Tales of Space and Time
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 amazing 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. 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. 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 daresay he's scared
and exasperated something tremendous, and trying to get at me. I daresay
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, 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 going 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