TO the library the spinal carriage was taken. When it had been wheeled
into the sunny embrasure of that wonderful room, which even the vicar
never entered without a slight pang of envy, the nurses retired,
leaving the two men together.
The library of Hart’s Ghyll was richly symbolical of the aristocracy
of an old country. It had once been part of a monastery which had been
set, as happened invariably when religion had a monopoly of learning
and taste, in the fairest spot the countryside could offer for the
purpose. From the large mullioned window the view of Hart’s Ghyll and
its enchanted vistas of hill, stream and woodland beyond was a miracle
of beauty. And the walls of the room displayed treasures above price,
such a collection of first editions and old masters as even a man
so insensitive as the vicar sometimes recalled in his dreams. Their
present owner, who in the vicar’s opinion had imbibed the modern spirit
far too freely, had often said that he could not defend possession in
such abundance by one who had done nothing to earn it. In an ideal
state, had declared this advanced thinker, these things would be part
of the commonweal--a theory which Mr. Perry-Hennington considered
fantastic. To his mind, as he had informed niece Millicent, it was
perilously like an affront to the order of divine providence.
The spirit of place seemed to descend upon the vicar, as in a hushed,
rather solemn tone, he asked Brandon whether the sun would be too much
for him.
“Not for a man who has been grilled in Gallipoli,” answered Brandon
with a stoic’s smile. “But if you will open that window a little wider
and roll me back a bit, I shall have my own piece of earth to look at.
Give me this and you may take the rest of Christendom. It’s been soaked
into my bones, into my brain. One ought to be a Virgil or a Wordsworth.”
“Which I hope you may presently prove, my dear fellow,” said the vicar,
touched by a sense of the man’s heroism.
“Alas, they are born.”
“In spirit at any rate you are with them.” The vicar was moved to an
infrequent compliment.
But he had suddenly grown nervous. Now that he was face to face with
his task he didn’t know how to enter upon it. The wave of indignation
which had borne him as far as the library of Hart’s Ghyll had been
dissipated by the presence of a suffering it was surely inhuman to
embarrass. The younger man, his rare faculty of perception strung to
a high pitch, saw at once the vicar’s hesitation. Like an intensely
sympathetic woman, Brandon began unconsciously to help him disburden
his mind of that which was trying it so sorely.
At last Mr. Perry-Hennington found himself at the point where it became
possible to break the ice.
“My dear Gervase,” he said, “there is nothing I dislike more than
having to ask you to share my troubles, but a most vexing matter has
arisen, and you are the only person whose advice I feel I can take.”
“I only hope I can be of use.”
“Well--it’s John Smith.” The vicar took the plunge. And as he did so,
he was sufficiently master of himself to watch narrowly the face of the
stricken man.
Brandon fixed deep eyes upon the vicar.
“But he’s such a harmless fellow.” The light tone, the placid smile,
told nothing.
“I admit, of course, that one oughtn’t to be worried by a village
wastrel.”
“I challenge the term,” said Brandon with the note of airy banter which
always charmed. “Not for the first time, you know. I’m afraid we shall
never agree about the dear chap.”
“No, I’m afraid we shall not.” The vicar could not quite keep
resentment out of his voice. But in deference to a graceful and perhaps
merited rebuke, the controversialist lowered his tone a little. “But
let me give you the facts.”
Thereupon, with a naïveté not lost upon the man in the spinal carriage,
Mr. Perry-Hennington very solemnly related the incident of the white
feather.
Brandon said nothing, but looked at the vicar fixedly.
“I hate having to worry you in this way.” Mr. Perry-Hennington watched
narrowly the drawn face. “Of course it had to be followed up. At first,
I’ll confess, I took it to be a mere piece of blasphemous bravado in
execrable taste, but now I’ve seen the man, now I’ve talked with him, I
have come to another conclusion.”
The vicar saw that Brandon’s eyes were full of an intense, eager
interest.
“Well?” said the sufferer softly.
“The conclusion I have come to is that it’s a case of paranoia.”
“That is to say, you think he intended the statement to be taken
literally?”
“I do. But I didn’t realize that all at once. When I accused him
of blasphemy he defended himself with a farrago of quasi mystical
gibberish which amounted to nothing, and he ended with a perfectly
fantastic statement. Let me give it you word for word. ‘At two o’clock
this morning a presence entered my room and said, “I am Goethe and I
have come to pray for Germany.” And I said, “Certainly, I shall be
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.’”
Brandon’s face had an ever-deepening interest, but he did not venture
upon a remark.
“Of course,” said the vicar, “one’s answer should have been, ‘My
friend, he who aids, abets and harbors an unregistered alien enemy
becomes amenable to the Defense of the Realm Regulations.’”
“What was your answer?” The look of bewilderment was growing upon
Brandon’s face.
“I made none. I was completely bowled out. But I went at once to see
the mother. And this is where the oddest part of all comes in. After
a little conversation with the mother, I discovered that she most
sincerely believes that her son is--is a messiah.”
Again the stricken man closed his eyes.
“There we have the clue. In a very exalted way she told me how her son
was born six months after her husband had been killed in action. She
told me how she had prayed that all wars might cease, how an angel
appeared to her with a promise that she would live to see the war
which would end all wars; she told me how a son was born to her in
fulfillment of the prophecy, and how she christened him John Emanuel. I
was astounded. But now I have had time to think about the matter much
is explained. The man is clearly suffering from illusions prenatally
induced. There is no doubt a doctor would tell us that it explains his
fits. It also accounts for his faith-healing nonsense. And there is no
doubt that mother and son have reacted upon one another in such a way
that they are now stark crazy.”
“And that is your deliberate opinion?”
“With the facts before me I can come to no other. It is the only
charitable explanation. Otherwise I should have felt it to be my duty
to institute a prosecution under the blasphemy laws. Only the other
day there was a man--a tailor, I believe--imprisoned under the statute
of Henry VII. But if, as there is now every reason to think, it is a
simple case of insanity, one will be relieved from that disagreeable
necessity.”
Brandon concurred.
“But as you will readily see, my dear Gervase, the alternative is
almost equally distressing. To clear him of the charge of blasphemy it
will be necessary to prove him insane; and in that event, of course, he
cannot remain at large.”
“Surely the poor chap is quite harmless?”
“Harmless!” Mr. Perry-Hennington had difficulty in keeping his voice
under control. “A man who goes about the parish proclaiming himself a
god!”
“He has Plotinus with him at any rate.” Again the stricken man closed
his eyes. “How says the sage? ‘Surely before this descent into
generation we existed in the intelligible world; being other men than
now we are, and some of us Gods; clear souls and minds immixed with all
existence; parts of the Intelligible, nor severed thence; nor are we
severed even now.’”[1]
[Footnote 1: Enn VI. 4, 14 [F. W. H. Myers].]
“Really, my dear Gervase,” said the vicar, trying very hard to
curb a growing resentment, “one should hesitate to quote the pagan
philosophers in a matter of this kind.”
“I can’t agree. They are far wiser than us in the only thing that
matters after all. They have more windows open in the soul.”
“No, no.” Mr. Perry-Hennington strove against vehemence. “Still, we
won’t go into that.” He was on perilous ground. Of late years Brandon
himself had been a thorn in the sacerdotal cushion. The modern spirit
had led him to skepticism, so that, in the vicar’s phrase, “he had
become an alien in the household of faith.” Now was not the moment
to open an old wound or to revive the embers of controversy. But the
vicar felt the old spiritual enmity, which Brandon’s stoic heroism had
lulled to sleep, again stirring his blood. Therefore, he must not allow
himself to be involved in a false issue. Let him keep rigidly to the
business in hand. And the business in hand was: What shall be done with
John Smith?
It was clear at once that in Brandon’s opinion there was no need to do
anything. The vicar felt ruefully that he should have foreseen this
attitude. But he had a right to hope that Brandon’s recent experiences,
even if they had not changed him fundamentally, would have done
something to modify the central heresies. Nothing was further from the
vicar’s desire than to bear hardly upon one who had carried himself so
nobly, but Brandon’s air of tolerance was a laxity not to be borne. Mr.
Perry-Hennington’s soul was on fire. It was as much as he could do to
hold himself in hand.
“You see, my dear fellow,” he said, “as the case presents itself to me,
I must do one of two things. Either I must institute a prosecution for
blasphemy, so that the law may deal with him, or, as I think would be
the wiser and more humane course, I must take steps to have him removed
to an asylum.”
“But why do anything?”
“I feel it to be my duty.”
“But he’s so harmless. And a dear fellow.”
“I wish I could share your opinion. I can only regard him as a plague
spot in the parish. Insanity is his only defense and it has taken such
a noxious form that it may infect others.”
“Hardly likely, one would think.”
“We live in abnormal times. I am very sorry, but I can only regard this
man as a moral danger to the community. Edith was greatly shocked.
I was greatly shocked. You must excuse my saying so, Gervase, but I
cannot help feeling that in the circumstances the vast majority of
right-thinking people would be.”
“But who are the people who think rightly?”
Mr. Perry-Hennington raised a deprecating hand. Yet Brandon, having
acted in the way he had, was entitled to put the question. He had given
more than life for an idea, and that fact made it immensely difficult
for the vicar to deal with him as faithfully as he could have wished.
He was face to face with a skeptic, but the skeptic was intrenched in a
special position where neither contempt nor active reproach of any kind
must visit him.
But in spite of himself the old slumbering antagonisms were now
awake in the vicar. Brandon, too, was a dangerous paradoxical
man. Notwithstanding the honor and the love he bore him, Mr.
Perry-Hennington felt his pulses quicken, his fibers stiffen. If ever
man did, he saw his duty straight and clear. The only real problem was
how to do it with the least affront to others, with the least harm to
the community.
“By the way,” said Brandon, his gentle voice filling an awkward pause
that had suddenly ensued, “have you ever really talked with John Smith?”
“Oh, yes, many times.”
“I mean have you ever really tried--if I may put it that way--to get at
the back of his mind?”
“As far as one can. But to me he seems to have precious little in
the way of mind to get at the back of. As far as one’s own limited
intelligence will allow one to judge, the mind of John Smith seems a
half-baked morass, a mere hotch-potch of moonstruck transcendentalisms,
overlaid with a kind of Swedenborgian mysticism, if one may so express
oneself. To me it seems a case where a little regular training at
a university and the clear thinking it induces would have been of
enormous value.”
Brandon smiled. “Have you seen his poem?” he asked.
“No.” The answer was short; and then the vicar asked in a tone which
had a tinge of disgust, “Written a poem, has he?”
“He brought it to me the other day.” Again Brandon closed his eyes. “To
my mind it is very remarkable,” he said half to himself.
“It would be, no doubt,” said the vicar, half to himself also.
“I should like you to read it.”
“I prefer not to do so,” said the vicar after a pause. “My mind is
quite made up about him. It would only vex me further to read anything
he may have written. We live by deeds, not by words, and never more so
than in this stern time.”
“To my mind, it is a very wonderful poem,” said the stricken man. “I
don’t think I am morbidly impressionable--I hope I’m not--but that poem
haunts me. It is even changing my outlook. It is an extravagant thing
to say, but the feeling it leaves on one’s mind is that if a spectator
of all time and all existence, a sort of Cosmostheorus, were to visit
the planet at this moment, it is the way in which he might be expected
to deliver himself.”
“Neoplatonism of the usual brand, I presume.” There was a slight curl
of a thin lip.
“Of a very unusual brand, I assure you. It may be neoplatonism, and
yet--no--one cannot give it a label. There is the Something Else behind
it.” Once more the stricken man closed his eyes. “Yes, there is the
Something Else. The thing infolds me like a dream, a passion. I feel it
changing me.”
“What is it called?” the vicar permitted himself to ask.
“It is called ‘The Door.’”
“Why ‘The Door’?”
“Is there a Door still open for the human race?--that is the question
the poem asks.”
“A kind of mysticism, I presume?”
“I wish I could persuade you to read the poem. To my mind it has
exquisite beauty, and a profundity beyond anything I have ever read. It
asks a question which at this moment admits of no answer. Everything
hangs in the balance. But the theme of the poem is the future’s vital
need, the keeping open, at all costs, of the Door.”
Mr. Perry-Hennington shook his head sadly, but the gesture was not
without indulgence. He was ready to make allowance for Brandon’s
present state. The importance he attached to such lucubrations was
quite unworthy of an ex-Fellow of Gamaliel, at any rate in the eyes
of a former Fellow of All Saints, which under an old but convenient
dispensation Mr. Perry-Hennington could claim to be. This morbid
sensibility was a fruit of Brandon’s disease no doubt. But for his own
part the vicar had neither time nor inclination for what could only be
an ill-digested farrago of mystical moonshine. Unhappily nothing was
left to poor Brandon now except to ease his mind as best he could. Such
a mental condition was to be deplored. Yet the vicar fervently hoped
that the canker would not bite too deep.
“Do let me get the poem for you to read.” Brandon’s eyes were full of
entreaty.
“No, no, my dear fellow,” said the vicar gently. “I really haven’t time
to give to such things just now. All one’s energies are absorbed in
dealing with things as they are. I am quite prepared to take your word
that the poem has literary merit--after all, you are a better judge of
such matters than I am. But for those of us who have still our work
to do, this is not a moment for poetic fancies or any other form of
self-indulgence. Moreover, I must reserve my right to full liberty of
action in a matter which is causing me grave concern.”
With these words the vicar took a chastened leave. It was clear that
nothing was to be hoped for in this quarter. Bitterly disappointed, but
more than ever determined to do his duty in a matter which promised to
become increasingly difficult, the vicar shook Brandon gently by the
hand and left the room. In the large Tudor hall, with its stone flags,
old oak and rare tapestry, he came suddenly upon his niece.
Millicent Brandon looked too girlish to be the mother of the two lusty
creatures whom she was helping to fit together a picture puzzle which
had been spread out on a table. Tall, slight, a picture of vivid
health, she had a charming prettiness of an unusual kind. And in the
clear, long-lashed eyes was an eagerness, an intensity of life which
the elf-like Babs and the sturdy, yellow-headed Joskin shared with her.
Even the vicar, who noticed so little, was struck by the force of the
contrast between this rich vitality and the broken man whom he had left
a moment ago.
It was clear, however, that above Millicent Brandon’s high spirit
hovered the dark shadow which continually haunted her. Behind the
surface gayety was an anxiety which never slept, a gnawing fear that
no preoccupation could allay. The solid, sensible vicar was liked and
respected by women, and he now received the affectionate greeting of
his niece, who was genuinely pleased to see him. But her tone had much
solicitude.
“Well, Uncle Tom,” was her eager question, “what do you think of
Gervase?”
The vicar did not answer at once, but drew in his lips a little, in
the manner of a cautious physician with a reputation for absolute and
fearless honesty.
“He seems cheerful,” he said.
“Everybody thinks he keeps up in the most wonderful way. And do you
know, he has begun to read again? A fortnight ago he seemed hardly
able to bear the thought of a book; he couldn’t be got to look at a
newspaper or even to listen to one. But that is now a thing of the
past. All the old interest is coming back. Last night I read Pascal
to him for nearly an hour, and he followed it the whole time with the
closest attention.”
“I hope you had the doctor’s permission,” said the vicar with a frown.
“Oh, yes. Both Dr. Shrubb and Dr. Joliffe are very pleased. Dr. Shrubb
was here yesterday. He thinks it is the most hopeful sign we have yet
had.”
“I am very glad indeed to hear it,” said the vicar with a puzzled face.
“Of course he can promise nothing--absolutely nothing, but he thinks it
is a great thing for the mind to be aroused. A fortnight ago Gervase
couldn’t be induced to take an interest in anything. And now he listens
to Pascal and reads the _Times_.”
The vicar’s frown grew more perplexed. “And the doctors are pleased?”
“Oh, yes.”
“How do they account for the change?”
“They give no explanation, but I have a theory that in a sort of way
the person who is really responsible for it--I know you’ll laugh at
me--is that dear fellow, John Smith.”
“Oh, indeed,” said the vicar in a hard, dry voice.
“I know you don’t altogether approve of him, Uncle Tom, but he’s such
a charming, whimsical, gentle creature, just a little mad they seem to
think in the village, but Gervase has always made a friend of him.”
“So I understand.” The voice was that of a statesman; the frown was
growing portentous.
“Well, every day since Gervase came home the dear fellow has picked a
bunch of flowers on the common and brought them here. And every day he
has begged to see Gervase. A fortnight ago, when Gervase had been out
of his room twice, I decided that he might. I felt sure no harm could
come of it. So he came and it seems he talked to Gervase of a poem he
had written--I didn’t hear the conversation so I can’t throw much light
on it--but the next day he returned with the poem. And the amazing part
is that Gervase read it, and dating from then he seems to have found a
new interest in everything.”
“And you are inclined to attribute the change in the first place to the
effect of this man’s verses?”
“Yes. It seems a little absurd. But in my own mind I can’t help
thinking that the improvement is entirely due to John Smith.”
“Have you read these verses, by the way?”
“No. It’s quite a long poem, I believe, stanza upon stanza, but Gervase
returned it at once. Since its effect has been so remarkable I am
thinking of trying to get hold of it.”
“Doesn’t this strike you as very odd, that is, assuming your theory of
the poem’s effect upon a man like Gervase to be correct?”
“Yes, quite extraordinary. He was always so fastidious, a man to whom
only the best and highest appealed.”
“Quite so.” The vicar pursed his lips. “And it is a fact to look in the
face, my dear Millicent. As you know, I am a great believer in looking
facts in the face.”
“You think, Uncle Tom, it implies mental deterioration?”
“One hardly likes to say that,” said the vicar cautiously. “But that is
what we have to fear.”
A deepening anxiety crept into the eyes of the wife. “It does seem a
reasonable explanation. But please don’t forget that Gervase took no
interest in any subject until John Smith came, and that now he has
begun to read the Bible.”
“It is certainly remarkable if such is the case. By the way, do the
doctors allow him to read the Bible?”
“He may read anything.”
“And they consider him quite rational?”
“Perfectly rational.” Millicent looked at the vicar in some surprise.
“Don’t you, Uncle Tom?”
The vicar would have evaded the question had he been able to do so. But
with those candid eyes upon him that was impossible. Moreover, the old
habit of fearless honesty in all things did not permit a deliberate lie.
Millicent declined to accept his silence. “You don’t!” She pinned him
down to a reply.
“If the doctors are satisfied,” said the vicar slowly, “that is the
important thing. One doesn’t set up one’s opinion against theirs, you
know.”
But he was not to escape in that way.
“Evidently you don’t agree with them, Uncle Tom. Now I want you to be
perfectly frank and tell me just how you feel about Gervase.”
“Well, I will.” The vicar spoke slowly and weightily. “Since you press
the question, his whole outlook appears to me to be changing.”
“But not for the worse, surely?”
“That I cannot say. It is only my opinion and I give it for what it
is worth, but I don’t quite approve this change which is coming over
Gervase.”
“Didn’t you find him happy and cheerful?”
“I did. But that is not the point. My feeling is that if Gervase
were perfectly rational he would not attach so much importance to
the--er--lucubrations of this fellow, John Smith.”
“But Gervase has always been a great lover of poetry,” said the
surprised Millicent. “He took prizes for it at Eton, and at Oxford
he won a medal. His love of poetry is really nothing new; in fact he
passes for an expert on the subject.”
“That is my point. I have always shared that view of Gervase. In common
with the rest of the world, I have greatly admired his translations
from the Greek. But that being the case, the question one must now ask
oneself is, why does a man of sure taste, of real scholarship, suddenly
surrender his mind to the fantastic trivialities of a half-baked,
half-educated village loafer?”
“But you’ve not read the poem,” said Millicent with a little air of
triumph, in which, however, relief was uppermost.
“No good thing can come out of Babylon. It isn’t reasonable to expect
it. Why, I’ve known that fellow Smith nearly twenty years. I know
exactly what education he has had, I know his record.”
“I won’t venture to argue with you, Uncle Tom. Your opinion is worth so
much more than mine, but isn’t there such a thing as genius?”
“There may be. Although it is a thing I am rather skeptical about
myself; that is to say I regard it primarily as an infinite capacity
for taking pains, a natural fruit of learning and study. That is why to
my mind it is more _wholesome_ to believe that Bacon wrote Shakespeare.
Nay, it must have been so, for it is surely a rational canon that the
most highly trained mind of the age wrote Hamlet, Othello and King
Lear, rather than an inspired clodhopper who began life as a butcher’s
apprentice.”
“Well, Uncle Tom,” said his niece demurely, “of course I mustn’t argue
with you, but aren’t your views rather like those of a character in
a most amusing play I saw in London the other day? When a dramatic
critic was asked to criticize a play, he said, ‘How can one begin to
criticize a play until one knows the name of the author?’”
“Quite so, quite so,” said Mr. Perry-Hennington triumphantly. “A very
apt illustration of my point.”
“But it is also an illustration of mine. At least I hope it is.”
“Then I’m afraid we are arguing about entirely different things.”
“Well, Uncle Tom,” said the tenacious Millicent, “I am arguing about
what Gervase would call the peril of a priori judgments. It seems to
me that the Christian religion itself is a proof of it. How does your
theory account for the fact that Jesus was a village carpenter?”
The vicar drew up his long, thin, rather ascetic frame to the topmost
of its seventy-two inches. “My dear child,” he said solemnly, “my
theory accounts for that fact by simply assuming that Jesus was God
Himself. It is the only reasonable hypothesis. Without it there is no
such thing as the Christian religion.”
“But, Uncle Tom, to quote Gervase again, isn’t that the greatest of all
assumptions for a rational mind to make?”
“Undoubtedly, my dear. And it is only permitted to us to make it by the
implicit eye of faith.”
“Do you mean that the Incarnation is the only matter in which we are to
exercise faith?”
“Ah, now we are getting into theology.” Mr. Perry-Hennington took up
his niece with a little air of bland condescension. “You mustn’t bother
your pretty head about that. I must go now.” A pang shot through him
as he suddenly remembered the morrow’s sermon. “I must leave you, my
dear, to help the children put together their picture puzzle. Good-by.
Gervase is really quite as well as I had hoped to find him. Let us
continue to have faith.”
Thereupon the vicar tore himself away from a controversy in which he
felt he was showing, as usual, to singular advantage. He was so sure of
the ground on which he stood, that even poor Gervase’s highly trained
intellect, of which the callow, fluffy-headed Millicent was the merest
echo, was hardly able to meet him upon it. Moreover the vicar was a
born fighter, and the trend of the discussion with his niece had had
the effect of stirring in his mind the embers of a latent antagonism.
The truth was, Brandon had never been quite forgiven a _mot_ he had
once permitted himself. He had said that the Established Church was
determined to eat his cake and to have it: that is, it was reared on
the basis of two and two makes five, but ordered its conduct on the
basis of two and two makes four.
As the vicar left the inner hall he heard the voice of the curly-headed
Joskin uplifted in a wail: “Oh, mummy, _do_ come and help us! We can’t
fit it in. There’s a piece missing.”