Certain it is that many eyes turned towards the Cathedral accustomed for
many years to look in quite other directions. There was to be a grand
service, they said, with "trumpets and shawms" and the big drum, and the
old Bishop preaching, making, in all probability, his very last public
appearance. Up from the dark mysteries of Seatown, down from the chaste
proprieties of the villas above Orange Street, from the purlieus of the
market, from the shops of the High Street, sailors and merchantmen,
traders and sea-captains and, from the wild fastness of the Fair, gipsies
with silver rings in their ears and, perhaps, who can tell? bells on their
dusky toes.
Very early were Lawrence and Cobbett about their duties. This was, in all
probability, Lawrence's last Great Day before the final and all-judging
one, and well both he and Cobbett were aware of it. Cobbett could see
himself that morning almost stepping into the old man's shoes, and the old
man himself was not well this morning--not well at all. Rheumatism, gout,
what hadn't he got?--and, above all, that strange, mysterious pain
somewhere in his very vitals, a pain that was not precisely a pain, too
dull and homely for that, but a warning, a foreboding.
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