THE CLOSED DOOR
A long saturating peace, a deep and drenching darkness, had folded Harry
Sanderson. Dully at first, at length more insistently and sharply, a
rhythmic pulsing sound began to annoy the quietude. K-track, k-track,
k-track--it grew louder; it grew more momentous and material; it
irritated the calm that had wrapped the animate universe. Shreds of
confusing impression had begun to arrange themselves on a void of
nothingness, blurred inchoate images to struggle through a delicious
sensation of indifference and repose. Outlines were filling, contours
growing distinct; the brain was beginning to resume its interrupted
function. As though from an immeasurable distance he heard a low
continuous roar, and now and again, through the roar, nearer voices.
Harry awoke. His mind awoke, but his eyes did not open at once, for the
gentle swaying that cradled him was pleasant and the muffled clack and
hum soothed him like opium. He was as serenely comfortable as a
stevedore who dozes out of the long stupefaction of exhaustion to the
realization that the day is a holiday. His blood was coursing like
quicksilver. He felt a buoyancy, a volatile pleasure, a sense of
complete emancipation from all that clogged and cloyed--the sensuous
delight of the full pulse and the perfect bodily mechanism.
He opened his eyes.
It was daylight. He was lying on dusty boards that rattled and vibrated
beneath him--the floor of an empty freight car in motion. The sliding
door was part-way open, and through it was borne the moist air of a
river bay and the purring wash of the tide. A small brown dog, an
abject, muddied and shivering morsel, was snuggled close to his side. It
whined, as if with joy to see his eyes opened, and its stubby tail beat
the floor.
Harry turned his head. Two men in dingy garments were seated on the
floor a little distance away, thumbing a decrepit pack of cards over an
empty box. He could see both side-faces, one weather-beaten and
good-humored, the other crafty--knights of the road.
The sudden movement had sent a momentary twinge to his temple; he put up
his hand--it touched a coarse handkerchief that had been bound tightly
about it. The corner hung down--it was soiled and stiff with blood. What
was he doing there? Where was he? _Who was he?_
It came to him with a start that he actually for the moment did not
know who he was--that he had ridiculously slipped the leash of his
identity. He smiled at his predicament. He would lie quietly for a few
moments and it would come: of course it would come!
Yet it did not come, though he lay many moments, the fingers of his mind
fumbling for the latch of the closed door. He had waked perfectly
well--all save the slight cut on his temple, and that was clearly
superficial, a mere scratch. Not a trouble or anxiety marred his soul;
his mind was as clear and light as a lark's. Body and brain together
felt as if they had never had a serious ache in the world. But all that
had preceded his awakening was gone from him as completely as though it
had had no existence. His mind, so far as memory of incident was
concerned, was wiped clean, as a wet sponge wipes off a slate. Yet he
felt no trouble or anxiety. That part of his brain which had vibrated to
these emotions was, as it were, under a curious anesthesia. Goaded and
overkeyed into a state of hypertension, it had retaliated with
insensibility. All that had vexed and hurt was gone into the limbo with
its own disturbing memories.
Stealthily he rose to a sitting posture and, with a frown of humorous
perplexity, took a swift and silent inventory. Here he was, in a
freight car, speeding somewhere or other, with a sore and damaged skull.
The dog clearly belonged to him, or he to the dog--there was an old
intimacy in the fawning fondness of the amber eyes. Yonder were two
tramps, diverting themselves in their own way, irresponsible and
questionable birds of passage. He scanned his own clothing. It was
little better than theirs. His coat was threadbare, and with mud, oil
and coal-dust, was in a more disreputable state. His wristbands were
grimy, and one cuff-link had been torn away. He had no hat.
He bethought himself of his pockets, and went through them methodically
one by one. They yielded several dollars in coin, a penknife and a tiny
gold cross, but not a letter, not a scrap of paper, nothing to serve
him. The gleam of a ring on his finger caught his eye; he rubbed away
the dirt and carefully examined it, wondering if the stone was real. His
hand was slightly cut and swollen, and the circlet would not come off,
but by shifting it slightly he could see the white depression made by
long wear. The setting was an odd one, formed of the twisted letters H.
S. Those naturally should be his initials, but there he stopped. He
repeated to himself all the names he could think of beginning with S,
but they told him nothing.
He looked himself over again, carefully, reflectively--many a time of
old he had regarded himself with the same amused, fastidious tolerance
when dressed for a "slumming" expedition--his head a little to one side,
the ghost of a smile on his lips. He put out his hand and laid it on the
spaniel's head.
Its rough tongue licked his fingers; it held up one forepaw mutely and
lamely. He drew the feverish, dirty little creature into his lap and
examined the limp member. It was broken.
"Poor little beggar!" said he under his breath. "So you've been knocked
out, too!" With his knife he cut a piece from the lining of his coat and
with a splinter of wood from the floor he set the fractured bone and
wrapped the leg tightly. The dog submitted without a whimper, and when
he set it down, it lay quietly beside him, watching him with
affectionate canine solicitude.
"I wonder who we are, you and I," muttered Harry Sanderson whimsically.
"I wonder!"
His gaze turned to where he could see the sunshine dancing and
shimmering from the tremulous water. He sniffed the warm air--it was
clear and sweet. Not a cloud was in the perfect sky. How fine he felt,
broken head and all!
He looked across the car, where the card players were still absorbed.
Over the shoulder of one he could see the hand he held--a queen, two
aces, a seven and a deuce. For an instant something in his brain snapped
and crackled like the sputtering spark of an incomplete insulation--for
an instant the fingers almost touched the latch of the closed door. Then
the sensation faded, and left a blank as before. He rose to his feet and
walked forward.
The players looked around. One of them nodded approvingly.
"Right as a trivet!" he said. "I made a pretty good job of that cut of
yours. Hurt you much?"
"No," said Harry. "I'm obliged to you for the attention."
"Foolish to walk on a railroad track," the other went on. "By your
looks, you've been on the road long enough to know better. We figgered
it out that you was just a-going to cross the railroad bridge when the
freight raised merry hell with you. We stopped to tank there and we
picked you up, you and your four-legged mate. Must have been a bit
squiffy, eh?"
He winked, and took a flask from his pocket. "Have a hair of the dog
that bit you?" he said.
Harry took the flask, and, wiping the top on his sleeve, uncorked it.
Something in the penetrating odor of the contents seemed to cleave
through far mental wastes to an intimate, though mysterious goal. He put
it to his lips and drank thirstily.
As the burning liquid scorched his throat, a recrudescence of old
impulses surged up through the crust of more modern usage. Mentally,
characteristically, he was once more the incongruous devil-may-care
figure in whom conspicuous achievement and contradictory excesses had
walked hand in hand. The Harry Sanderson of the new, remorseful,
temperate life, of chastened impulses, of rote and rule and reformed
habit--the rector of St. James--had been lost on that wild night ride.
The man who had awakened in the freight car was the Satan Sanderson of
four years before, who, under stress of mental illness and its warped
purview, in that strenuous scene in the chapel, had regained his ancient
governance.
Harry handed back the flask with a long breath. There was a composed yet
reckless light in his eye--the old veiled gleam of vagary, and paradox,
and escapade. He seated himself beside them.
"Thank you," he said. "With your permission, gentlemen, I will take a
hand in the game."