All Hallows' Eve (16 page)

Betty's eyes had been again wandering towards the sunlight at the window. She brought them back to look attentively at Lester, and she said quickly and affectionately, “Lester, you've been crying!”

Lester answered in a voice from which, for all her growing vision and springing charity, she could not keep a rigidity of exasperation, “I know I've been crying. I——”

Betty interrupted. “But of course I'll remember,” she said. “It was only that I didn't understand. What is it exactly you want me to remember?” She smiled as she spoke, and all the tenderness her mortal life had desired and lacked was visible in her. Lester felt an impulse to run away, to hide, even at least to shut her eyes. She held herself still; it had to be done. She said, “You might remember how I did behave to you at school. And afterwards.”

There was a long silence and in it Lester's new life felt the first dim beginnings of exalted peace. She was not less troubled nor less in fear of what might come. She was, and must be now, the victim of her victim. But also she was now, in that world, with someone she knew, with someone friendly and royally disposed to good, with someone native to her and to that world, easy and happy. The air she breathed was fresh with joy; the room was loaded with it. She knew it as a sick woman knows the summer. She herself was not yet happy, but this kind of happiness was new to her; only, even while she waited, she recollected that once or twice she had known something like it with Richard—one night when they had parted under a street-lamp, one day when they had met at Waterloo. They belonged here, those times; yet those times were as true as those other sinful times that danced without. Her heart was tranquil. If she must go, she must go; perhaps this hovering flicker of known joy might be permitted to go with her. All that was noble in her lifted itself in that moment. The small young figure before her was her judge; but it was also the center and source of the peace. She exclaimed, as if for Betty to know all was necessary to the fullness of the moment and to her own joy: “Oh remember! do remember!”

Betty stood attentive. The times of her happiness had been hitherto on the whole unclouded by her mortal life, except as she might sometimes vaguely remember an unpleasant dream. She set herself now to remember, since that, it seemed, was what was wanted, something she could lately have been contented to leave forgotten. It seemed to her also something of a waste on this glorious morning, with time happily before them, to spend it—however, she knew she wanted to remember. As soon as she knew that Lester wanted it, she too wanted it; so simple is love-in-paradise. She stood and thought. She was still smiling and she continued to smile, though presently her smile became a little grave. She said, “Oh well, how could you know?”

Lester said, “I knew quite enough.”

Betty went on smiling, but presently the smile vanished. She said, more seriously, “I do think Evelyn was rather unkind. But I suppose if she liked that sort of thing—anyhow we're not thinking of her. Well, now, that's done.”

Lester exclaimed, “You've remembered?” and Betty, now actually breaking into a gay laugh, answered, “Darling, how serious you are! Yes, I've remembered.”

“Everything?” Lester persisted; and Betty, looking her full in the eyes, so that suddenly Lester dropped her own, answered, “Everything.” She added, “It was lovely of you to ask me. I think perhaps I never quite wanted to remember—Oh all sorts of things—until you asked me, and then I just did, and now I shan't mind whatever else there is. Oh Lester, how good you are to me!”

The tears came into Lester's eyes, but this time they did not fall. Betty's figure swam indistinctly before her and then she blinked the tears away. They looked at each other and Betty laughed and Lester found herself beginning to laugh, but as she did so she exclaimed, “All the same——!” Betty put out her hand towards the other's lips, as if to hush her, but it did not reach them. Clear though they saw and heard each other, intimate as their hearts had become, and freely though they shared in that opening City a common good, still its proper definitions lay between them. The one was dead; the other not. The
Noli me tangere
of the City's own Lord Mayor was, in their small degree, imposed on them. Betty's hand dropped gently to her side. They half recognized the law and courteously yielded to it. Betty thought, “Of course, Lester was killed.” She also thought, and she said aloud, “Oh but I was glad Evelyn was killed.” Her voice was shocked; stricken, she looked at the other. She said, “How could I be?”

Lester had again forgotten Evelyn. She remembered. She became aware of Evelyn running, not now from her but towards her, towards them both. She herself now was at the other end of Evelyn's infinite haste; she shared with Betty the nature of the goal, and she felt at a distance Evelyn hurrying and almost there. She threw up her head, as she had thrown it up at the first call from the hill. She said—and now nothing deadened her speech; she said—in the voice that was to Richard her loveliest and lordliest, “I'll deal with Evelyn.”

Betty answered, half-laughing and half-embarrassed. “I can't think why she scares me a little still. But I didn't mean to want her to be dead. Only she's all mixed up with
there
. I usen't to think of that much when I was here.” There was no need to explain what she meant by “there” and “here.” Their hearts, now in union, knew. “But lately I seem to have to sometimes. Now you've made me remember, I don't so much mind. Stay with me a little while, if you can; will you, Lester? I know you can't settle that; things happen. But while you
can
… I've a feeling that I've got to get through something disagreeable, and I don't want to make a fuss again.”

“Of course I'll stay—if I may,” said Lester. “But make a fuss—you!”

Betty sat down on the bed. She smiled again at Lester; then she began to talk, almost as if to herself, or as if she were telling a child a story to soothe it to sleep. She said, “I know I needn't—when I think of the lake; at least, I suppose it was a lake. If it was a river, it was very broad. I must have been very small indeed, because, you know, it always seems as if I'd only just floated up through the lake, which is nonsense. But sometimes I almost think I did, because deep down I can remember the fishes, though not so as to describe them, and none of them took any notice of me, except one with a kind of great horned head which was swimming round me and diving under me. It was quite clear there under the water and I didn't even know I was there. I mean I wasn't thinking of myself. And then presently the fish dived again and went below me, and I felt him lifting me up with his back, and then the water plunged under me and lifted me, and I came out on the surface. And there I lay; it was sunny and bright, and I drifted in the sun—it was almost as if I was lying on the sunlight itself—and presently I saw the shore—a few steps in a low cliff, and a woman standing there. I didn't know who she was, but I know now, since you made me remember—Lester, I do owe you such a lot—it was a nurse I once had, but not for very long. She bent down and lifted me out of the water. I didn't want to leave it. But I liked her; it was almost as if she was my real mother, and she said: ‘There, dearie, no one can undo that; bless God for it.' And then I went to sleep, and that's the earliest thing I can remember, and after that only some things that belonged to it: some of the times I've been through London, and the Thames, and the white gulls. They were all in that part and in the other part too, the part I'm only just beginning to remember. And so were you, Lester, a little.”

“Il” said Lester bitterly. It did not seem to her likely that she could have belonged to that world of light and beauty. Yet even as she spoke she irrelevantly thought of Richard's eyes at the corner in Holborn—and before that—before that—before she was dead; and she remembered how Richard had come to meet her once and again, and how her heart had swelled for the glory and vigor of his coming. But Betty was speaking again.

“I see now that you were, and now it seems all right. That was why I ran after you—Oh how tiresome I must have been! but it doesn't matter. I'm afraid I did make a fuss; I know I did over the headaches—there were some places where I knew I was going to have headaches—and over Evelyn. It really was rather silly of Evelyn. And then there was this house——”

She stopped and yawned. She threw herself back on the pillow and swung up her legs. She went on: “But I'm too sleepy now to remember all that I ought to about this house.… And then there was Jonathan. Do you know Jonathan? he was very good to me. We might go and look at the Thames some time, you and I and Jonathan.…” Her eyes closed; her hands felt vaguely about the bed. She said, in tones Lester could only just hear, “I'm so sorry. I just can't keep awake. Don't go. Jonathan will be coming.… Don't go unless you must. It's lovely having you here.… It was sweet of you to come … Jonathan will … dear Lester.…” She made an uncertain movement to pull the bedclothes up over her; before the movement ended she was asleep.

Lester did not understand what she had been saying. In what strange way she had been known to Betty, more happily than ever she herself could have supposed, she did not know. Betty had been talking almost as if there had been two lives, each a kind of dream to the other. It would once have been easy to call the one life a fantasy, easy if this new, gay and vivid Betty had not precisely belonged to the fantasy. She felt both lives within her too sharply now to call either so. There had been something like two lives in her own single life—the gracious passionate life of beauty and delight, and the hard angry life of bitterness and hate. It was the recollection of that cold folly which perhaps now made Betty seem to her—no; it was not. Betty was changing; she was dying back; she was becoming what she had been. Color passed from her cheeks; the sweet innocence of sleep faded, and the pallor of exhaustion and the worn semblance of victimization spread. The hands twitched. She looked already, as men say, “near dead.” Lester exclaimed: “Betty!” It had no effect. The change affected the room itself; the sunlight weakened; power everywhere departed. The girl who lay before Lester was the girl she had turned away from. The hands and head could no longer threaten judgment; they were too helpless. Yes, but also they had judged. What had been, in that other state, decided, remained fixed; once known, always known. She knew quite clearly that Betty had—forgiven her. The smile, the warmth, the loveliness, were forgiveness. It was strange not to mind, but she did not mind. If she did not mind Betty, perhaps she would not mind Richard. She smiled. Mind Richard? mind being forgiven—forgiven so—by that difficult obnoxious adorable creature? Let him come to her in turn and she would show him what forgiveness was. Till now she had not really understood it; occasionally in the past each of them had “forgiven” the other, but the victim had not much liked it. But now—by high permission, yes. And if Richard and Betty, then others; if this permission which now directed her life allowed, others. “Thus”—how did it go?—“through all eternity I forgive you, you forgive me.” Wine and bread, the poem had called it; wine and bread let it be. Meanwhile there was nothing to do but to wait till that happened which must happen. In some way she had now been left in charge of Betty. She must keep her charge. She must wait.

All this time, since first Lester had entered the house, the unhappy soul of Evelyn had also waited. At first it had almost followed Lester in, but it did not dare. Frightful as the empty appearance of the City was to it, to be enclosed in the house would be worse. She would be afraid of being shut up with Lester and Betty, certainly with Lester, almost with Betty. She hated the victim of her torment, but to be alone with her in that dark solid house—the thought ought to have been agreeable, but it was not at all agreeable. As for Lester, she hated Lester too. Lester had patronized her, but then Lester could. She had the power to be like that and she was. She hated being alone in this place with Lester, though since she had run after Betty, even though she had missed her, she felt better. The street down which she had run after she had turned off from the hill, this street in which she now stood, had seemed more close, more helpful. The air held some sense of gain. This was more like the London she had known. The house should have been the climax; could she go in, she thought, it would be. Only she dared not go in. Lester was not to be trusted; Lester and Betty might be plotting.

After all, she was rather glad she had not caught up with Betty. Lester might have come up behind her and then the two of them might have done things to her. Or they might have thought she would have run into the house, but she had not; she had been too clever for that—and for them. She walked a few steps away. It was no good standing too near; they would not come out—no, but if they should … She could almost see them talking in the house, smiling at each other. She walked a little farther away and turned her head over her shoulder as she went. On her face was the look which had shocked Lester when she had earlier seen that turned head. It was hate relieved from mortality, malice incapable of death. Within the house, Lester's own face had taken on a similar change; some element of alteration had disappeared. She herself did not, of course, know it; her attention had been taken up by the growing glory that was Betty. But even Betty's face had not that other lucidity. What had looked at Lester from Evelyn's eyes, what now showed in her own, was pure immortality. This was the seal of the City, its first gift to the dead who entered it. They had what they were and they had it (as it seemed) forever. With that in her eyes, Evelyn turned her head again and wandered slowly on.

She came on to the hill and drifted down it, for having no choice of ways and yet being oddly compelled to go on—if not into the house, then away from the house—she only retraced her steps, slowly going back, slowly going down. She was about a third of the way down when from far off the sound of the Name caught her. She could hardly there be said to have heard it; it was not so much a name or even a sound as an impulse. It had gone, that indrawing cry, where only it could go, for the eternal City into which it was inevitably loosed absorbed it into its proper place. It could not affect the solid houses of earth nor the millions of men and women toilfully attempting goodness; nor could it reach the paradisal places and their inhabitants. It sounded only through the void streets, the apparent façades, the shadowy rooms of the world of the newly dead. There it found its way. Other wanderers, as invisible to Evelyn as she to them, but of her kind, felt it—old men seeking lechery, young men seeking drunkenness, women making and believing malice, all harborers in a lie. The debased Tetragrammaton drew them with its spiritual suction; the syllables passed out, and swirled, and drawing their captives returned to their speaker. Some went a little way and fell; some farther and failed; of them all only she, at once the latest, the weakest, the nearest, the worst, was wholly caught. She did not recognize captivity; she thought herself free. She began to walk more quickly, to run, to run fast. As she ran, she began to hear the sound. It was not friendly; it was not likeable; but it was allied. She felt towards it as Lester had felt towards the cry on the hill. The souls in that place know their own proper sounds and hurry to them.