"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.