All Hallows' Eve (17 page)

Something perhaps of fear entered her, to find herself running so fast. It was a steep road and it seemed much longer than when she had run up it of her own volition. She ran and she ran. She was running almost along the very cry itself, not touching the apparent pavement; it wailed louder below her. Her immortality was in her face; her spirituality in her feet; she was lifted and she ran.

She did not recognize the streets; she came at last round by King's Cross, on into the congeries of streets on the other side of the Euston Road, on towards Holborn. The cry grew quieter as she neared its source. What had been a wail in the more distant streets was a voice in the nearer. She still ran along it. At last, so running, she came through a small gate into a yard, and across it to a small low window. There she stopped and looked in. She saw a kind of hall, with people sitting on chairs, and away at the other end in a high chair, a man who was looking back at her. Or perhaps he was not actually looking back at her, but she knew he saw her. A dizziness of relief took her; here at last was someone else. She was so aware of him and of his sidelong knowledge of her, that she hardly noticed she was moving forward and through the wall. A film of spiders' webs brushed against her; she broke through it. She had come back; at the very sight of him she had been able to return into the world of men. She had escaped from the horrible vague City and here was he to welcome her.

He was smiling. She thought—as neither Jonathan nor Richard had done—that it was properly a smile, though again the smile was sidelong. He had reason, for when he saw her he knew that at last his writ ran in the spiritual City. He had known that it must be so, he being what he was. But that silence of Betty's about his future had almost troubled him. A deathly silence had seemed to hover round him, as if he had made an error in magic and could not recover himself. It was certainly time he sent out his messenger before him. But he knew now it was no error, for the silence had spoken. This was its first word—solitary, soon to be companioned. He would ride there presently upon their cries. He was overcoming that world.

The exchange of smiles—if that which had no thought of fair courtesy could be called exchange; at least some imitation of smiles—passed between them. Separately, each of them declined the nature of the City; which nevertheless held them. Each desired to breach the City; and either breach opened—directly and only—upon the other. Love to love, death to death, breach to breach; that was the ordering of the City, and its nature. It throve between Lester and Betty, between Richard and Jonathan, between Simon and Evelyn; that was its choice. How it throve was theirs. The noise of London, which was a part of it, rose at a distance outside the house—all its talk and traffic and turmoil. In the quiet of the hall the man said to the woman, “I shall want you soon.” She said, “Take me out of it.” And he, “Soon.” He stood up; that was when Richard found himself going out of the hall.

Chapter Seven

THE MAGICAL SACRIFICE

An hour or so later Jonathan opened his door to Richard. He said, “I say, what's been happening? You look ghastly. Sit down; have a drink.”

Richard was very white and unsteady. He dropped into a chair. Even the warm studio and Jonathan could not overcome the sense of that other thing which, ever since he had left the house in Holborn, had run cold in his blood. As Jonathan brought him the drink, he shuddered and looked rather wildly round. Jonathan said anxiously, “Here, drink this. Are you all right?”

Richard drank and sat for a little silent. Then he said, “I'd better tell you. Either I'm mad or … But I'm not just wrong. I'm either right or I'm mad. It's no good telling me I was taken in by seeing a barmaid in a yard——”

“No; all right,” said Jonathan. “I won't. I shouldn't be very likely to anyhow. Tell me what you like and I'll believe it. Why not?”

Richard began. He spoke slowly. He took care to be exact. He modified his description of his own sensations and emotions; he was as impartial as he could be. Once or twice he made an effort to be defensively witty; it was unsuccessful and he dropped it. As he came to the end, he grew even more careful. Jonathan sat on his table and watched him.

“I saw her come in. They looked towards each other and they smiled. And all I can tell you is that I know now what blasphemy is. It's not attractive and it isn't thrilling. It's just bloodcurdling—literally. It's something peculiarly different and it's something which happens. It isn't talk; it happens. My eyes began to go dark with it, because I simply couldn't bear it. And then, before I went quite under, we were all standing up and going out—down that corridor. I don't know what would have happened if one of them had touched me then. We got into the hall, and there was a lot of shuffling and whispering, and then an ordinary voice or two, and then everyone had disappeared except the caretaker. I saw the front door and I went straight to it. I was just at it when he called me. I couldn't go back or turn round. I stood still—I don't know why; I suppose I was still in a nightmare. And outside I saw that filthy little hand pointing in behind me. He spoke over my shoulder in that damn husky voice of his, and he said——”

“Yes; all right,” said Jonathan as Richard's voice went up a note or two. “Steady.”

“Sorry!” said Richard, recovering. “He said: ‘I won't keep you, Mr. Furnival. Come back presently. When you want me, I shall be ready. If you want your wife, I can bring her to you; if you don't want her, I can keep her away from you. Tell your friend I shall send for him soon. Goodbye.' So then I walked out.”

He lifted his eyes and looked at Jonathan, who couldn't think of anything to say. Presently Richard went on, still more quietly. “And suppose he can?”

“Can what?” asked Jonathan gloomily.

“Can,” said Richard carefully and explicitly, “do something to Lester. Leave off thinking of Betty for a moment; Betty's alive. Lester's dead, and suppose this man can do something to dead people? Don't forget I've seen one. I've seen that woman Mercer walk straight into his hall. I know she's dead; she looked dead. That's how I knew I saw her. No; not like a corpse. She was—fixed; as solid as you or me, but a deal more herself than either of us. If he made her come, can he make Lester come? If he can, I shall kill him.”

Jonathan said, staring at the floor, “No, I wouldn't do that. If … if he
can
do anything of that kind, don't you see it mightn't make much difference if he
were
dead? I wouldn't kill him.”

Richard got up. He said, “I see. No.” He began to wander about the room. Presently he said, “I won't have him touch Lester.” He added, “If I were to kill myself?”

Jonathan shook his head. “We don't know anything about it,” he said. “You couldn't be sure of being with her. And anyhow it's a sin.”

“Oh a sin!” said Richard peevishly and was silent. His friend was on the point of saying, “Well, if souls exist, sins may,” but he thought it would be tiresome, and desisted. Presently his eyes fell on the painting of those subhuman souls, and after staring at it he said abruptly, “Richard, I don't believe it. He may be able to hypnotize these creatures, but Lester wasn't much like them, was she? I don't believe he could control her unless she let him, and I shouldn't think she was much likely to let him. She wasn't, as I remember her, the kind of woman who likes being controlled, was she?”

Richard stopped. The faintest of smiles came to his lips. He said, “No. God help Father Simon if he tries to control Lester. Still”—and his face darkened again—“the plane was too much for her, and he might be.”

They stood side by side and looked at the cloud of rising backs. Evelyn Mercer was one of them; would Lester be? was Betty meant to be? Their ladies called to them from separate prisons, demanding help and salvation. The corridor of iron rock opened—surely not for those sacred heads? surely those royal backs could never incline below the imbecile face. But what to do? Richard's habitual agnosticism had so entirely disappeared with the first sight of Evelyn that he had already forgotten it. Jonathan was beginning to think of seeking out a priest. But their tale was a wild thing and he did not know what a priest could do. No priest could command Simon; nor exorcise Lester; nor enliven Betty. No; it was left to them.

He said, “Well, damn it, this isn't the only painting I've done. Let's look at the one Simon didn't like.”

“I don't see what good that'll do,” Richard said miserably, but he went round with his friend. He seemed to himself within himself to be standing alone among the insects, and he could not avoid the thought that perhaps now, somewhere, somehow, Lester was one of the insects—an irrational scuttling insect that would keep closer to him than any of the others would. That, if she were so, might still be left of their love, and that would be all. Their past would end in this, and this forever. Only he knew she would not—unless Simon had utterly and wholly changed her very nature. She would, insect or woman or some dreadful insect-woman, keep away from him; and as he knew it, he knew he did not want her to. If she were that, he wanted her—in spite of the horror; if he could bear the horror!—to be by him still. Or perhaps he might come to some agreement with Father Simon—perhaps he instead of her—she would be very angry indeed if he did; he knew very well it would be a contest between them, if such a chance could be; pride clashing with pride, but also love with love. It would be unfair to do it without her knowledge, yet with her knowledge it could never be done. The thought flickered through his mind before he realized of what he was really thinking. When he did, he could hardly think of it; the terrible metapsychosis gnawed at him and would not be seen. He stared in front of him and realized slowly that he was looking deeply into the light.

The massive radiance of that other painting flowed out towards him from the canvas; it had not surely, when he had seen it before, been as weighty as this? it had not so projected energy? He forgot Simon and the cluster of spiritual vermin; he forgot Lester, except that some changing detail of her hovered still in his mind—her hand, her forehead, her mouth, her eyes. The inscape of the painting became central. There, in the middle of this room, lay the City, ruined and renewed, submerged and gloriously re-emerging. It was not the sense of beauty but the sense of exploration that was greatest in him. He had but to take one step to be walking in that open space, with houses and streets around him. The very rubble in the foreground was organic and rising; not rising as the beetles were to some exterior compulsion but in proportion and to an interior plan. The whole subject—that is, the whole unity; shape and hue; rubble, houses, cathedral, sky and hidden sun, all and the light that was all and held all—advanced on him. It moved forward as that other painting retired. The imbecile master and his companions were being swallowed up in distance, but this was swallowing up distance. There was distance in it and yet it was all one. As a painting is.

He drew a deep breath. As he did so, a phrase from the previous day came back to him. He turned on Jonathan; he said, but his eyes were still on the canvas, “With plain observation and common understanding?”

“Yes,” said Jonathan. “I'll swear it was. I don't wonder Simon didn't like it.”

Richard could not bear the glow. It bore in upon him even more than it did on Jonathan—partly because it was not his painting, partly because he was already, despite himself, by his sight of Lester, some way initiated into that spiritual world. He walked to the window and stood looking out. The gray October weather held nothing of the painting's glory, yet his eyes were so bedazzled with the glory that for a moment, however unillumined the houses were, their very mass was a kind of illumination. They were illustrious with being. The sun in the painting had not risen, but it had been on the point of rising, and the expectation that unrisen sun had aroused in him was so great that the actual sun, or some other and greater sun, seemed to be about to burst through the cloud that filled the natural sky. The world he could see from the window gaily mocked him with a promise of being an image of the painting, or of being the original of which the painting was but a painting.

As he looked, he heard in the silence behind him a small tinkle. Something had fallen. Before his brain had properly registered the sound, he felt the floor beneath him quiver, and the tinkle was followed by a faint echo in different parts of the room. Things shook and touched and settled. The earth had felt the slightest tremor and all its inhabitants felt it. It was for less than a moment, as if an infinitesimal alteration had taken place. Richard saw in the sky upon which his eyes were fixed a kind of eyelid-lifting, an opening and shutting of cloud. He caught no direct light, but the roofs and chimneys of the houses gleamed, whether from above or in themselves he could not tell. It passed and his heart lifted. He was suddenly certain of Lester—not for himself, but in herself; she lived newly in the light. She lived—that was all; and so, by God's mercy, he.

He thought the phrase, and though it was strange to him it was very familiar. But he did not, in that second, feel he had abandoned his agnosticism for what he knew to be Jonathan's belief. Rather his very agnosticism rose more sharply and healthily within him; he swung to a dance and he actually did swing round, so that he saw Jonathan planted before his canvas and frowning at it, and on the floor a silver pencil which had rolled from the table. He walked across and picked it up, playing lightly with it, and as he began to speak Jonathan forestalled him. He said, “Richard, it
is
different.”

“Different?” asked Richard. “How different?”

“I'm very good,” Jonathan went on, but so simply that there was no egotism in the remark, “but I'm nothing like as good as this. I simply am not. I could never, never paint this.”