Chapter 23

Presently Brother Andrew came and sat beside him. The lay brother, like a human dog, had been following him about all the morning, and now in his feeble way he began to talk of his mother, and to wonder if John would ever see her. Her name was Pincher, and she was a good woman. She lived in Crook Lane, Crown Street, Soho, and kept house for his brother, who was a pawnbroker. But his brother, poor fellow! was much given to drink, and perhaps that had been a reason why he himself had left home. John promised to call on her, and then Brother Andrew began to cry. The sprawling features of the great fellow were almost laughable to look upon.

The bell rang for Terce. While the brothers were at prayers, John took his last look over the house. With the dog at his heels--the old thing seemed determined to lose sight of him no more--he passed slowly through the hall and into the community room and up the stairs and down the top corridor. He looked again at every inscription on the walls, though he knew them all by heart and had read them a hundred times. When he came to his own cell he was touched by a strange tenderness. Place where he had thought so much, prayed so much, suffered so much--it was dear to him, after all! He went up on to the tower. How often he had been drawn there as by a devilish fascination! The great city looked innocent enough now under its mantle of sunlight, dotted over with green, but how dense, how difficult! Then the bell rang for midday service, though it was not yet noon, and he went down to the hall. The brothers were there preparing to go into the church. The order of the procession was the same as on the day of his dedication, except that Brother Paul was no longer with them--Brother Andrew going first with the cross, then the lay brothers, then the religious, then the Father, and John Storm last of all.

Though the courtyard was full of sunshine, the church looked dark and gloomy. Curtains were drawn across the windows, and the altar was draped as for a funeral. As soon as the brothers had taken their places in the choir the Father stood on the altar steps and said:

“If any member of this community has one unfaithful thought of going back to the outer world, I charge him to come to this altar now. But woe to him through whom the offence cometh! Woe to him who turns back after taking up the golden plough!”

John was kneeling in his place in the second row of the choir. The eyes of the community were upon him. He hesitated a moment, then rose and stepped up to the altar.

“My son,” said the Father, “it is not yet too late. I see your fate as plainly as I see you now. Shall I tell you what it is? Can you bear to hear it? I see you going out into a world which has nothing to satisfy the cravings of your soul. I see you foredoomed to failure and suffering and despair. I see you coming back to us within a year with a broken and bleeding heart. I see you taking the vows of lifelong consecration. Can you face that future?”

“I must.”

The Father drew a long breath. “It is inevitable,” he said; and, taking a book from the altar, he read the awful service of the degradation:

_“By the authority of God Almighty, Father [Symbol: Patée], Son, and Holy Ghost, and by our own authority, we, the members of the Society of the Holy Gethsemane, do take away from thee the habit of our Order, and depose and degrade and deprive thee of all rights and privileges in the spiritual goods and prayers which, by the grace of God, are done among us.”_

“Amen! Amen!” said the brothers.

During the reading of the service John had been kneeling. The Father motioned to him to rise, and proceeded to remove the cord with which he had bound him at his consecration. When this was done, he signalled to Brother Andrew to take off the cassock.

The bell was tolled. The Father dropped on his knees. The brothers, hoarse and husky, began to sing _In exitu Israel de Aegypto_. Their heads were down, their voices seemed to come up out of the earth.

It was all over now. John Storm turned about, hardly able to see his way. Brother Andrew went before him to open the door of the sacristy. The lay brother was crying audibly.

The sun was still shining in the courtyard, and the birds were still singing and rejoicing. The first thing of which John was conscious was that the dog was licking his rigid fingers.

A moment later he was in the little covered passage to the street, and Brother Andrew was opening the iron gate.

“Good-bye, my lad!”

He stretched out his hand, then remembered that he was an excommunicated man, and tried to draw it back; but the lay brother had snatched at it and lifted it to his lips.

The dog was following him into the street.

“Go back, old friend.”

He patted the old creature on the head, and Brother Andrew laid hold of it by the loose skin at its neck. A hansom was waiting for him with his trunk on the top.

“Victoria Square, Westminster,” he called. The cab was moving off, when there was a growl and a lurch--the dog had broken away and was running after it.

How crowded the streets were! How deafening was the traffic! The church bell was ringing for midday service. What a thin tinkle it made out there, yet how deep was its boom within! Stock Exchange men with their leisurely activity were going in by their seven doorways to their great market place in Capel Court.

He began to feel a boundless relief. How his heart was beating! With what a strange and deep emotion he found himself once more in the world! Driving in the dense and devious thoroughfares was like sailing on a cross sea outside a difficult headland. He could smell the brine and feel the flick of the foam on his lips and cheeks. It was liberty, it was life!

Feeling anxious about the dog, he drew up the cab for a moment. The faithful creature was running under the driver's seat. Before the cab could start again a line of sandwich men had passed in front of it. Their boards contained a single word. The word was “GLORIA.”

He saw it, yet it barely arrested his consciousness. Somehow it seemed like an echo from the existence he had left behind.

The noises of life were as wine in his veins now. He was burning with impatience to overtake his arrears of knowledge, to see what the world had gone through in his absence. Leaning over the door of the hansom, he read the names of the streets and the signs over the shops, and tried to identify the houses which had been rebuilt and the thoroughfares which had been altered. But the past was the past, and the clock would turn back for no man. These men and women in the streets knew all that had happened. The poorest beggar on the pavement knew more than he did. Nearly a year of his life was gone--in prayer, in penance, in fasting, in visions, in dreams--dropped out, left behind, and lost forever.

Going by the Bank, the cab drew up again to allow a line of omnibuses to pass into Cheapside. Every omnibus had its board for advertisements, and nearly every board contained the word he had seen before--“GLORIA.”

“Only the name of some music-hall singer,” he told himself. But the name had begun to trouble him. It had stirred the fibres of memory, and made him think of the past--of his yacht, of Peel, of his father, and finally of Glory--and again of Glory--and yet again of Glory.

He saw that flags were flying on the Mansion House and on the Bank, and, pushing up the trap of the hansom, he asked if anything unusual was going on.

“Lawd, down't ye know what day it is terday, sir? It's the dear ole laidy's birthday. That's why all the wimming's going abart in their penny carridges. Been through a hillness, sir?”

“Yes, something of that sort.”

“Thort so, sir.”

When the cab started afresh he began to tell himself what he was going to do in the future. He was going to work among the poor and the outcast, the oppressed and the fallen. He was going to search for them and find them in their haunts of sin and misery. Nothing was to be too mean for him. Nothing was to be common or unclean. No matter about his own good name! No matter if he was only one man in a million! The kingdom of heaven was like a grain of mustard seed.

When he came within sight of St. Paul's the golden cross on the dome was flashing like a fiery finger in the blaze of the midday sun. That was the true ensign! It was a monstrous and wicked fallacy, a gloomy and narrow formula, that religion had to do with the affairs of the other world only. Work was religion! Work was prayer! Work was praise! Work was the love of man and the glory of God!

Glorious gospel! Great and deathless symbol!

THIRD BOOK.

_THE DEVIL'S ACRE_.

I.

Behind Buckingham Palace there is a little square of modest houses standing back from the tide of traffic and nearly always as quiet as a cloister. At one angle of the square there is a house somewhat larger than the rest but just as simple and unassuming. In the dining-room of this house an elderly lady was sitting down to lunch alone, with the covers laid for another at the opposite end of the table.

“Hae ye the spare room ready, Emma?”

“Yes, ma'am,” said the maid.

“And the sheets done airing? And baith the pillows? And the pillow-slips--and everything finished?”

The maid was answering “Yes” to each of these questions when a hansom cab came rattling up to the front of the house, and the old lady leaped out of her seat.

“It's himself!” she cried, and she ran like a girl to the hall.

The door had been opened before she got there, and a deep voice was saying, “Is Mrs. Callender----”

“It's John! My gracious! It's John Storm!” the old woman cried, and she lifted both hands as if to fling herself into his arms.

“My guidness, laddie, but you gave poor auld Jane sic a start! Expected ye? To be sure we expected you, and terribly thrang we've been all morning making ready. Only my daft auld brain must have been a wee ajee. But,” smiling through her tears, “has a body never a cheek, that you must be kissing at her hand? And is this your dog?” looking down at the bloodhound. “Welcome? Why, of course it's welcome. What was I saying the day, Emma? 'I'd like fine to have a dog,' didn't I? and here it is to our hand.--Away with ye, James, man, and show Mr. Storm to his room, and then find a bed for the creature somewhere. Letters for ye, laddie? Letters enough, and you'll find them on the table upstairs. Only, mind ye, the lunch is ready, and your fish is getting cold.”

John Storm opened his letters in his room. One of them was from his uncle, the Prime Minister: “I rejoice to hear of your most sensible resolution. Come and dine with me at Downing Street this day week at seven o'clock. I have much to say and much to ask, and I expect to be quite alone.”

Another was from his father: “I am not surprised at your intelligence, but if anything could exceed the folly of going into a monastery it is the imbecility of coming out of it. The former appears to be a subject of common talk in this island already, and no doubt the latter will soon be so.”

John flinched as at a cut across the face and then smiled a smile of relief. Apparently Glory was writing home wherever she was, and there was good news in that, at all events. He went downstairs.

“Come your way in, laddie, and let me look at ye again. Man, but your face is pale and your bonnie eyes are that sunken. But sit ye down and eat. They've been starving ye, I'm thinking, and miscalling it religion. It's enough to drive a reasonable body to drink. Carnal I am, laddie, and I just want to put some flesh on your bones. Monks indeed! And in this age of the world too! Little Jack Horners sitting in corners and saying, 'Oh, what a good boy am I!'”

John defended his late brethren. They were holy men; they lived a holy life; he had not been good enough for their company. “But I feel like a sailor home from sea,” he said; “tell me what has happened.”

“Births, marriages, and deaths? I suppose ye're like the lave of the men, and think nothing else matters to a woman. But come now, more chicken? No? A wee bitty? Aye, but ye're sair altered, laddie! Weel, where can a body begin?”

“The canon--how is he?”

“Fine as fi'pence. Guid as ever in the pulpit? Aye, but it's a pity he doesna' bide there, for he's naething to be windy of when he comes out of it. Deacon now, bless ye, or archdeacon, and some sic botherment, and his daughter is to be married to yon slip of a curate with the rabbit mouth and the heather legs. Weel, she wasna for all markets, ye ken.”

“And Mrs. Macrae?”

“Gone over to the angels. Dead? Nae, ye're too expecting altogether. She's got religion though, and holds missionary meetings in her drawing-room of a Monday, and gives lunches to actor folk of a Sunday, and now a poor woman that's been working for charity and Christianity all her days has no chance with her anyway.”

“And Miss Macrae?”

“Poor young leddy, they're for marrying her at last! Aye, to that Ure man, that lord thing with the eyeglass. I much misdoubt but her heart's been somewhere else, and there's ane auld woman would a hantle rather have heard tell of her getting the richt man than seeing the laddie bury hisel' in a monastery. She's given in at last though, and it's to be a grand wedding they're telling me. Your Americans are kittle cattle--just the Jews of the West seemingly, and they must do everything splendiferously. There are to be jewels as big as walnuts, and bouquets five feet in diameter, and a rope of pearls for a necklace, and a rehearsal of the hale thing in the church. Aye, indeed, a rehearsal, and the 'deacon, honest man, in the middle of the magnificence.”

John Storm's pale face was twitching. “And the hospital,” he said, “has anything happened there--?”

“Nothing.”

“No other case such as the one----”

“Not since yon poor bit lassie.”

“Thank God!”

“It was the first ill thing I had heard tell of her for years, and the nurses are good women for all that. High-spirited? Aye; but dear, bright, happy things, to think what they have to know and to be present at! Lawyers, doctors, and nurses see the worst of human nature, and she'd be a heartless woman who'd no make allowances for them, poor creatures!”

John Storm had risen from the table with a flushed face, making many excuses. He would step round to the hospital; he had questions to ask there, and it would be a walk after luncheon.

“Do,” said Mrs. Callender, “but remember dinner at six. And hark ye, hinny, this house is to be your hame until you light on a better one, so just sleep saft in it and wake merrily. And Jane Callender is to be your auld auntie until some ither body tak's ye frae her, and then it'll no be her hand ye'll be kissing for fear of her wrinkles, I'm thinking.”

The day was bright, the sun was shining, and the streets were full of well-groomed horses in gorgeous carriages with coachmen in splendid liveries going to the drawing-room in honour of the royal birthday. As John went by the palace the approaches to it were thronged, the band of the Household Cavalry was playing within the rails, and officers in full-dress uniform, members of the diplomatic service with swords and cocked hats, and ladies in gorgeous brocades carrying bouquets of orchids and wearing tiaras of diamonds and large white plumes were filing through the gate toward the throne-room.

The hospital looked strangely unfamiliar after so short an absence, and there were new faces among the nurses who passed to and fro in the corridors. John asked for the matron, and was received with constrained and distant courtesy. Was he well? Quite well. They had a resident chaplain now, and being in priest's orders he had many opportunities where death was so frequent. Was he sure he had not been ill? John understood--it was almost as if he had come out of some supernatural existence, and people looked at him as if they were afraid.

“I came to ask if you could tell me anything of Nurse Quayle?”

The matron could tell him nothing. The girl had gone; they had been compelled to part with her. Nothing serious? No, but totally unfit to be a nurse. She had some good qualities certainly--cheerfulness, brightness, tenderness--and for the sake of these, and his own interest in the girl, they had put up with inconceivable rudeness and irregularities. What had become of her? She really could not say. Nurse Allworthy might know--and the matron took up her pen.

John found the ward Sister with the house doctor at the bed of a patient. She was short, even curt, said over her shoulder she knew nothing about the girl, and then turned back to her work. As John passed out of the ward the doctor followed him and hinted that perhaps the porter might be able to tell him something.

The porter was difficult at first, but seeing his way clearer after a while he admitted to receiving letters for the nurse and delivering them to her when she called. That was long ago, and she had not been there since New Year's Eve. Then she had given him a shilling and said she would trouble him no more.

John gave him five shillings and asked if anybody ever called for her. Yes, once. Who was it? A gentleman. Had he left his name? No, but he had said he would write. When was that? A day or two before she was there the last time.

Drake! There could not be a shadow of a doubt of it. John Storm looked at the clock. It was 3:45. Then he buttoned his coat and crossed the street to the park with his face in the direction of St. James's Street.

Horatio Drake had given a luncheon in his rooms that day in honour of Glory's first public appearance. The performance was to come off at night, but in the course of the morning there had been a dress rehearsal in the _salon_ of the music hall. Twenty men and women, chiefly journalists and artists, had assembled there to get a first glimpse of the _débutante_, and cameras had lurked behind _portières_ and in alcoves to catch her poses, her expressions, her fleeting smiles, and humorous grimaces. Then the company had adjourned to Drake's chambers. The luncheon was now over, the last guest had gone, and the host was in his dining-room alone.

Drake was standing by the chimney-piece holding at arm's length a pencil sketch of a woman's beautiful face and lithe figure. “Like herself--alive to the fingertips,” he thought, and then he propped it against the pier-glass.

There was a sound of the opening and closing of the outer door downstairs, and Lord Robert entered the room. He looked heated, harassed, and exhausted. Shaking out his perfumed pocket handkerchief, he mopped his forehead, drew a long breath, and dropped into a chair.

“I've done it,” he said; “it's all over.”

Polly Love had lunched with the company that day, and Lord Robert had returned home with her in order to break the news of his approaching marriage. While the girl had been removing her hat and jacket he had sat at the piano and thumbed it, hardly knowing how to begin. All at once he had said, “Do you know, my dear, I'm to be married on Saturday?” She had said nothing at first, and he had played the piano furiously. Heavens, what a frame of mind to be in! Why didn't the girl speak? At last he had looked round at her, and there she stood grinning, gasping, and white as a ghost. Suddenly she had begun to cry. Good God, such crying! Yes, it was all over. Everything had been settled somehow.

“But I'll be in harder condition before I tackle such a job again.”

There was silence for a moment. Drake was leaning on the mantelpiece, his legs crossed, and one foot beating on the hearth-rug. The men were ashamed, and they began to talk of indifferent things. Smoke? Didn't mind. Those Indian cigars were good. Not bad, certainly.

At length Drake said in a different voice, “Cruel but necessary, Robert--necessary to the woman who is going to be your wife, cruel to the poor girl who has been.”

Lord Robert rose to his feet impatiently, stretched his arm, and shot out his striped cuff and walked to and fro across the room.

“Pon my soul, I believe I should have stuck to the little thing but for the old girl, don't you know. She's made such a good social running lately--and then she's started this evangelical craze too. No, Polly wouldn't have suited her book anyhow.”

Silence again, and then further talk on indifferent things.

“Wish Benson wouldn't sweep the soda water off the table.” “Ring for it.” “The little thing really cares for me, don't you know. And it isn't my fault, is it? I had to hedge. Frank, dear boy, you're always taunting me with the treadmill we have to turn for the sake of society, and so forth, but with debts about a man's neck like a millstone, what could one do----”

“I don't mean that you're worse than others, old fellow, or that sacrificing this one poor child is going to mend matters much----”

“No, it isn't likely to improve my style of going, is it?”

“But that man John Storm was not so far wrong, after all, and for this polygamy of our 'lavender-glove tribe' the nation itself will be overtaken by the judgment of God one of these days.”

Lord Robert broke into a peal of derisive laughter. “Go on,” he cried. “Go on, dear boy! It's funny to hear you, though--after to-day's proceedings too”; and he glanced significantly around the table.

Drake brought down his fist with a thump on to the mantelpiece. “Hold your tongue, Robert! How often am I to tell you this is a different thing entirely? Because I discover a creature of genius and try to help her to the position she deserves----”

“You hypocrite, if it had been a man instead of a charming little woman with big eyes, don't you know----”

But there had been a ring at the outer door, and Benson came in to say that a clergyman was waiting downstairs.

“Little Golightly again!” said Lord Robert wearily. “Are these everlasting arrangements never----”

The man stopped him. It was not Mr. Golightly; it was a stranger; would not give his name; looked like a Catholic priest; had been there before, he thought.

“Can it be---Talk of the devil----”

“Ask him up,” said Drake. And while Drake bit his lip and clinched his hands, and Lord Robert took up a scent bottle and sprayed himself with eau de cologne, they saw a man clad in the long coat of a priest come into the room--calm, grave, self-possessed, very pale, with hollow and shaven cheeks and dark and sunken eyes, which burned with a sombre fire, and head so closely cropped as to seem to be almost bald.

John Storm's anger had cooled. As he crossed the park the heat of his soul had turned to fear, and while he stood in the hall below, with an atmosphere of perfume about him, and even a delicate sense of a feminine presence, his fear had turned to terror. On that account he had refused to send up his name, and on going up the staircase, lined with prints, he had been tempted to turn about and fly lest he should come upon Glory face to face. But finding only the two men in the room above, his courage came back and he hated himself for his treacherous thought of her.

“You will forgive me for this unceremonious visit, sir,” he said, addressing himself to Drake.

Drake motioned to him to be seated. He bowed, but continued to stand.

“Your friend will remember that I have been here before.”

Lord Robert bent his head, and went on trifling with the spray.

“It was a painful errand relating to a girl who had been nurse at the hospital. The girl was nothing to me, but she had a companion who was very much.”

Drake nodded and his lips stiffened, but he did not speak.

“You are aware that since then I have been away from the hospital. I wrote to you on the subject; you will remember that.”

“Well?” said Drake.

“I have only just returned, and have come direct from the hospital now.”

“Well?”

“I see you know what I mean, sir. My young friend has gone. Can you tell me where to find her?”

“Sorry I can not,” said Drake coldly, and it stung him to see a look of boundless relief cross the grave face in front of him.

“Then you don't know----”