Waiting to be Hired.

‘I must know who that fellow is!’ the priest exclaimed; and, without more ado, walked up to him and boldly addressed him thus: ‘Ahem!—I say now—who are you, any way?’

And the man, in his wonder, forgot to take offence, and answered, ‘Why I, Sir, am the town crier!’

Talk of Yankee cheek indeed!

Then we went on down the lane, past the round marketplace, where women were selling sweets, and under the stone gateway with its time-worn tracery, to the south porch of the Cathedral, where a tricycle was standing. As the pilgrims had to pray before they could approach the sacred tomb, so we, after we had entered the nave, had to wait and listen to morning service. Then we were told that no one could go to the shrine unless led thither by the verger. There was nothing to do but to fall into the ranks of a detachment of tourists on their way to it. With them we were marshalled through the iron gate, separating the choir from the chapels, by a grey-bearded, grey-haired man, who kept his eye sternly upon us as we deposited our sixpences, our modest offerings in place of ‘silver broch and ryngis.’

‘Where is the shrine?’ we asked, as soon as we were on the other side of the gate.

‘The shrine which it lies but a few steps further on,’ the verger answered; ‘and you will come to it in good time.’

Then he showed us the ‘horgan and its pipes, which they lie in the triforium,’ and the ‘Norman Chapel of Saint Hanselm, which it is the holdest part of the building,’ and about all of which he had much to say. But we interrupted him quickly. ‘Take us to the shrine,’ we commanded. But just then another tourist, eager for information, began to ask questions not only about the Cathedral, but about the whole city. Before we knew where we were, she had carried us all out to Harbledown, and then, without stopping, whisked us off to Saint Martin’s-on-the-Hill. This was too much. We started to find the shrine for ourselves, but our friend the priest ran after us.

‘You must wait for the verger,’ he said. ‘I hope you don’t mind my telling you; but then, you know, you’re Americans, and I thought you mightn’t understand.’

His interest by degrees extended from us to the rest of the party. By some peculiar method of reasoning he had concluded that, because we were Americans, all who were following the verger, except himself, must be so likewise. Every now and then he would dart from our side to ask each one in turn, in a gentle whisper, ‘You’re an American, are you not?’ The results were not always satisfactory. I saw one Englishman, with John Bull written in every feature, glare at him in suppressed rage; while a lady, after saying, rather savagely, ‘Well, is there any harm in being one?’ dismissed him abruptly, as if to remind him that not she, but the Cathedral, was the show.

The verger lingered on the broad stairway, ‘which the pilgrims they mounted it on their knees, as is seen by the two deep grooves in the stone steps.’ He stood long by the tomb of Prince Hedward, the Black Prince, and when we came to the stone chair used only when archbishops are consecrated, he deliberately stopped, to suggest that some lady might like to sit in it, ‘though which it won’t make her a harchbishop,’ he added. Then at last he led us to the chapel just beyond, and close to the choir. He waited until we had all followed and formed a semicircle around him, then he pointed to the pavement,—

‘Which now,’ he said, solemnly, ‘you have come to the shrine of the saintly Thomas.’We had reached our goal. We stood in the holy place for which Monk and Knight, Nun and Wife of Bath, had left husbands and nunnery, castle and monastery, and for which we had braved the jests and jeers of London roughs, and had toiled over the hills and struggled through the sands of Kent. Even the verger seemed to sympathise with our feelings. For a few moments he was silent; presently he continued—

‘’Enery the Heighth, when he was in Canterbury, took the bones, which they was laid beneath, out on the green, and had them burned. With them he took the ’oly shrine, which it and bones is here no longer!’

Shrine and Tabard, Chapels and Inns by the way, all have gone with the pilgrims of yester-year.

FINIS.

London: Printed by Strangeways & Sons, Tower Street, Upper St. Martin’s Lane.