" True, they moved
only within strictly prescribed limits, and in accordance with certain
unalterable, wholly justifiable rules. Yet, in the very fact that
they did move, there seemed--to use an expressive slang phrase of the
day--"something not quite nice." It was therefore the fixed feasts
that pleased Percy best, and on Christmas Day, especially, he
experienced a temperate glow which would have perhaps surprised those
who knew him only slightly.
By reason of the athletic exercises of his earlier years, Percy had
retained in middle life a certain lightness and firmness of tread;
and this on Christmas morning, between his rooms and the Cathedral,
was always so peculiarly elastic that he might almost have seemed to
be rather running than walking. The ancient fane, with its soarings
of grey columns to the dimness of its embowed roof, the delicate
traceries of the organ screen, the swelling notes of the organ, the
mellow shafts of light filtered through the stained-glass windows
whose hues were as those of emeralds and rubies and amethysts, the
stainless purity of the surplices of clergy and choir, the sober
richness of Sunday bonnets in the transept, the faint yet heavy
fragrance exhaled from the hot-water pipes--all these familiar things,
appealing, as he sometimes felt, almost too strongly to that sensuous
side of his nature which made him so susceptible to the paintings of
Mr.
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