When It Was Dark Part 39

Mrs. Armstrong said nothing whatever, but turned to the other form. In this case the name was that of a Manchester alderman, obviously a Jew--Moses Goldstein, of Goldstein & Hildesheimer, chemical bleachers.

In a flowing business hand the following remarks were written:

"Regrettable increase of crime due in my opinion to sudden wave of disbelief in Christian doctrines. Have questioned men in my own works on the subject. Record this as fact without pretending to understand it. Crimes of violence on increase among Jewish workmen also. Probably sympathetic reaction against morality, though as a strict Jew myself find this doubly distressing.

"MOSES GOLDSTEIN."

"The famous philanthropist," murmured Mrs. Armstrong.

The lady seemed dazed. Her usual calm volubility seemed to have deserted her.

"This is a terrible blow," said Miss Paull, sadly, "and day by day things are getting worse as figures come in. It seems as if all our work has been in vain. Men seem to be relapsing into the state of the barbaric heathen world. But there is much more yet. I will read you an extract from Mrs. Mary P. Corbin's letter from Chicago. You will remember that she is the organising secretary of the United States branch of the League."

She took up a bundle of closely typewritten sheets.

"'The Friend to Poor Girls' Society' in this city reports a most painful state of things. The work has suddenly fallen to pieces and become totally disorganised. Many of the girls have left the home and returned to lives of prost.i.tution--there seems to be no restraining influence left. In a few cases girls have returned, after two or three weeks of sin, mere wrecks of their former selves. A---- S---- was a well-known girl on the streets when she was converted and brought to the home. Five weeks ago she went away, announcing her intention of resuming her former life. She has just returned in a dying condition from brutal ill-usage. She says that her former experience was nothing to what she has lately endured. Her words are terribly significant: '_I went back as I thought it was no use being good any more now that there isn't any Jesus. I thought I'd have a good old time. But it's not as it was.

h.e.l.l's broke loose in the streets. The men are a million times worse than they were. It's h.e.l.l now._'

"Another awful blow has been struck at the purity work. The state of the lower parts of Chicago and New York City has become so bad that even the munic.i.p.al authorities have become seriously alarmed.

Unmentionable orgies take place in public. Accordingly a bill is to be rushed through Congress licensing so many houses of ill-fame in each city ward, according to the Continental system."

She laid down the letter. "There is no need to read more than extracts,"

she said. "The letter is full of horrors. I may mention that the law against polygamy in the Mormon State of Utah is on the point of being repealed, and there can be no doubt that things will soon be as bad as ever there. Here is a letter from the Bishop of Toomarbin, who is at present in Melbourne, Australia. A Bill is preparing in the House of Legislature to make the divorce laws for men as easy and simple as possible, while women's privileges are to be greatly curtailed in this direction. In Rhodesia the mine-captains are beginning to flog native women quite unchecked by the local magistrates. English magistrates----"

"Stop, dear," said Mrs. Armstrong, with a sudden gesture almost of fear.

There was a craven, hunted look in the eyes of this well-known woman.

Her face was blanched with pain. She sat huddled up in her chair. All the stately confidence was gone. That proud bearing of equality, and more than equality, with men, which was so noticeable a characteristic of her port and manner, had vanished.

The white hand which lifted a cup of scalding tea to her lips trembled like a leaf.

The sisters sat together in silence. They sat there, names famous in the world for courage, ability, resource. To these two, perhaps more than to any others in England, had been given the power of building up the great edifice of women's enlightened position at the present day.

And now?

In a moment all was changed. The brute in man was awake, unchained, and loose. The fires of cruelty and l.u.s.t were lit, they heard the roaring of the fires like the roaring of wolves that "devour apace and nothing said."

Mrs. Armstrong was terribly affected. Her keen intelligence told her at once of coming horrors of which these were but the earliest signs.

The roaring of a great fire, louder and more menacing, nearer ...

nearer.

Christ had gone from the world never to return--Christ Whom the proud, wishful, worldly woman had not believed in.... They were flogging girls, selling girls ... the fires grew greater and greater ... nearer!

MARY, PITY WOMEN!

CHAPTER II

CYRIL HANDS REDUX

For the first two weeks after Hands's return he was utterly bewildered by the rush of events in which he must take part and had little or no time for thought.

His days were filled by official conferences with his chiefs at the Exploring Society, from which important but by no means wealthy body he had suddenly attained more than financial security.

Meeting succeeded meeting. Hands was in constant communication with the heads of the Church, Government, and Society. Interviewers from all the important papers shadowed him everywhere. Despite his protests, for he was a quiet and retiring man, photographers fought for him, and his long, somewhat melancholy face and pointed fair beard stared at him everywhere.

He had to read papers at learned societies, and afterwards women came and carried him off to evening parties without possibility of escape.

The Unitarians of England started a monster subscription for him, a subscription which grew so fast that the less sober papers began to estimate it day by day and to point out that the fortunate discoverer would be a rich man for life.

Everywhere he was flattered, caressed, and made much of. In fact, he underwent what to some natures is the grimmest torture of a humane age--he became the MAN OF THE HOUR. Even by Churchmen and others most interested in denying the truth of the discovery, Hands was treated with consideration and deference. His own _bona fides_ in the matter was indubitable, his long and notable record forbade suspicion.

Of Gortre Hands saw but little. Their greeting had been cordial, but there was some natural restraint, one fearing the att.i.tude of the other.

Gortre, no less than Hands, was much away from the chambers, and the pair had few confidences. Hands felt, naturally enough under the circ.u.mstances, that he would have been more comfortable with Spence. He was surprised to find him absent, but all he was able to glean was that the journalist had suddenly left for the Continent upon a special mission. Hands supposed that Continental feeling was to be thoroughly tested, and that the work had fallen to Spence.

Meanwhile the invitations flowed in. The old staircase of the inn was besieged with callers. In order to escape them, Hands was forced to spend much time in the chambers on the other side of the landing, which belonged to a young barrister, Kennedy by name, who was able to put a spare sitting-room at his disposal. This gentleman, briefless and happy, was somewhat of the d.i.c.k Swiveller type, and it gave him intense pleasure to reconnoitre the opposite "oak" through the slit of his letter-box, and to report and speculate upon those who stood knocking for admission.

How he loathed it all!

The shock and surprise of it was not one of the least distressing features.

Far away in the ancient Eastern city he had indeed realised the momentous nature of the strange and awful things he had found. But of the consequences to himself he had thought nothing, and of the effects on the world he had not had time to think.

Hands had never wished to be celebrated. His temperament was poetic in essence, retiring in action. He longed to be back under the eye of the sun, to move among the memorials of the past with his Arab boys, to lie upon the beach of the Dead Sea when no airs stirred, and, suddenly, to hear a vast, mysterious breaker, coming from nowhere, with no visible cause, like some great beast cras.h.i.+ng through the jungle.

And he had exchanged all this for lunches at inst.i.tutions, for hot rooms full of flowers and fools of women who said, "Oh, _do_ tell me all about your delightful discovery," smiling through their paint while the world's heart was breaking. And there was worse to come. At no distant date he would have to stand upon the platform at the Albert Hall, and Mr. Constantine Schuabe, M.P., Mrs. Hubert Armstrong, the writing woman--the whole crowd of uncongenial people--would hand him a cheque for some preposterous sum of money which he did not in the least want.

There would be speeches----

He was not made for this life.

His own convictions of Christianity had never been thoroughly formulated or marked out in his brain. All that was mystical in the great history of Christ had always attracted him. He took an aesthetic pleasure in the beautiful story. To him more than to most men it had become a vivid _panoramic_ vision. The background and accessories had been part of his daily life for years. It was as the figure of King Arthur and his old knights might be to some loving student of Malory.

And although his life was pure, his actions gentle and blameless, it had always been thus to him--a lovely and poetic picture and no more. He had never made a personal application of it to himself. His heart had never been touched, and he had never heard the Divine Voice calling to him.

At the end of a fortnight Hands found that he could stand the strain no longer. His nerves were failing him; there was a constant babble of meaningless voices in his ear which took all the zest and savour from life. His doctor told him quite unmistakably that he was doing too much, that he was not inured to this gaiety, and that he must go away to some solitude by the sea and rest.

The advice not only coincided with his own wishes, but made them possible. A good many engagements were cancelled, a paragraph appeared in the newspapers to say that Mr. Hands's medical adviser had insisted upon a thorough rest, and the man of the moment disappeared. Save only Gortre and the secretary of the Exploring Society, no one knew of his whereabouts.

In a week he was forgotten. Greater things began to animate Society--harsh, terrible, ugly things. There was no time to think of Hands, the instrument which had brought them about.

The doctor had recommended the remotest parts of Cornwall. Standing in his comfortable room at Harley Street, he expatiated, with an enthusiastic movement of his hand, upon the peace to be found in that lost country of frowning rocks and bottle-green seas, where, so far is it from the great centres of action, men still talk of "going into England" as if it were an enterprise, an adventure.

Two days found him at a lonely fis.h.i.+ng cove, rather than village, lodging in the house of a coast-guard, not far from Saint Ives.

A few whitewashed houses ran down to the beach of the little natural harbour where the boats were sheltered.