Chapter 32
“If a profession is sinful,” said Drake, “in proportion as it appeals to the senses, and lives on the emotions, and develops duplicity, then the profession of the Church is the most sinful in the world, for it offers the greatest temptations to lying, and produces the worst hypocrites and impostors!”
“That,” said John, with eyes flashing and passion vibrating in his voice--“that, sir, is the great Liar's everlasting lie--and you know it!”
Glory was between them with uplifted hands. “Peace, peace! Blessed is the peacemaker! But tea! Will nobody take more tea? Oh, dear! oh, dear! Why can't we have tea over again?”
“I know what you mean, sir,” said Drake. “You mean that I have brought Glory back to a life of danger and vanity, and sloth and sensuality. Very well. I deny your definition. But call it what you will, I have brought her back to the only life her talents are fit for, and if that's all----”
“Would you have done the same for your own sister?”
“How dare you introduce my sister's name in this connection?”
“And how dare you resent it? What's good for one woman is good for another.”
Glory was turning aside, and Drake was looking ashamed. “Of course--naturally--all I meant,” he faltered--“if a girl has to earn her living, whatever her talents, her genius--that is one thing. But the upper classes, I mean the leisured classes----”
“Damn the leisured classes, sir!” said John, and in the silence that followed the men looked round, but Glory was gone from the room.
Lord Robert, who had been whistling at the window, said to Drake in a cynical undertone: “The man is hipped and sore. He has lost his challenge, and we ought to make allowances for him, don't you know.”
Drake tried to laugh. “I'm willing to make allowances,” he said lightly; “but when a man talks to me as if--as if I meant to----” but the light tone broke down, and he faced round upon John and burst out passionately: “What right have you to talk to me like this? What is there in my character, in my life, that justifies it? What woman's honour have I betrayed? What have I done that is unworthy of the character of an English gentleman?”
John took a stride forward and came face to face and eye to eye with him. “What have you done?” he said. “You have used a woman as your decoy to win your challenge, as you say, and you have struck me in the face with the hand of the woman I love! That's what you've done, sir, and if it's worthy of the character of an English gentleman, then God help England!”
Drake put his hand to his head and his flushed face turned pale. But Lord Robert Ure stepped forward and said with a smile: “Well, and if you've lost your church so much the better. You are only an outsider in the ecclesiastical stud anyway. Who wants you? Your rector doesn't want you; your Bishop doesn't want you. Nobody wants you, if you ask me.”
“I don't ask you, Lord Robert,” said John. “But there's somebody who does want me for all that. Shall I tell you who it is? It's the poor and helpless girl who has been deceived by the base and selfish man, and then left to fight the battle of life alone, or to die by suicide and go shuddering down to hell! That's who wants me, and, God willing, I mean to stand by her.”
“Damme, sir, if you mean _me_, let me tell you what _you_ are,” said Lord Robert, screwing up his eyeglass. “You”--shaking his head right and left--“you are a man who takes delicately nurtured ladies out of sheltered homes and sends them into holes and hovels in search of abandoned women and their misbegotten children! Why”--turning to Drake-“what do you think has happened? My wife has fallen under this gentleman's influence--the poor simpleton!--and not one hour before I left my house she brought home a child which he had given her to adopt. Think of it!--out of the shambles of Soho, and God knows whose brat and bastard!”
The words were hardly out of the man's mouth when John Storm had taken him by both shoulders. “God _does_ know,” he said, “and so do I! Shall I tell you whose child that is? Shall I? It's yours!” The man saw it coming and turned white as a ghost. “Yours! and your wife has taken up the burden of your sin and shame, for she's a good woman, and you are not fit to live on the earth she walks upon!”
He left the two men speechless and went heavily down the stairs. Glory was waiting for him at the door. Her eyes were glistening after recent tears.
“You will come no more?” she said. She could read him like a book. “I can see that you intend to come no more.”
He did not deny it, and after a moment she opened the door and he passed out with a look of utter weariness. Then she went back to her room and flung herself on the bed, face downward.
The men in the drawing-room were beginning to recover themselves. Lord Robert was humming a tune, Drake pacing to and fro.
“Buying up his church to make a theatre for Glory was the very refinement of cruelty!” said Drake. “Good heavens! what possessed me?”
“Original sin, dear boy!” said Lord Robert, with a curl of the lip.
“Original? A bad plagiarism, you mean!”
“Very well. If _I_ helped you to do it, shall I help you to give it up? Withdraw the prospectus and return the deposits on shares--the dear Archdeacon's among the rest.”
Drake took up his hat and left the house. Lord Robert followed him presently. Then the drawing-room was empty, and the hollow sound of sobbing came down to it from the bedroom above.
* * * * *
Father Storm read prayers in church that night with a hard and absent heart. A terrible impulse of hate had taken hold of him. He hated Drake, he hated Glory, he hated himself most of all, and felt as if seven devils had taken possession of him, and he was a hypocrite, and might fall dead at the altar.
“But what a fate the Almighty has saved me from!” he thought. Glory would have been a drag on his work for life. He must forget her. She was only worthy of his contempt. Yet he could not help but remember how beautiful she had looked in her mourning dress, with that pure pale face and its signs of suffering! Or how charming she had seemed to him even in the midst of all that deception! Or how she had held him as by a spell!
Going home he came upon a group of men in the Court. One of them planted himself full in front and said with an insolent swagger: “Me and my mytes thinks there's too many parsons abart 'ere. What do you think, sir?”
“I think there are more gamblers and thieves, my lad,” he answered, and at the next instant the man had struck him in the face. He closed with the ruffian, grappled him by the throat, and flung him on his back. One moment he held him there, writhing and gasping, then he said, “Get up, and get off, and let me see no more of you!”
“No, sir, not this time,” said a voice above his back. The crowd had melted away and a policeman stood beside them. “I've been waiting for this one for weeks, Father,” he said, and he marched the man to jail.
It was Charlie Wilkes. At the trial of Mrs. Jupe that morning, Aggie, being a witness, had been required to mention his name. It was all in the evening papers, and he had been dismissed from his time-keeping at the foundry.
XIII.
A week passed. Breakfast was over at Victoria Square, and John Storm was glancing at the pages of a weekly paper. “Listen!” he cried, and then read aloud in a light tone of mock bravery which broke down at length into a husky gurgle:
“'The sympathy which has lately been evoked by the announcement that a proprietary church in Soho has been sold for secular uses, is creditable to public sentiment----'”
“Think of that, now!” interrupted Mrs. Callender.
“'----and no doubt the whole community will agree to hope that Father Storm will recover from the irritation natural to his eviction----'”
“Aye, we can all get over another body's disappointment, laddie.”
“'But there is a danger that in this instance the altruism of the time may develop a sentimentality not entirely good for public morals----'”
“When the ox is down there are lots of butchers, ye ken!”
“'With the uses to which the fabric is to be converted, it is no part of our purpose to deal, further than to warn the public not to lend an ear to the all too prurient purity of the amateur moralist; but considering the character of the work now carried on in Soho, no doubt with the best intentions----'”
“Aye, aye, it's easy to steal the goose and give the giblets in alms.”
“'----it behooves us to consider if the community is not to be congratulated on its speedy and effectual ending. Father Storm is a young man of some talents and social position, but without any special experience or knowledge of the world--in fact a weak, oversanguine, and rather foolish fanatic----'”
“Oh, aye, he's down; down with him!”
“'----and therefore it is monstrous that he should be allowed to subvert the order of social life or disturb the broad grounds of the reasonable and the practical----'”
“Never mind. High winds only blaw on high hills, laddie!”
“'----As for the “fallen sister” whom he has taken under his special care, we confess to a feeling that too much sympathy has been wasted on her already. Her feet take hold of hell, her house is the way of the grave, going down to the chamber of death----'”
Mrs. Callender leaped to her feet. “That's the 'deacon-man; I ken the cloven hoof!”
John Storm had flung the paper away. “What a cowardly world it is!” he said. “But God wins in the end, and by God he shall!”
“Tut, man! don't tak' on like that. You can't climb the Alps on roller-skates, you see! But as for the Archdeacon, pooh! I'm no windy aboot your 'Sisters' and 'Settlements' and sic like, but if there had been society papers in the Lord's time, Simon the Pharisee would have been a namby-pamby critic compared to some of them.”
A moment afterward she was looking out of the window and holding up both hands. “My gracious! It's himsel'! It's the Prime Minister!”
A gaunt old gentleman with a meagre mustache, wearing a broad-brimmed hat and unfashionable black clothes, was stepping up to the door.
“Yes, it's my uncle!” said John, and the old lady fled out of the room to change her cap.
“I have heard what has happened, John, so I have come to see you,” said the Prime Minister.
Was he thinking of the money? John felt uneasy and ashamed.
“I'm sorry, my boy, very sorry!”
“Thank you, uncle.”
“But it all comes, you see, of the ridiculous idea that we are a Christian nation! Such a thing couldn't have occurred at the shrine of a pagan god!”
“It was only a proprietary church, uncle. I was much to blame.”
“I do not deny that you have acted unwisely, but what difference does that make, my boy? To sell a church seems like the climax of irreverence; but they are doing as bad every day. If you want to see what times the Church has fallen on, look at the advertisements in your religious papers--your Benefice and Church Patronage Gazette, and so forth. A traffic, John, a slave traffic, worse than anything in Africa, where they sell bodies, not souls!”
“It is a crime which cries to the avenging anger of Heaven,” said John; “but it is the Establishment that is to blame, not the Church, uncle.”
“We are a nation of money-lenders, my boy, and the Church is the worst usurer of them all, with its learned divines in scarlet hoods, who hold shares in music halls, and its Fathers in God living at ease and leasing out public-houses. _You_ have been lending money on usury too, and on a bad security. What are you going to do now?”
“Go on with my work, uncle, and do two hours where I did one before.”
“And get yourself kicked where you got yourself kicked before!”
“Why not? If God puts ten pounds on a man, he gives him strength to bear twenty.”
“John, John, I am feeling rather sore, and I can't bear much more of it. I'm growing old, and my life is rather lonely too. Except your father, you are my only kinsman now, and it seems as if our old family must die with you. But come, my boy, come, throw up all this sorry masquerade. Isn't there a woman in the world who can help me to persuade you? I don't care who she is, or what, or where she comes from.”
John had coloured to the eyes, and was stammering something about the true priest cut off from earthly marriage, therefore free to commit himself completely to his work, when Mrs. Callender came back, spruce and smart, with many smiles and curtsies. The Prime Minister greeted her with the same old-fashioned courtesy, and they cooed away like two old doves, until a splendid equipage drove up to the door, and the plain old gentleman drove away in it.
“Wasn't he nice with me? wasn't he, now?” the old lady kept saying, and John being silent--“Tut! you young men are just puir loblollyboys with a leddy when the auld ones come.”
Going to Soho that day John Storm felt a sudden thrill at seeing on the street in front of him, walking in the same direction, an elderly figure in cassock and cord. It was the Father Superior of the Brotherhood. John overtook him and greeted him.
“Ah, I was on my way to see you, my son.”
“Then you have heard what has happened?”
“Yes, Satan's shafts fly fast.” Then taking John's arm as they walked, “Earthly blows are but reminders of Him, my son, like the hair shirt of the monk, and this trouble of yours is God's reminder of your broken obedience. What did I tell you when you left us--that you would come back within a year? And you will! Leave the world, my son. It treats you badly. The human spirit reigns over it, and even the Church is a Christian society out of the sphere and guidance of the Divine Spirit. Leave it and return to your unfinished vows.”
John shook his head and took the Father into the clergy-house, where the girls were gathering for the evening. “How can I leave the world, Father, when there's work like this to do? Society presents to a large proportion of these bright creatures the alternative, 'Sell yourself or starve.' But God says, 'Live, work, and love.' Therefore society is doomed, and that dead man's sepulchre, the Establishment, is doomed, but the Church will live, and become the corner-stone of the new order, and stand between woman and the world, as it stood of old between the poor and the rich.”
The Father preached for John that night, taking for his text “The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh.” And on parting from him at the door of the sacristy he said: “Religious work can only be good, my son, if it concerns itself first of all with the salvation of souls. Now what if it pleased God to remove you from all this--to call you to a work of intercession--say, to the mission field?”
John's face turned pale. “There can be no need to fly,” he said, with a frightened look. “Surely London is a mission field wide enough for any man.”
“Yet who knows? Perhaps for your own soul's sake, lest vanity should take hold of you, or the love of fame, or--or any of the snares of Satan! But good-bye, and God be with you!”
When John Storm reached home he found a letter awaiting him. It was from Glory:
“Are you dead and buried? If so, send me word, that I may compose your epitaph. 'Here lies--_Lies_ is good, for though you didn't promise to come back you ought to have done so; therefore it comes to the same thing in the end. You must not think too ill of Mr. Drake. I call him the milk of human kindness, and his friend Lord Robert the oil thereof--I mean the oil of vitriol. But his temper is like the Caspian Sea, having neither ebb nor flow, while yours is like the Bay of Biscay--oh, so I can't expect you to agree. As for poor me, I may be guilty of all the seven deadly sins, but I can't see why I should be boycotted on that account. There is something I didn't know when you were here, and I want to explain about it. Therefore come 'right away' (Lord Bob, Americanized). Being slow to anger and plenteous in mercy, I will forgive you if you come soon. If you don't, I'll--I'll go on the bike--feminine equivalent to the drink. To tell you the truth, I've done so already, having been careering round the gardens of the Inn during the early hours of morning, clad in Rosa's 'bloomers,' in which I make a picture and a sensation at the same time, she being several sizes larger round the hips, and fearfully and wonderfully made. If that doesn't fetch you I'll go in for boxing next, and in a pair of four-ounce gloves I'll cut a _striking_ figure, I can tell you.
“But, John Storm, have you cast me off entirely? Do you intend to abandon me? Do you think there is no salvation left for me? And are you going to let me sink in all this mire without stretching out a hand to help me? Oh, dear! oh, dear! I don't know what has come over the silly old world since I came back to London. Think it must be teething, judging by the sharpness of its bite, and feel as if I should like to give it a dose of syrup of squills.”
As John read the letter his eyelids quivered and his mouth relaxed. Then he glanced at it again, and his face clouded.
“I can not leave her entirely to the mercy of men like these,” he thought.
This innocent daring, this babelike ripping up of serviceable conventions--God knows what advantage such men might take of it. He must see her once again, to warn, to counsel her. It was his duty--he must not shrink from it.
* * * * *
It had been a day of painful impressions to Glory. Early in the morning Lord Robert had called to take her to the “reading” of the new play. It took place in the saloon of an unoccupied Strand theatre, of which the stage also had been engaged for rehearsal. The company were gathered there, and, being more or less experienced actors and actresses, they received her with looks of courteous indulgence, as one whose leading place must be due to other things than talent. This stung her; she felt her position to be a false one, and was vexed that she had permitted Lord Robert to call for her. But her humiliation had yet hardly begun.
While they stood waiting for the manager, who was late, a gorgeous person with a waxed mustache and in a fur-lined coat, redolent of the mixed odour of perfume and stale tobacco, forced his way up to her and offered his card. She knew the man in a moment.
“I'm Josephs,” he said in a confidential undertone, “and if there's anything I can do for you--acting management--anything--it vill give me pleesure.”
Glory flushed up and said, “But you don't seem to remember, sir, that we have met before.”
The man smiled blandly. “Oh, yes. I've kept track of you ever since and know all about you. You hadn't made your appearance then, and naturally I couldn't do much. But now--_now_ if you vill give me de pleesure----”
“Then an agent is one who can do nothing for you when you want help, but when you don't want it----”
The man laughed to carry off his audacity. “Veil, you know vhat they say of us--agent from _agere_, 'to do,' and we're always 'doing.' Ha, ha! But if you are villing to let bygones be bygones, I am, and velcome.”
Glory's face was crimson. “Will somebody go for the stage doorkeeper?” she said, and one of the company went out on that errand. Then, raising her voice so that everybody listened, she said: “Mr. Josephs, when I was quite unknown, and trying to get on, and finding it very hard, as we all do, you played me the cruellest trick a man ever played on a woman. I don't owe you any grudge, but, for the sake of every poor girl who is struggling to live in London, I am going to turn you out of the house.”
“Eh? Vhat?”
The stage doorkeeper had entered. “Porter, do you see this gentleman? He is never to come into this theatre again as long as we are here, and if he tries to force his way in you are to call a policeman and have him bundled back into the street!”
“Daddle doo,” and the waxed mustache over the grinning mouth seemed to cut the face across.
When Josephs had gone Glory could see that the looks of indulgence on the faces of the company had gone also. “She'll do!” said one. “She's got the stuff in her!” said another, but Glory herself was now quaking with fear, and her troubles were not yet ended.
A little stout gentleman entered hurriedly with a roll of papers in his hand. He stepped up to Lord Robert, apologized for being late, and mopped his bald crown and red face. It was Sefton.
“This is to be our manager,” said Lord Robert, and Mr. Sefton bobbed his head, winked with both eyes, and said, “Charmed, I'm sure--charmed!”
Glory could have sunk into the earth for shame, but in a moment she had realized the crushing truth that when a woman has been insulted in the deepest place--in her honour--the best she can do is to say nothing about it.
The company seated themselves around the saloon, and the reading began. First came the list of characters, with the names of the cast. Glory's name and character came last, and her nerves throbbed with sudden pain when the manager read, “and _Gloria_--Miss Glory Quayle.”
There was a confused murmur, and then the company composed themselves to listen. It was Gloria's play. She was rather scandalous. After the first act Glory thought it was going to be the story of Nell Gwynne in modern life; after the second, of Lady Hamilton; and after the third, in which the woman wrecks and ruins the first man in the country, she knew it was only another version of the Harlot's Progress, and must end as that had ended.
The actors were watching their own parts, and pointing and punctuating with significant looks the places where the chances came, but Glory was overwhelmed with confusion. How was she to play this evil woman? The poison went to the bone, and to get into the skin of such a creature a good woman would have to dispossess herself of her very soul. The reading ended, every member of the company congratulated some other member on the other's opportunities, and Sefton came up to Glory to ask if she did not find the play strong and the part magnificent.
“Yes,” she said; “but only a bad woman could play that part properly.”
“_You'll_ do it, my dear, you'll do it on your own!” he answered gaily, and she went home perplexed, depressed, beaten down, and ashamed.
A newspaper had been left at the door. It was a second-rate theatrical journal, still damp from the press. The handwriting on the wrapper was that of Josephs, and there was a paragraph marked in blue pencil. It pretended to be a record of her short career, and everything was in it--the programme selling, the dressing, the foreign clubs--all the refuse of her former existence, set in a sinister light and leaving the impression of an abject up-bringing, as of one who had been _in_ the streets if not on them.
Well, she had chosen her life and must take it at its own price. But, oh, the cruelty of the world to a woman, when her very success could be her shame! She felt that the past had gripped her again--the pitiless past--she could never drag herself out of the mire.
That night she wrote to John Storm, and next morning before Rosa had risen--her duties kept her up late--she heard a voice downstairs. Her dog also heard it and began to bark. At the next moment John was in the room and she was laughing up into his splendid black eyes, for he had caught her down at the sofa holding the pug's nose and trying to listen.
“Is it you? It's so good of you to come early! But this, dog”--breaking into the Manx dialect--“she's ter'ble, just ter'ble!” Then rising and looking serious: “I wished to tell you that I knew nothing about the church, nothing whatever. If I'd had the least idea... but they told me nothing--it was very wrong--nothing. And the first thing I knew was when I saw it in all the newspapers.”
He was leaning on the end of the mantelpiece. “If they deceived you like that, how can you go on with them?”