Mr. Britling Sees It Through

of his chair. Then he sat up and drew a deep breath.⁠ ⁠…

This had come almost as a matter of course.

For weeks his mind had been playing about this idea. He had talked to Letty of this Finite God, who is the king of man’s adventure in space and time. But hitherto God had been for him a thing of the intelligence, a theory, a report, something told about but not realised.⁠ ⁠… Mr. Britling’s thinking about God hitherto had been like someone who has found an empty house, very beautiful and pleasant, full of the promise of a fine personality. And then as the discoverer makes his lonely, curious explorations, he hears downstairs, dear and friendly, the voice of the Master coming in.⁠ ⁠…

There was no need to despair because he himself was one of the feeble folk. God was with him indeed, and he was with God. The King was coming to his own. Amidst the darknesses and confusions, the nightmare cruelties and the hideous stupidities of the great war, God, the Captain of the World Republic, fought his way to empire. So long as one did one’s best and utmost in a cause so mighty, did it matter though the thing one did was little and poor?

“I have thought too much of myself,” said Mr. Britling, “and of what I would do by myself. I have forgotten that which was with me.⁠ ⁠…”

§ 10

He turned over the rest of the night’s writing presently, and read it now as though it was the work of another man.

These later notes were fragmentary, and written in a sprawling hand.

“Let us make ourselves watchers and guardians of the order of the world.⁠ ⁠…

“If only for love of our dead.⁠ ⁠…

“Let us pledge ourselves to service. Let us set ourselves with all our minds and all our hearts to the perfecting and working out of the methods of democracy and the ending forever of the kings and emperors and priestcrafts and the bands of adventurers, the traders and owners and forestallers who have betrayed mankind into this morass of hate and blood⁠—in which our sons are lost⁠—in which we flounder still.⁠ ⁠…”

How feeble was this squeak of exhortation! It broke into a scolding note.

“Who have betrayed,” read Mr. Britling, and judged the phrase.

“Who have fallen with us,” he amended.⁠ ⁠…

“One gets so angry and bitter⁠—because one feels alone, I suppose. Because one feels that for them one’s reason is no reason. One is enraged by the sense of their silent and regardless contradiction, and one forgets the Power of which one is a part.⁠ ⁠…”

The sheet that bore the sentence he criticised was otherwise blank except that written across it obliquely in a very careful hand were the words “Hugh,” and “Hugh Philip Britling.”⁠ ⁠…

On the next sheet he had written: “Let us set up the peace of the World Republic amidst these ruins. Let it be our religion, our calling.”

There he had stopped.

The last sheet of Mr. Britling’s manuscript may be more conveniently given in facsimile than described.

§ 11

He sighed.

He looked at the scattered papers, and thought of the letter they were to have made.

His fatigue spoke first.

“Perhaps after all I’d better just send the fiddle.⁠ ⁠…”

He rested his cheeks between his hands, and remained so for a long time. His eyes stared unseeingly. His thoughts wandered and spread and faded. At length he recalled his mind to that last idea. “Just send the fiddle⁠—without a word.”

“No. I must write to them plainly.

“About God as I have found Him.

“As He has found me.⁠ ⁠…”

He forgot the Pomeranians for a time. He murmured to himself. He turned over the conviction that had suddenly become clear and absolute in his mind.

“Religion is the first thing and the last thing, and until a man has found God and been found by God, he begins at no beginning, he works to no end. He may have his friendships, his partial loyalties, his scraps of honour. But all these things fall into place and life falls into place only with God. Only with God. God, who fights through men against Blind Force and Night and Nonexistence; who is the end, who is the meaning. He is the only King.⁠ ⁠… Of course I must write about Him. I must tell all my world of Him. And before the coming of the true King, the inevitable King, the King who is present whenever just men foregather, this bloodstained rubbish of the ancient world, these puny kings and tawdry emperors, these wily politicians and artful lawyers, these men who claim and grab and trick and compel, these war makers and oppressors, will presently shrivel and pass⁠—like paper thrust into a flame.⁠ ⁠…”

Then after a time he said:

“Our sons who have shown us God.⁠ ⁠…”

§ 12

He rubbed his open hands over his eyes and forehead.

The night of effort had tired his brain, and he was no longer thinking actively. He had a little interval of blankness, sitting at his desk with his hands pressed over his eyes.⁠ ⁠…

He got up presently, and stood quite motionless at the window, looking out.

His lamp was still burning, but for some time he had not been writing by the light of his lamp. Insensibly the day had come and abolished his need for that individual circle of yellow light. Colour had returned to the world, clean pearly colour, clear and definite like the glance of a child or the voice of a girl, and a golden wisp of cloud hung in the sky over the tower of the church. There was a mist upon the pond, a soft grey mist not a yard high. A covey of partridges ran and halted and ran again in the dewy grass outside his garden railings. The partridges were very numerous this year because there had been so little shooting. Beyond in the meadow a hare sat up as still