0,49 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
- Sprache: Englisch
In "The Coming," J. C. Snaith masterfully explores the intertwined themes of hope and despair against the backdrop of a rapidly changing world. Through a striking blend of realism and speculative narrative, Snaith delves into the lives of characters grappling with existential crises, offering rich character development and a poignant social commentary that reflects the anxieties of his time. The literary style, marked by lyrical prose and vivid imagery, surrounds readers in a thought-provoking atmosphere where the ordinary meets the extraordinary, making it a vital contribution to early 20th-century literature. J. C. Snaith, a prolific writer and intellectual of his era, was deeply influenced by the societal changes and technological advancements of the early 1900s. His background in commerce and involvement in various literary circles provided him with a unique perspective on the human condition, inspiring him to blend fiction with pressing social realities. This experience is reflected in "The Coming," where his nuanced understanding of human motivations reveals the layers of complexity within each character's journey. For readers seeking an engaging narrative that balances personal and societal reflections, "The Coming" is a compelling recommendation. Snaith'Äôs ability to weave together individual experiences with broader themes of change and resilience invites profound reflection, making this book a must-read for those intrigued by the intersection of literature and the human experience.
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
Ähnliche
The coming
Table of Contents
I
He came to his own and his own knew him not.
The vicar of the parish sat at his study table pen in hand, a sheet of paper before him. It was Saturday morning already and his weekly sermon was not yet begun. On Sundays, at the forenoon service, it was Mr. Perry-Hennington’s custom to read an old discourse, but in the evening the rigid practice of nearly forty years required that he should give to the world a new and original homily.
To a man of the vicar’s mold this was a fairly simple matter. His rustic flock was not in the least critical. To the villagers of Penfold, a hamlet on the borders of Sussex and Kent, every word of their pastor was gospel. And in their pastor’s own gravely deliberate words it was the gospel of Christ Crucified.
There had been a time in the vicar’s life when his task had sat lightly upon him. Given the family living of Penfold-with-Churley in October, 1879, the Reverend the Honorable Thomas Perry-Hennington had never really had any trouble in the matter until August, 1914. And then, all at once, trouble came so heavily upon a man no longer young, that from about the time of the retreat from Mons Saturday morning became a symbol of torment. It was then that a dark specter first appeared in the vicar’s mind. For thirty-five years he had been modestly content with a simple moral obligation in return for a stipend of eight hundred pounds a year. He had never presumed to question the fitness of a man with an Oxford pass degree for such a relatively humble office. A Christian of the old sort, with the habit of faith, and in his own phrase “without intellectual smear,” he had always been on terms with God. And though Mr. Perry-Hennington would have been the last to claim Him as a tribal deity, in the vicar’s ear He undoubtedly spoke with the accent of an English public school, and used the language of Dr. Pusey and Dr. Westcott. But somehow August, 1914, had seemed to change everything.
It was now June of the following year and Saturday morning had grown into a nightmare for the vicar. Doubt had arisen in the household of faith, a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand, but only a firm will and a stout heart had been able to dispel it. Terrible wrong had been done to an easy and pleasant world and God had seemed to look on. Moreover it had been boldly claimed that not only was he a graduate of a foreign university, but that he had justified the ways of Antichrist.
After grave and bitter searchings of heart, Mr. Perry-Hennington had risen, not only in the pulpit but in the public press, to rebut the charge. But this morning, seated in a charming room, biting the end of a pen, a humbler, more personal doubt in his mind. Was it a man’s work to be devoting one’s energies to the duties of a parish priest? Was it a man’s work to be addressing a few yokels, for the most part women and old men? As far as Penfold-with-Churley was concerned Armageddon might have been ages away. In fact Mr. Perry-Hennington had recently written a letter to his favorite newspaper in very good English to say so.
For the tenth time that morning the vicar dipped his pen in the ink. For the tenth time it hung lifeless, a thing without words, above a page thirsting to receive them. For the tenth time the ink grew dry. With a faint sigh, which in one less strong of will would have been despair, he suddenly lifted his eyes to look through the window.
The room faced south. Sussex was spread before him like a carpet. Fold upon fold, hill beyond hill, it flowed in curves of inconceivable harmony to meet the distant sea. To the right a subtle thickening of sunlight marked the ancient forest of Ashdown; straight ahead was Crowborough Beacon; far away to the left were dark masses of gorse, masking the delicate verdure of the weald of Kent. There was not a cloud in the sky. The sun of June, a generous, living warmth, was everywhere. But as the vicar gazed solemnly out of the window he had not a thought for the enchantment of the scene.
Suddenly he rose a little impatiently and opened the window still wider. If he was to do his duty on the morrow he must have more light, more air. A grizzled head was flung forth to meet the strong, keen sun, to snuff the magic air. A clean wind racing by made his lips and eyelids tingle, and then, all at once, he remembered his boy on the Poseidon.
But he must put the Poseidon out of his mind if he was to do his pastoral duty on the morrow. Before he could draw in his head and buckle to his task, an odd whirr of sound, curiously sharp and loud, came on his ear. There was an airplane somewhere. Involuntarily he shaded his eyes to look. Yes, there she was! What speed, what grace, what incomparable power in the live, sentient thing! How feat she looked, how noble, as she rode the blue like some fabled roc of an eastern story.
“Off to France,” said the vicar. He took off his spectacles and wiped them, and then put them on again.
But the morrow’s sermon was again forgotten. He had remembered his boy in the air. The graceless lad whom he had flogged more than once in that very room, who had done little good at Marlborough, who had preferred a stool in a stockbroker’s office to the University, was now a superman, a veritable god in a machine. A week ago he had been to Buckingham Palace to be decorated by the King for an act of incredible daring. His name was great in the hearts of his countrymen. This lad not yet twenty, whom wild horses would not have dragged through the fourth Æneid, had made the name of Perry-Hennington ring throughout the empire.
From this amazing Charley in his biplane, it was only a step in the father’s mind to honest Dick and the wardroom of the Poseidon. The vicar recalled with a little thrill of pride how Dick’s grandfather, the admiral, had always said that the boy was “a thorough Hennington,” the highest compliment the stout old sea dog had it in his power to pay him or any other human being. And then from Dick with his wide blue eyes, his square, fighting face and his nerves of steel the thoughts of the father flew to Tom, his eldest boy, the high-strung, nervous fellow, the Trinity prize man with the first-class brain. Tom had left not only a lucrative practice and brilliant prospects at the Bar, but also a delicate wife and three young children in order to spend the winter in the trenches of the Ypres salient. Moreover, he had “stuck it” without a murmur of complaint, although he was far too exact a thinker ever to have had any illusions in regard to the nature of war, and although this particular war defied the human imagination to conceive its horror.
Yes, after all, Tom was the most wonderful of the three. Nature had not meant him for a soldier, the hypersensitive, overstrung lad who would faint over a cut finger, who had loathed cricket and football, or anything violent, who in years of manhood had had an almost fanatical distrust of the military mind. Some special grace had helped him to endure the bestiality of Flanders.
From the thought of the three splendid sons God had given him the mind of the vicar turned to their begetter. He was only just sixty, he enjoyed rude health except for a touch of rheumatism now and again, yet here he was in a Sussex village supervising parish matters and preaching to women and old men.
At last, with a jerk of impatience that was half despair, he suddenly withdrew his head from the intoxicating sun, the cool, scented wind of early June. “I’ll see the Bishop, that’s what I’ll do,” he muttered as he did so.
But as he sat down once more at his writing table before the accusing page, he remembered that he had seen the Bishop several times already. And the Bishop’s counsel had been ever the same. Let him do the duty next him. His place was with his flock. Let him labor in his vocation, the only work for which one of his sort was really qualified.
Bitterly this soldier of God regretted now that he had not chosen in his youth the other branch of his profession. Man of sixty as he was, there were times when he burned to be with his three boys in the fight. His own father, a fine old Crimean warrior, had once given him the choice of Sandhurst or Oxford, and the vicar was now constrained to believe that he had chosen the lesser part. By this time he might have been on the General Headquarters Staff, whereas he was not even permitted to wear the uniform of the true Church Militant.
At last with a groan of vexation the vicar dipped his pen again. And then something happened. Without conscious volition, or overt process of the mind, the pen began to move across the page. Slowly it traced a succession of words, whose purport he didn’t grasp until an eye had been passed over them. “Let us cast off the works of darkness, let us put on the armor of light.”
Sensible at once of high inspiration he took a vital force from the idea. It began to unseal faculties latent within him. His thoughts came to a point at last, they grew consecutive, he could see his way, his mind took wings. And then suddenly, alas, before he could lay pen to paper, there came a very unfortunate interruption.
II
There was a knock on the study door.
“Come in,” called the vicar rather sharply.
The whole household knew that on Sunday morning those precincts were inviolable.
His daughter Edith came hurriedly into the room. A tall, thin, eager-looking girl, her large features and hook nose were absurdly like her father’s. Nobody called her handsome, yet in bearing and movement was the lithe grace the world looks for in a clean-run strain. But lines of ill-health were in the sensitive face, and the honest, rather near-sighted eyes had a look of tension and perplexity. An only girl, in a country parsonage, thrown much upon herself, the war had begun to tell its tale. Intensely proud that her brothers were in it, she could think of nothing else. Their deeds, hazards, sacrifices were taken for granted as far as others could guess, but they filled her with secret disgust for her own limited activities. Limited they must remain for some little time to come. It had been Edith’s wish to go to Serbia with her cousin’s Red Cross unit. And in spite of the strong views of her doctor she would have done so but for a sharp attack of illness. That had been three months ago. She was not yet strong enough for regular work in a hospital or a munition factory, but as an active member of a woman’s volunteer training corps, she faithfully performed certain local and promiscuous duties.
There was one duty, however, which Edith in her zeal had lately imposed upon herself. Or it may have been imposed upon her by that section of the English press from which she took her opinions. For the past three Saturday mornings it had been carried out religiously. Known as “rounding up the shirkers,” it consisted in making a tour of the neighboring villages on a bicycle, and in presenting a white feather to male members of the population of military age who were not in khaki.
The girl had just returned from the fulfillment of the weekly task. She was in a state of excitement slightly tinged with hysteria, and that alone was her excuse for entering that room at such a time.
At first the vicar was more concerned by her actual presence than for the state of her feelings.
“Well, what is it?” he demanded impatiently, without looking up from his sermon.
“I’m so sorry to disturb you, father”—the high-pitched voice had a curious quiver in it—“but something rather disagreeable has happened. I felt that I must come and tell you.”
The vicar swung slowly round in his chair. He was an obtuse man, therefore the girl’s excitement was still lost upon him, but he had a fixed habit of duty. If the matter was really disagreeable he was prepared to deal with it at once; if it admitted of qualification it must wait until after luncheon.
There was no doubt, however, in Edith’s mind that it called for her father’s immediate attention. Moreover, the fact was at last made clear to him by a mounting color, and an air of growing agitation.
“Well, what’s the matter?” A certain rough kindness came into the vicar’s tone as soon as these facts were borne in upon him. “I hope you’ve not been overtaxing yourself. Joliffe said you would have to be very careful for some time.”
The attempt of a somewhat emotional voice to reassure him on that point was not altogether a success.
“Then what is the matter?” The vicar peered at her solemnly over his spectacles.
Edith hesitated.
The vicar mobilized an impatient eyebrow.
“It’s—it’s only that wretched man, John Smith.”
Mr. Perry-Hennington gave a little start of annoyance at the mention of the name.
“He’s quite upset me.”
“What’s he been doing now?” The vicar’s tone was an odd mingling of scorn and curiosity.
“It’s foolish to let a man of that kind upset one,” said Edith rather evasively.
“I agree. But tell me——?”
“It will only annoy you.” Filial regard and outraged feelings had begun a pitched battle. “It’s merely weak to be worried by that kind of creature.”
“My dear girl”—the tone was very stern—“tell me in just two words what has happened.” And the vicar laid down his pen and sat back in his chair.
“I have been insulted.” Edith made heroic fight but the sense of outrage was too much for her.
“How? In what way?” The county magistrate had begun to take a hand in the proceedings.
A little alarmed, Edith plunged into a narrative of events. “I had just one feather left on my return from Heathfield,” she said, “and as I came across the Common there was John Smith loafing about as he so often is. So I went up to him and said: ‘I should like to give you this.’”
A look of pained annoyance came into the vicar’s face. “It may be right in principle,” he said, “but the method doesn’t appeal to me. And I warned you that something of this kind might happen.”
“But he ought to be in the army. Or working at munitions.”
“Maybe. Well, you gave him the feather. And what happened?”
“First of all he kissed it. Then he put it in his buttonhole, and struck a sort of attitude and said—let me give you his exact words—‘And lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him.’”
The vicar jumped up as if he had been stung. “The fellow said that! But that’s blasphemy!”
“Exactly what I thought, father,” said Edith in an extremely emotional voice. “I was simply horrified.”
“Atrocious blasphemy!” Seething with indignation the vicar began to stride about the room. “This must be carried further,” he said.
To the lay mind such an incident hardly called for serious notice, even on the part of the vicar of the parish whose function it was to notice all things seriously. But with a subtlety of malice that Mr. Perry-Hennington deeply resented it had searched out his weakness. For some little time now, John Smith had been a thorn in the pastoral cushion. Week by week this village wastrel was becoming a sorer problem. Although the man’s outrageous speech was of a piece with the rest of his conduct, the vicar immediately felt that it had brought matters to a head. He had already foreseen that the mere presence in his parish of this young man would sooner or later force certain issues upon him. Let them now be raised. Mr. Perry-Hennington felt that he must now face them frankly and fearlessly, once and for all, in a severely practical way.
His imperious stridings added to Edith’s alarm.
“Somehow, father,” she ventured, “I don’t quite think he meant it for blasphemy. After all he’s hardly that kind of person.”
“Then what do you suppose the fellow did mean?” barked the vicar.
“Well, you know that half crazy way of his. After all, he may not have meant anything in particular.”
“Whatever his intention he had no right to use such words in such a connection. I am going to follow this matter up.”
Edith made a second rather distressed attempt to clear John Smith; the look in her father’s face was quite alarming.
But Mr. Perry-Hennington was not to be appeased. “Sooner or later there’s bound to be serious trouble with the fellow. And this is an opportunity to come to grips with him. I will go now and hear what he has to say for himself and then I must very carefully consider the steps to be taken in a highly disagreeable matter.”
Thereupon, with the resolution of one proud of the fact that action is his true sphere the vicar strode boldly to the hatstand in the hall.
III
As Mr. Perry-Hennington surged through the vicarage gate in the direction of the village green, a rising tide of indignation swept the morrow’s discourse completely out of his mind. This was indeed a pity. Much was going on around and its inner meanings were in themselves a sermon. Every bush was afire with God. The sun of June was upon gorse and heather; bees, birds, hedgerows, flowers, all were touched with magic; larks were hovering, sap was flowing in the leaves, nature in myriad aspects filled with color, energy and music the enchanted air. But none of these things spoke to the vicar. He was a man of wrath. Anger flamed within him as, head high-flung, he marched along a steep, bracken-fringed path, in quest of one whom he could no longer tolerate in his parish.
For some little time now, John Smith had been a trial. To begin with this young man was an alien presence in a well-disciplined flock. Had he been native-born, had his status and position been defined by historical precedent, Mr. Perry-Hennington would have been better able to deal with him. But, as he had complained rather bitterly, “John Smith was neither fish, flesh nor well-boiled fowl.” There was no niche in the social hierarchy that he exactly fitted; there was no ground, except the insecure one of personal faith, upon which the vicar of the parish could engage him.
The cardinal fact in a most difficult case was that the young man’s mother was living in Penfold. Moreover, she was the widow of a noncommissioned officer in a line regiment, who in the year 1886 had been killed in action in the service of his country. John, the only and posthumous child of an obscure soldier who had died in the desert, had been brought to Penfold by his mother as a boy of ten. There he had lived with her ever since in a tiny cottage on the edge of the common; there he had grown up, and as the vicar was sadly constrained to believe, into a freethinker, a socialist and a generally undesirable person.
These were hard terms for Mr. Perry-Hennington to apply to anyone, but the conduct of the black sheep of the fold was now common talk, if not an open scandal. For one thing he was thought to be unsound on the war. He was known to hold cranky views on various subjects, and he had addressed meetings at Brombridge on the Universal Religion of Humanity or some kindred high-flown theme. Moreover, he talked freely with the young men of the neighborhood, among whom he was becoming a figure of influence. Indeed, it was said that the source of a kind of pacifist movement, faintly stirring up and down the district, could be traced to John Smith.
Far worse, however, than all this, he had lately acquired a reputation as a faith-healer. It was claimed for him by certain ignorant people at Grayfield and Oakshott that by means of Christian Science he had cured deafness, rheumatism and other minor ills to which the local flesh was heir. The vicar had been too impatient of the whole matter to investigate it. On the face of it the thing was quite absurd. In his eyes John Smith was hardly better than a yokel, although a man of superior education for his rank of life. Indeed, in Mr. Perry-Hennington’s opinion, that was where the real root of the mischief lay. The mother, who was very poor, had contrived, by means of the needle, and by denying herself almost the necessities of life, to send the lad for several years to the grammar school at the neighboring town of Brombridge, where he had undoubtedly gained the rudiments of an education far in advance of any the village school had to offer. John had proved a boy of almost abnormal ability; and the high master of the grammar school had been sadly disappointed that he did not find his way to Oxford with a scholarship. Unfortunately the boy’s health had always been delicate. He had suffered from epilepsy, and this fact, by forbidding a course of regular study, prevented a lad of great promise obtaining at an old university the mental discipline of which he was thought to stand in need.
The vicar considered it was this omission which had marred the boy’s life. None of the learned professions was open to him; his education was both inadequate and irregular; moreover, the precarious state of his health forbade any form of permanent employment. Situations of a clerical kind had been found for him from time to time which he had been compelled to give up. Physically slight, he had never been fit for hard manual labor. Indeed, the only work with his hands for which he had shown any aptitude was at the carpenter’s bench, and for some years now he had eked out his mother’s slender means by assisting the village joiner.
The unfortunate part of the matter was, however, that the end was not here. Mentally, there could be no doubt, John Smith, a man now approaching thirty, was far beyond the level of the carpenter’s bench. His mind, in the vicar’s opinion, was deplorably ill-regulated, but in certain of its aspects he was ready to admit that it had both originality and power. The mother was a daughter of a Baptist minister in Wales, a fact which tended to raise her son beyond the level of his immediate surroundings; but that apart, the village carpenter’s assistant had never yielded his boyish passion for books. He continued to read increasingly, books to test and search a vigorous mind. Moreover, he had an astonishing faculty of memory, and at times wrote poetry of a mystical, ultra-imaginative kind.
The case of John Smith was still further complicated for Mr. Perry-Hennington by the injudicious behavior of the local squire. Gervase Brandon, a cultivated, scholarly man, had encouraged this village ne’er-do-well in every possible way. There was reason to believe that he had helped the mother from time to time, and John, at any rate, had been given the freedom of the fine old library at Hart’s Ghyll. There he could spend as many hours as he wished; therefrom he could borrow any volume that he chose, no matter how precious it might be; and in many delicate ways the well-meaning if over-generous squire, had played the part of Mæcenas.
In the vicar’s opinion the inevitable sequel to Gervase Brandon’s unwisdom had already occurred. A common goose had come to regard himself as a full-fledged swan. It was within the vicar’s knowledge that from time to time John Smith had given expression to views which the ordinary layman could not hold with any sort of authority. Moreover, when remonstrated with, “this half-educated fellow” had always tried to stand his ground. And at the back of the vicar’s mind still rankled a certain mot of John Smith’s, duly reported by Samuel Veale the scandalized parish clerk. He had said that, as the world was constituted at present, the gospel according to the Reverend Thomas Perry-Hennington seemed of more importance than the gospel according to Jesus Christ.
When taxed with having made the statement to the village youth, John Smith did not deny the charge. He even showed a disposition to defend himself; and the vicar had felt obliged to end the interview by abruptly walking away. Some months had passed since that incident. But in his heart the vicar had not been able to forgive what he could only regard as a piece of effrontery. Henceforward all his dealings with John Smith were tainted by that recollection. The subject still rankled in his mind; indeed he would have been the first to own that it was impossible now for such a man as himself to consider the problem of John Smith without prejudice. Moreover, he was aware that an intense and growing personal resentment boded ill for the young man’s future life in the parish of Penfold-with-Churley.
Sore, unhappy, yet braced with the stern delight that warriors feel, the vicar reached the common at last. That open, furze-clad plateau which divided Sussex from Kent and rose so sharply to the sky that it formed a natural altar upon which the priests of old had raised a stone was the favorite tryst of this village wastrel. As soon as Mr. Perry-Hennington came to the end of the steep path from the vicarage which debouched to the common, he shaded his eyes from the sun’s glare. Straight before him, less than a hundred yards away, was the man he sought. John Smith was leaning against the stone.
The vicar took off his hat to cool his head a little, and then swung boldly across the turf. The young man, who was bareheaded and clad in common workaday clothes, looked clean and neat enough, but somehow strangely slight and frail. Gaunt of jaw and sunken-eyed, the face was of a very unusual kind, and from time to time was lit by a smile so vivid as to be unforgetable. But the outward aspect of John Smith had never had anything to say to the vicar, and this morning it had even less to say than usual.
For the vicar’s attention had been caught by something else. Upon the young man’s finger was perched a little, timid bird. He was cooing to it, in an odd, loving voice, and as the vicar came up he said: “Nay, nay, don’t go. This good man will do you no harm.”
But the bird appeared to feel otherwise. By the time the vicar was within ten yards it had flown away.
“Even the strong souls fear you, sir,” said the young man with his swift smile, looking him frankly in the eyes.
“It is the first time one has heard such a grandiloquent term applied to a yellow-hammer,” said the vicar coldly.
“Things are not always what they seem,” said the young man. “The wisdom of countless ages is in that frail casket.”
“Don’t talk nonsense,” said the vicar sharply.
“Many a saint, many a hero, is borne on the wings of a dove.”
“Transcendental rubbish.” The vicar mopped his face with his handkerchief, and then he began: “Smith”—he was too angry to use the man’s Christian name—“my daughter tells me you have been blasphemous.”
The young man, who still wore the white feather in his coat, looked at the angry vicar with an air of gentle surprise.
“Please don’t deny it,” said the vicar, taking silence for a desire to rebut the charge. “She has repeated to me word for word your mocking speech when you put that symbol of cowardice in your buttonhole.”
John Smith looked at the vicar with his deep eyes and then he said slowly and softly: “If my words have hurt her I am very sorry.”
This speech, in spite of its curious gentleness, added fuel to the vicar’s anger.
“The humility you affect does not lessen their offense,” he said sharply.
“Where lies the offense you speak of?” The question was asked simply, with a grave smile.
“If it is not clear to you,” said the vicar with acid dignity, “it shall not be my part to explain it. I am not here to bandy words. Nor do I intend to chop logic. You consider yourself vastly clever, no doubt. But I have to warn you that the path you follow is full of peril.”
“Yes, the path we are following is full of peril.”
“Whom do you mean by ‘we’?” said the vicar sternly.
“Mankind. All of us.”
“That does not affect the question. Let us leave the general alone, let us keep to the particular.”
“But how can we leave the general alone, how can we keep to the particular, when we are all members of one another?”
The vicar checked him with an imperious hand.
“Blasphemer.” he said with growing passion, “how dare you parody the words of the Master?”
“No one can parody the words of the Master. Either they are or they are not.”
“I am not here to argue with you. Understand, John Smith, that in all circumstances I decline to chop logic with—with a person of your sort.”
It added to this young man’s offense in the eyes of the vicar that he had presumed to address him as an intellectual equal. It was true that in a way of delicate irony, which even Mr. Perry-Hennington was not too dense to perceive, this extraordinary person deferred continually to the social and mental status of his questioner. It was the manner of one engaged in rendering to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s, but every word masked by the gentle voice was so subtly provocative that Mr. Perry-Hennington felt a secret humiliation in submitting to them. The implication made upon his mind was that the rôle of teacher and pupil had been reversed.
This unpleasant feeling was aggravated to the point of the unbearable by John Smith’s next words.
“Judge not,” he said softly. “Once priests judged Jesus Christ.”
The vicar recoiled.
“Abominable!” he said, and he clenched his fists as if he would strike him. “Blasphemer!”
The young man smiled sadly. “I only speak the truth,” he said. “If it wounds you, sir, the fault is not mine.”
Mr. Perry-Hennington made a stern effort to keep himself in hand. It was unseemly to bandy words with a man of this kind. Yet, as he belonged to the parish, the vicar in a sense was responsible for him; therefore it became his duty to find out what was at the back of his mind. Curbing as well as he could an indignation that threatened every moment to pass beyond control, he called upon John Smith to explain himself.
“You say you only speak the truth as it has been shown you. First I would ask whence it comes, and then I would ask how do you know it for the truth?”
“It has been communicated by the Father.”
“Don’t be so free with the name of God,” said the vicar sternly. “And I, at any rate, take leave to doubt it.”
“There is a voice I hear within me. And being divine it speaks only the truth.”
“How do you know it is divine?”
“How do I know the grass is green, the sky blue, the heather purple? How do I know the birds sing?”
“That is no answer,” said the vicar. “It is open to anyone to claim a divine voice within did not modesty forbid.”
The smile of John Smith was so sweetly simple that it could not have expressed an afterthought. “Had you a true vocation,” he said, “would you find such uses for your modesty?”
The vicar, torn between a desire to rebuke what he felt to be an intolerable impertinence and a wish to end an interview that boded ill to his dignity, could only stand irresolute. Yet this odd creature spoke so readily, with a precision so rare and curious that his every word seemed to acquire a kind of authority. Bitterly chagrined, half insulted as the vicar was, he determined to continue the argument if only for the sake of a further light upon the man’s state of mind.
“You claim to hear a divine voice. Is it for that reason, may one ask, that you feel licensed to utter such appalling blasphemies?”
John Smith smiled again in his odd way.
“You speak like the men of old time,” he said softly.
“I use the King’s English,” said the vicar. “And I use it as pointedly, as expressively, as sincerely as lies in my power. I mean every word I say. You claim the divine voice, yet all that it speaks is profanity and corruption.”
“As was said of the prophets of old?”
“You claim to be a prophet?”
“Yes, I claim to be a prophet.”
“That is interesting.” There was a sudden change of tone as the vicar realized the importance of the admission. He saw that it might have a very important bearing upon his future course of action. “You claim to be a prophet in order that you may blaspheme the Creator.”
“I claim to be a prophet of the good, the beautiful, and the true. I claim to hear the voice of the eternal. And if these things be blasphemous in your sight, I can only grieve for your election.”
“Leave me out of it, if you please.” The clean thrust had stung the vicar to fury. “I know perfectly well where and how I stand, and if there is the slightest doubt in the matter it will be the province of my bishop to resolve it. But with you, Smith, who, I am ashamed to say, are one of my parishioners, it is a very different matter. In your case I have my duty to perform. It is one that can only cause me the deepest pain and anxiety, but I am determined that nothing shall interfere with it. Forgive my plainness, but your mind is in a most disorderly state. I am afraid Mr. Brandon is partly to blame. I have told him more than once that it was folly to give you the run of his library. You have been encouraged to read books beyond your mental grasp, or at least beyond your power to assimilate becomingly, in the manner of a gentleman. You are a half-educated man—it is my duty to speak out—and like all such men you are wise in your own conceit. Now there is reason to believe that, in virtue of an old statute which is still operative, you have made yourself amenable to the law of the land. At all events I intend to find out. And then will arise the question as to how far it will be one’s duty to move in this matter.”
Mr. Perry-Hennington watched the young man narrowly as he uttered this final threat. He had the satisfaction of observing that John Smith changed color a little. If, however, he had hoped to frighten the man it was by no means clear that he had succeeded.
“You follow your conscience, sir,” he said with a sweet unconcern that added to the vicar’s inward fury. “And I try to follow mine. But it is right to say to you that you are entering upon a deep coil. The soul of man is abroad in a dark night, yet the door is still open, and I pray that you at least will not seek to close it.”
“The door—still open!” The vicar looked at him in amazement. “What door?”
“The door for all mankind.”
“You speak in riddles.”
“For the present let them so remain. But I will give you a piece of news. At two o’clock this morning a presence entered my room and said: ‘I am Goethe and I have come to pray for Germany.’”
The vicar could only gaze in silence at John Smith.
“And I said: ‘Certainly, I am very glad to pray for Germany,’ and we knelt and prayed together. And then he rose and showed me the little town with its quaint gables and turrets where he sleeps at night, and I asked him to have courage and then I embraced him and then he left me, saying he would return again.”
The vicar heard him to the end with a growing stupefaction. Such a speech in its complete detachment from the canons of reason could only mean that the man was unhinged. The words themselves would bear no other interpretation; but in spite of that the vicar’s amazement soon gave way to a powerful resentment. At that moment the sense of outrage was stronger in him than anything else.
A certain practical sagacity enabled him to see at once that an abyss had opened between this grotesquely undisciplined mind and his own. The man might be merely recounting a dream, indulging a fancy, weaving an allegory, but at whatever angle he was approached by an incumbent of the Established Church, only one explanation could cover such lawlessness. The man was not of sound mind. And after all that was the one truly charitable interpretation of his whole demeanor and attitude. An ill-regulated, morbidly sensitive organization had broken down in the stress of those events which had sorely tried an intellect as stable as Mr. Perry-Hennington’s own. Indeed it was only right to think so; otherwise, the vicar would have found it impossible to curb himself. Even as it was he dared not trust himself to say a word in reply. All at once he turned abruptly on his heel and walked away as on a former occasion.
IV
As the vicar made his way across the green toward the village he deliberated very gravely. It was clear that such a matter would have to be followed up. But he must not act precipitately. Fully determined now not to flinch from an onerous task, he must look before and after.
Two courses presented themselves to his sense of outrage. And he must choose without delay. Before committing himself to definite action he must either see Gervase Brandon, whom he felt bound in a measure to blame for John Smith’s state of mind, and take advice as to what should be done, or he must see the young man’s mother and ask her help. It chanced, however, that Mrs. Smith’s cottage was near by. Indeed it skirted the common, and he had raised the latch of her gate before he realized that the decision had somehow been made for him, apparently by a force outside himself.
It was a very humble abode, typical of that part of the world, but a trim hedge of briar in front, a growth of honeysuckle above the porch, and a low roof of thatch gave it a rustic charm. The door stone had been freshly whitened, and the window curtains, simple though they were, were so neat and clean that the outward aspect of Rose Cottage was almost one of refinement.
The vicar’s sharp knock was answered by a village girl, a timid creature of fourteen. At the sight of the awe-inspiring figure on the threshold, she bobbed a curtsey, and in reply to the question: “Is Mrs. Smith at home?” gurgled an inaudible “Yiss surr.”
“Is that the vicar?” said a faint voice.
Mr. Perry-Hennington said reassuringly that it was, and entered briskly, with that air of decision the old ladies of the parish greatly admired.
A puny, white-haired woman was seated in an armchair in the chimney corner, with a shawl over her shoulders. She had the pinched, wistful look of the permanent invalid, yet the peaked face and the vivid eyes had great intelligence. But they were also full of suffering, and the vicar, at heart genuinely kind, was struck by it at once.
“How are you today, Mrs. Smith?” he said.
“No better and no worse than I’ve been this last two years,” said the widow in a voice that had not a trace of complaint. “It is very kind of you to come and see me. I wish I could come to church.”
“I wish you could, Mrs. Smith.” The vicar took a chair by her side. “It would be a privilege to have you with us again.”
The widow smiled wanly. “It has been ordained otherwise,” she said. “And I know better than to question. God moves in a mysterious way.”
“Yes, indeed.” The vicar was a little moved to find John Smith’s mother in a state of grace. “There is strength and compensation in the thought.”
“If one has found the Kingdom it doesn’t matter how long one is tied to one’s chair.”
“It gratifies me to hear you say that.” The vicar spoke in a measured tone. And then suddenly, as he looked at the calm face of the sufferer, he grew hopeful. “Mrs. Smith,” he said, with the directness upon which he prided himself, “I have come to speak to you about your boy.”
“About John?” The widow, the name on her lips, lowered her voice to a rapt, hushed whisper.
