In the gallery, the instinct of self-preservation helped him to
turn back and sign to young Rainer not to follow. He stammered out
something about a touch of dizziness, and joining them presently;
and the boy waved an unsuspecting hand and drew back.
At the foot of the stairs Faxon ran against a servant. "I should
like to telephone to Weymore," he said with dry lips.
"Sorry, sir; wires all down. We've been trying the last hour to
get New York again for Mr. Lavington."
Faxon shot on to his room, burst into it, and bolted the door. The
mild lamplight lay on furniture, flowers, books, in the ashes a
log still glimmered. He dropped down on the sofa and hid his face.
The room was utterly silent, the whole house was still: nothing
about him gave a hint of what was going on, darkly and dumbly, in
the horrible room he had flown from, and with the covering of his
eyes oblivion and reassurance seemed to fall on him. But they fell
for a moment only; then his lids opened again to the monstrous
vision. There it was, stamped on his pupils, a part of him
forever, an indelible horror burnt into his body and brain. But
why into his--just his? Why had he alone been chosen to see what
he had seen? What business was it of HIS, in God's name! Any one
of the others, thus enlightened, might have exposed the horror and
defeated it; but HE, the one weaponless and defenceless spectator,
the one whom none of the others would believe or understand if he
attempted to reveal what he knew--HE alone had been singled out as
the victim of this atrocious initiation!
Suddenly he sat up, listening: he had heard a step on the stairs.
Some one, no doubt, was coming to see how he was--to urge him, if
he felt better, to go down and join the smokers. Cautiously he
opened his door; yes, it was young Rainer's step. Faxon looked
down the passage, remembered the other stairway and darted to it.
All he wanted was to get out of the house. Not another instant
would he breathe its abominable air! What business was it of HIS,
in God's name?
He reached the opposite end of the lower gallery, and beyond it
saw the hall by which, he had entered. It was empty, and on a long
table he recognized his coat and cap among the furs of the other
travellers. He got into his coat, unbolted the door, and plunged
into the purifying night.
The darkness was deep, and the cold so intense that for an instant
it stopped his breathing. Then he perceived that only a thin snow
was falling, and resolutely set his face for flight. The trees
along the avenue dimly marked his way as he hastened with long
strides over the beaten snow. Gradually, while he walked, the
tumult in his brain subsided. The impulse to fly still drove him
forward, but he began to feel that he was flying from a terror of
his own creating, and that the most urgent reason for escape was
the need of hiding his state, of shunning other eyes' scrutiny
till he should regain his balance.
He had spent the long hours in the train in fruitless broodings on
a discouraging situation, and he remembered how his bitterness had
turned to exasperation when he found that the Weymore sleigh was
not awaiting him. It was absurd, of course; but, though he had
joked with Rainer over Mrs. Culme's forgetfulness, to confess it
had cost a pang. That was what his rootless life had brought him
to: for lack of a personal stake in things his sensibility was at
the mercy of such trivial accidents. ... Yes; that, and the cold
and fatigue, the absence of hope and the haunting sense of starved
aptitudes, all these had brought him to the perilous verge over
which, once or twice before, his terrified brain had hung.
Why else, in the name of any imaginable logic, human or devilish,
should he, a stranger, be singled out for this experience? What
could it mean to him, how was he related to it, what bearing had
it on his case? ... Unless, indeed, it was just because he was a
stranger-a stranger everywhere--because he had no personal life,
no warm strong screen of private egotisms to shield him from
exposure, that he had developed this abnormal sensitiveness to the
vicissitudes of others. The thought pulled him up with a shudder.
No! Such a fate was too abominable; all that was strong and sound
in him rejected it. A thousand times better regard himself as ill,
disorganized, deluded, than as the predestined victim of such
warnings!
He reached the gates and paused before the darkened lodge. The
wind had risen and was sweeping the snow into his face in
lacerating streamers. The cold had him in its grasp again, and he
stood uncertain. Should he put his sanity to the test and go back?
He turned and looked down the dark drive to the house. A single
ray shone through the trees, evoking a picture of the lights, the
flowers, the faces grouped about that fatal room. He turned and
plunged out into the road.
He remembered that, about a mile from Overdale, the coachman had
pointed out the road to Northridge; and he began to walk in that
direction. Once in the road, he had the gale in his face, and the
wet snow on his moustache and eye-lashes instantly hardened to
metal. The same metal seemed to be driving a million blades into
his throat and lungs, but he pushed on, desperately determined,
the vision of the warm room pursuing him.
The snow in the road was deep and uneven. He stumbled across ruts
and sank into drifts, and the wind rose before him like a granite
cliff. Now and then he stopped, gasping, as if an invisible hand
had tightened an iron band about his body; then he started again,
stiffening himself against the stealthy penetration of the cold.
The snow continued to descend out of a pall of inscrutable
darkness, and once or twice he paused, fearing he had missed the
road to Northridge; but, seeing no sign of a turn, he ploughed on
doggedly.
At last, feeling sure that he had walked for more than a mile, he
halted and looked back. The act of turning brought immediate
relief, first because it put his back to the wind, and then
because, far down the road, it showed him the advancing gleam of a
lantern. A sleigh was coming--a sleigh that might perhaps give him
a lift to the village! Fortified by the hope, he began to walk
back toward the light. It seemed to come forward very slowly, with
unaccountable zigzags and waverings; and even when he was within a
few yards of it he could catch no sound of sleigh-bells. Then the
light paused and became stationary by the roadside, as though
carried by a pedestrian who had stopped, exhausted by the cold.
The thought made Faxon hasten on, and a moment later he was
stooping over a motionless figure huddled against the snow-bank.
The lantern had dropped from its bearer's hand, and Faxon,
fearfully raising it, threw its light into the face of Frank
Rainer.
"Rainer! What on earth are you doing here!"
The boy smiled back through his pallor. "What are YOU, I'd like to
know?" he retorted; and, scrambling to his feet with a clutch on
Faxon's arm, he added gaily: "Well, I've run you down, anyhow!"
Faxon stood confounded, his heart sinking. The lad's face was
gray.
"What madness--" he began.
"Yes, it IS. What on earth did you do it for?"
"I? Do what? ... Why, I ... I was just taking a walk. ... I often
walk at night. ..."
Frank Rainer burst into a laugh. "On such nights? Then you hadn't
bolted!"
"Bolted?"
"Because I'd done something to offend you? My uncle thought you
had."