The Christian Part 44

Paul was looking up at him with a face full of astonishment.

"Do you really think I did all I could to find her--the nurse, I mean?"

But John had turned his own face away, and there was no answer. Paul tried to say something, but he could not find the words. At last in a choked voice he murmured: "We must keep close together, brother; we are in the same boat now."

And feeling for John's hand, he took it and held it, and they sat for some minutes with bowed heads, as if a ghost were going by.

"There's nothing but prayer and penance and fasting left to us, is there?"

Still John made no reply, and the broken creature began to comfort him.

"We have peace here at all events, and you wouldn't, think what temptations come to you in the world when you've lost somebody, and there seems to be nothing left to live for. Shall I tell you what I did? It was in the early morning and I was standing in a doorway in Piccadilly. The cabs and the crowds were gone, and only the nightmen were there swilling up the dirt of the pavements with their hose-pipes and water. 'My poor girl is lost,' I thought, 'We shall never see one another again. This wicked city has ruined her, and our mother, who was so holy, was fond of her when she was a little child.' And then my heart seemed to freeze up within me... and I did it. You'll think I was mad--I went to the police station and told them I had committed a crime. Yes, indeed, I accused myself of murder, and began to give particulars. It was only when they noticed my habit that I remembered the Father, and then I refused to answer any more questions. They put me in a cell, and that was where I spent the night, and next morning I denied everything, and they let me go."

Then, dropping his voice to a hoa.r.s.e whisper, he said: "That wasn't what brought me back, though. It was the vow. You can't think what a thing the vow is until you've broken it. It's like a hot iron searing your very soul, and if you were dying and at the farthest ends of the earth, and you had to crawl on your hands and knees, you would come back----"

He would have said more, but an attack of coughing silenced him, and when it was over there was a sound of some one moving in the house.

"What is that?"

"It is the Father," said John. "Our voices have wakened him."

Paul struggled to his feet.

"It's only a life of penance and suffering you've come back to, my poor lad."

"That's nothing--nothing at all--But are you sure you think I did everything?"

"You did what you could. Are you going somewhere?"

"Yes, to the Father."

"G.o.d bless you, my lad!"

"And G.o.d bless you too, brother!"

Half an hour later, by the order of the Superior, John Storm, with the help of Brother Andrew and the Father Minister, carried Brother Paul to his cell. The bell had been rung for Lauds, and going up the stairs they pa.s.sed the brothers coming down to service. News of Paul's return had gone through the house like a cutting wind, and certain of the brothers who had gathered in groups on the landings were whispering together, as if the coming back had been a shameful thing which cast discredit on all of them. It wasn't love of rule that had brought the man home again, but broken health and the want of a bed to die upon! Thus they talked under their breath, unconscious of the secret operation of their own hearts.

In a monastery, as elsewhere, failure is the worst disgrace.

John Storm returned to the hall with a firm step and eyes full of resolution. Hardly answering the brothers, who plied him with questions, he pushed through them with long strides, and, taking the key of the outer gate from the place in the alcove where he had left it, he turned toward the Father's room.

The day had dawned, and through the darkness which was lifting in the little room he could see the Father rising from his knees.

"Father!" he cried in an excited voice, and his words, like his breath, came in gusts.

"What is it, my son?"

"Take this key back again. The world is calling me, and I can not trust myself at the door any longer. Put me under the rule of silence and solitude, and shut me up in a cell, or I shall break my obedience and run away as sure as heaven is over us!"

XIV.

Glory awoke on New Year's morning with a little hard lump at her heart, and thought: "How foolish! Am I to give up all my cherished dreams because one man is a scoundrel?"

The struggle might be bitter, but she would not give in. London was the mother of genius. If she destroyed she created also. It was only the weak and the worthless she cast away. The strong she made stronger, the great she made greater. "O G.o.d, give me the life I love!" she thought; "give me a chance; only let me begin--no matter how, no matter where!"

She remembered her impulse of the night before to follow Brother Paul, and the little hard lump at her heart grew bitter. John Storm had gone from her, forgotten her, left her to take care of herself. Very well, so be it! What was the use of thinking? "I hate to be sentimental," she thought.

If Aggie called on Sunday night she would go with her, no matter if it was beginning at the bottom. Others had begun there, and what right had she to expect to begin anywhere else? For the future she would take the world on its own terms and force it to give way. She would conquer this great cruel London, and yet remain a good girl in spite of all.

Such was the mood in which she came down to breakfast, and the first thing that met her eyes was a letter from home. At that her face burned for a moment and her breath came in gusts, but she put the letter into her pocket unopened and tossed her head a little and laughed. "I hate to be so sensitive," she thought, and then she began to tell Mrs. Jupe what she intended to do.

"The clubs!" cried Mrs. Jupe. "I thought you didn't tyke to the shop because you fancied yerself above present company. But the foreign clubs! My gracious!"

The hissing of Mrs. Jupe's taunting voice followed her about all that day, and late at night, when they were going to bed and the streets were quiet, and there was only the jingle of a pa.s.sing hansom or a drunken shout or the screech of a concertina, she could hear it again from the other side of the plaster part.i.tion, interrupted occasionally by the sound of Mr. Jupe's attempts to excuse and apologize for her. No matter!

Anything to escape from the atmosphere of that woman's house, to be free of her and quit of her forever!

Toward eight o'clock on Sunday evening she went up to her bedroom to put on her hat and ulster, and being alone there, and waiting for Aggie, she could not help but open her letter from home.

"Sunday next is your birthday, my dear one," wrote the parson, "so we send you our love and greetings. This being the first of your twenty-one that you have spent from home, I will be thinking of you all the day through, and when night comes, and I smoke a pipe by the study fire, I know I shall be leaving the blind up that I may see the evening star and remember the happy birthdays long ago, when somebody, who was so petted and spoiled, used to say she had just come down from it, having dressed herself in some strange and grand disguises, and told us she was Phonodoree the fairy. You will be better employed than that, Glory, and as long as my dear one is well and happy and prosperous in the great city where she so loves to be----"

The candle was shaking in Glory's hands, and the little half-lit bedroom seemed to be blinking in and out.

Aunt Anna had added a postscript: "Glad to hear you are enjoying yourself in London, but rather alarmed at your frequent mention of theatres. Take care you don't go too often, child, and mind you send us the name of the vicar of the parish you are living in, for I certainly think grandfather ought to write to him."

To this again there was a footnote by Aunt Rachel: "You say nothing of Mr. Drake nowadays. Is he one of Mrs. Jupe's visitors? And is it he who takes you to theatres?"

Then there was a New Year's card enclosed, having a picture of an Eastern shepherd at the head of his flock of sheep and bearing the inscription, "Follow in his footsteps."

But the hissing sound of Mrs. Jupe's voice came up from below, and Glory's tears were dried in an instant. On going downstairs, she found Aggie in her mock sealskin and big black feathers sitting in the parlour at the back of the shop, and Mrs. Jupe talking to her in whispers, with an appearance of knowledge and familiarity. She caught the confused look of the one and the stealthy glances of the other, and the hard lump at her heart grew harder.

"Come on," said Glory, and a few minutes afterward the girls were walking toward Soho. The little chapels in the quieter streets were dropping out their driblets of people and the lights in the church windows were being extinguished one by one. Aggie had recovered her composure, and was talking of Charlie as she skipped along with a rapid step, swinging her stage-box by her side. Charlie was certain to be at one of the clubs, and he would be sure to see them home. He wasn't out of his time yet, and that was why her father wouldn't allow him about.

But he was in an office at a foundry, and his people lived in a house, and perhaps one of these days----

"Did you say that some of the people who are on the stage now began at the clubs?" said Glory.

"Plenty, my dear. There's Betty Bellman for one. She was at a club in Old Compton Street when Mr. Sefton found her out."

Aggie had to "work a turn" at each of three clubs that night, and the girls were now at the door of the first of them. It stood at the corner of a reputable square, and was like any ordinary house on the outside.

But people were coming and going constantly, and the doorkeeper was kept opening and closing the door. In the middle of the hall a clerk stood at a desk, having a great book in front of him, and making a show of challenging everybody as he entered. He recognised Aggie as an artiste, but pa.s.sed Glory also on the payment of twopence and the signing of her name in the book.

The dining-room of the house had been converted into a bar, with counter and stillage, and after the girls had crushed through the crowds that stood there they came into a large and shabby chamber, which had the appearance of having been built over the s.p.a.ce which had once been the backyard. This room had neither windows nor skylights; its walls were decorated with portraits of Garibaldi and Victor Emanuel in faded colours, and there was a stage and proscenium at its farther end.

It was an Italian club that met there on Sunday nights, and some two or three hundred hairdressers and restaurant-keepers of swarthy complexion sat in groups at little round tables with their wives and sweethearts (chiefly English women), smoking and drinking and laughing at the performance on the stage.

Aggie went down to her dressing-room under the floor, and Glory sat at a table with a yellow-haired lady and a dark-eyed man. A negro without the burnt cork was tw.a.n.ging a banjo and cracking the jokes of the corner-man.