All Hallows' Eve (24 page)

He whispered into the ear of the dwarf-woman, still pressing his hands on it. He and it were now alone in the hall. It could not be said to hear him, but it received his breath. He was now separated from those two other children of earth, and they from him, unless he deliberately called them. He knew that their awareness must be now of and through the body they in some sense inhabited; not that they lived in it as in a place, but that they only knew through it. There was no limit to the number of spiritual beings who could know in that way through one body, for there was not between any of them and it any organic relation. The singleness of true incarnation must always be a mystery to the masters of magic; of that it may be said that the more advanced the magic, the deeper the mystery, for the very nature of magic is opposed to it. Powerful as the lie may be, it is still a lie. Birth and death are alike unknown to it; there is only conjunction and division. But the lie has its own laws. Once even Lester had assented to that manner of knowledge, she must enter the City so. It remained to discover what she could do there.

In the front office of the house, the caretaker Plankin was standing by the door. He saw coming along from the side-passage a middle-aged woman. She was short and slightly deformed. Her eyes were fixed in front of her, and in spite of a dragging foot she was walking at a fair speed. She went by Plankin without noticing him and on into the street. He thought as he watched her, “Ah, the Father hasn't healed her yet. But he will; he will. He'll put his mark in her body.”

Chapter Nine

TELEPHONE CONVERSATIONS

Lady Wallingford sat in her drawing-room. Jonathan and Richard were with her, but she did not ask them to sit down. Jonathan leaned on the back of a chair, watching the door. Richard paced up and down. Had Jonathan painted the scene, he might have shown a wilderness, with a small lump of that iron-gray rock in the center, and near it a couched lion and a pacing leopard. It would have been a vision of principles, and so (even then) Jonathan, at least as the others appeared, took it in. He wondered, as he looked at Lady Wallingford, if she would ever move again; he wondered with what expectation Richard stepped and turned.

Yet it was the memory of something hardly more than an accident which chiefly held the woman rock-rigid in her chair. She knew what Simon proposed, though she did not know how he meant to fulfill his purpose. He had in mind a simpler and cruder thing than any magical dissolution. That had failed; there remained simple murder. She knew that that was what the night was to bring. But she was now only remotely aware of it, for though she no longer felt her body clamped in that frame which had shut on her in the bedroom, yet her anger was almost equally strong and imprisoned her from within. The maid's words, “Oh she is looking better, isn't she, my lady?” held her. She was furious that Betty should look better; she was almost more furious that the maid, even deferentially, should comment on it. The obnoxious fact was emphasized in the most obnoxious manner. It is the nature of things intensely felt as obnoxious so as to emphasize themselves. She sat raging—immobile in her wilderness.

The maid herself was hovering in the hall. She did not like to stay, in case Lady Wallingford came out and saw her, or to go, in case Lady Wallingford rang for her, in which case the sooner she was there the better for her. She drifted uneasily about the foot of the stairs. Presently she heard above her a door shut. She looked up. Miss Betty was coming down the stairs.

Miss Betty was looking very much better. The maid lingered in admiration. Betty smiled gaily down at her and the girl smiled shyly back. She ventured to say, with a sense of obscure justification, “You
are
better, aren't you, Miss Betty?”

“Much, thank you,” said Betty, and added remorsefully, “I expect I've given you a lot of extra work, Nina.”

“Oh
no
, Miss Betty,” Nina said. “Besides, I'd have liked it. My grandmother used to be with Sir Bartholomew's mother, so in a way we're in the family. She was your nurse, Miss Betty.”

Betty stopped on the third stair; then in a leap she was down them, and had caught hold of the girl's arm. Her face was alight; she exclaimed, “Your grandmother my nurse! Is she alive? where's she living? Do tell me, Nina.”

Nina, surprised but pleased by this interest, said, “Why, she's living in London, over in Tooting. I go and see her most weeks.”

Betty drew a deep breath. She said, “Isn't that marvelous?
I
want to see her. Can I? can I now?”

“She'd be very pleased if you did, Miss Betty,” Nina said. “Only,” she added more doubtfully, “I don't know if my lady would like it. I think there was some trouble between grandmother and my lady. She was sent away, I know, but Sir Bartholomew helped her. It's all a long time ago.”

“Yes,” said Betty—“when I was born and before you were. That'll be all right. Tell me the address; I'll explain to my mother.”

“It's 59 Upper Clapham Lane,” Nina answered. “It was once her own boarding-house, and then my brother and his wife took it over, only he's in Austria now. But my grandmother still lives there.”

Betty said, “I shall go today. Thank you, Nina. I'll see you when I come back.” She released the girl and went on into the drawing-room. She entered it, Jonathan thought, like water with the sun on it; the desert blossomed with the rose. The wild beasts in it were no less dangerous, but she was among them in the friendship and joy of a child. She slipped her hand in Jonathan's arm and she said, smiling at them all, “Mother, I've just found out where my old nurse lives and I'm going to see her. Isn't it marvelous? I've so often wanted to.”

“You had better,” said Lady Wallingford's dead voice, “have lunch here first.”

“Oh need we?” Betty said. “Jonathan, won't you take me to lunch somewhere and we could go on?”

“You were going to lunch with me anyhow,” Jonathan said. “We can go anywhere you like afterwards.”

“Do you mind, Mother?” Betty asked. “You see I really am absolutely all right.”

As if the rock itself shifted, Lady Wallingford got to her feet. She would, under her paramour's instruction and for his sake, have put friendliness into her voice, had it been possible. It was not. She could neither command nor beguile. She said, “When will you be back?”

“Oh to dinner,” said Betty. “May I bring Jonathan back?”

“No, thank you very much,” Jonathan said hastily. “I couldn't tonight. Besides, you're dining with me and after that we'll see. Let's go.”

“All right,” said Betty. “I'll ring you up, Mother, and tell you what we decide.”

Jonathan looked at Richard. “What are you doing?” he asked.

Richard came lightly forward. He said to Lady Wallingford, “I've intruded quite long enough. It's been quite unforgivable, and I don't suppose you mean to forgive me, which would save us both trouble. Goodbye, and thank you so much. I'm glad that Betty is better and that Sir Bartholomew will soon be back.”

Betty exclaimed and Lady Wallingford, still in that dead voice, said, “How do you know?”

“Oh the Foreign Office!” Richard said vaguely. “One can pick things up. Goodbye, Lady Wallingford, and thank you again. Come, children, or we shall get no lunch.”

But once outside the house, he disengaged himself. He sent off the two lovers and himself went on his way to his own flat. They, after the parting, went to lunch and the exchange of histories. Time was before them, and they had no need to hurry their understanding. After lunch they set out on their way to discover 59 Upper Clapham Lane. It was a largish respectable house, in reasonably good condition. Jonathan, as they looked at it, said, “
Is
everything brighter? or is it only being with you that makes me think so?—even than it was this morning?”

Betty pressed his arm. She said, “Everything's always as bright as it can be and yet everything's getting brighter. Unless, of course, it's dark.”

Jonathan shook his head. “Why,” he said, “you should be able to see better than I—why you should have more plain observation and common understanding than I—well, never mind! Let's ring.”

Presently they found themselves in Mrs. Plumstead's suite; she made it seem that by the way she welcomed them. She was a charming old lady, who was extremely touched and pleased by the unexpected appearance of Betty. She managed to treat it as at once an honor conferred and a matter of course, and made no allusion to the long separation. She did, however, with an awful aloofness once or twice allude to the parting between herself and Lady Wallingford, saying with an iciness equal to Lady Wallingford's, “I didn't suit my lady.” Jonathan said, in answer, “You seem to have suited Betty very well, Mrs. Plumstead,” and added ambiguously, “Without you she couldn't have been what she is.”

Mrs. Plumstead, sitting upright, said, “No; my lady and me—we did not suit. But there's a thing that's been on my mind, my dear, all these years, and I think I ought to tell you. I'm free to say that I was younger then and apt to take things on myself, which I wouldn't do now, for I don't think it was quite proper. Her ladyship and I did not see eye to eye, but after all she was your mother, my dear, and no doubt meant you well. And if it was to be done again, perhaps I would not do it.”

Jonathan thought that Mrs. Plumstead at that moment might have passed for Queen Elizabeth pronouncing upon the execution of Mary Queen of Scots. And then he forgot such literary fancies in the recollection of Betty's other life and of the lake of which at lunch she had told him, and the high sky and the wise water and all the lordly dream, if it were a dream. Betty was leaning forward now and gazing intently at the old lady. She said, “Yes, nurse?”

“Well, my dear,” the old nurse went on and ever so faintly blushed, “as I say, I was younger then, and in a way I was in charge of you, and I was a little too fond of my own way and very obstinate in some things. And now I do not think it right. But you were such a dear little thing and I did once mention it to my lady, but she was very putting-off and only said, ‘Pray, nurse, do not interfere'—her ladyship and I
never
suited—and I ought to have left it at that, I do think now, but I was obstinate, and then you were such a dear little thing, and it did seem such a shame, and so—” the old nurse said, unaware of the intensity of the silence in the room—“well, I christened you myself.”

Betty's voice, like the rush of some waterfall in a river, answered, “It was sweet of you, nurse.”

“No; it wasn't right,” Mrs. Plumstead said. “But there it is. For I thought then that harm it couldn't do you and good it might—besides getting back on her ladyship: Oh I was a wicked woman—and one afternoon in the nursery, I got the water and I prayed God to bless it, though I don't know now how I dared, and I marked you with it, and said the Holy Name, and I thought, ‘Well, I can't get the poor dear godfathers and godmothers, but the Holy Ghost'll be her godfather and I'll do what I can.' And so I would have done, only soon after her ladyship and I didn't suit. But that's what happened, and you ought to know now you're a grown woman and likely to be married and have babies of your own.”

Betty said, “So it was you who lifted me out of the lake!”

Jonathan thought that Lady Wallingford's behavior to her servants had been, on the whole, unfortunate. She had never credited the nurse she employed with such piety, decision and courage (or obstinacy, if you preferred the word). And now as in some tales Merlin had by the same Rite issued from the womb in which he had been mysteriously conceived, so this child of magic had been after birth saved from magic by a mystery, beyond magic. The natural affection of this woman and her granddaughter had in fact dispelled the shadows of giant schemes. And this then was what that strange Rite called baptism was—a state of being of which water was the material identity, a life rippling and translucent with joy.

Betty had stood up and was kissing her nurse. She said, “Goodbye, nurse. We'll come again soon, Jon and I. And never be sorry; some day I'll tell you how fortunate it was.” She added, quite naturally, “Bless me, now.”

“God bless you, my dear,” the old woman said. “And Mr. Drayton too, if I may take the liberty. And make you both very happy. And thank you for saying it was all right.”

When they were outside the house, Betty said, “So that's how it was! But … Jon, you must tell me about it—what it's supposed to be.”

Jonathan said grimly, “I don't know that you'll be much better off for my explaining. After all, it's you that are happening. I'm not sure that I'm not a little scared of you, darling.”

“I'm not sure that I'm not a little scared myself,” said Betty seriously. “Not badly, but a little. It's mixed up with discovering that you're really you—wonderful, darling, but rather terrifying. Let's go and look at your pictures, shall we? I've never yet looked at any of them properly and yesterday I was shaking with fear of my mother. I don't mind her now at all.”

“Anything,” said Jonathan, “that pleases you pleases me. And God send that that shall be true until we die—and perhaps he will. Let's take a taxi. That's one great advantage of being engaged—one always has a perfectly good reason for taking taxis. All these things are added to one.”

They spent some time in his room looking at various paintings, before Betty allowed herself to look at those two which still stood on their respective easels. She lingered for a long time before that of the City-in-light and Jonathan saw her eyes fill with tears. He caught her hand and kissed it. She went close to him. She said, “I
am
a little scared, dearest. I'm not ready for it yet.”

Jonathan said, holding her, “You're ready for much more than a painting … even if the colors have really become colors.”