She was not, however, then left to that doom. As the maid turned, she exclaimed, “Oh!” and stepped back, almost into her mistress. There was a sudden swiftness of feet; two forms loomed in the corridor. The maid slipped to the other side of the doorway and as Lady Wallingford broke—or was allowed to break—from the wooden beams which had appeared to close on her, Richard and Jonathan had passed her and come into the room.
Richard was speaking as he came. He said, “You must forgive this intrusion, Lady Wallingford. We know—Jonathan and I—that we’re behaving very badly. But it’s absolutely—I do mean absolutely—necessary for us to see Betty. If you believe in the Absolute. So we had to come.” He added, across the room to Lester, without surprise, but with a rush of apology, and only he knew to whom he spoke, “Darling, have I kept you waiting? I’m so sorry.”
Lester saw him. She felt, as he came, all her old self lifting in her; bodiless, she seemed to recall her body in the joy they exchanged. He saw her smile, and in the smile heaven was frank and she was shy. She said—and he only heard, and he rather knew than heard, but some sound of speech rang in the room, and the Clerk, now on his feet, looked round and up, wildly, as if to catch sight of the sound—she said, “I’ll wait for you a million years.” She felt a stir within her, as if life quickened; and she remembered with new joy that the deathly tide had never reached, even in appearance, to the physical house of life. If Richard or she went now, it would not much matter; their fulfillment was irrevocably promised them, in what manner so-ever they knew or were to know it.
Betty opened her eyes. She too saw Lester. She said, “Lester, you did stop! How sweet of you!” She looked round the room. Her eyes widened a little as she saw Richard; they passed unconcernedly over the Clerk and Lady Wallingford; they saw Jonathan. She cried out and sat up; she threw out her hands. He came to her and took them. He said, controlling the words, “You’re looking better.” He could not say more. Betty did not speak; she blushed a little and clung.
The Clerk looked down on her. The operation had failed; he did not doubt that he would yet succeed, but he must begin again. He did not permit himself any emotion towards whatever had interfered. It would waste his energy. These men were nothing. It had been in the other world that frustration had lain, and it should be seen to. Composing heart and features, he turned his head slowly towards Lady Wallingford. She took his will, and obeyed. She said, “We had better go downstairs. You can see, Mr. Drayton, that Betty is better; aren’t you, Betty?”
“Much better,” said Betty gaily. “Jonathan dear …” She paused; she went on, “I’ll get up and dress. Go away for a few minutes and I’ll be down.”
Jonathan said, “I’d much rather not leave you.”
“Nonsense,” said Betty. “I’m completely all right. Look, I’ll be very quick. Mother, do you mind?”
It was the one thing that Lady Wallingford now minded more than anything else. But even hell cannot prevent that law of the loss of the one thing. She was full of rage—much of her own; something of the Clerk’s which he had dismissed for her to bear. She was the vessel of such human passion as remained to him. She said, “If you will come down——?” The Clerk made a gesture with his hand as if to direct the two young men to pass in front of him, and his sudden constriction passed across his face. He looked particularly at Richard. But Richard was no longer the Richard of the house behind Holborn. He had tasted the new life in Jonathan’s flat; he had drunk of it in his wife’s eyes. As, while Jonathan spoke to Betty, he gazed at her, she began to withdraw, or rather it was not so much that she withdrew as that something—perhaps only the air of earth—came between them. But in that second of her immortal greeting, her passion and her promise, he had been freed from any merely accidental domination by the Clerk. She vanished; and, still at ease, he turned to meet Simon’s look and grinned back at him. He said, “You see, my dear Father, we had to make our own arrangements. But it was very kind of you to offer. No, no; after you. Lady Wallingford’s waiting.”
The unfortunate young maid had not known whether to go or stay. She had thought that Lady Wallingford might want the gentlemen shown out. She gathered, from the look Lady Wallingford gave her as she came through the door, that she had been wrong. The strange doctor followed; after him the two other visitors. Mr. Drayton paused to look back at Miss Betty; then he softly closed the door. The maid, even in her gloom, remembered that she had always said there was something between him and Miss Betty.
Chapter Eight
THE MAGICAL CREATION
All this while, Evelyn Mercer sat on the doorstep. It would once have seemed strange to her to think of herself sitting and hugging herself, as any old beggar-woman might, and she not old, though too much a beggar. She was acutely conscious of her beggary, ever since she had seen the man sitting in the chair. He had smiled and nodded at her, and she had expected and hoped he would speak. If he had only asked her a question, she could have told him everything—about her tiresome mother, and silly Betty, and cruel Lester. She did not expect him to talk, and all she wanted was for him to listen to her. She did not ask anything more; she was not the kind of girl that would. Lester was more like that, and even Betty.
In looking at him, she had become aware of her pain, which she had not been till then. It was not much more than a discomfort, a sense of pressure on her lungs. If she could talk, she would be able to appease it. He had sat nodding at her, as if he were telling her how right she was to come, and then he had stood up, and his nod as he did so had suddenly seemed to change. Instead of being a nod of welcome, it was now a nod of dismissal. She was to go; as she realized it, she yelped. She had not been able to help it. She had yelped rather like a lost cat, for she was frightened of being sent away, and the discomfort in her lungs had become immediately worse. But his head had still nodded dismissal. He was still smiling and the smile had a kind of promise. Her own smile, which was the smile with which she had run after Betty, had become oddly fixed; she felt her face harden. As, still looking over his shoulder, in that mingling of promise and dismissal, he. began to move away towards the door of the hall, she found that she herself was no longer in the hall but in the yard without. She had receded as he receded. She was up against the window, staring through it, but outside it, and sniffing at something in the air. It vaguely reminded her of fish, but it was not fish. She remained sniffing for some time, hoping that the man would come back. The smell had something to do with him, and he with the pain in her lungs. Presently she slipped away from the window-sill which she had been clutching; for the smell caused her to follow it. It was the kind of smell Betty had when Betty had to listen to her, though she had never understood that before. She began to run, out of the yard and along the street. Her head was stretched out; her eyes were bright, though they saw nothing except the pavement before them. She ran a long while, or not so long. When at last she stopped, it was outside a door—the door of the house from which she had hurried. Now she had hurried back.
As the semi-bestiality of her movement ceased, her muddled and obsessed brain managed to point that out to her. It even managed to suggest that to run forever between those two points would be unsatisfactory. She had now made almost the same passage three times; and perhaps while she was in the streets that was all she could do. But how could she get out of the streets? She was not let go in there and she did not dare go in here. She went right up to the door—the smell was strongest there; it was fish, surely—and stood by it listening. Betty was inside; for all she knew, he also might be inside. She even put her hand on the door. It sank through; she began to pull it back and found it caught as if in a tangle of thorns. She felt a long sharp scratch before she got it loose. Tears came into her eyes. She was lonely and hurt. She looked at her hand through her tears, but it was a long time before she could see the scratch, almost as if neither scratch nor hand was there until she had found them. The hand itself was dim, because she had been crying; and dirty, because she had been leaning against the
sill; and bleeding—at least, if she looked long enough it was bleeding. If the door was such a tangle of thorns, it was no use trying to go in. She went out of the porch and down the few steps. Her lungs were hurting her. She said aloud, “It isn’t fair.”
Lester had said the same thing, but as a rational judgment. This was not so much a rational judgment as a squeal. The squeal eased her lungs, and as she recognized this, she spoke again, saying, “Why won’t anyone help me?” and found that her ease increased. She added, “I do think they might,” and then the pain was no more than a slight discomfort. It seemed to her that the London air never had suited her, but she had never been able to agree with her mother where else they should live, so that somehow or other, because her mother had been inconsiderate, they had had to go on living in London. She was, at bottom, a little afraid that her mother too was in that dark house. Her mother didn’t like fish; not that what she was waiting for was fish. It was the tall man who nodded his head.
She sat down on the bottom step, sideways, with her eyes on the door and her legs drawn up. She forgot about the scratch, except occasionally and resentfully because the door was a tangle of thorns. Whenever her lungs began to hurt her, she talked to herself aloud. Soon, though she did not realize it, she was keeping up a small continuous monologue. She did not talk of herself, but of others. The monologue was not (primarily) self-centered but mean. Men and women—all whom she had known—dwindled in it as she chattered. No one was courteous; no one was chaste; no one was tender. The morning—for it was morning with her too—grew darker and the street more sordid as she went on.
In the middle of some sentence of attribution of foulness she stopped abruptly. The door had opened; there he was. He looked at her and she scrambled to her feet. He had come away from the conflict within the house, for purposes of his own. He had said to Lady Wallingford, “Keep her here.” But he would not wait, for he knew that he had now a spy in the spiritual places, who could, when he could talk to her, tell him of Betty and what had interfered with the great operation. He had left her where she was, holding her by that sympathy between them, by her instinctive obedience to the reversed Name, which had made itself known to her in the curious smell. She had lingered in it, as he knew she would. Now, as she rose, he lifted a finger. He was still in his own world and she in hers, but they were already visible to each other. He went so quickly that men did not see him, but behind him she was more truly invisible, as the actual streets of London were to her.
He came to the house behind Holborn and he passed down the corridor into the secret hall. He went to his chair and sat down. Evelyn did not quite like to follow him there; she waited just inside the door. Her lungs were beginning to hurt her again, but she did not dare to speak without his permission. But she hoped he would soon be kind and not as cruel as Lester. The fish smell was strong and the hall dim. It might have been in the depth of waters; waters of which the pressure lay on her lungs, and the distance was dark around her. As she stood there, she felt both light and lightheaded, except for that increased pressure. She was floating there, and beyond her he sat like the master of all water monsters, gazing away through the waters, and she must float and wait.
At the moment when the pain was becoming really troublesome, he turned his head. His eyes drew her; she ran forward and when she came to his seat, she sank on its steps as on the steps of the house. She had either to float or crouch; she could not easily stand. This did not astonish her; once she had been able to do something which now she could not do. The Clerk let her sit there; his eyes reverted to the distance. He said, “What do you know of that house?”
She began at once to chatter. After two sentences she found herself opening and shutting her mouth, but her voice had ceased. The pain was now really bad. She must speak, but she could only tell him what he wished to know. The tears again came into her eyes and ran down her face. That did not help. She choked and said—and immediately felt relief—“Betty was there and Lester had gone to her.”
The name of the obstacle, of that first interference, of the other girl on the bed, was Lester. The Clerk frowned; he had thought Betty was, through all the worlds, secluded from any companionship. He knew that there must always be some chance that a strange life, in those depths, should loom up, but he had supposed he had certainly cut his daughter off from any human friendship, and this sounded human. He had now to deal with it. He said, “Who is—Lester?”
Evelyn answered, “She was at school with Betty and me, and whatever she pretends now she didn’t have any use for Betty then. She never liked her. She was killed—when I was.” The last three words had to be spoken, but she shook all over as she spoke. When the Clerk said, “Was she a friend of yours?” she answered, “Yes, she was, though she was always hateful and superior. We used to go about together. She ought to be with me now.”
The Clerk considered. He knew of the fierce hunger for flesh, for their physical habitations, which sometimes assails the newly dead, even the greatest. He knew how that other sorcerer of his race, the son of Joseph, had by sheer power once for a while reanimated his body and held it again for some forty days, until at last on a mountainside it had dissolved into a bright cloud. What Jesus Bar-Joseph had not been able to resist, what he himself (if and when it was necessary) was prepared to do, he did not think it likely that this other creature, this Lester, would be able to resist. Especially if this other woman by him, her friend, drew her. He stretched out his hand over Evelyn’s head, and she felt its weight where she crouched, though it was above her and did not touch her. He said, “What do you most want now?”
Evelyn answered, “To get back—or else to have someone to talk to. No one will listen to me.”
The constriction which was his smile showed on the Clerk’s face, in sudden contempt for this wretched being and for all those like her—how many millions!—who were willing to waste their powers so: talk of friends, talk of art, talk of religion, talk of love; all formulae and all facts dissolved in talk. No wonder they were hypnotically swayed by his deliberate talk. They swam and floated in vain talk, or sometimes they crouched in cruel talk. They fled and escaped from actuality. Unknowing, they spoke as he did, knowing; therefore they were his servants—until they dissolved and were lost. That might happen to this one. Let it, but before then perhaps she could be his auxiliary and draw that other shape from his daughter’s bed.
It did not occur to him that he too was moving in the same direction. Sara Wallingford, Betty, Evelyn. Evelyn was a feebler instrument than Betty; even had there been no translucent Betty—and indeed for him there was none. But the helpless obedience of Betty was more exactly directed, more even of an accurate machine than this phantom in the worlds. There was indeed, even for her, a chance, could she have taken it. It lay precisely in her consenting not to talk, whether she succeeded or no. The time might be coming when she would have thrown that chance away, but for now she had it. She was looking up stealthily under his hand, that lay over her like a shadow on water; he was still gazing right away. But he said, “That might be done. I could give you a body—and as for talking, who would you most like to talk to?”
She knew that at once. In a voice stronger than she had hitherto been able to use in that world, she exclaimed, “Betty!”
He understood that. It seemed to him a poor and feeble wish, to be content to possess one other soul—to him who thought that numbers made a difference and even that quantity altered the very quality of an act, but he understood it. “The last infirmity of noble mind” can in fact make the mind so infirm that it becomes ignoble, as the divine Milton very well knew, or he would not have called it infirmity, nor caused Messias to reject it with such a high air; for paradise is regained not only by the refusal of sin but by the healing of infirmity. He looked down on her; she was touching her lips with her tongue. He said, “I could give you Betty.”
She only looked up. He went on, “But first you must find her and this Lester. Then I will give her to you.”
br /> She said, “Always? Can I have her always?”
“Always,” he said. As he spoke a hint of what he said was visible to them, a momentary sense of the infinite he named. The hall for each of them changed. It opened out for him; it closed in for her. He saw opening beyond it the leagues of the temporal world; he saw one of his Types exhorting crowds in a city of the Urals and another sitting in a chamber of Pekin and softly murmuring spells to learned men of China, and beyond them vague adoring shadows, the skies coalescing into shapes, and bowing themselves towards him. But for her the hall became a quite small room, which still seemed to grow smaller, where she and Betty sat, she talking and Betty trembling. Infinity of far and near lived together, for he had uttered one of the names of the City, and at once (in the way they wished) the City was there.
He dropped his hand nearer, and with a mortal it would have touched, but an infinity of division was between them (as between Betty and Lester), and it did not touch. He said, “You must get Lester away from her and bring her here. Then you shall have Betty. Go and look for them; look for them and tell me. Look and tell me; then you shall talk to Betty. Look and tell me. Go and find her; look and tell me.…”
She was willing to yield to his command; she did yield. But she had not yet been dead long enough to know and use the capacities of spirit; she could not instantaneously pass through space, or be here and there at once. But that was what he wished and his power was on her. She was to be at once with Betty and with him, to see and to speak. She was still aware of herself as having the semblance of a body, though it was dimmer now, and she still, as with the pain in her lungs or the words she heard or uttered, understood her spiritual knowledge in the sensations of the body. She was compelled now to understand, in that method, the coincidence of two places. She felt, by intolerable compulsion, her body and her head slowly twisted round. She opened her mouth to scream and a wind rushed into it and choked her. The pain in her lungs was terrible. In her agony she floated right up from the place where she sat; still sitting, she rose in the air. This apparent floating was the nearest she could get to the immaterial existence of spirit. She thought she heard herself scream, and yet she knew she did not; her torment was not to be so relieved. Presently she sank slowly down again on the steps of the pseudo-throne, but now rigid—contorted, and sealed in her contortion, staring. The Clerk had again lifted his eyes from her; inattentive to her pain, he waited only for tidings of that obstacle on whose removal he was set.