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The Angel

by Guy Thorne · English · Gutenberg #40571 · 501,463 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Angel

Author: Guy Thorne


        
Release date: August 24, 2012 [eBook #40571]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ANGEL ***

                         THE ANGEL

                       BY GUY THORNE

    Author of "When It Was Dark," "Made in His Image,"
              "First It Was Ordained," Etc.


    G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY
    PUBLISHERS      NEW YORK

    Copyright, 1908, by
    G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY




PREFACE


I do not think a book of this sort requires a very lengthy foreword, but
one or two things I feel it necessary to say concerning it. In the first
place, I have to thank Mr. Hamilton Edwards for many valuable
suggestions concerning it, suggestions which, undoubtedly, helped me
very much in the writing.

The story is an attempt to impress upon readers the fact that we are,
without doubt, surrounded on our way through life by unseen presences,
unseen intelligences, which guard or attack that real portion of us
which is ourselves--the soul.

Superficially, but only superficially, this is a very material age. We
are surrounded by so many material wonders that the unthinking person is
inclined to believe, at any rate to state, that the material is
everything. Yet there is nothing more unsatisfying than the purely
material aspect of life, after all.

How can any one be surprised if the ordinary man is perplexed when he is
called upon to decide questions of economy and morality, when the
material point of view is all that he can see? For all questions of
morality must necessarily depend--as long ago Plato pointed out--upon a
belief in something which we cannot touch or see. Otherwise, morality
has no significance and no meaning, except that of expediency.

If, when our body dies, our personality stops, then I can see no
logical reason whatever for trying to be good. To get all this life in
itself has to offer by means of any sort--provided they do not entail
personal discomfort--is the logical philosophy of the materialist. Yet
the materialist, at the same time, is very frequently an honest and
good-living man. This is not _because_ he is a materialist, for there is
no reason for being honest, unless one is found out in one's dishonesty,
but because there is implanted within that soul which he denies a spark
of the Divine Fire.

Of course, amongst thinking and really educated men and women,
materialism is as out-moded as the bow and arrow in modern warfare, yet
the majority of people do not think very much, nor are they well
educated.

This story is an endeavour to point out that people who assert nowadays
that Matthew Arnold's dogma, "miracles do not happen," are hopelessly
out of the run of modern thought.

Men like Sir Oliver Lodge are laboriously discovering some of the laws
of the Universe which give us portents and signs. No one who knows
to-day dares to sneer at parthenogenesis, or to repeat the slander of
Celsus about the Mother of God. It is only men who do not know, and men
who have grown rusty in reposing on their past reputations, who cannot
see that Materialism as a philosophy is dead.

Day by day fresh evidence of the power of the Spirit over Matter bursts
upon us. A plea for "philosophic doubt," for Professor Huxley's
infallibility, is no longer necessary. The very distinction between
Matter and Spirit grows more and more difficult as Science develops
analytical power. The minds of men are being again prepared to receive
that supreme revelation which told of the wedding of the earth and
Heaven, the taking of the Manhood into God.

The processes by which the hero of this story--Joseph--became what he
was have been carefully thought out, in order to provide an opportunity
for those who read the story, to get near to the explanation of some of
those psychical truths which need not necessarily be supernatural, but
only supernormal. It seems to me the wildest of folly to say that
because a thing is not capable of being explained by the laws of Nature
as we know them, that it is _above_ the laws of Nature. Every week is a
witness to the fact that the laws of Nature are only imperfectly known
by us, and therefore, to say that anything is _outside_ Nature is, to
put it plainly, simply nonsense.

For Nature does not exist, nor is there any possibility that it has ever
existed, without a Controlling Power which created it.

At the very end of his famous and wonderful life, Lord Kelvin himself
stated it as his unalterable opinion, after all the investigations he
had made into the primary causes of phenomena as we know them, that the
only possible explanation was that a Controlling Intelligence animated
and produced them all.

I was reading a few days ago one of a series of weekly articles which an
eminent modern scientist, Sir Ray Lankester, is writing in a famous
newspaper. He was speaking of Darwin and "The Origin of Species," and
he seemed to imagine that the great discovery of Darwin finally disposed
of the truth of the first chapter of Genesis, as we have it in the pages
of the Holy Bible. Surely nothing was ever more limited than such a view
as this! God manifests Himself in His own way, at His own time, and in a
fashion which is modified and adjusted to the intelligences and
opportunities of those who live at the time of this or that Revelation
in the progressive scheme of Revelation itself. To say that because
modern science has proved that God did not, as a human potter or
modeller of clay would do, make the whole of living things in full
being, and at a definite time, that therefore the Bible is untrue, is
simply the blindness of those who do not realize that Truth must often
wear a robe to hide its glory from the eyes of those who are unable to
appreciate its full splendour and magnificence.

If we are descended or evolved from primeval protoplasm, as I for one am
quite prepared to believe, one simply goes back to the simple
question--"Who made the protoplasm?"

It is no use. We cannot get away, try as we will, from the fact of God,
and we cannot also get away from the fact of the Incarnation, when God
revealed Himself more fully than ever before, and when God Himself
became Man.

My idea in this story is to show that, by means of processes of which we
have at present but little idea, a man may be drained and emptied, under
special circumstances, of himself and the influences of his past life,
and be made as a vessel for the special in-pouring of the Holy Spirit.

The death of Lluellyn Lys for Joseph, the mysterious interplay of a soul
going, and meeting on its way, another soul about to go into the
Unknown, aided by the special dispensation of God, might, I think, well
produce some such supernormal being as the Joseph of this tale. Perhaps
an angel, one of those mysterious beings--whom Christians believe to be
the forces and the messengers of God--may have animated Joseph in his
mission, without entirely destroying or obscuring his personality. Be
this as it may, I offer this story as an effort to attract my readers'
minds towards a consideration of the Unseen which is all around us, and
which--more probably than not--is the real world, after all, and one in
which we, as we are now, walk as phantoms and simulacrums of what we
shall one day be in the glorious hereafter.


GUY THORNE.




The Angel




CHAPTER I

AND GOD SPAKE----


Two men stood outside a bird-fancier's shop in the East End of London.
The shop was not far from the docks, and had a great traffic with
sailors. Tiny emerald and gamboge love-birds squawked in their cages,
there was a glass box of lizards with eyes like live rubies set in the
shop window, while a hideous little ape--chained to a hook--clattered in
an impish frenzy.

Outside the shop door hung a cage containing a huge parrot, and it was
this at which the two men were looking.

Hampson, a little wrinkled man in very shabby clothes, but of a brave
and confident aspect, pointed to the parrot.

"I wonder if it talks?" he said.

Immediately upon his words the grey bird, its watchful eye gleaming with
mischievous fire, began a stream of disconnected words and sentences,
very voluble, very rapid, and very clear.

Hampson shuddered.

"Do you know, Joseph," he said, "I am always afraid when I hear that
sound--that noise of a bird talking human words. To me, there is no more
dreadful sound in the world."

Hampson's companion, a taller and much more considerable man, looked at
the little fellow with surprise.

"Afraid?" he said. "Why should you be afraid? The sound is grotesque,
and nothing more. Has hunger completed her work, and privation conquered
at last? Are your nerves going?"

"Never better, my dear Joseph," the little man replied cheerfully. "It
will take a long time to knock me out. It's you I'm afraid about. But to
return to the parrot. Has it ever struck you that in all nature the
voice of a bird that has been taught to speak is unique? There is no
other sound even remotely resembling it. We hear a voice using human
words, and, in this instance, and this alone, we hear the spoken words
of a thing that has no soul!"

The other man started.

"How fantastic you are," he said impatiently. "The thing has a brain,
hasn't it? You have in a larger and far more developed measure exactly
what that bird has; so have I. But that is all. Soul! There is no such
thing!"

The bird in the cage had caught the word, which excited its mechanical
and oral memory to the repetition of one of its stock phrases.

"Soul! Soul! 'Pon my soul, that's too good. Ha, ha, ha!" said the
parrot.

"Polly differs, apparently," Hampson said drily, as they moved on down
the Commercial Road; "but what a hopeless materialist you are, Joseph.
You go back to the dogmatism of the pre-Socratic philosophers or voice
the drab materialism of the modern animal man who thinks with his skin.
Yet you've read your Plato!--you observe that I carefully refrain from
bringing in Christian philosophy even! You believe in nothing that you
have not touched or handled. Because you can't find the soul at a
post-mortem examination of the body you at once go and say there is no
such thing. Scholars and men of science like you seem astonishingly
blind to the value of evidence when it comes to religious matters. You,
my dear Joseph, have never seen India. Yet you know a place called India
exists. How do you know it? Simply through the evidence of other people
who have been there. You have just as much right to tell the captain of
a P. & O. steamer that what he thought was Calcutta was merely a
delusion as to tell me or any other professing Christian that there is
no such thing as the Kingdom of Heaven! Well, I must be off; I have a
bit of work to do that may bring in a few shillings. There may be dinner
to-night, Joseph!"

With a quick smile, Hampson turned down a side street and was gone. The
man called Joseph continued his way, walking slowly and listlessly, his
head sunk upon his breast in thought.

The teeming life of the great artery of East London went on all round
him; but he saw nothing of it. A Chinaman, with a yellow, wrinkled face,
jostled up against him, and he did not know it; a bloated girl, in a
stained plush blouse, wine-coloured like her face, and with an immense
necklace of false pearls, coughed out some witticism as he passed; a
hooligan surveyed him at leisure, decided that there could be nothing
worth stealing upon him, and strolled away whistling a popular tune--one
and all were no more to the wanderer than a dream, some dream
dim-panelled upon the painted scenes of sleep.

Shabbily dressed as he was, there was yet something about the man which
attracted attention. He drew the eye. He was quite unlike any one else.
One could not say of him, "Here is an Englishman," or "There is a
German." He would have looked like a foreigner--something alien from the
crowd--in any country to which he went.

Joseph's age was probably about thirty-three, but time and sorrow had
etched and graven upon his face a record of harsh experience which made
him seem much older.

The cheeks were gashed and furrowed with thought. Looking carefully at
him, one would have discovered that he was a distinctly handsome man.
The mouth was strong and manly in its curves, though there was something
gentle and compassionate in it also. The nose was Greek, straight and
clearly cut; the hair thick, and of a dark reddish-brown. But the wonder
of the man's face lay in his eyes. These were large and lustrous; full
of changing light in their dark and almost Eastern depth. They were
those rare eyes which seem to be lit up from within as if illuminated by
the lamp of the soul.

Soul! Yes, it was that of which those eyes told in an extraordinary and
almost overwhelming measure.

The soul is not a sort of fixed essence, as people are apt to forget. It
is a fluid thing, and expands or contracts according to the life of its
owner. We do not, for example, see any soul in the eyes of a gross,
over-fed, and sensual man. Yet this very man in the Commercial Road, who
denied the very existence of the soul with convinced and impatient
mockery, was himself, in appearance, at any rate, one of those rare
beings of whom we say, "That man is all soul."

The man's full name was Joseph Bethune. To the tiny circle of his
friends and acquaintances he was simply Joseph. If they had ever known
his surname, they had forgotten it. He was one of those men who are
always called by their Christian names because, whatever their
circumstances may be, they are real, accepted, and unquestioned facts in
the lives of their friends.

Joseph Bethune's history, to which he never referred, had been, up to
the present, drab, monotonous, and dismal. When an event had occurred it
was another failure, and he could point to no red-letter days in his
career. Joseph had never known either father or mother. Both had died
during his infancy, leaving him in the care of guardians.

His father had been a pastor of the Methodist sect--a man of singular
holiness of life and deep spiritual fervour. Possessed of some private
means, he had been able to leave a sufficient sum for his son's
education upon a generous and liberal scale.

The boy's guardians were distant relatives in each case. One was a
clergyman, the other a prosperous London solicitor. The strange,
studious child, quiet, dreamy, and devoted to his books, found himself
out of touch with both.

The clergyman was a Low Churchman, but of the worst type. There was
nothing of the tolerant outlook and strong evangelical piety of a
Robertson in Mr. St. John. He was as narrow as his creed, condemning all
that he had not experienced, or could not understand, hating the devil
more than he loved God. If he had been sent to the rack he could not
have truthfully confessed to an original thought.

Joseph Bethune was sent to an English public school of good, though not
of first, rank. Here he was unpopular, and made no friends. His nature
was too strong, and, even as a boy, his personality too striking, for
him to experience any actual physical discomfort from his unpopularity.
He was never bullied, and no one interfered with him; but he remained
utterly lonely.

In contradiction of the usual custom in the English public school of his
day, Hamilton possessed splendid laboratories, and great attention was
paid to modern science and mathematics.

Of these advantages Joseph Bethune availed himself to the full. His
temper of mind was accurate and inquiring, and though his manner was
dreamy and abstracted, it was the romance of science over which he
pored; the cold, glacial heights of the higher mathematics among which
his imagination roamed.

He gained a scholarship at Cambridge, lived a retired and monotonous
life of work, shunning the natural and innocent amusements of youth
while at the university, and was bracketed Third Wrangler as a result of
his degree examination.

By this time his moderate patrimony was nearly exhausted, though, of
course, his success in the schools had placed many lucrative posts
within his reach. He had actually been offered a fellowship and a
tutorial post at his own college, when he wrecked his university career
by an extraordinary and quite unexpected proceeding.

At a great meeting in the Corn Exchange, convened by the Bishop of
London for a discussion of certain vexed questions of the Christian
faith, Joseph Bethune rose, and, in a speech of some fifteen minutes'
duration, delivered an impassioned condemnation of Christianity,
concluding with a fierce avowal of his disbelief in God, and in anything
but the purely material.

We are tolerant enough nowadays. The red horror of the Inquisition has
departed, and men are no longer "clothed in a shirt of living fire" for
a chance word. A "Protestant" ruler no longer hangs the priests of the
Italian Mission for saying the Mass. Any one is at liberty to believe
what he pleases. But men about to occupy official positions must not
bawl unadulterated atheism from the housetops.

The offence was too flagrant, the offer of the fellowship was withdrawn,
and Joseph, so far as Cambridge was concerned, was ruined.

It is perfectly true that there were many people who believed exactly as
he did. They sympathized with him, but in secret, and no word or hint of
their sympathy ever reached him. He had done the unpardonable thing: he
had dared to speak out his thoughts, and men of the world do not care to
champion openly one who is publicly disgraced.

The news got about in many quarters. The man was not an
"agnostic"--polite and windy word! But he was an atheist! Terrible word,
recalling shuddering memories of Tom Paine and Bradlaugh even in the
minds of men and women who themselves believed in nothing at all. Some
men would have only been locally harmed by such an episode as this. But
Bethune's case was peculiar, and it ruined him.

He had nothing to sell in any market but the academic. He was a born
lecturer; demonstrator of scientific truth. But he had just overstepped
the limit allowed in even these liberal times. Moreover, he was too
young. Such a speech as he had made, had it been delivered at sixty,
with a long and distinguished record behind the speaker, would have been
regarded as a valuable and interesting contribution to modern thought.
It might even have been taken as a sort of fifth Gospel--the Gospel
according to St. Thomas the Doubter!

Joseph, however, was done for.

He disappeared from the university. His name was no more heard, and
after the traditional nine days was utterly forgotten.

It is true that three or four men who saw further than their fellows
realized that a force, a potential but very real force, had departed.
Some one who, as they believed, was to have done extraordinary things
was now crushed and robbed of his power. They perceived that virtue had
departed from the intellectual garment that shelters the men who _can_!

Joseph tried, and tried in vain, to make such a living as his vast
mental acquirements and achievements entitled him to. Obscure
tutorships, ill-paid lecturing to coteries of cock-cure Socialists, who
believed in nothing but their chances of getting a slice of the wealth
of men who had worked, and not merely talked--these were his dismal and
pitiful endeavours.

He came at last to the very lowest pitch of all. He, the high wrangler,
the eminent young mathematician, earned a squalid and horribly
precarious living by teaching elementary science to the sons of
struggling East End shopkeepers who were ambitious of County Council
scholarships for their progeny.

His health was impaired, but his spirit was as a reed bruised and shaken
by the winds of adversity, yet not broken. He had known sorrow, was
acquainted with grief.

He had plumbed the depths of poverty, and his body was a wreck. Want of
food--the mean and squalid resting-places he had perforce to seek--the
degradation and vileness of his surroundings, had sapped the life blood.
He did not know the defiant trumpet words of a poet of our time, but had
he done so, they would have well expressed his attitude--

    Out of the night that covers me,
      Black as the pit from pole to pole,
    I thank whatever gods may be
      For my unconquerable soul.
    In the fell clutch of circumstance
      I have not winced nor cried aloud;
    Under the bludgeonings of chance
      My head is bloody but unbowed.

He turned off into a by-street, and walked on till he came to the docks.
His progress was quite aimless. Once he stopped and wearily asked
himself whither he was going; but the next moment he was lost in
thought, and moved on again.

Once he stumbled over a steel hawser. He nearly lost his balance, and
had his arm not shot out with an involuntary movement to clutch the
bollard on his left, he would have fallen over the granite-bound edge of
the wharf into the foul, black, slimy depths below.

Hardly giving a thought to the danger he had just escaped, he moved on
and on.

Through open sheds--where freight was heaped up waiting the onslaught of
stevedores and labourers--across jutting portions of cobbled space and
shunting grounds, he came to a remote corner, far removed from the
rattle of cranes and the shouts of the workmen.

Something drew him out of himself, and fixed his attention. It was a
shadow. It caught his gaze, and his eyes became fixed on it. He knew
that a shadow was only the phenomenon produced when streams of radiant
energy are intercepted by an object which is unable to transmit them.
His scientific training had taught him that even _sound_ shadows may be
produced, though to recognize the existence of them the ear must pass
from the unshadowed to the shadowed part. Perhaps it was a symbol! He
himself was in darkness and shadow. Would his ear ever catch those
mysterious harmonies that come to those who suffer?--Hampson heard
them....

A woman crept stealthily behind the wall, and the shadow disappeared.

The woman bore a burden; what it was he could not see. But she held it
close to her breast with the tense clasp of some fierce emotion.

She had not noticed the dreamer. She stopped by some steps leading down
to the waters of a small section of the dock.

Joseph sat down on a capstan and looked steadily at her.

The woman unclasped the burden she bore, drew aside a part of the
covering, and kissed--a baby face. He knew at once what she was doing.
She was bidding it good-bye. She was going to drown it.

"And they say that there is a God," Joseph thought. "A conscious
Intelligence that directs human affairs. Even Lord Kelvin himself
thought so! Yet God does nothing to save this woman from her sin--or
rather crime!"

He gazed fiercely. Those eyes, through which his rebellious
unconquerable soul shone out, caught the startled stare of the woman as
she saw the strange man who watched her.

The man said nothing. The woman thought: "If he prevents me now, I
shall--I must do it later. He can't change me. If he gives me in charge
he can't prove it. I've done nothing yet."

Yet she looked again, and this time did not turn away.

A strange magnetism which seemed to run through her, projected from
those eyes, was making even her finger-tips tingle as with a new
sensation, and one she had never known before. Her purpose melted and
dissolved in that flow of more than electric influence; it changed as
fire changes a material thing. It melted like snow before the radiant
energy of the sun.

Slowly she unwrapped the bundle. The paper, the cloth wrappings she
threw into the black and oily water, but the child she clasped to her
breast.

"My baby," she murmured, very quietly, but in tones that pierced the
tense atmosphere and reached Joseph's ear. "I bore you in shame, and was
about to kill you to save you from shame like mine; but I will bear my
cross and love you for the sake of Jesus. Amen."

She stole away, trembling. There was a great fear and wonder at her
heart, and the watcher saw no more.

Joseph smiled bitterly. His brain seemed some detached thing, a theatre
upon the stage of which wild thoughts were the conflicting actors and
his sub-conscious intelligence the spectator.

The simile of the shadow returned to him, and was it not all a
shadow--this dark, unhappy life of his? The words "radiant energy," the
words "God" "conscious force" danced before him. The whole sentient
world was reeling--the blood that fed the grey matter of his brain was
poor and thin--this was the reason.

Yet, was it the reason, after all? What had happened to him in the last
few minutes? He felt as he had never in his whole life felt before.
There was a sense of extraordinary impotence. Something had come into
him; something had gone out of him.

No!--something had gone _through_ him--that was the way to describe it
to himself....

Oh for food, rich nourishing food, quiet and fresh air--then all this
sickness would go....

       *       *       *       *       *

Joseph left the docks, and was soon back in the teeming Commercial Road.
He walked, lost in thought, unconscious of all his surroundings.

"Nah, then, Monkey Brand, 'oo y'r shovin'? I can see y'r gettin' a thick
ear, young feller-my-lad. Owns the bloomin' pyvement--"

A string of obscene oaths and the above words brought Joseph the dreamer
down to earth again--the world of the Commercial Road.

He had stumbled against a typical bullet-headed, wicked-eyed East End
rough.

The man stepped close up to Joseph, lifting an impudent and dirty face,
holding the right arm ready to strike the short, jabbing blow so dear to
the hooligan.

Then a strange thing happened.

Joseph, roused so suddenly and rudely from his bitter reverie, became
aware of what was toward. He was about to apologize to the man when his
words were checked in his mouth by the fellow's filthy profanity. Joseph
suddenly, instead of speaking, turned his full face to him. The great,
blazing eyes, their brilliancy accentuated a hundred times by hunger and
scorn, seemed to cleave their way through the thick skull of the
aggressor, to pierce the muddy and besotted brain within, to strike fear
into the small leathern heart.

The man lifted his arm and covered his face, just like a street child
who expects a blow; and then with a curious sound, half whimper, half
snarl, turned and made off in a moment.

It was an extraordinary instance of magnetic power inherent in this
starving scholar who roamed the streets in a sad dream.

On his own part, Joseph's action had been quite unconscious. He had no
thought of the force stored up in him as in an electric accumulator.
Some experiments in animal magnetism he had certainly made, when he had
taken a passing interest in the subject at Cambridge. He had cured his
"gyp" of a bad attack of neuralgia once, or at least the man said he
had, but that was as far as it had gone.

He turned his steps towards the stifling attic he called "home." After
all, he was better there than in the streets. Besides, he was using up
what little strength remained to him in this aimless wandering.

He had eaten nothing that day, but at nine in the evening he had a
lesson to give. This would mean a shilling, and there were two more
owing from his pupil, so that even if Hampson, who lived in the next
garret, failed to get any money, both might eat ere they slept.

As he turned into the court and began to mount the stairs, Joseph
thought with an involuntary sigh of "hall" at Cambridge, the groaning
tables, the generous fare, the comely and gracious life of it all.

And he had thrown it all away--for what? Just for the privilege of
speaking out his thoughts, thoughts which nobody particularly wanted to
hear.

With a sigh of exhaustion he sat down on the miserable little bed under
the rafters, and stared out of the dirty window over the roofs of
Whitechapel.

Had he been right, after all? Was it worth while to do as he had done,
to give up all for the truth that was in him. The old spirit of revolt
awoke. Yes, he had been right a thousand times! No man must act or live
a lie.

But supposing it _was_ all true? Supposing there was a God after all.
Supposing that the Christ upon whom that woman had called so glibly
really was the Saviour of mankind? Then--The thought fell upon his
consciousness like a blow from a whip.

He leapt to his feet in something like fear.

"It's this physical exhaustion," he said to himself aloud, trying to
find an anodyne to thought in the sound of his own voice. "My brain is
starved for want of blood. No one can live as I have been living and
retain a sane judgment. It was because the hermits of old starved
themselves in the desert that they saw visions. Yet it is odd that I, of
all men, should weaken thus. I must go out into the streets again, come
what may. The mind feeds upon itself and conjures up wild and foolish
thoughts in a horrible little box like this."

With a heavy sigh he went slowly out of the room and down the steep
stairs. Never in all his life had he felt so lost and hopeless; so alone
and deserted.

Another man in his position would have called out upon God, either with
mad and puny revilings in that He had forsaken him, or with a last
piteous cry for help.

Joseph did not believe in God.

All his life he had lived without God. He had ignored the love of the
Father and the necessity of faith in His Son Jesus Christ. The temple of
his body was all empty of the Paraclete. Now he felt sure that there was
no God; never had been any God; never would be any God.

He was at the darkest hour of all, and yet, with a strange nervous
force, he clenched one lean hand until the shrunken muscle sprang up in
coils upon the back of it, resolving that come what might he would not
give in. There was no God, only a blind giant, Circumstance--well, he
would fight that!

His mental attitude was a curious one, curiously illogical. Keen and
well-balanced as the scientific side of him was, the man--like all those
who openly profess disbelief--was unable to see what might almost be
called the grim humor of his attitude.

"I do not believe in God!" the atheist cries, and then immediately
afterwards shakes his fist at the Almighty and bids Him to do His worst!

Man challenging God! There is no more grotesque and terrible thing in
human life than this.

But, as the world knows now, God had a special purpose in his dealings
with this man.

All unconscious of what was to befall him, of his high destiny to come,
Joseph walked aimlessly in Whitechapel, cursing in his heart the God in
whom he did not believe, and yet who had already chosen him to be the
centre and head of mighty issues.... A channel as we may think now....

We may well believe that each single step that Joseph took was known and
regulated by unseen hands, voices which were unheard by ear or brain,
but which the unconscious and sleeping soul nevertheless obeyed.

At last the Almighty spoke, and the first link in the chain of His
mysterious operations was forged.

Joseph was walking slowly past a great building which was in course of
erection or alteration. A network of scaffolding rose up into the smoky,
dun-colored sky.

The clipping of steel chisels upon stone, the echoing noise of falling
planks, the hoarse voices of the workmen as they called to each other
high up on their insecure perches, all rose above the deep diapason note
of the traffic in a welter of sharply-defined sound.

Joseph stepped upon the pavement beneath the busy works. He was, he
noticed, just opposite the office of the small East End newspaper for
which Hampson, the poor, half-starved, but cheery little journalist did
occasional jobs.

Hampson--good, kind, little Hampson! It was pleasant to think of him,
and as he did so Joseph's thoughts lost their bitterness for a moment.
Only the utterly vile can contemplate real unassuming goodness and
unselfishness without a certain warming of the heart.

Hampson was only half educated--he had the very greatest difficulty in
making a living, yet he was always bright and happy, ever illuminated by
some inward joy.

Even as he thought of Hampson--almost his only friend--Joseph saw the
man himself coming out of the narrow doorway. Hampson saw the scholar at
once in his quick, bird-like way, and waved his hand with a significant
and triumphant gesture.

There was to be dinner, then!

It was not so. The two poor friends were not to share a humble meal
together on that night, at any rate.

High above Joseph's head, two planks were being slowly hauled upwards to
the topmost part of the scaffolding. They were secured by the usual
halter knot round the centre. The noose, however, had slipped, as the
rope was a new one, and the two heavy pieces of timber hung downwards
with the securing tie perilously near the upper end.

There was a sudden shout of alarm which sent a hundred startled faces
peering upwards and then the planks fell right upon the man who stood
beneath, crushing him to the ground, face downwards, like a broken blade
of grass.

With the magic celerity which is part of the psychology of crowds, a
ring of excited people sprang round the crushed, motionless figure, as
if at the bidding of a magician's wand.

Willing hands began to lift the great beams from it. Hampson had been
one of the first to see and realize the accident.

He was by the side of his friend in three or four seconds after the
planks had struck him down. And he saw something that, even in his
horror and excitement, sent a strange inexplicable throb through his
blood and made all his pulses drum with a sense of quickening, of
nearness to the Unseen, such as he had never experienced in all his life
before.

It is given to those who are very near to God to see visions, sometimes
to draw very close to the Great Veil.

The two planks of timber had fallen over Joseph's back in the exact form
of the Cross. To the little journalist, if to no one else in the
rapidly-gathering crowd, the wood and the bowed figure below it brought
back the memory of a great picture he had seen, a picture of the Via
Dolorosa, when Jesus fainted and fell under the weight He bore.




CHAPTER II

"SOMETHING MARVELLOUS IS GOING TO HAPPEN"


In the drawing-room of a house in Berkeley Square, Lady Kirwan--the wife
of Sir Augustus Kirwan, the great banker--was arguing with her niece,
Mary Lys.

The elder lady was tall and stately, and although not aggressive in any
way, her manner was distinctly that of one accustomed to rule. Her
steady grey eyes and curved, rather beak-like nose gave her an aspect of
sternness which was genially relieved by a large, good-humored mouth. At
fifty, Lady Kirwan's hair was still dark and glossy, and time had dealt
very gently with her.

Of the old Welsh family of Lys, now bereft of all its great heritage of
the past, but with a serene and lofty pride in its great name still, she
had married Sir Augustus, then Mr. Kirwan, in early girlhood. As the
years went on, and her husband's vast wealth grew vaster still, and he
rose to be one of the financial princes of the world, Lady Kirwan became
a very prominent figure in society, and at fifty she had made herself
one of the hundred people who really rule it.

One daughter, Marjorie, was born to Sir Augustus and his wife, a beauty,
and one of the most popular girls in society.

"You may say what you like, but I have no patience at all with either
you or your crack-brained brother, Mary!" Lady Kirwan exclaimed, with an
irritable rapping of her fingers upon a little lapis lazuli table at her
side.

Mary Lys was a tall girl, dressed in the blue uniform of a hospital
nurse. The cloak was thrown back over her shoulders, and its scarlet
lining threw up the perfect oval contour of her face and the glorious
masses of black hair that crowned it. If Marjorie Kirwan was generally
said to be one of the prettiest girls in London--and the couple of
millions she would inherit by no means detracted from her good
looks--certainly Mary Lys might have been called one of the most
beautiful.

The perfect lips, graver than the lips of most girls, almost maternal in
their gentleness, formed, as it were, the just complement to the great
grey eyes, with their long dark lashes and delicately-curved black
brows. The chin was broad and firm, but very womanly, and over all that
lovely face brooded a holy peace, a high serenity, and a watchful
tenderness that one sees in the pictures of the old masters when they
drew the pious maids and matrons who followed the footsteps of Our Lord
on earth.

Her beauty was not the sort of beauty which would attract every one. It
was, indeed, physical beauty in perfection, but irradiated also by
loveliness of soul. The common-minded man who prefers the conscious and
vulgar prettiness of some theatre girl, posed for the lens of the camera
or the admiring glances of the crowd, would have said:--

"Oh, yes, she's beautiful, of course! One can't help admitting that. But
she's not my style a bit. Give me something with a little more life in
it."

But there were not wanting many men and women who said that they had
thought that the mother of the Saviour must have looked like Mary Lys.

"No! I've really no patience with either of you!" Lady Kirwan repeated.

"But, Aunt Ethel, surely we ought to live our own lives. I am quite
happy with my nursing in the East End. One can't do more good than by
trying to nurse and cure the sick, can one? And Lluellyn is happy also
in his Welsh mountains. He lives a very saintly life, auntie--a life of
prayer and preaching and good works, even if it is unconventional and
seems strange to you. I would not have it otherwise. Lluellyn is not
suited for the modern world."

"Fiddlesticks, Mary!" Lady Kirwan answered. "'Modern world,' indeed! You
speak as if you said 'Modern pestilence'! Who made the world, I should
like to know? And what right have you and your brother to despise it?
I'm sick of all this nonsense. How a girl with your looks and of your
blood, for there is hardly a peer in England with such a pedigree as
that of our family, can go on grubbing away nursing horrible people with
horrible diseases in that dreadful East End I can't possibly imagine.
You've no money, of course, for your two hundred a year is a mere
nothing. But what does that matter? Haven't your uncle and I more than
we know what to do with? Marjorie has already an enormous fortune
settled upon her. She is almost certain to marry the Duke of Dover next
season. Well, what do we offer you--you and Lluellyn? You are to be as
our second daughter. We will give you everything that a girl can have in
this world. You shall share in our wealth as if you were my own
daughter. With your looks and the money which is available for you, you
may marry any one. We stand well at Court. His Majesty is pleased when
one of the great old families of the realm restores its fallen fortunes.
Every chance and opportunity is yours. As for your brother, as I have so
often written and told him, he will be a son to us. We have not been
given a son; he shall become one. There is enough and to spare for all.
Give up this nonsense of yours. Make Lluellyn come to his senses and
leave his absurd hermit life, and this mad preaching about in the
mountain villages. Come to us at once, both of you. What more could any
one offer you, child? Am I not pleading with you out of my love for you
and my nephew, out of a sincere desire to see you both take your proper
place in the world?"

Lady Kirwan stopped, a little out of breath after her long speech, every
word of which had been uttered with the sincerest conviction and
prompted by real affection.

There was probably no more worldly woman in London than the kindly wife
of the great financier. The world was all in all to her, and she was as
destitute of religion or any knowledge of spiritual things as the parish
pump. She would not have divided her last shilling with any one, but
she was generous with her superfluity.

And certainly one of the great wishes of her life was to see the ancient
family from which she had sprung once more take a great place in life.
She felt within her veins the blood of those old wild princes of the
"stormy hills of Wales"--those Arthurs and Uthers, Caradocs and
Lluellyns innumerable, who had kept their warlike courts in the dear
mountains of her home.

It was monstrous, it was incredible to Lady Kirwan that the last two
survivors of the Lys family in the direct line should live obscure,
strange lives away from the world. Mary Lys a hospital nurse in the East
End! Lluellyn Lys a sort of anchorite and itinerant preacher! It was
inconceivable; it must be stopped.

"I will write to Lluellyn again, auntie," Mary said, rising from her
chair. "But, honestly, I fear it will be of little use. And as for
myself--"

As she spoke the door opened, and a footman entered the room.

"Miss Marjorie has returned, my lady," he said. "She is waiting below in
the motor-brougham. I was to say that if Miss Lys was ready Miss
Marjorie has a free hour, and will drive Miss Lys back to the hospital."

"There, there!" Lady Kirwan said to her niece, "Marjorie will take you
back to that place. It will be more comfortable than a horrid, stuffy
omnibus. Now don't give me any answer at present, but just think over
what I have said very seriously. Come again in a week, and we will have
another talk. Don't be in a hurry to decide. And remember, dear, that
with all your exaggerated ideas of duty, you may owe a duty to your
relations and to society quite as much as to indigent aliens in
Whitechapel. Run along, and be a dear good girl, and be sure you don't
catch some dreadful infectious disease."

A couple of footmen in knee-breeches, silk stockings, and powdered hair
stood on each side of the door. A ponderous butler opened it, another
footman in motor livery jumped down from his seat beside the driver and
held open the door of the brougham.

"All this pomp and circumstance," Mary thought sadly, "to get a poor
hospital nurse out of a house and into a carriage. Four great men are
employed to do so simple a thing as that, and whole families of my dear
people are starving while the breadwinner lies sick in the hospital!"

She sighed heavily, and her face was sad as she kissed the brilliant,
vivacious cousin who was waiting in the brougham.

"Well, you poor dear," Marjorie Kirwan said. "And how are you? I suppose
the usual thing has happened? Mother has been imploring you to take a
proper place in the world--you and my delightfully mysterious cousin
Lluellyn, who is quite like an old Hebrew prophet--and you have said
that you prefer your grubby scarlet-fever friends in Whitechapel!"

Mary nodded.

"Dear auntie," she said. "She is wonderfully kind and good, but she
doesn't quite understand. But don't let us talk about it."

"Very well, then, we won't," Marjorie answered affectionately. "Every
one must gang their own gait! You don't like what I like; I don't like
what you like. The great thing is to be happy, and we're both that. Tell
me something of your work. It always interests me. Have you had any new
adventures in Whitechapel?"

"Everything has been much the same," she said, "except that a very
wonderful personality has come into the hospital."

"Oh, how delightful! A man, of course! Do tell me all about him!"

"His name is Joseph. It sounds odd, but he doesn't seem to use his
surname at all. I did hear it, but I have forgotten. He is simply
Joseph. He was hurt, though not nearly as badly as he might have been,
by some falling planks from a house they were building. But he was in a
dreadfully exhausted and rundown condition--nearly starved indeed. He is
a great scholar and scientist, but he was ruined some years ago because
he made a speech against God and religion at Cambridge, before all the
dignitaries."

"And are you converting him?"

"No. That is no woman's work, with this man. He is in a strange state.
We have nursed him back to something like health, but his mind seems
quite empty. At first, when we had some talks together, he railed
against God--always with the proviso that there wasn't any God! Now he
is changed, with returning health. He is like an empty vessel, waiting
for something to be poured into it. He neither disbelieves nor believes.
Something has washed his mind clear."

"How extraordinary!"

"Extraordinary you say; but listen! Three days ago--it was in the early
evening--he called me to his bedside. He drew his hand from the
bedclothes and laid it on my arm. How I thrilled at the touch, I cannot
explain...."

"But, my dear, think of Tom--This is extraordinary!"

"I've thought of Thomas; but, Marjorie, you cannot know--it was not that
kind of love. It was nothing like love. Perhaps I put it badly, but you
jumped to quite a wrong conclusion. It was something quite different.
His eyes seemed to transfix me. The touch--the eyes--the thrill they
sent through me will remain as long as I live! But listen. He spoke to
me as he hadn't spoken before. 'Mary,' he said--"

"Did he call you _Mary_?"

"He had never done so before--he did then. Before I had always been
'Nurse' to him."

"Well, go on, dear--I am quite interested."

"He said, 'Mary, you are going off duty in a few minutes. Go to the
upper chamber of 24, Grey Street, Hoxton, and walk straight in. There is
one that has need of you.' I was about to expostulate, but he fell back
in exhaustion, and I called the house surgeon."

"You surely didn't go?"

"Yes, I went," Mary went on rapidly. "Something made me go. The low door
of Number 24 was open. I climbed till I got to the top. There was no
light anywhere. It was a miserable foggy evening. I felt for a door and
found one at last. It yielded to my hand and I entered an attic which
was immediately under the roof.

"Nothing could be seen. I had come unprepared for such darkness. But
taking courage I asked aloud if there was any one there.

"There was no answer. Yet I felt--I had a curious certainty--that I was
not alone. I waited--and waited. Then I moved slowly about the room. I
was afraid to move with any freedom for fear of stumbling
over--something or other.

"Suddenly a costermonger's barrow came into the court below. The naphtha
lamps lit up the whole place and the room was suddenly illuminated with
a flickering red light. I could see quite well now.

"I am accustomed to rather dreadful things, as you know, Marjorie--or at
least things which you would think rather dreadful. But I will confess I
was frightened out of my life now. I gave a shriek of terror, and then
stood trembling, utterly unable to move!"

"What was it?"

"I saw a man hanging by a rope to the rafters. His jaw had fallen down,
and his tongue was protruding. I shall never forget how the red light
from the court below glistened on his tongue--His eyes were starting out
of his head.... It was horrible."

"Oh, how frightful! I should have been frightened to death," said
Marjorie, and a cold shiver ran through her whole body, which Mary could
feel as her cousin nestled closer to her in the brougham.

"Yes, it was awful! I had never seen anything so awful before--except
once, perhaps, at an operation for cancer. But do you know, Marjorie, I
was quite unlike my usual self. I was acting under some strange
influence. The eyes of that poor man, Joseph, seemed to be following me.
I acted as I never should have been able to act unless something very
curious and inexplicable was urging me. I knew exactly what I had to do.

"I am experienced in these things, as you know, and I saw at once that
the man who was hanging from the roof was not dead. He was only just
beginning the last agony. There was a big box by the window, and upon a
little table I saw an ordinary table-knife. I dragged the box to the
man's feet, put them upon it, caught hold of the knife, and cut him
down.

"He was a small man, and fell limply back into my arms, nearly knocking
me over the box, but I managed to support him, and staggered down on to
the floor.

"Then I got the rope from round his neck, and tried to restore breathing
by Hall's method--you know, one can use this method by oneself. It is
really the basis of all methods, and is used very successfully in cases
of drowning."

"What did you do then?" Marjorie asked.

"As soon as he began to breathe again I rushed downstairs. In a room at
the bottom of the stairs, which was lit by a little cheap paraffin lamp
there was a horrid old woman, an evil-looking young man, and several
children. The old woman was frying some dreadful sort of fish for
supper, and I was nearly stifled.

"To cut a long story short, I sent the children out for a cab, made the
young fellow come upstairs, and together we brought down the man, who
was in a semi-conscious state. No questions were asked because, as you
know, or at least, as is a fact, a nurse's uniform commands respect
everywhere. I took the man straight to the hospital and managed to hush
the matter up, and to arrange with the house surgeon. Of course I could
not tell the doctors everything, but they trusted me and nothing was
said at all. The man was discharged as cured a few days ago. The poor
fellow had attempted his life in a fit of temporary madness. He was very
nearly starving. There is no doubt at all about it. He proved it to the
satisfaction of the hospital authorities."

"And have you found out who he is?"

"He is a friend of Joseph's--a comrade in his poverty, a journalist
called Hampson, and the garret was where Joseph and he had lived
together."

"Extraordinary is not the word for all this," Marjorie interrupted. "It
almost frightens me to hear about it."

"But even that is not all. When I got back to the hospital after seeing
the would-be suicide in safe keeping, I went straight to my own ward.

"Joseph was awake. He turned to me as I entered, smiled, and said in a
sort of whisper, 'Inasmuch.' I could hear no more.

"From that time his mind seemed to lapse into the same state--a state of
complete blank. He is waiting."

"For what?"

"Ah, here comes the most strange part of it all. I have received an
extraordinary letter from Lluellyn. My brother has strange psychic
powers, Marjorie--powers that have often been manifested in a way which
the world knows nothing of, in a way which you would find it impossible
to believe. In some way my brother has known of this man's presence in
the hospital. Our minds have acted one upon the other over all the vast
material distance which separates us. He wrote to me: 'As soon as the
man Joseph is recovered, send him to me. He will question, but he will
come. The Lord has need of him, for he shall be as a great sword in the
hand of the Most High.'"

Marjorie Kirwan shivered.

"You speak of mystical things," she said. "They are too deep for me.
They frighten me. Mary, you speak as if something was going to happen!
What do you mean?"

"I speak as I feel, dear," Mary answered, with a deep-ringing certainty
in her voice. "How or why, I do not know, but a marvellous thing is
going to happen! I feel the sense of it. It quickens all my life. I
wait for that which is to come. A new force is to be born into the
world, a new light is to be kindled in the present darkness. The lonely
mystic of the mountain and the strange-eyed man who has come into my
life are, even now, in mysterious spiritual communion. This very
afternoon Joseph goes to Lluellyn. I said good-bye to him before I left
the East End. What will be the issue my poor vision cannot tell me yet."

Through the hum the maiden of the world heard Mary's deep, steadfast
voice.

"Something great is going to happen. Now is the acceptable hour!"

It was utterly outside her experience. It was a voice which chilled and
frightened her. She didn't want to hear voices like this.

Even as Mary spoke, Marjorie Kirwan heard a change in her voice. The
brougham was quite still, and the long string of vehicles which were
passing in the other direction were motionless also.

Mary was staring out of the window at a hansom cab that was its
immediate _vis-à-vis_.

Two men were in the cab.

One of them, a small, eager-faced man flushed with excitement, was
bowing to Mary.

The other, taller, and very pale of face, was looking at the hospital
nurse with the wildest and most burning gaze the society girl had ever
seen.

"Who are they?" Marjorie whispered, though even as she asked she knew.

"The man I saved from death," Mary answered, in a low, quivering voice,
"and the man Joseph--Joseph!"

She sank back against the cushions of the carriage in a dead faint.




CHAPTER III

NEARER


Joseph turned to his companion.

His face was white and worn by his long illness, but now it was suddenly
overspread with a ghastly and livid greyness.

He murmured something far down in his throat, and at the inarticulate
sound, Hampson, who had been bowing with a flush of gratitude to Mary,
turned in alarm.

He saw a strange sight, and though he--in common with many others--was
to become accustomed to it in the future, he never forgot his first
impression.

Joseph's head had sunk back against the cushions of the cab. His mouth
was open, the jaw having fallen a little, as though he had no control of
it.

In a flash the terrible thought came to the journalist that his friend
was in the actual throes of death.

Then, in another second or two, just as the block in the traffic ceased,
and the cab moved on again, he knew that Joseph lived. The eyes which at
first were dark and lustreless--had seemed to be turned inward, as it
were--suddenly blazed out into life. Their expression was extraordinary.
It appeared to Hampson as if Joseph saw far away into an illimitable
distance. So some breathless watcher upon a mountain-top, who searched a
far horizon for the coming of a great army might have looked. A huge
eagle circling round the lonely summit of an Alp might have such a
strange light in its far-seeing eyes.

At what was the man looking? Surely it was no narrow vision bounded by
the bricks and mortar, the busy vista of the London Strand!

Then, in a flash, the journalist knew.

Those eyes saw no mortal vision, were not bounded by the material
circumstance of place and time. They looked into the future.

It was thus that Jeremiah, the son of Hilkiah looked when the word of
the Lord came to him.

Unconsciously Hampson spoke a verse from Holy Writ:--

"Then the Lord put forth His hand and touched my mouth. And the Lord
said unto me, Behold, I have put My words in thy mouth."

Then Joseph began to speak, and never had his friend heard a man speak
in this fashion.

The lips moved very little. The fixed far-off light remained in the
eyes, the face did not change with the word's as the face of an ordinary
man does.

"I hear a voice; and the voice says to me, 'Thou therefore gird up thy
loins and arise, and speak unto them all that I command thee: be not
dismayed at their faces, lest I confound thee before them.' The words,
which seemed to come from a vast distance, though they were very keen,
vibrant and clear, dropped in tone, and ceased for a moment. Then once
more they began--

"And I see the woman Mary and the one that was with her. They are with
me upon an hill-top. And they are as maids that have forgotten their
ornaments, and as brides that have not remembered their attire. And
below us I see great cities and busy markets, the movements of
multitudes, and the coming and going of ships. And I see that the maid
and I and those others who are with us upon the mountain pray to God.
And God touches my mouth, and I go down from the hill and those that are
with me, to root out, to pull down and destroy, and to throw down, to
build and to plant."

Trembling with eagerness and excitement, Hampson listened to these
extraordinary words.

Ever since the black hour when he had been rescued from the consequences
of his sudden madness, the journalist had known that there was something
very wonderful about his friend. Hampson could not in justice to himself
blame himself for his attempt at suicide. He knew that he had not been
responsible for what he did. The long privations of his life, the sudden
accident to Joseph in the Whitechapel Road, had been too much for a
sensitive and highly-strung nature. Gradually but surely reason had been
temporarily undermined, and Hampson had only a very slight remembrance
of the events in the fortnight which had preceded his attempt. It was in
the hospital, after the careful nursing and the generous food, that his
brain was restored to its balance. And it was in the hospital also that
Mary Lys had told him of the strange and supernatural occurrence that
had saved his life.

"Nurse," he had said to her, "I know nothing of what you tell me. I was
mad--quite unconscious of what I did. But I have always known that there
was something about my dear friend that tells me that he is not as other
men are. He is a man set apart, though for what end I do not know, and
cannot foresee. But one thing I plainly know and recognize--the Almighty
Father chose Joseph to be the medium by which I was saved. God moves in
a mysterious way, but he has destined my friend for wonderful things."

Mary Lys had agreed with her patient.

"I also have a prescience," she had said, "that Joseph has a work to do
for God. He does not know it. He cannot realize it. He has made no
submission to the Divine Will, but nevertheless he will be an instrument
of It. I know with a strange certainty that this is his high destiny."

The rapid and vivid remembrance of all this went through Hampson's brain
as a bullet goes through a board, when he heard Joseph's last words.

He caught him by the hand, holding the long, wasted fingers in his own,
chafing them to bring back some living warmth into their icy coldness.

The strange voice ceased finally, and Joseph closed his eyes. The rigid
tension of his face relaxed and a little color came back into it.

Then he gave a long sigh, shuddered and once more opened his eyes.

"I feel unwell," he said, in faint and hesitating tones. "I saw our
dear, kind nurse in a carriage with another lady. We were all stopped by
a block in the traffic, weren't we? I saw Nurse Mary, and then I can
remember nothing more. I have been in a faint. I did not know I was
still so weak."

"Don't you remember anything then, Joseph?"

"Nothing at all. But I feel exactly as I felt when I was lying in
hospital, and suddenly fainted there. It was the time when I said those
extraordinary words to nurse and she went and found you, poor old chap,
just in the nick of time."

Hampson quivered with excitement.

"Then you felt just the same sensation a few minutes ago as you did when
you were inspired to save my life by some mysterious influence?"

"Exactly the same. It is a weird feeling. It is as though suddenly my
whole mind and body are filled with a great wind. I seem to lose my
personality entirely, and to be under the dominion of an enormous
overwhelming power and force. Then everything goes away like a stone
falling through water, and I remember nothing until I regain
consciousness."

Hampson took his friend's hand.

"Joseph," he said in tones that were strangely moved and stirred, "have
you yourself no explanation? How do you account for the fact that you
told Nurse Mary to go and save my life?"

"I suppose it was owing to some sort of telepathy. The mind, so I
believe, gives off waves of electricity exactly like the instrument
which sends the wireless telegraphy messages. You know that if a
receiver in Marconi's system is tuned exactly to the pitch of a
transmitter it picks up the messages automatically, even if they are
not intended for it in the first instance. Some thought wave from your
sub-conscious brain must have reached mine when you were preparing to
hang yourself. That is the only explanation possible."

"No, Joseph," Hampson answered. "It is not the only explanation. There
is another, and if you could know the words that you spoke in your
trance but a few moments ago, you would think as I do."

"Did I speak? What did I say?"

"I think I will not tell you yet. Some day I will tell you. But I am
certain that every act of yours, every word you say, and every step you
take, are under special and marvellous guidance. The Holy Spirit is
guiding and leading you."

Joseph made a slight movement with his hand. There was something almost
petulant in the gesture.

"Let us not talk of that," he said. "I think we are agreed not to speak
of it. Certainly I will own that some curious things have happened. That
there is a destiny that shapes our ends may possibly be true. But that
any man does know anything of the nature and qualities of that destiny I
am unable to believe. You and that dear, sweet Nurse Mary have put your
own interpretation on the strange events of the last few weeks.
Certainly I seem to be the sport of some dominating influence. I admit
it, my friend. But it is coincidence, and nothing more. In my weaker
moments I have something of this sense; in my stronger ones I know that
it cannot be so."

"Well, Joseph, we shall see what the future has in store. For my part I
am certain it is big with events for you."

"I shall owe everything to Nurse Mary," Joseph answered, changing the
conversation. "It was extraordinarily kind of her to write to her
brother, and ask him to have me as his guest until I recover! Such
charity is rare in life. I have not often met with it, at any rate, on
my way through the world."

"She is a saint," Hampson answered, with deep reverence in his voice.

"She is something very like it," Joseph answered. "Some day I hope to
repay her. This long stay in the beautiful Welsh hills will give me the
necessary strength and quietness of nerve to get to work again. The
brother, I understand, is a sort of mystic. He lives a hermit's life,
and is a sort of mountain prophet. It is a strange thing, Hampson, that
I should be going as a pauper to stay with the brother of a dear girl
who took pity on my misfortunes! They have given me the money for my
journey. When I am well again I shall be given the money to return to
London, I, who am a graduate of Cambridge, and I may say it without
ostentation, a mathematician of repute, depend for my present sustenance
upon the charity of strangers. Yet I don't feel in the least
embarrassed. That is more curious than anything else. I have a sense
that my troubles are over now, that I shall come into my own again. We
are nearly at the station, are we not?"

Hampson made some ordinary remark of assent. He knew the history of the
almost incredible circumstances which had led to this journey of Joseph
to Wales. He had seen the letter from Lluellyn Lys which bade Mary to
send the man Joseph to him.

But Joseph did not know.

The patient had been told nothing of the mysterious circumstances that
had brought about this plan of his journey. Joseph simply thought that
he was invited to stay with Mary's brother, so that he might get well
and strong and recover power to enter the battle of life once more. But
Hampson was quite certain that before many days had passed his friend
would realize not only the truth about his mysterious summons, but also
the eternal truths of the Divine forces which were animating his
unconscious will and bringing him nearer and nearer to the consummation
of a Will which was not of this world, and of which he was the
instrument.

The cab was rolling through the wide squares and streets of Bloomsbury.
In three or four minutes it would arrive at Euston.

"You will soon be in splendid health, old fellow," Hampson said, anxious
to turn the conversation into an ordinary and conventional channel.
"Meanwhile, I'll have a cigarette. You mustn't smoke, of course, but you
won't grudge me the single comfort that my poor health allows me?"

He felt in his pocket for the packet of cigarettes that he had bought
that morning. Then, quite suddenly, he paused.

A sense of the tremendous incongruity of the present situation came to
him.

He was riding in a London cab to a London station. He was going to see a
sick friend start in a modern train for healing airs and a quiet sojourn
among the hills.

And yet--and yet he firmly believed--almost knew, indeed--that this
friend, this man who was called Joseph, was, so to speak, under the
especial convoy of the Holy Ghost!

It was incredible! Were there indeed miracles going on each day in the
heart of modern London? Was the world the same, even now, as it was in
the old, dim days when Jesus the Lord walked among the valleys and the
hills of Palestine?

Euston and cabs, and yet the modern world was full of mystery, of
wonder. Yes, indeed, God ruled now as He had always ruled.

Joseph was going towards some divinely-appointed goal! He had been told
nothing of the vision which had made Lluellyn Lys, the recluse of Wales,
write to Mary, commanding her to send him to his mountains. He was
moving blindly to meet his destiny.

Yet soon Joseph also would know what his friends knew. And with that
knowledge--

Hampson's thoughts had passed through his brain in a single instant,
while he was feeling for the cigarettes. He withdrew his hand
mechanically from his pocket and found that it grasped a letter--a
letter which had not been opened.

"Hullo," he said, "I have quite forgotten about my letter! It came by
the afternoon post just as I was leaving my room to go to the hospital
and meet you. I put it in my pocket and then thought no more about it."

He began to open the type-written envelope.

Joseph said nothing, but gazed out upon the panorama of the London
streets with dreamy eyes. He was thinking deeply.

Suddenly he was startled by an exclamation from Hampson.

Turning, he saw that the little man's face was alive with excitement and
flushed with pleasure.

"What is it, my dear fellow?" he asked.

"The most wonderful thing, Joseph! Fortune and prosperity at last! The
big newspaper firm of Rees--Sir David Rees is the head of it--have
offered me the editorship of their religious weekly, _The Sunday
Friend_. I have written a dozen articles or so for them from time to
time, and I suppose this is the result! I am to go and see Mr. Marston,
the managing editor, to-morrow."

The words tumbled breathlessly from his lips--he could hardly articulate
them in his enthusiasm and excitement. Joseph pressed his friend's hand.
He knew well what this opportunity meant to the conscientious and
hard-working little journalist, who had never had a chance before.

It meant freedom from the terrible and nerve-destroying hunt for
food--the horrible living from meal to meal--the life of an animal in
this regard, at least, but without the animal's faculties for satisfying
its hunger. It meant that Hampson's real talent would now be expressed
in its fullest power.

"I cannot congratulate you enough, dear friend," he said in a voice
which trembled with emotion. "Of all men, you deserve it. I cannot say
how happy this makes me, my friend, my brother--for it is as brothers
that you and I have lived this long while. I always knew your chance
would come. In the long run it always comes to those who are worthy of
it. To some it comes early, to others late, but it always comes."

"It means everything to me, Joseph," Hampson answered. "And think what
it will mean to you also! When you return cured and robust from Wales I
shall be able to give you regular employment. You will be able to write
any amount of articles for me. It means safety and a new start for us
both."

For some curious reason Joseph did not immediately reply.

Then he spoke slowly, just as the cab rolled under the massive archway
which guards the station courtyard.

"Thank you, indeed!" he answered. "But when you spoke, I had a sort of
presentiment that I should never need your aid. I can't account for it,
but it was strong and sudden."

"Oh, don't say that, old fellow! You must not be morbid, you know. You
will outlive most of us, without a doubt."

"I did not mean that I felt that I should die, Hampson. Rather a
sensation came to me that I was about to enter some new and strange life
which--"

The cab stopped.

"You and the porter must help me down," Joseph said, with a faint,
musing smile of singular sweetness and--so Hampson thought--of inward
anticipation and hope.

There was yet half an hour before the train was to start. It had been
thought better that Joseph should make a night journey to Wales. The
weather was very hot, and he would have more chance of rest.

"I'll take you to the waiting-room," Hampson said, "and then I will go
and get your ticket and some papers. I have told the porter who has your
bag what train you are going by. And the guard will come and see if you
want anything."

Joseph waited in the dingy, empty room while Hampson went away.

It was the ordinary bare, uncomfortable place with the hard leather
seats, the colored advertisements of seaside resorts, and the long,
heavy table shining with hideous yellow varnish.

Hampson seemed a long time, Joseph thought, though when he looked up at
the clock over the mantel-shelf he saw that the journalist had only been
gone about four minutes.

The waiting-room was absolutely silent save for the droning of a huge
blue fly that was circling round and round in the long beam of dusty
sunlight which poured in from one window.

The noise of the station outside seemed far away--a drowsy diapason.

Joseph, soothed by the distant murmur, leaned back in his chair and
emptied his mind of thought.

Then his eye fell idly and carelessly upon an open book that lay upon
the table.

The book was a copy of the Holy Bible, one of those large print books
which a pious society presents to places of temporary sojourn, if
perchance some passing may fall upon the Word of God and find comfort
therein.

From where he sat, however, Joseph could not see what the book was.

Nevertheless, for some strange reason or other, it began to fascinate
him. He stared at it fixedly, as a patient stares at a disc of metal
given him by the trained hypnotist of a French hospital when a trance is
to be induced.

Something within began to urge him to rise from his seat, cross the
room, and see exactly what it was that lay there. The prompting grew
stronger and stronger, until it filled his brain with an intensity of
compulsion such as he had never known before.

He resented the extraordinary influence bitterly. A mad, unreasoning
anger welled up within him.

"I will not go!" he said aloud. "Nothing in the world shall make me go!"

All that an ordinary spectator--had there been one in the
waiting-room--would have seen was a pale-faced man staring at the table.

Yet, nevertheless, a wild battle was going on, almost frightful in its
strength and power, though the end of it came simply enough.

The man could bear the fierce striving against this unknown and
mysterious compulsion no longer. His will suddenly dissolved, melted
away, fell to pieces like a child's house of cards, and with a deep sigh
that was almost a groan he rose and moved unsteadily towards the table.

He looked down at the book.

At first there was a mist before his eyes; then it rolled up like a
curtain and these words sprang out clear and vividly distinct from the
printed page: "But the Lord was with Joseph, and showed him mercy."




CHAPTER IV

ON THE MOUNTAIN


The long journey was over. A company of grave-faced men had met Joseph
at a little wayside station. On one side stretched the sea, on the other
great mountains towered up into the still, morning air.

It was early dawn. The sun in its first glory sent floods of joyous
light over the placid waters. How splendid the air was--this ozone-laden
breeze of the ocean--how cool, invigorating, and sweet!

Joseph turned to a tall, white-haired old man who seemed to be the
leader of the band of people who stood upon the platform.

"I have come to a new world," he said simply.

"Blessed be the name of the Lord who has sent you to Wales," came the
answer in deep and fervent tones.

Joseph looked at the man and his companions with astonishment. Why had
Lluellyn Lys, the mysterious recluse and hermit of the mountains, sent
these people to meet him? Why was there such a look of respect, almost
of awe, upon the face of each man there, such eagerness and
anticipation? It was all incomprehensible, utterly strange. He felt at a
loss what to do or say.

He bowed, and then, as if in a dream, mingled with the group and passed
out of the station. A carriage with two horses was waiting. By the side
of it stood the station-master; the man's peaked cap was in his hand,
and his face was lit up with welcome.

"The Teacher is waiting for you, sir," he said.

In a state of mind which was almost hypnotic Joseph was helped into the
carriage. Three of the people who had come to meet him entered also, and
they started up along the white mountain-road. Joseph felt that this
progress was all too slow. He was going to a definite goal; he had come
this vast distance to meet some one, and he was impatient of delay.

He looked up. High above his head the great slate mountain towered into
the sky, a white cap of cloud hid the summit.

The prospect was august, and it thrilled him strangely. In that great
cloud--like the cloud upon Sinai--what might lie hid? He was conscious
of strange unseen forces, whose depths, measures, or intensity he could
not understand, round him and controlling him. His life was utterly
changed. The hard wall of materialism against which he had leant his
sick life for support was melting and dissolving.

He gazed upwards once more at the great mountain.

Lluellyn Lys, the mysterious Teacher, was there! Who and what was this
man of the mountains, this teacher who was so revered? Mary's brother,
the brother of the beautiful girl who had saved him and sent him to
these wild solitudes of Wales.

Mary's brother, yes; but what besides? And what was Lluellyn Lys to be
to him?

       *       *       *       *       *

They came to a point at which the road ended and died away into a mere
grass track.

The old man who sat by Joseph's side rose from his seat and left the
carriage.

"Master," he said, and, as he said it, Joseph bowed his head and could
not look at him. "Master, here the road ends, and we must take you up
the mountain-side to the Teacher by a steep path."

Another deep Celtic voice broke in upon the old man's speech.

"Ay, it is a steep path to the Teacher, Lluellyn is ever near to
Heaven!"

Joseph had never heard Welsh before. He did not know a single word of
that old tongue which all our ancestors of Britain used before ever St.
Augustine came to England's shores with the news and message of Christ's
death and passion.

Yet, at that moment Joseph _understood exactly what the man said_. The
extraordinary fact did not strike him at the time, it was long
afterwards that he remembered it as one of the least of the wondrous
things that had befallen him.

He answered at once without a moment's pause.

"Lead on," he said; "I am with you. Take me to Lluellyn, the Teacher!"

Joseph turned. He saw that by the wayside there was a rough arm-chair
hung between two long poles. Still moving as a man in a dream, he sat
down on it. In a moment he was lifted up on the shoulders of four men,
and began to ascend a narrow, winding path among the heather.

On and up! On and up!

Now they have passed out of ordinary ways, and are high upon the
trackless hills. A dead silence surrounds them; the air is keen and
life-giving; the workaday world seems very far away.

On and up! Joseph is carried to his fate. Suddenly the old man who
walked in front stopped.

"Blessed be him who cometh in the name of the Lord!" he cried, in a
deep, musical voice that woke thunderous echoes in the lonely way.

For near upon an hour the strange procession continued among the heather
and bracken, through wild defiles and passes. At last, with singular and
startling suddenness, the party entered the huge mass of fleecy cloud
that veiled the mountain-top. All around was thick, impenetrable mist.
Everything was blotted out by the thick curtain, the footsteps of the
chair-bearers sounded like footsteps upon wool.

Then, without any other intimation than a few low words from the leader
of the party, the journey came to an end, the chair was carefully
lowered to the ground, and Joseph alighted.

A huge granite boulder stood close by. He sat down upon it, wondering
with eager curiosity what was to happen next, looking round him with
keen, searching eyes in a vain endeavor to pierce the ghostly, swaying
walls of mist which hemmed him in on every side.

The old man stepped up to him.

"Master," he said again, "our business is at an end. We have brought you
to the place where we have been told to bring you, and must say
farewell until we meet again."

Joseph started.

"I do not understand," he said, in a voice into which something almost
like fear had come....

"I do not understand. Do you mean to leave me here alone? I am a sick
man. I know nothing of where I am. Where is Lluellyn Lys?"

His voice sounded strained and almost shrill in its discomfort and
surprise.

If the old man appreciated the intonation in the voice of his questioner
he did not show it.

"Have no fear, master," he said. "What I do, I do by command of the
Teacher. No harm will come to you."

Joseph suddenly seemed to wake from his dream. A great sense of
irritation, almost of anger, began to animate him. He was once more the
old Joseph--the man who had walked with Hampson in the Commercial Road
before the accident had struck him down.

"That's all very well," he said sharply. "Perhaps no harm will happen to
me, but will Mr. Lluellyn Lys come to me? That is the question in which
I am particularly interested at this moment. I don't know in the least
where I am! I am too feeble to walk more than a few yards. I can't stay
here alone until--"

He found that he was speaking to the air, the white and lonely mist.
Suddenly, without a word of answer, his strange conductors had melted
away--withdrawn and vanished.

He was alone on a mountain-top in Wales, surrounded by an impenetrable
curtain of mist, unable to move in any direction. What was all this?

Was he the victim of some colossal trick, some cruel hoax, some immense
and indefensible practical joke?

It was difficult to believe it, and yet he cursed his folly in accepting
this strange invitation to Wales. What a foolish and unconsidered
business it all seemed--now that he sat alone in the white stillness,
the terrible solitude.

Still, mad as the action seemed to him now, he remembered that it was
the result of a long chain of coincidences. Certainly--yes, of that
there could be no doubt--he seemed to have been led to this place.
Something stronger than himself had influenced him. No, he was not here
by chance--

Had he fallen asleep?

Still he sat upon the lichen-covered boulder, still the grey curtain of
the mist hid all the mountain world.

Yet what was that sound--that deep, ringing voice which sounded in his
ears, falling from some distant height, falling through the air like an
arrow?

A voice! A voice! And these were the words it chanted--

"Rise up, Joseph, and come to me! Fear not, for God is with you! Come to
me, that the things that are appointed may be done!"

The great voice rolled through the mist like a cathedral bell.

Cold and trembling, Joseph rose to his feet. One hand rested against
the granite rock to support him as he answered, in a loud cry of
terror--

"Who are you? What is this? Are you the man Lluellyn? I cannot come. I
know not where to come. I am too weak to move. I am frightened."

Again the organ voice came pealing through the gloom.

"Joseph, Joseph, rise up and come! Come and fear not, for the power of
the Holy Ghost broods upon the mountains."

Joseph stood for a moment trembling, and swaying from side to side. Then
he was conscious of the most extraordinary sensation of his life.

Through the mist, invisible, impalpable, a great current of FORCE seemed
flowing to him and around him.

It poured into every fibre of his being, body, mind, and soul alike. It
was not a delusion. It was wonderfully, marvellously real. Each second
he grew stronger, power returned to his tired limbs, the weariness left
his brain. He called out aloud--

"Teacher, I am coming to you!" And, with the swinging, easy step of a
man in perfect health, together with the ease and certainty of a
practised mountaineer, he began to climb upward through the mist.

It was as though he was floating on air, buoyant as a bird is. On and on
he went, and all the while the invisible electric force poured into him
and gave him strength and power.

Suddenly thin yellow beams of sunshine began to penetrate and irradiate
the thick white blanket of mist. Stronger and stronger they grew,
throwing a thousand prismatic colors on the thinning vapor, until at
last Joseph emerged into full and glorious day.

This is what he saw.

The actual top of the mountain was only two or three yards above him,
and formed a little rock-strewn plateau some twenty or thirty yards
square--now bathed in vivid sunshine.

Against a cairn of boulders in the exact centre of the space a tall man
was standing.

Both his arms were stretched out rigidly towards Joseph, the _fingers of
each hand outspread and pointing to him_, as he emerged from the
fog-belt with the sunshine. The man, who wore a long black cloak, was
well over six feet high, and very thin. His face was pale, but the
strong, rugged features gave it an impression of immense vitality and
force.

Joseph stopped in sudden amazement at the sight of this strange figure
up in the clouds. He suddenly remembered a picture he had seen showing
Dante standing upon a great crag, and looking down into the abyss of the
Inferno.

Lluellyn Lys looks like that--exactly like that, Joseph thought.

He went straight up to the Teacher. As he did so, Lluellyn's arms
suddenly collapsed and fell loosely to his sides. His eyes, which had
been fixed steadily upon Joseph, closed with a simultaneous movement,
and he leant back against the cairn as if utterly exhausted.

But this was only for a moment. As Joseph came up to him he roused
himself, and his face lit up with welcome. The Teacher's smile was
singularly winning and sweet--it was just like Mary's smile, Joseph
thought--but it was also a very sad smile.

"Brother," Lluellyn said, "the peace of God be with you. May you be full
of the Holy Ghost, that you may better accomplish those high things for
which the Father has destined you, and for which He has brought you
here."

Joseph took Lluellyn's hand, and was about to answer him when the former
sank back once more against the boulders. His face grew white as linen,
and he seemed about to swoon.

"You are ill!" Joseph cried in alarm. "What can I do to help you?"

"It is nothing," Lluellyn answered in a moment or two. "I have been
giving you of my strength, Joseph, that you might mount the last stage
of your journey. The voice of the Lord came to me as I communed here
with Him, and the Holy Spirit sent the power to you through this
unworthy body of mine."

Joseph bowed.

"I am moving in deep waters," he said. "Many strange and wonderful
things have happened to me of late. My mind is shaken, and my old life
with its old point of view already seems very far away. But let me say,
first, how much I appreciate your extreme kindness in asking me here,
through Miss Lys. As Miss Mary will have told you, I am a poor, battered
scholar with few friends, and often hard put to live at all. Your
kindness will enable me to recover after my accident."

Lluellyn took Joseph by the arm.

He led him to the edge of the plateau.

"Look!" he said.

The mist had gone. From that great height they looked down the steep,
pine-clothed sides of the mountain to the little white village, far, far
below. Beyond was the shining, illimitable ocean.

"The world is very fair," Joseph said.

"The world is very fair because God is immanent in all things. God is in
the sea, and on the sides of the hills. The Holy Ghost broods over those
distant waters, and is with us here in this high place. Joseph, from the
moment when the cross-wise timbers struck you down in Whitechapel, until
this very moment now, you have been led here under the direct guidance
of the Holy Ghost. There is a certain work for you to do."

Joseph looked at the tall man with the grave, sweet smile in startled
astonishment.

"What do I bring?" he said. "I, the poor, battered wreck, the unknown,
the downtrodden? What do I bring _you_?"

Lluellyn looked Joseph in the face, and placed one long, lean hand upon
his shoulder.

"Ask rather what you bring God," he said. "It were a more profitable
question. For me, in the power and guidance of the Lord, it is ordained
that you bring one thing only."

"And what is that?"

"Death!" said Lluellyn Lys.




CHAPTER V

THE POURING


Lluellyn Lys lived in a cottage on the side of the mountain where Joseph
had first been taken to meet him. His small income was enough for his
almost incredibly simple wants, and an ancient widow woman who loved and
reverenced him more than anything else in the world kept the cottage for
him, milked the cow, and did such frugal cooking as was necessary.

Lluellyn was known far and wide in that part of Wales. The miners, the
small crofting farmers, and the scattered shepherds revered and honored
the mysterious "Teacher" as men of God, were revered in the old times.

His influence was very great in the surrounding mining villages; he had
been able to do what sometimes even the parish priests had tried in
vain. The drunkard, the man of a foul and blasphemous tongue,
loose-livers and gamblers, had become sober and God-fearing folk, with
their hearts set upon the Eternal Light.

No one knew when the tall ascetic figure would appear among them with a
strange appropriateness. It was said that he possessed the gift of
second sight, and many extraordinary stories were told of him.

His sermons were wonderful in their directness and force, their strange
magnetic power. He had a mysterious knowledge of men's hearts, and would
often make a personal appeal to some sinner who had stayed to hear
him--an appeal full of such accurate and intimate knowledge of his
listener's inner life and secret actions that it appeared miraculous.

And in addition to this power of divination, it was whispered that the
Teacher possessed the power of healing, that his touch had raised the
sick from couches of pain. It was certain that several people who had
been regarded as at death's door had recovered with singular rapidity
after Lluellyn had paid them one or two visits. But in every case the
folk who had got well refused to speak of their experiences, though it
was remarked that their devotion to the recluse became almost
passionate.

A continual mystery enveloped him. Sometimes no one saw him for weeks.
He would spend day after day locked up in the room he used in the
cottage, and people who had climbed the mountain to seek him, were told
by the housekeeper that it was impossible, and that she herself had not
looked upon his face for many days.

Occasionally some late returning shepherd or miner would see the tall,
dark figure kneeling, lost in prayer, on the summit of some cloudy peak,
or the edge of some terrible abyss--stark and sharply outlined in the
moonlight.

And then again would come those sudden periods of mighty activity, of
great gatherings on the hillside, fiery words of warning and
exhortation in the villages.

       *       *       *       *       *

Joseph had been with Lluellyn Lys for ten days. After the first strange
meeting on the mountain, when the Teacher had uttered the enigmatic word
"Death!" he had refused to give his newly arrived guest any explanation
of his saying.

"Brother," he said, "ask me not anything of the meaning of these things.
The time when they shall be revealed is not yet come, neither do I
myself see clearly in what manner they shall be accomplished."

Lluellyn had prayed.

"You are faint with the long journey, Joseph," he said, "but my house is
not far away, where you will find food and rest. But first let us pray
for a blessing upon your arrival, and that all things may befall as Our
Lord would have them."

And there, in the glorious noontide sunshine, on the highest point of
that great mountain from which they could survey the distant, shining
sea, and range beyond range of mighty hills, the two men knelt down and
prayed.

Joseph knelt with folded hands by the side of the Teacher.

It did not seem strange to him that he should do this. He no longer knew
the fierce revolt of the intellect against the promptings of the
conscience and the soul.

Rebellion had ceased. He bowed his head in prayer.

"Oh, Holy Ghost, descend upon us now, upon two sinful men, and fill us
with Thyself. Fill and permeate us with Thy divine power. Send down Thy
blessing upon us, and especially guard and influence Joseph that those
things which Thou hast designed for him be not too heavy for him.

"In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Three in One,
and One in Three--Amen."

Then had come a ten minutes' descent, by an easier path on the other
side of the principal cone, till the house of the Teacher was reached.

Joseph, after a simple meal, had fallen asleep. He was wearied to death,
and when the housekeeper told him that he had slept for a whole
revolution of the clock hands his surprise was great.

For the first two or three days of his stay Joseph saw but little of his
host. They met at the frugal midday and evening repasts, but that was
all. Even then Lluellyn talked but little, though his manner was always
kind and almost deferential.

The Teacher, so his guest could not avoid thinking, regarded him from
some standpoint which he could not enter into. Lluellyn spoke to, and
regarded Joseph as if he were a man set apart, for some reason or other.

It was very mysterious and piqued the convalescent's curiosity,
sometimes to an almost unbearable degree. There were constant veiled
references to the future, hints of a time to come--of some imminent
happening of tremendous importance.

What was to happen? How was he concerned in these matters? This was the
question that Joseph constantly asked himself with growing impatience
and nervous anticipation.

After the first three days Joseph saw more of his host. They went for
walks together over the hills, and once or twice the guest was present
at a great gathering on the mountain-side, when Lluellyn preached to the
people, and swayed them as the wind sways a field of corn.

More and more Joseph began to realize the holiness of this man with whom
he lived. His love for God and for men glowed within him like a white
flame. Joseph no longer said or believed that there was no God. His
experiences had been too wonderful for that. It was impossible for any
sane mind to be with Lluellyn Lys daily and not to recognize that some
influence which was supernormal both in essence and fact made him what
he was.

But Christ? Ah, that was a different matter! As yet the Man of Sorrows
had touched no responsive chord in Joseph's heart.

It was, then, under these conditions, and while his mental development
was just at this point, that the finger of God moved at last, and the
stupendous drama of Joseph's life began.

He had been alone all day, and as evening fell went out to see if he
could find Lluellyn. There was a sense of loneliness upon him. For some
reason or other he felt forsaken and forlorn. After all, life was
empty, and held very little for him.

Such were his thoughts as he walked along a familiar path towards an
ancient Druid circle, some half a mile from the cottage, where he
thought he might find his host.

A faint watery moonlight illuminated the path among the heather, a wan
and spectral radiance, which gave the mountain-pass a strange, unearthly
aspect.

And as Joseph walked there, with a heavy heart, he became aware that
some one was coming towards him. It was not Lluellyn Lys. Of that he was
certain, an instinct told him so.

The figure came rapidly and noiselessly over the heath, and as it came
Joseph began to tremble. His knees knocked together, his tongue clave to
the roof of his mouth, the palms of his hands were wet.

Yet, as far as we may judge, it was not unmixed fear that Joseph felt.
Never, at any time, did he describe his sensations at that supreme
moment.

When questioned afterwards he was always silent.

But it was not all fear.

The figure drew nearer until at last it stood in the centre of the path,
closing the way to the wanderer.

The dark moors, the faint and spectral sky, the whole visible world
flashed away. There was a noise in Joseph's ears as of many waters, and
through the great rush that was overwhelming him, body, mind, and soul,
he seemed to hear a voice speaking--

Then a thick darkness blotted out all sensation, and he knew no more.

       *       *       *       *       *

Joseph tried to lift his arm. He was conscious of the desire to do so,
but for some reason or other he was unable to move it for a moment.

The arm felt like lead.

Slowly--and this also was with an effort--he opened his eyes.

He was in bed, lying in the familiar room at Lluellyn's cottage, though
how he had come there he had no idea whatever.

His eyes wandered vaguely round the place, and as they grew accustomed
to conscious use he saw that some changes had been made in the aspect of
the room. A table had been removed, and a larger one substituted for it.
The new table was covered with bottles--square bottles with white labels
pasted on them. And there was a faint medicinal smell in the air also.
Then, a sofa-couch had made its appearance which had not been there
before. What did it all mean?

Suddenly the memory of the figure that had walked towards him upon the
moor when all was late and dark came back to him in a rush of sensation.
Why had everything flashed away as that silent figure approached? Who or
what was it that had come noiselessly upon him through the gloom? Why
had he been struck down?

Struck down? Yes; that was what had happened. He began to think a little
more clearly. He had been struck down, and now, of course, he was ill.
They had found him on the moor probably, and brought him back to the
cottage.

He began to realize more and more that he was ill--very ill. He tried to
turn in bed, and could hardly do so. Once more he endeavored to lift the
arm that felt like a limb of lead, and, partially succeeding, he saw
that it was thin and wasted.

There was a chair standing not far away from the bed, and on it a copy
of a religious journal. He started. His eye had fallen upon the date of
the paper.

Slowly and painfully he recalled the date of his first arrival in
Wales--the expiration of time since his sojourn with the Teacher began
until the date indicated upon the front page of the journal.

There could be no doubt about it, he had been lying unconscious of the
outside world, and heedless of the passage of time, for at least eight
days--possibly even more.

He gave a little gasp of astonishment--a gasp which was almost a
moan--and as he did so the door of the bedroom opened, and Mrs. Price,
the old housekeeper, entered.

She came straight up to the bedside and looked down upon Joseph. There
was something very strange in the expression of the old, wrinkled face.
It was changed from its usual expression of resigned and quiet joy.
There were red circles round the eyes, as if she had been weeping; the
kind old mouth was drawn with pain.

"Ah, my dear," she said to Joseph, "you've come to yourself at last! It
was what the doctor said--that it would be about this time that you
would come to. The Lord be praised!"

Joseph tried to answer her. The words came slowly from his lips. He
articulated with difficulty, and his voice was strange to his own ears.

"Have I been ill long?"

"For near ten days, sir, you have lain at death's door. The doctor from
Penmaenbach said that you would surely die. But the Teacher knew that
you would not. And oh, and oh, woe's the day when you came here!"

With a sudden convulsive movement, the old lady threw her hands up into
the air, and then burst into a passion of weeping.

Joseph had heard her with a languid interest. His question was answered;
he knew now exactly what had happened, but he was still too weak and
weary for anything to have much effect upon him. Yet the sudden tears
and the curious words of the kindly old dame troubled him.

"I am sorry," he said faintly. "I know that I must have been a great
trouble to you. But I had no idea I should fall ill again."

For answer she stooped over and kissed him upon the forehead.

"Trouble!" she cried, through her tears. "That's no word to say to me. I
spoke hastily, and what I said I said wrongly. It was the Teacher that
was in my mind. But it is all the will of the Lord to Whom all must
bow--you'll take your medicine now, if you please."

So she ended, with a sudden descent from high matters to the practical
occupations of the ministering angel.

Joseph drank the potion which the old lady held to his lips. Her arm was
round his head as she raised it, her brown, tear-stained face was close
to his.

He felt a sudden rush of affection for her. In the past he had ever been
a little cold in his relations with all men and women. Save, perhaps,
for Hampson, the journalist, he had not experienced anything like love
for his kind. Yet now he felt his heart going out to this dear old
nurse, and, more than that even, something cold and hard within him
seemed to have melted. He realized in his mind, as a man may realize a
whole vast landscape in a sudden flash of lightning, how much love there
was in the world after all.

Even as his whole weak frame was animated by this new and gracious
discovery, the door of the bedroom opened once more and Lluellyn Lys
came in.

Mrs. Price turned from the bed upon which Joseph was lying, and went up
to the Teacher.

She caught him by the arm--Joseph was witness of it all--and bowed her
head upon it. Then once more she began to sob.

"Oh, man, man," she said, "I've loved ye and tended ye for many years
now. And my father, and my mother, and my people for a hundred years
before, have served the house of Lys. But you have led me from the
bondage of darkness and sin into peace and light. Ye brought me to the
Lord Jesus, Lluellyn Lys. Aye and the Holy Ghost came down upon me when
I gave my heart to the Lord! And now, 'tis near over, 'tis all near
done, and my heart is bitter heavy, Lys. Master, my heart is bowed down
with woe and grief!"

Lluellyn gently took the poor old thing by the arm. He led her to the
bedside where Joseph lay.

"Old friend," he said--"dear old faithful friend and servant, it is not
me whom you must call Master any more. My work is nearly done, the time
of my departure draws near. Here is your Master."

The old dame, clinging to Lluellyn's arm, looked down at Joseph. Then
she started violently, and began to tremble like an autumn leaf in the
wind.

The old face, browned by a thousand days of mountain sun and storm, grew
pale under its tan. She looked up into Lluellyn's eyes with an
interrogation that was almost fierce in its intensity.

"I see something, Lys!" she said. "I see something! What does it
mean--what is it, Master? I never saw it before!"

Lluellyn answered her gravely and slowly.

"I know not," he said, "save only that it is God's will. All has not yet
been revealed to me. But I shall know soon, very soon, Anna, old friend.
And, as you are a godly woman of the Lord, I charge you that you go with
this man when he departs from this place. Leave us now, Anna. I have
somewhat to do with Joseph."

As his voice fell and ceased, the old lady went weeping from the room.

For some little time there was a dead silence in the place.

Joseph's brain was in a whirl, but his eyes were fixed upon the tall
figure of the Teacher.

Lluellyn Lys was strangely altered. His thin form was thinner still.
Always fragile in appearance, he now seemed as if a breath would blow
him away. His face and hands were deathly white, and his whole
appearance suggested a man almost bloodless, from whom all vitality had
been literally drained away.

"You are ill, Lluellyn," Joseph said at length.

The Teacher shook his head.

"No, dear friend," he answered. "I do what I have to do, that is all."

As he spoke, he drew a chair up to the bedside, and, stretching out his
long, thin hands, placed the finger-tips of one upon Joseph's forehead,
and those of the other upon his pulse.

A dim memory, faint and misty, came to Joseph of his recent illness.
Lluellyn had sat in this position before, the touch of his fingers was
familiar somehow or other, the stooping form awoke a chord of memory.

"Why," he said, "since I have been ill you have been doing this many
times. It is all coming back to me. What are you doing?"

Lluellyn smiled faintly.

"I am giving you strength for the work God intends you to do," he said.
"Do not talk, Joseph. Lie very still, and fix your thoughts on God."

Already the Teacher's voice seemed thin and far away to Joseph. It was
as though he was moving rapidly away from Lluellyn, carried by a strange
force, a vital fluid which was pouring into his veins.

He experienced exactly the same sensation as when he had first climbed
the mountain-top to meet Lluellyn--that of receiving power, of being a
vessel into which life itself was flowing.

At some time or another most people have been under the influence of an
anæsthetic, if only for the extraction of a tooth. Joseph now began to
lose consciousness in exactly the same way, rapidly, with a sense of
falling and a roaring noise in the ears.

The falling motion seemed to stop, the noise ceased, everything was
dark.

Then the black swayed like a curtain. Light came swiftly and silently,
and in one single moment Joseph saw stretched before him and below him a
vast panorama.

It was London that he saw, but in a way that no human eye has ever
beheld the modern Babylon. Nor does the word "saw" accurately express
the nature of the vision.

He apprehended rather than saw. The inner spiritual eye conveyed its
message to the brain far more clearly and swiftly than even the delicate
lenses and tissues of the flesh can ever do. Color, form, movement, all
these were not seen physically, but felt in the soul.

He had passed out of the dimensions of mortal things into another state.

London lay below him, and in the spirit he heard the noise of its
abominations, and saw the reek of its sin hanging over it like a vast,
lurid cloud.

They say, and the fact is well authenticated, that a drowning man sees
the whole of his past life, clear, distinct, minutely detailed, in a
second of time.

It was with some such flash as this that Joseph saw London. He did not
see a picture or a landscape of it. He did not receive an impression of
it. He saw it _whole_. He seemed to know the thoughts of every human
heart, nothing was secret from him.

His heart was filled with a terrible anguish, a sorrow so profound and
deep, so piercing and poignant, that it was even as death--as bitter as
death. He cried out aloud, "Lord Jesus, purge this city, and save the
people. Forgive them, O Lord, out of Thy bountiful goodness and mercy! I
that am as dust and ashes have taken it upon me to speak to the Lord. O
Lord, purge this city of its abominations, and save this Thy servant.
Teach me to love Thee and to labor for Thee!"

The vision changed. Into Joseph's heart there came an ineffable glow of
reverence and love. In its mighty power it was supersensual, an ecstasy
for which there are no words, a love in which self passed trembling away
like a chord of music, a supreme awe and adoration.

For he thought that a face was looking upon him, a face full of the
Divine love, the face of Our Lord.

A voice spoke in his heart--or was it an actual physical voice?--

"Lo, this has touched thy lips, and thine iniquity is taken away, and
thy sin purged. Also I heard the voice of the Lord saying, 'Whom shall I
send, and who will go for us?' Then said I, 'Here am I; send me.'"

A silence, a darkness of soul and mind, the rushing of many waters,
falling, falling, falling....

Joseph awoke, the voice rang in his ears still.

He saw the walls of the cottage room; he had come back to the world and
to life, a terrible, overmastering fear and awe shook him like a reed.

He cried out with a loud voice, calling for his friend, calling for the
Teacher.

"Lluellyn! Lluellyn Lys, come to me!"

He was lying upon his back still, in exactly the same position as that
in which he had lost consciousness while Lluellyn's hands were upon him
giving him life and strength.

Now he sat up suddenly, without an effort, as a strong and healthy man
moves.

"Lluellyn! Lluellyn!"

His loud call for help was suddenly strangled into silence. Lying upon
the floor, close to the bedside, was the body of Lluellyn Lys, a long
white shell, from which the holy soul had fled to meet its Lord.

The Teacher had given his life for his friend. In obedience to some
mysterious revelation he had received of the Divine Will, Lluellyn Lys
had poured his life into the body of another.

Joseph stared for a moment at the corpse, and then glanced wildly round
the room. He could call no more, speech had left him, his lips were
shrivelled, his tongue paralysed.

As he did so, his whole body suddenly stiffened and remained motionless.

Exactly opposite to him, looking at him, he saw once more the face of
his vision, the countenance of the Man of Sorrows.

In mute appeal, powerless to speak, he stretched out his arms in
supplication.

But what was this?

Even as he moved, the figure moved also. Hands were stretched out
towards him, even as his were extended.

He leapt from the bed, passed by the still, white body upon the
floor--and learned the truth.

A large mirror hung upon the opposite wall.

What he had thought to be the face of Christ--the veritable face of his
vision--was his own face!

His own face, bearded, changed, and moulded by his illness, altered
entirely.

His own face had become as an image and simulacrum of the traditional
pictures and representations of Our Lord's.




CHAPTER VI

THE CROSS AT ST. PAUL'S


Hampson had been in the editorial chair of the religious weekly for
nearly a month, and the change in the little journalist's circumstances
was enormous; from the most grinding poverty, the most precarious
existence, he had arrived at what to him was wealth.

He felt himself a rich man, and, indeed, the big firm of newspaper
proprietors which had singled him out to occupy his present position was
not niggardly in the matter of salary. With careful discrimination they
sought out the best man for this or that post, and when they found him
paid him sufficiently well to secure his continued adherence to their
interests.

Hampson generally arrived at his office about eleven, and opened his
letters. On the day of which this chapter treats he came earlier as he
had to "pass the paper for press."

A large amount of correspondence awaited him, and he waded steadily
through it for about an hour, giving directions to his secretary as each
letter was opened. When the man had gone to his own room Hampson leant
back in his comfortable chair with a sigh. His usually cheerful face
wore an expression of perplexity and annoyance.

More than a fortnight had elapsed since he had received any
communication from his friend Joseph.

When Joseph had first left London he had written every two or three days
to Hampson--brilliant, if slightly caustic letters, describing his new
environment and the life he was leading on the mountain with Lluellyn
Lys. These letters had concealed nothing, and had told the journalist
exactly what had occurred. Yet every time that the writer recorded some
strange happening, or wrote of some unusual experience and sensation, he
had given a _material_ explanation of it at considerable length.

The astonishing climb up the final peak of the mountain, for example,
was recorded with great accuracy. The voice of the Teacher as it pealed
down through the mist, the sudden access of strength that made it
possible for Joseph to join his host--all this, and much more, was set
down with orderly and scientific precision. But the explanation had been
that the tonic power of the mountain air had provided the muscular
impetus necessary for the climb, and that its heady influence upon a
mind unaccustomed to so much oxygen had engendered the delusion of a
supernatural force.

Hampson had his own opinion about these strange things. He saw further
into them than Joseph appeared to be able to see. Yet his friend's
letters were a constant source of pleasure and inspiration to him--even
while he deplored Joseph's evident resolve to admit nothing into his
life that did not allow of a purely material explanation.

And now the letters had stopped.

He had heard no single word for days and days. His own communications
had remained unanswered, nor had he received any reply to an anxious
inquiry after Joseph's health, addressed to Lluellyn Lys himself.

This morning, again, there was nothing at all, and the faithful little
man was gravely disturbed. Something serious had indubitably happened,
and how to find out what it was he did not know.

It was a day of thick and lurid fog. London lay under a pall--the whole
world around was sombre and depressing.

The well-furnished editorial sanctum, with it's electric lights,
leather-covered armchairs, gleaming telephones, and huge writing-table
was comfortable enough, but the leaden light outside, upon the Thames
Embankment, made London seem a city of dreadful night.

Hampson rose from his chair, and stood at the window for a moment, lost
in thought.

Yes, London was indeed a terrible city. More terrible than Babylon of
old, more awful when one remembered that Christ had come to the world
with His Message of Salvation.

The ancient city of palaces, in its eternal sunlit majesty, had never
known the advent of the Redeemer. Yet, were those forgotten people who
worshipped the God Merodach really worse than the Londoners of to-day?

Only on the day before, a West End clergyman had come to Hampson with
detailed statistics of the vice in his own parish in the neighborhood of
Piccadilly. The vicar's statements were horrible. To some people they
would have sounded incredible. Yet they were absolutely true, as Hampson
was very well aware--naked, shameful horrors in Christian London.

"Ah," the clergyman said, "if only Our Lord came to London now how awful
would His condemnation be!"

As the editor looked out upon the gloom he felt that the material
darkness was symbolic of a spiritual darkness which sometimes appalled
him when he realized it.

The door opened, and the sub-editor came in with "pulls" of the final
sheets of the paper. Hampson had to read these carefully, initial them,
and send them to the composing-room marked as ready for the
printing-machines. Then his work was done for the day.

At lunch time, the fog still continuing, he left the office. An idea had
come to him which might be of service in obtaining news of Joseph.

He would take a cab down to the East End Hospital, and ask Mary Lys if
she knew anything about his friend. Probably she would know something,
her brother, Lluellyn Lys, would almost certainly have written to her.

Hampson had met Mary two or three times during the last weeks. He
reverenced the beautiful girl who had saved him from the consequences of
his sudden madness, with all the force of his nature.

In her he saw a simple and serene holiness, an absolute abnegation of
self which was unique in his experience. She represented to him all that
was finest, noblest, and best in Christian womanhood.

Since his appointment to the editorial chair he had gloried in the fact
that he had been able to send her various sums of money for distribution
among the most destitute of the patients under her charge.

At four o'clock he had an appointment with the clerk of the works at St.
Paul's Cathedral, but until then he was free. The _Sunday Friend_
covered a very wide field, and hardly any question of interest to
religious people was left untouched. At the moment grave fears were
entertained as to the safety of the huge building upon Ludgate Hill. The
continual burrowing for various purposes beneath the fabric had caused a
slight subsidence of one of the great central piers. A minute crack had
made its appearance in the dome itself.

Hampson had obtained permission from the dean to inspect the work of
repair that was proceeding, knowing that his readers would be interested
in the subject.

Until four, however, he was perfectly free, and he drove straight
towards Whitechapel.

His cab drove slowly through the congested arteries of the City, where
the black-coated business men scurried about like rats in the gloom. But
in half an hour Hampson arrived at the door of the hospital, and was
making inquiries if Nurse Lys was off duty or no, and that if she were
would she see him.

He had not come at this time entirely on speculation. He knew that, as a
general rule, Mary was free at this hour.

She proved to be so to-day, and in a moment or two came into the
reception-room where he was waiting.

She was like a star in the gloom, he thought.

How beautiful her pure and noble face was, how gracious her walk and
bearing! All that spiritual beauty which comes from a life lived with
utter unselfishness for others, the holy tranquillity that goodness
paints upon the face, the light God lends the eyes when His light burns
within--all these, added to Mary's remarkable physical beauty, marked
her out as rare among women.

The little journalist worshipped her. She seemed to him a being so
wonderful that there was a sort of desecration even in touching her
hand.

"Ah, my friend," she said to him, with a flashing smile of welcome, "I
am glad to see you. To tell you the truth, I have a melancholy mood
to-day, a thing so very rare with me that it makes me all the more glad
to see a friend's face. How are you, and how is your work?"

"I am very well, Nurse Mary, thank you, but I am troubled in mind about
Joseph. I cannot get an answer to any of my letters, though at first he
wrote constantly. I even wrote to Mr. Lluellyn Lys, hoping to hear from
him that all was well. But I have received no answer to that letter
either. I came to ask you if you had any news."

Mary looked at him strangely, and with perplexity in her eyes.

"No," she said. "I have had no news at all from either of them for some
time. I have been disturbed in mind about it for some days. Of course I
have written, too, but there has been no response. That is why I have
been feeling rather downhearted to-day. It is curious that you, Mr.
Hampson, should have come to me with this question, and at this moment."

They looked at each other apprehensively, and for this reason: they were
not talking of two ordinary men and their doings.

Both felt this strongly.

There had been too many unusual and inexplicable occurrences in
connection with Joseph's accident and arrival at the hospital for either
Mary or Hampson to disregard any seeming coincidence. Both knew, both
had always felt, that they were spectators of--or, rather, actors in--a
drama upon which the curtain had but lately risen.

"When did you last hear from Joseph?" Mary asked.

Hampson mentioned the date. It was, though, of course, he did not know
it, the date of Joseph's strange experience upon the midnight moor, the
date on which he had been struck down, and on which his second illness
began.

"It was at that time that I received my last letter from my brother,"
the girl answered--"the exact day, in fact. The letter troubled me when
it came; it has troubled me ever since. It spoke of the end of his work
here, hinted that he felt he had almost done what he was sent into the
world to do, though at the same time he bade me prepare myself for great
events immediately imminent."

There was a silence in the big, bare reception-room. Mary broke it.

"What a dreadful day it is, Mr. Hampson," she said, with an effort to
give the conversation a less gloomy turn. "I have rarely seen the fog
lie so low over town. Oh, for a breath of fresh air--just five short
minutes of fresh, unclouded air! I think I would give almost anything
for that at this moment."

A sudden thought came to the journalist.

"Do you know, nurse," he said, "I think I am one of the few men in
London who can give you just what you ask at this moment; that is, if
you don't mind doing something slightly unconventional?"

"Oh, convention!" she answered, with the serene smile of the
high-natured woman for whom the world has no terrors.

Hampson explained where he was bound when he left the hospital, and for
what purpose. There would be no difficulty in the matter at all, if Mary
cared to accompany him to the roof of the cathedral. It was certain,
also, that the dome would rise high above the low belt of fog which was
stifling London.

Mary had three hours at her own disposal. In ten minutes they were
driving to the great church.

When they had ascended to the roof of St. Paul's they found the fog was
not so dense. The sun was setting over the modern Babylon.

Hampson pointed down at the nether gloom.

"Vanity Fair!" he said. "Vanity Fair! What would Jesus Christ say to
London if He came to it now?"

As he spoke the breeze suddenly freshened, the fog clouds took new
shapes, the light of the western sun grew in the dark.

And then a thing happened that set their hearts beating furiously.

Right ahead in the gloom, flashing, flame-like, clear-cut, and distinct,
a mighty cross hung over London.

It was at precisely this moment that Joseph was staring, trembling, into
the mirror, at the foot of which lay the long white body of Lluellyn
Lys, and realizing his own exact resemblance to the Man of Sorrows,
Jesus Who came to save us all.




CHAPTER VII

THE FINANCIER


Sir Augustus Kirwan, the great financier, was much disturbed by the news
that his nephew Lluellyn Lys was dead. Both Sir Augustus and his wife
had hoped that the recluse of the mountains might be induced to leave
his solitudes and take an ordinary place in the world. The baronet was
sonless. His wealth was enormous, and he could leave his daughter
Marjorie enough money to make her one of the richest heiresses in
England, and still endow a male heir with a huge fortune. This he would
have done for his wife's nephew--his own nephew by marriage, for though
not a well-born man himself, he had an immense reverence for ancient
blood.

He reverenced it in his wife, and was as well informed in the history of
the House of Lys as she was herself. Now, however, there was no longer
any chance of reclaiming Lluellyn from what Sir Augustus and Lady Kirwan
had always regarded as the most incredible folly and semi-madness.

The last male Lys in the direct line was gathered to his fathers. There
still remained Mary Lys.

"My dear," the baronet said to his wife, "Lluellyn's death has been a
great blow to you, and, indeed, it has to me also, for you know that I
share your enthusiasm for your family and your hopes for it. But Mary
is still with us. She is young and beautiful. We can give her a dowry
that will attract a duke. As soon as I am well again I shall put my foot
down in no uncertain way. This time, whatever Mary may say, I shall
compel her to leave this ridiculous slum-hospital work and take her
proper place in society."

Sir Augustus spoke of his illness. He was a man by no means indifferent
to the pleasures of the table. As he himself would have expressed it, he
"did himself well" in every particular.

But people who like white truffles from Piedmont, caviare from the
Volga, comet year port, and liqueurs of brandy at seven pounds a bottle,
must expect a Nemesis.

Two days before the news of Lluellyn's death arrived Sir Augustus was
seized with a bad attack of gout.

When Mary Lys, in uncontrollable grief, had hastened to her aunt's house
in Berkeley Square, carrying the sad message from Joseph Bethune which
told her of her beloved brother's death, the banker had been quite
unable to move.

Had it been in any way possible, the worthy man would have hastened to
Wales to be present at the funeral of his nephew by marriage. But the
physicians had absolutely forbidden him the journey. He would not,
however, allow Mary to travel to the principality by herself. In the
first place he had the not uncommon dislike of men to their womenkind
attending funerals. Mary would not hear of this.

"Uncle," she said, "shall I not go to see my dear and saintly brother's
body put into the earth from which he will rise again when the trumpet
of the Resurrection Day sounds?"

This was rather above Sir Augustus.

"Tut, tut, my dear," he said; "the--er--Resurrection trumpet is not very
near to the nineteenth century. But still, if you must go, I shall
insist on your having a proper escort."

Accordingly Mary had been sent to Wales in the charge of the Kirwans'
family solicitor, who was instructed to see that everything was done
decently and in order, as befitted the obsequies of the last male member
of the House of Lys.

For her part, Mary did not in the least want the company of Mr. Owen,
the solicitor. She would have infinitely preferred to be left alone with
her grief. Nevertheless she recognized the kindly feeling and family
instinct that prompted Sir Augustus' action, and submitted with the best
grace possible.

Lluellyn Lys had been dead for seven days, and it was now two days after
the funeral.

Sir Augustus was not yet able to leave the house, but his gout was
better. After the simple dinner--which was all that the doctor allowed
him--he sat in his library reading the newspaper of that morning.

The first thing that caught his eye was a review of a new play which had
just been produced under the title of "The Golden Maiden." Sir Augustus
was an occasional patron of the burlesque stage. The sort of
entertainments provided by the theatres that produce "musical comedy"
were quite to his taste. Kindly and generous as he was, he was a man
without any religious belief whatever and with no ideals. To such a
mind, the indelicacy and lubricity of these plays appealed intensely,
and afforded him great amusement. Nor had he the slightest idea that any
blame whatever could attach to him. These places were crowded night
after night by all sections of society--who was he to stay away?

Sir Augustus chuckled over the criticism. The writer first gave a
detailed synopsis of the plot--such as it was--and recorded his general
impressions of the performance. The critic was obviously a man of taste
and decent feeling, for he spoke in no measured terms of the gross
indecency of the play, which was, to put it plainly, little more nor
less than a glorification of adultery.

"And the pity of it is," the writer concluded, "that all London will
flock to see this immoral nonsense. If the drama is to be thus
degraded--and no other form of entertainment has an equal popularity
with the one under discussion--then decent English men and women will
begin to long for the return of the Commonwealth, with its stern and
self-sacrificing simplicity."

Sir Augustus put the paper down.

"Silly fool," he muttered. "I wonder he is allowed to write such
hypocritical twaddle. Certainly, from what he says, they do seem to have
gone a little too far this time."

Nevertheless, Sir Augustus made a mental resolve to look in at the
Frivolity for an hour or two as soon as ever his leg would let him.

He put down the paper and lit a cigar. All round him were the evidences
of enormous wealth. The library was a large and beautiful room. A fire
of cedar logs glowed in the open hearth, and threw flickering
lights--rose-pink and amethyst--upon the gold and crimson books standing
in their carved-oak shelves.

The parquet floor was almost hidden by priceless rugs from
Teheran--white, brick-dust color, and peacock-blue. There was a
marvellous _console_ which had belonged to Marie Antoinette, a buhl
clock which had stood in the palace of Sans Souci, and was a gift to
Frederick The Great from Voltaire. As Sir Augustus looked round he
forgot "The Golden Maiden," and sighed. He was thinking of his dead
nephew, Lluellyn Lys, and wishing that he had a son to succeed to all
these splendors.

The door opened, and Lady Kirwan entered, tall, stately, and beautiful
still, in her flowing black dinner-gown and the heavy ropes of pearls
around the white column of her neck.

She sat down on the opposite side of the fire to her husband.

"My dear," she said, and there was distress in her voice, "I am so
worried about Mary."

"About Mary?" Sir Augustus replied, with some little surprise. "Oh, you
need not worry about Mary, Julia. Of course, this has been a great blow
to her. But she is young and level-headed in many ways. Time will heal
her wounds."

"Oh, it is not that, Augustus. Of course, the poor dear girl will get
over her grief. Besides, she is religious, you know, and that certainly
does seem to help certain natures. I have often observed it. But I am
anxious about her now. Lluellyn was buried two days ago, and except Mr.
Owen's telegram announcing the bare fact, we have not heard a word from
either of them. Mary ought to be back here now."

"Well, my dear," the baronet replied, "I really don't think there is the
slightest reason for anxiety. Mary is in perfectly safe hands. Indeed, I
am particularly grateful to Owen for accompanying her himself. It is a
thing I should hardly have ventured to ask him. I quite imagined he
would send one of the elderly confidential clerks--Mr. Simpson, for
instance--a most respectable and trustworthy person."

"I hope it's all right, I'm sure," the dame replied. "But I can't see
what is keeping the girl for two days after the funeral, all the same.
And why is there no letter? Mary has a fortnight's leave of absence from
that stupid hospital, and she had arranged to come here and stay with
us."

There was a silence. Then Lady Kirwan pressed a button in the panelled
wall.

"I will take my coffee in here," she said. Sir Augustus nodded, and
picked up the newspaper once more.

A footman with powdered hair and large shoulder-knots brought in a
little nacre-encrusted table, with a tiny silver cup, a bowl of
dark-brown sugar-candy from Jamaica, and the long-handled brass pan from
Turkey, which held the coffee.

He had hardly left the room when Lady Kirwan was startled by a sudden
loud exclamation from Sir Augustus.

She rose from her seat in alarm, thinking that he was attacked by a
sudden spasm of pain.

In a moment she was undeceived.

"Good Heavens," he said, "here are extraordinary goings on! I never read
such a thing in my life! No wonder Mary has not come back."

Trembling with anxiety, Lady Kirwan ran to the back of her husband's
chair, and, leaning over it, read the article, headed in large type, to
which Sir Augustus pointed with a shaking finger.

     STRANGE RELIGIOUS REVIVAL

     A MOUNTAIN PREACHER EXCITES A WHOLE COUNTRYSIDE

     Our North Wales correspondents telegraph accounts of some
     extraordinary scenes in Wales, which are occurring on the mountains
     of the Cader Idris district.

     It seems that for some years past a mysterious recluse has been
     living in a small cottage high up on the great slate-mountain of
     Llan-y-Van. This man was a Mr. Lluellyn Lys, a member of a very
     ancient Welsh family, and possessed of small private means. His
     method of life was peculiar. Imbued with a deeply mystical
     religious spirit, he lived very much as the preaching hermits of
     the early days of the Christian faith. Sometimes he would remain
     secluded for many days, or be found upon the summit of some lonely
     mountain praying aloud to God. At others he would go preaching
     through the villages, exhorting every one to repentance and a holy
     life, with marvellous eloquence and fervour.

     In addition to this, the "Teacher," as this strange personality
     appears to have been known among the peasants and local miners,
     would sometimes hold vast meetings upon Sundays, high up in the
     hills. Thousands of people from far and near would gather together,
     and, standing upon a rock in their midst, Lluellyn Lys would speak
     with fiery exhortation, and lead those great musical choruses and
     hymns of praise for which the Celtic people are so famous.

     A few weeks ago all those--and there seem to have been many
     thousands--who regarded the Teacher as their spiritual adviser and
     leader, became aware that he was entertaining a guest at his lonely
     mountain home, for the first time within public remembrance. A
     strange man had appeared at the little railway station in the
     valley, and by Mr. Lys' orders he was carried up the mountain by
     various of the Teacher's adherents and disciples. The man, who was
     known only by the name of Joseph, was evidently recovering from a
     severe illness. He remained in Lluellyn's lonely cottage for some
     time, and the two men were attended by an old widow lady whose name
     is Mrs. Price.

     During the stranger's sojourn strange rumors were spread round the
     countryside. The Teacher had more than once referred to him in
     public as the "Master," and had hinted that he was about to conduct
     some great religious campaign, the precise nature of which was
     never clearly specified. It was also said, and said very generally,
     that some most extraordinary things were happening at the top of
     Moel Llan-y-Van.

     Incredible as it may seem to-day, there are at the present moment
     hundreds of people in this part of Wales who confidently assert,
     and offer to prove, that Mr. Lluellyn Lys possessed the gift of
     healing. Dozens of cures are attributed to his agency. Be this as
     it may, the consensus of opinion not only credits the Teacher with
     something like miraculous power, but said that his strange visitor
     was possessed of even more wonderful attributes than he was.

     A week ago Lluellyn Lys died.

     It seems that, in mystical language, he had already foretold his
     decease. And now we come to the strange part of this excessively
     strange story.

     Two days ago Lluellyn Lys was buried. But his was no ordinary
     burial; and, moreover, it is quite within the bounds of possibility
     that it may yet become the subject of an official inquiry.

     When the news of the Teacher's decease spread over the surrounding
     country, from valley and mountain an enormous concourse of people
     assembled. The body--it is described as being like a statue of
     white marble--was taken from the cottage without a coffin and
     buried on the very highest point of the mountain Llan-y-Van--a spot
     where the dead preacher had been wont to pray.

     It is understood that this was done by the dead man's wish and
     stipulation, though, probably quite contrary to law. No one,
     however, interfered--and interference would, of course, have been
     useless against several thousand people, who appeared to be in an
     ecstasy of grief, and who were obviously determined to carry out
     the wishes of their dead friend to the letter.

     If at this point readers of the _Daily Wire_ express incredulity at
     what follows we can only say that we guarantee the substantial
     accuracy of our report in the completest way.

     After the actual interment of the corpse, and amid the wailing
     cries of the vast multitude of mourners, a man mounted the cairn of
     boulders which forms the highest part of the mountain--the exact
     summit, so to speak.

     Immediately the sounds of mourning were hushed, as if at the beat
     of a conductor's bâton.

     Our correspondents describe the scene as wonderfully impressive and
     without parallel in their very varied experience.

     It was a cloudy morning, and somewhat chill in those high places.
     Yet a beam of sunlight, white and sudden, fell upon the tall figure
     upon the cairn. Every one could see the man quite distinctly; every
     one knew that this was the stranger known as Joseph, who had been
     the companion of Lluellyn Lys during the last weeks of his life.

     The sudden silence was perhaps due to the fact of this universal
     knowledge, but equally, perhaps, to another and extraordinary
     fact.

     Joseph in appearance resembles the traditional pictures of the
     Christ in an astounding manner. It seems almost irreverent to write
     these words. But they are written with no such intention. This man,
     whoever he may be--charlatan and impostor, or sincere saint and
     reformer of our own day--is the living, walking image of that idea
     which all the world has of Him who died upon the Cross!

     The words came; not very many, neither mystical nor obscure, but
     plain statements of intention. Yet the voice hushed that vast
     multitude of people as if with a magician's wand. Deep and clear,
     full of a music that our correspondents say no orator of our day
     can compass, a voice that goes straight to the heart--so, we are
     informed, was the voice of this man Joseph.

     The substance of his speech was startling--an actual shorthand
     report of the words will be found upon another page:

     This man, call him what you will, believes that he has a Divine
     mission to come to London, that he may warn it of its sins and
     bring its inhabitants to the foot of the Cross.

     With a band of disciples--we must use the word--he is even now
     speeding towards the metropolis. A dozen or more people are with
     him, and it is also said that the sister of the late Teacher, a
     very beautiful girl, who was formerly a hospital nurse, has joined
     the little band of fanatics. One thing is quite certain. London is
     on the eve of a new and most extraordinary sensation.

Thus the article concluded.

Lady Kirwan gave a gasp of dismay.

"Augustus!" she cried, "what a terrible scandal! What does it all mean?
I was right! I knew something had happened to Mary. Why hasn't Mr. Owen
looked after her properly? The poor girl has lost her senses, of course.
She is under the influence of some unscrupulous impostor. Oh, this is
awful, awful! To think that a member of the House of Lys should come to
this! What shall we do? What can we do? Something must be done at once!"

She had but hardly finished speaking, and both husband and wife were
looking into each other's eyes with faces of perplexity and alarm, when
the door opened and the butler entered.

"Mr. Owen has returned, Sir Augustus," he said, "and asks to see you
immediately."

In a moment or two a tall, elderly gentleman, with grey side-whiskers
and a keen, though benevolent face, was ushered into the room. He was in
morning dress, carried a plaid travelling-coat upon his arm, and a hard
felt hat in his hand.

He seemed anxious and distressed.

"I can't get up, Owen," Sir Augustus said at once. "I'm still a victim
to this confounded gout. What's all this preposterous stuff I see in the
_Daily Wire_? And where is my niece?"

The lawyer choked and swallowed. His face grew red and embarrassed. For
a moment or two he did not speak.

Mr. Owen was a considerable man. He was one of the best known family
solicitors in London. His reputation was unspotted; he was the confidant
of many great folk, and he may or may not have been worth three hundred
thousand pounds. But he was, at this moment, obviously embarrassed, and
perhaps angry also.

"Kirwan," he said, at length, "we are old friends, and we have been in
business relations for many years. You know, I think, that I am no fool.
You have entrusted vast interests to my care. I have never failed you
that I know of--until to-day."

"What has happened, dear Mr. Owen?" Lady Kirwan asked, terrified by the
solemnity of the lawyer's manner. "Where is Mary?"

"I've only just arrived," Mr. Owen answered. "I came straight here from
the station, Lady Kirwan. Your niece, Miss Mary Lys, has gone with that
fellow they call Joseph, and his company of crack-brained fools. Short
of force, I did everything a man could do to restrain her; but she beat
me. It was impossible to move her from her decision. For my part, I
believe the girl's mad!"

He paused, and both Sir Augustus and his wife realized that this eminent
man was considerably affected.

In the radiance of the electric light they could see the beads of
perspiration starting out upon his forehead like little pearls. The
baronet's face had gone quite pale.

With difficulty he rose from his seat, and an oath escaped him as he did
so.

"The little fool," he cried--"the fool! It's not your fault, Owen. Of
course, I know that. But where is she now? Where is this precious
company of tomfools and madmen?"

"I have every reason to believe," Mr. Owen answered with quiet emphasis,
"that the whole crew--and Miss Lys with them--are in London at the
present moment!"




CHAPTER VIII

"THE GOLDEN MAIDEN"


The theatrical criticism of the _Daily Wire_ was always printed on page
4; the more important news on page 6, over the leaf.

It was for this reason that Hampson, the editor of the _Christian
Friend_, never saw the news from Wales, and realized nothing of the
stupendous happenings there until the extraordinary events of the same
night in London.

He had arrived at his office for a long day's work. Among his letters
was one from a young man who, it appeared, had but lately arrived in the
metropolis to fill a situation as clerk in a big mercantile house.

Hampson had inaugurated a special feature in the paper. It was a sort of
"advice bureau," and already he knew that he had been able to help
hundreds of people in this way.

The letter from the clerk, obviously a Christian man who desired to live
a godly life, but was puzzled by the newness and strangeness of the
modern Babylon, in especial asked one question. He had been invited by
one of his fellows to attend a theatrical performance at one of the
"musical comedy" houses. Although he knew nothing of theatres, save that
there was a strong prejudice against them among his own people in the
country, he had declined the invitation. The result had been that he had
endured a good deal of ridicule, and when asked to state his reasons for
refusal, had been unable to do so. Now he asked the editor's opinion
upon the whole matter.

The question was one that Hampson had never thoroughly gone into. He had
certainly a low opinion of the calling of an actor or actress. He
believed the body to be the temple of the Holy Ghost, and therefore
thought it wrong to nightly paint that body and expose its grace and
beauty to the gaze of every one. It was years, however, since he himself
had entered the doors of a theatre. While he was thinking the matter
out, and wondering what answer he should make to the inquirer, his eye
happened to fall upon the _Daily Wire_, which lay open on the desk
beside him.

He took up the paper and read the criticism of the new play at the
Frivolity--read it with very different feelings to those which animated
Sir Augustus Kirwan on the evening of the same day.

If this was what the theatre was coming to, then let all decent men and
women keep out of such places!

Yet he was a cautious man, and one who was averse to hasty judgments. He
had, moreover, a strict love of truth, and an intense dislike for
hearsay evidence. An idea struck him. He would himself go and see this
play at the Frivolity! If it were really licentious and improper, he
knew that it could not harm him personally. It would disgust him, but
that was all. On the other hand, the critic might have exaggerated, or
he might even have had some personal spite against the management of the
theatre. Dramatic critics sometimes wrote plays themselves, and these
plays were rejected! Such things had been. And it would be a good thing
that his readers should have the impression of a cool and unbiassed mind
upon a subject which was not without importance in the life of the
modern Christian in London.

Accordingly he wrote a brief note to the business manager of the
theatre, explaining exactly why he wished to see the play, and asking if
a seat was to be had. This he sent round by a boy, with instructions
that if there was a vacant seat he should purchase it for him.

In an hour the lad returned. He brought a courteous note from the
manager, enclosing the coupon for a seat, marked "complimentary," and
returning Hampson's ten-and-sixpence.

During the rest of the day the editor was very hard at work, and had no
time to read any more news. The story of the strange doings upon the
mountains in Wales, therefore, escaped him entirely.

He had heard nothing from Joseph, even yet, nor had he seen Mary Lys
since they had climbed to the roof of St. Paul's Cathedral together. At
that time, when both of them were filled with doubt and anxiety about
Lluellyn and Joseph, they had seen the august symbol of the world's
salvation painted on the sky. Through the terrible fog that hung over
the Babylon of our times the crimson Cross had shone.

The curious circumstance had brought comfort and relief to both of
them. It might be that they were sentimental, superstitious.

Yet God moves in a mysterious way, and who were they to say that the
Father had not sent them a message from on high?

Miracle is not dead yet, whatever the materialists may say. Ask a
captain of the Salvation Army if Mary Magdalene does not still come to
the foot of the Cross! Ask the head of the Church Army if a thief is
never converted at almost the last moment in his evil career! Ask an
Anglican priest, a Congregationalist minister--a Roman Catholic
priest,--for their experiences of death-beds!

One and all will tell you that God rules the world still, the Holy
Spirit yet broods upon the waters.

Hampson returned to his rooms in Bloomsbury. After a simple dinner,
during which Butler's _Analogy_ was propped up against the water-bottle,
he changed into evening clothes and walked down to the Frivolity Theatre
in Shaftesbury Avenue.

The long curve of that street of theatres was thronged with carriages,
motor broughams, and cabs. Beautifully-dressed women with filmy lace
mantillas over their shining hair, attended by well-groomed men in opera
hats and white cashmere scarves, descended from the vehicles and entered
this or that theatre. The whole place blazed with light.

The great arc-lamps shone on the posters and the marble façades crowned
with their huge electric advertisements. The smart restaurants of
Piccadilly, Regent Street, and the Haymarket were pouring out their
guests at this hour when all the plays were beginning.

The London world of pleasure was awake in all its material splendor,
luxury and sin. The candle was alight, the gaudy moths fluttering around
it.

A man and woman descended from a hansom just as Hampson arrived under
the portico of the theatre, the woman so covered with jewels that these
alone, to say nothing of her general manner and appearance, sufficiently
indicated her class.

Hampson shuddered as he gave his hat and coat to an attendant, and
walked down the softly carpeted corridor through the warm, perfumed air
to the stalls.

The theatre was very full. On all sides wealth and luxury displayed
themselves in unbounded profusion. But this was an audience nearly every
member of which was devoted to folly, idle amusement, and worse. Hampson
saw vice stamped upon the faces all round him, vice or stupidity, and
carelessness.

Immediately upon his left, however, there was a young man, sleek and
immaculately dressed, who had a somewhat stronger face than many of the
young fellows there. There was a certain strength about the jaw and
poise of the head, an honesty in the blue eyes which the journalist
noticed at once.

Hampson sighed. Doubtless this young man was only just entering in upon
the life of pleasure and sin. He was not quite a slave yet--his soul not
irrevocably stained. But some day he would become like the curious
old-young men who sat all round, men with pointed ears, heavy eyes that
only brightened when they saw a pretty girl, mouths curved into
listless and weary boredom.

What a brigade they were, these rich and vicious young fools who
supported the Frivolity! Night after night they sat in their accustomed
stall while the actresses danced, and postured upon the other side of
the footlights--solemn, vacuous, and pitiable.

Two men bent over from their seats, and one of them touched the
fresh-looking young man by Hampson's side upon the shoulder.

The journalist heard names being exchanged--the first speaker was
introducing a friend. From this he discovered who his companion was--Sir
Thomas Ducaine. The name was quite familiar. The young baronet owned an
enormous property in Whitechapel. Some of the foulest and most fetid
dens in Europe belonged to him. Filth and misery, gaunt hunger, and
black crime crawled through hideous alleys, and slunk in and out of
horrible places which were his.

Probably there was not a property owner in England who was responsible
for the degradation of his fellow-creatures as this well-groomed young
man in the stalls of the Frivolity Theatre. Hampson knew--none better.
Had not he and Joseph starved in one of this man's attics? Yet, he
reflected, probably Sir Thomas knew nothing whatever of the dreadful
places from which he drew his vast revenues, had never visited them,
never would visit them.

The passing thoughts of those dark days in Whitechapel sent the editor's
mind with painful wonder to his absent friend and his mysterious
silence, and a deep depression was beginning to steal over him when the
orchestra concluded the overture and the curtain rose.

Always methodical, and with a great power of concentration, Hampson
banished all other thoughts, and gave his undivided attention to the
play he had come to criticise.

The scene showed the interior of a great London bar, a smart West End
establishment. It was crowded with young men in shining silk hats,
dove-colored trousers, and fashionably-cut grey frock-coats. They were
leaning over the counter, which ran down one side of the stage, and
flirting with half a dozen girls dressed as barmaids. The scene was
brilliant with light and color, accurate in every detail, and, indeed, a
triumph of the scene-painter's art.

After a moment or two the barmaids burst into a chorus. The music was
bright and tuneful, composed with real skill and sense of melody.
Hampson, who had a good ear, and was himself an amateur musician,
recognized the fact at once. But the words were incredibly vulgar and
stupid, a glorification of drink, by the aid of which all troubles--and
doubtless decency and duty also--might be easily forgotten.

The whole thing was nauseating, utterly disgusting, to Hampson. He
blushed even, and looked round him to see how the people took it. With a
sad wonder he saw smiles and appreciative gestures on every side. "The
grins of the lost," he thought bitterly, and then remembered that far
greater sinners than any of these fools had power to be, had yet been
redeemed by the saving power of the red wounds of Christ.

He noticed, however, and with some degree of relief, that this ode to
drunkenness did not apparently interest or amuse the young man on his
left. Sir Thomas Ducaine neither smiled nor showed any sign of
appreciation.

Sordid dialogue, prefatory to the thin story of the plot, began. The
topical slang that fast and foolish people use was introduced with
sickening reiteration.

This, and much more which it is not necessary to detail, formed the
first scene--a short one--and preparatory to the real action of the
play.

The thing went on. Hampson lay back in his softly-padded chair with a
set, impassive face. He was well dressed; his evening suit had been
built by a good tailor, and outwardly there was nothing to distinguish
him from any other of these "lovers of the drama." But as he listened to
this or that doubtful joke and _double entendre_, marked this or that
dance or pose, realized the skill of each cold and calculated appeal to
the baser senses and passions, his heart was sick to death within him.

He saw how nearly every one of the young men who surrounded him was
known to this or that girl in the chorus. Swift glances or smiles
flashed backwards and forwards from stalls to stage. The whole thing was
an enormous, smoothly-running mechanism of evil! A great house of
ill-fame! It was just that, no more nor less than that!

The curtain fell on a peculiarly suggestive scene at the end of Act II,
fell amid a roar of applause and laughter. It was so arranged that the
curtain descended hurriedly, as if to hide something that could not be
witnessed.

For five or six minutes this dirty wickedness was over. Nearly every one
got up and left his seat to go to the bar and take refreshment.

Hampson did not move, nor did Sir Thomas Ducaine, though the two men
behind asked him to accompany them to the _buffet_.

He happened to turn, and saw Hampson's face.

"Excuse me, sir," he said, with an entire disregard of the usual
convention which binds his class. "Excuse me, but you seem rather sick
of this."

"It's abominable!" Hampson answered, in a sudden burst of anger. "I
never go to the theatre, so I suppose I'm behind the times. But I really
shouldn't have thought that several hundreds of apparently decent people
would have come to see this sort of thing."

"I'm very much of your opinion," the young man replied, "and I don't
think I like it any better than you do. I never was fond of filth. But I
just strolled in because I'd nothing much better to do."

He sighed, and, turning from Hampson, stood up and began to survey the
house.

"Nothing better to do!" The words stung the journalist, and made him
shudder when he thought of Whitechapel. This young, kindly, and
obviously nice-minded man, had nothing better to do than to "drop in" at
the Frivolity!

Dear God! Nothing better to do!

The electric bell whirred. Men began to make their way back to their
seats, expectation was alight in most of the faces--faces somewhat
flushed now with brandy-and-soda; eyes brighter now in anticipation of
the opening scene of Act III!

This was the second night of the play, yet already the opening of Act
III was being talked of all over London.

Mimi Addington was surpassing herself.

Mimi was the heroine, _par excellence_, of all the picture-postcards.
Errand-boys whistled her songs, and told each other stories about her in
whispers. The front pages of the foul "sporting" papers which depended
upon their obscenity for their circulation were never without constant
mention of the girl's name.

Young, lovely, talented--with the terrible cleverness that one must
suppose the evil angels of Satan have--she stood almost alone in her
success and evil. She was a popular idol, though there were some who
knew the woman as she was--a high-priestess of degradation, a public
preacher of all that is debased and low!

Hampson knew. He did not watch the life in which she shone like a red
star. It was far alien from his own, utterly separate from the lives of
all Christian people. But he was a man in the world, and he could not
escape the popular knowledge.

As the curtain went up once more he set his teeth and sent up a wordless
prayer to God that his mind might not be influenced or soiled, that the
Almighty would bring the woman to repentance and cause the scourge to
cease.

She came upon the scene. There was a thunder of hands--even a few loud
cries of welcome pierced the mad applause. Yes, she was beautiful--very
beautiful indeed. And there was charm also. It was not a mere soulless
loveliness of face and form.

After the first verse of the song, there was a momentary pause while the
orchestra played the symphony on muted strings.

Then she began again, beautiful and seductive as a siren, with a voice
like a mellow flute. The lights were lowered in the auditorium. It was
well, for many folk, even amid that gay and worldly audience, grew hot
and flushed.

As the last triumphant notes of the song trilled through the theatre an
extraordinary thing happened.

A deep trumpet voice rang through the house. The voice of a man, deep,
musical and terrible--a voice that cleft the brain like a sword.

The lights leapt up once more, and all the vast audience, with a shudder
of fear, turned to look at the face and form of him who had spoken.

Standing in the stage-box, surrounded by a group of sombre figures, a
man was visible in the view of all.

Something went through the theatre like a chill wind. The music of the
band died away in a mournful wail.

There were a few frightened shouts, and then came a deep, breathless
silence.

Standing in the midst of them was one who, in face and form, seemed to
be none else but Our Lord Himself!

Hampson knew that voice. Even as it pealed out he rose, staggered, and
sank back into the arms of the man next to him. He did not know that Sir
Thomas was pointing with outstretched arm to the figure of a woman who
stood among the surrounding group in the box. He hardly heard the young
baronet's agonized cry of "Mary! Mary!"

He heard only that awful accusing thunder--

"WOE UNTO YOU, SAMARIA!"

There was an extraordinary silence in the theatre, such a silence as the
Frivolity had probably never known before in the whole of its
disreputable career.

The members of the orchestra dropped their instruments, and the gay
music died away with a frightened wail. Mimi Addington stopped suddenly
in her abominable song. No member of the vast audience made a single
sound. The silence of fear, swift, astonished fear, lay over all the
theatre.

Who was this man?

Joseph was, of course, in modern dress. But the long, dark cloak he
wore, Lluellyn's cloak, which Mary had given him, a veritable mantle of
Elijah, robbed the fact of any modern significance.

The frightened people in the theatre only saw come suddenly and
mysteriously among them one who was the image and similitude of Christ
Himself. It was as though He stood there.

The voice thrilled them through and through. In all their lives no
single one of them had ever heard a voice like this.

There were those who had, at one time or another, listened to great and
popular preachers, famous political orators. But none of these had
spoken with such a voice. All were thrilled by it, stirred and moved to
the depths of their being. And there were some among the crowd in whose
hearts the knowledge and love of God were only dormant, and not yet
dead.

These few trembled exceedingly, for they recognized the voice with their
spiritual, if not with their material ears.

Whoever this man might be--and the marvellous resemblance blazed out as
it were into the theatre--whoever he might be, the Holy Ghost was
speaking through his mouth!

The whole audience seemed turned to stone. Such a thing had never been
known before. The big, uniformed attendants who would have hustled out
an ordinary intruder or brawler almost before the audience had had time
to realize what was taking place, now stood motionless and silent.

"Behold, a whirlwind of the Lord is gone forth in fury, even a grievous
whirlwind. It shall fall grievously upon the head of the wicked."

In the terrible music and menace of its warning, the voice cleft the air
like a great sword. The people in the theatre cowered like a field of
corn when the wind blows over it. Every face grew pale, and in the
slight pause and breathless silence which followed Joseph's words, quick
ears could distinguish a curious sound--or, rather, the intimation of a
sound. It was as though muffled drums were sounding an enormous
distance away, so far and faint that the listener feels that, after all,
he may be mistaken, and there is nothing.

It was the beating of many human hearts.

Joseph came forward into the full view of every one. His arm was
outstretched, the marvellous eyes were full of a mystical fire and
inspiration.

"This is a home of abominations," he cried, "the lust of the flesh, the
pride of the eye. There!"--he went on with unutterable scorn, pointing
to Mimi Addington, with a sudden movement--"there is the priestess of
evil whom you have assembled to worship. Her body is fair. It was the
gift of God. Her voice is beautiful, she is subtle and skilled--these
are also the gifts of the Most High. But she has abused and degraded
these gifts. With her voice she has sung the songs of damnation, and
chanted the music of hell. She has led many astray. There are homes in
England desolate because of her. She has destroyed the peace of many
homes. She has poured poison into the minds of the innocent and young,
calling them to evil pleasure, and by her words leading them to think of
the flowery paths of sin. She has caused many to stumble and offend, and
unless she cast herself upon the infinite mercy of God, it were better
that a millstone were put about her neck and she were cast into the
sea."

The voice of the man with the message ceased for a moment.

There was a low sigh, though every one in the theatre heard it, and the
wretched girl sank in a tumbled heap of senseless glitter and finery
upon the floor.

A universal shudder of fear swept through the huge, brilliant building,
a cumulative gasp of dismay--the material voice of many consciences
awaking from sleep!

But no one moved to help the fallen actress, her companions on the stage
stood absolutely still, not a man in the orchestra or the auditorium
moved.

Then, with a swift movement, the accuser bent forward and pointed to the
rows of sleek, well-groomed young men in the stalls.

"And you!" he cried, his voice more stern and menacing than
before,--"you who sit nightly at the feast of sin, what of you? Young
and strong, your youth and strength are given you to serve the Lord. But
you have made your lives an abomination, you bow down to foul idols,
your doings stink in the nostrils of the just. I am come here to say to
you that surely the Lord will smite you and humble you. You shall be as
an oak that fadeth. Repent before it is too late. Seek God, and turn to
Him. Do this and be saved. For you young men of London are even as the
rulers in Sodom, and those who were set over Gomorrah. You have come in
vanity, and you will depart in darkness, and your names shall be covered
with darkness, and you shall be utterly consumed."

And then an almost incredible thing occurred. The terrible voice began a
series of _personal_ accusations, as if indeed the hidden secrets of the
hearts of those who heard him were indeed laid bare, some supernatural
instinct had raised the curtain that hung before many evil lives.

"There sits one among you"--so in each case Joseph began, though no name
was ever mentioned. But one by one those faultlessly dressed men of
London's wealthy pleasure brigade were stricken down as by spears. So
terrible a scene was without parallel in experience. Terrible stories
were revealed, black deeds sprang suddenly to light, and gradually a low
moaning sound began to fill the theatre, a deep and dreadful
accompaniment to the pealing voice of one who seemed to be the Man of
Sorrows Himself.

Suddenly a woman, somewhere in the back of the pit, began to shriek
horribly. In a second more the whole theatre was in a turmoil. Agonized
groans and cries of heartrending shame and sorrow grew into a piercing
cacophony of sound, drowning the preacher's voice, and seeming to rend
the very walls with its unutterable mournfulness and despair.

Then, it was never discovered how or why, though the point was ever
afterwards debated, every single light in the theatre went out.

Through the darkness, and the sudden calm which this added fear induced
for a moment, the mighty voice was heard, tolling like a great bell,
with its burden of "Repent! Repent! Repent!"

There was, however, no physical panic. No one was bodily injured. When
light was at length restored, it was seen that the strange figure, with
its little accompanying band of followers, had utterly disappeared. The
curtain had fallen and hidden the stage, the place where Joseph had
stood was dark and empty; every one was standing and shaking with fear,
and white faces were turned to faces whiter still, asking each other
what this thing might mean.

With hardly a sound, the huge audience poured silently out of the
Frivolity. People who, a few short hours before, had passed within the
doors light-hearted, smiling, and eagerly expectant of the mischievous
nonsense they had come to see, now moved with drawn faces and hanging
heads. Lips were clenched with resolve, or still trembled and muttered
in fear. Cheeks were red with terrible shame or blanched with agony. Out
they came like a procession of ghosts, and--London was just the same!

It was obvious that no inkling of what was going on in the Frivolity
Theatre had penetrated to the outside world.

Shaftesbury Avenue blazed with light as usual. Crowds--but how different
to this one!--poured from the other playhouses. The street was full of
cabs and carriages, the roar of late traffic, the hoarse shouts of
newsboys selling the last edition of the evening papers. The great
restaurants--Trocadero, Criterion, Monico--were hung with huge
arc-lamps, turning the night into wan and feverish day. Round about
Piccadilly Circus and Regent Street everything was precisely the same as
it had been. Was it all a dream? the late audience of the Frivolity were
asking each other.

The question was not answered in words. Suffering eyes and stricken
faces told their own tale.

Hampson, the journalist, was full of a wonder and awe for which there
was no name. He had recognized Joseph at once, a changed--marvellously
changed--Joseph, but his old friend still.

The whole thing had come upon him like a thunderclap, for it must be
remembered that he had not seen the report in the _Daily Wire_, and knew
nothing of the occurrences in Wales.

The extraordinary transformation of his friend, the supernatural power
of his words, the enormous hypnotic power of them--what did all these
things betoken?

He stood motionless, just opposite to the door of the Eccentric Club,
careless of the crowd that passed and jostled him, lost in a startled
dream.

Then he felt some one touch his arm, and, looking up quickly, saw that
the young man who had sat by him in the theatre, and whom he had heard
addressed as Sir Thomas Ducaine, was accosting him.

The baronet's face was white and frightened, and he seemed oblivious of
all ordinary conventions.

"I say," he began, in a curiously high-pitched and nervous voice, "what
does it all mean? You were sitting next to me, you know. And there was a
girl I know well--very well indeed--with that man; but I thought she was
in Wales--"

He broke off short, realizing that he was speaking to a total stranger.

"I beg your pardon, sir," he said, "but I am unstrung, as I fancy most
of us are to-night who have been to the Frivolity."

He lifted his hat mechanically, and was about to move away.

Hampson recollected a fact which he had hitherto forgotten. Sir Thomas
had called out "Mary!" when the mysterious party of strangers had first
appeared in the box.

"You mean Miss Lys?" he said.

The young man with great possessions stopped dead.

"You know her?" he said, in accents of extreme surprise. "Then you know
who the--the man was, too? At first I thought--oh, a mad
thought!--because of the extraordinary resemblance!"

He was still a little incoherent, and unable to speak the thoughts that
were rushing through his startled brain. With shaking hand, he took out
a gold cigarette-case and tried to light one of the little white tubes.

A tall policeman came up to them.

"You must move on, if you please, gentlemen," he said. "The pavements
must be kept clear at this time of night."

"Look here," Sir Thomas said to Hampson, "my name is Ducaine--Sir Thomas
Ducaine. You know something of all this--you know Miss Lys. I want to
talk to you. I must talk to you, sir! Now, I live only a few yards from
here, my house is in Piccadilly. Won't you come and spend an hour or two
with me? It would be a great kindness. I'm sure you want some supper,
too, after all this terrible excitement."

Hampson made up his mind immediately. He was attracted to the
fresh-looking, strong-faced young man. He liked what he had said about
the leprous play, before Joseph's appearance. And he also was terribly
bewildered, and needed human companionship and talk. Moreover, he was
faint with hunger--the emotions he had endured had robbed his blood of
all his strength, and his brain had burnt up the vital force within him.
He would go with Sir Thomas.

"I thank you!" he said, noting with surprise how thin and tired his own
voice was. "I shall be glad to come. My name is Hampson, and I am the
editor of a weekly newspaper."

"We will go at once," Sir Thomas answered, and crossing the Circus, the
strangely assorted pair walked rapidly down Piccadilly.

They had traversed about a third of that street of clubs and mansions
when the baronet stopped at the massive door of a large bow-windowed
house, opened it with a tiny Bramah key, and Hampson found himself, for
the first time in his life, in the house of a wealthy and fashionable
young gentleman of London.

A silent manservant took their coats, and the host led the way to a
small room, which opened into the hall at the further end of it. Here
another and older man was waiting--the butler, evidently. A small round
table was laid for supper with dainty richness. A mass of hothouse
violets stood in a silver bowl in the centre; there were tall
hock-glasses of Venetian ware, purple also; and the table-cloth and
serviettes were fringed with purple.

"Bring some supper at once, please!" Sir Thomas said. "Something light,
Mr. Hampson? Oh, very well! Some _consommé_, _Bryce_, some devilled
oysters--yes, and an omelette afterwards. That will do."

"And the wine, Sir Thomas?"

"Oh, bring some hock and seltzer!"

The man withdrew.

"Excuse me one moment, Mr. Hampson," the baronet said. "I am expecting a
rather important telegram. If it has arrived, they will have put it in
the library. I will go and see."

He hurried out of the room. Hampson looked round him. The walls were
panelled in white, and priceless old sporting prints, full of vivid
color and movement, had been let into the panels. A great couch, covered
in blue linen, with broad white stripes, was drawn up to the cosy fire,
and on the tiger skin which served as a hearthrug a little Japanese
spaniel was lying asleep. In a moment or two Sir Thomas returned. He had
changed his evening coat for a smoking-jacket of quilted satin, and wore
a pair of straw-woven Italian slippers upon his feet.

"Supper won't be a moment," he said, sinking down upon the couch. "I
have trained all my people to be quick. But if you are not too tired,
will you tell me, or begin to tell me, what you know? This means more to
me than you can possibly imagine."

"How shall I begin?"

"Who is that man who appeared in the theatre, and swayed and held it
with the force of his words?"

"He is named Joseph Bethune," Hampson answered, "and he is a great
personal friend of my own."

"And why was Miss Lys with him? And what do you know of her?"

With perfect frankness Hampson explained how Mary had saved his life. He
told of the strange occurrences in connection with Joseph's accident,
recovery, and journey to Wales.

"Miss Lys, I know," Hampson said, "was greatly impressed by Joseph and
the occurrences connected with him. Only three days ago I met her, and
we talked about him. She had not heard from her brother, with whom
Joseph was staying. I had not heard from Joseph, either, for several
weeks. We were both distressed."

Suddenly, as he said this, Hampson started. He remembered the great
fiery cross that he and Mary had seen hanging over London from the top
of St Paul's Cathedral.

Why should he keep back anything? he thought; and in short, graphic
sentences he described this marvel also.

Sir Thomas was intensely interested. His face was grave and set, his
eyes wide with wonder.

"Of course, I knew Miss Lys had a brother in Wales," he said. "I know
her very well. But she has never said anything to me of this man Joseph,
whom she sent to stay with him. What you have told me is extraordinary.
Frankly, I could not have believed in all of it had I not been present
at the theatre to-night. But I still fail to establish any connection
between Joseph in Wales with Lluellyn Lys and Miss Lys with Joseph at
the theatre."

"And I am as much in the dark as you are," Hampson answered.

While they had been speaking, the butler had been superintending the
movements of a footman who was bringing in the soup and the chafing-dish
with the oysters. Now he came up to his master, carrying a silver tray,
upon which was a folded newspaper.

"I am sorry, Sir Thomas," he said, "but I could not help overhearing
part of what you and this gentleman were saying. You were mentioning
some names which made me think that you could not have seen the paper
to-day, sir."

"Why, what d'you mean, Bryce?" Sir Thomas asked, in amazement.

The butler took the paper, opened it, pointed to a column, and said:

"The name 'Joseph' and Mr. Lys, sir. Mr. Lys is dead, sir. It's all
here, in a special telegram to the _Daily Wire_."

Sir Thomas jumped up from his seat, seized the paper, and spread it out
upon the supper-table.

Hampson rose also, and together the two men read the account of the
doings in Wales with eyes that were nearly starting out of their heads.

The butler and the footman had meanwhile discreetly withdrawn.

Sir Thomas was the first to break the silence. He read less quickly than
the practised journalist, but he was not long in supplying the
connecting links of the strange story.

He raised his hand to his head, with a weary and dejected movement.

"It is beyond me," he said. "Since chance has thrown us together, and
you have been so frank with me, I will be equally so with you. I, Mr.
Hampson, have long had hopes that Mary Lys would be my wife."

As they sat down to supper, probably even in London, that city of
marvels, no couple more unlike could have been found anywhere together
at that midnight hour. The one was a millionaire, rich even in this age
of huge fortunes. He was young, goodly to look upon, in perfect health,
and a universal favorite in society.

The man who confronted him was unknown, of humble origin, frail body,
and regarded himself as abnormally lucky to be earning four hundred
pounds a year by constant, highly specialized toil, and the exercise of
a keen and nimble intelligence.

Yet on this night, at any rate, chance--or may we not say rather the
exercise of the Supreme Will?--had brought them together in the
strangest circumstances and under the strangest conditions. Moreover,
unlike as they were in temperament, position and way of thought, both
were drawn to each other. They had become friends at once, and they were
aware of the fact.

For the first few minutes of the meal there was silence. Hampson was
physically sick and faint. His whole body cried out for food and
nourishment. He did not know that the _consommé_ he was enjoying was a
_consommé_ of clear turtle, but almost immediately strength began to
return to him. He was not an absolute teetotaller, though it was only on
the rarest occasions that he touched intoxicants. So to-night, though he
partook sparingly of a simple glass of golden hock, he was unaware that
it was the cuvée of '94, from the famous vineyard of Wauloh Landskrona.

Sir Thomas broke the silence.

"We have been strangely brought together," he said, "and by forces which
I do not pretend to analyse or understand. But I can trust you, I know,
and I am going to tell you something of my life."

He paused and frowned, as if thinking deeply. Then he began again--

"I have known Mary Lys for a long time," he said slowly and with some
difficulty, "and I have loved her deeply almost from the first. To me
she is the most precious thing on earth. She is far, far above me--that
I know; but, nevertheless, a great love gives courage, and I dared to
tell her of mine. I think--indeed, I am sure--that she cares for me. But
there has always been a great barrier between us, and one which has
seemed insurmountable. It seems more so than ever now, after what I have
learnt to-night. I have always been unable to believe in Christianity.
It means nothing to me. It is a beautiful fable, that is all. And I
cannot pretend, Mr. Hampson--I would not if I could. To gain the woman I
love for my wife I would do anything except live a lie. No union
founded on a fundamental deceit can be a happy one. If I pretended to
believe I should never know a moment's peace. Mary would soon find it
out by that marvellous sixth sense of hers, and both our lives would be
ruined beyond recall."

"I fear," Hampson answered sadly, "that there are many people who
profess and call themselves Christians who would have no such scruples,
Sir Thomas. They do you honor."

"Oh, no," the baronet answered. "It's temperament with me, that's all.
Well, again and again I have returned to the attack, but it has been
useless. Nothing will move her. However much she loved me, so she
stated, she would never marry me unless I gave up everything and
followed Christ. Those were her very words. And that I cannot do, for
Christ is nothing to me, and does not touch my heart at all. I can't
believe in Him. It is an impossibility. And I am rich, very rich. I love
my life; I am fond of beautiful things; I shrink from pain and sorrow
and poverty. And yet I don't think I am a bad man, as men go. I have no
particular vices. When you saw me at that filthy play to-night it was
quite an accident. I hate that sort of thing; the life that the
Frivolity type of man leads is absolutely disgusting to me. I felt
unhappy and bored; it happened that I had no engagement to-night, and I
turned into the first place I came to, without a thought. But Mary wants
me to give up everything and work among the poor--as a very poor man
myself. How can I give it up--my houses, estates, my yacht, and
pictures, all the things that make life pleasant? I can't do it! And
now, after to-night, Mary will be further away from me than ever."

He spoke with grief and despair in his fresh, young voice. Obviously he
was deeply stirred and moved. But there was doubt in his voice also. He
seemed to be talking in order to convince himself. There was a struggle
going on within his mind.

"What a wonderful man your friend Joseph must be," he said suddenly.
"There cannot be any one else like him in the world. There seems
something almost supernatural about him--only, of course, the
supernatural does not exist."

Then Hampson spoke.

"I know that you will believe what I am going to tell you," he said
quietly. "First, I must say a few words about myself. All my thinking
life--since I was a very young man--I have been a convinced Christian.
Even in the darkest hours my faith has not wavered, whatever my sins and
errors may have been. Joseph, on the contrary, has been as convinced an
atheist as you say that you yourself are. A hundred times in my hearing
he has derided Jesus Christ and mocked at God. He threw up a great
career at Cambridge because he felt it his duty to express his
convictions in public. Only a few weeks ago he was exactly of the same
way of thinking. To-night you heard him sway and move hundreds of sinful
men and women directly inspired by God. Like a prophet of old--even as
Jesus Himself--he preached the truth in the places of the ungodly. You,
yourself, were profoundly stirred. Now, I ask you, what does this
mean?"

Sir Thomas had been gazing at his guest with deep interest and wonder.

"You startle me, sir," he said. "You overwhelm me with what you tell me.
I must believe you. I do indeed! But what had changed him? Tell me
that!"

"The power of the Holy Ghost," said the journalist.

There was a silence.

Sir Thomas leant back in his chair with an abstracted gaze. He had eaten
nothing, though his guest, wiser than he, had made a sufficient and
recuperative meal.

The little Japanese spaniel rose from his sleep before the glowing fire,
and put his nose into his master's hand. Sir Thomas stroked the tiny
creature absently.

"The Holy Ghost?" he said, fixing his eyes upon Hampson. "What is that?
Who can say?"

"The Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father and the Son, is of one
substance, majesty, and glory with the Father and the Son, very and
eternal God."

"I would," the young man said, with great sadness--"would that the Holy
Ghost would come to me also."

He had hardly finished the sentence--probably the first prayer he had
ever made since he lisped "Our Father" at his mother's knee--when the
door opened, and the butler entered the room.

"A note, Sir Thomas," the man said. "A note from Miss Lys. The bearer
awaits an answer."

The young man took the note with trembling fingers and tore it open.
This was what he read:--

     "I saw you in the theatre to-night, and I knew that you were
     disturbed about me. Have no fear. I am writing this from my aunt's
     house, where I went immediately when we left the theatre. But I
     want you to come and see me here to-morrow, quite early. Would ten
     o'clock be too soon? I have something of the highest importance to
     say to you. Send back an answer to say that you can come. I have
     been here for an hour, and I have been thinking of you the whole
     time. I have a premonition about you--a happy one!

     "MARY."




CHAPTER IX

A LINK CHAPTER


Joseph, his followers, and Mary Lys, had passed out of the theatre
without hindrance in the dark. They encountered no one in their passage,
and found themselves in Shaftesbury Avenue as people pass from one dream
into another. The faces of all of them were pale and set, but no one
spoke.

It is a well-known fact that hardly any one attracts attention in the
streets of London unless because of noise or eccentric behavior. This is
quite true of the daytime, and especially true at night. So cosmopolitan
is the modern Babylon, so intent upon their own business or pleasure are
the inhabitants, that a Chinaman in full native costume or an admiral in
full-dress would do no more than excite the merest passing regard.

When, therefore, Joseph and his companions walked up the busy
pleasure-street, they were almost unnoticed. A man with a soft felt hat
pressed down upon his forehead, a bearded man wearing a black cloak of a
somewhat peculiar cut--what was there in that? A hospital nurse and a
few grave-faced men in country-clothes and obviously from the
country--who was to give them any notice?

It happened, therefore, that the little party were well on their way
towards Oxford Street before the first member of the audience had left
the Frivolity. As far as any knowledge of their whereabouts was
concerned, they might have vanished into thin air.

They walked on in silence, Joseph leading the way with Mary, the
half-dozen men following behind.

When Oxford Street was reached, Joseph hailed a cab.

"You have been with us long enough for to-night, sister," he said; "your
aunt and uncle must be anxious about you, and you owe them a duty after
you have fulfilled your duty to the Lord. Truly, the Holy Spirit has
been with us on this night, during the first few hours we have been
here. May He always be with us and bless and prosper our great
undertaking! Good-night, and God bless you, my dear sister. If it be
God's will we shall all meet again on the morrow. It may be that even
before then some one of us will receive a sign or a revelation."

His eyes shone with mystical fire as he said this, and watched the cab
drive away into the roar of lighted traffic.

Then he turned to his companions.

"Brethren," he said, "I feel, I know not why or how, that my work
to-night is not yet ended. But go you to your lodgings. I will be with
you for prayer and to break the fast not long after dawn. You trust me
still? You believe in our great work? You are not terrified by the noise
and the glitter of this wicked, mighty city? If there is one among you
who would even now draw back, and once more seek the quiet hills of
Wales, then he may yet do so on this very night."

"We have no home, Master," one of the men said, Owen Rees by name, and
obviously speaking in the name of his companions. "We have no home but
the Kingdom of God. We have set our hand to the plough, and will not
turn back. The Lord is with us," he concluded simply--"whatever and why
should we fear?"

"Then, brethren," Joseph answered, "God be with you. That omnibus there
will take you to the door of the place by the station where we have
taken our lodging. David Foulkes knows the number, and has the money.
Pray for us all."

With these words he turned and strode away westward. They gazed after
him until the tall, black figure was swallowed up by the crowd.

On and on went Joseph, regardless of all around him. His mind was full
of doubt and fear, despite the calm words he had spoken to his
disciples. All the saints of God have known dark and empty moments,
wherein all seems hopeless and sad, and the great world seems closing
round, shutting them off from the Almighty. It is always thus. We are
tried and tempted to the last. We also must know faintly some of those
hours of agony which the Man of Sorrows Himself knew and suffered.

It was thus with Joseph now. During the tremendous effort in the theatre
he had been conscious that God was with him, and speaking through the
mouth of His servant. He was the vessel of the Unseen and Awful Power.
In a flash of Divine inspiration he had known of the lives of the men
who sat below him.

But when it was all over, a reaction set in. He was filled with gloomy
and troubled thoughts. Had his words been right words after all? Was the
impulse which had drawn him to the theatre with irresistible strength an
impulse from on high? And who was he, after all, that he should lead
others in a new crusade against the sin and wickedness of this great
city?

He felt exactly as if some actual personality which had been animating
him was now withdrawn.

To his left, Park Lane stretched away towards Piccadilly, the palaces
there all blazing with light. It was typical of what he had come to
denounce, to warn, and to save.

And how was it possible that he, a weak man, could do this thing?

He walked on. Half-way down Park Lane he saw that a coffee-stall stood
in the shadow of the Park railings, drawn up close to the curb. The
sight reminded him that he had not eaten for many hours, and he crossed
the road towards it.

There were no customers but himself, and in a moment or two a steaming
cup of coffee and two great wedges of bread-and-butter stood before him.

He had never enjoyed a meal so much, he thought idly--no, not even in
the recent days of starvation in Whitechapel, when an unexpected
windfall had provided him and Hampson with food.

Whitechapel! What a lifetime of experience had been his since those
days! Wales, the mystical life with Lluellyn Lys--

A flush of shame and sorrow came over him. Why had he doubted even for a
single moment the power and guidance of God! Had not the Holy Ghost been
always with him--always, from the very first?

"O Lord," he cried, in his heart, "forgive Thine unworthy servant his
weak doubts and fears! I know that Thou art with me, now, and forever
more!"

He had concluded the short and unspoken prayer when he was startled by a
voice.

He had not noticed that when the coffee-stall proprietor--an old man
with snow-white hair, and large, horn-rimmed spectacles--had given him
the coffee, he had returned to a large book he was reading.

Now Joseph looked round suddenly, and realized that the old fellow was
saying the sentences aloud to himself.

"He shall call upon Me, and I will hear him; yea, I was with him in
trouble. I will deliver him, and bring him to honour."

Joseph put down his pennies upon the counter. The answer to his prayer
had come, once more God had spoken.

"Thank ye!" said the old man, in a strong Scotch accent. "I doot but I
startled ye with me reading. I read aloud to my wife, who can nae mair
see to read for hersel', and sae I've got in the way o't. But they're
gran' words, lad."

"Thank you for them, and God bless you!" Joseph answered; and with the
old fellow's kindly "Good nicht!" ringing in his ears, resumed his walk.

He was immeasurably comforted and helped, and his whole soul went up in
a burst of praise and adoration.

No thought of sleep came to him. He no longer felt physically weary. He
was impelled to walk and pray for sleeping London.

"Lord, grant that they will hear me! Lord, send down Thy Holy Spirit
upon me, and give me Thy grace! Raise up great and powerful helpers for
the work, for I am weak and poor."

He was in Piccadilly now, and as he prayed he walked more slowly.

Oh, that those great people who lived in this wonderful street--now so
dark and silent--would open the doors of their hearts that Christ might
enter in!

The dark was suddenly illuminated.

A great door swung slowly open, and two men in evening dress stood
together upon the threshold.

He turned instinctively and looked them full in the face.

There was a startled cry of "Joseph!" And as if in a dream he mounted
the steps and passed under the lintel.

The door closed quietly behind him.




CHAPTER X

THE COUSINS


It was midnight when Mary Lys arrived at her aunt's house in Berkeley
Square. Lady Kirwan had gone to bed; but it happened, so the butler told
her, that Miss Kirwan was sitting up in her boudoir, in the hopes that
her cousin might yet arrive that night.

The greeting between the two girls was warmly affectionate. Marjorie had
always loved Mary as a sister, loved her and reverenced her deeply. The
pretty society girl was certainly of a butterfly nature, loving the
bright and merry side of life, and unwilling to look upon its darker
aspects. Yet she was unspoiled at heart, and the constant spectacle of
Mary's devotion to the suffering and poor of the world, her steadfast
pursuit of a hard and difficult path, always touched the younger girl.

"Oh, you poor dear," she said, "I am so glad you have arrived at last!
We have all been so anxious about you. Mother has been actually crying,
and father is in a great way. Mr. Owen, the solicitor who went with you
to poor Lluellyn's funeral, has been here, and there has been something
in the paper, too! We have all been so upset!"

While Marjorie was speaking, her maid had entered and taken Mary's
nurse's cloak from her. Mary sank into a chair.

"Dear Marjorie," she said, "I'm so sorry! I blame myself very much. I
ought, of course, to have sent auntie a telegram. But such wonderful
things have happened and are happening that my mind has been taken from
everything else. It was very wrong of me."

"Never mind now, dear! But how pale you are! You have gone through so
much, poor dear, of course! You must have something to eat at once, and
afterwards you shall tell me everything. Antoinette shall get you
something--would some soup or some chicken-jelly do?"

Mary asked for a bowl of bread-and-milk, and while she was waiting gazed
round her cousin's pretty sanctum with a sense of rest and ease which
was most grateful to her overstrung nerves, her utterly exhausted body
and mind. Marjorie went into her bedroom, which opened into the boudoir,
unwilling to tire Mary by questions until she was refreshed by food.

It was a beautiful place, this nest of the wealthy, happy maiden of
society, though it had individuality and character also. It was thought
out, the expression of a personality, and no mere haphazard collection
of costly and beautiful things flung together anyhow, without regard to
fitness or arrangements.

How peaceful and cultured it all was!

For some moments the tired girl abandoned herself to the gracious
influence of the place, enjoying a moment of intense physical ease.
Then, swiftly, her thoughts sprang over London from West to East. She
saw the huge, gaunt hospital, its dim wards full of groaning sufferers,
lying there in night-long agony that the rich and fortunate might build
themselves just such "lordly pleasure-houses" as this. She thought of
the flaring gin-palaces of Whitechapel, at this hour full of the
wretched and the lost. The noise, the hideous oaths, the battered, evil
faces of vile men and women--men and women made in God's image, men and
women whom Jesus came to save, but who had never had a chance. It all
came to her with sudden vividness: the sounds, the smells, the crude raw
coloring.

A passionate fervor of love welled up in her pure heart, a passionate
rejection of the soft and pleasant things of life. Oh, that she could do
something, something, however small, to help all this sorrow and pain,
to purge London of its sores, to tell those who lived in high places and
wore soft raiment of the terrible Nemesis they were laying up for
themselves in another world!

Marjorie Kirwan only saw a pale-faced and beautiful girl, whom she
loved, sitting at a little octagonal table sipping a bowl of milk. But
if there were any of God's angels in that room--and may we not suppose
that the Almighty Father had given so high and pure a spirit into
especial charge?--if there were, indeed, august and unseen presences
there, they saw a saint praying to God for the conversion of London and
for success in the great battle which she had come to wage with Joseph
and his companions.

"That's better, dear!" Marjorie said, her pretty face all alight with
sympathy, and, it must be said, with curiosity also. "Now, do please
tell me what all these mysterious things mean? What is all this in the
newspaper? And your Joseph, the man with the wonderful eyes, the man we
saw in the cab some weeks ago, before poor dear Lluellyn's death, what
is he doing? Why were you with him?"

"I don't know how I can tell you, dear," Mary said, suddenly alive to
the extreme difficulty of the task which lay before her, for how could
she hope to explain the deep solemnness and import of the coming
mission?

"Oh, but I am sure I shall understand!" Marjorie answered. "And I am
certain it is awfully interesting!"

Mary winced. The light words jarred upon her mood of deep fervor and
resolve; but, gathering her powers together, she did her best.

"I believe," she said, in grave, quiet tones, "that a special revelation
is to come to London in the person of Joseph. Strange and, indeed,
miraculous things have happened. God has spoken in no uncertain way, and
the Holy Spirit has manifested Himself as He has never done before in
our time. I cannot now go into all the circumstances attending my dear
brother's death. That they were supernatural and God-sent no one who
witnessed them can have any manner of doubt. But, briefly, I can tell
you just this. The Holy Ghost has descended upon this man Joseph in full
and abundant measure, even as He descended upon the Apostles of old.
Joseph and a few devoted companions have come to London. I have come
with them. We are about to wage a holy war against the wickedness of
London, and the Spirit is with us.

"I cannot measure or define Joseph's new nature. It is all beyond me.
But I have thought deeply about it, and this is what I think. Joseph
seems to be two persons, at different times. It almost appears to be a
case of what the French doctors who are experimenting with hypnotism
call "dual control." Yet both these natures are quite distinct from his
old one. He was an atheist, you know, until he went to Wales, but now he
is the most sincere, and convinced believer that I have ever met. So far
he is no more than a brilliant and high-minded man who is trying to live
a holy life, a man such as one has met before, now and then. But the
other side of him is quite different again. At times he seems to one
almost supernatural--or perhaps _supernormal_ is the better word.
Something comes into him. He is filled with the Holy Ghost. And there
were such strange circumstances about his change of character and dear
Lluellyn's death.... Do you know, dear, I sometimes wonder if it
mightn't be that an angel of God inhabits him at times! People can be
possessed by evil spirits, why couldn't they be controlled by good
ones?"

Marjorie listened earnestly, the light fading out of her bright face as
she did so.

"I don't think I quite understand," she said, with a little shudder.
"Anyhow, it all seems very strange and--What can Joseph do--what can you
do? Surely there will be a great deal of trouble and scandal! And, Mary
darling, you mustn't be mixed up in anything of this sort. Oh, it would
never do! What would father and mother say? Why, it's like"--she
hesitated for a simile. "Why, it's like being a member of the Salvation
Army! You can't go about dressed like that, dear--and in the streets,
too, with a trombone. You are not your dear sweet self to-night, dear,
so we won't talk about it any more now. You have been through so much,
no wonder you are tired. Go to bed now, and you will be better in the
morning. They will have taken your boxes to your room, and I will send
Antoinette to you at once."

Mary rose.

"I do need sleep," she said, with a faint smile. "I do need it
dreadfully badly. But about my boxes, Marjorie dear. I only had one, and
I have forgotten all about it, I'm afraid. I suppose it's at the station
or somewhere. Joseph led us straight from the station to the theatre."

"The theatre! You've been to the theatre to-night! Before coming here!
Are you mad, Mary?"

Marjorie's face had grown quite white, her voice was shrill in its
horror and incredulity. What could her cousin mean? Did she actually
assert that two days after her brother's funeral she had gone to a
theatre with a strange man, and kept the whole household in Berkeley
Square in a state of suspense, while she did this dreadful thing?

"I can't explain, dear," Mary answered, in a tired voice. "But you will
know all about it to-morrow. It is not as you think. And now I will
really go to bed."

She kissed her astonished cousin, and, with a faint smile, left the
boudoir under convoy of the French maid.

After her last prayer--for her whole life was one long prayer--she fell
into a deep and dreamless sleep, but not before she had sent a certain
note....

There was but little sleep for Marjorie that night. The hour was not
late for her, it was not yet one o'clock, and night after night in the
season she would dance till dawn.

But the girl was stirred and frightened to the depths of her rather
shallow nature by the things which she had heard from Mary. The deep
solemnity and utter reality of Mary's words were full of a sort of
terror to Marjorie. They came into her gay, thoughtless and sheltered
life with unwelcome force and power. She wanted to hear no such things.
Life was happy and splendid for her always. It was one continual round
of pleasure, and no day of it had palled as yet. There was nothing in
the world that she might wish for that she could not have. Her enormous
wealth, her beauty, social position, and personal fascination brought
all men to her feet.

And incense was sweet in her nostrils! Heart-whole, she loved to be
adored. Religion was all very well, of course. All nice people went to
church on Sunday morning. It was _comme il faut_, and then one walked in
the Park afterwards for church parade, and met all one's friends.

Every Sunday Marjorie and Lady Kirwan attended the fashionable
ritualistic church of St. Elwyn's, Mayfair. The vicar, the Honorable
and Reverend Mr. Persse, was a great friend of Marjorie's, and she and
her mother had given him three hundred pounds only a few weeks ago for
the wonderful new altar frontals worked by the Sisters of Bruges.

But Mary's religion! Ah, that was a very different thing. It was harsh,
uncomely, unladylike even.

And what did this preposterous business about "Joseph" mean? Marjorie
had seen the paper, and could make nothing of it. And then the theatre!
Mary was making fun of her. She could not really have meant--

With these thoughts whirling in her brain and troubling it, the girl
fell asleep at last. Although she did not know it nor suspect it, she
was never again to wake exactly the same person as she had been. She did
not realize that her unconscious antagonism to Mary's words sprang from
one cause alone, that a process had begun in her which was to lead her
into other paths and new experiences.

She did not know that, at last, for the first time in her bright,
careless life, conscience was awake.

It was not till nearly nine o'clock that she awoke. Antoinette had
peeped into the bedroom several times. When at length the maid brought
the dainty porcelain cup of chocolate, a bright sun was pouring into the
room through the apricot-colored silk curtains.

Marjorie did not immediately remember the events and her sensations of
the night before. When she did so, they all came back in a sudden flash
of memory.

"Antoinette," she said quickly, "find Mrs. Summers"--Lady Kirwan's
maid--"and ask if I can come to mamma's room at once."

In a minute the maid returned.

"M'lady is nearly dressed, mademoiselle," she said. "Elle sera bien
contente de voir mademoiselle toute de suite."

Slipping on a dressing-gown and fur slippers, Marjorie went to her
mother's room immediately. She was bursting with eagerness and anxiety
to tell her the news. She was not in the least ill-natured or
small-minded. She had not the least wish to "tell tales." But she was
genuinely and seriously alarmed about her beloved cousin's future.

She found Lady Kirwan already dressed and sitting in her boudoir. The
elder lady wore a face of utter consternation, and her daughter saw at
once that there was little she could tell her.

Mrs. Summers, an elderly, confidential maid, was in the room, and there
was a pile of morning papers upon the writing-table.

Nothing that went on in Berkeley Square ever escaped the discreet
Summers. She was perfectly aware of Mary's late arrival, and that she
had come without any luggage. When Mary had been put to bed, she had
found out from Antoinette all that the French girl could tell her.

And the morning journals, which Mrs. Summers generally looked over
before taking them to her mistress, supplied the rest.

All London was at this moment ringing with the news of what had happened
at the Frivolity Theatre the night before. There had been several daily
journalists among the audience, and plenty of other people either
directly connected with, or, at any rate, in touch with, the Press.

The news eclipsed everything else. There were columns of description,
rumor and report.

Those who had actually been present had gone straight to the offices of
their papers while still under the influence of the tremendous scene
they had

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