On the Dulness of Irreligious People

IRRELIGIOUS PEOPLE

December, 1906.

I HAVE, wreathed in smiles, this moment let out of my front door a second cousin of mine who has done me the honour of paying his respects at my poor house within a week of his arrival in the town; and I must acknowledge that my geniality arose rather from the prospect of his departure than from the retrospect of his visit. I think I have seldom been so much bored; and yet he is a perfectly intelligent man, he converses agreeably, and he listens as much as he talks. And now that I am alone once more, I feel impelled to discuss the mystery of his abysmal dreariness.

In a word, I believe that it arises from his lack of the religious sense.

Now, we have not been talking about religion (nor even about art, which I hold to be a kind of religion in solution); in fact, I seldom wish to engage in conversation about God; I am sufficiently occupied with thinking about Him. Religion is one of those matters on which my judgment is so entirely in a state of suspense that conversation on the subject can be no more than a weighing of contrary opinions. It is, so to speak, sub judice, and the judge's mouth is consequently sealed. I am no controversialist; I wish neither to give nor receive blows in this quarrel; I have no interest in dogma beyond the question as to whether it may not happen to be true, and I know that George has no contribution to offer on that point. He has not arrived at the question as to whether it is true, for he has already pronounced sentence to the effect that it cannot possibly be anything but false, and therefore is no more worth his discussing than if a Sadducee should take sides in a scholastic disputation as to the number of angels capable of dancing simultaneously on the point of a pin.

I am not, therefore, piqued by his silence; on the contrary, I appreciate his kindness; my distress is caused rather by my contemplation of that arid waste which he calls his mind.

Now, it is full of facts intelligently selected and arranged; he has a pretty taste in domestic architecture; the land where he dwells flows with the milk of human kindness and the honey of friendly affection; but what is the matter with it is that it is not a Land of Promise. There is nothing whatever beyond; no glimpse of cloud-wreathed mountains, no peep of a flushed sky, no song of hidden birds, no whisper of a wind that comes whence no man knows and goes whither no man guesses. It is not even shrouded in gloom from which a trumpet of wrath one day might blow; there is no peak where God's feet might stand when He comes to shake the earth; no smoke to hint of hidden powers that one night may burst in fire. It is like such a landscape as you might see in a commercial traveller's dream of Paradise.

It has paved streets, admirably drained, lines of houses planned on the most modern system, and, beyond, the eye of the dreamer descries a flat plain, watered by a straight river on whose bosom are borne, not gallant ships with poop and gilding, but sensible barges, loaded to the water's edge with the necessaries of hfe. The fields stand thick with corn, but of such a character that no man is moved to laugh or sing: his sheep bring forth thousands and ten thousands, but not in the streets, for that would interfere with the traffic; his sons grow up like the young plants, but they are trained properly against the walls: his daughters cannot be compared to polished corners of the temple, for George would not know a temple by sight if he saw one: he would think it to be a Corn-Exchange.

Place by this the mind, let us say, of a dancing dervish or a Welsh revivalist; and what refreshment is there! The houses are ill-planned, the manure-heap it may be drains into them, as in many an Irish village; the children are dirty and stand with tangled hair in eyes and fingers in mouth; there is no economy, no thrift, no organization of resources; there is nothing that spells even the initial letter of Progress; there is not a grain of commonsense to be found in the dilapidated barns; and yet I could spend my life here and not there, for love of the laughter, the tears, the mystery and the hope. For the sky is heavy with rain-clouds and gashed with blue; the wind blows your hat off, it may be, but it stirs also the dew on the hedges and lifts the long grass; there is mud underfoot, but there may be jewels there too, or a button perhaps, or a fragment of a chandelier, or a tin soldier, or an ancient boot. There are mountains behind where saints may walk, or elves dance, where the deer live and the goats and strange wild creatures that fly at the sight or scent of man. The tangled string of water that desires you to mistake it for a stream, would bear no barge, it would not turn even a mill-wheel; but it is sufficient to

DULNESS IJ)

sweep paper boats down sideways, to make music in the night, to tell you of the far-off marshes whence it drew its life, and of the sea that will be its transfiguration and its tomb.

But the matter becomes the death of the doubly-slain when we turn from George's outlook to the prospect seen from a Catholic's window.

Observe, if you please, first the winding street beneath, ill-paved, perhaps, but then it was laid down nineteen centuries a^o. There are no side-walks; but is not the jostle of peasant and prince, of applewoman's cart and beauty's litter, of mangy donkey and knight's steel-clad charger, surprisingly pleasant.^ Would you seriously change that for a boulevard with electric trams and limes wrapped up in railings? Not that this city has no open spaces; for see far down there, beyond the swinging signs and the toppling houses, the great market-square where the images of the saints are sold, and cabbages, and fish for Friday, and lentils for Ash Wednesday, and all the rest of the dear, evil-smelling truck. There are blows bartered there sometimes, as well as onions and pence, and knives flash out, and little streaks of heart's blood run between the cobbles; but after all, is that so much worse than a solemn-faced policeman and Black Maria and the dispassionate hanging of a frantic man? Look across, too, into that window opposite, scarce a yard away; the diamond panes are thick with dust, but how pleasing is the glow of the wood-fire within, and the dim lines of the carved bed, and the grotesque shadow of the old man sitting over his beans in the chimney-corner. Would you prefer lace-curtains and a geranium-pot? See that very date and a pair of initials cut in the oak beneath your elbow, scratched three centuries ago perhaps by a lover with a string of beads in one hand and a knife in the other, lust, I dare say, in his heart, but a scapular above it that may save him yet. Is that not better than a foul word scribbled on a paling, that all deplore and none remove?

Look at that tawdry image at the street-corner with a Httle hinip before it and a faded marigold at its foot. Would you take that down and erect instead a marble image in frock-coat and trousers of a man who had side-whiskers and a blameless life to his credit, and a heart of flesh instead of fire, and eyes that looked upon a banking-book instead of upon God, to his lasting and eternal shame? I tell you that George's town is full of such; and I think that he would invoke them every morning if he had sufficient imagination and no one was looking.

And now for the supreme sight of this amazing city. Look up there to the right and see those monstrous masses, those flying arches, those incredible pinnacles soaring against a sky of pearl and amber. Have you ever seen a sight like that.^ Look well at it; for some say it is too good to be true; it will crumble w^hen the sun sets; it is an illusion of clouds. (But, for my part, I prefer to think that it is too good not to be true; though I would not bias you for the world. )

Within that long wall pierced by windows it is said that strange men dwell in white habits, with downcast faces and a measured walk. Wonderful things are whispered of them on Saturday nights round the fire; it is reported that they talk with angels, that they have found the key to the kingdom of Heaven, which, if what one said long ago is true, is to be found in your heart and mine, if we knew but the secret of its unlocking. There at least they are said to dwell; it is at least from that direction that they come walking sometimes, and up that street that they return. But none that I know have been with them; the air is too keen up those thousand steps, the sounds of warring clouds too awful, the faces that look from the windows on either side too white for you or me.

But this at least is certain — the Lord of the city dwells in that castle beneath; for he comes down here sometimes, riding on a white mule, himself in white and red, waving signs and smiling on the crowds that kneel on this side and that. I do not know if what they say of him is true — that he is more than just an old man with a kindly face and a white cap; that he has treasures of which the world does not dream, that at his nod angels fall to praying, and when he speaks there is commotion in the clouds. It may be false; there may be no angels, or clouds, or treasures; but what must it be to lean always from this window and believe every word of it as he comes riding past to the jingle of bells and the waving of fans and the crying of the crowed!

Here is a city of bells; the sun is near its setting, and from the huge tower of the Lord's castle sound three strokes and cease; and in a moment all the world stands still. Across these broad planes of golden light above the roofs and the twisted chimneys come sounding a myriad answers; from chapel and church and nunnery and guildhall. But these fantastic folk beneath us, suddenly petrified, stand silent with moving lips. The Lord himself up there has risen from his supper-table and laid down his fork; the mule-driver ceases to curse and rests his hand on his beast's shoulder; the old man has set down his beans; the mother pauses in her rocking of the cradle, and looks at the crying child as if she did not hear him.

Is it then a fire-alarm, or the warning of a troop coming up from the sea, or the signal for a massacre? I can tell you that it is none of these; but what it is I scarcely understand; nor scarcely believe what has been told me. You must ask another. It concerns a maiden and a child and an angel — no more than that....

Now is not this wild stuff.^ For I am back again in my room alone; and the dottel of George's pipe has hardly ceased to smoke in the fender; and the candles are not burned down half an inch since he left me. But I have no question as to where I would sooner dwell — whether in George's boulevards, or in Mosque Al x4ksar, or in the City of dreams, where some of my friends insist that life can be supported.

I am not concerned at this moment as to whether this or that is true, for I have no means of teUing; perhaps some day I may see more clearly. This only I know; that it is better to hope than to despair, it is better to be doubtful than positive, it is better to open doors than to shut them; it is better to affirm than to deny, to believe the best rather than the worst. And lastly this, that if to live means to be like my second cousin, — it is far, far better to die than to live....