746 THE DRAMA 



and the feeling of narrowness and oppression translated itself into a 

 sense of physical confinement. Everything else was too big for her, 

 she sometimes felt. Her husband, his vocation, his purposes, his pres- 

 ence, his will, his ways; the mountain that overhung her, the fiord 

 that locked her in, her sorrows, her memories, her darkness, her strife, 

 all were too big for her, only the church was too small. 



The mad Gerd said the same. The church down there in the valley 

 was poor and hideous because it was so small. She knew of a church 

 up on the mountain height, a church of ice and rock, and snow, where 

 waterfall and avalanche read the mass, and the wind preached amongst 

 the snow-peaks. 



And Brand felt that the ruinous and mouldering edifice, with 

 its cramped and narrow walls, was the symbol of the pining and pal- 

 try spirit of a religion in its second childhood. He would dedicate 

 his mother's wealth to the rearing of a church worthy of the religion 

 he peached. It should be the symbol of a wider and a stronger faith 

 in which life should find its unity. Its vault should stretch not only 

 over faith and doctrine, but over all to which God has given the right 

 to be human in life the day's toil, the evening's rest, the cares of 

 night, the fresh delight of childhood all that can claim a lodgment in 

 a human heart. The river that foams down its course, the waterfall 

 that roars through the cleft, the voice from the storm's great lungs and 

 the sounds that ring from the sea soul-caught should melt into one 

 with the organ notes and the stave on the people's tongue ! 



So Brand builds his church-symbol. And from all around the peo- 

 ple stream to fill the air with commonplace laudations of his generos- 

 ity, to give him knowing advice as to the best way of turning his gift 



to the advantage of the State and his own; to burn in upon his 



tortured soul the fact that of all his deeds this one is least under- 

 stood ; to madden him by showing him that his symbol has none but a 

 material meaning for the world; to drive him to fanaticism when he 

 sees that all he does or says feeds the very spirit of commonplace 

 against which he is fighting; to teach him that his church itself has 

 become one huge lie and that its dedication will be his lying reward. 



Overladen now with his sorrow and his defeat, and losing all touch 

 with practical reality, goaded yet further on the path he has been tak- 

 ing, and no longer recognising any physical limitations or conditions 

 of his mission, he turns the key contemptuously in the lock of the 

 church door and flings it into the river, and summoning the people to 

 follow him on his crusade through the world, and show that "life" 

 and "God's sacrifice" are one, he leads the multitude upon to wild 

 mountain heights whither they follow him in the belief that he is an in- 

 spired prophet and can work miracles for their sustenance and glory. 

 When, hungry and footsore, they halt, and learn, in answer to their 

 demands, that they must look for life-long toil, must strip themselves 



