The Christian Part 91

"Of course not! How could you? She must be at the office, and won't be back for hours. So you see we are quite alone!"

She did not know why she said that, and, in spite of the voice which she tried to render cheerful, her lip trembled. Then she laughed, though there was nothing to laugh at, and down at the bottom of her heart she was afraid. But she began moving about, trying to make herself easy and pretending not to be alarmed.

"Well, won't you help me off with my cloak? No? Then I must do it for myself I suppose."

Throwing off her outer things, she walked across the room and sat down on the sofa near to where he stood.

"How tired I am! It's been such a day! Once is enough for that sort of thing, though! Now where do you think I've been?"

"I know where you've been, Glory--I saw you there."

"You? Really? Then perhaps it _was_ you who----Was it you in the hollow?"

"Yes."

He had moved to avoid contact with her, but now, standing by the mantelpiece looking into her face, he could not help recognising in the fas.h.i.+onable woman at his feet the features of the girl once so dear to him, the brilliant eyes, the long lashes, the twitching of the eyelids, and the restless movement of the mouth. Then the wave of tenderness came sweeping over him again and he felt as if the ground were slipping beneath his feet.

"Will you say your prayers to-night. Glory?" he said,

"Why not?" she answered, trying to laugh.

"Then why not say them now, my child?"

"But why?"

He had made her tremble all over, but she got up, walked straight across to him, looked intently into his face for a moment, and then said: "What is the matter? Why are you so pale? You are not well, John!"

"No, I'm not well either." he answered.

"John, John, what does it all mean? What are you thinking of? Why have you come here to-night?"

"To save your soul, my child. It is in great, great peril."

At first she took this for the common, everyday language of the devotee, but another look into his face banished that interpretation, and her fear rose to terror. Nevertheless she talked lightly, hardly knowing what she said. "Am I, then, so very wicked? Surely Heaven doesn't want me yet, John. Some day I trust--I hope----"

"To-night, to-night--_now!_"

Then her cheeks turned pale and her lips became white and bloodless.

She had returned to the sofa, and half rose from it, then sat back, stretching out one hand as if to ward off a blow, but still keeping her eyes riveted on his face. Once she looked round to the door and tried to cry out, but her voice would not answer her.

This speechless fright lasted only a moment. Then she was herself again, and looked fearlessly up at him. She had the full use of her intellect, and her quick instinct went to the root of things. "This is the madness of jealousy," she thought. "There is only one way to deal with it. If I cry out--if I show that I am afraid--if I irritate him, it will soon, be over." She told herself in a moment that she must try gentleness, tenderness, reason, affection, love.

Trembling from head to foot, she stepped up to him again, and began softly and sweetly trying to explain herself. "John, dear John, if you see me with certain people and in certain places you must not think from that----"

But he broke in upon her with a torrent of words. "I can't think of it at all, Glory. When I look ahead I see nothing but shame and misery and degradation for you in the future. That man is destroying you body and soul. He is leading you on to the devil and h.e.l.l and d.a.m.nation, and I can not stand by and see it done!"

"Believe me, John, you are mistaken, quite mistaken." But, with a look of sombre fury, he cried, "Can you deny it?"

"I can protect and care for myself, John."

"With that man's words in your ears, still can you deny it?"

Suddenly she remembered Drake's last whisper as she got into the hansom, and she covered her face with her hands.

"You can't! It is the truth! The man is following you to ruin you, and you know it. You've known it from the first, therefore you deserve all that can ever come to you. Do you know what you are guilty of? You are guilty of soul-suicide. What is the suicide of the body to the suicide of the soul? What is the crime of the poor broken creature who only chooses death and the grave before starvation or shame, compared to the sin of the wretched woman who murders her soul for sake of the l.u.s.ts and vanities of the world? The law of man may punish, the one, but the vengeance of G.o.d is waiting for the other."

She was crying behind her hands, and, in spite of the fury into which he had lashed himself, a great pity took hold of him. He felt as if everything were slipping away from him, and he was trying to stand on an avalanche. But he told himself that he would not waver, that he would hold to his purpose, that he would stand firm as a rock. Heaving a deep sigh, he walked to and fro across the room.

"O Glory, Glory! Can't you understand what it is to me to be the messenger of G.o.d's judgment?"

She gasped for breath, and what had been a vague surmise became a certainty--thinking he was G.o.d's avenger, yet with nothing but a poor spasm of jealousy in his heart, he had come with a fearful purpose to perform.

"I did what I could in other ways and it was all in vain. Time after time I tried to save you from these dangers, but you would not listen. I was ready for any change, any sacrifice. Once I would have given up all the world for you, Glory--you know that quite well--friends, kinsmen, country, everything, even my work and my duty, and, but for the grace of G.o.d, G.o.d himself!"

But his tenderness broke again into a headlong torrent of reproach.

"You failed me, didn't you? At the last moment, too--the very last! Not content with the suicide of your own soul, you must attempt to murder the soul of another. Do you know what that is? That is the unpardonable sin! You are crying, aren't you? Why are you crying?" But even while he said this something told him that all he was waiting for was that her beautiful eyes should be raised and their splendid light flash upon him again.

"But that is all over now. It was a blunder, and the breach between us is irreparable. I am better as I am--far, far better. Without friends or kin or country, consecrated for life, cut off from the world, separate, alone!"

She knew that her moment had come, and that she must vanquish this man and turn him from his purpose, whatever it was, by the only weapon a woman could use--his love of her. "I do not deny that you have a right to be angry with me," she said, "but don't think that I have not given up something too. At the time you speak of, when I chose this life and refused to go with you to the South Seas, I sacrificed a good deal--I sacrificed love. Do you think I didn't realize what that meant? That whatever the pleasure and delight my art might bring me, and the flattery, and the fame, and the applause, there were joys I was never to know--the happiness that every poor woman may feel, though she isn't clever at all, and the world knows nothing about her--the happiness of being a wife and a mother, and of holding her place in life, however humble she is and simple and unknown, and of linking the generations each to each. And, though the world has been so good to me, do you think I have ever ceased to regret that? Do you think I don't remember it sometimes when the house rises at me, or when I am coming home, or perhaps when I awake in the middle of the night? And notwithstanding all this success with which the world has crowned me, do you think I don't hunger sometimes for what success can never buy--the love of a good man who would love me with all his soul and his strength and everything that is his?"

Out of a dry and husky throat John Storm answered: "I would rather die a thousand, thousand deaths than touch a hair of your head, Glory....

But G.o.d's will is his will!" he added, quivering and trembling. The compulsion of a great pa.s.sion was drawing him, but he struggled hard against it. "And then this success--you cling to it nevertheless!" he cried, with a forced laugh.

"Yes, I cling to it," she said, wiping away the tears that had begun to fall. "I can not give it up, I can not, I can not!"

"Then what is the worth of your repentance?"

"It is not repentance--it is what you said it was--in this room--long ago.... We are of different natures, John--that is the real trouble between us, now and always has been. But whether we like it or not, our lives are wrapped up together for all that. We can't do without each other. G.o.d makes men and women like that sometimes."

There was a piteous smile on his face. "I never doubted your feeling for me, Glory. No, not even when you hurt me most."

"And if G.o.d made us so----"

"I shall never forgive myself, Glory, though Heaven itself forgives me!"

"If G.o.d makes us love each other in spite of every barrier that divides us----"

"I shall never know another happy hour in this life. Glory--never!"

"Then why should we struggle? It is our fate and we can not conquer it.

You can't give up your life, John, and I can't give up mine; but our hearts are one."

Her voice sang like music in his ears, and something in his aching heart was saying: "What are the laws we make for ourselves compared to the laws G.o.d makes for us?" Suddenly he felt something warm. It was Glory's breath on his hand. A fragrance like incense seemed to envelop him. He gasped as if suffocating, and sat down on the sofa.

"You are wrong, dear, if you think I care for the man you speak of. He has been very good to me and helped me in my career, but he is nothing to me--nothing whatever--But we are such old friends, John? It seems impossible to remember a time when we were not old chums, you and I!

Sometimes I dream of those dear old days in the 'lil oilan'! Aw, they were ter'ble--just ter'ble! Do you remember the boat--the _Gloria_--do you remember her?" (He clinched his hands as though to hold on to his purpose, but it was slipping through his fingers like sand.) "What times they were! Coming round the castle of a summer evening when the bay and the sky were like two sheets of silvered gla.s.s looking into each other, and you and I singing 'John Peel'" (in a quavering voice she sang a bar or two): "'D'ye ken John Peel with his coat so gay? D'ye ken John Peel'---Do you remember it, John?"