CHAPTER X - THE SUBSEQUENT CAREER OF THE NIHILIST

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CHAPTER X - THE SUBSEQUENT CAREER OF THE NIHILIST

'Cucullus nonfacit monachum.'

Queen Mab and the Owl were returning, rather tired, from an excursion, when a procession of the Salvation Army came across them, with drums and banners, and the General at its head, and,--they could hardly believe their eyes,--the Nihilist walking by the side of the General and weeping abundantly. The Salvation Army had brought him to a conviction of his sins, and he was wringing his hands--at least one of them; the other, as if automatically, still carried the black bag. The General, on the contrary, was highly delighted. It was not every day that he converted a Nihilist, and the thought occurred, small blame to him, that the whole history of the incident would sound remarkably well in the 'War Cry.' So it would have done, but for that unfortunate bag.

'You renounce the devil,' said the General confidently, 'and all his ways?'

'I renounce him,' said the Nihilist, still clasping the black bag fervently, in a glow of pious enthusiasm, as if it were a prayer-book.

'Then you are all right,' said the General in an encouraging tone. 'Throw away the black bag, my friend, and shout Hallelujah! Do you feel your sins forgiven?'

'I do! I do!' exclaimed the Nihilist. 'But I daren't throw it away: it would make such a noise in the street. I'll tie it on to the next balloon that comes by empty. They'll assassinate me; but I don't care: I have peace in my heart!'

'That's the right ring,' said the General, not without conquering a feeling of repugnance towards the vicinity of the bag. 'Faith without works, you know. Well, my brother, we must be back to head-quarters. You'll meet us at the Hall to-night--seven sharp.'

'I will,' cried the Nihilist enthusiastically. 'I must go to one of your blessed gatherings before my enemies are on my track. Ah, it's true--the world is vanity. Dynamite is vanity. Torpedoes, nitro-glycerine--they're dust and ashes, broken cisterns! I renounce them all.'

They had reached an important metropolitan railway station, and the General's party, entering, began to take tickets for their return journey. Then, for the first time, the Nihilist noticed that the General also carried a black bag, in shape and size similar to his own, which he placed on the floor of the booking-office as he went to take his ticket. Queen Mab never fully comprehended what happened next. She could only assert that the expression on the face of the Nihilist was one of fervent and devoted piety, as, with an ejaculation of 'Hallelujah!' he absently put down his own bag and took up that of the General. Then he broke out, as in irrepressible enthusiasm, with a verse of 'Dare to be a Daniel!' The General, turning round, looked duly edified at this outburst of ardour, and took up his bag of pamphlets, as he supposed, without any suspicion of the length to which his friend's devotional rapture had carried him. The Nihilist then bade a hurried farewell, observing rather incoherently that the weight of sin was heavy on his conscience, and he was going to submerge it instantly at St. Paul's Pier. With this parting statement he rushed from the station, and Queen Mab, with a sense of misgiving, followed hastily.

A moment after, the city was thrilled by a loud explosion. No one was killed: above a hundred persons were injured, and the cause of the disturbance was traced to a bag left by the General on the platform close to the bookstall. For the next two or three days the station wore a blackened, distracted, and generally intermingled appearance. The big drum suffered the most severely, and shreds of parchment were wafted to a great distance, and gathered up, many of them, by adherents of the Army, as relics of this unfortunate martyr of Progress and of Nihilism. Many of the other instruments were shattered, and so great was the force of the explosion, that a small fragment of a bagpipe was propelled into St. Paul's Cathedral, where it was discovered next day, on the lectern, by the Canon who read the lessons. The General, for some time, was supposed to have disappeared with these instruments; but it was afterwards asserted, on good authority, that he had been seen the same evening on board a vessel bound for America; and the most reasonable conjecture appeared to be, that his native discrimination, at once perceiving the weight of evidence for the prosecution, had led him, during the tumult incident on the explosion, to effect an escape. Certain it is that the Hall at Clapton knew him no more.

Meanwhile, outside the station, amid a medley of blackened officials, disintegrated portions of railway carriages and book-stalls, Salvation Army captains, converted reprobates, policemen, cabmen, and orange vendors, was found a Nihilist! Once a Nihilist, but a Nihilist no longer. With a threepenny hymn-book in one hand and a black bag in the other, filled, not with dangerous explosives, but with a whole arsenal of tracts, 'War Crys,' hymn-books, addresses to swearers and Sabbath-breakers, and other devotional literature, he was calmly spouting:

'Convulsions shake the solid world, My faith shall never yield to fear!'

It may not be amiss, here, to say a few words as regards his subsequent history, as related by the Owl. After that somewhat untoward incident, he was not warmly received into the ranks of the Salvation Army. A coldness sprang up which, though not inexplicable, had the unfortunate effect of causing our Nihilist to renounce connection with that body. The influences which they had brought to bear upon him, however, did not so easily pass away, and it was in the continued glow of pious enthusiasm that he joined a Dissenting Society, in which respectability and fervour were happily combined, and which, accusing the Salvation Army of the fervour without the respectability, regarded the Nihilist as an interesting martyr of unjust suspicion. For two months he remained in this society, and rose to the post of deacon, or what corresponded to deacon in their system; but at the end of that time his native bias proved too strong for him. With singular injudiciousness he brought to the Sunday evening service a hymn-book carefully constructed, including the hymns of the society, and also a small but superlatively powerful block of explosive material, arranged to go off at the moment in which the collection was being taken up. So confident was he of the excellent workmanship of this article that he did not scruple even to write his name in it, and to leave it in the pew, assured that, once exploded, no trace of its ownership would remain. He then left before the collection--a thing which he had been repeatedly known to do before, and which struck the congregation with no alarm. But, from the pew behind, an eye was upon him. It was the eye of the Professor. What was the Professor! doing there? The answer was simple enough. He was writing a book on 'Competition, and the Survival of the Fittest, as displayed in Modern Sectarianism,' and he had come to this! dissenting place of worship in quest; of information. Always ardent in the pursuit of knowledge, he entered the Nihilist's pew the moment that individual left it, and began to scan the leaves of the hymn-book. To his infinite amazement, on turning over page 227, he came upon a cunning piece of machinery, not a musical-box, like those one comes to unexpectedly in the midst of photograph albums, but a "chef d'ouvre" of Donovan's own, smouldering away at a great rate. The time was just up; the collection-boxes were being handed round; instant destruction seemed inevitable, when, to the amazement of the congregation, the Professor, starting up, rushed to the altar, and, with the cool forethought and intrepidity so eminently characteristic of that gifted man, dropped the hymn-book into the large font, then full of water. The ignited wick ceased to smoulder; the peril was averted.

But the Nihilist was sought for in vain by the civil authorities. Glancing back at the threshold of the building, he had caught sight of the Professor, and, as if fascinated to the spot, he had watched him take up the fatal hymn-book. Then, with an instant presentiment of the consequences, he had rushed away. He has since joined the Parsees, and the Democrat, visiting America on business, met him the other day in New York, in the full costume of a Fire-worshipper. His complexion had assumed a more Eastern appearance, and his turban was pulled low down, and partially concealed his features; but the Democrat's keen eyes detected a resemblance, even before the Parsee began to hum, in a singularly rich and flexible tenor voice, a verse from Omar Khayyam:

'Ah Love, could you and I with Fate conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would we not shatter it to bits , and then
Remould it nearer to the Heart's Desire?'

From the depth of feeling which the Nihilist flung into these words, the Democrat conjectured that he had at last found his true devotional sphere, but he did not venture on renewing the acquaintance, judiciously reflecting that the flowing costume of a Persian magnate was favourable to the secretion of infernal machines of all sorts and sizes. _

Read next: CHAPTER XI - HOME AND FOREIGN POLICY COMBINED

Read previous: CHAPTER IX - IN WHICH THE NIHILIST, THE DEMOCRAT, AND THE PROFESSOR OFFER A SUGGESTION TO THE BISHOP

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