“It was so natural to her that she didn’t even notice. A nuisance, but something to accept with philosophy. You were meant to get wet if you got caught in the- rain away from shelter, and if the shelter were miraculously removed—well, that only emphasized the fact that you were meant to get a soaking~ Meant to, you see.” He paused, not at all sure just where this thread was leading, but his memory, dredging among the flotsam, had come up with that one phrase that all but dripped with significance when he saw it in full light.
Revelations hovered just beyond the next thought.
“She did get wet,” he went on slowly. “I remember now. She went home dripping, and caught cold, and had a high fever for several days—”
His mind moved swiftly along the chain of thoughts, drawing incredible conclusions. Was something, somehow, ruling Clarissa’s life with a hand so powerful it could violate every law of nature to keep her in the path its whim selected? Had something snatched her away through a tiny section of time and space to keep the street accident from her? But she had been meant to have that drenching and that fever, so—let the summerhouse be erased. Let it never have been. Let it vanish as naturally as the rain came down, so that Clarissa might have her fever…
Leasing shut his eyes again and ground his palms hard over them. Did he want to remember much farther? What morasses of implausibility was his memory leading him into? Vanishing summerhouses and vanishing girls and…and…intervention from—outside? He took one horrified mental glance at that thought and then covered it up quickly and went on. Deep down in the murk the gleam of that amazing discovery still drew him on, but he went more slowly now, not at all certain that he wanted to plumb the depths and see it clearly.
Dyke’s voice broke in as his mind began to let go and fall slack.
“She had a fever? Go on, what came next?”
“I didn’t see her for a couple of weeks. And the…the colors began to go out of everything—”
It had to be renewed, then, by her presence, that strange glamour that heightened every color, sharpened every outline, made every sound musical when they were together. He began to crave the stimulus as he felt it fade. Looking back now, he remembered the intolerable dullness of that period. It was then, probably, that he first began to realize he had fallen in love.
And Clarissa, in the interval, had discovered it too. Yes, he was remembering. He had seen it shining in her enormous black eyes on the first day he visited her again. A brilliance almost too strong to look upon, as if bright stars were interlacing their rays there until her eyes were a blaze of blackness more dazzling than any light.
He had seen her, alone, in that first meeting after her illness. Where had the aunt been? Not there, at any rate. The strange, windowless apartment was empty except for themselves. Windowless? He looked back curiously. It was true-there had been no windows. But there were many mirrors. And the carpets were very deep and dark. That was his dominant impression of the place, walking upon softness and silence, with the glimmer of reflecting distances all around.
He had sat beside Clarissa, holding her hand, talking in a low voice. Her smile had been tremulous, and her eyes so bright they were almost frightening. They were very happy that afternoon. He glowed a little, even now, remembering how happy they had been. He would not remember, just yet, that nothing was to come of it but grief.
The wonderful clarity of perception came back around him by degrees as they sat there talking, so that everything in the world had seemed gloriously right. The room was the center of a perfect universe, beautiful and ordered, and the spheres sang together as they turned around it.
“I was closer to Clarissa then,” he thought to himself, “than I ever came again. That was Clarissa’s world, beautiful and peaceful, and very bright. You could almost hear the music of the machinery, singing in its perfection as it worked. Life was always like that to her. No, I never came so close again.”
Machinery—Why did that image occur to him?
There was only one thing wrong with the apartment. He kept thinking that eyes were upon him, watching all he thought and did. It was probably only the mirrors, but it made him uncomfortable. He asked Clarissa why there were so many. She laughed.
“All the better to see you in, my darling.” But then she paused as if some thought had come to her unexpectedly, and glanced around the reflecting walls at her own face seen from so many angles, looking puzzled. Leasing was used by then to seeing reactions upon her face that had no real origin in the normal cause-and-effect sequence of familiar life, and he did not pursue the matter. She was a strange creature, Clarissa, in so many, many ways. Two and two, he thought with sudden affectionate amusement, seldom made less, than six to her, and she fell so often into such disproportionately deep and. thoughtful silences over the most trivial things. He had learned early in their acquaintance how futile it was to question her about them.
“By now,” he said, almost to himself, “I wasn’t questioning anything. I didn’t dare. I lived on the fringes of a world that wasn’t quite normal, but it was Clarissa’s world and I didn’t ask questions.”
Clarissa’s serene, bright, immeasurably orderly little universe. So orderly that the stars in their courses might be forced out of pattern, if need be, to maintain her in her serenity. The smooth machinery singing in its motion as it violated possibility to spare her a street accident, or annihilating matter that she might have her drenching and her fever…
The fever served a purpose. Nothing happened to Clarissa, he was fairly sure now, except things with a purpose. Chance had no place in that little world that circled her in. The fever brought delirium, and in the delirium with its strange~ abnormal clarity of vision—suppose she had glimpsed the truth? Or was there a truth? He could not guess. But her eyes were unnaturally bright now, as if the brilliance of fever had lingered or as if…as if she were looking ahead into a future so incredibly shining that its reflections glittered constantly in her eyes, with a blackness brighter than light.
He was sure by now that she did not suspect life was at all different for her, that everyone did not watch miracles happen or walk in the same glory clarissima. (And once or twice the world reversed itself and he wondered wildly if she could be right and he wrong, if everyone did but himself.)
They moved in a particular little glory of their own during those days. She did love him; he had no doubt of it. But her subtle exaltation went beyond that. Something wonderful was to come, her manner constantly implied, but the most curious thing was that he thought she herself did not know what. He was reminded of a child wakening on Christmas morning and lying there in a delicious state of drowsiness, remembering only that something wonderful waits him when he comes fully awake.
“She never spoke of it?” Dyke asked.
Lessing shook his head. “It was all just beneath the surface. And if I tried to ask questions they…they seemed to slide right off. She wasn’t consciously evading me. It was more as if she hadn’t quite understood—” He paused. “Arid then things went wrong,” he said slowly. “Something—”
It was hard to recapture this part. The bad memories were submerged perhaps a little deeper than the good ones, shut off behind additional layers of mental scar tissue. What had happened? He knew Clarissa loved him; they talked of marriage plans. The pattern of happiness had surely been set out clearly for them to follow.
“The aunt,” he said doubtfully. “I think she must have interfered. I think…Clarissa seemed to slip out of my hands. She’d be busy when I phoned, or the aunt would say she was out. I was fairly sure she was lying, but what could I do?”
When she did see him, Clarissa had denied her neglect, reassuring him with shining glances and delicate, grave caresses. But she was so preoccupied. She did so little, really, and yet she seemed always absorbingly busy.
“If she was only watching a sparrow pick up crumbs,” he told Dyke, “or two men arguing on the street, she gave all her attention to them and had none left over for me. So afte
r awhile—I think about a week had gone by without my even seeing her—I decided to have it out with the aunt.”
There were gaps—He remembered clearly only standing in the white hallway outside the apartment door and knocking. He remembered the door creaking softly open a little way. Only a little way. The chain had been on it, and it hung open only that narrow width, the chain glinting slightly from light within. It had been dim inside, light reflecting from wall to wall in the many mirrors, but from no source he could see. He could see, though, that someone was moving about inside, a figure distorted by the mirrors, multiplied by them, flickering quietly as it went about its own enigmatic business within, paying no attention to his ring at the door.
“Hello,” he called. “Is that you, ‘Clarissa?”
No answer. Nothing but the silent motion inside, visible now and then in the reflecting walls. He had called the aunt by name, then.
“Is it you, Mrs.—” What name? He had no idea, now. But he had called her again and again, getting angrier as the motion flickered on heedlessly. “I can see you,” he remembered saying, his face against the jamb. “I know you can hear me. Why don’t you answer?”
Still nothing. The motion vanished inside for a moment or two, then wavered twice and was still again. He could not see what figure cast the reflection. Someone dark, moving silently over the thick dark carpets, paying no attention to the voice at the door. What a very odd sort of person the aunt must be.
Abruptly he was struck with the unreality of the situation; that dim, fitting shape in the next room, and the unsatisfactory figure he cut, hesitating there on the threshold calling through the door. Why the devil did the woman insist on this mystery? She was too dominant.
Hot anger rose in him, a violent, sudden, unexpected reaction. “Clarissa!” he called. Then, as dim motion flickered in the mirrors again, he put his shoulder to the yielding panel, pushing hard.
The safety latch must have been flimsy. It gave with a crackling snap, and Lessing, off balance, staggered forward.
The room with its many dark mirrors whirled vertiginously. He did not see Clarissa’s aunt except as a swift, enigmatic movement in the glass, but quite suddenly he faced the inexplicable.
Gravity had- shifted, both in direction and in force. His motion continued and he fell with nightmare slowness—Alice down the Rabbit Hole-in a spiraling, expanding orbit; it was like anesthesia in its unlikeliness and the fact that it did not surprise him. The curious quality of the motion pushed everything else out of his mind for the moment. There was no one in the room with him; there were no mirrors; there was no room. Bodiless, an equation, a simplified ego, he fell toward—There was Clarissa. Then he saw a burst of golden light flaming and faffing against the white dark. A golden shower that enveloped Clarissa and carried her away.
Distantly, with the underbeat of his mind, he knew he should be surprised. But it was like half-sleep. It was too easy to accept things as they came, and he was too lazy to make the effort of awakening. He saw Clarissa again, moving against backgrounds sometimes only a little unfamiliar, at other times—he thought—wildly impossible—
Then an armored man was dropping down through warm sunlit air to the terrace, and the background was a park, with mountains rising far away. A woman was shrinking from him, two men had moved in front of her. Clarissa was there too. He could understand the language, though he did not know how he understood it. The armored man had a weapon of some sort lifted, and was crying, “Get back, Highness! I can’t fire—too close—”
A young man in a long, belted robe of barbaric colors skipped backward, tugging at the coiled scarlet whip which was his belt. But neither of them seemed quite ready to make any aggressive moves, astonishment blanking their faces and staring eyes as they gaped at Leasing. Behind them the tall woman with the commanding, discontented face stood frozen by the same surprise. Lessing glanced around in bewilderment, meeting the incredulous stares of the girls flocking behind her. Clarissa was among them, and beyond her—beyond her—someone he could not quite remember. A dark figure, enigmatic, a little stooped…
All of them stood transfixed. (All but Clarissa, perhaps. and perhaps the figure at her elbow—) The armored man’s-weapon was poised half lifted, the young robed man’s whip unslung but trailing. They wore fantastic garments of a style and period Leasing had never heard of, and all their faces were strained and unhappy beneath the blankness of surprise, as if they had been living under some long-standing pressure of anxiety. He never knew what it was.
Only Clarissa looked as serene as always. And only she showed no surprise. Her black eyes under a strange, elaborate coiffure met his with the familiar twinkling of many lights, and she smiled without saying anything.
A buzzing of excitement rose among the girls. The armored man said uncertainly, “Who are you? Where did you come from? Stand back or I’ll—”
“—Out of thin air!” the robed young man gasped, and gave the crimson whip a flick that made it writhe along the grass.
Leasing opened his mouth to say—well, something. The whip looked dangerous. But Clarissa shook her head, still smiling.
“Never mind,” she said. “Don’t bother explaining. They’ll forget, you know.”
If he had meant to say anything, that robbed him of all coherent thought again. It was too fantastically like…like…something familiar. Alice, that was it. Alice again, in Looking Glass Land, at the Duchess’ garden party. The bright, strange costumes, the bright green grass, the same air of latent menace. In a moment someone would scream, “Off with his head!”
The robed man stepped back and braced his feet against the- weight of the whip as he swung its long coil up. Lessing watched the scarlet tongue arch against the sky. (“Serpents! Serpents! There’s no pleasing them!” he thought wildly.) And then the whole world was spinning with the spin of the whip. The garden was a top, whirling faster and faster under that crimson lash. He lost his footing on the moving grass and centrifugal force flung him off into unconsciousness.
His head ached.
He got up off the hail floor slowly, pushing against the wall to steady’ himself. The walls were still spinning, but they slowed to a stop as he stood there swaying and feeling the bump on his forehead. His mind took a little longer to stop spinning, but once it came under control again he could see quite clearly what ‘had happened. That chain had never broken at all. He had not fallen into the dark, mirrored room within, where the shadow of the aunt flitted quietly to and fro. The door, actually, had never been opened at all. At least, it was not open now. And the position of the doormat and the long, dark scrape on the floor made it obvious that he had tried to force the door and had slipped. His head must have cracked hard against ‘the knob.
He wondered if such a blow could send hallucinations f or-ward as well as backward through time from the moment of collision. Because he knew he had dreamed—he must have dreamed—that the door was open and the silent shadow moving inside.
When he called Clarissa that night he was fully determined to talk to her this time if he had to threaten the guardian aunt with violence or arrest or whatever seemed, on the spur of the moment, most effective. He knew how humiliatingly futile such threats would sound, but he could think of no other alternative. And the need to see Clarissa was desperate now, after that curious Wonderland dream. He meant to tell her about it, and he thought the story would have some effect. Almost, in his bewilderment, he expected her to remember the part she herself had played, though he knew how idiotic the expectation was.
It was a little disconcerting, after his fiery resolution, to hear not the aunt’s voice but Clarissa’s on the telephone.
“I’m coming over,” he said flatly, frustrated defiance making the statement a challenge.
“Why, of course,” Clarissa sounded as if they had parted only a few hours ago.
His eagerness made the trip across town seem very long. He was rehearsing the story he would tell her as soon as they were alone. The dream had
been so real and vivid, though it must have passed in the flash of a second between the time his head struck the doorknob and the time his knees struck the floor. What would she say about it? He did not know why at all, but he thought she could give him an answer to his questions, if he told her.
He rang the doorbell impatiently. As before, there was no sound from within. He rang again. No answer. Feeling eerily as if he had stepped back in time, to relive that curious dream all over again, he tried the knob, and was surprised to find the door opening to his push. No chain fastened it this time. He was looking into familiar, many-mirrored dimness as the door swung wide. While he hesitated on the threshold, not sure whether to call out or try the bell again, he saw something moving far back in the apartment, visible only in the mirrors.
For a moment the conviction that he was reliving the past made his head swim. Then he saw that it was Clarissa this time. Clarissa standing quite still and looking up with a glow of shining anticipation upon her face. It was that Christmas morning look he had caught glimpses of before, but never so dearly as now. What she looked at he could not see, but the expression was unmistakable. Something glorious was about to happen, the lovely look implied. Something very glorious, very near, very soon—
About her the air shimmered. Lessing blinked. The air turned golden and began to shower down around her in sparkling rain. This was the dream, then, he thought wildly. He had seen it all before. Clarissa standing quietly beneath the golden shower, her face lifted, letting that shining waterfall pour over her slowly. But if it were the dream again, nothing further was to happen. He waited for the floor to spin underfoot—
No, it was real. He was watching another miracle take place, silently and gloriously, in the quiet apartment.
He had seen it in a dream; now it happened before his eyes. Clarissa in a shower of…of stars? Standing like Danae in a shower of gold—
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