Part 12 (1/2)

Only on the day before, a West End clergyman had come to Hampson with detailed statistics of the vice in his own parish in the neighborhood of Piccadilly. The vicar's statements were horrible. To some people they would have sounded incredible. Yet they were absolutely true, as Hampson was very well aware--naked, shameful horrors in Christian London.

”Ah,” the clergyman said, ”if only Our Lord came to London now how awful would His condemnation be!”

As the editor looked out upon the gloom he felt that the material darkness was symbolic of a spiritual darkness which sometimes appalled him when he realized it.

The door opened, and the sub-editor came in with ”pulls” of the final sheets of the paper. Hampson had to read these carefully, initial them, and send them to the composing-room marked as ready for the printing-machines. Then his work was done for the day.

At lunch time, the fog still continuing, he left the office. An idea had come to him which might be of service in obtaining news of Joseph.

He would take a cab down to the East End Hospital, and ask Mary Lys if she knew anything about his friend. Probably she would know something, her brother, Lluellyn Lys, would almost certainly have written to her.

Hampson had met Mary two or three times during the last weeks. He reverenced the beautiful girl who had saved him from the consequences of his sudden madness, with all the force of his nature.

In her he saw a simple and serene holiness, an absolute abnegation of self which was unique in his experience. She represented to him all that was finest, n.o.blest, and best in Christian womanhood.

Since his appointment to the editorial chair he had gloried in the fact that he had been able to send her various sums of money for distribution among the most dest.i.tute of the patients under her charge.

At four o'clock he had an appointment with the clerk of the works at St.

Paul's Cathedral, but until then he was free. The _Sunday Friend_ covered a very wide field, and hardly any question of interest to religious people was left untouched. At the moment grave fears were entertained as to the safety of the huge building upon Ludgate Hill. The continual burrowing for various purposes beneath the fabric had caused a slight subsidence of one of the great central piers. A minute crack had made its appearance in the dome itself.

Hampson had obtained permission from the dean to inspect the work of repair that was proceeding, knowing that his readers would be interested in the subject.

Until four, however, he was perfectly free, and he drove straight towards Whitechapel.

His cab drove slowly through the congested arteries of the City, where the black-coated business men scurried about like rats in the gloom. But in half an hour Hampson arrived at the door of the hospital, and was making inquiries if Nurse Lys was off duty or no, and that if she were would she see him.

He had not come at this time entirely on speculation. He knew that, as a general rule, Mary was free at this hour.

She proved to be so to-day, and in a moment or two came into the reception-room where he was waiting.

She was like a star in the gloom, he thought.

How beautiful her pure and n.o.ble face was, how gracious her walk and bearing! All that spiritual beauty which comes from a life lived with utter unselfishness for others, the holy tranquillity that goodness paints upon the face, the light G.o.d lends the eyes when His light burns within--all these, added to Mary's remarkable physical beauty, marked her out as rare among women.

The little journalist wors.h.i.+pped her. She seemed to him a being so wonderful that there was a sort of desecration even in touching her hand.

”Ah, my friend,” she said to him, with a flas.h.i.+ng smile of welcome, ”I am glad to see you. To tell you the truth, I have a melancholy mood to-day, a thing so very rare with me that it makes me all the more glad to see a friend's face. How are you, and how is your work?”

”I am very well, Nurse Mary, thank you, but I am troubled in mind about Joseph. I cannot get an answer to any of my letters, though at first he wrote constantly. I even wrote to Mr. Lluellyn Lys, hoping to hear from him that all was well. But I have received no answer to that letter either. I came to ask you if you had any news.”

Mary looked at him strangely, and with perplexity in her eyes.

”No,” she said. ”I have had no news at all from either of them for some time. I have been disturbed in mind about it for some days. Of course I have written, too, but there has been no response. That is why I have been feeling rather downhearted to-day. It is curious that you, Mr.

Hampson, should have come to me with this question, and at this moment.”

They looked at each other apprehensively, and for this reason: they were not talking of two ordinary men and their doings.

Both felt this strongly.