Under St Paul's: A Romance

by Richard Dowling

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As George Osborne and William Nevill walked arm-in-arm out of the Row, they did not speak. The former was wondering what Marie Gordon could have to say to him; the latter was wondering if upon his return from China he should, instead of going into a retort, get married. 'You know,' thought Nevill, 'I was naturally made for a domestic man. I often feel as if I were really designed by Nature to wheel a perambulator, and go to market on wet days. True, I haven't been much of a stay-at-home. But then I was born at sea, while the vessel was in an all-plain-sail breeze, and it may be the initial motion I inherited from the ship at my birth has not yet been quite exhausted. However, I feel as if it was gradually dying out. Once having set the planets spinning round the sun, there is no reason why they should ever stop spinning. Once having set me sailing over the water in an all-plain-sail breeze, there are reasons why I should stop some time. First, I am not by any means a heavenly body. No one could, with justice, say my appearance is heavenly; and I know what my mind is like, and I answer myself for that--it is, in fact, a good deal in the other direction. But, you see, although I am not myself a heavenly body, I may be influenced by heavenly bodies. Now, I should not be at all surprised if such a heavenly body as Kate Osborne might not have a very important influence in causing my orbit gradually to contract until it became purely local, entirely centred by her. Should anyone say to me: "If you are by nature a domestic man, how is it you never found it out before? how is it you have not settled down?" I should reply, "Show me the man who never finds out anything new about himself, and I'll show you a fool, a monomaniac." To the second question I should say, "How on earth could a fellow like me, without a relative in the world, become domestic, unless he married? and how on earth could a fellow like me marry until he had found someone who would marry him, and whom he would marry?" 'I am sure I should make an excellent husband, for I know nothing whatever about household affairs. I don't know what milk is a-gallon, or blacking a-pound, or coals a-ton, or jam a-pot. I have been brought up on a bill of fare. I am the embodiment of a table-d'hôte. I have seen beef roasted on the prairie, but the whole carcase had been purchased for a bullet and a charge of powder--say a penny. I know such rates do not rule the London market. I heard them say the other day, at dinner, beef was a shilling a-pound; but how much a pound is, I haven't the ghost of an idea. Considering me as a domestic man, there's another good trait in my character; I don't know weights--I mean domestic weights--' 'Nevill, shall we have a cab?' asked Osborne, breaking in upon his musings. 'Of course, of course. What a stupid being I am! I was running astray, Osborne, a rare thing for me. Of course, call a cab. I haven't the ghost of an idea where this place is. No doubt we have turned our back on it, and are walking away from it. I don't often ruminate. The chances are, if I did, I should some day soon walk under the legs of omnibus horses, or be killed by a coster's barrow.' 'Where to, sir?' asked the cabby through the trap. 'The Prehistoric Society, Great Saurian Street,' answered Nevill. 'It's a trifle over an eighteenpenny fare, and he'll offer me the eighteenpence and argufy for an hour. They gets no money out of them societies, and they won't let a man live. If they gets no money out of them societies, why can't they stop at home, and give a man a chance of picking up a living out of reasonable fares?' No conversation occurred in the cab. Each man was too much occupied with thought. When they alighted at the tall gaunt doorway in Great Saurian Street, Nevill handed the cabman half-a-crown. The man touched his hat and drove away, thinking, 'They must be ignorant foreigners or fools. I'll take my oath they don't belong to them sciences. There's nothing pays worse than science, not even hospitals.' Osborne and Nevill found a number of men, none of whom was young, and most of whom were beyond middle life, gathered in a room of modest dimensions. Down the centre of the room ran a large leather-covered table, liberally supplied with pens, ink, and paper. Scattered round the room were comfortably upholstered chairs. The walls were covered from ceiling to floor with glass-cases, crammed with daggers, bones, utensils, shields, arrowheads, spearheads, teeth, flasks of pottery and basins of stone, bone needles and brass knives. The proceedings of the meeting had not yet begun. Some of the members were looking into the cases, some chatting in groups, some writing at the table. All were serious. There was no laughter. The murmur of a guttural minor chord filled the room. Osborne whispered to Nevill, when they had taken their seats, 'What an unintellectual-looking set of men! Can these be the members of a learned society? They amaze me.' 'There are, I suppose, some visitors besides ourselves here to-day. But I daresay the bulk of men present are members. You can know the members as they enter by their nodding to the officials. Let us see if we can't pick up someone who will give us a little information. Stop, here's a civil-looking man sitting with his back to the window; let us go across to him and try if he will not tell us something of those around us.' They moved over to the window. Nevill took the chair next the man he had indicated; Osborne took a chair next to Nevill. When they had been seated awhile, Nevill turned to the stranger and said,-- 'I beg your pardon, sir.' The man bowed and smiled blandly, encouragingly. 'We, my friend and I, are strangers in London. We are the guests of this learned society to-day, and we know little of its scope and nothing of its members; and we have dared to hope that if you are not engaged in something more useful, you might give us a little information.' 'I shall be most happy to give you any information in my power. In the first place, I must tell you that I, like you and your friend, am a guest here to-day. I belong to two societies, but not to this. I therefore fear you have fallen into bad hands; if you will allow me, I shall be most happy to introduce you to the secretary or president.' 'Thank you,' answered Nevill, 'we could not think of intruding on the attention of any officials. We are not scientific men, but I take an interest in science. My friend, who is a poet, is rather afraid of science. We only want a few words about the men around us. I daresay we are now in a room with the flower of England's scientific men.' 'Yes. There is scarcely a man of the first eminence in science who is not here to-day. But may I ask why your friend is afraid of science?' 'He has a notion it is subversive.' 'Of course it is. But it is subversive of only error. My dear sir, you need never fear science. It can never do anyone harm. If I tell you the distance between this and the sun is so much, you may believe me or not. I don't roast you alive for doubting me. If we say two and two are four and prove the theorem, and you will not believe us, we will not stone you. Weak-knee'd Christians are afraid of us; yet where, in the history of Christianity, is a more charitable and tolerant spirit to be found than among the children of science?' 'But the birth of science seems to me the death of poetry,' said Osborne, not wishing to get on the graver branch of the argument. 'I am afraid you are right. As the inferior polypi and worms have been gradually pushed to the wall by their betters in the three ages of the world before man, so now among men we see the superior heads pushing the inferior heads to the wall. The mere hunter is almost gone. The mere grazier is going fast. You can see that at a glance. The hunting and the pastoral ages have passed. They were lazy, wasteful ages compared with ours. Ours is the age of hedged farms and exactly-defined rights. The day of the poet is gone. The head of the poet is going to the wall. What did he do in his time for man? Nothing but fill the head with vapours and history with myths. The hammer-headed man of science is now exterminating the delicately-headed man of art. The poet must go, and is going, as the black man must go, and is going.' 'That's dismal for you, Osborne,' said Nevill. 'I assure you,' protested Osborne, colouring and feeling very uncomfortable,' I am not a poet. Never wrote a line in my life.' 'I hope, sir,' said the stranger, 'you do not for a moment fancy I mean what I said to apply personally. Nothing of the kind. I was speaking of your species.' 'Oh, he understands you, sir,' said Nevill. Then, to turn the conversation away from Osborne, and gain the information he wished to get, he said,--'Who is this man here on my left? And out of mercy to this poet, don't use too technical language.' 'That man is the greatest authority, not only in England, but in the world, on bones. If you give one bone of any creature known to have once crawled, walked, flown, or swum, he will tell you not only what the creature was, but its probable size, and most likely he will tell you from what era of that creature's development the bone dates. The man in front is the illustrious broacher of the chimpanzee theory--that theory which caused more commotion in Europe, and more intellectual disquiet, than all the inventions of man since Abraham to our day. The man whom he is talking to is the most revolutionary chemist of our time. He has been able to do almost everything in chemistry save invent life. He is a physiologist as well as a chemist. The man leaning on his stick beside him is our greatest electrician. He and the chemist work together incessantly, and are hopeful they may yet get the pendulum of life to swing where no life was before, and into which no life has been imparted. On your left is a great geologist. He followed up a discovery made in the diluvial deposit in the Nile Valley. He also was largely instrumental in throwing back the age of granite as many years as the most remote fixed star is miles from earth, which, as far as the human mind can conceive, is infinity. Writing at the table, you find one of those men who make the morbid side of Nature a study. He has a theory explaining away almost every form of mental enthusiasm which has led to delusion. Spiritualism and religious frenzies are his strong points--' 'My God!' cried Osborne, in horror, 'there are women coming into this place!' 'Why should not women come in here? There is no place where they may sit with more security. We do not insist upon their coming here in indecently low dresses. While they are with us they will hear no double-meaning phrases, such as they find at many theatres. They are not asked to sit out an opera, the plot of which is a tissue of crimes such as pure women should never have heard of. They will hear no cursing or swearing here. On our stage we do not exhibit any scenes of gambling or drunkenness. The air of this place is as pure as that of the chastest house in London, and from the time they come in until they leave they will hear nothing which could defile a sanctuary.' 'Yes, but,' said Osborne, 'all they hear in this place must tend to unsettle them on matters they have, in their childhood, been taught to regard with reverence.' 'Ah, there I must not follow you. You would lead me into a controversy. A controversy is a thing I never engage in. Controversy belongs to the poetic or idle age. Controversies were undertaken to convince others. Science cares only to convince itself. If I say two and two are four, and can prove it to my own satisfaction, I am quite content. I don't ask you to adopt my demonstration of the theorem. If you wish for them you are welcome to my data, and you can try the theorem yourself. Or you can accept my proof, or you can let it all alone. Why should I seek to compel you to believe me or not? But if you say three and five are eight, that is another thing. You may be able to prove what you say. If you are, that ought to be enough for you. Suppose we both agree that four and four are eight, why should you come to me and say, "We both agree four and four are eight; there is some common ground between us. Come and put your four with my eight. Then we shall be partners in twelve?" But I don't care for a partner. Why should you?' 'I don't know,' said Osborne drearily. 'The road you go is a very barren one.' 'Ah, that is controversial. You say music is the finest art; I say painting. Very well. Let you stick to your fiddle and I to my brush. Why should you want the hairs of my bow to paint, or I want to mix my colours on the back of your fiddle!' At that moment there was a commotion. Silence fell upon the assembly, the chairman took his seat, and the members and the guests assumed attitudes of attention. There was a pause. Then the chairman said a few words, and called upon Mr Wilfrid Parkinson to address the meeting. There was a slight delay, during which Osborne glanced round once more upon the broken-down-looking men assisting at this unholy rite. It would be much more becoming in men of their age and position to spend the evening of their lives in trying to win souls out of this spiritual Slough of Despond, London, than to devote the few remaining hours of their time on earth to hastening into the toils of perdition those who already hesitated on the path. There they were, 'bent, wigged, and lame;' fathers of grown-up men; grandfathers of lusty blameless boys. Why could not they let well enough alone? What was the world to gain by all this progress, all this science? Was man any happier, any purer, any nobler, now, than when piety was undistracted by invention, unassailed by research? Here were these old men, with one foot in the grave, one side of them pushed through the mist of life into the full light of eternity, and yet they would not be warned. If the men had been younger he should not have felt so horrified. But these men had no longer the excuse of ardent blood or impetuous youth on their side. They were not likely to renounce their present convictions while they lived. And what an awful thing it was to think of these men knowingly and deliberately setting their face towards death, with the certainty in their minds that they had devoted much of the life God had given them to pulling props from under the faith God had bestowed on man, a faith miraculously handed from the skies, writ by the absolute finger of God Himself, and sealed upon this earth with the sacred Blood of Calvary. Horrible! Unnatural! Prodigious ingratitude! By this time Mr Wilfrid Parkinson had commenced his address to the assembly. Nevill listened intently, but Osborne felt too depressed and horrified to give attention. He was stunned and dazed. He had heard and read of such places before, but he had never, until now, been brought face to face, into intimate contact with science in the aggressive form. He was not, in most matters, superstitious, yet he could not help shrinking from those walls, against which reposed ghastly relics of bygone days, handed down by careless time to be the cause of spiritual misery and spiritual death among men to-day. He shrank from those old men, beneath whose blanched hair the calm and deliberate brain denied all things incapable of substantiation by facts and things. He shrank into his inner nature, and there cast down his spirit and prayed, prayed fervently, fiercely thanking God his Maker and His Son that he had been born in the faith of Christ. He did not pray for grace to keep that faith. He felt no doubt of his own strength. No question of his own strength existed in his mind. His attitude was simply one of terrible thankfulness. His whole soul was rendering homage to the Great Being who had given him his faith and kept him in that faith--a faith which had never seemed so priceless, so essential, as when contrasted with the barren creed which science sought to make out of dusty bones and senseless rocks. Osborne paid no attention to Mr Wilfrid Parkinson. He was conscious a human voice was droning out something or other in a most unexcited tone and manner. Nevill was following the speaker with intense interest. Osborne had made up his mind not to endure another afternoon of this kind again. How much more delightful to walk or sit with Marie, and chat of some kindly human subject, not about fossils and chalk, and flint and fluxes! Anything but this pedantry of calm impartiality. Anything but this cold-blooded prying into Nature, this wilful disturbing of things settled for thousands of years. What had satisfied a Shakespeare, a Milton, a Dante, might surely satisfy Nevill and himself. While Osborne was earnestly wishing the address over, that they might go away, a great buzz and commotion arose. Most of the men got on their feet, wiped their spectacles, and looked eagerly in the direction of the speaker, who was holding up in one hand the thigh-bone of a man, and in the other a stone vessel like a chemist's mortar. As soon as the commotion had subsided, and most of the audience had resumed their seats, Mr Wilfrid Parkinson proceeded to say in conclusion,-- 'I think there can be no longer any doubts of the theory I have been advancing since I did myself the honour of coming before you to-day. The friend who has forwarded me these remains is still busy excavating on the bank of the Nile. He writes me to say he is hopeful of fresh success, and that any further remains which may turn up he will at once forward to me, with an ample account of the place and circumstance of his good fortune. I am greatly pleased to think that, through the instrumentality of a friend of mine, the Prehistoric Society of London has to-day been able to inspect the first remains of man yet found so far down in that system.' Applause, long continued, followed the conclusion of the address. All crowded round the table eagerly. Some shook Mr Parkinson's hand warmly; some called out their congratulations to him. He was modest, and said no thanks or congratulations were due to him. He knew it would be very gratifying to his friend on the Nile, to whom all congratulations were due, when he heard the flattering reception his discovery had received at the hands of the illustrious members of the Prehistoric Society. Partly by the general movement towards the head of the room, and partly by the guidance of Nevill, Osborne found himself drifting slowly upwards towards the excited enthusiastic crowd gathered round Parkinson and the remains of some other man, name unknown. For the moment he did not care what way he went. That tedious discourse was over at last. Soon they should go out into the open air, then back to Peter's Row, and finally they four should dine at the pleasant Holborn, where there were no dreary scientists digging up unpleasant and unnecessary facts, and droning out uninteresting technicalities. At last they reached the table. How he wished it was six o'clock, that he might sit at a very different table, and in very different company! He should then have that beautiful face to feast upon, not this collection of feeble old age and enthusiastic deposers of sacred beliefs. 'I am glad you are with me here to-day, Osborne. You have had a treat many men would come from Berlin to enjoy.' 'I fear I did not pay sufficient attention to the speaker. You know I am not scientific.' 'But do you not know the meaning of this discovery?' 'No.' 'You amaze me, Osborne.' They were now standing at the table in front of the bone and the mortar. 'You know,' he went on, 'the Chinese claim a hundred thousand years of history, and we have laughed at them.' 'And of course so has every sensible man. Man has not been more than six thousand years on earth. That is clear any way. We may adjust the day of creation to the epochs of forming the earth, but man cannot have been on earth seven thousand years ago.' 'And yet,' said Nevill, pointing with an amused smile at the bone first, and then at the mortar, 'there is not room for the shadow of a doubt that this bone and this vessel are between nine and ten thousand years old.' 'Come away,' cried Osborne impatiently. 'I cannot stay any longer. I loathe the place.'