When It Was Dark: The Story of a Great Conspiracy

Gortre recognised the curious Cornish tones at once, and looked up with sudden interest.

"You'm wrong, my son," said the old woman, "bitter wrong you be, and 'tis carnal vanity that spakes within you. To Lostwithul, where I bide, I could show 'ee different to what you do say."

The workman, a good-humoured fellow enough, smiled superior at the odd old thing. The wrinkled face had become animated, two deep lines ran from the nostrils to the corner of the lips, hard and uncompromising. The eyes were bright.

"Well, Mother," he said, "let's hear what you've got ter say. Fair do's in argument is only just and proper."

"Ah!" she replied, "it's easy to go scat when you've not got love of the Lard in your heart. I be gone sixty years of age, and many as I can mind back-along as have trodden the path of sorrow. There be a brae lot o' fools about."

The workman winked at Gortre with huge enjoyment, and settled himself comfortably in his place.

"Then you don't hold with Disestablishing the Church, Mother?" he said.

"I do take no stock in Church," she replied, "begging the gentleman's pardon" – this to Gortre. "I was born and bred a Wesleyan and such I'm like to die. How should I know what they'll be doing up to London church town? This here is my first visit to England to see my daughter, and it'll be the last I've a mind to take. You should come to Cornwall, my dear, and then you'll see if religion's over and done away with."

"But you've heard of all as they've just found out at Jerusalem, surely? It's known now that Christ never was what He made out to be. He won't save no more sinners, – it's all false what the Bible says, it's been proved. I suppose you've heard about that in Cornwall?"

"I was down to the shop," said the old lady, with the gentle contempt of one speaking to a foolish child. "I was down to the shop December month, and Mrs. Baragwaneth showed me the Western Morning News with a picture and a lot of talk saying the Bible was ontrue, and Captain Billy Peters, of Treurthian mine, he was down-along too. How 'a did laugh at 'un! 'My dear,' he says, ''tis like the coast guards going mackerel-seining. Night after night have they been out, and shot the nets, too, for they be alwass seein' something briming, thinking it a school o' fish, and not knowing 'tis but moonshine. It's want of experience that do make folk talk so.'"

"That's all very well, Mother," answered the man, slightly nettled by the placid assurance of her tone. "That's all pretty enough, and though I don't understand your fishing terms I can guess at your meaning. But here's the proof on one side and nothing at all on t'other. Here's all the learned men of all countries as says the Bible is not true, and proving it, and here's you with no learning at all just saying it is, with no proof whatever."

"Do 'ee want proof, then?" she answered eagerly, the odd see-saw of her voice becoming more and more accentuated in her excitement. "I tell 'ee ther's as many proofs as pilchards in the say. Ever since the Lard died – ah! 'twas a bitter nailing, a bitter nailing, my dear!" – she paused, almost with tears in her voice, and the whole atmosphere of the little compartment seemed to Basil to be irradiated, glorified by the shining faith of the old dame – "ever since that time the proofs have been going on. Now I'll tell 'ee as some as I've see'd, my son. Samson Trevorrow to Carbis water married my sister, May Rosewarne, forty years ago. He would drink something terrible bad, and swear like a foreigner. He'd a half-share in a trawler, three cottages, and money in the bank. First his money went, then his cottages, and he led a life of sin and brawling. He were a bad man, my dear. Every one were at 'un for an ongodly wastrel, but 'a kept on. An' the Lard gave him no children; May could not make a child to him, for she were onfruitful, but he would not change. All that folk with sense could do was done, but 't were no use."

"Well, I know the sort of man," said the workman, with conviction. His interest was roused, that unfailing interest which the poorer classes take in each other's family history.

"Then you do know that nothing won't turn them from their evil ways?"

"When a chap gets the drink in him like that," replied the artisan, "there's no power that will take him from it. He'd go through sheet iron for it."

"And so would Samson Trevorrow, my dear," she continued. "One night he came home from Penzance market, market-peart, as the saying is, drunk if you will. My sister said something to 'un, what 't was I couldn't say, but he struck her, for the first time. Next morning was the Sunday, and when she told him of what he'd done overnight, he was shamed of himself, and she got him to come along with her to chapel. 'T was a minister from Bodmin as prached, and 'ee did prache the Lard at Sam until the Word got hold on 'un and the man shook with repentance at his naughty life. He did kneel down before them all and prayed for forgiveness, and for the Lard to help 'un to lead a new life. From that Sabbath till he died, many years after, Sam never took anything of liquor, he stopped his sweering and carrying on, and he lived as a good man should. And in a year the Lard sent 'un a son, and if God wills I shall see the boy this afternoon, for he's to meet the train. There now, my son, that be gospel truth what I tell 'ee. After that can you expect any one with a grain of sense to listen to such foolish truck as you do tell? The Lard did that for Samson Trevorrow, changed 'un from black to white, 'a did. If the Queen herself were to tell me that the Lard Jesus wasn't He, I wouldn't believe her."

As Gortre drove from Euston through the thronged veins of London towards the Inn, he thought much and with great thankfulness of the little episode in the train. Such simple faith, such supreme conviction, was, he knew, the precious possession of thousands still. What did it matter to these sturdy Nonconformists in the lone West that savants denied Christ? All over England the serene triumph of the Gospel, deep, deep down in the hearts of quiet people, gave the eternal lie to Schuabe and his followers. Never could they overcome the Risen Lord in the human heart. He began to realise more and more the ineffable wonder of the Incarnation.

Before he had arrived at Chancery Lane the London streets began to take hold of him once more with the old familiar grip. How utterly unchanged they were! It seemed but a day since he had left them; it was impossible at the moment of re-contact to realise all that had passed since he had gone away.

He was to have an immediate and almost terrifying reminder of it. The door of the chambers was not locked, and pushing it open, he entered.

Always most sensitive to the atmosphere of a room, moral as well as material, he was immediately struck by that of the chambers, most unpleasantly so, indeed. Certain indications of what had been going on there were easily seen. Others were not so assertive, but contributed their part, nevertheless, to the subtle general impression of the place.

The air was stale with the pungent smell of Turkish tobacco and spirits. It was obvious that the windows had not been as freely opened as their wont. A litter of theatre programmes lay on one chair. On another was a programme of a Covent Garden ball and a girl's shoe of white satin, into which a fading bouquet of hothouse flowers had been wantonly crushed. The table was covered with the débris of a supper, a pâté, some long-necked bottles which had held Niersteiner, a hideous box of pink satin and light blue ribbons half full of glacé plums and chocolates.

The little bust of the Hermes of Praxiteles, which stood on one of the bookcases, had been maltreated with a coarseness and vulgarity which hurt Basil like a blow. The delicate contour of the features, the pure white of the plaster, were soiled and degraded. The cheeks had been rouged up to the eyes, which were picked out in violet ink. The brows were arched with an "eyebrow pencil" and the lips with a vivid cardinal red.

Basil put down his portmanteau and grew very pale as he looked round on these and many other evidences of sordid and unlovely riot. His heart sank within him. He began to fear for Harold Spence.

Even as he looked round, Spence came into the room from his bed-chamber. He was dressed in a smoking jacket and flannel trousers. Basil saw at once that he had been drinking heavily. The cheeks were swollen under the pouch of the eye, he was unshaven, and his manner was full of noisy and tremulous geniality.

There are men in whom a week or two of sudden relapse into old and evil courses has an extraordinarily visible effect. Spence was one of them. At the moment he looked as the clay model compares with the finished marble.

Gortre was astounded at the change, but one thing the modern London clergyman learns is tact. The situation was obvious, it explained itself at once, and he nerved himself to deal with it warily and carefully.

Spence himself was ill at ease at they went through the commonplaces of meeting. Then, when they were both seated by the fire and were smoking, he began to speak frankly.

"I can see you are rather sick, old man," he said. "Better have it out and done with, don't you think?"

"Tell me all about it, old fellow," said Gortre.

"Well, there isn't very much to tell, only when I came back from Palestine after all that excitement I felt quite lost and miserable. Something seemed taken away out of one's life. Then there didn't seem much to do, and some of the old set looked me up and I have been racketing about town a good bit."

"I thought you'd got over all that, Harold; because, putting it on no other grounds, you know the game is not worth the candle."

"So I had, Basil, before" – he swallowed something in his throat – "before this happened. I didn't believe in it at first, of course, or, at least, not properly, when I got Hands's letter. But when I got out East – and you don't know and won't be able to understand how the East turns one's ideas upside down even at ordinary times – when I got out there and saw what Hands had found, then everything seemed slipping away. Then the Commission came over and I was with them all and heard what they had to say. I know the whole private history of the thing from first to last. It made me quite hopeless – a terrible feeling – the sort of utter dreariness that Poe talks of that the man felt when he was riding up to the House of Usher. Of course, thousands of people must have felt just the same during the past weeks. But to have the one thing one leaned upon, the one hope that kept one straight in this life, the hope of another and happier one, cut suddenly out of one's consciousness! Is it any wonder that one has gone back to the old temptations? I don't think so, Basil."

His voice dropped, an intense weariness showed in his face. His whole body seemed permeated by it, he seemed to sink together in his chair. All the mental pain he had endured, all the physical languor of fast living, that terrible nausea of the soul which seizes so imperiously upon the vicious man who is still conscious of sin; all these flooded over him, possessed him, as he sat before his friend.

An enormous pity was in Basil's heart as he saw this concrete weakness and misery. He realised what he had only guessed at before or seen but dimly. He would not have believed this transformation possible; he had thought Harold stronger. But even as he pitied him he marvelled at the Power which had been able to keep the man pure and straight so long. Even this horrid débâcle was but another, if indirect, testimony to the power of Faith.

And, secondly, as he listened to his friend's story, a deep anger, a righteous wrath as fierce as flame burned within him as he thought of the two men who, he was persuaded, had brought this ruin upon another. In Spence he was able to see but a single case out of thousands which he knew must be similar to it. The evil passions which lie in the hearts of all men had been loosened and unchained; they had sprung into furious activity, liberated by the appalling conspiracy of Schuabe and Llwellyn.

It is noticeable that there was by this time hardly any doubt in Gortre's mind as to the truth of his suspicions.

"I understand it all, old man," he said, "and you needn't tell me any more. I can sympathise with you. But I have much to tell you – news, or, at least, theories, which you will be astounded to hear. Listen carefully to me. I believe that just as you were the instrument of first bringing this news to public notice, so you and I are going to prove its falsity, to unearth the most wicked conspiracy in the world's history. Pull yourself together and follow me with all your power. All hope is not yet gone."

Basil saw, with some relief, the set and attentive face before him, a face more like the old Spence. But, as he began to tell his story, there flashed into his mind a sudden picture of the old Cornish woman in the train, and he marvelled at that greater faith as his eye fell upon the foul disorder of the room.

CHAPTER X

THE TRIUMPH OF SIR ROBERT LLWELLYN

In the large, open fireplaces of the Sheridan Club dining-room, logs of pine and cedar wood gave out a regular and well-diffused warmth. Outside, the snow was still falling, and beyond the long windows, covered with their crimson curtains, the yellow air was full of soft and silent movement.

The extreme comfort of the lofty, panelled dining-room was accentuated a hundred-fold, to those entering it, by the chilly experience of the streets.

The electric lights burnt steadily in their silk shades, the gleams falling upon the elaborate table furniture in a thousand points of dancing light.

At one of the tables, laid for two people, Sir Robert Llwellyn was sitting. He was in evening dress, and his massive face was closely scrutinising a printed list propped up against a wine-glass before him. His expression was interested and intent. By his side was a sheet of the club note-paper, and from time to time he jotted down something upon it with a slender gold pencil.

The great archæologist was ordering dinner for himself and a guest with much thought and care.

Crême d'asperge à la Reine

in his neat writing, the letters distinct from one another – almost like an inscription in Uncial Greek character, one might have fancied.

Turbot à l'Amiral promised well; the plump, powerful fingers wrote it down.

Poulardes du Mans rôties with petits pois à la Française with a salade Niçoise to follow; that would be excellent! Then just a little suprème de pêches, à la Montreuil, which is quite the best kind of suprème, then some Parmesan before the coffee.

"Quite a simple dinner, Painter," he said to the steward of the room, – the famous "small dining-room" with its alcoves and discreet corners, – "simple but good. Of course you will tell Maurice that it is for me. I want him to do quite his best. If you will send this list off to the kitchens with a message, we will go into the wines together."