Part 16 (1/2)
Something ancient and fishlike--it's that mouth--”
”He's a beauty!” interrupted Edgar Marten, sniffing with disgust. ”Eyes like a boiled haddock. And that thing has the cheek to call itself a Messiah. Thank G.o.d I'm a Jew; it's not business of mine. But if I were a Christian, I'd bash his blooming head in. d.a.m.ned if I wouldn't. The frowsy, fetid, flow-blown fraud. Or what's the matter with the Dog's Home?”
”Come, come,” said Mr. Heard, who had taken rather a liking to this violent youngster and was feeling more than usually indulgent that evening. ”Come! He can't help his face, I fancy. Have you no room in your heart for an original? And don't you think--quite apart from questions of religion--that we tourists ought to be grateful to these people for diversifying the landscape with their picturesque red blouses and things?”
”I have no eye for landscape, Mr. Heard, save in so far as it indicates strata and faults and other geological points. The picturesque don't interest me. I am full of Old Testamentary strains; I can't help looking at men from the ethical point of view. And what have people's clothes to do with their religion? He can't help his face, you say.
Well, if he can't help that greasy old mackintosh, I'll eat my hat.
Can't a fellow be a Messiah without sporting a pink s.h.i.+rt or fancy dressing-gown or blue pyjamas or something? But there you are! I defy you to name me a single-barrelled crank. If a man is a religious lunatic, or a vegetarian, he is sure to be touched in some other department as well; he will be an anti-vivisectionist, a nutfooder, costume-maniac, stamp-collector, or a spiritualist into the bargain.
Haven't you ever noticed that? And isn't he dirty? Where is the connection between piety and dirt? I suggest they are both relapses into ancestral channels and the one drags the other along with it. When I see a thing like this, I want to hew it in pieces. Agag, Mr. Heard; Agag. I must have another look at this specimen; one does not see such a sight every day. He is a living fossil--post-pleistocene.”
He drew off; Keith and the Count, engaged in some deep conversation, had also moved a few paces away.
Mr. Heard stood alone, his back turned to the Master. Moonlight still flooded the earth, the lanterns were flickering and sputtering. Some had gone out, leaving gaps of darkness in the lighted walls. Many of the guests retired without bidding farewell to their host; he liked them to feel at their ease, to take ”French leave” whenever so disposed--to depart ”A L'ANGLAISE,” as the French say. The garden was nearly empty. A great quietude had fallen upon its path and thickets.
From afar resounded the boisterous chorus of a party of revellers loth to quit the scene; it was suddenly broken by a terrific crash and bursts of laughter. Some table had been knocked over.
Standing there, the bishop could not but listen to Keith, who had raised his voice in emphasis and was saying to the Count, in his best Keithean manner:
”I am just coming to that point. A spring-board is what humanity needs.
What better one can be contrived than this pure unadulterated Byzantianism. Cretinism, I call it. Look at the Orthodox Church. A repository of apocalyptic nonsense such as no sane man can take seriously. Nonsense of the right kind, the uncompromising kind. That is my point. The paralysing, sterilizing cult of these people offers a far better spring-board into a clean element of thought than our English Church, whose DEMI-VIERGE concessions to common sense afford seductive resting-places to the intellectually weak-knee'd. Do I make myself clear? I'm getting infernally thirsty.”
”I quite agree with you, my friend. The Russians have got a better spring-board than the English. The queer thing is, that the Russians won't jump, whereas the Englishman often does. Well, well! We cannot live without fools.”
Mr. Heard was slightly perturbed by these words. A good fellow like Keith! ”DEMI-VIERGE concessions to common sense”; what did he mean by that? Did his church really make such concessions?
”I'll think about it to-morrow,” he decided.
The Master, when they returned to him, had not budged from his resting-place. The fingers still lay, starfish-wise, upon the folds of that soiled homespun; his eyes still stared out of the leafy bower; his face still wore its mask of placid imbecility.
The gla.s.s was empty.
Slowly, as on a pivot, his head turned in the direction of the bodyguard.
Forthwith some favourite disciple--not Krasnojabkin, who happened to be escorting Madame Steynlin to her villa just then--darted to his side; with the help of two lady-apostles known, respectively, as the ”goldfinch” and the ”red apple,” they conveyed him out of that shelter into the deserted, moonlit garden. He leaned heavily on the arm of the youth; peevish sounds, quasi-human, proceeded from his colourless lips.
And now he was almost speaking; desirous, it seemed, of formulating some truth too deep for human utterance.
”I bet I know what he is saying,” whispered Keith. ”It's something about the Man-G.o.d.”
CHAPTER XI
The Russian Government is notoriously tender-hearted. But even the worm will turn....
Scholars who have treated the life of the ex-monk Bazhakuloff divide it into five clearly marked periods: the probationary, dialectical, political, illumined and expiatory.
The first began in youth when, being driven from his father's house by reason of his vagrant habits and other incorrigible vices, he entered a monastery near Kasan. Despite occasional lapses prompted by the hot blood of his years and punished with harsh disciplinary measures, he seems to have performed his monkish duties with sufficient zeal. It was observed, however, that with increasing years he became unduly interested in questions of dogma. He talked too freely; he was always arguing. Being unable to read or write, he developed an astonis.h.i.+ng memory for things he had heard and faces he had seen; he brought them up at inconvenient moments. He grew factious, obstreperous, declaring that there was much in the const.i.tution of the Holy Russian Church which ought to be amended and brought up to date. What people wanted, he said, was a New Jerusalem. A violent altercation with his Superior touching the attributes of the Holy Ghost ended in a broken jaw-bone on the part of the older man, and the expulsion of the younger. The dialectical period had set in. The convent inmates, on the whole, were glad to see the last of him--particularly the Father Superior.