"Indeed I shall be with you in thought at the opening ceremony. I intend to motor over to Winchester, and spend the time in prayer and meditation in your little Chapel of the Epiphany.
"It will not by any means be my first pilgrimage there, David. It is the place of all others where I find I can most easily pray for your work. I kneel where you knelt, and look up at the stained glass representation of the Wise Men. It brings back every word of the sermon you preached this day last year.
"When you were there, did you happen to notice the window on the left, as you kneel at the rail? It represents the Virgin bending over the Baby Christ. She is holding both His little feet in one of her hands. I can't understand why; but that action seems so extraordinarily to depict the tenderness of her mother-love. I dislike babies myself, exceedingly; yet, ever since I saw that window, I have been pursued by the desire to hold a baby's two little feet in my hand that way, just to see how it feels! I am certain your mother often held your feet so, when you were a wee baby, David; and I am equally certain my mother never held mine. Don't you think tenderness, shown to little children, before they are old enough to know what tenderness means, makes a difference to their whole lives? I am sure I grew up hard-hearted, simply because no demonstration of affection was ever poured out upon me in my infancy. You grew up so sweet and affectionate to every one, simply because your mother lavished love upon you, kissed your curls, and held both your baby feet in one of her tender hands, when you were a tiny wee little kiddie, and knew nothing at all about it! There! Now you have one of my theories of life, thought out as I knelt in your little chapel, meaning to spend the whole time in prayer for your work.
"Last time I was there, just as I left the chapel, Even-song was beginning. I slipt quietly down the cathedral and sat at the very bottom of the vast nave. The service was going on away up in the choir, through distant gates. The music seemed to come floating down from heaven. They sang the 'Nunc Dimittis' to Garrett in F. 'Lord,' whispered the angel voices, on gently floating harmony: 'Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace.' 'Depart in peace,' repeated the silvery trebles, soaring back to heaven! I thought of you; and of how you quoted it, looking up at the picture of Simeon in the temple, as we walked down old St. Botolph's Church. How relieved you were to be off, David; and how glad to go.
"I still make pilgrimages to St. Botolph's, when spending any time in town; or when I take a panic over your health, or your many African perils, snakes, poisoned darts, and such like things—not to mention an early hippopotamus, dancing a cake-walk in your front-garden, before breakfast.
"The verger is becoming accustomed to my visits. At first she watched me with suspicion, evidently fearing lest I had designs on the cherubs of the lectern, or purposed carving my name upon the altar-rail. When she found my prayer and meditation covered no such sinister intentions, she gave up prowling round, and merely kept an eye on me from her seat at the bottom of the church. Last time I went, I had quite a long talk with her, and found her a most interesting and well-informed person; well up in the history of the old church, and taking a touching pride and delight in it; evidently fulfilling her duties with reverent love and care; not in the perfunctory spirit one finds only too often among church officials.
"But, oh David, what a contrast between this refined, well-educated woman, and the extraordinary old caretaker at that church to which you went when you were first ordained! Did I tell you, I made a pilgrimage there? I thought it a beautiful church, and took a quite particular interest in seeing the pulpit, and all the other places in which you performed, for the first time, the sacred functions of your holy office.
"But I can't return there, David, or remember it with pleasure, because of the appalling old gnome who haunts it, and calls herself the 'curtiker'. I never saw anything quite so terrifyingly dirty, or so weirdly coming to pieces in every possible place and yet keeping together. And there was no avoiding her. She appeared to be ubiquitous.
"When I first entered the church, she was on her knees in the aisle, flopping a very grimy piece of house flannel in and out of a zinc pail, containing what looked like an unpleasant compound of ink and soapsuds. Our acquaintance began by her exhorting me, in a very loud voice, to keep out of the 'pile.' The pail was the very last place into which one would desire to go. So, carefully keeping out of it, and avoiding the flops of the flannel, which landed each time in quite unexpected places, I fled up the church. A moment later, as I walked round the pulpit examining the panels, she popped up in it triumphant, waving a black rag, which I suppose did duty for a duster. Her sudden appearance, in the place where I was picturing you giving out your first text, made me jump nearly out of my skin. Whereupon she said: 'Garn!' and came chuckling down the steps, flapping her black rag on the balustrade. I hadn't a notion what 'garn' meant; but concluded it was cockney for 'go on,' and hurriedly went.
"But it was no good dodging round pillars or taking circuitous routes down one aisle and up another, in attempts to avoid her. Wherever I went, she was there before me; always brandishing some fresh implement connected with the process which, in any other hands, might have been church cleaning. So at last I gave up trying to avoid her, and stood my ground bravely, in the hopes of gleaning information from her very remarkable conversation. I say 'bravely,' because she became much more terrifying when she talked. She held her left eye shut, with her left hand, put her face very close to mine, and looked at me out of the right eye. She didn't seem able to talk without looking at me; or to look at me, without holding one eye shut.