“I am going,” said I with much presence of mind combined with the seriousness that repudiates any idea of enjoyment, “to buy some matches. Ours are running short.”
“Oh,” said he, plumping down his buckets and fumbling among the folds of his flappy clothes, “I can lend you some. Here you are.”
And he held out a box.
“Jellaby,” said I, “what is one box to a whole—shall we call it household? My wife requires many matches. She is constantly striking them. It is her husband’s duty to see that she has enough. Keep yours. And farewell.”
And walking at a pace that prohibited pursuit by a man with buckets I left him.
I have had so many dinners in dining-rooms since that one at Canterbury, ordered repasts without grease and that kept hot, that the wonder of it has lost in my memory much of its first brightness. You, my hearers, who dine as I now do regularly and well, would hardly if I could still describe be able to enter into my feelings. I found a cool room in an inn with the pleasantly un-English name Fleur de Lys, and a sympathetic waiter who fell in at once with my views about fresh air and shut all the windows. I had a newspaper, and I sipped a cognac while the meal was preparing. I ordered everything on the list except bacon, chickens, and sausages. I also would not eat potatoes, and declined, as a vegetable, cabbage. I drank much wine, full-bodied and generous, but I refused after dinner to drink coffee.
Filled and hallowed, once more in thorough tune with myself and life and ready to take any further experiences the day might bring with unruffled geniality, I left toward dusk the temple that had thus blest me (after debating within myself whether it would not be prudent having regard to the future in further lanes and fields to sup first, and regretfully realizing that I could not), and leisurely made my way across the street to that other temple, whose bells announced the inevitable service.
My decision to peep cautiously in and see whether the parson were alone before definitely committing myself to a pew was unnecessary, first because there were no pews but a mighty emptiness, and secondly because, along the dusk of this emptiness, groups of persons made their way to a vast flight of steps dividing the place into two and leading up to a region, into which they disappeared, of glimmering lights. Too clever now by far to go where there were lights and praying might be demanded of me, I wandered on tiptoe among the gathering shadows at the other end. It grew quickly darker among the towering pillars and dim, painted windows. The bells left off; the organ began to rumble about; and a distant voice, with a family likeness to that of Raggett, sing-songed something long. It had no ups and downs, no breaks; it was a drawn out thread of sound, thin and sweet like a trickle of liquid sugar. Then many voices took up the sing-song, broadening it out from a thread to a band. Then came the single trickle again; and so they went on alternately, while I, hidden among the pillars, listened very well pleased.
When the organ began, and an endless singing and repeating of the same tune, I cautiously advanced nearer in search of something to sit on. To the right of the steps I found what I wanted, an empty space in itself as big as our biggest church in Storchwerder but small in comparison to the rest, with immense windows full of the painted glass that becomes so confused and meaningless in the dusk, no lights, and here and there a chair or two.
I sat down at the foot of a huge pillar in this dark and unobserved corner, while the organ above me and the singing voices filled the spaces of the roof with their slumber-inciting repetitions. Presently, as a tired and comfortable man would do, I fell asleep, and was only wakened by the subdued murmur just round the edge of the pillar of two people talking, and I instantly, almost before my eyes opened, recognized that it was Frau von Eckthum and Jellaby.