The Christian Part 60

"Ah!--Well, he came back anyway, and said you were gone, and all trace of you was lost. Did I forget you after that, Glory?"

His husky voice broke off suddenly, and he rose with a look of wretchedness. "You are right, there are two selves in you, and the higher self is so pure, so strong, so unselfish, so n.o.ble--Oh, I am sure of it, Glory! Only there's no one to speak to it, no one. I try, but I can not."

She was still crying behind her hands.

"And meanwhile the lower self--there are only too many to speak to _that_----"

Her hands came down from her disordered face and she said, "I know whom you mean."

"I mean the world."

"No, indeed, you mean Mr. Drake. But you are mistaken. Mr. Drake has been a good friend to me, but he isn't anything else, and doesn't want to be. Can't you see that when you think of me and talk of me as you would of some other women you hurt me and degrade me, and I can not bear it? You see I am crying again--goodness knows why. But I sha'n't give up my profession. The idea of such a thing! It's ridiculous! Think of Glory in a convent! One of the poor Clares perhaps!"

"Hus.h.!.+"

"Or back in the island serving out sewing at a mothers' meeting! Give it up! Indeed I won't!"

"You shall and you must!"

"Who'll make me?"

"_I_ will!"

Then she laughed out wildly, but stopped on the instant and looked up at him with glistening eyes. An intense blush came over her face, and her looks grew bright as his grew fierce. A moment afterward the waiting maid, with an inquisitive expression, was clearing the table and keeping a smile in reserve for "the lovers' quarrel!"

Some of the Guardsmen were in the train going back, and at the next station they changed to the carriage in which Glory and John were sitting. Apparently they had dined before leaving their club at Maidenhead, and they talked at Glory with covert smiles. "Going to the Colosseum tonight?" said one. "If there's time," said another. "Oh, time enough. The attraction doesn't begin till ten, don't you know, and n.o.body goes before." "Tell me she's rippin'." "Good--deuced good."

Glory was sitting with her back to the engine drumming lightly on the window and looking out at the setting sun. At first she felt a certain shame at the obvious references, but, piqued at John's silence, she began to take pride in them, and shot glances at him from under half-closed eyelids. John was sitting opposite with his arms folded. At the talk of the men he felt his hands contract and his lips grow cold with the feeling that Glory belonged to everybody now and was common property. Once or twice he looked at them and became conscious of an impression, which had floated about him since he left the Brotherhood, that nearly every face he saw bore the hideous stamp of self-indulgence and sensuality.

But the noises of the train helped him not to hear, and he looked out for London. It lay before them under a canopy of smoke, and now and then a shaft from the setting sun lit up a gla.s.s roof and it glittered like a sinister eye. Then there came from afar, over the creaking and groaning of the wheels and the whistle of the engine, the deep, mult.i.tudinous murmur of that distant sea. The mighty tide was rising and coming up to meet them. Presently they were das.h.i.+ng into the midst of it, and everything was drowned in the splash and roar.

The Guardsmen, being on the platform side, alighted first, and on going off they bowed to Glory with rather more than easy manners. A dash of the devil prompted her to respond demonstratively, but John had risen and was taking off his hat to the men, and they were going away discomfited. Glory was proud of him--he was a man and a gentleman.

He put her into a hansom under the lamps outside the station, and her face was lit up, but she patted the dog and said: "You have vexed me and you needn't come to see me again. I shall not sing properly this evening or sleep tonight at all, if that is any satisfaction to you, so you needn't trouble to inquire."

When he reached home Mrs. Callender told him of a shocking occurrence at the fas.h.i.+onable wedding at All Saints' that morning. A young woman had committed suicide during the ceremony, and it turned out to be the poor girl who had been dismissed from the hospital.

John Storm remembered Brother Paul. "I must bury her," he thought.

V.

Glory sang that night with extraordinary vivacity and charm and was called back again and again. Going home in the cab she tried to live through the day afresh--every step, every act, every word, down to that triumphant "_I_ will." Her thoughts swayed as with the swaying of the hansom, but sometimes the thunderous applause of the audience broke in, and then she had to remember where she had left off. She could feel that beating against her breast still, and even smell the violets that grew by the pool. He had told her to give up everything, and there was an exquisite thrill in the thought that perhaps some day she would annihilate herself and all her ambitions, and--who knows what then?

This mood lasted until Monday morning, when she was sitting in her room, dressing very slowly and smiling at herself in the gla.s.s, when the c.o.c.kney maid came in with a newspaper which her master had sent up on account of its long report of the wedding.

"The Church of All Saints' was crowded by a fas.h.i.+onable congregation, among whom were many notable persons in the world of politics and society, including the father of the bridegroom, the Duke of ---- and his brother, the Marquis of ----. An arch of palms crossed the nave at the entrance to the chancel, and festoons of rare flowers were suspended from the rails of the handsome screen. The altar and the table of the commandments were almost obscured by the wreaths of exotics that hung over them, and the columns of the colonnade, the font and offertory boxes were similarly buried in rich and lovely blossom.

"Thanks to an informal rehearsal some days before, the ceremony went off without a hitch. The officiating clergy were the Venerable Archdeacon Wealthy, D. D., a.s.sisted by the Rev. Josiah Golightly and other members of the numerous staff of All Saints'. The service, which was fully choral, was under the able direction of the well-known organist and choirmaster, Mr. Carl Koenig, F. R. C. O., and the choir consisted of twenty adult and forty boy voices. On the arrival of the bride a procession was formed at the west entrance and proceeded up to the chancel, singing 'The voice that breathed o'er Eden----"

"Poor Polly!" thought Glory.

"The bride wore a d.u.c.h.ess satin gown trimmed with chiffon and Brussels lace, and having a long train hung from the shoulders. Her tulle veil was fastened with a ruby brooch and with sprays of orange blossom sent specially from the Riviera, and her necklace consisted of a rope of graduated pearls fully a yard long, and understood to have belonged to the jewel case of Catharine of Russia. She carried a bouquet of flowers (the gift of the bridegroom) brought from Florida, the American home of her family. The bride's mother wore---- The bridesmaids were dressed----Mr. Horatio Drake acted as best man----"

Glory drew her breath as with a spasm and threw down the newspaper. How blind she had been, how vain, how foolis.h.!.+ She had told John Storm that Drake was only a good friend to her, meaning him to understand that thus far she allowed him to go and no farther. But there was a whole realm of his life into which he did not ask her to enter. The "notable persons in politics and society," "the bridesmaids," these made up his real sphere, his serious scene. Other women were his friends, companions, equals, intimates, and when he stood in the eye of the world it was they who stood beside him. And she? She was his hobby. He came to her in his off hours. She filled up the under side of his life.

With a crus.h.i.+ng sense of humiliation she was folding up the newspaper to send it downstairs when her eye was arrested by a paragraph in small type in the corner. It was headed "Shocking occurrence at a fas.h.i.+onable wedding."

"Oh, good gracious!" she cried. A glance had shown her what it was. It was a report of Polly's suicide.

"At a fas.h.i.+onable wedding at a West-End church on Sat.u.r.day" (no names) "a young woman who had been sitting in the nave was seen to rise and attempt to step into the aisle, as if with the intention of crus.h.i.+ng her way out, when she fell back in convulsions, and on being removed was found to be dead. Happily, the attention of the congregation was at the moment directed to the bride and bridegroom, who were returning from the vestry with the bridal party behind them, and thus the painful incident made no sensation among the crowded congregation. The body was removed to the parish mortuary, and from subsequent inquiries it transpired that death had been due to poison self-administered, and that the deceased was Elizabeth Anne Love (twenty-four), of no occupation, but formerly a nurse--a circ.u.mstance which had enabled her to procure half a grain of liquor strychninae on her own signature at a chemist's where she had been known."

"O G.o.d! O G.o.d!" Glory understood everything now. "I've a great mind to go to All Saints' and shame them--Oh, it isn't the police I'm afraid of." Polly's purpose was clear. She had intended to fall dead at the feet of the bride and bridegroom and make them walk over her body.

Poor, foolish, ineffectual Polly! Her very ghost must be ashamed of the failure of her revenge. Not a ripple of sensation on Sat.u.r.day, and this morning only a few obscure lines in little letters!

Oh, it was hideous! The poor thing's vengeance was theatrical and paltry, but what of the man, wherever he was? What did he think of himself now, with his millions and his murder? Yes, his murder, for what else was it?

An hour later Glory was ringing the bell of a little house in St. John's Wood whereof the upper blinds were drawn. The grating of the garden door slid back and an untidy head looked out.

"Well, ma'am?"

"Don't you remember me, Liza?"

"Lawd, yus, miss!" and the door was opened immediately; "but I was afeard you was one o' them reportin' people, and my orders is not to answer no questions."'

"Has _he_ been here, then?"

"Blesh ye, no, miss! He's on 'is way to the Continents. But 'is friend 'as, and he's settled everything 'andsome--I will say that for the gentleman."

Glory felt her gall rising; there was something degrading, almost disreputable, even in the loyalty of Drake's friends.h.i.+p.

"Fancy Liza not knowing you, miss, and me at the moosic 'all a Tuesday night! I 'ope you'll excuse the liberty, but I _did_ laugh, and I won't say but I shed a few tears too. Arranged? Yes, the jury and the coroner and every-think. It's to be at twelve o'clock, so you may think I've 'ad my 'ands full. But you'll want to look at 'er, pore thing! Go up, miss, and mind yer 'ead; there's n.o.body but 'er friends with 'er now."

The friends proved to be Betty Belmont and her dressing-room companions.

When Glory entered they showed no surprise. "The pore child told us all about you," said Betty; and the little one said: "It's your nyme that caught on, dear. The minute I heard it I said what a top-line for a, bill!"

It was the same little bandbox of a bedroom, only now it was darkened and Polly's troubles were over. There was a slightly convulsed look about the mouth, but the features were otherwise calm and childlike, for all the dead are innocent.

The three women with demure faces were sipping Benedictine and talking among themselves, and Polly's pug dog was coiled up on the bare bolster and snoring audibly.

"Pore thing! I don't know how she could 'a done it. But there, that's the worst of this life! It's all in the present and leads to nothing and ain't got no future." "What could the pore thing do? She wasn't so wonderful pretty; and then men like----" "She was str'ight with him, say what yer like. Only she ought to been more patienter, and she needn't 'a been so hard on the lady, neither." "She had everything the heart could wish. Look at her rooms! I wonder who'll----"

Carriages were heard outside, and two or three men came in to do the last offices. Glory had turned her face away, but behind her the women were still talking. "Wait a minute, mister! ... What a lovely ring! ...

I wish I had a keepsake to remember her by." "Well, and why not? She won't want----"