Chapter 34

John Storm came in later the same day, when Rosa had gone out and Glory was alone. He was a different man entirely. His face looked round and his dark eyes sparkled. The clouds of his soul seemed to have drifted away, and he was boiling over with enthusiasm. He laughed constantly, and there was something almost depressing in the lumbering attempts at humour of the serious man.

“What do you think has happened? The Bishop sent for me and offered me a living in Westminster. It turns out to being the gift of Lord Robert Ure; but no thanks to him for it. Lady Robert was at the bottom of everything. She had called on the Bishop. He remembered me at the Brotherhood, and told me all about it. St. Jude's, Brown's Square, on the edge of the worst quarter in Christendom! It seems the Archdeacon expected it for Golightly, his son-in-law. The Reverend Joshua called on me this morning and tried to bully me, but I soon bundled him off to Botany Bay. Said the living had been promised to him--a lie, of course. I soon found that out. A lie is well named, you know--it hasn't a leg--to stand upon. Ha, ha, ha!”

Nothing would serve but that they should go to look at the scene of their future life, and with Don--he had brought his dog; it had to be held back from the pug under the table--they set off immediately. It was Saturday night, and as they dipped down into the slums that lie under the shadow of the Abbey, Old Pye Street, Peter's Street, and Duck Lane were aflare with the coarse lights of open naphtha lamps, and all but impassable with costers' barrows. There were the husky voices of the street hawkers, the hoarse laughter, the quarrelling, the oaths, the rasping shouts of the butcher selling chunks of dark joints by auction, the screeches of the roast-potato man, and the smell of stale vegetables and fried fish. “Jow, 'ow much a pound for yer turmaters?” “Three pence; I gave mor'n that for 'em myself.” “Garn!” “S'elp me, Gawd, I did, mum!”

“Isn't it a glorious scene?” said John; and Glory, who felt chilled and sickened, recalled herself from some dream of different things altogether and said, “Isn't it?”

“Sanctuary, too! What human cats we are! The poor sinners cling to the place still!”

He took her into the alleys and courts that score and wrinkle the map of Westminster like an old man's face, and showed her the “model” lodging-houses and the gaudily decorated hells where young girls and soldiers danced and drank.

“What's the use of saying to these people, 'Don't drink; don't steal'? They'll answer, 'If you lived in these slums you would drink too.' But we'll show them that we can live here and do neither--that will be the true preaching.”

And then he pictured a life of absolute self-sacrifice, which she was to share with him. “You'll manage all money matters, Glory. You can't think how I'm swindled. And then I'm such a donkey as far as money goes--that's not far with me, you know. Ha, ha, ha! Who's to find it? Ah, God pays his own debts. He'll see to that.”

They were to live under the church itself; to give bread to the hungry and clothes to the naked; to set up their Settlement in the gaming-house of the Sharkeys, now deserted and shut up; to take in the _un_deserving poor-the people who had nothing to say for themselves, precisely those; and thus they were to show that they belonged neither to the publicans and sinners nor to the Scribes and Pharisees.

“Only let us get rid of self. Only let us show that self-interest never enters our head in one single thing we do----” and meantime Glory, who had turned her head aside with a lump in her throat, heard some one behind them saying:

“Lawd, Jow, that's the curick and his dorg--'im as got pore Sharkey took! See--'im with the laidy?”

“S'elp me, so it is! Another good man gorn to 'is gruel, and all 'long of a bloomin' dorg.”

They walked round by the church. John was talking--rapturously at every step, and Glory was dragging after him like a criminal going to the pillory. At last they came out by Great Smith Street, and he cried: “See, there's the house of God under its spider's web of scaffolding, and here's the Broad Sanctuary--broad enough in all conscience! Look!”

A crowd of girls and men were trooping out of a place of entertainment opposite, and there were screams and curses. “Look at 'im!” cried a woman's voice. “There 'e is, the swine! And 'e was the ruin of me; and now 'e's 'listed for a soldier and going off with another woman!”

“You're bleedin' drunk, that's what you are!” said a man's voice, “and if you down't take kear I'll send ye 'ome on a dawer!”

“Strike me, will ye, ye dog? Do it! I dare you!”

“She ain't worth it, soldier--come along,” said another female voice, whereupon the first broke into a hurricane of oaths; and a little clergyman going by at the moment--it was the Rev. J. Golightly--said: “Dear, dear! Are there no policemen about?” and so passed on, with his tall wife tucked under his arm.

John Storm pressed through the crowd and came between the two who were quarrelling. By the light of the lamp he could see them. The man was Charlie Wilkes, in the uniform of a soldier; the woman, with the paint running on her face, her fringe disordered, and her back hair torn down, was Aggie Jones.

“We down't want no religion 'ere,” said Charlie, sneering.

“You'll get some, though, if you're not off quick!” said John. The man looked round for the dog and a moment afterward he had disappeared.

Glory came up behind. “O Aggie, woman, is it you?” she said, and then the girl began to cry in a drunken sob.

“Girls is cruel put upon, mum,” said one of the women; and another cried, “Nix, the slops!” and a policeman came pushing his way and saying: “Now, then, move on! We ain't going to stand 'ere all night.”

“Call a cab, officer,” said John.

“Yes sir--certainly, Father. Four-wheel-er!”

“Where do you live, Aggie?” said Glory; but the girl, now sobbing drunk, was too far gone to follow her.

“She lives in Brown's Square, sir,” said the woman who had spoken before, and when the cab came up she was asked to get in with the other three.

It was a tenement house, fronting to one facade of St. Jude's, and Aggie's room was on the second story. She was helpless, and John carried her up the stairs. The place was in hideous disorder, with clothing lying about on chairs, underclothing scattered on the floor, the fire out, many cigarette ends in the fender, a candle stuck in a beer bottle, and a bunch of withered roses on the table.

As John laid the girl on the bed she muttered, “Lemme alone!” and when he asked what was to happen to her when she grew old if she behaved like this when young, she mumbled: “Don't want to be old. Who's goin' to like me then, d'ye think?”

Half an hour afterward Glory and John were passing through the gates into Clement's Inn, with its moonlight and silence, its odour of moistened grass, its glimpse of the stars, and the red and white blinds of its windows lit up round about. John was still talking rapturously. He was now picturing the part which Glory was to play in the life they were to live together. She was to help and protect their younger sisters, the child-women, the girls in peril, to enlist their loyalty and filial tenderness for the hour of temptation.

“Won't it be glorious? To live the life, the real life of warfare with the world's wickedness and woe! Won't it be magnificent? You'll do it too! You'll go down into those slums and sloughs which I've shown you to-night--they are the cradle of shame and sin, Glory, and this wicked London rocks it!--you'll go down into them like a ministering angel to raise the fallen and heal the wounded! You'll live in them, revel in them, rejoice in them, they'll be your battlefield. Isn't that better, far better, a thousand times better, than _playing_ at life, and all its fashions and follies and frivolities?”

Glory struggled to acquiesce, and from time to time in a trembling voice she said “Yes,” and “Oh, yes,” until they came to the door of the Garden House, and then a strange thing happened. Somebody was singing in the drawing-room to the music of the piano. It was Drake. The window was open and his voice floated over the moonlit gardens;

Du liebes Kind, komm' geh mit mir! Gar schöne Spiele spiel' ich mit dir.

Suddenly it seemed to Glory that two women sprang into life in her--one who loved John Storm and wished to live and work beside him, the other who loved the world and felt that she could never give it up. And these two women were fighting for her heart, which should have it and hold it and possess it forever.

She looked up at John, and he was smiling triumphantly, “Are you happy?” she asked.

“Happy! I know a hundred men who are a hundred times as rich as I, but not one who is a hundredth part as happy!”

“Darling!” she whispered, holding back her tears. Then looking away from him she said, “And do you really think I'm good enough for a life of such devotion and self-sacrifice?”

“Good enough!” he cried, and for a moment his merry laughter drowned the singing overhead.

“But will the world think so?”

“Assuredly. But who cares what the world thinks?”

“We do, dear--we must!”

And then, while the song went on, she began to depreciate herself in a low voice and with a creeping sense of hypocrisy--to talk of her former life in London as a danger, of the tobacco-shop, the foreign clubs, the music hall, and all the mire and slime with which she had been besmirched. “Everything is known now, dear. Have you never thought of this? It is your duty to think of it.”

But he only laughed again with a joyous voice. “What's the odds?” he said. “The world is made up for the most part of low, selfish, sensual beings, incapable of belief in noble aims. Every innovator in such a world exposes himself to the risk of being slandered or ridiculed, or even shut up in a lunatic asylum. But who wouldn't rather be St. Theresa in her cell than Catharine of Russia on her throne? And in your case, what does it come to anyway? Only that you've gone through the fiery furnace and come out unscathed. All the better--you'll be a living witness, a proof that it is possible to pass through this wicked Babylon unharmed and untouched.”

“Yes, if I were a man--but with a woman it is so different! It is an honour to a man to have conquered the world, but a disgrace to a woman to have fought with it. Yes, believe me, I know what I'm saying. That's the cruel tragedy in a woman's life, do what you will to hide it. And then you are so much in the eye of the world; and besides your own position there is your family's, your uncle's. Think what it would be if the world pointed the finger of scorn at your--at your mission--at your high and noble aims--and all on account of me! You would cease to love me-and I--I----”

“Listen!” He had been shuffling restlessly on the pavement before her. “Here I stand! Here are you! Let the waves of public opinion dash themselves against us--we stand or fall together!” “Oh, oh, oh!”

She was crying on his breast, but with what mixed and conflicting feelings! Joy, pain, delight, dread, hope, disappointment. She had tried to dishonour herself in his eyes, and it would have broken her heart if she had succeeded. But she had failed and he had triumphed, and that was harder still to bear.

From overhead they heard the last lines of the song:

Erreicht den Hof mit Müh und Noth In seinen Armen das Kind war todt.

“Good-night,” she whispered, and fled into the house. The lights in the dining-room were lowered, but she found a telegram that was waiting on the mantelpiece. It was from Sefton, the manager: “Author arrived in London today. Hopes to be at rehearsal Monday. Please be there certain.”

The world was seizing her again, the imaginary Gloria was dragging her back with visions of splendour and success. But she crept upstairs and went by the drawing-room on tip-toe. “Not to-night,” she thought. “My face is not fit to be seen to-night.”

There was a dying fire in her bedroom, and her evening gown had been laid out on a chair in front of it. She put the gown away in a drawer, and out of a box which she drew from beneath the bed she took a far different costume. It was the nurse's outdoor cloak, which she had bought for use at the hospital. She held it a moment by the tips of her fingers and looked at it, and then put it back with a sigh.

“Gloria! is that you?” Rosa called up the stairs; and Drake's cheery voice cried, “Won't our nightingale come down and give us a stave before I go?”

“Too late! Just going to bed. Good-night,” she answered. Then she lit a candle and sat down to write a letter.

“It's no use, dear John, I can not! It would be like putting bad money into the offertory to put me into that holy work. Not that I don't admire it, and love it, and worship it. It is the greatest work in the world, and last week I thought I could count everything else as dross, only remembering that I loved you and that nothing else mattered. But now I know that this was a vain and fleeting sentiment, and that the sights and scenes of your work repel me on a nearer view, just as the hospital repelled me in the early mornings when the wards were being cleaned and the wounds dressed, and before the flowers were laid about.

“Oh, forgive me, forgive me! But if I am fit to join your life at all it can not be in London. That 'old serpent called the devil and Satan' would be certain to torment me here. I could not live within sight and sound of London and go on with the life you live. London would drag me back. I feel as if it were an earlier lover, and I must fly away from it. Is that possible? Can we go elsewhere? It is a monstrous demand, I know. Say you can not agree to it. Say so at once--it will serve me right.”

The stout watchman of the New Inn was calling midnight when Glory stole out to post her letter. It fell into the letter-box with a thud, and she crept back like a guilty thing.

XVI.

Next morning Mrs. Callender heard John Storm singing to himself before he left his bedroom, and she was standing at the bottom of the stairs when he came down three steps at a time.

“Bless me, laddie,” she said, “to see your face shining a body would say that somebody had left ye a legacy or bought ye a benefice instead of taking your church frae ye!”

“Why, yes, and better than both, and that's just what I was going to tell you.”

“You must be in a hurry to do it, too, coming downstairs like a cataract.”

“You came down like a cataract yourself once on a time, auntie; I'll lay my life on that.”

“Aye, did I, and not sae lang since neither. And fools and prudes cried 'Oh!' and called me a tomboy. But, hoots; I was nought but a body born a wee before her time. All the lasses are tomboys now, bless them, the bright heart-some things!”

“Auntie,” said John softly, seating himself at the breakfast table, “what d'ye think?”

She eyed him knowingly. “Nay, I'm ower thrang working to be bothered thinking. Out with it, laddie.”

He looked wise. “Don't you remember saying--that work like mine wanted a woman's hand in it?”

Her old eyes blinked. “Maybe I did, but what of it?”

“Well, I've taken your advice, and now a woman's hand is coming into it to guide it and direct it.”

“It must be the right hand, though, mind that.”

“It _will_ be the right hand, auntie.”

“Weel, that's grand,” with another twinkle. “I thought it might be the _left_, ye see, and ye might be putting a wedding-ring on it!” And then she burst into a peal of laughter.

“However did you find it out?” he said, with looks of astonishment.

“Tut, laddie, love and a cough can not be hidden. And to think a woman couldna see through you, too! But come,” tapping the table with both hands, “who is she?”

“Guess.”

“Not one of your Sisters--no?” with hesitation.

“No,” with emphasis.

“Some other simpering thing, na doot-they're all alike these days.”

“But didn't you say the girls were all tomboys now?”

“And if I did, d'ye want a body to be singing the same song always? But come, what like is she? When I hear of a lassie I like fine to know her colour first. What's her complexion?”

“Guess again.”

“Is she fair? But what a daft auld dunce I am!--to be sure she's fair.”

“Why, how did you know that, now?”

“Pooh! They say a dark man is a jewel in a fair woman's eye, and I'll warrant it's as true the other way about. But what's her name?”

John's face suddenly straightened and he pretended not to hear.

“What's her name?” stamping with both feet.

“Dear me, auntie, what an ugly old cap you're wearing!”

“Ugly?” reaching up to the glass. “Who says it's ugly?”

“I do.”

“Tut! you're only a bit boy, born yesterday. But, man, what's all this botherment about telling a lassie's name?”

“I'll bring her to see you, auntie.”

“I should think you will, indeed! and michty quick, too!”

This was on Sunday, and by the first post on Monday John Storm received Glory's letter. It fell on him like a blast out of a cloud in the black northeast, and cut him to the heart's core. He read it again, and being alone he burst into laughter. He took it up a third time, and when he had finished there was something at his throat that seemed to choke him. His first impulse was fury. He wanted to rush off to Glory and insult her, to ask her if she was mad or believed him to be so. Because she was a coward herself, being slave-bound to the world and afraid to fight it face to face, did she wish to make a coward of him also--to see him sneak away from the London that had kicked him, like a cur with its tail between its legs?

After this there came an icy chill and an awful consciousness that mightier forces were at work than any mere human weakness. It was the world itself, the great pitiless world, that was dividing them again as it had divided them before, but irrevocably now-not as a playful nurse that puts petted children apart, but as a torrent that tears the cliffs asunder. “Leave the world, my son, and return to your unfinished vows.” Could it be true that this was only another reminder of his broken obedience?

Then came pity. If Glory was slave-bound to the world, which of us was not in chains to something? And the worst slavery of all was slavery to self. But that was an abyss he dared not look into; and he began to think tenderly of Glory, to tell himself how much she had to sacrifice, to remember his anger and to be ashamed.

A week passed, and he went about his work in a helpless way, like a derelict without rudder or sail and with the sea roaring about it. Every afternoon when he came home from Soho Mrs. Callender would trip into the hall wearing a new cap with a smart bow, and finding that he was alone she would say, “Not to-day, then?”

“Not to-day,” he would answer, and they would try to smile. But seeing the stamp of suffering on his face, she said at last, “Tut, laddie! they love too much who die for love.”

On the Sunday afternoon following he turned again toward Clement's Inn. He had come to a decision at last, and was calm and even content, yet his happiness was like a gourd which had grown up in a day, and the morrow's sun had withered it.

Glory had been to rehearsal every day that week. Going to the theatre on Monday night she had said to herself, “There can be no harm in rehearsing--I'm not compelled to play.” Notwithstanding her nervousness, the author had complimented her on her passion and self-abandonment, and going home she had thought: “I might even go through the first performance and then give it all up. If I had a success, that would be beautiful, splendid, almost heroic--it would be thrilling to abandon everything.” Not hearing from John, she told herself he must be angry, and she felt sorry for him. “He doesn't know yet how much I am going to do.” Thus the other woman in her tempted and overcame her, and drew her on from day to day.

Mrs. Macrae sent Lord Robert to invite her to luncheon on Sunday. “There can be no harm in going there,” she thought. She went with Rosa, and was charmed with the lively, gay, and brilliant company. Clever and beautiful women, clever and handsome men, and nearly all of them of her own profession. The mistress of the mansion kept open house after church parade on Sunday, and she sat at the bottom of her table, dressed in black velvet, with the Archdeacon on her right and a famous actor on her left. Lord Robert sat at the head and talked to a lady whose remarks were heard all over the room; but Lady Robert was nowhere to be seen; there was a hush when her name was mentioned, and then a whispered rumour that she had differences with her husband, and had scandalized her mother by some act of indiscretion.

Glory's face beamed, and for the first half-hour she seemed to be on the point of breaking into a rapturous “Well!” Nearly opposite to her at the table sat a lady whose sleepy look and drowsy voice and airs of languor showed that she was admired, and that she knew it. Glory found her very amusing, and broke into little trills of laughter at her weary, withering comments. This drew the attention of some of the men; they found the contrast interesting. The conversation consisted first of hints, half signs, brilliant bits of by-play, and Glory rose to it like a fish to the May-fly. Then it fell upon bicycling and the costumes ladies wore for it. The languid one commented upon the female fetich, the skirt, and condemned “bloomers,” whereupon Glory declared that they were just charming, and being challenged (by a gentleman) for her reasons she said, “Because when a girl's got them on she feels as if she's an understudy for a man, and may even have a chance of playing the part itself in another and a better world.”

Then there was general laughter, and the gentleman said, “You're in the profession yourself now, aren't you?”

“Just a stranger within your gates,” she answered; and when the talk turned on a recent lawsuit, and the languid one said it was inconceivable that the woman concerned could have been such a coward in relation to the man, Glory protested that it was just as natural for a woman to be in fear of a man (if she loved him) as to be afraid of a mouse or to look under the bed.

“_Ma chère_,” said a dainty little lady sitting next but one (she had come to London to perform in a silent play), “they tells me you's half my countrywoman. All right. Will you not speak de French to poor me?” And when Glory did so the little one clapped her hands and declared she had never heard the English speak French before.

“Say French-cum-Irish,” said Glory, “or, rather, French which begat Irish, which begat Manx!”

“Original, isn't she?” said somebody who was laughing.

“Like a sea-gull among so many pigeons!” said somebody else, and the hothouse airs of the languid lady were lost as in a fresh gust from the salt sea.

But her spirits subsided the moment she had recrossed the threshold. As they were going home in the cab, past the hospital and down Piccadilly. Rosa, who was proud and happy, said: “There! All society isn't stupid and insipid, you see; and there are members of your own profession who try to live up to the ideal of moral character attainable by a gentleman in England even yet.”

“Yes, no doubt... But, Rosa, there's another kind of man altogether, whose love has the reverence of a religion, and if I ever meet a man like that--one who is ready to trample all the world under his feet for me--I think--yes, I really think I shall leave everything behind and follow him.”

“Leave everything behind, indeed! That _would_ be pretty! When everything yields before you, too, and all the world and his wife are waiting to shout your praises!”

Rosa had gone to her office, and Glory was turning over some designs for stage costumes, when Liza came in to say that the “Farver” was coming upstairs.