Chapter 45

“My lords and gentlemen, I have long had it in mind to say something--something of importance--and I feel the impulse to say it now. We have been doing our best with legislation affecting the Church, to give due reality and true life to its relation with the State. But the longer I live the more I feel that that relation is in itself a false one, injurious and even dangerous to both alike. Never in history, so far as I know, and certainly never within my own experience, has it been possible to maintain the union of Church and State without frequent adultery and corruption. The effort to do so has resulted in manifest impostures in sacred things, in ceremonies without spiritual significance, and in gross travesties of the solemn, worship of God. Speaking of our own Church, I will not disguise my belief that, but for the good and true men who are always to be found within its pale, it could not survive the frequent disregard of principles which lie deep in the theory of Christianity. Its epicureanism, its regard for the interests of the purse, its tendency to rank the administrator above the apostle, are weeds that spring up out of the soil of its marriage with the State. And when I think of the anomalies and inequalities of its internal government, of its countless poor clergy, and of its lords and princes, above all when I remember its apostolic pretensions and the certainty that he who attempts to live within the Church the real life of the apostles will incur the risk of that martyrdom which it has always pronounced against innovators, I can not but believe that the consciences of many Churchmen would be glad to be relieved of a burden of State temptation which they feel to be hurtful and intolerable--to render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's. Be that as it may, I have now to tell you that feeling this question to be paramount, yet despairing of dealing with it in the few years that old age has left to me, I have concluded to resign my office. It is for some younger statesman to fight this battle of the separation between the spiritual and the temporal in the interests of true religion and true civilization. God grant he may be a Christian man, and God speed and bless him!”

The cabinet broke up with many unwonted expressions of affection for the old leader, and many requests that he should “think again” over the step he contemplated. But every one knew that he had set his heart on an impossible enterprise, and every one felt that behind it lay the painful impulse of an incident reported at length in the newspapers that morning.

Left alone in the cabinet room, the Prime Minister drew up his chair before the empty grate and gave way to tender memories. He thought of John Storm and the wreck his life had fallen to; of John's mother and her brave renunciation of love; and finally of himself and his near retirement. A spasm of the old lust of power came over him, and he saw himself--to-morrow, next day, next week--delivering up his seals of office to the Queen, and then--the next day after that--getting up from this chair for the last time and going out of this room to return to it no more--his work done, his life ended.

It was at that moment the footman came to say that a young lady in the dress of a nurse was waiting in the hall. “A messenger from John,” he thought. And, as he rose to receive her, heavily, wearily, and with the burden of his years upon him, Glory came into the room with her quivering face and two great tear-drops standing in her eyes, but glowing with youth and health and courage.

“Sit down, sit down. But----” looking at her again, “have you been here before?”

“Never, my lord.”

“I have seen you somewhere.”

“I was an actress once. And I am a friend of John's.”

“Of John's? Then you are----”

“I am Glory.”

“Glory! And so we meet at last, dear lady! But I _have_ seen you before. When he spoke of you, but did not bring you to see me, I took a stolen glance at the theatre myself----”

“I have left it, my lord.”

“Left it?”

And then she told him what she had done. His old eyes glistened and his head sank into his breast.

“It wasn't that I came to talk about, my lord, but another and more painful matter.”

“Can I relieve you of the burden of your message, my child? It has reached me already. It is in all the morning newspapers.”

“I didn't think of that. Still the doctor told me to----”

“What does the doctor say about him?”

“He says----”

“Yes?”

“He says we are going to lose him.”

“I have sent for a great surgeon--But no doubt it is past help. Poor boy! It seems only yesterday he came up to London so full of hope and expectation. I can see him now with his great eyes, sitting in that chair you occupy, talking of his plans and purposes. Poor John! To think he should come to this! But these tumultuous souls whose hearts are battlefields, when the battle is over what can be left but a waste?”

Glory's eyes had dried of themselves and she was looking at the old man with an expression of pain, but he went on without observing her:

“It is one of the dark riddles of the inscrutable Power which rules over life that the good man can go under like that, while the evil one lives and prospers.”

He rose and walked to and fro before the fireplace. “Ah, well! The years bring me an ever-deepening sadness, an ever-increasing sense of our impotence to diminish, the infinite sorrow of the world.”

Then he looked down at Glory and said: “But I can hardly forgive him that he has thrown away so much for so little. And when I think of you, my child, and of all that might have been, and then of the bad end he has come to----”

“But I don't call it coming to a bad end, sir,” said Glory in a quivering voice.

“No? To be torn and buffeted and trampled down in the streets?”

“What of it? He might have died of old age in his bed and yet come to a worse end than that.”

“True, but still----”

“If that is coming to a bad end I shall have to believe that my father, who was a missionary, came to a bad end too when he was killed by the fevers of Africa. Every martyr comes to a bad end if that is a bad ending. And so does everybody who is brave and true and does good to humanity and is willing to die for it. But it isn't bad. It's glorious! I would rather be the daughter of a man who died like that than be the daughter of an earl, and if I could have been the wife of one who was torn and trampled down, in the streets by the very people----”

But her face, which had been aflame, broke into tears again and her voice failed her. The old man could not speak, and there was silence for a moment. Then she recovered herself and said quietly:

“I came to ask you if you could do something for me.”

“What is it?”

“You may have heard that John wished me to marry him?”

“Would to God you had done so!”

“That was when everybody was praising him.”

“Well?”

“Everybody is abusing him now, and railing at him and insulting him.”

“Well?”

“I want to marry him at last if there is a way--if you think it is possible and can be managed.”

“But you say he is a dying man!”

“That's why! When he comes to himself he will be thinking as you think, that his life has been a failure, and I want somebody to be there and say: 'It isn't, it is only beginning, it is the grain of mustard seed that _must_ die, but it will live in the heart of humanity for ages and ages to come; and I would rather take up your name, injured and insulted as it is, than win all the glory the world has in it.'”

The tears were coursing down the old man's face, and for some minutes he did not attempt to speak. Then he said:

“What you propose is quite possible. It will be a canonical marriage, but it will take some little time to arrange. I must send across to Lambeth Palace. Toward evening I can go down to where he lies and take the license with me. Meantime speak to a clergyman and have everything in readiness.”

He walked with Glory down the long corridor to the door, and there he kissed her on the forehead and said:

“I've long known that a woman can be brave, but meeting you this morning has taught me something else, my child. Time and again I thought John's love of you was near to madness. He was ready to give up everything for it--everything! And he was right! Love like yours is the pearl of pearls, and he who wins it is a prince of princes!”

* * * * *

Later the same day, when the Prime Minister was sitting alone in his room, a member of his cabinet brought him an evening paper containing an article which was making a deep impression in London. It was understood to be written by a journalist of Jewish extraction:

“'HIS BLOOD BE ON US AND ON OUR CHILDREN.'

“This prediction has been for eighteen hundred years the expression of an historical truth. That the whole Jewish nation, and not Pilate or the rabble of Jerusalem, killed Jesus is a fact which every Jew has been made to feel down to the present day. But let the Christian nation that is without sin toward the Founder of Christianity first cast a stone at the Jews. If it is true, as Jesus himself said, that he who offers a cup of cold water to the least of his little ones offers it to him, then it is also true that he who inflicts torture and death on his followers crucifies him afresh. The unhappy man who has been miserably murdered in the slums of Westminster was a follower of Jesus if ever there lived one, and whosoever the actual persons may be who are guilty of his death, the true culprit is the Christian nation which has inflicted mockeries and insults on everybody who has dared to stand alone under the ensign of Christ.

“Let us not be led away by sneers. This man, whatever his errors, his weaknesses, his self-delusions, and his many human failings, was a Christian. He was the prophet of woman in relation to humanity as hardly any one since Jesus has ever been. And he is hounded out of life. Thus, after nineteen centuries, Christianity presents the same characteristics of frightful tyranny which disfigured the old Jewish law. 'We have a law, and by our law he ought to die.' Such is the sentence still pronounced on reformers in a country where civil and religious laws are confounded. God grant the other half of that doom may not also come true--'His blood be on us and on our children!'”

XV.

There was a crowd of people of all sorts outside the tenement house when Glory returned to Brown's Square, and even the stairs were thronged with them. “The nurse!” they whispered as Glory appeared, and they made a way for her. Aggie was on the landing, wiping her eyes and answering the questions of strangers, being half afraid of the notoriety her poor room was achieving and half proud of it.

“The laidy 'as came, Miss Gloria, and she sent me to tell you to wyte 'ere for 'er a minute.”

Then putting her head in at the open doer she beckoned and Mrs. Callender came out.

“Hush! He's coming to. The poor laddie! He's been calling for ye, and calling and calling. But he thinks ye're in heaven together, seemingly, so ye must no say anything to shock him. Come your ways in now, and tak' care, lassie.”

John was still wandering, and the light of another world was in his eyes, but he was smiling, and he appeared to see.

“Where is she?” he said in the toneless voice of one who talks in his sleep.

“She's here now. Look! She's close beside ye.”

Glory advanced a step and stood beside the bed, struggling with herself not to fall upon his breast. He looked at her with a smile, but without any surprise, and said:

“I knew that you would come to meet me, Glory! How happy you look! We shall both be happy now.”

Then his eyes wandered about the poor, ill-furnished apartment, and he said:

“How beautiful it is here! And how lightsome the air is! Look! The golden gates! And the seven golden candlesticks! And the sea of glass like unto crystal! And all the innumerable company of the angels!”

Aggie, who had returned to the room, was crying audibly.

“Are you crying. Glory? Foolish child to cry! But I know--I understand! Put your dear hand in mine, my child, and we will go together to God's throne and say: 'Father, you must forgive us two. We were but man and woman, and we could not help but love each other, though it was a fault, and for one of us it was a sin.' And God will forgive us, because he made us so, and because God is the God of love.”

Glory could bear no more. “John!” she whispered.

He raised himself on his elbow and held his head aslant, like one who listens to a sound that comes from a distance.

“John!”

“That's Glory's voice.”

“It _is_ Glory, dearest.”'

The serenity in his face gave way to a look of bewilderment.

“But Glory is dead.”

“No, dear, she is alive, and she will never leave you again.”

“What place is this?”

“This is Aggie's room.”

“Aggie?”

“Don't you remember Aggie? One of the poor girls you fought and worked for.”

“Is it your spirit, Glory?”

“It is myself, dearest, my very, very self.”

Then a great joy came into his eyes, his breast heaved, his breath came quick, and without a word more he stretched out his arms.

* * * * *

“It is Glory! She is alive! My God! O my God!”

* * * * *

“Do you forgive me, Glory?”

“Forgive? There is nothing to forgive you for--except loving me too well.”

“My darling! My darling!”

* * * * *

“I thought I was in heaven, Glory, but I am like poor Buckingham--only half way to it yet. Have I been unconscious?”

Glory nodded her head.

“Long?”

“Since last night.”

“Ah, I remember everything now. I was knocked down in the streets, wasn't I? The men did it--Pincher, Hawking, and the rest.”

“They shall be punished, John,” said Glory in a quivering voice. “As sure as heaven's above us and there's law in the land----”

“Aye, aye, laddie” (from somewhere by the door), “mak' yersel' sure o' that. There'll be never a man o' them but he'll hang for it same as a polecat on a barn gate.”

But John shook his head. “Poor fellows! They didn't understand. When they come to see what they've done---- 'Lord, Lord! lay not this sin to their charge.'”

* * * * *

She had wiped away the tears that sprung to her eyes and was sitting by his side and smiling. Her white teeth were showing, her red lips were twitching, and her face was full of sunshine. He was holding her hand and gazing at her constantly as if he could not allow himself to lose sight of her for a moment.

“But I'm half sorry, for all that, Glory,” he said.

“Sorry?”

“That we are not both in the other world, for there you were my bride, I remember, and all our pains were over.”

Then her sweet face coloured up to the forehead, and she leaned over the bed and whispered, “Ask me to be your bride in this one, dearest.”

“I can't! I daren't!”

“Are you thinking of the vows?”

“No!” emphatically. “But--I am a dying man--I know that quite well. And what right have I----”

She gave a little gay toss of her golden head. “Pooh! Nobody was ever married because he had a _right_ to be exactly.”

“But there is your own profession--your great career.”

She shook her head gravely. “That's all over now.”

“Eh?” reaching up on his elbow.

“When you had gone and nearly everybody was deserting your work, I thought I should like to take up a part of it.”

“And did you?”

She nodded.

“Blessed be God! Oh, God is very good!” and he lay back and panted.

She laughed nervously. “Well, are you determined to make me ashamed? Am I to throw myself at your head, sir? Or perhaps you are going to refuse me, after all.”

“But why should I burden all the years of your life with the name of a fallen man? I am dying in disgrace, Glory.”

“No, but in honour--great, great honour! These few bad days will be forgotten soon, dearest--quite, quite forgotten. And in the future time people will come to me and say--girls, dearest, brave, brave girls, who are fighting the battle of life like men--they will come and say: 'And did you know him? Did you really, really know him?' And I will smile triumphantly and answer them 'Yes, for he loved me, and he is mine and I am his forever and forever!'”

“It would be beautiful! We could not come together in this world; but to be united for all eternity on the threshold of the next----”

“There! Say no more about it, for it's all arranged anyhow. The Father has been persuaded to read the service, and the Prime Minister is to bring the Archbishop's license, and it's to be to-day--this evening--and--and I'm not the first woman who has settled everything herself!”

Then she began to laugh, and he laughed with her, and they laughed together in spite of his weakness and pain. At the next moment she was gone like a gleam of sunshine before a cloud, and Mrs. Callender had come back to the bedside, tying up the strings of her old-fashioned bonnet.

“She's gold, laddie, that's what yon Glory is--just gold!”

“Aye, tried in the fire and tested,” he replied, and then the back of his head began to throb fiercely.

Glory had fled out of the room to cry, and Mrs. Callender joined her on the landing. “I maun awa', lassie. I'd like fine to stop wi' ye, but I can't. It minds me of the time my Alec left me, and that's forty lang years the day, but he seems to have been with me ever syne.”

* * * * *

“Where's Glory?”

“She's coming, Father,” said Aggie, and at the sound of her name Glory wiped her eyes and returned.

“And was it by my being lost that you came here to Westminster and found me?”

“Yes, and myself as well.”

“And I thought my life had been wasted! When one thinks of God's designs one feels humble--humble as the grass at one's feet----But are you sure you will never regret?”

“Never!”

“Nor look back?”

She tossed her head again. “Call me Mrs. Lot at once, and have done with it.”

“It's wonderful! What a glorious work is before you, Glory! You'll take it up where I have left it, and carry it on and on. You are nobler than I am, and stronger, far stronger, and purer and braver. And haven't I said all along that what the world wants now is a great woman? I had the pith of it all, though I saw the true light--but I was not worthy. I had sinned and fallen, and didn't know my own heart, and was not fit to enter into the promised land. It is something, nevertheless, that I see it a long way off. And if I have been taken up to Sinai and heard the thunders of the everlasting law----”

“Hush, dear! Somebody is coming.”

It was the great surgeon whom the Prime Minister had sent for. He examined the injuries carefully and gave certain instructions. “Mind you do this, Sister,” and that, and the other. But Glory could see that he had no hope. To relieve the pain in the head he wanted to administer morphia, but John refused to have it.

“I am going into the presence of the King,” he said. “Let me have all my wits about me.”

While the doctor was there the police sergeant returned with a magistrate and the reporter. “Sorry to intrude, but hearing your patient was now conscious----” and then he prepared to take John's deposition.

The reporter opened his notebook, the police magistrate stood at the foot of the bed, the doctor at one side of it and Glory at the other side, holding John's hand and quivering.

“Do you know who struck you, sir?”

There was silence for a moment, and then came “Yes.”

“Who was it?”

There was another pause, and then, “Don't ask me.”

“But your own evidence will be most valuable; and, indeed, down to the present we have no other. Who is it, sir?”

“I can't tell you.”

“But why?”

There was no answer.

“Why not give me the name of the scoundrel who took---- I mean attempted to take your life?”

Then in a voice that was hardly audible, with his head thrown back and his eyes on the ceiling, John said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!”

It was useless to go further. Glory saw the four men to the door.

“You must keep him quiet,” said the doctor. “Not that anything can save him, but he is a man of stubborn will.”

And the police magistrate said, “It may be all very fine to forgive your enemies, but everybody has his duty to society, as well as to himself.”

“Yes, yes,” said Glory, “the world has no room for greater hearts than its own.”

The police magistrate looked at her in bewilderment. “Just so,” he said, and disappeared.

* * * * *

“Where is she now, my girl?”

“She's 'ere, Father.”

“Hush!” said Glory, coming back to the room. “The doctor says you are not to talk so much.”

“Then let me look at you, Glory. Sit here--here--and if I should seem to be suffering you must not mind that, because I am really very happy.”

Just then an organ-man in the street began to play. Glory thought the music might disturb John, and she was going to send Aggie to stop it. But his face brightened and he said: “Sing for me, Glory. Let me hear your voice.”

The organ was playing a “coon song,” and she sang the words of it. They were simple words, childish words, almost babyish, but full of tenderness and love. The little black boy could think of nothing but his Loo-loo. In the night when he was sleeping he awoke and he was weeping, for he was always, always dreaming of his Loo-loo, his Loo-loo!

When the song was finished they took hands and talked in whispers, though they were alone in the room now, and nobody could hear them. His white face was very bright, and her moist eyes were full of merriment. They grew foolish in their tenderness and played with each other like little children. There were recollections of their early life in the little island home, memories of years concentrated into an hour--humorous stories and touches of mimicry. “'O Lord, open thou our lips----Where are you, Neilus?' 'Aw, here I am, your riverence, and my tongue shall shew forth thy praise.'”

All at once John's face saddened and he said, “It's a pity, though!”

“A pity!”

“I suppose the man who carries the flag always gets 'potted,' as they say. But somebody must carry it.”

Glory felt her tears gathering.

“It's a pity that I have to go before you, Glory.”

She shook her head to keep the tears from flowing, and then answered gaily: “Oh, that's only as it should be. I want a little while to think it all out, you know, and then--then I'll pass over to you, just as we fall asleep at night and pass from day to day.”

* * * * *

And then he lay back with a sigh and said, “Well, I have had a happy end, at all events.”

XVI.

The day had been fine, with a rather fierce sun shining until late in the afternoon, and long white clouds lying motionless in a deep blue sky, like celestial sand-banks in a celestial sea. But the tender and tempered splendour of the evening had come at length, with the sun gone over the housetops to the northwest, and its solemn afterglow spreading round, like the wings of angels sweeping down. London was unusually quiet after the roar and turmoil of the day. The great city lay like a tired ocean. And like an ocean it seemed to sleep, full of its living as well as its dead.

In a little square which stands on the fringe of the slums of Westminster, and has a well-worn church in the middle, and tenement houses, institutions, and workshops around its sides, a strange crowd had gathered. It consisted for the greater part of persons who are generally thought to be beyond the sympathies of life--the “priestesses of society,” who are the lowest among women. But they stood there for hours in silence, or walked about with dazed looks, glancing up at the window of a room on the second story which glittered with the rays of the dying day. Their friend and champion was near to his death in that room, and they were waiting for the last news of him.