Thorne Guy
The Angel

Sir Thomas Ducaine came into the room.

"My friends," he said, "the Master has recovered and asks you to pray and talk with him upon this great and happy night. He is waiting for you all in the ball-room upstairs. Will you come with me?"

The young baronet led the way. They followed him out of the dining-room, through the hall in which the liveried servants stood about with awe-struck faces, up the wide marble staircase with its crimson carpet, and into the vast room, lit by a thousand lights, which gleamed in the mirrors with which the walls were lined, and were reflected again in the smooth and shiny parquet floor.

And in the midst of all these splendors, seated upon a chair at one end of the room, they saw the dark-robed figure of the Master, with a sweet and gentle smile upon his face.

Without a word they grouped themselves round him, and, still smiling on them in love and brotherhood, Joseph began to speak.

"My dear brothers and sisters," he said quietly, "you have come here to-night from the church where I spoke as the Spirit of God compelled me to speak. The words that I said were there given to me, and to many of the congregation they must have seemed harsh and cruel. But out of all that congregation you have chosen to be with me to-night, and I pray and believe that a new life is to begin for all of you, even as it began for me no long time ago.

"I am going to ask you now how, and in what measure, each of you is going to live for Christ Jesus. Think about your past life and think about your future life in this world! God has given to all of you great powers and opportunities. In the ranks of this world you are set high. I and my companions have come from the hills of Wales, led by God, our band captained by the Holy Ghost, to wake this great and sinful city from its sloth and evil. By the blessing of the Holy Trinity you are assembled here to-night under the roof of a young man who is very rich and powerful in England. By the direct operation of the Paraclete, that young man is being led to the Truth, and has thrown in his lot with the servants of God. At the beginning of our battle we are thus provided with money and influence, and all the weapons with which God in His Divine wisdom makes it necessary for His servants to use.

"What are you, also, going to do for Jesus?"

There was a silence for a full minute when Joseph had made an end of speaking.

Then, quite suddenly, a strong, clear, and confident voice rang out in the great ball-room.

Eric Black, the journalist, was speaking.

"Sir Thomas Ducaine, Ladies and Gentlemen," he said, "I am not one of you. I am a writer for the Press, and, I may say, a writer who is successful and whose words are read by very many people. I have never before to-night thought much about religion, nor have I loved God or tried to serve Him. But from now, with the help of the Holy Spirit, I vow and pledge myself to write nothing that is untrue; nothing which shall not, in intention and effort, redound to the glory of God. With such power as in me lies, I enlist under the banner of this man, which I verily, truly and honestly believe to be the banner of Jesus. And there is one thing more that I must say. I beg you will excuse my presumption, and listen patiently to me for a moment, for I have a wonderful thing to tell you."

Then, in crisp, vivid sentences, full of color and movement, he told the listening company of the miracle of healing he had just witnessed in the West End slum.

He spoke as he wrote, keenly and directly, with the technical power of producing an actual picture in the hearer's or the reader's brain.

While he was telling his experience Joseph's eyes were half closed. His hands were resting upon the arms of his chair, and he was quite motionless.

When he had finished, the keen-faced King's Counsel began to speak in a somewhat hard and metallic voice, though with force and determination in every note of it.

"For my part," he said, "without any further preamble I will say just this. I will never again defend a cause in the courts in which I do not believe. I will give up all the methods and intrigues by which I have hoped to secure a judgeship. I will no longer court a political party in whose policy I do not really believe, in order that I may gain a prize. And when I am not exercising my profession and doing the duty to which God has called me, in an honest and Christian fashion, I will spend a right proportion of my wealth and time in helping Joseph to alleviate the sorrows and miseries of the poor, and to bring London back to Jesus Christ!"

The silence which ensued after the great lawyer, in his brusque and determined fashion, had made his confession of faith, was broken by a voice which was like water falling into water.

The great actress was speaking, gently and humbly.

"For my part," she said, "I can do little, oh, so very little. But I have enough money to live on quietly, and there will still be some to spare for the poor people. I will act no more. My art, such as it is, has been well thought of in this world. But I am sure now that I cannot go on playing. There is so much more to do for God. And, perhaps, I do not yet know, because I have not thought it out, it may not be good in the sight of Heaven that I should continue in my profession. That is what I will do, Master."

Young Lord Ashbury, Sir Thomas Ducaine's friend, began to mumble and stutter. He was a short, thick-set young fellow, with a clean-shaven, pleasant, but not particularly intellectual countenance.

"I – er – really, I don't quite know, but I – well, it's difficult to say, don't you know! At any rate, I'll do what I can. Old Tommy Ducaine is a good lead, and I haven't done all I ought to do – not by a very long way. But I will if I can. If I can help the poor Johnnies Joseph talks about, I jolly well will. That's all!"

Very red in the face, the Earl of Ashbury subsided into silence.

The night wore on, and many hearts were laid bare, many natures opened themselves before the Teacher.

It was close upon dawn when the last carriage rolled away, and the door opened to let the latest guest out into Piccadilly.

The battle of the Lord was begun. People were flocking to the enlistment. The standard of Jesus was raised in the Babylon of our time.

CHAPTER XVII
THE CONSPIRATORS

Mr. Andrew Levison, the lessee and part proprietor of the Frivolity Theatre, sat in his private office, which led out of the foyer, one damp and foggy afternoon, a fortnight after Joseph's now famous sermon at St. Elwyn's.

Since that momentous occasion, much water had run under the bridge.

Joseph and his companions had become the question of the hour. What, in the first instance, had been mere excitement and surmise, was now an accepted and revolutionary fact. Except by hearsay, London in reality was divided into two camps – those who were for, and those who were against the Teacher.

And the hostile party was infinitely greater than the friendly one.

In the first instance, the attitudes of the religious bodies were extremely varied.

Mr. Persse himself, whose church had become suddenly emptied of its congregation, and whose personal prestige had suffered an irremediable injury, headed a most virulent and persistent antagonism.

But the really fine brains and spiritual natures in the Anglican Church – including those noble men who live the lives of paupers among paupers, and work like galley-slaves – were much more friendly. They noticed that the Teacher made no personal assumptions. He did not say that those whose sins he remitted were cleansed. He baptized none; he called himself an ambassador, but not a priest of God.

That, in His inscrutable providence, the Father had richly endowed this man with the Holy Spirit, that he did indeed walk under the direct guidance of God, seemed to these good men impossible to doubt. They were, despite the certain restrictions of thought to which their training and temperament inclined them, ready to believe that because the advent of one directly inspired by the Holy Ghost in the sense with which the Apostle Paul was inspired was outside their personal experience, it was not to be rejected upon that account.

As far as in them lay, in the measure of their opportunities and possibilities, they held out the welcoming hand.

But, as was inevitable, it was the Free Sects who were in the front of the Teacher's army – as far as definitely Christian people went.

During the last few days of the fortnight which had intervened between the present moment and the sermon in St. Elwyn's, Dissent, with the exception of the Unitarians, had spoken in no uncertain way in favor of Joseph's mission. They saw, with a singular unanimity, that here was a deeply spiritual revival of religion upon true evangelical lines. Here was a greater than Wesley even, a force and a personality which could not be explained away by any accusations of charlatanism or self-interest, a man with a personal magnetism, a power over the human soul, a power even over the material things of life which was verily without precedent or likeness since the times of the holy apostles themselves!

That much of his teaching was definitely Catholic in tone, that he sent people to the true channels of grace – the Sacraments of the Church – did not alienate them as it might have done in another. It was now known that in his youth Joseph was a baptized and confirmed member of the Church of England, that he in no way repudiated it nor stood outside it, that he constantly received the Blessed Sacrament. But Nonconformity was not hostile.

The word "miracle," so long derided and discredited by the materialists and scientists who denied the immanence of God in all things, was now once more in the air.

The whole of England was awaking to the realization of strange new happenings. Men who had never thought or spoken of such things before now talked in low voices, one with the other, of the Holy Ghost. "God is a Spirit" – once more men said this to each other.

The healing of the verger's son was known to all the world. It was a fact beyond possibility of doubt, more authenticated and certain, more easily capable of proof than any of the Roman Catholic wonders of Lourdes or Treves. The colder analysis of the Anglo-Saxon temperament had been brought to bear upon the event. Evidence was weighed and sorted as the impulsive, emotional Latin temperament is incapable of doing.

And, in the event, even the most sceptical were forced to admit that there was no doubt at all.

The thing had really happened!

Eric Black had put it upon record. His vivid and powerful description had touched the heart of the nation. Then it was the turn of the investigators, and they had been unable to discover a single flaw in the sequence of cause, operation, and effect.

It was said also, and hinted everywhere, that a certain famous family had brought an afflicted daughter to the Teacher. Nothing was known definitely, but the generally believed story was this: —

The Lady Hermione – was the third daughter of the Duke of – . The family, one of the most famous in the historical annals of England, was still rich in power and wealth. But it was a physical ruin. Sons and daughters for the last three generations had been born feeble in brain and stunted in body.

A mysterious taint was on the ancient house, that Nemesis for past grandeur that Thackeray has drawn for us in the picture of the Marquis of Steyne in Vanity Fair.

The young and lovely lady had been seized with a mysterious and incurable disease of the mind. She had disappeared from society. It was said that her condition was terrible; that at times even the doctors and nurses who watched over her impenetrable seclusion shrunk back from her in fear.

It was as though she was possessed of an evil spirit – so the tale had long been whispered.

And now it was abroad and upon the lips of every one that the poor living body inhabited by some evil thing had been brought to the Teacher, and that all was once more well with the maid – the soul returned, health and simplicity her portion once more.

These things had made a most lasting and powerful impression upon the public mind. Who Joseph was, what were the reality and extent of his powers, what was to be the outcome of his mission: these were the questions of the day, and all the world was asking them.

The non-religious world sneered. The majority in "Christian" England was also divided in unequal portions. Most people said that Joseph was a marvellous trickster and cheat – a cheat and impostor such as England had probably never seen before, but still a rogue of rogues.

But among the last and poorest sections of the London community a very different opinion obtained.

They didn't know anything about religious matters, they cared still less. "God" was a word which gave point and freedom to an oath. The churches were places in which one was adjured to give up even the miserable pleasures which made life possible to be endured. The Bible was the little black Book you kissed in the police courts.

But Joseph was a friend.

Great things were going to happen in the congested districts of the lost. A material Saviour seemed to have risen up. A man who rebuked the rich and powerful, who poured words of fire upon the tyrant and the oppressor, had come to London. There was help then! A light was to dawn in the sky, there was a little patch of hope in the sombre environment of lost and degraded lives.

Joseph and his brethren were coming to help!

So all London was stirred to its depths.

Vested interests were threatened in innumerable ways, a revolution in public thought and sentiment was imminent, in some way or other, for all classes of society; things were going to be changed.

Things were going to be changed.

And, whether it knew it or not, the Modern Babylon was in the throes of a spiritual revolution.

The Holy Ghost brooded over the waters.

Mr. Andrew Levison sat in his private office at the Frivolity Theatre.

It was a richly furnished and comfortable place.

The walls were decorated with large photographs of the popular actors and actresses of the day. A heavy Turkey carpet covered the floor, a great writing-table of carved oak was littered with papers, electric lights in little silver shells glowed here and there; it was the luxury of a business room.

Andrew Levison's theatre had remained closed since the night when Joseph had first appeared in London and denounced the place. The attendance at many other theatres of the same class was dwindling enormously. It was exactly as the shrewd Jew had foreseen – the advent of the evangelist bade fair to ruin, or, at any rate, terribly embarrass, his unscrupulous enterprises.

He sat in his big arm-chair of green leather and smiled. A light yellow-colored cigar was between his firm white teeth. He drummed gently upon the writing-table with fat white fingers. No more happy-looking and prosperous person, at peace with the world and with himself, could have been seen anywhere – upon the surface.

It is a great mistake to imagine that the most evil passions of the heart show themselves in the face. Criminals, with the exception of those unhappy people who live continuously by crime, are no monsters in aspect. Your murderer is, as often as not, a mild and pleasant-looking man. Mr. Levison looked what he was – a good-natured, shrewd and money-loving Hebrew, no more. Yet, as he sat there, he was planning murder, and waiting the arrival of an assassin!

It is always thus, though many people have neither sufficient imagination nor knowledge of life to realize it. A man may be a panderer like Levison, or a robber like any successful rascal in the City, and yet he may still be a kind husband and father and a generous friend.

The Son of God, Who hung upon the shameful tree of Calvary, knew this.

"This day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise" was not said idly. Man is made in God's image, however marred or defaced the Divine imprint may be.

It is well to remember this sometimes, though it is fatal to allow our appreciation of its truth to make us kind to sin or tolerant of it. But may we not hope that no single son or daughter of God is ever entirely lost?

The theatrical manager's secretary, a pale and tired-looking girl, who took down his letters in shorthand and typed them upon her machine, knocked at the door and entered.

"Oh, Miss Campbell, what is it?" Levison said, making a pretence of looking up from a pile of papers.

"A man has come," the girl said, "who tells me that he is one of the supers in the last play. There is another man with him, and he says that he thinks you will see him. His name is Harris, and he states that he is one of the regular people here."

"Well, that's nothing to do with me," Levison answered. "They ought to see the stage-manager. He looks after all those things. However, you may tell them to come in. I suppose they're hard up, and want a shilling or two? I shan't disappoint them, I dare say."

He smiled, a flashing, good-humored smile of strong white teeth; and the girl went out, thinking that under a brusque exterior her employer had a heart of gold, after all.

In a moment or two more the carefully arranged comedy was over, the door of the office was carefully closed, and two seedy-looking, clean-shaven men stood in front of Mr. Levison's writing-table.

"This is my pal, Mr. Levison," one of the men said, in a hoarse and furtive voice.

He spoke softly and in the way of one who shared a confidential secret.

Levison looked the other man up and down with a keen and comprehensive regard. The fellow was shorter and stouter than his companion. His face was like a mask. It betrayed nothing whatever, although its obvious concealment of what lay behind – the real man, in short – was rather sinister. The light, red-flint eyes kept flickering and shifting from side to side, and that was the only betrayal of uneasiness apparent.

"What's your name?" Levison said; and then, with a sudden wave of his hand, he corrected himself. "No, I don't want to know your name, after all. That matters nothing to me. But what I am going to ask you is just this: Has Harris explained to you what you are going to be paid to do?"

"'E 'ave, gov'nor," said the man.

"He's told you exactly?"

The fellow nodded, without further waste of words.

"Very well, then," Levison answered – "then there is no need of any explanations on my part. At the same time, I will say just this: A certain person has got to be put out of the way. That you already understand. But there need not necessarily be anything more than that. An injury that would incapacitate the person we know of, would put him on the shelf for a long time, would be quite enough."

The man smiled. The whole ghastly immobility of the mask was suddenly transformed into a hideous and mocking countenance. The tool of the arch criminal betrayed his superiority to scruple, and in that moment the hired assassin was contemptuous of the greater scoundrel and the weaker man.

"As you like, gov'nor," he said, in a low, oily voice. "It's all one to me and my pals – give you my word. There's lots of ways of putting a cove through it wivout doin' of 'im entirely like. But the whole thing's just as easy."

Levison, whose face had suddenly grown very white, made him an impatient and terrified movement with his hand.

It was one thing to call up one of the foul creeping things of London, it was quite another to hear hideousness voicing horror in a quiet and accustomed room.

"I want to hear nothing at all!" he said, in a high-pitched and unsteady voice. "Don't tell me! Don't tell me! I don't want to know!"

Once more the assassin smiled – dreadfully.

"Very well, gov'nor," he whispered. "That's all O.K. Leave it to me, and it'll be safe as 'ouses. Day after ter-morrer this 'ere Joseph is going down into Whitechapel wiv a lot of 'is swell pals. Sort of explanatory tour, it is. 'E's a-goin' to show them 'ow the pore live. Tike 'em over the rookeries and preach the Gospel. We'll 'ave lots of chances, and no one won't know 'oo done it. It's a question of terms, that's all. You're a gen'leman, you are, sir; and Mr. 'Arris 'ere, an old pal of the boys, is a gentleman, too. Guv'nor, what are you a-goin' to hoffer?"

Levison's hand trembled as he opened a drawer of the big writing-table.

He withdrew ten sovereigns in gold.

"Take this," he said, "and when the thing is done, I'll give you twenty more of the same. Harris will give them to you from me. And now, for God's sake, get out of my sight!"

The last words burst from him in a high, almost feminine note, and as the two men shuffled away into the fog of the empty foyer, the fat, white hand of the Jew went up to his throat, clutching at it in sick hysteria.

"In the name of God, get out of my sight!"

Was there ever a more blasphemous parody and mockery than this? He who taketh the name of the Lord God in vain —