When It Was Dark: The Story of a Great Conspiracy

"Oh, yes," said the chaplain, "you will only see those from a distance; we keep them well locked up, I assure you."

The girls laughed with him.

The party went laughing through the long, spotless corridors, peeping into the bright, airy living-rooms, where bodies without brains were mumbling and singing to each other.

The imbecile who moved vacantly with slobbering lip, the dementia patient, the log-like, general paralytic – "G. P." —things which must be fed, the barred and dangerous maniac, they saw them all with pleasant thrills of horror, disgust, and sometimes with laughter.

"Oh, Grace, do look at that funny little fat one in the corner – the one with his tongue hanging out! Isn't he weird?"

"There's one actually reading! He must be only pretending!"

A young doctor joined them – a handsome Scotchman with pleasant manners.

For a time the lunatics were forgotten.

"Well, now, have we seen all, Doctor Steward?" one of the girls said. "All the worst cases? It's really quite a new sensation, you know, and I always go in for new sensations."

"Did ye show the young leddies Schuabe?" said the doctor to the chaplain.

"Bless my soul!" he replied, "I must be going mad myself. I'd quite forgotten to show you Schuabe."

"Who is Schuabe?" said the youngest of the sisters, a girl just fresh from school at Saint Leonards.

"Oh, Maisie!" said the eldest. "Surely you remember. Why, it's only five years ago. He was the Manchester millionaire who went mad after trying to blow up the tomb of Christ. I think that was it. It was in all the papers. A young clergyman found out what he'd been trying to do, and then he went mad – this Schuabe creature, I mean, not the clergyman."

"Every one likes to have a look at this patient," said the doctor. "He has a little sleeping-room of his own and a special attendant. His money was all confiscated by order of the Government, but they allow two hundred a year for him. Otherwise he would be among the paupers."

The girls giggled with pleasurable anticipation.

The doctor unlocked a door. The party entered a fairly large room, simply furnished. In an arm-chair a uniformed attendant was sitting, reading a sporting paper.

The man sprang up and saluted as he heard the door open.

On a bed lay the idiot. He had grown very fat and looked healthy. The features were all coarsened, but the hair retained its colour of dark red.

He was sleeping.

"Now, Miss Clegg, ye'd never think that was the fellow that made such a stir in the world but five years since. But there he lies. He always eats as much as he can, and goes to sleep after his meal. He's waking up now, sir. Here, Mr. Schuabe, some ladies have come to see you."

It got up with a foolish grin and began some ungainly capers.

"Thank you so much, Mr. Pritchard," the girls said as they left the building. "We've enjoyed ourselves so much."

"I liked the little man with his tongue hanging out the best," said one.

"Oh, Mabel, you've no sense of humour! That Schuabe creature was the funniest of all!"

THE THIRD PICTURE

A Sunday evensong. The grim old Lancashire church of Walktown is full of people. The galleries are crowded, every seat in the aisles below is packed.

This night, Easter night, the church looks less forbidding. The harsh note is gone, something of the supreme joy of Holy Easter has driven it away.

Old Mr. Byars sits in his stall. He is tired by the long, happy day, and as the choir sings the last verse of the hymn before the sermon he sits down.

The delicate, intellectual face is a little pinched and transparent. Age has come, but it is to this faithful priest but as the rare bloom upon the fruits of peace and quiet.

How the thunderous voices peal in exultation!

Alleluia!

Christ is risen! The old man turned his head. His eyes were full of happy tears. He saw his daughter, a young and noble matron now, standing in a pew close to the chancel steps. He heard her pure voice, full of triumph. Christ is risen!

From his oak chair behind the altar rails Dean Gortre came down towards the pulpit.

Young still – strangely young for the dignity which they had pressed on him for two years before he would accept it – Basil ascended the steps.

Christ is risen!

The organ crashed; there was silence.

All the lights in the church were suddenly lowered to half their height.

The two candles in the pulpit shone brightly on the preacher's face.

They all saw that it was filled with holy fire.

Christ is risen!

"if christ be not risen your faith is vain"

The church was absolutely still as the words of the text rang out into it.

The people were thinking humbly, with contrite hearts, of the shame five years ago.

"Would that our imagination, under the conduct of Christian faith, could even faintly realise the scene when the Human Soul of Our Lord came with myriads of attendant angels to the grave of Joseph, to claim the Body that had hung upon the cross.

"To-night, with the promise and warrant of our own resurrection that His has given us, our thoughts involuntarily turn to those we call the dead. We feel that this Easter is for them also an occasion of rejoicing, and that the happiness of the earthly Church is shared by the loving and beloved choir behind the veil.

"Christ is risen! Away with the illusions which may have kept us from Him. Let us also arise and live. For, as the spouse sings in the Canticles, 'The winter is past, … the time of the singing of birds is come; … arise, my love, my fair one, and come away!'"

Christ is risen!

notes

1

This article has already been seen in the preceding chapter.