The Last Miracle

by M. P. Shiel

One of the girls said that half-an-hour before, when Miss Langler was coming down the great stair to join the party, she had handed to Miss Langler a note which one of the villagers of Mins had given her. She had gone away while Miss Langler was reading the note, and did not know what Miss Langler had done afterwards.

As for me, my mind was a void filled only with fear. The house was empty, I had no one to consult, no notion how to act. At last I leapt into the cabriolet, lashed the horse, and went along the road that leads to Hallam Castle: at least I knew where one of the two was to be sought.

It is a ruin in the older Norman mood in the midst of Goodford Manor demesne. On getting to it I made fast the horse, and ran up a dell to the "north-west corner" of the rendezvous: Langler was not there, but it was still light enough for me to see some footprints in moss on a mass of broken ground not far from the castle-wall: whether his footprints or not I couldn't tell.

I began to call out, but there was no answer, and the footprints passing from the moss, I lost them among stones.

Night was darkening when I went to the other (east) end of the ruin, and entered by a wicket into one of the courtyards. When I had stumbled a little way up a stair I was all in darkness. I called aloud Langler's name again and again; but there was no answer.

I would go no farther, the steps were so broken, the darkness so crowded with foes and fears; I had no light; so at last I ran back down. He might after all, I thought, have left the ruin and gone to the church, as arranged. That was the first thing now to find out, so I ran back to my trap, and cantered off towards Ritching.

At Ritching I flung my reins to the railing before the church, and ran inward, the middle portal framing a glimmer of light before me. I heard the rise, long triumph, and fall of a royal voice: Dr Burton preaching; and, running up the three steps before the church, I peeped in.

There was no pulpit, no rood-screen; Dr Burton was before the sacrarium; and with his hands behind his back, he was striding sharply a little way to and fro, with swinging shoulders at the turn, like a man moved to wrath.

That evening he had read of the sending out of the Twelve; of the power vouchsafed them over unclean spirits; of the charge that they must take naught for their journey, save a staff only—no scrip, no bread, no money in their purse; and the contrast between the spirit of Christ and the spirit of Christendom may have fired the doctor. He had taken for his text: "crucify to yourselves afresh the son of man, and put him to an open shame"; and at the moment when I entered he was launching a war of language against the modern world and the modern Church.

The party from Goodford formed much the larger part of the congregation, down the nave running a desert of pews, and I think I am right in saying that not more than fifty persons were present, all herded towards the front, looking lost in the largeness of the church. So low had the gas been turned that, though I went peering quite half way up the nave, I could not say whether Langler was or was not there.