All Hallows' Eve by Charles Williams Read Free Book Online Page B

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.”
    â€œThis 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?”
    â€œIt 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.”
    â€œAlter 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.”
    â€œNo?” 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.”
    â€œMother——” 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 hate 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 tomorrow, 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