THE LAST.
Denis Caird was as good as his word, and better. He stuck to Beaumont
like a leech. In those hours of depression that always come to him who
has abandoned alcoholic stimulant—those hours in which every fibre of
the being seems to clamour for the wonted drug, the good clergyman was
to Beaumont a man and a brother, cheering him, rallying him, exhorting
him, appealing to all the better forces of his nature, and aiding him in
the bitter fight, till, after anxious months, both could feel the
victory was won.
And Beaumont got work, work to his heart’s desire, work for his pen
and work for what gift of speech he had.
“Go into the slums, go to the bottommost pit in this London hell,”
said Mr. Caird. “Go and see for yourself what the teaching of your
Omar Khayyam makes of men and women. See human beings turned into beasts
and devils by yielding to the beast and devil latent within every man
and every woman. You believe in evolution, you say. Well, what has made
men and women only a little lower than the angels? Why, nought but
myriads of years of beating down Satan under their feet, beating down
the animal basis on which the moral and the spiritual superstructure is
reared. Go, learn your lesson, and then, and not till then, with pen and
tongue preach your lesson. I’m a Socialist, you know I am. But ere
ever the masses enter into their kingdom of economic justice, ere ever
they win the full heritage of their toil, I pray and labour that they
may be worthy of that kingdom and of that heritage, that they may learn
the right use of wealth; else will all their gains be but added
curses.”
And Beaumont went into the slums, and their teaching sank deep into his
soul. And in his goings he met time after time that sweet and winsome
maiden whom he had first seen, years ago, in circumstances how
different, in his office in Huddersfield—Gertrude Fairfax, Sister
Gertrude. He saw her move, a ministering angel, among the foul purlieus,
the noxious dens, speaking to Women from whose touch Respectability
plucked its skirts, saw her indeed touch pitch without being defiled, a
serene and wholesome presence before which sin slunk abashed away, and
e’en the drunkard forbore to curse.
And seeing her thus almost daily, old memories died away, the carking
bitterness left his heart, and it was filled again with the image of a
woman whom to love was a liberal education and a holy cult in one.
The last scene of this story shall not open under the fogs nor ’mid
the slums of hideous London. Come with me, gentle reader, to that goodly
mansion by Stafford town, where dwell Mistress Jane Fairfax and her
niece Gertrude. It is the month of leafy June, the skies are blue
o’erhead, the air sweet and soft and warm, and the garden of Cromwell
House is rich in verdure and in bloom, and redolent of the choicest
perfumes distilled by that cunningest of all alchemists—Dame Nature.
There is a bower there with rustic seat, a bower all garlanded with
roses sweetly breathing, with clematis and wild convolvulus, and a
purling brook alive with darting troutlet babbles by. And there are
seated side by side the heroine of this story and Edward Beaumont.
“I have something to give you, Mr. Beaumont, that I think belongs to
you. Let me first tell you how it came to my hands. You had a clerk, had
you not, called Barnes?”
“I had.”
“Well, he came to a sad end, poor fellow. Drifted to London, took to
evil courses, and died in great straits. I was by his bed when the end
drew near. He remembered my being at your office, when you defended Pat
Sullivan. He had tried to find you. He confessed he had abstracted this
paper from your office, thinking he might make money by it, if a reward
were offered for its recovery. I promised if ever I met you to restore
it to you, and the man seemed easier for the promise.”
Beaumont wondering opened the document she handed to him.
“By Jove!” he cried, “the missing valuer’s certificate for
Midgley’s mortgage. Why, I’ve searched high and low for this. What
would I not have given for this precious bit of paper that night in
Stafford Town Hall when I got that awful telegram. You were there, you
tell me. If I’d only had this then! But it’s better as it is, much
better. Don’t you think God schemes for us better than we can scheme
for ourselves? A man need have long visions to scan the ways of God.”
“I don’t think, I know. But why do you ask that question just
now?”
“Why, you see, Gertrude, if I may call you so, if I had had this paper
I should probably have made a fight and struggled on in the law. And if
I had, it seems to stand to reason I shouldn’t have been here!”
“No; you’d have been happily married by this to Eleanor St.
Clair!”
“Who is much more happily married to George Wright, and I am free to
say what say I must before I leave for London and my work. Can’t you
guess what it is I would say, Gertrude? I’m not much of a man to offer
to any woman, but such as I am I love you, Gertrude. I’m poor, you are
rich or will be; I’m tainted, you are pure, unsullied. But, there, I
think you know me as I am. Say, Gertrude, is there in your heart any
tiny seedling of love for me that time and the warmth of my love may woo
to life and growth?”
Edward had risen and now stood before the girl to whom he pleaded, who
drooped her eyes before the ardour of his gaze, her bosom fluttering
’neath her modest dress like a prisoned bird that beats its bars, the
rich colour suffusing the pale brow and cheeks.
“I think I have loved you, Edward, since that day in the Police Court.
Oh! it nearly broke my heart when I heard how sadly you had fallen from
what I dreamed you might be, and shall from what, God willing, you may
be yet.”
“And you will help, Gertrude?”
“Aye, that I will.” And she rose and placed her hands in his and
spake to him as Ruth the Maobitish damsel, spake to Naomi, and as Edward
drew her to his breast and kissed the lips that met his he murmured:
“The Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and
me.”
And this is the end of my story, and yet but the real beginning of the
lives that were joined before God’s altar by the Rev. Denis Caird. The
wedding presents were neither costly nor numerous, but they included one
from Eleanor St Clair, now Lady Wright, for that ambitious matron never
rested till she saw her spouse a member for the Louth division, and,
once in Parliament, that gentleman wisely refrained from speech,
“never thought of thinking for himself at all, but always voted at his
party’s call”; and in due time the Premier of the day, yielding, it
was said, to the blandishments of that brilliant leader of society, Mrs.
George Wright, rewarded him with a baronetcy.
And what of Miss Amelia Wrigley and her amorous Sam? Alas! that lady
never realised her modest ambitions. Mr. Storth prospered, as indeed he
deserved to prosper, in the profession of his choice; but much beer,
added to a plethoric habit and a choleric temperament, induced an
apoplectic seizure from which he never rallied, and Miss Wrigley still
lives in maiden meditation, if not fancy free, still to be wooed and
won.
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's Sister Gertrude, by Daniel Frederick Edward Sykes