Wilbrid Passes Out.
I remember it was the afternoon of Christmas Day, 1916.
Madame had come across to our little home at Dinant for a few days'
rest.
She had almost worked herself to sickness in her active campaign of
organising in preparation for the war-storm that threatened Europe.
We were sitting on the verandah, overlooking the river, when we noticed
far down the zig-zag track that led to the house, a black-cloaked
figure. It was coming towards us and walked with the aid of a stick. As
it approached, it brought to my memory a similar figure I had met on the
Coblenz road; and I told Madame the story of my meeting with Wilbrid.
"If that is Wilbrid," she exclaimed, "he is spying. He must not see me
here."
I explained that it could not be the Great Humanist, as, eighteen months
before, he had changed his clerical garb for that of a civilian; and
this figure was old and bent, whereas Wilbrid was tall and erect.
I then went down the track to investigate. Within a hundred yards, the
person stopped and raised his hand.
"Jefson," was all he said.
It was Wilbrid!--but old, careworn, and almost out of breath.
"Why this change?" I asked, as I came up to him and we moved to a seat
at the side of the track.
"I'm down and out," he said. "My mission failed." And his chin sank upon
the top of the hand-clasped stick. "The crowd did not understand. You
know that I began to preach the doctrine of the Humanist to help the
masses to come into their own. You know we won upon the wave of reaction
that followed the war. We should have stayed at that level and moved
along, but the momentum was too great, the pendulum had swung too far;
for when the masses ruled they sinned worse than the party they
supplanted. They became more bitter autocrats than the rulers we
suppressed.
"Instead of 'Justice for the People,' it was 'Brute Strength for the
Mob.'
"I could not stem the flood that I had let loose. Heaven only knows how
hard I tried, for when I pleaded that a moderate track be taken, the mob
insisted that I sought a place to dominate, and put me in the rut.
"To-day they fear no law of man or God. To-day their self-satisfaction
has made them indifferent to anything that elevates. I had led them into
a morass, and deeper in the mire have they rushed!"
He sat silent and watched the shadows creeping along the river.
"And what now?" I asked.
"I am going back--back to the monastery. I misread the world, I misread
human nature. I was one of the fools who think they know all the
statesmanship that controls the destinies of nations, who think their
petty untrained minds can grasp the great problems of diplomacy.
"I have found you can only qualify for high administrative posts by
unselfish study. You cannot create a statesman by the mere toss of a
coin at a political meeting. Though people fitted to rule and lead men
to build mighty nations are sometimes born in obscurity, they cannot
develop there.
"But I meant rightly--I meant rightly. In my ignorance I have played
with a sharp-edged weapon, and it is turning upon me and--civilisation."
"How?" I queried.
"A cataclysm is coming," he said. "I can feel it. No, it will not be
within Asia, as many people fear, but within Europe.
"The hasty structure of Humanism cannot stand. Even now it is toppling.
It is going to crash, and from the ruins another creed will rise, a
creed, I trust, more rational.
"I was passing home, so came to tell you."
Then Madame came down the track.
Wilbrid rose as she approached. His hand shook as he removed his black
broad-brimmed hat. They stood before each other for a moment without a
word.
For the first time, these leaders faced each other. Then Wilbrid bent
his head.
"You have won," he said. "You have won."
"It took you some time to find that out," she remarked, with a trembling
voice. "I could have told you that soon after you began. You cried for
the destruction of the very things that have made the world progress.
You aimed to destroy individuality and you did so--but only with your
own class.
"You have preached that all wealth is the result of labor, but now you
have realised that intelligent supervision is required to make labor
effective, and that brains are just as necessary to the world's
prosperity as is manual toil.
"You went out to reform society and level down; and your party no sooner
won some power than your women-folk tried to form a "social set" of
their own--you don't know women. You are as ignorant of their desires as
you are of your own. You do not know it is woman's instinct to be
something more than a drab. There is more of the divine spark in the
woman than in the man. It should be so with the producers of men. She
yearns for uplift, even if it be the sneered-at "society" you sought to
crush.
"You have only to note how, when Socialist politicians in any country
win any power, their wives crowd each other into those circles of
society, that husbands had won notoriety by attacking as "loafing on the
workers."
"You have only to note the social columns of the daily press of those
countries to see how anxious these wives of Socialist members are to
have their names in print that they have had "afternoon-tea" with ladies
of any title.
"Deep in the heart of every woman is respect for the title or the
decorative side of human life. A flower to her is something more than a
thing.
"You women will tell you you do not know them--and how could you?--you,
a man who lived the greater part of your life in a monastery apart from
your fellows, apart from the problems, apart from the battle against
conditions that make men--men. You, in the seclusion of your own kind,
conceived dreams of Utopian madness and you came forth and cast your
foolish fancies like a net upon the ignorant. And now you find your
failings; you see the petty smallness of your ideals and you
retreat--back into your abbey like a frightened crab creeping beneath
the cover of a stone."
"I know it now," said the crestfallen man. "We can only learn our
lessons through bitter experience."
He turned upon his heel as if to leave.
She was touched by the pathetic figure and held out her hand to him.
He took it in his and bent over it.
"Good-bye," he said. "I go home on this day of days, this day of 'peace
on earth and good will to men'--and alas! the world a seething mass of
discontent!"
I brought him to the house and gave him some wine to drink.
"Good-bye," he said. "God bless you." And he waved his hat as we watched
the careworn figure slowly stroll down the track and pass out of our
lives.