Philip Kerr - Dark Matter

“Pray, sir,” she said coldly, “what do you mean by that remark?”

“Why, only what must be well known to you, Miss Barton. That Doctor Newton believes all received Christian tradition to be counterfeit and a fraud perpetrated by evil men who, for their own purposes, have wilfully corrupted the heritage of Jesus Christ.”

“Stop,” cried Miss Barton, rising suddenly to her feet, one of which she stamped like an impatient little pony. “Stop. Stop.”

Slowly I stood up and faced her, only now too late realising the truth of the matter, which was that for all her uncle’s heretical opinions — of which I could now perceive that she knew nothing — her clever discourse, her inquiring mind, and her manifest desire for me, Miss Barton herself retained the simple Christian faith of a village curate’s wife.

“How could you say such a wicked thing about my uncle?” she demanded, her eyes moistening suddenly.

I did not compound my offences by asserting that I had merely spoken the truth, for that would have added insult to the box on the ears my words had already given her; and instead I chose to compound them by explaining that it was possible that the unorthodox opinions I had imputed to Doctor Newton were mine and mine alone.

“Can it be that you believe such heinous and wicked things as I have heard you utter tonight?”

What is a lie? Nothing. Nothing but words. Could I have dissembled and preserved the bond that was between us? It is possible. Love, like a cuckolded husband, wishes to be deceived. I could have answered smoothly that I was a true Christian and that I thought my fever had returned, and she might have believed me. I might even have counterfeited a fainting attack and collapsed down upon the floor, as if I had been afflicted with the falling sickness. But instead I avoided her question altogether, which I’ll warrant was all the answer she needed.

“If I have offended you, Miss Barton, I am most heartily sorry and beg your pardon, most humbly.”

“You have offended yourself, Mister Ellis,” she said with a quite regal degree of hauteur. “Not just in my eyes, but in the eyes of Him who created you and in front of whom you will one day stand for judgement and be held to account for your blasphemy.” And then, shaking her head, she sighed loudly and added, “I have loved you, Mister Ellis. There is nothing I could not have done for you, sir. As you have already witnessed this evening. You have occupied my every waking thought these past few months. I would have loved you so much. Perhaps in time we might even have married. How else could I have permitted our earlier intimacies? But I could not love anyone who did not love Our Lord Jesus Christ.”

This was sore indeed and hardly to be endured, for it was plain to me that she intended our relationship to be at an end; and my only hope of her being reconciled to me now lay with him who had no more understanding of love than Oliver Cromwell. But still I tried to justify myself, as when one who is condemned although not yet sentenced is asked if he has anything to say.

“Religion is full of rogues,” said I, “who pretend to be pious. All I can say, Miss Barton, is that my atheism is honest and hard-wrought. I would that it were different. I had rather believe all the fables and all the legends than that this universal frame is without a mind. And yet I do not. I cannot. I will not. Until I met your uncle I had no other apprehension but that to deny God is to destroy the mystery of the world. Yet now that I have perceived how it is possible to see the mystery of the world explained by a man such as he, I cannot believe other than that the Church is as empty as a fairy ring, or that the Bible is as baseless as the Koran.”

Miss Barton shook her head vigorously. “But where does the uniformity in all the outward shapes of birds, beasts and men come but from the counsel and contrivance of a divine author? How is it that the eyes of all creatures are made the same? Did blind chance know that there was light and how it might be refracted, and did it design the eyes of all creatures after the most curious manner to make use of it?”

“The accident of uniformity in creation only seems to be thus,” I argued. “As once gravity and the rainbow used to seem which, now explained, are no more accidents than prisms or telescopes. One day all these questions will be answered, but not by reason of a God. Your uncle’s hand has pointed out the way forward.”

“Do not say this,” said Miss Barton. “He does not believe this. For him, atheism is senseless and odious to mankind. He knows that there is a Being who made all things and has all things in his power, and who is therefore to be feared. Fear God, Mister Ellis. Fear him as once you loved me.”

It was my turn to shake my head. “Man’s nobility is not born of fear, but of reason. If I must be kin to God by fear, then God is himself ignoble. And if your uncle does not understand this, it can only be because he does not wish to understand, for in all else he is the very spirit of understanding.

“But let us have no more high words, Miss Barton. I can see the insult I have offered you seems very grievous and shall say no more to vex you further.”

I bowed stiffly, and adding only that I would love her forever, to which she said nothing, I took my leave, already weary, to walk the several miles back to the Tower. And as I walked I had the smell of Miss Barton’s privy parts on my fingers to confirm that for a moment I had possessed her, only then to be rejected; and I was like one who had been shown the gates of Paradise only to have been denied entry. Which gave me no more appetite for my life than Judas, if such a man ever did exist. Indeed I might have hanged myself as Major Mornay was in the beginning thought to have done, but for the fear that now infected me of being nothing afterward.

It is no wonder that the early Christians could go to their martyrdoms with hymns on their lips when a place in Heaven seemed assured. But what was there for atheists, except oblivion? And without Miss Barton there was not even Paradise on earth.

It was two of the clock by the time I reached Tower Hill, and I could not have felt worse if I had been told I was to meet the hangman and his axe there in the morning. In the Lion Tower, one of the big cats moaned most pitiably, which sounded much like my own hopeless spirit, so that I pictured myself pacing up and down within the cage of my own disbelief. I passed through the gates at the Byward, with hardly a word for the sentry, Mister Grain, feeling as much sorrow for myself as any who had ever gone into that unhappy place. And when at last I reached my house, I went straightaway to bed but could not sleep all night.

So at six o’clock, with very little repose and rest, I arose and took a turn about the battlements to clear my head in a brisk wind that blew up the Thames from Deptford. London’s early-morning bustle contrasted sharply with my own preternatural calm: barges unloaded cargoes of wood and coal upon the Tower’s wharf at the same time that three-masted ships were setting sail for Chatham and beyond; while on the western side, in range of the dozen and a half cannon that were pointed at the City, maids in wide straw hats were putting down large baskets of fruit, bread and vegetables upon the ruined walls of the Tower’s old bulwark to sell unto the people that were already walking or riding by. Behind me, the flag of Saint George fluttered and snapped loudly in the unrelenting breeze, like a ship’s sail; at seven o’clock the gun on the Brass Mount fired its own salute to another day; and columns of soldiers stiffly marched their clockwork way about the Inner Ward like toys at a fair. And all the while I felt as if the world was passing me by, like a mote in a sunbeam.