“HULLOA, Murd! You’re looking cheap.” Brandon awoke to the sound of
the voice of Urban Meyer. En route from the luncheon table, Professor
Murdwell had tarried to pass the time of day with a celebrated
compatriot. A kind of freemasonry exists in all lands among the
supereminent, and these two shining examples knew how to pay the tacit
homage due to conspicuous merit.
“Not well, Murd?” The all-seeing eye of Urban Meyer was fixed like a
bead on the scientist.
“Nothing, my boy,” was the light answer. “A bit run down, that’s all.
As a fact I’m off now to see my doctor. I can soon be put right.
How are you, my friend?” The kindly pressure increased on Brandon’s
shoulder. “It’s very good to see you on your feet again. I heard the
other day from old Parson What’s-his-name that you had managed to find
a cure, although I’m bound to say that when I saw you last, back in the
fall, I’d about given you up. However--I’m more than glad--I’m simply
delighted.” And with the benign air of the _bon enfant_, Professor
Murdwell followed in the wake of Bud and Jooly, who had gone into the
hall.
“He mayn’t know it,” said Urban Meyer in a low voice, “but that man’s
got death in his face.”
Brandon was startled by the tone. It had an uncanny prescience which
made him feel uncomfortable.
“If looks mean anything his number’s up. Personally he’s a good
fellow--one of the best alive--but he’s been touching things which up
till now were _verboten_. Let us pray to God they always will be.”
How do you know all this?--was the question which rose to the tip of
Brandon’s tongue. But he refrained from asking it. Murdwell’s face had
a curious ashen hue, and now that its meaning had been pointed out it
was not to be mistaken. As for the second part of the statement, made
with equal authority, it gave an impression of curious insight into
certain phenomena, which it would be futile to discuss.
In the hall, over coffee and cigars, the talk went on. Brandon felt
himself living in a kind of wonderland of which Urban Meyer was king.
The little man’s words flowed on in soft, odd, detached syllables, yet
they were alive with a magic interest for one who shared his faith. As
for Pomfret, tasting deliberately a masterpiece among cigars, he had to
admit in the recesses of an almost uncomfortably sagacious mind, that
never in the whole course of its owner’s experience had it been so
completely at a loss.
It was impossible to recognize the Urban Meyer of commerce. And to find
one of the strongest brains of the age thrown off its balance by a mere
stage play, the stuff in which it was always trafficking, was simply
ludicrous. In the case of Brandon it was less surprising. For one thing
he had hardly recovered from a terrible illness; and again he came to
the theater a raw amateur. But Urban Meyer! Yes, it was quite true that
the day of miracles was not yet past!
By the time they had said good-by to the little man and had sauntered
round the corner into Saint James’s Street as far as Brandon’s club,
Pomfret’s amazement had grown quite disconcerting.
“I fancy when Old Uncle jumped from the _Lusitania_ it shook him up a
bit,” he said in a feeble attempt at self-protection. “He _can’t_ be
the man he was.”
“Because he sees the plenary inspiration in the Kingdom of the
Something Else?”
“To think of that old hard-shell turning the theater into a church! Ye
gods! It’s the most ironical thing I ever heard. Still, he can afford
himself little luxuries of that kind. He’s making his soul no doubt.”
“At any rate,” said Brandon, “he’ll deserve well of heaven if he can
reform the Boche.”
Before Pomfret could make suitable reply they walked into the arms of
George Speke, who was augustly descending the steps of the stronghold
of the Whigs.
“What!” he cried. “You!” His eyes raked Brandon from top to toe. “I
can’t believe it. And one hears people say that miracles don’t happen.”
“I plead guilty to being among them,” said Pomfret; in the presence of
Speke’s amazement he had a sense of intellectual relief.
“Science won’t acknowledge it as a miracle,” said Brandon. “It has
a theory which fully covers the case. It was explained to me last
night by Bowood, the nerve man. I forget what he called it--but what
the thing amounts to is that functional reaction has been induced by
counter-shock--excuse the phraseology--but Bowood says the thing is
constantly occurring.”
“I affirm it as a miracle,” said Speke.
“I, too,” said Brandon. “More has happened in my case than therapeutics
can explain. I’ve been given a new soul as well as a new body. But
we won’t go into that now. At this particular moment I want to talk
to you about that fantastically absurd official, the Censor of Stage
Plays.”
But the subject was deferred until the following evening when the two
men dined together. Even then George Speke was not very illuminating.
After all, the censorship of stage plays was a departmental matter,
and this habitual member of governments had the departmental mind. A
harmless functionary had been much attacked in the public press by the
kind of people who attack every kind of institution, but experience had
proved him to be at once wise, necessary, and convenient.
“Wise! Necessary! Convenient!” said Brandon, “to invest a single
individual of cynical mediocrity with absolute power? It’s an insult to
every pen in the realm.”
Speke laughed at the vehemence but admitted the truth. Yet a threadbare
controversy left him cold. To be quite candid, the theater was
negligible, the art of dramatic writing equally so. Far better that
both should perish than that either should sully the mind of the
humblest citizen of Imperial Rome.