Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 233
CHAPTER IV
IN the little dining-room with the bluish-grey paper, the dim light obscured by the smoke from the chimneys of Victoria Mansions, just on a level with the window — the Milnes’ flat was cheap enough for them just because this smoke was so troublesome that few tenants could be found to take rooms on that floor — pacing up and down the room, still grasping his umbrella, whilst Mr. Apollo leaned back in his chair, Mr. Clarges asked with a trembling voice —
“Is it really your intention to stay three weeks with these young people?”
The Alfred Milnes were moving plates to warm in the kitchen.
“It is really my intention to stay for that period,” the voice came level and remorseless to Mr. Clarges. “And I will tell you why I accepted that omen. To me all time is as nothing. What is it to me if I am here or elsewhere? As it is for you, all eternity is before me. Only I do not measure time as you do.”
Mr. Clarges threw back his head and snorted at the dim ceiling.
“You are a mere loafer, then,” he said.
“I am a mere loafer,” his opponent answered him. “And since I am a mere loafer, I do not measure the time of my stay here or there. I am here to experience certain things; these I can experience when and how I will. It is as if I were you and there stood before me a glass of wine; I can drink it now, in five minutes, or when I will. Therefore, if it pleases my caprice to set to my stay the limit that my host by a certain impulse sets to it, so I will do it For, as I have said, it is the privilege of those who are above reason to act by caprice.”
Mr. Clarges said —
“It is certainly above all reason and all decency that you should stay three weeks with these people. Are you aware what a struggle their life is?”
“I am very aware what a struggle their life is,” Mr. Apollo answered, “and it is for that reason that I am come to them.”
“Are you above pity too?” Mr. Clarges sneered. “I should have thought Durham’s set would have suited you better. You’d get more out of them.”
“Man!” Mr. Apollo said. “You are very well aware that I am not here to get things from people. Are you not afraid to speak injustice to one whom you know to be powerful?”
“I am not afraid to strike where I dislike,” Mr. Clarges said defiantly.
“Your dream was a very true one when you said it was you who cast a stone at the light you knew to be God,” Mr. Apollo said softly. “But still it is better to avoid injustice, and you are an old man who should have learned that it is very befitting to the gravity of age to accept the dictates of destiny.”
“I am old enough to know,” Mr. Clarges said, “that I’m the sort of man to fight to the last What do I care if your destiny overwhelms me? I shan’t have shown the white feather.”
“Then if you lack dignity,” Mr. Apollo said, “you atone by courage, and that perhaps is the nobler part in the defeated.”
Mr. Clarges put his umbrella behind him.
“Upon my soul,” he said, “you are the most conceited puppy I have ever met.”
“And that is, is it not, what you would say to God?” he heard in ironic tones. He choked in his throat, for the Milnes came into the room bearing dishes, and set about laying the cloth with table implements from the creaking drawers of the cheap sideboard that quivered when it was touched.
Whilst they were preparing the meal Mr. Clarges was perpetually in their way, moving up and down in their courses between sideboard and table. They bore his presence with equanimity, for they were patient people and loved him. Whilst they were eating their meal he would not sit down; he said that they had not enough for themselves, that he had no appetite, and he moved incessantly from wall to wall.
“What about the Krakroffs?” he tried to say again, but for the moment he thought it would be unavailing. Then he considered that he had a better way of attacking their guest, and what he ought before to have said came into his head. He fixed his spectacles upon Mr. Apollo and came to a halt with his hands upon the head of his umbrella.
“I should have thought,” he said, “that you would have been more at home with Durham’s set than here; because you have said that you are an idler; they’re idle enough.”
“But consider, since you are a man of perspicacity,” the slow tones came to him, “the purpose of my stay. If you desire to experience new things, do you go amongst scenes and persons similar to those you have usually around you? Not so; but you go to a theatre and study the methods of thought-readers. And this Durham and his friends are like Gods.”
“Like Gods!” Mr. Clarges said, with an ironic cackle.
“Why, you have said that a God was idle, conceited, and ineffable,” Mr. Apollo said. “And I have told you that. And so you must needs think of a God, for that is your nature, and no God will concern himself to change your nature. But consider how, in all things material, these people resemble Gods, and how there is only one thing in which they differ. What distinguishes a man from a God more than that the one toils and the other makes no effort? And these people make no effort. Time also is with them of no value, nor space; moreover, they fulfil no functions in the human republic; but they exist. They are borne backwards and forwards without effort; they are fed from unseen sources; their means of life are assured, and by no effort of their own; they are without fears and without doubts.”
“And they are decadent and rotten branches,” said Mr. Clarges.
“In saying that,” Mr. Apollo said, “you mention the one difference that exists between these peoples and the Gods. For the Gods do not decay. But these peoples decay incessantly. And I would have you to perceive that this resemblance of these peoples to Gods is more apparent to Gods than to themselves. For, being mortal, they are susceptible of fatigue, hopes, fears, and passions. Only their fatigues, their hopes, their fears, and their passions are alike caprices, since they have already all that man can possess.”
“Everything but brains and backbones,” Mr. Clarges said.
“And that is implied when we have agreed that these peoples are susceptible of decay. For, in a man, the lack of a need for effort brings about the lack of a stability of passions. A man who has everything that he needs will set his heart upon things of little purpose. He will exhaust his passions of hope and despair upon such a subject as that birds will settle upon his roof or his windows. He will lose his faith, because, having’ no need to pray to Gods, he will forget that Gods there are; and he will cease to wonder what comes after life, because life so engrosses him.”
“I’m glad at least,” Mr. Clarges said, “that you’re so sound upon social questions.”
“Zeus forbid,’’ he got his answer,” that I should speak of your social questions, which in no wise concern me or occupy my thoughts. For these are things that concern man alone. And if I think of those people at all, it is to consider of them as being very deserving of pity, since destiny has cast their lot into such unfortunate ways.”
“Unfortunate ways!” Mr. Clarges said. “Haven’t they the fat of the land to live on? Let them rot.”
“Ah, my friend,” Mr. Apollo said, “it is because they will rot that a God will pity them. For they rot because seldom or never do you find a God sojourning with them. And that, assuredly, is caused by a destiny to them remorseless; for destiny has put them into such a case that they lose their faiths and their reason, and their desires to toil and their hope to beget a healthful and a numerous progeny.”
“So that at least you advocate...” Mr. Clarges began.
“Make no mistake,” Mr. Apollo interrupted him; “I advocate nothing.”
“At any rate,” Mr. Clarges battled bravely, “you state that to live like a God is to end as a beast.”
“To live in material things like a God, without toil or hope, is to run the danger of ending like a beast,” Mr. Apollo said. “But to think as nearly as may be like a God, and to live as nearly as may be like a man beset by the hazards of life: the man to whom destiny has allotted this portion may be called fortunate in his day. For it is in the things of faith and of truth that a God functions, and it is in matters of destiny and of chance that a God thinks. And I say again that so to live as to be ready to receive the visit of a God is to be fortunate.”
Mr. Clarges dropped himself into the vacant chair beside the hearth; he leaned his umbrella against the mantel.
“I don’t know what your especial brand of devil worship may be,” he said, “and I don’t follow your argument. What’s it all about? What is a man’s God? How, for instance, would you have me to live so as to be ready to receive the visit of a God?” He had folded his hands and snickered with a fine irony.
“You should live very much as you now live.”
“But I am a rich man,” Mr. Clarges said. “I could buy Eugene Durham twice over. And if a God came to me...”
“If your God came to you, you would be ready to receive him, if it were only to wrestle with him,” the voice came to him; “for fighting men have fighting Gods. And though all your life you have denied the existence of a God, in your heart very well you know that you have a God. For in denying the existence of a certain God you have denied only the existence of one God in particular — or of two or three. You have denied, that is to say, the existence of the Gods of other men. For other men have found attuned to them Gods with six arms, Gods with the semblance of cats, Gods that revelled in the smell of blood, or Gods born of women. These gods — and one God in especial that was the Lord God of the people of Israel — you and your friends have unceasingly fought against, and so unceasingly have you fought that you have taken no time to consider what God it is that is attuned to you. You have cast stones, asleep and awake, at Jahwe, as you have laughed at Phoebus Apollo. But the universe is very great — being infinite — and in it there is room for a multitude of Gods — even for an infinite number. There is room for a multitude of Gods: for so many, that though the God of each man were a different God, yet for each man there would be a God attuned to him.”
Mr. Clarges, sitting back in his chair, proudly snorted at the ceiling.
“I should like to see the God that is my God,” he said. “I haven’t the ghost of one.”
“How is it then that you are frugal, courageous, undaunted, industrious in the pursuit of truth, and jealous to shield your fellow-men from error?” Mr. Apollo asked.
They had eaten the rabbit and the vegetables; they were eating cheese and some dried plums. It was already growing a little dark in the dusky room, and the roaring noise of the motor-cars in the highway close at hand became more audible as the evening fell. From the Victoria Mansions opposite there came the shriek of a woman, and the barking of dogs far below.
Mr. Clarges was silent, and at last, at the same moment, Frances and Alfred Milne spoke together.
“We have often thought.. they both said, but it was Mrs. Milne, in her calmness, who continued. Alfred was still, he was aware, too heated — he had a little touch of fever, and because he disliked uttering inexactitudes, he was accustomed to be rather silent when he felt excited.
“I have often thought,” Mrs. Milne continued to her guest, “when Mr. Clarges said there was no God, that, just as you have said, in his heart he must have been aware that there was a divine principle that inspired him. For he could not have been the good man he always has been unless he had an inward belief in the fitness of things.”
Mr. Clarges sprang to his feet.
“Oh, if you are going to say that God is the fitness of things...” he began.
But the Milnes had been silent for as long as seemed suitable to them, and it appeared that Mr. Apollo was not at that time minded to speak. It was, however, Alfred Milne who spoke, rather more quickly than was his wont.
“I should define God as the principle with which we act in harmony. And we’ve always seen that you, Mr. Clarges, acted in harmony with some unseen ideal. If you’ve any ideal you have a God....”
Mr. Clarges started to his feet.
“Good God!” he said. “Have I got to listen to this stale sentimentalism? The sort of stuff the bishops talked of as evidences of creation. It’s worse than Paley; it’s worse than a Young Men’s Christian Association. Get a magic-lantern and give us some views of Palestine, young man.”
He raised his hands on high, and then turned upon Mr. Milne.
“If you have an ideal you have ‘God’.. he mimicked.” Then I suppose that as your new friend is evidently your ideal he is going to be your God....”
And once again Mr. Clarges took refuge in flight. He returned, however, from the passage to fetch, ostentatiously, his umbrella, because he desired to show that he could not trust his property in the neighbourhood of their new friend. When for a second time he retired he did not go any further than the little book room, where he remained, seated on the truckle-bed and turning over the numbers of Mr. Milne’s Educational Journal. He turned impatiently, but he saw nothing of what he read. He heard them, at last, clear away the plates.
CHAPTER V
WHEN he returned to the room — and he did it with no particular ill grace, saying merely that he couldn’t stand that sort of talk and had gone to read a paper till they had done with it — he found Mrs. Milne in her accustomed seat beside the fire-place, and gliding half invisible through the gloom, he sat down in his accustomed place — as if, still, he meant to buttress her from the heresies of the world.
Her husband and their new guest were standing, mere silhouettes against the window.
“Of course I don’t want to ask impertinent questions,” he heard Alfred Milne ask. “But his disappearance has caused his wife such a lot of grief — so Bracondale says.”
“She should rather rejoice,” Mr. Apollo answered, “for this man was insolent, a braggart, oppressive, ill-natured, and had no faith in his God nor any love for his kind.”
“But still — not to know, not to have the slightest inkling, to be full of uncertainty.... He might return to-morrow, or never.”
“He will never return,” Mr. Apollo’s voice said passionlessly.
“But still.. Alfred Milne pleaded.
“If you offend against a God,” the voice returned, “there is no altering his verdict; nor can you atone, for you are dead and can no more act.”
Alfred Milne maintained a silence of intense thought. At last he said —
“I do not understand very well. Arthur Bracondale says that you have done a certain thing — that you say you have done a certain thing....” He could not be more explicit because he was aware of Mr. Clarge’s dark re-entry. “I cannot well believe that that is more than figurative speech. But there are so many things that I have failed to understand. This is a very weighty punishment to this man. He did not know the nature of his offence. Is this justice?”
“Assuredly it is justice,” his interlocutor said, “and such justice as every day you see before your eyes. For have you not seen a man set out to cross a road, and, not heeding his steps, be crushed out of all semblance of the man he was by an approaching vehicle? Is that justice or injustice? Which do you say? Assuredly it is justice, for so it is ordained: he who affronts an oncoming body falls to the ground and is killed.”
“But then...” Alfred Milne said, “in the case of the policeman...” He paused, for he did not know how to proceed.
“You pause,” Mr. Apollo said, “because you are well aware that that too was an action of divine justice. For that man was indeed most evil in his deeds as in his effects. For he had misrepresented the actions of myself, whom I will call, as being most suited to your comprehension, a very wonderful man; and what deed can be more full of sin than to misreport the actions of a very wonderful man? For the nearer a man approaches to the quality of wonderfulness the nearer he is to a god. And so the perjurer sins the more against his fellow-men, since it is only to the actions of their Gods, as they are recorded, that man can turn for guidance. And, in this misreporting the actions of a God — if your very wonderful man be indeed a god — your perjurer sins against the God; and though it be but a very little or no ill to the God, yet so potent a thing is a God that a very little sin against him is visited with a very terrible punishment. This must be apparent to your understanding.”
Alfred Milne was again silent for a long time. At last he said, as if he were pleading —
“But will you not come to the house of Mrs. Todd to see how she grieves?”
“My friend,” Mr. Apollo said, “I will go with you wherever you will.”
Milne crossed to his wife’s side and bent over her to say —
“I don’t know quite when I shall be back. There are a great many things to do. Mr. Todd the missionary has disappeared from his home. I want to see if he cannot be restored.”
“I will stay with your wife till you come back,” Mr. Clarges said a little grimly, and Alfred Milne answered —
“It would be kind if you would; but I shall in all probability be very late.”
As they went down the stairs Mr. Apollo said to the young man —
“Has it not occurred to you to consider it possible that in your absence thus late in the night-time this old man might make amorous overtures to your wife?”
Alfred Milne halted on the first landing.
“Do you ask,” he said, “because you consider it likely?” Having put the question, however, he continued to descend the dim stairs.
“I do not consider it likely,” Mr. Apollo said: “indeed I am assured that it will not take place. I ask that I may have insight into your view of your own heart.”
Again, upon the second landing down, Alfred Milne paused.
“I think that in the case of Mr. Clarges it has never occurred to me,” he said. “He is very much like our joint father; we are both orphans. But — as a principle...”
“Yes, let me hear your principle of the matter,” Mr. Apollo said.
Again Alfred Milne descended the stairs, and again, at the third landing, he halted.
“It isn’t very easy,” he said, “to put it exactly into words. But, roughly speaking, if a man can’t keep his wife’s affections — or if a wife is not willing to defend herself from such advances — it’s neither decent nor in any way useful for a man to interfere.”
