In the Dark

by E. Nesbit

  A smooth worn stile prefaced a path almost hidden in grass up for hay, a blaze of red sorrel, buttercups, ox-eyed daisies in the feathery foam of flowered grasses. The wood of the stile was warm to his hand, and the grasses that met over the path powdered his boots with their little seeds.

  Then there was a wood, and a rabbit warren, and short crisp grass dry on the chalk it thinly covered. The sun shone hardly in a sky of brass. The wayfarer panted for shade. It showed far ahead like a mirage in the desert, a group of pines, a flat whiteness of pond-water, a little house. One might ask the way at that house, and get – talk.

  He fixed his eyes on it and walked on, the leather straps hot on his shoulders, his oak stick-handle hot in his hand. Then suddenly he saw on the hill, pale beyond the pines, someone coming down the path. He knew the magnet that a planted easel is to rustic minds. This might perhaps be, after all, the better way. Never did artist prepare so rapidly the scene that should attract the eye of the rustic gazer, the lingering but inevitable approach of the rustic foot.

  In three minutes he was seated on his camp-stool, a canvas before him, his palette half-set. Four minutes saw a good deal of blue on the canvas. Purple, too, at the fifth minute, because the sky had turned that colour in the west, purple and, moreover, a strange threatening tint that called for burnt sienna and mid chrome and a dash of madder. The grey advancing figure had disappeared among the pines. He madly squeezed green paint on to the foreground; one must at least have a picture begun. And the sun searched intolerably every bit of him as he sat in the shadeless warren awaiting the passing of the other.

  And then, more sudden than an earthquake or the birth of love, a mighty rushing wind fell on him, caught up canvas and easel, even colour-box and oak staff, and whirled them away like leaves in an autumn equinox. His hat went too, not that that mattered, and the virgin sketch book whirled white before a wind that, the papers said next day, travelled at the rate of five-and-fifty miles an hour. The wonderful purple and copper of the west rushed up across the sky, a fierce spatter of rain stung face and hands. He pursued the colour-box, which had lodged in the front entry of a rabbit’s house, caught at the canvas, whose face lay closely pressed to a sloe-bush, and ran for the nearest shelter, the house among the pines. In a rain like that one has to run head down or be blinded, and so he did not see till he drew breath in the mouldering rotten porch of it that his shelter was not of those from which hospitality can be asked.

  A little lodge it was, long since deserted; walls and ceiling bulged and discoloured with damp, its latticed windows curtained only by the tapestry of the spider, its floors carpeted with old dust and drift of dry pine needles, and on its hearth the nests of long-fledged birds had fallen on the ashes of a fire gone out a very long time ago. A blazing lightning-flash dazzled him as he tried the handle of the door, and the door, hanging by one rusty hinge, yielded to his push as the first shattering peal of thunder clattered and cracked overhead. But a shelter it was, though the wind drove the rain almost horizontally through the broken window and across the room. He reached through the casement, and at the cost of a soaked coat-sleeve pulled to a faded green shutter and made this fast. Then he explored the upper rooms. Holes in the thatch had let through the weather, and the drop drop of the water that wears away stone had worn away the boards of the floor, so that they bent dangerously to his tread. The halfway landing of the little crooked staircase seemed the driest place. He sat down there with his back against the wall and listened to the cracking and blundering of the thunder, watched through the skylight the lightning shoot out of the clouds, rapid and menacing as the tongue from the mouth of a snake.

  No man who is not a dreamer chooses as a symbolic rite the kicking of a tall black hat down the stairs of the office he has elected to desert. Sellinge, audience at first to the glorious orchestra, fell from hearing to a waking dream, and the waking dream merged in a dreamless sleep.

  When he awoke he knew at once that he was not alone in the little forgotten house. A tramp perhaps, a trespasser almost certainly. He had not had time to move under this thought before the other overpowered it. It was he who was the tramp, the trespasser. The other might be the local police. Have you ever tried to explain anything to the police in a rural district? It would be better to lie quietly, holding one’s breath, and so, perhaps, escape an interview that could not be to his advantage, and might, in view of the end he pursued, be absolutely the deuce-and-all.

  So he lay quietly, listening. To almost nothing. The other person, whoever it was, moved hardly at all; or perhaps the movements were drowned in the mutter of the thunder and the lashing of the rain, for Sellinge had not slept out the storm. But its violence had lessened while he slept, and presently the great thunders died away in slow sulky mutterings, and the fierce rain settled to a steady patter on the thatch and a slow drip drip from the holes in the roof to the rotting boards below. And the dusk was falling; shadows were setting up their tents in the corners of the stairs and of the attic whose floor was on a level with his eyes. And below, through the patter of the rain, he could hear soft movements. How soft, his strained ears hardly knew till the abrupt contrast of a step on the earth without reminded him of the values of the ordinary noises that human beings make when they move.

  The step on the earth outside was heavy and plashy in the wet mould; the touch on the broken door was harsh, and harshly the creaking one hinge responded. The footsteps on the boarded floor of the lower room were loud and echoing. Those other sounds had been as the half heard murmur of summer woods in the ears of one half asleep. This was definite, undeniable as the sound of London traffic.

  Suddenly all sounds ceased for a moment, and in that moment Sellinge found time to wish that he had never found this shelter. The wildest, wettest, stormiest weather out under the sky seemed better than this little darkening house which he shared with these two others. For there were two. He knew it even before the man began to speak. But he had not known till then that the other, the softly moving first-comer, was a woman, and when he knew it, he felt, in a thrill of impotent resentment, the shame of his situation and the impossibility of escaping from it. He was an eavesdropper. He had not, somehow, thought of eavesdropping as incidental to the detective career. And there was nothing he could do to make things better which would not, inevitably, make them worse. To declare himself now would be to multiply a thousandfold everything which he desired to minimise. Because the first words that came to him from the two below were love-words, low, passionate, and tender, in the voice of a man. He could not hear the answer of the woman, but there are ways of answering which cannot be overheard.

  ‘Stay just as you are,’ he heard the man’s voice again, ‘and let me stay here at your feet and worship you.’

  And again, ‘Oh, my love, my love, even to see you like this. It’s all so different from what we used to think it would be; but it’s heaven compared with everything else in the world.’

  Sellinge supposed that the woman answered, though he caught no words, for the man went on:

  ‘Yes, I know it’s hard for you to come, and you come so seldom. And even when you’re not here, I know you understand. But life’s very long and cold, dear. They talk about death being cold. It’s life that’s the cold thing, Anna.’

  Then the voice sank to a murmur, cherishing, caressing, hardly articulate, and the shadows deepened, deepened inside the house. But outside it grew lighter because the moon had risen and the clouds and rain had swept away, and sunset and moonrise were mingling in the clear sky.

  ‘Not yet; you will not send me away yet,’ he heard. ‘Oh, my love, such a little time, and all the rest of life without you. Ah! let me stay beside you a little while.’

  The passion and the longing of the voice thrilled the listener to an answering passion of pity. He himself had read of love, thought of it, dreamed of it; but he had never heard it speak; he had not known that its voice could be like this.

  A faint whispering sound came to him; the woman�
�s answer, he thought, but so low was it that it was lost even as it reached him in the whisper of a wet ivy-branch at the window. He raised himself gently and crept on hands and knees to the window of the upper room. His movements made no sound that could have been heard below. He felt happier there, looking out on the clear, cold, wedded lights, and also he was as far as he could be, in the limits of that house, from those two poor lovers.

  Yet still he heard the last words of the man, vibrant with the agony of a death-parting.

  ‘Yes, yes, I will go.’ Then, ‘Oh, my dear, dear love; goodbye, goodbye!’

  The sound of footsteps on the floor below, the broken hinged door was opened and closed again from without, he heard its iron latch click into place. He looked from the window. The last indiscretion of sight was nothing to the indiscretions of hearing that had gone before, and he wanted to see this man to whom all his soul had gone out in sympathy and pity. He had not supposed that he could ever be so sorry for anyone.

  He looked to see a young man bowed under a weight of sorrow, and he saw an old man bowed with the weight of years. Silver-white was the hair in the moonlight, thin and stooping the shoulders, feeble the footsteps, and tremulous the hand that closed the gate of the little enclosure that had been a garden. The figure of a sad old man went away alone through the shadows of the pine-trees.

  And it was the figure of the old man who had driven by The Five Bells in the old-fashioned carriage, the figure of the man he had come down to watch, to spy upon. Well, he had spied, and he had found out – what?

  He did not wait for anyone else to unlatch that closed door and come out into the moonlight below the window. He thinks now that he knew even then that no one else would come out. He went down the stairs in the darkness, careless of the sound of his feet on the creaking boards. He lighted a match and held it up and looked round the little bare room with its one shuttered window and its one door, close latched. And there was no one there, no one at all. The room was as empty and cold as any last year’s nest.

  He got out very quickly and got away, not stopping to shut door or gate nor to pick up the colour-box and canvas from the foot of the stairs where he had left them. He went very quickly back to The Five Bells, and he was very glad of the lights and the talk and the smell and sight and sound of living men and women.

  It was next day that he asked his questions; this time of the round-faced daughter of the house.

  ‘No,’ she told him, ‘Squire wasn’t married,’ and ‘Yes, there was a sort of story.’

  He pressed for the story, and presently got it.

  ‘It ain’t nothing much. Only they say when Squire was a young man there was some carryings on with the gamekeeper’s daughter up at the lodge. Happen you noticed it, sir, an old tumble-down place in the pine woods.’

  Yes, he had happened to notice it.

  ‘Nobody knows the rights of it now,’ the girl told him; ‘all them as was in it’s under the daisies this long time, except Squire. But he went away and there was some mishap; he got thrown from his horse and didn’t come home when expected, and the girl she was found drownded in the pond nigh where she used to live. And Squire he waren’t never the same man. They say he hangs about round the old lodge to this day when it’s full moon. And they do say— But there, I dunno, it’s all silly talk, and I hope you won’t take no notice of anything I’ve said. One gets talking.’

  Caution, late born, was now strong in her, and he could not get anymore.

  ‘Do you remember the girl’s name?’ he asked at last, finding all assaults vain against the young woman’s discretion.

  ‘Why, I wasn’t born nor yet thought of,’ she told him, and laughed and called along the fresh sanded passage: ‘Mother, what was that girl’s name, you know, the one up at the lodge that—’

  ‘Ssh!’ came back the mother’s voice; ‘you keep a still tongue, Lily; it’s all silly talk.’

  ‘All right, mother, but what was her name?’

  ‘Anna,’ came the voice along the fresh sanded passage.

  ‘Dear Sir,’ ran Sellinge’s report, written the next day, ‘I have made enquiries and find no ground for supposing the gentleman in question to be otherwise than of sound mind. He is much respected in the village and very kind to the poor. I remain here awaiting your instructions.’

  While he remained there awaiting the instructions he explored the neighbourhood, but he found nothing of much interest except the grave on the north side of the churchyard, a grave marked by no stone, but covered anew every day with fresh flowers. It had been so covered every day, the sexton told him, for fifty years.

  ‘A long time, fifty years,’ said the man, ‘a long time, sir. A lawyer in London, he pays for the flowers, but they do say—’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sellinge quickly, ‘but then people say all sorts of things, don’t they?’

  ‘Some on ’em’s true though,’ said the sexton.

  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 everyone 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 revelations 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, goodbye, goodbye, 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.

  ‘En 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 c
ould 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 less 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.