yet encountered strange representatives. Still, in all the substitutes
there seemed to me a reminiscence of what they replaced. They seemed
only for a time transmuted into other shapes, and there lingered around
them the atmosphere of what they once had been. Thus I could have sworn
the room to have been mine, yet there was nothing in it that I could
rightly claim. Everything reminded me of some former possession that it
was not. I looked for the acacia at the window, and lo! long silken
palm-leaves swayed in through the open lattice; yet they had the same
motion and the same air of my favourite tree, and seemed to murmur to
me, "Though we seem to be palm-leaves, yet are we acacia-leaves; yea,
those very ones on which you used to watch the butterflies alight and
the rain patter while you smoked and dreamed!" So in all things; the
room was, yet was not, mine; and a sickening consciousness of my utter
inability to reconcile its identity with its appearance overwhelmed me,
and choked my reason.
"Well, have you determined whether or not this is your room?" asked the
girl on my left, proffering me a huge tumbler creaming over with
champagne, and laughing wickedly as she spoke.
"It is mine," I answered, doggedly, striking the glass rudely with my
hand, and dashing the aromatic wine over the white cloth. "I know that
it is mine; and ye are jugglers and enchanters who want to drive me
mad."
"Hush! hush!" she said, gently, not in the least angered by my rough
treatment. "You are excited. Alf shall play something to soothe you."
At her signal, one of the men sat down at the organ. After a short,
wild, spasmodic prelude, he began what seemed to me to be a symphony of
recollections. Dark and sombre, and all through full of quivering and
intense agony, it appeared to recall a dark and dismal night, on a cold
reef, around which an unseen but terribly audible ocean broke with
eternal fury. It seemed as if a lonely pair were on the reef, one
living, the other dead; one clasping his arms around the tender neck and
naked bosom of the other, striving to warm her into life, when his own
vitality was being each moment sucked from him by the icy breath of the
storm. Here and there a terrible wailing minor key would tremble through
the chords like the shriek of sea-birds, or the warning of advancing
death. While the man played I could scarce restrain myself. It seemed to
be Blokeeta whom I listened to, and on whom I gazed. That wondrous night
of pleasure and pain that I had once passed listening to him seemed to
have been taken up again at the spot where it had broken off, and the
same hand was continuing it. I stared at the man called Alf. There he
sat with his cloak and doublet, and long rapier and mask of black
velvet. But there was something in the air of the peaked beard, a
familiar mystery in the wild mass of raven hair that fell as if
wind-blown over his shoulders, which riveted my memory.
"Blokeeta! Blokeeta!" I shouted, starting up furiously from the couch on
which I was lying, and bursting the fair arms that were linked around my
neck as if they had been hateful chains,--"Blokeeta! my friend! speak to
me, I entreat you! Tell these horrid enchanters to leave me. Say that I
hate them. Say that I command them to leave my room."
The man at the organ stirred not in answer to my appeal. He ceased
playing, and the dying sound of the last note he had touched faded off
into a melancholy moan. The other men and the women burst once more into
peals of mocking laughter.
"Why will you persist in calling this your room?" said the woman next
me, with a smile meant to be kind, but to me inexpressibly loathsome.
"Have we not shown you by the furniture, by the general appearance of
the place, that you are mistaken, and that this cannot be your
apartment? Rest content, then, with us. You are welcome here, and need
no longer trouble yourself about your room."
"Rest content!" I answered madly; "live with ghosts, eat of awful meats,
and see awful sights! Never! never! You have cast some enchantment over
the place that has disguised it; but for all that I know it to be my
room. You shall leave it!"
"Softly, softly!" said another of the sirens. "Let us settle this
amicably. This poor gentleman seems obstinate and inclined to make an
uproar. Now we do not want an uproar. We love the night and its quiet;
and there is no night that we love so well as that on which the moon is
coffined in clouds. Is it not so, my brothers?"
An awful and sinister smile gleamed on the countenances of her unearthly
audience, and seemed to glide visibly from underneath their masks.
"Now," she continued, "I have a proposition to make. It would be
ridiculous for us to surrender this room simply because this gentleman
states that it is his; and yet I feel anxious to gratify, as far as may
be fair, his wild assertion of ownership. A room, after all, is not much
to us; we can get one easily enough, but still we should be loath to
give this apartment up to so imperious a demand. We are willing,
however, to _risk_ its loss. That is to say,"--turning to me,--"I
propose that we play for the room. If you win, we will immediately
surrender it to you just as it stands; if, on the contrary, you lose,
you shall bind yourself to depart and never molest us again."
Agonized at the ever-darkening mysteries that seemed to thicken around
me, and despairing of being able to dissipate them by the mere exercise
of my own will, I caught almost gladly at the chance thus presented to
me. The idea of my loss or my gain scarce entered into my calculations.
All I felt was an indefinite knowledge that I might, in the way
proposed, regain in an instant, that quiet chamber and that peace of
mind of which I had so strangely been deprived.
"I agree!" I cried eagerly; "I agree. Anything to rid myself of such
unearthly company!"
The woman touched a small golden bell that stood near her on the table,
and it had scarce ceased to tinkle when a negro dwarf entered with a
silver tray on which were dice-boxes and dice. A shudder passed over me
as I thought in this stunted African I could trace a resemblance to the
ghoul-like black servant to whose attendance I had been accustomed.
"Now," said my neighbour, seizing one of the dice-boxes and giving me
the other, "the highest wins. Shall I throw first?"
I nodded assent. She rattled the dice, and I felt an inexpressible load
lifted from my heart as she threw fifteen.
"It is your turn," she said, with a mocking smile; "but before you
throw, I repeat the offer I made you before. Live with us. Be one of us.
We will initiate you into our mysteries and enjoyments,--enjoyments of
which you can form no idea unless you experience them. Come; it is not
too late yet to change your mind. Be with us!"
My reply was a fierce oath, as I rattled the dice with spasmodic
nervousness and flung them on the board. They rolled over and over
again, and during that brief instant I felt a suspense, the intensity of
which I have never known before or since. At last they lay before me. A
shout of the same horrible, maddening laughter rang in my ears. I peered
in vain at the dice, but my sight was so confused that I could not
distinguish the amount of the cast. This lasted for a few moments. Then
my sight grew clear, and I sank back almost lifeless with despair as I
saw that I had thrown but _twelve_!
"Lost! lost!" screamed my neighbour, with a wild laugh. "Lost! lost!"
shouted the deep voices of the masked men. "Leave us, coward!" they all
cried; "you are not fit to be one of us. Remember your promise; leave
us!"
Then it seemed as if some unseen power caught me by the shoulders and
thrust me toward the door. In vain I resisted. In vain I screamed and
shouted for help. In vain I implored them for pity. All the reply I had
was those mocking peals of merriment, while, under the invisible
influence, I staggered like a drunken man toward the door. As I reached
the threshold the organ pealed out a wild triumphal strain. The power
that impelled me concentrated itself into one vigorous impulse that sent
me blindly staggering out into the echoing corridor, and as the door
closed swiftly behind me, I caught one glimpse of the apartment I had
left forever. A change passed like a shadow over it. The lamps died out,
the siren women and masked men vanished, the flowers, the fruits, the
bright silver and bizarre furniture faded swiftly, and I saw again, for
the tenth of a second, my own old chamber restored. There was the acacia
waving darkly; there was the table littered with books; there was the
ghostly lithograph, the dearly beloved smoking-cap, the Canadian
snow-shoes, the ancestral dagger. And there, at the piano, organ no
longer, sat Blokeeta playing.
The next instant the door closed violently, and I was left standing in
the corridor stunned and despairing.
As soon as I had partially recovered my comprehension I rushed madly to
the door, with the dim idea of beating it in. My fingers touched a cold
and solid wall. There was no door! I felt all along the corridor for
many yards on both sides. There was not even a crevice to give me hope.
I rushed downstairs shouting madly. No one answered. In the vestibule I
met the negro; I seized him by the collar and demanded my room. The
demon showed his white and awful teeth, which were filed into a saw-like
shape, and extricating himself from my grasp with a sudden jerk, fled
down the passage with a gibbering laugh. Nothing but echo answered to my
despairing shrieks. The lonely garden resounded with my cries as I
strode madly through the dark walls, and the tall funereal cypresses
seemed to bury me beneath their heavy shadows. I met no one,--could find
no one. I had to bear my sorrow and despair alone.
Since that awful hour I have never found my room. Everywhere I look for
it, yet never see it. Shall I ever find it?