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In the Closed Room
by
“It is the stillest house I was ever in,” she said. “I’m glad I’ve got you with me, Judy. If I was sole alone I believe it ‘ud give me the creeps. These big places ought to have big families in them.”
It was on the fourth floor that they came upon the Closed Room. Jane had found some of the doors shut and some open, but a turn of the handle gave entrance through all the unopened ones until they reached this one at the back on the fourth floor.
“This one won’t open,” Jane said, when she tried the handle. Then she shook it once or twice. “No, it’s locked,” she decided after an effort or two. “There, I’ve just remembered. There’s one kept locked. Folks always has things they want locked up. I’ll make sure, though.”
She shook it, turned the handle, shook again, pressed her knee against the panel. The lock resisted all effort.
“Yes, this is the closed one,” she made up her mind. “It’s locked hard and fast. It’s the closed one.”
It was logically proved to be the closed one by the fact that she found no other one locked as she finished her round of the chambers.
Judith was a little tired before they had done their work. But her wandering pilgrimage through the large, silent, deserted house had been a revelation of new emotions to her. She was always a silent child. Her mind was so full of strange thoughts that it seemed unnecessary to say many words. The things she thought as she followed her from room to room, from floor to floor, until they reached the locked door, would have amazed and puzzled Jane Foster if she had known of their existence. Most of all, perhaps, she would have been puzzled by the effect the closed door had upon the child. It puzzled and bewildered Judith herself and made her feel a little weary.
She wanted so much to go into the room. Without in the least understanding the feeling, she was quite shaken by it. It seemed as if the closing of all the other rooms would have been a small matter in comparison with the closing of this one. There was something inside which she wanted to see–there was something–somehow there was something which wanted to see her. What a pity that the door was locked! Why had it been done? She sighed unconsciously several times during the evening, and Jane Foster thought she was tired.
“But you’ll sleep cool enough to-night, Judy,” she said. “And get a good rest. Them little breezes that comes rustling through the trees in the Park comes right along the street to us.”
She and Jem Foster slept well. They spent the evening in the highest spirits and–as it seemed to them–the most luxurious comfort. The space afforded them by the big basement, with its kitchen and laundry and pantry, and, above all, the specially large room which had been used for billiard playing, supplied actual vistas. For the sake of convenience and coolness they used the billiard room as a dormitory, sleeping on light cots, and they slept with all their windows open, the little breezes wandering from among the trees of the Park to fan them. How they laughed and enjoyed themselves over their supper, and how they stretched themselves out with sighs of joy in the darkness as they sank into the cool, untroubled waters of deep sleep.
“This is about the top notch,” Jem murmured as he lost his hold on the world of waking life and work.
But though she was cool, though she was undisturbed, though her body rested in absolute repose, Judith did not sleep for a long time. She lay and listened to the quietness. There was mystery in it. The footstep of a belated passer-by in the street woke strange echoes; a voice heard in the distance in a riotous shout suggested weird things. And as she lay and listened, it was as if she were not only listening but waiting for something. She did not know at all what she was waiting for, but waiting she was.