All Hallows' Eve Read Online Free Page A

All Hallows' Eve
Book: All Hallows' Eve Read Online Free
Author: Charles Williams
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recognize it either as recollection or as a courtesy. Only for a moment she thought she saw a taxi race through the Park away before her, and she thought it could not be and was not. But she stiffened herself now against her instinctive shrinking and let her arm lie still, while the feeble hand clutched and pawed at her.
    Her apprehension quickened as she did so. To be what she was, to be in this state of death, was bad enough, but at the same time to feel the dead, to endure the clinging of the dead, being dead to know the dead—the live man in the taxi was far better than this, this that was Evelyn, the gabbing voice, the chattering teeth, the helpless sobs, the crawling fingers. But she had gone out with Evelyn much more than with the man in the taxi; her heart acknowledged a debt. She continued to sit still. She said in a voice touched by pity if not by compassion, “It’s no good talking, especially like that. Don’t you understand?”
    Evelyn answered, resentfully choking, but still holding on. “I was only telling you about Betty, and it’s all quite true. And no one can hear me except you, so it doesn’t matter.”
    No one could hear; it was true enough—unless indeed the City heard, unless the distant façades, and the nearer façade of trees and grass, were listening, unless they had in them just that reality at least, a capacity to overhear and oversee. The thin nothingness could perhaps hear and know. Lester felt all about her a strange attention, and Evelyn herself, as if frightened by her own words, gave a hasty look round, and then burst again into a hysterical monologue: “Isn’t it funny—we’re all alone? We never thought we’d be alone like this, did we? But I only said what was quite true, even if I do hate Betty. I hate everyone except you; of course I don’t hate you; I’m very fond of you. You won’t go away, will you? It’s nearly dark again and I hate it when it’s dark. You don’t know what the dark was like before you came. Why are we here like this? I haven’t done anything. I haven’t; I tell you I haven’t. I haven’t done anything. ”
    The last word rose like a wail in the night, almost (as in the old tales) as if a protesting ghost was loosed and fled, in a cry as thin as its own tenuous wisp of existence, through the irresponsive air of a dark world, where its own justification was its only, and worst, accusation. So high and shrill was the wail that Lester felt as though Evelyn herself must have been torn away and have vanished, but it was not so. The fingers still clutched her wrist and Evelyn still sat there, crying and ejaculating, without strength to cry louder. “I haven’t done anything, anything. I haven’t done anything at all.”
    And what then could be done now? If neither Evelyn nor she herself had ever of old done anything, what could or should they do now—with nothing and no one about them? with only the shell of a City, and they themselves but shell and perhaps not even true shell? only a faint memory and a pang worse than memory? It was too much to bear. As if provoked by an ancient impetuosity of rage, Lester sprang to her feet; shell or body, she sprang up and the motion tore her from the hand that held her. She took a step away. Better go alone than sit so companioned; and then as her foot moved to the second step she paused. Evelyn had failed again, “Oh don’t go! don’t go!” Lester felt herself again thrusting Richard away and she paused. She looked back over her shoulder; half in anger and half in pity, in fear and scorn and tenderness, she looked back. She saw Evelyn, Evelyn instead of Richard. She stared down at the other girl and she exclaimed aloud, “Oh my God!”
    It was the kind of casual exclamation she and Richard had been in the habit of throwing about all over the place. It meant nothing; when they were seriously
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