All Hallows' Eve (20 page)

Sara Wallingford was still leaning with her forehead against the door and pressing it more closely. She knew, as far as she could, what the operation meant. But as the intoning had proceeded, her merely mortal hate got the better of her knowledge; she murmured: “Kill! kill!” She did not care what became of Betty, so long as Betty was dead. When, dimly, she heard the ringing opposition of the Name, she felt only a fear that Betty might live. And while with all her force she rejected that fear lest it should weaken the effort, she felt her master beckon. If indeed they had been, with whatever subordination, allies, there would have been between them an image of a truth, however debased, which might have helped. There was not. They had never exchanged that joyous smile of equality which marks all happy human or celestial government, the lack of which had frightened Richard in Simon's own smile; that which has existed because first the Omnipotence withdrew its omnipotence and decreed that submission should be by living will, or perhaps because in the Omnipotence itself there is an equality which subordinates itself. The hierarchy of the abyss does not know anything of equality, nor of any lovely balance within itself, nor (if he indeed be) does the lord of that hierarchy ever look up, subordinate to his subordinates, and see above him and transcending him the glory of his household. So that never in all the myths, of Satan or Samael or Iblis or Ahriman, has there been any serious tale of that lord becoming flesh by human derivation; how could he be so supposed to submit, in bed or cradle? Simon himself, in the mystery of generation, had reserved something; he, like all his fellows, intended to dominate what he begot; therefore he and they always denied their purposes at the moment of achievement. “How shall Satan's kingdom stand, if it be divided against itself?” Messias asked, and the gloomy pedants to whom he spoke could not give the answer his shining eyes awaited: “Sir, it does not.”

The man beckoned; the woman stood upright. She had no choice; she was his instrument only; she must go and be used. But (more than she guessed) she was also the instrument of her own past. As she took a step away, there came a tap on the door. It was very gentle, but to those two it was shattering in the silence—a blasting summons from the ordinary world. All three of them heard it. Lester heard it; to her it sounded precisely what it was, clear and distinct. To say she might have been alive again is too little; it was more happily itself, more sweetly promising, than if she had been alive. It was a pure and perfect enjoyment. She knew she could, if she chose, exert herself now to see who waited on the other side of the door, but she did not choose. It was not worth while; let the exquisite disclosure come in its own way. The Clerk's face convulsed; he made a gesture of prohibition. He was too late. Lady Wallingford's past was in her and ruled her; all the times when she had thought about the servants now compelled her. She was the servant of her servants. The glorious maxim (sealed forever in the title of the Roman pontiff—
servus servorum Dei
) ruled her ingloriously. She was, for that second, oblivious of the Clerk. She put out her hand and switched on the light—there was no time to draw back the curtains; she unlocked and opened the door. She faced the parlormaid.

The maid said, “If you please, my lady, there are two gentlemen downstairs who say they must see you. The gentleman who spoke said he didn't think you'd know his name but the other is Mr. Drayton. They say it's very urgent and to do with Miss Betty.” She was young, pleasant and inexperienced; her mildly surprised eyes surveyed the room and rested on Betty. She broke out, “Oh she
is
looking better, isn't she, my lady?”

The news of Jonathan's arrival might, in her state of passion, have enraged Lady Wallingford; the impertinence of a servant outraged her past. It pulled her past and her together; unfortunately it pulled her together in the opposite direction from what was then going on. All the rebukes she had ever delivered rose in her; she did not see them, as Lester had seen her own actions, but her voice shook with them. She said, “You forget yourself, Nina.” She went on. “Tell Mr. Drayton's friend I can't see them. Send them away and see I'm not interrupted again.”

The maid shrank. Lady Wallingford stared angrily at her. As she did so, a curious sensation passed through her. She felt rooted and all but fixed, clamped in some invisible machine. A board was pressed against her spine; wooden arms shut down on her arms; her feet were iron-fixed. She could do nothing but stare. She heard her last dictatorial word, “see I'm not interrupted again.” Was she not to be? The maid took a step back, saying hastily, “Yes, my lady.” Lady Wallingford, immovable to herself, stared after her. She could not pursue.

She was not, however, then left to that doom. As the maid turned, she exclaimed, “Oh!” and stepped back, almost into her mistress. There was a sudden swiftness of feet; two forms loomed in the corridor. The maid slipped to the other side of the doorway and as Lady Wallingford broke—or was allowed to break—from the wooden beams which had appeared to close on her, Richard and Jonathan had passed her and come into the room.

Richard was speaking as he came. He said, “You must forgive this intrusion, Lady Wallingford. We know—Jonathan and I—that we're behaving very badly. But it's absolutely—I do mean
absolutely—
necessary for us to see Betty. If you believe in the Absolute. So we had to come.” He added, across the room to Lester, without surprise, but with a rush of apology, and only he knew to whom he spoke, “Darling, have I kept you waiting? I'm so sorry.”

Lester saw him. She felt, as he came, all her old self lifting in her; bodiless, she seemed to recall her body in the joy they exchanged. He saw her smile, and in the smile heaven was frank and she was shy. She said—and he only heard, and he rather knew than heard, but some sound of speech rang in the room, and the Clerk, now on his feet, looked round and up, wildly, as if to catch sight of the sound—she said, “I'll wait for you a million years.” She felt a stir within her, as if life quickened; and she remembered with new joy that the deathly tide had never reached, even in appearance, to the physical house of life. If Richard or she went now, it would not much matter; their fulfillment was irrevocably promised them, in what manner so-ever they knew or were to know it.

Betty opened her eyes. She too saw Lester. She said, “Lester, you did stop! How sweet of you!” She looked round the room. Her eyes widened a little as she saw Richard; they passed unconcernedly over the Clerk and Lady Wallingford; they saw Jonathan. She cried out and sat up; she threw out her hands. He came to her and took them. He said, controlling the words, “You're looking better.” He could not say more. Betty did not speak; she blushed a little and clung.

The Clerk looked down on her. The operation had failed; he did not doubt that he would yet succeed, but he must begin again. He did not permit himself any emotion towards whatever had interfered. It would waste his energy. These men were nothing. It had been in the other world that frustration had lain, and it should be seen to. Composing heart and features, he turned his head slowly towards Lady Wallingford. She took his will, and obeyed. She said, “We had better go downstairs. You can see, Mr. Drayton, that Betty is better; aren't you, Betty?”

“Much better,” said Betty gaily. “Jonathan dear …” She paused; she went on, “I'll get up and dress. Go away for a few minutes and I'll be down.”

Jonathan said, “I'd much rather not leave you.”

“Nonsense,” said Betty. “I'm completely all right. Look, I'll be very quick. Mother, do you mind?”

It was the one thing that Lady Wallingford now minded more than anything else. But even hell cannot prevent that law of the loss of the one thing. She was full of rage—much of her own; something of the Clerk's which he had dismissed for her to bear. She was the vessel of such human passion as remained to him. She said, “If you will come down——?” The Clerk made a gesture with his hand as if to direct the two young men to pass in front of him, and his sudden constriction passed across his face. He looked particularly at Richard. But Richard was no longer the Richard of the house behind Holborn. He had tasted the new life in Jonathan's flat; he had drunk of it in his wife's eyes. As, while Jonathan spoke to Betty, he gazed at her, she began to withdraw, or rather it was not so much that she withdrew as that something—perhaps only the air of earth—came between them. But in that second of her immortal greeting, her passion and her promise, he had been freed from any merely accidental domination by the Clerk. She vanished; and, still at ease, he turned to meet Simon's look and grinned back at him. He said, “You see, my dear Father, we had to make our own arrangements. But it was very kind of you to offer. No, no; after you. Lady Wallingford's waiting.”

The unfortunate young maid had not known whether to go or stay. She had thought that Lady Wallingford might want the gentlemen shown out. She gathered, from the look Lady Wallingford gave her as she came through the door, that she had been wrong. The strange doctor followed; after him the two other visitors. Mr. Drayton paused to look back at Miss Betty; then he softly closed the door. The maid, even in her gloom, remembered that she had always said there was something between him and Miss Betty.

Chapter Eight

THE MAGICAL CREATION

All this while, Evelyn Mercer sat on the doorstep. It would once have seemed strange to her to think of herself sitting and hugging herself, as any old beggar-woman might, and she not old, though too much a beggar. She was acutely conscious of her beggary, ever since she had seen the man sitting in the chair. He had smiled and nodded at her, and she had expected and hoped he would speak. If he had only asked her a question, she could have told him everything—about her tiresome mother, and silly Betty, and cruel Lester. She did not expect him to talk, and all she wanted was for him to listen to her. She did not ask anything more; she was not the kind of girl that would. Lester was more like that, and even Betty.

In looking at him, she had become aware of her pain, which she had not been till then. It was not much more than a discomfort, a sense of pressure on her lungs. If she could talk, she would be able to appease it. He had sat nodding at her, as if he were telling her how right she was to come, and then he had stood up, and his nod as he did so had suddenly seemed to change. Instead of being a nod of welcome, it was now a nod of dismissal. She was to go; as she realized it, she yelped. She had not been able to help it. She had yelped rather like a lost cat, for she was frightened of being sent away, and the discomfort in her lungs had become immediately worse. But his head had still nodded dismissal. He was still smiling and the smile had a kind of promise. Her own smile, which was the smile with which she had run after Betty, had become oddly fixed; she felt her face harden. As, still looking over his shoulder, in that mingling of promise and dismissal, he. began to move away towards the door of the hall, she found that she herself was no longer in the hall but in the yard without. She had receded as he receded. She was up against the window, staring through it, but outside it, and sniffing at something in the air. It vaguely reminded her of fish, but it was not fish. She remained sniffing for some time, hoping that the man would come back. The smell had something to do with him, and he with the pain in her lungs. Presently she slipped away from the window-sill which she had been clutching; for the smell caused her to follow it. It was the kind of smell Betty had when Betty had to listen to her, though she had never understood that before. She began to run, out of the yard and along the street. Her head was stretched out; her eyes were bright, though they saw nothing except the pavement before them. She ran a long while, or not so long. When at last she stopped, it was outside a door—the door of the house from which she had hurried. Now she had hurried back.

As the semi-bestiality of her movement ceased, her muddled and obsessed brain managed to point that out to her. It even managed to suggest that to run forever between those two points would be unsatisfactory. She had now made almost the same passage three times; and perhaps while she was in the streets that was all she could do. But how could she get out of the streets? She was not let go in there and she did not dare go in here. She went right up to the door—the smell was strongest there; it was fish, surely—and stood by it listening. Betty was inside; for all she knew,
he
also might be inside. She even put her hand on the door. It sank through; she began to pull it back and found it caught as if in a tangle of thorns. She felt a long sharp scratch before she got it loose. Tears came into her eyes. She was lonely and hurt. She looked at her hand through her tears, but it was a long time before she could see the scratch, almost as if neither scratch nor hand was there until she had found them. The hand itself was dim, because she had been crying; and dirty, because she had been leaning against the sill; and bleeding—at least, if she looked long enough it was bleeding. If the door was such a tangle of thorns, it was no use trying to go in. She went out of the porch and down the few steps. Her lungs were hurting her. She said aloud, “It isn't fair.”

Lester had said the same thing, but as a rational judgment. This was not so much a rational judgment as a squeal. The squeal eased her lungs, and as she recognized this, she spoke again, saying, “Why won't anyone help me?” and found that her ease increased. She added, “I do think they might,” and then the pain was no more than a slight discomfort. It seemed to her that the London air never had suited her, but she had never been able to agree with her mother where else they should live, so that somehow or other, because her mother had been inconsiderate, they had had to go on living in London. She was, at bottom, a little afraid that her mother too was in that dark house. Her mother didn't like fish; not that what she was waiting for was fish. It was the tall man who nodded his head.