The Christian | Page 7

his rubbings and his casts
he was as merry as an old sand-boy. Though they occupied the same
house, and her bedroom that faced the harbour was next to his little
musty study that looked over the scullery slates, he lived always in the
tenth century and she lived somewhere in the twentieth.
The imprisoned linnet was beating at the bars of its cage. Before she
was aware of it she wanted to escape from the sleepy old scene, and
had begun to be consumed with longing for the great world outside. On
summer evenings she would go up Peel Hill and lie on the heather,
where she had first seen John Storm, and watch the ships weighing
anchor in the bay beyond the old dead castle walls, and wish she were
going out with them--out to the sea and the great cities north and south.
But existence closed in ever-narrowing circles round her, and she could
see no way out. Two years passed, and at eighteen she was fretting that
half her life had wasted away. She watched the sun until it sank into the

sea, and then she turned back to Glenfaba and the darkened region of
the sky.
It was all the fault of their poverty, and their poverty was the fault of
the Church. She began to hate the Church; It had made her an orphan;
and when she thought of religion as a profession it seemed a selfish
thing anyway. If a man was really bent on so lofty an aim (as her own
father had been) he could not think of himself; he had to give up life
and love and the world, and then these always took advantage of him.
But people had to live in the world for all that, and what was the good
of burying yourself before you were dead?
Somehow her undefined wishes took shape in visions of John Storm,
and one day she heard he was home again. She went out on the hill that
evening and, being seen only by the gulls, she laughed and cried and
ran. It was just like poetry, for there he was himself lying on the edge
of the cliff near the very spot where she had been used to lie. On seeing
him she went more slowly, and began to poke about in the heather as if
she had seen nothing. He came up to her with both hands outstretched,
and then suddenly she remembered that she was wearing her old jersey,
and she flushed up to the eyes and nearly choked with shame. She got
better by-and-bye and talked away like a mill-wheel, and then fearing
he might think it was from something quite different, she began to pull
the heather and to tell him why she had been blushing. He did not laugh
at all. With a strange smile he said something in his deep voice that
made her blood run cold.
"But I'm to be a poor man myself in future, Glory. I've quarrelled with
my father. I'm going into the Church."
It was a frightful blow to her, and the sun went down like a shot. But it
burst open the bars of her cage for all that. After John Storm had found
a curacy in London and taken Orders, he told them at Glenfaba that
among his honorary offices was to be that of chaplain to a great West
End hospital. This suggested to Glory the channel of escape. She would
go out as a hospital nurse. It was easier said than done, for hospital
nursing was fashionable, and she was three years too young. With great
labour she secured her appointment as probationer, and with greater

labour still overcame the fear and affection of her grandfather. But the
old parson was finally appeased when he heard that Glory's hospital
was the same that John Storm was to be chaplain of, and that they
might go up to London together.

III.
"Dear Grandfather Of Me, And Everybody At Glenfaba: Here I am at
last, dears, at the end of my Pilgrim's Progress, and the evening and the
morning' are the first day. It is now eleven o'clock at night, and I am
about to put myself to bed in my own little room at the hospital of
Martha's Vineyard, Hyde Park, London, England.
"The captain was quite right; the morning was as fresh as his flattery,
and before we got far beyond the Head most of the passengers were
spread out below like the three legs of Man. Being an old sea-doggie
myself, I didn't give it the chance to make me sick, but went downstairs
and lay quiet in my berth and deliberated great things. I didn't go up
again until we got into the Mersey,