The Revolution in Tanner’s Lane · Chapter 24 (1/2)

XXIV

“I Came Not to Send Peace, but a Sword”

Mr. Allen, having business in London, determined to go on Saturday, and spend the next day with Zachariah. Although he always called on his old friend whenever he could do so, he was not often away from home on a Sunday. He also resolved to take George with him. Accordingly on Saturday morning they were up early and caught a coach on the North Road. The coaches by this time had fallen off considerably, for the Birmingham railway was open, and there was even some talk of a branch through Cowfold; but there were still perhaps a dozen which ran to places a good way east of the line. Father and son dismounted at the George and Blue Boar, where they were to sleep. Sunday was to be spent with the Colemans, whom George had seen before but very seldom; never, indeed, since he was a boy.

Zachariah still went to Pike Street Chapel, but only in the morning to hear Mr. Bradshaw, who was now an old man, and could not preach twice. On that particular Sunday on which Zachariah, Pauline, Mr. Allen, and George heard him he took for his text the thirteenth verse of the twelfth chapter of Deuteronomy: “Take heed to thyself that thou offer not thy burnt offerings in every place thou seest.” He put down his spectacles after he had read these words, for he never used a note, and said: “If your religion doesn’t help you, it is no religion for you; you had better be without it. I don’t mean if it doesn’t help you to a knowledge of a future life or of the way to heaven. Everybody will say his religion does that. What I do mean is, that the sign of a true religion⁠—true for you, is this⁠—Does it assist you to bear your own private difficulties?⁠—does it really?⁠—not the difficulties of the schools and theology, but those of the parlour and countinghouse; ay, difficulties most difficult, those with persons nearest to you?⁠ ⁠… Everybody ought to have his own religion. In one sense we are all disciples of Christ, but nevertheless each man has troubles peculiar to himself, and it is absurd to expect that any book system will be sufficient for each one of us at all points. You must make your own religion, and it is only what you make yourself which will be of any use to you. Don’t be disturbed if you find it is not of much use to other persons. Stick to it yourself if it is really your own, a bit of yourself. There are, however, in the Book of God universal truths, and the wonderful thing about them is, that they are at the same time more particularly adapted to you and me and all our innermost wants than anything we can discover for ourselves. That is the miracle of inspiration. For thousands and thousands of years some of the sayings here have comforted those who have well nigh despaired in the desert of the world. The wisdom of millions of apostles, of heroes, of martyrs, of poor field labourers, of solitary widows, of orphans of the destitute, of men driven to their last extremity has been the wisdom of this volume⁠—not their own, and yet most truly theirs.⁠ ⁠… Here is a word for us this morning: ‘Take heed to thyself that thou offer not thy burnt offerings in every place thou seest.’ Ah, what a word it is! You and I are not idolaters, and there is no danger of our being so. For you and me this is not a warning against idolatry. What is it for us then? Reserve yourself; discriminate in your worship. Reserve yourself, I say; but what is the implication? What says the next verse? ‘In the place which the Lord shall choose;’ that is to say, keep your worship for the Highest. Do not squander yourself, but, on the other hand, before the shrine of the Lord offer all your love and adoration. What a practical application this has!⁠ ⁠… I desire to come a little closer to you. What are the consequences of not obeying this Divine law? You will not be struck dead nor excommunicated, you will be simply disappointed. Your burnt offering will receive no answer; you will not be blessed through it; you will come to see that you have been pouring forth your treasure, and something worse, your heart’s blood⁠—not the blood of cattle⁠—before that which is no God⁠—a nothing, in fact. ‘Vanity of vanities,’ you will cry, ‘all is vanity.’ My young friends, young men and young women, you are particularly prone to go wrong in this matter. You not only lay your possessions but yourselves on altars by the roadside.”

It was the first time George had ever heard anything from any public speaker which came home to him, and he wondered if Mr. Bradshaw knew his history. He interpreted the discourse after his own way, and Priscilla was ever before him.

They came back to the little house, and sat down to dinner in the little front room. There were portraits on the walls⁠—nothing else but portraits⁠—and the collection at first sight was inconsistent. Major Cartwright was still there; there were also Byron, Bunyan, Scott, Paine, Burns, Mr. Bradshaw, and Rousseau. It was closely expressive of its owners. Zachariah and Pauline were private persons; they were, happily for them, committed to nothing, and were not subsidised by their reputations to defend a system. They were consequently free to think at large, and if they admired both Bunyan and Rousseau, they were at liberty to do so. Zachariah, in a measure, and a very large measure, had remained faithful to his earliest beliefs⁠—who is there that does not?⁠—and although they had been modified, they were still there; and he listened to Mr. Bradshaw with the faith of thirty years ago. He also believed in a good many things he had learned without him, and perhaps the old and the new were not so discordant as at first sight they might have seemed to be. He was not, in fact, despite all his love of logic, the “yes or no” from which most people cannot escape, but a “yes and no”; not immorally and through lack of resolution, but by reason of an original receptivity and the circumstances of his training. If he had been merely a student the case would have been different but he was not a student. He was a journeyman printer; and hard work has a tendency to demolish the distinctions of dialectics. He had also been to school outside his shop, and had learned many lessons, often confusing and apparently contradictory. Blanketeer marches; his first wife; the workhouse imprisonment; his second wife; the little Pauline had each come to him with its own special message, and the net result was a character, but a character disappointing to persons who prefer men and women of linear magnitude to those of three dimensions.

After dinner the conversation turned upon politics and Mr. Allen described his interview with Mr. Broad, regretting that the movement in the district round Cowfold would receive no countenance from the minister of the very sect which ought to be its chief support.

“A sad falling off,” said Zachariah, “from the days, even in my time, when the Dissenters were the insurrectionary class. Mr. Bradshaw, last Sunday, after his sermon, shut his Bible, and told the people that he did not now interfere much in political matters; but he felt he should not be doing his duty if he did not tell those whom he taught which way they ought to vote, and that what he had preached to them for so many years would be poor stuff if it did not compel them into a protest against taxing the poor for the sake of the rich.”

“Yes,” replied Mr. Allen; “but then Broad never has taught what Bradshaw teaches; he never seems to me to see anything clearly; at least he never makes me see anything clearly; the whole world is in a fog to him.”

“From what I have heard of Mr. Broad,” said Pauline, “I should think the explanation of him is very simple; he is a hypocrite⁠—an ordinary hypocrite. What is the use of going out of the way to seek for explanations of such commonplace persons?”

“Pauline, Pauline,” cried Zachariah, “you surely forget, my child, in whose company you are!”

“Oh, as for that,” said George, “Miss Coleman needn’t mind me. I haven’t married Mr. Broad, and my father is quite right. For that matter, I believe Miss Coleman is right too.”

“Well,” said Mr. Allen, “it is rather strong to say a man is an ordinary hypocrite, and it is not easy to prove it.”

“Not easy to prove it,” said Pauline, shifting a little her chair and looking straight at Mr. Allen, with great earnestness; “hypocrisy is the one thing easiest to prove. I can tell whether a man is a hypocrite before I know anything else about him. I may not for a long time be able to say what else he may be, but before he speaks, almost, I can detect whether he is sincere.”

“You women,” said Zachariah, with a smile, “or you girls rather, are so positive. Just as though the world were divided like the goats and the sheep in the gospel. That is a passage that I never could quite understand. I never, hardly, see a pure breed either of goat or sheep. I never see anybody who deserves to go straight to heaven or who deserves to go straight to hell. When the judgment day comes it will be a difficult task. Why, Pauline, my dear, I am a humbug myself.”

“Ah well, I have heard all that before; but, nevertheless, what I say is true. Some men, using speech as God meant men to use it, are liars, and some are not. Of course not entirely so, nor at all times. We cannot speak mere truth; we are not made to speak it. For all that you are not a liar.”

“Anyhow, I shall go on,” said Mr. Allen. “We shall have a desperate fight, and shall most likely lose; but no Tory shall sit for our county if I can help it.”

“Of course you will go on,” said Zachariah. “So shall I go on. We are to have a meeting in Clerkenwell tomorrow night, although, to tell you the truth, I don’t feel exactly the interest in the struggle which I did in those of five-and-twenty years ago, when we had to whisper our treasons to one another in locked rooms and put sentries at the doors. You know nothing about those times, George.”

“I wish I had,” said George, with an unusual passion, which surprised his father and caused Pauline to lift her eyes from the table and look at him. “I only wish I had. I can’t speak as father can, and I often say to myself I should like to take myself off to some foreign country where men get shot for what they call conspiracy. If I knew such a country I half believe I would go tomorrow.”

“Which means,” said Pauline, “that there would be an end of you and your services. If you care anything for a cause, you can do something better than get shot for it; and if you want martyrdom, there is a nobler martyrdom than death. The Christians who were trundled in barrels with spikes in them deserve higher honour than those who died in a moment, before they could recant. The highest form of martyrdom, though, is not even living for the sake of a cause, but living without one, merely because it is your duty to live. If you are called upon to testify to a great truth, it is easy to sing in flames. Yes, yes, Mr. George, the saints whom I would canonise are not martyrs for a cause, but those who have none.”

George thought that what Pauline said⁠—just as he had thought of Mr. Bradshaw’s sermon⁠—seemed to be said for him; and yet what did she know about him? Nothing. He was silent. All were silent, for it is difficult to follow anybody who pitches the conversation at so high a level; and Zachariah, who alone could have maintained it, was dreaming over his lost Pauline and gazing on the sacred pictures which were hung in the chamber of his heart. Just at that moment he was looking at the one of his wife as a girl; the room in which he was sitting had gone; he was in the court near Fleet Street; she had cleared the space for the dance; she had begun, and he was watching her with all the passion of his youth. The conversation gradually turned to something more indifferent, and the company broke up.

On the Monday George and his father went home. It is very depressing, after being with people who have been at their best, and with whom we have been at our best, to descend upon ordinary existence. George felt it particularly as he stood in the shop on Tuesday morning and reflected that for the whole of that day⁠—for his father was out⁠—he should probably not say nor hear a word for which he cared a single straw. But there was to be an election meeting that evening, and Mr. Allen was to speak, and George, of course, must be there. The evening came, and the room at the Mechanics’ Institute, which had just been established in Cowfold, was crowded. Admission was not by ticket, so that, though the Whigs had convened it, there was a strong muster of the enemy. Mr. Allen moved the first resolution in a stirring speech, which was constitutionally interrupted with appeals to him to go home and questions about a grey mare⁠—“How about old Pinfold’s grey mare?”⁠—which seemed conclusive and humorous to the last degree. Old Pinfold was a well-known character in Cowfold, horse-dealer, pig-jobber, attendant at races, with no definite occupation, and the grey mare was an animal which he managed to impose upon Mr. Allen, who sued him and lost. When Mr. Allen’s resolution had been duly seconded, one Rogers, a publican, got up and said he had something to say. There was indescribable confusion, some crying, “Turn him out;” others “Pitch into ’em, Bill.” Bill Rogers was well known as the funny man in Cowfold, a half-drunken buffoon, whose wit, such as it was, was retailed all over the place; a man who was specially pleased if he could be present in any assembly collected for any serious purpose and turn it into ridicule. He got upon a chair, not far from where George sat, but refused to go upon the platform. “No, thank yer my friends, I’m best down here; up there’s the place for the gentlefolk, the clever uns, them as buy grey mares!”⁠—(roars of laughter)⁠—“but, Mr. Chairman, with your permission”⁠—and here Bill put his had upon his chest and made a most profound bow to the chair, which caused more laughter⁠—“there is just one question I should like to ask⁠—not about the grey mare, sir”⁠—(roars of laughter again)⁠—“but I see a young gentleman here beknown to us all”⁠—(points to George)⁠—“and I should just like to ask him, does his mother-in-law⁠—not his mother, you observe, sir⁠—does his mother-in-law know he’s out?” Once more there was an explosion, for Mr. Broad’s refusal to take part in the contest was generally ascribed to Mrs. Broad. George sat still for a moment, hardly realising his position, and then the blood rose to his head; up crashed across the forms, and before the grin had settled into smoothness on Bill’s half-intoxicated features there was a grip like that of a giant on his greasy coat collar; he was dragged amidst shouts and blows to the door, George nothing heeding, and dismissed with such energy that he fell prostrate on the pavement. His friends had in vain attempted to stop George’s wrathful progress; but they were in a minority.