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 H?tel 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.