Chapter XXXV: Epilogue: In Three Pictures

NOTE.--_The three pictures all synchronise. The episodes they
portray take place five years after the day upon which Sir Robert
Llwellyn died._--G. T.

I. THE GRAVE

Two figures walked over the cliffs.

The day was wild and stormy. Huge clouds, bursting with sombre light, sailed over the pewter-coloured sea. The bleak magnificence of the moor stretched away in endless billows, as sad and desolate as the sea on which no sail was to be seen.

The wayfarers turned out of the struggle of the bitter wind into a slight depression. A few scattered cottages began to come into the field of their vision.

Soon they saw the whitewashed buildings of a coast-guard station and the high, square tower of a church.

"So it's all settled, Spence," said one of the men, a tall, noble-faced man, dressed as a clerk in Holy Orders.

"Yes, Father Ripon," Spence said. "They have offered me the paper. It was one of poor Ommaney's last wishes. Of course, we were injured in our circulation by the fact that we were the first to publish the news of the great forgery. But in two years Ommaney had brought the paper to the front again. He was wonderful, the first editor of his age.

"I was there with Folliott Farmer and the doctors when he died. Fancy, it was the first time I had ever been in his flat, though we had worked together all these years! The simplest place you ever saw. Just a couple of rooms, where he slept all the daytime. No luxury, hardly even comfort. Ommaney had no existence apart from his work. He'd saved nearly all his very large salary for many years. I am an executor of his will. He left a legacy to Farmer, and to me also, and the rest to the Institute of Journalists. But I am persuaded that he did not care in the least what happened to his money. He never did. He wasn't mean in any way, but he worked all night and slept all day, and simply hadn't any use for money. A good-hearted man, a very brilliant editor, but utterly detached from any _personal_ contact with life."

Father Ripon's keen face, still as eager and powerful as before, set into lines of thought.

He sighed a little. "A modern product," he said at length. "A modern product, a sign of the times. Well, Spence, a power is entrusted to you now such as no priest can enjoy. I pray that your editorship of this great paper will be fine. Try to be fine always. I believe that the Holy Spirit will be with you."

They rose up towards the moor again. "There's the church," said Spence, "where she lies buried. Gortre sees that the grave is kept beautiful with flowers. It was an odd impulse of yours, Father, to propose this visit."

"I do odd things sometimes," said the priest, simply. "I thought that the sight of this poor woman's resting-place might remind you and me of what has passed, of what she did for the world--though no one knows it but our group of friends. I hope that it will remind us, remind you very solemnly, my friend, in your new responsibility, of what Christ means to the world. The shadows of the time of darkness, 'When it Was Dark' during the 'Horror of Great Darkness,' have gone from us. And this poor sister did this for her Saviour's sake."

They stood by Gertrude Hunt's grave as they spoke.

A slender copper cross rose above it, some six feet high.

"I wonder how the poor girl managed it," said Spence at length; "her letter was wonderfully complete. Sir Michael--Lord Fencastle, I mean--showed it me some years ago. She was wonderfully adroit. I suppose Llwellyn had left papers about or something. But I do wonder how she did it."

"That," said Father Ripon, "was what she would never tell anybody."

"_Requiescat in pace_," said Spence.

"In Paradise with Saint Mary of Magdala," the priest said softly.

THE SECOND PICTURE

_Quem Deus Vult Perdere._

The chaplain of the county asylum stood by the castellated red brick lodge at the end of the asylum drive, talking to a group of young ladies.

The drive, which stretched away nearly a quarter of a mile to the enormous buildings of the asylum, with their lofty towers and warm, florid architecture, was edged with rhododendrons and other shrubs.

The gardens were beautifully kept. Everything was mathematically straight and clean, almost luxurious, indeed.

The girls were three in number, young, fashionably dressed. They talked without ceasing in an empty-headed stream of girlish chatter.

They were the daughters of a great ironfounder in the district, and would each have a hundred thousand pounds.

The chaplain was showing them over the asylum.

"How sweet of you, Mr. Pritchard, to show us everything!" said one of the girls. "It's awfully thrilling. I suppose we shall be quite safe from the violent ones?"

"Oh, yes," said the chaplain, "you will only see those from a distance; we keep them well locked up, I assure you."

The girls laughed with him.

The party went laughing through the long, spotless corridors, peeping into the bright, airy living-rooms, where bodies without brains were mumbling and singing to each other.

The imbecile who moved vacantly with slobbering lip, the dementia patient, the log-like, general paralytic--"G. P."--_things_ which must be fed, the barred and dangerous maniac, they saw them all with pleasant thrills of horror, disgust, and sometimes with laughter.

"Oh, Grace, _do_ look at that funny little fat one in the corner--the one with his tongue hanging out! Isn't he _weird_?"

"There's one actually _reading_! He _must_ be only pretending!"

A young doctor joined them--a handsome Scotchman with pleasant manners.

For a time the lunatics were forgotten.

"Well, now, have we seen _all_, Doctor Steward?" one of the girls said. "All the worst cases? It's really quite a new sensation, you know, and I always go in for new sensations."

"Did ye show the young leddies Schuabe?" said the doctor to the chaplain.

"Bless my soul!" he replied, "I must be going mad myself. I'd quite forgotten to show you Schuabe."

"Who is Schuabe?" said the youngest of the sisters, a girl just fresh from school at Saint Leonards.

"Oh, _Maisie_!" said the eldest. "Surely you remember. Why, it's only five years ago. He was the Manchester millionaire who went mad after trying to blow up the tomb of Christ. I think that was it. It was in all the papers. A young clergyman found out what he'd been trying to do, and then he went mad--this Schuabe creature, I mean, not the clergyman."

"Every one likes to have a look at this patient," said the doctor. "He has a little sleeping-room of his own and a special attendant. His money was all confiscated by order of the Government, but they allow two hundred a year for him. Otherwise he would be among the paupers."

The girls giggled with pleasurable anticipation.

The doctor unlocked a door. The party entered a fairly large room, simply furnished. In an arm-chair a uniformed attendant was sitting, reading a sporting paper.

The man sprang up and saluted as he heard the door open.

On a bed lay the idiot. He had grown very fat and looked healthy. The features were all coarsened, but the hair retained its colour of dark red.

He was sleeping.

"Now, Miss Clegg, ye'd never think that was the fellow that made such a stir in the world but five years since. But there he lies. He always eats as much as he can, and goes to sleep after his meal. He's waking up now, sir. Here, Mr. Schuabe, some ladies have come to see you."

_It_ got up with a foolish grin and began some ungainly capers.

"Thank you _so_ much, Mr. Pritchard," the girls said as they left the building. "We've enjoyed ourselves so much."

"I liked the little man with his tongue hanging out the best," said one.

"Oh, Mabel, you've _no_ sense of humour! That Schuabe creature was the funniest of _all_!"

THE THIRD PICTURE

A Sunday evensong. The grim old Lancashire church of Walktown is full of people. The galleries are crowded, every seat in the aisles below is packed.

This night, Easter night, the church looks less forbidding. The harsh note is gone, something of the supreme joy of Holy Easter has driven it away.

Old Mr. Byars sits in his stall. He is tired by the long, happy day, and as the choir sings the last verse of the hymn before the sermon he sits down.

The delicate, intellectual face is a little pinched and transparent. Age has come, but it is to this faithful priest but as the rare bloom upon the fruits of peace and quiet.

How the thunderous voices peal in exultation!

Alleluia!

Christ is risen! The old man turned his head. His eyes were full of happy tears. He saw his daughter, a young and noble matron now, standing in a pew close to the chancel steps. He heard her pure voice, full of triumph. Christ is risen!

From his oak chair behind the altar rails Dean Gortre came down towards the pulpit.

Young still--strangely young for the dignity which they had pressed on him for two years before he would accept it--Basil ascended the steps.

Christ is risen!

The organ crashed; there was silence.

All the lights in the church were suddenly lowered to half their height.

The two candles in the pulpit shone brightly on the preacher's face.

They all saw that it was filled with holy fire.

Christ is risen!

"IF CHRIST BE NOT RISEN YOUR FAITH IS VAIN"

The church was absolutely still as the words of the text rang out into it.

The people were thinking humbly, with contrite hearts, of the shame five years ago.

"Would that our imagination, under the conduct of Christian faith,
could even faintly realise the scene when the Human Soul of Our
Lord came with myriads of attendant angels to the grave of Joseph,
to claim the Body that had hung upon the cross.

"To-night, with the promise and warrant of our own resurrection
that His has given us, our thoughts involuntarily turn to those we
call the dead. We feel that this Easter is for them also an
occasion of rejoicing, and that the happiness of the earthly Church
is shared by the loving and beloved choir behind the veil.

"Christ is risen! Away with the illusions which may have kept us
from Him. Let us also arise and live. For, as the spouse sings in
the Canticles, 'The winter is past, ... the time of the singing of
birds is come; ... arise, my love, my fair one, and come away!'"

Christ is risen!

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This article has already been seen in the preceding chapter.

[2] This particular instance of the Nurié woman is _not_ all fiction. An incident much resembling it actually occurred to a well-known writer on the intimate life of Eastern peoples. For the purposes of the narrative the _locale_ has been changed from the Jaffa Road--where the event took place--to Jerusalem itself.

THE END

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TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES

Punctuation has been silently corrected where there are obvious errors.

Words with hyphens and accents have been standardised.

Italics are indicated by underscores _like this_.

Words in Greek script are indicated by equals-signs, =like this=.

The following corrections of typographical errors have been made:

"refined and, artistic" to "refined and artistic" (p.3)

"tolerent" to tolerant" (p. 29)

"it forget to jeer" to "it forgot to jeer" (p. 49)

"Salonika cigarrette" to "Salonika cigarette" (p. 53)

"forty thousands pounds" to "forty thousand pounds" (p. 67)

"volumn" to "volume" (p. 72)

"lines cames out upon it" to "lines came out upon it" (p. 90)

"weathly banker" to "wealthy banker" (p. 107)

"Dieppe its true significance" to "Dieppe--its true significance"
(p. 108)

"become more resonant" to "became more resonant" (p. 112)

"Schaube" to "Schuabe" (p. 193)

"Sanhedrim of the great" to "Sanhedrin of the great" (p. 235)

"Neirsteiner" to "Niersteiner" (p. 242)

"in amazemen" to "in amazement" (p. 261)

"Sir Ulang Pass" to "Sri Ulang Pass" (p. 293)

"rising but of the sea" to "rising out of the sea" (p. 323)

"Exellency" to "Excellency" (p. 350)

"the lastest visitor" to "the last visitor" (p. 384)