All Hallows' Eve Page 7

  During the war she had thought she would have to do a job and perhaps go away from home. She had registered and she had been interviewed by a nice oldish woman. But nothing else had happened. She had been a little surprised and she had even spoken of it to Lady Wallingford, who had only said, “You’re not strong enough—mentally strong enough, I mean.” Soa she supposed—and she was right—that Lady Wallingford had taken steps. After that she had begun to worry over her mind, after that rather nice refugee had disappeared. During the little time she had known him, he had been rather comforting, but presently he had ceased to be about. And there was no one again.

  Until there had been Jonathan Drayton. She could not remember how they had first met, and they had certainly not met often. If her mother had not wished to have a painting of Father Simon, they would have met less often. But even Lady Wallingford was sometimes compelled to allow one obstinacy to get in the way of another. She had been startled—though not much more startled than Betty—when Jonathan began to talk of an engagement. Betty remembered how she had clung to him the first time he had kissed her, and what he had said of her, but she tried not to remember that, for she had always known it would be no good, and now Lady Wallingford had chosen to be offended at his painting, and it was all ended. Very soon they would be in the country again. Lady Wallingford was always saying that, now the war was over, they would go there permanently—“and then you shall settle down. I shall have to go up sometimes, but you need never leave it again.” Betty was beginning to look on it as a refuge; once there, she would be Bettina altogether and perhaps that would be peace.

  But tonight it was no refuge. Jonathan was too near. He had sometimes talked to her about painting, and she had tried to understand and even ask questions, though her mistress—no, her adopted mother—had said, “Betty’s rather backward,” and repeated that she was mentally weak. But Jonathan had only said, “Thank God she’s not cultured! and anyhow I’m not much more than adolescent myself,” and gone on talking, and she had wanted to cry on his shoulder, as once or twice inexplicably she had. She never would again. She would be taken to hear Father Simon speak on Love. In a way that was a relief. While he talked she sat in a kind of trance and forgot everything. That was in Holborn; when he came to Highgate it was different and not so peaceful. She had to do something. He was always saying to her, “Do not trouble yourself; only do as I say.” She would; in that and the maid’s kitchen were her only hope.

  She lay, waking and waiting—waiting for her mind to grow weaker, waiting for her memory of Jonathan to cease, waiting for an end. She was afraid of Lady Wallingford and desperately afraid of Evelyn. Evelyn would get everything about Jonathan out of her and would tell people—no, she would not, for Evelyn was dead. In her sheer rush of gratitude Betty sat up in bed. It was almost her only individual movement for years. She drew a deep breath. Something of horror had stopped for ever. Evelyn, Evelyn was dead. Of course. Lester was dead too; she was a little sorry about Lester, but Lester had never wanted her. That had been Lester’s husband this afternoon; he looked nice. At the time of the wedding she had been in Yorkshire; not that she would have been asked anyhow. Yorkshire—Oh, well, Yorkshire; but Evelyn could never, never come to Yorkshire now. “Evelyn,” she said to herself, clasping her knees, “Evelyn’s dead.” In her entire joy, she even forgot Jonathan—in her sudden sense of a freedom she had not known. She had at least no consciousness of impropriety; she was mentally strong enough for joy. She said it again, drawing breath, hugging herself, savoring it: “Evelyn’s dead.”

  The door opened. Lady Wallingford came in. She switched on the light and saw Betty. Betty saw her and before a word could be spoken or a glance exchanged, she thought, “People die.” Lady Wallingford said, “Why are you sitting up like that?” and Betty answered, because it was so important, “Evelyn’s dead.”

  For once Lady Wallingford was taken aback. She had never had much interest in Evelyn, though she was not as hostile to her as she had been to Lester, for she knew Betty was afraid of Evelyn. She did not altogether wish Betty to lose this and she answered almost immediately—but there had been a second’s pause, a moment in which Betty all but triumphed, “Yes. But remember that that means she is still alive.” She did not give this time to settle; she was well assured that the thought would return. She went on. “But we can’t think of it now. Our Father needs you.”

  “Oh not now——” Betty exclaimed. “I’m so tired. I can’t—after this afternoon—Mother, I can’t.” She spoke with more boldness than usual. The sense of freedom that Evelyn’s death had given her was still strong, and an even larger sense that changes could happen which had risen in her mind when Lady Wallingford entered. People died. She looked at her mother almost as an equal; her mother would die. But she could not maintain her gaze. Lady Wallingford stared her down. As the girl’s eyes fell, she said, “We are waiting. Dress and come down.” She stayed for a moment, still staring; then she turned and went out.

  Discouraged and miserably helpless, Betty got up and put on her clothes. She knew what would happen; it had happened before. She knew she went out, but where and with what result she did not know—only that afterwards she was again back in the house, and exhausted. Lady Wallingford always kept her in bed the next day. These occasions were known to the servants as “Miss Betty’s turns.” It was vaguely understood that Miss Betty was subject to something not quite nice. Something mental. Nor indeed were they far wrong, for the mind as well as the body suffered from those lonely excursions, and it was a question for her directors how long she would be able to bear them.

  Her hands were trembling as she finished dressing. She had put on, and with difficulty fastened, a pair of outdoor shoes. If only, she thought, she did not have to leave the house! Or if she could know where she went and what she did! She might be braver then. It was this getting ready to go that frightened her, and the not knowing. Her tyrants never by any chance referred to her compulsory expeditions, except on the nights themselves. They would be waiting for her. She had forgotten Evelyn’s death and Lady Wallingford was perpetual. She looked at the clock; it was half-past one. There was no use in delay. She went down.

  They were waiting, as she had known, in the drawing-room. Lady Wallingford was sitting by a table. Simon was walking softly up and down. When she came in he stopped and scanned her. Then he pointed to a chair. He said, in that husky voice she dreaded, though it was never unkind, “I want you to go out.”

  She was without initiative. She went to the chair and sat down. She said, “Yes, Father.”

  He said, “You shall be at peace soon. You could be at peace now if you did not fight. In a moment you will not fight; then you will be in peace. Presently you will always be at peace. Let yourself be in my will. I can send you; I can bring you back; only take the peace. Be in peace and you will be in joy. Why do you—no, you will not fight; you are not fighting; you are dying into peace; why should you not die in peace? Peace.…”

  The quiet husky soothing voice ran on, recapitulating the great words; bidding the sufficient maxims. She knew she would lose herself; now it did not seem so horrid; now she wondered she was not quicker to let go. She usually was. But tonight something interfered with the words. Her hands, quiet though they lay, were strangely warm, and the blood in them seemed to beat. Her body (though she did not then realize it) held a memory that her mind had forgotten. The strength of Jonathan’s hands was still in her own and rose up her arms and stirred in her flesh. His voice, still sub-conditionally remembered in her ears, stirred in her corridors. She did not think of it but all her living body answered, “Jonathan!” and on that cry rose against the incantation that all but appeased her. The word love, when the Clerk uttered it, was only a dim sound of distant wind, but it said, “Jonathan”; the word peace was great waters on a gentle shore, but it murmured, “Jonathan!”; the word joy was an echo and no more, but it echoed: “Jonathan!” Even the afternoon, even the painting and all, had but made him more intens
e; as a man in sleep utters his love’s name, so now, as she all but slept, her body sighed for its friend. She did not speak, but as she yielded to the spell, she moaned a little; she slept, though with waking eyes, and she did not sleep peaceably. The Clerk knew it. He came near her; he spoke over her—he had a very great courage—those august words: “peace, joy, love.” He used them for what he needed, and they meant to him—and to her—what he chose.

  Lady Wallingford covered her eyes. She could not quite bear to see the nullification of life in the intellectual center of life. She detested her daughter, and she wished to distress and pain her. But then she wished her, while she lived, to be still herself so that she should be distressed and pained. That other who stood over the girl who was his daughter also, did not wish her to be herself, or even that only for a purpose. He wished her to be an instrument only; peace, joy, love, were but names for the passivity of the instrument. He was unique; yet he was no more than any man—only raised to a high power and loosed in himself.

  Presently Lady Wallingford heard his voice near her. It said, “You didn’t tell me she was so enamored. It doesn’t matter. I’ve found her in time.” She moved her hand. He was standing by her, looking over to Betty where now she sat quietly in her chair, her eyes open, her body composed. He drew deep breaths; he said, so quietly that Lady Wallingford hardly heard, so strongly that the entranced girl rose at once to obey: “Go now and bring me the news.”

  She rose. Her eyes looked at him, simply, almost lingeringly. She gave him her attention, with a kind of delight. The last revolt had been abolished; a docile sweetness possessed her. Docility and sweetness were natural to her. In a quiet that might have been peace, in an attraction that might have been love, in a content that might have been joy, she turned from her director towards the door. Her exhaustion on the next day would come not only from what she was about to do, but from this surrender which would then have ceased. Yet every time her restoration was a little less; a day might come when this hypnotic quiescence would occupy her whole life. That day (the Clerk thought) would be soon. Then he would be able to send her forever into the world she could now only visit.

  Betty went out of the room. The Clerk followed her, and Lady Wallingford, drawn by a desire she half dreaded, joined him and went with him. The house was warm and quiet. Sir Bartholomew was in Moscow; the servants were asleep in their rooms. Betty went to a lobby, took out a raincoat and a rough hat, and put them on. The two stood motionless, the tall man and the shorter woman, their arms hanging by their sides, their feet precisely together, their eyes fixed on the girl. They watched her go to the front door and open it wide. Beyond her lay the empty street, lit by the moon to a bluish pallor. The silence of it rushed in on them, a silence in which the quiet hall sounded as if, but a moment before, it had been noisy. Betty went out. The Clerk went quickly down the hall and almost closed the door, leaving it open but a chink. He stood by it, his head bent, intently listening. Lady Wallingford remained where she was, trembling a little. Hardly five minutes had passed when, in that perfect silence, deeper than any lull in any town, any stillness in any countryside, the faint sound of slow dragging feet was heard. They were literally dragging, each was pulled along the path. The Clerk let go the door and stood back. It was pushed open a little farther and through the crack Betty squeezed herself in. She was very pale, her eyes were almost shut, she drooped with the heaviness of her fatigue. She came in; she made a motion to push the door to; she stumbled forward and fell. The Clerk caught her; she lay against him. The clerk looked over his shoulder at Lady Wallingford, who as at a sudden call ran forward. She bent down and picked up her daughter’s feet. Between them the two creatures carried the girl upstairs, their monstrous shadows rising against the walls. They took her to her room and laid her on her bed. They undressed her and got her into the bed, all in silence and with the softest and quickest movements. Then they drew up chairs and sat down, one on each side. Lady Wallingford took up a notebook and a pen. The Clerk leaned his head close to Betty’s and said something in her ear. He moved his head so that his ear was close to Betty’s mouth, and in a voice hardly to be heard, with broken phrases and long intervals, she began to speak. He repeated, in a voice harder than was usual with him, what she said. Lady Wallingford wrote down the words. It was almost morning before the triple labor was done. The Clerk stood up frowning. Lady Wallingford looked at him. He shook his head slowly and presently they both left the room, she to her own, he to the staircase and the hall.

  Betty had gone out from the house into the street. She did not consciously remember what she had to do, and as she stood in the shadow of the porch she drew a deep breath or two. Something—if in the porch she had had a shadow, it would have been like her shadow, but it was not, and it was more solid—lay in the porch, against the door behind her. She did not notice it. She began to walk down the street, towards Highgate Hill and the City that lay below. She went lightly and gaily; these times were always happy and fortunate; she could not compare them with others, for she knew no others. All but these joyous hours were secluded from her. Ignorant of what she obeyed, but in a perfect volition of obedience, she went along. She did not know through what spectral streets she moved; she knew roads and turnings and recognized her way, but she did not name them. She was not thinking of them, for now she did not think. All that was, for the time, done. She only knew. But she did not know that the silence was any but an earthly silence, nor that the sky above her was the sky under which Lester and Evelyn walked. Nor did she think of any insolidity; if for a moment the fronts of the houses looked unearthly, she unconsciously attributed this to the effects of the moon. The world was as familiar as this world, and to her less terrifying.

  It lay there, as it always does—itself offering no barriers, open to be trodden, ghostly to this world and to heaven, and in its upper reaches ghostly also to those in its lower reaches where (if at all) hell lies. It is ours and not ours, for men and women were never meant to dwell there long; though it is held by some that certain unaccountable disappearances have been into that world, and that a few (even living) may linger there awhile. But mostly those streets are only for the passing through of the newly dead. It is not for human bodies, though it has known a few—“Enoch, Elijah, and the Lady”—though they not in London, but in the places where they died. It has certainly been thought, but the speculation is that of dreamers, that in the year of our great danger the grand attack of our enemies succeeded; that London and England perished; and that all we who then died entered it together and live there till we have wrought out our salvation—to enjoy (purgatorially) a freedom unpermitted on earth; and that our conquerors live on that earth, troubled and frenzy-driven by a mystical awareness of our presence. More justly, it is held by learned doctors that in times of much bloodshed that world draws closer (so to call a neighborhood we cannot define) to this, that chance entry for the living is easier, and that any who wish to drive others there for their own purposes find the deathly work lighter. One day perhaps it will indeed break through; it will undo our solidity, which belongs to earth and heaven, and all of us who are then alive will find ourselves in it and alone till we win through it to our own place. It is full enough of passengers, but mostly alone, though those who died together may have each other’s companionship there, as Lester and Evelyn had, and a few more fortunate friendships and intimate loves.

  Betty Wallingford knew nothing of this. She walked in peace and gay, in her seeming body. She had been compelled in her body, and in her body she had left the house. That actual body lay now crouched in the porch of the house, unconscious, waiting her return. Lester’s and Evelyn’s flesh no longer waited them so; they had to find another way to the reintegration of the great identity of flesh and soul. But the days that had passed since their death had not held more for them than the few minutes since she had left the house had for her. In that state there might be ignorance, but even ignorance and fear meant only definite pause or definite action. The va
gueness, the dreaming, the doubtful hanging-about are permitted only on the borders of intellectual life, and in this world they were rare. Neither angels nor insects know them, but only bewildered man. Far below Betty, as she came down the Hill, Lester and Evelyn walked. The City about them had not changed, nor they. They were still troubled in their hearts by what did not at all trouble her.

  She walked on. It was already morning; the day had rushed, in brightness and freshness, to meet her. It was a clear October morning—a little cold, with a few clouds, but agreeable to all her senses. She almost smelled it—a new pleasant smell mingling with the old London smell, but that itself (though heavier than the other) no longer unpleasant, if indeed it ever had been; the ground bass of the whole absorbed music with which the lighter sun and sky mingled. Indeed the same effect struck her in sound, for she heard, as on similar journeys she had done, the distant noise of the waking City. It always seemed to her at first strange and then not strange. In general its citizens hardly noticed it; they are a part of it and their ears are deafened by it. But her hearing was now cleared and fresh, and she knew that it was happy and that she was happily going to it. She had to find it, or rather something in it, something which helped to compose it. All the sounds and times which went to make it were not equally important to her now. It was a question of time; she would come to the right time, for she had been directed to it, but there was a way to it, a part to be gone through first, a part of the City, not exactly disagreeable but strange. It was as if she were going through a part of her own past, though it was not always the same part, nor the same past. She knew that she only remembered certain parts of it. Someone had once told her that her mind wasn’t very strong, “and indeed it isn’t,” she thought gaily, “but it’s quite strong enough to do what it’s got to do, and what it hasn’t got to do it needn’t worry about not doing.” Who was it who had so joyously teased her so? to whom she had so joyously replied?