Part 6

“Why should it, if the mind is really unsound? You must remember that such people don’t suffer in the way that rational people do.”

“But suppose he doesn’t happen to be insane?”

“If he doesn’t happen to be insane the law cannot confine him as a lunatic.”

“Who will decide?”

“He will be certified by two doctors.”

Again came silence, only broken by the peaceful plodding of old Alice. And then said Edith suddenly: “Father, whoever certifies John Smith will take an awful responsibility upon himself.”

“No doubt,” said the vicar. “Yet hardly so grave a one as you might think. It is the only right, reasonable and charitable view to take of him. And if the medical profession cannot be brought to do its clear and obvious duty, the man will have to be dealt with in some other and less gentle way.”

“I am beginning to wish I hadn’t spoken of the matter,” said Edith, in an anxious tone.

“My dear,” said the vicar, shaking up old Alice, “in mentioning it, disagreeable and distressing as it may be, you did no more than your duty. You must now leave other people to do theirs, and at the same time you must have the good sense to dismiss the matter entirely from your thoughts.”

Again Edith shivered. But further discussion was forbidden by their journey’s end. They had now reached the outskirts of Grayfield, and the gates of the manor were before them.

X

THERE was a very stimulating meeting in the parish room. The squire of Grayfield, the vicar’s Magdalen friend, Whymper, was by divine right in the chair. He was a dry, melancholy, exanimate sort of creature; a man of few words and very pronounced dislikes, not without force in a narrow way, but locally of more account as the husband of Lady Jane than from any native quality. Still, he made an excellent chairman. Brief, concise, self-effacing, he loathed his job; anything in the nature of speechifying bored him extremely, and he had a rooted objection “to making an ass of himself in public,” but natural grit and a high sense of duty pulled him through. In fact he did his job so well that it would have been hard for any man to improve on his performance.

There were only two speakers. One was the vicar of Penfold, but he was not the person who had filled the parish room to overflowing. A famous member of Parliament, a reputed master of the forensic arts, was spending a week-end at the manor house, and he had kindly consented to rouse the young men of the district.

This paladin, who spoke before the vicar, was a tall thin-faced man of forty-five, who hardly looked his age. George Speke by name, he was the kind of man no British government is ever without, and he discoursed the commonest of common sense with an air of ease and authenticity. He put the case for Britain and her allies with a force and a cogency that none could gainsay. And in that room at any rate, there was not the slightest wish to gainsay it. Even the group of young men at the back of the room, upon whom the local constable and two specials kept a vigilant eye, and to whom Mr. Speke’s remarks were addressed officially, showed no inclination to traverse his clear statement of historical fact. It was a very finished effort, and somehow it moved his audience.

Mr. Perry-Hennington came rather in the nature of an anticlimax. He had no pretensions to be considered an orator, as he was careful to warn his hearers at the outset; he had nothing to say that had not already been said far better in print, yet he felt it to be his duty to stand on a public platform and declaim obvious truths which the newspapers of the realm had weeks ago made banal and threadbare. But somehow there was a driving force, a contained ferocity about Mr. Perry-Hennington’s sincerity, trite and ill-phrased as it was, which, with the aid of copious “hear, hear’s” from Mr. Speke and his old Magdalen friend, Whymper, first staved off an epidemic of coughing and then of feet-shuffling, and then of coughing again. At last he got fairly into his stride, a strong, unmusical voice increasing in violence as he did so. And as the more violent he grew the more his audience approved, they soon began to march together toward a thrilling climax. Finally he swung into his fine peroration: “We shall not lay down the sword, etc.,” which belonged to another, and ended stronger than he began amidst quite a storm of cheering.

It was a mediocre performance, well within the range of any member of the educated classes, yet all who heard it seemed greatly impressed. Even Mr. Whymper and Mr. Speke seemed greatly impressed, and what was of still more importance it went home to a number of young men at the back of the room. When the meeting was over these came forward to the table at the side of the platform, at which a recruiting officer sat, and gave in their names. Nowhere else could such a scene have been enacted. To the ordinary intelligence, it was almost unbelievable that magnificent fellows in the pride of manhood could be moved to the supreme sacrifice by the jejune lucidities of Mr. Speke, and the brand of spirituality that the vicar of Penfold had to offer. Something must have been in the air of that overheated room. Behind the trite phrases, behind the rather otiose pomposities of the one, the deliberately quiet, over-varnished style of the other, must have been that spirit which, by hardly more than the breadth of a single hair, had temporarily saved civilization for mankind.

XI

AFTER the meeting, eight people sat down to dinner at the manor house. These were Mr. Speke, Mr. Perry-Hennington and his daughter, the host, the redoubtable hostess, and three rather crushed and colorless Miss Whympers, who were evidently in great awe of their mother.

Lady Jane Whymper was a large, humorless woman, a local terror, whom most people found it very hard to like. For one thing her connections were so high, and her family so good, that she never had to please or conciliate anyone, and there was nothing in her nature to lead her to do so. She gave so little thought to the feelings of others, that she always made a point of saying just what came into her head, without regard to time or place or company; moreover it was always said in a voice of an exasperatingly penetrative quality. In her little corner of the world there was no one to stand against her, therefore she could hector, trample and dogmatize to her heart’s content. And being a person with many social strings to pull, in London also she was able to order the world pretty much to her own liking.

Still even she, if as a general rule she was insufferable, kept a reserve of tact for special occasions. By no means a fool, she could sometimes rise to graciousness; and the knowledge that violence was thereby done to the order of her nature seemed to invest her hours of charm with greater significance. And this evening at dinner, she happened to be in her most winning mood. For one thing George Speke was a favorite of hers; she had also a regard for the vicar of Penfold; thus the augurs had doubly blessed the meal. It was true that Lady Jane reserved her unbendings for the other sex, certainly never for her own, unless she had some very portentous ax to grind; but on the present occasion the three Miss Whympers and their rather mournful and ineffectual sire found the evening much more agreeable than usual.

Speke was a favorite of Lady Jane’s for several reasons. To begin with, like herself he was highly connected. It may seem an anachronism that in the year 1915 a woman of the world should attach the slightest importance to such a fortuitous matter, but even at that time a type of mind still survived in the island to which degrees of birth were of vast consequence. Lady Jane owned a mind of that sort. Dear George was “next in” for a dukedom, and Lady Jane was a duke’s daughter.

Ducal aspect apart, Speke was an able and likable fellow. He had once been described by one who knew the world as a member of a first-rate second-rate family. The Spekes had always been “in it” ever since they had been a family; they ran to prime ministers, field marshals, ambassadors, archbishops, all down the scroll of history. George’s particular blend of Speke was an immensely distinguished clan; yet somehow when Clio, the muse, cast her searchlight upon their achievements they loomed far less in the eyes of posterity than in those of their own generation. Ten years before, Mr. Speke’s own little world of friends, relations and sconce bearers, had seen in him a future prime minister. But 1914 had modified their views. All the same a place had been found for him in the Coalition. As Lady Jane said, “We cannot hope to win the war without him.”

Speke had no such estimate of his own abilities, or at least, if he had, he knew how to conceal it. He talked modestly and well at the dinner table; his conversation was full of inside knowledge, and it had a grace of manner which Edith and the three Miss Whympers admired. He had met the vicar of Penfold before, and rather liked and respected him as most people did; also he claimed him as a distant kinsman, as the Perrys of Molesworth appeared in the Speke family tree.

“By the way, Mr. Perry-Hennington,” he said, “I was trespassing in your parish this afternoon. I went to see Gervase Brandon.”

“Poor fellow,” said the vicar. “But don’t you think he is bearing up remarkably?”

“Quite wonderfully. But he’s a pathetic figure. Six months ago when I saw him last, he was at the apex of mental and bodily power. And now he lies helpless, never expecting to walk again.”

“And yet not a word of complaint,” said the vicar. “This morning when I went to see him I was greatly struck by his splendid courage and cheerfulness.”

“Truly a hero--and so pathetic as he lies in that room--a wonderful room it is--among his books.”

“Can nothing be done for him?” said Lady Jane.

“The doctors are beginning to despair,” said the vicar. “Everything that medical science can do has been done already, and there’s no sign of an improvement.”

“The higher nerve centers, I suppose?”

“So I understand. The mere concussion of this modern artillery is appalling.”

“It is amazing to me that the human frame ever succeeds in adapting itself to war under modern conditions,” said Speke.

“And the awful thing is,” the host interposed in his melancholy tones, “that there appears to be no limit to what can be done in the way of self-immolation. The chemist and the inventor have only to go on long enough applying their arts to war to evolve conditions which will destroy the whole human race. We live in a time of horrors, but let us ask ourselves what the world will be twenty years hence?”

“Don’t, I implore you, Edward,” reproved his wife. “Spare us the thought.”

“No, it won’t bear speaking about,” said Speke. “We are already past the point where science destroys organic life faster than nature can replace.”

“Not a doubt of it,” said the vicar. “And if we cannot find a means of bridging permanently the chasm that has opened in the life of civilization, the globe will cease to be habitable for the human race.”

“Really! really!” said the hostess.

“Only too true,” said the host. “There’s hardly a limit to what modern devilry can do. Take aviation to begin with. We are merely on the threshold of the subject.”

“I agree,” said George Speke. “The other day, Bellman, the air minister, told me it is quite within the bounds of possibility to drop a poison from the clouds that will exterminate whole cities.”

“Which merely goes to prove what I have always contended,” said the hostess. “Sooner or later all nations will be forced into an agreement for the abolition of war.”

“My dear Lady Jane,” said the vicar, shaking a mournful head, “such a contingency is against all experience. It is not to be thought of unless a fundamental change takes place in the heart of man.”

“A change must take place,” said Lady Jane, “if the human race is to go on. Besides, doesn’t the Bible tell us that there will be a second coming of Christ, and that all wars will cease?”

“It does,” said the vicar; “but that is the millennium, you know. And I am bound to say there’s no sign of it at present. I am convinced that only one thing now can save the human race and that is a second advent. Only that can bridge the chasm which has opened in the life of the nations.”

“In the meantime,” said George Speke, “the watchers scan the heavens in vain. The miserable, childish futility of our present phase of evolution! So many little groups of brown grubs slaving night and day to make human life a worse hell than nature has made of it already. People talk of the exhilaration of war. Good God! they can’t have seen it. They can’t have seen colonies of organized hatreds, profaning all art and all science, poisoning the very air God gave us to breathe. It makes one loathe one’s species. We are little, hideous, two-legged ants, flying around in foul contraptions of our own invention. And to what end? Simply to destroy.”

“In order to recreate,” said the vicar robustly.

“I don’t believe it. The pendulum of progress--blessed word!--has swung too far. Unless we can contrive a means of holding back the clock, the doom of the world is upon us.”

“It all comes of denying God, of banishing him from the planet,” said the host.

“But is he banished from the planet? Take a man like Gervase Brandon. Life gave him everything. No man had a greater love of peace, yet when the call came he threw to the wind all his most cherished convictions, went to the war in the knightly spirit of a crusader, and for the rest of his days on earth is condemned to a state of existence from which death is a merciful release.”

“By sacrifice ye shall enter,” said the vicar.

“I am not competent to speak upon that. But one’s private conception of God is not banished from this corner of the planet as long as England teems with Gervase Brandons.”

“There I am fully with you,” said the vicar. “To me Gervase Brandon will always be a symbol of what man can rise to in the way of deliberate heroism, just as the beaches of Gallipoli will be enshrined forever in the history of the race to which he belongs. I have only to think of Gervase Brandon to affirm that God is more potent in the world than he ever was--and that is the awful paradox.”

“I don’t presume to question that,” said the host. “But the problem now for the world is, how shall his power be made supreme? That is what a ruined civilization has now to ask itself. All civilized people agree that war itself must cease, yet before it can do so there will have to be a conversion of the heart of man.”

“You are right,” said Speke, in his dry, cool voice. “And to my mind, as the world is constituted, the problem admits of no solution.”

“In other words,” said the host, “there must always be wars and rumors of wars until God has created Himself.”

“Or rather let us say,” the vicar rejoined, “until God has affirmed Himself. Hence the need for the second advent.”

“I wonder if we shall realize it when it occurs,” said Speke, his hand straying to his champagne glass. “In all its fundamentals the world is as it was two thousand years ago in Palestine. If Christ walked the earth again, it is certain that he would be treated now as he was then.”

“That, one cannot believe,” interposed Lady Jane with ready vehemence. “Even you admit, George, the amount of practical Christianity there is in the world. I, for one, will not believe all this sacrifice has been in vain.”

“I agree with you, Lady Jane,” said the vicar. “When He comes to resume His ministry, as come He will, at all events He will find that His Church has been true. But at present, I confess, one looks in vain for a sign of His advent.”

Speke shook his head. “With all submission,” he said, “if Christ appeared today he would be treated as a harmless crank, or he would be put in an asylum. Think of his reception by the yellow press--the ruler of nations, the maker of governments, the welder of empires. He would find it the same pleasant world he left two thousand years ago. Man, in sum, the vocal working majority, whether in London, Paris, Berlin, New York, or Petrograd, could not possibly meet the Master face to face or even hope to recognize him when he passed by.”

“That is true, no doubt,” said the vicar, “of the mass of the people. Men of truly spiritual mold are in a hopeless minority. But they are still among us. Depend upon it, when the hour comes they will recognize the Master’s voice, depend upon it, they will know His face.”

“I wonder?” said George Speke.

“I am absolutely convinced of that, George.” And Lady Jane, one with the law and the prophets, gave the signal to the ladies and rose superbly from the dinner table.

XII

WHEN the ladies had left the room the vicar took the chair on the right of his host, and then he said across the table to George Speke: “Talking of poor Brandon, what opinion did you form of him mentally when you saw him this afternoon?”

“Mentally!... I thought him rather wonderful.”

The eyes of the vicar searched those of the man opposite. If this was a conventional statement it was the clear desire of those eyes to expose it.

“The poise of his mind seemed to me perfect. And somehow one hadn’t quite expected it.”

“You felt he was in full possession of his whole mental faculty?”

“Didn’t you?”

The vicar’s failure to answer the question might be taken for a negative.

“Moreover, he greatly impressed me,” Speke added. There were two George Spekes. One had the departmental mind; the other was something more considerable than a rather arid public record indicated. “I always knew that he had a very first-rate intellect, but this afternoon it was even more striking than usual.”

“But,” said the vicar cautiously, “don’t you think it may be misleading him?”

“How? In what way?”

“I will give you a concrete instance of what I mean.” The vicar spoke very gravely. “And by the way, Whymper, it is a matter I want to talk to you about particularly. At Penfold, we are cursed with a sort of village ne’er-do-well, who has taken to writing poetry, blaspheming the Creator, and upholding the cause of the enemy. I am sorry to say that for some years now Brandon has been this man’s friend, lent him books from his private collection, helped to support him, and so on. Well, this morning, when I went to Hart’s Ghyll, Brandon told me that he had lately read a poem of this fellow John Smith’s, and that it had made a very deep impression upon him.”

“That’s interesting,” said Speke. “He told me the same. He said that a young man who lived in the village had lately produced the most wonderful poem he had ever read.”

“On the face of it, didn’t that strike you as nonsense?”

“No, not in the way that Brandon said it. He spoke as one having authority; and in the matter of poetry, he is thought, I believe, to have a good deal.”

“It may be so. But one mustn’t forget that in this case he is claiming semidivine honors for a half-educated, wholly mad village wastrel.”

“Mad!”

“So mad that we are having to arrange for him to be taken care of.”

“But surely such a man as Brandon could hardly be deceived by one of that caliber! He gave chapter and verse. He said that John Smith was a great clairvoyant, who had more windows open in his soul than other people.”

“Didn’t it strike you as a fantastic statement?”

“Why should it? I haven’t seen the poem, and he has; I don’t know John Smith and he does. Why should it strike one as a fantastic statement?”

“No, of course, you couldn’t be expected to know that John Smith is as mad as a hatter. But Brandon should know that as well as I do.”

“He says the man’s inspired--_Gottbetrunken_ was the word he used.”

“The man is a blasphemer and an atheist, and a pro-German to boot. And, as I say, steps are being taken to put him in a place of safety. We shall need _your_ help, Whymper; there’ll be a magistrates’ order for you to sign presently. But the distressing thing is that such a mind as Gervase Brandon’s should be susceptible to the man’s claptrap. The only explanation that occurs to one is that the poor dear fellow’s brain is going.”

“Well, I can only say that there seemed no trace of it this afternoon. I’ll admit that I thought him a little exalted, a little more the seer and the visionary than one quite liked to see him. But after all he must have walked pretty close with God. If a man gives up all the fair and easy things of life to storm the beaches of Gallipoli, it is not unlikely that a corner of the prophet’s mantle may be found for him--even if one agrees that it is a rather uncomfortable vestment.”

“There may be something in what you say.” The vicar shook a sad, unconvinced head. “But we have to deal with the thing as it exists. We have to look the facts in the face.”

“But what are the facts--that the poet bears the prosaic name of John Smith, that he belongs to the charming village of Penfold, and that he is an atheist.”

“A blasphemer and a pro-German, and that circumstances have made it necessary to inquire into his mental condition. His recent conduct in the village has made him amenable to the Blasphemy Laws and the Defense of the Realm Regulations.”

“Does Brandon know this?”

“Unfortunately he does. And that is why one is compelled to take such a gloomy view of the poor dear fellow at the present time.”

“Very odd,” said George Speke.

“Very tragic,” said the vicar.

XIII

IT was nearly midnight when old Alice turned in at the vicarage gate. Having handed her to the care of his man-of-all-work, the ancient Hobson, who was sitting up for her, the vicar said good-night to Edith and then went to his study. He had had a particularly trying day, and a man of less strength of will would have been content for this to be its end. But he could not bring himself to go to bed while that page of an accusing emptiness lay upon his blotting pad. It was within five minutes of Sunday and his sermon was hardly begun.

The clock on the chimneypiece struck the hour. The vicar turned up his reading lamp and sat down at his desk. He was really very tired and heart-sore, but for many a long year he had not failed in his pastoral duty, and he was not going to fail now. There was one line already traced in a bold, firm hand on the sheet before him. “Let us cast off the works of darkness, let us put on the armor of light.”

The words came upon him with a shock of surprise. He could not remember having written them. And at this moment, weary in body and spirit, he was not able to meet their implication. Overborne by the weight of an unintelligible world, he was unequal to their message. He drew his pen through them and wrote: “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. I will repay.” It was lower, easier ground for a man tired and dispirited, and, after all, it was the ideal text for war time. He had preached from it many times already, but in that hour it seemed the only one for his mood.

Yes, such a vengeance had come upon the world as had been long predicted. Once more those prophetic words glowed on the page with a living fire: “There shall be wars and rumors of war.” Terrible, ancient phrases, vibrating with emotion, came with a subliminal uprush into his mind. How miraculously had the Word been fulfilled. But one thing was needed to complete the tale, and that the far-off divine event to which the whole creation moves.

But, the vicar asked, as phrases and thoughts of his own began to take shape, was this Second Coming to be regarded as a literal fact of the physical world, was it only to be regarded by the eye of faith, or was it merely the figment of a poet’s fancy? It behooved the world of men to search its heart. Let all face the question that the time-spirit was asking; let all face it fully, frankly, fearlessly.