Part 34 (1/2)

She handed back the golden cup to her father, who was about to set it down upon a side table, when the Teacher spoke.

”Are you going to leave me out of your ceremony?” Joseph said.

”Very sorry, very sorry,” the baronet replied, in confusion. ”I wasn't quite sure.” He handed the cup to Joseph, but the Teacher only lifted it on high. ”May G.o.d bless your union, my dear brother and sister,” he said simply, and placed it on a table nearby.

The deep music of the voice, the love in it, the deep sincerity, came to them all like a benison.

”You have given me everything in this world and hopes of everything in the next, Joseph,” said Sir Thomas Ducaine.

”You were Lluellyn's friend,” Mary whispered.

”And you're a jolly good fellow, Mr. Joseph,” said Sir Augustus, ”in spite of all your critics, and I shall be glad to say so always.”

At that, for the first time during their knowledge of him, Joseph began to laugh. His merriment was full-throated and deep, came from real amus.e.m.e.nt and pleasure, was mirth unalloyed.

Joseph finished his laughter. ”May this hour,” he said gravely, ”be the beginning of a long, joyous and G.o.d-fearing life for you, Mary and Thomas. Hand in hand and heart to heart may you do the work of the Lord.”

Then, with a bow to all of the company a.s.sembled there, he went away.

When he had left the great house and walked for a few minutes, he came upon a huge public-house--a glittering structure at the corner of two streets.

He stopped in front of the great gaudy place, looked at it for a moment, sighed heavily, and went in.

CHAPTER XIX

”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 att.i.tude of the Teacher was as that of a man who is undergoing a great nervous strain.

He walked down a pa.s.sage. To his left were the doors of mahogany and cut-gla.s.s 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 pa.s.sage end, was the door which led into the saloon bar itself. Pus.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+ning semicircular bar, gleaming with mahogany, highly polished bra.s.s, and huge cut-gla.s.s 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-fas.h.i.+onable 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 gla.s.s 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, dest.i.tute alike of experience and ideals, with one gift only, youth, imagined that it was seeing ”life.”