The Angel Part 10

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

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

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

She came straight up to the bedside and looked down upon Joseph. There was something very strange in the expression of the old, wrinkled face.

It was changed from its usual expression of resigned and quiet joy.

There were red circles round the eyes, as if she had been weeping; the kind old mouth was drawn with pain.

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

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

"Have I been ill long?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lluellyn answered her gravely and slowly.

"I know not," he said, "save only that it is G.o.d's will. All has not yet been revealed to me. But I shall know soon, very soon, Anna, old friend.

And, as you are a G.o.dly woman of the Lord, I charge you that you go with this man when he departs from this place. Leave us now, Anna. I have somewhat to do with Joseph."

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

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

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

Lluellyn Lys was strangely altered. His thin form was thinner still.

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

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

The Teacher shook his head.

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

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

A dim memory, faint and misty, came to Joseph of his recent illness.

Lluellyn had sat in this position before, the touch of his fingers was familiar somehow or other, the stooping form awoke a chord of memory.

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

Lluellyn smiled faintly.

"I am giving you strength for the work G.o.d intends you to do," he said.

"Do not talk, Joseph. Lie very still, and fix your thoughts on G.o.d."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He had pa.s.sed out of the dimensions of mortal things into another state.