After a sorry spell of months in hospital he endured a month or two of crutches; then, with a stick and the fanciful cloak he always wore, he obtained a temporary lodging at the house of a successful nonconformist draper, one Scrowncer, who had a nonconformist mission in life. In heart Mr. Scrowncer was a kind, kind creature, but in the tactics of conversion he was a regular Mahomet for militancy and yearned to put the devil and all his minions to the edge of the battleaxe of song and salvation.
Mr. Scrowncer knew his man, realized his predicament, and found a use for his unimpaired gift of eloquence. Febery was taken by him to some very emotional services and soon became profoundly meditative. Paying scrupulous attention to Mr. Scrowncer’s suggestions—for he was now confronted by a serious monetary dilemma—he appeared at a chapel entertainment and recited Gray’s Elegy with miraculous effect. Oh, what an instrument for holy work! The draper declared his conviction that the Lord had put Blandford Febery into his hands for His peculiar purpose, and when Mr. Scrowncer outlined that purpose to him Blandford Febery began to believe it too, and was soon put to the proof by Mr. Scrowncer.
Febery was one of those to whom the sensations of things, rather than their meanings, were important. Inspired by occasions that yielded his cherished gift to eloquence a grander scope than ever, he exhorted with the sombre fire and fearful passion so necessary to bring sinners to their penitential knees until the draper was no longer merely certain. Miracles and marvels were to be wrought! It was a divine appointment! Blandford Febery was an angel and minister of grace!
“What do you require of me?” asked Febery.
And Mr. Scrowncer cried: “To speak the truth, and shame the devil!”
The devil! Shame the devil! Some features of oblivion must have rolled over Mr. Febery. Thrilled by his own emotions, he could believe that he himself believed.
“When I was a boy,” he said impressively, “my father always exhorted me to speak the truth. He told me, instructed me, and impressed it on me; never to be ashamed of truth. I will, to the best of my power, do what you wish.”
In short, he embarked upon the career of a revivalist preacher under the direction of Abner Scrowncer, whose organizing powers as to gimp, cotton flannel, and hairpins were as nothing compared to his genius in such a tremendous Cause. Not at all unmindful of Febery’s theatrical renown, Mr. Scrowncer caused the circuits to blaze with posters announcing the new evangelist. Febery did his part with a degree of secular skill not less than his admonitory gifts. It was no uncommon thing for him to appear at midday in the square of some market town uttering the weird incantation:
“Ring the bells of heaven! Reuben Ranzo’s gone! Follow me!”
There was plenty to mock at in his appearance, a slightly unshorn, slightly dissolute-looking man. Aided by a stick, he limped along in a curious black cloak. He wore no hat, and his thin sandy hair hung down to his collar. The eyes gleamed and the lips were heavy and thick, there always seemed to be some saliva on them as though some demon possessed him. But there were few that mocked.
“Give way there! By your leave,” he would cry, raising a histrionic hand. Open-mouthed the housewives gazed at his fantastic figure, the children shrank, the cattle-drover paused with uplifted stick as Febery went by, and crowds would follow him to an appointed place in the open air to listen to his denunciation of their godless state:
“Listen to me. Do you suppose for one moment that you are the result of some conscious call into the world? You are not! It is true that you stand here now—in a bowler hat and corduroy trousers, with a cotton shirt and a moustache copied from a comedian—but do you suppose that that was the figure explicit or implicit in the glow of procreative ardour from which you were begotten? It was not! All nature grins at you. Nobody, not one, that knew you when you were born could recognize you now. Nobody could imagine the beginning who sees this curious culmination. We are the result of evil tuition, evil environment, and a faculty for imitation. And now,” he would quote with soft irony, “now on this spot we stand with our robust souls.” With both arms menacingly raised he would cry: “All nature grins at you! Here are we, in the midst of teeming life, clinging to existence like a barnacle on a ship’s bottom, without a care for our divine meaning. All of us doing business; one way and another, business; some chopping suet, others selling beans. But I will tell you this about your business: one man’s meat is another man’s poison, one man’s evil is another man’s good, what profits some is a fraud to many. From its innocent beginning in Eden, our world has turned into a topsy-turvy world. Sometimes it is comically so, but more often it is tragic, and tears arise, and there seems no consolation possible; we feel tender towards our poor silly fellow creatures.”
Febery paused, adjusted his cloak, and shifted his stick from the left hand to the right.
“But you must pardon me, you people, if I seem to treat you as though you were simple little children. For you are not! We are none of us innocent now, not you, not I, none. We are all black-guards, one time or another, and all responsible for the measure of evil we create. What is to be the issue of it? How shall we escape from this damnation? You say you are helpless in the toils, that life uses us in this way; you tell me that the devil tempted you. Bah! I tell you: every heart conceives its own sin.”
“It’s true, it’s true!” murmured some of the elderly hearers, and though the younger were silent and perturbed, they seemed to agree.
“Do not come whining that the devil tempted you. Don’t try to hang your misdeeds on that hook—it is overloaded already! You are merely robbing Peter in order to pay Paul. The gospel of redemption may never find the devil, but it can find you! Let me tell you a story:
“There was once a rich man who had received many favours from the Enemy of Mankind, and when in the fullness of time he was brought to bed of a sickness, he sent for a notary to make him a will. The notary got out his pen and his ink-horn. ‘Sir, what have you got to dispose of?’ The man said he desired to leave his body to corruption, his good works to the devil, and his soul to God. ‘But—er—you can’t make a will like that!’ said the notary. ‘Not! Why not?’ asked the sick man. The notary hummed and haaed, and said it was the first time he had ever heard of such a request. ‘That’s nothing to the point,’ the sick man said, ‘it’s the first time I’ve had to die, isn’t it? Do as I bid you.’ So the notary, not daring to enrage the man in his precarious state, wrote out the will and it was properly attested. The man then bade farewell to all his friends and died soon after, and was buried amid great lamentations. But when the will came to be read—my goodness! The fat was in the fire! His friends exclaimed against it, the family declared against it, and everyone said it was scandalous. Long and bitterly they disputed. They swore it was all a machination of the devil, and determined to bring the devil to book about it, they carried the matter to law. But when the judge and jury took the case in hand it was learnt that the devil was not present in court, and what was more—he never would be! ‘Why, what is this?’ the judge asked very sternly; ‘has he not been cited to appear?’ ‘My lord,’ said the clerk, ‘we have tried to notify him, but it has been found that you can’t serve a writ against the devil.’ The judge took a peep into his register and saw that this was truly the law of the land. ‘So,’ said he, ‘the will must stand as a good and proper will. His soul must go to God—nobody will deny him that. His body must go to corruption—nobody can dispute it—while his good works must go to the devil; I do not see what can prevent it, anyway! Fiat justitia,’ he said, ‘you can’t serve writs against the devil.’”
Although dubiously swayed, the listening crowd was absorbed in him; as the harangue moved on, his denunciations ceased and were exchanged for promises of mystical bliss. “Oh, blessed are the pure in heart.” There came a dying fall, and he spoke with tender urgency of a heaven that opened at the gates of Belief, filled with everlasting beauty, the sports of angels, the delight of kings, and every joy familiar as Eve’s paradise.
; The man’s success as a religious orator was as striking as his success as an actor; it spread over an even wider range, curving like a meteor in evangelical orbits from Milford Haven to The Wash, from Carlisle to Canterbury. People flocked to hear him and were straightway smitten with a hysteria in which miracles and marvels indeed were wrought. Nobody was ever cured of a sickness by him—Blandford Febery never attempted that—but he undeniably did influence the lives of thousands of people, ordinary everyday people, those lambs who had no thought of evil until Blandford Febery expounded it, and thereafter no hope of mercy until he came to save them. Even others, some of the notoriously evil, became unnerved, voluntarily confessed their crimes, and went to prison; while a few of the notoriously good, hopeless of attaining any further sanctification, simply went mad and were conveyed to the appropriate asylums. The Scrowncer fraternity revered him as a creature of ultra-human destiny—prophet, saint, perhaps even an archangel! A long period of proselytizing triumphs inspired Mr. Scrowncer with the colossal ambition of founding a new church with a new iconoclastic creed, but Blandford Febery was not so eager.
“No, friend, no; don’t make a church of me!” he cried. “I’d rather go psalm-singing in the tropics. Every church, you know, contains the seeds of its own infamy, snares for its own delusion. The way of the Church is to proselytize, to organize, to subsidize; and then, while it stuffs itself with metaphysical mendacities, it suffers its holy inspiration to sicken and die. Do you not see that? Do you not realize that in a short time the sap perishes and the trunk alone is fostered and cherished? It becomes a valuable property—oh, they must keep it in good repair! It becomes a golden casket indeed, though it has never a gem inside! For that is the fate of all organizations, whether of law, religion, politics, patriotism, or commerce; to play the felon Jacob to its brother Esau, over and over again. The idolaters are worshipping a crown, a cross, a button, or a flag. Bah! No churches for me; I’ll beat the highways and the hedges.”
III
One autumn night, in the Town Hall of a south-coast town where a thousand people had thronged to hear him, he received a new summons. In the forefront of the hall sat an attractive young woman, with another girl beside her not so attractive. Throughout his discourse the pretty girl observed him with a rapt attention that was possibly not entirely devotional, and her appearance, simple, sweet, and perplexed, was just as magnetic to Febery. His eyes constantly encountered her eyes, confronting him with an appeal he had hitherto scarcely allowed himself to recognize. The choir from the local brotherhood broke into his address at designed stages with hymns. At the singing of Rock of Ages a stout widower stumbled weeping from the hall, overcome at the remembrances aroused by the hymn, which had been sung at his late wife’s funeral. The massed sympathy of the audience flamed into massed worship, and Febery called aloud for penitents. With closed eyes he waited, one skirt of his cloak cast over one shoulder, leaning both hands heavily upon his stick in exhaustion. Moment after moment ticked by; the hesitant people sobbed, groaned, and sighed; no one responded to his call.
Suddenly he beckoned with his finger in the direction of the pretty girl: “Come, lady; come!” At once she rose. There was a slight scuffle with her companion, who tried to retain her, but with averted head she walked to the little room set apart for those who desired the preacher’s private intercession. And there, alone, at the close of the meeting Febery found her awaiting him.
Her name was Marie Shutler and her eyes were beautiful. The room was odd as to shape, having the design of a harp, and odd as to its furniture, which was a big table with a red cloth upon it and coconut matting under it. One wall had a brass bracket with a gas lamp, and on the other were old oil paintings of the unknown ancestors of many living sinners. The charming girl stood meekly before him, answering his questions. She was—well—perhaps twenty-one or twenty-two. On one of her clasped fingers was an engagement ring with pearl stones. Febery closed his eyes, the girl did the same, and they stood immobile as though awaiting some pentecostal sign. Yet while still communing the girl peeped at him. At last he asked:
“Do you feel happiness now?”
“No,” said the girl.
Febery asked her if there was anything she didn’t understand, and the girl began to rack her brains, right and left, but could think of nothing to say—she could not!
“Sister,” he entreated, “let—”
At that moment there came a knock upon the door and a stout bonneted, corseted, beaded dame bustled in.
“Marie! What ever is the matter? Everybody has gone home, long ago. You must come now.” And turning to Febery she continued with a wry smile: “I must tell you, sir, that my daughter is already converted—aren’t you, dear? Long ago, ever since childhood, she always has been. And I am, too, and so is my husband—all of us! I can’t think what made her do this. What ever will people think of us, Marie! It is quite a mistake, sir, she is a really good girl, and she is going to be married soon to a sound Christian man. Come along now, Marie, we must go. I’m sorry she has troubled you, sir. Quite unnecessary!”
And seizing the pretty penitent firmly by the arm, Mrs. Shutler led her daughter away. Febery was conscious of something very much like annoyance—not with the girl; even her pusillanimity was charming!—but with the mother. The bugbear! the bugaboo!
The mission was continuing for a week, and on the following day, as Febery was limping along under a sunless sky, he saw the girl sitting on a bench above the sea wall. He was thrilled to meet her there, though not with surprise: love has no surprises commensurate with its anticipations. He sat down with her.
“What made you respond last night?”
She did not reply at first, but he insisted:
“Why? You must tell me why.”
The girl answered: “I do not know what made me do it.”
“But,” he said sternly, “you must know!”
“It was silly of me, I was all wrought up,” she lamely explained. “And I told my friend not to let me go if I felt like that, and I did not think I should want to, but somehow, after all, I did want to, and I really don’t know why. She tried to stop me—”
“I saw that,” he interjected. “You snatched your hand away.”
“It was wrong of me,” said the girl.
“Why wrong?”
“I was all wrought up,” she had no other interpretation, and sat watching the mild little waves splashing on sad little stones, and people throwing sticks for mad little dogs. Her eyes were beautiful. At length she burst out with: “I hate being good!”
It was Febery’s turn to be puzzled.
“Just as much as I hate being bad,” Marie continued.
“Those who hatreds cancel each other!” he exclaimed.
She shook her head decidedly. “No.”
“Then what is it you want to do, or be?”
It appeared she hardly knew, but she thought she would like to go out into the wide, wide world and study art.
“Art!”
She loved art; it all had such immense significance, didn’t he think?
“I have not studied it,” he mused. “I have looked at it, some of it, and some of it I like; but I can’t understand how one can like it because it is art.”
Oh, but she understood that perfectly! And then she plied him with so many questions about his old theatrical career that the morning wore away and she had to hurry home.
They met again, they met daily throughout his stay and talked, recklessly, of things that had no connection with the object of the mission. About her approaching marriage, for instance, to the young flourishing ironmonger.
“I do not really want to marry him,” the girl confessed.
“But you are engaged!” said the preacher.
“Yes, I suppose I must.”
“It is wrong of you.”
“I hate being good.”
“That is no reason for marrying him—marry me!” the preacher said.
For days he had been ruminating
angrily about her marriage to the ironmonger, pious though he was said to be, and although he, Febery, was pious too—in fact, all three of them!—his thoughts insidiously dwelt upon marriage, marriage, marriage, and in the company of the girl his mind was conscious of proprieties that his body demurred at. And Marie, too, was tempted, but: “No,” she sadly said. “It would not do, it is too late now, I can’t now; I hate being bad.”
He implored, he wooed, they wrangled. “No, no, no. It is silly of me,” she sighed. But at their final good-bye she kissed him fondly.
Away went Febery on his endless mission, and from the far-off towns he was reviving, still deeply impassioned, he importuned her in numerous letters. But Marie was obdurate, tenderly, even pleadingly, so; her vow to the ironmonger had completely enmeshed her timid soul. Or was it the old disparity of youth and age, Febery being now about thirty-five? Or was it that insubstantial fear which, in the guise of steadfastness, rules so many lives? She hated to be bad, and in a few months she married her ironmonger.
Still, the correspondence continued. Her part was affectionate while his, though more formal now, was deeply flattering to a feminine heart. After a year she grew mysteriously unwell and became a partial invalid. He gave her consoling tittle-tattle of the far-off towns he visited, while she wrote to him of her bathchair. None the less she was still acutely disturbing to him. Alas, there were other disturbances in Blandford Febery now. He had begun to doubt—well, everything: the message he had to preach; the validity of the penitence he could so easily evoke; the minds, wills, and habits of the sheep who so soon relapsed into the old rank pastures; and, saddest reflection of all, he doubted even himself until he was less concerned about ultimate truths, or the truths of other people, than with the black truth about Blandford Febery. It was a figure stuffed into a false heroic semblance! These flashing gleams that stirred the multitudes no longer stirred him. They portended a holy fire, but the fire was never seen, and none knew better than he that it had never flamed in him, but had burned out of vapours that he conjured for a fee—it was but a mirage. Not love, not righteousness, moved them at all—it was fear! Without the fear of annihilation there could be no religion, and the fear had seduced and subdued mankind. What it had seduced them from did not matter the toss of a ha’penny!—it had seduced them. For its own ends religion, that social flunkey, had traded upon man’s fear of extinction and had promised him an eternal reward for a temporary conformity. Not for the sake of being good was goodness wrought, but from fear of everlasting punishment. Faugh! What reality could ever arise from such Thespian fudge!
The Hurly Burly and Other Stories Page 17