was irresistible, and the house was always full of women, and whenever
he went out he was followed by a herd of them. Mrs. Martin was jealous,
Mr. Bly sulked and Mr. Nicodemus had a busy time placating indignant
husbands and lovers. Not a house in Tib street but was in a state of
upheaval. The men sought consolation in drink, and presently there was
hardly one who had retained his work.
“We are getting on,” said Mr. Nicodemus. “We are getting on. In the
good old times men left their work to follow me, and it used to be a
favourite device of mine to make their work seem so repulsive to them
that they preferred thieving or fighting or even suffering to it. If we
end as we have begun, then Jah will be as isolated as you and I have
been.”
And he chuckled in triumph and bussed Mrs. Martin.
“That,” said she, “reminds me of Martin; and he was a oner, he was.
That’s worth anything to me.”
With that the good creature bustled off to arrange for a week’s charing
to keep her lodgers in food.
Shortlived, however was the triumph of Mr. Nicodemus, for, with the
women neglecting their homes and the men their work, the children
sickened and died, and no day passed but two or three little coffins
were taken to the cemetery. And in their grief the women remembered
Jah, and went to church to appease His wrath. The men were sobered and
returned to work, but at wages punitively reduced, so that their last
state was worse than their first, for the women were now devoted to Jah
and the children were empty and their bellies were pinched.
Nicholas Bly cursed Jah. The sight of the little coffins being taken
out of Tib Street reminded him of his own children and he went near mad
and vowed that Jah was taking them because He was a jealous God, one
who had taken Hell from the devil and their children from men in the
purblindness of His fury.
And he began to preach at the corner of Tib Street.
VIII: MR. BLY’S SERMON
He said:
“There are many filthy streets in this town, but this is the filthiest.
Who made it filthy? Jah! It is the nature of man to love his wife and
his children, to dwell with them in peace and loving-kindness. But for
all his love, wherewith shall a man feed his wife and children? What
clothing shall he give them? What shelter find for them? Go you into
this street and look into the houses. You will find crumbling walls,
broken stairs, windows stuffed with clouts: you will find bare shelves
and cupboards: you will find dead children with never so much as a
whole shroud among them. You will say that perhaps they are better
dead, but I say unto you that if a man’s children be dead wherewith
shall he feed his love? And without a full love in his heart how shall
a man work or live or die? Are we born only to die? And if life ends
in death what matters it how life be lived? But, I say unto you, that
because life ends in death a man must see to it that all his days are
filled with love, which is beauty, which is truth. And I say unto you
when your eyes are filled and bleeding with the pain of the sights
you shall see here, go out into the fields and to the hills and the
great waters and see the sun rise and shed his light and go down and
cast his light upon the moon, and draw vapour from the earth and bring
it again in the rain; and feel the wind upon your faces, and see the
sodden air hang upon the earth until the coming of the storm to cleanse
its foulness: and do you mark the flight of the birds, the nesting of
the birds, the happy fish in the waters, the slow beasts in the fields:
observe the growth of trees and plants, and grasses and corn. Then you
shall know the richness of love among the creatures that know not Jah.
They die and are visited with sickness even as we, but theirs is a free
life and a free death unconfined by any sickness of the mind or tyranny
of Gods and Demons. We alone among creatures are cheated of our desires
and perish for the want of food amid plenty, and are cut off each from
his full share of the abounding love of the world. Who takes our share?
Jah! Who kills our love? Jah! Who filches the best of our thoughts, the
keenest sap of our courage? Who fills our lives and homes with darkness
and despair, and meanness and emptiness? Jah! I know not who Jah is,
nor whence He came, but I will dethrone Him.”
IX: THE EFFECT OF MR. BLY’S SERMON
Street oratory was at that time very common, but there was a note in
Mr. Bly’s eloquence which attracted many of the inhabitants of the
district, especially the young, and he achieved a certain fame. No
one knew exactly what he was talking about, for, except for expletive
purposes, the word Jah had dropped out of the vernacular. Mr. Bly
was assumed to be some kind of politician, and he was certainly more
exciting than most. Therefore his audiences were twice as large as
those of any other speaker. Seeing this, a Labour Agitator came to
him and offered him a place on his committee and a pound a week as a
lecturer.
“I can speak about nothing but Jah,” said Mr. Bly.
“Speak about anything you like so long as you catch their ears,” said
the agitator.
So Mr. Bly accepted the offer.
X: THE WIDOW MARTIN
When Mr. Bly told his infernal companion of his engagement Mr.
Nicodemus said:
“Talking is a very human way of creating a disturbance. My way and
Jah’s way is the way of corruption. We unseat the mind and poison the
soul with unsatisfiable desires. But if you wish it I will go with you.
We have lit a fire in Tib Street that will burn itself out without us.”
“I should like your company,” replied Mr. Bly. “It helps me to be
reminded that Jah has been unjust to more than human beings. It
redoubles my fury and kindles my eloquence. I am determined to earn my
pound a week and drive Jah out of the land.”
The devil began to draw on his shabby fur coat. Mrs. Martin had been
listening to their conversation. She burst in upon them and vowed that
her Nick should never, never leave her. With horrible callousness Mr.
Nicodemus told her that he was pledged to Mr. Bly, and asked her for
his tail. She refused to give it up, and was so stubborn that, at last,
after they had argued with her, and pleaded and stormed, and bribed
and bullied, she said she would produce his tail if she might go with
them; and they consented, for Mr. Nicodemus said that if he were ever
returned to power he would be in need of his tail, and indeed would be
a ridiculous object without it, his system of damnation being supported
by tradition and symbol and ritual.
They had a merry supper-party, and that night took train for the town
appointed for Mr. Bly’s first appearance on a political platform.
XI: MAKING A STIR
Where other politicians dealt in statistics, which, after all, are but
an intellectual excitement, a kind of mental cats’-cradle, our orator
sounded three notes: he appealed to a man’s love of women, his love of
children, and led his audience on to hatred of Jah. To the first two
they responded, were persuaded that they were as he said, cheated and
betrayed, and, though they could not follow him further without losing
their heads, they lost them and were filled with hatred. And as Mr.
Bly never made any reference either to Government or Opposition his
speeches were reported in the newspapers on both sides, and aroused
the greatest interest through the country. The well-to-do found
breakfast insipid without his utterances, and, to support him, they
subscribed largely to the funds of the organisation which promoted his
efforts. His salary was raised to two pounds a week on the day when a
Conservative organ published his portrait and a leading article on the
golden sincerity of the Working Classes.
XII: MAKING A STIRABOUT
Where other orators damned everything from sewing cotton to
battleships, and so could not avoid giving offence, Mr. Bly damned only
Jah and hurt nobody’s feelings. But he produced an effect. He laid
every grievance at Jah’s door, and roused so much enthusiasm that at
last he began to believe in his power.
It is not often that the people find a leader, and when they do they
expect him to lead. They were impatient for Mr. Bly to reveal to them a
line of action, and here he was puzzled. It was one thing (he found) to
talk about Jah, another to bring Jah to book. He had no other machinery
than that of the Labour Agitators, who had been making elaborate
preparations for a strike. Their preparations were excellent, but their
followers were reluctant. They could provide them with no adequate
motive. In vain did they talk of the dawn of Labour, the Rights of the
Worker, and a Place in the Sun; to all these the people preferred the
prospect of pay on Saturday. Nothing could stir them, until, at last,
at one of Mr. Bly’s meetings when he was being hailed as a leader and
implored to lead, and at his wit’s end what to do, upon a whisper from
behind, he said:
“Strike! Strike against Jah! You are workers! Why do you work? To feed
your children. Your children die. Strike, I say, strike while the
iron is hot, the iron that has entered into your souls from the cruel
tyranny of Jah! There is no other enemy. You have no other foe....”
He did not need to say more. The fat was in the fire.
XIII. SPARKS FLYING
The fat crackled and sputtered. In thirty-six hours the business of
the town was at a standstill, and by that time Mr. Bly had visited
three other towns, and they too succumbed to his passion. At every town
he visited he was welcomed with brass bands and red carpets, and his
orders were obeyed. The Labour Agitators of the neighbouring countries
desired his services and cabled for him, and he promised to go as soon
as Jah was driven out of Fatland.
The strikes were begun in feasting and merrymaking, and things were
done that delighted Mr. Nicodemus and the widow Martin’s heart:
“The men are becoming quite themselves again.”
And Mr. Nicodemus gazed upon it all and sighed:
“Ah! If only Hell were open!”
The widow Martin gazed upon him voluptuously and muttered:
“It would be just ’Eaven to keep that public you’re always talking
about for ever and ever with you.”
XIV: SMOULDERING
The strikers soon came to grips with want and the very poor were
brought to starvation. Only the more fiercely for that did their
passion glow. They forgot all about Mr. Bly and Jah: they were only
determined not to give in. They knew not wherefore they were fighting,
and were savagely resolved not to return to their old ways without some
palpable change. Forces and emotions had been stirred which led them to
look for a miracle, and without the miracle they preferred to die. The
miracle did not come and many of them died.
XV: SUCCOUR
With a moderate but assured income the Fattish are humane, that is to
say, they grope like shadows through life and shun the impenetrable
shadow of death. They shuddered to think of the very poor dying with
their eyes gazing forward for the miracle that never came, and they
said:
“To think of their finding no miracle but death! It is too horrible.
Can such things be in Fatland? Why don’t we do something?”
So they formed committees and wrote to the newspapers and started
various funds; and they invited Mr. Bly to lecture in aid of them.
He came to Bondon, lectured, and became the fashion. He discovered to
his amazement that there were rich people in Fatland, and these rich
people formed Anti-Jah societies. Enormous sums of money were collected
for the strikers, because the rich were so delighted to be amused. Mr.
Bly amused them enormously. Mr. Nicodemus gave a course of lectures
on the Kingdom from which Jah had deposed him, and Mrs. Martin held
meetings for women only, to expound her views of men. For years the
rich people had not been so vastly entertained, and they poured out
money for the strikers.
Unfortunately their subscriptions could buy little else for the very
poor but coffins, and of them the supply soon came to an end.
Famine and pestilence stalked abroad, but only the more fiercely
did Mr. Bly urge the destruction of Jah, and the more blindly and
desperately did the starving poor of Fatland look for the miracle.
But soon not only were the poor starving, but the comfortable, the
tradespeople, the professional classes, the humane persons with
moderate but assured incomes were faced with want. Rats were now five
shillings a brace, and a nest of baby mice was known to fetch four
shillings.
When the rich found their meals were costing them more than a pound a
head then they forgot their craze and Mr. Bly, and Mr. Nicodemus and
the widow Martin withdrew from Bondon. Mr. Bly was no longer reported
in the newspapers. His name had become offensive, the bloom had gone
from his novelty, the varnish from his reputation, and the sting out of
his power.
In all the towns gaunt spectre-like men began to sneak back to work,
and Mr. Bly was nigh frenzied with rage, disgust and despair.
“It is Jah!” he said. “It is Jah. He has crept into the hearts of men.
He has stirred their minds against me. Oh! my grief. He has used me to
bring men lower yet, so that they will live in viler dwellings, and eat
of fouler food, and be more meanly clad, more verminous than ever. The
women will be lower sluts and shrews than they have ever been, and of
their children it will be hard to see how they can ever grow into men
and women. Deeper and deeper into the pit has Jah brought us, and there
is now no hope.”
And in his agony he remembered how in his childhood he had been taught
to pray to Jah, and he knelt and prayed that he might come face to
face with Jah, to tell Him what He had done, and to implore Him to
make an end of His cruelty and to destroy all at once.
Hearing him pray Mr. Nicodemus fled from his side and left him alone
with the Widow Martin. Said she:
“Don’t take on so, dearie. A man’s no call to take on so when he has a
woman by his side. There’s nothing else in the nature of things, but
men and women only. If we starve, we starve: and if we die, we die,
it’s all one. Have done, I say, there’s always room for a bit o’ fun.”
“Fun!” cried Mr. Bly.
And the comfortable creature took his head to her bosom, and there he
sobbed out his grief.
XVI: ON THE ROAD
So the strike ended, and Nicholas Bly walked from town to town marking
its effects. It was as he had foreseen, and men were lower than before,
and every night he prayed that he might meet Jah to curse Him to His
face. For days on end he would utter never a word, but the widow Martin
stayed with him and saw that he ate and drank, stealing, begging,
wheedling, selling herself to get him food. She would say:
“It’s not like Mr. Nicodemus. There’s very little fun in him, but a
woman doesn’t care for fun when she’s sorry for a man.”
He was a grim sight now, was Nicholas Bly. His ragged clothes hung and
flapped on him as on a scarecrow. His cheeks were sunken and patched
with a dirty grey stubble. His eyes glared feverishly out of red
sockets, and they seemed to see nothing but to be asking for a sight
of something. There was a sort of film on them, but the light in the
man shone through it. His shoulders were bowed and his thin arms hung
limply by his side, but always his face was upturned, and he shook as
he walked, like a flame.
The malady in him drove him to the heights. His desire was to be near
the sky. Presently he forsook the towns and went from one range of
hills to another seeking the highest in Fatland.
At last after many days he reached the highest hill, and there he lay
flat on his face and would neither eat nor drink. By his side sat
the widow Martin, and she made certain that he was going to die, and
produced two pennies to lay upon his eyelids when death should come.
On the third day he turned over on his back and said:
“Jah is coming.”
And it was so.
Up the steep path came a man with a great beard and a huge nose and
eyes that twinkled with the light of merriment and shone with the
tenderness of irony, and blazed with the fire of genius. By his side
walked a slim dark figure, and with a joyful cry the widow Martin
declared it to be Mr. Nicodemus.
Nicholas Bly sat up and began to rehearse all the curses that in his
bitterness he had prepared.
XVII: JAH
He began:
“By the dead bodies of the children of men; by the plagues and diseases
of the bodies of women; by the festering----”
Very quietly Jah took His seat by his side and motioned to Mr.
Nicodemus to take up his position in front of them. In a voice of the
most musical sweetness and with a rich full diction He said:
“As we made the ascent I was expostulating with my friend here for
the absurdity of his attempt to reinstate himself in the world. There
is no Hell. Neither is there a Heaven. These places live by faith as
we have done. It is a little difficult for us to understand, but we
have no occasion for resentment. Separately it is impossible for us to
understand. My meeting with my dark friend here led me a little way on
the road towards a solution. The four of us may arrive at something.”
The widow Martin scanned Jah closely:
“You’ve been a fine man in your time.”
“I have never been a man,” replied Jah sadly. “Nor have I been able
to play my part in human affairs. Like my friend here I have been an
exile. I have been forced to dwell in the mists of superstition, even
as he has been confined in the dark depths of lust. Until now I never
understood our interdependence. I am the imagination of man. He is
man’s passion. Together we can bring about the release of love in his
soul. Separately we can do nothing to break his folly, his stupidity,
his brutality, his vain selfishness. Without us he can be inquisitive
and clever, vigorous and energetic, but he remains insensible, unjust,
cruel and cowardly.”
And Nicholas Bly roused himself and he seemed to grow, and the film
fell from his eyes and he cried:
“Blessed be Jah, blessed be Nicodemus, blessed be man and the heart of
man, blessed be woman and the love of woman, blessed be life, blessed
be death!”
So saying he rose to his feet. Before his face the sun was sinking in
the evening glory: behind him the moon rose.
XVIII: JAH SPEAKS
A great wind blew through Nicholas Bly’s hair and he bowed his head in
acceptance of the wonder of the universe.
As the moon rose to her zenith Jah said:
“There are Wonders beyond me and God is beyond imagination. My dwelling
is in the mind of men, but I have been driven therefrom. My friend here
should dwell in the heart of man, but he has been unseated. Together we
should win for man his due share of the world’s dominion and power, and
should be his sweetest stops in the instrument of life. For without us
is no joy, and with us joy is fierce. I speak, of the woman also, for
she is the equal of man and his comrade.”
And as the moon was sinking to the west Jah said:
“We have suffered too long, and we have brought forth nothing. Let us
no longer be separate, but let us, man, woman, God and Devil, join
together to bring forth joy, for until there is joy on earth there
shall not be justice, nor kindness, nor understanding, nor any good
thing. We are but one spirit, for the spirit is one, and none but the
undivided spirit can see the light of the sun.”
Even as he spoke the sun came up in his majesty, dwarfing the mighty
hills, and Nicholas Bly raised his head and saw Nicodemus in the
likeness of a lusty young man, fine and splendid in his desire, and Jah
in the shape of a winged boy. And as he saw them they disappeared, and
he said:
“They have vanished into the air.”
From the scarred hillside came an echo:
“Into the air.”
XIX: SONG
Then did Nicholas Bly sing:
“I have lived, I have loved, I have died,
And my spirit has burned like a flame;
In the furnace of life my soul has been tried,
I have dwindled to ashes of shame.
I have glowed to the winds of my own desire,
I have flickered and flared and roared,
Through the endless night has flashed my delight
To declare my joy in the Lord.
For the Lord is life and I am His,
And His are my shame and my pride.
My song is His: my Lord sings this:
I have lived, I have loved, I have died.”
XX: MORNING
Waking, the woman said:
“How is it with you, my man?”
He answered:
“I feel truly that I am a man.”
Gazing upon the woman, he saw that she was beautiful.
XXI: HOPE
They came down from the hills, and a mist descended upon them, and
presently a driving rain. They were glad of each other, and smiled
their joy upon all whom they met. Nicholas Bly never ceased to make
songs, and as he sang the woman laughed merrily. The songs he made he
sang to many men, but none would listen except the drunken man in the
public-houses.
One day a very drunken man asked Nicholas Bly to sing a song again, and
he refused, because he wished to sing a better song. The man offered
him a mug of beer to sing again, but he refused, saying:
“I do not sing for hire.”
The man despised him and drank the beer himself, saying:
“It’s a silly kind of sod will sing for nothing.”
And he would hear no more.
So it was everywhere. None could understand that Nicholas Bly should
sing for the delight of it or that there could be a joy to set him
singing. In the end, and that soon, his heart broke and he died, and
Fatland is as it is.
Mr. Nicodemus and Jah were never seen again, nor in Fatland is there
trace or memory of them.
But within the womb of the woman was the child of her man, so that she
gazed in upon herself with a great hope. In this she was so absorbed
that the insensibility of the Fattish moved her not at all and she
forgot to apply for her maternity benefit.
THE END OF
WINDMILLS
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.