Uncanny Stories — The Flaw in the Crystal Part 2
V
Night after night, she continued and without an effort.
It was as easy as drawing your breath; it was indeed the breath you drew.
She found that she had no longer to devote hours to Harding Powell, any more than she gave hours to Rodney; she could do his business in moments, in points of inappreciable time.
It was as if from night to night the times swung together and made one enduring timeless time.
For the process belonged to a region that was not of times or time.
She wasn’t afraid, then, of not giving enough time to it, but she _was_ afraid of omitting it altogether.
She knew that every intermission would be followed by a relapse, and Harding’s state did not admit of any relapses.
Of course, if time _had_ counted, if the thing was measurable, she would have been afraid of losing hold of Rodney Lanyon.
She held him now by a single slender thread, and the thread was Bella.
She “worked” it regularly now through Bella.
He was bound to be all right as long as Bella was; for his possibilities of suffering were thus cut off at their source.
Besides, it was the only way to preserve the purity of her intention, the flawlessness of the crystal.
That was the blessedness of her attitude to Harding Powell.
It was passionless, impersonal.
She wanted nothing of Harding Powell except to help him, and to help Milly, dear little Milly.
And never before had she been given so complete, so overwhelming a sense of having helped.
It was nothing—unless it was a safeguard against vanity—that they didn’t know it, that they persisted in thinking it was Milly’s plan that worked.
Not that that altogether accounted for it to Harding Powell.
He said so at last to Agatha.
They were returning, he and she, by the edge of the wood at the top of the steep field after a long walk.
He had asked her to go with him—it was her country—for a good stretch, further than Milly’s little feet could carry her.
They stood a moment up there and looked around them.
April was coming on, but the ploughed land at their feet was still bare;
the earth waited.
On that side of the valley she was delicately unfruitful, spent with rearing the fine, thin beauty of the woods.
But, down below, the valley ran over with young grass and poured it to the river in wave after wave, till the last surge of green rounded over the water’s edge.
Rain had fallen in the night, and the river had risen; it rested there, poised.
It was wonderful how a thing so brimming, so shining, so alive could be so still; still as marsh water, flat to the flat land.
[Illustration: ...
he stood for a moment in the open doorway ...
] At that moment, in a flash that came like a shifting of her eyes, the world she looked at suffered a change.
And yet it did not change.
All the appearances of things, their colours, the movement and the stillness remained as if constant in their rhythm and their scale; but they were heightened, intensified; they were carried to a pitch that would have been vehement, vibrant, but that the stillness as well as the movement was intense.
She was not dazzled by it or confused in any way.
Her senses were exalted, adjusted to the pitch.
She would have said now that the earth at her feet had become insubstantial, but that she knew, in a flash, that what she saw was the very substance of the visible world; live and subtle as flame; solid as crystal and as clean.
It was the same world, flat field for flat field and hill for hill; but radiant, vibrant, and, as it were, infinitely transparent.
Agatha in her moment saw that the whole world brimmed and shone and was alive with the joy that was its life, joy that flowed flood-high and yet was still.
In every leaf, in every blade of grass, this life was manifest as a strange, a divine translucence.
She was about to point it out to the man at her side when she remembered that he had eyes for the beauty of the earth, but no sense of its secret and supernatural light.
Harding Powell denied, he always had denied, the supernatural.
And when she turned to him her vision had passed from her.
They must have another tramp some day, he said.
He wanted to see more of this wonderful place.
And then he spoke of his recovery.
“It’s all very well,” he said, “but I can’t account for it.
Milly says it’s the place.
” “It _is_ a wonderful place,” said Agatha.
“Not so wonderful as all that.
You saw how I was the day after we came.
Well—it can’t be the place altogether.
” “I rather hope it isn’t,” Agatha said.
“Do you?
What do you think it is, then?
” “I think it’s something in you.
” “Of course, of course.
But what started it?
That’s what I want to know.
Something’s happened.
Something queer and spontaneous and unaccountable.
It’s—it’s uncanny.
For, you know, I oughtn’t to feel like this.
I got bad news this morning.
” “Bad news?
” “Yes.
My sister’s little girl is very ill.
They think it’s meningitis.
They’re in awful trouble.
And I—I’m feeling like this.
” “Don’t let it distress you.
” “It doesn’t distress me.
It only puzzles me.
That’s the odd thing.
Of course, I’m sorry, and I’m anxious and all that; but I _feel_ so well.
” “You _are_ well.
Don’t be morbid.
” “I haven’t told my wife yet.
About the child, I mean.
I simply daren’t. It’ll frighten her.
She won’t know how I’ll take it, and she’ll think it’ll make me go all queer again.
” He paused and turned to her.
“I say, if she _did_ know how I’m taking it, she’d think _that_ awfully queer, wouldn’t she?
” He paused.
“The worst of it is,” he said, “I’ve got to tell her.
” “Will you leave it to me?
” Agatha said.
“I think I can make it all right.
” “How?
” he queried.
“Never mind how.
I can.
” “Well,” he assented, “there’s hardly anything you can’t do.
” That was how she came to tell Milly.
She made up her mind to tell her that evening as they sat alone in Agatha’s house.
“Harding,” Milly said, “was happy over there with his books; just as he used to be, only more so.
” So much more so that she was a little disturbed about it.
She was afraid it wouldn’t last.
And again she said it was the place, the wonderful place.
“If you want it to last,” Agatha said, “don’t go on thinking it’s the place.
” “Why shouldn’t it be?
I feel that he’s safe here.
He’s out of it.
Things can’t reach him.
” “Bad news reached him to-day.
” “Aggy—what?
” Milly whispered in her fright.
“His sister is very anxious about her little girl.
” “What’s wrong?
” Agatha repeated what she had heard from Harding Powell.
“Oh—” Milly was dumb for an instant while she thought of her sister-in-law.
Then she cried aloud: “If the child dies, it’ll make him ill again?
” “No, Milly, it won’t. ” “It will, I tell you.
It’s always been that sort of thing that does it.
” “And supposing there was something that keeps it off?
” “What is there?
What is there?
” “I believe there’s something.
Would you mind awfully if it wasn’t the place?
” “What do you mean, Agatha?
” (There was a faint resentment in Milly’s agonized tone.
) It was then that Agatha told her.
She made it out for her as far as she had made it out at all, with the diffidence that a decent attitude required.
Milly raised doubts which subsided in a kind of awe when Agatha faced her with the evidence of dates.
“You remember, Milly, the night when he slept?
” “I do remember.
He said himself it was miraculous.
” She meditated.
“And so you think it’s that?
” she said presently.
“I do indeed.
If I dared leave off (I daren’t) you’d see for yourself.
” “What do you think you’ve got hold of?
” “I don’t know yet.
” There was a long, deep silence which Milly broke.
“What do you _do_?
” she said.
“I don’t do anything.
It isn’t me.
” “I see,” said Milly.
“I’ve prayed.
You didn’t think I hadn’t?
” “It’s not that—not anything _you_ mean by it.
And yet it is; only it’s more, much more.
I can’t explain it.
I only know it isn’t me.
” She was beginning to feel vaguely uncomfortable about having told her.
“And, Milly, you mustn’t tell him.
Promise me you won’t tell him.
” “No, I won’t tell him.
” “Because, you see, he’d think it was all rot.
” “He would,” said Milly.
“It’s the sort of thing he does think rot.
” “And that might prevent its working.
” Milly smiled faintly.
“I haven’t the ghost of an idea what ‘it’ is.
But whatever it is, can you go on doing it?
” “Yes, I think so.
You see, it depends rather—” “It depends on what?
” “Oh, on a lot of things—on your sincerity; on your—your purity.
It depends so much on _that_ that it frightens you, lest, perhaps, you mightn’t, after all, be so very pure.
” Milly smiled again a little differently.
“Darling, if that’s all, I’m not frightened.
Only—supposing—supposing you gave out?
You might, you know.
” “_I_ might.
But It couldn’t. You mustn’t think it’s me, Milly.
Because if anything happened to me, if I did give out, don’t you see how it would let him down?
It’s as bad as thinking it’s the place.
” “Does it matter what it is—or who it is,” said Milly passionately; “as long as—” Her tears came and stopped her.
Agatha divined the source of Milly’s passion.
“Then you don’t mind, Milly?
You’ll let me go on?
” Milly rose; she turned abruptly, holding her head high, so that she might not spill her tears.
Agatha went with her over the grey field towards the farm.
They paused at the gate.
Milly spoke.
“Are you sure?
” she said.
“Certain.
” “And you won’t let go?
” Her eyes shone towards her friend’s in the twilight.
“You _will_ go on?
” “_You_ must go on.
” “Ah—how?
” “Believing that he’ll be all right.
” “Oh, Aggy, he was devoted to Winny.
And if the child dies—” VI
The child died three days later.
Milly came over to Agatha with the news.
She said it had been an awful shock, of course.
She’d been dreading something like that for him.
But he’d taken it wonderfully.
If he came out of it all right, she _would_ believe in what she called Agatha’s “thing.
” He did come out of it all right.
His behaviour was the crowning proof, if Milly wanted more proof, of his sanity.
He went up to London and made all the arrangements for his sister.
When he returned he forestalled Milly’s specious consolations with the truth.
It was better, he told her, that the dear little girl should have died, for there was distinct brain trouble anyway.
He took it as a sane man takes a terrible alternative.
Weeks passed.
He had grown accustomed to his own sanity and no longer marvelled at it.
And still, without intermission, Agatha went on.
She had been so far affected by Milly’s fright (that was the worst of Milly’s knowing) that she held on to Harding Powell with a slightly exaggerated intensity.
She even began to give more and more time to him, she who had made out that time in this process did not matter.
She was afraid of letting go, because the consequences (Milly was perpetually reminding her of the consequences) of letting go would be awful.
For Milly kept her at it.
Milly urged her on.
Milly, in Milly’s own words, sustained her.
She praised her; she praised the Secret, praised the Power.
She said you could see how it worked.
It was tremendous; it was inexhaustible.
Milly, familiarized with its working, had become a fanatical believer in the Power.
But she had her own theory.
She knew, of course, that they were all, she and Agatha and poor Harding, dependent on the Power, that it was the Power that did it, and not Agatha.
But Agatha was _their_ one link with it, and if the link gave way where were they?
Agatha felt that Milly watched her and waylaid her;
that she was suspicious of failures and of intermissions; that she wondered; that she peered and pried.
Milly would, if she could, have stuck her fingers into what she called the machinery of the thing.
Its vagueness baffled and even annoyed her, for her mind was limited; it loved and was at home with limits; it desired above all things precise ideas, names, phrases, anything that constricted and defined.
[Illustration] But still, with it all, she believed; and the great thing was that Milly _should_ believe.
She might have worked havoc if, with her temperament, she had doubted.
What did suffer was the fine poise with which she, Agatha, had held Rodney Lanyon and Harding Powell each by his own thread.
Milly had compelled her to spin a stronger thread for Harding and, as it were, to multiply her threads, so as to hold him at all points.
And because of this, because of giving more and more time to him, she could not always loose him from her and let him go.
And she was afraid lest the pull he had on her might weaken Rodney’s thread.
Up till now, the Powells’ third week at Sarratt End, she had had the assurance that his thread still held.
She heard from him that Bella was all right, which meant that he too was all right, for there had never been anything wrong with him _but_ Bella.
And she had a further glimpse of the way the gift worked its wonders.
Three Fridays had passed, and he had not come.
Well—she had meant that; she had tried (on that last Friday of his), with a crystal sincerity, to hold him back so that he should not come.
And up till now, with an ease that simply amazed her, she had kept herself at the highest pitch of her sincere and beautiful intention.
Not that it was the intention that had failed her now.
It had succeeded so beautifully, so perfectly, that he had no need to come at all.
She had given Bella back to him.
She had given him back to Bella.
Only, she faced the full perfection of her work.
She had brought it to so fine a point that she would never see him again; she had gone to the root of it; she had taken from him the desire to see her.
And now it was as if subtly, insidiously, her relation to him had become inverted.
Whereas hitherto it had been she who had been necessary to him, it seemed now that he was far more, beyond all comparison, more necessary to her.
After all, Rodney had had Bella; and she had nobody but Rodney.
He was the one solitary thing she cared for.
And hitherto it had not mattered so immensely, for all her caring, whether he came to her or not.
Seeing him had been, perhaps, a small mortal joy; but it had not been the tremendous and essential thing.
She had been contented, satisfied beyond all mortal contentments and satisfactions, with the intangible, immaterial tie.
Now she longed, with an unendurable longing, for his visible, bodily presence.
She had not realized her joy as long as it was with her; she had refused to acknowledge it because of its mortal quality, and it had raised no cry that troubled her abiding spiritual calm.
But now that she had put it from her, it thrust itself on her, it cried, it clung piteously to her and would not let her go.
She looked back to the last year, her year of Fridays, and saw it following her, following and entreating.
She looked forward and she saw Friday after Friday coming upon her, a procession of pitiless days, trampling it down, her small, piteous mortal joy, and her mortality rose in her and revolted.
She had been disturbed by what she had called the “lurking possibilities” in Rodney; they were nothing to the lurking possibilities in her.
There were moments when her desire to see Rodney sickened her with its importunity.
Each time she beat it back, in an instant, to its burrow below the threshold, and it hid there, it ran underground.
There were ways below the threshold by which desire could get at him.
Therefore, one night—Tuesday of the fourth week—she cut him off.
She refused to hold him even by a thread.
It was Bella and Bella only that she held now.
On Friday of that week she heard from him.
Bella was still all right.
But _he_ wasn’t. Anything but.
He didn’t know what was the matter with him.
He supposed it was the same old thing again.
He couldn’t think how poor Bella stood him, but she did.
It must be awfully bad for her.
It was beastly—wasn’t it?
—that he should have got like that, just when Bella was so well.
She might have known it.
She had, in fact, known.
Having once held him, and having healed him, she had no right—as long as the Power consented to work through her—she had no right to let him go.
She began again from the beginning, from the first process of purification and surrender.
But what followed was different now.
She had not only to recapture the crystal serenity, the holiness of that state by which she had held Rodney Lanyon and had healed him; she had to recover the poise by which she had held him and Harding Powell together.
She was bound equally not to let Harding go.
It was now almost a struggle to concentrate on both Rodney and Harding, a struggle in which Harding persisted and prevailed.
Yes, there was no blinking it, he prevailed.
She had been prepared for it, but not as for a thing that could really happen.
It was contrary to all that she knew of the beneficent working of the Power.
She thought she knew all its ways, its silences, its reassurances, its inexplicable reservations and evasions.
She couldn’t be prepared for this—that it, the high and holy, the unspeakably pure thing should allow Harding to prevail, should connive (that was what it looked like) at his taking the gift into his own hands and turning it to his own advantage against Rodney Lanyon.
Not that she thought it really had connived.
That was unthinkable, and Agatha did not think these things; she felt them.
Hitherto she had had no misgivings as to the possible behaviour of the Power.
And now she was afraid, not of It, and not, certainly not, of poor Harding (how could she be afraid of him?
); she was afraid mysteriously, without knowing why or how.
It was her fear that made her write to Rodney Lanyon.
She wrote in the beginning of the fifth week (she was counting the weeks now).
She only wanted to know, she said, that he was better, that he was well.
She begged him to write and tell her that he was well.
He did not write.
And every night of that week, in those “states” of hers, Powell predominated.
He was becoming almost a visible presence impressed upon the blackness of the “state.
” All she could do then was to evoke the visible image of Rodney Lanyon and place it there over Harding’s image, obliterating him.
Now, properly speaking, the state, the perfection of it, did not admit of visible presences, and that Harding could so impress himself showed more than anything the extent to which he had prevailed.
He prevailed to such good purpose that he was now, Milly said, well enough to go back to business.
They were to leave Sarratt End in about ten days, when they would have been there seven weeks.
She had come over on the Sunday to let Agatha know that; and also, she said, to make a confession.
Milly’s face, as she said it, was all candour.
It had filled out; it had bloomed in her happiness; it was shadowless, featureless almost, like a flower.
She had done what she said she wouldn’t do; she had told Harding.
“Oh, Milly, what on earth did you do that for?
