NEW SERIAL. LAPSE OF THE BISHOP.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume XXI, 11 January 1922, Page 2

NEW SERIAL. LAPSE OF THE BISHOP.

By

GUY THORNE

Author of “When it was Dark,” etc.

(Copyright). The story opens with Admiral Sir Beauchamp Peveril and Mrs Stavely sitting upon the terrace walk of “Priors”, the beautiful mansion of the last remains of the famous old abbey buildigs of Psalmster. After the tennis set is over, the visitors depart, and leave the Admiral’s . daughter, Dorothy, and her fiance Herbert Masterman, alone. 11. “No man has a right,” he answered; don’t mistake me, Dorothy. I am not a coward, and I don’t think I am weak. But you see, I love this man, and I admire him more than any man I have ever known. I came under his influence when he was lecturing at Oxford before he took up parochial work. He is as near a saint as a man can be. If you had seen his work at Ironpool, as I did before I was ordered south and came to Portsmouth, you would realise what I mean. He is absolutely self-sacrificing. He hasn’t a thought of self—that’s what makes it, all so difficult.” “ If the Bishop is all that you sav then he will be able to understand that there are other points of view besides his own. Tell him that St Peter was a married man, and see what he says to that!” The girl stopped and smiled triumphantly at her lover. How dear she was, how simple; what a child after all! How could he explain to her? He didn’t try to do so, but his tone became lighter. “Ah, well,” he said, “I have to go through with it. It is a strange coincidence that I should have been appointed to this diocese and that Dr Manners should be its new Bishop. There’s one thing I am glad of. though.” “ What’s that, dear?” “ That Gorcombe is in cousin Henry's gift, and not the Bishop’s. Otherwise I couldn’t have accepted it, knowing his views about the younger clergy marrying, and we should have had to have waited until something else turned up!” “ Well, never mind, you’ve got two and a half hours yet before dining at the palace. Let’s go into the Cathedral, and explain some more to me. Wlffin you write your great book about Psalmster they will make you a bishop!” “ Come along, then. I could spend months in the Cathedral and never tire. I don’t care whet anybody says, it’s the most perfect Gothic building in England. The dogcart is at the Mitre Hotel, and my bag is there. I must go and change at seven ” —he was wearing a clerical suit of grey flannel — “but that will be plenty of time.” They passed through the house, and the front garden brilliant with flowers into the.. Close with its comfortable canonical houses surrounded by' elm trees, where the rooks were at evensong. Before them was the stupendous mass of the Cathedral with its three great spires. The sun was still hot upon grey wall and green ivy, the spirit of absolute peace brooded over the place. The pigeons wheeling about the pinnacles and perching upon the heads of the sculptured saints in their niches over the west door, crooned of peace. An old clergyman came out and down the steps as they approached, white-beard-ed and in a shabby black coat which was almost green in the sunlight. On his face also there was peace. The nave and the aisles were dark now. the remaining daylight creeping mysteriously subdued along the body of, the church till it seemed to be lost in the stained-glass windows high above the clerestory, which had the dead hues of a Persian rug. The panes absorbed the suns’ rays, and did not refract them. The violets were dull, the browns tan or tawny, the greens too blue. Even the reds seemed stained with soot, and were the colour of mulberry juice. But as they turned and looked at the great western Rose Window the light came in brighter and clearer colours —the blue of crushed sapphires, pale rubies, golden yellow and crystalline white. “How beautiful it is,” the girl said in a low voice. “ A great symbol, an eternal allegory of the Christian Faith,” Masterman answered, his face bright with

light. “To us, if we have eyes to see it, everything may come 1 under a figure,’ as St Pau] said everythimz came to the Hebrews. This Cathedral is a book written during the period when human beings lived in closest intercourse with God—the Midle Ages. It is a book which was intelligible to and most ignorant. This, church is a symbol of the body of Christ upon the Cross. The head is the altar, the transepts are His outstretched arms, the nave where we stand His legs. And there, in the centre of fhe transepts, the great spire rises up outside—that is above the very spot where, on the Cross, the breast of Christ would lie—starting, as it were, from His heart, to leap with one spring to Father, to soar up as if shot from the bow of the vaulting in an arrow to reach the sky.”

A mystical note came into the young man’s voice, and the girl by his side, though she but half understood his fervour,was thrilled by it. He was wonderful, this lover of hers—no girl ever had such a lover before, she thought. Her whole heart was overflowing with gratitude and love.

Ihe roof, ’ Masterton went on, “ is the symbol of Charity, which covers a multitude of sins; the leaden plates are the soldiers who defend the sanctuary against the heathen, represented by a storm. The stones all joined together are emblematic of the union of souls, the multitude of the faithful; the stronger stones are the souls most advanced in the way of perfection, who protect the smaller ones, which are the weaker brethren, from sleeping and falling. And they are all held together by mortar which is made of lime and sand and water; lime is the burning cloud of Charity, and it combines by the aid of water, which is the Spirit, with the sand of the earth earthy.” “And the windows?” Dorothy whispered, staring up to the great west window burning with coloured fires. “ They are emblematic of our sins, u hich should be closed to the vanities of the world, and open to the gifts of Heaven; they are the Scriptures, which receive the glory of the sun and keep out the wind, the hail and the snow, the symbols of infidelity and false doctrine.” Just then something went through the Cathedral like the beating of great wings, a vibration both heard and felt. Dr Severn, the Cathedral organist, ‘ was beginning to play in his high place : upon the choir screen, and the pedal i thunder from the concealed pipes lead- | ing everywhere through the mighty j building seemed like the voice of the ’ Spirit that had brooded on the deep, i evoking order out of chaos and light j from darkness. They stood a little to listen, as the I gracious melody disentangled itself from the opening diapason,. and shiv-I ered to the fretted roofs in a grave I movement of flutes, oboes and clarionets, which spoke of the untainted and ( unwearying joy of heavenly choirs, until at last it changed to a triumphant shouting of trumpets and tubas, which rang and snarled and echoed in a pyramid of glorious sound.

When they went out again into the Close the sun was sinking and the central spire was etched in dark purple against heaven. The sky glowed .with causeways and flotillas of smooth and fretted silver cloud, touched here and there with amber and with rose. The air had grown cooler, and fragrant scents came from all the gardens., Dorothy walked across to “Priors”

in a dream of happiness so sweet that it brought tears into her eyes. Soon she would have that tall form always beside her—those eyes so dark and kind, so mystical—revealing to her day by day more of the man and his soul, teaching a new, language for her alone in all the universe, a language, a patois of the heart that could set her trembling, that could draw her to him in humility and yet a triumph that was pure joy.

Continued in to-morrow's Advertieer.