IV. THE RITUAL, THE STREET CORNER, THE DEATH-BED, AND THE BELLS

Towards evening of the same day I was sitting with Langler in a little dingle not far from the water, while down by the water’s edge idled Miss Emily, feeding swans. I did not think that she was listening to our talk, or might divine it; but her lightness of ear was always very decided.

I had been telling Langler of the spectacle at Canterbury during Holy Week of that year. For the first time, I believe, since 1870 a Bishop of Rome had been permitted to leave the Vatican, and to pledge, as it were, the return of a prodigal, had pontificated High Mass in the metropolitan cathedral of England.

At that ritual I had been present, and Langler had been questioning me as to the conditions under which Tenebræ had been sung on the Wednesday night, and as to certain minutiæ of the vestments worn by the orders during the liturgical drama of the Thursday. The rite was fresh in my memory, and he listened, I could see, keenly, as I went on to tell of the conveyance of the Pontiff from the dean’s house; of the trumpets of the Noble Guard; of the reception of his Holiness by a procession of clergy, headed by the Bishop of Emmaus; of the last sound of the bell during the Gloria, and the clapper of the Sanctus and Canon; of the consecration of the holy oils, vase, oil-sticks, and chrism; of the twelve trumpets during Elevation; of the Communion, of which twelve bishops partook; of the conveyance of the wafer to an Altar of Repose; then of Vespers; of the antiphon “Diviserunt”; of “Deus, Deus meus” during the stripping of the altar; and of the ceremony of the night–the cope of violet, the washing and the wiping and the kissing of the right feet of the thirteen...

And as I spoke Miss Emily spun round from over her swans, and flung at us across the distance the words: “thus have they crucified to themselves afresh the son of man, and put him to an open shame.”

“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I said, “that this whole Canterbury gaudery remains illegal, for I have yet to hear that the Act of Uniformity has been repealed.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 t