The Last Miracle Part 4

"The bits of news which I mean were mostly printed small, in obscure corners, and the significance of their considerable number in the papers which I perused is big when one considers that they are country papers, not formal chronicles of world-news. If, then, you find in them mention of two disappearances of fishermen within four months on the north French coast, you may conceive that not two, but four, may have been the actual number: men vanished; caught quite away like leaves on the midnight wind; and one in the Harz Mountains; and one in London; and one in Naples; and two in Hungary; and one in Belgium; and three in Russia; and one in Catalonia; and one in Savoy----"

"My good Aubrey!" I breathed.

"Vanished, Arthur," he said--"gone into the gorge of that dragon. There it stands printed, and all have read it, but none has seen it, so unrelated seems each case in its isolated chronicle. I, however, have been able to read with a larger eye; and as to the palace of torment of at least one of the victims we are not in the dark."

"Have you discovered, then," I said, "the full name of the Styrian baron who has imprisoned Max Dees?"

"Unfortunately," he answered, "there are no less than three Styrian barons part of whose name is Gregor--one a Dirnbach, one a Stra.s.s, and one a Kolar--possibly the well-known Kolar----"

At that name an exclamation escaped me.

"Well?" said Langler.

"But have I said nothing at all to you since I have been here, about Baron Gregor Kolar?" I asked.

"I think not," he answered.

"Then it is a singular chance," I said: "why, I came down with him in the same carriage, I have his card in my pocket now. It never once entered my head that he might be Styrian! He is over at Goodford at this moment, a guest of Mr Edwards."

"Well, then, that fact seems to narrow our round of inquiry to two,"

said Langler: "our Gregor will doubtless now be found to be a Stra.s.s or a Dirnbach."

I made no answer, and we sat there some time silent, looking where some moor-hen or wild-fowl breasted the streaming of a surface agitated by the inrush of the cascade, stationary, yet seeming to move forward, like the moon ranging through flights of cloud.

CHAPTER VI

THE MEETING

The next day we were at Goodford. The mansion is Queen Anne, square and grave, standing on grounds which slope towards the exterior of the domain into oak-dotted swards that droop down to a wooded valley.

That first day at dinner I was able to point out to Langler the sneer of Baron Kolar at the part of the table where he droned amid the silence of his neighbours; and the next afternoon, when some men who had been shooting were standing in a group on a terrace, Baron Kolar, who was among them, left them to lower himself upon a bench close to that on which Langler and I were sitting.

It was just then that I heard someone in the standing group remark: "here comes our eloquent divine." And I heard Mr Edwards, who had looked round, say in his characteristic way: "what, he still on that same temperance job, I wonder?"

This remarkable man (who started life as a puddler's-boy in South Wales, then became a typewriter in a London newspaper-office, then editor of a boys' paper, then of a financial paper, then speculator and millionaire, then--without eloquence, stateliness, "brilliance" of any sort--Prime Minister of his country at the age of thirty-seven)--this remarkable man, I say, gave by his mere manners and appearance some hint of the reasons which underlay his elevation; he himself always accounted for it by declaring that "he alone knew how to run the Empire on purely business lines"; and, in truth, he looked like a man who could do this.

His face at this period was still fresh and pink, and a.s.suredly he did not look older than a youth of four or five and twenty. His hair swept from the parting across his forehead quite down to the right eyebrow; and against this he waged an old war, ever dashing it back, but down it came again. His eyes darted from side to side, and he appeared ever on the point of pitching at something, and having it over and accomplished.

He was not large in stature, and by the side of big Mrs Edwards (who was some ten years his senior) looked rather insignificant. It was suggested by his walk that one of his legs was somewhat shorter than the other.

He started out at once to meet Dr Burton, who came toiling up the terraces swinging a copy of, I fancy, Paradisus Animae. I saw them shake hands, and then lay their heads together, Edwards hearkening, Burton talking. Their walk led them towards Langler and me. Edwards began half to laugh, deprecatingly I thought; his shoulders shrugged; his arms opened; Dr Burton's brogue swelled; he waxed wroth.

The first words which I heard were these: "and are these poor sheep, then, to be so lost and ruined, Mr Edwards? Always, always the body, and never the soul? And is the protest of the Church no longer of avail with the great ones of the earth, sir? I tell you, sir----!"

Mr Edwards said: "but, Dr Burton, if you would only listen to common reason! My good sir, what can _I_ do? If I were a parish councillor, now--or a magistrate--but I am only a Prime Minister, after all."

Edwards, by the way, was never averse from references to this fact, with some mirth tacked on. But now he was interrupted by a deep, a bitter word: the doctor looked ireful, and in the very voice of reproof he said: "the matter is not one for jest, sir. I have laid this question before the Bishop, before the Suffragan of Southampton, before the Bishop of Guildford, the Dean, the Residential Canons; I have appealed to the Licensing Magistrates; again and again I have appealed to you; I have turned right, I have turned left: and everywhere I have fallen in with evasions, with infidel shrugs, with dull delay. Now hear what _I_ say as to this grievance: I say that I should not suffer it, no, I should not bear it at all. I don't wish to see this new bugbear in my parish: I will not see it: and if the heavens should rain for a harvest-moon a rain of atheist archbishops and rebellious ministers-of-State and blatant councils, all bound together to impose it upon me, still I say I would not suffer it, no, I would not bear it at all, at all, for G.o.d's sake I would not. In the spirit of the blessed St Ambrose, with my own sacred hand I shall abolish it from my sight if it confront me; and afterwards, but not before, will I give up the government that I hold, not of men, but of G.o.d."

And as this torrent ceased I just heard snuffled with a drawl near my ear these words:

"Oh, well, he is not so bad, though; he does it very well--very well...."

They came from Baron Kolar, who was gazing through sleepy lids at Dr Burton with (it seemed to me) the fondness of a father contemplating the feats of his boy in the presence of friends.

As for Mr Edwards, I saw him fling his hand at Dr Burton's words. He was a being who gave heed to one thing only--effective force. Pride, high words were so far wide of his interest that they failed even to win a smile from him; he heard them like wind, regarded only facts, results.

"Well, Dr Burton," he said, "I am always glad to lend a helping hand to a parson like yourself, interested in your work, go-a-head, and so on, and so on; I am the same kind of man myself, and there's the fellow-feeling, and so on, and so on. But I can do nothing in this matter--candidly, it would be going too far out of my way; you must approach the proper authorities, mentioning, of course, that you have my sympathies, and so on, and so on----"

Here I lost his words. Meantime the baron's eyes were dreamily following the priest and the minister-of-State, while Langler's gaze was fastened upon the baron's face, and I glanced from one to the other, seeking to fathom how much was inherent in what I saw about me.

Presently the Baron's eyes wandered round, as if looking for someone to talk to, and when they lighted upon me quite close he droned in his happy manner: "Well, he seems a worthy fellow, a nice fellow: a little too zealous, like a torrid sun, but he's not so bad. Have you heard him preach?"

"Dr Burton? No. Have you?"

"I went to hear him last Sunday. He does it very well--very well. You should hear him."

"Yes, I have been told...."

"But you could not conceive; he does not do it badly. He is a man who really is master of his business. He preaches with the progression of a great river. He is destined to become the greatest priest in Europe...."

"Ah? You think that?"

"Wait, you will see. If a man is master of his business, and has self-a.s.sertion to make the world cringe before his force, that is all that is necessary. A man is either like leaven or like meal: he leavens or is leavened. The chief thing about any animal is its amount of available vigour. How much of Sun-fire has the man in him?--that is the question. If he has only enough, he can wash the world in his flush, and also if he is taught in what fashion to use it. But this Dr Burton, I a.s.sure you, he is not a paltry man. I want you to present me--now."

"I?" I said, taken rather aback, "I don't know him."

But at once Langler said at my ear: "_I_ do."

"Mr Langler, however," I added, "probably knows him."

At this the baron said, half rising: "Ah, then----," and Langler stood up quickly, saying: "with pleasure...."

Dr Burton had now parted from Mr Edwards, and was pa.s.sing close by us, wrapped in gloom, his frock brabbling at every stalk with the breeze; so Langler hurried out to get at him, and Baron Kolar goaded after Langler his rolling gait.

At this Dr Burton, as when a bull stops in its career to stare at some new object, stood still, and at once Langler said graciously to him: "Dr Burton, permit me to present to you my friend, Mr Templeton--his Excellency Baron Kolar--Dr Burton."

The moment which followed was full of misery: for one could not tell what the doctor, still heated, would say or do. I was afraid that he wouldn't shake hands!

But the baron, with instant tact, spoke. "It was I," he said, "who asked Mr Langler to present me to Dr Burton. I had the pleasure last Sunday of being in the church at Ritching: that will explain."

At some moments, when he ceased to show his teeth and measured one with a stern up-and-down movement of the eyes, this man's face took on an expression of power which could even become compelling; so he looked now, eyeing Dr Burton, measuring him from head to toe, till Dr Burton put out his hand, whereupon the baron pipped a nothing sideways, and showed his teeth.

"Ah, well," he said in his happy drawl, "it is not often now that one can hear a sermon--not often. The pleasure comes from toillessly lolling and watching the toil of another: but the toil of that other must be real toil, and the toillessness of the hearer must be real also. I confess that I have some fault to find with your pews, doctor: a pew should never be a symbol of the narrow path that leadeth unto life. Oh, but they are not so bad, though--not so bad. Still, I, now, in Styria, have a church, and the pews are _fauteuils_. A man begins to cherish these little boons when the hair is getting grey. Oh, yes. The later Romans were the only race who truly understood the art of temple service. The courts, too, where men like Cicero, Hortensius, and Pliny thundered, were made luxurious. There must be the felt contrast between another's toil and one's own comfortable indolence. Only, the toil must be real toil. In the matter of books, now, the French have not done so badly in that--not badly. The author thinks and works hard, yet manages so that the reader need merely read, without thought or worry. That is rather good, very nice. I, for example, am no longer a young man: an old fellow gets to feel that people should see a little to his comforts.

Everything should be made easy and pleasant. The King of Korea, now: he sits, I am told, through a certain ceremonial on a couch made, back and seat, of four bags of brains. You know the derivation of the word _a.s.siduity_: to sit is to be a man; to sit much is to be civilised. But that is a long tale. What I wanted to tell you was not to disturb yourself about the detail which I heard you discussing with Mr Edwards.

I will take the affair upon my shoulders, and see to it that no public-house is opened in your parish to offend your eyes."