But you'll see what I
mean if you look at this old view." Worby reached down a framed print from the wall. "Well, the long and
the short of it was that the Dean he handed over to my father a copy
of an order of the Chapter that he was to clear out every bit of the
choir--make a clean sweep--ready for the new work that was being
designed up in town, and he was to put it in hand as soon as ever he
could get the breakers together. Now then, sir, if you look at that
view, you'll see where the pulpit used to stand: that's what I want
you to notice, if you please." It was, indeed, easily seen; an
unusually large structure of timber with a domed sounding-board,
standing at the east end of the stalls on the north side of the choir,
facing the bishop's throne. Worby proceeded to explain that during the
alterations, services were held in the nave, the members of the choir
being thereby disappointed of an anticipated holiday, and the organist
in particular incurring the suspicion of having wilfully damaged the
mechanism of the temporary organ that was hired at considerable
expense from London. The work of demolition began with the choir screen and organ loft, and
proceeded gradually eastwards, disclosing, as Worby said, many
interesting features of older work. While this was going on, the
members of the Chapter were, naturally, in and about the choir a great
deal, and it soon became apparent to the elder Worby--who could not
help overhearing some of their talk--that, on the part of the senior
Canons especially, there must have been a good deal of disagreement
before the policy now being carried out had been adopted. Some were of
opinion that they should catch their deaths of cold in the
return-stalls, unprotected by a screen from the draughts in the nave:
others objected to being exposed to the view of persons in the choir
aisles, especially, they said, during the sermons, when they found it
helpful to listen in a posture which was liable to misconstruction. The strongest opposition, however, came from the oldest of the body,
who up to the last moment objected to the removal of the pulpit. "You
ought not to touch it, Mr. Dean," he said with great emphasis one
morning, when the two were standing before it: "you don't know what
mischief you may do." "Mischief? it's not a work of any particular
merit, Canon." "Don't call me Canon," said the old man with great
asperity, "that is, for thirty years I've been known as Dr. Ayloff,
and I shall be obliged, Mr. Dean, if you would kindly humour me in
that matter. And as to the pulpit (which I've preached from for thirty
years, though I don't insist on that) all I'll say is, I _know_ you're
doing wrong in moving it." "But what sense could there be, my dear
Doctor, in leaving it where it is, when we're fitting up the rest of
the choir in a totally different _style_? What reason could be
given--apart from the look of the thing?" "Reason! reason!" said old
Dr. Ayloff; "if you young men--if I may say so without any disrespect,
Mr. Dean--if you'd only listen to reason a little, and not be always
asking for it, we should get on better. But there, I've said my say." The old gentleman hobbled off, and as it proved, never entered the
Cathedral again. The season--it was a hot summer--turned sickly on a
sudden. Dr. Ayloff was one of the first to go, with some affection of
the muscles of the thorax, which took him painfully at night. And at
many services the number of choirmen and boys was very thin. Meanwhile the pulpit had been done away with. In fact, the
sounding-board (part of which still exists as a table in a
summer-house in the palace garden) was taken down within an hour or
two of Dr. Ayloff's protest. The removal of the base--not effected
without considerable trouble--disclosed to view, greatly to the
exultation of the restoring party, an altar-tomb--the tomb, of course,
to which Worby had attracted Lake's attention that same evening. Much
fruitless research was expended in attempts to identify the occupant;
from that day to this he has never had a name put to him. The
structure had been most carefully boxed in under the pulpit-base, so
that such slight ornament as it possessed was not defaced; only on the
north side of it there was what looked like an injury; a gap between
two of the slabs composing the side. It might be two or three inches
across. Palmer, the mason, was directed to fill it up in a week's
time, when he came to do some other small jobs near that part of the
choir. The season was undoubtedly a very trying one. Whether the church was
built on a site that had once been a marsh, as was suggested, or for
whatever reason, the residents in its immediate neighbourhood had,
many of them, but little enjoyment of the exquisite sunny days and
the calm nights of August and September. To several of the older
people--Dr. Ayloff, among others, as we have seen--the summer proved
downright fatal, but even among the younger, few escaped either a
sojourn in bed for a matter of weeks, or at the least, a brooding
sense of oppression, accompanied by hateful nightmares. Gradually
there formulated itself a suspicion--which grew into a conviction--that
the alterations in the Cathedral had something to say in the matter. The widow of a former old verger, a pensioner of the Chapter of
Southminster, was visited by dreams, which she retailed to her
friends, of a shape that slipped out of the little door of the south
transept as the dark fell in, and flitted--taking a fresh direction
every night--about the close, disappearing for a while in house after
house, and finally emerging again when the night sky was paling. She
could see nothing of it, she said, but that it was a moving form: only
she had an impression that when it returned to the church, as it
seemed to do in the end of the dream, it turned its head: and then,
she could not tell why, but she thought it had red eyes. Worby
remembered hearing the old lady tell this dream at a tea-party in the
house of the chapter clerk. Its recurrence might, perhaps, he said, be
taken as a symptom of approaching illness; at any rate before the end
of September the old lady was in her grave. The interest excited by the restoration of this great church was not
confined to its own county. One day that summer an F.S.A., of some
celebrity, visited the place. His business was to write an account of
the discoveries that had been made, for the Society of Antiquaries,
and his wife, who accompanied him, was to make a series of
illustrative drawings for his report. In the morning she employed
herself in making a general sketch of the choir; in the afternoon she
devoted herself to details. She first drew the newly exposed
altar-tomb, and when that was finished, she called her husband's
attention to a beautiful piece of diaper-ornament on the screen just
behind it, which had, like the tomb itself, been completely concealed
by the pulpit.