by E. Nesbit
‘And you knew me?’ I asked.
‘By your ring,’ she said. ‘I saw your father wear it when I was a little girl. Can’t we get back to the inn now?’
‘Not unless you want everyone to know how silly we have been.’
‘I wish you’d forgive me,’ she said when we had talked awhile, and she had even laughed at the description of the pallid young man on whom I had bestowed, in my mind, her name.
‘The wrong is mutual,’ I said; ‘we will exchange forgivenesses.’
‘Oh, but it isn’t,’ she said eagerly. ‘Because I knew it was you, and you didn’t know it was me: you wouldn’t have tried to frighten me.’
‘You know I wouldn’t.’ My voice was tenderer than I meant it to be.
She was silent.
‘And who is to have the house?’ she said.
‘Why you, of course.’
‘I never will.’
‘Why?’
‘Oh, because!’
‘Can’t we put off the decision?’ I asked.
‘Impossible. We must decide tomorrow – today I mean.’
‘Well, when we meet tomorrow – I mean today – with lawyers and chaperones and mothers and relations, give me one word alone with you.’
‘Yes,’ she answered, with docility.
‘Do you know,’ she said presently, ‘I can never respect myself again? To undertake a thing like that, and then be so horribly frightened. Oh! I thought you really were the other ghost.’
‘I will tell you a secret,’ said I. ‘I thought you were, and I was much more frightened than you.’
‘Oh well,’ she said, leaning against my shoulder as a tired child might have done, ‘if you were frightened too, Cousin Lawrence, I don’t mind so very, very much.’
It was soon afterwards that, cautiously looking out of the parlour window for the twentieth time, I had the happiness of seeing the local policeman disappear into the stable rubbing his eyes.
We got out of the window on the other side of the house, and went back to the inn across the dewy park. The French window of the sitting-room which had let her out let us both in. No one was stirring, so no one save she and I were any the wiser as to that night’s work.
It was like a garden party next day, when lawyers and executors and aunts and relations met on the terrace in front of Sefton Manor House.
Her eyes were downcast. She followed her aunt demurely over the house and the grounds.
‘Your decision,’ said my great-uncle’s solicitor, ‘has to be given within the hour.’
‘My cousin and I will announce it within that time,’ I said, and I at once gave her my arm.
Arrived at the sundial we stopped.
‘This is my proposal,’ I said: ‘We will say that we decide that the house is yours – we will spend the £20,000 in restoring it and the grounds. By the time that’s done we can decide who is to have it.’
‘But how?’
‘Oh, we’ll draw lots, or toss a halfpenny, or anything you like.’
‘I’d rather decide now,’ she said; ‘you take it.’
‘No, you shall.’
‘I’d rather you had it. I – I don’t feel so greedy as I did yesterday,’ she said.
‘Neither do I. Or at any rate not in the same way.’
‘Do – do take the house,’ she said very earnestly.
Then I said: ‘My cousin Selwyn, unless you take the house, I shall make you an offer of marriage.’
‘Oh!’ she breathed.
‘And when you have declined it, on the very proper ground of our too slight acquaintance, I will take my turn at declining. I will decline the house. Then, if you are obdurate, it will become an asylum. Don’t be obdurate. Pretend to take the house and—’
She looked at me rather piteously.
‘Very well,’ she said, ‘I will pretend to take the house, and when it is restored—’
‘We’ll spin the penny.’
So before the waiting relations the house was adjudged to my cousin Selwyn. When the restoration was complete I met Selwyn at the sundial. We had met there often in the course of the restoration, in which business we both took an extravagant interest.
‘Now,’ I said, ‘we’ll spin the penny. Heads you take the house, tails it comes to me.’
I spun the coin – it fell on the brick steps of the sundial, and stuck upright there, wedged between two bricks. She laughed; I laughed.
‘It’s not my house,’ I said.
‘It’s not my house,’ said she.
‘Dear,’ said I, and we were neither of us laughing then, ‘can’t it be our house?’
And, thank God, our house it is.
THE THREE DRUGS
I
Roger Wroxham looked round his studio before he blew out the candle, and wondered whether, perhaps, he looked for the last time. It was large and empty, yet his trouble had filled it, and, pressing against him in the prison of those four walls, forced him out into the world, where lights and voices and the presence of other men should give him room to draw back, to set a space between it and him, to decide whether he would ever face it again – he and it alone together. The nature of his trouble is not germane to this story. There was a woman in it, of course, and money, and a friend, and regrets and embarrassments – and all of those reached out tendrils that wove and interwove till they made a puzzle-problem of which heart and brain were now weary. It was as though his life depended on his deciphering the straggling characters traced by some spider who, having fallen into the ink-well, had dragged clogged legs in a black zig-zag across his map of the world.
He blew out the candle and went quietly downstairs. It was nine at night, a soft night of May in Paris. Where should he go? He thought of the Seine, and took – an omnibus. The chestnut trees of the Boulevards brushed against the sides of the one that he boarded blindly in the first light street. He did not know where the omnibus was going. It did not matter. When at last it stopped he got off, and so strange was the place to him that for an instant it almost seemed as though the trouble itself had been left behind. He did not feel it in the length of three or four streets that he traversed slowly. But in the open space, very light and lively, where he recognised the Taverne de Paris and knew himself in Montmartre, the trouble set its teeth in his heart again, and he broke away from the lamps and the talk to struggle with it in the dark quiet streets beyond.
A man braced for such a fight has little thought to spare for the detail of his surroundings. The next thing that Wroxham knew of the outside world was the fact that he had known for some time that he was not alone in the street. There was someone on the other side of the road keeping pace with him – yes, certainly keeping pace, for, as he slackened his own, the feet on the other pavement also went more slowly. And now they were four feet, not two. Where had the other man sprung from? He had not been there a moment ago. And now, from an archway a little ahead of him, a third man came.
Wroxham stopped. Then three men converged upon him, and, like a sudden magic-lantern picture on a sheet prepared, there came to him all that he had heard and read of Montmartre – dark archways, knives, Apaches, and men who went away from homes where they were beloved and never again returned. He, too – well, if he never returned again, it would be quicker than the Seine, and, in the event of ultramundane possibilities, safer.
He stood still and laughed in the face of the man who first reached him.
‘Well, my friend?’ said he, and at that the other two drew close.
‘Monsieur walks late,’ said the first, a little confused, as it seemed, by that laugh.
‘And will walk still later, if it pleases him,’ said Roger. ‘Goodnight, my friends.’
‘Ah!’ said the second, ‘friends do not say adieu so quickly. Monsieur will tell us the hour.’
‘I have not a watch,’ said Roger, quite truthfully.
‘I will assist you to search for it,’ said the third man, and laid a hand on his arm.
Roger t
hrew it off. That was instinctive. One may be resigned to a man’s knife between one’s ribs, but not to his hands pawing one’s shoulders. The man with the hand staggered back.
‘The knife searches more surely,’ said the second.
‘No, no,’ said the third quickly, ‘he is too heavy. I for one will not carry him afterwards.’
They closed round him, hustling him between them. Their pale, degenerate faces spun and swung round him in the struggle. For there was a struggle. He had not meant that there should be a struggle. Someone would hear – someone would come.
But if any heard, none came. The street retained its empty silence, the houses, masked in close shutters, kept their reserve. The four were wrestling, all pressed close together in a writhing bunch, drawing breath hardly through set teeth, their feet slipping, and not slipping, on the rounded cobble-stones.
The contact with these creatures, the smell of them, the warm, greasy texture of their flesh as, in the conflict, his face or neck met neck or face of theirs – Roger felt a cold rage possess him. He wrung two clammy hands apart and threw something off – something that staggered back clattering, fell in the gutter, and lay there.
It was then that Roger felt the knife. Its point glanced off the cigarette-case in his breast pocket and bit sharply at his inner arm. And at the sting of it Roger knew that he did not desire to die. He feigned a reeling weakness, relaxed his grip, swayed sideways, and then suddenly caught the other two in a new grip, crushed their faces together, flung them off, and ran. It was but for an instant that his feet were the only ones that echoed in the street. Then he knew that the others too were running.
It was like one of those nightmares wherein one runs for ever, leaden-footed, through a city of the dead. Roger turned sharply to the right The sound of the other footsteps told that the pursuers also had turned that corner. Here was another street – a steep ascent. He ran more swiftly – he was running now for his life – the life that he held so cheap three minutes before. And all the streets were empty – empty like dream-streets, with all their windows dark and unhelpful, their doors fast closed against his need.
Far away down the street and across steep roofs lay Paris, poured out like a pool of light in the mist of the valley. But Roger was running with his head down – he saw nothing but the round heads of the cobble stones. Only now and again he glanced to right or left, if perchance some window might show light to justify a cry for help, some door advance the welcome of an open inch.
There was at last such a door. He did not see it till it was almost behind him. Then there was the drag of the sudden stop – the eternal instant of indecision. Was there time? There must be. He dashed his fingers through the inch-crack, grazing the backs of them, leapt within, drew the door after him, felt madly for a lock or bolt, found a key, and, hanging his whole weight on it, strove to get the door home. The key turned. His left hand, by which he braced himself against the door-jamb, found a hook and pulled on it. Door and door-post met – the latch clicked – with a spring as it seemed. He turned the key, leaning against the door, which shook to the deep sobbing breaths that shook him, and to the panting bodies that pressed a moment without. Then someone cursed breathlessly outside; there was the sound of feet that went away.
Roger was alone in the strange darkness of an arched carriageway, through the far end of which showed the fainter darkness of a courtyard, with black shapes of little formal tubbed orange trees. There was no sound at all there but the sound of his own desperate breathing; and, as he stood, the slow, warm blood crept down his wrist, to make a little pool in the hollow of his hanging, half-clenched hand. Suddenly he felt sick.
This house, of which he knew nothing, held for him no terrors. To him at that moment there were but three murderers in all the world, and where they were not, there safety was. But the spacious silence that soothed at first, presently clawed at the set, vibrating nerves already overstrained. He found himself listening, listening, and there was nothing to hear but the silence, and once, before he thought to twist his handkerchief round it, the drip of blood from his hand.
By and by, he knew that he was not alone in this house, for from far away there came the faint sound of a footstep, and, quite near, the faint answering echo of it. And at a window, high up on the other side of the courtyard, a light showed. Light and sound and echo intensified, the light passing window after window, till at last it moved across the courtyard, and the little trees threw back shifting shadows as it came towards him – a lamp in the hand of a man.
It was a short, bald man, with pointed beard and bright, friendly eyes. He held the lamp high as he came, and when he saw Roger, he drew his breath in an inspiration that spoke of surprise, sympathy, and pity.
‘Hold! hold!’ he said, in a singularly pleasant voice, ‘there has been a misfortune? You are wounded, monsieur?’
‘Apaches,’ said Roger, and was surprised at the weakness of his own voice.
‘Your hand?’
‘My arm,’ said Roger.
‘Fortunately,’ said the other, ‘I am a surgeon. Allow me.’
He set the lamp on the step of a closed door, took off Roger’s coat, and quickly tied his own handkerchief round the wounded arm.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘courage! I am alone in the house. No one comes here but me. If you can walk up to my rooms, you will save us both much trouble. If you cannot, sit here and I will fetch you a cordial. But I advise you to try and walk. That porte cochère is, unfortunately, not very strong, and the lock is a common spring lock, and your friends may return with their friends; whereas the door across the courtyard is heavy and the bolts are new.’
Roger moved towards the heavy door whose bolts were new. The stairs seemed to go on for ever. The doctor lent his arm, but the carved banisters and their lively shadows whirled before Roger’s eyes. Also, he seemed to be shod with lead, and to have in his leg bones that were red-hot. Then the stairs ceased, and there was light, and cessation of the dragging of those leaden feet. He was on a couch, and his eyes might close. There was no need to move anymore, nor to look, nor to listen.
When next he saw and heard, he was lying at ease, the close intimacy of a bandage clasping his arm, and in his mouth the vivid taste of some cordial.
The doctor was sitting in an armchair near a table, looking benevolent through gold-rimmed pince-nez.
‘Better?’ he said. ‘No, lie still, you’ll be a new man soon.’
‘I am desolated,’ said Roger, ‘to have occasioned you all this trouble.’
‘Not at all,’ said the doctor. ‘We live to heal, and it is a nasty cut, that in your arm. If you are wise, you will rest at present. I shall be honoured if you will be my guest for the night.’
Roger again murmured something about trouble.
‘In a big house like this,’ said the doctor, as it seemed a little sadly, ‘there are many empty rooms, and some rooms which are not empty. There is a bed altogether at your service, monsieur, and I counsel you not to delay in seeking it. You can walk?’
Wroxham stood up. ‘Why, yes,’ he said, stretching himself. ‘I feel, as you say, a new man.’
A narrow bed and rush-bottomed chair showed like doll’s-house furniture in the large, high, gaunt room to which the doctor led him.
‘You are too tired to undress yourself,’ said the doctor, ‘rest – only rest,’ and covered him with a rug, roundly tucked him up, and left him.
‘I leave the door open,’ he said, ‘in case you have any fever. Goodnight. Do not torment yourself. All goes well.’
Then he took away the lamp, and Wroxham lay on his back and saw the shadows of the window-frames cast on the wall by the moon now risen. His eyes, growing accustomed to the darkness, perceived the carving of the white panelled walls and mantelpiece. There was a door in the room, another door from the one which the doctor had left open. Roger did not like open doors. The other door, however, was closed. He wondered where it led, and whether it were locked. Presently he got up to see.
It was locked. He lay down again.
His arm gave him no pain, and the night’s adventure did not seem to have overset his nerves. He felt, on the contrary, calm, confident, extraordinarily at ease, and master of himself. The trouble – how could that ever have seemed important? This calmness – it felt like the calmness that precedes sleep. Yet sleep was far from him. What was it that kept sleep away? The bed was comfortable – the pillows soft. What was it? It came to him presently that it was the scent which distracted him, worrying him with a memory that he could not define. A faint scent of – what was it? perfumery? Yes – and camphor – and something else – something vaguely disquieting. He had not noticed it before he had risen and tried the handle of that other door. But now— He covered his face with the sheet, but through the sheet he smelt it still. He rose and threw back one of the long French windows. It opened with a click and a jar, and he looked across the dark well of the courtyard. He leaned out, breathing the chill, pure air of the May night, but when he withdrew his head, the scent was there again. Camphor – perfume – and something else. What was it that it reminded him of? He had his knee on the bed-edge when the answer came to that question. It was the scent that had struck at him from a darkened room when, a child, clutching at a grown-up hand, he had been led to the bed where, amid flowers, something white lay under a sheet – his mother they had told him. It was the scent of death, disguised with drugs and perfumes.
He stood up and went, with carefully controlled swiftness, towards the open door. He wanted light and a human voice. The doctor was in the room upstairs; he—
The doctor was face to face with him on the landing, not a yard away, moving towards him quietly in shoeless feet.
‘I can’t sleep,’ said Wroxham, a little wildly, ‘it’s too dark—’
‘Come upstairs,’ said the doctor, and Wroxham went.
There was comfort in the large, lighted room, with its shelves and shelves full of well-bound books, its tables heaped with papers and pamphlets – its air of natural everyday work. There was a warmth of red curtain at the windows. On the window ledge a plant in a pot, its leaves like red misshapen hearts. A green-shaded lamp stood on the table. A peaceful, pleasant interior.