Part 56 (1/2)

”It must be a dozen doors further on,” he said.

”It's the last house in the row,” murmured Gertie, in a weak voice. ”Is father looking out? Go and see.”

”My dear girl,” said Frank, ”do not be silly. Do remember your mother's letter.”

Then she suddenly turned on him, and if ever she was genuine she was in that moment.

”Frankie,” she whispered, ”why not take me away yourself? Oh! take me away! take me away!”

He looked into her eyes for an instant, and in that instant he caught again that glimpse as of Jenny herself.

”Take me away--I'll live with you just as you like!” She took him by his poor old jacket-lapel. ”You can easily make enough, and I don't ask--”

Then he detached her fingers and took her gently by the arm.

”Come with me,” he said. ”No; not another word.”

Together in silence they went the few steps that separated them from the house. There was a little garden in front, its borders set alternately with sea-sh.e.l.ls and flints. At the gate she hesitated once more, but he unlatched the gate and pushed her gently through.

”Oh! my gloves!” whispered Gertie, in a sharp tone of consternation. ”I left them in the shop next the A.B.C. in Wilton Road.”

Frank nodded. Then, still urging her, he brought her up to the door and tapped upon it.

There were footsteps inside.

”G.o.d bless you, Gertie. Be a good girl. I'll wait in the road for ten minutes, so that you can call me if you want to.”

Then he was gone as the door opened.

(II)

The next public appearance of Frank that I have been able to trace, was in Westminster Cathedral. Now it costs an extra penny at least, I think, to break one's journey from Hammersmith to Broad Street, and I imagine that Frank would not have done this after what he had said to Gertie about the difficulty connected with taking an omnibus, except for some definite reason, so it is only possible to conclude that he broke his journey at Victoria in an attempt to get at those gloves.

It seems almost incredible that Gertie should have spoken of her gloves at such a moment, but it really happened. She told me so herself. And, personally, on thinking over it, it seems to me tolerably in line (though perhaps the line is rather unusually prolonged) with all that I have been able to gather about her whole character. The fact is that gloves, just then, were to her really important. She was about to appear on the stage of family life, and she had formed a perfectly consistent conception of her part. Gloves were an integral part of her costume--they were the final proof of a sort of opulence and refinement; therefore, though she could not get them just then, it was perfectly natural and proper of her to mention them. It must not be thought that Gertie was insincere: she was not; she was dramatic. And it is a fact that within five minutes of her arrival she was down on her knees by her mother, with her face hidden in her mother's lap, crying her heart out.

By the time she remembered Frank and ran out into the street, he had been gone more than twenty minutes.

One of the priests attached to Westminster Cathedral happened to have a pause about half-past nine o'clock in his hearing of confessions. He had been in his box without a break from six o'clock, and he was extremely tired and stiff about the knees. He had said the whole of his office during intervals, and he thought he would take a little walk up and down the south aisle to stretch his legs.

So he unlatched the little door of his confessional, leaving the light burning in case someone else turned up; he slipped off his stole and came outside.

The whole aisle, it seemed, was empty, though there was still a sprinkling of folks in the north aisle, right across the great s.p.a.ce of the nave; and he went down the whole length, down to the west end to have a general look up the Cathedral.

He stood looking for three or four minutes.

Overhead hung the huge span of brickwork, lost in darkness, incredibly vast and mysterious, with here and there emerging into faint light a slice of a dome or the slope of some architrave-like dogmas from impenetrable mystery. Before him lay the immense nave, thronged now with close-packed chairs in readiness for the midnight Ma.s.s, and they seemed to him as he looked with tired eyes, almost like the bent shoulders of an enormous crowd bowed in dead silence of adoration. But there was nothing yet to adore, except up there to the left, where a very pale glimmer shone on polished marble among the shadows before the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament. There was one other exception; for overhead, against the half-lighted apse, where a belated sacristan still moved about, himself a shadow, busy with the last preparations of the High Altar--there burgeoned out the ominous silhouette of the vast hanging cross, but so dark that the tortured Christ upon it was invisible....