When he returned to his book, he found, somewhat to his annoyance, that a draught or capriciousness of the binding had turned the pages somewhat further on than the point at which he had halted; but looking at the attractive engraving decorating the page thus disclosed, he did not turn back to the beginning of the chapter.
Here it is necessary to rely upon hearsay, but Mr Sandford has a clear recollection of the matter on these pages, which made a peculiar impression upon him.
Mr Sandford knew little of architecture beyond the shape of Norman arches and his own good eye; but nonetheless the church in the illustration which confronted him struck him as being somehow out of the ordinary—why it should do so, he could not say.
The engraving showed the exterior of a church, with the conventional figures in the foreground; set back from the road, which brought to his mind a church in Bishopsgate whose name he was unable, for the moment, to recall; possessed of a tower which had a small spire or spike at each corner; and of the usual long nave, as he supposed it to be called. Indistinct birds fluttered round the tower.
Examined thus closely, it now seemed unremarkable, mediocre even; yet, as he looked at it, he felt himself drawn—there is no other way to describe the sensation—towards it. The thin parallel lines of shading seemed to become lowering clouds, the building to take on the aspect of weathered stone; and he states that the figures acquired certain details which were not pleasant to look at.
When he had, with difficulty, dragged his gaze away from the picture, Sandford began, since it was uncaptioned, to read the text below it. As he recalls, it ran thus, commencing in the middle of a sentence:
‘. . . in the City, is one of the most ancient and interesting buildings of London, though difficult to find; it was founded before the Conquest, and is said to be built on holy ground; it has been rebuilt twice: but has not, as some old buildings have, been disfigured by repairs and supposed improvement.
‘Here are numerous monuments of great interest; such as those of Marlock of Blackfriars, the poet Sadler, and Bishop Hartford. The jurists Jameson and Ashmole were buried here in one grave.’
(Here Mr Sandford frowned: he thought it odd that such names should be unfamiliar to him—he was a legal historian. He had not been surprised at not knowing the name of Sadler, and determined to ask his friend Mr Udall, of the English Department, about the poet.)
The following inscription is engraved upon a monument:
Sandford frowned at this doggerel, and looked back at the engraving for a last time before turning the page. He was a little disappointed, as well as inexplicably relieved, to find that it seemed to have lost its power to compel his gaze; yet strangely (or maybe not so strangely) he had a sudden thought that he knew where the church in question was.
‘I suppose I could go and find out the dates of those wretched jurists,’ said Mr Sandford to himself, for he knew that they would grow on his mind and bother him if he tried to ignore their unfamiliar names. He got up from his chair, set down the book, and, taking a pen from the inner pocket of his discarded coat, wrote on the back of an undergraduate’s essay which lay on the table, ‘Jameson. Ashmole.??’
Picking up the book once more he found that the pages had turned themselves further on to a chapter headed ‘The Bridges and the Tunnel’. Reluctantly laying the book aside, he addressed himself to the essay mentioned above, which, though as turgid in style as the book which he had been perusing, afforded him much less amusement.
Sleep came to him rather late that night, and seemed full of restless dreams; accordingly he woke late on Saturday morning with the strong impression that he had intended to do something that day, but no recollection of what that might be.
Sandford went to his favourite coffee shop for breakfast (somewhat later than was his custom) and there encountered a colleague from his Faculty. Words passed between them—mere desultory ‘shop’—and then Sandford’s friend, who knew his predilections, said: ‘Had any luck lately in those disgusting musty bookshops you’re so fond of?’
‘Yes, actually,’ replied Sandford, suddenly recalling the picture of the church with the curious figures and his determination to find it. ‘Did you know that in 1854 bus rides cost either 3d or 6d?’
‘Wish they still did,’ observed his friend, with feeling.
When he left the coffee shop, he proceeded directly to the underground station, where he took a tube to the Bank, and emerged from one of the numerous exits of that labyrinthine station some thirty minutes later.
Sandford liked the City of London, that strange self-contained and self-sufficient maze of oddly-named streets, although he invariably lost himself there; he had frequently intended to make an effort to familiarize himself with its intricacies but had never penetrated those mysteries any further than the merest outskirts. The curious names fascinated him; and as he wandered slowly along the streets on that fine and deserted winter Saturday—for the City is solely a weekday phenomenon—the monumental concrete and glass towers of the P&O and its taller neighbour, the CU, buildings, were less real to him than the narrow by-ways and unexpected alleys, which seemed to retain their character of a hundred years before.
He thought he was wandering aimlessly, going down a road at random simply to see where it went, but all the time in the back of his mind was a vague consciousness of the church of the engraving.
The reader will have guessed that he found it; but it took him far longer than he had expected. By the time he came out of one of those small squares endemic to the City via a narrow alley with three iron posts at one end, and saw before him the building he had half expected and half dreaded to see, it was mid-afternoon and the winter dusk had been hastened by a dull drizzle.
Although his fascination with the church had from the beginning been tempered by a kind of dread, he was altogether unprepared for the actual impression which the building made upon him. It may have been a trick of the light, or lack of it; indeed Sandford, for his peace of mind, insists that it was no more than this—but the church struck him in some way as extremely unpleasant, not to say unholy.
He could not define exactly why this should be his impression, but its whole aspect seemed to exude a kind of gloomy malevolence. As in the engraving, he could make out certain figures in the grounds of the building whose aspect was not entirely wholesome. Also as in the engraving, the actual building had the power to compel his gaze—and his steps—towards it.
The church was, as has been mentioned, set back from the road. There was an expanse of ground, bare of grass, for some twenty yards, traversed by a path of large paving stones, before it. Sandford opened the gate, which moved smoothly on its hinges, and walked up the path, The stones were even but deeply worn, and, curiously, he had the impression that they had not been worn by feet.
The day grew darker with an abruptness which surprised him. He tried to look at the figures in the distance, but they had never been clear, and seemed not to grow any nearer; indeed, he received the impression that they slid out of his vision when he looked at them. Soon the mirk became so thick that he could see little of anything.