Complete works of hall c.., p.294
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 294
“Oh, no-no, there’ll be no more letters now, porter, and — I’ll not come again. Here!”
“No, no, miss.”
“Yes, yes, you must.”
She forced a shilling into the porter’s hand in spite of his protests, and then fled from the look in his face which seemed to her to say that he would like to return her sixpence.
John Storm was lost to her. It was foolishness to go on expecting to hear from him. Had he not told her that the rule under which the brothers lived in community forbade them to write and receive letters except by special permission? But she had expected that something would happen — some accident, some miracle, she hardly knew what. That dream was over now; she was alone; it was no use deceiving herself any longer.
She went home by the back streets, for people were peering into her face, and she thought perhaps she had been crying. Late as it was, being New Year’s Eve, there were groups about every corner, and in some of the flagged courts and alleys little girls were dancing to the music of the Italian organ man or turning catherine-wheels. As she was going down Long Acre a creachy voice saluted her.
“Evening, miss! Going home early, ain’t ye?”
It was a miserable-looking woman in clothes that might have been stolen from a scarecrow.
“Market full to-night, my dear? Look as if the dodgers had been at ye. Live? I live off of the lane. But lor’ bless ye, I’ve lived in a-many places! Seen the day I lived in Soho Square. I was on the ‘alls then. Got a bit quisby on my top notes, you know, and took the scarlet fever — soldier, I mean, my dear. But what’s the use of frettin’?
“I likes to be jolly, and I allwiz is. Doing now? Selling flowers outside the theatres — police is nasty if you’ve got nothink. Ain’t I going home? Soon as I get a drain of white satin. Wish you luck, my dear!”
As she came up to the shop in the Turnstile she could hear that it was noisy with the voices of men and girls, so she turned back through Lincoln’s-Inn Fields and passed down to Fleet Street. It was approaching twelve o’clock by this time, and streams of people were flowing in the direction of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Glory turned eastward also and allowed herself to be carried along with the current which babbled and talked like a river in the night.
Immediately in front of her there was a line of girls walking arm-in-arm across the width of the pavement. They were factory girls in big hats with ostrich feathers, and as they skipped along with their free step they sang snatches of Salvation hymns and music-hall songs. All at once they gave a shrill peal of laughter, and one of them cried, “Tell me what it is and I’ll give it a nyme.” At the next moment a strange figure was forging past their line, going westward with long strides. It was a man in the habit of a monk, with long black cassock and broad-brimmed hat. Glory caught a glimpse of his face as he passed her. It was a hungry, eager face, with big, melancholy eyes, and it seemed to her that she must have seen it before somewhere. The wind was very cold, and the great cross on the dome of the cathedral stood out like a beacon against flying clouds.
St. Paul’s churchyard was thronged with noisy, happy people, and down to the last minute before the hour they shouted and joked and laughed. Then there was a hush, the great crowds seemed to hold their breath as if they had been a single living creature, and every face was turned upward to the clock. The clock struck, the bells of the cathedral began to ring, the people cheered and saluted each other and shook hands on every side, and then the dense mass broke up.
Glory could have cried for joy of it all — it was so simple, so human, so childlike. But she listened to the laughter and salutations of the people about her and felt more lonely than the Bedouin in the desert; she remembered the bubbling hopes that had carried her through the day, and her heart fell low; she thought of the letter which she had posted home on her way to the theatre, and two great tears came rolling from her eyes.
The face of the monk tormented her, and suddenly she bethought herself whose face it must have been. It must have been the face of Polly Love’s brother. He belonged to the Bishopsgate Fathers, and had once been a patient in the hospital, and perhaps he was going there now on some errand or urgent message — to the doctors or to ——
“It was foolish not to leave my address when the porter asked me,” she thought. She would go back and do so. There could be no harm in that; and if anything had really happened, if John ——
“Happy New Year to you, my dear!”
Somebody in the drifting crowd was standing before her and blocking the way. It was Agatha Jones in a mock seal-skin coat and big black hat surmounted by black feathers, and with Charlie Wilkes (with his diminutive cap pushed back from his oily fringe and pimpled forehead) leaning heavily on her arm.
“Well, I never! Who’d have thought of meeting you in St. Paul’s churchyawd!”
Glory tried to laugh and to return the salutation over the noises of the people and the clangour of the bells. And then Aggie put her face close, as women do who are accustomed to talking in the streets, and said: “Thought we’d seen the lahst of you, my dear, when you went off that night sudden. Selling programmes somewhere else now?”
“Something of that sort,” said Glory.
“I’m not. I’ve been left the old red church this fortnight and more. Charlie’s got me on the clubs. But my word!” turning to Charlie, “it’s her as oughter be there, my dear!”
“She cheeks me out,” said Charlie, “as you’ll knock the stuffing out of Betty Bellman ‘erself if you once myke a stawt.”
And Aggie said: “I might get you to do a turn almost any Sunday, if you like, my dear. There’s always somebody as down’t come, and they’re glad of an extra turn to tyke the number if she’s only clever enough to get a few ‘ands. Going ‘ome, dear?”
“Yes,” said Glory.
“Where d’ye live?” said Aggie, and Glory told her.
“I’ll call for you Sunday night at eight, and if you down’t tyke your chawnce when you get it, you’re a foolisher woman than I thought you were, that’s stright! By-bye!”
XII.
Always at half-past five in the morning the Father Superior began to awaken the Brotherhood. It took him a quarter of an hour to pass through the house on that errand, for the infirmities of his years were upon him. During this interval John Storm had intended to open the gate to Paul and then return the key to its place in the Father’s room. The time was short, and to lose no part of it he had resolved to remain awake the whole night through.
There was little need to make a call on that resolution. With fear and remorse he could not close his eyes, and from hour to hour he heard every sound of the streets. At one o’clock, the voices singing outside were strained and cracked and out of tune; at two, they were brutish and drunken and mingled with shrieks of quarrelling; at three, there was silence; at four, the butchers’ wagons were rattling on the stones from the shambles across the river to the meat markets of London, with the carcasses of the thousands of beasts that were slaughtered overnight to feed the body of the mammoth on the morrow; and at five, the postal vans were galloping from the railway stations to the post-office with the millions of letters that were to feed its mind.
At half-past five the Father had come out of his room and passed slowly upstairs, and John Storm was in the courtyard opening the lock of the outer gate. Although there was a feeling of morning in the freezing air it was still quite dark.
“Paul,” he whispered, but there was no answer.
“Brother Paul!” he whispered again, and then waited, but there was no reply.
It was not at first that he realized the tremendous gravity of what had occurred — that Brother Paul had not returned, and that he must go back to the house without him. He kept calling into the darkness until he remembered that the Father would be down in his room again soon and looking for the key where he had left it.
Back in the hall, he reproached himself with his haste, and concluded to return to the gate. There would be time to do it; the Father was still far overhead; his “Benedicamus Domino” was passing from corridor to corridor; and Paul might be coming down the street.
“Paul! Paul!” he cried again, and opening the gate he looked out. But there was no one on the pavement except a drunken man and a girl, singing themselves home in the dead waste of the New Year’s morning.
Then the truth fell on him like a thundercloud, and he hurried back to the house for good. By this time the Father was coming down the stairs, and had reached the landing of the first story. Snatching up from the bed in the alcove the book which had been lying there all night unregarded, he crept into the Father’s room. He was coming out of it when he came face to face with the Father himself, who was on the point of going in.
“I have been returning the book you lent me,” he said, and then he tried to steal away in his shame. But the Father held him a while in playful remonstrance. The hours were not all saved that were stolen from the night, and his swelled eyes this morning were a testimony to the musty old maxim. Still, with a book like that, his diligence was not to be wondered at, and it would be interesting to hear what he thought of it. He couldn’t say as yet. That wasn’t to be wondered at either. Somebody had said that a great book was like a great mountain — not to be seen to the top while you were still too near to it.
John’s duplicity was choking him. His eyes were averted from the Father’s face, for he had lost the power of looking straight at any one, and he could see the key of the gate still shaking from the hook on which his nervous fingers had placed it. When he escaped at length, the Father asked him to ring the bell for Lauds, as Brother Andrew, whose duty it was, had evidently overslept himself.
John rang the bell, and then took his lamp and some tapers from a shelf in the hall and went out to the church to light the candles, for that also was Brother Andrew’s duty. As he was crossing the courtyard on his way back to the house, he passed the Father going to open the gate.
“But what has become of your hat?” said the Father, and then, for the first time, John remembered what he had done with it.
“I’ve lent — that is to say, I’ve lost it,” he answered, and then stood with his eyes on the ground while the Father reproved him for heedlessness of health, and so forth.
It is part of the perversity of circumstance that while an incident of the greatest gravity is occurring, its ridiculous counterpart is usually taking place by the side of it. When the religious had gathered in the church it was seen that three of the stalls were vacant — Brother Paul’s, Brother Andrew’s, and the Father Minister’s. The service had hardly begun when the bell was heard to ring again, and with a louder clangour than before, whereupon the religious concluded that Brother Andrew had awakened from his sleep, and was remembering with remorse his belated duty.
But it was the Father Minister. That silent and severe person had oftentimes rebuked the lay brother for his sleepiness, and this morning he had himself been overcome by the same infirmity. Awakening suddenly a little after six by the watch that hung by his bed, he had thought, “That lazy fellow is late again — I’ll teach him a lesson.” Leaping to his feet (the monk sleeps in his habit), he had hastened to the bell and rung it furiously, and then snatched up a taper and hurried down the stairs to light the candles in the church. When he appeared at the sacristy door with a lighted taper in his hand and confusion on his face, the brothers understood everything at a glance, and not even the solemnity of the service could smother the snufflings of their laughter.
The incident was a trivial one, but it diverted attention for a time from the fact of Paul’s absence, and when the religious went back to the house and found Brother Andrew returned to his old duty as doorkeeper, the laughter was renewed, and there was some playful banter.
The monk is so far a child that the least thing happening in the morning is enough to determine the temper of the day, and as late as the hour for breakfast the house was still rippling with the humour of the Father Minister’s misadventure. There was one seat vacant in the refectory — Brother Paul’s — and the Superior was the first to observe it. With a twinkle in his eye, he said:
“I feel like Boy Blue this morning. Two of my stray sheep have come home, bringing their tails behind them. Will anybody go in search of the third?”
John Storm rose immediately, but a lay brother was before him, so he sat down again with his white cheeks and quivering lips, and made an effort to eat his breakfast.
The reader for the week recited the Scripture for the day, and then took up the book which the brothers were hearing at their meals. It was the Life and Death of Father Ignatius of St. Paul, and the chapter they had come to dealt with certain amusing examples of vanities and foibles. An evil spirit might have selected it with special reference to the incidents of the morning, for at every fresh illustration the Father Minister squirmed on his seat, and the brothers looked across at him and laughed with a spice of mischief, and even a touch of malice.
John’s eyes were on the door, and his heart was quivering, but the messenger did not return during breakfast, and when it was over the Superior rose without waiting for him and led the way to the community room.
A fire was burning in the wide grate, and the room was cheerful with reflected sun-rays, for the sun was shining in the courtyard and glistening on the frosty boughs of the sycamore. It was a beautiful New Year’s morning, and the Father began to tell some timely stories. In the midst of the laughter that greeted them the lay brother returned and delivered his message. Brother Paul could not be found, and there was not a sign of him anywhere in the house.
“That’s strange,” said the religious.
“Perhaps he is in his cell,” said the Father.
“No, he is not there,” said the messenger, “and his bed has not been slept in.”
“Now, that explains something,” said the Father. “I thought he didn’t answer when I knocked at his door in the morning, but my ears grow dull and my eyes are failing me, and I told myself perhaps — —”
“It’s very strange’” said the religious, with looks of astonishment.
“But perhaps he staid all night at his penance in the church,” said the Father.
“Apparently his hat did so at all events,” said one of the brothers. “I saw it lying with his lamp on the stall in front of me.”
There was silence for a moment, and then the Father said with a smile:
“But my children are so amusing in such matters! Only this morning I had to reprove Brother Storm for losing his hat somewhere, and now Brother Paul — —”
By an involuntary impulse, obscure to themselves, the brothers turned toward John, who was standing in the recess of one of the windows with his pale face looking out on the sunshine.
John was the first to speak.
“Father,” he said, “I have something to say to you.”
“Come this way,” said the Superior, and they passed out of the room together.
The Father led the way to his room and closed the door behind them. But there was little need for confession; the Father seemed to know everything in an instant. He sat in his wicker chair before the fire and rocked himself and moaned.
“Well, well, God’s wrath comes up against the children of disobedience, but we must do our best to bear our punishment.”
John Storm made no excuses. He had stood by the Father’s chair and told his story simply, without fear or remorse, only concealing that part of it which concerned himself in relation to Glory.
“Yes, yes,” said the Father, “I see quite plainly how it has been. He was like tinder, ready to take fire at a spark, and you were thinking I had been hard and cruel and in-human.”
It was the truth; John could not deny it; he held down his head and was silent.
“But shall I tell you why I refused that poor boy’s petition? Shall I tell you who he was, and how he came to be here? Yes, I will tell you. Nobody in this house has heard it until now, because it was his secret and mine and God’s alone — not given me in confession, no, or it would have to be locked in my breast forever. But you have thrust yourself in between us, so you must hear everything, and may the Lord pity and forgive you and help you to bear your burden!”
John felt that a cold damp was breaking out on his forehead, but he clinched his moist hands and made ready to control himself.
“Has he ever spoken of another sister?”
“Yes, he has sometimes mentioned her.”
“Then perhaps you have been told of the painful and tragic event that happened?”
“No,” said John, but something that he had heard at the board meeting at the hospital returned at that moment with a stunning force to his memory.
“His father, poor man, was one of my own people — one of the lay associates of our society in the world outside. But his health gave way, his business failed him, and he died in a madhouse, leaving his three children to the care of a friend. The friend was thought to be a worthy, and even a pious man, but he was a scoundrel and a traitor. The younger sister — the one you know — he committed to an orphanage; the elder one he deceived and ruined. As a sequel to his sin, she lived a life of shame on the streets of London, and died by suicide at the end of it.”
John Storm put up one hand to his head as if his brain was bursting, and with the other hand he held on to the Father’s chair.
“That was bad enough, but there was worse to follow. Our poor Paul had grown to be a man by this time, and Satan put it into his heart to avenge his sister’s dishonour. ‘As the whirlwind passeth, so the wicked are no more.’ The betrayer of his trust was found dead in his room, slain by an unknown assassin. Brother Paul had killed him.”
John Storm had fallen to his knees. If hell itself had opened at his feet he could not have been stricken with more horror. In a voice strangled by fear he stammered: “But why didn’t you tell me this before? Why have you hidden it until now?”
“Passions, my son, are the same in a monastery as outside of it, and I had too much reason to fear that the saintliest soul in our Brotherhood would have refused to live and eat and sleep in the same house with a murderer. But the poor soul had come to me like a hunted beast, and who was I that I should turn my back upon him? Before that he had tramped through the streets and slept in the parks, under the impression that the police were pursuing him, and thereby he had contracted the lung disease from which he suffers still. What was I to do? Give him up to the law? Who shall tell me how I could have held the balance level? I took him into my house; I sheltered him; I made him a member of our community; Heaven forgive me, I suffered myself to receive his vows. It was for me to comfort his stricken body, for the Church to heal his wounded soul; and as for his crime, that was in God’s hands, and God alone could deal with it.”
