"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 anattachéto 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 ownchef. 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. Wouldyoucare 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."
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 heisimprisoned, 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! Howutterat this moment must be his loss to understand by what marvelIcould 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 theoutréwarning 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?"
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 himin genubus, with (of all things)the Bookat 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 tohim, that it was lofty and pure onhispart. 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 BecketplusSavonarola, 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 wasbête. 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."
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 ofwood? 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 himafresh? 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 themacabredreams 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.
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 shemusthave 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 weremyshouts 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. Sooutréa 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.
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—forIhaven'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, beingnaturallystartled, contrived to send for my sister, who after examining him through the spyglass from a window came down to us. It wassoembarrassing at first! we had nonotionwhat to make of the man suddenly sprung upon us, with his great satin jacket and stream of talk, wecouldn'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 admiringeverything, then had the head gardener brought to suggest certain changes to him—and there is no doubt that hemustbe 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 wehadfinally 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 neverdreamt—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 tastedanything so nice; and it is only just to my sister to admit that shecanmake 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! Whatcouldwe do, Mr Templeton? Lizzie, who was quite distracted, put a chair under his feet, and proposed tometo brush his hair! I simplywouldnot! She maintained that it was my duty to assume the initiative, since I am the elder, but Icouldnot see eye to eye with her, and at last, after a great dealtoomany words, she decided that, since it had to be done, and Iwouldnot, then shemust, 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. Whatcanwe 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.