When It Was Dark Part 42

"Let us now turn to the ANGLO-SAXON sprung communities other than these Islands.

"In AMERICA we find a wave of lawlessness and fierce riot pa.s.sing over the country, such as it has never known before.

"The IRISHMEN and ITALIANS, who throng the congested quarters of the great cities, are robbing and murdering PROTESTANTS and JEWS.

The UNITED STATES Legislature is paralysed between the necessity of keeping order and the impossibility of resolution in the face of this tremendous _boulevers.e.m.e.nt_ of belief.

"From AUSTRALIA the foremost prelate of the great country writes of the utter overthrow of a communal moral sense, and concludes his communication with the following pathetic words:

"_'Everywhere,'_ he says, _'I see morals, no less than the religion which inculcates them, falling into neglect, set aside in a spirit of despair by fathers and mothers, treated with contempt by youths and maidens, spat upon and cursed by a degraded populace, a.s.sailed with eager sarcasm by the polite and cultured.'_

"The terrible seriousness of the situation need hardly be further insisted on here. Its reality cannot be more vividly indicated than by the statement of a single fact.

"CONSOLS ARE DOWN TO SIXTY-FIVE

"--and therefore we demand, in the name of humanity, a far more comprehensive and representative searching into the facts of the alleged 'discovery' at JERUSALEM. Society is falling to pieces as we write.

"Who will deny the reason?

"Already, after a few short weeks, we are learning that the world cannot go on without Christianity. That is the Truth which the world is forced to realise. And no essay in sociology, no special pleading on the part of Scientists or Historians, can shake our conviction that a creed which, when sudden doubts are thrown upon it, can be the means of destroying the essential fabric of human society, is not the true and una.s.sailable creed of mankind.

"We foresee an immediate reaction. The consequences of the wave of antichristian belief are now, and will be, so devastating, that sane men will find in Disbelief and its consequences a glorious recrudescence and a.s.surance of Faith."

Hands stared into the dying fire.

A solemn pa.s.sage from John Bright's great speech on the Crimean War came into his mind. The plangent power and deep earnestness of the words were even more applicable now than then.

_"The Angel of Death has been abroad throughout the land: you may almost hear the beating of his wings. There is no one, as when the first-born were slain of old, to sprinkle with blood the lintel and two side-posts of our doors, that he may spare and pa.s.s on."_

So they were asking for another commission! Well, they might try that as a forlorn hope, but _he knew_ that his discovery was real. Could _he_ be mistaken possibly? Could that congress of the learned be all mistaken and imposed upon? It was not possible. It could not be. Would that it _were_ possible.

There was no hope, despite the newspapers. For centuries the world had been living in a fool's paradise. He had destroyed it. It would be a hundred years before the echoes of his deed had died away.

But the terrible weight of the world's burden was too heavy for him to bear. He knew that. Not for much longer could he endure it.

The life seemed oozing out of him, pressed out by a weight--the sensation was physical.

He wished it was all over. He had no hope for the future, and no fear.

The weight was too heavy. The outside dark came through the walls, and began to close in on him. His heart beat loudly. It seemed to rise up in his throat and choke him.

The pressure grew each moment; mountains were being piled upon him, heavier, more heavy.

The wind was but a distant murmur now, but the weight was crus.h.i.+ng him.

Only a few more moments and his heart would burst. _At last!_

The dark thing huddled on the hearth-rug, which the girl found when she came down in the morning, was the scholar's body.

The newspaper he had been reading lay upon his chest.

CHAPTER IV

A LUNCHEON PARTY

Constantine Schuabe's great room at the Hotel Cecil had been entirely refurnished and arranged for the winter months.

The fur of great Arctic beasts lay upon the heavy Teheran carpets, which had replaced the summer matting--furs of enormous value. The dark red curtains which hung by windows and over doors were worked with threads of dull gold.

All the chairs were more ma.s.sive in material and upholstered warmly in soft leather; the logs in the fireplace crackled with white flame, amethyst in the glowing cavern beneath.

However the winter winds might sweep over the Thames below or the rain splash and welter on the Embankment, no sound or sign of the turmoil could reach or trouble the people who moved in the fragrant warmth and comfort of this room.

For his own part Schuabe never gave any attention to the _mise-en-scene_ by which he was surrounded, here or elsewhere. The head of a famous Oxford Street firm was told to call with his artists and undermen; he was given to understand that the best that could be done was to be done, and the matter was left entirely to him.

In this there was nothing of the _parvenu_ or of an ignorance of art, as far as Schuabe was concerned. He was a man of catholic and cultured taste. But experience had taught him that his furnis.h.i.+ng firm were trained to be catholic and cultured also, that an artist would see to it that no jarring notes appeared. And since he knew this, Schuabe infinitely preferred not to be bothered with details. In absolute contrast to Llwellyn, his mind was always busy with abstractions, with thought and forms of thought, things that cannot be handled or seen.

They were the real things for him always.

The millionaire sat alone by the glowing fire. He was wearing a long gown of camel's hair, dyed crimson, confined round the waist by a crimson cord. In this easy garment and a pair of morocco slippers without heels, he looked singularly Eastern. The whole face and figure suggested that--sinister, lonely, and splendid.

The morning papers were resting on a chair by his side. He was reading one of them.

It announced the death from heart disease of Mr. Cyril Hands while taking a few days' rest in a remote village of Cornwall. Not a shadow of regret pa.s.sed over the regular, impa.s.sive face. The eyes remained in fixed thought. He was logically going over the bearings of this event in his mind. How could it affect _him_? _Would_ it affect him one way or the other?

He paced the long room slowly. On the whole the incident seemed without meaning for him. If it meant anything at all it meant that his position was stronger than ever. The voice of the discoverer was now for ever silent. His testimony, his reluctant but convinced opinion, was upon record. Nothing could alter that. Hands might perhaps have had doubts in the future. He might have examined more keenly into the _way in which he came to examine the ground_ where the new tomb was hidden. Yes, this was better. That danger, remote as it had been, was over.

As his eyes wandered over the rest of the news columns they became more alert, speculative, and anxious. The world was in a tumult, which grew louder and louder every hour. Thrones were rocking, dynasties trembling.

He sank down in his chair with a sigh, pa.s.sing his hand wearily over his face. Who could have foreseen this? It was beyond belief. He gazed at the havoc and ruin in terrified surprise, as a child might who had lit a little fire of straw, which had grown and devoured a great city.

It was in this very room--just over there in the centre--that he had bought the brain and soul of the archaeologist.

The big man had stood exactly on that spot, blanched and trembling. His miserable notes of hand and promises to pay had flamed up in this fire.

And now? India was slipping swiftly away; a b.l.o.o.d.y civil war was brewing in America; Central Europe was a smouldering torch; the whips of Africa were cracking in the ears of Englishmen; the fortunes of thousands were melting away like ice in the sun. In London gentlemen were going from their clubs to their houses at night carrying pistols and sword-sticks.

North of Holborn, south of the Thames, no woman was safe after dark had fallen.

He saw his face in an oval silver gla.s.s. It fascinated him as it had never done before. He gripped the leather back of a chair and stared fiercely, hungrily, at the image. It was _this_, this man he was looking at, some stranger it seemed, who had done all this. He laughed--a dreadful, mirthless, hollow laugh. This ma.s.s of phosphates, carbon, and water, this moving, talking thing in a scarlet gown, was the pivot on which the world was turning!