eight feet high—raw oak it is—and it leads into a sort of horror-hole—bare beams and rafters, and black as Hell. 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 exorcised 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
