Read the book: «The Hunchback of Westminster», page 12
I should have liked to ask him what he meant, but dared not.
Already I was conscious of extraordinary things happening about me, and it was as much as I could do to stand still and to keep my courage from oozing through my hands.
Chapter Twenty.
More Mystery
Slowly, very slowly, the walls of that hermit’s cell seemed to fade out of sight.
The darkness of the place did not appear to grow more profound, but the light became greyer in tone, more misty in character, so that at length I felt I was standing in a kind of opalescent vapour, which would not let me distinguish objects more than two or three feet distant from the point where I stood, lost in profound amazement at the changes that came upon me from every quarter.
Something went moaning and sighing past me with eyes so huge and luminous that they gleamed like lamps of fire. Then I caught the sound of a woman crying – not with heartrending sobs that would tear to atoms the grief that had caused that outburst of emotion – but slowly, regularly, resistlessly, as though sorrow had touched the centre of her being and her tears flowed with every single throb of her heart.
Afterwards a scene formed itself in front of me, but whether it was a piece of clever stage realism or the free use of a panorama and a cinematograph I could never discover. All at once the light grew soft and rosy like that of early summer dawn, and I saw, apparently, stretched in front of me a sandy waste of country, across which the old monk, who had just been speaking to me was walking, footsore and bowed with age and weariness. Then came a shrill blast on a horn, and before one could utter even a sound a horde of savages in their war paint swept across the landscape and seized the old man and demanded something from him which he refused to yield. In a flash they caught him up amongst them, and there I saw inflicted on him such hideous atrocity and torture that I found myself reeling backward sick with the smell of burning flesh and faint with the sight of that flow of human blood.
Fortunately, the scene at length faded – everything went completely black – and out of a silence, so still that it could be felt almost, there arose the shrill whistle of an Arctic blast that pierced me through and through with cold. Sharper and sharper grew the frost about me. Eventually I became conscious of something that bit and stung which was falling on my hands, my face, my shoulders with ever-increasing swiftness, till, stretching out my fingers, I seemed to be in the centre of a bitter and searching snowstorm, above which the moon appeared to rise and to exhibit in front of me a man clad in the uniform of a Canadian letter-carrier. Almost as soon as he became visible I could see that the man was well-nigh spent and broken with the cold, but, as he toiled on and on in front of me I saw him sink deeper and deeper into the drift, until at length, absolutely exhausted, he threw up his arms and fell face downwards in the snow. Oh! how I toiled to reach him as the snow fell faster and faster, rapidly blocking his form out of sight. Somehow something seemed to force me perpetually to take a wrong direction – I became conscious of inhaling something uncommonly like chloroform – and I, too, fell.
When I next opened my eyes the scene had changed. Instead of snowclad plain and a wind that howled and whistled and cut through me like a newly-sharpened knife, I seemed to find myself in a brilliantly-furnished throne-room hung with rich tapestries and candelabra of gold, whilst dotted about the floor were pieces of gilded furniture of the days of Louis Seize. At the far end of this magnificent apartment were folding doors, and as, all sick and dizzy, like a man newly recovered from a surgical operation, I arose from the lounge on which in some miraculous fashion I had become stretched I saw these flung wide open. A stately march broke from an organ in a hidden gallery above, and there entered a procession of pages, who, taking no notice of my presence, ranged themselves, in their picturesque costumes of a bygone court period, on all sides of the room.
The music now became more jubilant as other figures loomed up in the doorway – figures of courtiers, jesters, ecclesiastics – until at length the apartment was almost filled with people, all conversing eagerly in that melodious Spanish tongue which I recognised but could not follow, although my knowledge of Latin was really profound enough to qualify me for a priest. Suddenly, however, the music stopped – all sounds of conversation ceased as if by magic – and all present appeared to take up their allotted positions. The next moment there entered two ecclesiastics in scarlet cassocks and cottas, carrying their birettas in their hands, whilst close behind there came a thin, white-faced cardinal, clad in the purple of the Roman Church, with the traditional skull cap at the back of his head.
Very low bent the assemblage at his approach to the throne, and no sooner was he seated than the smell of incense, cast on braziers full of burning charcoal in the corners of the room, arose, in clouds of smoke that had a most stimulating, instead of an oppressive, feeling upon me. I felt so bright, so strong so elastic that I could run, jump, anything, and I could barely contain myself as supplicant after supplicant entered the throne-room, and besought, in Spanish, some favour from the cardinal, who, I gathered, from the constant repetition of the phrase, could be no less a dignitary than the Cardinal-Archbishop of Toledo. Priests came – country curés, apparently newly arrived from remote mountain districts; pale-faced, humble-looking mother superiors, whose clothes and bearing bore eloquent evidence of their faithfulness to their vows of poverty and obedience; interspersed with which would now and then figure some crafty, oily scrivener; or, again, a fat, well-clad merchant, who seemed to bring the very trafficking of his shop into his language, his gestures, and attitude.
To my surprise, the last comers of all proved to be no less a personage than the very Prior of the Order of St. Bruno, clad in the Benedictine garb he affected, accompanied by José Casteno and two or three of the brethren. Apparently they had to pay some dues, for a table, crossed like a draught-board, and a pair of balances were brought in and fixed up before the cardinal, and from stout leather bags carried by the brethren were poured diamonds and rubies and emeralds that must have been worth thousands of pounds. Yet, large as their value looked, the Cardinal-Archbishop did not seem satisfied. He rose impatiently from his seat on the throne, his thin, ascetic, shrunken figure towering wrathfully over Mr Cooper-Nassington, who this time looked a prey to acute nervousness, and, shaking a warning finger at the pile of jewels, His Eminence spoke, in the quick, fiery Spanish tongue, some words that seemed to cause the St. Bruno-ites to cower and shiver as though they were being severely whipped.
A moment later they were hurried out of the audience chamber, and as the crowd of courtiers and ecclesiastics, who had drawn nearer to the throne during the altercation, settled themselves once again in their accustomed places I saw the Cardinal beckon to one of his chamberlains, to whom he whispered for a few seconds, looking the while, for the first time, in my direction.
The man bowed very low at the close of his instructions, and, taking up his wand of office, he marched with measured and dignified step in my direction, the crowd stopping suddenly their whispers and watching his movements with obvious interest. No sooner did he draw level with me than he spoke:
“His Eminence desires that you should approach him, Mr Hugh Glynn,” he said in excellent English, although his tone was decidedly that of a Spaniard. “He has some offer to make to you which he believes it is well for you to consider. Pray follow me.” And he turned about and led me right to the steps of the throne itself.
By this time the effect of the incense had very largely passed from me. In a way I was under the influence of the drugs in the sense that I was conscious of a high degree of exaltation and moral fervour, but the lust for action had gone and left in its place a consciousness of extraordinary importance and power.
Very low I bent before the bowed figure in front of me, and after the customary salutation: “Pax vobiscum,” to which I found myself answering quite mechanically: “Et cum spiritu tuo,” the cardinal addressed me, in rather laboured accents, in my own tongue.
“I have had you brought here, Mr Glynn,” he said slowly and with great care, “in a rather curious fashion, it is true, but none the less effective, although I won’t stop now to explain it, for two special and momentous reasons. The first relates to the Order of St. Bruno, from which I had you rescued in the moment of your initiation, for a cause that will quickly appear to all obvious enough. You have seen for yourself how the Prior and his brethren have come before me. They are, as a body, in my debt to an extent that would appal you, and yet, although I am probably one of the most lenient lenders in the world, you have seen for yourself how they attempt to evade payment by presents of costly jewels and of precious stones. Knowing this, I ask you, was it wise of you to want to link yourself with them? Remember, once you join them you become liable ipso facto for as much money as they happen to owe and cannot afford to pay for themselves. As a man who has been trained as a lawyer – nay, as one who intends shortly to incur all the sacred obligations of matrimony – is it wise of you to rush blindfold into this zone of debt and difficulty you can have no certain knowledge of, no appreciation? Take time to consider it while I put before you the second reason why you have been bidden here to this audience chamber.
“As a matter of fact,” he went on with increasing earnestness, “you stand at present in the most important city of Spain – Toledo – which possesses one of the most valuable collections of ancient historical manuscripts that have remained untranscribed since centuries and centuries before the days of the ill-fated Armada. In the minds of the rulers, however, the time has come for these documents to be disinterred from the chests in which they have lain from time immemorial, to be deciphered, and to be given to the world at the discretion of the head curator. Now, that place of head curator is vacant, and, although it is decided that only a Spaniard can fill it, I can easily get you letters of naturalisation, for I am empowered to offer you that position – a life appointment – at a salary of 2000 pounds English each year.”
In spite of myself I gasped at the munificence of this offer. In a flash I saw all the magnificent possibilities of a position of eminence and of usefulness such as that – to practise as a means of livelihood the finest and most fascinating hobby man who loved history ever had – and I own I was just on the point of accepting it when I felt instinctively the prick of the thorn hidden beneath the rose. I had to renounce my rights as an Englishman! I had to disavow my birthright! I had to throw aside the thing I treasured most – pride of race and birth! How could I do this with those burning words of the old hermit in his cell ringing even then in my ears? The Order of St. Bruno might be a gang of spendthrifts, they might have as officers adventurers who exploited the poor puffed-up patriots they caught in the meshes of their sophistries and vanity of their habits, but, after all, their ideal was too noble to cast aside just for money alone.
“Must – must this curator be a Spaniard?” I cried, stretching out my hands.
“He must,” came the inexorable answer.
“Then I am deeply honoured by the trouble you have taken, the kindly interest you have shown in me,” I replied slowly, “but the thing is frankly impossible – I cannot give up my nationality at a word in the the way you stipulate.”
There was a sudden shout, so loud that it sent me staggering backward with my hands pressed closely to the drums of my ears. The Cardinal-Archbishop appeared to bound from his throne like a man who had been shot, and once again, as something soft, diaphanous, and white was waved in front of me, I caught the sickly, sticky smell of chloroform, which overpowered me so quickly that almost as soon as it reached me I dropped to a lounge like a man dead with sleep.
When next I came to my senses I was astounded to find myself stretched on the floor in that same hermit’s cell from which I had started. The old monk who had first explained to me the secret that held men together in the Order of St. Bruno was bending over me, bathing my temples with some aromatic preparation from a small silver ewer that stood on the floor beside him, whilst I found my head resting on the only evidence of luxury in the place – a beautifully – embroidered silken cushion, that insensibly recalled to me all the glories of the palace of the Cardinal-Archbishop of Toledo.
Weak and trembling, like a man who had just recovered from a long and debilitating illness, I scrambled to my feet, and, aided by my companion, I seated myself on a chair that was standing near the table.
“Tell me,” I said, passing a tremulous hand over my throbbing forehead, “what has happened? Have you had a serious accident here while I have been in this cell?”
“No,” he said, with a grave shake of his head; “nothing has occurred here – nothing at all.”
“Did something hit me, or was I all of a sudden stricken with a fit.”
“Neither,” he replied; “all through you have been a free and a conscious agent.”
“Then, I didn’t dream! I didn’t rave! I have actually seen the things I have pictured?” I stammered, thoroughly bewildered by the man’s steady and truthful gaze. “Oh! I have it,” I cried suddenly again, “you have hypnotised me! You made me believe that I was first at the foot of a mountain in far-off Africa then on the snowclad wastes of Canada, and afterwards in a noble throne-room in Spain, where an offer was made that tempted me most sorely.”
“That is not so,” he answered coldly. “I am not a hypnotist! I do not understand mesmerism, and, if I did, I wouldn’t practise it. I consider it is based on a malign perversion of some beneficent law of Nature.
“No,” he went on, reaching out a hand and turning up the light that hung above his head; “there has been no occult influence at work here – none at all. All that you have seen has happened, fairly enough, but with this distinction – it has all happened round about this room.
“As a matter of fact, you must always remember this,” he proceeded, “the founder of our order, the Bruno Delganni, had a most marvellous knowledge of stage mechanics and effects, and when he found it so hard to discover whether the men who wished to join him were really patriots or not he turned this knowledge to the use you have seen. He erected in every monastery that he established huge theatrical machinery and properties, with the result that the brethren there are able to carry out any kind of test they wish.
“In your case, the plan agreed on was a very simple but an effective one. The first idea was to give you a fright, and then to take you off on all manner of excursions, so that you would not realise when the supreme test came what and which it was. Hence the deaths on the mountain and in the snowstorm. The real trial came when we played with all the force we could on the one string we knew held you like a vice – your love of manuscripts. Would you respond to this and renounce your birthright, or not?
“Luckily, you did not, although we bent every energy we had, every trick we knew, to lure you into the trap, using hasheesh, chloroform, anything that suited our purpose, to make our stage scenes seem to you the more vital, the more real. In the end you made the supreme refusal – you would not cease to be an Englishman. Therefore all our show ended as suddenly as it had begun. We had tested you, and we had found you were really the patriot you had always pretended to be to José Casteno when any question arose of the safety or the use of those three manuscripts that gave the whereabouts of the Lake of Sacred Treasure.
“We wanted to learn no more then. We decided there and then that you were the kind of novice which the Order of St. Bruno required, and we hastened back to our proper garbs again, anxious only now to bring the ceremony of initiation to an end. Hence it has come about that only one other test remains to be applied to you, and then you will be free to enter forthwith on all the rights and privileges of our brotherhood, which are, I am to explain, very numerous, far-reaching, and valuable.
“Do not fear it. In character, in effect, it is totally different to any experience you have been through; but our noble founder, Bruno Delganni, held it to be a very precious expedient to practise, and in his institutes, which we follow with scrupulous exactness, he lays it down in the clearest fashion that on no account must we omit it, however enthusiastic we may feel at the conduct of our novice in the other and more theatrical tests we have applied to him.”
“Very well,” I said resignedly. “I am prepared. Do with me as you will.” And taking the glass of wine he pressed on me I drained it, and then seated myself once more in the chair to await developments, although in my inmost heart I felt so upset and confused that I hardly knew how to speak.
With a stately inclination of the head the old monk passed through the doorway and left me.
Slowly, very very slowly, the light faded, and then I became surrounded by soft greyish darkness that afflicted me with a sense of intense mournfulness.
Chapter Twenty One.
The Use of the Image
For several seconds I felt that I could not bear the strain and suspense of this fresh test; already I had suffered so much I had grown weak and nervous. I wanted to be quiet, to sit still for a few minutes, and to think out all the extraordinary things I had heard and witnessed. Yet here I was caught up in this weird kaleidoscope of sensation. I no longer felt my feet on solid earth, but all at once I recognised that I had become the prey of some elements that defied all the ordinary laws of reason, and might, if I gave way to childish or unreasoning panic, send me practically demented.
In vain I told myself that the whole movement about me was but the insane jest of some crazy stage craftsman. In vain I held myself tightly together, and with all the vigour I was capable of anathematised Delganni for his preposterous notions of finding out the true metal of a man and what, in apparently grave moments of physical distress, he might be capable of. The hideousness of the scene afflicted me with a sense of intolerable vertigo. First there were ear-piercing screams, then long lurid intervals of silence in which some red light burned angrily in the background, and I saw the walls about me and the ceiling above me bend and crack and stoop; there appeared to be nothing – nothing to prevent them falling with a crash upon me and dashing me to instant annihilation.
The culminating horror of it all was reached when even the chair on which I sat, the table against which I rested, began to slowly revolve. The movements of the floor were steady, well ordered and rhythmical, but, as loud sonorous sounds were struck, afar off, on some brazen instruments, the framework seemed to rock and roll, as though the very earth were shaken by some subterranean power.
I verily believe that the physical strain of saving myself from being pitched forward kept me sane in these moments. I know I began by extending my rage to all secret societies, and then I passed on to swearing at myself for being so rash and foolish as to submit myself to these indignities – I, a free-born Englishman, upon whom, if I had confined myself to the ordinary walk of life, nobody dared lay a hand so grim and preposterous as this was.
Finally, as the movement grew more erratic, I was content to hang on, and I hung on so effectually that my tortures all at once ceased to torture me, the movements in the hermit’s cell stopped as though by magic, the light grew larger, rounder, more luminous, and suddenly Casteno appeared through the gloom in the doorway with a hand stretched out in welcome.
“I congratulate you, Glynn,” he said. “You have gone through all the tests required with flying colours. Now, come with me and receive your reward.”
Stiff, sick, and sore, I rose unsteadily from the chair and grabbed his arm. “I’ll come with you all right,” I panted, “but the kind of reward I feel interested in just at this minute is to give somebody such a thrashing that will relieve my feelings and teach my good friends at St. Bruno’s the danger of banging and bewildering a man in the way I have been.”
“Well,” conceded José, with a pleasant smile, “some of us do hold that this ceremony of initiation into the Order is rather foolish; but, after all, we don’t quite know how we can get out of it. In the first place, we see that Delganni was really a most wonderful man. Years before we had all this babble and talk and political trickery about a wise imperialism for England, and a Greater Britain, and the responsibilities of empire and so forth, he saw the eternal mission of our country, and he saw it clearly. More than that, he did, with all those fantastic methods of his, manage to institute this brotherhood and to get a very fine and reliable nucleus of workers together. That being so, who are we, his disciples as it were, to judge him? We are glad enough to take up his burden and his dream just when he laid them down. Then, if we put away this ceremony of initiation of his, what ceremony could we devise to take its place?”
“Anything,” I snapped, “anything but the one you have.” And with him I began to walk down the corridor.
“I am not so sure about that,” answered Casteno. “There will, I suppose, be always adventurers attracted to a cause by loaves and fishes, and it is highly necessary for the ideal we cherish that such should be weeded out. Anything that stops these sharks is useful, very useful. Why, we have had both Lord Cyril Cuthbertson and Lord Fotheringay up before us for examination, and we played so well on their weak points, as we tried to play on yours, over the place of curator at Toledo, that we actually got them to say they would renounce their nationality as Englishmen! No wonder, then, we won’t trust them with the deeds that would show the whereabouts of the Lake of Sacred Treasure. In our opinion, they are nothing more than the most pestilential parasites England has ever bred – I mean political patriots!”
I halted in amazement. “Then,” I stammered, “am I to take it that the Order is so rich and so powerful that even His Majesty’s Secretary for Foreign Affairs tried to get within its ranks?”
“Indeed it is,” answered Casteno earnestly. “Why, it is true Bruno Delganni only left about a million, but that million he left was in land near Leeds which had not at the time been exploited. Since his death it has been opened up, developed, and sold with remarkable care and skill, with the result that, aided by other benefactions, the Order to-day is enormously wealthy. It was computed a short time ago that if we divided the property amongst the members for any reason, say a terrific European war with England where the cash might in a patriotic sense be useful, we should each receive about seventy-five thousand pounds.
“And perhaps, what is more to the point just now, you will now become entitled to a share of that amount. In fact, we St. Bruno-ites boast and know we shall never want money for any good purpose either for ourselves or our friends. We have only to apply to the three rulers we have, whom we call the Council of Three, to get it.
“For instance, when I am married I shall ask their assistance, and I am sure they will yield it to me with great pleasure, and that they will allot my bride and myself such a handsome wedding portion that neither she nor I will ever want the means of keeping up a perfectly respectable and well-balanced position in society. Why, there are to-day five or six members of Parliament who are St. Bruno-ites, and where do you think they get the means from to win their different constituencies and to keep up their seats? From the Order, of course; and yet they never set foot inside these walls or write a line to the Council of Three from year’s end to year’s end. The money they require is put to their credit at their particular bank regularly every quarter, and all they do is to send to the Council of Three every New Year’s Day a small slip bearing the words: ‘Ready, ay ready,’ with the date, and their ordinary signatures.”
“And shall I be entitled to similar consideration?” I queried, blundering into a foolish, selfish question out of sheer nervousness.
“Of course you will,” answered Casteno, smilingly; “all are equal in this house – there are no favourites. The idea is that everybody wants everybody else to be perfectly happy and comfortable. You can come when you like; you can go when you like. Once in the house, of course, as a resident you have to submit yourself to the semi-monastic rule we affect, but you will find even that very good and helpful to you – yes, even the strikingly distinctive dress we wear – for it will serve to recall to you the sacred duties of patriotism which you have undertaken. It will accustom you, in a way, to your own ideal.”
“But why is the place so unlike a monastery?” I asked, stopping suddenly and pointing to some of the beautiful modern pictures which adorned the walls. “Look at these lovely works of art! There is nothing grim, nothing austere, nothing of self-sacrifice in these.”
“Of course there isn’t,” returned Casteno gaily. “We want our men to be as bright, as cheerful, and as ardent lovers of beauty and goodness as we can. We never interfere with their religions. That is their affair. Ours, we own, is a frankly worldly organisation, which, although it is under divine favour, we hope, as witness our watchwords: ‘God’ and ‘England,’ does really work to a worldly and an obvious conclusion. Therefore we make use of all the best things of the world, and amongst those we place beauty and things of beauty as of the highest therapeutic importance!”
“Is that why you have that statue in the entrance hall?” I questioned – “that wonderful figure of a woman, with the face of a Greek goddess, which stands on a pedestal, and before which there seem to be constant offerings of flowers and candles.”
José stopped at the mere suggestion, and laughed quite loudly. “Good gracious, no, man!” he replied so soon as he recovered his breath, “that statue has nothing to do with the members – nothing at all. You must know that poor old Bruno Delganni, although he really was a patriotic genius, had also a strangely poetic and romantic vein in his composition. Hence, when he found that the dream of his life, the Order of St. Bruno, did actually take form and substance and become a living organism powerful for great historical ends and occasions, he bethought himself of another vision of his youth – the woman who would not marry him.
“Of course, this idol of his, like all women with these faces of perfect beauty of form and expression, had no soul and no heart. In my opinion all those women in history who inspired noble resolves were like the idol of poor Bruno Delganni – Dante’s Beatrice, I mean, Paolo’s Francesca, Werther’s Charlotte, and so forth – mere mirrors in which great men saw depicted their own great possibilities.
“At all events, the woman in question married Bruno’s elder brother, because he was the better off, but Bruno never forgot her, and on his deathbed he ordered that her statue should be carved from an old photograph of her that he had in his possession and that a replica of that work of art should be placed in the refectory of each house connected with the Order of St. Bruno and duly and regularly adorned with so many candles and flowers.
“Unfortunately, we graceless bachelors, when we feel particularly irreverent, say that our founder had the image placed there as a fearful warning to us against pretty women, as a dumb but forcible appeal to each one of us to remember that ‘handsome is as handsome does,’ that ‘beauty is only skin deep,’ and that as the flowers around the statue fade so does woman’s charm. But it means nothing beyond this – nothing whatever.” And he caught me by one arm and stayed my steps opposite to one of the doors let into the wall.
“But here we are,” he went on in a more restrained tone. “When I open this you will find yourself in the presence of the brotherhood, all of whom, absolutely without exception, are eager to welcome you as one of themselves. Don’t be frightened of them. You have got through all the tests, and nothing but a joyous reception of you as a fine adherent to Brunoism now remains to be gone through. They all of them know about the manuscripts and the Lake of Sacred Treasure in Tangikano, and all you have done to assist me, so you can talk to anyone with the utmost freedom. When this is over I will get you to come with me and we will tackle the translation of the deeds with the aid of the key to the Jesuits’ cipher which Miss Velasquon has brought from Mexico; but at present your formal recognition as a Bruno-ite is the thing in hand, so follow me.”
He raised his hand to tap on the door, but I stopped him. “Just one question,” I muttered, “before I go in – only one. Why Saint Bruno if you have no religious object and significance? Why didn’t you call yourselves something less Catholic, more indicative of your real object?”
“Oh! we had nothing to do with it,” retorted Casteno lightly. “Delganni, I’m told, was a Catholic, and he christened the Order after his own notion. His institutes say that he had a great devotion to his name saint, and so he called the Order after him to pay him honour, and perhaps, what is more to the point to-day, to throw inquisitive persons off the scent as to our real motive, for they jump at once to the idea that we are some very wicked yet very religious brotherhood, and, therefore, leave us severely alone.”
