“Quite so,” said the vicar.
“The vistas opened up by Murdwell’s Law in the way of self-immolation don’t bear thinking about. A time is coming when it may be possible to sweep a whole continent bare of life from end to end.”
“And that, my friend, is a logical outcome of materialism, the negation of God.”
“Not a doubt of it,” said Mr. Murdwell, in his dry way. “It seems to me that some of you gentlemen in broadcloth will soon have to think about putting in a bit of overtime.”
XXVI
Going home with Edith in his host’s car, the vicar was thoughtful and depressed. He had enjoyed his evening, he had been entertained, even exhilarated by it, yet in a curious, subtle way it had shown him the writing on the wall. His host was a portent. Regard as one would this lean-faced, church-going American, he was a very sinister phenomenon. The vicar had little or no imagination, but he saw that Mr. Murdwell’s conclusions were inescapable.
For the next few days, however, Mr. Perry-Hennington was not able to give much attention to the doom of mankind. There were matters nearer at hand. He led a busy life in his parish, and in the larger parish of his local world. A mighty sitter on committees, a born bureaucrat, it was hardly his fault that he was less a spiritual force than a man of business. He was an extremely conscientious worker, never sparing himself in the service of others, yet that service connoted the common weal rather than the personal life.
In the course of a week a very trying matter came to a head. While it was maturing the vicar kept his own counsel very strictly. He did not go near Hart’s Ghyll, nor did he mention the subject to Edith. But one evening he dined three quarters of an hour earlier than usual, and then as the shadows were deepening upon Ashdown he took his hat and made his way to the common along the familiar path. As he came to Parson’s Corner, the village name for the lane’s debouch to the green, he stopped and looked furtively about. By the priest’s stone, still clearly visible in the evening half-light, a slight, frail, bareheaded figure was kneeling as if in prayer. The vicar took out his watch and consulted it anxiously, and then he scanned all points of the compass with an air of painful expectancy. Careful arrangements had been made with the proper authorities and disagreeable, even repugnant as was the whole matter, he felt it to be his duty to see them carried out.
The shadows grew deeper upon Ashdown. At last there came a distant crunch of gravel, and the vicar perceived a closed motor car creeping up stealthily from the village and past the widow’s cottage. As it came slowly toward him round the bend in the road he hailed it with a wave of the hand. It stopped within a few yards and two burly, sinister-looking men got out.
“Good evening, sir,” said the foremost of these.