The Last Miracle Part 17

"Well, so it seems," said he. "I personally never hoped to get through this adventure."

The water, working actively up, had won to my middle, striking very cold; and that cold, together with my forlornness in that wild, made my death the more awful to me. I tried once, and only once, to climb the cliff-wall; but I could not lift myself a foot, and thenceforth, as in a gla.s.s, I saw that there was no escape. A mile or so lower down was a water-mill, where the gorge opened somewhat, and thereabouts we might have got out of the trap (provided that we could climb the lock-gates); but, as Langler said, long before we could get to the gates the water would be over our heads; he could not swim; nor did I mean to leave him before he drowned in any hope of saving myself by swimming, since I knew that I should very soon perish of cold.

Only one thought, and with it a hope, if it can be called a hope, occurred within me, and I said to Langler: "but which way did Piast escape? it must have been forward: let us move forward...." and we did so, walking on a bottom of gra.s.s and slime, I in front with a grip on Langler's sleeve, and the water at our b.r.e.a.s.t.s. But it was slow going, and still the wall of rock was with us, so we did not go far, but stood still again near together, and I heard Langler's breaths looser than the puffs of the wind, and more burdened: a rather horrid sound in my memory.

"Well, Aubrey," I panted, with my hand on his shoulder.

His jaws chattered: he could make no answer.

It was about then that a light from, say, forty feet above streamed down comet-wise upon us that must have come from an electric dark-lantern, for, on looking up, I could see nothing save the dazzlement, though I have now an impression, too, of the hoofs of a horse on the cliff-edge: and a voice was shouting to us.

"There is," it cried--_in English_--and stopped; or I may be mistaken, but I am privately convinced that I did hear those two English words, though Langler did not.

"There is," it cried in German, "a stair in the rock twenty metres below"--and at once the light vanished.

We had walked past "the stair"! nor was there any chance that we should ever have found it, though so near; a stair it was not, but a few jags notched out of a slanting slip of the cliff. However, we found them, we contrived to climb to the top: but no one was any longer there when we got to it.

What followed for us that night was almost as baleful as what we had evaded: we were abroad hour after hour in an alpine storm, miners in the colliery of the night, sometimes standing still, dreading to take a step; indeed, it is strange that we were not many times dashed to death, for one could not see the mountains, nor the ground, nor the sky on high, all on all hands was swallowed up in awe, the heart failed at the great rivers of grief which the deluges of wind poured through the forests. It must have been long past midnight when, by a feat of luck, we hit upon a hut in which was one poor woman, living that hermit-life which they call almen-leben, with a few kine only for companions; she took us in, and succoured us; and with such greed did we eat out and still eat out this good Gretel's larder that our griefs ended in laughter.

When at last we were lying wrapped in blankets in a gloom beshone by a blush from the stove, I whispered to Langler: "did you hear the '_there is_' in English from the cliff?" "No," said he, "I think not." "But was not the voice at all familiar?" "I thought, Arthur, that it resembled Baron Kolar's." "So did I," I said.

Outside the winds worked, venting brokenly and gruff like breakers of oceans thundering on unearthly sh.o.r.es, while for some time I lay too fore-done to sleep, pondering the wonder of that voice in the night. If it was truly Baron Kolar's--I am still not sure of it!--what, I asked myself, could be his motive? Had he merely wished to prove to us his absolute power over our lives? Or had this terrible man meant to destroy us, but relented in the midst? I oftentimes think that he had a liking for Langler.... But I could not solve the riddle, and before long was asleep.

CHAPTER XVIII

AT THE SCHLOSS

The next afternoon we got down at last to the little guest-court where our luggage was, and now could see a tower of Schweinstein half-a-league away. Langler, however, had to take to his bed, and thus lost three days more.

I, for my part, more easily overcame the effects of my night on the alp, and during those days set myself to come at the truth as to whether or no Baron Kolar was really at home; I must have questioned twenty people; but the answer was always the same: his lordship was not in residence.

On our third morning (a Sat.u.r.day) at the guest-court we received, to our joy, a long letter from our wounded friend. I had thought it likely that she would write us at the P.O. at Gratz, so I had written to the P.O., and they had now sent on this letter to us in the mountains. Langler's hand trembled, and he had such a ravished smile as touched one to the heart. She had fled to a village in Gloucestershire named Alvington, and was still safely buried there, but meant, she said, to go back to Swandale as soon as she should opine that we in Styria had had time to work out our purpose. The letter for the most part was in a tone of affected lightness; she described the inn where she lodged, its flower-beds, its cat, the landlady's mows, the gambols of the wren; she even gave the political news! Diseased Persons had become law, and now it was the Education Bill that was the row: "as Satan and Michael contended for the body of Moses," she wrote, "so Mr Edwards and Dr Burton are striving for Ambrose Rivers"--Burton struggling to bring Rivers and his "New Church" under the power of the ecclesiastical courts, Edwards struggling tooth and nail against it; Dr Burton, however, she said, had had an apoplectic fit, and was laid aside for the time being. She begged to be remembered to "the good frock-coat" (_i.e._ to me), but, giving way in the end to her grief, cried out upon our pity to return to her. For us it was a heart-rending letter. I, at any rate, felt that if any mishap should befall her brother in this adventure, then dangers too sinister to be breathed to one's own heart might overhang her spirit. We had meant to present ourselves that day at the castle, but Langler was too deeply moved by the letter, so we put it off till the next day.

All those days I had not been idle, but had roved a good deal, trying to get friends, and had explored, too, round about the castle by land and river. There were quite thirty to fifty dwellings within two miles, but I found all these people very reserved, given up to their swine and agrarian cares, and looking upon me as a needless phenomenon. Swine abounded! a pig was in every life. However, I won some of them into saying something, and gathered, on the whole, that probably no one _knew_ what had become of Dees, but that all probably had a guess that he was, or had been, a prisoner in the castle, in which case they were pleased, with a feeling of "serve him right"; also that no one had, or wished to say that he had, any intuition whereabouts in the world his lordship then was. This, too, was strange, that on that Sunday when Langler and I at last walked down through the forest towards the river and burg no sound of bell called the people to worship; Europe was on its knees, but this one valley of Europe had washed its hands of the Christian Church.

And everyone had only one excuse to offer for this--namely, that "it was enough to do to keep body and soul together."

How clear and new-made was the air in there that Sunday afternoon! "Up here," wrote Langler to his sister, "it is never hot nor muggy, I think, for the breezes rest not day nor night, breathing eras of music through the timber." He said that he had never felt better, though bitterly like Don Quixote before the windmill! Old Lossow (our host) and two boys came along with us, but they left us in a flurry at the outwork barbacan; then we two stood before the gate, dressed to our gloves, and Langler said to me: "you know, Arthur, that Christ of Castagno in the gallery at Christ Church? it rises before me now as an expression of the languishment of mind which I feel in the presence of this stronghold."

So I, too, felt; nor was I at all sure that, once in, we should ever come out again; but there we were, and I summoned the castle--the knocker being a cannon-ball hanging on a chain, whereat a woman opened, we stepped into the bailey-court, and a somewhat loosely-dressed man, with a ta.s.selled smoking-cap on his head hurried towards us, followed by a brown bear. "Kiss the hand, sirs," said he, "you are without doubt the two English acquaintances of the baron from whom I have received a communication." "Yes, sir," said I. "I am the burgvogt, Jan Tschudi,"

said he; "I take it that you still wish to inspect the burg?" "Still, yes," said I, for I had a weapon on me. "Willingly from the heart will I show you over the fortress," said he, "be so good as to come this way."

We followed him inward, Langler fondling the bear, which had a string of rhododendrons round its neck, Herr Tschudi himself a burly German of middle age, fresh-faced, with a bold brow under his smoking-cap. He led us to some cannon, saying: "these two are fifteenth-century sakers, those there are what they call culverins; and everything with us is of this kind, sirs: here you will find all old, nothing splendid." He next led us into the gaudy little church, which Langler examined lingeringly, especially two curious niches in the south wall beside the altar, where the elements had been kept, over which he bent so long that Herr Tschudi and I became restless; "I see," I said meanwhile to Tschudi, "that your front row of seats are really easy-chairs, as I once heard Baron Kolar say that they are."

"Yes," he answered, with a smile. And he added, with a certain flush and challenge: "we once had a particularly brilliant preacher here whom the baron used to take a pleasure in coming down to hear on Sunday mornings; hence the chairs, for his lordship is fond of his ease."

I could see his lordship reclining, stroking back his sc.r.a.p of hair, and enjoying the "real toil" of another!

"Who, then, was that brilliant preacher?" I asked.

"He was called the Pater Dees, sir."

"And what has become of him now?"

"I could not tell you."

"But can it be the same Pater Max Dees of whom I have heard that he has been a prisoner in the castle?"

"The very same."

"May I ask--what was his offence?"

"The sin of ingrat.i.tude."

"Indeed? What is the story?"

"Ah, I'm afraid it might be long: you would regret having asked to hear it."

"I don't often regret what I do. But ingrat.i.tude! Does one go into prison in the alp for that?"

"It may happen!"

"But in a private castle?"

"Sir, let me tell you what you are not perhaps aware of, that among the ancestors of his lordship on the distaff side have been several Reichsunmittelbarer-Fursts, and that till late times the lords of this castle have been rechts-fahig" (able to make private laws).

"Quite so, quite so," said I, "but still, a prisoner in a private castle ... in our times...."

"It is a mere nothing; you should not let that trouble you."

"But is Father Dees--still a prisoner, if one may ask?"

"Surely one may ask: there is no harm in asking, you know. But all that was five long years ago, of course. Here, however, is your friend, the connoisseur, at last."

Langler now at last joined us. As we set out afresh a youth with ringlets and a velvet coif came up blushing, to be presented by Herr Tschudi as "Mr Court-painter (Hof-maler) Friedrich." "But has the baron a court?" I asked, to which Herr Tschudi answered: "not in strict etiquette any longer perhaps; but it amuses the baron to keep up a pretence of the old sovereign rights, and, being a dear heart at bottom, he is ever fond of pets, of whom our friend, the court-painter here, is one."

We now went on inward to the second court, a party thenceforth of five (including the bear), and were shown the granary, storehouses, electric set. "Do you keep a large staff of retainers?" I asked at the offices.

"A mere handful now," was the answer; and Herr Tschudi added with a laugh: "but they are all trusty to the backbone, in case you ever think of storming the castle!" This was the hard nut whom I had had the fantastic thought of bribing to tell the truth as to Dees! He was full of pride in his baron and castle, and such a hero-worshipper that I even fancied that he tried to ape the baron's manner and speech. "Certainly, the baron keeps some excellent horses," said I at the stables: "is he fond of riding?" "Ach, not now," was the answer; "but he has been a dashing bear and boar huntsman in his time, for whatever he attempts he does with a more magnificent success than others; the mother of the good Ami here (meaning the bear) was slain by him. As for the horses, the alp is noted for them." "So, since the baron no longer rides," said I, "how does he amuse himself now when in residence?" "Mainly in the laboratory, which I will show you presently in the keep," he answered. "Indeed?"

said I, "is the baron a chemist?" "What, you did not know that?" said he: "everyone knows that he is even a specially profound chemist, for chemistry has been his life-study." "The baron is always found to be more than one had thought him," said I; "I wonder if my friend and I will have the honour of seeing him before we leave the alp?" "His lordship's comings and goings," answered Herr Tschudi, "are always very uncertain." "Strange to say," said I, "there is a rumour in the alp that the baron is actually in residence; at least one woman told me that she knows it for a fact." "Thundery weather!" cried the man with a flush, "what is the woman's name?" "I don't know her name," I answered, not wishing to get my good sennerin into any trouble.

A move was now made towards the keep with its square tower at each corner. By an outside flight of steps we went up to the first floor--there was no ingress to the ground floor--and were shown the old hall (ritter-saal). The quality of this place was most quaint somehow, with some feeling of ancient forests, damsels and nixen, and knights of Lyones, yet all was quite plain, even shabby, save some rather portentous portieres which shut off his lordship's private quarters. I, for the most part, strolled with Herr Tschudi, while Langler, with Herr Court-painter, bent over everything in his connoisseur way: there were paintings by old abbots in tempera whose secret is lost, there were cressets, gobelins, tables of pierced bone, painted hoch-Deutsch MSS.

Langler said hardly anything, and only once spoke to Herr Tschudi, when he called out: "Is this pieta ancient?" to which Herr Tschudi answered: "fifteenth-century, sir." "But," said Langler, "Herr Court-painter says sixteenth-century," at which Herr Court-painter blushed all over his broad face. "No, sir, fifteenth-century," repeated Herr Tschudi. "I thought it modern," said Langler; "but what is this inscription on its base?" We all now went to look at the pieta, a Virgin and dead Christ in wax; but Herr Tschudi could make nothing of the inscription, for he said, "it is some pious motto, but I do not know that language--do you, perhaps, Herr Court-painter?" Herr Court-painter of the star-gazing spectacles shook his ringlets, with the answer: "I do not know what it says." "Does--the baron read Hebrew?" asked Langler suddenly. "Ach, not now any more, I think," answered Herr Tschudi; "but he has been a master of several old languages in his time." I noticed Langler's brow twitch, but did not imagine that the matter was of any importance; I saw, indeed, that the letters on the pieta were Greek, but all in capitals, with the sigmas like C's, and much effaced, so my mind shirked the bore of reading, and I turned away with the others from it.

After this we were shown the baron's laboratory, the upper rooms, one of the four towers, and were now escorted by Herr Tschudi, Herr Court-painter, and the bear back to the gate, where Herr Tschudi parted from us with profound reverences.