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Title:      All Hallows' Eve (1914)
Author:     Charles Williams
* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *
eBook No.:  0400061.txt
Edition:    1
Language:   English
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Date first posted:          January 2004
Date most recently updated: January 2004

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A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook

Title:      All Hallows' Eve (1914)
Author:     Charles Williams





CONTENTS

I. THE NEW LIFE

II. THE BEETLES

III. CLERK SIMON

IV. THE DREAM

V. THE HALL BY HOLBORN

VI. THE WISE WATER

VII THE MAGICAL SACRIFICE

VIII. THE MAGICAL CREATION

IX. TELEPHONE CONVERSATIONS

X. THE ACTS OF THE CITY



                            Chapter One

                           THE NEW LIFE

She was standing on Westminster Bridge. It was twilight, but the City
was no longer dark. The street lamps along the Embankment were still
dimmed, but in the buildings shutters and blinds and curtains had been
removed or left undrawn, and the lights were coming out there like the
first faint stars above. Those lights were the peace. It was true that
formal peace was not yet in being; all that had happened was that
fighting had ceased. The enemy, as enemy, no longer existed, and one
more crisis of agony was done. Labour, intelligence, patience-much need
for these; and much certainty of boredom and suffering and misery, but
no longer the sick vigils and daily despair.

Lester Furnival stood and. looked at the City while the twilight
deepened. The devastated areas were hidden; much was to be done but
could be. In the distance she could hear an occasional plane. Its sound
gave her a greater sense of relief than the silence. It was precisely
not dangerous; it promised a truer safety than all the squadrons of
fighters and bombers had held. Something was ended, and those remote
engines told her so. The moon was not yet risen; the river was dark
below. She put her hand on the parapet and looked at it; it should make
no more bandages if she could help it. It was not a bad hand, though it
was neither so clean nor so smooth as it had been years ago, before the
war. It was twenty-five now, and to her that seemed a great age. She
went on looking at it for a long while; in the silence and the peace,
until it occurred to her that the silence was very prolonged, except for
that recurrent solitary plane. No one, all the time she had been
standing there, had crossed the bridge; no voice, no step, no car had
sounded in the deepening night.

She took her hand off the wall, and turned. The bridge was as empty as
the river; no vehicles or pedestrians here, no craft there. In all that
City she might have been the only living thing. She had been so
impressed by the sense of security and peace while she had been looking
down at the river that only now did she begin to try and remember why
she was there on the bridge. There was a confused sense in her mind that
she was on her way somewhere; she was either going to or coming from her
own flat. It might have been to meet Richard, though she had an idea
that Richard, or someone with Richard, had told her not to come. But she
could not think of anyone, except Richard, who was at all likely to do
so, and anyhow she knew she had been determined to come. It was all
mixed up with that crash which had put everything out of her head; and
as she lifted her eyes, she saw beyond the Houses and the Abbey the
cause of the crash, the plane lying half in the river and half on the
Embankment. She looked at it with a sense of its importance to her, but
she could not tell why it should seem so important. Her only immediate
concern with it seemed to be that it might have blocked the direct road
home to her flat, which lay beyond Millbank and was where Richard was or
would be and her own chief affairs. She thought of it with pleasure; it
was reasonably new and fresh, and they had been lucky to get it when
Richard and she had been married yesterday. At least-yesterday? well,
not yesterday but not very much longer than yesterday, only the other
day. It had been the other day. The word for a moment worried her; it
had been indeed another, a separate, day. She felt as if she had almost
lost her memory of it, yet she knew she had not. She had been married,
and to Richard.

The plane, in the thickening darkness, was now but a thicker darkness,
and distinguishable only because her eyes were still fixed on it. If she
moved she would lose it. If she lost it, she would be left in the midst
of this-this lull. She knew the sudden London lulls well enough, but
this lull was lasting absurdly long. All the lulls she had ever known
were not as deep as this, in which there seemed no movement at all, if
the gentle agitation of the now visible stars were less than movement,
or the steady flow of the river beneath her; she had at least seen that
flowing-or had she? was that also still? She was alone with this night
in the City-a night of peace and lights and stars, and of bridges and
streets she knew, but all in a silence she did not know, so that if she
yielded to the silence she would not know those other things, and the
whole place would be different and dreadful.

She stood up from the parapet against which she had been leaning, and
shook herself impatiently. "I'm moithering," she said in a word she had
picked up from a Red Cross companion, and took a step forward. If she
could not get directly along Millbank, she must go round. Fortunately
the City was at least partially lit now. The lights in the houses shone
out, and by them she could see more clearly than in the bad old days.
Also she could see into them; and somewhere in her there was a small
desire to see someone-a woman reading, children playing, a man listening
to the wireless; something of that humanity which must be near, but of
which on that lonely bridge she could feel nothing. She turned her face
towards Westminster and began to walk.

She had hardly taken a dozen steps when she stopped. In the first
moment, she thought it was only the echo of her own steps that she
heard, but immediately she knew it was not. Someone else, at last, was
there; someone else was coming, and comipg quickly. Her heart leapt and
subsided; the sound at once delighted and frightened her. But she grew
angry with this sort of dallying, this over-consciousness of sensation.
It was more like Richard than herself. Richard could be aware of
sensation so and yet take it in its stride; it was apt to distract her.
She had admired him for it, and still did; only now she was a little
envious and irritated. She blamed Richard for her own incapacity. She
had paused, and before she could go on she knew the steps. They were
his. Six months of marriage had not dulled the recognition; she knew the
true time of it at once. It was Richard himself coming.   She went
quickly on.

In a few moments she saw him; her eyes as well as her ears recognized
him. Her relief increased her anger. Why had he let her in for this
inconvenience? had they arranged to meet? if so, why had he not been
there? why had she been kept waiting? and what had she been doing while
she had been kepThe lingering? lack of memory drove her on and increased
her irritation. He was coming. His fair bare head shone darkgold under a
farther street lamp; under the nearer they came face to face.

He stopped dead as he saw her, and his face went white. Then he sprang
towards her. She threw up her hand as if to keep him off. She said, with
a coldness against her deeper will, but she could not help it: "Where
have you been? what have you been doing? I've been waiting."

He said: "How did you get out? what do you mean waiting?"

The question startled her. She stared at him. His own gaze was troubled
and almost inimical; there was something in him which scared her more.
She wondered if she were going to faint, for he seemed almost to float
before her in the air and to be far away. She said: "What do you mean?
Where are you going? Richard!"

For he was going-in another sense. Her hand still raised, in that
repelling gesture, she saw him move backwards, uncertainly, out of the
range of that dimmed light. She went after him; he should not evade her.
She was almost up to him, and she saw him throw out his hands towards
her. She caught them; she knew she caught them, for she could see them
in her own, but she could not feel them. They were terrifying, and he
was terrifying. She brought her hands against her breast, and they grew
fixed there, as, wide-eyed with anger and fear, she watched him
disappearing before her. As if he were a ghost he faded; and with him
faded all the pleasant human soundsfeet, voices, bells, engines, wheels-
which now she knew that, while she had talked to him, she had again
clearly heard. He had gone; all was silent. She choked on his name; it
did not recall him. He had vanished, and she stood once more alone.

She could not tell how long she stood there, shocked and impotent to
move. Her fear was at first part of her rage, but presently it separated
itself, and was cold in her, and became a single definite thought. When
at last she could move, could step again to the parapet and lean against
it and rest her hands on it, the thought possessed her with its
desolation. It dominated everything-anger and perplexity and the
silence; it was in a word-"Dead," she thought, "dead." He could not
otherwise have gone; never in all their quarrels had he gone or she;
that certainty had allowed them a licence they dared not otherwise have
risked. She began to cry-unusually, helplessly, stupidly. She felt the
tears on her face and peered at the parapet for her handbag and a
handkerchief, since now she could not-O despair!-borrow his, as with her
most blasting taunts she ad sometimes done. It was not on the parapet.
She took a step or two away, brushed with her hand the tears from her
eyes, and looked about the pavement. It was not on the pavement. She was
crying in the street and she had neither handkerchief nor powder. This
was what happened when Richard was gone, was dead. He must be dead; how
else could he be gone? how else could she be there, and so?

Dead, and she had done it once too often. Dead, and this had been their
parting. Dead; her misery swamped her penitence. They had told each
other it made no difference, and now it had made this. They had
reassured each other in their reconciliations, for though they had been
fools and quick-tempered, high egotists and bitter of tongue, they had
been much in love and they had been but fighting their way. But she felt
her own inner mind had always foreboded this. Dead; separate; for ever
separate. It did not, in that separation, much matter who was dead. If
it had been she-

She. On the instant she knew it. The word still meant to her so much
only this separation that the knowledge did not at first surprise her.
One of them was; she was. Very well; she was. But then-she was. On that
apparent bridge, beneath those apparent stars, she stood up and knew it.
Her tears stopped and dried; she felt the stiffness and the stains on
her apparent flesh. She did not now doubt the fact and was still not
surprised. She remembered what had happened-herself setting out to meet
Evelyn at the Tube, and instead coming across her just over there, and
their stopping. And then the sudden loud noise, the shrieks, the violent
pain. The plane had crashed on them. She had then, or very soon after,
become what she now was.

She was no longer crying; her misery had frozen. The separation she
endured was deeper than even she had believed. She had seen Richard for
the last time, for now she herself was away, away beyond him. She was
entirely cut off; she was dead. It was now a more foreign word than it
had ever been and it meant this. She could perhaps, if it was he who had
been dead, have gone to him; now she could not. She could never get back
to him, and he would never come to her. He could not: she had thrown him
away. It was all quite proper; quite inevitable. She had pushed him
away, and there was an end to Richard. But there was no end to her.

Never in her life had she contemplated so final an end which was no end.
All change had carried on some kind of memory which was encouragement.
She had not always supposed it to be so; she had told herself, when she
left school, when she was married, that she was facing a new life. But
she had, on the whole, been fortunate in her passage, and some
pleasantness in her past had always offered her a promise in the future.
This however was a quite new life. Her good fortune had preserved her
from any experience of that state which is-almost adequately-called
"death-in-life"; it had consequently little prepared her for this life-
in-death. Her heart had not fallen ever, ever-through an unfathomed
emptiness, supported only on the fluttering wings of every-day life; and
not even realizing that it was so supported. She was a quite ordinary,
and rather lucky, girl, and she was dead.

Only the City lay silently around her; only the river flowed below, and
the stars flickered above, and in the houses lights shone. It occurred
to her presently to wonder vaguely-as in hopeless affliction men do
wonder-why the lights were shining. If the City were as empty as it
seemed, if there were no companion anywhere, why the lights? She gazed
at them, and the wonder flickered and went away, and after a while
returned and presently went away again, and so on for a long time. She
remained standing there, for though she had been a reasonably
intelligent and forceful creature, she had never in fact had to display
any initiative-much less such initiative as was needed here. She had
never much thought about death; she had never prepared for it; she had
never related anything to it; She had nothing whatever to do with it, or
(therefore) in it. As it seemed to have nothing to offer her except this
wide prospect of London, she remained helpless. She knew it was a wide
prospect, for after she had remained for a great while in the dark it
had grown slowly light again. A kind of pale October day had dawned, and
the lights in the apparent houses had gone out; and then it had once
more grown dark, and they had shone-and so on-twenty or thirty times.
There had been no sun. During the day she saw the River and the City;
during the night, the stars. Nothing else.

Why at last she began to move she could not have said. She was not
hungry or thirsty or cold or tired-well, perhaps a little cold and
tired, but only a little, and certainly not hungry or thirsty. But if
Richard, in this new sense, were not coming, it presently seemed to her
useless to wait. But besides Richard, the only thing in which she had
been interested had been the apparatus of mortal life; not people-she
had not cared for people particularly, except perhaps Evelyn; she was
sincerely used to Evelyn, whom she had known at school and since; but
apart from Evelyn, not people-only the things they used and lived in,
houses, dresses, furniture, gadgets of all kinds. That was what she had
liked, and (if she wanted it now) that was what she had got. She did
not, of course, know this, and she could not know that it was the
sincerity of her interest that procured her this relaxation in the void.
If Richard had died, this would have remained vivid to her. Since she
was dead, it remained also, though not (stripped of all forms of men and
women) particularly vivid.

She began to walk. It did not much matter which way. Her first conscious
movement-and even that was hardly a movement of volition-was to look
over her shoulder in the seeming daylight to see if the plane were
there. It was, though dimmer and smaller, as if it were fading. Would
the whole City gradually fade and leave her to emptiness? Or would she
too fade? She did not really attempt to grapple with the problem of her
seeming body; death did not offer her problems of that sort. Her body in
life had never been a problem; she had accepted it, inconveniences and
all, as a thing that simply was. Her pride-and she had a good deal of
pride, especially sexual-had kept her from commitments except with
Richard. It was her willingness to commit herself with Richard that made
her believe she (as she called it) loved Richard, though in her bad
moments she definitely wished Richard, in that sense, to love her more
than she loved him. But her bad moments were not many. She really did
want, need, and (so far) love Richard. Her lack and longing and despair
and self-blame were sincere enough, and they did not surprise her. It
had been plain honest passion, and plain honest passion it remained. But
now the passion more and more took the form of one thought; she had done
it again, she had done it once too often, and this was the unalterable
result.

She began to walk. She went up northward. That was instinct; she at
least knew that part of London. Up from the bridge, up Whitehall-no-one.
Into Trafalgar Square-noone. In the shops, in the offices-no-one. They
were all full and furnished with everything but man. At moments, as she
walked, a horrible fancy took her that those at which she was not, at
the moment, looking were completely empty; that everything was but a
facade, with nothing at all behind it; that if she had walked straight
through one of those shops, she would come out into entire nothing. It
was a creeping sensation of the void; she herself could not have put it
into words. But there the suspicion was.

She came to the bottom of Charing Cross Road, and began to go up it. In
front of her she saw the curtains of brick that hid the entrances to
Leicester Square Tube Station. By one of them, on the opposite side of
the road, someone was standing. She was still not conscious of any shock
of surprise or of fear or even of relief. Her emotions were not in
action. There had been no-one; there was now someone. It was not
Richard; it was another young woman. She crossed the road towards the
unknown; it seemed the thing to do. Unknown? not unknown. It was-and now
she did feel a faint surprise-it was Evelyn. In the sudden recollection
of having arranged to meet Evelyn there, she almost forgot that she was
dead. But then she remembered that their actual meeting had been
accidental. They had both happened to be on their way to their appointed
place. As she remembered, she felt a sudden renewal of the pain and of
the oblivion. It did not remain. There was nothing to do but go on. She
went on.

The figure of Evelyn moved and came towards her. The sound of her heels
was at first hideously loud on the pavement as she came, but after a
step or two it dwindled to almost nothing. Lester hardly noticed the
noise at the time or its diminution; her sense was in her eyes. She.
absorbed the approaching form as it neared her with a growing intensity
which caused her almost to forget Richard. The second-best was now the
only best. As they drew together, she could not find anything to say
beyond what she had said a hundred times-dull and careless: "O hallo,
Evelyn!" The sound of the words scared her, but much more the immediate
intolerable anxiety about the reply: would it come? It did come. The
shape of her friend said in a shaking voice: "O hallo, Lester!"

They stopped and looked at each other. Lester could not find it possible
to speak of their present state. Evelyn stood before her, a little
shorter than she, with her rather pinched face and quick glancing black
eyes. Her black hair was covered by a small green hat. She wore a green
coat; and her hands were fidgeting with each other. Lester saw at once
that she also was without a handbag. This lack of what, for both of
them, was almost, if not quite, part of their very dress, something
without which they were never seen in public; this loss of handkerchief,
compact, keys, money, letters, left them peculiarly desolate. They had
nothing but themselves and what they wore-no property, no convenience.
Lester felt nervous of the loss of her dress itself; she clutched it
defensively. Without her handbag she was doubly forlorn in this empty
City. But Evelyn was there, and Evelyn was something. They could, each
of them, whatever was to happen, meet it with something human close by.
Poor deserted vagrants as they were, they could at least be companions
in their wanderings.

She said: "So you're here!" and felt a little cheered. Perhaps soon she
would be able to utter the word death. Lester had no lack of courage.
She had always been willing, as it is called, "to face facts"; indeed,
her chief danger had been that, in a life with no particular. crisis and
no particular meaning, she would invent for herself facts to face. She
had the common, vague idea of her age that if your sexual life was all
right you were all right, and she had the common vague idea of all ages
that if you (and your sexual life) were not all right, it was probably
someone else's fault-perhaps undeliberate, but still their fault. Her
irritation with her husband had been much more the result of power
seeking material than mere fretfulness. Her courage and her power, when
she saw Evelyn, stirred; she half-prepared a part for them to play-
frankness, exploration, daring. Oh if it could but have been with
Richard!

Evelyn was speaking. Her quick and yet inaccurate voice rippled in words
and slurred them. She said: "You have been a long time. I quite thought
you wouldn't be coming. I've been waiting-you can't think how long.
Let's go into the Park and sit down."

Lester was about to answer when she was appalled by the mere flat
ordinariness of the words. She had been gripping to herself so long her
final loss of Richard that she had gripped also the new state in which
they were. This talk of sitting down in the Park came over her like a
nightmare, with a nightmare's horror of unreality become actual. She saw
before her the entrance to the station, and she remembered they had
meant to go somewhere by Tube. She began, with an equal idiocy, to say:
"But weren't we-" when Evelyn gripped her arm. Lester disliked being
held; she disliked Evelyn holding her; now she disliked it more than
ever. Her flesh shrank. Her eyes were on the station entrance, and the
repulsion of her flesh spread. There was the entrance; they had meant to
go-yes, but there could not now be any Tube below; or it would be as
empty as the street. A medieval would have feared other things in such a
moment-the way perhaps to the citta dolente, or the people of it, smooth
or hairy, tusked or clawed, malicious or lustful, creeping and
clambering up from the lower depths. She did not think of that, but she
did think of the spaces and what might fill them; what but the dead?
Perhaps-in a flash she saw them-perhaps there the people, the dead
people, of this empty City were; perhaps that was where the whole
population had been lying, waiting for her too, the entrance waiting and
all below the entrance. There were things her courage could not face.
Evelyn's clutch on her arm was light, light out of all proportion to the
fear in Evelyn's eyes, but in her own fear she yielded to it. She
allowed herself to be led away.

They went into the Park; they found a seat; they sat down. Evelyn had
begun to talk, and now she went on. Lester had always known Evelyn
talked a good deal, but she had never listened to more than she chose.
Now she could not help listening, and she had never before heard Evelyn
gabble like this. The voice was small and thin as it usually was, but it
was speedier and much more continuous. It was like a river; no, it was
like something thrown about on a river, twisted and tossed. It had no
pressure; it had no weight. But it went on. She was saying-"that we
wouldn't go to see it to-day, after all. I mean, there aren't many
people about, and I do hate an empty theatre, don't you? Even a cinema.
It always seems different. I hate not being with people. Should we go
and see Betty? I know you don't much care for Betty, or her mother. I
don't like her mother myself, though of course with Betty she must have
had a very difficult time. I wish I could have done more for her, but I
did try. I'm really very fond of Betty, and I've always said that there
was some simple explanation for that odd business with the little German
refugee a year or two ago. Naturally I never said anything to her about
it, because she's almost morbidly shy, isn't she? I did hear that that
painter had been there several times lately; what's his name? Drayton;
he's a friend of your husband, isn't he? but I shouldn't think he-"

Lester said-if she said; she was not certain, but she seemed to say: "Be
quiet, Evelyn."

The voice stopped. Lester knew that she had stopped it. She could not
herself say more. The stillness of the City was immediately present
again, and for a moment she almost regretted her words. But of the two
she knew she preferred the immense, the inimical stillness to that
insensate babble. Death as death was preferable to death mimicking a
foolish life. She sat, almost defiantly, silent; they both sat silent.
Presently Lester heard by her side a small and curious noise. She looked
round. Evelyn was sitting there crying as Lester had cried, the tears
running down her face, and the small noise came from her mouth. She was
shaking all over, and her teeth were knocking together. That was the
noise.

Lester looked at her. Once she would have been impatient or sympathetic.
She felt that, even now, she might be either, but in fact she was
neither. There was Evelyn, crying and chattering; well, there was Evelyn
crying and chattering. It was not a matter that seemed relevant. She
looked away again. They went on sitting.

The first shadow of another night was in the sky. There was never any
sun, so it could not sink. There was a moon, but a moon of some
difference, for it gave no light. It was large and bright and cold, and
it hung in the sky, but there was no moonlight on the ground. The lights
in the houses would come on, and then go out. It was certainly growing
darker. By her side the chattering went on; the crying became more full
of despair. Lester dimly remembered that she would once have been as
irritated by it as all but the truly compassionate always are by misery.
Now she was not. She said nothing; she did nothing. She could not help
being aware of Evelyn, and a slow recollection of her past with Evelyn
forced itself on her mind. She knew she had never really liked Evelyn,
but Evelyn had been a habit, almost a drug, with which she filled spare
hours. Evelyn usually did what Lester wanted. She would talk gossip
which Lester did not quite like to talk, but did rather like to hear
talked, because she could then listen to it while despising it. She kept
Lester up to date in all her less decent curiosities. She came because
she was invited and stayed because she was needed. They went out
together because it suited them; they had been going out that afternoon
because it suited them; and now they were dead and sitting in the Park
because it had suited someone or something else-someone who had let a
weakness into the plane or had not been able to manage the plane, or
perhaps this City of facades which in a mere magnetic emptiness had
drawn them to be there, just there.

Still motionlessly gazing across the darkening Park, Lester thought
again of Richard. If Richard had been in distress by her side-not, of
course, crying and chattering, more likely dumb and rigid-would she have
done anything? She thought probably not. But she might, she certainly
might, have cried to him. She would have expected him to help her. But
she could not think of it; the pang took her too quickly; he was not
there and could not be. Well ... the pang continued, but she was growing
used to it. She knew she would have to get used to it.

The voice by her side spoke again. It said, through its sobs, the sobs
catching and interrupting it: "Lester! Lester, I'm so frightened." And
then again: "Lester, why won't you let me talk?"

Lester began: "Why-" and had to pause, for in the shadow her voice was
dreadful to her. It did not sound like a voice; only like an echo. In
the apparent daylight, it had not been so bad, but in this twilight it
seemed only like something that, if it was happening at all, was
happening elsewhere. It could not hold any meaning, for all meaning had
been left behind; in her flat perhaps which she would never occupy
again; or perhaps with the other dead in the tunnels of the Tube; or
perhaps farther away yet, with, whatever it was that had drawn them
there and would draw them farther; this was only a little way-Oh what
else remained to know?

She paused, but she would not be defeated. She forced herself to speak;
she could and would dare that at least. She said: "Why.... Why do you
want to talk now?"

The other voice said: "I can't help it. It's getting so dark. Let's go
on talking. We can't do anything else."

Lester felt again the small weak hand on her arm, and now she had time
to feel it; nothing else intervened. She hated the contact. Evelyn's
hand might have been the hand of some pleading lover whose touch made
her flesh creep. She had, once or twice in her proud life, been caught
like that; once in a taxi-the present touch brought sharply back that
other clasp, in this very Park on a summer evening. She had only just
not snapped into irritation and resentment then; but in some ways she
had liked the unfortunate man, and they had been dining pleasantly
enough. She had remained kind; she had endured the fingers feeling up
her wrist, her whole body loathing them, until she could with sufficient
decency disengage herself. It was her first conscious recollection of an
incident in her past-that act of pure courtesy, though she did not then
recognize it either as recollection or as a courtesy. Only for a moment
she thought she saw a taxi race through the Park away before her, and
then she thought it could not be and was not. But she stiffened herself
now against her instinctive shrinking, and let her arm lie still, while
the feeble hand clutched and pawed at her.

Her apprehension quickened as she did so. To be what she was, to be in
this state of death, was bad enough, but at the same time to feel the
dead, to endure the clinging of the dead, being dead to know the dead-
the live man in the taxi was far better than this, this that was Evelyn,
the gabbling voice, the chattering teeth, the helpless sobs, the
crawling fingers. But she had gone out with Evelyn much more than with
the man in the taxi; her heart acknowledged a debt. She continued to sit
still. She said in a voice touched by pity if not by compassion: "It's
no good talking, especially like that. Don't you understand?"

Evelyn answered, resentfully choking, but still holding on: "I was only
telling you about Betty, and it's all quite true. And no-one can hear me
except you, so it doesn't matter."

No-one could hear; it was true enough-unless indeed the City heard,
unless the distant faqades, and the nearer fagade of trees and grass,
were listening, unless they had in them just that reality at least, a
capacity to overhear and oversee. The thin nothingness could perhaps
hear and know. Lester felt all about her a strange attention, and Evelyn
herself, as if frightened by her own words, gave a hasty look round, and
then burst again into a hysterical monologue: "Isn't it funny -we're all
alone? We never thought we'd be alone like this, did we? But I only said
what was quite true, even if I do hate Betty. I hate everyone except
you; of course I don't hate you; I'm very fond of you. You won't go
away, will you? It's nearly dark again, and I hate it when it's dark.
You don't know what the dark was like before you came. Why are we here
like this? I haven't done anything. I haven't; I tell you I haven't. I
haven't done anything."

The last word rose like a wail in the night, almost (as in the old
tales) as if a protesting ghost was loosed and fled, in a cry as thin as
its own tenuous wisp of existence, through the irresponsive air of a
dark world, where its own justification was its only, and worst,
accusation. So high and shrill was the wail that Lester felt as though
Evelyn herself must have been torn away and have vanished, but it was
not so. The fingers still clutched her wrist, and Evelyn still sat
there, crying and ejaculating, without strength to cry louder: "I
haven't done anything, anything. I haven't done anything at all."

And what then could be done now? If neither Evelyn nor she herself had
ever of old done anything, what could or should they do now-with nothing
and no-one about them? with only the shell of a City, and they
themselves but shell, and perhaps not even true shell? only a faint
memory and a pang worse than memory? It was too much to bear. As if
provoked by an ancient impetuosity of rage, Lester sprang to her feet;
shell or body, she sprang up, and the motion tore her from the hand that
held her. She took a step away. Better go alone than sit so companioned;
and then as her foot moved to the second step she paused. Evelyn had
wailed again: "Oh don't go! don't go!" Lester felt herself again
thrusting Richard away, and she paused. She looked back over her
shoulder; half in anger and half in pity, in fear and scorn and
tenderness, she looked back. She saw Evelyn, Evelyn instead of Richard.
She stared down at the other girl, and she exclaimed aloud: "Oh my god!"

It was the kind of casual exclamation she and Richard had been in the
habit of throwing about all over the place. It meant nothing; when they
were seriously aggressive or aggrieved, they used language borrowed from
bestiality or hell. She had never thought it meant anything. But in this
air every word meant something, meant itself; and this curious new
exactitude of speech hung there like a strange language, as if she had
sworn in Spanish or Pushtu, and the oath had echoed into an invocation.
Nothing now happened; no-one came; not a quiver disturbed the night, but
for a moment she felt as if someone might come, or perhaps not even
that-no more than a sudden sense that she was listening as if to hear if
it was raining. She was becoming strange to herself; her words, even her
intonations, were foreign. In a foreign land she was speaking a foreign
tongue; she spoke and did not know what she said. Her mouth was uttering
its own habits, but the meaning of those habits was not her own. She did
not recognize what she used. "I haven't done anything.... Oh my God!"
This was how they talked, and it was a great precise prehistoric
language forming itself out of the noises their mouths made. She
articulated the speech of Adam or Seth or Noah, and only dimly
recognized the intelligibility of it. She exclaimed again, despairingly:
"Richard!" and that word she did know. It was the only word common to
her and the City in which she stood. As she spoke, she almost saw his
face, himself saying something, and she thought she would have
understood that meaning, for his face was part of the meaning, as it
always had been, and she had lived with that meaning-loved, desired,
denounced it. Something intelligible and great loomed and was gone. She
was silent. She turned; she said, more gently than she had spoken
before: "Evelyn, let's do something now."

"But I haven't done anything," Evelyn sobbed again. The precise words
sounded round them, and Lester answered their meaning.

"No," she said, "I know. Nor have I-much." She had for six months kept
house for Richard and herself and meant it. She had meant it; quarrels
and bickerings could not alter that; even the throwing it away could not
alter it. She lifted her head; it was as certain as any of the stars now
above her in the sky. For the second time she felt-apart from Evelyn-her
past present with her. The first had been in the sense of that shadowy
taxi racing through the Park, but this was stronger and more fixed. She
lived more easily for that moment. She said again: "Not very much. Let's
go."

"But where can we go?" Evelyn cried. "Where are we? It's so horrible."

Lester looked round her. She saw the stars; she saw the lights; she saw
dim shapes of houses and trees in a landscape which was less familiar
through being so familiar. She could not even yet manage to enunciate to
her companion the word death. The landscape of death lay round them; the
future of death awaited them. Let them go to it; let them do something.
She thought of her own flat and of Richard-no. She did not wish to take
this other Evelyn there; besides, she herself would be, if anything at
all, only a dim shadow to Richard, a hallucination or a troubling
apparition. She could not bear that, if it could be avoided; she could
not bear to be only a terrifying dream. No; they must go elsewhere. She
wondered if Evelyn felt in the same way about her own home. She knew
that Evelyn had continuously snubbed and suppressed her mother, with
whom she lived; once or twice she had herself meant to say something, if
only out of an indifferent superiority. But the indifference had beaten
the superiority. It was now for Evelyn to choose. She said: "Shall we go
to your place?"

Evelyn said shrilly: "No; no. I won't see Mother. I hate Mother."

Lester shrugged. One way and another, they did seem to be rather
vagrants, unfortunate and helpless creatures, with no purpose and no
use. She said: "Well . . . let's go." Evelyn looked up at her. Lester,
with an effort at companionship, tried to smile at her. She did not very
well succeed, but at least Evelyn, slowly and reluctantly, got to her
feet. The lights in the houses had gone out, but a faint clarity was in
the air -perhaps (though it had come quickly) the first suggestion of
the day. Lester knew exactly what she had better do, and with an effort
she did it. She took Evelyn's arm. The two dead girls went together
slowly out of the Park.




                            Chapter Two

                            THE BEETLES

It was a month or so since Lester Furnival had been buried. The plane
crash had been explained and regretted by the authorities. Apologies and
condolences had been sent to Mrs. Furnival's husband and Miss Mercer's
mother. A correspondence on the possibility and propriety of
compensation had taken place in the Press, and a question or two had
been asked in the House. It was explained that nothing could be done,
but that a whole set of new instructions had been issued to everyone
connected with flying, from Air Marshals to factory hands.

The publicity of this discussion was almost a greater shock to Richard
Furnival than his wife's death; or, at least, the one confused the
other. He was just enough to see that, for the sake of the poor, the
Crown ought always at such times to be challenged to extend as a grace
what it refused as a claim. He was even conscious that Lester, if the
circumstances had been reversed, might properly have had no difficulty
in taking what he would have rejected; not that she was less fastidious
or less passionate than he, but it would have seemed to her natural and
proper to spoil those whom he was content to ignore.

The Foreign Office in which through the war he had been serving, pressed
on him prolonged leave. He had been half-inclined to refuse, for he
guessed that, after the first shock, it was not now that his distress
would begin. The most lasting quality of loss is its unexpectedness, No
doubt he would know his own loss in the expected places and times-in
streets and stations, in restaurants and theatres, in their own home. He
expected that. What he also expected, and yet knew he could not by its
nature expect, was his seizure by his    own loss in places uniquely
his-in his office while he read Norwegian minutes, in the Tube while he
read the morning paper, at a bar while he drank with a friend. These
habits     had existed before he had known Lester, but they could not
escape her. She had, remotely but certainly, and without her own
knowledge, overruled all. Her entrance into all was absolute, and
lacking her the entrance of the pain.

He went away; he returned. He went away to spare his office-companions
the slight embarrassment of the sight of him. He returned because he
could not bear to be away. He had not yet taken up his work; in a few
days he would. Meanwhile he determined unexpectedly one afternoon to
call on Jonathan Drayton.

He had known him for a number of years, long before Jonathan became a
well-known painter. He was also a very good painter, though there were
critics who disapproved of -him; they said his colour was too shrill.
But he had been appointed one of the official war-artists, and two of
his paintings-Submarine Submerging and Night Fighters over Paris-were
among the remarkable artistic achievements of the war. He also had been
for some time on leave, in preparation (it was understood) for the grand
meetings after the peace, when he would be expected to produce historic
records of historic occasions. He had been once or twice, a little
before the accident, at the Furnivals' flat, but he had then gone to
Scotland and written to Richard from there. A later postcard had
announced his return.

Richard had come across the card accidentally on this particular
afternoon, and had suddenly made up his mind to go round. Jonathan had
been living, or rather had left his things while he was away, on the top
floor of a building in the City, not far from St. Paul's, one room of
which was sufficiently well-lit to be used as a studio. It was to the
studio that he took Richard after a warm welcome. He was shorter and
stockier than his friend, and he had a gencral habit of leaving Richard
the most comfortable chair and himself sitting on the table. He settled
himself there, and went on: "I've got several things to tell you; at
least, I've got one to tell you and two to show you. If I tell you first
... the fact is I'm practically engaged."

"Splendid!" said Richard. Such thin        s were unlikely to distress
him, as Jonathan guessed; one could not altogether say what might, but
not that. He was quite simply pleased. He said: "Do I know her? and what
do you mean by'practically'?"

"I don't know if you know her," Jonathan said. "She's Betty Wallingford,
the daughter of the Air Marshal. She and her mother are coming here
presently."

"I remember hearing her name," Richard said. "She was a friend of
Lester's-or rather not a friend, but they knew each other some time ago.
But I rather gathered she was ill or something, and her mother didn't
let her go out much."

"That's true enough," Jonathan answered. "It was the Air Marshal who
asked me to dine one night after I'd painted him. He's a nice creature,
though not interesting to paint. Lady Wallingford keeps Betty rather
close, and why I say 'practically' is because, when things came to a
head with Betty the other day, she didn't seem very keen. She didn't
exactly refuse, but she didn't encourage. They're both coming here
presently. Don't go, whatever you do. I've a particular reason for
asking you to stay."

"Have you?" Richard said. "What is it?"

Jonathan nodded at an easel on which was a canvas covered by a cloth.
"That," he said, and looked at his watch. "We've an hour before they
come, and I'd like you to see it first. No; it's not a painting of
Betty, or of her mother. It's something quite different, but it may-I
don't know, but it just may-be a little awkward with Lady Wallingford.
However, there's something else for you to see first-d'you mind? If you
hadn't come along, 1. was going to ring you up. I'm never quite happy
about a thing till you've seen it."

This, as Richard knew, was a little extreme. But it had a basis of
truth, whenjonathan exaggerated, he exaggerated in the grand style. He
never said the same thing to two people; something similar perhaps, but
always distinguished, though occasionally hardly anyone but he could
distinguish the distinction. Richard answered: "I've never known you
take much notice of anything I said. But show it to me all the same,
whatever it is."

"Over here," Jonathan said, and took his friend round to the other side
of the room. A see  'ond easel was standing back to back with the first,
also holding a canvas, but this uncovered. Richard set himself to look
at it.

It was of a part of London after a raid-he thought, of the City proper,
for a shape on the right reminded him dimly of St. Paul's. At the back
were a few houses, but the rest of the painting was of a wide stretch of
desolation. The time was late dawn; the sky was clear; the light came,
it seemed at first, from the yet unrisen sun behind the single group of
houses. The light was the most outstanding thing in the painting;
presently, as Richard looked, it seemed to stand out from the painting,
and almost to dominate the room itself. At least it so governed the
painting that all other details and elements were contained within it.
They floated in that imaginary light as the earth does in the sun's. The
colours were so heightened that they were almost at odds. Richard saw
again what the critics meant when they said that Jonathan Drayton's
paintings "were shrill" or "shrieked", but he saw also that what
prevented this was a certain massiveness. The usual slight distinction
between shape and hue seemed wholly to have vanished. Colour was more
intensely image than it can usually manage to be, even in that art. A
beam of wood painted amber was more than that; it was light which had
become amber in order to become wood. All that massiveness of colour was
led, by delicate gradations almost like the vibrations of light itself,
towards the hidden sun; the eye encountered the gradations in their
outward passage and moved inwards towards their source. It was then that
the style of the painting came fully into its own. The spectator became
convinced that the source, of that light was not only in that hidden
sun; as, localized, it certainly was. "Here lies the east; does not the
day break here?" The day did, but the light did not. The eye, nearing
that particular day, realized that it was leaving the whole fullness of
the light behind. It was everywhere in the painting-- concealed in
houses and in their projected shadows, lying in ambush in the cathedral,
opening in the rubble, vivid in the vividness of the sky. It would
everywhere have burst through, had it not chosen rather to be shaped
into forms, and to restrain and change its greatness in the colours of
those lesser limits. It was universal, and lived.

Richard said at last: "I wish you could have shown the sun."

"Yes?" said Jonathan. "Why?"

"Because then I might have known whether the light's in the sun or the
sun's in the light. For the life of me, I can't be certain. It rather
looks as though, if one could see the sun, it would be a kind of
container... no, as if it would be made of the light as well as
everything else."

"And very agreeable criticism," Jonathan said. "I admit you imply a
whole lot of what I only hope are correct comments on the rest of it.
You approve?"

"It's far and away the best thing you've done," Richard answered. "It's
almost the only thing you've done-now you've done it. It's like a modern
Creation of the World, or at least a Creation of London. How did you
come to do it?"

"Sir Joshua Reynolds", said Jonathan, "once alluded to 'common
observation and a plain understanding' as the source of all art. I
should like to think I agreed with Sir Joshua here."

Richard still contemplated the painting. He said slowly: "You've always
been good at light. I remember how you did the moon in that other thing-
Doves on a Roof, and there was something of it in the Planes and the
Submarine. Of course one rather expects light effects in the sea and the
air, and perhaps one's more startled when the earth becomes like the sea
or the air, But I don't think that counts much. The odd thing is that
you don't at any time lose weight. No-one can say your mass isn't
massive."

"I should hope they couldn't," said Jonathan. "I've no notion of losing
one thing because I've put in another. Now to paint the massiveness of
light-"

"What do you call this?" Richard asked.

"A compromise, I fear," Jonathan answered. "A necessary momentary
compromise, I allow. Richard, you really are a blasted nuisance. I do
wish you wouldn't always be telling me what I ought to do next before
I've been let enjoy what I've done. This, I now see, is compromising
with light by turning it into things. Remains to leave out the things
and get into the light. "

Richard smiled. "What about the immediate future?" he asked. "Do you
propose to turn Churchill into a series of vibrations in pure light?"

Jonathan hummed a little. "At that-" he began and stopped. "No; I'm
babbling. Come and see the other thing, which is different."

He led the way back round the easels. He said: "Have you ever heard of
Father Simon?"

"Have I not?" said Richard. "Is he or is he not in all the papers,
almost as much as the Peace? The Foreign Office has been taking a mild
concern in all these new prophets, including this one. Then there's the
Russian one and the Chinese. You get them at times like these. But they
all seem, from our point of view, quite innocuous. I've not been very
interested myself."

"Nor was I, " said Jonathan, "till I met Lady Wallingford. Since then I
have read of him, listened to him, met him, and now painted him. Lady
Wallingford came across him in America when she was there soon after the
last war, and I gather fell for him then. During this war he became one
of their great religious leaders, and when he came over she was one of-
or rather she was-his reception committee. She's devoted to him; Betty-
not so much, but she goes with her mother." He paused frowning, as if he
were about to make a further remark about Betty and her mother, but he
changed his mind and went on: "Lady Wallingford thought it would be a
privilege for me to paint the Prophet."

Richard said: "Is that what they call him?"

His hand on the covering of the canvas, Jonathan hesitated. "No," he
said, "I don't want to be unfair. No. What she actually calls him is the
Father. I asked her if he was a priest, but she took no notice. He's got
a quite enormous following in America, though here, in spite of the
papers, he's kept himself rather quiet. It's been suggested that he's
the only man to evangelize Germany. It's also been suggested that he and
his opposite numbers in Russia and China shall make a threefold World
Leadership. But so far he's not done or said anything about it. He may
be just waiting. Well, I did the best I could. Here's the result."

He threw the covering back and Richard was confronted with the painting.
It was, at first glance, that of a man preaching. The congregation, of
which there seemed a vast number, had their backs to the spectator. They
were all a little inclined forward, as if (Richard supposed) in the act
of listening, so that they were a mass of slightly curved backs. They
were not in a church; they were not in a room; it was difficult to see
where they were, and Richard did not particularly mind. It was in an
open space somewhere; what he could see of the ground was not unlike the
devastation in the other picture, though more rock-like, more in the
nature of a wilderness than a City. Beyond them, in a kind of rock
pulpit against a great cliff, was the preacher. He seemed to be a
tallish dark man of late middle age, in a habit of some sort. His face,
clean-shaven, heavy, emaciated, was bent a little downward towards his
audience. One hand was stretched out towards them, also a little
downward, but the hand was open and turned palm upward.
Behind him his shadow was thrown on the rock; above, the sky was full of
heavy and rushing cloud.

Richard began to speak, and checked himself. He looked more closely at
the preaching figure, especially at the face. Though the canvas was
large the face inevitably was small, but it was done with care, and as
Richard studied it, the little painted oval began to loom out of the
picture till its downward-leaning weight seemed to dominate and press on
the audience below, and to make all- clouds and crowds and rock-pulpit
greyer and less determined around it. If it was a pulpit; Richard was
not clear whether the figure was casting a shadow on the rock or
emerging from a cleft in the rock. But the face -it was almost as if the
figure had lowered his face to avoid some expression being caught by the
painter, and had failed, for Jonathan had caught it too soon. But what
exactly had Jonathan caught? and why had Jonathan chosen to create
precisely that effect of attempted escape and capture? Richard said at
last: "It's a wonderful effect-especially the colour of the face. I
don't know how you got that dark deadness. But what-" He stopped.

"Richard," Jonathan said accusingly, "you were going to ask what it
meant."

"I don't think I was," Richard answered. "I may have been going to ask
what he meant. I feel as if there was something in him I hadn't grasped.
He's . . ." and again he paused.

"Go on!" Jonathan said. "The ladies won't be here just yet, and you may
now have got a general idea of why I'd like you to be here when they do
come. Anyhow, go on; say anything that occurs to you."

Richard obediently renewed his study and his reverie. They had done this
together on a number of occasions before a new painting. Richard did not
mind sounding foolish before his friend, and Jonathan did not mind being
denigrated by his friend; in fact, he always swore that one soliloquy of
this kind was worth a great deal of judicious criticism. Painting was
the only art, he maintained, about which it could be done; one couldn't
hear a poem or a symphony as one could look at a painting; in time one
could never get the whole at once, but one could in space-or all but;
there was bound perhaps to be a very small time-lag even there. Except
for that, all the aural arts aspired to escape from recollection into
the immediate condition of the visual.

Richard said: "The skin looks almost as if it were painted; I mean-as if
you were painting a painted effect. Very dark and very dull. Yet it's a
sort of massive dullness-much like your mass and light; only the
opposite. But what I don't get is the expression. At first he seems to
be just a preacher driving his point home-convicting them of sin or
something. Only, though that mass makes him effective enough-even his
hand seems to be pressing down on them, though it is back downwards; it
might almost be pulling the sky down on them by a kind of magic-a sort
of Samson and the pillars of cloud-yet the more I look at what I can see
of the face, the more I think that it doesn't mean anything. It seems to
be as near plain bewilderment as anything I ever saw."

"Ho! " said Jonathan, getting off the table to which he had retired.
"Ho! You're a genius, Richard. I thought that too. But I've looked at it
so often that I can't make out now who's bewildered-him or me."

Richard looked a question.

" I began painting the damned fellow, as one does, " Jonathan went on,
pacing up and down the room and frowning at the floor; "of course, he
wasn't sitting for me, so I had to do the best I could from one meeting
at St. Bartholomew's, a couple of orations, seven photographs in Picture
Post, a dozen daily papers, and other oddments. Lady Wallingford says he
won't sit because of his reserve, which may of course be true. But at a
pinch I can manage to get something out of such a general hodge-podge
fairly well, tiresome as the whole business always is, and this time I
took particular notice. I wasn't trying to paint his soul or anything; I
just wanted to get him done well enough to please Betty's mother. And
when I'd done it I stared at it and I thought: 'Either I don't know what
he is or he doesn't know where he is.' But a fellow who's put it over
all America and bits of England is likely to know where he is, I
suppose, so I must just have got him completely wrong. It's odd, all the
same. I generally manage to make something more or less definite. This
man looks as if he were being frightfully definite and completely
indefinite at the same moment-an absolute master and a lost loony at
once."

"Perhaps he is," said Richard doubtfully.

Jonathan came to a stop by the easel and sighed drearily. "No," he said,
"no. I'm afraid not. In fact, I'm afraid it's a complete give-away for
me. The main point is-do you think Lady Wallingford will notice it? And
what will she say if she does?"

"I shouldn't think she would," said Richard. "After all, I only just did
myself and I'm far more used to your style than she is."

"She may not be used to me, but she's extremely used to him," Jonathan
said gloomily. "She's one of the real inner circle. Betty and I will
have a much more difficult time if there's any trouble. Otherwise, I
shouldn't mind in the least. What do you people know about him,
Richard?"

"We know," said Richard, "that his name is Simon Leclerc -sometimes
called Father Simon and sometimes Simon the Clerk. We gather he's ajew
by descent, though born in France, and brought up in America. We know
that he has a great power of oratory-at least, over there; he hasn't
tried it much here so far-and, that it's said he's performed a number of
very remarkable cures, which I don't suppose we've checked. We know that
quite intelligent people are attached to him-and that's about all we do
know; at least, it's all I know. But, as I told you, I've not been
particularly interested. You say you've heard him preach; what does he
preach?"

"Love," said Jonathan, more gloomily than ever as he looked at his
watch. "They'll be here in a minute. Love, so far as I can gather, but I
was more looking at him than listening to him, and it's almost
impossible for me really to do both at once. I could sort of feel his
effect going on all round. But it was mostly Love, with a hint of some
secret behind, which Love no doubt could find out. He sometimes gives
private interviews, I know, but I really felt it'd be too embarrassing
to go to one. So I can only generalize from the bits I caught while I
was staring. Love, and something else."

There was a ring at the front door bell, Jonathan threw the cover again
over the painting, and said: "Richard, if you go now, I'll never forgive
you. And if you don't say the right thing, I'll never listen to a word
of yours again." He went hastily out.

He was back so soon that Richard had hardly time to do more than feel at
a distance within him that full and recollected life which, whenever it
did show itself, threatened to overthrow all other present experiences.
It was his first experience of such a nature, of "another" life. Almost,
as he too turned from the easel, he saw Lester's dead face, as he had
seen it, floating, dim and ill-defined, before his eyes; and the two
women who came into the room, though more spectacular, were more empty
and shell-like than she.

They were not unlike, with thirty years between. They were both
smallish. Lady Wallingford was grey and thin, and had something almost
of arrogance in her manner. Betty was fair and thinner than, at her age,
one would have thought she ought to be. She looked tired and rather wan.
Her eyes, as she entered, were turned on Jonathan, and Richard thought
he saw her hand drop from his. Jonathan presented him. Lady Wallingford
took him, so to speak, for granted-so granted as to be unnecessary.
Betty gave him a quick little glance of interest, which for the moment
he did not quite understand; having forgotten that she was supposed to
have known Lester. He bowed twice, and stepped back a pace. Jonathan
said: "You'll have some tea first, Lady Wallingford? It's not too warm
to-day."

Lady Wallingford said: "We'll look at the picture first. I'm anxious to
see it."

"I'm very cold, Mother," Betty said-a little nervously, Richard thought.
"Couldn't we have tea?"

Lady Wallingford entirely ignored this. She said: "Is that covere& thing
it? Let me see it."

Jonathan, with the faintest shrug, obeyed. He went to the easel; he
said, over his shoulder: "You'll understand that this is rather an
impression than a portrait," and he pulled aside the covering. There was
a silence, concentrated on the painting. Richard, discreetly in the
background, waited for its first quiver.

The first he observed was in Betty. She was just behind her mother, and
he saw her yield to a faint shudder. Jonathan saw it too; he almost made
a movement towards her, and checked it before Lady Wallingfbrd's
immobility. After what seemed like minutes, she said: "What is our
Father coming out of, Mr. Drayton?"

Jonathan pinched his lip, glanced at Betty, and answered: "What you
choose, Lady Wallingford."

Lady Wallingford said: "You must have some idea. What is he standing on?
rock?"

"Oh yes, rock," saidjonathan readily; and then, as if reluctantly
truthful, added: "At least, you might as well call it rock."

The private view was not going very well. Betty sat down, as if her
power had failed. Lady Wallingford said: "Is he standing on it?"

Jonathan answered: "It doesn't much matter, perhaps." He glanced rather
anxiously at Richard. Richard took a step forward, and said, as
engagingly as he could: "It's the whole impression that counts, don't
you think?"

It was quite certainly the wrong remark. Lady Wallingford took no notice
of it. She went on, still addressing herself to Jonathan, "And why are
the people so much like insects?"

Betty made an inarticulate sound. Jonathan and Richard both stared at
the painting. It had not occurred to either of them-not even apparently
to Jonathan-that the whole mass of inclined backs could be seen almost
as a ranked mass of beetles, their oval backs dully reflecting a distant
light. Once the word had been spoken, the painting became suddenly
sinister. Jonathan broke out, but his voice was unconvincing: "They're
not ... they weren't meant ... they don't look like beetles."

"They look exactly like beetles," Lady Wallingford said. "They are not
human beings at all. And Father Simon's face is exactly the same shape."

Richard saw that there at least she was right. The oval shape of the
face differed only in its features and its downward inclination from the
innumerable backs, and in the fact that it reflected no light. It was
this lack of reflection which gave it its peculiar deadness; the backs
had that dim reflection, but this face none. But now he saw it as so
similar in shape that it seemed to him for half a second not a face at
all, but another back; but this eyed and mouthed as if the living human
form ended in a gruesomeness, and had a huge beetle for its head, only a
beetle that looked out backward through its coat and had a wide speaking
mouth there also; a speaking beetle, an orating beetle, but also a dead
and watching beetle. He forgot the aesthetic remark he had been about to
make.

Jonathan was saying: "I think that's rather reading things into it." It
was not, for him, a particularly intelligent remark; but he was
distracted by the thought of Betty, and yet his voice was as cold as
Lady Wallingford's own. He could manage his words but not his tone.

Lady Wallingford moved her head a little more forward. Richard saw the
movement, and suddenly, as she stood in front of him, she too took on
the shape of an overgrown insect. Outside the painting her back repeated
the shapes in the painting. Richard suddenly found himself believing in
the painting. This then was what the hearers of Father Simon looked
like. He glanced at the face again, but he supposed he had lost that
special angle of sight; it was now more like a face, though of that dead
artificiality he had remarked before. Lady Wallingford leaned towards
the picture, as if she were feeling for it with invisible tentacles. But
she was feeling with a hideous and almost dangerous accuracy. She now
said, and her voice was more than cold; it was indignant: "Why have you
painted our Father as an imbecile?"

Here, however, Jonathan was driven to protest more strongly. He turned
his back on the painting, and he said with some passion: "No, really,
Lady Wallingford, I have not. I can see what you mean by complaining of
the shapes, though honestly I never thought of anything of the sort, and
I'll do something. I mean, I'll paint something different somehow. But I
never had the slightest intention of painting Father Simon in any
displeasing way. . . .

Lady Wallingford said: "You intended. . . . Look at it!" Jonathan
stopped speaking; he looked at the woman; then he looked beyond her at
Betty. She looked back despairingly. Richard observed the exchange of
their eyes, and the full crisis became clear to him. He felt, as they
did, Betty swept away on Lady Wallingford's receding anger; he saw her
throw out a hand towards Jonathan, and he saw Jonathan immediately
respond. He saw him move away from the painting and go across to Betty,
take her hands, and lift her from her chair so that she stood against
him. His arm round her, he turned again towards the painting. And again
Richard's eyes went with his.

It was as he had last seen it. Or was it? Was the face not quite so
down-turned? was it more lifted and already contemplating the room? Had
he misjudged the angle? of course, he must have misjudged the angle. But
to say it was "contemplating" was too much; it was not contemplating but
only staring. What he had called bewilderment was now plain lack of
meaning. Jonathan's phrase-"an absolute master and a lost loony at the
same time"-recurred to him. The extended hand was no longer a motion of
exposition or of convincing energy, holding the congregation attentive,
but rather drawing the congregation after it, a summons and a physical
enchantment. It drew them towards the figure, and behind the figure
itself perhaps to more; for the shadow of the figure on the cliff behind
was not now a shadow, but the darkness of a cleft which ran back very
deeply, almost infinitely deep, a corridor between two walls of rock.
Into that corridor the figure, hovering on its shadowy platform, was
about to recede; and below it all those inclined backs were on the point
of similar movement. A crowd of winged beetles, their wings yet folded
but at the very instant of loosing, was about to rise into the air and
disappear into that crevice and away down the prolonged corridor. And
the staring emaciated face that looked out at them and over them was the
face of an imbecile. Richard said impatiently to himself- "This is all
that old woman talking," because, though one did get different angles on
paintings, one did not usually so soon see on the same canvas what was
practically a different painting. Blatant and blank in the grey
twilight, where only a reflection of the sun shone from the beetles'
coats, the face hung receding; blank and blatant, the thousand insects
rose towards it; and beyond them the narrow corridor hinted some extreme
distance towards which the whole congregation and their master were on
the point of unchecked flight. And yet the face was not a true face at
all; it was not a mockery, but the hither side of something which was
hidden and looking away, a face as much stranger than the face they saw
as that-face or back-from the other insect backs below it.

They had all been silent; suddenly they all began to speak. Richard said
recklessly: "At least the colouring's superb." Betty said: "Oh.jon, need
you?" Jonathan said: "It's a trick of this light. Don't cry, Betty. I'll
do something else." Lady Wallingford said: "We won't keep you, Mr.
Drayton. If that's serious, we have very little in common. If it's not
serious, I didn't expect to be insulted. We'll go, Betty. My daughter
will write to you, Mr. Drayton."

"This is quite absurd," jonathan said. "Ask Mr. Furnival, and he'll tell
you that it wasn't in the least like that until you talked us into
believing it. I'm extremely sorry you don't like it, and I'll do
something different. But you can't think that I meant to show you a
painting of a madman and a mass of beetles as a portrait of your Father
Simon. Especially when I know what you think about him. Is it likely?"

"It appears to be a fact," said Lady Wallingford. She had turned her
back on the canvas, and was looking bitterly at Jonathan. "If we are
nothing more than vermin to you, Betty!"

Betty was still holding on to Jonathan. It seemed to give her some
strength, for she lifted her head and said: "But, Mother, Jonathan is
going to alter it."

"Alter it!" said Lady Wallingford. "He will alter it to something still
more like himself. You will have nothing more to do with him. Come."

Jonathan interrupted. "Lady Wallingford," he said, "I've apologized for
something I never thought or intended. But Betty's engagement to me is
another matter. I shan't accept any attempt to interfere with that."

"No?" Lady Wallingford said. "Betty will do what I tell her, and I have
other plans. This pretended engagement was always a ridiculous idea, and
now it is finished."

"Mother-" Betty began. Lady Wallingford, who had been looking at
Jonathan, turned her eyes slowly to her daughter. The slight movement of
her head was so deliberate that it concentrated a power not felt in that
-room till then. Her eyes held Betty as in the painting behind her the
outstretched hand held the attentive congregation; they summoned as that
summoned. Jonathan was thwarted, enraged, and abandoned. He stood,
helpless and alone, at the side of an exchange of messages which he
could not follow; he felt Betty flag in his arm and his arm was useless
to her. He tightened it, but she seemed to fall through it as a hurt
dove through the air by which it should be supported. Richard, as he saw
that slow movement, was reminded suddenly of Lester's way of throwing up
her hand; the physical action held something even greater than the
purpose which caused it. It was not only more than itself in its
exhibition of the mind behind it, but it was in itself more than the
mind. So killing, though it may express hate, is an utterly different
thing from hate. There was hate in the room, but that particular act was
not so much hate as killing, as pure deliberate murder. As a man weak
from illness might try to wrestle with a murderer and fail, he thought
he heard himself saying sillily: "Lady Wallingford, if I may speak,
wouldn't it be better if we talked about this another time? There's no
need to murder the girl at once, is there? I mean, if Jonathan did
something different, perhaps we could avoid it? or we might look at it-
at the portrait-in a different light? and then you might see her in a
different light? Sometimes a little attention. . . ."

He was not quite sure how much of this he had actually said, but he
stopped because Jonathan was speaking. Jonathan was speaking very
angrily and very quickly, and he was talking of Betty's father the Air
Marshal, and of his own aunt who would put Betty up for a few days, and
how they would get married almost to-morrow, and how all the paintings
and all the parents and all the prophets under heaven could not
interfere. He spoke close above Betty's ear, and several times he tried
to get her to turn and look at him. But she did not; she had gone even
paler than she had been before, and as Lady Wallingford took the first
step towards the door she too began to turn towards it. She twisted
herself suddenly out of Jonathan's arm, and she said nothing in reply to
the entreaties, persuasions, and commands which he continued to address
to her. Richard thought her face as she did so was very like another
face he had seen; the identification of that other troubled him for a
moment, and then was suddenly presentit was Lester's when he had last
seen it, Lester's when she was dead. The common likeness of the dead was
greater than any difference between their living faces; they were both
citizens of a remoter town than this London, and the other town was in
this room. He saw beyond Betty Lady Wallingford, who had walked across
the room and was looking back at Betty from the door, and her face,
though it was not that of the dead, was like a hard cliff in the world
of the dead, or like a building, if the dead had buildings, a house or a
temple of some different and disastrous stone. The whole ordinary room
became only an imitation of a room; Jonathan and he were ghosts in a
ghostly chamber, the realities were the man in the cleft of the rock and
the rising beetles, and the dead face of Betty, and the living face-but
in what way living?-of her tyrant. Even while he shivered in a sudden
bleakness, Betty had disengaged herself from Jonathan and gone over to
her mother. Lady Wallingford opened the door. She said to Betty: "We
will go to Holborn." She motioned her daughter before her; they went
out. The two men heard the shutting of the outer door.

They looked at each other. With that departure, the room became again a
room, and no more the outskirts of another world. Richard drew a breath,
and glanced again at the painting. It seemed to him now impossible to
miss its actuality. Seen as human beings, those shapes had been
motionless; seen as beetles, they were already in motion and on the
point of flight. The painting lived, as the Mona Lisa does, in the
moment of beginning, in the mathematical exactitude of beginning. Yet
now Richard uncertainly felt more; there was an ambiguity in it, for the
shapes might be either. That was its great, apparently unexpected, and
certainly unwanted, success: men who were beetles, beetles who were men;
insects who had just been men, men who had just become insects.
Metamorphosis was still in them. But could he then, he wondered, still
gazing, think of them the other way, insects who had just become men,
men who had just been insects? why not? Could humanity be living out of
them?-some miracle in process? animality made newly rational? and their
motion the rising into erect man? and the stretched arm the sign and
power that called them?

He looked along the arm; his eyes rose to the face that ruled and called
them? He saw it was impossible. That blank face could never work
miracles; or if it could, then only miracles of lowering and loss. He
could not persuade himself that it was growing into power; the
metempsychosis there, if any had been, was done. The distance in the
cleft behind, which he now clearly saw, as if the walls of it palely
shone with their own light, held no promise of a lordlier change. There
was no life there but that of rock-"lutto di Pietra di color ferrigno-
all iron-hued stone". What other life that stone might hold in itself,
the life in the woman's face by the door, the life that had seemed to
impinge on the room, could not be known by a face that had lost
understanding. And then he remembered that this was but the backward-
looking, the false, the devised face. What might the true face be that
looked away down the cleft, between the walls, to the end of the
corridor, if there was an end? That indeed might know more, much and
very terribly more.

He made an effort and turned his eyes away. Jonathan was moving towards
him; he said as he came, "What a mother!"

"But didn't you guess anything of this?" Richard asked, almost with
curiosity.

"Oh I don't know," Jonathan answered irritably. "I thought perhaps while
I was doing it that there was something odd about it, and then I thought
there wasn't and that I was imagining things. One gets confused and
can't judge. And I certainly thought she wouldn't notice it, or want to
notice it. Nor would she, but she doesn't mean me to marry Betty."

Richard said: "But supposing to destroy it was the only way? Suppose
Miss Wallingford asked you to?"

"Well, she hasn't," said Jonathan. "It'll be time enough, when she does.
I don't know-probably I should. It'd be tiresome, but if it eased
things.... She doesn't care for this Simon herself; she only goes
because her mother makes her."

"I'd like to see him for myself," Richard said. "Where is he? What was
that remark about Holborn?"

"You go," saidjonathan. "It's a place just between Holborn and Red Lion
Square-you'll easily find it. Go and hear him speak. He doesn't do it
often, but you'll find out when he's going to. Go and see, and tell me
the result."

"Well, I think I will," said Richard. "To-morrow. I'm very sorry about
all this. What do you think you'll do?"

"Just think first," Jonathan answered. "Shall I stick out or shall I try
and come to terms? I don't believe Sir Bartholomew'll be much good, even
when he does get back from Moscow, but at least I could see him, and
it's going to be damned difficult to keep in touch with Betty. She might
be a novice or a nun, the way her mother keeps her. I believe she even
reads her letters, and I'm sure she watches her telephone calls. Come
round to-morrow, will you, if it's not a bother? I shall want to talk to
you."

Richard promised and left. He came out into the London streets about the
time when everyone else was also going home, and after a glance at the
crowded transport he determined to walk. There was about the general
hubbub something that eased and pleased him. He relaxed his spirit a
little as he moved among them. He thought of Jonathan and Betty, and he
thought also: "I wish Lester were here; she'd know what to do, and she
knows Betty." It would be very convenient now if Lester could call on
Betty; he wished for Jonathan's sake that she could. A little of
Lester's energy and Lester's style and even Lester's temper might be of
a good deal of use to Betty now.

It occurred to him, with a light surprise, that he was thinking quite
naturally of Lester. He was sincerely sorry, for Jonathan's sake, that
her strong femininity was lost-for Jonathan's sake, not at that moment
for his own. It was what she was that was needed. What she was-not what
she was to him. It occurred to him then that he had on the whole been in
the habit of thinking of Lester only in relation to himself. He saw
suddenly in her the power that waited for use, and he saw also that he
had not taken any trouble about that power; that he had, in fact, been
vaguely content to suppose it was adequately used in attending to him.
He said, almost aloud: "Darling, did I neglect you?" It was no ordinary
neglect that he meant; of that certainly he had not been guilty-and of
this other perhaps she had been as guilty as he. No-not as guilty; she
knew more of him in himself than he had ever troubled to know of her in
herself. It was why her comments on him, in gaiety or rage, always had
such a tang of truth; whereas his were generally more like either
cultured jesting or mere abuse. The infinite accuracy of a wife's
intelligence stared out at him. He acknowledged what, in all his sincere
passion, he had been unwilling to acknowledge, that she was often simply
right, and the admission bound him to her the closer, dead though she
might be. He thought how many chances he had missed of delighting in her
entire veracity, instead of excusing, protesting, denying. The glowing
splendour of her beauty rose, and it was a beauty charged with
knowledge. It was that, among much else, that he had neglected. And now
they all needed her, and she was not there.

She was. It was along Holborn that he was walking, for he had half-
thought of going that night to look for Simon's hall or house or
whatever it was. And there, on the very pavement, the other side of a
crossing, she stood. He thought for the first second that there was
someone with her. He was held by the appearance as motionless as in
their early days he had thought he must be-though in fact in those early
days he had never actually stopped. Now he did. It was as if that shock
of her had at last compelled him to acknowledge it outwardly-at last,
but as he had always almost believed he did, perhaps more in those days
at the beginning when the strangeness was greater and the dear
familiarity less. But the strangeness, for all the familiarity, had
never quite gone, nor was it absent now; it was indeed, he felt, the
greater, as well it might be. They stood on either side that Holborn by-
way, and gazed.

He felt, as he gazed, more like a wraith than a man; against her vigour
of existence he hung like a ghost, and was fixed by it. -He did not then
remember the past hour in Jonathan's room, nor the tomb-like image of
Lady Wallingford. Had he done so, he would have felt Lester's to be as
much stronger than that woman's as hers had seemed stronger than his
own. Lester was not smiling any recognition; the recognition was in her
stillness. The passionate mouth was serious and the eyes deep with
wonder and knowledge: of him? certainly of him. He thought almost he saw
her suspire with a relief beyond joy. Never, never again would he
neglect. The broken oaths renewed themselves in him. One hand of hers
was raised and still almost as if it rested on some other arm, but the
other had flown to her breast where it lay as if in some way it held him
there. They made, for those few seconds, no movement, but their
stillness was natural and not strange; it was not because she was a
ghost but because she was she that he could not stir. This was their
thousandth meeting, but yet more their first, a new first and yet the
only first. More stable than rock, more transient in herself than
rivers, more distant-bright than stars, more comfortable than happy
sleep, more pleasant than wind, more dangerous than fire-all known
things similes of her; and beyond all known things the unknown power of
her. He could perhaps in a little have spoken; but before he could, she
had passed. She left with him precisely the sensation of seeing her go
on; past him? no; up the by-way? no; but it was not disappearance or
vanishing, for she had gone, as a hundred times she had, on her proper
occasions, gone, kissing, laughing, waving. Now she neither kissed nor
laughed nor waved, but that which was in all three lingered with him as
he saw she was no longer there.

Lights were coming out in the houses; the confused sound of the City was
in his ears. He was giddy with too much apprehension; he waited to
recover; then he crossed the by-way, and he too went on.




                           Chapter Three

                            CLERK SIMON

Jonathan spent the rest of the day in the abandoned studio. After the
first hour he made three efforts to ring up Betty. He gave his own name
the first time, but was told that Miss Wallingford was not in. The
second time he gave Richard's name, and for the third he invented a
flight lieutenant. But neither was more successful. It was, of course,
possible at first that the ladies had not returned from Holborn, but by
half-past ten it seemed more likely that Lady Wallingford had simply
secluded her daughter. He knew that if she had given orders that Miss
Betty was not to be disturbed, it was very unlikely that anybody would
disturb her. Between his two later calls he put in another. He knew that
Sir Bartholomew had some small property in Hampshire, just as Lady
Wallingford owned a house somewhere in Yorkshire, and he claimed to be
speaking on behalf of the Hampshire County Council on some business of
reconstruction. He asked if Sir Bartholomew had returned from Moscow or
if not, when he was likely to return. The answer was that nothing could
be said of Sir Bartholomew's movements. He suggested that Lady
Wallingford might be asked. The answer was that that would be useless;
instructions had been issued that no other answer could be given.
Jonathan at last gave up the telephone, and sat down to write letters.

He wrote to Betty; he wrote to Lady Wallingford. He offered, after a
slight struggle with his admiration of himself, to suppress the picture;
the admiration just managed to substitute "suppress" for "destroy". It
was still worth while trying to save Betty and the picture too. But he
knew that if he were driven far enough, he would consent to -its
destruction; though he could not quite avoid envisaging another picture
in which something much more drastic should be deliberately done about
Father Simon. He succeeded, however, in keeping this on the outskirts of
his mind and even in mentioning to himself the word "dishonesty". His
virtue, with some difficulty, maintained itself in the uncertain centre
of his mind. He told Betty he would be in his flat all the next day, in
case she could ring up or indeed come. He proposed an aunt's house in
Tunbridge Wells as a shelter for her. He told her that he would write to
Sir Bartholomew through the War Office. He was perfectly well aware that
Lady Wallingford would read the letter, but it told her nothing she
could not have guessed, and it would at least make clear that he had
other channels of communication with the Air Marshal.

He put off going to the post with these letters until almost midnight,
in case by any wild chance Betty should ring up. But at last he gave up
hope, took the letters, went to the door, and as he opened it switched
out the light. At that moment the front door bell rang. He caught his
breath and almost ran to it. He opened it; it was not she. In the dim
light of the landing he saw a tall figure, apparently wrapped in some
kind of cloak, and in his fierce disappointment he almost banged the
door shut. But as his hand tightened on it, a voice said: "Mr. Drayton?"

"Yes?" Jonathan said morosely. The voice was urbane, a little husky, and
had the very slightest foreign accent which Jonathan did not at once
recognize. He peered forward a little to see the face, but it was not
easy, even though the caller wore no hat. The voice continued: "Lady
Wallingford has been with me to-night to tell me of a painting. I am
Simon the Clerk."

"Oh!" saidjonathan; "yes. I see.... Look, won't you come in?" He had
been quite unprepared for this, and as he ushered his visitor into the
studio, his only feeling was one of extreme gratitude that in a moment
of peevishness he had flung the covering again over the canvas. It would
have been awkward to show Simon straight in at it. He could not quite
think why he had come. It must, of course, be about the painting, but
unless to see if he agreed with Lady Wallingford ... and it would be odd
to be as urgent as all that, especially as he disliked being painted.
Still, it would come out. He was very much on his guard, but as he
closed the door he said, as friendlily as he could: "Do sit down. Have a
drink?"

"No, thank you," Simon answered. He remained standing with his eyes on
the covered canvas. He was a tall man, with a smooth mass of grey-almost
white-hair; his head was large; his face thin, almost emaciated. The
face had about it a hint of the Jew-no more; so little indeed that
Jonathan wondered if it were only Richard's account that caused him to
think he saw it. But, considering more carefully, he saw it was there.
The skin was dark and Jonathan saw with a thrill of satisfaction that he
had got in his painting almost the exact kind of dead hue which it in
fact possessed. The eyes were more deeply set than he had thought;
otherwise he had been pretty accurate in detail. The only thing in which
he had been wrong was in producing any appearance of bewilderment or
imbecility. There was nothing at all of either in the Clerk's gaze. It
was not exactly a noble face, nor a prophetic; priestly, rather. A
remote sacerdotalism lived in it; the Clerk might have been some lonely
hierarch out of a waste desert. He stood perfectly still, and Jonathan
observed that he was indeed as near perfectly still as a man could be.
There was no slightest visible motion, no faintest sound of breath. He
was so quiet that quietness seemed to emanate from him. Jonathan felt
his own disturbance quelled. It was in a softer voice than his usual one
that he said, making what was almost an effort to move and speak at all:
"Are you sure you won't have a drink? . . . Well, I think I will, if
you'll excuse me." The other had very slightly shaken his head. Outside
the room, the bells of the City began to chime midnight. Jonathan said
to himself, as he had made a habit of doing since he had first met
Betty whenever he was awake at midnight, as he often was: "Benedicta
sit, et benedicti onmes parvuli Tui." He turned away and poured out his
drink. With the glass in his hand, he came back. The hour was striking,
near and far, wherever bells were still capable of sound, all over the
wide reaches of London. Jonathan heard it through the new quiet. He
said: "And now, Father Simon, Lady Wallingford?"

"Lady Wallingford was distressed about this painting," Simon answered.

"Distressed?" Jonathan said nastily. "Exhilarated was more the word, I
should have thought." Then the sense of the quiet and of the other's
presence made him ashamed of his petulance. He went on: "I beg your
pardon. But I can't think she was altogether unhappy. She was very
angry."

"Show it to me," the Clerk said. It was not perhaps quite a command, but
very nearly; it almost sounded like a Marshal of the Air speaking to an
official artist who ranked as a regular officer. Obedience was
enforceable, though unenforced. Jonathan hesitated. If Simon took Lady
Wallingford's view, he would be in a worse state than he was now. Was it
possible that Simon would not take Lady Wallingford's view? In that case
he might be very useful indeed; possibly he might persuade Lady
Wallingford to alter her own. It was a great risk. The other saw the
hesitation. The husky urbane voice said: "Come; you must not think I see
things as she does."

"No," said Jonathan doubtfully. "Only ... I mean she has talked to you.
I don't know what she's told you, but she's so damned convinced and
convincing that she'd even persuade, me that a smudge of umber was a
vermilion blot. Mind you, I think she's made up her mind to find
something wrong with it, in order to interfere with Betty and me, so she
wasn't disinterested."

"It doesn't matter what she told me," the other said. "I never see
things with other people's eyes. If she's wrong-I might be of use."

"Yes," said Jonathan, moving to the easel. "If you could convince her,
of course."

"She will think what I say," the Clerk said, and there was such a sudden
contempt in his voice that Jonathan looked round.

"I say, you are sure of her!" he said.

"I'm quite sure of her," the Clerk answered, and waited. All this time
he had not moved. The room itself, and it was large and by no means
over-furnished, seemed almost full and busy beside him. Jonathan, as he
threw back the cover, began to feel a warm attraction towards this
unmoving figure, which had the entire power to direct Lady Wallingford
what to think. He determined, if by any chance Simon should pass this
painting as harmless, to do him another about which there should be no
doubt whatever. He stepped aside, and for the third time that day the
picture was exposed to study.

As Jonathan looked at it, he became extremely uneasy. The beetles, the
blank gaze, the receding corridor, had not grown less striking since he
had seen them last. If this was the Father, he could not think the
Father would like himself. He wished again with all his heart that he
had never begun to paint it. He knew exactly how he could have avoided
it; he could have said he wasn't worthy. It would have been a lie, for
being worthy was not a thing that came in with painting; painting had
nothing to do with your personal merit. You could do it or you couldn't.
But it would have been a convenient-and to that woman an easily
credible-lie, and he wished he had told it, however difficult it would
have been to say it convincingly. Betty, after all.... He rather
wondered if he could say now that he realized he wasn't worthy. But the
Father did not look the sort of person who was taken in like that-
anyhow, at the present stage, when he obviously had thought himself
worthy. No; if things went wrong, he must argue again. By now he loathed
and hated the entire painting; he would have cut it up or given it to
the nation, if the nation had wanted it. He looked round.

Simon was still standing at gaze. The chimes rang a quarterpast twelve;
otherwise the City was silent. Outside the large window beyond Simon the
moon was high and cold. Her October chill interpenetrated the room.
Jonathan shivered; something was colder-the atmosphere or his heart.
Betty was far away, gone as lovers and wives do go, as Richard's wife
had gone, gone to her deathbed. Betty's own bed was cold, even like her
chastity. I would I were where Betty lies; no wedding-garment except
this fear, in the quiet, in the quiet, in the quiet, where a figure of
another world stood. All things rose fluttering round it; beetles? too
light for beetles: moths, bright light moths round a flame-formed dark;
the cloak of the dark and the hunger in the dark. The high moon a moth,
and he, only not Betty, Betty dead like Richard's wife, dead women in
the streets of the City under the moon.

A distant husky voice, with a strange accent, broke the silence. It
said: "That is I" Jonathan came to himself to see the Clerk staring. His
head was a little forward; his eyes were fixed. He was so gratified that
his voice let fall the words and ceased. The shock of them and of relief
was so great that Jonathan felt a little light-headed. He took a step or
two back to get his vision into focus. He began to say something, but
Simon was so clearly not listening that he gave it up and wandered away
towards the window. But even as he did so he listened for what else that
other should say which might give him hope, hope of Betty, hope of his
work. He looked out into the moonlight, he saw in it, below him, on the
other side of the road, two girls walking-they the only living in the
night; and as his eyes took them in he heard again the voice behind him
saying, but now in more than gratification, in low triumph: "That is I"

Jonathan turned. He said: "You like it?"

The other answered: "No-one has painted me so well for a hundred years.
Everything's there."

Jonathan went back. He did not quite see how to carry on the
conversation; the allusion to "a hundred years" baffled him. At last he
said doubtfully: "And Lady Wallingford?"

The Clerk slowly looked round at him, as if he were recalled. He said,
and his face twitched slightly, "Lady Wallingford? What has she to do
with it?"

"She was rather annoyed with it," said Jonathan. "In fact, she talked,
as no doubt she told you, about insects and imbeciles."

The Clerk, still looking at him, said: "They aren't insects; they are
something less. But insects is the nearest you can get. And as for
imbecile, haven't you read Sapientia adepti stultitia mundi? That is why
your work is so wonderful."

"Oh! " said Jonathan.

"That", the Clerk went on, turning his head again, "is what I am to
these creatures, and Lady Wallingford (as you call her) is one of them.
She thinks herself someone, but presently she'll find out. It's quite
good for them to be hypnotized; they're much happier. But you-you are
different; you are a genius. You must paint me often. Now you have shown
me as I am to them and to myself, you must paint me often as I am in
myself."

The chill sense of death was receding from Jonathan's heart. He began to
feel that life was still possible, even life with Betty. He also
wondered what his own painting of the face was like. He had first
thought it was an ordinary portrait; then he had been uneasy about the
bewilderment that seemed to show in it. Richard had agreed. Lady
Wallingford had spoken of imbecility. Now Simon seemed to see something
else beyond that, something that was hidden in that and yet contradicted
it. He might perhaps tell Lady Wallingford; he might make everything
clear for him and Betty. In a second of silence Jonathan had married
Betty, set up a house, painted Father Simon a stupendous portrait of
himself without the beetles, painted several other shattering successes
at the Peace Conferences and after, made a lot of money, become a father
and an immortal at once, and was back again in the studio with the
immediate necessity of explaining to Simon how all this was to be
brought about. Better not go into farther details of the painting;
better get on with the main job.

He began: "Then you'll speak to-" but the other was already speaking. He
was saying: "You must come with me, Mr. Drayton. I must have one or two
people with me who are something more than these other creatures. The
Doctrine is good for them; one gets nowhere by fighting it. All your
books have it-the Koran, the New Testament, the Law. Hitler fought it;
where is Hitler? There is nothing better, for those who need it. But you
are an exception. You belong to yourself -and to me. Great art is
apostolic. You must not lessen yourself. You are to be a master. I can
do something to help you, but then you must have courage to paint the
right things."

Jonathan listened to this with a certain warmth. He was a little shaken
by great art being apostolic, but there was no doubt a sense in which it
was true, though Sir Joshua's "common observation and plain
understanding" pleased him better. He did think he was a remarkable
painter, and he did not care how often he was told so. But he did not
lose sight of his main point. As soon as Simon paused, he said: "Then
you'll speak to Lady Wallingford?"

Simon's voice had seemed to be closer and clearer. It receded again and
grew huskier as he said: "What do you so want with Lady Wallingford?"

"I want to marry her daughter," Jonathan said.

The Clerk dropped his eyes to the ground. He said, after a moment: "I am
not sure that you're wise. But it shall be as you like. I will talk to
her-yes, in a few days, if you still wish. You shall have the girl, if
you want her. Show me something else."

"I haven't much here," Jonathan said. "The war-paintings--"

"Oh the war!" the Clerk said. "The war, like Hitler, was a
foolery. I am the one who is to come, not Hitler! Not the war; something
else."

"Well, there's this thing of London," Jonathan said. "Wait; I'll turn it
for you." He went round to the other easel, to the canvas on which he
had not looked since the early afternoon, because of all that had since
happened, but now he did, and saw it as he had seen it with Richard. He
knew the validity of his own work-yet he knew also that he might so
easily be wrong, as innumerable unfortunate bad painters had been. There
was no way of being certain. But at least he believed that painting
could be valid, could hold an experience related to the actuality of the
world, and in itself valuable to mind and heart. He hoped this painting
might be that; more he could not say. He saw beyond it the figure of the
Clerk looming, and the window behind him, and it seemed almost as if he
were now looking at the other painting made actual and released from
canvas. The figure was there; the blank window behind; he could not at
this distance and in this light see through it; it was but an opening
into bleakness. And he himself the only other being there. He looked at
the Clerk's face, and it too hung blank as the window, empty of meaning.
"I am being a fool," he thought, and looked, as he stepped back after
turning the easel again, at the light on the canvas. He said, with the
least flash of arrogance in his voice: "There! What do you think of
that?"

The Clerk looked, and flinched. Jonathan saw a quiver go through him; he
shut his eyes and opened them. He said: "No, no; it's too bright. I
can't see it properly. Move it."

Jonathan said coldly: "I'm sorry you don't like it. Myself, I think it's
better than the other."

The Clerk said: "That is because you do not quite understand the meaning
of your own work. This is a dream; that other is a fact. It is simply I
who have come. I shall give all these little people peace because they
believe in me. But these fancies of light would distract them. There is
only one art, and that is to show them their master. You had better-
well, I know how you painters love even your mistakes and I will not say
you should destroy it. But hide it for a year, and come with me, and
then look at it again, and you will see it as I do."

Jonathan said cautiously: "Well, I'll see what Betty says. Anyhow I
shan't have much time for views of the City during the next year or so."
The words, and the tone, of mastery did not seem altogether unsuitable
to the towering form; he himself was on the defensive. The very hint
that there was much more in the other picture than he had supposed, that
he painted more greatly than he knew, subtly soothed him. He was the
more ready to owe Betty to a man who saw so deeply. He added: "You won't
forget to speak to Lady Wallingford?"

"Presently," the Clerk said. "But you must remember that you have a
great work to do. When I am in union again, you shall paint me as I
shall be. Soon."

Jonathan murmured something. The conversation was getting beyond him. He
wished his visitor would go away, before he said the wrong thing. The
Clerk, almost as if he too felt that all had been said, turned. He said:
"I'll come to you again, or else I'll send for you."

"I may be moved about," Jonathan said. "We of the Services, you know-"

"Your service is with me," the other answered. "I or-or Betty will let
you know." His eyes stared out through the blank window. "What you shall
paint! Trust me. I will make you . . . never mind. But put the other
thing away. The colour is wrong."

He gave Jonathan no opportunity for a reply. He went towards the door,
and Jonathan followed. At parting he raised his hand a little. He came
out into the street and the moonlight, and began to walk.

He went towards Highgate, and he went easily though at great speed, and
as he went the City seemed to dwindle around him. His mind was very
earnestly set on himself. As he went the Jewish quality in his face
seemed to deepen; the occasional policemen whom he passed thought they
saw a Jew walking by night. Indeed that august race had reached in this
being its second climax. Two thousand years of its history were drawing
to a close; until this thing had happened it could not be free. its
priesthood-the priesthood of a nation-had been since Abraham determined
to one End. But when, after other terrible wars had shaken the Roman
peace, and armies- had moved over Europe, and Caesar (being all that
Caesar could be) had been stabbed in his own central place, when then
that End had.been born,'they were not aware of that End. It had been
proposed that their lofty tradition should be made almost unbearably
august; that they should be made the bloodcompanions of their Maker, the
own peculiar house and family of its Incarnacy-no more than the Gentiles
in the free equality of souls, but much more in the single hierarchy of
kindred flesh. But deception had taken them; they had, bidding a
scaffold for the blasphemer, destroyed their predestined conclusion, and
the race which had been set for the salvation of the world became a
judgment and even a curse to the world and to themselves. Yet the oaths
sworn in heaven remained. It had been a Jewish girl who, at the command
of the Voice which sounded in her ears, in her heart, along her blood,
and through the central cells of her body, had uttered everywhere in
herself the perfect Tetragrammaton. What the high priest vicariously
spoke among the secluded mysteries of the Temple, she substantially
pronounced to God. Redeemed from all division in herself, whole and
identical in body and soul and spirit, she uttered the Word and the Word
became flesh in her. Could It have been received by her own people, the
grand Judean gate would have been opened for all peoples. It could not.
They remained alien-to It and to all, and all to them and- too much!-to
It. The Gentiles, summoned by that other Jew of Tarsus, could not bear
their vicarious office. Bragging themselves to be the new Israel, they
slandered and slew the old, and the old despised and hated the bragging
new. Till at last there rose in Europe something which was neither, and
set itself to destroy both.

And when that had been thwarted, this also which was to happen had at
last happened. Jew and Christian alike had waited for the man who now
walked through the empty London streets. He had been born in Paris, in
one of those hiding-places of necromancy which all the energy of the
Fourteenth Louis had not quite stamped out. He was a child of the
nobility, but he was hardly yet a boy when the Revolution had broken
out. His family had moved safely through it, protected by wealth and
cunning and in extremes by another kind of cunning learned in very
ancient schools. His father had been to the world a scholar as well as a
nobleman, one of the early philologists, but to a different circle and
to his son his philology had been quite other. He knew sounds and the
roots of sounds, almost the beginnings of sounds; the vibrations that
overthrew and the vibrations that built up. The son followed his father.

He remembered now, as he walked, how he had come to know himself. It was
not often he permitted himself the indulgence of memory, but that
painted face which Jonathan had supposed to be blank of meaning yet in
which he had read all he wished to read, seeing it full of power and
portent-that artificiality had opened up recollection within him. He
remembered how he had seen the crowds in Paris, their poverty, their
need, their rage, and (so small as he was) understood how men need both
comfort and control. And he had seen Napoleon rise and fall, but before
that mastery was done his childish dreams of being king or emperor had
been better instructed. He had learnt three things from that small
college of which his father was president-that there was another power
to use, that there were ways of directing it, that many men would pay
much to learn them. Could they be sold! but they could not be. They were
private to those who had the right by nature, as all art is, but these
especially to the high-priestly race. Only a Jew could utter the Jewish,
which was the final, word of power.

There were not in the circles where he grew up any of the mere
obscenities of magic-no spectacular outrages of the Black Mass or
profane sensualities of the Sabbath. There were certain bloody
disciplines to test the postulant-it was all. The mass of men were at
once despised and pitied by the chaste sorcerers. He learnt to shelter,
to feed, to console them, but at the same time that he was separate from
them. He had watched a man starve, but he was not cruel; it was in his
training. He was not lustful; only once in all his life had he lain with
a woman, and that for a rational purpose. He had not been kept from talk
with holy Rabbis and charitable priests; if he had chosen their way no-
one would have interfered with him unless he had become inconvenient to
the great work. He did not so choose; he preferred his own.

He was not, in fact, much different from any man, but the possibilities
slowly opened to him were more rare. There shaped itself gradually in
his mind a fame beyond any poet's and a domination beyond any king's.
But it was fame and domination that he desired, as they did. That his
magical art extended where theirs could never reach was his luck. The
understanding of his reach had come when he first assisted at a
necromantic operation. As the dead body stood and spoke he felt the
lordship of that other half of the world. Once, as he had learnt the
tale, the attempt at domination had been made and failed. The sorcerer
who had attempted it had also been a Jew, a descendant of the house of
David, who clothed in angelic brilliance had compelled a woman of the
same house to utter the Name, and something more than mortal had been
born. But in the end the operation had failed. Of the end of the
sorcerer himself there were no records; Joseph ben David had vanished!
The living thing that had been born of his feminine counterpart had
perished miserably. It had been two thousand years before anyone had
dared to risk the attempt again.

He came up towards Highgate, and as he came he let his memories fade. He
put away the recollection of the painting; the time for his spiritual
enthronement was not quite come. But he felt the City lessen-not only
London, but all bodies and souls of men. He lifted his head; his face
was lean and hungry under the moon. He felt himself walking alone among
tiny houses among which men and women ran about under his protection and
by his will. There waited him, in the house to which he was going, the
means of another operation than his coming empery in this world; of
which his child was the instrument. For a moment he thought of Jonathan
and Jonathan's love. He smiled-or rather a sudden convulsion passed
across his face, a kind of muscular spasm rather than a smile. It was
not meant to be unkind; he did not dislike Jonathan, and he wished his
genius to thrive and paint the grand master even more intensely. But
Betty was for another purpose. Nor was he even aware that what had once
been a smile was now a mere constriction. One cannot smile at no-one,
and there was no-one at whom he could smile. He was alone. He went on,
ignorantly grimacing.




                            Chapter Four

                              THE DREAM

In the house at Highgate Betty Wallingford was lying awake. She was
wholly wretched. Her mother, after they had returned from that secret
conversation in Holborn, in which she had not been allowed to take part,
had sent her to bed. She had wished to protest; she had wished to ring
up Jonathan. But it would have been quite useless. She could not
remember a time when it would not have been useless. If she had been
Lady Wallingford's real daughter, she might have had a better chance, or
so sometimes she thought. But since, years ago, Lady Wallingford had
spoken of her adoption, she had always felt at a disadvantage. No
allusion was ever made to it now. She had tried, once or twice, to ask
Lady Wallingford about her real parents, but her adopted mother had only
said: "We will not talk of that, Betty," and so of course they did not.
As for Sir Bartholomew, she had been forbidden to mention it to him, and
anyhow he was hardly ever at home, and was only interested in air
matters. So she only knew she was not what everyone thought she was.

Everyone in London, that is. There was in the north, in Yorkshire, a
small house where she and Lady Wallingford sometimes went. They always
went by themselves, and when they got there she was not even treated as
a daughter. She was, purely and simply, the servant. It was supposed to
be training for her, in case (as might happen, Lady Wallingford said)
she ever had to earn her own living. She did the work; she showed in the
Vicar or any other local visitor, and then she went back to her nice
bright kitchen, where she had that morning's Daily Sketch (which Lady
Wallingford took in for her) and her radio on which she was only allowed
to listen to the most popular music (because, Lady Wallingford said,
that was what girls of that class liked). She was called Bettina there.
"Ridiculous  names these girls have nowadays!" Lady Wallingford had once
said to the Vicar as he was leaving; and the Vicar had said: "Not at all
ridiculous! a very good name." But he had not looked very attentive, and
Lady Wallingford never let her go out alone; so there was no help there.
And anyhow there was no need for help; what was there to help?

It had been going on for a long time, even before she had left school.
She had always been in terror lest any of the other girls should pass
and see her from a car. Or even, quite impossibly, call. She had tried
to think what she would say, and to practise saying it. There would be
nothing unusual in her mother and herself being there, but to be treated
as a housemaid.... She knew they would never believe anything she could
say, and still more certainly that she could never say it. She used to
lie awake by night thinking of it, and wondering if the next day would
bring them, but it never did; and presently the two of them always went
back to London, and then she was Betty Wallingford again-only of course
she was no more Betty Wallingford than she was a housemaid. She was
nothing and no-one. Her mistress-mother, her mother-mistress, told her
what to do; she and the man who sometimes came to see her, this Father
Simon.

Of all the girls at school, two only now remained in her mind; indeed,
she knew them a little still. She would have liked to be friends with
Lester Grantham, who was now Lester Furnival, but it had never come
about. At school Lester had never wanted to be bothered with her, though
she had been in a vague way half-scornfully kind, and when she and Lady
Wallingford met they had never got on very well. Lester had once or
twice called with Evelyn Mercer, who was the other girl, but Betty did
not like Evelyn. She might have borne Lester knowing about her being
Bettina, but she would have been anguished by Evelyn's finding out, and
Evelyn was the sort of person who did find things out. When Evelyn came
to see her, she used to sit and talk to her; she had hunted her down at
school sometimes just to talk to her. But it used to be horrible, and
she would cry, and even now Evelyn would ask so many questions and tell
so many horrid stories that Betty felt she could not bear it. Of course,
she had to, because Evelyn sat, eyeing her and talking. So that
presently she became the very image of Betty's fear, more even than Lady
Wallingford; and one of her worse nightmares was of running away from
Evelyn who was racing after her, calling "Bettina! Bettina!" And other
acquaintances she had none.

During the war she had thought she would have to do a job and perhaps go
away from home. She had registered, and she had been interviewed, by a
nice oldish -woman. But nothing else had happened. She had been a little
surprised, and she had even spoken of it to Lady Wallingford, who had
only said: "You're not strong enough-mentally strong enough, I mean." So
she supposed-and she was right-that Lady Wallingford had taken steps.
After that, she had begun to worry over her mind; after that rather nice
refugee had disappeared. During the little time she had known him, he
had been rather comforting, but presently he had ceased to be about. And
there was no-one again.

Until there had been Jonathan Drayton. She could not remember how they
had first met, and they had certainly not met often. If her mother had
not wished to have a painting of Father Simon, they would have met less
often. But even Lady Wallingford was sometimes compelled to allow one
obstinacy to get in the way of another. She had been startled-though not
much more startled than Betty-when Jonathan began to talk of an
engagement. Betty remembered how she had clung to him the first time he
had kissed her, and what he had said of her, but she tried not to
remember that, for she had always known it would be no good, and now
Lady Wallingford had chosen to be offended at his painting, and it was
all ended. Very soon they would be in the country again. Lady
Wallingford was always saying that, now the war was over, they would go
there permanently-"and then you shall settle down. I shall have to go up
sometimes, but you need never leave it again," Betty was beginning to
look on it as a refuge; once there, she would be Bettina altogether, and
perhaps that would be peace.

But to-night it was no refuge. Jonathan was too near. He had sometimes
talked to her about painting, and she had tried to understand, and even
ask questions, though her mistress-no her adopted mother-had said
"Betty's rather backward" and repeated that she was mentally weak. But
Jonathan had only said: "Thank God she's not cultured! and anyhow I'm
not much more than adolescent myself," and gone on talking, and she had
wanted to cry on his shoulder, as once or twice inexplicably she had.
She never would again. She would be taken to hear Father Simon speak on
Love. In a way that was a relief. While he talked she sat in a kind of
trance and forgot everything. That was in Holborn; when he came to
Highgate it was different and not so peaceful. She had to do something.
He was always saying to her: "Do not trouble yourself; only do as I
say." She would; in that and the maid's kitchen were her only hope.

She lay, waking and waiting-waiting for her mind to grow weaker, waiting
for her memory of Jonathan to cease, waiting for an end. She was afraid
of Lady Wallingford and desperately afraid of Evelyn. Evelyn would get
everything about Jonathan out of her, and would tell people-no, she
would not, for Evelyn was dead. In her sheer rush of gratitude Betty sat
up in bed. It was almost her only individual movement for years. She
drew a deep breath. Something of horror had stopped for ever. Evelyn,
Evelyn was dead. Of course. Lester was dead too; she was a little sorry
about Lester, but Lester had never wanted her. That had been Lester's
husband this afternoon; he looked nice. At the time of the wedding she
had been in Yorkshire; not that she would have been asked anyhow.
Yorkshire -Oh, well, Yorkshire; but Evelyn could never, never come to
Yorkshire now. "Evelyn," she said to herself, clasping her knees,
"Evelyn's dead." In her entire joy, she even forgot Jonathan-in her
sudden sense of a freedom she had not known. She had at least no
consciousness of impropriety; she was mentally strong enough for joy.
She said it again, drawing breath, hugging herself, savouring it:
"Evelyn's dead. "

The door opened. Lady Wallingford came in. She switched on the light and
saw Betty. Betty saw her, and before a word could be spoken or a glance
exchanged, she thought: "People die." Lady Wallingford said: "Why are
you sitting up like that?" and Betty answered, because it was so
important: "Evelyn's dead."

For once Lady Wallingford was taken aback. She had never had much
interest in Evelyn, though she was not as hostile to her as she had been
to Lester, for she knew Betty was afraid of Evelyn. She did not
altogether wish Betty to lose this, and she answered, almost
immediately-but there had been a second's pause, a moment in which Betty
all but triumphed: "Yes. But remember that that means she is still
alive." She did not give this time to settle; she was well assured that
the thought would return. She went on: "But we can't think of it now.
Our Father needs you."

"Oh not now-" Betty exclaimed. "I'm so tired. I can't-after this
afternoon-Mother, I can't." She spoke with more boldness than usual. The
sense of freedom that Evelyn's death had given her was still strong, and
an even larger sense that changes could happen which had risen in her
mind when Lady Wallingford entered. People died. She looked at her
mother almost as an equal; her mother would die. But she could not
maintain her gaze. Lady Wallingford stared her down. As the girl's eyes
fell, she said: "We are waiting. Dress and come down." She stayed for a
moment, still staring; then she turned and went out.

Discouraged and miserably helpless, Betty got up and put on her clothes.
She knew what would happen; it had happened before. She knew she went
out, but where and with what result she did not know-only that
afterwards she was again back in the house, and exhausted. Lady
Wallingford always kept her in bed the next day. These occasions were
known to the servants as "Miss Betty's turns". It was vaguely understood
that Miss Betty was subject to something not quite nice. Something
mental. Nor indeed were they far wrong, for the mind as well as the body
suffered from those lonely excursions, and it was a question for her
directors how long she would be able to bear them.

Her hands were trembling as she finished dressing. She had put on, and
with difficulty fastened, a pair of outdoor shoes. If only, she thought,
she did not have to leave the house! Or if she could know where she went
and what she did! She might be braver then. It was this getting ready to
go that frightened her, and the not knowing. Her tyrants never by any
chance referred to her compulsory expeditions, except on the nights
themselves. They would be waiting for her. She had forgotten Evelyn's
death, and Lady Wallingford was perpetual. She looked at the clock; it
was half-past one. There was no use in delay. She went down.

They were waiting, as she had known, in the drawing-room. Lady
Wallingford was sitting by a table. Simon was walking softly up and
down. When she came in he stopped and scanned her. Then he pointed to a
chair. He said, in that husky voice she dreaded, though it was never
unkind: "I want you to go out. "

She was without initiative. She went to the chair and sat down. She
said: "Yes, Father."

He said: "You shall be at peace soon. You could be at peace now if you
did not fight. In a moment you will not fight; then you will be in
peace. Presently you will always be at peace. Let yourself be in my
will. I can send you; I can bring you back; only take the peace. Be in
peace and you will be in joy. Why do you-no, you will not fight; you are
not fighting; you are dying into peace; why should you not die in peace?
Peace     ......

The quiet husky soothing voice ran on, recapitulating the great words,
bidding the sufficient maxims. She knew she would lose herself, now it
did not seem so horrid; now she wondered she was not quicker to let go.
She usually was. But to-night something interfered with the words. Her
hands, quiet though they lay, were strangely warm, and the blood in them
seemed to beat. Her body (though she did not then realize it) held a
memory that her mind had forgotten. The strength of Jonathan's hands was
still in her own, and rose up her arms, and stirred in her flesh. His
voice, still subconditionally remembered in her ears, stirred in her
corridors. She did not think of it but all her living body answered
"Jonathan!" and on that cry rose against the incantation that all but
appeased her. The word love, when the Clerk uttered it, was only a dim
sound of distant wind, but it said "Jonathan!"; the word peace was great
waters on a gentle shore, but it murmured "Jonathan!"; the wordjoy was
an echo and no more, but it echoed: "Jonathan!" Even the afternoon, even
the painting and all, had but made him more intense; as a man in sleep
utters his love's name, so now, as she all but slept, her body sighed
for its friend. She did not speak, but as she yielded to the spell, she
moaned a little; she slept though with waking eyes, and she did not
sleep peaceably. The Clerk knew it. He came near her; he spoke over her-
he had a very great courage-those august words:
"peace, joy, love". He used them for what he needed, and they meant to
him-and to her-what he chose.

Lady Wallingford covered her eyes. She could not quite bear to see the
nullification of life in the intellectual centre of life. She detested
her daughter, and she wished to distress and pain her. But then she
wished her, while she lived, to be still herself so that she should be
distressed and pained. That other, who stood over the girl who was his
daughter also, did not wish her to be herself, or even that only for a
purpose. He wished her to be an instrument only; peace, joy, love, were
but names for the passivity of the instrument. He was unique; yet he was
no more than any man-only raised to a high power and loosed in himself.

Presently Lady Wallingford heard his voice near her. It said: "You
didn't tell me she was so enamoured. It doesn't matter. I've found her
in time." She moved her hand. He was standing by her, looking over to
Betty where now she sat quietly in her chair, her eyes open, her body
composed. He drew deep breaths; he said, so quietly that Lady
Wallingford hardly heard, so strongly that the entranced girl rose at
once to obey: "Go now and bring me the news."

She rose. Her eyes looked at him, simply, almost lingeringly. She gave
him her attention, with a kind of delight. The last revolt had been
abolished; a docile sweetness possessed her. Docility and sweetness were
natural to her. In a quiet that might have been peace, in an attraction
that might have been love, in a content that might have been joy, she
turned from her director towards the door. Her exhaustion on the next
day would come not only from what she was about to do, but from this
surrender which would then have ceased. Yet every time her restoration
was a little less; a day might come when this hypnotic quiescence would
occupy her whole life. That day (the Clerk thought) would be soon. Then
he would be able to send her for ever into the world she could now only
visit.

Betty went out of the room. The Clerk followed her, and Lady
Wallingford, drawn by a desire she half-dreaded, joined him and went
with him. The house was warm and quiet. Sir Bartholomew was in Moscow;
the servants were asleep in their rooms. Betty went to a lobby, took out
a raincoat and a rough hat, and put them on. The two stood motionless,
the tall man and the shorter woman, their arms hanging by their sides,
their feet precisely together, their eyes fixed on the girl. They
watched her go to the front door and open it wide. Beyond her lay the
empty street, lit by the moon to a bluish pallor. The silence of it
rushed in on them, a silence in which the quiet hall sounded as if, but
a moment before, it had been noisy. Betty went out. The Clerk went
quickly down the hall and almost closed the door, leaving it open but a
chink. He stood by it, his head bent, intently listening. Lady
Wallingford remained where she was, trembling a little. Hardly five
minutes had passed when, in that perfect silence, deeper than any lull
in any town, any stillness in any countryside, the faint sound of slow
dragging feet was heard. They were literally dragging, each was pulled
along the path. The Clerk let go the door and stood back. It was pushed
open a little farther, and through the crack Betty squeezed herself in.
She was very pale, her eyes were almost shut, she drooped with the
heaviness of her fatigue. She came in; she made a motion to push the
door to; she stumbled forward and fell. The Clerk caught her; she lay
against him. The clerk looked over his shoulder at Lady Wallingford, who
as at a sudden call ran forward. She bent down and picked up her
daughter's feet. Between them the two creatures carried the girl
upstairs; their monstrous shadows rising against the walls. They took
her to her room and laid her on her bed. They undressed her and got her
into the bed, all in silence and with the softest and quickest
movements. Then they drew up chairs and sat down, one on each side. Lady
Wallingford took up a notebook and a pen. The Clerk leaned his head
close to Betty's and said something in her ear. He moved his head so
that his ear was close to Betty's mouth, and in a voice hardly to be
heard, with broken phrases and long intervals, she began to speak. He
repeated, in a voice harder than was usual with him, what she said. Lady
Wallingford wrote down the words. It was almost morning before the
triple labour was done. The Clerk stood up frowning. Lady Wallingford
looked at him. He shook his head slowly, and presently they both left