“But you don’t mean to tell me that,” the young man began. “No decent zoologist has done anything to question die fact of organic evolution and the survival or extinction of species by natural selection since Darwin broached the idea. Of course in minor details, in accounting for variations, for instance....”
Mr Chamble Pewter retained an expression of serene derision. “Since first I heard of it, I have never doubted for a moment that this idea of Evolution was utterly absurd. So why haggle about details?”
“Did you examine the evidence?”
“No,” said Mr Chamble Pewter. The young American seemed to be at a loss for breath.
“I may be old-feshioned and all that,” said Mr Chamble Pewter in the pause,” but I happen to prefer the Bible story of a creation, to Mr Darwin’s curious idea that a large ape came down a tree, went bald all over and wandered about until he met a female gorilla to whom, by some strange accident, the same impulse had occurred, a very very remarkable coincidence if you come to think of it, and that together they started the human race. I find that improbable to the pitch of absurdity.”
“It is. It’s a caricature. But have you ever looked into the evidence? Do you know how the case really stands?”
“Why should I? I believe with most rational people that this world was Created, and man and woman came straight from the hand of God, made in his image. How else could the world come about? How did it begin? We have age-long traditions, that great literature we call the Bible. I ask you plainly. Do you deny the Creation? That is to say, do you deny the Creator?”
The young man felt the chill of unpopularity about him.
“I deny the Creation,” he said.
“Then you deny your Creator?”
“Well if you must have it—yes.”
A breath of reprobation ruffled the gathering.
“But you mustn’t say that!” said the little lady in mittens. “You really mustn’t say that.”
“No, you can’t say that,” said Edward Albert decisively.
Mrs Doober murmured ambiguously as became her position, and even her down-trodden and practically negligible niece was faintly audible in reprobation.
“Forgive me if I smile,” said Mr Chamble Pewter. “But I have this confounded sense of humour of mine. I suppose it’s really a sense of proportion. But now I’m speaking out, let me say plainly that you scientific people would be insufferable if your ideas had anything like the importance you claim for them. Imagine it. Think of the churches, the cathedrals, the countless good works, the martrydoms, the saints, the vast legacy of art and beauty, the music drawing its inspiration from the divine fount, for all music to begin with was religious, the institution of family life, purity, love, chivalry, kingship, loyalty, the crusades, Benedictine, Chartreuse, the wines of France, hospitals, charities, the whole rich fabric of Christian life. Strip it from us and what is there left of us? You would leave us shivering in the void. Yes, Sir, the void. A world of mechanical apes. Because a few crazy old gentlemen have found some bones and had fancies about them. And they don’t agree even among themselves. Take that queer paper Nature and what do you find? Science perpetually contradicting itself....”
“But—!” The young American had attempted to cut in once or twice upon the flow of eloquence. But every time the new little lady boarder with the mittens had intervened with infinite gentleness and infinite insolence. “Do please let him finish first,” she said. “Please.”
“Tell me when you’ve finished,” said the altogether too modern young man.
“It’s a question of whether you are finished,” said Mr Chamble Pewter, and ceased abruptly.
And this arrogant young man had nothing to say. He had asserted himself over Doober’s too confidently, and now he found Doober’s solid against him. Not a soul had he captured. Even the blonde Miss Pooley, who had seemed at times to listen to him with interest, gave no sign. “Well,” he said. “I never met such ignorance. Here are ideas that are revolutionising the whole human outlook, and you not only don’t know a Thing about them, but you don’t want to know a Thing about them.”
Mr Chamble Pewter drank his coffee and regarded the young American with a quizzical expression. He put down his cup. “Yes,” he said. “We don’t want to know a Thing about them.”
“I give it up,” said the young American. Mr Chamble Pewter shrugged his shoulders and a profound silence ensued.
“Such a lovely black cat jumped on to my window-sill just before dinner,” said the little widow lady with the mittens, relieving the tension.
“Black Toms are said to be very lucky,” said Mrs Doober.
The arsenal of modern ideas got up slowly and thoughtfully and departed to his own room. The discussion was not resumed.
Later Mrs Doober heard him go out and slam the door behind him as loudly as it could be slammed, and she knew from years of experience that he was going out to find another boarding-house.
[Oh! If only people wouldn’t get into these arguments! It had happened before several times. And he was punctual in payment, quiet, gave no trouble.]
It was wonderful to Edward Albert. He was overcome by a wave of discipleship. It was just what he would have said and done himself—if it had occurred to him to say or do anything of the sort. He tried to memorise some of Mr Chamble Pewter’s best strokes before they faded from his mind, so that he could use them later. But he never achieved anything like the polish they had. Throughout this narrative you will hear Edward Albert making frequent use of such destructive comments as “Bawls” or “Dam-rot” or “piffle before the wind”, or “I suppose that’s all right for you”, or “What’s the evidence for that?”
“You can’t put that over me”, and so on. He even got to “Forgive me if my sense of humour prevents my swallowing that sort of rot.”
These were the outer defences of a more and more deeply entrenched ignorance. His instinct had always been to hate novel ideas, more particularly ideas that perplexed him or challenged his prepossessions. But previously he has been inclined to fear them. Now he despised them as impotent. In all this he was being thoroughly English. The Armistice celebrations had filled the soul of Homo Tewler Anglicanus with an immense reassurance. For yet another quarter of a century the educational mandarinate of the victorious Allies protected itself behind a Chinese Wall of self-satisfaction, and the growing body of modern knowledge, having no sense of humour, spluttered indignantly and in vain. As we have heard it .splutter. But you can’t be too careful of these strange new ideas and new things. You must not tamper with them. If you try to understand them, they may entangle and get hold of you, and then where will you be? Hide your mind from them, and hide them from your mind. Stick to the plain common sense of life. There will always be a to-morrow rather like to-day. At least so far there always has been a fairly similar to-morrow. Once or twice lately there have been jolts....
Try not to notice these jolts.
“It is no good meeting trouble halfway,”
VII. They Come—They Go
So it was that Doober’s changed continually and remained always the same, as manhood dawned murkily upon our Edward Albert. Doober’s, until he was wrenched out of it by circumstances beyond his control, was the foundation of his world. But outside it a number of other human encounters were streaming past him, making suggestions to him and deflecting his ideas about life. The staff he worked with at North London Leaseholds was a purely male one, and his general pose towards his colleagues was of someone “a bit superior” who condescended rather than was compelled to earn. He felt he dressed better than they did. He made a certain mystery of his place of residence; he had more pocket money; most of them still lived in and paid in to their homes. But if he offended them they controlled their resentment at his airs, and he found it more agreeable to go with them to the restaurant they frequented for lunch than to sit alone. And there they met “the girls—”