Part 8
"No. That is for others.--There are many others, and each of them must have a turn at the pleasant things. When you have lived in the community only a short time, you begin to understand that.... And when you have lived in it only a little longer you learn that between the pleasant duties and the unpleasant duties there is no difference, whatever. Nothing being done that is not done for God. When I was scrubbing the desks in the Little Class to-day,--there are seventy children, and the tiny ones come in with muddy boots from the garden in wet weather, and splash the ink over everything,--I was dusting the Altar.... When I was washing the slates I was washing the Feet of Christ. It is no matter what we do as long as it is nothing to be ashamed of--and is done with a right intention! ... The lowest service counts as the highest in the sight of Almighty God. It is one of the great mysteries of Faith that this should be so. But it is so! ... There's the first bell for Benediction!"
It was too late now. But even as she rose with that wonderful look in the calm face framed in by the triple row of little starched frills, and took his hand and led him to the door, P. C. Breagh realized that he ought from the first to have told the truth to her.
The parlor door led them into the corridor upon the boarders' side. She guided him along it, left him at the entrance of the chapel, pressed his hand, whispered "Good-bye for now!" and vanished through a curtained archway on the right hand, communicating with the cloister, possibly.
He entered the chapel. A small portion of the nave, near the west door, was open to the public. Some dozen worshipers, chiefly elderly ladies, knelt or sat upon the rush-bottomed chairs. Beyond, a high, wrought-iron grille partitioned off the capacious choir, separated from the cloisters upon either hand by the tall carved screen that backed the rows of stalls. And the dying daylight of the January afternoon shone through high windows, stained in hues tender as flower-petals or brilliant as jewels, depicting the various scenes in the life of the Virgin Mother of Christ.
The second bell had not yet rung for Benediction as Carolan bent the knee and slipped into a chair near the central gate of the grille. The place was full of the presence and perfume of flowers, and the spice of incense burned at the morning Mass. Tapers tall and short blazed on the High Altar, and a nun in purple habit and creamy veil knelt at a faldstool, absorbed in adoration of the Throned Mystery of Faith. Within the space of a Paternoster the second bell rang. The choir-sister rose, knelt in adoration, moved her stool carefully aside, and went out by a side-door in the sanctuary. And a sound as of many moving waters began to grow upon the ear. A curtain was drawn that masked an archway upon the farther side of the grille upon the right side: there was the invariable convent signal of a hand-clap, and two girlish shapes, in long white muslin veils over dark uniform dresses, entered together; and went to the bottom of the broad aisle between the rows of benches, moving sedately side by side. One wore a pale blue, the other a crimson ribbon supporting a silver medal. One was of solid Teutonic build, with magnificent plaits of golden hair, vivid red and white coloring, and rather stiff, if dignified, bearing. The other--a slender creature of stature almost childlike, yet with womanly coils of duskiness shot through with a tortoiseshell arrow, seemed insignificant as she walked beside her stately white-veiled mate. And yet, it was not walking, but gliding, hovering, floating ... such airy grace of movement as P. C. Breagh had never dreamed of,--Britomart-Krimhilde-Brünhilde having covered the ground with the magnificent indolence of a glacier, or traversed it with the overwhelming rush of an avalanche, when the exigencies of some imaginary scene of passion had compelled her to "fly from her conqueror's presence," or "impetuously gain his side." Now for the first time her inventor found himself wavering.... Was his heroic ideal too Titanic, too colossal, too big and too clumsy? Would it not be just as well to shorten her by half a dozen superfluous inches--reduce her superabundant flesh? And if at the same time one were to darken her dandelion tresses?--tone down the staring china-blue of her eyes into----
What was the color? The blue of the spring flower or the blue of the sapphire? ... You never knew until she looked at you ... and then you weren't certain ... you kept wanting her to look again! Meek or tigress-like, in whatever mood you found her, you would always be wanting Juliette to look, and look again.
The revelation of his monstrous folly, the knowledge of his faithlessness came in the instant of recognition, hit him like a seventh wave and bowled him off his mental legs.
Before he had recovered, the white-veiled hovering figure had vanished. The aisle had noiselessly filled with a great procession of similar figures, standing motionless, waiting, two by two. There was a second clap of hands,--and the white-veiled column knelt in adoration. At a third signal they rose and slowly filed into their seats. And a second double line of younger girls, the Middle Class, also white-veiled and white-gloved, formed in the place of them, and the orderly, impressive maneuver was repeated by these. Little children took their places, and did as their seniors. A noble voluntary burst from the organ in the high-placed loft, and the purple-habited, creamy-veiled choir-sisters poured in and took their stalls, and the lay-sisters and novices followed, filling the great choir to overflowing, as the door of the vestry was opened by a sweet-faced child in a red cassock and white cotta, and the vested priest, a scholarly-looking, gray-haired man, came in and went to his place. And the strains from the organ changed, and a voice fresh and sweet as a thrush's, passionless-pure as an angel's, began to chant _O Salutaris_,--and something like a sob broke from P. C. Breagh's throat, and hot tears came crowding, and one at least fell.
He had been shipwrecked, and here was a little green-palmed islet of peace to rest on--his only for a moment, but a moment in which to gather strength, and breath to face the raging seas again. His mood changed. He was glad he had not told Monica that he was homeless, half-clothed, and all but penniless in big, black, brutal, noisy London, and would have to water cab-horses, or sweep a crossing, or clean boots to keep alive.
Ah, what was it Monica had said? Without her knowing it those words had been somehow meant for Carolan. Let's see--how did they go? ... Something this way....
"_It is no matter what we do, as long as it is nothing to be ashamed of, and is done with a right intention. The lowest service counts as the highest in the sight of Almighty God. It is one of the great mysteries of Faith that this should be so. But it is so!_"
"I--see!"
He had sheltered his shamed and burning face in his big hands. But with that ray of inward light had come courage and resourcefulness. He lifted his head bravely now and drew in a deep chestful of the sweet, warm, pleasant air.
"Perhaps the money was spoiling me!--making me look to it instead of to myself--and I've been stripped and pitched into deep water as the big fellows used to do to us little chaps, when we funked. Perhaps this is for the best--and I'll find it so one day. Perhaps I can make up for some of the caddish things I've done--refusing that girl's offered help so savagely among 'em--by taking this thing well! Facing what there is to face--and putting up with what I've got to. Well, I'll have a shot at it!" said P. C. Breagh to P. C. Breagh. "I'll do nothing that I'm ashamed of--and be ashamed of nothing that's honest; I'll labor for my daily bread--and for my nightly bed,--with these hands and shoulders,--if nobody will pay me for my brains!--And what I do I'll do cheerfully. Shall I kick at sweeping a crossing, when He was a carpenter?"
It seemed to him that he had not prayed, and yet he had without knowing it. The Benediction seemed to fall on him like dew. He went out by the west door with the small congregation, and found himself in the foggy London square within sound of the roaring traffic of the London streets, with a return of the old hideous shrinking. A sensation paralleled by that of the shipwrecked castaway who has found brief resting-place upon the tiny coral atoll and must perforce commit himself, upon his crazy raft of planks and hencoops, to the shark-infested, treacherous Pacific seas again.
XII
He strolled up a short street, and looked for and found a roomy, double bow-fronted house of warm old red brick, with huge capacious areas. "Vanity Fair" had been written there, he knew, perhaps "Esmond" too, though he was not sure. He took off his hat to the memory of the magician, and wondered where his other idol, the still living author of the "Cloister and the Hearth," and "Never Too Late to Mend" might be run to earth, and made up his mind to see Dickens's grave in Westminster Abbey on the morrow, whether it cost sixpence, or whether it did not.... And then he wavered, sixpence, as we know, being the moiety of his capital; and then he remembered that to-morrow could only be reached by the bridge of to-night. He walked very fast for some distance, trying to exorcise the demons that this thought evoked, and,--blinded by their buzzing and stinging--was in Piccadilly before he knew. The high railings of the Green Park, and the foggy solitude of the gravel-walks between the wintry lawns, tempted him to turn in and rest upon a seat a while, for he was still somewhat giddy and shaky, and the bump so confidently prophesied by the Infanta had appeared upon his brow.
He took off the old felt wideawake and stared at Piccadilly, brilliant with the paroquet-colors of passing omnibuses, green and royal blue, chocolate and white-and-gold. Behind the shining windows of the great Clubs, the members' heads, gleamingly bald, or affluent of hair and whiskers, alternately appeared and vanished. He caught brief passing glimpses of white-bosomed waiters, ... the twinkle of gilt buttons on livery coats.... Beer-drays, driven by burly red-faced men, frequently in shirt-sleeves, went by with a whiff of malt, and the thunder of heavy hoofs. Vans of business-houses passed with a clang of bells. Victorias and landaus with muffled, and furred, and veiled ladies in them; shut-up broughams, madly-daring velocipedists on the machine of the era, a giant wheel followed by a pigmy one, made fleeting pictures on the retina of P. C. Breagh. And the double river of traffic, and the eastward and westward-flowing stream of pedestrians went by without a break in them. Gas-lamps began to make islands of yellow light upon the fog, but showed no dwindling in their numbers. He wondered if they would go on like this all night? And then some one came up and sat down on the other end of the seat rather heavily, and the slight resultant shock and jar brought round P. C. Breagh's head.
He saw the thick-set, rather lax and round-shouldered figure of a man of middle age, dressed in a suit of tweeds patterned in giant checks of black and white and gray, the _dernier cri_ in masculine morning-wear, had the observer but known it. His hat, a low-crowned chimney-pot in hard gray felt, was tilted backward, his hair, of a pale tow-color, tufted out from beneath the hat in a way that cried for the attention of the barber; his whiskers, and mustache, of the same shade as the hair, were raggedly in need of the shears. He wore a buttonhole-bouquet composed of a pink camellia with Neapolitan violets, and pale lemon kid gloves, and sucked the carved ivory knob of an ebony stick he carried, until,--upon his neighbor's looking round as above recorded,--he took it from a somewhat lax and swollen mouth, and observed that it was a nice afternoon. Adding, as P. C. Breagh made a sound which might have been assent or denial:
"If it is affernoon? Without my fellow to post me, I'm apt to be wrong about time. Not that that's remarable. Lots of people the same, don't you know? Nothing extra--nothing ex--oh, damn!"
A covert anxiety--and a very visible tremulousness were combined in the speaker's manner. His large watery blue eyes were painfully vague and blurred, with distended pupils that looked uneven; his gestures were uncertain, and his words, well chosen enough, and uttered with the tone and accent usually distinctive of a gentleman, came haltingly from a tongue that seemed to be too large for its owner's mouth:
"You don't regard it as extra ... Stop a minute!" A pause ensued, during which the vague-eyed gentleman waited, clutching his stick with both hands, and holding his swollen mouth ajar. And when he shut the mouth to shake his head, and looked at P. C. Breagh in the act of doing this, the perspiration shone upon his puffy cheeks and stood in beads upon his reddened forehead, as though it had been July instead of a foggy afternoon in January, and the pink-bordered cambric handkerchief with which he wiped his worried face became, after this usage, a very rag. And a queer, unwillingly-yielded-to sense of commiseration prompted Carolan to suggest:
"'Extraordinary' was the word you wanted, wasn't it?"
"Much obliged! The word, unnoutedly! 'Stror'nary how words do dodge one on occasion!" returned the uncertain gentleman in the large-patterned tweeds. He added, pulling at the ragged light mustache, with a gloved hand that was decidedly shaky: "I don't know that it matters parricurarly--but I'd prefer you to know that I'm not runk!"
"Not--what?..."
"Not runk!" repeated the vague-eyed gentleman emphatically. "Not cut, foozled, miffed, fizzed, screwed! Not that it's oblig--that's another of the words that perretually queer me!--or incumment on me to isplain, but I regard it as due to myself, by Gad! that you should clearly unnerstand the case. As I said to the manuscript upon the Bench when the bobby ran me in on Thursday--or was it Friray? ... Appearances are sally against me, but I have never been a rinking man! The doctors have a crajjaw name for my connition, which under the exissing circ--and that's another of the words that play the deuce and all with me! ... Look at my westick, buttoned all wrong!"
He slewed round upon the seat, and throwing back the large-patterned, fashionably cut-away coat, exhibited the garment mentioned, every buttonhole of which afforded hospitality to a button not its own. His necktie, the ample, sailor-knotted necktie of the period, was under his left ear, and his shirt had come unstudded. Being appealed to, P. C. Breagh admitted that the existing condition of things left something to be desired!
"When a man entirely ripends on valets and domessicks," explained his incoherent neighbor, "a man is apt to be neglected and so on. As a marrer of fact I live in that little joppa cottisit!" He waveringly pointed to a large, handsome private dwelling with an ornate portico, situated nearly opposite, and sandwiched between two Clubs. "An' as a narrural conquicense of my temorrary irrability to pronounce words of the most orinary nature, I am----" He drew an aimless figure in the muddy gravel with his ivory-topped, ebony stick, and went on with a weak laugh, "I am absoluly neglected by my own househol'. My own children seem ashamed or afray of me--all but Little Foxhall--splendid little chap is Little Foxhall! But his mother--my wife----" He broke off to say--"You will escuse my touching on these priva' matters in conversation with a perfec' stranger. I am quite conscience I trepsass against the orinary usages of propriety, especially in speaking of my wife! ... But--the fact is, sir! I am most desperately wretched. Six people imagine me runk--out of every half-dozen. While the other six--the irriots whisser it when they think I'm out of earshock--suppose me to be suffrig from Sofrig of the Bray!"
He began to tremble and shake, and put his stick between his knees to hold on to the edge of the seat with his lemon-kidded hands--and couldn't hold the stick in that position, and it fell, and P. C. Breagh picked it up and put it back.
"I am murrabliged," said the owner of the stick, "by your kind attention!" Something struggled and fought in the vague blue eyes that he turned upon Carolan,--it seemed as though in another moment Fear and Terror might have leaped glaring into sight. "And while I am boun' to ajopolize for thrussing my privarrafairs upon a stranger--I feel bound to put the quession; Why should thissorathing happen to ME? Goolor'! I've been no worse than lossa urra fellers!" He rose up shaking, and shakily sat down again, nearly missing the bench.
"Bessaran loss of 'em--if you come to that!" He turned to Carolan, and the vague eyes were piteous and desperate.... "You see the sort of chap my luck--my damble luck--has made o' me! Yet I used to be envied--envied ... you unnerstand! I have belonged to the best regiment in the Brigade of Guards--the devil another! I have played the bes' cards, driven the bes' turnouts, smoked the bes' cigars and had the most stunnin' women! Do you unnerstand me?--Have!" He brought down the uncertain hand in an attempt to strike his knee emphatically, and missed it; and tried to look as though he had not, and went on: "And I have belonged to the best gloves, by Gad! an' put on the clubs with the most celebrarred li'-weights! And I rode my steeplechase at York, and romped in first, and they toasted and speechified me at the Gimcrack dinner. And I won my Oaks and my Derby--and led in the winner, with all the cheeple reering;--the seeple peering--the--Goolor'! Goolor'! And the horse was Gladianor--and the victory was a popular one--and my name was a household word through the Unirred Kingom. A household word!..." He broke off, trembling and sweating, as the horse might have done after the race, and put the wavering hand to his head, and turned his empty blue eyes from Carolan's as though they hurt. "What was my name?" he asked himself in a dull, thick, shaky whisper, "Goolor'! Goolor'! What was my name? ... That you, Murchison?"
For a decent figure in the irreproachable dark clothing of a servant out of livery had passed and turned back, and now approached the bench, eyeing Carolan suspiciously even in the act of uncovering its well-brushed head, and saying in the smooth accents of servility:
"It is Murchison, your Grace. It's cold, your Grace, and you've not got on an overcoat. Your Grace had best come home now, before your Grace is missed!..."
"Home?" His Grace looked mildly from the authoritative Murchison to the stately "cottage opposite," and one of the uncertain hands in the pale lemon kid gloves, making as though to pluck at an untrimmed whisker, found itself imprisoned in a deferential but vigorous grip.
"Home, your Grace!" said Murchison, applying muscular leverage to raise the inert figure.
"All right. Prass I better, Murchison!" He rose to the perpendicular.... "Wish you a very good evening, sir!" With a faded reminiscence of what might have been a courtly manner, he touched his hat to P. C. Breagh, who returned the farewell greeting, avoiding the sharp glance of Murchison. Then valet and master moved off, leaving a little trail of dialogue behind them:
"You give us the fair slip that time, your Grace!..."
"Perhass I did, Murchison--now you happen to mention it."
"Might have been killed crossing Piccadilly, your Grace, and none of us the wiser."
"Goolor'! I'd wish I had, Murchison--if it wasn't for Little Foxhall!" ... Then in a high, quavering note of eagerness, the plea, pitiable and ridiculous and pathetic: "I--I say! ... Tell me the boy'd have minded, Murchison--whass a lie to you, you dam' smoo'-ranged Ananias!--and I'll give you my nex' week's sovereign--I'm dead broke now!"
And Murchison and His Grace went away together, the man steering, with deft guiding touches of the master's elbow, the latter stepping high and bringing his feet down with a peculiar thump that threw a light upon the situation in the eyes of P. C. Breagh. Not softening of the brain.... _Donnerwetter!_ what were the London doctors thinking of? Had none of them read the "Dissertation on Tabes Dorsalis" of the Herr Doctor Max Baumgarten, published in Berlin only a twelvemonth previously, and dealing fully with that rare and curious disease of the nervous system? ... Fibrous degeneration of the posterior columns of the spinal cord, affecting the patient's sight, gait, and--in isolated cases--speech and memory.
"I'd like to have got him to let me rap his shins! Bet you anything there'd have been total absence of reflex action! Remember that peddler in the Nervous Ward of the Augusta Hospital at Schwärz-Brettingen! ... They cured that chap with spinal injections and regular massage. And this man--being a thundering swell and having the best advice possible--is naturally being treated all wrong! Hang it!--how cold I am! Better be moving!" He got up and stamped some warmth into his cold feet and flailed his cold ribs with his elbows until they tingled again. He had learned something of the wretchedness that may sometimes dwell in princely homes, yet be homeless; and fare delicately from plate of gold and silver, and yet go hungry,--and lie down to toss and stare through dreadful sleepless nights on soft luxurious beds. Therefore the bright reflections of great fires dancing on the plate-glass windows of the "cottage opposite" stung him to no comparisons. "Is it base in me that the knowledge of the misery of this wealthy nobleman makes me more contented with my own obscure poverty?" he asked himself, and the answer was: "_Not if your content does not make you callous to his woe!_"
"I hope that Little Foxhall would have minded!" he found himself saying; "and I wish to Heaven Baumgarten could get a chance of doing something for his father! I've half a mind to drop a postcard to him--or write a line to the Herr Professor! ... Stop, though!"
He remembered that he must break into his last remaining shilling to buy the postcard and pay for the stamps. Then he swung out through the Park side-gates, and now he was one of the crowd rolling Circus-wards, and all the street gas-lamps had been lighted by certain officials with poles, furnished with hooks for keying the gas on, and perforated iron sockets filled with blazing tow that had been soaked in naphtha; thus every shop or restaurant became an Aladdin's cave of brilliancy, and the down-drawn blinds of the houses and clubs hid splendor unspeakable--if only one had been able to pull them up....