Mary asked for a bowl of bread-and-milk, and while she was waiting gazed round her cousin's pretty sanctum with a sense of rest and ease which was most grateful to her overstrung nerves, her utterly exhausted body and mind. Marjorie went into her bedroom, which opened into the boudoir, unwilling to tire Mary by questions until she was refreshed by food.
It was a beautiful place, this nest of the wealthy, happy maiden of society, though it had individuality and character also. It was thought out, the expression of a personality, and no mere haphazard collection of costly and beautiful things flung together anyhow, without regard to fitness or arrangements.
How peaceful and cultured it all was!
For some moments the tired girl abandoned herself to the gracious influence of the place, enjoying a moment of intense physical ease. Then, swiftly, her thoughts sprang over London from West to East. She saw the huge, gaunt hospital, its dim wards full of groaning sufferers, lying there in night-long agony that the rich and fortunate might build themselves just such "lordly pleasure-houses" as this. She thought of the flaring gin-palaces of Whitechapel, at this hour full of the wretched and the lost. The noise, the hideous oaths, the battered, evil faces of vile men and women—men and women made in God's image, men and women whom Jesus came to save, but who had never had a chance. It all came to her with sudden vividness: the sounds, the smells, the crude raw coloring.
A passionate fervor of love welled up in her pure heart, a passionate rejection of the soft and pleasant things of life. Oh, that she could do something, something, however small, to help all this sorrow and pain, to purge London of its sores, to tell those who lived in high places and wore soft raiment of the terrible Nemesis they were laying up for themselves in another world!
Marjorie Kirwan only saw a pale-faced and beautiful girl, whom she loved, sitting at a little octagonal table sipping a bowl of milk. But if there were any of God's angels in that room—and may we not suppose that the Almighty Father had given so high and pure a spirit into especial charge?—if there were, indeed, august and unseen presences there, they saw a saint praying to God for the conversion of London and for success in the great battle which she had come to wage with Joseph and his companions.
"That's better, dear!" Marjorie said, her pretty face all alight with sympathy, and, it must be said, with curiosity also. "Now, do please tell me what all these mysterious things mean? What is all this in the newspaper? And your Joseph, the man with the wonderful eyes, the man we saw in the cab some weeks ago, before poor dear Lluellyn's death, what is he doing? Why were you with him?"
"I don't know how I can tell you, dear," Mary said, suddenly alive to the extreme difficulty of the task which lay before her, for how could she hope to explain the deep solemnness and import of the coming mission?
"Oh, but I am sure I shall understand!" Marjorie answered. "And I am certain it is awfully interesting!"
Mary winced. The light words jarred upon her mood of deep fervor and resolve; but, gathering her powers together, she did her best.