The well-furnished editorial sanctum, with it's electric lights,
leather-covered armchairs, gleaming telephones, and huge writing-table
was comfortable enough, but the leaden light outside, upon the Thames
Embankment, made London seem a city of dreadful night.
Hampson rose from his chair, and stood at the window for a moment, lost
in thought.
Yes, London was indeed a terrible city. More terrible than Babylon of
old, more awful when one remembered that Christ had come to the world
with His Message of Salvation.
The ancient city of palaces, in its eternal sunlit majesty, had never
known the advent of the Redeemer. Yet, were those forgotten people who
worshipped the God Merodach really worse than the Londoners of to-day?
Only on the day before, a West End clergyman had come to Hampson with
detailed statistics of the vice in his own parish in the neighborhood of
Piccadilly. The vicar's statements were horrible. To some people they
would have sounded incredible. Yet they were absolutely true, as Hampson
was very well aware--naked, shameful horrors in Christian London.
"Ah," the clergyman said, "if only Our Lord came to London now how awful
would His condemnation be!"
As the editor looked out upon the gloom he felt that the material
darkness was symbolic of a spiritual darkness which sometimes appalled
him when he realized it.
The door opened, and the sub-editor came in with "pulls" of the final
sheets of the paper. Hampson had to read these carefully, initial them,
and send them to the composing-room marked as ready for the
printing-machines. Then his work was done for the day.
At lunch time, the fog still continuing, he left the office. An idea had
come to him which might be of service in obtaining news of Joseph.
He would take a cab down to the East End Hospital, and ask Mary Lys if
she knew anything about his friend. Probably she would know something,
her brother, Lluellyn Lys, would almost certainly have written to her.
Hampson had met Mary two or three times during the last weeks. He
reverenced the beautiful girl who had saved him from the consequences of
his sudden madness, with all the force of his nature.
In her he saw a simple and serene holiness, an absolute abnegation of
self which was unique in his experience. She represented to him all that
was finest, noblest, and best in Christian womanhood.
Since his appointment to the editorial chair he had gloried in the fact
that he had been able to send her various sums of money for distribution
among the most destitute of the patients under her charge.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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