As the sense of these words possessed my ears I saw that the astonishment of Dr Burton was as supreme as my own. Langler leant with his well-straightened neck over his thorn-stick, smiling, the lax skin of his forehead twitching a little.

After some seconds Dr Burton said, looking at the baron as at some strange being: "I am sorry, sir, but I am pressed for time. As you see, I am a priest, and my harvest is great, and the labourers are few, so I think you will understand that I have no time for loitering and listening. As to your reference to the public-house, I confess that I do not understand you at all."

Baron Kolar was bestowing upon him a smile of sleepy fondness, and as the doctor half turned to go, the baron's hand went out to the doctor's arm.

"Ah, well, you are busy, of course," he said: "well, it does not displease me to see you so. A man's youth is his ancestry: the best heirloom which he can inherit from it is a habit of industry. A young man should work hard, not for the sake of what he can accomplish in his youth, but because the impulse of his acquired energy will last him through his course in a higher sphere. He buys the habit of strife and empire, and that persists to the end. I am rejoiced to see you stressful and _impresse_. Similarly, the youth of nations should be full of rages; their age suave and luxurious. But with regard to the public-house, now--do not hara.s.s yourself about such a nothing, since I answer for it that the difficulty will vanish. I would speak to you, but you are so busy. I will call upon you to talk it over. Tell me when, and I will come, oh yes, I will come."

I was certain that, as the baron stopped, Langler, standing now close by Dr Burton, whispered some word at the doctor's ear. He afterwards told me that the words were: "_you should say no_."

But at his whisper Dr Burton turned upon him a look of surprise and some resentment, and at once said to the baron: "I shall be at home to-morrow evening at eight-thirty, sir, if that will please you." Whereupon he bowed, and was off.

"Oh, well, he's a nice fellow--a nice fellow," said the baron, summing up the doctor. "In a high position he would be just the man whom the Church needs to push her forward and make her aggressive. What is your opinion of the Church in England?"

His eyes rested upon Langler's face.

"My opinion?" said Langler.

"As to her lasting powers, now, I mean."

"My outlook is vague enough," answered Langler: "I should say that bishops, church-bells, sermons, and so on, will persist as we know them in England for another thirty, forty years."

"Ah, you think that. Well, well. I, now, should say a hundred, a hundred and fifty years."

"That is a long time," said Langler.

"Not so long. I mean, you know, if nothing happens to annihilate her. It is astonishing how old things will continue to hold on long after they are quite dead and decayed. Look at old oaks and houses! A gla.s.s of water will sometimes remain in the liquid state a long time below the freezing-point; the least shake would make it shiver into a gla.s.s of ice, but, lacking that, it remains liquid. Well, so with the Church.

Especially in a country like England, I give her another hundred and fifty years."

"You are quite possibly right," said Langler; "your opportunities for observing may have been better than mine."

"Oh, yes, I know old England very well--very well. I was once an _attache_ to the Emba.s.sy for three years; altogether, I have lived in England eight to ten years. I know the old country very well--not badly.

Very nice it is, too--provided one brings one's own _chef_. The pride of England is not her political potency, but her beef, for in no country in the world is so exquisite a care bestowed upon the culture of cattle, and if a quarter as much had been given to the culture of men, by this time the Angles would, in truth, have been angels. Not that I have a word to say against the culture of cattle. Perhaps after all man himself is not of so much importance as what he eats. Beef is the half of life; the other half is mutton. No, that is a little hyperbole perhaps--my little tendency to neatness and epigram. It is astonishing how, as a man gets older, he runs to seed in that way, for epigram is only an instinctive device for concealing meagreness of thought. I, for example, am no longer a young man. I begin to get fond of my little comforts. To be candid with you, the cooking at Goodford does not altogether please me, those partridges at dinner last night were not done enough--not enough. Still, they were not so bad--a little underdone--and the wines are very good--very good. But, talking of the Church, I a.s.sure you I give her a hundred and fifty years--unless someone has a motive for giving her a push, and then down she goes. Would _you_ care to see that done?"

His wandering eyes halted suddenly upon Langler's face.

"I?" said Langler, "why should I?"

"Oh, well, isn't there always the danger that a decayed old house may tumble and crush one? If the thing is a groan and a danger it may as well go, and be done."

"But if it be quaint and gracious and historic," said Langler, "it may as well stay, even at the cost of a prop or two. While it stands it hurts no one: it is only its fall that may hurt."

"Well, I see your point of view. You are right, too, in your own fashion. But for myself, the Modern Spirit does not displease me; it is very nice in its way--oh yes. Let us have it in its full noon, I say.

Whatever survival of the past stifles it should be quickly excised and suppressed. And if in England the Church is only laughable, I a.s.sure you that in other parts of Europe, where it is more mixed up with the life of the people, it continues to be positively baleful. In Austria, for example, one half of the teachers in the common schools are still ecclesiastics! and though the people do not believe in the Church any more than you do here, yet it influences them, it checks and hampers them: they feel that they would like to be quit of it, yet do not quite know how. And, apart from any harm which it does, it is astonishing how many thousands of men might be found in Europe who, from mere motives of vanity, merely to tell how they took a part in modifying the modern world, would lend a willing hand to pulling down the old building. I believe that that is so. But you, now, you see from a different standpoint. Well, you are right, too, in your own fashion."

To me it became clear that these two were pumping and sounding each other with some not very evident motive on either side, Langler striking his stick into the turf as he walked, looking downward; the baron looking downward also, at Langler's face.

Langler said: "I cannot be made a convert, Baron Kolar. Sh.e.l.ls, you know, are sometimes quite charming things, and for this sh.e.l.l which remains of the Church, I personally should, under certain conceivable conditions, be even prepared to give my life: such is the whim of my mind. But now you will excuse me--Arthur, you will excuse me: I have some letters.... But stay; I have to ask you a question, baron."

He had stood still; we all stood still, and Langler and the baron faced each other.

"Well, then," said the baron gravely, eyeing Langler up and down.

Langler, I must say, was paler than usual. He said: "I have lately had reason to run my eyes down a list of the Styrian n.o.bility, baron, and find that three several Styrian barons have the name of 'Gregor'--you being one. Are you acquainted with the other two?"

"Well, yes," was the answer: "one is a Stra.s.s, the other a Dirnbach; easy, good fellows they are. Our Styrian n.o.bility is not what it was; no, the n.o.bilities will soon have to go too. Fortunate thing, they will last through my time. Look at Mr Edwards, now--nice fellow, powerful fellow. It is fellows like him, with fresh, vulgar energies and elementary insights, whom the world needs to guide it now. Oh no, the n.o.bilities must go, too. Do you know----?"

But Langler cut short that drawl. He said: "Well, one of these two Barons Gregor unlawfully has in his castle a prisoner, one Father--Max--Dees----"

He spoke pointedly, his eyes fixed on Baron Kolar's face; and on his face dwelt the Gorgon eyes of the Styrian.

Some time went by in what was to me a distressing silence, till the baron pipped a nothing sideways--a movement, to me, of relief, as it were setting me free to breathe again, for I felt that Langler had dared to cross a definite Rubicon.

"What about him?" said the baron, a new something in his voice.

Undaunted, though gauntly, leaning over his stick, Langler went on.

"It is my intention," he said, "to expose and punish this particular Styrian baron as soon as ever I discover his ident.i.ty; and I speak of him to you in order to see if you can give me any hint as to which of the two is the guilty one."

The baron's look had lost its rigour now; his lips unwreathed from his teeth in a smile.

"It is that fellow Stra.s.s, you may be sure," he said; "or it may be Dirnbach, it may be, there is no telling. The n.o.bilities are no longer what they were in authoritative power, and in Styria, I a.s.sure you, it is nothing very astonishing that a baron should lawlessly clap a priest into a dungeon; but nice fellows all of them, not wicked, not so bad. I really should not worry myself about the matter, if I were you."

Langler said: "thank you, baron, I will think over what you have said."

And he walked away to the house.

It was only after two or three minutes of silence that the baron said to me: "your friend is one of the brightest minds in the world, really as extraordinary a fellow as I ever met, I a.s.sure you. No one with any respect for intellect could avoid liking him. But he is a man of books, he is of the scholar type, he is not a man of action--oh no. A scholar should never jog himself into antagonism with a man of action. The man of action may even wish to save and spare him, but sometimes he cannot: for, just as he is vastly stronger than the scholar, so facts and auspices may be vastly stronger than he. By far the safest plan for the scholar is to hatch pastorals in his closet and handle volumes of piety.

So amiable a man is your friend Mr Langler, so charming--nice fellow. I don't know if you think it worth while to repeat my words to him. Now I must leave you to talk to Mr Edwards about my friend the doctor ..." and he rolled away on his bow-legs, his hat canted over his eyes in his habitual manner.

That very night, some time after ten, Langler was handed a letter which he called me into the library to show me. It was a card damasked with raised devices in red--a Christ on the Cross--and on it had been scribbled in pencil the words: "You should not interfere."

CHAPTER VII

THE COMPACT

The next evening, as Baron Kolar raised himself on the arm of a valet into the trap which was to carry him to his meeting with Dr Burton, Langler remembered that some matters were going forward at Swandale which demanded his personal managing, and he asked me to go with him.

It was a fine autumn twilight when we set out, a sound of singing following us from the house and laughter from knots on the lawn, and we had a very pleasant ride. At Swandale Langler talked with John, with Jane, saw this and that with his own eyes, the water-cress at the rill under wire, the patch of reaped corn, for now poppies lay low, over the fields of the land the corn-shocks were leant together in lots, and all smelt well of harvest.

Langler wished to return to Goodford on foot, and we were presently trudging back through Ritching.

That something was on his mind I had felt sure; and this proved to be so, for as we drew nigh to Ritching church he said: "I have decided, Arthur, to speak with Dr Burton to-night, since, if this good man runs his rather rash head into any danger, I do not wish to have to reproach myself with too shrinking and nice a silence on my part."

"But danger of what nature?" I asked.

"Its nature is unguessable," he answered; "but of the danger itself one can't, I think, have any doubt. We know, for instance, that Dr Burton is '_another Max Dees_,' and we know that Max Dees is, for some reason or other, in durance. Now, of Max Dees we have two further pieces of knowledge: first, that his imprisonment has features resembling the disappearance of Robinson; and secondly, that he, like Dr Burton, is a 'union of Becket and Savonarola.' Well, now, with regard to the vanishing of Robinson, Emily has let fall the view that it was motived by his 'beauty'; and though this reason for the disappearance of a man seems even ridiculous, still we have promised ourselves not wholly to ignore her instincts in this matter. _If_, then, she may somehow be right, the reason for the disappearance of Max Dees may somehow be found in the fact that he, too, is 'beautiful'; or it may be found in the second fact known of him, that he is a 'union of Becket and Savonarola': we don't know: but we know that he _is_ imprisoned, and that in some respects he resembles Dr Burton. As to who is the gaoler of Max Dees, I am really no more in any doubt. The word 'Kolar' fits very well into the blurred s.p.a.ce on the missive brought us by the wren; and the man himself, you remember, made no effort to blind our eyes when asked about the matter, even going out of his way to a.s.sure us that the other two Gregors are 'harmless, nice fellows.' What a beast that man is! Yet how great a strength of soul is his! Imagine, Arthur (if he is, in truth, the gaoler of Dees), his astonishment at hearing that name on my lips!