by Edith Nesbit
“I am tired,” she said.
“They’ll shout the house down,” said the Management: “you must go.”
“I won’t,” said Sylvia; “let them shout.”
She dressed quickly and got to her brougham, already heaped with flowers and packets and letters. She had thrown herself back on the cushions, her heart beating almost to the choking point, and the motor was a couple of hundred yards on its roundabout way before she remembered Edmund. She had not seen him. She had not even looked for him.
“Drive back,” she said. “I’ve forgotten something — I mean . . .”
The chauffeur stopped the car and came to the window.
“If it’s the man you spoke to me about,” he said. “ He was at the theatre an hour ago, asking for Mr. Denis.”
“Did he see him?”
“I believe so, ma’am. He stayed a very short time, and then went away in a hansom.”
“Did you see Mr. Denis?”
“About a quarter of an hour ago, madam. He put one or two packages into the brougham and went off in a taxi.”
“Did he say anything?”
“He told me to be very careful of the big parcel, ma’am. It was priceless, he said.”
“That’ll do,” said Sandra, “ Home, please, as quickly as you dare.”
Why had he asked for Denny? To find out whether she would be alone? Would she find him waiting for her? Or perhaps he had wanted to leave a message for her? And had asked for Denny so that she might not to talked about at the theatre? That would be like him. And if he had done that she would find Denny at home. He would have gone in as usual by Miss Gertrude Steinhart’s door, and with her lover’s message. Well, she would be glad — yes, even if it meant that she could not see her lover alone. Poor Denny — what a brute she had been, to want to get rid of him on the very night of his success. To think of him driving down to Yalding all alone, on the very night when his music had set the crown on her triumphs, the very night when she ought to have had him near her — praising him, thanking him, making his triumph sweet with the sweetness of hers. Decidedly she was glad that Denny would be at home.
She looked out eagerly as the motor turned into the windowless cul de sac at the end of which the garage was. Her lover might be waiting there for her — but he was not. John Smith ran the motor into its garage, and closed and locked the outer doors, before extinguishing the lights and working the lift for her.
Then he came to the door of the brougham.
“Will you allow me to come in with you, madame, to carry your parcels?” he asked. “ And you might be nervous, going into an empty house alone.”
Sandra thanked him. “ I’m never nervous,” she said, and at the word knew that, for the first time in her life, she was. “And I don’t think it’s necessary, indeed,” she added. “ I expect Mr. Denny will be there.”
“I think not,” said John Smith. “I heard Mr. Denis telling the commissionaire at the theatre that he was going away to rest.”
“Was that after he saw Mr. Templar?”
“It would be after that, madame.”
“But I think we shall find him at home, all the same.”
But they did not find him at home. Instead, they found Uncle Mosenthal, back for an hour or two from Germany and his secret business — very cheerful, indeed, uncorking champagne, and quite incoherent with excitement and enthusiasm.
“Ah!” he cried, “you are Heaven blessed in the service of such an incomparable danseuse to be. She is prima donna assoluta — goddess over all the goddesses that ever on heaven’s floor danced have. Drink, Forrester, drink, mein lieber — drink to the Incomparable Salome.”
“It’s not Forrester, uncle. It’s our new chauffeur, John Smith. It’s all right, really.”
Uncle Mosenthal turned and looked at the new chauffeur.
“John Smith,” he said, and looked very straight into the man’s eyes. “ I see. Well — Mr. John Smith will be honoured to drink your health, my child.”
“I drink to your happiness, madam, if you will allow me,” said the chauffeur primly, glass in hand, and drank.
“It is the new head,” Uncle Mosenthal went on. “ I wish I had thought to bring it from the theatre. We would have crowned it with roses” — he pointed to the sheaf of bouquets that Smith had brought up—” and set it on the table and done honour to it.”
“It was not the head: it was Denny’s music — wasn’t it glorious?” She was glad that the head was not there. She was in no mood for that sort of mumming.
“The music was of the finest — he is the child of Tchaikovsky and the grandchild of Beethoven. Why is he not here for me to tell him so?”
“He was tired,” said Sandra, in a very tired voice; “he wanted to rest.”
“Oh, well, he will have all that is left of his life in which to rest and praised to be. But the head we could have praised to-night — I wish it were here — I see it with the roses. — Ah, Uncle Moses is the old man for the romance, eh? And The House With No Address the true home of romance. Is it not so, Smith? You also, like me, love the romance. Good night. Schlafen sie wohl!”
“You have luck always,” he said, when John Smith had gone. “ That man — how did you find him?”
She told.
“You know something about him?”
“We have met before,” said Uncle Mosenthal, “not as to-night. But I say nothing. Let him keep his secrets. And he will let us keep ours.”
As Sandra unwound her wraps she became aware of an impression of having seen — and not at the time noticed — that while Mr. Mosenthal had been speaking, the chauffeur had been trying to attract her attention, and to direct it, when he should have attracted it, to the further room where the parcels were that he had carried up from the brougham. Of course, there had been a letter from Him, and Denny had put it in the brougham with the other things. But why hadn’t he told her so? Perhaps he had meant to tell her when they got in, and had not liked to speak of it before Mr. Mosenthal.
“I’ll change my dress,” she said gaily. “ I won’t be a minute, uncle.”
She passed into the next room, and turned up the light and gathered all the letters from the table. Among the parcels, in brown paper and pink paper and white paper — parcels tied with blue ribbon, and silver string, and common twine — was a large bundle in a black cloth. She touched it curiously. Lifted a corner. It was the Head. Denny must have sent it home — it was broken perhaps — injured in some way. She was not going to have Uncle Moses find it. She did not want the thick-skinned jests of his Teutonic romanticism. She gathered the head up with the letters and ran up to her room, full-scented with the roses she had hidden there, laid all that she carried on her white pillow, changed her dress to a white and gold kimono, and went down to Uncle Mosenthal and the champagne and the lights and the supper and the loving flattery and the thought of her triumph. Edmund’s letter lay among the other letters upstairs, the letter that would explain everything — make everything right. The letter could lie there, waiting for her, and the knowledge that it was there would sweeten, while it lengthened, the hour that she must spend with the old millionaire, pleased as a child with her success, glad as a father in her joy it was a good hour, after all. She told him all about the pneumonia and her new freedom, and he was kind and quiet and gentle, and when he left her, to catch the midnight train for Calais, he blessed her as a father might have done.
The moment she was gone she turned out the electric lights and ran up to her room, extinguishing lights as she went. Arrived in the thick rose-scent of her room, she lighted the wax candles which it was her fancy to have, in just that room which sheltered her dreams, and turned to the bed for her letter.
The head lay there, as she had laid it — oh, no — not just as she had laid it, for it had slipped from her pillow and rolled down on to the quilt and lay there among the letters.
She lifted it to hide it away — the sight of it gave her an uncomfortable little shock. It was not
a nice thing to have in one’s bedroom. She would take it downstairs.
As she touched it, she touched also something else — something wet and sticky. There was something on the Head — how horrid! — some of the paint must have run — or the new composition had melted. It was all over the letters, too, and the white quilt. She dropped the Head, and went to the dressing-table where the candles burned in their silver candlesticks. The stuff on her hands was red. Almost as if . . .”
The thought was intolerable. She could not bear it an instant. With the courage of terror she sprang to the bed, lifted the Head again and carried it to the dressing-table where the candles were.
She stood there a very long time, quite without moving. It was not possible to move. For it was not paint that had run. And the head she held was of no new composition, but of the old composition — as old as Adam. And the stains on her hands were of blood — and the Plead that she held in her hands was the head of a dead man.
CHAPTER XIV. THE DEATH-NIGHT.
What would you do, dear reader, if at midnight and alone, in a house with no address, you found yourself before your toilet-table, with its neat, familiar furniture of cut glass and silver, and in your hands the head of a dead man?
You might scream and go mad, and be found in the morning a harmless lunatic fondling the dead thing in, heaven knows what, merciful delusion. Such things have been! There is a story of a dead hand, but it is not this story.
Or you might drop the head and run screaming out of the house and tell the first policeman you met your incredible tale.
Or you might just conceivably, if you were very strong indeed, be strong enough to hold on to your sanity and your self control. But I venture to affirm that not one in a hundred women could achieve this.
Sandra did. But then she was the chief among ten thousand, strong, self-reliant, brave. All her life’s training had been a training in self-reliance, in strength, in courage.
In the old days of the New Forest Denny and the old nurse had depended on her for all the things that make life endurable. It was she who schemed and planned to secure happiness and a measure of freedom for all three. Uncle Moses had seemed to manage every detail of the life they had led in London. It was he who had given her the romantic entourage of The House With No Address — had launched her, and wrought on the robe of her fame the embroidery of mystery that should enhance and adorn it. But under and through all this her own desire and intention stood firm as a rock. She had made up her mind that night at the Mount, when her grandfather lay dead, and she stood looking down on his quiet face for a long hour, examining her conscience, questioning her memory, and at last deciding that to his memory she owed nothing. All that he had done for her, in feeding her, clothing her, teaching her — or rather paying others to feed, teach and clothe — for all this he had taken payment for — full measure in the neglect of years and in the final cruelty of that “school for delicate and backward girls.” It was on that night that she had decided what to do. She would go to London and make a home for herself and her old nurse, — > give Denny a chance to give to the world the music that was in him. She would dance to thousands, and be a stranger to them all. She would fence herself round with a wall impassable. She would “keep herself to herself,” and no one should have more of her than the sight of her dancing. She had planned her white-haired disguise before she met Uncle Moses, and found in him that vein of romance which rhymed so well with hers. He had done for her what she had determined to do for herself, — and if he had not done it, she would have done. There was a vein of hardness in her, running beside the vein of romance — as there is in all those who make their dreams come true.
She stood there, with a dead man’s head in her hands, perfectly motionless, perfectly silent.
A man who has fallen from a cliff and is caught by some kindly stone or bush projecting from the cliff-face, feels at first nothing but the whirling sense that all is lost, and that he is but delayed an instant on the headlong way to death. But before he can feel this more superficially he realises that, if all his thought, all his strength, all his wit and will are raised to their highest power, he may yet live. At first the thought, the strength, the wit and the will concentrate on one thing — not to move — not to precipitate the disaster. Help may come. But when, presently, he has drawn breath, and feels that his support is firm, he will, since no help comes, dare to shift his position a little — raise a hand a thousandth part of an inch at a time — to feel, very slowly, very cautiously, for some hold for that hand. He grasps a piece of the rock, tries it, finds it firm and trustworthy. Then with his foot he reaches out for some support, finds it, ventures to open his eyes, to consider whether, and how, he may change those supports for others, — finds a way growing clearer — difficult, dangerous, but still a way, up the cliff face, — and so, straining to its utmost every power of mind and body, he slowly, slowly, slowly climbs up, and at last throws himself, half-insensible indeed, but alive, on the smooth safe turf, where the scent of the wild thyme is, and the skylarks sing — and there is a footpath by which living men go home across the fields. So Sandra.
The first thought was,—”The wax head has changed to this: I knew it was a horrible thing to do that dance — and the wax head has changed to this — that means I am mad. It is not really the head of a dead man. It only seems so to me.”
But quite soon she knew that what she held had never been wax. And when she knew this — certainly knew what it was that she held in her hand, her thought was:
“It is all over. Now I shall go mad.”
The next: “If I can hold out another moment against this horror that is closing round me, something may happen, some help may come. I may not go mad. It is horrible to go mad. Hold on to your senses, Sandra — hold on, hold on.”
Then the certainty that no help would come — that she was alone — and that if she were to be saved she must be her own saviour.
And, growing, growing, the knowledge that if she could only move her mind — give it some support to cling to — it might yet be saved from the abyss over which it hung, as by a thread.
Her mind reached out for something to hold on to. Red roses? No. Someone had made a horrible joke about roses — a long time ago. Something else — something else.
And all the time the horror was tightening boa-constrictor folds round her mind — in a pressure more and more difficult to resist. And all the while she held the head, and gazed at it — immobile as itself. That was when she felt that if she moved it would be to give the signal for the sluice gates to be raised and the flood of madness let loose to overflow her soul.
“Hold on,” she said, “hold on.” Slowly her intelligence reached out, caught at the silver brushes. By thinking very hard of silver brushes — yes, they were sold in shops, where crowds of people went in and out, and the sun shone in at the door. Yes, and there were other shops — Hamley’s, with the masks. They were not real faces. No — that support would not bear yet. The world was full of people: full of people all kind and friendly. No one could have done such a thing as this. (Yes — keep on thinking, think hard — it’s your only chance.)
“It isn’t a real head,” she said aloud — and got her eyes away from it.
She was almost at the top of the cliff now. She had got her eyes away from the head — but the room was horrible to her — more horrible now than the head itself.
“Hold on,” she said, “hold on — you’ll do it yet.”
She did not lay the head down while she fetched something to cover it. She knew well enough that she could never have gone back to it. She carried it to the wash-stand and wrapped the towels round it. Every nerve crisped, she walked slowly — it was so necessary not to hurry, or one would run; and if one ran, one would never stop — one would run round and round for ever — up one staircase and down the other, till one dropped dead. And then heads and heads and heads would come crowding out of the darkness and look at one as one lay.
“If I could
get downstairs,” she told herself, “ and turn on all the lights.”
She moved with the exaggerated caution of a man who knows that he is very drunk and is determined not to act otherwise than as sober men act.
She had the bundle of towels in her arms.
“Now,” she told herself, “open the door — quite slowly — go down the stairs and turn on the lights as you go. There is no one in the house — nothing can leap out at you or come up behind, and — no, don’t think of that — go right on — that’s right — light all the lights. You can leave them burning when you go up to bed. That’s it — only one more flight. Steady. Here’s the sitting-room. You’re doing it — you’re doing it. You’re not beaten.”
She got into the room, shutting the door behind her, to be sure. Quite steadily and quietly she went to the Buhl cabinet, opened it, and put the head in its wrappings on the red velvet-covered shelf, shut the door quickly — it was the first quick movement she had permitted herself — turned the ornate brass key, and drew a long breath, holding the key in her hands.
Then she turned to the door — to go upstairs again to her room to lock herself in, to be safe away from that.
But ... it was unthinkable — this room where the head was, became in that instant a place of refuge from that room upstairs where it had been, where the blood lay on the letters and on her quilt, and the red roses smelt so strong and sweet and sickly. With an instinct of fortifying what had suddenly become a sanctuary from her terror, she locked the door. She wished there had been a door between this and the next rooms. It was not nice to think that behind that curtain was darkness, the same darkness that was in the room upstairs. She made herself draw back the curtain — its rings were noisy and set her heart beating again — turned on all the lights in the dining-room — and, further, in the mirrored room, where someone that she used to be had danced that afternoon. As the light awoke, her own white shape leaped at her from the mirrors like a crowd of ghosts. She got back to the room where the head was, and again it seemed to her less horrible than any other place in that house.