But this is anticipating, and we must retrace our steps to that sixth Sunday for which Agnes was waiting in patient hope. Very anxiously she watched to see whether, when dinner was over, she would be despatched to Aldgate or Bermondsey. But it happened at last as she desired; there was nowhere to send her. Mistress Winter, in her usual considerate style of language, gave Agnes to understand that she had no wish to see her again before dark; and, clad in the old patched serge which was her Sunday dress, the poor drudge crept timidly into Saint Paul’s Cathedral.
From the Lady Chapel, soft and low, came the chant of the Virgin’s Litany. The fashionable people, in rich attire, were promenading up and down the aisle known as “Paul’s Walk.” In the side chapels a few worshippers lingered before the shrines; and round a lectern, in one corner of the nave, were gathered a little knot of men and women, waiting there in the almost forlorn hope that some priest, more zealous than the rest, might come up and read to them. They could not now expect any layman to have the courage to do so. Agnes joined this group.
“I misdoubt there’ll be no reading this day,” said a grey-headed man.
“Ne’er a priest in Paul’s careth to do the same,” responded a forlorn-looking woman. “They be an idle set of wine-bibbers, every man Jack of them.”
“Hush thee, Goody!” whispered a second woman, giving a friendly push to the first. “Keep a civil tongue in thine head, prithee, as whatso thy thoughts be.”
“Thoughts make no noise,” said the old man, smiling grimly.
All at once there was a little stir among the group, as the tall, gaunt figure of the Black Friar was seen climbing the steps of the desk.
“Brethren!” said the voice which Agnes so well remembered, “let us read together the word of God.”
And, beginning just where he had opened the book, he read to them the story of the raising of Lazarus. He gave no word of comment till he reached the end; then he shut the book and spoke to them.
“Brethren!” said the ringing voice, “this day is come Christ unto you, that He may awake you out of sleep. And if ye have not heretofore heard His voice, your sleep, like Lazarus, is that of very death. Now, O ye dead, hear the voice of the Son of God, and live. No man cometh unto the Father but by Him. Ye must come at God neither by mass, nor by penance, nor by confessing, nor by alms-giving, but alonely by Christ. And him that cometh will Christ in nowise cast out. No thief will He turn away; no murderer shall hear that he hath overmuch sinned for pardon; no poor soul shall be denied the unsearchable riches; no weary heart shall seek for rest and find none. Yea, He is become Christ—that is, God and man together—for this very thing, that He might give unto every one of you that will have them, His pardon and His peace. Come ye, every one of you, this day, and put this Christ unto the test.”