“My dear Nancy,” Noel said, groaning, “must we discuss marriage?
It is so overdone.”
“I’m a barbarian,” smiled Nancy. “I don’t know what’s overdone;
I’m afraid I discuss what interests me. Marriage does. When shall I
meet Daphne?”
“Mm,” said Noel, “Mm, mm-mm.”
“I know,” said Nancy, “every one in London’s so full up. Well” –
her voice changed – “I rather wish you hadn’t got a Daphne. I’m so
lonely. I do want somebody to talk to.”
“My dear Nancy?”
“I’m not a bit happy, Noel,” Nancy said, looking at him seriously
and simply. She blinked and touched the corner of one eye, quite
naïvely with the tip of a long finger as though there was a tear there.
Noel felt outraged. He looked at her incredulously for a moment,
then got up and looked out of the window. He could not bear that
sort of thing, it made him feel sick; Nancy would have to control
herself. He clasped his hands behind his back nervously and
said, after a wounding pause, “I’m sorry to hear that,” with cold
formality.
Nancy, getting up also, came and stood behind him, a hand on
his shoulder. It was hard to realise that this hand, smooth, pointed
and adorned with square-cut jewels, had been used to clutch him
feverishly when a little girl was afraid in the dark. He had never
done much to comfort Nancy . . . It was as though this reflection
transmitted itself, for Nancy said, half laughing, “You don’t care. You
always were cold-blooded, Noel. How you used to torture me!”
“Torture you?” said Noel. “How?”
“Fear,” said Nancy. “I didn’t mind pain. ‘
Just imagine
,’ you used to
say; you had froggy hands and queer pale eyes. You seemed to
see
the things; my flesh crept, it did really; I was in a perpetual state of
shivers.”
Noel wheeled round on her, interested. “Really, Nancy, really?” he
said eagerly. It made a great man of him all at once to have bullied
this Nancy of the dark and brilliant smile. Nothing Daphne ever
said had so moved him.
“Mmm,” said Nancy; her eyes grew narrow with retrospect.
“Weren’t you a little devil?”
“Was I a devil?” mused Noel, hugging this.
“I can’t think why I ever put up with it. I suppose I
had
to be fond
of somebody even then. But I almost think I pity Daphne.”
“But I don’t ever – ” he began and broke off, reminded too sharply
that there had been lacking in his intercourse with Daphne just this
subtle and secret pleasure.
Nancy’s laughter was melancholy and indifferent. She threw
herself down among her cushions again and brooded, the firelight
crimson in her eyes. “You couldn’t frighten me now,” she said. “It’s
only myself I’m frightened of. I’m terribly passionate.”
“Are you?” he said confusedly.
“You and your Daphne,” said she with friendly contempt. “You’re
so smug, I expect it does you good to hold hands in the dark and
tell each other ghost stories . . . Wait till you’ve lived,” she added, in
a changed voice. “But you won’t live – luckily for you.”
“I bet,” Noel said, stirred, angry and rather excited, “I could still
frighten you.”
She did not hear him. “You wait,” she went on, “till you love
someone – sickeningly. You won’t till you don’t trust them. You wait
till you’re hated and watched every hour of the day and hate and
watch back again.”
Noel thought they must all be very passionate out in the
Argentine. He looked at Nancy with awe and a faint inferiority, and
yet with tolerance, as though she belonged in the Zoo. “It’s a good
thing, at least,” he said innocently, “that you feel all this about
Ripon.”
“But I don’t,” said Nancy, and turned on him her impatient dark
eyes.
“O-oh,” said Noel. “Didn’t you once?”
“I wrote to you, didn’t I?” Nancy said with a flicker of remem
brance. “I suppose I didn’t know then what I could feel. I suppose,”
she said to the fire, while her fingers unclenched themselves slowly
along the arms of her chair, “one learns . . . ”
They sat silently opposite one another in the smothered light.
Her black figure melted into the black chair, and Noel, straining his
eyes to distinguish her, felt that she and she only mattered, and
mattered to him burningly. He was in a tumult for a moment or two,
then this ebbed and left him with a cold and frightful feeling of
insecurity. Fear! He was so afraid that he wanted to brandish
something at Nancy, to shake her, or violently to kiss the pale cheek
leaning in an attitude of abandon against her gold, preposterous
cushions. The tick of the two clocks, never quite synchronising,
pattering after each other, maddened him. Since the night fears of
his childhood he had never felt so menaced.
“You’ve no business to talk like that,” he said, cold with anger. “If
you’ll forgive my saying so, it rather shocks me. After all, however
much we played as children, I am to all intents and purposes a
stranger now, and I don’t want to hear about your husband – it
makes me feel quite sick. I needn’t say how sorry I am that you’re
. . . not happy, but after all that must be between you and him. At
least, over here we think so. Perhaps things may be different in the
Argentine.”
Nancy, turning her head slowly, looked at him from a long way
away. “What a boy you are . . . ”
He was silent, stung intolerably, and made a movement to go.
She stretched out her two friendly hands to him. “Oh, stay! You dear
Noel, you comfort me just by sitting there. You’re like something in
an English book, an old lady, a kettle or a cat. You don’t know what
a life I’ve led – you’re like an afternoon in Wimbledon . . . ”
“Ah,” said Noel, and looked at his cousin Nancy with dangerous
eyes. “Are you quite sure I couldn’t make you afraid again?”
“I wish you could . . . ” said Nancy wistfully. She stirred and
laughed in her chair. “Oh, Noel, do try . . . ”
3
A remote, inaccessible Spanish lady, veiled in tragic experience,
was laughing at the young man from Bloomsbury. He almost prayed
to be made cruel enough. “Very well,” said Noel. “Look out!”
He put a hand in front of his eyes and began to grope back, back.
The paths he had trod were lonely as death, clammy, forgotten but
now once more his familiar. He shut out the rich warm room, the
stir and scent of Nancy, they fell away from him; Bloomsbury, life,
hope, dreams, ambition and Daphne fell away from him, too; he ran
on alone to the edge of the Pit. Within him there was an absolute
silence, a blank across which shadows doubtfully shivered and fled.
Nancy laughed and turned out the lamp at her elbow; the room was
dark except for the firelight and the lights coming up from the Park,
silent except for the clocks and the rushing past of the cars. These
sounds swelled up and filled the room, then died down, leaving it
empty. From the forgotten source, deep in Noel, terror began to
well up.
He knelt, half crouched, beside Nancy’s chair, and, reaching out,
caught her hand, smooth and firm, in his own, which was very cold.
He felt her pulse jumping. Motionless as beneath some compulsion
she waited, while his intense consciousness of her there beside him
fought with his icy flood of overmastering fear. He had opened the
floodgates for her, so he felt it right to press himself against the side
of her chair and lean his head on her arm as they had done in
childhood.
“Just imagine . . . ” Noel whispered against her ear. Starting
violently, he pointed into the dark. Her hand leapt in his, she
laughed on an intake of breath as though she were stepping into
cold water.
“We’re not alone! Cover your face and don’t look, my dear, for
we’re . . . we’re Not Quite Alone . . . A-ah! – Oh, my God, IT’S
there
on the sofa . . . Don’t be, don’t be too much afraid; shall I tell you?
– It’s turning Its head . . . But It can’t, Nancy. It can’t possibly turn
Its head . . . Because It – hasn’t – got – a neck. No, not a neck.
Only a . . . strip of skin. And that’s, that’s, that’s – ALL ROTTING
AWAY.”
Nancy, between a laugh and a shudder, as though cold water were
rising round her, taunted, “Go
on
, Noel . . . ” She turned out the
electric fire; they watched the red square fade and all that they
could see of each other fade with it. Nancy made a movement, he
clutched her in terror, afraid to be left. She got up, drew the heavy
curtains across the window and turned out the light in the vestibule
so that not so much as a crack came in from under the door. So soft
were her movements, so quiet her step, that he only guessed at her
whereabouts and shrieked when, groping back to her chair, she put
a hand on his face.
“
Noel
!” cried she, appalled by his moments of silence.
“Hush – I am listening. Listen, too; do you hear? Some blood’s
dripping – tip, tap, tip, tap. Don’t
move
! It’s all over the floor. A-ach,
it’s all over my hands. It’s all sticky and cold.
Cold
blood, Nancy . . .
where shall I wipe it off? But you mustn’t stir. It will hear. You forget:
WE ARE NOT ALONE.”
At this moment the sofa creaked, a cushion slid off and fell to the
floor.
Noel, pressing his cheek against Nancy’s arm, felt the muscles
contract. A crack by the door and the sound of a heavy stirring
answered the creak of the sofa. There began, interrupted by silences,
the sound of something slithering, dragging itself along the wall.
“Noel!”
A shudder beside her.
“Noel, stop it now. It’s too real, I can’t bear it. Stop . . . You’ve
won! Oh, STOP it!”
“But, my God,” whispered Noel. “
I don’t know what it is
. . . ”
“What have you done?” Nancy laughed with horror. “There
is
something in here?”
“Yes . . . ”
Noel felt he must crouch till he died in the silent blackness,
counting the thuds of his heart. This horror had taken life from
himself, had been born of his mind and was creeping about the
room. When a fumbling began not far away and a hand seemed to
be feeling its way towards them over the furniture, he reached out
an arm for Nancy and held her against him. The delusion of life
showed its falseness, of action, security, manly and womanly
freedom from fear; they were plumbing together once more as in
childhood the terrible deep. They were very close.
“Oh, fool,” shivered Nancy. “Oh, fool; oh, you fool!” Her breath
ran through his hair.
“Be quiet,” he cried, putting up a hand and crushing her lips to
silence. A yard away, a chair slid forward softly over the parquet.
“Find the light!”
“Oh, I can’t, I daren’t put my hand out. Oh, Noel . . .”
Kneeling up, scarcely breathing, an arm still round Nancy, Noel
felt along the back of her chair for the lamp at her other elbow. He
touched the base of the lamp, heard it rattle, and his fingers crept
up to the switch. At this moment a cold hand, shaking a little,
closed on his own. “Now,” thought Noel, “I am finished.” Holding
Nancy against him, his cheek against hers, he waited while the grip
on his fingers, compelling them, wrenched round the switch.
Very tall, going on up indefinitely towards the ceiling and
spangled over with arabesques from the shade, the grey figure of
Ripon loomed over them. With the revelation of his material
presence, his identity flashed upon Noel. A shoe was tucked beneath
either of Ripon’s armpits: Noel looked at his silver-grey huge feet
planted squarely apart on the parquet.
“I thought I heard you in here,” said Ripon. “Am I in the way?”
Nancy, pale and insolent, stared up with dilated eyes.
“Is that the way one usually comes into one’s drawing-room?” she
asked in a voice over which she had not recovered control.
“Is this the way one usually entertains one’s visitors?” asked Ripon,
staring back.
Nancy shrugged, a gesture of disdain and helplessness. “A game,”
she said, “a favourite game of Noel’s. This is Noel – Ripon. Ripon –
Noel.”
Ripon turned, half bowed, and for the first time bent his dark,
intent and heavy gaze on Noel. Noel’s eyes, running agitatedly over
that immense and too-well-tailored person, focused themselves
under the chin, upon a flashing tie-pin. “Bounder!” he thought – the
word was balm to him – “Rotten cad!”
“I’m afraid,” he said at last uneasily, “you’ll think me pretty mad.
We were playing ghosts; I frightened Nancy. I didn’t know we had
an audience. An audience generally . . . declares itself.”
He glanced down and dusted the knees of his trousers: a gesture
purely, for Ripon’s parquet had been immaculate.
Then he realised that the big man was looking no longer at
himself but back again at Nancy. He had been brushed clear of
Ripon’s thoughts like a fly. Ripon’s eyes beneath his beetle brows
had an uneasy, tortured look, like some large dog’s whose trust in
life has been destroyed. He was looking towards Nancy dubiously,
bitterly, imploringly, asking for his cue. Nancy sat indifferent, a
smile for both of them, stroking back her smooth hair against her
head. A glance, a word from her, directed by an intention, could
have made Ripon either break the young cousin to pieces, or else
shake his hand, apologise to both of them, or even (inconceivable as
the thing seemed) cringe. Deep-set in the impressive face, the eyes
of Ripon held a torturing uncertainty. And Nancy, non-committal,
smiled on, made no sign.
Shame-faced, Noel quickly turned away, and, until that terrible
look ceased, could look at Ripon no more. There was an abyss here