She handed back the golden cup to her father, who was about to set it down upon a side table, when the Teacher spoke.

"Are you going to leave me out of your ceremony?" Joseph said.

"Very sorry, very sorry," the baronet replied, in confusion. "I wasn"t quite sure." He handed the cup to Joseph, but the Teacher only lifted it on high. "May G.o.d bless your union, my dear brother and sister," he said simply, and placed it on a table nearby.

The deep music of the voice, the love in it, the deep sincerity, came to them all like a benison.

"You have given me everything in this world and hopes of everything in the next, Joseph," said Sir Thomas Ducaine.

"You were Lluellyn"s friend," Mary whispered.

"And you"re a jolly good fellow, Mr. Joseph," said Sir Augustus, "in spite of all your critics, and I shall be glad to say so always."

At that, for the first time during their knowledge of him, Joseph began to laugh. His merriment was full-throated and deep, came from real amus.e.m.e.nt and pleasure, was mirth unalloyed.

Joseph finished his laughter. "May this hour," he said gravely, "be the beginning of a long, joyous and G.o.d-fearing life for you, Mary and Thomas. Hand in hand and heart to heart may you do the work of the Lord."

Then, with a bow to all of the company a.s.sembled there, he went away.

When he had left the great house and walked for a few minutes, he came upon a huge public-house--a glittering structure at the corner of two streets.

He stopped in front of the great gaudy place, looked at it for a moment, sighed heavily, and went in.

CHAPTER XIX

"AS A BRAND FROM THE BURNING"

Joseph pushed open the swing-doors of the big public-house and entered beneath a lamp marked "Saloon Bar."

His face was quite changed.

In the short time which had elapsed since he left Sir Augustus Kirwan"s house he seemed another person. The great eyes which had looked upon the lovers with such kindly beneficence had now the strange fixity and inward light that always came to them when he was about his Master"s business. The face was pale, and the whole att.i.tude of the Teacher was as that of a man who is undergoing a great nervous strain.

He walked down a pa.s.sage. To his left were the doors of mahogany and cut-gla.s.s which led into those boxes which are known as "private bars"

in the smart drinking-shops of London. To his right was a wall of brightly glazed tiles, and in front of him, at the pa.s.sage end, was the door which led into the saloon bar itself. Pushing this open, he entered.

He found himself in a largish room, brilliantly lit by the electric light, and triangular in shape.

Along two of the walls ran padded leather lounges, before the third was the shining semicircular bar, gleaming with mahogany, highly polished bra.s.s, and huge cut-gla.s.s urns of amber spirit.

In one corner of the room, seated at a marble topped table, a man was talking to an overdressed woman with a rouged face and pencilled eyebrows.

In front of the counter, seated upon a high cane stool, was a young man.

He wore a long brown over-coat of a semi-fashionable cut and a bowler hat pushed back on his head. His fair hair was a little ruffled, and his weak, youthful, though as yet hardly vicious face, was flushed high up on the cheek-bones. He was smoking a cigarette of the ten-for-threepence type, and chattering with a somewhat futile arrogation of merriment and knowingness to the barmaid, who had just set a gla.s.s of whisky-and-water before him.

For a minute or two, hidden from view by an imitation palm in a pot of terra-cotta which stood upon the counter, Joseph escaped notice. He could hear part of the conversation from where he was--any one might have heard it.

It was the usual thing, vapid, meaningless, inane. A narrow intellect, dest.i.tute alike of experience and ideals, with one gift only, youth, imagined that it was seeing "life."

Two fools! Two weak, silly, unconsidered members of the rank and file, without knowledge, manners or charm.

Yet for these two Christ had died upon the Cross no less surely than He had died for prince or pope or potentate. It was thus Joseph thought.

The Teacher"s eyes were wet with tears, a beautiful compa.s.sion dawned upon his face. He went up to the young man and touched him upon the shoulder.

At the touch the young fellow started and turned suddenly with a convulsive movement. His face was yellow with fear, his jaw dropped, his hands trembled; he was a repulsive picture of weak, nerveless, and uncontrollable terror.

The barmaid looked on in amazement. She marked the fear in her admirer"s face, and with swift intuition knew from what cause it proceeded.

It was not the first time in her poor, stunted life, with its evil surroundings, that she had seen a gay young spark touched upon the shoulder; seen the acquaintance of a month vanish for ever, never to come within her ken again save only in a few brief paragraphs in the newspaper reports of the Central Criminal Court.

"Who"s your friend, Charlie?" the girl said, with a sickly and inadequate attempt at merriment.

Joseph looked at her.

"My friend," he said, in his grave and beautiful voice, "I come to him with authority."

The girl gasped, then she turned and walked hurriedly to the other end of the bar, taking a newspaper from a drawer and holding it up with shaking fingers. She didn"t want to be mixed up in the thing, at any cost she must pretend that she was unconcerned.

The great law of self-preservation--the animal law--had its way with her now. She was alone in the world; she had her living to get; she could not afford to be mixed up with any scandal. She acted after her kind, and fled as far as she could. Who shall blame her?

Joseph took the young man by the arm and led him to the farthest corner of the room. The man and woman who had been there when Joseph entered had gone by now; the place was quite empty.

"Charlie" found himself sitting side by side with the stranger who had led him so easily from the counter. In the shrewd, mean brain of the young man one emotion had been succeeded by another. He had realized after the first moment of terror that Joseph was not what he supposed.

The enormous relief of this certainty was succeeded by resentment and puerile anger. He feared that he had given himself away in "Belle"s"

eyes.

"Now, look here," he said suddenly, "you startled me for a moment, and I won"t deny you did. But a gentleman doesn"t come and interrupt another gentleman when he"s talking to a lady. Who on earth are you, anyhow?"

The high, piping voice, the silly expression, the uncertain, childish rage were unspeakably pitiable.

For answer Joseph put his hand into an inside pocket of his coat and produced a little leather bag.

It was full of sovereigns. While the young clerk stared at him with wondering, fascinated eyes, the Teacher took fourteen pounds from the bag and then returned it to his pocket.

He placed the money in the young man"s hand.

"G.o.d sent me here to give you this," he said quietly. "It is the exact sum you have stolen from your firm. Replace it, and sin no more. G.o.d sends you this last opportunity."

The young fellow"s face grew suddenly wet. He took the money with a hand that had lost all nervous force. He could hardly hold the coins.

"Who are you?" he said, in a faint whisper. "How did you know that I had sto--took the money?"

"The Holy Spirit brought me to you," Joseph answered very simply. "A short time ago I was leaving the house of some friends. A dear sister and brother of mine--I speak in the Christian, and not in the family sense--had just plighted their troth. They are to be united in happy and honorable wedlock. I was coming away with my thoughts full of them, and feeling very happy in their happiness. For, you must know, that I love those two people very dearly. Well, as I pa.s.sed by this place, I was told that there was some one within it who was very miserable. I knew that I must come in and comfort you, and take you out of the net which had enmeshed your young life. Your mother sits at home in Balham, and longs for you. The small pittance that your father"s insurance money has secured for her is just enough to support her; but it is not enough to bring any comfort or brightness into her life. But you never go home in the evenings until very late. She sits waiting for you, yearning over her only son, and praying to G.o.d for his reformation. But you never come. And when at last you go down home by the last available train, you are often more or less intoxicated, and your mind is always filled with debased images and ideals, disordered longings and evil hopes. And for that reason your mother can never get very near you in spirit. What you are becoming repels her and wounds her motherhood. And now you have begun to steal from your employers, and you walk in deadly fear. In the back of your mind you know that discovery is inevitable before very long. Yet you put the thought away, and try and persuade yourself that everything will come right somehow, though you have no idea how. And during the last fortnight the process of deterioration has been more and more rapid. You have been drinking heavily to deaden your conscience and alleviate your alarm. You have known the end is near. Is not all this the truth?"