"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 attitude of the Teacher was
as that of a man who is undergoing a great nervous strain.
He walked down a passage. To his left were the doors of mahogany and
cut-glass 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 passage 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
brass, and huge cut-glass 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 glass 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,
destitute 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 compassion 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.
"God 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. God
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 passed 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 God 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?"
The tears were rolling down the weak, young face. The flaccid mouth
quivered; the neck was bowed.
"All this, sir," said the young man--"all this is true."
"A broken and contrite heart," the Teacher answered, "are not despised
of God. By his great mercy I have been sent to you to save you. Restore
the money you have stolen, but do far more. Turn from darkness; seek
light. Come to Jesus Christ. Boy, you have heard of what is known as the
'Great Refusal'; you know how the young man with great possessions could
not, and would not, give them up to follow the Son of God? But you deny
Jesus for a pot of beer! You give up your hope of eternal life to come
and the peace of God in this wicked world for nothing--nothing at all?
Now come with me to my house in Bloomsbury, my house of godly men. There
you shall pray and repent, and from there you shall go home cleansed and
purged of your sin, filled with the Holy Spirit, ready and anxious to
lead a new life, walking from henceforth in Christ Jesus."
They went out of the place together. The boy never cast a backward
glance at his inamorata of a few minutes ago. He followed the Teacher in
blind obedience. He was as one stunned. They came into the big
old-fashioned square where was the house which Sir Thomas Ducaine had
given to Joseph and his brethren. The windows were all lighted up, and
there was a small crowd lingering in front of the door.
"They are all praying within," Joseph said. "To-morrow we are to go down
into the worst places of the East End. A party of great people are
coming with us. We have persuaded them to come, in order that they may
see for themselves what these parts of London really are like."
He spoke quietly, and in a purely conversational tone, as if to an
equal. He knew well what the poor lad who walked so humbly by his side
was suffering. He knew of the remorse and shame, but also of the hope,
which were pouring into the young man's heart. And he knew also that all
this was but a preparation for what was to come--that there must,
indeed, be a final agony of surrender, an absolute and utter "giving-in"
to Jesus.
So, as they walked across the square, he tried to calm his captive's
nerves by a quiet recital of the great and hopeful things that they were
to do on the morrow.
Yet even to Joseph it was not then given to know what things the morrow
would bring forth.