Descent into Hell, Charles Williams [top 100 books to read TXT] 📗

he flung down the rescued

designs. Under them were his first drafts; he tore them instead.

 

The evening wore into night. He could not bring himself to go to

bed. He walked about the room; he worked a little and walked, and

walked a little and worked. He thought of going to bed, but then

he thought also of his dream, and the smooth strange rope. He had

never so much revolted against it as now; he had never, waking,

been so strongly aware of it as now. It might have been

coiled in some corner of the room, were it not that he knew he was

on it, in the dream. Physically and emotionally weary, he still

walked, and a somnambulism of scratched images closed on him. His

body twitched jerkily; the back of his eyes ached as if he stared

interiorly from the rope into a backward abysm. He stood

irritably still.

 

His eyes stared interiorly; exteriorly they glanced down and saw

the morning paper, which, by an accident, he had not opened. His

hands took it up, and turned the pages. In the middle he saw a

headline: “Birthday Honours”, and a smaller headline: “Knighthood

for Historian”. His heart deserted him: his puppet-eyes stared.

They found the item by the name in black type for their

convenience: “Aston Moffatt”.

 

There was presented to him at once and clearly an opportunity for

joy—casual, accidental joy, but joy. If he could not manage joy,

at least he might have managed the intention of joy, or (if that

also were too much) an effort towards the intention of joy. The

infinity of-grace could have been contented and invoked by a mere

mental refusal of anything but such an effort. He knew his duty—he

was no fool—he knew that the fantastic recognition would please

and amuse the innocent soul of Sir Aston, not so much for himself

as in some unselfish way for the honour of history. Such honours

meant nothing, but they were part of the absurd dance of the

world, and to be enjoyed as such. Wentworth knew he could share

that pleasure. He could enjoy; at least he could refuse not to

enjoy. He could refuse and reject damnation.

 

With a perfectly clear, if instantaneous, knowledge of what he

did, he rejected joy instead. He instantaneously preferred anger,

and at once it came; he invoked envy, and it obliged him. He

crushed the paper in a rage, then he tore it open, and looked

again and again-there it still was. He knew that his rival had

not only succeeded, but succeeded at his own expense; what chance

was there of another historical knighthood for years? Till that

moment he had never thought of such a thing. The possibility had

been created and withdrawn simultaneously, leaving the present

fact to mock him. The other possibility—of joy in that present

fact—receded as fast. He had determined, then and for ever, for

ever, for ever, that he would hate the fact, and therefore facts.

 

He walked, unknowing, to the window, and stared out. He loomed

behind the glass, a heavy bulk of monstrous greed. His hate so

swelled that he felt it choking his throat, and by a swift act

transferred it; he felt his rival choking and staggering, he hoped

and willed it. He stared passionately into death, and saw before

him a body twisting at the end of a rope. Sir Aston Moffatt…

Sir Aston Moffatt…. He stared at the faint ghost of the dead

man’s death, in that half-haunted house, and did not see it. The

dead man walked on his own Hill, but that Hill was not to be

Wentworth’s. Wentworth preferred another death; he was offered

it.

 

As he stood there, imagining death, close to the world of the

first death, refusing all joy of facts, and having for long

refused all unselfish agony of facts, he heard at last the

footsteps for which he had listened. It was the one thing which

could abolish his anger; it did. He forgot, in his excitement,

all about Aston Moffatt; he lost sight, exteriorly and

interiorly, of the dangling figure. He stood breathless,

listening. Patter, patter; they were coming up the road.

Patter-patter; they stopped at the gate. He heard the faint

clang. The footsteps, softer now, came in. He stared intently

down the drive. A little way up it stood a woman’s figure. The

thing he had known must happen had happened. She had come.

 

He pushed the window up—careful, even so, not to seem to go fast,

not to seem to want her. He leaned out and spoke softly. He

said: “Is that you?” The answer startled him, for it was Adela’s

voice and yet something more than Adela’s, fuller, richer, more

satisfying. It said “I’m here.” He could only just hear the

words, but that was right, for it was after midnight, and she was

beckoning with her hand. The single pair of feet drawn from the

double, the hand waving to him. He motioned to her to come, but

she did not stir, and at last, driven by his necessity, he climbed

through the window; it was easy enough, even for him-and went down

to meet her. As he came nearer he was puzzled again, as he had

been by the voice. It was Adela, yet it was not. It was her

height, and had her movement. The likeness appeased him, yet he

did not understand the faint unlikeness. For a moment he thought

it was someone else, a woman of the Hill, someone he had seen,

whose name he did not remember. He was up to her now, and he knew

it could not be Adela, for even Adela had never been so like Adela

as this. That truth which is the vision of romantic love, in

which the beloved becomes supremely her own adorable and eternal

self, the glory and splendour of her own existence, and her own

existence no longer felt or thought as hers but of and from

another, that was aped for him then. The thing could not astonish

him, nor could it be adored. It perplexed. He hesitated.

 

The woman said: “You’ve been so long.”

 

He answered roughly: “Who are you? You’re not Adela.”

 

The voice said: “Adela!” and Wentworth understood that Adela was

not enough, that Adela must be something different. even from

Adela if she were to be satisfactory to him, something closer to

his own mind and farther from hers. She had been in relation with

Hugh, and his Adela could never be in relation with Hugh. He had

never understood that simplicity before. It was so clear now. He

looked at the woman opposite and felt a stirring of freedom in

him.

 

He said: “You waved?” and she: “Or didn’t you wave to me?”

 

He said, under her eyes: “I didn’t think you’d be any use to me.”

 

She laughed: the laugh was a little like Adela’s, only better.

Fuller; more amused. Adela hardly ever laughed as if she were

really amused; she had always a small condescension. He said:

“How could I know?”

 

“You don’t think about yourself enough,” she said; the words were

tender and grateful to him, and he knew they were true. He had

never thought enough about himself. He had wanted to be kind. He

had wanted to be kind to Adela; it was Adela’s obstinate folly

which now outraged him. He had wanted to give himself to Adela

out of kindness. He was greatly relieved by this woman’s words,

almost as much as if he had given himself. He went on giving. He

said: “If I thought more of myself?”

 

“You wouldn’t have much difficulty in finding it,” she answered.

“Let’s walk.”

 

He didn’t understand the first phrase, but he turned and went by

her side, silent while he heard the words. Much difficulty in

finding what? in finding it? the it that could be found if he

thought of himself more; that was what he had said or she had

said, whichever had said that the thing was to be found, as if

Adela had said it, Adela in her real self, by no means the self

that went with Hugh; no, but the true, the true Adela who was

apart and his; for that was the difficulty all the while, that she

was truly his, and wouldn’t be, but if he thought more of her

truly being, and not of her being untruly away, on whatever way,

for the way that went away was not the way she truly went, but if

they did away with the way she went away, then

Hugh could be untrue and she true, then he would know themselves,

two, true and two, on the way he was going, and the peace in

himself, and the scent of her in him, and the her, meant for him,

in him; that was the she he knew, and he must think the more of

himself. A faint mist grew round them as they walked, and he was

under the broad boughs of trees, the trees of the Hill, going up

the Hill, up to the Adela he kept in himself, where the cunning

woman who walked by his side was taking him, and talking in

taking. He had been slow, slow, very slow not to see that this

was true, that to get away from Hugh’s Adela was to find somewhere

and somehow the true Adela, the Adela that was his, since what he

wanted was always and everywhere his; he had always known that,

yet that had been his hardship, for he must know it was so, and

yet it hadn’t seemed so. But here in the mists under the trees,

with this woman, it was all clear. The mist made everything

clear.

 

She said: “In here.” He went in; a wooden door swung before and

behind him.

 

It was quite dark. He stood. A hand slipped into his hand. and

pressed it gently. It drew him forward, and a little to one side.

He said aloud: “Where are we?” but there was no answer, only he

thought he heard the sound of water running, gently, a lulling and

a lapping. It was not worth while, against that sound, asking

again where he was. The darkness was quiet; his heart ceased to

burn, though he could hear its beating, in time with the lapping

and lulling waters. He had never heard his heart beating so

loudly; almost as if he were inside his own body, listening to it

there. It would be louder then, he thought, unless his senses

were lulled and dulled. Likely enough that if he were inside his

own body his senses would be lulled, though how he got there or

how he would get out…. If he wanted to get out. Why? Why

fly from that shelter, the surest shelter of all, though he could

not be quite there yet because of the hand that guided him, round

and round in some twisting path. He knew that there were hundreds

of yards, or was it millions, of tubes or pipes or paths or ropes

or something, coiled, many coils, in his body; he would not want

to catch his foot in them or be twisted up in them; that was why

the hand was leading him. He pressed it, for acknowledgment; it

replied. They were going downhill now, it seemed, he and his

guide, though he thought he could smell Adela, or if not Adela,

something like Adela, some growth like Adela, and the image of a

growth spread in his brain to trees and their great heavy boughs;

it was not a lapping but a rustling; he had come out of himself

into a wood, unless he was himself and a wood at the same time.

Could he be