The Angel Part 16

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

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

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

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

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

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

He heard only that awful accusing thunder--

"WOE UNTO YOU, SAMARIA!"

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

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

Who was this man?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was the beating of many human hearts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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