Trimblerigg

by Laurence Housman

With the ruddy honours of Puto-Congo fresh upon him, he stood for re-election to the Presidency of the Free Evangelical Union, and got turned down. The blow was a shrewd one, though he met it with a smiling face. But when, following upon that, after long and heated discussion an adverse motion was carried by the executive of the Free Evangelical Missions, whose organization on its present vast scale owed its prosperity mainly to him, then indeed he felt as though the bottom was being knocked out of his ministerial career; and was almost of a mind—of two minds, that is to say—to turn from divinity to politics.

For in politics at that time events were moving fast, creating for adaptable men opportunities of a new kind. If, as seemed likely, the old two-party system was about to give place to group-formations, whose tenure of life must necessarily be more of a negotiable than a fixed quantity, and if for the manipulation of democratic government to a safe middling course, opportunism must henceforth take a higher place than principle, could anyone be found with a more instinctive touch for the job than Mr. Trimblerigg?

In the political world the situation was there waiting for him: in the religious world, on the other hand, where for the time being movement seemed retrograde rather than forward, the situation would have to be made. It was the tougher job.

To give Mr. Trimblerigg his due, that—if only he could find for it the right environment—would be but an added attraction. A tough job always delighted him; so much so that, setting his teeth to the toughness of it, he thenceforth forgot everything but appetite; and as his appetite always grew with what it fed on—given a proposition of sufficient toughness, his appetite was apt to go strange lengths. So it had been when he set out to hew Agag, and skin the scapegoat, giving to the fantasy that air of probability which it needed in order to make it popular; so likewise when he had to find moral excuse for standing Christianity upon its head in the burnt-out cinders of native villages, with the compulsorily converted Free State of Puto-Congo as his reward. In each case the toughness of the job and the moral difficulties it presented took the place of conviction, supplied the necessary enthusiasm, and jogged him on to his goal.

So it was to be now. All that he lacked for the moment was the necessary environment, the atmosphere into which a new spiritual movement could be born. In politics it existed; in religion it had still to be found. Mr. Trimblerigg hesitated; and while he hesitated the call came, the spark of inspiration descended from on high, and what thereafter was saved to religion in a revivalism which swept the world, was lost to politics.

Two events, small in themselves, gave to his mind the impetus and direction it required. The first was the death of the harmless, unnecessary Caroline, the wife whose previous uneventfulness had given to his career the only ballast it had ever known; the other was the recrudescence of Isabel Sparling, manufacturing for herself in the spiritual and religious world a success which arrested his attention, and awoke in his breast first a small spark of jealousy, then emulation and the determination, doing likewise, to make a bigger thing of it.

Caroline’s death was due to obscure causes for which the doctor found a scientific name that satisfied all legal requirements; but if I have any qualification for diagnosing mortality in the human race, I should be inclined to say that she died of a gradual and cumulative attack of fright. Mr. Trimblerigg had once made her doubt the evidence of her senses—and not only of her own but of the children she had borne to him; and though she had acquiesced submissively at the time—having the negative proof always before her that the glory with which her imagination had surrounded him was departed, that he was in truth no saint, and had not after all taken his baths in cold weather—she was never the same woman again. That she should have imagined so difficult a thing, only to be told that it was a delusion after all, caused a shock to her system. Her breathing became asthmatic, she coughed with nothing to cough for, had flutterings of the heart, and began to wear shawls even when the weather was warm. And waking one night, shortly after Mr. Trimblerigg’s return from Puto-Congo had made them bed-fellows again, she saw or thought she saw upon the pillow beside her a recrudescence of her fear—the thing which could be seen but was not to be believed. Faint, very faint—the product only of a dream—it flushed feebly and passed away. But that single sight, or the mere suspicion of it, gave her a habit of wakefulness which grew on the apprehension that lay at the back of it; and just as people who see spots crossing the field of vision damage their eyesight by pursuing them, or as others who have a singing in their ears go mad in trying to be quit of it; so did Caroline in trying both to realize and get rid of the suspicion she wished to avoid, reduce herself to a nervous wreck; and day by day, eyeing Mr. Trimblerigg with looks whose meaning she would not explain, sank into a despondency which by destroying her domestic efficiency robbed life of its remaining raison d’être.

And so one morning, after an ecstatic dream of more than usual vividness, Mr. Trimblerigg woke to find her lying very quiet and open-eyed beside him; and though the expression was not peaceful, Caroline had nevertheless found peace; and Mr. Trimblerigg with curiously mixed feelings, yet with a decent modicum of grief which was quite genuine, saw that he had become a widower.

Among the letters of condolence which reached him after the sad event—not immediately but a few months later—was one of peculiar interest from Sir Roland Skoyle, conveying not merely sympathy, but news. For it now appeared that Caroline was not as lacking in spirit as her life had made out; rather had she reserved it for future use. Caroline, in fact, had suddenly become interesting; and if she had not quite found herself again in the old world where her real interests lay, she had found her medium; she was there, waiting for her credentials to be put to the test, and asking for him with such urgency that Mr. Trimblerigg had a doubt whether he was yet free to consider himself a complete widower.

If, on that matter, he felt that his liberty was less than he could have wished, there was nevertheless a compensating interest; for here, in germ, was the idea he had been waiting for: if he could convince himself that spiritualism was really true—his previous experience, though momentarily impressive had finally disappointed him—he would go on and convince the world. It was some such conviction that the religious world was now needing to spring it into fresh life; and he himself only needed confidence in the case to be presented, in order to become the man to do it. And so, at this point of his career, when he least expected it, Caroline became an important character.