The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories
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 Lullaborough 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 chapelgoer, 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 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 at that time. 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 in 1896. 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_----"