THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL NONSENSE.
by E. Temple Thurston.
BOOK I
THE ROAD TO THE CITY
The City of Beautiful Nonsense
CHAPTER I
A PRELUDE ON THE EVE OF ST. JOSEPH'S DAY
Of course, the eighteenth of March--but it is out of the question to say upon which day of the week it fell.
It was half-past seven in the evening. At half-past seven it is dark, the lamps are lighted, the houses huddle together in groups. They have secrets to tell as soon as it is dark. Ah! If you knew the secrets that houses are telling when the shadows draw them so close together!
But you never will know. They close their eyes and they whisper.
Around the fields of Lincoln's Inn it was as still as the grave. The footsteps of a lawyer's clerk hurrying late away from chambers vibrated through the intense quiet. You heard each step to the very last. So long as you could see him, you heard them plainly; then he vanished behind the curtain of shadows, the sounds became muffled, and at last the silence crept back into the Fields--crept all round you, half eager, half reluctant, like sleepy children drawn from their beds to hear the end of a fairy story.
There was a fairy story to be told, too.
It began that night of the eighteenth of March--the Eve of St. Joseph's day.
I don't know what it is about St. Joseph, but of all those saints who crowd their hallowed names upon the calendar--and, good heavens! there are so many--he seems most worthy of canonisation. In the fervent fanaticism of faith, the virtue of a martyr's death is almost its own reward; but to live on in the belief of that miracle which offers to crush marital happiness, scattering family honour like dust before the four winds of heaven--that surely was the noblest martyrdom of all.
There is probably enough faith left in some to-day to give up their lives for their religion; but I know of no man who would allow his faith to intercede for the honour of his wife's good name when once the hand of circumstance had played so conjuring a trick upon him.
And so, amongst Roman Catholics, who, when it comes to matters of faith, are like children at a fair, even the spirit of condolence seems to have crept its way into their attitude towards this simple-minded man.
"Poor St. Joseph," they say--"I always get what I want from him. I've never known him to fail."
Or--"Poor St. Joseph--he's not a bit of good to me. I always pray to the Blessed Virgin for everything I want."
Could anything be more childlike, more ingenuous, more like a game in a nursery--the only place in the world where things are really believed.
Every saint possesses his own separate quality, efficacious in its own separate way. St. Rock holds the magic philtre of health; you pray to St. Anthony to recover all those things that were lost--and how palpably stand out the times when, rising from your knees, your search was successful, how readily those times drop into oblivion when you failed.
It is impossible to enumerate all the saints and their qualities crowding the pages of those many volumes of _Butler's Lives_. For safety at sea, for instance, St. Gerald is unsurpassed; but St.
Joseph--poor St. Joseph!--from him flow all those good things which money can buy--the children's toys, the woman's pin money and the luxuries which are the necessities of the man.
Think, if you can--if you can conjure before your mind's eye--of all the things that must happen on that eve of the feast day of St. Joseph. How many thousands of knees are bent, how many thousand jaded bodies and hungry souls whisper the name of poor St. Joseph? The prayers for that glitter of gold, that shine of silver and that jangling of copper are surely too numerous to count. What a busy day it must be where those prayers are heard! What hopes must be born that night and what responsibilities lightened! Try and count the candles that are lighted before the shrine of St. Joseph! It is impossible.
It all resolves itself into a simple mathematical calculation. Tell me how many poor there are--and I will tell you how many candles are burnt, how many prayers are prayed, and how many hopes are born on the eve of St. Joseph's day.
And how many poor are there in the world?
The bell was toning for eight o'clock Benediction at the Sardinia St.
Chapel on that evening of the eighteenth of March--Sardinia St. Chapel, which stands so tremulously in the shadows of Lincoln's Inn Fields--tremulously, because any day the decision of the council of a few men may rase it ruthlessly to the ground.
Amongst all the figures kneeling there in the dim candle-light, their shoulders hunched, their heads sinking deeply in their hands, there was not one but on whose lips the name of poor St. Joseph lingered in earnest or piteous appeal.
These were the poor of the earth, and who and what were they?
There was a stock-broker who paid a rent of some three hundred pounds a year for his offices in the City, a rent of one hundred and fifty for his chambers in Temple Gardens, and whose house in the country was kept in all the splendour of wealth.
Behind him--he sat in a pew by himself--was a lady wearing a heavy fur coat. She was young. Twenty-three at the utmost. There was nothing to tell from her, but her bent head, that the need of money could ever enter into her consideration. She also was in a pew alone. Behind her sat three servant girls. On the other side of the aisle, parallel with the lady in the fur coat, there was a young man--a writer--a journalist--a driver of the pen, whose greatest source of poverty was his ambition.
Kneeling behind him at various distances, there were a clerk, a bank manager, a charwoman; and behind all these, at the end of the chapel, devout, intent, and as earnest as the rest, were four Italian organ-grinders.
These are the poor of the earth. They are not a class. They are every class. Poverty is not a condition of some; it is a condition of all.
Those things we desire are so far removed from those which we obtain, that all of us are paupers. And so, that simple arithmetical problem must remain unsolved; for it is impossible to tell the poor of this world and, therefore, just so impossible it is to count the candles that are burnt, the prayers that are prayed or the hopes that are born on the eve of St. Joseph's day.
CHAPTER II
THE LAST CANDLE
When the Benediction was over and the priest had passed in procession with the acolytes into the mysterious shadows behind the altar, the little congregation rose slowly to its feet.
One by one they approached the altar of St. Joseph. One by one their pennies rattled into the brown wooden box as they took out their candles, and soon the sconce before the painted image of that simple-minded saint was ablaze with little points of light.
There is nature in everything; as much in lighting candles for poor St.
Joseph as you will find in the most momentous decision of a life-time.
The wealthy stock-broker, counting with care two pennies from amongst a handful of silver, was servant to the impulses of his nature. It crossed his mind that they must be only farthing candles--a penny, therefore, was a very profitable return--the Church was too grasping.
He would buy no more than two. Why should the Church profit seventy-five per cent. upon his faith? He gave generously to the collection. It may be questioned, too, why St. Joseph should give him what he had asked, a transaction which brought no apparent profit to St.
Joseph at all? He did not appreciate that side of it. He had prayed that a speculation involving some thousands of pounds should prove successful. If his prayer were granted, he would be the richer by twenty per cent. upon his investment--but not seventy-five, oh, no--not seventy-five! And so those two pennies assumed the proportions of an exactment which he grudgingly bestowed. They rattled in his ear as they fell.
After him followed the charwoman. Crossing herself, she bobbed before the image. Her money was already in her hand. All through the service, she had gripped it in a perspiring palm, fearing that it might be lost.
Three-penny-bits are mischievous little coins. She gave out a gentle sigh of relief when at last she heard it tinkle in the box. It was safe there. That was its destination. The three farthing candles became hers. She lit them lovingly. Three children there were, waiting in some tenement buildings for her return. As she put each candle in its socket, she whispered each separate name--John--Mary--Michael. There was not one for herself.
Then came the clerk. He lit four. They represented the sum of coppers that he had. It might have bought a packet of cigarettes. He looked pensively at the four candles he had lighted in the sconce, then turned, fatalistically, on his heel. After all, what good could four farthing candles do to poor St. Joseph? Perhaps he had been a fool--perhaps it was a waste of money.
Following him was the bank manager. Six candles he took out of the brown wooden box. Every year he lit six. He had never lit more; he had never lit less. He lit them hurriedly, self-consciously, as though he were ashamed of so many and, turning quickly away, did not notice that the wick of one of them had burnt down and gone out.
The first servant girl who came after him, lifted it out of the socket and lit it at another flame.
"I'm going to let that do for me," she whispered to the servant girl behind her. "I lit it--it 'ud a' been like that to-morrow if I 'adn't a' lit it."
Seeing her companion's expression of contempt, she giggled nervously.
She must have been glad to get away down into the shadows of the church.