Chapter II: Part 2

Some light is thrown on the character of Byfield and his connection with this story by a pudgy volume of old sermons of the Commonwealth period which is contained in the library of the college. Among the sermons which are bound up in it is one which bears the date 1643 and is designated on the title page:

A FAITHFUL ADMONICION of the Baalite sin of _Enchanters & Stargazers_, preacht to the Colonel Cromwell’s Souldiers in Saint Pulcher’s (_i.e._ Saint Sepulchre’s) church, in Cambridge, by the fruitfull Minister, _Adoniram Byfield_, late departed unto God, in the yeare 1643, touching that of _Acts_ the seventh, verse 43, _Ye took up the Tabernacle of Moloch, the Star of your god Remphan, figures which ye made to worship them; & I will carrie you away beyond Babylon_.

The discourse, in its title as in its contents, reveals its author as one of the fanatics who wrought on the ignorance and prejudice against “carnal” learning which actuated the Cromwellian soldiers in their brutal usage of the University “scholars” in 1643. All Byfield’s learning was contained in one book--_the_ Book. For him the revelation which gave it sufficed for its interpretation. What needed Greek to the man who spoke mysteries in unknown tongues, or the light of comment to him who was carried in the spirit into the radiance of the third heaven?

Now Allen, too, was an enthusiast, lost in mystic speculation. His speculation was in the then novel science of mathematics and astronomy. Even to minds not darkened by the religious mania that possessed Byfield that science was clouded with suspicion in the middle of the seventeenth century. Anglican, Puritan, and Catholic were agreed in regarding its great exponent, Descartes, as an atheist. Mathematicians were looked upon as necromancers, and Thomas Hobbes says that in his days at Oxford the study was considered to be “smutched with the black art,” and fathers, from an apprehension of its malign influence, refrained from sending their sons to that University. How deep the prejudice had sunk into the soul of Adoniram his sermon shows. The occasion which suggested it was this. A pious cornet, leaving a prayer-meeting at night, fell down one of the steep, unlighted staircases of the college and broke his neck. Two or three of the troopers were taken with a dangerous attack of dysentery. There was talk of these misadventures among the soldiers, who somehow connected them with Allen and his studies. The floating gossip gathered into a settled conviction in the mind of Adoniram.

For Allen was a mysterious person. Whether it was because he was engrossed in his studies, or that he shrank from exposing himself to the insults of the soldiers, he seldom showed himself outside his chamber. Perhaps he was tied to it by the melancholy to which Sherman ascribed his violent end. In his three months’ sojourn on Allen’s staircase Byfield had not seen him a dozen times, and the mystery of his closed door awakened the most fantastic speculations in the chaplain’s mind. For hours together, in the room above, he could hear the mumbled tones of Allen’s voice, rising and falling in ceaseless flow. No answer came, and no word that the listener could catch conveyed to his mind any intelligible sense. Once the voice was raised in a high key and Byfield distinctly heard the ominous ejaculation, “Avaunt, Sathanas, avaunt!” Once through his partly open door he had caught sight of him standing before a board chalked with figures and symbols which the imagination of Byfield interpreted as magical. At night, from the court below, he would watch the astrologer’s lighted window, and when Allen turned his perspective glass upon the stars the conviction became rooted in his watcher’s mind that he was living in perilous neighbourhood to one of the peeping and muttering wizards of whom the Holy Book spoke.

An unusual occurrence strengthened the suspicions of Byfield. One night he heard Allen creep softly down the staircase past his room; and, opening his door, he saw him disappear round the staircase foot, candle in hand. Silently, in the dark, Byfield followed him and saw him pass into the Porter’s lodge. The soldiers were in bed and the armoury was unguarded. Through the lighted pane he saw Allen take down a horse-pistol from a rack on the wall. He examined it closely, tried the lock, poised it as if to take aim, then replaced it and, leaving the lodge, disappeared up the staircase with his candle. A world of suspicions rushed on Byfield’s mind, and they were not allayed when the soldiers reported in the morning that the pistols were intact. But one of the sick soldiers died that week.

Brooding on this incident Adoniram became more than ever convinced of the Satanic purposes and powers of his neighbour, and his suspicions were confirmed by another mysterious circumstance. As the weeks passed he became aware that at a late hour of night Allen’s door was quietly opened. There followed a patter of scampering feet down the staircase, succeeded by silence. In an hour or two the sound came back. The patter went up the stairs to Allen’s chamber, and then the door was closed. To lie awake waiting for this ghostly sound became a horror to Byfield’s diseased imagination. In his bed he prayed and sang psalms to be relieved of it. Then he abandoned thoughts of sleep and would sit up waiting if he might surprise and detect this walking terror of the night. At first in the darkness of the stairs it eluded him. One night, light in hand, he managed to get a glimpse of it as it disappeared at the foot of the stairs. It was shaped like a large black cat.

Far from allaying his terrors, the discovery awakened new questionings in the heart of Byfield. Quietly he made his way up to Allen’s door. It stood open and a candle burnt within. From where he stood he could see each corner of the room. There was the board scribbled with hieroglyphs: there were the magical books open on the table: there were the necromancer’s instruments of unknown purpose. But there was no live thing in the room, and no sound save the rustling of papers disturbed by the night air from the open window.

A horrible certitude seized on the chaplain’s mind. This Thing that he had caught sight of was no cat. It was the Evil One himself, or it was the wizard translated into animal shape. On what foul errand was he bent? Who was to be his new victim? With a flash there came upon his mind the story how Phinehas had executed judgment on the men that were joined to Baal-peor, and had stayed the plague from the congregation of Israel. He would be the minister of the Lord’s vengeance on the wicked one, and it should be counted unto him for righteousness unto all generations for evermore.

He went down to the armoury in the Porter’s lodge. Six pistols, he knew, were in the rack on the wall. Strange that to-night there were only five--a fresh proof of the justice of his fears. One of the five he selected, primed, loaded and cocked it in readiness for the wizard’s return. He took his stand in the shadow of the wall, at the entrance of the staircase. That his aim might be surer he left his candle burning at the stair-foot.

In solemn stillness the minutes drew themselves out into hours while Adoniram waited and prayed to himself. Then in the poring darkness he became sensible of a moving presence, noiseless and unseen. For a moment it appeared in the light of the candle, not two paces distant. It was the returning cat. A triumphant exclamation sprang to Byfield’s lips, “God shall shoot at them, suddenly shall they be wounded”--and he fired.

With the report of the pistol there rang through the court a dismal outcry, not human nor animal, but resembling, as it seemed to the excited imagination of the chaplain, that of a lost soul in torment. With a scurry the creature disappeared in the darkness of the court, and Byfield did not pursue it. The deed was done--that he felt sure of--and as he replaced the pistol in the rack a gush of religious exaltation filled his heart. That night there was no return of the pattering steps outside his door, and he slept well.

* * * * *

Next day the body of Thomas Allen was discovered in the grove which girds the college--his breast pierced by a bullet. It was surmised that he had dragged himself thither from the court. There were tracks of blood from the staircase foot, where it was conjectured that he had shot himself, and a pistol was missing from the armoury. Some of the inmates of the court had been aroused by the discharge of the weapon. The general conclusion was that recorded by Sherman--that the fatal act was prompted by brooding melancholy.

Of his part in the night’s transactions Byfield said nothing. The grim intelligence, succeeding the religious excitation of the night, brought to him questioning, dread, horror. Whatever others might surmise, he was fatally convinced that it was by his hand that Allen had died. Pity for the dead man had no place in the dark cabin of his soul. But how was it with himself? How should his action be weighed before the awful Throne? His lurid thought pictured the Great Judgment as already begun, the Book opened, the Accuser of the Brethren standing to resist him, and the dreadful sentence of Cain pronounced upon him, “Now art thou cursed from the earth.”

In the evening he heard them bring the dead man to the chamber above his own. They laid him on his bed, and, closing the door, left him and descended the stairs. The sound of their footsteps died away and left a dreadful silence. As the darkness grew the horror of the stillness became insupportable. How he yearned that he might hear again the familiar muffled voice in the room above! And in an access of fervour he prayed aloud that the terrible present might pass from him, that the hours might go back, as on the dial of Ahaz, and all might be as yesterday.

Suddenly, as the prayer died on his lips, the silence was broken. He could not be mistaken. Very quietly he heard Allen’s door open, and the old, pattering steps crept softly down the stairs. They passed his door. They were gone before he could rise from his knees to open it. A momentary flash lighted the gloom in Byfield’s soul. What if his prayer was heard, if Allen was not dead, if the events of the past twenty-four hours were only a dream and a delusion of the Wicked One? Then the horror returned intensified. Allen was assuredly dead. This creeping Thing--what might it be?

For an hour in his room Byfield sat in agonised dread. Most the thought of the open door possessed him like a nightmare. Somehow it must be closed before the foul Thing returned. Somehow the mangled shape within must be barred up from the wicked powers that might possess it. The fancy gripped and stuck to his delirious mind. It was horrible, but it must be done. In a cold terror he opened his door and looked out.

A flickering light played on the landing above. Byfield hesitated. But the thought that the cat might return at any moment gave him a desperate courage. He mounted the stairs to Allen’s door. Precisely as yesternight it stood wide open. Inside the room the books, the instruments, the magical figures were unchanged, and a candle, exposed to the night wind from the casement, threw wavering shadows on the walls and floor. At a glance he saw it all, and he saw the bed where, a few hours ago, the poor remains of Allen had been laid. The coverlet lay smooth upon it. The dead necromancer was not there.

Then as he stood, footbound, at the door a wandering breath from the window caught the taper, and with a gasp the flame went out. In the black silence he became conscious of a moving sound. Nearer, up the stairs, they drew--the soft creeping steps--and in panic he shrank backwards into Allen’s room before their advance. Already they were on the last flight of the stairs; and then in the doorway the darkness parted and Byfield saw. In a ring of pallid light that seemed to emanate from its body he beheld the cat--horrible, gory, its foreparts hanging in ragged collops from its neck. Slowly it crept into the room, and its eyes, smoking with dull malevolence, were fastened on Byfield. Further he backed into the room, to the corner where the bed was laid. The creature followed. It crouched to spring upon him. He dropped in a sitting posture on the bed and as he saw it launch itself upon him, he closed his eyes and found speech in a gush of prayer, “O my God, make haste for my help.” In an agony he collapsed upon the couch and clutched its covering with both hands. Beneath it he gripped the stiffened limbs of the dead necromancer, and, when he opened his eyes, the darkness had returned and the spectral cat was gone.

Brother John’s Bequest

On a certain morning in the summer of the year 1510 John Eccleston, Doctor in Divinity and Master of Jesus College in Cambridge, stood at the door of his lodge looking into the cloister court. There was a faint odour of extinguished candles in the air, and a bell automatically clanked in unison with its bearer’s step. It was carried by a young acolyte, who lagged in the rear of a small band of white-robed figures who were just disappearing from sight at the corner of the passage leading to the entrance court. They were the five Fellows of the newly-constituted College.

As they disappeared, the Master, with much deliberation, spat into the cloister walk.

To spit behind a man’s back might be accounted a mark of disgust, contempt, malice--at least of disapproval. Such were not the feelings of Dr. Eccleston.

It is a fact known all over the world, Christian and heathen, that visitants from the unseen realm cannot endure to be spat at. The Master’s action was prophylactic. For supernatural visitings of the transitory, curable kind the rites of the Church are, no doubt, efficacious. In inveterate cases it is well to leave no remedy untried.

With bell, book and candle the Master and Fellows had just completed a lustration of the lodge. The bell had clanked in the Founder’s Chamber and in the Master’s oratory. The Master’s bedchamber had been well soused with holy water. The candle had explored dark places in cupboards and under the stairs. If It was there before it was almost inconceivable that It remained there now. But one cannot be too careful.

Two days previously a funeral had taken place in the College. It was a shabby affair. The deceased, John Baldwin, late a brother of the dissolved Hospital of Saint John, was put away in an obscure part of the College churchyard--now the Master’s garden--behind some elder bushes which grew in the corner bounded by the street and the “chimney.” The mourners were the grave-digger, the sexton and the parson of All Saints’ Church. Though brother John had died in a college chamber the society of Jesus marked its reprobation of his manner of living by absenting themselves from his obsequies.

Brother John had been a disappointment: uncharitable persons might say he was a fraud. He had got into the College by false pretences. In life he had disgraced it by his excesses, and, when he was dead, he had perpetrated a mean practical joke on the society. It is not well for a man in religious orders to joke when he is dead.

How did it come that brother John Baldwin, late Granger of the Augustinian Hospital of Saint John, died in Jesus College?

The Hospital of Saint John was dissolved in the year 1510, to make room for the new college designed by the Lady Margaret. Bishops of Ely for three centuries and more had been its patrons and visitors, and dissolute James Stanley, bishop in 1510, fought stoutly for its maintenance. But circumstances were too strong for the bishop. The ancient Hospital was hopelessly bankrupt. The buildings were ruinous: there was not a doit in the treasury chest: the household goods were pawned to creditors in the town. The Master, William Tomlyn, had disappeared, none knew whither, and only two brethren were left in the place. One of them was John Baldwin: the other was the Infirmarer, a certain Bartholomew Aspelon.

On the eve of the dissolution, bishop Stanley wrote a letter to the Master and Fellows of the other Cambridge society of which he was visitor, namely, Jesus College. He commended to their charitable care brother John Baldwin, an aged man of godly conversation who was disposed to bestow his worldly goods for the comfort and sustenance of the Master and Fellows in consideration of their maintenance of him in College during the remaining years of his earthly pilgrimage. It was a not uncommon practice in those days for monasteries and colleges to accept as inmates persons, clerical or lay, who wished to withdraw from the world and were willing, either during life or by testamentary arrangements, to guarantee their hosts against pecuniary loss.

Report said that, though the Hospital was penniless, brother John in his private circumstances was well-to-do and even affluent. It did not befit the Master and Fellows to enquire how he had come by his wealth. They were wretchedly poor, and the bishop’s certificate of character was all that could be desired. They thanked the bishop for his prudent care for their interests and covenanted to give the religious man a domicile in the College with allowance for victuals, barber, laundress, wine, wax and all other things necessary for celebrating Divine service, as to any Fellow of the College. Brother John promptly transferred himself to his new quarters, which were in a room called “the loft,” on the top floor above the Founder’s Chamber in the Master’s lodge.

The Master and Fellows were disappointed in brother John’s luggage. It consisted simply of two brass-bound boxes, heavy but unquestionably small, even for a man of religion. An encouraging feature about them was that they bore the monogram of Saint John’s Hospital. Brother John and his former co-mate of the Hospital, Bartholomew Aspelon, constantly affirmed that the missing Master, William Tomlyn, had decamped with the contents of the Hospital treasury. But the society of Jesus hoped that they were not telling the truth. Brother John kept the two boxes under his bed. They were always carefully locked, but brother John threw out vague hints that their contents were destined for a princely benefaction to his hospitable entertainers.

In other respects brother John’s equipment was not such as would betoken a man of wealth. Rather it savoured of monastical austerity. His only suit of clothing was ancient, and even greasy. It was never changed, night or day. Brother John was apparently under a religious obligation to abstain from washing.

As a man of godly conversation brother John was unfortunate in his personal appearance. It was presumably a stroke of paralysis which had drawn up one side of his face and correspondingly depressed the other. His mouth was a diagonal compromise with the rest of his features. One eye was closed, and the other was bleared and watery. His nose was red, but the rest of his face was of a parchment colour.

Brother John was an elderly person, and continued ill health unfortunately confined him to his chamber, above the Master’s. He expressed a deep regret that he could not share the society of the Fellows in the Hall at their meals of oatmeal porridge, salt fish, and thin ale. His distressing ailments necessitated a sustaining diet of capons and oysters, supplied to him in his chamber by the College. He was equally debarred from attending services in the Chapel, but the wine with which the society had covenanted to supply him was punctually consumed at the private offices which he performed in his chamber. A suitable pecuniary compensation was made to him on the ground that his domestic arrangements rendered the services of the College laundress unnecessary.

Bartholomew Aspelon, who lodged in an alehouse in the town, was the constant and affectionate attendant at brother John’s sick bed: for, indeed, he seldom got out of it. From a neighbouring tavern he brought to him abundant supplies of the ypocras and malmsey wine which were requisite for the maintenance of the invalid’s failing strength. Brother Bartholomew was an individual of a merry countenance and gifted with cheerful song. In the sick room the Fellows would often hear him trolling a drinking catch, to which the invalid joined a quavering note. So constant and familiar was the lay that John Bale, one of the Fellows, remembered it thirty years afterwards, and put it in the mouth of a roystering monk whom he introduced as one of the characters in his play, _King Johan_. The words ran thus:

Wassayle, wassayle, out of the mylke payle,
Wassayle, wassayle, as whyte as my nayle,
Wassayle, wassayle, in snow, frost and hayle,
Wassayle, wassayle, with partriche and rayle,
Wassayle, wassayle, that much doth avayle,
Wassayle, wassayle, that never wyll fayle.

The invasion of the college silences by this unusual concert was marked by the Fellows with growing disapproval: and they were not comforted when they discovered that the new robe which they had contracted to supply to their guest had been pledged to the host of the Sarazin’s Head in part payment of an account rendered. But they possessed their souls in patience as they noted that the health of their venerable guest was declining with obvious rapidity. With some insistence they pointed out to the Master the desirability of having a prompt and clear understanding about brother John’s testamentary dispositions. Dr. Eccleston was entirely of the Fellows’ mind in the matter.

One evening in June, some three months after brother John had begun his residence in the College, it seemed to Dr. Eccleston that the time had come to sound him about his intentions. The patient was very low, and brother Bartholomew was much depressed. With inkhorn and pen the Master went upstairs to the sick man’s chamber. Nuncupatory wills were in those days accepted as legal obligations, and the Master was minded that he would not leave brother John until he had obtained, from his dictation, a statement of his intentions as to the disposal of his goods.

Obviously brother John’s mind was wandering when the Master entered the room, for he greeted his arrival with a snatch of the old scurvy tune,

Wassayle, wassayle, that never wyll fayle,

and feebly added “Art there, bully Bartholomew? Bear me thy hand to the bottle, for I am dry.”

“Brother John, brother John,” said the Master, “bestir thee, and think of thy state. It is time for thee to consider of thy world’s gear and how thou wilt bestow it according to thy promise to our poor company, for their tendance of thee.” Brother John raised himself in his bed and opened his serviceable eye. Something like a grin puckered up his sloping mouth. “Art thou of that counsel, goodman Doctor?” said he: “then have with thee. I were a knave if I did not thank you for your kindness, and, trust me, ye shall not be the losers for your pains. Take quill and write. I will dictate my will in two fillings of thy pen. Write”: and the Master wrote.

“To the Master and Fellows of Jesus College I give and bequeath that chest that lieth beneath my bed and is marked with a great letter A, and all that is in it. To brother Bartholomew Aspelon, late of the Hospital of Saint John, in like manner I bequeath that other chest that is marked B.”

“Is that all?” asked the Master. “Gogswouns, it is all I have,” said brother John. “Yet stay, good Master. Nothing for nothing is a safe text. Thou shalt write it as a condition, on pain of forfeiting my bequest, that ye shall bury me in the aisle of your church, immediately before the High Altar: that ye shall keep my obit, or anniversary, with _placebo_ and _dirige_ and mass of requiem; and that once each week a Fellow that is a priest shall pray and sing for the soul of John Baldwin, the benefactor of the College. Is it rehearsed, master doctor?” “It is written,” said the Master. “_Ite, missa est_,” said the invalid, “and fetch me a stoup of small ale, good Master.”

* * * * *

A few days later John Baldwin made his unimproving, unregretted end. Brother Bartholomew carried off his portion of the legacy. The other chest was deposited on the table in the Founder’s Chamber and opened by the Master before the assembled Fellows.

It contained half a dozen bricks, a fair quantity of straw and shavings, and nothing else--nothing except a small scrap of torn and dirty paper at the bottom of the box. With one voice the Master and Fellows decreed that their unworthy guest should be buried in the least respectable portion of the churchyard. Which thing was done, as I have already mentioned.

Of course the dirty paper under the straw was scrutinized by the Master and Fellows. But it was of no importance. It looked like a deed or a will, in which the deceased, in return for nursing in sickness, proposed to give some unspecified property to his disreputable friend, Aspelon, and apparently stipulated that he should be buried in the choir of the Hospital chapel. But it was not witnessed: it had obviously been torn up, and all that was left of it was the part on the scribe’s right hand. It ran thus:

ego Johannes Baldewyn nuper frat
rigiam do lego et confirmo domino
u pro mea in egritudine relevaci
domino Bartolomeo Aspelon confrat
ne quod habeat uter prior invener
am in tumulo sepultus subter quen
parte chori in sacello Hospitalis
theshede

The last word, if rightly read, was unintelligible.

But the College had by no means done with brother John. On the evening after his burial, as the Master and Fellows were leaving the Chapel, their steps were suddenly arrested as they heard the familiar Wassail stave raised in a thin and tuneless voice. It came from the open window of the deceased brother, and unquestionably the voice was not Aspelon’s. In consternation they listened till it died ineffectually away in an attempted chorus strain. After brief deliberation they resolved to visit the “loft” in a body--Master, Fellows, “disciples” and servants--and see what this thing might mean. They found the place as blank and silent as it remained when the deceased had been taken out to his burial. But before they reached the stair-foot in their descent the thin piping strain fell on their ears again, and this time none were bold enough to go back. After that, at all times of night and day, the interminable ditty was fitfully renewed, and panic held the College. At night the “disciples” huddled in one room, and the Fellows lay two in a bed.

Unfortunately for Dr. Eccleston, he was condemned to the solitude of the lodge, deserted even by his _famulus_, the sizar who attended him. He sat up all night and studied works of divinity, in the hope that theology, if it did not put the songster to rout, would at least distract his own thoughts from the devilish roundelay in the garret above his head. On the second night he began to congratulate himself on the success of his experiment, for the singer relapsed into silence. In his exhaustion he might even have slept, but that the door of his study had a gusty habit of flying open unexpectedly and closing with a bang. He had actually begun to drowse over his folio when a sharp pressure on his right shoulder aroused him. Hastily turning his head he saw the papery countenance of the dead brother gazing on him with all the affection that one eye could testify, the chin planted on the Master’s shoulder, and the mouth slewed into a simulation of innocent mirth. Dr. Eccleston read no more divinity that night.

Early next morning a College meeting was summoned by the Master. It was resolved by the unanimous voice of the society that brother John’s remains should be exhumed and re-interred in the middle of the chancel aisle, in accordance with the stipulation of the deceased: and there was no delay in carrying the resolution into effect. The Master also insisted that the whole society should help in the purgation of his lodge and the loft above it, in accordance with the ritual of the Church in that case applying: and this too was incontinently done, as I have already described. The consideration of the performance of the rest of the contract entered into by the Master with the late brother was deferred until it should be ascertained how far the deceased was satisfied with the measures already adopted.

Whether John Baldwin acquiesced in this somewhat lame execution of his wishes, or whether his perturbed spirit was laid to rest by the rites of exorcism it is impossible to say. It is quite certain that he troubled the College no more.

But in the afternoon following his re-interment an incident happened which possibly had some connection with the placation of his shade. Bartholomew Aspelon had not attended brother John’s funeral in the churchyard. In truth, he was filled with a moral resentment at his late friend’s lack of feeling and good taste which was only equalled by that of the society of Jesus: and the motive was the same. On opening the treasure chest bequeathed to him he had found it filled with bricks and straw, just like the other. If the Fellows were indignant Bartholomew was more so: for, from private sources of information which he possessed as a member of the dissolved Hospital, he was assured that brother John had prospered in its service to the extent of £200, at the least, and he was profoundly convinced that the whole sum had gone into the treasury of Jesus College. Under the straw he had found a morsel of paper, which was, indeed, too fragmentary to give any connected clue to its drift, but which, nevertheless, rather plainly indicated on the part of the deceased an intention of bequeathing to the College a certain treasure, the whereabouts of which, owing to the imperfection of the document, were not stated. He was confirmed in his interpretation of the manuscript by the honourable interment given to brother John’s remains in the Chapel.

Filled with resentment at the ingratitude of the patient whom he had so tenderly nursed and at the duplicity of the “dons” who had robbed him of the reward of his devoted service, Bartholomew sought the Master’s lodge. He used no language of studied courtesy in representing to Dr. Eccleston the nature of his grievance: and the Master, whose temper was severely tried by want of sleep and the disagreeable nature of the interment ceremony in which he had just unwillingly participated, replied with equal vehemence.

“Ye are robbers all,” cried Bartholomew: “you cheated him in his weakness into signing his property away from the friend who smoothed his pillow in his dying hours.”

“Thou naughty knave,” retorted the Master, “talk not to me of bricks and straw. It was gold that was contained in thy box, and the devil knows by what scurvy arts thou didst cozen us of our promised reward. His own paper convicts thee of the fraudulent attempt to get him to will his goods to thee. See what he left in the bottom of our box.” And the Master threw the scrap above-transcribed upon the table. “Take it and never let me see thy rogue’s face again.”

Brother Bartholomew leaped in his skin as he grabbed the document. He made no ceremony of leave-taking, but bolted down the stairs. When he got into the cloister outside he took from his pouch a dingy scrap of paper, which was the fellow of that which the Master had thrown to him. What he read on it was this:

Sciant omnes presentes et futuri quod
er Hospitalis Divi Johannis apud Canteb
doctori Ecclyston et sociis Collegii Jes
one equaliter inter se dividendum aut
ri meo in antedicto Hospitali ea racio
it totum thesaurum meum ita ut extat cl
dam lapidem iacentem in septentrionali
eiusdem cuius istud signum extat a dea

Then brother Bartholomew put the two pieces together, and it was thus that he translated the continuous lines:

Know all men present and to come that | I, John Baldwin, late a broth
er of the Hospital of Saint John at Camb | ridge, give, grant and bequeath to master
doctor Eccleston and the fellows of the College of Jes | u for my relief during sick
ness, equally to be divided among them, or | to master Bartholomew Aspelon, a brother
of mine in the aforesaid Hospital, provid | ed that he shall have it who is first fin
der, all my treasure as it now lies pri | vily buried in a tomb under a cert
ain stone lying on the northern | side of the choir in the chapel of the Hospital
aforesaid, of which this is the sign, a dea | th’s head.

Of what further pertains to brother John Baldwin and his bequest I have no more to say than that his name is not included in the Form for the Commemoration of Benefactors of Jesus College. Also that for twenty years after the events here recorded a cheerful individual, in a lay habit, might be seen, seated of custom on the ale-bench at the Sarazin’s Head. He drank of the best, paid in cash and never lacked for money. He could tell a good tale and he sang a good song. His Wassail song was always in request at the Sarazin’s Head.

The Burden of Dead Books

By its air of reverend quiet, its redolence of dusty death, in the marshalled lines of its sleeping occupants, and in the labels that briefly name the dead author and his work, an ancient repository of books, such as a college library, suggests the, perhaps, hackneyed similitude of a great cemetery. Here and there, among the vast majority of the undistinguished dead, we detect names that are still familiar. Here and there are the monuments of men who have at least been the ancestors of a surviving family of scholars and scientists. Some names will awake memories, not for the individual achievement of their bearers, but for the cause in which they worked. Royalist and Republican, Anglican, Romanist and Puritan here have laid down the arms which they bore against each other, and together sleep the sleep from which there is no rising. Though the issues for which these men fought are dead things now, their spirit is with us and their works follow them. But with the majority it is not so. Outnumbering all others are the hand-labourers of whose names the catalogue has no record. Their daywork, paid or unpaid, was commanded by more ambitious masters, who absorbed whatever temporary measure of credit attended the collaboration. Over the ashes of these unnamed toilers we waste no regrets: they sleep well. It is the fallen ambitions, the wasted energies, the mistaken aims of the master-craftsmen in letters that are food for ironical contemplation.

I do not know that in such a cemetery of small and great, the servant and his master, a more dismal corner exists than that which is reserved for the stillborn. They are a great host, and they are mostly of the family of Theology. Of one such product of fruitless travail I have to speak. It has rested undisturbed in the library of Jesus College for over 300 years, and in all that time, perhaps, no human being, except the official who transcribed its title in the catalogue, has ever had occasion to recall its existence. Its author was one Matthew Makepeace, S.T.P., a Fellow of the College in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. Its elaborate title is: “Speculum Archimagiae, sive Straguli Babyloniaci Direptio, necnon Offuciarum et Praestigiarum Romano-papisticarum Apocalypsis liberrima”: from which I conclude that the Pope received some hard knocks in it, and that the Babylonian lady of the Book of Revelation was left in pitiful disarray by the learned doctor’s assault. The title-page informs us that the book was printed at London by Melchisedeck Bradwell, for John Bill, in the year 1604: furthermore, that it had been “perused and approved by publike authoritie.” That it was ever perused I do not believe. Only in the most cursory way I have perused it myself, and I do not think that any other man has done as much. To our patient ancestors a book was a book, let it be ever so dull. They glossed it, annotated it, added their approving or inimical comments. But nobody has been at the pains to add his marginal notes to the text of Matthew Makepeace. Its cover is unworn, its pages as clean as on the day when it first saw light. This only: on a loose scrap of paper, contained between its pages, I have discovered a name written in Greek characters and a short Greek quotation.

Let me get done with this dull book as fast as I can. It is, of course, written in Latin, and its style does not suggest that the author had a facile Latinity. The extensive list of authors cited indicates that he had read widely, but digested little of what he read, in Patristic and Rabbinical literature. The purpose of the book is to discredit the claim of the Roman Church to the possession of supernatural gifts. The subjects dealt with are naturally the Roman sacraments and hagiology. The learned author arrives at the conclusion, on grounds which I have not had the patience to investigate, that the human exercise of miraculous powers ceased at the precise date, A.D. 430.

Of the writer, Doctor Makepeace, I can find little more information than is supplied in the History of Jesus College, written by John Sherman in the reign of Charles II. This work, composed in the fulsome Latin which was esteemed elegant in the seventeenth century, gives brief biographical notes of each of the Fellows from the date of the foundation of the College. There are various manuscript versions of the History, some ampler than others, and if you wish to read the original Latin, of which I subjoin a translation, you must search out the single copy which contains the full note of his life and work. It may be rendered:

“Matthew Makepeace, S.T.P., of the county of Northumberland, succeeded to a fellowship in 1565: a most learned investigator of theological matters (_rei theologicae indagator_), especially of the writings of the Fathers: a chastiser of the Pope (_Papomastix_): he illuminated by his knowledge the College and the University, most fearlessly attacking the unclean practices of the Babylonian harlot. He had one much-loved pupil, Marmaduke Dacre, first-born son of the lord baron Dacre, of the county of Cumberland. The same having disappeared from the College in a fashion as yet unknown (_modo adhuc inscibili_) the old man, seized with a phrenetic malady, gradually declined (_contabuit_), often asserting that he was that same pupil whom he had lost. Dying at the age of sixty years, he was buried in the chapel, September 8th, 1604.”

To the information given by Sherman I can only add the evidence of a blue flagstone--unhappily removed in the course of chapel restoration, in 1863--which lay in the floor of the south transept. Its simple inscription was: “_Matthaeus Makepeace, S.T.P., decessit, 1604_.”

With the evidence as to the date of the death of Dr. Makepeace, furnished by Sherman and the old gravestone, it is difficult to reconcile a curious entry in the register of burials in All Saints’ Parish Churchyard. The entry is dated April 13, 1654, and it runs:--

“Matthew Makepeace, an oldman yᵗ lodged with yᵉ widow Pearson in Jesus Lane, of yᵉ age of about three score years and ten. He was burried in Poorman’s Corner, by yᵉ parish.”

The date, the age of the deceased, the place of burial, the fact that this Makepeace was evidently a pauper and a stranger to Cambridge, all would seem to make it certain that he could not be the same man who is mentioned by Sherman. Nevertheless, I have my doubts, and the story which I have to unfold will explain the reason.

The story begins on August 16th, 1604, the very day on which the learned _Speculum_ made its first appearance, bound and complete, on the table of Matthew Makepeace. The doctor’s chamber was on an upper floor of the staircase at the western end of the chapel nave, and it overlooked what was then called Fair Yard, a plot of ground since annexed to the Master’s garden. August 16th happened to be the last of the three days of Garlick Fair, the ancient fair which, since the days of King Stephen, had been associated with the Church of Saint Radegund, and took place under the chapel walls.

Matthew Makepeace was alone. It was Long Vacation, and his sole pupil, Marmaduke Dacre, who shared his chamber, had been allowed a day’s outing. Heavy books of divinity lined the walls of the chamber, which had little of comfort about it and no elegance. The doctor’s high bed, with curtains of faded say, the pupil’s truckle-bed, a hanging cupboard for clothes, a rough deal stand on which was set an ewer and basin of coarse earthenware, a chair, two stools and a large oaken table in the middle of the room--these were the doctor’s principal household effects. There was but one window, of bottle-green glass, and its lattice was open to admit the air and sunlight of the August afternoon.

On the table lay the doctor’s new book, brave in its stamped leather and gilded label: but it was unopened. It was the outcome of five and twenty years of incessant study, and the single offspring of Matthew’s lucubration. And now that it was brought to birth he was in a mood to stifle it. It had been begun in the white heat of the controversies with Rome and Spain, and it lingered in parturition until the fire had burnt low, and the readers who should have applauded it were in their graves. Its author was not very sure that its contentions were true, and he was very sure that they were addressed to deaf ears. Had he gone out into the world he might have learnt what the world was interested in--what battles remained to fight, what causes were already finished. But Matthew’s world consisted of books, and his books were out of date. Of recent political developments, of the growth of scientific knowledge, of the blossoming of a native literature he had no more knowledge than a child. The work which had been begun with enthusiasm had been completed in mechanical drudgery, and too late he was conscious of the fact.

How well he recollected the enthusiasms of 1579! How ardent his friends were that his immense learning should signalise itself in the great national strife with the powers of darkness! If he could only live his life again with the old enthusiasm and the added knowledge of a life that should combine learning and action! The boy, Dacre, blessed with genius, wealth, high birth and noble aspirations--how wide the horizon that opened before him! For Matthew Makepeace it rested only to be forgotten before he died.

It was a strange bird of passage that had dropped the seed from which Matthew’s book grew. Alessandro Galiani was a medical doctor of Padua University when he came to Cambridge, and for a few months resided in Jesus College. Why he came nobody precisely knew; but he claimed to be a Protestant refugee, and he was certainly profoundly learned in many languages, as well as in medicine. He brought letters of introduction from the Chancellor, Lord Burleigh, and it was surmised that he was an agent of the Government, engaged to report on the University. But his talk and conduct were so equivocal that the suspicion presently arose that his Protestantism was simulated, and that he was a papal spy. The sentiments to which he gave expression were certainly Macchiavellian in the highest degree--intolerable to English ears. Wherefore his sojourn at Cambridge ended abruptly after a few months, and he passed away into the same mysterious spaces from which he had come. He was a man of extraordinary powers of observation and suggestion, and from a chance hint that he once let fall Makepeace got the idea of writing his book. It was Galiani who directed his attention to the Jewish and Arabic authors whom he consulted. But how little of the force and insight of the Italian entered into the completed book, Makepeace knew only too well.

So the book lay on the table and Matthew had no heart to open it. Through the window came sounds of merriment from the Fair Yard without. Regularly as August came round Makepeace had heard those sounds for forty years past, but until to-day he had regarded them only as a troublesome distraction, and closed his casement against them. To-day a profound lassitude made him draw his stool from the table, where lay the slighted volume, to the open window. His attention was especially drawn by a strident voice which came from near his chamber. Looking out on the Fair Yard he saw a platform of a few planks, mounted on casks, immediately beneath his window. On it a vagabond charlatan was loudly advertising to a group of gaping rustics the merits of a wonderful heal-all.

“Come buy, my masters, come buy,” he cried. “Buy the infallible salve of the famous doctor Pinchbeck, the ointment that heals the ague, the rheum, the palsy, the serpigo. Let him that goes on one leg but buy, and with thrice laying on he shall go on two. Let him that goes with crutches buy, and he shall dance home in a coranto. One groat only for the learned doctor’s ointment that shall quit you of the cramp, the gout, the quotidian and the tertian. An it rid you not in two days come again and Pinchbeck shall restore you fourfold.”

From time to time an ague-ridden swain mounted the platform, haggled with the quack, reluctantly parted with his groat and departed, dubious of his purchase. On the whole, Dr. Pinchbeck seemed to be doing a fair trade, when, late in the afternoon, an old man, bent double with rheumatism, raised a loud expostulation. He affirmed that he had purchased a box of the ointment on the first day of the fair, and had applied it thrice without the promised result.

He demanded the fourfold restitution of his money, and the mountebank stoutly resisted the claim. Angry cries arose from the bystanders, and it might have gone ill with the empiric, had not a diversion been effected by one of the crowd. This was a tall middle-aged man of somewhat dark complexion and foreign appearance, whose dress distinguished him as a gentleman and possibly a practiser of medicine. He stepped on the platform, spoke a few words to the ointment-vendor, and then, beckoning the old man to him, made him sit on a stool. He gazed fixedly for a few moments in the patient’s eyes, made some mysterious motions of the hands before his face, whispered in his ear, and then, with a few more passes of his hands, bade him stand. The old fellow stood erect without effort; then, at the stranger’s bidding, walked a few easy steps, and with a pleased and puzzled look descended to join his friends in the crowd. Loud applause greeted the wonderful cure, and patients crowded to receive the stranger’s ministrations. The same operations in each case were attended with the same result. Never had there been seen such a wonder at the fair.

Most of all it wrought wonder in Matthew Makepeace. This unknown individual--was he possessed of those miraculous gifts of healing which Makepeace in 400 quarto pages had proved to be extinct? He would accost him and, if possible, learn from his lips whether what he had seen were the operation of nature or of the magic art. Descending in the majesty of his doctor’s robes he mingled in the crowd, and mildly laid his hand on the stranger’s arm. “Pardon, learned sir,” said he, “the curiosity of a scholar--alas! too ignorant of books and all unskilled in the manual acts of healing. I would fain question with you of these same cures that by chance I have witnessed from my chamber.” The stranger was engaged in giving parting words of counsel to some of his patients. He turned at the touch of the doctor’s hand, surveyed him up and down for a moment, and said, “Anon, Master Makepeace, anon: I will be with you presently.”

Dr. Makepeace started to hear his name and threw a sharp look on the speaker. No; he was a complete stranger, and his accent betrayed him as a foreigner. Dr. Makepeace had certainly never seen him in his life before. He began to explain where his chamber was to be found.

“I know it,” interrupted the stranger, “I know it. Bear with me for a moment and I will seek you there.”

Makepeace was a little ruffled that the speaker, knowing his name, did not give him his academic title. “_Doctor_ Makepeace,” he said; “ask for _Doctor_ Makepeace.”

“Surely, surely,” replied the stranger carelessly: “yet _Master_ Makepeace, methinks, served you then.”

More than ever perplexed the doctor sought his room. Only a few minutes had passed when he heard his visitor mounting with no faltering step to his door, and Makepeace opened to him before he knocked. The stranger glanced rapidly round. He seemed to find something familiar in each article of furniture. He ran his eye, with a look of some amused contempt, over the array of worn volumes that lined the walls. “Old books, doctor Makepeace,” he said, “old books. I think you have not changed one these thirty years.”

“Old books are old friends,” said the doctor with a touch of resentment at his tone: “I would not change them.”

“Old friends die, doctor,” observed the stranger, “they die, and then we have no use for them but to bury them.”

“Sir,” said the doctor with a quick reminiscence of his wasted studies, “I _have_ buried my friends: but I love them still. But,” he went on, “it is not of old notions that I have to speak with you. You have shown me this afternoon something newer and,” he added sadly, “it may be, something better than all that old books tell. I ask you to impart to me no secret that might hurt you by the telling. Until now I have maintained that nothing exists in this present world that is not of natural course. If it be an honest mystery that you exercise, tell me, the humblest and poorest of scholars, whether it be the miraculous working of God’s power in human hands or simply the exercise of human art.”

The stranger seated himself, uninvited, in the doctor’s chair, and the doctor took a stool. “Everything,” said the stranger, “is miracle to him who does not know.”

“Great heavens,” cried Makepeace, “that is the beginning of my quotation from the learned Theodorus Gazophylacius. I never heard of the great Gazophylacius until Galiani told me of him: nobody that I know had heard of him. A marvellous scholar, truly, was Gazophylacius, but a pagan at heart, albeit a Byzantine Christian--and sadly drowned in superstition. Shall I show you the passage in the original Greek.” And he feverishly turned the pages of the _Speculum_ to find it?

“You may spare yourself that trouble,” said the stranger composedly. “Shall I finish the quotation? Shall I write it for you?” And he unceremoniously tore a corner from one of the immaculate leaves, took a quill and wrote. “There,” said he, “there, I have written in Greek what follows in your quotation, and I have added my name that you may remember the writer.”

The doctor took it and read the delicate Greek characters: “Demetrius Commagenus. All things are possible to him who knows and wills with earnestness.”

Makepeace was stupified. “Commagenus,” he said: “that is a Greek name, I take it. And yet I would have sworn that the handwriting was Galiani’s, and Galiani was an Italian. Besides, Galiani is dead, or he is sixty years old, less or more, by now: and you--I cannot think that you are past forty.”

Indifferently the self-styled Commagenus replied: “Galiani or Commagenus--what matters? What I wrote then I write now; and always I am your humble servant and the poor scholar who drew wisdom from the lips of the divine Gazophylacius.”

“We talk in dreams,” said Matthew: “Galiani told me--_you_ told me, if you are he--that Gazophylacius died at Rome, ten years after the Turks entered Constantinople: and that was a hundred and fifty years ago.”