The Christian Part 97

"Good-bye, old girl--loyal, unselfish, devoted friend! G.o.d will reward you yet, and a good man who has been chasing a Will-o'-the-wisp will open his eyes to see that all the time the star of the morning has been by his side. Tomorrow, when I leave the house, I know I shall want to run up and kiss you as you lie asleep, but I mustn't do that--the little druggeted stairs to your room would be like the road to another but not a better place, which is also paved with good intentions. What a scatter-brain I am! My heart is breaking, too, with all this severing of my poor little riven cords. Your foolish old chummie (the last of her),

"Glory."

Next morning, almost as soon as it was light, she rose and drew a little tin box from under the bed. It was the box that had brought all her belongings to London when she first came from her island home. Out of this box she took a simple gray costume--the costume she had bought for outdoor wear when a nurse at the hospital. Putting it on, she looked at herself in the gla.s.s. The plain gray figure, so unlike what she had been the night before, sent a little stab to her heart, and she sighed.

"But this is Glory, after all," she thought. "This is the granddaughter of my grandfather, the daughter of my father, and not the visionary woman who has been masquerading in London so long." But the conceit did not comfort her very much, and scalding tear-drops began to fall.

Tying up some other clothing into a little bundle, she opened the door and listened. There was no noise in the house, and she crept downstairs with a light tread. At the drawing-room she paused and took one last look round at the place where she had spent so many exciting hours, and lived through such various phases of life. While she stood on the threshold there was a sound of heavy breathing. It came from the pug, which lay coiled up on the sofa, asleep. Reproaching herself with having forgotten the little thing, she took it up in her arms and hushed it when it awoke and began to whine. Then she crept down to the front door, opened it softly, pa.s.sed out, and closed it after her. There was a click of the lock in the silent gardens, and then no sound anywhere but the chirrup of the sparrows in the eaves.

The sun was beginning to climb over the cool and quiet streets as she went along, and some cabmen at the stand looked over at the woman in nurse's dress, with a little bundle in one hand and the dog under the other arm. "Been to a death, p'r'aps. Some uv these nurses, they've tender 'earts, bless 'em, and when I was in the 'awspital----" But she turned her head and hurried on, and the voice was lost in the empty air.

As she dipped into the slums of Westminster the sun gleamed on her wet face, and a group of noisy, happy girls, going to their work in the jam factories of Soho, came toward her laughing.

The girls looked at the Sister as she pa.s.sed; their tongues stopped, and there was a hush.

XII.

John Storm's enemies had succeeded. He was committed for sedition, and there was the probability that when brought up again he would be charged with complicity in manslaughter. Throughout the proceedings at the police court he maintained a calm and dignified silence. Supported by an exalted faith, he regarded even death with composure. When the trial was over and the policeman who stood at the back of the dock tapped him on the arm, he started like a man whose mind had been occupied by other issues.

"Eh?"

"Come," said the policeman, and he was taken back to the cells.

Next day he was removed to Holloway, and there he observed the same calm and silent att.i.tude. His bearing touched and impressed the authorities, and they tried by various small kindnesses to make his imprisonment easy. He encouraged them but little.

On the second morning an officer came to his cell and said, "Perhaps you would care to look at the newspaper, Father?"

"Thank you, no," he answered. "The newspapers were never much to me even when I was living in the world--they can not be necessary now that I am going out of it."

"Oh, come, you exaggerate your danger. Besides, now that the papers contain so much about yourself----"

"That is a reason why I should not see them."

"Well, to tell you the truth, Father, this morning's paper has something about somebody else, and that was why I brought it."

"Eh?"

"Somebody near to you--very near and---- But I'll leave it with you----Nothing to complain of this morning--no?"

But John Storm was already deep in the columns of the newspaper. He found the news intended for him. It was the death of his father. The paragraph was cruel and merciless. "Thus the unhappy man who was brought up at Bow Street two days ago is now a peer in his own right and the immediate heir to an earldom."

The moment was a bitter and terrible one. Memories of past years swept over him--half-forgotten incidents of his boyhood when his father was his only friend and he walked with his hand in his--memories of his father's love for him, his hopes, his aims, his ambitions, and all the vast ado of his poor delusive dreams. And then came thoughts of the broken old man dying alone, and of himself in his prison cell. It had been a strangely familiar thought to him of late that if he left London at seven in the morning he could speak to his father at seven the same night. And now his father was gone, the last opportunity was lost, and he could speak to him no more.

But he tried to conquer the call of blood which he had put aside so long, and to set over against it the claims of his exalted mission and the spirit of the teaching of Christ. What had Christ said? "Call no man your father upon the earth; for one is your Father which is in heaven!"

"Yes," he thought, "that's it--'for one is your Father which is in heaven.'"

Then he took up the newspaper again, thinking to read with a calmer mind the report of his father's death and burial, but his eye fell on a different matter.

"ANOTHER MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE.--Hardly has the public mind recovered from the perplexity attending the disappearance of a well-known clergyman from Westminster, when the news comes of a no less mysterious disappearance of a popular actress from a West-End theatre."

It was Glory!

"Although a recent acquisition to the stage and the latest English actress to come into her heritage of fame, she was already a universal favourite, and her sudden and unaccountable disappearance is a shock as well as a surprise. To the disappointment of the public she had not played her part for nearly a week, having excused herself on the ground of indisposition, but there was apparently nothing in the state of her health to give cause for anxiety or to prepare her friends for the step she has taken. What has become of her appears to be entirely beyond conjecture, but her colleagues and a.s.sociates are still hoping for the hest, though the tone of a letter left behind gives only too much reason to fear a sad and perhaps fatal sequel."

When the officer entered the cell again an hour after his first visit, John Storm was pallid and thin and gray. The sublime faith he had built up for himself had fallen to ruins, a cloud had hidden the face of the Father which was in heaven, and the death he had waited for as the crown of his life seemed to be no better than an abject end to a career that had failed.

"Cheer up," said the officer; "I've some good news for you, at all events."

The prisoner smiled sadly and shook his head.

"Bail was offered and accepted at Bow Street this morning, and you will be at liberty to leave us to-day."

"When?" said John, and his manner changed immediately.

"Well, not just yet, you know."

"For the love of G.o.d, sir, let me go at once! I have something to do-somebody to look for and find."

"Still, for your own security, Father----"

"But why?"

"Then you don't know that the mob sent a dog out in search of you 2"

"No, I didn't know that; but if all the dogs of Christendom----"

"There are worse dogs waiting for you than any that go on four legs, you know."

"That's nothing, sir, nothing at all; and if bail has been accepted, surely it is your duty to liberate me at once. I claim--I demand that you should do so!"

The officer raised his eyes in astonishment. "You surprise me, Father.

After your calmness and patience and submission to authority too!"

John Storm remained silent for a moment, and then he said, with a touching solemnity: "You must forgive me, sir. You are very good--everybody is good to me here. Still, I am not afraid, and if you can let me go----"

The officer left him. It was several hours before he returned. By this time the long summer day had closed in, and it was quite dark.

"They think you've gone. You can leave now. Come this way."

At the door of the office some minutes afterward John Storm paused with the officer's hand in his, and said:

"Perhaps it is needless to ask who is my bail" (he was thinking of Mrs.

Callender), "but if you can tell me----"