Chapter 19

“I can not do that, I'm so weak, and it's not worth while.”

“But I want to hear all that happened. See, your feet are all right now--I've rubbed them warm again. Though I fast so much and look so thin I've a deal of life in me. And I've been pouring it all into you, haven't I? That's because I want you to revive and be strong and tell me everything. Hush! Speak low; don't waken anybody! Did you find the hospital?”

“Yes.”

“Then Nurse Quayle sees nothing of your sister now? That's the pity of the life she is leading, poor girl! No friends, no future----”

“It wasn' that, brother.”

“What then?”

“The nurse was not there.”

A silence followed, and then John said in another voice: “I suppose she was on a holiday. It was very stupid of me; I didn't think of that. Twice a year a hospital nurse is entitled to a week's holiday, and no doubt----”

“But she was gone.”

“Gone? You mean left the hospital?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” in a husky voice, “that isn't to be wondered at either. A high-spirited girl finds it hard to be bound down to rule and regulation. But the porter--he is an intelligent man--he would tell you where she had gone to.”

“I asked him; he didn't know. All he could say was that she left the hospital on the morning of Lord Mayor's Show-day.”

“That would be the 9th of November--the day we took our vows.”

There was another pause; the big dark eyes were wandering vacantly.

“After all, he is only a porter; you asked for the matron, didn't you?”

“Yes; I thought she might know what had become of my sister. But she didn't. As for Nurse Quayle, she had been dismissed also, and nobody knew anything about her.”

John had seated himself at Paul's side and the form itself was quivering.

“Now that's just like her,” he said hoarsely. “That matron was always a hard woman. And to think that in that great house of love and pity nobody----”

“I'm forgetting something, brother.”

“What is it?”

“The porter told me that the nurse called for her letters from time to time. She had been there that night--not half an hour before.”

“Then you followed her, didn't you? You asked which, way she had gone, and you hurried after her?”

“Yes; but half an hour in London is a week anywhere else. Let anybody cross the street and she is lost--more lost to sight than a ship in a storm on the ocean. And then it was New Year's Eve, and the thoroughfares were crowded, and thousands of women were coming and going--and--what could I do?” he said helplessly.

John answered scornfully: “What could you do? Do you ask me what you could do?”

“What would you have done?”

“I should have tramped every street in London and looked into the face of every woman I met until I had found her. I should have worn my shoes to the welt and my skin to the bone before I should have come crawling home like a snail with my shell broken over my head!

“Don't be hard on me, brother, least of all now, when I have come home like a snail, as you say, with my shell broken. I was very tired and ill and did all I could. If I had been strong like you and brave-hearted I might have struggled longer. Bid I _did_ tramp the streets and look into the women's faces. She must have been among them, if she's living the life you speak of; but God would not let me find her. Why was it that my search was fruitless? Perhaps there was evil in my heart at first--I don't mind telling you that now--but I swear to you by Him who died for us that at last I only wanted to find my sister that I might save her. But I am such a helpless creature, and----”

John put his arm about Paul's shoulders.

“Forgive me, brother. I was mad to talk to you like that--I who sent you out on that cruel night and staid at home myself. You did what you could----”

“You think that--really?”

“Yes, only at the moment it seemed as if we had changed places somehow, and it was I who had lost a sister and been out to find her, and given up the search too soon, and come home empty and useless and broken-spirited, and----”

Paul was looking up at him with a face full of astonishment.

“Do you really think I did all I could to find her--the nurse, I mean?”

But John had turned his own face away, and there was no answer. Paul tried to say something, but he could not find the words. At last in a choked voice he murmured: “We must keep close together, brother; we are in the same boat now.”

And feeling for John's hand, he took it and held it, and they sat for some minutes with bowed heads, as if a ghost were going by.

“There's nothing but prayer and penance and fasting left to us, is there?”

Still John made no reply, and the broken creature began to comfort him.

“We have peace here at all events, and you wouldn't, think what temptations come to you in the world when you've lost somebody, and there seems to be nothing left to live for. Shall I tell you what I did? It was in the early morning and I was standing in a doorway in Piccadilly. The cabs and the crowds were gone, and only the nightmen were there swilling up the dirt of the pavements with their hose-pipes and water. 'My poor girl is lost,' I thought, 'We shall never see one another again. This wicked city has ruined her, and our mother, who was so holy, was fond of her when she was a little child.' And then my heart seemed to freeze up within me... and I did it. You'll think I was mad--I went to the police station and told them I had committed a crime. Yes, indeed, I accused myself of murder, and began to give particulars. It was only when they noticed my habit that I remembered the Father, and then I refused to answer any more questions. They put me in a cell, and that was where I spent the night, and next morning I denied everything, and they let me go.”

Then, dropping his voice to a hoarse whisper, he said: “That wasn't what brought me back, though. It was the vow. You can't think what a thing the vow is until you've broken it. It's like a hot iron searing your very soul, and if you were dying and at the farthest ends of the earth, and you had to crawl on your hands and knees, you would come back----”

He would have said more, but an attack of coughing silenced him, and when it was over there was a sound of some one moving in the house.

“What is that?”

“It is the Father,” said John. “Our voices have wakened him.”

Paul struggled to his feet.

“It's only a life of penance and suffering you've come back to, my poor lad.”

“That's nothing--nothing at all--But are you sure you think I did everything?”

“You did what you could. Are you going somewhere?”

“Yes, to the Father.”

“God bless you, my lad!”

“And God bless you too, brother!”

Half an hour later, by the order of the Superior, John Storm, with the help of Brother Andrew and the Father Minister, carried Brother Paul to his cell. The bell had been rung for Lauds, and going up the stairs they passed the brothers coming down to service. News of Paul's return had gone through the house like a cutting wind, and certain of the brothers who had gathered in groups on the landings were whispering together, as if the coming back had been a shameful thing which cast discredit on all of them. It wasn't love of rule that had brought the man home again, but broken health and the want of a bed to die upon! Thus they talked under their breath, unconscious of the secret operation of their own hearts. In a monastery, as elsewhere, failure is the worst disgrace.

John Storm returned to the hall with a firm step and eyes full of resolution. Hardly answering the brothers, who plied him with questions, he pushed through them with long strides, and, taking the key of the outer gate from the place in the alcove where he had left it, he turned toward the Father's room.

The day had dawned, and through the darkness which was lifting in the little room he could see the Father rising from his knees.

“Father!” he cried in an excited voice, and his words, like his breath, came in gusts.

“What is it, my son?”

“Take this key back again. The world is calling me, and I can not trust myself at the door any longer. Put me under the rule of silence and solitude, and shut me up in a cell, or I shall break my obedience and run away as sure as heaven is over us!”

XIV.

Glory awoke on New Year's morning with a little hard lump at her heart, and thought: “How foolish! Am I to give up all my cherished dreams because one man is a scoundrel?”

The struggle might be bitter, but she would not give in. London was the mother of genius. If she destroyed she created also. It was only the weak and the worthless she cast away. The strong she made stronger, the great she made greater. “O God, give me the life I love!” she thought; “give me a chance; only let me begin--no matter how, no matter where!”

She remembered her impulse of the night before to follow Brother Paul, and the little hard lump at her heart grew bitter. John Storm had gone from her, forgotten her, left her to take care of herself. Very well, so be it! What was the use of thinking? “I hate to be sentimental,” she thought.

If Aggie called on Sunday night she would go with her, no matter if it was beginning at the bottom. Others had begun there, and what right had she to expect to begin anywhere else? For the future she would take the world on its own terms and force it to give way. She would conquer this great cruel London, and yet remain a good girl in spite of all.

Such was the mood in which she came down to breakfast, and the first thing that met her eyes was a letter from home. At that her face burned for a moment and her breath came in gusts, but she put the letter into her pocket unopened and tossed her head a little and laughed. “I hate to be so sensitive,” she thought, and then she began to tell Mrs. Jupe what she intended to do.

“The clubs!” cried Mrs. Jupe. “I thought you didn't tyke to the shop because you fancied yerself above present company. But the foreign clubs! My gracious!”

The hissing of Mrs. Jupe's taunting voice followed her about all that day, and late at night, when they were going to bed and the streets were quiet, and there was only the jingle of a passing hansom or a drunken shout or the screech of a concertina, she could hear it again from the other side of the plaster partition, interrupted occasionally by the sound of Mr. Jupe's attempts to excuse and apologize for her. No matter! Anything to escape from the atmosphere of that woman's house, to be free of her and quit of her forever!

Toward eight o'clock on Sunday evening she went up to her bedroom to put on her hat and ulster, and being alone there, and waiting for Aggie, she could not help but open her letter from home.

“Sunday next is your birthday, my dear one,” wrote the parson, “so we send you our love and greetings. This being the first of your twenty-one that you have spent from home, I will be thinking of you all the day through, and when night comes, and I smoke a pipe by the study fire, I know I shall be leaving the blind up that I may see the evening star and remember the happy birthdays long ago, when somebody, who was so petted and spoiled, used to say she had just come down from it, having dressed herself in some strange and grand disguises, and told us she was Phonodoree the fairy. You will be better employed than that, Glory, and as long as my dear one is well and happy and prosperous in the great city where she so loves to be----”

The candle was shaking in Glory's hands, and the little half-lit bedroom seemed to be blinking in and out.

Aunt Anna had added a postscript: “Glad to hear you are enjoying yourself in London, but rather alarmed at your frequent mention of theatres. Take care you don't go too often, child, and mind you send us the name of the vicar of the parish you are living in, for I certainly think grandfather ought to write to him.”

To this again there was a footnote by Aunt Rachel: “You say nothing of Mr. Drake nowadays. Is he one of Mrs. Jupe's visitors? And is it he who takes you to theatres?”

Then there was a New Year's card enclosed, having a picture of an Eastern shepherd at the head of his flock of sheep and bearing the inscription, “Follow in his footsteps.”

But the hissing sound of Mrs. Jupe's voice came up from below, and Glory's tears were dried in an instant. On going downstairs, she found Aggie in her mock sealskin and big black feathers sitting in the parlour at the back of the shop, and Mrs. Jupe talking to her in whispers, with an appearance of knowledge and familiarity. She caught the confused look of the one and the stealthy glances of the other, and the hard lump at her heart grew harder.

“Come on,” said Glory, and a few minutes afterward the girls were walking toward Soho. The little chapels in the quieter streets were dropping out their driblets of people and the lights in the church windows were being extinguished one by one. Aggie had recovered her composure, and was talking of Charlie as she skipped along with a rapid step, swinging her stage-box by her side. Charlie was certain to be at one of the clubs, and he would be sure to see them home. He wasn't out of his time yet, and that was why her father wouldn't allow him about. But he was in an office at a foundry, and his people lived in a house, and perhaps one of these days----

“Did you say that some of the people who are on the stage now began at the clubs?” said Glory.

“Plenty, my dear. There's Betty Bellman for one. She was at a club in Old Compton Street when Mr. Sefton found her out.”

Aggie had to “work a turn” at each of three clubs that night, and the girls were now at the door of the first of them. It stood at the corner of a reputable square, and was like any ordinary house on the outside. But people were coming and going constantly, and the doorkeeper was kept opening and closing the door. In the middle of the hall a clerk stood at a desk, having a great book in front of him, and making a show of challenging everybody as he entered. He recognised Aggie as an artiste, but passed Glory also on the payment of twopence and the signing of her name in the book.

The dining-room of the house had been converted into a bar, with counter and stillage, and after the girls had crushed through the crowds that stood there they came into a large and shabby chamber, which had the appearance of having been built over the space which had once been the backyard. This room had neither windows nor skylights; its walls were decorated with portraits of Garibaldi and Victor Emanuel in faded colours, and there was a stage and proscenium at its farther end.

It was an Italian club that met there on Sunday nights, and some two or three hundred hairdressers and restaurant-keepers of swarthy complexion sat in groups at little round tables with their wives and sweethearts (chiefly English women), smoking and drinking and laughing at the performance on the stage.

Aggie went down to her dressing-room under the floor, and Glory sat at a table with a yellow-haired lady and a dark-eyed man. A negro without the burnt cork was twanging a banjo and cracking the jokes of the corner-man.

“That's my style--a merry touch-and-go,” said the lady. And then glancing at Glory, “Singing to-night, my dear?”

Glory shook her head.

“Thort you might be a pro' p'rhaps. Use ter be myself when I was in the bally at the Lane. Married now, my dear; but I likes to come of a Sunday night when the kids is got to bed.”

Then Aggie danced a skirt dance, and there were shouts of applause for her, and she came back and danced again. When she reappeared in jacket and hat, and with her stage-box in her hand, the girls crushed their way out. Going through the bar they were invited to drink by several of the men who were standing there, but they got into the streets at last.

“They're rather messy, those bars,” said Aggie; “but managers like you to come round and tyke something after you've done your turn--if it's only a cup of cawfy.”

“Do you like this life?” said Glory, taking a long breath.

“Yes, awfully!” said Aggie.

Their next visit was to a Swiss club, which did not greatly differ from the Italian one, except that the hall was more shabby, and that the audience consisted of French and Swiss waiters and skittish young English milliners. The girls had taken their hats and cloaks off and sat dressed like dolls in white muslin with long streamers of bright ribbon. A gentleman sang the “Postman's Knock,” with the character accompaniment of a pot hat and a black-edged envelope, a lady sang “Maud” in silk tights and a cloak, Aggie danced her skirt dance, and then the floor was cleared for a ball.

“They're going to dance the Swiss dance,” said Aggie, “and the M. C. wants me to tyke a place; but I hate these fellows to be hugging me. Will you be my partner, dear?”

“Well--just for a minute or two,” said Glory, with nervous gaiety. And then the dance began.

It proved to be a musical version of odd man out, and Glory soon found herself being snapped up by other partners and addressed familiarly by the waiters and their women. She could feel the moisture of their hands and smell the oil of their hair, and a feeling like a spasm of physical pain came over her.

“Let us go,” she whispered.

“Yes, it's getting lyte,” said Aggie, and they crushed through the crowded bar and out into the street.

The twanging of the fiddles, the thud of the dancing, and the peals of coarse laughter followed them from the stifling atmosphere within, and Glory felt sick and faint.

“Do you say that managers of good places call at these clubs sometimes?”

“Often,” said Aggie, and she hummed a music-hall tune as she skipped and tripped along.

The streets, which had been dark and quiet when they arrived in Soho, were now ablaze with lights in every window, and noisy with people on every pavement. The last club they had to visit was a German one, and as they came near it they saw that a man was standing at the door bareheaded and looking out for somebody.

“It's Charlie,” said Aggie with a little jump of joy. But when they came up to him a scowl darkened his dark face, and he said:

“Lyte as usyal! Two of the bloomin' turns not come, and me looking up and dahn the bloomin' street for you every minute and more!”

The girl's eyes blinked as if he had struck her, but she only tossed her head and stiffened her under lip, and said: “Jawing again, are ye? I'd chuck it for once, Charlie, if it was only for sake of company.”

With that she disappeared to the dressing-room, and Charlie took charge of Glory, crushed a way for her through the refreshment room, offered her a “glaws of somethink,” and with an obvious pride of possession introduced her to admiring acquaintances as “a friend o' mine.” “Like yer style, Charlie,” said one of them. “Oh, yus! Dare say!” said Charlie.

The proscenium was surmounted by the German and English flags intertwined, the walls were adorned with oleograph portraits of the Kaiser, his father and grandfather, Bismarck and Von Moltke, and the audience consisted largely of lively young German Jews and Jewesses in evening dress, some Polish Jews, and a sprinkling of other foreigners.

During Aggie's turn Glory was conscious that two strangers out of another world altogether had entered the club and were standing at the back.

“Toffs,” said Charlie, looking at them over her shoulder, and then, answering to himself the meaning of their looks, “No, my luds! 'Tain't the first we've seen of sech!”

Then Aggie came up with an oily person in a flowered waistcoat and said, “This is my friend, guv'nor, and she wouldn't mind doing a turn if you asked her.”

“If de miss vill oblige,” began the oily one, and then the blood rushed to Glory's face, and before she knew what else had happened, her hat and ulster were in Aggie's hands and she was walking up the steps to the stage.

There was some applause when she went on, but she was in a dazed condition and it all seemed to be taking place a hundred miles away. She heard her own voice saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, with your kind permission I will endeavour to give you an imitation----” and something more. Down to that moment her breath had been coming and going in hot gasps, and she had felt a dryness in her throat; but every symptom of nervousness suddenly disappeared, and she threw up her head like a charger in battle.

Then she sang. It was only a common street song, and everybody had heard it a thousand times. She sang “And her golden hair was hanging down her back” after the manner of a line of factory girls going home from work at night. Arm-in-arm, decked in their Vandyke hats, slashed with red ribbons and crowned with ostrich feathers, with their free step, their shrill voices--they were there before everybody's eyes, everybody could see them, everybody could recognise them, and before the end of the first verse there were shouts and squeals of laughter.

Glory felt dizzy yet self-possessed; she gave a little audible laugh while she stood bowing between the verses. In a few minutes the song was finished and the people were stamping, whistling, uttering screeching cat-calls, and shouting “Brayvo!” But Glory was sitting at the foot of the stage by this time with a face contorted as in physical pain. After the first thrill of success the shame of it all came over her and she saw how low she had fallen, and felt horrified and afraid. The clamour, the clapping of hands, the vulgar faces, the vulgar laughter, the vulgar song, Sunday night, her own birthday! It all passed before her like the incidents in some nightmare, and at the back of it came other memories--Glenfaba, the sweet and simple household, the old parson smoking by the study fire and looking up at the evening star, and then John Storm and the church chimes at Bishopsgate! One moment she sat there with her burning face, staring helplessly before her, while people crowded round to shake hands with her and cried into her ears above the deafening tumult, “You'll have to tyke another turn, dear”; and then she burst into passionate weeping.

“Stand avay! De lady's not fit to sing again,” said some one, and she opened her eyes.

It was one of the two gentlemen who had been standing at the back.

“Ach Gott! Is it you? Don't you know me, nurse?”

It was Mr. Koenig, the organist.

“My gracious! Vot are you doing here, my child? Two monts ago I haf ask for you at de hospital, and haf write to de matron, but you vere gone. Since den I haf look for you all over London. Vhere do you lif?”

Glory told him, and he wrote down the address.

“Ugh! A genius, and lif in a tobacco shop! My vife vill call on you and fetch you avay. She is a goot woman, and vhatever she tell you to do you must do it; but not musical and clever same like as you. Bless mine soul! Singing in a Sunday club! Do you know, my child, you haf a voice, and talents, great talents! Vants training--yes. But vhat vould you haf? Here am I, Carl Koenig! I speak ver' bad de Englisch, but I know ver' goot to teach music. I vill teach you same like I teach oder ladies who pay me many dollare. Do you know vhat I am?”

Yes, she knew what he was--he was the organist at All Saints', Belgravia.

“Pooh! I am a composer as veil. I write songs, and all your countrymen and countryvomen sing dem. I haf a choral company, too, and it is for dat I vant you. I go to de first houses in de land, de lords, de ministers, de princes. You shall come vith me. Your voice is soprano--no, mezzo-soprano--and it vill grow. I vill pitch it, and vhen it is ready I vill bring you out. But now get away from dis place and naivare come back, or I vill be more angry as before.”