IV
Asthe vicar made his way across the green toward the village he deliberated very gravely. It was clear that such a matter would have to be followed up. But he must not act precipitately. Fully determined now not to flinch from an onerous task, he must look before and after.
Two courses presented themselves to his sense of outrage. And he must choose without delay. Before committing himself to definite action he must either see Gervase Brandon, whom he felt bound in a measure to blame for John Smith’s state of mind, and take advice as to what should be done, or he must see the young man’s mother and ask her help. It chanced, however, that Mrs. Smith’s cottage was near by. Indeed it skirted the common, and he had raised the latch of her gate before he realized that the decision had somehow been made for him, apparently by a force outside himself.
It was a very humble abode, typical of that part of the world, but a trim hedge of briar in front, a growth of honeysuckle above the porch, and a low roof of thatch gave it a rustic charm. The doorstone had been freshly whitened, and the window curtains, simple though they were, were so neat and clean that the outward aspect of Rose Cottage was almost one of refinement.
The vicar’s sharp knock was answered by a village girl, a timid creature of fourteen. At the sight of the awe-inspiring figure on the threshold, she bobbed a curtsey, and in reply to the question: “Is Mrs. Smith at home?” gurgled an inaudible “Yiss surr.”
“Is that the vicar?” said a faint voice.
Mr. Perry-Hennington said reassuringly that it was, and entered briskly, with that air of decision the old ladies of the parish greatly admired.
A puny, white-haired woman was seated in an armchair in the chimney corner, with a shawl over her shoulders. She had the pinched, wistful look of the permanent invalid, yet the peaked face and the vivid eyes had great intelligence. But they were also full of suffering, and the vicar, at heart genuinely kind, was struck by it at once.
“How are you today, Mrs. Smith?” he said.
“No better and no worse than I’ve been this last two years,” said the widow in a voice that had not a trace of complaint. “It is very kind of you to come and see me. I wish I could come to church.”
“I wish you could, Mrs. Smith.” The vicar took achair by her side. “It would be a privilege to have you with us again.”
The widow smiled wanly. “It has been ordained otherwise,” she said. “And I know better than to question. God moves in a mysterious way.”
“Yes, indeed.” The vicar was a little moved to find John Smith’s mother in a state of grace. “There is strength and compensation in the thought.”
“If one has found the Kingdom it doesn’t matter how long one is tied to one’s chair.”
“It gratifies me to hear you say that.” The vicar spoke in a measured tone. And then suddenly, as he looked at the calm face of the sufferer, he grew hopeful. “Mrs. Smith,” he said, with the directness upon which he prided himself, “I have come to speak to you about your boy.”
“About John?” The widow, the name on her lips, lowered her voice to a rapt, hushed whisper.
The vicar drew his chair a little closer to the invalid. “I am very, very sorry to cause you any sort of trouble, but I want to ask you to use your influence with him; I want to ask you to give him something of your own state of mind.”
The widow looked at the vicar in surprise. “But,” she said softly, “it is my boy John who has made me as I am.”
The vicar was a little disconcerted. “Surely,” he said, “it is God who has made you what you are.”
“Yes, but it is through my boy John that He has wrought upon me.”
“Indeed! Tell me how that came to be.”
The widow shook her head and smiled to herself. “Don’t ask me to do that,” she said. “It is a long and wonderful story.”
But the vicar insisted.
“No, no, I can’t tell you. I don’t think anyone would believe me. And the time has not yet come for the story to be told.”
The vicar still insisted, but this feeble creature had a will as tenacious as his own. His curiosity had been fully aroused, but common sense told him that in all human probability he had to deal with the hallucinations of an old and bed-ridden woman. A simple intensity of manner and words oddly devout made it clear that she was in a state of grace, yet it would seem to be rooted in some illusion in which her worthless son was involved. Although the vicar was without subtlety, he somehow felt that it would hardly be right to shatter that illusion. At the same time the key to his character was duty. And his office asked that in this case it should be rigidly performed. Let all possible light be cast upon the mental history of thisman, even if an old and poor woman be stricken in the process. A cruel dilemma was foreshadowed, but let it be faced manfully.
“Mrs. Smith,” he said after a trying pause, “I am very sorry, but there is bad news to give you of your son.”
The effect of the words was remarkable.
“Oh, what has happened to him?” The placid face changed in an instant; one hand clutched at the thin bosom.
The vicar hastened to quell her fears. “Nothing has happened to him,” he said in a grave, kind tone, “but I grieve to say that his conduct leaves much to be desired.”
The widow could only stare at the vicar incredulously.
“I am greatly troubled about him. For a long time now I have known him to be a disseminator of idle and mischievous opinions. I have long suspected him of being a corrupter of our village youth. This morning”—carried away by a sudden warmth of feeling the vicar forgot the mother’s frailty—“he insulted my daughter with a most blasphemous remark, and when I ventured to remonstrate with him he entered upon a farrago of light and meaningless talk. In a word, Mrs. Smith, much as it grieves me to say so, I findyour son an atheist, a socialist and a freethinker and I am very deeply concerned for his future in this parish.”
In the stress of indignation the vicar did not temper the wind to the shorn lamb. But the widow was less disconcerted than he felt he had a right to expect her to be. It was true that she listened with amazement, but far from being distressed, she met him with frank skepticism. It deepened an intense annoyance to find that she simply could not believe him.
He gave her chapter and verse. But a categorical indictment called forth the remark that, “John was such a great scholar that ordinary people could not be expected to understand him.”
Such a statement added fuel to the flame. Mr. Perry-Hennington did not pretend to scholarship himself, but he had such a keen and just appreciation of that quality in other people that these ignorant words aroused a pitying contempt. The mother’s attitude could only be taken as a desire to shield and uphold her son.
“Well, Mrs. Smith,” said the vicar, rising from his chair, “I have to tell you that talk of this kind cannot be tolerated here. I very much hope you will speak to him on the matter.”
“But who am I, vicar, that I should presume to speak to him?”
“You are his mother.”
“Of late I have begun to doubt whether I can be his mother.”
The vicar looked at the widow in amazement. “Surely you know whether or not he is your son?” he said in stern surprise.
“Yes, he is the child of my body, but I grow afraid to claim him as mine.”
“For what reason?”
“He is not as other men.”
“I don’t understand you,” said the vicar with stern impatience.
The widow looked at the vicar with a sudden light of ecstasy in her eyes. “I can only tell you,” she said, “that my husband was killed in battle months before a son was born to me. I can only tell you that I prayed and prayed continually that there might be no more wars. I can only tell you that one night an angel came to me and said that my prayer had been heard and would shortly be answered. I was told that I should live to see a war that would end all wars. And then my boy was born and I called him John Emanuel.”
The vicar mustered all his patience as he listened,half-scandalized, to the widow’s statement. He had to fortify himself with the obvious fact that she was a feeble creature who had known many sorrows, whose mind had at last given way. Somehow he felt a shocked resentment, but she was so palpably sincere that it was impossible to visit it upon her. And then the thought came to him that this pitiful illusion was going to add immensely to his difficulties. Having always known her for a decent woman and, when in health, a regular churchgoer, he had counted confidently upon her help. It came as a further embarrassment to find her mind affected. For her sake he might have been inclined to temporize a little with the son, in the hope that she would bring the influence of a known good woman to bear upon him. But that hope was now vain. The widow’s own mind was in a state of almost equal disorder, and any steps the matter might demand must now be taken without her sanction.
Had the mother infected the son, or had the son infected the mother was now the vicar’s problem. Regarding the one as a natural complement to the other, and reading them together, he saw clearly that both were a little unhinged. Beyond all things a good and humane man, he could not help blaming himself a little that he had not realized sooner the true state ofthe case. Now that he had spoken with the mother, the son became more comprehensible. Without a doubt the one had reacted on the other. It simplified the task it would be his bounden duty to perform, even if it did not make it less repugnant. The fact that two persons shared such a fantastic illusion made it doubly imperative that immediate steps should be taken in a matter which Mr. Perry-Hennington was now viewing with a growing concern.
“Mrs. Smith,” he said very sternly, “there is one question I feel bound to ask. Am I right in the assumption that you regard your son as a—er—a messiah?”
The answer came at once.
“Yes, vicar, I do,” said the widow falteringly. “The angel of the Lord appeared to me, and my son John—if my son he is—has come to fulfill the Prophecy.”