With the magic celerity which is part of the psychology of crowds, a ring of excited people sprang round the crushed, motionless figure, as if at the bidding of a magician"s wand.
Willing hands began to lift the great beams from it. Hampson had been one of the first to see and realize the accident.
He was by the side of his friend in three or four seconds after the planks had struck him down. And he saw something that, even in his horror and excitement, sent a strange inexplicable throb through his blood and made all his pulses drum with a sense of quickening, of nearness to the Unseen, such as he had never experienced in all his life before.
It is given to those who are very near to G.o.d to see visions, sometimes to draw very close to the Great Veil.
The two planks of timber had fallen over Joseph"s back in the exact form of the Cross. To the little journalist, if to no one else in the rapidly-gathering crowd, the wood and the bowed figure below it brought back the memory of a great picture he had seen, a picture of the Via Dolorosa, when Jesus fainted and fell under the weight He bore.
CHAPTER II
"SOMETHING MARVELLOUS IS GOING TO HAPPEN"
In the drawing-room of a house in Berkeley Square, Lady Kirwan--the wife of Sir Augustus Kirwan, the great banker--was arguing with her niece, Mary Lys.
The elder lady was tall and stately, and although not aggressive in any way, her manner was distinctly that of one accustomed to rule. Her steady grey eyes and curved, rather beak-like nose gave her an aspect of sternness which was genially relieved by a large, good-humored mouth. At fifty, Lady Kirwan"s hair was still dark and glossy, and time had dealt very gently with her.
Of the old Welsh family of Lys, now bereft of all its great heritage of the past, but with a serene and lofty pride in its great name still, she had married Sir Augustus, then Mr. Kirwan, in early girlhood. As the years went on, and her husband"s vast wealth grew vaster still, and he rose to be one of the financial princes of the world, Lady Kirwan became a very prominent figure in society, and at fifty she had made herself one of the hundred people who really rule it.
One daughter, Marjorie, was born to Sir Augustus and his wife, a beauty, and one of the most popular girls in society.
"You may say what you like, but I have no patience at all with either you or your crack-brained brother, Mary!" Lady Kirwan exclaimed, with an irritable rapping of her fingers upon a little lapis lazuli table at her side.
Mary Lys was a tall girl, dressed in the blue uniform of a hospital nurse. The cloak was thrown back over her shoulders, and its scarlet lining threw up the perfect oval contour of her face and the glorious ma.s.ses of black hair that crowned it. If Marjorie Kirwan was generally said to be one of the prettiest girls in London--and the couple of millions she would inherit by no means detracted from her good looks--certainly Mary Lys might have been called one of the most beautiful.
The perfect lips, graver than the lips of most girls, almost maternal in their gentleness, formed, as it were, the just complement to the great grey eyes, with their long dark lashes and delicately-curved black brows. The chin was broad and firm, but very womanly, and over all that lovely face brooded a holy peace, a high serenity, and a watchful tenderness that one sees in the pictures of the old masters when they drew the pious maids and matrons who followed the footsteps of Our Lord on earth.
Her beauty was not the sort of beauty which would attract every one. It was, indeed, physical beauty in perfection, but irradiated also by loveliness of soul. The common-minded man who prefers the conscious and vulgar prettiness of some theatre girl, posed for the lens of the camera or the admiring glances of the crowd, would have said:--
"Oh, yes, she"s beautiful, of course! One can"t help admitting that. But she"s not my style a bit. Give me something with a little more life in it."
But there were not wanting many men and women who said that they had thought that the mother of the Saviour must have looked like Mary Lys.
"No! I"ve really no patience with either of you!" Lady Kirwan repeated.
"But, Aunt Ethel, surely we ought to live our own lives. I am quite happy with my nursing in the East End. One can"t do more good than by trying to nurse and cure the sick, can one? And Lluellyn is happy also in his Welsh mountains. He lives a very saintly life, auntie--a life of prayer and preaching and good works, even if it is unconventional and seems strange to you. I would not have it otherwise. Lluellyn is not suited for the modern world."
"Fiddlesticks, Mary!" Lady Kirwan answered. ""Modern world," indeed! You speak as if you said "Modern pestilence"! Who made the world, I should like to know? And what right have you and your brother to despise it?
I"m sick of all this nonsense. How a girl with your looks and of your blood, for there is hardly a peer in England with such a pedigree as that of our family, can go on grubbing away nursing horrible people with horrible diseases in that dreadful East End I can"t possibly imagine.
You"ve no money, of course, for your two hundred a year is a mere nothing. But what does that matter? Haven"t your uncle and I more than we know what to do with? Marjorie has already an enormous fortune settled upon her. She is almost certain to marry the Duke of Dover next season. Well, what do we offer you--you and Lluellyn? You are to be as our second daughter. We will give you everything that a girl can have in this world. You shall share in our wealth as if you were my own daughter. With your looks and the money which is available for you, you may marry any one. We stand well at Court. His Majesty is pleased when one of the great old families of the realm restores its fallen fortunes.
Every chance and opportunity is yours. As for your brother, as I have so often written and told him, he will be a son to us. We have not been given a son; he shall become one. There is enough and to spare for all.
Give up this nonsense of yours. Make Lluellyn come to his senses and leave his absurd hermit life, and this mad preaching about in the mountain villages. Come to us at once, both of you. What more could any one offer you, child? Am I not pleading with you out of my love for you and my nephew, out of a sincere desire to see you both take your proper place in the world?"
Lady Kirwan stopped, a little out of breath after her long speech, every word of which had been uttered with the sincerest conviction and prompted by real affection.
There was probably no more worldly woman in London than the kindly wife of the great financier. The world was all in all to her, and she was as dest.i.tute of religion or any knowledge of spiritual things as the parish pump. She would not have divided her last shilling with any one, but she was generous with her superfluity.
And certainly one of the great wishes of her life was to see the ancient family from which she had sprung once more take a great place in life.
She felt within her veins the blood of those old wild princes of the "stormy hills of Wales"--those Arthurs and Uthers, Caradocs and Lluellyns innumerable, who had kept their warlike courts in the dear mountains of her home.
It was monstrous, it was incredible to Lady Kirwan that the last two survivors of the Lys family in the direct line should live obscure, strange lives away from the world. Mary Lys a hospital nurse in the East End! Lluellyn Lys a sort of anchorite and itinerant preacher! It was inconceivable; it must be stopped.
"I will write to Lluellyn again, auntie," Mary said, rising from her chair. "But, honestly, I fear it will be of little use. And as for myself--"
As she spoke the door opened, and a footman entered the room.
"Miss Marjorie has returned, my lady," he said. "She is waiting below in the motor-brougham. I was to say that if Miss Lys was ready Miss Marjorie has a free hour, and will drive Miss Lys back to the hospital."
"There, there!" Lady Kirwan said to her niece, "Marjorie will take you back to that place. It will be more comfortable than a horrid, stuffy omnibus. Now don"t give me any answer at present, but just think over what I have said very seriously. Come again in a week, and we will have another talk. Don"t be in a hurry to decide. And remember, dear, that with all your exaggerated ideas of duty, you may owe a duty to your relations and to society quite as much as to indigent aliens in Whitechapel. Run along, and be a dear good girl, and be sure you don"t catch some dreadful infectious disease."
A couple of footmen in knee-breeches, silk stockings, and powdered hair stood on each side of the door. A ponderous butler opened it, another footman in motor livery jumped down from his seat beside the driver and held open the door of the brougham.
"All this pomp and circ.u.mstance," Mary thought sadly, "to get a poor hospital nurse out of a house and into a carriage. Four great men are employed to do so simple a thing as that, and whole families of my dear people are starving while the breadwinner lies sick in the hospital!"
She sighed heavily, and her face was sad as she kissed the brilliant, vivacious cousin who was waiting in the brougham.
"Well, you poor dear," Marjorie Kirwan said. "And how are you? I suppose the usual thing has happened? Mother has been imploring you to take a proper place in the world--you and my delightfully mysterious cousin Lluellyn, who is quite like an old Hebrew prophet--and you have said that you prefer your grubby scarlet-fever friends in Whitechapel!"
Mary nodded.
"Dear auntie," she said. "She is wonderfully kind and good, but she doesn"t quite understand. But don"t let us talk about it."
"Very well, then, we won"t," Marjorie answered affectionately. "Every one must gang their own gait! You don"t like what I like; I don"t like what you like. The great thing is to be happy, and we"re both that. Tell me something of your work. It always interests me. Have you had any new adventures in Whitechapel?"
"Everything has been much the same," she said, "except that a very wonderful personality has come into the hospital."
"Oh, how delightful! A man, of course! Do tell me all about him!"
"His name is Joseph. It sounds odd, but he doesn"t seem to use his surname at all. I did hear it, but I have forgotten. He is simply Joseph. He was hurt, though not nearly as badly as he might have been, by some falling planks from a house they were building. But he was in a dreadfully exhausted and rundown condition--nearly starved indeed. He is a great scholar and scientist, but he was ruined some years ago because he made a speech against G.o.d and religion at Cambridge, before all the dignitaries."
"And are you converting him?"
"No. That is no woman"s work, with this man. He is in a strange state.
We have nursed him back to something like health, but his mind seems quite empty. At first, when we had some talks together, he railed against G.o.d--always with the proviso that there wasn"t any G.o.d! Now he is changed, with returning health. He is like an empty vessel, waiting for something to be poured into it. He neither disbelieves nor believes.
Something has washed his mind clear."
"How extraordinary!"
"Extraordinary you say; but listen! Three days ago--it was in the early evening--he called me to his bedside. He drew his hand from the bedclothes and laid it on my arm. How I thrilled at the touch, I cannot explain...."
"But, my dear, think of Tom--This is extraordinary!"
"I"ve thought of Thomas; but, Marjorie, you cannot know--it was not that kind of love. It was nothing like love. Perhaps I put it badly, but you jumped to quite a wrong conclusion. It was something quite different.
His eyes seemed to transfix me. The touch--the eyes--the thrill they sent through me will remain as long as I live! But listen. He spoke to me as he hadn"t spoken before. "Mary," he said--"