Devil's Tor

by David Lindsay

  Ingrid's two natures—they were not natures, nor the halves of any single uniting thing within her; but separate persons. She could not have said why the distinction appeared to her such a chasm—so awful. … Her gradually grown up and familiar child, peaceably passing these quiet days with those she loved and who loved her, the house's life, purity and youth, soon to be married to a decent man... and now, suddenly, also a strange woman, casting this child of hers out from her seat, disdaining relations as yet with any but these haughty adventurers, that were come to quicken the last of her unsuspected long, slow, lip-white fierceness towards the light. … Not her daughter ... but a daughter of the mystic icy North, knowing terrible imaginations and affinities, scorning sanity, an outlaw through the night, demanding for her share the grimnesses, twisted passions, witherings, lonelinesses, of the mortal passage. …

  What she had never seen, but saw now, was that this strange woman was a completed soul. … And so long she had been gathering her volcanic fires for the hour of explosive horror, when a new mountain was to be formed of her who had been her child. And such was Peter's foreknowledge; the warning glare, invisible to others, had caught his quick perceptions. Well he understood how a long-preparing disaster might spring like a beast at last without declaration. Shocked to tenseness by those sympathetic prodigies from the society-encircling blackness that was her element, up to the man Saltfleet's awaited apparition this woman armed to assassinate her daughter was directing her frown—doubtless, it was an ancient recognition. Peter said it but little differently. For once, his art's equipment was serving him. …

  "You dread losing me... not by death"... thus Ingrid was as wise. … And this, too, had been that queer boldness of love, like an incitement, felt just before her daughter's entry. Her heart had been quickened by the room's living restlessness (but she had rejected the urging) that she might be furnished with power against the menaced change. She had refused it, and so this more hateful scourge at the window was instead. She was meant to act. Ingrid was being protected: something must be curiously watching them both even now, and all the time; but a human arm, a medium, was indispensable. …

  Then she conceived it to be yet more critical. If for this once her child's wicked translation could be averted, it might be altogether. For how impossible it was that her life could hold two such men, two such trains of unearthly wonders and agonies. A mystery of that aspiring evil other woman's soul inside her daughter's shape might be that, being once denied its sovereignty in the upper world and thrust back to darkness, it might banish wholly, for ever, like a baffled ghost at cockcrow; killed by the effort to be born. …

  Aware though she was, as in another brain, of the riot and fever of all these imaginings, so past anything outside her dreams, Helga attempted not to quit the amazement. Presently she must return to sobriety—mad she would then seem to herself to have been... so all the more necessary was it now to adventure—and adventure—for Ingrid's salvation. Here, in this fire of intoxication and torture, lay the clue—nowhere else. It was the meaning. …

  One perception she kept trying to grasp—it was so fine, it escaped her every time. The room's unseen control, its character should be of softness, pity... belonging not to these other communicatings and compellings, but staying behind all else, as an atmosphere—a presence. … She kept half-feeling it; and as often as she did so, the involuntary following half-idea came into her head, that it was womanly. … At length, she could not consent that it was delusion. For each time it came, it was anew; some one string of her sensitiveness was being sounded; it was not memory. … She could have asseverated that a woman's person was somewhere invisible in the room; not Ingrid. …

  So nervous became the fancy that, scarcely comprehending her own impulse, she turned sharply round from the window to view the room and what was in it; but only the girl was there, sitting in lassitude where she had been. …

  Only Ingrid... yet what little colour still had been in her mother's face now fled, while her eyes became globes in a nailed stare. … Here was not Ingrid, but...

  The features, indeed, were unchanged—youthful, fair, known, as before... but how came they to be so ancient, and far off? It was a fearful phantom, displacing her daughter. Her beauty, as well, was shining and lamp-like... the gleaming surely stood for the overflowing of mighty springs; from no waters of the world. It was inward, yet symbolic too, like the posthumous token of a martyred saint. … The features themselves, however—their foreign womanish fairness of poise and flesh remained; was even more emphatic; but only as a base. They were miraculously shrunk together, as a very, very ancient face's should be ... without wrinkles or decrepitude—with all the bloom of early womanhood—but so wise; and a million years old... a million miles away: the room was not vanished, yet seemed to have no dimensions, no measurements. … Her child—the basic child in this wonder—she was loose, watery, sensuous, meaningless, the contrast gave that impression, as she went on sitting there, like an image of a camera obscura, through and supporting the other fulfilling phantom; which was all secrets, yet brought no shuddering of evil. …

  The illusion was swiftly gone. The re-transformation outstripped her eye, and she understood not how it had happened. … only, nothing was more certain to her than what had just been there. So real it had been, that all other kinds of reality, beside it, were faint and approximative. … It had been like another plane added to ordinary reality, by... deity. An apotheosis. …

  She refaced the window quickly, fearful that Ingrid would address words to her. …

  Thus she had been so ignorant—perverse! Her child had never rightly been, but only as a shadow, climbing, climbing, up to an ancient substantial state—how could that which was not, be lost? The state climbed to was past, present, future, all together: therefore, nowhere in cramped earth-existence, but elsewhere—whither, now, all the things of the world must ultimately be moving. …

  Time: its nature must be conceived before the beginning of the understanding of any of these mysteries. How a soul could be in two or more times, at once: how each time would thus be positively true for it; as a mere moment of all time, untrue. … But if the apparent passage of time were solely for rudimentary intelligences, framed by intention to take in but one thing at once! ... Her brain swam and sickened with its efforts to change its laws. …

  Certain only it already was that she dare not refuse Ingrid the continuance and last bitterness—even to tragedy—of this man's acquaintance—of these signals from another time; another vaster circle, outside and inclusive of the little dreaming fragmentary practical circle called real life. The explanation, perhaps, would come with the course... or perhaps the word, explanation, was a mode of the temporary human brain, rudely symbolising some higher mode of apprehension, that should partake as well of instinct, emotion, music. … But, then, what seemed here grief and intolerableness might there be even purest beauty—one loftier word in a loftier speech might have force so to translate it. … With Ingrid she must stand in her casting of childhood. This, once again, she remembered, had been her impulse of golden mother-love, so short a time ago. …

  Her thoughts subsided more and more to her accustomed world—for which, indeed, she waited—but soon she comprehended that her determination was fast; to be subject, though she should stand there an hour, to no further weakening or change.

  She approached her daughter, looking down on her. But Ingrid, perceiving in her face the end of their talk and the announcement of a decision that must be important, herself got up, to confront her wearily with hanging arms; yet, even so, her grace could not be lessened. Their eyes never steadily met.

  Helga said:

  "Yes, it is true: I haven't asked about your apparitions, because I was afraid. And now, when perhaps the courage has come, I feel that your account in words—supposing you could find the words... would be—inadequate. … But you haven't said if your opinion is that such marvels are repeatable. If they might be, I would wish to try and see the
m for myself. If some influence of the place is speaking to you, you are my child."

  Ingrid inclined her head in silence, and her mother continued:

  "Peter is troubled, so he should be with us ... we three together. And we could be joined there by those men, to be given what they want. It can be a last settlement of everything."

  "Only not to-day, mother."

  "No, I wouldn't ask it of you to-day. To-morrow morning, however, is the inquest, and the afternoon will be unsuitable. It will be Saturday: others may be on the hill. But later in the evening. …"

  "To-morrow evening."

  "Then so we will leave it. Peter shall see them, when he returns here, with the proposal. Surely they'll wait till then, knowing that they are to be contented at last. Meanwhile you will keep the house; and not write them at all."

  "Peter will explain."

  "He will explain. … And I must caution you, too. All this has grown up very fast and fantastically, Ingrid; but one must have seen it growing. Neither could I answer your uncle's questions, nor you, I fear. So beware of heedless references. Try to be yourself before him. Already he has taken your absence from the table at lunch rather ambiguously. He knows that you are unhappy since yesterday: that all can't be too well with you and Peter."

  "Perhaps, therefore, he should be told ... yet what is there tellable? If his mind is to be kept easy by my total silence, I can promise that."

  "You couldn't, of course, embellish it with hypocrisy."

  There was a pause.

  "With this great shame of your soul concerning a man you have fastened upon, mother," said the girl, in a quiet tone, "how dare you meet him?"

  But her mother not answering, she was moved to find her own reply to the imperfect expression of what had risen up in her heart,

  "Isn't it that your will is ceasing, like mine? , .. There is a third in this room with us. We are not willing or daring anything; but being ordered. … You never meant, a short time ago, to let me go up there again. The plan is an unreasonable one, appearing reasonable for a moment; but when you have to tell Peter, you will be quite embarrassed by its lack of impartible sense. …"

  "Is there a third in the room, Ingrid? Wouldn't you, otherwise, venture to meet him again—you either?"

  "I have no feeling about him. Mr. Arsinal I would rather not meet there."

  "Why?"

  "He will join those two stones, unless prevented; and a fearful thing may happen."

  "You ask me to drop the design?"

  "No. So evidently it is not yours, but must be. … But I have also thought—your fear and horror of him—they may not be only to bring about this occasion. … They may be, as well, to emphasise and complete your loss of me... soon. I hardly know what I am saying. … If I am to go away anywhere, you are to be told it isn't accidental, but fundamental. I am not to be followed. You and Peter are the world's representatives for me... and so I am to be altogether outcast. … Words cannot say what I feel. …"

  Helga viewed her with a mournful steadfastness, that was already like the sign of a renunciation.

  "Do you tell me, Ingrid, that your two destinies—yours and this man's—are beginning to unite?"

  "I cannot say," replied the girl quickly. "I do not know. It is impossible; and possible, too. All things are possible. I wish this were impossible."

  "You have gone too far to be silent now, however: so would it be through... love?"

  Ingrid for a few moments regarded her mother like a white young seer.

  "No, mother; never through love. Peter shall have so much consolation. That man and I have only at the very first met in the natural world. That was yesterday morning, when I came into the room where you were talking, and could glance at him impersonally, as a stranger. On the other occasions, I daresay we have had no very distinct impression even of each other's persons or faces: our talk has taken us far away from any interest in one another. … But you will insist on this easiest for a woman and a man! Are these events being easy? The lightning flashes, the thunder is rising, the wind is moaning—and you ask if a strange and unpardonable romance is on its way! ... No; if our two destinies are to unite, we should rather be appalled by each other, than love. … What could bring two shrinking beings together? No motive of the world, mother. That is why already I hate his friend, whom I haven't seen. There is no human need for him to be on the Tor with us... and yet no doubt he will and must be. …"

  Helga, however, was kept obstinate in the whole frame of her plan, by that singular fixation of her memory of Ingrid's phantom. Its first terror had begun to be effaced by the minutes, but another sort of permanence seemed to be beginning for it: now it was becoming like a fast and unassailable truth in her head, her heart. The truth of what she knew she had seen was a touchstone... almost, whatever she had before that dividing moment in her life imagined of time and the world, was now to be deemed false, until proved not false; but these unearthlier instincts and irrational decisions belonged to another category; she dared not reject them; she dared not change them in one particular. …

  She wished Ingrid to leave her, that she might think more quietly of all those matters, before Peter came.

  But the girl, understanding from her mother's silence and looking-away, and the agitated twisting of her joined fingers, that she had no more immediately to say, turned slowly from her, and left the room.

  Chapter XXVI

  AT THE STUDIO

  Peter's was the very last house of the straggled village, at its end farthest from Whitestone. It stood well back from the street, that was a road across the moor, down a nondescript hedged approach, half lane, half cul-de-sac, continuing, as it did, past the house's skirting fence as a mere overgrown foot-track to somewhere, seldom used. An allotment was on the dwelling's other side, dividing it from its next neighbour. Peter, when acquiring the property, had knocked two joined cottages into one, and thrown the four upper-storey rooms into a single studio with a roof-light. The retained original windows he had modernised. Inside and out, the place was simple, yet pleasing. Red tiles replaced the former dirty thatch, the walls were green-washed, the chimneys low and snug. What had been kitchen-gardens at the back now flourished as a wilderness of docks, nettles and grass; Peter took some pride in preferring it so.

  At a little before seven Arsinal, having Saltfleet at his back, raised the Silenus-faced front door knocker, and gave with it a sharp quick loud half-dozen raps; then waited, without turning round again to the other. Both men were subdued and taciturn from their afternoon's adventure. The knocking had to be repeated; but then the door opened. Peter showed himself. He recognised his visitors, started with the surprise of complete unexpectation, and gave them a blank look. No one smiled.

  "You here, gentlemen! I very little thought of such a move on your part. … But say if you wish to come in."

  "Perhaps it will be better to talk in a room, unless we are in the way." Arsinal replied this.

  "I'm alone. Please follow me upstairs."

  They went up. Saltfleet, going last, refrained from shutting the front door after him; an omission he was afterwards to find queer; but at the moment, being on this visit almost from the scorn of his own will, which wanted it not, he seemed to himself only to think to make it quick and informal. Peter either noticed nothing, or let it pass.

  The studio was as light and airy as it should be. Its north windows, facing the patch at the back, were open, the south ones, towards the street, closed and curtained. A divan at one end of the room's long length was opposite a standing easel and platform at the other, but the easel was bare, while the few unframed boards and canvases against a wall were turned to disappoint curiosity. Some chairs, a rug or so, a floor litter of prints, portfolios and sheets torn from magazines for some interest of illustration, and a glass-topped table smeared with working paints, nearly completed the furnishing of the den, whose empty grate was strewn with cigarette-ends. Peter lit another cigarette now, and pushed the box along the table in the dir
ection of the callers, but the action was ignored.

  "Sit down."

  A silence followed, for Arsinal, believing that this young man, however unfriendly towards them and possibly rude by temperament he might be, would yet have guessed their errand, wished not to say the wrong thing in being too quick to speak; while Peter was obstinate in declining to help him... Saltfleet, a glint of his eye informed him, was not to talk till aroused, he sat there grim and quiet, the other was to be the interlocutor. … Yet another sort of contact should be acting through that silence. Indeed, each in the room felt the same background, that in this new talk they were not resuming where they had left off in the morning, but that the incidents and wonders of the day had changed something else besides the negotiable situation. Hardly now were they associates, even in a business quickly growing more bewitched for all; only, to each it was seeming as though the others too were oppressed and depressed by the same labourings as his own. A dark magic had stolen into the air. The debate about to be renewed must not only be at a later stage, but also in this stranger peace, that was no peace.

  And still they persisted, and could not well lie down together Peter's fear, and grief, and spite, Arsinal's secret incandescence, Saltfleet's scorn: accordingly could that other identity of undertow spell no harmony. Each was no more than understanding it as a fish might understand the common helplessness of it and its fellows within an invisible drag-net. …