In the Dark

by E. Nesbit

  But that night, when sparse candles had lighted ‘the boys’ to their rooms, when the last pipe had been smoked, the last goodnight said, there came a fumbling with the handle of Vincent’s door. Edward entered, an unwieldy figure clasping pillows, trailing blankets.

  ‘What the deuce?’ queried Vincent in natural amazement.

  ‘I’ll turn in here on the floor, if you don’t mind,’ said Edward. ‘I know it’s beastly rot, but I can’t stand it. The room they’ve put me into, it’s an attic as big as a barn – and there’s a great door at the end, eight feet high – raw oak it is – and it leads into a sort of horror-hole – bare beams and rafters, and black as Hell. I know I’m an abject duffer, but there it is – I can’t face it.’

  Vincent was sympathetic, though he had never known a night-terror that could not be exorcised by pipe, book, and candle.

  ‘I know, old chap. There’s no reasoning about these things,’ said he, and so on.

  ‘You can’t despise me more than I despise myself,’ Edward said. ‘I feel a crawling hound. But it is so. I had a scare when I was a kid, and it seems to have left a sort of brand on me. I’m branded “coward”, old man, and the feel of it’s not nice.’

  Again Vincent was sympathetic, and the poor little tale came out. How Edward, eight years old, and greedy as became his little years, had sneaked down, night-clad, to pick among the outcomings of a dinner-party, and how, in the hall, dark with the light of an ‘artistic’ coloured glass lantern, a white figure had suddenly faced him – leaned towards him it seemed, pointed lead-white hands at his heart. That next day, finding him weak from his fainting fit, had shown the horror to be but a statue, a new purchase of his father’s, had mattered not one whit.

  Edward had shared Vincent’s room, and Vincent, alone of all men, shared Edward’s secret.

  And now, in Paris, Rose speeding away towards Cannes, Vincent said: ‘Let’s look in at the Musée Grévin.’

  The Musée Grévin is a waxwork show. Your mind, at the word, flies instantly to the excellent exhibition founded by the worthy Madame Tussaud, and you think you know what waxworks mean. But you are wrong. The exhibition of Madame Tussaud – in these days, at any rate – is the work of bourgeois for a bourgeois class. The Musée Grévin contains the work of artists for a nation of artists. Wax, modelled and retouched till it seems as near life as death is: this is what one sees at the Musée Grévin.

  ‘Let’s look in at the Musée Grévin,’ said Vincent. He remembered the pleasant thrill the Musée had given him, and wondered what sort of a thrill it would give his friend.

  ‘I hate museums,’ said Edward.

  ‘This isn’t a museum,’ Vincent said, and truly; ‘it’s just waxworks.’

  ‘All right,’ said Edward indifferently. And they went. They reached the doors of the Musée in the grey-brown dusk of a February evening.

  One walks along a bare, narrow corridor, much like the entrance to the stalls of the Standard Theatre, and such daylight as there may be fades away behind one, and one finds oneself in a square hall, heavily decorated, and displaying with its electric lights Loie Fuller in her accordion-pleated skirts, and one or two other figures not designed to quicken the pulse.

  ‘It’s very like Madame Tussaud’s,’ said Edward.

  ‘Yes,’ Vincent said; ‘isn’t it?’

  Then they passed through an arch, and behold, a long room with waxen groups life-like behind glass – the coulisses of the Opéra, Kitchener at Fashoda – this last with a desert background lit by something convincingly like desert sunlight.

  ‘By Jove!’ said Edward, ‘that’s jolly good.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Vincent again; ‘isn’t it?’

  Edward’s interest grew. The things were so convincing, so very nearly alive. Given the right angle, their glass eyes met one’s own, and seemed to exchange with one meaning glances.

  Vincent led the way to an arched door labelled: ‘Gallerie de la Revolution’.

  There one saw, almost in the living, suffering body, poor Marie Antoinette in prison in the Temple, her little son on his couch of rags, the rats eating from his platter, the brutal Simon calling to him from the grated window; one almost heard the words, ‘Ho la, little Capet – are you asleep?’

  One saw Marat bleeding in his bath – the brave Charlotte eyeing him – the very tiles of the bathroom, the glass of the windows with, outside, the very sunlight, as it seemed, of 1793 on that ‘yellow July evening, the thirteenth of the month’.

  The spectators did not move in a public place among waxwork figures. They peeped through open doors into rooms where history seemed to be re-lived. The rooms were lighted each by its own sun, or lamp, or candle. The spectators walked among shadows that might have oppressed a nervous person.

  ‘Fine, eh?’ said Vincent.

  ‘Yes,’ said Edward; ‘it’s wonderful.’

  A turn of a corner brought them to a room. Marie Antoinette fainting, supported by her ladies; poor fat Louis by the window looking literally sick.

  ‘What’s the matter with them all?’ said Edward.

  ‘Look at the window,’ said Vincent.

  There was a window to the room. Outside was sunshine – the sunshine of 1792 – and, gleaming in it, blonde hair flowing, red mouth half open, what seemed the just-severed head of a beautiful woman. It was raised on a pike, so that it seemed to be looking in at the window.

  ‘I say!’ said Edward, and the head on the pike seemed to sway before his eyes.

  ‘Madame de Lamballe. Good thing, isn’t it?’ said Vincent.

  ‘It’s altogether too much of a good thing,’ said Edward. ‘Look here – I’ve had enough of this.’

  ‘Oh, you must just see the Catacombs,’ said Vincent; ‘nothing bloody, you know. Only Early Christians being married and baptised, and all that.’

  He led the way, down some clumsy steps to the cellars which the genius of a great artist had transformed into the exact semblance of the old Catacombs at Rome. The same rough hewing of rock, the same sacred tokens engraved strongly and simply; and among the arches of these subterranean burrowings the life of the Early Christians, their sacraments, their joys, their sorrows – all expressed in groups of waxwork as like life as Death is.

  ‘But this is very fine, you know,’ said Edward, getting his breath again after Madame de Lamballe, and his imagination loved the thought of the noble sufferings and refrainings of these first lovers of the Crucified Christ.

  ‘Yes,’ said Vincent for the third time; ‘isn’t it?’

  They passed the baptism and the burying and the marriage. The tableaux were sufficiently lighted, but little light strayed to the narrow passage where the two men walked, and the darkness seemed to press, tangible as a bodily presence, against Edward’s shoulder. He glanced backward.

  ‘Come,’ he said, ‘I’ve had enough.’

  ‘Come on, then,’ said Vincent.

  They turned the corner – and a blaze of Italian sunlight struck at their eyes with positive dazzlement. There lay the Coliseum – tier on tier of eager faces under the blue sky of Italy. They were level with the arena. In the arena were crosses; from them drooped bleeding figures. On the sand beasts prowled, bodies lay. They saw it all through bars. They seemed to be in the place where the chosen victims waited their turn, waited for the lions and the crosses, the palm and the crown. Close by Edward was a group – an old man, a woman – children. He could have touched them with his hand. The woman and the man stared in an agony of terror straight in the eyes of a snarling tiger, ten feet long, that stood up on its hind feet and clawed through the bars at them. The youngest child, only, unconscious of the horror, laughed in the very face of it. Roman soldiers, unmoved in military vigilance, guarded the group of martyrs. In a low cage to the left more wild beasts cringed and seemed to growl, unfed. Within the grating on the wide circle of yellow sand lions and tigers drank the blood of Christians. Close against the bars a great lion sucked the chest of a corpse on whose blood-stained face th
e horror of the death-agony was printed plain.

  ‘Good God!’ said Edward. Vincent took his arm suddenly, and he started with what was almost a shriek.

  ‘What a nervous chap you are!’ said Vincent complacently, as they regained the street where the lights were, and the sound of voices and the movement of live human beings – all that warms and awakens nerves almost paralysed by the life in death of waxen immobility.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Edward. ‘Let’s have a vermouth, shall we? There’s something uncanny about those wax things. They’re like life – but they’re much more like death. Suppose they moved? I don’t feel at all sure that they don’t move, when the lights are all out, and there’s no one there.’ He laughed. ‘I suppose you were never frightened, Vincent?’

  ‘Yes, I was once,’ said Vincent, sipping his absinthe. ‘Three other men and I were taking turns by twos to watch a dead man. It was a fancy of his mother’s. Our time was up, and the other watch hadn’t come. So my chap – the one who was watching with me, I mean – went to fetch them. I didn’t think I should mind. But it was just like you say.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Why, I kept thinking: suppose it should move – it was so like life. And, if it did move, of course it would have been because it was alive, and I ought to have been glad, because the man was my friend. But all the same, if it had moved I should have gone mad.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Edward; ‘that’s just exactly it.’

  Vincent called for a second absinthe.

  ‘But a dead body’s different to waxworks,’ he said. ‘I can’t understand anyone being frightened of them.’

  ‘Oh, can’t you?’ The contempt in the other’s tone stung him. ‘I bet you wouldn’t spend a night alone in that place.’

  ‘I bet you five pounds I do!’

  ‘Done!’ said Edward briskly. ‘At least, I would if you’d got five pounds.’

  ‘But I have. I’m simply rolling. I’ve sold my Dejanira, didn’t you know? I shall win your money, though, anyway. But you couldn’t do it, old man. I suppose you’ll never outgrow that childish scare.’

  ‘You might shut up about that,’ said Edward shortly

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing to be ashamed of; some women are afraid of mice or spiders. I say, does Rose know you’re a coward?’

  ‘Vincent!’

  ‘No offence, old boy. One may as well call a spade a spade. Of course, you’ve got tons of moral courage, and all that. But you are afraid of the dark – and waxworks!’

  ‘Are you trying to quarrel with me?’

  ‘Heaven in its mercy forbid; but I bet you wouldn’t spend a night in the Musée Grévin and keep your senses.’

  ‘What’s the stake?’

  ‘Anything you like.’

  ‘Make it, that if I do, you’ll never speak to Rose again – and what’s more, that you’ll never speak to me,’ said Edward, white-hot, knocking down a chair as he rose.

  ‘Done!’ said Vincent; ‘but you’ll never do it. Keep your hair on. Besides, you’re off home.’

  ‘I shall be back in ten days. I’ll do it then,’ said Edward, and was off before the other could answer.

  Then Vincent, left alone, sat still, and over his third absinthe remembered how, before she had known Edward, Rose had smiled on him; more than on the others, he had thought. He thought of her wide, lovely eyes, her wild-rose cheeks, the scented curves of her hair, and then and there the devil entered into him.

  In ten days Edward would undoubtedly try to win his wager. He would try to spend the night in the Musée Grévin. Perhaps something could be arranged before that. If one knew the place thoroughly! A little scare would serve Edward right for being the man to whom that last glance of Rose’s had been given.

  Vincent dined lightly, but with conscientious care – and as he dined, he thought. Something might be done by tying a string to one of the figures, and making it move, when Edward was going through that impossible night among the effigies that are so like life – so like death. Something that was not the devil said: ‘You may frighten him out of his wits.’ And the devil answered: ‘Nonsense! do him good. He oughtn’t to be such a schoolgirl.’

  Anyway, the five pounds might as well be won tonight as any other night. He would take a great coat, sleep sound in the place of horrors, and the people who opened it in the morning to sweep and dust would bear witness that he had passed the night there. He thought he might trust to the French love of a sporting wager to keep him from any bother with the authorities.

  So he went in among the crowd, and looked about among the waxworks for a place to hide in. He was not in the least afraid of these lifeless images. He had always been able to control his nervous tremors. He was not even afraid of being frightened, which, by the way, is the worst fear of all. As one looks at the room of the poor little Dauphin, one sees a door to the left. It opens out of the room on to blackness. There were few people in the gallery. Vincent watched, and in a moment when he was alone he stepped over the barrier and through this door. A narrow passage ran round behind the wall of the room. Here he hid, and when the gallery was deserted he looked out across the body of little Capet to the gaolers at the window, too. Vincent amused himself with the fancy that this soldier might walk round the passage at the back of the room and tap him on the shoulder in the darkness. Only the head and shoulders of the soldier and the gaoler showed, so, of course, they could not walk, even if they were something that was not waxwork.

  Presently he himself went along the passage and round to the window where they were. He found that they had legs. They were full-sized figures dressed completely in the costume of the period.

  ‘Thorough the beggars are, even the parts that don’t show – artists, upon my word,’ said Vincent, and went back to his doorway, thinking of the hidden carving behind the capitols of Gothic cathedrals.

  But the idea of the soldier who might come behind him in the dark stuck in his mind. Though still a few visitors strolled through the gallery, the closing hour was near. He supposed it would be quite dark then. And now he had allowed himself to be amused by the thought of something that should creep up behind him in the dark, he might possibly be nervous in that passage round which, if waxworks could move, the soldier might have come.

  ‘By Jove!’ he said, ‘one might easily frighten oneself by just fancying things. Suppose there were a back way from Marat’s bathroom, and instead of the soldier Marat came out of his bath, with his wet towels stained with blood, and dabbed them against your neck.’

  When the next gallery was empty he crept out. Not because he was nervous, he told himself, but because one might be, and because the passage was draughty, and he meant to sleep.

  He went down the steps into the Catacombs, and here he spoke the truth to himself.

  ‘Hang it all!’ he said, ‘I was nervous. That fool Edward must have infected me. Mesmeric influences, or something.’

  ‘Chuck it and go home,’ said Commonsense.

  ‘I’m damned if I do!’ said Vincent.

  There were a good many people in the Catacombs at the moment – live people. He sucked confidence from their nearness, and went up and down looking for a hiding-place.

  Through rock-hewn arches he saw a burial scene – a corpse on a bier surrounded by mourners; a great pillar cut off half the still, lying figure. It was all still and unemotional as a Sunday School oleograph. He waited till no one was near, then slipped quickly through the mourning group and hid behind the pillar. Surprising – heartening too – to find a plain rushed chair there, doubtless set for the resting of tired officials. He sat down in it, comforted his hand with the commonplace lines of its rungs and back. A shrouded waxen figure just behind him to the left of his pillar worried him a little, but the corpse left him unmoved as itself. A far better place this than that draughty passage where the soldier with legs kept intruding on the darkness that is always behind one.

  Custodians went along the passages issuing orders. A stillness fell. Then suddenly
all the lights went out.

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Vincent, and composed himself to sleep.

  But he seemed to have forgotten what sleep was like. He firmly fixed his thoughts on pleasant things – the sale of his picture, dances with Rose, merry evenings with Edward and the others. But the thoughts rushed by him like motes in sunbeams – he could not hold a single one of them, and presently it seemed that he had thought of every pleasant thing that had ever happened to him, and that now, if he thought at all, he must think of the things one wants most to forget. And there would be time in this long night to think much of many things. But now he found that he could no longer think.

  The draped effigy just behind him worried him again. He had been trying, at the back of his mind, behind the other thoughts, to strangle the thought of it. But it was there – very close to him. Suppose it put out its hand, its wax hand, and touched him. But it was of wax: it could not move. No, of course not. But suppose it did?

  He laughed aloud, a short, dry laugh that echoed through the vaults. The cheering effect of laughter has been over-estimated, perhaps. Anyhow, he did not laugh again.

  The silence was intense, but it was a silence thick with rustlings and breathings, and movements that his ear, strained to the uttermost, could just not hear. Suppose, as Edward had said, when all the lights were out, these things did move. A corpse was a thing that had moved – given a certain condition – Life. What if there were a condition, given which these things could move? What if such conditions were present now? What if all of them – Napoleon, yellow-white from his death sleep – the beasts from the Amphitheatre, gore dribbling from their jaws – that soldier with the legs – all were drawing near to him in this full silence? Those death masks of Robespierre and Mirabeau, they might float down through the darkness till they touched his face. That head of Madame de Lamballe on the pike might be thrust at him from behind the pillar. The silence throbbed with sounds that could not quite be heard.