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 tillhishas 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 eightp.m.the constabulary had been warned by me, and have been searching for him ever since. Before the failure to findsometrace 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 tosee?" 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 Idobelieve in miracles, since such is your pleasure, Aubrey, but that I donotbelieve 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.
So peace was made. However, Langler did not sup with Miss Emily and me that night, nor was it till onep.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.
"Shemaybe 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 shouldperhapsbe 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."
"FromHeaven, 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 oftime, 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 fivep.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.
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 throughher——"
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,ifthere 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.
"Isthere 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 thatourdoubt 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,ifthere 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. Itisso. 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,ifthere is a plot—for I state nothing, I interfere in nothing—ifthere 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?"
"Imean to meddle in it somehow," I said suddenly.
"Beware, however, Arthur," he murmured. "I too feel themuthto 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 sincehisrise 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 ofthat!—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 twop.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 heconsent?" asked Langler, pale with excitement: "does he not already—suspect? Will he plug up both his ears againsta hundred whispersthat 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 whichtwice, 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."
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—