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The Christian, a novel by Hall Caine |
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Book 2. The Religious Life - Chapter 16 |
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_ SECOND BOOK. THE RELIGIOUS LIFE CHAPTER XVI "The Priory, St. John's Wood, London. "Behold, all men and women at Glenfaba, I have made one further change in my role of female Wandering Jew! You have to think of Glory now, dear people, in a nice house in St. John's Wood, though there is no wood anywhere visible except the park, where they keep all the wild beasts in London--all that go on four legs, you know. The master of the mansion is Mr. Carl Koenig, a dear old hippopotamus who is five-feet-nothing in his boots, and has piercing black eyes and an electroplated mustache. He is a sort of an English-German-Dutch-Polish musician. When he talks of himself as an organist he is always a little John Bull, being F. R. C. O. and lots of things besides; when he speaks of 'Vaterland' he is a German; when he mentions the sea he is a Dutchman; and when he is in good spirits (or they are in him) he sings 'Poland is not lost forever!' all over the house until you sometimes wish it were. "His wife is an Englishwoman, about forty or more, with big, moist, doggy eyes that give you an idea of slave-humility, and an unappreciated and undeveloped soul. There never were two married folk less alike, she being one of those silent creatures who come into a room and sit and listen and never speak, except to give instructions to the maids, while he is always cackling like an old hen who can never lay an egg without letting the whole world know all about it. They have two female servants--both beautiful Cockneys--besides a boy in the garden, and a parrot that holds forth all over the place; and their house is the rendezvous of all kinds and conditions of great people, for Mr. Koenig himself is a sort of Gideon's lamp among 'pros' of nearly every order. "And now you want to know how I come to be here. You are to learn then that Mr. Koenig happened to be one of my patients in the hospital, he having gone there for a slight operation, and I having helped to nurse him through what he calls his 'operatic cure.' In the course of that ordeal he had music of a less excruciating kind sometimes, it seems, and after his return home he searched for me all over London on account of my voice, and finding me unexpectedly at last he sent his wife to Mrs. Jupe's to fetch me, and--and here I am in a dainty little dimity room, whose walls are covered with portraits of well-known singers, violinists, pianists, and composers, with their affectionate inscriptions underneath. "But you want to learn why I am here. Well, you must know that Mr. Koenig (although a foreign musician) is organist of All Saints', Belgravia, where they sing a solo anthem at nearly every Sunday morning service; and having had various disappointments at the hands of vocal soloists from the Opera, whose 'professional engagements suddenly intervened,' he conceived the audacious idea of 'intervening' a woman to do their duty permanently. So this is my position in the church at which John Storm used to be curate, and once a week I pipe that his old enemy the canon may play. But as that good man is of St. Paul's opinion about women holding their tongues in the synagogue, and is blest with just enough ear to know a contralto from a corn-crake, I have to be hidden away behind a screen in order that his reverence may have all the fun to himself of believing me to be a boy. "So you see, my dearies, you needn't be anxious about me, 'at all at all', seeing that I am living in this atmosphere of art and the odour of sanctity, and that I have kept only one tiny little thing back, and I am going to tell you that now. You were afraid that I might go too often to the theatre, Aunt Anna. Never mind, auntie, I shall not be going so very often now, and in proof thereof permit me to introduce myself in my future style and character--Miss Glory Quayle, the eminent social entertainer! You don't know what that is, dear people? It is quite simple and innocent, nevertheless. I am to go to the houses of smart people when they give their grand parties and sing and recite, and so forth. Nothing wrong, you see--only what I used to do at Glenfaba. "You must know that, just as in the country the men go to the smithy when they have nothing more pressing on hand than to settle the affairs of the universe, and the women to the mangle-house when they have to mangle other things besides clothes, so in the towns the poor rich people have their own particular diversion, which they call their 'At Homes.' Mr. Drake used to tell me they were terrible Tower-of-Babel concerns, at which everybody talked at once, and all the tongues in the place went 'click-clack, world without end.' But they must be perfectly charming for all that; and when I think of the dresses and the diamonds and the titles as long as your breath--oh, dear! oh, dear! "I shall see it all soon, I suppose, for to supply the place of the hammer and the anvil the smart folks always add musical accompaniment to the confusion of tongues, and Mr. Koenig, who has a choral company, goes to the cream of the cream of such gatherings, and sings and plays from Grieg and Schumann, and Liszt and Wagner, and Chopin and Paderewski, and the place intended for me in this grand organization would appear to be that of jester to my lords and ladies. '_Ach Gott!_' says Mr. Koenig, who 'speaks ver' bad de Englisch,' 'your great people vant de last new ting. One lady she say to me, "Dear Mr. Koenig, I tink I shall not ask you dis season. I hear you everyvheres I go to, and I get so tired of peoples." But vhen I takes anoder wis me I am a new beesness. You shall sing and recite your leetle funny tings. Your great people tink dey loof music, but dey loof better to laugh. "For mercy's sake make dem laugh, Mr. Koenig"--dat's vhat a great man say to me. But, my gootness, how can I? I am a musician, I am a composer, I am an arteeste!' "For this high and noble office I have been going through a purgatory of preparation in which I have sometimes hardly known whether I was a hurdy-gurdy or an explosion of cats, and the future female jester has even been known to lie down on the floor and cry in her dumps of despair or some such devilry. However, Mr. Koenig begins to believe that I am passable, and my first appearance is to be made immediately after Lent, at the house of the Home Secretary, where it is not improbable, dear Aunt Rachel, that I may meet Mr. Drake, although that is no part of my programme. "Of course, I shall have to look charming in any case, and I am already busy with my dress. It is a black silk gown with a tight-fitting bodice. The bodice has windbag sleeves, formed of shawl pieces of guipure lace, and some lilies of the valley on the breast, finished with a waistband of heliotrope velvet, and I am going to wear long black gloves all the way up my arms, which are growing round and plump, and lovely enough for anything. The skirt is my old one, and I got the lace for three-and-six, so I am not ruining myself, you see; and though my hair is getting redder than ever, red is the fashionable colour in London now, therefore I sha'n't waste much money on dyes. "But for all this brave exterior, when the time comes I know that down in my heart I shall be terrified. It will be like the first dive of the year. 'One plunge, Glory, my child,' and then over I'll go! I partly realize already what it will be like by my experiences on Sunday evenings when the celebrities come here after church, and Mr. Koenig exhibits me to admiring friends and tells them how I brought him 'goot look,' and I overhear them say, 'That girl will show them all something yet.' Oh, this London is adorable, my dears, with its wit and fashion, and gaiety and luxury! and I have concluded that to live in the world is the best thing one can do, after all. Some people say hard things about it, and want to reform it, or even to leave it altogether; but I love it! I love it! and think it just charming! "And now spring is here, and the world is lovely in its yellow and green. It must be _urromassy_ nice over yandher in the 'oilan' too, with the primroses and the violets and the gorse in the glen. Oh, dear! oh, dear! I can smell it all three hundred miles away! The lilacs will be out at Glenfaba now, and Aunt Anna will be collecting her Easter eggs. Well--wait a whilley, and I'll come to thee, my dears! "Not a word from John Storm, of course. No doubt he is fighting with shadows while other people are struggling with realities. They tell me these Brotherhoods are common in the Church now, though most of them are secret societies; but the more I think of that kind of religion the more it looks like setting tasks to try faith, as if God were a coquettish woman. That reminds me that Mr. Worldly-Wealthy-Wiseman is no longer a canon, having got himself made archdeacon, and as such he looks more than ever like a black Spanish cock, being clad, of course, in those funny clothes, like the bishops, which always make one think their lordships must be in doubt on getting up in the morning whether they ought to wear a schoolboy's knickerbockers or a ballet-girl's skirt, so they settle the difficulty by putting on both. For this reason I try to avoid him when on duty at the church, lest I should be suddenly possessed of a devil and behave badly to his face. But this being Lent, and there being special preachers every day, it chanced on Sunday morning that I came upon three of him all in a row, and oh, my gracious, Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these! "It is too bad, though, to think that men like John Storm can't find room in the Church for the sole of their foot, while this archdemon is flourishing in it like a green bay tree. Forgive me, grandfather; I can't help it. But then the Church in the country doesn't seem the same as in town. _There_ you are somehow made to feel that man does a little and God does all the rest, while _here_ we reverse that order of things, with the result that this seed of the Amalekite--but never mind! "I went to the Zoo this morning. There was a lion shut up in a cage all by himself. Such a solemn, splendid, silent fellow; I could have cried. "But it is the witching hour of night, my daughter, and you must put yourself to bed. 'Goot look!' "Glory." _ |
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