She starts violently and turns in the direction from which the sound has come.
Medium shot from her viewpoint of Dr. Poole advancing cautiously from behind the tomb of Rudolf Valentine.
Cut back to Loola.
She flushes, then turns deathly pale. Her hand goes to her heart.
«Alfie,» she whispers.
He enters the shot, jumps into the grave beside her and, without a word, takes her in his arms. The kiss is passionate. Then she hides her face against his shoulder.
«I thought I should never see you any more,» she says in a breaking voice.
«What did you take me for?»
He kisses her again, then holds her at arm’s length and looks into her face.
«Why are you crying?» he asks.
«I can’t help it.»
«You’re lovelier even than I remembered.»
She shakes her head, unable to speak.
«Smile,» he commands.
«I can’t.»
«Smile, smile. I want to see them again.»
«See what?»
«Smile!»
With an effort, but full of a passionate tenderness, Look smiles up at him.
In her cheeks the dimples emerge from the long hibernation of her sorrow.
«There they are,» he cries in delight, «there they are!»
Delicately, like a blind man reading Herrick in Braille, he passes a finger across her cheek. Loola smiles more effortlessly, the dimple deepens under his touch. He laughs with pleasure.
At the same moment the whistled tune of «When I behold the Wondrous Horns» swells from a distant pianissimo through piano to mezzo forte.
An expression of terror appears on Loola’s face.
«Quick, quick!» she whispers.
With astonishing agility Dr. Poole scrabbles out of the grave.
By the time the plump girl re-enters the shot he is leaning in a studiedly casual attitude against the monument to Public Sweetheart Number One. Below him, in the pit, Loola is digging like mad.
«I forgot to tell you that we’re knocking off for lunch in half an hour,» Flossie begins.
Then, catching sight of Dr. Poole, she utters an exclamation of surprise.
«Good morning,» says Dr. Poole politely.
There is a silence. Flossie looks from Dr. Poole to Loola and from Loola back to Dr. Poole.
«What are you doing here?» she asks suspiciously.
«I’m on my way to St. Azazel’s,» he answers. «The Arch-Vicar sent a message that he wanted me to attend his three lectures to the Seminarists. Belial in History — that’s the subject of them.»
«You’ve chosen a very funny way to get to St. Azazel’s.»
«I was looking for the Chief,» Dr. Poole explains.
«Well, he’s not here,» says the plump girl.
There is another silence.
«In that case,» says Dr. Poole, «I’d better be trotting along. Mustn’t keep either of you young ladies from your duties,» he adds with an artificial and entirely unconvincing brightness. «Good-by. Good-by.»
He bows to the two girls, then, assuming an air of easy nonchalance, walks away.
Flossie looks after him in silence, then turns severely to Loola.
«Now listen, kid,» she begins.
Loola stops digging and looks up from the grave.
«What is it, Flossie,» she asks with an expression of uncomprehending innocence.
«What is it?» the other echoes derisively. «Tell me, what’s written on your apron?»
Loola looks down at her apron, then back at Flossie. Her face reddens with embarrassment.
«What’s written on it?» the plump girl insists.
«‘No!'»
«And what’s written on those patches?»
«‘No!'» Loola repeats.
«And on the other ones, when you turn around?»
«‘No!'»
«No, no, no, no, no,» says the plump girl emphatically. «And when the Law says no, it means no. You know that as well as I do, don’t you.»
Loola nods her head without speaking.
«Say you know it,» the other insists. «Say it.»
«Yes, I know it,» Loola brings out at last in a barely audible voice.
«Good. Then don’t pretend you haven’t been warned. And if that foreign Hot ever comes prowling around you again, just let me know. I’ll see to him.»
We dissolve to the interior of St. Azazel’s. Once the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe, St. Azazel’s has undergone only the most superficial of alterations. In the chapels, the plaster figures of St. Joseph, the Magdalen, St. Anthony of Padua and St. Rose of Lima have merely been painted red and fitted with horns. On the high altar nothing has been changed except that the crucifix has been replaced by a pair of enormous horns carved out of cedar wood and hung with a wealth of rings and wrist watches, of bracelets, chains, earrings and necklaces, mined from the cemeteries or found in association with old bones and the mouldering remnants of jewel boxes.
In the body of the church some fifty Toggenberg-robed seminarists — with Dr. Poole, incongruously bearded and in tweeds, in the middle of the front row — are sitting with bowed heads while, from the pulpit, the Arch-Vicar pronounces the final words of his lecture.
«For as in the Order of Things all might, if they had so desired, have lived, so also in Belial all have been, or inevitably shall be, made to die. Amen.»
There is a long silence. Then the Master of Novices rises. With a great rustling of fur, the seminarists follow suit and start to walk, two by two, and with the most perfect decorum, toward the west door.
Dr. Poole is about to follow them, when he hears a high childish voice calling his name.
Turning, he sees the Arch-Vicar beckoning from the steps of the pulpit.
«Well, what did you think of the lecture?» squeaks the great man, as Dr. Poole approaches.
«Very fine.»
«Without flattery?»
«Really and truly.»
The Arch-Vicar smiles with pleasure.
«I’m glad to hear it,» he says.
«I specially liked what you said about religion in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries — the retreat from Jeremiah to the Book of Judges, from the personal and therefore the universal to the national and therefore the internecine.»
The Arch-Vicar nods.
«Yes, it was a pretty close shave,» he says. «If they’d stuck to the personal and the universal, they’d have been in harmony with the Order of Things, and the Lord of Flies would have been done for. But fortunately Belial had plenty of allies — the nations, the churches, the political parties. He used their prejudices. He exploited their ideologies. By the time they’d developed the atomic bomb, he had people back in the state of mind they were in before 900 B.C.»
«And then,» says Dr. Poole, «I liked what you said about the contacts between East and West — how He persuaded each side to take only the worst the other had to offer. So the East takes Western nationalism, Western armaments, Western movies and Western Marxism; the West takes Eastern despotism, Eastern superstitions and Eastern indifference to individual life. In a word, He saw to it that mankind should make the worst of both worlds.»
«Just think if they’d made the best!» squeaks the Arch-Vicar. «Eastern mysticism making sure that Western science should be properly used; the Eastern art of living refining Western energy; Western individualism tempering Eastern totalitarianism.» He shakes his head in pious horror. «Why, it would have been the kingdom of heaven. Happily the grace of Belial was stronger than the Other One’s grace.»
He chuckles shrilly; then laying a hand on Dr. Poole’s shoulder, he starts to walk with him toward the vestry.
«You know, Poole,» he says, «I’ve got to be very fond of you.» Dr. Poole mumbles his embarrassed acknowledgements.
«You’re intelligent, you’re well educated, you know all kinds of things that we’ve never learned. You could be very useful to me and, on my side, I could be very useful to you — that is,» he adds, «if you were to become one of us.»
«One of you?» Dr. Poole repeats doubtfully.
«Yes, one of us.»
Comprehension dawns on an expressive close-up of Dr. Poole’s face. He utters a dismayed «Oh!»
«I won’t disguise from you,» says the Arch-Vicar, «that the surgery involved is not entirely painless, nor wholly without danger. But the advantages to be gained by entering the priesthood would be so great as to outweigh any trifling risk or discomfort. Nor must we forget. . .»
«But, Your Eminence. . .» Dr. Poole protests. The Arch-Vicar holds up a plump, damp hand.
«One moment, please,» he says severely. His expression is so forbidding that Dr. Poole hastens to apologise.
«I beg your pardon.»
«Granted, my dear Poole, granted.»
Once again the Arch-Vicar is all amiability and condescension.
«Well, as I was saying,» he goes on, «we must not forget that, if you were to undergo what I may call a physiological conversion, you would be delivered from all the temptations to which, as an unmutated male, you will most certainly be exposed.»
«Quite, quite,» Dr. Poole agrees. «But I can assure you. . .»
«Where temptations are concerned,» says the Arch-Vicar sententiously, «nobody can assure anyone of anything.»
Dr. Poole remembers his recent interview with Loola in the cemetery, and feels himself blushing.
«Isn’t that rather a sweeping statement?» he says without too much conviction.
The Arch-Vicar shakes his head.
«In these matters,» he says, «one can never be too sweeping. And let me remind you of what happens to those who succumb to such temptations. The bulls’ pizzles and the burying squad are always in readiness. And that is why, in your own interests, for your future happiness and peace of mind, I advise you — nay, I beg and implore you — to join our Order.»
There is a silence. Dr. Poole swallows hard.
«I should like to be able to think it over,» he says at last.
«Of course, of course,» the Arch-Vicar agrees. «Take your time. Take a week.»
«A week? I don’t think I could decide in a week.»
«Take two weeks,» says the Arch-Vicar, and when Dr. Poole still shakes his head, «Take four,» he adds, «take six, if you like. I’m in no hurry. I’m only concerned about you.» He pats Dr. Poole on the shoulder. «Yes, my dear fellow, about you.»
Dissolve to Dr. Poole at work in his
