And then he pictured a life of absolute self-sacrifice, which she was to
share with him. “You'll manage all money matters, Glory. You can't
think how I'm swindled. And then I'm such a donkey as far as money
goes--that's not far with me, you know. Ha, ha, ha! Who's to find it?
Ah, God pays his own debts. He'll see to that.”
They were to live under the church itself; to give bread to the hungry
and clothes to the naked; to set up their Settlement in the gaming-house
of the Sharkeys, now deserted and shut up; to take in the _un_deserving
poor-the people who had nothing to say for themselves, precisely those;
and thus they were to show that they belonged neither to the publicans
and sinners nor to the Scribes and Pharisees.
“Only let us get rid of self. Only let us show that self-interest never
enters our head in one single thing we do----” and meantime Glory, who
had turned her head aside with a lump in her throat, heard some one
behind them saying:
“Lawd, Jow, that's the curick and his dorg--'im as got pore Sharkey
took! See--'im with the laidy?”
“S'elp me, so it is! Another good man gorn to 'is gruel, and all 'long
of a bloomin' dorg.”
They walked round by the church. John was talking--rapturously at every
step, and Glory was dragging after him like a criminal going to the
pillory. At last they came out by Great Smith Street, and he cried:
“See, there's the house of God under its spider's web of scaffolding,
and here's the Broad Sanctuary--broad enough in all conscience! Look!”
A crowd of girls and men were trooping out of a place of entertainment
opposite, and there were screams and curses. “Look at 'im!” cried a
woman's voice. “There 'e is, the swine! And 'e was the ruin of me; and
now 'e's 'listed for a soldier and going off with another woman!”
“You're bleedin' drunk, that's what you are!” said a man's voice, “and
if you down't take kear I'll send ye 'ome on a dawer!”
“Strike me, will ye, ye dog? Do it! I dare you!”
“She ain't worth it, soldier--come along,” said another female voice,
whereupon the first broke into a hurricane of oaths; and a little
clergyman going by at the moment--it was the Rev. J. Golightly--said:
“Dear, dear! Are there no policemen about?” and so passed on, with his
tall wife tucked under his arm.
John Storm pressed through the crowd and came between the two who were
quarrelling. By the light of the lamp he could see them. The man was
Charlie Wilkes, in the uniform of a soldier; the woman, with the paint
running on her face, her fringe disordered, and her back hair torn down,
was Aggie Jones.
“We down't want no religion 'ere,” said Charlie, sneering.
“You'll get some, though, if you're not off quick!” said John. The man
looked round for the dog and a moment afterward he had disappeared.
Glory came up behind. “O Aggie, woman, is it you?” she said, and then
the girl began to cry in a drunken sob.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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