The doors flew open, the sunlight streamed into my face, and
through it, in a heavenly glory, the Madonna smiled, as Geneviève lifted
her flushed face from her marble couch and opened her sleepy eyes. IN THE COURT OF THE DRAGON


  "Oh, thou who burn'st in heart for those who burn
  In Hell, whose fires thyself shall feed in turn;
  How long be crying--'Mercy on them.' God! Why, who art thou to teach and He to learn?" In the Church of St. Barnabé vespers were over; the clergy left the
altar; the little choir-boys flocked across the chancel and settled in
the stalls. A Suisse in rich uniform marched down the south aisle,
sounding his staff at every fourth step on the stone pavement; behind him
came that eloquent preacher and good man, Monseigneur C----. My chair was near the chancel rail, I now turned toward the west end of
the church. The other people between the altar and the pulpit turned too. There was a little scraping and rustling while the congregation seated
itself again; the preacher mounted the pulpit stairs, and the organ
voluntary ceased. I had always found the organ-playing at St. Barnabé highly interesting. Learned and scientific it was, too much so for my small knowledge, but
expressing a vivid if cold intelligence. Moreover, it possessed the
French quality of taste: taste reigned supreme, self-controlled,
dignified and reticent. To-day, however, from the first chord I had felt a change for the worse,
a sinister change. During vespers it had been chiefly the chancel organ
which supported the beautiful choir, but now and again, quite wantonly as
it seemed, from the west gallery where the great organ stands, a heavy
hand had struck across the church at the serene peace of those clear
voices. It was something more than harsh and dissonant, and it betrayed
no lack of skill. As it recurred again and again, it set me thinking of
what my architect's books say about the custom in early times to
consecrate the choir as soon as it was built, and that the nave, being
finished sometimes half a century later, often did not get any blessing
at all: I wondered idly if that had been the case at St. Barnabé, and
whether something not usually supposed to be at home in a Christian
church might have entered undetected and taken possession of the west
gallery. I had read of such things happening, too, but not in works on
architecture. Then I remembered that St. Barnabé was not much more than a hundred years
old, and smiled at the incongruous association of mediaeval superstitions
with that cheerful little piece of eighteenth-century rococo. But now vespers were over, and there should have followed a few quiet
chords, fit to accompany meditation, while we waited for the sermon. Instead of that, the discord at the lower end of the church broke out
with the departure of the clergy, as if now nothing could control it. I belong to those children of an older and simpler generation who do not
love to seek for psychological subtleties in art; and I have ever refused
to find in music anything more than melody and harmony, but I felt that
in the labyrinth of sounds now issuing from that instrument there was
something being hunted. Up and down the pedals chased him, while the
manuals blared approval. Poor devil! whoever he was, there seemed small
hope of escape! My nervous annoyance changed to anger. Who was doing this? How dare he
play like that in the midst of divine service? I glanced at the people
near me: not one appeared to be in the least disturbed. The placid brows
of the kneeling nuns, still turned towards the altar, lost none of their
devout abstraction under the pale shadow of their white head-dress. The
fashionable lady beside me was looking expectantly at Monseigneur C----. For all her face betrayed, the organ might have been singing an Ave
Maria. But now, at last, the preacher had made the sign of the cross, and
commanded silence. I turned to him gladly. Thus far I had not found the
rest I had counted on when I entered St. Barnabé that afternoon. I was worn out by three nights of physical suffering and mental trouble:
the last had been the worst, and it was an exhausted body, and a mind
benumbed and yet acutely sensitive, which I had brought to my favourite
church for healing. For I had been reading _The King in Yellow_. "The sun ariseth; they gather themselves together and lay them down in
their dens." Monseigneur C---- delivered his text in a calm voice,
glancing quietly over the congregation. My eyes turned, I knew not why,
toward the lower end of the church. The organist was coming from behind
his pipes, and passing along the gallery on his way out, I saw him
disappear by a small door that leads to some stairs which descend
directly to the street. He was a slender man, and his face was as white
as his coat was black. "Good riddance!" I thought, "with your wicked
music! I hope your assistant will play the closing voluntary." With a feeling of relief--with a deep, calm feeling of relief, I turned
back to the mild face in the pulpit and settled myself to listen. Here,
at last, was the ease of mind I longed for. "My children," said the preacher, "one truth the human soul finds hardest
of all to learn: that it has nothing to fear. It can never be made to see
that nothing can really harm it." "Curious doctrine!" I thought, "for a Catholic priest. Let us see how he
will reconcile that with the Fathers." "Nothing can really harm the soul," he went on, in, his coolest, clearest
tones, "because----"

But I never heard the rest; my eye left his face, I knew not for what
reason, and sought the lower end of the church. The same man was coming
out from behind the organ, and was passing along the gallery _the same
way_. But there had not been time for him to return, and if he had
returned, I must have seen him. I felt a faint chill, and my heart sank;
and yet, his going and coming were no affair of mine. I looked at him: I
could not look away from his black figure and his white face. When he was
exactly opposite to me, he turned and sent across the church straight
into my eyes, a look of hate, intense and deadly: I have never seen any
other like it; would to God I might never see it again! Then he
disappeared by the same door through which I had watched him depart less
than sixty seconds before. I sat and tried to collect my thoughts. My first sensation was like that
of a very young child badly hurt, when it catches its breath before
crying out. To suddenly find myself the object of such hatred was exquisitely
painful: and this man was an utter stranger. Why should he hate me
so?--me, whom he had never seen before? For the moment all other
sensation was merged in this one pang: even fear was subordinate to
grief, and for that moment I never doubted; but in the next I began to
reason, and a sense of the incongruous came to my aid. As I have said, St. Barnabé is a modern church. It is small and well
lighted; one sees all over it almost at a glance.