All Hallows' Eve (23 page)

He sighed. He drew in air, and bending towards the cloud which now stood up like a tiny pyramid he exhaled the air towards it. He reached his hands down towards the dust and in the midst of his sighs he spat again. As his spittle fell on the dust, the pyramid thickened and became more solid. With a curious small whistling sound, as of air rushing through a narrow channel, the heap of dust enlarged and grew. There hung above it in that hall another sound as small as the whistling—the echo of a longing voice. It said, “Oh! Oh! a place for me?” and the Clerk's voice—was it a voice? to Lester, as now she heard the faint exchange, it seemed no more than a mere lifting wave of the moon when the thinnest cloud obscures and reveals it—answered: “For you; for you.” She herself was not permitted, or did not desire, then to speak; she was troubled faintly in her heart as that lifting wave came to her. Her own sins had not been of that kind; disordered in love, she had still always known that love was only love. She did not understand what was going on; only there was something disagreeable in that sign and countersign of agreement—“For me?” “For you.” The Clerk stretched down his hands again, but now as if he sheltered the early flicker of a fire, and immediately the fire was there.

It came from his palms. It was not fire but an imitation of fire. The palms themselves gave no sign of it and even though the seeming flames showed no reddening from the heat. The fire itself was pallid; it had no strength, but the flames darted down and hovered round the dust. They ran over it and clung to it, and as he encouraged them with mimetic movements of his hands, they sank deeper and were absorbed. As if their movement was communicated, the dust itself rose in sudden gushes and fell again, but each time the heap was larger than before. It was now about six inches high and had grown more like a column than a pyramid. It was waving to and fro, as a single unbranched plant might, and the whistling came from it, as if a dying man were trying to breathe. The whistling was thin, but so was the plant, if it were a plant, which it was not, for it was still dust, even if organic dust. It was vaguely swaying and waving itself about, as if in search of something it had no means of finding, and the pallid fire played about it as it sought. Simon's heavy sighs exhaled above it and his hands shielded it, though (to Lester's apprehension) there was a great, almost an infinite, distance between those palms and it, as if she saw something of a different kind that was without relation to the place in which it stood. Suddenly for the third time the Clerk spat on it and this time it grew at once higher by almost another six inches, and its movement became more defined though no more successful. It was now certainly feeling out with its summit—with what would have been its head, but it had no head. The fire was absorbed into it and disappeared; and as it did so the whole small column from being dust became a kind of sponge-like substance, an underwater growth. It began to try and keep a difficult balance, for it seemed to be slipping and sliding on the floor and by throwing itself one way and another just not falling. The thin whistling grew spasmodic, as if it had got some of its channels free, and was only here and there obstructed; and as the whistling ceased, so did the heavy breathing of the Clerk. He began to rise slowly from the position in which, like a witch-doctor, he had been half crouching; but he did so in sudden jerks, and as he did so the spongy growth in sudden jerks followed him and grew.

With its first jerk there came another change. For the jerk was not only an upward movement, adding perhaps another three inches to its height, but also interior, as if the sponge shook itself and settled. It now stood more firmly, and with the next one or two similar movements it took on the appearance of a rudimentary human body. It was developing from its center, for its feet and head were not visible, but only a something against its sides that might have been arms, and a division that might have been between its upper legs, and two faint swellings that might have been breasts. Soon, however, the arms did move outward, though they immediately fell, and below the center the thing split into two stumps, on which, each in turn, it soundlessly stamped. It was now throwing its upper end violently about, as if to free itself from its own heaviness, but it failed and subsided into a continual tremor. With this tremor, its sponginess began in patches to disappear, and give place to some sort of smooth pale-yellowish substance, which presently had spread so far that it was the sponginess which grew on it in patches. Thus there stood now on the floor the rough form of a woman, a little under two feet high and with the head gradually forming. The face, as far as it emerged, had no character; the whole thing was more like a living india-rubber doll than anything else, but then it did live. It was breathing and moving, and it had hair of a sort, though at present (as with such a doll) rather part of the formation of its head. It lifted its hands, as if to look at them, but its eyes were not yet formed and it dropped them again; and then it seemed to listen, but though its ears were almost there, it could not hear—and indeed the only sound it could have heard was Simon's breathing and that would only just have been audible even to a human ear.

Lester, as she watched, was a little surprised to find that the living doll was not more disgusting to her. It was faintly repellent, as an actual doll might be if it were peculiarly deformed or ugly. She disliked the spongy patches and the deadness of the apparent skin, but she could not feel strongly about it; not so strongly as Jonathan would have felt about a bad painting. She had a mild impulse to pick it up and put it right—pull and pat and order it, but she did not wish to touch it; and anyhow she did not know why it was there, nor why beside her she was aware that Evelyn was looking at it with such intensity and even giving what seemed little squeals of pleasure as it grew. Indeed, Evelyn presently gave a quick forward movement, as if she were about to rush to the doll. She was checked by the Clerk's voice.

He said, “Wait. It's too cold.” The fire was still pallid in the interior of his hands, and now he breathed on them as if to blow it into life and it grew round each hand as if he had put on gloves of pale light, a light more like that of the false Tetragrammaton but not so deathly. With his hands thus encased, he took up the manikin between them and handled and dandled and warmed and seemed to encourage it, whispering to it, and once or twice holding it up above his head, as a father might his child, and as it turned its head, now grown, and looked over its shoulder, the girls saw that its eyes were open and bright, though meaningless. They saw also that it was longer and now nearly three feet in height, but it seemed to have no more weight, for still he cherished and caressed it, and held it out standing on one hand, as if it were no more than a shell. But that ended his play with it. He sat it again on the floor, struck his hands together—as if to break the fire from them, and indeed the pale fire flew in sparks around him and about the hall, and his hands were clear of it. He looked at Evelyn, and said, “That is for you and your friend.”

Evelyn's answer was heard both by him and Lester. She said, “
Both
of us?”

Simon answered, “You'll find the sharing of it better than most things. It's something for you to get into. It'll grow when you do and you can go about in it. It will shelter you, and you will find presently you'll be able to talk to it, and it will understand better than anyone else and answer you as you want. It won't need food or drink or sleep unless you choose. If I call you out of it sometimes, I'll always send you back, and if I call you it will be to get the woman you want.”

Evelyn said, “Can't I have it for myself?” The Clerk slowly shook his head. He looked sideways at the motionless Lester. In what now seemed a dim air, Lester was not easily seen; unless the truth was that, even then, even in her attention, she was already farther away. Emboldened by that remoteness, Evelyn said, in what was meant to be a whisper and came out as a croak, almost as if the dwarf-woman (could she yet speak) might have spoken, in a subhuman voice, “
Must
she come?”

The Clerk said, “If you are to go, she must.” But the hall grew colder as he spoke, so that Evelyn felt it and shivered and turned to Lester with a desperate and yet feeble ferocity. The dwarf-woman seemed to her now her only hope, a refuge from the emptiness and the threats, a shelter from enmity and cold, and if presently she could get Betty into it to be victimized, she would be, she thought, content. So she tried to catch at Lester's hand and succeeded, for Lester left it to her. She had, half-unconsciously, withdrawn herself from that short dialogue with a pure and grave disdain; whatever these others were talking of she refused to overhear. Had the hand that now clutched at her held any friendship or love, she would have felt it in her spirit and responded, or to any need. But this was rather greed than need, and yet its touch was now not even inconvenient to her. The beginnings of heaven are not so troubled. Only with the touch, she knew at once what Evelyn wanted, and she said gently, “I wouldn't go, Evelyn.”

Evelyn said, “Oh I
must
. Do come, Lester. It can't hurt you.”

Lester unexpectedly laughed. It was years since anyone had laughed in that hall and now the sound, though low, was so rich and free, it so ran and filled the hall, that Evelyn gave a small scream, and the Clerk turned his head sharply this way and that, and even the dwarf-woman seemed to gaze more intently before her, with unseeing eyes. “No,” Lester said, “I don't think it can. But it mayn't be too good for you.”

Evelyn answered peevishly, “I wish you wouldn't laugh like that! And I want it. Do come. I've done enough things because you wanted them; you might just do this. Lester,
please!
I won't ask you for anything else. I swear I won't.”

The echo of the laughter, which still seemed to sound, was cut off suddenly, as if in a sudden silence all there and all beyond heard her oath. The Clerk's constriction showed in his face and Lester, though she did not altogether realize that the silly human phrase was now taken at its precise meaning, shuddered. If it had been but silliness, it might not have passed beyond the visionary façades of the City, but it was not. It was greed and clamorous demand, and it swept into the City's courts and high places and was sealed with its own desire. Lester said, almost as if, unknowing, she tried to forestall that sealing: “Come back with me. Come to Betty or your mother. Let's——” She saw the fixed immortality in Evelyn's eyes and ceased.

Evelyn pulled at her, and looked back at Simon, as if she were asking him to help. He did what he could. He knew he had no direct power on this alien spiritual thing until he could get into contact with it; and that, since he had been checked in the previous clash, he could only do now by a plausibility. He said, as if uttering some maxim of great wisdom: “Love is the fulfilling of the law.” Lester heard him. At that moment, doubtful of her duty, the maxim was greater than the speaker. She was not particularly aware of loving Evelyn, but she acknowledged her duty. The inconvenience of plunging with Evelyn wherever Evelyn wished to plunge was a little tiresome—no more. She felt as Betty had done when Lester insisted on recalling the past—that it was a pity to waste so much time. The lifting lightness of her new life looked ruefully at the magical shape of the dwarf-woman; her fledgling energy desired a freer scope. But there seemed to be no other way. She thought of Richard; she thought of Betty; she sighed—a small sigh, but a sigh. She thought of Evelyn's tormented face and the sigh ceased. She said suddenly, with one of those bursts of inspiration which are apt to possess noble and passionate hearts: “You'd be wiser to say that the fulfilling of the law is love.” She had spoken, as it were, into the void, but then she went on to Evelyn, “Very well, if you want me to. But you'd be wiser—I'm sure you'd be wiser—to come away.”

Evelyn did not answer. There was a pause of suspension in the whole hall. Then the dwarf-woman took a step forward. Under the Clerk's eyes, she began again to grow. She shook herself into shape as she did so, putting up her hands and settling her neck and head. There grew out of her smooth dead skin, into which the sponginess had now been wholly absorbed, fresh streaks and patches, ash-colored, which spread and came together and presently covered her and grew loose and wrapped itself round her like a dull dress. The dwarf pulled it into shape. There stood facing the Clerk, a short rather heavy-looking middle-aged woman, slightly deformed, with one shoulder a little higher than the other and one foot dragging a little, but undoubtedly, to all human eyes, a woman. Her eyes were brighter now and she seemed both to see and hear.

The Clerk lifted a finger and she stood still. He bent his knee slowly, lowering himself till his face was on a level with hers. He was muttering something as he did so. He put his hands on her thighs and from her thighs he passed them all over her. When he had finished, he leaned forward and very deliberately kissed her on the mouth. He sealed, so far as he could, a prison for those spirits, who had entered it by their own choice; and he judged he could do it well, for he knew the power that flesh—even impure and magical flesh—has on human souls, especially while they are still unused to that great schism in identity which is death. At first strangers in that other world, they may forget their bodies, but their bodies are their past and part of them and will not be forgotten. So that, sooner or later, these spiritual beings again strongly desire to be healed of their loss and whole. But this they cannot be until the whole of time is known to be redeemed, and when the hunger comes on them the blessed ones endure it smiling and easily, having such good manners that the time is no more to them than an unexpected delay before dinner at a friend's house.

He believed therefore that as, by proper magical means, a soul could within certain limits of time, be recalled to its body, so this false body might for a time ensnare and hold that other soul which was his enemy. He would have much preferred to operate necromantically on Lester's own proper body, and if Richard had remained under his influence he would have obtained through him some possession of hers which would have served for the first faint magical link with that body, and so set up a relation between them which might have brought her now corrupting flesh—or perhaps the scattered ashes of her cremated body—into this very hall. But Richard had failed him and he had no time to take more subtle ways; the danger to his domination of Betty now arising from Jonathan and from Lester was too great. He knew that the government of this world would be driven by popular pressure to make some approach to him, and that in no very long period the fatal meeting with his Types would be forced on him—fatal because though at a distance they might be energized and driven by his will, yet when the three met they must dwindle and fade beside him. And first he must have sent his daughter into the spiritual world. He must be forever before he could be now. So that altogether time was against him; the first condition of the universe was against him. He was hurried; he had to make haste. Therefore the magical trap; therefore its tossing, as he now proposed, into the ordinariness of earth.