“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 drewback 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,mustbreak 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, refusedhis 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 backagainst 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, andIthought 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 passagewhere 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 neverreallyliked him.” There was a pause. Then she said: “But how was ityouweren’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 Ihadto 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 believingit 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.
“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 behalfbad, really. If his eyebrows weren’t tied up into knots, I believehe’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.
“Idon’tknow 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 Cecilwouldsay. 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, valueshigh 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.Imade 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 ofinterest 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 herline 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 stranger 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 withso powerful a turn of the brake that the stranger was flung sideways against Nina, and his elbow nearly knocked her hat off.
He raised his own apologetically—but he did not speak even then.
“The wretch!” said Nina hotly; “he might at least have begged my pardon.”
The stranger sat down again, and began to read theSpectator. Nina had no papers. The train moved on an inch or two, and the reddening yellow of the fog seemed like a Charity blanket pressed against each window. Three of the bunches of violets shook and vibrated and slipped, the train moved again and they fell on the floor of the carriage. Nina watched their trembling in an agony of irritation induced by the fog, the delay, and the persistent silence of her companion. When the flowers fell, she spoke.
“You’ve dropped your flowers,” she said. Again a bow, a silent bow, and the flowers were picked up.
“Oh, I’m desperate!” Nina said inwardly. “He must be mad—or dumb—or have a vow of silence—I wonder which?”
The train had not yet reached the next station, though it had left the last nearly an hour before.
“Which is it? Mad, dumb, or a monk? Iwillfind out. Well, it’s his own fault; he shouldn’t be so aggravating. I’m going to speak to him. I’ve made up my mind.”
In the interval between decision and action the train in a sudden brief access of nervous energy got itself through a station, and paused a furlong down the line exhausted by the effort.
The stranger had put down hisSpectatorand was gazing gloomily out at the fog.
Nina drew a deep breath, and said—at least she nearly said: “What a dreadful fog!”
But she stopped. That seemed a dull beginning. If she said that he would think she was commonplace, and she had that sustaining inward consciousness, mercifully vouchsafed even to the dullest of us, of being really rather nice, and not commonplace at all. But what should she say? If she said anything about the colour of the fog and Turner or Whistler, it might be telling, but it would be of the shop shoppy. If she began about books—theSpectatorsuggested this—she would stand as a prig confessed. If she spoke of politics she would be an ignorant impostor soon exposed. If——But Nina took out her watch and resolved: “When the littlehand gets to the quarter Iwillspeak. Whatever I say, I’ll say something.”
And when the big hand did get to the quarter Nina did speak.
“Why shouldn’t we talk?” she said.
He looked at her; and he seemed to be struggling silently with some emotion too deep for words.
“It’s so silly to sit here like mutes,” Nina went on hurriedly—a little frightened, now she had begun, but more than a little determined not to be frightened. “If we were at a dance we shouldn’t know any more of each other than we do now—and you’d have to talk then. Why shouldn’t we now?”
Then the stranger spoke, and at the first sentence Nina understood exactly what reason had decided the stranger that they should not talk. Yet now they did. If this were a work of fiction I shouldn’t dare to pretend that the train took more than two hours to get to Mill Vale. But in a plain record of fact one must speak the truth. The train took exactly two hours and fifty minutes to cover the eleven miles between London and Mill Vale. After that first question and reply Nina and the stranger talked the whole way.
He walked with her to the door of her lodging, and she offered him her hand without that moment of hesitation which would have been natural to any heroine, because she had debated the question of that handshake all the way from the station, and made up her mind just as they reached the church, a stone’s throw from her home. When the door closed on her he went slowly back to the churchyard to lay his violets on a grave. Nina saw them there next day when she came out of church. She saw him too, and gave him a bow and a very small smile, and turned away quickly. The bow meant: “You see I’m not going to speak to you. You mustn’t think I want to be always talking to you.” The smile meant: “But you mustn’t think I’m cross. I’m not—only——”
In the hot, stuffy “life-room” at the Slade next day Molly teased with ill-judged bread-crumbs an arm hopelessly ill drawn, and chattered softly to Nina, who in the Saturday solitude had drawn her easel behind her friend’s “donkey.” “It’s all very well here when you first come in, but when once youarewarm, oh dear, how warm you are! Why do models want such boiling rooms?Why can’t they be soaked in alum or myrrh or something to harden their silly skins so that they won’t mind a breath of decent air? And I believe the model’s deformed—she certainly is from where I am. Oh, look at my arm! I ask you a little—look at the beastly thing. Foreshortened like this it looks like a fillet of veal with a pound of sausages tied on to it for a hand. Oh, my own and only Nina—save the sinking ship!”
“It ought to go more likethat,” Nina said with indicative brush, “and don’t keep on rubbing out so fiercely. You’ll get paralysed with bread—it’s a disease, you know. I heard Tonks telling you so only the other day——”
“It’s rather a good phrase: I wonder where he got it? He was rather nice that day,” said Molly. “Oh, this arm! It’s no good—I believe the model’s moved—I tell you Imust.” More bread. Nina re-absorbed in her canvas. “Yours is coming well. What’s the matter with you to-day? You’re very mousy. Has the ‘stranger who might’ been scowling more than usual? Or have you got a headache? I’m sure this atmosphere’s enough to make you.Did you see him this morning? Have you fainted at his feet yet? Has he relented in the matter of umbrellas? I’m sure he can’t have passed the whole week without some act of grumpiness.”
Nina leaned back and looked through half-shut eyes at the model’s beautiful form and stupid face.
“I went down in the same carriage with him on Thursday,” she said slowly.
“You did? Did he rush into the third class, where angels like himself ought to fear to tread?”
“There was a fog. Thirds all full, and seconds too. The guard bundled us both in, and the train started—and it took three or four hours to get down.”
“Any one else in the carriage?”
“Not so much as a mouse.”
“Whatdidyou do?”
“Do? What could I do? We sat in opposite corners as far as we could get from each other, exchanging occasional glances of mutual detestation for about an hour and a half. He knocked me down and walked on me once, and took his hat off very politely and beg-pardoningly, but he never said a word. He didn’t even say he thought Iwas the door-mat. And then some cabbages of his fell off the seat.”
“Sure they weren’t thistles?”
“Vegetables of some sort. And I said: ‘You’ve dropped your——whatever they were.’ And he just bowed again in a thank-you-very-much-but-I’m-sure-I-don’t-know-what-business-it-is-of-yours sort of way. Do leave that bread alone.”
Molly, lost in the interest of the recital, was crumbling the bread as though the floor of the life-room were the natural haunt of doves and sparrows.
“Well?” she said.
“Well?” said Nina.
“Why ever didn’t you ask him to put the window up, or down, or something? I would have—just to hear if he has a voice.”
“It wouldn’t have been any good. He’d just have bowed again, and I’d had enough bows to last a long time. No: I just said straight out that we were a couple of idiots to sit there gaping at each other with our tongues out, and why on earth shouldn’t we talk?”
“You never did!”
“Or words to that effect, anyhow. And then he said——”
A long pause.
“What?”
“He told me why he never spoke to strangers.”
“What a slap in the face! You poor——”
“Oh, he didn’t say it likethat, you silly idiot. And it was quite a good reason.”
“What was it?”
No answer.
“Tell me exactly what he said.”
“He said, ‘I—I—I——’ At any rate, I’m satisfied, and I rather wish we hadn’t called him pigs and beasts, and things like that.”
“Well?”
“That’s all.”
“Aren’t you going to tell me the reason? Oh, very well—you leave it to my guessing? Of course it’s quite evident he’s hopelessly in love with you, and never ventured to speak for fear of betraying his passion. But, encouraged by your advances——”
“Molly, go on with that arm, and don’t be a vulgar little donkey.”
Molly obeyed. Presently: “Cross-patch,” she said.
“I’m not,” said Nina, “but I want to work, and I like you best when you’re not vulgar.”
“You’re very rude.”
“No: only candid.”
Molly’s wounded pride, besieged by her curiosity, held out for five minutes. Then: “Did you talk to him much?”
“Heaps.”
“All the way down?”
No answer.
“Is he nice?”
Silence.
“Is he clever?”
“I want to work.”
“Well, what I want to know is, and then I’ll let you alone—what did you talk about? Tell me that, and I won’t ask another question.”
“We talked,” said Nina deliberately, taking a clean brush, “we talked about your brother Cecil. No, I shan’t tell you what we said, or why we talked about him, or anything. You’ve had your one question, now shut up.”
“Nina,” said Molly calmly, “if I didn’t like you so much I should hate you.”
“That certainty about the other has always been the foundation of our mutual regard,” said Nina calmly.
Then they laughed, and began to work in earnest.
The next time Molly mentioned the “stranger who might have been observed” Nina laughed, and said: “The subject is forbidden; it makes you vulgar.”
“And you disagreeable.”
“Then it’s best to avoid it. Best for you and best for me.”
“But do you ever see him now?”
“On occasion. He still travels by the 9.1, and I still have the use of my eyes.”
“Does he ever talk to you like he did that Thursday?”
“No—never. And I’m not going to talk about him to you, so it’s no good. Your turn to choose a subject. You won’t? Then it becomes my turn. What a long winter this is! We seem to have taken years to get from November to February!”
The time went more quickly between February and May. It was when the country was wearing its full dress of green and the hawthorn pearls were opening into baby-roses in the hedgerows that it was Nina’s fortune to be put, by the zealous indiscretion of a mistaken porter, into an express train for Beechwood—the wrong station—the wrong line.
The “stranger who might have beenobserved,” on this occasion was not observed, but observer. He saw and recognised the porter’s error, hesitated a moment, and then leaped into a carriage just behind hers. So that when, after a swift journey made eventful by agonised recognition of the fleeting faces of various stations where she might have changed and caught her own train, Nina reached Beechwood, the stranger’s hand was ready to open the door for her.
“There’s no train for ages,” he said in tones deliberate, almost hesitating. “Shall we walk home? It’s only six miles.”
“But you—aren’t you going somewhere here?”
“No—I—I—I saw the porter put you in—and I thought—at least—anyway you will walk, won’t you?”
They walked. When they reached Beechwood Common, he said: “Won’t you take my arm?” And she took it. Her hands were ungloved; the other hand was full of silver may and bluebells. The sun shot level shafts of gold between the birch trees across the furze and heather.
“How beautiful it is!” she said.
“We’ve known each other three months,” said he.
“But I’ve seen you every day, and we’ve talked for hours and hours in those everlasting trains,” she said, as if in excuse.
“I’ve seen you every day for longer than that; the first time was on the 3rd of October.”
“Fancy remembering that!”
“I have a good memory.”
A silence.
Nina broke it, to say again: “How pretty!” She knew she had said it before, or something like it, but she could think of nothing else—and she wanted to say something.
He put his hand over hers as it lay on his arm. She looked up at him quickly.
“Well?” he said, stopping to look down into her eyes and tightening his clasp on her hand. “Are you sorry you came to Beechwood?”
“No——”
“Then be glad. My dear, I wish you could ever be as glad as I am.”
Then they walked on, still with his hand on hers.
Nina and Molly sat on a locker swinging their feet and eating their lunch in the Slade corridor next day. Nina was humming softly under her breath.
“What are you so happy for all of a sudden?” Molly asked. “Your sketch-club things are the worst I’ve ever seen, and the Professor was down on you like a hundred of bricks this morning.”
“I’m not happy,” said Nina, turning away what seemed to Molly a new face.
“What is it, then?”
“Nothing. Oh yes—by the way, I’m going to be married.”
“Notreally?”
“Check this unflattering display of incredulity—I am.”
“Really and truly? And you never told me a thing. I hate slyness and secretiveness. Nina, who is it? Do I know him?”
Nina named a name.
“Never even heard of him. But where did you meet him? It really is rather deceitful of you.”
“I always meant to tell you, only there was nothing to tell till yesterday except——”
“Except everything,” said Molly. “Well, tell me now.”
Nina jumped up and shook the bath-bun crumbs off her green muslin pinafore.
“Promise not to be horrid, and I will.”
“I won’t—I promise I won’t.”
“Then it’s—it’s him—the ‘stranger who might’—you know. And I really should have told you, though there wasn’t anything to tell, only—don’t laugh.”
“I’m not. Can’t you see I’m not? Only what?”
“Well, when I spoke to him that day in the train, I said, ‘Why shouldn’t we talk?’ And he said, ‘I—I—I—be—be—be—because I stammer so.’ And hedid. You never heard anything like it. It was awful. He took hours to get out those few words, and I didn’t know where to look. And I felt such a brute because of the things we’d said about him, that I had no sense left; and I told him straight out how I’d wondered he never even said he wondered how late the train was when we were waiting for the 9.1, and I was glad it was stammering and not disagreeableness. And then I said I wasn’t glad he stammered, but so sorry; and he was awfully nice about it, and I told him about that man who cured your brother Cecil of stammering, and he went to him at once: and he’s almost all right now.”
“Good gracious!” said Molly. “Are you sure—but why didn’t he get cured long ago?”
“He had a mother: she stammered frightfully—afterthe shock of his father’s death, or something, and he got into the way of it from her. And—anyway he didn’t. I think it was so as not to hurt his mother’s feelings, or something. I don’t quite understand. And he said it didn’t seem to matter when she was dead. And he’s an artist. He sells his pictures too, and he teaches. He has a studio in Chelsea.”
“It all sounds a little thin; but if you’re pleased, I’m sure I am.”
“I am,” said Nina.
“But what did he say when he asked you?”
“He didn’t ask me,” said Nina.
“But surely he said he’d loved you since the first moment he saw you?”
Nina had to admit it.
“Then you see I wasn’t such a vulgar little donkey after all.”
“Yes, you were. You hadn’t any business even tothinksuch things, much less say them. Why, evenIdidn’t dare to think it for—oh—for ever so long. But I’ll forgive it—and if it’s good it shall be a pretty little bridesmaid, it shall.”
“When is it to be?” asked Molly, still adrift in a sea of wonder.
“Oh, quite soon, he says. He says we’reonly wasting time by waiting. You see we’re both alone.”
But Molly, looking wistfully at her friend’s transfigured face, perceived sadly that it was she who was alone, not they.
And the thought of the red-haired Pierrot with whom she had danced nine times at the Students’ Fancy Dress dance, an indiscretion hitherto her dearest memory, now offered no solid consolation.
Nina went away, singing softly under her breath. Molly sighed and followed slowly.
Her eyelids were red and swollen, her brown hair, flattened out of its pretty curves, clung closely to her head. Ink stained her hands, and there was even a bluish smear of it on her wrist. A tray with tea-things stood among the litter of manuscript on her table. The tea-pot had only cold tea-leaves in it; the bread and butter was untouched.
She put down the pen, and went to the window. The rose-tint of the sunset was reflected on the bank of mist and smoke beyond the river. Above, where the sky was pale and clear, a star or two twinkled contentedly.
She stamped her foot.
Already the beautiful garments of the evening mist, with veiled lights in the folds of it, was embroidered sparsely with the early litten lamps of impatient workers, and as shegazed, the embroidery was enriched by more and more yellow and white and orange—the string of jewels along the embankment, the face of the church clock.
She turned from the window to the room, and lighted her own lamp, for the room was now deeply dusk. It was a large, low, pleasant room. It had always seemed pleasant to her through the five years in which she had worked, and played, and laughed, and cried there. Now she wondered why she had not always hated it.
The stairs creaked. The knocker spoke. She caught her head in both hands.
“My God!” she said, “this is too much!”
Yet she went to the door.
“Oh—it’s only you,” she said, and, with no other greeting, walked back into the room, and sat down at the table.
The newcomer was left to close the outer door, and to follow at her own pleasure. The newcomer was another girl, younger, prettier, smarter. She turned her head sidewise, like a little bird, and looked at her friend with very bright eyes. Then she looked round the room.
“My dear Jane,” she said, “whatever have you been doing to yourself?”
“Nothing,” said her dear Jane very sulkily.
“Oh, if genius burns—your stairs are devilish—but if you’d rather I went away——”
“No, don’t go, Milly. I’m perfectly mad.” She jumped up and waved her outstretched arms over the mass of papers on the table. “Look at all this—three days’ work—rot—abject rot! I wish I was dead. I was wondering just now whether it would hurt much if one leaned too far out of the window—and—— No, I didn’t do it—as you see.”
“What’s the matter?” asked the other prosaically.
“Nothing. That’s just it. I’m perfectly well—at least I was—only now I’m all trembly with drink.” She pointed to the tea-cups. “It’s the chance of my life, and I can’t take it. I can’t work: my brain’s like batter. And everything depends on my idiot brain—it has done for these five years. That’s what’s so awful. It all depends on me—and I’m going all to pieces.”
“I told you so!” rejoined the other. “You would stay in town all the summer and autumn, slaving away. I knew you’d break down, and now you’ve done it.”
“I’ve slaved for five years, and I’ve never broken down before.”
“Well, you have now. Go away at once. Take a holiday. You’ll work like Shakespeare and Michelangelo after it.”
“But Ican’t—that’s just it. It’s those stories for theMonthly Multitude; I’m doing a series. I’m behindnow: and if I don’t get it done this week, they’ll stop the series. It’s what I’ve been working for all these years. It’s the best chance I’ve ever had, and it’s comenow, when I can’t do it. Your father’s a doctor: isn’t there any medicine you can take to make your head more like a head and less like a suet pudding?”
“Look here,” said Milly, “I really came in to ask you to come away with us at Whitsuntide; but you ought to go awaynow. Just go to our cottage at Lymchurch. There’s a dear old girl in the village—Mrs Beale—she’ll look after you. It’s a glorious place for work. Father did reams down there. You’ll do your stuff there right enough. This is only Monday. Go to-morrow.”
“Did he? I will. Oh yes, I will. I’ll go to-night, if there’s a train.”
“No, you don’t, my dear lunatic. Youare now going to wash your face and do your hair, and take me out to dinner—a real eighteenpenny dinner at Roches. I’ll stand treat.”
It was after dinner, as the two girls waited for Milly’s omnibus, that the word of the evening was spoken.
“I do hope you’ll have a good quiet time,” Milly said; “and it really is a good place for work. Poor Edgar did a lot of work there last year. There’s a cabinet with a secret drawer that he said inspired him with mysterious tales, and—— There’s my ’bus.”
“Why do you saypoorEdgar?” Jane asked, smiling lightly.
“Oh, hadn’t you heard? Awfully sad thing. He sailed from New York a fortnight ago. No news of the ship. His mother’s in mourning. I saw her yesterday. Quite broken down. Good-bye.Dotake care of yourself, and get well and jolly.”
Jane stood long staring after the swaying bulk of the omnibus, then she drew a deep breath and went home.
Edgar was dead. What a brute Milly was! But, of course, Edgar was nothing to Milly—nothing but a pleasant friend. How slowly people walked in the streets! Jane walkedquickly—so quickly that more than one jostled foot-passenger stopped to stare after her.
She had known that he was coming home—and when. She had not owned to herself that the constant intrusion of that thought, “He is here—in London,” the wonder as to when and how she should see him again, had counted for very much in these last days of fierce effort and resented defeat.
She got back to her rooms. She remembers letting herself in with her key. She remembers that some time during the night she destroyed all those futile beginnings of stories. Also, that she found herself saying over and over again, and very loud: “There are the boys—you know there are the boys.” Because, when you have two little brothers to keep, you must not allow yourself to forget it.
But for the rest she remembers little distinctly. Only she is sure that she did not cry, and that she did not sleep.
In the morning she found her rooms very tidy and her box packed. She had put in the boys’ portraits, because one must always remember the boys.
She got a cab and she caught a train, andshe reached the seaside cottage. Its little windows blinked firelit welcome to her, as she blundered almost blindly out of the station fly and up the narrow path edged with sea-shells.
Milly had telegraphed. Mrs Beale was there, tremulous, kindly, effective; with armchairs wheeled to the April fire—cups of tea, timid, gentle solicitude.
“My word, Miss, but you do look done up,” said she. “The kettle’s just on the boil, and I’ll wet you a cup o’ tea this instant minute, and I’ve a perfect picture of a chick a-roastin’ ready for your bit o’ dinner.”
Jane leaned back in the cushioned chair and looked round the quiet, pleasant little room. For the moment it seemed good to have a new place to be unhappy in.
But afterwards, when Mrs Beale had gone and she was alone in the house, there was time to think—all the time there had ever been since the world began—all the time that there would ever be till the world ended. Of that night, too, Jane cannot remember everything; but she knows that she did not sleep, and that her eyes were dry: very dry and burning, as though they had been licked into place between their lids by a tongue offlame. It was a long night: a spacious night, with room in it for more memories of Edgar than she had known herself mistress of.
Edgar, truculent schoolboy; Edgar at Oxford, superior to the point of the intolerable; Edgar journalist, novelist, war correspondent—always friend; Edgar going to America to lecture, and make the fortune that—he said—would make all things possible. He had said that on the last evening, when a lot of them—boys and girls, journalists, musicians, art students—had gone to see him off at Euston. He had said it at the instant of farewell, and had looked a question. Had she said “Yes”—or only thought it? She had often wondered that, even when her brain was clear.
Then—she pushed away the next thought with both hands, and drove herself back to the day when the schoolboy next door whom she had admired and hated, saved her pet kitten from the butcher’s dog—an heroic episode with blood in it and tears. Edgar’s voice, the touch of his hand, the swing of his waltz-step—the way his eyes smiled before his mouth did. How bright his eyes were—and his hands were very strong. He was strong every way: he would fight for hislife—even with the sea. Great, smooth, dark waves seemed rushing upon her in the quiet room; she could hear the sound of them on the beach. Why had she come near the sea? It was the same sea that—— She pushed the waves away with both hands. The church clock struck two.
“You mustn’t go mad, you know,” she told herself very gently and reasonably, “because of the boys.”
Her hands had got clenched somehow, her whole body was rigid. She relaxed the tense muscles deliberately, made up the fire, swept up the hearth.
The new flame her touch inspired flickered a red reflection on the face of the cabinet—the cabinet with the secret drawer that had “inspired Edgar with mysterious tales.”
Jane went to it, and patted it, and stroked it, and coaxed it to tell her its secret. But it would not.
“If it would only inspireme,” she said, “if I could only get an idea for the story, I could do it now—this minute. Lots of people work best at night. My brain’s really quite clear again now, or else I shouldn’t be able to remember all these silly little things. No, no,” she cried to a memory of a young mankissing a glove, a little creeping memory that came to sting. She trampled on it.
Next day Jane walked four miles to see a doctor and get a sleeping draught.
“You see,” she explained very earnestly, “I have some work to finish, and if I don’t sleep I can’t. And I must do it. I can’t tell you how important it is.”
The doctor gave her something in a bottle when he had asked a few questions, and she went back to the cottage to go on bearing what was left of the interminable, intolerable day.
That was the day when she set out the fair white writing paper, and the rosy blotting-paper, and the black ink and the black fountain pen, and sat and looked at them for hours and hours. She prayed for help—but no help came.
“I’m probably praying to the wrong people,” she said, when through the dusk the square of paper showed vague as a tombstone in twilit grass—“the wrong people—No, there are no tombstones in the sea—the wrong people. If St Anthony helps you to find things, and the other saints help you to be good, perhaps the dead people who used to write themselves are the ones to help one to write!”
Jane is ashamed to be quite sure that she remembers praying to Dante and Shakespeare, and at last to Christina Rossetti, because she was a woman and loved her brothers.
But no help came. The old woman fussed in and out with wood for the fire—candles—food. Very kindly, it appears, but Jane wished she wouldn’t. Jane thinks she must have eaten some of the food, or the old woman would not have left her as she did.
Jane took the draught, and went to bed.
When Mrs Beale came into the sitting-room next morning, a neat pile of manuscript lay on the table, and when she took a cup of tea to Jane’s bedside, Jane was sleeping so placidly that the old woman had not the heart to disturb her, and set the tea down on a chair by the pillow to turn white and cold.
When Jane came into the sitting-room, she stood long looking at the manuscript. At last she picked it up, and, still standing, read it through. When she had finished, she stood a long time with it in her hand.At last she shrugged her shoulders and sat down. She wrote to Milly.