The Christian Part 53

"Good-bye, Father, and G.o.d forgive me!"

A leather trunk which John had brought with him on the day he came to the Brotherhood was returned to his room, containing the clothes he had worn in the outer world, as well as his purse and watch and other belongings. He dressed himself in his habit as a clergyman, and put the ca.s.sock of the society over it, for he knew that to remove that must be part of the ordeal of his expulsion. Then the bell rang for breakfast, and he went down to the refectory.

The brothers received him in silence, hardly looking up as he entered, though by their furtive glances he could plainly see that he was the only subject that occupied their thoughts. When the meal was over he tried to mingle among them, that he might say farewell to as many as were willing that he should do so. Some gave him their hands with prompt good will, some avoided him, some turned their backs upon him altogether.

But if his reception in the refectory was chilling, his welcome in the courtyard was warm enough. At the first sound of his footsteps on the paved way the dog came from his quarters under the sycamore. One moment the creature stood and looked at him with its sad and bloodshot eyes; then, with a bound, it threw its fore paws on his breast, and then plunged around him and uttered deep bays that were like the roar of thunder.

He sat on the seat and caressed the dog, and his heart grew full and happy. The morning was bright with suns.h.i.+ne, the air was fragrant with the leaf.a.ge of spring, and birds were singing and rejoicing in the tree.

Presently Brother Andrew came and sat beside him. The lay brother, like a human dog, had been following him about all the morning, and now in his feeble way he began to talk of his mother, and to wonder if John would ever see her. Her name was Pincher, and she was a good woman. She lived in Crook Lane, Crown Street, Soho, and kept house for his brother, who was a p.a.w.nbroker. But his brother, poor fellow! was much given to drink, and perhaps that had been a reason why he himself had left home.

John promised to call on her, and then Brother Andrew began to cry. The sprawling features of the great fellow were almost laughable to look upon.

The bell rang for Terce. While the brothers were at prayers, John took his last look over the house. With the dog at his heels--the old thing seemed determined to lose sight of him no more--he pa.s.sed slowly through the hall and into the community room and up the stairs and down the top corridor. He looked again at every inscription on the walls, though he knew them all by heart and had read them a hundred times. When he came to his own cell he was touched by a strange tenderness. Place where he had thought so much, prayed so much, suffered so much--it was dear to him, after all! He went up on to the tower. How often he had been drawn there as by a devilish fascination! The great city looked innocent enough now under its mantle of sunlight, dotted over with green, but how dense, how difficult! Then the bell rang for midday service, though it was not yet noon, and he went down to the hall. The brothers were there preparing to go into the church. The order of the procession was the same as on the day of his dedication, except that Brother Paul was no longer with them--Brother Andrew going first with the cross, then the lay brothers, then the religious, then the Father, and John Storm last of all.

Though the courtyard was full of suns.h.i.+ne, the church looked dark and gloomy. Curtains were drawn across the windows, and the altar was draped as for a funeral. As soon as the brothers had taken their places in the choir the Father stood on the altar steps and said:

"If any member of this community has one unfaithful thought of going back to the outer world, I charge him to come to this altar now. But woe to him through whom the offence cometh! Woe to him who turns back after taking up the golden plough!"

John was kneeling in his place in the second row of the choir. The eyes of the community were upon him. He hesitated a moment, then rose and stepped up to the altar.

"My son," said the Father, "it is not yet too late. I see your fate as plainly as I see you now. Shall I tell you what it is? Can you bear to hear it? I see you going out into a world which has nothing to satisfy the cravings of your soul. I see you foredoomed to failure and suffering and despair. I see you coming back to us within a year with a broken and bleeding heart. I see you taking the vows of lifelong consecration. Can you face that future?"

"I must."

The Father drew a long breath. "It is inevitable," he said; and, taking a book from the altar, he read the awful service of the degradation:

_"By the authority of G.o.d Almighty, Father [Symbol: Patee], Son, and Holy Ghost, and by our own authority, we, the members of the Society of the Holy Gethsemane, do take away from thee the habit of our Order, and depose and degrade and deprive thee of all rights and privileges in the spiritual goods and prayers which, by the grace of G.o.d, are done among us."_

"Amen! Amen!" said the brothers.

During the reading of the service John had been kneeling. The Father motioned to him to rise, and proceeded to remove the cord with which he had bound him at his consecration. When this was done, he signalled to Brother Andrew to take off the ca.s.sock.

The bell was tolled. The Father dropped on his knees. The brothers, hoa.r.s.e and husky, began to sing _In exitu Israel de Aegypto_. Their heads were down, their voices seemed to come up out of the earth.

It was all over now. John Storm turned about, hardly able to see his way. Brother Andrew went before him to open the door of the sacristy.

The lay brother was crying audibly.

The sun was still s.h.i.+ning in the courtyard, and the birds were still singing and rejoicing. The first thing of which John was conscious was that the dog was licking his rigid fingers.

A moment later he was in the little covered pa.s.sage to the street, and Brother Andrew was opening the iron gate.

"Good-bye, my lad!"

He stretched out his hand, then remembered that he was an excommunicated man, and tried to draw it back; but the lay brother had s.n.a.t.c.hed at it and lifted it to his lips.

The dog was following him into the street.

"Go back, old friend."

He patted the old creature on the head, and Brother Andrew laid hold of it by the loose skin at its neck. A hansom was waiting for him with his trunk on the top.

"Victoria Square, Westminster," he called. The cab was moving off, when there was a growl and a lurch--the dog had broken away and was running after it.

How crowded the streets were! How deafening was the traffic! The church bell was ringing for midday service. What a thin tinkle it made out there, yet how deep was its boom within! Stock Exchange men with their leisurely activity were going in by their seven doorways to their great market place in Capel Court.

He began to feel a boundless relief. How his heart was beating! With what a strange and deep emotion he found himself once more in the world!

Driving in the dense and devious thoroughfares was like sailing on a cross sea outside a difficult headland. He could smell the brine and feel the flick of the foam on his lips and cheeks. It was liberty, it was life!

Feeling anxious about the dog, he drew up the cab for a moment. The faithful creature was running under the driver's seat. Before the cab could start again a line of sandwich men had pa.s.sed in front of it.

Their boards contained a single word. The word was "GLORIA."

He saw it, yet it barely arrested his consciousness. Somehow it seemed like an echo from the existence he had left behind.

The noises of life were as wine in his veins now. He was burning with impatience to overtake his arrears of knowledge, to see what the world had gone through in his absence. Leaning over the door of the hansom, he read the names of the streets and the signs over the shops, and tried to identify the houses which had been rebuilt and the thoroughfares which had been altered. But the past was the past, and the clock would turn back for no man. These men and women in the streets knew all that had happened. The poorest beggar on the pavement knew more than he did.

Nearly a year of his life was gone--in prayer, in penance, in fasting, in visions, in dreams--dropped out, left behind, and lost forever.

Going by the Bank, the cab drew up again to allow a line of omnibuses to pa.s.s into Cheapside. Every omnibus had its board for advertis.e.m.e.nts, and nearly every board contained the word he had seen before--"GLORIA."

"Only the name of some music-hall singer," he told himself. But the name had begun to trouble him. It had stirred the fibres of memory, and made him think of the past--of his yacht, of Peel, of his father, and finally of Glory--and again of Glory--and yet again of Glory.

He saw that flags were flying on the Mansion House and on the Bank, and, pus.h.i.+ng up the trap of the hansom, he asked if anything unusual was going on.

"Lawd, down't ye know what day it is terday, sir? It's the dear ole laidy's birthday. That's why all the wimming's going abart in their penny carridges. Been through a hillness, sir?"

"Yes, something of that sort."

"Thort so, sir."

When the cab started afresh he began to tell himself what he was going to do in the future. He was going to work among the poor and the outcast, the oppressed and the fallen. He was going to search for them and find them in their haunts of sin and misery. Nothing was to be too mean for him. Nothing was to be common or unclean. No matter about his own good name! No matter if he was only one man in a million! The kingdom of heaven was like a grain of mustard seed.

When he came within sight of St. Paul's the golden cross on the dome was flas.h.i.+ng like a fiery finger in the blaze of the midday sun. That was the true ensign! It was a monstrous and wicked fallacy, a gloomy and narrow formula, that religion had to do with the affairs of the other world only. Work was religion! Work was prayer! Work was praise! Work was the love of man and the glory of G.o.d!

Glorious gospel! Great and deathless symbol!

THIRD BOOK.

_THE DEVIL'S ACRE_.

I.

Behind Buckingham Palace there is a little square of modest houses standing back from the tide of traffic and nearly always as quiet as a cloister. At one angle of the square there is a house somewhat larger than the rest but just as simple and una.s.suming. In the dining-room of this house an elderly lady was sitting down to lunch alone, with the covers laid for another at the opposite end of the table.