The Christian Part 40

If she "caught on," there was no knowing what he might not get for her--ten pounds a week--fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, even fifty perhaps.

Glory's palpitation was becoming painful, and at the bottom of her heart there was a certain fear of this sudden tide of fortune, as if Providence had somehow made a mistake and would as suddenly find it out.

To appease her conscience she began to think of home and how happy she might make everybody there if G.o.d was really going to be so good to her.

They should want for nothing; they should never know a poor day again.

Meantime the stage manager was painting another picture. A girl didn't go a-begging if he once took her up. There was S----. She was only an "auricomous" damsel, serving in a tobacconist's shop in the Haymarket when he first found her, and now where was she?

"Of course, I've no interest of my own to serve, my dear--none whatever.

And there'll be lots of people to tempt you away from me when your name is made."

Glory uttered some vehement protest, and then was lost in her dreams again.

"Well, well, we'll see," said the stage manager. He was looking at her with glittering eyes.

"Do you know, my dear, you are a very fine-looking young woman?"

Glory's head was down, her face was flushed, and she was turning her mother's pearl ring around her finger. He thought she was overwhelmed by his praises, and coming closer, he said:

"Dare say you've got a good stage figure too, eh? Pooh! Only business, you know! But you mustn't be shy with me, my dear. And besides, if I am to do all this for you, you must do something for me sometimes."

She hardly heard him. Her eyes were still glistening with the far-off look of one who gazes on a beautiful vision.

"You are so good," she said. "I don't know what to say, or how to thank you."

"This way," he whispered, and leaning over to her he lifted her face and kissed her.

Then her poor dream of glory and grandeur and happiness was dispelled in a moment, and she awoke with a sense of outrage and shame. The man's praises were flattery; his predictions were a pretence; he had not really meant it at all, and she had been so simple as to believe everything.

"Oh!" she said, with the feeble, childish cry of one who has received a pistol wound in battle. And then she rose and turned to go. But the stage manager, who was laughing noisily out of his hot red face, stepped between her and the door.

"My dear child, you can't mean--a trifle like that--!"

"Open the door, please," she said in her husky voice.

"But surely you don't intend--In this profession we think nothing, you know----"

"Open the door, sir!"

"Really--upon my word----"

When she came to herself again she was out in the dark back street, and the snow was hard and dirty under foot, and the wind was high and cold, and she was running along and crying like a disappointed child.

The bitterest part of it all was the crus.h.i.+ng certainty that she had no talents and no chances of success, and that the man had only painted up his fancy picture as a means of deceiving her. Oh, the misery of being a woman! Oh, the cruelty of this great, glorious, devilish London, where a girl, if she was poor and alone, could live only by her looks!

With G.o.d knows what lingering remnant of expectation, but feeling broken and beaten after her brave fight for life, and with the weak woman uppermost at last, she had turned toward the hospital. It was nearly half-past eleven when she got there, and Big Ben was chiming the half hour as she ascended the steps. Bracing herself up, she looked in at the porter's door with a face that was doing its best to smile.

"Any letters to-night, porter?"

"Not to-night, miss."

"No? Well--none to get, none to answer, you know. Happy New Year to you!"

But there was a sob in her laughter, and the man said: "I'd be sorry to miss your face, nurse, but if you'll leave your address I'll send your letters on and save you the journey so late at night."

"Oh, no-no, there'll be no more letters now, porter, and--I'll not come again. Here!"

"No, no, miss."

"Yes, yes, you must."

She forced a s.h.i.+lling into the porter's hand in spite of his protests, and then fled from the look in his face which seemed to her to say that he would like to return her sixpence.

John Storm was lost to her. It was foolishness to go on expecting to hear from him. Had he not told her that the rule under which the brothers lived in community forbade them to write and receive letters except by special permission? But she had expected that something would happen--some accident, some miracle, she hardly knew what. That dream was over now; she was alone; it was no use deceiving herself any longer.

She went home by the back streets, for people were peering into her face, and she thought perhaps she had been crying. Late as it was, being New Year's Eve, there were groups about every corner, and in some of the flagged courts and alleys little girls were dancing to the music of the Italian organ man or turning catherine-wheels. As she was going down Long Acre a creachy voice saluted her.

"Evening, miss! Going home early, ain't ye?"

It was a miserable-looking woman in clothes that might have been stolen from a scarecrow.

"Market full to-night, my dear? Look as if the dodgers had been at ye.

Live? I live off of the lane. But lor' bless ye, I've lived in a-many places! Seen the day I lived in Soho Square. I was on the 'alls then.

Got a bit quisby on my top notes, you know, and took the scarlet fever--soldier, I mean, my dear. But what's the use of frettin'?

"I likes to be jolly, and I allwiz is. Doing now? Selling flowers outside the theatres--police is nasty if you've got nothink. Ain't I going home? Soon as I get a drain of white satin. Wish you luck, my dear!"

As she came up to the shop in the Turnstile she could hear that it was noisy with the voices of men and girls, so she turned back through Lincoln's-Inn Fields and pa.s.sed down to Fleet Street. It was approaching twelve o'clock by this time, and streams of people were flowing in the direction of St. Paul's Cathedral. Glory turned eastward also and allowed herself to be carried along with the current which babbled and talked like a river in the night.

Immediately in front of her there was a line of girls walking arm-in-arm across the width of the pavement. They were factory girls in big hats with ostrich feathers, and as they skipped along with their free step they sang s.n.a.t.c.hes of Salvation hymns and music-hall songs. All at once they gave a shrill peal of laughter, and one of them cried, "Tell me what it is and I'll give it a nyme." At the next moment a strange figure was forging past their line, going westward with long strides. It was a man in the habit of a monk, with long black ca.s.sock and broad-brimmed hat. Glory caught a glimpse of his face as he pa.s.sed her. It was a hungry, eager face, with big, melancholy eyes, and it seemed to her that she must have seen it before somewhere. The wind was very cold, and the great cross on the dome of the cathedral stood out like a beacon against flying clouds.

St. Paul's churchyard was thronged with noisy, happy people, and down to the last minute before the hour they shouted and joked and laughed. Then there was a hush, the great crowds seemed to hold their breath as if they had been a single living creature, and every face was turned upward to the clock. The clock struck, the bells of the cathedral began to ring, the people cheered and saluted each other and shook hands on every side, and then the dense ma.s.s broke up.

Glory could have cried for joy of it all--it was so simple, so human, so childlike. But she listened to the laughter and salutations of the people about her and felt more lonely than the Bedouin in the desert; she remembered the bubbling hopes that had carried her through the day, and her heart fell low; she thought of the letter which she had posted home on her way to the theatre, and two great tears came rolling from her eyes.

The face of the monk tormented her, and suddenly she bethought herself whose face it must have been. It must have been the face of Polly Love's brother. He belonged to the Bishopsgate Fathers, and had once been a patient in the hospital, and perhaps he was going there now on some errand or urgent message--to the doctors or to----

"It was foolish not to leave my address when the porter asked me," she thought. She would go back and do so. There could be no harm in that; and if anything had really happened, if John----

"Happy New Year to you, my dear!"

Somebody in the drifting crowd was standing before her and blocking the way. It was Agatha Jones in a mock seal-skin coat and big black hat surmounted by black feathers, and with Charlie Wilkes (with his diminutive cap pushed back from his oily fringe and pimpled forehead) leaning heavily on her arm.

"Well, I never! Who'd have thought of meeting you in St. Paul's churchyawd!"

Glory tried to laugh and to return the salutation over the noises of the people and the clangour of the bells. And then Aggie put her face close, as women do who are accustomed to talking in the streets, and said: "Thought we'd seen the lahst of you, my dear, when you went off that night sudden. Selling programmes somewhere else now?"

"Something of that sort," said Glory.

"I'm not. I've been left the old red church this fortnight and more.