And, as he touched it, it raised its head and looked vacantly at him, and its eyes were mobile and alive. He staggered back against another figure, and dropped the match. In the new darkness he heard the crouching figure move towards him. Then the darkness fitted in round him very closely.
“What was it exactly that sent poor Vincent mad: you’ve never told me?” Rose asked the question. She and Edward were looking out over the pines and tamarisks, across the blue Mediterranean. They were very happy, because it was their honeymoon.
He told her about the Musée Grévin and the wager, but he did not state the terms of it.
“But why did he think you would be afraid?”
He told her why.
“And then what happened?”
“Why, I suppose he thought there was no time like the present—for his five pounds, you know—and he hid among the wax-works. And I missed my train, and I thought there was no time like the present. In fact, dear, I thought if I waited I should have time to make certain of funking it, so I hid there, too. And I put on my big black capuchon, and sat down right in one of the wax-work groups—they couldn’t see me from the passage where you walk. And after they put the lights out I simply went to sleep; and I woke up—and there was a light, and I heard some one say: ‘They’re only wax,’ and it was Vincent. He thought I was one of the wax people, till I looked at him; and I expect he thought I was one of them even then, poor chap. And his match went out, and while I was trying to find my railway reading-lamp that I’d got near me, he began to scream, and the night watchman came running. And now he thinks every one in the asylum is made of wax, and he screams if they come near him. They have to put his food beside him while he’s asleep. It’s horrible. I can’t help feeling as if it were my fault, somehow.”
“Of course it’s not,” said Rose. “Poor Vincent! Do you know I never really liked him.” There was a pause. Then she said: “But how was it you weren’t frightened?”
“I was,” he said, “horribly frightened. I—I—it sounds idiotic, but I thought I should go mad at first—I did really: and yet I had to go through with it. And then I got among the figures of the people in the Catacombs, the people who died for—for things, don’t you know, died in such horrible ways. And there they were, so calm—and believing it was all all right. And I thought about what they’d gone through. It sounds awful rot I know, dear—but I expect I was sleepy. Those wax people, they sort of seemed as if they were alive, and were telling me there wasn’t anything to be frightened about. I felt as if I were one of them, and they were all my friends, and they’d wake me if anything went wrong, so I just went to sleep.”