The Last Miracle

by M. P. Shiel

CHAPTER XVIII

AT THE SCHLOSS

The next afternoon we got down at last to the little guest-court where our luggage was, and now could see a tower of Schweinstein half-a-league away. Langler, however, had to take to his bed, and thus lost three days more.

I, for my part, more easily overcame the effects of my night on the alp, and during those days set myself to come at the truth as to whether or no Baron Kolár was really at home; I must have questioned twenty people; but the answer was always the same: his lordship was not in residence.

On our third morning (a Saturday) at the guest-court we received, to our joy, a long letter from our wounded friend. I had thought it likely that she would write us at the P.O. at Gratz, so I had written to the P.O., and they had now sent on this letter to us in the mountains. Langler's hand trembled, and he had such a ravished smile as touched one to the heart. She had fled to a village in Gloucestershire named Alvington, and was still safely buried there, but meant, she said, to go back to Swandale as soon as she should opine that we in Styria had had time to work out our purpose. The letter for the most part was in a tone of affected lightness; she described the inn where she lodged, its flower-beds, its cat, the landlady's mows, the gambols of the wren; she even gave the political news! Diseased Persons had become law, and now it was the Education Bill that was the row: "as Satan and Michael contended for the body of Moses," she wrote, "so Mr Edwards and Dr Burton are striving for Ambrose Rivers"—Burton struggling to bring Rivers and his "New Church" under the power of the ecclesiastical courts, Edwards struggling tooth and nail against it; Dr Burton, however, she said, had had an apoplectic fit, and was laid aside for the time being. She begged to be remembered to "the good frock-coat" (i.e. to me), but, giving way in the end to her grief, cried out upon our pity to return to her. For us it was a heart-rending letter. I, at any rate, felt that if any mishap should befall her brother in this adventure, then dangers too sinister to be breathed to one's own heart might overhang her spirit. We had meant to present ourselves that day at the castle, but Langler was too deeply moved by the letter, so we put it off till the next day.

All those days I had not been idle, but had roved a good deal, trying to get friends, and had explored, too, round about the castle by land and river. There were quite thirty to fifty dwellings within two miles, but I found all these people very reserved, given up to their swine and agrarian cares, and looking upon me as a needless phenomenon. Swine abounded! a pig was in every life. However, I won some of them into saying something, and gathered, on the whole, that probably no one knew what had become of Dees, but that all probably had a guess that he was, or had been, a prisoner in the castle, in which case they were pleased, with a feeling of "serve him right"; also that no one had, or wished to say that he had, any intuition whereabouts in the world his lordship then was. This, too, was strange, that on that Sunday when Langler and I at last walked down through the forest towards the river and burg no sound of bell called the people to worship; Europe was on its knees, but this one valley of Europe had washed its hands of the Christian Church.

And everyone had only one excuse to offer for this—namely, that "it was enough to do to keep body and soul together."

How clear and new-made was the air in there that Sunday afternoon! "Up here," wrote Langler to his sister, "it is never hot nor muggy, I think, for the breezes rest not day nor night, breathing eras of music through the timber." He said that he had never felt better, though bitterly like Don Quixote before the windmill! Old Lossow (our host) and two boys came along with us, but they left us in a flurry at the outwork barbacan; then we two stood before the gate, dressed to our gloves, and Langler said to me: "you know, Arthur, that Christ of Castagno in the gallery at Christ Church? it rises before me now as an expression of the languishment of mind which I feel in the presence of this stronghold." So I, too, felt; nor was I at all sure that, once in, we should ever come out again; but there we were, and I summoned the castle—the knocker being a cannon-ball hanging on a chain, whereat a woman opened, we stepped into the bailey-court, and a somewhat loosely-dressed man, with a tasselled smoking-cap on his head hurried towards us, followed by a brown bear. "Kiss the hand, sirs," said he, "you are without doubt the two English acquaintances of the baron from whom I have received a communication." "Yes, sir," said I. "I am the burgvogt, Jan Tschudi," said he; "I take it that you still wish to inspect the burg?" "Still, yes," said I, for I had a weapon on me. "Willingly from the heart will I show you over the fortress," said he, "be so good as to come this way."

We followed him inward, Langler fondling the bear, which had a string of rhododendrons round its neck, Herr Tschudi himself a burly German of middle age, fresh-faced, with a bold brow under his smoking-cap. He led us to some cannon, saying: "these two are fifteenth-century sakers, those there are what they call culverins; and everything with us is of this kind, sirs: here you will find all old, nothing splendid." He next led us into the gaudy little church, which Langler examined lingeringly, especially two curious niches in the south wall beside the altar, where the elements had been kept, over which he bent so long that Herr Tschudi and I became restless; "I see," I said meanwhile to Tschudi, "that your front row of seats are really easy-chairs, as I once heard Baron Kolár say that they are."

"Yes," he answered, with a smile. And he added, with a certain flush and challenge: "we once had a particularly brilliant preacher here whom the baron used to take a pleasure in coming down to hear on Sunday mornings; hence the chairs, for his lordship is fond of his ease."