The Angel

The service was fixed for eight o'clock. As a usual thing the Sunday evensong was but poorly attended at St. Elwyn's. The fashionable world didn't mind going to church on Sunday morning, and afterwards for "church parade" in Hyde Park, but one really couldn't be expected to go in the evening! The world was dining then – and dinner was dinner!

Mr. Persse knew this, and he announced a "choral evensong" at eight, and "an address by the Evangelist Joseph" at nine. No one, owing to the fact of the numbered and reserved tickets, need necessarily attend the preliminary service. Every one could dine in peace and comfort and arrive in time for the sensation of the evening. Nothing could have been more pleasant and satisfactory.

The vicar, busy as he was with the necessary work of preparation, yet found time for a few moments of acute uneasiness. Nothing had been seen of Joseph. Would he come after all? Could he be depended upon, or would the whole thing prove a tremendous fiasco?

Late on the afternoon of the Saturday, Mr. Persse heard of the doings outside the hotel which had obviously occurred within an hour of Joseph's acceptance of the offer to preach and his mysterious departure from Berkeley Square. Immediately on reading this the vicar had dispatched his senior curate in his motor-brougham to make final arrangement with the Teacher about Sunday evening.

The young man, however, had returned with the news that Joseph and his companions had left the house by a back entrance during the afternoon, and that nothing was known of their whereabouts.

During the day of Sunday Mr. Persse, though he wore an expression of pious and sanctified expectation, found his uneasiness and alarm increase. He showed nothing of it at the luncheon party which he attended after morning service, and answered the excited inquiries of the other guests with suavity and aplomb. But as the hour of eight drew near and no word had been received from the Teacher, all the mean fears and worries that must ever be the portion of the popularity-hunter assailed him with disconcerting violence.

At eight o'clock that evening there was probably no more nervous and frightened man in the West End of London than this priest.

The stately ritual of evensong was over. The celebrated choir, in their scarlet cassocks and lace cottas, had filed away into the vestry, preceded by the great silver-gilt cross which Lady Kirwan had given to the church, and followed by the clergy in their copes and birettas.

A faint sweet smell of incense lingered about the great arched aisles, and an acolyte was putting out the candles on the High Altar with a long brass extinguisher.

It was a quarter before nine, and the church was filling rapidly. The vergers in their gowns of black velvet were showing the ticket-holders to their seats; on all sides were the rustle of silk, the gleam of jewels, breaths of faint, rare perfumes.

Mr. Persse always encouraged people to come to his church in evening dress. He said, and quite rightly, that there was no possible reason why people who belonged to a class which changes its costume in the evening as a matter of course should be prevented from coming together to worship God by that circumstance.

Nevertheless, the sight was a curious one, in comparison with that seen at the same hour in most other churches. The women wore black mantillas over their elaborate coiffures – just as the poorer class do at church in Italy – but the sparkle of diamonds and the dull sheen of the pearls were but hardly veiled. Fans moved incessantly, and there was a continuous sound of whispering, like the wind in the reeds on the bank of a river.

Mr. Persse was in the inner vestry with his two curates. His face was pale, and little beads of perspiration were beginning to start out upon it.

"I don't know what we shall do, Nugent," he said to one of the young men; "this is dreadful. We can't wait very much longer. Nearly every one has come, the verger tells me. Every seat is occupied, and they are putting chairs in the aisles. There is an enormous crowd of ordinary people outside the church, and fifty policemen can hardly keep a way for the carriages. There has been nothing like it before; it is marvellous. And the man has never turned up! I don't know what to do."

"It's very awkward," Mr. Nugent answered – he was Sir Arbuthnot Nugent's second son, and a great pet in Park Lane and its environs – "and if the man does not come it will do St. Elwyn's a great deal of harm."

"It will indeed," the vicar answered, "and I don't mind telling you, Nugent, that I have had quite an inspiration concerning him. When I asked him to come here he assented at once. I felt – you know how one has these intuitions – that he was a man over whom I should have great influence. Now, why should I not induce him to take Holy Orders, and give him a title to St. Elwyn's? He is no mere ignorant peasant, as the general public seem to imagine. He is a gentleman, and, I am informed by Sir Thomas Ducaine, took an excellent degree at Cambridge. The bishop would be glad to obtain him, I feel quite sure of it, and there can be no manner of doubt that he is a real spiritual force. Nor must we forget that God in His Providence has ensured a most influential following for him. I have it on quite unimpeachable authority that Joseph is to be taken up by all the best people."

There was a knocking at the door which led into the small courtyard at the back of the church.

The vicar called out "Come in!" in a voice that rang with uncertainty and hope, and Joseph himself entered.

The Teacher was very pale and worn. His face was marked and lined as if he had quite recently passed through some rending and tearing experiences, some deep agony of the soul. So Jacob might have appeared after he had wrestled with the Angel of the Lord, or Holy Paul when at last the scales fell from his eyes, and he received sight forthwith and arose.

"Ah, here you are," Mr. Persse said in tones of immeasurable relief. "We had almost given you up! There is a very large congregation, and some of the most important people in London are here. I hope you are prepared!"

"God will give me words," Joseph answered quietly, though he did not look at the priest as he spoke.

"Oh, ah, yes!" Mr. Persse replied; "though, for my own part, I confess to anxious preparation of all my sermons. Have you a surplice and a cassock? No? Oh well then we can fit you out very well from the choir cupboard."

A surplice was found for him, the vicar knelt and said a prayer, and then the three men, the two priests and the evangelist, walked into the church.

There was a stir, a rustle, and then a dead silence.

Mr. Persse and the curate sat in their stalls, and Joseph ascended the stone steps to the pulpit, which was set high on the left side of the chancel arch.

He looked down from his high place upon the faces below. Row after row of faces met his eye. Nearly all the electric lights, save only those which gleamed on the pulpit ledge and illuminated a crucifix behind his head, were lowered. He saw a sheen of black and white, the dull glitter of jewels, and the innumerable faces.

Still standing, he lifted his hands high above his head, and in a loud voice cried upon God —

"Father, give me a tongue to speak to these Thy children. Lord Jesus, guide me. Holy Ghost, descend upon this church, and speak through the mouth of Thy servant."

The voice rang like a bugle through the arches, and echoed in the lofty roof.

And now the words of the text: "Oh, consider this, ye that forget God; lest I pluck you away, and there be none to deliver you."

The second terrible warning to London had begun.

CHAPTER XIII

THE CONSPIRATORS OF ST. JOHN'S WOOD

At precisely the same hour on the Sunday evening when Joseph ascended the pulpit of St. Elwyn's Church a large red Napier motor-car stopped before the gate of a smart little villa in St. John's Wood.

The villa stood in its own grounds, and was surrounded by a high wall. It had a general air of seclusion and retirement, though it was obviously the property or in the tenancy of people of wealth.

The wall was clean and newly pointed, the gate was painted a dark green, the short drive which led to the front door was made of the finest white marl.

The motor-car stopped, and two men descended from it, clearly defined in the radiance from two electric globes that were mounted on each pillar of the villa gate. Both wore opera hats, white scarves round their throats and black overcoats.

One was tall, slim, and clean-shaven. His age was about twenty-six, his hair was a pale golden color, and his face, too young as yet to be permanently spoilt and damaged, nevertheless bore the unmistakable imprint of a fast life.

The young man, evil though his countenance was, conveyed a certain impression of birth and breeding.

His companion, on the other hand, was just as unmistakably destitute of both. He was short and fat in figure. His face boasted a modicum of impudent good looks, and was of a strongly Hebraic cast. The fine dark eyes, the hooked nose, the large lips – red like a ripe plum – all shouted the prosperous Jew.

The younger man gave an order to the chauffeur. The automobile swung away towards Hampstead, and the companions walked up the approach to the villa, the door of which was opened to them by a servant.

They entered a small hall, luxuriously furnished in the Eastern style, and lit with shaded electric lamps. As they did so, a manservant hurried up to them from behind some heavy Moorish curtains.

"Where is your mistress?" said the younger of the two men.

"My mistress is in the drawing-room, my lord," the servant answered.

"Oh, all right! Take our coats. We will go and find her at once."

The servant took the coats and hats, and the two men walked down a wide-carpeted passage, brilliantly lit by globes in the roof, which made their stiff white shirt-fronts glitter like talc, and opened a heavy door of oak.

The villa was the home of Miss Mimi Addington, the leading musical comedy actress of London – the star of the Frivolity.

The young man with the light hair and the dissipated expression was Lord Bellina, an Irish viscount.

He had succeeded to the title some three years before, and to a very large fortune, which had come into the impoverished Irish family owing to a marriage with the daughter of a wealthy Liverpool manufacturer.

The short Jewish-looking man who accompanied him was Mr. Andrew Levison, the theatrical entrepreneur and leesee of the Frivolity Theatre, in which Lord Bellina had invested several thousand pounds.