But the noise was multiple; that scream was not solitary. Rising through the drumming of the rain—of which all this time the Clerk had never been entirely unaware, as it is said that those in deep prayer can hear and even consider sounds without distraction—came the screams from beyond the threshold, but now from only just beyond. Those who screamed were already at the door. The house had thrown them from its upper rooms, or rather that which had entered the house. All in the bedrooms and in the offices and the rest had been locked and silent and asleep when through the night and the rain that single taxi had rolled to the outer door. It stopped; the driver leaned back, put out his hand and threw it open. Richard had been the first to descend; then Jonathan and Betty; lastly, the reluctant thing that had first got in. Jonathan gave some silver to the driver and the vehicle disappeared into the darkness. They turned to the house; the carved hand glowed; and then, as they passed it, Betty put out a hand with a movement as if she brushed a twig away and the thing went out suddenly. The dwarf, driven first of all the company, flinched as if it had itself been struck. It reached the door and was halted, for though alone of all in London, it might of its nature have passed through that door yet the high and now dominating spirit who controlled it knew that neither her husband nor her friend’s lover could. Jonathan began to use the knocker. Richard looked for a bell and could find none, until a thought struck him, and taking a step or two back he peered by the light of a sheltered match at the center of the carved hand. He saw there a discolored spot in the palm, something which might have been a bell, the nerve of the physical machinery of that house, whose brain (now secluding itself into imbecility) lay in the round hall within. They could not hear the sound of the bell, nor was Jonathan’s hammering and occasional kicking at the door much more than a relief to his own feelings. The noise seemed deadened and only an echo of itself. Presently, however, a window went up above them and a voice which Richard recognized as the doorkeeper’s said, “What’s all this? You can’t see the Father now. It’s too late.”
“We’ve something for him,” Jonathan called, “something of his own.”
“You can’t do anything for him and you can’t give him anything,” the voice of Plankin said. “It’s late; it’s too late.”
Another voice interrupted him. It came from the dwarf, but they knew it for Evelyn’s and as it sounded the dwarf in a paroxysm of strength beat on the door with its hands. It cried, “Let me in! Let me in!”
Plankin, unseen above them, said, “I don’t know, I’m sure. It isn’t right to open the door after dark. The Father doesn’t wish it. There’s things in the dark that might frighten us.”
Evelyn screamed, “Let me in! It’s raining; you can’t leave me in the rain.” She added, more quietly and sniveling, “I shall catch a dreadful cold.” The dwarf struck again at the door and this time there broke out under the false hands a deep booming sound, as if the previous faint echo had now passed into a cavern of great depth. Jonathan had ceased to knock and Richard took his hand from the discolored palm. This, at last, was the proper summons to that gatehouse; that which they had brought must itself demand entrance. At its call—dead woman and inorganic shape—the gatekeeper, if at all, would come down and open. They could not now hear Plankin for the noise, any more than they could see him for the night. They waited.
The door began to open—less than a crack; they could hardly have known it had not the dwarf, tearing and scrabbling, flung itself at the crack. Both its possessing spirits urged it there; there, with a yelp of delight, it pressed. The threshold shook; Betty and her friends felt it move, and the door, as if of its own accord, swung more widely back, revealing Plankin half-dressed and carrying him with it. He stared at the intruder, as he staggered back. The dwarf sprang jerkily into the lit hall. Betty and the others followed and as they did so the eyes of the gatekeeper changed. Dismay came into them; he gasped; he threw his hands to his head; he cried, “Oh! Oh!” Richard, as he saw and heard, remembered a phrase from their interview of that morning—“a tumor in the head.” As he recollected it, and saw the dreadful consciousness of returning pain, he heard a clamor break out on the floor above. The dwarf had thrust past Plankin and was scuttling away down the hall. As it pierced into the house the clamor grew—a hubbub of cries and thuds and shouts and hurrying feet and crashing doors. This was the Return and this the operation of inflexible law.
They appeared; they came, stumbling and roaring, down the stairs—all those who carried the Clerk’s mark in their bodies. First, an old woman, in a nightgown, eyes running tears and hand clutching her side where the cancer had begun again to gnaw, and she had been waked by it with only one thought, and that all confused—to be healed, to get to her Comforter. A few steps behind came a young man partly dressed, coughing and spitting blood onto the stairs, and feeling vainly for the handkerchief he had in his first waking spasm forgotten. And after him a still younger man, who as he came was being twisted slowly back into deformity, his leg withering and drawing up, so that he was presently clinging to the banisters and hopping down sideways. Others followed, some with unseen ailments and some with open wounds, but all hurrying with one instinctive desire—to get to Simon, to find their Father, to be healed and at rest. Only one of all that household was not there—one, the paralytic, who had waked to find her flesh turning again a prison, she already half-immobile, and now lying part in and part out of bed anguished and alone in her room. The rest were down the stairs and in the hall and hurrying as best they could round the corner into that corridor in the wall to the hole that gave on the center of all. In front of them, and quicker than any, went the dwarf, and as if in a miserable retinue they followed, Plankin the first. The hunt for the miracle-monger was up; they rushed to be again sealed his own, but there was something dangerous in the way they went.
Betty had paused in the open door till the scurry had gone by. Her hand was in Jonathan’s, who still carried the canvas of the painting under his other arm. Richard was on Betty’s other side. At last, she too began to move; she went quietly and her face was very serious and calm. As they went down the hall, they saw that the walls there and still more those of the narrow corridor when they entered it were running with drops and thin streams of water. Richard looked up. He saw that, here and there, the rain was beginning to come through the roof; he felt a few drops on his head, on his face, on his eyelids. But for the most part the rain was not yet upon the walls; it was the condensation of something in the air, some freshness of water that lay on them, but left the air dry and sterile for want of it. The walls absorbed it; under it they changed to a kind of slime.
When they came to the hall it was not so. There the roof was still sound and the walls, as far as they could see, still dry. Before them the diseased throng were hurrying across the floor and the three friends could not clearly see the dwarf beyond them or the two encircled figures beyond it. The woman, as all this crowd burst in, did not move, but the Clerk turned his eyes. Plankin was coming so fast that he outwent even the dwarf, who indeed seemed to pause and totter as it took there the first step, so that the others all broke out around it, and came first to the invisible barrier. That perhaps would not have held against any indifferent human beings; it was not primarily meant for such protection—much less against divine scepticism or heavenly joy. Brutality might have trampled it, scattered about the outer circle, tottering and crawling round it, surrounding it, beating with their hands on an invisible wall, wailing and moaning, and one howling dog-like. The Clerk took no slightest notice; he was looking, and his eyes were very wary, at the other thing that now began to advance.
It walked more steadily now, as if it had found some center of determination in itself. When Lester’s influence had been on it, there had been in its movements an irrepressible jerkiness. But now that jerkiness had passed; it moved inflexibly, as if it neither could nor wished to stop. When it had almost reached the barrier, Betty pulled her hand from Jonathan’s and ran after it. She caught up with it;
in a swift and strong motion she caught its hand; she exclaimed, “Evelyn, do stop!”
The Clerk had been watching it come. Now he stood up. As he did so, he released from the intensity of his concentration the endoplasmic image in the hands of his paramour; it fell; and she, unable to let it go, fell forward also at that sudden unbalancing release. The Clerk had, at the same time, taken a step towards the barrier, so that she fell against the chair, and the doll, to which her hands were still fastened by her own blood, lay on the seat. She lay propped there and she turned her head, so that she saw, at a little distance, not only the dwarf, of which she knew nothing, but handlinked with it her daughter, her rival and enemy. That Betty was wholly free from her. She saw her almost as Jonathan saw her, beautiful and good, very much Betty. That Betty was quite unlike the doll she helplessly held. The doll was all she had of Betty and even the doll was becoming, as her blood soaked into it, less and less like Betty and more and more like herself. She was being, by an operation which her own will had in the beginning encouraged, slowly substituted for Betty. She lay, rigid and fixed, propped by the edge of the chair, and into the insatiable image through those two small pricks her blood continued to drain.
The Clerk made a quick savage motion and the clamor of the diseased creatures ceased. He looked round the circle, collecting their pitiable eyes; then he raised his hand, pointing it at the dwarf, and he said, “Drag it away!”
Most of them ignored him. A few of those least diseased did look round at the dwarf, but they looked back at once. It was not disobedience but impotence that held them there. Someone—it was difficult to know who, in that throng—said feebly, “Make us well, Father!” The dwarf, dragging at Betty’s hand and pulling her after it, advanced another few steps. Now it was right up against the barrier and had, with a definite and powerful thrust, got one foot just over the circle by some half an inch. There it seemed to halt, as if it could press no farther. Betty still clung to its hand; it was all she could do. She called out, “Lester, do help me! I can’t hold her.”
Indeed nothing—neither the Clerk’s frown nor Betty’s clasp—could now affect the mad determination of the lost spirit. Evelyn was overridden by the fear that even this refuge in which she somehow was might be snatched from her. She saw the barrier almost as a material wall; if she could get this body within it, she would be safe, or as safe as she could be. The attraction which that point exercised on the mere material image was strengthened by her own will; a false union held her and it. Since the house had been entered, there had been no need for Lester to drive the shape; it had been only too urgent to hurry on. Only Betty still clung to it. She flung out her other hand behind her, as if to Jonathan; and Jonathan sprang forward and caught it. As if aware of them for the first time, the Clerk lifted his eyes and saw the three friends.
Jonathan and Betty were too occupied to meet his eyes, but Richard did. And as he did, the sudden recollection of what this man had offered him rose bitterly in his heart. This fellow had offered to rule Lester for him, to give him back his wife or not as he might choose—he! He had been still lingering by the door, but now suddenly he too moved. If Lester was to go from him, she should go with all honors. He walked forward to join the others and when he had reached them he took the canvas from under Jonathan’s arm. He said, “Father Simon, my wife wishes us to return your property. Take it.”
He lightly tossed the canvas towards the Clerk; it flew over the circles and struck Simon on the shoulder. The Clerk gave a sudden squeal. Richard went on, holding himself very upright and imperious. “If I had not been a fool in the past, you would not have been able to——”
“Darling, must you be quite so savage?” Lester’s voice half-laughing interrupted. “Tell him what you ought to tell him—that will be enough.”
Richard had forgotten his commission. Now he remembered. He said, “Yes … well … but I think it’s too late. Lester is free of you, and Betty is free, and the world will soon be free. But just before it is—I was sent to offer you everything—all the kingdoms in it and their glory. You were to be asked to meet those others who are like you; you were, all three of you, to be … how do I know what? masters, for all I do know. But I think we’ve come in time. Let’s see if your friends will.”
A sudden silence fell. Richard listened—all of them, even the Clerk, all except Evelyn, listened—for that other voice. It did not then come. Lester was still clearly aware of what was happening. But she was also aware of a certain difference in her surroundings. She had seemed to enter the house with the others, even to come as far as the hall, but when the others had gone right in, when Richard had gone and had begun to speak, when she had broken in on him with that gay but serious protest, she had become aware that she was no longer related to that deformed image. It had itself released her, merely by entering the hall. For as it did so and she for the first second with it, she had found herself once more in the rain. It was driving down over and past her onto—the Thames? some wide river, flowing, flowing on beneath her; and the pale ghastly light in the hall had changed. Within the rain a fresher light was opening. It shone on the rain and on the river; and the room with its companies was still there, but it stood on the river, which flowed through it, and in the rain, which fell through it. The light was like dawn, except that it had in it a tinge redder than dawn, and the same tinge was in the river and the rain, exquisite and blood-roseal, delicate and enriching. Only she felt again the awful sense of separation. It was like a sharp pain in a great joy. She gave herself to it; she could no other; she had consented long before—when she married Richard perhaps—or was consenting now—when she was leaving him. Her heart sank; without him, what was immortality or glory worth? and yet only without him could she even be that which she now was. All, all was ending; this, after so many preludes, was certainly death. This was the most exquisite and pure joy of death, in a bearing of bitterness too great to be borne. Above her the sky every moment grew more high and empty; the rain fell from a source far beyond all clouds. Below her the myriad drops, falling in slanting lines, struck the great river in innumerable little explosions, covering the whole surface. She saw each of them with an admirable exactitude—each at the same time as she saw all, and the flowing river and the empty sky, and herself no longer bodily understood, but a point, a point reflected from many drops and pierced by many drops, a spark of the light floating in the air. But she was not very conscious of herself as herself; she no longer thought of herself as bearing or enjoying; the bitterness, the joy and the inscape of those great waters were all she knew, and among them the round hall, with those mortal figures within it, and its window open, as she now saw it, on the waters. Even Richard’s figure there had lost its immediate urgency; something once necessary and still infinitely precious, which had belonged to it, now lay deep, beyond all fathoming deep, in the current below, and could be found again only within the current or within the flashing rain. Of any future union, if any were to be, she could not begin even to think; had she, the sense of separation would have been incomplete, and the deadly keenness of the rain unenjoyed.
The rain did not seem to her to be driving into the round hall; if it did, it was there invisible to her. The window was open, and she became aware that towards the window, from a great distance, two forms were moving. They came walking upon the waters, great-headed, great-cloaked forms, forms like Simon, two Simons far beyond the hall, coming towards the hall and Simon. She thought at first there were more—a whole procession of Simons, but it was not so; there were but the two. They were going directly towards the window, one behind the other, and as she saw them she had a sudden sense that never, never would she have asked either of them to bring her a drink of water in the night. She would have been terrified of what they brought; there would have been something in the glass—as if the Richard of past days had put secret poison in the drink; and much worse than that, for human malice was but human malice, and comprehensible and pardonable enough to any human; but this would
have been a cool and immaterial—and the worse for being immaterial—antipathy to—to? to all, a drink the taste of which would have been a separation without joy. They came on, as it were below her—not that she had at all a place to see them from—and as they passed or seemed to pass, she had a moment’s terror that it was not they but she. The great-headed, great-cloaked, steadily walking forms were wholly unlike her, but yet they were she—double, immense, concealed, walking through the unfelt rain on the unyielding water, antipathetic, relegated to antipathy; as if in the shadowy City of her early death she had gone another way and through the deep tunnels and tribes had come out on this water, and (grown in them to this size and covered in them with this wrapping to hide herself) were walking on to some quiet and awful consummation. This had been the other way, the way she had just not gone. Behind them, as they went, the faint roseal glow in the waters and the rain gathered thicker and followed and deepened as it followed. The color of it—rose or blood or fire—struck up the descending lines of rain and was lost somewhere in that empty upper sky above her; but below it was by now almost a wall which moved after those forms; and absorbed and changed the antipathy they diffused; and all behind them the freshness of the waters and the light was free and lovely.
On earth—that is, among those earthly—the turn of the night had come. The morning of the feast imperceptibly began, though none of them knew it—none? the Clerk knew. As a man feels the peculiar chill that comes, especially in early spring or late autumn, with the rising sun, so he, long before any sun had risen, felt a new coldness in the hall. The air within the charmed circle was heavy, but as the Acts of the City took charge and the nearness of all the hallows grew everywhere within the outer air, it became dank and even more oppressive with a graveyard chill. More than humanity was holy and more than humanity was strange. The round hall itself and its spare furnishings and the air in it were of earth, and nothing could alter that nature. The blessedness of earth was in them and now began to spread out of them. There too were the hallows, and their life began to awake, though the City itself seemed not yet awake. Invisible motions stirred and crept or stepped or flew, as if a whole creation existed there unseen. The Acts of the City were at hand. Simon’s eyes were still on the dwarf, which by now had pressed still farther into the barrier, as if it was working its way through some thick molded stuff which could not quite halt it. It was delayed also by its paw, being still caught in Betty’s; for all its spasmodic tugging it could not quite free itself from that young passionate clasp. But it had dragged Betty herself very near the barrier. Her other hand was in Jonathan’s and his arm was round her. As her foot touched the outer circle, she looked round at him and said, “Don’t hold me now, Jon. I must go with her.”