The sexton of Trinity was sweeping the steps. He took off his cap when Gard stopped to ask him where Moselle lived. "Two streets up, riverence," he said, "an' turn to your left; number sixty-siven, on'y it's rubbed out, riverence. Is it a bit o' music you're carryin', sor?"
Gard found where sixty-seven was rubbed out on a street door, and under direction climbed three narrow flights, to a narrow, top-story hall, with a skylight overhead and several doors, one with the grimy card of Fritz Moselle tacked upon it. He knocked. "Herein! Come! Veil, du lieber Himmel! It's de lil' anchorite!"
The room which Moselle came storming across seemed to have been originally three rooms, but the partitions had been mainly cut away. There were two pianos, and two grates for coal fires. Floor and chairs and tables were a welter of sheet-music, beer-bottles, steins, books, flower-pots, cats, pipes, newspapers, and rumpled rugs. Moselle came through it like a loose meteor, bent on breaking chaos into smaller fragments; hair brushed back and yellowish, dingy with age, eyebrows and mustache that swelled and dropped like cataracts, weight to threaten floors, huge, fat fist, and porcelain pipe in mouth. He hugged Gard to his mighty belly, muttered and puffed hoarsely, and pulled him across the room to where a man in black had risen from his chair, who had a long jaw and aggressive chin, shaven bluish, a slouched hat on his head, a frock-coat, and was tall, gaunt and bony. He held out his hand.
"I'm glad to know you, Mr. Windham," he said, in a deep, drawling voice, with a certain winningness of smile.
"'Tis Shack Mavering. He knows about you, kleiner," cried Moselle, boisterous, explanatory. "'Tis a friend of Mephisto, der Faust-devil, und of me. Ha! Sit down. Vat iss dat?" pointing to Gard's bundle.
Gard dropped his bundle beside his chair. At the brotherhood was orderly calm, thoughtful silence, cool, clear walls, and whispering sound of slippered feet. Moselle at organ lessons in Trinity had never seemed so loose and free, broad, joyous, unlimited. Somehow Gard felt as if vacant spaces about his soul were growing warm and inhabited. He laughed, and knew no reason for it.
"I've left the brotherhood. I'm going to be—"
"Gott! Vat you going to be?"
Gard laughed again.