XL
Afterluncheon that same day, the salutary process now at work in the vicar’s mind received a further stimulus. He was to find himself involved in a matter at once painful and unexpected, and the impression left upon him was deeply perplexing.
At the urgent request of Professor Murdwell, who had just returned from New York, he had promised to go to Longwood that afternoon. Mr. Murdwell had been out of the country six months, and now that he had got back, almost his first act had been to send for the vicar.
As Mr. Perry-Hennington made stately progress on an antiquated tricycle along the leafy carpet of the wind-bitten autumn lanes, he was far from anticipating the sad surprise that was in store. In the spring, when last at Longwood, he had been struck by the fact that his neighbor was not looking particularly well, and he had ventured to remark upon it. Mr. Murdwell had made light of the matter. But this afternoon, as soon as the vicar had been ushered into the cozyroom in which the scientist sat alone, he received a shock. A great change had taken place in a few months. The alert, far-looking eyes had lost their luster, the cheeks had fallen in, the face of keenness and power was terribly ravaged by disease.
Mr. Murdwell rose with the old air of courtesy to receive his visitor, but the effort was slow and painful.
“Good of you to come, sir,” he said, motioning his visitor to a chair, and then half collapsing into his own. He looked at the vicar with a rather forlorn smile. “I’m a very sick man these days,” he said.
The vicar was a little distressed by the air of complete helplessness. “I hope it’s nothing serious,” he said.
“I’ve come home to die,” said Mr. Murdwell, with the calmness of a stoic.
The words were a shock to the vicar.
“The word ‘home’ mustn’t surprise you. I come of clean-run stock; I belong to the old faith and the old blood. As the world goes just now, I feel that I am among my own people, and I want you to lay me yonder in your little churchyard on a good Sussex hillside.”
Mr. Perry-Hennington felt a growing dismay. “I venture to hope,” he said, “that you will be spared to us a long time yet.”
“A week or so at the most.” Infinite weariness was in the voice. “You are a good and sensible man, and I am going to talk to you frankly. The thought of leaving my wife and girl hurts like a knife; and of course my work means a very great deal to me. I have simply lived in it; indeed the truth is, I have lived in it too much. And it is now being brought home to me that it is for the ultimate good of humanity that it should remain unfinished.”
The vicar, grieved and amazed, was unable to say anything. He had quite a regard for this man of original and powerful mind, and it shocked him deeply to find him in his present state.
“It seems that at present there are certain things which are still forbidden to science. A year ago I was fully convinced that such was not the case. But that view was premature. At that time the whole question raised by Murdwell’s Law was stillsub judice. The verdict has now been given. I have a cancer, which must kill me long before I am able to complete my researches. And I think you, sir, and all who see the cosmos at your particular angle are fully entitled to regard this as the act of God.”
The vicar remained silent, but with an intense and painful interest he followed the revelations of the dying man.
“Thus far shalt thou go and no farther! The power, or the group of powers, which controls the development of mankind, whispered those words to me a year ago. But I chose to disregard them. I was too deeply committed to my studies, which, had I been allowed to pursue them to their logical conclusion, would have revolutionized war and everything else on this planet. There is no need to make a secret of the fact that, by the operation of Murdwell’s Law, I have been able to trace the existence of an element hitherto unknown. It has been given the name of vitalium, and my hope, and the hope of the distinguished men of science associated with me, was that its bearing on present events would be decisive. I still hold the theory that this element contains powers and properties compared with which all others in the purview of man are insignificant. For instance, I said that it was within the competence of vitalium to destroy an enemy fleet at a distance of twenty thousand miles. But as I was warned at the time the prophecy was made, and as I know beyond all question now, I am not to be allowed to prove my proposition.
“Prometheus is not to be allowed to steal the fire from heaven. And well it is for mankind that some things are still forbidden to it. Whether that will always be the case I dare not prophesy. But at thismoment I have no doubt that Gazelee Payne Murdwell is the writing on the wall for the human race. Put that on my tombstone in your Sussex churchyard.”
The vicar was strangely moved.
“Another theory I have formed, which I am not to be allowed to prove, is that with the aid of vitalium it is possible to communicate with other planets. There is little doubt that some of them do communicate with one another, and I am inclined to think that the terrible crisis the world is now passing through is a reaction to events in other places. Man is only at the threshold of the knowable. He is surrounded by many forces of which he knows little or nothing. Some of these are inimical. The future has terrible problems for the human race, and well it is that it cannot foresee them.
“As for this terrible struggle, in which I am proud to think my two boys are bearing a part, the end is not yet in sight. The resources of the enemy exceed all computation, and we don’t know what forces hostile to man stand behind them.”
“It may be so, Mr. Murdwell.” The vicar, greatly wrought upon, spoke in a voice of deep emotion. “We are in the hands of God. And I am convinced thatHe is fighting for us, and therefore in the end our cause must prevail.”
The man of science smiled wanly. “I cannot form a conception of God in terms of atomic energy. And yet I feel with you, as I have always felt, that there is a Friend behind phenomena. And I am inclined to believe, now that we have a mass of evidence to guide us, that the first phase of this war proved that very clearly. The victory of the Marne was a signal manifestation. By all the rules of the game, at the moment the enemy of mankind fell on Europe in her sleep, France was irretrievably lost, and civilization with her. But something happened which was not in the textbooks. And in the perpetual recurrence of that Something lies the one hope for the human race.”
“Well, Mr. Murdwell”—the vicar spoke very earnestly—“as a humble servant and minister of God, I can only say that I share your belief. Whatever may happen to us, I feel that the human race could not have got as far as it has, unless a special providence had always stood behind it. My faith is, that this providence will not be withdrawn in the world’s darkest hour.”
“I venture to think that you are right,” said the dying man. “But as I say, do not ever forget thatGazelee Payne Murdwell is the writing on the wall for the human race.”
This talk with Mr. Murdwell made a deep impression on the vicar. Unable by nature or mental habit to accept all the premises of an abnormal thinker, it was beginning to strike Mr. Perry-Hennington with new and rather bewildering force, that truth has many aspects. At Wellwood the previous day he had felt a vague distrust of his own perceptions. Things were not quite as they seemed. Even poor, deranged John Smith could not be dismissed by a simple formula. It had suddenly dawned on a closed mind that a door was opening on the unknown. Somehow the relation of John Smith to many dimly understood phenomena could not be bridged by a phrase. And a feeling of imperfect knowledge was intensified by contact with this other remarkable personality. One must be read in the light of the other. Murdwell was the antithesis, the negation of John Smith. And the nature of things being as it was, each must have his own meaning, his own message to be related to the sum of human experience.