PAGE 9
The Triumph Of Night
by
Would the other face turn if he said yes? Faxon felt a dryness in his throat. “No,” he answered.
“Ah? It’s possible I’ve a dozen. I believe I’m extremely usual-looking,” Mr. Lavington went on conversationally; and still the other face watched Rainer.
“It was… a mistake… a confusion of memory….” Faxon heard himself stammer. Mr. Lavington pushed back his chair, and as he did so Mr. Grisben suddenly leaned forward.
“Lavington! What have, we been thinking of? We haven’t drunk Frank’s health!”
Mr. Lavington reseated himself. “My dear boy!… Peters, another bottle….” He turned to his nephew. “After such a sin of omission I don’t presume to propose the toast myself… but Frank knows…. Go ahead, Grisben!”
The boy shone on his uncle. “No, no, Uncle Jack! Mr. Grisben won’t mind. Nobody but you–today!”
The butler was replenishing the glasses. He filled Mr. Lavington’s last, and Mr. Lavington put out his small hand to raise it…. As he did so, Faxon looked away.
“Well, then–All the good I’ve wished you in all the past years…. I put it into the prayer that the coming ones may be healthy and happy and many… and many, dear boy!”
Faxon saw the hands about him reach out for their glasses. Automatically, he reached for his. His eyes were still on the table, and he repeated to himself with a trembling vehemence: “I won’t look up! I won’t…. I won’t….”
His finders clasped the glass and raised it to the level of his lips. He saw the other hands making the same motion. He heard Mr. Grisben’s genial “Hear! Hear!” and Mr. Batch’s hollow echo. He said to himself, as the rim of the glass touched his lips: “I won’t look up! I swear I won’t!–” and he looked.
The glass was so full that it required an extraordinary effort to hold it there, brimming and suspended, during the awful interval before he could trust his hand to lower it again, untouched, to the table. It was this merciful preoccupation which saved him, kept him from crying out, from losing his hold, from slipping down into the bottomless blackness that gaped for him. As long as the problem of the glass engaged him he felt able to keep his seat, manage his muscles, fit unnoticeably into the group; but as the glass touched the table his last link with safety snapped. He stood up and dashed out of the room.
IV
In the gallery, the instinct of self-preservation helped him to turn back and sign to young Rainer not to follow. He stammered out something about a touch of dizziness, and joining them presently; and the boy nodded sympathetically and drew back.
At the foot of the stairs Faxon ran against a servant. “I should like to telephone to Weymore,” he said with dry lips.
“Sorry, sir; wires all down. We’ve been trying the last hour to get New York again for Mr. Lavington.”
Faxon shot on to his room, burst into it, and bolted the door. The lamplight lay on furniture, flowers, books; in the ashes a log still glimmered. He dropped down on the sofa and hid his face. The room was profoundly silent, the whole house was still: nothing about him gave a hint of what was going on, darkly and dumbly, in the room he had flown from, and with the covering of his eyes oblivion and reassurance seemed to fall on him. But they fell for a moment only; then his lids opened again to the monstrous vision. There it was, stamped on his pupils, a part of him forever, an indelible horror burnt into his body and brain. But why into his–just his? Why had he alone been chosen to see what he had seen? What business was it of his, in God’s name? Any one of the others, thus enlightened, might have exposed the horror and defeated it; but he, the one weaponless and defenceless spectator, the one whom none of the others would believe or understand if he attempted to reveal what he knew–he alone had been singled out as the victim of this dreadful initiation!