The Christian Part 23

"Get yoursel' some flesh on your bones first, man. It's easy to see ye've no been sleeping or eating these days and days together."

"That's nothing--nothing at all. G.o.d can not take half your soul. You must give yourself entirely."

"Eh, laddie, laddie, I feared me this was what ye were coming til. But a man can not bury himself before he is dead. He may bury the half of himself, but is it the better half? What of his thoughts--his wandering thoughts? Choose for yoursel', though, and if you must go--if you must hide yoursel' forever, and this is the last I'm to see of ye--ye may kiss me, laddie--I'm old enough, surely.--Go on, James, man, what for are ye sitting up there staring?"

When John Storm returned to his room he found a letter from Parson Quayle. It was a good-natured, cackling epistle, full of sweet nothings about Glory and the hospital, about Peel and the discovery of ancient ruins in the graveyards of the treen chapels, but it closed with this postscript:

"You will remember old Chalse, a sort of itinerant beggar and the privileged pet of everybody. The silly old gawk has got hold of your father and has actually made the old man believe that you are bewitched!

Some one has put the evil eye on you--some woman it would seem--and that is the reason why you have broken away and behaved so strangely! It is most extraordinary. That such a foolish superst.i.tion should have taken hold of a man like your father is really quite astonishing, but if it will only soften his rancour against you and help to restore peace we may perhaps forgive the distrust of Providence and the outrage on common sense. All's well that ends well, you know, and we shall all be happy."

XIX.

"Martha's.

"Lost, stolen, or strayed--a man, a clergyman, answers to the name of John Storm. Or rather he does not answer, having allowed himself to be written to twice without making so much as a yap or a yowl by way of reply. Last seen six days ago, when he was suffering from the sulks, after being in a de'il of a temper, with a helpless and innocent maiden who 'doesn't know nothin',' that can have given him offence. Any one giving information of his welfare and whereabouts to the said H. and I.

M. will be generously and appropriately rewarded.

"But, soberly, my dear John Storm, what has become of you? Where are you, and whatever have you been doing since the day of the dreadful inquisition? Frightful rumours are flying through the air like knives, and they cut and wound a poor girl woefully. Therefore be good enough to reply by return of post--and in person.

"Meantime please accept it as a proof of my eternal regard that after two knock-down blows received in silence I am once more coming up smiling. Know, then, that Mr. Drake has justified all expectations, having compelled Lord Robert to provide for Polly, who is now safely ensconced in her own country castle somewhere in St. John's Wood, furnished to hand with servants and va.s.sals complete. Thus you will be charmed to observe in me the growth of the prophetic instinct, for you will remember my positive prediction that if a girl were in trouble, and the necessity arose, Mr. Drake would be the first to help her. Of course, he had a great deal to say that was as sweet as syrup on the loyalty of my own friendship also, and he expended much beautiful rhetoric on yourself as well. It seems that you are one of those who follow the impulse of the heart entirely, while the rest of us divide our allegiance with the head; and if you display sometimes the severity of a tyrant of our s.e.x, that is only to be set down as another proof of your regard and of the elevation of the pedestal whereon you desire us to be placed. Thus he reconciles me to the harmony of the universe, and makes all things easy and agreeable.

"This being the case, I have now to inform you that Polly's baby has come, having hastened his arrival (it is a man, bless it!) owing either to the tears or the terrors of the crocodile. And being on night duty now, and therefore at liberty from 6.30 to 8.30, I intend to pay him my first call of ceremony this evening, when anybody else would be welcome to accompany me who might be willing to come to his shrine of innocence and love in the spirit of the wise men of the East. But, lest anybody _should_ inquire for me at the hospital at the first of the hours aforesaid, this is to give warning that the White Owl has expressly forbidden all intercourse between the members of her staff and the discharged and dishonoured mother. Set it down to my spirit of contradiction that I intend to disregard the mandate, though I am only too well aware that the poor discharged and dishonoured one has no other idea of friendship than that of a loyalty in which she shares but is not sharing. Of course, woman is born to such selfishness as the sparks fly upward; but if I should ever meet with a man who isn't I will just give myself up to him--body and soul and belongings--unless he has a wife or other enc.u.mbrance already and is booked for this world, and in that event I will enter into my own recognisances and be bound over to him for the next. Glory."

At six-thirty that evening Glory stood waiting in the portico of the hospital, but John Storm did not come. At seven she was ringing at the bell of a little house in St. John's Wood that stood behind a high wall and had an iron grating in the garden door. The bell was answered by a good-natured, slack-looking servant, who was friendly, and even familiar in a moment.

"Are you the young lady from the hospital? The missis told me about you.

I'm Liza, and come upstairs--Yes, doing nicely, thank you, both of 'em is--and mind your head, miss."

Polly was in a little bandbox of a bedroom, looking more pink and white than ever against the linen of her frilled pillow slips. By the bedside a woman of uncertain age in deep mourning, with little twinkling eyes and fat cheeks, was rocking the baby on her knee and babbling over it in words of maudlin endearment.

"Bless it, 'ow it do notice! Boo-loo-loo!"

Glory leaned over the little one and p.r.o.nounced it the prettiest baby she had ever seen.

"Syme 'ere miss. There ain't sech another in all London! It's jest the sort of baby you can love. Pore little thing, it's quite took to me already, as if it wanted to enkirridge you, my dear."

"This is Mrs. Jupe," said Polly, "and she's going to take baby to nurse."

"Boo-loo-loo-boo! And a nice new cradle's awaiting of it afront of the fire in my little back parlour. Boo-loo!"

"But surely you're never going to part with your baby!" said Glory.

"Why, what do you suppose, dear? Do you think I'm going to be tied to a child all my days, and never be able to go anywhere or do anything or amuse myself at all?"

"Jest that. It'll be to our mootual benefit, as I said when I answered your advertis.e.m.e.nt."

Glory asked the woman if she was married and had any children of her own.

"Me, miss? I've been married eleven years, and I've allwiz prayed the dear Lord to gimme childring. Got any? On'y one little girl; but I want to adopt another from the birth, so as to have something to love when my own's growed up."

Glory supposed that Polly could see her baby at any time, but the woman answered doubtfully:

"Can she see baby? Well, I would rather not, certingly. If I tyke it I want to feel it is syme as my very own and do my dooty by it, pore thing! And if the mother were coming and going I should allwiz feel as she 'ad the first claim."

Polly showed no interest in the conversation until Mrs. Jupe asked for the name of her "friend," in lieu of eighty pounds that were to be paid down on delivery of the child.

"Come, myke up your mind, my dear, and let me tyke it away at onct. Give me 'is nyme, that's good enough for me."

After some hesitation Glory gave Lord Robert's name and address, and the woman prepared the child for its departure.

"Don't tyke on so, my dear. 'Tain't sech a great crime, and many a laidy of serciety 'as done worse."

At the street door Glory asked Mrs. Jupe for her own address, and the woman gave her a card, saying if she ever wanted to leave the hospital it would be easy to help such a fine-looking young woman as she was to make a bit of living for herself.

Polly recovered speedily from the trouble of the child's departure, and presently a.s.sumed an easy and almost patronizing tone toward Glory, pretending to be amused and even a little indignant when asked how soon she expected to be fit for business again, and able to do without Lord Robert's a.s.sistance.

"To tell you the truth," she said, "I was as much to blame as he was. I wanted to escape from the drudgery of the hospital, and I knew he would take me when the time came."

Glory left early, vowing in her heart she would come no more. When she changed her omnibus at Piccadilly the Circus was very full of women.

"Letter for you, nurse," said the porter as she entered the hospital. It was from John Storm.

"Dear Glory: I have at length decided to enter the Brotherhood at Bishopsgate Street, and I am to go into the monastery this evening. It is not as a visitor that I am going this time, but as a postulant or novice and in the hope of becoming worthy in due course to take the vows of lifelong consecration. Therefore I am writing to you probably for the last time, and parting from you perhaps forever.

"Since we came up to London together I have suffered many shocks and disappointments, and I seem to have been torn in ribbons. My cherished dreams have proved to be delusions; the palaces I had built up for myself have turned out to be pasteboard, gilt, and rubbish; I have been robbed of all my jewels, or they have shown themselves to be shingle stones. In this condition of shame and disillusionment I am now resolved to escape at the same time from the world and from myself, for I am tired of both alike, and already I feel as if a great weight had been lifted off me.

"But I wish to speak of you. You must have thought me cantankerous, and so I have been sometimes, but always by conviction and on principle. I could not countenance the fashionable morality that is corrupting the manhood of the laity, or endure the toleration that is making the clergy thoroughly wicked; I could not without a pang see you cater to the world's appet.i.tes or be drawn into its gaieties and frivolities; and it was agony to me to fear that a girl of your pure if pa.s.sionate nature might perhaps fall a victim to a gamester in life's follies--an actor indulging a pastime--a mere cheat.

"And what you tell me of your friend's altered circ.u.mstances does not relieve me of such anxieties. The man who has deceived a girl once is likely to deceive her again. Short of marriage itself, such connections should be cut off entirely, whatever the price. When they are maintained in relations of liberty the victim is sure to be further victimized, and her last state is always worse than the first.

"However, I do not wish to blame anybody, least of all you, who have done everything for the best, and especially now when I am parting from you forever. You have never realized how much you have been to me, and I doubt if I knew it myself until to-day. You know how I was brought up--with a solitary old man--G.o.d be with him!--who tried to be good to me for the sake of his ambitions, and to love me for the sake of his revenge. I never knew my mother, I never had a sister, and I can never have a wife. You were all three to me and yourself besides. There were no women in our household, and you stood for woman in my life. I have never told you this before, but now I tell it as a dying man whispers his secret with his parting breath.

"I have written my letters of farewell--one to my father, asking his forgiveness if I have done him any wrong; one to my uncle, with my love and thanks; and one to your good old grandfather, giving up my solemn and sacred trust of you. My conduct will of course be condemned as weak and foolish from many points of view, but by my departure some difficulties will be removed, and for the rest I have come to see that everything is done by the spirit and nothing by the flesh, and that by prayer and fasting I can help and protect you more than by counsel and advice. Thus everything is for the best.

"The rule under which the Brothers live in community forbids them to write and receive letters without special permission, or even to think too constantly of the world outside; and now that I am on the eve of that new life, memories of the old one keep crowding on me as on a drowning man. But they are all of one period--the days when we were at Peel in your sweet little island, before the vain and cruel world came in between us, when you were a simple, merry girl, and I was little more than a happy boy, and we went plunging and laughing through your bright blue sea together.

"But earth's joys grow very dim and its glories are fading. That also is for the best. I have my Koh-i-noor--my desire to depart and surrender my life to G.o.d. John Storm."

"Anything wrong, nurse? Feeling ill, ain't ye? Only dizzy a bit?

Unpleasant news from home, perhaps?"

"No, something else. Let me sit in your room, porter."