Under St Paul's: A Romance. Dowling Richard

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СКАЧАТЬ suppose, as there is the seed of every disease in man, there's the seed of poetry in me. Where they put the blessed seed I don't know. What's the good of a seed that's in some cupboard if you don't know which, and when only four out of eight of the keys you have fit the locks? It's discouraging. I suppose every fellow thinks of poetry when he sees a face like hers. I wonder if a member of the London board of actuaries saw a face like that, what kind of poetry would he think of. Maybe he wouldn't think of poetry at all. Perhaps he'd try to estimate the superficial area of her face, allowing of course for the eyes. If I knew any figure-painter, I think I'd ask him to paint her and me as Psyche and Adonis. I'd get up an appropriate expression like this," he said to himself, throwing away the butt of his cigar, contorting his face until he was positively hideous, and then approaching the glass with a burlesque mincing gait. When he saw his reflection in the glass he laughed aloud. Then he undressed, put out the light, and went to bed. The woman still was up. She sat by the window of her bedroom. Her eyes were fixed on the cloudlike mass of St. Paul's towering above her. She was not thinking of St. Paul's. She was not thinking of London. She was not thinking of George Osborne. She had been to a concert that night, and she had heard a song often heard and sung by her before. It was a well-known song, a well-known air. It had never touched her until to-night. The music had reached some range of feeling, or emotion, or spirituality, of which she had had no previous acquaintance. While she listened she was conscious of some mighty upheaval of her nature. She saw all her past life by a new light, and she shrank back from the vague possibilities of what was to come. She could understand nothing of this change. She heard the rumble of some noble thought, but could not figure to her mind its appearance. She knew something great was at hand. She could not think of lying down. She must wait for what was coming, be it what it might. Hours went by, and still she did not move. Still she had the words of that refrain, the tone of the singer's voice, the rumble of the approaching revelation. Yet the revelation did not come. Hours again went by without change. She was unconscious of fatigue, unconscious there was cause for fatigue, unconscious of everything but the powers that kept her spell-bound. At last the east grew slowly grey. She marked this, and then came her first thought outside the tyranny that possessed her, – 'I shall not go down early.' The light broadened in the east. Gradually the gates of the morning were opened, and through their chinks great beams of pale-yellow light set themselves across the sky, and stood up like the fingers of a fan. Gradually these beams changed to orange, and then to crimson, and just where they converged, and forming the centre of their base, stood out in vague purple the shadow of St Paul's. All at once something seemed to strike her. She rose hastily to her feet, muttering, – 'How august! The dome is like the Head, the sunbeams form the aureola.' All at once to the great apparition before her came the words which had haunted her all night, Miserere nobis.' For a moment she shook. Her face, lighted up by the blazing east, was perplexed, perturbed, contorted. All at once it lost the look of conflict. An expression of infinite supplication settled upon it, and raising her clasped hands to Heaven, she fell upon her knees and sang out in a low broken voice, – 'Miserere nobis!'

      CHAPTER IX.

      AFTER THE DAWN

      'Miss Gordon! Miss Gordon, child, what have you been doing to yourself? What have you been doing?' 'I sat up late last night, O'Connor. What o'clock is it?' 'Sat up late! Why, you haven't been in bed at all. The bed isn't tossed. It's eight o'clock. What made you sit up last night? Why, there's your colour all gone!' 'Yes, the colour is gone out of the sky, O'Connor. I sat and watched all night, and then at dawn the colour came behind the dome, and all at once something burst upon me. It was like the conversion of Paul. I feel as if I had been received back into peace and quietness. But I am tired still-tired still, and I want to rest.' 'Then let me help you to take off your things, child, and lie down for a few hours. I'll bring you some tea and toast. Let me help you to lie down and rest yourself.' 'I am resting; I have been resting ever since dawn.' 'Resting! A nice way you rest yourself, on a straight-backed cane chair! Come, let me help you to take off your things.' 'No, O'Connor, I shall not lie down now. I thought in the night I should not go to breakfast, but I have changed my mind.' 'Maybe you'd like to go down to breakfast as you are, miss?' 'How do you mean?' 'Pale as a ghost, and in that low dress.' 'I don't care about my cheeks. Of course I must change the dress.' 'You don't care about your cheeks, miss! Well, then, I do; and you must not go down as you are. You must go to bed.' 'O'Connor!' 'Miss!' 'Help me to change. I'll wear that russet.' 'I'll have neither hand, act, nor part in it. You must go to bed. If you don't go of your own free will, I'll ask Mrs Barclay to send for a doctor. You ought to be ashamed of yourself!' 'O'Connor, I desire you to do what I tell you at once.' 'Miss Gordon, I'm not joking. I'll have no hand, act, or part in it!' 'O'Connor, I will not have this everlasting stubbornness on your part. It is more than I can bear. Get me that russet morning-gown.' 'You won't have me, Miss Gordon? Very well. You know what you have to do if you won't have me, Miss Gordon. Pay me my wages, and let me go back to Cork. Cork is good enough for me. You're a lady, a real lady, and I never said anything else of you, to your face or behind your back. Cork mightn't be to your liking; but it's good enough for the like of me; so pay me and let me go.' 'How many more of these tiresome scenes are we to have before we part?' 'Pay me my money, and this will be the last. Give me what you owe me, and I'll put the salt sea between you and me. I'm not good enough for the grandeur of London and foreign places; but Cork will be proud to have me, and it's good enough for me; so if it's pleasing to you I'll go.' 'It is not pleasing to me you should go. And it is not pleasing to me you should lose your temper, O'Connor.' 'Lose my temper! There's for you! Lose my temper! Why, was it I offered to go down to breakfast after being up all night and looking like a ghost, instead of going to bed and resting until the roses came back again? Do I ever want to put on dresses that make me look a fright? Do I ever open my window of winter nights, and sit at it for hours? Do I ever give all my good stockings to a lying beggar, and wear my old darned ones a month longer? Do I ever forget to complain about the boots cutting my French thirty-shilling shoes? Temper, indeed! Well, if they can't stand my temper in foreign places they can in Cork.' 'O'Connor, I have not been to bed all night. I do not feel very strong now, and this is too much for me.' 'Eh?' 'I do not feel strong.' 'Then, child, why don't you lie down?' 'I want you, O'Connor, not to cross me to-day. I am not very strong now, and I have had great trouble.' 'Not well, and in great trouble! Child, child, why didn't you say that before? Trouble, trouble! Tell me all about it, child.' 'I don't know that I can. It didn't seem trouble at the time; but now I feel as if I had had a great deal of trouble lately.' 'Through me, child? Is it through my wilful and foolish ways? You ought to be used to them now. Sure you know I wouldn't vex you for all the world, only to do you good.' 'No, no, no! it isn't you, O'Connor, but myself. I have been the cause of a great deal of trouble to myself.' 'In what way, child? I'll pin a collar on the russet before you put it on. I'll be ready with it in a minute. Tell me all.' 'You are a good Roman Catholic, O'Connor!' 'I don't know about the good; but I was brought up a Catholic, and I am a Catholic still.' 'And you never have been anything else?' 'No, never, miss. But what has that to do with your trouble? You don't want me to turn? You don't think I haven't a proper respect for my mistress because she is not the same as myself?' 'No, no. But then, O'Connor, you cannot understand my trouble. I was brought up in the Church-the Church of England-but of late years I have not gone, as you know, to any place of worship. I did not do it out of silliness, or even out of want of faith; but being a good deal in places where no Church of England service was to be found, I began to think going of no great consequence, and in the end I thought it of no consequence at all.' 'And what trouble are you in now?' 'Well, something has happened, and it has all come back to me at once; and I feel greatly distressed when I think of the years I have neglected such a serious matter.' 'And is this sorrow the trouble you speak of? There's the russet gown all right now, child.' 'Thank you, O'Connor. Yes, it is.' 'But if you are sorry for it all now, aren't you taught as well as we that you'll be let off?' 'Yes. But that is not enough. I am not only sorry, but I am horrified also. It is so dreadful, O'Connor, to think of the horrid, wicked life I have led.' 'Horrid, wicked life, indeed! Horrid, wicked life! Why, when you die, they ought, if they knew their manners, to put you in the litany of the saints. They must have very little to do with their time if they can bring up anything against you, child. And even if they did find one little fault, I am sure-and I know you better than anyone, – that all the poisoned impudence you have taken from me, and all the goodness you СКАЧАТЬ