The Christian Part 36

The ladies returned to the dressing-room again and again in the coa.r.s.e of the performance, and when not occupied with the changing of their dresses they amused themselves variously. Sometimes they smoked cigarettes, sometimes sent Collins for brandy and soda, sometimes talked of their friends in front: 'Lord Johnny's 'ere again. See 'im in the prompt box? It's 'is sixtieth night this piece, and there's only been sixty-nine of the run--and sometimes they discussed the audience generally: "Don't know what's a-matter with 'em to-night; ye may work yer eyes out and ye can't get a 'and."

The curtain came down at length, the outdoor costumes were resumed, the call-boy cried "Carriages, please," the ladies answered "Right ye are, Tommy," her plump ladyship nodded to Glory, "You'll do middling, my dear, when ye get yer 'and in"; and then nothing was left but the dark stage, the blank house, and the "Good-night, miss," of the porter at the stage door.

So these were favourites of the footlights! And Glory Quayle was dressing and undressing them and preparing them for the stage! Next morning, before rising, Glory tried to think it out. Were they so very beautiful? Glory stretched up in bed to look at herself in the gla.s.s, and lay down again with a smile. Were they so much cleverer than other people? It was foolishness to think of it, for they were as empty as a drum. There must be some explanation if a girl could only find it out.

The second night at the theatre pa.s.sed much like the first, except that the ladies were visited between the acts by a group of fellow-artistes from another company, and then the free-and-easy manners of familiar intercourse gave way to a style that was most circ.u.mspect and precise, and, after the fashion of great ladies, they talked together of morning calls and leaving cards and five-o'clock tea.

There was a scene in the performance in which the three girls sang together, and Glory crept out to the head of the stairs to listen. When she returned to the dressing-room her heart was bounding, and her eyes, as she saw them in the gla.s.s, seemed to be leaping out of her head. It was ridiculous! To think of all that fame, all that fuss about voices like those, about singing like that, while she--if she could only get a hearing!

But the cloud had chased the sunshine from her face in a moment, and she was murmuring again, "O G.o.d, do not punish a vain, presumptuous creature!"

All the same she felt happy and joyous, and on the third night she was down at the theatre earlier than the other dressers, and was singing to herself as she laid out the costumes, for her heart was beginning to be light. Suddenly she became aware of some one standing at the open door.

It was an elderly man, with a bald head and an owlish face. He was the stage manager; his name was Sefton.

"Go on, my girl," he said. "If you've got a voice like that, why don't you let somebody hear it?"

Her plump ladyship arrived late that night, and her companions were dressed and waiting when she swept into the room like a bat with outstretched wings, crying: "Out o' the wy! Betty Bellman's coming!

She's lyte."

There were numerous little carpings, backbitings, and hypocrisies during the evening, and they reached a climax when Betty said, "Lord Bobbie is coming to-night, my dear." "Not if _I_ know it, my love," said the tall lady. "We are goin' to supper at the Nell Gwynne Club, dearest."

"Surprised at ye, my darling." "_You_ are a nice one to preach, my pet!"

After that encounter two of their ladyships, who were kissing and hugging on the stage, were no longer on speaking terms in the dressing-room, and as soon as might be after the curtain had fallen, the tall lady and the little one swept out of the place with mysterious asides about a "friend being a friend," and "not staying there to see nothing done shabby."

"If she don't like she needn't, my dear," said the boycotted one, and then she dismissed Glory for the night with a message to the friend who would be waiting on the stage.

The atmosphere of the dressing-room had become oppressive and stifling that night, and, notwithstanding the exaltation of her spirits since the stage manager had spoken to her, Glory was sick and ashamed. The fires of her ambition were struggling to burn under the drenching showers that had fallen upon her modesty, and she felt confused and compromised.

As she stepped down the stairs the curtain was drawn up, the auditorium was a void, the stage dark, save for a single gas jet that burned at the prompter's wing, and a gentleman in evening dress was walking to and fro by the extinguished footlights. She was about to step up to the man when she recognised him, and turning on her heel she hurried away. It was Lord Robert Ure, and the memory that had troubled her at the first sight of Betty was of the woman who had ridden with Polly Love on the day of the Lord Mayor's show.

Feeling hot and foolish and afraid, she was scurrying through the dark pa.s.sages when some one called her. It was the stage manager.

"I should like to hear your voice again, my dear. Come down at eleven in the morning, sharp. The leader of the orchestra will be here to play."

She made some confused answer of a.s.sent, and then found herself in the back seat, panting audibly and taking long breaths of the cold night air. She was dizzy and was feeling, as she had never felt before, that she wanted some one to lean upon. If anybody had said to her at that moment, "Come out of the atmosphere of that hot-bed, my child, it is full of danger and the germs of death," she would have left everything behind her and followed him, whatever the cost or sacrifice. But she had no one, and the pain of her yearning and the misery of her shame were choking her.

Before going home she walked over to the hospital; but no, there was still no letter from John Storm. There was one from Drake, many days overdue:

"Dear Glory: Hearing that you call for your letters, I write to ask if you will not let me know where you are and how the world is using you.

Since the day we parted in St. James's Park I have often spoken of you to my friend Miss Macquarrie, and I am angry with myself when I remember what remarkable talents you have, and that they are only waiting for the right use to be made of them.

"Yours most kindly,

"F. H. N. Drake."

"Many thanks, good Late-i'-th'-day," she thought, and she was crushing the latter in her hand when she saw there was a postscript:

"P. S.--This being the Christmas season, I have given myself the pleasure of sending a parcel of Yuletide goodies to your dear old grandfather and his sweet and simple household; but as they have doubtless long forgotten me, and I do not wish to embarra.s.s them with, unnecessary obligations, I will ask you not to help them to the identification of its source."

She straightened out the letter and folded it, put it in her pocket and returned home. Another letter was waiting for her there. It was from the parson:

"So you sent us a Christmas-box after all! That was just like my runaway, all innocent acting and make-believe. What joy we had of it!--Rachel and myself, I mean, for we had to carry on the fiction that Aunt Anna knew nothing about it, she being vexed at the thought of our spendthrift spending so much money. Chalse brought it into the parlour while Anna was upstairs, and it might have been the ark going up to Jerusalem it entered in such solemn stillness. Oh, dear! oh, dear! The bun-loaf, and the almonds, and the cheese, and the turkey, and the pound of tobacco, and the mull of snuff! On account of Anna everything had to be conducted in great quietness, but it was a terrible leaky sort of silence, I fear, and there were hot and hissing whispers. G.o.d bless you for your thought and care of us! Coming so timely, it is like my dear one herself, a gift that cometh from the Lord; and when people ask me if I am not afraid that my granddaughter should be all alone in that great and wicked Babylon, I tell them: 'No; you don't know my Glory; she is all courage and nerve and power, a perfect bow of steel, quivering with sympathy and strength.'"

IX.

Christmas had come and gone at the Brotherhood, and yet the project was unfulfilled. John himself had delayed its fulfilment from one trivial cause after another. The night was too dark or not dark enough; the moon shone or was not shining. His real obstacle was his superst.i.tious fear.

The scheme was very easy of execution, and the Father himself had made it so. This, and the Father's trust in him, had almost wrecked the enterprise. Only his own secret anxieties, which were interpreted to his consciousness by the sight of Brother Paul's wasting face, sufficed to sustain his purpose.

"The man's dying. It can not be unpleasing to G.o.d."

He said this to himself again and again, as one presses the pain in one's side to make sure it is still there. Under the shadow of the crisis his character was going to ruin. He grew cunning and hypocritical, and could do nothing that was not false in reality or appearance. When the Father pa.s.sed him he would drop his head, and it was taken for contrition, and he was commended for humility.

It was now the last day of the year, and therefore the last of his duty at the door.

"It must be to-night," he whispered, as Paul pa.s.sed him.

Paul nodded. Since the plan of escape had been projected he had lost all will of his own and become pa.s.sive and inert.

How the day lingered! And when the night came it dragged along with feet of lead! It seemed as if the hour of evening recreation would never end. Certain of the brothers who had been away on preaching missions throughout the country had returned for the Feast of the Circ.u.mcision, and the house was bright with fresh faces and cheerful voices. John thought he had never before heard so much laughter in the monastery.

But the bell rang for Compline, and the brothers pa.s.sed into church. It was a cold night, the snow was trodden hard, and the wind was rising.

The service ended, and the brothers returned to the house with clasped hands and pa.s.sed up to their cells in silence, leaving Brother Paul at his penance in the church.

Finally the Father put up his hood and went out to lock the gate, and the dog, who took this for his signal, shambled up and followed him.

When he returned he shuddered and shrugged his shoulders.

"A bitter night, my son," he said. "It's like courting death to go out in it. Heaven help all homeless wanderers on a night like this!"

He was wiping the snow from his slippers.

"So this is the last day of your penance, Brother Storm, and to-morrow morning you will join us in the community room. You have done well; you have fought a good fight and resisted the a.s.saults of Satan. Good-night to you, my son, and G.o.d bless you!"

He took a few steps forward and then stopped. "By the way, I promised you the Life of Pere Lacordaire, and you might come to my room and fetch it."

The Father's room was on the ground floor to the left of the staircase, and it was entered from a corridor which cut the house across the middle. The rooms that opened out of this corridor to the front looked on the courtyard, and those to the back looked across the City in the direction of the Thames. The Father's room opened to the back. It was as bare of ornament as any of the cells, but it had a small fire, and a writing-table on which a lamp was burning.

As they entered the room together the Father hung the key of the gate on one of many hooks above the bed. It was the third hook from the end nearest the window, and the key was an old one with very few wards. John watched all this, and even observed that there were books on the floor, and that a man might stumble if he did not walk warily. The Father picked up one of them.

"This is the book, my son. A most precious doc.u.ment, the very mirror of a living human soul. What touched me most, perhaps, were the Father's references to his mother. A monk may not have his mother to himself, and if the love of woman is much to him he is miserable indeed until he has fixed his eyes on the most blessed among women. But the religious life does not destroy natural affection. It only kills in order to bring forth new life. The corn of wheat dies that it may live again. That is the true Christian asceticism, my son, and so it is with our vows.

Goodnight!"