Part 22 (1/2)
Max Dees was born of peasant parents thirty-two years before, within two miles of Schweinstein burg. From his tenderest years the boy began to notify a genius to whose nimbleness there appeared to be no end: he took to painting and to playing the zither; he would make figures of wood and stone and engines out of fragments of metal; he could cut out and make his mother's clothes; at the age of eight he vested himself as a bishop, and went preaching at every doorway of Jonah in the whale's belly and of Lazarus raised out of the grave: everything he managed with ease and mastery. However, he had tempests of pa.s.sion, a craze for the other s.e.x, and no government over himself.
The fame of his gifts came early to the baron's ears, and Max was early established a pet in the castle. He was sent to the University of Gratz, where he highly distinguished himself. As in Austria most of the priests are of peasant birth, the baron decided to make of the genius a churchman; and in due course Dees came to be the priest of St Photini's in the castle-court. At that time Baron Kolar was a widower, with one child, the joy of his eye, a little maid of sixteen named Undine.
”But Max strung his chords all too high for the folk,” his mother told us; ”I said to him: 'do not always fly on horses of wind,' but he would not hear, he would not heed.” The head of Dees, in fact, seems to have gone half-mad with churchman's-pride; if anyone was lax in religion he raged, he warned, he launched fines and penances. But no man is a prophet in his own piggery; the alp men kicked against this rigour; and there came a time when St Photini's was left almost empty of wors.h.i.+ppers. During all which Max Dees was the tutor of the little Undine.
It was in this state of things, when matters at the church had turned from bad to worse, that a wonder happened: one Sunday night the handful of wors.h.i.+ppers in St Photini's beheld a vision hung in mid-air in the nave--a lamb nailed to a cross: a real lamb to a real cross; they marked the dripping blood, there could be no mistake. It chanced that the baron was just then in residence, and present in the church: he, too, saw, and was almost as awed as anyone. Wild was the effect: St Photini's was thereafter the holy of holies, and Max Dees more the lord of the alp than the lord himself.
But this success must have been too much for the arrogant, weak head of Dees. He now dared to let his eye rest on Undine. The baron was often away at the Court in Vienna or elsewhere; often he had his Undine with him; but once for five months he left her at home. He appears to have had a fond confidence in Dees, though all this while he well knew that Dees was an impostor; or perhaps his confidence was in his own coronet and height above Dees, upon whom, moreover, he had lavished so many bounties: for powerful men are but moderately precautious. At any rate, on a certain Sunday morning when the baron returned to the burg after this term of absence, he returned to learn that his girl had been hurt by Dees. The people of the burg afterwards reported that he took it all very patiently; went down to the church that morning, and, seated in his easy-chair, enjoyed the oratory of Dees, sneering with his teeth at the corpse who preached. Only, before this, he had locked Undine into the chamber, from which she was never to come forth living.
During that same afternoon the baron had a talk with Dees in the burg: and it was rumoured about the mountain that he then made to Dees an offer of the chance of marrying Undine--a marvellous offer on the part of a German n.o.bleman, if it be a fact; but the impudence of Dees was even more marvellous than the father's meekness: the priest demurred to disfrock himself by marriage: he trembled, and said no.
That Sunday night the folk flocked as usual to the church in the castle-court, and the bell ceased to ring, the people waited, but no Max Dees appeared. The hour for the beginning of the office was long past, and the congregation was murmuring, when all eyes were caught by a vision hung in mid-air: but a disgusting one this time--one worthy of Baron Kolar--a pig nailed to a cross, a real pig to a real cross. And while they gaped at it, the head of the baron came up through the trap-door of the vaults; he walked to the pulpit, went up into it. His hands were red with blood. The people declared that in that one day the man's hair had turned grey and his back had bent. And from the pulpit he spoke to them.
He told them that they would never see their friend, the Pater Dees, any more, since he had proved ungrateful to his patron, and had that afternoon been imprisoned in the burg, where he would probably be kept for some years, till the time should be ripe for a still worse thing to come upon him. He, the baron, had been sorry to shock them with the vision of the pig, but he had ordained it so in order to clear their minds completely of the effect of the vision of the lamb which they had seen. That vision of the lamb had been contrived by the mechanical genius of their friend, the Pater Dees. On the Sunday night, a year before, when it had appeared the baron had locked Dees into a room with him for three hours, and had compelled Dees to tell by what means the vision had been produced. Dees had confessed that he had nailed a lamb to a cross in the vaults, and by means of a dark lantern, some limelight, and some plates of gla.s.s--a contrivance not new, yet new in its perfection--had thrown, as it were, the ghost of the lamb into the nave of the church. He, the baron, had successfully repeated the same thing with the pig that evening for them to see. He believed now that none of them would ever wish for any more church; if they should, he made them an offer: let any six of them come to him and say so, and he would supply them with a new priest. He would watch with interest to see how they would act. Meantime he hoped that they would continue to be good Christians in their homes; Christianity was the highest sign of man, and could never be destroyed or abolished, but it was an affair of aspiration and conduct, not of dogma: they might take it from him that there was no truth in any one of its dogmas, and for some years he had been casting about for an easy method of destroying the inst.i.tution which persisted in embarra.s.sing the world with those dogmas. Perhaps their friend, the Pater Dees, had now supplied him with such a method.
He would watch and see. But, meantime, they must never repeat to a soul what had pa.s.sed on the alp or what they heard him say that night; he set up a secret between them and himself, because they were his, and he loved them, and knew that they truly feared and loved him: but if ever anyone should recount or imply aught to outsiders that would incur his displeasure.
So much Langler and I were able to gather from the Mother Dees' gabble.
As for the ill-starred Undine, she seems to have died in, or soon after, giving birth to the five-year-old Undine of whom I had lightning glimpses on the breast of the Mother Dees. This child, the granddaughter of a n.o.bleman, was in rags, and had never been seen by Baron Kolar: a fact which chilled me with a sense of the changelessness of this man's resentments.
CHAPTER XXIV
OUR FLIGHT
Anyhow, in this unforeseen fas.h.i.+on we now had in full the history of the ill-fated Dees, to hear which we had started out for Styria. I now whispered to Langler, ”we should be quick”; but he, not perhaps quite understanding my eagerness to be gone, lingered, trying to get the poor woman to come with us, it was such a night, and she within sight of what anon was lit up down on the strip of gra.s.s by the river's brink. Langler offered to adopt the child straightway, but she would not part with it, nor would she come with us, so we had to leave her, leading the van, almost running, so that Langler, who was no runner, panted: ”well, no doubt it is as well to make haste.” ”Yes,” I answered, ”for I sha'n't be astonished if some attempt be now made to keep us from leaving the alp.
That man who ran off has by now taken the news to the castle, where it will be taken for granted that from the Mother Dees we have heard all, and we may not be allowed to get away with so much knowledge in our heads. In my opinion we oughtn't to go back to the guest-court for your trunk, but hurry straight down to the nearest sennhaus, get horses----”
”But I have five or six ma.n.u.script poems in the trunk, and the Theocritus with all my notes,” panted Langler, trotting after my haste.
”Well, then, we must get the trunk,” said I, ”but it is dangerous: I wish to Heaven that we were safe down at Badsogl....”
At that moment--we were now at the castle-back--I saw the light of a lantern, and a second later struck against Herr Tschudi. ”Well met, sirs!” he cried at once: ”it is just for you that I was going to look, for I have to talk with you; if not in a hurry, perhaps you would favour me by stepping into the castle a moment.” ”I am afraid that we _are_ rather in a hurry,” I answered, ”for we are wet, and have had nothing to eat; but if to-morrow morning at eleven will do, we shall then be happy to call upon you in the castle.” ”That will do just as well,” said he, ”but mayn't you as well step in now?” ”Pray excuse us for to-night,” I answered. ”Willingly from the heart,” said he, ”since that is your wish; but--has not the Mother Dees been telling you about things?” I was about to say ”which things?” when Langler said: ”perhaps, sir!” ”Oh, she has?”
broke out Tschudi, ”but, you see, you two men have gone a step too far now.” ”Come, Aubrey!” I cried out, ”we can't wait!”--and I ran, dragging him by the sleeve, while Tschudi sent after us the shout: ”yes, fly, you two! but don't hope to see your birth-places again....”
On reaching the guest-court breathless, I asked Lossow if the horse had been harnessed for us: he answered that he supposed so, and would see. I then paced our sitting-room for, say, six minutes, expecting him to summon us down, Langler being in his bedroom, crowding some knick-knacks into the trunk. I went in to him, saying that the waggonette must be waiting. ”One moment,” said he, and I waited till he locked the trunk.
But when we went to go out the door had been fastened on the outside.
We stared at each other's paleness, then I flew to the window, which was at the side of the house. The night was so deep that I could not see the ground, but I knew that it was no light leap. However, it was our only way out, so Langler slid down by the sheets, which I held for him, below heaped them for me to leap upon without making a hubbub, and I dropped upon my feet: the trap laid for us had failed. We ran on tiptoe, meaning somehow to make our way down the mountain on foot; but when we got to the back the light of the waggonette appeared just coming from the stable, and when the boy spoke to us we perceived that he had not yet been made privy to the plot against us. ”We came to meet you, Jan,” said I as I leapt in, ”for we are in a hurry.” ”But the trunk, sirs?” said he. ”We leave the trunk for to-night,” said I: ”just turn round now, and drive straight down.”
He did so! and we were off down the main road in a flush of escape. I pitied Langler for his lost papers, but there was no help. ”Let us only hope,” said I, ”that we sha'n't reach Badsogl too late to send the telegrams to England to-night.”
”Why so particularly to-night?” he asked.
”But is it not certain,” I answered, ”that the last phase of the plot against the Church must now be about to show itself in the greatest haste? Wasn't it because of the might of the Church that Baron Kolar so feared our meddling in the matter of Dees? And now that he has dared this ma.s.sacre of a churchman, how shall he escape the Church's vengeance if the Church is to remain mighty one month more? He is about to strike sharply, be sure, for we have forced his hand, and our seconds are precious.”
”But shall we do much good?” asked Langler.
”Well, certainly,” said I, with a laugh, ”it seems late in the day to ask that, Aubrey. a.s.suredly we shall do good. We, too, indeed, shall have to show that the miracles are none, but, then, we shall also show that they were no machinery of churchmen. In the case of the miracle up here six years ago, which made the little model for Kolar's great scheme, the death of the Church was due to the fact that the miracle _was_ found out to be the doing of the priest; but if we show that on the great scale churchmen have been guiltless of guile no shock of tempest will be let loose, things will decline into their old mood as before the miracles, and the Church will survive.”