AS Mr. Perry-Hennington surged through the vicarage gate in the
direction of the village green, a rising tide of indignation swept the
morrow’s discourse completely out of his mind. This was indeed a pity.
Much was going on around and its inner meanings were in themselves a
sermon. Every bush was afire with God. The sun of June was upon gorse
and heather; bees, birds, hedgerows, flowers, all were touched with
magic; larks were hovering, sap was flowing in the leaves, nature in
myriad aspects filled with color, energy and music the enchanted air.
But none of these things spoke to the vicar. He was a man of wrath.
Anger flamed within him as, head high-flung, he marched along a steep,
bracken-fringed path, in quest of one whom he could no longer tolerate
in his parish.
For some little time now, John Smith had been a trial. To begin with
this young man was an alien presence in a well-disciplined flock.
Had he been native-born, had his status and position been defined by
historical precedent, Mr. Perry-Hennington would have been better able
to deal with him. But, as he had complained rather bitterly, “John
Smith was neither fish, flesh nor well-boiled fowl.” There was no niche
in the social hierarchy that he exactly fitted; there was no ground,
except the insecure one of personal faith, upon which the vicar of the
parish could engage him.
The cardinal fact in a most difficult case was that the young man’s
mother was living in Penfold. Moreover, she was the widow of a
noncommissioned officer in a line regiment, who in the year 1886 had
been killed in action in the service of his country. John, the only
and posthumous child of an obscure soldier who had died in the desert,
had been brought to Penfold by his mother as a boy of ten. There he
had lived with her ever since in a tiny cottage on the edge of the
common; there he had grown up, and as the vicar was sadly constrained
to believe, into a freethinker, a socialist and a generally undesirable
person.
These were hard terms for Mr. Perry-Hennington to apply to anyone, but
the conduct of the black sheep of the fold was now common talk, if not
an open scandal. For one thing he was thought to be unsound on the
war. He was known to hold cranky views on various subjects, and he had
addressed meetings at Brombridge on the Universal Religion of Humanity
or some kindred high-flown theme. Moreover, he talked freely with the
young men of the neighborhood, among whom he was becoming a figure of
influence. Indeed, it was said that the source of a kind of pacifist
movement, faintly stirring up and down the district, could be traced to
John Smith.
Far worse, however, than all this, he had lately acquired a reputation
as a faith-healer. It was claimed for him by certain ignorant people
at Grayfield and Oakshott that by means of Christian Science he had
cured deafness, rheumatism and other minor ills to which the local
flesh was heir. The vicar had been too impatient of the whole matter
to investigate it. On the face of it the thing was quite absurd.
In his eyes John Smith was hardly better than a yokel, although
a man of superior education for his rank of life. Indeed, in Mr.
Perry-Hennington’s opinion, that was where the real root of the
mischief lay. The mother, who was very poor, had contrived, by means of
the needle, and by denying herself almost the necessities of life, to
send the lad for several years to the grammar school at the neighboring
town of Brombridge, where he had undoubtedly gained the rudiments of an
education far in advance of any the village school had to offer. John
had proved a boy of almost abnormal ability; and the high master of
the grammar school had been sadly disappointed that he did not find
his way to Oxford with a scholarship. Unfortunately the boy’s health
had always been delicate. He had suffered from epilepsy, and this fact,
by forbidding a course of regular study, prevented a lad of great
promise obtaining at an old university the mental discipline of which
he was thought to stand in need.
The vicar considered it was this omission which had marred the boy’s
life. None of the learned professions was open to him; his education
was both inadequate and irregular; moreover, the precarious state of
his health forbade any form of permanent employment. Situations of a
clerical kind had been found for him from time to time which he had
been compelled to give up. Physically slight, he had never been fit for
hard manual labor. Indeed, the only work with his hands for which he
had shown any aptitude was at the carpenter’s bench, and for some years
now he had eked out his mother’s slender means by assisting the village
joiner.
The unfortunate part of the matter was, however, that the end was
not here. Mentally, there could be no doubt, John Smith, a man now
approaching thirty, was far beyond the level of the carpenter’s bench.
His mind, in the vicar’s opinion, was deplorably ill-regulated, but
in certain of its aspects he was ready to admit that it had both
originality and power. The mother was a daughter of a Baptist minister
in Wales, a fact which tended to raise her son beyond the level of
his immediate surroundings; but that apart, the village carpenter’s
assistant had never yielded his boyish passion for books. He continued
to read increasingly, books to test and search a vigorous mind.
Moreover, he had an astonishing faculty of memory, and at times wrote
poetry of a mystical, ultra-imaginative kind.
The case of John Smith was still further complicated for Mr.
Perry-Hennington by the injudicious behavior of the local squire.
Gervase Brandon, a cultivated, scholarly man, had encouraged this
village ne’er-do-well in every possible way. There was reason to
believe that he had helped the mother from time to time, and John, at
any rate, had been given the freedom of the fine old library at Hart’s
Ghyll. There he could spend as many hours as he wished; therefrom he
could borrow any volume that he chose, no matter how precious it might
be; and in many delicate ways the well-meaning if over-generous squire,
had played the part of Mæcenas.
In the vicar’s opinion the inevitable sequel to Gervase Brandon’s
unwisdom had already occurred. A common goose had come to regard
himself as a full-fledged swan. It was within the vicar’s knowledge
that from time to time John Smith had given expression to views
which the ordinary layman could not hold with any sort of authority.
Moreover, when remonstrated with, “this half-educated fellow” had
always tried to stand his ground. And at the back of the vicar’s mind
still rankled a certain _mot_ of John Smith’s, duly reported by Samuel
Veale the scandalized parish clerk. He had said that, as the world was
constituted at present, the gospel according to the Reverend Thomas
Perry-Hennington seemed of more importance than the gospel according to
Jesus Christ.
When taxed with having made the statement to the village youth, John
Smith did not deny the charge. He even showed a disposition to defend
himself; and the vicar had felt obliged to end the interview by
abruptly walking away. Some months had passed since that incident. But
in his heart the vicar had not been able to forgive what he could only
regard as a piece of effrontery. Henceforward all his dealings with
John Smith were tainted by that recollection. The subject still rankled
in his mind; indeed he would have been the first to own that it was
impossible now for such a man as himself to consider the problem of
John Smith without prejudice. Moreover, he was aware that an intense
and growing personal resentment boded ill for the young man’s future
life in the parish of Penfold-with-Churley.
Sore, unhappy, yet braced with the stern delight that warriors feel,
the vicar reached the common at last. That open, furze-clad plateau
which divided Sussex from Kent and rose so sharply to the sky that
it formed a natural altar upon which the priests of old had raised a
stone was the favorite tryst of this village wastrel. As soon as Mr.
Perry-Hennington came to the end of the steep path from the vicarage
which debouched to the common, he shaded his eyes from the sun’s glare.
Straight before him, less than a hundred yards away, was the man he
sought. John Smith was leaning against the stone.
The vicar took off his hat to cool his head a little, and then swung
boldly across the turf. The young man, who was bareheaded and clad in
common workaday clothes, looked clean and neat enough, but somehow
strangely slight and frail. Gaunt of jaw and sunken-eyed, the face was
of a very unusual kind, and from time to time was lit by a smile so
vivid as to be unforgetable. But the outward aspect of John Smith had
never had anything to say to the vicar, and this morning it had even
less to say than usual.
For the vicar’s attention had been caught by something else. Upon the
young man’s finger was perched a little, timid bird. He was cooing to
it, in an odd, loving voice, and as the vicar came up he said: “Nay,
nay, don’t go. This good man will do you no harm.”
But the bird appeared to feel otherwise. By the time the vicar was
within ten yards it had flown away.
“Even the strong souls fear you, sir,” said the young man with his
swift smile, looking him frankly in the eyes.
“It is the first time one has heard such a grandiloquent term applied
to a yellow-hammer,” said the vicar coldly.
“Things are not always what they seem,” said the young man. “The wisdom
of countless ages is in that frail casket.”
“Don’t talk nonsense,” said the vicar sharply.
“Many a saint, many a hero, is borne on the wings of a dove.”
“Transcendental rubbish.” The vicar mopped his face with his
handkerchief, and then he began: “Smith”--he was too angry to use the
man’s Christian name--“my daughter tells me you have been blasphemous.”
The young man, who still wore the white feather in his coat, looked at
the angry vicar with an air of gentle surprise.
“Please don’t deny it,” said the vicar, taking silence for a desire to
rebut the charge. “She has repeated to me word for word your mocking
speech when you put that symbol of cowardice in your buttonhole.”
John Smith looked at the vicar with his deep eyes and then he said
slowly and softly: “If my words have hurt her I am very sorry.”
This speech, in spite of its curious gentleness, added fuel to the
vicar’s anger.
“The humility you affect does not lessen their offense,” he said
sharply.
“Where lies the offense you speak of?” The question was asked simply,
with a grave smile.
“If it is not clear to you,” said the vicar with acid dignity, “it
shall not be my part to explain it. I am not here to bandy words.
Nor do I intend to chop logic. You consider yourself vastly clever,
no doubt. But I have to warn you that the path you follow is full of
peril.”
“Yes, the path we are following is full of peril.”
“Whom do you mean by ‘we’?” said the vicar sternly.
“Mankind. All of us.”
“That does not affect the question. Let us leave the general alone, let
us keep to the particular.”
“But how can we leave the general alone, how can we keep to the
particular, when we are all members of one another?”
The vicar checked him with an imperious hand.
“Blasphemer.” he said with growing passion, “how dare you parody the
words of the Master?”
“No one can parody the words of the Master. Either they are or they are
not.”
“I am not here to argue with you. Understand, John Smith, that in all
circumstances I decline to chop logic with--with a person of your sort.”
It added to this young man’s offense in the eyes of the vicar that he
had presumed to address him as an intellectual equal. It was true that
in a way of delicate irony, which even Mr. Perry-Hennington was not
too dense to perceive, this extraordinary person deferred continually
to the social and mental status of his questioner. It was the manner
of one engaged in rendering to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s, but
every word masked by the gentle voice was so subtly provocative that
Mr. Perry-Hennington felt a secret humiliation in submitting to them.
The implication made upon his mind was that the rôle of teacher and
pupil had been reversed.
This unpleasant feeling was aggravated to the point of the unbearable
by John Smith’s next words.
“Judge not,” he said softly. “Once priests judged Jesus Christ.”
The vicar recoiled.
“Abominable!” he said, and he clenched his fists as if he would strike
him. “Blasphemer!”
The young man smiled sadly. “I only speak the truth,” he said. “If it
wounds you, sir, the fault is not mine.”
Mr. Perry-Hennington made a stern effort to keep himself in hand.
It was unseemly to bandy words with a man of this kind. Yet, as he
belonged to the parish, the vicar in a sense was responsible for him;
therefore it became his duty to find out what was at the back of his
mind. Curbing as well as he could an indignation that threatened every
moment to pass beyond control, he called upon John Smith to explain
himself.
“You say you only speak the truth as it has been shown you. First I
would ask whence it comes, and then I would ask how do you know it for
the truth?”
“It has been communicated by the Father.”
“Don’t be so free with the name of God,” said the vicar sternly. “And
I, at any rate, take leave to doubt it.”
“There is a voice I hear within me. And being divine it speaks only the
truth.”
“How do you know it is divine?”
“How do I know the grass is green, the sky blue, the heather purple?
How do I know the birds sing?”
“That is no answer,” said the vicar. “It is open to anyone to claim a
divine voice within did not modesty forbid.”
The smile of John Smith was so sweetly simple that it could not have
expressed an afterthought. “Had you a true vocation,” he said, “would
you find such uses for your modesty?”
The vicar, torn between a desire to rebuke what he felt to be an
intolerable impertinence and a wish to end an interview that boded ill
to his dignity, could only stand irresolute. Yet this odd creature
spoke so readily, with a precision so rare and curious that his every
word seemed to acquire a kind of authority. Bitterly chagrined, half
insulted as the vicar was, he determined to continue the argument if
only for the sake of a further light upon the man’s state of mind.
“You claim to hear a divine voice. Is it for that reason, may one ask,
that you feel licensed to utter such appalling blasphemies?”
John Smith smiled again in his odd way.
“You speak like the men of old time,” he said softly.
“I use the King’s English,” said the vicar. “And I use it as
pointedly, as expressively, as sincerely as lies in my power. I mean
every word I say. You claim the divine voice, yet all that it speaks is
profanity and corruption.”
“As was said of the prophets of old?”
“You claim to be a prophet?”
“Yes, I claim to be a prophet.”
“That is interesting.” There was a sudden change of tone as the vicar
realized the importance of the admission. He saw that it might have a
very important bearing upon his future course of action. “You claim to
be a prophet in order that you may blaspheme the Creator.”
“I claim to be a prophet of the good, the beautiful, and the true.
I claim to hear the voice of the eternal. And if these things be
blasphemous in your sight, I can only grieve for your election.”
“Leave me out of it, if you please.” The clean thrust had stung the
vicar to fury. “I know perfectly well where and how I stand, and if
there is the slightest doubt in the matter it will be the province of
my bishop to resolve it. But with you, Smith, who, I am ashamed to say,
are one of my parishioners, it is a very different matter. In your case
I have my duty to perform. It is one that can only cause me the deepest
pain and anxiety, but I am determined that nothing shall interfere
with it. Forgive my plainness, but your mind is in a most disorderly
state. I am afraid Mr. Brandon is partly to blame. I have told him
more than once that it was folly to give you the run of his library.
You have been encouraged to read books beyond your mental grasp, or at
least beyond your power to assimilate becomingly, in the manner of a
gentleman. You are a half-educated man--it is my duty to speak out--and
like all such men you are wise in your own conceit. Now there is reason
to believe that, in virtue of an old statute which is still operative,
you have made yourself amenable to the law of the land. At all events I
intend to find out. And then will arise the question as to how far it
will be one’s duty to move in this matter.”
Mr. Perry-Hennington watched the young man narrowly as he uttered this
final threat. He had the satisfaction of observing that John Smith
changed color a little. If, however, he had hoped to frighten the man
it was by no means clear that he had succeeded.
“You follow your conscience, sir,” he said with a sweet unconcern that
added to the vicar’s inward fury. “And I try to follow mine. But it is
right to say to you that you are entering upon a deep coil. The soul of
man is abroad in a dark night, yet the door is still open, and I pray
that you at least will not seek to close it.”
“The door--still open!” The vicar looked at him in amazement. “What
door?”
“The door for all mankind.”
“You speak in riddles.”
“For the present let them so remain. But I will give you a piece of
news. At two o’clock this morning a presence entered my room and said:
‘I am Goethe and I have come to pray for Germany.’”
The vicar could only gaze in silence at John Smith.
“And I said: ‘Certainly, I am very glad to pray for Germany,’ and we
knelt and prayed together. And then he rose and showed me the little
town with its quaint gables and turrets where he sleeps at night, and I
asked him to have courage and then I embraced him and then he left me,
saying he would return again.”
The vicar heard him to the end with a growing stupefaction. Such a
speech in its complete detachment from the canons of reason could only
mean that the man was unhinged. The words themselves would bear no
other interpretation; but in spite of that the vicar’s amazement soon
gave way to a powerful resentment. At that moment the sense of outrage
was stronger in him than anything else.
A certain practical sagacity enabled him to see at once that an
abyss had opened between this grotesquely undisciplined mind and his
own. The man might be merely recounting a dream, indulging a fancy,
weaving an allegory, but at whatever angle he was approached by an
incumbent of the Established Church, only one explanation could cover
such lawlessness. The man was not of sound mind. And after all that
was the one truly charitable interpretation of his whole demeanor and
attitude. An ill-regulated, morbidly sensitive organization had broken
down in the stress of those events which had sorely tried an intellect
as stable as Mr. Perry-Hennington’s own. Indeed it was only right to
think so; otherwise, the vicar would have found it impossible to curb
himself. Even as it was he dared not trust himself to say a word in
reply. All at once he turned abruptly on his heel and walked away as on
a former occasion.