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The cab stopped.
"You and the porter must help me down," Joseph said, with a faint, musing smile of singular sweetness and – so Hampson thought – of inward anticipation and hope.
There was yet half an hour before the train was to start. It had been thought better that Joseph should make a night journey to Wales. The weather was very hot, and he would have more chance of rest.
"I'll take you to the waiting-room," Hampson said, "and then I will go and get your ticket and some papers. I have told the porter who has your bag what train you are going by. And the guard will come and see if you want anything."
Joseph waited in the dingy, empty room while Hampson went away.
It was the ordinary bare, uncomfortable place with the hard leather seats, the colored advertisements of seaside resorts, and the long, heavy table shining with hideous yellow varnish.
Hampson seemed a long time, Joseph thought, though when he looked up at the clock over the mantel-shelf he saw that the journalist had only been gone about four minutes.
The waiting-room was absolutely silent save for the droning of a huge blue fly that was circling round and round in the long beam of dusty sunlight which poured in from one window.
The noise of the station outside seemed far away – a drowsy diapason.
Joseph, soothed by the distant murmur, leaned back in his chair and emptied his mind of thought.
Then his eye fell idly and carelessly upon an open book that lay upon the table.
The book was a copy of the Holy Bible, one of those large print books which a pious society presents to places of temporary sojourn, if perchance some passing may fall upon the Word of God and find comfort therein.
From where he sat, however, Joseph could not see what the book was.
Nevertheless, for some strange reason or other, it began to fascinate him. He stared at it fixedly, as a patient stares at a disc of metal given him by the trained hypnotist of a French hospital when a trance is to be induced.
Something within began to urge him to rise from his seat, cross the room, and see exactly what it was that lay there. The prompting grew stronger and stronger, until it filled his brain with an intensity of compulsion such as he had never known before.
He resented the extraordinary influence bitterly. A mad, unreasoning anger welled up within him.
"I will not go!" he said aloud. "Nothing in the world shall make me go!"
All that an ordinary spectator – had there been one in the waiting-room – would have seen was a pale-faced man staring at the table.
Yet, nevertheless, a wild battle was going on, almost frightful in its strength and power, though the end of it came simply enough.
The man could bear the fierce striving against this unknown and mysterious compulsion no longer. His will suddenly dissolved, melted away, fell to pieces like a child's house of cards, and with a deep sigh that was almost a groan he rose and moved unsteadily towards the table.
He looked down at the book.
At first there was a mist before his eyes; then it rolled up like a curtain and these words sprang out clear and vividly distinct from the printed page: "But the Lord was with Joseph, and showed him mercy."
CHAPTER IV
ON THE MOUNTAIN
The long journey was over. A company of grave-faced men had met Joseph at a little wayside station. On one side stretched the sea, on the other great mountains towered up into the still, morning air.
It was early dawn. The sun in its first glory sent floods of joyous light over the placid waters. How splendid the air was – this ozone-laden breeze of the ocean – how cool, invigorating, and sweet!
Joseph turned to a tall, white-haired old man who seemed to be the leader of the band of people who stood upon the platform.
"I have come to a new world," he said simply.
"Blessed be the name of the Lord who has sent you to Wales," came the answer in deep and fervent tones.
Joseph looked at the man and his companions with astonishment. Why had Lluellyn Lys, the mysterious recluse and hermit of the mountains, sent these people to meet him? Why was there such a look of respect, almost of awe, upon the face of each man there, such eagerness and anticipation? It was all incomprehensible, utterly strange. He felt at a loss what to do or say.
He bowed, and then, as if in a dream, mingled with the group and passed out of the station. A carriage with two horses was waiting. By the side of it stood the station-master; the man's peaked cap was in his hand, and his face was lit up with welcome.
"The Teacher is waiting for you, sir," he said.
In a state of mind which was almost hypnotic Joseph was helped into the carriage. Three of the people who had come to meet him entered also, and they started up along the white mountain-road. Joseph felt that this progress was all too slow. He was going to a definite goal; he had come this vast distance to meet some one, and he was impatient of delay.
He looked up. High above his head the great slate mountain towered into the sky, a white cap of cloud hid the summit.
The prospect was august, and it thrilled him strangely. In that great cloud – like the cloud upon Sinai – what might lie hid? He was conscious of strange unseen forces, whose depths, measures, or intensity he could not understand, round him and controlling him. His life was utterly changed. The hard wall of materialism against which he had leant his sick life for support was melting and dissolving.
He gazed upwards once more at the great mountain.
Lluellyn Lys, the mysterious Teacher, was there! Who and what was this man of the mountains, this teacher who was so revered? Mary's brother, the brother of the beautiful girl who had saved him and sent him to these wild solitudes of Wales.
Mary's brother, yes; but what besides? And what was Lluellyn Lys to be to him?
They came to a point at which the road ended and died away into a mere grass track.
The old man who sat by Joseph's side rose from his seat and left the carriage.
"Master," he said, and, as he said it, Joseph bowed his head and could not look at him. "Master, here the road ends, and we must take you up the mountain-side to the Teacher by a steep path."
Another deep Celtic voice broke in upon the old man's speech.
"Ay, it is a steep path to the Teacher, Lluellyn is ever near to Heaven!"
Joseph had never heard Welsh before. He did not know a single word of that old tongue which all our ancestors of Britain used before ever St. Augustine came to England's shores with the news and message of Christ's death and passion.
Yet, at that moment Joseph understood exactly what the man said. The extraordinary fact did not strike him at the time, it was long afterwards that he remembered it as one of the least of the wondrous things that had befallen him.
He answered at once without a moment's pause.
"Lead on," he said; "I am with you. Take me to Lluellyn, the Teacher!"
Joseph turned. He saw that by the wayside there was a rough arm-chair hung between two long poles. Still moving as a man in a dream, he sat down on it. In a moment he was lifted up on the shoulders of four men, and began to ascend a narrow, winding path among the heather.
On and up! On and up!
Now they have passed out of ordinary ways, and are high upon the trackless hills. A dead silence surrounds them; the air is keen and life-giving; the workaday world seems very far away.
On and up! Joseph is carried to his fate. Suddenly the old man who walked in front stopped.
"Blessed be him who cometh in the name of the Lord!" he cried, in a deep, musical voice that woke thunderous echoes in the lonely way.
For near upon an hour the strange procession continued among the heather and bracken, through wild defiles and passes. At last, with singular and startling suddenness, the party entered the huge mass of fleecy cloud that veiled the mountain-top. All around was thick, impenetrable mist. Everything was blotted out by the thick curtain, the footsteps of the chair-bearers sounded like footsteps upon wool.
Then, without any other intimation than a few low words from the leader of the party, the journey came to an end, the chair was carefully lowered to the ground, and Joseph alighted.
A huge granite boulder stood close by. He sat down upon it, wondering with eager curiosity what was to happen next, looking round him with keen, searching eyes in a vain endeavor to pierce the ghostly, swaying walls of mist which hemmed him in on every side.
The old man stepped up to him.
"Master," he said again, "our business is at an end. We have brought you to the place where we have been told to bring you, and must say farewell until we meet again."
Joseph started.
"I do not understand," he said, in a voice into which something almost like fear had come…
"I do not understand. Do you mean to leave me here alone? I am a sick man. I know nothing of where I am. Where is Lluellyn Lys?"
His voice sounded strained and almost shrill in its discomfort and surprise.
If the old man appreciated the intonation in the voice of his questioner he did not show it.
"Have no fear, master," he said. "What I do, I do by command of the Teacher. No harm will come to you."
Joseph suddenly seemed to wake from his dream. A great sense of irritation, almost of anger, began to animate him. He was once more the old Joseph – the man who had walked with Hampson in the Commercial Road before the accident had struck him down.
"That's all very well," he said sharply. "Perhaps no harm will happen to me, but will Mr. Lluellyn Lys come to me? That is the question in which I am particularly interested at this moment. I don't know in the least where I am! I am too feeble to walk more than a few yards. I can't stay here alone until – "
He found that he was speaking to the air, the white and lonely mist. Suddenly, without a word of answer, his strange conductors had melted away – withdrawn and vanished.
He was alone on a mountain-top in Wales, surrounded by an impenetrable curtain of mist, unable to move in any direction. What was all this?
Was he the victim of some colossal trick, some cruel hoax, some immense and indefensible practical joke?
It was difficult to believe it, and yet he cursed his folly in accepting this strange invitation to Wales. What a foolish and unconsidered business it all seemed – now that he sat alone in the white stillness, the terrible solitude.
Still, mad as the action seemed to him now, he remembered that it was the result of a long chain of coincidences. Certainly – yes, of that there could be no doubt – he seemed to have been led to this place. Something stronger than himself had influenced him. No, he was not here by chance —
Had he fallen asleep?
Still he sat upon the lichen-covered boulder, still the grey curtain of the mist hid all the mountain world.
Yet what was that sound – that deep, ringing voice which sounded in his ears, falling from some distant height, falling through the air like an arrow?
A voice! A voice! And these were the words it chanted —
"Rise up, Joseph, and come to me! Fear not, for God is with you! Come to me, that the things that are appointed may be done!"
The great voice rolled through the mist like a cathedral bell.
Cold and trembling, Joseph rose to his feet. One hand rested against the granite rock to support him as he answered, in a loud cry of terror —
"Who are you? What is this? Are you the man Lluellyn? I cannot come. I know not where to come. I am too weak to move. I am frightened."
Again the organ voice came pealing through the gloom.
"Joseph, Joseph, rise up and come! Come and fear not, for the power of the Holy Ghost broods upon the mountains."
Joseph stood for a moment trembling, and swaying from side to side. Then he was conscious of the most extraordinary sensation of his life.
Through the mist, invisible, impalpable, a great current of force seemed flowing to him and around him.
It poured into every fibre of his being, body, mind, and soul alike. It was not a delusion. It was wonderfully, marvellously real. Each second he grew stronger, power returned to his tired limbs, the weariness left his brain. He called out aloud —
"Teacher, I am coming to you!" And, with the swinging, easy step of a man in perfect health, together with the ease and certainty of a practised mountaineer, he began to climb upward through the mist.
It was as though he was floating on air, buoyant as a bird is. On and on he went, and all the while the invisible electric force poured into him and gave him strength and power.
Suddenly thin yellow beams of sunshine began to penetrate and irradiate the thick white blanket of mist. Stronger and stronger they grew, throwing a thousand prismatic colors on the thinning vapor, until at last Joseph emerged into full and glorious day.
This is what he saw.
The actual top of the mountain was only two or three yards above him, and formed a little rock-strewn plateau some twenty or thirty yards square – now bathed in vivid sunshine.
Against a cairn of boulders in the exact centre of the space a tall man was standing.
Both his arms were stretched out rigidly towards Joseph, the fingers of each hand outspread and pointing to him, as he emerged from the fog-belt with the sunshine. The man, who wore a long black cloak, was well over six feet high, and very thin. His face was pale, but the strong, rugged features gave it an impression of immense vitality and force.
Joseph stopped in sudden amazement at the sight of this strange figure up in the clouds. He suddenly remembered a picture he had seen showing Dante standing upon a great crag, and looking down into the abyss of the Inferno.
Lluellyn Lys looks like that – exactly like that, Joseph thought.
He went straight up to the Teacher. As he did so, Lluellyn's arms suddenly collapsed and fell loosely to his sides. His eyes, which had been fixed steadily upon Joseph, closed with a simultaneous movement, and he leant back against the cairn as if utterly exhausted.
But this was only for a moment. As Joseph came up to him he roused himself, and his face lit up with welcome. The Teacher's smile was singularly winning and sweet – it was just like Mary's smile, Joseph thought – but it was also a very sad smile.
"Brother," Lluellyn said, "the peace of God be with you. May you be full of the Holy Ghost, that you may better accomplish those high things for which the Father has destined you, and for which He has brought you here."
Joseph took Lluellyn's hand, and was about to answer him when the former sank back once more against the boulders. His face grew white as linen, and he seemed about to swoon.
"You are ill!" Joseph cried in alarm. "What can I do to help you?"
"It is nothing," Lluellyn answered in a moment or two. "I have been giving you of my strength, Joseph, that you might mount the last stage of your journey. The voice of the Lord came to me as I communed here with Him, and the Holy Spirit sent the power to you through this unworthy body of mine."
Joseph bowed.
"I am moving in deep waters," he said. "Many strange and wonderful things have happened to me of late. My mind is shaken, and my old life with its old point of view already seems very far away. But let me say, first, how much I appreciate your extreme kindness in asking me here, through Miss Lys. As Miss Mary will have told you, I am a poor, battered scholar with few friends, and often hard put to live at all. Your kindness will enable me to recover after my accident."
