Part 4

“Of a very unusual brand, I assure you. It may be neoplatonism, and yet--no--one cannot give it a label. There is the Something Else behind it.” Once more the stricken man closed his eyes. “Yes, there is the Something Else. The thing infolds me like a dream, a passion. I feel it changing me.”

“What is it called?” the vicar permitted himself to ask.

“It is called ‘The Door.’”

“Why ‘The Door’?”

“Is there a Door still open for the human race?--that is the question the poem asks.”

“A kind of mysticism, I presume?”

“I wish I could persuade you to read the poem. To my mind it has exquisite beauty, and a profundity beyond anything I have ever read. It asks a question which at this moment admits of no answer. Everything hangs in the balance. But the theme of the poem is the future’s vital need, the keeping open, at all costs, of the Door.”

Mr. Perry-Hennington shook his head sadly, but the gesture was not without indulgence. He was ready to make allowance for Brandon’s present state. The importance he attached to such lucubrations was quite unworthy of an ex-Fellow of Gamaliel, at any rate in the eyes of a former Fellow of All Saints, which under an old but convenient dispensation Mr. Perry-Hennington could claim to be. This morbid sensibility was a fruit of Brandon’s disease no doubt. But for his own part the vicar had neither time nor inclination for what could only be an ill-digested farrago of mystical moonshine. Unhappily nothing was left to poor Brandon now except to ease his mind as best he could. Such a mental condition was to be deplored. Yet the vicar fervently hoped that the canker would not bite too deep.

“Do let me get the poem for you to read.” Brandon’s eyes were full of entreaty.

“No, no, my dear fellow,” said the vicar gently. “I really haven’t time to give to such things just now. All one’s energies are absorbed in dealing with things as they are. I am quite prepared to take your word that the poem has literary merit--after all, you are a better judge of such matters than I am. But for those of us who have still our work to do, this is not a moment for poetic fancies or any other form of self-indulgence. Moreover, I must reserve my right to full liberty of action in a matter which is causing me grave concern.”

With these words the vicar took a chastened leave. It was clear that nothing was to be hoped for in this quarter. Bitterly disappointed, but more than ever determined to do his duty in a matter which promised to become increasingly difficult, the vicar shook Brandon gently by the hand and left the room. In the large Tudor hall, with its stone flags, old oak and rare tapestry, he came suddenly upon his niece.

Millicent Brandon looked too girlish to be the mother of the two lusty creatures whom she was helping to fit together a picture puzzle which had been spread out on a table. Tall, slight, a picture of vivid health, she had a charming prettiness of an unusual kind. And in the clear, long-lashed eyes was an eagerness, an intensity of life which the elf-like Babs and the sturdy, yellow-headed Joskin shared with her. Even the vicar, who noticed so little, was struck by the force of the contrast between this rich vitality and the broken man whom he had left a moment ago.

It was clear, however, that above Millicent Brandon’s high spirit hovered the dark shadow which continually haunted her. Behind the surface gayety was an anxiety which never slept, a gnawing fear that no preoccupation could allay. The solid, sensible vicar was liked and respected by women, and he now received the affectionate greeting of his niece, who was genuinely pleased to see him. But her tone had much solicitude.

“Well, Uncle Tom,” was her eager question, “what do you think of Gervase?”

The vicar did not answer at once, but drew in his lips a little, in the manner of a cautious physician with a reputation for absolute and fearless honesty.

“He seems cheerful,” he said.

“Everybody thinks he keeps up in the most wonderful way. And do you know, he has begun to read again? A fortnight ago he seemed hardly able to bear the thought of a book; he couldn’t be got to look at a newspaper or even to listen to one. But that is now a thing of the past. All the old interest is coming back. Last night I read Pascal to him for nearly an hour, and he followed it the whole time with the closest attention.”

“I hope you had the doctor’s permission,” said the vicar with a frown.

“Oh, yes. Both Dr. Shrubb and Dr. Joliffe are very pleased. Dr. Shrubb was here yesterday. He thinks it is the most hopeful sign we have yet had.”

“I am very glad indeed to hear it,” said the vicar with a puzzled face.

“Of course he can promise nothing--absolutely nothing, but he thinks it is a great thing for the mind to be aroused. A fortnight ago Gervase couldn’t be induced to take an interest in anything. And now he listens to Pascal and reads the _Times_.”

The vicar’s frown grew more perplexed. “And the doctors are pleased?”

“Oh, yes.”

“How do they account for the change?”

“They give no explanation, but I have a theory that in a sort of way the person who is really responsible for it--I know you’ll laugh at me--is that dear fellow, John Smith.”

“Oh, indeed,” said the vicar in a hard, dry voice.

“I know you don’t altogether approve of him, Uncle Tom, but he’s such a charming, whimsical, gentle creature, just a little mad they seem to think in the village, but Gervase has always made a friend of him.”

“So I understand.” The voice was that of a statesman; the frown was growing portentous.

“Well, every day since Gervase came home the dear fellow has picked a bunch of flowers on the common and brought them here. And every day he has begged to see Gervase. A fortnight ago, when Gervase had been out of his room twice, I decided that he might. I felt sure no harm could come of it. So he came and it seems he talked to Gervase of a poem he had written--I didn’t hear the conversation so I can’t throw much light on it--but the next day he returned with the poem. And the amazing part is that Gervase read it, and dating from then he seems to have found a new interest in everything.”

“And you are inclined to attribute the change in the first place to the effect of this man’s verses?”

“Yes. It seems a little absurd. But in my own mind I can’t help thinking that the improvement is entirely due to John Smith.”

“Have you read these verses, by the way?”

“No. It’s quite a long poem, I believe, stanza upon stanza, but Gervase returned it at once. Since its effect has been so remarkable I am thinking of trying to get hold of it.”

“Doesn’t this strike you as very odd, that is, assuming your theory of the poem’s effect upon a man like Gervase to be correct?”

“Yes, quite extraordinary. He was always so fastidious, a man to whom only the best and highest appealed.”

“Quite so.” The vicar pursed his lips. “And it is a fact to look in the face, my dear Millicent. As you know, I am a great believer in looking facts in the face.”

“You think, Uncle Tom, it implies mental deterioration?”

“One hardly likes to say that,” said the vicar cautiously. “But that is what we have to fear.”

A deepening anxiety crept into the eyes of the wife. “It does seem a reasonable explanation. But please don’t forget that Gervase took no interest in any subject until John Smith came, and that now he has begun to read the Bible.”

“It is certainly remarkable if such is the case. By the way, do the doctors allow him to read the Bible?”

“He may read anything.”

“And they consider him quite rational?”

“Perfectly rational.” Millicent looked at the vicar in some surprise. “Don’t you, Uncle Tom?”

The vicar would have evaded the question had he been able to do so. But with those candid eyes upon him that was impossible. Moreover, the old habit of fearless honesty in all things did not permit a deliberate lie.

Millicent declined to accept his silence. “You don’t!” She pinned him down to a reply.

“If the doctors are satisfied,” said the vicar slowly, “that is the important thing. One doesn’t set up one’s opinion against theirs, you know.”

But he was not to escape in that way.

“Evidently you don’t agree with them, Uncle Tom. Now I want you to be perfectly frank and tell me just how you feel about Gervase.”

“Well, I will.” The vicar spoke slowly and weightily. “Since you press the question, his whole outlook appears to me to be changing.”

“But not for the worse, surely?”

“That I cannot say. It is only my opinion and I give it for what it is worth, but I don’t quite approve this change which is coming over Gervase.”

“Didn’t you find him happy and cheerful?”

“I did. But that is not the point. My feeling is that if Gervase were perfectly rational he would not attach so much importance to the--er--lucubrations of this fellow, John Smith.”

“But Gervase has always been a great lover of poetry,” said the surprised Millicent. “He took prizes for it at Eton, and at Oxford he won a medal. His love of poetry is really nothing new; in fact he passes for an expert on the subject.”

“That is my point. I have always shared that view of Gervase. In common with the rest of the world, I have greatly admired his translations from the Greek. But that being the case, the question one must now ask oneself is, why does a man of sure taste, of real scholarship, suddenly surrender his mind to the fantastic trivialities of a half-baked, half-educated village loafer?”

“But you’ve not read the poem,” said Millicent with a little air of triumph, in which, however, relief was uppermost.

“No good thing can come out of Babylon. It isn’t reasonable to expect it. Why, I’ve known that fellow Smith nearly twenty years. I know exactly what education he has had, I know his record.”

“I won’t venture to argue with you, Uncle Tom. Your opinion is worth so much more than mine, but isn’t there such a thing as genius?”

“There may be. Although it is a thing I am rather skeptical about myself; that is to say I regard it primarily as an infinite capacity for taking pains, a natural fruit of learning and study. That is why to my mind it is more _wholesome_ to believe that Bacon wrote Shakespeare. Nay, it must have been so, for it is surely a rational canon that the most highly trained mind of the age wrote Hamlet, Othello and King Lear, rather than an inspired clodhopper who began life as a butcher’s apprentice.”

“Well, Uncle Tom,” said his niece demurely, “of course I mustn’t argue with you, but aren’t your views rather like those of a character in a most amusing play I saw in London the other day? When a dramatic critic was asked to criticize a play, he said, ‘How can one begin to criticize a play until one knows the name of the author?’”

“Quite so, quite so,” said Mr. Perry-Hennington triumphantly. “A very apt illustration of my point.”

“But it is also an illustration of mine. At least I hope it is.”

“Then I’m afraid we are arguing about entirely different things.”

“Well, Uncle Tom,” said the tenacious Millicent, “I am arguing about what Gervase would call the peril of a priori judgments. It seems to me that the Christian religion itself is a proof of it. How does your theory account for the fact that Jesus was a village carpenter?”

The vicar drew up his long, thin, rather ascetic frame to the topmost of its seventy-two inches. “My dear child,” he said solemnly, “my theory accounts for that fact by simply assuming that Jesus was God Himself. It is the only reasonable hypothesis. Without it there is no such thing as the Christian religion.”

“But, Uncle Tom, to quote Gervase again, isn’t that the greatest of all assumptions for a rational mind to make?”

“Undoubtedly, my dear. And it is only permitted to us to make it by the implicit eye of faith.”

“Do you mean that the Incarnation is the only matter in which we are to exercise faith?”

“Ah, now we are getting into theology.” Mr. Perry-Hennington took up his niece with a little air of bland condescension. “You mustn’t bother your pretty head about that. I must go now.” A pang shot through him as he suddenly remembered the morrow’s sermon. “I must leave you, my dear, to help the children put together their picture puzzle. Good-by. Gervase is really quite as well as I had hoped to find him. Let us continue to have faith.”

Thereupon the vicar tore himself away from a controversy in which he felt he was showing, as usual, to singular advantage. He was so sure of the ground on which he stood, that even poor Gervase’s highly trained intellect, of which the callow, fluffy-headed Millicent was the merest echo, was hardly able to meet him upon it. Moreover the vicar was a born fighter, and the trend of the discussion with his niece had had the effect of stirring in his mind the embers of a latent antagonism. The truth was, Brandon had never been quite forgiven a _mot_ he had once permitted himself. He had said that the Established Church was determined to eat his cake and to have it: that is, it was reared on the basis of two and two makes five, but ordered its conduct on the basis of two and two makes four.

As the vicar left the inner hall he heard the voice of the curly-headed Joskin uplifted in a wail: “Oh, mummy, _do_ come and help us! We can’t fit it in. There’s a piece missing.”

VII

THE vicar remembered his sermon and looked at his watch. It was within twenty minutes of luncheon; the most valuable morning of the week was gone. The spirit of vexation rose in him again. It was all the fault of this miserable fellow, John Smith. Two priceless hours had been lavished on this wastrel, this dead charge on the community. Moreover he would not be able to make up for lost time in the course of the afternoon. At three o’clock he was due at Brombridge to attend the War Economy Committee; at seven he had to take the chair at a recruiting meeting at Grayfield, and dine afterward with his old Magdalen friend, Whymper.

It cut him to the heart to forego the morrow’s sermon. He was the soul of conscientiousness, and not since his attack of rheumatoid arthritis nine years ago had he failed to come up to time on Sunday evening with a brand new discourse. And if ever one was needed it was now. The time cried aloud for pulpit direction. The government was conducting the war in half-hearted fashion. It had not yet dared to bring in a Conscription Bill, yet in Mr. Perry-Hennington’s opinion every man and every woman in the country up to the age of sixty-five ought to have been forcibly enlisted months ago. Several times already he had made that proposal in the newspapers over his own signature, and it had been greatly applauded by the only sort of people who counted in war time.

The hour was certainly ripe for a rasper in the way of a sermon. The nation wanted “gingering up.” He must find time somehow to put his ideas together against Sunday evening. As he strode with his long legs down the glorious avenue of Hart’s Ghyll he felt braced and reënforced with energy. Once more his thought began to flow. He had his text at any rate, and it ought not to be difficult to strike something compelling out of it. By the time the porter’s lodge was reached, he had grown quite hopeful. Phrases, ideas, were filling his mind; perhaps his morning had not been wholly wasted after all; it seemed to have stirred him to something. “Let us put on the armor of light.” For the vicar those words were a bugle call to the old Adam within. The spirit of conflict, like a sleeping giant, sprang to new life.

Hardly had Mr. Perry-Hennington passed beyond the iron gates into the village street, when a rather perspiring, decidedly genial-looking man on a bicycle immediately recalled his pastoral duty to his mind. Nay, it was more than that. The matter of John Smith had as much to do with the state as the recruiting question, the economy question, the supineness of the government, and the morrow’s sermon.

“Good-morning, Joliffe,” said the vicar in a hearty, detaining voice. “The very man I want to see.”

“Nothing wrong at home I hope,” said the man on the bicycle, who was the village doctor. He spoke in a simple, direct, unaffectedly practical way, which all the same was not without a faint note of deference, ever grateful to Mr. Perry-Hennington’s ear.

Dr. Joliffe slowed up and hopped from his bicycle.

“No, nothing of that kind I’m glad to say.” The vicar’s reply was equally precise and to the point. “But I want to have a little talk with you privately about a matter that is worrying me a good deal.”

“Very glad any time.” Dr. Joliffe looked at his watch. “Why not come and take potluck with me now--if you are not afraid of Mrs. Small in war time. She’s not up to your form at any time, but you are very welcome to what we have.”

The vicar hesitated. He was expected at home, but John Smith was burning a hole in his mind. He felt there must be no delay in taking a man whom he could trust into his confidence, and if he lost this present opportunity no other chance might arise for several days.

“You will?” said the practical Joliffe. “Although you’ll not expect much. I’ll send my boy along to the vicarage to tell them not to wait for you.”

Mr. Perry-Hennington allowed himself to be persuaded. Joliffe was the only person in the place to whom he might turn for help; moreover he was a discreet, unaffectedly honest man whom the vicar had always instinctively trusted. And disconcerted as he was by Brandon’s attitude in the matter, it was imperative that no time should be lost in taking competent advice.

The doctor’s abode was a rather fine, small Georgian specimen, standing back from the center of the village street. A widower and childless in a house too large for his needs, a man of taste in furniture and bric-a-brac, with a capital cellar and a good cigar for his friends, he was also a man of private means to whom the neighboring villages owed a great deal. He was such an excellent fellow, so widely and so justly respected, that it was a little odd to find him tinged with the national vice of servility. But with all his great merits he sometimes found it rather hard to forget that he belonged to the middle class and that the vicar belonged to the aristocracy. It may have been for that reason that Mr. Perry-Hennington felt so much confidence in his judgment. At any rate, the satisfying sense that Joliffe was aware of the deference due to a peer’s brother oiled the wheels of their intercourse, and enabled the vicar to treat him with a bonhomie which he knew would not be abused.

Mrs. Small had only a cottage pie and a pancake to offer the august visitor, but in spite of the King’s edict, to which the host apologetically referred, this fare was eked out by a very honest glass of brown sherry, a cup of coffee that did Mrs. Small great credit, and a really excellent cigar.

Both gentlemen were due at Brombridge at three, to which center of activity the doctor proposed to drive the vicar in his runabout. This suited the vicar very well. He would be there and back in half the time required by his gig. And old Alice, who was rising twenty-four, would be able to save herself for the evening journey to Grayfield, which old Alice’s master, fully conscious that “the old girl was not what she had been,” and a humane man to boot, had been inclined to view with some little concern. Things were turning out for the best in the mundane sphere at any rate, and the vicar was not unpleasantly aware of this fact as, after-luncheon cigar alight, he entered upon the incidental cause of a modest but agreeable meal to which he had done perhaps rather better justice than the state of his emotions justified.

“Joliffe,” said the vicar, taking a long and impressive pull at his cigar, “what I really want to talk to you about is that fellow John Smith. I am sorry to say I’ve come to the conclusion that he can no longer be allowed to stay in the parish.”

“Indeed,” said the doctor casually. “A harmless sort of creature I’ve always thought. Doesn’t quite know himself perhaps. A little too free with his opinions may be, but strictly between ourselves”--Dr. Joliffe’s voice grew respectfully confidential--“I think we may lay that to the door of someone else.”

“Brandon, eh? I agree.” The vicar grew magisterial. “Always an injudicious fellow. That’s the worst of your radical. Gives these intermediate sort of people ideas.”

“Quite so. I wish you’d try the brandy.” The host pushed it across.

“No. Really. War time, you know.”

“I should value your opinion. Just half a glass.”

“Well, half a glass. To return to John Smith. Excellent brandy. My girl, Edith, presented this fellow Smith with a white feather this morning. Of course he’s a poor half-begotten sort of creature, but as far as one can see there’s no reason why he shouldn’t be working at munitions instead of loafing about the common.”

“Exactly. Sure you won’t have a _leetle_ more?”

“Quite. Well, if you please, he kissed the feather, stuck it in his buttonhole, and said, ‘And lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him.’”

The doctor shook a grave, gray head. “Sounds decidedly cracked, I must say. At any rate a most improper speech to make to a clergyman’s daughter.”

“I should think so! Outrageous blasphemy!”

“Do you suppose the chap meant to insult her?”

“If he didn’t, and it’s charitable to give him the benefit of the doubt, his behavior only admits of one other explanation.”

Dr. Joliffe sat, a picture of perplexity. To a severely literal mind the speech was meaningless. He had known for some time that the man claimed to see visions, that he was a poet and a dreamer; and the doctor had lately heard rumors, to which he had paid little attention, that the man was dabbling in Christian Science in neighboring villages; but this was the first time it had occurred to him that the fellow was insane. But now the doctor agreed with the vicar that such behavior strongly suggested that condition.

“Mind you, that is not all.” And the vicar gave an account of his own visit to the common, his conversation with the man, his subsequent visit to the mother and the remarkable statement she had made to him.

“She has always been very religious,” said the doctor, “but up till now I have not questioned her sanity.”

“Nor I,” said the vicar. “But she is not important. She is practically bed-ridden. It is this son of hers we have to think about. I have already made up my mind that he must go. And that being the case, the problem arises as to what is the best means of getting rid of him.”

Dr. Joliffe, a worldly-wise man within his sphere, stroked his chin solemnly but offered no advice.

“Of course,” said the vicar, “it is in the public interest that whatever steps we may take should not excite attention. It is sufficiently disagreeable to have that sort of lunatic in one’s parish, without having busybodies and maliciously inclined people making a fuss. The readiest and simplest means, no doubt, would be to institute a prosecution for blasphemy. He would most certainly be detained during his Majesty’s pleasure. But such a proceeding might play into the hands of the enemies of the Established Church, in which, unfortunately, the country seems to abound. We might have Voltaires arising in the Cocoa Press or something equally revolting.”

“Quite so, vicar.” Dr. Joliffe compressed his lips. “You’ll be wise to go slow in a matter of this kind, believe me, or you might easily find public opinion against you.”