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ROBERT FINDS A NEW INSTRUMENT.
At length the vessel lay alongside the quay, and as Mysie stepped
from its side the skipper found an opportunity of giving her
Robert's letter. It was the poorest of chances, but Robert could
think of no other. She started on receiving it, but regarding the
skipper's significant gestures put it quietly away. She looked
anything but happy, for her illness had deprived her of courage, and
probably roused her conscience. Robert followed the pair, saw them
enter The Great Labourer--what could the name mean? could it mean
The Good Shepherd?--and turned away helpless, objectless indeed, for
he had done all that he could, and that all was of no potency. A
world of innocence and beauty was about to be hurled from its orbit
of light into the blackness of outer chaos; he knew it, and was
unable to speak word or do deed that should frustrate the power of a
devil who so loved himself that he counted it an honour to a girl to
have him for her ruin. Her after life had no significance for him,
save as a trophy of his victory. He never perceived that such
victory was not yielded to him; that he gained it by putting on the
garments of light; that if his inward form had appeared in its own
ugliness, not one of the women whose admiration he had secured would
not have turned from him as from the monster of an old tale.
Robert wandered about till he was so weary that his head ached with
weariness. At length he came upon the open space before the
cathedral, whence the poplar-spire rose aloft into a blue sky
flecked with white clouds. It was near sunset, and he could not see
the sun, but the upper half of the spire shone glorious in its
radiance. From the top his eye sank to the base. In the base was a
little door half open. Might not that be the lowly narrow entrance
through the shadow up to the sun-filled air? He drew near with a
kind of tremor, for never before had he gazed upon visible grandeur
growing out of the human soul, in the majesty of everlastingness--a
tree of the Lord's planting. Where had been but an empty space of
air and light and darkness, had risen, and had stood for ages, a
mighty wonder awful to the eye, solid to the hand. He peeped
through the opening of the door: there was the foot of a
stair--marvellous as the ladder of Jacob's dream--turning away
towards the unknown. He pushed the door and entered. A man
appeared and barred his advance. Robert put his hand in his pocket
and drew out some silver. The man took one piece--looked at
it--turned it over--put it in his pocket, and led the way up the
stair. Robert followed and followed and followed.
He came out of stone walls upon an airy platform whence the spire
ascended heavenwards. His conductor led upward still, and he
followed, winding within a spiral network of stone, through which
all the world looked in. Another platform, and yet another spire
springing from its basement. Still up they went, and at length
stood on a circle of stone surrounding like a coronet the last base
of the spire which lifted its apex untrodden. Then Robert turned
and looked below. He grasped the stones before him. The loneliness
was awful.
There was nothing between him and the roofs of the houses, four
hundred feet below, but the spot where he stood. The whole city,
with its red roofs, lay under him. He stood uplifted on the genius
of the builder, and the town beneath him was a toy. The all but
featureless flat spread forty miles on every side, and the roofs of
the largest buildings below were as dovecots. But the space between
was alive with awe--so vast, so real!
He turned and descended, winding through the network of stone which
was all between him and space. The object of the architect must
have been to melt away the material from before the eyes of the
spirit. He hung in the air in a cloud of stone. As he came in his
descent within the ornaments of one of the basements, he found
himself looking through two thicknesses of stone lace on the nearing
city. Down there was the beast of prey and his victim; but for the
moment he was above the region of sorrow. His weariness and his
headache had vanished utterly. With his mind tossed on its own
speechless delight, he was slowly descending still, when he saw on
his left hand a door ajar. He would look what mystery lay within.
A push opened it. He discovered only a little chamber lined with
wood. In the centre stood something--a bench-like piece of
furniture, plain and worn. He advanced a step; peered over the top
of it; saw keys, white and black; saw pedals below: it was an organ!
Two strides brought him in front of it. A wooden stool, polished
and hollowed with centuries of use, was before it. But where was
the bellows? That might be down hundreds of steps below, for he was
half-way only to the ground. He seated himself musingly, and
struck, as he thought, a dumb chord. Responded, up in the air, far
overhead, a mighty booming clang. Startled, almost frightened, even
as if Mary St. John had said she loved him, Robert sprung from the
stool, and, without knowing why, moved only by the chastity of
delight, flung the door to the post. It banged and clicked. Almost
mad with the joy of the titanic instrument, he seated himself again
at the keys, and plunged into a tempest of clanging harmony. One
hundred bells hang in that tower of wonder, an instrument for a
city, nay, for a kingdom. Often had Robert dreamed that he was the
galvanic centre of a thunder-cloud of harmony, flashing off from
every finger the willed lightning tone: such was the unexpected
scale of this instrument--so far aloft in the sunny air rang the
responsive notes, that his dream appeared almost realized. The
music, like a fountain bursting upwards, drew him up and bore him
aloft. From the resounding cone of bells overhead he no longer
heard their tones proceed, but saw level-winged forms of light
speeding off with a message to the nations. It was only his roused
phantasy; but a sweet tone is nevertheless a messenger of God; and a
right harmony and sequence of such tones is a little gospel.
At length he found himself following, till that moment
unconsciously, the chain of tunes he well remembered having played
on his violin the night he went first with Ericson to see Mysie,
ending with his strange chant about the witch lady and the dead
man's hand.
Ere he had finished the last, his passion had begun to fold its
wings, and he grew dimly aware of a beating at the door of the
solitary chamber in which he sat. He knew nothing of the enormity
of which he was guilty--presenting unsought the city of Antwerp with
a glorious phantasia. He did not know that only upon grand, solemn,
world-wide occasions, such as a king's birthday or a ball at the
Hôtel de Ville, was such music on the card. When he flung the door
to, it had closed with a spring lock, and for the last quarter of an
hour three gens-d'arme, commanded by the sacristan of the tower, had
been thundering thereat. He waited only to finish the last notes of
the wild Orcadian chant, and opened the door. He was seized by the
collar, dragged down the stair into the street, and through a crowd
of wondering faces--poor unconscious dreamer! it will not do to
think on the house-top even, and you had been dreaming very loud
indeed in the church spire--away to the bureau of the police.
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