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

and all the past.

He was afraid, this martyr of her house, and she knew what to do.

There was no doubt about it at all. She knew that the horror of

the fire had overcome him. He was in the trap in which she had

been but now; the universe had caught him. His teacher, his

texts, his gospel had been its bars, and his judges and

executioners were springing it; and the Lord God himself was, in

that desperate hour, nothing but the spring that would press him

into the torment. Once the Lord had been something else; perhaps

still…. He was praying passionately: “Make me believe; make me

believe.” The choice was first in her; Omnipotence waited her

decision.

 

She knew what she must do. But she felt, as she stood, that she

could no more do it than he. She could never bear that fear. The

knowledge of being burnt alive, of the flames, of the faces, of

the prolongation of pain. She knew what she must do. She opened

her mouth and could not speak. In front of her, alone in his foul

Marian prison, unaware of the secret means the Lord he worshipped

was working swiftly for his peace, believing and unbelieving, her

ancestor stood centuries off in his spiritual desolation and

preluding agony of sweat. He could not see beyond the years the

child of his house who strove with herself behind and before him.

The morning was coming; his heart was drained. Another spasm

shook him; even now he might recant. Pauline could not see the

prison, but she saw him. She tried to choose and to speak.

 

Behind her, her own voice said: “Give it to me, John Struther.” He

heard it, in his cell and chains, as the first dawn of the day of

his martyrdom broke beyond the prison. It spoke and sprang in his

drained heart; and drove the riotous blood again through his

veins: “Give it to me, give it to me, John Struther.” He stretched

out his arms again: he called: “Lord, Lord!” It was a devotion and

an adoration; it accepted and thanked. Pauline heard it,

trembling, for she knew what stood behind her and spoke. It said

again: “Give”. He fell on his knees, and in a great roar of

triumph he called out: “I have seen the salvation of my God.”

 

Pauline sighed deeply with her joy. This then, after so long, was

their meeting and their reconciliation: their perfect

reconciliation, for this other had done what she had desired, and

yet not the other, but she, for it was she who had all her life

carried a fear which was not her fear but another’s, until in the

end it had become for her in turn not hers but another’s. Her

heart was warm, as if the very fire her ancestor had feared was

a comfort to her now. The voice behind her sang, repeating the

voice in front, “I have seen the salvation of my God.”

 

Pauline turned. She thought afterwards that she had had no choice

then, but it was not so. It was a movement as swift, as

instinctive, as that with which one hand flies to balance the

other, but it was deliberate. She whirled on the thing she had so

long avoided, and the glorious creature looked past her at the

shouting martyr beyond. She was giddy with the still violence of

this last evening; she shut her eyes and swayed, but she was

sustained by the air about her and did not fall. She opened her

eyes again; there—as a thousand times in her looking-glass—

there! The ruffled brown hair, the long nose, the firm compressed

mouth, the taut body, the long arms, her dress, her gesture. It

wore no supernatural splendour of aureole, but its rich nature

burned and glowed before her, bright as if mortal flesh had indeed

become what all lovers know it to be. Its colour bewildered by

its beauty; its voice was Pauline’s, as she had wished it to be

for pronouncing the imagination of the grand art. But no verse,

not Stanhope’s, not Shakespeare’s, not Dante’s, could rival the

original, and this was the original, and the verse was but the

best translation of a certain manner of its life. The glory of

poetry could not outshine the clear glory of the certain fact, and

not any poetry could hold as many meanings as the fact. One

element coordinated original and translation; that element was

joy. joy had filled her that afternoon, and it was in the power of

such joy that she had been brought to this closest propinquity to

herself. It had been her incapacity for joy, nothing else, that

had till now turned the vision of herself aside; her incapacity

for joy had admitted fear, and fear had imposed separation. She

knew now that all acts of love are the measure of capacity for

joy; its measure and its preparation, whether the joy comes or

delays.

 

Her manifested joy whirled on her with her own habitual movement.

She sprang back from that immortality; no fear but a moment’s

truce of wonder and bodily tremor. She looked in her own eyes and

laboured to speak; a shout was in her. She wished to assent to

the choice her beatitude had made. The shout sank within her and

rose without; she had assented, then or that afternoon or before

this life began. She had offered her joy to her betrayed

ancestor; she heard now, though she saw nothing but those

brilliant and lucid eyes, the noise of his victorious going. The

unseen crowd poured and roared past her. Her debt was paid, and

now only she might know why and when she had incurred it. The

sacrifice had been accepted. His voice was shouting in her ears,

as Foxe said he had shouted, To him that hath shall be given. He

had had; she had been given to him. She had lived without joy

that he might die in joy, but when she lived she had not known and

when she offered she had not guessed that the sacrificial victim

had died before the sacrificial act was accomplished; that now the

act was for resurrection in death. Receding voices called still;

they poured onwards to the martyrdom. The confusion that was

round him was her own confusion of hostile horror at the fact of

glory: her world’s order contending with distraction-what

distraction!

 

One called: What of him that hath not? but who could be that had

not? so universal, in itself and through its means, was the

sublime honour of substituted love; what wretch so poor that all

time and place would not yield a vicar for his distress, beyond

time and place the pure vicariate of salvation? She heard the

question, in that union of the centuries, with her mortal ears, as

she heard excited voices round her, and the noise of feet, and the

rattle at a distance of chains. She saw nothing, except the

streets of the Hill and herself standing on the Hill. She felt no

grief or fear; that was still to come or else it had been,

according to choice of chronology. Her other self, or the image

in which she saw both those choices in one vision, still stood

opposite her, nor was its glory dimmed though and as her own

intensity absorbed it.

 

After the shouted question she did not hear a reply, other sounds

covered it. The scuffling, the rattling, the harsh alien voices

went on; then the voice she had heard calling on the Lord cried:

The ends of the earth be upon me. The roads had been doubled and

twisted so that she could meet him there; as wherever exchange was

needed. She knew it now from the abundant grace of the Hill or

the hour: but exchange might be made between many mortal hearts

and none know what work was done in the moment’s divine kingdom.

There was a pause, ominous down all the years; a suspense of

silence. Then suddenly she smelt burning wood; the fire was lit,

he in it. She heard the voice once more: I have seen the

salvation of my God.

 

He stood in the fire; he saw around him the uniforms—O uniforms

of the Grand Duke’s Guard—the mounted gentlemen, the couple of

friars, the executioners—O the woodcutter’s son singing in the

grand art!—the crowd, men and women of his village. The heat

scorched and blinded and choked him. He looked up through the

smoke and flame that closed upon him, and saw, after his manner,

as she after hers, what might be monstrous shapes of cherubim and

seraphim exchanging powers, and among them the face of his

daughter’s aeviternity. She only among all his children and

descendants had run by a sacrifice of heart to ease and carry his

agony. He blessed her, thinking her some angel, and in his

blessing her aeviternity was released to her, and down his

blessing beatitude ran to greet her, a terrible good. The ends of

the world were on them. He dead and she living were made one with

peace. Her way was haunted no more.

 

She heard the cry, and the sky over her was red with the glow of

fire, its smell in her nostrils. It did not last. Her beatitude

leant forward to her, as if to embrace. The rich presence

enveloped her; out of a broken and contrite heart she sighed with

joy. On the inhaled breath her splendour glowed again; on the

exhaled it passed. She stood alone, at peace. Dawn was in the

air; eccc omnia nova facio.

 

Soon after, as she came back to the house, she saw Stanhope

approaching. She waited, outside her gate. He came up, saying

with a smile: “Awake, lute and harp”—he made a gesture of

apology—“I myself will awake right early.” She put out her hand.

 

“I owe you this,” she said. “I owe you this for ever.”

 

He looked at her. “It’s done then?” he asked, and she: “It’s

done. I can’t tell you now, but it’s done.”

 

He was silent, studying her, then he answered slowly: “Arise,

shine; your light is come; the glory of the Lord is risen upon

you.” His voice quickened: “And you’ll do it well, taking prettily

and giving prettily, but the Lord’s glory, Periel, will manage to

keep up with you, and I shall try.”

 

“Oh, you!” she said, pressing and releasing his hand-. “but

you’ve got such a start!”

 

He shook his head. “No,” he said, “our handicaps are all

different, and the race is equal. The Pharisees can even catch up

the woman with the mites. Those who do not insist on Gomorrah.”

She said: “Gomorrah?” and ‘the chill of the word struck even

through her contemplation. She remembered the unanswered question

of her vision: What of them that have not? As if the answer had

been reserved for these lower circles, he gave it. He said: “The

Lord’s glory fell on the cities of the plain, of Sodom and

another. We know all about Sodom nowadays, but perhaps we know

the other even better. Men can be in love with men, and women

with women, and still be in love and make sounds and speeches, but

don’t you know how quiet the streets of Gomorrah are? haven’t you

seen the pools that everlastingly reflect the faces of those who

walk with their own phantasms, but the phantasms aren’t reflected,

and can’t be. The lovers of Gomorrah are quite contented, Periel;

they don’t have to put up with our difficulties. They aren’t

bothered by alteration, at least till the rain of the fire of the

Glory at the end, for they lose the capacity for change, except

for the fear of hell. They’re monogamous enough! and they’ve no