Part 2 (1/2)

She stole away, trembling. There was a great fear and wonder at her heart, and the watcher saw no more.

Joseph smiled bitterly. His brain seemed some detached thing, a theatre upon the stage of which wild thoughts were the conflicting actors and his sub-conscious intelligence the spectator.

The simile of the shadow returned to him, and was it not all a shadow--this dark, unhappy life of his? The words ”radiant energy,” the words ”G.o.d” ”conscious force” danced before him. The whole sentient world was reeling--the blood that fed the grey matter of his brain was poor and thin--this was the reason.

Yet, was it the reason, after all? What had happened to him in the last few minutes? He felt as he had never in his whole life felt before.

There was a sense of extraordinary impotence. Something had come into him; something had gone out of him.

No!--something had gone _through_ him--that was the way to describe it to himself....

Oh for food, rich nouris.h.i.+ng food, quiet and fresh air--then all this sickness would go....

Joseph left the docks, and was soon back in the teeming Commercial Road.

He walked, lost in thought, unconscious of all his surroundings.

”Nah, then, Monkey Brand, 'oo y'r shovin'? I can see y'r gettin' a thick ear, young feller-my-lad. Owns the bloomin' pyvement--”

A string of obscene oaths and the above words brought Joseph the dreamer down to earth again--the world of the Commercial Road.

He had stumbled against a typical bullet-headed, wicked-eyed East End rough.

The man stepped close up to Joseph, lifting an impudent and dirty face, holding the right arm ready to strike the short, jabbing blow so dear to the hooligan.

Then a strange thing happened.

Joseph, roused so suddenly and rudely from his bitter reverie, became aware of what was toward. He was about to apologize to the man when his words were checked in his mouth by the fellow's filthy profanity. Joseph suddenly, instead of speaking, turned his full face to him. The great, blazing eyes, their brilliancy accentuated a hundred times by hunger and scorn, seemed to cleave their way through the thick skull of the aggressor, to pierce the muddy and besotted brain within, to strike fear into the small leathern heart.

The man lifted his arm and covered his face, just like a street child who expects a blow; and then with a curious sound, half whimper, half snarl, turned and made off in a moment.

It was an extraordinary instance of magnetic power inherent in this starving scholar who roamed the streets in a sad dream.

On his own part, Joseph's action had been quite unconscious. He had no thought of the force stored up in him as in an electric acc.u.mulator.

Some experiments in animal magnetism he had certainly made, when he had taken a pa.s.sing interest in the subject at Cambridge. He had cured his ”gyp” of a bad attack of neuralgia once, or at least the man said he had, but that was as far as it had gone.

He turned his steps towards the stifling attic he called ”home.” After all, he was better there than in the streets. Besides, he was using up what little strength remained to him in this aimless wandering.

He had eaten nothing that day, but at nine in the evening he had a lesson to give. This would mean a s.h.i.+lling, and there were two more owing from his pupil, so that even if Hampson, who lived in the next garret, failed to get any money, both might eat ere they slept.

As he turned into the court and began to mount the stairs, Joseph thought with an involuntary sigh of ”hall” at Cambridge, the groaning tables, the generous fare, the comely and gracious life of it all.

And he had thrown it all away--for what? Just for the privilege of speaking out his thoughts, thoughts which n.o.body particularly wanted to hear.

With a sigh of exhaustion he sat down on the miserable little bed under the rafters, and stared out of the dirty window over the roofs of Whitechapel.

Had he been right, after all? Was it worth while to do as he had done, to give up all for the truth that was in him. The old spirit of revolt awoke. Yes, he had been right a thousand times! No man must act or live a lie.

But supposing it _was_ all true? Supposing there was a G.o.d after all.

Supposing that the Christ upon whom that woman had called so glibly really was the Saviour of mankind? Then--The thought fell upon his consciousness like a blow from a whip.