Title: The Red Room
Author: Wells, H. G. (Herbert George), 1866-1946
Language: English
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THE RED ROOM

By H. G. Wells


"It's your own choosing," said the man with the withered arm once more.

I heard the faint sound of a stick and a shambling step on the flags in
the passage outside. The door creaked on its hinges as a second old man
entered, more bent, more wrinkled, more aged even than the first. He
supported himself by the help of a crutch, his eyes were covered by
a shade, and his lower lip, half averted, hung pale and pink from his
decaying yellow teeth. He made straight for an armchair on the opposite
side of the table, sat down clumsily, and began to cough. The man with
the withered hand gave the newcomer a short glance of positive dislike;
the old woman took no notice of his arrival, but remained with her eyes
fixed steadily on the fire.

"I said--it's your own choosing," said the man with the withered hand,
when the coughing had ceased for a while.

"It's my own choosing," I answered.

The man with the shade became aware of my presence for the first time,
and threw his head back for a moment, and sidewise, to see me. I caught
a momentary glimpse of his eyes, small and bright and inflamed. Then he
began to cough and splutter again.

"Why don't you drink?" said the man with the withered arm, pushing the
beer toward him. The man with the shade poured out a glassful with a
shaking hand, that splashed half as much again on the deal table. A
monstrous shadow of him crouched upon the wall, and mocked his action
as he poured and drank. I must confess I had scarcely expected these
grotesque custodians. There is, to my mind, something inhuman in
senility, something crouching and atavistic; the human qualities seem
to drop from old people insensibly day by day. The three of them made me
feel uncomfortable with their gaunt silences, their bent carriage,
their evident unfriendliness to me and to one another. And that night,
perhaps, I was in the mood for uncomfortable impressions. I resolved to
get away from their vague fore-shadowings of the evil things upstairs.

"If," said I, "you will show me to this haunted room of yours, I will
make myself comfortable there."

The old man with the cough jerked his head back so suddenly that it
startled me, and shot another glance of his red eyes at me from out of
the darkness under the shade, but no one answered me. I waited a minute,
glancing from one to the other. The old woman stared like a dead body,
glaring into the fire with lack-lustre eyes.

"If," I said, a little louder, "if you will show me to this haunted room
of yours, I will relieve v you from the task of entertaining me."

"There's a candle on the slab outside the door," said the man with the
withered hand, looking at my feet as he addressed me. "But if you go to
the Red Room to-night--"

"This night of all nights!" said the old woman, softly.

"--You go alone."

"Very well," I answered, shortly, "and which way do I go?"

"You go along the passage for a bit," said he, nodding his head on his
shoulder at the door, "until you come to a spiral staircase; and on the
second landing is a door covered with green baize. Go through that, and
down the long corridor to the end, and the Red Room is on your left up
the steps."

"Have I got that right?" I said, and repeated his directions.

He corrected me in one particular.

"And you are really going?" said the man with the shade, looking at me
again for the third time with that queer, unnatural tilting of the face.

"This night of all nights!" whispered the old woman.

"It is what I came for," I said, and moved toward the door. As I did so,
the old man with the shade rose and staggered round the table, so as to
be closer to the others and to the fire. At the door I turned and
looked at them, and saw they were all close together, dark against the
firelight, staring at me over their shoulders, with an intent expression
on their ancient faces.

"Good-night," I said, setting the door open.. "It's your own choosing,"
said the man with the withered arm.

I left the door wide open until the candle was well alight, and then I
shut them in, and walked down the chilly, echoing passage.

I must confess that the oddness of these three old pensioners in
whose charge her ladyship had left the castle, and the deep-toned,
old-fashioned furniture of the housekeeper's room, in which they
foregathered, had affected me curiously in spite of my effort to keep
myself at a matter-of-fact phase. They seemed to belong to another age,
an older age, an age when things spiritual were indeed to be feared,
when common sense was uncommon, an age when omens and witches were
credible, and ghosts beyond denying. Their very existence, thought I, is
spectral; the cut of their clothing, fashions born in dead brains; the
ornaments and conveniences in the room about them even are ghostly--the
thoughts of vanished men, which still haunt rather than participate in
the world of to-day. And the passage I was in, long and shadowy, with
a film of moisture glistening on the wall, was as gaunt and cold as a
thing that is dead and rigid. But with an effort I sent such thoughts
to the right-about. The long, drafty subterranean passage was chilly and
dusty, and my candle flared and made the shadows cower and quiver. The
echoes rang up and down the spiral staircase, and a shadow came sweeping
up after me, and another fled before me into the darkness overhead. I
came to the wide landing and stopped there for a moment listening to a
rustling that I fancied I heard creeping behind me, and then, satisfied
of the absolute silence, pushed open the unwilling baize-covered door
and stood in the silent corridor.

The effect was scarcely what I expected, for the moonlight, coming in by
the great window on the grand staircase, picked out everything in vivid
black shadow or reticulated silvery illumination. Everything seemed in
its proper position; the house might have been deserted on the yesterday
instead of twelve months ago. There were candles in the sockets of
the sconces, and whatever dust had gathered on the carpets or upon the
polished flooring was distributed so evenly as to be invisible in my
candlelight. A waiting stillness was over everything. I was about to
advance, and stopped abruptly. A bronze group stood upon the landing
hidden from me by a corner of the wall; but its shadow fell with
marvelous distinctness upon the white paneling, and gave me the
impression of some one crouching to waylay me. The thing jumped upon
my attention suddenly. I stood rigid for half a moment, perhaps. Then,
with my hand in the pocket that held the revolver, I advanced, only
to discover a Ganymede and Eagle, glistening in the moonlight. That
incident for a time restored my nerve, and a dim porcelain Chinaman on a
buhl table, whose head rocked as I passed, scarcely startled me.

The door of the Red Room and the steps up to it were in a shadowy
corner. I moved my candle from side to side in order to see clearly the
nature of the recess in which I stood, before opening the door. Here it
was, thought I, that my predecessor was found, and the memory of
that story gave me a sudden twinge of apprehension. I glanced over my
shoulder at the black Ganymede in the moonlight, and opened the door
of the Red Room rather hastily, with my face half turned to the pallid
silence of the corridor.

I entered, closed the door behind me at once, turned the key I found
in the lock within, and stood with the candle held aloft surveying the
scene of my vigil, the great Red Room of Lorraine Castle, in which the
young Duke had died; or rather in which he had begun his dying, for
he had opened the door and fallen headlong down the steps I had just
ascended. That had been the end of his vigil, of his gallant attempt to
conquer the ghostly tradition of the place, and never, I thought, had
apoplexy better served the ends of superstition. There were other
and older stories that clung to the room, back to the half-incredible
beginning of it all, the tale of a timid wife and the tragic end that
came to her husband's jest of frightening her. And looking round that
huge shadowy room with its black window bays, its recesses and alcoves,
its dusty brown-red hangings and dark gigantic furniture, one could
well understand the legends that had sprouted in its black corners, its
germinating darknesses. My candle was a little tongue of light in the
vastness of the chamber; its rays failed to pierce to the opposite
end of the room, and left an ocean of dull red mystery and suggestion,
sentinel shadows and watching darknesses beyond its island of light. And
the stillness of desolation brooded over it all.

I must confess some impalpable quality of that ancient room disturbed
me. I tried to fight the feeling down. I resolved to make a systematic
examination of the place, and so, by leaving nothing to the imagination,
dispel the fanciful suggestions of the obscurity before they obtained
a hold upon me. After satisfying myself of the fastening of the door, I
began to walk round the room, peering round each article of furniture,
tucking up the valances of the bed and opening its curtains wide. In
one place there was a distinct echo to my footsteps, the noises I made
seemed so little that they enhanced rather than broke the silence of the
place. I pulled up the blinds and examined the fastenings of the several
windows. Attracted by the fall of a particle of dust, I leaned forward
and looked up the blackness of the wide chimney. Then, trying to
preserve my scientific attitude of mind, I walked round and began
tapping the oak paneling for any secret opening, but I desisted before
reaching the alcove. I saw my face in a mirror--white.

There were two big mirrors in the room, each with a pair of sconces
bearing candles, and on the mantelshelf, too, were candles in china
candle-sticks. All these I lit one after the other. The fire was
laid--an unexpected consideration from the old housekeeper--and I lit
it, to keep down any disposition to shiver, and when it was burning
well I stood round with my back to it and regarded the room again. I
had pulled up a chintz-covered armchair and a table to form a kind of
barricade before me. On this lay my revolver, ready to hand. My precise
examination had done me a little good, but J still found the remoter
darkness of the place and its perfect stillness too stimulating for the
imagination. The echoing of the stir and crackling of the fire was * no
sort of comfort to me. The shadow in the alcove at the end of the
room began to display that undefinable quality of a presence, that odd
suggestion of a lurking living thing that comes so easily in silence
and solitude. And to reassure myself, I walked with a candle into it
and satisfied myself that there was nothing tangible there. I stood that
candle upon the floor of the alcove and left it in that position.

By this time I was in a state of considerable nervous tension, although
to my reason there was no adequate cause for my condition. My mind,
however, was perfectly clear. I postulated quite unreservedly that
nothing supernatural could happen, and to pass the time I began
stringing some rhymes together, Ingoldsby fashion, concerning the
original legend of the place. A few I spoke aloud, but the echoes were
not pleasant* For the same reason I also abandoned, after a time, a
conversation with myself upon the impossibility of ghosts and haunting.
My mind reverted to the three old and distorted people downstairs, and I
tried to keep it upon that topic.

The sombre reds and grays of the room troubled me; even with its seven
candles the place was merely dim. The light in the alcove flaring in
a draft, and the fire flickering, kept the shadows and penumbra
perpetually shifting and stirring in a noiseless flighty dance. Casting
# about for a remedy, I recalled the wax candles I had seen in the
corridor, and, with a slight effort, carrying a candle and leaving the
door open, I walked out into the moonlight, and presently returned with
as many as ten. These I put in the various knick-knacks of china with
which the room was sparsely adorned, and lit and placed them where
the shadows had lain deepest, some on the floor, some in the window
recesses, arranging and rearranging them until at last my seventeen
candles were so placed that not an inch of the room but had the direct
light of at least one of them. It occurred to me that when the ghost
came I could warn him not to trip over them. The room was now quite
brightly illuminated. There was something very cheering and reassuring
in these little silent streaming flames, and to notice their steady
diminution of length offered me an occupation and gave me a reassuring
sense of the passage of time.

Even with that, however, the brooding expectation of the vigil weighed
heavily enough upon me. I stood watching the minute hand of my watch
creep towards midnight.

Then something happened in the alcove. I did not see the candle go out,
I simply turned and saw that the darkness was there, as one might start
#and see the unexpected presence of a stranger. The black shadow had
sprung back to its place. "By Jove," said I aloud, recovering from my
surprise, "that draft's a strong one;" and taking the matchbox from^he
table, I walked across the room in a leisurely manner to relight the
corner again. My first match would not strike, and as I succeeded with
the second, something seemed to blink on the wall before me. I turned my
head involuntarily and saw that the two candles on the little table by
the fireplace were extinguished. I rose at once to my feet.

"Odd," I said. "Did I do that myself in a flash of absent-mindedness?"

I walked back, relit one, and as I did so I saw the candle in the
right sconce of one of the mirrors wink and go right out, and almost
immediately its companion followed it. The flames vanished as if the
wick had been suddenly nipped between a finger and thumb, leaving the
wick neither glowing nor smoking, but black. While I stood gaping the
candle at the foot of the bed went out, and the shadows seemed to take
another step toward me.

"This won't do!" said I, and first one and then another candle on the
mantelshelf followed.

"What's up?" I cried, with a queer high note getting into my voice
somehow. At that the candle on the corner of the wardrobe went out, and
the one I had relit in the alcove followed.

"Steady on!" I said, "those candles are wanted," speaking with a
half-hysterical facetiousness, and scratching away at a match the
while, "for the mantel candlesticks." My hands trembled so much that
twice I missed the rough paper of the matchbox. As the mantel emerged
from darkness again, two candles in the remoter end of the room were
eclipsed. But with the same match I also relit the larger mirror
candles, and those on the floor near the doorway, so that for the moment
I seemed to gain on the extinctions. But then in a noiseless volley
there vanished four lights at once in different corners of the room, and
I struck another match in quivering haste, and stood hesitating whither
to take it.

As I stood undecided, an invisible hand seemed to sweep out the two
candles on the table. With a cry of terror I dashed at the alcove, then
into the corner and then into the window, relighting three as two more
vanished by the fireplace, and then, perceiving a better way, I dropped
matches on the iron-bound deedbox in the corner, and caught up the
bedroom candlestick. With this I avoided the delay of striking matches,
but for all that the steady process of extinction went on, and the
shadows I feared and fought against returned, and crept in upon me,
first a step gained on this side of me, then on that. I was now almost
frantic with the horror of the coming darkness, and my self-possession
deserted me. I leaped panting from candle to candle in a vain struggle
against that remorseless advance.

I bruised myself in the thigh against the table, I sent a chair
headlong, I stumbled and fell and whisked the cloth from the table in
my fall. My candle rolled away from me and I snatched another as I rose.
Abruptly this was blown out as I swung it off the table by the wind of
my sudden movement, and immediately the two remaining candles followed.
But there was light still in the room, a red light, that streamed across
the ceiling and staved off the shadows from me. The fire! Of course I
could still thrust my candle between the bars and relight it.

I turned to where the flames were still dancing between the glowing
coals and splashing red reflections upon the furniture; made two steps
toward the grate, and incontinently the flames dwindled and vanished,
the glow vanished, the reflections rushed together and disappeared, and
as I thrust the candle between the bars darkness closed upon me like the
shutting of an eye, wrapped about me in a stifling embrace, sealed my
vision, and crushed the last vestiges of self-possession from my brain.
And it was not only palpable darkness, but intolerable terror. The
candle fell from my hands. I flung out my arms in a vain effort to
thrust that ponderous blackness away from me, and lifting up my voice,
screamed with all my might, once, twice, thrice. Then I think I must
have staggered to my feet. I know I thought suddenly of the moonlit
corridor, and with my head bowed and my arms over my face, made a
stumbling run for the door.

But I had forgotten the exact position of the door, and I struck myself
heavily against the corner of the bed. I staggered back, turned, and was
either struck or struck myself against some other bulky furnishing. I
have a vague memory of battering myself thus to and fro in the darkness,
of a heavy blow at last upon my forehead, of a horrible sensation
of falling that lasted an age, of my last frantic effort to keep my
footing, and then I remember no more.

I opened my eyes in daylight. My head was roughly bandaged, and the man
with the withered hand was watching my face. I looked about me trying
to remember what had happened, and for a space I could not recollect.
I rolled my eyes into the corner and saw the old woman, no longer
abstracted, no longer terrible, pouring out some drops of medicine
from a little blue phial into a glass. "Where am I?" I said. "I seem to
remember you, and yet I can not remember who you are."

They told me then, and I heard of the haunted Red Room as one who bears
a tale. "We found you at dawn," said he, "and there was blood on your
forehead and lips."

I wondered that I had ever disliked him. The three of them in the
daylight seemed commonplace old folk enough. The man with the green
shade had his head bent as one who sleeps.

It was very slowly I recovered the memory of my experience. "You
believe now," said the old man with the withered hand, "that the room is
haunted?" He spoke no longer as one who greets an intruder, but as one
who condoles with a friend.

"Yes," said I, "the room is haunted."

"And you have seen it. And we who have been here all our lives have
never set eyes upon it. Because we have never dared. Tell us, is it
truly the old earl who--"

"No," said I, "it is not."

"I told you so," said the old lady, with the glass in her hand. "It is
his poor young countess who was frightened--"

"It is not," I said. "There is neither ghost of earl nor ghost of
countess in that room; there is no ghost there at all, but worse, far
worse, something impalpable--"

"Well?" they said.

"The worst of all the things that haunt poor mortal men," said I; "and
that is, in all its nakedness--'Fear!' Fear that will not have light
nor sound, that will not bear with reason, that deafens and darkens and
overwhelms. It followed me through the corridor, it fought against me in
the room--"

I stopped abruptly. There was an interval of silence. My hand went up to
my bandages. "The candles went out one after another, and I fled--"

Then the man with the shade lifted his face sideways to see me and
spoke.

"That is it," said he. "I knew that was it. A Power of Darkness. To put
such a curse upon a home! It lurks there always. You can feel it even
in the daytime, even of a bright summer's day, in the hangings, in the
curtains, keeping behind you however you face about. In the dusk it
creeps in the corridor and follows you, so that you dare not turn. It is
even as you say. Fear itself is in that room. Black Fear.... And there
it will be... so long as this house of sin endures."





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