For Greater Things | Page 7

the care of a tutor, a young man named Bilinski. He had left them in the early morning. As the day wore on and he did not return home, they became uneasy. They went about all afternoon, inquiring amongst their friends and acquaintance if any had seen him. Only one or two were in the secret, and they kept discreet silence. Unable therefore to get any trace of Stanislaus, they soon came to the conclusion that he had fled. And, as we shall see, they had good reason in their own hearts for guessing that from the first. They returned to the house of the Senator Kimberker, where they were all lodging, and taking Kimberker, who was a Lutheran, into their confidence, they held a council of war.
It was decided that Stanislaus must have gone to Augsburg. Paul recalled something that Stanislaus had said to him only the day before, when he had threatened plainly to run away. And they had heard him say, another time, that at Augsburg was Peter Canisius, the Provincial of the German Jesuits. Of course they were going to follow him and bring him back. But night had come on before their inquiries and deliberations were finished. They must wait till the next day.
Accordingly, bright and early the following morning, all three, with one of the Kostkas' servants, drove out in a carriage over the Augsburg road. They had four good horses and they told their coachman not to spare the whip. They came to the inn where Stanislaus had spent the night. They questioned the landlord.
"Have you seen a boy of seventeen, a Polish noble, pass westward along this road yesterday or today?"
But the landlord was shrewd, and though the whole matter was beyond him, he fancied somehow that these eager folk were no great friends of the boy who had lodged with him. And as he trusted that boy and could scarcely help being loyal to him, he shrugged his shoulders and answered:
"How should I know? So many travel this road."
Then Bilinski described Stanislaus and his doublet of velvet and hose of silk and jeweled dagger. But at that the landlord shook his head in denial.
"I have seen no such person as your graces describe," he said.
Bilinski called out to the coachman:
"Drive on. We have nothing to learn here."
But Paul said: "NQ let us turn back. He cannot have walked this far in one day. We must have passed him on the road."
"Perhaps you could not have walked so far," said Bilinski, with a sneer. "But Stanislaus could. Drive on!"
Forty miles or more out of Vienna, they saw a boy trudging ahead of them, in a rough tunic, rope-girdled, with a staff in his hand. At the noise of the hurrying wheels the boy glanced back, then quickly turned up a lane which there entered the road. He did not look in the least like a nobleman's son, and the carriage passed the bottom of the lane without so much as slacking speed.
Stanislaus ran up the lane until he came to where it ended at a rough, brawling stream. Without a moment's hesitation he put off his shoes, tucked up his tunic, and began wading in the course of the stream. The water was cold, the sharp stones in the bed of the stream bruised his feet, at any moment he might fall into a deep hole and be drowned. But he splashed and stumbled ahead, as fast as he could go, praying to his guardian angel to have care of him. A little farther, he knew, the highway crossed this stream by a bridge, and there he could leave the water and regain the road.
The carriage meantime kept on and came to this bridge. But Paul had been thinking of the young fellow who took to the lane when he saw the carriage approach and a shrewd suspicion came into his head.
"Did you see that boy who ran up the lane?" he cried at length to Bilinski. "I believe it was Stanislaus."
"But he was dressed like a peasant," said Bilinski. "And Stanislaus had on a handsome suit."
They debated for a time, but Paul prevailed. Round they turned and drove furiously back to the lane. But as the driver tried to turn his horses into it, the animals reared and balked and refused to enter. Blows and curses were showered on them; they merely stood and trembled; no efforts could urge them into the lane. Then the driver grew afraid, and cried out:
"My Lord Paul, we cannot go into this lane. And before God, I have fear upon me! Never have the horses acted this way."
And indeed fear seized them all. They saw the hand of God in this strange obstinancy of their beasts. Even Kimberker cried the pursuit.
"Fear God!" he said. "For