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Updated: June 27, 2025
The numerous and many-colored congregation, the white surpliced choristers, the charity-school children in their uniforms surrounding the altar, all framed in by the dark old oak screens with their quaint readings, and partially vividly illuminated by occasional gleams of strong sunlight which poured suddenly through the colored windows, presented a beautiful picture.
Laura looked round her, with a sigh from her inmost heart. But the vast church seemed to her ugly and inhuman. She remembered a saying of her father's as to its "vicious Roman style" the "tomb of the Italian mind." What matter? Ah! Suddenly a dim surpliced figure in the distance, and lights springing like stars in the apse. Presently the high altar, in a soft glow, shone out upon the dark church.
Organ, orchestra, and ringing voices burst into triumphant melody, the vestibule doors fly open, and, headed by the crucifer and his sacred emblem, the white surpliced choristers come thronging up the centre aisle, while the whole congregation turns and faces them, as wedding congregations will, and the lofty rafters ring with the exultant strains, "Hark! hark, my soul!
At Badsey objections were soon heard to the innovation of the surpliced choir and improved music in the restored church; one old villager, living close by, expressed himself as follows concerning the entry of the Vicar and choir, in procession, from the new vestry: "They come in with them boys all dressed up like a lot of little parsons, and the parson behind 'em just like the old Pope hisself.
Peter's; have seen the Metropolitan Archbishop of Moscow, surrounded by prelates of the Russian Empire, conduct the burial of a czar; have seen the highest Lutheran dignitaries solemnize the marriage of a German kaiser; have sat under the ministrations of sundry archbishops of Canterbury; have been present at high mass performed by the Archbishop of Athens under the shadow of Mars Hill and the Parthenon; and, though I am singularly susceptible to the influence of such pageants, especially if they are accompanied by noble music, no one of these has ever made so great an impression upon me as that simple Anglo-American service performed by a surpliced clergyman with a country choir and devout assemblage in this little village church.
The dream that had haunted her for so long seemed all at once to have become a reality. She had heard this ceremony compared to a wedding, the priest was there uttering blessings, and surpliced men were chanting prayers; surely she was being married! Did the vicomte feel the nervous trembling of her fingers? Did his heart sympathize with hers?
In the mists of a rainy morning a surpliced English clergyman saw her put out of sight and mind in a little obscure cemetery. There were only two mourners. I myself was one; Miss R , with her fair hair and her black dress, was the other. A few days later I left Beaulieu for England by way of the Italian lakes.
In the moonlight-flooded silence of the old town of glorious tombs and tragic memories, I could see again the small boy of that day following a hearse; a space kept clear in which I walked alone, conscious of an enormous following, the clumsy swaying of the tall black machine, the chanting of the surpliced clergy at the head, the flames of tapers passing under the low archway of the gate, the rows of bared heads on the pavements with fixed, serious eyes.
The sunlight filtering through the windows of stained glass splashed fantastic colors over the long surpliced train which wound through the aisles down to the chancel, singing processionals of joyous hope; the air was full of the sense of solemn meaning; the organ pealed; the noble words of the fine old ritual spoke to the hearts of the hearers, and carried their message of a faith which took hold upon the unseen.
It was winter, and the streets of tall and sullen houses in that gloomy neighbourhood were darkening with fog. This fog crept slowly into the cathedral. The surpliced boy who presented an alms-dish just within the doors was stamping his feet and snuffling with cold. The leaves of tracts and pamphlets on the table blew up and chattered in the wind every time the door was thrust open.
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