Lord Fotheringay

“ Before leaving him, as she was compelled to do owing to her own engagements, Lady Innisfail had another interesting conversation—it almost amounted to a consultation—with her friend Mrs. Burgoyne on the subject of the Reform of the Hardened Reprobate. And the result of their further consideration of the subject from every standpoint, was to induce them to believe that, with such a powerful incentive to the Higher Life as an acute rheumatic attack, Lord Fotheringay’s reform might safely be counted on. It might, at any rate, be freely discussed during the winter. ”

“ Mr. Fotheringay performed no more miracles that night, nor did he trouble to see what had become of his flowering stick. He returned to the town, scared and very quiet, and went to his bedroom. "Lord!" he said, "it's a powerful gift—an extremely powerful gift. I didn't hardly mean as much as that. Not really... I wonder what Hades is like!"
He sat on the bed taking off his boots. Struck by a happy thought he transferred the constable to San Francisco, and without any more interference with normal causation went soberly to bed. In the night he dreamt of the anger of Winch. ”

“ No greater good could befall me in this world. You see—are you now not witnesses?—why they put me to death. Consider why they sent Lord Kent with his disputes and religious controversies. Have not they now plainly shown their intention? Is it not notorious that they have always feared that if I lived they would never be in safety regarding their religion? Therefore," concluded Mary, "let each one be patient and leave us here to pray to God." [118]
When all the men had left her room, the Queen spent some time in prayer with her women. ”

“ The Lord Chancellor opened the proceedings by a speech, in which he declared that the Queen of England, having been surely informed, to her great grief, that the destruction of her person and the downfall of her kingdom had been lately planned by the Queen of Scots, and that in spite of her long tolerance and patience, this same Queen continued her bad practices and had made herself the disturber of religion and the public peace, Her Majesty felt impelled to convoke this present assembly to examine into these accusations. ”

“ Fotheringay presently perceived, with a glow of surprise and gratification, of all the miracles they would presently do. "And, by the bye, Mr. Maydig," said Mr. Fotheringay, "I might perhaps be able to help you—in a domestic way."
"Don't quite follow," said Mr. Maydig pouring out a glass of miraculous old Burgundy.
Mr. Fotheringay helped himself to a second Welsh rarebit out of vacancy, and took a mouthful. "I was thinking," he said, "I might be able (chum, chum) to work (chum, chum) a miracle with Mrs. Minchin (chum, chum) —make her a better woman." ”

“ Being thus pressed, Sir Thomas Bromley and Lord Burleigh read aloud the protestation, refusing at the same time either to approve or accept it. Bromley acknowledged, however, that he had on the previous occasion received it from Mary and presented it to his mistress. "Her Majesty," continued he, "neither approved nor accepted it, and we are not at liberty to receive it, nor you to make use of it. The Queen of England has power in her own kingdom over all persons who conspire against her without respect to quality or degree. ”

“ He buttoned up his jacket and addressed himself to the habitable globe, with as good an assumption of confidence as lay in his power. ‘Jest stop rotating, will you?’ said Mr Fotheringay.
Incontinently he was flying head over heels through the air at the rate of dozens of miles a minute. In spite of the innumerable circles he was describing per second he thought; for thought is wonderful—sometimes as sluggish as flowing pitch, sometimes as instantaneous as light. ”

“ At the name of Morgan, Burleigh, with his usual vehemence, reproached the Queen. "You know well, madame," said he, "that Morgan professes to be your servant, and you have pensioned him, although you are well aware that he plotted the death of the Queen along with Parry, for which crime he is still a prisoner in France, having been pursued and accused by Lord Derby, in the name of Her Majesty."
"You know well," replied Mary, turning towards the audience, "that I have not joined in this undertaking, nor suborned any one." ”

“ The Commissioners found Mary guilty, not of certain matters with which Lord Burleigh had charged her, but for having "compassed and imagined since the 1st of June aforesaid divers matters tending to the hurt, death, and destruction of the Queen of England." One man alone had the courage to assert his belief in Mary's innocence. ”

“ Elizabeth smiled, and presently told Davison to take the warrant to the Lord Chancellor that he might-167- attach the great seal to it, and transmit it to those designed to preside at its execution. The Queen added that this must be done as secretly as possible, as, if the matter were known before the day of execution, it might be dangerous for her. "On the road," she added, with a sinister smile, "you will visit Walsingham to show him the warrant. Ill as he is, I fear the pain it will cause him will kill him outright." ”

“ So that the village, and Mr Maydig, and Mr Fotheringay, and everybody and everything had been jerked violently forward at about nine miles per second—that is to say, much more violently than if they had been fired out of a cannon. And every human being, every living creature, every house, and every tree—all the world as we know it—had been so jerked and smashed and utterly destroyed. That was all.
These things Mr Fotheringay did not, of course, fully appreciate. But he perceived that his miracle had miscarried, and with that a great disgust of miracles came upon him. ”

“ Wrong sort of bowl and wrong sort of fish. And I thought I'd ask someone."
"A proper course," said Mr. Maydig, "a very proper course—altogether the proper course." He stopped and looked at Mr. Fotheringay. "It's practically an unlimited gift. Let us test your powers, for instance. If they really are. . . If they really are all they seem to be."
And so, incredible as it may seem, in the study of the little house behind the Congregational Chapel, on the evening of Sunday, Nov. 10, 1896, Mr. Fotheringay, egged on and inspired by Mr. Maydig, began to work miracles. ”

“ His name was George McWhirter Fotheringay—not the sort of name by any means to lead to any expectation of miracles—and he was clerk at Gomshott's. He was greatly addicted to assertive argument. It was while he was asserting the impossibility of miracles that he had his first intimation of his extraordinary powers. This particular argument was being held in the bar of the Long Dragon, and Toddy Beamish was conducting the opposition by a monotonous but effective "So you say," [328] that drove Mr. Fotheringay to the very limit of his patience. ”

“ And at first the miracles worked by Mr Fotheringay were timid little miracles—little things with the cups and parlour fitments, as feeble as the miracles of Theosophists, and, feeble as [Pg 132] they were, they were received with awe by his collaborator. He would have preferred to settle the Winch business out of hand, but Mr Maydig would not let him. But after they had worked a dozen of these domestic trivialities, their sense of power grew, their imagination began to show signs of stimulation, and their ambition enlarged. ”

“ Working a miracle, indeed! Miracle! Well, that’s downright funny! Why, you’s the chap that don’t believe in miracles.... Fact is, this is another of your silly conjuring tricks—that’s what this is. Now, I tell you——’
But Mr Fotheringay never heard what Mr Winch was going to tell him. He realised he had given himself away, flung his valuable secret to all the winds of heaven. A violent gust of irritation swept him to action. He turned on the constable swiftly and fiercely. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘I’ve had enough of this, I have! I’ll show you a silly conjuring trick, I will! Go to Hades! ”

“ God of his great mercy towards us and our poor people most happily and miraculously discovered and prevented the same. Our pleasure is that you shall immediately repair to Fotheringay, where the said Queen now remains in charge of [Pg 84] Sir Amias Paulet, and after you have delivered our letter to him and imparted our instructions and other directions, you shall go together to the Scottish Queen, to whom you shall signify the cause of our sending you to her, namely, to let her understand how the lords and our commissioners lately sent to Fotheringay have proceeded from their return from her. ”

“ Fotheringay sat with his arm on the table and his head on his arm, looking worried. "I don't see how I'm to manage about Winch," he said.
"A gift of working miracles—apparently a very powerful gift," said Mr. Maydig, "will find a way about Winch—never fear. My dear sir, you are a most important man—a man of the most astonishing possibilities. As evidence, for example! And in other ways, the things you may do..."
"Yes, I've thought of a thing or two," said Mr. Fotheringay. "But— some of the things came a bit twisty. ”

“ At Fotheringay we find the prisoner standing alone before her judges. At Westminster the witnesses appear in the absence of the accused, while at neither is a single original document produced; copies, not of written letters, but pretended copies from ciphers were admitted and believed on the faith of men whose confessions were drawn from them by fear of torture or documents forged by Philipps. Such was the evidence by which Mary was tried and condemned. ”

“ When people wake——"
"But——," said Mr. Fotheringay.
Mr. Maydig gripped his arm suddenly. His eyes were bright and wild. "My dear chap," he said, "there's no hurry. Look"—he pointed to the moon at the zenith—"Joshua!"
"Joshua?" said Mr. Fotheringay.
"Joshua," said Mr. Maydig. "Why not? Stop it."
Mr. Fotheringay looked at the moon.
"That's a bit tall," he said, after a pause.
"Why not?" said Mr. Maydig. "Of course it doesn't stop. You stop the rotation of the earth, you know. Time stops. It isn't as if we were doing harm."
"H'm!" said Mr. Fotheringay. "Well," he sighed, "I'll try. ”

“ Goaded by the Torres Vedras tactics of Mr Beamish, Mr Fotheringay determined to [Pg 119] make an unusual rhetorical effort. ‘Looky here, Mr Beamish,’ said Mr Fotheringay. ‘Let us clearly understand what a miracle is. It’s something contrariwise to the course of nature, done by power of will, something what couldn’t happen without being specially willed.’
‘So you say,’ said Mr Beamish, repulsing him.
Mr Fotheringay appealed to the cyclist, who had hitherto been a silent auditor, and received his assent—given with a hesitating cough and a glance at Mr Beamish. ”

“ A simple specimen of an iron vane may yet be seen on Cowdray House in the same county. The octagonal steeple of Fotheringay church, Northants, built at the cost of Richard duke of York c. 1435, is surmounted by a fine representation in copper of his badge, the falcon within a fetterlock. ”

“ Fothergil is not tall, and he is slightly pigeon-toed — the fleshly toes of Fothergil symbolize the toes of his ever-fleecing soul — but he strides. Female poets undulate. Erotic male poets saunter. Tramp poets lurch and swagger. Fothergil, being a vers libre poet, a Prophet of the Virile, a Little Brother of the Cosmic Urge, is compelled by what his verse is to stride vigorously across rooms as if they were vast desert places, in spite of what his toes are. ”

“ Avice laughed and said: ‘It would have to be a very clever governess, Jerome.’
‘But not old and ugly, or I could not possibly learn from her; and yet, if she were young and handsome, I might fall in love with her. Upon my word, I think I should like to have a governess, Avice. Shall we see about it?’
‘How ridiculous you are! Since I have had you, I don’t care so much about a governess. How horribly frightened of you I was, before I saw you. Papa used to pinch my ear sometimes when he wanted to tease me, and say, “I wonder what Hieronymus will say when he first sees you—little interloper!” ”

“ There is a great deal of it, Fothergil says. If you know Fothergil you are aware that when he declaims his Virile verses he becomes excited; he swells physically; sometimes he looks quite five feet tall in his moments of expansion; all this is very bad for him. More than once the declamation of his poem, "Myself and the Cosmic Urge," has sent him shaking to the tea urn. ”

“ There’s a larger extent of wood there than we have; isn’t there, Fothergill?”
Mr. Fothergill said that the Greshamsbury woods were very extensive, but that, perhaps, he thought——
“Oh, ah! I know,” said the duke. “The Black Forest in its old days was nothing to Gatherum woods, according to Fothergill. And then again, nothing in East Barsetshire could be equal to anything in West Barsetshire. Isn’t that it; eh, Fothergill?”
Mr. Fothergill professed that he had been brought up in that faith and intended to die in it.
“Your exotics at Boxall hill are very fine, magnificent!” said Mr. Sowerby. ”

“ If Theodora Martindale yields to the Fotheringhams now, and deserts Georgina, it will be a confirmation of all the absurd reports. As long as I have it to say the Martindale family are as intimate as ever, I have an answer for Lady Fotheringham, and if Mark is smitten with her, so much the better. I hope Percy Fotheringham may be properly rewarded for his presumption and ill-nature. The sooner they quarrel the better. ”

“ Sometimes, at the abundant ‘spreads’ on the Thorsgarth or Red Gables boards, his sallow young face would take a faint glow, his deep-set black eyes would grow wistfully misty, but never a word betrayed the bareness of the board at home, nor the fact that his father might even then be asking a blessing upon a bowl of oatmeal-porridge, sole reward of a hard day’s work. For the living of Bradstane, although ancient, was not rich, and the parish priest’s own stipend was not a fat one. Judge, therefore, how exceeding short the curate must have come! ”