Mary flushed. She seemed to want to get back to her cooking. "It's something inside us, dearie," she thought: "that n.o.body hears but ourselves."

"That tells him to talk all that twaddle?" demanded Miss Ensor. "Have you heard him?"

"No, dearie," Mary admitted. "But I expect it's got its purpose. Or he wouldn't have to do it."

Miss Ensor gave a gesture of despair and applied herself to her pie. The hirsute face of Mr. Simson had lost the foolish aggressiveness that had irritated Joan. He seemed to be pondering matters.

Mary hoped that Joan was hungry. Joan laughed and admitted that she was.

"It's the smell of all the nice things," she explained. Mary promised it should soon be ready, and went back to her corner.

A short, dark, thick-set man entered and stood looking round the room.

The frame must once have been powerful, but now it was shrunken and emaciated. The shabby, threadbare clothes hung loosely from the stooping shoulders. Only the head seemed to have retained its vigour. The face, from which the long black hair was brushed straight back, was ghastly white. Out of it, deep set beneath great s.h.a.ggy, overhanging brows, blazed the fierce, restless eyes of a fanatic. The huge, thin-lipped mouth seemed to have petrified itself into a savage snarl. He gave Joan the idea, as he stood there glaring round him, of a hunted beast at bay.

Miss Ensor, whose b.u.mp of reverence was undeveloped, greeted him cheerfully as Boanerges. Mr. Simson, more respectful, rose and offered his small, grimy hand. Mary took his hat and cloak away from him and closed the door behind him. She felt his hands, and put him into a chair close to the fire. And then she introduced him to Joan.

Joan started on hearing his name. It was one well known.

"The Cyril Baptiste?" she asked. She had often wondered what he might be like.

"The Cyril Baptiste," he answered, in a low, even, pa.s.sionate voice, that he flung at her almost like a blow. "The atheist, the gaol bird, the pariah, the blasphemer, the anti-Christ. I've hoofs instead of feet.

Shall I take off my boots and show them to you? I tuck my tail inside my coat. You can't see my horns. I've cut them off close to my head.

That's why I wear my hair long: to hide the stumps."

Mary had been searching in the pockets of his cloak. She had found a paper bag. "You mustn't get excited," she said, laying her little work- worn hand upon his shoulder; "or you'll bring on the bleeding."

"Aye," he answered, "I must be careful I don't die on Christmas Day. It would make a fine text, that, for their sermons."

He lapsed into silence: his almost transparent hands stretched out towards the fire.

Mr. Simson fidgeted. The quiet of the room, broken only by Mary's ministering activities, evidently oppressed him.

"Paper going well, sir?" he asked. "I often read it myself."

"It still sells," answered the proprietor, and editor and publisher, and entire staff of _The Rationalist_.

"I like the articles you are writing on the History of Superst.i.tion.

Quite illuminating," remarked Mr. Simson.

"It's many a year, I am afraid, to the final chapter," thought their author.

"They afford much food for reflection," thought Mr. Simson, "though I cannot myself go as far as you do in including Christianity under that heading."

Mary frowned at him; but Mr. Simson, eager for argument or not noticing, blundered on:--

"Whether we accept the miraculous explanation of Christ's birth,"

continued Mr. Simson, in his best street-corner voice, "or whether, with the great French writer whose name for the moment escapes me, we regard Him merely as a man inspired, we must, I think, admit that His teaching has been of help: especially to the poor."

The fanatic turned upon him so fiercely that Mr. Simson's arm involuntarily a.s.sumed the posture of defence.

"To the poor?" the old man almost shrieked. "To the poor that he has robbed of all power of resistance to oppression by his vile, submissive creed! that he has drugged into pa.s.sive acceptance of every evil done to them by his false promises that their sufferings here shall win for them some wonderful reward when they are dead. What has been his teaching to the poor? Bow your backs to the lash, kiss the rod that scars your flesh. Be ye humble, oh, my people. Be ye poor in spirit. Let Wrong rule triumphant through the world. Raise no hand against it, lest ye suffer my eternal punishments. Learn from me to be meek and lowly. Learn to be good slaves and give no trouble to your taskmasters. Let them turn the world into a h.e.l.l for you. The grave--the grave shall be your gate to happiness.

"Helpful to the poor? Helpful to their rulers, to their owners. They take good care that Christ shall be well taught. Their fat priests shall bear his message to the poor. The rod may be broken, the prison door be forced. It is Christ that shall bind the people in eternal fetters.

Christ, the lackey, the jackal of the rich."

Mr. Simson was visibly shocked. Evidently he was less familiar with the opinions of _The Rationalist_ than he had thought.

"I really must protest," exclaimed Mr. Simson. "To whatever wrong uses His words may have been twisted, Christ Himself I regard as divine, and ent.i.tled to be spoken of with reverence. His whole life, His sufferings--"

But the old fanatic's vigour had not yet exhausted itself.

"His sufferings!" he interrupted. "Does suffering ent.i.tle a man to be regarded as divine? If so, so also am I a G.o.d. Look at me!" He stretched out his long, thin arms with their claw-like hands, thrusting forward his great savage head that the bony, wizened throat seemed hardly strong enough to bear. "Wealth, honour, happiness: I had them once. I had wife, children and a home. Now I creep an outcast, keeping to the shadows, and the children in the street throw stones at me. Thirty years I have starved that I might preach. They shut me in their prisons, they hound me into garrets. They jibe at me and mock me, but they cannot silence me. What of my life? Am I divine?"

Miss Ensor, having finished her supper, sat smoking.

"Why must you preach?" she asked. "It doesn't seem to pay you." There was a curious smile about the girl's lips as she caught Joan's eye.

He turned to her with his last flicker of pa.s.sion.

"Because to this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth," he answered.

He sank back a huddled heap upon the chair. There was foam about his mouth, great beads of sweat upon his forehead. Mary wiped them away with a corner of her ap.r.o.n, and felt again his trembling hands. "Oh, please don't talk to him any more," she pleaded, "not till he's had his supper."

She fetched her fine shawl, and pinned it round him. His eyes followed her as she hovered about him. For the first time, since he had entered the room, they looked human.

They gathered round the table. Mr. Baptiste was still pinned up in Mary's bright shawl. It lent him a curious dignity. He might have been some ancient prophet stepped from the pages of the Talmud. Miss Ensor completed her supper with a cup of tea and some little cakes: "just to keep us all company," as Mary had insisted.

The old fanatic's eyes pa.s.sed from face to face. There was almost the suggestion of a smile about the savage mouth.

"A strange supper-party," he said. "Cyril the Apostate; and Julius who strove against the High Priests and the Pharisees; and Inez a dancer before the people; and Joanna a daughter of the rulers, gathered together in the house of one Mary a servant of the Lord."

"Are you, too, a Christian?" he asked of Joan.

"Not yet," answered Joan. "But I hope to be, one day." She spoke without thinking, not quite knowing what she meant. But it came back to her in after years.

The talk grew lighter under the influence of Mary's cooking. Mr.

Baptiste could be interesting when he got away from his fanaticism; and even the apostolic Mr. Simson had sometimes noticed humour when it had chanced his way.

A message came for Mary about ten o'clock, brought by a scared little girl, who whispered it to her at the door. Mary apologized. She had to go out. The party broke up. Mary disappeared into the next room and returned in a shawl and bonnet, carrying a small brown paper parcel. Joan walked with her as far as the King's Road.

"A little child is coming," she confided to Joan. She was quite excited about it.

Joan thought. "It's curious," she said, "one so seldom hears of anybody being born on Christmas Day."

They were pa.s.sing a lamp. Joan had never seen a face look quite so happy as Mary's looked, just then.

"It always seems to me Christ's birthday," she said, "whenever a child is born."

They had reached the corner. Joan could see her bus in the distance.