The Last Miracle Part 25

"I regret that I do not quite see with you, Baron Kolar," 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 Kolar 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 b.u.t.ton.

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, but _you_ will 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 ma.s.s 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 a.s.sure 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 Kolar 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 Kolar."

"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 Kolar, and would be quite surprising, if it were not you who had it," said Langler; "but, after all, the claims upon us of grat.i.tude and affection are not the greatest.

I pray you, then, not again to ask me to sign the paper."

To this Baron Kolar 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 a.s.sure 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 G.o.d; 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 G.o.d 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, G.o.d knows," he began to say, when the key was again heard in the lock, whereat he got up hastily, b.u.t.toning his dress again, as Baron Kolar 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 Kolar 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 Kolar."

"Of a most rash and foolhardy man, sir," was Baron Kolar'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 Kolar 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 Kolar. 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 Kolar 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 G.o.d, 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 n.o.ble 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 Kolar, "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 Kolar, 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 six P.M. the next evening. Baron Kolar'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 'chast.i.ty 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 G.o.d for downright bulk, the earth His footstool, His b.u.t.tocks throned broad over the stars, His head up in the room beyond, huge Egyptian shadow----Oh, I _must_...." 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 pa.s.sion, criticising still, arguing still of literature, till his pa.s.sing. "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 G.o.d! 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 G.o.d gave me tears, and a deep sleep.

CHAPTER XXVIII

END OF MISS LANGLER

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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d 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 "d.u.c.h.ess" 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 cas.e.m.e.nt, 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 G.o.d is on His throne, thinking on His glory....

APPENDIX

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 somehow _in 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."