The Angel Part 26

"There are men here to-night who have won fortune, rank, and celebrity from the wholesale poisoning of the poor. The food which the slaves of the modern Babylon eat, the drink they drink, is full of foulness, that you may fare sumptuously every day, that your wives may be covered with jewels. There are men here to-night who keep hundreds and thousands of their fellow-Christians in hideous and dreadful dens without hope, and for ever. In order that you may live in palaces, surrounded by all the beauties and splendors that the choicest art, the most skilled handicraft can give, hundreds of human beings who lurk in the holes for which they pay you must spend their lives, where no ordinary man or woman can remain for more than a moment or two, so terrible are these nauseous places.

"Whole miles of ground in the modern London are thickly packed with fellow-Christians who are hourly giving up their lives in one long torture that you may eat, drink and be merry. At midday you may go into the East End of London and pa.s.s a factory. Men come out of it dripping with perspiration, and that perspiration is green. The hair of these men sprouts green from the roots giving them the appearance of some strange vegetable. These men are changed and dyed like this that your wives may spend the life-earnings of any one of them in the costly shops of the perruquiers in Bond Street.

"In order that you may draw twenty, thirty, forty, or fifty per cent.

from your investments, instead of an honest return from the wealth with which G.o.d has entrusted you, there are men who eat like animals. In the little eating-houses around the works, there are human beings who leave their knives and forks unused and drop their heads and bury their noses and mouths into what is set before them. All the bones, nerves, and muscles below their wrists are useless. These are the slaves of lead, who are trans.m.u.ting lead with the sacrifice of their own lives, that it may change to gold to purchase your banquets. You are the people who directly or indirectly live in a luxury such as the world has never seen before, out of the wages of disease and death. Copper colic, hatter's shakers, diver's paralysis, shoemaker's chest, miller's itch, hammerman's palsy, potter's rot, shoddy fever, are the prices which others pay for your yachts and pictures, your horses and motor-cars, your music, your libraries, your clubs, your travel, and your health.

"And what of the other and more intimate side of your lives? Do you live with the most ordinary standard of family and personal purity before you? Do you spend a large portion of your lives in gambling, in the endeavor to gain money without working for it from people less skilful or fortunate than yourself? Do you reverence goodness and holiness when you find them or are told of them, or do you mock and sneer? Do you destroy your bodily health by over-indulgence in food, in wine, and in unnatural drugs, which destroy the mind and the moral sense? Do you ever and systematically seek the good and welfare of others, or do you live utterly and solely for yourself, even as the beasts that perish?"

The preacher stopped in one long pause; then his voice sank a full tone--

"Yes, all these things you do, and more, and G.o.d is not with you."

Nearly every head in the church was bent low as the flaming, scorching words of denunciation swept over them.

Wealthy, celebrated, high in the world's good favor as they were, none of these people had ever heard the terrible, naked truth about their lives before. Nor was it alone the denunciatory pa.s.sion of the words and the bitter realization of the shameful truth which moved and influenced them so deeply. The personality of the Teacher, some quality in his voice which they had never yet heard in the voice of living man, the all-inspiring likeness to the most sacred figure the world has ever known, the intense vibrating quality of more than human power and conviction--all these united to light the fires of remorse in every heart, and to touch the soul with the cold fingers of fear.

Accustomed as most of them were to this or that piquant thrill or sensation--for were not their lives pa.s.sed in the endless quest of stimulating excitement?--there was yet something in this occasion utterly alien to it, and different from anything they had ever known before.

Of what this quality consisted, of what it was composed, many of them there would have given conflicting and contradictory answers. All would have agreed in its presence.

Only a few, a very few, knew and recognized the truth, either with gladness and holy awe or with shrinking and guilty dread, the Power which enveloped them with the sense of the presence of the Holy Ghost.

There was a change in the accusing voice--

"But it is not yet too late. G.o.d's mercy is infinite, and through the merits of His Son you may save yourselves while there is time. Kneel now and pray silently as you have never prayed before, for I tell you that G.o.d is here among you. An opportunity will be given to each one of you to make reparation for the evil you have done, for the messengers of the Lord have come to London, and wondrous things will come to pa.s.s! And now pray, pray, pray! In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen."

With no further word the Teacher turned and quietly descended the pulpit steps.

Every head was bowed; hardly a single person heard or saw him move away into the vestry, and a great silence fell upon the church.

As if in a dream, the tall figure in its white linen ephod pa.s.sed through the outer vestry into the large and comfortable room used by the priests. No one was there, and Joseph sank upon his knees in prayer. He had been sending up his pa.s.sionate supplications for the souls of those without but a few seconds, when he felt a touch--a timid, hesitating touch--upon his shoulder.

He looked up, and saw a little elderly man, wearing the long velvet-trimmed gown which signalized a verger in St. Elwyn's, standing by his side. The old man's face was moving and working with strong emotion, and a strange blaze of eagerness shone in his eyes.

"Master," he said, "I heard it all, every word you said to them; and it is true--every word is bitter true. Master, there is one who has need of you, and in G.o.d's name I pray you to go with me."

"In G.o.d's name I will come with you, brother," Joseph answered gravely.

"Ay," the old man answered, "I felt my prayer would be answered, Master." He took Joseph's surplice from him, divested himself of his own gown, and opened the vestry door. "You found this way when you came, Master," he said. "The public do not know of it, for it goes through the big livery-stables. The district is so crowded. No one will see us when we leave the church, though there are still thousands of people waiting for you to pa.s.s in front. But my poor home is not far away."

As they walked, the old man told his story to Joseph. His son, a young fellow of eighteen or nineteen, had been employed as bas.e.m.e.nt porter in the Countess of Morston's Regent Street shop for the selling of artistic, hand-wrought metal work.

Like many another fashionable woman in London, Lady Morston was making a large sum of money out of her commercial venture. But the repousse work which she sold was made by half-starved and sweated work-people in the East End of town, and all the employees in the shop itself were miserably underpaid. From early morning, sometimes till late at night, the old fellow's son had been at work carrying about the heavy crates of metal. His wages had been cut down to the lowest possible limit, and when he had asked for a rise he had been told that a hundred other young fellows would be glad to step into his shoes at any moment.

One day the inevitable collapse had come. He had found himself unable to continue the arduous labor, and had left the position. Almost immediately after his departure he had been attacked with a long and painful nervous complaint. Unable, owing to the fact of his resignation, to claim any compensation from the countess as a legal right, he had humbly pet.i.tioned for a little pecuniary help to tide him over his illness. This had been coldly refused, and the young man was now bedridden and a permanent enc.u.mbrance to the old man, who himself was unable to do anything but the lightest work.

Mr. Persse, on being applied to for a.s.sistance, had consulted the Countess of Morston, who was one of his parishioners, in order, as he said, to find out if it were "a genuine case." With an absolute disregard for truth, and in order to shield herself, the woman had told the clergyman that her late a.s.sistant was a dishonest scoundrel who merited no consideration whatever.

"And so, Master," the old man concluded--"and so I lost all hope, and tried to make up my mind to see my lad die slowly. And then I see about you in the paper, and something comes into my mind like. And then the vicar he tells me about this here service to-night, and that you were coming yourself, Master. So I prayed and I prayed that I should have a chance to speak to you. Master, I want you to raise Bill up and make him well."

The old man clutched Joseph by the arm, his cracked and pathetic voice full of poignant pleading.

"You will, won't you, Master?" he said once more.

"Take me to the young man," Joseph answered.

CHAPTER XV

JOSEPH AND THE JOURNALIST

Eric Black was thirty-three years of age, and one of the chief and most trusted writers upon the staff of the _Daily Wire_.

Very few of the younger school of journalists in London had the crisp touch and vivid sense of color in words possessed by this writer. His rise to considerable success had been rapid, and his signed articles on current events were always read with extreme interest by the enormous public who bought the most popular journal of the day.

Eric Black's intellect was of first cla.s.s order, but it was one-sided.

He saw all the practical and material affairs of life keenly, truly and well. But of that side of human existence which men can neither touch nor see he was profoundly ignorant, and as ignorance generally is, inclined to be frankly contemptuous.

In religious matters accordingly this brilliant young man might have been called an absolute "outsider." He never denied religion in any way, and very rarely thought about it at all. No one had ever heard him say that he did not believe in G.o.d, he simply ignored the whole question.

His personal life was singularly kindly, decent, and upright. He was, in short, though he had not the slightest suspicion of it himself, a man waiting and ready for the apprehension of the truth--one of those to whom the Almighty reveals Himself late.

On a great daily paper, when some important event or series of events suddenly rises on the horizon of the news-world, a trusted member of the staff, together with such a.s.sistants as may be necessary, is placed in entire charge of the whole matter. Eric Black, accordingly, was deputed to "handle" the affair of Joseph and his epoch-making arrival in London.

Mr. Persse, the vicar of St. Elwyn's, had sent two tickets of admission for Joseph's address to the _Daily Wire_, and Eric Black, accompanied by a shorthand writer who was to take down the actual words of the sermon, sat in a front seat below the pulpit during the whole time of Joseph's terrible denunciation of modern society.

While the reporter close by bent over his note-book and fixed the Teacher's burning words upon the page, Black, his brain alert and eager, was busy in recording impressions of the whole strange and unexpected scene. He was certainly profoundly impressed with the dignity and importance of the occasion. He realized the emotions that were pa.s.sing through the minds of the rich and celebrated people who filled the church. His eyes drank in the physical appearance of the Teacher, his ears told him that Joseph's voice was unique in all his experience of modern life.

Enormously interested and stirred as he was, Black was not, however, emotionally moved. The journalist must always and for ever be watchful and serene, never carried away--an acute recorder, but no more.

Towards the end of the sermon, when the young man saw that Joseph would only say a few more words, a sudden flash of inspiration came to him. No journalist in London had yet succeeded in obtaining an interview or a definite statement with the extraordinary being who had appeared like a thunderbolt in its midst. It was the ambition of Eric Black to talk with the Teacher, and thus to supply the enterprising journal which employed him, and for which he worked with a whole-hearted and enthusiastic loyalty, with an important and exclusive article.

He had noticed that the Teacher could not possibly have entered the church by the main entrance. The journalist himself, in order to secure the best possible seat, had arrived at St. Elwyn's at the commencement of the evening service which preceded the address.

With a keen, detective eye he had noted the little subtle signs of uneasiness upon the vicar's face, and had deduced accordingly that Joseph had not yet arrived. When the Teacher actually appeared, it was obvious that he must have come by the vestry door, in order to elude the waiting crowd. It was morally certain also that he would leave by the same route.

The writer saw his chance. By his side was the representative of a rival paper, a drawback to the realization of his scheme. As his quick brain solved the difficulty of that, he remembered Mr. Kipling's maxim, that "all's fair in love, war, and journalism." The shorthand writer from the _Daily Wire_ sat just beyond the rival journalist.

"Look here, Tillotson," he whispered, in tones which he knew the _Mercury_ man could hear, "I'm feeling frightfully unwell. I must get out of this, if I can, for a minute or two. Of course, after the sermon is over, Joseph will go down into the aisles. I hear that a big reception is arranged for him at the west entrance. I am going to slip away for a minute or two. When the preacher comes out of the vestry, fetch me at once. I mustn't let any of the other fellows get to him before I do. I shall be in the side-chapel over there, which is quite empty, and where the air will be cooler."

Satisfied that he had done all that was necessary to mislead his rival, Black slipped out of his seat, pa.s.sed behind a ma.s.sive pillar, and, un.o.bserved by any one, slipped into the outer vestry, through the inner, and eventually came out into the narrow pa.s.sage which led to the livery stables, where he waited with anxious alertness.

In less than five minutes his patience and clever forestalling of events were richly rewarded. Joseph himself, accompanied by a little old man, whom Black recognized as the verger who had shown him to his seat, came out together, talking earnestly. They pa.s.sed him, and when they had gone a few yards the journalist followed cautiously. He was anxious, in the first place, to discover where the mysterious man, whose appearances and disappearances were the talk of London, was going, and upon what errand.

He waited his time to speak to him, resolved that nothing should now prevent him from bringing off a journalistic "scoop" of the first magnitude.