The Last Miracle Part 24

"Extraordinary thing," said I, "there must be some atmospheric disturbance somewhere; it seems even more glorious than yesterday's."

"It may be the a.s.sembled 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 h.e.l.l-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 t.i.tchfield 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 G.o.d'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 t.i.tchfield 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 advertis.e.m.e.nts, 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 t.i.tchfield 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 t.i.tchfield 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 t.i.tchfield 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 t.i.tchfield 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 pa.s.sage, 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 pa.s.sion. 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 pa.s.sion 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 Kolar 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 ma.s.s and amplitude, in his hand a bit of paper.

CHAPTER XXVII

END OF LANGLER--_continued_

"Well, now, you see," said the man.

We made no answer, and Baron Kolar 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 a.s.sure 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 Kolar. "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 Kolar, when Langler made no movement to sign.

"No, Baron Kolar," answered Langler, "no," with his eyes cast down.

"What! You do not sign?"

"No, Baron Kolar, 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d's sake, only this once----"

"But what is the matter with Mr Langler?" said Baron Kolar: "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 I _have_ this 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 Kolar, 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 G.o.d 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 Kolar, 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 G.o.d designed 'faith' to do--to make men moral by heredity? for they would hardly, I think, have become so without the goad of 'h.e.l.l,' and so on. Descartes, a theorist like you, was a.s.sured that G.o.d cannot be a deceiver; but G.o.d 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 h.e.l.ls 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 h.e.l.l 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."