Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

She drew a key from her pocket and fitted it to the lock. She opened the door and I followed her in. It was a large, dark room, full of old-fashioned furniture. There were wax candles in brass candlesticks and a smell of lavender.

  The big four-post bed was covered with white.

  “My lamb — my poor pretty lamb!” said the woman, beginning to cry for the first time as she drew back the sheet. “Don’t she look beautiful?”

  I stood by the bedside. I looked down on my wife’s face. Just so I had seen it lie on the pillow beside me in the early morning when the wind and the dawn came up from beyond the sea. She did not look like one dead. Her lips were still red, and it seemed to me that a tinge of colour lay on her cheek. It seemed to me, too, that if I kissed her she would wake, and put her slight hand on my neck, and lay her cheek against mine — and that we should tell each other everything, and weep together, and understand and be comforted.

  So I stooped and laid my lips to hers as the old nurse stole from the room.

  But the red lips were like marble, and she did not wake. She will not wake now ever any more.

  I tell you again there are some things that cannot be written.

  III.

  I lay that night in a big room filled with heavy, dark furniture, in a great four-poster hung with heavy, dark curtains — a bed the counterpart of that other bed from whose side they had dragged me at last.

  They fed me, I believe, and the old nurse was kind to me. I think she saw now that it is not the dead who are to be pitied most.

  I lay at last in the big, roomy bed, and heard the household noises grow fewer and die out, the little wail of my child sounding latest. They had brought the child to me, and I had held it in my arms, and bowed my head over its tiny face and frail fingers. I did not love it then. I told myself it had cost me her life. But my heart told me that it was I who had done that. The tall clock at the stairhead sounded the hours — eleven, twelve, one, and still I could not sleep. The room was dark and very still.

  I had not been able to look at my life quietly. I had been full of the intoxication of grief — a real drunkenness, more merciful than the calm that comes after.

  Now I lay still as the dead woman in the next room, and looked at what was left of my life. I lay still, and thought, and thought, and thought. And in those hours I tasted the bitterness of death. It must have been about two that I first became aware of a slight sound that was not the ticking of the clock. I say I first became aware, and yet I knew perfectly that I had heard that sound more than once before, and had yet determined not to hear it, because it came from the next room — the room where the corpse lay.

  And I did not wish to hear that sound, because I knew it meant that I was nervous — miserably nervous — a coward and a brute. It meant that I, having killed my wife as surely as though I had put a knife in her breast, had now sunk so low as to be afraid of her dead body — the dead body that lay in the room next to mine. The heads of the beds were placed against the same wall; and from that wall I had fancied I heard slight, slight, almost inaudible sounds. So when I say that I became aware of them I mean that I at last heard a sound so distinct as to leave no room for doubt or question. It brought me to a sitting position in the bed, and the drops of sweat gathered heavily on my forehead and fell on my cold hands as I held my breath and listened.

  I don’t know how long I sat there — there was no further sound — and at last my tense muscles relaxed, and I fell back on the pillow.

  “You fool!” I said to myself; “dead or alive, is she not your darling, your heart’s heart? Would you not go near to die of joy if she came to you? Pray God to let her spirit come back and tell you she forgives you!”

  “I wish she would come,” myself answered in words, while every fibre of my body and mind shrank and quivered in denial.

  I struck a match, lighted a candle, and breathed more freely as I looked at the polished furniture — the commonplace details of an ordinary room. Then I thought of her, lying alone, so near me, so quiet under the white sheet. She was dead; she would not wake or move. But suppose she did move? Suppose she turned back the sheet and got up, and walked across the floor and turned the door-handle?

  As I thought it, I heard — plainly, unmistakably heard — the door of the chamber of death open slowly — I heard slow steps in the passage, slow, heavy steps — I heard the touch of hands on my door outside, uncertain hands, that felt for the latch.

  Sick with terror, I lay clenching the sheet in my hands.

  I knew well enough what would come in when that door opened — that door on which my eyes were fixed. I dreaded to look, yet I dared not turn away my eyes. The door opened slowly, slowly, slowly, and the figure of my dead wife came in. It came straight towards the bed, and stood at the bed-foot in its white grave-clothes, with the white bandage under its chin. There was a scent of lavender. Its eyes were wide open and looked at me with love unspeakable.

  I could have shrieked aloud.

  My wife spoke. It was the same dear voice that I had loved so to hear, but it was very weak and faint now; and now I trembled as I listened.

  “You aren’t afraid of me, darling, are you, though I am dead? I heard all you said to me when you came, but I couldn’t answer. But now I’ve come back from the dead to tell you. I wasn’t really so bad as you thought me. Elvire had told me she loved Oscar. I only wrote the letter to make it easier for you. I was too proud to tell you when you were so angry, but I am not proud any more now. You’ll love me again now, won’t you, now I’m dead? One always forgives dead people.”

  The poor ghost’s voice was hollow and faint. Abject terror paralyzed me. I could answer nothing.

  “Say you forgive me,” the thin, monotonous voice went on; “say you love me again.”

  I had to speak. Coward as I was, I did manage to stammer —

  “Yes; I love you. I have always loved you, God help me!”

  The sound of my own voice reassured me, and I ended more firmly than I began. The figure by the bed swayed a little unsteadily.

  “I suppose,” she said wearily, “you would be afraid, now I am dead, if I came round to you and kissed you?”

  She made a movement as though she would have come to me.

  Then I did shriek aloud, again and again, and covered my face with the sheet, and wound it round my head and body, and held it with all my force.

  There was a moment’s silence. Then I heard my door close, and then a sound of feet and of voices, and I heard something heavy fall. I disentangled my head from the sheet. My room was empty. Then reason came back to me. I leaped from the bed.

  “Ida, my darling, come back! I am not afraid! I love you! Come back! Come back!”

  I sprang to my door and flung it open. Some one was bringing a light along the passage. On the floor, outside the door of the death-chamber, was a huddled heap — the corpse, in its grave-clothes. Dead, dead, dead.

  She is buried in Mellor churchyard, and there is no stone over her.

  Now, whether it was catalepsy — as the doctors said — or whether my love came back even from the dead to me who loved her, I shall never know; but this I know — that, if I had held out my arms to her as she stood at my bed-foot — if I had said, “Yes, even from the grave, my darling — from hell itself, come back, come back to me!” — if I had had room in my coward’s heart for anything but the unreasoning terror that killed love in that hour, I should not now be here alone. I shrank from her — I feared her — I would not take her to my heart. And now she will not come to me any more.

  Why do I go on living?

  You see, there is the child. It is four years old now, and it has never spoken and never smiled.

  MAN-SIZE IN MARBLE.

  Although every word of this story is as true as despair, I do not expect people to believe it. Nowadays a “rational explanation” is required before belief is possible. Let me then, at once, offer the “rational explanation” which finds most favour among those who have heard the tale of my
life’s tragedy. It is held that we were “under a delusion,” Laura and I, on that 31st of October; and that this supposition places the whole matter on a satisfactory and believable basis. The reader can judge, when he, too, has heard my story, how far this is an “explanation,” and in what sense it is “rational.” There were three who took part in this: Laura and I and another man. The other man still lives, and can speak to the truth of the least credible part of my story.

  I never in my life knew what it was to have as much money as I required to supply the most ordinary needs — good colours, books, and cab-fares — and when we were married we knew quite well that we should only be able to live at all by “strict punctuality and attention to business.” I used to paint in those days, and Laura used to write, and we felt sure we could keep the pot at least simmering. Living in town was out of the question, so we went to look for a cottage in the country, which should be at once sanitary and picturesque. So rarely do these two qualities meet in one cottage that our search was for some time quite fruitless. We tried advertisements, but most of the desirable rural residences which we did look at proved to be lacking in both essentials, and when a cottage chanced to have drains it always had stucco as well and was shaped like a tea-caddy. And if we found a vine or rose-covered porch, corruption invariably lurked within. Our minds got so befogged by the eloquence of house-agents and the rival disadvantages of the fever-traps and outrages to beauty which we had seen and scorned, that I very much doubt whether either of us, on our wedding morning, knew the difference between a house and a haystack. But when we got away from friends and house-agents, on our honeymoon, our wits grew clear again, and we knew a pretty cottage when at last we saw one. It was at Brenzett — a little village set on a hill over against the southern marshes. We had gone there, from the seaside village where we were staying, to see the church, and two fields from the church we found this cottage. It stood quite by itself, about two miles from the village. It was a long, low building, with rooms sticking out in unexpected places. There was a bit of stone-work — ivy-covered and moss-grown, just two old rooms, all that was left of a big house that had once stood there — and round this stone-work the house had grown up. Stripped of its roses and jasmine it would have been hideous. As it stood it was charming, and after a brief examination we took it. It was absurdly cheap. The rest of our honeymoon we spent in grubbing about in second-hand shops in the county town, picking up bits of old oak and Chippendale chairs for our furnishing. We wound up with a run up to town and a visit to Liberty’s, and soon the low oak-beamed lattice-windowed rooms began to be home. There was a jolly old-fashioned garden, with grass paths, and no end of hollyhocks and sunflowers, and big lilies. From the window you could see the marsh-pastures, and beyond them the blue, thin line of the sea. We were as happy as the summer was glorious, and settled down into work sooner than we ourselves expected. I was never tired of sketching the view and the wonderful cloud effects from the open lattice, and Laura would sit at the table and write verses about them, in which I mostly played the part of foreground.

  We got a tall old peasant woman to do for us. Her face and figure were good, though her cooking was of the homeliest; but she understood all about gardening, and told us all the old names of the coppices and cornfields, and the stories of the smugglers and highwaymen, and, better still, of the “things that walked,” and of the “sights” which met one in lonely glens of a starlight night. She was a great comfort to us, because Laura hated housekeeping as much as I loved folklore, and we soon came to leave all the domestic business to Mrs. Dorman, and to use her legends in little magazine stories which brought in the jingling guinea.

  We had three months of married happiness, and did not have a single quarrel. One October evening I had been down to smoke a pipe with the doctor — our only neighbour — a pleasant young Irishman. Laura had stayed at home to finish a comic sketch of a village episode for the Monthly Marplot. I left her laughing over her own jokes, and came in to find her a crumpled heap of pale muslin weeping on the window seat.

  “Good heavens, my darling, what’s the matter?” I cried, taking her in my arms. She leaned her little dark head against my shoulder and went on crying. I had never seen her cry before — we had always been so happy, you see — and I felt sure some frightful misfortune had happened.

  “What is the matter? Do speak.”

  “It’s Mrs. Dorman,” she sobbed.

  “What has she done?” I inquired, immensely relieved.

  “She says she must go before the end of the month, and she says her niece is ill; she’s gone down to see her now, but I don’t believe that’s the reason, because her niece is always ill. I believe some one has been setting her against us. Her manner was so queer — —”

  “Never mind, Pussy,” I said; “whatever you do, don’t cry, or I shall have to cry too, to keep you in countenance, and then you’ll never respect your man again!”

  She dried her eyes obediently on my handkerchief, and even smiled faintly.

  “But you see,” she went on, “it is really serious, because these village people are so sheepy, and if one won’t do a thing you may be quite sure none of the others will. And I shall have to cook the dinners, and wash up the hateful greasy plates; and you’ll have to carry cans of water about, and clean the boots and knives — and we shall never have any time for work, or earn any money, or anything. We shall have to work all day, and only be able to rest when we are waiting for the kettle to boil!”

  I represented to her that even if we had to perform these duties, the day would still present some margin for other toils and recreations. But she refused to see the matter in any but the greyest light. She was very unreasonable, my Laura, but I could not have loved her any more if she had been as reasonable as Whately.

  “I’ll speak to Mrs. Dorman when she comes back, and see if I can’t come to terms with her,” I said. “Perhaps she wants a rise in her screw. It will be all right. Let’s walk up to the church.”

  The church was a large and lonely one, and we loved to go there, especially upon bright nights. The path skirted a wood, cut through it once, and ran along the crest of the hill through two meadows, and round the churchyard wall, over which the old yews loomed in black masses of shadow. This path, which was partly paved, was called “the bier-balk,” for it had long been the way by which the corpses had been carried to burial. The churchyard was richly treed, and was shaded by great elms which stood just outside and stretched their majestic arms in benediction over the happy dead. A large, low porch let one into the building by a Norman doorway and a heavy oak door studded with iron. Inside, the arches rose into darkness, and between them the reticulated windows, which stood out white in the moonlight. In the chancel, the windows were of rich glass, which showed in faint light their noble colouring, and made the black oak of the choir pews hardly more solid than the shadows. But on each side of the altar lay a grey marble figure of a knight in full plate armour lying upon a low slab, with hands held up in everlasting prayer, and these figures, oddly enough, were always to be seen if there was any glimmer of light in the church. Their names were lost, but the peasants told of them that they had been fierce and wicked men, marauders by land and sea, who had been the scourge of their time, and had been guilty of deeds so foul that the house they had lived in — the big house, by the way, that had stood on the site of our cottage — had been stricken by lightning and the vengeance of Heaven. But for all that, the gold of their heirs had bought them a place in the church. Looking at the bad hard faces reproduced in the marble, this story was easily believed.

  The church looked at its best and weirdest on that night, for the shadows of the yew trees fell through the windows upon the floor of the nave and touched the pillars with tattered shade. We sat down together without speaking, and watched the solemn beauty of the old church, with some of that awe which inspired its early builders. We walked to the chancel and looked at the sleeping warriors. Then we rested some time on the stone seat in the
porch, looking out over the stretch of quiet moonlit meadows, feeling in every fibre of our being the peace of the night and of our happy love; and came away at last with a sense that even scrubbing and blackleading were but small troubles at their worst.

  Mrs. Dorman had come back from the village, and I at once invited her to a tête-à-tête.

  “Now, Mrs. Dorman,” I said, when I had got her into my painting room, “what’s all this about your not staying with us?”

  “I should be glad to get away, sir, before the end of the month,” she answered, with her usual placid dignity.

  “Have you any fault to find, Mrs. Dorman?”

  “None at all, sir; you and your lady have always been most kind, I’m sure — —”

  “Well, what is it? Are your wages not high enough?”

  “No, sir, I gets quite enough.”

  “Then why not stay?”

  “I’d rather not” — with some hesitation—”my niece is ill.”

  “But your niece has been ill ever since we came.”

  No answer. There was a long and awkward silence. I broke it.

  “Can’t you stay for another month?” I asked.

  “No, sir. I’m bound to go by Thursday.”

  And this was Monday!

  “Well, I must say, I think you might have let us know before. There’s no time now to get any one else, and your mistress is not fit to do heavy housework. Can’t you stay till next week?”

  “I might be able to come back next week.”

  I was now convinced that all she wanted was a brief holiday, which we should have been willing enough to let her have, as soon as we could get a substitute.

  “But why must you go this week?” I persisted. “Come, out with it.”

  Mrs. Dorman drew the little shawl, which she always wore, tightly across her bosom, as though she were cold. Then she said, with a sort of effort —

  “They say, sir, as this was a big house in Catholic times, and there was a many deeds done here.”