Days and moments quickly flying.
The singing came to an end, and there was some low, inarticulate droning, and then a general “Amen.” The hammer of the bell continued to beat out its hymn, and Glory stood under the shadow of the tree to collect her thoughts.
Then the sacristy door opened and a line of men came out. They were in long black cassocks, and they crossed the courtyard from the church to the house with the measured and hasty step of monks, and with their hands clasped at their breasts. Almost at the end of the line, walking with an old man whose tread was heavy, there was a younger one who was bareheaded, and who did not wear the cassock. The moon threw a light on his face, which looked pale and worn. It was John Storm.
Glory gave a faint cry, a gasp, and he turned round as if startled.
“Only the creaking of the sycamore,” said the Superior. And then the mysterious shadows took them; they passed into the house, the door was closed, and she was alone with the chimes:
Days and moments quickly flying,Blend the living with the dead.
Glory's strength had deserted her, and she went away as she came. When she got back to Victoria, she felt for the first time as if her own little life had been swallowed up in the turmoil of London, and she had gone down to the cold depths of an icy sea.
It was a quarter to ten when she returned to the ward, and the matron, with her dog on her lap, was waiting to receive her.
“Didn't I tell you that you could not go out to-night?”
“Yes, ma'am,” said Glory.
“Then how did you dare to go?”
Glory looked at her unwaveringly, with glittering eyes that seemed to smile, whereupon the matron picked up her dog, gathered up her train, and swept out of the ward, saying:
“Nurse, you can leave me at the end of your term; and you need never cross the doors of this institution again.”
Then Glory, who had all night wanted to cry, burst into laughter. The ward Sister reproved her, but she laughed in the woman's fat face, and would have given worlds to slap it.
There was not a nurse in the hospital who showed more bright and cheerful spirits when the patients were being prepared for the night. But next morning, in the gray dawn, when she had dragged herself to bed, and was able at length to be alone, she beat the pillows with both hands and sobbed in her loneliness and shame.
But youth is rich in hope, and at noon, when Glory awoke, the thought of Drake flashed upon her like light in a dark place. He had compelled Lord Robert to assist Polly in a worse extremity, and he would assist her in her present predicament. How often he had hinted that the hospital was not good enough for her, and that some day and somewhere Fate would find other work for her and another sphere. The time had come; she would appeal to him, and he would hasten to help her.
She began to revive the magnificent dreams that had floated in her mind for months. No need to tell the people at home of her dismissal and disgrace; no need to go back to the island. She would be somebody in her own right yet. Of course, she would have to study, to struggle, to endure disappointments, but she would triumph in the end. And when at length she was great and famous she would be good to other poor girls; and as often as she thought of John Storm in his solitude in his cell, though there might be a pang, a red stream running somewhere within, she would comfort herself with the thought that she, too, was doing her best; she, too, had her place, and it was a useful and worthy one.
Before that time came, however, there would be managers to influence and engagements to seek, and perhaps teachers to pay for. But Drake was rich and generous and powerful; he had a great opinion of her talents, and he would stop at nothing.
Leaping out of bed, she sat down at the table as she was and wrote to him:
“Dear Mr. Drake: Try to see me to-night. I want your advice immediately. What do you think? I have got myself 'noticed' at last, and as a consequence I am to leave at the end of my term. So things are urgent, you see. I 'wave my lily hand' to you. Glory.
“P.S.—save time I suggest the hour and the place: eight o'clock, St. James's Park, by the bridge going down from Marlborough House.”
Drake received this note as he was sitting alone in his chambers smoking a cigarette after drinking a cup of tea, in that hour of glamour that is between the lights. It seemed to bring with it a secret breath of passion out of the atmosphere in which it had been written. At the first impulse it went up to his lips, but at the next moment he was smitten by the memory of something, and he thought: “I will do what is right; I will play the game fair.”
He dined that night with a group of civil servants at his club in St. James's Street, but at a quarter to eight, notwithstanding some playful bantering, he put on his overcoat and turned toward the park. The autumn night was soft and peaceful; the stars were out and the moon had risen; a fragrant mist came up from the lake, and the smoke of his cigar was hardly troubled by the breeze that pattered the withered tassels of the laburnums. Big Ben was striking eight as he reached the end of the little bridge, and almost immediately afterward he was aware of soft and hurrying footsteps approaching him.
Glory had come down by the Mall. The whispering of the big white trees in the moonlight was like company, and she sang to herself as she walked. Her heart seemed to have gone into her heels since yesterday, for her step was light and sometimes she ran a few paces. She arrived out of breath as the great clock was striking, and seeing the figure of a gentleman in evening dress by the end of the bridge, she stopped to collect herself.
Her hand was hot and a little damp when Drake took it, and her face was somewhat flushed. She had all at once become ashamed that she had come to ask him for anything, and she took out her pocket-handkerchief and began to roll it in her palms. He misunderstood her agitation, and trying to cover it he offered her his arm and took her across the bridge, and they turned westward down the path that runs along the margin of the lake.
“Mr. Storm has gone,” she said, thinking to explain herself.
“I know,” he answered.
“Is it generally known, then?”
“I had a letter from him yesterday.”
“Was it about me?”
“Yes.”
“You must not mind if he says things, you know.”
“I don't, Glory. I set them down to the egotism of the religious man. The religious man can not believe that anybody can live a moral life and act on principle except from the religious impulse.... I suppose he has warned you against me, hasn't he?”
“Well—yes.”
“I'm at a loss to know what I've done to deserve it. But time must justify me. I am not a religious man myself, you know, though I hate to talk of it. To tell you the truth, I think the religious idea a monstrous egotism altogether, and the love of God merely the love of self. Still, you must judge for yourself, Glory.”
“Are we not wasting our time a little?” she said. “I am here; isn't that proof enough of my opinion?” And then in an agitated whisper she added: “I have only half an hour, the gates will be closing, and I want to ask your advice, you know. You remember what I told you in my letter?”
He patted the hand on his arm and said, “Tell me how it happened.”
She told him everything, with many pauses, expecting every moment that he would break in upon her and say, “Why didn't you box the woman's ears?” or perhaps laugh and assure her that it did not matter in the least, and she was making too much of a mere bagatelle. But he listened to every syllable, and after she had finished there was silence for a moment. Then he said: “I'm sorry—very sorry; in fact, I am much troubled about it.”
Her nerves were throbbing hard and her hand on his arm was twitching.
“If you had left of your own accord after that scene in the board room, it would have been so different—so easy for me to help you!”
“How?”
“I should have spoken to my chief—he is a governor of many hospitals—and said, 'A young friend of mine, a nurse, is uncomfortable in her present place and would like to change her hospital.' It would have been no sooner said than done. But now—now there is the black book against you, and God knows if ... In fact, somebody has laid a trap for you, Glory, intending to get rid of you at the first opportunity, and you seem to have walked straight into it.”
She felt stunned. “He has forgotten all he has said to me,” she thought. In a feeble, expressionless voice she asked:
“But what am I to do now?”
“Let me think.”
They walked some steps in silence. “He is turning it over,” she thought. “He will tell me how to begin.”
He stopped, as if seized by a new idea.
“Did you tell them where you had been?”
“No,” she replied, in the same weak voice.
“But why not do so? There is hope in that. The chaplain was your friend—your only friend in London, so far as they know. Surely that is an extenuating circumstance so plausible——”
“But I cannot——”
“I know it is bitter to explain—to apologize—and if I can do it for you——”
“I will not allow it!” she said. Her lips were set, and her breath was coming through them in gusts.
“It is a pity to allow the hospitals to be closed against you. Nursing is a good profession, Glory—even a fashionable one. It is true womanly work, and——”
“That was what he said.”
“Who? John Storm? He was right. Indeed, he was an entirely honourable and upright man, and——”
“Butyoualways seemed to say there were other things more worthy of a girl, and if she had a mind to—— But no matter. We needn't talk about the hospitals any longer. I am not fit for them and shall never go back to them, whatever happens.”
He looked down at her. She was biting her lips, and the tears were gathering in her eyes.
“Well, well, never mind, dear,” he said, and he patted her hand again.
The moon had begun to wane, and out of the dark shadows they walked in they could see the lines of houses lit up all around.
“Look,” she said, with a feeble laugh, “in all this great busy London is there nothing else I'm fit for?”
“You are fit for anything in the world, my dear,” he answered.
Her nerves were throbbing harder than ever. “Perhaps he doesn't remember,” she thought. Should she tell him what he said so often about her talents, and how much she might be able to make of them?
“Is there nothing a girl can do except go down on her knees to a woman?”
He laughed and talked some nonsense about the kneeling. “Poor little woman, she doesn't know what she is doing,” he thought.
“I shouldn't mind what people thought of me,” she said, “not even my own people, who have been brought up with such narrow ideas, you know. They might think what they liked, if I felt I was in the right place at last—the right place for me, I mean.”
Her nervous fingers were involuntarily clutching at his coat sleeve. “Now, any other man——” he thought.
She began to cry. “Hewon'tremember,” she told herself. “It was only his way of being agreeable when he praised me and predicted such wonderful things. And now his good breeding will not allow him to tell me there are hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of girls in London as likely to——”
“Come, you mustn't cry, Glory. It's not so bad as that.”
She had never seemed to him so beautiful, and he wanted to take her in his arms and comfort her.
“I had no one but you to come to,” she murmured in her confusion. But she was thinking: “Why didn't you stop me before? Why have you let me go on all these months?”
“I must try to think of something, and I'll speak to my friend Rosa—Miss Macquarrie, you know.”
“You are a man,” said Glory, “and I thought perhaps——” But she could not speak of her fool's paradise now, she was so deeply ashamed and abased.
“That's just the difficulty, my dear. If I were not a man, I might so easily help you.”
What did he mean? The frogs kept croaking at the margin of the lake, disturbed by the sound of their footsteps.
“Whatever you were to tell me to do I should do it,” she said, in the same confused murmur. She was ruining herself with every word she uttered.
He drew up and stood before her, so close that she could feel his breath, on her face. “My dear Glory,” he said passionately, “don't think it isn't terrible to me to renounce the happiness of helping you, but I must not, I dare not, I will not take it.”
She could scarcely breathe for the shame that took sudden hold of her.
“Heaven knows I would give anything to have the joy of looking after your happiness, dear, but I should despise myself forever if I took advantage of your circumstances.”
Good God! What did he think she had been asking of him?
“I am thinking of yourself, Glory, because I want to esteem you and honour you, and because your good name is above everything else—everything else in the world.”
Her shame was now abject. It stifled her, deafened her, blinded her. She could not speak or hear or see.
He took her hand and pressed it.
“Let me go,” she stammered.
“Stay—do not go yet!”
“Let me go, will you?”
“One moment——”
But with a cry like the cry of a startled bird she disappeared in the shadow of the trees.
He stood a moment where she had left him, tingling in every nerve, wanting to follow her, and overtake her, and kiss her, and abandon everything. But he buttoned up his overcoat and turned away, telling himself that whatever another man might have done in the same case he at least had done rightly, and that men like John Storm were wrong if they thought it was impossible to act on principle without the impulse of religion.
Meanwhile Glory was flying through the darkness and weeping in the bitterness of her disappointment and shame. The big trees overhead were all black now and very gaunt and grim, and the breeze was moaning in their branches.
“I had disgrace enough already,” she thought; “I might have spared myself a degradation like this!”
Drake had supposed that she came to plead for herself to-night as she had pleaded for Polly a week ago. How natural that he should think so! How natural and yet how hideous!
“I hate him! I hate him!” she thought.
John Storm had been right. In their heart of hearts these men of society had only one idea about a girl, and she had stumbled on it unawares. They never thought of her as a friend and an equal, but only as a dependent and a plaything, to be taken or left as they liked.
“Oh, how shameful to be a woman—how shameful, how shameful!”
And Drake had renounced her! In the hideous tangle of his error he had renounced her! For honour's sake, and her own sake, and for sake of his character as a gentleman—renounced her! Oh, there was somebody who would never have renounced her whatever had happened, and yet she had driven him away, and he was gone forever!
“I hate myself! I hate myself!”
She remembered how often out of recklessness and daring and high spirits, but without a thought of evil, she had broken through the barrier of manners and given Drake occasion to think lightly of her—at the ball, at the theatre, at tea in his chambers, and by dressing herself up as a man.
“I hate myself! I hate myself!”
John Storm was right, and Drake in his different way was right too, and she alone had been to blame. But Fate was laughing at her, and the jest was very, very cruel.
“No matter. It is all for the best,” she thought. She would be the stronger for this experience—the stronger and the purer too, to stand alone and to face the future.
She got back to the hospital just as the great clock of Westminster was chiming the half-hour, and she stood a moment on the steps to listen to it. Only half an hour had passed, and yet all the world had changed!
It was the last day of Glory's probation, and, dressed in the long blue ulster in which she came from the Isle of Man, she was standing in the matron's room waiting for her wages and discharge. The matron was sitting sideways at her table, with her dog snarling in her lap. She pointed to a tiny heap of gold and silver and to a foolscap paper which lay beside it.
“That is your month's salary, nurse, and this is your 'character.' The 'character' has given me a deal of trouble. I have done all I could for you. I have said you were bright and cheerful, and that the patients liked you. I trust I have not committed myself too far.”
Glory gathered up the money, but left the “character” untouched.
“You need not be anxious, ma'am; I shall not require it.”
“Have you got a situation?”
“No.”
“Then where are you going next?”
“I don't know—yet.”
“How much money have you saved?”
“About three months' wages.”
“Only three pounds altogether!”
“It will be quite sufficient.”
“What friends have you got in London?”
“None—that is to say—no, none whatever.”
“Then why don't you go back to your island?”
“Because I don't wish to be a burden upon my people, and because earning my living in London doesn't depend on the will or the whim of any woman.”
“That's just like you. I might have dismissed you instantly, but for the sake of the chaplain I've borne with your rudeness and irregularities, and even tried to be your friend, and yet—— I dare say you've not even told your people why you are leaving the hospital?”
“I haven't—I haven't told them yet that I'm leaving at all.”
“Then I've a great mind to do it for you. A venturesome, headstrong girl who flings herself on London is in danger of ruin.”
“You needn't trouble yourself, ma'am,” said Glory, opening the door to go.
“Why so?” said the matron.
Glory stood at her full height and answered:
“Because if you said that of me there is nobody in the world would believe you!”
Her box had been brought down to the hall, and the porter, who wished to be friendly, was cording it.
“May I leave it in your care, porter, until I am able to call for it?”
“Certingly, nurse. Sorry you're goin'. I'll miss your face, too.”
“Thank you. I'll call for my letters also.”
“There's one just come.”
It was from Aunt Anna, and was full of severe reproof and admonition. Glory was not to think of leaving the hospital; she must try to be content with the condition to which God had called her. But why had her letters been so few of late? and how did it occur that she had never told them about Mr. Storm? He had gone for good into that strange Brotherhood, it seemed. Not Catholic, and yet a monastery. Most extraordinary! They were all eagerly waiting to hear more about it. Besides, the grandfather was anxious on Glory's account. If half they heard was true, the dangers of London——
The house-surgeon came down to say good-bye. He had always been as free and friendly as Sister Allworthy would allow. They stood a moment at the door together.
“Where are you going to?” he asked.
“Anywhere—nowhere—everywhere; to 'all the airts the wind can blaw.'”
It was a clear, bright morning, with a light, keen frost. On looking out, Glory saw that flags were flying on the public buildings.
“Why, what's going on?” she said.
“Don't you know? It's the ninth of November—Lord Mayor's Day.”
She laughed merrily. “A good omen. I'm the female Dick Whittington! Here goes for it! Good-bye, hospital nursing.—By-bye, doctor.”
She dropped him a playful curtsy at the bottom of the steps, and then tripped along the street.
“What a girl it is!” he thought. “And what is to become of her in this merciless old London?”
She had taken less than a score of steps from the hospital when blinding teardrops leaped from her eyes and ran down her cheeks; but she only dropped her veil and walked on boldly.
The Society of the Holy Gethsemane, popularly called the Bishopsgate Fathers, was one of the many conventual institutions of the English Church which came as a sequel to the great upheaval of religious feeling known as the Tractarian or Oxford movement. Most of them gave way under the pressure of external opposition, some of them broke down under the strain of internal dissension, and a few lived on as secret brotherhoods, in obedience to a rule which was never divulged by their members, who were said to wear a hair shirt next the skin and to scourge themselves with the lash of discipline.
Of these conventual institutions the Society of the Holy Gethsemane had been one of the earliest, and it was now quite the oldest, although it had challenged not only the traditions of the Reformed Church but the spirit of the age itself by establishing its place of prayer at the very doors of the Stock Exchange—that crater of volcanic emotions, that generating house for the electric currents of the world.
Its founder and first Superior had been a man of iron will, who had fought his way through ecclesiastical courts and popular anger, and even family persecution, which had culminated in an effort of his own brother to shut him up as a lunatic. His first disciple and most stanch supporter had been the Rev. Charles Frederic Lamplugh, a fellow of Corpus, newly called to orders after an earlier career which had been devoted to the world, and, according to rumour, nearly wrecked in an affair of the heart.
When the community had proved its legal right to exist within the Establishment and public clamour had subsided, this disciple was despatched to America, and there he established a branch brotherhood and became great and famous. At the height of his usefulness and renown he was recalled, and this exercise of authority provoked a universal outcry among his admirers. But he obeyed; he left his fame and glory in America and returned to his cell in London, and was no more heard of by the outer world until the founder of the society died, when he was elected by the brothers to the vacant place of Superior.
Father Lamplugh was now a man of seventy, so gentle in his manner, so sweet in his temper, so pious in his life, that when he stepped out of his room to greet John Storm on his arrival in Bishopsgate Street it seemed as if he brought the air of heaven in the rustle of his habit, and to have come from the holy of holies.
“Welcome! welcome!” he said. “I knew you would come to us; I have been expecting you. The first time I saw you I said to myself: 'Here is one who bears a burden; the world can not satisfy the cravings of a heart like that; he will surrender it some day.'”
Having been there before, though in “Retreat” only, he entered at once into the life of the Brotherhood. It was arranged that he was to spend some two or three months as postulant, then to take the vow of a novice for one year, and finally, if he proved his vocation, to seal and establish his calling by taking the three life vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.
The home of the Brotherhood was one of those old London mansions in the heart of the city, which were built perhaps for the palaces of dignitaries of the Church, and were afterward occupied as the houses and offices of London merchants and their apprentices, and have eventually descended to the condition of warehouses and stores and tenement dwellings for the poor. Its structure remained the same, but the brothers made no effort to support its ancient grandeur. Nothing more simple can be imagined than the appointments of their monastery. The carved-oak staircase was there, but the stairs wore carpetless, and the panelled and parqueted hall was bare of ornament, except for a picture, in a pale oaken frame, of the head of Christ in its crown of thorns. A plain clock in a deal case was nailed up under the floral cornice, and beneath it there hung the text: “Lord, who shall dwell in thy tabernacle, or who shall rest upon thy holy hill? Even he that leadeth an uncorrupt life.” The old dining-room was now the community room, the old kitchen was the refectory, the spacious bedrooms were partitioned into cells, and the corridors, which had once been covered with tapestry, were now coated with whitewash, and bore the inscription, “Silence in the passages.”
In this house of poverty and dignity, of past grandeur and present simplicity, the brothers lived in community. They were forty in number, consisting of ten lay brothers, ten novices, and twenty professed Fathers. The lay brothers, who were under the special direction of their own Superior, the Father Minister, and were rarely allowed to go into the street, had to clean the house and bake the bread and cook and serve the food which was delivered at the door, and thus, in that narrow circle of duty, they proved their piety by their devotion to a lot which condemned them to scour and scrub to the last day of life. The clerical brothers, who were nearly all in full orders, enjoyed a more varied existence, being confined to the precincts only during a part of their novitiate, and then sent out at the will of the Superior to preach in the churches of London or the country, and even despatched on expeditions to establish missions abroad.
The lay brothers had their separate retiring room, but John Storm met his clerical housemates on the night of his arrival. It was the hour of evening recreation, and they were gathered in the community room for reading and conversation. The stately old dining-room was as destitute as the corridors of adornments or even furniture. Straw armchairs stood on the clean, white floor; a bookcase, containing many volumes of the Fathers, lined one of the panelled walls; and over the majestic fireplace there was a plain card with the inscription, “There be eunuchs which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake.”
The brothers gathered about him and examined him with a curiosity which was more than personal. To this group of men, detached from life, the arrival of some one from the outer world was an event of interest. He knew what wars had been waged, what epidemics were raging, what Governments had risen and fallen. He might not speak of these things in casual talk, for it was against rule to discuss, for its own sake, what had been seen or heard outside, but they were in the air about him, and they were happening on the other side of the wall.
And he on his part also examined his housemates, and; tried to guess what manner of men they were and what had brought them to that place. They were men of all ages, and nearly every school of the Church had sent its representatives. Here was the pale face of the ascetic, and there the guileless eyes of the saint. Some were keen and alert, others were timid and slow. All wore the long black cassock of the community, and many wore the rope with three knots. They spoke little of the world outside, but it was clear that they could not dismiss it from their thoughts. Their talk was cheerful, and the Father told stories of his preaching expeditions which provoked some laughter. They had no newspapers (except one well-known High-Church organ) and no games, and there was no smoking.
The bell rang for supper, and they went down to the refectory. It was a large apartment in the basement, and it still bore the emblems of its ancient service. Over the great kitchen ingle there was yet another card with the inscription, “Neither said any of them that aught of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common.” A table, scoured white, ran round three sides of the room, the seats were forms without backs, and there was one chair—the Superior's chair—in the middle.
The supper consisted of porridge and milk and brown bread, and it was eaten out of plates and cans of pewter. While it lasted one of the brothers, seated at a raised desk, read first a few passages of Scripture, and then some pages, of a secular book which the religious were thus hearing at their meals. The supper was hardly over when the bell rang again. It was time for Compline, the last service of the day, and the brothers formed in procession and passed out of the house, across the courtyard, into the little church.
The old place was dimly lighted, but the brothers occupied the chancel only. They sat in two companies on opposite sides of the choir, in three rows of stalls, the lay brothers in front, the novices next, and the Fathers at the back. Each side had its leader in the recitation of the prayers. The Miserere was said kneeling, the Psalms were sung with frequent pauses, each of the duration of the words “Ave Maria,” producing the effect of a broken wail. The service was short, and it ended with “May the Lord Almighty grant us a quiet night and a perfect end.” There was another stroke of the bell, and the brothers returned to the house in silence.
John Storm walked with the Superior, and passing through the courtyard, in the light of the moon that had risen while they were at prayers, he was startled by the sound of something.
“Only the creaking of the sycamore,” said the Father.
He had thought it was the voice of Glory, but he had been hearing her cry throughout the service, so he dismissed the circumstance as a dream. Half an hour later the household had retired for the night, the lights were put out, and the Society of the Gethsemane was at rest.
John's cell was on the topmost floor, next to the quarters of the lay brothers. There was nothing above it but a high lead flat, which was sometimes used by the religious as watch-tower and breathing place. The cell was a narrow room with bare floor, a small table, one chair, a prayingstool, a crucifix, and a stump bed, having a straw pillow and a crimson coverlet marked with a large white cross.
“Here,” he thought, “my journey is at an end. This is my resting-place for life.” The mighty hand of the Church was on him and he felt a deep peace. He was like a ship that had been tossed at sea and was lying quiet in harbour at last.
Without was the world, the fantastic world, forever changing; within were gentle if strict rules and customs securely fixed. Without was the ceaseless ebb and flow of the financial tide; within were content and sweet poverty and no disturbing fears. Without were struggle and strife and the fever of gain; within were peace and happiness and the grand mysteries which God reveals to the soul in solitude.
He began to pass his life in review and to think: “Well, it is all over, at all events. I shall never leave this place. Friends who forgive me, good-bye! And foes who are unforgiving, good-bye to you too!
“And the world—the great, vain, cruel, hypocritical world—farewell to it also! Farewell to its pomp and its glory! Farewell to life, and liberty, and—love——”
The wind was rustling the leaves of the tree in the courtyard, and he could not help but hear again the voice he had heard when crossing from the church. His eyes were closed, but Glory's face, with its curling and twitching lip and its laughing and liquid eyes, was printed on the darkness.
“Ave Maria,” he murmured; and saying this again and again, he fell asleep.
Next morning the daylight had not quite dawned when he was awakened by a knock at his door and a low voice saying, “Benedicamus Domino!”
It was the Father Superior, who made it his rule to rouse the household himself, on the principle of “whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant.”
“Deo Gratias,” he answered, and the voice went on through the corridor. Then the bell rang for Lauds and Prime, and John left his cell to begin his life as Brother Storm.
Though it was against the rule of the Order to indulge in particular friendships, yet in obedience to the rule of Nature he made friends among the brothers. His feeling for the Superior became stronger than love and approached to adoration, and there were certain of the Fathers to whom his heart went out with a tender sympathy. The Father Minister was a man of a hard, closed soul, very cantankerous and severe; but the rest were gentle and timid men for the most part, with a wistful outlook on the world.
It was due in part to the proximity of his cell to the quarters assigned to the lay brothers that his two closest friendships were made among them. One was with a great creature, like an overgrown boy, who kept the door to the monastery by day, and alternated that duty with another by night. He was called Brother Andrew—for the lay brothers were known by their Christian names—and he was one of those characterless beings who are only happy when they have merged their individuality in another's and joined their fate to his. He attached himself to John from the first, and as often as he was at liberty he was hanging about him, ready to fetch and carry in his shambling gait, which was like the roll of an old dog. The expression of his beardless face was that of a boy, and he had no conversation, for he always agreed with everything that was said to him.
The other of John's friendships was with the lay brother whom he had known outside—the brother of Polly Love—but this was a friendship of slower growth, impeded by a tragic obstacle. John had seen him first in the refectory on the night of his arrival, and observed in his face the marks of suffering and exhaustion. At various times afterward he had seen him in the church and encountered him in the corridors, and had sometimes bowed to him and smiled, but the brother had never once given sign of recognition. At length he had begun to doubt his identity, and one morning, going upstairs from breakfast side by side with the Superior, he said:
“Father, is the lay brother with the melancholy eyes and the pale face the one whom I knew at the hospital?”
“Yes,” said the Father; “but he is under the rule of silence.”
“Ah! Does he know what has become of his sister?”
“No.”
It was the morning hour of recreation, and the Father drew John into the courtyard and talked of Brother Paul.
He was much tormented by thoughts of the world without, and being a young man of a weak nervous system and a consumptive tendency, such struggles with the evil one were hurtful to him. Therefore, though it was the rule that a lay brother should not be consecrated until after long years of service, it had been decided that he should take the vows immediately, in order that Satan might yield up his hold of him and the world might drag at him no more.
“Is that your experience?” said John; “when a religious has taken the vows, are his thoughts of the world all conquered?”
“He is like the sailor making ready for his voyage. As long as he lies in harbour his thoughts are of the home he has left behind him; but when he has once crossed the bar and is out on the ocean he thinks only of the haven where he would be.”
“But are there no backward glances, Father? The sailor may write to the friends he has parted from—surely the religious may pray for them.”
“As brothers and sisters of the spirit, yes, always and at all times; as brothers and sisters of the flesh, no, never, save in hours of especial need. He is the spouse of Christ, my son, and all Christ's children are his kindred equally.”
As a last word the Father begged of John to abstain from reference to anything that had happened at the hospital, lest Brother Paul might hear of it and manifold evils be the result.
The warning seemed needless. From that day forward John tried to avoid Brother Paul. In church and in the refectory he kept his eyes away from him. He could not see that worn face, with its hungry look, and not think of a captured eagle with a broken wing. It was with a shock that he discovered that their cells were side by side. If they came near to each other in the corridors he experienced a kind of terror, and was thankful for the rule of silence which forbade them to speak. Under the smouldering ashes there might be coals of fire which only wanted a puff to fan them into flame.
They came face to face at last. It was on the lead flat of the tower above their cells. John had grown accustomed to go there after Compline, that he might look on London from that eminence and thank God that he had escaped from its clutches. The stars were out, and the city lay like a great monster around and beneath. Something demoniacal had entered into his view of it. Down there was the river, winding like a serpent through its sand, and here and there were the bridges, like the scales across it, and farther west was the head of the great creature, just beginning to be ablaze with lights.
“She is there,” he thought, and then he was startled by a sound. Had he uttered the words aloud? But it was some one else who had spoken. Brother Paul was standing by the parapet with his eyes in the same direction. When he became conscious that John was behind him he stammered something in his confusion, and than hurried away as if he had been detected in a crime.
“God pity him!” thought John. “If he only knew what has happened!”
Going back to his cell, he began to think of Glory. By the broken links of memory he remembered for the first time, since coming into the monastery, the condition of insecurity in which he had left her. How uncertain her position at the hospital, how perilous her relations with her friend!
The last prayer of the day for the brothers of the Gethsemane was the prayer before the crucifix by the side of the bed: “Thanks be to God for giving me the trials of this day!” To this he added another petition: “And bless and protect her wheresoever she may be!”
He ceased to frequent the tower after that, and did not go up to it again until the morning of the day on which he was to make his vows. By this time his soul had spent itself so prodigally in prayer that he had almost begun to regard himself as one already in another world. The morning was clear and frosty, and he could see that something unusual was taking place on the earth below. Traffic was stopped, the open spaces were crowded, and processions were passing through the streets with bands of music playing and banners flying. Then he remembered what day it was—it was Lord Mayor's Day, the 9th of November—and once again he thought of Glory. She would be there, for her heart was light and she loved the world and all its scenes of gaiety and splendour.
It was the day of his final preparation, and he was under the rule of silence, so he returned to his cell and shut the door. But he could not shut out the sounds of the streets. All day long the bands were playing and the horses prancing, and there was the tramp of many feet. And even in the last hour before the ceremony, when he was on his knees in front of the crucifix and the palms of his hands were pressed against his face, he could see the gay spectacle and the surging throngs—the men, the women, the children in every window, on every parapet, and Glory in the midst of them with her laughing lips and her sparkling eyes.
Night brought peace with it at length, and then the bell rang and he went down to service. The brothers were waiting for him in the hall, and they formed into line and passed into the church: first, Brother Andrew with the cross, then Brother Paul with the incense, and the other lay brothers with the candles, then the religious in their cassocks, and the Superior in his cope, and John Storm last of all.
The altar was decorated as for a feast, and the service was strange but solemn. John had drawn up in writing a promise of stability and obedience, and this he placed with his own hand on the altar. Down to that moment he had worn his costume as a secular priest, but now he was to be robed in the habit of the Order.
The Father stood on the altar steps with the habit lying at his feet. He took it up and blessed it and then put it on John, saying as he bound it with the cord, “Take this cord and wear it in memory of the purity of heart wherewith you must ever hereafter seek to abide in the love and service of our Lord Jesus.”
At that moment a door was suddenly and loudly slammed, to signify that the world was being shut out; the choir said the Gloria Patri, and then sang a hymn beginning: