LONDON
T. WERNER LAURIE
CLIFFORD'S INN
1906
"My domain how lordly large, sublime!
Time's my domain; my seedfield's Time."
Towards the end of May 1900 the writer received as noteworthy a letter and packet of papers as it has been his lot to examine. They came from a good friend of mine, a Dr A. Lister Browne, M.A. Oxon., F.R.C.P., whom, as it happened that for some years I had been living mostly in France, and Browne being in Norfolk, I had not seen during my visits to London. Moreover, as we were both bad correspondents, only three notes had passed between us in the course of those years.
But in the May of 1900 there reached me the letter—and the packet—to which I refer, the packet consisting of four note-books full of shorthand, the letter also pencilled in shorthand, and this letter, together with the note-book marked "I.," I now publish.
[The note-book marked "II." has already appeared under the title of "The Lord of the Sea," and that marked "III." under the title of "The Purple Cloud," each in three languages; while that marked "IV." has been judged unsuitable to publication.]
The following is Browne's letter:—
"Dear old Man,—I have been thinking of you, wishing that you were here to give me a last squeeze of the hand before I—go. Four days ago I felt a soreness in the throat, so in passing by old Johnson's surgery at Selbridge, I asked him to have a look at me. He muttered something about membranous laryngitis which made me smile; but by the time I reached home I was hoarse, and not smiling: before night I had stridor. I at once telegraphed to London for Horsford, and he and Johnson have been opening my inside and burning it with the cautery, so I am breathing easier now, and it is wonderful how little I suffer; but I am too old a hand not to know what's what: the bronchi are involved—too far, and, as a matter of fact, there isn't any hope. Horsford is still fondly hoping to add me to his successful-tracheotomy statistics; but I have bet him not, and the consolation of my death will be the beating of a specialist in his own line.
"I have been arranging some of my affairs, and remembered these note-books which I intended letting you have long ago; but you know my habit of putting things off, and, moreover, the lady was alive from whose mouth I took down the words. She is now dead, and, as a man of books, you should be interested, if you can manage to read them.
"I am under a little morphia at present, propped up in a nice little state of languor, so I will give you in the old Pitman's something about her. Her name was Miss Mary Wilson; she was about thirty when I met her, forty-five when she died, and I knew her all those fifteen years. Do you know anything of the philosophy of the hypnotic trance? That was the relation between us—hypnotist and subject. She suffered from tic of the fifth nerve, had had all her teeth drawn before I knew her, and an attempt had been made to wrench out the nerve by the external scission. But it made no difference: all the clocks in purgatory tick-tacked in that poor woman's jaw, and it was a mercy of Providence that ever she came across me.
"Well, you never knew anyone so weird in appearance as my friend, Miss Wilson. Medicineman as I am, I could never see her without a shock, she so suggested what we call 'the other world.' Her brow was lofty, her lips thin, her complexion ashen, and she was execrably emaciated; her eyes were of the hue of mist; at forty her wisp of hair was withered to white.
"She lived almost alone in old Marsham manor-house, five miles from Ash Thomas, and I, just beginning in these parts at the time, soon took up my residence at the manor, she insisting that I should give up myself to her.
"Well, I quickly found that in the state of trance Miss Wilson possessed very queer powers—queer, I mean, not because peculiar to herself in kind, but because so far-reaching in degree. Most people are now talking with an air of discovery about the reporting powers of the mind in its trance state, as though the fact had not been fully known to every old crone since the Middle Ages; but the certainty that someone in a trance in Manchester may tell what is going on in Glasgow was not, of course, left to the discovery of an office in Fleet Street, and the psychical people in establishing the fact for the public have not gone one step towards explaining it.
"But, speaking of poor Miss Wilson, I say that her powers were queer because so special in quantity. I believe it to be a fact that, in general, the powers of trance manifest themselves with respect to space, as distinct from time: the spirit roams in the present, travels over a plain, doesn't usually astonish one by huge ascents or descents. I fancy that this is so. But Miss Wilson's gift was queer to this degree, that she travelled in every direction, and easily in all but one, north and south, up and down, in the past, the present, and the future.
"This much I soon got to find out. She would give out a stream of sounds in the trance state—I can hardly call it speech, so murmurous, yet guttural, was the utterance, mixed with puffy breath-sounds at the lips, this state being accompanied by contraction of the pupils, failure of the knee-jerk, rigour, and a rapt expression, so I got into the habit of tarrying for hours by her bedside, fascinated by her, trying to catch the news of those musings which came mounting from her mouth; and in the course of months my ear learned to make out the words: 'the veil was rent' for me also, and I was able to follow somewhat the trips of her straying spirit.
"At the end of six months I heard her one day repeat some words which were familiar to me. They were these: 'Such were the arts by which the Romans extended their conquests, and attained the palm of victory; and the concurring testimony of different authors enables us to describe them with precision....' I was startled: they are part of Gibbon's 'Decline and Fall,' which I readily guessed that she had never read.
"I said in a stern voice: 'Where are you?'
"She replied: 'Us are in a room, eight hundred miles above. A man is writing. Us are reading.'
"I may tell you two things: first, that in trance she never spoke of herself as 'I' but, for some reason, as 'us': 'us are,' she would say, 'us will'; secondly, that when wandering in the past she represented herself as being above (the earth?), and higher the farther back she went; in describing present events she appears to have felt herself on (the earth); while, as to the future, she always declared that 'us' were so many miles 'within' (the earth).
"To her excursions in this last direction, however, there seemed to exist certain limits: I say seemed, for I can't be sure, and only mean that she never, in fact, went far in this direction. Three, four thousand 'miles' were common figures in her mouth in describing her distance 'above'; but her distance 'within' never got beyond sixty-three. She appeared, in relation to the future, to be like a diver in the sea who, the deeper he dives, finds a more resistant pressure, till at no great depth resistance grows to prohibition, and he can no further dive.
"I am afraid I can't go on, though I had a good deal to tell you about this lady. During fifteen years, off and on, I sat listening by her couch to her murmurs. At last my ear could catch the meaning of her briefest breath. I heard the 'Decline and Fall' almost from beginning to end. Some of her reports were the merest twaddle; over others I have hung in a sweat of interest. About the fifth year it struck me that I might just as well jot down some of her mouthings, and the note-book marked 'I.' belongs to the seventh year. Its history is this: I heard her one afternoon murmuring in the tone which she used when reading, asked her where she was, and she replied: 'Us are forty-five miles within: us read, and another writes'; from which I concluded that she was some forty to sixty years in the future. I believe you may find it curious, if you are able to read my notes.
"But no more of Mary Wilson now, and a little of A. L. Browne, F.R.C.P.!—with a breathing-tube in his trachea, and Eternity under his bed now. Isn't that a curious beast, my dear boy, the thing you call a 'modern man'? Is he not? Here am I writing to you about Miss Mary Wilson and her freights of froth, and all the time I know what this frame of mine will be to-morrow night; I know and am not afraid. Am I a saint, then? At least a hero? No, I am a modern man, a know-nothing. The Lord have mercy upon my never-dying soul! if my soul is never-dying, and if ... rather a mess.
"Well, no more now. I know you will think of me sometimes. You will have to, by the way, because I am making you one of my executors. 'A long farewell!' ..."
Here begins the Note-book marked I."
I have been asked by the publishers who bring out this book to add yet a mite to the mass of writing which has appeared in regard to the late events, for how are the mighty fallen! and, as when an oak announces its downfall through the forest, so here it was only natural that the little fowl should fly and flap, with outcries (sometimes) of sharp shrillness! Much, then, has been written and said; and if I now place my small word with the books already sprung out of what we call "The Revival" and, rather blatantly, the "Abolition of Christianity," my excuse lies in the circumstance that during those storms I was much with Aubrey Langler, and that, long before those events, I was probably his closest friend.
I can, therefore, give details as to that gracious life and the strifes in which he had a hand not very possible to another writer.
It was my way to stay with Langler at least thrice a year. My crowded town-life was a rude enough contrast with his eremite mood, so I rarely failed to avail myself of his invitations. Of these he gave me one in the August of the year of the Pope's visit, and shortly afterwards I started for Alresford (Swandale lies five miles north-west of Alresford by carriage-road).
There happened to travel in the rail-train with me a remarkable man: certainly, I think that I never beheld a larger human being, except in an exhibition. We were alone in my carriage, and I was able to take note of him. His vast jacket was of satin, and from every button ran two cords of silk, ending in a barrel-shaped ornament of silk, such as used, I believe, to be called "frogs"; his shirt was frilled and limp; and he wore four or five rings. This was enough to prove him a foreigner, though otherwise his dress was ordinary. He sat with his fat legs wide apart, smiling at the world in the most good-humoured, yet sneering way, showing some very long top teeth.
All the time his hand travelled to and fro, fro and to, in a rub along the tightly-clad length of his thigh.
The man seemed most happy. From the manner in which his eyes, half hid by their sleepy lids, hovered anon upon me, I could see that he was longing to speak out some of his self-satisfaction; and after some short time he did indeed speak, saying with a drowsy drawl through his nostrils, exhibiting the sneer of his teeth, and speaking English without a hint of foreignness:
"The landscape is not displeasing to me. Oh no; it is not so bad. There now, you see, that little farm: it is not so bad. But it is not romantic—not plantureux. It would be strange to me if the English were other than they are. The English are an exact expression of England—their character, constitution, Church, everything. The cliffs of Dover, now. Cæsar might have foretold their future from their mere appearance as he approached them; a traveller might just look at them from his ship, and go back home saying: 'I know the English'—if he be a man of force and grasp and insight. Oh no; that is a little hyperbole perhaps—my little tendency to hyperbole. But, I assure you, the landscape does not displease me...."
In this way he went on purring; did not stop; would not permit me to say anything. His utterance was lazy, nasal; and ever and anon he pipped from his lips, as he droned and rubbed his thigh, a dry pin-point of nothing: this, one could see, was a habit of his being. I cannot now recall a thousandth part of his talk, but I do recall that, as he droned on and on from topic to topic, this thought roved through my brain: "But what a head! what a fount of ideas!"
The man made upon me an impression of great grossness, perhaps from his big bulk, or his manner of ironing his thigh, or his ejection of nothings, or that wallowing in his own self-satisfaction. Round his chin and cheeks ran a bandage of iron-grey beard; his hair was scanty, and bald at the temples, where his forehead ran up into two gulfs of bare skin, so that the skimpy region of hair on his great head resembled a jacket much too small for the person who wears it.
A few minutes before our arrival at Alresford something led him to tell me that he was about to join the house-party of the Prime Minister at Goodford. His servants, I soon saw, were in the carriage next to ours, for as the train drew up a valet ran out to help his master to alight, but his master coolly made use of my shoulder to help himself out as he limped heavily to the platform, and did it with such an air of patronage and old friendship, that, for the life of me, I couldn't help feeling flattered.
I suppose that to be caressed by a force is always pleasant—the purring of a petted cat!—and I understood that the Baron Gregor Kolár was a force.
For now I knew his already well-known name, inasmuch as, after turning away from me on the platform, he turned again, fumbled fretfully for his card, and gave it me. I gave him mine. Then, with a bow-legged rolling of gait which bowled his head aside at each stride, he strolled to the brougham awaiting him.
His brougham and mine ran along the same road for some distance—Goodford, his bourne, being only five miles from Swandale—till we parted at a meeting of roads, and he passed from my mind for a season.
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."
Swandale cottage is very large, covering more than half of the island, but mostly one-storeyed, the roofs being of thatch made heavy with rocks, and the walls of marble kept snow-white by means of snakestone; but not much of the walls is visible, for the eaves of the roof droop so low that parts of them have had to be removed over the doors; and as most of the timber about the cottage is huge, the twilight within broods at noon. At the time of which I write candles burned in most of the rooms throughout the day in an atmosphere smoky with incense; for all within was a feeling of the ecclesiastical, everywhere the Church, monasticism, the vestment, the ritual, the Middle Ages, the mood of the altar.
I spent most of the day after my arrival—a Sunday—with Langler in his study, which was in a corner of the cottage, and looked like a great garret or barn with its black beams, its floor of black and red stone, its arras and bookshelves; the ottoman, fixed into a nook under a Christ in hone-stone, was covered with embroideries of the Armenian Church; three diamond-paned windows looked out upon some flower-beds and lawn and upon a slip of the lake seen through oak and poplar; on the desk stood a pyx-and-cross, with two candelabra of plain old gold, whose six candles more or less cancelled the gloom.
At breakfast I had asked him how the wren was faring, his answer had been evasive, but in the study he referred himself to it, saying, "you asked about the wren at breakfast, by which I understood you to ask about the paper round its leg. Now, I have been examining this paper, it bears some written words, and as they are unpleasant I didn't wish to speak of it before Emily. However, I will show it now to you."
He opened the pyx, took out a little curl of paper, and spread it on the desk. It was uneven at the edges, had been much begrimed, but with a magnifying-glass I contrived to read these words in the tiniest writing:
"Ich, der Pater Max Dees, bin ein ... ner im Sc ... des Barons Gregor ... Um Gottes Willen"; or: "I, Father Max Dees, am a ... 'ner' in the 'Sc' ... of Baron Gregor.... For God's sake."
"Notice the material of writing," said Langler.
"Not red ink?"
"No, blood. And the instrument of writing——"
"Not a pen?"
"No, a pin, as you see from the downstrokes."
"But have you been able to fill in the blanks in the sentence?"
"In two at least of the three instances: for if a man writes with a pin and with blood he is certainly somehow a prisoner, and that seems to suggest the word ending in 'ner', namely, Gefangener. And, having that, we know the word beginning with 'Sc': for he could hardly be a prisoner in anything beginning with 'Sc' except a Schloss. So that we get that Father Max Dees is a prisoner in the castle of Baron Gregor Something; and he begs us for God's sake to do something: very likely he was interrupted in the act of writing it."
"But how on earth, I wonder, did he trap the wren in his prison?" I said.
"People in such situations do become ingenious," Langler answered.
"But will you take any steps in the matter?"
"Well, I suppose one must, for mercy's sake," he answered: "but what steps?"
"The first thing," I said, "is to locate our priest: that is, to find out the full name of our Baron Gregor; but that is precisely what may be difficult."
"No; I think not," he answered; "you haven't looked at the thread with which the paper was tied round the wren's leg: just look now, though I doubt if it will give you any information, but Emily or John would know at once."
After examining the thread under the glass I said No.
"Well," he said, "over yonder among my flock are three goats, half-domesticated Styrian hill-goats, whose greyish undergrowth of mohair is woven undyed for underclothing in Upper Styrian villages, and, in spite of its long exposure, I feel sure that the fibre you are looking at is Styrian hill-goat wool, and a thread ravelled from some garment or other woven in Styria."
"So that Father Max Dees probably is in some Styrian castle?"
"So it would seem, and we shall know which Styrian castle as soon as we run our eyes down some list of Styrian barons—unless there are two or more Gregors among them. At any rate, we shall have some information, and can then take some step to rid our backs of the burden of the matter. But where to find a list of Styrian barons?"
I answered that I didn't know, but that there would be no difficulty about that. "But a Styrian wren!" I said. "How comes it in England in August—or at any time?"
"We shall have to get Emily to coach you in some of the more glaring facts of country-life," Langler said, with a nod. "Don't you know, really, that many wrens are winter birds? And as to the migratory ones, surely you know that hardly any kind of bird is reliable in its migrations. I once knew a cuckoo—but I won't talk Greek to a Scythian. They drift into strange tribes, you know, at the home-coming; they even change their nationality for a summer or for a lifetime. That bit of paper, remember, has been wafted at least twelve months on the wings of the wind, and mauled in the forests of midmost old Lybia, so that our prisoner may be already free—or dead. In any case, it seems an odd little trait of chance that the thing should come here—to me."
Towards evening of the same day I was sitting with Langler in a little dingle not far from the water, while down by the water's edge idled Miss Emily, feeding swans. I did not think that she was listening to our talk, or might divine it; but her lightness of ear was always very decided.
I had been telling Langler of the spectacle at Canterbury during Holy Week of that year. For the first time, I believe, since 1870 a Bishop of Rome had been permitted to leave the Vatican, and to pledge, as it were, the return of a prodigal, had pontificated High Mass in the metropolitan cathedral of England.
At that ritual I had been present, and Langler had been questioning me as to the conditions under which Tenebræ had been sung on the Wednesday night, and as to certain minutiæ of the vestments worn by the orders during the liturgical drama of the Thursday. The rite was fresh in my memory, and he listened, I could see, keenly, as I went on to tell of the conveyance of the Pontiff from the dean's house; of the trumpets of the Noble Guard; of the reception of his Holiness by a procession of clergy, headed by the Bishop of Emmaus; of the last sound of the bell during the Gloria, and the clapper of the Sanctus and Canon; of the consecration of the holy oils, vase, oil-sticks, and chrism; of the twelve trumpets during Elevation; of the Communion, of which twelve bishops partook; of the conveyance of the wafer to an Altar of Repose; then of Vespers; of the antiphon "Diviserunt"; of "Deus, Deus meus" during the stripping of the altar; and of the ceremony of the night—the cope of violet, the washing and the wiping and the kissing of the right feet of the thirteen....
And as I spoke Miss Emily spun round from over her swans, and flung at us across the distance the words: "thus have they crucified to themselves afresh the son of man, and put him to an open shame."
"Ah? Is that so?" asked Langler, with his smile.
"Happily," I said, "nobody any longer cares, Emily."
"Unhappily," sighed Langler.
And, like an echo, there came from Miss Emily, who had not heard him: "unhappily!"
"But observe," I said, "that this whole Canterbury gaudery remains illegal, for I have yet to hear that the Act of Uniformity has been repealed. Wouldn't the civil power be competent, if it chose, to take action against someone?"
"I think so," replied Langler, "if the civil power were not far too deeply indifferent to what takes place in Canterbury to rake up against it old laws which have become academic. Even thirty, twenty years ago what a howl of 'popery!' Now—nothing...."
"Yet," I said, "I can't think that indifference was quite the feeling of the nation with regard to the Pope's visit; on the contrary, people seemed interested and pleased. With our much of numbness about the Church is there not, really, mixed a sort of interest?"
"In one class," replied Langler—"in the class which has acquired a liking for charming rites and vestments in good taste. Hence the corporate reunion that has been growing up since the last century, till now it culminates, for the English Church got to see that it must more and more imitate its great old Mother and her graces if it was to retain any of the interest of the nation. It has, in fact, by this imitation retained some of the interest of one class, but we know that it is none of it a religious interest, but an æsthetic one; and as to the lower classes, no sort of interest has survived. In other words, while the dogmas of the Church have become mawkish to all, her dear altar-cloths and subcingula have continued pleasing to some—to you and me, for example."
"But the end!" I said.
"Ah, the end," he sighed, and we were silent for a while till he added: "ah, but talking of all that, I have not told you, have I, of our new rector? You shall hear! He is a man with a tragedy in his future, a brilliance in his past, and, to my mind, much lovableness in his present—though you may not say so. His name is Burton—a Harrow and King's College man, the son of a successful undertaker of Belfast. He became a Bell Scholar and Browne's Medallist before he was twenty-one, and was Senior Classic and Senior Chancellor's Medallist very shortly after. Later on he was appointed lecturer, and got a tutorship. I don't know what he did for some years, but I am told that he was offered the headmastership of Ardingly, which he refused: he said, mark you, that he wished to devote himself to pastoral work! Think of that for a modern person of that sort! Then the Prime Minister, hearing of his parts, offered him Ritching, which, you know, is in his gift, and at Ritching Burton now is, so you will not fail to come across him somewhere soon. But it is my belief that, if ever Edwards regretted a thing, it is this of grafting Burton under his nose here into Ritching. He has caught a Tartar in Burton, I can tell you. Burton believes! He is the last of the, let us say the—Barons. And he has quite the tone of the old-world type of priest and arch-priest—more lofty than Lucifer himself, in his quality of churchman, you understand, though underneath I believe him to be a dear, humble fellow. The living is worth three hundred pounds, and of that let us say thirty pounds is spent upon Dr Burton. The rest goes in needless 'works' among his flock—really his flock I mean, for Burton's intellect still divides the world into Church and Sheep: he actually says 'sheep.' He breaks his fast at noon, in Advent and Lent not till five, and I hear of hair-cloths, and of midnight risings to recite the breviary office. Add to what I have said that the sermons which he preaches weekly to empty pews are undoubtedly the most brilliant, impassioned, inspired now anywhere uttered in the English tongue—I have been to hear two of them, and you may believe me—and you get a figure rather incongruously ranged with regard to his age. He, by the way, bans me even more than I love him, pronouncing at my shadow a 'Retro, Satanas.' He knows that I am hardly quite 'of the light,' and my love of the Church is an added fault in his eyes. However, to his smitings I find no difficulty in turning always my other cheek. On the whole, I assure you, the world will hear of Dr Burton, or Dr Burton will break himself up against the world——But who is this?"
It was one of the gardeners, named John, who came to say that someone had run over from Ritching with the tidings that Mrs Robinson, the mother of the vanished Robinson, was dying.
At this Miss Emily hurried up from the water, rushing into pinks and whites, calling: "what, Mrs Robinson! not dying?... Oh, my forgetful head! I intended the first thing this morning.... It is grief and solitude that is killing the poor woman. Aubrey, I must go now to her."
"Well, and I too," said Langler; and to me: "Would you care to come?"
We hurried to the house, and soon set out—Langler with his broad hat and thorn stick, Miss Emily with a basket, and old Bruno (a mastiff) at our heels.
We wound the north way out of Swandale by a path where we had to walk in single file through aftermath, Langler going first, Miss Emily behind, and as I in the middle reached my hand backward to relieve her of the basket my fingers happened to meet her palm, Langler then talking about Robinson, though at the time I hardly heeded him; he said, however: "if ever midnight darkened with sudden disaster upon the life of any man, surely it was upon this poor fellow. He was an easy, good chap, this Robinson. You knew him, Arthur. What a beauty of mild, large eye was his, and dark-curling beard! Do you know, I often seemed to realise in him my notion of the face of Jesus; certainly, he wasn't unlike the later French conception of the Saviour. As to his disappearance, nothing can be queerer. He left Swandale at noon on Thursday to walk to Ritching, in order, they say, to bespeak Lang, the blacksmith. Now, a little on this north side of Swandale there lay in a spinney a ne'er-do-weel named Notter; Notter saw Robinson, but Robinson did not see Notter: and what, according to Notter, was Robinson doing as he went by?—looking up into the air, whistling! So that we may say that Robinson was not then running away—had, in fact, no perverse purpose of any kind in his mind. Yet Ritching is less than three miles from Swandale! And he never entered Ritching! that we know. In that interval, then, the poor fellow was whiffed from the ways of men by some injurious magic: and the place which knew him knows him no more."
"And as to the police?" I said.
"No doubt they are at work," he answered; "but in a matter of just this kind I believe you will find that nothing but a species of inspired divining, hardly common in the bureaux, will accomplish much."
"Aubrey, there were three strangers in Ritching during the week," called Miss Emily from behind.
"Ah? Is that so?" said Langler. "I didn't know."
"Jane heard it in Ritching last night, and told me."
"Friends?" asked Langler.
"No, apparently; they were people taking holiday. They put up for several days at the Calf's Head. Two were foreigners."
We were now at a gate between two great masses of rock, and passed through it to the path over which poor Robinson had lately gone to his fate. Hence to the dale in which Ritching moons the way is mostly downhill, and we were soon entering the south end of the old townlet.
At that south end of the street stood a group of people singing—a squad of three Salvationists, from Alresford perhaps, and with them a few of the villagers—singing as we drew near, with a certain rollicking swing, and I well recall the lilt and the words:
Twice they encored this chorus, some laughing as they sang, others standing silent, with dimples of amusement on that side of the lips where the pipe was not. When this was chanted out sprang a captain, and, himself smiling, began to cry aloud: "Well, friends, you may laugh, but—but——" He got no further, for just then down the path ran bounding a rat, a terrier, a lot of men and boys; I had to draw Miss Emily aside, as, rushing by, they pelted among the Salvationists, who, in their turn, scattered, and joined the chase. Only the captain and his two mates were left.
I caught the captain's words: "well, here's a rum go, mates."
We, for our part, went on our way, I smiling, but on the face of either of my friends not a smile. I could not help saying: "modern Christianity in the modern village does not thrive"; but at once I was sorry for having said anything, for neither the one nor the other answered me.
Only after some time Langler said: "still, the martyrs, dying for it, lifted up their eyes, and saw heaven open. But now, you see, it has come to this." I heard him murmur to himself: "And now I am happy all the day...."
Miss Emily, who had hurried on a little ahead, now vanished into a cottage into which Langler and I presently followed her. On our entrance she had just passed through into an inner room, and we heard someone in there going "Sh-h-h!" to her in an angry fashion.
We, too, after a little moved into that inner room. There the mother of Robinson lay dying, and it was there that I first laid eyes on Dr Burton.
He was standing, with a stole on, at the further side of the bed, and a murmur of rapid words was coming from him.
At the near bedside were two of the villagers, with a lay sister from the Poor Clares at Up Hatherley, and Miss Emily; the little place was very dingy, but Dr Burton's face was towards us as we entered: I saw Langler bow austerely, but the Doctor looked through him with a vacant gaze.
The appearance of Dr Burton was impressive: his waistband circumferenced a hemisphere of paunch, so that the hem of his frock stuck well out in front of his toes, and he was also thick about the shoulders, chest, and throat; his brow, invaded all round by close-cropped hair, had a scowl, and his mouth a pout; his complexion was of a red brown. I heard him mutter: "by this holy unction, and through His great mercy, Almighty God forgive thee whatever thou hast sinned by sight...." And his right thumb anointed the eyelids of the dying with oil.
And again he ran on in a rapid recitative: "by this holy unction, and through His great mercy, Almighty God forgive thee whatever thou hast sinned by hearing...." And his right thumb smeared the ear of the dying with oil.
I saw Miss Emily bridle a little. In Dr Burton's left hand was an old Sarum liturgical book in pigskin, and on he droned: "by this holy unction, and through His great mercy, Almighty God forgive thee whatever thou hast sinned by smelling...." And his thumb noted the nose of the poor old woman with oil.
Except this cantering mutter and a death-ruckle on the bed all was still in the darkling room. Miss Emily stood at the head, parted from Dr Burton by the breadth of the bed, I with her. And once more the drone was droning: "by this holy unction, and through His great mercy, Almighty God forgive thee——"
But now there was an interruption: the little old woman for some half minute had been making some effort—to speak or to move—and now she lifted her head, opened her eyes, and whispered something to Miss Emily. Her words, as I afterwards learned, were: "ah, Miss Emily, tell him to stop ... dear, good soul he is ... my poor son...."
Her head fell back upon the pillow. It was clear that her strength had already been well tried before our entrance, for on a table near the bed were the bell, light, and cross of the Blessed Sacrament, with the pyx wrapped in linen. But at the interruption Dr Burton stopped; his face darkened, and forth went his arm, pointing to the door.
"All leave the room," cried he with a gruff brogue.
I saw Miss Emily's face go rosy, while Langler's eyes dwelt upon the Doctor, and he asked, with a smile: "but why so, Dr Burton?"
"Do it, sir!" cried the doctor in a startling manner; whereupon for perhaps thirty seconds it lasted, the doctor pointing, Langler smiling, till Langler turned, and said "come" to Miss Emily and to me.
We went out, the two villagers following us, leaving the doctor and the Franciscan alone with the dying woman. But in the outer room Miss Emily sat on a chair, saying: "I mean to wait here till Dr Burton chooses to go away. Send John to me, and don't expect me home until all is over."