by Tim Mason
A tumor within the year? thought Sir Jasper. Nonsense! How could the man possibly know what is happening within my body? He made it up to frighten me, that’s all. The man’s a lunatic, I don’t need him. I’ll hire a professional to do the job. A German, perhaps, one of these anarchist chappies. Of course! And then I shall feed Decimus Cobb to the damned jackals. Oh, won’t I just!
“We are not naive,” Wilberforce was saying. “We know the earth is much older than we once believed. The advances and discoveries of the present century—some of them thanks to great minds here present”—the bishop bowed to Owen who acknowledged the tribute with a modest smile—“have taught us differently, and so we accept that which is undeniable. We are scholars. We do not test the truth of natural science by the word of revelation but the other way round.”
“You should do!” cried Captain FitzRoy from the crowd, shaking his massive Bible before him. “You can test it all, right in here in the Book! Trust God, not men!”
The audience registered their alarm with anxious murmurs. The inspector pushed more urgently through the crowd toward the captain. This fellow wants watching. Then he spotted a young lad with jet-black hair, standing very near the sea captain, looking frightened. It struck Field that the boy’s hair might be too black.
“This does not mean, however,” said the bishop, ignoring the outburst, “that we do not point out on scientific grounds errors, when those errors tend to limit God’s glory in creation or to gainsay all that which creation reveals to us of God himself. To both these classes of error, we think Mr. Darwin’s speculations sadly tend. The simple fact remains: a rock pigeon is a rock pigeon and always was a rock pigeon!”
The crowd liked this and showed it by their applause.
Thomas Huxley was fuming. It was Wilberforce’s condescending demeanor that most infuriated him. Here was this unctuous man, this intellectual lightweight, calling Charles Darwin an amateur!
Something was brushing Huxley’s left ear. He swatted it, thinking it to be a fly, and was shocked to find it was a man’s hand. He swiveled and looked up into the deep coal-black eyes of the tall man who stood behind him.
“Did you just touch me, sir?” whispered Huxley.
“Forgive me, Mr. Huxley,” murmured Decimus. “There’s quite a crush.”
“Oh, well, yes. You startled me, that’s all.” Huxley turned back to attend Wilberforce’s remarks.
“Your children currently enjoy good health, I hope?” said Decimus quietly.
Huxley again spun round in his chair. “I beg your pardon?” he whispered. “Have we been introduced, sir?”
But Decimus had his eyes now firmly fixed on the bishop and appeared to be listening intently.
“Sir?” hissed Huxley.
The tall blond man with the dark eyes smiled, shook his head gently, and put an admonitory finger to his lips.
Constable Kilvert observed the entire exchange. His attention had been caught some minutes earlier by the distinctive eyes of the man standing behind the speakers’ row. Now the man seated in front of him seemed flushed and agitated. Kilvert started to edge his way in their direction.
“Mr. Darwin claims to be a Christian,” Wilberforce was saying, “and we take him at his word in this. We do not suspect him of being one who harbors secret doubts, hiding them from the world for fear of consequences. If his village vicar tells me that Mr. Darwin is rarely, if ever, to be found in the pew alongside his wife and children of a Sunday, surely it must be because of the vicissitudes of his health. We should pray for him; I know I do.”
Kilvert had levered himself through the crowd to the tall man’s side. Their eyes met for a moment, and then Kilvert turned toward the bishop.
Something, he thought. There was something just now, what was it?
“The words graven on the everlasting rocks,” said Wilberforce, “written in the earth itself, hill and dale, mountain and valley, are the words of God, graven by his hand. They are ours to read aright, to gain thereby wisdom and strength. Truly it is said, ‘They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like the eagle!’”
Land of my fathers, it’s a bloody eagle.
Kilvert slid his glance sideways down the tall man’s torso. His hands rested on the brass head of a walking stick. A brazen eagle’s beak protruded between the fingers and one brass eagle’s wing. Kilvert raised his glance slowly and found the deep-set eyes of the man upon him. The man glanced down, saw his own walking stick, looked up again at Kilvert, and smiled ruefully, shaking his head.
“Sir,” said the constable quietly, “I am Officer Kilvert of the Metropolitan Police. I am going to ask you to step out with me. Quietly now—I’m sure you will want to assist me with my inquiries.”
“What, and miss the show?” whispered Decimus genially. Kilvert felt the warmth of the man’s breath in his ear and the pressure of the man’s hand on his back. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know, Officer, after this breaks up. You don’t want to cause a stir, not in a crowd this size, now do you?” The man’s hand remained warmly on his back.
The policeman glanced about at the dense crowd.
“Fair enough,” said Kilvert. “We’ll wait.”
The bishop was heating up for a big finish. He surveyed his audience, his hands clasped before him again, unconsciously washing each other.
“To oppose facts in the natural world because they seem to oppose revelation is but another form of lying for God. This, we reject. Nonetheless, how are we to respond, when Mr. Darwin openly declares that he applies his scheme of natural selection not only to the dumb animals around him but to man himself?”
At this, the well-known Cambridge economist, Henry Fawcett, blinded in a shooting accident, said to the man who stood at his elbow, “No, he doesn’t!” Fawcett apparently was unaware that his voice was perfectly audible to much of the assembly. “Implied, perhaps, but nowhere does Darwin come out and say it. One of my young men read it aloud to me, word for word. I’ll lay odds from all he’s said that this man here hasn’t even read the damned book!”
Wilberforce, who in fact had not read Origin, turned in a red rage upon the speaker but, seeing who it was, the cane and the smoked glasses, swallowed the rebuke that was on his lips.
“Now we must say at once,” continued Wilberforce at an ever-rising pitch, “that such a notion is absolutely incompatible with the whole representation of that moral and spiritual condition of man which is the proper subject of natural history.” He fairly glared at the crowd now, as if defying anyone there to contradict him. “Man’s power of articulate speech; his gift of reason; his free will; his supremacy over the earth; his fall and salvation—all are utterly irreconcilable with the degrading notion of a brute origin for him who was created in the image of God and redeemed by the Eternal Son!”
So forceful was the bishop’s rhetoric that there followed a stunned silence. He himself was pleased with the words that had come to him, and their passion, but the bishop also liked very much to be liked. He needed to lighten the atmosphere a bit; he needed, frankly, a laugh and decided he’d found one sitting in the front row.
“Mr. Huxley,” he said in a humorous, cajoling tone, leaning forward with his elbows on the podium, “on which side do you claim descent from the ape? Your grandpapa’s or your grandmama’s?”
The hoped for laugh did not come. There was an intake of breath and, if anything, a deepening of the silence from the vast crowd. He had gone too far. The bishop’s smile remained frozen on his face. He felt drops of sweat roll from armpit to hip. He noticed the tall man with the infinitely dark eyes standing above Huxley, and he thought, oddly, of death.
“Soapy Sam has just made my work a deal easier,” whispered Huxley to Joseph Hooker at his side as he rose slowly to his feet. Huxley acknowledged the bishop with a bow. “If, my lord, I were forced to choose between having an ape for an ancestor or a man of great ability and influence who used his manifold gifts to introduce rid
icule into a serious discourse, I should without hesitation choose the ape.”
Sensation in the room.
Hear, hear! What did he say? Shame! Well done, Huxley! Well done!
From the front row Owen was hissing at the bishop. “Remember the posterior lobes, Wilberforce! Talk about the hippocampus minor!”
Josiah Kilvert had never felt anything like it. He was suddenly, inexplicably exhausted. Light-headed, he grasped the back of the chair before him. He saw that the tall blond man was observing him closely. With curiosity? Amusement? The policeman realized he was in danger of fainting. He summoned all his will to make his way out of the library, pushing himself through the crowd.
The boy watched the goings-on with a dazed look. Field, standing unnoticed next to him, confirmed his suspicion that the lad’s hair had been dyed black and had reddish roots below. He decided to take a chance.
“Tom?” he said quietly. The boy’s whole body jolted; he looked at Field and then adamantly looked away. “You are Tom Ginty, are you not?” Tom shook his head almost imperceptibly. “Your mother is frantic, Tom. She came to me. Distraught, she was. She begged me to find you, and I did, didn’t I?” The boy remained rigid and unresponsive. Field glanced over the jostling heads around him and saw Constable Llewellyn watching him. Field tilted his head in Tom’s direction and nodded. Llewellyn nodded back.
“Point the man out to me, Tom,” the inspector said into the boy’s ear. “You can do it with a word, lad. A whisper. I’ll see, I’ll know. I’m a policeman, son. My men and I will take him in charge. We won’t let him hurt you. You’ll go home again. That’s what you want, isn’t it?” Field thought he saw the lad’s eyes glisten, but he did not move.
Huxley had taken over the podium and was hitting his stride.
“Bishop Wilberforce ended his remarks with several claims. He claimed that the brain of man is different in kind from the brains of primates. He said that the brains of men have these three unique features that set them apart from all others: a posterior lobe, a posterior horn, and the hippocampus minor. These distinctions are perhaps somewhat unfamiliar to the layperson.”
A smattering of laughter spread through the library.
“I think it may be possible they are, in fact, unfamiliar to the bishop himself.”
The laughter grew.
“I think it is possible that my lord is merely repeating by rote what he has been taught by the distinguished anatomist here present, Sir Richard Owen.” Huxley paused for a moment, aware of Owen looking up at him with beak-like nose and lips compressed to invisibility. “However the bishop may have come by these assertions, they are simply inaccurate. Had I the ability here and now to dissect the brain of a gorilla before you, I could point out to you in its brain a posterior lobe, a posterior horn, and—ladies and gentlemen—a perfectly viable hippocampus minor. Professor Owen has simply overlooked them. He is mistaken in his researches. His argument, espoused many times in the past few months to refute Mr. Darwin’s genius and repeated here by the bishop of Oxford, is based on error, pure and simple. Now, we all make mistakes, but the natural historian is obliged by his calling to admit them. We are all of us humbled by the unfolding mysteries of the natural world—and each of us, without exception, must pray for the courage to face a fact and own up to it, even though it slays us! Thank you.”
There was thunderous applause as Huxley sat, but a man was shouting.
“No, no, no, no, no!” cried the erstwhile captain of the Beagle, dancing with rage, swinging his massive Bible before him like a scythe, pushing toward the podium. “Follow the ways of God, not man!”
There were shouts throughout the library. A woman shrieked and an undulating wave convulsed the crowd. Someone was down. Perkins cried from the front, “Order! Order! There’s a lady fainted, make way!”
Inspector Field knew this much: such was the size of the crowd, chaos had to be averted quickly or disaster would ensue. He grabbed Tom by the wrist and dragged him toward the fallen lady, and Llewellyn approached from his side. They found the woman cradled in a sitting position by a female companion, who fanned her ineffectually with one hand.
The inspector turned to the boy. “Tom, I need to help this lady. You stick close to me and we’ll see you safe home. All right?”
Tom barely nodded.
Field released the boy’s wrist, stooped with Llewellyn to get the woman’s arms around their shoulders, and the two men hoisted her up. At the podium, Perkins was red to the top of his balding crown. “Ladies and gentlemen, open a path there! Make way!” The crowd inched apart before the policemen as they shuffled with their burden toward the library doors, the boy in the lead. Field saw the tall man at the door before he made the connection. The man seemed to be beckoning them on, but no, it was Tom Ginty who sped up, leaving them behind, pushing through the throng to the man at the door with the deep-set eyes.
“Tom!” cried the inspector. “Stop!”
The man glared at Tom, then looked fiercely up at Field. A moment later he and the boy were gone. Field cursed savagely under his breath. The crowd was applauding the policemen, but to Field it sounded like a chorus of condemnation.
The inspector and Llewellyn emerged from the library onto the gallery with the woman draped between them; she was beginning to revive.
“You there!” cried Field to a knot of undergraduates who were among the overflow crowd. “I’m a policeman—you lot look after this lady, she’s fainted.”
As soon as Field and Llewellyn had passed off the woman to other hands, the inspector started down the staircase, shouting over his shoulder, “You check the gallery floor, Sam!” He didn’t even notice Kilvert sitting at the top of the steps, but Llewellyn did. He was leaning against the stairs’ balustrade, his cheek pressed to the marble.
“Josiah?” Llewellyn knelt beside his partner. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”
Kilvert saw the hills of his boyhood, a vast chorus of Welshmen arrayed on them, singing. He was there with them, he was a boy again. He tried not to look at the mounted fossilized creatures on the museum floor below. They had taken life and were moving, their stone bones clanking horribly, their grotesque faces turning up toward him, their empty eye sockets gleaming with a red malevolence.
“Josiah!”
Kilvert’s skin was paper white. He was singing in a faint voice.
Now by my faithful hound I’m led,
I wend from door to door . . .
Llewellyn stood and shouted down the stairs. “Mr. Field! Come quickly!” Field stopped and turned at the bottom of the steps. He saw the expression on Llewellyn’s face and raced back up the steps.
Proclaim how Wales has fought and bled,
In tales of old time lore.
The hole at the back of Kilvert’s coat was so small they didn’t notice it, but when they got his jacket off they saw the back of his shirt was red and running. In a moment the men had shouldered their comrade and were carrying him down the stairs, his feet slapping the steps. They pushed through the museum’s doors into the sunlight.
The two university Bulldogs whom Field had encountered earlier were waiting. The inspector had time to say, “Get him to a doctor!” before the first baton struck him a glancing blow to the skull. Llewellyn took the whole weight of Kilvert as Smuts’ truncheon felled Charles Field like a toppled tree.
21
Jack Callow sat in the front pew of the St. Cross church, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. The closed wooden casket stood before him, resounding in its silence. The verger, a corpulent red-nosed old man, watched the undergraduate from the back of the church, rubbing his hands together to warm them.
Jack was twenty years old, and lost. His people were comfortable country gentry, and handsome Jack, who excelled at both sport and study, had grown up his family’s shining star. There was nothing he could not do; this was received as plain fact in the village and among the neighboring farms. But had he ever possessed a sense of purpose or dir
ection? Jack wondered. He hadn’t anticipated the jolting, white-hot force that had brought him together with David Gates in their second year; he certainly hadn’t looked for it. Now, it seemed to Jack, that it was gentle David who knew who he was and why, who believed in things with enough conviction to act upon them. And now David was gone and, with him, all sense of meaning.
He heard footsteps on the stone and a rustle of fabric. Miss Rebecca Gates, David’s sister, stood above him. Jack leapt to his feet, but she motioned him to sit again.
“My father is at the hotel, sleeping,” she said. “Cold in here, is it not. The stone saps the heat right out of one.” Rebecca moved to her brother’s casket and laid a hand on it. After a long moment she sat in the pew beside Jack.
“My beloved brother is not here,” she said, looking at the coffin. “He is with God.”
“Oh, Miss Gates . . .”
“Please, don’t let’s speak. Just for now.” Jack nodded.
From the back of the little church the verger watched the two of them keeping vigil. When they finally left, he stepped out and stood in the door, wheezing in the sunlight. He was a lonely man whose life, when sober, was spent in silent observation. Now he watched the young woman and the young gentleman walk away wordlessly toward the long grass of the University Parks.
A small postdebate gathering was held in the bishop’s study at Christ Church. There were cold meats, and drinks in abundance.
“So you think I came off well, did you?” the bishop asked of the room in general. He was drinking port, and his eyes had acquired an unaccustomed luster. “I rather thought I did, but then, one never knows. The blind chap threw me for a moment, that Fawcett fellow. Why the devil is it, the blind never seem to know how loudly they’re speaking?”
Sir Jasper, seated in a leather chair with a cigar in one hand and a whiskey in the other, seemed to have cast off his earlier glum spirits. He thrust the cigar in Wilberforce’s direction. “My dear man, you spoke with eloquence and passion. Huxley and Hooker? Dry as dust!”