When it was Dark

by Guy Thorne

  In a very short time Basil felt thoroughly at home. He knew by a kind of instinct he would be happy in Lincoln's Inn. Cyril Hands had still a month to spend in London before he went back to Palestine to continue his work for the Exploring Society, and he looked forward to many interesting talks with him. Hands, he learnt, was the agent and superintendent of the work in Jerusalem, the trained eye and arm of the great and influential Palestine Exploring Society.

  As for Harold Spence, he had known him ever since his first Oxford days, many years ago now. Spence was like a brother to him -- had always been that.

  After the noisy isolation of Walktown, Basil felt he was now in the centre of things. Both Spence and Hands were thoroughly cultured men, and both were distinguished above the crowd in their respective spheres.

  Basil heard keen, critical, "inside" talk for almost the first time. His two companions knew everybody, were at the hub of things. Two nights ago Spence had been talking to the Prime Minister for ten minutes. -- The Daily Wire was the unofficial Government organ. Hands had been at Lambeth with the Archbishop, who was the president and patron of the Palestine Exploring Society.

  "I'm sorry, Basil," Spence said suddenly, "I have a note for you from Father Ripon. I forgot to give it to you. He sent it down by a special messenger this morning."

  Father Ripon was the vicar of St. Mary's, Basil Gortre's new chief. He took the note and opened it.

  THE CLERGY HOUSE

  ST MARY'S, BLOOMSBURY.

  Dear Mr. Gortre,

  Friend Spence says you will arrive in London this afternoon. I don't believe in wasting time and I want a good long talk with you before you begin your work with us. Tonight I am due at Bethnal Green to give a lecture. I will be driving home about ten and I'll call at Lincoln's Inn on my way. If this will not be too late for you, we can then talk matters over.

  Sincerely yours in Christ,

  ARTHUR RIPON.

  Basil passed the note to Spence.

  "That will be all right," he said. "I'll be at work, and Hands will be in his own room. What a man Ripon is! He's just the incarnation of breezy energy. Brusque, unconventional, but one of the sincerest Christians and best men I ever met or ever will meet. He signs his note like that because he means it. He hates hypocrisy, and what in some men would appear a rather unnecessary form of ending, is to him just an ordinary everyday fact. You'll get on with Father Ripon, Basil, I'm sure, and get to love the man as we all do. I never knew anyone as absolutely joyous as he is. His private income is nearly two thousand a year, and his living's worth something too, yet I don't suppose his own expenses are fifty pounds. He lives more or less on porridge -- when he remembers to eat at all -- and his only extravagance is hansom cabs, so that he can cram more work into the day."

  They all laughed, and Spence began to tell anecdotes of the famous "ritualistic" parson who daily filled more stomachs, saved more souls, and shocked more narrow-minded people than any two clergymen in the Crockford directory.

  At seven o'clock they all went out together -- Spence to his adjacent newspaper office in Fleet Street, the other two to dine quietly at the University Club.

  "London depresses me," said Hands, when they were seated on the top of a horse drawn omnibus and rolling westward through the Strand. "I'm afraid I'll never be in love with London anymore. I always dislike my vacations, or rather my business visits here to town. It is necessary that I attend the annual meeting of the Palestine Exploring Society and see people in authority. And of course I have to give a few lectures. But I hate it all the same. I love the simple life of the Middle East: the sun, the deep blue shadows, my silent Arab workers. I know of no more beautiful sight than the Holy City when the hills are covered with the January snows. Why do they call Rome the Holy City? Jerusalem is the Holy City. It is a wonderful, immemorial land, Gortre -- a silent, beautiful country. Just before I came over here I spent a fortnight working at some inscriptions in a very ancient Latin monastery. I never knew such peace. And then I come back and I'm plunged into this!"

  He threw out his hand over the side of the omnibus with a note of disgust in his rather dreamy voice. The Strand was brilliantly lit and waiting crowds stood by all the theatre doors. Men and women passed in and out of the bright orange light of bars and restaurants, and small filthy boys stabbed the sound of the traffic with their shrill voices as they called out the evening papers.

  They dined quietly and simply at Hands' big warm club in Piccadilly. Hands did most of the talking and Basil was content to listen to the pleasant monotony of the low, level voice and fall under the man's peculiar spell or charm.

  As he listened, Basil also began to feel something of the mystery and enchanting influence of that country of the Son of God's birth.

  It was half-past nine when they got back to the chambers. Hands went at once to his room to work, and Basil sat in front of a red, glowing fire, gazing into the hot caverns, lost in reverie. It was as though he had taken some opiate and there was nothing better in life than to sit and dream in the warm silence of the fire-lit room.

  A few minutes after ten he was suddenly called out of the clouds by a furious knocking at the door of the chambers.

  The sound cut into his thoughts like a knife.

  He went to open the door, and Father Ripon, his new vicar, came in like a whirlwind. His voluminous black cloak brought cold air in its folds. His breezy, genial personality struck such a strident, material note, that dreams and reverie fled before it.

  Basil turned up the gas jets and flooded the room with light.

  Father Ripon was a tall, well-made man, too active to be portly, but with hints of a tendency towards plumpness, which was never allowed to ripen. The mobile face glowed and flashed continually with changing expression. In the ordinary business of life, the large humanity of the man gave him a readier title to the hearts of his people than their knowledge of the underlying saintliness of his character.

  "Whisky?" he said, as Basil offered him some. "No, thanks. Teetotaller for sake of example, always have been. Don't like the stuff either, never did. But I'll have some coffee and some bread and butter if you've got it, and some of those oranges I see there. Forgot to lunch and had no time to dine!"

  He began ravenously on the oranges and with little further preamble plunged at once into the business of the parish. To emphasise a point, he flung a piece of orange peel into the fire now and again.

  "Our congregation," he said, "is peculiar to the church. You'll realise that when you get among them. I don't suppose in the whole of London there's a more difficult class of people to reach than our own. In the first place, it is a young congregation, speaking generally. 'Good,' you'll say; 'ductile material, plenty of enthusiasm to work on.' Not a bit of it. Most of the men are engaged in the City as clerks on a small wage. The lowest and the highest classes are far easier to get at because they are temperamentally more alike. As they have no settled place in society, these are horribly afraid of ridicule. They are a far more difficult lot than their colleagues who live in the suburbs and have chances for healthier recreations.

  "Then much of our work lies among women who seem irretrievably lost, and, I fear, very often are. The Bloomsbury district is honeycombed with well-conducted dens of impurity. The women of a certain class have fixed on the parish as their home. I don't mean the starving prostitute one finds in the East End. I mean the fairly prosperous, utterly immoral women. In the great and luxurious buildings of flats which have sprung up in all the squares, the well-known London people who dance on the stage, and whose pictures glare on one from every hoarding, have made their homes. They constantly parade before the eyes of others the wealth which is the reward of lust.

  "This is a wicked part of London, Gortre. And yet, day by day, in our beautiful church, where the Holy Communion is celebrated and prayers go up unceasingly, we have evidences that our work is acceptable and that the power of our Lord is with us. The prostitute still comes with her jewels and her tears of repentance. I ask
and beg of you to remember certain things -- keep them always before your eyes -- during your ministry among us. Whenever a man or woman comes to you, and tells of incredible sins, welcome the very slightest movement towards the light. Cultivate an all-embracing sympathy. I firmly believe that more souls have been lost by a repellent manner on the part of a church minister, or an apparent lack of understanding, than anyone has any idea of. Err rather on the side of compassion. Who are we to judge?"

  As Basil listened with deep attention to the vicar's earnest words, he began to realise more clearly the difficulties of his new life. And yet the obstacles did not daunt him. They seemed rather a trumpet note for battle. Ripon's enthusiasm was contagious. He felt the exhilaration of the tried soldier at a coming contest.

  "One more thing," said the vicar. "In all your teaching and preaching, hammer away at the great central fact of the Incarnation of our Lord. No system of morals will reach these people -- however plausible, however pure -- unless you constantly bring the spiritual side of our faith before them. Preach the Incarnation day in, day out. Don't, like so many men, regard the truth of God being born as Man, and His death on the Cross to forgive our sins, as an accepted fact by all. Get that central truth into the hearts of a congregation, and everything else will follow. I have kept you late, but I wished to have a talk with you. A good deal will devolve on you. You are to preach at Sunday Evensong. Sir Michael Manichoe, our patron, will be there, and there will certainly be a large congregation."

  He turned, said goodnight with sudden abruptness as if he had been lingering too long and was displeased with himself, and hurried away. Basil was soon to discover that this was his usual manner of farewell.

  A few minutes afterwards, Basil went to bed. He found it difficult to believe that he had walked down the Faubourg de la Barre in France that morning. It had been a crowded day.

  Chapter 9

  Sir Michael Manichoe was the great supporter of St. Mary's. His father had been a wealthy banker in Rome. The son, who had enormously increased his inherited wealth, took up a strong Christian faith during his Oxford days in England. He was the Conservative member for a division in Lincolnshire, where his great country house was situated, and had become a pillar of the Church and State in England.

  He was the great opponent of Constantine Schuabe, having equal wealth and position. Although Schuabe was by far the more brilliant of the two men, Sir Michael devoted all his energies to the opposition of the secular and agnostic influences of his political rival.

  Every Sunday during the session, when he was in London, Sir Michael drove to St. Mary's for both the morning and evening services. He was churchwarden, intimately concerned in all the parochial business, while his purse was always open at Father Ripon's request.

  Basil had been introduced to Sir Michael during the week, and he knew the great man would be attending to hear his first sermon at St. Mary's on the Sunday evening.

  He prepared his discourse with extreme care. A natural wish to make a good first impression animated him; but as he sat late on the Saturday night, finally arranging his notes, he began to be conscious of new and surprising thoughts about the coming event. Earlier in the evening he had been talking to Cyril Hands, but the archaologist had gone to bed and left him alone.

  The day had been a gloomy one. A black pall of fog had fallen over London at dawn and remained all day, almost choking him as he conducted evensong in the Saturday service in the almost empty church.

  All day long he had felt strangely overburdened and depressed. A chance paragraph in an evening paper, stating that Mr. Schuabe, MP, had returned from a short Continental trip, started an uneasy train of thought. The memory of the terrible night with Schuabe at Walktown, all those months ago, recurred to him with a horrible sense of unreality. The picture was blurred somewhat, as if the fingers of the disease which had struck him down after their first meeting, were again pressing on his brain.

  Much of what he remembered of that dread interview in Schuabe's house must surely have been delusion. And yet in all other matters he was sane enough. Many times he had met and argued with unbelievers. They had saddened him, but no more. Why did this man, notorious atheist as he was, fill him with a shuddering fear, a horror for which he had no name?

  Then also, what had been the significance of the incident at Dieppe -- its true significance? Sir Robert Llwellyn had also inspired him with a feeling of utter loathing and abhorrence, though perhaps in a lesser degree. There was the sudden glimpse of Schuabe's signature on the letter. What was the connection between the two men? How could the Antichristian be in friendly communion with the greatest Bible scholar of the time?

  He recalled an even more sinister occurrence, or so it had seemed to him. Two days after his first introduction to Sir Robert Llwellyn and the dinner at the Pannier d'Or, he had seen him enter the Paris train with Schuabe himself, who had just arrived from England. He had said nothing of the incident to Mr. Byars or Helena. They would have regarded it as ordinary enough. They knew nothing of what had earlier passed between him and Schuabe. Sir Robert Llwellyn's deliberate words in the restaurant of new discoveries at Jerusalem came back to him again and again, taking possession of his brain and ousting all other thoughts. What new discoveries was the Professor hinting at?

  What did the whole obsession of his brain mean?

  Curiously enough, he felt certain that these thoughts were in no way heralds of a new attack of brain fever. It seemed as if the persistent whisperings within him were rather the results of some spiritual message with some definite end and purpose in view.

  The more he prayed, the stronger his premonitions became. Added force was given to them, as if they were the direct causes of his supplications.

  It seemed that God was speaking to him.

  He had questioned Cyril Hands cautiously, trying to learn if any new and important facts bearing on Biblical history were indeed likely to be discovered in the near future.

  The answer did not amount to much. The new and extensive excavations, under the permission of the lately granted permit from the Turkish Government, were only just beginning. The real work was to commence when Hands finished his work in London and returned to take charge of the operations.

  Of course, Hands had said there were possibilities of discovery of first-class importance, but he doubted it. The locality of Golgotha and the Holy Sepulchre was already established, in Hands's opinion. He had but little doubt of the authenticity of the established sites. Llwellyn's theories he dismissed altogether, while agreeing with him in his dismissal of the Gordon Tomb.

  So there had been very little from Hands that was in any way satisfactory to Basil.

  But as he sat in the great silence of the night and read over the headings of his sermon, a great sense of comfort came to him. He felt a mysterious sense of power, not merely because he knew the sermon was good, but something beyond that. He was conscious that for some reason or other that particular sermon which he was about to preach was one on which much depended. He could not say how or why he knew the thing was fraught with destiny to himself or others. He only knew it.

  When he looked back on the terrible and stupendous events in which he was to play so prominent a part, he was able to see clearly the chain of events, and to place his experience about what he always afterwards called his "Resurrection sermon" in their proper sequence.

  But that night as he prayed before going to sleep, he only felt a sweet security as he placed the sermon on the chair by his bedside.

  * * *

  The pulpit was high above the heads of the people, much higher than is usual, a box of stone set in the great arch of the chancel.

  As Basil stood for a moment after the prayer before he preached, he looked down the great building and saw the hundreds of watchful, expectant faces, and felt an uplifting sense of power. He felt as if he were a mouthpiece of an unseen force. The air seemed full of wings.

  For a moment he paused and sent a keen glance over the congr
egation below. He saw Sir Michael Manichoe sitting in his front pew. A few seats behind him, with a sudden throb of surprise but nothing else, he saw the calm and evil magnificence of Constantine Schuabe's face looking up at him.

  The strangeness of the appearance and the shock of it had at that moment no menace or intimidation for him. Standing there to deliver God's message, in God's house, his enemy seemed to have no power to throw his brain into its old fear and tumult.

  Another face, unknown to him, arrested his attention.

  The sexes were not separated for worship in St. Mary's. In the same pew where Schuabe sat was a woman, handsome, expensively dressed.

  They sat apart, and it was obvious there was no connection between her and the millionaire. Her face, as Basil's eyes rested on it for a second, seemed to be curiously familiar, as if he saw it every day of his life, but it nevertheless struck no personal note.

  Basil began to speak, taking for his text part of a verse from the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans -- "Declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection of the dead."

  "In this world of today," he began calmly, and with a certain deliberation and precision in his utterance, "what people in general are hungering after is a positive assurance of actual spiritual agency in the world. They crave for something to hold which is outside themselves, and which cannot have grown out of their inner persuasions. If I can tonight show that any appearance of the Risen Lord is attested in the same way as are certain facts commonly accepted as history, I will have accomplished as much as I can hope."

  Then, very carefully, Basil went through the scientific and historical evidences for the truth of the Resurrection. The eyewitnesses who became changed men and women, the Apostles who faced death as they passed on this good news of the Resurrection they had witnessed, to countries far and wide. Gradually, as he marshalled his proofs and brought forth one after the other, he began to make his objective the pew where Schuabe and the unknown woman sat.

  Slowly Basil's voice became more resonant and triumphant. To many of the congregation, the overwhelming and stupendous evidences for the truth of the Gospel narratives which the study of late years had collected was entirely new. The fact that it is not only in science that "discoveries" can be made; the excavations in the Middle East and the newly discovered manuscripts, with their variations of reading; the possibility that the lost Aramaic original of St. Matthew's Gospel may yet be discovered -- these were all things which came to them for the first time in their lives. Their interest was profoundly quickened.