"This is the wife of our organist and choir master. Good day! Kindest greetings to the Prime Minister.... And, by the way, let us say Monday for the beginning of your chaplaincy at the hospital."
The Earl of Erin, as First Lord of the Treasury, occupied the narrow, una.s.suming brick house which is the Treasury residence in Downing Street. Although the official head of the Church, with power to appoint its bishops and highest dignitaries, he was secretly a sceptic, if not openly a derider of spiritual things. For this att.i.tude his early love pa.s.sage had been chiefly accountable. That strife between duty and pa.s.sion which had driven the woman he loved to religion had driven him in the other direction and left a broad swath of desolation in his soul.
He had seen little of his brother since that evil time, and nothing whatever of his brother"s son. Then John had written, "I am soon to be bound by the awful tie of the priesthood," and he had thought it necessary to do something for him. When John was announced he felt a thrill of tender feeling to which he had long been a stranger. He got up and waited. The young man with his mother"s face and the eyes of an enthusiast was coming down the long corridor.
John Storm saw his uncle first in the s.p.a.cious old cabinet room which looks out on the little garden and the Park. He was a gaunt old man with, meagre mustache and hair, and a face like a death"s head. He held out his hand and smiled. His hand was cold and his smile was half tearful and half saturnine.
"You are like your mother, John."
John never knew her.
"When I saw her last you were a child in arms and she was younger than you are now."
"Where was that, uncle?"
"In her coffin, poor girl."
The Prime Minister shuffled some papers and said, "Well, is there anything you wish for?"
"Nothing. I"ve come to thank you for what you"ve done already."
The Prime Minister made a deprecatory gesture.
"I almost wish you had chosen another career, John. Still, the Church has its opportunities and its chances, and if I can ever----"
"I am satisfied; more than satisfied," said John. "My choice is based, I trust, on a firm vocation. G.o.d"s work is great, sir; the greatest of all in London. That is why I am so grateful to you. Think of it, sir----"
John was leaning forward in his chair with one arm stretched out.
"Of the five millions of people in this vast city, not one million cross the threshold of church or chapel. And then remember their condition. A hundred thousand live in constant want, slowly starving to death, every day and hour, and a quarter of the old people of London die as paupers.
Isn"t it a wonderful scene, sir? If a man is willing to be spiritually dead to the world--to leave family and friends--to go forth never to return, as one might go to his execution----"
The Prime Minister listened to the ardent young man who was talking to him there with his mother"s voice, and then said--
"I"m sorry."
"Sorry?"
"I"m afraid I"ve made a mistake."
John Storm looked puzzled.
"I"ve sent you to the wrong place, John. When you wrote, I naturally supposed you were thinking of the Church as a career, and I tried to put you in the way of it. Do you know anything of your vicar?"
John knew that fame spoke of him as a great preacher--one of the few who had pa.s.sed through their Pentecost and come out with the gift of tongues.
"Precisely!" The Prime Minister gave a bitter little laugh. "But let me tell you something about him. He was a poor curate in the country where the lord of the manor chanced to be a lady. He married the lady of the manor. His wife died and he bought a London parish. Then, by the help of an old actor who gave lessons in elocution, he--well, he set up his Pentecost. Since then he has been a fashionable preacher and frequents the houses of great people. Ten years ago he was made an honorary canon, and, when he hears of an appointment to a bishopric, he says in a tearful voice, "I don"t know what the dear Queen has got against me.""
"Well, sir?"
"Well, if I had known you felt like that I should scarcely have sent you to Canon Wealthy. And yet I hardly know where else a young man of your opinions ... I"m afraid the Church has a good many Canon Wealthys in it."
"G.o.d forbid!" said John. "No doubt there are Pharisees in these days just as in the days of Christ, but the Church is still the pillar of the State----"
"The caterpillar, you mean, boy--eating out its heart and its vitals."
The Prime Minister gave another bitter little laugh, then looked quickly into John"s flushed face and said:
"But it"s poor work for an old man to sap away a young man"s enthusiasm."
"You can"t do that, uncle," said John, "because G.o.d is the absolute ruler of all things, good and bad, and he governs both to his glory. Let him only give us strength to endure our exile----"
"I don"t like to hear you talk like that, John. I think I know what the upshot will be. There"s a gang of men about--Anglican Catholics they call themselves; well, remember the German proverb, "Every priestling hides a popeling." ... And if you _are_ to be in the Church, John, is there any reason why you shouldn"t marry and be reasonable? To tell you the truth, I"m rather a lonely old man, whatever I may seem, and if your mother"s son would give me a sort of a grandson--eh?"
The Prime Minister was pretending to laugh again.
"Come, John, come, it seems a pity--a fine young fellow like you, too.
Are there no sweet young girls about in these days? Or are they all dead and gone since I was a young fellow? I could give you a wide choice, you know, for when a man stands high enough ... in fact, you would find me reasonable--you might have anybody you liked, rich or poor, dark or fair.----"
John Storm had been sitting in torment, and now he rose to go. "No, uncle," he said, in a thicker voice, "I shall never marry. A clergyman who is married is bound to life by too many ties. Even his affection for his wife is a tie. And then there is her affection for the world, its riches, its praise, its honours.----"
"Well, well, we"ll say no more. After all, it"s better than running wild, and that"s what most young men seem to be doing nowadays. But then your long education abroad--and your poor father left to look after himself! Good-day to you. Come and see me now and then. How like your mother you are sometimes! Good-day!"
When the door of the cabinet room closed on John Storm the Prime Minister thought, "Poor boy, he"s laying up for himself a big heartache one of these fine days!"
And John Storm, going down the street with uncertain step, said to himself: "How strange he should talk like that! But, thank G.o.d, he didn"t produce a flicker in me. I died to all that a year ago."
Then he lifted his head and his footstep lightened, and deep in some secret place the thought came proudly, "She shall see that to renounce the world is to possess the world--that a man may be poor and have all the kingdom of the world at his feet."
He went back by the Underground from Westminster Bridge. It was midday, and the train was crowded. His spirits were high and he talked with every one near him. Getting out at Victoria, he came upon his vicar on the platform and saluted him rather demonstratively. The canon responded with some restraint and then stepped into a first-cla.s.s carriage.
On turning into Eaton Place he came upon a group of people standing around something that lay on the pavement. It was an old woman, a tattered, bedraggled creature with a pinched and pallid face. "Is it an accident?" a gentleman was saying, and somebody answered, "No, sir, she"s gorn off in a faint." "Why doesn"t some one take her to the hospital?" said the gentleman, and then, like the Levite, he pa.s.sed by on the other side. The butcher"s cart drew up at the curb, and the butcher jumped down, saying, "There never _is_ no p"lice about when they"re wanted for anythink."
"But they aren"t wanted here, friend," said somebody from the outside.
It was John Storm, and he was pushing his way through the crowd.
"Will somebody knock at that door, please?" He lifted the old thing in his arms and carried her toward the canon"s house. The footman looked aghast. "Let me know when the canon returns," said John, and then marched up the carpeted stairs to his rooms.
An hour afterward the old woman opened her eyes and said: "Anythink gorn wrong? Wot"s up? Is it the work"us?"
It was a clear case of dest.i.tution and collapse. John Storm began to feed the old creature with the chicken and milk sent up for his own lunch.
Some time in the afternoon he heard the voice and step of the vicar in the room below. Going down to the study, he was about to knock; but the voice continued in varying tones, now loud, now low. During a pause he rapped, and then, with noticeable irritation, the voice cried, "Come in!"
He found the vicar, with a ma.n.u.script in hand, rehearsing his Sunday"s sermon. It was a shock to John, but it helped him to understand what his uncle had said about the canon"s Pentecost.
The canon"s brow was clouded. "Ah, is it you? I was sorry to see you getting out of a third-cla.s.s carriage to-day, Mr. Storm."
John answered that it was the poor man"s cla.s.s, and therefore, he thought, it ought to be his.