While Alicia Livingstone fought with her imagination in accounting for
Duff Lindsay's absence from the theatre on the first night of a notable
presentation by Miss Hilda Howe, he sat with his knees crossed on the
bench furthest back in the corner obscurest of the Salvation Army
Headquarters in Bentinck street. It had become his accustomed place;
sitting there he had begun to feel like the adventurer under Niagara, it
was the only spot from which he could observe, try to understand, and
cope with the torrential nature of his passion. Nearer to the fair charm
of her presence in the uncertain flare of the kerosene lamp and the
sound of the big drum, he grew blind, lost count, was carried away. His
persistent refusal of a better place also profited him in that it
brought to Ensign Sand and the other "officers" the divination that he
was one of those shyly anxious souls who have to be enticed into the
Kingdom of Heaven with wariness, and they made a great pretence of not
noticing him, going on with the exercises just as if he were not there,
a consideration which he was able richly to enhance when the plate came
round. After his first contribution Mrs. Sand regarded his spiritual
interests with almost superstitious reverence, according them the
fullest privacy of which she was capable. The gravity which the
gentleman attached to his situation was sufficiently testified by the
"amount"; Mrs. Sand never wanted better evidence than the amount. Even
Laura, acting doubtless under instructions, seemed disposed to hold away
from him in her prayers and exhortations; only a very occasional
allusion passed her lips which Duff could appropriate. These, when they
fell he gathered and set like flowers in his tenderest consciousness, to
visit and water them after the sun went down and for twenty-four hours
he would not see her again. Her intonation went with them and her face,
they lived on that. They stirred him, I mean, least of all in the manner
of their intention. After the first quarter of an hour it is to be
feared Lindsay suffered no more apprehensions on the score of emotional
hypnotism. He recognised his situation plainly enough, and there was no
appeal in it of which the Reverend Stephen Arnold for example could
properly suspect the genuineness or the permanence.
On this Saturday night he sat through the meeting as he had sat through
other meetings, absorbed in his exquisite experience, which he meditated
mostly with his eyes on the floor. His attitude was one quite adapted to
deceive Ensign Sand; if he had been occupied with the burden of his
transgressions it was one he might very well have fallen into. When
Laura knelt or sang he sometimes looked at her, at other times he looked
at the situation in the brightness of her presence at the other end of
the room. She gave forth there, for Lindsay, an illumination by which he
almost immediately began to read his life, and it was because he thought
he had done this with accuracy and intelligence that he came up behind
her that evening when the meeting was over as she followed the rest,
with her _sari_ drawn over her head, out into the darkness of Bentinck
street, and said with directness, "I should like to come and see you.
When may I? Any time that suits you. Have you half an hour to spare
to-morrow?"
It was plain that she was tired, and that the brightness with which she
welcomed his advance was a trifle taught and perfunctory. Not the
frankness, though, or the touch of "Now we are getting to business,"
that stood somehow in her expression. She looked alert and pleased.
"You would like to have a little talk, wouldn't you?" she said. Her
manner took Lindsay a trifle aback, it suggested that she conferred this
privilege so freely. "To-morrow--let me see, we march in the morning,
and I have an open-air at four in the afternoon--the Ensign takes the
evening meeting. Yes, I could see you to-morrow about two or about
seven, after I get back from the Square." It was not unlike a
professional appointment.
Lindsay considered. "Thanks," he said, "I'll come at about seven--if you
are sure you won't be too exhausted to have me after such a day."
He saw that her lids as she raised them to answer were slightly reddened
at the edges, testifying to the acridity of Calcutta's road dust, and a
dry crack crept into the silver voice with which she said
matter-of-factly, "We are never too exhausted to attend to our Master's
business."
Lindsay's face expressed an instant's hesitation, he looked gravely the
other way. "And the address?" he said.
"Almost next door--we all live within bugle-call. The entrance is in
Crooked lane. Anybody will tell you."
At the door Ensign Sand was conspicuously waiting. Arnold said "Thanks"
again and passed out--she seemed to be holding it for him--and picked
his way over the gutters to the shop of his Chinaman opposite. From
there he watched the little company issue forth and turn into Crooked
lane, where the entrance was. It gave him a sense that she had her part
in this squalor, which was not altogether distressful in that it also
localised her in the warm, living, habitable world, and helped to make
her thinkable and attainable. Then he went to his room at the club and
found there a note from Miss Howe, written apparently to forgive him in
advance, to say that she had not expected him. "Friendly creature!" he
said as he turned out the lamp, and smiled in the dark to think that
already there was one who guessed, who knew.
One gropes in Crooked lane after the lights of Bentinck street have done
all that can be expected of them. There are various things to avoid,
washer-men's donkeys and pariah dogs, unyoked ticca-gharries, heaps of
rubbish, perhaps a leprous beggar. Lindsay, when he had surmounted
these, found himself at the entrance to a quadrangle which was
positively dark. He waylaid a sweeper slinking out; and the man showed
him where an open staircase ran down against the wall in one corner. It
was up there, he said, that the "tamasho-mems"[2] lived. There were
three tamasho-mems, he continued, responding to Arnold's trivial coin,
and one sahib, but this was not the time for the tamasho--it was
finished. Lindsay mounted the first flight by faith, and paused at the
landing to avoid collision with a heavy body descending. He inquired
Miss Filbert's whereabouts from this person, who providentially lighted
a cigar, disclosing himself a bald Armenian in tusser silk trousers and
a dirty shirt, presumably, Lindsay thought, the landlord. At all events,
he had the information. Lindsay was to keep straight on; it was the
third story, "and a lovelie airie flat, too, sir, for this part of the
town." Duff kept straight on in a spirit of caution and just missed
treading upon the fattest rat in the heathen parish of St. John's. At
the top he saw a light and hastened; it shone from an open door at the
side of a passage. The partition in which the door was came considerably
short of the ceiling, and from the top of it to the window opposite
stretched a line of garments to dry, of pungent odour and infantile
pattern. Lindsay dared no further, but lifted up his voice in the Indian
way to summon a servant. "_Qui hai!_"[3] he called; "_Qui hai!_"
[Footnote 2: Festival-making women.]
[Footnote 3: "Whoever is there!"]
He heard somewhere within the noise of a chair pushed back, and a door
further down the passage opened outwards, disclosing Laura Filbert with
her hand upon the handle. She made a supple, graceful picture. "Good
evening, Mr. Lindsay," she said as he advanced. "Won't you come in?" She
clung to the handle until he had passed into the room, then she closed
the door after him. "I was expecting you," she said. "Mr. Harris, let me
make you acquainted with Mr. Lindsay. Mr. Lindsay, Mr. Harris."
Mr. Harris was sitting sideways on one of the three cane-bottomed
chairs. He was a clumsily built youth, and he wore the private's garb of
the Salvation Army. It was apparent that he had been reading a
newspaper; he had a displeasing air of possession. At Laura's formula he
looked up and nodded without amiability, folded his journal the other
side out and returned to it.
"Please take a seat," Laura said, and Lindsay took one. He had a demon
of self-consciousness that possessed him often, here he felt dumb. Nor
did he in the very least expect Mr. Harris. He crossed his legs in
greater discomfort than he had dreamed possible, looking at Laura, who
sat down like a third stranger, curiously detached from any sense of
hospitality.
"Mr. Lindsay is anxious about his soul, Mr. Harris," she said
pleasantly. "I guess you can tell him what to do about it as well as I
can."
"Oh!" Lindsay began, but Mr. Harris had the word. "Is he?" said Mr.
Harris, without looking up from his paper. "Well, what I've got to say
on that subject I say at the evenin' meetin', which is a proper an' a
public place. He can hear it there any day of the week."
"I think I have already heard," remarked Lindsay, "what you have to
say."
"Then that's all right," said Mr. Harris, with his eyes still upon his
newspaper. He appeared to devour it. Laura looked from one to the other
of them and fell upon an expedient.
"If you'll excuse me," she said, "I'll just get you that bicycle story
you were kind enough to lend me, Mr. Harris, and you can take it with
you. The Ensign's got it," and she left the room. Lindsay glanced round
and promptly announced to himself that he could not come there again. It
was taking too violent an advantage. The pursuit of an angel does not
imply that you may trap her in her corner under the Throne. The place
was divided by a calico curtain, over which plainly showed the top of a
mosquito curtain--she slept in there. On the walls were all tender texts
about loving and believing and bearing others' burdens, interspersed
with photographs, mostly of women with plain features and enthusiastic
eyes, dressed in some strange costume of the Army in Madras, Ceylon,
China. A little wooden table stood against the wall holding an album, a
Bible and hymn-books, a work-basket and an irrelevant Japanese doll
which seemed to stretch its absurd arms straight out in a gay little
ineffectual heathen protest. There was another more embarrassing table;
it had a coarse cloth and was garnished with a loaf and butter-dish, a
plate of plantains and a tin of marmalade, knives and teacups for a
meal evidently impending. It was atrociously, sordidly intimate, with
its core in Harris, who when Miss Filbert had well gone from the room
looked up. "If you're here on private business," he said to Lindsay,
fixing his eyes, however, on a point awkwardly to the left of him,
"maybe you ain't aware that the Ensign"--he threw his head back in the
direction of the next room--"is the person to apply to. She's in command
here. Captain Filbert's only under her."
"Indeed?" said Lindsay. "Thanks."
"It ain't like it is in the Queen's army," Harris volunteered, still
searching Lindsay's vicinity for a point upon which his eye could
permanently rest, "where, if you remember, ensigns are the smallest
officer we have."
"The commission is, I think, abolished," replied Lindsay, trying to
govern a deep and irritated frown.
"Maybe so. This Army don't pretend to pattern very close on the
other--not in discipline, anyhow," said Mr. Harris with ambiguity. "But
you'll find Ensign Sand very willing to do anything she can for you.
She's a hard-working officer."
A sharp wail smote the air from a point suspiciously close to the lath
and canvas partition on the other side, followed by hasty hushings and
steps in the opposite direction. It enabled Lindsay to observe that Mr.
Sand seemed at present to be sufficiently engaged, at which Mr. Harris
shifted one heavy limb over the other, and lapsed into silence, looking
sternly at an advertisement. The air was full of their mutual annoyance,
although Duff tried to feel amused. They were raging as primitively,
under the red flannel shirt and the tan-coloured waistcoat with white
silk spots, as two cave-men on an Early British coast; their only
sophistication lay in Harris's newspaper and Lindsay's idea that he
ought to find this person humourous. Then Laura came back and resolved
the situation.
"Here it is," she said, handing the volume to Mr. Harris; "we have all
enjoyed it. Thank you very much." There was in it the oddest mixture of
the supreme feminine and the superior officer. Harris, as he took the
book, had no alternative.
"Good-evening, then, Captain," said he, and went stumbling at the door.
"Mr. Harris," said Laura, equably, "found salvation about a month ago.
He is a very steady young man--foreman in one of the carriage works
here. He is now struggling with the tobacco habit, and he often drops in
in the evening."
"He seems to be a--a member of the corps," said Lindsay.
"He would be, only for the carriage works. He says he doesn't find
himself strong enough in grace to give up his situation yet. But he
wears the uniform at the meetings to show his sympathy, and the Ensign
doesn't think there's any objection."
Laura was sitting straight up in one of the cane-bottomed chairs, her
_sari_ drawn over her head, her hands folded in her lap. The native
dress clung to her limbs in sculpturable lines, and her consecrated
ambitions seemed more insistent than ever. She had nothing to do with
anything else, nothing to do with her room or its arrangements, nothing,
Lindsay felt profoundly, to do with him. Her personal zeal for him
seemed to resolve itself, at the point of contact, into something
disappointingly thin; he saw that she counted with him altogether as a
unit in a glorious total, and that he himself had no place in her
knowledge or her desire. This brought him, with something like a shock,
to a sense of how far he had depended on her interest for his soul's
sake to introduce her to a wider view of him.
"But you have come to tell me about yourself," she said, suddenly, it
seemed to Lindsay, who was wrapped in the contemplation of her profile.
"Well, is there any special stumbling-block?"
"There are some things I should certainly like you to know," replied
Lindsay; "but you can't think how difficult"----he glanced at the lath
and plaster partition, but she, to whom publicity was a condition
salutary, if not essential, to spiritual experience, naturally had no
interpretation for that.
"I know it's sometimes hard to speak," she said; "Satan ties our
tongues."
The misunderstanding was almost absurd, but he saw only its
difficulties, knitting his brows.
"I fear you will find my story very strange and very mad," he said. "I
cannot be sure that you will even listen to it."
"Oh," Laura said, simply, "do not be afraid! I have heard confessions! I
work at home, you see, a good deal among the hospitals, and--we do not
shrink, you know, in the Army from things like that."
"Good God!" he exclaimed, staring, "you don't think--you don't
suppose----"
"Ah! don't say that! It's so like swearing."
As he sat in helpless anger, trying to formulate something intelligible,
the curtain parted, and a sallow little Eurasian girl of eighteen, also
in the dress of the Army, came through from the bedroom part. She smiled
in a conscious, meaningless way, as she sidled past them. At the door
her smile broadened, and as she closed it after her she gave them a
little nod.
"That's my lieutenant," said Laura.
"The place is like a warren," Lindsay groaned. "How can we talk here?"
Laura looked at him gravely, as one making a diagnosis. "Do you think,"
she said, "a word of prayer would help you?"
"No," said Lindsay. "No, thank you. What is making me miserable," he
added, quietly, "is the knowledge that we are being overheard. If you go
into the next room, I am quite certain you will find Mrs. Sand listening
by the wall."
"She's gone out! She and the Captain and Miss De Souza, to take the
evening meeting. Nobody is in there except the two children, and they
are asleep." Her smile, he thought, made a Madonna of her. "Indeed, we
are quite alone, you and I, in the flat now. So please don't be afraid,
Mr. Lindsay! Say whatever is in your heart, and the mere saying----"
"Oh," Lindsay cried, "stop! Don't, for Heaven's sake, look at me in that
light any longer. I'm not penitent. I'm not--what do you call it?--a
soul under conviction. Nothing of the sort." He waited with
considerateness for this to have its effect upon her; he could not go on
until he saw her emerge, gasping, from the inundation of it. But she was
not even staggered by it. She only looked down at her folded hands with
an added seriousness and a touch of sorrow.
"Aren't you?" she said. "But at least you feel that you ought to be. I
thought it had been accomplished. But I will go on praying."
"Shall you be very angry, if I tell you that I'd rather you didn't? I
want to come into your life differently--sincerely."
She looked at him with such absolute blankness that his resolution was
swiftly overturned, and showed him a different face.
"I won't tell you anything about what I feel and what I want to-night
except this--I find that you are influencing all my thoughts and all my
days in what is to me a very new and a very happy way. You hear as much
as that often, and from many people, don't you? So there is nothing in
it that need startle you or make you uncomfortable." He paused, and she
nodded in a visible effort to follow him.
"So I am here to-night to ask you to let me do something for you just
for my own pleasure--there must be some way of helping you, and being
your friend----"
"As Mr. Harris is," she interrupted. "I do influence Mr. Harris for
good, I know. He says so."
"Influence me," he begged, "in any way you like."
"I will pray for you," she said. "I promise that."
"And you will let me see you sometimes?" he asked, conceding the point.
"If I thought it would do you any good"--she looked at him doubtfully,
clasping and unclasping her hands--"I will see; I will ask for guidance.
Perhaps it is one of His own appointed ways. If you have no objection, I
will give you this little book, _Almost Persuaded_. I am sure you are
almost persuaded. Above all, I hope, you will go on coming to the
meetings."
And in the course of the next two or three moments Lindsay found
himself, somewhat to his astonishment, again in the night of the
staircase, dismissed exactly as Mr. Harris had been, by the agency of a
printed volume. Only in his case, a figure of much angelic beauty stood
at the top, holding a patent kerosene lamp high to illumine his way. He
refrained from looking back lest she should see something too human in
his face and vanish, leaving him in darkness which would be indeed
impenetrable.