He was a young man with an eager soul, and his work in Apple Blossom
Court and places like it had torn him many ways. Religious conventions
established through centuries of custom had not prepared him for life
among the submerged. He had struggled and been appalled, he had wrestled
in prayer and felt himself unanswered, and in repentance of the feeling
had scourged himself with thorns. Miss Montaubyn, returning from the
hospital, had filled him at first with horror and protest.
"But who knows--who knows?" he said to Dart, as they stood and talked
together afterward, "Faith as a little child. That is literally hers.
And I was shocked by it--and tried to destroy it, until I suddenly saw
what I was doing. I was--in my cloddish egotism--trying to show her
that she was irreverent BECAUSE she could believe what in my soul I do
not, though I dare not admit so much even to myself. She took from some
strange passing visitor to her tortured bedside what was to her a
revelation. She heard it first as a child hears a story of magic. When
she came out of the hospital, she told it as if it was one. I--I--" he
bit his lips and moistened them, "argued with her and reproached her.
Christ the Merciful, forgive me! She sat in her squalid little room
with her magic--sometimes in the dark--sometimes without fire, and she
clung to it, and loved it and asked it to help her, as a child asks its
father for bread. When she was answered--and God forgive me again for
doubting that the simple good that came to her WAS an answer--when any
small help came to her, she was a radiant thing, and without a shadow of
doubt in her eyes told me of it as proof--proof that she had been heard.
When things went wrong for a day and the fire was out again and the room
dark, she said, 'I 'aven't kept near enough--I 'aven't trusted TRUE. It
will be gave me soon,' and when once at such a time I said to her, 'We
must learn to say, Thy will be done,' she smiled up at me like a happy
baby and answered:
"'Thy will be done on earth AS IT IS IN 'EAVEN. Lor', there's no cold
there, nor no 'unger nor no cryin' nor pain. That's the way the will is
done in 'eaven. That's wot I arst for all day long--for it to be done
on earth as it is in 'eaven.' What could I say? Could I tell her that
the will of the Deity on the earth he created was only the will to do
evil--to give pain--to crush the creature made in His own image. What
else do we mean when we say under all horror and agony that befalls, 'It
is God's will--God's will be done.' Base unbeliever though I am, I could
not speak the words. Oh, she has something we have not. Her poor,
little misspent life has changed itself into a shining thing, though it
shines and glows only in this hideous place. She herself does not know
of its shining. But Drunken Bet would stagger up to her room and ask to
be told what she called her 'pantermine' stories. I have seen her there
sitting listening--listening with strange quiet on her and dull yearning
in her sodden eyes. So would other and worse women go to her, and I,
who had struggled with them, could see that she had reached some remote
longing in their beings which I had never touched. In time the seed
would have stirred to life--it is beginning to stir even now. During
the months since she came back to the court--though they have laughed at
her--both men and women have begun to see her as a creature weirdly set
apart. Most of them feel something like awe of her; they half believe
her prayers to be bewitchments, but they want them on their side. They
have never wanted mine. That I have known--KNOWN. She believes that
her Deity is in Apple Blossom Court--in the dire holes its people live
in, on the broken stairway, in every nook and awful cranny of it--a
great Glory we will not see--only waiting to be called and to answer. Do
_I_ believe it--do you--do any of those anointed of us who preach each
day so glibly 'God is EVERYWHERE'? Who is the one who believes? If
there were such a man he would go about as Moses did when 'He wist not
that his face shone.'"
They had gone out together and were standing in the fog in the court.
The curate removed his hat and passed his handkerchief over his damp
forehead, his breath coming and going almost sobbingly, his eyes staring
straight before him into the yellowness of the haze.
"Who," he said after a moment of singular silence, "who are you?"
Antony Dart hesitated a few seconds, and at the end of his pause he put
his hand into his overcoat pocket.
"If you will come upstairs with me to the room where the girl Glad
lives, I will tell you," he said, "but before we go I want to hand
something over to you."
The curate turned an amazed gaze upon him.
"What is it?" he asked.
Dart withdrew his hand from his pocket, and the pistol was in it.
"I came out this morning to buy this," he said. "I intended--never mind
what I intended. A wrong turn taken in the fog brought me here. Take
this thing from me and keep it."
The curate took the pistol and put it into his own pocket without
comment. In the course of his labors he had seen desperate men and
desperate things many times. He had even been--at moments--a desperate
man thinking desperate things himself, though no human being had ever
suspected the fact. This man had faced some tragedy, he could see. Had
he been on the verge of a crime--had he looked murder in the eyes? What
had made him pause? Was it possible that the dream of Jinny Montaubyn
being in the air had reached his brain--his being?
He looked almost appealingly at him, but he only said aloud:
"Let us go upstairs, then."
So they went.
As they passed the door of the room where the dead woman lay Dart went
in and spoke to Miss Montaubyn, who was still there.
"If there are things wanted here," he said, "this will buy them." And
he put some money into her hand.
She did not seem surprised at the incongruity of his shabbiness
producing money.
"Well, now," she said, "I WAS wonderin' an' askin'. I'd like 'er clean
an' nice, an' there's milk wanted bad for the biby."
In the room they mounted to Glad was trying to feed the child with bread
softened in tea. Polly sat near her looking on with restless, eager
eyes. She had never seen anything of her own baby but its limp newborn
and dead body being carried away out of sight. She had not even dared
to ask what was done with such poor little carrion. The tyranny of the
law of life made her want to paw and touch this lately born thing, as
her agony had given her no fruit of her own body to touch and paw and
nuzzle and caress as mother creatures will whether they be women or
tigresses or doves or female cats.
"Let me hold her, Glad," she half whimpered. "When she's fed let me
get her to sleep."
"All right," Glad answered; "we could look after 'er between us well
enough."
The thief was still sitting on the hearth, but being full fed and
comfortable for the first time in many a day, he had rested his head
against the wall and fallen into profound sleep.
"Wot's up?" said Glad when the two men came in. "Is anythin'
'appenin'?"
"I have come up here to tell you something," Dart answered. "Let us sit
down again round the fire. It will take a little time."
Glad with eager eyes on him handed the child to Polly and sat down
without a moment's hesitance, avid of what was to come. She nudged the
thief with friendly elbow and he started up awake.
"'E's got somethin' to tell us," she explained. "The curick's come
up to 'ear it, too. Sit 'ere, Polly," with elbow jerk toward the bundle
of sacks. "It's got its stummick full an' it'll go to sleep fast
enough."
So they sat again in the weird circle. Neither the strangeness of the
group nor the squalor of the hearth were of a nature to be new things to
the curate. His eyes fixed themselves on Dart's face, as did the eyes
of the thief, the beggar, and the young thing of the street. No one
glanced away from him.
His telling of his story was almost monotonous in its semi-reflective
quietness of tone. The strangeness to himself--though it was a
strangeness he accepted absolutely without protest--lay in his telling
it at all, and in a sense of his knowledge that each of these creatures
would understand and mysteriously know what depths he had touched this
day.
"Just before I left my lodgings this morning," he said, "I found myself
standing in the middle of my room and speaking to Something aloud. I
did not know I was going to speak. I did not know what I was speaking
to. I heard my own voice cry out in agony, 'Lord, Lord, what shall I do
to be saved?'"
The curate made a sudden movement in his place and his sallow young
face flushed. But he said nothing.
Glad's small and sharp countenance became curious.
"'Speak, Lord, thy servant 'eareth,'" she quoted tentatively.
"No," answered Dart; "it was not like that. I had never thought of such
things. I believed nothing. I was going out to buy a pistol and when I
returned intended to blow my brains out."
"Why?" asked Glad, with passionately intent eyes; "why?"
"Because I was worn out and done for, and all the world seemed worn out
and done for. And among other things I believed I was beginning slowly
to go mad."
From the thief there burst forth a low groan and he turned his face to
the wall.
"I've been there," he said; "I 'm near there now."
Dart took up speech again.
"There was no answer--none. As I stood waiting--God knows for what--the
dead stillness of the room was like the dead stillness of the grave. And
I went out saying to my soul, 'This is what happens to the fool who
cries aloud in his pain.'"
"I've cried aloud," said the thief, "and sometimes it seemed as if an
answer was coming--but I always knew it never would!" in a tortured
voice.
"'T ain't fair to arst that wye," Glad put in with shrewd logic.
"Miss Montaubyn she allers knows it WILL come--an' it does."
"Something--not myself--turned my feet toward this place," said Dart. "I
was thrust from one thing to another. I was forced to see and hear
things close at hand. It has been as if I was under a spell. The woman
in the room below--the woman lying dead!" He stopped a second, and then
went on: "There is too much that is crying out aloud. A man such as I
am--it has FORCED itself upon me--cannot leave such things and give
himself to the dust. I cannot explain clearly because I am not thinking
as I am accustomed to think. A change has come upon me. I shall not
use the pistol--as I meant to use it."
Glad made a friendly clutch at the sleeve of his shabby coat.
"Right O!" she cried. "That's it! You buck up sime as I told yer. Y'
ain't stony broke an' there's 'allers to-morrer."
Antony Dart's expression was weirdly retrospective.
"I did not think so this morning," he answered.
"But there is," said the girl. "Ain't there now, curick? There's a lot
o' work in yer yet; yer could do all sorts o' things if y' ain't too
proud. I'll 'elp yer. So 'll the curick. Y' ain't found out yet what
a little folks can live on till luck turns. Me, I'm goin' to try Miss
Montaubyn's wye. Le's both try. Le's believe things is comin'. Le's
get 'er to talk to us some more."
The curate was thinking the thing over deeply.
"Yer see," Glad enlarged cheerfully, "yer look almost like a gentleman.
P'raps yer can write a good 'and an' spell all right. Can yer?"
"Yes."
"I think, perhaps," the curate began reflectively, "particularly if you
can write well, I might be able to get you some work."
"I do not want work," Dart answered slowly. "At least I do not want the
kind you would be likely to offer me."
The curate felt a shock, as if cold water had been dashed over him.
Somehow it had not once occurred to him that the man could be one of the
educated degenerate vicious for whom no power to help lay in any hands--
yet he was not the common vagrant--and he was plainly on the point of
producing an excuse for refusing work.
The other man, seeing his start and his amazed, troubled flush, put out
a hand and touched his arm apologetically.
"I beg your pardon," he said. "One of the things I was going to tell
you--I had not finished--was that I AM what is called a gentleman. I am
also what the world knows as a rich man. I am Sir Oliver Holt."
Each member of the party gazed at him aghast. It was an enormous name
to claim. Even the two female creatures knew what it stood for. It was
the name which represented the greatest wealth and power in the world of
finance and schemes of business. It stood for financial influence which
could change the face of national fortunes and bring about crises. It
was known throughout the world. Yesterday the newspaper rumor that its
owner had mysteriously left England had caused men on 'Change to discuss
possibilities together with lowered voices.
Glad stared at the curate. For the first time she looked disturbed and
alarmed.
"Blimme," she ejaculated, "'e's gone off 'is nut, pore chap!--'e's
gone off it!"
"No," the man answered, "you shall come to me"--he hesitated a second
while a shade passed over his eyes--"TO-MORROW. And you shall see."
He rose quietly to his feet and the curate rose also. Abnormal as the
climax was, it was to be seen that there was no mistake about the
revelation. The man was a creature of authority and used to carrying
conviction by his unsupported word. That made itself, by some clear,
unspoken method, plain.
"You are Sir Oliver Holt! And a few hours ago you were on the point
of--"
"Ending it all--in an obscure lodging. Afterward the earth would have
been shovelled on to a work-house coffin. It was an awful thing." He
shook off a passionate shudder. "There was no wealth on earth that could
give me a moment's ease--sleep--hope--life. The whole world was full
of things I loathed the sight and thought of. The doctors said my
condition was physical. Perhaps it was--perhaps to-day has strangely
given a healthful jolt to my nerves--perhaps I have been dragged away
from the agony of morbidity and plunged into new intense emotions which
have saved me from the last thing and the worst--SAVED me!"
He stopped suddenly and his face flushed, and then quite slowly turned
pale.
"SAVED ME!" he repeated the words as the curate saw the awed blood
creepingly recede. "Who knows, who knows! How many explanations one is
ready to give before one thinks of what we say we believe. Perhaps it
was--the Answer!"
The curate bowed his head reverently.
"Perhaps it was."
The girl Glad sat clinging to her knees, her eyes wide and awed and with
a sudden gush of hysteric tears rushing down her cheeks.
"That's the wye! That's the wye!" she gulped out. "No one won't
never believe--they won't, NEVER. That's what she sees, Miss Montaubyn.
You don't, 'E don't," with a jerk toward the curate. "I ain't nothin'
but ME, but blimme if I don't--blimme!"
Sir Oliver Holt grew paler still. He felt as he had done when Jinny
Montaubyn's poor dress swept against him. His voice shook when he
spoke.
"So do I," he said with a sudden deep catch of the breath; "it was the
Answer."
In a few moments more he went to the girl Polly and laid a hand on her
shoulder.
"I shall take you home to your mother," he said. "I shall take you
myself and care for you both. She shall know nothing you are afraid of
her hearing. I shall ask her to bring up the child. You will help
her."
Then he touched the thief, who got up white and shaking and with eyes
moist with excitement.
"You shall never see another man claim your thought because you have not
time or money to work it out. You will go with me. There are to-morrows
enough for you!"
Glad still sat clinging to her knees and with tears running, but the
ugliness of her sharp, small face was a thing an angel might have paused
to see.
"You don't want to go away from here," Sir Oliver said to her, and she
shook her head.
"No, not me. I told yer wot I wanted. Lemme do it."
"You shall," he answered, "and I will help you."
The things which developed in Apple Blossom Court later, the things
which came to each of those who had sat in the weird circle round the
fire, the revelations of new existence which came to herself, aroused no
amazement in Jinny Montaubyn's mind. She had asked and believed all
things--and all this was but another of the Answers.