Short Fiction, Arthur Machen [books suggested by bill gates TXT] 📗

me his furniture. I was thinking of furnishing at the time, and I thought the things might come in handy; but I assure you there wasn’t a single article that I cared to give houseroom to. All dingy, old mahogany; big bookcases and bureaus, and claw-legged chairs and tables. As I said to the wife (as she was soon afterwards), ‘We don’t exactly want to set up a chamber of horrors, do we?’ So I sold off the lot for what I could get. I must confess I like a cheerful room.”

Darnell said he had heard that artists liked the old-fashioned furniture.

“Oh, I dare say. The ‘unclean cult of the sunflower,’ eh? You saw that piece in the Daily Post? I hate all that rot myself. It isn’t healthy, you know, and I don’t believe the English people will stand it. But talking of curiosities, I’ve got something here that’s worth a bit of money.”

He dived into some dusty receptacle in a corner of the room, and showed Darnell a small, worm-eaten Bible, wanting the first five chapters of Genesis and the last leaf of the Apocalypse. It bore the date of 1753.

“It’s my belief that’s worth a lot,” said Wilson. “Look at the wormholes. And you see it’s ‘imperfect,’ as they call it. You’ve noticed that some of the most valuable books are ‘imperfect’ at the sales?”

The interview came to an end soon after, and Darnell went home to his tea. He thought seriously of taking Wilson’s advice, and after tea he told Mary of his idea and of what Wilson had said about Dick’s.

Mary was a good deal taken by the plan when she had heard all the details. The prices struck her as very moderate. They were sitting one on each side of the grate (which was concealed by a pretty cardboard screen, painted with landscapes), and she rested her cheek on her hand, and her beautiful dark eyes seemed to dream and behold strange visions. In reality she was thinking of Darnell’s plan.

“It would be very nice in some ways,” she said at last. “But we must talk it over. What I am afraid of is that it will come to much more than ten pounds in the long run. There are so many things to be considered. There’s the bed. It would look shabby if we got a common bed without brass mounts. Then the bedding, the mattress, and blankets, and sheets, and counterpane would all cost something.”

She dreamed again, calculating the cost of all the necessaries, and Darnell stared anxiously; reckoning with her, and wondering what her conclusion would be. For a moment the delicate colouring of her face, the grace of her form, and the brown hair, drooping over her ears and clustering in little curls about her neck, seemed to hint at a language which he had not yet learned; but she spoke again.

“The bedding would come to a great deal, I am afraid. Even if Dick’s are considerably cheaper than Boon’s or Samuel’s. And, my dear, we must have some ornaments on the mantelpiece. I saw some very nice vases at eleven-three the other day at Wilkin and Dodd’s. We should want six at least, and there ought to be a centrepiece. You see how it mounts up.”

Darnell was silent. He saw that his wife was summing up against his scheme, and though he had set his heart on it, he could not resist her arguments.

“It would be nearer twelve pounds than ten,” she said.

“The floor would have to be stained round the carpet (nine by nine, you said?), and we should want a piece of linoleum to go under the washstand. And the walls would look very bare without any pictures.”

“I thought about the pictures,” said Darnell; and he spoke quite eagerly. He felt that here, at least, he was unassailable. “You know there’s the ‘Derby Day’ and the ‘Railway Station,’ ready framed, standing in the corner of the box-room already. They’re a bit old-fashioned, perhaps, but that doesn’t matter in a bedroom. And couldn’t we use some photographs? I saw a very neat frame in natural oak in the City, to hold half a dozen, for one and six. We might put in your father, and your brother James, and Aunt Marian, and your grandmother, in her widow’s cap⁠—and any of the others in the album. And then there’s that old family picture in the hair-trunk⁠—that might do over the mantelpiece.”

“You mean your great-grandfather in the gilt frame? But that’s very old-fashioned, isn’t it? He looks so queer in his wig. I don’t think it would quite go with the room, somehow.”

Darnell thought a moment. The portrait was a “kitcat” of a young gentleman, bravely dressed in the fashion of 1750, and he very faintly remembered some old tales that his father had told him about this ancestor⁠—tales of the woods and fields, of the deep sunken lanes, and the forgotten country in the west.

“No,” he said, “I suppose it is rather out of date. But I saw some very nice prints in the City, framed and quite cheap.”

“Yes, but everything counts. Well, we will talk it over, as you say. You know we must be careful.”

The servant came in with the supper, a tin of biscuits, a glass of milk for the mistress, and a modest pint of beer for the master, with a little cheese and butter. Afterwards Edward smoked two pipes of honeydew, and they went quietly to bed; Mary going first, and her husband following a quarter of an hour later, according to the ritual established from the first days of their marriage. Front and back doors were locked, the gas was turned off at the meter, and when Darnell got upstairs he found his wife already in bed, her face turned round on the pillow.

She spoke softly to him as he came into the room.

“It would be impossible to buy a presentable bed at anything under one pound eleven, and good sheets are