CHAPTER VII

LOVE ON THE LEAS

“Thank heaven!” sighed Herrick. He tossed a bulky brief on a side-table, and rose to his feet. The heat was stifling in his narrow room in Paper Buildings. Outside in the gardens the brown grass, dry and baked, bore witness to the long-continued drought. London was becoming an inferno.

But for a week-end, at any rate, he was going to escape from it. The Westwoods were at Folkestone, and within twenty minutes the train would be carrying him sea-wards, to clean, pure air, to a smokeless sky--and to Aldwyth Westwood.

The boy-clerk entered with two letters. “For you, sir,” said the youth, known to his Temple intimates as “Awthur.”

“Right,” answered Herrick, thrusting them into a pocket. “Here, take my bag--look sharp! a hansom for Charing Cross.”

“Awthur” showed himself alert, and within four minutes the jaded barrister was being driven westward through the thronged and sweltering Strand.

“Poor devils, _they’ve_ got to stay in town,” he muttered. It struck him that the great artery of London life looked strange and sad in the afternoon glare of the summer sun; on every face was a set look of weariness and strain.

High up on Exeter Hall, a huge placard attracted his attention:

ON WEDNESDAY NEXT!!! MEETING FOR MEN ONLY. ADDRESS BY FATHER FRANCIS.

Father Francis was well known to him by reputation. They had been contemporaries at Oxford, but the “Father” was then known as Lord Francis Purbrook, fifth son of the Duke of Portsdown--a wild and dissipated youth. His follies and debaucheries had been continued in the wider world, outside the University; until a strange and sudden change had come to him. He simply said that he had been converted. His old companions sneered, and asserted that he had turned “goody-goody.” But this transformation of his, call it what you will, was obvious to all. Then he had taken Holy Orders, and now was the priest-in-charge of St Stephen’s mission church--a chapel in a side street of Mayfair. His courtesy title had been wholly abandoned, and he was always spoken of as Father Francis.

With so much of the past, Herrick, like most Londoners, was well acquainted; but it was not given him to foresee the tragic scene in which the young priest was soon to play a foremost and a fatal part. Herrick, at the moment prosaically absorbed, was mainly bent on catching his train in time for a corner seat in a “smoker”; and here in a few minutes was the station, busy and bustling as ever. Here, too, was Henshaw of Scotland Yard, keenly eyeing continental arrivals from Boulogne _via_ Folkestone.

“A lot of foreigners,” said the barrister, as he passed him with a nod.

“And a bad lot, too,” was the detective’s comment. There was no time for more; late arrivals were scurrying down the platform. Herrick rushed with the rest; he found a seat; the guard’s whistle and extended hand signalled the departure of the train. They were off and away, wriggling over the railroad network of London, until presently the grim and hideous streets and outskirts of the Surrey side were left behind. The pleasant fields and woods of Kent succeeded to scenes of sordid toil, and still more sordid recreation. The murk and stew of the great town, the hoot of its motors, the hoof-hammer of its jaded horses, the dominant note of its thousands of weary feet--all were left behind.

Within three hours the westering sun had set. Eastward, lighthouses sent their first flashing rays across the heaving sea. Westward, the rose and amber of the clouds deepened into purple. The stars came out brighter and brighter in the darkening sky, thousands upon thousands, and tens of thousands--the steps of Allah’s wonderful throne!

Herrick and Aldwyth Westwood paced slowly on the Leas. The influence of the magical hour had stolen upon their spirits. They spoke but little, but their hearts were full--full of the tenderness of kindred spirits in harmony with each other and in touch with the infinite. For this wonderful night seemed to reveal the infinite in all the ordered beauty of earth and sky and sea, breathing a message to poor humanity, whispering of ultimate emancipation and high destiny.

Later on, they came down, as needs must, from the stars.

Herrick, who had brought down important papers from the Temple, asked when he could discuss them with Sir John.

To his surprise, Aldwyth showed some doubt.

“Father is not quite himself,” she said hesitatingly. “But perhaps---- Well come in and I’ll ask him.”

They walked across the grass and re-entered the hotel. The band--of violins and harps--was playing its final waltz, and the guests, who were lounging here and there, gazed with interest at the tall and comely couple. The well-knit figure and bearing of the young barrister won some approval; but the critical faculty of the lady onlookers expended itself chiefly in observing the evening dress and general style of his companion. Let no man expect that he will make any particular impression when there is a woman at his side whose costume calls for criticism, or the sincere flattery of imitation.

Aldwyth went upstairs to the suite of rooms reserved for Sir John Westwood and herself, and Herrick, waiting her message, turned into the smoking-room, where only two men were sitting, and those engaged in earnest conversation. In the light of after events Herrick often recalled much of what they said. It was an open conversation in a public room. The speakers were unknown to him. Later on, he learnt that one was Dr Wilson Wake, a nerve specialist, to whose consulting rooms in Harley Street patients crowded. The other was a writer, whose essays in the weightier reviews had attracted much attention.

“It happened before, and it will happen again,” the doctor was saying. “It was simply a sequel to the ravages of bubonic plague.”

“You mean the Black Death of the fourteenth century?”

“That, of course, was the popular name of the disease. The Italians, in their more musical language, called it ’_la mortalega grande_’--the Great Mortality.”

“But you surely don’t anticipate----?”

“A similar visitation?--certainly not. We were only speaking of the after effects; and similar effects might, and, in my judgment will, be produced in modern times by some less appalling form of physical disease. The _Chorea_, or Dancing Mania of the Middle Ages was the outcome of the Black Death, and the Dancing Mania itself was simply the expression of disordered nerves.”

“But, my dear sir, this is the twentieth century.”

“History always repeats itself, though with interesting variations. My dear fellow, the nervous system of the nation is out of order.”

“You ought to know.”

“I do,” said the specialist, drawing at his cigar.

“But the extent of the mortality from plague was greatly exaggerated,” protested the other.

“Of course, of course; nevertheless, in London upwards of fifty thousand corpses were buried in layers in a single district, and we know the burial pits even to this day.”

“And, after all, the Dancing Mania was mainly a Continental development.”

“No doubt; but scientifically it was only a form of epilepsy, and St Vitus has had his votaries in all countries, at all times. It was not until the sixteenth century that the faculty ventured to question the demon theories of the priests. Look up Paracelsus, my friend. His diagnosis was correct, but his remedies were ridiculous.”

“I suppose the tarantism of Italy was only a form of the same nervous disorder?” queried the other.

“Precisely; the spider’s bite was a delusion--though, no doubt, the Apulian Tarantula was a _bona fide_ insect. Hysteria can always invent a spider, or a mouse. As recently as 1787, two or three hundred girls in a Lancashire cotton mill were seized with violent convulsions, because one girl put a mouse into the bosom of another girl. They all declared that they had been treated in the same way. The insane delusions of the Convulsionaires in France lasted till near the end of the eighteenth century, and of course we have had our own Jumpers, Shakers, and Pentecostal Dancers here in England.”

“And you think we haven’t seen the last of them?”

“Nor yet the worst,” said the specialist, rising. “Shall we finish our cigars outside?”

As the two men ended their odd dialogue and left the room, a waiter brought Herrick a pencilled note.

“_Father will see you.--Aldwyth._”