“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 of self-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.”