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

another Adela. Even when his hand was on her bare

arm, or hers caressing his, he was dimly troubled. He wanted to pull the

curtains, to lock the doors, to bar out what was in his brain by barring

his house, to be with what was irreconcilably not the world. He wanted

either to shut himself wholly away from the world in a sepulchre of

desire and satiety and renewed desire; or to destroy if not the world,

at least one form that walked in the world.

 

His trouble was increased by the likelihood of the intrusion of the world

of the other Adela. He had, weeks since, sent to Mrs. Parry drawings and

descriptions for the Grand Ducal uniforms. She had rung him up once or

twice about them, and she was beginning to insist on his going round to

her house to approve the result. He did not want to go to her house. He

would be expected to be at the play, the performance of which was

approaching, and he did not want to be at the play. Adela would be

acting, and he didn’t want to see her in her eighteenth-century costume,

or any more at all. He would have to speak to her and he did not want to

speak to her. He wanted to be alone with his fantasies. It was all the

busy world, with Adela as its chief, that still hampered him. He could,

of course, shut himself away, but if he were to enjoy the phantasm of

Adela as he wanted to, his servants must see her and bring her tea and

accept her as a visitor, and then what would they think if they heard of

the actual Adela being seen somewhere else at the same time? Or if, by

chance, the actual Adela should call? It knew, with that accuracy with

which it always prevented his desires, that he was disturbed about

something it-could not, until night came, cure. It spent on him a

lingering gaze of love, and said “I must go.” It caught and kissed his

hand in a hungry fire, and it looked up at him fervently and said:

“Tonight? Dear Lawrence, tonight?” He said “Tonight”, and desired to

add the name. But he had never yet been able to do so-as if the name

were indeed something actual, sacramental of reality. He said

“Tonight”, and pressed it and kissed it and took it to the door, which

he shut quickly, as he always did, for he had an uneasy wonder whether it

ever went anywhere, once it had parted from him, and he did not wish to

see it fade be-fore his eyes into the air which, this summer, was growing

so intolerably bright.

 

The unusual brightness had been generally noticed. It was not a

heat-wave; the weather was too gay and airy for that. It was an increase

in luminous power; forms stood out more sharply, voices were heard more

clearly. There seemed to be a heightening of capacity, within and

without. The rehearsals of the play increased in effect, a kind of

swiftness moved in the air; all things hastened. People said: “What a

beautiful summer!” and went on saying it. One afternoon Pauline heard

Stanhope, who had replied to that phrase a score of times, vary the reply

by saying with some surprise: “O, the summer, do you think?” But his

interlocutor had already been wafted away.

 

It was two days since the promise of substituted love, and it was their

first meeting. She took advantage of her precursor’s remark to say, as

she shook hands, and their glances exchanged affection: “What then, if it

isn’t the summer?”

 

He shrugged delicately. “Only, does it seem like the summer?” he asked.

 

“Not very,” she said. “But what do you think?”

 

“The air within the air, perhaps,” he answered, half-serious. “The thing

that increases everything that is, and decreases everything that isn’t.”

 

Pauline said, not upon any impulse of conventional chatter, “And which am

I?”

 

“O is,” he said, “is, decidedly. Unfortunately, perhaps, in many ways,

but final. You haven’t had any meetings yet?”

 

She began to answer and was cut short by new arrivals. It was the day of

the dress rehearsal, and even the sophisticated practitioners of Battle

Hill felt a new excitement.

 

Climax was at hand. The young and more innocent actors triumphed in a

delight modified by fear of their incapacity; the more experienced feared

the incapacity of others. Adela Hunt, for instance, was anxious that

Periel and the Chorus should be her adequate background, and that her

dramatic lover should adore her urgently. He, a nice boy and shy, was

too conscious of the Chorus individually to rise quite to the height of

them in a mass. His voice still faltered with the smallest vibration of

awareness upon the invocation of the fire. Mrs. Parry had pointed out to

him that he must be used to burning leaves, and he had agreed; still, at

the height of the verse, he trembled a little with the stress. The Bear,

on the other hand, was distracted between his own wish to be ursine and

Mrs. Parry’s to be period. His two great moments, however, were in

action rather than speech. One was a heavy pursuit of the Princess; at

the other he and Periel intertwined in a dance among all the personages,

drawing them into a complexity of union. He was not a pantomime bear; no

assistant completed quadrupedicity; he walked bowed but upright, a bear’s

head, high furred boots, furred coat and gauntlets, making up the design

which signified or symbolized the growling mass of animal life. Nor,

though he and the spirit of the spirits danced together, did they ever

meet or speak; between them always moved the mortal figures and

harmonized their incommunicable utterances.

 

It was the reputation of Peter Stanhope which had so largely increased

the excitement of this year’s drama. Public attention was given to it;

articles appeared in New York and paragraphs in Paris. Seats had to be

reserved for a few-a very fewvery distinguished visitors; many others

could be and had to be refused. The Press would be there. A palpitation

of publicity went through the cast; the world seemed to flow towards

Battle Hill. There was no denying that it was an event, almost a moment

in the history of the imagination; recognized as such by, at least, a not

inconsiderable minority of those who cared for such things, and a quite

inconsiderable minority of those who did not, but who read everything in

their papers. Even the cast were provided with tickets; and the

rehearsal itself was guarded by a policeman. A popular member of the

Chorus also stood by the gate and scrutinized all arrivals, as if the

bear and the spirit purged creation by power and knowledge.

 

The pressure of this outer world had modulated and unified the producer,

the performers, and every one else concerned with the play. Harmony

became so necessary that it was actually achieved, fate and free-will

coinciding. Stanhope became so desirable that he was compelled to promise

to say a few words at the end. A deference towards him exhibited itself.

Adela rebuked Pauline for speaking lightly of the great man.

 

“I didn’t know that you admired him so much yourself,” Pauline said.

 

Adela, with an unfailing grasp of the real values of the world, said:

“Even if I didn’t, he is respected by some very fine judges. But I’ve

come to see there is more in him than I’d thought. He’s got a number of

curiously modern streaks under his romanticism.”

 

When Adela mentioned romanticism Pauline, and most other people, changed

the conversation. Otherwise it was a prelude to a long and complete

denunciation of all romantics as the enemies of true art. True art had

been recently defined, by a distinguished critic, as “the factual

oblique”, and of the factual oblique romanticism, it seemed, was

incapable, being neither clear enough to be factual or clever enough to

be oblique. The factual oblique, incidentally, had not yet revealed to

Adela the oblique fact that she never mentioned romanticism when she was

with Hugh; any conversation in which it seemed likely to appear was

deflected before it arrived. Pauline, not having been able to reflect,

merely altered.

 

“There’s Mr. Wentworth,” she said. “I do hope he approves of the Guard.”

 

“He ought to have looked at them before,” Adela said severely. “He’s

been terribly slack. I suppose you haven’t seen him lately?”

 

“No, not with grandmother and the play and everything,” Pauline answered.

“Have you?”

 

Adela shook her head. Wentworth was moving slowly across the lawn

towards them. His eyes were on the ground; he walked heavily, and it was

as if by accident that he at last drew level with them. Pauline said:

“Good afternoon, Mr. Wentworth.”

 

He looked up at her and blinked. It was true the air was very clear and

the sun very bright, yet Pauline was astonished by the momentary

difficulty he seemed to find in focusing her. When he had got her right,

he slowly smiled, and said: “Ah! Good afternoon, Miss Anstruther.”

 

Adela Hunt abruptly said: “Mr. Wentworth!” He jumped. Slightly but

definitely he jerked, and only then looked round. He looked, and there

was perplexity in his eyes. He stared at the surprised Adela; he seemed

taken aback at seeing her, and almost to resent it. A disagreeable shock

showed in his face, and was gone, as he answered: “Oh, yes; Misss Hunt”;

a statement, not a greeting: a piece of information offered to the

inquiring mind. Adela could not help noticing it, and was almost too

astonished to smile. She couldn’t believe the look had been acted, yet

he couldn’t really be surprised. She wondered if he were indeed secretly

angry, if it were a poor mad insult of an outraged mind, and decided it

couldn’t be.

 

She said briskly: “I hope you’ve approved of the uniforms.” He took a

step back. He said, in real distress: “Oh, hush, hush, not so loud,”

and in turn he blinked at her, as if, when he had taken in her words,

they surprised him more. Little though she could know it, they did. He

had supposed, in the night and the morning, that he had hated the Adela

of the world; He had had her in his imagination as an enemy and a

threat. He had overrated her. She was, in fact, nothing like what he

had, and now he had met her he had hardly recognized her. There had been

a girl, talking to—to—the name had again escaped him—to the other girl,

whose shape had reminded him of his nightly mistress; she had turned her

head, and it had been his mistress, and then again it was not. It could

not be, for this one was remote and a little hostile; it was not, for

this one was nothing like as delightful, as warm, as close-bewildering.

She spoke, and it was strange, for he expected love; he did not want

that voice except in love, and now it—at first—said strange things.

With relief he realized it was not his voice—so he called it, admirably

exact; this was not the voice of his mistress, and his mistress was most

particularly he. This distressed him; it was loud, harsh, uncouth. It

was like the rest of the tiresome world into which he had been compelled

to enter—violent, smashing, bewildering by its harsh clamour, and far

from the soft sweetness of his unheard melody. It was not without

reason that Keats imagined the lover of unheard melody in reverie on

stone images; the real Greek dancers would have pleased him less. But

though Wentworth was shocked by the clumsy tread and the loud voice,

they relieved him also.