The Last Miracle Part 11

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

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

He did not mention to me the grounds of this impulse to "go to Styria,"

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

When at last Miss Emily heard that we should _perhaps_ be going, it was I who told it her in confidence.

That was just a week after Langler had a.s.sured 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 repet.i.tion, for with each new alarm I was anew imbued with the same dream of the wind-up and term of the drama of time and the trumps of the tribunes of eternity. I saw the telegram tremble in Langler's hand; I heard him murmur: "another."

"Yes," I said, "another--the fourth." And I cried out: "Oh, Aubrey!

where do we stand?"

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

"But am I not ready?" I cried.

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

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

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

"The fourth."

"From _Heaven_, Arthur?"

"Or from h.e.l.l."

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

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

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

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

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

"Of course not," I murmured.

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

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

But he would not listen to me: "Allow me," he said, coming to the tree.

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

That same night he spoke to Miss Emily of our voyage, and from the next morning the business of making ready began. But this was not soon over!

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

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

"Yes, most decidedly, it is a question of time," said he, "and each day that pa.s.ses is such a care and qualm to me, such a disease and hara.s.sment, 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."