“Chuck it and go home,” said common sense.
“I’m hanged if I do,” said Vincent.
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 rush-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 overestimated 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 Mme. 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 its 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 hypnotized 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 bright 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 waxworks. 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. An
d I put on my big black capuchon, and sat down right in one of the waxwork groups – they couldn’t see me from the gallery 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 someone 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 everyone in the asylum is made of wax, and he screams if they come near him. They have to put his food near 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. It – it – sounds idiotic, but I was 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 right. So 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 was 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 Wondersmith
Fitz-James O’Brien
Golosh Street and its People
A small lane, the name of which I have forgotten, or do not choose to remember, slants suddenly off from Chatham Street, (before that headlong thoroughfare reaches into the Park), and retreats suddenly down towards the East River, as if it were disgusted with the smell of old clothes, and had determined to wash itself clean. This excellent intention it has, however, evidently contributed towards the making of that imaginary pavement mentioned in the old adage; for it is still emphatically a dirty street. It has never been able to shake off the Hebraic taint of filth which it inherits from the ancestral thoroughfare. It is slushy and greasy, as if it were twin brother of the Roman Ghetto.
I like a dirty slum; not because I am naturally unclean – I have not a drop of Neapolitan blood in my veins – but because I generally find a certain sediment of philosophy precipitated in its gutters. A clean street is terribly prosaic. There is no food for thought in carefully swept pavements, barren kennels, and vulgarly spotless houses. But when I go down a street which has been left so long to itself that it has acquired a distinct outward character, I find plenty to think about. The scraps of sodden letters lying in the ash-barrel have their meaning: desperate appeals, perhaps, from Tom, the baker’s assistant, to Amelia, the daughter of the dry-goods retailer, who is always selling at a sacrifice in consequence of the late fire. That may be Tom himself who is now passing me in a white apron, and I look up at the windows of the house (which does not, however, give any signs of a recent conflagration) and almost hope to see Amelia wave a white pocket-handkerchief. The bit of orange-peel lying on the sidewalk inspires thought. Who will fall over it? who but the industrious mother of six children, the eldest of which is only nine months old, all of whom are dependent on her exertions for support? I see her slip and tumble. I see the pale face convulsed with agony, and the vain struggle to get up; the pitying crowd closing her off from all air; the anxious young doctor who happened to be passing by; the manipulation of the broken limb, the shake of the head, the moan of the victim, the litter borne on men’s shoulders, the gates of the New York Hospital unclosing, the subscription taken up on the spot. There is some food for speculation in that three-year-old, tattered child, masked with dirt, who is throwing a brick at another three-year-old, tattered child, masked with dirt. It is not difficult to perceive that he is destined to lurk, as it were, through life. His bad, flat face – or, at least, what can be seen of it – does not look as if it were made for the light of day. The mire in which he wallows now is but a type of the moral mire in which he will wallow hereafter. The feeble little hand lifted at this instant to smite his companion, half in earnest, half in jest, will be raised against his fellow-beings forevermore.
Golosh Street – as I will call this nameless lane before alluded to – is an interesting locality. All the oddities of trade seem to have found their way thither and made an eccentric mercantile settlement. There is a bird-shop at one corner, wainscoted with little cages containing linnets, waxwings, canaries, blackbirds, Mino-birds, with a hundred other varieties, known only to naturalists. Immediately opposite is an establishment where they sell nothing but ornaments made out of the tinted leaves of autumn, varnished and gummed into various forms. Farther down is a second-hand book-stall, which looks like a sentry-box mangled out flat, and which is remarkable for not containing a complete set of any work. There is a small chink between two ordinary-sized houses, in which a little Frenchman makes and sells artificial eyes, specimens of which, ranged on a black velvet cushion, stare at you unwinkingly through the window as you pass, until you shudder and hurry on, thinking how awful the world would be, if every one went about without eyelids. There are junk-shops in Golosh Street that seem to have got hold of all the old nails in the Ark and all the old brass of Corinth. Madame Filomel, the fortune-teller, lives at No. 12 Golosh Street, second story front, pull the bell on the left-hand side. Next door to Madame is the shop of Herr Hippe, commonly called the Wondersmith.
Herr Hippe’s shop is the largest in Golosh Street, and to all appearance is furnished with the smallest stock. Beyond a few packing-cases, a turner’s lathe, and a shelf laden with dissected maps of Europe, the interior of the shop is entirely unfurnished. The window, which is lofty and wide, but much begrimed with dirt, contains the only pleasant object in the place. This is a beautiful little miniature theatre, – that is to say, the orchestra and stage. It is fitted with charmingly painted scenery and all the appliances for scenic changes. There are tiny traps, and delicately constructed ‘lifts,’ and real footlights fed with burning-fluid, and in the orchestra sits a diminutive conductor before his desk, surrounded by musical manikins, all provided with the smallest of violoncellos, flutes, oboes, drums, and such like. There are characters also on the stage. A Templar in a white cloak is dragging a fainting female form to the parapet of a ruined bridge, while behind a great black rock on the left one can see a man concealed, who, kneeling, levels an arquebuse at the knight’s heart. But the orchestra is silent; the conductor never beats the time, the musicians never play a note. The Templar never drags his victim an inch nearer to the bridge, the masked avenger takes an eternal aim with his weapon. This repose appears unnatural; for so admirably are the figures executed, that they seem replete with life. One is almost led to believe, in looking on them, that they are resting beneath some spell which hinders their motion. One expects every moment to hear the loud explosion of the arquebuse – to see the blue smoke curling, the Templar falling, – to hear the orchestra playing the requiem of the guilty.
Few people knew what Herr Hippe’s business or trade really was. That he worked at something was evident; else why the shop? Some people inclined to the belief that he was an inventor, or mechanician. His workshop was in the rear of the store, and into that sanctuary no one but himself had admission. He arrived in Golosh Street eight or ten years ago, and one fine morning, the neighbors, taking down their shutters, observed th
at No. 13 had got a tenant. A tall, thin, sallow-faced man stood on a ladder outside the shop-entrance, nailing up a large board, on which ‘Herr Hippe, Wondersmith,’ was painted in black letters on a yellow ground. The little theatre stood in the window, where it stood ever after, and Herr Hippe was established.
But what was a Wondersmith? people asked each other. No one could reply. Madame Filomel was consulted, but she looked grave, and said that it was none of her business. Mr. Pippel, the bird-fancier, who was a German, and ought to know best, thought it was the English for some singular Teutonic profession; but his replies were so vague, that Golosh Street was as unsatisfied as ever. Solon, the little humpback, who kept the odd-volume book-stall at the lowest corner, could throw no light upon it. And at length people had to come to the conclusion, that Herr Hippe was either a coiner or a magician, and opinions were divided.
A Bottleful of Souls
IT was a dull December evening. There was little trade doing in Golosh Street, and the shutters were up at most of the shops. Hippe’s store had been closed at least an hour, and the Mino-birds and Bohemian waxwings at Mr. Pippel’s had their heads tucked under their wings in their first sleep.
Herr Hippe sat in his parlor, which was lit by a pleasant wood-fire. There were no candles in the room, and the flickering blaze played fantastic tricks on the pale gray walls. It seemed the festival of shadows. Processions of shapes, obscure and indistinct, passed across the leaden-hued panels and vanished in the dusk corners. Every fresh blaze flung up by the wayward logs created new images. Now it was a funeral throng, with the bowed figures of mourners, the shrouded coffin, the plumes that waved like extinguished torches; now a knightly cavalcade with flags and lances, and weird horses, that rushed silently along until they met the angle of the room, when they pranced through the wall and vanished.
On a table close to where Herr Hippe sat was placed a large square box of some dark wood, while over it was spread a casing of steel, so elaborately wrought in an open arabesque pattern that it seemed like a shining blue lace which was lightly stretched over its surface.
Supernatural Horror Short Stories Page 60
