Part 15

“At the first opportunity I should like to put up that play in New York at my biggest theater. There would be an all-star cast and a special orchestra, and in every detail it would be absolutely the greatest production ever seen in the States or anywhere else.”

“And you would present it exactly as it is written?” said Pomfret in a matter-of-fact tone.

“Yes. Not a line would be altered. It’s not ordinary theater stuff. In this case it’s the spirit of the thing that is going to matter and that must not be tampered with on any account.”

Pomfret sat, a picture of whimsical incredulity, but Brandon, burning with the zeal of the evangelist, was now unequal to the change that the prudence of this world had laid upon him. Urban Meyer had been visited by the divine wisdom, and Brandon could not withhold acknowledgment of a fact so signal and so astonishing.

“The theater is my religion,” the little man went on, and his queer eyes grew suddenly fixed as if they were looking at something. “I believe in it as I believe in nothing else. When you’ve watched millions of people going crazy over stunts like ‘Baby’s Bedsocks,’ the original smile-with-a-tear-in-it, you ask yourself what could be done by a real play with a live message. As I say, the theater is the church of the future. There’s no limit to its power; it speaks to the masses, cheers them, strengthens them, makes them healthy, lifts them up; it takes them into worlds beyond their own. And they understand its language.

“Now this play, as I see it, is a test case. It’s not theater stuff of the ordinary brand and it’s got to be played just as it is, in the spirit of reverence. It may fall down, and fall down badly, but I’d like to produce it as an act of faith, for the love I bear humanity.”

Pomfret could hardly believe his ears. Something had happened to the little man. He had known Urban Meyer nearly twenty years, and it was hard to relate this gush of altruism with the impresario whose astuteness was a byword all over the world. For one thing, and it amused Pomfret vastly, in the stress of his enthusiasm he had even forgotten to discuss the terms of the contract.

They came to that presently, and then a sight for the gods presented itself. With the aid of racial instincts ruthlessly applied, Urban Meyer had taken an immense fortune out of the theater, but now, entering it as a missionary, he was willing to make a contract which added greatly to Pomfret’s perplexity.

“It’s double what I’ve ever offered to a new man,” said Urban Meyer, “but as I say, this production is going to be an act of faith. I believe in God, I believe in the theater, I believe in this play and that’s the basis on which I invite the world to come in. If it falls down I may be out a hundred thousand dollars, but I shall not grudge a nickel, because no man can serve God and serve Mammon at the same time.”

Moreover, to judge by a new glow in a quaintly Semitic countenance, Urban Meyer felt immensely strengthened by being in a position to make that assertion. He was not puffed up, but a light of enthusiasm played over his face which somehow made him better to look at. “Nothing is but thinking makes it so! To a man of imagination that means all that ever was and ever will be. And if you keep on expecting miracles to happen, miracles are bound to happen--if only you expect in the right way.”

Pomfret could only smile perplexedly, but Brandon, flooded by a happiness rare and strange, was overborne by the workings of the divine providence. For a moment he was submerged by wild speculations, and then he awoke with a start to the fact that a sudden hand had been laid on his shoulder.

XXXVIII

“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.

XXXIX

IN the course of the next few days Brandon interviewed various specialists, and then by their advice he went to Brighton for two months. The result was such a steady gain in physical force and mental equilibrium that he was able to resume his military duties.

Not by his own request was he spared the boredom, the misery, the ghoulish horror of the trenches. The higher expediency was able to realize that men of Brandon’s age, particularly if they have once been badly knocked out, don’t pay for cartage to France. Therefore he was given a commission and sent to the north to train new units.

He didn’t complain. Whatever his job, he would have taken off his coat and set to. He was no subscriber to the military fetish, nothing would ever make him one, but in August, 1914, he had given his services unconditionally to his country and he was not the man to shirk the obligation into which he had entered.

To one of subtle perceptions and fastidious culture, the teaching of a lot of “bandy-legged coal-shovelers” to form fours, and to hurl an imaginary bomb at an imaginary Hun should have been a wearisome, soul-destroying affair. Yet somehow it was not. There was a time when in spite of his honest, democratic liberalism, he would have been tried beyond endurance by the fantastic boredom of it all. But that time had passed. Never again could the human factor, however primitive, be without its meaning. He had been wrought upon by a miracle, and it abided with him during every hour of the new life.

His thoughts were often with John Smith. Enshrined in Brandon’s heart as a divine symbol, he was the key to a Mystery which had the power to cleanse even the thing called war of its bestial obscenity. Many a night when he came back dog-tired and heart-sore, to a dirty, comfortless room and an ill-cooked meal in a rude, miserable colliery township whose like he had never seen, he was sustained by the sublime faith of one who, for the sake of the love he bore his kind, had dared to transcend reason in order to affirm it.

Many a night in the fetid air of a bedroom whose window could not be persuaded to open, he lay on a broken-backed mattress trying to relate this divine friend with the humanity through whose travail he had found expression. Who and what was this portent? Was he akin to the August Founder of Christianity? Was he a madman hugging a crazy but pathetic and terrible delusion? Or was he the superman of which the World Spirit had long been dreaming, a great clairvoyant able to summon representative souls from the astral plane?

It must be left to the future to decide. At the best these were fantastic speculations, but they were now the _clou_ of a forward-looking soul. Only these could sustain it in the path of duty. Week by week, it was being borne in upon Brandon that the sword could never hope to achieve anything worth achieving. Humanity was too complex and it was poisoned at the roots. Prussia after all was only a question of degree. Unless a change took place in the heart of man, these splendid, simple chaps with their debased forms of speech, their crudeness and their ignorance, would hurl their bombs in vain.

How he loved these bandy-legged warriors who never opened their mouths without defiling his ears. Deeper even than the spirit of race was the sense of human brotherhood. It resolved every difficulty, it unlocked every door. And the key had come to him by means of the inmate of Wellwood who had received it in turn from the divine mystic of the hills of Galilee.

The weeks went by in their weariness, yet nothing happened to the world. Months ago Urban Meyer had returned to America and the play had gone with him. The shrewd Pomfret had been made an agent for the author, in order to protect the interests of John Smith, but he received no word from New York beyond an intimation that the play had been mysteriously “hung up.” The news was not unexpected, yet he never doubted that sooner or later Urban Meyer would carry out his fixed intention of producing it.

In the meantime, Brandon wrote several letters to the inmate of Wellwood. The new turn of events was revealed, and great stress laid upon the supreme good fortune which so far had attended the play. To have convinced such a man as Urban Meyer of its almost plenary inspiration meant that its destiny was on the way to fulfillment.

The letters Brandon received in answer must have puzzled him greatly, had they not squared so exactly with the theory he had formed. Full as they were of warm and deep feeling, they yet seemed remote from the conditions of practical life. Even their note of sure faith was open to misinterpretation. There was no recognition of the singular providence which had set Urban Meyer on the track of the play, or if there was, it took for granted that the little man was the chosen instrument of God. Like Brandon himself, he was only a medium, through which Heaven was to resolve a high and awful issue.

Brandon received no second command to Wellwood, and he had not the courage to make pilgrimage without it. But as the long months passed and he grew more secure in physical power, the impression of the dreamlike December journey remained ineffaceably vivid. Time strengthened a fervent belief in the sublime genius of John Smith, but the wild speculations to which that belief gave rise led to one inescapable conclusion which in the last resort he could not quite find the courage to embrace openly. The disciple was thrilled by the tone of each letter he received, but nineteen centuries had passed since the Master had walked among men; and Brandon, with his own work in the world yet to do, could only feel that Faith itself besought him not to go too far beyond the poor, limited, human ken.

In order to fulfill the common daily round, he felt bound to hold aloof from John Smith, yet the man himself was never out of his thoughts. And not for a moment did he forget a sacred task. Months went by, the brief occasional letters ceased, and then Brandon sent an emissary to Wellwood, so that he might gain first-hand knowledge without incurring the terrible risk his every instinct warned him must attend a personal visit.

Mr. Perry-Hennington was the chosen vehicle. Between the two men there had been a reconciliation. The return of health had enabled Brandon to shed much of his animosity; besides, he saw that if John Smith’s view of his mission was the true one, such a man as the vicar of Penfold could hardly be more than a humble catspaw of destiny. That good, but narrow and obtuse man, was perhaps only the unconscious means by which a second world-drama was to unfold itself.

In the autumn Brandon was granted a few days’ leave. After weary months of servitude in the arid north, a week at Hart’s Ghyll, among his own people, was like a breath of heaven. And it synchronized with a tide of greater events.

These began with a morning call from the vicar. A very different Gervase Brandon received him now in that glorious room, which, however, for them both, must always hold memories of anxious and embittered conflict. The squire of Hart’s Ghyll had emerged from the long night of the soul, and even to this closed mind he was far more than the Gervase Brandon of old. In returning to that physical world which he loved so well, he had gained enlargement. Something had been added to a noble liberality; a softness, an immanence of the spirit, which Mr. Perry-Hennington was quick to ascribe to his favorite process of purification by suffering.

The vicar was pleased by the warmth of his reception; and he had already had a sign of Brandon’s change of attitude. The previous day, at Brandon’s request, he had paid a visit to Wellwood. And in that request, Mr. Perry-Hennington saw a tacit admission of the justice of his actions; he also saw that Brandon, now clothed in his right mind, was fully alive to his own errors in the past.

“Well, my dear Gervase,” he said with full-toned heartiness, the underside of which was magnanimity, “yesterday, as you suggested, I went to Wellwood to see our friend.”

“More than good of you,” said Brandon, his eyes lighted by gratitude and eagerness. “An act of real charity. I could have gone myself, of course, but I don’t quite trust myself in the matter--that is to say--”

“Quite so--I understand and appreciate that. And I am particularly glad you left it to me to form my own impressions.”

“Well?”

“In the first place, I had a long talk with Dr. Thorp, who by the way is a singularly experienced and broad-minded man.”

“I fully agree.”

“Well, I’m bound to say that he grew quite enthusiastic over the poor dear fellow. In every way he is a most exemplary patient; indeed, I was told that he wields a truly remarkable moral influence over the whole establishment, inmates and nursing staff alike.”

“I learned that many months ago.”

“It is very surprising that it should be so.” The vicar’s air was one of perplexity. “But Dr. Thorp considers John Smith an extraordinary case.”

“So I have gathered.”

“He suffers, of course, from an obscure form of religious mania, which fully justifies his detention, but at the same time he leads the life of a saint.”

“How is his health?”

A cloud came on the vicar’s face. He did not answer the question at once. At last he said: “Let me prepare you for bad news. I regret to say that he is slowly dying.”

Brandon caught his breath sharply. He did not try to conceal his distress. He put a dozen eager questions. The announcement had come as a great blow.

“Dr. Thorp holds out no hope that his life will be a long one,” said the vicar. “Apart from the ravages of his disease, the spirit appears to be wearing out the body. He doesn’t take enough nourishment. He simply can’t be induced to touch flesh meat in any form; in fact for many weeks he has been existing almost entirely on bread and water.”

“He does not wish to live?”

“I think he longs for the other and the better world.”

“That, at any rate, is perhaps not altogether surprising.”

The thrust might not have been intentional, but the shadow deepened on the vicar’s face. “It is not,” he said. “Yet he is so well cared for, he is allowed such liberty, his relations with all the other inmates are so charmingly harmonious, that it is hard to see how the freedom of the outer world could add to his present happiness; that, at any rate, is Dr. Thorp’s view. His troubles, odd as it may seem, do not spring from his immediate surroundings; they spring from the present state of the world. His mania has crystallized into a strange form. He has become pathetically convinced that he is the Savior, and he spends his whole time in fasting and prayer.”

“Did you see him?”

“Yes.” The vicar paused an instant, and in that instant Brandon literally devoured the subtly changing face of the man before him. “Not only did I see him, I was permitted to speak to him. Moreover, he sent you a message. You are always to remember that one unconverted believer may save the whole world.” As the vicar repeated the odd phrase, his eye met Brandon’s and a silence followed.

“I shall never forget the way he said it,” Mr. Perry-Hennington went on. “The tone of his voice, the look of his eyes gave one quite an uncanny feeling. Whether it was the mental and physical state of the poor man himself, or whether it was his surroundings, I cannot say, but somehow I can’t get the picture of him as he spoke those words out of my mind. It’s weak, I know, but the whole of last night I lay awake thinking of Wellwood, and this poor dear fellow, John Smith.”

“Was he so different from what you expected to find him?”

“Somehow he was. His disease has taken such a curious form. And in that strange place, in the midst of a lot of old men, afflicted like himself with various fantastic delusions, he has an air of authority which is really most striking--I am bound to say is really most striking.”

“I cannot tell you how interested I am to hear you say that,” was Brandon’s eager rejoinder.

“If one had not continually said to oneself: ‘This gloomy place, haunted with dead souls, is Wellwood Asylum,’ one might even have come under a strange spell. Dr. Thorp says the freakish power of some of these broken-down intellects is amazing; and to see them seated around that large and somber room engaged in what John Smith calls ‘the correlation of human experience,’ is at once the most tragic and the most pathetic sight I have ever witnessed.”

“It is a sight that I, at any rate, shall take to my grave.” As Brandon saw again the picture by the inward eye, he was shaken by a wild tremor. “Henceforth, I shall see it always in this life, and I look to see it in the next.”

“Yes,” said the vicar. “I can well understand your feeling about it.”

Brandon gave a little shudder; and then, after a silence he said: “May I ask what impression you formed of our poor friend?”

“It is most difficult to put it into words. Physically and mentally he has undergone a very curious change; and he appears to wield a strange power over all with whom he comes in contact. As I say, I felt it myself. I shall never forget the shock I had when those eyes emerged from that bearded face. For a moment one could have almost believed oneself in the presence of Someone Else. Then I remembered where I was, but it needed an effort I assure you.”

“Do you still feel that Wellwood is the place for him?”

“Yes, I do. I discussed the matter with Dr. Thorp, and he is strongly of the opinion that the poor fellow is better off at Wellwood than he would be elsewhere. They have come to love him there. He is extremely well cared for, he never complains of the loss of personal liberty, and, as I say, there is every reason to think that his days are numbered.”

“Dr. Thorp has no doubt on that point?”

“None. The poor fellow is failing physically. At the present time he appears to live more in another world than he does in this. One does not pretend to know what that other world is or may be. Apparently it is a kind of mystical dreamland, in which he persuades himself that he communicates with departed spirits. And there are times when he enters a soul condition which lies outside Dr. Thorp’s own experience of psychical phenomena. In fact, he considers John Smith to be by far the most baffling and complex case with which he has ever had to deal.”