Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 229
“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 VI
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 —
“Oh, that is... only... hypnotic... suggestion.... I’ve... seen... better turns... at... the... Em...”
A sudden cry came from the doorway —
“Oh, no more! No more! I can’t bear it,” Margery Snyde cried out in the darkness. “I shall die.”
The music ceased; the light died away in the sky; the candles flamed up again. Margery Snyde pushed her way into the room.
“It was wicked,” she said, and she gazed at the wonder-worker. “It is the work of devils. How can I have come to such a place as this?”
“Child,” the Godhead uttered, “you will not die, but you will live and be happy as simple people are happy. And assuredly you have committed no sin. When you tell it to your confessor he will smile and say you were overwrought.”
A certain emotion was communicated to that little circle, so that when Gertrude Welby, who was studying psychology for the London University degree, asked the young man from Norwich “what he thought of it,” she spoke in a whisper. The others were simply silent because no one had the courage to speak. There were there George Durant, who would have been a rising engineer had he not been too scrupulous to find employment, and Edward Wynn, who was a designer of advertisements, but found his serious interests in Esoteric Buddhism and psychical research. There were thus seven of them in the room, besides the stranger, and although they filled the room enough to feel themselves a crowd with a corporate spirit, there were not, they all felt, enough of them to make it worth a charlatan’s while to give a so elaborate display.
They approached the manifestations with a certain timidity; if they had occurred at a music-hall they would have laughed at them. But here, in this room with the dull wall-paper, the framed autotype of Watts’s “Hope,” sloppily clad, seated on a round ball and fingering a one-stringed harp, for the sole picture; with the cheap fumed-oak sideboard that served also as a bookshelf, the cheap table, the cheap serge hangings — what could be made out of that impecunious gathering in the bare room? There was not enough money in the whole of them to pay for an apparatus capable of producing that distant and brilliant illumination and that wail of unknown instruments; so that they felt at the moment — and they said it amongst themselves afterwards — that they might dismiss the idea of an apparatus.
For the moment Margery Snyde had been the most vocal, and the sobs from the passage to which she had retired, and where, invisible, she was softly robing herself to depart, her sobs at least bore witness to the fact that she fully believed. She believed that she had witnessed true sorcery, the work of the devil. She half believed that this being was Satan himself; she felt in herself the contamination that came from having been present at a satanic rite; and having in the dark pulled on her cotton gloves, she pulled them off again feverishly, as if by that action she were cleansing herself from pollution; and she let herself inaudibly out of the door because she did not wish Eugene to follow her at the moment.
The happiness that this being had promised her she regarded as a bribe to tempt her. It was almost the worst of all, for it was as if it separated her from Eugene Durham, and, as she went through the narrow, dark, and squalid streets that led to the straight and chilly vistas of South Kensington, she determined that it should separate her from Eugene, at least to the extent of making her never go to More’s Buildings again. If Eugene wanted her he must come to find her.
She had gone frequently to the Milnes’ because she liked them, and because the irreligious talk that at times she heard passed outside her sphere of consciousness. It was like the talk of brilliant children, and she was aware that she was winning some of them to her side, or at least that, by going there, she familiarised them with the idea of Rome, made them less intolerant, since she herself behaved with a tolerance that could only come with a deep faith.
But now, if it were coming to this — and of course it must come to this — she could never go there again. Of course it must come to this, for irreligious talk led to the worship, to the very presence, of the ministers of false gods.
A little, quivering figure, in a large hat and a clinging cloak, Margery Snyde pushed courageously enough through crowds of evil men that filled the street outside More’s Buildings. If they jeered at her she felt no fear, if they obstructed her path she avoided them, if they spoke to her as if she were one of the too many women of the town that there came home to roost, she turned a deaf ear. But false gods she feared, for she believed in the existence of false gods.
She did not, that is to say, believe that there was but one God and outside His Trinity an arid vacuum wherein there dwelt no supernatural beings. But Buddha existed for her: a fallen being, divine, but cast out of heaven, and Allah the god of the Saracens, and Dagon and Satan. Therefore she was ready to believe that this man she had seen was indeed an emissary of an evil power, since all that is outside the Church Catholic — all that is outside it and supernatural — is evil. Hurrying down the Brompton Road, she said a Hail Mary as she passed the Oratory and she calmed herself by telling her beads. She wondered that she had forgotten to make the sign of the cross or to pray in the Milnes’ room. It was thus that Satan took one, unawares, overcome by panic. And again she said to herself that she would never go to the Milnes’ again.
