Christmas had come and gone at the Brotherhood, and yet the project was
unfulfilled. John himself had delayed its fulfilment from one trivial
cause after another. The night was too dark or not dark enough; the moon
shone or was not shining. His real obstacle was his superstitious fear.
The scheme was very easy of execution, and the Father himself had made
it so. This, and the Father's trust in him, had almost wrecked the
enterprise. Only his own secret anxieties, which were interpreted to his
consciousness by the sight of Brother Paul's wasting face, sufficed to
sustain his purpose.
“The man's dying. It can not be unpleasing to God.”
He said this to himself again and again, as one presses the pain in
one's side to make sure it is still there. Under the shadow of
the crisis his character was going to ruin. He grew cunning and
hypocritical, and could do nothing that was not false in reality or
appearance. When the Father passed him he would drop his head, and it
was taken for contrition, and he was commended for humility.
It was now the last day of the year, and therefore the last of his duty
at the door.
“It must be to-night,” he whispered, as Paul passed him.
Paul nodded. Since the plan of escape had been projected he had lost all
will of his own and become passive and inert.
How the day lingered! And when the night came it dragged along with feet
of lead! It seemed as if the hour of evening recreation would never
end. Certain of the brothers who had been away on preaching missions
throughout the country had returned for the Feast of the Circumcision,
and the house was bright with fresh faces and cheerful voices. John
thought he had never before heard so much laughter in the monastery.
But the bell rang for Compline, and the brothers passed into church. It
was a cold night, the snow was trodden hard, and the wind was rising.
The service ended, and the brothers returned to the house with clasped
hands and passed up to their cells in silence, leaving Brother Paul at
his penance in the church.
Finally the Father put up his hood and went out to lock the gate, and
the dog, who took this for his signal, shambled up and followed him.
When he returned he shuddered and shrugged his shoulders.
“A bitter night, my son,” he said. “It's like courting death to go out
in it. Heaven help all homeless wanderers on a night like this!”
He was wiping the snow from his slippers.
“So this is the last day of your penance, Brother Storm, and to-morrow
morning you will join us in the community room. You have done well; you
have fought a good fight and resisted the assaults of Satan. Good-night
to you, my son, and God bless you!”
He took a few steps forward and then stopped. “By the way, I promised
you the Life of Père Lacordaire, and you might come to my room and fetch
it.”
The Father's room was on the ground floor to the left of the staircase,
and it was entered from a corridor which cut the house across the
middle. The rooms that opened out of this corridor to the front looked
on the courtyard, and those to the back looked across the City in the
direction of the Thames. The Father's room opened to the back. It was
as bare of ornament as any of the cells, but it had a small fire, and a
writing-table on which a lamp was burning.
As they entered the room together the Father hung the key of the gate
on one of many hooks above the bed. It was the third hook from the end
nearest the window, and the key was an old one with very few wards. John
watched all this, and even observed that there were books on the floor,
and that a man might stumble if he did not walk warily. The Father
picked up one of them.
“This is the book, my son. A most precious document, the very mirror of
a living human soul. What touched me most, perhaps, were the Father's
references to his mother. A monk may not have his mother to himself, and
if the love of woman is much to him he is miserable indeed until he has
fixed his eyes on the most blessed among women. But the religious life
does not destroy natural affection. It only kills in order to bring
forth new life. The corn of wheat dies that it may live again. That
is the true Christian asceticism, my son, and so it is with our vows.
Goodnight!”
As John was coming out of the Father's room, he met Brother Andrew going
into it, with clean linen over one arm and a ewer of water in the other
hand. He threw on his bed in the alcove the book which the Father had
given him, and sat down on the form at the door and tried to strengthen
himself in his purpose.
“The man is dying for the sight of his sister. He can save her soul if
he can only see her. It can not be displeasing to the Almighty.”
When he lifted his head the house was silent, except for the wind that
whistled outside its walls. Presently there was a scarcely perceptible
click, as of a door closing, and Brother Andrew came from the direction
of the Superior's room. John called to him and he stepped up on tip-toe,
for the monk hates noise as an evil spirit. The sprawling features of
the big fellow were all smiles.
“Has the Father gone to bed?” said John.
“Yes.”
“Just gone?”
“No; half an hour ago.”
“Then he will be asleep by this time.”
“He was asleep before I left him.”
“So he doesn't lock his door on the inside?”
“No, never.”
“Does the Father sleep soundly?”
“Sometimes he does, and sometimes a cat would waken him.”
“Brother Andrew----”
“Yes.”
“Would you do something for me if I wanted, it very much?”
“You know I would.”
“Even if you had to run some risk?”
“I'm not afraid of that”
“And if I got you into trouble, perhaps?”
“But you wouldn't. _You_ wouldn't get anybody into trouble.”
John could go no further. The implicit trust in the simple face was too
much for him.
“What is it?” said Brother Andrew.
“Oh, nothing--nothing at all,” said John. “I was only trying you, but
you are too good to be tempted, and I am ashamed. You must go to bed
now.”
“Can I put out the lights for you?”
“No, I'm not ready yet. Ugh! what a cruel wind! A cold night for Brother
Paul in the church.”
“Tell me, Brother Storm, what is the matter with Brother Paul? He makes
me think of my mother, I don't know why.”
John made no answer, and the lay brother began to go upstairs. Two steps
up he stopped and whispered:
“Won't you let me do something for you, then?”
“Not to-night, Brother Andrew.”
“Good-night, Brother Storm.”
“Good-night, my lad.”
John listened to his footsteps until they stopped far overhead, and then
all was quiet. Only the whistling of the wind broke the stillness of
the peaceful house. He slid back the grating and looked out. All was
darkness except for the tiny gleam of coloured light that came from the
church, where Brother Paul sat to say his Rosary.
This fortified his courage, and he got up to put out the lamps in the
staircase and corridors. He began at the top, and as he came down he
listened on every landing and looked carefully around. There was no
sound anywhere except the light fall of his own deadened footstep. His
superstitious fears came back upon him, and his restless conscience
created terrors. The old London mansion, with its mystic cells, seemed
full of strange shadows, and the wind howled around it like a fiend.
One by one he extinguished the lamps. The last of them hung in the hall
under the picture of Christ in his crown of thorns. As he put it out he
thought the eyes looked at him, and he shuddered.
It was now half-past ten, and time to carry out his project. The back
of his neck was aching and his breath was coming quick. With noiseless
steps he walked to the door of the Father's room and listened again.
Hearing nothing, he opened the door wide and stepped into the room.
The fire was slumbering out, but it cast a faint red glow on the ceiling
and on the bed. A soft light rested on the Father's face, and he was
sleeping peacefully. There was no sound except the wind in the chimney
and a whistle sounding from a steamer in the river.
To reach the key, where it hung above the bed, it was necessary to step
between the fire and the sleeping man. As John did so his black shadow
fell on the Father's face. He stretched out his hand for the key and
found that a bunch of other keys were now hanging over it. When he
removed them they jingled slightly, and then his heart stood still, but
the Father did not stir, and he took the key of the gate off the hook,
put the other keys back in their place, and turned to go.
The dog began to howl--somebody was playing music in the street--and the
open door made the wind to roar in the chimney. The Father sighed, and
John stood with a quivering heart and looked over his shoulder. But it
was only a deep human sigh uttered in sleep.
At the next moment John had returned to the corridor and closed the door
behind him. His throat was parched, his eyelids were twitching, and his
temples were beating like drums. He went gliding along like a thief, and
as he passed the picture of Christ in the darkness the wind seemed to be
crying “Judas!”
Back in the hall he dropped on to the form, for his knees could support
him no longer. Love and conscience, humanity and religion clamoured
loud in his heart and tore him in pieces. “Traitor!” cried one. “But the
man's dying!” cried another. “Judas!” “She is hovering on the brink
of hell and he may save her soul from death and damnation!” When the
struggle was over, conscience and religion were worsted, and he was more
cunning than before.
Then the clock chimed the three quarters, and he raised his head.
The streets, usually so quiet at that hour, were becoming noisy with
traffic. There were the shuffling of many feet on the hard snow and the
sharp crack of voices.
He opened the great door of the house with as little noise as possible
and stepped out into the courtyard. The bloodhound started from its
quarters and began to growl, but he silenced it with a word, and the
creature came up and licked his hand. He crossed the court with quick
and noiseless footsteps, lifted the latch of the sacristy and pushed
through into the church.
There was a low, droning sound in the empty place. It ran a space and
was then sucked in like the sound of the sea at the harbour steps.
Brother Paul was sitting in the chancel with a lamp on the stall by his
side. His head leaned forward, his eyes were closed, and the light on
his thin face made it look pallid and lifeless. John called to him in a
whisper.
“Paul!”
He rose quickly and followed John into the courtyard, looking wild and
weak and lost.
“But the lamp--I've forgotten it,” he said. “Shall I go back and put it
out?”
“How simple you are!” said John. “Somebody may be lying awake in the
house. Do you want him to see that you've left your penance an hour too
soon?”
“True.”
“Come this way--quietly.”
They passed on tip-toe to the passage leading to the street, where some
flickering gleams of the light without fell over them.
“Where's your hat?” said John.
“I forgot that too--I left it in the church.”
“Take mine,” said John, “and put up your hood and button your
cassock--it's a cruel night.”
“But I'm afraid,” said Paul.
“Afraid of what?”
“Now that the time has come I'm afraid to learn the truth about her.
After all uncertainty is hope, you know, and then----”
“Tut! Be a man! Don't give way at the last moment. Here, tie my
handkerchief about your neck! How helpless you are, though! I've half a
mind to go myself instead.”
“But you don't know what I want to say, and if you did you couldn't say
it.”
“Then listen! Are you listening?”
“Yes.”
“Go to the hospital where your sister used to be a nurse.”
“Martha's Vineyard?”
“Ask for Nurse Quayle--will you remember?”
“Nurse Quayle.”
“If she is on night duty she will see you at once. But if she is on day
duty she may be in bed and asleep, and in that case----”
“What?”
“Here, take this letter. Have you got it?”
“Yes.”
“Give it to the porter. Tell him it comes from the former chaplain--you
remember. Say it concerns a matter of great importance, and ask him to
send it up to the dormitories immediately. Then----”
“Well?”
“Then _she_ must tell you what to do next.”
“But if she is out?”
“She may be-this is New Year's Eve.”
“Ah!”
“Wait in the porch till she comes in again.”
John's impetuous will was carrying everything before it, and the
helpless creature began to overwhelm him with grateful blessings.
“Pooh! We'll not talk of that.... Have you any money?”
“No.”
“Neither have I. I brought nothing here except the little in my purse,
and I gave that up on entering.”
“I don't want any--I can walk.”
“It will take you an hour then.”
A clock was striking somewhere. “Hush! One, two, three ... eleven
o'clock. It will be midnight when you get there. Now go!”
The key was grating in the lock of the gate. “Remember Lauds at six in
the morning.”
“I'll be back at five.”
“And I'll open the gate at 5.30. Only six hours to do everything.”
“Good-night, then.”
“Wait!”
“What is it?”
Paul was in the street, but John was in the darkness of the passage.
“Very likely you'll cross London in a cab with her.”
“My sister?”
“Your sister went to live somewhere in St. John's Wood, I remember.”
“St. John's Wood?”
“Tell her”--John was striving to keep his voice firm--“tell her I am
happy--and cheerful--and looking strong and well, you know.”
“But you're not. You're too good, and you're wearing away in my----”
“Tell her I am often thinking of her, and if she has anything to
say--anything to send--any word--any message ... it can't be displeasing
to the Almighty.... But no matter! Go, go!”
The key had grated in the lock again, the lay brother was gone, and John
was left alone.
“God pity and forgive me!” he muttered, and then he turned away.
The traffic in the streets was increasing every moment, and as he
stumbled across the courtyard a drunken man going by the gate stopped
and cried into the passage, “Helloa, there! I'm a-watchin' of ye!” The
bloodhound leaped up and barked, but John hurried into the house and
clashed the door.
He sat on the form and tried to compose himself. He thought of Paul as
he had seen him at the last moment--the captured eagle with the broken
wing scudding into the night, the night of London, but free, free!
In his mind's eye he followed him through the streets--down Bishopsgate
Street into Threadneedle Street and along Cheapside to St. Paul's
churchyard. Crowds of people would be there to-night waiting for the
striking of the clock at midnight that they might raise a shout and wish
each other a happy New Year.
That made him think of Glory. She would be there too, for she loved a
rich and abounding life. He could see her quite plainly in the midst of
the throng with her sparkling eyes and bounding step. It would be so new
to her, so human and so beautiful! Glory! Always Glory!
He thought he must have been dreaming, for suddenly the clocks were all
striking, first the clock in the hall, then the clocks of the churches
round about, and finally the great clock of the cathedral. Almost at the
same moment there was a distant sound like the rattle of musketry, and
then the church bells began to ring.
The noises in the street were now tumultuous. People were shouting and
laughing. Some of them were singing. At one moment it was the Salvation
chorus, at the next a music-hall ditty. First “At the Cross, at the
Cross,” then “Mr. 'enry 'awkins,” and then an unfamiliar ditty. With
measured steps over the hardened snow of the pavement there came
tramping along a line of boys and girls, crying:
D'ye ken John Peel with his coat so gay?
D'ye ken John Peel at the break of day?
D'ye ken John P-e-e-l----
Their shrill trebles broke like a rocket on the topmost note, and there
was loud laughter.
Glory again! Always, always Glory!
Then the scales fell from his eyes and he saw himself as he was, a
self-deluded man and a cheat. The impulses that had prompted him to this
night's work had really centred in Glory. It had been Glory first and
Glory last, and his pity for Brother Paul and his fear for the fate of
Polly had been only a falsehood and pretence.
The night wind was still howling about the house. Its noise mingled
with the peal of the church bells, and together they seemed to utter the
voices of mocking fiends: Judas! Traitor! Fool! Fool! Traitor! Judas!
He covered his ears with his hands and his head fell into his breast.