AT a quarter to ten on Monday morning Father Malachy, having said Mass at nine, sat down to breakfast. (Canon Geoghegan and Fathers Neary and O’Flaherty, having said the earlier Masses, had already breakfasted) and, mindful of the examples of Saint Aloysius and the game of billiards, turned a natural operation into a supernatural one by buttering his bread to the glory of the Father and stirring his tea to the glory of the Son and nicking the top off his egg to the glory of the Holy Ghost. But, try as he would, he could not think as exclusively of heavenly things as he wanted because the events of the last thirty-four hours and a quarter kept switching in upon his consciousness and so, excusing himself on the ground that his intention was meritorious and that the earthly matters exercising his attention were as otherworldly as it was possible for them to be, he gave up the exclusively heavenly as a bad job and allowed his thoughts to follow his inclinations.
And, indeed, it was no wonder that he indulged himself in this manner because the miracle, which had begun by being a personal affair between himself and God, had ended by becoming everybody’s business. It appeared that an attendant of the Garden of Eden had been the first to notice that anything out of the ordinary had occurred. He had been sent, so he had told the policeman on point duty, by a patron of the establishment at twenty-six or twenty-seven minutes past eleven to get a taxicab and, returning at twenty-five minutes to twelve with one of Dan T. Munro’s brightest and reddest, he had found a great square hole in the ground where the Garden of Eden used to be. It had taken him quite three minutes to realize that the Garden of Eden had actually been bodily removed from its customary location and another five to persuade the taxi driver that he hadn’t been “trying to take a loan of him,” so that it had been seventeen minutes to twelve before he had informed the policeman of the mysterious disappearance; and the policeman had quite naturally said “Awa’ and tell that to the marines” and “Havers, man” several times before consenting to accompany the boy and the taxi driver to the spot from which they said that the Garden of Eden had disappeared. Then, after a few slow nods of the head and a “Weel, weel” or two, the representative of the law had pulled a notebook from his hip pocket and proceeded to ask those heavy, practical questions which Caledonian constables always ask when something has happened to upset the public order. “Was ye sure ye was inside when the gentleman sent ye outside for to get a taxi?” And what would the gentleman be like? Young or old, fair or dark? Oh, and he was with a lady, was he? Would she be a real lady or—or yin o’ yon? And when he got outside, did he notice any suspeecious folk loitering about? Any folk that might be anarchists or communionists or likely to have a bomb on them? So he had noticed three clairgies, had he? looking as holy as though they were praying at a Band o’ Hope meeting. Weel, weel, it couldna be the clairgies now, could it? Did he no mind of seeing somebody mair—mair seenister than a clairgie or a meenister?
By this time, however, quite a crowd had col-lected and everyone familiar with the district agreed that the Garden of Eden had disappeared and that, all things considered, it was a mighty queer kind of flitting for folks to make. Some remembered having seen it the day before, some that morning and some as recently as an hour previously, and some, whom the policeman had later described as “a lot of claverin’ sweetie wives,” said that they had seen lights flying through the air above the London Road and three topers, who had been leaning against the closed door of the public house on the other side of the street, swore that they had seen all the windows of the Garden of Eden go bang up into the sky like the scenery in a pantomime, but had concluded, not unnaturally, that the vision had been inspired by their last “double.” Several, however, testified to seeing three clairgies or three meenisters “standing as though they were praying like” outside the Garden of Eden, and a free-thinking soldier on leave from Redford Barracks said that, in his opinion, the clairgies had looked “awfy like as though they were Roamin’ Catholickies” and so the policeman, followed by an ever-increasing crowd, had been forced to cross the street and ring the bell of the presbytery of the church of Saint Margaret of Scotland. And he had had to ring not once but many times because the servants were all asleep on the fourth floor and because the priests had not yet returned from singing the solemn Te Deum in church. At last, however, the bell had been heard and Canon Geoghegan, who had expected something of the sort, had restrained Father Malachy from opening the door and they had all gone up to the spare bedroom on the first floor and Father Neary, hugely enjoying the fun, had raised the window sash and asked the policeman below what he wanted. “It’s about the Garden of Eden,” the policeman had said. “It seems to have fleed awa’ and this laddie here says that he saw three clairgies standing outside it just before it got lost. I was wondering if you gentlemen knew anything about it.” “Yes,” Father Malachy had answered, pulling Father Neary back from the window, “we know all about it. At half-past eleven to-night, I, Malachy Murdoch, monk and priest of the Order of Saint Benedict, caused, by the power of God, the Garden of Eden to be transported through the air to the Bass Rock.” “Mighty me,” the constable had exclaimed, “and what for did ye do a thing like yon?” “To show the people that God is still as powerful as He was and that Christ is King of this world as well as of the next,” Father Malachy had replied, and a youthful heretic had begun to whistle the tune of a song of which the words ought to have been: “When it’s Dimanche in Deauville it’s Sunday over here.”
By this time the crowd had grown immense as it was being continually added to by contingents from the other crowd which had now gathered round the site of the Garden of Eden. The policeman, unsupported by another of his kind, had been at a loss what to do and had hesitated as to whether to arrest the self-confessed miracle-monger and haul him off to jail. But, as Canon Geoghegan had pointed out, there was no law on the statute book forbidding the performance of miracles and, as the government of the country believed, officially at any rate, in a miraculous religion, he might seriously prejudice his chances of promotion if he were to arrest a priest for carrying out the precepts of their Lord and Master. He had contented himself, therefore, with taking down the names of the clergy resident in the house and wagging his head and saying: “Weel, this is a fine to-do and no mistake.”
All night long the crowds had surged and re-surged and all night long there had been catcalls and tugs at the presbytery bell and blasphemies and blessings; and at seven o’clock in the morning, when Canon Geoghegan had entered the sanctuary to say the first Mass, the church had been filled with a congregation which was not entirely Catholic, Roman, and Apostolic. At this Mass, as at all others, Father Malachy had preached. “My friends,” he had said, wrapping himself up in his black habit, “I want you all to join with me in giving thanks to Almighty God for having vouchsafed, through my unworthy hands, to effect a great miracle. Last night at half-past eleven, in order to confound a Protestant clergyman who said that miracles were impossible, I transferred, by the power of God, the dancing hall known as the Garden of Eden from its customary site to the top of the Bass Rock. There is, I am glad to say, no doubt as to the authenticity of the miracle; you have only to look for yourselves if, indeed, you have not done so already; and we were informed early this morning by telephone from North Berwick that the Garden of Eden alighted on the Bass Rock at thirteen minutes to twelve last night. Now, brethren, I want you to do three things. Firstly, as I have already said, I want you to thank Almighty God for having given us and the whole world such a very evident proof of the truths of our holy religion. Secondly, I want you to refrain from vain boasting either among yourselves or in the presence of your non-Catholic friends and to remember that Almighty God has granted this miracle to quicken our faith and not to provide a vulgar sensation. Thirdly, as his lordship the bishop is at present away administering the Sacrament of Confirmation in Cowdenbeath, I want you to understand that my words to you this morning must not be interpreted as the official opinion of the Catholic Church regarding this latest wonder of God, but simply as an exhortation to prayer and humility. A blessing, my very dear brethren, which I wish you in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.” At all Masses, including his own, he had preached this short sermon and again at Benediction in the evening.
But unfortunately Father Malachy had been able to preach only to the good Catholics of Edinburgh and to those comparatively few “not of this fold” who came desiring to hear some new thing. He had not been able to preach to the rest of the city, to the grinning stockbrokers who had given up their Sunday golf to come and hum and haw their opinion of the miracle over the great square hole which marked the former site of the Garden of Eden, to the loud-voiced utilitarians from Glasgow who came in their plus-fours and two-seaters to see and to misunderstand, to the trilling young girls who went motoring down to North Berwick to see the Garden of Eden perched lugubriously on top of the Bass Rock; and still less had he been able to preach to the greater public, to Leeds and Manchester and London, to Paris and New York and Madrid, to the thousand and one places to which the miracle was broadcast. To them he had trusted that the miracle would preach for itself and that the spiritually indifferent the world over would be brought to the Feet of Christ by this very wonderful supernatural happening. For surely, he had argued, when those who had despised religion as superstitious heard of this vindication of the miraculous, all that they could possibly do would be to kneel in the dust and ask God to forgive them for their past unbelief.
Edinburgh, however, was by no means willing to accept the miracle as genuine. For more than three hundred years Edinburgh had known that Roman Catholics were not to be trusted and that they paid their priests for licenses to eat meat on Fridays and to rape the daughters of good-living Presbyterians. Edinburgh was not to be taken in by any of that popish hanky-panky. That sort of thing was all very well for Italian ice-cream merchants and temperamental South African operatic tenors, but it cut no ice where Edinburgh was concerned. The miracle was no miracle at all; it was just auto-suggestion or mass-hypnotism or sheer fraud. As one devout old lady remarked to another devout old lady in front of the scene of the miracle: “Thae Catholics is wrang, Jeannie; and even if they prove they’re right they’re wrang.” Against the logic of such illogic even the gates of heaven could not prevail.
And what had been true of Edinburgh had also been true of the Great Big World where leading cinema actresses and dubious deans oiled the wheels of international thought. The ordinary editions of the Sunday newspapers, having been printed on the evening on which the miracle had taken place, had contained no echo of the unusual happenings by the Firth of Forth but had been the customary hash of dramatic criticism, novel reviews, murders, adulteries and epoch-making articles on modern girls and their attitude towards the Athanasian Creed. As soon, however, as the first news had got to London every editor worth his blue pencil had rushed to press a special edition in which the circumstances of the “alleged miracle” were chronicled in the most purple journalese and in which the “leading thinkers of the day” stated their views on what it was impossible for them to have any views at all. There had been totally inaccurate descriptions of Father Malachy and the Reverend Humphrey Hamilton and wireless-transmitted photographs of the chorus of the Whose Baby Are You? company being rescued from the Bass Rock by the North Berwick lifeboat crew; and Miss Puggie de la Warrene, America’s leading prima ballerina then appearing in London, had stated that Seeing was Believing as Far as She was Concerned and the most dubious and most metropolitan of the deans, interviewed through a closed bathroom door, had said that, in his opinion, miracles were as bad form as they were bad science and that he thanked the innate sanity of the English people that no Anglican clergyman would have been allowed to perform one. Even the saner journals, those literate publications in which real thinkers write for thinkers, had been most guarded in their references to the matter. “Miracle is as far from our metaphysic as Edinburgh is from London,” one cautious critic had written, “and we would advise our readers to await further details from the North before concluding that the natural laws are no more legal than they are natural but mere physical conventions which may be overthrown at any moment by the caprice of a discredited tribal god.”
Such had been the reasonings and the unrea-sonings of those not of the Household of Faith.
Catholics, who are generally supposed to swal-low without difficulty weeping Madonnas and other knotty parts of the heavenly tapioca, had, as far as could be ascertained, been unwilling to commit themselves to belief or to disbelief in the miracle. At any rate, those in high places had been as ca’ canny as a batch of Auld Kirk elders sniffing at a doubtful haggis. “Whether or not this miracle said to have been performed in Edinburgh is true, I can’t say,” the cardinal archbishop of Westminster had stated to the same reporter who had interviewed the dubious dean. “All that the Catholic Church has to say on the matter has already been said. Miracles have occurred in the past and they are possible in the present as is indicated by the cures at Lourdes. But the Church has always hesitated to make the acceptance de fide of any particular miracle, except those upon which the essentials of the Christian religion are based, binding upon her children. And I think that you may take it from me that even if the miracle which you mention has really occurred, Holy Church will allow the faithful to disbelieve in it as much as they want to.” “Ça se peut que ce soit un vrai miracle et ça se peut également que ce ne soit pas un vrai miracle,” had said the cardinal archbishop of Paris and “Se é vero é vero, ma, se non é vero, non é vero,” had said the cardinal archbishop of Milan, and “Un milagro que es verdaderamente un milagro vale dos milagros,” had said the cardinal archbishop of Seville. And his lordship the bishop of Midlothian, on being asked by a representative of the Cowdenbeath Sunday at Home what he thought of recent events in his diocese, had blown his nose on a dirty pocket handkerchief and said: “Aye, aye, when the ca-a-at’s away, the mice will play.”
And to-day, Monday, the twelfth of December, the newspapers were swollen with badly digested miracle. Murders and abductions had been rare of late and, as it had been at least six weeks since a university don had been taken in amorous delight in Hyde Park and four months since a lady typist had flown the Atlantic, the miracle, as far as the journalists were concerned, had fallen as manna upon a sensationless world. It was, of course, difficult for them adequately to describe an event which their philosophy or lack of it declared to be impossible. But they had been too long accustomed to the job of supporting and abetting a Christianity which was tacitly supposed to be untrue not to be able to make a decent show without in any way committing their high impartiality. WONDER DANCE HALL STILL ON BASS ROCK; FATHER MALACHY SAYS ACT OF GOD. IS ISAAC NEWTON DISCREDITED? DRAMATIC STORY OF SCOTTISH MYSTERY MONK’S LIFE ran some of the headlines. Yet, startling though they were intended to be, the headlines somehow failed to reflect the reality. Perhaps it was because it was difficult for political and other kinds of correspondents to write about the supernatural or perrhaps it was because, having so often applied the word “wonder” to super-marmalade factories and the word “drama” to taxicab accidents and the word “mystery” to the disappearance of girls of eighteen, reporters found themselves at a loss for terms when confronted with an event which was really a wonder, a drama, and a mystery.
But, anyway, bald headlines or bad headlines, miracle or mass-hypnotism, it seemed that Father Malachy was well on his way to becoming as important as the Prince of Wales or Mr. Michael Arlen and that in a very short time his opinions on the merits of health salts and fountain pens would be treated, when expressed, as apocalyptic utterances. So that, all things considered, it was not to be wondered at that, after supernaturalizing his actions, he naturalized his thoughts on that Monday morning within the first octave of the translation of the Garden of Eden.
2
But it was not for long that he was able to think over recent events and to wonder whether God would convince the whole world of their reality, for Canon Geoghegan, in his nobby cassock with the purple buttonholes, entered and said:
“I’m sorry to disturb you, Father, but Plus Bob-bie’s just arrived and he says that he would like to see you immediately.”
“Plus Bobbie?” Father Malachy’s voice was all interrogation.
“Our little nickname for his lordship,” the canon explained. “It was, I think, Father Neary who invented it. You know the way bishops sign their names.” He took a stub of pencil and printed on the margin of the front page of the Scotsman: ✚ ROBERT GILLESPIE. “Well, well, even the most loyal must have their little disloyalties, mustn’t they? And when you have seen the right reverend gentleman I am sure that you will agree with me that the sobriquet is well found.”
“I see.” Father Malachy began to fold his nap-kin as methodically as though it were altar linen. “About the miracle, I suppose. And may I ask what attitude he seems to take up?”
“I am afraid, Father, that he is still inclined to regard it as unproven. He says—not without reason, I think—that it has never been the policy of the Catholic Church to define any event, however supernatural in origin it may seem to be, as a miracle until all other philosophic and physical possibilities have been exhausted. He instances, naturally enough, the cures of organic diseases at Lourdes which everyone knows to be miracles and which the Church will not define as such from motives of holy prudence. He also says that some of the miracles which the more irresponsible of the saints have been pleased to work in Spain have retarded rather than advanced the Catholic cause. Of course, Father, I do not need to tell you that I personally am wholly convinced of the reality of the miracle. So, for that matter, are Fathers Neary and O’Flaherty; and indeed Father O’Flaherty was ill enough advised to tell his lordship that only a moth-eaten, atheistic Mormon could disbelieve in such a holy wonder of God. But, if you don’t mind, I think that we had better go at once, as by nature he is impatient and does not like to be kept waiting.”
They adjourned to the room in which Father Malachy and Canon Geoghegan had first made each other’s acquaintance and where they found the bishop seated in the most important chair. His lips were pursed in a thoroughly Pictish manner and he was drumming his long fingers on the shiny knees of his trousers. He was a man of about fifty years of age and carried his six feet three inches so gracelessly that, even when sitting, he looked as though he must have had a bad time of it when getting into railway carriages. About his colourless, unlighted eyes was the bleary expression of an unhappy cabman and his nose, red from the first Sunday in Advent to the last after Pentecost, seemed as though it must always be running. His long black coat, as uncomely as any country parson’s, flowed from him drearily as though trying to symbolize an unmanicured temptation as seen by God; but between his collar and his waistcoat there peeped out a patch of purple to show that the Holy Spirit had been conferred upon him to such an extent that he himself was qualified to confer It upon others.
“Well, well,” he said as Father Malachy went down on one knee before him and kissed the ring on his finger, “this is a pretty kettle of fish, isn’t it?” And, indeed, as he uttered the words and peered into Father Malachy’s face, he looked, with his ghoulish eyes and blubbery nose, not unlike a fishmonger examining a creel of newly caught haddocks. “A pretty kettle of fish,” he repeated and stared gloomily across to the window where Fathers Neary and O’Flaherty, ordained boys of twenty-five years of age, were standing scratching unbrushed heads with red, mutton-chop hands.
“My lord, I agree with you.” Father Malachy had ceased to bend over the episcopal bauble and was now holding himself upright and speaking with quiet determination. “It is a very pretty kettle of fish. Indeed, with your lordship’s permission, I will go so far as to describe it as a glorious kettle of fish. For surely it is not every day that Almighty God condescends to work a miracle for the guidance and instruction of His people.”
The bishop sat for a long time without saying anything. He wore on his face that absorbed expression of unabsorption which, when it was directed in tram cars upon his breviary, had earned for him from the unsuspecting the title of “yon saft meenister who’s for aye readin’ his Bibul in the trarm.”
“Aye,” he said at length. “But why did ye never let on?”
“Why did I never let on?” Father Malachy re-peated the Caledonianism in a tone which showed clearly that he had but imperfectly understood it.
“Aye. Why didn’t ye tell me about it? Surely if a buddy wants to go sticking his finger into miracles the bishop of the diocese has got a right to be in the know.”
Father Malachy remembered the words with which Canon Geoghegan had assented to the proposed miracle: “All right. But not a word to the bishop, mind. He mightn’t like it.” He decided, however, that it would be hitting below the girdle to drag the canon into the affair and said:
“My lord, if I have displeased you I must hum-bly ask your pardon and forgiveness. And I must also ask you to believe that, in acting as I did, I did so for the honour and glory of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and not to further any petty personal ambition. I believed—and I know that I was—that I was acting under the guidance of the Holy Ghost and such scruples as I had about not making my intentions known to your lordship I silenced by telling myself that, though a priest is bound to obtain a faculty from the bishop of any diocese in which he proposes to hear confessions, canon law says nothing about such a faculty being necessary for a priest who intends to perform a miracle. Bernadette, I would respectfully remind your lordship, did not have a permit from the bishop of Tarbes before she could see Our Blessed Lady in the grotto at Lourdes.”
“Aye,” said the bishop grumpily, “that’s as may be. But it seems to me that seeing Our Lady in the grotto at Lourdes and making a dance hall fly through the air are two very different cups of tea.”
“My lord, both miracles were dependent upon the grace of God. Bernadette required the grace of God to see Our Lady just as much as Our Lady required the grace of God to appear to Bernadette. And I, my lord, required the grace of God to remove the Garden of Eden.”
The bishop snuffled away inside his long, red nose.
“Your miracle strikes me as being too new-fangled,” he said. “‘Nihil innovetur nisi quod traditum est,’ Father. And I don’t think that you can deny that making a dancing hall go gallivanting about the air has any precedent in tradition or holy legend.”
“And what precedent, my lord, had tradition or holy legend when they were neither tradition nor holy legend but merely the outward and visible side of everyday Christianity?” Father Malachy, aware of the great danger of spiritual pride, took pains to keep all suggestion of disrespect from his voice. “For both tradition and holy legend have had a beginning.” He smiled sadly as a thought came to him and he expressed it. “If your lordship will pardon the observation, I think that it is rather a pity that the laity should spend so much of their time in trying to make a legend out of present-day actualities and the clergy in trying to make present-day actualities out of legends. I am not, Heaven be my witness, so foolish as to think that truth changes with the ages; but I do think that Almighty God, since He made time as well as eternity, is not averse from using the material objects peculiar to any particular time for the furtherance of His divine purposes. For when Our Blessed Lord changed water into wine at the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee He was being every bit as ‘new-fangled’ as He was when He permitted me to transfer the Garden of Eden to the Bass Rock. And I would remind you, my lord, that it was He Who gave me the power to perform this miracle. ‘Non quod sufficientes simus cogitare aliquid a nobis, quasi ex nobis; sed sufficientia nostra ex Deo est,’ as Saint Paul says. In other words and in another dialect, it wasna me.”
“It wasna you, wasn’t it?” The bishop nodded over the words as though they were a piece of writing which he could not decipher. “Aye, aye. And our sufficiency is from God, is it? Well, well. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind going on with your story, Father—Father Malachy.” He let his face slide into the palm of his hand, closed his eyes, and appeared to have gone to sleep. “It’s all right,” he said, seemingly to dispel the illusion. “Ah’m listening to ye.”
Father Malachy glanced quickly around the room. Canon Geoghegan was standing slightly behind him and wore the mask-like countenance of a cardinal assisting at a rather boring consistory. Fathers Neary and O’Flaherty, over by the window, had ceased to scratch their heads and were looking like a couple of flabbergasted schoolboys, and the Right Reverend Monsignor Robert Gillespie, Lord Bishop of Midlothian, having said that he was listening, had slouched further into a pose of inattention. The brown curtains, billowing slightly in a draught, seemed the most lively objects in the room and it was to them that, after bowing in the direction of the huddled bishop, he made his apologia.
“My lord bishop,” he said to the curtains as in and out they flapped. “It is manifest to the least observant of us that this is a very godless age. Indeed, so godless is it that the godlessness of former ages appears almost pious by contrast. For the godlessness of former ages consisted more in forgetting God than in denying Him, whereas the godlessness of to-day is a real revolt against God as God and heaps ridicule upon those who would remember Him. The truths of our holy religion: the Blessed Sacrament, the prestige in heaven of the Mother of God, the divinity of Our Blessed Lord are regarded and publicly described as anthropomorphic misconceptions by high philosophers and scientists. In Britain we who have faith are but a handful as compared with those who rejoice that they are not encumbered with any such mediæval superstition. In France the Catholic religion has been trampled on by the lusts of the flesh disguised as pride of intellect, and in Italy and South America the religion which satisfied Augustine and Aquinas is coming to be looked upon as mainly a woman’s affair. And even in the only two sane countries left in the world, even in Spain and Ireland, even in Compostella and by Killarney are the grand facts of Catholicism becoming swamped under Paris hats and New York economics. The Catholic religion, my lord, is not only beautiful; it is also true. The Blessed Sacrament is not only a poetic conception of the Divine Presence; it is also a harder and more permanent reality than Throgmorton Street on a wet afternoon. Our Blessed Lord is not merely a pale figure moving through the Gospels in lovely Latin; He is also Very God of Very God and will judge those who don’t believe in Him just as impartially as He will those who do. And modernist sinners who die in the state of final impenitence will not be able to escape hell on the grounds that no educated reader of the Daily Mail believes in it.
“My lord, Our Blessed Lord came down from heaven to die for our sins and to form a church which should apply the benefits of His Atonement to the souls of men and women. That church we know to be the Catholic Church because it is the only church which reaches back to the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles and because it alone bears the marks of uniformity in time and in space by which men may know the Bride of Christ. ‘Euntes, ergo, docete omnes gentes,’ Our Blessed Lord commanded the Apostles before He ascended into heaven, and to Greece and to Russia and to Scotland and to Iceland they and their successors went, teaching all men and baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, casting out devils and healing the sick and bringing the white peace of Christ in the folds of their robes. The result of their teaching was the Ages of Faith in which, if there was disobedience to God, there was at least the conviction that the things of heaven were permanent and that the things of earth were transitory. Then came the Reformation and the great attack upon Christian doctrine, of which the results can be clearly seen to-day. From rejecting the Mass men have passed to rejecting Him Who founded the Mass and from rejecting Him Who founded the Mass they have passed to that dreadful apathy in spirituals which is the cause of all the most repugnant characteristics of contemporary civilization. And yet, my lord, the Catholic religion is just as true to-day as it was when Columbus first set sail for Iona.” He smiled as he noticed that the curtains were still now and he perorated to them in gratitude for their attention: “Behind trams and talking pictures and Wall Street the realities of God go on like the wheels behind the face of a watch which men are too unskilled to open. There is heaven and there is hell and there is purgatory, and Mary prays for sinners and the Holy Ghost goes coasting about the world like a wise old wind. Francis Thompson was a realist as well as a poet when he wrote:
‘The angels keep their ancient places;—
Turn but a stone and start a wing!
’Tis ye, ’tis your estrangèd faces,
That miss the many-splendoured thing.
‘But (when so sad thou can’st not sadder)
Cry; and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob’s ladder
Pitched between Heaven and Charing
Cross.’ ”
Cross.’ ”
“‘Turrn but a stone and starrt a wing,’” the bi-shop interrupted to requote. “Aye, aye, and so instead of turning a stone ye flitted a dancing hall? is that what ye mean?”
“Precisely,” Father Malachy was going to say when the door opened and James, the house factotum, entered and announced to Canon Geoghegan:
“Yer riverince, there’s a man downstairs with a nice fresh complexion like yourself and he’s afther seein’ Father Malachy here about the miracle. He says his name is Gillespie and, now that I come to think of it, he’s not unlike his lordship the bishop there. And, saving your riverind prisinces, he’s got a fancy piece of goods with him. You know. The kind his lordship’s always writing pastorals about.”
3
“James,” said the canon, breaking in upon the silence which followed this descent of the ridiculous upon the sublime, “how often have I told you that it is not your place to comment upon the characteristics of visitors to the clergy house. And his lordship the bishop must, I am sure, find your impertinent references to himself in very bad taste.”
But James was not at all discomfited.
“Sure,” he said, “and there was no harm intind-ed at all. And sure if I hadn’t been afther tellin’ ye that the colleen looked more loik Mary Pickford than Blessed Mother Margaret Alacoque it’s yer riverince who’d be afther pullin’ me ears.”
The canon took no notice of James’s defense but addressed himself to the bishop.
“My lord,” he said, “if what the boy says is true it would seem that it is your lordship’s brother who wants to see Father Malachy. Perhaps, under the circumstances…”
The bishop suddenly sat up, blinked his eyes, and began to take a more evident interest in what was happening around him.
“Aye,” he said. “It’ll be Aundry as like as not. Mebbe he’s been at some of his carryings-on. Mebbe even he was in that paly de donce when it was flitted. He was always a great boy for the dancing, was Aundry. Ah remember as a bairn he used to be awfy fond of Hulla-ballu-ballu Hulla-ballu-balli and Jingaring. Perhaps, though, if there’d been more Shall We Gather at the River and less Hulla-ballu-ballu Aundry wouldn’t have been such a bard lard as he is to-day. But if Father Malachy here has no objection to seeing him, then Ah see no reason why the interview should not take place in ma presence. And Ah’d like fine to have a peek at the lassie that Aundry’s traipsing round with. For upon ma wurrd, Canon, what with lassies and yon dancin’ it’s pretty difficult for a non-churrch-going Presbyterian like Aundry to keep his bapteesmal innocence. Aye, aye, we’d better have a look at the two of them.”
The canon turned to James.
“Show them both up here,” he said sharply.
Father Malachy wondered for a moment as to whether he should go on with his apologia, but he judged, from the expression on the bishop’s face and from those on the faces of the other three priests, that he was not expected to do so. Canon Geoghegan, however, seized the opportunity of offering excuses for James’s familiar mode of address.
“I must apologize, my lord, for that boy,” he said. “But I simply can’t get him to speak respectfully to or of his superiors. Only last week Mrs. Gore-Whisket—one of our most important converts—called to see me and James announced her to me as ‘an old hag whose face doesn’t match the rest of her body’; by which he meant that Mrs. Gore-Whisket, who is a vain and frivolous woman, disobeys what I may call the toilet rubrics of His Holiness Pope Pius the Eleventh and paints her face as though she were a light woman in Budapesth or the Book of Proverbs. But, of course, she is nothing of the sort, my lord; she lives in Murrayfield and is a regular attendant at all the meetings of the Bona Mors Society. And, as for James, it is in speech rather than in deed that he errs for he serves my Mass each morning at eight and goes to Holy Communion every day of his life.”
The bishop nodded heavily.
“The laddie strikes me as being all right,” he said. “And so he goes to Holy Communion every day, does he? Well now, fancy that. And, mind you, Ah’d far rather have a laddie with a bee in his bonnet and God in his soul than one of those clever ones who are all genuflections and no rosary. Aye, and that’s the sober truth that Ah’m telling ye.” The bishop’s chin sank back onto the patch of purple beneath his collar. “Aye,” he sighed rather than said and closed his eyes and was silent.
But it was not for long that his chin remained there for, almost as soon as the last sentence had passed from his mouth to the minds of his hearers, the door opened again, and the Bee Bee Bee and Bubbles were brushed into the room by an expressive wave of James’s hand.
Bubbles came first, with those short mincing steps with which Agag is recorded to have approached Samuel and with which mannequins in the Rue de la Paix work such harm to the souls of the weak in spirit and strong in flesh. She was wearing a pale green coat which she held tightly about her as though it were the only garment which she had on. But beneath it there peeped out, as pale and as green, the margin of a frock, fluted and silken, which wooed her legs and made tempting little sounds as she walked. Her hat was black, a close-fitting crown with a silver brooch in it, and her shoes were high-heeled and shiny. Flip, flip, flip she came, like a courtesan coming to Anthony in the desert, and the bishop and Canon Geoghegan and Father Malachy and Father Neary and Father O’Flaherty, for all that they had been consecrated to God, looked so hardly at her that they almost failed to notice her cavalier who, blue-suited and bespatted, followed dully in her train like a piece of unremarkable prose coming after an exquisite line of poetry.
It was, however, the cavalier and not the cava-liered who spoke. Bubbles didn’t know the bishop or any of the other four clergymen who were standing, their black clothes dripping from them like graceless ink, awkwardly about the room and so, at a distance of about three yards from Christ’s representative in Midlothian, she stopped and allowed the Bee Bee Bee to precede her and, as she silently phrased it in the secret parts of her consciousness, to do all the pow-wowing.
“Well, Bobbie, just fancy meeting you here," the Bee Bee Bee greeted. “Ah’d heard from a felly in F. and F.’s that you were over in Cowdenheath holding a consummation, whatever that may mean.”
The bishop, whose chin was now well away from the purple and whose eyes were more for Bubbles than for his brother, said testily:
“Confirmation, Aundry, confirmation. And it means imparting the Holy Spirit to folk to give them strength to keep the promises which were made for them at their bapteesm. And by the same token, Aundry, a good dose of the same medicine wouldn’t do ye any harm.” His eyes became all for Bubbles. “And who’s the lassie, Aundry? Who’s the lassie?”
“She’s me wee hen,” said the Bee Bee Bee, blushing.
“Your wee hen?”
“Aye, me ain wee snooky. Ma wee Scottish haggis. Ah call her Bubbles, but her right name’s Peggy McNab and soon it’s going to be Peggy Gillespie—Mistress Peggy Gillespie. She used to teach dancing over by.” He jerked is head towards where the Garden of Eden used to be, and then, addressing Peggy, continued: “Bubbles, this is ma big, releegious brother. He’s a popey bishop and burns candles all the year round but he’s not a bad sort when ye get to know him. That’s right. Shake hands with him. He looks like a big Ally Sloper but he can be as nice as sausages when he likes.”
The bishop half rose from his chair and, bend-ing his head and smiling his most secular smile, shook hands with Bubbles, who half-curtsied and said: “Pleased to meet you, mister.” Then, whisking his coattails from where they had whisked themselves, he sat down again and became once more the sacerdos magnus, who was more accustomed to have authority than to be under it.
“Aye,” he said, “and so ye was thinking of get-ting married, Aundry, was ye?”
“Ah was that,” said the Bee Bee Bee.
“Fancy that now,” said the bishop.
“Aye, just fancy,” said the Bee Bee Bee.
“Aye,” said the bishop, “just fancy.”
“Yes,” said the Bee Bee Bee, “just fancy.”
The bishop again concentrated his gaze upon Bubbles, whose pale green clothes seemed to fill the room with their colour. A wee bit worldly, he decided, and not over-given to thoughts about the hereafter. But then Aundry himself was such a harum-scarum that no really devout woman, Catholic or Protestant, would look twice at him. Taught dancing, too? Och, well, people talked an awful lot about dancing, but at least half of it was sheer haver and it was as like as not that she taught the half which, if it wasn’t apostolic, was not necessarily diabolic. Aye, aye, aye. There was dancing and dancing and the lassie, for all her powder and paint and falderals, seemed a nice enough wee bairn. Och, well, and Aundry, with all his whiskers and daundering about, was not the sort of man to marry the serious go-to-meeting sort of woman. Och, well. Aye, aye, aye.
“Sit ye down,” he said as genially as he could, “sit ye down.”
They sat down: Bubbles carefully, keeping the custody of her frock and crossing her legs in such a manner that her knees should not be seen; the Bee Bee Bee jauntily, as though he owned the chair and didn’t give a damn for anybody. And four priests, who had been standing since the beginning of the interview, interpreted the episcopal invitation as including them and sat down on the nearest chairs which they could find.
“Aye,” said the bishop to his brother, “and so ye was wanting to see Father Malachy here, was ye?”
The Bee Bee Bee nodded.
“Ah was that. Ye see, it’s like this. Bubbles and I were in the Garden of Eden when it fleed away. Now, if that doesn’t set me thinking on the old song, Bobbie. Ye know it, don’t ye? About three craws sittin’ on a wa’ and the first and second craw fleeing roond the wa’ and the third craw not being able to flee at a’. Well, all that Ah can say is that this particular craw fleed and fleed and fleed—just like Eyetalian sliders in the summer. The Garden of Eden, I mean.”
“Aye,” said the bishop, “it seems to have fleed all right.”
“Aye, it did that.” The Bee Bee Bee glanced first at the bishop and then at the four priests and finally at Bubbles, who, all silken and green, looked like a slender fern growing on a heap of slag. “Ah had just popped the question to Peg here and she had said that she would be very pleased to be Mistress Gillespie and that she’d like fine to go for a little ta-ta by the briny and Ah had told the laddie at the door to look slippy about getting a taxi. Well, to cut a long story short, Ah had sent for a taxi and was waiting and waiting with Peg here who looked just like a wee stotty ball in her coat and hat. And while we were waiting and waiting Ah told her how nice it would be to go for a hurl in a taxi and she told me—och, well, never mind what she told me but it was awfy passionate and would have looked fine on the fillums. Ye know the sort of thing: ‘Ma heart beats for you like a drum sounding across the waves of eturrnity’ and all yon. Well, as Ah was saying, we were waiting and waiting and waiting and all thae theatrical lassies were gallivanting about like a lot of bumble-bees having a mighty good bumble to themselves. A pretty lot of lassies they were, all slim and slithery, ye know, like bad women from Paris leading Elders o’ the Kirk into temptation. Well, as Ah was saying, we were waiting and waiting and talking away like two commercial travellers in Hawick and never a sign of the taxi or of the laddie who had gone to fetch it and all thae theatrical lassies were moving about and dancing and carrying on with the laddies. Well, after about half an hour of standing and standing, Ah thought that something queer must have happened to the laddie so Ah told Peg here to wait for me and went out to see what was up. Mind ye, Ah thought that the air was a bit fresh when Ah got outside and Ah mind wondering why Ah couldna see the lights on the other side of the street. However, Ah didn’t bother ma head about that and Ah went down the steps like a lamplighter and slipped on a bit of slimy rock and nearly went head over heels into the sea.”
“Ye what?” The bishop was all goggling eyes and open mouth. “Ye what? Say that again, Aundry.”
“Ah slipped on a bit of slimy rock and nearly went head over heels into the sea,” the Bee Bee Bee repeated. “But Ah managed to clamber back all right and then Ah found Ah was on the Bass Rock. Aye, Bobbie, smile if ye will. But it wasna a Sunday school outing, Ah can tell ye.”
“Ah’m no smiling, Aundry.” The bishop, in his emotion, became doubly Scots. “But are ye sure that ye’re no makin’ a mistake? Are ye sure that ye hadna taken a boat out to the Bass Rock like and dreamt ye were dancing and all that?”
“You’re a fine one, Bobbie, and no mistake.” The Bee Bee Bee shook his head in deliberate pity. “Ah couldna dream that Ah was awake, could I? And that the Garden of Eden was sticking on the Bass Rock like as though it had been built there. Ah couldna dream that the basement fitted into the rock like a knife into a bit of plum duff and that the lassies were all as feared as geared could be. Ah might have dreamt it but if Ah did Ah’m dreaming now and you’re still in Cowdenheath fiddling away at your silly consummation. Aye, and Bubbles must have dreamt it, too, and the theatrical lassies and the manager, who’s a great big feardie if ever there was one. Aye, and Ah must have dreamt about us all sleeping on the tables and chairs and things and Ah must have dreamt about the lighthouse-keeper climbing up to find out what had happened and about the lifeboat rescuing us and about us getting our photies taken for the Daily Mail and about ma coming here to see Father Malachy. Aye, Bobbie, Ah must have been doing an awfy lot of dreaming.”
The bishop nodded his head gravely.
“That’s so,” he said. “But did ye no feel the fleeing when the fleeing was on?”
“No,” said the Bee Bee Bee humourlessly, “there was no sea-sickness about the business at all.” He was silent for a moment and appeared to be thinking inwards rather than outwards. “Aye,” he went on, “and, what with the wind blowing about like the wrath of God and Bubbles here weeping like a two-year-old and the chorus lassies yelling and shrieking like a lot of dying pigs, we had a mighty fine time, Ah can tell ye. And us not knowing whether the end of the wurrld had come and no decent beds to sleep upon forby. Ah wasna sorry when the morning came and we got taken ashore. And then Ah read in the papers that the priestie here”—he jerked his head in the direction of Father Malachy—“had done all yon fiddle-sticks to prove the power o’ God or some such blether.”
“Aye, aye,” said the bishop as his mind pon-dered the eternal verities and their reflection through the ages, “the power o’ God is a wonderful thing.”
“So,” concluded the Bee Bee Bee, glancing at Bubbles as though to include her judgment with his. “Ah just called in to tell Father Malachy here that Ah didn’t believe a word of all yon humbuggery and nonsense.”
4
They went as they had come: Bubbles with her coat wrapped tightly about her like Cleopatra passing through her eunuchs on the way to her bath, the Bee Bee Bee insignificantly, like a domesticated Mark Anthony without any battles to lose.
“Aye,” said the bishop when the door had closed behind them, “that just lets ye shows ye. Aundry wouldn’t believe in hell fire even if he were kept there for a month of eternities.”
“In that,” said Father Malachy, “he is not unlike some of our more famous spiritual leaders whose ecclesiastical preferment is due to the fact that they disbelieve in more than their colleagues. Indeed, we all know of one prelate who expresses in the language of Isaiah the theology of bank clerks and who, when he is conducted to the gates of hell, will protest that the place doesn’t exist and that he has several times described it as an exploded superstition in the pages of the Evening Flag. Your brother, my lord, who has been—if one may say so—in the thick of the miracle and doesn’t believe in it is only another instance of the dogmatism of a race which says that there is no such thing as dogma. For the modernists, from those who read philosophy to those who play the gramophone, assert that all dogmas are untrue, save the dogma that there is no dogma.”
“Aye,” said the bishop, “it strikes me that yon miracle of yours is going to be a bit of a botheration.”
“My lord,” Canon Geoghegan interposed, “I think, if you will permit me to say so, that you are wrong. Since the miracle took place I have been requested by three ladies of the High Anglican inaccuracy to instruct them in the doctrines of the Catholic Church; and I feel sure that, as the authenticity of the miracle becomes more widely known, these applications will be followed by others. After all, your brother is a notoriously unspiritual person and it is not altogether to be wondered at that he should be unwilling to believe in what is, for him, a shattering of his most cherished materialisms. I must admit, however, that as yet neither the professor of physics at the university nor the lord provost of Edinburgh has presented himself for catechetical instruction, but I see no reason why, within the next few days, we should not be enriched by many important conversions.”
“Mebbe aye and mebbe no and mebbe Inver-ary,” said the bishop. “In other wurrds, Ah’m not so sure. Miracles were all very well in the days when saints were treated like Harry Lauder; but in these days of whisky and disbelief and what not…Ye heard what Aundry said? He was in yon paly de donce when it fleed away and he says that he doesn’t believe in the miracle. Now what can ye make of a daftie like yon?”
Father Malachy spoke again, gently, persua-sively.
“In any case,” he said, “I hope that your lord-ship has no longer any doubts as to the reality of the wonder which was worked on Saturday night by the grace of God. And, if there rest any misgivings in your mind as to the purity of my motives, surely the fact that God did make the Garden of Eden fly through the air is sufficient testimony that I was not seeking personal notoriety. For, even although the doctrine has never been defined by any council of theologians, it is evident that Almighty God does not override the natural laws in order that an insignificant Benedictine monk may get his name into the papers. And, again, even if only one soul is brought to the truth by this translation of the Garden of Eden, then the miracle has not been in vain. For Our Blessed Lord loves all souls with an equal and limitless love and the salvation of the shoeless prostitute is as dear to His Sacred Heart as that of His vicar in Rome. There are hierarchies of order, my lord, but there are no hierarchies of title to grace. And it was to bring in the lame, the halt, and the blind, the biologist, the engineer, and the light-o’-love that I begged Our Lord to grant me the power to perform this miracle.”
The bishop had been nodding his head all the time that Father Malachy had been speaking.
“Aye,” he said. “Ah’m beginning to think that your miracle is the real Mackay, all right. Aundry’s not the sort of person to imagine that a building’s been fleeing when it’s been standing still. But what bothers me is what the Pope’s going to say about it. And all thae scarlet runners that he’s got about him. They are not the sort of folks that swallow miracles easily. They’ll appoint commissions to inquire into the matter and mebbe in about a hundred years’ time the miracle will be declared to be genuine. Till then Ah suppose the Garden of Eden will go on sitting on the Bass Rock and the faithful will be free to believe that it’s still here in Edinburgh or in Copenhagen. The mills of God grind slowly, Father, and miracles require a mighty lot of minting before they can have ‘nihil obstat’ stamped on them.”
“But surely,” Father Malachy protested, “it will be obvious to any unprejudiced person that the Garden of Eden couldn’t have got onto the Bass Rock by any natural means.”
Once again Canon Geoghegan interrupted in his high monotone.
“My dear Father,” he said, “I am afraid that there are very few unprejudiced persons in the world. People generally try to make facts fit philosophies rather than to make philosophies fit facts. As an instance of this I have only to tell you that, while you were having breakfast this morning, Mr. Humphrey Hamilton called to tell me that, as he had taken the science tripos at Cambridge, he was convinced that the translation of the Garden of Eden was no translation at all but an illusion, like that of the fakir throwing a rope into the air and climbing up it and disappearing, produced by mass-hypnotism.”
“Ah wouldn’t pay much attention to a scallywag like him,” said the bishop. “Only last Wednesday Ah saw him on top of a tram reading a novel by Elinor Glyn. Sure as death that’s the truth Ah’m telling ye.”
Canon Geoghegan and Father Neary and Fa-ther O’Flaherty, to whom any novel in which men and women made love competently was anathema maranatha, looked very grave and each of them made a silent resolution to preach at the earliest opportunity on the folly of reading any book in which the characters did not all become Catholics on the last page.
“Aye,” the bishop re-mumbled, “scallywag. And he wears grey flannels and a yellow straw hat in the summer time. Many’s the time Ah’ve seen him swa-anking along Princes Street like Saint Augustine before he saw the light. Aye, and with strippit socks on, too.”
Father Malachy, perceiving that the conversa-tion was switching from the miraculous to the material, said:
“My lord, I quite realize the point which you have just made and I know that Rome is slow to move because she does not wish, through hastiness or lack of reflection, to prejudice the cause of Christ throughout the world. But here in the diocese of Midlothian we have seen with our own eyes and heard with our own ears and we know that God has wrought a great miracle for the conversion of the heathen in our midst and for the encouragement of those who, possessing the faith, find it difficult, in workshop or in office, to correspond with the grace which comes to them from above. I think, therefore, that it behoves us to use this opportunity of quickening the spiritual life of those souls which have been committed to your lordship’s charge.”
“Aye,” said the bishop, “Ah’m all in favor of that. Some of ma bonny bairns in God want a good talking to, there’s no denying that. A little less picture house and a little more Benediction wouldn’t do a lot of folk any harm.”
“My lord,” Canon Geoghegan began in his par-sonical wail, “I think that you must admit that it is most significant that Almighty God should have chosen to remove from the parish an establishment which, if it wasn’t Continental, was peninsular rather than insular in its customs. The Garden of Eden has always been the cause of a great deal of sensuality in my parish, and I, for one, am heartily thankful for its removal.”
“Sensuality?” The bishop was again speaking to his purple patch. “You mean boys and girls carrying on, don’t ye?”
“I do,” said Canon Geoghegan. “And carrying on and carrying on and carrying on.”
“Dearie me,” said the bishop, “that’s a turrible state of affairs.”
“Faith,” said Father Neary, “and it’s from my own bedroom window that I’ve been seeing things that were worse than I’ve read about in moral theology.”
The bishop was just going to say what he thought—that the teaching of the French language ought to be forbidden in Catholic schools—when there came from outside a burst of music and the sound of voices singing raggedly “Hail, Queen of Heaven, the Ocean Star.” Moved simultaneously by the same impulse, the bishop and the four priests rose from their chairs and went quickly to the window where, pulling back the curtains, they saw that a surpliced procession had halted in front of the former site of the Garden of Eden and that a clergyman wearing a white cope was censing the place where the main entrance had been. The crowd was so great that there were at least ten policemen occupied in controlling its surgings and four cinematographers were gaily turning handles.
“If it isn’t that arch-pretender Meaty,” Canon Geoghegan said angrily. “Not content with stealing our hymns, our vestments, and our liturgy, he is now doing his best to pocket our miracle.”
“Meaty?” The bishop was puzzled, and looked it. “Meaty? Who’s Meaty?”
“He’s the rector of the Anglican church at St. Gabriel,” the canon explained. “He calls himself ‘Father’ and spits in his sanctuary as, having once been on a Cook’s tour to Rome, he imagines that the habit has the authority of the Sacred Congregation of Rites.”
“The ould thief,” said Father Neary.
“Sure and he has no right at all to pinch our darlin’ miracle,” said Father O’Flaherty.
The bishop, pressing his nose against the win-dow-pane and breathing a hectagon of mist over it, came quickly to a decision.
“Aye,” he said, “the miracle’s a wurrk of God all right. And Aundry couldn’t have been mistaken about all yon fleeing any more than I can be mistaken about yon paly de donce being no longer there. Besides, we canna have the Piskies lifting our miracle like this. It’ll be the Presbies next and then the Congregationalists and all thae dreich heretics. So let it be clearly understood, Canon, that I, Robert, Bishop of Midlothian order, by the authority given to me from God through our Holy Father the Pope, that a solemn procession to the scene of the miracle take place every afternoon this week and that the Te Deum be pontifically chanted by myself; and ye might as well see to it that there are some of thae cinema fellies on the spot and if ye show me where your telephone is Ah’ll say how-d’ye-do to the parish priest of North Berwick and tell him to go out in a boat and sprinkle a wee bit holy water over the Bass Rock.”
Father Malachy's Miracle, Chapter Seven
Father Malachy's Miracle, Chapter Five
Notes
Ça se peut que ce soit un vrai miracle et ça se peut également que ce ne soit pas un vrai miracle: It is possible that it is a true miracle, and it is equally possible that it is not a true miracle.
Se é vero é vero, ma, se non é vero, non é vero: If it is true it is true, but if it is not true it is not true.
Un milagro que es verdaderamente un milagro vale dos milagros: A miracle which is a true miracle is worth two miracles.
Michael Arlen (16 November 1895 in Ruse, Bulgaria –23 June 1956 in New York City), born Dikran Kouyoumdjian, was a British essayist, short story writer, novelist, playwright, and scriptwriter of Armenian origin, who had his greatest successes in the 1920s while living and writing in England.
Nihil innovetur nisi quod traditum est: Let there be no innovations except those which have been handed down.
"Non quod sufficientes simus cogitare aliquid a nobis, quasi ex nobis; sed sufficientia nostra ex Deo est": “Not that we are sufficient to think anything of ourselves but our sufficiency is from God.”
"Euntes, ergo, docete omnes gentes.": “Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations.”
sacerdos magnus: great priest
Sir Henry Lauder (4 August 1870–26 February 1950) was a Scottish singer and comedian popular in both music hall and vaudevillian theatre traditions; he achieved international success.
nihil obstat: “Nothing stands in the way” (Rome’s declaration that there is no objection warranting the censoring of a book, an initiative, an appointment, etc.).
Elinor Glyn (17 October 1864–23 September 1943): a British novelist and scriptwriter who specialized in romantic fiction considered scandalous for its time.
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