Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (269 page)

“But you were aware that, to a certain extent, in your own consciousness, the doctrine was true,” Mr. Apollo said. “Why then did you say that it was all lies?”

“Because,” Carver said, “the Church of Rome stands for everything that is against what I represent. She assimilates truths in the end, but she always holds them back for as long as she can. And we want to get on. We want to get on. You can’t blame me for being a little colloquial when I’m talking in a rough-and-ready way. All the Catholic doctrines don’t appear to be lies to me, but some do. And her whole tendency is opposed to me. I dislike authority, and the Church of Rome claims authority. You can’t blame me any more than you can blame her.”

“Zeus forbid,” Mr. Apollo said, “that I should blame either the one or the other, for it should be evident to you that to a divine nature the beliefs of man must be a subject of indifference. But it is to be pointed out to you that in uttering — for the purpose of convincing an opponent — in uttering for that purpose mere half-truths that you are aware are mere half-truths, you are acting in the very way for which you condemn the Church to which this young girl belongs; and in adopting a jaunty attitude which is foreign to your contemplative nature, you are doing harm to any cause that you uphold, because you repel many who otherwise might listen to you. So, inasmuch as by speaking your thoughts to me you have pleased me, I have, as I have said, made these facts evident to you. This, you will be aware, is the performance of a miracle — that is to say of a thing, humanly speaking, inexplicable — for but a little while ago, before I entered this room, you would have denied with great force that by your hasty words and unlovely manner you injured the cause you have at heart.”

Mr. Carver said —

“Well, now!” and, wrinkling his brows, he looked down at the ground.

“We have often said the same thing to Carver!” the young teacher from Norfolk said, “but it never had any effect.”

“How then is it that what I said has had an effect?” the claimant to Godhead asked.

Mrs. Milne was leaning forward in her chair.

“Isn’t it your voice, isn’t it your manner that have impressed Carver?” she said.

“Oh yes,” Mr. Apollo answered, and he smiled at her.

“Then,” she said slowly and with an earnest and deep voice, “surely the thing is explicable, is it not?”

“How explicable?” her teacher asked.

“It is explicable by your voice and by your manner,” she answered. She spoke always slowly, a little as if she were walking in her sleep, a little as if she were thinking very deeply.

“If a thing’s explicable it can’t be called a miracle!” a dogmatic voice came from the doorway. Again, looking at Mrs. Milne, the claimant to Godhead smiled.

“But if you explain this phenomenon by my voice and by my manner, how do you explain my voice and my manner? For surely, if many men, and those the closest friends of this man, have failed in inducing him to abandon habits that they deem very harmful, then how will you explain my voice and manner that, with one short speech, have changed that which appeared to be so ingrained in the very fibres of this man’s being?”

“Certainly it is a very wonderful gift,” Mrs. Milne said dreamily.

“And how,” Mr. Apollo said, “would you differentiate between the divine and the human other than by saying that a god has very wonderful gifts?”

CHAPTER V
I

CARVER, who had remained with his head between his shoulders, bundled up and looking at the dim ground, sprang suddenly to his feet. His eyes searched his opponent’s face, he leaned upon the back of his chair, craning over.

“You claim divine powers?” he said huskily.

“I claim nothing,” Mr. Apollo answered slowly. “If in your heart you believe, believe. It is immaterial to me if you worship me or no.”

Carver passed his hand across his damp brow. His face was quite pale, his eyes very large and black.

“I must go to my sections,” he said huskily.

“You mean, do you not?” his interlocutor asked, “that you wish to be alone and reflect upon these things?”

“I don’t know,” Carver said. “I don’t know what I mean. I must go.”

It came into Mrs. Milne’s head that Carver’s flight as he pushed his way through the little crowd in the room oddly resembled the flight of Mr. Clarges. She wondered whether perhaps that were not natural enough, if indeed this stranger — who without doubt spoke allegorically — if indeed he did possess a new light, a new truth. And if another, why not he? For the possessors of new lights, of new truths, came in very odd guises. There had been prophets who were fishermen, prophets who were carpenters, prophets who were tenders of sheep. You could not tell where or to whom some new scintillation of truth, uttered perhaps in parables, in images, some new and blinding light might not be vouchsafed. And, in the unfolding of human wisdom, all those scintillæ, all those rays of light, counted. They made up the sum of knowledge. Why should not this man, as well as any other, have his ray of new light to communicate?

And, in truth, Mrs. Milne was in need of a leader; she seemed for some while — for a very long while — to have been marking time, floating, contemplating, thinking. Her union with her husband — and she looked at him as he stood up, tranquil, comforting, thoughtful, a little dim in the light of the two cheap candles that found no reflection in the sombre, grey-green wall-paper — her union with her husband was so close that she could not — although of that she was hardly aware — regard him as her leader. They thought so much alike that, when she appealed to him for confirmation of any of her thoughts, she only did it as it were to register what actually her own thoughts were. If he were thinking, and upon much the same things, he didn’t ever get much further than she: they thought, as it were, at the same rate.

She tried to look at this stranger more closely, and she was aware that at the same moment her husband’s eyes took the same course. But, either because her attention was diverted, or because he was in shadow and the candles were very cheap — they came from the little oil shop in the basement of the great building — or because she was anxious to divine what Alfred Milne was thinking, she had not formed any conclusion when again their glances met She was conscious of pleasure, and then she was conscious that her husband was — it was not alarmed, it was not appalled — but it was a deep emotion that moved him. And, by the expression in his eyes, she was made aware that she too was shaken and was deeply moved. To all deep and still natures the sudden revelation of an aspect of life causes a slow but pervasive emotion, akin to fear, akin to joy, partaking of one and the other, a trouble of the mind such as we feel when we touch for the first time on the mysteries of religion, of sex, or discover for the first time a hint of the ground plan, of the hypocrisy, the opportunism, and the common sense of a system of human government. And Mrs. Milne felt, in her large and tranquil being, such an emotion as had stirred her in the crucial moments of her life....

A large, genial, round-faced, bland, and brown-featured young man was pushing himself into the little room, as if he were swimming sideways through a surf a little too solid for him to manage very easily.

He had a smiling condescension, an erectness, that marked him off from any one else in the room.

“Tut, tut!” he uttered a little breathlessly. “Oh, your stairs! your stairs!”

It was this young man who had cried from behind the door — where he had been pulling off an almost priceless motor-coat of fur — dogmatically the words —

“If a thing is explicable it can’t be a miracle,” and as he pushed himself, not too roughly, but quite good-humouredly, into a foremost position, he exclaimed, a little abstractedly —

“What’s this? What’s this? What are we discussing now?”

He was actually the Hon. Eugene Durham, a cousin of Frances Milne. He was reported to be fabulously wealthy. He had been in Parliament as a Liberal; but he had lost his seat, without much regret, at the last General Election. He had a mother who doted on him — she was a banker’s widow. And he came partly because he liked the discussions, partly because he really thought that some of these young men would really be the shining lights of the future, partly because he was genuinely fond of his cousins, and partly to be in the society of Margery Snyde, the Roman Catholic young lady who had first mooted the image of the unclosing rose.

It could hardly be said that his intentions were honourable. It could not, indeed, be said that he had any intentions at all. The girl was a lady, the daughter of an official at South Kensington Museum. But she was very impecunious. It would not be a good match; it would not, indeed, be a match at all. He did not know what it would lead to, but he came, vaguely, for what he could get. Her religion, he was aware, might keep her straight; or his own conscience. On the other hand, he was also conscious of being aware, as a man of the world, that the Roman Catholic Church, since it condoned certain offences, was regarded as encouraging them. He came, in short, quite good-humouredly, for what he could get — from the discussions, from his cousins, and from Margery Snyde. The discussions might keep him up to date in his ideas; at any rate, retailed at dinner-parties, they got him a reputation for brilliance and originality. The pleasure of being with his cousins was an actual asset that he really got in exchange for his time. And as for Margery Snyde, she might, since he was very rich and she very poor, make a docile wife or a pleasing and devoted mistress. She was tall and draped in a low-necked gown, her neck being bare and her black hair parted in the middle and falling low over her ears. Standing beside her, and aware that she was paying, in the doorway, a great deal more attention to the discussion than to him, he had first exclaimed as to the inexplicability of miracles, and, still intent on asserting his authority in Margery’s eyes, he was pushing himself forward through the little crowd.

“What’s this about a miracle?” he exclaimed. “What’s all this?” He considered himself an excellent debater, since he had been — though not with much success — a member of the House of Commons. He put, however, his want of success down to the fact that you could not, by any manner of means, set down his fellow members as gentlemen, and, upon the whole, he shone considerably more when he was in the society of these young people.

The stranger, however, did not regard him at all, and Eugene Durham, not having been able, from the passage, to see who had been speaking, addressed himself to Alfred Milne.

Milne was rather more abstracted than usual, and, having kept silence for a second, when he did address himself it was to his new guest rather than to his cousin.

“Would you really,” he said, “call that a miracle? — supposing, I mean, that, for the sake of argument, we acknowledged that a person doing such a thing was a God or a prophet.”

Again the stranger smiled.

“Regard it as an act of healing,” he said, “then what aspect would it wear?”

“It would,” Alfred Milne said—”supposing it to be permanent in its effects — it would have the aspect of a cure.”

“Then,” the stranger said, “you may assuredly regard it as a miracle. For a miracle is the effecting of a thing by means inscrutable to men. That the means are obvious and simple to the Godhead performing them must be manifest to you. You see the obverse of the shield, he the reverse.”

“But seriously,” Alfred Milne said, “a miracle should be a thing more startling, so that its miraculous nature should be the more apparent.”

“Not so!” the stranger said. “For a Godhead should be wise.”

“What is all this about?” Eugene Durham said.

“Oh, be quiet, Eugene,” Margery uttered from the doorway. “We want to hear what they say.”

The stranger looked benevolently towards the doorway, behind which the girl was hidden. And at this moment Eugene Durham was aware — it came to him as an intimate conviction — that he would marry Margery Snyde. It put itself — the new proposition — that there was not anything to be got out of a girl — a mere girl — who could speak to him, Eugene Durham, with such authority when he was trying to impose himself on a gathering. He would not be able to conquer her; therefore he must submit.... He did not see anything miraculous in his sudden change of feeling. It was simply that Margery Snyde had never so brushed him on one side before, and, having done it, she appeared, suddenly, to have become at once supremely desirable and supremely to be respected.

“You will observe,” the stranger was saying to Alfred Milne, “the problem before me was to change the heart of a man. It was indeed more than that: it was to make him see that there are in this world powers greater than he had before taken account of. Now consider: a Godhead is wise. Therefore a Godhead will expend no more of his energies upon a given task than are exactly needed to accomplish his purpose. That alone is sufficient to single out a God from mankind. If, therefore, being able to change the heart of your friend with words alone, I had done it with phenomena more troublesome, I should have exhibited a divine unwisdom. Nay, more, if I had exhibited other marvels to him, I should have defeated my purpose. For consider the nature of this man and the nature of my powers. This man is an observer of natural phenomena, possessing or seeking to cultivate what he calls an open mind. I have powers over music and over the light of the sun. If I had caused celestial music to sound; if I had caused, now that it is night, the rays of the sun to shine into this chamber, how would that have affected him?”

Alfred Milne reflected slowly.

“He would have tried to explain them away,” he confessed.

“He would have explained them away,” the stranger said. “Later I will show you how he would have explained them away. But, for the moment, consider what I have done. This man could explain away all marvellous phenomena; there was one thing only that he could not explain away — a change in his own heart. That it was that moved him in the very depths of his being. For his passion was to make himself appear odious and painful in his speech and in his arguments. And suddenly, against his will, he found himself speaking gently and in a language more pleasing. And this was done by one small speech. How then, do you think, will he view this transaction? Assuredly for him, in his heart of hearts, it will appear a miracle. For, for a man as for a God, his own heart is the centre of life.”

“Oh come,” Eugene Durham said, “you don’t mean to say, Alfred, that this gentleman made Carver behave decently? That really
would
be a miracle.”

“I will show you,” the stranger said, “how little greater marvels will affect such men. You shall hear music and, though it is night, you shall see the rays of the sun.”...

There was a stir in the little room. The stranger looked towards the candles on the mantelpiece: their flames died. From the window, a dull square, there came no light save that of a lamp far below. It was so high that they saw a great expanse of the heavens.

“What are you going to do?” Eugene Durham laughed his dilettante and amiable laugh.

“You shall see the rays of the sun,” the voice came.

And suddenly, across the pale heavens there ran upwards a beam of golden light. The shadowy faces became evident, gazing all intently towards the west.

“Oh well,” Eugene Durham said, “those are the austral rays. They have not yet been explained, but it is a sort of aurora borealis effect, I believe. It is a perfectly natural phenomenon.”

As if sardonically, the light was gone; then it shone again, and again all the faces were visible.

“Oh well,” Eugene Durham said, “the smoke is blowing across from the chimney of the electric-light works. There is nothing miraculous about
that.
”

His voice was drowned by a low chant, a pervasive wailing, in slow waves that seemed to sway them all. And whilst, tall and debonair, he wavered on his feet, he said amiably —