Richard listened, and saw suddenly that the logical, reasonable and inevitable conclusion of cynicism and boredom was the desire for death, there was no other end, Yet he himself did not wish to die. All he wished was to find a relief from boredom, and something vital still existed in him, because he was still searching and, yes, hoping to find that relief. That was why he was here in this fantastic situation, why he was taking part in this fraud.
He was sure now that that was what it was–-
And then, all at once, something of imminence and expectancy filled the temple, sweeping through it like the wind, with the rush and the sound and the overwhelming though invisible presence of the wind, and even Richard Shelmadine knew the almost-forgotten, longed-for quickening of the sluggish blood.
Damask had gone. Her body lay there, slim, white, virginal, but it was as inanimate as the other things with which Mr Mundford busied himself. He had noticed the moment when the induced, drugged trance gave way to true coma and again congratulated himself upon his choice. The girl might even die.
She was back in the place which she had visited once before, when she lay on the floor of her mother’s kitchen and Julie had feared her dead. She recognised it with a sense of wonder that her memory of it should have been so blurred and imperfect and her one attempt to describe it to Mr Mundford so halting and imprecise. Yet she understood—because here she understood everything— that this was because there were no words in which to convey a description of this place, this state. You could no more do it than you could describe colour to a man blind from birth.
She had remembered, and mentioned, voices … but voices were physical things utterly disconnected from the method of communication which one experienced here….
In only one way did this place resemble the world, this state the state of being alive in a physical sense, and that was in the perpetual pull, the conflict between the Good
and the Evil___Names again, symbols … but how else
could she explain to herself? For although she was here, knowing and understanding and experiencing, she was
not part of it yet, she did not belong; the physical world, where ‘I’ was a thing of hands and feet and eyes and ears and a mind which could only understand through a mesh of symbolism, was waiting to claim her again. Soon, too soon, before she was ready, cleansed and reinstated. For here, eyeless, handless, mindless, the naked spirit was still faced with the same choice as in the other place, the world … one side, or the other. She remembered the last time and how she had chosen, and where, in the end, that choice had led. With the whole of her being she cried, ‘God forgive me and take me back!’, knowing that the words ‘God’ and The’ were also symbols—one standing for a great vibrating power, the other for something no more than a dust mote, visible for one second in a ray of sunshine. But the dust mote was capable of choice. Last time it had willed itself one way; now it willed itself the other, and knew itself to be accepted. In its turn it accepted the fact that there would be pains to bear, difficult things to be done. ‘I’ll do anything, anything. Only show me the way,’ she cried.
And it seemed that she was shown. Straight before her face was a great cloud of smoke, the heart of which slowly cleared into a tulip-shaped radiance. In the clear space she saw John Whitwell, exactly as he had looked when he stood in the barn in the evening light and called to her to come to Jesus, except that now the brightness about his head was spiked, plainly denned. Of course—the crown of thorns. And now behind his outstretched arms was the cross of rough wood; and there was Mr Mundford, horned and hoofed, grinning maliciously, hammering home the nails.
She stared for a long while with a double awareness. The scene was as real as any she had ever looked at; yet at the same time she knew that John Whitwell and Mr Mundford were only symbols, that understanding had to creep in this way just as the light of the sun must creep through the cracks of a shutter. But none of what was important; what mattered was what she must now do.
Mr Mundford watched the core of brightness grow and knew that at last he had succeeded. Lucifer, Son of the Morning___
Richard Shelmadine watched too, his feeling of expectancy recoiling in the old familiar way. A complete hoax. Nothing but a nasty mess and a dead naked girl on a stone slab! He might have known, he thought.
Seeing nothing at all save a column of smoke, he was sufficiently in possession of his ordinary senses to be aware when the girl moved. Not dead, then. It would be of some slight interest to watch her behaviour when she woke up sufficiently to realise that she was stark naked in the presence of two men, one of whom at least would stare at her with unfriendly eyes.
He saw her move, with the precise, weighted movements of a somnambulist, and reach out for the knife which Alec had used on the pheasants. He was a little slow in realising what she intended to do with it; then he remembered that Alec now owed him two thousand pounds and that was not a debt which his heirs and executors would be likely to honour. Alec, self-deluded fool, was now on his knees with his hands clasped over his eyes, gabbling away like a crazy man, praying for death again.
Richard shouted ‘Look out, man!’ and moved between the two and reached out his hand to take the knife. Then the feeling of complete, incredulous wonder to which he had so long been a stranger was briefly his. The knife plunged home, and with his life-blood spurting out over his clutching hands he knew for a moment, too late, the value of life.
The spell was broken. Mr Mundford felt his dark master’s withdrawal and sagged forward with a cry of despair.
The spell was broken. Damask cried out too, for the re-welding of body and spirit was as painful as the birth-wrench.
Up at Fuller’s inspiration came. ‘Danny,’ cried Mrs
Fuller, ‘I have just thought of something. Fetch me the pepper, quick!’ Danny blundered down the stairs and up again and thrust the wooden canister into her hand. Shaking a spoonful into her damp palm, she went to the bed and knew a decline of hope. Sally’s pudgy little nose had gone sharp, its pinched-in nostrils bluish-white, so dead-seeming that to hold out the pepper seemed almost like desecrating a corpse. Mrs Fuller’s hand trembled and some of the pepper spilled as she said, ‘S’too late, my pore dear, too late.’ But she was wrong. Sally drew a snuffling breath and the pepper stirred; then she gasped and gave a mighty sneeze, with, hard on its heels, a scream that rent the night. And there was the baby, as fine and lively as though he had arrived exactly at the right time and in the ordinary way. Mrs Fuller didn’t even have to slap him to make him draw his first breath, and that was just as well, for she was taken completely by surprise and was crying and saying, ‘Oh, thank God, thank God.’ It was almost a minute before she could proceed with all she had to do.
It was perhaps only a minute that they had spent thus standing just by the door with their arms around one another, Linda clinging to him as though he were the one solid thing in a disintegrating world, he holding her close and tight as though a flood or a whirlwind might tear her out of his arms—but it seemed a long time. Hadstock had time to remember her face of terror—but she had opened the door; so frightened and so brave. Oh, if only this comforting clasp in which he held her could be a symbol of real rescue, real support; if he could pick her up and carry her away and keep her safe so that nothing could ever frighten or trouble again. ‘Where to?’ asked the sardonic voice in his mind. ‘The cottage in Berry Lane which is part of your miserable remuneration and from which you will be ejected tomorrow morning?’ He imagined himself and Linda tramping the roads. Well, would it be worse than this? Had he been cowardly to hold back so long? Was it fair to decide for her, leave her to believe that she must go on … and on … alone? Above all, had
he been cold-hearted always to have rejected the alternative? Yes, he had; and though he would, even at this minute, with Linda in his arms, have preferred to cut off his hand than do it, he would. He’d go to the man who had begotten him and apologise, take back all those things he had said, humble himself, ask him for money. The sensual, genial old sinner would stamp and swear, but he’d be pleased, triumphant and he would make no effort to conceal his triumph. He’d take a fingerful of snuff and trumpet into his fine silk handkerchief and say, ‘What did I tell you? What’s amiss with the wrong side of the blanket if that’s where the money is. So now you’ve run off with another man’s wife, have you? You’ll have to amend your Puritan notions about bastards, my boy.’