Glory was turning aside, and Drake was looking ashamed. “Of course—naturally—all I meant,” he faltered—“if a girl has to earn her living, whatever her talents, her genius—that is one thing. But the upper classes, I mean the leisured classes——”
“Damn the leisured classes, sir!” said John, and in the silence that followed the men looked round, but Glory was gone from the room.
Lord Robert, who had been whistling at the window, said to Drake in a cynical undertone: “The man is hipped and sore. He has lost his challenge, and we ought to make allowances for him, don't you know.”
Drake tried to laugh. “I'm willing to make allowances,” he said lightly; “but when a man talks to me as if—as if I meant to——” but the light tone broke down, and he faced round upon John and burst out passionately: “What right have you to talk to me like this? What is there in my character, in my life, that justifies it? What woman's honour have I betrayed? What have I done that is unworthy of the character of an English gentleman?”
John took a stride forward and came face to face and eye to eye with him. “What have you done?” he said. “You have used a woman as your decoy to win your challenge, as you say, and you have struck me in the face with the hand of the woman I love! That's what you've done, sir, and if it's worthy of the character of an English gentleman, then God help England!”
Drake put his hand to his head and his flushed face turned pale. But Lord Robert Ure stepped forward and said with a smile: “Well, and if you've lost your church so much the better. You are only an outsider in the ecclesiastical stud anyway. Who wants you? Your rector doesn't want you; your Bishop doesn't want you. Nobody wants you, if you ask me.”
“I don't ask you, Lord Robert,” said John. “But there's somebody who does want me for all that. Shall I tell you who it is? It's the poor and helpless girl who has been deceived by the base and selfish man, and then left to fight the battle of life alone, or to die by suicide and go shuddering down to hell! That's who wants me, and, God willing, I mean to stand by her.”
“Damme, sir, if you mean me, let me tell you what you are,” said Lord Robert, screwing up his eyeglass. “You”—shaking his head right and left—“you are a man who takes delicately nurtured ladies out of sheltered homes and sends them into holes and hovels in search of abandoned women and their misbegotten children! Why”—turning to Drake-“what do you think has happened? My wife has fallen under this gentleman's influence—the poor simpleton!—and not one hour before I left my house she brought home a child which he had given her to adopt. Think of it!—out of the shambles of Soho, and God knows whose brat and bastard!”
The words were hardly out of the man's mouth when John Storm had taken him by both shoulders. “God does know,” he said, “and so do I! Shall I tell you whose child that is? Shall I? It's yours!” The man saw it coming and turned white as a ghost. “Yours! and your wife has taken up the burden of your sin and shame, for she's a good woman, and you are not fit to live on the earth she walks upon!”
He left the two men speechless and went heavily down the stairs. Glory was waiting for him at the door. Her eyes were glistening after recent tears.