The Burning Spear: Being the Experiences of Mr. John Lavender in the Time of War

XVI
FIGHTS THE FIGHT OF FAITH

The strenuous experiences through which Mr. Lavender had passed resulted in what Joe Petty called “a fair knock-out,” and he was forced to spend three days in the seclusion of his bed, deprived of his newspapers. He instructed Mrs. Petty, however, on no account to destroy or mislay any journal, but to keep them in a pile in his study. This she did, for though her first impulse was to light the kitchen fire with the five of them every morning, deliberate reflection convinced her that twenty journals read at one sitting would produce on him a more soporific effect than if he came down to a mere five.

Mr. Lavender passed his three days, therefore, in perfect repose, feeding Blink, staring at the ceiling, and conversing with Joe. An uneasy sense that he had been lacking in restraint caused his mind to dwell on life as seen by the monthly rather than the daily papers, and to hold with his chauffeur discussions of a somewhat philosophical character.

“As regards the government of this country, Joe,” he said, on the last evening of his retirement, “who do you consider really rules? For it is largely on this that our future must depend.”

“Can’t say, sir,” answered Joe, “unless it’s Botty.”

“I do not know whom or what you signify by that word,” replied Mr. Lavender; “I am wondering if it is the People who rule.”

“The People!” replied Joe; “the People’s like a gent in a lunatic asylum, allowed to ‘ave instinks but not to express ‘em. One day it’ll get aht, and we shall all step lively.”

“It is, perhaps, Public Opinion,” continued Mr. Lavender to himself, “as expressed in the Press.”

“Not it,” said Joe, “the nearest opinion the Press gets to expressin’ is that of Mayors. ‘Ave you never noticed, sir, that when the Press is ‘ard up for support of an opinion that the public don’t ‘old, they go to the Mayors, and get ‘em in two columns?”

“Mayors are most valuable public men,” said Mr. Lavender.

“I’ve nothin’ against ‘em,” replied Joe; “very average lot in their walk of life; but they ain’t the People.”

Mr. Lavender sighed. “What, then, is the People, Joe?”

“I am,” replied Joe; “I’ve got no opinions on anything except that I want to live a quiet life – just enough beer and ‘baccy, short hours, and no worry.”

“‘If you compare that with the aspirations of Mayors you will see how sordid such a standard is,” said Mr. Lavender, gravely.

“Sordid it may be, sir,” replied Joe; “but there’s, a thing abaht it you ‘aven’t noticed. I don’t want to sacrifice nobody to satisfy my aspirations. Why? Because I’ve got none. That’s priceless. Take the Press, take Parlyment, take Mayors – all mad on aspirations. Now it’s Free Trade, now it’s Imperialism; now it’s Liberty in Europe; now it’s Slavery in Ireland; now it’s sacrifice of the last man an’ the last dollar. You never can tell what aspiration’ll get ‘em next. And the ‘ole point of an aspiration is the sacrifice of someone else. Don’t you make a mistake, sir. I defy you to make a public speech which ‘asn’t got that at the bottom of it.”

“We are wandering from the point, Joe,” returned Mr. Lavender. “Who is it that governs, the country?”

“A Unseen Power,” replied Joe promptly.

“How?”

“Well, sir, we’re a democratic country, ain’t we? Parlyment’s elected by the People, and Gover’ment’s elected by Parlyment. All right so far; but what ‘appens? Gover’ment says ‘I’m going to do this.’ So long as it meets with the approval of the Unseen Power, well an’ good. But what if it don’t? The U.P. gets busy; in an ‘undred papers there begins to appear what the U.P. calls Public Opinion, that’s to say the opinion of the people that agree with the U.P. There you ‘ave it, sir, only them – and it appears strong. Attacks on the Gover’ment policy, nasty things said abaht members of it that’s indiscreet enough to speak aht what, they think – German fathers, and other secret vices; an’ what’s more than all, not a peep at any opinion that supports the Gover’ment. Well, that goes on day after day, playin’ on the mind of Parlyment, if they’ve got any, and gittin’ on the Gover’ment’s nerves, which they’ve got weak, till they says: ‘Look ‘ere, it’s no go; Public Opinion won’t stand it. We shall be outed; and that’ll never do, because there’s no other set of fellows that can save this country.’ Then they ‘ave a meetin’ and change their policy. And what they’ve never seen is that they’ve never seen Public Opinion at all. All they’ve seen is what the U.P. let ‘em. Now if I was the Gover’ment, I’d ‘ave it out once for all with the U. P.”

“Ah!” cried Mr. Lavender, whose eyes were starting from his, head, so profoundly was he agitated by what was to him a new thought.

“Yes,” continued Joe, “if I was the Gover’ment, next time it ‘appened, I’d say: ‘All right, old cock, do your damnedest. I ain’t responsible to you. Attack, suppress, and all the rest of it. We’re goin’ to do what we say, all the same!’ And then I’d do it. And what’d come of it? Either the U.P. would go beyond the limits of the Law – and then I’d jump on it, suppress its papers, and clap it into quod – or it’d take it lyin’ down. Whichever ‘appened it’d be all up with the U. P. I’d a broke its chain off my neck for good. But I ain’t the Gover’ment, an Gover’ment’s got tender feet. I ask you, sir, wot’s the good of havin’ a Constitooshion, and a the bother of electing these fellows, if they can’t act according to their judgment for the short term of their natural lives? The U.P. may be patriotic and estimable, and ‘ave the best intentions and all that, but its outside the Constitooshion; and what’s more, I’m not goin’ to spend my last blood an’ my last money in a democratic country to suit the tastes of any single man, or triumpherate, or wotever it may be made of. If the Government’s uncertain wot the country wants they can always ask it in the proper way, but they never ought to take it on ‘earsay from the papers. That’s wot I think.”

While he was speaking Mr. Lavender had become excited to the point of fever, for, without intending it, Joe had laid bare to him a yawning chasm between his worship of public men and his devotion to the Press. And no sooner had his chauffeur finished than he cried: “Leave me, Joe, for I must think this out.”

“Right, sir,” answered Joe with his smile, and taking the tea-tray from off his master, he set it where it must infallibly be knocked over, and went out.

“Can it be possible,” thought Mr. Lavender, when he was alone, “that I am serving God and Mammon? And which is God and which is Mammon?” he added, letting his thoughts play over the countless speeches and leading articles which had formed his spiritual diet since the war began. “Or, indeed, are they not both God or both Mammon? If what Joe says is true, and nothing is recorded save what seems good to this Unseen Power, have I not been listening to ghosts and shadows; and am I, indeed, myself anything but the unsubstantial image of a public man? For it is true that I have no knowledge of anything save what is recorded in the papers.” And perceiving that the very basis of his faith was endangered, he threw off the bedclothes, and began to pace the room. “Are we, then, all,” he thought, “being bounded like india-rubber balls by an unseen hand; and is there no one of us strong enough to bounce into the eye of our bounder and overthrow him? My God, I am unhappy; for it is a terrible thing not to know which my God is, and whether I am a public man or an india-rubber ball.” And the more he thought the more dreadful it seemed to him, now that he perceived that all those journals, pamphlets, and reports with which his study walls were lined might not be the truth, but merely authorized versions of it.

“This,” he said aloud, “is a nightmare from which I must awaken or lose all my power of action and my ability to help my country in its peril.”

And sudden sweat broke out on his brow, for he perceived that he had now no means of telling even whether there was a peril, so strangely had Joe’s words affected his powers of credulity.

“But surely,” he thought, steadying himself by gripping his washstand, “there was, at least, a peril once. And yet, how do I know even that, for I have only been told so; and the tellers themselves were only told so by this Unseen Power; and suppose it has made a mistake or has some private ends to serve! Oh! it is terrible, and there is no end to it.” And he shook the crockery in the spasms which followed the first awakenings of these religious doubts. “Where, then, am I to go,” he cried, “for knowledge of the truth? For even books would seem dependent on the good opinion of this Unseen Power, and would not reach my eyes unless they were well spoken of by it.”

And the more he thought the more it seemed to him that nothing could help him but to look into the eyes of this Unseen Power, so that he might see for himself whether it was the Angel of Truth or some Demon jumping on the earth. No sooner had this conviction entered his brain than he perceived how in carrying out such an enterprise he would not only be setting his own mind at rest, and re-establishing or abolishing his faith, but would be doing the greatest service which he could render to his country and to all public men. “Thus,” he thought, “shall I cannonize my tourney, and serve Aurora, who is the dawn of truth and beauty in the world. I am not yet worthy, however, of this adventure, which will, indeed, be far more arduous and distressing to accomplish than any which I have yet undertaken. What can I do to brighten and equip my mind and divest it of all those prejudices in which it may unconsciously have become steeped? If I could leave the earth a short space and commune with the clouds it might be best. I will go to Hendon and see if someone will take me up for a consideration; for on earth I can no longer be sure of anything.”

And having rounded off his purpose with this lofty design, he went back to bed with his head lighter than a puff-ball.

XVII
ADDRESSES THE CLOUDS

On the morning following his resurrection Mr. Lavender set out very early for the celebrated flying ground without speaking of his intention to anyone. At the bottom of the hill he found to his annoyance that Blink had divined his purpose and was following. This, which compelled him to walk, greatly delayed his arrival. But chance now favoured him, for he found he was expected, and at once conducted to a machine which was about to rise. A taciturn young man, with a long jaw, and wings on his breast, was standing there gazing at it with an introspective eye.

“Ready, sir?” he said.

“Yes,” replied Mr. Lavender, enveloped to the eyes in a garment of fur and leather. “Will you kindly hold my dog?” he added, stroking Blink with the feeling that he was parting for ever with all that was most dear to him.

An attendant having taken hold of her by the collar, Mr. Lavender was heaved into the machine, where the young airman was already seated in front of him.

“Shall I feel sick?” asked Mr. Lavender.

“Probably,” said the young airman.

“That will not deter me, for the less material I become the better it will be.”

The young airman turned his head, and Mr. Lavender caught the surprised yellow of his eye.

“Hold on,” said the airman, “I’m going to touch her off.”

Mr. Lavender held on, and the machine moved but at this moment Blink, uttering a dismal howl, leapt forward, and, breaking from the attendant’s grasp, landed in the machine against Mr. Lavender’s chest.

“Stop! stop he cried!” my dog.

“Stuff her down,” said the unmoved airman, “between your legs. She’s not the first to go up and won’t be the last to come down.”

Mr. Lavender stuffed her down as best he could. “If we are to be killed,” he thought, “it will be together. Blink!” The faithful creature, who bitterly regretted her position now that the motion had begun, looked up with a darkened eye at Mr. Lavender, who was stopping his ears against the horrible noises which had now begun. He too, had become aware of the pit of his stomach; but this sensation soon passed away in the excitement he felt at getting away from the earth, for they were already at the height of a house, and rising rapidly.

“It is not at all like a little bird,” he thought, “but rather resembles a slow train on the surface of the sea, or a horse on a switchback merry-go-round. I feel, however, that my spirit will soon be free, for the earth is becoming like a board whereon a game is played by an unseen hand, and I am leaving it.” And craning his head out a little too far he felt his chin knock against his spine. Drawing it in with difficulty he concentrated his attention upon that purification of his spirit which was the object of his journey.

“I am now,” he thought, “in the transcendent ether. It should give me an amazing power of expression such as only the greatest writers and orators attain; and, divorced as I am rapidly becoming from all sordid reality, truth will appear to me like one of those stars towards which I am undoubtedly flying though I cannot as yet see it.”

Blink, who between his legs had hitherto been unconscious of their departure from the earth, now squirmed irresistibly up till her forepaws were on her master’s chest, and gazed lugubriously at the fearful prospect. Mr. Lavender clasped her convulsively. They were by now rapidly nearing a flock of heavenly sheep, which as they approached became ever more gigantic till they were transformed into monstrous snow-fleeces intersected by wide drifts of blue.

“Can it be that we are to adventure above them?” thought Mr. Lavender. “I hope not, for they seem to me fearful.” His alarm was soon appeased, for the machine began to take a level course a thousand feet, perhaps, below the clouds, whence little wraiths wandering out now and again dimmed Mr. Lavender’s vision and moistened his brow.

Blink having retired again between her master’s legs, a sense of security and exaltation was succeeding to the natural trepidation of Mr. Lavender’s mood. “I am now,” he thought, “lifted above all petty plots and passions on the wings of the morning. Soon will great thoughts begin to jostle in my head, and I shall see the truth of all things made clear at last.”

But the thoughts did not jostle, a curious lethargy began stealing over him instead, so that his head fell back, and his mouth fell open. This might have endured until he returned to earth had not the airman stopped the engines so that they drifted ruminantly in space below the clouds. With the cessation of the noise Mr. Lavender’s brain regained its activity, and he was enchanted to hear the voice of his pilot saying:

“How are you getting on, sir?”

“As regards the sensation,” Mr. Lavender replied, “it is marvellous, for after the first minute or two, during which the unwonted motion causes a certain inconvenience, one grasps at once the exhilaration and joy of this great adventure. To be in motion towards the spheres, and see the earth laid out like a chess-board below you; to feel the lithe creature beneath your body responding so freely to every call of its gallant young pilot; to be filled with the scream of the engines, as of an eagle at sport; to know that at the least aberration of the intrepid airman we should be dashed into a million pieces; all this is largely to experience an experience so unforgettable that one will never – er – er – forget it.”

“Gosh!” said the young airman.

“Yes,” pursued Mr. Lavender, who was now unconsciously reading himself in his morning’s paper, “one can only compare the emotion to that which the disembodied spirit might feel passing straight from earth to heaven. We saw at a great depth below us on a narrow white riband of road two crawling black specks, and knew that they were human beings, the same and no more than we had been before we left that great common place called Earth.”

“Gum!” said the young airman, as Lavender paused, “you’re getting it fine, sir! Where will it appear?”

“Those great fleecy beings the clouds,” went on Mr. Lavender, without taking on the interruption, “seemed to await our coming in the morning glory of their piled-up snows; and we, with the rarefied air in our lungs, felt that we must shout to them.” And so carried away was Mr. Lavender by his own style that he really did begin to address the clouds: “Ghosts of the sky, who creep cold about this wide blue air, we small adventuring mortals great-hearted salute you. Humbly proud of our daring have we come to sport with you and the winds of Ouranos, and, in the rapturous corridors between you, play hide-and seek, avoiding your glorious moisture with the dips and curves and skimming of our swallow flights – we, the little unconquerable Spirits of the Squirth!”

The surprise which Mr. Lavender felt at having uttered so peculiar a word, in the middle of such a flow of poetry reduced him to sudden silence.

“Golly!” said the airman with sudden alarm in his voice. “Hold tight!” And they began to shoot towards earth faster than they had risen. They came down, by what seemed a miracle to Mr. Lavender, who was still contemplative, precisely where they had gone up. A little group was collected there, and as they stepped out a voice said, “I beg your pardon,” in a tone so dry that it pierced even the fogged condition in which Mr. Lavender alighted. The gentleman who spoke had a dark moustache and thick white hair, and, except that he wore a monocle, and was perhaps three inches taller, bore a striking resemblance to himself.

“Thank you,” he replied, “certainly.”

“No,” said the gentleman, “not at all – on the contrary, Who the hell are you?”

“A public man,” said Mr. Lavender, surprised; “at least,” he added conscientiously, “I am not quite certain.”

“Well,” said the gentleman, “you’ve jolly well stolen my stunt.”

“Who, then, are you?” asked Mr. Lavender.

“I?” replied the gentleman, evidently intensely surprised that he was not known; “I – my name – ”

But at this moment Mr. Lavender’s attention was diverted by the sight of Blink making for the horizon, and crying out in a loud voice: “My dog!” he dropped the coat in which he was still enveloped and set off running after her at full speed, without having taken in the identity of the gentleman or disclosed his own. Blink, indeed, scenting another flight in the air, had made straight for the entrance of the enclosure, and finding a motor cab there with the door open had bolted into it, taking it for her master’s car. Mr. Lavender sprang in after her. At the shake which this imparted to the cab, the driver, who had been dozing, turned his head.

“Want to go back, sir?” he said.

“Yes,” replied Mr. Lavender, breathless; “London.”

XVIII
SEES TRUTH FACE TO FACE

“I fear,” thought Mr. Lavender, as they sped towards Town, “that I have inadvertently taken a joy-ride which belonged to that distinguished person with the eyeglass. No matter, my spirit is now bright for the adventure I have in hand. If only I knew where I could find the Unseen Power – but possibly its movements may be recorded in these journals.” And taking from his pocket his morning papers, which he had not yet had time to peruse, he buried himself in their contents. He was still deeply absorbed when the cab stopped and the driver knocked on the window. Mr. Lavender got out, followed by Blink, and was feeling in his pocket for the fare when an exclamation broke from the driver:

“Gorblimy! I’ve brought the wrong baby!”

And before Mr. Lavender had recovered from his surprise, he had whipped the car round and was speeding back towards the flying ground.

“How awkward!” thought Mr. Lavender, who was extremely nice in money matters; “what shall I do now?” And he looked around him. There, as it were by a miracle, was the office of a great journal, whence obviously his distinguished colleague had set forth to the flying grounds, and to which he had been returned in error by the faithful driver.

Perceiving in all this the finger of Providence, Mr. Lavender walked in. Those who have followed his experiences so far will readily understand how no one could look on Mr. Lavender without perceiving him to be a man of extreme mark, and no surprise need be felt when he was informed that the Personage he sought was on the point of visiting Brighton to open a hospital, and might yet be overtaken at Victoria Station.

With a beating heart he took up the trail in another taxi-cab, and, arriving at Victoria, purchased tickets for himself and Blink, and inquired for the Brighton train.

“Hurry up!” replied the official. Mr. Lavender ran, searching the carriage windows for any indication of his objective. The whistle had been blown, and he was in despair, when his eye caught the label “Reserved” on a first-class window, and looking in he saw a single person evidently of the highest consequence smoking a cigar, surrounded by papers. Without a moment’s hesitation he opened the door, and, preceded by Blink, leaped in. “This carriage is reserved, sir,” said the Personage, as the train moved out.

“I know,” said Mr. Lavender, who had fallen on to the edge of the seat opposite; “and only the urgency of my business would have caused me to violate the sanctity of your retreat, for, believe me, I have the instincts if not the habits of a gentleman.”

The Personage, who had made a move of his hand as if to bring the train to a standstill, abandoning his design, replaced his cigar, and contemplated Mr. Lavender from above it.

The latter remained silent, returning that remarkable stare, while Blink withdrew beneath the seat and pressed her chin to the ground, savouring the sensation of a new motion.

“Yes,” he thought, “those eyes have an almost superhuman force and cunning. They are the eyes of a spider in the centre of a great web. They seem to draw me.”

“You are undoubtedly the Unseen Power, sir,” he said suddenly, “and I have reached the heart of the mystery. From your own lips I shall soon know whether I am a puppet or a public man.”

The Personage, who by his movements was clearly under the impression that he had to do with a lunatic, sat forward with his hands on his knees ready to rise at a moment’s notice; he kept his cigar in his mouth, however, and an enforced smile on the folds of his face.

“What can I do for you, sir?” he said.

“Will you have a cigar?”

“No, thank you,” replied Mr. Lavender, “I must keep the eyes of my spirit clear, and come to the point. Do you rule this country or do you not? For it is largely on the answer to this that my future depends. In telling others what to do am I speaking as my conscience or as your conscience dictates; and, further, if indeed I am speaking as your conscience dictates, have you a conscience?”

The Personage, who had evidently made up his mind to humour the intruder, flipped the ash off his cigar.

“Well, sir, he said, I don’t know who the devil you may be, but my conscience is certainly as good as yours.”

“That,” returned Mr. Lavender with a sigh, “is a great relief, for whether you rule the country or not, you are undoubtedly the source from which I, together with the majority of my countrymen, derive our inspirations. You are the fountainhead at which we draw and drink. And to know that your waters are pure, unstained by taint of personal prejudice and the love of power, will fortify us considerably. Am I to assume, then, that above all passion and pettiness, you are an impersonal force whose innumerable daily editions reflect nothing but abstract truth, and are in no way the servants of a preconceived and personal view of the situation?”

“You want to know too much, don’t you think?” said the Personage with a smile.

“How can that be, sir?” asked Mr. Lavender: “If you are indeed the invisible king swaying the currents of national life, and turning its tides at will, it is essential that we should believe in you; and before we can believe in you must we not know all about you?”

“By Jove, sir,” replied the Personage, “that strikes me as being contrary to all the rules of religion. I thought faith was the ticket.”

By this answer Mr. Lavender was so impressed that he sat for a moment in silence, with his eyebrow working up and down.

“Sir,” he said at last, “you have given me a new thought. If you are right, to disbelieve in you and the acts which you perform, or rather the editions which you issue, is blasphemy.”

“I should think so,” said the Personage, emitting a long whiff of smoke. “Hadn’t that ever occurred to you before?”

“No,” replied Mr. Lavender, naively, “for I have never yet disbelieved anything in those journals.”

The Personage coughed heartily.

“I have always regarded them,” went on Mr. Lavender, “as I myself should wish to be regarded, ‘without fear and without reproach.’ For that is, as I understand it, the principle on which a gentleman must live, ever believing of others what he would wish believed of himself. With the exception of Germans,” he added hastily.

“Naturally,” returned the Personage. “And I’ll defy you to find anything in them which disagrees with that formula. Everything they print refers to Germans if not directly then obliquely. Germans are the ‘idee fixe’, and without an ‘idee fixe’, as you know, there’s no such thing as religion. Do you get me?”

“Yes, indeed,” cried Mr. Lavender, enthused, for the whole matter now seemed to him to fall into coherence, and, what was more, to coincide with his preconceptions, so that he had no longer any doubts. “You, sir – the Unseen Power – are but the crystallized embodiment of the national sentiment in time of war; in serving you, and fulfilling the ideas which you concrete in your journals, we public men are servants of the general animus, which in its turn serves the blind and burning instinct of justice. This is eminently satisfactory to me, who would wish no better fate than to be a humble lackey in that house.” He had no sooner, however, spoken those words than Joe Petty’s remarks about Public Opinion came back to him, and he added: “But are you really the general animus, or are you only the animus of Mayors, that is the question?”

The personage seemed to follow this thought with difficulty. “What’s that?” he said.

Mr. Lavender ran his hands through his hair.

“And turns,” he said, “on what is the unit of national feeling and intelligence? Is it or is it not a Mayor?”

The Personage smiled. “Well, what do you think?” he said. “Haven’t you ever heard them after dinner? There’s no question about it. Make your mind easy if that’s your only trouble.”

Mr. Lavender, greatly cheered by the genial certainty in this answer, said: “I thank you, sir. I shall go back and refute that common scoffer, that caster of doubts. I have seen the Truth face, to face, and am greatly encouraged to further public effort. With many apologies I can now get out,” he added, as the train stopped at South Croydon. “Blink!” And, followed by his dog, he stepped from the train.

The Personage, who was indeed no other than the private secretary of the private secretary of It whom Mr. Lavender had designated as the Truth watched him from the window.

“Well, that WAS a treat, dear papa!” he murmured to himself, emitting a sigh of smoke after his retreating interlocutor.