ON the afternoon of the following day, Millicent Brandon took the great
news to the vicarage, that Gervase had walked across the room. It was
a thrilling announcement, and Millicent’s excitement was reflected in
Edith and the vicar, for like all his friends they had given up hope
that he would ever walk again.
It appeared that something very like a miracle had happened. And,
strange to say, it coincided with the visit to Wellwood. But doctor and
nurse were loath to believe that that unsanctioned journey had anything
to do with a most astonishing matter. As for Brandon himself, walking
the path of an extreme wariness in the midst of new and overwhelming
perplexities, he was very careful not to claim it as the fount of
healing.
A week passed, a truly wonderful week of returning life, of unsealed
physical power. The sensory apparatus had been repaired, the dead
limbs were again alive, the sufferer had risen from his bed; and in
his own mind it was absolutely clear to what agency the fact was due.
Moreover, it carried with it a very special obligation.
Brandon had never regarded himself as a religious man. Before he
went to the wars of his country he had been a skeptic. He understood
well enough the great part faith had played in human affairs, but
he had conceived it as the fruit of a peculiar mental and physical
constitution. He knew that the religious sense had the power to create
an amazing world of its own, but he had been glad to think that he
could meet the facts of existence without its aid. Now, however, he
felt himself to be a new Faust, who had sold himself, not to the devil,
but to the Christian God. He had been miraculously restored to physical
health, but only on condition that he obeyed without mental reservation
of any kind, the implicit will of Another.
He must lay all questioning aside. Body and soul were now in the care
of a superhuman power. He had entered into a most solemn pact, to whose
fulfillment he must bend the whole force of his will. And its first
fruits were to be seen in a letter which he addressed to an old school
and college friend, one Robert Pomfret, urging him to come and spend
Christmas at Hart’s Ghyll.
Brandon hardly dared to hope that the letter would succeed in its
purpose. There was little in such an invitation to lure a regular man
of the town from his accustomed round. But the unexpected happened.
Pomfret, being “at a loose end” in Christmas week, found his way to
Hart’s Ghyll, prompted, no doubt, by a generous desire to cheer up an
old friend in the hour of affliction.
The two men were curiously unalike. Pomfret was not a creature of
delicate perceptions, or intellectual curiosity. Apart from a large and
rich geniality, which endeared him to a wide circle of acquaintances,
he was merely a shrewd, eupeptic man of business, whose supreme merit
was, that he knew exactly how many beans made five. But a subtle bond
may exist between diverse characters, if each is sound at the core,
and in this case a humorous respect was paid to the other’s peculiar
qualities.
Brandon was delighted, and perhaps just a little flattered by the
arrival of his sagacious friend on Christmas Eve. He had not dared
to hope that a casual note, at such short notice, would lure a pagan
and worldling from his orbit. But a divinity shapes our ends. His old
fagmaster at school was the one man of practical experience to whom
Brandon could turn in the difficult and unknown country he had now to
traverse. Robert Pomfret had really been summoned to Hart’s Ghyll,
not as he innocently and magnanimously believed, on the score of old
friendship, but in his capacity of prosperous lessee of three West End
theaters.
It was not until Christmas Day was far spent that the host disclosed
his fell design. Immediately after dinner he contrived to get the
redoubtable Robert into the library on the plea of “a little advice
on an important matter,” without his victim suspecting the trap that
had been laid for him. Brandon, moreover, led up to the subject with
the discretion of a statesman. And then, in order to get a direct and
reasoned verdict, he read aloud the first act.
His own experience of the stage was confined to one appearance with the
O. U. D. S. in a very humble part. Moreover, his knowledge of general
theatrical conditions was extremely slight. At the same time he knew
that for a tyro to force the portals of the English theater was a
superhuman task. But now, sustained by a very odd sense of the author’s
plenary inspiration, he read with a devout eagerness which puzzled and
rather intimidated Pomfret. However, he was still awake at the end of
the first act.
“What do you think of it?” asked Brandon.
“Go on,” was the curt rejoinder.
Sustained by this Olympian encouragement, Brandon passed to the second
act.
“Go on,” was still the command.
With a puzzled attention, which he somehow yielded in spite of himself,
Pomfret listened to the end of Act Four. And then the flushed, excited,
triumphant reader asked his question again.
“It’s certainly very unusual,” said Mount Olympus cautiously.
Brandon somehow felt as if a bucket of cold water had been dashed
over him. He had allowed himself to expect more sonorous epithets.
Intoxicated by the play’s magic, he suddenly took the bull by the
horns. “I want you to put it up at your best theater in the next six
months,” he said.
“My dear boy,” Pomfret gasped, “do you want to ruin me?”
“What’s the objection?”
“Simply that it isn’t a commercial proposition. Mind, I’m not saying a
word against the play. You’ve got a wonderful head to have thought of
it all, but as I say, it isn’t a commercial proposition.”
“It isn’t my head that’s thought of it, you old dunce,” said Brandon.
“Therefore I invite you to express yourself quite freely and frankly.”
“Well, in the first place,” said the great man, drawing at his cigar,
“the subject itself is not suited to the theater.”
“You think so?”
“I’m sure of it. The whole thing is far too fantastic.”
“Don’t you think the central figure is a wonderful conception?”
“Yes, I do. But who do you suppose is going to play a god who works
miracles, who is the genius of love and laughter, who heals the wounds
of the world by converting it to a religion of universal brotherhood,
universal fellowship, universal joy? Of course, in its way it’s
sublime, but the whole thing is full of peril.”
“It has pitfalls, no doubt. But if only the players will have courage,
I am convinced that the play will carry them.”
“It would be a terrible risk. And then there’s the Censor.”
Brandon confessed that he had forgotten the Censor.
“He’s very shy of religion as a rule,” said Pomfret. “And he’s very
likely to object that it’s far too gentle with the Boche. The creed
of love your enemies is all very well in the Bible, but it’s quite
impossible to practice--at any rate just now. And then the parsons
won’t like their pitch being queered. Their stock in trade has always
been gloom, reproach, damnation, mumbo jumbo, but your deity is a sort
of Pied Piper, who converts a bleeding world to the love of God by the
charm of his music, his power of sympathy, and his care for the doers
of evil. Yes, it’s a remarkable idea, but I’m afraid it’s pro-Boche,
and as far as the religious aspect goes, the people whom it might hope
to interest are the most likely to take offense at it.”
“I can’t think they will,” Brandon protested, “if it’s given in the
spirit in which it’s conceived. Don’t you see that it restates the
central truths of Christianity, and presents them in a clearer, fuller,
more universal light?”
“It may, but that is not likely to appeal to the big public, which goes
to the play to be amused, and not to be edified.”
“Why not let the two states be one and the same? Why not let them march
together?”
“My boy, you don’t know the theater.”
“But the idea behind this play is that the theater is capable of
becoming a great moral and spiritual force. And that’s what it ought
to be. It’s appeal is irresistible; and religion brought from its
superhuman pedestal might be humanized, individualized, made attractive
to all the world. Now, my friend, produce this play at your best
theater, with all the wonderful technical resources at your command,
and you will have a success that will simply astonish you.”
“Or failure that will cause me to file a petition in bankruptcy.”
“I will indemnify you against all loss.”
Pomfret shook a solemn head. “My dear boy,” he said, “it would be
madness to put up a play of this kind.”
“Tell me, what would be the cost of a first-class production?”
“At the Imperial, five thousand pounds, and you would have to be
prepared to lose every penny. It’s not the kind of thing the public
wants, particularly just now.”
“Well, let them have their chance and see what happens.”
They continued to discuss the matter until midnight, and even returned
to it the following day. Brandon marshaled his arguments with such
skill that Pomfret, against his deepest instinct as a theatrical
manager, began to weaken a little. Like all men who succeed in life,
the sense of his own limitations was ever before him. He knew that
there were more things in earth and heaven than were dreamed of in the
philosophy of Robert Pomfret. Brandon was a poet, a scholar, a man of
taste, and even if his qualities had no place in a theater run on
sound commercial lines, after all they stood for something. And when
they had a solid backing of five thousand pounds, they became doubly
impressive.
By the time Pomfret was at the end of his brief stay, he was thinking
furiously. And if he saw no cause to alter the judgment he had formed,
he was too shrewd a man not to fortify it with sound technical advice.
Therefore, the next day, when he left Hart’s Ghyll, the precious
manuscript went with him. He promised to have it copied and submitted
to his reader of plays.