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."