XLI
Distressedby the interview with his neighbor, the vicar took the first chance of going to Hart’s Ghyll with the sad news. He had a craving to unburden his mind. And Brandon, with whom he was now on terms of complete amity, was the one person likely to share an almost painful interest in Murdwell’s Law and its discoverer.
Brandon, indeed, was only too ready to discuss the matter. The tenant of Longwood had loomed large in his thoughts from the hour in which he had first had the privilege of knowing him. To the mind of a Gervase Brandon, he was a portent, a phenomenon; in sober truth “the writing on the wall for the human race.” But the vicar’s news caused Brandon less concern than might have been the case had he not been able in a measure to anticipate and therefore to discount it. He recalled his last glimpse of Professor Murdwell in London, and the prophetic words of Urban Meyer.
“A terrible nemesis,” said the vicar. “A great tragedy.”
“An intervention of a merciful providence,” was Brandon’s rejoinder.
“No doubt—if his theories are rooted in scientific fact. To me, I confess, they seem wholly fantastic. They suggest megalomania. How does Murdwell’s Law stand scientifically?”
“It is accepted by the mathematician, and is said to provide a key to certain unknown forces in the physical world. It has given rise to an immense amount of speculation, and for some little time past very remarkable developments have been predicted.”
“Which may not now materialize?”
“Let us hope not. Murdwell himself is another Newton, but his Law opens the door to sheer diabolism on a cosmic scale. May its terrible secrets perish with him!—that’s the best the poor race of humans has to hope for.”
The vicar fully agreed. “Researches of this kind are surely the negation of God,” he said.
“I think with you. But heads vastly better than mine think otherwise. Good and evil are interchangeable terms in our modern world of T. N. T. and the U-boat.”
“That I shall never believe. Black is black, white is white.” It was the fighting tone, yet there was somehow a difference.
“I shall not contradict you,” said Brandon, with a smile, which had none of the old antagonism. “For one thing, the spectrum has shifted its angle since last we discussed the subject. I see you, my dear friend, and the views you hold, in a new light. But apart from that I am simply burning to talk about something else. I think I once told you that John Smith had written a play.”
“A play, was it?” Almost in spite of himself, there came an odd constraint to the vicar’s tone. “I was under the impression that it was a poem.”
“There was a poem. But there was also a play, which I think I once mentioned.”
“You may have.” Constraint was still there. “But whichever it is—does it really matter? Poor dear fellow!”
“Yes, it matters intensely.” The sudden gleam of excitement took the vicar by surprise. “The news has just reached me that the play has been produced in New York.”
Mr. Perry-Hennington agreed that the fact was remarkable, but far less so than its production in London would have been. After all, the Americans were a very curious people.
“But it starts with every augury of world-wide success.”
“Isn’t that the American way? Mustn’t they always be licking creation over there?”
Brandon was inclined to admit the indictment. “But,” said he, “they generally have a solid basis of fact to work on before they start doing that. And in this case they appear to have found it. The man who has dared to produce this play is convinced that it will prove a landmark in the history of the drama at any rate.”
“Really!” The vicar pursed cautious, half-incredulous lips. “But I’m afraid the theater conveys nothing to me—the modern theater, that is. Of course I’ve read Shakespeare and the Greek tragedies, and I once saw Irving in Hamlet—very impressive he was—but to me the theater in general is so much Volapuk.”
“Still,” persisted Brandon, “I hope you will allow it to be truly remarkable that a people so sagacious, who in works of creative imagination are better judges than ourselves, should be carried off their feet by the dramatic genius of our local village idiot.”
An ever-increasing perception of the situation’s irony lured Brandon to a little intellectual byplay. Perhaps to have resisted it would have been more than human. And as he had staked all upon the transcendent powers of his friend, and an impartial court had now declared in his favor, this moment ofself-vindication came to him as the most delicious of his life.
Somehow it did him good to watch a cloud gather slowly over the vicar’s craggily unexpressive face. An abyss was opening in Mr. Perry-Hennington’s mental life. Things were happening which threatened to undermine his moral and intellectual values. Brandon could almost have pitied him. And yet it was hardly possible to pity the vicar’s particular brand of arrogance, or, in this case, to forget the crime it had wrought.
“Urban Meyer,” Brandon went on in his quiet voice, “is the world’s foremost theatrical manager. And he writes to say that, were his theater six times its present size, it could not accommodate the crowds which flock to it daily.”
“Really!” said the vicar. “A very curious people, the Americans.”
“As you say, a very curious people. And this abnormally shrewd and far-sighted little German Jew has already arranged for the play’s production at Stockholm, Christiania, and also at the Hague.”
“Some kind of propaganda, I presume.” There was a sudden stiffening of the vicar’s tone.
“It may be so. The aim of the play is to heal the wounds of the world, so I suppose it is a kind ofpropaganda. But it may interest you to know that Christiansen, the great Scandinavian poet and dramatist, has already prepared a version for the Stockholm state theater, that Hjalmars is doing the same for Denmark, Van Roon for Holland, and that it has been banned in London.”
“Ah!” said Mr. Perry-Hennington. And then with a show of fight which amused Brandon, he added, “Wisely, no doubt.”
“In other words, the Censor of Stage Plays has completely justified his existence.”
“I’m afraid I can’t offer an opinion on that point,” said the vicar, slowly renewing his dignity.
“Only the pen of a Swift or a Voltaire could do justice to that sublime individual. Here we have a country whose proud boast is that it alone among European states is really free, which is sacrificing its young men by the million in order to overthrow Prussianism, imposing such fetters upon intellectual liberty that one can only gasp.”
“Rightly no doubt.” Of late deadly blows had been aimed at the vicar’s mental security, but there was still a kick in the old Adam. “In intellectual matters absolute freedom becomes anarchy, and that would be intolerable, even in a democratic country. The state is bound to devise a means of holding it incheck. Of this play I know nothing, nor am I competent to speak of plays in general, but prima facie the government is fully justified in suppressing it. No good thing can come out of Babylon.”
“Or in other words out of Wellwood Asylum.”
“One does not go quite so far as to say that,” said the vicar thoughtfully.
“An interesting admission!”
“Which perhaps one oughtn’t to make,” said the vicar rather uneasily. And then, as if a little shocked by his own boldness, he hastened to quit such perilous ground. “To return to stage plays. Things of that kind will not help us to win the war.”
“And yet the pen is mightier than the sword.”
“That is a dark saying I have never been able to understand. We live not by words but by deeds, and never more so than in this stern time.”
“A play may be a great deed.”
“If it be sufficiently inspired. But there is much virtue in an ‘if.’”
Brandon did not continue the argument. Feeling the ground on which he stood to be impregnable, he could well afford not to do so. Besides it was scarcely the act of a friend to press the vicar too hard in the present amazing circumstances. He was no longer intrenched in self-security. If certain odd changesof manner meant anything, the walls of his little world were falling in, and a perplexed and bewildered Thomas Perry-Hennington was now visible amid the ruins.