by Edith Nesbit
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.
“You fool,” he said to himself, “your dinner has disagreed with you, with a vengeance. Don’t be an ass. The whole lot are only a set of big dolls.”
He felt for his matches, and lighted a cigarette. The gleam of the match fell on the face of the corpse in front of him. The light was brief, and it seemed, somehow, impossible to look, by that light, in every corner where one would have wished to look. The match burnt his fingers as it went out; and there were only three more matches in the box.
It was dark again, and the image left on the darkness was that of the corpse in front of him. He thought of his dead friend. When the cigarette was smoked out, he thought of him more and more, till it seemed that what lay on the bier was not wax. His hand reached forward, and drew back more than once. But at last he made it touch the bier, and through the blackness travel up along a lean, rigid arm to the wax face that lay there so still. The touch was not reassuring. Just so, and not otherwise, had his dead friend’s face felt, to the last touch of his lips: cold, firm, waxen. People always said the dead were “waxen.” How true that was! He had never thought of it before. He thought of it now.
He sat still, so still that every muscle ached, because if you wish to hear the sounds that infest silence, you must be very still indeed. He thought of Edward, and of the string he had meant to tie to one of the figures.
“That wouldn’t be needed,” he told himself. And his ears ached with listening — listening for the sound that, it seemed, must break at last from that crowded silence.
He never knew how long he sat there. To move, to go up, to batter at the door and clamour to be let out — that one could have done if one had had a lantern, or even a full matchbox. But in the dark, not knowing the turnings, to feel one’s way among these things that were so like life and yet were not alive — to touch, perhaps, these faces that were not dead, and yet felt like death. His heart beat heavily in his throat at the thought.
No, he must sit still till morning. He had been hypnotised into this state, he told himself, by Edward, no doubt; it was not natural to him.
Then suddenly the silence was shattered. In the dark something moved. And, after those sounds that the silence teemed with, the noise seemed to him thunder-loud. Yet it was only a very, very little sound, just the rustling of drapery, as though something had turned in its sleep. And there was a sigh — not far off.
Vincent’s muscles and tendons tightened like fine-drawn wire. He listened. There was nothing more: only the silence, the thick silence.
The sound had seemed to come from a part of the vault where, long ago, when there was light, he had seen a grave being dug for the body of a young girl martyr.
“I will get up and go out,” said Vincent. “I have three matches. I am off my head. I shall really be nervous presently if I don’t look out.”
He got up and struck a match, refused his eyes the sight of the corpse whose waxen face he had felt in the blackness, and made his way through the crowd of figures. By the match’s flicker they seemed to make way for him, to turn their heads to look after him. The match lasted till he got to a turn of the rock-hewn passage. His next match showed him the burial scene: the little, thin body of the martyr, palm in hand, lying on the rock floor in patient waiting, the grave-digger, the mourners. Some standing, some kneeling, one crouched on the ground.
This was where that sound had come from, that rustle, that sigh. He had thought he was going away from it: instead, he had come straight to the spot where, if anywhere, his nerves might be expected to play him false.
“Bah!” he said, and he said it aloud, “the silly things are only wax. Who’s afraid?” His voice sounded loud in the silence that lives with the wax people. “They’re only wax,” he said again, and touched with his foot, contemptuously, the crouching figure in the mantle.
And, as he touched it, it raised its head and looked vacantly at him, and its eyes were mobile and alive. He staggered back against another figure, and dropped the match. In the new darkness he heard the crouching figure move towards him. Then the darkness fitted in round him very closely.
“What was it exactly that sent poor Vincent mad: you’ve never told me?” Rose asked the question. She and Edward were looking out over the pines and tamarisks, across the blue Mediterranean. They were very happy, because it was their honeymoon.
He told her about the Musée Grévin and the wager, but he did not state the terms of it.
“But why did he think you would be afraid?”
He told her why.
“And then what happened?”
“Why, I suppose he thought there was no time like the present — for his five pounds, you know — and he hid among the wax-works. And I missed my train, and I thought there was no time like the present. In fact, dear, I thought if I waited I should have time to make certain of funking it, so I hid there, too. And I put on my big black capuchon, and sat down right in one of the wax-work groups — they couldn’t see me from the passage where you walk. And after they put the lights out I simply went to sleep; and I woke up —
and there was a light, and I heard some one say: ‘They’re only wax,’ and it was Vincent. He thought I was one of the wax people, till I looked at him; and I expect he thought I was one of them even then, poor chap. And his match went out, and while I was trying to find my railway reading-lamp that I’d got near me, he began to scream, and the night watchman came running. And now he thinks every one in the asylum is made of wax, and he screams if they come near him. They have to put his food beside him while he’s asleep. It’s horrible. I can’t help feeling as if it were my fault, somehow.”
“Of course it’s not,” said Rose. “Poor Vincent! Do you know I never really liked him.” There was a pause. Then she said: “But how was it you weren’t frightened?”
“I was,” he said, “horribly frightened. I — I — it sounds idiotic, but I thought I should go mad at first — I did really: and yet I had to go through with it. And then I got among the figures of the people in the Catacombs, the people who died for — for things, don’t you know, died in such horrible ways. And there they were, so calm — and believing it was all all right. And I thought about what they’d gone through. It sounds awful rot I know, dear — but I expect I was sleepy. Those wax people, they sort of seemed as if they were alive, and were telling me there wasn’t anything to be frightened about. I felt as if I were one of them, and they were all my friends, and they’d wake me if anything went wrong, so I just went to sleep.”
“I think I understand,” she said. But she didn’t.
“And the odd thing is,” he went on, “I’ve never been afraid of the dark since. Perhaps his calling me a coward had something to do with it.”
“I don’t think so,” said she. And she was right. But she would never have understood how, nor why.
THE STRANGER WHO MIGHT HAVE BEEN OBSERVED
“There he goes — isn’t he simply detestable!” She spoke suddenly, after a silence longer than was usual to her; she was tired, and her voice was a note or two above its habitual key. She blushed, a deep pink blush of intense annoyance, as the young man passed down the long platform among the crowd of city men and typewriting girls, patiently waiting for the belated train to allow them to go home from work.
“Oh, do you think he heard? Oh, Molly — I believe he did!”
“Nonsense!” said Molly briskly, “of course he didn’t. And I must say I don’t think he’s so bad. If he didn’t look so sulky he wouldn’t be half bad, really. If his eyebrows weren’t tied up into knots, I believe he’d look quite too frightfully sweet for anything.”
“He’s exactly like that Polish model we had last week. Oh, Molly, he’s coming back again.”
Again he passed the two girls. His expression was certainly not amiable.
“How long have you known him?” Molly asked.
“I don’t know him. I tell you I only see him on the platform at Mill Vale. He and I seem to be the only people — the only decent people — who’ve found out the new station. He goes up by the 9.1 every day, and so do I. And the train’s always late, so we have the platform and the booking office to ourselves. And there we sit, or stand, or walk, morning after morning like two stuck pigs in a trough of silence.”
“Don’t jumble your metaphors, though you very nearly carried it off with the trough, I own. Stuck pigs don’t walk — in troughs, or anywhere else.”
“Well, you know what I mean — —”
“But what do you want the wretched man to do? He can’t speak to you: it wouldn’t be proper — —”
“Proper — why not? We’re human beings, not wild beasts. At least, I’m a human being.”
“And he’s a beast — I see.”
“I wish I were a man,” said Nina. “There he is again. His nose goes up another half inch every time he passes me. What’s he got to be so superior about? If I were a man I’d certainly pass the time of day with a fellow-creature if I were condemned to spend from ten to forty minutes with it six days out of the seven.”
“I expect he’s afraid you’d want to marry him. My brother Cecil says men are always horribly frightened about that.”
“Your brother Cecil!” said Nina scornfully. “Yes; that’s just the sort of thing anybody’s brother Cecil would say. He simply looks down on me because I go third. He only goes second himself, too. Here’s the train — —”
The two Art students climbed into their third-class carriage, and their talk, leaving Nina’s fellow-traveller, washed like a babbling brook about the feet of great rocks, busied itself with the old Italian Masters, painting as a mission, and the aims of Art — presently running through flatter country and lapping round perspective, foreshortening, tones, values high lights and the preposterous lisp of the anatomy lecturer.
Arrived at Mill Vale the Slade students jumped from their carriage to meet a wind that swept grey curtains of rain across the bleak length of the platform.
“And we haven’t so much as a rib of an umbrella between us,” sighed Molly, putting her white handkerchief over the “best” hat which signalised her Saturday to Monday with her friend. “You’re right: that man is a pig. There he goes with an umbrella big enough for all three of us. Oh, it’s too bad! He’s putting it down — he’s running. He runs rather well. He’s exactly like the cast of the Discobolus in the Antique Room.”
“Only his manners have not that repose that stamps the cast. Come on — don’t stand staring after him like that. We’d better run, too.”
“He’ll think we’re running after him. Oh, bother — —”
A moment of indecision, and Nina had turned her skirt over her head, and the two ran home to the little rooms where Nina lived — in the house of an old servant. Nina had no world of relations — she was alone. In the world of Art she had many friends, and in the world of Art she meant to make her mark. For the present she was content to make the tea, and then to set feet on the fender for a cosy evening.
“Did you see him coming out of church?” Nina asked next day. “He looked sulkier than ever.”
“I can’t think why you bother about him,” said the other girl. “He’s not really interesting. What do you call him?”
“Nothing.”
“Why, everything has a name, even a pudding. I made a name for him at once. It is ‘the stranger who might have been observed — —’”
They laughed. After the early dinner they went for a walk. None of your strolls, but a good steady eight miles. Coming home, they met the stranger: and then they talked about him again. For, fair reader, I cannot conceal from you that there are many girls who do think and talk about young men, even when they have not been introduced to them. Not really nice girls like yourself, fair reader — but ordinary, commonplace girls who have not your delicate natures, and who really do sometimes experience a fleeting sensation of interest even in the people whose names they don’t know.
Next morning they saw him at the station. The 9.1 took the bit in its teeth, and instead of being, as usual, the 9.30 something, became merely the 9.23. So for some twenty odd minutes the stranger not only might have been, but was, observed by four bright and critical eyes. I don’t mean that my girls stared, of course. Perhaps you do not know that there are ways of observing strangers other than by the stare direct. He looked sulkier than ever: but he also had eyes. Yet he, too, was far from staring, so far that the indignant Nina broke out in a distracted whisper: “There! you see! I’m not important enough for him even to perceive my existence. I’m always expecting him to walk on me. I wonder whether he’d apologise when he found I wasn’t the station door-mat?”
The stranger shrugged his shoulders all to himself in his second-class carriage when the train had started.
“‘Simply detestable!’ But how one talks prose without knowing it, all along the line! How can I ever have come enough into her line of vision to be distinguished by an epithet! And why this one? Detestable!”
The epithet, however distinguishing, seemed somehow to lack charm.
At Cannon Street Station the strange
r looked sulkier than Nina had ever seen him. She said so, adding: “Than I’ve ever seen him? Oh — I’m wandering. He looks sulkier than I’vsquo;ve ever seen any one — sulkier than I’ve ever dreamed possible. Pig — —”
Through the week, painting at the school and black and white work in the evenings filled Nina’s mind to the exclusion even of strangers who might, in more leisured moments, seem worthy of observation. She was aware of the sulky one on platforms, of course, but talking about him to Molly was more amusing somehow than merely thinking of him. When it came to thinking, the real, the earnest things of life — the Sketch Club, the chance of the Melville Nettleship Prize, the intricate hideousness of bones and muscles — took the field and kept it, against strangers and acquaintances alike.
Saturday, turning this week’s scribbled page to the fair, clear page of next week, brought the stranger back to her thoughts, and to eyes now not obscured by close realities.
He passed her on the platform, with a dozen bunches of violets in his hands.
Outside, on the railway bridge, the red and green lamps glowed dully through deep floods of yellow fog. The platform was crowded, the train late. When at last it steamed slowly in, the crowd surged towards it. The third-class carriages were filled in the moment. Nina hurried along the platform peering into the second-class carriages. Full also.
Then the guard opened the way for her into the blue-cloth Paradise of a first-class carriage; and, just as the train gave the shudder of disgust which heralds its shame-faced reluctant departure, the door opened again, and the guard pushed in another traveller — the “stranger who might — —” of course. The door banged, the train moved off with an air of brisk determination. A hundred yards from the platform it stopped dead.
There were no other travellers in that carriage. When the train had stood still for ten minutes or so, the stranger got up and put his head out of the window. At that instant the train decided to move again. It did it suddenly, and, exhausted by the effort, stopped after half a dozen yards’ progress with so powerful a turn of the brake that the stranger was flung sideways against Nina, and his elbow nearly knocked her hat off.