“Ah! if you would but make the Spiritual Exercises in my house; I will provide a conductor; and there is nothing that would resolve your doubts so quickly.”
Anthony was interested in this; and asked further details as to what these were.
“It is too late,” said Mr. Buxton, “to tell you to-night. I will write from Stanfield.”
Mr. Buxton came downstairs with Anthony to see him on to his horse, and they parted with much good-will; and Anthony rode home with a heavy and perplexed heart to Lambeth.
He spent a few days more pondering; and then determined to lay his difficulties before the Archbishop; and resign his position if Grindal thought it well.
He asked for an interview, and the Archbishop appointed an hour in the afternoon at which he would see him in Cranmer’s parlour, the room above the vestry which formed part of the tower that Archbishop Cranmer had added to Lambeth House.
Anthony, walking up and down in the little tiled cloisters by the creek, a few minutes before the hour fixed, heard organ-music rolling out of the chapel windows; and went in to see who was playing. He came in through the vestry, and looking to the west end gallery saw there the back of old Dr. Tallis, seated at the little positive organ that the late Archbishop had left in his chapel, and which the present Archbishop had gladly retained, for he was a great patron of music, and befriended many musicians when they needed help—Dr. Tallis, as well as Byrd, Morley and Tye. There were a few persons in the chapel listening, the Reverend Mr. Wilson, one of the chaplains, being among them; and Anthony thought that he could not do better than sit here a little and quiet his thoughts, which were nervous and distracted at the prospect of his coming interview. He heard voices from overhead, which showed that the Archbishop was engaged; so he spoke to an usher stationed in the vestry, telling him that he was ready as soon as the Archbishop could receive him, and that he would wait in the chapel; and then made his way down to one of the return stalls at the west end, against the screen, and took his seat there.
This February afternoon was growing dark, and the only lights in the chapel were those in the organ loft; but there was still enough daylight outside to make the windows visible—those famous windows of Morton’s, which, like those in King’s Chapel, Cambridge, combined and interpreted the Old and New Testaments by an ingenious system of types and antitypes, in the manner of the “Biblia Pauperum.” There was then only a single subject in each light; and Anthony let his eyes wander musingly to and fro in the east window from the central figure of the Crucified to the types on either side, especially to a touching group of the unconscious Isaac carrying the wood for his own death, as Christ His Cross. Beneath, instead of the old stately altar glowing with stuffs and precious metals and jewels which had once been the heart of this beautiful shrine, there stood now a plain solid wooden table that the Archbishop used for the Communion. Anthony looked at it, and sighed a little to himself. Did the altar and the table then mean the same thing?
Meanwhile the glorious music was rolling overhead in the high vaulted roof. The old man was extemporising; but his manner was evident even in that; there was a simple solemn phrase that formed his theme, and round this adorning and enriching it moved the grave chords. On and on travelled the melody, like the flow of a broad river; now sliding steadily through a smiling land of simple harmonies, where dwelt a people of plain tastes and solid virtues; now passing over shallows where the sun glanced and played in the brown water among the stones, as light arpeggio chords rippled up and vanished round about the melody; now entering a land of mighty stones and caverns where the echoes rang hollow and resonant, as the counterpoint began to rumble and trip like boulders far down out of sight, in subaqueous gloom; now rolling out again and widening, fuller and deeper as it went, moving in great masses towards the edge of the cataract that lies like a line across the landscape: it is inevitable now, the crash must come;—a chord or two pausing,—pausing;—and then the crash, stupendous and sonorous.