Anyhow, in this unforeseen fashion we now had in full the history of the ill-fated Dees, to hear which we had started out for Styria. I now whispered to Langler, "we should be quick"; but he, not perhaps quite understanding my eagerness to be gone, lingered, trying to get the poor woman to come with us, it was such a night, and she within sight of what anon was lit up down on the strip of grass by the river's brink. Langler offered to adopt the child straightway, but she would not part with it, nor would she come with us, so we had to leave her, leading the van, almost running, so that Langler, who was no runner, panted: "well, no doubt it is as well to make haste." "Yes," I answered, "for I sha'n't be astonished if some attempt be now made to keep us from leaving the alp. That man who ran off has by now taken the news to the castle, where it will be taken for granted that from the Mother Dees we have heard all, and we may not be allowed to get away with so much knowledge in our heads. In my opinion we oughtn't to go back to the guest-court for your trunk, but hurry straight down to the nearest sennhaus, get horses——"
"But I have five or six manuscript poems in the trunk, and the Theocritus with all my notes," panted Langler, trotting after my haste.
"Well, then, we must get the trunk," said I, "but it is dangerous: I wish to Heaven that we were safe down at Badsögl...."
At that moment—we were now at the castle-back—I saw the light of a lantern, and a second later struck against Herr Tschudi. "Well met, sirs!" he cried at once: "it is just for you that I was going to look, for I have to talk with you; if not in a hurry, perhaps you would favour me by stepping into the castle a moment." "I am afraid that wearerather in a hurry," I answered, "for we are wet, and have had nothing to eat; but if to-morrow morning at eleven will do, we shall then be happy to call upon you in the castle." "That will do just as well," said he, "but mayn't you as well step in now?" "Pray excuse us for to-night," I answered. "Willingly from the heart," said he, "since that is your wish; but—has not the Mother Dees been telling you about things?" I was about to say "which things?" when Langler said: "perhaps, sir!" "Oh, she has?" broke out Tschudi, "but, you see, you two men have gone a step too far now." "Come, Aubrey!" I cried out, "we can't wait!"—and I ran, dragging him by the sleeve, while Tschudi sent after us the shout: "yes, fly, you two! but don't hope to see your birth-places again...."
On reaching the guest-court breathless, I asked Lossow if the horse had been harnessed for us: he answered that he supposed so, and would see. I then paced our sitting-room for, say, six minutes, expecting him to summon us down, Langler being in his bedroom, crowding some knick-knacks into the trunk. I went in to him, saying that the waggonette must be waiting. "One moment," said he, and I waited till he locked the trunk. But when we went to go out the door had been fastened on the outside.
We stared at each other's paleness, then I flew to the window, which was at the side of the house. The night was so deep that I could not see the ground, but I knew that it was no light leap. However, it was our only way out, so Langler slid down by the sheets, which I held for him, below heaped them for me to leap upon without making a hubbub, and I dropped upon my feet: the trap laid for us had failed. We ran on tiptoe, meaning somehow to make our way down the mountain on foot; but when we got to the back the light of the waggonette appeared just coming from the stable, and when the boy spoke to us we perceived that he had not yet been made privy to the plot against us. "We came to meet you, Jan," said I as I leapt in, "for we are in a hurry." "But the trunk, sirs?" said he. "We leave the trunk for to-night," said I: "just turn round now, and drive straight down."
He did so! and we were off down the main road in a flush of escape. I pitied Langler for his lost papers, but there was no help. "Let us only hope," said I, "that we sha'n't reach Badsögl too late to send the telegrams to England to-night."
"Why so particularly to-night?" he asked.
"But is it not certain," I answered, "that the last phase of the plot against the Church must now be about to show itself in the greatest haste? Wasn't it because of the might of the Church that Baron Kolár so feared our meddling in the matter of Dees? And now that he has dared this massacre of a churchman, how shall he escape the Church's vengeance if the Church is to remain mighty one month more? He is about to strike sharply, be sure, for we have forced his hand, and our seconds are precious."
"But shall we do much good?" asked Langler.
"Well, certainly," said I, with a laugh, "it seems late in the day to ask that, Aubrey. Assuredly we shall do good. We, too, indeed, shall have to show that the miracles are none, but, then, we shall also show that they were no machinery of churchmen. In the case of the miracle up here six years ago, which made the little model for Kolár's great scheme, the death of the Church was due to the fact that the miraclewasfound out to be the doing of the priest; but if we show that on the great scale churchmen have been guiltless of guile no shock of tempest will be let loose, things will decline into their old mood as before the miracles, and the Church will survive."
"True," said he; "but is that worth all our pains? an obsolete Church keeping up a look of life...."
"But is it not late in the day, Aubrey," said I, "to trouble our heads with any such doubts? We decided months ago, before we came, that the Church was worth saving; hence we came. Let's not disparage our own work. Personally, I assure you, I am not deeply concerned, for I don't deem myself called upon to be the saviour of anything: but Emily despatched me upon this work, and so I do it with conviction. Moreover, the quicker done the quicker at Swandale."
"Ah, Swandale," sighed Langler. "But I confess, Arthur, that I depart from the mountain with some regret: that old burg up there is so cradled in gales, such a spirit-world wears out its winds with well-a-days, and the tarns, the vapours, the wild swans...."
"My own feeling is rather rapture than regret," I answered; but such was the elegiac soul of Langler, which still discovered something over which to sigh and indulge its chaste melancholies. Meantime, our waggonette was moving at a walk down the benighted mountain-world, our Jan cowering so still over his nag that he might have been asleep; while we others chatted constantly—I at least being elated at our escape, at our task almost over, at home in sight, though I had no hat, the drizzles were trying, the bosom of the mountains gave out a steam of music, as it were thousands and ten thousands busy and breeding, and the organ's sound-board breathing, and our talk was a forlorn droning in a state of being which was made all of winds and bewitchment; sometimes in a flash we might descry a crucifix hung on a crag, and our sighs would then hanker back to that night-whelmed thing on the river-bank away behind us. Keenly our hearts smote us at this memory of Max Dees. How much harm had our meddling hurled upon that man! how he must have waited and hungered for that "one good file" which never found its way to him; and now he was all in the dark on the river-bank. When I expressed my surprise that it was Tschudi himself who had sent us to see him there, Langler said: "I wonder if Tschudi has been acting to-night on his own initiative? The baron now, at any rate, does not appear to be about the burg, or the troop should have seen him; still, Tschudi may be in wireless communication with him. But Tschudi's own private motive in sending us to the crucifix seems to have been an impulse of mere spite or rage, and he may have had in his mind that we should never leave the region after seeing."
"I doubt though that at that time he meant to stop us," said I: "I think it was only after he knew of our talk with the Mother Dees. Yet it would be odd, too, that they shouldn't mind our getting away with the knowledge of Dees' doom, but should be so eager to stop us with the knowledge of Dees' life-story."
"But of the two the latter is the more important," said Langler; "for, as to Dees' doom, they perhaps calculated that by the time we could report it the Church would be impotent to avenge it; but, as to Dees' life-story, our knowledge of it is knowledge of the Church-plot, and is of permanent value as proof that churchmen are innocent of fraud in the present miracles; therefore it was urgent to stop us when we had this knowledge, since even years hence our evidence may be of use in restoring churchmen to favour, and in ruining the plot."
"Ah," said I, "years hence little would be left of the Church, I think, if we had once been locked into that north-west dungeon. However, here we are, and now for the break-up of the fountains of the great deep. Poor Dr Burton! I wonder wherehewill be found in all that upheaval? I am afraid for him: the spirit that could pitch from such a moral height to 'well, pretty, do you love me?'——"
"Beastly mess!" hissed Langler to himself: "oh, pray, Arthur, I beg——"
"As for me," I said quickly, "the man upon whom I now rather bet is the archbishop's red rag, Ambrose Rivers"—and we went on chatting about the latest news of Rivers which we had from Swandale. We were still, I remember, discussing Rivers when a jodeling call arose somewhere in our rear, at which our Jan, it seemed to me, sat up to prick his ears. In a minute the call was anew heard, lalling nearer now; and now Jan pulled up short. "Why do you stop?" I cried to him, "don't stop! get on!" "It is my cousin Isai, sirs," he answered, "who is running to me with a message, for it is his jodel." "Still, you are to hurry on instantly," I cried; "every moment is precious!" But he would not budge, and even as I urged him I heard the panting of a runner near upon us. Our Jan now jumped down; at the horse's head there was a confab between the cousins, of which all that I could catch was the pantings of Isai; and I sat in a stew of the keenest anxiety. It came into my head to rush and seize the reins and lash the horse; but before I could act the whispering was over, Jan jumped up afresh, and we moved on—at least it never entered my mind to doubt that it was Jan who jumped up, though I now suspect that it was Isai. Anyway, we went on at the old walk, regained some calm of mind, again began to be talkative, and for perhaps twenty minutes now nothing happened, till all at once I was aware of the leap of our driver from the wagon, and a second afterwards the nag broke into galloping. It is my belief that a knife or something keen had been driven into its flesh—nothing less could account for its fury, and the clown had chosen for his deed a piece of the road which was little broader than the vehicle, with precipice on the right, with cliff on the left above us. There was no hope for us but in leaping, and "leap, Aubrey!" I cried as I sprang into the air over the back, with my face to the pace, and fell on my length. Lying there, I seemed to hear a fearful silence; no sound of horse and cart; and, understanding that both had bounded down the steep, I feared to stir, lest I might find that Langler had gone with them. But presently, from some distance down, he called out upon me. I ran asking if he was hurt. "A few bruises perhaps," he panted in answer, "but I seem to have lost my hat." This solicitude abouthis hatI understood to be feigned, for I felt him trembling like a leaf. But such was Langler: he was for ever preoccupied about the soul, and, not calm by nature, wished always to appear to himself immovably calm.
Well, the hat could not be found, and on foot we went on down the pass. But it was not long before we were lost in a wilderness of stone and wood, where no way was. We fell into a state of fear that night both of us, and it imbued our souls for hours. I had never before in my life felt quite like that; I hope never to have to undergo such ghouls again. But there are things which can hardly be put on paper. Perhaps our experiences of the evening, the nets set for our feet, the steepness of our leap from the cart, that sight on the river-bank behind us—all these may have helped to demoralise us. The word "jumpy" somewhat describes our panic. After a time we ceased to try to hide our chills from each other. What exactly was the matter I can't quite tell; we had always endeavoured to be brave men, and no particular peril now menaced; but that night our spirits caught affrights one from the other; we both seem to have had the boding that we were about to taste of death; the grave, being, the mountains, grew too hugely gruesome for us, the womb of gloom brought forth awe—somehow we were unhinged. It was Langler perhaps who openly began it. We were resting together on a rock under the fragments of a Carthusian monastery when I heard him murmur in a sort of awed contemplation: "God be merciful...." "Why, what now?" said I. "God be merciful," he murmured again, "I have seen the wraith of Emily." This was so unlike him! My blood ran cold. "Where?" I whispered. For a minute he made no answer, then with the same entranced awe he murmured: "there—to the left of the arch, between the two trees: do you see nothing?" The hairs of my head bristled as, peering that way, I murmured: "yes, it is she." "Our breath is in His hand," sighed Langler, with a held-up hand.
For me to say now, after so long, that I did, or could, see any such thing would be too much beyond reason; most likely I saw nothing: there was little light in the night; I think that there was no lightning at the time; but we were on that stretch of the spirit when spectres start up, and are catching: at the moment I could have sworn that I saw. It may have been the form of the boy Isai, who had perhaps followed us, it may have been Miss Emily's wraith, or a phantom of our brains; in any case, we underwent such troubles and shyings of the soul that night as could not be told, lasting more or less upon us almost till we got to Badsögl about daybreak, so worn out that we at once dropped upon our beds, and slept.
I opened my eyes about mid-day quite quit of our night of griefs, with the word "safe" on my lips, for down there at Badsögl in bright daylight all looked rosy at last, and I was already inclined to doubt the bogies of the dark. Eager to start for England, I woke Langler, wired to Swandale, warned our Hanska to be ready. We breakfasted, and now nothing remained but to send the telegrams and set out.
We had determined to send two telegrams—one to Percival of Keble, the other to my friend, Mr Martin Bentley, ofThe Chronicle. In that morning's paper was no word yet of any exposure, the only big news being that overnight in England Education had been again sent up to the Lords; so under the corn-sheaf in the porch I, at Langler's request, wrote the two telegrams, telling of the little alp-miracle, of the world-plot, of the coming vials: and I handed it to Langler to read.
To my astonishment, Langler's face showed fastidious, and he said: "Percival will think me sudden and epic, Arthur."
"Perhaps," I answered shortly, for he seemed not to mind that Mr Martin Bentley would thinkmesudden and epic.
"Couldn't we arrange somehow," said he, "to spread abroad our knowledge without having our names mixed up in it? I hate this glare——"
"But the sudden proposition, Aubrey, at this eleventh hour," said I: "how can this possibly be done?"
"I have thought," said he, "of a meeting of journalists in London, to whom we could tell everythingviva voce, since that, I think, would be more in order."
"For Heaven's sake, Aubrey," I exclaimed, "let us get this thing off our backs now, and be done with it!"
"But I have thought," said he, "that if we retard the news even a day or two that might be a great thing for the Church as against the Education Bill." (He disliked the bill for some reason—called it "smart.")
"But what have we to do with the fate of the Education Bill?" said I, for what I wanted was to see his sister's face: "surely we can't gyve and entangle ourselves with such side-motives now! See, here is the boy waiting to take the telegrams; pray let us send them."
"Is that your deliberate judgment?" he asked.
"It is, yes," said I.
"Then," said he, "I submit to it: send the telegrams."
But he said it just too late, and the telegrams were never sent, for at that moment a letter-carrier came into the porch with a telegram for us which I saw shake in Langler's hand as he read it; it came from Paris, bore no signature, and was in the words: "If you send any telegrams you sacrifice Miss Langler."
We ought now to have decided upon our action in one minute, but were two hours in the dining-room, where we went to discuss it. "What we have to do," I said from the first, "is to send instantly a telegram to Emily ordering her to fly and hide herself, as she did before, till we come; then send the two telegrams to Percival and Bentley, just as we intended."
"Ah, it would shock her, such a telegram," said Langler.
"We needn't send it, really," said I; "I only propose it so as to be quite on the safe side, for this message of Baron Kolár's is just a threat, a last card to keep us from acting; if we defy it, and send the two telegrams, he will have no motive whatever to hurt Emily—except a wanton revenge, of which the man is incapable. I believe that Emily is quite safe, really. Let us boldly send the two telegrams, whether we send one to Emily or not."
"Oh, I couldn't," he murmured, flinching, pacing the floor, sorely pestered now. Of Baron Kolár as regards his sister he had a blue awe and shiver, like a man who when a child has been frighted with bogies. It is obvious that my view of the matter was the rational one, but he flinched irrationally, he had a blue fear of what Kolár might just possibly be minded to do to Miss Emily. On the other hand, his pride rebelled against the baron, for when I said: "don't send the telegrams, then, but let us start at once," his answer was: "but who is this man that I should in all things obey him blindly? He may find me of grimmer make than he thinks!"
"But it must be one thing or the other, Aubrey," said I. "Send the telegrams or not as you please, but, either way, do let us be gone at once. My telegram to Emily this morning assured her that she should see us on Friday morning; if we don't start now we can't reach London till Friday night, and she will thus be thrown into a fresh stew of misery. The one fatal thing for us is indecision."
He stood at a window, looking out upon the garden, and after some time said: "well, I won't send the telegrams: let us start, and in passing through London we can divulge all to the meeting of journalists, secretly called, then at once hurry on to Swandale."
"Very good," said I, "the car is ready; let us start this moment."
"But what a mess!" he hissed, turning upon me: "I warn you, Arthur, that it is even mean, it is even craven. Am I, then, the bondman of this person?"
"Still, let us start, Aubrey! let us start!" cried I, with a pang of panic in me.
"We are about to start," said he. "But consider whether this meeting of journalists in London will not mean delay: suppose the man gets wind of it, and, even while we are about it, perpetrates some horror at Swandale...."
"He will have no motive!" I cried.
"Ah, he may have, hemay. Would it not be better to send the telegrams, only warning Percival and Mr Bentley not to make them public for some days? In that way we act as we originally intended, our purposes will not have been influenced by this man's mandates, and at the same time he will not know that we have defied him."
"Well, then, let us do so, and quickly," said I.
"But that, after all, is mere self-cheating," he sighed: "if the telegrams are not to be made public at once, why send telegrams? Why not wait and write letters, which, moreover, would be less sudden and assaulting? No, Arthur, if we are to obey the mandates of the man let us not do so in such a way as to persuade ourselves that we have not done so."
"But all this subtlety, Aubrey, when we should be stirring!" said I: "come, shall we not decide one way or the other, and start now?"
"But are we to start without knowing what we are about?" he cried. "What a mess! Is it possible that you cannot help me a little to see my way?"
"What more can I say?" I asked: "I have begged you to send the telegrams, but, since you are timid about Emily, do not send them; there remains the meeting of journalists in London; or thirdly, we can write letters from Swandale. Only, let us start. I see clearly that all danger to Emily is past; the really terrible danger now is to ourselves up to the moment when we shall have communicated to someone else this knowledge that we carry in our heads; and, indirectly, there is a danger to Emily if our return is delayed, for it will monstrously shock her, I warn you, Aubrey: let us start."
"Yes, do, do let us start," he muttered: "I shall send the telegrams; in which case, do you still advise me to send one to Emily bidding her fly from Swandale?"
I looked at the clock, saying, "no, not now, too late: for if Baron Kolár really meant her any harm, by this time he has made his arrangements to accomplish it; she wouldn't escape him. But he means her no harm, and such a telegram would only throw her into needless alarms."
"Well, but I couldn't venture to send the telegrams to Percival and Mr Bentley without also sending one to her," he answered.
"Ah, then, here is another deadlock," said I.
"Oh, Arthur," he cried out, "how we do need some faculty between scent and sight to live!"
"But if you would let me decide for you—if you could, if you would!" I wooed to him.
"Do so, do so, I beg for nothing better," he answered with his bitter-sweet smile.
And again I decided for him, but again he raised new side-issues, and it went on until near three, when we at last departed, after wiring to Swandale that we should not arrive on Friday morning, as promised, but on Friday evening between nine and eleven. As for the two telegrams, they had not gone, for our world-message was to be shuffled off our shoulders at the meeting of journalists.
Away, then, we flew westward. A whine was now in the time of year even in the lowlands, and the worm of winter at its work in the woods. I saw bands of telegraph-wires like bars of written music, crowded with birds migrating, and thought how a messenger-wren, too, may be, had once halted to rest on this band or on that; I saw cliffs of forest reflected red, yellow, and negro in rivers, like old tapestry, angular and faded; and that evening I saw such a sunset as I think that I have never seen, save on the three following evenings, perfectly astonishing, like portents. At dinner-time we arrived at Munich, where a telegram from Swandale awaited us, and as she could hardly have been certain at which hotel we should stay, we understood that she must have sent many telegrams on the chance of striking us somewhere.Whythe delay from Friday morning to Friday night, she wished to know! Were we actually now on the way? Would we telegraph her at every town? She had been greatly upset, but was reconciled now to the delay, provided we were actually now at last on the way—a long message. We wired that we were straining homeward, and at Stuttgart that midnight met yet a message from her that seemed to laugh through tears, not without something of the rictus of hysteria, I am afraid, with its "joy!" and its "bless God!" and its "poor Kitty-wren is ill; she will sink more and more as you come nearer, and the moment you re-enter Swandale gate will drop dead." We had to stop some time at Stuttgart, but sleep was far from me, such a pity bled in me, such a fear was mine; then under the stars we started out afresh behind our flying Hanska, who had gained from Langler the biblical name of "the terror, the arrow, and—the pestilence."
On the Thursday evening we were at Metz, where fresh messages passed between us and Swandale; at Metz also we arranged for the meeting of journalists, first wiring to Langler's friend, the Rev. Thomas Grimes, who in his reply placed at our disposal a room in the Church-house, Great Titchfield Street; we then sent messages to eight journalists whom I knew, begging them to be at the Church-house at eight on the Friday night, and to bring with them any other journalists whom they chose, to hear a matter of high moment: we hoped that we might thus have a meeting of perhaps a hundred men, who would instantly flood the world with the news.
We then afresh set off, straining to catch the next day's 5.35p.m.boat. I am fond of the memory of that ride, for with it ended most of my merriment in this life; the air was crisp and bright, the flight filled our breasts, and raised our spirits. That evening on leaving Metz we looked with something like awe and joy at the sunset, which was most flamboyant, and likened by Langler to God's war-lords mingled in battle. There burned in it a form that had an urn in her hand, which he pointed me out, and with much feeling said to me: "to me, too, this earth is dear, Arthur. It is easy to conceive a world with ruby mountains and coloured moons, where all the lads are forever blowing the oboe and ring-doves roll their soft rondeaus; but give me this hand-made old home of ours, with her quite Greek trimness of style; for it is something after all not to have been turned out by a God in a troubadour mood, and out of her strength comes forth sweetness, too, anon,—consolations and vouchsafements, winning twangs, and Memnon-vowels. Farther in the future this music of our Father will discourse perhaps, and mourn, Arthur, to a humanity that will have outlived this outer ear, and hoarded up an inward hearing and harmony."
Moved by some throe of love, I laid my hand on his arm then, as the sunset faded, murmuring to him "Aubrey, always full of grace and truth"—I cannot tell why; it was my last caress; I did it to his burying; and God knew, but not I. The same night we rushed through Charleville, and by 5.10 the next evening were in Calais.
We crossed over to Dover, where a man came on board the boat, calling abroad: "Langler! Langler!" with a wire for us from Swandale: she wished to know if we had actually reached England, and also why it was that, arriving at Dover at 6.15, we should not arrive at Swandale till ten!—for we had mentioned to her nothing of the meeting of journalists in Great Titchfield Street. She begged us to telegraph the instant we touched British soil, and again when we should reach Victoria.
Langler telegraphed that we were safe at Dover, that all was, and would be, well, praying her to be patient, promising to be with her at ten—but still not mentioning the meeting of journalists, though I entreated him to.
We then set off by rail-train for London, and still there was no mention of any exposure of the miracles, as I saw on looking through the evening paper in the train.
"I suspect," said Langler to me, "that the delay in the exposure may be accounted for by this Education Bill turmoil, for as the Lords have now again mangled the bill, and the clash between Church and world has now waxed into acuteness, the plotters may be waiting a little till this reach its highest fever, when they will strike. Remember how it was with Diseased Persons. But this time we should be able to counteract at least half the force of their stroke."
"In any case, I think that the Education Bill will triumph," said I.
"Well," said he, "let that be as it will: why do we so heave and rave in all the batrachomuomachia, leaving our poor souls behind, as though life were a flight on motor-cars, with the nitrogen all drained out of the air? The earth does not march by petroleum with puffs, but by the charm of an old spell-word; and that sunset, Arthur—look at it: ah, for one bath of that large, warm calm."
"Extraordinary thing," said I, "there must be some atmospheric disturbance somewhere; it seems even more glorious than yesterday's."
"It may be the assembled good-bye of all the prophets and apostles to their old Church," said he: "that shape afaint above yonder in white is Elijah translated far with robes aflaunt, and that charmed to rose is St Paul caught up in trance to the third heaven."
He was talkative, full of sparkle and fancy, even playful, that evening; but all our talk in the train was interrupted by a debate between two men about the eternity of hell-fire, which they maintained to the moment of our alighting at Victoria. It was then night, with only twenty minutes left us in which to get to Great Titchfield Street by eight o'clock, but we first made our way to the telegraph-office, where yet a message from Swandale awaited us, this time our friend writing in the words: "Yours from Dover to hand; you are in England, so all's well, I await now with quietness. Poor Kitty-wren drooped visibly at moment when you must have touched Dover. I pity her a little. She can't last. Am quite at rest now, waiting upon God's good will. Carriage will await you at Alresford at 9.52 without fail. Wire me from Victoria." We sent her a message, I left my chest at the station, and we hastened away.
It was drizzling slightly, the night dreary, the yard crowded with people and things darting to and fro, and I was struck with a feeling of how intensely even within the past few years, the pace of everything had quickened. But only two cars came to bid for our fare. I fancy now that this seemed queer to me at the moment, but being rather late for the meeting of journalists, elated at our nearness to Swandale, I paid no heed to it, and we leapt into one of the cars, I calling to the man: "the Church-house, Great Titchfield Street."
We sped off, but had not proceeded far when we fell in with a procession with banners, at which our car had to pull up. All down Victoria Street it teemed, blocking the world's business, some regions of it chanting ave, maris stella. I was very teased, for by this means we must have lost five minutes, having just collided with the Friday in the octave of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin. Our driver, a lank man with a stoop, deliberately turned, in crossing himself, as if for us to see—so it looked to me, then off afresh we started behind the last of the procession. London was in high animation, in spite of the wet, and I was admiring the flaming advertisements, the tempest of life, when Langler said: "London is still not a great city, no, it lacks the tone, it is a group of parishes. Look at that newspaper-placard occupied with 'Buggins Captured.' Who is Buggins? Some mean misdoer, I suppose. And that other: 'Buggins' Love-letters to Peggy Jinks.' You can't conceive that in Paris: it is not world-news; my Athenians of Paris would slightly shrug at such parish pragmatism; no, London is not a great city...." and as he spoke, I saw "Great Titchfield Street" at a street corner, and into it we dashed.
But we had not gone far down it when our man careered into a by-street to the right; whereat I started up to him, calling out: "but where are you going? you have left Great Titchfield Street." "Yes, sir," was his answer, "they have just taken up the street down yonder, so we have to go round." I, for my part, had no idea whereabouts in Great Titchfield Street the Church-house was, nor any grounds to fancy that the man's words might be false, and after he had raced with us through a maze of Soho back-streets, through so many that I lost track of where we were, when he halted at the door of a house, unhandsome and dark though it was, I did not doubt that I was in Titchfield Street, and at the Church-house.
When we went to the door a man inside said "this way, gentlemen," to us, whereat we stepped into a passage, and not a thought of wrong crossed my mind until I found myself on the ground, while a crowd of men searched my pockets—to see if I had any pistol, I imagine. Langler was in a like way. I struggled, of course, but quickly gave in; and presently we were permitted to get up, and were taken up through darkness to a room on the second floor.
This room was quite small, not more than fifteen feet long and fifteen broad, in a corner of the house, without any window, and like a room within a room, for two of its sides were made of boarding, which may have been run up for the special purpose of imprisoning us—I cannot tell. The floor was bare, the furniture was one chair and a bedstead placed under one of the two boardings—a cheap little bedstead without a bed, but with a pillow without a pillow-slip. On one of the walls burned an antique electric jet very palely.
All was silent. For it might be ten minutes Langler and I fronted each other's gaze, the notion or dream, meantime, in my own heart being that our door did not seem over strong, that a dart downward might well deliver us. All, I say, was silent. I drove my shoulder at the door, and my heart hailed Heaven with thanks when I found it frail, so heaving now my all into the strain, I heard the steel give out sounds, felt the beams bound. But the staple would not quite start, though again I dashed myself into it, and again and again and again, with passion. Then I panted out upon Langler, "help, Aubrey, help...."
"Oh, Arthur," was his answer, "are we to strive and cry?"
"Never mind ... help ... help...." I panted.
"I implore you to be calm," said Langler.
Sure that his help would force the door, I now flew from it in a passion to my knees before him, with my arms spread out beseechingly to him, crying out to him, "for Christ's sake, help me, help me...."
"Well, since you so insist," said he, "but it seems useless, too, and is it not better...."
"Never mind, help," I panted.
I think that he would now have helped, but as he was now about to say something else the key turned outside, and Baron Kolár came in, equal to three men. As he locked the door again, I sprang up from my knees, and we both faced him. He had on the old shabby satin jacket, his hat hung over his eyes, looking earnest and abstracted, like a man carrying on his back matters of large mass and amplitude, in his hand a bit of paper.
"Well, now, you see," said the man.
We made no answer, and Baron Kolár began to pace the room.
"You have been most insolent and foolish, you two men," said he: "I have lavished warnings upon you in vain, and I shall have you shot within five minutes like two dogs, without compunction, I assure you, unless you do now as I direct you."
"But don't be angry," said I, "since we have meant well, and are quite likely to do as you direct us."
"You have been most insolent and foolish," he repeated with invective; "you have hampered me, badgered me, invaded my estate, forced my hand, placed me in the greatest personal danger, threatened the success of my life-work. You are a nuisance and a danger, and should be removed.... Tell me now how you came to know that there was a prisoner in Schweinstein Castle."
"The prisoner sent out a messenger-bird," said I, "which came to Mr Langler's estate."
"Oh, that was it, yes, that was it.... Well, that was no fault of yours. You have no doubt acted like honourable men. But I hate you for having molested me. You made a great mistake to listen to the woman who gave you the story of the Styrian priest's life—for I take it that you did hear it of her?"
"Some of it," said I.
"Or rather—all of it," suggested Langler.
"Well, you made a mistake," said Baron Kolár. "However, I have a confirmed confidence in your honour: sign me, therefore, this paper, promising not to divulge to a soul during ten years, or till my death, anything that you have learned on the alp, and you shall be free men. To-night several of the bodies that were crucified are to be disinterred, including that of your groom, Charles Robinson; to-morrow morning the world will learn that the miracles were the work of priests; and, as I do not wish you to be out in the crisis of the excitement, I shall have you here till to-morrow afternoon; after that you may go, yes, you may go. I understand that I risk something in trusting you; it is a disloyalty to my comrades; but I am a reader of men—though I have sometimes been wrong, too, I have not always been right: you, however, are not men who would wound the hand that has given you life. Sign me that paper, as a formality between us."
"Willingly," said I, for what I wished to look on was the face of Miss Langler, and gave little heed to aught else, so, without even reading the thing, I knelt flurriedly by the chair, and had it signed and finished with.
It was now for Langler to sign.
"Now, Mr Langler," said Baron Kolár, when Langler made no movement to sign.
"No, Baron Kolár," answered Langler, "no," with his eyes cast down.
"What! You do not sign?"
"No, Baron Kolár, no," he repeated.
"Then woe to you, sir," said the Baron, measuring him from head to foot.
"Well, then, woe to me," said Langler.
Ah, he was pallid now, with a mulishness of mien which I knew with panic; whereat I at his secret ear breathed in my anguish: "but Emily, Aubrey, fair's fair, loyalty to Emily first, this is too much, you know, Aubrey, Emily first——"
"No, second," he said, with a stiff neck.
"As if duty and God had anything to do with it!" I groaned panic-stricken: "martyrs are martyrs, and die for what they cherish, but to die for a Church which you always call obsolete, for which you care nothing really, except by some trick of culture, it would be too monstrously pitiful, for God's sake, only this once——"
"But what is the matter with Mr Langler?" said Baron Kolár: "my time is short."
"But by what right do you even dream of daring to shed anyone's blood?" asked Langler, turning upon the baron.
"Know that Ihavethis right, Mr Langler," answered the baron sternly: "men like me, whose heads are clear, and whose motives are righteous, have such divine rights."
"One readily admits the righteousness of your motives," said Langler, "but the clearness of your head is less certain, if I may say so. We all intend to do good, Baron Kolár, but to do it is an intricate trick, only given to critics. You seem in your scheming to have quite forgotten the moral reaction which must follow upon the sudden death of faith, and upon the disclosure that the men who try to remind the world of God are a gang of misdoers. Is it nothing to you that to-morrow every wanton impulse of men's hearts will lift its head, the restraints of ages once swept away? Your motives are good: why should you not give up this scheme even now, and I, on my side, should be able to vow myself to silence?"
At this Baron Kolár, looking down upon him, answered: "you speak, sir, very like a child; you are a man with a mind made up chiefly of theories acquired in your study, or acquired from other prigs and theorists who are foreigners to the agoras of men. Is not this scheme of mine modelled on the incident of the alp? But in that case no 'wanton impulses' lifted their head——"
"Ah, I think so," said Langler.
"But you annoy me, Mr Langler," said the baron. "Understand that on the final death of 'faith' to-morrow the people will remain precisely where they stood before the miracles, when 'faith' was already dead, and this because they are moral by habit and heredity. Wasn't this just the work in evolution which God designed 'faith' to do—to make men moral by heredity? for they would hardly, I think, have become so without the goad of 'hell,' and so on. Descartes, a theorist like you, was assured that God cannot be a deceiver; but God does nothing but deceive for His creatures' good, and, housed in His motley, the zebra-herd browses hidden and grey in the grey of the morning. At first two hells were needed; but by the date of the Reformation purgatory could be dispensed with in the highest nations; by the date of the abolition of hanging for sheep-stealing men could do without any hell at all. The Church was thus an excellent crutch, which humanity is now able to hurl away and burn; for men, thanks to her, are now as hardened in good conduct as they were once naturally heinous, and crime would now be quite irksome to the host of them, as swimming is to a frog that was lately a swimming tadpole. But do not trouble your head about any such questions at all: just sign me that paper now."
"I regret that I do not quite see with you, Baron Kolár," answered Langler stiffly, with downcast eyes, while I, wooing at his ear, whispered, "ah, but Emily, Aubrey, you forget!"
"But will he not sign?" asked the baron.
"No, sir," said Langler.
Baron Kolár groaned.
"It seems a pity, Mr Langler," he said, "that you are quite so gallant a man. Nature, after all, is a cannibal tigress that devours her fairest offspring...." saying which, he now reached aside, and pressed an electric button.
It was now that I cast myself down at the man's feet, grasping him so that he could not escape me, gasping to him: "but you cannot hurt him, cannot touch him, she will go crazy, is not strong, it is your fault, you should not have done to her what you twice did; she is expecting him to-night, never hoped in her heart to see him again, but we made her hope against hope, and now that he is almost at home—see, these are her telegrams, read them, mad with haste, and it is useless to plead with him, he is infected with some moral crotchet, butyouwill find a way for us, I cast myself upon your mighty heart like a child, not for myself, nor for him, but for her, whom you have so horribly wronged ..." and, as I so pleaded, the man's hand lifted, and was about to come upon me: was it a half-blow? a half-caress? I am not even now sure; but when, just then, someone rapped at the door in answer to his summons, he called out in Italian, "never mind, I will ring again when I want you"; and to me he said: "give me the telegrams."
His demand for them surprised me. I handed them to him in a mass as I had snapped them out of my pocket, whereupon he took out his spectacles, wiped them, adjusted them upon his nose, and holding the telegrams away from his eyes close to the grimy light, perused them patiently, while I waited with legs that could hardly any more uphold my weight. One by one he let the leaves of paper fall down, having read them, and read the next; but the last two he tossed away without reading, and turned off to pace the floor.
I waited shivering while four or five times he paced, poring upon him, and once I saw his brow lift largely, his eyes wander round the roof, and heard him breathe to himself the words: "death death." Of what he was thinking I was not then aware, and I waited, shaking, my eyes nailed to his face. When he next spoke it was with sudden vexation, saying: "ridiculous beings! I foresaw that you would come to grief, I lavished warnings upon you, I ought to see you shot like two dogs. How do you dare to say now that Miss Langler's frailty is any fault of mine, when it is wholly your own? I was devoting myself to the welfare of men, seeing clearly, knowing clearly, what I did, for as the heavens are high above the earth, just so, I suppose, are my thoughts larger than your thoughts, and you dared to meddle with me. I ought to see you shot now like two dogs, I assure you. Why should I take my useful life down into the darkness of death in order to save pedants like you, or to spare a woman's feelings?"
"Your life?" I breathed; "the darkness of death? There is no such question!"
"But you speak very like a child," said he: "is it not clear to you that either Mr Langler or I must throw up the cards now, since he will not give his word to be silent? The crucifixion of the priest which you witnessed by the riverside in the mountain would be called a murder by the world, so undoubtedly will the miracle-crucifixions. It is true that I am rather above being punished by the law for them, but my name would be quite blighted, and my life nothing worth to me. I have neither wife nor child.... I must only sacrifice it, since you insist that I have already enough wounded Miss Langler—unless Mr Langler will sign me that paper this instant."
"Oh, sign," I whispered, edging nearer to Langler, but he stood white, inflexible. "There is no occasion for anyone to die," he said, with lowered lids: "let Baron Kolár be silent as to the miracles being none, and I, too, will be silent; but if they be bruited abroad as the work of churchmen, then, I shall not fail, if I have life and liberty, to declare that, on the contrary, they are the work of Baron Kolár."
"But how am I to be silent?" asked the baron: "does Mr Langler imagine that I am alone in this scheme? This night three thousand gentlemen, earnest fellows, large fellows, are in the act of carrying their task to its end, nor should I dream of spoiling their work by sparing your life if I thought that one man's voice could seriously spoil it; but your voice will effect little, Mr Templeton will not support it, it will be lost in the vast uproar, and will only be of avail to cast a blight upon my own private name: to save my life, then, which I have a thought of laying down for your wounded sister's sake, vouchsafe to sign me that paper this instant."
"Such a thought is most admirable, Baron Kolár, and would be quite surprising, if it were not you who had it," said Langler; "but, after all, the claims upon us of gratitude and affection are not the greatest. I pray you, then, not again to ask me to sign the paper."
To this Baron Kolár said nothing in reply, but picked up the paper signed by me, put it into his pocket, and paced about, frowning; till on a sudden his brow cleared, he said: "oh, well," and he sat himself down on the bedstead laths. There he took out of his pocket a bag of grapes, and, stooping forward, began to feed upon them, with quite a working of the mouth and a sputtering of seeds. While thus busy, and given up to this guttling, he kept looking up with wandering eyes, and he mumbled mainly to himself, saying: "they are grapes of Egripos; very sweet they are, too, very nice, not bad, and whenever I die, if I be opened, some of them will be found in me. These few here may be my last feast, hence I do not offer you any. But I do not fancy so, oh no, you will see. It is astonishing what influences personality has upon events: from my boyhood, if by chance I bet on a race-horse, it always won, strange thing, it always won. Once, when a youth, I fought a duel with the famous swordsman, Paulus, and, though no hand at the rapier myself, I somehow came out grandly, I got in such a slash, yes, such a slash, right in his cheek—very nice. I have always come nicely through everything. Archbishop Burton, now: two hours ago he called me a scoundrel, and lifted a chair to strike me; but the moment he lifted it he dropped in a fit, and has since died. I seem to be immune from such maniacs, I assure you. On the sixth of June five years ago a fellow named Vesgolcza threw a bomb at me in Vienna; but it killed my political enemy, Count Attem, and I procured the fellow's pardon. No, I was not born for the martyr's crown, I own the badge and trick of escape. It is a question of organisation and secret league with the soul of the world. Look at me, I am sound throughout, a little trouble with the stomach after food sometimes, a little flatulence, nothing much, a little trouble. But Mr Langler, now: you are one of those men who are tricked out with every jewel, except just the pearl of great price, effectualness, favouritism with high God; such men are the scapegoats of progress; history is based on their pains and groans; to the bane in their fate there grows no bezoar. If you perish to-night, do not imagine that I shall grieve for you; you are a man whom I might have loved, but I lavished warnings upon you in vain, and I am such that even in death my gall cannot quite forgive a personal insolence; but I shall realise that your fate is over-sad, and I shall grieve for your graceful sister, who has not offended me, but to whom I was forced to be ungallant. Therefore I am about to give you one last great chance of life, though you will not rise to the luck of it, you will be failing, I think.... But let me not brag too soon. As you see, it must be either you or I to whom this bedstead within one hour will turn out to be the death-bed. Death is dark and monstrous, yes, death is dark. The artful old brain all at once ceases to discern, the old heart no longer brawls, all becomes nothing. But some humour of the soul has brought me to risk it, and, even if I should not manage to get through, what, after all, is the death of a man? Nothing more to God than the jaundice and death of a leaf. I notice that Fitzroy Square out there is covered just now with dead leaves: no one heeds them, no, no one heeds them.... Well, now, we shall see."
He sprang up, sputtering his last seeds, wiping his hands, saying: "I shall be back in three minutes," and went out. Some seconds later I was standing with my forehead on my arm against the wall when I heard behind me some heavy pantings, and, glancing round, beheld Langler staggering, with his hand held over his heart. I was only just in time to catch him. "One moment," he sighed, "my heart...." He looked ghastly. But when I had got him to the chair and fanned him with my handkerchief he presently opened his eyes. "My heart, God knows," he began to say, when the key was again heard in the lock, whereat he got up hastily, buttoning his dress again, as Baron Kolár came in.
The baron first placed the key of the door and a piece of paper on the chair, saying: "here is the key and a permit for you to go out of the house, in case of my death, gentlemen"; then, pouring two pills from a big blue pill-box into his palm, he held them out to Langler, saying: "now, sir, if you take one of these I will take the other."
"But why so?" I heard Langler ask; and I heard Baron Kolár answer: "one is a poison, the other is harmless; choose one, sir, and I will have the other."
"But if I chance to choose the harmless one," Langler next said, "I become the cause of the death of a most magnanimous man, Baron Kolár."
"Of a most rash and foolhardy man, sir," was Baron Kolár's answer; "but choose quickly, I charge you, sir."
"But, baron——" I heard Langler say.
"Do not delay! or I dash the cursed pills to the ground!" I now heard Baron Kolár cry out: "your chance to serve your sister and madman Church vanishes in two ticks of my watch!"
"Well, then, since you put it in that way, baron ... well, then, baron...." I heard Langler say, but what next went on I did not witness, for my face all this while was pressed against the wall. Indeed, I was sick, with a most mortal taste in my mouth, and there at the wall I waited in what seemed to me a month of stillness, until there reached me a sound of moaning which I understood to come from Baron Kolár. I dared then, for the first time, to turn and look at them. Langler was standing with his back against the wall, white, but smiling; Baron Kolár was sitting on the bedstead, holding his head with both his hands, his eye wandering wildly. When he caught my eye he said to me: "it is I who have swallowed the poison-pill, yes, it is I." And when I now moved to stand at his side he turned up at me a most haggard jowl, an all-gone gaze, his eyes hanging languishingly upon mine. On a sudden he started, saying with new alarm: "It is I who have taken the poison!" Then afresh he rocked himself from side to side, moving his palm to and fro along the length of his thigh, full of sighs and retchings and moans. I was crouched on my knees before his anguish, I sobbed aloud to him: "great, fatherly heart!" "Stay!" he said, with a new brusqueness, "I feel the stiffness coming on in the neck, I had better get up: it is brucine," and he now raised himself by my help, and stepped about, upheld on my shoulder, during which, "yes," he said to me in confidence, "I have gone a step too far, I have tempted God, and He has abandoned me"; and again he moaned, "it is brucine," pressing his reins ruefully, with groans. "But can I do nothing?" I cried to him, "let me do something for you!" To this he made no answer, but said to me: "I never thought to fail; I have always managed to come out prettily through everything, but now I perish miserably for a mere whim of my bile, a moment's noble wind, it is all your own doing, Gregor, you reap what you have sown. Recount to Miss Langler how a man like me died for her, tell the Misses Chambers and all your friends how I perished, let all their hearts pity me and bleed...." It was while he was saying this that I first noticed Langler, who now stepped out from the wall toward us, trying to smile, saying to Kolár, "no, baron, do not dismay yourself with such fancies, you have already over-much worked out ..." but his speech was broken short by a jerk of the neck, his mouth was drawn, he had an aspect of terror: death was in the face of my friend. Baron Kolár, staring at him, seemed to start from a dream, and like a man dropped aghast but glad from the gallows-rope the man's lips unwreathed in a kind of rictus, as he said with an opening of the arms: "well, I told you how it would be," whereupon at once he now turned in flight from the sight of Langler's face, but turned again to whisper to me, "you can go into another room or be here, just as you wish," and after waiting an instant for my answer, when I only gaped at him, he fled away.
I sat by the bedstead, upon which Langler had fallen, and must have remained there on the floor, I imagine, till five or sixp.m.the next evening. Baron Kolár's prophecy that the bedstead would become a death-bed within one hour did not come true, for it must have been two, perhaps three, hours before Langler was freed from his anguish, though I am not sure, for after half-an-hour or so the light for some cause died out, and the darkness may have stifled out my consciousness of time. I think, however, that he lived three hours. The poison given him may have been over-little, or over-much, or poor in poignancy, so that at some times it was difficult to believe that he could be really dying; there were such intervals as that in which he repeated most of the Homeric hymn to Apollo, then there were spasms on spasms, and presently again his mind gave signs of wandering. All was in rayless darkness—it was well so. Thrice he cried to me: "Oh, that we knew where once more we might find Him, Arthur!" "We are like babes that are being weaned," he said, "but nothing is offered us in place of the Breast that has been withdrawn, we bawl in the dark...." After this he lay without saying anything for some time, until he said again: "yes, now in the hour of my voyage it is Jesus who to me is the most eminent, the best-beloved. Blessed name, blessed name. How abounding in beguilement are all his words, like lovers' sidelong glances, and honey of Hybla to the tongue! 'Consider the lilies of the field, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these'—surely, Arthur, the most literary words ever used—except in a quite literal sense—if you accept my definition of literature as 'chastity a-burn.' I know of nothing quite to match them for that demure rich indirectness which is the essence of literature, except perhaps '[Greek: asteras eisathreis],' and the 'path which no fowl knoweth.' How staid the statement, how rosy the aroma; how little is said, how much is felt and meant and suggested: for the puny men dissect and depict, the huge men sum up and suggest. And that big-mouthed 'swear not by Heaven'—you can't match me that God for downright bulk, the earth His footstool, His buttocks throned broad over the stars, His head up in the room beyond, huge Egyptian shadow——Oh, Imust...." Upon this my friend was held up by one of the fits, in which he stretched like an arch on his head and feet; but there was no bed, his legs slipped between the laths, causing them to vibrate and jangle; I could not see, it was very well so. But in the interims he was easy enough, without much suffering, I think, and now he was unconscious of me, and maundered with a wandering mind, showing still his ruling passion, criticising still, arguing still of literature, till his passing. "Surely the light is good," says he, "and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun," being all gone by that time, I believe, and all gone, too, when he breathed to himself: "oh, a rough God! In what velocities does He mix and revel! The encounter of dark suns—how He slackens bridle and urges them like chargers, faster, faster, with laughter in His beard, and afterwards muses upon the silence of their tragedy when a new star psalms in the sky at night, and the star-masters watch it with awe." This was among his final utterances, and afterwards I had for some time a sense of being alone in the dark there without him; but then I heard my friend say in a thin and dying whine: "why art thou cast down, oh, my soul, and why art thou disquieted within me?" and at the last he panted out at me, "tell her, Arthur, tell her, in His will is our peace." Long I sat then, incaved in night, with nothing but the darkness and his death in my mind, but in the end God gave me tears, and a deep sleep.
When I opened my eyes I found myself lying alone half under the bedstead. The body of my friend, no longer there, must have been very quietly taken away. It was found in the river, high up about Wargrave.
I gathered up my hat and some telegrams scattered over the floor, and passed out, for the door of the room I found to be now open, so also was the door below. I think that I met no one on the stairs.
I next found myself in a train, and noticed now that it was evening at the sight of one of those sunsets that for three evenings had surprised everyone. Some men in the train were wildly talking, and though I heard little more of it than "Church" and "miracles," and "downfall," I can vividly remember their vowels of wonder and agitated jabbering.
On arriving at Alresford I got into a car to go to Swandale, but half-way to Swandale got out again, for I was now in no haste to be there, so it came into my head to walk, and at one moment I walked, at another I was standing still, at another I rabidly ran. In Swandale, when I was crossing the bridge toward the cottage, I beheld an old man named Davenport at the cottage-door whispering to two maid-servants, one of whom darted away, and when I had come to the cottage, "quite well, I hope, sir?" this old man mumbled to me, "fine evening, sir." "None o' that," I said to him, "where is Miss Langler?" "This way, sir," he answered, and ushered me into the morning-room. But I was no sooner in than the doorway was blocked with retainers, men and women, and it appeared to me that these people were there to impede and tease me. No doubt my dress and appearance were in some disarray, since they seemed to gape in alarm at me, so now, growing angry, I said to old Davenport: "what is the meaning of this? is Miss Langler alive?" "Surely, sir," was his answer. "Then what is the meaning of this?" said I, "where is she?" "Miss Langler is no longer in the house, sir," he answered. "That now is a wilful falsehood, Davenport, and you know it full well," said I. "You say so, sir," he answered, "though I was never charged quite in that way till now, sir." "Well, you are charged now, Davenport," said I, "and I require to be taken instantly to Miss Langler." "The Almighty God look down upon this house!" he now bawled out, "you cannot, Mr Arthur, you cannot!" "But we shall see, then, whether I am a captive or not, Davenport!" I cried, whereat the old man shouted out: "John! stop him! he is out of his wits!" They failed, however, to hold me, for I tore clear out of the thick of them, and pelted down the length of two long, dark corridors, nor did any of them dare to come after me.
Through all that region of the house I now flew in a heat of search for Miss Langler: I glanced into her chamber, and she was not there; I looked into room after room, and did not see her; I peered into nooks, for nothing was lit anywhere, and everything brooded in a deep dusk. But on getting nearer to Langler's study I seemed to detect some sound.... I went to it. Both the doors were locked on the outside, and the sound, louder now, was going on within; so, crouching there at one of the two doors in the hush of the dark, I hearkened a long, long while to it. Something within seemed to me to be running about the study at a trot, round and round, with trot, trot, trot, in a steady way; but whether it was a living human soul I did not know, for it was strange that the lungs of a man should last so long, and not fail, and I wondered whether it was she—or he; when it drew nigh to the door I heard pantings awhile, till it went on its way, and presently panted nigh once more, and was away, round and round, in a steady way; twice or thrice, too, I seemed to be aware of a flutter somewhere, the thin utterance of a bird; and ever I spurred myself to venture in, to look and see for myself, but each time that I brisked up to try it my hairs bristled, and I shied at it.
There did, however, come a moment when I very gingerly turned the key and found myself in. It was Miss Langler whom I saw; but she, for her part, did not see, or at least heed, me at all, nor make any attempt to escape, but continued to trot round, panting towards some bourn in a heavy haste, made heavier by the large hat that she wore, and by the velvet of a violet hue that voluminously clothed her, some of which she carried over her arm that she might the handier hurry. That print of Gainsborough's "Duchess" in her large gown over the pyx, if it had stepped down from its frame to run and run, could hardly have more resembled her. The mastiff Bruno was following at her heels, and on her shoulder rode the little wren in unstable balance, this latter all mauled now and bemuddled in its own blood, while many of its feathers lay moulted about the floor-tiles: for when she had seen that her brother did not come to her, she seems to have given way to a craving to crush out the creature's life, but it had contrived to escape her hand, she had run after to catch it, and had kept on running. But why, I wondered, did she so press, with her eye musing inwardly upon herself, the enamel eye of mosaics, fixed and dull? If I dared to stand in her way to bar her, for I was far from dreaming of daring to touch her, she meekly swerved as from some rock or block, and continued to run her course. Rarely did she halt for sheer breathlessness, and lean her shoulder a little, and pant, and start afresh, followed by the machine that whined at her heels with a long lolling tongue and eyes of abashment. I, seated in the casement, hearkened and hearkened to her every step, and to the rushing of the cascade, and my eye-corners were ever aware of her as she came and went in that twilight stillness, of the flutterings, too, of the bird, and of the fading out of the sunset, for all that heaven of hues in the west I saw die down to bloodshed and dabbling, and wished that I, too, was dead.
It was not till two in the morning that I saw her removed, she protesting with a meek dignity, begging to be permitted to catch.... But of this I could hardly write more; it was with her as the hard heart of the world would have it; and God is on His throne, thinking on His glory....
Having finished the tale of my tragedy, what I may still further have to utter will contain naught that is new, no exclusive knowledge of my own, but may still be of interest as a sketch of my introduction to the so-called Church-of-the-overman.
The nine months following the death of Langler are somehow almost wholly blotted out of my life, I remember next to nothing of them, living somehowin vacuo, with curiously little of pain or pleasure or volition, and almost my first new memories are of the visits of my friend, Mr Martin Magee, who put himself to infinite pains with me, read to me, insisted upon interesting me. Again and again he would recount to me the thousand-fold drama of "the downfall" in all its ramifications and phases. "Dead?" he would say of the Church, with his Irish energy and a thump of the fist, "dead with a thud that has been felt by the priesthood in China: there has been a little recrudescence of old-fashioned Nonconformity in England, Scotland, and America, but that isn't going to last ten years, you'll see."
"So the people imagine that the miracles were the work of churchmen?" I asked.
"Pooh, not now," he answered; "they did at first, and it was the rage arising out of this fancy that wiped out the Church as a political power; but, of course, the real death of the Church is not due to rage, but to unconcern and oblivion."
"Was it for this, then, that Aubrey Langler died?" I thought, "in order that the Church as a political power might be wiped out?" "But was there no moral reaction, Magee?" I asked: "Langler said that there would be, and another friend of mine that there would not."
"Which friend was that?" asked Magee.
"I may tell you and the world some day," I answered, "if he dies before me, but not at present."
"Well, whoever he is, he knows his modern Europe," said Magee. "I don't remember hearing of any moral reaction."
"But, then," said I, "is the Western world left now without any religion?"
"Never a bit," said he; "it is now just beginning to be gushingly religious. Haven't we, first of all, our store of hereditary religion, unconscious in us? And remember that 'the unconscious is the alone complete.' Religion, I suppose, is whatever binds us back from living to please our primary natural selves? Therefore religion of old said, 'live to please those about you'; and man has roughly reached to that, of old making society possible, now making it solid. But the evolution of 'live to please those about you,' is it not this: 'live to please those whom you cannot even see, the unborn'? All which you may hear Rivers say if you will come with me forthwith to church."
"Which church?" I asked.
"Why, Rivers'—or any of the others."
"But what is it all about?" I asked.
"Haven't I told you about it again and again?" said he: "but with this wilful numbness of yours you won't remember anything. It is a Church of transcendent ambitions, Templeton, aspiring at no less than the planting under heaven before long of a tribe higher than man, though its methods of setting about it are of a naiveté bound at first to leave you alien to their mystery of meaning; its theory is that the fowl precedes the egg: it grapples with the parent, beginning at the base of the ladder, its eyes fixed on the flying galaxies; but you wouldn't catch a glimpse of all at your first visit, and, if you find anythingqueerish, remember sacring-bells and praying-mills, and remember that the first British person who happened to broach an umbrella in a public road cast twelve million fools into a brabble of laughter. Anyhow, I challenge you to go twice to the new Church without hungering to go thrice."
"You seem sincere," I said, "but you only wish to win me out of doors, I suppose. Where did Rivers get money from? He didn't use to be rich."
"But the whole hubbubboo is more or less early-Christian-communistic," answered Magee: "people pay, because it is costly, and earns its pay. Socialism just needed a religious nerve, didn't it? and here you have it. The base-wall of all is equality—'if one's neck-muscles alone are brawny,' Rivers always has it, 'he will call no man your lordship.' The idea is to preach and drill the nation into one army, the train-band of the times to come, for Rivers is the arch-foe of heterogeneity, he would have all men as twin as two perfect peas. But the Church is built on pity as well as on aspiration; equality is swallowed up in fraternity; charity is her riches, love is her festival. Run chiefly by women, she is an enthusiasm of the poor for the poor, and for the poorest of the poor, the child to be born; and to the poor a Gospel is again preached. You will find them all inflamed with the finest faith in the future, full of self-culture, ideality, good fellowship, and good food. The soul, too, is fed with a true emotion and communion of saints, as distinct from a fictitious: worship takes place."
"You seem quite enamoured," I said. "But worship of what?"
"Of God," said he.
"But which God?" said I, "the old God?"
"No," said he, "the new God."
"Ah, the new God," said I, "He is a most vague person: like Langler, I almost prefer the old God."
"But is it a question ofpreference?" asked Magee: "prefer as you please, you can't have the old God: He is as dead as His Church. But His death is, of course, phoenix-death, and the new God is only vague because the age is new, and men's brains only just enough evolved to see Him darkly; soon, I dare say. He will take the darlingest bright ship-shape. The old God too at first was pitched too high for men's eyes, hence lapses into idolatry and golden-calfishness, for idolatry is ever a soul-sloth, an idle backsliding to some lower, more facile ideal of one's forefathers; and for us now sluggishly to worship the old God would be equally idolatrous; we must stretch up now to the new, so making the stretch facile for our children: all which are not my own ungiven words, but Rivers'; let's go now to him."
"But is this the right day and hour?" I asked.
"There's a service every day at noon," he answered, "we should be just in time."
Well, I let myself be led. As I was getting ready Magee called to me: "by the way, you must put on a belt; one doesn't go in braces and corsets." So I put on a belt, and we went.
It was a sultry day in May, like summer almost, and most strange, I remember, was the look and mood of everything to me that day as we drove to Kensington. Arrived there, under the porch of the church I was struck by a prodigious fresco of Jesus, which was rather a revelation to me, for then first I seemed to see Jesus, a brown peasant in a turban—not going about blessing little children with long hair and nothing on his head in a blazing climate, according to the too churchy fancy of the painters, in defiance of St Paul's "It is a shame for a man to have long hair." Here, anyway, as it struck me, was the Man, the dusky Lily, and though much too garishly painted, it powerfully engaged our gaze. However, the crowd pressed; we went in.
But never yet had I bowed the head under half so vast a house of man! most vast, though cheap and unhandsome. Magee and I were so fortunate as to be led far forward toward the stage, and there we sat, each in a pew four feet long—only one person sitting in each pew—while hosts of nuns haunted the aisles and seven galleries, nutmegging the air with incense swung from censers; and I noticed that the roofs were in some way detached, and the air as pure and fresh as in the open.
A young man, parting the curtain, stood and howled out with all his heart a number out of a hymn-book; upon which the host of people started up, and shouted it—Tennyson's "Brook"—"for men may come and men may go, but I go on for ever." But that burden of sound was almost too over-ponderous for the bethundered eardrum! trumpets pealed, organs braved, while the earthquake and brotherhood of it brushed in ague-chills down my back, and was still humming about my head half-a-minute after it was hushed.
The next twenty minutes were taken up with the Blessed Sacrament, partaken of in early-Christian manner, only that there was no table. It was served by a hive of nuns, who bore baskets of sandwiches, fruit, cakes, etc., and water dashed with wine. The sandwiches were rather palpable for my palate! but, as with early-Christians, those who were not hungry no longer partook of the Lord's body, though all drank of his blood, those who were not thirsty drinking from liqueur-glasses and the thirsty from tumblers. Meantime, a man at the edge of the stage was howling: "though I should die with thee, yet will I not deny thee...." And again he howled with passion: "he was oppressed, yet he humbled himself, and opened not his mouth; as a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before her shearers is dumb: yea! he opened not his mouth...."
When this was over the curtains rushed away, the stage was opened, and for some twenty minutes I was the witness of a set of shows. There was no dialogue, and never should I have supposed that means so guileless would persuade to so high a sense of art: each heart, I think, was touched. The shows were little pictures of man in his various doings and modes of being, and we had all to become human, and brothers of one another; in one case it was a dog that caused the music, and we had all to become brothers of the dog and of one another. First, there sprang upon the stage a Japanese athlete, naked but for a loin-cloth, who did nothing but parade himself as our pattern, with a few wanton movements about the waist to give assurance of his grace and perfected joy. Then followed a boy and girl who kissed on the sly behind a horrid aunt. Then a Jewish rag-picker, who did nothing but pick up rags, but still moved the springs of one's breast with love of him. Then a woman in a loose garment who lay down on a couch, and we marked the pangs that wrung her; she ran off slimmer than she came on! laughing! with an infant in her arms, while the people pursued her with the acclaims proper to victors. Then a child was stolen, but its mother was joyfully guided to it by a dog. Then came a ship-boy, a musician who forgot his own name, a grey astronomer, and three or four more.