Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Young men -- Conduct of life -- Fiction
Anthony felt the attention of the room centered upon himself, he heard
disconnected periods; “... to the eyes. Good fellow... threw friend
out--one of them lawyer jags, too dam' smart.” A voice flowed, thick
and gummy like molasses, from the redness at his side, “He's my fellow;
ain't you, Raymond?”
A wave of deathly sickness swept up from the shuddering void and
enveloped him. He summoned his dissipated faculties, formed his cold
lips in readiness to pronounce fateful words, when he was diverted
by the sharp impact of a shutting door, he heard with preternatural
clearness a bolt slip in its channel. The young man in the blue suit had
disappeared. Again the sobbing, low and distinct, rose and fell upon his
hearing.
There was a general stir in the room; the form beside him rose; and he
was lunging to his feet when, in the act of moving, he became immovable;
he stood bent, with his hands extended, listening; he turned his head
slowly, he turned his dull, straining gaze from side to side. Then he
straightened up as though he had been opened by a spring.
“Who--who called?” he demanded. “Who called me--Anthony?”
In the short, startled silence which followed the room grew suddenly
clear before him, the mist dissolved before a garish flood of gaslight
that fell upon a grotesque circle of women in shapeless, bright apparel;
he saw haggard, youthful countenances on which streaks of paint burned
like flames; he saw eyes shining and dead like glass marbles; mouths
drawn and twisted as though by torture. He saw the fragile, fashionably
dressed youth with the flat face. No one of them could have called him
in the clear tone that had swept like a silver stream through the miasma
of his consciousness.
Again he heard it. “Anthony!” Its echo ran from his brain in thrills of
wonder, of response, to the tips of his fingers. “Anthony!” Oh, God!
he knew now, beyond all question, all doubt, that it was the voice
of Eliza. But Eliza was dead. It was an inexplicable, a cunning and
merciless jest, at the expense of his love, his longing.... “Anthony!”
it came from above, from within.
A double, sliding door filled the middle of the wall, and, starting
forward, he fumbled with its small, brass handles. A sudden, subdued
commotion of curses, commands, arose behind him; hands dragged at
his shoulders; an arm as thin and hard as steel wire closed about his
throat. He broke its strangling hold, brushed the others aside. The door
was bolted. Yes, it came from beyond; and from within came the sobbing
that had hovered continuously at the back of his perception.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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