The Angel

The three conspirators were struck by them as if by some terrible crushing physical force.

With dilated eyes and faces, which were scarcely human in their terror, they crouched before the terrible apparition.

In that moment all remembrance of what they had just learnt from the newspaper was blotted from their minds; they only thought that here was one veritably risen from the dead, or come in spirit to denounce them.

The woman was the first to succumb. With a low, whimpering moan she fell in a tumbled heap upon the floor. Neither the Jew nor the younger man moved a finger to help her. They crouched trembling against the opposite wall, and stared at the tall figure of the man they had tried to murder.

Joseph stood looking upon them. His face was no index whatever to his thoughts. In whatever spirit he had come they could define nothing of it from his face, though the words which he had uttered as he appeared from behind the hangings rang in their ears with a deep and ironical mockery as if the bell of doom was tolling for them.

Once more Joseph raised his hands.

"Peace be unto you," he said again, as if blessing them. And then he asked very gravely and calmly: "Why are you afraid of me?"

Again there was silence, until at last Levison, the Jew, with a tremendous and heroic effort of self-control, pulled himself a little together and essayed to speak.

"Do not prolong this scene, sir," he said, in a cracked, dry voice, which seemed to come from a vast distance. "Have your men in at once and take us away. It will be better so. You have won the game, and we must pay the penalty. I suppose you have captured the men who made the attempt upon your life, and" – here Levison remembered, with an added throb of horror, how another had suffered in place of his intended victim – "and who, unfortunately, killed another person in mistake for you. So be it. We are ready to go."

The sound of the Jew's voice speaking thus, and calm with all the hideous calmness of defeat and utter despair, had roused Lord Ballina's sinking consciousness. As Levison concluded, the young man fell upon his knees and almost crawled to the feet of the Master.

"It's all lies," he gasped – "it's all lies, sir! I don't know what he is talking about, with his murders and things. I know nothing whatever about it all. I wasn't in it. I assure you I'd nothing whatever to do with it. It was he who did it all."

The livid young wretch extended a shaking hand of cowardly accusation, and pointed it at his whilom friend.

Joseph looked down to the creature at his feet with a blazing scorn in his eyes, and as he did so the Jew, who was still leaning upon the opposite wall, as if too physically weak to move, broke in upon the end of Lord Ballina's quavering exculpation.

"It's quite true, sir," he said to Joseph, though even in the hour of his own agony the man's bitter contempt for the coward crept into his voice and chilled it. "It is perfectly true, this young – er – gentleman, Lord Ballina, knew nothing of the matters of which you speak. Nor can he be connected with them in any way."

"Friend," said Joseph, very calmly, lifting his eyes from the thing that crouched upon the floor below him – "friend, of what matters have I spoken?"

Levison looked steadily at him. A puzzled expression crossed his terror-stricken face for a moment, and then left it as before.

"Why quibble about words," he said, "at such a time as this? I beg you, sir, to call in your detectives, and have me taken away at once. I, and I only, am responsible for the attempt upon your life."

Here there came a sudden and even more dramatic interruption than before. From the heap of shimmering draperies upon the floor by the couch, which covered the swooning body of the actress, a head suddenly protruded. It was like the head of a serpent coming slowly into view, with flashing eyes of enmity and hate.

Mimi Addington rose with a slow and sinuous movement, a movement which, if she could have reproduced it in ordinary life, and showed it upon the stage, would, perhaps, have lifted her to the rank of the greatest tragedy actress of this or any other era.

The movement was irresistible, like the slow, gliding erection of a serpent. The head oscillated a little in front of the body, with a curiously reptilian movement. The eyes were fixed in their steady and unflinching glare of hate.

Levison stared, trembling, at the sudden and hideous apparition. All the beauty had faded from the face. It was as the face of one lost and doomed, the face of some malignant spirit from the very depths of despair.

Then a hollow, hissing voice filled the place.

"They are both wrong," said the voice; "they are both wrong. It was I who did this thing. I myself and no other. Whatever you may be, man or spirit, I care not. It was I who set the men on to kill you, and the death that you were to die was all too easy for you. I hate you with a hatred for which there are no words. I would that I could inflict upon you a death lasting many days of torture, and do it with my hands. And then I would dance upon your grave. I hate you as woman never hated man before. Before all the world you spurned me and showed me as I am. You made me a laughing-stock to London, and a shame in the eyes of all men."

Her lifted hand was extended towards the Teacher.

Spellbound, unable to move or think, Levison saw that the silken feet, from which the little bronze shoes had fallen, were gradually and imperceptibly moving with the apparent immobility of the trained dancer towards the tall figure by the door.

The awful voice went on, and into it, even in that moment of horrid tragedy which at the beginning had given it some dignity, a note of indescribable coarseness and vulgarity began to creep.

And all the time the Jew saw the little feet, in their stockings of pale blue silk, were moving nearer and nearer. Then, suddenly, she leapt at Joseph with a swift bound, like the bound of a panther, and without a single sound.

She struck once, twice, thrice; but as the Jew watched he saw with an awe and wonder more heart-stirring, more terrible than even the first agony of terror, that she struck at least a foot away from the figure of the Teacher – that is to say, her blows did not reach within more than a foot of the grave, bearded man who stood regarding her. It was as though Joseph was surrounded by some invisible aura, some unseen protection, which rendered him invulnerable to all material attack. At the third stroke the woman's arm fell to her side. She looked in a puzzled, childlike way at the figure before her. The hate seemed to have suddenly been wiped from her face, as a sponge wipes a chalk mark from a slate. The light in her eyes was extinguished, they became dull and glassy; and in a feeble, childlike fashion she brushed past the Teacher, now unimpeded by any obstacle, and passed through the draperies into the corridor beyond. They heard her laughing, in a mad and meaningless merriment – the laughter of one whose brain is finally dissolved and gone, and who will never more take part in the strife and councils of men and women.

The laughter grew quieter as the mad woman wandered away down the corridor.

Joseph stooped down to where Lord Ballina still crouched upon the floor. He placed both hands beneath the young man's arms and lifted him to his feet. He held him in front of him for a moment or two, and looked steadily into his eyes. Then, bending forward, he kissed him on the forehead.

"Brother," he said, "go, and sin no more."

The Jew heard the uncertain footsteps of the young viscount as he also left the tented room – heard them tap, tap as they crossed those spaces of the tiled floor of the hall which were not covered with rugs, and then a moment afterwards the clang of the hall door.

Joseph and Andrew Levison were left alone.

The Jew exercised his self-control in a still greater measure than before.

"And now, sir," he said, "since those two others have gone, and you have before you the real criminal, do with me as you will. I should like to ask you one thing, however, and that is this: I should like it to be thoroughly understood at the trial that I, and I only, am responsible for what has occurred. I am the murderer of Sir Augustus Kirwan, and should have been your murderer far more really and truly than the assassin whom I bribed to actually commit the deed. I was the controlling brain and the instigator of the whole thing. Therefore I hope that, guilty as my instrument may be, it will be recognized by everybody concerned that he is not guilty to such an extent as I am guilty. It would be an additional misery to me, though I don't put it only on those grounds, if my creature also were to suffer the extreme penalty of the law. And now I am quite ready."

Joseph turned, as Levison thought, to summon the police officers whom he supposed had accompanied him.

Instead of doing that, Joseph closed the door and pulled the hangings over it.

"Why did you seek to murder me?" he asked, in calm and gentle tones.

Levison began to tremble.

"It will seem incredible to you, sir," he said, in a low voice, "but you stood in my way. You were destroying my business as a theatrical manager, and you had very greatly angered my leading lady, the woman who tried to kill you again just now."

Then, suddenly, the whirling brain of the theatrical manager remembered the significance of what he had seen when Mimi Addington had dashed at the Teacher with hate and murder in her eye.

"Who are you!" he said, terror mastering him once more. "Who are you that Mimi could not reach you? Who are you? And how, now I come to think of it, how could you be here so soon? What can it all mean? Who are you?"

"Like you," the Teacher answered, "I am a son of God. For me as for you, Christ Jesus died upon the Cross. You ask me questions, I will answer them. There is no reason why I should not answer them. When I came to this house I had no idea whom I should see, save only that here I should find those who had plotted against my life. I was brought here by a Power stronger than any human power. I was brought here by the hand of God Who – blessed be His name! – orders my way and directs my path. And as for your accomplice, the poor man who would have struck me down, and who has slain one of the great ones of this earth, and one who might have been a witness to the truth of God and the love of mankind, I know that he will not be found. He has not been discovered, nor will he ever be by human agency. He will pay the penalty for what he has done, as all must pay the penalty for evil deeds, in sorrow and remorse. It may be that he will not repent, and will not be forgiven. Of that I cannot speak, because no knowledge has been vouchsafed to me. It may be, and I pray to the Holy Trinity that it shall be so – that he will repent and be forgiven, because he knew not what he did."

"But you know, sir," Levison answered – "you know who has been behind it all. Take me swiftly, and do what has to be done. I beg and implore you to delay no longer. I can make no defence, nor shall I try to do so. Who you are, and what power is given to you, I don't know, nor can I understand. But this one thing I know – that I am guilty, and am prepared to pay the penalty for what I have done. I will go with you from this sin-stricken house!"

"Yes," Joseph answered, "my brother, you will go with me, but not as you think, to the hands of human law. It is not God's will that you should suffer for what you have done at the hands of human justice. His will towards you is very different, and I am come to be the humble instrument of it. You will come with me, as you say; but you will come with me to my own house, there to make your repentance before Almighty God, meekly kneeling upon your knees, and asking for forgiveness for your great sin and for grace to live a new life in the future, henceforth serving Him and bearing the weight of the Cross which He bore for you so long ago, until at last, in His good will and time, you may be gathered up and join the blessed company of those saved by Christ's precious blood."

The deep, grave words roused the long dormant religious instinct in the heart of the worldly financier who stood broken and abject before him. The Jew remembered the days of his youth, when he also had prayed to the Lord of Hosts and the God of Israel in the synagogue of his parents. In one swift burst of remembrance the times came back to him when he had bound the phylacteries upon his forehead, and heard the priests of Israel reading from the Holy Book of the Law. He saw in a sudden riot of memory the solemn hours of Passover, tasted the forgotten savor of days of fasting, performed the holy ablutions of his faith. And now he heard from the lips of the man whom he had tried to murder, news of that other religion which he had scorned and derided all his life, and yet which was but the fulfilment of the prophecies of his own. One had come to him preaching the Messiah Whom he had spurned – the Jew Who was both God and Man, and Whose Agony had saved the world.

Levison bowed his head in his hands and wept.

"And you," he said, between his sobs, "if indeed God can forgive me for the evil that I have done, how can you forgive me? I have never spoken to you, yet I hated you because you had come into my theatre and disturbed my life and taken the profits of my business away from me. But you have not done to me a tithe of the evil I would have done to you. You came to me, knowing well my evil life and that I pandered to the passions of the low and the debased. You did what I now see the Lord commanded you to do. But I – How can you forgive me, Master?"

"Brother," Joseph answered, "it is a very little thing for me to forgive you. It is nothing, and is no merit in me. I have no anger towards you in my heart. What you did you did, and it was a sin for which you must answer to the Almighty. But I am well aware that you walked in darkness, and had not seen the Light. If our beloved Master Jesus could forgive the men who nailed Him to the Cross, should not His humble and unworthy follower forgive what you have done? Brother, I forgive you with all my heart. Accept my forgiveness and my love, and come with me, that you may learn more of Him who is above the thrones and principalities and powers of this earth; of Him who is not only justice, but mercy and tenderness inexpressible; of Him to Whom all men are equal, Who loveth all men."

They passed out of the scented room and into the silent hall, where no servants or others were about. Together they left that house, to which neither were ever to return; that house in which so many and strange things had been done, and which now seemed as a house of the dead.