XXI.
THE MAN WHO COULD WORK MIRACLES.
A PANTOUM IN PROSE.
It is doubtful whether the gift was innate. For my own part, I think itcame to him suddenly. Indeed, until he was thirty he was a sceptic, anddid not believe in miraculous powers. And here, since it is the mostconvenient place, I must mention that he was a little man, and had eyes ofa hot brown, very erect red hair, a moustache with ends that he twistedup, and freckles. His name was George McWhirter Fotheringay--not the sortof name by any means to lead to any expectation of miracles--and he wasclerk at Gomshott's. He was greatly addicted to assertive argument. It waswhile he was asserting the impossibility of miracles that he had his firstintimation of his extraordinary powers. This particular argument was beingheld in the bar of the Long Dragon, and Toddy Beamish was conducting theopposition by a monotonous but effective "So _you_ say," that droveMr. Fotheringay to the very limit of his patience.
There were present, besides these two, a very dusty cyclist, landlord Cox,and Miss Maybridge, the perfectly respectable and rather portly barmaid ofthe Dragon. Miss Maybridge was standing with her back to Mr. Fotheringay,washing glasses; the others were watching him, more or less amused by thepresent ineffectiveness of the assertive method. Goaded by the TorresVedras tactics of Mr. Beamish, Mr. Fotheringay determined to make anunusual rhetorical effort. "Looky here, Mr. Beamish," said Mr.Fotheringay. "Let us clearly understand what a miracle is. It's somethingcontrariwise to the course of nature, done by power of will, somethingwhat couldn't happen without being specially willed."
"So _you_ say," said Mr. Beamish, repulsing him.
Mr. Fotheringay appealed to the cyclist, who had hitherto been a silentauditor, and received his assent--given with a hesitating cough and aglance at Mr. Beamish. The landlord would express no opinion, and Mr.Fotheringay, returning to Mr. Beamish, received the unexpected concessionof a qualified assent to his definition of a miracle.
"For instance," said Mr. Fotheringay, greatly encouraged. "Here would be amiracle. That lamp, in the natural course of nature, couldn't burn likethat upsy-down, could it, Beamish?"
"_You_ say it couldn't," said Beamish.
"And you?" said Fotheringay. "You don't mean to say--eh?"
"No," said Beamish reluctantly. "No, it couldn't."
"Very well," said Mr. Fotheringay. "Then here comes someone, as it mightbe me, along here, and stands as it might be here, and says to that lamp,as I might do, collecting all my will--Turn upsy-down without breaking,and go on burning steady, and--Hullo!"
It was enough to make anyone say "Hullo!" The impossible, the incredible,was visible to them all. The lamp hung inverted in the air, burningquietly with its flame pointing down. It was as solid, as indisputable asever a lamp was, the prosaic common lamp of the Long Dragon bar.
Mr. Fotheringay stood with an extended forefinger and the knitted brows ofone anticipating a catastrophic smash. The cyclist, who was sitting nextthe lamp, ducked and jumped across the bar. Everybody jumped, more orless. Miss Maybridge turned and screamed. For nearly three seconds thelamp remained still. A faint cry of mental distress came from Mr.Fotheringay. "I can't keep it up," he said, "any longer." He staggeredback, and the inverted lamp suddenly flared, fell against the corner ofthe bar, bounced aside, smashed upon the floor, and went out.
It was lucky it had a metal receiver, or the whole place would have beenin a blaze. Mr. Cox was the first to speak, and his remark, shorn ofneedless excrescences, was to the effect that Fotheringay was a fool.Fotheringay was beyond disputing even so fundamental a proposition asthat! He was astonished beyond measure at the thing that had occurred. Thesubsequent conversation threw absolutely no light on the matter so far asFotheringay was concerned; the general opinion not only followed Mr. Coxvery closely but very vehemently. Everyone accused Fotheringay of a sillytrick, and presented him to himself as a foolish destroyer of comfort andsecurity. His mind was in a tornado of perplexity, he was himself inclinedto agree with them, and he made a remarkably ineffectual opposition to theproposal of his departure.
He went home flushed and heated, coat-collar crumpled, eyes smarting, andears red. He watched each of the ten street lamps nervously as he passedit. It was only when he found himself alone in his little bedroom inChurch Row that he was able to grapple seriously with his memories of theoccurrence, and ask, "What on earth happened?"
He had removed his coat and boots, and was sitting on the bed with hishands in his pockets repeating the text of his defence for the seventeenthtime, "I didn't want the confounded thing to upset," when it occurred tohim that at the precise moment he had said the commanding words he hadinadvertently willed the thing he said, and that when he had seen the lampin the air he had felt that it depended on him to maintain it therewithout being clear how this was to be done. He had not a particularlycomplex mind, or he might have stuck for a time at that "inadvertentlywilled," embracing, as it does, the abstrusest problems of voluntaryaction; but as it was, the idea came to him with a quite acceptablehaziness. And from that, following, as I must admit, no clear logicalpath, he came to the test of experiment.
He pointed resolutely to his candle and collected his mind, though he felthe did a foolish thing. "Be raised up," he said. But in a second thatfeeling vanished. The candle was raised, hung in the air one giddy moment,and as Mr. Fotheringay gasped, fell with a smash on his toilet-table,leaving him in darkness save for the expiring glow of its wick.
For a time Mr. Fotheringay sat in the darkness, perfectly still. "It didhappen, after all," he said. "And 'ow _I'm_ to explain it I_don't_ know." He sighed heavily, and began feeling in his pocketsfor a match. He could find none, and he rose and groped about thetoilet-table. "I wish I had a match," he said. He resorted to his coat,and there was none there, and then it dawned upon him that miracles werepossible even with matches. He extended a hand and scowled at it in thedark. "Let there be a match in that hand," he said. He felt some lightobject fall across his palm and his fingers closed upon a match.
After several ineffectual attempts to light this, he discovered it was asafety match. He threw it down, and then it occurred to him that he mighthave willed it lit. He did, and perceived it burning in the midst of histoilet-table mat. He caught it up hastily, and it went out. His perceptionof possibilities enlarged, and he felt for and replaced the candle in itscandlestick. "Here! _you_ be lit," said Mr. Fotheringay, andforthwith the candle was flaring, and he saw a little black hole in thetoilet-cover, with a wisp of smoke rising from it. For a time he staredfrom this to the little flame and back, and then looked up and met his owngaze in the looking-glass. By this help he communed with himself insilence for a time.
"How about miracles now?" said Mr. Fotheringay at last, addressing hisreflection.
The subsequent meditations of Mr. Fotheringay were of a severe butconfused description. So far, he could see it was a case of pure willingwith him. The nature of his experiences so far disinclined him for anyfurther experiments, at least until he had reconsidered them. But helifted a sheet of paper, and turned a glass of water pink and then green,and he created a snail, which he miraculously annihilated, and got himselfa miraculous new tooth-brush. Somewhere in the small hours he had reachedthe fact that his will-power must be of a particularly rare and pungentquality, a fact of which he had indeed had inklings before, but no certainassurance. The scare and perplexity of his first discovery was nowqualified by pride in this evidence of singularity and by vagueintimations of advantage. He became aware that the church clock wasstriking one, and as it did not occur to him that his daily duties atGomshott's might be miraculously dispensed with, he resumed undressing, inorder to get to bed without further delay. As he struggled to get hisshirt over his head, he was struck with a brilliant idea. "Let me be inbed," he said, and found himself so. "Undressed," he stipulated; and,finding the sheets cold, added hastily, "and in my nightshirt--ho, in anice soft woollen nightshirt. Ah!" he said with immense enjoyment. "Andnow let me be comfortably asleep..."
&nb
sp; He awoke at his usual hour and was pensive all through breakfast-time,wondering whether his over-night experience might not be a particularlyvivid dream. At length his mind turned again to cautious experiments. Forinstance, he had three eggs for breakfast; two his landlady had supplied,good, but shoppy, and one was a delicious fresh goose-egg, laid, cooked,and served by his extraordinary will. He hurried off to Gomshott's in astate of profound but carefully concealed excitement, and only rememberedthe shell of the third egg when his landlady spoke of it that night. Allday he could do no work because of this astonishing new self-knowledge,but this caused him no inconvenience, because he made up for itmiraculously in his last ten minutes.
As the day wore on his state of mind passed from wonder to elation, albeitthe circumstances of his dismissal from the Long Dragon were stilldisagreeable to recall, and a garbled account of the matter that hadreached his colleagues led to some badinage. It was evident he must becareful how he lifted frangible articles, but in other ways his giftpromised more and more as he turned it over in his mind. He intended amongother things to increase his personal property by unostentatious acts ofcreation. He called into existence a pair of very splendid diamond studs,and hastily annihilated them again as young Gomshott came across thecounting-house to his desk. He was afraid young Gomshott might wonder howhe had come by them. He saw quite clearly the gift required caution andwatchfulness in its exercise, but so far as he could judge thedifficulties attending its mastery would be no greater than those he hadalready faced in the study of cycling. It was that analogy, perhaps, quiteas much as the feeling that he would be unwelcome in the Long Dragon, thatdrove him out after supper into the lane beyond the gasworks, to rehearsea few miracles in private.
There was possibly a certain want of originality in his attempts, for,apart from his will-power, Mr. Fotheringay was not a very exceptional man.The miracle of Moses' rod came to his mind, but the night was dark andunfavourable to the proper control of large miraculous snakes. Then herecollected the story of "Tannhaeuser" that he had read on the back of thePhilharmonic programme. That seemed to him singularly attractive andharmless. He stuck his walking-stick--a very nice Poona-Penang lawyer--into the turf that edged the footpath, and commanded the dry wood toblossom. The air was immediately full of the scent of roses, and by meansof a match he saw for himself that this beautiful miracle was indeedaccomplished. His satisfaction was ended by advancing footsteps. Afraid ofa premature discovery of his powers, he addressed the blossoming stickhastily: "Go back." What he meant was "Change back;" but of course he wasconfused. The stick receded at a considerable velocity, and incontinentlycame a cry of anger and a bad word from the approaching person. "Who areyou throwing brambles at, you fool?" cried a voice. "That got me on theshin."
"I'm sorry, old chap," said Mr. Fotheringay, and then, realising theawkward nature of the explanation, caught nervously at his moustache. Hesaw Winch, one of the three Immering constables, advancing.
"What d'yer mean by it?" asked the constable. "Hullo! it's you, is it? Thegent that broke the lamp at the Long Dragon!"
"I don't mean anything by it," said Mr. Fotheringay. "Nothing at all."
"What d'yer do it for then?"
"Oh, bother!" said Mr. Fotheringay.
"Bother indeed! D'yer know that stick hurt? What d'yer do it for, eh?"
For the moment Mr. Fotheringay could not think what he had done it for.His silence seemed to irritate Mr. Winch. "You've been assaulting thepolice, young man, this time. That's what _you_ done."
"Look here, Mr. Winch," said Mr. Fotheringay, annoyed and confused, "I'msorry, very. The fact is----"
"Well?"
He could think of no way but the truth. "I was working a miracle." Hetried to speak in an off-hand way, but try as he would he couldn't.
"Working a--! 'Ere, don't you talk rot. Working a miracle, indeed!Miracle! Well, that's downright funny! Why, you's the chap that don'tbelieve in miracles... Fact is, this is another of your silly conjuringtricks--that's what this is. Now, I tell you--"
But Mr. Fotheringay never heard what Mr. Winch was going to tell him. Herealised he had given himself away, flung his valuable secret to all thewinds of heaven. A violent gust of irritation swept him to action. Heturned on the constable swiftly and fiercely. "Here," he said, "I've hadenough of this, I have! I'll show you a silly conjuring trick, I will! Goto Hades! Go, now!"
He was alone!
Mr. Fotheringay performed no more miracles that night, nor did he troubleto see what had become of his flowering stick. He returned to the town,scared and very quiet, and went to his bedroom. "Lord!" he said, "it's apowerful gift--an extremely powerful gift. I didn't hardly mean as much asthat. Not really... I wonder what Hades is like!"
He sat on the bed taking off his boots. Struck by a happy thought hetransferred the constable to San Francisco, and without any moreinterference with normal causation went soberly to bed. In the night hedreamt of the anger of Winch.
The next day Mr. Fotheringay heard two interesting items of news. Someonehad planted a most beautiful climbing rose against the elder Mr.Gomshott's private house in the Lullaborough Road, and the river as far asRawling's Mill was to be dragged for Constable Winch.
Mr. Fotheringay was abstracted and thoughtful all that day, and performedno miracles except certain provisions for Winch, and the miracle ofcompleting his day's work with punctual perfection in spite of all thebee-swarm of thoughts that hummed through his mind. And the extraordinaryabstraction and meekness of his manner was remarked by several people, andmade a matter for jesting. For the most part he was thinking of Winch.
On Sunday evening he went to chapel, and oddly enough, Mr. Maydig, whotook a certain interest in occult matters, preached about "things that arenot lawful." Mr. Fotheringay was not a regular chapelgoer, but the systemof assertive scepticism, to which I have already alluded, was now verymuch shaken. The tenor of the sermon threw an entirely new light on thesenovel gifts, and he suddenly decided to consult Mr. Maydig immediatelyafter the service. So soon as that was determined, he found himselfwondering why he had not done so before.
Mr. Maydig, a lean, excitable man with quite remarkably long wrists andneck, was gratified at a request for a private conversation from a youngman whose carelessness in religious matters was a subject for generalremark in the town. After a few necessary delays, he conducted him to thestudy of the manse, which was contiguous to the chapel, seated himcomfortably, and, standing in front of a cheerful fire--his legs threw aRhodian arch of shadow on the opposite wall--requested Mr. Fotheringay tostate his business.
At first Mr. Fotheringay was a little abashed, and found some difficultyin opening the matter. "You will scarcely believe me, Mr. Maydig, I amafraid"--and so forth for some time. He tried a question at last, andasked Mr. Maydig his opinion of miracles.
Mr. Maydig was still saying "Well" in an extremely judicial tone, when Mr.Fotheringay interrupted again: "You don't believe, I suppose, that somecommon sort of person--like myself, for instance--as it might be sittinghere now, might have some sort of twist inside him that made him able todo things by his will."
"It's possible," said Mr. Maydig. "Something of the sort, perhaps, ispossible."
"If I might make free with something here, I think I might show you by asort of experiment," said Mr. Fotheringay. "Now, take that tobacco-jar onthe table, for instance. What I want to know is whether what I am going todo with it is a miracle or not. Just half a minute, Mr. Maydig, please."
He knitted his brows, pointed to the tobacco-jar and said: "Be a bowl ofvi'lets."
The tobacco-jar did as it was ordered.
Mr. Maydig started violently at the change, and stood looking from thethaumaturgist to the bowl of flowers. He said nothing. Presently heventured to lean over the table and smell the violets; they werefresh-picked and very fine ones. Then he stared at Mr. Fotheringay again.
"How did you do that?" he asked.
Mr. Fotheringay pulled his moustache. "Just told it--and there you are.
Isthat a miracle, or is it black art, or what is it? And what do you think'sthe matter with me? That's what I want to ask."
"It's a most extraordinary occurrence."
"And this day last week I knew no more that I could do things like thatthan you did. It came quite sudden. It's something odd about my will, Isuppose, and that's as far as I can see."
"Is that--the only thing. Could you do other things besides that?"
"Lord, yes!" said Mr. Fotheringay. "Just anything." He thought, andsuddenly recalled a conjuring entertainment he had seen. "Here!" hepointed, "change into a bowl of fish--no, not that--change into a glassbowl full of water with goldfish swimming in it. That's better! You seethat, Mr. Maydig?"
"It's astonishing. It's incredible. You are either a most extraordinary...But no----"
"I could change it into anything," said Mr. Fotheringay. "Just anything.Here! be a pigeon, will you?"
In another moment a blue pigeon was fluttering round the room and makingMr. Maydig duck every time it came near him. "Stop there, will you?" saidMr. Fotheringay; and the pigeon hung motionless in the air. "I couldchange it back to a bowl of flowers," he said, and after replacing thepigeon on the table worked that miracle. "I expect you will want your pipein a bit," he said, and restored the tobacco-jar.
Mr. Maydig had followed all these later changes in a sort of ejaculatorysilence. He stared at Mr. Fotheringay and in a very gingerly manner pickedup the tobacco-jar, examined it, replaced it on the table. "_Well_!"was the only expression of his feelings.
"Now, after that it's easier to explain what I came about," said Mr.Fotheringay; and proceeded to a lengthy and involved narrative of hisstrange experiences, beginning with the affair of the lamp in the LongDragon and complicated by persistent allusions to Winch. As he went on,the transient pride Mr. Maydig's consternation had caused passed away; hebecame the very ordinary Mr. Fotheringay of everyday intercourse again.Mr. Maydig listened intently, the tobacco-jar in his hand, and his bearingchanged also with the course of the narrative. Presently, while Mr.Fotheringay was dealing with the miracle of the third egg, the ministerinterrupted with a fluttering, extended hand.
"It is possible," he said. "It is credible. It is amazing, of course, butit reconciles a number of amazing difficulties. The power to work miraclesis a gift--a peculiar quality like genius or second sight; hitherto it hascome very rarely and to exceptional people. But in this case...I havealways wondered at the miracles of Mahomet, and at Yogi's miracles, andthe miracles of Madame Blavatsky. But, of course--Yes, it is simply agift! It carries out so beautifully the arguments of that great thinker"--Mr. Maydig's voice sank--"his Grace the Duke of Argyll. Here we plumb someprofounder law--deeper than the ordinary laws of nature. Yes--yes. Go on.Go on!"
Mr. Fotheringay proceeded to tell of his misadventure with Winch, and Mr.Maydig, no longer overawed or scared, began to jerk his limbs about andinterject astonishment. "It's this what troubled me most," proceeded Mr.Fotheringay; "it's this I'm most mijitly in want of advice for; of coursehe's at San Francisco--wherever San Francisco may be--but of course it'sawkward for both of us, as you'll see, Mr. Maydig. I don't see how he canunderstand what has happened, and I daresay he's scared and exasperatedsomething tremendous, and trying to get at me. I daresay he keeps onstarting off to come here. I send him back, by a miracle, every few hours,when I think of it. And, of course, that's a thing he won't be able tounderstand, and it's bound to annoy him; and, of course, if he takes aticket every time it will cost him a lot of money. I done the best I couldfor him, but, of course, it's difficult for him to put himself in myplace. I thought afterwards that his clothes might have got scorched, youknow--if Hades is all it's supposed to be--before I shifted him. In thatcase I suppose they'd have locked him up in San Francisco. Of course Iwilled him a new suit of clothes on him directly I thought of it. But, yousee, I'm already in a deuce of a tangle----"
Mr. Maydig looked serious. "I see you are in a tangle. Yes, it's adifficult position. How you are to end it..." He became diffuse andinconclusive.
"However, we'll leave Winch for a little and discuss the larger question.I don't think this is a case of the black art or anything of the sort. Idon't think there is any taint of criminality about it at all, Mr.Fotheringay--none whatever, unless you are suppressing material facts. No,it's miracles--pure miracles--miracles, if I may say so, of the veryhighest class."
He began to pace the hearthrug and gesticulate, while Mr. Fotheringay satwith his arm on the table and his head on his arm, looking worried. "Idon't see how I'm to manage about Winch," he said.
"A gift of working miracles--apparently a very powerful gift," said Mr.Maydig, "will find a way about Winch--never fear. My dear sir, you are amost important man--a man of the most astonishing possibilities. Asevidence, for example! And in other ways, the things you may do..."
"Yes, _I've_ thought of a thing or two," said Mr. Fotheringay. "But--some of the things came a bit twisty. You saw that fish at first? Wrongsort of bowl and wrong sort of fish. And I thought I'd ask someone."
"A proper course," said Mr. Maydig, "a very proper course--altogether theproper course." He stopped and looked at Mr. Fotheringay. "It'spractically an unlimited gift. Let us test your powers, for instance. Ifthey really _are_ ... If they really are all they seem to be."
And so, incredible as it may seem, in the study of the little house behindthe Congregational Chapel, on the evening of Sunday, Nov. 10, 1896, Mr.Fotheringay, egged on and inspired by Mr. Maydig, began to work miracles.The reader's attention is specially and definitely called to the date. Hewill object, probably has already objected, that certain points in thisstory are improbable, that if any things of the sort already described hadindeed occurred, they would have been in all the papers at that time. Thedetails immediately following he will find particularly hard to accept,because among other things they involve the conclusion that he or she, thereader in question, must have been killed in a violent and unprecedentedmanner more than a year ago. Now a miracle is nothing if not improbable,and as a matter of fact the reader _was_ killed in a violent andunprecedented manner in 1896. In the subsequent course of this story thatwill become perfectly clear and credible, as every right-minded andreasonable reader will admit. But this is not the place for the end of thestory, being but little beyond the hither side of the middle. And at firstthe miracles worked by Mr. Fotheringay were timid little miracles--littlethings with the cups and parlour fitments, as feeble as the miracles ofTheosophists, and, feeble as they were, they were received with awe by hiscollaborator. He would have preferred to settle the Winch business out ofhand, but Mr. Maydig would not let him. But after they had worked a dozenof these domestic trivialities, their sense of power grew, theirimagination began to show signs of stimulation, and their ambitionenlarged. Their first larger enterprise was due to hunger and thenegligence of Mrs. Minchin, Mr. Maydig's housekeeper. The meal to whichthe minister conducted Mr. Fotheringay was certainly ill-laid anduninviting as refreshment for two industrious miracle-workers; but theywere seated, and Mr. Maydig was descanting in sorrow rather than in angerupon his housekeeper's shortcomings, before it occurred to Mr. Fotheringaythat an opportunity lay before him. "Don't you think, Mr. Maydig," hesaid, "if it isn't a liberty, _I_----"
"My dear Mr. Fotheringay! Of course! No--I didn't think."
Mr. Fotheringay waved his hand. "What shall we have?" he said, in a large,inclusive spirit, and, at Mr. Maydig's order, revised the supper verythoroughly. "As for me," he said, eyeing Mr. Maydig's selection, "I amalways particularly fond of a tankard of stout and a nice Welsh rarebit,and I'll order that. I ain't much given to Burgundy," and forthwith stoutand Welsh rarebit promptly appeared at his command. They sat long at theirsupper, talking like equals, as Mr. Fotheringay presently perceived, witha glow of surprise and gratification, of all the miracles they wouldpresently do. "And, by-the-by, Mr. Maydig," said Mr. Fotheringay, "I mightperhaps be able to help you--in a domestic way."
"Don't quite follow," said Mr. Maydig, pouring
out a glass of miraculousold Burgundy.
Mr. Fotheringay helped himself to a second Welsh rarebit out of vacancy,and took a mouthful. "I was thinking," he said, "I might be able (_chum,chum_) to work (_chum, chum_) a miracle with Mrs. Minchin(_chum, chum_)--make her a better woman."
Mr. Maydig put down the glass and looked doubtful.
"She's----She strongly objects to interference, you know, Mr.Fotheringay. And--as a matter of fact--it's well past eleven and she'sprobably in bed and asleep. Do you think, on the whole----"
Mr. Fotheringay considered these objections. "I don't see that itshouldn't be done in her sleep."
For a time Mr. Maydig opposed the idea, and then he yielded. Mr.Fotheringay issued his orders, and a little less at their ease, perhaps,the two gentlemen proceeded with their repast. Mr. Maydig was enlarging onthe changes he might expect in his housekeeper next day, with an optimism,that seemed even to Mr. Fotheringay's supper senses a little forced andhectic, when a series of confused noises from upstairs began. Their eyesexchanged interrogations, and Mr. Maydig left the room hastily. Mr.Fotheringay heard him calling up to his housekeeper and then his footstepsgoing softly up to her.
In a minute or so the minister returned, his step light, his face radiant."Wonderful!" he said, "and touching! Most touching!"
He began pacing the hearthrug. "A repentance--a most touching repentance--through the crack of the door. Poor woman! A most wonderful change! Shehad got up. She must have got up at once. She had got up out of her sleepto smash a private bottle of brandy in her box. And to confess it too!...But this gives us--it opens--a most amazing vista of possibilities. If wecan work this miraculous change in _her_..."
"The thing's unlimited seemingly," said Mr. Fotheringay. "And about Mr.Winch----"
"Altogether unlimited." And from the hearthrug Mr. Maydig, waving theWinch difficulty aside, unfolded a series of wonderful proposals--proposals he invented as he went along.
Now what those proposals were does not concern the essentials of thisstory. Suffice it that they were designed in a spirit of infinitebenevolence, the sort of benevolence that used to be called post-prandial.Suffice it, too, that the problem of Winch remained unsolved. Nor is itnecessary to describe how far that series got to its fulfilment. Therewere astonishing changes. The small hours found Mr. Maydig and Mr.Fotheringay careering across the chilly market square under the stillmoon, in a sort of ecstasy of thaumaturgy, Mr. Maydig all flap andgesture, Mr. Fotheringay short and bristling, and no longer abashed at hisgreatness. They had reformed every drunkard in the Parliamentary division,changed all the beer and alcohol to water (Mr. Maydig had overruled Mr.Fotheringay on this point); they had, further, greatly improved therailway communication of the place, drained Flinder's swamp, improved thesoil of One Tree Hill, and cured the vicar's wart. And they were going tosee what could be done with the injured pier at South Bridge. "The place,"gasped Mr. Maydig, "won't be the same place to-morrow. How surprised andthankful everyone will be!" And just at that moment the church clockstruck three.
"I say," said Mr. Fotheringay, "that's three o'clock! I must be gettingback. I've got to be at business by eight. And besides, Mrs. Wimms----"
"We're only beginning," said Mr. Maydig, full of the sweetness ofunlimited power. "We're only beginning. Think of all the good we're doing.When people wake----"
"But----," said Mr. Fotheringay.
Mr. Maydig gripped his arm suddenly. His eyes were bright and wild. "Mydear chap," he said, "there's no hurry. Look"--he pointed to the moon atthe zenith--"Joshua!"
"Joshua?" said Mr. Fotheringay.
"Joshua," said Mr. Maydig. "Why not? Stop it."
Mr. Fotheringay looked at the moon.
"That's a bit tall," he said, after a pause.
"Why not?" said Mr. Maydig. "Of course it doesn't stop. You stop therotation of the earth, you know. Time stops. It isn't as if we were doingharm."
"H'm!" said Mr. Fotheringay. "Well," he sighed, "I'll try. Here!"
He buttoned up his jacket and addressed himself to the habitable globe,with as good an assumption of confidence as lay in his power. "Jest stoprotating, will you?" said Mr. Fotheringay.
Incontinently he was flying head over heels through the air at the rate ofdozens of miles a minute. In spite of the innumerable circles he wasdescribing per second, he thought; for thought is wonderful--sometimes assluggish as flowing pitch, sometimes as instantaneous as light. He thoughtin a second, and willed. "Let me come down safe and sound. Whatever elsehappens, let me down safe and sound."
He willed it only just in time, for his clothes, heated by his rapidflight through the air, were already beginning to singe. He came down witha forcible, but by no means injurious, bump in what appeared to be a moundof fresh-turned earth. A large mass of metal and masonry, extraordinarilylike the clock-tower in the middle of the market square, hit the earthnear him, ricochetted over him, and flew into stonework, bricks, andcement, like a bursting bomb. A hurtling cow hit one of the larger blocksand smashed like an egg. There was a crash that made all the most violentcrashes of his past life seem like the sound of falling dust, and this wasfollowed by a descending series of lesser crashes. A vast wind roaredthroughout earth and heaven, so that he could scarcely lift his head tolook. For a while he was too breathless and astonished even to see wherehe was or what had happened. And his first movement was to feel his headand reassure himself that his streaming hair was still his own.
"Lord!" gasped Mr. Fotheringay, scarce able to speak for the gale, "I'vehad a squeak! What's gone wrong? Storms and thunder. And only a minute agoa fine night. It's Maydig set me on to this sort of thing. _What_ awind! If I go on fooling in this way I'm bound to have a thunderingaccident!...
"Where's Maydig?
"What a confounded mess everything's in!"
He looked about him so far as his flapping jacket would permit. Theappearance of things was really extremely strange. "The sky's all rightanyhow," said Mr. Fotheringay. "And that's about all that is all right.And even there it looks like a terrific gale coming up. But there's themoon overhead. Just as it was just now. Bright as midday. But as for therest----Where's the village? Where's--where's anything? And what on earthset this wind a-blowing? I didn't order no wind."
Mr. Fotheringay struggled to get to his feet in vain, and after onefailure, remained on all fours, holding on. He surveyed the moonlit worldto leeward, with the tails of his jacket streaming over his head. "There'ssomething seriously wrong," said Mr. Fotheringay. "And what it is--goodness knows."
Far and wide nothing was visible in the white glare through the haze ofdust that drove before a screaming gale but tumbled masses of earth andheaps of inchoate ruins, no trees, no houses, no familiar shapes, only awilderness of disorder, vanishing at last into the darkness beneath thewhirling columns and streamers, the lightnings and thunderings of aswiftly rising storm. Near him in the livid glare was something that mightonce have been an elm-tree, a smashed mass of splinters, shivered fromboughs to base, and further a twisted mass of iron girders--only tooevidently the viaduct--rose out of the piled confusion.
You see, when Mr. Fotheringay had arrested the rotation of the solidglobe, he had made no stipulation concerning the trifling movables uponits surface. And the earth spins so fast that the surface at its equatoris travelling at rather more than a thousand miles an hour, and in theselatitudes at more than half that pace. So that the village, and Mr.Maydig, and Mr. Fotheringay, and everybody and everything had been jerkedviolently forward at about nine miles per second--that is to say, muchmore violently than if they had been fired out of a cannon. And everyhuman being, every living creature, every house, and every tree--all theworld as we know it--had been so jerked and smashed and utterly destroyed.That was all.
These things Mr. Fotheringay did not, of course, fully appreciate. But heperceived that his miracle had miscarried, and with that a great disgustof miracles came upon him. He was in darkness now, for the clouds hadswept together and blotted out his momentary glimpse of
the moon, and theair was full of fitful struggling tortured wraiths of hail. A greatroaring of wind and waters filled earth and sky, and peering under hishand through the dust and sleet to windward, he saw by the play of thelightnings a vast wall of water pouring towards him.
"Maydig!" screamed Mr. Fotheringay's feeble voice amid the elementaluproar. "Here!--Maydig!
"Stop!" cried Mr. Fotheringay to the advancing water. "Oh, for goodness'sake, stop!
"Just a moment," said Mr. Fotheringay to the lightnings and thunder. "Stopjest a moment while I collect my thoughts... And now what shall I do?" hesaid. "What _shall_ I do? Lord! I wish Maydig was about."
"I know," said Mr. Fotheringay. "And for goodness' sake let's have itright _this_ time."
He remained on all fours, leaning against the wind, very intent to haveeverything right.
"Ah!" he said. "Let nothing what I'm going to order happen until I say'Off!'...Lord! I wish I'd thought of that before!"
He lifted his little voice against the whirlwind, shouting louder andlouder in the vain desire to hear himself speak. "Now then!--here goes!Mind about that what I said just now. In the first place, when all I'vegot to say is done, let me lose my miraculous power, let my will becomejust like anybody else's will, and all these dangerous miracles bestopped. I don't like them. I'd rather I didn't work 'em. Ever so much.That's the first thing. And the second is--let me be back just before themiracles begin; let everything be just as it was before that blessed lampturned up. It's a big job, but it's the last. Have you got it? No moremiracles, everything as it was--me back in the Long Dragon just before Idrank my half-pint. That's it! Yes."
He dug his fingers into the mould, closed his eyes, and said "Off!"
Everything became perfectly still. He perceived that he was standingerect.
"So _you_ say," said a voice.
He opened his eyes. He was in the bar of the Long Dragon, arguing aboutmiracles with Toddy Beamish. He had a vague sense of some great thingforgotten that instantaneously passed. You see that, except for the lossof his miraculous powers, everything was back as it had been, his mind andmemory therefore were now just as they had been at the time when thisstory began. So that he knew absolutely nothing of all that is told here--knows nothing of all that is told here to this day. And among otherthings, of course, he still did not believe in miracles.
"I tell you that miracles, properly speaking, can't possibly happen," hesaid, "whatever you like to hold. And I'm prepared to prove it up to thehilt."
"That's what _you_ think," said Toddy Beamish, and "Prove it if youcan."
"Looky here, Mr. Beamish," said Mr. Fotheringay. "Let us clearlyunderstand what a miracle is. It's something contrariwise to the course ofnature done by power of Will..."