The Color of Evil - The Dark Descent V1 (1991)
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we really reach them. ’ ’ He seemed in the last stages of gloom.
“ Oh, I ’m sure you do,” said Mrs. Iblis comfortingly. “ All
those millions of copies. Power like that over people’s minds
must be a rather terrible thing.” She was conscious that the
very strong cider had reached her very weak head from her
very empty stomach.
The pupils of Coner’s eyes seemed to perform a complete
halfcircle. Then he said: “ You should wear nothing but black.
Cut rather low. The sort of style young girls can’t manage. “
He had placed his hand firmly on Mrs. Iblis’s thorax to indicate precisely how low. Mrs. Iblis withdrew slightly with a distinct shudder.
“ Thank you for the advice.”
He stepped toward her again. “ I find something quite remarkably charming about you. Even in pale blue.”
Without the cider, Mrs. Iblis would probably have blushed
and felt flattered. As it was, she answered: “ Nonsense, Mr.
Coner. I ’m not quite to silly as that.”
The waiter had just drawn a greasy overcoat from the hidden recess which had earlier evicted lobster salad. He departed, worming his way into the garment.
“ Shall I leave the lights, Mr. Coner?”
“ Yes. I ’ll put them out.”
The last guests having also withdrawn, Mrs. Iblis was alone
in the billiard room with her host and a dish filled with sliced
cake.
“ What’s your name?”
“ Iblis. I-B-L-I-S.”
“ How much do you know about me?”
“ Very little more than I ’ve read in the papers and so forth.
Only what everyone knows.”
“ Shall we sit down?”
Mrs. Iblis wanted few things less. However, they sat in the
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depressing yellow glare on blue basketwork chairs brought in
for use by frequenters of the buffet. It Was not even very
warm.
“ It’s close.” Coner passed his handkerchief round the inside of his collar. “ But never mind that. Now where shall I begin? ’ ’ This question was for answer by the speaker himself.
Clearly he was about to tell his life story.
“ I expect you’ll soon have to join your other guests, so I
mustn’t keep you too long.”
“ Oh God,” said Coner, “ the world’s weight! The terror
of one’s own littleness.” He was even whiter and had begun
to weep profusely. His head dropped onto his hands, so that
they covered his face. A cataract of tears fell through his
fingers onto his gray trousers, which became as if spattered
with ink.
Mrs. Iblis, who had never seen a man behave like this
before (and hardly even a woman), was completely at a loss.
After all the events of that day, Coner’s demonstration was
too much for her. Her body was insufficiently nourished, her
mind awash in homemade cider. She too began gaspingly to
weep. The scene in the billiard room was as if the two of
them had just forsaken the last childhood’s illusions.
Coner seemed quite lost to the world. Tears flooded his
clothing. His body shook. His mind might have ceased to
function.
Mrs. Iblis was less collapsed. The tears raced down her
face, but she scrabbled through her handbag for a handkerchief and after a few minutes had somewhat pulled herself together.
“ Please forgive me, Mr. Coner,” she said. “ Is there anything I can do to help?”
Coner went on sobbing and shivering like a man whose
heart was long since broken and for whom such episodes as
this were regular occurrences.
“ Please, Mr. Coner.” She extended her own rather unsteady hand and touched his shoulder. “ What can I do?”
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Afraid, like most women, to go too far in sympathy lest the
sympathy be misinterpreted, she had never in her life gone
further than this.
Coner began to babble distressingly of his littleness and
inadequacy; his responsibilities; his uncertainties; his health
troubles. “ The human mind is such a minnow,’’ he spluttered out. “ If only one could find some all-embracing pattern to guide one.’’
“ The human mind is a whale.” The speaker was Mr. Stillman, who had entered the large murky room unnoticed. It was the first time Mrs. Iblis had seen him since her arrival.
He looked businesslike and prosperous in his well-cut dark
suit. He carried a copy of the Jewish Monthly.
“ The human mind is a whale,” said Mr. Stillman again.
“ It’s all there inside you, enormous unknown things, difficult
to reach. And woe betide the man who looks outside himself
for what he can only find inside. That is surely one thing
which modem psychology has made clearer than ever. The
subconscious mind, you know. So much larger than the conscious. The sublimal self.” He paused. His eye was traveling along the buffet. “ Ah, cake. There are hungry people in the
house. Do you mind if I take the cake?”
Coner was staring at him, his face like an idiot’s.
Mrs. Iblis replied: “ I am sure that will be all right.”
“ Thank you,” said Mr. Stillman, picked up the large white
dish in his free hand, and left.
Coner now partially came to. “ That’s what we’re all trying
to do,” he said. “ To find ourselves.”
“ I gather not,” rejoined Mrs. Iblis, with what might almost have been acerbity. “ You’re all trying to find something larger than yourselves.”
She rose and left the billiard room, leaving Coner recumbent like a drenched tea cloth.
Everybody was eating cake and seemed more cheerful. It
was like the miracle of the loaves, until Mrs. Iblis realized
that volunteers had scoured the house for food and had stumbled upon a cache in the little pantry allotted to the caterers
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for their supplies. Also in the pantry were traces of protein-
ous foodstuffs which the hired staff had withheld and taken
home to sell. The discovery had diverted much of the conversation to questions of supply and then rapidly to politics.
Altogether, though disagreeing with many of the views expressed, Mrs. Iblis had never felt so much at home at Bunhill as now. Even Professor Borgia made comparatively agreeable
company when discoursing upon the complexities of Swiss
dietetics. Mrs. Iblis took another piece of cake herself, though
it was long past her hour. After the last crumb went down,
Sister Nuper emerged from the music room at the head of
her young men. Idly curious, Mrs. Iblis counted them. They
numbered no less than twelve, each as radiantly good-looking
as the rest. Would Sister Nuper, her pleasant evening over,
now proceed to bed? Apparently not: Sister Nuper went directly to the front door, opened it, and led the way out into the chilly night, closely attended as ever by her faithful followers. The door banged loudly behind the last of them, shaking the house.
Mrs. Iblis now dared to ask questions. “ Where are they
going at this hour? ’ ’
Her neighbor, a metaphysical daredevil who had recently
been the youngest Ph.D. of his year, became suddenly reserved, almost aggressive. “ They’ve gone for a walk,” he replied rudely, as if it were no business of hers.
Mrs. Iblis
did not care to invite another snub from these
strange people by pursuing the matter further. Despite the
welcome loosening up of the talk, she had the irritating feeling that she alone (or almost alone) was excluded from a general and advantageous secret. Of course, she reflected,
she had not been really intended to be present that weekend.
Nonetheless, she felt piqued. She decided to go to bed and
went. One or two of her fellow guests to whom she said good
night (there was no sign of Coner or Mrs. Coner, or even
Mr. Stillman) seemed surprised, but only faintly.
* * *
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Mrs. Iblis turned out the light and drew back the curtains,
glad to stand for a moment in the cool darkness. Though the
storm was long since over, the sky was not clear. There appeared, on the contrary, to be a dense ceiling of low cloud obscuring the stars but tinged with a radiance towards the
east, which Mrs. Iblis supposed to come from the moon.
In the comfortable bed Mrs. Iblis soon fell asleep once
more, despite the uncertainties relating to Sister Nuper’s
movements. After a dreamless span of uncertain length, she
was awakened by a knocking on the door, at once purposeful
and agitated.
“ Come in, come in,” said Mrs. Iblis rather peevishly. She
switched on the bedside light.
She supposed it to be Sister Nuper (in who knows what
condition?); but, in feet, it was Mavis. She wore saffron silk
pajamas and no dressing gown. Her face was covered with
unpleasing traces of what Mrs. Iblis presumed to be a
“ pack.”
“ I ’m sorry, but there’s something wrong. I ’m frightened.”
Mavis was shivering noticeably.
Mrs. Iblis felt none too helpful. “ You should have put
something on.”
“ Yes. I suppose I should.” Mavis vaguely clasped her pajamas about her.
“ Have my dressing gown?”
“ Thank you.” Rather halfheartedly, she donned it. “ Forgive my coming to you. Mrs. Coner’s right out.”
“ Out?”
“ Stuff she takes to make her sleep. She’s never compos
mentis till midday.”
“ What about the other guests? Not that I don’t want to
help,” Mrs. Iblis added. Still, she did feel that this was the
last straw.
“ That’s just it. They’re not in their rooms. I ’m frightened,” repeated Mavis. “ It’s bloody awful.”
Mrs. Iblis was now sitting up in bed and herself feeling
none too warm. “ Tell me exactly what’s the matter.”
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“ There’s a queer light.” Mavis crossed to the window and
slightly drew back one of the curtains. “ Look!”
“ It’s the moon. ”
“ There’s no moon.”
“ How do you know?”
“ We compost the garden. You need to know for that. It’s
left to me, like most other things. I do know.”
“ Do you think it’s a fire?”
“ No.” Mavis further withdrew the curtain. “ Do you?”
A white radiance filled the air.
“ It was beginning when I went to bed. I thought it was
the moon. Are you quite sure?”
“ Quite sure. It comes from the other side of the house.”
“ Searchlights?”
“ It’s not in beams. It’s everywhere.”
Mrs. Iblis felt no particular eagerness to leave her bed and
investigate further.
“ Have you looked on the other side of the house?”
“ No. I wanted some moral support. Things go on here,
you know.” Mavis looked around the room so as to seem in
part to localize her reference in a way which Mrs. Iblis found
rather unpleasant. “ I went to Ruth’s room and it was empty.
Then I went to several other rooms. They are all empty.”
“ So then you thought of Sister Nuper?”
“ No. I thought of you. Will you come down with me?”
“ Yes, of course, if you wish it.” Mrs. Iblis got out of bed.
“ But why do we have to go down? Is that the first thing? ”
“ They’re all in the hall. I can hear them.”
Mrs. Iblis was reduced to putting on her overcoat. “ Well
now, let’s see.”
In what was precisely a half-light, the house did seem to
Mrs. Iblis somewhat eerie. A life-sized figure of Buddha
stood on the half landing, serenely menacing.
Through the thick brown curtains below and up the stairwell ascended a wavering hubbub. Then, just as Mrs. Iblis and her companion reached the bottom, a woman screamed
sharply. She controlled herself almost at once.
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The scene in the hall was certainly the strangest Mrs. Iblis
had yet seen. The entire Forum (or so it seemed) were packed
in, like refugees from some catastrophe. All appeared to be
in their nightclothes, and there were the usual contrasts,
comic and revealing. Professor Borgia’s friend, the rotund
young man, Mrs. Iblis noticed, was wearing a rich Oriental
dressing gown. The leader of the New Vision Movement was
wearing a nightshirt. Mrs. Iblis looked at once for Coner but
could not see him.
In the poor light the throng appeared all to be gazing at
the front door. They were now quite silent. Ruth, in the loose
sweater and trousers she had worn by day, was elbowing her
way forward, her face like that of St. Joan en route to the
stake. Mrs. Iblis realized that she was going to open the door
and deduced that someone had screamed when Ruth had made
clear this intention.
All their faces were wrung in a conflict between a dreadful
curiosity and the instinct to flee. A grim figure of the Kingsley Martin type collapsed upon his knees and, sinking his tortured face in his hands, began to pray. The rotund young
man glanced at him and smiled faintly. A tall woman in an
ulsterlike garment began to emit crooning sounds. Her face
was stony with dread. Mrs.. Iblis suspected that it had been
she who had screamed.
Ruth had now struggled through to the door. With a final
self-dedicatory gesture she lugged it open.
The strange luminosity fell upon her martyr’s face. The
doorway was filled with light. Behind could be seen a huge
luminous shape. The light filled this shape and seemed to go
towering upwards. The shape recalled in Mrs. Iblis’s mind
some common quotation: something about the feet of the
gods on the mountains.
The Forum began to creep out into the garden, silently
like snails under the moon.
“ Come away,” said a voice quietly to Mrs. Iblis. “ Come
upstairs.” Mr. Stillman, in white silk pajamas and a black
dressing gown, had gently touched her arm. He still carried
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a copy of the Jewish Monthly, his finger between the pages.
Round his neck was a scarf with the colors of some good
club.
Mrs. Iblis glanced at Mavis.
“ You come too,” said Mr. Stillman.
“ I wonder what’s become of Mr. Coner?”
“ He’s in good hands,” said Mr. Stillman; and Mavis
seemed will
ing to leave it at that.
The trio ascended to the first floor. There Mrs. Iblis had
expected them to stop. But Mr. Stillman said: “ We’re going
on the roof.”
They went up two more stories; then by a Slingsby ladder
to the roof, which Coner had laid out for sunbathing and deck
games. Inflatable rubber objects lay about, once bright and
crude, now discolored. Every now and then one stumbled
over a quoit. The house was L-shaped, so that, by looking
over the rail, Mrs. Iblis could see the Forum stUl issuing
slowly from the front door. The light kept burning all night
in Mrs. Coner’s bedroom could also be seen.
Once outside, members of the Forum seemed to lose initiative and to accumulate in a mass against the wall of the house. The entire atmosphere was filled with the strange light,
but Mrs. Iblis began to realize that the light nonetheless had
a distinct source, a source independent of the general air. It
was like the concentration and narrowing of the perceptions
which often follow emergence from an anesthetic. The cause
of the confusion was simply the vastness of the source. Up
here it looked as if the air was alight: but in fact it was a vast
shining figure which filled the entire visible earth and sky.
As each member of the Forum realized this fact, he or she
drew back into the company of the other members against
the wall.
Although the members of the Forum might have been
brightened, Mrs. Iblis found the scale of the occurrence simply too large for fright. She quite consciously rehearsed this fact over to herself in her mind. Mavis, however, was shaking
more than ever and looked about to faint. Mrs. Iblis drew
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forward a striped deck chair and seated Mavis upon it, whispering some comforting words to her. She noticed that the strange light drew all the strong color from Mavis’s pajamas.
Mr. Stillman was looking on at these particular workings of
the universe with apparently complete equipoise. The paper
in his hand might have been a program of events.
The light suddenly increased around and upon the Forum
huddled against the wall to the left of the front door. It was
as if an immense spotlight picked out a group of the opposition about to be laid low with machine-gun fire. But in fact it was that the vast figure was looking downwards from the