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But it is to be hoped that there was some good result from the incident. A waggish clergyman once saw a pompous clerical brother march quite to the head of the aisle of a crowded church to find a seat, with an air of expectation that all pew-doors would fly open at his approach. But as every seat was full, and nobody stirred, the crestfallen brother was obliged to retrace his steps.
The massive mahogany pew-doors were elaborately carved and surmounted by small crosses; the tall, arched windows were of superb stained glass, representing the twelve apostles; the floor and balustrade of the altar, and the grand Gothic pillared pulpit, were all of the purest white marble; and the capitals of the airy, elegant columns of the same material, that supported the organ gallery, were ornamented with rich grape-leaf moulding; while the large window behind and above the pulpit contained a figure of Christ bearing his Cross a noble copy of the great painting of Solario, at Berlin.
Around the church-door all is solitude, and an impenetrable obscurity beyond the threshold. A commotion is heard. The seats are slammed down, and the pew-doors thrown back, a multitude of feet are trampling along the unseen aisles, and the congregation bursts suddenly through the portal.
To her great surprise the door opened, and without a thought she entered. She had never been in so tumbledown and neglected a place in her life; the pew-doors were either hanging or gone altogether, some of the pews were too rotten to use, the plaster and paint hung off in scales, and a large hole in the roof showed that the risk of attending service there was no slight one.
Money can't do everything," said the heedless young man as he came lounging down the middle aisle, tapping contemptuously with his cane upon the high pew-doors. "I wonder where the people expected to go to who built Carlingford Church? Curious," continued the young Anglican, stopping in mid career, "to think of bestowing consecration upon anything so hideous.
Boots cheeped unseen in the arches, sibilant whispers smote the silence, pew-doors creaked, and from far corners of the church violent coughing sounded with muffled reverberations. Mary Lou would have slipped into the very last pew, but Virginia led the way up up up in the darkness, nearer and nearer the altar, with its winking red light, and genuflected before one of the very first pews.
Wilkins paused, flushed and breathless with her defence, and Christie said, candidly: "I did like the freedom and good-will there, for people sat where they liked, and no one frowned over shut pew-doors, at me a stranger. An old black woman sat next me, and said 'Amen' when she liked what she heard, and a very shabby young man was on the other, listening as if his soul was as hungry as his body.
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