Complete works of hall c.., p.274
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 274
From that time forward Lord Storm considered himself the injured person. He had never cared for his brother, and now he designed to wipe him out. His son would do it. He was the heir to the earldom, for the earl had never married. But a posthumous revenge was too trivial. The earl had gone into politics and was making a name. Lord Storm had missed his own opportunities, though he had got himself called to the Upper House, but his son should be brought up to eclipse everything.
To this end the father devoted his life to the boy’s training. All conventional education was wrong in principle. Schools and colleges and the study of the classics were drivelling folly, with next to nothing to do with life. Travel was the great teacher. “You shall travel as far as the sun,” he said. So the boy was taken through Europe and Asia and learned something of many languages. He became his father’s daily companion, and nowhere the father went was it thought wrong for the boy to go also. Conventional morality was considered mawkish. The chief aim of home training was to bring children up in total ignorance, if possible, of the most important facts and functions of life. But it was not possible, and hence suppression, dissimulation, lying, and, under the ban of secret sin, one half the world’s woe. So the boy was taken to the temples of Greece and India, and even to Western casinos and dancing gardens. Before he was twenty he had seen something of nearly everything the world has in it.
When the time came to think of his career England was in straits about her colonial empire. The vast lands over sea wanted to take care of themselves. It was the moment of the “British North America Act,” and that gave the father his cue for action. While his brother the earl was fiddling the country to the tune of limited self-government for Crown colonies, the father of John Storm conceived the daring idea of breaking up the entire empire, including the United Kingdom, into self-governing states. They were to be the “United States of Great Britain.”
This was to be John Storm’s policy, and to work it out Lord Storm set up a house in the Isle of Man where he might always look upon his plan in miniature. There he established a bureau for the gathering of the data that his son would need to use hereafter. Newspapers came to him in his lonely retreat from all quarters of the globe, and he cut out everything relating to his subject. His library was a dusty room lined all around with brown-paper pockets, which were labelled with the names of colonies and counties.
“It will take us two generations to do it, my boy, but we’ll alter the history of England.”
At fifty he was iron-gray, and had a head like a big owl.
Meanwhile the object of these grand preparations, the offspring of that loveless union, had a personality all his own. It seemed as if he had been built for a big man every way, and Nature had been arrested in the making of him. When people looked at his head they felt he ought to have been a giant, but he was far from rivalling the children of Anak. When they listened to his conversation they thought he might turn out to be a creature of genius, but perhaps he was only a man of powerful moods. The best strength of body and mind seemed to have gone into his heart. It may be that the sorrowful unrest of his mother and her smothered passion had left their red stream in John Storm’s soul.
When he was a boy he would cry at a beautiful view in Nature, at a tale of heroism, or at any sentimental ditty sung excruciatingly in the streets. Seeing a bird’s nest that had been robbed of its eggs he burst into tears; but when he came upon the bleeding, broken shells in the path, the tears turned to fierce wrath and mad rage, and he snatched up a gun out of his father’s room and went out to take the life of the offender.
On coming to the Isle of Man he noticed as often as he went to church that a little curly red-headed girl kept staring at him from the vicar’s pew. He was a man of two-and-twenty, but the child’s eyes tormented him. At any time of day or night he could call up a vision of their gleaming brightness. Then his father sent him to Canada to watch the establishment of the Dominion, and when he came back he brought a Canadian canoe and an American yacht, and certain democratic opinions.
The first time he sailed the yacht in Manx waters he sighted a disabled boat and rescued two children. One of them was the girl of the vicar’s pew, grown taller and more winsome. She nestled up to him when he lifted her into the yacht, and, without knowing why, he kept his arms about her.
After that he called his yacht the Gloria, in imitation of her name, and sometimes took the girl out on the sea. Notwithstanding the difference of the years between them, they had their happy boy and girl days together. In her white jersey and stocking-cap she looked every inch a sailor. When the wind freshened and the boat plunged she stood to the tiller like a man, and he thought her the sweetest sight ever seen in a cockpit. And when the wind saddened and the boom came aboard she was the cheeriest companion in a calm. She sang, and so did he, and their voices went well together. Her favourite song was “Come, Lasses and Lads”; his was “John Peel”; and they would sing them off and on for an hour at a spell. Thus on a summer evening, when the bay was lying like a tired monster asleep, and every plash of an oar was echoing on the hills, the people on the land would hear them coming around the castle rock with their —
“D’ye ken John Peel, with his coat so gay?
D’ye ken John Peel at the break of day?
D’ye ken John P-e-e-l....”
For two years he amused himself with the child, and then realized that she was a child no longer. The pity of the girl’s position took hold of him. This sunny soul with her sportfulness, her grace of many gifts, with her eyes that flashed and gleamed like lightning, with her voice that was like the warble of a bird, this golden-headed gipsy, this witch, this fairy — what was the life that lay before her? Pity gave place to a different feeling, and then he was aware of a pain in the breast when he thought of the girl. As often as her eyes lasted upon him he felt his face tingle and burn. He began to be conscious of an imprisoned side to his nature, the passionate side, and he drew back afraid. This wild power, this tempest, this raging fire within, God only knew whither it was to lead him. And then he had given a hostage to fortune, or his father had for him.
From his father’s gloomy house at Knockaloe, where the winds were ever droning in the trees, he looked over to Glenfaba, and it seemed to him like a little white cloud lit up by the sunshine. His heart was forever calling to the sunny spot over there, “Glory! Glory!” The pity of it was that the girl seemed to understand everything, and to know quite well what kept them apart. She flushed with shame that he should see her wearing the same clothes constantly, and with head aside and furtive glances she talked of the days when he would leave the island for good, and London would take him and make much of him, and he would forget all about his friends in that dead old place. Such talk cut him to the quick. Though he had seen a deal of the world, he did not know much about the conversation of women.
The struggle was brief. He began to wear plainer clothes — an Oxford tweed coat and a flannel shirt — to talk about fame as an empty word, and to tell his father that he was superior to all stupid conventions.
His father sent him to Australia. Then the grown-up trouble of his life began.
He passed through the world now with eyes open for the privations of the poor, and he saw everything in a new light. Unconsciously he was doing in another way what his mother had done when she flew to religion from stifled passion. He had been brought up as a sort of imperialist democrat, but now he bettered his father’s instructions. England did not want more Parliaments, she wanted more apostles. It was not by giving votes to a nation, but by strengthening the soul of a nation, that it became great and free. The man for the hour was not he who revolved schemes for making himself famous, but he who was ready to renounce everything, and if he was great was willing to become little, and if he was rich to become poor. There was room for an apostle — for a thousand apostles — who, being dead to the world’s glory, its money or its calls, were prepared to do all in Christ’s spirit, and to believe that in the renunciation, which was the “secret” of Jesus, lay the only salvation remaining for the world.
He tramped through the slums of Melbourne and Sydney, and afterward through the slums of London, returned to the Isle of Man a Christian Socialist, and announced to his father his intention of going into the Church.
The old man did not fume and fly out. He staggered back to his room like a bullock to its pen after it has had its death-blow in the shambles. In the midst of his dusty old bureau, with its labelled packets full of cuttings, he realized that twenty years of his life had been wasted. A son was a separate being, of a different growth, and a father was only the seed at the root that must decay and die.
Then he made some show of resistance.
“But with your talents, boy, surely you are not going to throw away your chances of a great name?”
“I care nothing for a great name, father,” said John. “I shall win a greater victory than any that Parliament can give me.”
“But, my boy, my dear boy! one must either be the camel or the camel-driver; and then society — —”
“I hate society, and society would hate me. It is only for the sake of the few godly men that God spares it as he spared Sodom for Lot’s sake.”
Having braved this ordeal and nearly broken the heart of his old father, he turned for his reward to Glory. He found her at her usual haunt on the headlands.
“I was blushing when you came up, wasn’t I?” she said. “Shall I tell you why?”
“Why?”
“It was this,” she said, with a sweep of her hand across her bosom.
He looked puzzled.
“Don’t you understand? This old rag — it’s the one I was wearing before you went away.”
He wanted to tell her how well she looked in it — better than ever now that her bosom showed under its seamless curves, and her figure had grown so lithe and shapely. But though she was laughing he saw she was ashamed of her poverty, and he thought to comfort her.
“I’m to be a poor man myself in future, Glory. I’ve quarrelled with my father. I’m going to take Orders.”
Her face fell. “Oh, I didn’t think anybody would be poor who could help it. To be a clergyman is all right for a poor man, perhaps, but I hate to be poor; it’s horrid.”
Then darkness fell upon his eyes and he felt sad and sick. Glory had disappointed him. She was vain, she was worldly, she was incapable of the higher things; she would never know what a sacrifice he had made for her; she would think nothing of him now; but he would go on all the same, the more earnestly because the devil had drawn a bow at him and the arrow had gone in up to the feathers.
“With God’s help I shall nail my colours to the mast,” he said.
Thus he made up his mind to follow the unrolling of the scroll. He had the strength called character. The Church had been his beacon before, but now it was to be his refuge.
He found no difficulty in making the necessary preparations. For a year he read the Anglican divines — Jeremy Taylor, Hooker, Butler, Waterland, Pearson, and Pusey — and when the time came for his ordination his uncle, the Earl of Erin, who was now Prime Minister, obtained him a title to a curacy under the popular and influential Canon Wealthy of All Saints, Belgravia. The Bishop of London gave letters dimissory to the Bishop of Sodor and Man, by whom he was examined and ordained.
On the morning of his departure for London his father, with whom there had in the meantime been trying scenes, left him this final word of farewell: “As I understand that you intend to lead the life of poverty, I presume that you do not need your mother’s dowry, and I shall hold myself at liberty to dispose of it elsewhere, unless you require it for the use of the young lady who is, I hear, to go up with you.”
V.
“I will be a poor man among poor men,” said John Storm to himself as he drove to his vicar’s house in Eaton Place, but he awoke next morning in a bedroom that did not answer to his ideas of a life of poverty. A footman came with hot water and tea, and also a message from the canon overnight saying he would be pleased to see Mr. Storm in the study after breakfast.
The study was a sumptuous apartment immediately beneath, with soft carpets on which his feet made no noise, and tiger-skins over the backs of chairs. As he entered it a bright-faced man in middle life, clean-shaven, wearing a gold-mounted pince-nez, and bubbling over with politeness, stepped forward to receive him.
“Welcome to London, my dear Mr. Storm. When the letter came from the Prime Minister I said to my daughter Felicity — you will see her presently — I trust you will be good friends — I said, ‘It is a privilege, my child, to meet any wish of the dear Earl of Erin, and I am proud to be in at the beginning of a career that is sure to be brilliant and distinguished.’”
John Storm made some murmur of dissent.
“I trust you found your rooms to your taste, Mr. Storm?”
John Storm had found them more than he expected or desired.
“Ah, well, humble but comfortable, and in any case please regard them as your own, to receive whom you please therein, and to dispense your own hospitalities. This house is large enough. We shall not meet oftener than we wish, so we can not quarrel. The only meal we need take together is dinner. Don’t expect too much. Simple but wholesome — that’s all we can promise you in a clergyman’s family.”
John Storm answered that food was an indifferent matter to him, and that half an hour after dinner he never knew what he had eaten. The canon laughed and began again.
“I thought it best you should come to us, being a stranger in London, though I confess I have never had but one of my clergy residing with me before. He is here now. You’ll see him by-and-bye. His name is Golightly, a simple, worthy young man, from one of the smaller colleges, I believe. Useful, you know, devoted to me and to my daughter, but of course a different sort of person altogether, and — er — —”
It was a peculiarity of the canon that whatever he began to talk about, he always ended by talking of himself.
“I sent for you this morning, not having had the usual opportunity of meeting before, that I might tell you something of our organization and your own duties.... You see in me the head of a staff of six clergy.”
John Storm was not surprised; a great preacher must be followed by flocks of the poor; it was natural that they should wish him to help them and to minister to them.
“We have no poor in my parish, Mr. Storm.”
“No poor, sir?”
“On the contrary, her Majesty herself is one of my parishioners.”
“That must be a great grief to you, sir?”
“Oh, the poor! Ah, yes, certainly. Of course, we have our associated charities, such as the Maternity Home, founded in Soho by Mrs. Callender — a worthy old Scotswoman — odd and whimsical, perhaps, but rich, very rich and influential. My clergy, however, have enough to do with the various departments of our church work. For instance, there is the Ladies’ Society, the Fancy Needlework classes, and the Decorative Flower Guild, not to speak of the daughter churches and the ministration in hospitals, for I always hold — er — —”
John Storm’s mind had been wandering, but at the mention of the hospital he looked up eagerly.
“Ah, yes, the hospital. Your own duties will be chiefly concerned with our excellent hospital of Martha’s Vineyard. You will have the spiritual care of all patients and nurses — yes, nurses also — within its precincts, precisely as if it were your parish. ‘This is my parish,’ you will say to yourself, and treat it accordingly. Not yet being in full Orders, you will be unable to administer the sacrament, but you will have one service daily in each of the wards, taking the wards in rotation. There are seven wards, so there will be one service in each ward once a week, for I always say that fewer — —”
“Is it enough?” said John. “I shall be only too pleased — —”
“Ah, well, we’ll see. On Wednesday evenings we have service in the church, and nurses not on night duty are expected to attend. Some fifty of them altogether, and rather a curious compound. Ladies among them? Yes, the daughters of gentlemen, but also persons of all classes. You will hold yourself responsible for their spiritual welfare. Let me see — this is Friday — say you take the sermon on Wednesday next, if that is agreeable. As to views, my people are of all shades of colour, so I ask my clergy to take strictly via media views — strictly via media. Do you intone?”
John Storm had been wandering again, but he recovered himself in time to say he did not.
“That is a pity; our choir is so excellent — two violins, a viola, clarinet, ‘cello, double bass, the trumpets and drums, and of course the organ. Our organist himself — —”
At that moment a young clergyman came into the room, making apologies and bowing subserviently.
“Ah, this is Mr. Golightly — the-h’m — Hon. and Rev. Mr. Storm. — You will take charge of Mr. Storm and bring him to church on Sunday morning.”
Mr. Golightly delivered his message. It was about the organist. His wife had called to say that he had been removed to the hospital for some slight operation, and there was some difficulty about the singer of Sunday morning’s anthem.
“Most irritating! Bring her up.” The curate went out backward. “I shall ask you to excuse me, Mr. Storm. My daughter, Felicity — ah, here she is.”
A tall young woman in spectacles entered.
“This is our new housemate, Mr. Storm, nephew of dear Lord Erin. Felicity, my child, I wish you to drive Mr. Storm round and introduce him to our people, for I always say a young clergyman in London — —”
John Storm mumbled something about the Prime Minister.
“Going to pay your respects to your uncle now? Very good and proper. Next week will do for the visits. Yes, yes. Come in, Mrs. Koenig.”
A meek, middle-aged woman had appeared at the door. She was dark, and had deep luminous eyes with the moist look to be seen in the eyes of a tired old terrier.
