"No," said Charlie.

"Where are you going to?"

"Nowhere as you can come."

Aggie's eyes watered, and she wrenched a button off, but she only laughed and answered, "Don't think as we're throwing ourselves at your head, my man! We only wanted to know. Ta-ta!"

It was now midnight, and the streets were thin of people, but sounds of music and dancing came from nearly every open window and door.

Aggie was crying. "That's the worst of the clubs," she said, "they lead 'em to the gambling hells. And then a young man always knows when he can tyke advantage."

As they returned past the Swiss club somebody who was being thrown out into the street was shouting in a gurgling voice, "Let go o' my throat or I'll corpse ye!" And farther on two or three girls in their teens, with their arms about the necks of twice as many men, were reeling along the pavement and singing in a tuneless wail.



XV.

Toward the middle of Lent the Society of the Holy Gethsemane was visited by its ecclesiastical Visitor. This was the Bishop of the diocese, a liberal-minded man and not a very rigid ecclesiastic, abrupt, brusque, businesslike, and a good administrator. When the brothers had gathered in the community room, he took from the Superior the leathern-bound volume containing the rule of the Brotherhood and read aloud the text of it.

"And now, gentlemen," he said, "whether I approve of your rule or not is a matter with which we have no concern at present. My sole duty is to see that it is lawfully administered. Are you satisfied with the administration of it and willing to remain under its control?"

There was only one response from the brothers—they were entirely satisfied.

The Bishop rose with a smile and bowed to the brothers, and they began to leave the room.

"There are two of my people whom you have not yet seen," said the Father.

"Where are they?"

"In their cells."

"Why in their cells?"

"One of them is ill; the other is under the rule of silence and solitude."

"Let us visit them," said the Bishop, and they began to ascend the stairs.

"I may not agree with your theory of the religious life, Father, but when I see your people giving up the world and its comforts, its joys and possessions, its ties of blood and affection——"

They had reached the topmost story, and the Father had paused to recover breath. "This cell to the right," said he, "is occupied by a lay brother who was tempted by the Evil One to a grievous act of disobedience, and the wrath of God has fallen on him. But Satan has overreached himself for once, and by that very act grace has triumphed. Not a member of our community rejoices more in the blessed sacrament, and when I place the body of our Lord——"

"May we go in to him?"

"Certainly; he is dying of lung disease, but you shall see with what patience he possesses his soul."

Brother Paul was sitting before a small fire in an arm-chair padded with pillows, holding in his dried-up hands a heavy crucifix which was suspended from his heck.

"How lightsome and cosy we are up here!" said the Bishop. "A long way up, certainly, but no doubt you get everything you require."

"Everything," said Paul.

"I dare say the brothers are very good to you—they usually are so to the weak and ailing in a monastery."

"Too good, my lord."

"Of course you see a doctor occasionally?"

"Three times a week, and if he would only let me escape from an evil and troublesome world——"

"Hush! It's not right to talk like that, my son. Whatever happens, it is our duty to live, you know."

"I've lost all there was to live for, and besides——"

"Then there is nothing you wish for?" said the Bishop.

"Nothing but death," said Paul, and lifting the crucifix he carried it to his lips.

"Thank God we are born to die!" said the Bishop, and they stepped back to the corridor and closed the door.

"This next cell," said the Father, "is occupied by such a one as you were thinking of—one who was born to possess the world and to achieve its sounding triumphs, but——"

"Has he given it up entirely?"

"Entirely."

"Is he young?"

"Quite young, and he has left the world, not as Augustine did, after learning by bitter experience the deceitfulness of sin——"

"Then why is he here?"

"He can not trust himself yet. He feels the inward strivings and struggles of our rebellious nature and——"

"Then his solitude and silence are voluntary?"

"Now they are. See," said the Father, and stooping to the floor he picked up a key that lay at his feet.

"What does that mean?"

"He locks himself in and pushes the key under the door."

When they entered the cell John Storm was standing by the window in a stream of morning sunlight, looking out on the world below with fixed and yearning eyes.

"This is our Visitor," said the Father. "The rule of silence is relaxed in his case."

"Have I not seen you before?" said the Bishop.

"I think not, Father," said John.

"What is your name, and where did you live before you came here?"

John told him.

"Then I have both seen and heard you. But I perceive that the world has gone on a little since you left it—your canon is an archdeacon now, and one of the chaplains to the Queen as well. How long have you been in the Brotherhood?"

"Since the 14th of August."

"And how long have you kept your cell?"

"Since the octave of Epiphany."

"But this is Lent—rather a long penance, Father."

"I have often urged our dear brother——" began the Father.

"You carry your fastings and prayers too far, Mr. Storm," said the Bishop. He was picking up one by one some black-letter books that were lying on the table and on the bed. "I know that divines in all ages tell us that the body is evil, and that its desires and appetites must be eradicated. But they also teach us that the perfect Christian character is the blending of the two lives, the life of Nature and the life of grace. Don't despise your humanity, my son. Your Master did not despise it. He came down from heaven that he might live and work among the sinful brotherhood of man. And don't pray for death, or fast as if you wished for it. You would have no right to do that even if you were like your poor neighbour next door, whom Death smiles on and beckons to repose. But you are young and you are strong. Who knows what good work your heavenly Father keeps waiting for you yet?"

John had returned to the window and was looking out with vacant eyes.

"But all this is beside my present business," said the Bishop. "There is nothing you wish to complain of?"

"Nothing whatever."

"You are content to live in this house, under the laws and statutes of this society and in voluntary obedience to its Superior?"

"Yes."

"That is enough."

The Bishop was leaving the cell, when his eye was arrested by some writing in pencil on the wall. It ran, "9th of November—Lord Mayor's Day"; and under it were short lines such as a prisoner makes when he keeps a reckoning.

"What is the meaning of this date?" said the Bishop.

John was silent, but the Father answered with a smile: "That is the date of his vow, my lord. It is part of the discipline of his life of grace to keep count of the days of his novitiate, so eager is he for the time when he may dedicate his whole life to God."

Back at the head of the stairs the Father paused again and said, "Listen!"

There was the sound as of a trembling hand turning the key in the lock of the door they had shut behind them, and at the next moment the key itself came out of the aperture under it.

When the door closed on the Bishop and John Storm was alone in his cell, one idea was left with him—the idea of work. He had tried everything else, and everything had failed.

He had tried solitude. On asking to be shut up in a cell, he had said to himself: "The thought of Glory is a temptation of my unquickened and unspiritual nature. It has already betrayed me into an act of cowardice and inhumanity, and it will drive me out into the world and fling me back again, as it drove out and flung back Brother Paul." But the result of his solitude was specious and deceitful. As pictures seem to float before the eyes after the eyelids are closed, so his past life, now that it was over, seemed to rise up before him with awful distinctness. Sitting alone in his cell, every event of his life with Glory passed before him in review, and harassed him with pitiless condemnation. Why had he failed to realize the essential difference of temperament between himself and that joyous creature? Why had he hesitated to gratify her natural and innocent love of mere life? Why had he done this? Why had he not done that? If Glory were lost, if the wicked and merciless world had betrayed her, the fault was his, and God would surely punish him. Thus did solitude enervate his soul by frightening it, and the temptation he had hoped to vanquish became the more strong and tyrannical.

He had tried reading. The Fathers told him that God allowed ascetics to keep the keys of their nature in their own hands; that they had only to think of woman as more bitter than death, and of her beauty as a cause of perdition, and that if any woman's face tormented them they were to picture it to the eye of the mind as old and wrinkled, defaced by disease, and even the prey of the worm. He tried to think of Glory as the Fathers directed, but when darkness fell and he lay on his bed, with the first dream of the night the strong powers of Nature that had no mind to surrender swept down the pitiful bulwarks of religion, and Glory was smiling upon him in her youth, her beauty, her sweetness, her humour, and all the grace of her countless gifts.

He had tried fasting. Three times a day Brother Andrew brought him his food, and twice a day, when the lay brother had left him, he opened the window and spread the food on the sill for the birds to take. But the results of his fasting were the reverse of his expectations. At one moment he was uplifted by strong emotions, at the next moment he was in collapse. Visions began to pass before him. His father's face tormented him constantly, and sometimes he was conscious of the face of his mother, though he had never known her. But above all and through all there came the face of Glory. Fasting had only extended his dreams about her. He was dreaming both by day and by night now, and Glory was with him always.

He had tried prayer. Hitherto he had said his Offices regularly, but now he would say special prayers as well. To get the victory over his lawless and rebellious nature he would turn his eyes to the mother of the Lord. But when he tried to fix his mind on Mary there was nothing to answer to it. All was shadowy and impalpable. There was only a vague, empty cloud before his eyes, until suddenly a luminous face glided into the vacant place, and it was full of tenderness, of sweetness, of charm, of pity and womanly love—but it was the face of Glory.

Despair laid hold of him. His attempts to overcome Nature were clearly rejected by the Almighty. Winter passed with its foggy days. The Father wished him to return to the ordinary life of the community, yet he begged to be allowed to remain.

But the spring came and diffused its joy throughout all Nature. He listened to the leaves, he watched the birds threading their way in the clear air, he caught glimpses of the yellow flowers, and strained his eyes for the green country beyond. The young birds began to take wing, and one little sparrow came hopping into his room as often as he opened his window in the morning and played about his feet like a mouse, and then was gone to the mother bird that called to it from the tree.

Little by little hope grew to impatience, and impatience rose to fever heat; but he remembered his vow, and, to put himself out of temptation, he locked the door of his cell and pushed the key through the aperture under it. But he could not lock the door of his soul, and his old trouble came up again with the throb of a stronger and fresher life. Every morning when he awoke he thought of Glory. Where was she now? What had become of her by this time? He wrote on the wall the date of her disappearance from the hospital—"9th of November; Lord Mayor's Day"—and tried to keep pace in his mind with the chances of her fate. "I am guilty of a folly," he thought. The pride of his reason revolted against what he was doing. Nevertheless, he knew full well it would be the same to-morrow, and the next day, and the next year, for his human passions would not yield, and his vow still clutched him as with fangs.

He was standing one morning by the window looking through an opening between high buildings to the river, with its hay barges gliding down the glistening water-way, and its little steamers with their spirals of smoke ascending, when everything in the world began in a moment to bear another moral interpretation. The lesson of life was work. Man could not exist without it. If he departed from that condition, no matter how much he fasted and meditated and prayed, he was useless and miserable and depraved.

Then the lock turned in the door of his cell and the Father and the Bishop entered. When they were gone he felt suffocated by their praises of his piety, and asked himself, "What am I doing here?" He was a hypocrite. Ten thousand other men whom the Church called saints had been hypocrites before him, and as they paced their cloisters they had asked themselves the same question. But the mighty hand of the Church was over him still, and with trembling fingers he turned the key again and pushed it under the door. Then he knew that he was a coward also, and that religion had deprived him of his will, of his manhood, and enervated his soul itself.

Brother Paul was moving about in the adjoining cell. The lay brother had become very weak; his step was slow, his feet dragged along the floor; his breath was audible and sometimes his cough was long and raucous. John had heard these sounds every day and had tried not to listen, but now he strained his ears to hear. A new thought had come to him: he would ask to be allowed to nurse Brother Paul; that should be his work, for work alone could save him.

Next morning he leaped up from sleep at the first syllable of "Benedicamus Domino," and cried, "Father!" But when the door opened in answer to his call it was the Father Minister who entered. The Superior had gone to give a Retreat to a sisterhood in York, and would be absent until the end of Lent. John looked at the hard face of the deputy, the very mirror of its closed and frozen soul, and he could say nothing.

"Is it anything that I can do for you?" said the Father Minister.

"No—that is to say—no, no," said John.

When he opened his window that day he could hear the Lenten services in the church. The prayers, the responses, the psalms, and the hymns woke to fresh life the memory of things long past, and for the first time he became oppressed with a great loneliness. The near neighbourhood of Brother Paul intensified that loneliness, and at length he asked for an indulgence and spoke to the Father Minister again.

"Brother Paul is ill; let me attend to him," he said.

The Father Minister shook his head. "The brother gets all he wants. He does not wish for constant attendance."

"But he is a dying man, and somebody should be with him always."

"The doctor says nothing can be done for him. He may live months. But if he is dying, let us leave him to meditate on the happiness and glory of another world."

John made no further struggle. Another door had closed on him. But it was not necessary to go to Brother Paul that he might be with him always. The spiritual eye could see everything. Listening to the sounds in the adjoining cell, it was the same at length as if the wall between them had fallen down and the two rooms were one. Whatever Brother Paul did John seemed to see, whatever he said in his hours of pain John seemed to hear, and when he lifted his scuttle of coal from the place at the door where the lay brother left it, John's hand seemed to bear up the weight.

It was a poor, pathetic folly, but it brought the comfort of company, and John thought with a pang of the time when he had wished to be separated from Paul, and had all but asked for a cell elsewhere. Paul had a fire, and John could hear him build and light and stir it; and sometimes when this was done he could sit down himself before his own empty grate on his own side of the wall and fancy they were good comrades sitting side by side.

As the day passed he thought that Brother Paul on his part also was touched by the same sense of company. His silence at certain moments, his half-articulate salutations, his repetition of the sounds that John himself made, seemed to be the dumb expression of a sense that, in spite of the wall that divided them, and the rule of silence and solitude that separated them on John's side, they were, nevertheless, together.

Brother Paul's cough grew rapidly worse, and at last it burst into a fit so long and violent as to seem as if it would never end. John held his breath and listened. "He'll suffocate," he thought; "he'll never live through it!" But the spasm passed, and there was a prolonged hush, a dead stillness, that was not broken by so much as the sound of a breath. Was he gone? By a sudden impulse, in the agony of his suspense, John stretched out his hand and knocked three times on the wall.

There was a short silence, and then faintly, slowly, and irregularly three other knocks came back to him.

Paul had understood, and John shouted in his joy. But even on top of his relief came his religious fears. Had he broken the rule of silence? Were they guilty of a sin?

Nevertheless, for many days thereafter, though they knew it was a fault, in this vague and dumb and feeble fashion they communicated constantly. On going to bed they rapped "Good-night": on rising for the day they rapped "Good-morning." They rapped when the bell rang for midday service, and again when the singing came up through the courtyard. And sometimes they rapped from sympathy and sometimes from pity, and sometimes from mere human loneliness and the love of company.

Thus did these exiles from life, struggling to live under the eye of God in obedience to their earthly vow, try to cheer their crushed and fettered souls, and to comfort each other like imprisoned children.



XVI.

"The Priory, St. John's Wood, London.

"Behold, all men and women at Glenfaba, I have made one further change in my role of female Wandering Jew! You have to think of Glory now, dear people, in a nice house in St. John's Wood, though there is no wood anywhere visible except the park, where they keep all the wild beasts in London—all that go on four legs, you know. The master of the mansion is Mr. Carl Koenig, a dear old hippopotamus who is five-feet-nothing in his boots, and has piercing black eyes and an electroplated mustache. He is a sort of an English-German-Dutch-Polish musician. When he talks of himself as an organist he is always a little John Bull, being F. R. C. O. and lots of things besides; when he speaks of 'Vaterland' he is a German; when he mentions the sea he is a Dutchman; and when he is in good spirits (or they are in him) he sings 'Poland is not lost forever!' all over the house until you sometimes wish it were.

"His wife is an Englishwoman, about forty or more, with big, moist, doggy eyes that give you an idea of slave-humility, and an unappreciated and undeveloped soul. There never were two married folk less alike, she being one of those silent creatures who come into a room and sit and listen and never speak, except to give instructions to the maids, while he is always cackling like an old hen who can never lay an egg without letting the whole world know all about it. They have two female servants—both beautiful Cockneys—besides a boy in the garden, and a parrot that holds forth all over the place; and their house is the rendezvous of all kinds and conditions of great people, for Mr. Koenig himself is a sort of Gideon's lamp among 'pros' of nearly every order.

"And now you want to know how I come to be here. You are to learn then that Mr. Koenig happened to be one of my patients in the hospital, he having gone there for a slight operation, and I having helped to nurse him through what he calls his 'operatic cure.' In the course of that ordeal he had music of a less excruciating kind sometimes, it seems, and after his return home he searched for me all over London on account of my voice, and finding me unexpectedly at last he sent his wife to Mrs. Jupe's to fetch me, and—and here I am in a dainty little dimity room, whose walls are covered with portraits of well-known singers, violinists, pianists, and composers, with their affectionate inscriptions underneath.

"But you want to learn why I am here. Well, you must know that Mr. Koenig (although a foreign musician) is organist of All Saints', Belgravia, where they sing a solo anthem at nearly every Sunday morning service; and having had various disappointments at the hands of vocal soloists from the Opera, whose 'professional engagements suddenly intervened,' he conceived the audacious idea of 'intervening' a woman to do their duty permanently. So this is my position in the church at which John Storm used to be curate, and once a week I pipe that his old enemy the canon may play. But as that good man is of St. Paul's opinion about women holding their tongues in the synagogue, and is blest with just enough ear to know a contralto from a corn-crake, I have to be hidden away behind a screen in order that his reverence may have all the fun to himself of believing me to be a boy.

"So you see, my dearies, you needn't be anxious about me, 'at all at all', seeing that I am living in this atmosphere of art and the odour of sanctity, and that I have kept only one tiny little thing back, and I am going to tell you that now. You were afraid that I might go too often to the theatre, Aunt Anna. Never mind, auntie, I shall not be going so very often now, and in proof thereof permit me to introduce myself in my future style and character—Miss Glory Quayle, the eminent social entertainer! You don't know what that is, dear people? It is quite simple and innocent, nevertheless. I am to go to the houses of smart people when they give their grand parties and sing and recite, and so forth. Nothing wrong, you see—only what I used to do at Glenfaba.

"You must know that, just as in the country the men go to the smithy when they have nothing more pressing on hand than to settle the affairs of the universe, and the women to the mangle-house when they have to mangle other things besides clothes, so in the towns the poor rich people have their own particular diversion, which they call their 'At Homes.' Mr. Drake used to tell me they were terrible Tower-of-Babel concerns, at which everybody talked at once, and all the tongues in the place went 'click-clack, world without end.' But they must be perfectly charming for all that; and when I think of the dresses and the diamonds and the titles as long as your breath—oh, dear! oh, dear!

"I shall see it all soon, I suppose, for to supply the place of the hammer and the anvil the smart folks always add musical accompaniment to the confusion of tongues, and Mr. Koenig, who has a choral company, goes to the cream of the cream of such gatherings, and sings and plays from Grieg and Schumann, and Liszt and Wagner, and Chopin and Paderewski, and the place intended for me in this grand organization would appear to be that of jester to my lords and ladies. 'Ach Gott!' says Mr. Koenig, who 'speaks ver' bad de Englisch,' 'your great people vant de last new ting. One lady she say to me, "Dear Mr. Koenig, I tink I shall not ask you dis season. I hear you everyvheres I go to, and I get so tired of peoples." But vhen I takes anoder wis me I am a new beesness. You shall sing and recite your leetle funny tings. Your great people tink dey loof music, but dey loof better to laugh. "For mercy's sake make dem laugh, Mr. Koenig"—dat's vhat a great man say to me. But, my gootness, how can I? I am a musician, I am a composer, I am an arteeste!'

"For this high and noble office I have been going through a purgatory of preparation in which I have sometimes hardly known whether I was a hurdy-gurdy or an explosion of cats, and the future female jester has even been known to lie down on the floor and cry in her dumps of despair or some such devilry. However, Mr. Koenig begins to believe that I am passable, and my first appearance is to be made immediately after Lent, at the house of the Home Secretary, where it is not improbable, dear Aunt Rachel, that I may meet Mr. Drake, although that is no part of my programme.

"Of course, I shall have to look charming in any case, and I am already busy with my dress. It is a black silk gown with a tight-fitting bodice. The bodice has windbag sleeves, formed of shawl pieces of guipure lace, and some lilies of the valley on the breast, finished with a waistband of heliotrope velvet, and I am going to wear long black gloves all the way up my arms, which are growing round and plump, and lovely enough for anything. The skirt is my old one, and I got the lace for three-and-six, so I am not ruining myself, you see; and though my hair is getting redder than ever, red is the fashionable colour in London now, therefore I sha'n't waste much money on dyes.

"But for all this brave exterior, when the time comes I know that down in my heart I shall be terrified. It will be like the first dive of the year. 'One plunge, Glory, my child,' and then over I'll go! I partly realize already what it will be like by my experiences on Sunday evenings when the celebrities come here after church, and Mr. Koenig exhibits me to admiring friends and tells them how I brought him 'goot look,' and I overhear them say, 'That girl will show them all something yet.' Oh, this London is adorable, my dears, with its wit and fashion, and gaiety and luxury! and I have concluded that to live in the world is the best thing one can do, after all. Some people say hard things about it, and want to reform it, or even to leave it altogether; but I love it! I love it! and think it just charming!

"And now spring is here, and the world is lovely in its yellow and green. It must be urromassy nice over yandher in the 'oilan' too, with the primroses and the violets and the gorse in the glen. Oh, dear! oh, dear! I can smell it all three hundred miles away! The lilacs will be out at Glenfaba now, and Aunt Anna will be collecting her Easter eggs. Well—wait a whilley, and I'll come to thee, my dears!

"Not a word from John Storm, of course. No doubt he is fighting with shadows while other people are struggling with realities. They tell me these Brotherhoods are common in the Church now, though most of them are secret societies; but the more I think of that kind of religion the more it looks like setting tasks to try faith, as if God were a coquettish woman. That reminds me that Mr. Worldly-Wealthy-Wiseman is no longer a canon, having got himself made archdeacon, and as such he looks more than ever like a black Spanish cock, being clad, of course, in those funny clothes, like the bishops, which always make one think their lordships must be in doubt on getting up in the morning whether they ought to wear a schoolboy's knickerbockers or a ballet-girl's skirt, so they settle the difficulty by putting on both. For this reason I try to avoid him when on duty at the church, lest I should be suddenly possessed of a devil and behave badly to his face. But this being Lent, and there being special preachers every day, it chanced on Sunday morning that I came upon three of him all in a row, and oh, my gracious, Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these!

"It is too bad, though, to think that men like John Storm can't find room in the Church for the sole of their foot, while this archdemon is flourishing in it like a green bay tree. Forgive me, grandfather; I can't help it. But then the Church in the country doesn't seem the same as in town. There you are somehow made to feel that man does a little and God does all the rest, while here we reverse that order of things, with the result that this seed of the Amalekite—but never mind!

"I went to the Zoo this morning. There was a lion shut up in a cage all by himself. Such a solemn, splendid, silent fellow; I could have cried.

"But it is the witching hour of night, my daughter, and you must put yourself to bed. 'Goot look!'

"Glory."



XVII.

In the middle of the night of Good Friday, John Storm was wakened by noises in the adjoining cell. There seemed to be the voices of two men in angry and violent altercation, the one threatening and denouncing, the other protesting and supplicating.

"The girl is dead—isn't that proof enough?" said one voice. "It's a lie! It's a false accusation!" said the other voice. "Paul, what are you going to do?" "Put this bullet in your brain." "But I'm innocent—I take the Almighty to witness that I'm innocent. Put the pistol down. Help! help!" "No use calling—there's nobody in the house." "Mercy! mercy! I haven't much money about me, but you shall have it all. Take everything—everything—and if there's anything I can do to start you in life—I'm rich, Paul—I have influence—only spare me!" "Scoundrel, do you think you can buy me as you bought my sister?" "And if I did I was not the only one." "Liar! Tell that to herself when you meet her at the judgment!" "As-sassin!" "Too late—you've met her!"

John Storm listened and understood. The two voices were one voice, which was the voice of Brother Paul. The lay brother was delirious. His poor broken brain was rambling in the ways of the past. He was re-enacting the scene of his crime.

John hesitated. His impulse was to fly into Paul's room and lay hold of him, that he might prevent him from doing himself any injury. But he remembered the law of the community, that no member of it should go into the cell of another under pain of grievous penance. And then there was the rule of silence and solitude which had not yet been lifted away.

But monks are great sophists, and at the next moment John Storm had told himself that it was not Brother Paul who was in the adjoining room, but only his poor perishing body, labouring through the last sloughs of the twilight land of death. Paul himself, his soul, his spirit, was far away. Hence it could be no sin to go into the cell of one whose senses were not there.

His own door was locked, but he scraped back the key and lit his candle, and stepped into the passage. The voices were still loud in Paul's room, but no one seemed to hear them. Not another sound broke the silence of the sleeping house. The cell beyond Paul's was empty. It was Brother Andrew's cell, and Andrew was at the door downstairs.

When John Storm entered the dark room, candle in hand, Brother Paul was standing in the middle of the floor with one hand outstretched and a ghastly and appalling smile upon his face. He was pale as death, his eyes were ablaze, his forehead was streaming with perspiration, and he was breathing from the depths of his chest. He wiped the dews from his brow and said in a choking voice, "He has died as he lived—a liar and a scoundrel!"

John took him by the hand and drew him to the bed, and, putting him to sit there, he tried to soothe and comfort him. He was terrified at first by the sound of his own voice, but the sophism that had served to bring him, served to support him also, and he told himself it could be no breach of the rule of silence to speak to one who was not there. The delirium of the lay brother spent itself at length, and he fell into a deep sleep.

Next day, when Brother Andrew came to John's cell with the food, he began to sing as if to himself while he bustled about the room.

"Brother Paul is sinking—he is sinking rapidly—Father Jerrold has confessed him—he has taken the sacrament—and is very patient."

This, as if it had been a Gregorian chant, the great fellow had hit upon as a means of communicating with John without breaking the rule and committing sin.

John did not lock his door on the following night. On going to bed he listened for the noises he had heard before, half fearing and yet half wishing that he might hear them again. But he heard nothing, and toward midnight he fell asleep. Something made him shudder, and he awoke with the sensation of moonlight on his face. The moon was indeed shining, and its sepulchral light was on a figure that stood by the foot of the bed. It was Paul, with a livid face, murmuring his name in a voice almost as faint as a breath.

John leaped up and put his arms about him.

"You are ill, brother—very ill."

"I am dying."

"Help! help!" cried John, and he made for the door.

"Hush, brother, hush!"

"Oh, I don't care for rule. Rule is nothing in a case like this. And, besides, it is an understood thing—— Help!"

"I implore you, I conjure you!" said Paul in a voice strangled by weakness. "Let them leave us together a little longer. It was by my own wish that I was left alone. I have something to say to you—something to confess. I have to ask your pardon."

In two strides John had reached the door, but he came back without opening it.

"Why, my poor lad, what have you done to me?"

"When you let me out of the house to go in search of my sister——"

"That was long ago; we'll not talk of it now, brother."

"But I can not die in peace without telling you. You remember that I had something to say to her?"

"Yes."

"It was a threat. I was going to tell her that unless she gave up her way of life I should find the man who had been the cause of it and follow him up and kill him."

"It was only a temptation of the devil, brother, and it is past; and now——"

"Don't you see what I was going to do? I was going to bring trouble and disgrace upon you also as my comrade and accomplice. That's what a man comes to when Satan——"

"But God willed it otherwise, brother; let us say no more about it."

"You forgive me, then?"

"Forgive? It is I who ought to ask for your forgiveness, and perhaps if I told you everything——"

"There is something else. Listen! The Almighty is calling me; I have no time to lose."

"But you are so cold, brother! Lie on the bed, and I'll cover you with the bedclothes. Oh, never fear; they sha'n't separate us again. If the Father were at home—he is so good and tender-hearted—but no matter. There, there!"

"You will despise and hate me—you who are so holy and brave, and have given up everything and conquered the world, and even triumphed over love itself!"

"Don't say that, brother."

"It's true, isn't it? Everybody knows what a holy life you live."

"Hush!"

"But I have never lived the religious life at all, and I only came to it as a refuge from the law and the gallows; and if the Father hadn't——"

"Another time, brother."

"Yes, the story I told the police was true, and I had really——"

"Hush, brother, hush! I won't hear you. What you are saying is for God's ear only, and, whatever you have done, God will judge your soul in mercy. We have only to ask him——"

"Quick, then; the last sands are running out!" and he strove to rise and kneel.

"Lie still, brother: God will accept the humiliation of your soul."

"No, no, let me up; let me kneel beside you. The prayer for the dying—say it with me, Brother Storm; let us say it together. 'O Lord, save——'"

_"'O Lord, save thy servant,

"'Which putteth his trust in thee.

"'Send him help from thy holy place.

"'And ... evermore ... mightily defend him.

"'Let the enemy have no advantage over him.

"'Nor the ... wicked——

"'Be unto him, O Lord, a strong tower.

"'From the——

"'O Lord, hear our prayers.

"'And——'"_

"Paul! Paul! Speak to me! Speak! Don't leave me! We shall console and support each other. You shall come to me, I will go to you. No matter about the religious life. One word! My lad, my lad!"

But Brother Paul had gone. The captured eagle with the broken wing had slipped its chain at last.

In the terrible peace which followed the air of the room seemed to become empty. John Storm felt chill and dizzy, and a great awe fell upon him. The courage which he had built up in sight of Brother Paul's sufferings ebbed rapidly away, and his old fear of rule flowed back. He must carry the lay brother to his cell; he must be ignorant of his death; he must conceal and cover up everything. The moon had gone by this time, for it was near to morning, and the shadows of night were contending with the leaden hues of dawn.

He opened the door and listened. The house was still quite silent. He walked on tip-toe to the end of the corridor, pausing at every cell. There was no sound anywhere, except the sonorous breathing of some heavy sleeper and the ticking of the clock in the hall.

Then he returned to the chamber of death, and, lifting the dead man in his arms, he carried him back to the room which he had left as a living man. The body was light, and he scarcely felt its weight, for the limbs under the cassock had dried up like withered twigs. He stretched them out on the bed that they might be fit for death's composing hand, and then closed the eyes and laid the hands together on the breast, and took the heavy cross that hung about the neck and put it as well as he could into the nerveless fingers. By this time the daylight had overcome the shadows of the fore-dawn, and the ruddy glow of morning was gliding into the room. Traffic was beginning to stir in the sleeping city, and a cart was rattling down the street.

One glance more he gave at the dead brother's face, and going down on his knees beside it he said a prayer and crossed himself. Then he rose and stole back to his room and shut the door without a sound.

There was a boundless relief when this was done, and partly from relief and partly from exhaustion he fell asleep. He slept for a few minutes only, but sleep knows no time, and a moment in its garden of forgetfulness will wipe out the bitterness of a life. When he awoke he stretched out his hand as he was accustomed to do and rapped three times on the wall. But the tide of consciousness returned to him even as he did so, and in the dead silence that followed his very heart grew cold.

Then the Father Minister began to awaken the household. His deep call and the muffled answer which followed it rose higher and higher and came nearer and nearer, and every step as he approached seemed to beat upon John Storm's brain. He had reached the topmost story—he was coming down the corridor—he was standing before the door of the dead man's cell.

"Benedicamus Domino!" he called, but no answer came back to him. He called again, and there was a short and terrible silence.

John Storm held his breath and listened. By the faint click of the lock he knew that the door had been opened, and that the Father Minister had entered the room. There was a muttered exclamation and then another short silence, and after that there came the click of the lock again. The door had been closed, and the Father Minister had resumed his rounds. When he called at the door of John Storm's cell not a tone of his voice would have told that anything unusual had taken place.

The bell rang, and the brothers trooped down the stairs. Presently the low, droning sound of their voices came up from the chapel where they were saying Lauds. But the service had scarcely ended when the Father Minister's step was on the stair again. This time another was with him. It was the doctor. They entered the brother's room and closed the door behind them. From the other side of the wall John Storm followed every movement and every word.

"So he has gone at last, poor soul!"

"Is he long dead, doctor?"

"Some hours, certainly. Was there nobody with him then?"

"He didn't wish for anybody. And then you told us that nothing could he done, and that he might live a month."

"Still, a dying man, you know—— But how strangely composed he looks! And then the cross on his breast as well!"

"He was very devout and penitent. He made his last devotion yesterday with an intensity of joy such as I have rarely witnessed."

"His eyes closed, too! You are sure there was nobody with him?"

"Nobody whatever."

There was a moment's silence and then the doctor said, "Well, he has slipped his anchor at last, poor soul!"

"Yes, he has launched on the ocean of the love of God. May we all be as ready when our call comes!"

They came back to the corridor, and John heard their footsteps going downstairs. Then for some minutes there were unusual noises below. Rapid steps were coming and going, the hall bell was ringing, and the front door was opening and shutting.

An hour later Brother Andrew came with the breakfast. He was obviously excited, and putting down the tray he began to busy himself in the room and to sing, as before, in, his pretence of a Gregorian chant:

"Brother Paul is dead—he died in the night—there was nobody with him—we are sorry he has left us, but glad he is at peace-God rest the soul of our poor Brother Paul!"

It was Easter Day. At midday service in the church the brothers sang the Easter hymn, and a mighty longing took hold of John Storm for his own resurrection from his living grave.

Next day there was much coming and going between the world outside and the adjoining cell, and late at night there were heavy and shambling footsteps, and even some coarse and ribald talk.

"Bear a 'and, myte."

"Well, they won't have their backs broke as carry this one downstairs. He ain't a Danny Lambert, anyway."

"No, they don't feed ye on Bovril in plyces syme as this. I'll lay ye odds yer own looking-glass wouldn't know ye arter three months 'ard on religion and dry tommy."

"It pawses me 'ow people tyke to it. Gimme my pint of four-half, and my own childring to follow me."

Early on the following morning a stroke rang out on the bell, then another stroke, and again another.

"It is the knell," thought John.

A group of the lay brothers came up and passed into the room. "Now!" said one, as if giving a signal, and then they passed out again with the measured steps of men who bear a burden. "They are taking him away," he thought.

He listened to their retreating footsteps. "He has gone," he murmured.

The passing bell continued to ring out minute by minute, and presently there was the sound of singing. "It is the service for the dead," he told himself.

After a while both the bell and the singing ceased, and then there was no sound anywhere except the dull rumble of the traffic in the city outside—the deep murmur of the mighty sea that flows on forever.

"What am I doing?" he asked himself. "What bolts and bars are keeping me? I am guilty of a folly. I am degrading myself."

At midday Brother Andrew came with his food. "Brother Paul is buried," he sang, "the coffin was beautiful—it was covered with flowers—we buried him in his cassock, with his beads and psalter—we left the cross on his breast—he loved it and died with it in his hands—the Father has come home—he said mass this morning."

John Storm could bear no more. He pushed the lay brother aside and made straight for the Superior's room.

The Father was sitting before the fire, looking sad and low and weary. He rose to his feet with a painful smile, as John broke into his cell with blazing eyes, and cried in a choking voice:

"Father, I can not live the religious life any longer! I have tried to—with all my soul and strength I've tried to, but I can not, I can not! This life of prayer and penance and meditation is stifling me, and corrupting me, and crushing the man out of me, and I can not bear it."

"What are you saying, my son?"

"I have been deceiving you and myself and everybody."

"Deceiving me?"

"It was for my own ends and not Brother Paul's that I helped him to break obedience, and so injure his health and hasten his death."

"Your own?"

"I, too, had a sister in the world, and my heart was hungry for news of her."

"A sister?"

"Some one nearer than a sister—and all my spiritual life has been a sham."

"My son, my son!"

"Forgive me, Father. I shall love you and honour you and revere you always; but I must break my obedience and leave you, or I shall be a hypocrite and a liar and a cheat."



XVIII.

The dinner party at the Home Secretary's took place on Wednesday, in the week after Easter. It had rained during the day, but cleared up toward night. Glory and Koenig had taken an omnibus to Waterloo Place, and then walked up the wide street that ends with the wide steps going down to the park. Two lines of lofty stone houses go off to right and left, and the house they were going to was in one of them.

A footman received them with sombre but easy familiarity. The artistes? Yes. They were shown into the library, and light refreshments were brought in to them on a tray. Three other members of the choral company were there already. Glory was seeing it all for the first time, and Koenig was describing and explaining everything in broken whispers.

A band was playing in the well of the circular staircase, and a second footman stood in an alcove behind an outwork of hats and overcoats. The first footman reappeared. Were the artistes ready to go to the drawing-room?

They followed him upstairs. The band had stopped, and there was the distant hum of voices and the crackle of plates. Waiters were coming and going from the dining-room, and the butler stood at the door giving instructions. At one moment there was a glimpse within of ladies in gorgeous dresses, and a table laden with silver and bright with fairy-lamps. When the door opened the voices grew louder, when it closed the sounds were deadened.

The upper landing opened on to a salon which had three windows down to the ground, and half of each stood open. Outside there was a wide terrace lit up by Chinese and Moorish lanterns. Beyond was the dark patch of the park, and farther still the towers of the Abbey and the clock of Westminster, but the great light was not burning to-night.

"De House naivare sits on Vednesday night," said Koenig.

They passed into the drawing-room, which was empty. The standing lamps were subdued by coverings of yellow-silk lace. There was a piano and an organ.

"Ve'll stay here," said Koenig, opening the organ, and Glory stood by his side.

Presently there were ripples of laughter, sounds of quick, indistinguishable voices, waves of heliotrope, and the rustle of silk dresses on the stairs. Then the ladies entered. Two or three of them who were elderly leaned their right hands on the arms of younger women, and walked with ebony sticks in their left. An old lady wearing black satin and a large brooch came last. Koenig rose and bowed to her. Glory prepared to bow also, but the lady gave her a side inclination of the head as she sat in a well-cushioned chair under a lamp, and Glory's bow was abridged.

The ladies sat and talked, and Glory tried to listen. There were little nothings, punctuated by trills of feminine laughter. She thought the conversation rather silly. More than once the ladies lifted their lorgnettes and looked at her. She set her lips hard and looked back without flinching.

A footman brought tea on a tray, and then there was the tinkle of cup and saucer, and more laughter. The lady in satin looked round at Koenig, and he began to play the organ. He played superbly, but nobody seemed to listen. When he finished there was a pause, and everybody said: "Oh, thank you; we're all—er——" and then the talk began again. The vocal soloist sang some ballad of Schumann, and as long as it lasted an old lady with an ear-trumpet sat at the foot of the piano, and a young girl spoke into it. When it was over, everybody said, "Ah, that dear old thing!" Then there was an outbreak of deeper voices from the stairs, with lustier laughter and heavier steps.

The gentlemen appeared, talking loudly as they entered. Koenig was back at the organ and playing as if he wished it were the 'cello and the drum and the whole brass band. Glory was watching everything; it was beginning to be very funny. Suddenly it ceased to be so. One of the gentlemen was saying, in a tired drawl: "Old Koenig again! How the old boy lasts! Seem to have been hearing—him since the Flood, don't you know."

It was Lord Robert Ure. Glory caught one glimpse of him, then looked down at her slipper and pawed at the carpet. He put his glass in his eye, screwed up the left side of his face, and looked at her.

An elderly man with a leonine head came up to the organ and said: "Got anything comic, Mr. Koenig? All had the influenza last winter, you know, and lost our taste for the classical."

"With pleasure, sir," said Koenig, and then turning to Glory he touched her wrist. "How's de pulse? Ach Gott! beating same like a child's! Now is your turn."

Glory made a step forward, and the talk grew louder as she was observed. She heard fragments of it. "Who is she?" "Is she a professional?" "Oh, no—a lady." "Sing, does she, or is it whistling?" "No, she's a professional; we had her last year; she does conjuring." And then the voice she had heard before said, "By Jove, old fellow, your young friend looks like a red standard rose!" She did not flinch. There was a nervous tremor of the lip, a scarcely perceptible curl of it, and then she began.

It was Mylecharaine, a Manx ballad in the Anglo-Manx, about a farmer who was a miser. His daughter was ashamed of him because he dressed shabbily and wore yellow stockings; but he answered that if he didn't the stocking wouldn't be yellow that would be forthcoming for her dowry.

She sang, recited, talked, acted, lived the old man, and there was not a sound until she finished, except laughter and the clapping of hands. Then there was a general taking of breath and a renewed outbreak of gossip. "Really, really! How—er—natural!" "Natural—that's it, natural. I never—er——" "Rather good, certainly; in fact, quite amusing." "What dialect is it?" "Irish, of course." "Of course, of course," with many nods and looks of knowledge, and a buzz and a flutter of understanding. "Hope she'll do something else." "Hush! she's beginning."

It was Ny Kiree fo Niaghtey, a rugged old wail of how the sheep were lost on the mountains in a great snowstorm; but it was full of ineffable melancholy. The ladies dropped their lorgnettes, the men's glasses fell from their eyes and their faces straightened, the noisy old soul with the ear-trumpet sitting under Glory's arm was snuffling audibly, and at the next moment there was a chorus of admiring remarks. "'Pon my word, this is something new, don't you know!" "Fine girl too!" "Fine! Irish girls often run to it." "That old miser—you could see him!"

"What's her next piece?—something funny, I hope."

Koenig's pride was measureless, and Glory did not get off lightly. He cleared the floor for her, and announced that with the indulgence, etc., the young artiste would give an imitation of common girls singing in the street.

The company laughed until they screamed, and when the song was finished Glory was being overwhelmed with congratulations and inquiries, "Charming! All your pieces are charming! But really, my dear young lady, you must be more careful about our feelings. Those sheep now—it was really quite too sad." The old lady with the ear-trumpet asked Glory whether she could go on for the whole of an afternoon, and if she felt much fatigued sometimes, and didn't often catch cold.

But the lady in satin came to her relief at last. "You will need some refreshment," she said. "Let me see now if I can not——" and she lifted her glass and looked round the room. At the next moment a voice that made a shudder pass over her said:

"Perhaps I may have the pleasure of taking Miss Quayle down."

It was Drake. His eyes were as blue and boyish as before, but Glory observed at once that he had grown a mustache, and that his face and figure were firmer and more manlike. A few minutes afterward they had passed through one of the windows on to the terrace and were walking to and fro.

It was cool and quiet out there after the heat and hubbub of the drawing-room. The night was soft and still. Hardly a breath of wind stirred the leaves of the trees in the park below. The rain had left a dewy moistness in the air, and a fragrant mist was lying over the grass. The stars were out, and the moon had just risen behind the towers of Westminster.

Glory was flushed with her success. Her eyes sparkled and her step was light and free. Drake touched her hand as it lay on his arm and said:

"And now that I've got you to myself I must begin by scolding you."

They looked at one another and smiled. "Have I displeased you so much to-night?" she said.

"It's not that. Where have you been all this time?"

"Ah, if you only knew!" She had stopped and was looking into the darkness.

"I want to know. Why didn't you answer my letter?"

"Your letter?" She was clutching at the lilies of the valley in her bosom.

He tapped her hand lightly and said, "Well, we'll not quarrel this time, only don't do it again, you know, or else——"

She recovered herself and laughed. Her voice had a silvery ring, and he thought it was an enchanting smile that played upon her face. They resumed their walk.

"And now about to-night. You have had a success, of course."

"Why of course?"

"Because I always knew you must have."

She was proud and happy. He began to be grave and severe.

"But the drawing-room after dinner is no proper scene for your talents. The audience is not in the right place or the right mood. Guests and auditors—their duties clash. Besides, to tell you the truth, art is a dark continent to people like these."

"They were kind to me, at all events," said Glory.

"To-night, yes. The last new man—the last new monkey——"

She was laughing again and swinging along on his arm as if her feet hardly touched the ground.

"What is the matter with you?"

"Nothing; I am only thinking how polite you are," and then they looked at each other again and laughed together.

The mild radiance of the stars was dying into the brighter light of the moon. A bird somewhere in the dark trees below had mistaken the moonlight for the dawn, and was making its early call. The clock at Westminster was striking eleven, and there was the deep rumble of traffic from the unseen streets round about.

"How beautiful!" said Glory. "It's hard to believe that this can be the same London that is so full of casinos and clubs and-monasteries."

"Why, what does a girl like you know about such places?"

She had dropped his arm and was looking over the balcony. The sound of voices came from the red windows behind them. Then the soloist began to sing again. His second ballad was the Erl King:

Du liebes Kind, komm' geh' mit mir! Gar schoene Spiele spiel' ich mit dir.

"Any news of John Storm?" said Drake.

"Not that I know of."

"I wonder if you would like him to come out again—now?"

"I wonder!"

At that moment there was a step behind them, and a soft voice said, "I want you to introduce me, Mr. Drake."

It was a lady of eight or nine and twenty, wearing short hair brushed upward and backward in the manner of a man.

"Ah, Rosa—Miss Rosa Macquarrie," said Drake. "Rosa is a journalist, and a great friend of mine, Glory. If you want fame, she keeps some of the keys of it, and if you want friendship—— But I'll leave you together."

"My dear," said the lady, "I want you to let me know you."

"But I've seen you before—and spoken to you," said Glory.

"Why, where?"

Glory was laughing awkwardly. "Never mind now! Some other time perhaps."

"The people inside are raving about your voice. 'Where does it come from?' they are saying—'from a palace or Ratcliffe Highway?' But I think I know. It comes from your heart, my dear. You have lived and and loved and suffered—and so have I. Here we are in our smart frocks, dear, but we belong to another world altogether and are the only working women in the company. Perhaps I can help you a little, and you have helped me already. I may know you, may I not?"

There was a deep light in Glory's eyes and a momentary quiver of her eyelids. Then without a word she put her arms about Rosa's neck and kissed her,

"I was sure of you," said Rosa. Her voice was low and husky. "Your name is Glory, isn't it? It wasn't for nothing you were given that name. God gave it you!"

The party was breaking up and Koenig came for "his star." "I vill give you an engagement for one, two, tree year, upon my vord I vill," he said as they went downstairs. While the butler took him back to the library to sign his receipt and receive his cheque, Glory stood waiting by the billiard table in the hall and Drake and Lord Robert stepped up to her.

"Until when?" said Drake with a smile, but Glory pretended not to understand him. "I dare say you thought me cynical to-night, Glory. I only meant that if you are to follow this profession I want you to make the best of it. Why not look for a wider scene? Why not go directly to the public?"

"But de lady is engaged to me for tree year," said Koenig, coming up.

Drake looked at Glory, who shook her head, and then Koenig made an effort at explanation. It was an understood thing. He had taught her, taken her into his house, found her in a Sunday——

But Drake interrupted him. If they could help Miss Quayle to a better market for her genius Mr. Koenig need be no loser by the change. Then Koenig was pacified, and Drake handed Glory to a cab.

"We're good friends again, aren't we?" he said, touching her hand lightly.

"Yes," she answered.

There was a letter from Aunt Rachel waiting for her at the Priory. Aunt Anna didn't like these frequent changes, and she had no faith in music or musicians either, but the Parson thought Anna too censorious, and as for Mr. Koenig's Sunday evening companies, he had no doubt they were of Germans chiefly, and that they came to talk of Martin Luther and to sing his hymn. Sorry to say his infirmities were increasing; the burden of his years was upon him, and he was looking feeble and old.

Glory slept little that night. On going to her room she threw up the window and sat in front of it, that the soft night breeze might play on her hot lips and cheeks. The moon was high and the garden was slumbering under its gentle light. Everything around was hushed, and there was no sound anywhere except the far-off rumble of the great city, as of the wind in distant trees. She was thinking of a question which Drake had put to her.

"I wonder if I should?" she murmured.

And through the silence there was the unheard melody of the German song:

Du liebes Kind, komm' geh' mit mir! Gar schoene Spiele spiel' ich mit dir.



XIX.

"The Priory—May Day.

"Dear Aunt Rachel: The great evening is over! Such dresses, such diamonds—you never saw the like! The smart folks are just like other human beings, and I was not the tiniest bit afraid of them. My own part of the programme went off pretty well, I think. Mr. Koenig had arranged the harmonies and accompaniments of some of our old Manx songs, so I sang Mylecharaine, and they listened and clapped, and then Ny Kiree fo Niaghtey, and they cried (and so did I), and then I imitated some work-girls singing in the streets, and they laughed and laughed until I laughed too, and then they laughed because I was laughing, and we all laughed together. It was over and done before I knew where I was, and everybody was covering me with—well, no, not kisses, as grandfather used to do, but the society equivalent—ices and jellies—which the gentlemen were rushing about wildly to get for me.

"But all this is as nothing compared to what is to happen next. I mustn't whisper a word about it yet, so false face must hide what the false heart doth know. You'll have to forgive me if I succeed, for nothing is wicked in this world except failure, you know, and a little sin must be a great virtue if it has grown to be big enough, you see. There! How sagacious of me! You didn't know what a philosopher you had in the family, did you, my dears?

"It is to be on the 24th of May. That will be the Queen's birthday over again; and when I think of all that has happened since the last one I feel as romantic as a schoolgirl and as sentimental as a nursery maid. Naturally I am in a fearful flurry over the whole affair, and, to tell the truth, I have hied me to the weird sisters on the subject—that is to say, I have been to a fortune-teller, and spent a 'goolden' half-sovereign on the creature at one fell swoop. But she predicts wonderful things for me, so I am satisfied. The newspapers are to blaze with my name; I am to have a dazzling success and become the idol of the hour—all of which is delightful and entrancing, and quite reasonable at the money. Grandfather will reprove me for tempting Providence, and, of course, John Storm, if he knew it, would say that I shouldn't do such things under any circumstances; yet to tell me I oughtn't to do this and I oughtn't to do that is like saying I oughtn't to have red hair and I oughtn't to catch the measles. I can't help it! I can't help it! so what's the good of breaking one's heart about it?

"But I hadn't got to wait for Hecate et cie for what related to the newspapers. You must know, dear Aunt Rachel, that I did meet Mr. Drake at the house of the Home Secretary, and he introduced me to a Miss Rosa Macquarrie, who is no longer very young or beautiful, but a dear for all that! and she, being a journalist, has bruited my praises abroad, with the result that all the world is ringing with my virtues. Listen, all men and women, while I sound mine own glory out of a column as long as the Duke of York's:

"'She is young and tall, and has auburn hair' (always thought it was red myself) 'and large gray eyes, one of which seems at a distance to be brown' (it squints), 'giving an effect of humour and coquetry and power rarely, if ever, seen in any other face.... Her voice has startling varieties of tone, being at one moment soft, cooing, and liquid, and at another wild, weird, and plaintive; and her face, which is not strictly beautiful' (oh!), 'but striking and unforgetable, has an extraordinary range of expression.... She sings, recites, speaks, laughs, and cries (literally), and some of her selections are given in a sort of Irish patois' (oh, my beloved Manx!) 'that comes from her girlish lips with charming vivacity and drollness.' All of which, though it is quite right, and no more than my due, of course, made me sob so long and loud that my good little hippopotamus came upstairs to comfort me, but, finding me lying on the floor, he threw up his hands and cried, 'Ach Gott! I t'ought it vas a young lady, but vhatever is it?'

"Yet wae's me! Sometimes I think how many poor girls there must be who have never had a chance, while I have had so many and such glorious ones; who can not get anybody to listen to them, while I am so pampered and praised; who live in narrow alleys and serve in little dark shops, where men and men-things talk to them as they can't talk to their sisters and wives, while I am held aloft in an atmosphere of admiration and respect: who earn their bread in clubs and casinos, where they breathe the air of the hotbeds of hell, while I am surrounded by everything that ennobles and refines! O God, forgive me if I am a vain, presumptuous creature, laughing at everything and everybody, and sometimes forgetting that many a poor girl who is being tossed about in London is just as good as me, and as clever and as brave.

"But hoot! 'I likes to be jolly and I allus is.' So Aunt Anna doesn't like this Wandering Jew existence! Well, do you know I always thought I should love a gipsy life. It has a sense of movement that must be delightful, and then I love going fast. Do you remember the days when 'Caesar' used to take the bit in his teeth and bolt with me! Lo, there was little me, cross-legged on his bare back, with nothing to trust to but Providence and a pair of rope reins; but, oh my! I couldn't breathe for excitement and delight! Dear old maddest of created 'Caesars,' I feel as if I were whacking at him yet! What do you think of me? But we 'that be females are the same craythurs alwis', as old Chalse used to say, and what a woman is in the cradle she continues to be to the end. There again! I wonder who told you that, young lady!

"But to tell you the truth at last, dear Aunt Rachel, there is something I have kept back until now, because I couldn't bear the thought of any of you being anxious on my account, especially grandfather, who thinks of Glory so much too often as things are. Can't you guess what it is? I couldn't help taking up my life of Wandering Jew, because I was dismissed from the hospital! Didn't you understand that, my dears? I thought I was telling you over and over again. Yes, dismissed as unfit to be a nurse, and so I was, according to the order of the institution first, and human love and pity last. But all's well that ends well, you know, and now that my wanderings seem to be over and I am in my right place at length, I feel like one who is coming out of a long imprisonment, a great peril, a darkness deeper even than John Storm's cell. And if I ever become a famous woman, and good men will listen to me, I will tell them to be tender and merciful to poor girls who are trying to live in London and be good and strong, and that the true chivalry is to band themselves together against the other men who are selfish and cruel and impure. Oh, this great, glorious, devilish, divine London! It must stand to the human world as the seething, boiling, bubbling waters of Niagara do to the world of Nature. Either a girl floats over its rapids like a boat, and in that case she draws her breath and thanks God, or she is tossed into its whirlpool like a dead body and goes round and round until she finds the vortex and is swallowed up!

"There! I have blown off my steam, and now to business. Mr. Drake is to give a luncheon party in his rooms on the twenty-fourth, in honour of my experiment, but the great event itself will not come off until nearly half-past nine that night. By that time the sun will have set over the back of the sea at Peel, the blackbird will have given you his last 'guy-smook,' and all the world will be dropping asleep. Now, if you'll only remember to say just then,'God bless Glory!' I'll feel strong and big and brave.

"Your poor, silly, sentimental girlie, Glory."



XX.

Some weeks had passed, and it was the morning of the last day of John Storm's residence at Bishopsgate Street. After calling the Brotherhood, the Father had entered John's room and was resting on the end of the bed.

"You are quite determined to leave us?"

"Quite determined, Father."

The Father sighed deeply, and said in broken sentences: 'Our house is passing through terrible trials, my son. Perhaps we did wrong to come here. There is no cross in our foundations, and we have built on a worldly footing. 'Unless the Lord build the house—' It was good of you to delay the execution of your purpose, but now that the time has come—I had set my heart on you, my son. I am an old man now, and something of the affection of the natural father——"

"Father, if you only knew——"

"Yes, yes; I know, I know. You have suffered, and it is not for me to reproach you. The novitiate has its great joys, but it has its great trials also. Self has to be got rid of, faith has to be exerted, obedience has to be learned, and, above all, the heart has to be detached from its idols in the world—a devoted mother, it may be; a dear sister; perhaps a dearer one still."

There was silence for a moment. John's head was down; he could not speak.

"That you wish to return to the world only shows that you came before you heard the call of God. Some other voice seemed to speak to you, and you listened and thought it was God's voice. But God's voice will come to you yet, and you will hear it and answer it and not another—— Have you anywhere to go to when you leave this house?"

"Yes, the home of a good woman. I have written to her—I think she will receive me."

"All that you brought with you will be returned, and if you want money——"

"No, I came to you as a beggar—let me leave you as a beggar too."

"There is one thing more, my son."

"What is it, Father?"

The old man's voice was scarcely audible. "You are breaking obedience by leaving us before the end of your novitiate, and the community must separate itself from you, though you are only a novice, as from one who has violated his vow and cast himself off from grace. This will have to be done before you cross our threshold. It is our duty to the Brotherhood—it is also our duty to God. You understand that?"

"Yes."

"It will be in the church, a few minutes before midday service."

The Father rose to go. "Then that is all?"

"That is all."

The Father's voice was breaking. "Good-bye, my son."

"Good-bye, Father, and God forgive me!"

A leather trunk which John had brought with him on the day he came to the Brotherhood was returned to his room, containing the clothes he had worn in the outer world, as well as his purse and watch and other belongings. He dressed himself in his habit as a clergyman, and put the cassock of the society over it, for he knew that to remove that must be part of the ordeal of his expulsion. Then the bell rang for breakfast, and he went down to the refectory.

The brothers received him in silence, hardly looking up as he entered, though by their furtive glances he could plainly see that he was the only subject that occupied their thoughts. When the meal was over he tried to mingle among them, that he might say farewell to as many as were willing that he should do so. Some gave him their hands with prompt good will, some avoided him, some turned their backs upon him altogether.

But if his reception in the refectory was chilling, his welcome in the courtyard was warm enough. At the first sound of his footsteps on the paved way the dog came from his quarters under the sycamore. One moment the creature stood and looked at him with its sad and bloodshot eyes; then, with a bound, it threw its fore paws on his breast, and then plunged around him and uttered deep bays that were like the roar of thunder.

He sat on the seat and caressed the dog, and his heart grew full and happy. The morning was bright with sunshine, the air was fragrant with the leafage of spring, and birds were singing and rejoicing in the tree.

Presently Brother Andrew came and sat beside him. The lay brother, like a human dog, had been following him about all the morning, and now in his feeble way he began to talk of his mother, and to wonder if John would ever see her. Her name was Pincher, and she was a good woman. She lived in Crook Lane, Crown Street, Soho, and kept house for his brother, who was a pawnbroker. But his brother, poor fellow! was much given to drink, and perhaps that had been a reason why he himself had left home. John promised to call on her, and then Brother Andrew began to cry. The sprawling features of the great fellow were almost laughable to look upon.

The bell rang for Terce. While the brothers were at prayers, John took his last look over the house. With the dog at his heels—the old thing seemed determined to lose sight of him no more—he passed slowly through the hall and into the community room and up the stairs and down the top corridor. He looked again at every inscription on the walls, though he knew them all by heart and had read them a hundred times. When he came to his own cell he was touched by a strange tenderness. Place where he had thought so much, prayed so much, suffered so much—it was dear to him, after all! He went up on to the tower. How often he had been drawn there as by a devilish fascination! The great city looked innocent enough now under its mantle of sunlight, dotted over with green, but how dense, how difficult! Then the bell rang for midday service, though it was not yet noon, and he went down to the hall. The brothers were there preparing to go into the church. The order of the procession was the same as on the day of his dedication, except that Brother Paul was no longer with them—Brother Andrew going first with the cross, then the lay brothers, then the religious, then the Father, and John Storm last of all.

Though the courtyard was full of sunshine, the church looked dark and gloomy. Curtains were drawn across the windows, and the altar was draped as for a funeral. As soon as the brothers had taken their places in the choir the Father stood on the altar steps and said:

"If any member of this community has one unfaithful thought of going back to the outer world, I charge him to come to this altar now. But woe to him through whom the offence cometh! Woe to him who turns back after taking up the golden plough!"

John was kneeling in his place in the second row of the choir. The eyes of the community were upon him. He hesitated a moment, then rose and stepped up to the altar.

"My son," said the Father, "it is not yet too late. I see your fate as plainly as I see you now. Shall I tell you what it is? Can you bear to hear it? I see you going out into a world which has nothing to satisfy the cravings of your soul. I see you foredoomed to failure and suffering and despair. I see you coming back to us within a year with a broken and bleeding heart. I see you taking the vows of lifelong consecration. Can you face that future?"

"I must."

The Father drew a long breath. "It is inevitable," he said; and, taking a book from the altar, he read the awful service of the degradation:

"By the authority of God Almighty, Father [Symbol: Patee], Son, and Holy Ghost, and by our own authority, we, the members of the Society of the Holy Gethsemane, do take away from thee the habit of our Order, and depose and degrade and deprive thee of all rights and privileges in the spiritual goods and prayers which, by the grace of God, are done among us."

"Amen! Amen!" said the brothers.

During the reading of the service John had been kneeling. The Father motioned to him to rise, and proceeded to remove the cord with which he had bound him at his consecration. When this was done, he signalled to Brother Andrew to take off the cassock.

The bell was tolled. The Father dropped on his knees. The brothers, hoarse and husky, began to sing In exitu Israel de Aegypto. Their heads were down, their voices seemed to come up out of the earth.

It was all over now. John Storm turned about, hardly able to see his way. Brother Andrew went before him to open the door of the sacristy. The lay brother was crying audibly.

The sun was still shining in the courtyard, and the birds were still singing and rejoicing. The first thing of which John was conscious was that the dog was licking his rigid fingers.

A moment later he was in the little covered passage to the street, and Brother Andrew was opening the iron gate.

"Good-bye, my lad!"

He stretched out his hand, then remembered that he was an excommunicated man, and tried to draw it back; but the lay brother had snatched at it and lifted it to his lips.

The dog was following him into the street.

"Go back, old friend."

He patted the old creature on the head, and Brother Andrew laid hold of it by the loose skin at its neck. A hansom was waiting for him with his trunk on the top.

"Victoria Square, Westminster," he called. The cab was moving off, when there was a growl and a lurch—the dog had broken away and was running after it.

How crowded the streets were! How deafening was the traffic! The church bell was ringing for midday service. What a thin tinkle it made out there, yet how deep was its boom within! Stock Exchange men with their leisurely activity were going in by their seven doorways to their great market place in Capel Court.

He began to feel a boundless relief. How his heart was beating! With what a strange and deep emotion he found himself once more in the world! Driving in the dense and devious thoroughfares was like sailing on a cross sea outside a difficult headland. He could smell the brine and feel the flick of the foam on his lips and cheeks. It was liberty, it was life!

Feeling anxious about the dog, he drew up the cab for a moment. The faithful creature was running under the driver's seat. Before the cab could start again a line of sandwich men had passed in front of it. Their boards contained a single word. The word was "GLORIA."

He saw it, yet it barely arrested his consciousness. Somehow it seemed like an echo from the existence he had left behind.

The noises of life were as wine in his veins now. He was burning with impatience to overtake his arrears of knowledge, to see what the world had gone through in his absence. Leaning over the door of the hansom, he read the names of the streets and the signs over the shops, and tried to identify the houses which had been rebuilt and the thoroughfares which had been altered. But the past was the past, and the clock would turn back for no man. These men and women in the streets knew all that had happened. The poorest beggar on the pavement knew more than he did. Nearly a year of his life was gone—in prayer, in penance, in fasting, in visions, in dreams—dropped out, left behind, and lost forever.

Going by the Bank, the cab drew up again to allow a line of omnibuses to pass into Cheapside. Every omnibus had its board for advertisements, and nearly every board contained the word he had seen before—"GLORIA."

"Only the name of some music-hall singer," he told himself. But the name had begun to trouble him. It had stirred the fibres of memory, and made him think of the past—of his yacht, of Peel, of his father, and finally of Glory—and again of Glory—and yet again of Glory.

He saw that flags were flying on the Mansion House and on the Bank, and, pushing up the trap of the hansom, he asked if anything unusual was going on.

"Lawd, down't ye know what day it is terday, sir? It's the dear ole laidy's birthday. That's why all the wimming's going abart in their penny carridges. Been through a hillness, sir?"

"Yes, something of that sort."

"Thort so, sir."

When the cab started afresh he began to tell himself what he was going to do in the future. He was going to work among the poor and the outcast, the oppressed and the fallen. He was going to search for them and find them in their haunts of sin and misery. Nothing was to be too mean for him. Nothing was to be common or unclean. No matter about his own good name! No matter if he was only one man in a million! The kingdom of heaven was like a grain of mustard seed.

When he came within sight of St. Paul's the golden cross on the dome was flashing like a fiery finger in the blaze of the midday sun. That was the true ensign! It was a monstrous and wicked fallacy, a gloomy and narrow formula, that religion had to do with the affairs of the other world only. Work was religion! Work was prayer! Work was praise! Work was the love of man and the glory of God!

Glorious gospel! Great and deathless symbol!



THIRD BOOK.

THE DEVIL'S ACRE.



I.

Behind Buckingham Palace there is a little square of modest houses standing back from the tide of traffic and nearly always as quiet as a cloister. At one angle of the square there is a house somewhat larger than the rest but just as simple and unassuming. In the dining-room of this house an elderly lady was sitting down to lunch alone, with the covers laid for another at the opposite end of the table.

"Hae ye the spare room ready, Emma?"

"Yes, ma'am," said the maid.

"And the sheets done airing? And baith the pillows? And the pillow-slips—and everything finished?"

The maid was answering "Yes" to each of these questions when a hansom cab came rattling up to the front of the house, and the old lady leaped out of her seat.

"It's himself!" she cried, and she ran like a girl to the hall.

The door had been opened before she got there, and a deep voice was saying, "Is Mrs. Callender——"

"It's John! My gracious! It's John Storm!" the old woman cried, and she lifted both hands as if to fling herself into his arms.

"My guidness, laddie, but you gave poor auld Jane sic a start! Expected ye? To be sure we expected you, and terribly thrang we've been all morning making ready. Only my daft auld brain must have been a wee ajee. But," smiling through her tears, "has a body never a cheek, that you must be kissing at her hand? And is this your dog?" looking down at the bloodhound. "Welcome? Why, of course it's welcome. What was I saying the day, Emma? 'I'd like fine to have a dog,' didn't I? and here it is to our hand.—Away with ye, James, man, and show Mr. Storm to his room, and then find a bed for the creature somewhere. Letters for ye, laddie? Letters enough, and you'll find them on the table upstairs. Only, mind ye, the lunch is ready, and your fish is getting cold."

John Storm opened his letters in his room. One of them was from his uncle, the Prime Minister: "I rejoice to hear of your most sensible resolution. Come and dine with me at Downing Street this day week at seven o'clock. I have much to say and much to ask, and I expect to be quite alone."

Another was from his father: "I am not surprised at your intelligence, but if anything could exceed the folly of going into a monastery it is the imbecility of coming out of it. The former appears to be a subject of common talk in this island already, and no doubt the latter will soon be so."

John flinched as at a cut across the face and then smiled a smile of relief. Apparently Glory was writing home wherever she was, and there was good news in that, at all events. He went downstairs.

"Come your way in, laddie, and let me look at ye again. Man, but your face is pale and your bonnie eyes are that sunken. But sit ye down and eat. They've been starving ye, I'm thinking, and miscalling it religion. It's enough to drive a reasonable body to drink. Carnal I am, laddie, and I just want to put some flesh on your bones. Monks indeed! And in this age of the world too! Little Jack Horners sitting in corners and saying, 'Oh, what a good boy am I!'"

John defended his late brethren. They were holy men; they lived a holy life; he had not been good enough for their company. "But I feel like a sailor home from sea," he said; "tell me what has happened."

"Births, marriages, and deaths? I suppose ye're like the lave of the men, and think nothing else matters to a woman. But come now, more chicken? No? A wee bitty? Aye, but ye're sair altered, laddie! Weel, where can a body begin?"