All Hallows' Eve Read online

  He did not answer directly, but he put his arm about her shoulders, and said, “What about your mother?”

  They went to her. They knelt and looked and touched and spoke. She showed no sign, lying there living but inert. It would be long before she came to herself and then she would not come to herself. When presently she woke and tried to move, she would wake without knowledge, without memory, lost to all capacity and to all care. She would not know who she was or where she was or who those were that were about her or what they did—not even what they did for her, for the things that were done—the dressing, the feeding, the taking into the air—would be things to which she could attach no words. She had given herself away and her self would be no longer there, or rather (as if it were a newborn child) would have to be cared for and trained afresh. But since in that gift she had desired the good of another and not her own, since she had indeed willed to give her self, the City secluded her passion and took her gift to its own divine self. She had, almost in a literal physical sense, to be born again; at least she had to grow again, and over the growth her daughter was to preside. That tenderness was to meet her needs and (if she could ever speak) to answer her stumbling words. She was now almost in that state to which her master had willed to reduce their child; the substitution was one of the Acts of the City. Her spiritual knowledge lay unconscious, as it were in the depth of the separating and uniting waters; her body under the common sun. Resurrection must be from the very beginning and meanwhile Betty was to do for her mother, while she lived, all that love could do.

  But it would be certainly, for a long while, a thinner and wanner Betty who would do so. For now, when it was clear that she could do nothing there for her mother, she and Jon then rose from their knees. She said, “Well.…” and she kissed him. Then she saw Richard. They looked at each other; she smiled and put out her hand, and he came slowly across. She went to meet him and gave him also her mild lips. He said, “Thank you for the picture.” She pressed his hand and then she had turned again and gone across to the nearest of those sick and sorry creatures who were lying or crouching there. Her immortality was strong in her as she came to him; it happened to be Plankin. She took his hands in hers; the joy of the City in her, she kissed him on the mouth; she looked into his eye. She said, after a minute, “You’ll be well.” He looked at first bewildered; then slowly relieved; then suddenly joyous. He half-scrambled to his feet from where, his head on his knees, he had been sitting, and uttered some sort of incoherent cry. Betty said clearly, “That’ll be all right,” released herself, and went on. She passed, so, round the whole circle, holding, touching, healing—simply and naturally, and with all the gaiety that she could. But though her voice did not falter nor her hands lose their strength, yet as she went on she herself changed. She grew paler; she had to pause to recover as time after time she rose and left renewed wholeness behind. Jonathan had followed her all the while and presently, as she came near the end, she was leaning on his arm for the necessary step or two between one and another. As the high heavenly power in her was poured into those tormented beings, so the power, and still more quickly the joy of the power, passed from her. She who had risen from the waters was still that she and could not be lost unless she betrayed herself, but these energies were for a purpose and were to be spent on that purpose. Have and not-have; not-have and have—sometimes on the first and sometimes the other; but by both she and Lester and all came to the City, though the union of both and the life of the union, the life of that final terrible and triumphant Have! was yet far beyond them and even to envisage it would be to refuse the way to it. Her miraculous life passed into those others and she herself, without any apparent gain to herself from her voice and smile and gesture and free love, was left wholly to her old. At the end she wavered and nearly fell. Jonathan held her and they turned and came, but she hardly, back towards Richard, who took her other arm, and so she paused, white and worn, supported by her lover and her friend. She murmured, with a last flashing smile, “That’s done!”

  All those whom she had healed were on their feet—moving, chattering, tidying themselves. They did not seem to know what exactly had happened; at least they showed no awareness of Betty and did not even look at her. Someone said, “I knew the Father would help us,” and someone else, “It might have been a dream,” and someone else. “Goodness! what a fright!” And then a whole noise of voices broke out and a little laughter, and Betty looked pleadingly at Jonathan, and the three began to move slowly towards the door. The morning of the feast was bright in the hall. As they came near the door, and Betty’s white frailty was only just holding up and holding level, Plankin suddenly ran up to them. He said, “Excuse me, miss and gentlemen, but there’s one more upstairs—Elsie Bookin who does the typing. She used to have the paralysis, and if she thinks she’s got it again I daresay she couldn’t get down with the rest of us. But she may feel bad, and if so be as you were going upstairs, I’m sure she’d be thankful.”

  Jonathan began to say something. Betty pressed his arm. She looked at Plankin and the faintest of wry smiles turned her lips. With a final effort she pulled herself up. She said, “Oh well … Yes. Jon, do you mind …?”

  About the Author

  Charles Williams (1886–1945) was a British author and longtime editor at Oxford University Press. He was one of the three most prominent members of the literary group known as the Inklings—the other two being C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. Williams wrote poetry, drama, biography, literary criticism, and more, but is best known for his novels, which explored the primal conflict between good and evil. T. S. Eliot, who wrote an introduction to Williams’s All Hallows’ Eve, praised the author’s “profound insight into … the heights of Heaven and the depths of Hell, which provides both the immediate thrill, and the permanent message of his novels,” and Time magazine called him “one of the most gifted and influential Christian writers England has produced this century.”

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1948 by Pellegrini & Cudahy

  Cover design by Kat Lee

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-0668-2

  This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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