CANTERBURY
After this weeks passed before we knew whether Miss Emily would live or
die, and the existence of Max Dees and of Styria was forgotten in
Swandale, for our poor friend took a delirious fever, and had three
relapses, so we others dragged our lives through many a black day while
hers hung in the balance: weeks of watching: leaving not much
outstanding in the memory, save the fact of a certain new quarry--a puny
affair perhaps, but for ever associated in my mind with the nightmare of
that time, and somehow lending to it a strange awfulness; for it
happened that someone had lately opened a quarry some miles north of
Swandale, and was blasting the rock: so fifteen, twenty times a day we
would hear it, not loud, but clear, a knock at the north door of heaven,
and two seconds later an answer sounded in the south of heaven: and each
time Langler would look at me with such a smile. So that this sound of
blasting, all mingled as it was with Miss Langler's fight for life, has
still for me whenever I hear it meanings the most momentous, as it were
rumours of the guns and din of Armageddon, and the arbitrament of the
doom of being. In the end, however, I managed to make terms with the
owner, and the noises ceased.
About the same time--_i.e._ towards the end of the year--hope brightened
for our wounded friend, and my mind found some breathing-space to think
out what I could do for her brother, who had been very gravely shocked
and cowed. After a time I would get him into his study at night, and
there read to him his accumulated correspondence, with a view to weaning
his thoughts from a room three corridors away; for the letters, being
mainly from men in the whirlpool, were full of history, and such as to
reawaken his interest in things. Also I insisted upon answers to some of
them being dictated to me; and also, at last, I read to him a little
from books and newspapers.
At midnight of Christmas Day I was thus reading to him through the noise
of the cascade, made noisier that night by stormy weather, when he said:
"Europe and America, then, are again Christian in an ancient sense. How
many visions in all have now been seen?"
I found among the newspapers on our half-round settle one containing a
list of the miracles, with their dates, and saw that their number was
twenty-three.
At this Langler seemed to wince, and we sat cowering over our wood fire
in a bitter rumination, till after a while he said: "I have nothing to
do with the defect in the world's fate, and don't wish to cause my
voice to be any more heard: but still, Arthur, consider how the sins of
nations do find them out."
I was pleased at his new tone of interest, but said that I did not know
to what he referred.
"I refer," he answered, "to this proposed 'weeding out' of our refuse
populations by the 'lethal chamber' method, and to the growth among men
of a certain brute directness with which the nineteenth century was less
tainted. Mind you, I interfere in nothing; but don't let us hide from
each other the existence in our minds of certain ghastly suspicions with
regard to these visions; and if such a thing can be, however
large-minded the motive, think of it, Arthur! The growth of such a brute
directness can only be the penalty, subtle yet terrible, of some sin in
the body politic; nor is any seer needed to see that that sin is the
mere discussion of such a step as this wholesale 'weeding out' of men's
lives."
"I, too," I said, "have felt that such a thing was brutalising."
"But it is beastly!" he hissed. "Man's evolution, certainly, is
henceforth in his own hands; but to want to beget taller sons with a
strain of the thug in their blood! It is an instance, and a chief cause,
of that brute directness which is tainting society, which perhaps
culminates in these miracles, which I myself have experienced----"
"Never mind," I murmured.
"To strike me through _her_----"
I said quickly: "but this purpose of 'weeding out' the submerged seems
to have died since the miracles, for the people are now Christian,
Aubrey, in deed as well as in creed."
"But before we rejoice, let us ask for how long!" said he. "If what we
have dared to suspect of the miracles--that they may be none--be true,
is it not probable that they involve some plot unfriendly to the Church?
We have sure knowledge, for that matter, that someone who need not be
named between us is no friend of churches. Since, therefore, the Church
flourishes by the miracles, it can only be, _if_ there is a plot against
her, that the miracles will in time be shown to be none: in which case,
think of the moral swing back, huge enough perhaps to wreck the frame of
society."
I said nothing, and for some time we bent over the fire in a silence of
wormwood.
"_Is_ there a plot?" he began again: "if there is, I believe with her
who lies hurt that the key to it may be found in a castle of--Austria.
But anon, when I remember that we here are the only three in the world
into whom such a doubt has entered, it strikes me as even impious----"
"There is also Rivers who doubts," I said. "Lidcott, by the way, has
written you an account of Rivers' secession and 'new religion' in
Littlemore--a 'religion' with a following of six! Lidcott's letter also
contains one from Burton about Rivers' secession: I'll read it you now,
if you like."
"Well, then," said he; so I got and read the letters.
Rivers was an Oriel man of very brilliant reputation, one of the younger
group of leaders of the so-called "Liberal Movement"--a church-party
which had been making some noise in the world just before the miracles;
he was a contemporary of Langler and myself, so we were familiar with
his personality and church-idea, which had been called "anti-romantic";
he was one of the warmest admirers of Langler's criticism, and had set
to sweet minor music some of Langler's songs. Well, when the miracles
began, Ambrose Rivers, alone of thinkers, for some reason or other broke
off from the Church, and started a new "religion" in Littlemore--with a
following of six; and Dr Lidcott's letter to Langler was a description
of this new flight of Rivers', containing also the following from Dr
Burton: "The Chancery, Lincoln, In Festo Sanct. F. Xav. My dear
Lidcott,--The tragedy of Rivers has been as great a heaviness to me as
to you and the rest; how mysterious, too, now, when our Light is come.
Can nothing be done even now? It was a branch loaded with flowers and
fruit, and though the very canker was in them, it is hard to see it
lopped off at a stroke. Do reason with him, then, still a little; but,
if he be obdurate and damned in error, you will leave him to the
tormentors, warning him that the day is even at hand when Holy Church
will no longer spare dissent and rebellion, but everywhere on the front
of that chief of crimes will brand her effective anathema. Verbum caro
factum est, et habitavit in nobis. Farewell. On the 13th inst. I leave
this for St Paul's. Miserere mei, Deus, asperge me, Domine, hyssopo, et
mundabor; and you, pray for me.--In haste, yours faithfully in Xt., John
Burton."
"Well," said Langler when I had read the two letters, "but Rivers' doubt
of the miracles is due to some trait of a wayward mind, if not to some
wisdom of the man's really divine genius; but in our case the doubt has
grown out of facts which have come before us, and since those facts are
very meagre I say that _our_ doubt sometimes strikes me as impious. I
think, however, that it will be justified if Dr Burton's rise so
continues as strikingly to fulfil the prophecy that he is 'destined to
be the greatest of churchmen.'"
"Oh, you think that," I said.
"Yes," said he; "for, _if_ there is a plot, there is no difficulty about
divining its purposes: we can say with assurance that those purposes
are, firstly, to raise the Church to the height of power, in which case
what she will surely do was foreseen: she will become harsh, will clash
with the modern spirit. And to make this clash doubly certain a number
of brisk churchmen would naturally be chosen out by the plotters to
become generals of the Church--of whom Burton was chosen for England. It
_is_ so. For we read of Burton: 'I am sure that he will do for England:
he is another Max Dees, as arrogant as he is brilliant, a union of
Becket and Savonarola.' Now, it is clear that the 'Savonarola' and the
'brilliance' in Burton are one, and the 'Becket' and the 'arrogance' are
one: for who was Becket? an arch-priest who flouted the civil power.
Therefore, _if_ there is a plot--for I state nothing, I interfere in
nothing--_if_ there is one, I say that the Church is to be pushed to
clash with the civil power. And now suppose, secondly, that at the
height of that clash the miracles be shown to be none; and suppose
further, thirdly, that it be then made to appear that these false
miracles were contrived not by the enemies of the Church for her ruin,
but by churchmen themselves for their own rise and rule: well,
then--what then?... And shall no man be found to meddle in this, one
with heart, head, hand, Arthur, though a sword pierce his own heart?"
"_I_ mean to meddle in it somehow," I said suddenly.
"Beware, however, Arthur," he murmured. "I too feel the _muth_ to
venture--if it be not already too late.... In any case, let us hasten
slowly, and wait till our doubt acquires some little certitude. I say
that something of certitude will be ours, if Dr Burton's rise becomes
so marked----"
"But surely, Aubrey," I said, "we need not wait for that. Look at things
in Germany and Russia, look at France: in France ever since the
Separation Act, the Church was a dead thing; then came the miracles, and
to-day France is on her knees. It is touching: there never was an age so
hungry for faith. This week there have been eleven pilgrimages in France
alone to the spots of the miracles--caravans counting their hundreds of
thousands. Things have been moving, you know. Italy is more a theocracy
now than under Alexander VI.; one quarter of the Austrian Abgeordneten
House is already given over to churchmen; in our own election in October
forty people of churchman type were tided into Parliament, and in the
Lords the bishops awe, so how it would be there under Dr Burton one may
imagine; when Burton was preaching at St Paul's crowds vaster than the
cathedral could contain waited all the night through--nowhere, it seems,
are there enough churches, and women hourly swoon in the crowds round
certain churches; not a few rich men have stripped themselves to endow
the Church; as for charity, here is the high day of Christ's sick and
needy: everyone is giving apparently, everyone is muttering
prayers--merchants over their cargoes, doctors over their charges; in
November two New York negroes, by pretending to have seen the vision on
a country-road, and asking for funds to open a church, became vastly
rich, and now have disappeared; even the bourses have caught the
rapture, gambling is going out, all sorts of personal oddities of
behaviour and costume abound, as in Puritan days, saints arise,
newspapers no more print certain kinds of matter, in the Commons during
prayers members are as if in pews; as for the Nonconformists, they are
hardly any longer even the political clubs and caucuses which they had
become, since most of them have gone over to the Church of the miracles.
If you would bear to hear me read, you would see for yourself the
millionfold modification of everything. A certain Father Mathieu, in
whose church at Windau the second of the visions appeared, is followed
by multitudes to be healed by his touch; while the once Vicar-Apostolic
of Bayeux, a man of Burton's very temper, is now Metropolitan of Paris.
It was about him, by the way, that I wanted to tell you, for since _his_
rise is complete, we needn't wait for Dr Burton's to become so, in order
to get that certitude as to a plot----"
"Well, let that be so," said Langler; "but ah, Arthur, what touch shall
be found, both gentle and strong, to heal all this fevered world? If the
Master were indeed here, with the stars of night in his eyes! As for me,
I confess, my longing is for escape. I have read a tale of a tiny world
which struck our earth, tore up a field or two, and carried off someone
into space----think of _that_!--the dumb empyrean, the leisure to be a
man, the starry dream, and in those grassy graves, too, of Ritching
churchyard----"
"But things are as they are," I murmured; "we can't escape them."
"True," he answered; "life is a sterner dreaming than dreams, but surely
a diviner; and in His plan be our good."
"Well, then," said I, "this being so, what I, for myself, propose to do
now is to write a letter to the Styrian authorities, stating what I know
of Father Max Dees, and giving hints as to the place of his
imprisonment, without breaking any law of libel. Dees may thus be
liberated; whereupon, if he knows anything of a plot, he will divulge
it."
"Well, we might think that over," said Langler, "and see if we find it
to be our duty."
In the end this was determined upon between us, and from the next
morning I set about it, writing first to consult my solicitors as to the
proper authority to whom to address ourselves: this, they answered, was
the Public Safety Bureau of Upper Styria; so Langler and I set to work
to draw up the document, and on the 7th of January it was posted.
This work quite warmed us anew, and we were eager for a reply, sometimes
discussing whether it would come in one week, in two, or in three: but a
month passed, Miss Emily was being allowed to sit up, and no reply had
come.
Those were the days when England was at the height of the excitement
over the disappearance of the Bishop of Bristol. On the death, three
weeks before, of Archbishop Kempe, the question who would succeed him
had raised a simmering of interest, not in church-circles only, but in
the nation: a very distinguished Cambridge man was a rumour, also Dr
Todhunter, Bishop of Bristol, while Dr Burton, now Bishop of Winchester,
was the popular choice. For us at Swandale, however, only two of these
were really in the running, for we lived too near to Goodford not to
know that Mr Edwards would never of his free will set such a spirit as
Burton over the province of Canterbury. Edwards' majority in the House
was now only twenty-three, and, apart from that, everything in him shied
at Dr Burton's whole State-idea and order of mind; so when Dr
Todhunter's appointment was made known Langler said to me, "you see,
now, it is as we said."
Three days after Edwards' letter of invitation to Dr Todhunter the
doctor wrote to Langler, stating that he had accepted the primacy, and
closing with a very tender reference to our wounded friend. We two had
known and loved him since undergraduate days, and Langler in particular
had a kind of devotion for the classicism of his style and preaching.
Who, in fact, that ever knew him could fail to revere him? When only
fifty his mass of hair was quite wool-white, and no saintlier face,
surely, ever lifted towards the skies. Well, his election by
dean-and-chapter had taken place by the 17th of February; on the 19th
the archbishop elect took a trip to London, meaning to be back in
Bristol by the 21st; but from the hour of two P.M. on the 20th nothing
appears ever to have been seen of him. At that hour of two--high
daytime!--the old man parted from the Rev. William Vaux, Dean of the
Arches, on the pavement in Whitehall, and--walked away into nothingness;
nor, I think, has one ray of real light ever been thrown upon his
disappearance.
I can almost feel again, as I write, the mood of those days. One
sometimes lost control of oneself! one had seizures of excitement, could
hardly utter one's words! Langler in particular was strongly moved: his
cheek at one spot would go pale, and quiver. By the 24th or 25th we at
Swandale began to understand that Dr Todhunter would never more be seen;
and I said then: "No! he will never more be seen; and in two months from
to-day--wait and see!--Dr Burton will be primate of England."
"But will he _consent_?" asked Langler, pale with excitement: "does he
not already--_suspect_? Will he plug up both his ears against _a hundred
whispers_ that already throng in his consciousness?"
What grounds Langler had for assuming these "hundred whispers" in Dr
Burton's consciousness I do not know; but, if it was a guess, it may
have been a shrewd one, for I have seen a letter of Burton's written
about then, in which _twice_, occurs a certainly very suggestive prayer
against "the deceitful man": "ab homine iniquo et doloso erue me"--twice
in one letter.
However this was, it was soon beyond doubt that Dr Burton would not only
be invited, but would accept the primacy. The rumour grew and grew. The
Prime Minister, in fact, must have been under the strongest pressure to
invite Burton, and after a struggle with fate, with his hair, and with
the wire-pullers, had to give in. Mrs Edwards herself, who drove over
one afternoon from Goodford, told us so much; and by the middle of March
it began to be taken for granted that Dr Burton would be metropolitan of
Canterbury. I remember the date very well, for just about that time
Baron Kolár came down to Goodford for one afternoon to repose himself,
to eat the Misses Chambers' toast, and sleep on their sofa, and have his
hair brushed; and it was that same day--either the 14th or 15th of
March--that the weak voice of our friend said to her brother: "you
should go to Styria, since it is so." It was a rough evening, before the
candles were lit, and we two were sitting beside her cane chair by her
fire; and Langler, with his brow bowed over her hand, answered: "yes, I
will go, since I should. We have written a letter to the authorities in
those parts, and are waiting for their answer, but if it does not come
within a week--or two--I shall do as you bid me."