I am betraying no confidence when I say that the ease with which this loan was obtained was in no small part due to the universal activity of One Who has often appeared in the pages of this sad record. If any further reward beyond the natural pleasure which proceeds from a good action may be of value to Him, He may take this assurance from my pen that He made a good man happy for more than thirty-six hours.
On the evening before his rendezvous at the Plantagenet Club, Mr Burden, as usual, returned to his home by the 5.13. Cosmo he did not expect; for the young man moved, as his father well knew, in another, and as he hoped, a better world. He read, therefore, all that evening, to beguile his thoughts, a novel dealing with the conflict between science and religion. At half-past ten he went to bed.
It is a matter somewhat curious, but vouched for by a serving maid of the name of Hannah, who brought hot water to his room, that he said his prayers. I mention the point only to illustrate the attitude of his mind at this critical moment. He went to sleep before eleven; but his sleep was disturbed with dreams; in these dreams the grotesque, unhappily, mixed with the terrible, and there ran through them that reminiscence of the immediate past which is a sure sign of disturbance in the Ganglions of the Cerebellum.
THE BISHOP OF SHOREHAM (THE HONBLE. THE REV. PEREGRINE MAUCLERC) SITTING AS AN ASSESSOR AT THE TRIAL OF CANON CONE FOR HERESY, PIRACY, CONSPIRACY AND SCHISM
AN EXCELLENT LIKENESS, WHICH WE TAKE FROM THE “CONE TRIAL ILLUSTRATED SUPPLEMENT” OF “CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS”
He dreamt that many men of many kinds were offering him money in incredible amounts, as loans, as gifts, as reversions, as exorbitant prices for securities which he held; and yet these offers did not please, but vaguely disturbed him, for they were made by sundry beings with faces always distorted, sometimes horrible, who sat beside him on the seat of a hansom cab, wherein he drove. In the corners of this cab, before him, were bottles of champagne. It was brilliantly lit, and he could see outside in the darkness between the shafts, that it was drawn not by a horse, but by his friend Mr Abbott. The dream was evil, and, though he knew not by what the cab was driven, yet he knew there sat up there some Thing which he did not care to think of, and which he did not dare to see. Twice he would have lifted the trap to glance furtively; twice his hand failed him and his body grew quite cold with fear. Such is the nature of dreams, that he found the event but ordinary when the hansom turned into a bath chair, running of itself, and this again to his own bed, which seemed to be at once in his own bedroom, and yet in a crowded street; up and down this street he noticed a multitude of people, nearly all of whom he knew, going to their business. The last of them came, a healthy, up-standing figure, tall, strong, rubicund; he was well familiar with it: it was that of the Honourable, the Reverend Peregrine Mauclerc, vicar of St Judas’s, Denmark Hill, a church he constantly attended. This figure, passing rapidly, nodded at him in a breezy way, and cried cheerfully and very loudly: “It will be paid for in shares.” Then an awful spasm of pain, come and gone in a twinkling, incredibly severe, shot through his chest; and Mr Burden suddenly awoke.
He was gasping and sitting upright; to his astonishment it was quite dark. Never had his regular sleep been broken by such a sharp and dreadful agony: rarely had it been broken at all for many years. Indeed, since his father’s death, and the relief from political discussion which followed it, he could remember nothing of the night save evening, and then daylight again.
But now he found himself staring at darkness, with his left hand at his chest. The pain had darted and vanished like the stab of a dagger; but the shock was still in his brain.
There lay under his pillow a gold watch, presented to him, after their release, by the officers and men of the Commander-in-Chief’s Own Fighting Body-guard, in recognition of his services and generous subscription to the Prisoners’ Funds. It was of great value; upon sliding a small spring along the side this watch would strike the hours and the quarters and the minutes, while pressure upon one of three jewelled buttons caused it to render Hearts of Oak, or The Wearing of the Green, or Mr Kipling’s Kill ’im wid yer mouf; but these Mr Burden very properly left silent, save when he would amuse the children of his friends.