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

a

demented fanatic; a faint distaste that she should come of his

blood had touched her. It now occurred to her that Struther might

have been talking flat realism. She put the book down, and looked

out of the window. It was-all of a sudden-remarkably easy to look

out of the window. She might even walk down to the gate and look

at the street. The parcel was completely in some one else’s care,

and all she had to do was to leave it. She hoped it was not

troublesome to Peter Stanhope, but it wouldn’t be. He and

whatever he meant by the Omnipotence would manage it quite well

between them. Perhaps, later on,

she could give the omnipotence a hand with some other burden;

everyone carrying everyone else’s, like the Scilly Islanders

taking in each other’s washing. Well, and at that, if it were

tiresome and horrible to wash your own clothes and easy and happy

to wash

someone else Is, the Scilly Islanders might be intelligent enough.

“Change here for Scilly,” she said aloud as she came to the gate.

 

“My dear!” said a voice beside her.

 

Pauline jumped. it was a fairly high wall, and she had been

preoccupied; still, she ought to have seen the woman who was

standing outside, alone against the wall on her left. For a

moment something jarred, but she recovered. She said, “Oh, good

evening, Mrs. Sammile. I didn’t see you.”

 

The other peered at her. “How’s your grandmother?” she asked.

 

“Rather weaker, I’m afraid,” Pauline said. “It’s kind of you to

ask.”

 

“And how are you?” Lily Sammile went on. “I’ve been—” but

Pauline unintentionally cut through the sentence.

 

“Very well indeed,” she murmured, with a deep breath of pleasure.

“Isn’t it a lovely night?”

 

The other woman strained a little forward, as if, even in the June

evening, she could not see her clearly. She said, “I haven’t seen

you about lately: you haven’t wanted to see me. I thought perhaps

you might.”

 

Pauline looked back smiling. How, in this quietness of spirit,

could she have thought she wanted anything changed? But the old

lady had wanted to help, and though now she did not need the help,

the goodwill remained. She said, leaning over the gate: “Oh, I’m

much better now.”

 

“That’s good,” the other woman said. “But take care of yourself.

Think of yourself; be careful of yourself. I could make you

perfectly safe and perfectly happy at the same time. You really

haven’t any idea of how happy you could be.”

 

Her voice was infinitely softer than Pauline could remember it. In

the full light of day, the other woman had seemed to her slightly

hard, her voice a light third hammer to her feet. She pattered

everywhere, upstairs, downstairs, in my lady’s chamber, in any

chamber; but now her figure was dim and her feet still, and her

voice soft. As soft as the dust the evening wind was blowing down

the street. Dust of the dead,

dust of the Struther who had died in flame. Had he been happy?

happy? happy? Pauline was not sure whether she or her companion

had spoken the word again, but it hung in the air, floating

through it above, and the dust was stirred below, and a little

dizziness took her and passed. Lazily she swung the gate.

 

She said, as if to draw down the floating mist: “Happy? I… I

happy?”

 

The other murmured: “Happy, rich. Insatiate, yet satisfied. How

delicious everything would be! I could tell you tales that would

shut everything but yourself out. Wouldn’t you like to be happy?

If there’s

anything that worries you, I can shut it away from you. Think

what you might be missing.”

 

Pauline said: “I don’t understand.”

 

The other went on: “My dear, it’s so simple. If you will come

with me, I can fill you, fill your body with any sense you choose.

I can make you feel whatever you’d choose to be. I can give you

certainty of joy

for every moment of life. Secretly, secretly; no other soul-no

other living soul.”

 

Pauline tingled as she listened. Shut up within herself—shut up

till that very day with fear and duty for only companions—with

silence and forbearance as only possibilities—she felt a vague

thrill of promised delight. Against it her release that day began

already to seem provisional and weak. She had found calm,

certainly; only ten minutes earlier that calm had seemed to her

more than she could ever have hoped. She loved it still; she owed

to it this interval of indulgent communion with something other

than calm. The communion threatened the calm with a more

entrancing sensation of bliss; she felt almost that she had too

rashly abandoned her tribulation for a substitute that was but a

cold gift, when warm splendour had been waiting to enrapture her.

In the very strength of her new-found security she leaned from it,

as from the house itself; as within a tower of peace, with

deliberate purpose she swung

the gate more wide. Inconceivably she all but regretted the fear

that would have been an excuse, even a just reason, for accepting

a promise of more excitement of satisfaction than peace and

freedom could

give or could excuse. Peace had given her new judgment, and

judgment began to lament her peace. If she opened the gate, if

the far vision of her returning vision gave her speed and strength

to leap from it to this more thrilling refuge! And while her heart

beat more quickly and her mind laboured at once to know and not to

know its desires, a voice slid into her ear, teasing her, speeding

her blood, provoking her

purpose. It spoke of sights and sounds, touches and thrills, and

of entire oblivion of harm; nothing was to be that she did not

will, and everything that she willed, to the utmost fullness of

her heart, should be. She would be enough for herself. She could

dream for ever, and her dream should for ever be made real. “Come

soon,” it said, “come now. I’ll wait for you here. In a few

minutes you’ll be free, and then you’ll

come; you shall be back soon. Give me your hand and I’ll give you

a foretaste now.” A hand came into hers, a pulse against her wrist

beat with significance of breathless abandonment to delirious joy.

She

delayed in a tremulous and pleasurable longing.

 

“But how?” she murmured, “how can all this happen? how do I know

what I want? I’ve never thought… I don’t know anyone… and

to be alone….”

 

“Give me your hand,” the other said, “then come and dream, till

you discover, so soon, the ripeness of your dream.” She paused,

and added, “You’ll never have to do anything for others any more.”

 

It was the last touch, and false, false because of the habit

of her past and because of Stanhope’s promise. The fountain of

beauty had sprung upward in a last thrust; it broke against the

arched roof of his world, and the shock stung her into coldness.

Never have to do anything—and she had been promising herself that

she would carry someone’s parcel as hers had been carried, that

she would be what he

said she could. Like it or not, it had been an oath; rash or wise

it stood.

 

“An oath, an oath, I have an oath in heaven.” She had been reading

more verse of late, since she had had to speak Stanhope’s, and the

holy words engulfed her in the sound which was so much more than

she. “An oath, an oath…. Shall I lay perjury upon my soul?”

The wind, rising as if to a storm, screamed “perjury” through the

sky that held the Hill and all; false, false! she perjured in that

last false gleam. She was come; “false, fleeting, perjured Clarence!

Seize on him, Furies…. The word, Antaean, sprang hundred-voiced

around her, and held her by every gripping voice. Perjury,

on her soul and in her blood, if now she slipped to buy sweets

with money that was not hers; never, till it was hers in all love

and princely good, by gift and gift and gift beyond excelling gift,

in no secrecy of greed but all glory of public exchange, law of the

universe and herself a child of the universe. Never till he—not

Pascal nor the Jesuits nor the old chattering pattering woman but he;

not moonlight or mist or clouding dust but he; not any power in

earth or heaven but he or the peace she had been made bold to bid

him-till they bade her take with all her heart what nothing could

then forbid. An oath, an oath, an oath in heaven, and heaven

known in the bright oath itself, where two loves struck together,

and the serene light of substitution shone, beyond her understanding

but not beyond her deed. She flung the gate shut, and snatched

her hands away, and as it clanged she was standing upright, her

body a guard flung out on the frontier of her soul. The other

woman was at the gate—of garden or world or soul—leaning to but

not over it, speaking hurriedly, wildly, and the voice rising on

the wind and torn and flung on the wind: “Everything, anything;

anything, everything; kindness to me… help to me… nothing

to do for others, nothing to do with others… everything,

everything…”

 

The door behind her was opened; the maid’s voice said doubtfully:

“Miss Pauline?”

 

Pauline, rigid at her post, said, turning her head a little: “You

wanted me?”

 

Phoebe murmured: “Your grandmother’s asking for you, Miss Pauline,

if you could come.”

 

Pauline said, “I’m coming.” She looked over the gate; she added in

a voice hard with an unreasoning hostility: “Good night.” She ran in.