(I)
The electric train slowed down and stopped at the Hammersmith terminus,
and there was the usual rush for the doors.
"Come on, Gertie," said a young man, "here we are."
The girl remained perfectly still with her face hidden.
The crowd was enormous this Christmas Eve, and for the most part laden
with parcels; the platforms surged with folk, and each bookstall,
blazing with lights (for it was after seven o'clock), was a center of a
kind of whirlpool. There was sensational news in the evening papers, and
everyone was anxious to get at the full details of which the main facts
were tantalizingly displayed on the posters. Everyone wanted to know
exactly who were the people concerned and how it had all happened. It
was a delightful tragedy for the Christmas festivities.
"Come on," said the young man again. "They're nearly all out."
"I can't," moaned the girl.
Frank took her by the arm resolutely.
"Come!" he said.
Then she came, and the two passed out together into the mob waiting to
come in.
"We shall have to walk," said Frank. "I'm sorry; but I've got to get
home somehow."
She bowed her head and said nothing.
Gertie presented a very unusual appearance this evening. Certainly she
had laid out the two-pound-ten to advantage. She was in a perfectly
decent dark dress with a red stripe in it; she had a large hat and some
species of boa round her neck; she even carried a cheap umbrella with a
sham silver band and a small hand-bag with one pocket-handkerchief
inside it. And to her own mind, no doubt, she was a perfect picture of
the ideal penitent--very respectable and even prosperous looking, and
yet with a dignified reserve. She was not at all flaunting, she must
have thought; neither was she, externally, anything of a disgrace. It
would be evident presently to her mother that she had returned out of
simple goodness of heart and not at all because her recent escapade had
been a failure. She would still be able to talk of "the Major" with
something of an air, and to make out that he treated her always like a
lady. (When I went to interview her a few months ago I found her very
dignified, very self-conscious, excessively refined and faintly
reminiscent of fallen splendor; and her mother told me privately that
she was beginning to be restless again and talked of going on to the
music-hall stage.)
But there is one thing that I find it very hard to forgive, and that is,
that as the two went together under the flaming white lights towards
Chiswick High Street, she turned to Frank a little nervously and asked
him if he would mind walking just behind her. (Please remember, however,
in extenuation, that Gertie's new pose was that of the Superior Young
Lady.)
"I don't quite like to be seen--" murmured this respectable person.
"Oh, certainly!" said Frank, without an instant's hesitation.
* * * * *
They had met, half an hour before, by appointment, at the entrance to
the underground station at Victoria. Frank's van-journeyings would, he
calculated, bring him there about half-past six, and, strictly against
the orders of his superiors, but very ingeniously, with the connivance
of his fellow-driver of the van, he had arranged for his place to be
taken on the van for the rest of the evening by a man known to his
fellow-driver--but just now out of work--for the sum of one shilling, to
be paid within a week. He was quite determined not to leave Gertie alone
again, when once the journey to Chiswick had actually begun, until he
had seen her landed in her own home.
The place of meeting, too, had suited Gertie very well. She had left
Turner Road abruptly, without a word to anyone, the instant that the
Major's military-looking back had been seen by her to pass within the
swing-doors of the "Queen's Arms" for his usual morning refreshment.
Then she had occupied herself chiefly by collecting her various things
at their respective shops, purchased by Frank's two-pound-ten, and
putting them on. She had had a clear threepence to spare beyond the few
shillings she had determined to put by out of the total, and had
expended it by a visit to the cinematograph show in Victoria Street.
There had been a very touching series of pictures of the "Old Home in
the Country," and the milking of the cows, with a general atmosphere of
roses and church-bells, and Gertie had dissolved into tears more than
once, and had cried noiselessly into her new pocket-handkerchief drawn
from her new hand-bag. But she had met Frank quite punctually, for,
indeed, she had burned her boats now entirely and there was nothing else
left for her to do.
* * * * *
At the entrance to Chiswick High Street another brilliant thought struck
her. She paused for Frank to come up.
"Frankie," she said, "you won't say anything about the two-pound-ten,
will you? I shouldn't like them to think--"
"Of course not," said Frank gravely, and after a moment, noticing that
she glanced at him again uneasily, understood, and fell obediently to
the rear once more.
* * * * *
About a quarter of a mile further on her steps began to go slower. Frank
watched her very carefully. He was not absolutely sure of her even now.
Then she crossed over the street between two trams, and Frank dodged
after her. Then she turned as if to walk back to Hammersmith. In an
instant Frank was at her side.
"You're going the wrong way," he said.
She stopped irresolutely, and had to make way for two or three hurrying
people, to pass.
"Oh, Frankie! I can't!" she wailed softly.
"Come!" said Frank, and took her by the arm once more.
Five minutes later they stood together half-way down a certain long lane
that turns out of Chiswick High Street to the left, and there, for the
first time, she seems to have been genuinely frightened. The street was
quite empty; the entire walking population was parading up and down the
brightly-lit thoroughfare a hundred yards behind them, or feverishly
engaged in various kinds of provision shops. The lamps were sparse in
this lane, and all was comparatively quiet.
"Oh, Frankie!" she moaned again. "I can't! I can't!... I daren't!"
She leaned back against the sill of a window.
Yet, even then, I believe she was rather enjoying herself. It was all so
extremely like the sort of plays over which she had been accustomed to
shed tears. The Prodigal's Return! And on Christmas Eve! It only
required a little snow to be falling and a crying infant at her
breast....
I wonder what Frank made of it. He must have known Gertie thoroughly
well by now, and certainly there is not one sensible man in a thousand
whose gorge would not have risen at the situation. Yet I doubt whether
Frank paid it much attention.
"Where's the house?" he said.
He glanced up at the number of the door by which he stood.
"It must be a dozen doors further on," he said.
"It's the last house in the row," murmured Gertie, in a weak voice. "Is
father looking out? Go and see."
"My dear girl," said Frank, "do not be silly. Do remember your mother's
letter."
Then she suddenly turned on him, and if ever she was genuine she was in
that moment.
"Frankie," she whispered, "why not take me away yourself? Oh! take me
away! take me away!"
He looked into her eyes for an instant, and in that instant he caught
again that glimpse as of Jenny herself.
"Take me away--I'll live with you just as you like!" She took him by his
poor old jacket-lapel. "You can easily make enough, and I don't ask--"
Then he detached her fingers and took her gently by the arm.
"Come with me," he said. "No; not another word."
Together in silence they went the few steps that separated them from the
house. There was a little garden in front, its borders set alternately
with sea-shells and flints. At the gate she hesitated once more, but he
unlatched the gate and pushed her gently through.
"Oh! my gloves!" whispered Gertie, in a sharp tone of consternation. "I
left them in the shop next the A.B.C. in Wilton Road."
Frank nodded. Then, still urging her, he brought her up to the door and
tapped upon it.
There were footsteps inside.
"God bless you, Gertie. Be a good girl. I'll wait in the road for ten
minutes, so that you can call me if you want to."
Then he was gone as the door opened.
(II)
The next public appearance of Frank that I have been able to trace, was
in Westminster Cathedral. Now it costs an extra penny at least, I think,
to break one's journey from Hammersmith to Broad Street, and I imagine
that Frank would not have done this after what he had said to Gertie
about the difficulty connected with taking an omnibus, except for some
definite reason, so it is only possible to conclude that he broke his
journey at Victoria in an attempt to get at those gloves.
It seems almost incredible that Gertie should have spoken of her gloves
at such a moment, but it really happened. She told me so herself. And,
personally, on thinking over it, it seems to me tolerably in line
(though perhaps the line is rather unusually prolonged) with all that I
have been able to gather about her whole character. The fact is that
gloves, just then, were to her really important. She was about to appear
on the stage of family life, and she had formed a perfectly consistent
conception of her part. Gloves were an integral part of her
costume--they were the final proof of a sort of opulence and refinement;
therefore, though she could not get them just then, it was perfectly
natural and proper of her to mention them. It must not be thought that
Gertie was insincere: she was not; she was dramatic. And it is a fact
that within five minutes of her arrival she was down on her knees by her
mother, with her face hidden in her mother's lap, crying her heart out.
By the time she remembered Frank and ran out into the street, he had
been gone more than twenty minutes.
* * * * *
One of the priests attached to Westminster Cathedral happened to have a
pause about half-past nine o'clock in his hearing of confessions. He had
been in his box without a break from six o'clock, and he was extremely
tired and stiff about the knees. He had said the whole of his office
during intervals, and he thought he would take a little walk up and down
the south aisle to stretch his legs.
So he unlatched the little door of his confessional, leaving the light
burning in case someone else turned up; he slipped off his stole and
came outside.
The whole aisle, it seemed, was empty, though there was still a
sprinkling of folks in the north aisle, right across the great space of
the nave; and he went down the whole length, down to the west end to
have a general look up the Cathedral.
He stood looking for three or four minutes.
Overhead hung the huge span of brickwork, lost in darkness, incredibly
vast and mysterious, with here and there emerging into faint light a
slice of a dome or the slope of some architrave-like dogmas from
impenetrable mystery. Before him lay the immense nave, thronged now with
close-packed chairs in readiness for the midnight Mass, and they seemed
to him as he looked with tired eyes, almost like the bent shoulders of
an enormous crowd bowed in dead silence of adoration. But there was
nothing yet to adore, except up there to the left, where a very pale
glimmer shone on polished marble among the shadows before the chapel of
the Blessed Sacrament. There was one other exception; for overhead,
against the half-lighted apse, where a belated sacristan still moved
about, himself a shadow, busy with the last preparations of the High
Altar--there burgeoned out the ominous silhouette of the vast hanging
cross, but so dark that the tortured Christ upon it was invisible....
Yet surely that was right on this night, for who, of all those who were
to adore presently the Child of joy, gave a thought to the Man of
Sorrows? His Time was yet three months away....
* * * * *
As the priest stood there, looking and imagining, with that strange
clarity of mind and intuition that a few hours in the confessional gives
to even the dullest brain, he noticed the figure of a man detach itself
from one of the lighted confessionals on the left and come down towards
him, walking quickly and lightly. To his surprise, this young man,
instead of going out at the northwest door, wheeled and came towards
him.
He noticed him particularly, and remembered his dress afterwards: it was
a very shabby dark blue suit, splashed with mud from the Christmas
streets, very bulgy about the knees; the coat was buttoned up tightly
round a muffler that had probably once been white, and his big boots
made a considerable noise as he came.
The priest had a sudden impulse as the young man crossed him.
"A merry Christmas," he said.
The young man stopped a moment and smiled all over his face, and the
priest noticed the extraordinary serenity and pleasantness of the
face--and that, though it was the face of a Poor Man, with sunken cheeks
and lines at the corners of the mouth.
"Thank you, Father," he said. "The same to you."
Then he went on, his boots as noisy as ever, and turned up the south
aisle. And presently the sound of his boots ceased.
* * * * *
The priest still stood a moment or two, looking and thinking, and it
struck him with something of pleasure that the young man, though
obviously of the most completely submerged tenth, had not even hesitated
or paused, still less said one word, with the hope of a little something
for Christmas' sake. Surely he had spoken, too, with the voice of an
educated man.
He became suddenly interested--he scarcely knew why, and the impression
made just by that single glimpse of a personality deepened every
moment.... What in the world was that young man doing here?... What was
his business up in that empty south aisle? Who was he? What was it all
about?
He thought presently that he would go up and see; it was on his way back
to the clergy-house, too. But when he reached the corner of the aisle
and could see up it, there seemed to be no one there.
He began to walk up, wondering more than ever, and then on a sudden he
saw a figure kneeling on the lower step of the chapel on the right,
railed off and curtained now, where the Crib was ready to be disclosed
two hours later.
It all seemed very odd. He could not understand why anyone should wish
to pray before an impenetrable curtain. As he came nearer he saw it was
his friend all right. Those boots were unmistakable. The young man was
kneeling on the step, quite upright and motionless, his cap held in his
hands, facing towards the curtain behind which, no doubt, there stood
the rock-roofed stable, with the Three Personages--an old man, a maid
and a new-born Child. But their time, too, was not yet. It was two hours
away.
Priests do not usually stare in the face of people who are saying their
prayers--they are quite accustomed to that phenomenon; but this priest
(he tells me) simply could not resist it. And as he passed on his
noiseless shoes, noticing that the light from his own confessional shone
full upon the man, he turned and looked straight at his face.
Now I do not understand what it was that he saw; he does not understand
it himself; but it seems that there was something that impressed him
more than anything else that he had ever seen before or since in the
whole world.
The young man's eyes were open and his lips were closed. Not one muscle
of his face moved. So much for the physical facts. But it was a case
where the physical facts are supremely unimportant.... At any rate, the
priest could only recall them with an effort. The point was that there
was something supra-physical there--(personally I should call it
supernatural)--that stabbed the watcher's heart clean through with one
over whelming pang.... (I think that's enough.)
* * * * *
When the priest reached the Lady chapel he sat down, still trembling a
little, and threw all his attention into his ears, determined to hear
the first movement that the kneeling figure made behind him. So he sat
minute after minute. The Cathedral was full of echoes--murmurous
rebounds of the noises of the streets, drawn out and mellowed into long,
soft, rolling tones, against which, as against a foil, there stood out
detached, now and then, the sudden footsteps of someone leaving or
entering a confessional, the short scream of a slipping chair--once the
sudden noise of a confessional-door being opened and the click of the
handle which turned out the electric light. And it was full of shadows,
too; a monstrous outline crossed and recrossed the apse behind the High
Altar, as the sacristan moved about; once a hand, as of a giant,
remained poised for an instant somewhere on the wall beside the throne.
It seemed to the priest, tired and clear-brained as he was, as if he sat
in some place of expectation--some great cavern where mysteries moved
and passed in preparation for a climax. All was hushed and confused, yet
alive; and the dark waves would break presently in the glory of the
midnight Mass.
He scarcely knew what held him there, nor what it was for which he
waited. He thought of the lighted common-room at the end of the long
corridor beyond the sacristy. He wondered who was there; perhaps one or
two were playing billiards and smoking; they had had a hard day of it
and would scarcely get to bed before three. And yet, here he sat, tired
and over-strained, yet waiting--waiting for a disreputable-looking young
man in a dirty suit and muffler and big boots, to give over praying
before a curtain in an empty aisle.
A figure presently came softly round the corner behind him. It was the
priest whom he had heard leaving his confessional just now.
"Haven't you done yet?" whispered the new-comer, pausing behind his
chair.
"Coming in a minute or two," he said.
The figure passed on; presently a door banged like muffled thunder
somewhere beyond the sacristy, and simultaneously he heard a pair of
boots going down the aisle behind.
He got up instantly, and with long, silent steps made his way down the
aisle also. The figure wheeled the corner and disappeared; he himself
ran on tip-toe and was in time to see him turning away from the
holy-water basin by the door. But he came so quickly after him that the
door was still vibrating as he put his hand upon it. He came out more
cautiously through the little entrance, and stood on the steps in time
to see the young man moving off, not five yards away, in the direction
of Victoria Street. But here something stopped him.
Coming straight up the pavement outside the Art and Book Company depot
was a newsboy at the trot, yelling something as he came, with a poster
flapping from one arm and a bundle of papers under the other. The priest
could not catch what he said, but he saw the young man suddenly stop and
then turn off sharply towards the boy, and he saw him, after fumbling in
his pocket, produce a halfpenny and a paper pass into his hands.
There then he stood, motionless on the pavement, the sheet spread before
him flapping a little in the gusty night wind.
"Paper, sir!" yelled the boy, pausing in the road. "'Orrible--"
The priest nodded; but he was not thinking much about the paper, and
produced his halfpenny. The paper was put into his hand, but he paid no
attention to it. He was still watching the motionless figure on the
pavement. About three minutes passed. Then the young man suddenly and
dexterously folded the paper, folded it again and slipped it into his
pocket. Then he set off walking and a moment later had vanished round
the corner into Victoria Street.
* * * * *
The priest thought no more of the paper as he went back through the
Cathedral, wondering again over what he had seen....
But the common-room was empty when he got to it, and presently he spread
the paper before him on the table and leaned over it to see what the
excitement was about. There was no doubt as to what the news was--there
were headlines occupying nearly a third of a column; but it appeared to
him unimportant as general news: he had never heard of the people
before. It seemed that a wealthy peer who lived in the North of England,
who had only recently been married for the second time, had been killed
in a motor smash together with his eldest son. The chauffeur had escaped
with a fractured thigh. The peer's name was Lord Talgarth.