Mary was greatly agitated. She sat down as she was told. All other thoughts but those induced by the ordeal which she was about to face left her mind.
Now, in the early morning, the upper servants of the Berkeley Square mansion were employed on various matters, and only a young footman was on duty in the hall.
It chanced that on this morning a raw lad from the country, who was being trained to London service, was the person who answered the front door.
Sir Augustus had cleared his throat and had just begun, "Now, in regard to this man Joseph, my dear Mary," when the door of the library swung open, and the young footman, in a somewhat puzzled and frightened voice, announced—
"Sir Thomas Ducaine and Mr. Joseph, to see Miss Lys!"
There was a dead silence in the great library. The morning sunshine poured into it, touching and refining the rich decorations with a glory which was greater than they. But no one spoke a word. It was a dramatic moment.
Then Mary spoke, and there was a rose-pink flush upon her cheeks.
"Oh, auntie," she said, "I am so very sorry! But I asked Sir Thomas Ducaine to come here and see me this morning. I meant to have told you. But when you and uncle sent for me here I forgot all about it."
"What does it matter if you did forget, dear?" she said to Mary. "Sir Thomas, how do you do? So glad to see you!"
"How do, Ducaine?" said Sir Augustus. "Sorry I can't get up; but this confounded gout still hangs round me. Can't quite get rid of it."
Mary saw, with a strange throb at her heart, that Ducaine's face had changed in some subtle way. She had not seen him for a fortnight or more, and she noticed the difference immediately, though she could hardly have defined it. But what was Joseph doing here? How came the Teacher to be with the man who loved her? Even as she asked herself the question she knew the answer. What diddetailsmatter, after all? The Holy Ghost was leading and guiding....
"I want you to know my friend Joseph, Lady Kirwan," Sir Thomas said. "Allow me to introduce him to you. Joseph—Lady Kirwan."
"How do you do, Mr. Joseph?" she answered. "This is quite an unexpected pleasure. Of course, we have all been hearing so much about you in the papers lately; and, of course, you were with my poor dear nephew when he died."
She gave him her hand with great graciousness, marvelling at the tall, erect figure, the serene power and beauty of the face, the wonderful magnetic eyes.
Joseph bowed.
"Thank you very much, Lady Kirwan," he said in the deep, musical voice which could rise to such heights of passion and pleading, or remain as now, so perfectly modulated and strong. "I did not know Lluellyn for very long, but we were like brothers for a time, and he allowed me to see deep into his heart. I have never known a better man. I shall never meet with anyone so good again, or so specially gifted and favored by God."
Lady Kirwan was unable to repress a slight start of surprise. The man before her spoke and moved like an easy and polished gentleman. There was no possible doubt about it. And she had expected something so very different.
"Present me to your friend, Ducaine," Sir Augustus said from his arm-chair; and the Teacher shook hands with the great banker, and then at his invitation sat down beside him.
"Well, sir," the baronet said, "you have been making a pretty big stir in London, it seems. The most talked-of person in England at this moment, I suppose."
Joseph smiled.
"Oh, that was inevitable!" he said. "I am sorry in a way, because I intensely dislike publicity that is merely curiosity. But I expect our backs are broad enough to bear it. And if only I can get people to listen, that is the great thing, after all."
"But about last night," Sir Augustus said. "Aren't you afraid of being arrested for making a disturbance? I've no doubt the play went a little too far, even for the Frivolity. But such very drastic methods, you know—well really, sir, if this sort of thing is allowed to continue—I mean no unkindness, believe me—society would be quite upset."
"I hope to upset it, Sir Augustus," Joseph answered with an absolute simplicity that robbed his words of either ostentation or offence. "No; they will take no action against me for what I did—of that I am quite certain."
"I by no means share your certainty," Sir Augustus answered. "Though I am sure, for your sake, and for the sake of my niece, who, I gather, somewhat foolishly accompanied you, I hope you're right. But I am a man of the world, you know, while you—if you will pardon me for saying so—hardly seem to be that."
"I was at the theatre last night," Sir Thomas Ducaine broke in, "and I'm quite certain they will do nothing, Sir Augustus. They wouldn't dare. I saw everything that went on. You may take it from me that it will be all right."
"Well, you ought to know, my dear fellow," the banker said, obviously relieved at the words of the younger man. "And I do hope, Mr.—er—Joseph, that you don't mean to visit any more theatres, except in a purely private capacity."
"I don't think we are likely to visit any more theatres," Ducaine said quietly.
Everyone looked up quickly at the word "we". There was a mute interrogation upon every face.
Then there was a silence. Sir Augustus Kirwan was thinking rapidly and arriving at a decision. He had made his vast fortune, had gained his reputation and influence, by just this power of rapid, decisive thought, mingled with a shrewd intuition which all his life had served him well.
He saw at once that this man Joseph was no ordinary person. He had pictured him as some noisy, eloquent, and sincere Welsh peasant. He found him a gentleman in manner, and possessed of a personality so remarkable, a latent force so unmistakable, that in any assembly, wherever he went, he would be like a sword among kindling wood.
The newspapers of that morning had exaggerated nothing at all.
And then the man was obviously closely intimate with Sir Thomas Ducaine. Sir Augustus made up his mind.
"I am going to do a thing very much out of the ordinary," he said. "But this is not an ordinary occasion, however much some of us here would like it to be so. I am going to speak out, and I am going to ask some questions. I think you will admit that I have a right to ask them. My nephew by marriage, Lluellyn Lys, is dead. Lady Kirwan and I standin loco parentisto our dear niece here, Mary Lys. She is, of course, of age, and legally her own mistress. But there are moral obligations which are stronger than legal ones. Very well, then. Mary, my dear girl, I want you to tell me why you asked Sir Thomas Ducaine to come here this morning. And did you ask Mr. Joseph here to accompany him?"
"I asked Sir Thomas to come, uncle," she said, "because I wanted to persuade him to meet Joseph. I wanted him to hear the truth as I have heard it. I wanted him to believe in Christ, and follow Him with us. I did not ask Joseph to come here. I did not know that he had ever met Sir Thomas."
Then Ducaine broke in.
"I think, Sir Augustus," he said, "that here I must make an explanation. Mary and I are old friends. We have known each other for a long time."
He paused, with an evident difficulty in continuing, nor did he see the swift glance which passed between Lady Kirwan and her husband—a glance full of surprise, meaning, and satisfaction, which said as plainly as possible, "this quite alters the position of affairs!"
Ducaine continued:—
"I hate speaking about it," he said, "but you have a right to know. I love her better than anything else in the world, and over and over again I have asked her to be my wife. She has always refused me. I have understood that such a great joy might be possible for me if I could believe as Mary believes. But I couldn't do so. I could not believe in Christ, and of course I could not pretend to accept Christianity in its full sense unless I was really convinced. It was no use trying to trick myself into a state of mind which my conscience would tell me was insincere. There the matter has rested until last night. Last night I was at the theatre, and saw Mary with Joseph. Afterwards, when I came out, I tried to find them everywhere, but they had vanished. I was in a terrible state of mind when I met, by chance, a friend of Joseph's—a Mr. Hampson—who came home to supper with me. Late that same evening I met, by a coincidence"—Joseph shook his head with a smile, but Ducaine did not notice him—"by a coincidence, I met Joseph. We have talked all night long, and I have come to this conclusion."
He paused, and, in the sunlight, Mary could see that little beads of perspiration stood out upon his brow. There was a dead silence in the room now, every ear was strained—one heart, at least, was beating rapidly.
"Yes?" Sir Augustus said.
"That I am going to throw in my lot with Joseph and his campaign," Sir Thomas replied. "My money, and such influence as I have, will be at his disposal. Now, I do this without any thought of what I hope to gain by it—the priceless treasure I hope to gain." He looked at Mary for the first time since he had begun to speak. "I am not yet convinced of the truth of Christianity. I do not, even after this momentous decision which I have taken, believe in Christ. But I want to believe, for the truth's own sake. One way or another the next few months will settle the question for me, and so I am going with Joseph."
Sir Augustus had listened to the young man with tightly shut lips. Nothing in his face showed what he thought.
Suddenly he turned to Joseph.
"Well, sir," he said, not without a kindly irony in his voice, "you may be quite sure that London will listen to you now. With Sir Thomas Ducaine's money and influence behind you, the path is smooth."
"It is God's will—blessed be His name!" Joseph answered quietly.
His voice was so humble and sincere, so full of gratitude and fervor, that even in the mind of the hard-headed man of the world no further doubt could possibly remain.
"Be that as it may," Sir Augustus said, after a pause. "I suppose you have some sort of a definite programme, sir?"
The grave answer rang like a bell in the room:—
"To succor, help, and comfort all that are in danger, necessity, and tribulation. To strengthen such as do stand; to comfort and help the weak-hearted; to raise up them that fall; to rebuke those that do evil in the sight of the Lord, and finally to beat down Satan under our feet."
Once more there was a silence.
"And you, Mary?" Sir Augustus asked suddenly.
"I mean to give my humble aid to this great work," Mary answered slowly. "Oh, don't oppose me, uncle—don't forbid me! It would make me so unhappy to do anything that you did not wish. But Jesus calls me—He calls all of us—His voice is ever in my ears."
"I propose," Sir Augustus said, at length, "that you all go into another room and leave me here with my wife. I should like to discuss this with her for a few minutes."
When the two elder people were alone, their conference was brief and to the point.
"Of course, we shall withdraw all opposition," said Sir Augustus the worldly. "The thing has quite changed its aspect. This Joseph fellow is, of course, as mad as a hatter. But he is obviously a gentleman, and, at the same time, quite sincere—another Lluellyn, in fact, though with a good deal more in him. Ducaine's accession to the movement makes all the difference. Joseph will become a fashionable fad, and all sorts of people will join him in search of a new sensation. I'm quite looking forward to it. London will be more amusing than it has been for years. Then it will all die a natural death, this Joseph will disappear, and Mary will marry Tom Ducaine, the biggest catch in London."
"It does seem as if Providence was in it, after all," said Lady Kirwan piously.
"No doubt, no doubt!" the banker answered jovially. "Just make the girl promise to make this house her home—she shall have perfect freedom to go and come as she pleases, of course—and everything will come right."
They had settled it to their mutual satisfaction, and were about to send for Mary, when the butler entered the library and announced that the Reverend Mr. Persse had called and asked for her ladyship.
Lady Kirwan was about to say that she was engaged, and could not see the clergyman, when Sir Augustus interposed. "I think I should see Mr. Persse, dear," he said. And then, when the man had gone: "We'll introduce him to this Joseph. It will be most amusing, and I want a little amusement, after being tied by the leg like this for nearly a fortnight. And besides, that humbug Persse will go and tell everyone in Mayfair, and it will give the whole thing acachetand a send-off! Don't say anything—leave it all to me."
Sir Augustus did not like The Hon. Mr. Persse, the fashionable clergyman of Mayfair, and it was with a somewhat sardonic smile that he welcomed him a moment afterwards.
The vicar of St. Elwyn's was a tall, clean-shaven priest, who would have been pompous had he not been so suave. His face was a smooth cream-color, his eyes ingratiating and perhaps a little furtive, while the mouth was mobile and clever. He occupied a somewhat peculiar position among the London clergy. He was an advanced Ritualist, inclining to many ceremonies that were purely Roman and Continental. But he had very little of the ascetic about him, and was as far removed from the patient, self-denying Anglican clergy of the slum districts in the East End, as four pounds of butter is from four o'clock. St. Elwyn's was one of the "smartest" congregations in London. The costly splendor of its ceremony, the perfection with which everything was done, attracted pleasure-loving people, who would go anywhere for a thrill that would act as the blow of a whip to jaded and enervated lives.
Mr. Persse "catered"—the word exactly describes his methods—for precisely that class of people whom he was so successful in attracting.
"How do you do, Lady Kirwan?" he said, in a pleasant and gentlemanly voice. "Ah, Sir Augustus, I hope you are better. It is a trying time of the year. I have called this morning on a somewhat singular errand. I was told, I must not say by whom, that he actually saw your niece, Miss Lys, in the theatre last night—you have read the papers this morning—yes?—in company with this extraordinary mountebank of whom every one is talking. Of course I denied it indignantly. I have met Miss Lys at your house, and I knew such a thing to be impossible. But my informant is, I am sorry to say, a little prone to gossip and tittle-tattle, and I thought, in justice to you that if I were armed with an authoritative denial, I should be able to nip all such foolish gossip in the bud, before it has time to spread. You know how people talk, dear Lady Kirwan."
Lady Kirwan certainly knew—and so did Mr. Persse. He was the hero of many afternoon tea-tables, and an active disseminator of gossip.
"My dear Mr. Persse," Sir Augustus said somewhat emphatically, "allow me to tell you that you have beenquitemistaken in your view of the new movement. The man whom the papers call Joseph is not at all what you think. Sir Thomas Ducaine, for example, is hand and glove with him. I must really correct your ideas on the point. If irregular, perhaps, the mission will be most influential."
"Oh, ah! I had no idea," said Mr. Persse, with remarkable mental agility. "Dear me, is that so, Sir Augustus? Anything that makes for good, of course, must be welcomed by all of us. I myself—"
"I will introduce you to Joseph," Sir Augustus interrupted, with intense internal enjoyment. "He happens to be in the house at this moment."
That afternoon all the evening papers contained an announcement that Joseph, the new evangelist, would preach at St. Elwyn's, Mayfair, after evening service on the morrow—which was Sunday.
What had happened was this:
Joseph had been duly introduced to Father Persse. The latter, in whom the instincts of the theatricalentrepreneurwere very largely developed, saw his chance at once. Mayfair would have a sensation such as it had never enjoyed before.
Joseph had promised to preach without any more words than a simple assent. That there would probably be trouble with the bishop Mr. Persse knew very well. But he was already out of favor in Episcopal quarters, and could hope for nothing in that direction. At the worst, an apology and a promise not to repeat the offence of asking a layman, who was unlicensed by the bishop, to preach in St. Elwyn's, would make everything right. He had made the actual request to Joseph privately, asking leave to have a few moments' conversation alone with him.
After obtaining the promise he went back to the library, where Mary and Sir Thomas Ducaine had returned, and announced his success.
But when they went to look for the Teacher he had disappeared. No one knew where he had gone, and neither Mary nor any of the others saw him again that day.
The West End of London waited with considerable excitement for what Sunday would bring forth.
At the moment when Joseph had met the Vicar of St. Elwyn's, he knew him for just what he was. The mysterious power which had enabled the Teacher to lay bare the sins and secrets of the strangers in the theatre came to him then, and he saw deep through the envelope of flesh to the man's naked soul. Nothing was hidden from him. The meanness, the snobbery, the invincible absorption in a petty self, the hunger for notoriety and applause—all the layers and deposits of earthly stuff which overlaid the little undeveloped germ of good—these were plain to the spiritual vision of the man who was filled with the Holy Ghost.
The man's mind and its workings moved in his sight as a scientist sees the blood pulsing in the veins of an insect under the microscope. But directly Mr. Persse asked him to address the congregation of the fashionable West End church, Joseph knew that, whatever motives dictated the vicar's offer, the opportunity was from God. It was ordained that he should mount the pulpit and deliver the message that was within him.
He had slipped out of the mansion in Berkeley Square without bidding any of its inmates farewell. He had no wish to make mysterious entrances and exits. Indeed, he never thought about the matter at all, but there was something within him that led and moved him, a force which he obeyed without question.
As he went out into the square, Joseph's heart was full of hope and thankfulness to God. God had led him to the door of Sir Thomas Ducaine's house in Piccadilly. God had been with him during the still watches of the night as he pleaded and reasoned with the young man having great possessions. And God had prevailed! All that had seemed so hopeless and insuperable during the dark hours after the scene in the theatre was over, was now lightened and smoothed away. In a few hours money and influence had come to him, and at a time when the sword of the Lord had but hardly left its sheath for the battle that was to be fought.
Joseph bent his steps at once towards the Euston Road. His faithful followers were there in the quiet hotel by the station. Ignorant of London, knowing nothing of what was going to happen, unaware of their leader's plans or place, they waited, trusting in God. The thought quickened his steps. He longed to be with these trusting ones, to pray with them that God would be with him on the morrow.
Every now and again, as he walked, some one or other glanced curiously at him. The face of this or that passer-by would wear a look of curiosity and interrogation, and then, in several instances, the wonder changed into recognition, and the wayfarers felt almost sure that this must indeed be the very man with whose name all London was ringing. But no one followed him. No one could be quite sure of his identity, even though it was more than once suspected, and walking so swiftly as he did, he was far out of hail before anyone could make up his mind to accost or follow him.
For his part Joseph heeded these significant signs and tokens of the huge interest with which his personality was inspiring London very little. He had not seen the morning papers, though he knew from what he had heard in Berkeley Square that they were much occupied with his name and doings. That was to be expected, he knew. But he did not care to see what they were saying of him. He walked through the streets of London, a man walking with God, holding high commune with the Eternal. But ere he met his brethren, he was to have a very practical illustration of London's excitement, and London was to have another sensation.
He had turned into the Euston Road, and was nearing the house which sheltered his disciples, when he saw that a huge crowd stood before it. The road was almost impassable for traffic, and a dozen stalwart policemen urged the thick mass of humanity to move in vain.
Every face was turned up to the dingy red-brick front of the hotel.
There may have been nearly a thousand people there, and the crowd was growing every moment, and every one was gazing up at the windows of the house.
The strange thing about the crowd was that it was an absolutely silent one. No one shouted or spoke, the thick clotted mass of humanity was motionless and orderly, though it refused to obey the orders of the police to disperse.
What had occurred was simple enough. The landlord of the hotel was interested from the first in the band of grave, silent men who had arrived at his house on the evening before. He had had but a few moments' conversation with Joseph, but the interview had powerfully affected him. Himself one of the sidesmen of a neighboring church, an honest and God-fearing man, who ran his temperance hotel with conspicuous decency in a street renowned for its bad and unsavory reputation, the landlord had read all about the strange mountain revival in Wales.
He identified his new guests immediately upon their arrival. It was impossible to mistake Joseph, that strange and mysterious being whose outward form resembled the very Christ Himself in such a marvellous and awe-inspiring fashion. When the band had bestowed their simple luggage in their rooms, and had left the hotel for the theatre under Joseph's guidance, the landlord, all agog with his news, went to the local Conservative club, of which he was a member, and told it. Then had come the stupendous intelligence in the journals of that morning, and it had immediately got about—as news does get about, who shall say how or why?—that the headquarters of the evangelist were at a certain temperance hotel in that neighborhood.
By half-past eleven, silently, swiftly, as if drawn by some unseen magnet, the people had collected in front of the house, and, even as Joseph drew near, journalists from all parts of Fleet Street, summoned by telephone and telegram, were hastening to the scene as fast as hansom cabs could bring them.
Joseph walked straight up to the edge of the tightly packed mass of people. The way to the hotel door was entirely blocked, and he was at a loss how to approach it.
At length he touched a policeman upon the shoulder. The man's back was turned to him, and he also was staring at the window of the hotel in puzzled silence.
"My friend," Joseph said quietly, "do you think you could make a way for me? I must get to the house. My friends are there."
Something in the deep, quiet voice startled the constable. He turned round with a rapid movement, involuntarily knocking off the Teacher's soft felt hat as he did so.
The big man's face grew pale with surprise, and then flushed up with excitement. He was a huge fellow, a tower of bone and muscle, but he seemed no taller than the man beside him, no more powerful than Joseph at the moment of their meeting.
The sun was still shining, and it fell upon the Teacher's face and form, lighting them up with almost Eastern definiteness and distinctness. But it was not only the sun which irradiated Joseph's face with an unearthly serenity and beauty. He had been communing with God. His thoughts were still on high. His face was not of this world. It was "as the face of an angel."
The man shouted out in a loud, high-pitched voice, which sent an immediate responsive quiver through the crowd.
"Make way!" he called. "Make way! He's come! Joseph has come!"
There was a sudden rustling sound, like the first murmur the upspringing wind makes in a forest. The crowd swayed and strained as every member of it turned, and Joseph saw a mass of stippled pink framed in black before him.
There was a deep organ note from many voices, interspersed here and there with sharp cries, falsetto, high in the palate, ejaculations of excitement, which could not be controlled.
Then every one saw him.
The deep note swelled into a great shout of welcome, astonishment, and even fear, while, as the waters rolled back for the passage of Israel, the living billows of humanity separated and were cleaved asunder.
It was the triumph of a personality which, at this moment, was superhuman, a personality such as had never visited the modern Babylon before. Good men and saints have ofttimes trodden, and still tread the streets of London, but never before had its weary, sin-worn people known the advent of one such as this man, an "angel" or "messenger" of warning straight from God!
It was a scene which recalled other scenes in the dim past. Human nature has not changed, though the conditions under which it manifests itself have changed. Steam and electricity, all the discoveries of science, all the increase of knowledge which they have produced, have had no real influence for change upon the human heart. Science does not limit, nor does knowledge destroy, the eternal truths of Christianity. This man, coming as he did, influenced as he was influenced, had the same power over a modern mob in London as he would have had in those ages which fools call "dark" or "superstitious"—not realizing that the revelation of God to man is still going on in perfect beauty and splendor, that day by day new proofs are added to the great Central Truth of the Incarnation.
They swept aside to let him pass, calling aloud upon his name, in anger, in supplication, in fear and in joy—a mighty multiple voice of men and women stirred to the very depths of being.
His bare head bowed, his face still shining with inward spiritual fire, Joseph passed among them, and was lost to their sight within the doors of the house.
He moved swiftly up the stairs, still as if in a dream in which worldly things had no part, with the rapt face of one who sees a vision still. Pushing open a door, he found himself by instinct, for no one had directed him, in the large upper chamber where the brethren were gathered together.
The room was a large bare place, occasionally let for dinners and other social occasions, but ordinarily very little used. The dozen or so of the faithful friends who had come with Joseph from their native hills were kneeling at the chairs placed round the walls. One of them, David Owen, was praying aloud, in a deep fervent voice.
"Lord God of Hosts, we know how Thou didst anoint Our Lord with the Holy Ghost and with power; Who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with Him. Anoint our Master Joseph in the same way, that he and we with him may prevail against the devils of London and their captain, Beelzebub. And oh, most Merciful Father, preserve our Teacher while he is away from us from the assaults of Satan and the craft and subtlety of evil men. Send him back to us with good news, and armed for the battle with Thy grace and protection. Dear Lord, Amen."
There was a deep groan of assent, and then a momentary silence, broken by David, who said: "Brethren, I have it in my mind to read a portion of the Holy Book, this being the first chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. For it is therein that we shall remind ourselves of how the Apostles remained at Jerusalem waiting for the promise of the Father that ere many days passed they should be baptized with the Holy Ghost. And reading thus, we shall be comforted and of a stout heart."
With these words the old man rose, and, turning, saw Joseph standing among them. He gave a glad shout of surprise, and in a moment the Teacher was surrounded by the faces of his friends. They wrung him by the hand, they pressed on him with words of joy, the sonorous Welsh ejaculations of praise and thanksgiving rang like a carillon in the long, bare room.
The tears came into Joseph's eyes.
"My brethren," he said, and all marked the splendor of his countenance and the music of his voice, "God has richly blessed us, and shown us signs of His love and favor. Sit you down, and I will tell you my story and all that has happened to me. Blessed be the name of the Lord!"
He told them everything, leaving out no single detail, and beginning his story from the moment on which he had left them the night before. Many were the exclamations of sympathy and comprehension as he told of the black doubts and fears that had haunted him upon this midnight walk. Like all men who have passed through deep spiritual experiences, they know such hours well. For all men who love God and try to serve Him must endure their agony and must be tempted in the desert places, even as Christ Jesus Who died for us was tempted.
The simple band of brethren heard with rapt attention how the Holy Spirit had led their chief into the dwellings of the rich and powerful, and raised up mighty help for the battle that was to come.
In all they saw the hand of God. Miracle had succeeded miracle from the very moment when they laid the body of their beloved Lluellyn Lys to rest upon the wild mountain top.
God was with them indeed!
It is not too much to say that during the remainder of the Saturday London was in an extraordinary ferment.
The time was one of great religious stagnation. It was as though, as the old chronicle of the Middle Ages once put it: "God and all his angels seemed as asleep." For months past a purely secular spirit had been abroad. Socialistic teachings had been widely heard, and the man in the street was told that here, and here only, was the real panacea for the ills of life to be found.
And now, at the very moment of this universal stagnation, Joseph had come to London.
There had suddenly arisen, with every circumstance of mystery and awe calculated to impress the popular mind, a tremendous personality, a revolutionary from God—as it seemed—a prophet calling man to repent, a being with strange powers, a lamp in which the fires of Pentecost burned anew, one who "spake boldly in the name of the Lord Jesus."
By dinner-time on the Saturday night all Mayfair knew that Joseph was to preach at St. Elwyn's on the evening of the morrow. The evening papers had announced the fact, and a series of notes had been sent round to various houses by the vicar and his assistant clergy.
St. Elwyn's was a large and imposing building, but its seating capacity was limited.
Mr. Persse was very well aware that the occasion he had provided would have filled Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's as well. The crowd was sure to be enormous. He therefore determined that admission to the service should be by ticket only, a perfectly unjustifiable proceeding, of course, but one which would secure just the sort of congregation he wished to be impressed by his own activity and broad-mindedness. The tickets were hurriedly printed and issued, some of them were sent to the Press, the remainder to the wealthy and influential society people who were accustomed to "worship" at this church.
The service was fixed for eight o'clock. As a usual thing the Sunday evensong was but poorly attended at St. Elwyn's. The fashionable world didn't mind going to church on Sunday morning, and afterwards for "church parade" in Hyde Park, but one really couldn't be expected to go in the evening! The world was dining then—and dinner was dinner!
Mr. Persse knew this, and he announced a "choral evensong" at eight, and "an address by the Evangelist Joseph" at nine. No one, owing to the fact of the numbered and reserved tickets, need necessarily attend the preliminary service. Every one could dine in peace and comfort and arrive in time for the sensation of the evening. Nothing could have been more pleasant and satisfactory.
The vicar, busy as he was with the necessary work of preparation, yet found time for a few moments of acute uneasiness. Nothing had been seen of Joseph. Would he come after all? Could he be depended upon, or would the whole thing prove a tremendous fiasco?
Late on the afternoon of the Saturday, Mr. Persse heard of the doings outside the hotel which had obviously occurred within an hour of Joseph's acceptance of the offer to preach and his mysterious departure from Berkeley Square. Immediately on reading this the vicar had dispatched his senior curate in his motor-brougham to make final arrangement with the Teacher about Sunday evening.
The young man, however, had returned with the news that Joseph and his companions had left the house by a back entrance during the afternoon, and that nothing was known of their whereabouts.
During the day of Sunday Mr. Persse, though he wore an expression of pious and sanctified expectation, found his uneasiness and alarm increase. He showed nothing of it at the luncheon party which he attended after morning service, and answered the excited inquiries of the other guests with suavity and aplomb. But as the hour of eight drew near and no word had been received from the Teacher, all the mean fears and worries that must ever be the portion of the popularity-hunter assailed him with disconcerting violence.
At eight o'clock that evening there was probably no more nervous and frightened man in the West End of London than this priest.
The stately ritual of evensong was over. The celebrated choir, in their scarlet cassocks and lace cottas, had filed away into the vestry, preceded by the great silver-gilt cross which Lady Kirwan had given to the church, and followed by the clergy in their copes and birettas.
A faint sweet smell of incense lingered about the great arched aisles, and an acolyte was putting out the candles on the High Altar with a long brass extinguisher.
It was a quarter before nine, and the church was filling rapidly. The vergers in their gowns of black velvet were showing the ticket-holders to their seats; on all sides were the rustle of silk, the gleam of jewels, breaths of faint, rare perfumes.
Mr. Persse always encouraged people to come to his church in evening dress. He said, and quite rightly, that there was no possible reason why people who belonged to a class which changes its costume in the evening as a matter of course should be prevented from coming together to worship God by that circumstance.
Nevertheless, the sight was a curious one, in comparison with that seen at the same hour in most other churches. The women wore black mantillas over their elaborate coiffures—just as the poorer class do at church in Italy—but the sparkle of diamonds and the dull sheen of the pearls were but hardly veiled. Fans moved incessantly, and there was a continuous sound of whispering, like the wind in the reeds on the bank of a river.
Mr. Persse was in the inner vestry with his two curates. His face was pale, and little beads of perspiration were beginning to start out upon it.
"I don't know what we shall do, Nugent," he said to one of the young men; "this is dreadful. We can't wait very much longer. Nearly every one has come, the verger tells me. Every seat is occupied, and they are putting chairs in the aisles. There is an enormous crowd of ordinary people outside the church, and fifty policemen can hardly keep a way for the carriages. There has been nothing like it before; it is marvellous. And the man has never turned up! I don't know what to do."
"It's very awkward," Mr. Nugent answered—he was Sir Arbuthnot Nugent's second son, and a great pet in Park Lane and its environs—"and if the man does not come it will do St. Elwyn's a great deal of harm."
"It will indeed," the vicar answered, "and I don't mind telling you, Nugent, that I have had quite an inspiration concerning him. When I asked him to come here he assented at once. I felt—you know how one has these intuitions—that he was a man over whom I should have great influence. Now, why should I not induce him to take Holy Orders, and give him a title to St. Elwyn's? He is no mere ignorant peasant, as the general public seem to imagine. He is a gentleman, and, I am informed by Sir Thomas Ducaine, took an excellent degree at Cambridge. The bishop would be glad to obtain him, I feel quite sure of it, and there can be no manner of doubt that he is a real spiritual force. Nor must we forget that God in His Providence has ensured a most influential following for him. I have it on quite unimpeachable authority that Joseph is to be taken up by all the best people."
There was a knocking at the door which led into the small courtyard at the back of the church.
The vicar called out "Come in!" in a voice that rang with uncertainty and hope, and Joseph himself entered.
The Teacher was very pale and worn. His face was marked and lined as if he had quite recently passed through some rending and tearing experiences, some deep agony of the soul. So Jacob might have appeared after he had wrestled with the Angel of the Lord, or Holy Paul when at last the scales fell from his eyes, and he received sight forthwith and arose.
"Ah, here you are," Mr. Persse said in tones of immeasurable relief. "We had almost given you up! There is a very large congregation, and some of the most important people in London are here. I hope you are prepared!"
"God will give me words," Joseph answered quietly, though he did not look at the priest as he spoke.
"Oh, ah, yes!" Mr. Persse replied; "though, for my own part, I confess to anxious preparation of all my sermons. Have you a surplice and a cassock? No? Oh well then we can fit you out very well from the choir cupboard."
A surplice was found for him, the vicar knelt and said a prayer, and then the three men, the two priests and the evangelist, walked into the church.
There was a stir, a rustle, and then a dead silence.
Mr. Persse and the curate sat in their stalls, and Joseph ascended the stone steps to the pulpit, which was set high on the left side of the chancel arch.
He looked down from his high place upon the faces below. Row after row of faces met his eye. Nearly all the electric lights, save only those which gleamed on the pulpit ledge and illuminated a crucifix behind his head, were lowered. He saw a sheen of black and white, the dull glitter of jewels, and the innumerable faces.
Still standing, he lifted his hands high above his head, and in a loud voice cried upon God—
"Father, give me a tongue to speak to these Thy children. Lord Jesus, guide me. Holy Ghost, descend upon this church, and speak through the mouth of Thy servant."
The voice rang like a bugle through the arches, and echoed in the lofty roof.
And now the words of the text: "Oh, consider this, ye that forget God; lest I pluck you away, and there be none to deliver you."
The second terrible warning to London had begun.
At precisely the same hour on the Sunday evening when Joseph ascended the pulpit of St. Elwyn's Church a large red Napier motor-car stopped before the gate of a smart little villa in St. John's Wood.
The villa stood in its own grounds, and was surrounded by a high wall. It had a general air of seclusion and retirement, though it was obviously the property or in the tenancy of people of wealth.
The wall was clean and newly pointed, the gate was painted a dark green, the short drive which led to the front door was made of the finest white marl.
The motor-car stopped, and two men descended from it, clearly defined in the radiance from two electric globes that were mounted on each pillar of the villa gate. Both wore opera hats, white scarves round their throats and black overcoats.
One was tall, slim, and clean-shaven. His age was about twenty-six, his hair was a pale golden color, and his face, too young as yet to be permanently spoilt and damaged, nevertheless bore the unmistakable imprint of a fast life.
The young man, evil though his countenance was, conveyed a certain impression of birth and breeding.
His companion, on the other hand, was just as unmistakably destitute of both. He was short and fat in figure. His face boasted a modicum of impudent good looks, and was of a strongly Hebraic cast. The fine dark eyes, the hooked nose, the large lips—red like a ripe plum—all shouted the prosperous Jew.
The younger man gave an order to the chauffeur. The automobile swung away towards Hampstead, and the companions walked up the approach to the villa, the door of which was opened to them by a servant.
They entered a small hall, luxuriously furnished in the Eastern style, and lit with shaded electric lamps. As they did so, a manservant hurried up to them from behind some heavy Moorish curtains.
"Where is your mistress?" said the younger of the two men.
"My mistress is in the drawing-room, my lord," the servant answered.
"Oh, all right! Take our coats. We will go and find her at once."
The servant took the coats and hats, and the two men walked down a wide-carpeted passage, brilliantly lit by globes in the roof, which made their stiff white shirt-fronts glitter like talc, and opened a heavy door of oak.
The villa was the home of Miss Mimi Addington, the leading musical comedy actress of London—the star of the Frivolity.
The young man with the light hair and the dissipated expression was Lord Bellina, an Irish viscount.
He had succeeded to the title some three years before, and to a very large fortune, which had come into the impoverished Irish family owing to a marriage with the daughter of a wealthy Liverpool manufacturer.
The short Jewish-looking man who accompanied him was Mr. Andrew Levison, the theatricalentrepreneurand leesee of the Frivolity Theatre, in which Lord Bellina had invested several thousand pounds.
Lord Bellina opened the door of the room and entered, followed by Mr. Levison.
Upon one of the divans, wearing a long tea-gown of Indian red, Mimi Addington was lounging. Her face was very pale, and on this occasion quite destitute of the little artistic touches with which she was wont to embellish it. The expression was strained and angry, and the beautiful eyes shone with a hard, fierce glitter.
There had been no performance at the Frivolity Theatre on the night after Joseph's sudden appearance there.
Mimi Addington had been taken away in a state of wild and terrified hysteria. It was impossible for her to play upon the Saturday night, and her understudy, who should have sustained the part in the illness of her principal, had disappeared, and could not be found. Moreover, several other members of the cast had sent in their resignations, and many of the ticket offices of the West End of town had reported that the gilded gang of young men who were accustomed to take stalls for considerable portions of the run of a popular piece had withdrawn their applications.
"Well, Mimi, my dear," said Mr. Levison, with anxious geniality, "and how are you to-day?"
"Bad," the girl answered in one single bitter word.
Mr. Levison made a commiserating noise.
"Tut, tut!" he said; "you must try and bear up, Mimi, though I must own this abominable and unprecedented occurrence has been enough to try any one—this Joseph."
At the word the woman sprang from her couch with a swift feline movement of rage.
"Him!" she screamed, in a voice from which all the usual melody and sweetness had entirely departed. "If I had him here I'd murder him! No, that would be too good for him! I've thought of worse things than that to do!"
Lord Bellina went up to her and put his arm round her shoulder.
"And serve him right," he said; "but try and be quiet, Mimi, you'll only make yourself worse."
She pushed the young man roughly away, in a blaze of passion so lurid and terrible that it frightened the two men.
Lord Bellina looked helplessly at Levison for a moment. The elder man rose to the occasion.
"Let's get to business," he said; "something must be done."
The woman nodded eagerly and quickly, and with the same unnatural glitter in her eyes.
"Have you seen any of the papers?" Levison said.
She shook her head.
"Well, Bally and I have been going through them, and, what's more, we have been seeing a whole lot of people, and getting various extra opinions. You know that I can say without boasting in the least that there are very few men in London who know the popular taste as I do. I've made my success by realizing exactly what London will do and think just a day or two before it has made up its own mind. I have never made a mistake. I won't bother you now with an account of how I have arrived at my present conclusion. It is enough to say that I am certain of it, and that it is this:
"There is not the slightest doubt that if this man Joseph continues in his pleasant little games—you see, I speak without heat—theatrical business in London will be ruined for months. There is going to be a great wave of religious enthusiasm all over the place. This man—Joseph he calls himself—is going to lead it. The man is an extraordinary one. He has a personality and a force greater, probably, than any living person in Europe to-day. There is no doubt about it. You, my dear Mimi, will have to forego your nightly triumphs. Public opinion will hound you off the stage and shut up my theatre, or compel me to let it as a mission-hall for ten pounds a night! As for you, Bellina, you will have to retire to your estates in Galway, and superintend the potato crop, and take an intelligent interest in the brood of the Irish national animal—the pig in short, Bally!"
Although he spoke jauntily enough, there was a deep vein of bitterness and sincerity underlying the Jew's words. He watched the faces of his two listeners with a quick and cunning scrutiny.
Mimi Addington spoke.
"You've hit the mark, Andrew," she said, in a low voice, in which there was a curious hissing quality—"you've hit the mark, as you always do. What you've said is perfectly true. I know it and feel it."
Her eyes blazed, and she put one white and shapely hand up to the ivory column of her throat, wrestling with the agony of hysteria and hate, which once more threatened to master her. With a great effort of will, she calmed herself, and went on speaking.
"But all this, Andrew, depends upon one little word, 'if.'"
Lord Bellina looked quickly at Levison, with a glance which seemed to say that they had already arrived at precisely the same conclusion.
"That's it," he said; "there is always that little word, 'if.'"
There was a dead silence in the little room, and three faces, pale and full of sinister purpose, sought each other in a horrid trio of hate.
The girl's face was as it had been from the first, unredeemed evil. The countenance of the young peer had changed from its usual vacuous and dissipated weakness into something which, bad as it was, had still a quality of strength. He had sat cowering in the theatre while the terrible denunciation of the evangelist had laid bare the secrets of his life. And although he did not outwardly show how hard he had been hit, his resentment was no less furious though less vulgarly expressed, than that of Mimi.
The Israelite gave no indication of his inward feelings. In truth, they were of a quite different nature from those of the other two. He lived for two purposes. One was to make money, the other was to enjoy himself; he saw now that his money-making was menaced, and that his enjoyment would be spoiled—unless—
Mimi Addington became suddenly quite calm and business-like. She realized that she was in perfect accord with the other two.
"Now let's get to work," she said. "This Joseph must be got rid of at once. It can be done, I suppose, if we pay enough."
"Quite so," said Mr. Levison. "It now only remains to form ourselves into a committee of ways and means."
Like a bell the preacher's voice rang through the crowded church.
After the delivery of the solemn and menacing text of warning, Joseph began, suddenly and swiftly, without any of the usual preliminary platitudes with which so many preachers in all the churches commence their addresses.
"I look down upon you and see you with an inward and spiritual vision. And to me, you men and women in your wealth, your temporal power, your beauty, your curiosity and your sin, seem as a vast Slough of Despond.
"I need no such fantastic images, powerful and skilful as they may be, by means of which Dante or Milton portrayed the horrors of hell, to show me a horror more real and terrible than any of which they wrote. This is the City of Dreadful Night. It is the Modern Babylon, where Christendom, corrupt both in state and in society, sits by many waters, and speaks in her heart, and boasts, 'I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow.'
"Sin and Satan exercise a terrible dominion, ungodliness and debauchery accompany them, for Babylon is the abode of all unclean spirits.
"And in this church, you men and women to whom I am speaking now represent in your very persons no small portion of the army of wickedness which rules London and fattens upon its corruption."
He paused for a moment, looking down from his high place with a pale face, burning eyes, and a hand outstretched in condemnation.
There was a soft, universal, and perceptible noise of movement, which rose and ceased. Then all was silent again. With their eyes fixed steadfastly on Joseph, no one had seen the vicar half rise from his seat in the chancel, with a scared look upon his face, and a sudden deprecatory movement of his arm.
The preacher resumed:—
"In a very short time—for some of you the time is shorter than you dream of—for to-night God has revealed much to me—you will all be dead. The feasting, and the folly, and the fun, and the lying and the drinking and the lust will all be over for you, and you will answer for what you have done.
"This is what I tell you to have constantly in your minds while I am speaking to you to-night. You may think in your blindness, in your folly, that I am exaggerating the evil of the time, the monstrous wickedness of London, for which you and people like you are largely responsible. Delude yourself with no such vain imagining, for I speak to you as the ambassador of the Most High God, and to-night you shall hear me.
"The signs of the time are unmistakable. London has come to the worship of the image of the beast, of the human spirit, which has apostatized from God, and made itself God. You have fallen into strong delusions, into which the Lord suffers all to fall who have not received the truth in the love of it, that they might be saved. You worship that which the inspired words of the Bible call the 'beast' because it denies what is truly human, and, with all its culture and civilization, is more and more tending to degrade humanity.
"All who see with the eye of the Spirit know that atheistic and materialistic systems, denying God and the existence of the Spirit, and based upon a purely physical view of existence, and atheistic literature, which by its poetry, fictions, and romances, diffuses the Gospel of the flesh among the masses, grow daily, and are triumphant. The words of Revelation have come true, and out of the mouth of the dragon and out of the false prophet have proceeded the three unclean spirits, like frogs. These creatures of the swamp, the mire, and the morass are among you. Their croaking, powerless as it is in itself, yet produces a sound which penetrates, and is heard all around; repeating the same thing day after day, deluding men, and bringing them into the right state of mind for the service of Antichrist.
"You call yourselves Christians. You are here in a church, and the presence of most of you is the most grim and ghastly mockery that the finite mind can possibly conceive.
"Day by day in this holy temple of the Blessed Trinity God Incarnate comes down upon the altar yonder as the priest says the words of Consecration—those incredibly wonderful five words which put the Blessed Body of our Lord under the white species of the Host. Only this morning many of you heard those