In the Dark (Nesbit, Strand magazine 1923)

by E. Nesbit

IN THE DARK

E. NESBIT

IT was one of those war-engagements entered on in haste, between two people each keyed up to something so different from the normal self as to be really a perfectly different entity. Or perhaps the psycho-analysts would tell us that the personality which emerged during the stress of war was really only the sub-conscious self, purified by pity and terror. Only you know it wasn't. It was the real self, but with all the lights heightened, the shadows deepened—the real man or woman painted with flaming colours and a coarse brush, or perhaps rather the real man or woman conventionalized to a sort of typical blowsy loud definiteness—like cheap oleographs of great pictures. What did she see in him? A soldier, first of all. That was what every woman saw in every man who wore the ugly sand-coloured cloth that served for the British uniform. Next—an officer. Then, a gentleman her social superior; one whose voice was kind, whose hands were gentle, and who admired her—yes—but seriously? A fount of honour and worship and flowers and chocolates and theatres and rides in taxis—a feather in her cap, a captive of her bow and spear—someone to talk about, to boast about, to exhibit the photographs and the letters of, to be anxious about—when she remembered—to be proud of when he was mentioned in despatches, to write to—but that was a nuisance—to be married to some day.

That the young man's means were such as to ensure that their married life would begin in nothing less than a nice villa—possibly even detached—with a “girl,” or perhaps even two, and no silly worry about money—really, to do Bessie justice, counted for very little. But it did count for something.

And he? What he saw in her was first and last and all the time woman, girl, soft pink cheeks, radiant brown hair—bright eyes that sparkled for him, red lips that smiled for him, a dazzling enchantment, an embodied dream, intoxicating in its life and colour to the young man newly come from the blood and mud of the trenches, the drab horror of No Man's Land. He stepped off the gangway at Folkestone worn out with the interminable dot-and-go-one of the leave-train, the rolling and tumbling and pitching of the cross-Channel journey. The dawn was rising in cold silver over the sea when he shivered into the hotel and asked for coffee. And it was brought by a vision radiant as the dawn itself, but warm and kind, with cheering words and pleasant smiles. He found himself watching her as she waited on the cold, tired men, and pleased himself with the thought that she did not smile quite so kindly on them as she had done on him.

He was right.

When the others had gone their ways and he still sat there, too tired to move, she came and talked to him.

“If I was you, I shouldn't go on, not to-day,” she advised. “You get a room here and have a day's sleep—that's what you want. Send a wire home to say you can't get there before to-morrow. They'll be disappointed, but anything's better than going home with that face on you.”

“I'm not going home,” he said. “My people are in New Zealand.”

“Where are you going to spend your leave, then?”

“I don't know—anywhere—London—I don't know.”

“Well, you go to bed, that's what you do, or you won't get any benefit from your leave.”

“I'd take your advice,” he said, “if I wasn't too tired to move.”

She put her hands in his—soft, warm, kind hands. “Heave-ho!” she said, laughing, and pulled him to his feet.

“That's the way to the bureau,” she said; “can you get there all right?”

“Oh, I'm not so tired as all that,” he told her: “but I say—when shall I see you again?”

“I'm always here; five to five,” she said.

“But after five?”

“Oh, then I go home to my friends.”

“I say—come somewhere in the town and have tea—at five—I don't know a creature here. Do—there's a kind girl; it'll be a charity.”

“Not really?” she said. “All right, just for once. But I don't make a habit of it.”

“I shall find you her at five?”

 

HE did find her there at five, but not alone—a pale-faced young lady was and talking to her—a lady so very different from Bess that a cold shock of surprise went through him as he found himself being introduced to “My cousin Eliza—Miss Dixon.” “I told her about you asking us to tea, and she's quite willing.”

“How do you do?” said Cousin Eliza, her voice was soft like Bessie's, and said no more.

He talked all the time, Bessie part of the time. Cousin Eliza not at all. She was the merest gooseberry. A dreamy, absent companion, buried in her own thoughts—but an inevitable one, too, the young man found.

For he stayed in Folkestone, and every day he and the bright flushed Bessie and the pale cousin met and had tea and walked on the Leas, or to Cæar's Camp, or along the road past the pebbly waste.

If it had not been for the constant chaperonage of the cousin, his fancy might have spent itself in pretty speeches, chocolates, flowers, and perhaps a kiss or two. And so, back to the trenches a free man still. But the presence of the chaperon made every stolen glance, every fleeting touch of hand on shoulder, a thrilling, priceless secret.

One night, as the three walked home through the dark street, hands found each other and clung fast. Next evening the friendly darkness allowed him to pass his arm round a soft, yielding figure. Her head leaned lightly towards him, rested a moment on his shoulder. But on his other side was the pale, silent cousin. He stooped to Bess, and whispered in her ear: “I must see you alone. To-morrow? When? Where? I'm going back the day after!”

Her hand touched his that lay against her warm shape. Four strong definite pats.

He was at her table at four o'clock on the next day. And the chaperon was not there. And Bessie was in hat and coat and gloves.

“I've got leave,” said Bessie.

They left the hotel, not together, but furtively, like guilty conspirators, found a taxi, and were driven out into the country. As soon as the door was shut on them he took her hands—when the town died away to fields and woods he took her in his arms.

“How could you?” he asked, after many kisses. “This is the first time I've ever been alone with you. Your cousin——”

“She promised mother to look after me—it's rather a bore—but she's very kind really. I suppose I may tell her?”

“Tell her what?”

“Oh, about our being engaged.”

“Yes—tell her by all means,” he said, after a hesitation that lasted less than a second. “Let's go back and tell her now, and buy a ring before the shops shut.”

“How lovely!” said Bessie.

 

THE cousin was waiting at Bessie's table in the restaurant. It was not yet five, though so much had happened. They told her. She wished them joy very kindly and simply; a faint colour shone in her cheeks, a smile softened her mouth.

For the first time he perceived that the cousin also had beauty.

The last few crowded hours passed dreamlike. Then came farewells and the parting. And all through the short drama the sound of the guns over there had never ceased; he and she had heard it all the time. To its terrible music Bessie went back to her work in floods of tears. And she was quite pale and interesting-looking. Her friends sympathized very much.

He, when the boat was out of sight of England, drew a long breath, as one awakened from a dream. He was caught back into a life that had nothing to do with that isolated, agitated episode at Folkestone. But he thought of Bessie with wonderful tenderness. He could still feel the touch of her soft lips, the pressure of her kind hands. And he had her photograph. And, presently, her letters.

He was deeply determined, at the very back of his mind, to make every allowance for her letters. Of course, they could not be expected to be literary. She was a wild flower, a lovely wild flower. Her mind was quite unformed, and he was going to form it He had not much time to speculate about her letters, for the first one reached him. as by some miracle, almost at once.

And this, the first of many letters, gave him to think:—

 

“Dear,—I wish I were this letter. Because then I could travel with you on the 'Daisy,' and find you quite soon after you get over there, and tell you all the things you wanted me to say to you when we were together. But I ought not to envy the letter, because I shall be where you are—at least, all my heart will be—and that's the really important thing, isn't it? But the rest of me will have to see you go to-morrow, and look at the sea every day till the day when you come back to your faithful friend and love."

 

He did not find it necessary to make any excuses to himself for this letter. Nor did he find any difficulty about answering it. He was also able to say to that curious unsatisfied critic at the back of his mind:—

“There! What did I tell you? You see, it is all right. And look at her handwriting—how neat and pretty. And the one rose-leaf pressed in the letter—from the roses I gave her that morning. It's right, it's all right, it's better than right.”

So he turned again to the business of war. And her letters came, and the parcels came—such as women used to ease their hearts by sending across the sea—and his letters to her and hers to him wove a strong web that seemed to hold her and him together.

 

“I would not have believed,” he wrote to her, “that letters could do so much. It is as though I heard you talking—and yet you never would talk much about real things. But our time together was so short, wasn't it? And you hadn't had time to get used to me. I almost thought you were afraid to talk to me—real talk, I mean. And I was afraid, too—you won't think that silly; men are afraid of saying the wrong thing just as much as girls are—more, I think. But we're not afraid of each other now, are we? And if our time together was short then, it's to be tong, long, long when the war's over—a whole, long, happy life together, my dear wild-rose-face—my darling sweetheart.”

 

IT was quite a thick packet of letters that they found with a photograph in his pocket when he was wounded. And as soon as his arm was in splints—it was only his arm—and he was conscious again, he said “Letters,” and they let him have them under his pillow.

And then the hospital was shelled, and when things were quiet again his arm was mending, but he was blind. The doctors could find no injury and no disease. Only, he could not see. And the doctors gave no hope. They were each doing three men's work and were rather short in their answers, but quite plain.

So he got a nurse to write for him to Bessie—to tell her that now he was blind he felt that marriage was not for him, and that he hoped she would soon forget him—all the things, you know, that you could get a nurse to write for you.

And she answered, in the kind of letter that you would not mind having read aloud by a nurse.

 

“What nonsense!” the letter ran. "As if I were going to give up my life's happiness for any such reason as that. To begin with, I believe your dear eyes will be all right again quite soon. And if they aren't, why, you'll want someone to read and write letters for you till they are all right. And that someone is going to be ME. So get your kind nurse to write and tell me that you would like me to put up the banns."

 

With more to the same tune.

But at the bottom of the page she wrote very large and plain, “To the Nurse. Private. Make him see that I can't give him up. I love him more than life. It's for my own sake, not his, that I want to marry hint. Make him see that.”

The nurse, as it happened, was a person capable of seeing such things and of causing them to be seen.

He was discharged sooner than he expected. There were no banns. The three weeks' delay was undesirable. A special licence would enable them to catch an early ship to New Zealand.

Bessie did not meet him at his landing—she was bidding farewell to her friends in Somerset.

They were to be married at All Saints', and at the appointed hour, or rather before it, he was there with a brother officer—his mind a tangle of remorse and regret and longing and hope and despair. He drove through the dark streets, walked up the dark churchyard, and stood in the black darkness in a cold, windy place which he understood to be the chancel of the church. A hand came out of the darkness and shook his. It was the parson's.

“I wish you every happiness,” said the parson—and went on to something affable about affliction being all for our good.

He stood in the black dark and heard. Then the waiting began. When they had waited nearly an hour the parson went away to his dinner.

“If the lady arrives you can send for me,” he said, not at all hopefully.

The friend would have had the bridegroom sit down, but he would not.

“It would not be respectful to her,” he said.

Very pale and lean, with drawn face and wide-open, fixed grey eyes, he stood there, waiting, waiting, waiting.

The friend at last ventured to suggest that there must have been some misunderstanding as to time and place.

“No,” said the bridegroom, “she will come.”

And at a quarter to three, when the clergyman had come back to see whether there really was to be any wedding, there was a sound of wheels—and a sound of hurrying feet. He heard them in that black darkness.

“Ah, here she is!” said the friend, relieved. He wanted to get away to his own sweetheart.

“Ah, here she is!” said the parson. “No delays if you wish to be married to-day. There is only just time. The bride on the left, if you please—yes.”

So the bride, very pale and tremulously offering explanations, was brushed and hustled into place and the service hurried through—and Elizabeth Somers signed her maiden name for the last time in her life—and the clergyman shook hands and took his fee—and the friend shook hands and took his leave, and the bride led the bridegroom to the waiting car and they took their way to the station He could feel that she was trembling all over.

“Dearest,” he said in the car, as it hooted and bustled its way to the station, “my dearest—you're sure you aren't sorry? You don't regret—— Selfish beast that I am to let you.”

“It's not that,” she said, very low. “I don't want to talk. Let me rest, won't you, and just hold your hand and be glad. I was in time. Forgive me for making you wait.”

So they held hands all the way to London, though there were people in the carriage, and together were glad and sad at once, as lovers in such case may well be.

 

THEY had food at the London terminus (“Yes—I'm eating all right—but I can't talk,” she said), and then they were alone in the train and the train was moving. She was being whirled through a maze of mean streets that mocked the sunshine, opposite a man with pale set face, and eyes that did not see you—did not any more see anything. He was, as now for ever he knew he must be, in black darkness: the darkness at present was shaken and jarred, and in the darkness there was a voice that answered when he spoke. Just answered, very briefly, and then was silent. He felt a little hurt, a little injured, so he too was silent. And the train shivered and vibrated on its way.

Between his speech and her answers there was that in the silence which struck him suddenly.

“Is anything wrong?” he asked. “Why were you late?”

“I couldn't help it,” she said, in a voice so heartbroken that he reached out his arms to her.

“Where are you?” he said. “I can't come to you, you know. I don't know where you are.”

She came to him on that, and he took her in his arms.

“You've something to tell me,” he said, with absolute certainty—“something terrible.”

“Not really terrible—it can all be put right,” she said. “I'll tell you directly. Let me stay like this for a minute first.” Her hand crept round his neck and her face lay against his.

“What can anything matter,” he said, “since we are here together?” And so for a little time he sat there holding her in profound peace and contentment.

Then she put him from her and spoke.

“What would you have done if I hadn't come?”

“But I knew you would come,” he said, and sought to hold her again embraced.

“What shall I do?” she said again. “What shall I do? I thought I could go through with it and tell you when you had learned to love me. You would have learned to love me. But I can't, I can't. I must tell you. I must, I must. There must be truth between us if there's nothing else.”

“What is it?” he urged, in an agony. “Tell me. Is it that—that you don't love me, that there's someone else?”

“No, no, no, no, no,” she said. “I do love you—that's my only excuse. At least, it doesn't excuse, but it explains.”

“Explains what? Bess, if you don't tell me I shall go mad. I can't see you. I can't see you—I can't tell what you mean. You must say everything—I can never read anything in your face. Tell me, tell me, what is it?”

“Let me hold your hand,” she said, and held it. “Now! I'm not Bessie. I'm Eliza. Bessie wouldn't marry you because of—because—she said she would, she swore she would, and then she cried off at the last minute and sent me to tell you so.”

“But why didn't you tell me?”

“I couldn't. With those people there wondering and pitying? I couldn't shame you before them—have them say you were left in the lurch. I did try—and while I was trying to do it they hustled me up beside you and began the service. And I thought you'd never know till I told you. And you never would have known, if I hadn't told you. And I love you far, far more than she did. And you can get us unmarried if you like. Or—you can forgive me, and let me try to teach you to love me.

“Love you?” he cried, flinging her hands away. “You, who make a mock of a blind man and trick him into marrying you? And then talk of love—why, I don't even know that my Bessie has given me up. It may be all a lie of yours. I must find out.”

He stood up and groped for the communication cord.

“No, no,” she said. “You can't do anything now. Don't be unhappy—we'll get it all put right. Only not Bessie, because she's gone off with somebody else.”

It was then that he sat down and covered his face with his hands. And she watched the sunlit fields speed by, then the sunlight was shut off by a deep cutting, and the train ran screaming into a tunnel.

 

IT was almost at once that the shock came, a shock of unbelievable violence that threw each of them against the side of the carriage. The lamps were extinguished and a red light flamed at the window's; there was a rattle and roar. Cries and shouts, then raging spluttering of an engine. Screams. Then a rattling on the roof of the carriage like the rattling of earth on a coffin-lid. Then deep darkness, and something that was almost silence.

Then came her voice.

“Are you hurt?” she said.

“No—are you?”

“No.”

“Can you see what happened?”

“No; it's quite dark. The lamp's gone out.”

“Put your head out of the window.”

“I can't,” she said, after a pause. “There's something up against it—it feels like earth, and there's earth on the floor of the carriage. Yes—I'll try the other window.”

She felt her way past him, and felt him draw back.

“The other window won't open,” she said. “Oh, what is it?”

“There's been an accident, of course,” he said, crossly. “Oh, if I could only see!”

“It wouldn't make any difference,” she said, gently. “I can't see either. There's nothing to see. It's all black.”

“Yes,” he said, “it's all black.”

“Oh,” she broke out, “how do you bear it? It's always like this to you—you're very, very brave. I feel as if I were going mad. Oh, mayn't I come and hold your hand? We're buried alive and I'm not going to behave like a coward or a fool—but it would be easier to behave properly if I weren't all alone over here.”

Then he came across to her and held her in his arms, coldly, as one holds a frightened child whom one does not love. And she clung to him and said:—

“I do love you—I do. You don't believe now that I was deceiving you? It was always I who loved you. She didn't. She doesn't know what love means. And you never loved her. It's me you've been loving all these months.”

“Hush, hush!” he murmured.

“No—I'm not mad. If we're going to die here together you shall know. She never cared. She couldn't even be bothered to write to you. I wrote all those letters. All the letters you wrote were written to me, to me, to me. Oh, won't you forgive me, in case we're going to die?”

“We won't die,” he said, and his voice was changed. "Those letters? It was you who wrote them? But the letters——”

“They do count for something, don't they?” she urged. “They were half of it, weren't they? Didn't the letters count for as much as—as what Bessie gave you? Don't the letters count at all, then?”

“But they do,” he said, “the letters are almost all—at least—— Oh, I don't know—it's all like a mad dream, but don't let us lose our heads. Let's hold on to each other. After all, neither of us is alone.” And he held her more closely, for indeed the clasp of her hand round his neck had a magic of its own that reinforced the magic of her soft voice—so like Bessie's, so very like, and yet with a note in it that he had longed for in Bessie's voice and had never heard. Bessie, and her kisses—the fleet, brief hours. The letters—the long, slow weeks and months.

“Thank you for caring like this,” he said, found her hand, and kissed it.

“To be alone in the dark,” she said, pulling her hand away to hold on to him with it. “Oh, try to forgive me. If I hadn't done what I did you'd be all alone here now, and I should be——. You see I was right. I must have had a premonition. If this is really the end—you can forgive me, can't you? Remember I am the letters. It's me you wrote yours to.”

“Rest so,” he said; “if we are saved we can talk of all these things. If this is the end—I've dragged you into it. And we are in together, and any talk of forgiveness is childish.”

But she would not have that. And so they talked, and presently she led him to tell her all that she had longed to hear—of his people, his youth, his childhood,

 

AND the time wore on and he said at last: “There is air coming in or we should be dead by now. Can't you see any light?”

But she could not.

Then he must hear her life-story—of scholarships and college, and a dying woman commending her cousin Bessie to her care—of chaperonage—of anxieties,

“And then you came,” she said, “and I knew she did not care—and—but I've told you all that. Listen! Can you hear anything—anything different?”

They held their breath and listened. And it was the sound of picks and shovels they heard.

“We aren't going to die,” he said. “My brave lady of the letters, we're going to have life to learn to know each other in.”

“You're going to forgive me?” she said low in his ear. For indeed all this time they were very close together.

“I'm going to adore you,” he said; “it is you I love—you who showed me your heart in your letters—you who—— Oh, bravest girl in the world—but what a life for you, to be the star of a blind man's night.”

“It's the life I'd have died for a day of,” she said, for indeed she was, as he had said, brave.

So they held each other very close and were silent and waited. And her eyes were blind with tears. And at last, quite suddenly, he leaped up, putting her from him, and cried out, in a strange, hoarse, croaking voice:—

“Light—there's light!”

And she opened her eyes and there was light—the light of the lanterns of the rescuers—and they were saved. (The doctors said a great deal about the effect of sudden shocks on the nerves. He and she believe in miracles.)

And when they had crawled along the narrow earthy passage and come out of the tunnel to the good light of day they faced each other, dusty, disordered, with faces streaked with her tears—and not hers only—and gazed upon each other as the first man and woman must have gazed upon each other in Paradise.

“And this is you!” he said; "but I've never seen you before!”

“I never dared to let you see my real face before,” she said, and their eyes embraced.

“You all right?” said the doctor over his shoulder as he bustled past. “Come on, then, and help these other people.”

So their new life began in joint service to those who had been hurt and broken in the shock that had brought to them only Love and Light.