CHAPTER TWENTY-NINESecond Wind
MR. TRIMBLERIGG’S home-coming, in spite of the triumphal note sedulously given to it by his out-and-out supporters, was a sad one. He found Free Evangelicalism divided against him. His results had not wiped out the memory of his methods; and as there had been loud protest while these were still going on, there was now controversy as to whether they had in the least helped to the more peacefuldénouementwhich had followed. In the main his only backers among the Free Evangelicals were the armed missionaries who had carried out his policy, and the shareholders whose investments he had saved from ruin. And though True Belief had rallied whole-heartedly to the support of his more than Mosaic discipline—finding for it the warrant of Scripture—True Belief, in spite of the new importance thus given to it, was not the mould into which he could pour himself at this advanced stage of his career upon his return to civilization. Except in the mission field, where he had used it to meet an emergency, its die-hard tenets were incompatible with Relative Truth; yet though some of its followers still held that the world was flat, and others that it did not go round, in a matter of religious war against the barbarism of savage tribes he could work with them, and in their eye-for-an-eye and tooth-for-a-tooth standpoint find the Relative Truth which served his need. But they, for their part, would not doctrinally budge an inch to come to him.
So when the main body of Free Evangelicalism turned against him, intimacy with True Belief stood rather as a liability than as an asset; though for a time it was aquestion whether he had anywhere else to turn—whether any religious connection large and lively enough to serve his purpose was willing to have him except on terms into which even his diversified record could not fit without foolishness.
With the ruddy honours of Puto-Congo fresh upon him, he stood for re-election to the Presidency of the Free Evangelical Union, and got turned down. The blow was a shrewd one, though he met it with a smiling face. But when, following upon that, after long and heated discussion an adverse motion was carried by the executive of the Free Evangelical Missions, whose organization on its present vast scale owed its prosperity mainly to him, then indeed he felt as though the bottom was being knocked out of his ministerial career; and was almost of a mind—of two minds, that is to say—to turn from divinity to politics.
For in politics at that time events were moving fast, creating for adaptable men opportunities of a new kind. If, as seemed likely, the old two-party system was about to give place to group-formations, whose tenure of life must necessarily be more of a negotiable than a fixed quantity, and if for the manipulation of democratic government to a safe middling course, opportunism must henceforth take a higher place than principle, could anyone be found with a more instinctive touch for the job than Mr. Trimblerigg?
In the political world the situation was there waiting for him: in the religious world, on the other hand, where for the time being movement seemed retrograde rather than forward, the situation would have to be made. It was the tougher job.
To give Mr. Trimblerigg his due, that—if only he could find for it the right environment—would be but an added attraction. A tough job always delighted him; so much so that, setting his teeth to the toughness of it, he thenceforth forgot everything but appetite; and as his appetite always grew with what it fed on—given a proposition of sufficient toughness, his appetite was apt to go strange lengths. So it had been when he set out to hew Agag, and skin the scapegoat, giving to the fantasy that air of probability which it needed in order to make it popular; so likewise when he had to find moral excuse for standing Christianity upon its head in the burnt-out cinders of native villages, with the compulsorily converted Free State of Puto-Congo as his reward. In each case the toughness of the job and the moral difficulties it presented took the place of conviction, supplied the necessary enthusiasm, and jogged him on to his goal.
So it was to be now. All that he lacked for the moment was the necessary environment, the atmosphere into which a new spiritual movement could be born. In politics it existed; in religion it had still to be found. Mr. Trimblerigg hesitated; and while he hesitated the call came, the spark of inspiration descended from on high, and what thereafter was saved to religion in a revivalism which swept the world, was lost to politics.
Two events, small in themselves, gave to his mind the impetus and direction it required. The first was the death of the harmless, unnecessary Caroline, the wife whose previous uneventfulness had given to his career the only ballast it had ever known; the other was the recrudescence of Isabel Sparling, manufacturing for herself in the spiritual and religious world a success which arrested hisattention, and awoke in his breast first a small spark of jealousy, then emulation and the determination, doing likewise, to make a bigger thing of it.
Caroline’s death was due to obscure causes for which the doctor found a scientific name that satisfied all legal requirements; but if I have any qualification for diagnosing mortality in the human race, I should be inclined to say that she died of a gradual and cumulative attack of fright. Mr. Trimblerigg had once made her doubt the evidence of her senses—and not only of her own but of the children she had borne to him; and though she had acquiesced submissively at the time—having the negative proof always before her that the glory with which her imagination had surrounded him was departed, that he was in truth no saint, and had not after all taken his baths in cold weather—she was never the same woman again. That she should have imagined so difficult a thing, only to be told that it was a delusion after all, caused a shock to her system. Her breathing became asthmatic, she coughed with nothing to cough for, had flutterings of the heart, and began to wear shawls even when the weather was warm. And waking one night, shortly after Mr. Trimblerigg’s return from Puto-Congo had made them bed-fellows again, she saw or thought she saw upon the pillow beside her a recrudescence of her fear—the thing which could be seen but was not to be believed. Faint, very faint—the product only of a dream—it flushed feebly and passed away. But that single sight, or the mere suspicion of it, gave her a habit of wakefulness which grew on the apprehension that lay at the back of it; and just as people who see spots crossing the field of vision damage their eyesight by pursuing them, or asothers who have a singing in their ears go mad in trying to be quit of it; so did Caroline in trying both to realize and get rid of the suspicion she wished to avoid, reduce herself to a nervous wreck; and day by day, eyeing Mr. Trimblerigg with looks whose meaning she would not explain, sank into a despondency which by destroying her domestic efficiency robbed life of its remainingraison d’être.
And so one morning, after an ecstatic dream of more than usual vividness, Mr. Trimblerigg woke to find her lying very quiet and open-eyed beside him; and though the expression was not peaceful, Caroline had nevertheless found peace; and Mr. Trimblerigg with curiously mixed feelings, yet with a decent modicum of grief which was quite genuine, saw that he had become a widower.
Among the letters of condolence which reached him after the sad event—not immediately but a few months later—was one of peculiar interest from Sir Roland Skoyle, conveying not merely sympathy, but news. For it now appeared that Caroline was not as lacking in spirit as her life had made out; rather had she reserved it for future use. Caroline, in fact, had suddenly become interesting; and if she had not quite found herself again in the old world where her real interests lay, she had found her medium; she was there, waiting for her credentials to be put to the test, and asking for him with such urgency that Mr. Trimblerigg had a doubt whether he was yet free to consider himself a complete widower.
If, on that matter, he felt that his liberty was less than he could have wished, there was nevertheless a compensating interest; for here, in germ, was the idea he had been waiting for: if he could convince himself thatspiritualism was really true—his previous experience, though momentarily impressive had finally disappointed him—he would go on and convince the world. It was some such conviction that the religious world was now needing to spring it into fresh life; and he himself only needed confidence in the case to be presented, in order to become the man to do it. And so, at this point of his career, when he least expected it, Caroline became an important character.
It was a strange apotheosis; and the realization of its truth came to him in strange words at the first interview which Sir Roland Skoyle arranged for them. The medium, sitting entranced, was not in the least like her; but no matter. She breathed asthmatically, coughed, and holding hand to heart hugged an imaginary shawl. Taking her disengaged hand tenderly, he asked: ‘Caroline, my dear, is that you?’ And the voice of Caroline answered: ‘I did see it, Jonathan; I really did! And I can see it now. You look beautiful.’ Then, after a pause, ‘Who have you got to mend your socks for you?’
That was Caroline all over; and as conviction settled into his brain, her importance established itself. The conversation that ensued was trivial and domestic in character; it was, nevertheless, a world-moving event.
And the second was like unto it—in this at least, that a woman whom he had come to regard as of no importance assumed all upon a sudden a new significance and took her place once more in the shaping of his career.
Isabel Sparling, failing to find lodgment for her preaching powers in any home-grown community among the Free Churches, had passed on to America, where strange faiths and novel methods have always a better chance.
A stray paragraph in a newspaper gave him the news that among the Blue Ridge and Alleghany mountains she had achieved a startling success in the propaganda of Second Adventism. The rural population of Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina had begun robing itself in white; drawn by the spirit, thousands upon thousands of Last Day saints made periodical pilgrimages to the tops of the high mountains, and there picnicked for whole weeks at a time waiting for an Event which, though it failed to show visibly, always sent them back to their homes spiritually refreshed. Rain-baptisms—by preference in a thunder-storm—were another manifestation of the new faith. There were startling cases when a date had been fixed weeks beforehand; torrential rains had descended in answer to prayer and washed into renewed sanctity five thousand converts at a time.
Mr. Trimblerigg had always had a modernist’s doubt about the efficacy of prayer either for fine weather or wet. But supposing these accounts to be true, Isabel Sparling was a water-finder of no uncertain power. If she had ever failed, the papers made no report of it; at any rate, in States where the rainfall was generally less than could be desired, the average was going steadily up, and conversion to Second Adventism had in consequence become popular. Manifestly she had got her stick by the right end; in this practical age a combination between revealed religion and good business was the one thing needful, and as the increased rainfall was welcome to a large agricultural interest, so also were the pilgrimages and the picnics to the retail traders. Pious people, who had hitherto been frugal stay-at-homes, were now spending a great deal upon white linen sunshades, Panama hats, shoe leather, thermosflasks, mineral waters, cooked food of a portable kind and all other necessary accompaniments for outings conducted on a large scale. In a quite important slice of the States religion had once more become not merely popular but vibrant and all-embracing in its character. An ‘urge’ for righteousness had taken hold of whole districts where no ‘urge’ of any kind had been felt before; and what at first had only occurred in rural districts was now rapidly assuming a civic, a municipal, and a territorial character. It was announced that one State Governor at least, and the whole population of a large penal settlement were waiting to receive rain-baptism on the earliest date that Isabel Sparling’s engagements with Heaven would allow.
Mr. Trimblerigg read and was impressed. He went further; he took steps to have the matter investigated, and while awaiting a further report he thought much. Over there something was moving which had affinity to the motions of his own brain; a sense of opportunity and of environment began to stir in the inner recesses of his soul. And when the report came—favourable in its main facts—he found all at once that he had recovered his spiritual appetite. The world was the right world after all; there was something in it waiting for him to do.
Nevertheless, for a man of his modern tendencies, Second Adventism was a big pill to swallow; he did not quite see how he was going to believe in it—sufficiently to make it a popular success, and for a while wondered whether he could not run spiritualism alone, with Second Adventism left out.
He consulted Caroline; she was stimulating, but rather vague. ‘Oh, if you only knew, if you only knew, you could do anything!’ she told him. ‘Let your light shine, Jonathan!It’s there, though you don’t see it. If you did, you’d know the way. If you don’t, it may go again, like it did before.’
That little imperfection of grammar, uncorrected in the spirit-world, gave Mr. Trimblerigg a fresh thrill of conviction that this was the real Caroline. How often, as they climbed the social ladder, had he corrected, a little impatiently, those symptoms of a lowly origin. But now it rejoiced his heart to hear her recount the beatific vision she had of him with homely incorrected speech ‘like’ she might have done before.
Yes, it sounded encouraging, but it still left him in doubt; there was too much ‘if’ about it. He wanted to be quite sure, without any ‘ifs’, before he began.
It was at five o’clock one morning, after a sleepless night, that the spark of inspiration swam into Mr. Trimblerigg’s brain, and though it was not my sending—being entirely his own—I saw it come.
He was lying with his head on one side sucking a cough lozenge, when, with a sudden jerk of astonishment, first his eyes opened, then his mouth. The cough lozenge fell out, staining the pillow: he turned his head sharply, eyes front, and sat up.
The conception which had got hold of him was large but quite simple; he saw that Second Adventism depended for its success on one thing and one thing alone. If what he was pleased to regard as Christendom—that is to say, Free Evangelicalism and its dependent relatives among the Free Churches—if Free Evangelicalism could but be persuaded to believe in a Second Advent, and to desire it wilfully, whole-heartedly, passionately—then by the law of spiritual gravity, the Second Advent would come.
It was a great idea; Pragmatism, a thing he had only half-believed in before, would thus be given a test worthy of its powers—would, he believed, win through and make the world what it ought to be—theologically up-to-date. The saints under the Throne crying ‘How long?’ would suddenly change their tune, take up the initiative, and with spiritual Coué-ings themselves fix the date.
It was a bold democratic conception, and since he had always been a whole-hearted democrat there was no inconsistency—though he now thought of it for the first time—in applying it to things doctrinal. Man had his spiritual destiny—including dates—in his own hands; all he needed was unanimity or, failing that, a commanding majority. He had never had it, had never applied it till now. Had he done so the millennium would already have bloomed into being.
And the means to this spiritual unanimity, or commanding majority, by which the race was to be won? In the moment of inspiration that also had been flashed into his brain, and Civilization stood explained. The conquests of science were to become the weapons of faith, and publicity the final expression of religious art. What countless missionaries could not have done in a previous age a single voice would do now. All that was required was a world-wide audience of converts to Second Adventism, a voice going out into all lands, a trumpet signal, and a shout, and at that shout the walls of Jericho would fall flat:
Faith would vanish into sight,Hope be emptied in delight,
Faith would vanish into sight,Hope be emptied in delight,
Faith would vanish into sight,
Hope be emptied in delight,
and every man would go up straight before him and possess the city of his inheritance.
Nor had Mr. Trimblerigg any doubt—in that first flush of inspiration—whose the voice was to be. As for the trumpet whose blast was to rend the veil of a new world, science had providentially supplied the instrument. It would be a big business to get possession of it; but once done, it would be Big Business indeed. At the stroke of a wizard’s wand—or call it Aaron’s rod—trade and commerce were to become spiritualized, and the fiery chariot of Elijah would be found among men once more, conveying the voice of prophecy to the far ends of earth—in that moment, that division of a breath, that twinkling of an eye of which older prophecy had spoken. Or to put the matter quite prosaically—on that business footing which was to prove the secret of its success—a monopoly of Broadcasting throughout the English-speaking world was revealed to him as the means for the coming of the Kingdom on Earth.
‘The coming of the Kingdom’? The phrase was picturesque; but it was old and obsolete. ‘Making Heaven safe for Democracy’ was better. That was what Mr. Trimblerigg intended to do.