CHAPTER XIV:  MY FATHER MAKES THE ACQUAINTANCE OF MR BALMY, AND WALKS WITH HIM NEXT DAY TO SUNCH’STON

Up to this point, though he had seen enough to shew him the main drift of the great changes that had taken place in Erewhonian opinions, my father had not been able to glean much about the history of the transformation.  He could see that it had all grown out of the supposed miracle of his balloon ascent, and he could understand that the ignorant masses had been so astounded by an event so contrary to all their experience, that their faith in experience was utterly routed and demoralised.  It a man and a woman might rise from the earth and disappear into the sky, what else might not happen?  If they had been wrong in thinking such a thing impossible, in how much else might they not be mistaken also?  The ground was shaken under their very feet.

It was not as though the thing had been done in a corner.  Hundreds of people had seen the ascent; and even if only a small number had been present, the disappearance of the balloon, of my mother, and of my father himself, would have confirmed their story.  My father, then, could understand that a single incontrovertible miracle of the first magnitude should uproot the hedges of caution in the minds of the common people, but he could not understand how such men as Hanky and Panky, who evidently did not believe that there had been any miracle at all, had been led to throw themselves so energetically into a movement so subversive of all their traditions, when, as it seemed to him, if they had held out they might have pricked the balloon bubble easily enough, and maintained everything in statu quo.

How, again, had they converted the King—­if they had converted him?  The Queen had had full knowledge of all the preparations for the ascent.  The King had had everything explained to him.  The workmen and workwomen who had made the balloon and the gas could testify that none but natural means had been made use of—­means which, if again employed any number of times, would effect a like result.  How could it be that when the means of resistance were so ample and so easy, the movement should nevertheless have been irresistible?  For had it not been irresistible, was it to be believed that astute men like Hanky and Panky would have let themselves be drawn into it?

What then had been its inner history?  My father had so fully determined to make his way back on the following evening, that he saw no chance of getting to know the facts—­unless, indeed, he should be able to learn something from Hanky’s sermon; he was therefore not sorry to find an elderly gentleman of grave but kindly aspect seated opposite to him when he sat down to supper.

The expression on this man’s face was much like that of the early Christians as shewn in the S. Giovanni Laterano bas-reliefs at Rome, and again, though less aggressively self-confident, like that on the faces of those who have joined the Salvation Army.  If he had been in England, my father would have set him down as a Swedenborgian; this being impossible, he could only note that the stranger bowed his head, evidently saying a short grace before he began to eat, as my father had always done when he was in Erewhon before.  I will not say that my father had never omitted to say grace during the whole of the last twenty years, but he said it now, and unfortunately forgetting himself, he said it in the English language, not loud, but nevertheless audibly.

My father was alarmed at what he had done, but there was no need, for the stranger immediately said, “I hear, sir, that you have the gift of tongues.  The Sunchild often mentioned it to us, as having been vouchsafed long since to certain of the people, to whom, for our learning, he saw fit to feign that he belonged.  He thus foreshadowed prophetically its manifestation also among ourselves.  All which, however, you must know as well as I do.  Can you interpret?”

My father was much shocked, but he remembered having frequently spoken of the power of speaking in unknown tongues which was possessed by many of the early Christians, and he also remembered that in times of high religious enthusiasm this power had repeatedly been imparted, or supposed to be imparted, to devout believers in the middle ages.  It grated upon him to deceive one who was so obviously sincere, but to avoid immediate discomfiture he fell in with what the stranger had said.

“Alas! sir,” said he, “that rarer and more precious gift has been withheld from me; nor can I speak in an unknown tongue, unless as it is borne in upon me at the moment.  I could not even repeat the words that have just fallen from me.”

“That,” replied the stranger, “is almost invariably the case.  These illuminations of the spirit are beyond human control.  You spoke in so low a tone that I cannot interpret what you have just said, but should you receive a second inspiration later, I shall doubtless be able to interpret it for you.  I have been singularly gifted in this respect—­more so, perhaps, than any other interpreter in Erewhon.”

My father mentally vowed that no second inspiration should be vouchsafed to him, but presently remembering how anxious he was for information on the points touched upon at the beginning of this chapter, and seeing that fortune had sent him the kind of man who would be able to enlighten him, he changed his mind; nothing, he reflected, would be more likely to make the stranger talk freely with him, than the affording him an opportunity for showing off his skill as an interpreter.

Something, therefore, he would say, but what?  No one could talk more freely when the train of his thoughts, or the conversation of others, gave him his cue, but when told to say an unattached “something,” he could not even think of “How do you do this morning? it is a very fine day;” and the more he cudgelled his brains for “something,” the more they gave no response.  He could not even converse further with the stranger beyond plain “yes” and “no”; so he went on with his supper, and in thinking of what he was eating and drinking for the moment forgot to ransack his brain.  No sooner had he left off ransacking it, than it suggested something—­not, indeed, a very brilliant something, but still something.  On having grasped it, he laid down his knife and fork, and with the air of one distraught he said—­

   “My name is Norval, on the Grampian Hills
   My father feeds his flock—­a frugal swain.”

“I heard you,” exclaimed the stranger, “and I can interpret every word of what you have said, but it would not become me to do so, for you have conveyed to me a message more comforting than I can bring myself to repeat even to him who has conveyed it.”

Having said this he bowed his head, and remained for some time wrapped in meditation.  My father kept a respectful silence, but after a little time he ventured to say in a low tone, how glad he was to have been the medium through whom a comforting assurance had been conveyed.  Presently, on finding himself encouraged to renew the conversation, he threw out a deferential feeler as to the causes that might have induced Mr. Balmy to come to Fairmead.  “Perhaps,” he said, “you, like myself, have come to these parts in order to see the dedication of the new temple; I could not get a lodging in Sunch’ston, so I walked down here this morning.”

This, it seemed, had been Mr. Balmy’s own case, except that he had not yet been to Sunch’ston.  Having heard that it was full to overflowing, he had determined to pass the night at Fairmead, and walk over in the morning—­starting soon after seven, so as to arrive in good time for the dedication ceremony.  When my father heard this, he proposed that they should walk together, to which Mr. Balmy gladly consented; it was therefore arranged that they should go to bed early, breakfast soon after six, and then walk to Sunch’ston.  My father then went to his own room, where he again smoked a surreptitious pipe up the chimney.

Next morning the two men breakfasted together, and set out as the clock was striking seven.  The day was lovely beyond the power of words, and still fresh—­for Fairmead was some 2500 feet above the sea, and the sun did not get above the mountains that overhung it on the east side, till after eight o’clock.  Many persons were also starting for Sunch’ston, and there was a procession got up by the Musical Bank Managers of the town, who walked in it, robed in rich dresses of scarlet and white embroidered with much gold thread.  There was a banner displaying an open chariot in which the Sunchild and his bride were seated, beaming with smiles, and in attitudes suggesting that they were bowing to people who were below them.  The chariot was, of course, drawn by the four black and white horses of which the reader has already heard, and the balloon had been ignored.  Readers of my father’s book will perhaps remember that my mother was not seen at all—­she was smuggled into the car of the balloon along with sundry rugs, under which she lay concealed till the balloon had left the earth.  All this went for nothing.  It has been said that though God cannot alter the past, historians can; it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence.  Painters, my father now realised, can do all that historians can, with even greater effect.

Women headed the procession—­the younger ones dressed in white, with veils and chaplets of roses, blue cornflower, and pheasant’s eye Narcissus, while the older women were more soberly attired.  The Bank Managers and the banner headed the men, who were mostly peasants, but among them were a few who seemed to be of higher rank, and these, for the most part, though by no means all of them, wore their clothes reversed—­as I have forgotten to say was done also by Mr. Balmy.  Both men and women joined in singing a litany the words of which my father could not catch; the tune was one he had been used to play on his apology for a flute when he was in prison, being, in fact, none other than “Home, Sweet Home.”  There was no harmony; they never got beyond the first four bars, but these they must have repeated, my father thought, at least a hundred times between Fairmead and Sunch’ston.  “Well,” said he to himself, “however little else I may have taught them, I at any rate gave them the diatonic scale.”

He now set himself to exploit his fellow-traveller, for they soon got past the procession.

“The greatest miracle,” said he, “in connection with this whole matter, has been—­so at least it seems to me—­not the ascent of the Sunchild with his bride, but the readiness with which the people generally acknowledged its miraculous character.  I was one of those that witnessed the ascent, but I saw no signs that the crowd appreciated its significance.  They were astounded, but they did not fall down and worship.”

“Ah,” said the other, “but you forget the long drought and the rain that the Sunchild immediately prevailed on the air-god to send us.  He had announced himself as about to procure it for us; it was on this ground that the King assented to the preparation of those material means that were necessary before the horses of the sun could attach themselves to the chariot into which the balloon was immediately transformed.  Those horses might not be defiled by contact with this gross earth.  I too witnessed the ascent; at the moment, I grant you, I saw neither chariot nor horses, and almost all those present shared my own temporary blindness; the whole action from the moment when the balloon left the earth, moved so rapidly, that we were flustered, and hardly knew what it was that we were really seeing.  It was not till two or three years later that I found the scene presenting itself to my soul’s imaginary sight in the full splendour which was no doubt witnessed, but not apprehended, by my bodily vision.”

“There,” said my father, “you confirm an opinion that I have long held.—­Nothing is so misleading as the testimony of eye-witnesses.”

“A spiritual enlightenment from within,” returned Mr. Balmy, “is more to be relied on than any merely physical affluence from external objects.  Now, when I shut my eyes, I see the balloon ascend a little way, but almost immediately the heavens open, the horses descend, the balloon is transformed, and the glorious pageant careers onward till it vanishes into the heaven of heavens.  Hundreds with whom I have conversed assure me that their experience has been the same as mine.  Has yours been different?”

“Oh no, not at all; but I always see some storks circling round the balloon before I see any horses.”

“How strange!  I have heard others also say that they saw the storks you mention; but let me do my utmost I cannot force them into my mental image of the scene.  This shows, as you were saying just now, how incomplete the testimony of an eye-witness often is.  It is quite possible that the storks were there, but the horses and the chariot have impressed themselves more vividly on my mind than anything else has.”

“Quite so; and I am not without hope that even at this late hour some further details may yet be revealed to us.”

“It is possible, but we should be as cautious in accepting any fresh details as in rejecting them.  Should some heresy obtain wide acceptance, visions will perhaps be granted to us that may be useful in refuting it, but otherwise I expect nothing more.”

“Neither do I, but I have heard people say that inasmuch as the Sunchild said he was going to interview the air-god in order to send us rain, he was more probably son to the air-god than to the sun.  Now here is a heresy which—­”

“But, my dear sir,” said Mr. Balmy, interrupting him with great warmth, “he spoke of his father in heaven as endowed with attributes far exceeding any that can be conceivably ascribed to the air-god.  The power of the air-god does not extend beyond our own atmosphere.”

“Pray believe me,” said my father, who saw by the ecstatic gleam in his companion’s eye that there was nothing to be done but to agree with him, “that I accept—­”

“Hear me to the end,” replied Mr. Balmy.  “Who ever heard the Sunchild claim relationship with the air-god?  He could command the air-god, and evidently did so, halting no doubt for this beneficent purpose on his journey towards his ultimate destination.  Can we suppose that the air-god, who had evidently intended withholding the rain from us for an indefinite period, should have so immediately relinquished his designs against us at the intervention of any less exalted personage than the sun’s own offspring?  Impossible!”

“I quite agree with you,” exclaimed my father, “it is out of the—­”

“Let me finish what I have to say.  When the rain came so copiously for days, even those who had not seen the miraculous ascent found its consequences come so directly home to them, that they had no difficulty in accepting the report of others.  There was not a farmer or cottager in the land but heaved a sigh of relief at rescue from impending ruin, and they all knew it was the Sunchild who had promised the King that he would make the air-god send it.  So abundantly, you will remember, did it come, that we had to pray to him to stop it, which in his own good time he was pleased to do.”

“I remember,” said my father, who was at last able to edge in a word, “that it nearly flooded me out of house and home.  And yet, in spite of all this, I hear that there are many at Bridgeford who are still hardened unbelievers.”

“Alas! you speak too truly.  Bridgeford and the Musical Banks for the first three years fought tooth and nail to blind those whom it was their first duty to enlighten.  I was a Professor of the hypothetical language, and you may perhaps remember how I was driven from my chair on account of the fearlessness with which I expounded the deeper mysteries of Sunchildism.”

“Yes, I remember well how cruelly—­” but my father was not allowed to get beyond “cruelly.”

“It was I who explained why the Sunchild had represented himself as belonging to a people in many respects analogous to our own, when no such people can have existed.  It was I who detected that the supposed nation spoken of by the Sunchild was an invention designed in order to give us instruction by the light of which we might more easily remodel our institutions.  I have sometimes thought that my gift of interpretation was vouchsafed to me in recognition of the humble services that I was hereby allowed to render.  By the way, you have received no illumination this morning, have you?”

“I never do, sir, when I am in the company of one whose conversation I find supremely interesting.  But you were telling me about Bridgeford:  I live hundreds of miles from Bridgeford, and have never understood the suddenness, and completeness, with which men like Professors Hanky and Panky and Dr. Downie changed front.  Do they believe as you and I do, or did they merely go with the times?  I spent a couple of hours with Hanky and Panky only two evenings ago, and was not so much impressed as I could have wished with the depth of their religious fervour.”

“They are sincere now—­more especially Hanky—­but I cannot think I am judging them harshly, if I say that they were not so at first.  Even now, I fear, that they are more carnally than spiritually minded.  See how they have fought for the aggrandisement of their own order.  It is mainly their doing that the Musical Banks have usurped the spiritual authority formerly exercised by the straighteners.”

“But the straighteners,” said my father, “could not co-exist with Sunchildism, and it is hard to see how the claims of the Banks can be reasonably gainsaid.”

“Perhaps; and after all the Banks are our main bulwark against the evils that I fear will follow from the repeal of the laws against machinery.  This has already led to the development of a materialism which minimizes the miraculous element in the Sunchild’s ascent, as our own people minimize the material means that were the necessary prologue to the miraculous.”

Thus did they converse; but I will not pursue their conversation further.  It will be enough to say that in further floods of talk Mr. Balmy confirmed what George had said about the Banks having lost their hold upon the masses.  That hold was weak even in the time of my father’s first visit; but when the people saw the hostility of the Banks to a movement which far the greater number of them accepted, it seemed as though both Bridgeford and the Banks were doomed, for Bridgeford was heart and soul with the Banks.  Hanky, it appeared, though under thirty, and not yet a Professor, grasped the situation, and saw that Bridgeford must either move with the times, or go.  He consulted some of the most sagacious Heads of Houses and Professors, with the result that a committee of enquiry was appointed, which in due course reported that the evidence for the Sunchild’s having been the only child of the sun was conclusive.  It was about this time—­that is to say some three years after his ascent—­that “Higgsism,” as it had been hitherto called, became “Sunchildism,” and “Higgs” the “Sunchild.”

My father also learned the King’s fury at his escape (for he would call it nothing else) with my mother.  This was so great that though he had hitherto been, and had ever since proved himself to be, a humane ruler, he ordered the instant execution of all who had been concerned in making either the gas or the balloon; and his cruel orders were carried out within a couple of hours.  At the same time he ordered the destruction by fire of the Queen’s workshops, and of all remnants of any materials used in making the balloon.  It is said the Queen was so much grieved and outraged (for it was her doing that the material ground-work, so to speak, had been provided for the miracle) that she wept night and day without ceasing three whole months, and never again allowed her husband to embrace her, till he had also embraced Sunchildism.

When the rain came, public indignation at the King’s action was raised almost to revolution pitch, and the King was frightened at once by the arrival of the promised downfall and the displeasure of his subjects.  But he still held out, and it was only after concessions on the part of the Bridgeford committee, that he at last consented to the absorption of Sunchildism into the Musical Bank system, and to its establishment as the religion of the country.  The far-reaching changes in Erewhonian institutions with which the reader is already acquainted followed as a matter of course.

“I know the difficulty,” said my father presently, “with which the King was persuaded to allow the way in which the Sunchild’s dress should be worn to be a matter of opinion, not dogma.  I see we have adopted different fashions.  Have you any decided opinions upon the subject?”

“I have; but I will ask you not to press me for them.  Let this matter remain as the King has left it.”

My father thought that he might now venture on a shot.  So he said, “I have always understood, too, that the King forced the repeal of the laws against machinery on the Bridgeford committee, as another condition of his assent?”

“Certainly.  He insisted on this, partly to gratify the Queen, who had not yet forgiven him, and who had set her heart on having a watch, and partly because he expected that a development of the country’s resources, in consequence of a freer use of machinery, would bring more money into his exchequer.  Bridgeford fought hard and wisely here, but they had gained so much by the Musical Bank Managers being recognised as the authorised exponents of Sunchildism, that they thought it wise to yield—­apparently with a good grace—­and thus gild the pill which his Majesty was about to swallow.  But even then they feared the consequences that are already beginning to appear, all which, if I mistake not, will assume far more serious proportions in the future.”

“See,” said my father suddenly, “we are coming to another procession, and they have got some banners, let us walk a little quicker and overtake it.”

“Horrible!” replied Mr. Balmy fiercely.  “You must be short-sighted, or you could never have called my attention to it.  Let us get it behind us as fast as possible, and not so much as look at it.”

“Oh yes, yes,” said my father, “it is indeed horrible, I had not seen what it was.”

He had not the faintest idea what the matter was, but he let Mr. Balmy walk a little ahead of him, so that he could see the banners, the most important of which he found to display a balloon pure and simple, with one figure in the car.  True, at the top of the banner there was a smudge which might be taken for a little chariot, and some very little horses, but the balloon was the only thing insisted on.  As for the procession, it consisted entirely of men, whom a smaller banner announced to be workmen from the Fairmead iron and steel works.  There was a third banner, which said, “Science as well as Sunchildism.”