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The Christian, a novel by Hall Caine |
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Book 1. The Outer World - Chapter 20 |
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_ FIRST BOOK. THE OUTER WORLD CHAPTER XX But youth is rich in hope, and at noon, when Glory awoke, the thought of Drake flashed upon her like light in a dark place. He had compelled Lord Robert to assist Polly in a worse extremity, and he would assist her in her present predicament. How often he had hinted that the hospital was not good enough for her, and that some day and somewhere Fate would find other work for her and another sphere. The time had come; she would appeal to him, and he would hasten to help her. She began to revive the magnificent dreams that had floated in her mind for months. No need to tell the people at home of her dismissal and disgrace; no need to go back to the island. She would be somebody in her own right yet. Of course, she would have to study, to struggle, to endure disappointments, but she would triumph in the end. And when at length she was great and famous she would be good to other poor girls; and as often as she thought of John Storm in his solitude in his cell, though there might be a pang, a red stream running somewhere within, she would comfort herself with the thought that she, too, was doing her best; she, too, had her place, and it was a useful and worthy one. Before that time came, however, there would be managers to influence and engagements to seek, and perhaps teachers to pay for. But Drake was rich and generous and powerful; he had a great opinion of her talents, and he would stop at nothing. Leaping out of bed, she sat down at the table as she was and wrote to him:
"P.S.--save time I suggest the hour and the place: eight o'clock, St. James's Park, by the bridge going down from Marlborough House."
He dined that night with a group of civil servants at his club in St. James's Street, but at a quarter to eight, notwithstanding some playful bantering, he put on his overcoat and turned toward the park. The autumn night was soft and peaceful; the stars were out and the moon had risen; a fragrant mist came up from the lake, and the smoke of his cigar was hardly troubled by the breeze that pattered the withered tassels of the laburnums. Big Ben was striking eight as he reached the end of the little bridge, and almost immediately afterward he was aware of soft and hurrying footsteps approaching him. Glory had come down by the Mall. The whispering of the big white trees in the moonlight was like company, and she sang to herself as she walked. Her heart seemed to have gone into her heels since yesterday, for her step was light and sometimes she ran a few paces. She arrived out of breath as the great clock was striking, and seeing the figure of a gentleman in evening dress by the end of the bridge, she stopped to collect herself. Her hand was hot and a little damp when Drake took it, and her face was somewhat flushed. She had all at once become ashamed that she had come to ask him for anything, and she took out her pocket-handkerchief and began to roll it in her palms. He misunderstood her agitation, and trying to cover it he offered her his arm and took her across the bridge, and they turned westward down the path that runs along the margin of the lake. "Mr. Storm has gone," she said, thinking to explain herself. "I know," he answered. "Is it generally known, then?" "I had a letter from him yesterday." "Was it about me?" "Yes." "You must not mind if he says things, you know." "I don't, Glory. I set them down to the egotism of the religious man. The religious man can not believe that anybody can live a moral life and act on principle except from the religious impulse.... I suppose he has warned you against me, hasn't he?" "Well--yes." "I'm at a loss to know what I've done to deserve it. But time must justify me. I am not a religious man myself, you know, though I hate to talk of it. To tell you the truth, I think the religious idea a monstrous egotism altogether, and the love of God merely the love of self. Still, you must judge for yourself, Glory." "Are we not wasting our time a little?" she said. "I am here; isn't that proof enough of my opinion?" And then in an agitated whisper she added: "I have only half an hour, the gates will be closing, and I want to ask your advice, you know. You remember what I told you in my letter?" He patted the hand on his arm and said, "Tell me how it happened." She told him everything, with many pauses, expecting every moment that he would break in upon her and say, "Why didn't you box the woman's ears?" or perhaps laugh and assure her that it did not matter in the least, and she was making too much of a mere bagatelle. But he listened to every syllable, and after she had finished there was silence for a moment. Then he said: "I'm sorry--very sorry; in fact, I am much troubled about it." Her nerves were throbbing hard and her hand on his arm was twitching. "If you had left of your own accord after that scene in the board room, it would have been so different--so easy for me to help you!" "How?" "I should have spoken to my chief--he is a governor of many hospitals--and said, 'A young friend of mine, a nurse, is uncomfortable in her present place and would like to change her hospital.' It would have been no sooner said than done. But now--now there is the black book against you, and God knows if... In fact, somebody has laid a trap for you, Glory, intending to get rid of you at the first opportunity, and you seem to have walked straight into it." She felt stunned. "He has forgotten all he has said to me," she thought. In a feeble, expressionless voice she asked: "But what am I to do now?" "Let me think." They walked some steps in silence. "He is turning it over," she thought. "He will tell me how to begin." He stopped, as if seized by a new idea. "Did you tell them where you had been?" "No," she replied, in the same weak voice. "But why not do so? There is hope in that. The chaplain was your friend--your only friend in London, so far as they know. Surely that is an extenuating circumstance so plausible----" "But I cannot----" "I know it is bitter to explain--to apologize--and if I can do it for you----" "I will not allow it!" she said. Her lips were set, and her breath was coming through them in gusts. "It is a pity to allow the hospitals to be closed against you. Nursing is a good profession, Glory--even a fashionable one. It is true womanly work, and----" "That was what he said." "Who? John Storm? He was right. Indeed, he was an entirely honourable and upright man, and----" "But _you_ always seemed to say there were other things more worthy of a girl, and if she had a mind to---- But no matter. We needn't talk about the hospitals any longer. I am not fit for them and shall never go back to them, whatever happens." He looked down at her. She was biting her lips, and the tears were gathering in her eyes. "Well, well, never mind, dear," he said, and he patted her hand again. The moon had begun to wane, and out of the dark shadows they walked in they could see the lines of houses lit up all around. "Look," she said, with a feeble laugh, "in all this great busy London is there nothing else I'm fit for?" "You are fit for anything in the world, my dear," he answered. Her nerves were throbbing harder than ever. "Perhaps he doesn't remember," she thought. Should she tell him what he said so often about her talents, and how much she might be able to make of them? "Is there nothing a girl can do except go down on her knees to a woman?" He laughed and talked some nonsense about the kneeling. "Poor little woman, she doesn't know what she is doing," he thought. "I shouldn't mind what people thought of me," she said, "not even my own people, who have been brought up with such narrow ideas, you know. They might think what they liked, if I felt I was in the right place at last--the right place for me, I mean." Her nervous fingers were involuntarily clutching at his coat sleeve. "Now, any other man----" he thought. She began to cry. "He _won't_ remember," she told herself. "It was only his way of being agreeable when he praised me and predicted such wonderful things. And now his good breeding will not allow him to tell me there are hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of girls in London as likely to----" "Come, you mustn't cry, Glory. It's not so bad as that." She had never seemed to him so beautiful, and he wanted to take her in his arms and comfort her. "I had no one but you to come to," she murmured in her confusion. But she was thinking: "Why didn't you stop me before? Why have you let me go on all these months?" "I must try to think of something, and I'll speak to my friend Rosa--Miss Macquarrie, you know." "You are a man," said Glory, "and I thought perhaps----" But she could not speak of her fool's paradise now, she was so deeply ashamed and abased. "That's just the difficulty, my dear. If I were not a man, I might so easily help you." What did he mean? The frogs kept croaking at the margin of the lake, disturbed by the sound of their footsteps. "Whatever you were to tell me to do I should do it," she said, in the same confused murmur. She was ruining herself with every word she uttered. He drew up and stood before her, so close that she could feel his breath, on her face. "My dear Glory," he said passionately, "don't think it isn't terrible to me to renounce the happiness of helping you, but I must not, I dare not, I will not take it." She could scarcely breathe for the shame that took sudden hold of her. "Heaven knows I would give anything to have the joy of looking after your happiness, dear, but I should despise myself forever if I took advantage of your circumstances." Good God! What did he think she had been asking of him? "I am thinking of yourself, Glory, because I want to esteem you and honour you, and because your good name is above everything else--everything else in the world." Her shame was now abject. It stifled her, deafened her, blinded her. She could not speak or hear or see. He took her hand and pressed it. "Let me go," she stammered. "Stay--do not go yet!" "Let me go, will you?" "One moment----" But with a cry like the cry of a startled bird she disappeared in the shadow of the trees. He stood a moment where she had left him, tingling in every nerve, wanting to follow her, and overtake her, and kiss her, and abandon everything. But he buttoned up his overcoat and turned away, telling himself that whatever another man might have done in the same case he at least had done rightly, and that men like John Storm were wrong if they thought it was impossible to act on principle without the impulse of religion. Meanwhile Glory was flying through the darkness and weeping in the bitterness of her disappointment and shame. The big trees overhead were all black now and very gaunt and grim, and the breeze was moaning in their branches. "I had disgrace enough already," she thought; "I might have spared myself a degradation like this!" Drake had supposed that she came to plead for herself to-night as she had pleaded for Polly a week ago. How natural that he should think so! How natural and yet how hideous! "I hate him! I hate him!" she thought. John Storm had been right. In their heart of hearts these men of society had only one idea about a girl, and she had stumbled on it unawares. They never thought of her as a friend and an equal, but only as a dependent and a plaything, to be taken or left as they liked. "Oh, how shameful to be a woman--how shameful, how shameful!" And Drake had renounced her! In the hideous tangle of his error he had renounced her! For honour's sake, and her own sake, and for sake of his character as a gentleman--renounced her! Oh, there was somebody who would never have renounced her whatever had happened, and yet she had driven him away, and he was gone forever! "I hate myself! I hate myself!" She remembered how often out of recklessness and daring and high spirits, but without a thought of evil, she had broken through the barrier of manners and given Drake occasion to think lightly of her--at the ball, at the theatre, at tea in his chambers, and by dressing herself up as a man. "I hate myself! I hate myself!" John Storm was right, and Drake in his different way was right too, and she alone had been to blame. But Fate was laughing at her, and the jest was very, very cruel. "No matter. It is all for the best," she thought. She would be the stronger for this experience--the stronger and the purer too, to stand alone and to face the future. She got back to the hospital just as the great clock of Westminster was chiming the half-hour, and she stood a moment on the steps to listen to it. Only half an hour had passed, and yet all the world had changed! _ |
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