John was crushed. “Very well, sir, if that is your wish; only I thought
you said my rooms----Besides, the poor old thing fills her place as well
as Queen Victoria, and perhaps the angels are watching the one as much
as the other.”
Next day John Storm called to see the old woman at Martha's Vineyard,
and he saw the matron, the house doctor, and a staff nurse as well.
His adventure was known to everybody at the hospital. Once or twice he
caught looks of amused compassion, and heard a twitter of laughter. As
he stood by the bed, the old woman muttered: “I knoo ez it wuzn't the
work'us, my dear. He spoke to me friendly and squeedged my 'and.”
Coming through the wards he had looked for a face he could not see; but
just then he was aware of a young woman, in the print dress and white
apron of a nurse, standing in silence at the bed-head. It was Glory, and
her eyes were wet with tears.
“You mustn't do such things,” she said hoarsely; “I can't bear it,” and
she stamped her foot. “Don't you see that these people----”
But she turned about and was gone before he could reply. Glory was
ashamed for him. Perhaps she had been taking his part! He felt the blood
mounting to his face, and his cheeks tingling. Glory! His eyes were
swimming, and he dared not look after her; but he could have found it in
his heart to kiss the old bag of bones on the bed.
That night he wrote to the parson in the island: “Glory has left off
her home garments, and now looks more beautiful than ever in the white
simplicity of the costume of the nurse. Her vocation is a great one.
God grant she may hold on to it!” Then something about the fallacy
of ceremonial religion and the impossibility of pleasing God by such
religious formalities. “But if we have publicans and Pharisees now, even
as they existed in Christ's time, all the more service is waiting for
that man for whom life has no ambitions, death no terrors. I thank God I
am in a great measure dead to these things.... I will fulfil my promise
to look after Glory. My constant prayer is against Agag. It is so easy
for him to get a foothold in a girl's heart here. This great new world,
with its fashions, its gaieties, its beauty, and its brightness--no
wonder if a beautiful young girl, tingling with life and ruddy health,
should burn with impatience to fling herself into the arms of it. Agag
is in London, and as insinuating as ever.”
VI.
On Sunday morning his fellow-curate came to his room to accompany him
to church. The Rev. Joshua Golightly was a little man with a hook nose,
small keen eyes, scanty hair, and a voice that was something between
a whisper and a whistle. He bowed subserviently, and made meek little
speeches.
“I do trust you will not be disappointed with our church and service. We
do all we can to make them worthy of our people.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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