When It Was Dark: The Story of a Great Conspiracy

As reflected in the newspapers, the public mind in England was becoming seriously alarmed at these horrible and daily bulletins, but neither Parliament nor people were as yet ready with a suggested course of action. The forces of disintegration had been at work; it seemed no longer possible to secure a great body of opinion as in the old times. And Englishmen were troubled with grave domestic problems also. More especially the great increase of the worst forms of crime attracted universal attention and dismay.

Then news came which shook the whole country to its depths. Men began to look into each other's eyes and ask what these things might mean.

Hands read:

"Our special correspondent in Bombay telegraphs disquieting news from India. The native regiments in Bengal are becoming difficult to handle. The officers of the staff corps are making special reports to headquarters. Three native officers of the 100th Bengal Lancers have been placed under arrest, though no particulars as to the exact reason for this step have been allowed to transpire."

This first guarded intimation of serious disaffection in India was followed, two days afterwards, by longer and far more serious reports. The Indian mail arrived with copies of The Madras Mail and The Times of India, which disclosed much more than had hitherto come over the cables.

Long extracts were printed from these journals in the English dailies.

Epitomised, Hands learned the following facts. From a mass of detail a few lurid facts remained fixed in his brain.

The well-meant but frequently unsuccessful mission efforts in Southern India were brought to a complete and utter stand-still.

By that thought-willed system of communication and the almost flame-like mouth-to-mouth carnage of news which is so inexplicable to Western minds, who can only understand the workings of the electric telegraph, the whole of India seemed to be throbbing with the news of the downfall of Christianity, and this within a fortnight of the publication of the European report.

From Cashmere to Travancore the millions whispered the news to each other with fierce if secret exultation.

The higher Hinduism, the key to the native character in India, the wall of caste, rose up grim and forbidding. The passionate earnestness of the missionaries was met by questions they could not answer. In a few days the work of years seemed utterly undone.

Europeans began to be insulted in the Punjaub as they had never been since the days before the Mutiny. English officers and civilians also began to send their wives home. The great P. and O. boats were inconveniently crowded.

In Afghanistan there was a great uneasiness. The Emir had received two Russian officers. Russian troops were massing on the north-west frontier. Fanatics began to appear in the Hill provinces, claiming divine missions. People began to remember that every fourth man, woman, and child in the whole human race is a Buddhist. Asia began to feel a great thrill of excitement permeating it through and through. There were rumours of a new incarnation of Buddha, who would lead his followers to the conquest of the West.

Troops from all over India began to concentrate near the Sri Ulang Pass in the Hindu-Kush.

Simultaneously with these ominous rumours of war came an extraordinary outburst of Christian fanaticism in Russia. The peasantry burst into a flame of anger against England. The priests of the Greek Church not only refused to believe in the Palestine discovery, but they refused to ignore it, as the Roman Catholics of the world were endeavouring to do.

They began to preach war against Great Britain for its infidelity, and the political Powers seized the opportunity to use religious fanaticism for their own ends.

All these events happened with appalling swiftness.

In the remote Cornish village Hands moved as in a dream. His eyes saw nothing of his surroundings, his face was pallid under the brown of his skin. Sometimes, as he sat alone on the moors or by the sea, he laughed loudly. Once a passing coast-guard heard him. The man told of it among the fishermen, and they regarded their silent visitor with something of awe, with the Celtic compassion for those mentally afflicted.

On the first Sunday of his arrival Hands heard the deep singing of hymns coming from the little white chapel on the cliff. He entered in time for the sermon, which was preached by a minister who had walked over from Penzance.

Here all the turmoil of the world beyond was ignored. It seemed as though nothing had ever been heard of the thing that was shaking the world. The pastor preached and prayed, the men and women answered with deep, groaning "Amens." It all mattered nothing to them. They heeded it no more than the wailing wind in the cove. The voice of Christ was not stilled in the hearts of this little congregation of the Faithful.

This chilled the recluse. He could find no meaning or comfort in it.

That evening he heard the daughter of the coast-guard with whom he lodged singing. It was a wild night, and Hands was sitting by the fire in his little sitting-room. Outside the wind and rain and waves were shouting furiously in the dark.

The girl was playing a few simple chords on the harmonium and singing to them.

"For ever with the Lord."

An untuneful voice, louder than need be, but with what conviction!

Hands tried to fix his attention on the newspaper which he held.

He read that in Rhodesia the mine capitalists were moving for slavery pure and simple. It was proposed openly that slavery should be the penalty for law-breaking for natives. This was the only way, it asserted, by which the labour problem in South Africa could be solved.

"Life from the dead is in that word,

'Tis immortality."

It seemed that there was small opposition to this proposal. It would be the best thing for the Kaffir, perhaps, this wise and kindly discipline. So the proposal was wrapped up.

"And nightly pitch my moving tent

A day's march nearer home."

Hands saw that, quite suddenly, the old horror of slavery had disappeared.

This, too, was coming, then? This old horror which Christians had banished from the world?

"So when my latest breath

Shall rend the veil in twain."

Hands started. His thoughts came back to the house in which he sat. The girl's voice touched him immeasurably. He heard it clearly in a lull of the storm. Then another tremendous gust of wind drowned it.

Two great tears rolled down his cheeks.

It was midnight, and all the people in the house were long since asleep, when Hands picked up the last of his newspapers.

It was Saturday's edition of the London Daily Mercury, the powerful rival of the Wire. A woman who had been to Penzance market had brought it home for him, otherwise he would have had to wait for it until the Monday morning.

He gazed wearily round the homely room.

Weariness, that was what lay heavy over mind and body – an utter weariness.

The firelight played upon the crude pictures, the simple ornaments, the ship worked in worsted when the coast-guard was a boy in the Navy, the shells from a Pacific island, a model gun under a glass shade. But his thoughts were not prisoned by these humble walls and the humble room in which he sat. He heard the groaning of the peoples of the world, the tramp of armies, the bitter cry of souls from whom hope had been plucked for ever.

He remembered the fair morning in Jerusalem when, with the earliest light of dawn, he had gone to work with his Arab boys before the heat of the day.

From the Mosque of Omar he had heard the sonorous chant of the muezzin.

"The night has gone with the darkness, and the day approaches with light and brightness!

"Praise God for securing His favour and kindness!

"God is most great! God is most great! I testify that there is no god but God!

"I testify that Mohammed is the Apostle of God!

"Come to prayer!