_The 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.’
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 few which
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 and earnestly, 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 its
advertisement columns alone it was only beaten by that most popular of
all ladies’ journals _The Toilet Table_. And even _The Toilet Table_ in
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, in _The 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--that is 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 access of 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 the divine 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
the _clou_ to 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 the world 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, what more 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 affairs which 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.