When It Was Dark/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII
A DINNER AT THE PANNIER D'OR
HELENA stood with her hand raised to her eyes, close by the port paddle-box, staring straight in front of her at a faint grey line upon the horizon.
A stiff breeze was blowing in the Channel, though the sun was shining brightly on the tossing waters, all yellow-green with pearl lights, like a picture by Henry Moore.
By the tall, graceful figure of the girl, swaying with the motion of the steamer and bending gracefully to the sudden onslaughts of the wind, stood a thick-set man of middle height, dressed in a tweed suit. His face was a strong one. Heavy reddish eyebrows hung over a pair of clear grey eyes, intellectual and kindly. The nose was beak-like and the large, rugged, red moustache hid the mouth.
This was Harold Spence, the journalist with whom Gortre was to live after the holiday was over and he began his work in Bloomsbury . Spence was snatching a few days from his work in Fleet Street, in order to accompany Gortre and Mr. and Miss Byars to Dieppe. It had been his first introduction to the vicar and his daughter.
"So that is really France, Mr. Spence!" said Helena; "the very first view of a foreign country I've ever had. I don't suppose you've an idea of what I'm feeling now? It seems so wonderful, something I've been waiting for all my life."
Spence smiled kindly, irradiating his face with good humour as he did so.
"Well, my sensations or emotions at present, Miss Byars, are entirely confined to wondering whether I am going to be seasick or not."
"Don't speak of it!" said a thin voice, a voice from which all the blood seemed to be drained, and, turning, they saw the vicar at their elbow.
His face was livid, his beard hung in lank dejection, a sincere misery poured from his pathetic eyes.
"Basil," he said, "Basil is down in the saloon eating greasy cold chicken and ham and drinking pale ale! I told him it was an outrage —" His feelings overcame him and he staggered away towards the stern.
"Poor father," said the girl. "He never could stand the sea, you know. But he very soon gets all right when he is on dry land again. Oh, look! that must be a church tower! I can see it quite distinctly, and the sun on the roofs of the houses!"
"That is St. Jacques," said Spence, "and that dome some way to the right, is St. Remy. Farthest of all to the right, on the cliffs, you can just see the château where the garrison is."
Helena gazed eagerly and became silent in her excitement. Basil, who came up from the saloon and joined them, the healthy colour beginning to glow out on his cheeks once more, watched her tenderly. There was something childishly sweet in her delight as the broad, tub-like boat kicked its way rapidly towards the quaint old foreign town.
In smoky Walktown he had not often seen her thus. Life was a more sober thing there, and her nature was graver than that of many girls, attuned to her environment. But, at the beginning of this holiday time, under a brilliant spring sun, which she was already beginning to imagine had a foreign charm about it, she too was happy and in a holiday mood.
Basil pulled out his new and glorious gold watch, which had replaced the battered old gun-metal one he usually wore. Though not a poor man, he was simple in all his tastes, and the new toy gave him a recurring and childish pleasure whenever he looked at it.
"We ought to be in in about twenty minutes," he said. Have you noticed that the tossing of the ship has almost stopped? The land protects us. How clear the town is growing! I wonder if you will remember any of your French, Helena? I almost wish I was like you, seeing a foreign country for the first time. Spence is the real voyageur though. He's been all over the world for his paper."
The vicar came up to them again, just as there was a general movement of the passengers towards the deck. A hooting cry from the steam whistle wailed over the water and the boat began to move slowly.
In a few more minutes they had passed the breakwater and were gliding slowly past the wharves towards the landing-stage.
Suddenly Helena clutched hold of Basil's arm.
"O Basil," she whispered, "how beautiful — look! Guarding the harbour!"
He turned and followed the direction of her glance.
An enormous crucifix, more than life size, planted in the ground, rose from the low cliffs on the right for all entering the harbour to see.
They watched the symbol in silence as the passengers chattered on every side and gathered up their rugs and hand-bags.
Gortre slipped his arm through Helena's.
The reminder was so vivid and sudden it affected them powerfully. They were both people of the world, living in it and enjoying the pleasures of life that came in their way. Gortre was not one of those narrow, and even ill-bred, young priests with a text for ever on his lips, a sort of inopportune concordance, with an unpleasant flavour of omniscience. His religion and Helena's was too deep and fibrous a thing for commonplaces about it. It did not continually effervesce within and break forth in minute and constant bubbles, losing all its sincerity and beauty by the vulgar wear and tear of a verbal trick.
But it was always and for ever with him a transmuting force which changed his life each hour in a way of which the nominal believer has no conception.
A letter he had once written to Helena during a holiday compressed all his belief, and his joy in his belief, into a few short lines. Thus had run the sincere and simple statement, unadorned by any effort of literary grace to give it point and force: —
"Day by day as your letters come I go on saying my prayers for you, and with you, in fresh faith and confidence. You know that I absolutely trust the Lord Jesus Christ, who is, I believe, the God who made the worlds, and that I pray to Him continually, relying on His promises.
"I keep on reading all sides of the question, as your father does also, and while admitting all that honest criticism and sincere intellectual doubt can teach me, and freely conceding that there is no infallible record in the New Testament, I grow more and more convinced that the Gospels and Paul's letters relate facts and not imaginations or hallucinations. And the more strongly my intellect is convinced, so much more does my heart delight in the love of God, who has given Himself for me. How magnificent is that finale of St. John's Gospel! 'Thomas saith unto Him, My Lord and my God.' And, then, how exquisite is the supplement about the manifestation at the lake side! Imagine the skill of the literary man who invented that! Fancy such a man existing in a.d. 150 or thereabouts! I see Mrs. Humphry Ward says 'it was a dream which the old man at Ephesus related, and his disciples thought it was fact.' And she is a literary person!"
So, as the lovers glided slowly past the high symbol of God's pain, the worship in their hearts found but little utterance on their lips, though they were deeply touched.
It seemed a good omen to welcome them to France!
Spence remained to look after the luggage and to see it through the Customs, and the three others resolved to walk to the rooms which they had taken in the Faubourg de la Barre on the steep hill behind the château.
They passed over the railway line in the middle of the road, and past the cafés which cluster round the landing- stage, into the quaint market-place, with the great Gothic Cathedral Church of St. Jacques upon one side, and the colossal statue of Duquesne surrounded by baskets of spring flowers in the centre.
To Helena Byars that simple progress was one of unalloyed excitement and delight. The small and wiry soldiers in their unfamiliar uniforms; an officer sipping vermouth in a café with spurs, sword, and helmet shining in the sun; two black priests, with huge furry hats — all the moving colour of the scene gave her new and delightful sensations.
"It's all so different!" she said breathlessly. "So bright and gay. What is that red thing over the tobacco shop, and that little brass dish over the hair-dresser's? Think of Walktown or Salford, now!"
The house in the Faubourg de la Barre was kept by a Madame Vamier, who spoke English well, and was in the habit of letting her rooms to English people. A late déjeuner was ready for them.
The omelette was a revelation to Helena, and the rognons sautes filled her with respect for such cooking, but she was impatient, nevertheless, to be out and sight-seeing.
The vicar was tired, and proposed to stay indoors with the Spectator, and Spence had some letters to write, so Basil and Helena went out alone.
"The vicar and I will meet you at six," Spence said, "at the Cafe des Tribuneaux, that big place with the gabled roof in the centre of the town. At six the l'heure verre begins, the time when everyone goes out for an aperitif, the appetiser before dinner; afterwards I'll take you to dine at the Pannier d'Or, a jolly little restaurant I know of, and in the evening we'll go to the Casino."
Madame Vamier, the patronne, was in her kitchen sitting-room at the bottom of the stairs, and they looked in through the hatchway as they passed to tell her that they were not dining indoors.
On the floor a little girl, with pale yellow hair, an engaging button of three, was playing with a live rabbit, plump and mouse-coloured.
"How sweet!" said Helena, who was in a mood which made her ready to appreciate everything. "Look at the little darling with its pet. Has baby had the rabbit long, Madame Varnier?"
The Frenchwoman smiled lavishly. "Est-elle gentille l'enfant! hein! I bring the lapin chez moi from the magazin yesterday. There was very good lapins yesterday. I buy when I can. Je trouverai ça plus prudent. He is for the déjeuner of mademoiselle to-morrow. I take him so," — she caught up the animal and suited the action to the word, — "I press his throat till his mouth open, and I pour a little cognac into him. Il se meurt, and the flesh have a delicious flavour from the cognac!"
"How perfectly horrible!" said Helena as they came out into the street and walked down the hill. "Fancy seeing one's lunch alive and playing about like that, and then killing it with brandy, too! What pigs these French people are!"
Soon after the cool gloom of St. Remy enveloped them. Under the big dome they lingered for a time, walking from chapel to chapel, where nuns were praying. But it dulled them rather, and they had more pleasure in the grey and Gothic twilight of St. Jacques. Here the eye was uplifted by more noble lines, there was a more mediæval and romantic feeling about the place.
"We will come here to Mass on Sunday," said Basil. "I shall not go to the English Church at all. I never do abroad, and the vicar agrees with me. You see one belongs to the Catholic Church in England. In France one belongs to it, too. The 'Protestant' Church, as they call it, with an English clergyman, is, of course, a Dissenting church here."
"I see your point," said Helena, "though I don't know that I quite agree with it. But I have never been to a Roman Catholic church in England, and I want to see some of the services. 'Bowing down in the House of Rimmon,' Mr. Philemon would call it at Walktown."
They turned down a narrow street of quiet houses, and came out on to the Plage. There were a good many people walking up and down the great promenade from the Casino to the harbour mouth. An air of fulness and prosperity floated round the magnificent hotels which faced the sea.
It was a spring season, owing to the unusual mildness of the weather, and Dieppe was full of people. The Casino was opened temporarily after the long sleep of the winter, and a company was performing there, having come on from the theatre at Rouen.
"What a curious change from the churches and market-place," said Helena. "This is tremendously smart and fashionable. How well-dressed every one is. Look at that red-haired woman with the furs. This is being quite in the world again."
They began a steady walk towards the pier and lighthouse. The wind was fresh, though not troublesome, and at five o'clock the sun, low in the sky, was still bright, and could give his animation to the picture.
The two young people amused themselves by speculations about the varied types of people who passed and repassed them. Gortre wore a suit of very dark grey, with a short coat and an ordinary tweed cap — his holiday suit, he called it — and, except for his clerical collar, there was little to show his calling. He was pleased, with a humorous sense of proprietorship, a kind of vicarious vanity, to notice the attention and admiration excited by the beautiful English girl at his side.
Helena Byars held her own among the cosmopolitan crowd of women who walked on the Plage. Her beauty was Saxon, very English, and not of a type that is always appreciated to its full value on the Continent, but it shone the more from Latin contrasts, and could not escape remark.
Every now and again they turned, at distances of a quarter of a mile or so, and during the recurrence of their beat they began to notice a person whom they met several times, coming and going.
He was an enormously big man, broad and tall, dressed expensively and with care. His size alone was sufficient to mark him out of the usual, but his personality seemed to them no less arresting and strange.
His large, smooth face was fat, the eyes small and brilliant, with heavy pouches under them. His whole manner was a trifle florid and Georgian. Basil said that he seemed to belong to the Prince Regent's period in some subtle way. "I can imagine him on the lawns at Brighton or dining in the Pavilion," he said. "What a sensual, evil face the man has! Of course it may mean nothing, though. The Bishop of —, one of the saints of the time, whose work on the Gospels is the most wonderful thing ever done in the way of Christian apologetics, has a face like one of the grotesque devils carved on the roof of Notre Dame or Lincoln Cathedral. But this man seems by his face to have no soul. One can't feel it is there, as one does, thank God! with most people."
"But what an intellect such a man must have! Look at him now. Look at the shape of his head. And besides, you can see it in his face, despite its sensuality and materialism. He must be some distinguished person. I seem to remember pictures of him, just lately, too, in the illustrated papers, only I can't get a name to them. I'm certain he's English, and some one of importance."
The big man passed them again with a quiet and swift glance of appreciation for Helena. He seemed lonely. Basil and Helena realised that he would have welcomed a chance word of greeting, some overture of friendship, which is not so impossible between English people abroad — even in adjacent Dieppe — as in our own country.
But neither of them responded to the unspoken wish they felt in the stranger. They were quite happy with each other, and presently they saw him light a cigar and turn into one of the great hotels.
They discussed the man for a few minutes — he had made an odd impression on them by his personality — and then found that it was time for the rendezvous at the Café des Tribuneaux.
By this time dusk was falling, and the sea moaned with a certain melancholy. But the town began to be brilliant with electric lights, and the florid Moorish building of the Casino was jewelled everywhere.
They turned away to the left, leaving the sea behind them, and, passing through a narrow street by the Government tobacco factory, came into the town again, and, after a short walk, to the café.
The place was bright and animated — lights, mirrors, and gilding, the stir and movement of the pavement, combined to make a novel and attractive picture for the English girl. The night was not cold, and they sat under the awning at a little round table watching the merry groups with interest. In a few minutes after their arrival they saw Spence and the vicar, now quite restored and well, coming towards them. They had forborne to order anything before the arrival of their companions.
The journalist took them under his wing at once. It amused him to be a cicerone to help them to a feeling of being at home. Gortre and Mr. Byars had been in Switzerland, and the latter at Rome on one occasion, but under the wing of a bishop's son who made his livelihood out of personally conducting parties to Continental towns of interest for a fixed fee. There was little freedom in these cut-and-dried tours, with their lectures en route and the very dinners in the hotel ordered for the tourists, and everything so arranged that they need not speak a word of any foreign language.
For the vicar, Spence prescribed a vermouth sec ; Gortre, a courtesy invalid, was given a minute glass of an amber-coloured liquid with quinine in it — "Dubonnet" Spence called it; and Helena had a sirop of menthe.
They were all very happy together in the simple-minded, almost childish, way of quiet, intellectual people. Their enjoyment of the novel liqueurs, in a small café at tourist-haunted Dieppe, was as great as that of any sybarite at the Hotel Ritz in Paris, or at a rare dinner at Giro's in Monte Carlo.
Spence ordered an absinthe for himself.
The vicar seemed slightly perturbed. "Isn't that stuff rather dangerous, Spence?" he said, shrinking a little from the glass when the waiter brought it. "I've heard terrible things of it."
"Oh, I know," said the journalist, laughing, "people call it the French national vice and write tirades against it. Of course if it becomes a regular habit it is dangerous, and excess in absinthe is worse than most things. But one glass taken now and again is a wonderful stomachic and positively beneficial. I take one, perhaps, five times in a year and like it. But, like all good things, it is terribly abused both by the people who use it and those who don't."
Suddenly Helena turned to Gortre.
"Oh, look, Basil!" she said. "There is our friend of the Plage — Quinbus Flestrin, the mountain of flesh, you remember your Swift?"
The big stranger, now in evening dress and a heavy fur coat, had just come into the café and was sitting there with a cigarette and a Paris paper. He seemed lost in some sort of anxious speculation — at least so it seemed by the drooping of the journal in his massive fingers and the set expression of abstraction which lingered in his eyes and spread a veil over his countenance.
They had all turned at Helena's exclamation and looked towards the other side of the café where the man was sitting.
"Why, that's Sir Robert Llwellyn," said Spence.
The vicar looked up eagerly. "The great authority on the antiquities of the Holy Land?" he said.
"Yes, that's the man. They knighted him the other day. He's supposed to be the greatest living authority, you know."
"Do you know him, then?" asked the vicar.
"Oh, yes," said Spence, carelessly. "One knows every one in my trade. I have to. I've often gone to him for information when anything very special has been discovered. And I've met him in clubs and at lectures or at first nights at the theatre. He is a great play-goer."
"A decent sort of man?" said Gortre in a tone which certainly implied a doubt.
Spence hesitated a moment. "Oh, well, I suppose so," he said carelessly. "There are tales about his private life, but probably quite untrue. He's a man of the world as well as a great scholar, and I suppose the rather unusual combination makes people talk. But he is right up at the top of the tree, — goes everywhere; and he's just been knighted for his work. I'll go over and speak to him."
"If he'll come over," said the vicar, his eyes alight with anticipation and the hope of a talk with this famous expert on the subjects nearest his own heart, "bring him, please. There is nothing I should like better than a chat with him. I know his Modern Discoveries and Holy Writ almost by heart."
They watched Spence go across to Sir Robert's table. The big man started as he was spoken to, looked up in surprise, then smiled with pleasure, and extended a welcoming hand. Spence sat down beside him and they were soon in the middle of a brisk conversation.
"The poor man looked very bored until Mr. Spence spoke to him," said Helena. "Father, I'm sure you'll have your wish. He seems glad to have some one to talk to."
She was right. After a minute or two the journalist returned with Llwellyn, and the five of them were soon in a full flood of talk.
"I was going to dine alone at my hotel" said the Professor, at length; "but Spence says that he knows of a decent restaurant here. I wonder if you would let me be one of your party? I'm quite alone in Dieppe for a couple of days. I'm waiting for a friend with whom I am going to travel."
"Oh, do come, Sir Robert," said the vicar, with manifest pleasure. "Are you going to be away from England for long?"
"I have leave from the British Museum for a year," said the Professor. "My doctor says that I require absolute rest. I am en route for Marseilles and from there to Alexandria."
The Pannier d'Or proved a pleasant little place, and the dinner was excellent. The Professor surprised and then amused the others by his criticism of the viands. He made the dinner his especial business, sent for the cook and had a serious conversation with him, chose the wines with extreme care.
His knowledge of the culinary art was enormous, and he treated it with a kind of reverence, addressing himself more particularly to Helena.
"Yes, Miss Byars, you must be most careful in the preparation of really good crayfish soup. This is excellent. The great secret is to flavour with a little lobster spawn and to mix the crumb of a French roll with the stock — white stock of course — before you add the powdered shells and anchovies."
Many times, despite his impatience to get to deeper and more congenial subjects, the vicar smiled at the purring of this gourmet, who seemed to prefer a sauce to an inscription and rissoles to research.
But with the special coffee — covered with fine yellow foam and sweetened with crystals of amber sugar — the vicar's hour came. Sir Robert realised that it was inevitable and with a half sigh gave the required opening.
Once started, his manner changed utterly. The mask of materialism peeled away from his face, which became younger, brighter, as thought animated it, and new, finer lines cames out upon it as knowledge poured from him.
The conversation threatened to be a long one. Spence saw that and proposed to go on to the Casino with Helena, leaving the two clergymen with Llwellyn. It was when they had gone that the trio settled down completely.
It resolved itself at first into a duologue between the two elder men. Gortre's knowledge was too general and superficial on these purely antiquarian matters to allow him to take much part in it. He sat sipping his coffee and listening with keen attention and great enjoyment to this talk of experts. He had not liked Llwellyn from the first and could not do so even now, but he was forced to recognise the enormous intellectual activity and power of the big, purring creature before him.
Step by step the two archaeologists went over the new discoveries being made in the ground between the City Wall of Jerusalem and the Hill of "Jeremiah's Grotto." They talked of the blue and purple mosaics found on the Mount of Olives, of all that had been done by the English and German excavators during the past years.
Gradually the discussion became more intimate and began to touch on great issues.
Mr. Byars was in a state of extraordinary interest. His knowledge was wide, and Llwellyn early realised this, speaking to him as an equal, but beside the Professor's all-embracing achievements it was as nothing. The clergyman learnt something fresh, some sudden illuminating point of view, some irradiating fact, at every moment.
"I suppose," Mr. Byars said at length, "that the true situation of the Holy Sepulchre is still a matter of considerable doubt, Professor. Your view would interest me extremely."
"My view," said Llwellyn, with remarkable earnestness and with an emphasis which left no doubt about his convictions, "is that the Sepulchre has not yet been located."
"And your view is authoritative of course," said Mr. Byars.
The Professor bowed.
"That is as it may be," he said, "but I have no doubt upon the subject. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is quite out of the question. There is really no historical evidence for it beyond a foolish dream of the Empress Helena, in a.d. 326. The people who know dismiss the traditional site at once. Of course it is generally believed, but one cannot expect the world at large to be cognisant of the doings of the authorities. Canon MacColl has said that the traditional site is the real one, and as his name has never been out of the public eye since what were called 'The Bulgarian Atrocities,' they are content to follow his lead. Then there is the question of the second site, in which a great many people believe they have found the true Golgotha and Sepulchre. 'The Gordon Tomb,' as it has been called, excited a great deal of attention at the time of its discovery. You may remember that I went to Jerusalem on behalf of the Times to investigate the matter. You may recollect that I proved beyond dispute that the tomb was not Jewish at all, but indubitably Christian and long subsequent to the time of Christ As a matter of fact, when the tomb was excavated in 1873 it was full of human bones and the mould of decomposed bodies, and there were two red-painted crosses on the walls. The tomb was close to a large Crusading hospice, and I have no doubt that it was used for the burial of pilgrims. Besides, my excavations proved that the second "city wall" must have included the new site, so that the Gospel narrative at once demolishes the new theory. I embodied twenty-seven other minor proofs in my letters to the Times also. No, Mr. Byars, my conviction is that we are not yet able to locate in any way the position of Golgotha and the Holy Tomb."
"You think that is to come?" asked Gortre.
"I feel certain," answered the Professor, with great deliberation and meaning — "I feel certain that we are on the eve of stupendous discoveries in this direction."
His tones were so impressive and so charged with import that the two clergymen looked quickly at each other. It seemed obvious that Llwellyn was aware of some impending discoveries. He must, they knew, be in constant touch with all that was being done in Palestine. Curiously enough, his words gave each of them a certain sense of chill, of uneasiness. There seemed to be something behind them, something of sinister suggestion, which they could not divine or formulate, but merely felt as an action upon the nerves.
It was a rare experience to sit with the greatest living authority upon a subject, and hear his views — views which it would be folly not to accept. His knowledge was so sure and so profound, a sense of power flowed from him.
But though both men felt a dim premonition of what his words might possibly convey, neither could bring himself to a deliberate question. Nor did Llwellyn appear to invite it. During the whole of their talk he had sedulously avoided any religious questions. He had dealt solely with historical aspects.
His position in the religious world was singular. His knowledge of Biblical history was one of its assets, but he was not known definitely as a believer.
His attitude had always been absolutely noncommittal He did the work he had to do without taking sides.
It had become generally understood that no definite statement of his own personal convictions was to be asked or expected from him.
The general consensus of opinion was that Sir Robert Llwellyn was not a believer in the divinity of Christ; but it was merely an opinion, and had never been confirmed by him.
There was rather a tense silence for a short time.
The Professor broke it.
"Let me show you," he said, taking a gold pencil-case from his pocket, "a little map which I published at the time of the agitation about Gordon's Tomb. I can trace the course of the city walls for you."
He felt in his pocket for some paper on which to make the drawing, and took out a letter.
Gortre and the vicar drew their chairs closer.
Suddenly a curious pain shot through Basil's head and all his pulses throbbed violently. He experienced a terribly familiar sensation — the sick fear and repulsion of the night before his illness in the great library. The aroma of some utterly evil and abominable personality seemed to come into his brain.
For, as he had looked down at the paper on which the great white fingers were now tracing thin lines, he had seen, before Llwellyn turned it over, a firm, plain signature, thus:
With some excuse about the heat of the room, he left it and went out into the night.
His brain was busy with terrible intuitive forebodings, he seemed to be caught up in the fringe of some great net, the phantoms of his illness came round him once more, the dark air was thick with their wings — vague, and because of that more hideous.
He passed the lighted kiosk at the Casino entrance with a white, set face.
He was going home to pray.