Part 23 (1/2)
”Get yoursel' some flesh on your bones first, man. It's easy to see ye've no been sleeping or eating these days and days together.”
”That's nothing--nothing at all. G.o.d can not take half your soul. You must give yourself entirely.”
”Eh, laddie, laddie, I feared me this was what ye were coming til. But a man can not bury himself before he is dead. He may bury the half of himself, but is it the better half? What of his thoughts--his wandering thoughts? Choose for yoursel', though, and if you must go--if you must hide yoursel' forever, and this is the last I'm to see of ye--ye may kiss me, laddie--I'm old enough, surely.--Go on, James, man, what for are ye sitting up there staring?”
When John Storm returned to his room he found a letter from Parson Quayle. It was a good-natured, cackling epistle, full of sweet nothings about Glory and the hospital, about Peel and the discovery of ancient ruins in the graveyards of the treen chapels, but it closed with this postscript:
”You will remember old Chalse, a sort of itinerant beggar and the privileged pet of everybody. The silly old gawk has got hold of your father and has actually made the old man believe that you are bewitched!
Some one has put the evil eye on you--some woman it would seem--and that is the reason why you have broken away and behaved so strangely! It is most extraordinary. That such a foolish superst.i.tion should have taken hold of a man like your father is really quite astonis.h.i.+ng, but if it will only soften his rancour against you and help to restore peace we may perhaps forgive the distrust of Providence and the outrage on common sense. All's well that ends well, you know, and we shall all be happy.”
XIX.
”Martha's.
”Lost, stolen, or strayed--a man, a clergyman, answers to the name of John Storm. Or rather he does not answer, having allowed himself to be written to twice without making so much as a yap or a yowl by way of reply. Last seen six days ago, when he was suffering from the sulks, after being in a de'il of a temper, with a helpless and innocent maiden who 'doesn't know nothin',' that can have given him offence. Any one giving information of his welfare and whereabouts to the said H. and I.
M. will be generously and appropriately rewarded.
”But, soberly, my dear John Storm, what has become of you? Where are you, and whatever have you been doing since the day of the dreadful inquisition? Frightful rumours are flying through the air like knives, and they cut and wound a poor girl woefully. Therefore be good enough to reply by return of post--and in person.
”Meantime please accept it as a proof of my eternal regard that after two knock-down blows received in silence I am once more coming up smiling. Know, then, that Mr. Drake has justified all expectations, having compelled Lord Robert to provide for Polly, who is now safely ensconced in her own country castle somewhere in St. John's Wood, furnished to hand with servants and va.s.sals complete. Thus you will be charmed to observe in me the growth of the prophetic instinct, for you will remember my positive prediction that if a girl were in trouble, and the necessity arose, Mr. Drake would be the first to help her. Of course, he had a great deal to say that was as sweet as syrup on the loyalty of my own friends.h.i.+p also, and he expended much beautiful rhetoric on yourself as well. It seems that you are one of those who follow the impulse of the heart entirely, while the rest of us divide our allegiance with the head; and if you display sometimes the severity of a tyrant of our s.e.x, that is only to be set down as another proof of your regard and of the elevation of the pedestal whereon you desire us to be placed. Thus he reconciles me to the harmony of the universe, and makes all things easy and agreeable.
”This being the case, I have now to inform you that Polly's baby has come, having hastened his arrival (it is a man, bless it!) owing either to the tears or the terrors of the crocodile. And being on night duty now, and therefore at liberty from 6.30 to 8.30, I intend to pay him my first call of ceremony this evening, when anybody else would be welcome to accompany me who might be willing to come to his shrine of innocence and love in the spirit of the wise men of the East. But, lest anybody _should_ inquire for me at the hospital at the first of the hours aforesaid, this is to give warning that the White Owl has expressly forbidden all intercourse between the members of her staff and the discharged and dishonoured mother. Set it down to my spirit of contradiction that I intend to disregard the mandate, though I am only too well aware that the poor discharged and dishonoured one has no other idea of friends.h.i.+p than that of a loyalty in which she shares but is not sharing. Of course, woman is born to such selfishness as the sparks fly upward; but if I should ever meet with a man who isn't I will just give myself up to him--body and soul and belongings--unless he has a wife or other enc.u.mbrance already and is booked for this world, and in that event I will enter into my own recognisances and be bound over to him for the next. Glory.”
At six-thirty that evening Glory stood waiting in the portico of the hospital, but John Storm did not come. At seven she was ringing at the bell of a little house in St. John's Wood that stood behind a high wall and had an iron grating in the garden door. The bell was answered by a good-natured, slack-looking servant, who was friendly, and even familiar in a moment.
”Are you the young lady from the hospital? The missis told me about you.
I'm Liza, and come upstairs--Yes, doing nicely, thank you, both of 'em is--and mind your head, miss.”
Polly was in a little bandbox of a bedroom, looking more pink and white than ever against the linen of her frilled pillow slips. By the bedside a woman of uncertain age in deep mourning, with little twinkling eyes and fat cheeks, was rocking the baby on her knee and babbling over it in words of maudlin endearment.
”Bless it, 'ow it do notice! Boo-loo-loo!”
Glory leaned over the little one and p.r.o.nounced it the prettiest baby she had ever seen.
”Syme 'ere miss. There ain't sech another in all London! It's jest the sort of baby you can love. Pore little thing, it's quite took to me already, as if it wanted to enkirridge you, my dear.”
”This is Mrs. Jupe,” said Polly, ”and she's going to take baby to nurse.”
”Boo-loo-loo-boo! And a nice new cradle's awaiting of it afront of the fire in my little back parlour. Boo-loo!”
”But surely you're never going to part with your baby!” said Glory.
”Why, what do you suppose, dear? Do you think I'm going to be tied to a child all my days, and never be able to go anywhere or do anything or amuse myself at all?”
”Jest that. It'll be to our mootual benefit, as I said when I answered your advertis.e.m.e.nt.”