AFTER luncheon that same day, the salutary process now at work in
the vicar’s mind received a further stimulus. He was to find himself
involved in a matter at once painful and unexpected, and the impression
left upon him was deeply perplexing.
At the urgent request of Professor Murdwell, who had just returned
from New York, he had promised to go to Longwood that afternoon. Mr.
Murdwell had been out of the country six months, and now that he had
got back, almost his first act had been to send for the vicar.
As Mr. Perry-Hennington made stately progress on an antiquated tricycle
along the leafy carpet of the wind-bitten autumn lanes, he was far from
anticipating the sad surprise that was in store. In the spring, when
last at Longwood, he had been struck by the fact that his neighbor
was not looking particularly well, and he had ventured to remark upon
it. Mr. Murdwell had made light of the matter. But this afternoon, as
soon as the vicar had been ushered into the cozy room in which the
scientist sat alone, he received a shock. A great change had taken
place in a few months. The alert, far-looking eyes had lost their
luster, the cheeks had fallen in, the face of keenness and power was
terribly ravaged by disease.
Mr. Murdwell rose with the old air of courtesy to receive his visitor,
but the effort was slow and painful.
“Good of you to come, sir,” he said, motioning his visitor to a chair,
and then half collapsing into his own. He looked at the vicar with a
rather forlorn smile. “I’m a very sick man these days,” he said.
The vicar was a little distressed by the air of complete helplessness.
“I hope it’s nothing serious,” he said.
“I’ve come home to die,” said Mr. Murdwell, with the calmness of a
stoic.
The words were a shock to the vicar.
“The word ‘home’ mustn’t surprise you. I come of clean-run stock; I
belong to the old faith and the old blood. As the world goes just now,
I feel that I am among my own people, and I want you to lay me yonder
in your little churchyard on a good Sussex hillside.”
Mr. Perry-Hennington felt a growing dismay. “I venture to hope,” he
said, “that you will be spared to us a long time yet.”
“A week or so at the most.” Infinite weariness was in the voice. “You
are a good and sensible man, and I am going to talk to you frankly. The
thought of leaving my wife and girl hurts like a knife; and of course
my work means a very great deal to me. I have simply lived in it;
indeed the truth is, I have lived in it too much. And it is now being
brought home to me that it is for the ultimate good of humanity that it
should remain unfinished.”
The vicar, grieved and amazed, was unable to say anything. He had quite
a regard for this man of original and powerful mind, and it shocked him
deeply to find him in his present state.
“It seems that at present there are certain things which are still
forbidden to science. A year ago I was fully convinced that such was
not the case. But that view was premature. At that time the whole
question raised by Murdwell’s Law was still _sub judice_. The verdict
has now been given. I have a cancer, which must kill me long before I
am able to complete my researches. And I think you, sir, and all who
see the cosmos at your particular angle are fully entitled to regard
this as the act of God.”
The vicar remained silent, but with an intense and painful interest he
followed the revelations of the dying man.
“Thus far shalt thou go and no farther! The power, or the group of
powers, which controls the development of mankind, whispered those
words to me a year ago. But I chose to disregard them. I was too deeply
committed to my studies, which, had I been allowed to pursue them to
their logical conclusion, would have revolutionized war and everything
else on this planet. There is no need to make a secret of the fact
that, by the operation of Murdwell’s Law, I have been able to trace the
existence of an element hitherto unknown. It has been given the name of
vitalium, and my hope, and the hope of the distinguished men of science
associated with me, was that its bearing on present events would be
decisive. I still hold the theory that this element contains powers and
properties compared with which all others in the purview of man are
insignificant. For instance, I said that it was within the competence
of vitalium to destroy an enemy fleet at a distance of twenty thousand
miles. But as I was warned at the time the prophecy was made, and as
I know beyond all question now, I am not to be allowed to prove my
proposition.
“Prometheus is not to be allowed to steal the fire from heaven. And
well it is for mankind that some things are still forbidden to it.
Whether that will always be the case I dare not prophesy. But at this
moment I have no doubt that Gazelee Payne Murdwell is the writing on
the wall for the human race. Put that on my tombstone in your Sussex
churchyard.”
The vicar was strangely moved.
“Another theory I have formed, which I am not to be allowed to prove,
is that with the aid of vitalium it is possible to communicate with
other planets. There is little doubt that some of them do communicate
with one another, and I am inclined to think that the terrible crisis
the world is now passing through is a reaction to events in other
places. Man is only at the threshold of the knowable. He is surrounded
by many forces of which he knows little or nothing. Some of these are
inimical. The future has terrible problems for the human race, and well
it is that it cannot foresee them.
“As for this terrible struggle, in which I am proud to think my two
boys are bearing a part, the end is not yet in sight. The resources of
the enemy exceed all computation, and we don’t know what forces hostile
to man stand behind them.”
“It may be so, Mr. Murdwell.” The vicar, greatly wrought upon, spoke
in a voice of deep emotion. “We are in the hands of God. And I am
convinced that He is fighting for us, and therefore in the end our
cause must prevail.”
The man of science smiled wanly. “I cannot form a conception of God in
terms of atomic energy. And yet I feel with you, as I have always felt,
that there is a Friend behind phenomena. And I am inclined to believe,
now that we have a mass of evidence to guide us, that the first phase
of this war proved that very clearly. The victory of the Marne was a
signal manifestation. By all the rules of the game, at the moment the
enemy of mankind fell on Europe in her sleep, France was irretrievably
lost, and civilization with her. But something happened which was not
in the textbooks. And in the perpetual recurrence of that Something
lies the one hope for the human race.”
“Well, Mr. Murdwell”--the vicar spoke very earnestly--“as a humble
servant and minister of God, I can only say that I share your belief.
Whatever may happen to us, I feel that the human race could not have
got as far as it has, unless a special providence had always stood
behind it. My faith is, that this providence will not be withdrawn in
the world’s darkest hour.”
“I venture to think that you are right,” said the dying man. “But as I
say, do not ever forget that Gazelee Payne Murdwell is the writing on
the wall for the human race.”
This talk with Mr. Murdwell made a deep impression on the vicar. Unable
by nature or mental habit to accept all the premises of an abnormal
thinker, it was beginning to strike Mr. Perry-Hennington with new and
rather bewildering force, that truth has many aspects. At Wellwood
the previous day he had felt a vague distrust of his own perceptions.
Things were not quite as they seemed. Even poor, deranged John Smith
could not be dismissed by a simple formula. It had suddenly dawned
on a closed mind that a door was opening on the unknown. Somehow the
relation of John Smith to many dimly understood phenomena could not
be bridged by a phrase. And a feeling of imperfect knowledge was
intensified by contact with this other remarkable personality. One must
be read in the light of the other. Murdwell was the antithesis, the
negation of John Smith. And the nature of things being as it was, each
must have his own meaning, his own message to be related to the sum of
human experience.