On a certain Monday in June, little more than a year after the last
letter of the correspondence quoted in the preceding chapter, two young
men of the period were seated in the smoking-room of the Traveller’s
Club. One was young George Craik, the other was Cholmondeley, of the
‘Charing Cross Chronicle.’
‘I assure you, my dear fellow,’ the journalist was saying, ‘that if you
are in want of a religion----’
‘Which I am _not_,’ interjected George, sullenly.
‘If you are in want of a new sensation, then, you will find this new
Church just the thing to suit you. It has now been opened nearly a
month, and is rapidly becoming the fashion. At the service yesterday I
saw, among other notabilities, both Tyndall and Huxley, Thomas Carlyle,
Hermann Vezin the actor, John Mill the philosopher, Dottie Destrange of
the Prince’s, Labouchere, and two colonial bishops. There is an article
on Bradley in this morning’s “Telegraph,” and his picture is going into
next week’s “Vanity Fair.”’
‘But the fellow is an atheist and a Radical!’
‘My dear Craik, so am I!’
‘Oh, you’re different!’ returned the other with a disagreeable laugh.
‘Nobody believes you in earnest when you talk or write that kind of
nonsense.’
‘Whereas, you would say, Bradley is an enthusiast? Just so; and his
enthusiasm is contagious. When I listen to him, I almost catch it
myself, for half an hour. But you mistake altogether, by the way, when
you call him atheistical, or even Radical. He is a Churchman still,
though the Church has banged its door in his face, and his dream is to
conserve all that is best and strongest in Christianity.’
‘I don’t know anything about that,’ said Craik, savagely. ‘All I know is
that he’s an infernal humbug, and ought to be lynched.’
‘Pray don’t abuse him! He is my friend, and a noble fellow.’
‘I don’t care whether he is your friend or not--he is a scoundrel.’
Cholmondeley made an angry gesture, then remembering who was speaking,
shrugged his shoulders.
‘Why, how has he offended _you_? Stop, though, I remember! The fair
founder of his church is your cousin.’
‘Yes,’ answered the other with an oath, ‘and she would have been my
wife if he had not come in the way. It was all arranged, you know, and
I should have had Alma and--and all her money; but she met him, and he
filled her mind with atheism, and radicalism, and rubbish. A year ago,
when he was kicked out of his living, I thought she was done with him;
but he hadn’t been gone a month before she followed him to London, and
all this nonsense began. The governor has almost gone down on his knees
to her, but it’s no use. Fancy her putting down ten thousand pounds in
solid cash for this New Church business; and not a day passes but he
swindles her out of more.’
‘Bradley is not a swindler,’ answered the journalist quietly. ‘For the
rest, I suppose, that they will soon marry.’
‘Not if I can help it! Marry that man! It would be a standing disgrace
to the family.’
‘But they are engaged, or something of that sort. As for its being a
disgrace, that is rubbish. Why, Bradley might marry a duke’s daughter if
he pleased. Little Lady Augusta Knowles is crazy about him.’
True to his sarcastic instinct, Cholmondeley added, ‘Of course I know
the little woman has a hump, and has only just got over her
_grande passion_ for Montepulciano the opera singer. But a duke’s
daughter--think of that!’
George Craik only ground his teeth and made no reply.
Shortly afterwards the two men separated, Cholmondeley strolling to his
office, Craik (whom we shall accompany) hailing a hansom and driving
towards St. John’s Wood.
Before seeking, in the young man’s company, those doubtful regions which
a modern satirist has termed
The shady groves of the Evangelist,
let us give a few explanatory words touching the subject of the above
conversation. It had all come about exactly as described. Yielding to
Alma’s intercession, and inspired, moreover, by the enthusiasm of
a large circle in London, Bradley had at last consented to open
a religious campaign on his own account in the very heart of the
metropolis. A large sum of money was subscribed, Alma heading the list
with a princely donation, a site was selected in the neighbourhood of
Regent’s Park, and a church was built, called by its followers the New
Church, and in every respect quite a magnificent temple. The stained
windows were designed by leading artists of the æsthetic school, the
subjects partly religious, partly secular (St. Wordsworth, in the guise
of a good shepherd, forming one of the subjects, and St. Shelley, rapt
up into the clouds and playing on a harp, forming another), and the
subject over the altar was an extraordinary figure-piece by Watts,
‘Christ rebuking Superstition’--the latter a straw-haired damsel with a
lunatic expression, grasping in her hands a couple of fiery snakes. Of
course there was a scandal. The papers were full of it, even while the
New Church was building. Public interest was thoroughly awakened; and
when it became current gossip that a young heiress, of fabulous wealth
and unexampled personal beauty, had practically created the endowment,
society was fluttered through and through. Savage attacks appeared on
Bradley in the religious journals. Enthusiastic articles concerning him
were published in the secular newspapers. He rapidly became notorious.
When he began to preach, the enthusiasm was intensified; for his
striking presence and magnificent voice, not to speak of the ‘fiery
matter’ he had to deliver, carried everything before them.
It may safely be assumed that time had at last reconciled him to
the secret trouble of his life. Before settling in London he had
ascertained, to his infinite relief, that Mrs. Montmorency had gone to
Paris and had remained there with her child, under the same
‘protection’ as before. Finding his secret safe from the world, he began
unconsciously to dismiss it from his mind, the more rapidly as Alma’s
relations towards him became more and more those of a devoted sister.
Presently his old enthusiasm came back upon him, and with it a sense of
new power and mastery. He began to feel an unspeakable sacredness in the
tie which bound him to the woman he loved; and although it had seemed at
first that he could only think of her in one capacity, that of his wife
and the partner of his home, her sisterhood seemed indescribably sweet
and satisfying. Then, again, her extraordinary belief in him inspired
him with fresh ambition, and at last, full of an almost youthful ardour,
he stepped out into the full sunshine of his London ministry.
*****
In the least amiable mood possible, even to him, George Craik drove
northward, and passing the very portals of Bradley’s new church, reached
the shady groves he sought. Alighting in a quiet street close to the
‘Eyre Arms,’ he stood before a bijou villa all embowered in foliage,
with a high garden wall, a gate with a wicket, and the very tiniest of
green lawns. He rang the bell, and the gate was opened by a black-eyed
girl in smart servant’s costume; on which, without a word, he strolled
in.
‘Mistress up?’ he asked sharply; though it was past twelve o’clock.
‘She’s just breakfasting,’ was the reply.
Crossing the lawn, Craik found himself before a pair of French windows
reaching to the ground; they stood wide open, revealing the interior
of a small sitting-room or breakfast parlour, gorgeously if not tastily
furnished--a sort of green and gold cage, in which was sitting, sipping
her coffee and yawning over a penny theatrical paper, a pretty lady of
uncertain age. Her little figure was wrapt in a loose silk morning gown,
on her tiny feet were Turkish slippers, in her lap was one pug dog,
while another slept at her feet. Her eyes were very large, innocent, and
blue, her natural dark hair was bleached to a lovely gold by the art of
the _coiffeur_, and her cheeks had about as much colour as those of a
stucco bust.
This was Miss Dottie Destrange, of the ‘Frivolity’ Theatre, a lady
famous for her falsetto voice and her dances.
On seeing Craik she merely nodded, but did not attempt to rise.
‘Good morning, Georgie!’ she said--for she loved the diminutive, and
was fond of using that form of address to her particular friends. ‘Why
didn’t you come yesterday? I waited for you all day--no, not exactly all
day, though--but except a couple of hours in the afternoon, when I went
to church.’
Craik entered the room and threw himself into a chair.
‘Went to church?’ he echoed with an ugly laugh. 41 didn’t know _you_
ever patronised that kind of entertainment.’
‘I don’t as a rule, but Carrie Carruthers called for me in her brougham,
and took me off to hear the new preacher down in Regent’s Park. Aram
was there, and no end of theatrical people, besides all sorts of swells;
and, what do you think, in one of the painted glass windows there was
a figure of Shakespeare, just like the one on our drop curtain! I think
it’s blasphemous, Georgie. I wonder the roof didn’t fall in!’
The fair doves of the theatre, we may remark in parenthesis, have seldom
much respect for the temple in which they themselves flutter; they
cannot shake from their minds the idea that it is a heathen structure,
and that they themselves are, at the best, but pretty pagans.
Hence they are often disposed to receive in quite a humble spirit the
ministrations of their mortal enemies, the officers of the Protestant
Church.
George Craik scowled at the fair one as he had scowled at Oholmondeley.
‘You heard that man Bradley, I suppose?’
‘Yes; I think that was his name. Do you know him, George?’
‘I know no good of him. I wish the roof _had_ fallen in, and smashed
him up. Talk about something else; and look here, don’t let me catch
you going there again, or we shall quarrel. I won’t have any one I know
going sneaking after that humbug.’
‘All right, Georgie dear,’ replied the damsel, smiling maliciously.
‘Then it’s true, I suppose, that he’s going to marry your cousin? I saw
her sitting right under him, and thought her awfully pretty.’
‘You let her alone,’ grumbled George, ‘and mind your own affairs.’
‘Why don’t you marry her yourself, Géorgie?’ persisted his tormentor. ‘I
hope what I have heard isn’t true?’
‘What have you heard?’
‘That she prefers the parson!’
The young man sprang up with an oath, and Miss Dottie burst into a peal
of shrill laughter. He strode off into the garden, and she followed
him. Coming into the full sunlight, she looked even more like plaster
of Paris, or stucco, than in the subdued light of the chamber; her hair
grew more strawlike, her eyes more colourless, her whole appearance more
faded and jaded.
‘I had a letter this morning from Kitty,’ she said carelessly, to change
the subject.
‘Kitty who?’
‘Kitty Montmorency. She says old Ombermere is very ill, and thinks he’s
breaking up. By the way, that reminds me--Kitty’s first husband was
a man named Bradley, who was to have entered the Church. I suppose it
can’t be the same.’
She spoke with little thought of the consequences, and was not prepared
for the change which suddenly came over her companion.
‘Her _husband_, did you say?’ he exclaimed, gripping her arm. ‘Were they
married?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘And the man was named Bradley--Ambrose Bradley?’
‘I’m not _quite_ sure about the Christian name.’
‘How long was this ago?’
‘Oh, a long time--ten years,’ she replied; then with a sudden
remembrance of her own claims to juvenility, which she had forgotten for
a moment, she added, ‘when I was quite a child.’
George Craik looked at her for a long time with a baleful expression,
but he scarcely saw her, being lost in thought. He knew as well as she
did that she was ten or fifteen years older than she gave herself out to
be, but he was not thinking of that. He was wondering if he had, by the
merest accident, discovered a means of turning the tables on the man he
hated. At last he spoke.
‘Tell me all you know. Let us have no humbug, but tell me everything.
Did you ever see Bradley before you saw him yesterday?’
‘Never, Georgie.’
‘But Kitty Montmorency was once married to, or living with, a man of
that name? You are quite sure?’
‘Yes. But after all, what does it signify, unless----’
She paused suddenly, for all at once the full significance of the
situation flashed upon her.
‘You see how it stands,’ cried her companion. ‘If this is the same man,
and it is quite possible, it will be worth a thousand pounds to me--ah,
ten thousand! What is Kitty’s address?’
‘Hôtel de la Grande Bretagne, Rue Caumartin, Paris.’
All right, Hottie. I shall go over to-night by the mail.’
The next morning George Craik arrived in Paris, and drove straight to
the hotel in the Rue Caumartin--an old-fashioned building, with a great
courtyard, round which ran open-air galleries communicating with
the various suites of rooms. On inquiring for Mrs. Montmorency he
ascertained that she had gone out very early, and was not expected home
till midday. He left his card and drove on to the Grand Hotel.
It might be a fool’s errand which had brought him over, but he was
determined, with the bulldog tenacity of his nature, to see it through
to the end.
Arrived at the hotel, he deposited his Gladstone-bag in the hall, and
then, to pass the time, inspected the visitors’ list, preparatory to
writing down his own name.
Presently he uttered a whistle, as he came to the entry--
‘Lord and Lady Ombermere and family, London.’
He turned to the clerk of the office, and said carelessly in French--
‘I see Lord Ombermere’s name down. Is his lordship still here?’
‘Yes,’ was the reply. ‘He has been here all the winter. Unfortunately,
since the warm weather began, milord has been very ill, and since last
week he has been almost given up by the physicians.’