OF HALLAM CASTLE
When at last a movement was made to leave the church I first assured
myself that neither Langler nor Miss Emily was there, then I set out
upon the drive back to Goodford somewhat behind the crowd of carriages,
no sound now to be heard from all that picnic party which had left
Goodford loud with gaiety an hour before.
During that drive the mere sight of the trees and fields once more
brought down my mind from the miracle to the care which had racked it
before I had entered the church. Langler, his sister, both of them, were
where I did not know; and at another time my fright at a situation so
fraught with darkness might have been even madding, but that night my
heart was the home of feelings so pious that something of hope healed my
fears.
My relief, however, was great enough when, in front of Goodford House, I
spied Langler standing among the alighting church-party. As I hurried up
to him he was just saying to one of the ladies: "I hope you enjoyed the
office," but her only answer was: "ah, Mr Langler."
Langler, of course, was quite out of tune with us all at the moment, and
he could not perhaps observe the look of our faces, for the night was
dark.
As I touched his arm he spun round, saying: "ah, Arthur," and I remember
how his tone of the world, his cigar, shocked me: he seemed to me a
grosser being than we. I wished to say to him: "Hush! the earth is holy
ground."
In a low voice I asked him as to his sister. His answer was: "she is in
the house; two hours ago a note was handed to her, purporting----"
"We can't speak of it now," I said, stopping him: "all is well if she is
in the house."
When he looked at me with some surprise I whispered to him: "we are none
of us inclined to talk just now: you will soon know why."
The others meanwhile all going within, in the inner hall I now heard a
laugh which I recognised as Miss Emily's, and I did not know whether it
more shocked me or filled me with thankfulness that she was safely
there.
"If you had waited one little hour for me," she said as I went in, "I
should have been back to go to the church with you."
"I will explain all later," I answered. "I had to go to look for
Aubrey."
"Look for him?"
"You may be told in time," I answered: "you see, everyone is making
haste to retire...."
"So I see," said she, "but what is the matter?"
"We have all seen something."
"One would say a ghost."
"The ghost of God," I answered, in what she _must_ have thought a tone
of bathos!
"You imply that God is dead," she retorted in her dry way.
"He died for us, Emily," I answered most crassly! whereat she bridled,
and said: "_O!_" with such an underlook and depth of satire, that I
could not bear to see her so banned from my awful mood, and, with a
motion of my hand, left her in haste, for all manner of talk at that
moment seemed to me unholy.
On the Monday morning, as I was breakfasting in my own quarters, Langler
came to me, saying: "I have to apologise, Arthur, if my manner last
night was at all incongruous with your mood, and I have to add Emily's
apologies to my own. We have now heard and read what you saw, and
understand how you must have felt."
"You understand something," I answered; "you can't understand all."
"Well, no," said he: "I am only sorry that neither Emily nor I was
privileged to be present, so that we might be in the fullest sympathy
with you. Did you, Arthur--get a complete sight of the vision?"
He sat beside me, his hand on my arm, and I told him all, word by word,
in a husky voice; and he listened with a bent head.
"We are dust and ashes," he murmured when I had finished: "the
humiliation of it for us all!"
"Yes, the salvation," said I.
"But the humiliation firstly, I think," said he. "How modern men have
taken up and confirmed the seer's word: 'the same yesterday, to-day, and
for ever.' It was the one certain clue which we had to God. And now
that, too, is snapped when we find His way of acting on Sunday night so
foreign to His way on Saturday and Monday."
"Aubrey, we know nothing," I said.
"So I, too, say," he answered, "and I say that it is in the proof which
the vision has given us of this that our humiliation lies. How shall we
ever more trust our reason, or enjoy the pleasures of our mind? We were
so assured that His voice is ever small and hinting, that He guides us
with His eye; but now on a sudden we seem to find Him glaring and
pedagogic----"
"Still, let us not allow ourselves to criticise the vision, Aubrey," I
said.
"No, certainly, we mustn't allow ourselves to do that," he replied: "I
was rather criticising the paltriness of our reason, and I was thinking
of the damper which the vision will undoubtedly put upon the intellect
of the Western world before this day is over."
"Well, since our intellect is unreliable, that won't much matter," I
said, "and God's way is best. But I still know nothing of your
adventures last night: did you go to Hallam Castle?"
"Yes, I went, and the promise of my unknown correspondent was even duly
fulfilled."
"You don't mean that you saw Robinson?"
"At least I saw Robinson's face, according to the promise."
His words struck me dumb.
"I reached the Castle soon after twilight had begun to darken," he went
on. "It is a low ruin, you know, stretching along the upper edges of a
mound, at the bottom of which, on the north side, runs a road through a
sort of dell which they call the 'Castle Dell'; up this road I went in
order to get to the 'north-west corner' named in the rendezvous. A few
sheep were pasturing on the castle-mound; but no other living thing was
to be seen, nor a sound to be heard, and I won't pretend that I was so
perfectly collected in mind as I might have been. It is a pity that we
should ever breathe shorter than we will, but.... Anyway, I climbed up
the dell-road till I came as near the north-west corner of the ruin as I
could, for one can't quite get up to it, the mound at that point being
rocky and steep; but after waiting on the road some minutes, and seeing
no one, I began to climb a path at right angles to the dell-road leading
south on the west side of the castle--a path with steps embedded in the
soil. I was on these steps when I heard some sound like the echo of a
shout, and on glancing to my left I saw Robinson's face at a window of
the round-tower which forms the north-west corner of the ruin."
The fact of Robinson's face being seen at last sounded so strange to my
ears that I could only breathe: "but are you sure, Aubrey?"
"Well," said he, "he was separated from me by perhaps thirty yards, for
between the mass of ground on which I stood and that west side of the
castle is a ravine or dry moat of about that breadth; moreover, it was
getting dark in the dell, which is well wooded; but still I saw him
pretty well, and it was certainly Robinson and no other."
"But did he see you? Did he speak?" I asked.
"He probably did not see me," Langler answered; "certainly he did not
speak. I cried out to him, bending forward over a rail at the edge of
the cleft, but he did not answer.... Oh, Arthur, it was a face much
marred, believe me! It is my belief that he was unconscious, that he was
held at the window for me to see by others whom I could not see. After
some seconds he was withdrawn from my sight."
"But this is pitiful," I said. "What did you do?"
"I might perhaps have acted more promptly than I did," he answered: "I
see that now, and must confess it to you and to myself. It is certainly
to be regretted that the rate of one's breathing should ever have an
influence upon the quality of the mental operations or upon the quality
of one's mode of acting; and here certainly is a little matter to which,
it seems, that I, for my part, will have to give some attention on all
future occasions. There is no doubt that I lost some minutes in thinking
what I should next do: however, as I am familiar with the castle, I did
not lose time in running to the west gate near on my left, for this I
knew to be fastened, but I hurried down the dell-road to the east side
of the ruin, and there climbed the mound by a path in the sward which
leads to the east gate. Here I could gain an entrance, for the wicket of
this gate has disappeared, but I see now that I ought to have waited
outside, and not gone in: help might have come from some source; at
least no one could have come out of the ruin without being seen by me.
However, I went in, for after the delays already made I felt urged to do
something energetic, and, no doubt, fidgeted. Some people seem to act
aptly without forethought, as the fly flies; others act aptly by
forethought; and others again, in using too much forethought here, and
none at all there, produce those left-handed, gawky results which seem
to guffaw in one's face. I hope that I am not of this last type; but on
this particular occasion, I confess, I do rather seem to have been
outdone--in fact, I was outdone. I rushed without thought through the
wicket into the lowest of the three courtyards, which is now a
greensward shaded by two walnut-trees, and ran up some steps in the
north-east round-tower, my feet, I fear, making some sounds, and once or
twice I slipped in the dark, the stones being very displaced. Near the
tower-top I turned west over the castle-wall--the wall is really two
walls, you know, filled between with concrete, over which runs a footway
between field flowers. This footway brought me into a second tower,
where some stairs lead up to a similar path on the wall which runs along
the second courtyard. It was quite dark in that tower, and I stopped
once to consider whether the course which I was pursuing was quite the
best; however, having come to no decision, I was creeping on up when I
heard a sound behind me, the creak of a door, then at once another creak
of another door somewhere; at the same time both doors were bolted, and
I understood that I was in durance."
He smiled at my look of concern, adding: "don't be alarmed, since you
now see me here; in fact, having convinced myself that I was really
imprisoned, I, for my part, became easier in mind than I had been,
feeling the irksomeness of having to fight out this matter taken off my
hands, since, being a prisoner, it was now out of my power to do
anything; and I resigned myself to suffer with a calm spirit whatever
might be in store for me. Indeed, it seems to be often less of a burden
and bore to suffer patiently than to have to run, and wage war, and
act; at any rate, I felt that my captors had relieved me of a
responsibility in this matter of the rescue of poor Robinson. I stood
against the wall on a ledge three feet wide, with a railing at its edge,
and the hollow interior of the tower below, and the two doors being grey
with age, their surface rough with the carvings of visitors' names, but
still stout, I put my arm through some of the holes which have appeared
in the oak, trying to reach the bolts, but could not. Then I sat down in
a hearthplace, and was sitting there so long, with nothing for the eye
to rest on but the bushes at the tower-top massed against the dark sky,
that I should have fallen asleep if I had not been roused by hearing
some shouts, coming, I thought, from the castle-dell----"
"They were _my_ shouts probably," I said; "and you were there all the
time!"
"What, were you at Hallam Castle last night?" he asked.
"Why, yes," I answered, "for when Emily disappeared, and it struck me
that you had both been inveigled away, I could think of nothing but to
go to the castle to look for you. I shouted your name in the
castle-dell, I even went up the very stairs--didn't you hear me call out
'Aubrey'? Hearing no answer, I hurried off to Ritching, to see if you
were in the church: and you were in the ruins all the time!"
"Your shouts reached me only as echoes," he said, "and when they ceased
I composed myself afresh to rest in my hearthplace, but was soon again
startled by a sound--the drawing of the bolt of the door by which I had
entered. I leapt up, to find the door open: but my liberator, whoever he
was, was not to be seen. I hurried down the stair, but neither saw him
nor heard his tread."
"Strange proceedings," I said.
"But with a meaning in their strangeness, I am convinced," said Langler.
"What did you do now?"
"What could I do? I walked back to Goodford village, informed the
constabulary that I had seen Robinson, then, very tired, trudged up to
Goodford House, only to hear that Emily had not gone to the church with
the party, but had disappeared. However, I was examining the servants on
the matter when Emily herself walked in."
"What had happened?" I asked.
"As she was about to set out with the party," he answered, "a note had
been handed her, purporting to come from me, asking her to join me
secretly on a matter of urgency at the Cart-and-Horse in Mins. So
_outré_ a thing, of course, alarmed her, and she started out in great
haste. It was only when she got to the Cart-and-Horse, that, looking
again at the note, she saw that the writing was not really mine, but a
forgery. She then got a trap, and drove back to Goodford."
"Oh, there is something ominous in all this, Aubrey," I said.
"Well, so it seems," he answered. "The note purporting to come from me
was handed to Emily by a still-room girl here named Charlotte, and was
handed to Charlotte by a villager named Weeks. Now, I have had Weeks
over from Mins this morning, and Weeks declares that the note was handed
him by a dapper young gentleman, probably a foreigner, who met him a
little outside Mins, and offered him five shillings for taking it to
Goodford House. Weeks left the stranger sitting in the gloaming on the
roots of a well-known yew on the road between Mins and Up Hatherley."
"But what design," I said, "could this man have had in enticing Emily
from Goodford at that particular time?"
"That is hard to say," answered Langler; "but you observe that I, too,
was enticed from Goodford at that time by a promise which was kept by
men whom we need not suppose to be scrupulous in the matter of keeping
their word. What, then, could have been the motive of actually showing
me the face of Robinson, as promised? It could only have been to draw me
into the tower to his rescue, and so to my imprisonment. But remember
that that imprisonment only lasted three-quarters of an hour at most,
and during that short detainment it was that Emily was enticed to Mins.
It would seem, then, that with the same motive her absence and mine
from Goodford House during that particular three-quarters of an hour was
a thing to be desired."
"It wasn't from Goodford that our absence was desired, Aubrey," cried
Miss Emily, suddenly looking through the half-opened door, "but from
Ritching church: for I was about to go to the church, and so did you
mean to go to it from Hallam Castle."
Langler, it seems, had been constrained to tell her something of his
adventures at the castle, and he said now, with rather a start: "well,
then, it may have been from the church that our absence was desired."
"But for what reason in the world?" I asked.
"Who knows?" he answered. "Still, it does seem now to be so."
"But for what possible reason, do you imagine, Emily?" I asked again.
Miss Emily after a moment's silence answered: "how should I know? But
quidquid latet apparebit! we shall know it all some day"--and, saying
this, she was gone from us.