Condensed Novels: New Burlesques Part 5

"I saw John Gale the other day with a crowd following him in the Strand. He had on only a kind of brown serge dressing-gown, tied around his waist by a rope, and a hood on his head. I think his poor 'toe-toes' were in sandals, and I dare say his legs were cold, poor dear. However, if he calls THAT protection of Golly--I don't! I might be run off at any moment--for all he'd help. No matter! If this Court understands herself, and she thinks she do, Golly can take care of herself--you bet."

Nevertheless, Golly lost her place at the hospital through her heroic defense of her friend Jinny Jones, who had been deceived by Lord Brownstone Ewer. "You would drive that poor girl into the street," she said furiously to the Chairman of the Board, throwing her cap and ap.r.o.n in their faces. "You're a lot of rotten old hypocrites, and I'm glad to get shut of you." Not content with that, she went to Drake and demanded that he should make his friend Lord Brownstone marry Jinny.

"Sorry--awfully sorry--my dear Golly, but he's engaged to a rich American girl who is to pay his debts; but I'll see that he does something handsome for Jinny. And YOU, my child, what are YOU going to do without a situation?" he added, with touching sympathy. "You see, I've some vague idea of marrying you myself," he concluded meditatively.

"Thank you for nothing," interrupted Golly gayly, "but I can take care of myself and follow out my mission like John Gale."

"There's a pair of you, certainly," said Drake, with a tinge of jealous bitterness.

"You bet it's 'a pair' that will take your 'two knaves,' you and your Lord Brownstone," returned Golly, dropping a mock courtesy. "Ta-ta; I'm going on the stage."

BOOK III

She went first into a tobacconist's--and sold cigarettes. Sometimes she suffered from actual want, and ate fried fish. "Do you know how nice fried fish tastes in London,--you on 'the Oilan'?" she wrote gayly.

"I'm getting on splendidly; so's John Gale, I suppose, though he's looking cadaverous from starving himself all round. Tell aunty I haven't seen the Queen yet, though after all I really believe she has not seen me."

Then, after a severe struggle, she succeeded in getting on the stage as a song and dance girl. She sang melodiously and danced divinely, so remarkably that the ignorant public, knowing her to be a Manx girl, and vaguely a.s.sociating her with the symbol of the Isle of Man, supposed she had three legs. She was the success of the season; her cup of ambition was filled. It was slightly embittered by the news that her friend Jinny Jones had killed herself in the church at the wedding of her recreant lover and the American heiress. But the affair was scarcely alluded to by the Society papers--who were naturally shocked at the bad taste of the deceased. And even Golly forgot it all--on the stage.

BOOK IV

Meanwhile John Gale, or Brother Boreas, as he was known in the monastery, was submitting--among other rigors--to an exceptionally severe winter in Bishopsgate Street, which seemed to have an Arctic climate of its own,--possibly induced by the "freezing-out" process of certain stock companies in its vicinity.

"You are miserable, and eager to get out in the wicked world again, my son," said the delightful old Superior, as he sat by the only fire, sipping a gla.s.s of mulled port, when John came in from shoveling snow outside. "I, therefore, merely to try you, shall make you gatekeeper.

The keys of the monastery front door are under the door-mat in my cell, but I am a sound sleeper." He smiled seraphically, and winked casually as he sipped his port. "We will call it, if you please--a penance."

John threw himself in an agony of remorse and shame at the feet of the Superior. "It isn't of myself I'm thinking," he confessed wildly, "but of that poor young man, Brother Bones, in the next cell to mine. He is a living skeleton, has got only one lung and an atrophied brain. A night out might do him good."

The Father Superior frowned. "Do you know who he is?"

"No."

"His real name is Jones. Why do you start? You have heard it before?"

John had started, thinking of Jinny Jones, Golly's deserted and self-immolated friend.

"It is an uncommon name," he stammered--"for a monastery, I mean."

"He is or was an uncommon man!" said the Superior gravely. "But," he added resignedly, "we cannot pick and choose our company here. Most of us have done something and have our own reasons for this retreat.

Brother Polygamus escaped here from the persecutions of his sixth wife.

Even I," continued the Superior with a gentle smile, putting his feet comfortably on the mantelpiece, "have had my little fling, and the dear boys used to say--ahem!--but this is mere worldly vanity. You alone, my dear son," he went on with slight severity, "seem to be wanting in some criminality, or--shall I say?--some appropriate besetting sin to qualify you for this holy retreat. An absolutely gratuitous and blameless idiocy appears to be your only peculiarity, and for this you must do penance. From this day henceforth, I make you doorkeeper! Go on with your shoveling at present, and shut the door behind you; there's a terrible draught in these corridors."

For three days John Gale underwent an agony of doubt and determination, and it still snowed in Bishopsgate Street.

On the fourth evening he went to Brother Bones.

"Would you like to have an evening out?"

"I would," said Brother Bones.

"What would you do?"

"I would go to see my remaining sister." His left eyelid trembled slowly in his cadaverous face.

"But if you should hear she was ruined like the other? What would you do?"

A shudder pa.s.sed over the man. "I have not got my little knife," he said vacantly.

True, he had not! The Brotherhood had no pockets,--or rather only a corporate one, which belonged to the Superior. John Gale lifted his eyes in sublime exaltation. "You shall go out," he said with decision.

"m.u.f.fle up until you are well out of Bishopsgate Street, where it still snows."

"But how did you get the keys?" said Brother Bones.

"From under the Father Superior's door-mat."

"But that was wrong, Brother."

"The mat bore the inscription, 'Salve,' which you know in Latin means 'Welcome,'" returned John Gale. "It was logically a permission."

The two men gazed at each other silently. A shudder pa.s.sed over the two left eyelids of their wan spiritual faces.

"But I have no money," said Brother Bones.

"Nor have I. But here is a 'bus ticket and a free pa.s.s to the Gaiety.

You will probably find Golly somewhere about. Tell her," he said in a hollow voice, "that I'm getting on."

"I will," said Brother Bones, with a deep cough.

The gate opened and he disappeared in the falling snow. The bloodhound kept by the monastery--one of the real Bishopsgate breed--bayed twice, and licked its huge jaws in ghastly antic.i.p.ation. "I wonder," said John Gale as he resumed his shoveling, "if I have done exactly right.

Candor compels me to admit that it is an open question."

BOOK V

Early the next morning, Brother Bones was brought home by Policeman X, his hat crushed, his face haggard, his voice husky and unintelligible.

He only said vaguely, "Washertime?"

"It is," said John Gale timidly, in explanation to Policeman X, "a case of spiritual exhaustion following a vigil."

"That warn't her name," said Policeman X sternly. "But don't let this 'ere appen again."

John Gale turned to Brother Bones. "Then you saw her--Golly?"

"No," said Brother Bones.

"Why? What on earth have you been doing?"