MISS LANGLER OUTRAGED
So peace was made. However, Langler did not sup with Miss Emily and me
that night, nor was it till one P.M. of the next day that I saw him
again, looking rather haggard, and it was then, for the first time (not
the last!), that he made me the announcement that he would go to Styria.
"Yes," he said, "I will go."
"Well, and I also, Aubrey," I said.
"That is like you, Arthur," he answered. "Ah, yes, it is a high
mountain, this, but I say that it shall be climbed."
"A short journey," I said. "When do we start?"
"At once," he answered, "while the grimness of it is upon us."
"To-morrow, then?"
"It shall be done!" said he; "but let us hasten slowly: Emily has first
to be won over."
"Oh, I think that that will be all right," I answered, for I knew that
Miss Emily desired a change for him.
"She _may_ be alarmed," he said; "in any case, the question must be
broached to her by degrees."
I answered nothing, but thought to myself: "then, it will be another
week before we start."
He did not mention to me the grounds of this impulse to "go to Styria,"
but I assumed that the words of his sister, random as they were, had
roused and set him furiously thinking, as they had set me. Indeed, the
miracle had been very numbing to the intellect, as it were bludgeoning
one's head, so I was glad to notice that afternoon an almost playfulness
in Langler during a visit of Miss Jane and Miss Lizzie (Chambers), for
it seemed to show that nature in him was at last roused to cast off a
gloom which it found unbearable.
Still, this new gaiety of his was certainly a little forced, a little
distempered. I was rather puzzled. Once when Miss Emily left the room,
Langler seemed only to have waited for this in order to say to the
Misses Chambers: "I am on the very verge of a voyage to Styria."
"Styria!" they said together.
"What, is Styria so remote?" asked Langler, leaning forward with a
quizzing look. "I didn't say China, I said Styria--a two days' journey
by the new rail-trains, with 'every luxury' _en route_! Do you imagine,
then, that you will never see me again?"
"But can he be serious?" asked one of the ladies over her tea-cup:
"Emily said nothing of it."
"Emily does not happen to know!" cried Langler--"that is something in
store for Emily!"
"Then it is hardly a serious intention, since Emily has not yet been
told."
"Who lives will see if it is serious!" said Langler.
"But Styria," said one of the ladies--"Styria sounds so mythical! Why
Styria?"
"To open the eyes of the blind," said Langler in a deep voice, "to set
at liberty them that are bound!"
The ladies exchanged glances; but before any more could be said Miss
Emily came in with a plate of seeds, and Langler sat up straight.
Now, before this, Miss Jane and Miss Lizzie had been giving the story of
Baron Kolár's visits; one afternoon lately, they said, the baron had
come down from London merely to eat their toast; and they expected him
again soon. This being so, I was surprised that Langler should be so
unbridled as to publish to them his going to Styria to set free the
baron's prisoner! To this day I am at a loss to understand him, though I
suppose that he was somewhat distempered by the late events, and in a
state of unreal levity. And the very next afternoon, when one of the
Benedictines of Up Hatherley, an old college friend, called at the
cottage, to him, too, Langler told his intention of "starting at once
for Styria." All this time he had said not a word of it to Miss Emily,
so that I found myself doubting whether his intention could be serious.
When at last Miss Emily heard that we should _perhaps_ be going, it was
I who told it her in confidence.
That was just a week after Langler had assured me that his mind was made
up to go: and it was during the evening of that same day on which I told
Miss Emily of it that a group of Spanish peasants, moving homeward in
the gloaming through some fields between the villages of Guardo and
Villalba, in Palencia, saw wrought in mid-air by a mountain side a
vision of the crucifixion, and dropped to the ground. I was in my own
rooms when a message of it was brought me. It was after dinner; Miss
Emily had gone to Ritching to see some sick, and when I went to look for
Langler I heard that he, too, was not in the house. However, I presently
found him down in the south-west, in a grape-arbour near the abbey, and
handed him the telegram without a word. He, as he read it, rose slowly
from his seat, with a paleness under the skin; for the news of these
events had always the same effect upon the mind--awe mixed with a very
peculiar ecstasy--which did not diminish with repetition, for with each
new alarm I was anew imbued with the same dream of the wind-up and term
of the drama of time and the trumps of the tribunes of eternity. I saw
the telegram tremble in Langler's hand; I heard him murmur: "another."
"Yes," I said, "another--the fourth." And I cried out: "Oh, Aubrey!
where do we stand?"
He made no answer; his head was bowed; till presently he said: "let us
go! why do we delay? let us go to-morrow."
"But am I not ready?" I cried.
"That is settled, then," said he: "we go. Emily shall hear it this
night, and to-morrow we turn our backs upon Swandale and all our life
here. It shall be done now."
"I am sure that you will be none the worse for it," I said.
"On the contrary," said he, "for ease and sloth are the very bane of the
soul, Arthur, believe me. It is putting out from port to rough it that
braces the ship's timbers! Well, let us launch forth: I at least am
ready. So there is another now--the fourth."
"The fourth."
"From _Heaven_, Arthur?"
"Or from hell."
"Ah, talking of hell," said he, "just come now with me, and I will show
you something in that tone."
He left the arbour, and I went with him down a dell towards the
south-east of Swandale, till, near the great gate, he stopped at a
certain larch tree on a brook's bank, peered at its bark, and pointed to
it. It was already rather dark, but I, looking close, saw carved in
large letters in the trunk the two words: "Don't Go."
"You see it?" asked Langler: "it was pointed out to me yesterday by
John. You see, now, you see...."
I kept on gazing at the carving, while Langler looked at me, smiling,
with his arms akimbo; and I thought to myself: "what a pity that our
intention of going was ever divulged!"
"Someone seeks a quarrel with me, Arthur," said Langler: "you see now,
you see. But perhaps I do not look dismayed."
"Of course not," I murmured.
"Let them threaten me," he said, "let them do their worst! They may find
me of grimmer make than their present delusions of me conceive me. Wait,
you shall see me give them their fit answer now."
"But why?" I cried: "no, Aubrey, pray, don't think of carving anything
there"--for I saw him opening a pen-knife.
But he would not listen to me: "Allow me," he said, coming to the tree.
I could do nothing to stop him, and stooping there during ten minutes,
he carved under "Don't Go" the words "I Will." I was astonished at his
conduct, and still cannot understand what end he imagined would be
served by this ataxic defiance.
That same night he spoke to Miss Emily of our voyage, and from the next
morning the business of making ready began. But this was not soon over!
I had imagined that the packing of a trunk would be almost all: but
Langler had many orders to give, and letters of farewell to write to his
churchmen and wardens and fellows and professors; and by three in the
afternoon it was seen that we could not go that day. Nor could we go the
next, for Langler rose from bed with a pain in the heart and a pallor
under his skin, and toward evening said to me in his study: "it seems
callow, Arthur, for us to set out upon this enterprise without seeing
our way before us: let us hasten more slowly, and at least provide
ourselves with the proper introductions to people abroad."
"But isn't it rather a question of _time_, Aubrey?" I asked, for it
began to seem to me that if we hastened any more slowly we should never
get to Styria.
"Yes, most decidedly, it is a question of time," said he, "and each day
that passes is such a care and qualm to me, such a disease and
harassment, that if I break down under it, you won't wonder. Would that
we were already gone--that we had gone long ago! Oh, Arthur, am I never
to know sweet quiet and peace of heart again?"
I was taken aback! poor Langler said this with so much heart; nor did I
quite understand ... since a voyage to Styria to make some inquiries did
not seem to me such a task. Langler, of course, was an autochthon--had
never been farther than Paris!--and I understood that he was loth to
tear himself from his Armenian cushions, his roses, and the Greekish old
routine of life in Swandale; but still, I could not see.... Each mind,
however, knows the bitter tang of its own plight and entanglement.
"Well, well," I said, "but we have only to set out and you will feel
better."
"I know it full well!" he answered, "but each day's delay has only made
our departure the more irksome to me. If we had set out at once, as I
begged you to, all our difficulties would by now perhaps have solved
themselves. But when I think of that poor man in his dungeon, and of how
each of the days which we have wasted here may be an age of pain to him,
and of how much hangs upon our action--how much!--my limbs seem bound,
and my sense of my guilt becomes hard to bear."
"Perhaps it is the heat of these last few days," I said.
"Certainly it has been hot," he answered: "one can hardly get one's
breath; and to venture at such a time into southern lands----"
"Ah, but there is the sea-voyage," I said; "let us not think of
obstacles, let us just go: _solvitur faciendo_."
"You are right," he cried, "right! That is just the word that we
needed--_solvitur faciendo_! thanks for that word. Oh, Arthur, we have
lost time--time that never comes back--the angel with the parting look.
And think of what world-business depends upon us--so much. For mercy's
sake, let us lose no more."
"That is agreed, then," I said: "we set out."
"But to what?" he asked suddenly. "We take a voyage into mist! Where
exactly are we going to? What shall we do when there? Nothing is clear
to me. Suppose we go and effect nothing, and have to return like
Quixotes? Suppose there is no Max Dees, no Styrian castle, save in our
brains? Shall we leave Emily alone, and our solid good.... Really,
Arthur, a certain terror of the absurd is mixed for me with the other
obstructions to this adventure."
"But that is what the police-officer thought of Dees," I said, "that he
is a myth, and you called him stolid. What you were sure of now seems
mist to you when it becomes a question of venturing your weight upon it,
as Peter lost faith when he stepped out on the waves. But even if it is
a myth, let us go and see, fearing nothing, not even the absurd."
"Well, that is bravely said, too," he answered: "let us go, then, let us
go.... But tell me whether you do not think it better to get letters to
the foreign personages first, and not go crudely like birds migrating
without due support."
"As you please," I said, and said no more, for I did not see that we
needed any letters.
However, he wrote for letters, and it was some days--I forget how
many--before he had all of the number which he asked for. By this time
our date of departure, our very train, had been fixed by Miss Emily, it
was now three weeks since Langler had first mooted his idea of going,
and by now scores of persons all about must have known that he was
going, and when.
During the day before our departure Langler gave a last look to every
part of Swandale, and re-entering the house near five P.M., had tea with
Miss Emily and me. We were having tea when I heard a noise in a
corridor, and on asking was told by Miss Emily that it was "Aubrey's
trunks being taken to the station." I could not at first understand why
they were being taken that night till, on glancing through the door, I
saw almost a cartload of baggage (swelled by books!). Miss Emily and I,
standing at a window, she with the wren on her shoulder, watched all
this luggage being put upon a cart--Langler had now left the room--and
driven away; but a minute after it had gone Miss Emily, crying out
something, ran from my side, and out of the cottage. I saw her hurry
across the bridge, heard her call after the driver, who had disappeared,
and soon she too disappeared beyond the bridge.
I assumed that she had run to give the man some forgotten instruction,
and expected her back soon; but when she did not come I was not at all
anxious, since I had no reason to be so. I was reading Bellarmine, I
remember, in a wicker chair that rocked me, and it became so dark that
I could hardly see the print. I heard Langler playing Gregorian chants
on the organ in the oratory, for he had the habit of playing chants
about that hour of the evening, but had rather given it up since the
miracles.
Well, I was thus reading in the half dark when, suddenly, a man stood
before me--the driver of the cart, who, having left the luggage at the
station, was now returned. He seemed unable to speak: if ever I saw awe
it was in that man's face; when I asked: "what is it?" his breath burst
from his lips in his vain effort to answer me; his face rolled with
sweat. At last when he was able to say something, it was in the words:
"Miss Langler--come with me--don't say anything----"
I sped with him past two astonished girls in the passage out of the
cottage, he taking the way to the south-east, but having already run far
he had now to make stoppages, and so hard he found it to speak that we
had gone over a quarter of a mile, and were near the great gate, before
I could gather from him aught of what was in his mind. He had led me
down a path that ran between a brook and a rose-tree hedge, till we were
within sight of the carriage-road, and there in a sort of glade, where a
larch stood by the brook's bank, he stopped, and pointed--the same larch
on which had been carved "Don't Go" and Langler's "I Will." At the foot
of the tree, in a patch of reeds, I saw a female form lying like one
asleep, or unconscious, or dead. It was my poor Miss Emily. When I
peered nearer I perceived that her left hand had been pegged to the tree
by a big nail. But she did not know it, nor reck, she lay in sleep,
without any pain or care, her lips a little open, and two poor tears of
her truce had trickled down her cheeks.
While I was still gloating over her I was aware, to my woe, that Langler
was with us: one of the girls in the house, on seeing me run out, must
have warned him of something wrong, and he had hasted at a rounder rate,
though a sorry runner, than the exhausted man who had brought me could
come; but the effort had been altogether too large for Aubrey's gauge:
he was awfully breathed and gaunt. I saw him stand off, peering gingerly
at his dear, asking: "_what is it_?" with his cheeks peaked up, poor
Aubrey: and I had to leave her pierced, in order to turn to him.