"DISEASED PERSONS"
What happened now I do not find it easy to tell, for my next weeks were
passed in a state like to De Quincey's "tortures of opium": I cannot
clearly remember telling Langler what had happened, or showing him the
telegrams, and he had to return to Swandale alone, in what sort of state
I do not know, for I was in a bad dream, flushed with fever, nor was I
able to go out of doors till the 25th of April. It was a Sunday, towards
evening, I was accompanied by a friend, and we happened to go into St
Clement Dane's, where the preacher referred to Miss Langler, and
expressed the wonder of the world at the outrage; but what makes that
service stand out in my memory is a little thing that happened to
myself, for I was sitting with my head bowed during the Kyrie when a
priest who was pacing about came and pushed me rudely on the back,
saying: "_kneel, kneel_." I never was more astonished.
The next day I stood at last by the bedside of our friend. She knew me,
I think, though not very clearly, but I understood that she had received
such a shock this time that she would never more be strong, even if she
did not die, for she had been still frail from the first woe when again
she was torn. Langler stood with me and watched her, for his
self-control was at all times fine, though I don't think born with him,
but won by strict schooling of himself; but after a time when we saw her
tossing her head from side to side, so acquainted with misfortune, we
had to turn from her. She had been especially unlucky, since she had
_meant_ to be on her guard, never to be out of doors alone, during her
brother's absence; but in passing from her carriage at the park wall of
Dale Manor to the house, it had come upon her. I remember spending that
evening of my arrival on my back at a window, staring up at a poplar
which looked like a fountain of leafage shot up to a point on high out
of the ground; sometimes its top seemed to be sailing against the sky,
as toppling to fall; and the breaths of the wind rocked its branches,
roughing up the under-white of its foliage with a chaunting like the
psalm of Time; and a starling flew up to her charming home on high in
it: and this somehow calmed and consoled me.
I could stay only three days then, and for the next six weeks was to and
fro between Swandale and London on dates of which I have no record,
spending most of my time in a sort of political pool and uproar of
things, which perhaps did me good. Those were Diseased Persons days, and
well I recollect the thrill that ran through England on the night of
its virtual throwing out by the Lords in Committee. Burton and Edwards
were now at their death-grips, on the side of the archbishop being all
the awe of the nation, on that of the minister all its reason, its
secret sympathy, for it seemed that even God, howling from heaven, could
not quite bring it about to clericalise the modern world. I had just
telegraphed the throwing out to Langler, and was gossiping about it with
some men in one of my clubs--it was late, after the theatres--when I was
aware of Baron Kolár's presence: he had come in with three men, and his
eyes, swimming round, found me out. He walked straight to me. "Miss
Langler," were his first low words--"how is she?"
The _cheek_, and also the hearty concern, of the question confounded me.
"Miss Langler is, of course, gravely ill," I answered.
He groaned, with a look of ruth, of care, on his face: nor did it occur
to me to suppose it feigned, since I very well knew that the man was no
hypocrite; yet I was sure too, in my heart, that here was the man who
was the undoer of Miss Langler.
"But surely she will recover?" said he: "let me hear now that she will."
"Well, no doubt she will recover," I said.
He pipped a nothing with relief, his lips unwreathed, his teeth shone
out happily, and he said: "Oh, well, everything works out nicely in the
end, if only things be premeditated by men of grasp and vigour. I
assure you, the longer I live the more I see it--the supremacy of mind
in the world. When I was a wild chap of seventeen I said to myself one
night: 'go to, now, I will be a man: I will be grand, I will govern my
passions, and have a hand in history.' And so said, so done. I did it!
here you see me now, I did it very well, very well, oh yes, here I am.
Mind is everything. Look at Mr Edwards, now--nice fellow, powerful
fellow, sharp as a falchion! You know, of course, that the Lords have
just virtually thrown out Diseased Persons? Tell me now which of the two
you think will come off the victor in this duel between Edwards and the
archbishop."
"Who can win against the grain of an archbishop under a _régime_ of
miracles, Baron Kolár?" I asked.
"What!" said he, eyeing me sternly from top to toe, "but is there to be
no term to the insolence of the Church? Remember that this plan of
sterilising diseased persons is no new thing: during twenty years it has
been under discussion; in Austria, I assure you, if it had not been for
the miracles, diseased persons would at present be consigned to the
lethal chamber; but this most moderate bill only ensures their
sterilisation. Everywhere such a measure is called for; it is in the
very gist of our age; and now when Mr Edwards, by a travail of Hercules,
has driven it through his House with a grim majority of twelve--earnest
fellow, grand fellow--are we to see his pearl trampled under foot by a
herd of bishops? But you shall not see that. I forecast that the bill
will be sent back to the Lords a second and a third time, and in the end
Edwards will win--oh yes, he will win."
"He may," said I.
"He will," said he: "England will rise to his support; wait, you will
see."
He turned off from me, but turned again to ask after the Misses
Chambers, then left me to rejoin his friends.
When I mentioned his words the next day at Swandale, Langler said to me:
"but since this man is so very sure beforehand of the Prime Minister's
victory, may we not at once look for some stroke of policy against the
Church on his part--perhaps the showing of the miracles to be none?"
"In that case, Aubrey," said I, for I was excited, "let us be beforehand
with him! let both of us now write plainly to our friends that the
miracles are probably none, but still are no contrivance of priests----"
But Langler interrupted me, saying: "you would hardly have us, Arthur,
appear to our friends in the light of crusaders and quixotes."
"Why quixotes?" said I.
"Wouldn't it be terribly like springing upon them the statement, '_the
sky is brown_'? The miracles are now among established things, nor are
our suspicions anything but suspicions. Certainly, we should seem pert,
if not irrelevant. Letters are perused over the breakfast-cup, and are
not expected to be epic."
"However," said I, "this is the one plan which you can carry out without
fear of being interfered with and hindered, and by it you wash your
hands at once of the whole business and burden."
"Perhaps; but still, frankly, it would not be quite to my taste: I'd
rather die than seem _outré_, or strutting, or oracular----"
"But since so much is at stake----"
"Sooner any other plan, Arthur."
"But what other plan--except going to Styria?"
"Hardly again," said he, with closed eyes, "hardly again," and we were
silent.
After a while he asked: "does the agent, Barker, still decline to go to
Styria alone?"
"Yes," said I; "he and others naturally scent danger in the adventure
after what has twice befallen us. If anyone goes, it must be ourselves;
so what shall be done?"
"But do you ask me that, Arthur?" cried he, much moved: "how shall I
answer you? I have already paid a great price; my heart has wept. The
men who are against us are of withering mood, though I do not say wicked
men; in fact, they are not, since the mere success of their exploits
implies, I think, an erectness of meaning which commands our
esteem----"
"Esteem, Aubrey," I murmured: but such was the _finesse_ of Langler's
criticism, whose scales no zephyr of passion could ever shake, and he
derided as crass and green whoever did not give to the devil his dainty
due.
"Yes, I say esteem," said he, "for the misdoer is, and must be, a
bungler, so where you have a series of lawlessnesses finely achieved you
may look to find behind them a mood of moral erectness. But little the
morality of these men concerns me--I was speaking of their power."
"Now, however," said I, "whatever their power, is the hour for us to
strike in, if ever: Diseased Persons will soon be back in the Lords;
Burton, of course, will not yield--"
"Talking of Burton," said he, "I have two letters of his which I will
show you now"--and he rose and got them: one was a letter of sympathy,
very feelingly worded, written to Langler on the second wounding
of our friend; the other, written only five days before to Percival
of Keble, was as follows:--"The Palace, Lambeth. P. + T. My dear
Percival,--Forgive my silence, since you are continually in my heart. It
is now confirmed that Diseased Persons will be thrown out; and as Israel
prevailed over Amalek in Rephidim, so we shall ride over them that rise
up against us. Hertford, Jersey, and Ellenborough have declared on our
side, and the zeal of young Denman, who now has rooms in the Palace, is
profitable to me: the Lord reward them according to their works....
There can be no looking back now, even if we would, being more strongly
impelled against the Bill from the side of St Peter than many divine;
and, in addition, there are forces, _in their nature subterranean_,
which prompt and urge us, and make retreat impossible--even if we would!
Bellini of the Maddallena writes that he does not consider the Bill
contrary to Holy Writ! And is it? What say you? Give me of your wisdom.
But however that be, on we must, the force behind is grim and deaf. I
say that the whole truth is known to none: you will remember at some
future day, if need be, that I have said it to you and to others; nor is
what I now give you any whisper between ourselves. But is not the whole
truth still good to speak? not the truth only, but the whole? We have
Clement of Alexandria on 'uttering a lie, as the Sophists say'; but to
utter a lie is it not to tell one? and to tell one is it not to lie? and
to lie is it not to be a rotting liar? And to trim, and economise, and
keep dark, and be shifty, is it not to utter many lies? To all which I
say: 'Get thee behind me, Satan! I will wash my hands in innocency.'
Forgive me if I am curious and obscure to-night, good friend, since I
write in some gloom of mind. One short year ago I was a village-priest,
and had songs in the night; at present I am full of tossings to and fro
till the morning. But my every loss, were it of life and soul, I will
count as gain, if only Zion prosper, though I warn you, Percival, of
rocks ahead, and fears and doubts not to be formulated; at some hours I
see the future dark as crape--I could not tell you. Our victory in
Gloucester was ominously close, and here and there in the country one
hears Old Adam growling. They must obey! they must submit themselves!
stantes sunt pedes nostri in atriis tuis, Jerusalem: over all uprising
we shall ride gloriously, God help us. Alas! sometimes when I am
mightiest, then am I weakest: the solid Pisgah gives way under my feet,
the wings of Icarus stream with melting; oh, for faith, and more faith,
and still more: pray for me. Still, we shall ride, we shall triumph. As
to the Lambeth degrees in medicine, and our right to grant them, this
you shall see carried against all the rage of the heathen in the near
future, so also as to the proposed new powers of Consistory Courts and
of my Court of Audience, so also as to the restoring to Canterbury of
her jurisdiction over wills and intestacies, so also as to the condign
punishment of Ambrose Rivers: all these. Only, still the sleeplessness,
no rest, no shutting of the eyelid, but tossings till the morning, and
not poppy nor mandragoras shall medicine me now, I think. Oh, Percival,
how happy is the obscure good man, the upright heart and pure, kept
unspotted from the world! Down yonder in Ritching parish my garden grew
wild, the vicarage was holey and ruined, but very pretty, very homely,
and ever for me there was one sweetest, secret cruse of water from
Siloa's brook, and my morsel of dry bread was like coriander seed, man,
I tell you, and the taste of it like wafers made with honey. Percival, I
warn you, fly from preferment: there is one sweeter sluice than all.
Pray write as to the scripturalness of Diseased Persons. Farewell, dear
friend.--In haste, yours faithfully in N.D.J.C., JOHN CANTUAR."
"Here, I think," said Langler when I had got through the two letters,
"you have a soul in the toils," and we went on talking about Burton and
other things, without coming to the point as to what we personally were
now to do; moreover, I had promised to be back in London at once, and
left Swandale that night, our friend being then definitely on the road
to recovery.
I did not, I think, return to Swandale during some two weeks, and
meanwhile twice saw Archbishop Burton, once in the Lords on the night
when Diseased Persons was being debated for the second time; all the
world was there: I saw Mr Edwards peeping behind the throne; I saw Baron
Kolár ironing his thigh, while his eyes dwelt upon the primate, who,
somehow, denounced the bill less loudly than I had expected to hear. I
thought that Dr Burton's girth was less outgrown, his visage less brown
than usual; indeed, I have grounds to know that about that time the
archbishop was putting himself to cruel tortures with regimen, the
thongs of discipline, and other articles of piety. Twice to my
knowledge, while speaking, he glanced up at Baron Kolár in the gallery,
and I witnessed the meeting of their eyes. Well, the bill, which had
been sent up this second time with an ominous drop in Edwards' majority
from twelve to nine, was anew mutilated; and at this thing the sort of
ecstasy which marked the mood of the country can only be recalled, not
described, for Diseased Persons and the Education Bill (setting up
_lycees_ on the French model) were the two main items in the King's
Speech, the Church withstood both, and the deadlock was complete.
Edwards would not yield, for if ever man knew England and Englishmen it
was he, and a sort of world-wide mutter against churchmen, which did not
dare express itself, yet could be felt, was abroad. It was at this
juncture that I again saw the archbishop one night at a political crush
at the Duchess of St Albans'. I was making my way through a throng when
I caught a view of Baron Kolár's head above a press of men, and, the
hall being full of a noise of tongues, I won near to the group around
him to hear, for he was talking; in doing which I caught sight of the
robed figure of the archbishop sitting on an ottoman, silent, solitary,
but within earshot of the baron's talk; indeed, I fancied that the
baron's voice was purposely pitched so that Dr Burton might overhear. As
I won near the first words of the baron which reached my ears were: "but
Jesus did not believe in the immortality of the soul: no, he didn't
believe in it; he never heard of such a thing: not in our sense of the
term----"
I stood astonished at this drowsy outrage upon the ears of a devout
crowd, though a year previously his words would have been ordinary
enough, and I saw Dr Burton's eyes fixed sideward upon the baron with I
know not what musketry of meanings in them.
"Oh no," the baron went on, "he had no notion of our 'immortality.' Our
notion of a ghost distinct from the body, of 'spirit' distinct from
matter, is, of course, an Aryan-Greek one, quite foreign to the Hebrew
mind: the very angels of the Hebrews ate mutton like Charles II., their
very God was material, with hind parts and front parts; and you will
burrow through the Old Testament in vain for a valid hint that men may
live after their body is livid."
No one answered anything; only Dr Burton's eyes aimed a ray of keener
and keener meaning at the speaker.
"However," the baron went on, "there arose at a late date a crowd among
the Hebrews called Pharisees, who said: 'no, all is not over at death,
for some day there will be a resurrection, and we shall then live
again'; opposed to whom were the Conservatives--the Sadducees--who
denied that there would be a resurrection: and Jesus was a Pharisee in
this belief in a resurrection of the body. But as to our fantastic Greek
ghost and its immortality, it was quite outlandish to all Hebrews, to
Pharisee, Essene, and Sadducee alike: Jesus hardly heard of it."
I glanced toward Dr Burton's face: it had in it reproach, shame, and
anger together: and still the baron droned on: "hence the frequency of
this word 'resurrection' in the Gospels, in spite of the fact that their
writers were tinged with Greek ideas: for Jesus believed that we ceased
to live at death, but afterwards should have a 'resurrection': he was a
good Hebrew. On the other hand, in the writings of St Paul, who was both
a Hebrew and a man learned in Greek ideas, we have a perfect confusion
of the two ideas, Greek 'immortality' and Pharisee 'resurrection.'
Sometimes Paul believes in one, sometimes in the other, sometimes
somehow in both together. Where he says, 'to be absent from the body is
to be present with the Lord,' he is a Greek; where he says, 'I have
fought a good fight ... henceforth there is laid up for me a crown which
the Lord will give me in the day of his appearing,' he is a Hebrew: for
he won't get the crown at once, oh no, it is _laid up_ for him till
resurrection-day, when he will wake up out of the dust. And so all
through that epistle----'"
But at that point the baron stopped, looking with a delicious fat
chuckle after the flight of Dr Burton, who was off through the throng.
Nobody made any reply to the baron's words. I wish that one could
describe the man's tones, _his eyes_!--wandering, fishy, light grey,
the whites fouled yellowish; but so strong somehow! They would light
upon one a moment in a preoccupied way, and wander off again, as if one
was not of worth enough to engage their attention. But I'm afraid that
my pen was not made to paint. At any rate, his words were always most
weighty, living, memorable, and overbearingly authoritative--not in
themselves perhaps, but in some way because they came from him.
I happened to overhear a few private words between him and Dr Burton
that same night which I should recount, but before then I was in a crowd
with Mr Edwards, who was looking rather harassed, though quick-eyed as
ever, and appeared from his talk to be less bitter against Dr Burton's
big attacks than against the "pin-pricks "; "the face of Europe was
turned towards the future," one heard him say, "and now come the parsons
twisting it about, and saying, 'look back to the past.' It can't be
done, you know: neck'll break. And such pettifogging, penny-ha'penny,
antediluvian antics! How is an archbishop to grant degrees in medicine
at this time of day? As for Ambrose Rivers, all I can say is, if the
church-party should succeed in laying a finger upon that harmless
lunatic, then the Government will begin to ask itself whether the time
is not come to throw up the cards. May the dickens fly away----!" he
stopped, but I understood him to mean "with the church-party, and all
things, save the multiplication-table and the present Prime Minister of
England." He was a man of many sterling qualities of mind, and exercised
a true influence over his countrymen, perhaps through his very actuality
and directness; and though he ever refused to embellish himself with one
touch of personal stateliness, he was listened to with attention.
Half-an-hour afterwards I was talking with a man over a balcony rail,
where it was dark, when I heard behind me the words: "you should not
slacken in your opposition to the bill: the Church must be pushed on and
made quite triumphant"; they were spoken by Baron Kolár, and from Dr
Burton I heard a murmured reply, but not the words; then I am almost
certain that I heard the baron say: "there will be some more miracles";
and I distinctly heard the doctor's reply, halting, wifely: "how do
you--know?" and the answer too to this I heard: "I know by faith,
doctor," whereupon they turned in their pacing, and their voices were
lost. I allowed myself to whisper to the man with me: "Mephisto and
Faust!"
Well, what happened next with respect to Diseased Persons happened in a
kind of whirlwind, and before I knew where I was I was off to Styria.
Once more the bill was sent up, this time by Lower House majorities of
in general seventeen. What Mr Edwards' hope was, whether he was pushed
from behind by secret forces, one does not know; certainly by this time
the grumble in his favour--on the platform, in the press, in the
country--had grown; but still, no one much expected the Church to give
way. However, at about two in the afternoon of the very night on which
the bill was brought for the third time before the Lords, an old woman,
one Madame Ronfaut, who housed close to the Cathedral of Bayeux, found
in her cellar a grave, not a new grave, but one newly reopened, and in
the grave a cross, and nailed to the cross the remains of a man's body
that had been dead at least some months. The news of this thing flew
that afternoon like loosened effluvia. What was the precise significance
of the find I suppose that nobody gave himself the breathing-space to
think; it was felt to be significant: and never was news more dynamic.
That night Diseased Persons had a victory in spite of all the bishops.
I, for my part, flew to Swandale, understanding that the finding of the
body and cross was no chance thing, but purposely managed to give a
first shock to the faith of men. "Have you heard all?" said I to Langler
as I hurried into the cottage. He gazed at me strangely, without answer;
I saw his cheek shake; and I cried out: "Aubrey, how is Emily?"
"She is gone, she is gone," said he, with as woeful a smile as ever I
beheld.
"Gone, Aubrey," said I, "what do you mean?"
He handed me a note which she had written to him, and I saw that, on
hearing of the finding of the body and cross, she had fled from
Swandale, alone, weak, hardly yet able to walk. "Dearest Aubrey," she
had written, "you will go now to Styria, because you should; and partly
to make the leaving of me possible to you, and partly to save you from
being stopped this time by any hurt done to me, I am running away to
hide myself well somewhere. Have no fear for me, I undertake that no one
shall track me, I shall be safely hidden, and get quite well, and be
back in Swandale to welcome you when you return. Go at once, will you,
for me? with Arthur. 'Quit you like men, be strong'; you are in for it
now, poor dear: it has happened so. I take £40 from the casket. But,
beloved, if it be only possible, come back to me; and bring him who goes
with you. Your Emily."
I found Langler in such a state of powerful, though governed, emotion,
that I was unwilling to have him start that night, for his heart was not
strong. But he would come, and we reached London at two A.M., went to
bed for a time, and started in the morning by private car, so as to
catch the first passage.
We were safe aboard at Dover, and the boat about to cast her moorings,
when a car was seen making down the pier, and an outcry arose for the
boat to wait awhile, the men in the car being Baron Kolár and two
others. They were barely in time, and soon after the baron had
manoeuvred himself aboard I saw his earnest looks clear into a smile.
During the trip across he took not the least notice of our presence, nor
we of his.