On entering the drawing-room John Storm was seized with a weird feeling
of dread. The soft air seemed to be filled with Glory's presence and her
very breath to live in it. On the side-table a lamp was burning under a
warm red shade. A heap of petty vanities lay about--articles of silver,
little trinkets, fans, feathers, and flowers. His footsteps on the soft
carpet made no noise. It was all so unlike the place he had come from,
his own bare chamber under the church!
He could have fancied that Glory had that moment left the room. The door
of a little ebony cabinet stood half open and he could see inside. Its
lower shelves were full of shoes and little dainty slippers, some of
them of leather, some of satin, some black, some red, some white. They
touched him with an indescribable tenderness and he turned his eyes
away. Under the lamp lay a pair of white gloves. One of them was flat
and had not been worn, but the other was filled out with the impression
of a little hand. He took it up and laid it across his own big palm, and
another wave of tenderness broke over him.
On the mantelpiece there were many photographs. Most of them were of
Glory and some were very beautiful, with their gleaming and glistening
eyes and their curling and waving hair. One looked even voluptuous with
its parted lips and smiling mouth; but another was different--it was
so sweet, so gay, so artless. He thought it must belong to an earlier
period, for the dress was such as she used to wear in the days when he
knew her first, a simple jersey and a sailor's stocking cap. Ah, those
days that were gone, with their innocence and joy! Glory! His bright,
his beautiful Glory!
His emotion was depriving him of the free use of his faculties, and he
began to ask himself why he was waiting there. At the next instant came
the thought of the awful thing he had come to do and it seemed monstrous
and impossible. “I'll go away,” he told himself, and he turned his face
toward the door.
On a what-not at the door side of the room another photograph stood in
a glass stand. His back had been to it, and the soft light of the lamp
left a great part of the room in obscurity, but he saw it now, and
something bitter that lay hidden at the bottom of his heart rose to his
throat. It was a portrait of Drake, and at the sight of it he laughed
savagely and sat down.
How long he sat he never knew. To the soul in torment there is no such
thing as time; an hour is as much as, eternity and eternity is no more
than an hour. His head was buried in his arms on the table and he was a
prey to anguish and doubt. At one time he told himself that God did
not send men to commit murder; at the next that this was not murder
but sacrifice. Then a mocking voice in his ears seemed to say, “But
the world will call it murder and the law will punish you.” To that he
answered in his heart: “When I leave this house I will deliver myself
up. I will go to the nearest police court and say 'Take me, I have
done my duty in the eye of God, but committed a crime in the eye of my
country.'” And when the voice replied, “That will only lead to your own
death also,” he thought, “Death is a gain to those who die for their
cause, and my death will be a protest against the degradation of women,
a witness against the men who make them the creatures of their pleasure,
their playthings, their victims, and their slaves.” Thinking so, he
found a strange thrill in the idea that all the world would hear of what
he had done. “But I will say a mass for her soul in the morning,” he
told himself, and a chill came over him and his heart grew cold as a
stone.
Then he lifted his head and listened. The room was quiet, there was
not a sound in the gardens of the Inn, and, through a window which was
partly open, he could hear the monotonous murmur of the streets outside.
A great silence seemed to have fallen on London--a silence more awful
than all the noise and confused clamour of the evening. “It must be
late,” he thought; “it must be the middle of the night.” Then the
thought came to him that perhaps, Glory would not come home that night
at all, and in a sudden outburst of pent-up feeling his heart cried,
“Thank God! Thank God!”
He had said it aloud and the sound of his voice in the silent
room--awakened all his faculties. Suddenly he was aware of other sounds
outside. There was a rumble of wheels and the rattle of a hansom. The
hansom came nearer and nearer. It stopped in the outside courtyard.
There was the noise of a curb-chain as if the horse were shaking its
head. The doors of the hansom opened with a creak and banged back on
their spring. A voice, a woman's voice, said “Good-night!” and another
voice, a man's voice, answered, “Good-night and thank you, miss!” Then
the cab wheels turned and went off. All his senses seemed to have
gone into his ears, and in the silence of that quiet place he heard
everything. He rose to his feet and stood waiting.
After a moment there was the sound of a key in the lock of the door
below; the rustle of a woman's dress coming up the stairs, an odour of
perfume in the air, an atmosphere of freshness and health, and then the
door of the room which had been ajar was swung open and there on the
threshold with her languid and tired but graceful movements was she
herself, Glory. Then his head turned giddy and he could neither hear nor
see.
When Glory saw him standing by the lamp, with his deadly pale face, she
stood a moment in speechless astonishment, and passed her hand across
her eyes as if to wipe out a vision. After that she clutched at a chair
and made a faint cry.
“Oh, is it you?” she said in a voice which she strove to control. “How
you frightened me! Whoever would have thought of seeing you here!”
He was trying to answer, but his tongue would not obey him, and his
silence alarmed her.
“I suppose Liza let you in--where _is_ Liza?”
“Gone to bed,” he said in a thick voice.
“And Rosa--have you seen Rosa?”
“No.”
“Of course not! How could you? She must be at the office, and won't be
back for hours. So you see we are quite alone!”
She did not know why she said that, and, in spite of the voice which
she tried to render cheerful, her lip trembled. Then she laughed, though
there was nothing to laugh at, and down at the bottom of her heart she
was afraid. But she began moving about, trying to make herself easy and
pretending not to be alarmed.
“Well, won't you help me off with my cloak? No? Then I must do it for
myself I suppose.”
Throwing off her outer things, she walked across the room and sat down
on the sofa near to where he stood.
“How tired I am! It's been such a day! Once is enough for that sort of
thing, though! Now where do you think I've been?”
“I know where you've been, Glory--I saw you there.”
“You? Really? Then perhaps it _was_ you who----Was it you in the
hollow?”
“Yes.”
He had moved to avoid contact with her, but now, standing by the
mantelpiece looking into her face, he could not help recognising in the
fashionable woman at his feet the features of the girl once so dear to
him, the brilliant eyes, the long lashes, the twitching of the eyelids,
and the restless movement of the mouth. Then the wave of tenderness
came sweeping over him again and he felt as if the ground were slipping
beneath his feet.
“Will you say your prayers to-night. Glory?” he said,
“Why not?” she answered, trying to laugh.
“Then why not say them now, my child?”
“But why?”
He had made her tremble all over, but she got up, walked straight across
to him, looked intently into his face for a moment, and then said: “What
is the matter? Why are you so pale? You are not well, John!”
“No, I'm not well either.” he answered.
“John, John, what does it all mean? What are you thinking of? Why have
you come here to-night?”
“To save your soul, my child. It is in great, great peril.”
At first she took this for the common, everyday language of the devotee,
but another look into his face banished that interpretation, and her
fear rose to terror. Nevertheless she talked lightly, hardly knowing
what she said. “Am I, then, so very wicked? Surely Heaven doesn't want
me yet, John. Some day I trust--I hope----”
“To-night, to-night--_now!_”
Then her cheeks turned pale and her lips became white and bloodless.
She had returned to the sofa, and half rose from it, then sat back,
stretching out one hand as if to ward off a blow, but still keeping her
eyes riveted on his face. Once she looked round to the door and tried to
cry out, but her voice would not answer her.
This speechless fright lasted only a moment. Then she was herself again,
and looked fearlessly up at him. She had the full use of her intellect,
and her quick instinct went to the root of things. “This is the madness
of jealousy,” she thought. “There is only one way to deal with it. If I
cry out--if I show that I am afraid--if I irritate him, it will soon,
be over.” She told herself in a moment that she must try gentleness,
tenderness, reason, affection, love.
Trembling from head to foot, she stepped up to him again, and began
softly and sweetly trying to explain herself. “John, dear John, if you
see me with certain people and in certain places you must not think from
that----”
But he broke in upon her with a torrent of words. “I can't think of it
at all, Glory. When I look ahead I see nothing but shame and misery and
degradation for you in the future. That man is destroying you body and
soul. He is leading you on to the devil and hell and damnation, and I
can not stand by and see it done!”
“Believe me, John, you are mistaken, quite mistaken.” But, with a look
of sombre fury, he cried, “Can you deny it?”
“I can protect and care for myself, John.”
“With that man's words in your ears, still can you deny it?”
Suddenly she remembered Drake's last whisper as she got into the hansom,
and she covered her face with her hands.
“You can't! It is the truth! The man is following you to ruin you, and
you know it. You've known it from the first, therefore you deserve all
that can ever come to you. Do you know what you are guilty of? You are
guilty of soul-suicide. What is the suicide of the body to the suicide
of the soul? What is the crime of the poor broken creature who only
chooses death and the grave before starvation or shame, compared to the
sin of the wretched woman who murders her soul for sake of the lusts
and vanities of the world? The law of man may punish, the one, but the
vengeance of God is waiting for the other.”
She was crying behind her hands, and, in spite of the fury into which
he had lashed himself, a great pity took hold of him. He felt as if
everything were slipping away from him, and he was trying to stand on
an avalanche. But he told himself that he would not waver, that he would
hold to his purpose, that he would stand firm as a rock. Heaving a deep
sigh, he walked to and fro across the room.
“O Glory, Glory! Can't you understand what it is to me to be the
messenger of God's judgment?”
She gasped for breath, and what had been a vague surmise became a
certainty--thinking he was God's avenger, yet with nothing but a poor
spasm of jealousy in his heart, he had come with a fearful purpose to
perform.
“I did what I could in other ways and it was all in vain. Time after
time I tried to save you from these dangers, but you would not listen. I
was ready for any change, any sacrifice. Once I would have given up all
the world for you, Glory--you know that quite well--friends, kinsmen,
country, everything, even my work and my duty, and, but for the grace of
God, God himself!”
But his tenderness broke again into a headlong torrent of reproach.
“You failed me, didn't you? At the last moment, too--the very last! Not
content with the suicide of your own soul, you must attempt to murder
the soul of another. Do you know what that is? That is the unpardonable
sin! You are crying, aren't you? Why are you crying?” But even while he
said this something told him that all he was waiting for was that her
beautiful eyes should be raised and their splendid light flash upon him
again.
“But that is all over now. It was a blunder, and the breach between us
is irreparable. I am better as I am--far, far better. Without friends or
kin or country, consecrated for life, cut off from the world, separate,
alone!”
She knew that her moment had come, and that she must vanquish this man
and turn him from his purpose, whatever it was, by the only weapon a
woman could use--his love of her. “I do not deny that you have a right
to be angry with me,” she said, “but don't think that I have not given
up something too. At the time you speak of, when I chose this life and
refused to go with you to the South Seas, I sacrificed a good deal--I
sacrificed love. Do you think I didn't realize what that meant? That
whatever the pleasure and delight my art might bring me, and the
flattery, and the fame, and the applause, there were joys I was never
to know--the happiness that every poor woman may feel, though she isn't
clever at all, and the world knows nothing about her--the happiness of
being a wife and a mother, and of holding her place in life, however
humble she is and simple and unknown, and of linking the generations
each to each. And, though the world has been so good to me, do you think
I have ever ceased to regret that? Do you think I don't remember it
sometimes when the house rises at me, or when I am coming home, or
perhaps when I awake in the middle of the night? And notwithstanding all
this success with which the world has crowned me, do you think I don't
hunger sometimes for what success can never buy--the love of a good man
who would love me with all his soul and his strength and everything that
is his?”
Out of a dry and husky throat John Storm answered: “I would rather die a
thousand, thousand deaths than touch a hair of your head, Glory....
But God's will is his will!” he added, quivering and trembling. The
compulsion of a great passion was drawing him, but he struggled hard
against it. “And then this success--you cling to it nevertheless!” he
cried, with a forced laugh.
“Yes, I cling to it,” she said, wiping away the tears that had begun to
fall. “I can not give it up, I can not, I can not!”
“Then what is the worth of your repentance?”
“It is not repentance--it is what you said it was--in this room--long
ago.... We are of different natures, John--that is the real trouble
between us, now and always has been. But whether we like it or not, our
lives are wrapped up together for all that. We can't do without each
other. God makes men and women like that sometimes.”
There was a piteous smile on his face. “I never doubted your feeling for
me, Glory. No, not even when you hurt me most.”
“And if God made us so----”
“I shall never forgive myself, Glory, though Heaven itself forgives me!”
“If God makes us love each other in spite of every barrier that divides
us----”
“I shall never know another happy hour in this life. Glory--never!”
“Then why should we struggle? It is our fate and we can not conquer it.
You can't give up your life, John, and I can't give up mine; but our
hearts are one.”
Her voice sang like music in his ears, and something in his aching heart
was saying: “What are the laws we make for ourselves compared to the
laws God makes for us?” Suddenly he felt something warm. It was Glory's
breath on his hand. A fragrance like incense seemed to envelop him. He
gasped as if suffocating, and sat down on the sofa.
“You are wrong, dear, if you think I care for the man you speak of. He
has been very good to me and helped me in my career, but he is nothing
to me--nothing whatever--But we are such old friends, John? It seems
impossible to remember a time when we were not old chums, you and I!
Sometimes I dream of those dear old days in the 'lil oilan'! Aw, they
were ter'ble--just ter'ble! Do you remember the boat--the _Gloria_--do
you remember her?” (He clinched his hands as though to hold on to his
purpose, but it was slipping through his fingers like sand.) “What times
they were! Coming round the castle of a summer evening when the bay and
the sky were like two sheets of silvered glass looking into each other,
and you and I singing 'John Peel'” (in a quavering voice she sang a
bar or two): “'D'ye ken John Peel with his coat so gay? D'ye ken John
Peel'---Do you remember it, John?”
She was sobbing and laughing by turns. It was her old self, and the
cruel years seemed to roll back. But still he struggled. “What is the
love of the body to the love of the soul?” he told himself.
“You wore flannels then, and I was in a white jersey--like this, see,”
and she snatched up from the mantelpiece the photograph he had been
looking at. “I got up my first act in imitation of it, and sometimes
in the middle of a scene--such a jolly scene, too--my mind goes back to
that sweet old time and I burst out crying.”
He pushed the photograph away. “Why do you remind me of those days?”
he said. “Is it only to make me realize the change in you?” But even at
that moment the wonderful eyes pierced him through and through.
“Am I so much changed, John? Am I? No, no, dear! It is only my hair done
differently. See, see!” and with trembling fingers she tore her hair
from its knot. It fell in clusters over her shoulders and about her
face. He wanted to lay his hand on it, and he turned to her and then
turned away, fighting with himself as with an enemy.
“Or is it this old rag of lace that is so unlike my jersey?
There--there!” she cried, tearing the lace from her neck, and throwing
it on the floor and trampling upon it. “Look at me now, John--look at
me? Am I not the same as ever? Why don't you look?”
She was fighting for her life. He started to his feet and came to
her with his teeth set and his pupils fixed. “This is only the devil
tempting me. Say your prayers, child!”
He grasped her left hand with his right. His grip almost overtaxed
her strength and she felt faint. In an explosion of emotion the insane
frenzy for destroying had come upon him again. He longed to give his
feelings physical expression.
“Say them, say them!” he cried, “God sent me to kill you, Glory!”
A sensation of terror and of triumph came over her at once. She half
closed her eyes and threw her other arm around his neck. “No, but to
love me!--Kiss me, John!”
Then a cry came from him like that of a man flinging himself over a
precipice. He threw his arms about her, and her disordered hair fell
over his face.