ABOUT the same time as the lord bishop of Midlothian was interviewing Father Malachy the station at North Berwick was gay with slim young legs and bright frocks. For the chorus ladies of the Whose Baby Are You? company, after having been entertained at breakfast by the management of the Marine Hotel, were all fluttering about the platform in very worldly clothes and, with their golden hair and ebony hair and with their high heels and with their lips like rivers of blood, were looking just as though they had been in no miracle at all. Swish, swish, swish they went, in crimsons, in greens and in blues, shrilling here, trilling there as, with Happy Magazines and Passing Shows and boxes of chocolates under their arms, they climbed into third-class compartments and were absorbed by them, like different coloured inks being sucked into dirty bottles.
And behind them, or rather not quite behind them—for he was going as fast as his fat little legs would carry him—came Mr. George Bleater, their manager. He was a broad man with a large bullet head and stupid brown eyes and a face that had long been dyed a deep damask by excessive bibbing. He was fifty-nine years of age, was Mr. George Bleaker, and was grey at the temples and bald underneath the bowler which he wore like a dismal crown more symbolic of servitude than of sovereignty. And this morning, as he shepherded his girls before him, he was in a roaring bad temper because they were due to open that night at Newcastle at seven o’clock and they ought to have arrived the previous day at noon.
Mr. George Bleater was a very dour Scot and he did not like having to spend money. Indeed, so little did he like to spend money that he grudged spending it on the commodity which gave him greatest enjoyment and so he managed, by insinuating himself into and withdrawing himself from groups in bars at the right moment, to get as much of it as he could for nothing. And yesterday and this morning he had been having to spend a very great deal of money on that which gave him no pleasure at all.
To begin with they had been rescued from the Bass Rock too late on Sunday morning for them to motor into Edinburgh to catch the one day train to Newcastle which a Scots God allowed the London & North Eastern Railway Company to run on the Sabbath; and in any case the girls, in spite of the fact that they had been sucking tangerine oranges and drinking lemonade all night, had been clamoring for breakfast. And by the time that they had finished that, at least half of them declared that they were too overcome with nervous exhaustion to be able to travel that day and at least another quarter had pointed out to him that they had received no lodgings in Newcastle and that, as the night train would not get them there until after one o’clock in the morning, they would have to stay the night in a hotel at his expense. And, as he had already booked the railway tickets from Edinburgh, he did not see that there was any economy to be made by hiring an omnibus or cars and making the journey by road. So he had just had to put his hand in his pocket and pay them all a day’s meals and a night’s rest at the Marine Hotel. Fortunately, however, the management had, by way of discount on so large a bill and in recognition of the fame which they had reflected on the hotel, presented them with their Monday morning’s breakfast free gratis and for nothing.
His bad temper was calmed to a certain extent when, on entering a first-class smoking compartment, he found that it was already tenanted by Mr. J. Shyman Bell, manager and owner of the Garden of Eden.
Mr. J. Shyman Bell was about forty years of age and was even fatter than Mr. George Bleater and liked alcohol so much that he was willing, at all times and in all places, to pay for it. But whereas Mr. George Bleater’s fatness was, to a certain extent, the earned stoutness of maturity, Mr. J. Shyman Bell’s fatness was that premature and unhealthy flabbiness due to excess in drink and venery. His face, from which two small blue eyes peered numbly at the world, was a bright, brick red and, hanging down over his neck like a roll of incontinent blubber, resembled nothing so much as a grotesque red moon such as is sometimes painted on musical comedy scenery. And across this red moon there ran, like a furrow to make it look real, a scar which had been acquired in a fight at school which Mr. J. Shyman Bell had not quite succeeded in avoiding (during the war he had served his King and Country in Madrid). This scar he always tried to hide, when speaking or laughing, by an acquired mannerism of scratching the part between his left nostril and his left upper lip.
“Good morning, Mr. George Bleater,” he greet-ed, looking up from the very popular daily newspaper which he had been scanning. (It was another of his mannerisms always to address people whom he didn’t know very well by their Christian names as well as their surnames.) “Good morning, Mr. George Bleater. The papers are full of this most extraordinary happening, I see. Extraordinary, what?” And his thumb and forefinger went a-scratching interrogatively across the scar on his face.
Mr. George Bleater did not immediately reply. To tell the truth, he thought that Mr. J. Shyman Bell, although he drank whisky well enough to confirm his nationality, talked a little too much and too fluently to be a good Scot. So he sat down slowly, pulled up his neat blue trousers and, showing two margins of grey woollen sock surmounting his neat black boots, blinked and looked, as he really was, like a mass of anatomy whose sense perceptions were physical rather than mental.
“Pack of fiddle-faddle,” he said. “Pack of En-glish Church fiddle-faddle. Who’s the Holy Ghost, anyway? Eh, tell me that. Who’s the Holy Ghost, anyway? Well, I’ll tell you if you can’t tell me. The Holy Ghost’s just a—just an imaginary imagination. In other words, just a piece of English Church fiddle-faddle.”
“There’s a prominent clergyman says here that the miracle is a scandal to Christendom and an insult to the modern mind,” said Mr. J. Shyman Bell, rolling the quoted words lusciously round his tongue and booming them out as though it were a thousand Mr. George Bleaters that he was addressing. “And,” he went on, reading now rather than quoting, “such so-called manifestations of the supernatural are crude blasphemies against the spirit of an age which has learned to recite the Apostles’ Creed with the same detached spirit as, during the late war, our soldiers sang 'Colonel Bogey.' If the Roman authorities hope to advance their cause in England by such obsolete wizardry, then I can only tell them that they are mistaken. To the educated mind the transference of an Edinburgh dancing hall to the top of the Bass Rock is no more proof of the infallibility of the Pope than the production of a rabbit out of a conjuror’s hat is a proof of the infallibility of the conjuror. In other words, all phenomena, no matter how extraordinary they may seem to be, are expressible in terms of natural laws; and some other answer than that given by sanctified hocus-pocus will have to be found for the event stated to have taken place on Saturday night.” Mr. J. Shyman Bell’s voice sank to a lower tone as, folding up his newspaper and tossing it a good yard along the blue-cushioned seat, he asked once more: “Extraordinary, what?”
Once again Mr. George Bleater did not imme-diately reply. The words had rung even more meaninglessly in his mind than they had been rung on Mr. J. Shyman Bell’s lips (for Mr. Bell liked articulating words which sounded to him sonorous and did not particularly bother his head as to their meaning). But at last, rolling his brown eyes in pathetic inquiry, he said:
“I think that the Church has no business to in-terfere with people. The Holy Ghost indeed! And who is the Holy Ghost, I should like to know? Mind you, it’s not the first time I’ve asked the question. Damn it, man, I’ve asked ministers and they haven’t been able to tell me. So what I say is that the Holy Ghost is an imaginary imagination. Did you ever know anyone who’d seen a photograph of the Holy Ghost? I ask you, did you ever know anyone who’d seen a photograph of the Holy Ghost?”
Mr. J. Shyman Bell certainly did not remember having heard of anyone who had seen a photograph of the Holy Ghost. Indeed, never having taken a great interest in spiritual matters, he was almost as hazy as his questioner as to the identity and functions of the Person under discussion.
“Trinity,” he said at length. “Trinity. That’s it, Mr. George Bleater. The Holy Ghost’s got something to do with the Trinity.”
“Trinity.” Mr. George Bleater repeated the fa-miliar syllables and tried to accustom himself to their unfamiliar meaning; for, having toured theatrical companies in and around Edinburgh for nearly thirty years and having neglected to pay a visit to any place of worship for nearly forty, it was but natural that the word should connote for him the residential district in Leith called by that name rather than the theological conception which had caused the district to be so called. “Trinity. Oh, I see. You mean more of that English Church fiddle-faddle, don’t you?”
Mr. J. Shyman Bell nodded.
“That’s it, Mr. George Bleater. I see that you understand perfectly. God and the Virgin Mary and the Holy Ghost and all that.” He paused, scratched his scar, and continued: “I must say that that’s quite a nice set of birds that you’ve got in your company, what? Nice legs and figures that go in and come out at the proper places.” He scratched his scar vigorously. “Not too virtuous, I suppose.”
Now, Mr. George Bleater was, in his vices, such a monotheist that, consecrating all his devotion to Bacchus, he had none left over for Venus. So Mr. J. Shyman Bell’s compliments upon the hips and knees of the ladies of his chorus struck him as falling in the same category as remarks about rain or sunshine or the lack of either and as requiring no definite reply. (“Dear George,” his not unintelligent wife used to remark to her friends, “is a most reliable sort of husband to have in the theatrical business although I must admit that what he doesn’t give to the bust he takes out of the bottle.”) Besides, he was really puzzled as to how the Garden of Eden had come, from sitting on a street in Edinburgh, to place itself upon the Bass Rock. “I did so by the Holy Ghost within me,” Father Malachy had been reported as saying by the North Berwick Gull and, having for a long time been trying, from motives of inquisitiveness rather than from those of erudition, to find out who the Holy Ghost was, he was as genuinely intrigued as the tissues of his fifth-rate cerebellum allowed him to be. And so, as the train slid out from the multi-coloured Oxo and Gold Flake and Edgar Wallace advertisements into the drab brown of the winter fields, he began again:
“Yes,” he said, “that’s all very well. But who is the Holy Ghost? That’s what I want to know. A person or a thing or what? And why is it that nobody seems to be able to tell me who the Holy Ghost really is or was? Damn it, man, I’ve asked ministers and they haven’t been able to tell me. Now, if I could see a picture or a photograph or a drawing or something. But do you think that anyone can show me one? Ministers even. I’ve asked ministers, and they haven’t been able to tell me. So what I say is that the Holy Ghost is an imaginary imagination just as—just as God is an imaginary imagination.” And, having thus annihilated revelation from Alpha to Omega, he blinked polemically through his glasses at Mr. J. Shyman Bell as though challenging him to defend, if he could, the Christian faith as delivered to and by the Apostles.
But Mr. J. Shyman Bell was as uninterested in the Holy Ghost as he was in the fauna and flora of Norway. He did not pretend to know how the Garden of Eden had got on the top of the Bass Rock, but he hoped, inarticulately, like all good business men the world over, that God had had nothing to do with it and, being an optimist like all good business men must be, he construed, like them, his inarticulate hope into the articulate conviction that miracles and all that were fakes and shams and frauds.
“Extraordinary, what? But I wouldn’t bother my head about it if I were you, Mr. George Bleater. This clergyman here”—he reached out to tap the newspaper which he had flung aside—“says that it’s all nonsense. And what’s good enough for a famous dean like him ought to be good enough for you and me, Mr. George Bleater. Yes, all nonsense. These Catholics!” He made a gesture the expressiveness of which was mitigated by the podginess of his hands. “After all, we’re men of the world, Mr. George Bleater, and we’re not going to make fools of ourselves over Holy Ghosts and Holy This-es and Holy Thats. And if you’d lived abroad as much as I have, Mr. George Bleater, you’d know that the Catholic Church is all fairy tales and humbug. Why, in France the priests ride women’s bicycles because of the long black skirts that they wear. Extraordinary, what? Now what I’ve always said is this: that a religion must be a pretty common sort of affair if the priests have got to ride women’s bikes. Although, Mr. George Bleater, that is not to say that I wouldn’t like to see some of your well-built young ladies doing the same thing, ha, ha.”
Mr. George Bleater thought and thought and thought. Or, rather, Mr. George Bleater did not think and did not think and did not think. For so whiskied was his brain that Mr. J. Shyman Bell’s words flew past it as quickly as the brown fields flew past the window and impressed themselves no more upon his tabula almost rasa than did the fleeting fields and trees upon the hazed pane of glass. Catholic Church, women’s bicycles, well-built young ladies, they were but words and they passed to the nothingness out of which all words came and to which all words returned; and Mr. J. Shyman Bell was just an Englishfied blether who was talking through the seat of his pants.
“Yes,” he said, his eyes more stupidly and more glintingly brown than ever, “but who is the Holy Ghost? Damn it, man, the Holy Ghost must be somebody if it can make a dancing hall fly onto the top of the Bass Rock. And what I should like to know is why there isn’t a photograph of the Holy Ghost on the back page of the Daily Mail and not just snaps of my girls powdering their noses and looking like a lot of loose Lizzies. And not just a diddly, small wee photograph either. A large one.” Mr. George Bleater pulled apart his hands as though he were playing a concertina. “A large one, a very large one so that people could see once and for all what the Holy Ghost looked like and wouldn’t need to go around bothering ministers and clergymen and people.”
“Yes,” said Mr. J. Shyman Bell, doing his best to divert the conversation from the theological to the pornological, “these snaps of your little sweeties were yum yum and no mistake.” He saw, however, from the lack of expression in his companion’s eyes that he was not ready to leave the Holy Ghost for the unholy living and so, producing a flask from the rabbit pocket on his generous backside, he handed it to Mr. George Bleater and said, “Another little drink wouldn’t do us any harm, would it, Mr. George Bleater?”
Mr. George Bleater’s eyes immediately lost their higher-things or their nothing-at-all look and, focusing themselves so hardly upon the flask that they almost squinted, sparkled and appeared to reflect more sunlight than a pale December sun was able to shine upon them.
“Well, perhaps a small one,” he said, taking the flask and unscrewing the bright metal top. “Just a very small one.” He filled the top which, when inverted, became a cup, to the brim, unconsciously illustrating the spiritual ecstasies described in the twenty-third psalm. “Ah,” he said, polishing off the joy of the Lord at a single gulp, “that certainly does do a fellow a bit of good on a nasty cold morning like this.”
“Now that’s a true saying if ever there was one,” said Mr. J. Shyman Bell, holding out his hand for the flask quite twenty seconds before Mr. George Bleater was ready to return it to him and filling the cup, when it was given to him, with splashing haste. “What I always say, Mr. George Bleater, is that religion’s all very well in its way but that when it comes down to a question of brass tacks, you can’t beat a glass of whisky and stroking a pair of pretty legs. Of course, Mr. George Bleater, I am the last man in the world to do anything which—to do anything which Kipling would not have a true Englishman do but, like the other fellow, I must say that I like my little bit of fun occasionally. Nothing very wrong, you know, just a run in a car, a drink and a cuddle, and home to bye-byes. Now, that girl in your company, Mr. George Bleater, the one with the red hair and the big mouth, she looked as cute a little bit of goods as I’ve seen for many a long day. I don’t suppose that she would be averse to having a little bit of fun occasionally, would she? Clean fun, of course, Mr. George Bleater, clean fun.”
But Mr. George Bleater’s eyes were glued upon the flask of whisky which Mr. J. Shyman Bell still held in his hand.
“Yes,” he said. “That was good whisky all right.”
“Like another one?”
“Well, perhaps just a small one. Just a very small one.”
Once again Mr. J. Shyman Bell passed the flask and once again Mr. George Bleater poured himself out a good measure, pressed down and overflowing, and swallowed it and said “A-ah!” in an appreciative tone.
“Of course,” he said, “Holy Ghost or no Holy Ghost, I’m going to tell Father Whatever-he-calls-himself just what I think of him. I’m going to tell him straight that I think that he and his Holy Ghost had no business at all to land a lot of law-abiding folk on top of the Bass Rock at all hours of the night. And what the police think that they were up to I can’t for the life of me imagine. But as I say, I am going to tell this Father Whatever-he-calls-himself just what I think of him and, what’s more, I’m going to ask him for a refund of my out-of-pocket expenses.”
“Quite,” said Mr. J. Shyman Bell, taking back the flask and swigging its contents almost as heartily as Mr. George Bleater had done. “And I, too, am going to call upon the same priest because, as I think that you will agree, the earning capacities of my dancing hall have been considerably damaged by its transference to the Bass Rock. Not that I believe in miracles, Mr. George Bleater. Please don’t misunderstand me on that score. As that dean fellow says in the paper there, only the uneducated believe in miracles. But all the same you must admit that it’s a bit thick when a superstitious priest removes a fellow’s dancing hall to the top of the Bass Rock just to pretend that his rotten religion isn’t all eye-wash.”
“Yes,” said Mr. George Bleater, “and I’m going to tell him just what I think of him and if he doesn’t refund me my out-of-pocket expenses I’ll know the reason why. Holy Ghost indeed! I’ll give him Holy Ghost!”
And for the remainder of the journey the whisky flask, which was a large one, continued to pass backward and forward like an amber shuttlecock which wasn’t quite certain at which end of its groove it ought to rest. So that, when the train streamed into the Waverley Station, Edinburgh, Mr. George Bleater was still pointing out that nobody had ever seen a photograph of the Holy Ghost and Mr. J. Shyman Bell was still speculating aloud as to the degree of clean fun which the chorus girl with the red hair and the large mouth would be willing to afford him and neither was listening to what the other was saying.
2
Lunch that day in the presbytery was a festive affair at which Canon Geoghegan held out high hopes that the days of the modern novel, dancing, disbelief, and disorderly two-seaters were at an end and that the time was indeed ripe for the contemporary heathen—who were so much more hard-boiled than the real heathen in that they had had the Gospel preached unto them but had, from motives of sin or pseudo-science, rejected it—to submit their reason and their loins to the Church of God. And Father Neary had burbled over his third glass of beer that this time they had the disbelaivin’ by the short hairs and that it would not be long before every stinkin’ ould heretic in England was reconciled to the Holy Catholic Church. Father Malachy alone had taken no part in the general spiritual boisterousness and, as soon as he could decently do so, he excused himself and went into the church and, kneeling before the altar and, gazing upon the faded violet tabernacle curtains, which hid God in majesty and humility, he began to make his mid-day examination of conscience.
God was God, his mind told his soul as he shut his eyes to the hieratical upholstery around him, and had created man to love Him, to serve Him, and to be happy with Him forever. And because man had rebelled against God He had sent His Son, Who had been with Him since the timelessness of time, to redeem His children and to found a Church which should unfailingly apply to all and for always the curative properties of His death and passion. And he, Malachy Murdoch, was a priest of this God and of this infallible Church (infallible because God, being God, could neither deceive nor be deceived) and it therefore behooved him to lead a life as free from blemish as it was possible for a human being to lead. He searched, then, in the familiar wastes of his soul for all those petty little sins of pride and cruelty which, because they are so petty and so little and so mean, do more to make people unhappy than all the lustings and the thievings and murderings which have splashed scarlet and crimson upon the centuries.
For behind the tabernacle door he knew, be-hind that faded violet curtain which he couldn’t see, Jesus Christ lay cradled, as He had promised, in Bread until time should once more pass back to timelessness and Himself come to rout Anti-Christ, riding upon a cloud in great glory. And with Him, inseparable in Bread as in Unity, lay God the Father and God the Holy Ghost, the Creator in the creature for the creature, the Power which had fashioned the world out of chaos and which could, were It but to put off the powerlessness which It had imposed upon Itself, shine forth and shatter to a million nothings that which Itself had created of one. In churches the world over, in neglected wayside chapels as in Saint Peter’s, Rome, God, reduced to a flake of Himself, lay waiting for men to come and love Him. Surely, in face of a Love so great, it was impossible to let the soul rot and rust with petty prideful sins. So prying, prying went his mind, peering into this and peering into that, examining motive and weighing intention, striving to smooth out self into selflessness and to acquire that peace which comes only to those who do not seek it. And the faded violet curtains hung still and unseen before his eyes, strips of coloured silk cloaking eternity from time.
3
About five minutes after Father Malachy had begun his examination of conscience, Mr. George Bleater and Mr. J. Shyman Bell, cocktailed, lunched, wined and liqueured, presented themselves at the door of the presbytery and asked to see “the priest who was responsible for all this miracle business.” At first James, who had received strict instructions from Canon Geoghegan to allow no visitor who was not in Holy Orders to enter the house, had been all for refusing to admit them; but, on learning the identity of the spirituous callers, he had decided that they were the exceptions which proved the rule and, showing them into the small parlour usually reserved for interviews with potential converts, he shuffled off into the church to inform Father Malachy that two dhrunken divils of hiritics wanted to speak with him.
The parlour in which the two visitors found themselves was one of those bare rooms which, when consecrated to theological consultations, succeeded in making the spiritual life seem ten times more unattractive than it actually is. The chairs had evidently been carpentered with the purpose of mortifying two out of the five senses and the walls, distempered in pale grey, were hung with pictures which represented, as Novemberishly as was possible, the cardinal archbishop of New York blessing a motor tractor, a certain Father Brannigan presenting a gold watch to the captain of the parish football team, Saint Ignatius rolling his eyes to heaven, Canon Geoghegan telling a famous cinema actress de passage in Edinburgh that films could be a source of great good and of great evil, and the Angel of the Lord, pink, chubby and anthropomorphic, appearing unto Mary.
“Don’t think much of these gadgets,” said Mr. J. Shyman Bell when he had walked round the room and stood and bleared at each picture. “Not very cheerful, what? And yet they say that these Roman Catholics are great boys for arty colouring and all that. Well, well. It just shows you that you can’t believe everything you hear, doesn’t it?”
Mr. George Bleater did not immediately reply for he, too, was inspecting the pictures and he was taking longer about it than Mr. J. Shyman Bell had done. At length, however, he had finished and, taking off his gold-rimmed pince-nez and wiping them energetically on his handkerchief, he remarked:
“I thought as much. No photograph of the Holy Ghost. Not a snap even. What I say is this: all these churchy people ought to be compelled by law to keep photographs of the Holy Ghost and then all this humbug would come to an end because they wouldn’t be able to get hold of a photograph of the Holy Ghost. And why wouldn’t they be able to get hold of a photograph of the Holy Ghost? Well, I’ll tell you, because the Holy Ghost is an imaginary imagination and even Bacon up there in Princes Street can’t take a photo of an imaginary imagination.” His big brown eyes flashed in confident wrath and he began to walk up and down the room with small, dumpy steps. “Holy Ghost indeed. Damn it, man, who is the Holy Ghost? I’ve asked ministers and they can’t tell me.” And as he stumped up and down in his neat blue suit (he had left his overcoat in the hall) the very creases on the seat of his trousers seemed to express Erastianism, Machiavellianism, Joynson Hicksism, and all the other sanities beloved by those who will have no priest between them and God.
“Now the sort of thing that I like,” said Mr. J. Shyman Bell who was thoroughly tired of Mr. George Bleater and the Holy Ghost, “now the sort of thing that I like is something with a bit of kick in it. They do these things so well in Paris, you know. Girls, I mean. Naughty but nice.” His thumb and forefinger ceased scratching along their accustomed furrow and transferred themselves to one of his pockets from which they extracted the current issue of the London Mail. “Now, that’s the sort of thing that brightens cricket,” he said, pointing to an illustration of a young girl lying on a sofa in what a Nordic artist imagined a Nordic public would interpret as a state of abandon. “Cheers a fellow up after a hard day’s work at the office. Whereas all this holy bunk—well, to be quite frank with you, Mr. George Bleater, I must confess that it gives me the pip in five places.”
This time, however, the sudden and silent entry of Father Malachy prevented Mr. George Bleater from making an inconsequent reply; and with him there seemed to come some of the Benedictine peace, the shadow of that PAX which lies so surely over Solesmes, Farnborough, and Montserrat, the shadow of a reality which was none the less real for being itself a shadow. Even Mr. George Bleater seemed to sense the spiritual electricity in the air, for his eyes softened from wrath to stupidity and Mr. J. Shyman Bell, with a temporary blush spreading over his permanent one, hastily replaced the London Mail in his pocket and pulled down the flap so that the title should not be seen.
“I understand, gentlemen, that you wish to see me.” Father Malachy’s voice was quiet and steady as he uttered the simple sentence. “And may I ask the nature of your business?”
Now neither Mr. George Bleater nor Mr. J. Shy-man Bell, for all that they knew more about the Catholic Church than the Pope of Rome did, had ever spoken to or been spoken to by a priest in their lives before; and the ordinariness of Father Malachy’s voice astonished them so that they looked at each other in perplexity, moistened their lips with their tongues, coughed solemnly as though they were at a board meeting or a funeral, looked away again and changed, for something to do, the position of their feet.
“Perhaps,” said Father Malachy, indicating the uncomfortable chairs, “you will be seated.”
They sat down, taking a long time about it. For Mr. George Bleater had an eye on Mr. J. Shyman Bell and Mr. J. Shyman Bell had an eye on Mr. George Bleater, as neither wished to commit what the other might describe as a solecism. At last, however, they were seated and, as they leaned back against the creaking wood, Father Malachy sat down too and folded his hands in front of him.
“Was it by any chance about the miracle that you wished to see me?” he asked gently.
Once again Mr. George Bleater and Mr. J. Shy-man Bell looked at each other in perplexity and once again they moistened their lips with their tongues; but this time Mr. George Bleater who, being a stupider man than his companion, feared the unknown less, said, lurchingly:
“Look here, Mister, it’s all very well to talk about the Holy Ghost and all that, but what we want to know is…”
But he got no further, for Father Malachy was holding up his right hand, almost in the manner of the priest of the Lyceum stage forbidding a seduction, and saying:
“Excuse me, gentlemen. I am a monk and a priest; my title is ‘Father.’ Father Malachy Murdoch of the Order of Saint Benedict. A mere matter of form, I know, but if we didn’t observe matters of form there would be even more strife and unpleasantness in the world than there actually is.”
“I am sure, Father Malachy Murdoch, that Mr. George Bleater joins me in proffering our most sincere apologies for any slight which we may have unconsciously offered you.” Mr. J. Shyman Bell spoke slowly and sonorously, but not too slowly and not too sonorously, for he did not want Mr. George Bleater to interrupt him. “Perhaps when I tell you, Father Malachy Murdoch, that both Mr. George Bleater and myself are stout Protestants to whom the faith that we learned at our mothers’ knees is dearer than life itself, perhaps then you will understand that, having had no occasion for intercourse with Roman Catholic clergymen, we are naturally at a loss for words and terms. And, Father Malachy Murdoch, in view of the fact that one religion is as good as another and that one day we shall have to stand together before the All-Father and take our chances as man to man, in view of that fact, Father Malchy Murdoch, I am sure that you will forgive us.” His beady little eyes were wet as he concluded, partly owing to his anteprandial, prandial, and post-prandial bibbings, partly owing to the sincerity of his insincerity. “Yes, Father Malachy Murdoch, in view of that fact I am sure that you will forgive us.”
Father Malachy bowed slightly.
“I understand perfectly,” he said.
His tone seemed to imply so much more than the sentence which it cradled that Mr. George Bleater and Mr. J. Shyman Bell were again at a loss for words and for thoughts. And indeed Father Malachy himself, whose spiritual sensibilities were acute, did not quite know how to address his visitors, whom he realized to be a thousand years and a solar system of prejudices and environment distant from him. They sat, therefore, without speaking, outwardly three human beings looking at one another, inwardly three sets of metaphysics and moral philosophies packed up and hidden in bindings that were, to an unmental eye, the same. Three human beings: three universes, three cosmologies, three worlds, three Scotlands, three Spains, three rooms in which they sat, three units miserably failing to be one unity.
At length, however, Father Malachy asked again:
“Was it by any chance about the miracle that you wished to see me?”
Mr. J. Shyman Bell looked at Mr. George Bleater and saw that, given the opportunity, the other would obscure the issue by asking irrelevant questions about the Holy Ghost. He turned, therefore, to Father Malachy and said with energetic unctuousness:
“I do not know, Father Malachy Murdoch, if your servant informed you as to our identity. My friend here is Mr. George Bleater, manager of the Whose Baby Are You? company, the chorus of which was present at my invitation in the Garden of Eden on Saturday night. And I myself have the honour to be Mr. J. Shyman Bell, manager and owner of the Garden of Eden.” He had been producing, as he talked, a card from his pocketbook and he handed it, with a flick and a flourish, to Father Malachy. “So I think that you will realize that we have some fairly sound reasons for being interested in your wonderful little miracle.”
Father Malachy rose and held out his hand and Mr. George Bleater and Mr. J. Shyman Bell did likewise. Awkwardly, self-consciously the three worlds, the three Scotlands, the three Spains shook hands and made polite noises at one another and sat down again.
“And now,” said Mr. J. Shyman Bell, who was beginning to recover his accustomed self-assurance, “and now that we have shaken hands like good men and true perhaps it will be easier for us to see eye-to-eye on the rather delicate matter which we have to discuss together.”
Mr. George Bleater, to whom his companion’s verbosity was distasteful, sat with a glower on his face and another in his mind. What, he refrained from asking, was the good of all this blethering and beating about the bush? Why not go straight to the point and ask the fellow bang out who the Holy Ghost was and whether he had any intention of paying for the damages caused by his hanky-panky? Perhaps the fellow had taken out an insurance policy for his miracles. These Roman Catholic priests were up to all sorts of dodges and nobody could tell what they’d be doing next. But, insurance policy or no insurance policy, all this havering about “delicate little matters” was sheer damned silliness.
“Yes,” said Father Malachy, “the ways of Al-mighty God are delicate, aren’t they? I often think that the world is like the shroud which wrapped Our Lord’s Body when It was laid in the tomb: it bears His imprint in every mountain and valley.”
Mr. J. Shyman Bell’s face assumed that ex-pression of expressionlessness which he deemed fitting to references about the glorious dead, his Saviour, and unintentional double entendres in the presence of ladies of principle.
“Quite,” he said. “And these little matters, deli-cate, as we have both agreed, in themselves are made more delicate because they can also be expressed in terms of a commodity which neither priest nor dance-hall proprietor, Father Malachy Murdoch, can live without.”
“Yes,” blustered Mr. George Bleater, “Saturday night’s high jinks with your Holy Ghost cost me a little over a hundred pounds. A little over a hundred pounds, I tell you. And what for? Just to feed and lodge twenty-odd chorus girls whose nerves were shattered at suddenly finding themselves on the Bass Rock. It was no good my telling them that it was the Holy Ghost who had done it; they just laughed at me and told me that as their presence in the Garden of Eden was good publicity for my show they thought that I ought to pay for any misadventures which might happen to them in it. So I think that as it was you who asked the Holy Ghost to perform this queer sort of business, I think that it is only fair that you should stump up.” He pulled out a small piece of crumpled paper from his waistcoat pocked and looked at it angrily. “One hundred and thirteen pounds, nineteen shillings, that’s what you owe me. And if you can’t see your way to paying me I’ll write a letter to the papers about it. Mind you, I mean what I say. I’ll write letters to all the papers about it. Not just a wee letter, either; a long letter with full names. Damn it, man, I once prevented my next-door neighbor from keeping hens by writing to the papers about it. Yes, I mean what I say. I’ll write to the papers about it unless you compensate me for the unlawful detention of my girls on the Bass Rock by the Holy Ghost.”
Father Malachy, completely concealing his amazement and his disgust, said gently:
“Of course, Mr. Bleater, of course I shall com-pensate you in full. I had forgotten that miracles could be expressed in terms of money, but then I am only a very unbusinesslike monk and acquainted more with the philosophical than the practical problems of life. So you really must excuse me for not having realized that I should have to pay for my miracle. But as it has been such a good miracle I have no doubt that either the diocesan authorities or my own community at Fort William will be more than willing to reimburse you any sum by which you may find yourself poorer on its account.”
“Cash,” said Mr. George Bleater unashamedly, “hard, glittering spondulicks.”
Father Malachy bowed.
“I understand perfectly and I think that I can guarantee that either the right reverend the lord bishop of Midlothian or the right reverend the lord abbot of Fort William will pay you the amount you claim in hard, glittering spondulicks.”
Mr. J. Shyman Bell, who never asked a direct question if he could ask three indirect ones and who prided himself on commercial finesse and on being able to tell the right smutty story to the right patron at the right moment, was genuinely distressed by Mr. George Bleater’s blundering descent to the brass tacks; and seeing that the other was about to ask “When,” he addressed himself immediately to Father Malachy.
“I am afraid, Father Malachy Murdoch,” he be-gan, “that you must excuse the somewhat abrupt manner in which my old pal Mr. George Bleater has chosen to express himself. When you’ve known old Geordie as long as I have you’ll know that his bark is worse than his bite. Isn’t that so, old man?” He switched, for a moment, the lighted turnip of his face upon his companion. “An old college chum of Geordie’s once told me that he was so bad-tempered that he ought to have been a sergeant-major. Now, Geordie, don’t lose your wool or I’ll tell Father Malachy Murdoch here all about your past.” The lighted turnip was again shining full upon Father Malachy. “And of course, Father Malachy Murdoch, we must remember—must we not?—that he really has been considerably inconvenienced by this little miracle of yours and that he has still to catch a train to Newcastle this afternoon in order to be in time for the first performance to-night.”
Looking at Mr. J. Shyman Bell’s fat face and listening to his suave tones, Father Malachy was tempted to wonder if Almighty God could really have intended that he should love this man and see in him, naked or hungering, Christ naked, Christ hungering. And Saint John had written—had he not?—something like: “if a man love not his neighbour whom he hath seen, how shall he love God Whom he hath not seen?” Poor Saint John. He certainly could not have foreseen the bladder-like face of Mr. J. Shyman Bell, pre-created from all eternity for all eternity. But, with an effort, he brushed the cynicism from him and said: “You may rest assured, Mr. Bell, that I harbour no resentment against your friend for any asperity which there may have been in his mode of addressing himself to me.”
“It is indeed good of you, Father Malachy Mur-doch, to be so patient with us.” Mr. J. Shyman Bell’s thumb and forefinger began to dig periods out of his scar. “But perhaps you will permit me to say that I am not surprised because, being by nature a quick judge of character, I knew you, as soon as I saw you, Father Malachy Murdoch, to be the man you are. Now, as I think I have already told you, I am a stout Protestant and I would gladly suffer death rather than renounce those principles for which my Covenanting forefathers shed their glorious blood on our Scottish moors; and you are a devout Roman Catholic and no doubt you feel just the same way as I do about these higher things about which, when all is said and done, we shall know nothing for certain until we have passed into the Great Beyond. But we are both, I take it, men of the world and therefore I see no reason why we should not come to a satisfactory understanding about the—about the financial side of—of this very religious—of this very religious miracle which you have brought off. You have just, out of the kindness of your heart, which I am glad to see is clean and British, offered to refund to my friend Mr. George Bleater the expenses which he has incurred as a result of the aforesaid religious miracle. Now I also, Father Malachy Murdoch, am a loser in respect thereof and I estimate my losses at little short of a hundred thousand pounds.”
“A hundred thousand pounds.” Father Malachy repeated the amount over to himself. “To a poor monk like myself that sounds like a great deal of money.”
“It is a great deal of money, Father Malachy Murdoch. But it is no more than I have lost or stand to lose through your removal of my dance hall from its former site. A dance hall on top of the Bass Rock, Father Malachy Murdoch, is something of a white elephant; and plain business men, however deep and sincere their respect for religious miracles, cannot afford to lose buildings, fittings, and fixtures, good will, earning capacity and all, without claiming some pecuniary compensation in return.”
Oh dear, thought Father Malachy, but what a fool he had been. He might have realized that one just couldn’t go borrowing dance halls for the purpose of proving the eternal verities without having to pay the owners. And Canon Geoghegan. And the bishop. The idea hadn’t seemed to strike them either. And Almighty God. Almighty God had allowed him to perform the miracle and had not permitted the Holy Ghost to inspire him with any counsels of prudence. Which meant that Almighty God was all for the miracle. Which meant that the money would be found somewhere. He smiled again in his soul and from his soul.
“Mr. Bell,” he said, “I must be frank with you. I don’t know at the moment how or where I am going to find so large a sum of money as you have just mentioned. But I fully realize that you are entitled to compensation for the losses which you have sustained through this very wonderful manifestation of God’s power and I ask you to believe that, had the practical side of the question crossed my mind, I would have formally asked your permission before attempting the miracle. I have said that I don’t know where I am going to find the money, but I am certain that it will be found. Perhaps the bishop of Midlothian will find it for me; perhaps my abbot, perhaps we shall have to open a subscription fund. But one thing I do know, Mr. Bell: and that is that Almighty God will find a way to reimburse you for the loss of your dancing hall.”
“Yes,” said Mr. J. Shyman Bell. “Yes, Father Malachy Murdoch, but supposing He doesn’t?”
“But He will. He allowed the miracle to be per-formed. Therefore He will find the money to pay for it. It’s really very simple.” Mr. J. Shyman Bell was not too sure about God finding the money, but he realized that to stress his skepticism would be tactless.
“Father Malchy Murdoch,” he said, “since you have been generous, I’ll be generous, too. If you get the—the Holy Ghost, wasn’t it?—if you get the Holy Ghost to bring back my dance hall in time for to-night’s evening session I shan’t claim a penny from you. Perhaps that will be the simplest way out of the difficulty and we’d both be satisfied. Yes, Father Malachy Murdoch, get the Holy Ghost to bring back the Garden of Eden and we’ll cry quits.”
“I am afraid that you don’t quite understand the position,” Father Malachy explained. “I asked Almighty God to allow me to perform this miracle in order that unbelievers and heretics might be confounded. And, as miracles aren’t believed in a day, unbelievers and heretics will not be confounded in a day. No, Mr. Bell, your dance hall has got to go on sitting on the Bass Rock until the world comes back to faith in Our Blessed Lord. And that, as I have said, will not be in a day. You yourself, Mr. Bell. You come here to claim damages because I have removed your dance hall to the Bass Rock and yet you don’t really believe in the miracle. Not really and truly and without mental reservations.”
“I have told you that I am a stout Protestant,” Mr. J. Shyman Bell defended.
“Even stout Protestants must accept the evi-dence of their eyes. Saint Thomas, if you will pardon my saying so, was well on his way to becoming a stout Protestant until he thrust his hand in Our Lord’s Side.” The sigh in Father Malachy’s spirit billowed out into his voice. “But I forgot. You did not come here for a course of dogmatic theology, did you? You came here seeking lawful damages which you have very kindly offered to forego if I annul my miracle by performing another and reinstate your dance hall where it was before. Well, my answer to that is that I cannot reinstate your dance hall but that I am perfectly prepared to approach my ecclesiastical superiors with regard to the money which you claim. And that, gentlemen, is, I am afraid, all that I can say or do for the moment.”
And, after a few other courtesies had been ex-changed between Mr. J. Shyman Bell and Father Malachy, they all took leave of one another and returned to their separate worlds; Mr. George Bleater to two large whiskies and the afternoon train to Newcastle; Mr. J. Shyman Bell to the Braid Hills and a little bit of fluff he had picked up in the lounge of the new picture house; and Father Malachy to the solemn Te Deum in front of what had once been the Garden of Eden, sung by the bishop and Canon Geoghegan and himself, the three of them in their snappiest white vestments.
4
Half an hour later, after having intoned the Te Deum in the presence of an odd ten thousand centres of the universe (which included a bewildered thirty, of the all-for-morning-prayer-but-never-at-it kindergarten of thought, from the adjacent Stock Exchange) the bishop, Canon Geoghegan, and Father Malachy were unvesting in the sacristy and, as the bishop, snuffling and sniffling, was trying to disentangle his pectoral cross from his stole, a meaningless rhyme, composed by him when a novice, was running through Father Malachy’s head:
“Father Time
Was at Prime;
But at None
He was gone.”
At last, however, the bishop had freed pectoral cross from stole and stole from pectoral cross and, standing gaunt and gawky and looking, in his unornamented alb, like the farmer of farce in the nightgown of farce, was mumbling:
“Ah saw Aundry in the crowd. With his wee bit hen as he calls her. His wee bit hen. Och, well. Aundry was always a bit of a coamic.”
Canon Geoghegan did no answer. He regard-ed the sacristy as the direct antechamber to the sanctuary and had forbidden his curates to indulge in secular tittle-tattle while vesting or unvesting. But the bishop was the bishop; and one could show disapproval only by silence when he broke the rules and rubrics or bungled his ritual at Pontifical High Mass.
“Aye,” said the bishop, who secretly thought that Canon Geoghegan was a bit of an auld fusspot, “aye and his wee bit hen seemed to me to be more like a wee bit bubbly-jock than a wee bit hen. She was wearing one of yon coloured sweaters that look just like a rainbow with the measles. Aye, aye.” His voice became more of a mumble than ever as he pulled his alb over his head. “Aye,” he said again as he began to unbutton his cassock, “Ah suppose Ah’d better be getting home for ma tea.”
“If your lordship will excuse me,” Father Mal-achy broke in, “I’d like to have a word with you before you go home.”
“Of course Ah’ll excuse you and you can have as many wurrds with me as you like.” The bishop was feeling more genial than he had ever felt since the day when he had preached, at the opening of the convent school for girls and coran cardinali and prominent heretics, on the “Flames o’ Hell as a Speeritual and Pheesical Reality.” “And wasn’t all yon crowd just the finest thing ye ever saw? All the godless lassies and laddies who think only of theeters and pictures. Well, all that Ah can say is that yon miracle of yours has given them pictures. Man, Malachy, Ah shouldn’t be surprised if you and your Garden of Eden were to convert the whole world from Dan to Beersheba and from John o’ Groats to Bewnos Airs.”
“Perhaps your lordship would prefer to inter-view Father Malachy in the house,” Canon Geoghegan suggested.
“And perhaps ma lordship would prefer to have a wee bit confabulation just where we are. What say you, Father Malachy? We’re fine where we are, aren’t we?”
But the debt of a hundred thousand pounds was beginning to appear so large to Father Malachy that he was unable to smile.
“My lord,” he said, “in the early part of the afternoon I received a visit from a Mr. J. Shyman Bell who stated that he was the owner of the Garden of Eden.”
“Ye did, did ye? And what might he be want-ing? Has he been converted or what?”
“I’m afraid not, my lord. All that he seems to be wanting is a hundred thousand pounds for his dance hall.”
“A hundred thousand pounds. Why did he no make it a million when he was about it? And we haven’t stolen his dance hall, have we? All that we’ve done is to flit it to the Bass Rock.”
“That is so, my lord; but Mr. Bell points out that this removal of the Garden of Eden to the Bass Rock is as good as theft because it has turned if from a profit-earning establishment into a structural curiosity. And, while in no way sympathizing with Mr. Bell’s philosophy of life, I must really say that I admit the justice of his claim. Indeed, so convinced was I of the reality of his losses that I undertook to approach you and my abbot with a view to seeing how the money could be found.”
“That was kind of ye. But I haven’t got a hun-dred thousand pence, let alone a hundred thousand pounds.” The bishop was by now out of his cassock and into his clerical coat and was appearing not at all pontifical. “But in any case the laddie’ll have to justify his claim: buildings so much, fancy carpets so much, what-nots so much, electric fittings so much. And he can’t do that in under a month—not justify it, I mean. And by that time we may have converted a few yon wealthy fellows who live out by Murrayfield and never darken a church door. Dinna fash yerself, Malachy; the money side of the business will settle itself.”
“Yes,” said Canon Geoghegan, “and in any case our Protestant friends are for the moment disbelieving so faithfully in the miracle that they will find it difficult to treat it as real or to have it treated as real for legal purposes. Yes, for once I rather think I am sorry for our Protestant friends.” He smiled in a semi-Oriental manner, as though to indicate that Protestants were his friends only for rhetorical purposes. (For when Canon Geoghegan made use of the phrase “our Protestant friends” one felt that he would have liked to be able to dispense with diplomatic flatulence and to call them roundly effing bees; but then the Reverend Dr. Montrose McMichen, who had preached on several occasions before the King in Crathie parish church, always gruffed out “our Western brethren” just as though he meant it to sound like effing cees.) “Yes, this time I think that our Protestant friends have bitten off more than they can chew.”
“But,” Father Malachy protested, “the poor man is entitled to some pecuniary compensation. We know that the miracle is a true one and we know that he has been deprived of his lawful means of livelihood because of the miracle. Therefore it is our duty to pay Mr. Bell any sum which he may justifiably claim.”
“The man’s means of livelihood was not lawful,” Canon Geoghegan intoned. “The Garden of Eden was an iniquitous blot upon the parish and the diocese, and its removal to the Bass Rock is in the nature of a personal subscription from the Catholic Church towards Scottish purity.”
“I maintain, Canon, that you are grossly exag-gerating the true state of affairs.” Father Malachy spoke with patience and kindness. “And I also maintain that, economically and morally, we are bound to make some restitution to Mr. Bell for the commerce of which we have deprived him.”
“And I maintain that the sins practised in and because of the Garden of Eden relieve us from the obligation to make any restitution. This Mr. Bell must be a very gross personage from what I have heard of him, and the souls which he has caused to be damned deny him the right to plead any cause against us.” The canon was flushed and angry. “And, if we did make any restitution, the Garden of Eden would become our property. And what would we do with it? Turn it into a summer house for the children of Mary?”
“We could turn it into a church where monks would perpetually sing the office in gratitude to Almighty God for the miracle. And that is another reason why we should make restitution, Canon. We must at all costs prevent this building, which has been so marvellously used by God, from being desecrated by secular hands.”
The bishop reached for his black felt hat and said snotteringly:
“Have your little argy-bargy if you must; but Ah’m awa’ home for ma tea.”
And, after allowing Canon Geoghegan and Father Malachy to kiss his ring, the lord bishop of Midlothian passed out of the sacristy, through the church, across the street and into a tram where, producing his breviary and poring over it, he looked once more like the plain man’s misconception of him: a Presbyterian minister who was indecently and unsportingly attached to Holy Writ.
Notes
William Joynson-Hicks (23 June 1865–8 June 1932), was an English solicitor and Conservative Party politician. He opposed a revision of the Book of Common Prayer on the grounds that the revision veered into “papistry.”
William Joynson-Hicks (23 June 1865–8 June 1932), was an English solicitor and Conservative Party politician. He opposed a revision of the Book of Common Prayer on the grounds that the revision veered into “papistry.”
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