“Il” said Lester bitterly. It did not seem to her likely that she could have belonged to that world of light and beauty. Yet even as she spoke she irrelevantly thought of Richard’s eyes at the corner in Holborn—and before that—before that—before she was dead; and she remembered how Richard had come to meet her once and again, and how her heart had swelled for the glory and vigor of his coming. But Betty was speaking again.
“I see now that you were, and now it seems all right. That was why I ran after you—Oh how tiresome I must have been! but it doesn’t matter. I’m afraid I did make a fuss; I know I did over the headaches—there were some places where I knew I was going to have headaches—and over Evelyn. It really was rather silly of Evelyn. And then there was this house——”
She stopped and yawned. She threw herself back on the pillow and swung up her legs. She went on: “But I’m too sleepy now to remember all that I ought to about this house.… And then there was Jonathan. Do you know Jonathan? he was very good to me. We might go and look at the Thames some time, you and I and Jonathan.…” Her eyes closed; her hands felt vaguely about the bed. She said, in tones Lester could only just hear, “I’m so sorry. I just can’t keep awake. Don’t go. Jonathan will be coming.… Don’t go unless you must. It’s lovely having you here.… It was sweet of you to come … Jonathan will … dear Lester.…” She made an uncertain movement to pull the bedclothes up over her; before the movement ended she was asleep.
Lester did not understand what she had been saying. In what strange way she had been known to Betty, more happily than ever she herself could have supposed, she did not know. Betty had been talking almost as if there had been two lives, each a kind of dream to the other. It would once have been easy to call the one life a fantasy, easy if this new, gay and vivid Betty had not precisely belonged to the fantasy. She felt both lives within her too sharply now to call either so. There had been something like two lives in her own single life—the gracious passionate life of beauty and delight, and the hard angry life of bitterness and hate. It was the recollection of that cold folly which perhaps now made Betty seem to her—no; it was not. Betty was changing; she was dying back; she was becoming what she had been. Color passed from her cheeks; the sweet innocence of sleep faded, and the pallor of exhaustion and the worn semblance of victimization spread. The hands twitched. She looked already, as men say, “near dead.” Lester exclaimed: “Betty!” It had no effect. The change affected the room itself; the sunlight weakened; power everywhere departed. The girl who lay before Lester was the girl she had turned away from. The hands and head could no longer threaten judgment; they were too helpless. Yes, but also they had judged. What had been, in that other state, decided, remained fixed; once known, always known. She knew quite clearly that Betty had—forgiven her. The smile, the warmth, the loveliness, were forgiveness. It was strange not to mind, but she did not mind. If she did not mind Betty, perhaps she would not mind Richard. She smiled. Mind Richard? mind being forgiven—forgiven so—by that difficult obnoxious adorable creature? Let him come to her in turn and she would show him what forgiveness was. Till now she had not really understood it; occasionally in the past each of them had “forgiven” the other, but the victim had not much liked it. But now—by high permission, yes. And if Richard and Betty, then others; if this permission which now directed her life allowed, others. “Thus”—how did it go?—“through all eternity I forgive you, you forgive me.” Wine and bread, the poem had called it; wine and bread let it be. Meanwhile there was nothing to do but to wait till that happened which must happen. In some way she had now been left in charge of Betty. She must keep her charge. She must wait.
All this time, since first Lester had entered the house, the unhappy soul of Evelyn had also waited. At first it had almost followed Lester in, but it did not dare. Frightful as the empty appearance of the City was to it, to be enclosed in the house would be worse. She would be afraid of being shut up with Lester and Betty, certainly with Lester, almost with Betty. She hated the victim of her torment, but to be alone with her in that dark solid house—the thought ought to have been agreeable, but it was not at all agreeable. As for Lester, she hated Lester too. Lester had patronized her, but then Lester could. She had the power to be like that and she was. She hated being alone in this place with Lester, though since she had run after Betty, even though she had missed her, she felt better. The street down which she had run after she had turned off from the hill, this street in which she now stood, had seemed more close, more helpful. The air held some sense of gain. This was more like the London she had known. The house should have been the climax; could she go in, she thought, it would be. Only she dared not go in. Lester was not to be trusted; Lester and Betty might be plotting.
After all, she was rather glad she had not caught up with Betty. Lester might have come up behind her and then the two of them might have done things to her. Or they might have thought she would have run into the house, but she had not; she had been too clever for that—and for them. She walked a few steps away. It was no good standing too near; they would not come out—no, but if they should … She could almost see them talking in the house, smiling at each other. She walked a little farther away and turned her head over her shoulder as she went. On her face was the look which had shocked Lester when she had earlier seen that turned head. It was hate relieved from mortality, malice incapable of death. Within the house, Lester’s own face had taken on a similar change; some element of alteration had disappeared. She herself did not, of course, know it; her attention had been taken up by the growing glory that was Betty. But even Betty’s face had not that other lucidity. What had looked at Lester from Evelyn’s eyes, what now showed in her own, was pure immortality. This was the seal of the City, its first gift to the dead who entered it. They had what they were and they had it (as it seemed) forever. With that in her eyes, Evelyn turned her head again and wandered slowly on.
She came on to the hill and drifted down it, for having no choice of ways and yet being oddly compelled to go on—if not into the house, then away from the house—she only retraced her steps, slowly going back, slowly going down. She was about a third of the way down when from far off the sound of the Name caught her. She could hardly there be said to have heard it; it was not so much a name or even a sound as an impulse. It had gone, that indrawing cry, where only it could go, for the eternal City into which it was inevitably loosed absorbed it into its proper place. It could not affect the solid houses of earth nor the millions of men and women toilfully attempting goodness; nor could it reach the paradisal places and their inhabitants. It sounded only through the void streets, the apparent façades, the shadowy rooms of the world of the newly dead. There it found its way. Other wanderers, as invisible to Evelyn as she to them, but of her kind, felt it—old men seeking lechery, young men seeking drunkenness, women making and believing malice, all harborers in a lie. The debased Tetragrammaton drew them with its spiritual suction; the syllables passed out, and swirled, and drawing their captives returned to their speaker. Some went a little way and fell; some farther and failed; of them all only she, at once the latest, the weakest, the nearest, the worst, was wholly caught. She did not recognize captivity; she thought herself free. She began to walk more quickly, to run, to run fast. As she ran, she began to hear the sound. It was not friendly; it was not likeable; but it was allied. She felt towards it as Lester had felt towards the cry on the hill. The souls in that place know their own proper sounds and hurry to them.
Something perhaps of fear entered her, to find herself running so fast. It was a steep road and it seemed much longer than when she had run up it of her own volition. She ran and she ran. She was running almost along the very cry itself, not touching the apparent pavement; it wailed louder below her. Her immortality was in her face; her spirituality in her feet; she was lifted and she ran.
She did not recognize the streets; she came at last round by King’s Cross, on into the congeries of streets on the other side of the Euston
Road, on towards Holborn. The cry grew quieter as she neared its source. What had been a wail in the more distant streets was a voice in the nearer. She still ran along it. At last, so running, she came through a small gate into a yard, and across it to a small low window. There she stopped and looked in. She saw a kind of hall, with people sitting on chairs, and away at the other end in a high chair, a man who was looking back at her. Or perhaps he was not actually looking back at her, but she knew he saw her. A dizziness of relief took her; here at last was someone else. She was so aware of him and of his sidelong knowledge of her, that she hardly noticed she was moving forward and through the wall. A film of spiders’ webs brushed against her; she broke through it. She had come back; at the very sight of him she had been able to return into the world of men. She had escaped from the horrible vague City and here was he to welcome her.
He was smiling. She thought—as neither Jonathan nor Richard had done—that it was properly a smile, though again the smile was sidelong. He had reason, for when he saw her he knew that at last his writ ran in the spiritual City. He had known that it must be so, he being what he was. But that silence of Betty’s about his future had almost troubled him. A deathly silence had seemed to hover round him, as if he had made an error in magic and could not recover himself. It was certainly time he sent out his messenger before him. But he knew now it was no error, for the silence had spoken. This was its first word—solitary, soon to be companioned. He would ride there presently upon their cries. He was overcoming that world.
The exchange of smiles—if that which had no thought of fair courtesy could be called exchange; at least some imitation of smiles—passed between them. Separately, each of them declined the nature of the City; which nevertheless held them. Each desired to breach the City; and either breach opened—directly and only—upon the other. Love to love, death to death, breach to breach; that was the ordering of the City, and its nature. It throve between Lester and Betty, between Richard and Jonathan, between Simon and Evelyn; that was its choice. How it throve was theirs. The noise of London, which was a part of it, rose at a distance outside the house—all its talk and traffic and turmoil. In the quiet of the hall the man said to the woman, “I shall want you soon.” She said, “Take me out of it.” And he, “Soon.” He stood up; that was when Richard found himself going out of the hall.
Chapter Seven
THE MAGICAL SACRIFICE
An hour or so later Jonathan opened his door to Richard. He said, “I say, what’s been happening? You look ghastly. Sit down; have a drink.”
Richard was very white and unsteady. He dropped into a chair. Even the warm studio and Jonathan could not overcome the sense of that other thing which, ever since he had left the house in Holborn, had run cold in his blood. As Jonathan brought him the drink, he shuddered and looked rather wildly round. Jonathan said anxiously, “Here, drink this. Are you all right?”
Richard drank and sat for a little silent. Then he said, “I’d better tell you. Either I’m mad or … But I’m not just wrong. I’m either right or I’m mad. It’s no good telling me I was taken in by seeing a barmaid in a yard——”
“No; all right,” said Jonathan. “I won’t. I shouldn’t be very likely to anyhow. Tell me what you like and I’ll believe it. Why not?”
Richard began. He spoke slowly. He took care to be exact. He modified his description of his own sensations and emotions; he was as impartial as he could be. Once or twice he made an effort to be defensively witty; it was unsuccessful and he dropped it. As he came to the end, he grew even more careful. Jonathan sat on his table and watched him.
“I saw her come in. They looked towards each other and they smiled. And all I can tell you is that I know now what blasphemy is. It’s not attractive and it isn’t thrilling. It’s just bloodcurdling—literally. It’s something peculiarly different and it’s something which happens. It isn’t talk; it happens. My eyes began to go dark with it, because I simply couldn’t bear it. And then, before I went quite under, we were all standing up and going out—down that corridor. I don’t know what would have happened if one of them had touched me then. We got into the hall, and there was a lot of shuffling and whispering, and then an ordinary voice or two, and then everyone had disappeared except the caretaker. I saw the front door and I went straight to it. I was just at it when he called me. I couldn’t go back or turn round. I stood still—I don’t know why; I suppose I was still in a nightmare. And outside I saw that filthy little hand pointing in behind me. He spoke over my shoulder in that damn husky voice of his, and he said——”
“Yes; all right,” said Jonathan as Richard’s voice went up a note or two. “Steady.”
“Sorry!” said Richard, recovering. “He said: ‘I won’t keep you, Mr. Furnival. Come back presently. When you want me, I shall be ready. If you want your wife, I can bring her to you; if you don’t want her, I can keep her away from you. Tell your friend I shall send for him soon. Goodbye.’ So then I walked out.”
He lifted his eyes and looked at Jonathan, who couldn’t think of anything to say. Presently Richard went on, still more quietly. “And suppose he can?”
“Can what?” asked Jonathan gloomily.
“Can,” said Richard carefully and explicitly, “do something to Lester. Leave off thinking of Betty for a moment; Betty’s alive. Lester’s dead, and suppose this man can do something to dead people? Don’t forget I’ve seen one. I’ve seen that woman Mercer walk straight into his hall. I know she’s dead; she looked dead. That’s how I knew I saw her. No; not like a corpse. She was—fixed; as solid as you or me, but a deal more herself than either of us. If he made her come, can he make Lester come? If he can, I shall kill him.”
Jonathan said, staring at the floor, “No, I wouldn’t do that. If … if he can do anything of that kind, don’t you see it mightn’t make much difference if he were dead? I wouldn’t kill him.”
Richard got up. He said, “I see. No.” He began to wander about the room. Presently he said, “I won’t have him touch Lester.” He added, “If I were to kill myself?”
Jonathan shook his head. “We don’t know anything about it,” he said. “You couldn’t be sure of being with her. And anyhow it’s a sin.”
“Oh a sin!” said Richard peevishly and was silent. His friend was on the point of saying, “Well, if souls exist, sins may,” but he thought it would be tiresome, and desisted. Presently his eyes fell on the painting of those subhuman souls, and after staring at it he said abruptly, “Richard, I don’t believe it. He may be able to hypnotize these creatures, but Lester wasn’t much like them, was she? I don’t believe he could control her unless she let him, and I shouldn’t think she was much likely to let him. She wasn’t, as I remember her, the kind of woman who likes being controlled, was she?”
Richard stopped. The faintest of smiles came to his lips. He said, “No. God help Father Simon if he tries to control Lester. Still”—and his face darkened again—“the plane was too much for her, and he might be.”
They stood side by side and looked at the cloud of rising backs. Evelyn Mercer was one of them; would Lester be? was Betty meant to be? Their ladies called to them from separate prisons, demanding help and salvation. The corridor of iron rock opened—surely not for those sacred heads? surely those royal backs could never incline below the imbecile face. But what to do? Richard’s habitual agnosticism had so entirely disappeared with the first sight of Evelyn that he had already forgotten it. Jonathan was beginning to think of seeking out a priest. But their tale was a wild thing and he did not know what a priest could do. No priest could command Simon; nor exorcise Lester; nor enliven Betty. No; it was left to them.
He said, “Well, damn it, this isn’t the only painting I’ve done. Let’s look at the one Simon didn’t like.”
“I don’t see what good that’ll do,” Richard said miserably, but he went round with his friend. He seemed to himself within himself to be standing alone among the insects, and he could not avoid the thought that pe
rhaps now, somewhere, somehow, Lester was one of the insects—an irrational scuttling insect that would keep closer to him than any of the others would. That, if she were so, might still be left of their love, and that would be all. Their past would end in this, and this forever. Only he knew she would not—unless Simon had utterly and wholly changed her very nature. She would, insect or woman or some dreadful insect-woman, keep away from him; and as he knew it, he knew he did not want her to. If she were that, he wanted her—in spite of the horror; if he could bear the horror!—to be by him still. Or perhaps he might come to some agreement with Father Simon—perhaps he instead of her—she would be very angry indeed if he did; he knew very well it would be a contest between them, if such a chance could be; pride clashing with pride, but also love with love. It would be unfair to do it without her knowledge, yet with her knowledge it could never be done. The thought flickered through his mind before he realized of what he was really thinking. When he did, he could hardly think of it; the terrible metapsychosis gnawed at him and would not be seen. He stared in front of him and realized slowly that he was looking deeply into the light.
The massive radiance of that other painting flowed out towards him from the canvas; it had not surely, when he had seen it before, been as weighty as this? it had not so projected energy? He forgot Simon and the cluster of spiritual vermin; he forgot Lester, except that some changing detail of her hovered still in his mind—her hand, her forehead, her mouth, her eyes. The inscape of the painting became central. There, in the middle of this room, lay the City, ruined and renewed, submerged and gloriously re-emerging. It was not the sense of beauty but the sense of exploration that was greatest in him. He had but to take one step to be walking in that open space, with houses and streets around him. The very rubble in the foreground was organic and rising; not rising as the beetles were to some exterior compulsion but in proportion and to an interior plan. The whole subject—that is, the whole unity; shape and hue; rubble, houses, cathedral, sky and hidden sun, all and the light that was all and held all—advanced on him. It moved forward as that other painting retired. The imbecile master and his companions were being swallowed up in distance, but this was swallowing up distance. There was distance in it and yet it was all one. As a painting is.
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