Guy Thorne

“ No chance or illusion had sent the vision and the dream, and the innocent-looking cigarette-case that lay upon the table, and which had come into his hands so strangely, was the pivot upon which strange events had turned.
The little silver thing was surrounded by as black and impenetrable a mystery as ever a man had trodden into unawares.
And in the broad daylight, when all that was fantastic and unreal was banished from thought, Megbie knew quite well towards whom his thoughts tended, on what remarkable and inscrutable personality his dreadful suspicions had begun to focus themselves. ”

“ It was a holy and wonderful evening-time, as the boat glided on through the vast shining solitudes. The heavenly influence stole into the souls of the three serfs, and purged them of all fear and sorrow. Imagine the enormous change in their lives. A curtain seemed to have fallen over all that they had known. The noise of the horrible castle, the sharp orders, the lash of the whip, the fœtid terrors of the stoke, had all vanished as if they had never been. Before them might lie a wonderful life, possible happiness, freedom. ”

“ The door at the opposite end of the saloon had been slid back. In the rather dim light from the hanging lamp, I saw a great, bearded, whiskered face, red, and framed in a fury of lint-coloured hair. It seemed just like a gorilla turned white and malevolent in a sudden ray of sunshine.
There was another deafening explosion: One! Two! Three! and the furious noise in the confined space of the cabin filled me with something of its own rage. I saw red. The warm and evil silence of this comfortable place had frightened me far more than this onslaught. Unharmed, I leapt to my feet. ”

“ A great light, growing larger and larger every moment, began to shine in upon the dark places of the East End. It was as though some great lighthouse of God had been built by living hands, growing rapidly, like some building in a fairy story, and flooding this part of London with radiance. And in the height of the tower, directing the unflagging rays of hope, was Frederick Nicholas Charrington. ”

“ He looked like a man of immense age, and his narrow eyes were full of brooding, sombre light. Almost at his feet lay the body of Helzephron. It had been decently disposed with the hands upon the breast, and the morning light played over the hawk-like, bronzed face and open eyes in which there was now no cruelty.
The dead man was august as he lay there. There was a certain nobility about the features. He did not look like a scoundrel, and all resentment and hate passed away from me for ever as I looked at him. ”

“ And when he was gone, and she was alone in her room up-stairs, Marjorie was filled with a joy and exhilaration such as she had never known before. Yet there seemed hanging over the little rosy landscape, the brightly-lit landscape in which she moved, a dark and massive cloud.
She dreamt thus. She dreamt that this cloud grew blacker and blacker, and still more heavy, sinking lower and lower towards her. Then she saw her lover as a knight in armour cutting upwards with a gleaming sword until the cloud departed and rushed away, and all was once more bathed in sunlight. ”

“ He went to open the door, and Father Ripon, his new vicar, came in like a whirlwind. His voluminous black cloak brought cold air in its folds; his breezy, genial personality was so actual a fact, struck such a strident, material note, that dreams and reverie fled before it.
Gortre turned up the gas-jets and flooded the room with light.
Father Ripon was a tall, well-made man, too active to be portly, but with hints of a tendency towards plumpness, which was never allowed to ripen. His iron-grey hair was cropped close to his large, well-shaped head. ”

“ It was four o'clock in the morning. A bitter wind had risen and was wailing around the "Golden Swan," interspersed with heavy storms of hail which rattled on roof and windows. Outside the tempest shrieked and was accompanied by a vast, humming, harp-like noise as it flung itself against the lattice-work of the towers and vibrated over Richmond like a chorus of giant Æolian harps. Arthur and I sat in the shabby sitting-room, which had been the theater of so much emotion that night, and stared at each other with troubled faces. ”

“ At no time, in all probability, has any man or woman escaped a long sleepless night in a darkened room. The candle is out; the silence begins to nibble at the nerves; there is no sound but the uneasy tossing upon the bed. It seems, one would rather say, that there is no sound save only that made by the sufferer. At such hours comes a dread weariness of life, a restlessness which is but the physical embroidery upon despair. The body itself is at the lowest pitch of its vitality. ”

“ The next morning was big with shadow and gloom. A shudder passed over the country. Certain telegrams appeared in all the papers which struck a chill of fear to the very heart of all who read them, Christian and indifferent alike.
It was as though a great and ominous bell had begun to toll over the world.
The faces of people in the streets were universally pale.
It was remarked that the noises of London, the traffic, the movement of crowds engaged upon their daily business, lost half their noise. ”

“ Did you not meet the young man who is great in the eyes of the world—the young man who has given a fortune for our work—the young man who has come to Jesus at last?"
Joseph bowed his head.
"Yes, David," he replied; "it was even so, blessed be God. But to-night I feel differently. Then I was trembling upon the verge of doubt. My old disbelief had appeared again within me. It was as if a serpent slept in my brain and suddenly raised its head in coiled hate and enmity to the Light. But now it is not the same. I love and believe. ”

“ In no part of London did the fog seem more dreary than in Bloomsbury. The gaunt squares, the wide, old-fashioned streets, were like gashes cut into a face of despair.
At half-past nine o'clock Mary Marriott came out of her tiny bedroom into her tiny sitting-room and lit the gas. She lived on the topmost floor of a great Georgian house in a narrow street just off Bedford Square. In the old days, before there were fogs, and when trees were still green in the heart of London, a great man had lived in this house. ”

“ A myriad night life pulsed round the waking man. The Goatsucker flew round the borders of the wood catching the insects in his flight, and his strange, jarring pipe thrilled all the heavy air; among the leaves and undergrowth the Hedgepig, rested with his long day's sleep, rustled in search of food, making his curious, low, gurgling sound, and rattling his spines.
In those far-off days wild life luxuriated and throve. Day and night were full of strange sounds heard but rarely now. As Hyla stood wearily by his hut, the Polecat was fishing for eels in the mud of the lake shore. ”

“ Lucy was genuinely fond of Lady Linquest, but somehow on this bright morning to hear a woman with one foot in the grave talking nothing but scandal and empty catchwords of Vanity Fair, struck with a certain chill to her heart.
To see her sitting there, curled, painted, scented, sipping her tonic drink, ready for a smart party of people as empty and useless as herself, was to see a thing that hurt, after the experiences of the morning.
Lucy had not taken her maid to Scarning. She had wanted to live as simply as possible there, to live the outdoors riverside life. ”

“ I followed. It is impossible to describe what I saw—at any rate, my pen is not equal to the task. For a moment, I was blinded by brilliant light, through which a multitude of figures danced and leapt, like people in a dream. My ear-drums were almost split by the noise. There was a horrible, bitter smell in my nostrils, and my throat felt as if I was swallowing a bullet of lead.
Then, as things cleared, and I suppose it could only have been an instant before they did so, I found myself in a gleaming tunnel, surrounded by unfamiliar machinery. ”

“ Still the spectators saw the mapped landscape of the Holy City shining before them, glad, radiant and serene.
And then, old Lady Poole dropped her fan—a heavy fan made of ebony and black silk. It clattered down the tier of seats and brought an alien note into the tension and the darkness of the laboratory.
Everybody started in the gloom. There was a little momentary flutter of excitement. And, as they all watched the gleaming circle of light upon which the brain of the Bishop had painted his memories so truthfully and well, they saw a sudden change. ”

“ Here was a real prince of this world, a prince who had suffered the hours of a keen and bitter attack with fine dignity and chivalry—James Fabian Rose had not spared words—and there was a princess of art, who from nothing had made a more enduring kingdom, a more splendid realm, than even the long line of peers, statesmen, and warriors had bestowed upon the young man before her. ”

“ Mary fell upon her knees. "Brother—brother!" she cried, stretching out her hands in supplication. "Dear brother, speak to me! Tell me why you are here from the grave!"
There was no answer in words. The face of the figure grew much brighter than the rest, and the weeping, imploring girl saw upon it a peace so perfect, a joy so serene and high, a beatitude so unspeakable, that her sobs and moans died away into silence as she gazed at the transfigured countenance in breathless awe and wonder. ”

“ Coming up the staircase was a thick-set man of medium height with white hair, a brown face, and good features, but of such immobility that they might have been carved in sandstone. By his side, very simply dressed, and wearing no ornament but one rope of great pearls, came Juanita Morse.
If I live for a thousand years I shall never forget that first vision of her. I have seen all the beauties of London, Paris and Rome, danced with many of them, spoken at least to the majority, but never before or since have I seen such luminous and compelling loveliness. ”

“ ALTHOUGH, during the first days of the Darkness, hundreds of thousands of Christian men and women were chilled almost to spiritual death, and although the lamp of Faith was flickering very low, it was not in London that the far-reaching effects of the discovery at Jerusalem were most immediately apparent.
In that great City there is an outward indifference, bred of a million different interests, which has something akin to the supreme indifference of Nature. The many voices never blend into one, so that the ear may hear them in a single mighty shout. ”

“ Autumn came to London, a warm, lingering season. There was a hint of the South in the atmosphere of town. All business moved with languor; there was more enjoyment in life as people went and came through the streets under so ripe and genial a sun.
Gortre had settled down to steady, regular work. At no time before had a routine been so pleasant to him. His days were full of work, which, hard as it was, came to him with far more appeal than his duties at Walktown. Nothing ever stagnated here, at the very hub and centre of things. ”

“ Death had come to many fowlers there who did not know its complexities and who omitted to carry an illuminated compass for night work. Many men had been cut off on an island of mud covered with the purple sea-thistles, the bronze-green marrum grass, and the rank vegetation of the saltings. And some had been waiting in a minor creek when the tide came fast and swift through all the intricate waterways, who were unable to climb the steep sides of slippery mud, and so met their fate. ”

“ And now, as his shadow, cast upon the wall in the firelight, parodied and distorted all his movements, there seemed two obscene and evil creatures in the rich and quiet room. It was as though the man with his huge hairless face were being watched and waited for by an ape-like ambassador from hell.
Guest clutched the mahogany sideboard and, his fingers were so hot that a greyness like that of damp breath on frosted glass glowed out upon the wood—it seemed as if the man's very touch brought mildew and blight. ”

“ Then the black swayed like a curtain. Light came swiftly and silently, and in one single moment Joseph saw stretched before him and below him a vast panorama.
It was London that he saw, but in a way that no human eye has ever beheld the modern Babylon. Nor does the word "saw" accurately express the nature of the vision.
He apprehended rather than saw. The inner spiritual eye conveyed its message to the brain far more clearly and swiftly than even the delicate lenses and tissues of the flesh can ever do. Color, form, movement, all these were not seen physically, but felt in the soul. ”

“ You are an artist, you live for your art, and you care for it. You can understand the peculiar horror, I should say one peculiar horror, of the life of the worker which he is himself generally too blind and ignorant to understand. For he has no leisure to look about him, no heart to speculate as to what things might be. Over all his misery and misfortune towers one supreme misery and misfortune—the want of all that makes the pleasure and interest of life to the free man. No genius tells stories, makes music, paints pictures, writes or acts, plays, builds palaces for the worker. ”

“ Ommaney," asked Mrs. Armstrong, "that in the enormous publication of telegrams and political foreign news, the glorious fact that the world has at last awakened to a knowledge of the glorious truths of real religion is being swamped and forgotten? After all, what will be the greatest thing in history a hundred years from now? Will it not be the death of the old superstitions rather than a mutiny in the East or a war with Russia? Will not the names of the pioneers of truth remain more firmly fixed in the minds of mankind than those of generals and chancellors?" ”

“ Two thousand feet above London there is a Palace of all delights. Immeasurable wealth, the genius of great artists have been combined to make a City of Enchantment. And in every garden with its plashing fountains, in its halls of pictures and delights, upon its aerial towers, down its gilded galleries, lurking at the banquet, mingling with the music, great shapes of terror squeak and gibber like the ghosts Shakespeare speaks of in ancient Rome. ”

“ The personality of the Teacher, some quality in his voice which they had never yet heard in the voice of living man, the all-inspiring likeness to the most sacred figure the world has ever known, the intense vibrating quality of more than human power and conviction—all these united to light the fires of remorse in every heart, and to touch the soul with the cold fingers of fear. ”

“ I tell you, paid priest as you are, a blind man leading the blind, that a day is coming when all your boasted fabric of Christianity will disappear. It will go suddenly, and be swept utterly away. And you, you shall see it. You shall be left naked of your faith, stripped and bare, with all Christendom beside you. Your pale Nazarene shall die amid the bitter laughter of the world, die as surely as He died two thousand years ago, and no man or woman shall resurrect Him. ”

“ There was not a cloud in the heavens, and one looked up at a far-flung vault of black velvet spangled with gold. Never had I seen the stars so clear and brilliant in England, for the haze of smoke and the miasma of overbreathed air which is the natural atmosphere of London lay two thousand feet below. The Grand Square blazed with light. The buildings, with their spires, domes and cupolas, stood out with extraordinary clearness against the circumambient black of space. ”

“ Two great forces, two great criminals, two horrid egotists, and both lost men! Lost far more certainly and irrevocably than the prisoned and dying gentleman far below in the strong room, where the electric fans whispered all day and night, where the fetters jingled and the heart was turning to salt stone!
The man was changed utterly. The grave courtly ascetic vanished as a breath on glass vanishes. And in his stead stood a creature racked with evil jealousy and malice, a gaunt inhuman figure in whose eyes was the glitter of a bird of prey. ”

“ Thomas Ducaine was sleeping in the little cottage room of the Welsh village, where he had come for the great day of his life.
As the sun touched the young and noble face, the head moved a little, and the firm mouth parted in a happy smile. As they will in dreams, towards the end of both sleep and dreaming, the events of the last day or two were summing themselves up in the sub-conscious brain, just before consciousness itself was about to return, and the eyes open upon the happy day. ”

“ They were climbing up Outfangthef.
The fresh airs of evening played about them. After the stench of the oubliette, it was like heaven to Hyla.
They passed up and up, among the chirping birds, until a little ill-fitting wooden door, through the chinks of which the light poured like water, showed their labour was at an end. The serf's spirits rose enormously. At last! At last! Death was at hand. At this moment of supreme excitement, he nerved himself to be a man. ”

“ He shall know to-day how his body will be discovered, and how his memory will be for ever discredited in the eyes of the world. And I shall tell him to-day, that as he lies bound and in my power, wearing the helmet of brass which robs him of his own power of secret thought, that I am going up-stairs to watch his agony in pictures, and that Marjorie will be with me—that she is utterly under my influence—and that we shall laugh together as we see each thought, each agony, chasing one another over the screen. ”

“ Then Joseph spoke again.
"Come, beloved brother and sister, and my dear brethren," he said, "come to the tomb of Lluellyn Lys, whose body lies here until the glorious Resurrection Day, and whose soul is in Paradise, walking with the blest. Come and stand round that tomb, and pray for London, which you are sworn to conquer for the Lord. Come and pray for Thomas and Mary, that their lives may be a song of triumph over evil, and that they may lead you worthily until your lives end." ”

“ There was force about him, the force of clean, happy youth, health, and a good brain. It was not the concentrated force and power of Sir William, but it was force nevertheless.
And as he came into the room, Marjorie felt her whole heart go out to him, leaping towards him in his young and manly beauty. She knew that here indeed was the one man that would satisfy her life for ever and a day. He was not famous, he was clever without having a great intellect, but for some reason or other he was the man for her. ”

“ The oppression of the thunder seemed to have passed away, and the air was fresh and cool as they drove through the roaring, lighted streets of the great Babylon towards the Brothers' house in Bloomsbury. Once or twice, as the carriage halted in a block of traffic, Levison saw the newspaper boys holding the startling contents sheets before them, and the tragic headlines met his eye. At such times he shuddered like a leaf in the wind, and the tears of remorse and agony rolled down his cheeks unregarded, splashing upon his ringed hands. ”

“ The Teacher may have remained motionless in this position for five or ten minutes—the journalist never knew—and all the time the power and unseen influence grew and grew in the silence, until the very walls of the little room seemed to melt and dissolve beyond the bounds of sense, and the brain, mind, and soul of the watcher to grow and dissolve with them in one overpowering ecstasy of reverence and awe. ”

“ Joseph and his young companion passed through the little crowd of loiterers and curious people that nearly always stood before the door of the mysterious house where the Teacher was now known to reside. There was a stir and movement as he came among them, nudgings of elbows, a universal pressure forward, whispers and remarks below the voice: "That's him!" "There's Joseph himself!"
Joseph passed through the crowd without taking any notice of it. On the doorstep he paused and turned as if to speak. The people—there may have been thirty or forty of them—pressed forward in a circle of eager faces. ”

“ There was a certain strength about the jaw and poise of the head, an honesty in the blue eyes which the journalist noticed at once.
Hampson sighed. Doubtless this young man was only just entering in upon the life of pleasure and sin. He was not quite a slave yet—his soul not irrevocably stained. But some day he would become like the curious old-young men who sat all round, men with pointed ears, heavy eyes that only brightened when they saw a pretty girl, mouths curved into listless and weary boredom. ”

“ With a languid mental smile you hear of the devil and the evil spirits who walk up and down the City seeking whom they may devour. You would not smile if you were to take a short journey from this church into the devil's country, the East End of London—if now, with one accord, you were to drive in your carriages to those places where the air is heavy with ceaseless curses, where hideous disease and uncleanliness that you cannot even imagine, stalk hand in hand with famine, despair, and unmentionable horrors of vice. ”

“ It appeared to Hampson as if Joseph saw far away into an illimitable distance. So some breathless watcher upon a mountain-top, who searched a far horizon for the coming of a great army might have looked. A huge eagle circling round the lonely summit of an Alp might have such a strange light in its far-seeing eyes.
At what was the man looking? Surely it was no narrow vision bounded by the bricks and mortar, the busy vista of the London Strand! ”

“ In the terrible music and menace of its warning, the voice cleft the air like a great sword. The people in the theatre cowered like a field of corn when the wind blows over it. Every face grew pale, and in the slight pause and breathless silence which followed Joseph's words, quick ears could distinguish a curious sound—or, rather, the intimation of a sound. ”

“ At that point a green gorge stretches up between two spurs of the hill above, a green gorge covered with soft, pneumatic turf cropped like a lawn by the innumerable sheep which range over those high pastures. And then on and up, through the pleasant, slanting valley, until the heather-covered plateau is reached.
There one surveys a vast expanse of wild and lonely moor, all purple, green, and brown. At huge distances great peaks rise up—the peaks of the Snowdon range—and on clear moments the white and glistening cap of the emperor mountain of Wales shines in its distant majesty. ”

“ Every one sat up in their places with grave and tired eyes, wearing the aspect of people who had come back to life after a sojourn in that strange country of the soul which lies between this world and the next.
The vicar, very pale and agitated, had descended from the chancel in his surplice and biretta, and had gone among the people, whispering here and there, frowning, faintly smiling, and only too obviously upset and frightened in body, mind, and spirit. ”

“ Joseph came forward into the full view of every one. His arm was outstretched, the marvellous eyes were full of a mystical fire and inspiration.
"This is a home of abominations," he cried, "the lust of the flesh, the pride of the eye. There!"—he went on with unutterable scorn, pointing to Mimi Addington, with a sudden movement—"there is the priestess of evil whom you have assembled to worship. Her body is fair. It was the gift of God. Her voice is beautiful, she is subtle and skilled—these are also the gifts of the Most High. ”

“ The sound of a great wind, and then a soft and sudden radiance showed them the Christ-like figure of their Friend with the arms again upraised in blessing, with love shining from his eyes. The sound of the wind growing louder and louder and louder, a rushing, mighty wind, a wind which enveloped them with wild, tempestuous force, which blew the ghostly mists away—away and far away, until the sun shone upon the tall, long tomb of Lluellyn Lys, and there was no more any man there. ”