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

Chapter Eight

DRESS REHEARSAL

 

Among the many individualized forms, dead or living, upon the Hill, there

was one neither dead nor living. It was the creature which had lingered

outside the illusion of Eden for the man who had consented to its

company. It had neither intellect nor imagination; it could not

criticize or create, for the life of its substance was only the magical

apparition of its father’s desires. It is said in the old tales that the

devil longs to become incarnate that he may challenge the Divine Word in

his own chosen house of flesh and that he therefore once desired and

overshadowed a maid. But even at the moment of conception a mystical

baptism fell on the child, and the devil was cast out of his progeny at

the moment of entrance. He who was born of that purified intercourse

with angelic sacrilege was Merlin, who, wisest of magicians, prophesied

and prefigured the Grail-quest, and built a chapel to serve the Table

till Logres came to an end, and the Merciful Child Galahad discovered the

union in a Mass of the Holy Ghost which was sung by Messias among a great

company of angels. Since that frustrating transubstantiation the devil

has never come near to dominion over a mortal woman. His incubi and

succubi which tempt and torment the piety of anchorites, are phantasms,

evoked from and clouded and thickened with the dust of the earth or the

sweat of the body or the shed seed of man or the water of ocean, so as to

bewilder and deceive longing eyes and eager hands.

 

The shape of Lawrence Wentworth’s desire had emerged from the power of

his body. He had assented to that making, and again, outside the garden

of satisfied dreams, he had assented to the company of the shape which

could not be except by his will and was imperceptibly to possess his

will. Image without incarnation, it was the delight of his incarnation

for it was without any of the things that troubled him in the incarnation

of the beloved. He could exercise upon it all arts but one; he could not

ever discover by it or practise towards it the freedom of love. A man

cannot love himself, he can only idolize it, and over the idol

delightfully tyrannize without purpose. The great gift which this simple

idolatry of self gives is lack of further purpose; it is, the saints tell

us, a somewhat similar thing that exists in those wholly possessed by

their End; it is, human experience shows, the most exquisite delight in

the interchanges of romantic love. But in all loves but one there are

counterpointing times of purposes; in this only there are none.

 

They had gone down the hill together, the man and that creature of

illusion which had grown like the flowers of Eastern magic between the

covering and uncovering of a seed. The feminine offspring of his

masculinity clung to him, pressing her shoulder against him, turning eyes

of adoration on him, stroking his fingers with her own. The seeming

trance prolonged itself in her in proportion as it passed from his own

senses; he could plunge again into its content whenever the creature

looked at or spoke to him. Their betrothal had been celebrated thus

before they began to walk down the hill, and in that betrothal a fraction

of his intelligence had slept never to wake. During the slow walk his

child dallied with his senses and had an exquisite perception of his

needs. Adela walked by him and cajoled him-in the prettiest way-to love

her. He was approached, appeased, flattered, entreated. There flowed

into him from the creature by his side the sensation of his absolute

power to satisfy her. It was what he had vehemently and in secret

desired-to have his own way under the pretext of giving her hers. This

was the seed which grew in his spirit and from which in turn his spirit

grew-the core of the fruit and also the fruit of the core. The vagrant

of matter murmured to him; it surrounded him with devotion, as very well

it could, seeing what the only reality of its devotion was. He did not

need to say much, nor himself to initiate approach. It took all that

activity upon itself; and the sweet reproaches which its mouth offered

him for having misunderstood and neglected and hurt it were balm to his

mind. He had hurt her—then he had not been hurt or she did not know

it. He was wanted—then he need not trouble to want or to know he

wanted. He was entreated by physical endearments-in languorous joy he

consented to gratify the awful ambiguity of his desire.

 

At his own gate they had paused. There, for a little, he almost

recovered himself; his habitual caution leapt into action. He thought

for himself. “Suppose anyone saw us?” and looked anxiously up at the

windows. They were dark; his servants were asleep in their own rooms at

the back of the house. He glanced up and down the road; no one was

about. But his caution, having struck one note, passed to another; he

looked down at the creature who stood opposite him. It was Adela in

every point, every member and article: its hair, its round ears, its full

face, its plump hands, its square nails, its pink palms, its gestures,

its glances. Only that appealing softness was new, and by that same

appealing softness he knew clearly for an instant that it was not Adela

who had returned by his side.

 

He stared at it and a shudder seized him; he took a half-step away, and

the first chance of escape was offered. He wondered, desperately,

perhaps in a little hope, if it would say good-night and go away. His

hand was on the latch of the gate, yet he hesitated to do anything so

certain as to go sharply through. He looked up and down the street;

perhaps someone would come. He had never before wanted to see Hugh

Prescott; now he did. If Hugh would come and slip his arm through

Adela’s and take her away! But Hugh could not save him unless he wanted

the thing that was Hugh’s, and not this other thing. The thought of Hugh

had done all it could when it reminded him of the difference between the

real and the unreal Adela. He must face jealousy, deprival, loss, if he

would be saved. He fled from that offer, and with a sudden snarl

clutched his companion by the arm. It leaned closer to him, and

otherwise circumstance lay still. It yearned to him as @if it feared to

be disappointed, which indeed at the bottom of his heart he infinitely

did. It put one hand upon his heart. It said, in a breathless whisper:

“You won’t send me away?” Adela and his refusal to know Adela in

relation to Hugh rose in him; sensuality and jealousy twined. He swung

open the gate. It said: “Be kind to me, be whatever you want, but don’t

send me away.” He had never been able to dream of a voice so full of

passion and passion for him. The hand that smoothed his heart was the

hand that had lain in Hugh’s, yet it was not; he crushed it in his own,

relieved from agony and released to a pretended vengeance. His mind

became giddy. He caught the whole form tighter, lest indeed Hugh should

come striding out of the night, tall as a house, and stretch out a huge

animal hand, and pull her from his arm. He moved to the threshold; as if

it swooned against him it drooped there with all its weight upon his

heart and side. He muttered thickly: “Come on, come on,” but it seemed

past movement. Its voice still murmured incoherent passion, but its

limbs were without strength to take the step. He said: “Must I carry

you?” and the head fell back, and the voice in a trance of abandonment

answered: “Carry me, carry me.” He gathered it to his arms and lifted it;

it lay there, no more than an easy weight.

 

As he moved, his mind spoke, or more than his mind. The whole air of the

Hill said in his ear, with a crisp intelligence: “You fool, that’s not

Adela; you couldn’t carry Adela. What do you think you’ll get out of

anything that isn’t Adela?” He recognized well enough that the real Adela

might have given him considerable trouble to lift, but his whole

damnation was that he would not choose the trouble to lift the real

Adela. This thing was light in his arms, though solid to his heart, and

his brain was dazed by its whispers. He came over the threshold and

when they had entered the garden it found its feet again, and went along

with him to the complacency of his dream.

 

Since that night it had come to him often, as on that night it had been

all he could desire. it had been an ape of love’s vitality, and a parody

also of its morality. It possessed a semblance of initiative, and it had

appeased, as is all lovers’ duty, the fantasies of his heart; it had

fawned on him and provoked him. He had no need of the devices against

fertility which, wisely or unwisely, the terrible dilemmas of men drive

them to use, for he consummated a marriage whose infertility was assured.

This, which it made clear to him for his satisfaction, a little troubled

him, for it reminded him, until he managed to forget, of its true nature.

He was outraging his intelligence with this invited deceit, and he did

not wish to know it. But it passed, for he was given good measure after

his kind. There was no lack of invention and pleasure, for the other

forming of sterile growth from sterile root was far off, lying in the

necessity of the stir of distant leaves on the side of the mountain where

he had no thought to