Then, it was never discovered how or why, though the point was ever afterwards debated, every single light in the theatre went out.
Through the darkness, and the sudden calm which this added fear induced for a moment, the mighty voice was heard, tolling like a great bell, with its burden of "Repent! Repent! Repent!"
There was, however, no physical panic. No one was bodily injured. When light was at length restored, it was seen that the strange figure, with its little accompanying band of followers, had utterly disappeared. The curtain had fallen and hidden the stage, the place where Joseph had stood was dark and empty; every one was standing and shaking with fear, and white faces were turned to faces whiter still, asking each other what this thing might mean.
With hardly a sound, the huge audience poured silently out of the Frivolity. People who, a few short hours before, had passed within the doors light-hearted, smiling, and eagerly expectant of the mischievous nonsense they had come to see, now moved with drawn faces and hanging heads. Lips were clenched with resolve, or still trembled and muttered in fear. Cheeks were red with terrible shame or blanched with agony. Out they came like a procession of ghosts, and—London was just the same!
It was obvious that no inkling of what was going on in the Frivolity Theatre had penetrated to the outside world.
Shaftesbury Avenue blazed with light as usual. Crowds—but how different to this one!—poured from the other playhouses. The street was full of cabs and carriages, the roar of late traffic, the hoarse shouts of newsboys selling the last edition of the evening papers. The great restaurants—Trocadero, Criterion, Monico—were hung with huge arc-lamps, turning the night into wan and feverish day. Round about Piccadilly Circus and Regent Street everything was precisely the same as it had been. Was it all a dream? the late audience of the Frivolity were asking each other.
The question was not answered in words. Suffering eyes and stricken faces told their own tale.
Hampson, the journalist, was full of a wonder and awe for which there was no name. He had recognized Joseph at once, a changed—marvellously changed—Joseph, but his old friend still.
The whole thing had come upon him like a thunderclap, for it must be remembered that he had not seen the report in the Daily Wire, and knew nothing of the occurrences in Wales.
The extraordinary transformation of his friend, the supernatural power of his words, the enormous hypnotic power of them—what did all these things betoken?