Chapter 25

“Aunt Anna, I'm knitting the sweetest little shawl for you, dear--blue and white, to suit your complexion--being engaged in the evening only, and most of the day sole mistress of my own will and pleasure. How charming of me, isn't it? But I'm afraid it isn't, because you'll see through me like a colander, for I want to tell you something which I have kept back too long, and when I think of it I grow old and wrinkled like a Christmas apple. So you must be a pair of absolute old angels, aunties, and break the news to grandfather.

“You know I told you, Aunt Rachel, to say something for me at nine o'clock on the Queen's birthday. And you remember that Mr. Drake used to think pearls and diamonds of Glory, and predict wonderful things for her. Then you don't forget that Mr. Drake had a friend named Lord Robert Ure, commonly called Lord Bob. Well, you see, by Mr. Drake's advice, and Lord Bobbie's influence and agency, and I don't know what, I have made one more change--it's to be the last, dears, the very last--in my Wandering-Jew existence, and now I am no longer a society entertainer, because I am a music-hall art----”

Glory had written so far when she dropped the pen and rose from the table, wiping her eyes.

“My poor child, you can't tell them, it's impossible; they would never forgive you!”

Then a carriage stopped before the house, the garden bell was rung, and the maid came into the room with a lady's card. It was inscribed “Miss Polly Love,” with many splashes and flourishes.

“Ask her up,” said Glory. And then Polly came rustling up the stairs in a silver-gray silk dress and a noticeable hat, and with a pug-dog tucked under her arm. She looked older and less beautiful. The pink and ivory of her cheeks was coated with powder, and her light gray eyes were pencilled. There was the same blemished appearance as before, and the crack in the vase was now plainly visible.

Glory had met the girl only once since they parted after the hospital, but Polly kissed her effusively. Then she sat down and began to cry.

“Perhaps you wouldn't think it, my dear, but I'm the most miserable girl in London. Haven't you heard about it? I thought everybody knew. Robert is going to be married. Yes, indeed, to-morrow morning to that American heiress, and I hadn't an idea of it until Monday afternoon. That was the day of your luncheon, dear, and I felt sure something was going to happen, because I broke my looking-glass dressing to go out. Robert took me home, and he began to play the piano, and I could see he was going to say something. 'Do you know, little woman, I'm to be married on Saturday?' I wonder I didn't drop, but I didn't, and he went on playing. But it was no use trying, and I burst out and ran into my room. After a minute I heard him coming in, but he didn't lift me up as he used to do. Only talked to me over my back, telling me to control myself, and what he was going to do for me, and so on. He used to say a few tears made me nicer looking, but it was no good crying--and then he went away.”

She began to cry again, and the dog in her lap began to howl.

“O God! I don't know what I've done to be so unfortunate. I've not been flash at all, and I never went to _cafés_ at night, or to Sally's or Kate's, as so many girls do, and he can't say I ever took notice of anybody else. When I love anybody I think of him last thing at night and first thing in the morning, and now to be left alone--I'm sure I shall never live through it!”

Glory tried to comfort the poor broken creature. It was her duty to live. There was her child--had she never even seen it since she parted with it to Mrs. Jupe? It must be such a darling by this time, creeping about and talking a little, wherever it was. She ought to have the child to live with her, it would be such company.

Polly kissed the pug to stop its whining, and said: “I don't want company. Life isn't the same thing to me now. He thinks because he is marrying that woman--What better is she than me, I would like to know? She's only snapping at him for what he is, and he is only taking her for what she's got, and I've a great mind to go to All Saints' and shame them. You wouldn't? Well, it's hard to hide one's feelings, but it would serve them right if--if I did it.”

Polly had risen with a wild look, and was pressing the pug so hard that it was howling again.

“Did what?” said Glory.

“Nothing--that is to say----”

“You mustn't dream of going to the church. The police----”

“Oh, it isn't the police I'm afraid of,” said Polly, tossing her head.

“What then?”

“Never mind, my dear,” said Polly.

On the way downstairs she reproached herself for not seeing what was coming. “But girls like us never do, now do we?”

Glory coloured up to her hair, but made no protest. At the gate Polly wiped her eyes and drew down her veil, and said: “I'm sorry to say it to your face, my dear, but it's all been that Mr. Drake's doings, and a girl ought to know he'd do as much himself, and worse. But you're a great woman now, and in everybody's mouth, so you needn't care. Only----”

Glory's face was scarlet and her under lip was bleeding. Yet she kissed the poor shallow thing at parting, because she was down, and did not understand, and lived in another world entirely. But going back to where her letter lay unfinished she thought: “Impossible! If this girl, living in an atmosphere so different, thinks that----” Then she sat at the table and forced herself to tell all.

She had got through the red riot of her confession and was writing: “I don't know what he would think of it, but do you know I thought I saw his face on Wednesday night. It was in the dark, and I was in a cab driving away from the stage door. But so changed! oh, so changed! It must have been a dream, and it was the same as if his ghost had passed me.”

Then she became aware of voices in dispute downstairs. First a man's voice, then the voices of two men--one of them Koenig's, the other with a haunting ring in it. She got up from the table and went to the door of her room, going on tip-toe, yet hardly knowing why. Koenig was saying: “No, sair, de lady does not lif here.” Then a deep, strong chest-voice answered, “Mr. Koenig, surely you remember me?” and Glory's heart seemed to beat like a watch. “No-o, sair. Are you--Oh, yes; what am I thinking of?--But de lady----”

“Mr. Koenig,” Glory called, cried, gasped over the stair-rail, “ask the gentleman to come up, please.”

She hardly knew what happened next, only that Koenig seemed to be muttering confused explanations below, and that she was back in her sitting-room giving a glance into the looking-glass and doing something with her hair. Then there was a step on the stairs, on the landing, at the threshold, and she fell back a few paces from the door, that she might see him as he came in. He knocked. Her heart was beating so violently that she had to keep her hand over it. “Who's there?”

“It is I.”

“Who's I?”

Then she saw him coming down on her, and the very sunlight seemed to wave like the shadows on a ship. He was paler and thinner, his great eyes looked weary though they smiled, his hand felt bony though firm, and his head was closely cropped.

She looked at him for a moment without speaking and with a sensation of fulness at her heart that was almost choking her.

“Is it you? I didn't know it was you--I was just thinking----” She was talking at random, and was out of breath as if she had been running.

“Glory, I have frightened you!”

“Frightened? Oh, no! Why should you think so? Perhaps I am crying, but then I'm always doing that nowadays. And, besides, you are so----”

“Yes, I am altered,” he said in the pause that followed.

“And I?”

“You are altered too.” He was looking at her with an earnest and passionate gaze. It was she--herself--Glory--not merely a vision or a dream. Again he recognised the glorious eyes with their brilliant lashes and the flashing spot in one of them that had so often set his heart beating. She looked back at him and thought, “How ill he must have been!” and then a lump came into her throat and she began to laugh that she might not have to cry, and broke out into broad Manx lest he should hear the tremor in her voice:

“But you're coming too, aren't ye? And you've left that theer--Aw, it's glad ter'ble I am, as our people say, and it's longin' mortal you'd be for all, boy.”

Another trill of nervous laughter, and then a burst of earnest English: “But tell me, you've come for good--you are not going back to----”

“No, I am not going back to the Brotherhood, Glory.” How friendly his low voice sounded!

“And you?”

“Well, I've left the hospital, you see.”

“Yes, I see,” he said. His weary eyes were wandering about the room, and for the first time she felt ashamed of its luxuries and its flowers.

“But how did you find me?”

“I went to the hospital first----”

“So you hadn't forgotten me? Do you know I thought you had quite--But tell me at once, where did you go then?”

He was silent for a moment, and she said, “Well?”

“Then I went to Mr. Drake's chambers.”

“I don't know why everybody should think that Mr. Drake----”

His great eyes were fixed on her face and his mouth was quivering, and, to prevent him from speaking, she put on a look of forced gaiety and said, “But how did you light on me at last?”

“I meant to find you, Glory, if I tramped all London over and everybody denied you to me”--the lump in her throat was hurting her dreadfully--“but I chanced to see the name over the music hall.”

She saw it coming, and broke into laughter. “The music hall! Only think! You looking at music halls!”

“I was there on Monday night.”

“You? Monday? Then perhaps it was not my fancy that I saw you by the stage do--.” Her nerves were getting more and more excited, and to calm them she crossed her arms above her head. “So they gave you my address at the stage door, did they?”

“No, I wrote for it to Peel.”

“Peel?” She caught her breath, and her arms came down. “Then perhaps you told them where----” “I told them nothing, Glory.” She looked at him through her eyelashes, her head held down.

“Not that it matters, you know.”

“I've just been writing to them, and they'll soon--But, oh, I've so much to say, and I can't say it here. Couldn't we go somewhere? Into the park or on to the heath, or farther--much farther--the room is so small, and I feel as if I've been suffocating for want of air.”

“I've something to say too, and if----”

“Then let it be to-morrow morning, and we'll start early, and you'll bring me back in time for the theatre. Say Paddington Station, at eleven--will that do?”

“Yes.”

She saw him to the gate, and when he was going she wanted him to kiss her hand, so she pretended to do the high handshake, but he only held it for a moment and looked steadily into her eyes. The sunshine was pouring into the garden, and she was bareheaded. Her hair was coiled up, and she was wearing a light morning blouse. He thought she had never looked so beautiful. On getting into the omnibus at the end of the street he took a letter out of his vest pocket, and, being alone, he first carried it to his lips, then reopened and read it:

“See her at once, dear John, and keep in touch with her, and I shall be happy and relieved. As for your father, that old Chaise is going crazy and is sending Lord Storm crazy too. He has actually discovered that the dust the witch walks on who has cast the evil eye on you lies in front of Glenfaba gate, and he has been sweeping it up o' nights and scattering it in front of Knockaloe! What simplicity! There are only two women here. Does the silly old gawk mean Rachel? or is it, perhaps, Aunt Anna?”

And while the omnibus joggled down the street, and the pale young clergyman with the great weary eyes was poring over his letter, Glory was sitting at her table and writing with flying fingers and a look of enthusiastic ecstasy:

“I've had three bites at this cherry. But who do you think has just been here? John!--John Storm! But then you know that he is back, and it wasn't merely my fancy that I saw him by the stage door. It seems as if people have been denying me to him, and he has been waiting for me and watching over me.” (Blot.) “His voice is so low, but I suppose that comes to people who are much alone, and he is so thin and so pale, and his eyes are so large, and they have that deep look that cuts into the heart. He knew he was changed, and I think he was ashamed” (blot), “but of course I didn't let whit that I was taking notice, and I'm so happy for his sake, poor fellow! that he has escaped from his cage in that Salvation zoo that I know I shall make them split their sides in the theatre to-night.” (Blot, blot.) “How tiresome! This ink must have got water in it somehow, and then my handwriting is such a hop-skip-and-a-jump anyway. But hoots!

“Why shouldn't I love Johnny, “And why shouldn't Johnny love me?

“Glory.”

IV.

It was a beautiful May morning, and standing by the Paddington Station with the dog at his feet, he felt her approach instinctively as she came toward him with her free step in her white cambric dress under the light parasol fringed with lace. Her face was glowing with the fresh air, and she looked happy and bright. As they walked into the station she poured out a stream of questions about the dog, took possession of him straightway, and concluded to call him Don.

They agreed to spend the day at Burnham Beeches, and while he went for the tickets she stepped on to the platform. It was Saturday, the bookstall was ablaze with the picture papers, and one of them was prominently displayed at a page containing her own portrait. She wanted John to see this, so she invented an excuse for bringing him face to face with it, and then she laughed and he bought the paper.

The clerk recognised her--they could see that by the smile he kept in reserve--and a group of officers in the Guards, in flannels and straw hats, going down to their club at Maidenhead, looked at her and nudged each other as if they knew who she was. Her eyes danced, her lips smiled, and she was proud that John should see the first fruits of her fame. She was proud of him, too, with his bold walk and strong carriage, as they passed the officers in their negligent dress, with their red and blue neckties. But John's heart was aching, and he was wondering how he was to begin on the duty he had to do.

From the moment they started she gave herself up to the delights of their holiday, and even the groaning and cranking and joggling of the train amused her. When the Guards had got into their first-class carriage they had glanced at the open window where her brilliant eyes and rosy lips were gleaming behind a veil. John gazed at her with his slow and tender looks, and felt guilty and ashamed.

They left the train at Slough, and a wave of freshness, with an odour of verdure and sap, blew into their faces. The dog leaped and barked, and Glory skipped along with it, breaking every moment into enthusiastic exclamations. There was hardly any wind, and the clouds, which were very high overhead, were scarcely moving. It was a glorious day, and Glory's face wore an expression of perfect happiness.

They lunched at the old hotel in the town, with the window open, and the swallows darting in the air outside, and Glory, who took milk “for remembrance,” rose and said, “I looks toward Mr. Storm,” and then drank his health and swept him the prettiest courtesy. All through lunch she kept feeding the dog from her own fingers, and at the end rebuked him for spreading his bones in a half circle across the carpet, a thing which was never done, she said, in the best society, this side the Cannibal Islands.

“By-and-bye,” he thought, “time enough by-and-bye,” for the charm of her joy was infectious.

The sun was high when they started on their walk, and her face looked flushed and warm. But through the park-like district to the wood she raced with Don, and made him leap over her sunshade and roll over and over on the bright green grass. The larks were trilling overhead, everything was humming and singing.

“Let her have one happy day,” he thought, and they began to call and shout to each other.

Then they came to the beeches, and, being sheltered from the fiery rays of the sun, she put down her sunshade and John took off his hat. The silence and gloom, the great gnarled trees, with their thews and sinews, their arms and thighs and loins, the gentle rustle of the breeze in the branches overhead, the deep accumulation of dead leaves underfoot, the fluttering of wings, the low cooing of pigeons, and all the mystery and wonder of the wood, brought a sense of awe, as on entering a mighty minster in the dusk. But this wore away presently, and Glory began to sing. Her pure voice echoed in the fragrant air, and the happiness so long pent up and starved seemed to bubble in every word and note.

“Isn't this better than singing in music halls?” he thought, and then he began to sing too, just like any happy boy, without thinking of yesterday or to-morrow, of before or after. She smiled at him. He smiled back. It was like a dream. After his long seclusion it was difficult to believe it could be true. The open air, the perfume of the leaves they were wading through, the silver bark of the birches and the blue peeps of the sky between, and then Glory walking with her graceful motion, and laughing and singing by his side! “I shall wake up in a minute,” he thought, “I'm sure I shall!”

They sang one song together. It was Lasses and Lads, and to make themselves think it was the old time back again they took each other's hands and swung them to the tune. He felt her clasp like milk coursing through his body, and a great wave of tenderness swept up his hard resolve as sea-wrack is thrown up after a storm. “She is here; we are together; why trouble about anything more?” and the time flew by.

But their voices went wrong immediately, and they were soon in difficulties. Then she laughed, and they began again; but they could not keep together, and as often as they tried they failed. “Ah, it's not like the old days!” he thought, and a mood of sadness came over him. He had begun to observe in Glory the trace of the life she had passed through--words, phrases, ideas, snatches of slang, touches of moods which had the note of a slight vulgarity. When the dog took a bone uninvited she cried: “It's a click; you've sneaked it”; when John broke down in the singing she told him to “chuck it off the chest”; and when he stopped altogether she called him glum, and said she would “do it on her own.”

“Why does he look so sorrowful?” she thought, and telling herself that this came to people who were much alone, she rattled on more recklessly than before.

She talked of the life of the music hall, the life at “the back,” glorifying it by a tone of apology. It was all hurry-scurry, slap, dash, and drive; no time to consider effects; a succession of last acts and first nights; so it was really harder to be a music-hall woman than a regular actress. And the music-hall woman was no worse than other women--considering. Had he seen their ballet? It was fetching. Such pages! Simply darlings! _They_ were the proud young birds of paradise whom toffs like those Guards came to see, and it was fun to see them pluming and preening themselves at the back, each for the eyes of her own particular lord in the stalls. Thus she flung out unfamiliar notes, hardly knowing their purport, but to John they were as slimy creatures out of the social mire she had struggled through. O London! London! Its shadow was over them even there, and go where they would, they could never escape from it.

His former thought began to hang about him again, and he asked her to tell him what had happened to her during his absence.

“Shall I?” she said. “Well, I brought three golden sovereigns out of the hospital to distribute among the people of London, but, bless you, they went nowhere.”

“And what then?”

“Then--then Hope was a good breakfast but a bad supper, you know. But shall I tell you all? Yes, yes, I will.”

She told him of Mrs. Jupe, and of the deception she had practised upon her people, and he turned his head that he might not see her tears. She told him of the “Three Graces,” and of the stage manager--she called him the “stage damager”--and then _she_ turned her head that she might hide her shame. She told him of Josephs, the bogus agent, and his face grew hard and his brown eyes looked black.

“And where did you say his place was?” he asked in a voice that vibrated and broke.

“I didn't say,” she answered with a laugh and a tear.

She told him of Aggie, and of the foreign clubs, and of Koenig, and of the dinner party at the Home Secretary's, and then she skipped a step and cried:

“Ding, dong, dended, My tale's ended.”

“And was it there you met Mr. Drake again?”

She replied with a nod.

“Never having seen him in the meantime?”

She pursed her lips and shook her head. “That's all over now, and what matter? I likes to be jolly and I allwis is!”

“But is it all over?” he said, and he looked at her again with the deep look that had cut into her heart.

“He's going to say something,” she thought, and she began to laugh, but with a faint tremor, and giving the dog her parasol to carry in his mouth, she took off her hat, swung it in her hand by the brim, and set off to run.

There was the light shimmer of a pool at a level below, where the water had drained to a bottom and was inclosed by beeches. The trees seemed to hang over it with outstretched wings, like birds about to alight, and round its banks there were plots of violets which filled the air with their fragrance. It was a God-blest bit of ground, and when he came up with her she was standing at the edge of the marshy mere panting and on the point of tears, and saying, in a whisper, “Oh, how beautiful!”

“But however am I to get across?” she cried, looking with mock terror on the two inches of water that barely covered the grass, and at the pretty red shoes that peeped from under her dress.

Then something extraordinary occurred. She hardly knew what was happening until it was over. Without a word, without a smile, he lifted her up in his arms and carried her to the other side. She felt helpless like a child, as if suddenly she belonged to herself no longer. Her head had fallen on his shoulder and her heart was beating against his breast. Or was it _his_ heart that was beating? When he put her down she was afraid she was going to cry, so she began to laugh and to say they mustn't lose that 7.30 to London or the “rag” would be rolling up without her and the “stage damager” would be using “cuss words.”

They had to pass the old church of Stoke Pogis on the way back to the town, and after looking at its timber belfry and steeple John suggested that they should see the inside. The sexton was found working in the garden at the side of the house, and he went indoors for the keys. “Here they be, sir, and you being a pa'son I'll bide in the orchet. You and your young missus can look at the church without me. 'A b'lieve 'a hev seed it afore,” he said with a twinkle.

The church was dark and cool. There was a window representing an angel ascending to heaven against a deep blue sky, and a squire's pew furnished like a box at the theatre, with a carpet and even a stove. The chairs in the front bore family crests, and behind them were inferior chairs, without crests, for the servants. John had opened the little modern organ and begun to play. After a while he began to sing. He sang Nazareth, and his voice filled the empty church and went up into the gloom of the roof, and echoed and returned, and it was almost as if another voice were singing there.