Chapter 11

“Dear Glory: I have at length decided to enter the Brotherhood at Bishopsgate Street, and I am to go into the monastery this evening. It is not as a visitor that I am going this time, but as a postulant or novice and in the hope of becoming worthy in due course to take the vows of lifelong consecration. Therefore I am writing to you probably for the last time, and parting from you perhaps forever.

“Since we came up to London together I have suffered many shocks and disappointments, and I seem to have been torn in ribbons. My cherished dreams have proved to be delusions; the palaces I had built up for myself have turned out to be pasteboard, gilt, and rubbish; I have been robbed of all my jewels, or they have shown themselves to be shingle stones. In this condition of shame and disillusionment I am now resolved to escape at the same time from the world and from myself, for I am tired of both alike, and already I feel as if a great weight had been lifted off me.

“But I wish to speak of you. You must have thought me cantankerous, and so I have been sometimes, but always by conviction and on principle. I could not countenance the fashionable morality that is corrupting the manhood of the laity, or endure the toleration that is making the clergy thoroughly wicked; I could not without a pang see you cater to the world's appetites or be drawn into its gaieties and frivolities; and it was agony to me to fear that a girl of your pure if passionate nature might perhaps fall a victim to a gamester in life's follies--an actor indulging a pastime--a mere cheat.

“And what you tell me of your friend's altered circumstances does not relieve me of such anxieties. The man who has deceived a girl once is likely to deceive her again. Short of marriage itself, such connections should be cut off entirely, whatever the price. When they are maintained in relations of liberty the victim is sure to be further victimized, and her last state is always worse than the first.

“However, I do not wish to blame anybody, least of all you, who have done everything for the best, and especially now when I am parting from you forever. You have never realized how much you have been to me, and I doubt if I knew it myself until to-day. You know how I was brought up--with a solitary old man--God be with him!--who tried to be good to me for the sake of his ambitions, and to love me for the sake of his revenge. I never knew my mother, I never had a sister, and I can never have a wife. You were all three to me and yourself besides. There were no women in our household, and you stood for woman in my life. I have never told you this before, but now I tell it as a dying man whispers his secret with his parting breath.

“I have written my letters of farewell--one to my father, asking his forgiveness if I have done him any wrong; one to my uncle, with my love and thanks; and one to your good old grandfather, giving up my solemn and sacred trust of you. My conduct will of course be condemned as weak and foolish from many points of view, but by my departure some difficulties will be removed, and for the rest I have come to see that everything is done by the spirit and nothing by the flesh, and that by prayer and fasting I can help and protect you more than by counsel and advice. Thus everything is for the best.

“The rule under which the Brothers live in community forbids them to write and receive letters without special permission, or even to think too constantly of the world outside; and now that I am on the eve of that new life, memories of the old one keep crowding on me as on a drowning man. But they are all of one period--the days when we were at Peel in your sweet little island, before the vain and cruel world came in between us, when you were a simple, merry girl, and I was little more than a happy boy, and we went plunging and laughing through your bright blue sea together.

“But earth's joys grow very dim and its glories are fading. That also is for the best. I have my Koh-i-noor--my desire to depart and surrender my life to God. John Storm.”

“Anything wrong, nurse? Feeling ill, ain't ye? Only dizzy a bit? Unpleasant news from home, perhaps?”

“No, something else. Let me sit in your room, porter.”

She read the letter again and again, until the words seemed blurred and the lines irregular as a spider's web. Then she thought: “We can not part forever like this. I must see him again whatever happens. Perhaps he has not yet gone.”

It was now half-past eight and time to go on duty, but she went upstairs to Sister Allworthy and asked for an hour's further leave. The request was promptly refused. She went downstairs to the matron and asked for half an hour, only that she might see a friend away on a long journey, and that was refused too. Then she tightened her quivering lips, returned to the porter's room, fixed her bonnet on before the scratched pier-glass, and boldly walked out of the hospital.

It was now quite dark and the fashionable dinner hour of Belgravia, and as she hurried through the streets many crested and coroneted carriages drew up at the great mansions and discharged their occupants in evening dress. The canon's house was brilliantly lighted, and when the door was opened in answer to her knock she could see the canon himself at the head of his own detachment of diners coming downstairs with a lady in white silk chatting affably on his arm.

“Is Mr. Storm at home?”

The footman, in powdered wig and white cotton gloves, answered haltingly. “If it is--er--anything about the hospital, miss, Mr.--er--Golightly will attend.”

“No, it is Mr. Storm himself I wish to see.”

“Gorn!” said the footman, and he shut the door in her face.

She had an impulse to hammer on the door with her hand, and command the flunky to go down on his knees and beg her pardon. But what was the good? She had no time to think of herself now.

As a last resource she would go to Bishopsgate. How dense the traffic seemed to be at Victoria! She had never felt so helpless before.

It was better in the city, and as she walked eastward, in the direction indicated by a policeman, every step brought her into quieter streets. She was now in that part of London which is the world's busiest market-place by day, but is shut up and deserted at night. Her light footsteps echoed against the shutters of the shops. The moon had risen, and she could see far down the empty street.

She found the place at last. It was one of London's weather-beaten old churches, shouldered by shops on either hand, and almost pushed back by the tide of traffic. There was an iron gate at the side, leading by an arched passage to a little courtyard, which was bounded by two high blank walls, by the back wall of the church, and by the front of a large house with a small doorway and many small windows. In the middle of the courtyard there was a tree with a wooden seat round its trunk.

And being there, she felt afraid and almost wished she had not come. The church was dimly lighted, and she thought perhaps the cleaners were within. But presently there was a sound of singing, in men's voices only, and without any kind of musical accompaniment. Just then the clock in the steeple struck nine, and chimes began to play:

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.

XX.

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----”

“But _you_ always 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. “He _won't_ remember,” 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!

XXI.

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!”