King John of Jingalo Part 27

"Women Chartists," said Sister Jenifer.

"What are they doing here?"

"They go wherever they can get a hearing."

Max stopped to listen a little satirically; he had never heard a woman speaking in public before. Presently he turned to his guide and found that her eye was on him. "Shall we go on?" he said.

"This does not interest you, then?"

"It is a subject about which I know nothing."

"But you came to learn."

"Well,--is that woman telling the truth?"

"No, not exactly."

"Does she know what she is talking about?"

"Not as well as she ought to."

"Then, isn't that sufficient?"

"You have listened to men here whose statements were just as wide of the mark, and whose proposals were just as useless."

"Yes, so you warned me; but what I find instructive is not the speaker but the crowd."

"You have a crowd here."

"A much smaller one."

"So you are for the majorities?"

Max acknowledged the stroke. "Very well," he said; "let us go back."

"No, I only wanted you to notice the crowd. Did they seem interested?"

"They listened."

"That is something, is it not, when she was talking of things that to their minds hardly concerned them?"

"But you say she was not telling the truth."

"She was ignorant, and she exaggerated; but for all they know what she is saying might be gospel."

"Is that how you would have it preached?"

"If gospels had to wait for the wise and prudent," said Jenifer, "they would wait till eternity. That woman was speaking not for an inst.i.tution but for a movement."

"Do not such exaggerations condemn it?"

"By no means; if some did not exaggerate none of us would get a hearing--especially if we happened to be in a minority; and reformers always are."

"Though I embroider it for myself," said Prince Max, "from others I prefer to get plain truth."

"Plain truth," she replied, "is only that manner of dealing with a thing--with some wrong, say--which makes it plain to people that the wrong exists. Short of that you haven't got truth into them."

"Now you are preaching pragmatism," said Max.

"Do you suppose," she went on, "that to that dull, sunk, slow-witted crowd we have been looking at, a mere n.i.g.g.ardly statement of facts would make the truth plain, or stir them to any action or feeling for others? That woman on some points over-stated her case quite ridiculously--especially as to the benefits and rewards which the women's Charter would bring--but the effect upon her hearers fell far short of what the real facts justify. Oh, people have to be bribed even to do no more than open their ears to the truth."

"By false promises of reward? Yes, you have the Church with you there.

It deals with our ordinary everyday morality, in very much the same way.

Tells a maximum of untruth so that a necessary minimum may spring out of it. How many Christians to-day really believe in the doctrine of h.e.l.l?"

"Surely," she said, "to see the light of its fires in so many faces is proof enough."

"That is not the doctrine," said the Prince, "and you know it. h.e.l.l here and now may be very real; but it is not what your Church preaches. Many of those lit-up faces that you speak of are aglow with mere l.u.s.tful enjoyment. But the Church does not teach that men can make the mistake when in h.e.l.l of actually believing themselves in Heaven; that would be too dangerous. Turn on that tap, and the jasper sea in which your angels take their baths will run dry."

She looked at him half quizzically. "And what is your doctrine?" she inquired. "When you are enjoying yourself--saying things like that, for instance, hoping to hurt--do you ever think that you are in h.e.l.l?"

"No," said Max, "I do not make enjoyment the test. Just now, for instance, I rather feel that I may be at the gates of Heaven; but I am not, therefore, superlatively happy. Can you promise me that the heavenly road is one of pure happiness?"

"To any one who accepted absolutely the Divine Will it must be."

"The Divine Will," said Max, "gave me my body and my reasoning power.

You must not ask me to forfeit them. I agree with that old collegiate (a doctor of divinity like myself) to whom one of more austere piety had declared 'abject submission' the only possible att.i.tude of the creature toward his Creator. 'No, no!' protested the Doctor, with outraged dignity, 'deference, but not--not abject submission!' Deference is all a man can honestly promise so long as reason remains to him; abject submission is fit only for lunatic asylums."

"And yet," she retorted, "abject submission to antecedents is all that science can infer when once it starts to investigate the springs of action."

"That is not to deny reason; that only conditions it. I wanted you to accuse me of blasphemy; but as you do not give me my legitimate openings I have to make them for myself. To me the abrogation of reason, on any pretense, is the most rooted blasphemy of which the mind of man is capable. Some modern Romanist penned once a hymn which had in it these or like words for its refrain--

'And black is white, And wrong is right, If it be Thy sweet Will.'

That, to my mind, is a blasphemous utterance, for it juggles with the fundamentals of all morality. The person who adopts that att.i.tude as an act of surrender to earthly love is a sensualist. It is a form of sensualism rampant in women; and men encourage it by bestowing upon it the names of womanly virtues. To adopt a similar att.i.tude in spiritual matters seems to me sensualism none the less. And what a hot-bed for that sort of sensualism the Church has always been and still is!"

His ugly talk roused her spirit of resistance.

"How can it be sensual," she protested, "when it results in self-denial and self-sacrifice?"

"Self-sacrifice," he replied, "may be merely sensualism in its intensest form; it is peculiarly a woman's temptation; the scientific name for it (since you throw science at my head) is 'negative egoism.' You yourself are quite capable of it; for you cannot get rid of the results of your training all in a day."

She did not flinch from his attack.

"What do you know of my training?" she asked.

"I know this: here are you the superior of any Bishop on the bench now preparing to play injured martyr at the loss of his political privileges; and what position of authority and influence has your Church to offer you--you and the thousands like you whose practical humanity alone has made its antiquated forms still possible? Yes, you are its life-preservers, and they tuck you away into subordinate positions and back slums where n.o.body hears of you. And you have been trained to think that it is right!"