Chapter X: The Last

Denis Caird was as good as his word, and better. He stuck to Beaumont like a leech. In those hours of depression that always come to him who has abandoned alcoholic stimulant—those hours in which every fibre of the being seems to clamour for the wonted drug, the good clergyman was to Beaumont a man and a brother, cheering him, rallying him, exhorting him, appealing to all the better forces of his nature, and aiding him in the bitter fight, till, after anxious months, both could feel the victory was won.

And Beaumont got work, work to his heart’s desire, work for his pen and work for what gift of speech he had.

“Go into the slums, go to the bottommost pit in this London hell,” said Mr. Caird. “Go and see for yourself what the teaching of your Omar Khayyam makes of men and women. See human beings turned into beasts and devils by yielding to the beast and devil latent within every man and every woman. You believe in evolution, you say. Well, what has made men and women only a little lower than the angels? Why, nought but myriads of years of beating down Satan under their feet, beating down the animal basis on which the moral and the spiritual superstructure is reared. Go, learn your lesson, and then, and not till then, with pen and tongue preach your lesson. I’m a Socialist, you know I am. But ere ever the masses enter into their kingdom of economic justice, ere ever they win the full heritage of their toil, I pray and labour that they may be worthy of that kingdom and of that heritage, that they may learn the right use of wealth; else will all their gains be but added curses.”

And Beaumont went into the slums, and their teaching sank deep into his soul. And in his goings he met time after time that sweet and winsome maiden whom he had first seen, years ago, in circumstances how different, in his office in Huddersfield—Gertrude Fairfax, Sister Gertrude. He saw her move, a ministering angel, among the foul purlieus, the noxious dens, speaking to Women from whose touch Respectability plucked its skirts, saw her indeed touch pitch without being defiled, a serene and wholesome presence before which sin slunk abashed away, and e’en the drunkard forbore to curse.

And seeing her thus almost daily, old memories died away, the carking bitterness left his heart, and it was filled again with the image of a woman whom to love was a liberal education and a holy cult in one.

The last scene of this story shall not open under the fogs nor ’mid the slums of hideous London. Come with me, gentle reader, to that goodly mansion by Stafford town, where dwell Mistress Jane Fairfax and her niece Gertrude. It is the month of leafy June, the skies are blue o’erhead, the air sweet and soft and warm, and the garden of Cromwell House is rich in verdure and in bloom, and redolent of the choicest perfumes distilled by that cunningest of all alchemists—Dame Nature. There is a bower there with rustic seat, a bower all garlanded with roses sweetly breathing, with clematis and wild convolvulus, and a purling brook alive with darting troutlet babbles by. And there are seated side by side the heroine of this story and Edward Beaumont.

“I have something to give you, Mr. Beaumont, that I think belongs to you. Let me first tell you how it came to my hands. You had a clerk, had you not, called Barnes?”

“I had.”

“Well, he came to a sad end, poor fellow. Drifted to London, took to evil courses, and died in great straits. I was by his bed when the end drew near. He remembered my being at your office, when you defended Pat Sullivan. He had tried to find you. He confessed he had abstracted this paper from your office, thinking he might make money by it, if a reward were offered for its recovery. I promised if ever I met you to restore it to you, and the man seemed easier for the promise.”

Beaumont wondering opened the document she handed to him.

“By Jove!” he cried, “the missing valuer’s certificate for Midgley’s mortgage. Why, I’ve searched high and low for this. What would I not have given for this precious bit of paper that night in Stafford Town Hall when I got that awful telegram. You were there, you tell me. If I’d only had this then! But it’s better as it is, much better. Don’t you think God schemes for us better than we can scheme for ourselves? A man need have long visions to scan the ways of God.”

“I don’t think, I know. But why do you ask that question just now?”

“Why, you see, Gertrude, if I may call you so, if I had had this paper I should probably have made a fight and struggled on in the law. And if I had, it seems to stand to reason I shouldn’t have been here!”

“No; you’d have been happily married by this to Eleanor St. Clair!”

“Who is much more happily married to George Wright, and I am free to say what say I must before I leave for London and my work. Can’t you guess what it is I would say, Gertrude? I’m not much of a man to offer to any woman, but such as I am I love you, Gertrude. I’m poor, you are rich or will be; I’m tainted, you are pure, unsullied. But, there, I think you know me as I am. Say, Gertrude, is there in your heart any tiny seedling of love for me that time and the warmth of my love may woo to life and growth?”

Edward had risen and now stood before the girl to whom he pleaded, who drooped her eyes before the ardour of his gaze, her bosom fluttering ’neath her modest dress like a prisoned bird that beats its bars, the rich colour suffusing the pale brow and cheeks.

“I think I have loved you, Edward, since that day in the Police Court. Oh! it nearly broke my heart when I heard how sadly you had fallen from what I dreamed you might be, and shall from what, God willing, you may be yet.”

“And you will help, Gertrude?”

“Aye, that I will.” And she rose and placed her hands in his and spake to him as Ruth the Maobitish damsel, spake to Naomi, and as Edward drew her to his breast and kissed the lips that met his he murmured: “The Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.”

And this is the end of my story, and yet but the real beginning of the lives that were joined before God’s altar by the Rev. Denis Caird. The wedding presents were neither costly nor numerous, but they included one from Eleanor St Clair, now Lady Wright, for that ambitious matron never rested till she saw her spouse a member for the Louth division, and, once in Parliament, that gentleman wisely refrained from speech, “never thought of thinking for himself at all, but always voted at his party’s call”; and in due time the Premier of the day, yielding, it was said, to the blandishments of that brilliant leader of society, Mrs. George Wright, rewarded him with a baronetcy.

And what of Miss Amelia Wrigley and her amorous Sam? Alas! that lady never realised her modest ambitions. Mr. Storth prospered, as indeed he deserved to prosper, in the profession of his choice; but much beer, added to a plethoric habit and a choleric temperament, induced an apoplectic seizure from which he never rallied, and Miss Wrigley still lives in maiden meditation, if not fancy free, still to be wooed and won.

THE END.

End of Project Gutenberg's Sister Gertrude, by Daniel Frederick Edward Sykes