"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."
CHAPTER IV
THE RITUAL, THE STREET CORNER, THE DEATH-BED, AND THE BELLS
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."