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. Barnabe vespers were over; the clergy left thealtar; the little choir-boys flocked across the chancel and settled inthe stalls. A Suisse in rich uniform marched down the south aisle,sounding his staff at every fourth step on the stone pavement; behind himcame that eloquent preacher and good man, Monseigneur C----.
My chair was near the chancel rail, I now turned toward the west end ofthe church. The other people between the altar and the pulpit turned too.There was a little scraping and rustling while the congregation seateditself again; the preacher mounted the pulpit stairs, and the organvoluntary ceased.
I had always found the organ-playing at St. Barnabe highly interesting.Learned and scientific it was, too much so for my small knowledge, butexpressing a vivid if cold intelligence. Moreover, it possessed theFrench 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 organwhich supported the beautiful choir, but now and again, quite wantonly asit seemed, from the west gallery where the great organ stands, a heavyhand had struck across the church at the serene peace of those clearvoices. It was something more than harsh and dissonant, and it betrayedno lack of skill. As it recurred again and again, it set me thinking ofwhat my architect's books say about the custom in early times toconsecrate the choir as soon as it was built, and that the nave, beingfinished sometimes half a century later, often did not get any blessingat all: I wondered idly if that had been the case at St. Barnabe, andwhether something not usually supposed to be at home in a Christianchurch might have entered undetected and taken possession of the westgallery. I had read of such things happening, too, but not in works onarchitecture.
Then I remembered that St. Barnabe was not much more than a hundred yearsold, and smiled at the incongruous association of mediaeval superstitionswith that cheerful little piece of eighteenth-century rococo.
But now vespers were over, and there should have followed a few quietchords, fit to accompany meditation, while we waited for the sermon.Instead of that, the discord at the lower end of the church broke outwith 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 notlove to seek for psychological subtleties in art; and I have ever refusedto find in music anything more than melody and harmony, but I felt thatin the labyrinth of sounds now issuing from that instrument there wassomething being hunted. Up and down the pedals chased him, while themanuals blared approval. Poor devil! whoever he was, there seemed smallhope of escape!
My nervous annoyance changed to anger. Who was doing this? How dare heplay like that in the midst of divine service? I glanced at the peoplenear me: not one appeared to be in the least disturbed. The placid browsof the kneeling nuns, still turned towards the altar, lost none of theirdevout abstraction under the pale shadow of their white head-dress. Thefashionable lady beside me was looking expectantly at Monseigneur C----.For all her face betrayed, the organ might have been singing an AveMaria.
But now, at last, the preacher had made the sign of the cross, andcommanded silence. I turned to him gladly. Thus far I had not found therest I had counted on when I entered St. Barnabe 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 mindbenumbed and yet acutely sensitive, which I had brought to my favouritechurch for healing. For I had been reading _The King in Yellow_.
"The sun ariseth; they gather themselves together and lay them down intheir 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 behindhis pipes, and passing along the gallery on his way out, I saw himdisappear by a small door that leads to some stairs which descenddirectly to the street. He was a slender man, and his face was as whiteas his coat was black. "Good riddance!" I thought, "with your wickedmusic! I hope your assistant will play the closing voluntary."
With a feeling of relief--with a deep, calm feeling of relief, I turnedback 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 hardestof all to learn: that it has nothing to fear. It can never be made to seethat nothing can really harm it."
"Curious doctrine!" I thought, "for a Catholic priest. Let us see how hewill reconcile that with the Fathers."
"Nothing can really harm the soul," he went on, in, his coolest, clearesttones, "because----"
But I never heard the rest; my eye left his face, I knew not for whatreason, and sought the lower end of the church. The same man was comingout from behind the organ, and was passing along the gallery _the sameway_. But there had not been time for him to return, and if he hadreturned, 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: Icould not look away from his black figure and his white face. When he wasexactly opposite to me, he turned and sent across the church straightinto my eyes, a look of hate, intense and deadly: I have never seen anyother like it; would to God I might never see it again! Then hedisappeared by the same door through which I had watched him depart lessthan sixty seconds before.
I sat and tried to collect my thoughts. My first sensation was like thatof a very young child badly hurt, when it catches its breath beforecrying out.
To suddenly find myself the object of such hatred was exquisitelypainful: and this man was an utter stranger. Why should he hate meso?--me, whom he had never seen before? For the moment all othersensation was merged in this one pang: even fear was subordinate togrief, and for that moment I never doubted; but in the next I began toreason, and a sense of the incongruous came to my aid.
As I have said, St. Barnabe is a modern church. It is small and welllighted; one sees all over it almost at a glance. The organ gallery getsa strong white light from a row of long windows in the clerestory, whichhave not even coloured glass.
The pulpit being in the middle of the church, it followed that, when Iwas turned toward it, whatever moved at the west end could not fail toattract my eye. When the organist passed it was no wonder that I saw him:I had simply miscalculated the interval between his first and his secondpassing. He had come in that last time by the other side-door. As for thelook which had so upset me, there had been no such thing, and I was anervous fool.
I looked about. This was a likely place to harbour supernatural horrors!That clear-cut, reasonable face of Monseigneur C----, his collectedmanner and easy, graceful gestures, were they not just a littlediscouraging to the notion of a gruesome mystery? I glanced above hishead, and almost laughed. That flyaway lady supporting one corner of thepulpit canopy, which looked like a fringed damask table-cloth in a highwind, at the first attempt of a basilisk to pose up there in the organloft, she would point her gold trumpet at him, and puff him out ofexistence! I laughed to myself over this conceit, which, at the time, Ithought very amusing, and sat and chaffed myself and everything else,from the old harpy outside the railing, who had made me pay ten centimesfor my chair, before she would let me in (she was more like a basilisk, Itold myself, than was my organist with the anaemic complexion): from thatgrim old dame, to, yes, alas! Monseigneur C---- himself. For alldevoutness had fled. I had never yet done such a thing in my life, butnow I felt a desire to mock.
As for the sermon, I could not hear a word of it for the jingle in myears of
"The skirts of St. Paul has reached. Having preached us those six Lent lectures, More unctuous than ever he preached,"
keeping time to the most fantastic and irreverent thoughts.
It was no use to sit there any longer: I must get out of doors and shakemyself free from this hateful mood. I knew the rudeness I was committing,but still I rose and left the church.
A spring sun was shining on the Rue St. Honore, as I ran down the churchsteps. On one corner stood a barrow full of yellow jonquils, pale violetsfrom the Riviera, dark Russian violets, and white Roman hyacinths in agolden cloud of mimosa. The street was full of Sunday pleasure-seekers. Iswung my cane and laughed with the rest. Some one overtook and passed me.He never turned, but there was the same deadly malignity in his whiteprofile that there had been in his eyes. I watched him as long as I couldsee him. His lithe back expressed the same menace; every step thatcarried him away from me seemed to bear him on some errand connected withmy destruction.
I was creeping along, my feet almost refusing to move. There began todawn in me a sense of responsibility for something long forgotten. Itbegan to seem as if I deserved that which he threatened: it reached along way back--a long, long way back. It had lain dormant all theseyears: it was there, though, and presently it would rise and confront me.But I would try to escape; and I stumbled as best I could into the Rue deRivoli, across the Place de la Concorde and on to the Quai. I looked withsick eyes upon the sun, shining through the white foam of the fountain,pouring over the backs of the dusky bronze river-gods, on the far-awayArc, a structure of amethyst mist, on the countless vistas of grey stemsand bare branches faintly green. Then I saw him again coming down one ofthe chestnut alleys of the Cours la Reine.
I left the river-side, plunged blindly across to the Champs Elysees andturned toward the Arc. The setting sun was sending its rays along thegreen sward of the Rond-point: in the full glow he sat on a bench,children and young mothers all about him. He was nothing but a Sundaylounger, like the others, like myself. I said the words almost aloud, andall the while I gazed on the malignant hatred of his face. But he was notlooking at me. I crept past and dragged my leaden feet up the Avenue. Iknew that every time I met him brought him nearer to the accomplishmentof his purpose and my fate. And still I tried to save myself.
The last rays of sunset were pouring through the great Arc. I passedunder it, and met him face to face. I had left him far down the ChampsElysees, and yet he came in with a stream of people who were returningfrom the Bois de Boulogne. He came so close that he brushed me. Hisslender frame felt like iron inside its loose black covering. He showedno signs of haste, nor of fatigue, nor of any human feeling. His wholebeing expressed one thing: the will, and the power to work me evil.
In anguish I watched him where he went down the broad crowded Avenue,that was all flashing with wheels and the trappings of horses and thehelmets of the Garde Republicaine.
He was soon lost to sight; then I turned and fled. Into the Bois, and farout beyond it--I know not where I went, but after a long while as itseemed to me, night had fallen, and I found myself sitting at a tablebefore a small cafe. I had wandered back into the Bois. It was hours nowsince I had seen him. Physical fatigue and mental suffering had left meno power to think or feel. I was tired, so tired! I longed to hide awayin my own den. I resolved to go home. But that was a long way off.
I live in the Court of the Dragon, a narrow passage that leads from theRue de Rennes to the Rue du Dragon.
It is an "impasse"; traversable only for foot passengers. Over theentrance on the Rue de Rennes is a balcony, supported by an iron dragon.Within the court tall old houses rise on either side, and close the endsthat give on the two streets. Huge gates, swung back during the day intothe walls of the deep archways, close this court, after midnight, and onemust enter then by ringing at certain small doors on the side. The sunkenpavement collects unsavoury pools. Steep stairways pitch down to doorsthat open on the court. The ground floors are occupied by shops ofsecond-hand dealers, and by iron workers. All day long the place ringswith the clink of hammers and the clang of metal bars.
Unsavoury as it is below, there is cheerfulness, and comfort, and hard,honest work above.
Five flights up are the ateliers of architects and painters, and thehiding-places of middle-aged students like myself who want to live alone.When I first came here to live I was young, and not alone.
I had to walk a while before any conveyance appeared, but at last, when Ihad almost reached the Arc de Triomphe again, an empty cab came along andI took it.
From the Arc to the Rue de Rennes is a drive of more than half an hour,especially when one is conveyed by a tired cab horse that has been at themercy of Sunday fete-makers.
There had been time before I passed under the Dragon's wings to meet myenemy over and over again, but I never saw him once, and now refuge wasclose at hand.
Before the wide gateway a small mob of children were playing. Ourconcierge and his wife walked among them, with their black poodle,keeping order; some couples were waltzing on the side-walk. I returnedtheir greetings and hurried in.
All the inhabitants of the court had trooped out into the street. Theplace was quite deserted, lighted by a few lanterns hung high up, inwhich the gas burned dimly.
My apartment was at the top of a house, halfway down the court, reachedby a staircase that descended almost into the street, with only a bit ofpassage-way intervening, I set my foot on the threshold of the open door,the friendly old ruinous stairs rose before me, leading up to rest andshelter. Looking back over my right shoulder, I saw _him,_ ten pacesoff. He must have entered the court with me.
He was coming straight on, neither slowly, nor swiftly, but straight onto me. And now he was looking at me. For the first time since our eyesencountered across the church they met now again, and I knew that thetime had come.
Retreating backward, down the court, I faced him. I meant to escape bythe entrance on the Rue du Dragon. His eyes told me that I never shouldescape.
It seemed ages while we were going, I retreating, he advancing, down thecourt in perfect silence; but at last I felt the shadow of the archway,and the next step brought me within it. I had meant to turn here andspring through into the street. But the shadow was not that of anarchway; it was that of a vault. The great doors on the Rue du Dragonwere closed. I felt this by the blackness which surrounded me, and at thesame instant I read it in his face. How his face gleamed in the darkness,drawing swiftly nearer! The deep vaults, the huge closed doors, theircold iron clamps were all on his side. The thing which he had threatenedhad arrived: it gathered and bore down on me from the fathomless shadows;the point from which it would strike was his infernal eyes. Hopeless, Iset my back against the barred doors and defied him.
There was a scraping of chairs on the stone floor, and a rustling as thecongregation rose. I could hear the Suisse's staff in the south aisle,preceding Monseigneur C---- to the sacristy.
The kneeling nuns, roused from their devout abstraction, made theirreverence and went away. The fashionable lady, my neighbour, rose also,with graceful reserve. As she departed her glance just flitted over myface in disapproval.
Half dead, or so it seemed to me, yet intensely alive to every trifle, Isat among the leisurely moving crowd, then rose too and went toward thedoor.
I had slept through the sermon. Had I slept through the sermon? I lookedup and saw him passing along the gallery to his place. Only his side Isaw; the thin bent arm in its black covering looked like one of thosedevilish, nameless instruments which lie in the disused torture-chambersof mediaeval castles.
But I had escaped him, though his eyes had said I should not. _Had_I escaped him? That which gave him the power over me came back out ofoblivion, where I had hoped to keep it. For I knew him now. Death and theawful abode of lost souls, whither my weakness long ago had senthim--they had changed him for every other eye, but not for mine. I hadrecognized him almost from the first; I had never doubted what he wascome to do; and now I knew while my body sat safe in the cheerful littlechurch, he had been hunting my soul in the Court of the Dragon.
I crept to th
e door: the organ broke out overhead with a blare. Adazzling light filled the church, blotting the altar from my eyes. Thepeople faded away, the arches, the vaulted roof vanished. I raised myseared eyes to the fathomless glare, and I saw the black stars hanging inthe heavens: and the wet winds from the lake of Hali chilled my face.
And now, far away, over leagues of tossing cloud-waves, I saw the moondripping with spray; and beyond, the towers of Carcosa rose behind themoon.
Death and the awful abode of lost souls, whither my weakness long ago hadsent him, had changed him for every other eye but mine. And now I heard_his voice_, rising, swelling, thundering through the flaring light,and as I fell, the radiance increasing, increasing, poured over me inwaves of flame. Then I sank into the depths, and I heard the King inYellow whispering to my soul: "It is a fearful thing to fall into thehands of the living God!"