“Mine and my husband’s,” Olive laughed and called Joan and Robert Ilden from their game with the kitten. Mark played with them in all content for half an hour, didn’t glance at Olive, and told her blond children about his best nephew, Gurdy Bernamer. The bored infants broke his watch chain and their puzzled mother took Mark to walk. She led him down through the college and wondered why he paused to stare at the cathedral walls where the sunshine was pallid on the weathered stone.—He was thinking that bulbs tinted straw colour might get this glow against properly painted canvas.—His eyes opened and his drowsy gaze pleased the woman. She said, “Do you like it? The cathedral?”
“The tower’s too small,” he said.
“Clever of you. Yes, architects think so. Glad you noticed.”
“Anybody could see that. Is that the Bishop?” he asked, seeing black gaiters in motion on a lawn.
“A mere dean. And the birds are rooks. All the best cathedrals have rooks about. Shall we go in?”
“I’d just as soon,” he nodded, regretting that the queer shade of the elms wasn’t possible on a backdrop.
The interior charmed him. He forgot his headache. His thoughts hopped. Church scenes never went well. No way to capture this slow echo for the stage. The upper brightness made him raise his eyes. This range of high windows where the lights melted together was called a “clerestory.” The mingled glory almost frightened him. He saw a white butterfly that jigged and wheeled, irreverent, solitary on the far shadows of the vault. Mark smiled. Small Gurdy Bernamer named butterflies “bruffles” and was probably chasing one, now, across the hot perfume of the Fayettesville garden. The fancy made him homesick. He blinked. The woman watching him saw crystal wetness point his lashes and hastily stated, “This is William de Wykeham’s tomb.”
Mark examined the painted tomb, wished he could sketch the canopy and the pygmy monks who pray at the Bishop’s feet. Gurdy Bernamer would like the monks and would break them. He rubbed his nose and chuckled.
“I suppose,” Olive said, “that all this seems rather silly to you. You’re a practical people.”
“It’s good lookin’. I don’t see how a good lookin’ thing can be silly, exactly. I was thinkin’ my kid nephew’d like those monks to play with. But he’d bust them.—Isn’t King William Rufus buried here?”