,” and the pale face made an effort to smile.
“But, John, my dear, dear John, this is not what you expected, what you have been thinking of and dreaming of, and building your hopes upon.”
“No,” he said; “and for your sake I am sorry, very sorry. I thought of a great career for you, Glory. Not rescue work merely—others can do that. There are many good women in the world—nearly all women are good, but Jew are great—and for the salvation of England, what England wants now is a great woman.... As for me—God knows best! He has his own way of weaning us from vanity and the snares of the devil. You were only an instrument in his hands, my child, hardly knowing what you were doing. Perhaps he has a work of intercession for us somewhere—far away from here—in some foreign mission field—who can say?”
A feeling akin to terror caught her breath, and she looked up at him with tearful eyes.
“After all, I am glad that this has happened,” he said. “It will help me to conquer self, to put self behind my back forever, to show the world, by leaving London, that self has not entered into my count at all, and that I am thinking of nothing but my work.”
A warm flush rose to her cheeks as he spoke, and again she wanted to fling herself on his neck and cry. But he was too calm for that, too sad and too spiritual. When he rose to go she held out her hands to him, but he only took them and carried them to his lips, and kissed them.
As soon as she was alone she flung herself down and cried, “Oh, give me strength to follow this man, who mistakes his love of me for the love of God!” But even while she sat with bent head and her hands over her face the creeping sense came back as of another woman within her who was fighting for her heart. She had conquered again, but at what a cost! The foreign mission field—what associations had she with that? Only the memory of her father's lonely life and friendless death.
She was feeling cold and had begun to shiver, when the door opened and Rosa entered.
“So hedidcome again?”
“Yes.”
“I thought he would,” and Rosa laughed coldly.
“What do you mean?”
“That when religious feelings take possession of a man he will stop at nothing to gain the end he has in view.”
“Rosa,” said Glory, flushing crimson, “if you imply that my friend is capable of one unworthy act or thought I must ask you to withdraw your words absolutely and at once!”
“Very well, dear. I was only thinking for your own good. We working women must not ruin our lives or let anybody else ruin them. 'Duty,' 'self-sacrifice'—I know the old formulas, but I don't believe in them. Obey your own heart, my dear, that is your first duty. A man like Storm would take you out of your real self, and stop your career, and——”
“Oh, my career, my career! I'm tired to death of hearing of it!”
“Glory!”
“And who knows? I may not go on with it, after all.”
“If you have lost your sense of duty to yourself, have you forgotten your duty to Mr. Drake? Think what Mr. Drake has done for you!”
“Mr. Drake! Mr. Drake! I'm sick of that too.”
“How strange you are to-night, Glory!”
“Am I? So are you. It is Mr. Drake here and Mr. Drake there! Are you trying to force me into his arms?”
“Is it you that says that, Glory—you? and to me, too? Don't you see that this is a different case altogether? And if I thought of my own feelings only—consulted my own heart——”
“Rosa!”
“Ah! Is it so very foolish? Yes, he is young and handsome, and rich and brilliant, while I—I am ridiculous.”
“No, no, Rosa; I don't mean that.”
“I do, though; and when you came in between us—young and beautiful and clever—everything that I was not, and could never hope to be—and he was so drawn to you—what was I to do? Nurse my hopeless and ridiculous love—or think of him—his happiness?”
“Rosa, my poor dear Rosa, forgive me! forgive me!”
An hour later, dinner being over, they had returned to the drawing-room. Rosa was writing at the table, and there was no sound in the room except the scratching of her pen, the falling of the slips of “copy,” and the dull reverberation of the bell of St. Clement's Danes, which was ringing for evening service. Glory was sitting at the desk by the window, with her head on her hands, looking down into the garden. Out of the dead load at her heart she kept saying to herself: “Could I do that? Could I give up the one I loved for his own good, putting myself back, and thinking of him only?” And then a subtle hypocrisy stole over her and she thought, “Yes I could, I could!” and in a fever of nervous excitement she began to write a letter:
“The wind bloweth where it listeth, and so with a woman's will. I can not go abroad with you, dear, because I can not allow myself to break up your life, for itwouldbe that—it would, it would, you know it would! There are ten thousand men good enough for the foreign mission field, but there is only one man in the world for your work in London. This is one of the things hidden from the wise, and revealed to children and fools. It would be wrong of me to take you away from your great scene. I daren't do it. It would be too great a responsibility. My conscience must have been dead and buried when I suggested such a possibility! Thank God, it has had a resurrection, and it is not yet too late.”
But when the letter was sealed and stamped, and sent out to the post, she thought: “I must be mad, and there is no method in my madness either. What do I want—to join his life in London?” And then remembering what she had written, it seemed as if the other woman must have written it—the visionary woman, the woman she was making herself into day by day.
John Storm had left home early on Monday morning. It was the last day of his tenancy of the clergy-house, and there was much to do at Soho. Toward noon he made his way to the church in Bishopsgate Street for the first time since he had left the Brotherhood. It was midday service, and the little place was full of business men with their quick, eyes and eager faces. The Superior preached, and the sermon was on the religious life. We were each composed of two beings, one temporal, the other eternal, one carnal, the other spiritual. Life was a constant warfare between these two nearly matched forces, and often the victory seemed to sway from this side to that. Our enemy with the chariots of iron was ourselves. There was a Judas in each one of us ready to betray us with a kiss if allowed. The lusts of the flesh were the most deadly sins, absolute chastity the most pleasing to God of all virtues. Did we desire to realize what the religious life could be? Then let us reflect upon the news which had come from the South Seas. What was the word that had fallen that morning on all Christendom like a thunderclap, say, rather, like the blast of a celestial trumpet? Father Damien was dead! Think of his lonely life in that distant island where doomed men lived out their days. Cut off from earthly marriage, with no one claiming his affection in the same way as Christ, he was free to commit himself entirely to God and to God's afflicted children. He was truly married to Christ. Christ occupied his soul as Lord and spouse. Glorious life! Glorious death! Eternal crown of glory waiting for him in the glory everlasting!
When the service ended John Storm stepped up to speak to the Father. His wide-open eyes were flaming; he was visibly excited. “I came to ask a question,” he said, “but it is answered already. I will follow Father Damien and take up his work. I was thinking of the mission field, but my doubt was whether God had called me, and I had great fear of going uncalled. God brought me here this morning, not knowing what I was to do, but now I know, and my mind is made up at last.”
The Father was not less moved. They went out into the courtyard together and walked to and fro, planning, scheming, contriving, deciding.
“You'll take the vows first, my son?”
“The vows?”
“The life vows.”
“But—but will that be necessary?”
“It will be best. Think what a peculiar appeal it have for those poor doomed creatures! They are cut off from the world by a terrible affliction, but you will be cut off by the graciousness of a Christ-fed purity. They are lepers made of disease; you will be as a leper for the kingdom of heaven's sake.”
“But, Father—if that be so—how much greater the appeal will be if—if a woman goes out also! Say she is young and beautiful and of great gifts?”
“Brother Andrew may go with you, my son.”
“Yes, Brother Andrew as well. But holy men in all ages have been bound by ties of intimacy and affection to good women who have lived and worked beside them.”
“Sisters, my son, elder sisters always.”
“And why not? Sister, indeed, and united to me by a great and spiritual love.”
“We are none of us invincible, my son; let us not despise danger.”
“Danger, Father! What is the worth of my religion if it does not enable me to defy that?”
“Well, well—do not decide too soon. I'll come to you at Soho this evening.”
“Do. It's our last night there. I must tell my poor people what my plans are to be. Good-bye for the present, Father, good-bye.”
“Good-bye, my son,” and as John Storm went off with a light heart and bounding step the Father passed indoors with downcast face, saying to himself with a sigh, “Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.”
It was Lord Mayor's Day again, the streets were thronged, and John Storm was long in forging his way home. Glory's letter was waiting for him, and he tore it open with nervous fingers, but when he had read it he laughed aloud. “God bless her! But she doesn't know everything yet.” Mrs. Callender was out in the carriage; she would be back for lunch, and the maid was laying the cloth; but he would not wait. After scribbling a few lines in pencil to tell of his great resolve, he set off to Clement's Inn. The Strand was less crowded when he returned to it, and the newsboys were calling the evening papers with “Full Memoir of Father Damien.”
On coming home from rehearsal Glory had found the costume for her third act, her great act, awaiting her. All day long she had been thinking of her letter to John, half ashamed of it, half regretting it, almost wishing it could be withdrawn. But the dress made a great tug at her heart, and she could not resist the impulse to try it on. The moment she had done so the visionary woman whose part she was to play seemed to take possession of her, and shame and regret were gone.
It was a magnificent stage costume, green as the grass in spring with the morning sun on it. The gown was a splendid brocade with gold-embroidered lace around the square-cut neck and about the shoulders of the tight-made sleeves. Round her hips was a sash of golden tissue, and its hanging ends were fringed with emeralds. A band of azure stones encircled her head, and her fingers were covered with turquoise rings.
She went to the drawing-room, shut the door, and began to rehearse the scene. It was where the imaginary Gloria, being vain and selfish, trampled everything under her feet that she might possess the world and the things of the world. Glory spoke the words aloud, forgetting they were not her own, until she heard another voice saying, “May I come in, dear?”
It was John at the door. She was ashamed of her costume then, but there was no running away. “Yes, of course, come in,” she cried, trembling all over, half afraid to be seen, and yet proud too of her beauty and her splendour. When he entered she was laughing nervously and was about to say, “See, this has happened before——”
But he saw nothing unusual, and she was disappointed and annoyed. Coming in breathless, as if he had been running, he flung himself down on one end of the couch, threw his hat on the other end, and said: “What did I tell you, Glory? That a way would open itself, and it has!”
“Really?”
“Didn't you think of it when you saw the news in the papers this morning?”
“What news?”
“That Father Damien is dead.”
“But can you—do you really mean that—do you intend——”
“I do, Glory—I do.”
“Then you didn't get my letter this morning?”
“Oh, yes, dear, yes; but you were only thinking for me—God bless you!—that I was giving up a great scene for a little one. But this—this is the greatest scene in the world, Glory. Life is a small sacrifice; the true sacrifice is a living death, a living crucifixion.”
She felt as if he had taken her by the throat and was choking her. He had got up and was walking to and fro, talking impetuously.
“Yes, it is a great sacrifice I am asking you to make now, dear. That far-off island, the poor lepers, and then lifelong banishment. But God will reward you, and with interest too. Only think, Glory! Think of the effect of your mere presence out there among those poor doomed creatures! A young and beautiful woman! Not a melancholy old dolt like me, preaching and prating to them, but a bright and brilliant girl, laughing with them, playing games with them, making mimicry for them, and singing to them in the voice of an angel. Oh, they'll love you, Glory, they'll worship you—you'll be next to God and his blessed mother with them. And already I hear them saying among themselves: 'Heaven bless her! She might have had the world at her feet and made a great name and a great fortune, but she gave it all up—all, all, all—for pity and love of us!' Won't it be glorious, my child? Won't it be the noblest thing in all the world?”
And she struggled to answer, “Yes, no doubt—the noblest thing in all the world!”
“Then you agree? Ah, I knew your heart spoke in your first letter, and you wanted to leave London. You shall, too, for God has willed it.”
Then she recovered a little and made a nervous attempt to withdraw. “But the church at Westminster?”
He laughed like a boy. “Oh, Golightly may have that now, and welcome.”
“But the work in London?”
“Ah, that's all right, Glory. Ever since I heard from you I have been dealing with the bonds which bound me to London one by one, unravelling some and breaking others. They are all discharged now, every one of them, and I need think of them no more. Self is put behind forever, and I can stand before God and say: 'Do with me as you will; I am ready for anything—anything!'”
“Oh!”
“Crying, Glory? My poor, dear child! But why are you crying?”
“It's nothing!”
“Are you sure—quite sure? Am I asking too much of you? Don't let us deceive ourselves—think——”
“Let us talk of something else now.” She began to laugh. “Look at me, John—don't I look well to-day?”
“You always look well, Glory.”
“But isn't there any difference—this dress, for instance?”
Then his sight came back and his big eyes sparkled. “How beautiful you are, dear!”
“Really? Do I look nice then—really?”
“My beautiful, beautiful girl!”
Her head was thrown back, and she glowed with joy.
“Don't come too near me, you know—don't crush me.”
“Nay, no fear of that—I should be afraid.”
“Not that I mustn't be touched exactly.”
“What will they think, I wonder, those poor, lost creatures, so ugly, so disfigured?”
“And my red hair. This colour suits it, doesn't it?”
“Some Madonna, they'll say; the very picture of the mother of God herself!”
“Are you—are you afraid of me in this frock, dear? Shall I run and take it off?”
“No—no; let me look at you again.”
“But you don't like me to-day, for all that.”
“I?”
“Do you know you've never once kissed me since you came into the room?”
“Glory!”
“My love! my love!”
“And you,” he said, close to her lips, “are you ready for anything?”
“Anything,” she whispered.
At the next moment she was holding herself off with her arms stiff about his neck, that she might look at him and at her lace sleeves at the same time. Suddenly a furrow crossed his brow. He had remembered the Father's warning, and was summoning all his strength.
“But out there I'll love you as a sister, Glory.”
“Ah!”
“For the sake of those poor doomed beings cut off from earthly love we'll love each other as the angels love.”
“Yes, that is the highest, purest, truest love, no doubt. Still——”
“What does the old Talmud say?—'He who divorces himself from the joys of earth weds himself to the glories of Paradise.'”
Her lashes were still wet; she was gazing deep into his eyes.
“And to think of being united in the next world, Glory—what happiness, what ecstasy!”
“Love me in this world, dearest,” she whispered.
“You'll be their youth, Glory, their strength, their loveliness!”
“Be mine, darling, be mine!”
But the furrow crossed his brow a second time, and he disengaged himself before their lips had met again. Then he walked about the room as before, talking in broken sentences. They would have to leave soon—very soon—almost at once. And now he must go back to Soho. There was so much to do, to arrange. On reaching the door he hesitated, quivering with love, hardly knowing how to part from her. She was standing with head down, half angry and half ashamed.
“Well,au revoir,” he cried in a strained voice, and then fled down the stairs. “The Father was right,” he thought. “No man is invincible. But, thank God, it is over! It can never occur again!”
Her glow had left her, and she felt chilled and lost There was no help for it now, and escape was impossible. She must renounce everything for the man who had renounced everything for her. Sitting on the couch, she dropped her head on the cushion and cried like a child. In the lowest depths of her soul she knew full well that she could never go away, but she began to bid good-bye in her heart to the life she had been living. The charm and fascination of London began to pass before her like a panorama, with all the scenes of misery and squalor left out. What a beautiful world she was leaving behind her! She would remember it all her life long with useless and unending regret. Her tears were flowing through the fingers which were clasped beneath her face.
A postman's knock came to the door downstairs. The letter was from the manager, written in the swirl and rush of theatrical life, and reading like a telegram: “Theatre going on rapidly, men working day and night, rehearsals advanced and scenery progressing; might we not fix this day fortnight for the first performance?”
Inclosed with this was a letter from the author: “You are on the eve of an extraordinary success, dear Gloria, and I write to reassure and congratulate you. Some signs of inexperience I may perhaps observe, some lack of ease and simplicity, but already it is a performance of so much passion and power that I predict for it a triumphant success. A great future awaits you. Don't shrink from it, don't be afraid of it; it is as certain as that the sun will rise to-morrow.”
She carried the letter to her lips, then rose from the couch, and threw up her head, closed her eyes, and smiled. The visionary woman was taking hold of her again with the slow grip and embrace of the glacier.
Rosa came home to dine, and at sight of the new costume she cried, “Shade of Titian, what a picture!” During dinner she mentioned that she had met Mr. Drake, who had said that the Prince was likely to be present at the production, having asked for the date and other particulars.
“But haven't you heard thegreatnews, dear? It's in all the late editions of the evening papers.”
“What is it?” said Glory; but she saw what was coming.
“Father Storm is to follow Father Damien. That's the report, at all events; but he is expected to make a statement at his club to-night, and I have to be there for the paper.”
As soon as dinner was over Rosa went off to Soho, and then Glory was brought back with a shock to the agony of her inward struggle. She knew that her hour had arrived, and that on her action now everything depended. She knew that she could never break the chains by which the world and her profession held her. She knew that the other woman had come, that she must go with her, and go for good. But the renunciation of love was terrible. The day had been soft and beautiful. It was falling asleep and yawning now, with a drowsy breeze that shook the yellow leaves as they hung withered and closed on the thinning boughs like the fingers of an old maid's hand. She was sitting at the desk by the window, trying to write a letter. More than once she tore up the sheet, dried her eyes, and began again. What she wrote last was this:
“It is impossible, dear John. I can not go with you to the South Seas. I have struggled, but I can not, I can not! It is the greatest, noblest, sublimest mission in the world, but I am not the woman for these high tasks. I should be only a fruitless fig tree, a sham, a hypocrite. It would be like taking a dead body with you to take me, for my heart would not be there. You would find that out, dear, and I should be ashamed.
“And then I can not leave this life—I can not give up London. I am like a child—I like the bustling streets, the brilliant thoroughfares, the crowds, the bands of music, the lights at night, and the sense of life. I like to succeed, too, and to be admired, and—yes, to hear the clapping of hands in a theatre. You are above all this, and can look down at it as dross, and I like you for that also. But give it all up I can't; I haven't the strength; it is in my blood, dear, and if I part from it I must die.
“And then I like to be fondled and coaxed and kissed, and I want so much—oh, so much to be loved! I want somebody to tell me every day and always how much he loves me, and to praise me and pet me and forget everything else for me, everything, everything, even his own soul and salvation! You can not do that; it would be sinful, and besides it wouldn't be love as you understand it, and as it ought to be, if you are to go out to that solemn and awful task.
“When I said I loved you I spoke the truth, dear, and yet I didn't know what the word meant really, I didn't realize everything. I love you still—with all my heart and soul I love you; but now I know that there is a difference between us, that we can never come together. No, I can not reach up to your austere heights. I am so weak; you are so strong. Your 'strength is as the strength of ten because your heart is pure,' while I——
“I am unworthy of your thoughts, John. Leave me to the life I have chosen. It may be poor and vain and worthless, but it is the only life I'm fit for. And yet I love you—and you loved me. I suppose God makes men and women like that sometimes, and it is no use struggling.
“One kiss, dear—it is the last.”