Explore "The Inquisitor" by Hugh Walpole on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It was on an afternoon late in January 1934 that Bishop Kendon preached his last sermon. The occasion was the Festival of St. Margaret--one of the oldest of all the Cathedral ceremonies.
The weather on that day was halcyon; the town lay soaked in that honey-fragrance of a too precipitate southern warmth; to-morrow the gales will blow in across the shivering fields and hail will rattle the farm windows, but to-day the sun lies like a warm hand on the stones of the High Street; the lanes above Orange Street are scented with almost the flower and leaf fragrance of May. Peace and stillness are iridescent in the haze of shadow and sun-shot chimney smoke. As the bells ring for the St. Margaret service Crispangle finds a purple leather prayer-book for two old ladies; Bellamy stands, legs straddleways, talking to Aldridge on the sunny pavement; the bright red-brick building rising on the ruins of the old Library catches the sun and blushes perhaps for its newness; two clergymen, their hands behind their backs, walk slowly up the street, very seriously discussing their golf handicaps.