CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

_Second Wind_

Mr. Trimblerigg’s home-coming, in spite of the triumphal note sedulously given to it by his out-and-out supporters, was a sad one. He found Free Evangelicalism divided against him. His results had not wiped out the memory of his methods; and as there had been loud protest while these were still going on, there was now controversy as to whether they had in the least helped to the more peaceful _dénouement_ which had followed. In the main his only backers among the Free Evangelicals were the armed missionaries who had carried out his policy, and the shareholders whose investments he had saved from ruin. And though True Belief had rallied whole-heartedly to the support of his more than Mosaic discipline--finding for it the warrant of Scripture--True Belief, in spite of the new importance thus given to it, was not the mould into which he could pour himself at this advanced stage of his career upon his return to civilization. Except in the mission field, where he had used it to meet an emergency, its die-hard tenets were incompatible with Relative Truth; yet though some of its followers still held that the world was flat, and others that it did not go round, in a matter of religious war against the barbarism of savage tribes he could work with them, and in their eye-for-an-eye and tooth-for-a-tooth standpoint find the Relative Truth which served his need. But they, for their part, would not doctrinally budge an inch to come to him.

So when the main body of Free Evangelicalism turned against him, intimacy with True Belief stood rather as a liability than as an asset; though for a time it was a question whether he had anywhere else to turn--whether any religious connection large and lively enough to serve his purpose was willing to have him except on terms into which even his diversified record could not fit without foolishness.

With the ruddy honours of Puto-Congo fresh upon him, he stood for re-election to the Presidency of the Free Evangelical Union, and got turned down. The blow was a shrewd one, though he met it with a smiling face. But when, following upon that, after long and heated discussion an adverse motion was carried by the executive of the Free Evangelical Missions, whose organization on its present vast scale owed its prosperity mainly to him, then indeed he felt as though the bottom was being knocked out of his ministerial career; and was almost of a mind--of two minds, that is to say--to turn from divinity to politics.

For in politics at that time events were moving fast, creating for adaptable men opportunities of a new kind. If, as seemed likely, the old two-party system was about to give place to group-formations, whose tenure of life must necessarily be more of a negotiable than a fixed quantity, and if for the manipulation of democratic government to a safe middling course, opportunism must henceforth take a higher place than principle, could anyone be found with a more instinctive touch for the job than Mr. Trimblerigg?

In the political world the situation was there waiting for him: in the religious world, on the other hand, where for the time being movement seemed retrograde rather than forward, the situation would have to be made. It was the tougher job.

To give Mr. Trimblerigg his due, that--if only he could find for it the right environment--would be but an added attraction. A tough job always delighted him; so much so that, setting his teeth to the toughness of it, he thenceforth forgot everything but appetite; and as his appetite always grew with what it fed on--given a proposition of sufficient toughness, his appetite was apt to go strange lengths. So it had been when he set out to hew Agag, and skin the scapegoat, giving to the fantasy that air of probability which it needed in order to make it popular; so likewise when he had to find moral excuse for standing Christianity upon its head in the burnt-out cinders of native villages, with the compulsorily converted Free State of Puto-Congo as his reward. In each case the toughness of the job and the moral difficulties it presented took the place of conviction, supplied the necessary enthusiasm, and jogged him on to his goal.

So it was to be now. All that he lacked for the moment was the necessary environment, the atmosphere into which a new spiritual movement could be born. In politics it existed; in religion it had still to be found. Mr. Trimblerigg hesitated; and while he hesitated the call came, the spark of inspiration descended from on high, and what thereafter was saved to religion in a revivalism which swept the world, was lost to politics.

Two events, small in themselves, gave to his mind the impetus and direction it required. The first was the death of the harmless, unnecessary Caroline, the wife whose previous uneventfulness had given to his career the only ballast it had ever known; the other was the recrudescence of Isabel Sparling, manufacturing for herself in the spiritual and religious world a success which arrested his attention, and awoke in his breast first a small spark of jealousy, then emulation and the determination, doing likewise, to make a bigger thing of it.

Caroline’s death was due to obscure causes for which the doctor found a scientific name that satisfied all legal requirements; but if I have any qualification for diagnosing mortality in the human race, I should be inclined to say that she died of a gradual and cumulative attack of fright. Mr. Trimblerigg had once made her doubt the evidence of her senses--and not only of her own but of the children she had borne to him; and though she had acquiesced submissively at the time--having the negative proof always before her that the glory with which her imagination had surrounded him was departed, that he was in truth no saint, and had not after all taken his baths in cold weather--she was never the same woman again. That she should have imagined so difficult a thing, only to be told that it was a delusion after all, caused a shock to her system. Her breathing became asthmatic, she coughed with nothing to cough for, had flutterings of the heart, and began to wear shawls even when the weather was warm. And waking one night, shortly after Mr. Trimblerigg’s return from Puto-Congo had made them bed-fellows again, she saw or thought she saw upon the pillow beside her a recrudescence of her fear--the thing which could be seen but was not to be believed. Faint, very faint--the product only of a dream--it flushed feebly and passed away. But that single sight, or the mere suspicion of it, gave her a habit of wakefulness which grew on the apprehension that lay at the back of it; and just as people who see spots crossing the field of vision damage their eyesight by pursuing them, or as others who have a singing in their ears go mad in trying to be quit of it; so did Caroline in trying both to realize and get rid of the suspicion she wished to avoid, reduce herself to a nervous wreck; and day by day, eyeing Mr. Trimblerigg with looks whose meaning she would not explain, sank into a despondency which by destroying her domestic efficiency robbed life of its remaining _raison d’être_.

And so one morning, after an ecstatic dream of more than usual vividness, Mr. Trimblerigg woke to find her lying very quiet and open-eyed beside him; and though the expression was not peaceful, Caroline had nevertheless found peace; and Mr. Trimblerigg with curiously mixed feelings, yet with a decent modicum of grief which was quite genuine, saw that he had become a widower.

Among the letters of condolence which reached him after the sad event--not immediately but a few months later--was one of peculiar interest from Sir Roland Skoyle, conveying not merely sympathy, but news. For it now appeared that Caroline was not as lacking in spirit as her life had made out; rather had she reserved it for future use. Caroline, in fact, had suddenly become interesting; and if she had not quite found herself again in the old world where her real interests lay, she had found her medium; she was there, waiting for her credentials to be put to the test, and asking for him with such urgency that Mr. Trimblerigg had a doubt whether he was yet free to consider himself a complete widower.

If, on that matter, he felt that his liberty was less than he could have wished, there was nevertheless a compensating interest; for here, in germ, was the idea he had been waiting for: if he could convince himself that spiritualism was really true--his previous experience, though momentarily impressive had finally disappointed him--he would go on and convince the world. It was some such conviction that the religious world was now needing to spring it into fresh life; and he himself only needed confidence in the case to be presented, in order to become the man to do it. And so, at this point of his career, when he least expected it, Caroline became an important character.

It was a strange apotheosis; and the realization of its truth came to him in strange words at the first interview which Sir Roland Skoyle arranged for them. The medium, sitting entranced, was not in the least like her; but no matter. She breathed asthmatically, coughed, and holding hand to heart hugged an imaginary shawl. Taking her disengaged hand tenderly, he asked: ‘Caroline, my dear, is that you?’ And the voice of Caroline answered: ‘I did see it, Jonathan; I really did! And I can see it now. You look beautiful.’ Then, after a pause, ‘Who have you got to mend your socks for you?’

That was Caroline all over; and as conviction settled into his brain, her importance established itself. The conversation that ensued was trivial and domestic in character; it was, nevertheless, a world-moving event.

And the second was like unto it--in this at least, that a woman whom he had come to regard as of no importance assumed all upon a sudden a new significance and took her place once more in the shaping of his career.

Isabel Sparling, failing to find lodgment for her preaching powers in any home-grown community among the Free Churches, had passed on to America, where strange faiths and novel methods have always a better chance.

A stray paragraph in a newspaper gave him the news that among the Blue Ridge and Alleghany mountains she had achieved a startling success in the propaganda of Second Adventism. The rural population of Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina had begun robing itself in white; drawn by the spirit, thousands upon thousands of Last Day saints made periodical pilgrimages to the tops of the high mountains, and there picnicked for whole weeks at a time waiting for an Event which, though it failed to show visibly, always sent them back to their homes spiritually refreshed. Rain-baptisms--by preference in a thunder-storm--were another manifestation of the new faith. There were startling cases when a date had been fixed weeks beforehand; torrential rains had descended in answer to prayer and washed into renewed sanctity five thousand converts at a time.

Mr. Trimblerigg had always had a modernist’s doubt about the efficacy of prayer either for fine weather or wet. But supposing these accounts to be true, Isabel Sparling was a water-finder of no uncertain power. If she had ever failed, the papers made no report of it; at any rate, in States where the rainfall was generally less than could be desired, the average was going steadily up, and conversion to Second Adventism had in consequence become popular. Manifestly she had got her stick by the right end; in this practical age a combination between revealed religion and good business was the one thing needful, and as the increased rainfall was welcome to a large agricultural interest, so also were the pilgrimages and the picnics to the retail traders. Pious people, who had hitherto been frugal stay-at-homes, were now spending a great deal upon white linen sunshades, Panama hats, shoe leather, thermos flasks, mineral waters, cooked food of a portable kind and all other necessary accompaniments for outings conducted on a large scale. In a quite important slice of the States religion had once more become not merely popular but vibrant and all-embracing in its character. An ‘urge’ for righteousness had taken hold of whole districts where no ‘urge’ of any kind had been felt before; and what at first had only occurred in rural districts was now rapidly assuming a civic, a municipal, and a territorial character. It was announced that one State Governor at least, and the whole population of a large penal settlement were waiting to receive rain-baptism on the earliest date that Isabel Sparling’s engagements with Heaven would allow.

Mr. Trimblerigg read and was impressed. He went further; he took steps to have the matter investigated, and while awaiting a further report he thought much. Over there something was moving which had affinity to the motions of his own brain; a sense of opportunity and of environment began to stir in the inner recesses of his soul. And when the report came--favourable in its main facts--he found all at once that he had recovered his spiritual appetite. The world was the right world after all; there was something in it waiting for him to do.

Nevertheless, for a man of his modern tendencies, Second Adventism was a big pill to swallow; he did not quite see how he was going to believe in it--sufficiently to make it a popular success, and for a while wondered whether he could not run spiritualism alone, with Second Adventism left out.

He consulted Caroline; she was stimulating, but rather vague. ‘Oh, if you only knew, if you only knew, you could do anything!’ she told him. ‘Let your light shine, Jonathan! It’s there, though you don’t see it. If you did, you’d know the way. If you don’t, it may go again, like it did before.’

That little imperfection of grammar, uncorrected in the spirit-world, gave Mr. Trimblerigg a fresh thrill of conviction that this was the real Caroline. How often, as they climbed the social ladder, had he corrected, a little impatiently, those symptoms of a lowly origin. But now it rejoiced his heart to hear her recount the beatific vision she had of him with homely incorrected speech ‘like’ she might have done before.

Yes, it sounded encouraging, but it still left him in doubt; there was too much ‘if’ about it. He wanted to be quite sure, without any ‘ifs’, before he began.

It was at five o’clock one morning, after a sleepless night, that the spark of inspiration swam into Mr. Trimblerigg’s brain, and though it was not my sending--being entirely his own--I saw it come.

He was lying with his head on one side sucking a cough lozenge, when, with a sudden jerk of astonishment, first his eyes opened, then his mouth. The cough lozenge fell out, staining the pillow: he turned his head sharply, eyes front, and sat up.

The conception which had got hold of him was large but quite simple; he saw that Second Adventism depended for its success on one thing and one thing alone. If what he was pleased to regard as Christendom--that is to say, Free Evangelicalism and its dependent relatives among the Free Churches--if Free Evangelicalism could but be persuaded to believe in a Second Advent, and to desire it wilfully, whole-heartedly, passionately--then by the law of spiritual gravity, the Second Advent would come.

It was a great idea; Pragmatism, a thing he had only half-believed in before, would thus be given a test worthy of its powers--would, he believed, win through and make the world what it ought to be--theologically up-to-date. The saints under the Throne crying ‘How long?’ would suddenly change their tune, take up the initiative, and with spiritual Coué-ings themselves fix the date.

It was a bold democratic conception, and since he had always been a whole-hearted democrat there was no inconsistency--though he now thought of it for the first time--in applying it to things doctrinal. Man had his spiritual destiny--including dates--in his own hands; all he needed was unanimity or, failing that, a commanding majority. He had never had it, had never applied it till now. Had he done so the millennium would already have bloomed into being.

And the means to this spiritual unanimity, or commanding majority, by which the race was to be won? In the moment of inspiration that also had been flashed into his brain, and Civilization stood explained. The conquests of science were to become the weapons of faith, and publicity the final expression of religious art. What countless missionaries could not have done in a previous age a single voice would do now. All that was required was a world-wide audience of converts to Second Adventism, a voice going out into all lands, a trumpet signal, and a shout, and at that shout the walls of Jericho would fall flat:

Faith would vanish into sight, Hope be emptied in delight,

and every man would go up straight before him and possess the city of his inheritance.

Nor had Mr. Trimblerigg any doubt--in that first flush of inspiration--whose the voice was to be. As for the trumpet whose blast was to rend the veil of a new world, science had providentially supplied the instrument. It would be a big business to get possession of it; but once done, it would be Big Business indeed. At the stroke of a wizard’s wand--or call it Aaron’s rod--trade and commerce were to become spiritualized, and the fiery chariot of Elijah would be found among men once more, conveying the voice of prophecy to the far ends of earth--in that moment, that division of a breath, that twinkling of an eye of which older prophecy had spoken. Or to put the matter quite prosaically--on that business footing which was to prove the secret of its success--a monopoly of Broadcasting throughout the English-speaking world was revealed to him as the means for the coming of the Kingdom on Earth.

‘The coming of the Kingdom’? The phrase was picturesque; but it was old and obsolete. ‘Making Heaven safe for Democracy’ was better. That was what Mr. Trimblerigg intended to do.

CHAPTER THIRTY

‘_Arise, Shine!_’

Mr. Trimblerigg’s acceptance of the phenomena of spiritualism, though it drew mass-meetings to hear him, gave a bad jolt to Free Evangelical unity. Thenceforth pulpits were divided; and Mr. Trimblerigg had the run of only half of them. But when, following upon that, he announced his conversion to Second Adventism, a special conference of the connection was called, and secession followed. Mr. Trimblerigg went out hopefully into the wilderness, drawing a tail of all the Free Churches after him; and though for a time they lacked funds, and found many doors closed against them, they had not to be long in doubt that theirs was the winning cause.

What the world wanted--the religious even more than the secular--was a real bird-in-the-hand; proof positive, quick results, practice not theory, ocular demonstration, moral certainty, wheels which actually went round, whose buzz could be heard to the far ends of earth. A race for Heaven without obstacles, and a goal visibly to be won were the materials to make religion once more popular. Spiritualism and Second Adventism run together seemed to meet the demand. The Free Churches Militant began, in an expressive American phrase, ‘to palp with emotion’; and as the new spiritual Combine devised by Mr. Trimblerigg, with joined effects of dark séance and lurid anticipation of coming events, filled its hired halls to overflowing with suffocating converts, the churches grew empty.

With the sword of his spirit unsheathed and high uplifted, Mr. Trimblerigg did not spare his old associates who hung back in this day of battle for the new birth of spiritual democracy; and, to ears which had drunk in the sound of it, the old gang’s trumpetings ceased henceforth to avail or mean anything. Starting upon his fiery crusade to the sound of a hundred drums hired for the occasion, he stood at the door of his Pulman car, in the special that had been provided for him, and flourished defiance to all opposers over the heads of the seething multitude which filled the terminus, frantic with joy at having found a leader whose single aim was to keep things on the run.

He stood there at the crowning point of his career; for here at last he had created his own atmosphere; at the touch of his magician’s wand a new and densely populated environment had sprung up to spread itself round him. Power had been given him, vision, and the gift of tongues; the future of revealed religion in the Free Churches hung trembling in the balances of his mind.

But though it trembled (as it might well), he himself did not. From all over the world he felt a responsive rush of wings to meet him; the right button had been touched, his call to make Heaven safe for Democracy had come at last and the means to it had been found. All the rest had been but a preparation; this was the real thing.

The first sure proof of it was the readjustment of the news-headings in the daily press; Religion began to take a front place. In the beginning this perhaps was merely due to the novelty of the thing, with its attendant features of controversy and secession upon a large scale. But when weekly meetings all over the country, in the largest halls that towns or cities could provide, became an established feature of the new movement, it acquired not only a popular but a commercial importance as well; and when presently Mr. Trimblerigg did his first great stroke of business--combining the earthly with the heavenly on a scale that had never been attempted before--Big Business itself sat up and began to pay attention. In less than six months, for reasons soon to be explained, the Stock Exchange, for the first time in its existence, became sensitive to the call of Religion; and before the finish even the Bank-rate had become affected by the vast scale of reinvestments in other worldliness engineered by Mr. Trimblerigg. For it was quite natural, was it not?--if the world was coming to an end--that people should want to take their money to Heaven with them. Mr. Trimblerigg obligingly provided them with a way, and even coined a new form of currency to give it better effect, image and superscription no longer Cæsar’s.

But this is to anticipate. Before these things happened, Mr. Trimblerigg’s faith in himself had reached an intensity which, except for outside assistance, it could hardly have achieved. The impetus had come from an unexpected quarter, and at first had not been welcome.

It was characteristic of Mr. Trimblerigg, when he took up with Second Adventism, to do so without acknowledging or even recognizing the source of his inspiration; for it is safe to say that within twenty-four hours of making it his own he had, by an acrobatic feat of mental detachment, put Isabel Sparling entirely out of his mind as having anything to do with it; and had almost forgotten her existence in the whirl of his own discovery, when among the rushing wings that flew to meet him from the far parts of the earth, came first a message from Isabel, couched in tactful terms, hailing him not as her follower but as her leader, and then Isabel herself. Nor did she come with her hands empty; she brought with her the proffered allegiance of her own vigorous following, already some fifty thousand strong and going stronger every day; Rain-Baptists, Seals of Solomon, First Resurrectionists, Second Adventists, Last Day Disciples, New Jerusalemites--all these, so little known in their separate capacities, now joined together under her leadership in a common bond were a force no longer to be despised. And however little Mr. Trimblerigg might welcome the reminder that his inspiration was shared by another, he was too practical to reject the material thus offered him. Even though at home the movement was going ahead by leaps and bounds, a nucleus of fifty thousand souls in a country so impressionable as America was worth having: it meant at least a year to the good in solid spade work; in publicity it meant even more.

But Isabel had something else to give beside adherents; something very unique and wonderful and precious--so, displaying it, she told him; nor was it the first time he had heard of it.

It was not much to look at: a small wooden box with a domed lid, and a cover of mildewed paper in an old-fashioned diaper; and around its rim were seven seals, chipped and blackened with age, two of them already hanging loose where the covering paper had detached itself. But though a poor thing to look at, it had of late years acquired fame, or at least notoriety; and the Press had made copy of it. For this was the box of the American prophetess, Susannah Walcot, dead now for over a hundred years but having followers still--the box concerning which she had said that it must wait till one wearing a crown should open it, and reveal to the world its prophecies concerning the last things. And because all the crowned heads approached had refused to open it, and had been much abused by the faithful remnant of her followers for so doing, therefore it had remained sealed; till, coming into the hands of Isabel Sparling, upon the adherence to her teaching of the dwindling group which held it, it brought to mind a bright particular head she had once seen, which, though in no earthly or material sense, had indubitably been crowned in a glory of its own, so fulfilling the condition which the prophetess had laid down.

And that memory being in her mind when the treasure came into her keeping, it may be guessed with what joyous confirmation of hope she heard presently that the once-crowned head had itself become a sudden convert to Second Adventism. No sooner did the news reach her than she felt that he was already hers; and having first sped a message, a week later she was upon the high seas, on her way to meet him, and the box with its seven seals, bore her company.

At the Customs she expensively saved its sacred contents from profane scrutiny by declaring it to be a special brand of tea hermetically sealed from sea-air. And as nothing of that weight could have cost her more, officials with uncrowned heads took her word for it, and passed into the country a prophecy destined to make its mark in history, besides giving a neat finish to the career of Mr. Trimblerigg.

What happened next must be briefly told; for I do not quite know all the circumstances that lay behind it. With the soul of Isabel Sparling I have had so little acquaintance that I do not make myself responsible for it; only as she came within range of Mr. Trimblerigg, and affected his career, did she interest me. For which reason I must leave unsolved the problem of the seven seals and what they contained at different dates, more especially whether they contained different things before and after the day when she actually took charge of them. I will only say this, that Isabel Sparling was by the look of her an astute, a daring, and a resolute character; nor do I think that for good and great ends she would stick at trifles or have more scruple than Mr. Trimblerigg himself. Also I have reason to believe that she knew her man; and it may well be that in the gyrations of her emotional career, on which Mr. Trimblerigg’s own orbit had had its gravitating effect, she may have assimilated the doctrine of Relative Truth more than one knows. And so whether it was genuine prophecy, coincidence, or only Relative Truth which brought the thing to pass, I leave each reader to decide according to his own taste or credulity.

The initial fact is that when Isabel Sparling, obliterating a disputatious past, again met Mr. Trimblerigg, in order to make him the instrument of her vision for the Millennium that was to be, she did not find his head visibly crowned. Nor had she expected it; yet she was puzzled that it was not so. Such self-abnegation, to the foregoing of a gift so uplifting and spiritual, though admirable as a mere act of humility was not to be encouraged when a world in flux was waiting to be saved not so much by knowledge in things spiritual as by novelty, and when, in consequence, anything in the way of signs and wonders might be of so much help.

Miss Sparling had seen the manifestation, and had believed in it; believed therefore that what had been once could be again. The circumstances under which she had seen it, gave her grounds for suspecting that Mr. Trimblerigg had not then borne witness valiantly to the light which was in him, had in consequence lost it, and needed perhaps to be encouraged in order to find it again. She recalled also the case of Jonah: prophets were sometimes reluctant and had to be pushed. All that I have now to record is the pushing.

Outwardly it was very gently applied: Miss Sparling merely placed the box in Mr. Trimblerigg’s hands for safe-keeping, and there left it. Inwardly? There after stating the facts, I can only leave others to guess. But be it noted that when she left it in his hands she did not ask him to open it; she even told him that only a crowned head could qualify for that purpose; and at that time at all events Mr. Trimblerigg was wearing no crown. Nevertheless--she having asked him to use his influence and persuade a crowned head to open it--the box lay in his undisputed possession. And, as I have said before, I think that Miss Sparling knew her man, and how best to have him.

And so it came about that, finding himself alone with it, though by no means yet convinced of its importance or the truth of its credentials, he became interested in it. The mere fact that a box has been shut up for nearly a hundred and fifty years makes it interesting--at least until it has been opened again: and this was a box claiming to contain prophecy.

Mr. Trimblerigg was no longer of a mind to reject anything which might bring grist to his mill. His discovery of Publicity as the wide gate and the broad road leading to eternal life, forbade him to dismiss as common or unclean anything which might seize the public interest. And his public was now in a mood to seize anything: a whirl of excitement had caught hold of the great semi-detached unsectarian forces of this transitional age; and the fact that he was emptying the Churches was sufficient proof that what the public wanted was something it did not get there. The Churches had ceased to prophesy; prophecy, therefore, might be the right card to play. Second Adventism was based on it: if anticipation was to be raised and seals opened, any old box might help; and this one had already attained publicity though not of a very serious kind. ‘Can any real prophecy come from America?’ had been the depreciatory attitude with which the religious communities of the Old World met its claims; and if from America, why this demand for a crowned head to open it? Why not a President, or a millionaire?

Mr. Trimblerigg himself, though doubting the extreme claims made for it, had never entirely rejected prophecy. Even when, for a brief spell, he had counted himself a modernist, the better to escape from the trammels of True Belief, he had still found a rhetorical use for it; and the Land of Promise with its flowings of milk and honey had oftentimes evoked soul-stirring utterances from his tongue which, when they failed to materialize, became mere figures of speech. But he would much rather that they had materialized; and had they done so would have claimed the credit for it. That precisely was, and always had been his attitude toward prophecy; if he could give its fulfilment he would claim credit for it; if not he would treat it as a figure of speech.

It was in that same attitude, tentatively, that he laid his hand on the box. It might be a good egg; but he did not want to commit himself publicly to anything that would let him down. He would like first to know more of the contents. Prophecy might be what his public required to complete the spell he had begun to lay on it; but the extant writings of Susannah Walcot, obscure, diffuse, and ungrammatical, together with the diminished number of her followers, did not inspire him with confidence; and so for the present his attitude toward prophecy, as he laid his hand on a box said to be full of it, remained unchanged,--he was only prepared to accept it conditionally--in his own time and in his own way; that is, if it suited him.

But as he stooped and examined the box, its structure as well as its possibilities began to interest him; for he noticed that though it had many seals at the top its bottom was quite removable; long rusty nails sticking out a little where the dried wood had shrunk, and at one point a gap where cautious leverage might be possible, suggested a way which in the interests of Relative Truth one might adopt. From one aspect--the one which practically did not matter--it was an equivocal and surreptitious deed; but as over everything else which might have held others in doubt, having quite made up his mind to it, he prayed long and fervently that he might be guided aright in what he did, and also that he might have sufficient skill in carpentry to cover up his tracks when the will of Heaven was done.

He worked at it very patiently for three hours, when the rest of his household was a-bed, till with gathered experience he acquired a standard which, if not skilled, allowed him to feel safe.

It was not hard work so much as delicate; the wood was tender and worm-eaten, the old-fashioned nails with screw-heads came out quite easily--too easily in fact, at first; bits of the wood came with them. This frightened him, he went more slowly. After a tedious period of minute labour the wood was ready to come away in his hand. With his attitude to prophecy still unchanged he lifted it away, and out of the box like a pudding from its mould came a compact mass of very yellow stained paper slightly stuck together by mildew, and dampness that had dried.

Mr. Trimblerigg saw at once that a long task was before him. The prophecies were in a small cramped hand with numerous contractions, and many words badly spelt.

Here and there the ink had gone faint; in other parts time and moisture had made whole passages undecipherable; portions of the prophecy had indubitably passed into oblivion; but far larger portions remained.

With the help of headings--titles symbolic in character--Mr. Trimblerigg began skimming. At first sceptical and a little bored, he presently grew interested; and though not yet convinced, he saw that from the publicity point of view the thing had possibilities. This, for instance, he regarded as an arresting passage:

‘And lo, when the Cock, stricken by the double-pated Eagle, draws in its claws, causing the Scarlet Parrot to fall from its perch, then shall a city fall and a people go free, and the mark of the Beast that was on it shall be blotted out.’

Mr. Trimblerigg, questing this way and that, searched his history; and when presently his mind lighted on a likely spot, he found there an astonishingly close parallel; for this, clearly, was--or could be taken as--a reference, couched in unfriendly terms, to the Papacy’s loss of Temporal Power in the year 1870, owing to the withdrawal of the French troops which protected it.

Presently he began to feel that he was missing things through not knowing as much about modern history as he ought to do; and that a great deal that he was reading might possibly be true could he but discover the application.

Presuming that the prophecies followed a chronological order, he turned on, and before long had struck substance. Here he was no longer out of his depth.

‘When the Bear and the Lion and the Cock shall rise up and stand together in a heap, and become as one for the defence of a Lamb that was without blame--’ This clearly was modern history, and though not quite true history it was the kind of history that was still being swallowed by the Public for which Mr. Trimblerigg had to cater. This at all events was the sort of thing that would go down; there was, in the journalistic sense, good copy in it.

At first Mr. Trimblerigg had inclined to suppose that ‘the Lamb’ had a scriptural significance; he soon decided, however, that it was better for it to mean Belgium; without making the prophecy more true it made it more obvious.

This wresting of the text to suit his possible requirements was a sufficient indication that now Mr. Trimblerigg’s interest had become active. His attitude to prophecy had not exactly changed, but it was being accentuated. He was beginning to see Opportunity upon a large scale; in fact he was not far off from becoming a Susannah Walcotite. With hope mounting to enthusiasm he read on.

Startling analogies began to come thick and fast; with a whirring of wings like coveys put up from fields of unreaped harvest--invisible at one moment, at the next dominating the whole landscape, they flew over his head making a plumed darkness on the bright heavens beyond. From this strange scripture, diffuse, chaotic, with pages not numbered, he began to take notes. Amid much that he did not understand and a good deal which might mean anything, certain figures leapt into definite significance, capable of meaning but one thing only.

‘When the Striped Eagle is seen walking upon the waters with his face to the sun,’ was the entry of America into the War. It is true that, in the first instance, he read the third word as ‘stupid’; but on consideration of the facts and the post-war susceptibilities of America, he decided that ‘striped’ was better. And there was more like unto it.

Then, turning for awhile from its theme of nations at War, the prophecy became personal and particular.

‘And in that day behold a man shall arise and become a beacon; in him a candle shall be set up, and its wick shall be kindled, so that the four corners of the earth shall know of it. His light shall shine; yea, men shall see it and be amazed. Honour shall be upon his head; and whatsoever he sayeth shall come to pass; his hand shall prosper it. My “yea” shall be upon his lips, and my yolk upon his shoulders; to his voice the “yea, yea” of the nations shall answer: they shall be all yolked together because of him.’

Susannah’s spelling was often queer; but as I read this, looking over Mr. Trimblerigg’s shoulder to do it, I began to think that her spelling was sometimes inspired; for I saw now what was coming.

Turning a page,--a page which stood somehow by itself, mildewed like the rest, but with most of its script obliterated--Mr. Trimblerigg read on:

‘He is my prophet, my messenger; unto Nineveh have I called him; yea, I have given him a name that he may be known, that he may be called the second Jonah. Than him none shall be more exalted; and of all feet that run no feet shall run faster.’

Jonathan sat up; his name almost _was_ Jonah; and with the word that followed, dropping only an H, the anagram was perfect. Uplifted and entranced, he read on:

‘When I call him, he shall be afraid; but though he fears me I will run after him. Yea, I will run while I wait; and though I bide my time yet will I catch him. When I make my light shine on him he shall be in doubt; I will withdraw my light from him, so that in darkness he may learn and know. I will put my hook in his mouth and lead him; yea, I will bait his breath so that he may become a catcher of men. He shall travel west, but east he shall return: he shall go far, but I will make him come again. Yea, the ship whereon he goes shall be shaken because of him; the rigging thereof shall tremble. Have I not given him a name?’

Mr. Trimblerigg no longer merely sat up, he skipped to his feet. Only one letter--the letter ‘i’ was missing to make the prophecy absolute. But proper names, he remembered, were very seldom correctly spelt in old days; and it had ever been a source of pride to him to know that upon his father’s side, far back, the family had been illiterate for generations.

‘Trimblerigg!’ ‘And the rigging thereof shall tremble. Have I not given him a name?’ What could be plainer than that?

He continued to pore over the quaint crabbed writing, with its misspellings and its occasional misconstructions,--a style of grammar belonging to the half-educated of a century ago, but not much worse on the whole than the bad Greek of the New Testament. Was bad grammar and bad spelling a reason for rejecting a message so high? In the world’s eyes he feared it would be. In the worldly sense this Susannah was but a half-educated person; sometimes she made prophecies which he not only failed to identify, but which even seemed contradictory, in a wrong tone, out of place. This, for instance, presented a meaning less doubtful than undesirable; he had no use for it:

‘In that day the Lion and the Ass will lie down together; they will share a bed, they will eat hay together, and the heart of the Lion shall wax faint, and his thoughts grow foolish. And the Lion shall listen to the voice of the Ass, and shall think it wisdom. For the Ass shall bray and speak, saying, “It is going to rain”; and immediately it shall do so. Then shall the Ass say, “Come into my stable; for there I have a place prepared for thee, where it does not rain.” So shall they rise up and go, the Lion and the Ass together; and in the stable they shall find one waiting for them with his tackle prepared; and he shall let down his tackle upon their backs and harness the two of them, the Lion with the Ass, and the Ass with the Lion, making them to be a pair under one yolk. And all their apples shall be in one cart; and the man, the owner of the Ass shall drive them whither they know not.’

Mr. Trimblerigg read the passage twice; he did not like it, it perturbed him. Assuming the Lion to mean what he thought it to mean, this was an event which no reading of history could justify: it never had been true, it never would be true. In the other prophecies it was quite evident that the Lion was the chosen beast, well-pleasing to the Lord; how, then, did it come into this forecast of divine dispensation that the Lion should go so far astray?

And who the dickens was the Ass? He looked ahead wherever he saw Ass and Lion figuring together; and the obscurities and perversities of the prophecy became more confounding. The Lion was clearly not doing the right thing; it was following the Ass into a course of action which was leading to no good, which was, in fact, morally wrong; and so far as he could place the prophecies in their chronological sequence, these misdoings must some of them be quite recent, and some actually taking place now. Unedified, he began turning the pages in haste, to find something better; and so doing--it was a pity!--managed to miss this, which caught my quicker eye:

‘And the Ass said to the Lion, “Let us drive the scapegoat into the wilderness and there skin it; and from the skin of the scapegoat let us make coats for ourselves and for our children.” And the Lion said, “Will it be enough?” And the Ass answered, “It shall be enough; for we will stretch it this way and that and make it enough; or if so it be not enough, then we will wait till a second skin be grown, and will take that also; and after that another, and another, till we be satisfied.” Then said the Lion, “But if he die of it, how shall we be satisfied?” And the Ass answered, “We will not let him die, till we be satisfied.” So together they drove the scapegoat into the wilderness, and there they lost him. And the Lion reproached the Ass saying, “Where is the skin of the scapegoat that you promised me?” And the Ass answered, “A proposal is not a promise, neither is a promise a performance. Let it suffice that we have driven the scapegoat into the wilderness, and that he will presently die there. What matter how he dies, so long as he does die?” But the Lion said, “I have no coats for my children, and I am not satisfied.”’

Had Mr. Trimblerigg read that, I wonder what he would have made of it? Had he done so his attitude toward prophecy might have altered. He might have given the box back to Isabel Sparling ‘unopened,’ without having found what followed.

This was a separate enclosure of folded tissue paper, spotted and yellow with age, broken at the folds, and very frail to the touch. It was sealed with the seal of the prophetess; but a single seal on paper presented little difficulty to Mr. Trimblerigg. With great circumspection and delicacy of handling he applied the hot blade of a knife, lifted the seal away, and laid open the contents. A wash-drawing in sepia on mildewed paper was what met his eye. From the artistic point of view it was very poor and amateurish; but to say that it interested him were to put the matter very mildly indeed. It represented a man with rather short legs, middle-aged, somewhat full in the body, and clad in a full-skirted coat. As a forecast of present-day fashions it was not very good; but the legs were in trousers, not knee-breeches, and the head did not wear a wig.

It was the head that most interested him; a large spot of mildew had partly obliterated the features, but not enough to obscure the type. The face was broad, the cheeks were smooth-shaven, the forehead was noble, the hair rather long, and curled up at the ends like the hair of the knave of hearts in a pack of cards; a large bow-tie sat under the chin,--the black tie of a Free Church minister. Underneath were the words, ‘Behold the Fore-runner!’ And again, underneath that, were these words of Scripture: ‘Arise, shine, for thy light has come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee!’ Around the head was an indubitable halo; and faint, very faint, upon the blank space of it to right and left, the initials ‘J’ and ‘T.’

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

_The Procession of a Flea_

Mr. Trimblerigg stopped to breathe; and while he did so I made a psychological examination of that poor work of art which was yet, in its way, so perfect a masterpiece. Had Mr. Trimblerigg been more of an expert in old wash-drawings and brushwork, had he been gifted with a more sceptical turn of mind than that which had fitted his views to such differing situations, he might have examined those initials, and that spot of mildew defacing the supposititious features, more minutely, analytically and chemically than he actually did. That the wash-drawing as a whole was well over a hundred years old any expert would probably have agreed; whether he would have given the same date to the initials, and a few other salient touches I had my doubt, and the doubt remains unresolved; no expert has ever been called in to decide the matter. If Miss Sparling herself limed that snare, she certainly did it well; the obliteration of the face, with just the suggestion of a likeness left, was finely controlled; and yet the control may have only been Father Time’s; and whether it was luck, or whether Susannah Walcot was in truth a prophetess of penetrating power, who is now to say? The lengths to which the human faculties can go have often filled me with astonishment; Mr. Trimblerigg was only one instance among many. On this occasion, however, he did not astonish me in the least; he did what I expected him to do.

Before that culminating piece of evidence--that silent but resounding call--he sank upon his knees, and remained on them for a long time.

I watched the motions of his mind; they were very interesting; but they had not really to go far. That he was called to be a shining light to the whole civilized world did not at this stage of things surprise him. As a probability he had thought so ever since he could remember; recently he had been made sure of it. It was only the strange manner of this final call, and its clearly miraculous accompaniments that did a little stagger him. It also caused a definite shift--a shift to the right--in his always adjustable theology. It drew him definitely from modernism back toward True Belief. For this was something with which modernism could not be reconciled; it was primitive, apocalyptic, ultra-evangelical, it made, amongst other things, for the literal interpretation of Scripture: if this was true, the other was not.

And so it became clear that in accepting the call from such a source, his own cast of faith must be simplified once and for all,--that he must revert to the earlier faith of his Uncle Phineas.

Uncle Phineas was right. It might still be true that the sun did not actually go round the earth, that the earth was not literally fixed, or flat, as Uncle Phineas had wished him to believe; but there was nevertheless a principle of fixture in eternal truth, fixture rather than evolution or motion, going much deeper into the nature of things than he had supposed. He became, all at once, curiously doubtful of his doctrine of Relative Truth, for he saw that to his exposition of this more divine and direct dispensation it might prove a hindrance.

It was for his followers he was now troubled. As regards himself he had no difficulty in getting rid of it. For the recovery of that purer faith his early training now stood him in good stead, and Uncle Phineas became a rock in whose shadow he could hide. What he had trained himself to believe in his ’teens, what he had broken away from in his early twenties, what he had exploitively used for opportunist purposes in the propaganda of war and of Mosaic reprisals on savages who could not otherwise be taught better, was still in his blood--waiting to give him the upward push. In his new childlikeness he thanked whatever gods there be that he had always treated with tender allowance and regard the primitive views of Caroline, both as wife and mother; and that he had never allowed the scepticism of Davidina--Davidina, who had now found a new sphere for her dispensing powers in the exploration and humane taming of savage tribes--to discolour the rainbow gradients of his mind. The theological problems she had maliciously presented to him in old days, he had happily ignored: they had at least done him no permanent harm. Reversion to type, in his case at all events, was not difficult. In a certain sense Relative Truth helped him; for even if the simpler faith were not as absolutely true as it now seemed to him, it was true relatively to the immediate purpose in hand. And so still, as one might say, upon two legs--one numbed and quiescent but the other lithe and active--he entered confidently and with singleness of purpose into the Kingdom that had been prepared for him.

Going up to bed in the small hours he was very tired, and did not stop to look in the glass, did not stop to do anything. He switched out the light and got into bed. Only then did the great recovery he had made dawn on him.

Turning his head sideways in comfortable adjustment for slumber, he saw upon the pillow a patch of yellow light, faint, but for small immediate use efficient. In the centre of its radiance marched a flea.

Mr. Trimblerigg did not like fleas; he made an instinctive pounce, and the flea died the death. Then the wonder of it occurred to him. He sat up, he got out of bed, he went to the glass. In the darkness he could see himself: Crocean dawn was round him once more. His surreptitious action of the last few hours, Heaven had now justified. He had no longer any doubts, any fears; he did not even see difficulties, for now the world was running to meet him, and millions of his fellow-creatures were prepared to take without question anything he offered them.

Faint with bliss, he tottered back to bed, laid his crowned head upon the pillow, and slept.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

_The Procession Continues_

The next morning there was a small fly in the ointment of his bliss; a letter from Davidina. Thousands of miles away, among the swamps of the Amazon, news had apparently reached her of her brother’s marvellous doings; and of course, as he might have expected, her comment sounded the note of criticism.

‘My dear Jonathan,’ ran the letter, ‘if you go on like that, you will burst. ‘Yours affectionate, ‘D. T.’

The letter came too late. Mr. Trimblerigg no longer cared what the far-removed Davidina thought of him. Her long-distance pin-pricks had lost their medicinal virtue. ‘Puff!’ he remarked airily; and as he flipped the letter into the waste-paper basket, his fate resumed the jiggety tenor of its way, and the bursting process went on. For in the last few hours Mr. Trimblerigg had greatly fortified himself by prayer, so that his good opinion of himself was now undeflectable; and the old helpless feeling, which his attacks of prayer so often gave me, had come upon me once more. But this time I was rather enjoying it, and was very much interested, wondering how far--left to himself--Mr. Trimblerigg would go.

If ever the human race comes to read its own history, without prejudice, or blindness, or superstition, it will discover as never before what a tremendous part answer to prayer has played in man’s making. As never before: for the strangest part of that discovery will be from which end the answer to prayer has come. Man claims many virtues which he does not possess; but he has also a few which he does not know; and if my materials have sometimes disappointed me, and inclined me to think that, on the whole, the making of man was a mistake, I have only had to turn and watch him in his marvellous manufacture of answers to his own prayers, to feel afresh the encouragement and diversion with which the work of creation has provided me.

Under the auspices of a thousand religions, which cannot possibly all of them be true, operated in the interests of gods who are, or who were some of them, no better than they should be, prayer has always been answered. And the more firmly man has held to that faith bowing before the dark altars of his strange and shifting creeds, the more surely and swiftly has he evolved and made for himself a life worth living, and for me a spectacle worth contemplating.

Had all those Heavens to which he addressed his prayer really sent back the answer, bobbing it like a cherry to the open mouth of the supplicant, what a poor effete parasitic thing he would have become! But because the Heavens were more aloof and the gods much harder of hearing than he knew, or because a wise silence was the true air from which his spirit drew breath of life, therefore has man, left to answer himself from that Kingdom of Heaven which is within him, become the overruling factor of his still changing and troubled world; possessing himself of the lies wherewith priestcraft has so generously provided him, he takes and turns them into truth.

And so, by prayer, he has made history. But, though he has told many tales to the contrary for the bettering of his faith, has anything ever really happened in his contact with wind or weather, seed-time or harvest, storm, earthquake, eclipse, course of sun and moon, that he has not brought about himself? He still talks of the evidence of his senses: but there the evidence of his senses stands immemorially before him, and he still does not believe them! In spite of all the Bank-holidays and National Fêtes that wet weather has spoiled for him, inflicting disappointment and misery upon millions of his fellows out for a snack of holiday whose date cannot possibly be changed--in spite of that evidence staring him in the face, he still thinks that I am the clerk of the weather, and prays to me about it, and still likes me; and does not think me cross-grained, or spiteful, or revengeful, because I have spoiled so many of his holidays! Truly, with all his faults, man is the most marvellously forgiving creature that was ever made--or else the most inconsequent in all those matters which are called matters of faith.

Often and often have I had cause to wonder at the things which man found possible to believe: his queer creeds, his superstitions, his transference of justice from this world to the next, his appetite for making his gods like himself in their bad as well as in their good qualities; and then for making them unlike himself, with miraculous powers, attended by signs and wonders, and visitations, and unexpected happenings, which even in his insurance policies he calls ‘acts of God.’ All these things fill me with amazement that any man should believe in them as having any spiritual significance whatsoever. But when I consider how many believe that I provide the weather for Bank-holiday and harvest, and can change it at will, then I have to admit that man can make himself believe anything if once he starts praying about it. And so it was quite natural that having prayed about himself so long and earnestly, Mr. Trimblerigg should also believe in himself as much as he did.

And so upon its second advent, Mr. Trimblerigg’s halo was a great success. It did not have to appear unexplained; a public meeting was arranged for it. And there with due solemnity for the strengthening of faith the box of Susannah Walcot was brought forth like a new ark of the covenant; and a crowned head, having first prayed to be guided aright, broke the seals, drew out the contents, and read extracts, and coming upon an illustrated page was for putting it modestly aside, when his hand was stayed by the vigilance of Isabel Sparling. After that the success of Susannah’s prophecies was assured. Judiciously edited they caused a tremendous sensation, arousing also, in the episcopal churches, derision and furious opposition.

It was the finishing touch requisite for full success. With that final push Second Adventism, under the ban of the older theology, moved on from strength to strength. In the Free Churches it swept the board, and not many months later candidates for holy orders, in all congregations where the incumbents were democratically chosen, had little chance of selection unless they came as certified converts to Spiritualism, Second Adventism, and the prophetic writings of Susannah Walcot. The organ of the movement, _The Last Trump_, displaying on its cover an ace of hearts with rays emanating, ran into a circulation of millions. And though its opponents might call it ‘The Artful Card,’ and its radiant editor ‘The Artful Dodger,’ and publish parodies of the prophecies as they appeared in weekly instalments, its scope and influence became more and more irresistible. In the price and extent of its advertisement columns alone it was only beaten by that most popular of all ladies’ journals _The Toilet Table_. And even _The Toilet Table_ in its editorials was kind to the movement, and gave prominent reports of its preachers and the smartness of its congregations.

Indeed before long there were scarcely any other congregations worth talking about outside the high and dry pale of Episcopacy. And then, against that also, Mr. Trimblerigg struck his blow. A brief announcement without boast or comment, in _The Last Trump_, told that exclusive arrangements had been made by Second Adventism for the broadcasting of Mr. Trimblerigg’s orations, every Sunday, morning and evening, at the competitive hours of divine service.

At that scrapping of its preachers, Episcopacy became active, appealed to public opinion for its protection, and found that it was too late. Within a month informal disestablishment had become its lot; and though with its endowments and its powers of preferment left, it remained rich, and in its own narrow circle influential; it ceased to count as an organization of national importance. And meanwhile, in surreptitious driblets, adherents of the Free Church rump--Baptists, Congregationalists, Methodists, Free Evangelicals were passing over to the ranks of Second Adventism.

How, indeed, could any who did not accuse Mr. Trimblerigg of demoniacal possession--which was the cry of the ‘Scarlet Parrot’--do otherwise? For here, undeniably, was a light that shone, which only spiritual agencies could explain; and, good or bad, the world must make its choice, and camp accordingly. For the most part it camped where the extraordinary phenomenon could best be seen--that is to say among Mr. Trimblerigg’s audiences, which now--aided by loud-speakers--had become vast, occupying almost daily a deserted stadium, where an ephemeral exhibition, having burned out its six-months’ popularity, still stood with only its shell of lath, plaster, and paint, awaiting the dissolution of time. Into that vast auditorium, in all weathers, wet or dry, special trains, running to the exhibition terminus, poured their thousands day after day. And day by day the world’s conviction that it was coming to a speedy and a prosperous end, increased and became a fever raging through the body politic, unstabilizing the currency, doing certain vested interests much harm, but others much more good.

When it was announced that Second Adventism had become a co-operative company for the conversion of Commerce to the reception of the New Jerusalem, presently to appear upon earth in concrete form, and when Mr. Trimblerigg promulgated a great building scheme--mainly of the said concrete--by which the vision was to materialize on the ground where the derelict Exhibition with its plaster palaces stood awaiting decay, then began ugly rushes on the Stock Exchange, a sharp shifting of investments; and between Big Finance, Episcopacy, and the Liquor Trade a desperate alliance was formed--quite as in the old days of Mr. Trimblerigg’s early career--sign that at last the real issue was to be joined, and that there were interests in the world--and powerful ones--which Second Adventism did not suit.

Mr. Trimblerigg, though it often annoyed him, was not the kind of man to fear opposition when it came. He did not avoid the challenge, he went out to meet it. But he saw that the tussle was coming, and in order to gain access of strength as expeditiously as possible for the ordeal that lay ahead he decided that the psychological moment had come for him to visit America.

Offers of a sensational character had, of course, already reached him. One Lecture Agency had assured him that if his halo would stand the change of climate, a scientific investigation, and the nervous strain incidental to a daily appearance before mammoth audiences, it could guarantee that thousands should be turned away in every city, and no seats sold to the public under five dollars a head.

Mr. Trimblerigg, when the time came, decided otherwise. He announced that admission was to be free. When America heard that, it first fell down and worshipped him, then in panic began to mobilize its army, double its police force, set up steel barricades and enlarge its cemeteries in order to cope with the record crowds and the ensuing mortality which would result. The problem of how to deal with countless multitudes all ruthlessly set at whatever expense to life and limb, on seeing a real halo alive on a man’s head, and hearing the man’s head speak from the midst of it, occupied the headlines of the newspapers for weeks, even before Mr. Trimblerigg started on his voyage. And when he had started, then all the reporters of the American press chartered a ship and went out to meet him.

It was then that Mr. Trimblerigg was asked the historic question what it felt like to be the greatest man in the world. And Mr. Trimblerigg answered that it made him feel shy; and the next moment could have bitten his tongue out for having fallen so easily into the first trap which an expert in publicity had set for him.

It did not in the least really matter. It made good copy; and though it also made the judicious smile, the judicious--always an insignificant minority--in an affair conducted on so vast a scale did not count.

‘Trimblerigg charges that he is the greatest man alive,’ was an unfair way of putting it; but it could not be described as untrue. And so he just had to live it down.

He did so without any difficulty. He was in a country where only the statue of Liberty shared the distinction that he carried about with him; and while her halo only shot out in separate rays from perforations concealed under her crown, his was a perfect round, it went out everywhere; it was also alight continuously day and night. The torchlight procession organized up Fifth Avenue to greet its arrival was thrown into the shade by its ever-increasing vitality. The torches were a foolish excrescence, they interested nobody; and though five miles of them impeded the distant view, the one central fact outshone them all.

The reporters, dealing with that central fact, after a brief attempt to be facetious had become hushed and awes-truck. Their public would not allow them to be otherwise; America, having gotten a live halo to its shores, was not in a mood to have its genuineness questioned, the mystery of its origin derided, or any other slight put upon its dignity. It became a thing inviolate, sacred as ‘Old Glory’ herself; and when an unfortunate youth, unimpressed by the beauty of its holiness, shouted a derisive remark at its passing, the crowd lynched him for it. After that minority opinion became as terrorized from expressing itself as it had been while the ‘Liberty Loan’ was voluntarily subscribing for America’s entry into the war. There was no half-way safety point left: those who doubted the divine origin of Mr. Trimblerigg’s luminosity were regarded as Satanists; and when here, as in the old world, Episcopacy persisted in holding out, the genuineness of its Orders began for the first time to be generally doubted, and the numbers of its adherents seriously diminished. No wonder that even the ‘Movies’ became afraid of him, and offered him fabulous sums to turn film-artist, on the single condition that during his term of contract he would keep himself hid from the public eye.

And so, if anybody had laughed at Mr. Trimblerigg’s ingenuous answer on the question of his greatness, the laugh speedily died down, having left nothing to feed on. For if Mr. Trimblerigg was not the greatest man in the world, he was, at all events, the greatest success. In a single week he had made America believe in miracle; after which, from such a source, America was ready to believe almost anything.

His first message was delivered from the plinth of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbour, to an arrangement of loud-speakers which enabled him to be heard from Newark round by Staten Island to Brooklyn; thence, to a yet wider circle--embracing the greater part of the western hemisphere--broadcasting took up the tale, and if not quite making the world one, making Mr. Trimblerigg its sole topic of conversation.

Record crowds attended the performance; two ferry-boats capsized under the one-sided weight of the thousands who jammed the upper decks. The churches, smarter in the uptake than those of his own country, were satisfactorily filled; for there also loud-speakers adorned the vacant pulpits, and congregations of a hundred denominations hung upon his lips.

In that there was a danger, since verbal inspiration was now generally ascribed to him: and Mr. Trimblerigg being one of those orators who, when they let themselves go, are never quite sure what they may say,--or, afterwards, what they actually have said,--found it very hard to keep within safe bounds, or to withhold certain inspiring facts which he believed himself to possess.

He knew, for instance, the day on which the world, as regards its present dispensation, was to end. Susannah Walcot had given her word for it; but hitherto the Council of the Second Adventists had decided not to publish it,--to keep it till their position had become more absolutely assured, and the world psychologically ready to receive it.

But it was very difficult for Mr. Trimblerigg, when a whole continent was rushing into a state of conversion, and millions listening fervently to his daily orations, it was very difficult to keep back, in moments of inspired utterance, a declaration which would give the _clou_ to the whole movement, letting organized society know in definite terms how brief, how startlingly brief, was its time-limit, before that great cataclysmic change which would take and turn it upside down.

And so one day, in a moment of effervescence, Mr. Trimblerigg let it out. And having done so, there was no going back on it.

With many millions already declared converts, and at least as many more hovering upon the brink, waiting for the deciding push, Second Adventism in that act of inspired indiscretion revealed its weakness and its strength. Western civilization (the East staying strangely unmoved, sceptical, slightly amused) received a shock comparable to a renewed outbreak of war. It was as though a half of the world had leapt to its feet in startled amaze, then staggered and plunged. For then on all the stock exchanges the wildest rush for reinvestments began that had ever been known, and mainly for shares in the vast co-operative concerns of New Jerusalem Ltd. which had been set going before his departure to America by Mr. Trimblerigg. A city designed to hold a million souls--self-governing, self-supporting, with its own trade-tokens for currency, and closely encircled by an agricultural combine exclusively supplying its needs from day to day--was now being rushed into being before the astonished eyes of a metropolis which had hitherto regarded itself as the biggest thing of its kind in the world.

But if, in less than a year, such a city could spring up mushroom-like from the soil, with a mere used-up playground set about with toy-palaces as its nucleus, what might it not do within a decade under a new dispensation? Its huge neighbour, unplanned, haphazard, fortuitous in the slow growth through which it had attained its present dimensions, and replete with vested interests opposed to so dislocating a change, paled at the mere thought of it. But the plan was already in operation, building was going on; and half the farmers and dairymen of the surrounding counties had signed contracts of future service entirely subversive to the supply-system of a city ten times its size. The trade-interests tried to get an act through Parliament, but the electoral power of Second Adventism was too strong. They tried to engineer a strike in the building trade, but Second Adventism was paying its workers too well. In every department there was prosperity and contentment; and when the Trade Unions and their leaders themselves became converts to Second Adventism, what more could the enemy do? They tried to get Mr. Trimblerigg’s co-operative currency prohibited as a base imitation of the coin of the realm; but Mr. Trimblerigg’s currency had been designed with holes through it--haloes with the heads missing--so that it could deceive nobody; and the Courts ruled that as a trade-token for convenience in commerce, it was allowable. Then they tried to swamp out its value by forging it; but as it had its full worth of silver in the world’s exchange, forgeries did not matter. Of course no bank would handle it; but that also did not matter. The New Jerusalem was going to have a bank of its own; and when the present state of things came to an end, it might well be the only bank that would count.

For Second Adventism did not teach that the world was going to end in fire, and earthquake, and physical overthrow; but that a new spirit would come hovering, responsive to the call of its worshippers; and entering into the place prepared for it, there set up a light; and all the world would see a working object-lesson of the new society that was soon to be; co-operation would take the place of competition; a reorganization of industry would make strikes superfluous; internationalism would arise, not from the adjustment of racial differences but from religious unity. And out of that would come Peace.

The originality of Mr. Trimblerigg’s idea had been this--first to make religion irresistibly popular, by running it as a kind of ‘stunt’--big business and beatific vision combined--and then having made piety prosperous, to substitute, for the solution of the world’s ills, the religious organization for the political.

Mr. Trimblerigg had seen that habit--habit of mind as well as body--is the dead weight in the world’s affairs which separates man from faith, and prevents mountains from being moved. And so with Second Adventism, backed by spiritualism and prophecy, he had routed men’s minds out of their groove, simply by convincing them that on a given date, willy-nilly, the groove was coming to an end. Mr. Trimblerigg’s greatest exploit was not in building a city capable of containing a million souls, but in finding a million souls ready to flock to it. And he had done so, in the main, by convincing them that the New Jerusalem meant good business. ‘Homes for Haloes,’ the motto he had chosen for his scheme, did not really mean much when you came to examine it, for though the homes were fast taking shape, the haloes were still to seek. But ‘Homes for Heroes’ or ‘Homes for Haloes’, have an encouraging sound about them, and each, on different occasions, have served their turn, helping publicists out for popular applause to rouse a fictitious enthusiasm in their followers, till cold fact came after and snuffed it out.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

_The Procession Ends_

Having announced a date for the end of the world--the old world with its troublous record, its damaged reputation, its useless strivings after success,--an end which was to be brought about not by the death and destruction of the wicked, but by a new birth unto righteousness upon an unprecedented scale,--having so definitely announced the spiritual transformation which was about to take place before the eyes of all, the Second Adventists had to live up to it.

And to their credit, be it said, they did so without a qualm of doubt. Mr. Trimblerigg’s experience since his adoption of Second Adventism had convinced him that if only it were well organized for a fixed purpose, prayer could get itself answered; and that given a commanding majority and a united aim, the human race was master of the Event. He had backed his country through war with prayerful conviction, had even prayed that it might go on an extra eighteen months so as to avoid a negotiated peace, and secure the dictated one which was to be so much better; and then, because hearts and aims were divided, had seen the dictated peace lost and become very much worse than a negotiated one; and though he did not for a moment consider that his own prayers and strivings for a dictated peace made him in the least responsible for its bad results, he had an uneasy suspicion that the world, and even his own country, might have done better for itself by letting the war end sooner than it did, for the simple reason that though it could agree about fighting it could not agree about peace.

But about making the bad old world come to an end on a given date, Second Adventists were all enthusiastically agreed; and when Mr. Trimblerigg returned from America he found the building of the New Jerusalem so well advanced that though it might not be entirely habitable on the day, externally it looked habitable; and though a good many scaffolding poles still had to remain, they would serve to hang bunting on, and so enhance the welcoming effect when Heaven sent down its new spirit to take possession.

For that something auspicious and visible would take place was the general belief; the writings of Susannah Walcot suggested it, and though the idea had not been officially endorsed, yet, since it helped publicity, nothing had been said to discourage it. It might be prophecy, or it might only be figure of speech; but in a very literal sense the faith of millions did undoubtedly look skywards expecting a sign to be given it. For it must be remembered that always now before men’s eyes one sign stood conspicuous; and if upon one eminent head glory had so forecast itself, might it not be possible when the Day came that Heaven would rain haloes by the million upon those found faithfully waiting to receive them?

For that given date the railway companies had already arranged to run special excursions from all parts of the country, timed to arrive at latest before the stroke of midnight signalled the beginning of the new Day. Behind the railways were the caterers, all ready to link up the meat and the fish markets, the dairies, the greengrocers, and the provision-dealers, with the demanding appetite of the new-born and spiritualized world.

It was computed that not less than a million prospective inhabitants of the New Jerusalem would be there all ready and waiting in wedding garments for the hour when Heaven should declare itself.

All were to come dressed in white; and a city dressed in white stood prepared to receive them. A little garish by day, the New Jerusalem looked very beautiful by moonlight; then, with its white walls, and pearly windows, and blue-grey roofs, crowned fantastically by the points and perforated pinnacles of its toy-palaces, it seemed like a city of silver. In the midst of it--the great co-operative shopping-centre--were buildings composed entirely of glass, with covered streets where the weather would no longer count for anything; and on the outskirts, separated from the residential quarters by parks and public gardens and ornamental lakes, stood the power-stations, and water-towers, and above all these, in noble battlemented walls, like a mediæval castle converted to spiritual ends, the gasometers had concealed themselves. It was all very expansive and opulent, and self-complacent, and plausible, and what perhaps in an earlier age might have been called genteel; but what to my mind it resembled most was the character--the public character, I mean--of Mr. Trimblerigg as it appeared when things went well with him. In this ‘Home for Haloes’ he had finally and magnificently expressed himself as he wished he might be. ‘Si monumentum requiris, circumspice’ was the motto with which, after looking out of his Presidential window on that last happy night of his career, he closed his eyes in post-prandial repose, so as to be up blithe and fresh for ‘the Great Watch’ which at midnight was to begin. In all the streets that lay before his gaze orderly crowds, clothed in white and carrying lanterns and palm-branches in their hands, paraded with happy unanimity, all marching one way as the traffic signals directed, and singing as they went. It was a marvel of organization; as a human demonstration--the expression of a commanding majority devoting itself for the first time to one single spiritual end--it was still more wonderful.

And so with a happy smile upon his illuminated face Mr. Trimblerigg lay down in his Presidential robe, and slept like a child.

He was awakened at about half-past ten by a terrific explosion. Fragments of plaster battlements were falling into the street and against his front door as he opened the window and looked out. Hurriedly he drew his head in again; but what had sent him back was not the falling fragments but the despairing ululations of the crowd, which, dropping its hymn-singing parade was now rushing hither and thither frantic for shelter from showering rubble and glass which filled the air. Under the calm blaze of the full moon, queening it in a cloudless heaven, a ragged scud of black dust jagged its way from roof to roof, obliterating the distant view; in its rear, at a more ponderous gallop, came a hunch of smoke, which as it advanced billowed and spread, and became huge; swallowing up the clear air as it advanced, it left in its track a pallid haze which went everywhere. The New Jerusalem became a ghost, vague of form, clad no longer in white, but in a dun grey streaked by scarves of black lined with colours of fire. In this settling obscurity the sound of human woe went on increasing, enlivened now and again by cries of rage. The crowd, cumbered by its wedding raiment, was fighting confusedly for priority of place; the terminus was being rushed, empty excursion trains boarded. A faint-hearted exodus from the New Jerusalem had already begun: the world was not coming to an end in the peaceful way that had been foretold.

A ring-up on Mr. Trimblerigg’s telephone gave him the news. His castle of gasometers had been blown up; as to the cause, inquiry was being made; incendiarism was suspected. Following upon that came other news of a similar kind. Something had gone wrong with the power-stations; wires fused and lights went out; after that went the water-supply; about midnight to the sound of bombs, three water-towers cascaded to earth; and when, here, there, and everywhere, fainting people turned taps to get water, none came. Presently in various parts of the city fires began; and as there was no water to put them out, they spread. Before morning the New Jerusalem had had several bits taken out of it, and many of its prospective inhabitants were left homeless. About dawn a covey of aeroplanes let down a discharge of sticky gas--the latest military invention for the humane dispersal of unarmed crowds. It had adhesive properties of an extraordinary effectiveness; the New Jerusalem became like well-spread fly-paper, and all humans with whom it established contact walked thereafter as though they had been anointed with treacle, or honey, or preserved-ginger, or turpentine; and having no water in which to wash themselves, their misery became greater than they could bear; and from all that crowd of souls which had come together with such singleness of purpose, and confidence, and goodwill, the social sense was cast violently out, so that they all hated the sight and the touch and the sound of each other.

Now all this, it must be understood, was not the operation of Heaven, but only of Big Finance, and certain other vested interests which did not wish the old ways of the world to end, or competitive society to become co-operative, or religion in any form to have control over economics and politics, or Mr. Trimblerigg to go any farther than they considered safe for the well-being of the country. And as Second Adventism had in these respects become a peril, quite as formidable in its way as foreign invasion, therefore an underground organization had been formed, which, calling itself ‘Red Knights of the Fiery Cross’, had designed for itself a costume, and a secret ritual, and an oath which could not be broken; and had laid up store of military preparation, and with prayer and fasting and genuflections, had practised bomb-throwing and incendiarism and the casting down of sticky gas in solitary places where a Duke preserved pheasants, and where, therefore, no members of the outer public were allowed to intrude. And having become experts in the game, upon the advertised day they made a match of it, and in this, the first round, had apparently won hands down. For the New Jerusalem had become a sticky object, coated with dust and very offensive to the smell: and the Second Adventists sharply divided into two bodies of an unequal size: the larger fugitive and dispersive in tendency, no longer wishing for the end of the world, but only for the excursion trains to start upon their return journeys: the other comparatively small, but vigorous, vocal and tending to direct action: truculent, abusive, full of grievance, clamorous for the return of its deposits in a co-operative scheme which no longer seemed safe, and with regard to which, in certain important respects, the undertakings, as per contract, were not being carried out.

It was this section which presented itself at an early hour outside the Presidency, and howled to be received in deputation by Mr. Trimblerigg. For three hours they howled, while Mr. Trimblerigg, in order to give confidence to his frightened followers, had his breakfast and his bath (for which sufficient water remained in the cistern) and dealt with certain arrears of correspondence.

At ten o’clock punctually, he looked at his watch, and said to his secretary, ‘Now I will go out and speak to them.’

The secretary said, ‘I think, sir, you had better not. If I know anything of crowds, that crowd is dangerous.’

Mr. Trimblerigg said, ‘I hope it is. I shall do my best to make it so.’

The light of battle was in his eye. He said to his secretary, ‘You must dress yourself up; you are a Knight of the Fiery Cross whom we have taken prisoner. You must be shown to the people, with your hands bound and your face stained with blood. It will only be for a moment; but it will satisfy them. I will do the rest.’

But before he had finished, he spoke to emptiness: the secretary had fled. He looked out into the ante-chamber. All the others had fled with him. Outside the crowd was howling like a pack of wolves.

Mr. Trimblerigg sighed: ‘Then I must do it all by myself,’ he concluded thoughtfully. ‘Deserted of my followers, I stand alone. No matter; they shall see!’ He felt that he was a great man, and this a great occasion for making the fact known.

He went out from his study into the Council Chamber, a handsome apartment hung with mirrors. It had four windows overlooking the street, windows that went down to the ground and opened upon a balcony supported by a colonnade extending from the entrance-porch to right and left.

I have never admired Mr. Trimblerigg more than I did at that moment; as he crossed the open space before him he paused to glance at himself in one of the mirrors: his light had not failed him; its radiance was undiminished; in the midst of it his countenance shone cherubic and hopeful. He was going to enjoy himself; for of all whose fortunes depended on the breath of popular applause there was no one who understood a crowd as he did.

That this one was now hostile only added to the zest with which he faced the task that lay before him. Standing back in the deep interior of the room and where he could not be seen, he studied its physiognomy--a sea of faces in storm, multitudinous but yet one. He looked at it with affection and pride; for in another minute he was going to take and turn it round his finger, and make it into a new instrument to suit his need.

Suddenly, while he so stood, the very window-pane through which he looked fell into splinters; from the crystal chandelier above his head came a rain of shattered glass. That was the prelude; he stepped back, and skirting the wall, while all the other panes flew into fragments, reached the far window, in which by that time not a pane remained unbroken. He only paused to fasten the last button of the morning coat into which he had tactfully changed; and then, lightly embraced by the civilization he had come to save, he opened the window and stepped out.

For one moment the crowd, shocked into mute amaze, stood and gaped; then a roar of execration filled the air. Even the bright manifestation of his mission, which had once awed and delighted, failed to placate them now. Mr. Trimblerigg knew enough of crowds to admit that his secretary was right; this crowd was dangerous; but he knew also that he had only to get them to listen, to hear his opening words, for his spell to be on them. He could trust the inspiration of the moment to do the rest.

And so, with exactly the right emotional expression upon his face, he leaned out from the stone balustrade, and over the heads of the crowd pointed into the distance.

The gesture had its calculated effect: heads turned, necks were craned; the roar died down to a confused murmur. Presently they would turn back to him and seek to have the thing explained; then would come silence and they would hear what he had to say; and though that was not going to make them less dangerous, it would no longer be danger for him, but for others.

Now it so happened that in the direction where he pointed there was, by fate or by chance, something which on being pointed at, did excite the curiosity of the crowd. On its far outskirts a lone taxi with persistent wrigglings was trying to get through; an attempt which, until the attention of the crowd had been directed towards it, would have been absolutely hopeless. But now, as if by the manipulation of an invisible police, a way grew open before it, and the taxi triumphantly advanced.

As it did so it became--though nobody could guess why--a thing of extraordinary importance; people began climbing on each other’s backs to look at it. Even Mr. Trimblerigg became interested; for this--though an interruption--was also a diversion; it meant safety. A crowd which could focus its interest on a taxi-cab, could focus it also upon him; nor had he now the slightest doubt that when he spoke to it the crowd would prove amenable.

Folding his arms on the balustrade, and playing with his eyeglasses, he was the very picture of confidence and hope and courage and resourcefulness, and all the other things which, in their leaders, men admire. How could people look at him without liking him? How could they hear him without trusting him? How could there be any danger for a man who stood up to face it with such an air of high spirits and genial acceptance of a situation which seemed awkward. He felt with a sure instinct that the crowd was coming his way, that in another moment it would be cheering him.

The taxi was coming his way also. It stopped. Davidina put out her head. Over the hushed murmurs of the crowd, clear and incisive her voice reached him:

‘Jonathan, take that off!’

If the end of Mr. Trimblerigg’s world could have come then in whatever other form it chose to take, it might have been said of him thereafter that he died happy, died believing in himself, and believed in by others even though the immediate circumstances spelt failure.

But when he felt the probing eye of Davidina, and heard the challenge of her voice, ‘Take that off!’--then all his sense of spiritual nakedness returned; and the power over his soul which she had been used to exercise reinstated itself in all its potency. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, and in the presence of all that people whose mood towards him was on the very point of ceasing to be dangerous, and whose hearts in another minute he would have won to the fulfilling of vengeance due--in a space of time too brief for breath to be taken, she had spiritually scalped him. With his head shorn of glory he stood and looked at her; and fleeing suddenly to the domestic note as his last chance of refuge from the storm which was about to burst, ‘How do you do, Davidina?’ he said.

It was magnificent, but it was no good. The crowd’s yell of derision told him that it had failed. Suddenly the taxi disappeared from view; ten, twenty, thirty human atoms, excited, gesticulating, were up and were over it. He saw Davidina fighting her way out of the collapsed framework; saw her in imminent danger, saw her emerge safe and unharmed. With no use or duty to stay him, conscious that all was lost, he turned to flee. It was too late. Active members of the crowd pushed from below swarmed up the colonnades; faster than the eye could count, heads appeared on a level with his waist,--hands, feet, fiery eyes, fierce mouths showing teeth; he became one of a confused group, felt his legs carrying much more than his own weight, his buttons bursting to a rending strain--from behind. Collared, surrounded, forced to the balcony’s edge, he looked down into a sea of eyes; and heard dimly, in the background of his dream, Davidina knocking for admission at the door under his feet; a door which nobody would answer.

‘Up, up!’ came the cry of the crowd. He was hoisted, stood giddily on the stone ledge; swayed, tottered, but hands still held him. Everything then seemed very near and immediate and objective: individual faces, blemishes, blackened eyes, the very cut and colour of men’s clothes, a broken watch-chain, the taxi-driver trying to recover possession of a cab that had become a wreck. Fifty yards away an arc-lamp high aloft on a street refuge for some unexplainable reason spat itself into light. That attracted him, only to remind him with a pang of despair that he could no longer do the same. Light and hope and faith had all gone out of him.

‘Down! Down!’ the crowd’s cry had changed: but its intention was the same. A thousand hands reached up, opening and shutting like mouths, hungry to have hold of him. The hands from behind gave a jerk, then tossed and let go. He felt himself falling, but of that was not afraid. A real fall was impossible; of that the thousand hands made him feel safe. They caught him, forced him down, and set him upon his feet. A voice at his back cried: ‘Stand clear! Give him a run!’

Magically a way cleared for him: a long stretch of pavement, then a road: in the middle of the road, aloft on its iron standard, spluttered the arc-lamp, very wan and pale against the healthier light of day.

Propelled from behind he began running towards it, with an agility which for a moment, in his responsive mind, wakened an absurd hope.

But a moment later, under the lamp-post, he was off his feet again. Up in front of him swarmed a man-monkey of the sailor-breed trailing a rope. The crowd roared gloriously, its rage changing to delight.

Clasping the iron standard despairingly with legs and arms in a last embrace, he felt hands below pushing him, making him go higher. Then suddenly there came a wrench; the hands loosed him, but his feet did not touch ground. And as his agitated body sought this way and that for the hand-hold or foot-hold it had lost never to find again, I, reading for the last time the scrip of his brain, found the truth fairly lodged there at last:

‘O, you fool! O, you damned fool! O, you silly, damned fool, look what you have done to yourself now!’

And then something happened: something quite unexpected, for which I cannot account; though I have a sort of a fear that I know in what direction the account may hereafter be found.

I followed him into those last moments--for his last moments they proved to be--with a breathless interest, which at least told me that though he had tried me much, I was not as tired of him as, for my own peace, I would have liked to be. And up to the last hitch, I still wondered whether so agile an executant of quick turns would not manage even then to escape from his enemies. His enemies, I say. But my wonder now is whether his last escape has not been made from one who, like Davidina, was his faithful though discriminating friend. For when, after the rope had done its work, I looked for him on the spiritual plane, it was to find that he had vanished. And if I, too, must own the truth--I do not know what has become of him.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.