CHAPTER XXXI.
THE NEW CHURCH.
In a poor suburb of the city, which I could see well enough from my little
window, a new Gothic church was building. When I first took up my abode
in the cell, it was just begun--the walls had hardly risen above the
neighbouring sheds and garden-fences. But month after month I had watched
it growing; I had seen one window after another filled with tracery, one
buttress after another finished off with its carved pinnacle; then I had
watched the skeleton of the roof gradually clothed in tiling; and then the
glazing of the windows--some of them painted, I could see, from the iron
network which was placed outside them the same day. Then the doors were put
up--were they going to finish that handsome tower? No: it was left with its
wooden cap, I suppose for further funds. But the nave, and the deep chancel
behind it, were all finished, and surmounted by a cross,--and beautifully
enough the little sanctuary looked, in the virgin-purity of its spotless
freestone. For eighteen months I watched it grow before my eyes--and I was
still in my cell!
And then there was a grand procession of surplices and lawn sleeves; and
among them I fancied I distinguished the old dean's stately figure, and
turned my head away, and looked again, and fancied I distinguished another
figure--it must have been mere imagination--the distance was far too
great for me to identify any one; but I could not get out of my head the
fancy--say rather, the instinct--that it was my cousin's; and that it was
my cousin whom I saw daily after that, coming out and going in--when the
bell rang to morning and evening prayers--for there were daily services
there, and saint's day services, and Lent services, and three services on a
Sunday, and six or seven on Good Friday and Easter-day.
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