Laurence Housman

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Trimblerigg himself was then making other plans of his own. A sense of his abilities had begun to stir his mind to the prospects of life. He had become conscious that a career was awaiting him—or, to put it more accurately, several careers—of which he had only to choose. One day, in a weak moment of expansiveness, when Davidina by a histrionic show of sisterly sympathy had led him on, he confided to her the sparkling alternatives which he had in mind. And she, when her first admiration had become tempered with criticism, passed word of them carefully on to the ears of his Uncle Jonah. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.
[273] 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I shall go out and preach everywhere.’
‘You’ll do as the Lord tells you,’ said his uncle. ‘It’s no good one that’s not a True Believer talking of what he’ll do when he becomes one.’
‘No, Uncle,’ said Jonathan meekly, still out to do business; ‘but living at home makes it very hard for me. I’m much nearer to being a True Believer than Mother is, or Father, or Davidina. Davidina says you can believe anything if you’ll only make yourself. She says she could make herself believe that the Bible was all false, if she were to try.’
‘Has she tried, does she mean?’ inquired Uncle Phineas grimly. ”

“ The Conversion of Caroline MR. TRIMBLERIGG joined his family in a small retired bungalow, standing between estuary and sea, on the outskirts of a large health-resort looking south. It was the very place for him to be—if not exactly alone—unobserved. The shore was shadeless; across an arm of the estuary a rickety foot-bridge led to copse and field, and across the railroad to a wide expanse of heath. After that came the littered margin of the town, with its cheap and scrubby architecture run up as a trap for holiday-makers. ”

“ It was that holiday feeling, coming after the bad time they had been through under the old system—a holiday feeling which even the chiefs, stimulated by bribes, could not control—which did the mischief; for it came inopportunely just at the time when, five thousand miles away, civilization had become imperilled by causes with which the Puto-Congo natives had nothing whatever to do. If civilization was so imperilled all the better for them. ”

“ Like everything else in life, character is a product, the inevitable outcome of its constituent parts. When I invented him, I gave Mr. Trimblerigg brains and a good head for business; I also gave him imagination and an emotional temperament. Why, then, should it be wondered at if he made a calculating use of his imaginative powers, or indulged his emotions with a good eye to business?
Could you find me any occasion on which the fervours of his oratory got in the way of his worldly advancement, or did anything but add size to his following, I would admit that his character puzzled me. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In this large and tolerant atmosphere, where modernism was beginning to lift its head, Mr. Trimblerigg stood all alone. It was a challenge that delighted him. He had no illusions as to the lack of a future outlook afforded by adherence to the strict tenets of True Belief: but he had the sense to realize that what a student believes, or thinks he believes, in his teens under the unavoidable influence of the parental upbringing, matters nothing to his future career. ”

“ Mr. Trimblerigg took it very quietly; he made no sign; even now he was not sure that he wished things differently. He had a great desire, for his own spiritual comfort, to get the better of Davidina, just once.
‘Well, I congratulate you,’ he said; ‘where will the next expedition be? The Sahara, Persia, Arabia? It looks as if you were going to be a famous woman traveller; you’ve always had the pluck and the brain; and now you’ve got the means for it.’
‘Do you mind, Jonathan?’ she asked him. ”

“ All through the world’s history there have been men doubtful of their makers, honestly incredulous of the source from which they sprung—infidels, sceptics, atheists—of lives too short to mark the changes, vicissitudes and final disappearance of the creeds they would not hold. Many such have I known with sympathy and with understanding; but Mr. Trimblerigg, so far as my experience goes, is the unique instance of that process reversed—one who has raised a like doubt in the mind of his creator. ”

“ Nouveau Riche A CROCEAN dawn was outside and around him when he awoke—yellow, of the metropolitan variety; it was, that is to say, a fog. But in spite of the dullness of the outer world, Mr. Trimblerigg awoke happy, with the happiness of a man whose prayer has been answered.
For many days he had been praying fervently that his character might be placed above suspicion: and now that Davidina’s suspicion of him had gone, and his own with it, he had just everything for the present that he could pray for. ”

“ The passionate fervour of his prayer to whatever end he desired, put him more utterly beyond reach of instruction than a conscious plunge into sin. Against that there might have been a natural reaction; but against the spiritual avidity with which he set to work saving his own skin day by day, no reaction was possible. The day-spring from on high visited him with a light-heeled nimbleness which cleared not only all obstacles of a material kind but all qualms of conscience as well. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Trimblerigg’s attention was first attracted to the career his elders designed for him, not so much by the habitual goodness with which the rivalry of Davidina had imbued his character, as by his observation of the sensation caused in his native village by the missionizing efforts of a certain boy-preacher, then known to fame as ‘The Infant Samuel Samuel,’ whose call, beginning at his baptism in that strange invocative reduplication of the family name imposed by his godparents, went on till it suddenly passed in silence to an obscurity from which the veil has never been lifted. ”

“ 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. [316] 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. ”

“ Quite early in his examination of the tenets of True Belief, anxious that she should keep him in countenance, Mr. Trimblerigg asked Davidina what she thought of them.
‘My belief is,’ said Davidina, ‘that we can all believe what we want to believe; and if you only believe it enough, it comes true—for you, at any rate. You can believe every word of the Bible is true, or that every word of it is false; and either way, you can live up to it. The True Believers are right there, anyway. ”

“ Davidina, having measured him judicially with her eye, settled that he was well enough for an indulgence that would be mutual.
‘He says you are out of danger,’ she answered; ‘so now you are in it again.’
‘In what?’
‘In your own way,’ she replied, elliptically. ‘It’s done you no harm being ill. To be safe from yourself for a fortnight never happened to you before. Mother calls it a God’s mercy you’re still alive. Perhaps it is: I don’t know.’
Mr. Trimblerigg lay trying to read her face and the meanings behind it. ”

“ Trimblerigg. ‘You mean well; but I don’t need to be told how to pray: I pray as I feel.’
‘You do,’ she said comfortingly. ‘D’you ever look at your tongue first to see your symptoms? No? Well, you should then. There’s nothing in this world so dangerous as prayer if you’ve fixed up the answer before you begin. Forty years ago, Jonathan, you set that trap for yourself, now it’s a habit you can’t get rid of. Let’s look at your tongue. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [312] 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. ”

“ I could have soon enough made them think me a devil if I’d taken your line, Jonathan. So now, unless it’s against [255] your religion, you’d better try mine for a change. Be a god, Jonathan, be a god! It won’t be true; but believe me—sing, glory hallelujah! it’s the better hole to fall into. And now I’m going.’ So saying, she started to climb out the way she had come.
‘Where to?’ inquired Mr. Trimblerigg, astounded at so abrupt a leave-taking.
‘Anywhere, so long as it’s away from civilization—and you!’ she declared. ”

“ Trimblerigg to a crocodile, I hope nobody will suppose that I am taking the ordinary sentimental view of crocodiles, as of creatures more cruel than other creatures. A crocodile when it eats a human being is no more cruel than a thrush when it eats a worm; and if people could only get that well into their heads theology would have a better basis than it has at present. A crocodile only appears more cruel than nature’s average because it is peculiarly efficient to its end, and makes a wider sweep. ”

“ Trimblerigg was safely downstairs, I have seen her go into the bathroom and inspect, with a woman’s eye for details: appraise the amount of moisture left in the towel, and various other minute points for the confirmation of her hope that he was not overdoing it. And when she has quite satisfied herself, I have seen her smile and go on down to breakfast, a good contented soul, full of the comfortable assurances wives often have, that though husbands may be clever in their way, to see through them domestically is not difficult. ”