He moved on abruptly, and overtook Tranter.
CHAPTER XV
A Builder of Men
James Layton occupied two dingy rooms, in a dilapidated house, situated between a church and a public-house, in as squalid and unwholesome a street as any in the East End of London. In them he spent such time as was left to him—and it was not much—after his active ministrations among the denizens of the miserable neighborhood. They were scantily furnished, and of comforts there were none. He denied himself anything beyond the barest necessities of existence, with the exception of a few books and pipes, which were the companions of his odd moments of leisure, and he read and smoked in a hard wicker chair, destitute even of a cushion. He ate sparingly, of food scarcely better than that on which his neighbors subsisted, and drank little. His clothes were poor, his shirts frayed, and his boots patched—and his income was a thousand pounds a week.
In his work he was unusually broad-minded and unprejudiced. He spent none of his time in efforts to lure the occupants of the public-house on his left into the church on his right. Indeed, he was an excellent customer of the former institution, and was on the best of terms with its landlord, who was an ex-pugilist after his kind. He made no discrimination in the dispensation of his charity. He worked on the principle that before he reformed a man he must feed him—so before he attempted to deal with the mind he relieved the body. He was open-handed and unsuspicious—and wonderfully beloved. There were hundreds of people in that street, and many other streets, who would gladly have laid down their lives for him—and who imposed on him shockingly day after day in the minor matters of life. The Mad Philanthropist never turned away—never refused. He was a builder of Men. No one knew, or cared, who he was or whence he came. He never gave account of himself, or spoke of his own affairs. Curiosity was the one thing he resented. He enclosed himself, so far as private matters were concerned, within the fortifications of a reserve which no one had succeeded in penetrating. Though he held a thousand confidences, he made none. In listening to the experiences of others he never referred to his own, or even hinted whether they had been sweet or bitter. He went on his silent way—and the world was the better for him.
In his bare sitting-room he sat with his face between his hands. A girl knelt on the floor beside him.
She was a remarkable girl. Wild, wayward, with all the passions—brimful with untamed vitality—incapable of the common restraints. Her face was neither beautiful, nor, perhaps, even pretty—but Diana herself might have envied the full, lithe figure, the free grace of her movements. She was the creature of her desires—knowing no laws that opposed them. A Primitive Woman, from the dawn of the world.