The Power of Darkness | Page 2

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 '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 Musée Grévin.'
The Musée Grévin 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 Musée Grévin 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 Musée Grévin.
'Let's look in at the Musée Grévin,' said Vincent. He remembered the
pleasant thrill the Musée 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 Musée 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 Opéra, 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
Révolution.'
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