The Christian Part 103

"This is Aggie's room."

"Aggie?"

"Don't you remember Aggie? One of the poor girls you fought and worked for."

"Is it your spirit, Glory?"

"It is myself, dearest, my very, very self."

Then a great joy came into his eyes, his breast heaved, his breath came quick, and without a word more he stretched out his arms.

"It is Glory! She is alive! My G.o.d! O my G.o.d!"

"Do you forgive me, Glory?"

"Forgive? There is nothing to forgive you for--except loving me too well."

"My darling! My darling!"

"I thought I was in heaven, Glory, but I am like poor Buckingham--only half way to it yet. Have I been unconscious?"

Glory nodded her head.

"Long?"

"Since last night."

"Ah, I remember everything now. I was knocked down in the streets, wasn't I? The men did it--Pincher, Hawking, and the rest."

"They shall be punished, John," said Glory in a quivering voice. "As sure as heaven's above us and there's law in the land----"

"Aye, aye, laddie" (from somewhere by the door), "mak' yersel' sure o'

that. There'll be never a man o' them but he'll hang for it same as a polecat on a barn gate."

But John shook his head. "Poor fellows! They didn't understand. When they come to see what they've done---- 'Lord, Lord! lay not this sin to their charge.'"

She had wiped away the tears that sprung to her eyes and was sitting by his side and smiling. Her white teeth were showing, her red lips were twitching, and her face was full of suns.h.i.+ne. He was holding her hand and gazing at her constantly as if he could not allow himself to lose sight of her for a moment.

"But I'm half sorry, for all that, Glory," he said.

"Sorry?"

"That we are not both in the other world, for there you were my bride, I remember, and all our pains were over."

Then her sweet face coloured up to the forehead, and she leaned over the bed and whispered, "Ask me to be your bride in this one, dearest."

"I can't! I daren't!"

"Are you thinking of the vows?"

"No!" emphatically. "But--I am a dying man--I know that quite well. And what right have I----"

She gave a little gay toss of her golden head. "Pooh! n.o.body was ever married because he had a _right_ to be exactly."

"But there is your own profession--your great career."

She shook her head gravely. "That's all over now."

"Eh?" reaching up on his elbow.

"When you had gone and nearly everybody was deserting your work, I thought I should like to take up a part of it."

"And did you?"

She nodded.

"Blessed be G.o.d! Oh, G.o.d is very good!" and he lay back and panted.

She laughed nervously. "Well, are you determined to make me ashamed? Am I to throw myself at your head, sir? Or perhaps you are going to refuse me, after all."

"But why should I burden all the years of your life with the name of a fallen man? I am dying in disgrace, Glory."

"No, but in honour--great, great honour! These few bad days will be forgotten soon, dearest--quite, quite forgotten. And in the future time people will come to me and say--girls, dearest, brave, brave girls, who are fighting the battle of life like men--they will come and say: 'And did you know him? Did you really, really know him?' And I will smile triumphantly and answer them 'Yes, for he loved me, and he is mine and I am his forever and forever!'"

"It would be beautiful! We could not come together in this world; but to be united for all eternity on the threshold of the next----"

"There! Say no more about it, for it's all arranged anyhow. The Father has been persuaded to read the service, and the Prime Minister is to bring the Archbishop's license, and it's to be to-day--this evening--and--and I'm not the first woman who has settled everything herself!"

Then she began to laugh, and he laughed with her, and they laughed together in spite of his weakness and pain. At the next moment she was gone like a gleam of suns.h.i.+ne before a cloud, and Mrs. Callender had come back to the bedside, tying up the strings of her old-fas.h.i.+oned bonnet.

"She's gold, laddie, that's what yon Glory is--just gold!"

"Aye, tried in the fire and tested," he replied, and then the back of his head began to throb fiercely.

Glory had fled out of the room to cry, and Mrs. Callender joined her on the landing. "I maun awa', la.s.sie. I'd like fine to stop wi' ye, but I can't. It minds me of the time my Alec left me, and that's forty lang years the day, but he seems to have been with me ever syne."

"Where's Glory?"

"She's coming, Father," said Aggie, and at the sound of her name Glory wiped her eyes and returned.