“Because Gervase Brandon is too true an Englishman ever to doubt the spirit of the race. He is depressed just now about a very trivial matter. He has magnified it out of all proportion, whereas had he been fit and well he would not have given it a second thought. No, Gervase Brandon is not the man to despair of the Republic. He is part and parcel of England herself, flesh of her flesh, bone of her bone.”
“I see he’s all that. In fact he belongs to one of your first families, with the most beautiful place on the countryside, and the manes of his ancestors, who went to the Crusades, all around him. No, I suppose he couldn’t help doing as he did, if you come to figure it out.”
“He was without a choice in the matter as he freely admits.”
“And yet that man’s a highbrow of highbrows. His knowledge amazed me—not on his own subject, of which he didn’t speak, and I didn’t either, because I know nothing about it, but on my own—on which I claim to know just a little more than anyone else.”
“On the subject of Murdwell’s Law?” said the vicar with an air of keen interest.
But dinner was now at an end, and as the inexhaustible subject of Murdwell’s Law was at all times a little too much for the ladies of the house, they made good their escape before its discoverer could hoist himself upon a theme which promised to revolutionize the world of physical science.
XXV
“Plato apart,” said Mr. Murdwell, as soon as Bud, Edith and Jooly had fled, “or whatever our neighbor’s secret vice may be, he’s got the strongest brain I’ve come up against lately.”
“I’m surprised to hear you say that,” said the vicar. “Of course he’s by way of being a scholar, a poet, an independent thinker, and all that sort of thing, but since he’s been knocked out I’m afraid he can never be the man he was.”
Mr. Murdwell confessed to surprise also. “I don’t know what he may have been,” he said, “before he went to Gallipoli; I can only say that when I made his acquaintance the other day, it seemed a great privilege to talk to him.”