“Martha's.
“Lost, stolen, or strayed--a man, a clergyman, answers to the name of
John Storm. Or rather he does not answer, having allowed himself to be
written to twice without making so much as a yap or a yowl by way of
reply. Last seen six days ago, when he was suffering from the sulks,
after being in a de'il of a temper, with a helpless and innocent maiden
who 'doesn't know nothin',' that can have given him offence. Any one
giving information of his welfare and whereabouts to the said H. and I.
M. will be generously and appropriately rewarded.
“But, soberly, my dear John Storm, what has become of you? Where are
you, and whatever have you been doing since the day of the dreadful
inquisition? Frightful rumours are flying through the air like knives,
and they cut and wound a poor girl woefully. Therefore be good enough to
reply by return of post--and in person.
“Meantime please accept it as a proof of my eternal regard that after
two knock-down blows received in silence I am once more coming up
smiling. Know, then, that Mr. Drake has justified all expectations,
having compelled Lord Robert to provide for Polly, who is now safely
ensconced in her own country castle somewhere in St. John's Wood,
furnished to hand with servants and vassals complete. Thus you will be
charmed to observe in me the growth of the prophetic instinct, for you
will remember my positive prediction that if a girl were in trouble,
and the necessity arose, Mr. Drake would be the first to help her. Of
course, he had a great deal to say that was as sweet as syrup on the
loyalty of my own friendship also, and he expended much beautiful
rhetoric on yourself as well. It seems that you are one of those who
follow the impulse of the heart entirely, while the rest of us divide
our allegiance with the head; and if you display sometimes the severity
of a tyrant of our sex, that is only to be set down as another proof of
your regard and of the elevation of the pedestal whereon you desire us
to be placed. Thus he reconciles me to the harmony of the universe, and
makes all things easy and agreeable.
“This being the case, I have now to inform you that Polly's baby has
come, having hastened his arrival (it is a man, bless it!) owing either
to the tears or the terrors of the crocodile. And being on night duty
now, and therefore at liberty from 6.30 to 8.30, I intend to pay him my
first call of ceremony this evening, when anybody else would be welcome
to accompany me who might be willing to come to his shrine of innocence
and love in the spirit of the wise men of the East. But, lest anybody
_should_ inquire for me at the hospital at the first of the hours
aforesaid, this is to give warning that the White Owl has expressly
forbidden all intercourse between the members of her staff and
the discharged and dishonoured mother. Set it down to my spirit of
contradiction that I intend to disregard the mandate, though I am only
too well aware that the poor discharged and dishonoured one has no other
idea of friendship than that of a loyalty in which she shares but is not
sharing. Of course, woman is born to such selfishness as the sparks fly
upward; but if I should ever meet with a man who isn't I will just give
myself up to him--body and soul and belongings--unless he has a wife
or other encumbrance already and is booked for this world, and in that
event I will enter into my own recognisances and be bound over to him
for the next. Glory.”
At six-thirty that evening Glory stood waiting in the portico of the
hospital, but John Storm did not come. At seven she was ringing at the
bell of a little house in St. John's Wood that stood behind a high wall
and had an iron grating in the garden door. The bell was answered by a
good-natured, slack-looking servant, who was friendly, and even familiar
in a moment.
“Are you the young lady from the hospital? The missis told me about you.
I'm Liza, and come upstairs--Yes, doing nicely, thank you, both of 'em
is--and mind your head, miss.”
Polly was in a little bandbox of a bedroom, looking more pink and white
than ever against the linen of her frilled pillow slips. By the bedside
a woman of uncertain age in deep mourning, with little twinkling eyes
and fat cheeks, was rocking the baby on her knee and babbling over it in
words of maudlin endearment.
“Bless it, 'ow it do notice! Boo-loo-loo!”
Glory leaned over the little one and pronounced it the prettiest baby
she had ever seen.
“Syme 'ere miss. There ain't sech another in all London! It's jest the
sort of baby you can love. Pore little thing, it's quite took to me
already, as if it wanted to enkirridge you, my dear.”
“This is Mrs. Jupe,” said Polly, “and she's going to take baby to
nurse.”
“Boo-loo-loo-boo! And a nice new cradle's awaiting of it afront of the
fire in my little back parlour. Boo-loo!”
“But surely you're never going to part with your baby!” said Glory.
“Why, what do you suppose, dear? Do you think I'm going to be tied to
a child all my days, and never be able to go anywhere or do anything or
amuse myself at all?”
“Jest that. It'll be to our mootual benefit, as I said when I answered
your advertisement.”
Glory asked the woman if she was married and had any children of her
own.
“Me, miss? I've been married eleven years, and I've allwiz prayed the
dear Lord to gimme childring. Got any? On'y one little girl; but I want
to adopt another from the birth, so as to have something to love when my
own's growed up.”
Glory supposed that Polly could see her baby at any time, but the woman
answered doubtfully:
“Can she see baby? Well, I would rather not, certingly. If I tyke it
I want to feel it is syme as my very own and do my dooty by it, pore
thing! And if the mother were coming and going I should allwiz feel as
she 'ad the first claim.”
Polly showed no interest in the conversation until Mrs. Jupe asked for
the name of her “friend,” in lieu of eighty pounds that were to be paid
down on delivery of the child.
“Come, myke up your mind, my dear, and let me tyke it away at onct. Give
me 'is nyme, that's good enough for me.”
After some hesitation Glory gave Lord Robert's name and address, and the
woman prepared the child for its departure.
“Don't tyke on so, my dear. 'Tain't sech a great crime, and many a laidy
of serciety 'as done worse.”
At the street door Glory asked Mrs. Jupe for her own address, and the
woman gave her a card, saying if she ever wanted to leave the hospital
it would be easy to help such a fine-looking young woman as she was to
make a bit of living for herself.
Polly recovered speedily from the trouble of the child's departure,
and presently assumed an easy and almost patronizing tone toward Glory,
pretending to be amused and even a little indignant when asked how soon
she expected to be fit for business again, and able to do without Lord
Robert's assistance.
“To tell you the truth,” she said, “I was as much to blame as he was. I
wanted to escape from the drudgery of the hospital, and I knew he would
take me when the time came.”
Glory left early, vowing in her heart she would come no more. When she
changed her omnibus at Piccadilly the Circus was very full of women.
“Letter for you, nurse,” said the porter as she entered the hospital. It
was from John Storm.
“Dear Glory: I have at length decided to enter the Brotherhood at
Bishopsgate Street, and I am to go into the monastery this evening. It
is not as a visitor that I am going this time, but as a postulant or
novice and in the hope of becoming worthy in due course to take the vows
of lifelong consecration. Therefore I am writing to you probably for the
last time, and parting from you perhaps forever.
“Since we came up to London together I have suffered many shocks and
disappointments, and I seem to have been torn in ribbons. My cherished
dreams have proved to be delusions; the palaces I had built up for
myself have turned out to be pasteboard, gilt, and rubbish; I have been
robbed of all my jewels, or they have shown themselves to be shingle
stones. In this condition of shame and disillusionment I am now resolved
to escape at the same time from the world and from myself, for I am
tired of both alike, and already I feel as if a great weight had been
lifted off me.
“But I wish to speak of you. You must have thought me cantankerous, and
so I have been sometimes, but always by conviction and on principle. I
could not countenance the fashionable morality that is corrupting the
manhood of the laity, or endure the toleration that is making the clergy
thoroughly wicked; I could not without a pang see you cater to the
world's appetites or be drawn into its gaieties and frivolities; and it
was agony to me to fear that a girl of your pure if passionate nature
might perhaps fall a victim to a gamester in life's follies--an actor
indulging a pastime--a mere cheat.
“And what you tell me of your friend's altered circumstances does not
relieve me of such anxieties. The man who has deceived a girl once is
likely to deceive her again. Short of marriage itself, such connections
should be cut off entirely, whatever the price. When they are maintained
in relations of liberty the victim is sure to be further victimized, and
her last state is always worse than the first.
“However, I do not wish to blame anybody, least of all you, who have
done everything for the best, and especially now when I am parting from
you forever. You have never realized how much you have been to me, and
I doubt if I knew it myself until to-day. You know how I was brought
up--with a solitary old man--God be with him!--who tried to be good to
me for the sake of his ambitions, and to love me for the sake of his
revenge. I never knew my mother, I never had a sister, and I can never
have a wife. You were all three to me and yourself besides. There were
no women in our household, and you stood for woman in my life. I have
never told you this before, but now I tell it as a dying man whispers
his secret with his parting breath.
“I have written my letters of farewell--one to my father, asking his
forgiveness if I have done him any wrong; one to my uncle, with my love
and thanks; and one to your good old grandfather, giving up my solemn
and sacred trust of you. My conduct will of course be condemned as
weak and foolish from many points of view, but by my departure some
difficulties will be removed, and for the rest I have come to see that
everything is done by the spirit and nothing by the flesh, and that by
prayer and fasting I can help and protect you more than by counsel and
advice. Thus everything is for the best.
“The rule under which the Brothers live in community forbids them to
write and receive letters without special permission, or even to think
too constantly of the world outside; and now that I am on the eve of
that new life, memories of the old one keep crowding on me as on a
drowning man. But they are all of one period--the days when we were at
Peel in your sweet little island, before the vain and cruel world came
in between us, when you were a simple, merry girl, and I was little more
than a happy boy, and we went plunging and laughing through your bright
blue sea together.
“But earth's joys grow very dim and its glories are fading. That also is
for the best. I have my Koh-i-noor--my desire to depart and surrender my
life to God. John Storm.”
“Anything wrong, nurse? Feeling ill, ain't ye? Only dizzy a bit?
Unpleasant news from home, perhaps?”
“No, something else. Let me sit in your room, porter.”
She read the letter again and again, until the words seemed blurred and
the lines irregular as a spider's web. Then she thought: “We can not
part forever like this. I must see him again whatever happens. Perhaps
he has not yet gone.”
It was now half-past eight and time to go on duty, but she went upstairs
to Sister Allworthy and asked for an hour's further leave. The request
was promptly refused. She went downstairs to the matron and asked for
half an hour, only that she might see a friend away on a long journey,
and that was refused too. Then she tightened her quivering lips,
returned to the porter's room, fixed her bonnet on before the scratched
pier-glass, and boldly walked out of the hospital.
It was now quite dark and the fashionable dinner hour of Belgravia, and
as she hurried through the streets many crested and coroneted carriages
drew up at the great mansions and discharged their occupants in evening
dress. The canon's house was brilliantly lighted, and when the door was
opened in answer to her knock she could see the canon himself at the
head of his own detachment of diners coming downstairs with a lady in
white silk chatting affably on his arm.
“Is Mr. Storm at home?”
The footman, in powdered wig and white cotton gloves, answered
haltingly. “If it is--er--anything about the hospital, miss,
Mr.--er--Golightly will attend.”
“No, it is Mr. Storm himself I wish to see.”
“Gorn!” said the footman, and he shut the door in her face.
She had an impulse to hammer on the door with her hand, and command
the flunky to go down on his knees and beg her pardon. But what was the
good? She had no time to think of herself now.
As a last resource she would go to Bishopsgate. How dense the traffic
seemed to be at Victoria! She had never felt so helpless before.
It was better in the city, and as she walked eastward, in the direction
indicated by a policeman, every step brought her into quieter streets.
She was now in that part of London which is the world's busiest
market-place by day, but is shut up and deserted at night. Her light
footsteps echoed against the shutters of the shops. The moon had risen,
and she could see far down the empty street.
She found the place at last. It was one of London's weather-beaten old
churches, shouldered by shops on either hand, and almost pushed back by
the tide of traffic. There was an iron gate at the side, leading by
an arched passage to a little courtyard, which was bounded by two high
blank walls, by the back wall of the church, and by the front of a large
house with a small doorway and many small windows. In the middle of the
courtyard there was a tree with a wooden seat round its trunk.
And being there, she felt afraid and almost wished she had not come.
The church was dimly lighted, and she thought perhaps the cleaners were
within. But presently there was a sound of singing, in men's voices
only, and without any kind of musical accompaniment. Just then the clock
in the steeple struck nine, and chimes began to play:
Days and moments quickly flying.
The singing came to an end, and there was some low, inarticulate
droning, and then a general “Amen.” The hammer of the bell continued
to beat out its hymn, and Glory stood under the shadow of the tree to
collect her thoughts.
Then the sacristy door opened and a line of men came out. They were in
long black cassocks, and they crossed the courtyard from the church
to the house with the measured and hasty step of monks, and with their
hands clasped at their breasts. Almost at the end of the line, walking
with an old man whose tread was heavy, there was a younger one who was
bareheaded, and who did not wear the cassock. The moon threw a light on
his face, which looked pale and worn. It was John Storm.
Glory gave a faint cry, a gasp, and he turned round as if startled.
“Only the creaking of the sycamore,” said the Superior. And then the
mysterious shadows took them; they passed into the house, the door was
closed, and she was alone with the chimes:
Days and moments quickly flying,
Blend the living with the dead.
Glory's strength had deserted her, and she went away as she came. When
she got back to Victoria, she felt for the first time as if her own
little life had been swallowed up in the turmoil of London, and she had
gone down to the cold depths of an icy sea.
It was a quarter to ten when she returned to the ward, and the matron,
with her dog on her lap, was waiting to receive her.
“Didn't I tell you that you could not go out to-night?”
“Yes, ma'am,” said Glory.
“Then how did you dare to go?”
Glory looked at her unwaveringly, with glittering eyes that seemed to
smile, whereupon the matron picked up her dog, gathered up her train,
and swept out of the ward, saying:
“Nurse, you can leave me at the end of your term; and you need never
cross the doors of this institution again.”
Then Glory, who had all night wanted to cry, burst into laughter. The
ward Sister reproved her, but she laughed in the woman's fat face, and
would have given worlds to slap it.
There was not a nurse in the hospital who showed more bright and
cheerful spirits when the patients were being prepared for the night.
But next morning, in the gray dawn, when she had dragged herself to bed,
and was able at length to be alone, she beat the pillows with both hands
and sobbed in her loneliness and shame.