All Hallows' Eve (7 page)

Lights were coming out in the houses; the confused sound of the City was in his ears. He was giddy with too much apprehension; he waited to recover; then he crossed the by-way and he too went on.

Chapter Three

CLERK SIMON

Jonathan spent the rest of the day in the abandoned studio. After the first hour he made three efforts to ring up Betty. He gave his own name the first time, but was told that Miss Wallingford was not in. The second time he gave Richard's name and for the third he invented a flight lieutenant. But neither was more successful. It was, of course, possible at first that the ladies had not returned from Holborn, but by half-past ten it seemed more likely that Lady Wallingford had simply secluded her daughter. He knew that if she had given orders that Miss Betty was not to be disturbed, it was very unlikely that anybody would disturb her. Between his two later calls he put in another. He knew that Sir Bartholomew had some small property in Hampshire, just as Lady Wallingford owned a house somewhere in Yorkshire, and he claimed to be speaking on behalf of the Hampshire County Council on some business of reconstruction. He asked if Sir Bartholomew had returned from Moscow or if not, when he was likely to return. The answer was that nothing could be said of Sir Bartholomew's movements. He suggested that Lady Wallingford might be asked. The answer was that that would be useless; instructions had been issued that no other answer could be given. Jonathan at last gave up the telephone and sat down to write letters.

He wrote to Betty; he wrote to Lady Wallingford. He offered, after a slight struggle with his admiration of himself, to suppress the picture; the admiration just managed to substitute “suppress” for “destroy.” It was still worth while trying to save Betty and the picture too. But he knew that if he were driven far enough, he would consent to its destruction; though he could not quite avoid envisaging another picture in which something much more drastic should be deliberately done about Father Simon. He succeeded, however, in keeping this on the outskirts of his mind and even in mentioning to himself the word “dishonesty.” His virtue, with some difficulty, maintained itself in the uncertain center of his mind. He told Betty he would be in his flat all the next day, in case she could ring up or indeed come. He proposed an aunt's house in Tunbridge Wells as a shelter for her. He told her that he would write to Sir Bartholomew through the War Office. He was perfectly well aware that Lady Wallingford would read the letter, but it told her nothing she could not have guessed, and it would at least make clear that he had other channels of communication with the Air Marshal.

He put off going to the post with these letters until almost midnight, in case by any wild chance Betty should ring up. But at last he gave up hope, took the letters, went to the door, and as he opened it switched out the light. At that moment the front door bell rang. He caught his breath and almost ran to it. He opened it; it was not she. In the dim light of the landing he saw a tall figure, apparently wrapped in some kind of cloak, and in his fierce disappointment he almost banged the door shut. But as his hand tightened on it, a voice said, “Mr. Drayton?”

“Yes?” Jonathan said morosely. The voice was urbane, a little husky, and had the very slightest foreign accent which Jonathan did not at once recognize. He peered forward a little to see the face, but it was not easy, even though the caller wore no hat. The voice continued. “Lady Wallingford has been with me tonight to tell me of a painting. I am Simon the Clerk.”

“Oh!” said Jonathan, “yes. I see.… Look, won't you come in?” He had been quite unprepared for this, and as he ushered his visitor into the studio, his only feeling was one of extreme gratitude that in a moment of peevishness he had flung the covering again over the canvas. It would have been awkward to show Simon straight in at it. He could not quite think why he had come. It must, of course, be about the painting, but unless to see if he agreed with Lady Wallingford … and it would be odd to be as urgent as all that, especially as he disliked being painted. Still, it would come out. He was very much on his guard, but as he closed the door he said, as friendlily as he could, “Do sit down. Have a drink?”

“No, thank you,” Simon answered. He remained standing with his eyes on the covered canvas. He was a tall man, with a smooth mass of gray—almost white—hair; his head was large; his face thin, almost emaciated. The face had about it a hint of the Jew—no more; so little indeed that Jonathan wondered if it were only Richard's account that caused him to think he saw it. But, considering more carefully, he saw it was there. The skin was dark and Jonathan saw with a thrill of satisfaction that he had got in his painting almost the exact kind of dead hue which it in fact possessed. The eyes were more deeply set than he had thought; otherwise he had been pretty accurate in detail. The only thing in which he had been wrong was in producing any appearance of bewilderment or imbecility. There was nothing at all of either in the Clerk's gaze. It was not exactly a noble face, nor a prophetic; priestly, rather. A remote sacerdotalism lived in it; the Clerk might have been some lonely hierarch out of a waste desert. He stood perfectly still, and Jonathan observed that he was indeed as near perfectly still as a man could be. There was no slightest visible motion, no faintest sound of breath. He was so quiet that quietness seemed to emanate from him. Jonathan felt his own disturbance quelled. It was in a softer voice than his usual one that he said, making what was almost an effort to move and speak at all, “Are you sure you won't have a drink?… Well, I think I will, if you'll excuse me.” The other had very slightly shaken his head. Outside the room, the bells of the City began to chime midnight. Jonathan said to himself, as he had made a habit of doing since he had first met Betty whenever he was awake at midnight, as he often was, “
Benedicta sit, et benedicti omnes parvuli Tui.
” He turned away and poured out his drink. With the glass in his hand, he came back. The hour was striking, near and far, wherever bells were still capable of sound, all over the wide reaches of London. Jonathan heard it through the new quiet. He said, “And now, Father Simon, Lady Wallingford?”

“Lady Wallingford was distressed about this painting,” Simon answered.

“Distressed?” Jonathan said nastily. “Exhilarated was more the word, I should have thought.” Then the sense of the quiet and of the other's presence made him ashamed of his petulance. He went on. “I beg your pardon. But I can't think she was altogether unhappy. She was very angry.”

“Show it to me,” the Clerk said. It was not perhaps quite a command, but very nearly; it almost sounded like a Marshal of the Air speaking to an official artist who ranked as a regular officer. Obedience was enforceable, though unenforced. Jonathan hesitated. If Simon took Lady Wallingford's view, he would be in a worse state than he was now. Was it possible that Simon would not take Lady Wallingford's view? In that case he might be very useful indeed; possibly he might persuade Lady Wallingford to alter her own. It was a great risk. The other saw the hesitation. The husky urbane voice said, “Come; you must not think I see things as she does.”

“No,” said Jonathan doubtfully. “Only … I mean she
has
talked to you. I don't know what she's told you, but she's so damned convinced and convincing that she'd even persuade me that a smudge of umber was a vermilion blot. Mind you, I think she's made up her mind to find something wrong with it, in order to interfere with Betty and me, so she wasn't disinterested.”

“It doesn't matter what she told me,” the other said. “I never see things with other people's eyes. If she's wrong—I might be of use.”

“Yes,” said Jonathan, moving to the easel. “If you could convince her, of course.”

“She will think what I say,” the Clerk said, and there was such a sudden contempt in his voice that Jonathan looked round.

“I say, you are sure of her!” he said.

“I'm quite sure of her,” the Clerk answered, and waited. All this time he had not moved. The room itself, and it was large and by no means over-furnished, seemed almost full and busy beside him. Jonathan, as he threw back the cover, began to feel a warm attraction towards this unmoving figure which had the entire power to direct Lady Wallingford what to think. He determined, if by any chance Simon should pass this painting as harmless, to do him another about which there should be no doubt whatever. He stepped aside and for the third time that day the picture was exposed to study.

As Jonathan looked at it, he became extremely uneasy. The beetles, the blank gaze, the receding corridor, had not grown less striking since he had seen them last. If this was the Father, he could not think the Father would like himself. He wished again with all his heart that he had never begun to paint it. He knew exactly how he could have avoided it; he could have said he wasn't worthy. It would have been a lie, for being worthy was not a thing that came in with painting; painting had nothing to do with your personal merit. You could do it or you couldn't. But it would have been a convenient—and to that woman an easily credible—lie, and he wished he had told it, however difficult it would have been to say it convincingly. Betty, after all … He rather wondered if he could say now that he realized he wasn't worthy. But the Father did not look the sort of person who was taken in like that—anyhow, at the present stage, when he obviously had thought himself worthy. No, if things went wrong, he must argue again. By now he loathed and hated the entire painting; he would have cut it up or given it to the nation, if the nation had wanted it. He looked round.

Simon was still standing at gaze. The chimes rang a quarter-past twelve; otherwise the City was silent. Outside the large window beyond Simon the moon was high and cold. Her October chill interpenetrated the room. Jonathan shivered; something was colder—the atmosphere or his heart. Betty was far away, gone as lovers and wives do go, as Richard's wife had gone, gone to her deathbed. Betty's own bed was cold, even like her chastity. I would I were where Betty lies; no wedding garment except this fear, in the quiet, in the quiet, in the quiet, where a figure of another world stood. All things rose fluttering round it; beetles? too light for beetles: moths, bright light moths round a flame—formed dark; the cloak of the dark and the hunger in the dark. The high moon a moth, and he; only not Betty, Betty dead like Richard's wife, dead women in the streets of the City under the moon.

A distant husky voice with a strange accent broke the silence. It said, “That is I.” Jonathan came to himself to see the Clerk staring. His head was a little forward; his eyes were fixed. He was so gratified that his voice let fall the words and ceased. The shock of them and of relief was so great that Jonathan felt a little lightheaded. He took a step or two back to get his vision into focus. He began to say something, but Simon was so clearly not listening that he gave it up and wandered away towards the window. But even as he did so he listened for what else that other should say which might give him hope, hope of Betty, hope of his work. He looked out into the moonlight, he saw in it, below him, on the other side of the road, two girls walking—they the only living in the night; and as his eyes took them in he heard again the voice behind him saying, but now in more than gratification, in low triumph: “That is I.”

Jonathan turned. He said, “You like it?”

The other answered, “No one has painted me so well for a hundred years. Everything's there.”

Jonathan went back. He did not quite see how to carry on the conversation; the allusion to “a hundred years” baffled him. At last he said doubtfully, “And Lady Wallingford?”

The Clerk slowly looked round at him as if he were recalled. He said and his face twitched slightly, “Lady Wallingford? What has she to do with it?”

“She was rather annoyed with it,” said Jonathan. “In fact, she talked, as no doubt she told you, about insects and imbeciles.”

The Clerk, still looking at him, said, “They aren't insects; they are something less. But insects is the nearest you can get. And as for imbecile, haven't you read
Sapientia adepti stultitia mundi?
That is why your work is so wonderful.”

“Oh!” said Jonathan.

“That,” the Clerk went on, turning his head again, “is what I am to these creatures, and Lady Wallingford (as you call her) is one of them. She thinks herself someone, but presently she'll find out. It's quite good for them to be hypnotized; they're much happier. But you—you are different; you are a genius. You must paint me often. Now you have shown me as I am to them and to myself, you must paint me often as I am in myself.”

The chill sense of death was receding from Jonathan's heart. He began to feel that life was still possible, even life with Betty. He also wondered what his own painting of the face was like. He had first thought it was an ordinary portrait; then he had been uneasy about the bewilderment that seemed to show in it. Richard had agreed. Lady Wallingford had spoken of imbecility. Now Simon seemed to see something else beyond that, something that was hidden in that and yet contradicted it. He might perhaps tell Lady Wallingford; he might make everything clear for him and Betty. In a second of silence Jonathan had married Betty, set up a house, painted Father Simon a stupendous portrait of himself without the beetles, painted several other shattering successes at the Peace Conferences and after, made a lot of money, become a father and an immortal at once, and was back again in the studio with the immediate necessity of explaining to Simon how all this was to be brought about. Better not go into further details of the painting; better get on with the main job.

He began, “Then you'll speak to——” but the other was already speaking. He was saying, “You must come with me, Mr. Drayton. I must have one or two people with me who are something more than these other creatures. The Doctrine is good for them; one gets nowhere by fighting it. All your books have it—the Koran, the New Testament, the Law. Hitler fought it; where is Hitler? There is nothing better, for those who need it. But you are an exception. You belong to yourself—and to me. Great art is apostolic. You must not lessen yourself. You are to be a master. I can do something to help you, but then you must have courage to paint the right things.”