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

what’s to be

done about the Chorus? Had we better keep it in or leave it out?

Which would you prefer, Mr. Stanhope?”

 

“I should prefer it in, if you ask me,” Stanhope said politely.

“But not to inconvenience the production.”

 

“It seems to be in the forest so often,” Mrs. Parry mused,

dismissing cake. “There’s the distant song in the first act,

when the princess goes away from the palace, and the choric

dialogue when…. It isn’t Dryads, is it?”

 

A friend of Adela’s, a massive and superb young man of

twenty-five, offered a remark. “Dryads would rather wreck the

eighteenth century, wouldn’t they?”

 

“Watteau,” said a young lady near Adela. “You could have them

period.”

 

Mrs. Parry looked at her approvingly. “Exactly, my dear,’ she

said. “A very charming fantasy it might be; we must take care it

isn’t precious—only period. But, Mr. Stanhope, you haven’t told

us—are they Dryads?”

 

“Actually,” Stanhope answered, “as I told you, it’s more an

experiment than anything else. The main thing is—was—

that they are non-human.”

 

“Spirits?” said the Watteau young lady with a trill of pleasure.

 

“If you like,” said Stanhope, “only not spiritual. Alive, but

with a different life-even from the princess.”

 

“Irony?” Adela exclaimed. “It’s a kind of comment, isn’t it, Mr.

Stanhope, on futility? The forest and everything, and the

princess and her lover—so transitory.”

 

Stanhope shook his head. There was a story, invented by himself,

that The Times had once sent a representative to ask for

explanations about a new play, and that Stanhope, in his efforts

to explain it, had found after four hours that he had only

succeeded in reading it completely through aloud: “Which,” he

maintained, “was the only way of explaining it.”

 

“No,” he said now, “not irony. I think perhaps you’d better

cut them out.”

 

There was a moment’s pause. “But we can’t do that, Mr.

Stanhope,” said a voice; “they’re important to the poetry, aren’t

they?” it was the voice of another young woman, sitting behind

Adela. Her name was Pauline Anstruther, and, compared with

Adela, she was generally silent. Now, after her quick question,

she added hastily, “I mean-they come in when the princess and the

woodcutter come together, don’t they?” Stanhope looked at her,

and she felt as if his eyes had opened suddenly. He said, more

slowly:

 

“In a way, but they needn’t. We could just make it chance.”

 

“I don’t think that would be nearly as satisfactory,” Mrs. Parry

said. “I begin to see my way—the trees perhaps—leaves—to have

the leaves of the wood all so helpful to the young people—so

charming!”

 

“It’s a terribly sweet idea,” said the Watteau young lady. “And

so true too!”

 

Pauline, who was sitting next her, said in an undertone: “True?”

 

“Don’t you think so?” Watteau, whose actual name was Myrtle Fox,

asked. “It’s what I always feel-about trees and flowers and

leaves and so on—they’re so friendly. Perhaps you don’t notice

it so much; I’m rather mystic about nature. Like Wordsworth. I

should love to spend days out with nothing but the trees and the

leaves and the wind. Only somehow one never seems to have time.

But I do believe they’re all breathing in with us, and it’s such

a comfort-here, where there are so many trees. Of course, we’ve

only to sink into ourselves to find peace—and trees and clouds

and so on all help us. One never need be unhappy. Nature’s so

terribly good. Don’t you think so, Mr. Stanhope?”

 

Stanhope was standing by, silent, while Mrs. Parry communed with

her soul and with one or two of her neighbours on the

possibilities of dressing the Chorus. He turned his head and

answered, “That Nature is terribly good? Yes, Miss Fox. You do

mean ‘terribly’?”

 

“Why, certainly,” Miss Fox said. “Terribly—dreadfully—very.”

 

“Yes,” Stanhope said again. “Very. Only—you must forgive me;

it comes from doing so much writing, but when I say ‘terribly’ I

think I mean ‘full of terror’. A dreadful goodness.”

 

“I don’t see how goodness can be dreadful,” Miss Fox said, with a

shade of resentment in her voice. “If things are good they’re

not terrifying, are they?”

 

“It was you who said ‘terribly’,” Stanhope reminded her with a

smile, “I only agreed.”

 

“And if things are terrifying,” Pauline put in, her eyes half

closed and her head turned away as if she asked a casual question

rather of the world than of him, “can they be good?”

 

He looked down on her. “Yes, surely,” he said, with more energy.

“Are our tremors to measure the Omnipotence?”

 

“We’ll have them in shades of green then,” Mrs. Parry broke in,

“light to darkg with rich gold sashes and embroidery running all

over like twigs, and each one carrying a conventionalized bough—

different lengths, I think. Dark gold stockings.”

 

“To suggest the trunks?” asked Adela’s friend, Hugh Prescott. @

 

“Quite,” Mrs. Parry said, and then hesitated. “I’m not sure—

perhaps we’d better keep the leaf significances. when they’re

still—of course they could stand with their legs twined….”

 

“What, with one another’s?” Adela asked in a conscious

amazement.

 

“My dear child, don’t be absurd,” Mrs. Parry said. “Each pair of

legs just crossed, so.”—she interlaced her own.

 

“I could never stand still like that,” Miss Fox said, with great

conviction.

 

“You’d have your arms stretched out to People’s shoulders on each

side,” Mrs. Parry said dubiously, “and a little gentle swaying

wouldn’t be inappropriate. But perhaps we’d better not risk it.

Better have green stockings—we can manage some lovely groupings.

Could we call them ‘Chorus of Leaf-Spirits’, Mr. Stanhope?”

 

“Sweet!” said Miss Fox. Adela, leaning back to Hugh Prescott,

said in a very low voice, “I told you, Hugh, she’ll ruin the

whole thing. She’s got no idea of mass. she ought to block it

violently and leave it without a name. I wouldn’t even have

‘Chorus’. I hope he won’t give way, but he’s rather

weak.”

 

However, Stanhope was, in the politest language, declining

to have anything of the sort. “Call it the Chorus,” he said, “or

if you like I’ll try and find a name for the leader, and the rest

can just dance and sing. But I’m afraid ‘Leaf-Spirits’ would be

misleading.”

 

“What about’Chorus of Nature-Powers’?” asked Miss Fox, but

Stanhope only said, smiling, “You will try and make the trees

friendly,” which no one quite understood, and shook his head

again.

 

Prescott asked: “Incidentally, I suppose they will be women?”

 

Mrs. Parry had said, “O, of course, Mr. Prescott,” before the

question reached her brain. When it did, she added, “At least…I

naturally took it for granted…. They are feminine, aren’t

they?”

 

Still hankering after mass, Adela said, “It sounds to me more

like undifferentiated sex force,” and ignored Hugh’s murmur,

“There isn’t much fun in that.”

 

“I don’t know that they were meant to be either male or

female,” Stanhope said. “I told you they were more of an

experiment in a different kind of existence. But whether men or

women are most like that is another matter.” He shed an

apologetic smile on Mrs. Parry.

 

“If they’re going to be leaves,” Miss Fox asked, “couldn’t they

all wear huge green leaves, so that no one would know if they

were wearing knee-breeches or skirts?”

 

There was a pause while everyone took this in, then Mrs. Parry

said, very firmly, “I don’t think that would answer,” while Hugh

Prescott said to Adela, “Chorus of Figleaves!”

 

“Why not follow the old pantomime or the present musical comedy,”

Stanhope asked, “and dress your feminine chorus in exquisite

masculine costume? That’s what Shakespeare did with his heroines,

as often as he could, and made a diagram of something more sharp

and wonderful than either. I don’t think you’ll do better.

Masculine voices—except boys—would hardly do, nor feminine

appearances.”

 

Mrs. Parry sighed, and everyone contemplated the problem again.

Adela Hunt and Hugh Prescott discussed modernity

between themselves. Pauline, lying back, like Stanhope, in her

chair, was thinking of Stanhope’s phrases, “a different

life”, “a terrible good”, and wondering if they were related, if

this Chorus over which they were spending so much trouble were

indeed an effort to shape in verse a good so alien as to be

terrifying. She had never considered good as a thing of terror,

and certainly she had not supposed a certain thing of terror in

her own secret life as any possible good. Nor now; yet there had

been an inhumanity in the great and moving lines of the Chorus.

She thought, with an anger generous in its origin but proud and

narrow in its conclusion, that not many of the audience really

cared for poetry or for Stanhope’s poetry—perhaps none but she.

He was a great poet, one of a very few, but what would he do if

one evening he met himself coming up the drive? Doppelgaenger,

the learned called it, which was no comfort. Another poet had

thought of it; she had had to learn the lines at school, as an

extra task because of undone work:

 

The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child,

Met his own image walking in the garden.

 

She had never done the imposition, for she had had nightmares

that night, after reading the lines, and had to go sick for days.

But she had always hated Shelley since for making it so lovely,

when it wasn’t loveliness but black panic. Shelley never seemed

to suggest that the good might be terrible. What would Peter

Stanhope do? what could he? if he met himself?

 

They were going: people were getting up and moving off. Everyone

was being agreeably grateful to Stanhope for his lawn, his tea,

and his poetry. In her fear of solitude she attached herself to

Adela and Hugh and Myrtle Fox, who were all saying goodbye at

once. As he shook hands he said casually: “You don’t think they

are?” and she did not immediately understand the reference to the

measurement of Omnipotence by mortal tremors. Her mind was on

Myrtle, who lived near her. She hated the pang of gratitude she

felt, and hated it more because she despised Miss Fox. But at

least she wouldn’t be alone, and the thing she hated most only

came, or had so far only come, when she was alone. She stuck

close to Myrtle, listening to Adela as they went.

 

“Pure waste,” Adela was saying. “Of course, Stanhope’s

dreadfully traditional”-how continually, Pauline thought, people

misused words like dreadful; if they knew what dread was!-“but

he’s got a kind of weight, only he dissipates it. He undermines

his mass. Don’t you think so, Pauline?”

 

“I don’t know,” Pauline said shortly, and then added with private

and lying malice: “I’m no judge of literature.”

 

“Perhaps not,” Adela said, “though I think it’s more a question

of general sensitiveness. Hugh, did you notice how the Parry

talked of significance? Why, no one with a really adult mind

could possibly—O, goodbye, Pauline; I may see you tomorrow.”

Her voice passed away, accompanied by Hugh’s temporary and lazy

silence, and Pauline was left to Myrtle’s monologues on the

comforting friendliness of sunsets.

 

Even that had to stop when they reached the Foxes’ hole. Myrtle,

in a spasm of friendship for Messias, frequently called it that.

As they parted upon the easy joke, Pauline felt the rest of the

sentence pierce her. She took it to her with a sincerity of pain

which almost excused the annexation-“the Son of Man hath not.

where to lay his head.” It was the cry of her loneliness and

fear, and it meant nothing to her mind but the empty streets and

that fear itself. She went on.

 

Not to think; to think of