The Christian Part 5

"You do yourself an injustice, Mr. Storm. Besides, to tell you the truth, I don't choose that my a.s.sistant clergy----"

John looked ashamed. "If that is your view, sir," he said, "I don't know what you'll say to what I've been doing since."

"I've heard of it, and I confess I'm not pleased. Whatever your old _protegee_ may be, my house is no place for her. I help to maintain charitable inst.i.tutions for such cases, and I will ask you to lose no time in having her removed to the hospital."

John was crushed. "Very well, sir, if that is your wish; only I thought you said my rooms----Besides, the poor old thing fills her place as well as Queen Victoria, and perhaps the angels are watching the one as much as the other."

Next day John Storm called to see the old woman at Martha's Vineyard, and he saw the matron, the house doctor, and a staff nurse as well.

His adventure was known to everybody at the hospital. Once or twice he caught looks of amused compa.s.sion, and heard a twitter of laughter. As he stood by the bed, the old woman muttered: "I knoo ez it wuzn't the work'us, my dear. He spoke to me friendly and squeedged my 'and."

Coming through the wards he had looked for a face he could not see; but just then he was aware of a young woman, in the print dress and white ap.r.o.n of a nurse, standing in silence at the bed-head. It was Glory, and her eyes were wet with tears.

"You mustn't do such things," she said hoa.r.s.ely; "I can't bear it," and she stamped her foot. "Don't you see that these people----"

But she turned about and was gone before he could reply. Glory was ashamed for him. Perhaps she had been taking his part! He felt the blood mounting to his face, and his cheeks tingling. Glory! His eyes were swimming, and he dared not look after her; but he could have found it in his heart to kiss the old bag of bones on the bed.

That night he wrote to the parson in the island: "Glory has left off her home garments, and now looks more beautiful than ever in the white simplicity of the costume of the nurse. Her vocation is a great one.

G.o.d grant she may hold on to it!" Then something about the fallacy of ceremonial religion and the impossibility of pleasing G.o.d by such religious formalities. "But if we have publicans and Pharisees now, even as they existed in Christ's time, all the more service is waiting for that man for whom life has no ambitions, death no terrors. I thank G.o.d I am in a great measure dead to these things.... I will fulfil my promise to look after Glory. My constant prayer is against Agag. It is so easy for him to get a foothold in a girl's heart here. This great new world, with its fashions, its gaieties, its beauty, and its brightness--no wonder if a beautiful young girl, tingling with life and ruddy health, should burn with impatience to fling herself into the arms of it. Agag is in London, and as insinuating as ever."

VI.

On Sunday morning his fellow-curate came to his room to accompany him to church. The Rev. Joshua Golightly was a little man with a hook nose, small keen eyes, scanty hair, and a voice that was something between a whisper and a whistle. He bowed subserviently, and made meek little speeches.

"I do trust you will not be disappointed with our church and service. We do all we can to make them worthy of our people."

As they walked down the streets he talked first of the church officers--there were honorary wardens, gentlemen sidesmen, and lady superintendents of floral decorations; then of the choir, which consisted of organist and choir master, professional members, voluntary members, and choir secretary. The anthem was sung by a professional singer, generally the tenor from the opera; the canon could always get such people--he was a great favourite with artistes and "the profession." Of course, the singers were paid, and the difficulty this week had been due to the exorbitant fee demanded by the Italian barytone from Covent Garden.

Disappointment and disenchantment were falling on John Storm at every step.

All Saints' was a plain, dark structure with a courtyard in front.

The bells were ringing, and a line of carriages was drawing up at the portico as at the entrance to a theatre, discharging their occupants and pa.s.sing on. Vergers in yellow and buff, with knee-breeches, silk stockings, and powdered wigs, were receiving the congregation at the doors.

"Let us go in by the west door--I should like you to see the screen to advantage," said Mr. Golightly.

The inside of the church was gorgeous. As far up as the clerestory every wall was frescoed, and every timber of the roof was gilded. At the chancel end there was a wrought-iron screen of delicate tracery, and the altar was laden with gold candlesticks. Above the altar and at either side of it were stained gla.s.s windows. The morning sun was shining through them and filling the chancel with warm splashes of light. Ladies in beautiful spring dresses were following the vergers up the aisles.

"This way," the curate whispered, and John Storm entered the sacristy by a low doorway like the auditorium entrance to a stage. There he met some six others of his fellow-curates. They nodded to him and went on arranging their surplices. The choir were gathering in their own quarters, where the violins were tuning up and the choir boys were laughing and behaving after their kind.

The bell slackened and stopped, and the organ began to play. When all were ready they stepped into a long corridor and formed in line with their faces to the chancel and their backs to a little door, at which a verger in blue stood guard.

"The canon's room," whispered Mr. Golightly.

A prayer was said by some one, the choir sang the response, and then they walked in procession to their places in the chancel, the choir boys first, the canon last. Seen through the tracery of the screen, the congregation appeared to fill every sitting in the church with a blaze of light and colour, and the atmosphere was laden with delicate perfume.

The service was choral. An anthem was sung at the close of the sermon, the collection being made during the hymn before it. The professional singer looked like any other chorister in his surplice, save for his swarthy face and heavy mustache.

The canon preached. He wore his doctor's hood of scarlet cloth. His sermon was eloquent and literary, and it was delivered with elocutionary power. There were many references to great writers, painters, and musicians, including a panegyric on Michael Angelo and a quotation from Browning. The sermon concluded with a pa.s.sage from Dante in the original.

John Storm was dazed and perplexed. When the service was over he came out alone, returning down the nave, which was now empty but still fragrant. Among other notices pasted on a board in the porch he found this one: "The vicar and wardens, having learned with regret that purses have been lost on leaving the church, recommend the congregation to bring only such money as they may need for the offertory."

Had he been to the house of G.o.d? No matter! G.o.d ruled the world in righteousness and wrought out everything to his own glory.

Next morning he began duty as chaplain at the hospital, and when he had finished the reading of his first prayers he could see that he had lived down some of the derision due to his adventure with the old woman. That poor old bag of bones was sinking and could not last much longer.

Going out by way of the dispensary, he saw Glory again, and heard that she had been at church the day before. It was lovely. All those hundreds of nice-looking people in gay colours, with the rustle of silk and the hum of voices--it was beautiful--it reminded her of the sea in summer.

He asked her what she thought of the sermon, and she said, "Well, it wasn't religion exactly--not what I call religion--not a 'reg'lar rousing rampage for sowls,' as old Chalse used to say, but----"

"Glory," he said impetuously, "I'm to preach my first sermon on Wednesday."

He did not ask her to come, but inquired if she was on night duty. She answered No, and then somebody called her.

"She'll be there," he told himself, and he walked home with uplifted head. He would look for her; he would catch her eye; she would see that it was not necessary to be ashamed of him again.

And then close behind, very close, came recollections of her appearance.

He could reconstruct her new dress by memory--her face was easy to remember. "After all, beauty is a kind of virtue," he thought. "And all natural friendship is good for the progress of souls if it is built upon the love of G.o.d."

He wrote nothing and learned nothing by heart. The only preparation he made for his sermon was thought and prayer. When the Wednesday night came he was very nervous. But the church was nearly empty, and the vergers, who were in their everyday clothes, had only partially lit up the nave. The canon had done him the honour to be present; his fellow-curates read the prayers and lessons.

As he ascended the pulpit he thought he saw the white bonnets of a group of nurses in the dim distance of one of the aisles, but he did not see Glory and he dared not look again. His text was, "My kingdom is not of this world." He gave it out twice, and his voice sounded strange to himself--so weak and thin in that hollow place.

When he began to speak his sentences seemed awkward and difficult. The things of the world were temporal and the nations of the world were out of harmony with G.o.d. Men were biting and devouring each other who ought to live as brothers. "Cheat or be cheated" was the rule of life, as the modern philosopher had said. On the one side were the many dying of want, on the other side the few occupied with poetry and art, writing addresses to flowers, and peddling--in the portraiture of the moods and methods of love, living lives of frivolity, taking pleasure in mere riches and the l.u.s.ts of the eye, while thousands of wretched mortals were grovelling in the mire.... Then where was our refuge? ...

The Church was the refuge of G.o.d's people ... from Christ came the answer--the answer--the----

His words would not flow. He fought hard, threw out another pa.s.sage, then stammered, began again, stammered again, felt hot, made a fresh effort, flagged, rattled out some words he had fixed in his mind, perspired, lost his voice, and finally stopped in the middle of a sentence and said, "And now to G.o.d the Father--" and came down from the pulpit.

His sermon had been a failure, and he knew it. On going back to the sacristy the Reverend Golightly congratulated him with a simper and a vapid smile. The canon was more honest but more vain. He mingled lofty advice with gentle reproof. Mr. Storm had taken his task too lightly.

Better if he had written his sermon and read it. Whatever might serve for the country, congregations in London--at All Saints'

especially--expected culture and preparation.

"For my own part I confess--nay, I am proud to declare--my watchword is Rehea.r.s.e! Rehea.r.s.e! Rehea.r.s.e!"

As for the doctrine of the sermon it was not above question. It was necessary to live in the _nineteenth_ century, and it was impossible to apply to its conditions the rules of life that had been proper to the first.

John Storm made no resistance. He slept badly that night. As often as he dozed off he dreamed that he was trying to do something he could not do, and when he awoke he became hot as with the memory of a disgrace. And always at the back of his shame was the thought of Glory.

Next morning he was alone in his room and fumbling the toast on his breakfast table, when the door opened and a cheery voice cried, "May I no come in, laddie?"

An elderly lady entered. She was tall and slight and had a long, fine face, with shrewd but kindly eyes, and nearly snow-white hair.

"I'm Jane Callender," she said, "and I couldna wait for an introduction or sic bother, but must just come and see ye. Ay, laddie, it was a bonnie sermon yon! I havena heard the match of it since I came frae Edinburgh and sat under the good Doctor Guthrie. Now _he_ was nae slavish reader neither--none of your paper preachers was Thomas. My word, but you gave us the right doctrine, too! They're given over to the worship of Beelzebub--half these church-going folks! Oh, these Pharisees! They are enough to sour milk. I wish they had one neck and somebody would just squeeze it. Now, where did ye hear that, Jane? But no matter! And the la.s.ses are worse than the men, with their fashions and foldololls. They love Jesus, but they like him best in heaven, not bothering down in Belgravia. But I must be going my ways. I left James on the street, and there's nae living with the man if you keep his horses waiting. Good-morning til ye! But eh, laddie, I'm afraid for ye!

I'm thinking--I'm thinking ... but come and see me at Victoria Square.

Good-morning!"

She had rattled this off at a breath, and had hardly given time for a reply, when her black silk was rustling down the stairs.