THE next morning, when John Smith called as usual at Hart’s Ghyll with
his bunch of flowers, he was allowed once more to see his friend. The
stricken man received him in the library with the most affectionate
intimacy.
“My dear, dear fellow,” he said, “how good it is to see you. You bring
the light of the sun to this room whenever you enter it.”
The visitor took Brandon’s hand with the caressing touch of a woman.
“Dear friend,” he said, “I always pray that the light may accompany me
wherever I go.”
The simplicity of the man, which it would have been easy to misread,
had now, as always, a strange effect upon Brandon. And yet he was
heart-sore and miserable. The weight of sorrow now upon him seemed to
transcend all his other sufferings. A cruel sense of the futility of
his terrible sacrifice had overtaken him. What proof was there that
it had not been in vain? After all, what hope could there be for the
future of men; what was there to expect from a purblind, material
world? He was now in the throes of a cruel reaction. Somehow his talk
with the vicar had struck at his faith in his own kind.
He took no comfort from the thought that Mr. Perry-Hennington was a
profoundly stupid man. Turning his mind back, he saw the parson of
Penfold as the spiritual guide of the race of average men, of a race
which allowed itself to be governed by the daily newspaper, which in
one feverish hour threw away the liberties it had cost its father
hundreds of years to win. Prussia was being met with Prussia, Baal with
the image of Baal.
Throughout a wakeful night, that had been the thought in Brandon’s
heart. Behind all the swelling heroics and the turgid phrases of
organized opinion, was this Frankenstein monster. The world was moving
in a vicious circle. The public press had somehow managed to recreate
what it had set out to destroy. The question for Brandon now was, had
he been the victim of a chimera? In the course of a long night of
bitterness, the thought had taken root in him that all the blood and
tears humanity was shedding would merely fix the shackles more cruelly
on generations yet unborn.
This morning Brandon saw no hope for the ill-starred race of men. Hour
by hour his fever-tinged thoughts had flown to one for whom he had
conceived an emotion of the highest and purest friendship, to one whom
his fellows were seeking a means to destroy.
“I have been wondering,” said Brandon, “whether you will consent to
have your poem published? I know you are shy of print, but this is a
rare jewel, the heritage of the whole world.”
“Don’t let us talk of it just now.” There was a shadow upon the
eloquent face. “I have need of guidance. My poem, such as it is, is but
one aspect of a great matter. I pray that I may find a more universal
one.”
Brandon dissembled his surprise, but he could not bridle his curiosity.
“Your poem _is_ a great matter,” he said. “To me it is wonderful. You
call it ‘The Door.’ Why not let all the world pass through?”
“Such is my task, but I do not know that it can be fulfilled by the
printed word. There may be a surer way. The question I have to ask
myself is, can I do the Father’s will more worthily? By prayer and
fasting perhaps I may.”
“But the thing is so perfect. Why gild the lily?”
“It is only one of many keys, dear friend. It is not the Door itself.
It is no more than a stage in a long, long pilgrimage; no more than a
means to the mighty end that has been laid upon me.”
Brandon, however, had set his heart upon the poem’s publication. To him
it was a perfect thing. Moreover, he saw in it a vindication of its
author, a noble answer to those who were conspiring to destroy him.
Strangely, however, John was not to be moved from his resolve. And more
strangely still, as it seemed to Brandon, intimations had come to him
already of the terrible fate that was about to overtake him. “It has
been communicated to me that I am about to be called to a great trial,”
were the words he used.
Brandon, sick at heart, had hardly the courage to seek an explanation.
“You--you have been told that?” He scanned anxiously the face of the
man at his side.
“Yes,” was the answer. “The inner voice spoke to me last evening. I
don’t know when the blow will fall, or what fate awaits me, but a sword
hangs by a single hair above my head.”
“And--and you are not afraid?” To Brandon this calmness was almost
superhuman.
“I am not afraid. The souls of the just are in the hands of God. And
I ask you, my dear friend, to share my faith. You are one of two
witnesses to whom I have been allowed to reveal myself. The other is
an old woman who can no longer work with her hands. You have long given
her a roof for her head, and I have kept a loaf in her cupboard and
found her fire in the winter. But there is only the poorhouse for her
when I am taken, and I think she fears it.”
“Whatever happens, that shall not be her fate.”
“I will not thank so good a man. But it is your due that you should
know this.”
“It is my great privilege. Is there any other way in which I may hope
to be of use?”
“At the moment, none.” John Smith laid his hand on the arm of the
stricken man with a gesture of mingled pity and solicitude. “But a time
is surely coming when a heavy tax will be laid upon your friendship.”
“I cannot tell you how I shall welcome it.” As Brandon spoke he gazed
upward to the eyes of the man who bent over him. As he met those
large-pupiled orbs, a curious thrill passed through his frame. In the
sudden sweep of his emotion was an odd sense of awe.
“I foresee, dear friend, that you are about to be called to a hero’s
task.” The soft, low voice seemed to strike through Brandon as he lay.
“Whatever it may be, I accept it joyfully. In the meantime I can only
pray that I may stand worthy in the day of trial.”
“Of that there can be no doubt--if you will always remember that one
unconverted believer may save the whole world.”
For many days to come these cryptic words were to puzzle Brandon, and
to linger in his ears. But in the moment of their utterance he could
seek no elucidation. His whole soul was melted by a sense of awe. It
was as if a new, unknown power was beginning to enfold him.
John Smith kissed Brandon gravely on the forehead and then went away.
The stricken man was left in a state of bewildered perplexity. And a
heavier load of misery was now upon him than any he had known. A rare,
exquisite thing had been revealed to him in a miraculous way. It was
about to suffer a cruel fate, and he had not the power to save it.