All Hallows' Eve Page 9

  The unspoken dialogue ceased. The call from above had ceased. She seemed to have shut her eyes; she opened them. She saw Evelyn in front of her, running hard. She called, and even as she did so she realized that she could call Evelyn easily enough and that that was not surprising—she called: “Evelyn!” The silent running figure looked back over its shoulder and Evelyn’s thin voice came to her clearly. It said, “That was Betty.” It turned its head again and ran on.

  Lester also began to run. The face that had looked back had startled her; it had been excited and pleased. She remembered Betty and she remembered that Evelyn had not been very nice to Betty. They had once all three run in this way through the grounds of their school by the sea; indeed, as she ran, the bushes of those grounds showed through the houses and shops. Betty had run away and Evelyn had run after Betty, and suddenly she herself had run after Evelyn. It had not been often she took the trouble, for Betty bored her and anyhow Evelyn never did anything to Betty; even then she had been calling, “I only want to talk to you.” But something in the talk made Betty cry and for once Lester had interfered; and now, as then, they ran down the path; no, not down the path but up the street, towards Highgate, out to the bottom of the Hill. High above them a single figure watched them come.

  Betty watched them; they were at first far away and she did not know them. While she had gone out on her appointed way, she had been free from pain. But the terrible laws of that place gave her what she wanted when she insisted on it. Her distress, and now the nearness of her distress, might excuse a rebellion; it could not modify its results. She had stamped on the pavement and (as in the old tales) the inhabitants of that place sprang at once into being. She had called on something she knew. But that something was more deeply engaged on its work in the world of the shadow behind her, and this world would not give her that. She saw at a distance the two running women, strange and remote as in a painting or a poem. She watched them curiously and the time went by, as long to her as to Evelyn racing up the slope or to Lester outdistanced behind. Lester lost ground; she did not know clearly why she went, but Evelyn did; therefore the one ran faster and the other slower, for still in the outer circles of that world a cruel purpose could out-speed a vague pity. But the cruelty could not reach its end. Betty waited till, halfway up the Hill, the first running figure lifted its head slightly, so that she saw the face and knew it for Evelyn’s. She took a step or two back, and the night of this world into which she had hesitated to advance took her as she retreated. Her nightmare possessed her; now it was happening. She screamed and turned and fled.

  Evelyn called, “Betty! Betty! Stop!” but to Betty’s ears the name rang confused. It had been “Bettina!” in her dreams; it was “Bettina!” now. She ran. There was but a short street or two between her and the house; they were to her the natural streets, the sad unhappy streets of Highgate. She forgot her fear of the house in her fear of Evelyn. “Bettina! Bettina!” O lost, lost! but now nearer the house and the cold quiet thing that waited her in the porch. “Bettina! Bettina!” No—she was there, and she and the shape by the door were no longer separate. A great exhaustion fell on her; her eyes closed; her body failed; she pushed weakly at the door and stumbled through. She fell; someone caught her; she knew nothing more.

  Outside the house Evelyn stopped. For her that other world had not changed. It was as quiet and empty, as earthly and unearthly as ever. It was not quite dark; it never yet had been quite dark. The soft, intense, and holy darkness of that City was not known to her. She stood, gently panting, as a girl might who has wholeheartedly run from and been pursued by a welcome lover: so, and yet not so, for that swift and generous animality was not hers. The kind of rage that was in her was the eager stirring of the second death. She had wanted Betty, and now she did not know what she wanted. The house was before her, but she was afraid to try to enter it.

  At that moment Lester caught her up. She said with an imperious demand, “What are you doing, Evelyn? Can’t you let her be?” and as she spoke she seemed to herself again to be saying something she had said before—away in those gardens by the sea, a great sea the sound of which, beyond her own voice, she could dimly hear as she had so often heard it in her bed at school. It was almost as if, behind her, the whole City moved. She half-lifted her hand to catch Evelyn by the shoulder, and that too she had once done; but she let it fall, for now the revolt in her flesh was too strong. Yet, as if she had been swung round by that once impetuous hand, Evelyn turned. She said, as she had said before, in that foolish slurred voice whose protestations provoked disbelief, “What do you mean? I wasn’t doing anything.”

  The answer shocked Lester back into fuller consciousness. They were no longer schoolgirls; they were—what were they? Women; dead women; living women; women on whose lips such words could have no meaning. The excuse of a child in a garden by the sea might have been accepted, if it had not been repeated here. But here it became dreadful. In the Park Lester could have half smiled at it; she could not smile now. She spoke with a fuller and clearer voice than ever it had been in this world; she spoke as a woman, as Richard’s wife, as something more than a vagrant, even if not yet a citizen; and she said, “Don’t, my dear. It isn’t worth it——” and as if by compulsion she added, “here.”

  Evelyn stopped, almost as if detaching herself from the other’s hand, and took a step away. Lester looked up at the house. It seemed to her strange and awful. Betty had taken refuge in it, as once on a garden-seat among the bushes. Over it, close to it, a lone star hung. The other houses were shadowy and uncertain; this alone was solid and real. It stood out, and within its porch the entrance was as black as one of those other dark entrances which she feared. As she gazed, there came from the house a small human sound. It was someone crying. The half-suppressed unhappy sobs were the only noise that broke the silence. Evelyn’s sobs and chattering teeth had broken it in the Park, but Evelyn was not crying now. It was Betty who was crying—among the bushes, in the house, without strength, without hope. Lester, with her own yearning in her bones, stirred restlessly, in an impatient refusal of her impatient impulse to go and tell her to stop. In those earlier days, she had not gone; she had hesitated a moment just so and then turned away. Betty must really learn to stand up for herself. “Must she indeed?” Lester’s own voice said to her. She exclaimed, with the fervent habit of her mortality: “Hell!”

  The word ran from her in all directions, as if a dozen small animals had been released and gone racing away. They fled up and down the street, beating out the echo of the word with their quick pattering feet, but the larger went for the house in front of them and disappeared into the porch. She saw them and was appalled; what new injury had she loosed? There was then no help. She too must go there. And Richard? She had thought that in this terrible London she had lost Richard, but now it seemed to her that this was the only place where she might meet Richard. She had seen him twice and the second time with some undeclared renewal of love. What might not be granted a third time? voice? a word? Ghosts had spoken; ghost as he was to her in those first appearances, he too might speak. To go into the house might be to lose him. The quiet crying, still shockingly suppressed, continued. Lester hung irresolute.

  Behind her, Evelyn’s voice said, “Oh come away!” At the words Lester, for the first time in her life, saw a temptation precisely as it is when it has ceased to tempt—repugnant, implausible, mean. She said nothing. She went forward and up the steps. She went on into Lady Wallingford’s house.

  Chapter Five

  THE HALL BY HOLBORN

  Richard Furnival was as wakeful that night in his manner as Betty in hers. Once he had again reached his flat—it was taking him a long time to get used to saying “my flat” instead of “our flat”—and as the night drew on, he found himself chilled and troubled. He knew of a score of easy phrases to explain his vision; none convinced him. Nor had he any conviction of metaphysics into which, retaining its own nature, it might easily pass. He thought of tales of ghosts;
he even tried to pronounce the word; but the word was silly. A ghost was a wraith, a shadow; his vision had been of an actual Lester. The rooms were cold and empty—as empty as any boarding-house rooms where the beloved has been and from which (never to return) she has gone. The afternoon with Jonathan had, when he left, renewed in him the tide of masculine friendship. But that tide had always swelled against the high cliff of another element, on which a burning beacon had once stood—and now suddenly had again stood. The sound of deep waves was in his ears, and even then his eyes had again been filled with the ancient fiery light. He had not, since he had first met Lester, lost at all the sense of great Leviathans, disputes and laughter, things native and natural to the male, but beyond them, and shining towards them had been that other less natural, and as it were more archangelic figure—remote however close, terrifying however sustaining, that which was his and not his, more intimate than all that was his, the shape of the woman and his wife. He had yet, for all his goodwill, so neglected her that he had been content to look at her so from his sea; he had never gone in and lived in that strange turret. He had admired, visited, used it. But not till this afternoon had he seen her as simply living. The noise of ocean faded; rhetoric ceased. This that he had seen had been in his actual house, and now it was not, and the house was cold and dark. He lit a fire to warm himself; he ate and drank; he went from room to room; he tried to read. But every book he opened thrust one message at him—from modern novels (“Aunt Rachel can’t live much longer——”) to old forgotten volumes (“The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying”; “But she is dead, she’s dead …”). His teeth chattered; his body shook. He went to bed and dozed and woke and walked and again lay down, and so on. Till that night he had not known how very nearly he had loved her.

  In the morning he made haste to leave. He was indeed on the point of doing so when Jonathan rang him up. Jonathan wanted to tell him about the Clerk’s visit and the Clerk’s approval of the painting. Richard did his best to pay attention and was a little arrested by the mere unexpectedness of the tale. He said, with a serious sympathy, “But that makes everything much simpler, doesn’t it? He’ll deal with Lady Wallingford, I suppose?”

  “Yes,” said Jonathan’s voice, “yes. If I want him to. I don’t believe I do want him to.”

  “But why not?” asked Richard.

  “Because … The fact is, I don’t like him. I don’t like the way he talks about Betty or the way he looks at paintings. You go and see him or hear him or whatever you can, and come on here and tell me. God knows I … well, never mind. I shall be here all day, unless Betty sends for me.”

  After this conversation, Richard was about to leave the flat when he paused and went back. He would not seem to run away; if, by any chance, that presence of his wife should again appear, he would not be without all he could accumulate from her environs with which to greet her. Nor would he now seem to fly. He walked through the rooms. He submitted to memory and in some poignant sense to a primitive remorse, for he was not yet spiritually old enough to repent. Then, quietly, he went out and (unable quite to control his uselessly expectant eyes) walked through the streets till he reached Holborn.

  It did not take him long to find the place of which he was in search. Behind Holborn, close to Great James Street, in a short street undamaged by the raids, were three buildings, one the largest, of a round shape, in the middle with a house on each side. They were not marked by any board, but as Richard came to the farther house, he saw that the door was open. A small exquisite carving of a hand, so delicate as to be almost a woman’s or a child’s hand, was fastened to the door-post, its fingers pointing into the house. Richard had never seen any carving that so nearly achieved the color of flesh; he thought at the first glance that it was flesh, and that a real dismembered hand pointed him to the Clerk’s lodging. He touched it cautiously with a finger as he went by and was a little ashamed of his relief when he found it was hard and artificial.

  He walked on as far as the end of the street; then he walked back. It was a warm sunny morning for October, and as he paced it seemed to him that the air was full of the scent of flowers. The noise of the streets had died away; it was very quiet. He thought, as he paused before turning, how pleasant it was here. It was even pleasant in a way not to have anyone in his mind, or on his mind. People who were in your mind were so often on your mind and that was a slight weariness. One would, of course, rather have it so than not. He had never grudged Lester anything, but here, where the air was so fresh and yet so full of a scent he just did not recognize, and London was as silent as the wood in Berkshire where he and Lester had been for a few days after their marriage, it was almost pleasant to be for a moment without Lester. His eyes averted themselves from where she was not lest she should unexpectedly be there. It was sufficient now to remember her in that wood—and even so, eclectically, for she had one day been rather difficult even in that wood, when she had wanted to go into the nearest town to get a particular magazine, in case by the time they did go on their return, it should be sold out, and he had not, for (as he had rightly and rationally pointed out) she could at a pinch wait for it till they got to London. But she had insisted, and because he always wished to consider her and be as unselfish as possible, they had gone. He was surprised, as he stood there, to remember how much he had considered Lester. A score of examples rushed vividly through his mind, and each of those he remembered was actual and true. He really had considered her; he had been, in that sense, a very good husband. He almost wondered if he had been too indulgent, too kind. No; if it were to do again, he would do it. Now she was gone, he was content to remember it. But also now she was gone, he could attend to himself. Luxuriating—more than he knew—in the thought, he turned. Luxury stole gently out within him and in that warm air flowed about him; luxury, luxuria, the quiet distilled luxuria of his wishes and habits, the delicate sweet lechery of idleness, the tasting of unhallowed peace.

  He remembered with equal distaste that he was on an errand and felt sorry that Jonathan was not doing his own errand. Jonathan could, just as well as not; after all, it was Jonathan who wanted to marry Betty. However, as he had promised, as he was committed … it would be more of a nuisance to explain to Jonathan—and to himself, but he did not add that—than to go in. He contemplated the carved hand with admiration, almost with affection; it really was the most exquisite thing. There was nothing of Jonathan’s shouting colors about it. Jonathan was so violent. Art, he thought, should be persuasive. This, however, was too much even for his present state of dreaming luxury. He came to, or almost came to, and found himself in the hall.

  It was a rather larger hall than he had expected. On his left hand were the stairs; before him the passage ran, with another ascending staircase farther on, to a kind of garden door. There was apparently another passage at the end turning off to the left. On his right was the door into the front room, which was open, and beyond it another door, which was shut. Richard hesitated and began to approach the open door. As he did so, a short rather fat man came out of it and said in a tone of much good humor, “Yes, sir?”

  Richard said, “Oh good morning. Is this Father Simon’s place?”

  The short man answered, “That’s right, sir. Can I do anything for you?”

  “I just wanted to get some particulars for a friend,” Richard said. “Is there anyone I could see?”

  “Come in here, sir,” said the other, retreating into the room. “I’m here to answer, as you may say, the first questions. My name’s Plankin; I’m a kind of doorkeeper. Come in, sir, and sit down. They all come to me first, sir, and no one knows better than I do what the Father’s done. A tumor on the brain, sir; that’s what he cured me of a year ago. And many another poor creature since.”

  “Did he?” said Richard, a little sceptically. He was in the front room by now. He had vaguely expected something like an office, but it was hardly that; a waiting-room perhaps. There was a table with a telephone, a few chairs, and that was all.
Richard was maneuvered to a chair; the short man sat down on another by the table, put his hands on his knees and looked benevolently at the visitor. Richard saw that, beside the telephone, there was also on the table a large-sized album and a pot of paste. He thought, but he knew one could not judge, that it looked as if Plankin had an easy job. But after a tumor on the brain——! He said, “I wanted to ask about Father Simon’s work. Does he——”

  The short man, sitting quite still, began to speak. He said, “Yes, sir, a tumor. He put his blessed hands on my head and cured it. There isn’t a man or woman in this house that he hasn’t cured. I’ve never had a pain since, not of any kind. Nor they neither. We all carry his mark in our bodies, sir, and we’re proud of it.”

  “Really?” said Richard. “Yes, you must be. Does he run some kind of clinic, then?”

  “Oh no, sir,” Plankin said. “He puts everything right straight away. He took the paralysis away from Elsie Bookin who does the typing, and old Mrs. Morris who’s the head cook—he cured her cancer. He does it all. I keep an album here, sir, and I stick in it everything the papers say about him. But it’s not like knowing him, as we do.”

  “No,” said Richard, “I suppose not. Do you have many inquiries?”

  “Not so very many, for the Father wants to be quiet here,” said Plankin. “He sends most of them away after he’s seen them, to wait. But they come; oh yes, they come. And some go away and some even come to the Relaxations.”

  “The Relaxations?” Richard asked.

  “Oh well, sir,” said Plankin, “you’ll hear about them if you stay. The Father gives us peace. He’ll tell you about it.” He nodded his head, swaying a little and saying, “Peace, peace.”

  “Can I see the Father then?” said Richard. Inside the room the warm air seemed again to be full of that attractive smell. He might have been in the very middle of the Berkshire wood again, without Lester, but with an agreeable memory of Lester. The green distemper on the walls of the room was gently moving as if the walls were walls of leaves, and glints of sunlight among them; and the short man opposite him no more than a tree stump. He could be content to sit here in the wood, where the dead did not matter and never returned—no more than if they had not been known, except for this extra exquisiteness of a happy dream. But presently some sort of surge went through the wood, and the tree stump stood up and said, “Ah now that’ll be one of the ladies. She’ll tell you better than I can.” Richard came to himself and heard a step in the hall. He rose to his feet and as he did so Lady Wallingford appeared in the doorway.