The Christian Part 75

The wind swept the hood of her cape about her head and he could smell the fragrance of her hair.

He tried to think what he had done to deserve such happiness, but all the suffering he had gone through seemed as nothing compared to a joy like this. The great clock of Westminster swung its hollow sounds into the air, which went riding by on the wind like the notes of an organ, now full and now as soft as a baby's whisper. They could hear the far-off rumble of the vast city which fringed their blessed island like a mighty sea, and through the pulse of their clasped hands it seemed as if they felt the pulse of the world. An angel had come down and breathed on the face of the waters, and it was G.o.d's world, after all.

He took her home, and they parted at the door. "Don't come in to-night,"

she whispered. She wished to be alone, that she might think it all out and go over it again, every word, every look. There was a lingering hand-clasp and then she was gone.

He returned through the park and tried to step over the very places where her feet had trod. On reaching Buckingham Gate he turned back and walked round the park, and again round it, and yet again. The bells tolled out the hours, the cabs went westward with ladies in evening wraps going home from theatres, the tide of traffic ebbed farther and farther and died down, but still he walked and the wind sang to him.

"G.o.d can not blame us," he thought. "We were made to love each other."

He uncovered his head to let the wind comb through his hair, and he was happy, happy, happy! Sometimes he shut his eyes, and then it was hard to believe that she was not walking by his side, a fragrant presence in the moonlight, going step by step with him.

When the day was near the wind had gone, the little world of wood was silent, and his footsteps crunched on the gravel. Then a yellow gleam came in the sky to the east, and a chill gust swept up as a scout before the dawn, the trees began to s.h.i.+ver, the surface of the lake to creep, the birds to call, and the world to stretch itself and yawn.

Peace in her chamber, wheresoe'er It be--a holy place.

As he went home by Birdcage Walk the park was still heavy with sleep, and its homeless wanderers had not yet risen from their couches on the seats. A pale mist was lying over London, but the towers of the Abbey stood clear above it, and pigeons were wheeling around them like sea-fowl about rocks in the sea. What a night it had been! A night of dreams, of love, of rapture!

The streets were empty and very quiet--only the slow rattle of the dust-cart and the measured step of policemen changing beats. Long blue vistas and a cemetery silence as of a world under the great hand of the gentle brother of Death, and then the clang of Big Ben striking six.

A letter was waiting for John in the breathless hall. It was from the Bishop of London: "Come and see me at St. James's Square."

XV.

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 pa.s.sed, 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, n.o.body acting, and n.o.body 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 you _will_ succeed! 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 rehea.r.s.e----But mum's the word--an' we could an' we would," etc. Another of the letters was from the art editor of an ill.u.s.trated 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 coa.r.s.e lights of open naphtha lamps, and all but impa.s.sable with costers' barrows. There were the husky voices of the street hawkers, the hoa.r.s.e 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 h.e.l.ls 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, G.o.d 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 the _un_deserving 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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 pus.h.i.+ng his way and saying: "Now, then, move on! We ain't going to stand 'ere all night."

"Call a cab, officer," said John.