Part 2 (2/2)

”It will take us two generations to do it, my boy, but we'll alter the history of England.”

At fifty he was iron-gray, and had a head like a big owl.

Meanwhile the object of these grand preparations, the offspring of that loveless union, had a personality all his own. It seemed as if he had been built for a big man every way, and Nature had been arrested in the making of him. When people looked at his head they felt he ought to have been a giant, but he was far from rivalling the children of Anak. When they listened to his conversation they thought he might turn out to be a creature of genius, but perhaps he was only a man of powerful moods. The best strength of body and mind seemed to have gone into his heart. It may be that the sorrowful unrest of his mother and her smothered pa.s.sion had left their red stream in John Storm's soul.

When he was a boy he would cry at a beautiful view in Nature, at a tale of heroism, or at any sentimental ditty sung excruciatingly in the streets. Seeing a bird's nest that had been robbed of its eggs he burst into tears; but when he came upon the bleeding, broken sh.e.l.ls in the path, the tears turned to fierce wrath and mad rage, and he s.n.a.t.c.hed up a gun out of his father's room and went out to take the life of the offender.

On coming to the Isle of Man he noticed as often as he went to church that a little curly red-headed girl kept staring at him from the vicar's pew. He was a man of two-and-twenty, but the child's eyes tormented him.

At any time of day or night he could call up a vision of their gleaming brightness. Then his father sent him to Canada to watch the establishment of the Dominion, and when he came back he brought a Canadian canoe and an American yacht, and certain democratic opinions.

The first time he sailed the yacht in Manx waters he sighted a disabled boat and rescued two children. One of them was the girl of the vicar's pew, grown taller and more winsome. She nestled up to him when he lifted her into the yacht, and, without knowing why, he kept his arms about her.

After that he called his yacht the _Gloria_, in imitation of her name, and sometimes took the girl out on the sea. Notwithstanding the difference of the years between them, they had their happy boy and girl days together. In her white jersey and stocking-cap she looked every inch a sailor. When the wind freshened and the boat plunged she stood to the tiller like a man, and he thought her the sweetest sight ever seen in a c.o.c.kpit. And when the wind saddened and the boom came aboard she was the cheeriest companion in a calm. She sang, and so did he, and their voices went well together. Her favourite song was ”Come, La.s.ses and Lads”; his was ”John Peel”; and they would sing them off and on for an hour at a spell. Thus on a summer evening, when the bay was lying like a tired monster asleep, and every plash of an oar was echoing on the hills, the people on the land would hear them coming around the castle rock with their--

”D'ye ken John Peel, with his coat so gay?

D'ye ken John Peel at the break of day?

D'ye ken John P-e-e-l....”

For two years he amused himself with the child, and then realized that she was a child no longer. The pity of the girl's position took hold of him. This sunny soul with her sportfulness, her grace of many gifts, with her eyes that flashed and gleamed like lightning, with her voice that was like the warble of a bird, this golden-headed gipsy, this witch, this fairy--what was the life that lay before her? Pity gave place to a different feeling, and then he was aware of a pain in the breast when he thought of the girl. As often as her eyes lasted upon him he felt his face tingle and burn. He began to be conscious of an imprisoned side to his nature, the pa.s.sionate side, and he drew back afraid. This wild power, this tempest, this raging fire within, G.o.d only knew whither it was to lead him. And then he had given a hostage to fortune, or his father had for him.

From his father's gloomy house at Knockaloe, where the winds were ever droning in the trees, he looked over to Glenfaba, and it seemed to him like a little white cloud lit up by the suns.h.i.+ne. His heart was forever calling to the sunny spot over there, ”Glory! Glory!” The pity of it was that the girl seemed to understand everything, and to know quite well what kept them apart. She flushed with shame that he should see her wearing the same clothes constantly, and with head aside and furtive glances she talked of the days when he would leave the island for good, and London would take him and make much of him, and he would forget all about his friends in that dead old place. Such talk cut him to the quick. Though he had seen a deal of the world, he did not know much about the conversation of women.

The struggle was brief. He began to wear plainer clothes--an Oxford tweed coat and a flannel s.h.i.+rt--to talk about fame as an empty word, and to tell his father that he was superior to all stupid conventions.

His father sent him to Australia. Then the grown-up trouble of his life began.

He pa.s.sed through the world now with eyes open for the privations of the poor, and he saw everything in a new light. Unconsciously he was doing in another way what his mother had done when she flew to religion from stifled pa.s.sion. He had been brought up as a sort of imperialist democrat, but now he bettered his father's instructions. England did not want more Parliaments, she wanted more apostles. It was not by giving votes to a nation, but by strengthening the soul of a nation, that it became great and free. The man for the hour was not he who revolved schemes for making himself famous, but he who was ready to renounce everything, and if he was great was willing to become little, and if he was rich to become poor. There was room for an apostle--for a thousand apostles--who, being dead to the world's glory, its money or its calls, were prepared to do all in Christ's spirit, and to believe that in the renunciation, which was the ”secret” of Jesus, lay the only salvation remaining for the world.

He tramped through the slums of Melbourne and Sydney, and afterward through the slums of London, returned to the Isle of Man a Christian Socialist, and announced to his father his intention of going into the Church.

The old man did not fume and fly out. He staggered back to his room like a bullock to its pen after it has had its death-blow in the shambles.

In the midst of his dusty old bureau, with its labelled packets full of cuttings, he realized that twenty years of his life had been wasted. A son was a separate being, of a different growth, and a father was only the seed at the root that must decay and die.

Then he made some show of resistance.

”But with your talents, boy, surely you are not going to throw away your chances of a great name?”

”I care nothing for a great name, father,” said John. ”I shall win a greater victory than any that Parliament can give me.”

”But, my boy, my dear boy! one must either be the camel or the camel-driver; and then society----”

”I hate society, and society would hate me. It is only for the sake of the few G.o.dly men that G.o.d spares it as he spared Sodom for Lot's sake.”

Having braved this ordeal and nearly broken the heart of his old father, he turned for his reward to Glory. He found her at her usual haunt on the headlands.

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