As we both have become too well aware since we wrote each other last, there is nothing to be gained in increasing one's efforts if the results were greatly diminished as they were. So it was when your woman went to hear that old dodderer's will read.
Most of what money had been his, had immediately gone to settle the solicitor's fee, and what remained of it went to a charitable trust and to some of the servants he had had when he was able to afford them. In that, you and your woman took that first blow right away. In order to recoup that loss, you wasted no time in urging your woman on to try some of that silent feminine charm that has so long been hers. That solicitor, however, would have none of it. He had only to catch sight of your instruction -- your woman would fidget with the hem of her skirt, or when she heard the will read, would lean over and in, leading with her breasts -- to do nothing more than offer his eyes a quarter-roll, and that was it. Your woman was not able to have held his interest for all her world, or we, could offer. Of course, the fault lies mostly with you, in allowing yourself to send even such a teasing coquette as your woman up against someone as entrenched in the Enemy and His teachings as that solicitor is. I will do it later instead of now, but you may be sure I will take you in hand over that.
The worst blow against our influence came at the last -- the provision that old Professor had made for your woman and, had they lived, her siblings. Nothing was there for her but so many old books. Your influence and tutelage had, since she left the Enemy's kingship, much diminished her love of those books. Atop it all -- Our Father Below be praised -- this is truer of no book than of the Enemy's Book. When your woman found that she had been left a copy, how my heart thrilled to see her regard it with a sideways glance and a thanking so short as to reveal how dismissive it was, and how well, in this instance, that said Book has been clay beneath our hands -- but that first thrilling of my heart lasted as long as your woman's glance.
Your woman was to return to her city on a train next morning, and would take her rest over the preceding evening. During that day, she would find lodging in that town's great squalor known as the solicitor's house. Never mind how cleanly the place is kept. Anywhere that so swims in the presence of the Enemy, with those things called Love, and Peace, and Joy, can only be counted as a disgusting little Heaven-hole. That aside, you helped keep the conversation inconsequential for most of the day, and on nothing of any import -- until dinnertime, that is. It was little wonder that you, as you have since written me, fell into confusion.
In your youth, you have not yet come to hone the knowledge I have earned of predicting future events based on information available to you. It was for that reason that I so strongly cautioned you against bringing your woman near the solicitor's wife; I could see in that wife, the potential for working the Enemy's purpose out. When the evening meal was served, the wife had the very cheek to volunteer asking the Enemy's Blessing on them and on their meal. And what did your woman do? She played the good sport -- she may not have believed so much of it, but she went right along and bowed her head. Even to play that way is a danger to us, but since you paid me no heed at the onset, neither you nor I could go after either of them. And it only became worse as the evening drew to its close.
There exist, in the World of Men, marks in time to tell men when they may take their rests. Those marks are called Nights. When that Night came, your woman made her preparations to return to her own city, and to lie down for a rest. I know it looked appealing to you to do so, but as you are not a human creature, you have no need to take rests. More to the point, it is especially in these Nights that our voices are the loudest to those in our charge. Yours usually is, which keeps your woman in that most deliciously accursed state of Despair over what you have helped her to become. That night, though, you had tired yourself from your disregard to what I had told you -- and worse will follow, for both of us.
Your woman started thinking about how, when she had been a child, her mother had taught her things about the Enemy, and how He showed that reprehensible Love to her. Your voice wore its usual strength when you reminded her of the truth of the times in which she now lives -- how she too much loves drink, loves sharing her bedchamber with those dashing young men on whom we have hold. And did you see? You had her lying in bed, in glorious and many tears over the knowledge that the Enemy is all Purity, all Holiness, all everything against which we fight -- and since she has let you make her into someone who lives against them, you have been able to tell her that since she does the things the Enemy hates, she is also just such a thing. She is fit for nothing but His hatred and the anger in His -- must I say the word? -- righteousness.
One thing I love to see in human children, is that delightful thing called being Lost. When they are, their cries, mostly from feeling that their parents have abandoned them or else no longer care, are our great treasures, and I know you agree. Great screams give way to crushed little sobs, such as your woman offered up. At that moment, I knew I had better prepare as best I could -- for all the good it would or would not do.
Your woman asked the Enemy -- not in the mocking tone with which she usually mentions or addresses Him, but in a thin, broken voice of a little girl missing in a crowd -- where He could be found after these blows we have stricken her. Worse still, she followed with wondering if your truth was no longer strong enough -- whether He could still love her after she has so transgressed Him.
It was the same answer that fell. On her ear and heart, it was thin as a whisper, but on us -- not on our ears, but on us -- it was as a rock falling from a great height.
One of the ways the Enemy's Book depicts Our Father Below is as, and I must quote here, "a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour." Had you been better about your work those few days, your woman might have been more favorably positioned to be devoured that way. But on the subject of lions, only the Enemy is depicted as The Lion -- not just any lion, but The Lion -- who came to triumph. The Enemy had such a triumph in His mind when he answered that human creature as he did, and when it sounded to us as it did. In our ears, the answer was just such a roar.
For the moment, He contented Himself with saying, "Yes." Your woman may not have heard it very well at first, but she fell asleep asking Him to love her if He was still available. Had you kept up your watch, she could not have heard or asked.
Your power is slipping, daughter of mine. Now that my hearing has returned, call out to me and seek my help. You will need it, with your woman's establishing even so small a hold for the Enemy.
Your affectionate but most displeased mother,
Slumtrimpet