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Erewhon Revisited, a novel by Samuel Butler |
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Chapter 24. After Dinner, Dr. Downie And The Professors... |
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_ CHAPTER XXIV. AFTER DINNER, DR. DOWNIE AND THE PROFESSORS WOULD BE GLAD TO KNOW WHAT IS TO BE DONE ABOUT SUNCHILDISM It was about six when George's _fiancee_ left the house, and as soon as she had done so, Yram began to see about the rug and the best substitutes she could find for the billy and pannikin. She had a basket packed with all that my father and George would want to eat and drink while on the preserves, and enough of everything, except meat, to keep my father going till he could reach the shepherd's hut of which I have already spoken. Meat would not keep, and my father could get plenty of flappers--i.e. ducks that cannot yet fly--when he was on the river-bed down below. The above preparations had not been made very long, before Mrs. Humdrum arrived, followed presently by Dr. Downie and in due course by the Professors, who were still staying in the house. My father remembered Mrs. Humdrum's good honest face, but could not bring Dr. Downie to his recollection till the Doctor told him when and where they had met, and then he could only very uncertainly recall him, though he vowed that he could now do so perfectly well. "At any rate," said Hanky, advancing towards him with his best Bridgeford manner, "you will not have forgotten meeting my brother Professor and myself." "It has been rather a forgetting sort of a morning," said my father demurely, "but I can remember that much, and am delighted to renew my acquaintance with both of you." As he spoke he shook hands with both Professors. George was a little late, but when he came, dinner was announced. My father sat on Yram's right-hand, Dr. Downie on her left. George was next my father, with Mrs. Humdrum opposite to him. The Professors sat one on either side of the Mayor. During dinner the conversation turned almost entirely on my father's flight, his narrow escape from drowning, and his adventures on his return to England; about these last my father was very reticent, for he said nothing about his book, and antedated his accession of wealth by some fifteen years, but as he walked up towards the statues with George he told him everything. My father repeatedly tried to turn the conversation from himself, but Mrs. Humdrum and Yram wanted to know about Nna Haras, as they persisted in calling my mother--how she endured her terrible experiences in the balloon, when she and my father were married, all about my unworthy self, and England generally. No matter how often he began to ask questions about the Nosnibors and other old acquaintances, both the ladies soon went back to his own adventures. He succeeded, however, in learning that Mr. Nosnibor was dead, and Zulora, an old maid of the most unattractive kind, who had persistently refused to accept Sunchildism, while Mrs. Nosnibor was the recipient of honours hardly inferior to those conferred by the people at large on my father and mother, with whom, indeed, she believed herself to have frequent interviews by way of visionary revelations. So intolerable were these revelations to Zulora, that a separate establishment had been provided for her. George said to my father quietly--"Do you know I begin to think that Zulora must be rather a nice person." "Perhaps," said my father grimly, "but my wife and I did not find it out." When the ladies left the room, Dr. Downie took Yram's seat, and Hanky Dr. Downie's; the Mayor took Mrs. Humdrum's, leaving my father, George, and Panky, in their old places. Almost immediately, Dr. Downie said, "And now, Mr, Higgs, tell us, as a man of the world, what we are to do about Sunchildism?" My father smiled at this. "You know, my dear sir, as well as I do, that the proper thing would be to put me back in prison, and keep me there till you can send me down to the capital. You should eat your oaths of this morning, as I would eat mine; tell every one here who I am; let them see that my hair has been dyed; get all who knew me when I was here before to come and see me; appoint an unimpeachable committee to examine the record of my marks and measurements, and compare it with those of my own body. You should let me be seen in every town at which I lodged on my way down, and tell people that you had made a mistake. When you get to the capital, hand me over to the King's tender mercies and say that our oaths were only taken this morning to prevent a ferment in the town. I will play my part very willingly. The King can only kill me, and I should die like a gentleman." "They will not do it," said George quietly to my father, "and I am glad of it." He was right. "This," said Dr. Downie, "is a counsel of perfection. Things have gone too far, and we are flesh and blood. What would those who in your country come nearest to us Musical Bank Managers do, if they found they had made such a mistake as we have, and dared not own it?" "Do not ask me," said my father; "the story is too long, and too terrible." "At any rate, then, tell us what you would have us do that is within our reach." "I have done you harm enough, and if I preach, as likely as not I shall do more." Seeing, however, that Dr. Downie was anxious to hear what he thought, my father said-- "Then I must tell you. Our religion sets before us an ideal which we all cordially accept, but it also tells us of marvels like your chariot and horses, which we most of us reject. Our best teachers insist on the ideal, and keep the marvels in the background. If they could say outright that our age has outgrown them, they would say so, but this they may not do; nevertheless they contrive to let their opinions be sufficiently well known, and their hearers are content with this. "We have others who take a very different course, but of these I will not speak. Roughly, then, if you cannot abolish me altogether, make me a peg on which to hang all your own best ethical and spiritual conceptions. If you will do this, and wriggle out of that wretched relic, with that not less wretched picture--if you will make me out to be much better and abler than I was, or ever shall be, Sunchildism may serve your turn for many a long year to come. Otherwise it will tumble about your heads before you think it will. "Am I to go on or stop?" "Go on," said George softly. That was enough for my father, so on he went. "You are already doing part of what I wish. I was delighted with the two passages I heard on Sunday, from what you call the Sunchild's Sayings. I never said a word of either passage; I wish I had; I wish I could say anything half so good. And I have read a pamphlet by President Gurgoyle, which I liked extremely; but I never said what he says I did. Again, I wish I had. Keep to this sort of thing, and I will be as good a Sunchildist as any of you. But you must bribe some thief to steal that relic, and break it up to mend the roads with; and--for I believe that here as elsewhere fires sometimes get lighted through the carelessness of a workman--set the most careless workman you can find to do a plumbing job near that picture." Hanky looked black at this, and George trod lightly on my father's toe, but he told me that my father's face was innocence itself. "These are hard sayings," said Dr. Downie. "I know they are," replied my father, "and I do not like saying them, but there is no royal road to unlearning, and you have much to unlearn. Still, you Musical Bank people bear witness to the fact that beyond the kingdoms of this world there is another, within which the writs of this world's kingdoms do not run. This is the great service which our church does for us in England, and hence many of us uphold it, though we have no sympathy with the party now dominant within it. 'Better,' we think, 'a corrupt church than none at all.' Moreover, those who in my country would step into the church's shoes are as corrupt as the church, and more exacting. They are also more dangerous, for the masses distrust the church, and are on their guard against aggression, whereas they do not suspect the doctrinaires and faddists, who, if they could, would interfere in every concern of our lives. "Let me return to yourselves. You Musical Bank Managers are very much such a body of men as your country needs--but when I was here before you had no figurehead; I have unwittingly supplied you with one, and it is perhaps because you saw this, that you good people of Bridgeford took up with me. Sunchildism is still young and plastic; if you will let the cock-and-bull stories about me tacitly drop, and invent no new ones, beyond saying what a delightful person I was, I really cannot see why I should not do for you as well as any one else. "There. What I have said is nine-tenths of it rotten and wrong, but it is the most practicable rotten and wrong that I can suggest, seeing into what a rotten and wrong state of things you have drifted. And now, Mr. Mayor, do you not think we may join the Mayoress and Mrs. Humdrum?" "As you please, Mr. Higgs," answered the Mayor. "Then let us go, for I have said too much already, and your son George tells me that we must be starting shortly." As they were leaving the room Panky sidled up to my father and said, "There is a point, Mr. Higgs, which you can settle for me, though I feel pretty certain how you will settle it. I think that a corruption has crept into the text of the very beautiful--" At this moment, as my father, who saw what was coming, was wondering what in the world he could say, George came up to him and said, "Mr. Higgs, my mother wishes me to take you down into the store-room, to make sure that she has put everything for you as you would like it." On this my father said he would return directly and answer what he knew would be Panky's question. When Yram had shewn what she had prepared--all of it, of course, faultless--she said, "And now, Mr. Higgs, about our leave-taking. Of course we shall both of us feel much. I shall; I know you will; George will have a few more hours with you than the rest of us, but his time to say good-bye will come, and it will be painful to both of you. I am glad you came--I am glad you have seen George, and George you, and that you took to one another. I am glad my husband has seen you; he has spoken to me about you very warmly, for he has taken to you much as George did. I am very, very glad to have seen you myself, and to have learned what became of you--and of your wife. I know you wish well to all of us; be sure that we all of us wish most heartily well to you and yours. I sent for you and George, because I could not say all this unless we were alone; it is all I can do," she said, with a smile, "to say it now." Indeed it was, for the tears were in her eyes all the time, as they were also in my father's. "Let this," continued Yram, "be our leave-taking--for we must have nothing like a scene upstairs. Just shake hands with us all, say the usual conventional things, and make it as short as you can; but I could not bear to send you away without a few warmer words than I could have said when others were in the room." "May heaven bless you and yours," said my father, "for ever and ever." "That will do," said George gently. "Now, both of you shake hands, and come upstairs with me." * * * * * When all three of them had got calm, for George had been moved almost as much as his father and mother, they went upstairs, and Panky came for his answer. "You are very possibly right," said my father--"the version you hold to be corrupt is the one in common use amongst ourselves, but it is only a translation, and very possibly only a translation of a translation, so that it may perhaps have been corrupted before it reached us." "That," said Panky, "will explain everything," and he went contentedly away. My father talked a little aside with Mrs. Humdrum about her grand-daughter and George, for Yram had told him that she knew all about the attachment, and then George, who saw that my father found the greatest difficulty in maintaining an outward calm, said, "Mr. Higgs, the streets are empty; we had better go." My father did as Yram had told him; shook hands with every one, said all that was usual and proper as briefly as he could, and followed George out of the room. The Mayor saw them to the door, and saved my father from embarrassment by saying, "Mr. Higgs, you and I understand one another too well to make it necessary for us to say so. Good-bye to you, and may no ill befall you ere you get home." My father grasped his hand in both his own. "Again," he said, "I can say no more than that I thank you from the bottom of my heart." As he spoke he bowed his head, and went out with George into the night. _ |
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