When it was Dark

by Guy Thorne

  "It is all so different!" she said breathlessly. "So bright and cheerful. Look at that red thing over the tobacco shop, and that little brass dish over the hairdresser's. Think of Walktown or Salford, now!"

  The house in the Faubourg de la Barre was kept by Madame Varnier, who spoke English well, and was in the habit of letting her rooms to English people. A late déjeuner was ready for them.

  The omelette was a revelation to Helena, and the rognons sautés filled her with respect for such cooking, but she was impatient, nevertheless, to be out sightseeing.

  The vicar was tired, and proposed to stay indoors with the Spectator, and Harold Spence had some letters to write, so Basil and Helena went out alone.

  They turned down a narrow street of quiet houses, and came out onto la Plage. There were a good many people walking up and down the great promenade from the Casino to the harbour mouth. An air of fullness and prosperity floated round the magnificent hotels which faced the sea.

  They began a steady walk towards the pier and lighthouse. The wind was fresh, though not troublesome, and at five o'clock the sun, low in the sky, was still bright.

  Helena Byars held her own among the cosmopolitan crowd of women who walked on la Plage. Her beauty was Saxon, very English, and not of a type always appreciated to its full value on the Continent, but it shone the more from Latin contrasts, and could not escape remark.

  Every now and again they turned, at distances of a quarter of a mile or so, and during the recurrence of their beat they began to notice a man they passed several times, coming and going.

  He was an enormous man, broad and tall, dressed expensively and with care. His size alone was sufficient to mark him out of the usual, but his personality seemed to them no less arresting and strange.

  His large, smooth face was fat, the eyes small and brilliant, with heavy pouches under them. Basil said he seemed to belong to the Prince Regent's period. "I can imagine him on the lawns at Brighton or dining in the Pavilion," he said. "What a sensual, evil face the man has! Of course it may mean nothing, though. A Bishop I know, whose work on the Gospels is the most wonderful thing ever done in the way of Christian apologetics, has a face like one of the grotesque devils carved on the roof of Notre Dame or Lincoln Cathedral. But this man seems by his face to have no soul. I cannot feel it is there, as I can, thank God, with most people."

  "But what an intellect such a man must have," said Helena. "Look at him now. Look at the shape of his head. He must be some distinguished person. I seem to remember pictures of him, just lately too, in the illustrated papers, only I can't get a name to him. I'm certain he's English, and someone of importance."

  The big man passed them again with a quiet and swift glance of appreciation at Helena. He seemed lonely. Basil and Helena suspected he would have welcomed a chance word of greeting, some overture of friendship.

  But neither of them responded to the unspoken wish they felt in the stranger. They were happy with each other, and presently they saw the man light a cigar and enter one of the great hotels.

  They discussed the man for a few minutes -- he had made an odd impression on them by his personality -- then realised it was time for the rendezvous at the Café des Tribuneaux.

  By this time dusk was falling, and the sea moaned with a certain melancholy. They turned away to the left, leaving the sea behind them, and passing through a narrow street by the Government tobacco factory they came into the town again, and after a short walk to the café.

  The place was bright and animated -- lights, mirrors, and gilding; the stir and movement of the pavement area outside; all combined to make a novel and attractive picture for the English girl. The night was not cold, and they sat under the awning at a small round table watching the merry groups with interest.

  In a few minutes after their arrival they saw Harold Spence and Helena's father, now quite restored and well, coming towards them. They had decided not to order anything before the arrival of their companions.

  The journalist took them under his wing at once. It amused Spence to be a guide to help them to a feeling of being at home. Basil Gortre and Mr. Byars had been to Switzerland, and the latter to Rome on one occasion, but under the wing of a bishop's son who made his livelihood out of personally conducting parties to Continental towns for a fixed fee. There was little freedom in these cut-and-dried tours, with their lectures en route and the very dinners in the hotel ordered for the tourists, and everything so arranged that they need not speak a word of any foreign language.

  For the vicar, Spence prescribed a vermouth sec; Basil, being still a courtesy invalid, was given a minute glass of an amber-coloured liquid with quinine in it -- "Dubonnet" Spence called it -- and Helena had a sirop de menthe.

  They were all happy together in the simple way of quiet, intellectual people. Their enjoyment of the liqueurs in a small café at tourist-haunted Dieppe, was as great as that of any hedonist at the Hotel Ritz in Paris, or at a rare dinner at Ciro's in Monte Carlo.

  Suddenly Helena turned to Basil. "Oh, look!" she said. "There's our friend from la Plage."

  The big stranger, now in evening dress and a heavy fur coat, had just come into the café and was sitting there with a cigarette and a Paris paper. He seemed lost in some sort of anxious speculation -- at least so it seemed by the drooping of the journal in his massive fingers, and the set expression which lingered in his eyes and spread a veil over his countenance.

  They all turned at Helena's exclamation and looked towards the other side of the café, where the man was sitting.

  "Why, that's Sir Robert Llwellyn," said Spence.

  The vicar looked up eagerly. "The great authority on the antiquities of the Holy Land?"

  "Yes, that's the man. They knighted him the other day. He's supposed to be the greatest living authority, you know."

  "Do you know him, then?" asked the vicar.

  "Oh, yes," said Spence casually. "One knows everyone in my trade. I have often gone to him for information when anything special has been discovered. And I have met him in clubs and at lectures or at first nights at the theatre. He's a great play-goer."

  "A decent sort of man?" said Basil, in a tone which implied a doubt.

  Spence hesitated a moment. "Oh, well, I suppose so," he said. "There are tales about his private life, but probably quite untrue. He's a man of the world as well as a great scholar, and I suppose the rather unusual combination makes people talk. But he's right up at the top of the tree. Travels everywhere. I'll go over and speak to him."

  "If he'll come over," said the vicar, his eyes alight with anticipation and the hope of a talk with this famous expert on the subjects nearest his own heart, "bring him, please. There's nothing I would like better than a chat with him. I know his Modern Discoveries and Holy Writ almost by heart."

  They watched Spence go across to Sir Robert's table. The big man jumped as he was spoken to, looked up in surprise, then smiled with pleasure and extended a welcoming hand. Spence sat down beside him and they were soon in the middle of a brisk conversation.

  "The poor man looked bored until Mr. Spence spoke to him," said Helena. "Father, I'm sure you'll have your wish. He seems glad to have someone to talk to."

  She was right. After a minute or two the journalist returned with Sir Robert Llwellyn, and the five of them were soon in a full flood of talk.

  "I was going to dine alone at my hotel," said the Professor, at length, "but Spence says he knows of a decent restaurant here called the Pannier d'Or. I wonder if you would let me be one of your party? I'm quite alone in Dieppe for a couple of days. I'm waiting for a friend with whom I'm going to travel."

  "Oh, do come with us, Sir Robert," said the vicar, with manifest pleasure. "Are you going to be away from England for long?"

  "I have leave of absence from the British Museum for a year," said the Professor. "My doctor says I require absolute rest. I'm en route for Marseilles and from there to Alexandria."

  The Pannier d'Or proved a pleasant place, and the din
ner was excellent. The Professor surprised and then amused the others by his observations on the various dishes.

  Many times, despite his impatience to get to deeper and more congenial subjects, the vicar smiled at the purring of this gourmet, who seemed to prefer a sauce to an inscription, and rissoles to research.

  But with the special coffee -- covered with fine yellow foam and sweetened with crystals of amber sugar -- the vicar's hour came. Sir Robert must have realised it was inevitable and with a half sigh gave the required opening.

  The conversation threatened to be a long one. Harold Spence saw this, and proposed to go on to see the Casino with Helena, leaving the two clergymen with Llwellyn. It was when they had gone that the trio settled down completely.

  It resolved itself at first into a duologue between the two elder men. Basil's knowledge was too general and superficial on these purely antiquarian matters to allow him to take much part in it. He sat sipping his coffee and listening with keen attention and great enjoyment to this talk of experts.

  He had not liked Robert Llwellyn from the first, and could not do so even now, but he was forced to recognise the enormous intellectual activity and power of the big man before him.

  Step by step Sir Robert and Basil's future father-in-law went over the new discoveries being made in the ground between the City Wall of Jerusalem and the hill of Jeremiah's Grotto. They talked of the blue and purple mosaics found on the Mount of Olives, of all that had been done by the English and German excavators during the past years.

  Gradually the discussion became more intimate and began to touch on great issues.

  Mr. Byars was in a state of extraordinary interest. His knowledge was wide, and Llwellyn early realised this, speaking to him as an equal.

  "I suppose," Mr. Byars said at length, "that the true situation of the Holy Sepulchre is still a matter of considerable doubt, Professor. Your view would interest me extremely."

  "My view," said Llwellyn, with remarkable earnestness and with an emphasis which left no doubt about his convictions, "is that the Sepulchre has not yet been located."

  "And your view is authoritative of course," said Mr. Byars.

  The Professor bowed. "I have no doubt on the subject. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is quite out of the question. There is really no historical evidence for it, beyond a foolish dream of the Empress Helena in AD 326. The people who know, dismiss the traditional site at once.

  "Then there is the question of the second site, in which a great many people believe they have found the true Golgotha and Sepulchre. 'The Gordon Tomb,' as it has been called, excited a great deal of attention at the time of its discovery. You may remember I went to Jerusalem on behalf of the Times to investigate the matter. You may recollect that I proved beyond dispute that the tomb was not Jewish at all, but indubitably Christian and long subsequent to the time of Christ. As a matter of fact, when the tomb was excavated in 1873 it was full of human bones and the mould of decomposed bodies, and there were two red-painted crosses on the walls.

  "The tomb was close to a large Crusading hospice, and I have no doubt that it was used for the burial of pilgrims. Besides, my excavations proved the second city wall must have included the new site, so the Gospel narrative at once demolishes the new theory. I embodied twenty-seven other minor proofs in my letters to the Times. No, Mr. Byars, my conviction is that we are not yet able to locate in any way the position of Golgotha and the Holy Tomb."

  "You think that is to come?" asked Gortre.

  "I feel certain," answered the Professor, with great deliberation and meaning. "I feel certain that we are on the eve of stupendous discoveries in this direction."

  His tones were so extraordinary that the two clergymen looked quickly at each other. It seemed obvious that Llwellyn was aware of some impending discoveries. He must, they knew, be in constant touch with all that was being done in Palestine. Curiously enough, his words gave each of them a certain sense of chill, of uneasiness. There seemed to be something behind them, something of sinister suggestion.

  Llwellyn's position in the religious world was extraordinary. His knowledge of Biblical history was one of its assets, but he was not known as a believer. His attitude had always been absolutely non-committal. He did the work he had to do without taking sides.

  There was rather a tense silence for a short time.

  The Professor broke it.

  "Let me draw you," he said, taking a gold pencil from his pocket, "a little map like the one I published at the time of the agitation about Gordon's Tomb. I can trace the course of the city walls for you."

  He felt in his pocket for some paper on which to make the drawing, and took out a letter.

  Gortre and the vicar drew their chairs closer.

  Suddenly a curious pain shot through Basil's head, and all his pulses throbbed violently. He experienced a terribly familiar sensation -- the sick fear and repulsion of the night before his illness in the great library with Constantine Schuabe nearly five months ago. The aroma of some utterly evil and abominable personality seemed to come into his brain.

  For, as he had looked down at the paper on which the great white fingers were now tracing thin lines, he had seen, before Llwellyn quickly turned it over, a firm, plain signature.

  With some excuse about the heat of the room, he went out into the night.

  His brain was busy with terrible intuitive forebodings. He felt himself caught up in some great net. The phantoms of his illness came round him once more. The dark air was thick with their wings -- vague, and because of that, more hideous.

  He passed the lighted kiosk at the Casino entrance with a white, set face.

  He was going back to their lodgings to pray.

  Chapter 8

  It was at Victoria Station that Basil Gortre said goodbye to Helena. Harold Spence had been back in London for a fortnight. Mr. Byars and his daughter were to go straight back to Manchester the same day, and Basil was to take possession of his new quarters in Lincoln's Inn with Spence, and enter his duties at St. Mary's without delay.

  It had been a pleasant holiday in France, the three agreed, as the train brought them up from Newhaven. Basil had come to know Mr. Byars with far more completeness than had been possible during their busy parochial life at Walktown. The elder man's calm and steadfast belief, his wide knowledge and culture, the Christian sanity of his life, were never more manifest than in the uninterrupted time of rest and pleasure.

  He saw in his future father-in-law such a man as he himself humbly hoped that he might become. Certainly Mr. Byars's had no simple, childlike nature to whom goodness and belief came easily. He was subtle yet complex, and Basil could see that Byars' victory over himself had cost him more than it costs most men.

  To Helena, this time of holiday had been precious. To mark the fervour of her chosen one, the energy Basil threw into Life, Love, and Religion, to find him a man and yet a priest -- these were her uplifting feelings. As they walked and talked, listened to the music at the Casino, explored the ancient forest and castle at Arques, or knelt with bowed heads in the French church -- these had been the united bond of the great knowledge and faith they shared together.

  After the farewells had been said in the noisy station, and Basil's hansom cab drove him rapidly towards his new home, he felt wonderfully ready and prepared for his new work.

  The cab moved slowly up Chancery Lane, then turned into the sudden quiet of Lincoln's Inn. It was almost like going back to Oxford, he thought, with a quick glow of pleasure to see himself surrounded by mellow, ancient buildings once more.

  All his heavy personal effects had been sent here from Walktown some days before, and when he had carried up his two portmanteaus he knocked at the outside door of the chambers, and saw that his name was freshly painted on the lintel of the door under the two others:

  MR. HAROLD M. SPENCE

  MR. CYRIL HANDS

  REV. BASIL GORTRE

  In a minute he heard footsteps. The inner door was opened and he saw
a tall, thin man, bearded and brown, peering at him through spectacles.

  "Ah! Gortre, I suppose," said the other. "We were expecting you. I'm Hands, you know, home for another month yet. Give me these bags. Come in, come in."

  Basil followed the big, stooping fellow with a sense of well-being at the cheery informality of his greeting.

  He found himself in a large room, panelled from floor to ceiling, the woodwork painted a sage green. Three great windows, each with a cushioned seat in its recess, looked down into the quadrangle below. Doors faced him on all sides of the room, which was oddly shaped and full of nooks and angles. Books and newspapers covered three writing tables, and more were piled on shelves between the doors.

  "I have got you a sort of meal, Gortre," said Hands, pleasantly, "though we were rather in doubt as to what a man could want at four o'clock in the afternoon. Spence suggested afternoon tea, as you'll be wanting to dine later on. But Mrs. Buscall, our housekeeper, suggested cold beef and Bass's beer, after a sea voyage which she regards as a sort of Columbus adventure. So here you are. Harold is just getting up."

  Indeed, as he spoke there came a noise of vigorous splashing from behind one of the closed doors, and Spence's voice bellowed out a greeting.

  Basil looked puzzled for a moment and Hands laughed as he saw it.

  "You must appreciate that Spence doesn't get back from The Daily Wire office till three in the morning," he said. "He's writing four leaders a week for The Wire now, and on his late nights, when he comes back, his brain is too alert and excited to sleep. So he has some Bovril and just works away at other stuff till morning. He won't interfere with us, though. I never hear him come in, nor will you. These chambers are a regular rabbit warren for size and ramification."

  Basil went into the bedroom he was to have, a spacious, clean, and simply furnished place, and when he came out again for his meal he found Spence, wearing a loose suit of flannels. The journalist joined him at the table.