By the way, I remember a few days ago, when I was moralising in one of my minor keys about the origin of evil, I endeavoured to set forth that the hurricane, the lightning, pain, disease, and many other things which appear to us to detract from the benevolence of the Creator are really – could we but see into them – among his choicest gifts. I have noticed since, on looking over my Paley,144 that he throws a light upon one at least of these phenomena. If you put foul air into a bottle with a little water, says he, and shake them up together, you will remove all the impurity. When a tempest lashes the sea into foam, the very same process is being carried on on an enormous scale. Were it not for these periodical cleansings, the whole atmosphere would soon become so loaded with carbon and impurities of all sorts that it would be poisonous to our lungs. It may be true or it may not, but it shows at any rate how hard it is to distinguish a blessing from a curse. There is nothing which may not prove eventually to have been of benefit to us – except perhaps rheumatic gout.
All these theological disquisitions are prompted by the fact that about three o’clock this afternoon I had a visit from no less an individual than the senior curate of the parish – a long thin gentleman with a sad pale face and a subdued manner. I have no love for the cloth. A long experience has convinced me that just as cotton, which is a harmless substance enough in itself, becomes dangerous on being dipped into nitric acid, so the mildest of mortals is to be feared when once he has inoculated himself with sectarian religion. If he has any capacity for rancour or hardness in him, it will bring it out. I was therefore by no means overjoyed to see my visitor, though I received him with due courtesy and begged him to be seated.
Mrs Rundle attended at his church, he explained, and he had heard that one of her lodgers was ill. He had considered it to be his duty to call and see if he could be of any service to me. Was very glad to perceive that I was regaining my health and hoped I would soon be able to get about again. He spoke in rather a high and yet husky voice, and had a way of dropping it at the last few words of each sentence which jarred rather upon my ear. His long white quivering fingers too, which played nervously with the little cross which hung from his watch chain, annoyed and fidgeted me. I thanked him, however, for his kindness in calling upon me with all the cordiality which I could command.145
‘You see, the Vicar has been away in the South of France for his health,’ he explained, ‘and we have to do the best we can to look after things in his absence. He has been away for nearly two years.’
‘The parish must miss him very much,’ I remarked politely.
‘Well, he never lived in the parish,’ said the Curate. ‘You see, he is a man who has always been accustomed to live in very good style, and there was no house in the parish large enough for his requirements. He is a very distinguished man of good family, and we may consider ourselves fortunate in having his services.’
I was too much bewildered at this view of the matter to make any reply. Before I could quite recover from my wonder, the Curate, who had been eyeing me closely, remarked, ‘You must have been only a short time among us. I cannot recollect having ever seen your face in Church.’
‘No,’ said I. ‘I never go to church.’
‘Not a dissenter,’ cried my visitor, half rising from his chair with disgust expressed upon every feature of his face. ‘I did not understand from Mrs Rundle that you were a dissenter.’
‘Neither I am.’
‘Oh, quite so – I see,’ he said playfully, with a look of relief. ‘A little lax – a little negligent. Well, well, men of the world get into these ways. They have much to distract their attentions. You at least cling fast to the fundamental truths of Christianity – you believe those in your heart.’
‘I believe from the bottom of my heart,’ said I, ‘that Jesus Christ was the sweetest and best character of whom we have any record in the history of this planet.’
‘I trust that your belief goes deeper than that,’ said the Curate severely. ‘You are surely prepared to admit that he was an incarnation of the Godhead.’
‘But it appears to me,’ I objected, ‘that if he were but a frail mortal like ourselves, his life assumes a deep significance as showing how pure and how lofty a human existence may be. It becomes a standard towards which we may work. If, on the other hand, he was intrinsically of a different nature to ourselves, then his existence loses its point since we and he start on a different basis. To my mind, such a supposition takes away all the beauty and all the moral of his life. If he was divine, then he could not sin, and there was an end of the matter. We who are not divine, and who can sin, have little to learn from a life like that. It is a cheap triumph. You remember the Emperor Commodus, who used to descend into the arena fully armed and pit himself against some poor wretch who had only a leaden sword given him which would double up if he used it? According to your theory of Christ’s life, you would have it that he faced the temptations of the world at such an advantage that they were but harmless leaden things, and not the sharp terrible assailants which we find them. I prefer to look upon Christ as a sweet, loving elder brother, who came down as we have come down into this arena of life, and who, without any sheltering halo of divinity, fought a fair fight against the very enemies which we have to face, and showed how easy it was to conquer them.’
‘Why, you are nothing else than a Unitarian, sir,’ cried the Curate with a pink flush upon his white cheeks.
‘You may label me as you like,’ said I. ‘I have been looking for truth this thirty years, and though I may not have got much further, I at least have come to some pretty certain conclusions as to what is not truth. It is not true that religion reached its acme nineteen hundred years ago, and that we are forever to refer back to what was written and said in those times. No, sir. Religion is a vital living thing, still growing and working, and capable of endless extension and development like all other fields of thought. There were some eternal truths spoken of old, and handed down to us in a book which may truly be called holy. But there are other eternal truths yet to be revealed, and if we are to reject them because they are not to be found in those pages, you will do as wisely as a scientist who would have nothing to say to Kirshhoff’s spectral analysis because there is no mention of it in Albertus Magnus. There are prophets now as there were prophets then. Our modern prophet wears a broadcloth coat and writes for The Nineteenth Century, but he may none the less be the little pipe which conveys a tiny rill from the inexhaustible reservoirs of eternal truth.146 I have a text there, sir, over the door – “One way or another all the light, energy, and available virtue which we have does come out of us, and goes very infallibly into God’s treasury living and working through eternities there. We are not lost – not a single atom of us – of one of us.”147 Now that has the ring of religious truth about it, and yet came from no Hebrew lips, but from a very worthy man down Chelsea way. I don’t know that God Almighty has declared that he has said his last say to the Human Race. It is as easy for him to speak through Carlyle the Scotchman as through Jeremiah the Jew. The Bible, sir, is a book which comes out in instalments, and “To be continued,” not “finis,” is written at the end of it. We may expect a further supplement one of these days.’
My visitor had been showing every sign of acute uneasiness during this long speech of mine, but as he listened to my concluding words he sprang to his feet and seized his soft black hat in a paroxysm of indignation.
‘Your opinions are highly dangerous, sir,’ said he. ‘I never listened to sadder infidelity. You believe in nothing.’
‘I believe in nothing which limits the power or the goodness or the justice of God,’ I answered.
‘You have evolved all this from your own spiritual pride and self sufficiency,’ said he hotly. ‘Why do you not pray to that Deity whose name you use? Why do you not humble yourself before Him and ask for a little saving faith?’
‘How do you know I don’t?’ I asked.
‘You said yourself that you never went to church.’<
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‘I carry my own church about under my own hat,’ said I.‘Bricks and mortar won’t make a ladder into heaven. I believe with Christ that the human heart is the best temple. I am sorry to see that you differ from him on this point.’
Perhaps it was too bad of me to say that. I might have guarded myself without countering. Anyhow, it had the effect of ending an interview which was becoming somewhat oppressive. My visitor was too indignant to answer, and bounced out of the room and down the stairs without another word. From my window I can see him streaming down the street, a poor little black angry thing, very hot and troubled because he can’t measure the whole universe with his pocket square and compass. Think of it, and think of what he is, an atom among atoms, standing at the meeting point of two eternities. But what am I, a brother-atom, that I should judge him!
After all, might it not have been better had I listened to what he had to say without obtruding my own views? If he is happy in his beliefs, I should be sorry indeed to controvert them. Yet we can but say what we believe to be truth after having sought it out in the silence of our own hearts. Is it not a duty to speak out against the narrower and less comprehensive views, for the true creed must be as broad as the Universe itself, and therefore infinitely broader than anything which the mind of man can conceive? A protest against sectarian ways of thought must always be an aspiration towards truth. The great Creator is no God of cliques, but has all this vast universe in his keeping. Who shall dare to claim a monopoly of him, or to limit his loving kindness? Surely it is there that the real impiety lies.
I had hoped that the Major would have come in today, but I have seen no sign of him, though his crisp military step may be heard on the floor above. I fear that he has met with ill success at the War Office.148 Down below, Herr Lehmann bangs and crashes on the grand piano. Perhaps in some future avatar the Herr Professor may be transformed into one of those pneumora whose whole bodies serve as musical instruments. By the way, is it not a fact that we exalt our auditory apparatus unduly at the expense of some of our other faculties? Our olfactory nerves, for example, are as sensitive and as delicate as our sense of hearing, yet we do not hear of their producing the refined and spiritual and ethereal effects which are said to arise from the higher developments of music. There is no reason why a brain-stimulation through smell should be less suggestive than a brain-stimulation through sound. Why should not some olfactory Mendelssohn of the future arrange a series of scents without words, which should convey as dreamy and poetical an effect as their musical prototypes? Why should we not have studies in frangi panni or a symphony in Attar of Roses with a musk accompaniment? Who knows that there may not be a scent opera in the days to come, which shall blend all manner of expressive and artistically arranged perfumes, from the violets which mark the entrance of the rustic heroine to the whiff of asafoetida or brimstone which heralds the approach of the villain. Indeed, when one thinks of it, there is an infinitely greater variety in scent than in sound, and a composer may launch forth upon that field without any fear of plagiarising from the works of his predecessors. Mr Gilbert could not do better than discard Mr Sullivan and take Mr Rimmel into a literary and odoriferous partnership.149
I confess that I am somewhat of a Philistine in this matter of music, nor am I at all convinced that the musical ear is in itself a mark of refinement. Some of the most delicate-minded sensitive highly-strung men whom I have known have confessed to me that they were in the position of the historical personage who could only recognise two tunes, one of which was ‘God save the Queen’ and the other wasn’t. On the other hand, I very well remember that at Singapore in the old days the Malays and lascars could pick up any tune after hearing it once, and reproduce it on their violins. Their musical sense amounted almost to an instinct, and yet I don’t think their best friends would claim refinement as one of their virtues. In its higher developments the musical faculty may be elevating and aesthetic, but you won’t find among your own friends that there is any direct ratio between their mental or even their emotional capacity and their ear for music. Darwin states somewhere that men probably conversed by means of musical sounds before they had learned to frame words, which would make our composers and performers mere reversions to a lower type. There is a German band playing at the other end of the street which would lend itself to the theory.
What a heavy, heavy day! Nothing but grumbling and disputing, and treading on my neighbours’ corns! Let me wind up with a few verses on a subject which we can all agree upon. The Major was narrating the other day the devotion of some of our rank and file in Egypt, and lamenting that poor Tommy Atkins150and his individual doings seldom found their way into the dispatches. As Lowell sang,
‘Somehow when we’ve fought and licked, I always found the thanks
Got kind of lodged before they reached as low down as the ranks’151
The thought has been running in my mind, together with a particular example of gallantry – one of many which had come under his notice – with the result that it suddenly crystallised out into a string of verses which I have named:
Corporal Dick’s Promotion152
The Eastern day was well high o’er
When, parched with thirst and travel-sore
Two of McPherson’s Army Corps
Across the desert were tramping.
They had wandered off from the beaten track
And now were wearily harking back,
Ever glancing round for the Union Jack
Which marked their comrades camping.
The first was Lance-Corporal Robert Dick,
Bearded and burly, short and thick,
Rough of speech and in temper quick,
A sullen old dog and a surly.
The other, fresh from his mother’s care,
Was a young recruit, smooth-cheeked and fair,
With a face as fresh as the English air
And his flaxen hair all curly.
Jaded and spent and hunger-torn
They had wandered on from early morn
And the young recruit was all forlorn
Silent – his troubles nursing.
Save a desert jackal dining alone,
And snarling over a half-gnawed bone
Not a sound broke in on the monotone
Of the Corporal’s muttered cursing.
But far to westward a rolling cloud,
The sandy spray from a moving crowd,
Darkens the air, like a sombre shroud
Against the background of azure.
Rifts in the whirling wreaths reveal
Shadowy riders and glint of steel
While the tawny clouds all else conceal
Like the smoke from a fort’s embrasure.
The Corporal glanced at the darkening west,
Stuck his pipe in his khaki vest,
Growled out an oath and onward pressed
Still glancing over his shoulder.
‘Bedouins, mate!’ he curtly said
‘We’ll have some work for steel and lead
‘And, maybe, sleep on a sandy bed
‘Before we’re one hour older!’
Side by side with pain and toil,
Ankle-deep in the yielding soil
They staggered along – while a wild turmoil
Rose from the distant foeman.
Swiftly the Arab warriors sped
But far in front their Chieftain led,
Riding a charger desert-bred
With a vulture flapping over his head
A dark portentous omen.
Nearer yet and yet more near
Thundering on in his wild career
He brandished high his gleaming spear
With a smile on his swarthy features.
At the sound of his hoofs the pair faced round,
Dogged and grim they stood their ground,
With never a word save a sharp fierce sound,
Like the snarl of hunted creatures.
Says Corporal Dick with a
rugged frown,
‘First come, first served! We must fetch him down!
‘Aim steady and true or I lay you a crown
‘That we’ve reached the end of the chapter!’
A sputter of fire – a cry of pain –
The blue smoke drifting over the plain –
The Chief is down and his charger’s rein
Is in the hands of its captor.
With the light of hope upon his face
The Corporal sprang in the dead man’s place,
He knew the gallant stallion’s pace,
Rejoicing to bestride him.
But ere upon his course he flew
One hurried glance around he threw,
And he met the wistful eyes so blue
Of the young recruit beside him.
‘Twas but a flash – a fleeting dart,
But it pierced the rough old soldier’s heart,
He sprang to earth. ‘Up, up and start!
‘They’ll be on us in less than a minute!
‘Up with you! No palaver! Go!
‘I’ll bide behind and run the show
‘Promotion has been cursed slow
‘And this is my chance to win it.’
Into the saddle he thrust him quick,
Spurred up the steed with a bayonet prick,
Watched it gallop with plunge and with kick
Away o’er the desert careering.
Then he turned with a softened face,
Loosening the strap of his cartridge case,
While his thoughts flew back to the dear old place,
In the sunny Hampshire clearing.
His young companion gazing back
Saw the pursuers’ wild attack
And heard the sharp Martini crack
But as he looked already
The dark fanatic Arab band
Were closing in on every hand
Until a whirling wreath of sand
The Narrative of John Smith Page 13