The Last Miracle

by M. P. Shiel

"Ah? Is that so?" asked Langler, with his smile.

"Happily," I said, "nobody any longer cares, Emily."

"Unhappily," sighed Langler.

And, like an echo, there came from Miss Emily, who had not heard him: "unhappily!"

"But observe," I said, "that this whole Canterbury gaudery remains illegal, for I have yet to hear that the Act of Uniformity has been repealed. Wouldn't the civil power be competent, if it chose, to take action against someone?"

"I think so," replied Langler, "if the civil power were not far too deeply indifferent to what takes place in Canterbury to rake up against it old laws which have become academic. Even thirty, twenty years ago what a howl of 'popery!' Now—nothing...."

"Yet," I said, "I can't think that indifference was quite the feeling of the nation with regard to the Pope's visit; on the contrary, people seemed interested and pleased. With our much of numbness about the Church is there not, really, mixed a sort of interest?"

"In one class," replied Langler—"in the class which has acquired a liking for charming rites and vestments in good taste. Hence the corporate reunion that has been growing up since the last century, till now it culminates, for the English Church got to see that it must more and more imitate its great old Mother and her graces if it was to retain any of the interest of the nation. It has, in fact, by this imitation retained some of the interest of one class, but we know that it is none of it a religious interest, but an æsthetic one; and as to the lower classes, no sort of interest has survived. In other words, while the dogmas of the Church have become mawkish to all, her dear altar-cloths and subcingula have continued pleasing to some—to you and me, for example."

"But the end!" I said.

"Ah, the end," he sighed, and we were silent for a while till he added: "ah, but talking of all that, I have not told you, have I, of our new rector? You shall hear! He is a man with a tragedy in his future, a brilliance in his past, and, to my mind, much lovableness in his present—though you may not say so. His name is Burton—a Harrow and King's College man, the son of a successful undertaker of Belfast. He became a Bell Scholar and Browne's Medallist before he was twenty-one, and was Senior Classic and Senior Chancellor's Medallist very shortly after. Later on he was appointed lecturer, and got a tutorship. I don't know what he did for some years, but I am told that he was offered the headmastership of Ardingly, which he refused: he said, mark you, that he wished to devote himself to pastoral work! Think of that for a modern person of that sort! Then the Prime Minister, hearing of his parts, offered him Ritching, which, you know, is in his gift, and at Ritching Burton now is, so you will not fail to come across him somewhere soon. But it is my belief that, if ever Edwards regretted a thing, it is this of grafting Burton under his nose here into Ritching. He has caught a Tartar in Burton, I can tell you. Burton believes! He is the last of the, let us say the—Barons. And he has quite the tone of the old-world type of priest and arch-priest—more lofty than Lucifer himself, in his quality of churchman, you understand, though underneath I believe him to be a dear, humble fellow. The living is worth three hundred pounds, and of that let us say thirty pounds is spent upon Dr Burton. The rest goes in needless 'works' among his flock—really his flock I mean, for Burton's intellect still divides the world into Church and Sheep: he actually says 'sheep.' He breaks his fast at noon, in Advent and Lent not till five, and I hear of hair-cloths, and of midnight risings to recite the breviary office. Add to what I have said that the sermons which he preaches weekly to empty pews are undoubtedly the most brilliant, impassioned, inspired now anywhere uttered in the English tongue—I have been to hear two of them, and you may believe me—and you get a figure rather incongruously ranged with regard to his age. He, by the way, bans me even more than I love him, pronouncing at my shadow a 'Retro, Satanas.' He knows that I am hardly quite 'of the light,' and my love of the Church is an added fault in his eyes. However, to his smitings I find no difficulty in turning always my other cheek. On the whole, I assure you, the world will hear of Dr Burton, or Dr Burton will break himself up against the world——But who is this?"