The Christian Part 41

Charlie's got me on the clubs. But my word!" turning to Charlie, "it's her as oughter be there, my dear!"

"She cheeks me out," said Charlie, "as you'll knock the stuffing out of Betty Bellman 'erself if you once myke a stawt."

And Aggie said: "I might get you to do a turn almost any Sunday, if you like, my dear. There's always somebody as down't come, and they're glad of an extra turn to tyke the number if she's only clever enough to get a few 'ands. Going 'ome, dear?"

"Yes," said Glory.

"Where d'ye live?" said Aggie, and Glory told her.

"I'll call for you Sunday night at eight, and if you down't tyke your chawnce when you get it, you're a foolisher woman than I thought you were, that's stright! By-bye!"

XII.

Always at half-past five in the morning the Father Superior began to awaken the Brotherhood. It took him a quarter of an hour to pa.s.s through the house on that errand, for the infirmities of his years were upon him. During this interval John Storm had intended to open the gate to Paul and then return the key to its place in the Father's room. The time was short, and to lose no part of it he had resolved to remain awake the whole night through.

There was little need to make a call on that resolution. With fear and remorse he could not close his eyes, and from hour to hour he heard every sound of the streets. At one o'clock, the voices singing outside were strained and cracked and out of tune; at two, they were brutish and drunken and mingled with shrieks of quarrelling; at three, there was silence; at four, the butchers' wagons were rattling on the stones from the shambles across the river to the meat markets of London, with the carca.s.ses of the thousands of beasts that were slaughtered overnight to feed the body of the mammoth on the morrow; and at five, the postal vans were galloping from the railway stations to the post-office with the millions of letters that were to feed its mind.

At half-past five the Father had come out of his room and pa.s.sed slowly upstairs, and John Storm was in the courtyard opening the lock of the outer gate. Although there was a feeling of morning in the freezing air it was still quite dark.

"Paul," he whispered, but there was no answer.

"Brother Paul!" he whispered again, and then waited, but there was no reply.

It was not at first that he realized the tremendous gravity of what had occurred--that Brother Paul had not returned, and that he must go back to the house without him. He kept calling into the darkness until he remembered that the Father would be down in his room again soon and looking for the key where he had left it.

Back in the hall, he reproached himself with his haste, and concluded to return to the gate. There would be time to do it; the Father was still far overhead; his "Benedicamus Domino" was pa.s.sing from corridor to corridor; and Paul might be coming down the street.

"Paul! Paul!" he cried again, and opening the gate he looked out.

But there was no one on the pavement except a drunken man and a girl, singing themselves home in the dead waste of the New Year's morning.

Then the truth fell on him like a thundercloud, and he hurried back to the house for good. By this time the Father was coming down the stairs, and had reached the landing of the first story. s.n.a.t.c.hing up from the bed in the alcove the book which had been lying there all night unregarded, he crept into the Father's room. He was coming out of it when he came face to face with the Father himself, who was on the point of going in.

"I have been returning the book you lent me," he said, and then he tried to steal away in his shame. But the Father held him a while in playful remonstrance. The hours were not all saved that were stolen from the night, and his swelled eyes this morning were a testimony to the musty old maxim. Still, with a book like that, his diligence was not to be wondered at, and it would be interesting to hear what he thought of it.

He couldn't say as yet. That wasn't to be wondered at either. Somebody had said that a great book was like a great mountain--not to be seen to the top while you were still too near to it.

John's duplicity was choking him. His eyes were averted from the Father's face, for he had lost the power of looking straight at any one, and he could see the key of the gate still shaking from the hook on which his nervous fingers had placed it. When he escaped at length, the Father asked him to ring the bell for Lauds, as Brother Andrew, whose duty it was, had evidently overslept himself.

John rang the bell, and then took his lamp and some tapers from a shelf in the hall and went out to the church to light the candles, for that also was Brother Andrew's duty. As he was crossing the courtyard on his way back to the house, he pa.s.sed the Father going to open the gate.

"But what has become of your hat?" said the Father, and then, for the first time, John remembered what he had done with it.

"I've lent--that is to say, I've lost it," he answered, and then stood with his eyes on the ground while the Father reproved him for heedlessness of health, and so forth.

It is part of the perversity of circ.u.mstance that while an incident of the greatest gravity is occurring, its ridiculous counterpart is usually taking place by the side of it. When the religious had gathered in the church it was seen that three of the stalls were vacant--Brother Paul's, Brother Andrew's, and the Father Minister's. The service had hardly begun when the bell was heard to ring again, and with a louder clangour than before, whereupon the religious concluded that Brother Andrew had awakened from his sleep, and was remembering with remorse his belated duty.

But it was the Father Minister. That silent and severe person had oftentimes rebuked the lay brother for his sleepiness, and this morning he had himself been overcome by the same infirmity. Awakening suddenly a little after six by the watch that hung by his bed, he had thought, "That lazy fellow is late again--I'll teach him a lesson." Leaping to his feet (the monk sleeps in his habit), he had hastened to the bell and rung it furiously, and then s.n.a.t.c.hed up a taper and hurried down the stairs to light the candles in the church. When he appeared at the sacristy door with a lighted taper in his hand and confusion on his face, the brothers understood everything at a glance, and not even the solemnity of the service could smother the snufflings of their laughter.

The incident was a trivial one, but it diverted attention for a time from the fact of Paul's absence, and when the religious went back to the house and found Brother Andrew returned to his old duty as doorkeeper, the laughter was renewed, and there was some playful banter.

The monk is so far a child that the least thing happening in the morning is enough to determine the temper of the day, and as late as the hour for breakfast the house was still rippling with the humour of the Father Minister's misadventure. There was one seat vacant in the refectory--Brother Paul's--and the Superior was the first to observe it.

With a twinkle in his eye, he said:

"I feel like Boy Blue this morning. Two of my stray sheep have come home, bringing their tails behind them. Will anybody go in search of the third?"

John Storm rose immediately, but a lay brother was before him, so he sat down again with his white cheeks and quivering lips, and made an effort to eat his breakfast.

The reader for the week recited the Scripture for the day, and then took up the book which the brothers were hearing at their meals. It was the Life and Death of Father Ignatius of St. Paul, and the chapter they had come to dealt with certain amusing examples of vanities and foibles.

An evil spirit might have selected it with special reference to the incidents of the morning, for at every fresh ill.u.s.tration the Father Minister squirmed on his seat, and the brothers looked across at him and laughed with a spice of mischief, and even a touch of malice.

John's eyes were on the door, and his heart was quivering, but the messenger did not return during breakfast, and when it was over the Superior rose without waiting for him and led the way to the community room.

A fire was burning in the wide grate, and the room was cheerful with reflected sun-rays, for the sun was s.h.i.+ning in the courtyard and glistening on the frosty boughs of the sycamore. It was a beautiful New Year's morning, and the Father began to tell some timely stories. In the midst of the laughter that greeted them the lay brother returned and delivered his message. Brother Paul could not be found, and there was not a sign of him anywhere in the house.

"That's strange," said the religious.

"Perhaps he is in his cell," said the Father.

"No, he is not there," said the messenger, "and his bed has not been slept in."

"Now, that explains something," said the Father. "I thought he didn't answer when I knocked at his door in the morning, but my ears grow dull and my eyes are failing me, and I told myself perhaps----"

"It's very strange'" said the religious, with looks of astonishment.

"But perhaps he staid all night at his penance in the church," said the Father.

"Apparently his hat did so at all events," said one of the brothers. "I saw it lying with his lamp on the stall in front of me."

There was silence for a moment, and then the Father said with a smile:

"But my children are so amusing in such matters! Only this morning I had to reprove Brother Storm for losing his hat somewhere, and now Brother Paul----"

By an involuntary impulse, obscure to themselves, the brothers turned toward John, who was standing in the recess of one of the windows with his pale face looking out on the suns.h.i.+ne.

John was the first to speak.

"Father," he said, "I have something to say to you."

"Come this way," said the Superior, and they pa.s.sed out of the room together.

The Father led the way to his room and closed the door behind them.

But there was little need for confession; the Father seemed to know everything in an instant. He sat in his wicker chair before the fire and rocked himself and moaned.

"Well, well, G.o.d's wrath comes up against the children of disobedience, but we must do our best to bear our punishment."

John Storm made no excuses. He had stood by the Father's chair and told his story simply, without fear or remorse, only concealing that part of it which concerned himself in relation to Glory.