High up, white pigeons wheeled round the spire or fluttered from niche to niche, and a queer fancy took him that they were the souls of the carved saints up there, talking to one another above the city’s traffic. At length he withdrew his eyes, and reading the name “Oriel Street” on an angle of the wall above him, passed down a narrow by-lane in search of further wonders.
The clocks were striking three when, after regaining the High and lunching at a pastrycook’s, Taffy turned down into St. Aldates and recognised Tom Tower ahead of him. The great gates were closed. Through the open wicket he had a glimpse of green turf and an idle fountain; and while he peered in, a jolly-looking porter stepped out of the lodge for a breath of air and nodded in the friendliest manner.
“You can walk through if you want to. Were you looking for anyone?”
“No,” said Taffy, and explained proudly, “My father used to be at Christ Church.”
The porter seemed interested. “What name?” he asked.
“Raymond.”
“That must have been before my time. I suppose you’ll be wanting to see the Cathedral. That’s the door—right opposite.”
Taffy thanked him and walked across the great empty quadrangle. Within the Cathedral the organ was sounding and pausing, and from time to time a boy’s voice broke in upon the music like a flute, the pure treble rising to the roof as though it were the very voice of the building, and every pillar sustained its petition, “Lord have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law!” Neither organist nor chorister was visible, and Taffy tiptoed along the aisles in dread of disturbing them. For the moment this voice adoring in the noble building expressed to him the completest, the most perfect thing in life. All his own boyish handiwork, remember, under his father’s eye had been guided toward the worship of God.
“... And incline our hearts to keep this law.” The music ceased. He heard the organist speaking, up in the loft; criticising, no doubt: and it reminded him somehow of the small sounds of home and his mother moving about her housework in the hush between breakfast and noon.
He stepped out into the sunlight again, and wandering through archway and cloister found himself at length beyond the college walls and at the junction of two avenues of elms, between the trunks of which shone the acres of a noble meadow, level and green. The avenues ran at a right angle, east and south; the one old, with trees of magnificent girth, the other new and interset with poplars.