The Abandoned Room | Page 8

but
through that mental turmoil tore the thought of Graham and his
intention of going to the Cedars. With shaking fingers he dragged out
his watch. He couldn't read the dial. He braced his hands against the
table, thrust back his chair, and arose. The room tumbled about him.
Before his eyes the dancers made long nebulous bands of colour in
which nothing had form or coherence. Instinctively he felt he hadn't
dined recklessly enough to account for these amazing symptoms. He
was suddenly afraid.
"Carlos!" he whispered.
He heard Maria's voice dimly:
"Take him home."
A hand touched his arm. With a supreme effort of will he walked from

the room, guided by the hand on his arm. And always his brain
recorded fewer and fewer impressions for his memory to struggle with
later.
At the cloak room some one helped him put on his coat. He was
walking down steps. He was in some kind of a conveyance. He didn't
know what it was. An automobile, a carriage, a train? He didn't know.
He only understood that it went swiftly, swaying from side to side
through a sable pit. Whenever his mind moved at all it came back to
that sensation of a black pit in which he remained suspended, swinging
from side to side, trying to struggle up against impossible odds. Once
or twice words flashed like fire through the pit: "Tyrant!--Fool to go."
From a long immersion deeper in the pit he struggled frantically. He
must get out. Somehow he must find wings. He realized that his eyes
were closed. He tried to open them and failed. So the pit persisted and
he surrendered himself, as one accepts death, to its hateful blackness.
Abruptly he experienced a momentary release. There was no more
swaying, no more movement of any kind. He heard a strange,
melancholy voice, whispering without words, always whispering with a
futile perseverance as if it wished him to understand something it could
not express.
"What is it trying to tell me?" he asked himself.
Then he understood. It was the voice of the wind, and it tried to tell him
to open his eyes, and he found that he could. But in spite of his desire
they closed again almost immediately. Yet, from that swift glimpse, a
picture outlined itself later in his memory.
In the midst of wild, rolling clouds, the moon was a drowning face.
Stunted trees bent before the wind like puny men who strained
impotently to advance. Over there was one more like a real man--a
figure, Bobby thought, with a black thing over its face--a mask.
"This is the forest near the Cedars," Bobby said to himself. "I've come
to face the old devil after all."

He heard his own voice, harsh, remote, unnatural, speaking to the dim
figure with a black mask that waited half hidden by the straining trees.
"Why am I here in the woods near the Cedars?"
And he thought the thing answered:
"Because you hate your grandfather."
Bobby laughed, thinking he understood. The figure in the black mask
that accompanied him was his conscience. He could understand why it
went masked.
The wind resumed its whispering. The figures, straining like puny men,
fought harder. The drowning face disappeared, wet and helpless. Bobby
felt himself sinking back, back into the sable pit.
"I don't want to go," he moaned.
A long time afterward he heard a whisper again, and he wondered if it
was the wind or his conscience. He laughed through the blackness
because the words seemed so absurd.
"Take off your shoes and carry them in your hand. Always do that. It is
the only safe way."
He laughed again, thinking:
"What a careful conscience!"
He retained only one more impression. He was dully aware that some
time had passed. He shivered. He thought the wind had grown angry
with him, for it no longer whispered. It shrieked, and he could make
nothing of its wrath. He struggled frantically to emerge from the pit.
The quality of the blackness deepened. His fright grew. He felt himself
slipping, slowly at first then faster, faster down into impossible depths,
and there was nothing at all he could do to save himself.
* * * * *

"Go away! For God's sake, go away!"
Bobby thought he was speaking to the sombre figure in the mask. His
voice aroused him to one more effort at escape, but he felt that there
was no use. He was too deep.
Something hurt his eyes. He opened them and for a time was blinded
by a narrow shaft, of sunlight resting on his face. With an effort he
moved his head to one side and closed his eyes again, at first merely
thankful that he had escaped from the black hell,