"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....

Yet surely that was right on this night, for who, of all those who were to adore presently the Child of joy, gave a thought to the Man of Sorrows? His Time was yet three months away....

As the priest stood there, looking and imagining, with that strange clarity of mind and intuition that a few hours in the confessional gives to even the dullest brain, he noticed the figure of a man detach itself from one of the lighted confessionals on the left and come down towards him, walking quickly and lightly. To his surprise, this young man, instead of going out at the northwest door, wheeled and came towards him.

He noticed him particularly, and remembered his dress afterwards: it was a very shabby dark blue suit, splashed with mud from the Christmas streets, very bulgy about the knees; the coat was b.u.t.toned up tightly round a m.u.f.fler that had probably once been white, and his big boots made a considerable noise as he came.

The priest had a sudden impulse as the young man crossed him.

"A merry Christmas," he said.

The young man stopped a moment and smiled all over his face, and the priest noticed the extraordinary serenity and pleasantness of the face--and that, though it was the face of a Poor Man, with sunken cheeks and lines at the corners of the mouth.

"Thank you, Father," he said. "The same to you."

Then he went on, his boots as noisy as ever, and turned up the south aisle. And presently the sound of his boots ceased.

The priest still stood a moment or two, looking and thinking, and it struck him with something of pleasure that the young man, though obviously of the most completely submerged tenth, had not even hesitated or paused, still less said one word, with the hope of a little something for Christmas' sake. Surely he had spoken, too, with the voice of an educated man.

He became suddenly interested--he scarcely knew why, and the impression made just by that single glimpse of a personality deepened every moment.... What in the world was that young man doing here?... What was his business up in that empty south aisle? Who was he? What was it all about?

He thought presently that he would go up and see; it was on his way back to the clergy-house, too. But when he reached the corner of the aisle and could see up it, there seemed to be no one there.

He began to walk up, wondering more than ever, and then on a sudden he saw a figure kneeling on the lower step of the chapel on the right, railed off and curtained now, where the Crib was ready to be disclosed two hours later.

It all seemed very odd. He could not understand why anyone should wish to pray before an impenetrable curtain. As he came nearer he saw it was his friend all right. Those boots were unmistakable. The young man was kneeling on the step, quite upright and motionless, his cap held in his hands, facing towards the curtain behind which, no doubt, there stood the rock-roofed stable, with the Three Personages--an old man, a maid and a new-born Child. But their time, too, was not yet. It was two hours away.

Priests do not usually stare in the face of people who are saying their prayers--they are quite accustomed to that phenomenon; but this priest (he tells me) simply could not resist it. And as he pa.s.sed on his noiseless shoes, noticing that the light from his own confessional shone full upon the man, he turned and looked straight at his face.

Now I do not understand what it was that he saw; he does not understand it himself; but it seems that there was something that impressed him more than anything else that he had ever seen before or since in the whole world.

The young man's eyes were open and his lips were closed. Not one muscle of his face moved. So much for the physical facts. But it was a case where the physical facts are supremely unimportant.... At any rate, the priest could only recall them with an effort. The point was that there was something supra-physical there--(personally I should call it supernatural)--that stabbed the watcher's heart clean through with one over whelming pang.... (I think that's enough.)

When the priest reached the Lady chapel he sat down, still trembling a little, and threw all his attention into his ears, determined to hear the first movement that the kneeling figure made behind him. So he sat minute after minute. The Cathedral was full of echoes--murmurous rebounds of the noises of the streets, drawn out and mellowed into long, soft, rolling tones, against which, as against a foil, there stood out detached, now and then, the sudden footsteps of someone leaving or entering a confessional, the short scream of a slipping chair--once the sudden noise of a confessional-door being opened and the click of the handle which turned out the electric light. And it was full of shadows, too; a monstrous outline crossed and recrossed the apse behind the High Altar, as the sacristan moved about; once a hand, as of a giant, remained poised for an instant somewhere on the wall beside the throne.

It seemed to the priest, tired and clear-brained as he was, as if he sat in some place of expectation--some great cavern where mysteries moved and pa.s.sed in preparation for a climax. All was hushed and confused, yet alive; and the dark waves would break presently in the glory of the midnight Ma.s.s.

He scarcely knew what held him there, nor what it was for which he waited. He thought of the lighted common-room at the end of the long corridor beyond the sacristy. He wondered who was there; perhaps one or two were playing billiards and smoking; they had had a hard day of it and would scarcely get to bed before three. And yet, here he sat, tired and over-strained, yet waiting--waiting for a disreputable-looking young man in a dirty suit and m.u.f.fler and big boots, to give over praying before a curtain in an empty aisle.

A figure presently came softly round the corner behind him. It was the priest whom he had heard leaving his confessional just now.

"Haven't you done yet?" whispered the new-comer, pausing behind his chair.

"Coming in a minute or two," he said.

The figure pa.s.sed on; presently a door banged like m.u.f.fled thunder somewhere beyond the sacristy, and simultaneously he heard a pair of boots going down the aisle behind.