The Last Miracle

by M. P. Shiel

"But we have the charts, he can't lead us far astray; nor can we allow ourselves to judge him on a mere suspicion."

I said no more, but felt uneasy. Soon afterwards I left Langler outside, went up the (external) steps into the middle room of the sennhaus, and sat by the wheel where the sennerin was spinning flax; she looked homely and good with her thick waist and calves and dress of opera-bouffe, so I entered into talk with her, asking her first what had been the effect of the miracles in the alp. "Kiss the hand, sir!" she said, and she smiled as she told me that "the good people of the alp must work hard to keep body and soul together, without troubling the head about such matters. That is not all gold what glances."

I was astonished! The thought came into my mind, "here is Ambrose Rivers in the Noric Alps," for, except Rivers and this woman, I had heard of no one who thus lightly threw off the miracles. "But surely," said I, "such high events!" She sighed, saying: "ah, dear Heaven, those on the alp had their miracle six long years ago, and that was enough of miracles, it seems to me, with great cry and little wool." "Six years ago? a miracle?" said I. "Yes, sir; but let each sweep before her own door"—another proverb, and a strong one apparently, for nothing further could I get from her as to this miracle of six years before.

I then, for the first time in Styria, spoke of Max Dees. "My friend and I," I said, "are here to visit the Pater Max Dees: do you—know him?" Again she smiled, saying: "my man did frohn-arbeit on his buckwheat-field for three years"—(this "frohn-arbeit" being, as she explained it, a kind of church-due paid in day-labour). "So you know the Pater well?" I asked. With the same half-a-smile, she answered: "I knew him." "But isn't he still in the alp, then?" "Not at the church, sir." "Which church?" "St Photini's in the castle-court." "Oh, he is not still the priest at St Photini's, so perhaps my friend and I have taken a voyage in vain. Who, then, is now the priest there?" "There is no priest," said she; "even if there were, we of this church-parish should no longer plod to his church, since it is work enough to keep body and soul together; for burials a priest rides up from Badsögl; but St Photini's has been shut up near five years—before the birth of the little sugar-corn Käthchen, in fact."

"But that is strange!" said I. "To whom does St Photini's belong?"

"All this alp, one might say, belongs to the baron, sir."

"All? He must be enormously rich and powerful!"

"Gold makes old, sir; but the baron is not believed to be rich, not as some of the great landowners are, for glaciers and precipices make no man rich, and the most of his land is forest, with some flax, beet, and then the pastures; his lordship has also a share in the glass factory a mile up."

"So he is not very rich, the baron? But is he powerful? much feared in the alp?"

"Ah, dear Heaven, he is very much feared, and very much loved, and very much pitied, by all."