The Christian Part 90

"They call him the Faro King," said Drake. "Made all his money by gambling in Paris, and now he is a squire with a living in his gift."

Then over the laughter and voices, the band and the singing, with an awful suddenness there came a crash of thunder. The band and the comic song stopped, and there was a hush for a moment. Then Lord Robert said:

"Wonder if this is the dreadful storm that is to overwhelm the nation, don't you know!"

That fell on the house of frivolity like a second thunderbolt, and people began to look up with blanched faces.

"Well, it isn't the first time the _storm_ has howled; it's been howling all along," said Lord Robert, but n.o.body laughed.

Presently the company recovered itself, the bands and the singing were heard again, louder and wilder than before, the men shouted for more champagne, and nicknamed every waiter "Father Storm."

Glory was ashamed. With her head on her hand she was looking at the people around when the "Faro King," who had been making eyes at her, leaned over her shoulder and said in a confidential whisper, "And what is Gloria looking for?"

"I am looking for _a man_," she answered. And as the big beard turned away with "Oh, confound it!" she became aware that Drake and Lord Robert were at high words from opposite sides of the table.

"No, I tell you no, no, _no_!" said Drake. "Call him a weakling and a fool and an a.s.s, if you will, but does that explain everything? This is one of the men with the breath of G.o.d in him, and you can't judge of him by ordinary standards."

"Should think not, indeed, dear chap," said Lord Robert, "Common sense laughs at the creature."

"So much the worse for common sense. When it judges of these isolated beings by the standards of the common herd then common sense is always the greatest nonsense."

"Oho! oho!" came in several voices, but Drake paid no attention.

"Jesus Christ himself was mocked at and ridiculed by the common sense of his time, by his own people, and even his own family, and his family and people and time have been gibbeted by all the centuries that have come after them. And so it has been with every ardent soul since who has taken up his parable and introduced into the world a new spirit. The world has laughed at him and spat upon him, and, only for its fear of the sublime banner he has borne, it would have shut him up in a mad-house."

They were strange words in a strange place. Everybody listened.

"But these sombre giants are the leaders of the world for all that, and one hour of their Divine madness is worth more to humanity than a cycle of our sanity. And yet we deny them friendship and love, and do our best to put them out of the pale of the human family! We have invented a new name for them too--degenerates--pygmies and pigs as we are, who ought to go down on our knees to them with our faces buried in the dirt!

Gentlemen," he cried, filling his gla.s.s and rising to his feet, "I give you a toast--the health of Father Storm!"

Glory had sat trembling all over, breathing hard, blushing, and wide-eyed until he had done. Then she leaped up to where he stood beside her, threw her arms about his neck, and kissed him.

"And now you ring down quick, my dear," said Betty, and everybody laughed a little.

Drake was laughing with the rest, and Glory, who had dropped back to her seat in confused embarra.s.sment, was trying to laugh too.

"Another bottle of fizz anyway," cried Drake. He had mistaken the meaning of Glory's kiss, and was utterly intoxicated by it. She could have cried with shame and rage, seeing he thought such conduct came naturally to her and perhaps imagined it wasn't the first time she had done as much. But to carry off the situation she laughed a good deal with him, and when the wine came they jingled gla.s.ses.

"I'm going to see you home to-night," he whispered, smiling slyly and looking her full in the eyes. She shook her head, but that only provoked him to fresh effort.

"I must, I will--you _shall_ allow me," and he began to play with her hand and ruffle up the lace that covered her round arm.

Just then his man Benson, looking hot and excited, came up to him with a message. Glory overheard something about "the office," "the Secretary,"

and "Scotland Yard." Then Drake turned to her with a smile, over a look of vexation, and said: "I'm sorry, dear--very--I must go away for a while. Will you stay here until I return, or----"

"Take me out and put me in a cab," said Glory. Their getting up attracted attention, and Lord Robert said:

"Is it, perhaps, something about that----"

"It's nothing," said Drake, and they left the room.

The band in the ballroom was still playing the dance out of the burlesque, and half a hundred voices were shouting "Tra-la-la-la" as Glory stepped into a hansom.

"I'll follow on, though," whispered Drake with a merry smile.

"We shall all be in bed, and the house locked up---- How magnificent you were to-night!"

"I couldn't see the man trodden on when he was down---- But how lovely you've looked to-day, Glory! I'll get in to-night if I have to ring up Liza or break down the door for it!"

As the cab crossed Trafalgar Square it had to draw up for a procession of people coming up Parliament Street singing hymns. Another and more disorderly procession of people, decorated with oak leaves and hawthorns and singing a music-hall song, came up and collided with it. A line of police broke up both processions; and the hansom pa.s.sed through.

VIII.

On entering the drawing-room John Storm was seized with a weird feeling of dread. The soft air seemed to be filled with Glory's presence and her very breath to live in it. On the side-table a lamp was burning under a warm red shade. A heap of petty vanities lay about--articles of silver, little trinkets, fans, feathers, and flowers. His footsteps on the soft carpet made no noise. It was all so unlike the place he had come from, his own bare chamber under the church!

He could have fancied that Glory had that moment left the room. The door of a little ebony cabinet stood half open and he could see inside. Its lower shelves were full of shoes and little dainty slippers, some of them of leather, some of satin, some black, some red, some white. They touched him with an indescribable tenderness and he turned his eyes away. Under the lamp lay a pair of white gloves. One of them was flat and had not been worn, but the other was filled out with the impression of a little hand. He took it up and laid it across his own big palm, and another wave of tenderness broke over him.

On the mantelpiece there were many photographs. Most of them were of Glory and some were very beautiful, with their gleaming and glistening eyes and their curling and waving hair. One looked even voluptuous with its parted lips and smiling mouth; but another was different--it was so sweet, so gay, so artless. He thought it must belong to an earlier period, for the dress was such as she used to wear in the days when he knew her first, a simple jersey and a sailor's stocking cap. Ah, those days that were gone, with their innocence and joy! Glory! His bright, his beautiful Glory!

His emotion was depriving him of the free use of his faculties, and he began to ask himself why he was waiting there. At the next instant came the thought of the awful thing he had come to do and it seemed monstrous and impossible. "I'll go away," he told himself, and he turned his face toward the door.

On a what-not at the door side of the room another photograph stood in a gla.s.s stand. His back had been to it, and the soft light of the lamp left a great part of the room in obscurity, but he saw it now, and something bitter that lay hidden at the bottom of his heart rose to his throat. It was a portrait of Drake, and at the sight of it he laughed savagely and sat down.

How long he sat he never knew. To the soul in torment there is no such thing as time; an hour is as much as, eternity and eternity is no more than an hour. His head was buried in his arms on the table and he was a prey to anguish and doubt. At one time he told himself that G.o.d did not send men to commit murder; at the next that this was not murder but sacrifice. Then a mocking voice in his ears seemed to say, "But the world will call it murder and the law will punish you." To that he answered in his heart: "When I leave this house I will deliver myself up. I will go to the nearest police court and say 'Take me, I have done my duty in the eye of G.o.d, but committed a crime in the eye of my country.'" And when the voice replied, "That will only lead to your own death also," he thought, "Death is a gain to those who die for their cause, and my death will be a protest against the degradation of women, a witness against the men who make them the creatures of their pleasure, their playthings, their victims, and their slaves." Thinking so, he found a strange thrill in the idea that all the world would hear of what he had done. "But I will say a ma.s.s for her soul in the morning," he told himself, and a chill came over him and his heart grew cold as a stone.

Then he lifted his head and listened. The room was quiet, there was not a sound in the gardens of the Inn, and, through a window which was partly open, he could hear the monotonous murmur of the streets outside.

A great silence seemed to have fallen on London--a silence more awful than all the noise and confused clamour of the evening. "It must be late," he thought; "it must be the middle of the night." Then the thought came to him that perhaps, Glory would not come home that night at all, and in a sudden outburst of pent-up feeling his heart cried, "Thank G.o.d! Thank G.o.d!"

He had said it aloud and the sound of his voice in the silent room--awakened all his faculties. Suddenly he was aware of other sounds outside. There was a rumble of wheels and the rattle of a hansom. The hansom came nearer and nearer. It stopped in the outside courtyard.

There was the noise of a curb-chain as if the horse were shaking its head. The doors of the hansom opened with a creak and banged back on their spring. A voice, a woman's voice, said "Good-night!" and another voice, a man's voice, answered, "Good-night and thank you, miss!" Then the cab wheels turned and went off. All his senses seemed to have gone into his ears, and in the silence of that quiet place he heard everything. He rose to his feet and stood waiting.

After a moment there was the sound of a key in the lock of the door below; the rustle of a woman's dress coming up the stairs, an odour of perfume in the air, an atmosphere of freshness and health, and then the door of the room which had been ajar was swung open and there on the threshold with her languid and tired but graceful movements was she herself, Glory. Then his head turned giddy and he could neither hear nor see.

When Glory saw him standing by the lamp, with his deadly pale face, she stood a moment in speechless astonishment, and pa.s.sed her hand across her eyes as if to wipe out a vision. After that she clutched at a chair and made a faint cry.

"Oh, is it you?" she said in a voice which she strove to control. "How you frightened me! Whoever would have thought of seeing you here!"

He was trying to answer, but his tongue would not obey him, and his silence alarmed her.

"I suppose Liza let you in--where _is_ Liza?"

"Gone to bed," he said in a thick voice.

"And Rosa--have you seen Rosa?"

"No."