When it was Dark

by Guy Thorne

  He was gone in a clattering rush.

  For a long time Basil sat thinking. The mysterious links of some great chain were being revealed inch by inch. He felt sure there was far more behind them than he knew as yet. There was some unseen tie, some influence that drew his thoughts ever more and more towards the disagreement in Schuabe's library in Manchester.

  * * *

  The next evening a maid showed Basil into the hall of the flat of Bloomsbury Court Mansions, eyeing him curiously as she did so.

  He passed down the richly carpeted passage with a quickening of all his pulses, noticing the Moorish lamps of copper studded with turquoise which threw a dim crimson light over everything, marking the ostentatious luxury of the place with wonder.

  Gertrude Hunt lay back in a low armchair. She was dressed in a long, crimson tea gown of cashmere, with a broad white band round the neck opening, of white Indian needlework embroidered with dark green leaves.

  Her face looked pale and tired.

  Despite the general warmth of the time, a fire burnt steadily on the hearth.

  Basil sat down at her invitation, and they fell into a half-hearted conversation. He waited for her to open up on the real subjects that had brought him there.

  He watched the weary but attractive face. This woman, who lived the life of a doll, had character. He could see that. Perhaps, he thought, as he looked at her, that the very eagerness and greed for pleasure marked in her face, the passionate determination to tear the heart and core out of life, might still be directed to purer ends.

  Then she began to talk to him frankly, with no disguise or passing over the facts of her life.

  "I'm sick and tired of it all, Mr. Gortre," she said bitterly. "You can't know what it means a bit -- lucky for you. Imagine spending all your life in a room painted bright yellow, eating nothing but chocolate creams, with a band playing comic songs for ever and ever. And even then you won't get it."

  Basil shook his head. There was something so poignant and forceful in her words that they hurt, stung like a whiplash. He was being brought into grim contact not only with the grip of sin, but with its results. The hideous staleness and torture of it appalled him as he looked at this human personification of it in the crimson gown.

  "That's how it was at first," she continued. "I knew there was something more than this in life, though. I could read it in people's faces. So I came to the service at your church one Sunday evening. I'd never made fun of religion and all that at any time. I simply couldn't believe it, that was all. Then I heard you preach on the Resurrection. I heard all the proofs for the first time. Of course, I could see there wasn't any doubt about the matter at all. Then, curiously, directly I began to believe in Jesus, I began to hate the way I was going on, so I went to Father Ripon, who was very nice, and he said you'd call."

  "I quite understand you, Miss Hunt," said Basil. "That's the beauty of faith. When once you believe, then you've got to change. It is a great pity, a very great pity, that church ministers don't attempt to explain things more than they do. If one isn't built in a certain way, I can quite understand and sympathise with anyone who isn't able to take a parson's mere statement on trust, so to speak. But that's beside the way. You believe at any rate. And now what are you going to do? I'm here to help you in every possible way. I want to hear your views, just as you've thought them out."

  "I like that," she said. "That's practical and sensible. I have never cared very much for sentimental ways of looking at things. You already know I can't live very long. I have got enough to live quietly on for some years, put away in a bank, money I have made acting. I haven't spent a penny of my salary for years. I tell men I don't have any money, and make them pay for everything. I'll go quietly away to the country and be alone with my thoughts, close to a little quiet church. You'll find a place for me, won't you? That's what I want to do. But there's something in the way, and a big something, too."

  "I'm here to help that," said Basil.

  "It's Bob," she answered. "The man that keeps me. I'm afraid of him. He's been away for months, out of England, but he's coming back. Tomorrow as likely as not. He couldn't say to a day. I had a letter from Brindisi last week. He's been to Palestine, via Alexandria."

  A quick premonition took hold of Basil. "Who is he?" he asked.

  She took a photograph from the mantelshelf and gave it to him. It was one of the Stereoscopic Company's series of "celebrities." Under the portrait was printed -- "Sir Robert Llwellyn."

  Gortre jumped violently. "I know him," he said thickly. "I felt when I met him.... What does it all mean?"

  He dropped his head into his hands, filled with the old, nameless, unreasoning fear.

  She looked steadily at him, wondering at his manner.

  There was a tense silence for a time.

  In the silence they heard a sound, clear and distinct. A key was being inserted into the door of the flat.

  They waited breathlessly. Gertrude Hunt grew white. Without any words from her, Basil knew whose fingers were even now on the handle of the door.

  Llwellyn entered. His huge form was dressed in a light grey suit and he carried a straw hat in his hand. His face was burned a deep brown.

  He stopped suddenly as he saw Basil, and an ugly look flashed out on the sensual, intellectual face. Some swift intuition seemed to give him the key of the situation, or something near it.

  "The curate of Dieppe!" he said in a cold, mirthless voice. "And what, Mr. Gortre, may I ask, are you doing here?"

  "Miss Hunt has asked me to come and see her," answered Basil.

  "Consoling yourself with the Church, Gertie, while your proprietor is away?" Llwellyn said with a sneer.

  Then his manner changed suddenly.

  He turned to Basil. "Now then, my man," he snarled, "get out of this place at once! You may not know that I pay the rent and other expenses of this establishment. It's mine. I know all about you. Your reputation has reached me from sources of which you have little idea. I saw you at Dieppe, and I don't propose to resume our acquaintance in London. Kindly go. At once!"

  Basil looked at the woman. He saw pleading, a horrifying entreaty in her eyes. If he left her now, the power of this man, his strength of will, might drag her back for ever into hell. He could see the girl regarded Llwellyn with terror. There was a great surprise in her face also. The man seemed so strong and purposeful. Basil remembered that Sir Robert Llwellyn had worn no such indefinable air of confidence and triumph when they met in France.

  "Miss Hunt wants me to stay, sir," he answered quietly, "and so I'm going to stay. But perhaps you had better be given an explanation at once. Miss Hunt is going to leave you tomorrow. She will never see you again."

  "And may I ask," the big man answered, "why you have interfered in my private affairs and why you think -- for she is going to do nothing of the sort -- Miss Hunt is going from here?"

  "Simply because the Holy Spirit wills it so," said Basil.

  Llwellyn looked steadily at him and then at the woman. Something he saw in their faces told him the truth.

  He laughed shortly. "Let me tell you," he said in a voice which quivered with ugly passion, "that in a short time all meddling priests will lose their power over the minds of others. For ever. Your Christ, your God, the pale dreamer of Palestine, will be revealed to you and all men at last!"

  His manner had changed once more. Fierce as it was, there was an intense meaning and power in it. He spoke as one having authority, with a concentrated hate in his words, so real and bitter that it gave them a certain authority.

  Basil answered him, "You lie and you know you lie! And by the powers given to me I will tell you from God Himself: Christ is risen! As the day follows the night, so the Spirit of God remains on the earth God once visited, and works on and in the hearts of men and women."

  "Are you going?" said Llwellyn, stepping towards Basil.

  "No," Basil answered in sharp, angry tones. "It is you who are going, Sir Robert. You know as well as I
do that I can do exactly as I like with you if it comes to force. And really I'm not at all disinclined to do so, despite my parson's coat. The newly made knight fighting a clergyman under such very curious circumstances? If this thing is to become open talk, then let us have it so. You can do me no harm. I came here at my vicar's request and Miss Hunt's. You know best if you can stand a scandal of this kind in your position. Now, are you going at once, or shall I knock you down and kick you out?"

  He could not help a note of exultation in his voice, try as he did. He was still a young man, full of power and virility. As he heard the arrogant denial of Christ's Godhead coming from those polluted lips, a wild longing flared up inside him. Like a sudden flame, the impulse to strike a clean, hard blow fired all his blood. The old Oxford days of athletic triumphs on field, flood, and river came back to him.

  He measured the man carefully with his eyes, judging his distance, alert to strike.

  Llwellyn did not seem in the least afraid of Basil or in any way intimidated by him. Indeed, he laughed, a laugh which was hollow, mirthless, and cold.

  "Ah, my boy," he said, "I have a worse harm with which to work you than you can dream of yet. You will remember me some day. You cannot frighten me now. I will go. I want no scandal. Goodbye, Gertrude. You also will remember and regret some day. Goodbye."

  He went noiselessly out of the room, still with the strange flickering smile of insight and fate on his evil face.

  When he had gone, Gertrude fell into a passion of weeping. The strain had been too great. Basil comforted her as well as he could do so decorously, and before he went promised to see Father Ripon that night and make arrangements for her to quietly disappear the next day to some distant, undiscoverable haven.

  Then he went out into the night.

  * * *

  Sir Robert walked swiftly to Oxford Street, where he found a cab. He ordered the man to drive him to the Sheridan Club. On the way he stopped at Charing Cross Station and ordered his luggage to be sent home at once to his house in Upper Berkeley Street. He had only been in London two or three hours, having crossed from Calais that afternoon.

  He washed when he arrived at the famous club, before going upstairs to the grill room for some supper. It was the hour when the Sheridan was full of the upper Bohemian world. Great actors and musicians, a judge on his way through town from one watering place to another, -- for it was now the long vacation, -- a good many well-known journalists, all sorts and conditions of men. All were eminent in their field, for that was a condition of membership.

  Llwellyn was welcomed on all sides, though men noticed he seemed preoccupied. His healthy appearance was commented on: his face browned, as was supposed, by the sun of the Riviera, his general fitness of manner and carriage.

  He took supper by himself at a small table, choosing the menu with his usual extreme care, and more than once summoning the head waiter to conference. Although he kept glancing at his watch as if expecting an arrival, he made a good meal, mixing his own salad of crisp white lettuce with deliberation.

  He had sent a page early on his arrival to find out if Mr. Constantine Schuabe was in the club.

  He was standing at the desk in the middle of the room, paying his bill, when the swing doors were pushed open and Schuabe entered. He was in evening dress and carried a light overcoat on his arm.

  Although the meeting between the two men was obviously prearranged, neither of the two men smiled as they shook hands. Both were expectant of each other, almost with some apprehension, it might have been fancied; and though the meeting seemed a relief to each, there was little human kindliness in it.

  "Come down to my Hotel," said Schuabe. "We cannot possibly say anything here. Every room is full."

  They walked out of the club together, two figures of noticeable distinction, very obviously belonging to the ruling classes of England. The millionaire's pale and striking face was worn and lined as they walked to the Cecil Hotel, no great distance, saying little by the way, and presently they were in the millionaire's great room, with its spacious view over the Thames.

  The two men sat down in the centre of the room on light chairs, with a small Turkish table and cool drinks between them.

  "You have received all my letters, my last from Jaffa?" asked Sir Robert.

  "Yes, all of them," said Schuabe. "Each one was carefully destroyed after I read it and memorised the contents. Let me say that you have done your work with extraordinary brilliance. It's been an intellectual pleasure of a high order to follow your proceedings and know your plans. There's not another man in the world who could do what you have done. Everything seems guarded against, all is secure."

  "You are right, Schuabe," said Llwellyn, in a matter-of-fact voice. "You bade me make a certain thing possible. You paid me proportionately to the terrible risks, and for my unrivalled knowledge. Well, you and I are going to shake the whole world as no two other men have ever done. And what will be the end?"

  "The end?" cried Schuabe, in a high, strained, unnatural voice. "Who can say? What man can know? For evermore the gigantic fable of the Cross and the Man God will be overthrown. The temples of the world will fall into the abomination of desolation, and you and I, latter-day bringers of light -- Lucifers! -- will kill the Nazarene more surely than the Jewish leaders and Roman soldiers of the past."

  The great figure of the scholar shifted uneasily in its chair. "That fellow Gortre, that abominable young priest, has been getting in my way tonight," Llwellyn said with a savage curse. "I found him with Gertrude Hunt, the woman I have spent thousands on! The priests have got her. She's going to 'lead a new life.' She's 'found Christ'!"

  Schuabe smiled, a cunning smile of unutterable malice. "That man has crossed my path also," he said. "In some way, by a series of coincidences, he's become involved in our lives. Leave the matter to me. So small a thing as the fanaticism of one obscure young man is nothing to trouble us. I will see to his future. But he will live to know what is coming to the world. Then -- it's easy enough to dispose of him."

  They were silent for a minute or two. Sir Robert lifted a long glass to his lips. His hand shook with passion, and the ice in the liquid clinked and tinkled.

  "Everything is ready," he said at last, glancing at Schuabe. "Every detail. My Greek assistant, Ionides, knows what he has to do when he receives the signal. He's a mere tool, and knows and cares nothing of what will happen. He has to direct the excavators in certain directions. That's all. It will be three months, so I calculate, after we have set the machinery in motion, before the blow falls. It rests with you now to begin."

  "Why wait? The letter will go at once," said Schuabe. His eyes glittered, his mouth worked with emotion. "It is a sheet of paper with a single sign on it."

  "What is the sign?"

  "A drawing of a broken cross. Before the day dawns we will send the broken cross to Jerusalem."

  Chapter 12

  In the winter, two or three weeks before Christmas, Basil Gortre asked Father Ripon for a ten days' holiday, and went north to Walktown to spend the time with Helena and Mr. Byars. Christmas itself could be no time of vacation for him. The duties of St. Mary's would be heavy, so he snatched a respite from work before the actual time of festival.

  Harold Spence was left alone in the chambers at Lincoln's Inn. The journalist found himself discontented, lonely, and bored. He had not realised before how much Basil's companionship had contributed to his happiness during the past few months.

  He had spent a hard summer and autumn over very uncongenial work with the paper. For months there had been a curious lull and calm in the news world. Yet day by day The Daily Wire had to be filled. Not that there was any lack of material. Even in the dullest season the expert journalist will say that his difficulty is what to leave out of his paper, not what to put in, but the material was uninteresting and dull.

  He felt himself that his leaders were growing stale, lacking in spontaneity. His style did not glitter and ring quite as usual. And Basil had helped
him through this time wonderfully.

  One Wednesday -- he remembered the day afterwards -- he awoke about midday. He had been late at the office the night before and afterwards had gone to a club, not going to bed till after four.

  He heard the housekeeper moving about the chambers preparing his breakfast. He called to her, and in a minute or two she came in with his letters and a cup of tea. She went to the window and pulled up the blind, letting a dreary grey-yellow December light into the room.

  "Nasty day, Mrs. Buscall," he said, sipping his tea.

  "It is, sir," the woman said, a lean, kindly-faced Londoner from a court in Drury Lane. "Gives me a frog in my throat all the time, this fog does. You'd better let me pour a drop of hot water into your bath, sir. I have got the kettle on the gas stove."

  The woman had an objection to cold baths, deep-rooted and a matter of principle. The daily cold tub she regarded as suicidal, and when Basil Gortre had arrived, her pained surprise at finding him also -- a clergyman too! -- addicted to such adventurous and injudicious habits had been as extreme as her disappointment.

  Spence agreed to humour her, and she began to prepare the bath.

  "Letter from Mr. Cyril, I see, sir," she remarked.

  Mrs. Buscall loved the archaologist more than she did her other two charges. The unusual and mysterious had a real fascination for her uneducated Cockney brain. Cyril Hands's rare stays at the chambers, the Middle Eastern dresses and pictures in his room, his strange and perilous life -- as she considered it -- in the actual Bible land where Satan roamed the desert in the form of a lion seeking whom he might devour: all these stimulated her imagination and brought colour into the dreary courts of Drury Lane.

  Most of the women around Mrs. Buscall drank gin. The doings of Cyril Hands were sufficient tonic for her.

  Spence glanced at the bulky packet with its Turkish stamps, taking in the aroma which the London fog had not yet killed. Hands was a good correspondent. Sometimes he sent general articles on the work he was doing, not too technical, and Ommaney, the editor of Spence's paper, used and paid well for them.