The Christian Part 61

Glory felt as if she was choking, but Polly's pug dog had been awakened by the commotion and was beginning to howl, so she took up the little mourner and carried it out. An organ-man somewhere near was playing Sweet Marie.

The funeral was at Kensal Green, and the four girls were the only followers. The coroner's verdict being _felo-de-se_, the body was not taken into the chapel, but a clergyman met it at the gate and led the way to the grave. Walking with her head down and the dog under her arm, Glory had not seen him at first, but when he began with the tremendous words, "I am the resurrection and the life," she caught her breath and looked up. It was John Storm.

While they were in the carriage the clouds had been gathering, and now some spots of rain were falling. When the bearers had laid down their burden the spots were large and frequent, and all save one of the men turned and went back to the shelter of the porch. The three women looked at each other, and one of them muttered something about "the dead and the living," and then the little lady stole away. After a moment the tall one followed her, and from shame of being ashamed the third one went off also.

By this time the rain was falling in a sharp shower, and John Storm, who was bareheaded, had opened his book and begun to read: "Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty G.o.d of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear sister here departed----"

Then he saw that Glory was alone by the graveside, and his voice faltered and almost failed him. It faltered again, and he halted when he came to the "sure and certain hope," but after a moment it quivered and filled out and seemed to say, "Which of us can sound the depths of G.o.d's design?" After the "maimed rites" were over, John Storm went back to the chapel to remove his surplice, and when he returned to the grave Glory was gone.

She sang as usual at the music hall that night, but with a heavy heart.

The difference communicated itself to the audience, and the unanimous applause which had greeted her before frayed off at length into separate hand-claps. Crossing the stage to her dressing-room she met Koenig, who came to conduct for her, and he said:

"Not quite yourself to-night, my dear, eh?"

Going home in the hansom, Polly's dog coddled up with the old sympathy to the new mistress, and seemed to be making the best of things. The household was asleep, and Glory let herself in with a latch-key. Her cold supper was laid ready, and a letter was lying under the turned-down lamp. It was from her grandfather, and had been written after church on Sunday night:

"It is now so long--more than a year--since I saw my runaway and truant that, notwithstanding the protests of Aunt Anna and the forebodings of Aunt Rachel, I have determined to give my old legs a journey and my old eyes a treat. Therefore take warning that I intend to come up to London forthwith, that I may see the great city for the first time in my life, and--which is better--my little granddaughter among all her new friends and in the midst of her great prosperity."

At the foot of this there was a postscript from Aunt Rachel, hastily scrawled in pencil:

"Take no notice of this. He is far too weak to travel, and indeed he is really failing; but your letter, which reached us last night, has so troubled him ever since that he can't take rest for thinking of it."

It was the last straw. Before finis.h.i.+ng the letter or taking off her hat, Glory took up a telegraph form and wrote, "Postpone journey--am returning home to-morrow." Then she heard Koenig letting himself into the house, and going downstairs she said:

"Will you take this message to the telegraph office for me, please?"

"Vhy, of course I vill, and den ve'll have supper togeder--look!" and he laughed and opened a paper and drew out a string of sausages.

"Mr. Koenig," she said, "you were right. I was not myself to-night. I want a rest, and I propose to take one."

As Glory returned upstairs she heard stammerings, sputterings, and swearings behind her about managers, engagements, announcements, geniuses, children, and other matters. Back in her room she lay down on the floor, with her face in her hands, and sobbed. Then Koenig appeared, panting and saying: "Dere! I knew vhat vould happen! Here's a pretty ting! And dat's vhy Mr. Drake told me to deny you to de man. De brute, de beast, de dirty son of a monk!"

But Glory had leaped up with eyes of fire, and was crying: "How dare you, sir? Out of my room this instant!"

"Mein Gott! It's a divil!" Koenig was muttering like a servant as he went downstairs. He went out to the telegraph office and came back, and then Glory heard him frying his sausages on the dining-room fire.

The night was far gone when she pushed aside her untouched supper, and, wiping her eyes, that she might see properly, sat down to write a letter.

"Dear John Storm (monk, monster, or whatever it is!): I trust it will be counted to me for righteousness that I am doing your bidding and giving up my profession--for the present.

"Between a woman's 'yes' and 'no'

There isn't room for a pin to go,

which is very foolish of her in this instance, considering that she is earning various pounds a night and has nothing but Providence to fall back upon. I have told my jailer I must have my liberty, and, being a man of like pa.s.sions with yourself, he has been busy blaspheming in the parlour downstairs. I trust virtue will be its own reward, for I dare say it is all I shall ever get. If I were Narcissus I should fall in love with myself to-day, having shown an obedience to tyranny which is beautiful and worthy of the heroic age. But to-morrow morning I go back to the 'oilan,' and it will be so nice up there without anybody and all alone!"

She was laughing softly to herself as she wrote, and catching her breath with a little sob at intervals.

"A letter now and then is profitable to the soul of man--and--woman; but you must not expect to hear from _me_, and as for you, though you _have_ resurrected yourself, I suppose a tyrant of your opinions will continue the Benedictine rule which compels you to hold your peace--and other things. I am engaged to breakfast with a nice girl named Glory Quayle to-morrow morning--that is to say, _this_ morning--at Euston Station at a quarter to seven, but happily this letter won't reach you until 7.30, so I'll just escape interruption."

The house was still and the streets were quiet, not even a cab going along.

"Good-bye! I've realized--a dog! It's a pug, and therefore, like somebody else, it always looks black at me, though I suspect its father married beneath him, for it talks a good deal, and evidently hasn't been brought up in a Brotherhood. Therefore, being a 'female,' I intend to call it Aunt Anna--except when the original is about. Aunt Anna has been hopping up and down the room at my heels for the last hour, evidently thinking that a rational woman would behave better if she went to bed.

Perhaps I shall take a leaf out of your book and 'comb her hair,' when I get her all alone in the train to-morrow, that she may be prepared for the new sphere to which it has pleased Providence to call her.

"Good-bye again! I see the lamps of Euston running after each other, only it's the _other_ way this time. I find there is something that seizes you with a fiercer palpitation than coming _into_ a great and wonderful city, and that is going out of one. Dear old London! After all, it has been very good to me. No one, it seems to me, loves it as much as I do. Only somebody thinks--well, never mind! Goodbye 'for all!'

Glory."

At seven next morning, on the platform at Euston, Glory was standing with melancholy eyes at the door of a first-cla.s.s compartment watching the people sauntering up and down, talking in groups and hurrying to and fro, when Drake stepped up to her. She did not ask what had brought him--she knew. He looked fresh and handsome, and was faultlessly dressed.

"You are doing quite right, my dear," he said in a cheerful voice.

"Koenig telegraphed, and I came to see you off. Don't bother about the theatre; leave everything to me. Take a rest after your great excitement, and come back bright and well."

The locomotive whistled and began to pant, the smoke rose to the roof, the train started, and before Glory knew she was going she was gone.

Then Drake walked to his club and wrote this postscript to a letter to Lord Robert Ure, at the Grand Hotel, Paris: "The Parson has drawn first blood, and Gloria has gone home!"

VI.

On the Sunday evening after Glory's departure John Storm, with the bloodhound running by his side, made his way to Soho in search of the mother of Brother Andrew. He had come to a corner of a street where the walls of an ugly brick church ran up a narrow court and turned into a still narrower lane at the back. The church had been for some time disused, and its facade was half covered with boardings and plastered with placards: "Brighton and Back, 3_s_."; "_Lloyd's News_"; "Coals, 1_s_. a cwt."; and "Barclay's Sparkling Ales."

There was a tumult in the court and lane. In the midst of a close-packed ring of excited people, chiefly foreigners, shouting in half the languages of Europe, a tall young c.o.c.kney, with bloated face and eyes aflame with drink, was writhing and wrestling and cursing. Sometimes he escaped from the grasp of the man who held him, and then he flung himself against the closed door of a shop which stood opposite, with the three b.a.l.l.s of the p.a.w.nbroker suspended above it. Somebody within the shop was howling for help. It was a woman's voice, and the louder she screamed the more violent were the man's efforts to beat down the door between them.

As John Storm stood a moment looking on, some one on the street beside him said, "It's a d---- shyme." It was a man with a feeble, ineffectual face and the appearance of a waiter. Seeing he had been overheard, the man stammered: "Beg parding, sir; but they may well say 'when the Devil can't come hisself 'e sends 'is brother Drink.'" Having said this he began to move along, but stopped suddenly on seeing what the clergyman with the dog was doing.

John Storm was pus.h.i.+ng his way through the crowd, and his black figure in that writhing ring of undersized foreigners looked big and commanding. "What's this?" he was saying in a husky voice that rose clear above the clamour. The shouting and swearing subsided, all save the howling from the inside of the shop, and the tumult settled down in a moment to mutterings and gnas.h.i.+ngs and a broken and irregular silence.

Then somebody said, "It's nothink, sir." And somebody else said, "'Es on'y drunk, and wantin' to pench 'is mother." Without listening to this explanation John Storm had laid hold of the young man by the collar and was dragging him, struggling and fuming, from the door.

"What's going on?" he demanded. "Will n.o.body speak?"

Then a poor swaggering imitation of a man came up out of the cellar of a house that stood next to the disused church, and a comely young woman carrying a baby followed close behind him. He had a gin bottle in his hands, and with a wink he said: "A christenin'--that's what's going on.

'Ave a kepple o' pen'orth of 'ollands, old gel?"

At this sally the crowd recovered its audacity and laughed, and the drunken man began to say that he could "knock spots out of any bloomin'

parson, en' now bloomin' errer."

But the young fellow with the gin bottle broke in again. "What's yer gime, mister? Preach the gawspel? Give us trecks? This is my funeral, down't ye know, and I'd jest like to hear."

The little foreigners were enjoying the parson-baiting, and the drunken man's courage was rising to fever heat. "I'll give 'im one-two between the eyes if 'e touches me again." Then he flung himself on the p.a.w.nshop like a battering ram, the howling inside, which had subsided, burst out afresh, and finally the door was broken down.

Half a minute afterward the crowd was making a wavering dance about the two men. "Look out, ducky!" the young fellow shouted to John. The warning came too late--John went reeling backward from a blow.

"Now, my lads, who says next?" cried the drunken ruffian. But before the words were out of his mouth there was a growl, a plunge, a snarl, and he was full length on the street with the bloodhound's muzzle at his throat.