In the Closed Room | Page 8

was as if she were not only listening but waiting for
something. She did not know at all what she was waiting for, but
waiting she was.
She lay upon her cot with her arms flung out and her eyes wide open.
What was it that she wanted--that which was in the closed room? Why
had they locked the door? If they had locked the doors of the big
parlours it would not have mattered. If they had locked the door of the
library--Her mind paused--as if for a moment, something held it still.
Then she remembered that to have locked the doors of the library
would have been to lock in the picture of the child with the greeting
look in her eyes and the fine little uplifted hand. She was glad the room
had been left open. But the room up-stairs--the one on the fourth
floor--that was the one that mattered most of all. She knew that
to-morrow she must go and stand at the door and press her cheek
against the wood and wait--and listen. Thinking this and knowing that
it must be so, she fell--at last--asleep.

PART TWO
Judith climbed the basement stairs rather slowly. Her mother was busy
rearranging the disorder the hastily departing servants had left. Their
departure had indeed been made in sufficient haste to have left behind
the air of its having been flight. There was a great deal to be done, and
Jane Foster, moving about with broom and pail and scrubbing brushes,
did not dislike the excitement of the work before her. Judith's certainty
that she would not be missed made all clear before her. If her absence
was observed her mother would realize that the whole house lay open
to her and that she was an undisturbing element wheresoever she was
led either by her fancy or by circumstance. If she went into the parlours
she would probably sit and talk to herself or play quietly with her

shabby doll. In any case she would be finding pleasure of her own and
would touch nothing which could be harmed.
When the child found herself in the entrance hall she stopped a few
moments to look about her. The stillness seemed to hold her and she
paused to hear and feel it. In leaving the basement behind, she had left
the movement of living behind also. No one was alive upon this
floor--nor upon the next--nor the next. It was as if one had entered a
new world--a world in which something existed which did not express
itself in sound or in things which one could see. Chairs held out their
arms to emptiness--cushions were not pressed by living things--only
the people in the pictures were looking at something, but one could not
tell what they were looking at.
But on the fourth floor was the Closed Room, which she must go
to--because she must go to it--that was all she knew.
She began to mount the stairs which led to the upper floors. Her shabby
doll was held against her hip by one arm, her right hand touched the
wall as she went, she felt the height of the wall as she looked upward. It
was such a large house and so empty. Where had the people gone and
why had they left it all at once as if they were afraid? Her father had
only heard vaguely that they had gone because they had had trouble.
She passed the second floor, the third, and climbed towards the fourth.
She could see the door of the Closed Room as she went up step by step,
and she found herself moving more quickly. Yes, she must get to
it--she must put her hand on it--her chest began to rise and fall with a
quickening of her breath, and her breath quickened because her heart
fluttered--as if with her haste. She began to be glad, and if any one
could have seen her they would have been struck by a curious
expectant smile in her eyes.
She reached the landing and crossed it, running the last few steps
lightly. She did not wait or stand still a moment. With the strange
expectant smile on her lips as well as in her eyes, she put her hand upon
the door--not upon the handle, but upon the panel. Without any sound it
swung quietly open. And without any sound she stepped quietly inside.

The room was rather large and the light in it was dim. There were no
shutters, but the blinds were drawn down. Judith went to one of the
windows and drew its blind up so that the look of the place might be
clear to her. There were two windows and they opened upon the flat
roof of an extension, which