The Dark House

e the crocodiles he had met on his visit to the Zoo, lying malignantly inert in their oily water. Bu

glacial courtesy. They said things to each other and at Christine which were quiet and deadly as the rustle of a snake in the grass. Robert had never fled from his father as he fled from their restrained disgust. He h

feelings might have been expected. We have suffered enough. If you knew what people said-- Mrs. Stonehouse has been talk

ce of trouble. He disgraced Christine. Her people hated her because she was good to him. He felt the shame of it all over him like a horrible kind of uncleanliness, and beneath the shame a burning sense of wrong. He hid in dark places. He refused to answer even

as kitchen and bath-room. Acacia Grove was the deformed extremity of a misbegotten suburb. There were five acacia trees planted on either side of the unfinished roadway, but they had been blighted i

a gathering of Decayed Gentlefolk, carried her off citywards, and at dusk returned her again, grey and worn, with wisps of tired brown hair hanging about her face and bundles of solemn letters and folded parchment docu

ply and impatiently as her fingers blundered at the keys. On odd nights, when there was no copying to be done, she tried to teach Robert his letters and words of one syllable, but they were both too tired, and he yawned and kicked the table and was cross and stupid with

or that they were on the brink of some new convulsion. He did not even ask where Christine went in the day-time, or what had become of Edith, or where their money came from. He clung desperately to an ignorance which allowed him to believe that he and Christine would always live like this, quietly and happily. When the landlady's shadow came heavy-footed up the stairs, he hid himself and stuffed his fingers in his ears lest he should hear her threaten them with instant expulsion. (It was incredible that she and Christine should be talking amicably about the weather.) Or when they went to the butcher's, he hung behind

ld. You might hurt yourself-or

might drop from him, and everyone would find out-the neighbours who nodded kindly and the tradespeople who bowed

e Francey who knew that he was a nasty little boy who couldn't even beat a girl-who told lies-the Francey who despised him. And then it was as though his body had been bruis

rown to demonic proportions, towered over Christine's huddled body, his eyes terrible, his fists clenched and raised to strike. Then in that moment, at the very height of hi

re dead-you're

eyes hot with unshed tears, and Christine's hand would come to

ees he could see the afterglow of the sunset like the reflection of a blazing city. The road then was full of silence and shadow. The drab outlines grew faint and the mean houses were merged into the vaster shapes of night. Robert waited, motionless, breathless. He was sure that something was coming to him down the path of fading light. He did not know what it was. Once, indeed, it had been Francey, with her q

plunge into it, reckless and shouting, as into a warm, dancing, summer sea. And yet it menaced him. It was of fire and colour, of the rumble and thud of armies, of laughter and singing and distant broken music. It was all just round the comer. If he h