While Alicia Livingstone fought with her imagination in accounting for Lindsay's absence from the theatre on the first night of a notable presentation by Miss Hilda Howe, he sat with his knees crossed on the bench farthest back and the corner obscurest of the Salvation Army Headquarters in Bentinck Street. It had become his accustomed place; sitting there he had begun to feel like the adventurer under Niagara, it was the only spot from which he could observe, try to understand and cope with the torrential nature of his passion. Nearer to the fair charm of his kneeling Laura, in the uncertain flare of the kerosene lamp and the sound of the big drum, he grew blind, lost count, was carried away. His persistent refusal of a better place also profited him in that it brought to Ensign Sand and the other “officers” the divination that he was one of those shyly anxious souls who have to be enticed into the Kingdom of Heaven with wariness, and they made a great pretence of not noticing him, going on with the exercises just as if he were not there, a consideration which he was able richly to enhance when the plate came round. After his first contribution, Mrs. Sand regarded his spiritual interests with almost superstitious reverence, according them the fullest privacy of which she was capable. The gravity which the gentleman attached to his situation was sufficiently testified by the “amount”; Mrs. Sand never wanted better evidence than the amount. Even Laura, acting doubtless under instructions, seemed disposed to hold away from him in her prayers and exhortations; only a very occasional allusion passed her lips which Duff could appropriate. These, when they fell, he gathered and set like flowers in his tenderest consciousness, to visit and water them after the sun went down and for twenty-four hours he would not see her again. Her intonation went with them and her face; they lived on that. They stirred him, I mean, least of all in the manner of their intention. After the first quarter of an hour, it is to be feared, Lindsay suffered no more apprehensions on the score of emotional hypnotism. He recognised his situation plainly enough, and there was no appeal in it of which the Reverend Stephen Arnold, for example, could properly suspect the genuineness or the permanence.
On this Saturday night he sat through the meeting as he had sat through other meetings, absorbed in his exquisite experience which he meditated mostly with his eyes on the floor. His attitude was one quite adapted to deceive Ensign Sand; if he had been occupied with the burden of his transgressions it was one he might very well have fallen into. When Laura knelt or sang he sometimes looked at her, at other times he looked at the situation in the brightness of her presence at the other end of the room. She gave forth there, for Lindsay, an illumination by which he almost immediately began to read his life; and it was because he thought he had done this with accuracy and intelligence that he came up behind her that evening when the meeting was over as she followed the rest, with her sari drawn over her head, out into the darkness of Bentinck Street, and said with directness, “I should like to come and see you. When may I? Any time that suits you. Have you half an hour to spare to-morrow?”
It was plain that she was tired, and that the brightness with which she welcomed his advance was a trifle taught and perfunctory. Not the frankness though, or the touch of “Now we are getting to business,” that stood in her expression. She looked alert and pleased.
“You would like to have a little talk, wouldn't you?” she said. Her manner took Lindsay a trifle aback; it suggested that she conferred this privilege so freely. “To-morrow—let me see, we march in the morning, and I have an open-air at four in the afternoon—the Ensign takes the evening meeting. Yes, I could see you to-morrow about two or about seven, after I get back from the Square.” It was not unlike a professional appointment.
Lindsay considered. “Thanks,” he said, “I'll come at about seven—if you are sure you won't be too exhausted to have me after such a day.”
He saw that her lids as she raised them to answer were slightly reddened at the edges, testifying to the acridity of Calcutta's road dust, and a dry crack crept into the silver voice with which she said matter-of-factly, “We are never too exhausted to attend to our Master's business.”
Lindsay's face expressed an instant's hesitation; he looked gravely the other way. “And the address?” he said.
“Almost next door—we all live within bugle-call. The entrance is in Crooked Lane. Anybody will tell you.”
At the door Ensign Sand was conspicuously waiting. Lindsay said “Thanks” again, and passed out—she seemed to be holding it for him—and picked his way over the gutters to the shop of his Chinaman opposite. From there he watched the little company issue forth and turn into Crooked Lane, where the entrance was. It gave him a sense that she had her part in this squalor, which was not altogether distressful in that it also localised her in the warm, living, habitable world, and helped to make her thinkable and attainable. Then he went to his room at the club and found there a note from Miss Howe, written apparently to forgive him in advance, to say that she had not expected him. “Friendly creature!” he said as he turned out the lamp, and smiled in the dark to think that already there was one who guessed, who knew.
One gropes in Crooked Lane after the lights of Bentinck Street have done all that can be expected of them. There are various things to avoid, washer-men's donkeys and pariah dogs, unyoked ticca-gharries, heaps of rubbish, perhaps a leprous beggar. Lindsay, when he had surmounted these, found himself at the entrance to a quadrangle which was positively dark. He waylaid a sweeper slinking out, and the man showed him where an open staircase ran down against the wall in one corner. It was up there, he said, that the “tamasho-mems” * lived. There were three tamasho-mems, he continued, responding to Lindsay's trivial coin, and one sahib, but this was not the time for the tamasho—it was finished. Lindsay mounted the first flight by faith, and paused at the landing to avoid collision with a heavy body descending. He inquired Miss Filbert's whereabouts from this person, who providentially lighted a cigar, disclosing himself a bald Armenian in tusser silk trousers and a dirty shirt, presumably, Lindsay thought, the landlord. At all events he had the information, Lindsay was to keep straight on, it was the third storey. Duff kept straight on in a spirit of caution, and just missed treading upon the fattest rat in the heathen parish of St. John's. At the top he saw a light and hastened; it shone from an open door at the side of a passage. The partition in which the door was came considerably short of the ceiling, and from the top of it to the window opposite stretched a line of garments to dry, of pungent odour and infantile pattern. Lindsay dared no farther, but lifted up his voice in the Indian way to summon a servant, “Qui hai?"# he called, “Qui hai?”
* Festival-making women.
# “Whoever is there?”
He heard somewhere within the noise of a chair pushed back, and a door farther down the passage opened outwards, disclosing Laura Filbert with her hand upon the handle. She made a supple, graceful picture. “Good-evening, Mr. Lindsay,” she said as he advanced. “Won't you come in?” She clung to the handle until he had passed into the room, then she closed the door after him. “I was expecting you,” she said. “Mr. Harris, let me make you acquainted with Mr. Lindsay. Mr. Lindsay, Mr. Harris.”
Mr. Harris was sitting sideways on one of the three cheap little chairs. He was a clumsily built youth, and he wore the private's garb of the Salvation Army. It was apparent that he had been reading a newspaper; he had a displeasing air of possession. At Laura's formula he looked up and nodded without amiability, folded his journal the other side out and returned to it.
“Please take a seat,” Laura said, and Lindsay took one. He had a demon of self-consciousness that possessed him often, here he felt dumb. Nor did he in the very least expect Mr. Harris. He crossed his legs in greater discomfort than he had dreamed possible, looking at Laura, who sat down like a third stranger, curiously detached from any sense of hospitality.
“Mr. Lindsay is anxious about his soul, Mr. Harris,” she said pleasantly. “I guess you can tell him what to do as well as I can.”
“Oh!” Lindsay began, but Mr. Harris had the word. “Is he?” said Mr. Harris, without looking up from his paper. “Well, what I've got to say on that subject I say at the evenin' meetin', which is a proper an' a public place. He can hear it there any day of the week.”
“I think I have already heard,” remarked Lindsay, “what you have to say.”
“Then that's all right,” said Mr. Harris, with his eyes still upon his newspaper. He appeared to devour it. Laura looked from one to the other of them and fell upon an expedient.
“If you'll excuse me,” she said, “I'll just get you that bicycle story you were kind enough to lend me, Mr. Harris, and you can take it with you. The Ensign's got it,” and she left the room. Lindsay glanced round, and promptly announced to himself that he could not come there again. It was taking too violent an advantage. The pursuit of an angel does not imply that you may trap her in her corner under the Throne. The place was divided by a calico curtain, over which plainly showed the top of a mosquito curtain—she slept in there. On the walls were all tender texts about loving and believing and bearing others' burdens, interspersed with photographs, mostly of women with plain features and enthusiastic eyes, dressed in some strange costume of the Army in Madras, Ceylon, China. A little wooden table stood against the wall holding an album, a Bible and hymn-books, a work-basket and an irrelevant Japanese doll which seemed to stretch its absurd arms straight out in a gay little ineffectual heathen protest. There was another more embarrassing table: it had a coarse cloth; and was garnished with a loaf and butter-dish, a plate of plantains and a tin of marmalade, knives and teacups for a meal evidently impending. It was atrociously, sordidly intimate, with its core in Harris, who when Miss Filbert had well gone from the room looked up. “If you're here on private business,” he said to Lindsay, fixing his eyes, however, on a point awkwardly to the left of him, “maybe you ain't aware that the Ensign”—he threw his head back in the direction of the next room—“is the person to apply to. She's in command here. Captain Filbert's only under her.”
“Indeed?” said Lindsay. “Thanks.”
“It ain't like it is in the Queen's army,” Harris volunteered, still searching Lindsay's vicinity for a point upon which his eyes could permanently rest, “where, if you remember, Ensigns are the smallest officer we have.”
“The commission is, I think, abolished,” replied Lindsay, governing a deep and irritated frown.
“Maybe so. This Army don't pretend to pattern very close on the other—not in discipline anyhow,” said Mr. Harris with ambiguity. “But you'll find Ensign Sand very willing to do anything she can for you. She's a hard-working officer.”
A sharp wail smote the air from a point close to the lath and canvas partition, on the other side, followed by hasty hushings and steps in the opposite direction. It enabled Lindsay to observe that Mrs. Sand seemed at present to be sufficiently engaged, at which Mr. Harris shifted one heavy limb over the other, and lapsed into silence, looking sternly at an advertisement. The air was full of their mutual annoyance, although Duff tried to feel amused. They were raging as primitively, under the red flannel shirt and the tan-coloured waistcoat with white silk spots, as two cave-men on an Early British coast; their only sophistication lay in Harris's newspaper and Lindsay's idea that he ought to find this person humorous. Then Laura came back and resolved the situation.
“Here it is,” she said, handing the volume to Mr. Harris; “we have all enjoyed it. Thank you very much.” There was in it the oddest mixture of the supreme feminine and the superior officer. Harris, as he took the book, had no alternative.
“Good-evening, then, Captain,” said he, and went, stumbling at the door.
“Mr. Harris,” said Laura equably, “found salvation about a month ago. He is a very steady young man—foreman in one of the carriage works here. He is now struggling with the tobacco habit, and he often drops in in the evening.”
“He seems to be a—a member of the corps,” said Lindsay.
“He would be, only for the carriage works. He says he doesn't find himself strong enough in grace to give up his situation yet. But he wears the uniform at the meetings to show his sympathy, and the Ensign doesn't think there's any objection.”
Laura was sitting straight up in one of the cheap little chairs, her sari drawn over her head, her hands folded in her lap. The native dress clung to her limbs in sculpturable lines, and her consecrated ambitions seemed more insistent than ever. She had nothing to do with anything else, nothing to do with her room or its arrangements, nothing, Lindsay felt profoundly, to do with him. Her personal zeal for him seemed to resolve itself, at the point of contact, into something disappointingly thin; he saw that she counted with him altogether as a unit in a glorious total, and that he himself had no place in her knowledge or her desire. This brought him, with something like a shock, to a sense of how far he had depended on her interest for his soul's sake to introduce her to a wider view of him.
“But you have come to tell me about yourself,” she said, suddenly it seemed to Lindsay, who was wrapped in the contemplation of her profile. “Well, is there any special stumbling-block?”
“There are some things I should certainly like you to know,” replied Lindsay; “but you can't think how difficult—” he glanced at the lath and plaster partition, but she to whom publicity was a condition salutary, if not essential, to spiritual experience, naturally had no interpretation for that.
“I know it's sometimes hard to speak,” she said; “Satan ties our tongues.”
The misunderstanding was absurd, but he saw only its difficulties, knitting his brows.
“I fear you will find my story very strange and very mad,” he said. “I cannot be sure that you will even listen to it.”
“Oh,” Laura said simply, “do not be afraid! I have heard confessions! I work at home, you see, a good deal among the hospitals, and—we do not shrink, you know, in the Army, from things like that.”
“Good God!” he exclaimed, staring, “you don't think—you don't suppose—”
“Ah! don't say that! It's so like swearing.”
As he sat in helpless anger, trying to formulate something intelligible, the curtain parted, and a sallow little Eurasian girl of eighteen, also in the dress of the Army, came through from the bedroom part. She smiled in a conscious, meaningless way, as she sidled past them. At the door her smile broadened, and as she closed it after her she gave them a little nod.
“That's my lieutenant,” said Laura.
“The place is like a warren,” Lindsay groaned. “How can we talk here?”
Laura looked at him gravely, as one making a diagnosis. “Do you think,” she said, “a word of prayer would help you?”
“No,” said Lindsay. “No, thank you. What is making me miserable,” he added quietly, “is the knowledge that we are being overheard. If you go into the next room, I am quite certain you will find Mrs. Sand listening by the wall.”
“She's gone out! She and the Captain and Miss De Souza, to take the evening meeting. Nobody is in there except the two children, and they are asleep.” Her smile, he thought, made a Madonna of her. “Indeed, we are quite alone, you and I, in the flat now. So please don't be afraid, Mr. Lindsay! Say whatever is in your heart, and the mere saying—”
“Oh,” Lindsay cried, “stop! Don't, for Heaven's sake, look at me in that light any longer. I'm not penitent. I'm not—what do you call it?—a soul under conviction. Nothing of the sort.” He waited with considerateness for this to have its effect upon her; he could not go on until he saw her emerge, gasping, from the inundation of it. But she was not even staggered by it. She only looked down at her folded hands with an added seriousness and a touch of sorrow.
“Aren't you?” she said. “But at least you feel that you ought to be. I thought it had been accomplished. But I will go on praying.”
“Shall you be very angry if I tell you that I'd rather you didn't? I want to come into your life differently—sincerely.”
She looked at him with such absolute blankness that his resolution was swiftly overturned, and showed him a different face.
“I won't tell you anything about what I feel and what I want to-night except this—I find that you are influencing all my thoughts and all my days in what is to me a very new and a very happy way. You hear as much as that often, and from many people, don't you? So there is nothing in it that need startle you or make you uncomfortable.” He paused, and she nodded in a visible effort to follow him.
“So I am here to-night to ask you to let me do something for you just for my own pleasure—there must be some way of helping you, and being your friend—”
“As Mr. Harris is,” she interrupted. “I do influence Mr. Harris for good, I know. He says so.”
“Influence me,” he begged, “in any way you like.”
“I will pray for you,” she said. “I promise that.”
“And you will let me see you sometimes?” he asked, conceding the point.
“If I thought it would do you any good”—she looked at him doubtfully, clasping and unclasping her hands; “I will see; I will ask for guidance. Perhaps it is one of His own appointed ways. If you have no objection, I will give you this little book, Almost Persuaded. I am sure you are almost persuaded. Above all, I hope you will go on coming to the meetings.”
And in the course of the next two or three moments Lindsay found himself, somewhat to his astonishment, again in the night of the staircase, dismissed exactly as Mr. Harris had been, by the agency of a printed volume. Only in his case a figure of much angelic beauty stood at the top, holding a patent kerosene lamp high, to illumine his way. He refrained from looking back lest she should see something too human in his face, and vanish, leaving him in darkness which would be indeed impenetrable.
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