The dwarf in that pause had leaned again against the parapet. The ordinary traffic of London was going on, but as if Lester’s pause had affected it, there came at the moment a lull and a silence. Through it there toddled slowly along an elderly gentleman, peering through his glasses at an evening paper. Lester, shyly and daringly, moved towards him. She meant to say, “I beg your pardon, but could you possibly spare me two pennies for the telephone?” But she had not yet control of that false voice and the croak in which she spoke sounded more like “twopence as a loan.” The elderly gentleman looked up, saw a poor shabby deformed creature staring glassily at him, heard the mumble and hastily felt in his pocket. He said—and it was mercifully permitted him by the Omnipotence to be on this occasion entirely truthful, “It’s all the change I’ve got.” He raised his hat, in some faint tradition of “brave and ancient things,” and toddled on. The magical body stood holding the pennies in its pseudo-hand, and Lester felt in her that something of a stir in glory which she had felt in seeing Richard’s movements or Betty’s smile. She was made free of adoration.
The dwarf, under her impulse, crossed the road and went into a telephone box. She put the two pennies in the slot and dialed a number. Lester was aware that there was no reply; Richard apparently was not at home. She felt a small pang at the thought of their empty flat; the desolation seemed to be approaching. It was most likely that he was at Jonathan’s. She compelled her instrument to try again. A voice said, “Jonathan Drayton speaking.” She caused her instrument to press the button. She said—and now her power was moving so easily in these conditions that something of her own voice dominated the croaking spasms and rang down the telephone. “Mr. Drayton, is Richard there?”
“Hold on,” said Jonathan. “Richard!” For soon after Richard’s conversation with the Foreign Office he had been rung up by Jonathan and so warmly invited by both the lovers to join them that he had yielded and gone. Presently they were all to go and dine, but until then they had sat together talking and gradually, as fat as possible, making clear to each other the mystery in which they moved. Betty showed an ever-quickened desire to get rid of the painting of the Clerk and his congregation; and both she and Jonathan had so pressed the other canvas on Richard that at last he had accepted it. He did so gratefully, for now, after all that he had seen, he found himself even more moved by it, so that at any moment he half expected to find that he had missed the figure of Lester walking in the midst of it—if that swift and planetary carriage of hers could be called a walk—and even that he himself might find himself not without but within it and meeting her there. And the three of them in the room had begun, uncertainly and with difficulty—even Betty—to speak of the true nature of the streets there represented, when the telephone had rung.
At Jonathan’s call Richard went across and took the receiver. He said, “Richard Furnival,” and then, to his amazement, but not much to his amazement, he heard Lester’s voice. It was interrupted by some kind of croak which he took to be a fault in the instrument, but he heard it say, “Richard!” and at the noble fascination of that familiar sound he answered, not as unsteadily as he feared, “Is it you, darling?” At the other end the dwarf leaned against the side of the box; nothing at either end, to any who saw, seemed in the least unusual. Along the wires the unearthly and earthly voice continued. “Listen, dearest. Presently someone is coming to see you; it’s a short and rather unpleasant woman—at least, that’s what it looks like. But I shall be with her, I hope—I do so hope. Will you be as sweet to me as you can, even if you don’t like it?”
Richard said, “I’ve been all kinds of a fool, I know. But I’ll do anything with you, if I possibly can. Jonathan and Betty are here.”
“That’s all right,” the voice said. It added, “Once more. Before I go, before I give you up. Oh my sweet!”
The voice was so full of serene grief that Richard went cold. He said, “Nothing shall make me give you up. I’ve only just begun to find you.”
“But you will, even if nothing makes you,” the voice said. “It’ll have to be like that. But I’ll come first. Don’t be too distressed about anything. And ask Jonathan to let me in; I’ll speak to you inside. Goodbye. I do love you, Richard.”
A kind of hubbub broke out on the telephone—another voice and the mechanic croaking—and then Lester’s voice, dominating all, “Wait for us. Goodbye,” and he heard the click of the receiver. He held his own a full minute before he slowly put it down. His two friends watched him coming back to them across the room. He said, “Something is coming here—a kind of woman. And Lester. I don’t know anything more. She says she’ll be with it.”
“But—Lester …” Jonathan began.
“If that wasn’t Lester,” Richard said, “you’re not looking at Betty now.”
They both looked at her. She was standing by the window and beyond her the October darkness was closing in. She said seriously, “Did she sound—disturbed?”
“Not about that,” said Richard. He was silent; then he broke out, “Why isn’t one taught how to be loved? Why isn’t one taught anything?”
Betty said, “Don’t worry, Richard; we can’t be taught till we can learn. I wish Jonathan was going to get as good a wife as yours is. She wasn’t like us; she hardly had to find out how to learn. Jon, take that thing off the easel, won’t you? We’ll get rid of it tonight. Tonight.”
She sounded almost impatient, but only because they had not already acted and the preaching horror was still in the room where they were and Lester was to come. Jonathan went and lifted the canvas. As he laid it face downwards on the table, he said, “Do you know what tonight is? All Hallows’ Eve.”
“A good night,” said Richard, “for anything that has to be done.”
“And a good night,” Betty added, “for Lester to come to us here.”
They fell into silence and for the time that followed they remained mostly silent. Once Jonathan, muttering something about food, moved, and he and Betty spread a rough meal of bread and cheese and cold scraps and wine. There was not much, but there was enough, and they ate and drank standing, as Israel did while the angels of the Omnipotence were at their work in Egypt. The night was heavy without and the sound of rain. The sense of the crisis was sharp in them and the expectation of that which came.
Presently the bell rang. They looked at each other. Richard said, “You go, Jonathan; she asked you to.” Jonathan went to the street door and opened it. He saw in the night a short pale-faced woman and stood aside for her to come in. As it did so, he saw how blank its eyes were, how dead-dull its flesh. Yet he could have believed that, like a paralytic, it tried to recognize him and almost to smile. Neither of them spoke; it knew its way and went before him into the room where the others were.
They watched it come right in; they hardly watched but they heard Jonathan close the room door. Then Betty said, in a low voice of welcome, “Lester!” She saw, as the others did not, the form of her friend beside this other thing; and yet what she saw, she saw less clearly than before. They were growing away from each other. Lester was bound to pass more wholly into that other world which cannot catch its true and perfect union with this until the resurrection of all the past; the occasional resurrection which then obtained for her was rather purgatorial than paradisal, though sometimes the two were simply one. But Betty also was changing. That free and (as it were) immaculate self which had been by high disposition granted her was bound now to take on the conditions of its earthly place and natural heredity. The miracle that had preserved her was over and she too must be subjected to the tribulations and temptations of common life. As she so drew apart her vision faded. One evening yet remained and even now the other form and face were full of cloud.
But she saw her. Richard and Jonathan did not. They looked at that uncouth visitor, its blank struggling gaze, its lank hair, its dropped shoulder, its heavy hanging hands, its dragging foot, its dead flesh, its flopping dress, and could not speak. What had this to do with Lester?
Lester herself, could she have felt regret, would in that moment have regretted that she had come. She did not. The Acts that were about to take place saw to that. They would, when the time came, see that she spoke what she had to speak, for she was already assenting to their will. It was why they had, since she had driven her present vehicle away from Charing Cross on the long walk to Jonathan’s flat, quickened their purging. Up Villiers Street, along the Strand and Fleet Street, up Ludgate Hill, along the Old Bailey, they had worked on her. As the magical shape plodded on, its steps growing slower and heavier, through the rain and the dark, they troubled her with a sense of the physical body she had left. At first indeed, as the walk began, she had endured only a great wish that she had again the body as well as the soul of Lester, the body that Richard had loved and for which she had herself felt a small admiration. She wished, if she were to be thus materially before her husband, to give again the hand she had given, to speak to him with the mouth he had kissed. She had no physical desires except to be in his eyes her own physical self. But as she thought of it, she grew disturbed. Her faults, on the whole, had not been physical. Her body had carried no past of fornication or adultery, nor had she therefore mystically to free it from those avenging unions. She had not to disengage her flesh from those other bodies, or to re-engage her flesh so that its unions should be redeemed, approved and holy. Nor had she been given to the other luxurious commitments of the flesh. She had not been particularly lazy or greedy; as bodies go, hers was reasonably pure. As bodies go—but even then? More and more disliking this body to which she was transitorily bound, she more and more came to consider her dealings with her own. All through that long walk, she relived them and always she ended with this other false disrelish. She again and again began by being conscious of her looks, her energy, her swiftness; again and again she would (except for mere fastidiousness, which was of no account) have tempted others with it, though not to commit herself; again and again she melted to delicate pleasures and grew dependent on them, and as she did so, she woke to find herself in the end one with this other. It was this false deformed death of which she was proud, with which she tempted, in which she took her delight. Hers was this, or at least no more than this; unless, for again and again in the end the sudden impulse sprang—unless she could still let it be what it had been ordained to be, worthy in its whole physical glory of Betty, of Richard, of the City she felt about her, of all that was unfamiliar to her in the name of God. Her past went with her all that walk; and by the end of the walk her past had taught her this.
Yet, having so thought of herself in humility and serious repentance all the way, it was, when at last she came into Jonathan’s room, of Richard that she thought. She was agonized for what she felt must be his horror if, seeming to be in this shape, she spoke. Betty’s cry of welcome went unnoticed; she was here to speak and now how could she—how could she—speak? He was staring at—her? no; but at this; and he was her husband; how could she treat her husband so? All the coldnesses and all the angers were but delirium and bitterness of love; she could have helped them perhaps, but now this she could not help and this was worst of all. She had for a moment a terrible fear that this was they; even that this was she and that he—Oh he by whom alone in that world she lived—would know that this was she. The silence became a fearful burden to them all. It was Betty who saved them. She broke into action; she dashed across the room; she caught Jonathan’s and Richard’s hands. She cried out, “Come over here!”
The relief of her action released them; uncertainly, they obeyed. She pulled them across to the window; she said, “Turn round, both of you; look out there.” She nodded her golden head at the darkness and to Jonathan it seemed as if a rain of gold drove through the night and vanished. They obeyed her still; one hand on the nearer shoulder of each she held them there. She turned her head over her shoulder; she exclaimed, “Lester, say something to us.” Lester, in a rush of gratitude, did so. She said, it is true, no more than “Hullo!” but the voice was undoubtedly her voice, and (though no louder than on earth) it filled the room. Jonathan, hearing it, jumped a little. Richard did not; there was, in all the universe, no place in which that voice was not recognizable and good. He answered, with the immediate instinct of something that might yet be love, “Hullo, darling!”
Lester, dallying with peace and half-forgetful of the others, said, “Have I been very long? I’m so sorry.” “Sorry” is a word that means many things; there is in general a friendliness about it and now it meant all friendliness. “We took such a time.” Her laugh sounded in their ears. “Have you been waiting?”
Betty took her hand off Richard’s shoulder. In the intimacy of those two, her hand was a solecism. Lester’s voice went on. “But I’ve been tiresome so often, darling. I’ve been beastly to you. I——”
He said, “You’ve never been tiresome,” and she, “No; speak true now, my own. I——”
He said, “Very well; you have. And what in all the heavens and hells, and here too, does it matter? Do we keep accounts about each other? If it’s the last word I speak I shall still say you were too good for me.”
“And——?” she said, and her laughter was more than laughter; it was the speech of pure joy. “Go on, blessing—if it’s our last word.”
“And I’m too good for you,” Richard said. “Let me turn round now. It’s all right; I promise you it’s all right.”
“Do, darling,” she said.
He turned, and the others with him. They saw the long room, and at the other end the painting of the City that dominated the room as if it and not the wall behind it were the true end of the room, as if the room precisely opened there on that space and those streets; and as if some unseen nature present there united both room and painting, the light in it was within the room also and vibrated there. The table with the remnants of the meal, the wine still in the glasses, the back of the other canvas lying on the table—all these were massive with the light. Between them and the table stood the dwarf-woman, but somehow it did not matter to any of them. The full and lovely voice said, almost as if a rich darkness spoke within the light, “It’s nice to see you all again.”
Betty said, “It’s blessed to see you. But what is this, my dear?” She nodded at the dwarf.
Lester said, “It was made by—I don’t even know who he is, but by the man in your room.”
Richard said, “He’s called Simon, and sometimes the Clerk, and he thinks himself no end of a fellow. Has he hurt you?”
“Not a bit,” said Lester. “I’ve been with it of my own choice. But now I’ve seen you, I know what to do—before I go away. It must be taken back to him.”
So much was suddenly clear to her. She was here—and Richard and Betty, and Jonathan too, were here for this purpose. It was time the magical dwarf was driven back to Simon. It had come from him; it must go to him. The Acts of the City were in operation; she felt their direction. She only could compel this movement; she only return to the false maker the thing he had falsely made. It was full time.
Betty said, “We were going to take him that other thing—the painting Jon did of him. You haven’t seen it; but that doesn’t matter. It’s very good, but it’d be much better if he had it altogether. So Jon’s being a saint and giving it to him.… Lester, there’s someone else with you!”
It was fortunate that the Acts of the City had allowed the three those minutes to become accustomed to the voice and to the shape. For now the shape took a quick step forward and there broke from it a sudden confused noise. Neither Richard nor Jonathan at all recognized the human voice that was mixed with that croaking and cackling, but Betty recognized it. She had feared it too much and too often not to know. She did not step backwards, but she flinched, as if the noise had struck her. She exclaimed, “Evelyn!”
The noise ceased abruptly. Jonathan took a step forward, but Betty caught his arm. She said, “No, really, Jon; it’s too silly. I’m not afraid; I know perfectly well I’m not afraid. I was only surprised. Le
ster, you needn’t stop her. Were you talking to me, Evelyn?”
“No one,” said the dwarf with a slow effort and in a harsh imitation of Evelyn’s voice, “cares about me. I don’t expect much. I don’t ask for much. I only want you, Betty. Lester’s so cruel to me. She won’t cry. I only want to see you cry.” It tried to lift its hands, but they only waggled. The body drooped and the head fell on one side. So askew, it continued to emit sounds mostly indistinguishable. Now and then a sentence stood out. It said at last, clearly and with a slight giggle, “Betty looked so funny when she cried. I want to see Betty cry.”
Jonathan said under his breath, “God be merciful to us all!” Betty said, “Evelyn, if you want to talk, come and talk. I can’t promise to cry, but I’ll listen.” Richard said, “Must we waste time?”
The dwarf’s head jerked and turned as far as it could from one to the other. It gave back a little. Before those three, as if the consciousness of their eyes oppressed it, it fell together a little more. It said, with a final great effort, “You hurt me when you look at me. I don’t want you to look at me. I want to look at you. Betty, you used to be frightened of me. I want you to be frightened of me.”
Jonathan said with a sudden decision, “We can’t do anything. Let’s do what we can do. If we’re to do it, let’s go now.” He went to the table and took up the canvas.
Betty said, “Shall we, Lester?” and the other voice, again filling the room, answered, “We’d better. Evelyn can’t manage this and I’ve only one thing to do with it—to take it back. Let’s go.”
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