CHAPTER ONEDeus Loquitur
OF course when I made Mr. Trimblerigg, though I had shaped him—I will not say to my liking, but at least to my satisfaction—I did not foresee how he would turn out. It is not my custom to look ahead. I can, to be sure, do so when I please: but that makes thedénouementso dull. I prefer, therefore—and have now made it a rule—that my creations shall, in what they do, come upon me as a surprise—pleasant or the reverse. For since I have given them free-will, let me also have the benefit of it: let them make their own plans, their own careers,—attributing to me, if they must, those features of both for which they do not feel themselves responsible; and let me (in the moment when they think to have fulfilled themselves) experience that small stimulus of novelty which the infinite variety and individuality of my creatures is always capable of providing.
For it is this spice of novelty alone which keeps me from being unutterably disinterested in the workings of what theologians are pleased to call ‘the moral purpose of the universe.’
So it was that, having shaped Mr. Trimblerigg to my satisfaction, I let him go. And as, with his future in his own very confident hands, he went, I did not for the moment trouble to look after him.
When I say that I shaped him to my satisfaction, I am speaking merely as a craftsman. I knew that I had made a very clever man. As to liking him, that had nothing to do with craftsmanship, but would depend entirely on what he did with himself—how he appealed to me as astudent of life, when—laying aside my rôle of maker, I became merely the observer.
It is always an interesting experiment whether I shall be drawn to my creations before they become drawn to me. Sometimes I find that they interest me enormously, even while denying me with their last breath. But the unrequited affections of a god have always an element of comedy; for though, in the spiritual direction, one’s creations may take a way of their own, they are never as quit of us as they suppose; and when they know it least they come back to us for inspection and renovation. Even the soul that thinks itself lost is not so lost as to leave one unaware of its condition; though it may have ceased to call, its address is still known.
In Mr. Trimblerigg’s case it was all the other way—from the moment that he discovered me he never let me alone; though I had cast him forth like bread upon the waters, not expecting to see him again for many days, he came back to me early, and from that time on gave me the advantage of his intimate and varying acquaintance to the very end.
I wonder to myself sometimes whether I tried him as much as he tried me, and whether he managed to like me up to the last. This at least I found—that by the time he was five years old, whether I liked him or not, Mr. Trimblerigg liked me; and the reason for his liking was simple—he found me useful.
For one day, having done something which deserved, or was supposed to deserve punishment, he lied about it, and was discovered. The discovery came to his ears before he was actually taxed with it. The small world on which he stood became suddenly an abyss; lifting up his feet he fledfor refuge to his own chamber, and was about to hide in the cupboard, when he heard the awful tread of judgment ascending the stairs. Being clever (for which I admit I was responsible) he realized how temporary a refuge the cupboard must necessarily be; what he needed was the eternal; and so, throwing himself on his knees he began praying to me—aloud. And in his prayer he told the truth, volubly, abundantly, and without making any excuse for himself. ‘I have told a lie,’ he cried, ‘O God, I have told a lie!’
The agony of his prayer was heard, not so much by me as by the elder for whose entry he had so accurately timed it. And who, looking upon that youthful and ingenuous countenance, could doubt the sincerity of his grief? His lips quivered, his eyes streamed tears, his nails dug into his tender flesh, leaving marks. At that sight, at those sounds, the paternal heart was deeply moved; the birch was laid aside; elder and younger knelt together and prayed for quite a long time, with great fervour, fixity, and unanimity of purpose, that henceforth young Mr. Trimblerigg should be a good boy, and never never again be caught telling a lie.
That prayer unfortunately was not entirely answered—though between us we did our best. In the years that followed Mr. Trimblerigg lied often and well, but was very seldom caught, and still more seldom punished.
The only really important outcome of that incident was that Mr. Trimblerigg found he liked me; I had been useful to him. And yet I had done, I protest, absolutely nothing—except making him clever. It was not through my providential intervention that he liked me, but throughhis own. The prayer of faith had saved him from a whipping; it was a lesson he never forgot.
And so, from that day on, he made me his general help and stay; and on every occasion of doubt, difficulty, or distress, was able, by coming to me, to convince himself that he meant well. Never in my whole world’s existence have I come upon anybody who was able to answer his own prayers about himself, and about other people, with such conviction, avidity, and enthusiasm as Mr. Trimblerigg. And why should I complain? It made him a great power in the world, without my having to lift a finger, or turn a hair, or do anything, in fact, except wink an eye, or seem to.
The virtuous incentives of family life, though only provided on a small scale, were not lacking for the development of Mr. Trimblerigg’s character. He had three uncles, two aunts, a great-uncle and a grandfather—all fairly contiguous, the family being of the indigenous not of the migratory kind—besides a father, a mother and a sister, with whom contact was continuous and unescapable. Even in their naming the children had been linked for lovely and pleasant relationship in after-life; for when the Trimblerigg first-born, whom its parents confidently expected to be a son, turned into a daughter—adapting the forechosen name to suit her sex, they called her Davidina; and when, nearly two years later, our own Mr. Trimblerigg struggled out into the world, nearly killing his mother in the process, the destined name Jonathan was there waiting for him.
And so, very early in his career, Mr. Trimblerigg’s sister Davidina became the whetstone of his virtues—its operation summed up in the word ‘emulation.’ Nature wouldperhaps have brought it about in any case, even if the parental plan had not inculcated and forced it home; but when it became clear to Mr. and Mrs. Trimblerigg senior that no more children were to be theirs, they conceived the idea of blending the business with the moral instincts, and in the training of their two offspring making virtue competitive.
No wonder then, that, as their moral sense dawned, the germ of mutual suspicion and hatred grew lodged in their souls. This, however, did not prevent them, when self-interest prompted, from being also allies, as the following may show.
The parental idea of making virtue competitive had taken one of its earlier forms—for economic reasons, I fancy—in the matter of pocket-money; and the weekly penny was tendered not as a right nor even as a reward for good average behaviour, but as a prize to be wrestled for, gain by the one involving loss by the other—a device that had the incidental advantage of halving the tax on the pocket which provided it.
The fact that Davidina won it far more frequently and easily than he did, set Mr. Trimblerigg his first problem in goodness run as a means to profit. He accordingly invited his sister to an arrangement whereby, irrespective of conduct, they should go shares; and when this accommodating olive-branch was scornfully rejected, he became so offensively good for three weeks on end that Davidina, left penniless, capitulated on terms, and, in order to get a remnant of her money’s worth, bargained that they should be good—or at least each better than the other—in alternate weeks, this being a more tolerable arrangement to her careful soul than that brother Jonathan, with noeffort at all, ever secondary in virtue, should share equally the pennies which she had earned.
For a while the plan worked well; Mr. Trimblerigg by calculated effort bettered his sister in the alternate weeks, got the penny and shared it grudgingly but honourably—while Davidina, remaining merely herself, received it in the natural course when Jonathan reverted to his more normal standard.
But there came a day when Mr. Trimblerigg had privily done certain things about which his elders knew less than did Davidina, and so got wrongfully the penny he had not earned. Davidina demanded it; on the denial of her claim they fought, and between them the penny got lost. The next week, though Davidina earned it, Mr. Trimblerigg claimed it, arguing that as last week’s penny had been lost to him through her, this week’s should be his. Davidina thought differently; and putting the penny for safety in her mouth, in the resulting struggle by accident swallowed it.
After that the alliance was over. Thenceforth Jonathan had a permanent and lively incentive for becoming good; and in the competition that ensued Davidina was decisively worsted. Goodness became for Mr. Trimblerigg a matter of calculation, habit, resolute will, and in the long series of defeats which followed, Davidina might, had she chosen, have found satisfaction in the large part she played toward the reshaping of her brother’s character.
So decisive was the change that it became apparent to the world, and was reckoned as proof of that conversion to grace which was necessary for full church-membership in the sect where he belonged. And so, at an unusually early age, Jonathan was baptized into the congregation ofthe Free United Evangelicals. That incident decided his career; he became destined for the ministry.
Thus out of evil comes good.
When the matter was first decided Mr. Trimblerigg himself knew nothing about it. It was the elders of the family, the parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts—sitting together in conclave for the adjustment of ways to narrow means, who foresaw the convenience of the call which in due time came to him.
Mr. Trimblerigg himself was then making other plans of his own. A sense of his abilities had begun to stir his mind to the prospects of life. He had become conscious that a career was awaiting him—or, to put it more accurately, several careers—of which he had only to choose. One day, in a weak moment of expansiveness, when Davidina by a histrionic show of sisterly sympathy had led him on, he confided to her the sparkling alternatives which he had in mind. And she, when her first admiration had become tempered with criticism, passed word of them carefully on to the ears of his Uncle Jonah. Jonah, who was anti-romantic by temperament, made it his duty to strip these pretensions bare before the eyes of the assembled family—doing it no doubt for his nephew’s good. ‘Jonathan is thinking,’ said he, ‘that he would like to be Prime Minister; and well he might be if he had the ability to be consistent in his principles. Seems also he’d like to be President to the Free Church Conference; but for that he needs to be spiritual and one that speaks nothing but the truth. Failing that he’s for being Lord Chief Justice and Master of the Rolls; but Jonathan hasn’t the judicial mind. And to be Field-Marshal rising from the ranks(which is another flea he has in his bonnet) God in His great mercy hasn’t given him sufficient inches to meet the military requirements. You’ll do well, Jonathan; for you’re quick in the turnover, and your convictions don’t trouble you; and you’ve a wonderful courage for thinking yourself right when all the evidence is against you. But what you’ll do if you’re wise is find a master who’ll let you hide behind his back and be clever for him in the ways that don’t show; one who’ll take over all the responsibility for your mistakes, for the sake of all the times when you’ve guessed right. Given he’s got the patience to put up with you, you’ll be worth it to him, and a credit to your family. But there’s a deal of practice you’ve to get before you can do the thing well. Don’t spread yourself.’
But Uncle Jonah, being an undertaker by trade, had narrow and confining views; and the shadow of his daily occupation, entailing a too-frequent wearing of black, caused him to set foot on life sombrely, especially on life that was young. This also was said before the time when nephew Jonathan had become conspicuously good.
With his higher aspirations thus blown upon, Mr. Trimblerigg, after watering Davidina’s pet fern with strong tea which it did not like, diverted his invention to more practical ends, and for a time wished to be a conjurer, having read accounts of the wonders performed at the Egyptian Hall, London, by Messrs. Maskelyne & Cooke. But as ill-luck would have it, his first sight of conjuring came to him at a village fair; and there, while others stared and were amazed, he with his sharp eyes saw how everything was done, and found the entertainment dull. Now had he only been interested and stirred to emulation thus early, I am quite convinced that Mr. Trimblerigg could have become a conjurer such as the world has never seen. If his parents could only have afforded to take him to London, and to the Egyptian Hall, the world’s history might have been different. It was not to be.
JONATHAN TRIMBLERIGG (aged 7) with his Mother & Sister DavidinaJONATHAN TRIMBLERIGG(aged 7) with his Mother & Sister Davidina
JONATHAN TRIMBLERIGG(aged 7) with his Mother & Sister Davidina
JONATHAN TRIMBLERIGG(aged 7) with his Mother & Sister Davidina
Mr. Trimblerigg’s attention was first attracted to the career his elders designed for him, not so much by the habitual goodness with which the rivalry of Davidina had imbued his character, as by his observation of the sensation caused in his native village by the missionizing efforts of a certain boy-preacher, then known to fame as ‘The Infant Samuel Samuel,’ whose call, beginning at his baptism in that strange invocative reduplication of the family name imposed by his godparents, went on till it suddenly passed in silence to an obscurity from which the veil has never been lifted. What happened then nobody knows, or nobody chooses to tell. But between the ages of seven and fifteen, while sustained by the call, Samuel Samuel never saw a vacant seat, or an uncrowded aisle, or had sitting under him a congregation unrent by sobs in the hundreds of chapels to which the spirit bore him.
When Mr. Trimblerigg heard him, Samuel Samuel at the age of ten was still in the zenith of his powers; and it has been credibly reported that, in the mining villages which he passed through, publicans went bankrupt and committed suicide because of him, and pit-ponies, their ears robbed of the familiar expletives to which they had been trained, no longer obeyed orders; and that alongside of these manifestations of grace, the illegitimate birth-rates went up and struck a record; till, six months later, things settled back and became the same; birth-rates went down, pit-ponies obeyed a restored vocabulary, and ruinedpublicans were vindicated in the prosperity of their successors.
But these things only happened after; and when Mr. Trimblerigg heard the cry of the Infant Samuel Samuel, he discerned a kindred spirit, and saw a way opening before his feet, under a light which thereafter continued to shine. And so at the age of twelve the designs which Mr. Trimblerigg’s elders had on him, and the designs which he had on himself, coalesced and became one; and even Davidina, borne down by the sense of the majority, had to accept the fact that her brother Jonathan had received a call.
Thus early did the conversion of souls enter into the life and calculations of Mr. Trimblerigg. A striking justification of his chosen calling followed immediately, when, without in the least intending it, he converted an almost lost soul in a single day—the soul of an Uncle, James Hubback by name, the only uncle upon his mother’s side left over from a large family—who while still clinging to the outward respectability of a Free Church minister, had taken secretly to drink.
Mr. Trimblerigg had been born and brought up in a household where the idea that spirits were anything to drink had never been allowed to enter his head. He only knew of spirit as of something that would catch fire and boil a kettle, or embrace death in a bottle and preserve it from decay. These aspects of its beneficence he had gathered first in the back kitchen of his own home, and secondly in the natural history department of the County Museum, to which as a Sunday-school treat he had been taken. Returning therefrom, he had been bitten for a short while with a desire to catch, kill, and preserve frogs,bats, beetles, snakes, and other low forms of existence, and make a museum of his own—his originality at that time being mainly imitative. To this end he clamoured to his mother to release his saved pennies which she held in safe-keeping for him, in order that he might buy spirit for collecting purposes; and so pestered her that at last she promised that if for a beginning he could find an adder, he should have a bottle of spirit to keep it in.
Close upon that his Uncle James arrived for a stay made sadly indefinite by the low water in which he found himself. He still wore his clerical garb but was without cure of souls: Bethel and he had become separated, and his family in consequence was not pleased with him. Nevertheless as a foretaste of reformation he wore a blue ribbon, and was prevented thereby from letting himself be seen on licensed premises; while a totally abstaining household, and a village with only one inn which had been warned not to serve him, and no shop that sold liquor, seemed to provide a safe environment for convalescence.
It is at this point that Mr. Trimblerigg steps in. One day, taking down a book from the shelf in the little study, he discovered behind it a small square bottle of spirits: he did not have to taste or smell it—the label ‘old brandy’ was enough; and supposing in his innocence the word ‘old’ to indicate that it had passed its best use, at once his volatile mind was seized with the notion that here was a mother’s surprise waiting for him, and that he had only to provide the adder for the bottle and its contents to become his. And so with that calculating larkishness which made him do audacious things that when done had to be swallowed, he determined to give his mother a surprise in return.
Going off in search of his adder and failing to get it himself, he gave another boy a penny for finding him a dead one. An hour later the adder was inside the brandy bottle behind the books; and an hour after that his Uncle James had achieved complete and lifelong conversion to total abstinence.
Thedénouementpresented itself to Mr. Trimblerigg at first with a shock of disappointment in the form of smashed glass, and his dead adder lying in a spent pool of brandy on the study floor; and only gradually did it dawn upon him after a cautious survey of the domestic situation that this was not as he had at first feared his mother’s angry rejection of the surprise he had prepared for her: on the contrary she was pleased with him. His uncle, he learned, was upstairs lying down, without appetite either for tea or supper. Mr. Trimblerigg heard him moaning in the night, and he came down to breakfast the next day a changed character. Within a year he had secured reinstatement in the ministry, and was become a shining light on the temperance platform, telling with great fervour anecdotes which give hope. There was, however, one story of a drunkard’s reformation which he never told: perhaps because, on after-reflection, though he had accepted their testimony against him, he could not really believe his eyes, perhaps because there are certain experiences which remain too deep and sacred and mysterious ever to be told.
But to Mr. Trimblerigg the glory of what he had done was in a while made plain. More than ever it showed him destined for the ministry: it also gave colour to his future ministrations, opening his mind in the direction of a certain school of thought in which presently he became anadept. ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is taken by tricks,’ became the subconscious foundation of his belief; and when he entered the pulpit at the age of twenty-one, he was by calculative instinct that curious combination of the tipster, the thimblerigger, and the prophet, the man of vision and the man of lies, which drew to itself the adoration of one half and the detestation of the other half of the Free United Evangelical Connection, eventually dividing that great body into two unequal portions, and driving its soul into a limbo of spiritual frustration and ineffectiveness till it found itself again under new names.