CHAPTER THIRTY-TWOThe Procession Continues
THE next morning there was a small fly in the ointment of his bliss; a letter from Davidina. Thousands of miles away, among the swamps of the Amazon, news had apparently reached her of her brother’s marvellous doings; and of course, as he might have expected, her comment sounded the note of criticism.
‘My dear Jonathan,’ ran the letter, ‘if you go on like that, you will burst.‘Yours affectionate,‘D. T.’
‘My dear Jonathan,’ ran the letter, ‘if you go on like that, you will burst.
‘Yours affectionate,‘D. T.’
The letter came too late. Mr. Trimblerigg no longer cared what the far-removed Davidina thought of him. Her long-distance pin-pricks had lost their medicinal virtue. ‘Puff!’ he remarked airily; and as he flipped the letter into the waste-paper basket, his fate resumed the jiggety tenor of its way, and the bursting process went on. For in the last few hours Mr. Trimblerigg had greatly fortified himself by prayer, so that his good opinion of himself was now undeflectable; and the old helpless feeling, which his attacks of prayer so often gave me, had come upon me once more. But this time I was rather enjoying it, and was very much interested, wondering how far—left to himself—Mr. Trimblerigg would go.
If ever the human race comes to read its own history, without prejudice, or blindness, or superstition, it will discover as never before what a tremendous part answer to prayer has played in man’s making. As never before: for the strangest part of that discovery will be from which end the answer to prayer has come. Man claims many virtues which he does not possess; but he has also a fewwhich he does not know; and if my materials have sometimes disappointed me, and inclined me to think that, on the whole, the making of man was a mistake, I have only had to turn and watch him in his marvellous manufacture of answers to his own prayers, to feel afresh the encouragement and diversion with which the work of creation has provided me.
Under the auspices of a thousand religions, which cannot possibly all of them be true, operated in the interests of gods who are, or who were some of them, no better than they should be, prayer has always been answered. And the more firmly man has held to that faith bowing before the dark altars of his strange and shifting creeds, the more surely and swiftly has he evolved and made for himself a life worth living, and for me a spectacle worth contemplating.
Had all those Heavens to which he addressed his prayer really sent back the answer, bobbing it like a cherry to the open mouth of the supplicant, what a poor effete parasitic thing he would have become! But because the Heavens were more aloof and the gods much harder of hearing than he knew, or because a wise silence was the true air from which his spirit drew breath of life, therefore has man, left to answer himself from that Kingdom of Heaven which is within him, become the overruling factor of his still changing and troubled world; possessing himself of the lies wherewith priestcraft has so generously provided him, he takes and turns them into truth.
And so, by prayer, he has made history. But, though he has told many tales to the contrary for the bettering of his faith, has anything ever really happened in his contact with wind or weather, seed-time or harvest, storm, earthquake,eclipse, course of sun and moon, that he has not brought about himself? He still talks of the evidence of his senses: but there the evidence of his senses stands immemorially before him, and he still does not believe them! In spite of all the Bank-holidays and National Fêtes that wet weather has spoiled for him, inflicting disappointment and misery upon millions of his fellows out for a snack of holiday whose date cannot possibly be changed—in spite of that evidence staring him in the face, he still thinks that I am the clerk of the weather, and prays to me about it, and still likes me; and does not think me cross-grained, or spiteful, or revengeful, because I have spoiled so many of his holidays! Truly, with all his faults, man is the most marvellously forgiving creature that was ever made—or else the most inconsequent in all those matters which are called matters of faith.
Often and often have I had cause to wonder at the things which man found possible to believe: his queer creeds, his superstitions, his transference of justice from this world to the next, his appetite for making his gods like himself in their bad as well as in their good qualities; and then for making them unlike himself, with miraculous powers, attended by signs and wonders, and visitations, and unexpected happenings, which even in his insurance policies he calls ‘acts of God.’ All these things fill me with amazement that any man should believe in them as having any spiritual significance whatsoever. But when I consider how many believe that I provide the weather for Bank-holiday and harvest, and can change it at will, then I have to admit that man can make himself believe anything if once he starts praying about it. And so it was quite natural that having prayed about himself so long andearnestly, Mr. Trimblerigg should also believe in himself as much as he did.
And so upon its second advent, Mr. Trimblerigg’s halo was a great success. It did not have to appear unexplained; a public meeting was arranged for it. And there with due solemnity for the strengthening of faith the box of Susannah Walcot was brought forth like a new ark of the covenant; and a crowned head, having first prayed to be guided aright, broke the seals, drew out the contents, and read extracts, and coming upon an illustrated page was for putting it modestly aside, when his hand was stayed by the vigilance of Isabel Sparling. After that the success of Susannah’s prophecies was assured. Judiciously edited they caused a tremendous sensation, arousing also, in the episcopal churches, derision and furious opposition.
It was the finishing touch requisite for full success. With that final push Second Adventism, under the ban of the older theology, moved on from strength to strength. In the Free Churches it swept the board, and not many months later candidates for holy orders, in all congregations where the incumbents were democratically chosen, had little chance of selection unless they came as certified converts to Spiritualism, Second Adventism, and the prophetic writings of Susannah Walcot. The organ of the movement,The Last Trump, displaying on its cover an ace of hearts with rays emanating, ran into a circulation of millions. And though its opponents might call it ‘The Artful Card,’ and its radiant editor ‘The Artful Dodger,’ and publish parodies of the prophecies as they appeared in weekly instalments, its scope and influence became more and more irresistible. In the price and extent of itsadvertisement columns alone it was only beaten by that most popular of all ladies’ journalsThe Toilet Table. And evenThe Toilet Tablein its editorials was kind to the movement, and gave prominent reports of its preachers and the smartness of its congregations.
Indeed before long there were scarcely any other congregations worth talking about outside the high and dry pale of Episcopacy. And then, against that also, Mr. Trimblerigg struck his blow. A brief announcement without boast or comment, inThe Last Trump, told that exclusive arrangements had been made by Second Adventism for the broadcasting of Mr. Trimblerigg’s orations, every Sunday, morning and evening, at the competitive hours of divine service.
At that scrapping of its preachers, Episcopacy became active, appealed to public opinion for its protection, and found that it was too late. Within a month informal disestablishment had become its lot; and though with its endowments and its powers of preferment left, it remained rich, and in its own narrow circle influential; it ceased to count as an organization of national importance. And meanwhile, in surreptitious driblets, adherents of the Free Church rump—Baptists, Congregationalists, Methodists, Free Evangelicals were passing over to the ranks of Second Adventism.
How, indeed, could any who did not accuse Mr. Trimblerigg of demoniacal possession—which was the cry of the ‘Scarlet Parrot’—do otherwise? For here, undeniably, was a light that shone, which only spiritual agencies could explain; and, good or bad, the world must make its choice, and camp accordingly. For the most part it camped where the extraordinary phenomenon could best be seen—thatis to say among Mr. Trimblerigg’s audiences, which now—aided by loud-speakers—had become vast, occupying almost daily a deserted stadium, where an ephemeral exhibition, having burned out its six-months’ popularity, still stood with only its shell of lath, plaster, and paint, awaiting the dissolution of time. Into that vast auditorium, in all weathers, wet or dry, special trains, running to the exhibition terminus, poured their thousands day after day. And day by day the world’s conviction that it was coming to a speedy and a prosperous end, increased and became a fever raging through the body politic, unstabilizing the currency, doing certain vested interests much harm, but others much more good.
When it was announced that Second Adventism had become a co-operative company for the conversion of Commerce to the reception of the New Jerusalem, presently to appear upon earth in concrete form, and when Mr. Trimblerigg promulgated a great building scheme—mainly of the said concrete—by which the vision was to materialize on the ground where the derelict Exhibition with its plaster palaces stood awaiting decay, then began ugly rushes on the Stock Exchange, a sharp shifting of investments; and between Big Finance, Episcopacy, and the Liquor Trade a desperate alliance was formed—quite as in the old days of Mr. Trimblerigg’s early career—sign that at last the real issue was to be joined, and that there were interests in the world—and powerful ones—which Second Adventism did not suit.
Mr. Trimblerigg, though it often annoyed him, was not the kind of man to fear opposition when it came. He did not avoid the challenge, he went out to meet it. But he saw that the tussle was coming, and in order to gain accessof strength as expeditiously as possible for the ordeal that lay ahead he decided that the psychological moment had come for him to visit America.
Offers of a sensational character had, of course, already reached him. One Lecture Agency had assured him that if his halo would stand the change of climate, a scientific investigation, and the nervous strain incidental to a daily appearance before mammoth audiences, it could guarantee that thousands should be turned away in every city, and no seats sold to the public under five dollars a head.
Mr. Trimblerigg, when the time came, decided otherwise. He announced that admission was to be free. When America heard that, it first fell down and worshipped him, then in panic began to mobilize its army, double its police force, set up steel barricades and enlarge its cemeteries in order to cope with the record crowds and the ensuing mortality which would result. The problem of how to deal with countless multitudes all ruthlessly set at whatever expense to life and limb, on seeing a real halo alive on a man’s head, and hearing the man’s head speak from the midst of it, occupied the headlines of the newspapers for weeks, even before Mr. Trimblerigg started on his voyage. And when he had started, then all the reporters of the American press chartered a ship and went out to meet him.
It was then that Mr. Trimblerigg was asked the historic question what it felt like to be the greatest man in the world. And Mr. Trimblerigg answered that it made him feel shy; and the next moment could have bitten his tongue out for having fallen so easily into the first trap which an expert in publicity had set for him.
It did not in the least really matter. It made good copy;and though it also made the judicious smile, the judicious—always an insignificant minority—in an affair conducted on so vast a scale did not count.
‘Trimblerigg charges that he is the greatest man alive,’ was an unfair way of putting it; but it could not be described as untrue. And so he just had to live it down.
He did so without any difficulty. He was in a country where only the statue of Liberty shared the distinction that he carried about with him; and while her halo only shot out in separate rays from perforations concealed under her crown, his was a perfect round, it went out everywhere; it was also alight continuously day and night. The torchlight procession organized up Fifth Avenue to greet its arrival was thrown into the shade by its ever-increasing vitality. The torches were a foolish excrescence, they interested nobody; and though five miles of them impeded the distant view, the one central fact outshone them all.
The reporters, dealing with that central fact, after a brief attempt to be facetious had become hushed and awes-truck. Their public would not allow them to be otherwise; America, having gotten a live halo to its shores, was not in a mood to have its genuineness questioned, the mystery of its origin derided, or any other slight put upon its dignity. It became a thing inviolate, sacred as ‘Old Glory’ herself; and when an unfortunate youth, unimpressed by the beauty of its holiness, shouted a derisive remark at its passing, the crowd lynched him for it. After that minority opinion became as terrorized from expressing itself as it had been while the ‘Liberty Loan’ was voluntarily subscribing for America’s entry into the war. There was no half-way safety point left: those who doubted thedivine origin of Mr. Trimblerigg’s luminosity were regarded as Satanists; and when here, as in the old world, Episcopacy persisted in holding out, the genuineness of its Orders began for the first time to be generally doubted, and the numbers of its adherents seriously diminished. No wonder that even the ‘Movies’ became afraid of him, and offered him fabulous sums to turn film-artist, on the single condition that during his term of contract he would keep himself hid from the public eye.
And so, if anybody had laughed at Mr. Trimblerigg’s ingenuous answer on the question of his greatness, the laugh speedily died down, having left nothing to feed on. For if Mr. Trimblerigg was not the greatest man in the world, he was, at all events, the greatest success. In a single week he had made America believe in miracle; after which, from such a source, America was ready to believe almost anything.
His first message was delivered from the plinth of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbour, to an arrangement of loud-speakers which enabled him to be heard from Newark round by Staten Island to Brooklyn; thence, to a yet wider circle—embracing the greater part of the western hemisphere—broadcasting took up the tale, and if not quite making the world one, making Mr. Trimblerigg its sole topic of conversation.
Record crowds attended the performance; two ferry-boats capsized under the one-sided weight of the thousands who jammed the upper decks. The churches, smarter in the uptake than those of his own country, were satisfactorily filled; for there also loud-speakers adorned the vacant pulpits, and congregations of a hundred denominations hung upon his lips.
In that there was a danger, since verbal inspiration was now generally ascribed to him: and Mr. Trimblerigg being one of those orators who, when they let themselves go, are never quite sure what they may say,—or, afterwards, what they actually have said,—found it very hard to keep within safe bounds, or to withhold certain inspiring facts which he believed himself to possess.
He knew, for instance, the day on which the world, as regards its present dispensation, was to end. Susannah Walcot had given her word for it; but hitherto the Council of the Second Adventists had decided not to publish it,—to keep it till their position had become more absolutely assured, and the world psychologically ready to receive it.
But it was very difficult for Mr. Trimblerigg, when a whole continent was rushing into a state of conversion, and millions listening fervently to his daily orations, it was very difficult to keep back, in moments of inspired utterance, a declaration which would give theclouto the whole movement, letting organized society know in definite terms how brief, how startlingly brief, was its time-limit, before that great cataclysmic change which would take and turn it upside down.
And so one day, in a moment of effervescence, Mr. Trimblerigg let it out. And having done so, there was no going back on it.
With many millions already declared converts, and at least as many more hovering upon the brink, waiting for the deciding push, Second Adventism in that act of inspired indiscretion revealed its weakness and its strength. Western civilization (the East staying strangely unmoved, sceptical, slightly amused) received a shock comparable to a renewed outbreak of war. It was as though a half of theworld had leapt to its feet in startled amaze, then staggered and plunged. For then on all the stock exchanges the wildest rush for reinvestments began that had ever been known, and mainly for shares in the vast co-operative concerns of New Jerusalem Ltd. which had been set going before his departure to America by Mr. Trimblerigg. A city designed to hold a million souls—self-governing, self-supporting, with its own trade-tokens for currency, and closely encircled by an agricultural combine exclusively supplying its needs from day to day—was now being rushed into being before the astonished eyes of a metropolis which had hitherto regarded itself as the biggest thing of its kind in the world.
But if, in less than a year, such a city could spring up mushroom-like from the soil, with a mere used-up playground set about with toy-palaces as its nucleus, what might it not do within a decade under a new dispensation? Its huge neighbour, unplanned, haphazard, fortuitous in the slow growth through which it had attained its present dimensions, and replete with vested interests opposed to so dislocating a change, paled at the mere thought of it. But the plan was already in operation, building was going on; and half the farmers and dairymen of the surrounding counties had signed contracts of future service entirely subversive to the supply-system of a city ten times its size. The trade-interests tried to get an act through Parliament, but the electoral power of Second Adventism was too strong. They tried to engineer a strike in the building trade, but Second Adventism was paying its workers too well. In every department there was prosperity and contentment; and when the Trade Unions and their leaders themselves became converts to Second Adventism, whatmore could the enemy do? They tried to get Mr. Trimblerigg’s co-operative currency prohibited as a base imitation of the coin of the realm; but Mr. Trimblerigg’s currency had been designed with holes through it—haloes with the heads missing—so that it could deceive nobody; and the Courts ruled that as a trade-token for convenience in commerce, it was allowable. Then they tried to swamp out its value by forging it; but as it had its full worth of silver in the world’s exchange, forgeries did not matter. Of course no bank would handle it; but that also did not matter. The New Jerusalem was going to have a bank of its own; and when the present state of things came to an end, it might well be the only bank that would count.
For Second Adventism did not teach that the world was going to end in fire, and earthquake, and physical overthrow; but that a new spirit would come hovering, responsive to the call of its worshippers; and entering into the place prepared for it, there set up a light; and all the world would see a working object-lesson of the new society that was soon to be; co-operation would take the place of competition; a reorganization of industry would make strikes superfluous; internationalism would arise, not from the adjustment of racial differences but from religious unity. And out of that would come Peace.
The originality of Mr. Trimblerigg’s idea had been this—first to make religion irresistibly popular, by running it as a kind of ‘stunt’—big business and beatific vision combined—and then having made piety prosperous, to substitute, for the solution of the world’s ills, the religious organization for the political.
Mr. Trimblerigg had seen that habit—habit of mind as well as body—is the dead weight in the world’s affairswhich separates man from faith, and prevents mountains from being moved. And so with Second Adventism, backed by spiritualism and prophecy, he had routed men’s minds out of their groove, simply by convincing them that on a given date, willy-nilly, the groove was coming to an end. Mr. Trimblerigg’s greatest exploit was not in building a city capable of containing a million souls, but in finding a million souls ready to flock to it. And he had done so, in the main, by convincing them that the New Jerusalem meant good business. ‘Homes for Haloes,’ the motto he had chosen for his scheme, did not really mean much when you came to examine it, for though the homes were fast taking shape, the haloes were still to seek. But ‘Homes for Heroes’ or ‘Homes for Haloes’, have an encouraging sound about them, and each, on different occasions, have served their turn, helping publicists out for popular applause to rouse a fictitious enthusiasm in their followers, till cold fact came after and snuffed it out.