When It Was Dark Part 12

But it was always and for ever with him a trans.m.u.ting force which changed his life each hour in a way of which the nominal believer has no conception.

A letter he had once written to Helena during a holiday compressed all his belief, and his joy in his belief, into a few short lines. Thus had run the sincere and simple statement, unadorned by any effort of literary grace to give it point and force:--

"Day by day as your letters come I go on saying my prayers for you, and with you, in fresh faith and confidence. You know that I absolutely trust the Lord Jesus Christ, who is, I believe, the G.o.d who made the worlds, and that I pray to Him continually, relying on His promises.

"I keep on reading all sides of the question, as your father does also, and while admitting all that honest criticism and sincere intellectual doubt can teach me, and freely conceding that there is no infallible record in the New Testament, I grow more and more convinced that the Gospels and Paul's letters relate _facts_ and not imaginations or hallucinations. And the more strongly my intellect is convinced, so much more does my heart delight in the love of G.o.d, who has given Himself for me. How magnificent is that finale of St. John's Gospel! 'Thomas saith unto Him, My Lord and my G.o.d.' And, then, how exquisite is the supplement about the manifestation at the lake side! Imagine the skill of the literary man who INVENTED that! Fancy such a man existing in A.D. 150 or thereabouts! I see Mrs. Humphry Ward says 'it was a dream which the old man at Ephesus related, and his disciples thought it was fact.'

And _she_ is a literary person!"

So, as the lovers glided slowly past the high symbol of G.o.d's pain, the worship in their hearts found but little utterance on their lips, though they were deeply touched.

It seemed a good omen to welcome them to France!

Spence remained to look after the luggage and to see it through the Customs, and the three others resolved to walk to the rooms which they had taken in the Faubourg de la Barre on the steep hill behind the chateau.

They pa.s.sed over the railway line in the middle of the road, and past the _cafes_ which cl.u.s.ter round the landing-stage, into the quaint market-place, with the great Gothic Cathedral Church of St. Jacques upon one side, and the colossal statue of Duquesne surrounded by baskets of spring flowers in the centre.

To Helena Byars that simple progress was one of unalloyed excitement and delight. The small and wiry soldiers in their unfamiliar uniforms; an officer sipping vermouth in a _cafe_, with spurs, sword, and helmet shining in the sun; two black priests, with huge furry hats--all the moving colour of the scene gave her new and delightful sensations.

"It's all so different!" she said breathlessly. "So bright and gay. What is that red thing over the tobacco shop, and that little bra.s.s dish over the hair-dresser's? Think of Walktown or Salford, now!"

The house in the Faubourg de la Barre was kept by a Madame Varnier, who spoke English well, and was in the habit of letting her rooms to English people. A late _dejeuner_ was ready for them.

The omelette was a revelation to Helena, and the _rognons sautes_ filled her with respect for such cooking, but she was impatient, nevertheless, to be out and sight-seeing.

The vicar was tired, and proposed to stay indoors with the _Spectator_, and Spence had some letters to write, so Basil and Helena went out alone.

"The vicar and I will meet you at six," Spence said, "at the Cafe des Tribuneaux, that big place with the gabled roof in the centre of the town. At six the _l'heure verre_ begins, the time when everyone goes out for an _aperitif_, the appetiser before dinner; afterwards I'll take you to dine at the Pannier d'Or, a jolly little restaurant I know of, and in the evening we'll go to the Casino."

Madame Varnier, the _patronne_, was in her kitchen sitting-room at the bottom of the stairs, and they looked in through the hatchway as they pa.s.sed to tell her that they were not dining indoors.

On the floor a little girl, with pale yellow hair, an engaging b.u.t.ton of three, was playing with a live rabbit, plump and mouse-coloured.

"How sweet!" said Helena, who was in a mood which made her ready to appreciate everything. "Look at the little darling with its pet. Has baby had the rabbit long, Madame Varnier?"

The Frenchwoman smiled lavishly. "Est-elle gentille l'enfant! hein! I bring the lapin chez moi from the magazin yesterday. There was very good lapins yesterday. I buy when I can. Je trouverai ca plus prudent. He is for the dejeuner of mademoiselle to-morrow. I take him so,"--she caught up the animal and suited the action to the word,--"I press his throat till his mouth open, and I pour a little cognac into him. Il se meurt, and the flesh have a delicious flavour from the cognac!"

"How perfectly horrible!" said Helena as they came out into the street and walked down the hill. "Fancy seeing one's lunch alive and playing about like that, and then killing it with brandy, too! What pigs these French people are!"

Soon after the cool gloom of St. Remy enveloped them. Under the big dome they lingered for a time, walking from chapel to chapel, where nuns were praying. But it dulled them rather, and they had more pleasure in the grey and Gothic twilight of St. Jacques. Here the eye was uplifted by more n.o.ble lines, there was a more mediaeval and romantic feeling about the place.

"We will come here to Ma.s.s on Sunday," said Basil. "I shall not go to the English Church at all. I never do abroad, and the vicar agrees with me. You see one belongs to the Catholic Church in England. In France one belongs to it, too. The 'Protestant' Church, as they call it, with an English clergyman, is, of course, a Dissenting church here."

"I see your point," said Helena, "though I don't know that I quite agree with it. But I have never been to a Roman Catholic church in England, and I want to see some of the services. 'Bowing down in the House of Rimmon,' Mr. Philemon would call it at Walktown."

They turned down a narrow street of quiet houses, and came out on to the Plage. There were a good many people walking up and down the great promenade from the Casino to the harbour mouth. An air of fulness and prosperity floated round the magnificent hotels which faced the sea.

It was a spring season, owing to the unusual mildness of the weather, and Dieppe was full of people. The Casino was opened temporarily after the long sleep of the winter, and a company was performing there, having come on from the theatre at Rouen.

"What a curious change from the churches and market-place," said Helena.

"This is tremendously smart and fashionable. How well-dressed every one is. Look at that red-haired woman with the furs. This is being quite in the world again."

They began a steady walk towards the pier and lighthouse. The wind was fresh, though not troublesome, and at five o'clock the sun, low in the sky, was still bright, and could give his animation to the picture.

The two young people amused themselves by speculations about the varied types of people who pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed them. Gortre wore a suit of very dark grey, with a short coat and an ordinary tweed cap--his holiday suit, he called it--and, except for his clerical collar, there was little to show his calling. He was pleased, with a humorous sense of proprietorship, a kind of vicarious vanity, to notice the attention and admiration excited by the beautiful English girl at his side.

Helena Byars held her own among the cosmopolitan crowd of women who walked on the Plage. Her beauty was Saxon, very English, and not of a type that is always appreciated to its full value on the Continent, but it shone the more from Latin contrasts, and could not escape remark.

Every now and again they turned, at distances of a quarter of a mile or so, and during the recurrence of their beat they began to notice a person whom they met several times, coming and going.

He was an enormously big man, broad and tall, dressed expensively and with care. His size alone was sufficient to mark him out of the usual, but his personality seemed to them no less arresting and strange.

His large, smooth face was fat, the eyes small and brilliant, with heavy pouches under them. His whole manner was a trifle florid and Georgian. Basil said that he seemed to belong to the Prince Regent's period in some subtle way. "I can imagine him on the lawns at Brighton or dining in the Pavilion," he said. "What a sensual, evil face the man has! Of course it may mean nothing, though. The Bishop of ----, one of the saints of the time, whose work on the Gospels is the most wonderful thing ever done in the way of Christian apologetics, has a face like one of the grotesque devils carved on the roof of Notre Dame or Lincoln Cathedral. But this man seems by his face to have no soul. One can't feel it is there, as one does, thank G.o.d! with most people."

"But what an intellect such a man must have! Look at him now. Look at the shape of his head. And besides, you can see it in his face, despite its sensuality and materialism. He must be some distinguished person. I seem to remember pictures of him, just lately, too, in the ill.u.s.trated papers, only I can't get a name to them. I'm certain he's English, and some one of importance."

The big man pa.s.sed them again with a quiet and swift glance of appreciation for Helena. He seemed lonely. Basil and Helena realised that he would have welcomed a chance word of greeting, some overture of friendship, which is not so impossible between English people abroad--even in adjacent Dieppe--as in our own country.

But neither of them responded to the unspoken wish they felt in the stranger. They were quite happy with each other, and presently they saw him light a cigar and turn into one of the great hotels.

They discussed the man for a few minutes--he had made an odd impression on them by his personality--and then found that it was time for the rendezvous at the Cafe des Tribuneaux.

By this time dusk was falling, and the sea moaned with a certain melancholy. But the town began to be brilliant with electric lights, and the florid Moorish building of the Casino was jewelled everywhere.

They turned away to the left, leaving the sea behind them, and, pa.s.sing through a narrow street by the Government tobacco factory, came into the town again, and, after a short walk, to the _cafe_.

The place was bright and animated--lights, mirrors, and gilding, the stir and movement of the pavement, combined to make a novel and attractive picture for the English girl. The night was not cold, and they sat under the awning at a little round table watching the merry groups with interest. In a few minutes after their arrival they saw Spence and the vicar, now quite restored and well, coming towards them.

They had forborne to order anything before the arrival of their companions.

The journalist took them under his wing at once. It amused him to be a cicerone to help them to a feeling of being at home. Gortre and Mr.

Byars had been in Switzerland, and the latter at Rome on one occasion, but under the wing of a bishop's son who made his livelihood out of personally conducting parties to Continental towns of interest for a fixed fee. There was little freedom in these cut-and-dried tours, with their lectures _en route_ and the very dinners in the hotel ordered for the tourists, and everything so arranged that they need not speak a word of any foreign language.

For the vicar, Spence prescribed a _vermouth sec_; Gortre, a courtesy invalid, was given a minute gla.s.s of an amber-coloured liquid with quinine in it--"_Dubonnet_" Spence called it; and Helena had a _sirop_ of _menthe_.

They were all very happy together in the simple-minded, almost childish, way of quiet, intellectual people. Their enjoyment of the novel liqueurs, in a small _cafe_ at tourist-haunted Dieppe, was as great as that of any sybarite at the Hotel Ritz in Paris, or at a rare dinner at Ciro's in Monte Carlo.

Spence ordered an absinthe for himself.

The vicar seemed slightly perturbed. "Isn't that stuff rather dangerous, Spence?" he said, shrinking a little from the gla.s.s when the waiter brought it. "I've heard terrible things of it."

"Oh, I know," said the journalist, laughing, "people call it the French national vice and write tirades against it. Of course if it becomes a regular habit it is dangerous, and excess in absinthe is worse than most things. But one gla.s.s taken now and again is a wonderful stomachic and positively beneficial. I take one, perhaps, five times in a year and like it. But, like all good things, it is terribly abused both by the people who use it and those who don't."

Suddenly Helena turned to Gortre.

"Oh, look, Basil!" she said. "There is our friend of the Plage--Quinbus Flestrin, the mountain of flesh, you remember your Swift?"

The big stranger, now in evening dress and a heavy fur coat, had just come into the _cafe_ and was sitting there with a cigarette and a Paris paper. He seemed lost in some sort of anxious speculation--at least so it seemed by the drooping of the journal in his ma.s.sive fingers and the set expression of abstraction which lingered in his eyes and spread a veil over his countenance.

They had all turned at Helena's exclamation and looked towards the other side of the _cafe_, where the man was sitting.