The Country of the Blind and other Selected Stories Read online

  There was possibly a certain want of originality in his attempts, for apart from his will-power Mr Fotheringay was not a very exceptional man. The miracle of Moses’ rod came to his mind, but the night was dark and unfavourable to the proper control of large miraculous snakes. Then he recollected the story of Tannhäuser3 that he had read on the back of the Philharmonic programme. That seemed to him singularly attractive and harmless. He stuck his walking-stick – a very nice Poona-Penang lawyer4 – into the turf that edged the footpath, and commanded the dry wood to blossom. The air was immediately full of the scent of roses, and by means of a match he saw for himself that this beautiful miracle was indeed accomplished. His satisfaction was ended by advancing footsteps. Afraid of a premature discovery of his powers, he addressed the blossoming stick hastily: ‘Go back.’ What he meant was ‘Change back’; but of course he was confused. The stick receded at a considerable velocity, and incontinently came a cry of anger and a bad word from the approaching person. ‘Who are you throwing brambles at, you fool?’ cried a voice. ‘That got me on the shin.’

  ‘I’m sorry, old chap,’ said Mr Fotheringay, and then realizing the awkward nature of the explanation, caught nervously at his moustache. He saw Winch, one of the three Immering5 constables, advancing.

  ‘What d’yer mean by it?’ asked the constable. ‘Hullo! It’s you, is it? The gent that broke the lamp at the Long Dragon!’

  ‘I don’t mean anything by it,’ said Mr Fotheringay. ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘What d’yer do it for then?’

  ‘Oh, bother!’ said Mr Fotheringay.

  ‘Bother indeed! D’yer know that stick hurt? What d’yer do it for, eh?’

  For the moment Mr Fotheringay could not think what he had done it for. His silence seemed to irritate Mr Winch. ‘You’ve been assaulting the police, young man, this time. That’s what you done.’

  ‘Look here, Mr Winch,’ said Mr Fotheringay, annoyed and confused, ‘I’m very sorry. The fact is –’

  ‘Well?’

  He could think of no way but the truth. ‘I was working a miracle.’ He tried to speak in an offhand way, but try as he would he couldn’t.

  ‘Working a – ! ’Ere, don’t you talk rot. Working a miracle, indeed! Miracle! Well, that’s downright funny! Why, you’s the chap that don’t believe in miracles.… Fact is, this is another of your silly conjuring tricks – that’s what this is. Now, I tell you –’

  But Mr Fotheringay never heard what Mr Winch was going to tell him. He realized he had given himself away, flung his valuable secret to all the winds of heaven. A violent gust of irritation swept him to action. He turned on the constable swiftly and fiercely. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘I’ve had enough of this, I have! I’ll show you a silly conjuring trick, I will! Go to Hades! Go, now!’

  He was alone!

  Mr Fotheringay performed no more miracles that night, nor did he trouble to see what had become of his flowering stick. He returned to the town, scared and very quiet, and went to his bedroom. ‘Lord!’ he said, ‘it’s a powerful gift – an extremely powerful gift. I didn’t hardly mean as much as that. Not really.… I wonder what Hades is like!’

  He sat on the bed taking off his boots. Struck by a happy thought he transferred the constable to San Francisco, and without any more interference with normal causation went soberly to bed. In the night he dreamt of the anger of Winch.

  The next day Mr Fotheringay heard two interesting items of news. Someone had planted a most beautiful climbing rose against the elder Mr Gomshott’s private house in the Lulla-borough Road, and the river as far as Rawling’s Mill was to be dragged for Constable Winch.

  Mr Fotheringay was abstracted and thoughtful all that day, and performed no miracles except certain provisions for Winch, and the miracle of completing his day’s work with punctual perfection in spite of all the bee-swarm of thoughts that hummed through his mind. And the extraordinary abstraction and meekness of his manner was remarked by several people, and made a matter for jesting. For the most part he was thinking of Winch.

  On Sunday evening he went to chapel, and oddly enough, Mr Maydig, who took a certain interest in occult matters, preached about ‘things that are not lawful’. Mr Fotheringay was not a regular chapel goer, but the system of assertive scepticism, to which I have already alluded, was now very much shaken. The tenor of the sermon threw an entirely new light on these novel gifts, and he suddenly decided to consult Mr Maydig immediately after the service. So soon as that was determined, he found himself wondering why he had not done so before.

  Mr Maydig, a lean, excitable man with quite remarkably long wrists and neck, was gratified at a request for a private conversation from a young man whose carelessness in religious matters was a subject for general remark in the town. After a few necessary delays, he conducted him to the study of the Manse, which was contiguous to the chapel, seated him comfortably, and, standing in front of a cheerful fire – his legs threw a Rhodian arch of shadow on the opposite wall – requested Mr Fotheringay to state his business.

  At first Mr Fotheringay was a little abashed, and found some difficulty in opening the matter. ‘You will scarcely believe me, Mr Maydig, I am afraid’ – and so forth for some time. He tried a question at last, and asked Mr Maydig his opinion of miracles.

  Mr Maydig was still saying ‘Well’ in an extremely judicial tone, when Mr Fotheringay interrupted again: ‘You don’t believe, I suppose, that some common sort of person – like myself, for instance – as it might be sitting here now, might have some sort of twist inside him that made him able to do things by his will.’

  ‘It’s possible,’ said Mr Maydig. ‘Something of the sort, perhaps, is possible.’

  ‘If I might make free with something here, I think I might show you by a sort of experiment,’ said Mr Fotheringay. ‘Now, take that tobacco-jar on the table, for instance. What I want to know is whether what I am going to do with it is a miracle or not. Just half a minute, Mr Maydig, please.’

  He knitted his brows, pointed to the tobacco-jar and said: ‘Be a bowl of vi’lets.’

  The tobacco-jar did as it was ordered.

  Mr Maydig started violently at the change, and stood looking from the thaumaturgist to the bowl of flowers. He said nothing. Presently he ventured to lean over the table and smell the violets; they were fresh-picked and very fine ones. Then he stared at Mr Fotheringay again.

  ‘How did you do that?’ he asked.

  Mr Fotheringay pulled his moustache. ‘Just told it – and there you are. Is that a miracle, or is it black art, or what is it? And what do you think’s the matter with me? That’s what I want to ask.’

  ‘It’s a most extraordinary occurrence.’

  ‘And this day last week I knew no more that I could do things like that than you did. It came quite sudden. It’s something odd about my will, I suppose, and that’s as far as I can see.’

  ‘Is that – the only thing. Could you do other things besides that?’

  ‘Lord, yes!’ said Mr Fotheringay. ‘Just anything.’ He thought, and suddenly recalled a conjuring entertainment he had seen. ‘Here!’ He pointed. ‘Change into a bowl of fish – no, not that – change into a glass bowl full of water with goldfish swimming in it. That’s better! You see that, Mr Maydig?’

  ‘It’s astonishing. It’s incredible. You are either a most extraordinary… But no –’

  ‘I could change it into anything,’ said Mr Fotheringay. ‘Just anything. Here! be a pigeon, will you?’

  In another moment a blue pigeon was fluttering round the room and making Mr Maydig duck every time it came near him. ‘Stop there, will you,’ said Mr Fotheringay; and the pigeon hung motionless in the air. ‘I could change it back to a bowl of flowers,’ he said, and after replacing the pigeon on the table worked that miracle. ‘I expect you will want your pipe in a bit,’ he said, and restored the tobacco-jar.

  Mr Maydig had followed all these later changes in a sort of ejaculatory silence. He stared at Mr Fotheringay and, in a
very gingerly manner, picked up the tobacco-jar, examined it, replaced it on the table. ‘Well!’ was the only expression of his feelings.

  ‘Now, after that it’s easier to explain what I came about,’ said Mr Fotheringay; and proceeded to a lengthy and involved narrative of his strange experiences, beginning with the affair of the lamp in the Long Dragon and complicated by persistent allusions to Winch. As he went on, the transient pride Mr Maydig’s consternation had caused passed away; he became the very ordinary Mr Fotheringay of everyday intercourse again. Mr Maydig listened intently, the tobacco-jar in his hand, and his bearing changed also with the course of the narrative. Presently, while Mr Fotheringay was dealing with the miracle of the third egg, the minister interrupted with a fluttering extended hand –

  ‘It is possible,’ he said. ‘It is credible. It is amazing, of course, but it reconciles a number of difficulties. The power to work miracles is a gift – a peculiar quality like genius or second sight – hitherto it has come very rarely and to exceptional people. But in this case… I have always wondered at the miracles of Mahomet, and at Yogi’s miracles, and the miracles of Madame Blavatsky.6 But, of course! Yes, it is simply a gift! It carries out so beautifully the arguments of that great thinker’ – Mr Maydig’s voice sank – ‘his Grace the Duke of Argyll.7 Here we plumb some profounder law – deeper than the ordinary laws of nature. Yes – yes. Go on. Go on!’

  Mr Fotheringay proceeded to tell of his misadventure with Winch, and Mr Maydig, no longer overawed or scared, began to jerk his limbs about and interject astonishment. ‘It’s this what troubled me most,’ proceeded Mr Fotheringay; ‘it’s this I’m most mijitly in want of advice for; of course he’s at San Francisco – wherever San Francisco may be - but of course it’s awkward for both of us, as you’ll see, Mr Maydig. I don’t see how he can understand what has happened, and I dare say he’s scared and exasperated something tremendous, and trying to get at me. I dare say he keeps on starting off to come here. I send him back, by a miracle, every few hours, when I think of it. And of course, that’s a thing he won’t be able to understand, and it’s bound to annoy him; and, of course, if he takes a ticket every time it will cost him a lot of money. I done the best I could for him, but of course it’s difficult for him to put himself in my place. I thought afterwards that his clothes might have got scorched, you know – if Hades is all it’s supposed to be – before I shifted him. In that case I suppose they’d have locked him up in San Francisco. Of course I willed him a new suit of clothes on him directly I thought of it. But, you see, I’m already in a deuce of a tangle –’

  Mr Maydig looked serious. ‘I see you are in a tangle. Yes, it’s a difficult position. How you are to end it…’ He became diffuse and inconclusive.

  ‘However, we’ll leave Winch for a little and discuss the larger question. I don’t think this is a case of the black art or anything of the sort. I don’t think there is any taint of criminality about it at all. Mr Fotheringay – none whatever, unless you are suppressing material facts. No, it’s miracles – pure miracles – miracles, if I may say so, of the very highest class.’

  He began to pace the hearthrug and gesticulate, while Mr Fotheringay sat with his arm on the table and his head on his arm, looking worried. ‘I don’t see how I’m to manage about Winch,’ he said.

  ‘A gift of working miracles – apparently a very powerful gift,’ said Mr Maydig, ‘will find a way about Winch – never fear. My dear Sir, you are a most important man – a man of the most astonishing possibilities. As evidence, for example! And in other ways, the things you may do…’

  ‘Yes, I’ve thought of a thing or two,’ said Mr Fotheringay. ‘But – some of the things came a bit twisty. You saw that fish at first? Wrong sort of bowl and wrong sort of fish. And I thought I’d ask someone.’

  ‘A proper course,’ said Mr Maydig, ‘a very proper course – altogether the proper course.’ He stopped and looked at Mr Fotheringay. ‘It’s practically an unlimited gift. Let us test your powers, for instance. If they really are… If they really are all they seem to be.’

  And so, incredible as it may seem, in the study of the little house behind the Congregational Chapel, on the evening of Sunday, Nov. 10, 1896,8 Mr Fotheringay, egged on and inspired by Mr Maydig, began to work miracles. The reader’s attention is specially and definitely called to the date. He will object, probably has already objected, that certain points in this story are improbable, that if any things of the sort already described had indeed occurred, they would have been in all the papers a year ago. The details immediately following he will find particularly hard to accept, because among other things they involve the conclusion that he or she, the reader in question, must have been killed in a violent and unprecedented manner more than a year ago. Now a miracle is nothing if not improbable, and as a matter of fact the reader was killed in a violent and unprecedented manner a year ago. In the subsequent course of this story that will become perfectly clear and credible, as every right-minded and reasonable reader will admit. But this is not the place for the end of the story, being but little beyond the hither side of the middle. And at first the miracles worked by Mr Fotheringay were timid little miracles – little things with the cups and parlour fitments, as feeble as the miracles of Theosophists, and, feeble as they were, they were received with awe by his collaborator. He would have preferred to settle the Winch business out of hand, but Mr Maydig would not let him. But after they had worked a dozen of these domestic trivialities, their sense of power grew, their imagination began to show signs of stimulation, and their ambition enlarged. Their first larger enterprise was due to hunger and the negligence of Mrs Minchin, Mr Maydig’s housekeeper. The meal to which the minister conducted Mr Fotheringay was certainly ill-laid and uninviting as refreshment for two industrious miracle-workers; but they were seated, and Mr Maydig was descanting in sorrow rather than in anger upon his housekeeper’s shortcomings, before it occurred to Mr Fotheringay that an opportunity lay before him. ‘Don’t you think, Mr Maydig,’ he said, ‘if it isn’t a liberty, I –’

  ‘My dear Mr Fotheringay! Of course! No – I didn’t think.’ Mr Fotheringay waved his hand. ‘What shall we have?’ he said, in a large, inclusive spirit, and, at Mr Maydig’s order, revised the supper very thoroughly. ‘As for me,’ he said, eyeing Mr Maydig’s selection, ‘I am always particularly fond of a tankard of stout and a nice Welsh rarebit, and I’ll order that. I ain’t much given to Burgundy,’ and forthwith stout and Welsh rarebit promptly appeared at his command. They sat long at their supper, talking like equals, as Mr Fotheringay presently perceived with a glow of surprise and gratification, of all the miracles they would presently do. ‘And, by the bye, Mr Maydig,’ said Mr Fotheringay, ‘I might perhaps be able to help you – in a domestic way.’

  ‘Don’t quite follow,’ said Mr Maydig, pouring out a glass of miraculous old Burgundy.

  Mr Fotheringay helped himself to a second Welsh rarebit out of vacancy, and took a mouthful. ‘I was thinking,’ he said, ‘I might be able (chum, chum) to work (chum, chum) a miracle with Mrs Minchin (chum, chum) – make her a better woman.’

  Mr Maydig put down the glass and looked doubtful. ‘She’s – She strongly objects to interference, you know, Mr Fotheringay. And – as a matter of fact – it’s well past eleven and she’s probably in bed and asleep. Do you think, on the whole – ’

  Mr Fotheringay considered these objections. ‘I don’t see that it shouldn’t be done in her sleep.’

  For a time Mr Maydig opposed the idea, and then he yielded. Mr Fotheringay issued his orders, and a little less at their ease, perhaps, the two gentlemen proceeded with their repast. Mr Maydig was enlarging on the changes he might expect in his housekeeper next day, with an optimism that seemed even to Mr Fotheringay’s supper senses a little forced and hectic, when a series of confused noises from upstairs began. Their eyes exchanged interrogations, and Mr Maydig left the room hastily. Mr Fotheringay heard him calling up to his housekeeper and then his footsteps goi
ng softly up to her.

  In a minute or so the minister returned, his step light, his face radiant. ‘Wonderful!’ he said, ‘and touching! Most touching!’

  He began pacing the hearthrug. ‘A repentance – a most touching repentance – through the crack of the door. Poor woman! A most wonderful change! She had got up. She must have got up at once. She had got up out of her sleep to smash a private bottle of brandy in her box. And to confess it too! … But this gives us – it opens – a most amazing vista of possibilities. If we can work this miraculous change in her…’

  ‘The thing’s unlimited seemingly,’ said Mr Fotheringay. ‘And about Mr Winch –’

  ‘Altogether unlimited.’ And from the hearthrug Mr Maydig, waving the Winch difficulty aside, unfolded a series of wonderful proposals – proposals he invented as he went along.

  Now what those proposals were does not concern the essentials of this story. Suffice it that they were designed in a spirit of infinite benevolence, the sort of benevolence that used to be called post-prandial. Suffice it, too, that the problem of Winch remained unsolved. Nor is it necessary to describe how far that series got to its fulfilment. There were astonishing changes. The small hours found Mr Maydig and Mr Fotheringay careering across the chilly market square under the still moon, in a sort of ecstasy of thaumaturgy, Mr Maydig all flap and gesture, Mr Fotheringay short and bristling, and no longer abashed at his greatness. They had reformed every drunkard in the Parliamentary division, changed all the beer and alcohol to water (Mr Maydig had overruled Mr Fotheringay on this point), they had, further, greatly improved the railway communication of the place, drained Flinder’s swamp, improved the soil of One Tree Hill, and cured the Vicar’s wart. And they were going to see what could be done with the injured pier at South Bridge. ‘The place,’ gasped Mr Maydig, ‘won’t be the same place tomorrow. How surprised and thankful everyone will be!’ And just at that moment the church clock struck three.