The stars were paling, but the day had not yet dawned, when there came
a knock at the door. John started and listened. After an interval the
knock was repeated. It was a timid, hesitating tap, as if made with the
tips of the fingers low down on the door.
“Praise be to God!” said John, and he drew the slide of the grating. He
had expected to see a face outside, but there was nothing there.
“Who is it?” he asked, and there came no answer.
He took up the lamp that was kept burning in the hall and looked out
through the bars. There was nothing in the darkness but an icy mist,
which appeared to be rising from the ground.
“Only another of my dreams,” he thought, and he laid his hand on the
slide to close it.
Then he heard a sigh that seemed to rise out of the ground, and at the
same moment the dog uttered a deep bay. He laid hold of the door and
pulled it quickly open. At his feet the figure of a man was kneeling,
bent double and huddled up.
“Paul!” he cried in an excited whisper.
Brother Paul raised his head. His face was frightfully changed. It was
gray and wasted. His eyes wandered, his lips trembled, and he looked
like a man who had been flogged.
“Good Lord, what a wreck!” thought John. He helped him to rise and
enter. The poor creature's limbs were stiff with cold, and he stumbled
from weakness as he crossed the threshold.
“But, thank God, you are back and no harm done!” said John. “How anxious
we've been! You must never go out again--never! There, brother, sit
there.”
The wandering eyes looked up with a supplicating expression. “Forgive
me. Brother Storm----”
But John would not listen. “Hush, brother! what have I to forgive? How
cold you are! Your hands are like ice. What can I do? There's no fire in
the house at this time of night--even in the kitchen it will be out now.
But wait, I can rub you with my hands. See, I'm warm and strong. There's
a deal of blood in me yet. That's better, isn't it? Tingling, eh? That's
right--that's good! Now for your feet--your feet will be colder still.”
“No, brother, no. I ought to be kissing the feet of everybody in the
house and asking the prayers of the community, and yet you----”
“Tut! what nonsense! Let me take off this shoe. Dear me, how it sticks!
Why, you've worn it through and through. Look! What a mercy the snow was
hard! If there had been thaw, now! How far you must have walked!”
“Yes, I've wandered a long way, brother.”
“You shall tell me all about it. I want to hear everything--every single
thing.”
“There's nothing to tell. I've failed in my errand--that's all.”
John, who was on his knees, drew back and looked up. “Do you mean,
then---Have you not seen your sister?”
“No, she's gone, and nobody knows anything about her.”
“Well, perhaps it's for the best, brother. God's will be done, you know.
If you had found her--who knows?--you might have been tempted--But tell
me everything.”
“I can not do that, I'm so weak, and it's not worth while.”
“But I want to hear all that happened. See, your feet are all right
now--I've rubbed them warm again. Though I fast so much and look so
thin I've a deal of life in me. And I've been pouring it all into you,
haven't I? That's because I want you to revive and be strong and tell
me everything. Hush! Speak low; don't waken anybody! Did you find the
hospital?”
“Yes.”
“Then Nurse Quayle sees nothing of your sister now? That's the pity of
the life she is leading, poor girl! No friends, no future----”
“It wasn' that, brother.”
“What then?”
“The nurse was not there.”
A silence followed, and then John said in another voice: “I suppose
she was on a holiday. It was very stupid of me; I didn't think of that.
Twice a year a hospital nurse is entitled to a week's holiday, and no
doubt----”
“But she was gone.”
“Gone? You mean left the hospital?”
“Yes.”
“Well,” in a husky voice, “that isn't to be wondered at either.
A high-spirited girl finds it hard to be bound down to rule and
regulation. But the porter--he is an intelligent man--he would tell you
where she had gone to.”
“I asked him; he didn't know. All he could say was that she left the
hospital on the morning of Lord Mayor's Show-day.”
“That would be the 9th of November--the day we took our vows.”
There was another pause; the big dark eyes were wandering vacantly.
“After all, he is only a porter; you asked for the matron, didn't you?”
“Yes; I thought she might know what had become of my sister. But she
didn't. As for Nurse Quayle, she had been dismissed also, and nobody
knew anything about her.”
John had seated himself at Paul's side and the form itself was
quivering.
“Now that's just like her,” he said hoarsely. “That matron was always
a hard woman. And to think that in that great house of love and pity
nobody----”
“I'm forgetting something, brother.”
“What is it?”
“The porter told me that the nurse called for her letters from time to
time. She had been there that night--not half an hour before.”
“Then you followed her, didn't you? You asked which, way she had gone,
and you hurried after her?”
“Yes; but half an hour in London is a week anywhere else. Let anybody
cross the street and she is lost--more lost to sight than a ship in
a storm on the ocean. And then it was New Year's Eve, and the
thoroughfares were crowded, and thousands of women were coming and
going--and--what could I do?” he said helplessly.
John answered scornfully: “What could you do? Do you ask me what you
could do?”
“What would you have done?”
“I should have tramped every street in London and looked into the face
of every woman I met until I had found her. I should have worn my shoes
to the welt and my skin to the bone before I should have come crawling
home like a snail with my shell broken over my head!
“Don't be hard on me, brother, least of all now, when I have come home
like a snail, as you say, with my shell broken. I was very tired and ill
and did all I could. If I had been strong like you and brave-hearted I
might have struggled longer. Bid I _did_ tramp the streets and look into
the women's faces. She must have been among them, if she's living the
life you speak of; but God would not let me find her. Why was it that
my search was fruitless? Perhaps there was evil in my heart at first--I
don't mind telling you that now--but I swear to you by Him who died for
us that at last I only wanted to find my sister that I might save her.
But I am such a helpless creature, and----”
John put his arm about Paul's shoulders.
“Forgive me, brother. I was mad to talk to you like that--I who sent
you out on that cruel night and staid at home myself. You did what you
could----”
“You think that--really?”
“Yes, only at the moment it seemed as if we had changed places somehow,
and it was I who had lost a sister and been out to find her, and
given up the search too soon, and come home empty and useless and
broken-spirited, and----”
Paul was looking up at him with a face full of astonishment.
“Do you really think I did all I could to find her--the nurse, I mean?”
But John had turned his own face away, and there was no answer. Paul
tried to say something, but he could not find the words. At last in a
choked voice he murmured: “We must keep close together, brother; we are
in the same boat now.”
And feeling for John's hand, he took it and held it, and they sat for
some minutes with bowed heads, as if a ghost were going by.
“There's nothing but prayer and penance and fasting left to us, is
there?”
Still John made no reply, and the broken creature began to comfort him.
“We have peace here at all events, and you wouldn't, think what
temptations come to you in the world when you've lost somebody, and
there seems to be nothing left to live for. Shall I tell you what I
did? It was in the early morning and I was standing in a doorway in
Piccadilly. The cabs and the crowds were gone, and only the nightmen
were there swilling up the dirt of the pavements with their hose-pipes
and water. 'My poor girl is lost,' I thought, 'We shall never see one
another again. This wicked city has ruined her, and our mother, who was
so holy, was fond of her when she was a little child.' And then my heart
seemed to freeze up within me... and I did it. You'll think I was mad--I
went to the police station and told them I had committed a crime. Yes,
indeed, I accused myself of murder, and began to give particulars. It
was only when they noticed my habit that I remembered the Father, and
then I refused to answer any more questions. They put me in a cell, and
that was where I spent the night, and next morning I denied everything,
and they let me go.”
Then, dropping his voice to a hoarse whisper, he said: “That wasn't what
brought me back, though. It was the vow. You can't think what a thing
the vow is until you've broken it. It's like a hot iron searing your
very soul, and if you were dying and at the farthest ends of the earth,
and you had to crawl on your hands and knees, you would come back----”
He would have said more, but an attack of coughing silenced him, and
when it was over there was a sound of some one moving in the house.
“What is that?”
“It is the Father,” said John. “Our voices have wakened him.”
Paul struggled to his feet.
“It's only a life of penance and suffering you've come back to, my poor
lad.”
“That's nothing--nothing at all--But are you sure you think I did
everything?”
“You did what you could. Are you going somewhere?”
“Yes, to the Father.”
“God bless you, my lad!”
“And God bless you too, brother!”
Half an hour later, by the order of the Superior, John Storm, with the
help of Brother Andrew and the Father Minister, carried Brother Paul to
his cell. The bell had been rung for Lauds, and going up the stairs they
passed the brothers coming down to service. News of Paul's return had
gone through the house like a cutting wind, and certain of the brothers
who had gathered in groups on the landings were whispering together, as
if the coming back had been a shameful thing which cast discredit on all
of them. It wasn't love of rule that had brought the man home again, but
broken health and the want of a bed to die upon! Thus they talked under
their breath, unconscious of the secret operation of their own hearts.
In a monastery, as elsewhere, failure is the worst disgrace.
John Storm returned to the hall with a firm step and eyes full of
resolution. Hardly answering the brothers, who plied him with questions,
he pushed through them with long strides, and, taking the key of the
outer gate from the place in the alcove where he had left it, he turned
toward the Father's room.
The day had dawned, and through the darkness which was lifting in the
little room he could see the Father rising from his knees.
“Father!” he cried in an excited voice, and his words, like his breath,
came in gusts.
“What is it, my son?”
“Take this key back again. The world is calling me, and I can not trust
myself at the door any longer. Put me under the rule of silence and
solitude, and shut me up in a cell, or I shall break my obedience and
run away as sure as heaven is over us!”