THE UPSHOT
Early the following morning Langler and I had pretty sharp difference of
opinion at my bedside. I said to him: "Dees' own view of what is good
for himself is naturally worth more than yours or mine: a file is what
he says that he wants, and I believe that we can still get it to him if
we act now before the boat is found."
"The boat may have already been found," said Langler.
"Possibly," said I; "but no doubt the rumour will take some time to get
into the castle, so that if we act boldly at once, taking the ladder
here, we may get the file to Dees."
"But we have no file," said he.
"That is the least of it, surely," I answered: "Lossow has a big box of
tools; we can take a file."
"No, frankly, Arthur, it would not be quite to my taste," said he.
"What would not, Aubrey?"
"This of the file: does it seem quite pretty and correct to allow
ourselves to become the abettors of any person in breaking open another
man's house?"
I was silent: it was painful to me to believe that Langler could be
serious. "But in this case," said I, "the other man's house happens to
be a house in which the person is lawlessly imprisoned. Or is that not
so?"
"True," said he; "but still, isn't it very well said that two wrongs do
not make a right? If you look at it with a certain sidelong criticism
and detachment, I fancy that you will just see that it would not be
quite decorous and becoming. No, it would not be decorous, and,
moreover, it is not in the scheme. We have now actually seen Dees in
prison, so the proper authorities can no longer refuse to act, and upon
them we must now cast the burden."
"But the authorities _can_ refuse to act," said I, "for Baron Kolár,
remember, is no mere nobleman, but a political somebody, and the
authorities, if they do act, may take weeks, or 'months or years,' as
Dees said. True, the authorities are what we originally proposed: but we
did not then contemplate that _time_ would be the question, that Baron
Kolár might be here at home, or might have any purpose against the life
of this poor man--'crucify,' by the way, is the word which Dees used:
open your mind to it, Aubrey."
"Well, but to me there is something fantastic in the mere word," said
he: "Dees' mind may be unhinged."
"Not in the least, I believe," I answered. "Are crucifixions so very
unfamiliar to you? I say that if some circumstance or other once led
Baron Kolár to vow that this thing shall be done, then it will be done,
unless we act now out of the rut of ourselves, on a plane higher than
our everyday height. It is hard to do, of course, but perhaps we can
screw ourselves up to it. Let us think of Dees' agony of waiting for the
file to-night, to-morrow night, every night; and I promised him, I said,
'we sha'n't fail you, trust in us, we shall stick to you to our last
breath.' No, we can't fail him."
"But you speak as though I proposed to fail him, Arthur!" said Langler.
"No, you don't, of course, propose that," said I, "but still, we can't
let some qualm of primness or respectability in us cause the man to
curse Heaven: he should have the file; I know that Emily would agree
with me----"
"Emily? No! Emily would hardly say, I think, that the principles of
conduct should be modified by pressing circumstances."
"But did not David eat of the shewbread in pressing circumstances?" said
I: "I am convinced that Emily would agree with me, if I know her."
"No, nego, nego."
"Well, we won't dispute that," said I; "but still, let us think of Dees
waiting, despairing, conscious perhaps that Baron Kolár is in the
castle, with God knows what ghastly meaning. And to move the authorities
will take time, even if they be willing; and who can say what may
happen meanwhile to Max Dees?"
"Then I shall know how to act this very day," said he, "neither
approaching the authorities nor giving Dees the file, but in another
vigorous, yet law-abiding, fashion."
"Which fashion, Aubrey?"
"I shall rouse the alp," said he, "I shall implant into each mind the
certainty of Dees' imprisonment, I shall ignite their indignation, and
lead them all to demand his release."
For some time I made no answer to this; then I said: "well, do so; and,
if the human swineherds on this alp were theories, you might just
possibly succeed: remember, however, that, in the event of your failure,
it will be too late then to take the file, for the news of the boat and
ladder will certainly by that time have reached the castle, and Dees
will thenceforth be strictly guarded, or removed to another dungeon."
"Well, but I won't fail," said he--"at least let us hope that I won't
fail, Arthur; one can but try one's purblind best, and it may perhaps be
that time and tide will happen to him."
"Yes, I see how you feel, I see," said I; "but you know the awe, and
even affection, which all these people here cherish for the baron: how,
then, can you expect to 'lead' them against him? If you do manage it,
the baron will send Herr Court-painter to stare them away with his
spectacles----"
"No, I think that you underestimate the good people," he answered:
"though indolent in the presence of a suspected wrong, they will not be
slow to rise against a proved wrong. Do let us have some little trust in
our kind."
I felt myself, as it were, caught in the toils with this sudden scheme
of Langler's, seeing quite clearly, as I did, that no good would come of
it, but the more I argued the more I seemed to fix him in it, till at
last it almost looked as if a crick of contradiction to me had entered
into his motive. I saw, indeed, his point of view: to approach the
authorities might be fatally slow, to give Dees the file was
"improper"--a touch of bigotry perhaps being added to this latter view
by my unlucky claim that his sister would believe it proper, for he was
touchy as to her judgments, and inflexible whenever the moral, or even
the proper, was at all involved; but still, his way out of the fix
appeared to me too wild. At one moment I even had the thought of taking
the file to Dees without him, but I saw that I should probably fail
single-handed; and, moreover, _he_ was the head in this matter: to his
house, not to mine, Max Dees' wren had come, and I had merely
accompanied his undertaking.
Well, what happened that day is tedious to me to tell, and shall be told
shortly: first, I saw Langler in head-to-head talk with Lossow, our
host, who, though very friendly with us, had never yet let one word of
Dees' history escape his lips; then after all the talk, the
head-noddings, the finger-countings, I saw Langler giving money--a good
mass of it, too--and I thought to myself: "what, has it become a
question already of bribing the 'good people'? the disillusionment will
grow!" Lossow then wrote out a list of names, which Langler conned, and
near eleven in the morning they two rode out together. I offered to be
with them: but it was felt that my heart was hardly in the business, and
I was left out of it behind.
At one o'clock Lossow came back alone, and hurried to me, mopping his
bald head, where I sat at the foot of a tree. This old man always seemed
by some movement of the mouth to be trying to keep back a smile, but
without success; he was stout and chubby, his arms hung from his stooped
shoulders with a certain paralysed look, and he stepped short like a
woman. "Kiss the hand!" he said, beaming, "all goes well, we have ridden
like blackriders, and canvassed the folk. Herr Somebody will not only
come, but will bring his two sons and his three day-labourers, and by
three o'clock you will see gathered here the bravest swarm of them."
"That should mean good trade in the beer for you, Lossow," said I. "The
beer? good trade? for me?" said he, taken aback, "well, no doubt, folks
must drink after all, folks must drink, what would you have? There's
Karl and Jakub So-and-so have already struck work, and mean to make a
day of it--it is the richest affair this day! You'll see them come
gaping here like fish presently, the blessed swarm of them!" "But why
gaping?" said I, "hasn't Herr Langler explained why they are to come?"
"Ach, not to all," he answered, "for I whispered to Herr Langlaire,
'hasten with leisure,' 'many heads, many minds'; they of these parts are
a curious lot, you know, oh, a curious lot, you wouldn't understand them
even after many years, for one must be born among them." "On the
contrary, Lossow," said I, "I understand you through and through: you
mean that, if Herr Langler had told them everything, they would have
been afraid to show their noses, and the rich affair would have been
spoiled." "Ah, you are a rogue!" said he, "well, between us, it was
something like that: what would you have? one is nearer to himself than
to his neighbour. After all, these bauers and landsasses here are a
mean-spirited swarm, what can you expect? As for me, if I had been they,
I should have demanded the release of the Pater Dees long ago, yes,
I!--if I had been they. Still, some of them _have_ been told all, and
there's Herr Somebody coming with his two sons, Wolfgang and Ernst----"
"Who is this Herr Somebody?" I asked. "What," said he, "not know Herr
Somebody yet? the Mittel-frei? with fifty acres of beet on the yon side
of the Schwannsee? Between us, he keeps a little grudge against the
baron, and is all for a lark, with a carouse to follow"----in this way
he kept on gossiping, trying not to smile, but smiling, and full of the
heyday. Langler, it appeared, was still "canvassing the folk," had five
cottages more to visit, but would be back for dinner, which Lossow at
last hurried off to see to.
Langler, returning near two, threw himself upon our sofa with a sad
sigh, saying: "well, so far, so good; but the boat has been recovered,
Arthur; all is known, and your things and my hat, with the ladder, have
been taken to the castle. Perhaps some of them will shrink from coming
to the rendezvous now." He sighed again.
"As to the boat," said I, "that I quite expected: it is calamitous, but
I expected it. But as to the rendezvous, I doubted that you would still
adhere, Aubrey, to this strange action upon which you have embarked."
"But you speak of it, Arthur, as strange! Is it not as natural as the
unfolding of a flower to appeal to one's human fellows in a case where
humanity has been outraged? True, these people are not quite gilt with
perfection--ah, no! one must admit that; but their rudeness is the
plainness of honesty, they are robust and good, and, after all, I have
had more success with them than I could have hoped."
"But you have not told them for what purpose you want them to come."
"No, not told it to all, not yet."
"And when you do tell them, do you imagine that they will march to the
castle?"
"Yes, they will rise, they will act: men are not sheep after all."
"But suppose they rise, and act, and march, what then? Will they tear
the castle down like the Bastille?"
"No, certainly, not that: but truth alone is huge, surely; justice by
itself is the shout of a host. We shall see how it turns out. One after
all can only steer by one's best chart, Arthur, casting one's cause upon
the immortal gods, not without hope. But here is Lossow come to call us
to dinner."
In peeped a face trying not to smile, but smiling, and we went down to
dinner in the old kitchen, soon after which I began to note the shy
arrival of Hans and Klaus, one by one, two by two, who all slunk into
the beer-room on the left of the porch, and I heard later on (though not
from Langler) that drink was free that day. Meantime Langler was pacing
our sitting-room with a strenuous brow, preparing, I think, a speech.
Down below grew a noise of tongues, and soon after three o'clock in
looked Lossow busily, giving out the whisper: "they are all in the
beer-garden waiting!" this beer-garden being a yard with tables, swings,
etc., behind the house, which was L-shaped. Upon this Langler paced yet
twice, took up hat and thorn-stick, and said quietly to me: "well, then,
let us go."
Below we stood under the verandah, and with us were Lossow, Frau Lossow,
their four daughters, and two servants; before us in the garden a mob of
some fifty, with a few women and infants, earth-born beings, one of whom
bore a broomstick with a rag for flag: this was Herr Somebody!--I think
the name was Voss or Huss--a sloven, red rascal like a satyr. Some few
gaped silent, "like fishes," but it was evident to me that the mind of
the meeting was waggish; and Langler, standing against the
verandah-rail, addressed them.
He was palish, but then his brow reddened, and, on the whole, I was
surprised how well he spoke, since German was strange to his tongue; he
kept putting his palms to the rail and catching them up again, and
bowing forward and up again, and I felt how very foreign, very trying
and hard, to him all this must be; but he became earnest, speaking
feelingly, and I could have cried to see him spending his soul upon that
herd, appealing to them as brothers where no brotherhood was, giving
them news of justice and of compassion and of passionate intrepidity,
where only pigs and mugs were understood. Several times he was stopped
by the ribald Herr Voss or Huss waving the broomstick, and whooping some
such cry as "on to the burg, you clowns! let's souse old Tschudi in the
river-water!"
"Well, now," said Langler, "let us go: all of us together: with the
fixed purpose not to leave the castle without bringing back our poor
prisoner with us. We will carry no weapon in our hands, no, yet we shall
be great in power. Let us go; and I shall go in front, and my friend
here, too, will come, to strengthen us."
I think that he was about to say more: but just now, on a sudden, behold
Herr Castle-governor Tschudi in his smoking-cap standing with us. I
first heard a guffaw behind me, then at once the man was beside Langler
at the verandah-rail, and at once he was crying out jokes to this or the
other of the crowd, cutting Langler short, asking one how his horrid old
swell-foot was, assuring another that his old woman was at that very
moment making a cuckold of him, egging on another to go at once to the
castle to rescue the _saintly_ and _grateful_ Pater Dees; and the throng
was roaring with laughter when, all at once, the man's face took on a
look of ire that strongly reminded one of his over-lord, and he ordered
them all instantly to be gone to their abodes.
Langler made not one other effort, for he was not one to strive and cry,
and the power over the mob of the coarse-grained man beside him was so
obvious. As the crowd began to flow away my friend turned to me, and
smiled.
The last I saw of our army was Voss or Huss marching loudly away,
broomstick held aloft, against the burg, in the midst of a crew of some
eight or ten.
As these disappeared, Herr Tschudi tapped me on the arm.
"Sirs," said he, "kiss the hand: will you have the goodness to step this
way with me?"
We followed him into a room opening upon the verandah.
"Those articles yours, sirs?" said he, pointing to a chair on which lay
our rope-ladder together with my jacket, waistcoat, and cap, and
Langler's hat, left in the boat.
"Yes," said I, "they are ours."
"Well, I have brought them for you," said he; "but I have now to suggest
to you, sirs, that you leave the alp before noon to-morrow."
"Is it a threat?" cried I, starting.
The man made me no answer, but laying his hand upon Langler's arm, said
to him: "don't take it as a threat; I suggest it to you in a friendly
way: listen to me. You have shot a buck (made a blunder) in coming here,
and you will spin no silk by remaining longer. You have been strangely
lucky so far, owing to the fact that your intentions are amiable; but
you know nothing, you are groping in the dark on the brink of a
precipice. You go away now."
"Well, your advice seems to be kindly meant," said Langler, "and we
thank you. But there is no chance of its influencing us at all, Herr
Tschudi."
"Then I leave it to you," said Tschudi, "God guard," and he strode away.
We two then went up to our sitting-room, where we spent the evening and
most of that night. Little was said between us. Langler was not well,
and complained of a pain in the heart. He was, indeed, very deeply hurt,
and said to me with a meekness that made my heart ache: "I shall never
again act against your judgment, Arthur, in such a matter. Oh, I thought
men nobler, and the gods less niggard." It was useless to go to bed, for
I never heard such a racket, the wind was rough, and the crew of
peasants, who had gone away only for a time, were below, since drink
already reckoned for was to be had that night. Till quite into the
morning their music, quarrelling, and roars of merriment rose up to us
through the roaring of the tempest in the forest--hour after hour--so
that I pitied Langler, who, I knew, must be feeling that the money which
he had laid out with fond hopes of good was working harm. Between the
noises he and I deliberated as to what was now to be done by us; but
there was nearly nothing to be said, since nothing remained but to
address ourselves to the law of the land. I wanted him to come, too,
with me to Gratz, but he said, what was true, that it was useless for us
both to go; he was weary and disillusioned, and perhaps Herr Tschudi's
command to go had something to do with his will to stay, but I was
unwilling to leave him, and begged him to go down at least to
Speisendorf or Badsögl; but no, he would stay where he was. At last the
noises died down, and some time after two we went to bed.