HIM NEXT DAY TO SUNCH’STON
Up to this point, though he had seen enough to shew him the main drift of
the great changes that had taken place in Erewhonian opinions, my father
had not been able to glean much about the history of the transformation.
He could see that it had all grown out of the supposed miracle of his
balloon ascent, and he could understand that the ignorant masses had been
so astounded by an event so contrary to all their experience, that their
faith in experience was utterly routed and demoralised. If a man and a
woman might rise from the earth and disappear into the sky, what else
might not happen? If they had been wrong in thinking such a thing
impossible, in how much else might they not be mistaken also? The ground
was shaken under their very feet.
It was not as though the thing had been done in a corner. Hundreds of
people had seen the ascent; and even if only a small number had been
present, the disappearance of the balloon, of my mother, and of my father
himself, would have confirmed their story. My father, then, could
understand that a single incontrovertible miracle of the first magnitude
should uproot the hedges of caution in the minds of the common people,
but he could not understand how such men as Hanky and Panky, who
evidently did not believe that there had been any miracle at all, had
been led to throw themselves so energetically into a movement so
subversive of all their traditions, when, as it seemed to him, if they
had held out they might have pricked the balloon bubble easily enough,
and maintained everything _in statu quo_.
How, again, had they converted the King--if they had converted him? The
Queen had had full knowledge of all the preparations for the ascent. The
King had had everything explained to him. The workmen and workwomen who
had made the balloon and the gas could testify that none but natural
means had been made use of--means which, if again employed any number of
times, would effect a like result. How could it be that when the means
of resistance were so ample and so easy, the movement should nevertheless
have been irresistible? For had it not been irresistible, was it to be
believed that astute men like Hanky and Panky would have let themselves
be drawn into it?
What then had been its inner history? My father had so fully determined
to make his way back on the following evening, that he saw no chance of
getting to know the facts--unless, indeed, he should be able to learn
something from Hanky’s sermon; he was therefore not sorry to find an
elderly gentleman of grave but kindly aspect seated opposite to him when
he sat down to supper.
The expression on this man’s face was much like that of the early
Christians as shewn in the S. Giovanni Laterano bas-reliefs at Rome, and
again, though less aggressively self-confident, like that on the faces of
those who have joined the Salvation Army. If he had been in England, my
father would have set him down as a Swedenborgian; this being impossible,
he could only note that the stranger bowed his head, evidently saying a
short grace before he began to eat, as my father had always done when he
was in Erewhon before. I will not say that my father had never omitted
to say grace during the whole of the last twenty years, but he said it
now, and unfortunately forgetting himself, he said it in the English
language, not loud, but nevertheless audibly.
My father was alarmed at what he had done, but there was no need, for the
stranger immediately said, “I hear, sir, that you have the gift of
tongues. The Sunchild often mentioned it to us, as having been
vouchsafed long since to certain of the people, to whom, for our
learning, he saw fit to feign that he belonged. He thus foreshadowed
prophetically its manifestation also among ourselves. All which,
however, you must know as well as I do. Can you interpret?”
My father was much shocked, but he remembered having frequently spoken of
the power of speaking in unknown tongues which was possessed by many of
the early Christians, and he also remembered that in times of high
religious enthusiasm this power had repeatedly been imparted, or supposed
to be imparted, to devout believers in the middle ages. It grated upon
him to deceive one who was so obviously sincere, but to avoid immediate
discomfiture he fell in with what the stranger had said.
“Alas! sir,” said he, “that rarer and more precious gift has been
withheld from me; nor can I speak in an unknown tongue, unless as it is
borne in upon me at the moment. I could not even repeat the words that
have just fallen from me.”
“That,” replied the stranger, “is almost invariably the case. These
illuminations of the spirit are beyond human control. You spoke in so
low a tone that I cannot interpret what you have just said, but should
you receive a second inspiration later, I shall doubtless be able to
interpret it for you. I have been singularly gifted in this respect--more
so, perhaps, than any other interpreter in Erewhon.”
My father mentally vowed that no second inspiration should be vouchsafed
to him, but presently remembering how anxious he was for information on
the points touched upon at the beginning of this chapter, and seeing that
fortune had sent him the kind of man who would be able to enlighten him,
he changed his mind; nothing, he reflected, would be more likely to make
the stranger talk freely with him, than the affording him an opportunity
for showing off his skill as an interpreter.
Something, therefore, he would say, but what? No one could talk more
freely when the train of his thoughts, or the conversation of others,
gave him his cue, but when told to say an unattached “something,” he
could not even think of “How do you do this morning? it is a very fine
day;” and the more he cudgelled his brains for “something,” the more they
gave no response. He could not even converse further with the stranger
beyond plain “yes” and “no”; so he went on with his supper, and in
thinking of what he was eating and drinking for the moment forgot to
ransack his brain. No sooner had he left off ransacking it, than it
suggested something--not, indeed, a very brilliant something, but still
something. On having grasped it, he laid down his knife and fork, and
with the air of one distraught he said--
“My name is Norval, on the Grampian Hills
My father feeds his flock--a frugal swain.”
“I heard you,” exclaimed the stranger, “and I can interpret every word of
what you have said, but it would not become me to do so, for you have
conveyed to me a message more comforting than I can bring myself to
repeat even to him who has conveyed it.”
Having said this he bowed his head, and remained for some time wrapped in
meditation. My father kept a respectful silence, but after a little time
he ventured to say in a low tone, how glad he was to have been the medium
through whom a comforting assurance had been conveyed. Presently, on
finding himself encouraged to renew the conversation, he threw out a
deferential feeler as to the causes that might have induced Mr. Balmy to
come to Fairmead. “Perhaps,” he said, “you, like myself, have come to
these parts in order to see the dedication of the new temple; I could not
get a lodging in Sunch’ston, so I walked down here this morning.”
This, it seemed, had been Mr. Balmy’s own case, except that he had not
yet been to Sunch’ston. Having heard that it was full to overflowing, he
had determined to pass the night at Fairmead, and walk over in the
morning--starting soon after seven, so as to arrive in good time for the
dedication ceremony. When my father heard this, he proposed that they
should walk together, to which Mr. Balmy gladly consented; it was
therefore arranged that they should go to bed early, breakfast soon after
six, and then walk to Sunch’ston. My father then went to his own room,
where he again smoked a surreptitious pipe up the chimney.
Next morning the two men breakfasted together, and set out as the clock
was striking seven. The day was lovely beyond the power of words, and
still fresh--for Fairmead was some 2500 feet above the sea, and the sun
did not get above the mountains that overhung it on the east side, till
after eight o’clock. Many persons were also starting for Sunch’ston, and
there was a procession got up by the Musical Bank Managers of the town,
who walked in it, robed in rich dresses of scarlet and white embroidered
with much gold thread. There was a banner displaying an open chariot in
which the Sunchild and his bride were seated, beaming with smiles, and in
attitudes suggesting that they were bowing to people who were below them.
The chariot was, of course, drawn by the four black and white horses of
which the reader has already heard, and the balloon had been ignored.
Readers of my father’s book will perhaps remember that my mother was not
seen at all--she was smuggled into the car of the balloon along with
sundry rugs, under which she lay concealed till the balloon had left the
earth. All this went for nothing. It has been said that though God
cannot alter the past, historians can; it is perhaps because they can be
useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence.
Painters, my father now realised, can do all that historians can, with
even greater effect.
Women headed the procession--the younger ones dressed in white, with
veils and chaplets of roses, blue cornflower, and pheasant’s eye
Narcissus, while the older women were more soberly attired. The Bank
Managers and the banner headed the men, who were mostly peasants, but
among them were a few who seemed to be of higher rank, and these, for the
most part, though by no means all of them, wore their clothes reversed--as
I have forgotten to say was done also by Mr. Balmy. Both men and women
joined in singing a litany the words of which my father could not catch;
the tune was one he had been used to play on his apology for a flute when
he was in prison, being, in fact, none other than “Home, Sweet Home.”
There was no harmony; they never got beyond the first four bars, but
these they must have repeated, my father thought, at least a hundred
times between Fairmead and Sunch’ston. “Well,” said he to himself,
“however little else I may have taught them, I at any rate gave them the
diatonic scale.”
He now set himself to exploit his fellow-traveller, for they soon got
past the procession.
“The greatest miracle,” said he, “in connection with this whole matter,
has been--so at least it seems to me--not the ascent of the Sunchild with
his bride, but the readiness with which the people generally acknowledged
its miraculous character. I was one of those that witnessed the ascent,
but I saw no signs that the crowd appreciated its significance. They
were astounded, but they did not fall down and worship.”
“Ah,” said the other, “but you forget the long drought and the rain that
the Sunchild immediately prevailed on the air-god to send us. He had
announced himself as about to procure it for us; it was on this ground
that the King assented to the preparation of those material means that
were necessary before the horses of the sun could attach themselves to
the chariot into which the balloon was immediately transformed. Those
horses might not be defiled by contact with this gross earth. I too
witnessed the ascent; at the moment, I grant you, I saw neither chariot
nor horses, and almost all those present shared my own temporary
blindness; the whole action from the moment when the balloon left the
earth, moved so rapidly, that we were flustered, and hardly knew what it
was that we were really seeing. It was not till two or three years later
that I found the scene presenting itself to my soul’s imaginary sight in
the full splendour which was no doubt witnessed, but not apprehended, by
my bodily vision.”
“There,” said my father, “you confirm an opinion that I have long
held.--Nothing is so misleading as the testimony of eye-witnesses.”
“A spiritual enlightenment from within,” returned Mr. Balmy, “is more to
be relied on than any merely physical affluence from external objects.
Now, when I shut my eyes, I see the balloon ascend a little way, but
almost immediately the heavens open, the horses descend, the balloon is
transformed, and the glorious pageant careers onward till it vanishes
into the heaven of heavens. Hundreds with whom I have conversed assure
me that their experience has been the same as mine. Has yours been
different?”
“Oh no, not at all; but I always see some storks circling round the
balloon before I see any horses.”
“How strange! I have heard others also say that they saw the storks you
mention; but let me do my utmost I cannot force them into my mental image
of the scene. This shows, as you were saying just now, how incomplete
the testimony of an eye-witness often is. It is quite possible that the
storks were there, but the horses and the chariot have impressed
themselves more vividly on my mind than anything else has.”
“Quite so; and I am not without hope that even at this late hour some
further details may yet be revealed to us.”
“It is possible, but we should be as cautious in accepting any fresh
details as in rejecting them. Should some heresy obtain wide acceptance,
visions will perhaps be granted to us that may be useful in refuting it,
but otherwise I expect nothing more.”
“Neither do I, but I have heard people say that inasmuch as the Sunchild
said he was going to interview the air-god in order to send us rain, he
was more probably son to the air-god than to the sun. Now here is a
heresy which--”
“But, my dear sir,” said Mr. Balmy, interrupting him with great warmth,
“he spoke of his father in heaven as endowed with attributes far
exceeding any that can be conceivably ascribed to the air-god. The power
of the air-god does not extend beyond our own atmosphere.”
“Pray believe me,” said my father, who saw by the ecstatic gleam in his
companion’s eye that there was nothing to be done but to agree with him,
“that I accept--”
“Hear me to the end,” replied Mr. Balmy. “Who ever heard the Sunchild
claim relationship with the air-god? He could command the air-god, and
evidently did so, halting no doubt for this beneficent purpose on his
journey towards his ultimate destination. Can we suppose that the air-
god, who had evidently intended withholding the rain from us for an
indefinite period, should have so immediately relinquished his designs
against us at the intervention of any less exalted personage than the
sun’s own offspring? Impossible!”
“I quite agree with you,” exclaimed my father, “it is out of the--”
“Let me finish what I have to say. When the rain came so copiously for
days, even those who had not seen the miraculous ascent found its
consequences come so directly home to them, that they had no difficulty
in accepting the report of others. There was not a farmer or cottager in
the land but heaved a sigh of relief at rescue from impending ruin, and
they all knew it was the Sunchild who had promised the King that he would
make the air-god send it. So abundantly, you will remember, did it come,
that we had to pray to him to stop it, which in his own good time he was
pleased to do.”
“I remember,” said my father, who was at last able to edge in a word,
“that it nearly flooded me out of house and home. And yet, in spite of
all this, I hear that there are many at Bridgeford who are still hardened
unbelievers.”
“Alas! you speak too truly. Bridgeford and the Musical Banks for the
first three years fought tooth and nail to blind those whom it was their
first duty to enlighten. I was a Professor of the hypothetical language,
and you may perhaps remember how I was driven from my chair on account of
the fearlessness with which I expounded the deeper mysteries of
Sunchildism.”
“Yes, I remember well how cruelly--” but my father was not allowed to get
beyond “cruelly.”
“It was I who explained why the Sunchild had represented himself as
belonging to a people in many respects analogous to our own, when no such
people can have existed. It was I who detected that the supposed nation
spoken of by the Sunchild was an invention designed in order to give us
instruction by the light of which we might more easily remodel our
institutions. I have sometimes thought that my gift of interpretation
was vouchsafed to me in recognition of the humble services that I was
hereby allowed to render. By the way, you have received no illumination
this morning, have you?”
“I never do, sir, when I am in the company of one whose conversation I
find supremely interesting. But you were telling me about Bridgeford: I
live hundreds of miles from Bridgeford, and have never understood the
suddenness, and completeness, with which men like Professors Hanky and
Panky and Dr. Downie changed front. Do they believe as you and I do, or
did they merely go with the times? I spent a couple of hours with Hanky
and Panky only two evenings ago, and was not so much impressed as I could
have wished with the depth of their religious fervour.”
“They are sincere now--more especially Hanky--but I cannot think I am
judging them harshly, if I say that they were not so at first. Even now,
I fear, that they are more carnally than spiritually minded. See how
they have fought for the aggrandisement of their own order. It is mainly
their doing that the Musical Banks have usurped the spiritual authority
formerly exercised by the straighteners.”
“But the straighteners,” said my father, “could not co-exist with
Sunchildism, and it is hard to see how the claims of the Banks can be
reasonably gainsaid.”
“Perhaps; and after all the Banks are our main bulwark against the evils
that I fear will follow from the repeal of the laws against machinery.
This has already led to the development of a materialism which minimizes
the miraculous element in the Sunchild’s ascent, as our own people
minimize the material means that were the necessary prologue to the
miraculous.”
Thus did they converse; but I will not pursue their conversation further.
It will be enough to say that in further floods of talk Mr. Balmy
confirmed what George had said about the Banks having lost their hold
upon the masses. That hold was weak even in the time of my father’s
first visit; but when the people saw the hostility of the Banks to a
movement which far the greater number of them accepted, it seemed as
though both Bridgeford and the Banks were doomed, for Bridgeford was
heart and soul with the Banks. Hanky, it appeared, though under thirty,
and not yet a Professor, grasped the situation, and saw that Bridgeford
must either move with the times, or go. He consulted some of the most
sagacious Heads of Houses and Professors, with the result that a
committee of enquiry was appointed, which in due course reported that the
evidence for the Sunchild’s having been the only child of the sun was
conclusive. It was about this time--that is to say some three years
after his ascent--that “Higgsism,” as it had been hitherto called, became
“Sunchildism,” and “Higgs” the “Sunchild.”
My father also learned the King’s fury at his escape (for he would call
it nothing else) with my mother. This was so great that though he had
hitherto been, and had ever since proved himself to be, a humane ruler,
he ordered the instant execution of all who had been concerned in making
either the gas or the balloon; and his cruel orders were carried out
within a couple of hours. At the same time he ordered the destruction by
fire of the Queen’s workshops, and of all remnants of any materials used
in making the balloon. It is said the Queen was so much grieved and
outraged (for it was her doing that the material ground-work, so to
speak, had been provided for the miracle) that she wept night and day
without ceasing three whole months, and never again allowed her husband
to embrace her, till he had also embraced Sunchildism.
When the rain came, public indignation at the King’s action was raised
almost to revolution pitch, and the King was frightened at once by the
arrival of the promised downfall and the displeasure of his subjects. But
he still held out, and it was only after concessions on the part of the
Bridgeford committee, that he at last consented to the absorption of
Sunchildism into the Musical Bank system, and to its establishment as the
religion of the country. The far-reaching changes in Erewhonian
institutions with which the reader is already acquainted followed as a
matter of course.
“I know the difficulty,” said my father presently, “with which the King
was persuaded to allow the way in which the Sunchild’s dress should be
worn to be a matter of opinion, not dogma. I see we have adopted
different fashions. Have you any decided opinions upon the subject?”
“I have; but I will ask you not to press me for them. Let this matter
remain as the King has left it.”
My father thought that he might now venture on a shot. So he said, “I
have always understood, too, that the King forced the repeal of the laws
against machinery on the Bridgeford committee, as another condition of
his assent?”
“Certainly. He insisted on this, partly to gratify the Queen, who had
not yet forgiven him, and who had set her heart on having a watch, and
partly because he expected that a development of the country’s resources,
in consequence of a freer use of machinery, would bring more money into
his exchequer. Bridgeford fought hard and wisely here, but they had
gained so much by the Musical Bank Managers being recognised as the
authorised exponents of Sunchildism, that they thought it wise to
yield--apparently with a good grace--and thus gild the pill which his
Majesty was about to swallow. But even then they feared the consequences
that are already beginning to appear, all which, if I mistake not, will
assume far more serious proportions in the future.”
“See,” said my father suddenly, “we are coming to another procession, and
they have got some banners, let us walk a little quicker and overtake
it.”
“Horrible!” replied Mr. Balmy fiercely. “You must be short-sighted, or
you could never have called my attention to it. Let us get it behind us
as fast as possible, and not so much as look at it.”
“Oh yes, yes,” said my father, “it is indeed horrible, I had not seen
what it was.”
He had not the faintest idea what the matter was, but he let Mr. Balmy
walk a little ahead of him, so that he could see the banners, the most
important of which he found to display a balloon pure and simple, with
one figure in the car. True, at the top of the banner there was a smudge
which might be taken for a little chariot, and some very little horses,
but the balloon was the only thing insisted on. As for the procession,
it consisted entirely of men, whom a smaller banner announced to be
workmen from the Fairmead iron and steel works. There was a third
banner, which said, “Science as well as Sunchildism.”