The tall windows on either side, and
the clerestory lights above, glimmered faintly in the darkening light.
But to the Catholic eyes that looked on it the desolation was more
apparent than the splendour. There were plenty of people here, indeed:
groups moved up and down, talking, directing themselves more and more
towards the exits, as the night was coming on and the church would be
closed presently; in one aisle a man was talking aloud, as if lecturing,
with a crowd of heads about him. In another a number of soberly dressed
men were putting up their papers and ink on the little tables that stood
in a row--this was Scriveners' Corner, she was told; from a third half a
dozen persons were dejectedly moving away--these were servants that had
waited to be hired. But the soul of the place was gone. When they came
out into the transepts, Anthony stopped them with a gesture, while a
couple of porters, carrying boxes on their heads, pushed by, on their
short cut through the cathedral.
"It was there," he said, "that the altars stood."
He pointed between the pillars on either side, and there, up little
raised steps, lay the floors of the chapels. But within all was empty,
except for a tomb or two, some tattered colours and the _piscinae_ still
in place. Where the altars had stood there were blank spaces of wall;
piled up in one such place were rows of wooden seats set there for want
of room.
Opposite the entrance to the choir, where once overhead had hung the
great Rood, the four stood and looked in, through a gap which the masons
were mending in the high wall that had bricked off the chancel from the
nave.
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