At eight o'clock that night John Storm was walking through the streets
of Soho. The bell of a jam factory had just been rung, and a stream of
young girls in big hats with gorgeous flowers and sweeping feathers were
pouring out of an archway and going arm-in-arm down the pavement. Men
standing in groups at street ends shouted to them as they passed, and
they shouted back in shrill voices and laughed with wild joy. In an
alley round one corner an organ man was playing “Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay,”
and some of the girls began to dance and sing around him. Coming to the
main artery of traffic, they were almost run down by a splendid equipage
which was cutting across two thoroughfares into a square, and they
screamed with mock terror as the fat coachman in tippet and cockade
bellowed to them to get out of the way.
The square was a centre of gaiety. Theatres and music halls lined two of
its sides, and the gas on their facades and the beacons on their roofs
were beginning to burn brightly in the fading daylight. With skips and
leaps the girls passed over to the doors of these palaces, and peered
with greedy eyes through lines of policemen and doorkeepers in livery at
gentlemen, in shields of shirt-front and ladies in light cloaks and long
white gloves stepping out of gorgeous carriages into gorgeous halls.
John Storm was looking on at this masquerade when suddenly he became
aware that the flare of coarse lights on the front of the building
before him formed the letters of a word. The word was “GLORIA.” Seeing
it again as he had seen it in the morning, but now identified and
explained, he grew hot and cold by turns, and his brain, which refused
to think, felt like a sail that is flapping idly on the edge of the
wind.
There was a garden in the middle of the square, and he walked round and
round it. He gazed vacantly at a statue in the middle of the garden, and
then walked round the rails again. The darkness was gathering fast, the
gas was beginning to blaze, and he was like a creature in the coil of a
horrible fascination. That word, that name over the music hall, fizzing
and crackling in its hundred lights, seemed to hold him as by an eye of
fire. And remembering what had happened since he left the monastery--the
sandwich men, the boards on the omnibuses, the hoardings on the
walls--it seemed like a fiery finger which had led him to that spot.
Only one thing was clear--that a supernatural power had brought him
there, and that it was intended he should come. Fearfully, shamefully,
miserably, rebuking himself for his doubts, yet conquered and compelled
by them, he crossed the street and entered the music hall.
He was in the pit and it was crowded; not a seat vacant anywhere, and
many persons standing packed in the crush-room at the back. His first
sensation was of being stared at. First the man at the pay-box and then
the check-taker had looked at him, and now he was being looked at by
the people about him. They were both men and girls. Some of the men wore
light frock-coats and talked in the slang of the race-course, some of
the girls wore noticeable hats and showy flowers in their bosoms and
were laughing in loud voices. They made a way for him of themselves, and
he passed through to a wooden barrier that ran round the last of the pit
seats.
The music hall was large, and to John Storm's eyes, straight from the
poverty of his cell, it seemed garish in the red and gold of its Eastern
decorations. Men in the pit seats were smoking pipes and cigarettes, and
waiters with trays were hurrying up and down the aisles serving ale and
porter, which they set down on ledges like the book-rests in church. In
the stalls in front, which were not so full, gentlemen in evening dress
were smoking cigars, and there was an arc of the tier above, in which
people in fashionable costumes were talking audibly. Higher yet, and
unseen from that position, there was a larger audience still, whose
voices rumbled like a distant sea. A cloud of smoke filled the
atmosphere, and from time to time there was the sound of popping corks
and breaking glasses and rolling bottles.
The curtain was down, but the orchestra was beginning to play. Two men
in livery came from the sides of the curtain and fixed up large figures
in picture frames that were attached to the wings of the proscenium.
Then the curtain rose and the entertainment was resumed. It was in
sections, and after each performance the curtain was dropped and the
waiters went round with their trays again.
John Storm had seen it all before in the days when, under his father's
guidance, he had seen everything--the juggler, the acrobat, the
step-dancer, the comic singer, the tableaus, and the living picture. He
felt tired and ashamed, yet, he could not bring himself to go away. As
the evening advanced he thought: “How foolish! What madness it was to
think of such a thing!” He was easier after that, and began to listen to
the talk of the people about him. It was free, but not offensive. In the
frequent intervals some of the men played with the girls, pushing and
nudging and joking with them, and the girls laughed and answered back.
Occasionally one of them would turn her head aside and look into John's
face with a saucy smile. “God forbid that I should grudge them their
pleasure!” he thought. “It's all they have, poor creatures!”
But the audience grew noisier as the evening went on. They called to
the singers, made inarticulate squeals, and then laughed at their own
humour. A lady sang a comic song. It described her attempt to climb to
the top of an omnibus on a windy day. John turned to look at the faces
behind him, and every face was red and hot, and grinning and grimacing.
He was still half buried in the monastery he had left that morning, and
he thought: “Such are the nightly pleasures of our people. To-night,
to-morrow night, the night after! O my country, my country!”
He was awakened from these thoughts by an outburst of applause. The
curtain was down and nothing was going on except the putting up of a
new figure in the frames. The figure was 8. Some one behind him said,
“That's her number!” “The new artiste?” said another voice. “Gloria,”
said the first.
John Storm's head began to swim. He looked back--he was in a solid
block of people. “After all, what reasons have I?” he thought, and he
determined to stand his ground.
More applause. Another leader of the orchestra had appeared. _Bâton_ in
hand, he was bowing from his place before the footlights. It was Koenig,
the organist, and John Storm shuddered in the darkest corner of his
soul.
The stalls had filled up unawares to him, and a party was now coming
into a private box which had hitherto been empty. The late-comers were
Drake and Lord Robert Ure, and a lady with short hair brushed back from
her forehead.
John Storm felt the place going round him, yet he steadied and braced
himself. “But this is the natural atmosphere of such people,” he
thought. He tried to find satisfaction in the thought that Glory was not
with them. Perhaps they had exaggerated their intimacy with her.
The band began to play. It was music for the entrance of a new
performer. The audience became quiet; there was a keen, eager, expectant
air; and then the curtain went up. John Storm felt dizzy. If he could
have escaped he would have turned and fled. He gripped with both hands
the rail in front of him.
Then a woman came gliding on to the stage. She was a tall girl in a dark
dress and long black gloves, with red hair, and a head like a rose. It
was Glory! A cloud came over John Storm's eyes, and for a few moments he
saw no more.
There was some applause from the pit and the regions overhead. The
people in the stalls were waving their handkerchiefs, and the lady in
the box was kissing her hand. Glory was smiling, quite at her ease,
apparently not at all nervous, only a little shy and with her hands
interlaced in front of her. Then there was silence again and she began
to sing.
It is the moment when prayers go up from the heart not used to pray.
Strange contradiction! John Storm found himself praying that Glory
might do well, that she might succeed and eclipse everything! But he
had turned his eyes away, and the sound of her voice was even more
afflicting than the sight of her face. It was nearly a year since he had
heard it last, and now he was hearing it under these conditions, in
a place like this! He must have been making noises by his breathing.
“Hush! hush!” said the people about him, and somebody tapped him on the
shoulder.
After a moment he regained control of himself, and he lifted his head
and listened. Glory's voice, which had been quavering at first, gathered
strength. She was singing Mylecharaine, and the wild, plaintive harmony
of the old Manx ballad was floating in the air like the sound of the
sea. After her first lines a murmur of approval went round, the people
sat up and leaned forward, and then there was silence again--dead
silence--and then loud applause.
But it was only with the second verse that the humour of her song began,
and John Storm waited for it with a trembling heart. He had heard her
sing it a hundred times in the old days, and she was singing it now as
she had sung it before. There were the same tricks of voice, the same
tricks of gesture, the same expressions, the same grimaces. Everything
was the same, and yet everything was changed. He knew it. He was sure it
must be so. So artless and innocent then, now so subtle and significant!
Where was the difference? The difference was in the place, in the
people. John Storm could have found it in his heart to turn on the
audience and insult them. Foul-minded creatures, laughing, screaming,
squealing, punctuating their own base interpretations and making evil of
what was harmless! How he hated the grinning faces round about him!
When the song was finished Glory swept a gay courtesy, lifted her
skirts, and tripped off the stage. Then there were shouting, whistling,
stamping, and deafening applause. The whole house was unanimous for
an encore, and she came back smiling and bowing with a certain look of
elation and pride. John Storm was becoming terrified by his own anger.
“Be quiet there!” said some one behind him. “Who's the josser?” said
somebody else, and then he heard Glory's voice again.
It was another Manx ditty. A crew of young fishermen are going ashore on
Saturday night after their week on the sea after the herring. They go up
to the inn; their sweethearts meet them there; they drink and sing. At
length they are so overcome by liquor and love that they have to be put
to bed in their big sea boots. Then the girls kiss them and leave them.
The singer imitated the kissing, and the delighted audience repeated the
sound. Sounds of kissing came from all parts of the hall, mingled
with loud acclamations of laughter. The singer smiled and kissed back.
Somehow she conveyed the sense of a confidential feeling as if she were
doing it for each separate person in the audience, and each person had
an impulse to respond. It was irresistible, it was maddening, it swept
over the whole house.
John Storm felt sick in his very soul. Glory knew well what she was
doing. She knew what these people wanted. His Glory! Glory of the old,
innocent happy days! O God! O God! If he could only get out! But that
was impossible. Behind him the dense mass was denser than ever, and he
was tightly wedged in by a wall of faces--hot, eager, with open mouths,
teeth showing, and glittering and dancing eyes. He tried not to listen
to what the people about were saying, yet he could not help but hear.
“Tasty, ain't she?” “Cerulean, eh?” “Bit 'ot, certinly!” “Well, if I
was a Johnny, and had got the oof, she'd have a brougham and a sealskin
to-morrow.” “To-night, you mean,” and then there were significant
squeaks and trills of laughter.
They called her back again, and yet again, and she returned with
unaffected cheerfulness and a certain look of triumph. At one moment she
was doing the gaiety of youth, and at the next the crabbedness of age;
now the undeveloped femininity of the young girl, then the volubility
of the old woman. But John Storm was trying to hear none of it. With his
head in his breast and his eyes down he was struggling to think of the
monastery, and to imagine that he was still buried in his cell. It was
only this morning that he left it, yet it seemed to be a hundred years
ago. Last night the Brotherhood, the singing of Evensong, Compline, the
pure air, silence, solitude, and the atmosphere of prayer; and to-night
the crowds, the clouds of smoke, the odour of drink, the meaning
laughter, and Glory as the centre of it all!
For a moment everything was blotted out, and then there was loud
hand-clapping and cries of “Bravo!” He lifted his head. Glory had
finished and was bowing herself off. The lady in the private box flung
her a bouquet of damask roses. She picked it up and kissed it, and bowed
to the box, and then the acclamations of applause were renewed.
The crush behind relaxed a little, and he began to elbow his way out.
People were rising or stirring everywhere, and the house was emptying
fast. As the audience surged down the corridors to the doors they talked
and laughed and made inarticulate sounds. “A tricky bit o' muslin, eh?”
“Yus, she's thick.” “She's my dart, anyhow.” Then the whistling of a
tune. It was the chorus of Mylecharaine. John Storm felt the cool air of
the street on his hot face at last. The policemen were keeping a way
for the people coming from the stalls, the doorkeepers were whistling
or shouting for cabs, and their cries were being caught up by the match
boys, who were running in and out like dogs among the carriage wheels
and the horses' feet. “En-sim!” “Four-wheel-er!”
In a narrow court at the back, dimly lit and not much frequented, there
was a small open door under a lamp suspended from a high blank wall.
This was the stage-door of the music hall, and a group of young men,
looking like hairdressers' assistants, blocked the pavement at either
side of it. “Wonder what she's like off?” “Like a laidy, you bet.” “Yus,
but none o' yer bloomin' hamatoors.” “Gawd, here's the josser again!”
John Storm pushed his way through to where a commissionaire sat behind a
glass partition in a little room walled with pigeon holes.
“Can I see Miss Quayle?” he asked.
The porter looked blank.
“Gloria, then,” said John Storm, with an effort.
The porter looked at him suspiciously. Had he an appointment? No; but
could he send in his name? The porter looked doubtful. Would she come
out soon? The porter did not know. Would she come this way? The porter
could not tell. Could he have her address?
“If ye want to write to the laidy, write here,” said the porter, with a
motion of his hands to the pigeon-holes.
John Storm felt humiliated and ashamed. The hairdressers' assistants
were grinning at him. He went out, feeling that Glory was farther than
ever from him now, and if he met her they might not speak. But he could
not drag himself away. In the darkness under a lamp at the other side of
the street he stood and waited. Shoddy broughams drove up, with drivers
in shabby livery, bringing “turns” in wonderful hats and overcoats, over
impossible wigs, whiskers, and noses--niggers, acrobats, clowns, and
comic singers, who stepped out, shook the straw of their carriage
carpets off their legs, and passed in at the stage entrance.
At length the commissionaire appeared at the door and whistled, and a
hansom cab rattled up to the end of the court. Then a lady muffled in
a cape, with the hood drawn over her head, and carrying a bouquet of
roses, came out leaning on the arm of a gentleman. She stood a moment by
his side and spoke to him and laughed. John heard her laughter. At the
next moment she had stepped into the hansom, the door had fallen to,
the driver had turned, the gentleman had raised his hat, the light had
fallen on the lady's face, and she was leaning forward and smiling. John
saw her smiles.
At the next moment the hansom had passed into the illuminated
thoroughfares and the group of people had dispersed. John Storm was
alone under the lamp in the little dark street, and somewhere in
the dark alleys behind him the organ man was still grinding out
“Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay.”
“Weel, what luck on your first night out?” said Mrs. Callender at
breakfast in the morning. “Found any of the poor lost things yet?”
“One,” said John, with a rueful face. “Lost enough, though she doesn't
know it yet, God help her!”
“They never do at first, laddie. Write to her friends, if she has any.”
“Her friends?”
“Nothing like home influences, ye ken.”
“I will--I must! It's all I can do now.”