All Hallows' Eve (11 page)

Far away, in London's mortal measurement, but brief time enough immortally, the two dead girls walked. It was not, to them, so very long since they had left the Park—a few days or even less. But Evelyn had reached what would have been on earth the point of exhaustion from tears; there was here no such exhaustion, but as if by a kind of reflexive action she stopped. She might begin again when she would have been capable of beginning again; at present she could not. She did not dare leave Lester, though she did not like Lester any the better for that. Lester still interfered with her chatter, and without her chatter this world was almost unbearable to her. She was afraid of losing that escape from its pressure, nor did she know how Lester could bear that pressure. And if Lester would not listen, there was no one else to do so. Her fright required of her that relief and she hated Lester for depriving her of it. Yet Lester still held her arm and in default of better she dare not lose that pressure. And sometimes Lester did say something and encourage her to answer—only generally about silly uninteresting things.

Once, as they had been coming along Holborn, Lester had stopped and looked in one of those curious windows which were no windows. She had said hesitantly to her companion, “Evelyn, look, can you see any difference?” Evelyn had looked, but she had not seen anything particular. It seemed to be a shop with electric lamps and fires displayed—all vague and unreal enough. But Lester was looking at them seriously. She said, “That's the kind I've always meant to get. Do you see, the one in the back row?” Evelyn did not even want to look. She said in a high strained voice, “Don't be silly, Lester. What's the good?” It gave her some pleasure to retaliate; besides, she never had been interested in such convenient details. She would complain if things went wrong, but she would take no care to have them go right. Lester almost smiled; it was a sad little smile, but it was her first unpremeditated smile. She said, “No. But they do somehow look more real. And we both meant to get one. Richard was going to try and get me one for my birthday. Do be interested, Evelyn.” Evelyn said sullenly, “You wouldn't be interested in what I was saying,” and pulled away.

Lester with a small sigh had turned with her. That shop had for a moment seemed less like a façade and more like a shop. It had held the sort of thing that had once concerned her—not only for her own convenience, or to improve on her neighbors, but for a pleasure in its own neatness and effectiveness. As she turned away, at a corner, Evelyn felt her stop so suddenly that she herself gave a little squeal of fright. The grip on her arm relaxed and then was so tightened that she squealed again in protest. But Lester had been rough and unkind. She had said, “Keep quiet——” and had choked and drawn a deep breath or two. Evelyn felt how unfair it was; first she was to talk and then not to talk, and how could anyone know? She felt herself beginning to cry and then they had gone on again in silence, up northward, till they had come out of all the parts of London she knew and were in some long sordid street. There was still no one else.

But suddenly there was another sound. High beyond and above them a voice called, piercing the air and shaking their hearts. Both girls abruptly stood still. It was a human voice, a girl's voice, crying high in the silence, with assurance and belief. Lester threw up her head; she did not recognize the voice but the note of it lifted her. It was a woman's call; and that was the way a woman should call in this City, the way she should call if she—if she too could dare. She thought of Richard as she had just now seen him in Holborn, and she opened her mouth to send his name also ringing over the streets, as this other name which she could not yet catch was ringing. She heard her voice, “as if hoarse with long disuse,” say dully: “Richard!” The sound horrified her. Was this all she could do? She tried again. It was.

She made a third effort and again she heard from her own mouth only the flat voice of the dead. She was possessed by it. Death, it seemed, was not over; it had only just begun. She was dying further. She could not call; presently she would not be able to speak; then not to see—neither the high stars nor the meaningless lights—yet still, though meaningless, faintly metropolitan. But she would find even this pale light too much, and presently would creep away from it towards one of those great open entrances that loomed here and there, for inside one of them she could hide from the light. Then she would go farther in, so as not to see even the entrance, in spite of the brick wall that stood before it; farther in, and a little way down the coiling stairs. If Richard came along the street then … no; perhaps she would wait at the entrance till he did, and then call him in this faint croak. She had pushed him away once, but now she would not push him away; she would call him and keep him; let him too find it—all the stairs, all the living dead. It was not the dead, as she had thought, it was the living who dwelled in those tunnels of earth—deep and O deep beyond any railways, in the tubes they themselves, thrusting and pushing, hollowed out for their shelter. Richard should no longer be pushed away; he should be there with her, prisoner with her, prisoner to her. If only he too would die, and come!

She saw all this in her mind for as long as it took that other voice to call once more. She saw it clearly—for an aeon; this was what she wanted; this was what she was. This was she, damned; yes, and she was damned; she, being that, was damned. There was no help, unless she could be something other, and there was no power in her to be anything other. As she stood in a trance of horror at herself or at hell, or at both, being one, a word pierced her brain. The word was “Jonathan!” The far voice was calling: “Jonathan!” She knew the word; it was the name of Richard's friend. She had not herself much interest in Jonathan, but she had asked him to dinner because Richard liked him, she had studied his paintings with good will because Richard liked him. She recognized the name, and the name struck through her vision of the Pit. She was not yet so; no, she was not yet there; she was in the streets and breathed still the open air and knew the calls of love. Something, in or out of her mind, said to her, “Would it be unfair?” She answered with the courage and good sense native to her, but with a new and holy shyness: “It would be perhaps extreme.” “It would be your own extreme,” the voice, if it were a voice, continued. She said, “Yes.”

The unspoken dialogue ceased. The call from above had ceased. She seemed to have shut her eyes; she opened them. She saw Evelyn in front of her, running hard. She called, and even as she did so she realized that she could call Evelyn easily enough and that that was not surprising—she called: “Evelyn!” The silent running figure looked back over its shoulder and Evelyn's thin voice came to her clearly. It said, “That was Betty.” It turned its head again and ran on.

Lester also began to run. The face that had looked back had startled her; it had been excited and pleased. She remembered Betty and she remembered that Evelyn had not been very nice to Betty. They had once all three run in this way through the grounds of their school by the sea; indeed, as she ran, the bushes of those grounds showed through the houses and shops. Betty had run away and Evelyn had run after Betty, and suddenly she herself had run after Evelyn. It had not been often she took the trouble, for Betty bored her and anyhow Evelyn never did anything to Betty; even then she had been calling, “I only want to talk to you.” But something in the talk made Betty cry and for once Lester had interfered; and now, as then, they ran down the path; no, not down the path but up the street, towards Highgate, out to the bottom of the Hill. High above them a single figure watched them come.

Betty watched them; they were at first far away and she did not know them. While she had gone out on her appointed way, she had been free from pain. But the terrible laws of that place gave her what she wanted when she insisted on it. Her distress, and now the nearness of her distress, might excuse a rebellion; it could not modify its results. She had stamped on the pavement and (as in the old tales) the inhabitants of that place sprang at once into being. She had called on something she knew. But that something was more deeply engaged on its work in the world of the shadow behind her, and this world would not give her that. She saw at a distance the two running women, strange and remote as in a painting or a poem. She watched them curiously and the time went by, as long to her as to Evelyn racing up the slope or to Lester outdistanced behind. Lester lost ground; she did not know clearly why she went, but Evelyn did; therefore the one ran faster and the other slower, for still in the outer circles of that world a cruel purpose could out-speed a vague pity. But the cruelty could not reach its end. Betty waited till, halfway up the Hill, the first running figure lifted its head slightly, so that she saw the face and knew it for Evelyn's. She took a step or two back, and the night of this world into which she had hesitated to advance took her as she retreated. Her nightmare possessed her; now it was happening. She screamed and turned and fled.

Evelyn called, “Betty! Betty! Stop!” but to Betty's ears the name rang confused. It had been “Bettina!” in her dreams; it was “Bettina!” now. She ran. There was but a short street or two between her and the house; they were to her the natural streets, the sad unhappy streets of Highgate. She forgot her fear of the house in her fear of Evelyn. “Bettina! Bettina!” O lost, lost! but now nearer the house and the cold quiet thing that waited her in the porch. “Bettina! Bettina!” No—she was there, and she and the shape by the door were no longer separate. A great exhaustion fell on her; her eyes closed; her body failed; she pushed weakly at the door and stumbled through. She fell; someone caught her; she knew nothing more.

Outside the house Evelyn stopped. For her that other world had not changed. It was as quiet and empty, as earthly and unearthly as ever. It was not quite dark; it never yet had been quite dark. The soft, intense, and holy darkness of that City was not known to her. She stood, gently panting, as a girl might who has wholeheartedly run from and been pursued by a welcome lover: so, and yet not so, for that swift and generous animality was not hers. The kind of rage that was in her was the eager stirring of the second death. She had wanted Betty, and now she did not know what she wanted. The house was before her, but she was afraid to try to enter it.

At that moment Lester caught her up. She said with an imperious demand, “What are you doing, Evelyn? Can't you let her be?” and as she spoke she seemed to herself again to be saying something she had said before—away in those gardens by the sea, a great sea the sound of which, beyond her own voice, she could dimly hear as she had so often heard it in her bed at school. It was almost as if, behind her, the whole City moved. She half-lifted her hand to catch Evelyn by the shoulder, and that too she had once done; but she let it fall, for now the revolt in her flesh was too strong. Yet, as if she had been swung round by that once impetuous hand, Evelyn turned. She said, as she had said before, in that foolish slurred voice whose protestations provoked disbelief, “What do you mean? I wasn't doing anything.”

The answer shocked Lester back into fuller consciousness. They were no longer schoolgirls; they were—what were they? Women; dead women; living women; women on whose lips such words could have no meaning. The excuse of a child in a garden by the sea might have been accepted, if it had not been repeated here. But here it became dreadful. In the Park Lester could have half smiled at it; she could not smile now. She spoke with a fuller and clearer voice than ever it had been in this world; she spoke as a woman, as Richard's wife, as something more than a vagrant, even if not yet a citizen; and she said, “Don't, my dear. It isn't worth it——” and as if by compulsion she added, “here.”

Evelyn stopped, almost as if detaching herself from the other's hand, and took a step away. Lester looked up at the house. It seemed to her strange and awful. Betty had taken refuge in it, as once on a garden-seat among the bushes. Over it, close to it, a lone star hung. The other houses were shadowy and uncertain; this alone was solid and real. It stood out, and within its porch the entrance was as black as one of those other dark entrances which she feared. As she gazed, there came from the house a small human sound. It was someone crying. The half-suppressed unhappy sobs were the only noise that broke the silence. Evelyn's sobs and chattering teeth had broken it in the Park, but Evelyn was not crying now. It was Betty who was crying—among the bushes, in the house, without strength, without hope. Lester, with her own yearning in her bones, stirred restlessly, in an impatient refusal of her impatient impulse to go and tell her to stop. In those earlier days, she had not gone; she had hesitated a moment just so and then turned away. Betty must really learn to stand up for herself. “Must she indeed?” Lester's own voice said to her. She exclaimed, with the fervent habit of her mortality: “Hell!”

The word ran from her in all directions, as if a dozen small animals had been released and gone racing away. They fled up and down the street, beating out the echo of the word with their quick pattering feet, but the larger went for the house in front of them and disappeared into the porch. She saw them and was appalled; what new injury had she loosed? There was then no help. She too must go there. And Richard? She had thought that in this terrible London she had lost Richard, but now it seemed to her that this was the only place where she might meet Richard. She had seen him twice and the second time with some undeclared renewal of love. What might not be granted a third time? voice? a word? Ghosts had spoken; ghost as he was to her in those first appearances, he too might speak. To go into the house might be to lose him. The quiet crying, still shockingly suppressed, continued. Lester hung irresolute.

Behind her, Evelyn's voice said, “Oh come
away!
” At the words Lester, for the first time in her life, saw a temptation precisely as it is when it has ceased to tempt—repugnant, implausible, mean. She said nothing. She went forward and up the steps. She went on into Lady Wallingford's house.