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

Chapter Ten

THE SOUND OF THE TRUMPET

 

Mrs. Parry, rising that morning to control the grand occasion, and

excluding from her mind as often as possible the image of a

photograph in the papers of herself and Peter Stanhope side by

side, “author and producer”, found a note from Lawrence Wentworth

waiting on her breakfast table. It was short and frigid. It said

only that he had caught a feverish chill and would not be at the

performance. Even so, it had given him some trouble to write, for

it had demanded contact, and only a desire that he should not be,

by some maddening necessary inquiry, disturbed in his solitude,

had compelled him to write it. He had sent it round very early,

and then had returned to sit in his study, with curtains drawn, to

help him in his sickness.

 

“Very odd weather to catch a feverish chill,” Mrs. Parry thought,

looking through her window at the dancing sunlight. “And he might

have returned his ticket, and he might have sent good wishes.”

Good wishes were precisely what Wentworth was incapable of sending

anywhere, but Mrs. Parry could not know that. It was difficult to

imagine what either Zion or Gomorrah would make of Mrs. Parry, but

of the two it was certainly Zion which would have to deal with

her, since mere efficiency, like mere being, is in itself

admirable, and must be coloured with definite evil before it can

be lost. She made a note to tell the Seating Committee there was

a seat to spare. If there were no other absentee, if none of the

cast were knocked down by a car, blown up by a geyser, or

otherwise incapacitated, she would think herself fortunate. She

had had a private word with Pauline the day before, after the

rehearsal. Rumours of Mrs. Anstruther’s condition had reached

her, and she wanted, in effect, to know what Periel was going to

do about it. She had always been a little worried about it, but

one couldn’t refuse parts to suitable people because of elderly

grandmothers. Periel, however, had been entirely sensible;

with the full consent, almost (Mrs. Parry understood) under the

direction of the grandmother. She would, under God, be there.

Mrs. Parry had not too much belief in God’s punctuality, but she

was more or less satisfied, and left it at that. If misadventure

must come, the person best spared to it would be Peter Stanhope

himself. Mrs. Parry would willingly have immolated him on any

altar, had she had one, to ensure the presence of the rest, and

the success of the afternoon; it was why he admired her. She

desired a public success, but more ardently she desired success—the

achievement. She would have preferred to give a perfect

performance to empty seats rather than, to full, it should fall

from perfection.

 

She was given her desire. Even the picture was supplied.

Stanhope, approached by photographers, saw to that. He caused her

to be collected from her affairs at a distance; he posed by her

side; he directed a light conversation at her; and there they both

were: “Mr. Stanhope chatting with the producer (Mrs. Catherine

Parry).” She took advantage of the moment to remind him that he

had promised to say something at the end of the play, “an informal

epilogue”. He assured her that he was ready-“quite informal.

The formal, perhaps, would need another speaker. An archangel, or

something.”

 

“It’s angelic of you, Mr. Stanhope,” she said, touched to a new

courtesy by his, but he only smiled and shook his head.

 

The photographs—of them, of the chief personages, of the Chorus—had

been taken in a secluded part of the grounds before the performance.

Stanhope lingered, watching, until they were done; then he joined

Pauline.

 

“How good Mrs. Parry is!” he said sincerely. “Look how quiet and

well-arranged we all are! a first performance is apt to be much

more distracted, but it’s as much as our lives are worth to be

upset now.”

 

She said thoughtfully, “She is good, but I don’t think it’s

altogether her: it’s the stillness. Don’t you feel it, Peter?”

 

“It doesn’t weigh on us,” he answered, smiling, “but-yes.”

 

She said: “I wondered. My grandmother died this morning—five

minutes after I got back. I wondered if I was imagining the

stillness from that.”

 

“No,” he said thoughtfully, “but that may be in it. It’s as if

there were silence in heaven—a fortunate silence. I almost wish

it were the Tempest and not me. What a hope!

 

I’ll deliver all;

And promise you calm seas, auspicious gales,

And sail so expeditious, that shall catch

Your royal fleet far off.”

 

His voice became incantation; his hand stretched upward in the

air, as if he invoked the motion of the influences, and the hand

was magical to her sight. The words sprang over her; auspicious

gales, sail so expeditious, and she away to the royal fleet far

off, delivered, all delivered, all on its way. She answered:

“No; I’m glad it’s you. You can have your Tempest, but I’d rather

this.”

 

He said, with a mild protest: “Yet he wrote your part for you too;

can you guess where?”

 

“I’ve been educated,” she answered, brilliant in her pause before

they parted. “Twice educated, Peter. Shall I try?

 

Merrily, merrily, shall I live now

Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

 

Bless me to it.”

 

“Under the Mercy,” he said, and watched her out of sight before he

went to find a way to his own seat.

 

The theatre was almost full; late-comers were hurrying in. The

gate was on the point of being closed—two minutes, as the notices

had stated, before the beginning of the play when the last came.

It was Mrs. Sammile. She hurried through, and as she came she saw

Stanhope. As he bowed, she said breathlessly: “So nice,@ isn’t

it? Have you got everything you want?”

 

“Or that we don’t-” Stanhope began, but she chattered on: “But

it’s a good thing not to have, isn’t it? Perfection would be so

dull, wouldn’t it? It’s better to think of it than to have it

isn’t it? I mean, who was it said it’s better to be always walking

than to get there?”

 

“No, thank you very much,” he said, laughing outright. “I’d

rather have perfection than think of it, though I don’t see why we

shouldn’t do both. But we mustn’t stop; you’ve only a minute and

a half. Where’s your ticket? This way.” He took her round to her

seat—at the end of a row, towards the front—and as he showed it to

her he said, gravely: “You won’t mind getting there for once, will

you? Rather than travelling hopefully about this place the whole

afternoon.”

 

She threw a look at him, as he ran from her to his own seat, which

perplexed him, it seemed so full of bitterness and despair. It

was almost as if she actually didn’t want to sit down. He

thought, as he sank into his chair, “But if one hated to arrive?

If one only lived by not arriving? if one preferred avoiding to

knowing? if unheard melodies were only sweet because they weren’t

there at all? false, false…. and dismissed his thought, for

the Prologue stood out before the trees, and the moment of silence

before the trumpet sounded was already upon them.

 

It sounded annunciatory of a new thing. It called its world

together, and prepared union. It directed all attention forward,

as, his blasts done, the Prologue, actors ready behind and

audience expectant before, advanced slowly across the grass. But

to one mind at least it did even more. At the dress rehearsal it

had announced speech to Pauline, as to the rest; now it proclaimed

the stillness. It sprang up out of the stillness. She also was

aware of a new thing-of speech in relation to the silence in which

it lived.

 

The pause in which the Prologue silently advanced exhibited itself

to her as the fundamental thing. The words she had so long

admired did not lose their force or beauty, but they were the mere

feel of the texture. The harmony of motion and speech, now about

to begin, held and was composed by the pauses: foot to foot, line

to line, here a little and there a little. She knew she had

always spoken poetry against the silence of this world; now she

knew it had to be spoken against—that perhaps, but also something

greater, some silence of its own. She recognized the awful space

of separating stillness which all mighty art creates about itself,

or, uncreating, makes clear to mortal apprehension. Such art, out

of “the mind’s abyss”, makes tolerable, at the first word or note

or instructed glance, the preluding presence of the abyss.

It creates in an instant its own past. Then its significance

mingles with other significances; the stillness gives up kindred

meanings, each in its own orb, till by the subtlest graduations

they press into altogether other significances, and these again

into others, and so into one contemporaneous nature, as in that

gathering unity of time from which Lilith feverishly fled. But

that nature is to us a darkness, a stillness, only felt by the

reverberations of the single speech. About the song of the

Woodcutter’s Son was the stillness of the forest. That living

stillness had gathered the girl into her communion with the dead;

it had passed into her own spirit when the vision of herself had

closed with herself; it had surrounded her when she looked on the

dead face of Margaret; and now again it rose at the sound of the

trumpet—that which is before the trumpet and shall be after,

which is between all sentences and all words, which is between and

in all speech and all breath, which is itself the essential nature

of all, for all come from it and return to it.

 

She moved; she issued into the measured time of the play; she came

out of heaven and returned to heaven, speaking the nature of

heaven. In her very duty the doctrine of exchange held true,

hierarchical and republican. She owed the words to Stanhope; he

owed the utterance to her and the rest. He was over her in the

sacred order, and yet in the sacred equality they ran level. So

salvation lay everywhere in interchange: since, by an act only

possible in the whole, Stanhope had substituted himself for her,

and the moan of a God had carried the