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

He had hated once; but then he had not wanted

to hate-it disturbed him too much; and now he knew he did not. He need

not resent the grossness of the world; enough if, by flight, he rejected

it. He had his own living medicament for all trouble, and distaste and

oblivion for everything else-most of all for his noisome parody of his

peace.

 

Adela said, modulating her voice: “Have you got a headache? what a shame!

it’s good of you to turn out, but we do want to be sure everything’s all

right. I mean, if we must have uniforms. Personally…”

 

Wentworth said, in a voice of exhaustion: “Oh, please!” In this

stridency, as it seemed to him, there was a suggestion of another

disastrous noise-the nightmare of a groan, tearing up the abyss, setting

the rope swinging. The dull, heavy, plain thing opposite him became

identified to his pained sense with that dreadful break-up of his

dream, and now he could not hide. He could not say to the hills of those

comforting breasts: “Cover me”. The sound sang to his excruciated body,

as the sight oppressed it. The two imprisoned and split him: they held

him and searched his entrails. They wanted something of him. He refused

to want anything but what he wanted.

 

While Adela stared, half offended by his curious moan, he withdrew

himself into his recesses, and refused to be wanted. Like the dead man

on his flight down the hill, he declined communion. But he, to whom more

room and beauty in life had been given, chances of clarity and devotion,

was not now made frightening to himself. He had not known fear, nor did

he find fear, nor was fear the instrument of salvation. He had what he

had. There were presented to him the uniforms of the Grand Ducal Guard.

 

A voice as loud but less devastating than Adela’s, for it recalled no

unheard melodies, said behind him: “Mr. Wentworth! at last! we’re all

ready for you. Pauline, the Guard are over by the beeches: take Mr.

Wentworth across. I’ll be there in a minute.” Mrs. Parry, having said

this, did not trouble to watch them do it. She went on.

 

Pauline smiled at Wentworth’s dazed and Adela’s irritated face. She

said: “I suppose we’d better. Would you, Mr. Wentworth?”

 

He turned to her with relief. The sound of her voice was quieter than

the rest. He had never before thought so, but now certainly it was. He

said, “Yes, yes; let’s get away.”

 

Pauline saw Adela as they turned from her, a Gorgon of incredulity. Her

heart laughed, and they went. As they passed over the grass, she said:

“I do hope you haven’t a headache? They’re so trying.”

 

He answered, a little relieved to be away from the dull shouting

oppression of Adela: “People are so noisy. Of course… anything I can

do… but I can’t stop long.”

 

“I shouldn’t think it would take more than a few minutes,” Pauline said.

“You’ll only have to say yes or no—practically. And,” she added,

looking round at the whole chaos of glory, and instinctively discerning

Stanhope in the distance, “as it’s far too late for anything else, you

might be so very kind as to enjoy us for what we are, and say yes.”

 

Hugh Prescott, grand-ducally splendid and dramatically middle-aged, ran

after them. He said, as he caught them up: “Hallo, Mr. Wentworth! I hope

my Guard’ll be correct.”

 

Wentworth had been soothed by Pauline’s voice. It had to his mind, after

Adela’s, something of that quality he desired. It mingled with him; it

attracted him; it carried him almost to that moment he knew so well,

when, as the desire that expressed his need awoke and grew in him, there

came a point of abandonment to his desire. He did not exactly will, but

he refused to avoid. Why, indeed, he had once asked himself, swiftly,

almost thoughtlessly, should he avoid? He asked himself no more; he

sighed, and as it were, nestled back into himself, and then it would

somehow be there-coming from behind, or speaking in his ear, or perhaps

not even that, but a breath mingling with his, almost dividing from his

to mingle with it, so that there were two where there had been one, and

then the breath seemed to wander away into his palm where his hand lay

half-closed, and became a hand in his own hand, and then a slow arm grew

against his, and so, a tender coil against him or a swift energy of

hunger, as his mood was, it was there, and when the form was felt, it

could at last be seen, and he sank into its deep inviting eyes. As he

listened to Pauline he suddenly knew all this, as he had never known it

before; he almost saw it happen as a thing presented. Her voice created,

but it separated. It brought him almost to his moment, and coiled away,

with him in its toil. It directed him to the Guard; it said, with an

intensity that Pauline had never uttered, but he in his crisis heard:

“Take us as we are, and say yes; say yes or no… we are… we are…

say yes…” and another voice, “Is the Grand Duke’s Guard correct?”

They became, as he paused before the displayed magnificence, a chorus

swinging and singing: “We are… we are… we are…. Is the

Guard correct?… Say, say, O say… is the Guard, is the Guard

correct?”

 

It was not. In one flash he saw it. In spite of his diagrams and

descriptions, they had got the shoulder-knots all wrong. The eighteenth

century had never known that sort of thing. He looked at them, for the

first moment almost with the pure satisfaction of the specialist. He

almost, somewhere in him, joined in that insane jangle: “No, no, no; the

Guard is wrong—O, wrong. Say… I say… He looked, and he swung,

as if on his rope, as if at a point of decision—to go on or to climb up.

He walked slowly along the line, round the back, negligent of remarks

and questions, outwardly gazing, inwardly swinging. After that first

glance, he saw nothing else clearly. “Say yes or no. The shoulder-knots

could be altered easily enough, all twelve, in an hour or so’s work. Or

pass them—“take us as we are… say yes.” They could be defended, then

and there, with half a dozen reasons; they were no more of a jumble than

Stanhope’s verse. But he was something of a purist; he did not like

them. His housekeeper, for that matter, could alter them that evening

under his direction, and save the costume-makers any further trouble.

“Is the Guard, is the Grand Duke’s Guard, correct?”

 

A voice penetrated him. Hugh was saying: “One must have one’s

subordinates exact, mustn’t one?” There was the slightest stress on

“subordinates”-or was there? Wentworth looked askance at him; he was

strolling superb by his side. Pauline said: “We could alter some things,

of course.” His silence had made her anxious. He stood away, and

surveyed the backs of the Guard. He could, if he chose, satisfy and

complete everything. He could have the coats left at his house after the

rehearsal; he could do what the honour of his scholarship commanded; he

could have them returned. It meant only his being busy with them that

one evening, and concerning himself with something different from his

closed garden. He smelt the garden.

 

Mrs. Parry’s voice said: “Is the Guard correct?” He said: “Yes.” It was

over; he could go.

 

He had decided. The jingle was in his ears no more. Everything was

quite quiet. The very colours were still. Then from a distance movement

began again. His future was secure, both proximate and ultimate. But his

present was decided for him; he was not allowed to go. The devil, for

that afternoon, promptly swindled him. He had cheated; he was at once

cheated. Mrs. Parry expected him to stop for the rehearsal and oversee

the movement of the Guard wherever, in its odd progress about the play,

it marched on or marched off. She made it clear. He chattered a

protest, to which she paid no attention. She took him to a chair, saw

him in it, and went off. He had no energy to oppose her. No one had.

Over all that field of actors and spectators-over Stanhope and Pauline,

over Adela and Hugh, over poetry and possession and sacred possession the

capacity of one really capable woman imposed itself. The moment was

hers, and in view of her determination the moment became itself. As

efficient in her kind as Margaret Anstruther in hers, Catherine Parry

mastered creation, and told it what to do. She had taken on her job, and

the determination to fulfil her job controlled the utterance of the

poetry of Stanhope and delayed the operation of the drugs of Lilith.

Wentworth struggled and was defeated, Adela writhed but obeyed, Peter

Stanhope laughed and enjoyed and assented. It was not perhaps the least

achievement of his art that it had given to his personal spirit the

willingness to fulfil the moment as the moment, so that, reserving his

own apprehension of all that his own particular business meant to him, he

willingly subordinated it to the business of others at their proper time.

He seconded Mrs. Parry as far as and in every way that he could. He ran

errands, he took messages, he rehearsed odd speeches, he fastened hooks

and held weapons. But he only seconded her. The efficiency was hers;

and the Kingdom of God which fulfilled itself in the remote recesses of

his spacious universe fulfilled itself also in her effective supremacy.

She stood in the middle of the field and looked around her. The few

spectators were seated; the actors were gathering. Stanhope stood by her

side. The Prologue, with his trumpet, ran hastily across the stage to

the trees which formed the background. Mrs. Parry said: “I think we’re

ready?” Stanhope agreed. They retired to their chairs, and Mrs. Parry

nodded vigorously to the Prologue. The rehearsal began.

 

Wentworth, sitting near to Stanhope, secluded himself from it as much as

possible, reaching backward and forward with closed eyes into his own

secrecies. At the extreme other end of activity, Pauline, waiting with

the Chorus for the Woodcutter’s Son’s speech, upon which, as he fed the

flames, the first omnipotent song was to break, also gave herself up to

delight. If the heavens had opened, it was not for her to deny them, or

even too closely to question or examine them. She carried, in her

degree, Peter Stanhope and his fortunes-not for audience or other

publicity but for the achievement of the verse and the play itself. It

was all very well for Stanhope to say it was an entertainment and not a

play, and to be charmingly and happily altruistic about her, and since he

preferred her to fall in with Mrs. Parry’s instructions she did it, for

everyone’s sake including her own. But he was used, anyhow in his

imagination, to greater things; this was the greatest she had known or

perhaps was ever likely to know. If the apparition she had so long

dreaded came across the field she would look at it with joy. If it would

sit down till the rehearsal was over…. She smiled to herself at the

fantasy and laughed to think that she could smile. The Woodcutter’s Son

from beside her went forward, carrying his burden of twigs. His voice

rose in the sublime speculations of fire and glory which the poet’s

reckless generosity had given him. He spoke and paused, and Pauline and

all the Chorus, moving so that their own verdure showed among the trees,

broke into an answering song.