The Christian Part 95

"May I go with you?"

"If you wish to, but it will be useless--he won't be there."

"Why not?"

"The Prime Minister left London last night--I can't help thinking there is something in that."

"He will be there, Rosa. He's not the man to run away. I know him," said Glory proudly.

The church was crowded, and it was with difficulty they found seats.

John's enemies were present in force--all the owners of vested interests who had seen their livelihood threatened by the man who declared war on vice and its upholders. There was a dangerous atmosphere before the service began, and, notwithstanding her brave faith in him, Glory found herself praying that John Storm might not come. As the organ played and the choir and clergy entered the excitement was intense, and some of the congregation got on to their seats in their eagerness to see if the Father was there. He was not there. The black ca.s.sock and biretta in which he had lately preached were nowhere to be seen, and a murmur of disappointment pa.s.sed over friends and enemies alike.

Then came a disgraceful spectacle. A man with a bloated face and a bandage about his forehead rose in his place and cried, "No popery, boys!" Straightaway the service, which was being conducted by two of the clerical brothers from the Brotherhood, was interrupted by hissing, whistling, shouting, yelling, and whooping indescribable. Songs were roared out during the lessons, and cus.h.i.+ons, ca.s.socks, and prayer-books were flung at the altar and its furniture. The terrified choir boys fled downstairs to their own quarters, and the clergy were driven out of the church.

John's own people stole away in terror and shame, but Glory leaped to her feet as if to fling herself on the cowardly rabble. Her voice was lost in the tumult, and Rosa drew her out into the street.

"Is there no law in the land to prevent brawling like this?" she cried, but the police paid no heed to her.

Then the congregation, which had broken up, came rus.h.i.+ng out of the church and round to the door leading to the chambers beneath it.

"They've found him," thought Glory, pressing her hand over her heart.

But no, it was another matter. Immediately afterward there rose over the babel of human voices the deep music of the bloodhound in full cry. The crowd shrieked with fear and delight, then surged and parted, and the dog came running through with its stern up, its head down, its forehead wrinkled, and the long drapery of its ears and flews hanging in folds about its face. In a moment it was gone, its mellow note was dying away in the neighbouring streets, and a gang of ruffians were racing after it. "That'll find the feller if he's in London!" somebody shouted; it was the man with the bandaged forehead--and there were yells of fiendish laughter.

Glory's head was going round, and she was holding on to Rosa's arm with a convulsive grasp.

"The cowards!" she cried. "To use that poor creature's devotion to its master for their own inhuman ends--it's cowardly, it's brutal, it's----Oh, oh, oh!"

"Come, dear," said Rosa, and she dragged Glory away.

They went back through Broad Sanctuary. Neither spoke, but both were thinking: "He has gone to the monastery. He intends to stay there until the storm is over." At Westminster Bridge they parted. "I have somewhere to go," said Rosa, turning down to the Underground. "She is going to Bishopsgate Street," thought Glory, and they separated with constraint.

Returning to Clement's Inn, Glory found a letter from Drake:

"Dear Glory: How can I apologize to you for nay detestable behaviour of last night? The memory of what pa.s.sed has taken all the joy out of the success upon which everybody is congratulating me. I have tried to persuade myself that you would make allowances for the day and the circ.u.mstances and my natural excitement. But your life has been so blameless that it fills me with anguish and horror to think how I exposed you to misrepresentation by allowing you to go to that place, and by behaving to you as I did when you were there. Thank G.o.d, things went no farther, and some blessed power prevented me from carrying out my threat to follow you. Believe me, you shall see no more of men like Lord Robert Ure and women like his a.s.sociates. I despise them from my heart, and wonder how I can have tolerated them so long. Do let me beg the favour of a line consenting to allow me to call and ask your forgiveness. Yours most humbly,

"F. H. N. Drake."

Glory slept badly that night, and as soon as Liza was stirring she rang for the newspaper.

"Didn't ye 'ear the dorg, mum?" said Liza.

"What dog?"

"The Farver's dorg. It was scratching at the front dawer afore I was up this morning. 'It's the milk,' sez I. But the minute I opened the dawer up it came ter the drawerin' room and went snuffling rahnd everywhere."

"Where is it now?"

"Gorn, mum."

"Did anybody else see it? No? You say no? You're sure? Then say nothing about it, Liza--nothing whatever--that's a good girl."

The newspaper was full of the mysterious disappearance. Not a trace of the Father had yet been found. The idea had been started that he had gone into seclusion at the Anglican monastery with which he was a.s.sociated, but on inquiry at Bishopsgate Street it was found that nothing had been seen of him there. Since yesterday the whole of London had been scoured by the police, but not one fact had been brought to light to make clearer the mystery of his going away. With the most noticeable face and habit in London he had evaded scrutiny and gone into a retirement which baffled discovery. No master of the stage art could have devised a more sensational disappearance. He had vanished as though whirled to heaven in a cloud, and that was literally what the more fanatical of his followers believed to have been his fate. Among these persons there were wild-eyed hangers-on telling of a flight upward on a fiery chariot, as well as a predicted disappearance and reappearance after three days. Such were the stories being gulped down by the thousands who still clung with an indefinable fascination to the memory of the charlatan. Meantime the soldier Wilkes had died of his injuries, and the coroner's inquiry was to be opened that day.

"Unfeeling brutes! The bloodhound is an angel of mercy compared to them," thought Glory, but the worst sting was in the thought that John had fled out of fear and was now in hiding somewhere.

Toward noon the newsboys were rus.h.i.+ng through the Inn, crying their papers against all regulations, and at the same moment Rosa came in to say that John Storm had surrendered.

"I knew it!" cried Glory; "I knew he would!"

Then Rosa told her of Brother Andrew's attempt to personate his master, and with what pitiful circ.u.mstances it had ended.

"Only a lay brother, you say, Rosa?"

"Yes, a poor half-witted soul apparently--must have been, to imagine that a subterfuge like that would succeed in London."

Glory's eyes were gleaming. "Rosa," she said, "I would rather have done what he did than play the greatest part in the world."

She wished to be present at the trial, and proposed to Rosa that she should go with her.

"But dare you, my child? Considering your old friends.h.i.+p, dare you see him----"

"Dare I?" said Glory. "Dare I stand in the dock by his side!"

But when she got to Bow Street and saw the crowds in the court, the line of distinguished persons of both s.e.xes allowed to sit on the bench, the army of reporters and newspaper artists, and all the ma.s.s of smiling and eager faces, without ruth or pity, gathered together as for a show, her heart sickened and she crept out of the place before the prisoner was brought into the dock.

Walking to and fro in the corridor, she waited the result of the trial.

It was not a long one. The charge was that of causing people unlawfully to a.s.semble to the danger of the public peace. There was no defence. A man with a bandaged forehead was the first of the witnesses. He was a publican, who lived in Brown's Square and had been a friend of the soldier Wilkes. The injury to his forehead was the result of a blow from a stick given by the prisoner's lay brother on the night of the Derby, when, with the help of the deceased, he had attempted to liberate the bloodhound. He had much to say of the Father's sermons, his speeches, his predictions, his slanders, and his disloyalty. Other witnesses were Pincher and Hawkins. They were in a state of abject fear at the fate hanging over their own heads, and tried to save their own skins by laying the blame of their own conduct upon the Father. The last witness was Brother Andrew, and he broke down utterly. Within an hour Rosa came out to say that John Storm had been committed for trial. Bail was not asked for, and the prisoner, who had not uttered a word from first to last, had been taken back to the cells.

Glory hurried home and shut herself in her room. The newsboys in the street were shouting, "Father Storm in the dock!" and filling the air with their cries. She covered her ears with her hands, and made noises in her throat that she might not hear.

John Storm's career was at an end. It was all her fault. If she had yielded to his desire to leave London, or if she had joined him there, how different everything must have been! But she had broken in upon his life and wrecked it. She had sinned against him who had given her everything that one human soul can give another.

Liza came up with, red eyes, bringing the evening papers and a letter.

The papers contained long reports of the trial and short editorials reproving the public for its interest in such a poor impostor. Some of them contained sketches of the prisoner and of the distinguished persons recognised in court. "The stage was represented by----," and then a caricature of herself.

The letter was from Aunt Rachel:

"My Dear, My Best-Beloved Glory: I know how much your kind _heart_ will be lowered by the painful tidings I have to write to you. Lord Storm died on Monday and was buried to-day. To the last he declared he would never consent to make peace with John, and he has left nothing to him but his t.i.tle, so that our dear friend is now a n.o.bleman without an estate. Everybody about the old lord at the end was unanimous in favour of his son, but he would not listen to them, and the scene at the deathbed was shocking. It seems that with his dying breath and many bursts of laughter he read aloud his will, which ordered that his effects should be sold and the proceeds given to some society for the protection of the Established Church. And then he told old Chaise that as soon as he was gone a coffin was to be got and he was to be screwed down at once, 'for,' said he, 'my son would not come to see me _living_, and he sha'n't stand grinning at me _dead_.' The funeral was at Kirkpatrick this morning, and _few_ came to see the last of one who had left none to mourn him; but just as the remains were being deposited in the dark vault a carriage drove up and an elderly gentleman got out. No one knew him, and he stood and looked down with his impa.s.sive face while the service was being read, and then, without speaking to any one, he got back into the carriage and drove away. The _minute_ he was gone I told Anna he was somebody of consequence; and then everybody said it must be Lord Storm's brother and no less a person than the Prime Minister of England. It seems that the sale is to come off immediately, so that Knockaloe will be a waste, as if sown with salt; and, so far as this island is concerned, all trace of the Storms, father and son, will be gone for good. I ever knew it must end thus! But I will more particularly tell you everything when we meet again, which I hope may be _soon_. Meantime I need not say how much I am, my dear child, your ever fond--nay, more than fond--_devoted_ auntie.

"Rachel."

XI.