The Angel Part 7

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 antic.i.p.ation? 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 pa.s.sed 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 gra.s.s 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 sh.o.r.es with the news and message of Christ's death and pa.s.sion.

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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.ses. At last, with singular and startling suddenness, the party entered the huge ma.s.s 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--