The visit to the doctor was a great success, and Wimble left two guineas
on the marble mantelpiece without regret. Joan was growing rapidly in
mind and body, and mind and body should develop evenly if possible,
otherwise there must be unbalance somewhere. 'It's a nervous, restless
age we live in,' observed the physician; 'the mind is apt to take in too
much nourishment and shoot ahead much quicker than it did when _we_ were
young, Mr. Wimble, and unless the body is well cared for, the nervous
system cannot possibly keep even pace with the mass of instruction it
receives at every turn. The young it is wisest to consider as healthy
animals that need play, food, and rest in right proportions. Personally,
I prefer to see the mind develop a trifle late, rather than too early.'
He advised, therefore, play, rest, and ample nourishment. 'Half an hour's
rest in the afternoon, or better still, an hour,' he added, 'is an
excellent thing.' He looked at Joan searchingly, with both severity and
kindness, for he had that mixture of father and policeman which belongs
to most successful doctors. Joan felt a little guilty. She had not read
_Erewhon_, of course, yet was vaguely aware she had done something wrong.
To be obliged to see a doctor touched the sense of shame in her.
'The country's just the thing for you,' the specialist mentioned, ignoring
the two guineas that lay within the reach of his hand, 'the very place.'
And Wimble felt relieved as he went out. It was like a visit to the
police that had ended happily. Neither he nor Joan had been arrested, but
they had been told they must not do it again. He had paid a fine.
'Mother'll be very pleased with that,' he remarked, while Joan, glancing
up quickly, seemed glad it was over. 'It's the first time I've ever felt
ill,' she said. 'The moment I saw him I felt I ought to be ill.'
'Suggestion,' he mumbled. 'Never mind. Mother'll feel better now that
you've been. That's something.'
They walked happily down Seymour Street together. 'Don't skip, child.
It looks funny in a town. Besides, you're too big to skip.' She took a
slower pace to suit his slower little legs. But even so there were
springs in her feet, and her movements seemed to push the solid earth away
as though she wanted to rise. 'Flow, fly, flow,' she hummed, 'wherever I
am, I go.'
'I shouldn't hum in the street, dear, if I were you,' he chided.
People were staring, he noticed. 'It looks so odd. I mean it sounds
unusual.'
She turned her bright, happy eyes upon him. 'Daddy, that's the doctor,'
she warned him, 'you're saying "No" to everything.' She came close and
took his arm, whispering at the same time, 'I believe you're sorry about
the two guineas. You're trying to get your money's worth, as Tom calls
it,' and the shaft was so true it made him laugh.
They turned down into the great thoroughfare of Oxford Street.
It was brimmed with people, a river filled and running over.
They crossed it somehow, he rather like a bewildered rabbit, a step
forwards, a pause, a hesitating step backwards, a glance in both
directions that saw nothing accurately, and then a flurried run; Joan
catching his outstretched hand and pulling him against his will and better
judgment, while his little coat-tails flapped in the wind. They landed on
the curb, merged in the stream of pedestrians, bumped into some, collided
with others, and were swept round the swirling corner of the Circus into
the downhill torrent of Regent Street.
'Yet a bird,' he remembered, 'plunges headlong, at fifty miles an hour,
into a forest of branches, swaying possibly in a wind, avoided the
slightest collision, and with unerring and instant calculation
selects a twig and lands on it, balancing with perfect security on feet so
tiny they're not worth mentioning!' He felt clumsy and inferior.
What co-ordination of sight and muscle! What confidence!
What poise. . . . The throng of awkward, crawling, heavy-footed humans
sprawled in all directions; he was one of them, one of the least steady
too. And yet he was aware of something in himself that did not shake and
wobble, something secure and balanced, something that went gliding with
swift and certain safety. He noted the easy grace of Joan passing the
shop windows like a nut-hatch along a twig, half dancing and half flitting
on her toes. It was not a physical thing he felt. It was not that.
It was a quality--a careless, exquisite balance in herself. It entered
him too as he watched her. His soul rested securely amid the turmoil by
means of it. It was poise.
His thoughts ran on. . . .
'Look, Daddy,' Joan interrupted him. 'Here's a funny sign. What does it
mean? Let's go in.'
He drew up beside her, a trifle breathless. They were in a side street,
the main stream of people pouring away at right angles now, bathed in the
autumn sunshine.
'Look,' she repeated. 'Wings.' She pointed to a brass plate
advertisement in a little hall-way. 'Isn't it funny?' He read the sign
in neat black letters against the shining metal: 'Aquarian Society,
Membership Free,' and wondered what it meant. Ruins and battered objects
of the past occurred to him, for at first he connected the word with
'antiquarian.' Above them, black tipped with gold, were a pair of
outspread wings, the badge of the Society apparently. In brackets was
'First Floor,' and a piece of paper pasted below bore a notice:
'Meeting Daily from 11.30 to 1. All welcome.'
'Let's go up, Daddy,' Joan said again. 'There's a meeting going on now,
and it's free. What does it mean? Something about birds----'
'Water birds, probably,' he said, still puzzling about the strange word;
'_old_ water birds apparently,' he added, combining both possible
derivations; 'perhaps a society to preserve old water birds and provide
artificial paddles when their webbed feet wear out.'
They laughed at the idea, but their laughter hushed as a couple of ladies,
beautifully dressed and with what is called refined, distinguished
bearing, brushed past them and went upstairs, evidently going to the
meeting. Though they were unknown to him, and it was obvious, in his
black tail-coat and brown boots, that he was a commercial traveller of
sorts, they bowed with a pleasant little smile of polite apology for
pushing past. 'A duchess and her daughter at least! Old families
certainly!' he thought; 'yet they treated us as equals!' It startled him,
it was so un-English. He raised his hat and smiled. In their manner and
the expression of face he caught something new, a kindness, a sympathy, a
touch of light perhaps, something at any rate quick and alert and gentle
that brought the word 'sympathy' intuitively across his mind. He held his
hat in his hand a moment. 'They've got air in them,' flashed into him.
'I wonder if they're members.'
'Your head's in a draught, Daddy,' said Joan. He put his hat on. A scrap
of conversation reached them from the stairs: 'I'd rather sit well at the
back, I think,' said the younger of the two.
'We shall have to, probably,' was the reply; 'it's always full.
And remember--just keep an open mind and listen. The quackery doesn't
matter, nor the grammar. He was only a railway guard'--then something
inaudible as they turned the corner--'his idea of a New Age is true
somewhere, I'm positive. It was the speed of the train, you know--always
rushing through space--that made him . . .' And the voices died away.
'Come, Joan, we'll go in too. What are you dawdling about for?' exclaimed
Wimble on the spur of the moment. Something in that interrupted sentence
caught him.
'You, Daddy,' she said, as she tripped after him up the stairs.
People were standing in the corridor and in the little hall; the room
beyond, where a heavily-moustached man, with an eager, soap-polished face,
cheerful expression, and bright earnest eyes, stood lecturing, was full.
The two ladies who had preceded them were sitting on a window-sill.
'I'm afraid there are no seats left,' whispered a pleasant, earnest woman
beside the door, 'but I've sent for some chairs. They'll be here
presently. I hope you'll hear something out here.' Wimble thanked her
with a nod and smile; he leaned against the wall with Joan and looked
about him.
Some thirty people were crowded into the small inner room, three-quarters
of their number women, what are called 'nice' women. They were well
dressed; there was a rustle of silk, a faint atmosphere of perfume, and
fur, and soft expensive garments; young and old, he saw, a good many of
them in mourning. The men looked, generally speaking, like well-to-do
business men; he noticed one clergyman; a few were shabbily dressed; one
or two were workmen, mechanics possibly. There was an alert attention on
most of the faces, and in the air a kind of eager expectancy, serious,
watchful, yearning, and waiting to be satisfied; sympathetic, it seemed,
on the whole, rather than critical. One or two listeners looked vexed and
scowling, and a tall, thin-visaged man in the corner was almost angry.
But as a whole he got the impression of people just listening patiently,
people for the most part empty, hungry, wondering if what they heard might
fill them. He was aware of minds on tiptoe. Here, evidently, he judged,
was a group of enquiring folk following a new Movement. 'One of the Signs
of what's in the air To-day,' he thought. 'Five years ago these people
would have been in Church, convinced they were miserable sinners with no
good in them. That mechanic-looking fellow would have been in Chapel.
That portly man with the stolid face, wearing a black tail-coat, a low
collar, a heavy gold watch-chain and a black and white striped tie surely
took round the plate in Kensington.' The thin-faced angry man was merely
a professional iconoclast.
He wondered. He thought a moment of the unimaginative English standing
about the island in hordes, marvellously reliable, marvellously brave,
with big, deep hearts, but childishly unobservant, conservative,
conventional, not to be moved till the fire burns the soles of their feet,
sturdy and unemotional, and constitutionally suspicious of all new things.
He saw these hordes, strong in their great earth-qualities, ballast of the
world, but at the same time world-rulers. . . . And then his thought
flashed back with a snap to the scene before him. What was this group
after? Why was it dissatisfied? Why had it turned from the ancient
shibboleths? Something, of course, was up. He wondered. These people
looked so earnest. This Aquarian Society, he knew, was one of a hundred,
a thousand others. It might be rubbish, it might contain a true idea, it
was sure to prove exaggerated. The people, however, were enquiring.
He glanced at Joan, but her eyes were fixed intently upon the speaker's
face--the face of a former railway guard whose familiarity with speed
(certainly not on _his_ own crawling line, thought Wimble!), with rushing
transit from scene to scene through the air, had opened his mind to some
new idea or other.
'I wonder if he sang "Wherever I am, I go!"' he whispered to Joan.
'He ought to, anyhow!' But Joan was too intent to hear him.
He swallowed his smile and listened. The speaker's rough, uncultivated
voice rang with sincerity. There was a glow about his face that only deep
conviction brings. To Wimble, however, it all sounded at the moment as if
he had fallen out of his Express Train and picked up his ideas as he
picked up himself.
For at first he could not understand a single word, as though,
coming out of the busy human street, he had plunged neck-deep into a
stream of ideas that took his breath away. Having missed what had gone
before, he could not catch the drift of what he heard. Then gradually,
and by degrees, his listening mind fell into the rhythm of the minds about
him; he slipped into the mood of the meeting; his intelligence merged with
the collective intelligence of the others; he merged with the
group-consciousness of the little crowd. The hostile interjections had no
meaning for him, since those who made them, not being included in the
group-consciousness, spoke an unintelligible language.
The speaker was very much in earnest evidently; he believed what he was
saying, at the moment anyhow. Possibly this belief was permanent;
possibly it was merely self-persuasion. Though obviously he expected
hostile comment from time to time, when it came--usually from the
iconoclast in the corner--he rarely replied to it. This method of
ignoring criticism was not only easier than answering it, it induced an
appearance of contemptuous superiority that increased his authority.
Wimble and his daughter had come in at a happy moment, for the long
stretch of argument and explanation was just over, it seemed, and a
summing up was about to begin.
'So where are we, then, with it all?' asked the lecturer.
'Where 'ave we got to? Where do we stand?'
He paused, and into the pause fell the angry voice of the thin-faced man:
'Exactly where we started. You haven't stated one single fact as yet.'
The speaker looked straight in front of him without a word, and the
audience, almost to an individual, ignored the criticism. They supported
the lecturer loyally, to the point at least of not even turning their
heads away. They stared patiently and waited.
'Where 'ave we got to,' repeated the man on the platform, 'that's wot we
want to know, isn't it? After all we've listened to this morning, 'ow do
we stand about it?'
'That's it exactly,' from the interrupter in a contemptuous but intense
tone of voice. He seemed annoyed that no one was intelligent enough to
support him. At a Society of Rationalist Control across the road he would
have been at home. He, too, was a seeker, and a very earnest one, only he
had tumbled into the wrong group. Across the road he might have been
constructive; here he was destructive merely.
'Well, on the physical plane,' resumed the speaker, 'on wot I might call
the scientific and materialistic plane, as I've tried to show you, the
'ole trend of modern civilisation is towards speed and universality.
That's clear--at least I 'ope I've made it so. Air, and wot air
represents, shows itself in the physical plane like that. Distant
countries are getting all linked up everywhere--by wireless, by motor, by
aviation, by cinematograph, and the like. A kind of telepathy all over
the world is--' he hesitated an instant--'engendered.'
'Go on,' from the critic, 'any word will do as well.'
'That's the scientific side of the business, as it were,' he went on, 'the
practical, everyday aspect we can all understand. It's the universality
of the new element, air, as it affects the practical mind, so to speak;
the technical understanding and mastery or space--wot I called aether a
little while ago, as you'll remember--or, as the Aquarian Society prefers
to call it, as being simpler and shorter--air.'
'Well,' he added, 'we now want to see 'ow we stand with regard to the
'igher side of life, the mental, spiritual aspect. Wot does this new Age,
in which air is the key--the symbol like--wot does it mean to the race on
_that_ side?'
'Gas,' interjected the other, but in a lower voice.
From several books lying beside the water-bottle the lecturer selected
one. He adjusted a pair of heavy reading-glasses to his eyes.
'The link between the two is better expressed than wot I can express it,'
he resumed quickly, 'in this little volume, _The New Science of Colour_--
and colour means light, remember, and light means aether, and aether means
space, universality--so it's all the same.'
'Every bit of it,' came the contemptuous comment from the corner.
'Just this short paragraph--I came across it by chance--except that there
reely is no chance at all--and it puts it well. It supplies the link.
So I'll read it.' He heavily emphasised certain words:
'We are approaching an age of mental telepathy, in which the _organism of
the race_ is about to become attuned to the second sense of the earth and
to the third element that sustains her--_i.e. air_--and in which our
action and our outlook will alike assume the characteristics of that
element, which are _elasticity and brilliance_.'
He laid down the book, slowly removing the heavy glasses from his nose,
and while 'that's no proof was heard to snap from the corner, the other
repeated with emphasis of manner, yet lowering his voice at the same time:
'the organism of the race--becoming attuned to _air_--elasticity and
brilliance.'
Fingering his glasses and looking very thoughtful, the speaker kept
silence for a minute or so. He drank a few sips of water slowly, while
everybody, even the interjector, waited, and those who had been staring at
him turned their eyes away from his face, as though embarrassed to watch
him drink. He produced a big handkerchief from his coat-tail pocket,
wiped his lips, and replaced the handkerchief with some difficulty whence
it came. The pause lengthened, but no one stirred. Then the
earnest-faced woman near the door touched Wimble on the arm and indicated
an empty chair, but Wimble, too absorbed in the proceedings, shook his
head impatiently. Joan slipped into it. Joan, he noticed, did not seem
interested; the keen attention she had shown at first had left her face,
she looked half bewildered and half bored. 'She's too much in it to need
explanation,' flashed across him.
The slight shuffling warned the lecturer that the mind of his audience
needed holding lest it begin to wander. Picking up a sheet of paper
covered with notes, he advanced to the edge of the little platform and
cleared his throat.
'As I've been trying to explain,' he began, ''umanity has now reached a
crushial moment in its development. The planet we live on belongs to the
sun, and the sun has just entered--in 1881, to be igsact,--the sign of
Aquarius. Aquarius, according to the old Chaldean system, is wot's called
an Air Sign, and the new powers waking in us all--coming down into our
world now--will be ruled by the element of air. The Age of Pisces, a
Water Sign, is just finished and done with. We are entering another
period. A new Age is beginning--the Age of Air.' And he glanced about
him as though to catch any evidence of challenge.
'What is an Age?' asked a thin voice from the rear. It was not hostile,
and heads were turned to find the questioner, but without success.
'An accomplice,' muttered the habitual interrupter to himself.
No one noticed the comment, and Wimble, now completely captured by the
collective sympathy, even wondered what he meant.
'I'll tell you,' continued the lecturer, and referred to the sheet of
notes in his hand. 'I'll tell you again with pleasure.'
He emphasised the word 'again.' The glasses were readjusted. With a
certain air of mystery, as though he knew far more than he cared to
impart, he read aloud, emphasising frequent passages as his habit was, and
making here and there effective and semi-theatrical pauses. Behind this
cheapness, however, burned obviously a deep sincerity and belief. He
deemed himself a prophet, and he knew a prophet's proverbial fate.
'Astronomers tell us that our sun and his fam'ly of planets revolve around
a central sun, which is millions of miles distant,' he read slowly, 'and
that it requires about 26,000 years to make one revolution.'
Remembering one of his most successful Primers, Wimble sat forward on his
chair, all eagerness. Here was what the critic called a 'fact' at any
rate.
'This orbit is called the Zodiac,' continued the other, 'and it is divided
into twelve signs.' He mentioned them, beginning with Aries and Taurus,
and ending with Aquarius and Pisces. 'Now, you asked what is an Age,
didn't you?' He paused a second. 'Well, our solar system takes a bit
over 2000 years to pass through each of these Signs, and this time is the
measurement of an Age. And with each Age certain new things 'appen.'
He made this announcement with a certain mysterious significance.
'Certain things 'appen to the planet and to us as lives on it. Certain
changes come. They're sure as summer and winter is sure--that is, you can
count on them. Those who know can count on them--prophets and people with
inner vision. There you get prophecy and the meaning of prophecy.
Vision!' And without a vision the people perish--miss their chances, that
is. The seers, the mystics, always know and see ahead, and this end of
the Age--and of the world as it's sometimes called stupidly--has been
prophesied by many.'
The audience was on tiptoe with anticipation. Each individual possibly
hoped that certain personal peculiarities of his own were going to be
explained, made wonderful. Wimble was particularly aware of this
excitement; it dawned upon him that he was about to receive an
explanation, and a semi-scientific explanation too, of his own strange
ideas and feelings. He glanced across at Joan. She seemed, to his
amazement, asleep; her eyes were closed, at any rate; her attention was
not held. He wanted to poke her. He wanted to say 'I told you so,' or
rather 'You told me so.' But the speaker had ended his pause, and, to
Wimble's delight, was explaining that this movement of the sun passes
through the Zodiacal Signs in reverse order--'precession of the
equinoxes,' as it is called--Pisces therefore preceding Aquarius instead
of following it. Here was another 'fact' that his Knowledge Primer
justified.
The personal anticipation in the audience was not immediately satisfied,
however. The speaker intensified it first by a slight delay. Aware that
he held the minds before him, he took his time.
'Now, these Signs'--lifting his eyes from the sheet of paper and fixing
them upon a woman in the front row, who at once showed nervousness, as
though she would believe black was white, if only he would stare at some
one else--' these Signs ain't just dead things. They reveal and express
and convey intelligent life. They're immense intelligences, they're
Zodiacal Intelligences. That's wot they are. The 'ole universe,
remember, is alive, and you and I ain't the only living beings in it, nor
the 'ighest either. We're not the only _bodies_. No one can say wot
constitoots a body, a living body, nor define it. Our planet is a
tuppeny-'alfpenny affair compared to the others, and we're nothing but a
lot of hinsects like ants and so forth on it. But if the 'ole universe is
alive--and we know it is----'
'Hanwell,' interrupted the angry man.
'----each and every part of it must be alive too. And you can't leave out
the planets, stars, and suns, the most magnificent bodies, called the
'eavenly bodies, as you know. They're all living bodies. They're the
bodies of beings, living beings, but beings far higher than wot we are.
And the Zodiacal Signs are 'igher still. They represent functions of the
universe, as the ancients knew quite well. They're a kind of intelligence
we may call per'aps a Group Intelligence.'
Again he paused a moment. Then, as no interruption came, he went on with
greater emphasis than before:
'Now, each of these Zodiacal Intelligences--as the sun, with our little
earth alongside, passes through it--rules over its partickler period.
With every period we enter a new current of forces. Each period,
therefore, of about 2000 years has new Gods, new characteristics, new
types of 'uman beings with new tendencies and powers and possibilities in
them--a new point of view, if you like to call it so, or, as we Aquarians
call it, a new consciousness. Well, the Aquarius Sign just beginning, is
an Air Sign. We're getting our new powers, our new point of view and
hattitude, our new consciousness--from the air.'
In his excitement and deep belief the word 'air' was dangerously near
'hair,' but no one smiled. Perhaps even the critic experienced similar
difficulties in his home circle that prevented his noticing it, or caring
to take advantage of it if he did.
'I've already referred,' the speaker continued, 'to its effect on the
physical plane, new inventions and the like, and 'ow men now navigate the
air as fish do the sea, and send their thoughts spinning round the world
with the speed of lightning. That's easy enough. I mean, you can all see
it for yourselves. The areoplane's a fac' nobody can't get away from,
whichever way you take it. But the effect on the spiritual plane is not
so simple. It's not so easy to describe--far from it, I admit. When a
new mode of consciousness begins to hoperate in men and women, they find
difficulty in expressing it. They're puzzled a bit. They don't know
where they are with it quite. Those 'oo get it first are called quacks
and charlituns, and maybe swindlers too. The slower ones regard them with
suspicion, and they may think themselves lucky if they 'ain't stoned or
burned alive or crucified as they once was.'
He smiled, and the audience smiled deprecating with him.
'And the chief reason for their difficulty,' he went on, 'is simply this:
They 'aven't got the language. Nor the words. That's it. The words
describe the experiences of a new type of consciousness don't exist at
first. They come later, slowly, gradually. They evolve as the new powers
in the race evolve.'
He took his glasses off and wiped them carefully.
'So wot's the result?' he asked. 'Why, this. There's only _feeling_
left. The people that first get the new consciousness feel it in them.
But they can't prove it to others because their power is small. And they
can't explain it in words, because the words don't exist. So there you
are. Only the truth is there too jest the same.'
The challenge in his tone was unmistakable, but no one took it up.
The critic was making notes on his cuff and probably had not heard it.
Some one coughed, however, and feet shuffled here and there.
'_I_ know it's true, and some of you 'ere in front of me know it's true,'
the speaker resumed quickly, his eyes alight and intense conviction in his
tone and manner, 'but we can't do more at first than _feel_ it and be
glad. All we can do is to show it in our lives. We can live it. We can
feel the joy and speed and lightness of the air, and we can live it, show
it. We can express it that way, leaving the words to follow in good time.
And that's a lot, for example guides the world.'
A murmur of applause greeted the emphatic statement, and Wimble, for one,
was tempted to rise on his toes with waving hands and give his confession
of faith in no uncertain voice. This railway guard, half quack, half
prophet, this man of the people whose knowledge was as faulty as his
grammar, had offered the first explanation he had yet heard of his own
strange attitude to life and of his experiences since boyhood. This man,
similarly, had caught his secret from the air. His exposition might be as
exaggerated and wild as the critic suggested, yet it was somewhere true,
he felt. The man, owing to his very ignorance perchance, had caught at
the skirts of a new and mighty truth that in a century would have become a
commonplace, but that at the present moment caused others with better
education than himself to talk of Hanwell. Wimble felt this excitement in
him--to get up before them all and say that he, too, had felt and tried to
live this light, new, swift and spontaneous airy consciousness.
The impulse, the generous desire to help, caught at him. Another minute
and he might have been on his toes, bearing stammering witness to the
truth that was in him. The lecturer himself, however, prevented.
'We stand to-day,' he said, using his notes again, 'upon the cusp of the
Aquarian Age. The Piscean Age lies behind us. The Zodiacal Intelligences
of that Piscean Age were watery powers and water was its keynote and its
symbol. It was the Age of Jesus. Now, listen, please, listen closely,
for 'istory bears me out.'
He moved nearer to the edge of the platform, and heads were craned forward
to lose no word.
'The sun,' he said, in a lowered tone, 'entered the sign of Taurus in the
days of our pre'istoric Adam. That was the Taurian Age. Next came the
Arian Age--about the time that Abra'am lived, and with Aries the ram
replaced the bull. With the rise of the Roman Empire the sun entered the
sign of Pisces, and the Piscean Age began. It took the fish for its
symbol. That was the Christian Dispensation with its new outlook and
attitude, its new powers, its new type of consciousness. Jesus introduced
water baptism, and water became the symbol of purification. It was a
watery sign, as I told you. While it lasted, as you'll notice--the last
2000 years--this Piscean Age, with a fish for its symbol, 'as certainly
been one of water, and the many uses of that element 'ave been emphasised,
and sea and lake and river navigation have been brought to a 'igh degree
of efficiency.'
He waited for the impression this was bound to produce. It was evidenced
by deep silence, broken only by the rustle of paper and soft garments.
'Jesus Himself referred to the beginning of this Aquarian Age in these
words,' he continued solemnly and reverently, 'as you'll find in one of
Wisdom Books they don't include in our own Bible:
'And then the man who bears the pitcher will walk forth across an
arc of 'eaven; the sign and signet of the Son of Man will stand
forth in the Eastern sky. The wise will then lift up their
heads and know that the redemption of the earth is near.'
He paused significantly. Then he added, his hands raised aloft and his
eyes turned toward the ceiling:
'We're already in it, the new Dispensation, the New Age--air.'
'Compressed air,' added the critic, after his long silence.
'Bravo! bravo!' exclaimed Wimble, unable to suppress himself.
'But surely a new Age can only begin in each person individually, and not
in any other sense,' put in the thin voice that had spoken once before.
Unperturbed, the speaker repeated with deep emphasis, his eyes and hands
still raised aloft:
'And air means spiritual. The Aquarian Age is pre-eminently a spiritual
age; and its meaning may now be apprehended by multitudes of people,
'ungry for truth, who will now come--are already coming--into an advanced
spiritual consciousness. Our air-bodies is being quickened.'
The last few words seemed to produce a strange effect upon the chief
critic. Apparently they enraged him. He fidgeted, half rising from his
chair as though about to make a violent speech in reply. In the end,
however, he did nothing beyond shrugging his shoulders, with a muttered
'Consciousness indeed! Why, you don't even know the meaning of the word!'
He leaned back in his seat, unwilling to stay, yet too annoyed to leave;
he resigned himself, keeping his great onslaught perhaps for the close of
the meeting. Then, suddenly changing his mind, he leaped to his feet.
But the lecturer was before him. In a ringing voice that held his
audience and drowned the interruption, he dominated the room.
He was about to satisfy the anticipation raised some ten minutes earlier.
He took his listeners into his confidence.
'Now, ladies and gentlemen,' he cried, 'or brothers and sisters, as I'd
prefer to call you if you've no objection, wot is it we Aquarians means
when we talk of air, when we speak of air as the sign of the New Age? We
call it spiritual. Wot do we reely mean by that? 'Ow can we show it in
our lives? Let us come down to plain words, the language of the street.'
There was again a rustle, as pencils and paper were prepared anew for
taking notes.
'It means this--to put it quite plainly, simply: It means living lightly,
carelessly, spontaneously, as a bird does, so to speak, 'oose 'ome is air
and 'oo works 'ard without taking too much thought. It means living by
faith and that means--' he uttered the next words with great emphasis--
'living by the subconsciousness--by intuition.'
'A bird's heart,' he cried, 'lies in the centre of its body. _We_ must
live from the centre too.
'That's the secret, and that's the first sign that you're getting it.
There you get the first 'int of this new Aquarian Age, and from the
moment we entered it--not so long ago, forty years or so--this idea of the
Subconsciousness 'as showed itself as the key-word of the day.
It's everywhere already. Even the scientific men 'as got it. Bergson
began with 'is intuition, and professors like Frood of Vienna and Young of
Zurich caught on like lightning. William James too, and a 'undred others.
Why, it's got down into our poietry and novels, and even the pore old
dying pulpits 'ave a smack at it just to try and keep their heads above
water.
'To live by your subconscious knowledge, instead of by your slow old
calculating reason, means a new, airy way of living. And it's spiritual,
I say, because it stands for the beginning of a new knowledge and
understanding, and therefore a new sympathy with each other. With
everybody! All sorts of powers lie in our subconsciousness, powers of the
'ole race, powers forgotten and powers to come, and it's in touch with
greater powers still that so far 'ave been beyond us as a race. All
knowledge 'ides there--God.
'And if you rely upon it, it will guide you--and guide you quickly,
surely, in a flash. Nor you won't go wrong either, for in your
subconsciousness you touch everybody else; we all join on down
there--within--and that's where the Kingdom of 'eaven lies--and if you
rely upon the Kingdom of 'eaven it will guide you right. We all touch
'ands if you go deep enough, and that means brotherhood, don't it? For it
means sympathy, understanding, love. The 'ottentot's your neighbour.'
He stepped back, squaring his shoulders and drawing a deep breath as he
surveyed his audience.
'Well, it's only just beginning. Some of us, many of us likely, don't
know about it yet, don't _feel_ it. We're only ankle-deep as yet. And
those 'oo ain't aware of this great subconscious life, no amount of
argument or explanation won't put it into them. A new Age touches
individuals first, one 'ere, one there. The end of the world, as some
call it, 'appens to each heart alone, as somebody said just now. But
it'll come to all in the end. It's coming now. We're in Aquarius, and
sooner or later we'll _all_ get into the air and know it. And the new
inventions, the new tricks everywhere, as I told you, are paving the way
already on the physical plane so that even the hintellectuals and
materialists are bound to feel its bigger side before long.
'Air! Why, think of it, and wot a lovely symbol it is! It's everywhere.
It flows. Nothing belonging to the sky is stationary. It all moves.
Light grows and wanes, wind falls and rises, clouds, birds pass rapidly
across it. It 'as nothing rigid about it anywhere. Breath is the first
sign of life in your body when you're born, and the breath of the spirit
is the first sign of life in your soul when you are born again. And the
bird, remember, the natural in'abitant of air, 'as its heart in the centre
of its body!
'The subconscious powers, the subconscious life--yes, that's the secret.
To rely upon it, live and act by it, means to act with the 'ole world at
once and know the 'appiness of brother'ood and love. It means to lose
yourself--your little conscious, surface, limited self--in the bigger
ocean of the air. 'Itherto it's been called living by faith and prayer.
That's all right enough, but it ain't enough. That means touching the
subconscious at moments only. We want to touch it always and every
minute. In this new Aquarian Age it will be at our fingers' ends, so to
speak. The "sub" will disappear. The subconscious will become the
conscious. We shall know everything, and everything at once; we shall be
everywhere, and everywhere at once.' He raised his voice. 'We shall be
ONE, and know that we are ONE. We shall 'ave spiritual consciousness.'
The noise of an overturned chair was heard. Outside the shrill blast of
distant factory whistles suggested lunch and food. The critic, pushing
hastily past the hushed sitters near him, made his way to the door.
As he reached the passage he turned. 'That's the best recipe for hysteria
I ever heard,' he cried back, 'and the sooner you're safe in Hanwell, the
better for the world!'--and vanished.
It was an abrupt and violent interruption, but yet it startled no one; the
thread of interest was not broken; a few heads turned to look, and then
faced towards the lecturer again. A general sigh was heard, expressive of
relief. The audience settled itself more comfortably, and a deeper
concentration of interest was felt at once. The removal of the hostile
element produced an immediate increase of attentive earnestness.
It showed first in the lecturer's face; his eyes grew fixed and steady,
his manner more confident, more impressive, and his tone of voice had a
more authoritative ring than before.
He leaned forward with an air of mysterious intimacy, as though about to
share a secret knowledge he had not dared to divulge before a scoffer.
There was a booming note about his voice that thrilled. The charlatan
that hides in every human soul slipped out, unconsciously perhaps but
unmistakably. It was this, possibly, that affected Wimble as he watched
and waited, so eagerly attentive; or, possibly, it was some uncanny
anticipation of what he was about to hear. An emotion, at any rate, and
one shared by others in the small packed room, rose suddenly in his soul.
A little shiver ran down his spine, he shuddered, as once before he had
shuddered in Maida Vale.
'Before we close this little meeting,' the deep voice rang, 'and before
you go your way and I go mine, per'aps not to come across each other's
path again for a tidy while--I want to just say this. It's as well we
all should know it, so as we are prepared.'
He fixed his glowing eyes on one of his audience--on Wimble, it so
happened--and went on slowly, choosing his words with care and uttering
them with a conviction that was not without its impressiveness:
'I want to warn you all, to give you this little word of warning. For I'm
led to believe--in fact, I may say it's been given me--that a dying Age--
don't die without an effort. An expiring Age, so to say, seeks to prolong
its life. With the result that, just before it passes, its
characteristics is first intensified. The Powers that have ruled over us
for 2000 years make themselves felt with extra strength; and these Powers,
seeing that their time is past, are no longer right. They're no longer
what we need. Good and right in their time, they now seem wrong, and out
of place. They're evil. We see them as evil, any'ow, though they make
for good in another way. I don't know if you foller me. Wot I mean is
that, when an old Age is passing and a new Age coming to birth--there's
conflict.'
There was a renewed rustling, as this sentence was written down on many
half-sheets that had so far been blank. But Wimble had no need to make a
note of it. He remembered that walk down Maida Vale of several months
before, and again the singular shudder passed like a little wind of ice
along his nerves.
'Conflict means trouble,' continued the speaker amid a solemn hush,
'and nothing big ever comes to birth without labour and travail and pain.
We must expect this pain and travail, and be ready for it. A new 'eaven
and a new earth will come, but they won't come easily. They will be
preceded by a mighty effort of the old ones to keep going a bit longer
first. A 'uge up'eaval, physically and spiritually, will take place
first--on the earth, that is, as well as in our 'earts--before we all get
caught up to meet the Lord in the air.'
His sentences grew slower and more emphatic, more charged with conviction
and with warning. He made privileged communications. There were pauses
between his utterances:
'I warn you, I prepare you, so that when it comes you will be ready and
prepared--not for yourselves, mind, but so as you may 'elp others wot
won't quite realise quite wot it all means.
'For there'll be _sacrifice_ as well.
'There's always a sacrifice when a New Age catches 'old of our old earth,
and our old earth will shake and tremble in the re-making, and some of us
will shake and tremble too. You'll feel, maybe, that shudder in advance
and know what it means. Signs and wonders, men's 'earts failing them for
fear, and the instability of all solid things.
'There will be _death_.
'Death takes its 'undreds, aye, its thousands at a time like that, and
many--the best and finest usually--go out before their time, as it seems.
But--mark this--they go out--to _h_elp!
'There comes in the sacrifice.
'They'll be taken off to 'elp, taken into the air, but taken away from
those they leave be'ind.'
His tone grew lower, and a deeper hush passed over the little crowd before
him. There was dull fire in his eyes. An atmosphere of the prophet
clothed him.
'It's just there,' he emphasised, 'that we--we who know--can 'elp.
'For we know that death is nothing more nor less than slipping back into
your own subconsciousness, and so becoming greater and finer and more
active--more useful, too, and with grander powers--than we ever 'ad in our
limited, imperfect bodies. And we know that this separate life, ended at
death, is nothing but an episode in our universal life which death can
never put an end to because it is imperishable. We are part of the
universe, not of this little planet alone.
'There'll be mourning, but we can 'elp dry their tears; there'll be
terror, but we can take their fear away; there'll be loneliness, but we
can show them--show 'em by the way we live--that there'll be reunion
better than before. We all meet in the sub-consciousness, and know each
other face to face. For it means reunion in the air, which is everywhere
at once and universal, and stands for that denial of space and time--that
spiritual haffirmation--we Aquarians call NOW.'
He held out his hands as in blessing over the intently listening and
expectant throng. Gazing above their heads into space, he appeared to
concentrate his thoughts a moment. Then his face lightened, as though his
mental effort had succeeded.
'After every meeting,' he then went on, but this time in a conversational
tone, as friend to friend, the prophet and his flock put aside, 'it is our
custom, as you know, to find a carrying-away Sentence. Something you can
take away and remember easily. Something that sums up all we've talked
about together. Something to keep in your minds and think about every
minute of the day until we meet again. Something you can try to live in
your daily lives.'
He waited a moment to ensure that all listened closely.
'The sentence I've chosen this time will 'elp you to remember all we've
said to-day. It's a symbol that includes the 'ole promise of the air
that's so soon to be fulfilled in us.
'I'll now give it out--if yer all ready.'
The expectant, eager, attentive faces were a convincing proof that all
were ready and listening attentively.
With a happy and confiding smile, the speaker then pronounced the
carrying-away sentence:
'The 'eart of a bird lies in the _centre_ of its body.'