THE WREN
As I went on towards Swandale the thought suddenly struck me that my
driver's back was strange to me. I bent forward, and asked him what,
then, had become of Robinson.
"I wish I could tell you, sir," was his answer, "but seemingly that's
just what nobody knows."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Robinson has been missing for three days, sir," he said--"since
Thursday noon, high or low, no one can find him: and cut up is what Mr
and Miss Langler are about it."
This Robinson, a very handsome man, well under forty years, was a part
of Swandale, and long known to me; but now the carriage rolled over
broken stones, and I asked no more. Soon thereafter we passed into the
gorge which runs into Swandale.
The fame of this vale is at present pretty far-spread, yet of the
"pen-pictures" which have appeared of it I know of none which portrays
half its witchery. The piling up of details is, in fact, fruitless, for
not the pen, but the brush, is fashioned to paint. I may repeat,
however, that the vale is an oval, the gorge being at the south-east,
in which already the ear is caught by that sound of waters whose chant
pervades the vale (the whole is not more than twelve hundred yards long
and eight hundred wide), and one goes on through an air of perfumes to a
giant portal, till, in contrast with the wildness of the approach,
Swandale itself dawns upon the eye in all its rusticity--a rusticity
attained by the touchiest art, for I think that throughout the dale
there was not at that time a coo or a drain not due to the care of its
designer. Langler had, in fact, given many years and the mass of his
fortune to the making of this garden.
The house is not precisely in the centre of the oval, but towards the
north-west, on an islet in the lake, the lake itself being an oval, and
it is strange that waters so shaken can show so staringly every pebble
and grayling in their deeps: _shaken_, for the ground north of the house
mounts in terrace on terrace to the hills, and down these, all rowdy
with laughter, darts a rout of waters which wash into the lake. On the
wooden bridge looking east over the lake Langler and his sister stood
awaiting me.
Langler was now a man of forty, with some silver in his hair, and Miss
Emily at this time twenty-seven.
They formed something of a contrast, she was so much darker than he, for
Langler had light, wavy hair, parted in the middle over the broadest
brow, a brow parcelled up into lax fields by the furrows of "much
learning." He wore no hair on the face, save side-whiskers down the
longish hollow of his cheeks, cheeks which looked no wider than the
breadth of his broad chin: a massive countryman's-face, yet with
something wistful and ill-fated about the eyes and the thick lips, which
ever bore a sad smile. His "bone-in-the-throat" drew the eye by its
prominence! He always impressed one as being better groomed than other
men, I never could tell why, since he was ever quite plainly dressed,
but in the very pink of correctness somehow.
However, in a certain--shall I say cynicalness?--of look there was
resemblance between the two--or, say, criticalness, scepticism: both had
a trick of screwing up at the cheek-bones a little and piercing into
anything new or curious that was in question.
It is commonly known now that both were beings of uncommon endowment,
and so kin and kind were they, that they appeared to live, as it were, a
twin life.
When we went into the cottage I found waiting to welcome me several men
and women servants--a small crowd of much more than ordinary comeliness.
Langler said then to me: "have you heard about my poor friend?"
It was nothing new for him to speak so of his servant, so I knew that he
referred to Robinson, and replied: "I have heard something. Can't you
form any idea what has become of him?"
"No idea so far," he answered; "I am giving my mind to it."
"He should be found, then," I said; at which Langler smiled.
Miss Emily was rather behind us in the passage, and at that moment I
heard her say: "Aubrey, here is John running after us with something."
I turned, and saw this John pelting up the boards embedded in the soil
which served as steps from the bridge to the cottage. He held a spade in
the left hand and some object on the right palm; Langler turned to him;
and at once I saw that the thing on the man's palm lived, fluttered a
wing, was a bird.
"What!" said Langler, "a wren?"
"Why, it is ill," said Miss Emily.
"I found it caught in the vine tendrils, miss," said John.
Everybody bent over it.
"I have never seen it before," said Langler.
"No, it is certainly a stranger," said Miss Emily, "and what _can_ that
be round its leg?"
She was rather palish.
The thing round the leg was a piece of paper, wound with worsted.
And Langler, peering at it, said: "stay, _I_ will undertake the cure of
this wanderer."