Читать книгу The Christian - Sir Hall Caine - Страница 24

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John Storm was sitting in his room next morning fumbling the leaves of a book and trying to read, when a lady was announced. It was Miss Macrae, and she came in with a flushed face, a quivering lip, and the marks of tears in her eyes. She held his hand with the same long hand-clasp as before, and said in a tremulous voice:

“I am ashamed of coming, and mother does not know that I am here; but I am very unhappy, and if you can not help me——”

“Please sit down,” said John Storm.

“I have come to tell you——” she said, and then her sad eyes moved about the room and came back to his face. “It is about Lord Robert Ure, and I am very wretched.”

“Tell me everything, dear lady, and if there is anything I can do——”

She told him all. It was a miserable story. Her mother had engaged her to Lord Robert Ure (there was no other way of putting it) for the sake of his title, and he had engaged himself to her for the sake of her wealth. She had never loved him, and had long known that he was a man of scandalous reputation; but she had been taught that to attach weight to such considerations would be girlish and sentimental, and she had fought for a while and then yielded.

“You will reproach me for my feebleness,” she said, and he answered haltingly:

“No, I do not reproach you—I pity you!”

“Well,” she said, “it is all over now, and if I am ruined, and if my mother——”

“You have told her you can not marry him!”

“Yes.”

“Then who am I to reproach you?” he said; and rising to his feet, he threw down his book.

Her dark eyes wandered about the room, and came back to his face again and shone with a new lustre.

“I heard your sermon on Sunday, Mr. Storm, and I felt as if there were nobody else in the church, and you were speaking to me alone. And last night at the theatre——”

“Well?”

He had been tramping the room, but he stopped.

“I saw him in a box with his friend and two—two ladies.”

“Were they nurses from the hospital?”

She made a cry of surprise and said, “Then you know all about it, and the sermon was meant for me?”

He did not speak for a moment, and then he said with a thick utterance:

“You wish me to help you to break off this marriage, and I will try. But if I fail—no matter what has happened in the past, or what awaits you in the future——”

“Oh,” she said, “if I had your strength beside me I should be brave—I should be afraid of nothing.”

“Good-bye, dear lady,” said John Storm; and before he could prevent her she had stooped over his hand and kissed it.

John Storm had returned to his book and was clutching it with nervous fingers, when his fellow-curate came with a message from the canon to request his presence in the study.

“Tell him I was on the point of going down,” said John. And the Reverend Golightly coughed and bowed himself out.

The canon had also had a visitor that morning. It was Mrs. Macrae herself. She sat on a chair covered with a tiger skin, sniffed at her scented handkerchief, and poured out all her sorrows.

Mercy had rebelled against her authority, and it was entirely the fault of the new curate, Mr. Storm. She had actually refused to carry out her engagement with Lord Robert, and it all came of that dreadful sermon on Sunday. It was dishonourable, it was unprincipled, and it was a pretty thing to teach girls to indulge their whims without regard to the wishes of parents!

“Here have I been two years in London, spending a fortune on the girl and trying to do my best for her, and the moment I fix her in one of the first English families, this young man—this curate—this—— Upon my honour, it's real wicked, it's shameful!” And the handkerchief steeped in perfume went up from the nose to the eyes.

The canon swung his pince-nez. “Don't put yourself about, my dear Mrs. Macrae. Leave the matter to me. Miss Macrae will give up her objections, and——”

“Oh, you mustn't judge her by her quietness, canon. You don't know her character. She's real stubborn when her mind's made up. But I'll be as stubborn as she is—I'll take her back to America—I'll never spend another penny——”

“And as for Mr. Storm,” continued the canon, “I'll make everything smooth in that quarter. You mustn't think too much about the unhappy sermon—a little youthful esprit fort—we all go through it, you know.”

When Mrs. Macrae had gone, he rang twice for Mr. Golightly and said, “Tell Mr. Storm to come down to me immediately.”

“With pleasure, sir,” said the little man; and then he hesitated.

“What is it?” said the canon, adjusting his glasses.

“I have never told you, sir, how I found him the night you sent me to the hospital.”

“Well, how?”

“On his knees to a Catholic priest who was visiting a patient.”

The canon's glasses fell from his eyes and his broad face broke into strange smiles.

“I thought the Sorceress of Rome was at the bottom of it,” he said. “His uncle shall know of this, and unless I am sadly deceived—but fetch him down.”

John Storm was wearing his flannel shirt that morning, and he came downstairs with a heavy tread and swung himself, unasked, into the chair that had just before been occupied by Mrs. Macrae.

The perpendicular wrinkles came between the canon's eyebrows and he said: “My dear Mr. Storm, I have postponed as long as possible a most painful interview. The fact is, your recent sermon has given the greatest offence to the ladies of my congregation, and if such teaching were persisted in we should lose our best people. Now, I don't want to be angry with you, quite the contrary, but I wish to put it to you, as your spiritual head and adviser, that your idea of religion is by no means agreeable to the needs and necessities of the nineteenth century. There is no freedom in such a faith, and St. Paul says, 'Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.' But the theory of your religion is not more unscriptural than its application is unwholesome. Yours is a gloomy faith, my dear Storm, and what did Luther say of a gloomy faith?—that the devil was very apt to be lurking behind it. As for himself he married, you may remember; he had children, he played chess, he loved to see young people dancing——”

“I don't object to the dancing, sir,” said John Storm. “I only object to the tune.”

“What do you mean?” said the canon, not without insolence, and the perpendicular wrinkles became large and heavy.

“I mean, sir,” said John Storm, “that half the young people nowadays—the young women in the west of London especially—are asked to dance to the Dead March.”

And then he spoke of the infamous case of Mercy Macrae, how she was being bought and sold, and how scandalous was the reputation of the man she was required to marry.

“That was what I was coming down to speak about, sir—to ask you to save this innocent girl from such a mockery of holy wedlock. She is not a child, and the law can not help her, but you can do so, because the power of the Church is at your back. You have only to set your face against this infamy, and say——”

“My dear Mr. Storm,” the canon was smiling condescendingly and swinging his glasses, “the business of the Church is to solemnize marriages, not to make them. But if the young lady comes to me I will say: 'My dear young lady, the conditions you complain of are more common than you suppose; put aside all foolish, romantic notions, make a nest for yourself as comfortably as you can, and come back in a year to thank me.'”

John Storm was on his feet; the blood was mounting to his face and tingling in his fingers.

“And so these men are to make their wives of the daughters of the poor first, and then ask the Church to solemnize their polygamy——”

But the canon had lifted his hand to silence him.

“My dear young friend, a policy like yours would decimate the House of Commons and abolish the House of Lords. Practical religion has a sweet reasonableness. We are all human, even if we are all gentlemen; and while silly young things——”

But John Storm was out in the hall and putting on his hat to see Glory.

Glory had not yet awakened from her trance. While others were living in to-day she was still going about in yesterday. The emotion of the theatre was upon her, and the world of reality took the tone and colour of drama. This made her a tender woman, but a bad nurse.

She began the day in the Outpatient Department, and a poor woman came with a child that had bitten its tongue. Its condition required that it should remain in the house a day or two. “Let me put the pore thing to bed; she's allus used to me,” said the woman piteously. “Are you the mother?” said the Sister. “No, the grandmother.” “The mother is the only person who can enter the wards except on visiting day.” The poor woman began to cry. Glory had to carry the child to bed, and she whispered to the grandmother, “Come this way,” and the woman followed her. When they came to the surgical ward, she said to the nurse in charge, “This is the child's mother, and she has come to put the poor little thing to bed.”

Later in the morning she was sent up to help in the same ward. A patient in great pain called to her and said, “Loosen this bandage for me, nurse; it is killing me!” And she loosened it.

But the glamour of the theatre was upon her as well as its sentiment and emotion, and in the space before the bed of one of the patients, at a moment when the ward Sister was away, she began to make imitations of Beatrice and Benedick and the singer of “Sigh no more, ladies.” The patient was Koenig, the choirmaster of “All Saints',” a little fat German with long mustaches, which he waxed and curled as he lay in bed. Glory had christened him “the hippopotamus,” and at her mimicry he laughed so much that he rolled and pitched and dived among the bedclothes.

“Ach, Gott!” he cried, “vot a girl! Never—I haf never heard any one so goot on de stage. Vot a voice, too! A leetle vork under a goot teacher, and den, mein Gott! Vot is it de musicians say?—the genius has a Cremona inside of him on which he first composes his immortal vorks. You haf the Cremona, my dear, and I will help you to bring it out. Vot you tink?”

It was the hour of the morning when the patients who can afford it have their newspapers brought up to them, but the newspapers were thrown aside; every eye was on Glory, and there was much noisy laughter and even some clapping of hands.

Ward Sister Allworthy entered with the house doctor.

“What's the meaning of this?” she demanded. Glory told the truth, and was reproved.

“Who has loosened this bandage?” said the doctor. The patient tried to prevaricate, but Glory told the truth again, and was reproved once more.

“And who permitted this woman to come into the ward?” said the nurse.

“I did,” said Glory.

“You're not fit to be a nurse, miss, and I shall certainly report you as unfit for duty.”

Glory laughed in the Sister's face.

It was at this moment that John Storm arrived after his interview with the canon. He drew Glory into the corridor and tried to pacify her.

“Oh, don't suppose I'm going to do hospital nursing all my life,” she said. “It may be good womanly work, but I want to be a human being with a heart, and not a machine called Duty. How I hate and despise my surroundings! I'll make an end of them one of these days. Sooner or later it must come to that.”

“Your life has been deranged, Glory, and that is why you disdain your surroundings. You were at the theatre last night.”

“Who told you that? Well, what of it? Are you one of those who think the theatre——”

“I don't object to the theatre, Glory. It is the derangement of your life I am thinking of; and if anybody is responsible for that he is your enemy, not your friend.”

“You will make me angry again, as you did before,” and she began to bite her quivering lip.

“I did not come to make you angry, Glory. I came to ask you—even to entreat you—to break off this hateful connection.”

“Because you know nothing of this—this connection, as you say—you call it hateful.”

“I know what I am talking about, my child. The life these men live is worse than hateful; and it makes my heart bleed to see you falling a victim to it.”

“You are degrading me again; you are always degrading me. Other men try to be agreeable to me, but you—— Besides, I can not hear my friends abused. Yes, they are my friends. I was at the theatre with them last night, and I am going to take tea at their chambers on my next holiday. So please——”

“Glory!”

With one plunge of his arm he had gripped her by the wrist.

“You are hurting me.”

“You are never to set foot in the rooms of those men!”

“Let me go!”

“You are as inexperienced as a child, Glory, and it is my duty to protect you against yourself.”

“Let go, I say!”

“Don't destroy yourself. Think while there's time—think of your good name, your character!”

“I shall do as I please.”

“Listen! If I have chosen to be a clergyman, it's not because I've lived all my life in cotton wool. Let me tell you what the lives of such men really are—the best of them, the very best. He gets up at noon, walks in the park, takes tea with some one, grunts and groans that he must go to somebody's dinner party, escapes to the Gaiety Theatre, sups at a so-called club——”

“You mean Lord Robert. But what right have you to say——”

“The right of one who knows him to be as bad as this, and worse—ten times worse! Such a man thinks he has a right to play with a girl if she is poor. She may stake her soul, her salvation, but he risks nothing. To-day he trifles with her; to-morrow he marries another, and flings her to the devil!”

“There's something else in this. What is it?”

But John Storm had swung about and left her.

As soon as she was at liberty she went in search of Polly Love, expecting to find her in her cubicle, but the cubicle was empty. Coming out of the little room she saw a piece of paper lying on the floor. It was a letter, carefully folded. She picked it up, unfolded it, and read it, hardly knowing what she was doing, for her head was dizzy and her eyes were swimming in unshed tears. It ran:

“You ask, Do I mean to adopt entirely? Yes; to bring up just the same as if it were born to me. I hope yours will be a strong and healthy boy; but if it is a girl——”

Glory could not understand what she was reading. Whose letter could it be? It was addressed “X. Y. Z., Office of Morning Post.”

There was a hurried footstep approaching, and Polly came in, with her eyes on the ground as if looking for something she had dropped. At the next moment she had snatched the letter out of Glory's hand, and was saying:

“What are you doing in my room? Has your friend the chaplain told you to spy upon me?”

The expression on her face was appalling, and Glory, who had flushed up with shame, turned away without a word.

When John Storm got back to his room he found the following letter from the canon on his table:

“Since our interview of this morning (so strangely abridged) I have had the honour to visit your dear uncle, the Prime Minister, and he agrees with me that the strain of your recent examinations and the anxieties of a new occupation have probably disturbed your health, and that it will be prudent of you to take a short vacation. I have therefore the greatest pleasure in assuring you that you are free from duty for a week, a fortnight, or a month, as your convenience may determine; and during your much-regretted absence I will do my best to sustain the great loss of your invaluable help.”

On reading the message, John Storm flung himself into a chair and burst into a long peal of bitter laughter. But when the laughter was spent there came a sense of great loneliness. Then he remembered Mrs. Callender, and went across to her little house in Victoria Square, and showed her the canon's letter and told her everything.

“Lies, lies, lies!” she said. “Ah, laddie, laddie! to lie, to know you lie, to be known to lie, and yet to go on lying—that is the whole art of life with these fashionable shepherds and their fashionable flock. As for that woman—ugh! She was separated from her husband for two years before his death; and he died in a hotel abroad without kith or kin to comfort him: and now she wears his hair in a gold locket on her bosom—that's what she is! But all's well that ends well, laddie. The holly will do ye good, for you were killing yerself with work. You'll no be spending it in your little island, now, eh?”

John Storm was sitting with one leg across the other, and his head on his hand and his elbow on his knee.

“I shall spend it,” he said, “in Retreat at the Brotherhood in Bishopsgate.”

“God bless me, man! is that the change of air ye'll be going to gie yoursel'? It may be well enough for men with water in their veins; but you have blood, laddie—blood! Tak' care, tak' care!”