The Power of Darkness | Page 2

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 'Goodnight' said, there came a fumbling with the handle of Vincent's door. Edward came in, 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, and it leads into a sort of horror hole--bare beams and rafters, and black as night. 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 exorcized 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 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 Mus��e Gr��vin.'
The Mus��e Gr��vin is a waxwork show. Your mind, at the word, flies instantly to the excellent exhibition founded by the worthy Mme Tussaud. And you think you know what waxworks mean. But you are wrong. The Mus��e Gr��vin contains the work of artists for a nation of artists. Wax-modelled and retouched till it seems as near life as death is: this is what one sees at the Mus��e Gr��vin.
'Let's look in at the Mus��e Gr��vin,' said Vincent. He remembered the pleasant thrill the Mus��e had given him, and wondered what sort of a thrill it would give his friend.
'I hate museums,' said Edward.
'This isn't a museum,' Vincent said, and truly; 'it's just waxworks.'
'All right,' said Edward, indifferently. And they went.
They reached the doors of the Mus��e in the grey-brown dusk of a February evening.
One walks along a bare, narrow corridor, much like the entrance to the stalls of the Standard Theatre, and such daylight as there may be fades away behind one, and one finds oneself in a square hall, heavily decorated, and displaying with its electric lights Loie Fuller in her accordion-pleated skirts, and one or two other figures not designed to quicken the pulse.
'It's very like Mme Tussaud's,' said Edward.
'Yes,' Vincent said; 'isn't it?'
Then they passed through an arch, and beheld a long room with waxen groups life-like behind glass--the coulisses of the Op��ra, Kitchener at Fashoda--this last with a desert background lit by something convincingly like desert sunlight.
'By Jove!' said Edward. 'That's jolly good.'
'Yes,' said Vincent again; 'isn't it?'
Edward's interest grew.
The things were so convincing, so very nearly alive. Given the right angle, their glass eyes met one's own, and seemed to exchange with one meaning glances.
Vincent led the way to an arched door labelled 'Galerie de la R��volution.'
There one saw--almost in the living, suffering body--poor Marie Antoinette in prison in the Temple, her little son on his couch of rags, the rats eating from his platter, the brutal Simon calling to him from the grated window. One almost heard the words: 'Hola, little Capet!--are you asleep?'
One saw Marat bleeding in his bath, the brave Charlotte eyeing him; the very tiles of the bathroom, the glass of the windows, with, outside, the very sunlight, as it seemed, of 1793, on that 'yellow July evening, the thirteenth of the month'.
The spectators did not move in a public place among waxwork figures. They peeped through open doors into rooms where history seemed to be relived. The rooms were lighted each by its own sun or lamp or candle. The spectators walked among shadows that might have oppressed a nervous person.
'Fine, eh?' said Vincent.
'Yes,' said Edward; 'it's wonderful.'
A turn of a corner brought them to a room. Marie Antoinette fainting, supported by