Fitz-James O'Brien Read online

  “How I know them? Because I am their enemy. Because they tremble at my whisper. Because I hang upon their track with the perseverance of a blood-hound and the stealthiness of a tiger—because—because—I was of them once!”

  “Wretch!” I cried, excitedly, for involuntarily his eager tones had wrought me up to a high pitch of spasmodic nervousness, “then you mean to say that you—”

  As I uttered this word, obeying an uncontrollable impulse, I stretched forth my hand in the direction of the speaker and made a blind clutch. The tips of my fingers seemed to touch a surface as smooth as glass, that glided suddenly from under them. A sharp, angry hiss sounded through the gloom, followed by a whirring noise, as if some projectile passed rapidly by, and the next moment I felt instinctively that I was alone.

  A most disagreeable sensation instantly assailed me. A prophetic instinct that some terrible misfortune menaced me; an eager and overpowering anxiety to get back to my own room without loss of time. I turned and ran blindly along the dark cypress alley, every dusky clump of flowers that arose blackly in the borders making my heart each moment cease to beat. The echoes of my own footsteps seemed to redouble and assume the sounds of unknown pursuers following fast upon my track. The boughs of lilac-bushes and syringas that here and there stretched partly across the walk seemed to have been furnished suddenly with hooked hands that sought to grasp me as I flew by, and each moment I expected to behold some awful and impassable barrier fall right across my track, and wall me up forever.

  At length I reached the wide entrance. With a single leap I sprang up the four or five steps that formed the stoop, and dashing along the hall, up the wide, echoing stairs, and again along the dim funereal corridors until I paused, breathless and panting, at the door of my room. Once so far, I stopped for an instant and leaned heavily against one of the panels, panting lustily after my late run. I had, however, scarcely rested my whole weight against the door, when it suddenly gave way, and I staggered in head foremost. To my utter astonishment the room that I had left in profound darkness was now a blaze of light. So intense was the illumination that, for a few seconds while the pupils of my eyes were contracting under the sudden change, I saw absolutely nothing save the dazzling glare. This fact in itself coming on me with such utter suddenness, was sufficient to prolong my confusion and it was not until after several moments had elapsed that I perceived the room was not alone illuminated but occupied. And such occupants! Amazement at the scene took such possession of me that I was incapable of either moving or uttering a word. All that I could do was to lean against the wall, and stare blankly at the whole business.

  It might have been a scene out of Faublas, or Grammont’s Memoirs, or happened in some palace of Minister Fouque.

  Round a large table in the centre of the room, where I had left a student-like litter of books and papers, were seated half a dozen persons. Three were men, and three were women. The table was heaped with a prodigality of luxuries. Luscious Eastern fruits were piled up in silver filagree vases, through whose meshes their glowing rinds shone in the contrasts of a thousand hues. Small silver dishes that Benvenuto might have designed, filled with succulent and aromatic meats, were distributed upon a cloth of snowy damask. Bottles of every shape, slender ones from the Rhine, stout fellows from Holland, sturdy ones from Spain, and quaint basket-woven flasks from Italy, absolutely littered the board. Drinking glasses of every size and hue filled up the interstices, and the thirsty German flagon stood side by side with the aerial bubbles of Venetian glass that rested so lightly on their thread-like stems. An odor of luxury and sensuality floated through the apartment. The lamps that burned in every vacant spot where room for one could be found, seemed to diffuse a subtle incense on the air, and in a large vase that stood on the floor I saw a mass of magnolias, tuberoses, and jasmines grouped together, stifling each other with their honeyed and heavy fragrance.

  The inhabitants of my room seemed beings well suited to so sensual an atmosphere. The women were strangely beautiful, and all were attired in dresses of the most fantastic devices and brilliant hues. Their figures were round, supple, and elastic; their eyes dark and languishing; their lips full, ripe, and of the richest bloom. The three men wore halfmasks, so that all I could distinguish were heavy jaws, pointed beards, and brawny throats that rose like massive pillars out of their doublets. All six lay reclining on Roman couches about the table, drinking down the purple wines in large draughts, and tossing back their heads and laughing wildly.

  I stood, I suppose, for some three minutes, with my back against the wall staring vacantly at the bacchanal vision, before any of the revelers appeared to notice my presence. At length, without any expression to indicate whether I had been observed from the beginning or not, two of the women arose from their couches, and, approaching, took each a hand and led me to the table. I obeyed their motions mechanically. I sat on a couch between them as they indicated. I unresistingly permitted them to wind their arms about my neck.

  “You must drink,” said one, pouring out a large glass of red wine, “here is Clos Vougeot of a rare vintage; and here,” pushing a flask of amber-hued wine before me, “is Lachrima Christa.”

  “You must eat,” said the other, drawing the silver dishes toward her. “Here are cutlets stewed with olives, and here are slices of a filet stuffed with bruised sweet chestnuts;” and as she spoke, she, without waiting for a reply, proceeded to help me.

  The sight of the food recalled to me the warnings I had received in the garden. This sudden effort of memory restored to me my other faculties at the same instant. I sprang to my feet, thrusting the women from me with each hand.

  “Demons!” I almost shouted, “I will have none of your accursed food. I know you. You are cannibals, you are ghouls, you are enchanters. Begone, I tell you! Leave my room in peace!”

  A shout of laughter from all six was the only effect that my passionate speech produced. The men rolled on their couches, and their halfmasks quivered with the convulsions of their mirth. The women shrieked, and tossed the slender wine-glasses wildly aloft, and turned to me and flung themselves on my bosom, fairly sobbing with laughter.

  “Yes,” I continued, as soon as the noisy mirth had subsided, “yes, I say, leave my room instantly! I will have none of your unnatural orgies here!”

  “His room!” shrieked the woman on my right.

  “His room!” echoed she on my left.

  “His room! He calls it his room!” shouted the whole party, as they rolled once more into jocular convulsions.

  “How know you that it is your room?” said one of the men who sat opposite to me, at length, after the laughter had once more somewhat subsided.

  “How do I know?” I replied, indignantly, “How do I know my own room? How could I mistake it, pray? There’s my furniture—my piano—”

  “He calls that a piano!” shouted my neighbors, again in convulsions as I pointed to the corner where my huge piano, sacred to the memory of Blokeeta, used to stand. “Oh, yes! It is his room. There—there is his piano!”

  The peculiar emphasis they laid on the word “piano” caused me to scrutinize the article I was indicating more thoroughly. Up to this time, though utterly amazed at the entrance of these people into my chamber, and connecting them somewhat with the wild stories I had heard in the garden, I still had a sort of indefinite idea that the whole thing was a masquerading freak got up in my absence, and that the bacchanalian orgy I was witnessing was nothing more than a portion of some elaborate hoax of which I was to be the victim. But when my eyes turned to the corner where I had left a huge and cumbrous piano, and beheld a vast and sombre organ lifting its fluted front to the very ceiling, and convinced myself, by a hurried process of memory, that it occupied the very spot in which I had left my own instrument, the little self-possession that I had left forsook me. I gazed around me bewildered.

  In like manner every thing was changed. In the place of that old haftless dagger, connected with so many historic associations persona
l to myself, I beheld a Turkish yataghan dangling by its belt of crimson silk, while the jewels in the hilt blazed as the lamplight played upon them. In the spot where hung my cherished smoking-cap, memorial of a buried love, a knightly casque was suspended, on the crest of which a golden dragon stood in the act of springing. That strange lithograph by Calame was no longer a lithograph, but it seemed to me that the portion of the wall which it had covered, of the exact shape and size, had been cut out, and, in place of the picture, a real scene on the same scale, and with real actors, was distinctly visible. The old oak was there, and the stormy sky was there; but I saw the branches of the oak sway with the tempest, and the clouds drive before the wind. The wanderer in his cloak was gone; but in his place I beheld a circle of wild figures, men and women, dancing with linked hands around the bole of the great tree, chanting some wild fragment of a song, to which the winds roared an unearthly chorus. The snow-shoes, too, on whose sinewy woof I had sped for many days amidst Canadian wastes, had vanished, and in their place lay a pair of strange up-curled papooshes, that had, perhaps, been many a time shuffled off at the doors of mosques, beneath the steady blaze of an Orient sun.

  All was changed. Wherever my eyes turned they missed familiar objects, 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. Every thing 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 favorite 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 that want to drive me mad.”

  “Hush hush!” she said, gently, not in the least angered at my rough treatment. “You are excited. Alf shall play something to soothe you.”

  At her signal one of the men arose and 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 roof, 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 been 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 furious 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 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 can not 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 would be loth 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 over-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, which I had so strangely been deprived of.

  “I agree!” I cried, eagerly; “I agree. Any thing 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 shuddered 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 neighbor, 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. 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 cou
ld 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 neighbor, 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 were 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 beat against 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 down stairs 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 walks, 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.