“How else are we to keep warm on these mucking winter’s nights?” the jolly man asked, and there was a murmur of approval about him. Charley tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Would you mind keeping quiet while this gentleman speaks?”
The jolly man swung round on Charley. Though age had withered him like a prune, his mouth was spread red and large across his face as if it had been plastered there by a fist. He worked this ample mouth now, realized that Charley was stronger than he was, and relapsed into silence. Unmoved, the parson continued his oration.
“We must bow before His will, my friends, that’s what we must do. Soon we shall all go down on our knees here and pray. It will be fitting for us all to go together into His presence, for we are the last of His generations, and it is meet that we should bear ourselves accordingly. What have we to fear if we are righteous, ask yourselves that? Once before He swept the Earth clean with a flood because of the sins of man. This time He has taken from our generative organs the God-given power to procreate. If you think that to be a more terrible punishment than the flood, then the sins of our century, the Twenty-First Century, are more terrible sins. He can wipe the slate clean as many times as He will, and begin again.
“So we do not weep for this Earth we are to leave. We are born to vanish as the cattle we once tended have already vanished, leaving the Earth clean and new for His further works. Let me recall to you, my brethren, before we sink upon our knees in prayer, the words of the scriptures concerning this time.”
He put his fluttering hands together and peered into the darkness to recite: ” ‘For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth the beasts – yea, even one thing befalleth them. As the one dieth, so dieth the other, and they have but one breath. So that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast, for all is vanity. All go unto one place, all are of the dust, and all turn again to dust. Wherefore I perceive that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in the Lord’s works, for that is his portion. And who shall bring him to see what shall be after him?”
“My old missus will be after me, if I don’t get home,” the jolly man said. “Good night to thee, parson.” He began to straggle up the road, supported by a crony. Greybeard shook Charley’s arm, and said, “This man isn’t Bunny Jingadangelow, for all that he advertises eternal life. Let’s move on.”
“No, let’s hear a bit more yet, Greybeard. Here’s a man speaking truth. In how many years have I heard someone so worth listening to?”
“You stay here then, I’ll go on.”
“Stay and listen, Algy – it’ll do you good.”
But Greybeard moved up the road. The parson was again using the dead man by his platform for his text.
Perhaps that had been one of the ineradicable faults of mankind – for even a convinced atheist had to admit there were faults – that it was never content with a thing as a thing; it had to turn things into symbols of other things. A rainbow was not only a rainbow; a storm was a sign of celestial anger; and even from the puddingy earth came forth dark chthonian gods. What did it all mean? What an agnostic believed and what the willowy parson believed were not only irreconcilable systems of thought: they were equally valid systems of thought because, somewhere along the evolutionary line, man, developing this habit of thinking of symbols, had provided himself with more alternatives than he could manage, more systems of alternatives than he could manage. Animals moved in no such channel of imagination – they copulated and they ate; but to the saint, bread was a symbol of life, as the phallus was to the pagan. The animals themselves were pressed into symbolic service – and not only in mediaeval bestiaries, by any means.