All Hallows' Eve by Charles Williams Page A

isn’t,” she thought gaily, “but it’s quite strong enough to do what it’s got to do, and what it hasn’t got to do it needn’t worry about not doing.” Who was it who had so joyously teased her so? to whom she had so joyously replied?
    She began, as she came to the bottom of the Hill, to remember more clearly what did happen at these times. She had—they were hardly waking dreams, but she could not think of another word. Sometimes she seemed to be in a shadowy house, with the street faintly visible through the wall; sometimes she saw herself going by in a car with her mother. One way or another she was always in the dreams, and of some of them she was a little ashamed because she seemed to be making a frightful fuss. In ordinary dreams, as far as she knew, you did not criticize yourself. You were doing something or other and you were just doing it, but you rarely thought you might have done it very much better. Her shame, however, did not do away with her enjoyment; there was an agreeable exhilaration in her severe comments on herself. She began to try and recollect one or other of her dreams, but it was difficult, for she was now coming into the busy streets, and there was color and sound and many people, and the sky was sparkling, and her heart swelled with mere delight. And in the midst of it all she was at King’s Cross Station.
    It was crowded but not unpleasantly. She knew at once what she had to do, or the first thing. She had to go and find that other self and say a kind encouraging word to it; she had to help herself. Cleverer people, no doubt, would help others, but she did not envy them, though she did admire. Helping herself was almost like helping another, and helping another was much like helping yourself. She made for the platform where the York train stood. The happy exhilaration of action was upon her. She remembered that you had to change at York for Palchester, and at Palchester for Laughton; and she remembered how that other she grew more and more distressed at each change and less and less capable of showing it. The reason, for the moment, evaded her, but it ought not to be so. “Be yourself, Betty,” she said admonishingly, and saw herself on the platform outside a compartment. This, she knew at once, was her most recent journey. She and her mother had gone down in July, and this was July, and there was she and there was her mother. Her mother—she was in these dreams always surprised at her mother, for she definitely remembered her as domineering and powerful, but whenever she saw her in this world there seemed to be something lacking; she looked so blank and purposeless and even miserable. And there by her mother was the other Betty, quiet, wan, unhappy. The porters were calling out, “Grantham, Doncaster, York”; the passengers were getting in. Betty came to the compartment. The dream was very strong. There was herself, her sister, her twin. She laughed at her; she said, gaily and yet impatiently, “Oh don’t worry ! Isn’t it all a game? Why can’t you play it?”
    She did not know why she was so sure of the game, nor how she knew that it was her mother’s game, and only a courtesy, if she could, to play it well. She added, “It won’t hurt you.” The other Betty said, “It does hurt me.” She answered, “Well, if you can’t stand a pinch—Oh darling, laugh!” The other Betty stood wretched and mute. Lady Wallingford said, “Get in, Betty. You travel first class as far as Laughton, you know.” She added to a porter, “This part is for York?” The porter having just called out, “Grantham, Doncaster, York,” exercised a glorious self-restraint, and said, “Yes, lady.” He spoke perhaps from habit, but here habit was full of all its past and all its patience, and its patience was the thunder of the passage of a god dominant, miraculous and yet