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The Last Miracle

by M. P. Shiel · English · Gutenberg #41794 · 436,916 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Last Miracle

Author: M. P. Shiel


        
Release date: January 6, 2013 [eBook #41794]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAST MIRACLE ***

                      THE LAST MIRACLE

                       By M. P. SHIEL

    _Author of "The Yellow Danger," "The Lord of the Sea," "The Evil
    that Men do," "The Yellow Wave," etc._

    LONDON
    T. WERNER LAURIE
    CLIFFORD'S INN
    1906


    "My domain how lordly large, sublime!
    Time's my domain; my seedfield's Time."




THE LAST MIRACLE


Towards the end of May 1900 the writer received as noteworthy a letter
and packet of papers as it has been his lot to examine. They came from a
good friend of mine, a Dr A. Lister Browne, M.A. Oxon., F.R.C.P., whom,
as it happened that for some years I had been living mostly in France,
and Browne being in Norfolk, I had not seen during my visits to London.
Moreover, as we were both bad correspondents, only three notes had
passed between us in the course of those years.

But in the May of 1900 there reached me the letter--and the packet--to
which I refer, the packet consisting of four note-books full of
shorthand, the letter also pencilled in shorthand, and this letter,
together with the note-book marked "I.," I now publish.

[The note-book marked "II." has already appeared under the title of "The
Lord of the Sea," and that marked "III." under the title of "The Purple
Cloud," each in three languages; while that marked "IV." has been judged
unsuitable to publication.]

The following is Browne's letter:--

"DEAR OLD MAN,--I have been thinking of you, wishing that you were here
to give me a last squeeze of the hand before I--_go_. Four days ago I
felt a soreness in the throat, so in passing by old Johnson's surgery at
Selbridge, I asked him to have a look at me. He muttered something about
membranous laryngitis which made me smile; but by the time I reached
home I was hoarse, and not smiling: before night I had stridor. I at
once telegraphed to London for Horsford, and he and Johnson have been
opening my inside and burning it with the cautery, so I am breathing
easier now, and it is wonderful how little I suffer; but I am too old a
hand not to know what's what: the bronchi are involved--_too far_, and,
as a matter of fact, there isn't any hope. Horsford is still fondly
hoping to add me to his successful-tracheotomy statistics; but I have
bet him not, and the consolation of my death will be the beating of a
specialist in his own line.

"I have been arranging some of my affairs, and remembered these
note-books which I intended letting you have long ago; but you know my
habit of putting things off, and, moreover, the lady was alive from
whose mouth I took down the words. She is now dead, and, as a man of
books, you should be interested, if you can manage to read them.

"I am under a little morphia at present, propped up in a nice little
state of languor, so I will give you in the old Pitman's something
about her. Her name was Miss Mary Wilson; she was about thirty when I
met her, forty-five when she died, and I knew her all those fifteen
years. Do you know anything of the philosophy of the hypnotic trance?
That was the relation between us--hypnotist and subject. She suffered
from _tic_ of the fifth nerve, had had all her teeth drawn before I knew
her, and an attempt had been made to wrench out the nerve by the
external scission. But it made no difference: all the clocks in
purgatory tick-tacked in that poor woman's jaw, and it was a mercy of
Providence that ever she came across me.

"Well, you never knew anyone so weird in appearance as my friend, Miss
Wilson. Medicineman as I am, I could never see her without a shock, she
so suggested what we call 'the other world.' Her brow was lofty, her
lips thin, her complexion ashen, and she was execrably emaciated; her
eyes were of the hue of mist; at forty her wisp of hair was withered to
white.

"She lived almost alone in old Marsham manor-house, five miles from Ash
Thomas, and I, just beginning in these parts at the time, soon took up
my residence at the manor, she insisting that I should give up myself to
her.

"Well, I quickly found that in the state of trance Miss Wilson possessed
very queer powers--queer, I mean, not because peculiar to herself in
kind, but because so far-reaching in degree. Most people are now talking
with an air of discovery about the reporting powers of the mind in its
trance state, as though the fact had not been fully known to every old
crone since the Middle Ages; but the certainty that someone in a trance
in Manchester may tell what is going on in Glasgow was not, of course,
left to the discovery of an office in Fleet Street, and the psychical
people in establishing the fact for the public have not gone one step
towards explaining it.

"But, speaking of poor Miss Wilson, I say that her powers were queer
because so special in quantity. I believe it to be a fact that, in
general, the powers of trance manifest themselves with respect to space,
as distinct from time: the spirit roams in _the present_, travels over a
plain, doesn't usually astonish one by huge ascents or descents. I fancy
that this is so. But Miss Wilson's gift was queer to this degree, that
she travelled in every direction, and easily in all but one, north and
south, up and down, in the past, the present, and the future.

"This much I soon got to find out. She would give out a stream of sounds
in the trance state--I can hardly call it speech, so murmurous, yet
guttural, was the utterance, mixed with puffy breath-sounds at the lips,
this state being accompanied by contraction of the pupils, failure of
the knee-jerk, rigour, and a rapt expression, so I got into the habit of
tarrying for hours by her bedside, fascinated by her, trying to catch
the news of those musings which came mounting from her mouth; and in
the course of months my ear learned to make out the words: 'the veil was
rent' for me also, and I was able to follow somewhat the trips of her
straying spirit.

"At the end of six months I heard her one day repeat some words which
were familiar to me. They were these: 'Such were the arts by which the
Romans extended their conquests, and attained the palm of victory; and
the concurring testimony of different authors enables us to describe
them with precision....' I was startled: they are part of Gibbon's
'Decline and Fall,' which I readily guessed that she had never read.

"I said in a stern voice: 'Where are you?'

"She replied: 'Us are in a room, eight hundred miles above. A man is
writing. Us are reading.'

"I may tell you two things: first, that in trance she never spoke of
herself as '_I_' but, for some reason, as '_us_': '_us_ are,' she would
say, '_us_ will'; secondly, that when wandering in the past she
represented herself as being _above_ (the earth?), and higher the
farther back she went; in describing present events she appears to have
felt herself _on_ (the earth); while, as to the future, she always
declared that '_us_' were so many miles '_within_' (the earth).

"To her excursions in this last direction, however, there seemed to
exist certain limits: I say seemed, for I can't be sure, and only mean
that she never, in fact, went far in this direction. Three, four
thousand 'miles' were common figures in her mouth in describing her
distance 'above'; but her distance 'within' never got beyond
sixty-three. She appeared, in relation to the future, to be like a diver
in the sea who, the deeper he dives, finds a more resistant pressure,
till at no great depth resistance grows to prohibition, and he can no
further dive.

"I am afraid I can't go on, though I had a good deal to tell you about
this lady. During fifteen years, off and on, I sat listening by her
couch to her murmurs. At last my ear could catch the meaning of her
briefest breath. I heard the 'Decline and Fall' almost from beginning to
end. Some of her reports were the merest twaddle; over others I have
hung in a sweat of interest. About the fifth year it struck me that I
might just as well jot down some of her mouthings, and the note-book
marked 'I.' belongs to the seventh year. Its history is this: I heard
her one afternoon murmuring in the tone which she used when _reading_,
asked her where she was, and she replied: 'Us are forty-five miles
within: us read, and another writes'; from which I concluded that she
was some forty to sixty years in the future. I believe you may find it
curious, if you are able to read my notes.

"But no more of Mary Wilson now, and a little of A. L. Browne,
F.R.C.P.!--with a breathing-tube in his trachea, and Eternity under his
bed now. Isn't that a curious beast, my dear boy, the thing you call a
'modern man'? Is he not? Here am I writing to you about Miss Mary Wilson
and her freights of froth, and all the time I know what this frame of
mine will be to-morrow night; I know and am not afraid. Am I a saint,
then? At least a hero? No, I am a modern man, a know-nothing. The Lord
have mercy upon my never-dying soul! _if_ my soul is never-dying, and
_if_ ... rather a mess.

"Well, no more now. I know you will think of me sometimes. You will have
to, by the way, because I am making you one of my executors. 'A long
farewell!' ..."

_Here begins the Note-book marked_ I."




CHAPTER I

MY VISIT TO SWANDALE


I have been asked by the publishers who bring out this book to add yet a
mite to the mass of writing which has appeared in regard to the late
events, for how are the mighty fallen! and, as when an oak announces its
downfall through the forest, so here it was only natural that the little
fowl should fly and flap, with outcries (sometimes) of sharp shrillness!
Much, then, has been written and said; and if I now place my small word
with the books already sprung out of what we call "The Revival" and,
rather blatantly, the "Abolition of Christianity," my excuse lies in the
circumstance that during those storms I was much with Aubrey Langler,
and that, long before those events, I was probably his closest friend.

I can, therefore, give details as to that gracious life and the strifes
in which he had a hand not very possible to another writer.

It was my way to stay with Langler at least thrice a year. My crowded
town-life was a rude enough contrast with his eremite mood, so I rarely
failed to avail myself of his invitations. Of these he gave me one in
the August of the year of the Pope's visit, and shortly afterwards I
started for Alresford (Swandale lies five miles north-west of Alresford
by carriage-road).

There happened to travel in the rail-train with me a remarkable man:
certainly, I think that I never beheld a larger human being, except in
an exhibition. We were alone in my carriage, and I was able to take note
of him. His vast jacket was of satin, and from every button ran two
cords of silk, ending in a barrel-shaped ornament of silk, such as used,
I believe, to be called "frogs"; his shirt was frilled and limp; and he
wore four or five rings. This was enough to prove him a foreigner,
though otherwise his dress was ordinary. He sat with his fat legs wide
apart, smiling at the world in the most good-humoured, yet sneering way,
showing some very long top teeth.

All the time his hand travelled to and fro, fro and to, in a rub along
the tightly-clad length of his thigh.

The man seemed most happy. From the manner in which his eyes, half hid
by their sleepy lids, hovered anon upon me, I could see that he was
longing to speak out some of his self-satisfaction; and after some short
time he did indeed speak, saying with a drowsy drawl through his
nostrils, exhibiting the sneer of his teeth, and speaking English
without a hint of foreignness:

"The landscape is not displeasing to me. Oh no; it is not so bad. There
now, you see, that little farm: it is not so bad. But it is not
romantic--not _plantureux_. It would be strange to me if the English
were other than they are. The English are an exact expression of
England--their character, constitution, Church, everything. The cliffs
of Dover, now. Cæsar might have foretold their future from their mere
appearance as he approached them; a traveller might just look at them
from his ship, and go back home saying: 'I know the English'--if he be a
man of force and grasp and insight. Oh no; that is a little hyperbole
perhaps--my little tendency to hyperbole. But, I assure you, the
landscape does not displease me...."

In this way he went on purring; did not stop; would not permit me to say
anything. His utterance was lazy, nasal; and ever and anon he pipped
from his lips, as he droned and rubbed his thigh, a dry pin-point of
nothing: this, one could see, was a habit of his being. I cannot now
recall a thousandth part of his talk, but I do recall that, as he droned
on and on from topic to topic, this thought roved through my brain: "But
what a head! what a fount of ideas!"

The man made upon me an impression of great grossness, perhaps from his
big bulk, or his manner of ironing his thigh, or his ejection of
nothings, or that wallowing in his own self-satisfaction. Round his chin
and cheeks ran a bandage of iron-grey beard; his hair was scanty, and
bald at the temples, where his forehead ran up into two gulfs of bare
skin, so that the skimpy region of hair on his great head resembled a
jacket much too small for the person who wears it.

A few minutes before our arrival at Alresford something led him to tell
me that he was about to join the house-party of the Prime Minister at
Goodford. His servants, I soon saw, were in the carriage next to ours,
for as the train drew up a valet ran out to help his master to alight,
but his master coolly made use of _my_ shoulder to help himself out as
he limped heavily to the platform, and did it with such an air of
patronage and old friendship, that, for the life of me, I couldn't help
feeling flattered.

I suppose that to be caressed by a force is always pleasant--the purring
of a petted cat!--and I understood that the Baron Gregor Kolár was a
force.

For now I knew his already well-known name, inasmuch as, after turning
away from me on the platform, he turned again, fumbled fretfully for his
card, and gave it me. I gave him mine. Then, with a bow-legged rolling
of gait which bowled his head aside at each stride, he strolled to the
brougham awaiting him.

His brougham and mine ran along the same road for some
distance--Goodford, his bourne, being only five miles from
Swandale--till we parted at a meeting of roads, and he passed from my
mind for a season.




CHAPTER II

THE WREN


As I went on towards Swandale the thought suddenly struck me that my
driver's back was strange to me. I bent forward, and asked him what,
then, had become of Robinson.

"I wish I could tell you, sir," was his answer, "but seemingly that's
just what nobody knows."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Robinson has been missing for three days, sir," he said--"since
Thursday noon, high or low, no one can find him: and cut up is what Mr
and Miss Langler are about it."

This Robinson, a very handsome man, well under forty years, was a part
of Swandale, and long known to me; but now the carriage rolled over
broken stones, and I asked no more. Soon thereafter we passed into the
gorge which runs into Swandale.

The fame of this vale is at present pretty far-spread, yet of the
"pen-pictures" which have appeared of it I know of none which portrays
half its witchery. The piling up of details is, in fact, fruitless, for
not the pen, but the brush, is fashioned to paint. I may repeat,
however, that the vale is an oval, the gorge being at the south-east,
in which already the ear is caught by that sound of waters whose chant
pervades the vale (the whole is not more than twelve hundred yards long
and eight hundred wide), and one goes on through an air of perfumes to a
giant portal, till, in contrast with the wildness of the approach,
Swandale itself dawns upon the eye in all its rusticity--a rusticity
attained by the touchiest art, for I think that throughout the dale
there was not at that time a coo or a drain not due to the care of its
designer. Langler had, in fact, given many years and the mass of his
fortune to the making of this garden.

The house is not precisely in the centre of the oval, but towards the
north-west, on an islet in the lake, the lake itself being an oval, and
it is strange that waters so shaken can show so staringly every pebble
and grayling in their deeps: _shaken_, for the ground north of the house
mounts in terrace on terrace to the hills, and down these, all rowdy
with laughter, darts a rout of waters which wash into the lake. On the
wooden bridge looking east over the lake Langler and his sister stood
awaiting me.

Langler was now a man of forty, with some silver in his hair, and Miss
Emily at this time twenty-seven.

They formed something of a contrast, she was so much darker than he, for
Langler had light, wavy hair, parted in the middle over the broadest
brow, a brow parcelled up into lax fields by the furrows of "much
learning." He wore no hair on the face, save side-whiskers down the
longish hollow of his cheeks, cheeks which looked no wider than the
breadth of his broad chin: a massive countryman's-face, yet with
something wistful and ill-fated about the eyes and the thick lips, which
ever bore a sad smile. His "bone-in-the-throat" drew the eye by its
prominence! He always impressed one as being better groomed than other
men, I never could tell why, since he was ever quite plainly dressed,
but in the very pink of correctness somehow.

However, in a certain--shall I say cynicalness?--of look there was
resemblance between the two--or, say, criticalness, scepticism: both had
a trick of screwing up at the cheek-bones a little and piercing into
anything new or curious that was in question.

It is commonly known now that both were beings of uncommon endowment,
and so kin and kind were they, that they appeared to live, as it were, a
twin life.

When we went into the cottage I found waiting to welcome me several men
and women servants--a small crowd of much more than ordinary comeliness.
Langler said then to me: "have you heard about my poor friend?"

It was nothing new for him to speak so of his servant, so I knew that he
referred to Robinson, and replied: "I have heard something. Can't you
form any idea what has become of him?"

"No idea so far," he answered; "I am giving my mind to it."

"He should be found, then," I said; at which Langler smiled.

Miss Emily was rather behind us in the passage, and at that moment I
heard her say: "Aubrey, here is John running after us with something."

I turned, and saw this John pelting up the boards embedded in the soil
which served as steps from the bridge to the cottage. He held a spade in
the left hand and some object on the right palm; Langler turned to him;
and at once I saw that the thing on the man's palm lived, fluttered a
wing, was a bird.

"What!" said Langler, "a wren?"

"Why, it is ill," said Miss Emily.

"I found it caught in the vine tendrils, miss," said John.

Everybody bent over it.

"I have never seen it before," said Langler.

"No, it is certainly a stranger," said Miss Emily, "and what _can_ that
be round its leg?"

She was rather palish.

The thing round the leg was a piece of paper, wound with worsted.

And Langler, peering at it, said: "stay, _I_ will undertake the cure of
this wanderer."




CHAPTER III

THE STYRIAN


Swandale cottage is very large, covering more than half of the island,
but mostly one-storeyed, the roofs being of thatch made heavy with
rocks, and the walls of marble kept snow-white by means of snakestone;
but not much of the walls is visible, for the eaves of the roof droop so
low that parts of them have had to be removed over the doors; and as
most of the timber about the cottage is huge, the twilight within broods
at noon. At the time of which I write candles burned in most of the
rooms throughout the day in an atmosphere smoky with incense; for all
within was a feeling of the ecclesiastical, everywhere the Church,
monasticism, the vestment, the ritual, the Middle Ages, the mood of the
altar.

I spent most of the day after my arrival--a Sunday--with Langler in his
study, which was in a corner of the cottage, and looked like a great
garret or barn with its black beams, its floor of black and red stone,
its arras and bookshelves; the ottoman, fixed into a nook under a Christ
in hone-stone, was covered with embroideries of the Armenian Church;
three diamond-paned windows looked out upon some flower-beds and lawn
and upon a slip of the lake seen through oak and poplar; on the desk
stood a pyx-and-cross, with two candelabra of plain old gold, whose six
candles more or less cancelled the gloom.

At breakfast I had asked him how the wren was faring, his answer had
been evasive, but in the study he referred himself to it, saying, "you
asked about the wren at breakfast, by which I understood you to ask
about the paper round its leg. Now, I have been examining this paper, it
bears some written words, and as they are unpleasant I didn't wish to
speak of it before Emily. However, I will show it now to you."

He opened the pyx, took out a little curl of paper, and spread it on the
desk. It was uneven at the edges, had been much begrimed, but with a
magnifying-glass I contrived to read these words in the tiniest writing:

"Ich, der Pater Max Dees, bin ein ... ner im Sc ... des Barons
Gregor ... _Um Gottes Willen_"; or: "I, Father Max Dees, am a ... 'ner'
in the 'Sc' ... of Baron Gregor.... _For God's sake._"

"Notice the material of writing," said Langler.

"Not red ink?"

"No, blood. And the instrument of writing----"

"Not a pen?"

"No, a pin, as you see from the downstrokes."

"But have you been able to fill in the blanks in the sentence?"

"In two at least of the three instances: for if a man writes with a pin
and with blood he is certainly somehow a prisoner, and that seems to
suggest the word ending in 'ner', namely, Gefangener. And, having that,
we know the word beginning with 'Sc': for he could hardly be a prisoner
in anything beginning with 'Sc' except a Schloss. So that we get that
Father Max Dees is a prisoner in the castle of Baron Gregor Something;
and he begs us _for God's sake_ to do something: very likely he was
interrupted in the act of writing it."

"But how on earth, I wonder, did he trap the wren in his prison?" I
said.

"People in such situations do become ingenious," Langler answered.

"But will you take any steps in the matter?"

"Well, I suppose one must, for mercy's sake," he answered: "but what
steps?"

"The first thing," I said, "is to locate our priest: that is, to find
out the full name of our Baron Gregor; but that is precisely what may be
difficult."

"No; I think not," he answered; "you haven't looked at the thread with
which the paper was tied round the wren's leg: just look now, though I
doubt if it will give you any information, but Emily or John would know
at once."

After examining the thread under the glass I said No.

"Well," he said, "over yonder among my flock are three goats,
half-domesticated Styrian hill-goats, whose greyish undergrowth of
mohair is woven undyed for underclothing in Upper Styrian villages, and,
in spite of its long exposure, I feel sure that the fibre you are
looking at is Styrian hill-goat wool, and a thread ravelled from some
garment or other woven in Styria."

"So that Father Max Dees probably is in some Styrian castle?"

"So it would seem, and we shall know which Styrian castle as soon as we
run our eyes down some list of Styrian barons--unless there are two or
more Gregors among them. At any rate, we shall have some information,
and can then take some step to rid our backs of the burden of the
matter. But where to find a list of Styrian barons?"

I answered that I didn't know, but that there would be no difficulty
about that. "But a Styrian wren!" I said. "How comes it in England in
August--or at any time?"

"We shall have to get Emily to coach you in some of the more glaring
facts of country-life," Langler said, with a nod. "Don't you know,
really, that many wrens are winter birds? And as to the migratory ones,
surely you know that hardly any kind of bird is reliable in its
migrations. I once knew a cuckoo--but I won't talk Greek to a Scythian.
They drift into strange tribes, you know, at the home-coming; they even
change their nationality for a summer or for a lifetime. That bit of
paper, remember, has been wafted at least twelve months on the wings of
the wind, and mauled in the forests of midmost old Lybia, so that our
prisoner may be already free--or dead. In any case, it seems an odd
little trait of chance that the thing should come here--to me."




CHAPTER IV

THE RITUAL, THE STREET CORNER, THE DEATH-BED, AND THE BELLS


Towards evening of the same day I was sitting with Langler in a little
dingle not far from the water, while down by the water's edge idled Miss
Emily, feeding swans. I did not think that she was listening to our
talk, or might divine it; but her lightness of ear was always very
decided.

I had been telling Langler of the spectacle at Canterbury during Holy
Week of that year. For the first time, I believe, since 1870 a Bishop of
Rome had been permitted to leave the Vatican, and to pledge, as it were,
the return of a prodigal, had pontificated High Mass in the metropolitan
cathedral of England.

At that ritual I had been present, and Langler had been questioning me
as to the conditions under which Tenebræ had been sung on the Wednesday
night, and as to certain minutiæ of the vestments worn by the orders
during the liturgical drama of the Thursday. The rite was fresh in my
memory, and he listened, I could see, keenly, as I went on to tell of
the conveyance of the Pontiff from the dean's house; of the trumpets of
the Noble Guard; of the reception of his Holiness by a procession of
clergy, headed by the Bishop of Emmaus; of the last sound of the bell
during the Gloria, and the clapper of the Sanctus and Canon; of the
consecration of the holy oils, vase, oil-sticks, and chrism; of the
twelve trumpets during Elevation; of the Communion, of which twelve
bishops partook; of the conveyance of the wafer to an Altar of Repose;
then of Vespers; of the antiphon "Diviserunt"; of "Deus, Deus meus"
during the stripping of the altar; and of the ceremony of the night--the
cope of violet, the washing and the wiping and the kissing of the right
feet of the thirteen....

And as I spoke Miss Emily spun round from over her swans, and flung at
us across the distance the words: "thus have they crucified to
themselves afresh the son of man, and put him to an open shame."

"Ah? Is that so?" asked Langler, with his smile.

"Happily," I said, "nobody any longer cares, Emily."

"Unhappily," sighed Langler.

And, like an echo, there came from Miss Emily, who had not heard him:
"unhappily!"

"But observe," I said, "that this whole Canterbury gaudery remains
illegal, for I have yet to hear that the Act of Uniformity has been
repealed. Wouldn't the civil power be competent, if it chose, to take
action against someone?"

"I think so," replied Langler, "if the civil power were not far too
deeply indifferent to what takes place in Canterbury to rake up against
it old laws which have become academic. Even thirty, twenty years ago
what a howl of 'popery!' Now--nothing...."

"Yet," I said, "I can't think that indifference was quite the feeling of
the nation with regard to the Pope's visit; on the contrary, people
seemed interested and pleased. With our much of numbness about the
Church is there not, really, mixed a sort of interest?"

"In one class," replied Langler--"in the class which has acquired a
liking for charming rites and vestments in good taste. Hence the
corporate reunion that has been growing up since the last century, till
now it culminates, for the English Church got to see that it must more
and more imitate its great old Mother and her graces if it was to retain
any of the interest of the nation. It has, in fact, by this imitation
retained _some_ of the interest of one class, but we know that it is
none of it a religious interest, but an æsthetic one; and as to the
lower classes, no sort of interest has survived. In other words, while
the dogmas of the Church have become mawkish to all, her dear
altar-cloths and subcingula have continued pleasing to some--to you and
me, for example."

"But the end!" I said.

"Ah, the end," he sighed, and we were silent for a while till he added:
"ah, but talking of all that, I have not told you, have I, of our new
rector? You shall hear! He is a man with a tragedy in his future, a
brilliance in his past, and, to my mind, much lovableness in his
present--though _you_ may not say so. His name is Burton--a Harrow and
King's College man, the son of a successful undertaker of Belfast. He
became a Bell Scholar and Browne's Medallist before he was twenty-one,
and was Senior Classic and Senior Chancellor's Medallist very shortly
after. Later on he was appointed lecturer, and got a tutorship. I don't
know what he did for some years, but I am told that he was offered the
headmastership of Ardingly, which he refused: he said, mark you, that he
wished to devote himself to _pastoral work_! Think of that for a modern
person of that sort! Then the Prime Minister, hearing of his parts,
offered him Ritching, which, you know, is in his gift, and at Ritching
Burton now is, so you will not fail to come across him somewhere soon.
But it is my belief that, if ever Edwards regretted a thing, it is this
of grafting Burton under his nose here into Ritching. He has caught a
Tartar in Burton, I can tell you. Burton _believes_! He is the last of
the, let us say the--Barons. And he has quite the tone of the old-world
type of priest and arch-priest--more lofty than Lucifer himself, in his
quality of churchman, you understand, though underneath I believe him to
be a dear, humble fellow. The living is worth three hundred pounds, and
of that let us say thirty pounds is spent upon Dr Burton. The rest goes
in needless 'works' among his flock--really his _flock_ I mean, for
Burton's intellect still divides the world into Church and Sheep: he
actually says 'sheep.' He breaks his fast at noon, in Advent and Lent
not till five, and I hear of hair-cloths, and of midnight risings to
recite the breviary office. Add to what I have said that the sermons
which he preaches weekly to empty pews are undoubtedly the most
brilliant, impassioned, inspired now anywhere uttered in the English
tongue--I have been to hear two of them, and you may believe me--and you
get a figure rather incongruously ranged with regard to his age. He, by
the way, bans me even more than I love him, pronouncing at my shadow a
'Retro, Satanas.' He knows that I am hardly quite 'of the light,' and my
love of the Church is an added fault in his eyes. However, to his
smitings I find no difficulty in turning always my other cheek. On the
whole, I assure you, the world will hear of Dr Burton, or Dr Burton will
break himself up against the world----But who is this?"

It was one of the gardeners, named John, who came to say that someone
had run over from Ritching with the tidings that Mrs Robinson, the
mother of the vanished Robinson, was dying.

At this Miss Emily hurried up from the water, rushing into pinks and
whites, calling: "what, Mrs Robinson! not dying?... Oh, my forgetful
head! I intended the first thing this morning.... It is grief and
solitude that is killing the poor woman. Aubrey, I must go now to her."

"Well, and I too," said Langler; and to me: "Would you care to come?"

We hurried to the house, and soon set out--Langler with his broad hat
and thorn stick, Miss Emily with a basket, and old Bruno (a mastiff) at
our heels.

We wound the north way out of Swandale by a path where we had to walk in
single file through aftermath, Langler going first, Miss Emily behind,
and as I in the middle reached my hand backward to relieve her of the
basket my fingers happened to meet her palm, Langler then talking about
Robinson, though at the time I hardly heeded him; he said, however: "if
ever midnight darkened with sudden disaster upon the life of any man,
surely it was upon this poor fellow. He was an easy, good chap, this
Robinson. You knew him, Arthur. What a beauty of mild, large eye was
his, and dark-curling beard! Do you know, I often seemed to realise in
him my notion of the face of Jesus; certainly, he wasn't unlike the
later French conception of the Saviour. As to his disappearance, nothing
can be queerer. He left Swandale at noon on Thursday to walk to
Ritching, in order, they say, to bespeak Lang, the blacksmith. Now, a
little on this north side of Swandale there lay in a spinney a
ne'er-do-weel named Notter; Notter saw Robinson, but Robinson did not
see Notter: and what, according to Notter, was Robinson doing as he went
by?--looking up into the air, whistling! So that we may say that
Robinson was not then running away--had, in fact, no perverse purpose of
any kind in his mind. Yet Ritching is less than three miles from
Swandale! And he never entered Ritching! that we know. In that interval,
then, the poor fellow was whiffed from the ways of men by some injurious
magic: and the place which knew him knows him no more."

"And as to the police?" I said.

"No doubt they are at work," he answered; "but in a matter of just this
kind I believe you will find that nothing but a species of inspired
divining, hardly common in the _bureaux_, will accomplish much."

"Aubrey, there were three strangers in Ritching during the week," called
Miss Emily from behind.

"Ah? Is that so?" said Langler. "I didn't know."

"Jane heard it in Ritching last night, and told me."

"Friends?" asked Langler.

"No, apparently; they were people taking holiday. They put up for
several days at the Calf's Head. Two were foreigners."

We were now at a gate between two great masses of rock, and passed
through it to the path over which poor Robinson had lately gone to his
fate. Hence to the dale in which Ritching moons the way is mostly
downhill, and we were soon entering the south end of the old townlet.

At that south end of the street stood a group of people singing--a squad
of three Salvationists, from Alresford perhaps, and with them a few of
the villagers--singing as we drew near, with a certain rollicking swing,
and I well recall the lilt and the words:

    "At the Cross, at the Cross, where I first saw the light,
      And the burden of my heart rolled away,
    It was there by faith I received my sight,
      And now I am happy all the day."

Twice they encored this chorus, some laughing as they sang, others
standing silent, with dimples of amusement on that side of the lips
where the pipe was not. When this was chanted out sprang a captain, and,
himself smiling, began to cry aloud: "Well, friends, you may laugh,
but--but----" He got no further, for just then down the path ran
bounding a rat, a terrier, a lot of men and boys; I had to draw Miss
Emily aside, as, rushing by, they pelted among the Salvationists, who,
in their turn, scattered, and joined the chase. Only the captain and his
two mates were left.

I caught the captain's words: "well, here's a rum go, mates."

We, for our part, went on our way, I smiling, but on the face of either
of my friends not a smile. I could not help saying: "modern
Christianity in the modern village does not thrive"; but at once I was
sorry for having said anything, for neither the one nor the other
answered me.

Only after some time Langler said: "still, the martyrs, dying for it,
lifted up their eyes, and saw heaven open. But now, you see, it has come
to this." I heard him murmur to himself: "_And now I am happy all the
day_...."

Miss Emily, who had hurried on a little ahead, now vanished into a
cottage into which Langler and I presently followed her. On our entrance
she had just passed through into an inner room, and we heard someone in
there going "_Sh-h-h!_" to her in an angry fashion.

We, too, after a little moved into that inner room. There the mother of
Robinson lay dying, and it was there that I first laid eyes on Dr
Burton.

He was standing, with a stole on, at the further side of the bed, and a
murmur of rapid words was coming from him.

At the near bedside were two of the villagers, with a lay sister from
the Poor Clares at Up Hatherley, and Miss Emily; the little place was
very dingy, but Dr Burton's face was towards us as we entered: I saw
Langler bow austerely, but the Doctor looked through him with a vacant
gaze.

The appearance of Dr Burton was impressive: his waistband circumferenced
a hemisphere of paunch, so that the hem of his frock stuck well out in
front of his toes, and he was also thick about the shoulders, chest, and
throat; his brow, invaded all round by close-cropped hair, had a scowl,
and his mouth a pout; his complexion was of a red brown. I heard him
mutter: "by this holy unction, and through His great mercy, Almighty God
forgive thee whatever thou hast sinned by sight...." And his right thumb
anointed the eyelids of the dying with oil.

And again he ran on in a rapid recitative: "by this holy unction, and
through His great mercy, Almighty God forgive thee whatever thou hast
sinned by hearing...." And his right thumb smeared the ear of the dying
with oil.

I saw Miss Emily bridle a little. In Dr Burton's left hand was an old
Sarum liturgical book in pigskin, and on he droned: "by this holy
unction, and through His great mercy, Almighty God forgive thee whatever
thou hast sinned by smelling...." And his thumb noted the nose of the
poor old woman with oil.

Except this cantering mutter and a death-ruckle on the bed all was still
in the darkling room. Miss Emily stood at the head, parted from Dr
Burton by the breadth of the bed, I with her. And once more the drone
was droning: "by this holy unction, and through His great mercy,
Almighty God forgive thee----"

But now there was an interruption: the little old woman for some half
minute had been making some effort--to speak or to move--and now she
lifted her head, opened her eyes, and whispered something to Miss Emily.
Her words, as I afterwards learned, were: "ah, Miss Emily, tell him to
stop ... dear, good soul he is ... my poor son...."

Her head fell back upon the pillow. It was clear that her strength had
already been well tried before our entrance, for on a table near the bed
were the bell, light, and cross of the Blessed Sacrament, with the pyx
wrapped in linen. But at the interruption Dr Burton stopped; his face
darkened, and forth went his arm, pointing to the door.

"All leave the room," cried he with a gruff brogue.

I saw Miss Emily's face go rosy, while Langler's eyes dwelt upon the
Doctor, and he asked, with a smile: "but why so, Dr Burton?"

"Do it, sir!" cried the doctor in a startling manner; whereupon for
perhaps thirty seconds it lasted, the doctor pointing, Langler smiling,
till Langler turned, and said "come" to Miss Emily and to me.

We went out, the two villagers following us, leaving the doctor and the
Franciscan alone with the dying woman. But in the outer room Miss Emily
sat on a chair, saying: "I mean to wait here till Dr Burton chooses to
go away. Send John to me, and don't expect me home until all is over."

"Well, then," said Langler; and he and I started off to go back to
Swandale, night now falling as we passed through Ritching and thence on
up the rising land towards Swandale, and half way up we halted, and
turned together, surveying the scene of the valley, veiled now in the
hazes of the Sabbath evening: Ritching church-spire could be seen
standing out of a garland of wood; so could a part of Goodford village
far in the north-west, and there, too, just vanishing out of sight, a
church-spire; and presently there was wafted up to us from the valley a
charming noise--church-bells chiming for Benediction of the Blessed
Sacrament. Langler said then to me in a low voice: "Arthur, to me it is
very touching, such a scene; that Goodford church always reminds me of
Bemerton, where George Herbert walked and talked with his Lord, and on
the whole, what a language do they speak, those spires, those bells, how
noble an expression of men's noblest thoughts of this world through
twenty ages! One knows that for the new phasis of the world the old
expression will not do; but for myself, though I tolerate the sun, give
me Iris and the Götterdämmerung. Certainly, she was rather lovely, this
old church of the Nazarene, with a loveliness that was so useful, too,
to lure and lever the world. Who could have foretold that just in sorrow
would have been born such a charm, that the moan alone of a saint could
more ravish the sense than the rose of Sharon? And through such a roll
of generations, Arthur! The beauty that could so long baffle the law
'they all shall change,' what a charm of life must have informed her! If
we who now see her mouthing her mumblings in her extreme age, garishly
rouged and dizened with trumperies, can still by an effort live again in
her youth, how vital a youth must that have been! But that extreme age
is really here apparently. Surely the rouge cracks now, and beneath
peers the very saffron of death and putrescence imminent. Look where you
like, from the event at Canterbury to our 'now I am happy all the day,'
and do not the signs bode the passing-bell and the sexton? Judging only
from our experiences of to-day, may we not say with some assurance that
we now listen to those chimes for about the last time?"




CHAPTER V

THE TRAIL


Langler, let me repeat here, was a man of some luck in prophecy; and
though those bells of Ritching, which he said that we then listened to
for about "the last time," were about to clash over Europe carillons of
summons, shaking the hearts of men, yet even here, it will be said, he
was not quite at fault: for death more often than not is forerun by this
very kind of flickering: slow decay, then a rage and show of life, then
the end and darkness--that appears to be the way.

On the Monday morning after our visit to Ritching, as I entered the
breakfast-room a few minutes early, there at a casement stood Miss
Emily, and I see her once more as she was then, as fresh as the morning,
or as the twines of roses that climbed within the small marble casement.
Like her brother, she was not tall, but her figure was highly spirited,
with a quite French outpush of bust, reminding one always of
Gainsborough's "Duchess."

We two were speaking together in low voices when I heard the steps of
Langler coming. I may say that I had been begging her for a rose, but
she had not given it me. I had prayed, and she was saying, "but I
thought that 'blue is the hue for folk who hope,'" when I heard the
steps of Langler, and whispered her, "then some forget-me-nots."

The room was gaily feted out with flowers, and she glanced round to find
what I had asked for; but there were none, and she was saying, "there
are none; it is rather late--" when Langler walked in. I was angry with
fate, for it was an anniversary date with her and me; and _jealous_, for
into _his_ jacket she pinned a rosebud.

On sitting to table she said to her brother: "Aubrey, Mrs Edwards wants
you and me to go over to Goodford. I have just answered that we have a
guest, and, of course, she will ask us to bring him too."

"Would you care?" Langler asked me: "they are crude but worthy folk, as
you know, and their guests are often well chosen."

I said that I should be glad to go.

"But as to Mrs Robinson?" asked Langler of his sister.

"She died just before nine," answered Miss Emily. "I came home with John
after eleven, so wouldn't disturb you, as I had made all the
arrangements. Dr Burton went away at seven, came back after Compline,
frowned excommunications at me, sprinkled the body, said a prayer from
the Alexandrine Liturgy of St Basil, and groaned 'poor sheep!' with the
very tenderness of the Good Shepherd. I should revere that man, if I
didn't despise him."

"Ah? is that so?" asked Langler, with his smile.

We spoke through breakfast of Mrs Robinson and her missing son, of the
Prime Minister's guests at Goodford, of our probable visit to him, and
again of the missing man.

"Do you know," said Miss Emily in her dry way, hardly meaning, I think,
to be taken seriously, "I have my theory of Robinson? Given a village
like Ritching, where nothing odd ever happens, when two odd things
happen in it those two will be related. Is that a fair statement of a
law of probability?"

"Excellent, I think," I answered.

Langler did not answer, but was listening, one could see, attentively.

"Then," said Miss Emily, "I say that three tourists at the Calf's Head
is one thing, and Robinson's disappearance is another thing; and my
theory is that these strangers have kidnapped Robinson."

"But with what motive?" asked Langler, glancing sharply at her.

"Because," she answered, while the nerves of her face screwed up into a
little energy of shrewdness--"because he was beautiful."

We were silent at this, till Langler remarked: "ah, there you are hardly
convincing."

"I suppose not," she replied. "But what other reason? There was nothing
special about Robinson except that one thing, his beauty, and that is
how I feel. Find out some reason why one English and two foreign
tourists should need to kill or capture a specially handsome man and you
solve the mystery of Robinson."

Langler answered nothing more, and we spoke of other matters. He
afterwards said that he would be absent during most of the day, and, as
some letter-writing kept me from going with him, I saw him ride down the
course of the brook and vanish behind the arches of the abbey.

He returned before dinner, and some hours later, when the house was
asleep, we two were down by the lake's brim, the night murky and
autumnal, but we could just see some moor-hen or wild-fowl briskly
breast the waters, like boats in a choppy channel, moored, yet seeming
to move forward, as when the moon is flying through cloud.

I asked Langler if he had been able to do anything for the captive,
Father Max Dees; he puffed at his pipe several times before replying,
and then said: "Father Max Dees is becoming _too_ interesting,
Arthur--so much so that he threatens to overwhelm my interest in all
life outside himself. How if I tell you that this man, so remote from me
and mine, speaking with me from afar by a bird, now seems connected in
some way with the disappearance of Robinson?"

"It sounds queer," I said.

"Yet it is true; and, since true, mark the luck of Emily in this matter.
She said that the mere singularity of two such things as the strangers
and the disappearance of Robinson was sufficient to make her think those
things connected. Well, the singularity is not sufficient, she was not
convincing: but we know that her guesses are of a quality not very
common, and it will be some time, I promise, before I again permit
myself to slight one of them."

"You have discovered, then, that she was right?"

"Not directly," he answered; "but I believe so by one of those
processes of the mind which, if they be not reason, resemble it. You
will understand me when I remind you of a _third_ event among us about
that time--the wren, namely, and its message. Now, by Emily's guess all
the three should be interconnected; and if I tell you that two of them
are, in fact, connected, I think you will jump to the conclusion that
all are so."

"But which two are connected?" I asked.

"The wren and the strangers."

"Tell me."

"I rode out to-day with the object of making some inquiries about these
strangers, and also of finding somewhere a list of Styrian barons. Well,
then, I went first to the Calf's Head, and what I gathered there was
this: that the strangers are now gone; that they were 'certainly'
unknown to one another; and that at the hour when Robinson vanished one
of the foreigners was sitting on the doorstep of the inn studying the
county-map, one was sipping beer in the bar-parlour, while the third,
the Englishman, was leaning against Lang's smithy-door: so that Brown,
the landlord, had all these men under his eyes on that Thursday noon
when poor Robinson was undergoing his mystery. However, I had no sooner
heard of this _tableau vivant_ than my own instinct of wrong, vague
before, started into liveliness, the word which stirred my anger being
Brown's 'certainly' in saying that the three were strangers to one
another. He said it because he had never seen them speak together. Yet
these men for days ate, smoked, etc., together, under which conditions
men do exchange a word; so what could have kept these apart, except a
wish to appear unacquainted?--a wish which argues that they were not so.
But their pose at the moment of the tragedy! Brown says that 'they were
like that most of the afternoon.' Imagine, therefore, the tale of sips
taken by one of them, the countless interest of the second in the
county-map, the resource in chat of the last at the smithy-door of
Lang--all under the benign, remarking eye of Brown. One can almost
assert that, if a wrong was then to their knowledge being accomplished,
it would be in just such poses of statuesque guilelessness that they
would parade themselves.... At all events, I left Brown with the
expectation of finding that other foreigners than these had been in our
midst on that mid-day of mystery.

"I then rode over to Goodford, and was told that three weeks previously
two strangers had been there--one a foreigner. I went to Ayeling, Mins,
St Peter's, Up Hatherley--all within eight miles of Ritching--and
learned that the neighbourhood within the last months has been liable to
quite a little epidemic of 'strangers,' foreign and English, who did not
seem acquainted. I asked whether any of the strangers had been absent on
the noon of mystery. In every case I gathered that they had gone for
good before that day, or else on that day had remained conspicuously
present in the villages.

"But at Mins a very odd accident brought into my way something of a
character so wild that my eyes almost could not credit it. You know,
Arthur, the unconsciousness of people when in a foreign land that anyone
in it can understand their speech: I had this fact in my mind when at
each of the villages I inquired whether the strangers had left behind no
leaves, no fragments of paper. I pried into waste-paper baskets, even
poked into dust-heaps, but could find nothing. However, I was leading
the horse from the door of the Crown at Mins towards the gate when I saw
a little stick, so to speak, of paper in the hedge. It had been crumpled
up to be used as a pipe-light perhaps--you know the habitual frugality
of foreigners as to matches--and was scorched at one end, smeared, too,
with soap and atoms of hair, so that someone had used it to wipe his
razor on. However, it had on it some German writing, still mostly
legible, and I got six almost perfect lines. These were the words which
I read: '... now--the 15th of June--I have been here three weeks, so I
know him well. _I am sure_ that he will do for England. He is another
Max Dees, as arrogant as he is brilliant, a union of Becket and
Savonarola. His name is Burton, and he is rector at a place called
Ritching. Your Excellency should find some way of coming down here,
for ...' and I can't tell you, Arthur, the queer feeling which chilled my
veins at the instant when, in an inn-yard of Mins, I chanced upon those
words: 'Max Dees.'"

"It is very astonishing," I breathed.

"But mark," continued Langler, "the point at which I had now arrived. I
had already decided that, if other strangers were about on the day of
Robinson's disappearance, then the three at Ritching were conscious of
what was going on, and that if the three were conscious, then all might
be concerned. But at least one of those concerned had that name of
Father Max Dees familiarly on his pen's point; and, looking at the bald
record of his captivity which Dees sent forth by the wren, we may
conclude that that captivity is unknown to his world--that, in fact he
vanished from his world more or less in the manner of Robinson;
whereupon one's mind no longer pauses, but, in lack of knowledge, says
at once: 'in each case the same agents, in each the same motive.'

"But, given two disappearances, my divination went on to a surmise which
would never have been suggested to me by one only, and I asked myself,
'since there are more than one, may there not be more than two?' And
this question no sooner occurred to me than I spurred my horse, and
hurried to Alresford, where I have spent my afternoon. At the library I
obtained some volumes of the county papers, and though my search was, of
course, very hurried, I harked back nearly a year, and what I
half-expected I found.

"Most dark, Arthur, is the path of some power which now, to-night, is at
work within this Europe of ours--a phantom of whose being and trend
one's fancy can form no dream, walking vast though invisible among us,
amorphous, yet most actual. And I do not speak of a probability. I am
pretty sure now that this is so, and Father Max Dees and Robinson, if
they live, are sure also.

"One of the oddest things which I have noticed is the slumber of
understanding and of memory--especially of memory--with which we modern
people look through the newspapers. I have been reading to-day, with
dismay, details which I had undoubtedly read before, but at the first
reading must have dully cast out of my consciousness as devoid of
interest. May we not, then, define man as 'a dormouse who wakes during
earthquakes'?

"The bits of news which I mean were mostly printed small, in obscure
corners, and the significance of their considerable number in the papers
which I perused is big when one considers that they are country papers,
not formal chronicles of world-news. If, then, you find in them mention
of two disappearances of fishermen within four months on the north
French coast, you may conceive that not two, but four, may have been the
actual number: men vanished; caught quite away like leaves on the
midnight wind; and one in the Harz Mountains; and one in London; and one
in Naples; and two in Hungary; and one in Belgium; and three in Russia;
and one in Catalonia; and one in Savoy----"

"My good Aubrey!" I breathed.

"Vanished, Arthur," he said--"gone into the gorge of that dragon. There
it stands printed, and all have read it, but none has seen it, so
unrelated seems each case in its isolated chronicle. I, however, have
been able to read with a larger eye; and as to the palace of torment of
at least one of the victims we are not in the dark."

"Have you discovered, then," I said, "the full name of the Styrian baron
who has imprisoned Max Dees?"

"Unfortunately," he answered, "there are no less than three Styrian
barons part of whose name is Gregor--one a Dirnbach, one a Strass, and
one a Kolár--possibly the well-known Kolár----"

At that name an exclamation escaped me.

"Well?" said Langler.

"But have I said nothing at all to you since I have been here, about
Baron Gregor Kolár?" I asked.

"I think not," he answered.

"Then it is a singular chance," I said: "why, I came down with him in
the same carriage, I have his card in my pocket now. It never once
entered my head that he might be Styrian! He is over at Goodford at this
moment, a guest of Mr Edwards."

"Well, then, that fact seems to narrow our round of inquiry to two,"
said Langler: "our Gregor will doubtless now be found to be a Strass or
a Dirnbach."

I made no answer, and we sat there some time silent, looking where some
moor-hen or wild-fowl breasted the streaming of a surface agitated by
the inrush of the cascade, stationary, yet seeming to move forward, like
the moon ranging through flights of cloud.




CHAPTER VI

THE MEETING


The next day we were at Goodford. The mansion is Queen Anne, square and
grave, standing on grounds which slope towards the exterior of the
domain into oak-dotted swards that droop down to a wooded valley.

That first day at dinner I was able to point out to Langler the sneer of
Baron Kolár at the part of the table where he droned amid the silence of
his neighbours; and the next afternoon, when some men who had been
shooting were standing in a group on a terrace, Baron Kolár, who was
among them, left them to lower himself upon a bench close to that on
which Langler and I were sitting.

It was just then that I heard someone in the standing group remark:
"here comes our eloquent divine." And I heard Mr Edwards, who had looked
round, say in his characteristic way: "what, he still on that same
temperance job, I wonder?"

This remarkable man (who started life as a puddler's-boy in South Wales,
then became a typewriter in a London newspaper-office, then editor of a
boys' paper, then of a financial paper, then speculator and millionaire,
then--without eloquence, stateliness, "brilliance" of any sort--Prime
Minister of his country at the age of thirty-seven)--this remarkable
man, I say, gave by his mere manners and appearance some hint of the
reasons which underlay his elevation; he himself always accounted for it
by declaring that "he alone knew how to run the Empire on purely
business lines"; and, in truth, he looked like a man who could do this.

His face at this period was still fresh and pink, and assuredly he did
not look older than a youth of four or five and twenty. His hair swept
from the parting across his forehead quite down to the right eyebrow;
and against this he waged an old war, ever dashing it back, but down it
came again. His eyes darted from side to side, and he appeared ever on
the point of pitching at something, and having it over and accomplished.
He was not large in stature, and by the side of big Mrs Edwards (who was
some ten years his senior) looked rather insignificant. It was suggested
by his walk that one of his legs was somewhat shorter than the other.

He started out at once to meet Dr Burton, who came toiling up the
terraces swinging a copy of, I fancy, Paradisus Animæ. I saw them shake
hands, and then lay their heads together, Edwards hearkening, Burton
talking. Their walk led them towards Langler and me. Edwards began half
to laugh, deprecatingly I thought; his shoulders shrugged; his arms
opened; Dr Burton's brogue swelled; he waxed wroth.

The first words which I heard were these: "and are these poor sheep,
then, to be so lost and ruined, Mr Edwards? Always, always the body, and
never the soul? And is the protest of the Church no longer of avail with
the great ones of the earth, sir? I tell you, sir----!"

Mr Edwards said: "but, Dr Burton, if you would only listen to common
reason! My good sir, what can _I_ do? If I were a parish councillor,
now--or a magistrate--but I am only a Prime Minister, after all."

Edwards, by the way, was never averse from references to this fact, with
some mirth tacked on. But now he was interrupted by a deep, a bitter
word: the doctor looked ireful, and in the very voice of reproof he
said: "the matter is not one for jest, sir. I have laid this question
before the Bishop, before the Suffragan of Southampton, before the
Bishop of Guildford, the Dean, the Residential Canons; I have appealed
to the Licensing Magistrates; again and again I have appealed to you; I
have turned right, I have turned left: and everywhere I have fallen in
with evasions, with infidel shrugs, with dull delay. Now hear what _I_
say as to this grievance: I say that I should not suffer it, no, I
should not bear it at all. I don't wish to see this new bugbear in my
parish: I will not see it: and if the heavens should rain for a
harvest-moon a rain of atheist archbishops and rebellious
ministers-of-State and blatant councils, all bound together to impose it
upon me, still I say I would not suffer it, no, I would not bear it at
all, at all, for God's sake I would not. In the spirit of the blessed St
Ambrose, with my own sacred hand I shall abolish it from my sight if it
confront me; and afterwards, but not before, will I give up the
government that I hold, not of men, but of God."

And as this torrent ceased I just heard snuffled with a drawl near my
ear these words:

"Oh, well, he is not so bad, though; he does it very well--very
well...."

They came from Baron Kolár, who was gazing through sleepy lids at Dr
Burton with (it seemed to me) the fondness of a father contemplating the
feats of his boy in the presence of friends.

As for Mr Edwards, I saw him fling his hand at Dr Burton's words. He was
a being who gave heed to one thing only--effective force. Pride, high
words were so far wide of his interest that they failed even to win a
smile from him; he heard them like wind, regarded only facts, results.

"Well, Dr Burton," he said, "I am always glad to lend a helping hand to
a parson like yourself, interested in your work, go-a-head, and so on,
and so on; I am the same kind of man myself, and there's the
fellow-feeling, and so on, and so on. But I can do nothing in this
matter--candidly, it would be going too far out of my way; you must
approach the proper authorities, mentioning, of course, that you have my
sympathies, and so on, and so on----"

Here I lost his words. Meantime the baron's eyes were dreamily following
the priest and the minister-of-State, while Langler's gaze was fastened
upon the baron's face, and I glanced from one to the other, seeking to
fathom how much was inherent in what I saw about me.

Presently the Baron's eyes wandered round, as if looking for someone to
talk to, and when they lighted upon me quite close he droned in his
happy manner: "Well, he seems a worthy fellow, a nice fellow: a little
too zealous, like a torrid sun, but he's not so bad. Have you heard him
preach?"

"Dr Burton? No. Have you?"

"I went to hear him last Sunday. He does it very well--very well. You
should hear him."

"Yes, I have been told...."

"But you could not conceive; he does not do it badly. He is a man who
really is master of his business. He preaches with the progression of a
great river. He is destined to become the greatest priest in Europe...."

"Ah? You think that?"

"Wait, you will see. If a man is master of his business, and has
self-assertion to make the world cringe before his force, that is all
that is necessary. A man is either like leaven or like meal: he leavens
or is leavened. The chief thing about any animal is its amount of
available vigour. How much of Sun-fire has the man in him?--that is the
question. If he has only enough, he can wash the world in his flush, and
also if he is taught in what fashion to use it. But this Dr Burton, I
assure you, he is not a paltry man. I want you to present me--now."

"I?" I said, taken rather aback, "I don't know him."

But at once Langler said at my ear: "_I_ do."

"Mr Langler, however," I added, "probably knows him."

At this the baron said, half rising: "Ah, then----," and Langler stood
up quickly, saying: "with pleasure...."

Dr Burton had now parted from Mr Edwards, and was passing close by us,
wrapped in gloom, his frock brabbling at every stalk with the breeze; so
Langler hurried out to get at him, and Baron Kolár goaded after Langler
his rolling gait.

At this Dr Burton, as when a bull stops in its career to stare at some
new object, stood still, and at once Langler said graciously to him: "Dr
Burton, permit me to present to you my friend, Mr Templeton--his
Excellency Baron Kolár--Dr Burton."

The moment which followed was full of misery: for one could not tell
what the doctor, still heated, would say or do. I was afraid that he
wouldn't shake hands!

But the baron, with instant tact, spoke. "It was I," he said, "who asked
Mr Langler to present me to Dr Burton. I had the pleasure last Sunday of
being in the church at Ritching: that will explain."

At some moments, when he ceased to show his teeth and measured one with
a stern up-and-down movement of the eyes, this man's face took on an
expression of power which could even become compelling; so he looked
now, eyeing Dr Burton, measuring him from head to toe, till Dr Burton
put out his hand, whereupon the baron pipped a nothing sideways, and
showed his teeth.

"Ah, well," he said in his happy drawl, "it is not often now that one
can hear a sermon--not often. The pleasure comes from toillessly lolling
and watching the toil of another: but the toil of that other must be
real toil, and the toillessness of the hearer must be real also. I
confess that I have some fault to find with your pews, doctor: a pew
should never be a symbol of the narrow path that leadeth unto life. Oh,
but they are not so bad, though--not so bad. Still, I, now, in Styria,
have a church, and the pews are _fauteuils_. A man begins to cherish
these little boons when the hair is getting grey. Oh, yes. The later
Romans were the only race who truly understood the art of temple
service. The courts, too, where men like Cicero, Hortensius, and Pliny
thundered, were made luxurious. There must be the felt contrast between
another's toil and one's own comfortable indolence. Only, the toil must
be real toil. In the matter of books, now, the French have not done so
badly in that--not badly. The author thinks and works hard, yet manages
so that the reader need merely read, without thought or worry. That is
rather good, very nice. I, for example, am no longer a young man: an old
fellow gets to feel that people should see a little to his comforts.
Everything should be made easy and pleasant. The King of Korea, now: he
sits, I am told, through a certain ceremonial on a couch made, back and
seat, of four bags of brains. You know the derivation of the word
_assiduity_: to sit is to be a man; to sit much is to be civilised. But
that is a long tale. What I wanted to tell you was not to disturb
yourself about the detail which I heard you discussing with Mr Edwards.
I will take the affair upon my shoulders, and see to it that no
public-house is opened in your parish to offend your eyes."

As the sense of these words possessed my ears I saw that the
astonishment of Dr Burton was as supreme as my own. Langler leant with
his well-straightened neck over his thorn-stick, smiling, the lax skin
of his forehead twitching a little.

After some seconds Dr Burton said, looking at the baron as at some
strange being: "I am sorry, sir, but I am pressed for time. As you see,
I am a priest, and my harvest is great, and the labourers are few, so I
think you will understand that I have no time for loitering and
listening. As to your reference to the public-house, I confess that I do
not understand you at all."

Baron Kolár was bestowing upon him a smile of sleepy fondness, and as
the doctor half turned to go, the baron's hand went out to the doctor's
arm.

"Ah, well, you are busy, of course," he said: "well, it does not
displease me to see you so. A man's youth is his ancestry: the best
heirloom which he can inherit from it is a habit of industry. A young
man should work hard, not for the sake of what he can accomplish in his
youth, but because the impulse of his acquired energy will last him
through his course in a higher sphere. He buys the habit of strife and
empire, and that persists to the end. I am rejoiced to see you stressful
and _impressé_. Similarly, the youth of nations should be full of rages;
their age suave and luxurious. But with regard to the public-house,
now--do not harass yourself about such a nothing, since I answer for it
that the difficulty will vanish. I would speak to you, but you are so
busy. I will call upon you to talk it over. Tell me when, and I will
come, oh yes, I will come."

I was certain that, as the baron stopped, Langler, standing now close by
Dr Burton, whispered some word at the doctor's ear. He afterwards told
me that the words were: "_you should say no_."

But at his whisper Dr Burton turned upon him a look of surprise and some
resentment, and at once said to the baron: "I shall be at home to-morrow
evening at eight-thirty, sir, if that will please you." Whereupon he
bowed, and was off.

"Oh, well, he's a nice fellow--a nice fellow," said the baron, summing
up the doctor. "In a high position he would be just the man whom the
Church needs to push her forward and make her aggressive. What is your
opinion of the Church in England?"

His eyes rested upon Langler's face.

"My opinion?" said Langler.

"As to her lasting powers, now, I mean."

"My outlook is vague enough," answered Langler: "I should say that
bishops, church-bells, sermons, and so on, will persist as we know them
in England for another thirty, forty years."

"Ah, you think that. Well, well. I, now, should say a hundred, a hundred
and fifty years."

"That is a long time," said Langler.

"Not so long. I mean, you know, if nothing happens to annihilate her. It
is astonishing how old things will continue to hold on long after they
are quite dead and decayed. Look at old oaks and houses! A glass of
water will sometimes remain in the liquid state a long time below the
freezing-point; the least shake would make it shiver into a glass of
ice, but, lacking that, it remains liquid. Well, so with the Church.
Especially in a country like England, I give her another hundred and
fifty years."

"You are quite possibly right," said Langler; "your opportunities for
observing may have been better than mine."

"Oh, yes, I know old England very well--very well. I was once an
_attaché_ to the Embassy for three years; altogether, I have lived in
England eight to ten years. I know the old country very well--not badly.
Very nice it is, too--provided one brings one's own _chef_. The pride of
England is not her political potency, but her beef, for in no country in
the world is so exquisite a care bestowed upon the culture of cattle,
and if a quarter as much had been given to the culture of men, by this
time the Angles would, in truth, have been angels. Not that I have a
word to say against the culture of cattle. Perhaps after all man himself
is not of so much importance as what he eats. Beef is the half of life;
the other half is mutton. No, that is a little hyperbole perhaps--my
little tendency to neatness and epigram. It is astonishing how, as a man
gets older, he runs to seed in that way, for epigram is only an
instinctive device for concealing meagreness of thought. I, for example,
am no longer a young man. I begin to get fond of my little comforts. To
be candid with you, the cooking at Goodford does not altogether please
me, those partridges at dinner last night were not done enough--not
enough. Still, they were not so bad--a little underdone--and the wines
are very good--very good. But, talking of the Church, I assure you I
give her a hundred and fifty years--unless someone has a motive for
giving her a push, and then down she goes. Would _you_ care to see that
done?"

His wandering eyes halted suddenly upon Langler's face.

"I?" said Langler, "why should I?"

"Oh, well, isn't there always the danger that a decayed old house may
tumble and crush one? If the thing is a groan and a danger it may as
well go, and be done."

"But if it be quaint and gracious and historic," said Langler, "it may
as well stay, even at the cost of a prop or two. While it stands it
hurts no one: it is only its fall that may hurt."

"Well, I see your point of view. You are right, too, in your own
fashion. But for myself, the Modern Spirit does not displease me; it is
very nice in its way--oh yes. Let us have it in its full noon, I say.
Whatever survival of the past stifles it should be quickly excised and
suppressed. And if in England the Church is only laughable, I assure you
that in other parts of Europe, where it is more mixed up with the life
of the people, it continues to be positively baleful. In Austria, for
example, one half of the teachers in the common schools are still
ecclesiastics! and though the people do not believe in the Church any
more than you do here, yet it influences them, it checks and hampers
them: they feel that they would like to be quit of it, yet do not quite
know how. And, apart from any harm which it does, it is astonishing how
many thousands of men might be found in Europe who, from mere motives of
vanity, merely to tell how they took a part in modifying the modern
world, would lend a willing hand to pulling down the old building. I
believe that that is so. But you, now, you see from a different
standpoint. Well, you are right, too, in your own fashion."

To me it became clear that these two were pumping and sounding each
other with some not very evident motive on either side, Langler striking
his stick into the turf as he walked, looking downward; the baron
looking downward also, at Langler's face.

Langler said: "I cannot be made a convert, Baron Kolár. Shells, you
know, are sometimes quite charming things, and for this shell which
remains of the Church, I personally should, under certain conceivable
conditions, be even prepared to give my life: such is the whim of my
mind. But now you will excuse me--Arthur, you will excuse me: I have
some letters.... But stay; I have to ask you a question, baron."

He had stood still; we all stood still, and Langler and the baron faced
each other.

"Well, then," said the baron gravely, eyeing Langler up and down.

Langler, I must say, was paler than usual. He said: "I have lately had
reason to run my eyes down a list of the Styrian nobility, baron, and
find that three several Styrian barons have the name of 'Gregor'--you
being one. Are you acquainted with the other two?"

"Well, yes," was the answer: "one is a Strass, the other a Dirnbach;
easy, good fellows they are. Our Styrian nobility is not what it was;
no, the nobilities will soon have to go too. Fortunate thing, they will
last through my time. Look at Mr Edwards, now--nice fellow, powerful
fellow. It is fellows like him, with fresh, vulgar energies and
elementary insights, whom the world needs to guide it now. Oh no, the
nobilities must go, too. Do you know----?"

But Langler cut short that drawl. He said: "Well, one of these two
Barons Gregor unlawfully has in his castle a prisoner, one
Father--Max--Dees----"

He spoke pointedly, his eyes fixed on Baron Kolár's face; and on his
face dwelt the Gorgon eyes of the Styrian.

Some time went by in what was to me a distressing silence, till the
baron pipped a nothing sideways--a movement, to me, of relief, as it
were setting me free to breathe again, for I felt that Langler had dared
to cross a definite Rubicon.

"What about him?" said the baron, a new something in his voice.

Undaunted, though gauntly, leaning over his stick, Langler went on.

"It is my intention," he said, "to expose and punish this particular
Styrian baron as soon as ever I discover his identity; and I speak of
him to you in order to see if you can give me any hint as to which of
the two is the guilty one."

The baron's look had lost its rigour now; his lips unwreathed from his
teeth in a smile.

"It is that fellow Strass, you may be sure," he said; "or it may be
Dirnbach, it may be, there is no telling. The nobilities are no longer
what they were in authoritative power, and in Styria, I assure you, it
is nothing very astonishing that a baron should lawlessly clap a priest
into a dungeon; but nice fellows all of them, not wicked, not so bad. I
really should not worry myself about the matter, if I were you."

Langler said: "thank you, baron, I will think over what you have said."
And he walked away to the house.

It was only after two or three minutes of silence that the baron said to
me: "your friend is one of the brightest minds in the world, really as
extraordinary a fellow as I ever met, I assure you. No one with any
respect for intellect could avoid liking him. But he is a man of books,
he is of the scholar type, he is not a man of action--oh no. A scholar
should never jog himself into antagonism with a man of action. The man
of action may even wish to save and spare him, but sometimes he cannot:
for, just as he is vastly stronger than the scholar, so facts and
auspices may be vastly stronger than he. By far the safest plan for the
scholar is to hatch pastorals in his closet and handle volumes of piety.
So amiable a man is your friend Mr Langler, so charming--nice fellow. I
don't know if you think it worth while to repeat my words to him. Now I
must leave you to talk to Mr Edwards about my friend the doctor ..." and
he rolled away on his bow-legs, his hat canted over his eyes in his
habitual manner.

That very night, some time after ten, Langler was handed a letter which
he called me into the library to show me. It was a card damasked with
raised devices in red--a Christ on the Cross--and on it had been
scribbled in pencil the words: "You should not interfere."




CHAPTER VII

THE COMPACT


The next evening, as Baron Kolár raised himself on the arm of a valet
into the trap which was to carry him to his meeting with Dr Burton,
Langler remembered that some matters were going forward at Swandale
which demanded his personal managing, and he asked me to go with him.

It was a fine autumn twilight when we set out, a sound of singing
following us from the house and laughter from knots on the lawn, and we
had a very pleasant ride. At Swandale Langler talked with John, with
Jane, saw this and that with his own eyes, the water-cress at the rill
under wire, the patch of reaped corn, for now poppies lay low, over the
fields of the land the corn-shocks were leant together in lots, and all
smelt well of harvest.

Langler wished to return to Goodford on foot, and we were presently
trudging back through Ritching.

That something was on his mind I had felt sure; and this proved to be
so, for as we drew nigh to Ritching church he said: "I have decided,
Arthur, to speak with Dr Burton to-night, since, if this good man runs
his rather rash head into any danger, I do not wish to have to reproach
myself with too shrinking and nice a silence on my part."

"But danger of what nature?" I asked.

"Its nature is unguessable," he answered; "but of the danger itself one
can't, I think, have any doubt. We know, for instance, that Dr Burton is
'_another Max Dees_,' and we know that Max Dees is, for some reason or
other, in durance. Now, of Max Dees we have two further pieces of
knowledge: first, that his imprisonment has features resembling the
disappearance of Robinson; and secondly, that he, like Dr Burton, is a
'union of Becket and Savonarola.' Well, now, with regard to the
vanishing of Robinson, Emily has let fall the view that it was motived
by his 'beauty'; and though this reason for the disappearance of a man
seems even ridiculous, still we have promised ourselves not wholly to
ignore her instincts in this matter. _If_, then, she may somehow be
right, the reason for the disappearance of Max Dees may somehow be found
in the fact that he, too, is 'beautiful'; or it may be found in the
second fact known of him, that he is a 'union of Becket and Savonarola':
we don't know: but we know that he _is_ imprisoned, and that in some
respects he resembles Dr Burton. As to who is the gaoler of Max Dees, I
am really no more in any doubt. The word 'Kolár' fits very well into the
blurred space on the missive brought us by the wren; and the man
himself, you remember, made no effort to blind our eyes when asked about
the matter, even going out of his way to assure us that the other two
Gregors are 'harmless, nice fellows.' What a beast that man is! Yet how
great a strength of soul is his! Imagine, Arthur (if he is, in truth,
the gaoler of Dees), his astonishment at hearing that name on my lips!
How _utter_ at this moment must be his loss to understand by what marvel
_I_ could ever have learned that name. I expected at least to see him
start, to look abashed a little. But no; his eyes rested serenely on my
face: he seemed to be sorry for me, to deplore my indiscretion. Here,
then, is a man mighty in mass and stature, all self-assured, whose will,
whether it be bent upon good or upon ill, is hardly to be withstood.
Such a person is, apart from special considerations, inherently
formidable; but how if this person be found trying to convert another to
enmity against the Church, and at the same time be found striking up a
friendship with a churchman who in certain particulars resembles another
churchman imprisoned in his castle? Certainly, one's mind can't reject a
notion of danger; and it has appeared to me that I ought not to hold my
peace in the matter, in spite of the _outré_ warning of the card which
Baron Kolár has been kind enough to forward me."

We had now arrived before Ritching church, which stands well back from
the village street in a large piece of land--"park" one may call
it--well timbered and dark. The building itself is big, modern, and
ugly--one of those churches with huge roofs, red bricks, red shingles,
which rather suggest the cult of some latter-day Moloch than of the
Carpenter. It is built, however, over some old vaults in which repose
generations of the Hampshire branch of the Bellasis family, once of
Goodford, now extinct.

We got into the grounds by a gateway in a wall of rubble before the
church, and thence, by a path which winds inward through the park some
quarter of a mile towards the vicarage, passed on to the vicarage
garden. The night was now dark, and we found the house in darkness.

"It looks," said Langler in a low voice, "as if the baron's visit to the
doctor has been quite a long one--two hours at the least--for he seems
to be still here, if one may divine by the darkness in this front part,
which, no doubt, the doctor would have lighted on seeing his visitor
through. The baron must have left his trap at the Calf's Head, for I
don't see it here. Let us wait outside, then, a little. The doctor, by
the way, has the good taste to look out from his study window behind
yonder upon a patch of that white vetch which shimmers so bridally in
all shades of twilight. Come softly, and I will show it you."

I tracked his tread through thicket towards the back of the old manse,
till we began to catch sight of a glow of light emanating from a
casement behind, and a moment later Langler whispered me: "There, you
see, is the growth of vetch."

Five feet farther, and from an angle of a lean-to, we could peer through
ivy and rose-bush into a lighted room: in it were Baron Kolár and Dr
Burton, standing. Langler laid hold of my arm, and we stood breathless,
looking.

The two in the room were deep in converse, the rumour of which reached
us, but none of the words.

Presently the baron took his hand from the doctor's shoulder, took up a
book from a table, held it uplifted a minute, kissed it.

He then tendered the book to the doctor, who seemed to us to draw back
rather, and I felt Langler's grasp tighten on my arm, but the baron
seemed to press and reason with the doctor; then the doctor took the
book, lifted it to his lips, kissed it: and at once the hands of the two
men met in a clasp.

Langler whispered into my ear: "but what agreement hath Christ with
Belial? Isn't it written that he who is a friend of the world is the
enemy of God?"




CHAPTER VIII

THE FACE OF ROBINSON


Two minutes after that clasp of the hands the doctor passed out of the
room with the baron; two minutes later he returned to the room alone,
and stood at the casement, with his brow drooped toward his breast, in a
brown study.

Langler whispered to me: "you will wait outside. I am going to speak to
him now."

We walked round to the front of the manse, where Langler rapped, Dr
Burton presently came to him, and I from outside looked on at the two
standing together in lamplight in a parlour.

Langler, I think, was not asked to sit. I heard the brogue of Dr Burton,
then in Langler's hand beheld the piece of paper on which Dr Burton was
spoken of as a "union of Becket and Savonarola." Dr Burton did not look
at it, but began to lower angrily, Langler to bow, till at last Dr
Burton frowned towards the doorway. Langler bowed, and withdrew.

When angry he had a habit of lowering the eyelids in an expression of
hissing disdain, and the street-lamps, as we trudged through Ritching,
revealed him so to me. For some time he was silent, but finally, when
we were climbing towards Goodford village, he said: "Dr Burton has
insulted me, Arthur, and for the moment I find it difficult to speak of
him in a Christian spirit. However, he is a good man--I really need just
now to repeat that fact to myself--though mewed up in crassness.
Uppishness, of course, is part of the being of every dominant man, and I
don't blame him for his uppishness, but only for the fact that it is so
blatant and instant. Still, one must take the thorns with the rose, and
I promise by to-morrow morning to love him again. Partly it was my own
fault, for I should have felt, after the compact which we witnessed,
that my warning would be all too late. Imagine how momentous must have
been the matter of that compact, Arthur, when Burton could be brought to
confirm it with the Bible at his lips, and imagine the craft and the
might of will by which he must have felt himself crimped and mesmerised.
Here is a man who two days ago began by telling Baron Kolár that he had
not leisure to listen to him, and already we find him _in genubus_, with
(of all things) _the Book_ at his lips. Have you not here a miracle of
mind? But given a known individuality, one may deduce certain facts from
it. We can assert, for instance, from our sure knowledge of Burton, that
the compact contained nothing dishonouring to _him_, that it was lofty
and pure on _his_ part. It must be so. And since it was Kolár who first
kissed, and afterwards Burton, we may say, too, that the first terms of
the pact are to be fulfilled by Kolár. If Kolár will do certain things,
as he says he will, then Burton will do certain things. But what things?
Pity we couldn't catch a few snatches of the talk; yet certainly, even
so, I don't think that we are quite in the dark. For Burton's motives
were lofty and pure: therefore Kolár's promises of good things did not
concern Burton's own self-interests, or not solely. Yet Burton was so
enthusiastic as to these promises that he took an oath of repayment:
they may very likely, therefore, have concerned his love--the Church.
But the Church where? At Ritching? It is inconceivable that Kolár can be
so interested in the Church at Ritching as to wish to exact any oath
with regard to it. 'Church,' therefore, as between him and Burton, must
mean Church on a larger scale; and in the Church on this scale we know
that Kolár is, in fact, interested. But how is Burton, a village priest,
to repay services rendered to the Church on so large a scale? Does it
not seem as if Kolár's promises do not apply altogether to the Church,
but in part to Burton personally, that Burton is not for ever to remain
a village priest? Indeed, did not Kolár yesterday volunteer the prophecy
that this 'union of Becket and Savonarola' is 'destined to become the
greatest priest in Europe'? A singular prophecy, Arthur, from a man
whose words in general assuredly have some significance. We may guess,
then, that Kolár's undertakings consist in rendering to the Church some
good which will include the rise and greatness of the doctor himself,
and the doctor swears to use his greatness in some way indicated, or to
be indicated, by Kolár. Certainly, such seem the divinations prompted by
the facts which we have."

"Isn't it a strange thing," I said, "the interest of Kolár in the
doctor, even before he saw him? It is not to be supposed that Kolár is a
very regular church-goer, yet he hastened to hear the doctor at once on
coming to Goodford. One could be almost certain that the letter
describing the doctor as Becket _plus_ Savonarola, and asking someone to
'come down,' was addressed to no other than to Baron Kolár."

"Very likely," replied Langler; "and that was chiefly what I had to say
to Burton in our interview just now. I tried to persuade him that the
baron is no friend of priests, that he probably has one of them a
prisoner in his burg at this moment, but because I could make no certain
statements his mind was closed against me. On his part, he used the
words 'evil-speaking,' 'presumption,' 'interference'; he said 'dare,' he
said 'irreverent.' But I won't speak of that interview--it was _bête_.
The sentiment that now occupies my mind about Dr Burton is this: 'the
pity of it!' One cannot touch pitch and go undefiled. I have often had
the augury that Burton is a man with a tragedy in his future, and, if I
was right, that tragedy now perhaps takes shape: it will consist in his
'defilement.' Baron Kolár has prophesied that the doctor will be the
greatest of priests: well, if I, too, may prophesy, I say that from
being the greatest of priests, as he now is, he will become no priest at
all; that by little and little he will drop from his height, will lose
perfection of motive and absoluteness of fibre, till on a day he will
find himself fingering the dross of the grosser world."

By this time we had got into sight of the lights of Goodford House. On
our arrival, as we were passing through the outer hall, a man handed a
letter to Langler, which Langler, after glancing through it, handed to
me; and I read the words: "Charles Robinson, your groom, is certainly in
this neighbourhood, and if you have not found him it is because you have
not searched enough. If you have the courage to meet the writer at the
north-west corner of Hallam Castle alone at seven on Sunday evening, he
promises you that at least you shall see the face of the missing man.--A
Well-wisher."




CHAPTER IX

"CRUCIFY TO YOURSELVES AFRESH THE SON OF MAN ..."


It was the thirteenth Sunday after Trinity, and for what reason I don't
remember--certainly, the house-party at Goodford were hardly zealots in
the matter of church-going--that Sunday evening quite a party had been
got up to go to the office at Ritching. The fact, I believe, was that
the fame of Dr Burton's oratory had spread through the house, and
dowager and lordling, finding the Sabbath evening empty, yielded to the
pique of curiosity and to Mrs Edward's organising genius.

Baron Kolár, too, had everywhere dropped the opinion that Dr Burton was
a nice fellow, that he was not so bad, that he was the only living man
with whom grandiose speech was a natural function, like sleep.

Langler alone had declined to take part in the bout. Under any
circumstances, I fancy, he would have shrunk from that kind of religious
picnic; but he had now the special reason that he meant to go "at seven"
that evening to the rendezvous at Hallam Castle given him in the
unsigned letter.

To me this seemed very foolish, for I argued that no one could know the
whereabouts of Robinson except those to whom he owed his disappearance,
and during two days I had been praying Langler to ignore the letter. He
answered that he had made up his mind to go. But at least he would let
me go with him, I urged. He answered that he would rather be alone. What
arms, I asked, would he take with him? He said that he was not
accustomed to carry weapons about, and would take his stick.

"But you speak," I had said, "just as though you were not conscious of
any danger in the undertaking."

"Well, I am conscious of danger," he answered, "but I believe that in
proportion to the danger may be the amount of information to be
gathered."

He had said that he would walk to Hallam Castle (three miles), and then,
after his interview with the letter-writer, walk from Hallam to Ritching
church (two miles), in order to get back to Goodford with the
house-party in a carriage.

A little before six on the Sunday evening I was leaning with Miss Emily
over a bridge in the north park when he came to us on his way to the
rendezvous, spoke a few words, said he was going farther, and made me a
signal with the eyes to be mum. Twice he waved back at us as he went
forward; once and again I saw him stop to bend over a hedge-flower. He
was rather pale. I had long understood that his heart was not strong,
as small exertions would sometimes put him out of breath.

Miss Emily, for her part, had consented to be one of the party of
excursionists, so after half-an-hour at the bridge she and I climbed the
rising ground to the house to go to the church.

She said, I remember, that the escapade was a bore to her, so that up to
that moment she certainly meant to go.

There in front of the porch when we reached it stood a crowd of
vehicles, saddle-horses, drivers, grooms, in the midst of costumes and
chatter. Two of the carriages had already started, bearing away cries of
laughter at the crowded discomfort within them. I saw the pink brow of
Mr Edwards under the neck of a rearing horse; large Mrs Edwards was in a
flush of earnestness; Baron Kolár was seated on a cube of marble
bestowing his teeth upon the scene.

Miss Emily was not yet ready to start, so ran into the house, telling me
that she would be back in three minutes.

It had been ordained by Mrs Edwards that she should drive with Baron
Kolár. I was with another party. In a few minutes only two of the
vehicles were left; in one of them sat the baron, waiting for Miss
Emily. I was in the other with four ladies; the baron's was a cabriolet,
mine a car; both waited for the coming of Miss Emily.

Someone in my car said: "she is a long time."

The baron's eyes wandered; he drew his hand backward over his scrap of
hair, looking restless; he pipped nothings. Presently he called out:
"where is she, then?"

I was unwilling to drive away without her, so I called back to him: "if
you will take my place, I will take yours, and wait for her."

There was the objection of space to this proposition; but, without
answering, the baron at once got himself down from his cabriolet, and,
with ponderous cares, managed to wedge himself into my place in the car,
which drove off, while I stood by the cabriolet, waiting for Miss Emily.

She did not come. I waited ten minutes, fifteen. Then I went into the
house, full of trouble.

I quickly found a housemaid, and sent her to hunt, but, running back
after some minutes, she said that Miss Langler was not in her room.
Before long I had a number of men and women searching the house for her;
but she could not be found, and my heart sank at the thought that both
of them, brother and sister, were where I did not know.

One of the girls said that half-an-hour before, when Miss Langler was
coming down the great stair to join the party, she had handed to Miss
Langler a note which one of the villagers of Mins had given her. She had
gone away while Miss Langler was reading the note, and did not know what
Miss Langler had done afterwards.

As for me, my mind was a void filled only with fear. The house was
empty, I had no one to consult, no notion how to act. At last I leapt
into the cabriolet, lashed the horse, and went along the road that leads
to Hallam Castle: at least I knew where one of the two was to be sought.

It is a ruin in the older Norman mood in the midst of Goodford Manor
demesne. On getting to it I made fast the horse, and ran up a dell to
the "north-west corner" of the rendezvous: Langler was not there, but it
was still light enough for me to see some footprints in moss on a mass
of broken ground not far from the castle-wall: whether his footprints or
not I couldn't tell.

I began to call out, but there was no answer, and the footprints passing
from the moss, I lost them among stones.

Night was darkening when I went to the other (east) end of the ruin, and
entered by a wicket into one of the courtyards. When I had stumbled a
little way up a stair I was all in darkness. I called aloud Langler's
name again and again; but there was no answer.

I would go no farther, the steps were so broken, the darkness so crowded
with foes and fears; I had no light; so at last I ran back down. He
might after all, I thought, have left the ruin and gone to the church,
as arranged. That was the first thing now to find out, so I ran back to
my trap, and cantered off towards Ritching.

At Ritching I flung my reins to the railing before the church, and ran
inward, the middle portal framing a glimmer of light before me. I heard
the rise, long triumph, and fall of a royal voice: Dr Burton preaching;
and, running up the three steps before the church, I peeped in.

There was no pulpit, no rood-screen; Dr Burton was before the sacrarium;
and with his hands behind his back, he was striding sharply a little way
to and fro, with swinging shoulders at the turn, like a man moved to
wrath.

That evening he had read of the sending out of the Twelve; of the power
vouchsafed them over unclean spirits; of the charge that they must take
naught for their journey, save a staff only--no scrip, no bread, no
money in their purse; and the contrast between the spirit of Christ and
the spirit of Christendom may have fired the doctor. He had taken for
his text: "crucify to yourselves afresh the son of man, and put him to
an open shame"; and at the moment when I entered he was launching a war
of language against the modern world and the modern Church.

The party from Goodford formed much the larger part of the congregation,
down the nave running a desert of pews, and I think I am right in saying
that not more than fifty persons were present, all herded towards the
front, looking lost in the largeness of the church. So low had the gas
been turned that, though I went peering quite half way up the nave, I
could not say whether Langler was or was not there.

At that moment Dr Burton had lashed himself into a really painful pitch
of heat. He was tacking to and fro in short runs, rather like lions at
the moment when they spy their keeper coming with meat, and loudly he
cried out in his brogue: "ye crucify him afresh! Oh, the poor, bleeding
hands--so nailed. Oh, the poor, bleeding side--so pierced. Oh, the
ravished lamb, oh, the violated dove, oh, the crushed Christ! Have ye,
then, no pity? no entrails of compassion? ye dry eyes? ye hard hearts?
ye tearless teats? Have ye become men of _wood_? worm-eaten? loth as
death? chill as the silver ye gloat on? sallow as the gold ye clutch?
May God put fire into you, if it were half hell-fire, ye Monophysites,
ye modern men of pure Polar snow! Oh, look--oh, see: that lip--so
sucked: Is there no lust about you that you don't bind it with wild
community to your mouth? Those eyeballs ooze a whey of blood: is there
no heart in all the Sahara of your vulgar gullets to weep and groan and
weep?... Yes, it was pitiful: he was kind, and he was killed, he was
good, and he was galled, he was meek, and he was mangled. And will you
crucify him _afresh_? In the name of Holy Church, I call the Eternal God
this night----"

But at this point Dr Burton stopped with a gasp, gaping upward all in
wonderment; and from his mouth, from mine, from the mouths of us all in
the church, there burst a sound.

Yonder in mid-air--under the roof of the central aisle--hung the
crucified himself.

That sight will never tend to fade or be blurred in the memory of those
who beheld it; if there be memory in Eternity, then always still in
Eternity that sight, I think, will be with me.

It was not an optical error--that was the first certainty at which the
brain, on waking a little from its deadness, arrived; it was not some
magic illusion: a real man crucified on a real cross stood there
revealed. From three points of the thorn-dented forehead I, with my eye
of flesh, saw a trickle creep, and pause, and creep.

I found myself on my knees on the tiles, with my hands clasped. I forgot
Langler--I forgot my love, his sister--and all things else. From the
bowed knot of men and women in front of me came groan on groan.

_At last!_ The heavens had spoken....

Yet it was faintly seen, and though I raised my head, and forced my eyes
to search the divine horror, the light was most dim, and the revelation
seemed rather the spectre of a thing than the thing itself. Only, each
detail was perfect, and it was the crudeness of these details which
proved its reality to the mind with proof a hundred times sure. The
haggard crucifixions of Dürer and Spagnoletto--all the _macabre_ dreams
of a painter, graver, sculptor, heaped into one massacre of flesh and of
grinning bone--would seem like a child's fancy in comparison with that
fact. Still in my dreams I see the sideward hang of that under-lip, and
that hollow between ribs and hips drawn out into shocking length, and
the irregular drip from the hands, the left of which had been ripped to
the finger-roots, and the crown of sorrow, and the dead drop of that
tragic brow, it cannot be told....

Perhaps I alone examined details; the rest knelt bowed down; only Dr
Burton, with his neck stretched back, stared as if in vision straight
upward upon heaven. In myself I felt a kind of rapture, and also of
peace; and the words which I murmured to myself were these: "at last."

All at once, without ascent, descent, or movement, the image vanished.

But still for a longish time no stir nor sound, save some hushed sob,
was to be heard echoing through the building.

At last! after the dumb centuries, a sign from the skies, a flag from
God; and I thought to myself: "long have been those years in which so
many generations of men have wept in the face of the sphinx, craving but
one sure word from the callous vault for a morsel of manna to their
hunger, and now the old silence is over"; and I remember hugging myself,
thinking: "it was true, then! it was not a fancy of man's infancy! it
was all quite true."

Through the church the sobs of duchess and ploughman, of server and
acolyte, began to sound in growing volume; I saw Dr Burton lift himself
and escape into the sacristy; the others mingled the sounds of their
awe, till the echoes became one murmur in the vault. As for me, the
burden of my thought was this: "at last...."

But, looking up, I was conscious of a row of teeth, and of Baron Kolár,
who, with a raised head, was smiling his benediction upon the scene, and
his look was as when he snuffled sleepily of a thing, "well, it is not
so bad." I do not know if anyone else noticed him; but, as for me,
filled though I was with my other feelings, for a moment I was most
offended.




CHAPTER X

OF HALLAM CASTLE


When at last a movement was made to leave the church I first assured
myself that neither Langler nor Miss Emily was there, then I set out
upon the drive back to Goodford somewhat behind the crowd of carriages,
no sound now to be heard from all that picnic party which had left
Goodford loud with gaiety an hour before.

During that drive the mere sight of the trees and fields once more
brought down my mind from the miracle to the care which had racked it
before I had entered the church. Langler, his sister, both of them, were
where I did not know; and at another time my fright at a situation so
fraught with darkness might have been even madding, but that night my
heart was the home of feelings so pious that something of hope healed my
fears.

My relief, however, was great enough when, in front of Goodford House, I
spied Langler standing among the alighting church-party. As I hurried up
to him he was just saying to one of the ladies: "I hope you enjoyed the
office," but her only answer was: "ah, Mr Langler."

Langler, of course, was quite out of tune with us all at the moment, and
he could not perhaps observe the look of our faces, for the night was
dark.

As I touched his arm he spun round, saying: "ah, Arthur," and I remember
how his tone of the world, his cigar, shocked me: he seemed to me a
grosser being than we. I wished to say to him: "Hush! the earth is holy
ground."

In a low voice I asked him as to his sister. His answer was: "she is in
the house; two hours ago a note was handed to her, purporting----"

"We can't speak of it now," I said, stopping him: "all is well if she is
in the house."

When he looked at me with some surprise I whispered to him: "we are none
of us inclined to talk just now: you will soon know why."

The others meanwhile all going within, in the inner hall I now heard a
laugh which I recognised as Miss Emily's, and I did not know whether it
more shocked me or filled me with thankfulness that she was safely
there.

"If you had waited one little hour for me," she said as I went in, "I
should have been back to go to the church with you."

"I will explain all later," I answered. "I had to go to look for
Aubrey."

"Look for him?"

"You may be told in time," I answered: "you see, everyone is making
haste to retire...."

"So I see," said she, "but what is the matter?"

"We have all seen something."

"One would say a ghost."

"The ghost of God," I answered, in what she _must_ have thought a tone
of bathos!

"You imply that God is dead," she retorted in her dry way.

"He died for us, Emily," I answered most crassly! whereat she bridled,
and said: "_O!_" with such an underlook and depth of satire, that I
could not bear to see her so banned from my awful mood, and, with a
motion of my hand, left her in haste, for all manner of talk at that
moment seemed to me unholy.

On the Monday morning, as I was breakfasting in my own quarters, Langler
came to me, saying: "I have to apologise, Arthur, if my manner last
night was at all incongruous with your mood, and I have to add Emily's
apologies to my own. We have now heard and read what you saw, and
understand how you must have felt."

"You understand something," I answered; "you can't understand all."

"Well, no," said he: "I am only sorry that neither Emily nor I was
privileged to be present, so that we might be in the fullest sympathy
with you. Did you, Arthur--get a complete sight of the vision?"

He sat beside me, his hand on my arm, and I told him all, word by word,
in a husky voice; and he listened with a bent head.

"We are dust and ashes," he murmured when I had finished: "the
humiliation of it for us all!"

"Yes, the salvation," said I.

"But the humiliation firstly, I think," said he. "How modern men have
taken up and confirmed the seer's word: 'the same yesterday, to-day, and
for ever.' It was the one certain clue which we had to God. And now
that, too, is snapped when we find His way of acting on Sunday night so
foreign to His way on Saturday and Monday."

"Aubrey, we know nothing," I said.

"So I, too, say," he answered, "and I say that it is in the proof which
the vision has given us of this that our humiliation lies. How shall we
ever more trust our reason, or enjoy the pleasures of our mind? We were
so assured that His voice is ever small and hinting, that He guides us
with His eye; but now on a sudden we seem to find Him glaring and
pedagogic----"

"Still, let us not allow ourselves to criticise the vision, Aubrey," I
said.

"No, certainly, we mustn't allow ourselves to do that," he replied: "I
was rather criticising the paltriness of our reason, and I was thinking
of the damper which the vision will undoubtedly put upon the intellect
of the Western world before this day is over."

"Well, since our intellect is unreliable, that won't much matter," I
said, "and God's way is best. But I still know nothing of your
adventures last night: did you go to Hallam Castle?"

"Yes, I went, and the promise of my unknown correspondent was even duly
fulfilled."

"You don't mean that you saw Robinson?"

"At least I saw Robinson's face, according to the promise."

His words struck me dumb.

"I reached the Castle soon after twilight had begun to darken," he went
on. "It is a low ruin, you know, stretching along the upper edges of a
mound, at the bottom of which, on the north side, runs a road through a
sort of dell which they call the 'Castle Dell'; up this road I went in
order to get to the 'north-west corner' named in the rendezvous. A few
sheep were pasturing on the castle-mound; but no other living thing was
to be seen, nor a sound to be heard, and I won't pretend that I was so
perfectly collected in mind as I might have been. It is a pity that we
should ever breathe shorter than we will, but.... Anyway, I climbed up
the dell-road till I came as near the north-west corner of the ruin as I
could, for one can't quite get up to it, the mound at that point being
rocky and steep; but after waiting on the road some minutes, and seeing
no one, I began to climb a path at right angles to the dell-road leading
south on the west side of the castle--a path with steps embedded in the
soil. I was on these steps when I heard some sound like the echo of a
shout, and on glancing to my left I saw Robinson's face at a window of
the round-tower which forms the north-west corner of the ruin."

The fact of Robinson's face being seen at last sounded so strange to my
ears that I could only breathe: "but are you sure, Aubrey?"

"Well," said he, "he was separated from me by perhaps thirty yards, for
between the mass of ground on which I stood and that west side of the
castle is a ravine or dry moat of about that breadth; moreover, it was
getting dark in the dell, which is well wooded; but still I saw him
pretty well, and it was certainly Robinson and no other."

"But did he see you? Did he speak?" I asked.

"He probably did not see me," Langler answered; "certainly he did not
speak. I cried out to him, bending forward over a rail at the edge of
the cleft, but he did not answer.... Oh, Arthur, it was a face much
marred, believe me! It is my belief that he was unconscious, that he was
held at the window for me to see by others whom I could not see. After
some seconds he was withdrawn from my sight."

"But this is pitiful," I said. "What did you do?"

"I might perhaps have acted more promptly than I did," he answered: "I
see that now, and must confess it to you and to myself. It is certainly
to be regretted that the rate of one's breathing should ever have an
influence upon the quality of the mental operations or upon the quality
of one's mode of acting; and here certainly is a little matter to which,
it seems, that I, for my part, will have to give some attention on all
future occasions. There is no doubt that I lost some minutes in thinking
what I should next do: however, as I am familiar with the castle, I did
not lose time in running to the west gate near on my left, for this I
knew to be fastened, but I hurried down the dell-road to the east side
of the ruin, and there climbed the mound by a path in the sward which
leads to the east gate. Here I could gain an entrance, for the wicket of
this gate has disappeared, but I see now that I ought to have waited
outside, and not gone in: help might have come from some source; at
least no one could have come out of the ruin without being seen by me.
However, I went in, for after the delays already made I felt urged to do
something energetic, and, no doubt, fidgeted. Some people seem to act
aptly without forethought, as the fly flies; others act aptly by
forethought; and others again, in using too much forethought here, and
none at all there, produce those left-handed, gawky results which seem
to guffaw in one's face. I hope that I am not of this last type; but on
this particular occasion, I confess, I do rather seem to have been
outdone--in fact, I was outdone. I rushed without thought through the
wicket into the lowest of the three courtyards, which is now a
greensward shaded by two walnut-trees, and ran up some steps in the
north-east round-tower, my feet, I fear, making some sounds, and once or
twice I slipped in the dark, the stones being very displaced. Near the
tower-top I turned west over the castle-wall--the wall is really two
walls, you know, filled between with concrete, over which runs a footway
between field flowers. This footway brought me into a second tower,
where some stairs lead up to a similar path on the wall which runs along
the second courtyard. It was quite dark in that tower, and I stopped
once to consider whether the course which I was pursuing was quite the
best; however, having come to no decision, I was creeping on up when I
heard a sound behind me, the creak of a door, then at once another creak
of another door somewhere; at the same time both doors were bolted, and
I understood that I was in durance."

He smiled at my look of concern, adding: "don't be alarmed, since you
now see me here; in fact, having convinced myself that I was really
imprisoned, I, for my part, became easier in mind than I had been,
feeling the irksomeness of having to fight out this matter taken off my
hands, since, being a prisoner, it was now out of my power to do
anything; and I resigned myself to suffer with a calm spirit whatever
might be in store for me. Indeed, it seems to be often less of a burden
and bore to suffer patiently than to have to run, and wage war, and
act; at any rate, I felt that my captors had relieved me of a
responsibility in this matter of the rescue of poor Robinson. I stood
against the wall on a ledge three feet wide, with a railing at its edge,
and the hollow interior of the tower below, and the two doors being grey
with age, their surface rough with the carvings of visitors' names, but
still stout, I put my arm through some of the holes which have appeared
in the oak, trying to reach the bolts, but could not. Then I sat down in
a hearthplace, and was sitting there so long, with nothing for the eye
to rest on but the bushes at the tower-top massed against the dark sky,
that I should have fallen asleep if I had not been roused by hearing
some shouts, coming, I thought, from the castle-dell----"

"They were _my_ shouts probably," I said; "and you were there all the
time!"

"What, were you at Hallam Castle last night?" he asked.

"Why, yes," I answered, "for when Emily disappeared, and it struck me
that you had both been inveigled away, I could think of nothing but to
go to the castle to look for you. I shouted your name in the
castle-dell, I even went up the very stairs--didn't you hear me call out
'Aubrey'? Hearing no answer, I hurried off to Ritching, to see if you
were in the church: and you were in the ruins all the time!"

"Your shouts reached me only as echoes," he said, "and when they ceased
I composed myself afresh to rest in my hearthplace, but was soon again
startled by a sound--the drawing of the bolt of the door by which I had
entered. I leapt up, to find the door open: but my liberator, whoever he
was, was not to be seen. I hurried down the stair, but neither saw him
nor heard his tread."

"Strange proceedings," I said.

"But with a meaning in their strangeness, I am convinced," said Langler.

"What did you do now?"

"What could I do? I walked back to Goodford village, informed the
constabulary that I had seen Robinson, then, very tired, trudged up to
Goodford House, only to hear that Emily had not gone to the church with
the party, but had disappeared. However, I was examining the servants on
the matter when Emily herself walked in."

"What had happened?" I asked.

"As she was about to set out with the party," he answered, "a note had
been handed her, purporting to come from me, asking her to join me
secretly on a matter of urgency at the Cart-and-Horse in Mins. So
_outré_ a thing, of course, alarmed her, and she started out in great
haste. It was only when she got to the Cart-and-Horse, that, looking
again at the note, she saw that the writing was not really mine, but a
forgery. She then got a trap, and drove back to Goodford."

"Oh, there is something ominous in all this, Aubrey," I said.

"Well, so it seems," he answered. "The note purporting to come from me
was handed to Emily by a still-room girl here named Charlotte, and was
handed to Charlotte by a villager named Weeks. Now, I have had Weeks
over from Mins this morning, and Weeks declares that the note was handed
him by a dapper young gentleman, probably a foreigner, who met him a
little outside Mins, and offered him five shillings for taking it to
Goodford House. Weeks left the stranger sitting in the gloaming on the
roots of a well-known yew on the road between Mins and Up Hatherley."

"But what design," I said, "could this man have had in enticing Emily
from Goodford at that particular time?"

"That is hard to say," answered Langler; "but you observe that I, too,
was enticed from Goodford at that time by a promise which was kept by
men whom we need not suppose to be scrupulous in the matter of keeping
their word. What, then, could have been the motive of actually showing
me the face of Robinson, as promised? It could only have been to draw me
into the tower to his rescue, and so to my imprisonment. But remember
that that imprisonment only lasted three-quarters of an hour at most,
and during that short detainment it was that Emily was enticed to Mins.
It would seem, then, that with the same motive her absence and mine
from Goodford House during that particular three-quarters of an hour was
a thing to be desired."

"It wasn't from Goodford that our absence was desired, Aubrey," cried
Miss Emily, suddenly looking through the half-opened door, "but from
Ritching church: for I was about to go to the church, and so did you
mean to go to it from Hallam Castle."

Langler, it seems, had been constrained to tell her something of his
adventures at the castle, and he said now, with rather a start: "well,
then, it may have been from the church that our absence was desired."

"But for what reason in the world?" I asked.

"Who knows?" he answered. "Still, it does seem now to be so."

"But for what possible reason, do you imagine, Emily?" I asked again.

Miss Emily after a moment's silence answered: "how should I know? But
quidquid latet apparebit! we shall know it all some day"--and, saying
this, she was gone from us.




CHAPTER XI

BARON KOLAR ON THE MIRACLE


Going down the stair later in the day, I was met by Mrs Edwards hurrying
up with her large face flushed, and she stopped a little to give into my
ear like a cargo all that was on her mind. Her manner was ever homely,
one might say petting and motherly.

"How did you sleep?" she said in a sort of whisper, "I hope you and the
Langlers are not going to desert me, too: five of the others are off
after lunch, and it is too bad, everything will be spoiled. If the
miracle had only waited till--but God's will be done. What a thing! I
haven't got over it yet, have you? Edwards says he will be at the
telephone most of the day, and that Dr Burton will have to be a prelate
or something. The Queen has been talking with him from Windsor about
Burton and the miracle; the whole world seems wild with excitement; they
say that no miracle was ever seen by so many reliable witnesses. Poor
Edwards is up to the ears in it, I'm afraid he is not very pleased at
bottom, and he puts the whole blame of it upon me, as though I had any
power to interfere.... I oughtn't to have got up the church-party, he
says--as though I could have foreseen.... Anyway, five of the guests are
off, and Edwards says that Society will have to moderate its tone in
face of what he foresees"--and some more of this kind.

I told her that I didn't think that the Langlers would be shortening
their visit. "But as to Baron Kolár," I said, "is he among the departing
guests?"

"No," she answered, "the baron stays on till Thursday. He was closeted
an hour this morning with Edwards--Oh, that man! he is too incorrigible;
he has told Lady Truscott not to be overwhelmed, since the miracle has
some explanation--puts it all down to hypnotism--I must go." On this she
ran on up, and left me.

Below I was at once struck by a difference in the tone of the house. I
did not see Mr Edwards, and Baron Kolár too was missing. Langler told me
that the baron was at Ritching Vicarage with Dr Burton, and when I
mentioned to him what Mrs Edwards had whispered me as to Burton's
probable rise, his answer was: "well, that will be only fitting:
moreover, Baron Kolár prophesied it, you remember."

The afternoon passed into twilight, and still I saw no sign of the
Styrian, but an hour before dinner, as I happened to be strolling alone
in one of the home-coverts separated by a path from the park, Mr
Edwards, without any hat, broke through the bushes, dashing back his
hair, and looking pestered. "Oh, Mr Templeton," he said, "have you seen
anything of Baron Kolár?"

I said no.

"Hang the man," said he, "I have had four men out on his trail for an
hour...."

I said that I had understood earlier in the day that the baron was at Dr
Burton's.

"He was," answered Edwards, "but he isn't now. It is precisely about Dr
Burton that I want to see him, for the Bishop of Lincoln offers Burton
the nomination to the vacant Chancellorship and Residentiary Canonry, on
condition that I accept at once. Properly speaking, you know, the whole
job lies miles outside my interest, and I only wish----God forgive me."

"But why all the flurry?" I asked.

"Well," he answered, "the country, of course, looks to me now to rush Dr
Burton into some Grand Lamaship--as though one could at a moment's
notice like this! I assure you, Mr Templeton, soft isn't the word for
the hundreds of unpractical suggestions that have been made me this day
by leading men in the country, so what we are coming to from a business
point of view is rather hard to say. Oxford is a place up in the clouds!
and Cambridge isn't far below.... I don't seem to have even a spare
deanery into which to fit Burton, and the whole to-do is rather hard on
me--all extraneous work and worry--for _I_ haven't studied
Church-organisation! if anyone were to ask me who is the real head of it
all as things are, the King or the Pope, I believe I'd be put to it to
give him a straight answer. However, there's this Lincoln
Chancellorship, and I'm hunting down Baron Kolár to see whether or not
he'll have it for Dr Burton just for the time being...."

At this I could not help exclaiming: "but what voice has Baron Kolár in
the matter of the career of Dr Burton?"

"Oh, well," said Mr Edwards, "you would hardly see the inwardness of it
off-hand by the light of nature, for it is delicate in a diplomatic way.
You know that Baron Kolár fills such a place both in and out of the
Reichsrath that he is one of the four men who really have the world's
peace in the hollow of their hand, but perhaps you don't know by how far
he is probably the most dangerous of the four, for the bottom meanings
of that man's polity remain an unknown quantity, and in order to get at
them you would have first of all to draw his teeth, for his mind lurks
in a stronghold of which his teeth are the ramparts, and it takes a
pretty tricky one to see much that's behind 'em. Anyway, the Foreign
Minister of a country whose chief asset is peace would rather stand
personally well with Baron Kolár with a view to sound sleep at night
than with, I was going to say his--own--wife."

"Quite so," said I; "but still, what can be the grounds of this
interest of the baron in Dr Burton? not political?"

"It is, somehow," said Edwards, "though I don't pretend quite to fathom
the lees of this particular mind; but from the first he adopted Burton,
and, of course, when a man like him chooses to chaperon a parish-priest
up the mountains of preferment----"

At this point a clerk ran up to deliver some message to Mr Edwards, who
went off with him, I, for my part, continuing my stroll through the
covert till I came out upon a road, where the first thing which I saw
was Baron Kolár's valet reclining in a meadow, smoking. I went through a
gate to him, and asked where his master was. His answer was in the
words: "perhaps can you that house there under see? there is he."

I knew the house to which he pointed: it is called Dale Manor, and was
then the home of two old maids whom I had long known as "Miss Jane" and
"Miss Lizzie" (Chambers), for they were visitors at Swandale. How Baron
Kolár had come to know them, why he was there, I couldn't guess; but, in
good nature to Mr Edwards, I walked down three very steep fields, then
down two lanes, to Dale Manor, in order to tell the baron that he was
being sought.

This Dale Manor, certainly, was a very charming home. I pulled the
bell-chain at the wall which surrounds the place, and, on being let in,
caught sight of Miss Jane pacing, with gloves and scissors, among her
flowers. I think that the sun had already set, and the scene in there
was all one of bowery shades and peace and well-being. Miss Jane, I
suppose, thought that I had come on a visit, and after asking some
questions about the Langlers and the miracle invited me in. I then asked
if Baron Kolár was in the house, to which she replied, with a smile:
"yes--_fast asleep_."

"Asleep!"

"_Sh-h-h!_" she whispered, "he is just under that window there: my
sister is watching over him; it must be nearly time for me to relieve
her...."

I was too astonished to speak! My knowledge of the manner of life of
these ladies, its English primness and reclusion, made all the keener my
feeling of the oddity here, for certainly they would have consented to
take turns in watching over the slumbers of no other male person, and I
thought to myself: "well! such miracles are wrought by great men."

"I didn't know that you even knew the baron," I said at last.

"We have known him for five afternoons," answered Miss Jane in a hushed,
but animated, manner--"since last Thursday! In passing by the Manor he
fell in love with it, and rang the gate-bell. I happened to be in the
gardens, and, being _naturally_ startled, contrived to send for my
sister, who after examining him through the spyglass from a window came
down to us. It was _so_ embarrassing at first! we had no _notion_ what
to make of the man suddenly sprung upon us, with his great satin jacket
and stream of talk, we _couldn't_, of course, know who he might be, for
it was only after a long while that he let out that he was staying at
Goodford. He led us round the grounds, criticising and admiring
_everything_, then had the head gardener brought to suggest certain
changes to him--and there is no doubt that he _must_ be a past master of
horticulture, forestry, and landscape gardening, you know--then he said
that he was tired and thirsty, and had a headache, so we _had_ finally
to decide to ask him in."

"It must have been an event!"

"Well, we were certainly put out," answered Miss Jane, "and poor Lizzie
has been taking lavender-water; for Barons Kolár do not grow on every
bush, and it all came upon us like any thunderclap. He sat by that
window in the drawing-room, talking, talking in his long-drawn way, and
looking sleepy, while Lizzie and I glanced at each other, wondering what
next, for my sister and I of course know what each other is thinking
without needing to speak. Now, as it happened, Fanny, our between-maid,
was ill, and Lizzie had been making some special milk-toast for her, so
it occurred to Lizzie to give him some of it, with tea; she had made
quite a pile, and never _dreamt_--anyway, it was brought in. Well, he
began to eat languidly, but he kept on eating and talking, and, Mr
Templeton, he ate up every scrap--yes, every scrap."

"Poor Fanny!"

"Yes, indeed. My sister and I glanced at each other when we saw the pile
of milk toast going, going, and then gone. But he consoled poor Lizzie,
who, if she has just a touch of vanity, is to be condoned on the score
of her youth--you know, of course, Mr Templeton, that my sister is my
junior by three years--he consoled her by saying that he had never
tasted _any_thing so nice; and it is only just to my sister to admit
that she _can_ make milk-toast. But he had hardly finished the
milk-toast when he began to nod, and before we knew where we were we had
him fast asleep on our hands. He muttered afresh that he had a headache,
that he wished to be allowed to sleep on the sofa, and that he would
like his hair to be brushed while he slept! then he threw himself down,
and was instantly asleep. Imagine our plight! What _could_ we do, Mr
Templeton? Lizzie, who was quite distracted, put a chair under his feet,
and proposed to _me_ to brush his hair! I simply _would_ not! She
maintained that it was my duty to assume the initiative, since I am the
elder, but I _could_ not see eye to eye with her, and at last, after a
great deal _too_ many words, she decided that, since it had to be done,
and I _would_ not, then she _must_, being the younger----"

"That was brave and charming of Miss Lizzie," I said.

"You think so?" asked Miss Jane, with a weighing look at me: "to tell
the truth, we here are not much in favour of adventures and new
departures, and rather affect the quiet old monotonies; but since you
think so----At any rate, he slept for an hour; and every afternoon since
then he comes, eats a pile of milk-toast, sleeps an hour, and has his
hair brushed. What _can_ we do or say? We are in the maze of an
enchantment! Punctually as the clock strikes four his ring is heard at
the gate, and in he comes, happy and smiling."

"It is an idyll," I said; "but I have an urgent message for him, if one
may venture to disturb his Excellency's siesta."

"I fear he would hardly approve of being awakened," said Miss Jane; "but
he won't sleep long now, I know. We might go in softly, and see
them...."

On this we went in, to find Miss Lizzie, all brown silk and mitts,
sitting in patient vigil over the Styrian, from whom came a note of
slumber. To me nothing could have been funnier than this casting of his
gross weight by Baron Kolár upon these dainty ladies, and at the sight
of it I was afresh pierced with laughter. Miss Jane now took Miss
Lizzie's place as watcher, while Miss Lizzie came to ply me with hushed
questions about the miracle, till at last the baron opened his eyes,
showed his teeth in a smile, moaned for happiness, and sat up.

I informed him that he was being sought by the Prime Minister, and
presently, after some talk, we two left Dale Manor together for
Goodford.

"Dear beings," he said happily to me of the Misses Chambers, "nice
people, charming people, I like them. These are not women, oh no, they
are angels. It is astonishing to what differentiations the human species
lends itself: here in these ladies you have a type which is not the
highest anthropologically, and yet may be as unapelike as the exactest
genius of our age. Primitive creatures spent their lives in a passion of
earnestness, seeking their food, and defending themselves from violence;
but evolution is toward the appreciation of trifles. The earnestness of
the engineer, of the statesman, is still brutish: he bestrides the world
wild of eye, while to these ladies a parish is the world, tiny
traditions are their life, whatever arises causes them to exchange a
code of glances. Nice people, gracious people: their velvet manners,
their cushions, their shaded interior--everything nice and luxurious,
and, I assure you, they make very good toast--very good. Nor does it
displease me to find them devoid of ideas, oh no, there is no need for
them to say anything: merely as listeners they have a merit. I am only
sorry that this so-called miracle has come to excite and unsettle
them."

"But 'so-called,' Baron Kolár!" I could not help crying out: "surely you
saw the miracle with your own eyes, like the rest of us!"

"Well, yes, I saw it," he said; "oh yes, I saw it, too. But this looks
to me a case in which it would be well not to place too much faith in
the senses. If we know that miracles cannot happen, then, when we see
them, we can only regard them as due to some caprice of our fancy; and
if Providence is warned beforehand that we shall so regard them, it will
be the less tempted to trouble us with any. On the whole, a mood of
impassive aloofness seems to me the wisest with regard to what we
witnessed on Sunday night. Do not permit it to engage or modify you at
all; just say to yourself: 'let the vulgar millions lose their heads,
but let me and my friends watch them with an impregnable eye.' Or do you
not think that my advice is good?"

"On the contrary," I said, while a flush leapt to my face, "I think it
even irreverent, baron--as an eye-witness of such a revelation must
needs think it."

"Oh, you think that: well, you are right, too, in your own way," he
answered. "A religion that was based on the senses would not be
displeasing to me, even though somewhat displeasing to reason. Do not
imagine me an enemy of piety. I only meant to suggest that the senses
are not always sure avenues to knowledge. But you, now, believe that you
have seen a revelation, and the dawn of an epoch: well, you are right,
too, in your own fashion."

As he was thus droning we arrived before Goodford House, and the private
secretary hurried out from a French window where he had been watching,
to hail and greet the baron.




CHAPTER XII

THE QUESTION OF STYRIA


My half-promise to Mrs Edwards that the miracle should not shorten the
stay of the Langlers at Goodford was too soon given, for on the Tuesday
both Langler and Miss Emily begged me to return at once to Swandale with
them; in fact, quite a number of departures was already proving the
spirit of dissolution at work in the house-party.

"I do pity Aubrey," Miss Emily said aside to me on the Tuesday night:
"there he stands smiling like a statue, but I know that he is tasting
bitterness in the very valley. To any scholar of forty years it must be
no fun to have to change his scheme of thought and life on a sudden; so
what this miracle, or whatever you call it, must mean to Aubrey's touchy
intellect and tremulous piety is more than I care to think on. Anyway it
is certain that he must be in agony in his present company, and longing
to be alone."

"Yes, that must be so," I agreed. "Well, let us go away, for we all need
time and solitude to find room in ourselves for this new thing."

"Oh, as for me," she said, "I am in no rage to adjust myself to it: my
soul can wait till _his_ has won back to rest. Being a woman, I am less
sensitive to evidence, you see, and tougher in the nerve; but poor
Aubrey's elements are delicately mixed, and ah, he suffers."

"I understand that," I said; "perhaps it would be even well if I
returned to London for the present."

She looked at me, saying: "don't say that; he needs you now, and wishes
you to stay."

"And you?" I asked.

"Not what I will," she answered softly in Greek, "but what he."

We accordingly returned to Swandale from Goodford on the Thursday
morning. But something of the old Sabbath was soon known now to have
departed from our habit of life in the cottage, for the roar of the age
reached even into our cloister, hampering the mood of that old world
which we wished to inhabit. The very servants had new looks of unrest.
Langler smiled doggedly, but was as one who ruminates bitterish herbage.
He was much alone, questioning the oracles in the dells or in his study;
and Miss Emily and I were much with each other.

She at least knew little quietness in those days, I think: I would spy
her hanging about the door behind which her brother paced, and her fever
about his state of mind became chronic. "The visits of this man must be
terrible to him," she said of some sort of police-official from London
who called about the happenings at Hallam Castle on the Sunday night of
the miracle; Robinson had left no trace behind: so poor Langler was
plied with questions, without having the least faith probably that the
man with the note-book would see light where he himself saw none. And
"it is so distressing," Miss Emily said to me during the third of the
visits; "he keeps Aubrey closeted an hour, and he is not pretty, his
boots creak. I only wish that Aubrey could be coaxed into some change of
scene; you ought to be able to get him to Paris, if you try. Have you
noticed that for four days he has burned no incense at all in his
rooms?"

"I wonder why?" I said.

"Perhaps he thinks it unbecoming now--I don't know; and he hasn't once
played the usual chants since we have been back from Goodford. The old
attitude to everything has to be all changed, twisted, readjusted, now.
Deus meus! in what foreign world have we suddenly waked up?"

"Patience!" I said: "in time the new way will be seen to be the best."

"But the old pleases Cato all the same," she muttered, with a nod of
stubbornness which belonged to her; "it is to be desired at least that
the new way was not complicated by officers of the law."

As to this officer, Langler himself spoke to me that same evening when I
happened to be in his study, saying: "you saw, Arthur, the officer who
called to-day?"

"Yes," I answered, "I am afraid he must have bored you to death."

"Well, he means well," he answered, "and we are none of us perfect in
grace and wisdom. This man in particular must be very impressed just now
with the limitations of our human intelligence, for he stands almost
ludicrously dumfoundered before the facts which we know about Robinson;
dumfoundered, above all, before the fact that Robinson should have been
shown to me in an unconscious state at Hallam Castle at the hour of
seven-fifteen, and in that state should have been conveyed away through
a peopled countryside without being seen, though by eight P.M. the
constabulary had been warned by me, and have been searching for him ever
since. Before the failure to find _some_ trace the mind stands as
staggered as if in the presence of unearthly agents. To the questions
Where is Robinson now? in a house? in the grave? conscious? still
unconscious? why can he contrive to give no sign? our minds can begin to
form no guess. Well, we are a small infantry, just wise enough to learn
to be meek, and of few days, and full of trouble. But what I wanted to
tell you as to this officer is that I took occasion to lay before him
all we know about Father Max Dees in his Styrian dungeon, and to ask
what I could do for this poor man."

I had forgotten Max Dees in the excitement of what had lately happened!
"Well, what did the officer advise?" I asked.

"He seemed unreceptive of the whole matter," was the answer: "to people
of stolid minds the unique is apt to seem unreal; and the mere fact that
our knowledge of Dees was brought us by a wren appeared to obstruct this
man's concern in the case. However, he remarked with truth that we had
no evidence that, of the three Barons Gregor, the one whom we suspect is
really the gaoler of Dees; that, in any case, the English police have
nothing to do with the incident; but that, with regard to the Austrian
authorities, my best course before approaching them is to 'make sure of
the facts.' In truth, he doesn't half believe in Dees--the wren being to
blame. The man actually recommended me, with a smile, to go myself to
Styria in order to 'make sure of the facts.'"

"Well, that might be done," I said: "by all means let us go, for I would
go, too."

Langler looked at me, and smiled, hardly taking me seriously, I fancy.

But this question of "going to Styria" was destined, alas, to arise
again. The very next (Sunday) morning, in the breakfast-room, Miss
Emily, to my surprise, said to me: "who, then, is Max Dees?"

As I knew that nothing had been told her of the wren's message, I could
only think that she had overheard Langler's talk with me on the
Saturday evening, and, anyway, had now to tell her all--of Dees'
imprisonment, of his prayer "_for God's sake_," of our almost certainty
that Baron Kolár was his gaoler, of the paper found at the inn at Mins
stating that "Dr Burton is another Max Dees," of the disappearances,
like Robinson's, which Langler had found to have been going on over
Europe, and so on. That morning Langler had not risen from bed--he had
flutters of the heart--so I had time to tell a long tale, to which Miss
Emily listened without comment, and remained museful throughout the day.

In the evening we were all at Ritching church to hear Dr Burton's
farewell before his departure for Lincoln, and I don't know who took
care of Swandale during the office, for Langler was now most strict in
having every soul about the place at each church-service. He had risen
from bed, and we three walked somewhat ahead, with the knot of retainers
following. I have an idea that in some recess of Miss Emily's mind these
church-goings were not regarded with emotions quite utterly saintly; but
whatever resentment rankled in her she breathed no word of it, but went
meekly in the pilgrimages with her brother.

We had started out early, so as to secure seats, and far off, as we
walked down the road to Ritching, out broke the shambling brogue of the
chimes. I thought then how, when Langler and I last heard those bells
together, he had said that we heard them for "about the last time," and
thenceforth all the evening there were ringing in my head like a
sing-song the words: "[Greek: kai pulai adou, kai pulai adou]--and gates
of hell shall not prevail against it." When we reached the church it was
already full; but in the end I fancy that seats were found for all the
Swandale party, though we were all separated throughout the office.

Dr Burton was assisted in the duty by his diocesan and two others, but
spoke the address in person. His manner, I judged, was most meek, his
throat choked, as of a man who has been struck dumb and has not yet
recovered himself: I, in a seat far back, could hardly hear his words,
though once, twice, as it were, the lion's voice lifted and vaunted a
little, threatening wraths. However, one had little need to hear, in
order to feel, Dr Burton that night, for his holiness by itself was as a
focus of fire, pouring forth its power into all.

When it was ended, and our set met once more beyond the crowd, Miss
Emily said to me: "three-quarters of these folk have never seen Ritching
before; half are from London: I saw Lady Agnew, the President of the
Academy, and Dr Gootch, who has Aubrey's heart in his keeping. What do
you say brought all these good people here?"

Her manner of speaking, I must say, seemed to me rather dry, and I
answered shortly: "a pious need, no doubt."

"Not a hope to see in Dr Burton's church a repetition of the 'miracle'?"
she asked: "not the lust of a new thrill?"

"How you can be cruel!" I whispered.

"But what went they out for to _see_?" she laughed. "Wherever Dr Burton
preaches henceforth all England will be squeezing after him in the
secret hope of a peep-show! and I prophesy----" But at that moment
Langler joined us, and she was mum.

It was a gloomy night, without any moonlight, and during our return to
Swandale groups of wayfarers trudged before and behind us, a strange
sight, quite changing the mood of the countryside. Night, however, in
the country merges everything in an enchantment, and in Swandale itself
was once more nothing but fays and black shades. But even there, just as
we were crossing the bridge to enter the cottage, a messenger from the
world intruded to trouble us. It was a boy who brought a telegram--for
me--which on going in I opened, and read the words: "Two fresh visions
reported--one in village-church, Windau, Baltic, one in Bayeux
Cathedral." It had been sent to me from London by a good friend of mine,
the editor of a morning paper, and I handed it to Langler, who, having
read it, handed it to Miss Emily.

It was at that moment that a thing new, I think, to Swandale took
place--a spark of anger, a flush of the cheek: for Miss Emily, tossing
the telegram aside even as she read it, let the heated words escape
her: "oh, I am like Baron Kolár: I don't believe in miracles"; and then
for the first time I saw Langler look with reproof at his sister.

"Emily," said he pointedly, "your words seem to me irreverent."

Miss Emily's cheek blanched. There was silence for a little while.

"Emily," said Langler again, "I ask you to take back those words."

Miss Emily sat down sharply on a chair by the table, having on still her
hat and gloves, the little bird perched on her shoulder, her lips set.
She answered nothing, and another most painful silence followed. I, for
my share, did not know what to say, or where to hide myself away from
such a scene so suddenly sprung upon us. I wished that the unhappy
telegram had never come.

But after a minute of this silence Miss Emily's pallor rushed into pink,
and the words broke from her in a heat not far from choking, and a
strain of tears: "so, then, I am to abase my intellect before the
incredible at your bidding, Aubrey! Then, I will say that I _do_ believe
in miracles, since such is your pleasure, Aubrey, but that I do _not_
believe in this one."

"But this is precisely the only one that was ever well attested," said
Langler, with a puzzled brow.

"Then, it is my whim to believe in the ill-attested, Aubrey, rather than
in this," said Miss Emily, "since we are in the Inquisition, Aubrey, and
expected to believe in miracles." She stopped a moment, and then went
on, pouring out her words chokily, with stoppages: "I did not see the
thing, I am not gainsaying my own senses, and to be charged with
irreverence, Aubrey! Why was I not allowed to see it? Why were not you?
To be charged with irreverence, Aubrey! The thing is not, so to say,
'the work of God'; it is related to the disappearance of Charles
Robinson and of Father Max Dees, and of all the others, and to these two
new 'miracles'--and Baron Kolár foreknew that it would happen in Dr
Burton's church when he foretold Dr Burton's rise. And to be charged
with irreverence, Aubrey! If you wish to find out the meaning of it all,
go to a castle in Styria, for that is where the key lies--" and some
more of this kind: guesses without proof, statements without form, but
so sprung in a pile upon our minds that Langler and I stood dumb before
them.

Thus, at any rate, for the second time in two days, those words: "go to
Styria," were broached in the cottage: a seed of bitter reaping.

Miss Emily went to a casement, and stood there looking out, while upon
me Langler turned a look which I took to imply surprise that I should
have spoken to her of Max Dees. For some minutes nothing was said; but
presently Langler moved to the window, and laid his hand upon his love;
whereat she heaved up to him a smile which beamed with beatitude: and at
this I slipped away.




CHAPTER XIII

MISS LANGLER OUTRAGED


So peace was made. However, Langler did not sup with Miss Emily and me
that night, nor was it till one P.M. of the next day that I saw him
again, looking rather haggard, and it was then, for the first time (not
the last!), that he made me the announcement that he would go to Styria.

"Yes," he said, "I will go."

"Well, and I also, Aubrey," I said.

"That is like you, Arthur," he answered. "Ah, yes, it is a high
mountain, this, but I say that it shall be climbed."

"A short journey," I said. "When do we start?"

"At once," he answered, "while the grimness of it is upon us."

"To-morrow, then?"

"It shall be done!" said he; "but let us hasten slowly: Emily has first
to be won over."

"Oh, I think that that will be all right," I answered, for I knew that
Miss Emily desired a change for him.

"She _may_ be alarmed," he said; "in any case, the question must be
broached to her by degrees."

I answered nothing, but thought to myself: "then, it will be another
week before we start."

He did not mention to me the grounds of this impulse to "go to Styria,"
but I assumed that the words of his sister, random as they were, had
roused and set him furiously thinking, as they had set me. Indeed, the
miracle had been very numbing to the intellect, as it were bludgeoning
one's head, so I was glad to notice that afternoon an almost playfulness
in Langler during a visit of Miss Jane and Miss Lizzie (Chambers), for
it seemed to show that nature in him was at last roused to cast off a
gloom which it found unbearable.

Still, this new gaiety of his was certainly a little forced, a little
distempered. I was rather puzzled. Once when Miss Emily left the room,
Langler seemed only to have waited for this in order to say to the
Misses Chambers: "I am on the very verge of a voyage to Styria."

"Styria!" they said together.

"What, is Styria so remote?" asked Langler, leaning forward with a
quizzing look. "I didn't say China, I said Styria--a two days' journey
by the new rail-trains, with 'every luxury' _en route_! Do you imagine,
then, that you will never see me again?"

"But can he be serious?" asked one of the ladies over her tea-cup:
"Emily said nothing of it."

"Emily does not happen to know!" cried Langler--"that is something in
store for Emily!"

"Then it is hardly a serious intention, since Emily has not yet been
told."

"Who lives will see if it is serious!" said Langler.

"But Styria," said one of the ladies--"Styria sounds so mythical! Why
Styria?"

"To open the eyes of the blind," said Langler in a deep voice, "to set
at liberty them that are bound!"

The ladies exchanged glances; but before any more could be said Miss
Emily came in with a plate of seeds, and Langler sat up straight.

Now, before this, Miss Jane and Miss Lizzie had been giving the story of
Baron Kolár's visits; one afternoon lately, they said, the baron had
come down from London merely to eat their toast; and they expected him
again soon. This being so, I was surprised that Langler should be so
unbridled as to publish to them his going to Styria to set free the
baron's prisoner! To this day I am at a loss to understand him, though I
suppose that he was somewhat distempered by the late events, and in a
state of unreal levity. And the very next afternoon, when one of the
Benedictines of Up Hatherley, an old college friend, called at the
cottage, to him, too, Langler told his intention of "starting at once
for Styria." All this time he had said not a word of it to Miss Emily,
so that I found myself doubting whether his intention could be serious.
When at last Miss Emily heard that we should _perhaps_ be going, it was
I who told it her in confidence.

That was just a week after Langler had assured me that his mind was made
up to go: and it was during the evening of that same day on which I told
Miss Emily of it that a group of Spanish peasants, moving homeward in
the gloaming through some fields between the villages of Guardo and
Villalba, in Palencia, saw wrought in mid-air by a mountain side a
vision of the crucifixion, and dropped to the ground. I was in my own
rooms when a message of it was brought me. It was after dinner; Miss
Emily had gone to Ritching to see some sick, and when I went to look for
Langler I heard that he, too, was not in the house. However, I presently
found him down in the south-west, in a grape-arbour near the abbey, and
handed him the telegram without a word. He, as he read it, rose slowly
from his seat, with a paleness under the skin; for the news of these
events had always the same effect upon the mind--awe mixed with a very
peculiar ecstasy--which did not diminish with repetition, for with each
new alarm I was anew imbued with the same dream of the wind-up and term
of the drama of time and the trumps of the tribunes of eternity. I saw
the telegram tremble in Langler's hand; I heard him murmur: "another."

"Yes," I said, "another--the fourth." And I cried out: "Oh, Aubrey!
where do we stand?"

He made no answer; his head was bowed; till presently he said: "let us
go! why do we delay? let us go to-morrow."

"But am I not ready?" I cried.

"That is settled, then," said he: "we go. Emily shall hear it this
night, and to-morrow we turn our backs upon Swandale and all our life
here. It shall be done now."

"I am sure that you will be none the worse for it," I said.

"On the contrary," said he, "for ease and sloth are the very bane of the
soul, Arthur, believe me. It is putting out from port to rough it that
braces the ship's timbers! Well, let us launch forth: I at least am
ready. So there is another now--the fourth."

"The fourth."

"From _Heaven_, Arthur?"

"Or from hell."

"Ah, talking of hell," said he, "just come now with me, and I will show
you something in that tone."

He left the arbour, and I went with him down a dell towards the
south-east of Swandale, till, near the great gate, he stopped at a
certain larch tree on a brook's bank, peered at its bark, and pointed to
it. It was already rather dark, but I, looking close, saw carved in
large letters in the trunk the two words: "Don't Go."

"You see it?" asked Langler: "it was pointed out to me yesterday by
John. You see, now, you see...."

I kept on gazing at the carving, while Langler looked at me, smiling,
with his arms akimbo; and I thought to myself: "what a pity that our
intention of going was ever divulged!"

"Someone seeks a quarrel with me, Arthur," said Langler: "you see now,
you see. But perhaps I do not look dismayed."

"Of course not," I murmured.

"Let them threaten me," he said, "let them do their worst! They may find
me of grimmer make than their present delusions of me conceive me. Wait,
you shall see me give them their fit answer now."

"But why?" I cried: "no, Aubrey, pray, don't think of carving anything
there"--for I saw him opening a pen-knife.

But he would not listen to me: "Allow me," he said, coming to the tree.
I could do nothing to stop him, and stooping there during ten minutes,
he carved under "Don't Go" the words "I Will." I was astonished at his
conduct, and still cannot understand what end he imagined would be
served by this ataxic defiance.

That same night he spoke to Miss Emily of our voyage, and from the next
morning the business of making ready began. But this was not soon over!
I had imagined that the packing of a trunk would be almost all: but
Langler had many orders to give, and letters of farewell to write to his
churchmen and wardens and fellows and professors; and by three in the
afternoon it was seen that we could not go that day. Nor could we go the
next, for Langler rose from bed with a pain in the heart and a pallor
under his skin, and toward evening said to me in his study: "it seems
callow, Arthur, for us to set out upon this enterprise without seeing
our way before us: let us hasten more slowly, and at least provide
ourselves with the proper introductions to people abroad."

"But isn't it rather a question of _time_, Aubrey?" I asked, for it
began to seem to me that if we hastened any more slowly we should never
get to Styria.

"Yes, most decidedly, it is a question of time," said he, "and each day
that passes is such a care and qualm to me, such a disease and
harassment, that if I break down under it, you won't wonder. Would that
we were already gone--that we had gone long ago! Oh, Arthur, am I never
to know sweet quiet and peace of heart again?"

I was taken aback! poor Langler said this with so much heart; nor did I
quite understand ... since a voyage to Styria to make some inquiries did
not seem to me such a task. Langler, of course, was an autochthon--had
never been farther than Paris!--and I understood that he was loth to
tear himself from his Armenian cushions, his roses, and the Greekish old
routine of life in Swandale; but still, I could not see.... Each mind,
however, knows the bitter tang of its own plight and entanglement.

"Well, well," I said, "but we have only to set out and you will feel
better."

"I know it full well!" he answered, "but each day's delay has only made
our departure the more irksome to me. If we had set out at once, as I
begged you to, all our difficulties would by now perhaps have solved
themselves. But when I think of that poor man in his dungeon, and of how
each of the days which we have wasted here may be an age of pain to him,
and of how much hangs upon our action--how much!--my limbs seem bound,
and my sense of my guilt becomes hard to bear."

"Perhaps it is the heat of these last few days," I said.

"Certainly it has been hot," he answered: "one can hardly get one's
breath; and to venture at such a time into southern lands----"

"Ah, but there is the sea-voyage," I said; "let us not think of
obstacles, let us just go: _solvitur faciendo_."

"You are right," he cried, "right! That is just the word that we
needed--_solvitur faciendo_! thanks for that word. Oh, Arthur, we have
lost time--time that never comes back--the angel with the parting look.
And think of what world-business depends upon us--so much. For mercy's
sake, let us lose no more."

"That is agreed, then," I said: "we set out."

"But to what?" he asked suddenly. "We take a voyage into mist! Where
exactly are we going to? What shall we do when there? Nothing is clear
to me. Suppose we go and effect nothing, and have to return like
Quixotes? Suppose there is no Max Dees, no Styrian castle, save in our
brains? Shall we leave Emily alone, and our solid good.... Really,
Arthur, a certain terror of the absurd is mixed for me with the other
obstructions to this adventure."

"But that is what the police-officer thought of Dees," I said, "that he
is a myth, and you called him stolid. What you were sure of now seems
mist to you when it becomes a question of venturing your weight upon it,
as Peter lost faith when he stepped out on the waves. But even if it is
a myth, let us go and see, fearing nothing, not even the absurd."

"Well, that is bravely said, too," he answered: "let us go, then, let us
go.... But tell me whether you do not think it better to get letters to
the foreign personages first, and not go crudely like birds migrating
without due support."

"As you please," I said, and said no more, for I did not see that we
needed any letters.

However, he wrote for letters, and it was some days--I forget how
many--before he had all of the number which he asked for. By this time
our date of departure, our very train, had been fixed by Miss Emily, it
was now three weeks since Langler had first mooted his idea of going,
and by now scores of persons all about must have known that he was
going, and when.

During the day before our departure Langler gave a last look to every
part of Swandale, and re-entering the house near five P.M., had tea with
Miss Emily and me. We were having tea when I heard a noise in a
corridor, and on asking was told by Miss Emily that it was "Aubrey's
trunks being taken to the station." I could not at first understand why
they were being taken that night till, on glancing through the door, I
saw almost a cartload of baggage (swelled by books!). Miss Emily and I,
standing at a window, she with the wren on her shoulder, watched all
this luggage being put upon a cart--Langler had now left the room--and
driven away; but a minute after it had gone Miss Emily, crying out
something, ran from my side, and out of the cottage. I saw her hurry
across the bridge, heard her call after the driver, who had disappeared,
and soon she too disappeared beyond the bridge.

I assumed that she had run to give the man some forgotten instruction,
and expected her back soon; but when she did not come I was not at all
anxious, since I had no reason to be so. I was reading Bellarmine, I
remember, in a wicker chair that rocked me, and it became so dark that
I could hardly see the print. I heard Langler playing Gregorian chants
on the organ in the oratory, for he had the habit of playing chants
about that hour of the evening, but had rather given it up since the
miracles.

Well, I was thus reading in the half dark when, suddenly, a man stood
before me--the driver of the cart, who, having left the luggage at the
station, was now returned. He seemed unable to speak: if ever I saw awe
it was in that man's face; when I asked: "what is it?" his breath burst
from his lips in his vain effort to answer me; his face rolled with
sweat. At last when he was able to say something, it was in the words:
"Miss Langler--come with me--don't say anything----"

I sped with him past two astonished girls in the passage out of the
cottage, he taking the way to the south-east, but having already run far
he had now to make stoppages, and so hard he found it to speak that we
had gone over a quarter of a mile, and were near the great gate, before
I could gather from him aught of what was in his mind. He had led me
down a path that ran between a brook and a rose-tree hedge, till we were
within sight of the carriage-road, and there in a sort of glade, where a
larch stood by the brook's bank, he stopped, and pointed--the same larch
on which had been carved "Don't Go" and Langler's "I Will." At the foot
of the tree, in a patch of reeds, I saw a female form lying like one
asleep, or unconscious, or dead. It was my poor Miss Emily. When I
peered nearer I perceived that her left hand had been pegged to the tree
by a big nail. But she did not know it, nor reck, she lay in sleep,
without any pain or care, her lips a little open, and two poor tears of
her truce had trickled down her cheeks.

While I was still gloating over her I was aware, to my woe, that Langler
was with us: one of the girls in the house, on seeing me run out, must
have warned him of something wrong, and he had hasted at a rounder rate,
though a sorry runner, than the exhausted man who had brought me could
come; but the effort had been altogether too large for Aubrey's gauge:
he was awfully breathed and gaunt. I saw him stand off, peering gingerly
at his dear, asking: "_what is it_?" with his cheeks peaked up, poor
Aubrey: and I had to leave her pierced, in order to turn to him.




CHAPTER XIV

CANTERBURY


After this weeks passed before we knew whether Miss Emily would live or
die, and the existence of Max Dees and of Styria was forgotten in
Swandale, for our poor friend took a delirious fever, and had three
relapses, so we others dragged our lives through many a black day while
hers hung in the balance: weeks of watching: leaving not much
outstanding in the memory, save the fact of a certain new quarry--a puny
affair perhaps, but for ever associated in my mind with the nightmare of
that time, and somehow lending to it a strange awfulness; for it
happened that someone had lately opened a quarry some miles north of
Swandale, and was blasting the rock: so fifteen, twenty times a day we
would hear it, not loud, but clear, a knock at the north door of heaven,
and two seconds later an answer sounded in the south of heaven: and each
time Langler would look at me with such a smile. So that this sound of
blasting, all mingled as it was with Miss Langler's fight for life, has
still for me whenever I hear it meanings the most momentous, as it were
rumours of the guns and din of Armageddon, and the arbitrament of the
doom of being. In the end, however, I managed to make terms with the
owner, and the noises ceased.

About the same time--_i.e._ towards the end of the year--hope brightened
for our wounded friend, and my mind found some breathing-space to think
out what I could do for her brother, who had been very gravely shocked
and cowed. After a time I would get him into his study at night, and
there read to him his accumulated correspondence, with a view to weaning
his thoughts from a room three corridors away; for the letters, being
mainly from men in the whirlpool, were full of history, and such as to
reawaken his interest in things. Also I insisted upon answers to some of
them being dictated to me; and also, at last, I read to him a little
from books and newspapers.

At midnight of Christmas Day I was thus reading to him through the noise
of the cascade, made noisier that night by stormy weather, when he said:
"Europe and America, then, are again Christian in an ancient sense. How
many visions in all have now been seen?"

I found among the newspapers on our half-round settle one containing a
list of the miracles, with their dates, and saw that their number was
twenty-three.

At this Langler seemed to wince, and we sat cowering over our wood fire
in a bitter rumination, till after a while he said: "I have nothing to
do with the defect in the world's fate, and don't wish to cause my
voice to be any more heard: but still, Arthur, consider how the sins of
nations do find them out."

I was pleased at his new tone of interest, but said that I did not know
to what he referred.

"I refer," he answered, "to this proposed 'weeding out' of our refuse
populations by the 'lethal chamber' method, and to the growth among men
of a certain brute directness with which the nineteenth century was less
tainted. Mind you, I interfere in nothing; but don't let us hide from
each other the existence in our minds of certain ghastly suspicions with
regard to these visions; and if such a thing can be, however
large-minded the motive, think of it, Arthur! The growth of such a brute
directness can only be the penalty, subtle yet terrible, of some sin in
the body politic; nor is any seer needed to see that that sin is the
mere discussion of such a step as this wholesale 'weeding out' of men's
lives."

"I, too," I said, "have felt that such a thing was brutalising."

"But it is beastly!" he hissed. "Man's evolution, certainly, is
henceforth in his own hands; but to want to beget taller sons with a
strain of the thug in their blood! It is an instance, and a chief cause,
of that brute directness which is tainting society, which perhaps
culminates in these miracles, which I myself have experienced----"

"Never mind," I murmured.

"To strike me through _her_----"

I said quickly: "but this purpose of 'weeding out' the submerged seems
to have died since the miracles, for the people are now Christian,
Aubrey, in deed as well as in creed."

"But before we rejoice, let us ask for how long!" said he. "If what we
have dared to suspect of the miracles--that they may be none--be true,
is it not probable that they involve some plot unfriendly to the Church?
We have sure knowledge, for that matter, that someone who need not be
named between us is no friend of churches. Since, therefore, the Church
flourishes by the miracles, it can only be, _if_ there is a plot against
her, that the miracles will in time be shown to be none: in which case,
think of the moral swing back, huge enough perhaps to wreck the frame of
society."

I said nothing, and for some time we bent over the fire in a silence of
wormwood.

"_Is_ there a plot?" he began again: "if there is, I believe with her
who lies hurt that the key to it may be found in a castle of--Austria.
But anon, when I remember that we here are the only three in the world
into whom such a doubt has entered, it strikes me as even impious----"

"There is also Rivers who doubts," I said. "Lidcott, by the way, has
written you an account of Rivers' secession and 'new religion' in
Littlemore--a 'religion' with a following of six! Lidcott's letter also
contains one from Burton about Rivers' secession: I'll read it you now,
if you like."

"Well, then," said he; so I got and read the letters.

Rivers was an Oriel man of very brilliant reputation, one of the younger
group of leaders of the so-called "Liberal Movement"--a church-party
which had been making some noise in the world just before the miracles;
he was a contemporary of Langler and myself, so we were familiar with
his personality and church-idea, which had been called "anti-romantic";
he was one of the warmest admirers of Langler's criticism, and had set
to sweet minor music some of Langler's songs. Well, when the miracles
began, Ambrose Rivers, alone of thinkers, for some reason or other broke
off from the Church, and started a new "religion" in Littlemore--with a
following of six; and Dr Lidcott's letter to Langler was a description
of this new flight of Rivers', containing also the following from Dr
Burton: "The Chancery, Lincoln, In Festo Sanct. F. Xav. My dear
Lidcott,--The tragedy of Rivers has been as great a heaviness to me as
to you and the rest; how mysterious, too, now, when our Light is come.
Can nothing be done even now? It was a branch loaded with flowers and
fruit, and though the very canker was in them, it is hard to see it
lopped off at a stroke. Do reason with him, then, still a little; but,
if he be obdurate and damned in error, you will leave him to the
tormentors, warning him that the day is even at hand when Holy Church
will no longer spare dissent and rebellion, but everywhere on the front
of that chief of crimes will brand her effective anathema. Verbum caro
factum est, et habitavit in nobis. Farewell. On the 13th inst. I leave
this for St Paul's. Miserere mei, Deus, asperge me, Domine, hyssopo, et
mundabor; and you, pray for me.--In haste, yours faithfully in Xt., John
Burton."

"Well," said Langler when I had read the two letters, "but Rivers' doubt
of the miracles is due to some trait of a wayward mind, if not to some
wisdom of the man's really divine genius; but in our case the doubt has
grown out of facts which have come before us, and since those facts are
very meagre I say that _our_ doubt sometimes strikes me as impious. I
think, however, that it will be justified if Dr Burton's rise so
continues as strikingly to fulfil the prophecy that he is 'destined to
be the greatest of churchmen.'"

"Oh, you think that," I said.

"Yes," said he; "for, _if_ there is a plot, there is no difficulty about
divining its purposes: we can say with assurance that those purposes
are, firstly, to raise the Church to the height of power, in which case
what she will surely do was foreseen: she will become harsh, will clash
with the modern spirit. And to make this clash doubly certain a number
of brisk churchmen would naturally be chosen out by the plotters to
become generals of the Church--of whom Burton was chosen for England. It
_is_ so. For we read of Burton: 'I am sure that he will do for England:
he is another Max Dees, as arrogant as he is brilliant, a union of
Becket and Savonarola.' Now, it is clear that the 'Savonarola' and the
'brilliance' in Burton are one, and the 'Becket' and the 'arrogance' are
one: for who was Becket? an arch-priest who flouted the civil power.
Therefore, _if_ there is a plot--for I state nothing, I interfere in
nothing--_if_ there is one, I say that the Church is to be pushed to
clash with the civil power. And now suppose, secondly, that at the
height of that clash the miracles be shown to be none; and suppose
further, thirdly, that it be then made to appear that these false
miracles were contrived not by the enemies of the Church for her ruin,
but by churchmen themselves for their own rise and rule: well,
then--what then?... And shall no man be found to meddle in this, one
with heart, head, hand, Arthur, though a sword pierce his own heart?"

"_I_ mean to meddle in it somehow," I said suddenly.

"Beware, however, Arthur," he murmured. "I too feel the _muth_ to
venture--if it be not already too late.... In any case, let us hasten
slowly, and wait till our doubt acquires some little certitude. I say
that something of certitude will be ours, if Dr Burton's rise becomes
so marked----"

"But surely, Aubrey," I said, "we need not wait for that. Look at things
in Germany and Russia, look at France: in France ever since the
Separation Act, the Church was a dead thing; then came the miracles, and
to-day France is on her knees. It is touching: there never was an age so
hungry for faith. This week there have been eleven pilgrimages in France
alone to the spots of the miracles--caravans counting their hundreds of
thousands. Things have been moving, you know. Italy is more a theocracy
now than under Alexander VI.; one quarter of the Austrian Abgeordneten
House is already given over to churchmen; in our own election in October
forty people of churchman type were tided into Parliament, and in the
Lords the bishops awe, so how it would be there under Dr Burton one may
imagine; when Burton was preaching at St Paul's crowds vaster than the
cathedral could contain waited all the night through--nowhere, it seems,
are there enough churches, and women hourly swoon in the crowds round
certain churches; not a few rich men have stripped themselves to endow
the Church; as for charity, here is the high day of Christ's sick and
needy: everyone is giving apparently, everyone is muttering
prayers--merchants over their cargoes, doctors over their charges; in
November two New York negroes, by pretending to have seen the vision on
a country-road, and asking for funds to open a church, became vastly
rich, and now have disappeared; even the bourses have caught the
rapture, gambling is going out, all sorts of personal oddities of
behaviour and costume abound, as in Puritan days, saints arise,
newspapers no more print certain kinds of matter, in the Commons during
prayers members are as if in pews; as for the Nonconformists, they are
hardly any longer even the political clubs and caucuses which they had
become, since most of them have gone over to the Church of the miracles.
If you would bear to hear me read, you would see for yourself the
millionfold modification of everything. A certain Father Mathieu, in
whose church at Windau the second of the visions appeared, is followed
by multitudes to be healed by his touch; while the once Vicar-Apostolic
of Bayeux, a man of Burton's very temper, is now Metropolitan of Paris.
It was about him, by the way, that I wanted to tell you, for since _his_
rise is complete, we needn't wait for Dr Burton's to become so, in order
to get that certitude as to a plot----"

"Well, let that be so," said Langler; "but ah, Arthur, what touch shall
be found, both gentle and strong, to heal all this fevered world? If the
Master were indeed here, with the stars of night in his eyes! As for me,
I confess, my longing is for escape. I have read a tale of a tiny world
which struck our earth, tore up a field or two, and carried off someone
into space----think of _that_!--the dumb empyrean, the leisure to be a
man, the starry dream, and in those grassy graves, too, of Ritching
churchyard----"

"But things are as they are," I murmured; "we can't escape them."

"True," he answered; "life is a sterner dreaming than dreams, but surely
a diviner; and in His plan be our good."

"Well, then," said I, "this being so, what I, for myself, propose to do
now is to write a letter to the Styrian authorities, stating what I know
of Father Max Dees, and giving hints as to the place of his
imprisonment, without breaking any law of libel. Dees may thus be
liberated; whereupon, if he knows anything of a plot, he will divulge
it."

"Well, we might think that over," said Langler, "and see if we find it
to be our duty."

In the end this was determined upon between us, and from the next
morning I set about it, writing first to consult my solicitors as to the
proper authority to whom to address ourselves: this, they answered, was
the Public Safety Bureau of Upper Styria; so Langler and I set to work
to draw up the document, and on the 7th of January it was posted.

This work quite warmed us anew, and we were eager for a reply, sometimes
discussing whether it would come in one week, in two, or in three: but a
month passed, Miss Emily was being allowed to sit up, and no reply had
come.

Those were the days when England was at the height of the excitement
over the disappearance of the Bishop of Bristol. On the death, three
weeks before, of Archbishop Kempe, the question who would succeed him
had raised a simmering of interest, not in church-circles only, but in
the nation: a very distinguished Cambridge man was a rumour, also Dr
Todhunter, Bishop of Bristol, while Dr Burton, now Bishop of Winchester,
was the popular choice. For us at Swandale, however, only two of these
were really in the running, for we lived too near to Goodford not to
know that Mr Edwards would never of his free will set such a spirit as
Burton over the province of Canterbury. Edwards' majority in the House
was now only twenty-three, and, apart from that, everything in him shied
at Dr Burton's whole State-idea and order of mind; so when Dr
Todhunter's appointment was made known Langler said to me, "you see,
now, it is as we said."

Three days after Edwards' letter of invitation to Dr Todhunter the
doctor wrote to Langler, stating that he had accepted the primacy, and
closing with a very tender reference to our wounded friend. We two had
known and loved him since undergraduate days, and Langler in particular
had a kind of devotion for the classicism of his style and preaching.
Who, in fact, that ever knew him could fail to revere him? When only
fifty his mass of hair was quite wool-white, and no saintlier face,
surely, ever lifted towards the skies. Well, his election by
dean-and-chapter had taken place by the 17th of February; on the 19th
the archbishop elect took a trip to London, meaning to be back in
Bristol by the 21st; but from the hour of two P.M. on the 20th nothing
appears ever to have been seen of him. At that hour of two--high
daytime!--the old man parted from the Rev. William Vaux, Dean of the
Arches, on the pavement in Whitehall, and--walked away into nothingness;
nor, I think, has one ray of real light ever been thrown upon his
disappearance.

I can almost feel again, as I write, the mood of those days. One
sometimes lost control of oneself! one had seizures of excitement, could
hardly utter one's words! Langler in particular was strongly moved: his
cheek at one spot would go pale, and quiver. By the 24th or 25th we at
Swandale began to understand that Dr Todhunter would never more be seen;
and I said then: "No! he will never more be seen; and in two months from
to-day--wait and see!--Dr Burton will be primate of England."

"But will he _consent_?" asked Langler, pale with excitement: "does he
not already--_suspect_? Will he plug up both his ears against _a hundred
whispers_ that already throng in his consciousness?"

What grounds Langler had for assuming these "hundred whispers" in Dr
Burton's consciousness I do not know; but, if it was a guess, it may
have been a shrewd one, for I have seen a letter of Burton's written
about then, in which _twice_, occurs a certainly very suggestive prayer
against "the deceitful man": "ab homine iniquo et doloso erue me"--twice
in one letter.

However this was, it was soon beyond doubt that Dr Burton would not only
be invited, but would accept the primacy. The rumour grew and grew. The
Prime Minister, in fact, must have been under the strongest pressure to
invite Burton, and after a struggle with fate, with his hair, and with
the wire-pullers, had to give in. Mrs Edwards herself, who drove over
one afternoon from Goodford, told us so much; and by the middle of March
it began to be taken for granted that Dr Burton would be metropolitan of
Canterbury. I remember the date very well, for just about that time
Baron Kolár came down to Goodford for one afternoon to repose himself,
to eat the Misses Chambers' toast, and sleep on their sofa, and have his
hair brushed; and it was that same day--either the 14th or 15th of
March--that the weak voice of our friend said to her brother: "you
should go to Styria, since it is so." It was a rough evening, before the
candles were lit, and we two were sitting beside her cane chair by her
fire; and Langler, with his brow bowed over her hand, answered: "yes, I
will go, since I should. We have written a letter to the authorities in
those parts, and are waiting for their answer, but if it does not come
within a week--or two--I shall do as you bid me."




CHAPTER XV

OUR START


Ten more days passed without answer from Styria, and I was daily
awaiting Miss Emily's word: "You should start now."

She had left her room on the 22nd, and I can see again in fancy our
friend as she was that day, with her hair somewhat lax, and the little
wren on her bosom; she was palish, but one would hardly have thought
that she had come through a great illness, and more laughter than I
could quite account for, than quite pleased me perhaps, was on her lips.

Those were warm days in which much more than the daffodil had blown in
Swandale, and on the 25th of the month our friend went out of doors.
Towards evening she and I were in the pavilion--for I find that I must
tell something as to her and me, and since I must, will tell it more or
less verbatim, with reporter's blankness, as well as I can remember. We,
then, being in the pavilion (a circular temple at the end of an oblong
of water), she said to me: "those groups of lily-leaves on the lake
looking like ears must remember the music which Aubrey and I made here
most nights last summer. They will never hear us more. We used to sit in
that recess there, and this is the cupboard where we put up the violin
and harp." (A series of cupboards and old chairs went round the wall,
and there were chambers within the thickness of the marble, each with
its big window and seat; in one of the cupboards I saw still a harp in a
bag.)

"But the water-lilies will hear you and him again, Emily," I answered.

"Will they? What name shall we give him, Kitty-wren?" she asked of the
bird, "let's call him Mr Hopeful, Mr Butterlips; let's screech him down
with nicknames, Jenny"--whereat the bird from picking at the scab in her
palm broke, as if in answer, into chattering, so that we had to smile:
indeed, this tiny brown being that had come to us so strangely with its
message from Styria, and would never leave us, was seldom silent even in
the winter, and now in the spring would sometimes scatter one's talk
with its showers of music. Miss Emily touched its cocky, short tail,
saying: "Jenny knows! and the water-lilies know, too: they are never to
hear us more. Birds and herbs and women: they are in the original
obiah-dodge, and know what they do know."

"Women above all," I remember saying, though my heart was sore for her
and for me.

"Look at her now!" she cried--"perched right atop of the harp, screaming
something: the devil's in the bird, I think--pneuma akatharton echei!"
This she said with a laugh, but when the bird now suddenly hopped upon
her she stepped back from it with grave looks, brushing it off,
murmuring, "get away, you, go"; and at this I found myself bowed over
her drawn left palm, choked with her name; for she was no longer
herself, and feelings surged within me which cannot be told; but as I
held her hand, she first looked gravely at me, and then, to my wonder,
began to hum the common song: "two in a bed," whereat, with playful
reproach, I murmured "Gregorian," and let go her hand. Just then, the
bird settling afresh upon her, she said to it: "well, come then,
Kitty-wren: though you be the banshee, the very moth of death, I sha'n't
shun you--not though your mood be all of shrouds, and of thundery lone
nights in the ground, and good-bye all. Still, you were sick, you know,
and I nursed you, I have fed you, and watered you, and cleaned you, and
tamed you, and loved you, and you have a devil against me, Jenny."

"Oh, but, Emily," I said, "this little bird begins now to take up too
much of your thoughts!"

She did not answer me, but remarked thoughtfully: "she has baseness in
her nature; yes, she makes a show of affection, but how flightily she
forsook me that evening! I was just by that whitethorn bush out there,
looking down at the water-lilies, and she was on my left shoulder, when
suddenly she flew away, and before you could say 'Jenny!' a wet cloth
was over my face, my mouth was crammed, and the scream of my being made
no sound in my ears. Yet I have a sort of memory of a man, a masked man,
a lanky man with a stoop, so strong, so rude, dark as death, cruel as
the grave----"

"But, Emily, you speak of that?" I cried.

"Aubrey isn't here to hear," she said in a confidential way, "so it is
nothing. Let me talk. There's something in mere blackness without one
ray, in ravines without bottom, in bitterness so bitter that it churns
to cud in the chewing. You don't know how strong he was: I struggled
with him, but I was like a straw in his grasp; and when I felt myself
going, and no succour nor ruth in the world, and the large darkness
glooming, why then I sighed and was reconciled, and I chewed the brash
of the grave like black bread, and it was boon and good to me."

When I began now to reproach her for such melancholies she hummed a
catch of Langler's--

          "In its dash
    Showers down the rill,"

then at once ran to a window, crying: "look, you can see the whitethorn
from here; I must have been dragged at least forty yards from it----"
but I would no longer hear her, but drawing her down to the window-seat,
said, "hear me, dear Emily: you are not well, you are still far from
well, and for some days I have determined to ask you whether you do not
see that it would be well for you now to end my ordeal. If I have the
right----"

"Which right, Jenny?" she cried: "here is a young man who wishes to
sleep two in a bed with me--two in a bed, bed, bed, bed, bed! but he
will never sleep two in a bed with _me_, I think."

At these words I was so alarmed for her and pierced with pain, that I
could only bow my head over her knees, and I used the word "mercy."

"Mercy?" said she, "is it she who lives in Cuckoo-town? But you have not
waited long."

"Five years."

"Is that long? madly, dyingly long?... But it is only four."

"The fifth has long since begun."

"Has it? Truly? You might have reminded me!"

"On the morning when it began I begged of you a rose as symbol, and you
would not give it."

"Is that so? But perhaps I might have given some forget-me-nots, only
there were none.... You see, there's failure in you somewhere, Arthur,
there's a troubled light about your eyes, you were not born to make a
mother of me: you should buy an urn, Arthur, to blubber in."

"Well, I must, since you pronounce me so unfortunate," I said; "but
after four years and nearly a half of hope and promise----"

"Not promise."

"But of hope so warm----"

"The conditions remain: I have a brother." "But, Emily, you care----"

"For him."

"Alone?"

"They say the flowers grow fresher on maids' graves, Arthur: have you
ever heard say that?"

"Yes, but hear me: a day had to come when you must leave Aubrey--only
for a time, only partially--and for over a week it has seemed sure to me
that it is come now. You should be taken from Swandale, you should enter
upon a new life--only for a time. Hear me, Emily: you have been
fearfully ill, nigh to death; turn to me, say that you will come----"

"_To Styria?_"

"Styria! Of course, I did not mean Styria."

"Then, where does the man mean, Kitty-wren?" cried she: "he is talking
in Nephelo-coccugia, he hears a toll and thinks it a marriage-bell, I am
sure he is bewitched, he has blinkers on his eyes and morris bells on
his fingers: let's scream at him, and stop his dancing; he will take
worms to his bed, and be hugging them for his warm darling: Heaven guard
us from such a carle!"

"But pray, pray," was all that I could say, for a hunger and pity of her
possessed me.

"I am only telling you the truth," she answered, "your luck has leprosy,
your godmother must have been cross-eyed; and have I ever vowed to be
one Mrs Templeton, with your ring round my finger, whispering: '_this is
my body_'? I don't remember! I knew you when you were a young boy, and
I had a dream of you one night in which something said into my ear
nothing but 'Arthur, Arthur, Arthur'--just 'Arthur, Arthur, Arthur' for
years, and nothing else--a rum dream. But '_wife!_' '_wife!_' shrilled
the thrush, and the cuckoo answered, 'all gone,' 'all gone.' 'Wife' is a
bird-word, Jenny, it has no equivalent in my language. '_Wife!_' sing
'_wife!_' My tongue is too thick to sweet it."

"Mine isn't," I said, "if you will hear me say it. Emily, look at me, I
am praying you----"

"Idolatrously: I am wood and stone. Still, let me hear you say it."

"Say what?"

"'Wife': to hear how you pronounce the fluty f-sound and the deep i and
the wallowing w."

"Well, since that pleases you, I say--'wife.'"

"Oh, but so sheepishly? without unction? Hear _me_ say it--'_wife_.'"

"Well, so I too say it--'_wife_.'"

"Yes, that's strong. But you still speak of this? You still hope for
such a thing of me, really?"

"But may I not? Only to be allowed to take you----"

"_To Styria?_" she repeated: "oh, Arthur, the colour of your eyes and
mine don't match, you were not fashioned to be the father of a houseful
of sons, they would all squint. Deus meus! doesn't the enthronisation of
Archbishop Burton take place to-morrow, and will you not be going to
Styria the day after, or the day after?"

"I do not know that," I said: "we are waiting for a letter from the
authorities there."

"But if no letter comes? Will you not be going? Will you let Aubrey go
alone?"

"I am far from certain that Aubrey is going! There are pits and
perils----"

"He shall go," she said, "though they pierce my side, too, so that out
of it gush blood mingled with tears; he will go of himself, because he
should, and he shall go, because I will tell him to."

"I know that he will if he should," I answered; "but should he? What has
Aubrey to do with the world's trouble? As for me, I tell you, Emily,
that I care for nothing in the wide earth----"

"But care you must! Kitty-wren has come, the gripe's on," said she, "and
if she hath a devil we must nourish a God in us, to match it. There is
no escape, we are under orders, and care we must, go he shall, and you
with him, though they crucify him and you, and though they fix every
muscle of me to a different tree."

"But why did this bird come to _us_?" I thought then in my pity: "there
was the world for her, and she came to Swandale"; and some despair in
our friend's face seemed to say to me, "yes, she came to us, to me, to
you, not to others, but to us: it stands recorded, two Gods are in it."
Her face showed wannish in that twilight against her violet velvet and
her furs, for the shades of night were gathering, and we looked aside
through the window upon the darkling oblong of water in silence, since I
could find nothing to answer her, nor any way out of the entanglement in
which my feet seemed to be engaged; anon her large plush hat touched my
face, anon she fingered the chords of the harp, while the bird on her
shoulder twittered its song. At last I said to her: "let it be as you
wish, Emily: but is a journey to Styria such a great matter? We will go,
and we shall return. Nothing shall be strong enough to restrain me from
returning, if you say that my ordeal shall then come to its conclusion."

She looked with sorrowful eyes over the water, and after some minutes
she murmured: "only return safe with him, and I may be fond to you,
Arthur."

We dallied there a goodly time after this, till some of the star-glints
were lit all amid the lilies of the pool; the little bird became
sullener or sleepy, and barely lisped anon; I saw a tear steal down the
cheek of our friend, as she commenced to hum, and then to sing
wistfully, and to twang out on the harp one of those artificial little
hymns of her brother, whose austere, sad music had long been dear to our
hearts: it was his Serenade, already at that time set to music by the
many-minded Ambrose Rivers of "New Church" notoriety:

            "In its dash
    Showers down the rill,
    Raving of the hill
    (Graves are on the hill),
            May its streams
    Mingle with thy dreams.
    Rove with Robin, love:
    Mumble in thy brain
    Murmurs of the main.

            For the cock
    Drawleth as a-yawn,
    Dreaming of the dawn
    (Hoarily a-dawn),
            And a-mount
    Showereth the fount.
    Almond-drugged the garth,
    Showery besprayed,
    Hoarily arrayed.

            And of God
    Worthy is the sight,
    Worlds are in the night
    (Walkers of the night),
            And He calls
    Westwardly His thralls;
    Gorgeous large they glide,
    Wardedly like sheep,
    Walkers in a sleep.

            And a brawl
    Craveth in this breast,
    Craving thee and rest
    (God in thee and rest),
            And a roar
    Droneth to the shore.
    Dashing raves the rill,
    'Lazily they lie,
    God it is to die.'"

Her rendering of it was berippled all the while by the whispering tongue
of the wren, and when she finished I said to her: "you see, the
water-lilies have heard at least you once more, Emily, and there is
hope, for Mercy is only in Cuckoo-town in so far as Cuckoo-town is in
heaven. But we should go back to the cottage now, for the stars are
looking out in crowds, and it is beginning to grow cold."

She came with me, and we paced back by the margin of the pool, through
the wood, and up a dell, to the cottage. All laughter had gone now from
her lips, her steps were laggard, for she was easily wearied and emptied
now; and I held her poor hand all the way.

As we entered upon the bridge, there stood Langler at a door of the
cottage, a letter in his hand, which, when we had gone into the
dining-room, he handed to me openly before Miss Emily. It was the letter
from Upper Styria come at last, signed by a certain Oberpolizeirath
Tiarks, whose face I was destined one day to see. I read it with a greed
which I could not hide. But it consisted mostly of a gorgeous heading,
the writing being in two lines only, and these cold enough but for their
salute of "high-born sir!" It merely acknowledged the receipt of our
"honoured but somewhat insubstantial [ungegründet!] communication"; and
there it ended.

It was for this that we had waited! The paper was actually perfumed.

It had upon me an effect of gloom, and I felt now that our departure was
about to be, but nothing was said of the letter at dinner, nor was it
till near ten in the night that we three met to talk of it in Langler's
study. Miss Emily closed the shutter, we felt like plotters, and laid
our heads together with low voices. Our friend seemed now quite
business-like and herself: she proposed that we should leave England in
four days' time, our purpose of going being kept quite secret meantime,
and that I should start first, to await Langler in London. All this was
arranged; also that Miss Emily should stay mainly with the Misses
Chambers during our absence, and it was not till towards one in the
morning that, at the third knocking of a nurse, we rose and parted to go
to bed.

After all this I was naturally not a little surprised to hear Langler
say the next morning to his old butler, Davenport: "Davenport, I am
about to take a long voyage from home, as you will soon see for
yourself!" It was _a propos_ of nothing! The old fellow had brought in
some sour milk, and was retiring, when Langler stretched back his neck
and made the remark! No one, indeed, could be safer than old Davenport,
but still, the confidence seemed so needless.... "But it is a secret,
Davenport," I said pointedly.

Well, I left Alresford for London that evening, and from the next
morning, the 27th--the morning after Dr Burton was enthroned--set to
work to gather all the information which would be useful to our
undertaking: I engaged an agent, named Barker, to accompany us, I wrote
letters, did business, relearned German and the map of Styria, kept
clear of friends, and even bought a number of things, including some
revolvers. On my second morning in London I got a letter from Langler,
and another the next morning, with a note from his sister: he said that
he was ready, and would be with me at three P.M. of the 29th.

During the evening of the 28th, I being at home alone, reading, a letter
was handed me, consisting only of the three words: "_All is known_,"
scribbled across half-a-sheet of note-paper, with a criss-cross for
crest. After much reflection I made up my mind not to write of it to the
Langlers, but it robbed me of sleep that night.

At three P.M. the next day I was at the station to meet Langler, but he
did not come, and from then I underwent the keenest anxiety till six,
when I got a telegram: "About to start now"; and near nine Langler,
thick in furs, stood smiling before me, with the words: "_eh bien, me
voici_."

"The luggage below?" I asked.

"No, I took it direct to Victoria."

"Oh, but I thought, Aubrey, that you were to bring it here, as the
safest way?"

"Well, to save a double nuisance...."

"All right: I hope it doesn't matter. And as to Emily?"

"Well, thank God, and strong in heart."

"And you, how do you feel after the voyage?"

He smiled in his wistful way.

"Well, let us dine," I said, pulling the bell. "I mean to have you in
bed by eleven, after no more than two pipes, for our train starts as the
clock strikes nine in the morning."

I had kept back dinner for him, and we were soon at table. We were
eating fish when my man brought me in two telegrams, and the moment I
saw them in his hand, before ever I opened or touched them, my heart
sank: for I think that only the farther future is quite unknown, but we
know a moment hence, as when a heavy weight is to drop we feel it
beforehand. Tearing open one of the telegrams, I glanced at the sender's
name--"Lizzie Chambers"; she had written: "Emily ill, don't go away"; I
tore open the other: it, too, was from Miss Chambers, and she wrote:
"Emily's other hand has been nailed."

Into the gloom of my mind grew the understanding that the milder of the
telegrams must be for Langler's eyes, the sterner for mine alone: but I
showed him neither, I left him there at the table, and in another room
called out upon Almighty God for help and strength. When I returned to
the outer room I could speak.

But I showed him neither of the telegrams, for I had not the heart, and
he slept in peace that night. The next morning I told him when he came
to my bedside that I feared I should not be able to go to Styria, since
I was ill; and indeed I was very ill.




CHAPTER XVI

"DISEASED PERSONS"


What happened now I do not find it easy to tell, for my next weeks were
passed in a state like to De Quincey's "tortures of opium": I cannot
clearly remember telling Langler what had happened, or showing him the
telegrams, and he had to return to Swandale alone, in what sort of state
I do not know, for I was in a bad dream, flushed with fever, nor was I
able to go out of doors till the 25th of April. It was a Sunday, towards
evening, I was accompanied by a friend, and we happened to go into St
Clement Dane's, where the preacher referred to Miss Langler, and
expressed the wonder of the world at the outrage; but what makes that
service stand out in my memory is a little thing that happened to
myself, for I was sitting with my head bowed during the Kyrie when a
priest who was pacing about came and pushed me rudely on the back,
saying: "_kneel, kneel_." I never was more astonished.

The next day I stood at last by the bedside of our friend. She knew me,
I think, though not very clearly, but I understood that she had received
such a shock this time that she would never more be strong, even if she
did not die, for she had been still frail from the first woe when again
she was torn. Langler stood with me and watched her, for his
self-control was at all times fine, though I don't think born with him,
but won by strict schooling of himself; but after a time when we saw her
tossing her head from side to side, so acquainted with misfortune, we
had to turn from her. She had been especially unlucky, since she had
_meant_ to be on her guard, never to be out of doors alone, during her
brother's absence; but in passing f

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