Mr. Trimblerigg was no longer of a mind to reject anything which might bring grist to his mill. His discovery of Publicity as the wide gate and the broad road leading to eternal life, forbade him to dismiss as common or unclean anything which might seize the public interest. And his public was now in a mood to seize anything: a whirl of excitement had caught hold of the great semi-detached unsectarian forces of this transitional age; and the fact that he was emptying the Churches was sufficient proof that what the public wanted was something it did not get there. The Churches had ceased to prophesy; prophecy, therefore, might be the right card to play. Second Adventism was based on it: if anticipation was to be raised and seals opened, any old box might help; and this one had already attained publicity though not of a very serious kind. ‘Can any real prophecy come from America?’ had been the depreciatory attitude with which the religious communities of the Old World met its claims; and if from America, why this demand for a crowned head to open it? Why not a President, or a millionaire?
Mr. Trimblerigg himself, though doubting the extreme claims made for it, had never entirely rejected prophecy. Even when, for a brief spell, he had counted himself a modernist, the better to escape from the trammels of True Belief, he had still found a rhetorical use for it; and the Land of Promise with its flowings of milk and honey had oftentimes evoked soul-stirring utterances from his tongue which, when they failed to materialize, became mere figures of speech. But he would much rather that they had materialized; and had they done so would have claimed the credit for it. That precisely was, and always had been his attitude toward prophecy; if he could give its fulfilment he would claim credit for it; if not he would treat it as a figure of speech.
It was in that same attitude, tentatively, that he laid his hand on the box. It might be a good egg; but he did not want to commit himself publicly to anything that would let him down. He would like first to know more of the contents. Prophecy might be what his public required to complete the spell he had begun to lay on it; but the extant writings of Susannah Walcot, obscure, diffuse, and ungrammatical, together with the diminished number of her followers, did not inspire him with confidence; and so for the present his attitude toward prophecy, as he laid his hand on a box said to be full of it, remained unchanged,—he was only prepared to accept it conditionally—in his own time and in his own way; that is, if it suited him.
But as he stooped and examined the box, its structure as well as its possibilities began to interest him; for he noticed that though it had many seals at the top its bottom was quite removable; long rusty nails sticking out a little where the dried wood had shrunk, and at one point a gap where cautious leverage might be possible, suggested a way which in the interests of Relative Truth one might adopt. From one aspect—the one which practically did not matter—it was an equivocal and surreptitious deed; but as over everything else which might have held others in doubt, having quite made up his mind to it, he prayed long and fervently that he might be guided aright in what he did, and also that he might have sufficient skill in carpentry to cover up his tracks when the will of Heaven was done.
He worked at it very patiently for three hours, when the rest of his household was a-bed, till with gathered experience he acquired a standard which, if not skilled, allowed him to feel safe.
It was not hard work so much as delicate; the wood was tender and worm-eaten, the old-fashioned nails with screw-heads came out quite easily—too easily in fact, at first; bits of the wood came with them. This frightened him, he went more slowly. After a tedious period of minute labour the wood was ready to come away in his hand. With his attitude to prophecy still unchanged he lifted it away, and out of the box like a pudding from its mould came a compact mass of very yellow stained paper slightly stuck together by mildew, and dampness that had dried.
Mr. Trimblerigg saw at once that a long task was before him. The prophecies were in a small cramped hand with numerous contractions, and many words badly spelt.
Here and there the ink had gone faint; in other parts time and moisture had made whole passages undecipherable; portions of the prophecy had indubitably passed into oblivion; but far larger portions remained.
With the help of headings—titles symbolic in character—Mr. Trimblerigg began skimming. At first sceptical and a little bored, he presently grew interested; and though not yet convinced, he saw that from the publicity point of view the thing had possibilities. This, for instance, he regarded as an arresting passage:
‘And lo, when the Cock, stricken by the double-pated Eagle, draws in its claws, causing the Scarlet Parrot to fall from its perch, then shall a city fall and a people go free, and the mark of the Beast that was on it shall be blotted out.’