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"Certainly he was," replied the bishop. "Has he not come forth?" "That he has not, my lord. I have let nobody whatever out except your lordship and the porter. I have called out to him, but he does not answer, and does not come." "He went up into the organ-loft in search of a candle and matches," remarked the bishop. "You had better go after him, Thorpe. He may not know that the doors are open."
It was a great place for dust, the organ-loft dust that fell, and dust that rose; dust of wormy wood, dust of crumbling leather, dust of tattered mothy curtains that were dropping to pieces, dust of primeval green baize; but Mr Sharnall had breathed the dust for forty years, and felt more at home in that place than anywhere else.
"I'm not going to put it up in the organ-loft, as you suppose, but in a place where it is likely to be quite as much appreciated." "And that?" I asked. "In the hay-loft," he replied. "I don't blame you," said I, after a pause. "Neither do I," said he. "But why did you go down to the church?" I asked. "Well," he explained, chuckling in spite of himself. "It was this way.
Mr Sharnall often played for half an hour or more after the evening-service, and on such occasions Westray found time, now and then, to make his way to the organ-loft.
When Stradella came down from the organ-loft after the Benediction he was in haste to reach the sacristy before any of the choristers, as he did not mean to keep Ortensia waiting a moment longer than necessary.
He seemed once more to be making his way up the ghostly nave, on past the pillars that stood like gigantic figures in white winding-sheets, on under the great tower arches. Once more he was groping in the utter darkness of the newel stair, once more he came out into the organ-loft, and saw the baleful silver and sea-green of the nebuly coat gleaming in the transept window.
A few moments later he was in the singers' robing-room, hastily getting into the purple silk cassock and the spotless lace-trimmed cotta which he had to wear when he appeared in the organ-loft of a basilica, or among the singers of the Sistine Chapel.
"That noon Timothy electrified me by appearing in the organ-loft while it still echoed with the benediction, though heretofore he had invariably waited for me after service in the vestibule. I happened just then to be congratulating the new soprano on being in such capital voice that morning, and as the tenor stepped across to shake hands with Timothy, I went on talking with her till she left.
From the second seats the sterling middle classes, half envy and half disdain, examined the glittering ostentation in front of them; they had no illusions concerning it; their knowledge of financial realities was exact. Up in the gloom of the balcony the crowded faces of the unimportant and the obscure rose tier above tier to the organ-loft.
At first I may be a little shocked with the familiar manner in which the images and statues and the gilded paraphernalia are treated, very different from the stately ceremony of the morning, when the priests are at the altar, the choir is in the organ-loft, and the people crowd nave and aisles. Then everything is sanctified and inviolate.
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