The Angel

It was most prettily and spontaneously done. Nothing could have been more natural, charming or welcome.

There were tears in Sir Augustus' eyes, as that genial, kind-hearted worldling held out his hand to Sir Thomas Ducaine.

"I congratulate you, my dear boy," he said heartily. "I see how it is with my dear niece and you. I love Mary like a daughter, and there are few people to whom I would rather trust her than to you. God bless you both! Mary, love, come and kiss your uncle."

There was a hum of excited, happy talk, and then Sir Augustus, a man who had had always a great sense of "celebrating" events by some time-honored ceremony, suddenly said:

"Now we'll have a drink out of the loving-cup to Mary and Sir Thomas."

Nobody there wanted wine, but no one liked to baulk the genial and excited old gentleman. But, just as he was about to press the bell and give the order, Sir Augustus suddenly paused. He looked at Joseph, for whom, by this time, he had acquired considerable regard, not unmixed with fear, though quite destitute of any real understanding of him.

"Oh – er – Mr. Joseph," he said, "I hope you won't mind – "

Sir Augustus had an idea that religion and teetotalism were the same thing and were inseparable. He was quite unable to differentiate between the two, no doubt because he knew absolutely nothing of either.

"Mind, Sir Augustus!" Joseph said, in surprise. "Why should I mind, and for what reason?"

The baronet did not quite know what to answer. "Oh, well, you know," he said at length. "I had an idea that you might object. Never mind."

Joseph laughed. The grave and beautiful face seemed singularly happy. Care had passed from it for a time; he looked with eyes of love at Mary and Sir Thomas, with eyes of blessing and of love. The stern denunciator of evil, the prophet and evangelist of God, who warned the world of its wickedness, had disappeared. In his stead was the kindly friend rejoicing in the joy of those who were dear to him.

A servant brought a great two-handled gold cup, which had been filled with wine.

Sir Augustus handed it to Lady Kirwan. The dame lifted the heavy chalice, jewelled with great amethysts, which had been presented to her husband by the Corporation of the City of London.

"My dear, dear niece," she said, while the tears gathered in her eyes; "I drink to your continual happiness, and to the name I bore, and which you bear now, the noble name of Lys!"

Then Sir Augustus took the cup. "To my pretty Mary, whom I love as if she were a child of mine!" said the good man; "and to you, Tom Ducaine, who will make her a true husband, and are a gallant lover."

He passed the cup to his daughter Marjorie. The girl lifted it, looked straight at Mary Lys with a curious meaning and intentness in her eyes, and then said, "With my love of your true love on this happiest of all happy hours."

She handed back the golden cup to her father, who was about to set it down upon a side table, when the Teacher spoke.

"Are you going to leave me out of your ceremony?" Joseph said.

"Very sorry, very sorry," the baronet replied, in confusion. "I wasn't quite sure." He handed the cup to Joseph, but the Teacher only lifted it on high. "May God bless your union, my dear brother and sister," he said simply, and placed it on a table nearby.

The deep music of the voice, the love in it, the deep sincerity, came to them all like a benison.

"You have given me everything in this world and hopes of everything in the next, Joseph," said Sir Thomas Ducaine.

"You were Lluellyn's friend," Mary whispered.

"And you're a jolly good fellow, Mr. Joseph," said Sir Augustus, "in spite of all your critics, and I shall be glad to say so always."

At that, for the first time during their knowledge of him, Joseph began to laugh. His merriment was full-throated and deep, came from real amusement and pleasure, was mirth unalloyed.

Joseph finished his laughter. "May this hour," he said gravely, "be the beginning of a long, joyous and God-fearing life for you, Mary and Thomas. Hand in hand and heart to heart may you do the work of the Lord."

Then, with a bow to all of the company assembled there, he went away.

When he had left the great house and walked for a few minutes, he came upon a huge public-house – a glittering structure at the corner of two streets.

He stopped in front of the great gaudy place, looked at it for a moment, sighed heavily, and went in.

CHAPTER XIX

"AS A BRAND FROM THE BURNING"

Joseph pushed open the swing-doors of the big public-house and entered beneath a lamp marked "Saloon Bar."

His face was quite changed.

In the short time which had elapsed since he left Sir Augustus Kirwan's house he seemed another person. The great eyes which had looked upon the lovers with such kindly beneficence had now the strange fixity and inward light that always came to them when he was about his Master's business. The face was pale, and the whole attitude of the Teacher was as that of a man who is undergoing a great nervous strain.

He walked down a passage. To his left were the doors of mahogany and cut-glass which led into those boxes which are known as "private bars" in the smart drinking-shops of London. To his right was a wall of brightly glazed tiles, and in front of him, at the passage end, was the door which led into the saloon bar itself. Pushing this open, he entered.

He found himself in a largish room, brilliantly lit by the electric light, and triangular in shape.

Along two of the walls ran padded leather lounges, before the third was the shining semicircular bar, gleaming with mahogany, highly polished brass, and huge cut-glass urns of amber spirit.

In one corner of the room, seated at a marble topped table, a man was talking to an overdressed woman with a rouged face and pencilled eyebrows.

In front of the counter, seated upon a high cane stool, was a young man. He wore a long brown over-coat of a semi-fashionable cut and a bowler hat pushed back on his head. His fair hair was a little ruffled, and his weak, youthful, though as yet hardly vicious face, was flushed high up on the cheek-bones. He was smoking a cigarette of the ten-for-threepence type, and chattering with a somewhat futile arrogation of merriment and knowingness to the barmaid, who had just set a glass of whisky-and-water before him.

For a minute or two, hidden from view by an imitation palm in a pot of terra-cotta which stood upon the counter, Joseph escaped notice. He could hear part of the conversation from where he was – any one might have heard it.

It was the usual thing, vapid, meaningless, inane. A narrow intellect, destitute alike of experience and ideals, with one gift only, youth, imagined that it was seeing "life."

Two fools! Two weak, silly, unconsidered members of the rank and file, without knowledge, manners or charm.

Yet for these two Christ had died upon the Cross no less surely than He had died for prince or pope or potentate. It was thus Joseph thought.

The Teacher's eyes were wet with tears, a beautiful compassion dawned upon his face. He went up to the young man and touched him upon the shoulder.

At the touch the young fellow started and turned suddenly with a convulsive movement. His face was yellow with fear, his jaw dropped, his hands trembled; he was a repulsive picture of weak, nerveless, and uncontrollable terror.

The barmaid looked on in amazement. She marked the fear in her admirer's face, and with swift intuition knew from what cause it proceeded.

It was not the first time in her poor, stunted life, with its evil surroundings, that she had seen a gay young spark touched upon the shoulder; seen the acquaintance of a month vanish for ever, never to come within her ken again save only in a few brief paragraphs in the newspaper reports of the Central Criminal Court.

"Who's your friend, Charlie?" the girl said, with a sickly and inadequate attempt at merriment.

Joseph looked at her.

"My friend," he said, in his grave and beautiful voice, "I come to him with authority."

The girl gasped, then she turned and walked hurriedly to the other end of the bar, taking a newspaper from a drawer and holding it up with shaking fingers. She didn't want to be mixed up in the thing, at any cost she must pretend that she was unconcerned.

The great law of self-preservation – the animal law – had its way with her now. She was alone in the world; she had her living to get; she could not afford to be mixed up with any scandal. She acted after her kind, and fled as far as she could. Who shall blame her?

Joseph took the young man by the arm and led him to the farthest corner of the room. The man and woman who had been there when Joseph entered had gone by now; the place was quite empty.

"Charlie" found himself sitting side by side with the stranger who had led him so easily from the counter. In the shrewd, mean brain of the young man one emotion had been succeeded by another. He had realized after the first moment of terror that Joseph was not what he supposed. The enormous relief of this certainty was succeeded by resentment and puerile anger. He feared that he had given himself away in "Belle's" eyes.

"Now, look here," he said suddenly, "you startled me for a moment, and I won't deny you did. But a gentleman doesn't come and interrupt another gentleman when he's talking to a lady. Who on earth are you, anyhow?"

The high, piping voice, the silly expression, the uncertain, childish rage were unspeakably pitiable.

For answer Joseph put his hand into an inside pocket of his coat and produced a little leather bag.

It was full of sovereigns. While the young clerk stared at him with wondering, fascinated eyes, the Teacher took fourteen pounds from the bag and then returned it to his pocket.

He placed the money in the young man's hand.

"God sent me here to give you this," he said quietly. "It is the exact sum you have stolen from your firm. Replace it, and sin no more. God sends you this last opportunity."

The young fellow's face grew suddenly wet. He took the money with a hand that had lost all nervous force. He could hardly hold the coins.

"Who are you?" he said, in a faint whisper. "How did you know that I had sto – took the money?"

"The Holy Spirit brought me to you," Joseph answered very simply. "A short time ago I was leaving the house of some friends. A dear sister and brother of mine – I speak in the Christian, and not in the family sense – had just plighted their troth. They are to be united in happy and honorable wedlock. I was coming away with my thoughts full of them, and feeling very happy in their happiness. For, you must know, that I love those two people very dearly. Well, as I passed by this place, I was told that there was some one within it who was very miserable. I knew that I must come in and comfort you, and take you out of the net which had enmeshed your young life. Your mother sits at home in Balham, and longs for you. The small pittance that your father's insurance money has secured for her is just enough to support her; but it is not enough to bring any comfort or brightness into her life. But you never go home in the evenings until very late. She sits waiting for you, yearning over her only son, and praying to God for his reformation. But you never come. And when at last you go down home by the last available train, you are often more or less intoxicated, and your mind is always filled with debased images and ideals, disordered longings and evil hopes. And for that reason your mother can never get very near you in spirit. What you are becoming repels her and wounds her motherhood. And now you have begun to steal from your employers, and you walk in deadly fear. In the back of your mind you know that discovery is inevitable before very long. Yet you put the thought away, and try and persuade yourself that everything will come right somehow, though you have no idea how. And during the last fortnight the process of deterioration has been more and more rapid. You have been drinking heavily to deaden your conscience and alleviate your alarm. You have known the end is near. Is not all this the truth?"

The tears were rolling down the weak, young face. The flaccid mouth quivered; the neck was bowed.

"All this, sir," said the young man – "all this is true."

"A broken and contrite heart," the Teacher answered, "are not despised of God. By his great mercy I have been sent to you to save you. Restore the money you have stolen, but do far more. Turn from darkness; seek light. Come to Jesus Christ. Boy, you have heard of what is known as the 'Great Refusal'; you know how the young man with great possessions could not, and would not, give them up to follow the Son of God? But you deny Jesus for a pot of beer! You give up your hope of eternal life to come and the peace of God in this wicked world for nothing – nothing at all? Now come with me to my house in Bloomsbury, my house of godly men. There you shall pray and repent, and from there you shall go home cleansed and purged of your sin, filled with the Holy Spirit, ready and anxious to lead a new life, walking from henceforth in Christ Jesus."

They went out of the place together. The boy never cast a backward glance at his inamorata of a few minutes ago. He followed the Teacher in blind obedience. He was as one stunned. They came into the big old-fashioned square where was the house which Sir Thomas Ducaine had given to Joseph and his brethren. The windows were all lighted up, and there was a small crowd lingering in front of the door.

"They are all praying within," Joseph said. "To-morrow we are to go down into the worst places of the East End. A party of great people are coming with us. We have persuaded them to come, in order that they may see for themselves what these parts of London really are like."

He spoke quietly, and in a purely conversational tone, as if to an equal. He knew well what the poor lad who walked so humbly by his side was suffering. He knew of the remorse and shame, but also of the hope, which were pouring into the young man's heart. And he knew also that all this was but a preparation for what was to come – that there must, indeed, be a final agony of surrender, an absolute and utter "giving-in" to Jesus.

So, as they walked across the square, he tried to calm his captive's nerves by a quiet recital of the great and hopeful things that they were to do on the morrow.

Yet even to Joseph it was not then given to know what things the morrow would bring forth.

CHAPTER XX

MURDER AND SUDDEN DEATH

The big house was very plainly furnished. What was absolutely necessary had been put into it, but that was all. Sir Thomas Ducaine had been astounded at the simplicity of the arrangements. The wealthy young man, accustomed as he was to every luxury and amenity of life that riches bring, was most anxious to make the place more comfortable.

"My dear fellow," he said to Joseph, "you can't possibly live like this. Why, it's barer than a work-house! You must really let me send you some things in."

But the baronet had not in the least succeeded in altering the Teacher's determination.

"The Lord's work is to be done," Joseph had answered. "We are here to do it, and our thoughts are set on other matters. We have no need of these things."

"But you don't think comfort or luxury, I suppose you would call it, wrong?"

"Certainly not, if a man has earned it, is robbing nobody in acquiring it, and finds personal enjoyment in it. Christ sat at the rich man's feast. He took the gift of the precious ointment. But for us such things are unnecessary."

So the house, now more famous than perhaps any house in London, was a veritable hermit's cell in its appointments. There, however, the resemblance ceased entirely. The place hummed with varied activities. It was the centre of the many organizations that were springing into being under Joseph's direction; activities made possible by Sir Thomas Ducaine's magnificent gifts and the stream of outside donations that had followed in their wake.

Joseph and his young companion passed through the little crowd of loiterers and curious people that nearly always stood before the door of the mysterious house where the Teacher was now known to reside. There was a stir and movement as he came among them, nudgings of elbows, a universal pressure forward, whispers and remarks below the voice: "That's him!" "There's Joseph himself!"

Joseph passed through the crowd without taking any notice of it. On the doorstep he paused and turned as if to speak. The people – there may have been thirty or forty of them – pressed forward in a circle of eager faces. On the outskirts of the group there was a woman, dressed in black and past the middle-age. She seemed to hang back, as if reluctant, or too timid, to approach.

Joseph's eye fell upon her. Then he took a latchkey from his pocket and gave it to the young man.

"Open the door," he said, "and go into the house. Go into the room on the right-hand side of the hall, and I will meet you there."

The young man did as he was bidden, and disappeared.

Then Joseph spoke.

"Among you all," he said, "there is but one here that needs me. You have come to see a show, not to seek God and help to lead you to Him. Get you gone from this place, for there is no health in you!"

The voice rang out in stern command – a command which it seemed impossible to disobey. Without a word, the people turned and slunk away, melting like ghosts into the darkness of the square.

Only the woman in black remained, and she now came timidly up to the Teacher.

"Sir," she said, in a thin but clear and educated voice – "sir, I should like to speak with you, if I may."

"My friend," he answered. "I was waiting for you. Come within the house."

He led the woman into a small room on the left-hand side of the hall – an uncarpeted room, with nothing but a few chairs, a big table covered with papers, and a purring gas-stove upon the hearth.

At the Teacher's invitation the woman sat down, and revealed a thin, anxious face and eyes that seemed perpetually trembling upon the brink of tears.

"It is very kind of you to see me, sir," she said, "I never expected that I should have such good fortune. But I have read about you in the papers – that you go about doing good, just as our dear Lord did, and something within me moved me to seek you out, even if it were only just to look at you. For I am very unhappy, sir, and I have no one to confide in, no one whom I can ask about my trouble or obtain advice from."

"Tell me all about it," Joseph said gently. "When I stood at the door and looked at the people I felt in my heart that they were there out of idle curiosity. God in His wisdom has given me power to know these things. But something came straight from you to me that made me aware that you needed me. Tell me everything."

"It's about my son, sir," the woman said, not noticing the slight start that Joseph gave and the new light that came into his eyes. "I am a widow with one son. He is just twenty, and is employed as a clerk in a City House. But he is going wrong, sir. I can read the signs easily. He stays out late at night, he seems to be losing his love for me, and is impatient of anything I say to him. And more than once he has come home intoxicated lately. And in his room I have found programmes of the performances at music-halls and such places.

"I do not pry about, sir, nor am I foolishly severe and hard. Young men must have their amusements, and they must have their secrets, I suppose. I do not expect Charlie to tell me everything. And he only earns thirty shillings a week, part of which he gives to me for his board and lodging. He cannot possibly afford these amusements.

"I have a terrible fear that never leaves me that he has not been honest, that he must have been taking other people's money, and that he will be ruined. I have prayed and prayed, sir, but it really seems as if prayer is of no use, though, of course, I keep on."

"Don't say that," Joseph answered. "Prayer is still the greatest force in the world, however despondent we may become at times. But your prayers have been answered. Charlie is saved!"

The weeping mother gave a sudden cry, half of joy, half of incredulity.

"But, sir," she stammered, "how can you know that? Oh, if only it could be true!"

"It is true, my dear sister," he answered. "The Lord led me to a place where I found your son, not an hour ago. The Holy Ghost told my mind that there was a widow's son whom I could save. All you have been conjecturing is only too true. Charlie has done the things you say. He has taken money from his employers, but I have given him the sum that he may return it to them. He is here, in this house now, and I know that the leaven of repentance is working within him, and that he feels that he is rescued from both material and spiritual ruin. We are going to pray together. Come with me, and add your prayers to ours."

But when they crossed the hall and entered the room opposite, they found that the young man was already on his knees.

Day by day some such episode as this occurred. Joseph's power seemed more and more sure and wonderful. When he had sent away the widow and her son, tearful and happy, with something in the face of the young man that had never been there before, the Teacher went up the wide Georgian stairs to a large room on the first floor.

No one was there but old David Owen. All the other friends and companions of Joseph were out upon various efforts of compassion and salvation; only the old man remained, for he had a cold, and could not face the night air. A grey, knitted comforter was round his neck, and he was slowly eating his supper – a bowl of bread-and-milk. Before him, on the table, was a large Bible, and he was reading eagerly as he ate, reading with the avidity and concentrated interest that more ordinary people give to an engrossing romance.

He looked up as Joseph entered, and smiled at him.

"It's wonderful, Master!" he said. "It grows more and more wonderful every time I opens it. I've spent my life reading in the Holy Book, and I'm an old man now. But ten lives would be all too short!"

He pointed to the volume with gnarled, wrinkled fingers that trembled with emotion.

"Ah! 'Twas a bitter nailing!" he went on. "A bitter, bitter torture He bore for us. And remember, Joseph, He bore the sins of the whole world, too. I'm no scholar, and I can't see things like you can. All the time I'm reading an' yet I know I can only see a little bit of it. But even that's rending and tearing, Master. It's dreadful what He suffered for us! I can't understand why every one doesn't love Him. It's easy to understand folk doing wrong things. The flesh is very strong – man is full of wickedness. Satan, he goes about tempting the heart, with his dreadful cunning. But, whatever a man does, and is sorry for afterwards, I can't understand his not loving Jesus. And so few folk love Jesus in this wicked town!"

"The clouds are very dark, David," Joseph answered. "But they will break. The dawn of the Lord is at hand, and deliverance is sure. But I, too, at this moment, am full of gloom and sorrow. You know my bad hours, old friend. One of them is with me now. I fear some calamity, though I pray against it. But it is coming. Something tells me it is coming. It is as if I heard slow footsteps drawing nearer and nearer – "

David looked anxiously at his chief.

"I doubt but you've been doing something that's taken power from you, Master," he said. "It has ever been thus with you. Have you not told us of the night when we went to the theatre-house, the home of the ungodly, when you walked the streets of Babylon, and were full of doubt, though you had struck a blow for God that rang through England? And what happened then? Did you not meet the young man who is great in the eyes of the world – the young man who has given a fortune for our work – the young man who has come to Jesus at last?"

Joseph bowed his head.

"Yes, David," he replied; "it was even so, blessed be God. But to-night I feel differently. Then I was trembling upon the verge of doubt. My old disbelief had appeared again within me. It was as if a serpent slept in my brain and suddenly raised its head in coiled hate and enmity to the Light. But now it is not the same. I love and believe. The tortures of a martyrdom, of which I am not worthy, could not alter that. But I have a terrible apprehension – a fear of what to-morrow may bring forth. I cannot explain it; I do not understand it. But nevertheless it is there, and very real."