Unfortunately the Cathedral service fell on a Friday night, when S.
Cohn, the Emporium closed, was wont to absorb the Sabbath peace. He
would sit, after high tea, of which cold fried fish was the prime
ingredient, dozing over the Jewish weekly. He still approved
platonically of its bellicose sentiments. This January night, the
Sabbath arriving early in the afternoon, he was snoring before seven,
and Mrs. Cohn slipped out, risking his wrath. Her religion forced her
to make the long journey on foot; but, hurrying, she arrived at St.
Paul's before the doors were opened. And throughout the long walk was
a morbid sense of one wasted ticket. She almost stopped at a friend's
house to offer the exciting spectacle, but dread of a religious rebuff
carried her past. With Christians she was not intimate enough to
invite companionship. Besides, would not everybody ask why she was
going without her husband?
She inquired for the door mentioned on her ticket, and soon found
herself one of a crowd of parents on the steps. A very genteel crowd,
she noted with pleasure. Her boy would be in good company. The scraps
of conversation she caught dealt with a world of alien things--how
little she was Anglicized, she thought, after all those years! And
when she was borne forward into the Cathedral, her heart beat with a
sense of dim, remote glories. To have lived so long in London and
never to have entered here! She was awed and soothed by the solemn
vistas, the perspectives of pillars and arches, the great nave, the
white robes of the choir vaguely stirring a sense of angels, the
overarching dome, defined by a fiery rim, but otherwise suggesting
dim, skyey space.
Suddenly she realized that she was sitting among the men. But it did
not seem to matter. The building kept one's thoughts religious. Around
the waiting congregation, the human sea outside the Cathedral
rumoured, and whenever the door was opened to admit some dignitary the
roar of cheering was heard like a salvo saluting his entry. The Lord
Mayor and the Aldermen passed along the aisle, preceded by
mace-bearers; and mingled with this dazzle of gilded grandeur and
robes, was a regretful memory of the days when, as a Town Councillor's
consort, she had at least touched the hem of this unknown historic
English life. The skirl of bagpipes shrilled from without--that
exotic, half-barbarous sound now coming intimately into her life. And
then, a little later, the wild cheers swept into the Cathedral like a
furious wind, and the thrill of the marching soldiers passed into the
air, and the congregation jumped up on the chairs and craned towards
the right aisle to stare at the khaki couples. How she looked for
Simon!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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