XXXVIII
“Hulloa, Murd! You’re looking cheap.” Brandon awoke to the sound of the voice of Urban Meyer. En route from the luncheon table, Professor Murdwell had tarried to pass the time of day with a celebrated compatriot. A kind of freemasonry exists in all lands among the supereminent, and these two shining examples knew how to pay the tacit homage due to conspicuous merit.
“Not well, Murd?” The all-seeing eye of Urban Meyer was fixed like a bead on the scientist.
“Nothing, my boy,” was the light answer. “A bit run down, that’s all. As a fact I’m off now to see my doctor. I can soon be put right. How are you, my friend?” The kindly pressure increased on Brandon’s shoulder. “It’s very good to see you on your feet again. I heard the other day from old Parson What’s-his-name that you had managed to find a cure, although I’m bound to say that when I saw you last, back in the fall, I’d about given you up. However—I’m more than glad—I’m simply delighted.” And with the benign air of thebon enfant, ProfessorMurdwell followed in the wake of Bud and Jooly, who had gone into the hall.
“He mayn’t know it,” said Urban Meyer in a low voice, “but that man’s got death in his face.”
Brandon was startled by the tone. It had an uncanny prescience which made him feel uncomfortable.
“If looks mean anything his number’s up. Personally he’s a good fellow—one of the best alive—but he’s been touching things which up till now wereverboten. Let us pray to God they always will be.”
How do you know all this?—was the question which rose to the tip of Brandon’s tongue. But he refrained from asking it. Murdwell’s face had a curious ashen hue, and now that its meaning had been pointed out it was not to be mistaken. As for the second part of the statement, made with equal authority, it gave an impression of curious insight into certain phenomena, which it would be futile to discuss.
In the hall, over coffee and cigars, the talk went on. Brandon felt himself living in a kind of wonderland of which Urban Meyer was king. The little man’s words flowed on in soft, odd, detached syllables, yet they were alive with a magic interest for one who shared his faith. As for Pomfret, tasting deliberately a masterpiece among cigars, he had to admit in the recesses of an almost uncomfortably sagacious mind,that never in the whole course of its owner’s experience had it been so completely at a loss.
It was impossible to recognize the Urban Meyer of commerce. And to find one of the strongest brains of the age thrown off its balance by a mere stage play, the stuff in which it was always trafficking, was simply ludicrous. In the case of Brandon it was less surprising. For one thing he had hardly recovered from a terrible illness; and again he came to the theater a raw amateur. But Urban Meyer! Yes, it was quite true that the day of miracles was not yet past!
By the time they had said good-by to the little man and had sauntered round the corner into Saint James’s Street as far as Brandon’s club, Pomfret’s amazement had grown quite disconcerting.
“I fancy when Old Uncle jumped from theLusitaniait shook him up a bit,” he said in a feeble attempt at self-protection. “Hecan’tbe the man he was.”
“Because he sees the plenary inspiration in the Kingdom of the Something Else?”
“To think of that old hard-shell turning the theater into a church! Ye gods! It’s the most ironical thing I ever heard. Still, he can afford himself little luxuries of that kind. He’s making his soul no doubt.”
“At any rate,” said Brandon, “he’ll deserve well of heaven if he can reform the Boche.”
Before Pomfret could make suitable reply they walked into the arms of George Speke, who was augustly descending the steps of the stronghold of the Whigs.
“What!” he cried. “You!” His eyes raked Brandon from top to toe. “I can’t believe it. And one hears people say that miracles don’t happen.”
“I plead guilty to being among them,” said Pomfret; in the presence of Speke’s amazement he had a sense of intellectual relief.
“Science won’t acknowledge it as a miracle,” said Brandon. “It has a theory which fully covers the case. It was explained to me last night by Bowood, the nerve man. I forget what he called it—but what the thing amounts to is that functional reaction has been induced by counter-shock—excuse the phraseology—but Bowood says the thing is constantly occurring.”
“I affirm it as a miracle,” said Speke.
“I, too,” said Brandon. “More has happened in my case than therapeutics can explain. I’ve been given a new soul as well as a new body. But we won’t go into that now. At this particular moment Iwant to talk to you about that fantastically absurd official, the Censor of Stage Plays.”
But the subject was deferred until the following evening when the two men dined together. Even then George Speke was not very illuminating. After all, the censorship of stage plays was a departmental matter, and this habitual member of governments had the departmental mind. A harmless functionary had been much attacked in the public press by the kind of people who attack every kind of institution, but experience had proved him to be at once wise, necessary, and convenient.
“Wise! Necessary! Convenient!” said Brandon, “to invest a single individual of cynical mediocrity with absolute power? It’s an insult to every pen in the realm.”
Speke laughed at the vehemence but admitted the truth. Yet a threadbare controversy left him cold. To be quite candid, the theater was negligible, the art of dramatic writing equally so. Far better that both should perish than that either should sully the mind of the humblest citizen of Imperial Rome.