V
Thevicar left Rose Cottage in a state of the deepest perturbation he had ever known. He was not the kind of man who submits lightly to any such feeling, but again the sensation came upon him, which he had first felt half an hour ago in his amazing interview with John Smith, that an abyss had suddenly opened under his feet, into which he had already stumbled.
That such heresies should be current in his own little cure of Penfold-with-Churley, with which he had taken such infinite trouble for the past thirty-five years, that they should arise in his own personal epoch, and that of his favorite books and newspapers and friends and fellow workers and thinkers, was so remarkable that he hardly knew how to face the sore problem to which they gave rise. Unquestionably such ideas were a by-product of this terrible war which was tearing up civilization by the roots. In a sense there was consolation in the thought. Abnormal events give rise to abnormal mental processes. Half-developed, ill-regulated, morbidly impressionable minds were verylikely to be overthrown by such a phase as the world was now passing through. But even that reflection did little to reduce Mr. Perry-Hennington’s half-indignant sense of horror, or to soften the fierce ordeal in which he was now involved.
What should he do? An old shirker of issues he did not look for help in the quarter where some might have sought it. He was therefore content to put his question to the bracken, to the yellow gorse, to the golden light of heaven which was now beginning to beat uncomfortably upon him.
“Why do anything?” answered the inner voice of the university graduate qua the county gentleman. “Edith is naturally a little upset, but the question to ask oneself is: Are these poor crackbrains really doing any harm?”
Mr. Perry-Hennington had been long accustomed to identify that particular voice with the highest part of himself. In many of the minor crises which had arisen in his life he had thankfully and gratefully followed it. There were times undoubtedly when it was the duty of a prudent person to turn the blind eye to the telescope. But a very little reflection convinced him that this occasion was not one of them.
Apart from the fact that it was quite impossible to allow such a fantastic heresy to arise in his parish,there was the public interest to consider. The country was living under martial law, and it had come to his knowledge that the King’s enemies were receiving open countenance. The man Smith was a poor sort of creature enough, however one might regard him, but he was thought to have influence among persons of his own standing, and it was said to be growing. Moreover, there was “his faith-healing tomfoolery” to be taken into account; at the best a trivial business, yet also a portent, which was having an effect upon the credulous and the ignorant. Therefore the man must be put in his place. And if possible he must be taught a lesson. The subject was beset with thorns of the prickliest kind, but the vicar had never lacked moral courage of an objective sort, and he felt he would be unworthy of his cloth if for a moment he allowed himself to shirk his obvious duty.
While a rather hide-bound intellect set squarely to the problem before it, Mr. Perry-Hennington marched slowly along the only attempt at a street that the village of Penfold could boast. At the far end was a massive pair of iron gates picked out with gold, surmounted by a medieval arch of stone, upon which a coat of arms was emblazoned. Beyond these portals was a short avenue of glorious trees which led to thebeautiful old house known as Hart’s Ghyll, the seat for many generations of the squires of Penfold.
The symbol above the gates brought the vicar up short with a shock of surprise. Unconscious of the direction in which the supraliminal self had been leading him, he was inclined to accept it as the clear direction of a force beyond himself. It seemed, therefore, right to go at once and lay this difficult matter before Gervase Brandon, the man whom he felt bound to blame more than anyone else for John Smith’s unhappy state of mind.
The owner of Hart’s Ghyll, having married Mr. Perry-Hennington’s niece, could claim to be his relation by marriage. Brandon, a man of forty-two, born to the purple of assured social position, rich, cultivated, happily wed, the father of two delightful children, had seemed to possess everything that the heart of man could desire. Moreover, he had a reputation not merely local as a humane and liberal thinker—a too liberal thinker in the opinion of the vicar, who was proud to belong to a sturdier school. A model landlord who housed his laborers in absurdly modern and hygienic dwellings, who, somewhat to the scandal of less enlightened neighbors, allowed his smaller tenants to farm his land at purely nominal rents, hedid his best to foster a spirit of thrift, independence and true communal feeling.
As a consequence there were those who held the squire of Penfold to be a mirror of all the virtues. There was also a smaller but vastly more influential class which could not bear to hear his name mentioned. He was mad, said the county Guys of the district. The vicar of Penfold did not go quite to that length, but he sympathized with the point of view. When he lunched and dined, as he often did, with the neighboring magnates, he was wont to sigh sadly over “that fellow Brandon,” and at the same time gravely lament, but not without an air of plaintive humor, that niece Millicent had yet to teach him sense. And this statement always involved the corollary that niece Millicent’s failure was the more surprising since the Perry-Henningtons were a sound old Tory stock.
The opinion current in old-port-drinking circles was that Gervase Brandon was as charming a fellow as you would meet in a day’s march, but that he was overeducated—he had been a don at Oxford before he came into the property—and that he had more money to spend than was good for him. For some years he had been “queering the pitch” for less happily placed neighbors and contemporaries, and these found it hard to forgive him. They had prophesied that the daywould come when his vagaries would cause trouble, and at the moment the famous Brandon coat of arms of the lion and the dove, and its motto: “Let the weak help the strong, let the strong help the weak,” came within the vicar’s purview, he felt that the prophecy had been most oddly, not to say dramatically, fulfilled.
If blame there was for the appearance of a Mad Mullah in the parish, without a doubt it must be laid to the door of Gervase Brandon. In the most absurd way he had long encouraged one whom the vicar could only regard as a wastrel. He had allowed this incorrigible fellow the run of the Hart’s Ghyll library, and the vicar recalled meeting John Smith in the village street with a priceless Elzevir copy of Plato’s Theætetus under his arm, the Brandon crest stamped on the leather, the Brandon bookplate inside. The vicar understood that the man had been a frequent visitor at the house, that money had been given him from time to time, and that the mother had been allowed to occupy the cottage on the common rent free. Was it to be wondered at that a weak, half-developed brain had been thrown off its balance?
In these circumstances it was right that Gervase Brandon should be made to understand the mischief he had wrought; it was right that he should be calledupon to take a hand in the adjustment of the coil. But as Mr. Perry-Hennington passed through the gate of Hart’s Ghyll and walked slowly up the avenue toward the house there was still a reservation in his mind. As matters were with Brandon now he might not be able to grapple with a problem of a nature to make heavy demands upon the mental and moral faculties.
The vicar had scarcely entered upon this aspect of the case, when the sight of a spinal carriage in the care of two nurses forbade any more speculation upon the subject. He was suddenly brought face to face with reality in a grimly practical shape.
“How are you this morning, Gervase?” said the vicar, stopping the little procession with a hearty voice. The question was addressed to a gaunt, hollow-eyed man in a green dressing gown, who was propped up on pillows.
“I’ve nothing to complain of,” said Gervase Brandon. He spoke in a calm, gentle way. “Another capital night.”
“Do you still have pain?”
“None for a week, I’m thankful to say. But I touch wood!”
The optimistic, almost gay tone did not deceive the vicar. The tragic part of the matter was that thecessation of pain was not a hopeful sign. Brandon might not have known that. This morning, at any rate, he had the half-defiant cheerfulness of one who did not intend to admit physical calamity. Yet he must have well understood the nature of the thing that had come upon him. For three long, terrible months he had lain on his back, paralyzed from the waist down, the result of shell shock sustained on the beaches of Gallipoli. There was every reason to fear a lesion of certain ganglia, and little hope was now held out that he would ever walk again.
To a man in meridian pride of body such a prospect hardly bore thinking about. But the blow had been borne with a fortitude at which even a man so unimaginative as the vicar could only marvel. Not again would the owner of Hart’s Ghyll prune his roses, or drive a golf ball, or cast a fly, or take a pot shot at a rabbit; not again would he take his children on his knee.
Brandon had always been the least militant of men. His instincts were liberal and humane, and in the happy position of being able to live as he chose he had gratified them to the full. He had had everything to attach him to existence; if ever fortune had had a favorite it was undoubtedly he. It had given him everything, with a great zest in life as a crowningboon. But in August, 1914, in common with so many of his countrymen, he had cast every personal consideration to the wind and embraced a life which he loathed with every fiber of his being.
He had only allowed himself one reason for the voluntary undertaking of a bestial task, and it was the one many others of his kind had given: “So that that chap won’t have to do it”—the chap in question being an engaging, curly-headed urchin still in the care of a governess. Well, the father had “done his bit,” but as far as the small son was concerned there was no guaranty that it had not been done in vain. And none knew that better than the shattered man propped up in the spinal carriage.
The sight of Gervase Brandon had done something to weaken the vicar’s resolve. It hardly seemed right to torment the poor fellow with this extremely disagreeable matter. Yet a moment’s reflection convinced Mr. Perry-Hennington that it would be most unwise to take any decisive step without discussing it with the man best able to throw light upon it. Moreover, as the vicar recognized, Brandon’s mental powers did not seem to have shared his body’s eclipse. He appeared to enjoy them to the full; in fact it might be said that complete physical prostration had added to their perceptiveness. Whenever the vicar talked withhim now he was much impressed by the range and quality of his mind.
“Gervase,” said the vicar after a brief mental survey of the position, “I wonder if I might venture to speak to you about something that is troubling me a good deal?”
“Certainly, certainly,” said the occupant of the spinal carriage, with an alert, almost eager smile. “If there’s any way in which I can be of the slightest use, or any way in which you think I can I shall be only too delighted.”
“I hate having to bother you with a matter of this kind. But it is likely that you know something about it. And I am greatly in need of advice, which I hope you may be able to give.”
“I hope I may.” The vicar’s gravity was not lost upon Brandon. “Perhaps you would like to discuss it in the library?”
“If you don’t mind.”