When It Was Dark/Chapter 27
CHAPTER III
all ye inhabitants of the world, and dwellers on the earth, see ye, when he lifteth up an ensign on the mountains .— Isaiah xviii: 3
HANDS awoke to terrible realisation.
The telegrams in the newspapers provided him with a bird's-eye view, an epitomised summary of a world in tumult.
Out of a wealth of detail, culled from innumerable telegrams and articles, certain facts stood out clearly.
In the Balkan States, always in unrest, a crisis, graver than ever before, suddenly came about. The situation flared up like a petrol explosion.
A great revival of Mohammedan enthusiasm had begun to spread from Jerusalem as soon as Europe had more or less definitely accepted the discovery made by Cyril Hands and confirmed by the international committee.
It was no longer possible to hold the troops of the Sultan in check. It was openly said by the correspondents that instructions had been sent from Yildiz Kiosk to the provincial Valis in both European and Asiatic Turkey that Christians were to be exterminated, swept for ever from the world.
Telegrams of dire importance filled the columns of the papers.
Hands would read in one Daily Wire:
"Paris (From our own Correspondent). — The Prince of Bulgaria has indefinitely postponed his departure, and remains at the Hotel Ritz for the present. It is impossible for him to progress beyond Vienna. Dr. Daneff, the Bulgarian Premier, has arrived here. In the course of an interview with a representative of Le Matin he has stated the only hope of saving the Christians remaining in the Balkan States lies in the intervention of Russia. 'The situation,' Dr. Daneff is reported to have said, 'has assumed the appearance of a religious war. The followers of Islam are drunk with triumph and hatred of the "Nazarenes." The recent discoveries in Jerusalem simply mean a licence to sweep Christians out of existence. The exulting cries of "Ashahadu, lá ílaha ill Allah" have already sounded the death-knell of our ancient faith in Bulgaria.' M. Daneff was extremely affected during the interview, and states that Prince Ferdinand is unable to leave his room."
Never before in the history of Eastern Europe had the future appeared so gloomy or the present been so replete with horror.
The massacres of bygone years were as nothing to those which were daily flashed over the wires to startle and appal a world which was still Christian, at least in name.
An extract from a leading article in the Daily Wire shows that the underlying reason and cause was thoroughly appreciated and understood in England no less than abroad.
"In this labyrinth of myth and murder," the article said, "a sudden and spontaneous outburst of hatred, of Mussulman hatred for the Christian, has now — owing to the overthrow of the chief accepted doctrine of the Christian faith — become a deliberate measure of extermination adopted by a barbarous Government as the simplest solution of the problem in the Near East. The stupendous fact which has lately burst upon the world has had effects which, while they might have been anticipated in some degree, have already passed far beyond the bounds of the most confirmed political pessimist's dream.
"From the fact of the Jerusalem discovery, ambitious agitators have hurried to draw their profit. Politicians have not hesitated to provoke a series of massacres, and by playing upon the worst forms of Mussulman fanaticism to organise that ghastliest system of crime upon the largest and most comprehensive scale. The whole thing is, moreover, immensely complicated by the utter unscrupulousness of that association universally notorious as the Macedonian Committee. These people, who may be described as a company of aspirants to the crown of immortality earned by other people's martyrdom, have themselves assisted in the work of lighting the fires of Turkish passion, and they have helped to provoke atrocities which will enable them to pose before the eyes of the civilised world as the interesting victims of Moslem ferocity."
Thus Hands read in his rock cave above the boiling winter sea. Thus and much more, as the cloud grew darker and darker over Eastern Europe, darker and darker day by day.
In a week it became plain to the world that Bulgarians, Servians, and Armenians alike had collapsed utterly before the insolent exultation of the Turks. The spirit of resistance and enthusiasm had gone. The ignorant and tortured peoples had no answer for those who flung foul insults at the Cross.
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 carriage 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 Sir 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 afilicted.
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,
'T is 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."
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!
"Come to security!
"Prayer is better than sleep!
"God is most great!
"There is no god but God!
"Arise, make morning, and to God be the praise!"
He had heard the magnificent chant as he passed by, almost kneeling with his Arabs. So short a time ago! Hardly three months — he had kept no count of time lately, but it could hardly be four months.
How utterly unconscious he had been on that radiant morning outside the Damascus Gate! He had seen the men at work, and was sitting under his sun-tent writing on his pad; he was just lighting a cigarette, he remembered, when Ionides, the foreman, had come running up to him, his shrewd, brown face wrinkled with excitement.
And now, even as he sat there on that stormy midnight, far from the world, even now the whole globe was echoing and reverberating with his discovery. He had opened the little rock chambers, and it seemed that the blows of the picks had set free a troop of ruinous spirits, who were devastating mankind.
Pandora's box — that legend fitted what he had done, but with a deadly difference.
He could not find that Hope remained. It would have been better a thousand times if the hot Eastern sun had struck him down that distant morning on his way through the city.
The awful weight, the initial responsibility rested with him.
He alone had been the means by which the world was being shaken with horrors — horrors growing daily, and that seemed as if the end would be unutterable night.
How the wind shrieked and wailed!
Εγω Ιωσηφ ὁ ἀπο Αριμαθειας.
The words were written in fire on his mind!
The wind was shrieking louder and louder.
The Atlantic boomed in one continuous burst of sound.
He looked once more at the leading article in the paper.
It was that article which was long afterwards remembered as the "Simple Statement" article.
The writer had spoken the thought that was by this time trembling for utterance on the lips and in the brains of all Englishmen — the thought which had never been so squarely faced, so frankly stated before.
Here and there passages started out more vividly than the rest. The words seemed to start out and stab him.
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"— So much for India, where, sprung from the same Cause, the indications are impossible to mistake.
"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 passing 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 bouleversement 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, assailed with eager sarcasm by the polite and cultured.'
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"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
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"— 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 unassailable creed of mankind.
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"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 assurance of Faith."
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Hands stared into the dying fire.
A solemn passage 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 pass 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 crushing 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.