"Why do you want to know that, auntie?"
"What"s it to you, laddie? Can"t a body call to say "Good-bye" to a la.s.sie, and tak" her a wee present before going away, without asking a man"s permission?"
"I shouldn"t do it, though, if I were you."
"And why not, pray?"
"Because she"s as bright as a star and as quick as a diamond, and she"d see through you in a twinkling. Besides, I shouldn"t advise----"
"Keep your advice like your salt till you"re asked for it, my man--and to think of any reasonable body giving up his work in London for that--that----"
"Good men have gone out to the mission field, auntie."
"Mission fiddlesticks! Just a barber"s chair, fit for every comer."
"And then this isn"t the mission field exactly either."
"Mair"s the pity, and then you wouldna be running bull-neck on your death before your time."
"None of us can do that, auntie, for heaven is over all."
"High words off an empty stomach, my man, so you can just keep them to cool your parridge. But oh, dear--oh, dear! You"ll forget your puir auld Jane Callender, anyway."
"Never, auntie!"
"Tut! don"t tell me!"
"Never!"
"It"s the last I"m to see of you, laddie. I"m knowing that fine--and me that fond of you too, and looking on you as my ain son."
"Come, auntie, come; you mustn"t take it so seriously."
"And to think a bit thing like that can make all this botherment!"
"Nay, it"s my own doing--absolutely mine."
"Aye, aye, man"s the head, but woman turns it."
They dined together and then got into the carriage for Soho. John talked continually, with an impetuous rush of enthusiasm; but the old lady sat in gloomy silence, broken only by a sigh. At the corner of Downing Street he got out to call on the Prime Minister, and sent the carriage on to the clergy-house.
A newsboy going down Whitehall was calling an evening paper. John bought a copy, and the first thing his eye fell upon was the mention of his own name: "The announcement in another column that Father Storm of Soho intends to take up the work which the heroic Father Damien has just laid down will be received by the public with mingled joy and regret--joy at the splendid heroism which prompts so n.o.ble a resolve, regret at the loss which the Church in London will sustain by the removal of a clergyman of so much courage, devotion, independence, and self-sacrifice.... That the son of a peer and heir to an earldom should voluntarily take up a life of poverty in Soho, one of the most crowded, criminal, and neglected corners of Christendom, was a fact of so much significance----"
John Storm crushed the paper in his hand and threw it into the street; but a few minutes afterward he saw another copy of it in the hands of the Prime Minister as he came to the door of the Cabinet room to greet him. The old man"s face looked soft, and his voice had a faint tremor.
"I"m afraid you are bringing me bad news, John."
John laughed noisily. "Do I look like it, uncle? Bad news, indeed! No, but the best news in the world."
"What is it, my boy?"
"I am about to be married. You"ve often told me I ought to be, and now I"m going to act on your advice."
The bleak old face was smiling. "Then the rumour I see in the papers isn"t true, after all?"
"Oh, yes, it"s true enough, and my wife is to go with me."
"But have you considered that carefully? Isn"t it a terrible demand to make of any woman? Women are more religious than men, but they are more material also. Under the heat of religious impulse a woman is capable of sacrifices--great sacrifices--but when it has cooled----"
"No fear of that, uncle," said John; and then he told the Prime Minister what he had told Mrs. Callender--that it was Glory"s proposal that they should leave London, and that without this suggestion he might not have thought of his present enterprise. The bleak face kept smiling, but the Prime Minister was asking himself: "What does this mean? Has she _her own_ reasons for wishing to go away?"
"Do you know, my boy, that with all this talk you"ve not yet told me who she is?"
John told him, and then a faint and far-off rumour out of another world seemed to flit across his memory.
"An actress at present, you say?"
"So to speak, but ready to give up everything for this glorious mission."
"Very brave, no doubt, very beautiful; but what of your present responsibilities--your responsibilities in London?"
"That"s just what I came to speak about," said John; and then his rapturous face straightened, and he made some effort to plunge into the practical aspect of his affairs at Soho. There was his club for girls and his home for children. They were to be turned out of the clergy-house tomorrow, and he had taken a shelter at Westminster.
But the means to support them were still deficient, and if there was anything coming to him that would suffice for that purpose--if there was enough left--if his mother"s money was not all gone----
The Prime Minister was looking into John"s face, watching the play of his features, but hardly listening to what he said. "What does this mean?" he was asking himself, in the old habitual way of the man whose business it is to read the motives that are not revealed.
"So you are willing to leave London, after all, John?"
"Why not, uncle? London is nothing to me in itself, less than nothing; and if that brave girl to whom it is everything----"
"And yet six months ago I gave you the opportunity of doing so, and then----"
"Then my head was full of dreams, sir. Thank G.o.d, they are gone now, and I am awake at last!"
"But the Church--I thought your duty and devotion to the Church----"
"The Church is a chaos, uncle, a wreck of fragments without unity, principle, or life. No man can find foothold in it now without accommodating his duty and his loyalty to his chances of a livelihood.
It is a career, not a crusade. Once I imagined that a man might live as a protest against all this, but it was a dream, a vain and presumptuous dream."
"And then your woman movement----"
"Another dream, uncle! A whole standing army marshalled and equipped to do battle against the world"s sins toward woman could never hope for victory. Why? Because the enemy is ourselves, and only G.o.d can contend against a foe like that. He will, too! For the wrongs inflicted on woman by this wicked and immoral London G.o.d will visit it with his vengeance yet. I see it coming, it is not far off, and G.o.d help those----"
"But surely, my boy, surely it is not necessary to fly away from the world in order to escape from your dreams? Just when it is going to be good to you, too. It was kicking and cuffing and laughing at you only yesterday----"
"And to-morrow it would kick and cuff and laugh at me again. Oh, it is a cowardly and contemptible world, uncle, and happy is the man who wants nothing of it! He is its master, its absolute master, and everybody else is its wretched slave. Think of the people who are scrambling for fame and t.i.tles and decorations and invitations to court! They"ll all be in their six feet by two feet some-day. And then think of the rich men who hire detectives to watch over their children lest they should be stolen for sake of a ransom, while they themselves, like human mill-horses, go tramping round and round the safes which contain their securities!
Oh, miserable delusion, to think that because a nation is rich it is therefore great! Once I thought the Church was a refuge from this worst of the spiritual dangers of the age, and so it would have been if it had been built on the Gospel. But it isn"t; it loves the thrones of the world and bows down to the golden calf. Poverty! Give me poverty and let me renounce everything. Jesus, our blessed Jesus, he knew well what he was doing in choosing to be poor, and even as a man he was the greatest being that ever trod upon the earth."