Part 6

One thing was clear enough. If what he had seen and heard was not a fiction or the delusion of his senses, the _Speculum_ was a colossal stupidity. Even if the rejuvenations of Commagenus were as much in the course of nature as he affirmed them to be, did they not warrant the Pope’s most arrogant pretensions? But it was with himself that he was most concerned. Was it not the fact that, as Commagenus had declared, his life had been most miserably wasted? And the mistake was past repair. If only his youth had known! And his mind went back to a short, happy time, just after he had taken his degree, when he had served as chaplain in his far-away northern country, at the ancestral castle of the Dacres. His pupil then had been the present Lord, Marmaduke’s father; and the pupil had had so much to teach his master about hawks and horses and hounds that the master had little leisure to repay it in Greek and Latin. Those were happy days when they had roamed the Cumbrian fells together. And now this Lord Dacre was great in the councils of his sovereign, the wise and respected ruler of a barony that was almost a kingdom in itself. And in his trusting confidence he had committed his son to the care of his old master at Cambridge; and that son in course of years would naturally succeed to his father’s station.

Had Commagenus indeed sat in that chamber, only a few hours since, and unfolded to him the secret of perpetual youth? Yes: there was the evidence of the written scrap lying on the open page of the _Speculum_. True, Commagenus had made a detestable use of his wonderful power. But with Makepeace it would be different. He was conscious of his sobriety and virtue, and there were the noble traditions of the house of Dacre to keep him in the right way. He had abilities, if only he had youth and opportunity to use them, and the experience of sixty years was a better guarantee for their proper employment than any that a callow youth could offer. Clearer, louder than the voices of conscience or calculation there came back to him, like the drumming burden of an iterated song, the words “The door is open. Be young.” Was it fancy that a door seemed to open in the dark book-press opposite, and that through it he looked out on a sunny haze enveloping blue hills and waters and the towers of Dacre Castle? And cool breaths from heathery heights took up the refrain, and whispered to him “Be young.”

Matthew Makepeace crept quietly to the dark corner where his pupil lay. His will was intense as he had never known it before. He took care that his shadow should not fall on the sleeper’s face and arouse him. He made the wonderful passes--with what extraordinary clearness they were printed on his recollection! He stooped and whispered in his pupil’s ear the mysterious word.

If Matthew had expected a flash of lightning, the apparition of the Evil One, the jubilations of triumphant fiends on the success of his experiment, he was agreeably disappointed. Nothing of the kind happened. Only in the dim light of the candle he saw a grey shadow of weary age steal over his pupil’s face, and he felt the vigour and vitality of youth invade his own limbs as with the intoxication of wine. Then the wick suddenly flickered in the candle-socket and went out. He heard Marmaduke turn over in his bed with an uneasy sigh.

Then Makepeace woke to reason and a horrible dread. He dared not relight the candle for fear of rousing the sleeper. In the dark, before he was discovered, he must repeat the process which should restore each to his own person. In the dark, as nearly as he could, he went through the magical passes, and with extraordinary vehemence he willed himself back into Matthew Makepeace. But the word! Great heavens! It had passed from him as suddenly and completely as the light of the extinguished candle. In vain he racked his memory of every language, living or dead. It had no meaning in any language, living or dead: of that he felt sure, and he was sure of nothing else. For an hour, by his pupil’s bedside, he tore his hair in desperate efforts to recall it. For an hour he alternately cursed Commagenus and prayed that he might return before day to give him the forgotten word. Then the grey morning light began to creep through the casement, and the birds woke and sang.

There could be no shadow of doubt about it. There lay Matthew Makepeace before him, and the old man was drowsily stirring his limbs as the light broadened into day. And young Dacre, in a doctor’s gown, was looking down upon him, tortured with horrible thoughts. One thing was certain. He could never pass himself off as Marmaduke. Conscience, gratitude, affection forbade it. Besides, the thing was impossible. He, the torpid pedant, could never play the part of the young and chivalrous heir of the Dacres: and there would be Marmaduke to convict the imposture. Before his pupil woke, before the discovery was made, he must disappear from Cambridge. Quietly and in haste he took down his pupil’s clothes from the closet where they hung, and exchanged for them his doctor’s robes. Then he descended his stairs and stepped out into the cool shadows of the August morning. The porter was just opening the gate. He nodded familiarly to young Dacre as he passed. That was the last which any soul in Jesus College saw of Matthew Makepeace.

Unless, indeed, it were that same Matthew Makepeace who, with the homing instinct of a dying animal, crept back to Cambridge in poverty and wretchedness, and died in widow Pearson’s house in 1654. In any case the flagstone in the chapel transept told a lie: it was Marmaduke Dacre that lay beneath it.

One thing further I have to mention. When I first took down the _Speculum_ from its shelf in the college library I found it in the same virgin condition in which it had lain on the table of Matthew Makepeace on that fatal afternoon in August, 1604. No living soul had disturbed its repose for over 300 years. It was evidently the same copy: perhaps no other was ever issued. As I turned its pages a scrap of paper fluttered to the floor. It had been torn from the bottom corner of pages 273-4. On it was written in minute Greek letters an inscription which I translate:

“Demetrius Commagenus. All things are possible to him who knows and wills with earnestness.”

Thankfull Thomas

A passage in the lately edited _Diary of George Evans_, 1649-1658, has called my attention to a singular and, I believe, unrecorded episode in the history of Jesus College.

With Mr. Evans himself the story is not concerned. It is sufficient to say that he was appointed to a fellowship at Jesus in 1650 by the Committee for Reforming the Universities, in place of an expelled Presbyterian. He was, as his name suggests, a Welshman, of the county of Radnor, and, of course, an Independent. He vacated his fellowship, on his marriage, in 1654, and retired to the living of Marston Monceux, co. Salop. He held the incumbency until his death, in 1672, having conformed at the Restoration.

The portion of his diary which has awaked my interest relates to the date June 11, 1652. For its explanation it is necessary to state that ten years previously, just before the outbreak of the Civil War, the College had taken a quantity of its plate from the Treasury and delivered it to a certain Mr. John Poley, by him to be conveyed to His Majesty, who was then at Nottingham. As the whole society was under menace of expulsion before the end of 1642, they took the precaution, before quitting the College, of concealing the rest of the plate, as well as the chapel organ. This organ had been introduced in 1634 by the Master, Richard Sterne, who was Archbishop Laud’s chaplain, and had actively promoted his plans for the re-organisation of church ritual in the University. It was a small chamber instrument, easily transportable. When the new society, consisting of Presbyterians introduced by the Earl of Manchester, entered the College in January, 1643, they noted in the Treasury Book that they could only discover three pieces of plate. Entries in the Bursar’s Book in the year 1652 record that the rest of the plate was discovered in that year, and at a rather later date the organ was brought to light.

Some further notes respecting the Chapel in Commonwealth days will serve to explain certain points in the history which I have been able to unravel. The older of the two existing bells in the tower was cast by Christopher Gray in 1659. It took the place of another which was of pre-Reformation date and had probably served the Nunnery of Saint Radegund. This was a heavy tenor bell, and had apparently belonged to a set of four, named after the evangelists. It bore the emblem of Saint Mark, a lion, and the inscription in ancient lettering--

=Celorvm Marce resonet tvvs ympnvs in Arce.=

This bell, for many years previous to 1652, had been disused owing to the weakness of its frame and of the supporting floor.

The passage, above referred to, in George Evans’ diary runs as follows:

“June 11 [1652]. Present yᵉ Master, Mr. Woodcocke and Mr. Machin, fellows, with Mr. Thomas Buck, Thankfull Thomas and Robert Hitchcock digging, we digged up yᵉ treasury plate hidd in yᵉ Masters orchard. In all were seventeen peeces (then follows a list). Searched till prayers. But Quaerendm whether there be not yit other peeces and yᵉ treasure hidd by yᵉ former societie. Thomas saith Mr. Germyn cld avouch for more.”

On reading this extract, the name--for such it seemed to be--Thankfull Thomas, at once arrested my attention. It reminded me of a partially obliterated inscription on a flat gravestone which lies at the crossing of the transepts, close to the south-west pier of the tower--that one which is distinguished from the other piers by a dog-tooth moulding. The letters are so worn by treading that they can only be distinguished in certain lights, and indeed have altogether disappeared on the side of the stone which is furthest from the pier-base. What remains is to be read:--

=nkfull mas=

followed by a date of which the figures =652= are legible.

I have searched the Register of the College for such a name, but, though it is complete for the years preceding 1652, I have been unable to find it. But in the College Order Book I have found, among other appointments of the year 1650, an entry, “Thomas constitutus est Custos Templi.” From which it would seem that Thomas was the surname of the Independent official corresponding to a verger or chapel-clerk. It is singular that he should have been buried, among Masters and Fellows, in such a conspicuous place in the Chapel.

The discovery of the plate in the Master’s orchard--brought about through the agency of Mr. Thomas Buck, of Catharine Hall, who was one of the Esquire Bedells--was matter for disappointment as much as congratulation to the Master and Fellows. They had a convinced belief that a much larger quantity of treasure remained concealed in some quarter of the College, and, as the passage in the diary shows, Thankfull Thomas suggested that Mr. Germyn probably knew something of the matter. Of him it is necessary to say a few words.

Gervase Germyn, of the county of Huntingdon, was admitted to the College in 1621, and in 1652 must have been a man of middle age. He was a Master of Arts, unmarried, and resided in Cambridge. He was not one of the expelled Fellows. He had acted as organist and choir-master in the mastership of Richard Sterne, and was passionately devoted to church music. After the removal of the organ and the installation of the new Master and Fellows, in 1643, his connection with the College ceased. He was miserably poor and supported himself by teaching music. His small, spare figure was ordinarily dressed in a thread-bare garb of semi-clerical appearance, and he had a quaintness of manner and speech which induced the belief that he was not of ordinary sanity.

Thankfull Thomas particularly disliked him. Gervase had a tone of superiority in addressing him which was the more galling because what he said was only remotely intelligible to the sexton; and he had a disagreeable habit of meddling with what he considered to be the duties and prerogatives of his office. Germyn must have possessed a key to the Chapel, for he was constantly presenting himself there at unexpected times, often late in the evening. He had a distracting habit of roaming about the building, and, as Thomas thought, spying on his actions from unseen quarters. Thomas had seen him looking down on him from the Nuns’ gallery in the north transept, or high up in the tower arcade.

Thomas took note of these circumstances and kept his knowledge to himself. His cupidity was aroused by the thought of the hidden treasure, and he was perfectly convinced that the clue to its discovery lay with Germyn. As it was useless to question him directly he resorted to a system of counter-espial.

His attention was particularly drawn to the Chapel tower, where he had more than once detected Germyn’s presence. The arcaded storey beneath the belfry is reached by a dark, winding stair in the wall at the north-east angle of the north transept. The staircase emerges, at a considerable height, on a Norman gallery, which, at the time of which I am speaking, was not protected on the transept side by a railing. Thomas was a timid man, and he made this alarming passage clutching each pillar as he passed it. Then another stair in the tower pier led up to the arcaded gallery, and there the inner communication stopped. A door in the north arcade opened on the roof of the transept, from which a dizzy ladder ascended to the belfry window. The ladder gave Thomas pause. It was old, weather-worn and crazy, and, unless by the light figure of Germyn, had perhaps never been scaled for a generation. The silent belfry above, encompassed by wheeling jackdaws, was a terror to his weak nerves. Even from the floor below he could see the gaping rottenness of its rafters: so he let it alone.

Secure on the Chapel floor he began his researches. In his vacant moments he roamed about chancel, transepts and nave, beating the walls and trampling the flags, if perchance he might light on some recess wherein the treasure was contained. At first his curiosity was excited by certain crosses graved on the nave floor. He did not know that they marked the processional path of the Saint Radegund nuns. But he could detect no sound of hollowness beneath them. Finally, he fastened his mind on a large, unmarked stone, next the south-west pier of the tower. Here, and in no other part of the Chapel, there was distinct evidence that a vault of some kind existed. Above it the disused bell-rope was attached to the pier.

Often, when the Chapel was closed after service hours, he scrutinised this stone. It had no mark of recent disturbance, but in ten years it was likely that any such indication had been obliterated. One summer evening in 1652 he was so engaged, and kneeling on the stone, when he was startled by the sudden falling of a shadow. He sprang to his feet and beheld Gervase Germyn.

“Good evening, friend,” said Germyn. “You work late. I was visiting some old friends that lie under the stones here, having a word with him or him that I have known, a remembered jest with one, a snatch of old song with another--who knows what? And here are you at the like business. And who, pray, is your friend?”

“Master Germyn,” replied Thomas stiffly, “an idle man may talk to dead men, if he will: a sexton has other business with them. How often am I to bid you not to meddle in my affairs?”

“You are very right,” said Germyn, “and now I perceive this is no man’s grave--yet. Perhaps the sexton is looking to make it one. And which, pray, of my friends, the new Fellows, has gone to his audit? Or is it to be mine, perhaps, or thine: and I think it be thine indeed, for I find thee lying on it. But you don’t know the Prince of Denmark: else I should ask you the clown’s riddle, ‘What is he that builds stronger than either the mason, the ship-wright, or the carpenter?’ It is a pretty riddle to ask within walls that are five hundred years old.”

“I make no graves,” answered Thomas, “and I have no time or patience for your riddles. I only ask you to begone.”

“Is the trade then so slack, friend Thomas, and is there none to give the sexton employment?--none of all that dig for death as for hid treasure, and some, perhaps, who dig for treasure and find death.”

Thomas was startled at the hint that his purpose was detected. He looked dubiously on the speaker, and the thought dawned on him that perhaps Germyn was offering himself as a confederate. “Treasure,” he said slowly; “yes, if you talk of treasure there is more sense in you than I thought. I don’t know but what we might find it together; and a poor man, such as you, might have his fair share, and none be the wiser.”

“You are wholly mistaken,” said Germyn, “if you think that I know anything of the treasure that you are looking for: and, if I knew, God forbid that I should rob the dead of their trust. No, let them keep it until the day of restitution, when their friends claim it of them. You are a bold man, Thomas, to think of the dead as if they had no sense of what happens to-day. For my part, though we talk as old friends, I have a dreadful awe of them: they can do so much, and I can’t hurt them, if I would. It is a marvel to me that you can walk and work at such an hour in a place that is so full of voices and presences. A holy man you should be! Do you know how Goodman Deane, the last man who held your office, died?”

“They tell me he died distracted. But I don’t trouble myself with fancies.”

“It was in August, two years since. What had he seen? What had he heard? They say that in his wanderings he often repeated ‘I should have rung, I should have rung.’ And I think I see his meaning. It is an old belief--God knows what of truth there is in it--that at the ringing of the church bell the congregations of the dead break up and give place to the living. Poor Deane! Mark could not speak for him: he has been dumb these twenty years, though one day, please God, he will speak again for his friends--of whom you are not one. And there is another old fancy that belongs to this church, and perhaps had something to do with Deane’s matter. It used to be told among the old society, that are scattered or dead now, that the festival of the Name of Jesus was a great day with the old dead folk. Each year at midnight on that day, which is the seventh of August, they assemble--men or women, I know not which--here in the church to observe the hour of Lauds. It was said that you could hear them trooping down from their chambers outside by a stair that does not exist, and they came through the church wall by a door that is unseen. Then, each in order, they rank themselves on the crosses that mark this pavement, and go round the church in darkness, for they need no lights. Their singing has been often heard, but I do not know that living eye has seen their procession, unless it were Deane’s, and, it seems, he did not live long after.”

“It is a curious fancy, truly,” said Thomas, “if one could credit it. But I don’t know why you tell it me, as I never visit the church after nightfall. And little as I believe your tale, I believe you less when you tell me that you know nothing of this treasure. But I spoke of it at a venture, and it is none of my business. So I leave you to your ghosts.”

* * * * *

Thankfull Thomas was not courageous, but his fears were not of a sentimental order. He was more than ever convinced that Germyn knew the secret of the hidden treasure, and that his story was a device to prevent him from continuing his search for it; and he had made up his mind that it lay under the stone where Germyn had interrupted him. At night he would be secure from his interference, and would have time to lift the stone and replace it in such a manner as to leave no trace of its disturbance. And as the date which Germyn had mentioned had passed out of his mind, it so happened that August 7 was the night which he chose for his enterprise.

It was past eleven when he entered the church with lantern and tools. The stone was heavy, and it took a considerable time to dislodge and lift it. Beneath it he saw a vault, some five feet deep. He lowered his lamp into it. Great was his disappointment to find it blankly empty. He had so fastened his expectations on this particular spot that hardly yet could he think himself mistaken. He let himself down into the vault that he might explore for some recess in its walls or floor.

He was still groping in semi-gloom when, above his head, he caught the sound of quiet treading, and then a waft of strange music. He was too unskilled to tell what the instrument might be, but the sound of it was soft and pleasant. It rose, and died away, and rose again in fitful strains. Then it went on in a continuous melody and was taken up by a voice peculiarly sweet and clear--so clear that the words were plainly distinguishable. “When the Lord turned again the captivity of Sion then were we like unto them that dream.”

Thomas listened in amazement till the psalm ended and silence returned. Then he heard the shuffling of descending steps, and with a sudden horror he remembered the story of the dead men’s staircase and the phantom procession. He heard a door softly open in the dark transept, and he sprang wildly to the bell-rope above his head. One frightful clang: Mark spoke again after twenty years of silence: a rumble and a roar: the heavy bell splintered itself on the floor beneath, and Thankfull Thomas, in a pool of blood, lay in the grave of his own making.

* * * * *

In a corner of the belfry, where the floor was not broken by the falling bell, they discovered the organ, which had been hidden there since 1642.

* * * * *

The Restoration brought back a few survivors of the expelled Society of 1642, and with them Gervase Germyn. But in 1664 I find that George Loosemore was master of the College choristers, and Germyn was dead. At what precise date he died I cannot say. But one thing is known. The Chapel, after long neglect and misappropriation, was repaired, decorated and restored to Anglican usage about the year 1663. The reconciliation of the Church was marked by a choral service, and Germyn occupied his old seat at the organ. Among the psalms chosen for the service was the 126th, _In convertendo captivitatem Sion_. The singers had reached the last verse--“He that now goeth on his way weeping and beareth forth good seed: shall doubtless come again with joy and bring his sheaves with him.” There the organ accompaniment faltered, failed, died, and left the choir to chant the _Gloria_ unassisted. The grey head of Gervase Germyn lay on the key-board, and the College had to seek a new organist.

The Palladium

On an unspecified morning in the year 1026, in the reign of Cnut, king, of happy memory, Aethelstan, abbat of Ramsey, delivered to the monks of his Benedictine household, in chapter assembled, an address which had notable consequences.

The reverend father took as the text of his discourse the verse, _in libro Regum tertio_, which in our Authorised Version is expressed--Know ye not that Ramoth in Gilead is ours, and we be still, and take it not out of the hand of the King of Syria?

With the ghostly lessons to be drawn from this passage we need not concern ourselves: indeed they were but lightly touched upon by the abbat. He turned almost directly to practical matters.