On the Sunday evening after Glory's departure John Storm, with the
bloodhound running by his side, made his way to Soho in search of the
mother of Brother Andrew. He had come to a corner of a street where the
walls of an ugly brick church ran up a narrow court and turned into
a still narrower lane at the back. The church had been for some time
disused, and its facade was half covered with boardings and plastered
with placards: “Brighton and Back, 3_s_.”; “_Lloyd's News_”; “Coals,
1_s_. a cwt.”; and “Barclay's Sparkling Ales.”
There was a tumult in the court and lane. In the midst of a close-packed
ring of excited people, chiefly foreigners, shouting in half the
languages of Europe, a tall young Cockney, with bloated face and eyes
aflame with drink, was writhing and wrestling and cursing. Sometimes
he escaped from the grasp of the man who held him, and then he flung
himself against the closed door of a shop which stood opposite, with the
three balls of the pawnbroker suspended above it. Somebody within the
shop was howling for help. It was a woman's voice, and the louder she
screamed the more violent were the man's efforts to beat down the door
between them.
As John Storm stood a moment looking on, some one on the street beside
him said, “It's a d---- shyme.” It was a man with a feeble, ineffectual
face and the appearance of a waiter. Seeing he had been overheard, the
man stammered: “Beg parding, sir; but they may well say 'when the Devil
can't come hisself 'e sends 'is brother Drink.'” Having said this he
began to move along, but stopped suddenly on seeing what the clergyman
with the dog was doing.
John Storm was pushing his way through the crowd, and his black
figure in that writhing ring of undersized foreigners looked big and
commanding. “What's this?” he was saying in a husky voice that rose
clear above the clamour. The shouting and swearing subsided, all save
the howling from the inside of the shop, and the tumult settled down in
a moment to mutterings and gnashings and a broken and irregular silence.
Then somebody said, “It's nothink, sir.” And somebody else said, “'Es
on'y drunk, and wantin' to pench 'is mother.” Without listening to this
explanation John Storm had laid hold of the young man by the collar and
was dragging him, struggling and fuming, from the door.
“What's going on?” he demanded. “Will nobody speak?”
Then a poor swaggering imitation of a man came up out of the cellar of
a house that stood next to the disused church, and a comely young woman
carrying a baby followed close behind him. He had a gin bottle in his
hands, and with a wink he said: “A christenin'--that's what's going on.
'Ave a kepple o' pen'orth of 'ollands, old gel?”
At this sally the crowd recovered its audacity and laughed, and the
drunken man began to say that he could “knock spots out of any bloomin'
parson, en' now bloomin' errer.”
But the young fellow with the gin bottle broke in again. “What's yer
gime, mister? Preach the gawspel? Give us trecks? This is my funeral,
down't ye know, and I'd jest like to hear.”
The little foreigners were enjoying the parson-baiting, and the drunken
man's courage was rising to fever heat. “I'll give 'im one-two between
the eyes if 'e touches me again.” Then he flung himself on the pawnshop
like a battering ram, the howling inside, which had subsided, burst out
afresh, and finally the door was broken down.
Half a minute afterward the crowd was making a wavering dance about
the two men. “Look out, ducky!” the young fellow shouted to John. The
warning came too late--John went reeling backward from a blow.
“Now, my lads, who says next?” cried the drunken ruffian. But before the
words were out of his mouth there was a growl, a plunge, a snarl, and
he was full length on the street with the bloodhound's muzzle at his
throat.
The crowd shrieked and began to fly. Only one person seemed to remain.
It was an elderly woman, with dry and straggling gray hair. She had come
out of the pawnshop and thrown herself on the dog in an effort to rescue
the man underneath, crying: “My son--oh, my son! It'll kill him! Tyke
the beast away!”
John Storm called the dog off, and the man got up unhurt, and nearly
sober. But the woman continued to moan over the ruffian and to assail
John and his dog with bitter insults. “We want no truck with parsons
'ere,” she shouted.
“Stou thet, mother. It was my fault,” said the sobered man, and then the
woman began to cry. At the next minute John Storm was going with mother
and son into the shut-up pawnshop, and the unhinged door was being
propped behind them.
The crowd was trailing off when he came out again half an hour
afterward, and the only commotion remaining was caused by a belated
policeman asking, “Wot's bin the matter 'ere?” and by the young fellow
with the gin bottle performing a step-dance on the pavement before the
entrance to the cellar. The old woman stood at her door wiping her eyes
on her apron, and her son was behind with a face that was now red from
other causes than drink and rage.
“Good-bye, Mrs. Pincher; I may see you again soon.”
Hearing this, the young swaggerer stopped his step-dancing and cried:
“What cheer, myte? Was it a blowter and a cup of cawfy?”
“For shynie, Charlie!” cried the girl with a baby, and the young fellow
answered, “Shut yer 'ead, Aggie!”
The waiter was still at the corner of the court, and when John came up
he spoke again. “There must be sem amoosement knockin' women abart, but
I can't see it myself.” Then in a simple way he began to talk about
his “missis,” and what a good creature she was, and finally announced
himself “gyme” to help a parson “as stood up to that there drunken
blowke for sake of a woman.”
“What's your name?” said John.
“Jupe,” said the man, and then something stirred in John's memory.
On the following day John Storm dined with his uncle at Downing Street.
The Prime Minister was waiting in the library. In evening dress, with
his back to the fireplace and his hands enlaced behind him, he looked
even more thin and gaunt than before. He welcomed John with a few
familiar words and a smile. His smile was brief and difficult, like
that which drags across the face of an invalid. Dinner was announced
immediately, and the old man took the young one's arm and they passed
into the dining-room.
The panelled chamber looked cold and cheerless. It was lighted by
a single lamp in the middle of the table. They took their seats at
opposite sides. The statesman's thin hair shone on his head like streaks
of silver. John exercised a strong physical influence upon him, and all
through the dinner his bleak face kept smiling.
“I ought to apologize for having nobody to meet you, but I had something
to say--something to suggest--and I thought perhaps----”
John interrupted with affectionate protestations, and a tremor passed
over the wrinkles about the old man's eyes.
“It is a great happiness to me, my dear boy, that you have turned your
back on that Brotherhood, but I presume you intend to adhere to the
Church?”
John intended to take priest's orders without delay, and then go on with
his work as a clergyman.
“Just so, just so”--the long, tapering fingers drummed on the
table--“and I should like to do something to help you.”
Then sipping at his wine-glass of water, the Prime Minister, in his
slow, deep voice and official tone, began to detail his scheme. There
was a bishopric vacant. It was only a colonial one--the Bishopric of
Colombo. The income was small, no more than seventeen hundred pounds,
the work was not light, and there were fifty clergy. Then a colonial
bishopric was not usually a stepping-stone to preferment at home, yet
still----
John interrupted again. “You are most kind, uncle, but I am only looking
forward to living the life of a poor priest, out of sight of the world
and the Church.”
“Surely Colombo is sufficiently out of sight, my boy?”
“But I see no necessity to leave London.”
The Prime Minister glanced at him steadily, with the concentrated
expression of a man who is accustomed to penetrate the thoughts and
feelings of another.
“Why then--why did you----”
“Why did I leave the monastery, uncle? Because I had come to see that
the monastic system was based on a faulty ideal of Christianity, which
had been tried for the greater part of nineteen hundred years and
failed. The theory of monasticism is that Christ died to redeem our
carnal nature, and all we have to do is to believe and pray. But it
is not enough that Christ died once. He must be dying always--every
day--and in every one of us. God is calling on us in this age to seek a
new social application of the Gospel, or, shall I say, to go back to the
old one?”
“And that is----?”
“To present Christ in practical life as the living Master and King and
example, and to apply Christianity to the life of our own time.”
The Prime Minister had not taken his eyes off him. “What does this
mean?” he had asked himself, but he only smiled his difficult smile
and began to talk lightly. If this creed applied to the individual it
applied also to the State; but think of a cabinet conducting the affairs
of a nation on the charming principle of “taking no thought for the
morrow,” and “loving your enemies,” and “turning the other cheek,” and
“selling all and giving to the poor”!
John stuck to his guns. If the Christian religion could not be the
ultimate authority to rule a Christian nation, it was only because we
lacked faith and trusted too much to mechanical laws made by statesmen
rather than to moral laws made by Christ. “Either the life of Christ, as
the highest standard and example, means something or it means nothing.
If something, let us try to follow it; but if nothing, then for God's
sake let us put it away as a cruel, delusive, and damnable mummery!”
The Prime Minister continued to ask himself, “What is the key to this?”
and to look at John as he would have looked at a problem that had to be
solved, but he only went on smiling and talking lightly. It was true we
said a prayer and took an oath on the Bible in the Houses of Parliament,
but did anybody think for a moment that we intended to trust the nation
to the charming romanticism of the politics of Jesus? As for the Church,
it was founded on acts of Parliament, it was endowed and established by
the State, its head was the sovereign, its clergy were civil servants
who went to levées and hung on the edge of drawing-rooms and troubled
the knocker of No. 10 Downing-Street. And as for Christ's laws--in this
country they were interpreted by the Privy Council and were under
the direct control of a State department. Still, it was a harmless
superstition that we were a Christian nation. It helped to curb the
masses of the people, and if that was what John was thinking of----
The Prime Minister paused and stopped.
“Tell me, my boy,” touching John's arm, “do you intend yourself to
live--in short, the--well, after the example of the life of Christ?”
“As far as my weak and vain and sinful nature will permit, uncle!”
“And in what way would you propose to apply your new idea of
Christianity?”
“My experiment would be made on a social basis, sir, and first of all in
relation to women.” John was hot all over, and his face had flushed up
to the eyes.
The Prime Minister glanced stealthily across the table, passed his thin
hand across his forehead, and thought, “So that's how it is!” But John
was deep in his theme and saw nothing. The present position of women was
intolerable. Upon the well-being of women, especially of working women,
the whole welfare of society rested. Yet what was their condition? Think
of it--their dependence on man, their temptations, their rewards, their
punishments! Three halfpence an hour was the average wage of a working
woman in England!--and that in the midst of riches, in the heart of
luxury, and with one easy and seductive means of escape from poverty
always open. Ruin lay in wait for them, and was beckoning them and
enticing them in the shape of dancing houses and music halls and rich
and selfish men.
“Not one man in a million, sir, would come through such an ordeal
unharmed. And yet what do we do?--what does the Church do for these
brave creatures on whose virtue and heroism the welfare of the nation
depends? If they fall it cuts them off, and there is nothing before
them but the streets or crime or the Union or suicide. And meanwhile it
marries the men who have tempted them to the snug and sheltered darlings
for whose wealth or rank or beauty they have been pushed aside. Oh,
uncle, when I walk down Regent Street in the daytime I am angry, but
when I walk down Regent Street at night I am ashamed. And then to think
of the terrible solitude of London to working girls who want to live
pure lives--the terrible spiritual loneliness!”
John's voice was breaking, but the Prime Minister had almost ceased to
hear. Thinking he had realized the truth at last, his own youth seemed
to be sitting before him and he felt a deep pity.
“Coffee here or in the library, your lordship?” said the man at his
elbow.
“The library,” he answered, and taking John's arm again he returned to
the other room. There was a fire burning now, and a book lay under the
lamp on a little table, with a silver paper-cutter through the middle to
mark the page.
“How you remind me of your mother sometimes, John! That was just like
her voice, do you know--just!”
Two hours afterward he led John Storm down the long corridor to the
hall. His bleak face looked soft and his deep voice had a slight tremor.
“Good-night, my dear boy, and remember your money is always waiting for
you. Until your Christian social state is established you are only an
advocate of socialism, and may fairly use your own. If yours is the
Christianity of the first century it has to exist in the nineteenth, you
know. You can't live on air or fly without wings. I shall be curious to
see what approach, to the Christian ideal the condition of civilization
admits of. Yet I don't know what your religious friends and the humdrum
herd will think of you--mad probably, or at least weak and childish and
perhaps even a hunter after easy popularity. But good-night, and God
bless you in, your people's church and Devil's Acre!”
John was flushed and excited. He had been talking of his plans, his
hopes, his expectations. God would provide for him in this as in
everything, and then God's priest ought to be God's poor. Meantime two
gentlemen in plush waited for him at the door. One handed him his hat,
the other his stick and gloves.
Then with regular steps, and his hands behind him, the Prime Minister
paced back through the quiet corridors. Returning to the library, he
took up his book and tried to read. It was a novel, but he could not
attend to the incidents in other people's lives. From time to time he
said to himself: “Poor boy! Will he find her? Will he save her?” One
pathetic idea had fixed itself on his mind--John Storm's love of God was
love of a woman, and she was fallen and wrecked and lost.
A fortnight later John wrote to Glory:
“Fairly under weigh at last, dear Glory! Taken priest's orders, got the
Bishop's 'license to officiate,' and found myself a church. It is St.
Mary Magdalene's, Crown Street, Soho, a district that has borne for
three hundred years the name of the 'Devil's Acre,' bears it still,
and deserves it. The church is an old proprietary place, licensed, not
consecrated, formerly belonging to Greek, or Italian, or French, or some
other refugees, but long shut up and now much out of repair. Present
owners, a company of Greek merchants, removed from Soho to the City, and
being too poor (as trustees) to renovate the structure, they have forced
me to get money for that purpose from my uncle, the Prime Minister. But
the money is my own, apparently, my uncle having in my interest demanded
from my father ten thousand pounds out of my mother's dowry, and got it.
And now I am spending two thousand on the repair of my church buildings,
notwithstanding the protests of the Prime Minister, who calls me
'chaplain to the Greek-Turks,' and of Mrs. Callender, who has discovered
that I am a 'maudlin, sentimental, daft young spendthrift.' Dare say I
am all that and a good deal more, as the wise world counts wisdom--but
it matters little!
“Have not waited for the workmen, though, to begin operations. Took
first services last Sunday. No organist, no choir, no clerk, and next to
no congregation. Just the church cleaner, a good, simple old soul
named Pincher, her son, a reformed drunkard and pawnbroker, and another
convert who is a club waiter. Nevertheless, I went through the whole
service, morning and evening, prayers, psalms, and sermon. God will be
the more glorified.
“Have started my new crusade on behalf of women, too, and made various
processions of three persons through the streets of Soho. First, my
pawnbroker bearing the banner (a white cross, the object of various
missiles), next my waiter carrying a little harmonium, and familiarly
known as the 'organ man,' and finally myself in my cassock. Last
mentioned proves to be a highly popular performance, being generally
understood to be a man in a black petticoat. We have had a nightly
accompaniment of a much larger procession, though, calling themselves
'Skellingtons,' otherwise the 'Skeletons,' an army of low women and
roughs; who live vulture lives on this poor, soiled, grimy, forgotten
world. Thank God, the ground of evil-doers is in danger, and they know
it!
“Behind my church, in a dark, unwholesome alley called. Crook Lane, we
have a clergy house, at present let out in tenements, the cellar being
occupied as a gin shop. As soon as these premises can be cleared of
their encumbrances I shall turn them into a club for working girls. Why
not? In the old days the Church came to the people: let it come to the
people now. Here we are in the midst of this mighty stronghold of
the devil's kingdom of sin and crime. Foreign clubs, casinos, dancing
academies, and gambling houses are round about us. What are we to
do? Put up a forest of props (as at the Abbey) and keep off touch and
contamination? God forbid! Let us go down into these dens of moral
disease and disinfect them. The poor working girls, of Soho want their
Sunday: give it them. They want music and singing: give it them. They
want dancing: give them that also, for God's sake, give it them in your
churches, or the devil will give it them in his hells!
“Expect to be howled at of course. Some good people will think I am
either a fanatic or an artful schemer, while the clerical place-seekers,
who love the flesh-pots of Egypt and have their eyes on the thrones of
the Church and the world, will denounce my 'secularity' and tell me I
am feeding the 'miry troughs' of the publican and sinner. No matter, if
only God is pleased to vouchsafe 'signs following.' And one weary-faced
lonely girl, grown fresh of countenance and happy of mien, or one bright
little woman, snatched from the brink of perdition, will be a better
fruit, of religion than some of them have seen for many a year.
“As soon as the workmen have cleared out I am going to establish a daily
service and keep the church open always. Still at Mrs. Callender's, you
see; but I am refusing all invitations, except as a priest, and already
I don't seem to, have time to draw my breath. No income connected with
St. Mary Magdalene's, or next to none, just enough to pay the caretaker;
but I must not complain of that, for it is the accident to which I owe
my church, nobody else wanting it under the circumstances. I had begun
to think my time in the monastery wasted, but God knew better. It will
help me to live the life of poverty, of purity, of freedom from the
world.
“Love to the grandfather and the ladies. How I wish you were with me in
the thick of the fight! Sometimes I dream you are, too, and I fancy I
see you in the midst of these bright young things with their flowers and
feathers--they will make beautiful Christians yet! Oddly enough, on the
day you travelled to the island, every hour that took you farther away
seemed to bring you nearer. Greetings!”