THE SMOKE AND THE FIRE.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XV, Issue IV, 27 July 1895, Page 99

THE SMOKE AND THE FIRE.

BY

MRS LYNN LINTON.

He who should seek to regulate his life according to those old proverbial sayings, which yet do really contain sound precepts and wise direction, would often find himself in a cleft stick. Here are two which make between them the horns of a pretty dilemma—which trace out two roads incompatible with each other, and perplex the anxious wayfarer with doubt and difficulty of choice : ‘Throw plenty of mud and some will stick.’ ‘ There is no smoke without some fire.’ Which are we to believe ? The one sets forth how the grossest slander, if diligently spread and constantly repeated, will at last be believed in for all time, no matter what rebutting evidence may hereafter be brought forward ; the other maintains that no evil report can exist without some foundation in fact. The divergence between them is wide, and the choice is difficult; and so obscure are the issues that even cross-examination at times fails to discover the exact truth. Those who believed in the Claimant, for example, went on the principle of the smoke and the fire. They thought it impossible that a man should have suddenly started out of space with no kind of relation to his story. He was this or he was that. If not Roger Tichborne he was his * morganatic ’ brother ; and poor Mrs Orton’s character had to suffer, not to Speak of Sir James Tichborne’s, to satisfy the minds of those who held to the fire beneath the smoke. History is full of these concealed fires, which certain persons now deny, and which others affirm must have been —else, why all this smoke ? But the more generous, perhaps the truer and more searching criticism of the present day tends to whitewash rather than to blacken ; and even such typical sinners as Faustina, Lucrezia Borgia, Joanna of Naples, to name no others, have found their historical scourers who have scraped them clean from all their smoke-dried crust.

In private life our choice between the two proverbs is made according to our temperament. It is in no wise a matter of wisdom, for current report has no more evidence than' it has traceable source. It springs, as it were, automatically, as suddenly as a mushroom on a damp night—as spontaneously as that generation which comes without seeds or parent eggs, and is full-formed by its own activity. One man hears it and another man repeats it. It buzzes through the Clubs and is whispered round the tea-tables, and women frown and say, * How shocking !’ or simper and say, ‘ How queer ■’ as their moral sense predominates or their foolish indifferentism is the stronger. But no one denies, and few doubt. * They say ’ has au almost magical power of conviction, and gossip has a cumulative effect which few can resist. Set afloat the most monstrous story concerning illustrious personages, and it is accepted, in defiance of all the rules of common sense, and all the laws of probability. Say that such a one has done such and such a thing of which, if he had done it, there must needs be a public and written record ; bnt though no such record exists, and of corroborative evidence there is not a trace, the ‘fly-swallowers’ are none the less convinced that the smoke does hide somt

fire, and that things would not be said if there was not something in them. Link noble names to ignoble deeds, and gibbet the two in the market place, and the gaping crowd will storm the spectral scarecrow. No one will ask for verification, no one will examine the substance of the show. The magician’s spirits appeared, and through thesmoke which surrounded the circle, he wisely forbade his dupe the power of testing and examining. It is t fae same with our friends Let slanderers repeat a vague accusation often enough, and there will always

be found an audience of credulous believers to accept it, body and bones, as it stands. A few of the more judicialminded and kind-hearted may hesitate, stroke their chins, and say they would like to have a little valid evidence—something more exact as to names, dates, places, and the like —something tangible, and such as would satisfy a juryman if laid before him. But such kindly Pyrrhonists are rare, and for the most part the dramatic instinct of society fastens eagerly on wellrounded stories, however slanderous they may be, and however vague and undated in origin. The smoke hides the fire, but the fire is there all the same. That marriage is a failure, and the husband is a cad ; but the wife clings to him, in spite of all the rumours as to his evil ways, and her constancy might seem to be a sufficient disclaimer. The fly-swallowers think differently, and the smoke is their evidence. So with her, that pretty little woman whose overflowing vitality offends the more phlegmatic, even as the brilliancy of Browning’s Duchess offended her Duke and his mother. No one but a mud-thrower by liking and profession could see any harm in her. No one but a fly-swallower by temperament and lack of brains would believe in the fire beneath the smoke. But there it is ; and by dint of incipient repetition a certain mildew grows round her name, a certain unsavoury atmosphere is created, and men look sly and women tiptilt their noses when she is spoken of, while those who hold to her are cited as instances of wonderful moral courage to be congratulated or sneered at, as it may chance, and all this time what has been proved ? Absolutely nothing. It is merely a case of ‘ They say,’ and the smoke which they say denotes the fire. In the days of good Haroun Alraschid that smoke denoted the afreet when set free from the seal of the great king In our days now, here in Christian England, it means very much the same thing ; and for the burning fire we may often substitute the hideous evil spirit of lies and voluntary scandal with no fire at all.— St James' Budget.