The Angel

The cab stopped.

"You and the porter must help me down," Joseph said, with a faint, musing smile of singular sweetness and – so Hampson thought – of inward anticipation and hope.

There was yet half an hour before the train was to start. It had been thought better that Joseph should make a night journey to Wales. The weather was very hot, and he would have more chance of rest.

"I'll take you to the waiting-room," Hampson said, "and then I will go and get your ticket and some papers. I have told the porter who has your bag what train you are going by. And the guard will come and see if you want anything."

Joseph waited in the dingy, empty room while Hampson went away.

It was the ordinary bare, uncomfortable place with the hard leather seats, the colored advertisements of seaside resorts, and the long, heavy table shining with hideous yellow varnish.

Hampson seemed a long time, Joseph thought, though when he looked up at the clock over the mantel-shelf he saw that the journalist had only been gone about four minutes.

The waiting-room was absolutely silent save for the droning of a huge blue fly that was circling round and round in the long beam of dusty sunlight which poured in from one window.

The noise of the station outside seemed far away – a drowsy diapason.

Joseph, soothed by the distant murmur, leaned back in his chair and emptied his mind of thought.

Then his eye fell idly and carelessly upon an open book that lay upon the table.

The book was a copy of the Holy Bible, one of those large print books which a pious society presents to places of temporary sojourn, if perchance some passing may fall upon the Word of God and find comfort therein.

From where he sat, however, Joseph could not see what the book was.

Nevertheless, for some strange reason or other, it began to fascinate him. He stared at it fixedly, as a patient stares at a disc of metal given him by the trained hypnotist of a French hospital when a trance is to be induced.

Something within began to urge him to rise from his seat, cross the room, and see exactly what it was that lay there. The prompting grew stronger and stronger, until it filled his brain with an intensity of compulsion such as he had never known before.

He resented the extraordinary influence bitterly. A mad, unreasoning anger welled up within him.

"I will not go!" he said aloud. "Nothing in the world shall make me go!"

All that an ordinary spectator – had there been one in the waiting-room – would have seen was a pale-faced man staring at the table.

Yet, nevertheless, a wild battle was going on, almost frightful in its strength and power, though the end of it came simply enough.

The man could bear the fierce striving against this unknown and mysterious compulsion no longer. His will suddenly dissolved, melted away, fell to pieces like a child's house of cards, and with a deep sigh that was almost a groan he rose and moved unsteadily towards the table.

He looked down at the book.

At first there was a mist before his eyes; then it rolled up like a curtain and these words sprang out clear and vividly distinct from the printed page: "But the Lord was with Joseph, and showed him mercy."

CHAPTER IV

ON THE MOUNTAIN

The long journey was over. A company of grave-faced men had met Joseph at a little wayside station. On one side stretched the sea, on the other great mountains towered up into the still, morning air.

It was early dawn. The sun in its first glory sent floods of joyous light over the placid waters. How splendid the air was – this ozone-laden breeze of the ocean – how cool, invigorating, and sweet!

Joseph turned to a tall, white-haired old man who seemed to be the leader of the band of people who stood upon the platform.

"I have come to a new world," he said simply.

"Blessed be the name of the Lord who has sent you to Wales," came the answer in deep and fervent tones.

Joseph looked at the man and his companions with astonishment. Why had Lluellyn Lys, the mysterious recluse and hermit of the mountains, sent these people to meet him? Why was there such a look of respect, almost of awe, upon the face of each man there, such eagerness and anticipation? It was all incomprehensible, utterly strange. He felt at a loss what to do or say.

He bowed, and then, as if in a dream, mingled with the group and passed out of the station. A carriage with two horses was waiting. By the side of it stood the station-master; the man's peaked cap was in his hand, and his face was lit up with welcome.

"The Teacher is waiting for you, sir," he said.

In a state of mind which was almost hypnotic Joseph was helped into the carriage. Three of the people who had come to meet him entered also, and they started up along the white mountain-road. Joseph felt that this progress was all too slow. He was going to a definite goal; he had come this vast distance to meet some one, and he was impatient of delay.

He looked up. High above his head the great slate mountain towered into the sky, a white cap of cloud hid the summit.

The prospect was august, and it thrilled him strangely. In that great cloud – like the cloud upon Sinai – what might lie hid? He was conscious of strange unseen forces, whose depths, measures, or intensity he could not understand, round him and controlling him. His life was utterly changed. The hard wall of materialism against which he had leant his sick life for support was melting and dissolving.

He gazed upwards once more at the great mountain.

Lluellyn Lys, the mysterious Teacher, was there! Who and what was this man of the mountains, this teacher who was so revered? Mary's brother, the brother of the beautiful girl who had saved him and sent him to these wild solitudes of Wales.

Mary's brother, yes; but what besides? And what was Lluellyn Lys to be to him?

They came to a point at which the road ended and died away into a mere grass track.

The old man who sat by Joseph's side rose from his seat and left the carriage.

"Master," he said, and, as he said it, Joseph bowed his head and could not look at him. "Master, here the road ends, and we must take you up the mountain-side to the Teacher by a steep path."

Another deep Celtic voice broke in upon the old man's speech.

"Ay, it is a steep path to the Teacher, Lluellyn is ever near to Heaven!"

Joseph had never heard Welsh before. He did not know a single word of that old tongue which all our ancestors of Britain used before ever St. Augustine came to England's shores with the news and message of Christ's death and passion.

Yet, at that moment Joseph understood exactly what the man said. The extraordinary fact did not strike him at the time, it was long afterwards that he remembered it as one of the least of the wondrous things that had befallen him.

He answered at once without a moment's pause.

"Lead on," he said; "I am with you. Take me to Lluellyn, the Teacher!"

Joseph turned. He saw that by the wayside there was a rough arm-chair hung between two long poles. Still moving as a man in a dream, he sat down on it. In a moment he was lifted up on the shoulders of four men, and began to ascend a narrow, winding path among the heather.

On and up! On and up!

Now they have passed out of ordinary ways, and are high upon the trackless hills. A dead silence surrounds them; the air is keen and life-giving; the workaday world seems very far away.