Part 70 (1/2)

”Hold your tongue, Glory! n.o.body wants your tea! Let us hear the story,”

said Rosa.

”Why, yes, certainly,” said Lord Robert, and everybody laughed again.

”She was all for travel and triumphal processions in those days----”

Glory stopped her ears and began to sing:

w.i.l.l.y, w.i.l.l.y Wilkin, Kissed the maid a-milkin'!

Fa, la la!

”There were so many things people could do if they wouldn't waste so much time working----”

w.i.l.l.y, w.i.l.l.y Wilkin Kissed the maid----

”Glory, if you don't be quiet we'll turn you out!” and Rosa got up and nourished her proofs.

”I had brought my dog, and when I called her a----”

But Glory had leaped to her feet and fled from the room. Drake had leaped up also, and now, putting his back against the door, he raised his voice and went on with his story.

”Somebody saved us, though, and she lay in his arms and kissed him all the way home again.”

Glory was strumming on the door and singing to drown his voice. When the story was ended and she was allowed to come back she was panting and gasping with laughter, but there were tears in her eyes for all that, and Lord Robert was saying, with a sidelong look toward John Storm, ”Really, this ought to be a scene in the new Sigurdsen, don't you know!”

John had retired within himself during this nonsense. He had been feeling an intense hatred of the two men, and was looking as gloomy as deep water. ”All acting, sheer acting,” he thought, and then he told himself that Glory was only worthy of his contempt. What could attract her in the society of such men? Only their wealth, and their social station. Their intellectual and moral atmosphere must weary and revolt her.

Rosa had to go to her newspaper office, and Drake saw her to the door.

John rose at the same time, and Glory said, ”Going already?” but she did not try to detain him. She would see him again; she had much to say to him. ”I suppose you were surprised to hear that I had returned to London?” she said, looking up at his knitted brows.

He did not answer immediately, and Lord Robert, who was leaning against the chimney-piece, said in his cold drawl, ”Your friend ought to be happy that you have returned to London, seems to me, my dear, instead of wasting your life in that wilderness.”

John drew himself up. ”It's not London I object to,” he said; ”that was inevitable, I dare say.”

”What then?”

”The profession she has come back to follow.”

”Why, what's amiss with the profession?” said Lord Robert, and Drake, who returned to the room at the moment, said: ”Yes, what's amiss with it? Some of the best men in the world have belonged to it, I think.”

”Tell me the name of one of them, since the world began, who ever lived an active Christian life.”

Lord Robert made a kink of laughter, and, turning to the window, began to play a tune with his finger tips on the gla.s.s of a pane. Drake struggled to keep a straight face, and answered, ”It is not their role, sir.”

”Very well, if that's too much to ask, tell me how many of them have done anything in real life, anything for the world, for humanity--anything whatever, I don't care what it is.”

”You are unreasonable, sir,” said Drake, ”and such objections could as properly apply to the professions of the painter and the musician. These are the children of joy. Their first function is to amuse. And surely amus.e.m.e.nt has its place in real life, as you say.”

”On the contrary,” said John, following his own thought, for he had not listened, ”how many of them have lived lives of reckless abandonment, self-indulgence, and even scandalous license!”