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Louise, too, remained silent. In Fleury’s view she was quite right to sit there quietly and listen to what the gentlemen had to say, because speaking a great deal in company is not an attractive quality in a young lady. A young lady with strong opinions is even worse. What can be more distressing than to hear a member of the fair sex exclaiming: “In the first place, this … and in the second place, that …” while she chops the air with her fingers and divides whatever you have just been saying into categories? No, a woman’s special skill is to listen quietly to what a fellow has to say and thereby create the sort of atmosphere in which good conversation can flourish. So thought Fleury, anyway.
Mrs Hampton, the Padre’s wife, did occasionally venture an opinion, as her rank and maturity entitled her to … but she took advantage of her privilege only to support the views of her husband, which no one could object to. Of the other ladies two were remarkably garrulous, or would have been had they not been overawed by Mrs Hampton who kept them severely in check, cutting in firmly each time one of them tried to launch into a silly discourse. One of them, a pretty though rather vulgar person, was Mrs Rayne, the wife of the Opium Agent; the other, even more talkative, was her friend and companion, recently widowed, Mrs Ross.
Now that he had eaten, Fleury was merely waiting for a break in the conversation before voicing his own opinion on progress. It came almost immediately. “If there has been any progress in our century,” he declared with confidence, “it has been less in material than in spiritual matters. Think of the progress from the cynicism and materialism of our grandparents … from. a Gibbon to a Keats, from a Voltaire to a Lamartine!”
“I disagree,” replied Mr Rayne with a smile. “It’s only in practical matters that one may look for signs of progress. Ideas are always changing, certainly, but who’s to say that one is better than another? It is in material things that progress can be clearly seen. I hope you’ll forgive me ill mention opium but really one has to go no farther to find progress exemplified. Opium, even more than salt, is a great source of revenue of our own creation and is now more productive than any except the land revenue. And who pays it? Why, John Chinaman … who prefers our opium to any other. That’s what I call progress.”
The Collector had been behaving oddly; moody and expansive by turns, perhaps on account of tiredness or of the claret he had drunk, he now suddenly became expansive again. “My dear friends, there’s no question at all of a division of importance between the spiritual and the practical. It is the one that imbues the other with purpose … It’s the other that provides an indispensable instrument for the one! Mr Rayne, you are perfectly right to mention this increase of revenue from opium but consider for a moment … what is it all for? It’s not simply to acquire wealth, but to acquire through wealth, that superior way of life which we loosely term civilization and which includes so many things, both spiritual and practical … and of the utmost diversity … a system of administering justice impartially on the one hand, works of art unsurpassed in beauty since antique times on the other. The spreading of the Gospel on the one hand, the spreading of the railways on the other. And yet where shall be placed such a phenomenon as the gigantic iron steamship, the Great Eastern, which our revered cornpatriot, Mr Brunel, is at this moment building, and which is soon to subdue the seven seas of the world? For is this not at once a prodigious material triumph and an embodiment, by God’s grace, of the spirit of mankind? Mr Rayne, both the poet and the Opium Agent are necessary to our scheme of things. What d’you say, Padre? Am I right?”
Although lightly built, the Reverend Hampton had been a rowing man at Oxford and he retained from those days a healthy and unassuming ma
“Mr Hopkins, as you know, I had the privilege like yourself of attending the Great Exhibition which opened in our homeland six years ago almost to this very day. To wander about in that vast building of glass, so immense that the elms it enclosed looked like Christmas trees, was to walk in a wonderland of beauty and of Man’s ingenuity … But of all the many marvels it contained there was one in the American section which made a particular impression on me because it seemed to combine so happily both the spiritual and the practical. I am referring to the Floating Church for Seamen from Philadelphia. This unusual construction floated on the twin hulls of two New York clipper ships and was entirely in the Gothic style, with a tower surmounted by a spire … inside, it contained a bishop’s chair; outside, it was painted to resemble brown stone. As I looked at it I thought of all the churches built by men throughout the ages and said to myself: ‘There has surely never been a more consummate embodiment of Faith than this.’ ”
“A splendid example,” agreed the Collector. “A very happy marriage of fact and spirit, of deed and ghost.”
“But no, sir! But no, Padre!” cried Fleury, so vehemently as to startle awake those guests whose minds had wandered during the preceding discussion. All eyes turned towards him and even as he spoke he wondered whether he might not be ever so slightly drunk. “But no, with all respect, that’s not it at all! Please consider, Padre, that a church is no more a church because it floats! Would a church be any more of a church if we could hoist it into the skies with a thousand balloons? Only the person capable of listening to the tenderest echoes of his own heart is capable of making that aerial ascent which will unite him with the Eternal. As for your most brilliant engineers, if they don’t listen to the voice of their hearts, not a thousand, not a million balloons will be capable of lifting their leaden feet one inch from the earth …” Fleury paused, catching sight of the consternation on the Doctor’s face. He did not dare glance at Louise. Somehow he knew she would be displeased. He could have kicked himself now for having blurted out all that about “the tenderest echoes of the heart” … that was the very last line to take with a girl like Louise who enjoyed flirting with officers. He had meant to say none of that… he had meant to be blunt and manly and to smile a lot. What a fool he was! As he sat there a random, frightening thought occurred to him: tonight he would have to sleep in the midst of sipping snakes!
Meanwhile, the Padre was looking distinctly alarmed. This young man had started a theological hare which might prove difficult to seize if he let it get away. He thought back grimly to his undergraduate days where this sort of theological beagling had been very fashionable and had ended, alas, in more than one young man taking a fall and losing his Faith. And the Padre was already beset by worries enough; apart from the manifold problems of ministry in a heathen country, scarcely two hours had passed since he had had a painful interview with the fallen woman in the dak bungalow, and he had found her still so intoxicated as to be unavailable to the voice of her conscience. But he had an even greater worry than that, for with the English mail that had arrived in the dak gharry that very evening had come a copy of the Illustrated London News with a strong editorial against a danger of which he had not even been aware … a ‘projected new translation of the Bible. It had not taken the editorial to make him realize the extent of this danger looming over the Christian world. The Bible was sacred and the Padre knew that one ca