IX
Notaltogether pleased with the turn of events, Dr. Joliffe drove the vicar home. He was a conscientious man, and he had no more confidence in “that fool Parker,” than Dr. Parker had in “that fool Joliffe.” Still, the vicar could not be expected to know that. On the way back to Penfold he was inclined to congratulate himself. Machinery had been set in motion which could hardly fail to deal effectively with John Smith.
Dr. Joliffe was gloomy. All the way home he confined himself to polite monosyllables, and kept his eyes glued to the steering wheel of the car. Hitherto he had not had occasion to question the sanity of John Smith, whom he had always regarded as a particularly harmless creature. And even if the vicar had reported the man correctly, Dr. Joliffe was by no means clear that Mr. Perry-Hennington was not taking an extreme view of his duty.
The vicar, however, had not a doubt in the matter. A sermon unprepared still cast its shadow over him, but a cloud had lifted from his mind. A sanguine manendowed with great animal energy, he never questioned the logic of his own views, the soundness of his judgment, or the absolute rectitude of his conduct. It was in the interests of the community that John Smith should be taken care of. It even gave the vicar a certain satisfaction that his duty in a most disagreeable matter should now stand out so clearly before him.
Mr. Perry-Hennington had only just time to drink a cup of tea at the vicarage before he was off on his travels again. This time his objective was Grayfield, a feudal sort of hamlet over on the Sussex side. He had to speak at a recruiting meeting, arranged by his old Magdalen friend Whymper, with whom a distinguished member of parliament was spending the weekend.
Edith accompanied her father in the gig; and they had been invited to dine at the manor after the meeting. Grayfield was a good hour for old Alice, upon whom Anno Domini had set an unmistakable seal. But it was a rare evening for a drive. The sweet, clean air of the Sussex uplands was like a mellow wine; the road was straight and firm; the sun of June still lingered over Ashdown; trees and hedges wore a sheen of glory, with a trim farm or a cowled oasthouse nestling here and there. This calm and quiet landwith its mathematically parceled acres, its placid cows and horses looking over five-barred gates to watch the stately progress of old Alice, its occasional forelock-pulling rustic, was like a “set” in a theater. The whole scene was so snug, so perfect, so ordained, that nature appeared to have very little part to play in it.
“Odd to think that Armageddon ishere,” said the vicar.
Edith thought it was, very.
The vicar gave a shake of the reins to encourage old Alice. And then he said: “It’s my firm belief that there are people on this countryside who don’t realize it even yet.”
“I’m sure there are,” said Edith.
“It will be brought home to every man, every woman, every child in the land before we are through with it.”
“You think so?” said Edith, in the curious, precise voice she had inherited from the Henningtons. “Personally I am not so sure. We are much too secure here. I sometimes think that an invasion would be the best thing that could happen to us.”
“I am inclined to agree with you,” said her father, with another shake for old Alice. “But it’s gradually coming home to the nation. Rather than give in we shall fight to the last man and the last shilling, andunless they have altered since the days of Frederick the Great they will do the same.”
“But it can’t go on indefinitely. It means extermination.”
“The end of civilization at any rate,” said the vicar mournfully. “The clock has already been put back a century.”
“Sooner or later something must surely happen.”
“But what can happen? We don’t begin to look like downing them, and it’s unthinkable that they can down us.”
“There’s God,” said Edith, in a voice of sudden, throbbing softness. “I’m convinced that He must put an end to it soon.”
Before the vicar continued the conversation he gave Alice a little touch of the whip.
“Have you ever thought, my dear girl, what an awful weight of sin there is upon the human race? Instead of expecting God to put an end to it soon, it will be little short of miraculous if He ever puts an end to it at all.”
“But think of the awful suffering which falls for the most part on those who are the least to blame.”
“There is Biblical precedent for all that has happened, nay for far more than has happened. It is ajudgment on the world, and the innocent have to suffer with the guilty.”
Edith was silent a little while.
“It all seems so horribly unfair,” she said at last, in a deep, palpitating tone which the vicar had not heard her use before. “It is not the people who have made the war who are really suffering by it.”
“They who question!” and the vicar shook up old Alice yet again.
A long silence followed, through which old Alice jogged in her placid way. Hardly a ripple stirred the evening air. It was very difficult to realize what was happening within a hundred miles.
“I can’t help thinking of that man,” Edith suddenly remarked.
“What man?” said her father. For the moment his thoughts were far away. An unwritten sermon was looming up at the back of his brain.
“John Smith. I can’t tell you what a curious impression he has left upon me. Somehow I have done nothing but think of him ever since the thing happened.”
It was a wrench for the vicar to quit the sequence of ideas which was being formed so painfully in his mind. And for the time he had had quite enough of the subject of John Smith, nay, was in process ofsuffering a reaction from it. Besides it was such a vexatiously disagreeable matter that he had no wish to discuss it more than was absolutely necessary.
“I should forget the man if I were you,” was his counsel to Edith.
“Somehow I can’t. He’s made a most curious impression upon me. I begin to feel now that I had no right to take for granted that what he said was meant for blasphemy.”
The vicar dissented forcibly. “There can be no possible excuse for him. It was a most improper remark for any man to make in such circumstances, and you were quite right to feel as you did about it. But if you are wise you will now put it out of your mind; at the same time I should like you to give up the practice of distributing feathers.”
“Yes, father, I will,” said Edith with a quick flush.
“You will be wise. I am arranging for an inquiry to be made into the man’s mental condition.”
“Is that absolutely necessary?” The flush grew deeper.
“The public interest calls for it. This incident is a climax of many.”
“Yet somehow he doesn’t seem exactly insane.”
“Not even when he talks in that way?” said thevicar surprisedly. “My dear girl, it is the only charitable explanation.”
“Do you really think so?” said the reluctant Edith.
“Demonstrably.”
“And yet somehow, when one really thinks about him, he seems so sweetly reasonable.”
“Sweetly reasonable!” The vicar pinned down the unfortunate phrase. “How can you say that? A mild and harmless creature, perhaps—apart from his opinions—but reasonable!—surely that is the very last word to apply to him.”
Perplexity deepened upon Edith’s face. “Somehow, I can’t throw off the curious impression he has left upon me.”
“Try to forget the man.” The vicar spoke sternly.
“Dismiss him from your thoughts, at any rate while the case issub judice. You have done your duty by reporting the matter to me, and I am doing mine by putting in motion proper machinery to deal with it.”
“I sincerely hope that nothing is going to happen to him.”
“He will be sent to an asylum.”
Edith shivered. “Oh, I hope not,” she said, drawing in her breath sharply. “To my mind that is the cruellest fate that can overtake any human being.”
“One doesn’t altogether agree,” said the vicar. “Hewill be taken care of as he ought to be, and treated, of course, with the greatest humanity. You must remember that asylums are very different places from what they were sixty years ago, when Dickens—I think it was Dickens—wrote about them.”
“But it must mean dreadful suffering to be held for the rest of one’s life within four walls among lunatics without hope of escape.”
“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.