Man and Maid. Nesbit Edith

– ”

      “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.

      II

      THE POWER OF DARKNESS

      It was an enthusiastic send-off. Half the students from her Atelier were there, and twice as many more from other studios. She had been the belle of the Artists’ Quarter in Montparnasse for three golden months. Now she was off to the Riviera to meet her people, and every one she knew was at the Gare de Lyons to catch the pretty last glimpse of her. And, as had been more than once said late of an evening, “to see her was to love her.” She was one of those agitating blondes, with the naturally rippled hair, the rounded rose-leaf cheeks, the large violet-blue eyes that look all things and mean Heaven alone knows how little. She held her court like a queen, leaning out of the carriage window and receiving bouquets, books, journals, long last words, and last longing looks. All eyes were on her, and her eyes were for all – and her smile. For all but one, that is. Not a single glance went Edward’s way, and Edward, tall, lean, gaunt, with big eyes, straight nose, and mouth somewhat too small, too beautiful, seemed to grow thinner and paler before one’s eyes. One pair of eyes at least saw the miracle worked, the paling of what had seemed absolute pallor, the revelation of the bones of a face that seemed already covered but by the thinnest possible veil of flesh.

      And the man whose eyes saw this rejoiced, for he loved her, like the rest, or not like the rest; and he had had Edward’s face before him for the last month, in that secret shrine where we set the loved and the hated, the shrine that is lighted by a million lamps kindled at the soul’s flame, the shrine that leaps into dazzling glow when the candles are out and one lies alone on hot pillows to outface the night and the light as best one may.

      “Oh, good-bye, good-bye, all of you,” said Rose. “I shall miss you – oh, you don’t know how I shall miss you all!”

      She gathered the glances of her friends and her worshippers on her own glance, as one gathers jewels on a silken string. The eyes of Edward alone seemed to escape her.

      “Em voiture, messieurs et dames.”

      Folk drew back from the train. There was a whistle. And then at the very last little moment of all, as the train pulled itself together for the start, her eyes met Edward’s eyes. And the other man saw the meeting, and he knew – which was more than Edward did.

      So, when the light of life having been borne away in the retreating train, the broken-hearted group dispersed, the other man, whose name by the way was Vincent, linked his arm in Edward’s and asked cheerily: “Whither away, sweet nymph?”

      “I’m off home,” said Edward. “The 7.20 to Calais.”

      “Sick of Paris?”

      “One has to see one’s people sometimes, don’t you know, hang it all!” was Edward’s way of expressing the longing that tore him for the old house among the brown woods of Kent.

      “No attraction here now, eh?”

      “The chief attraction has gone, certainly,” Edward made himself say.

      “But there are as good fish in the sea – ?”

      “Fishing isn’t my trade,” said Edward.

      “The beautiful Rose! – ” said Vincent.

      Edward raised hurriedly the only shield he could find. It happened to be the truth as he saw it.

      “Oh,” he said, “of course, we’re all in love with her – and all hopelessly.”

      Vincent perceived that this was truth, as Edward saw it.

      “What are you going to do till your train goes?” he asked.

      “I don’t know. Café, I suppose, and a vilely early dinner.”

      “Let’s look in at the Musée Grévin,” said Vincent.

      The two were friends. They had been school-fellows, and this is a link that survives many a strain too strong to be resisted by more intimate and vital bonds. And they were fellow-students, though that counts for little or much – as you take it. Besides, Vincent knew something about Edward that no one else of their age and standing even guessed. He knew that Edward was afraid of the dark, and why. He had found it out that Christmas that the two had spent at an English country house. The house was full: there was a dance. There were to be theatricals. Early in the new year the hostess meant to “move house” to an old convent, built in Tudor times, a beautiful place with terraces and clipped yew trees, castellated battlements, a moat, swans, and a ghost story.

      “You boys,” she said, “must put up with a shake-down in the new house. I hope the ghost won’t worry you. She’s a nun with a bunch of keys and no eyes. Comes and breathes softly on the back of your neck when you’re shaving. Then you see her in the glass, and, as often as not, you cut your throat.” She laughed. So did Edward and Vincent, and the other young men; there were seven or eight of them.

      But that night, when sparse candles had lighted “the boys” to their rooms, when the last pipe had been smoked, the last good-night 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 wax-work show. Your mind, at the word, flies instantly to the excellent exhibition founded by the worthy Madame Tussaud, and you think you know what wax-works 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.