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 manœuvred 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.