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

Chapter Eleven

THE OPENING OF GRAVES

 

Whatever mystery had, to Pauline’s exalted senses, taken its place

in the world on that afternoon, it seemed to make no difference to

the world. Things proceeded. Her uncle had arrived from London

during the performance, and had had to have his niece’s absence

explained to him, first by the maid and later by the niece. After

the explanation Pauline remembered without surprise in her shame

that she used to dislike her uncle.

 

Margaret Anstruther was buried on the next day but one, to the

sound of that apostolic trumpet which calls on all its hearers to

rise from the dead, and proclaims the creation on earth of

celestial bodies, “sown in corruption, raised in incorruption;

sown in dishonour, raised in glory; sown in weakness, raised in

power”. “Be steadfast, unmovable… your labour is not in vain

in the Lord.” Pauline heard with a new attention; these were no

longer promises, but facts. She dared not use the awful phrases

for herself; only, shyly, she hoped that perhaps, used by some

other heavenly knowledge, they might not be altogether

inapplicable to herself. The epigram of experience which is in

all dogma hinted itself within her. But more than these passages

another stranger imagination struck her heart: “Why are they then

baptized for the dead?” There, rooted in the heart of the Church

at its freshest, was the same strong thrust of interchange.

Bear for others; be baptized for others; and, rising as her new

vision of the world had done once and again, an even more fiery

mystery of exchange rolled through her horizons, turning and

glancing on her like the eyed and winged wheels of the prophet.

The central mystery of Christendom, the terrible fundamental

substitution on which so much learning had been spent and about

which so much blood had been shed, showed not as a miraculous

exception, but as the root of a universal rule… “behold, I shew

you a mystery”, as supernatural as that Sacrifice, as natural as

carrying a bag. She flexed her fingers by her side as if she

thought of picking one up.

 

The funeral over, her uncle hastened action. The moment for which

they had all been waiting had arrived; his mother was dead. So

now they could clear things up. The house could be sold, and most

of the furniture. Pauline could have a room in a London hostel,

which he would find her, and a job in a London office, which he

had already found her. They discussed her capacities; he hinted

that it was a pity she hadn’t made more of the last few years.

She might have learned German while sitting with Margaret, and

Spanish instead of taking part in plays. She would have to be

brisker and livelier. Pauline, suppressing a tendency to point

out that for years he had wished her to be not brisk or lively,

but obedient and loving, said she would remember. She added that

she would have a little money, enough to buy her bread. Her uncle

said that a woman couldn’t live on bread, and anyhow a job was a

good thing; he didn’t wish his niece to waste her time and energy.

Pauline, thinking that Stanhope had said the same thing

differently, agreed. Her uncle, having put everything he could

into somebody’s hands, left her to live for a few days in the

house with the maid, and rushed back to London with his wife,

whose conversation had been confined to assuring Pauline that she

would get over it presently.

 

Pauline might have believed this if she had been clear what it was

that she was expected to get over. Of one thing it was true; she

no longer expected to see the haunting figure of’ her childhood’s

acquaintance and youthful fear. She remembered it now as one

remembers a dream, a vivid dream of separation and search. She

had been, it seemed, looking for a long while for someone, or

perhaps some place, that was necessary to her. She had been

looking for someone who was astray, and at the same time she had

been sought. In the dream she had played hide-and-seek with

herself in a maze made up of the roads of Battle Hill, and the

roads were filled with many figures who hated—neither her nor any

other definite person, but hated. They could not find anything

they could spend their hate on, for they slipped and slithered and

slid from and through each other, since it was their hate which

separated them. It was no half-self-mocking hate, nor even an

immoral but half-justified hate, certainly not the terrible,

enjoyable, and angry hate of ordinary men and women. It was the

hate of those men and women who had lost humanity in their extreme

love of themselves amongst humanity. They had been found in their

streets by the icy air of those mountain peaks of which she

had once heard her grandmother speak, and their spirits had frozen

in them. Among them she also had gone about, and the only thing

that had distinguished her from them was her fear lest they should

notice her. And while she hurried she had changed, in her bygone

dream, and she was searching for some poor shadow of herself that

fled into the houses to escape her. The dream had been long, for

the houses had opened up, as that shadow entered, into long

corridors and high empty rooms, and there was one dreadful room

which was all mirrors, or what was worse than mirrors, for the

reflections in those mirrors were living, though they hid for a

while and had no being till the shadow at last came speeding into

the room, but then they were seen, and came floating out of their

flickering cells, and danced the shadow into some unintelligible

dissolution among them. it was from that end that she sought to

save the miserable fugitive-. When in her memory she reached that

point, when the shadow was fleeing deeper into Gomorrah, and she

fled after it on feet that were so much swifter than its own and

yet in those infinite halls and corridors could never overtake it

while it fled-when the moment of approach down the last long

corridor to the last utter manifestation of allusion drew near,

she heard far off a trumpet, and she could remember nothing more

but that she woke. She remembered that she woke swiftly, as if a

voice called her, but however hard she tried she could not well

recollect whose voice it was; perhaps that also was part of the

dream, or perhaps it was the nurse’s voice that had called her on

the morning her grandmother had died. Perhaps; perhaps not.

Under all the ceremonies of the days, under the companionship of

her people, under her solitude, under her gradual preparations for

departure and her practice of studies which were to make her more

efficient in whatever job her uncle and the operation of the

Immortals should find her, under sun and moon alike, she waited.

She waited, and remembered only as a dream the division between

herself and the glorious image by which the other was to be

utterly ensouled.

 

It was observable, however, on the Hill, how many of the

inhabitants were unwell. Mrs. Sammile had fainted, and had not

been seen about since. Someone had offered to take her home in a

car, but she had declined, declaring that she was all right, and

had disappeared. Myrtle Fox, though she had got through the

performance, had gone home crying, and had been in bed ever since.

She could not sleep; a doctor had been called in, but he did not

help her. She took this and that, and nothing did good. She

would doze a little, and wake crying and sobbing. “It’s all this

excitement,” her mother said severely, and opinion began to blame

the play for Myrtle’s illness. Lawrence Wentworth remained shut

in his house; even his servants hardly saw him, and the curtains

of his study were generally drawn. “It isn’t human,” his parlour-maid

said to next door’s parlour-maid. Some of the actors and

some of the audience were also affected by what was generally

called the local influenza epidemic. The excitement of the play

or the brightness of the summer or the cold winds that even under

such a sun swept the Hill, or some infection more subtle than

these, struck the inhabitants down.

 

Neither Adela nor Hugh were among them. Hugh, like Mrs. Parry,

went on efficiently dealing with the moment. Adela suffered, from

the heat, from the thunder, from suppressed anxiety, but she did

not go to bed. Pauline, even had she been free from her family,

could not have carried out her promise, for immediately after the

performance Stanhope disappeared for a few days; it was understood

he had gone away for a change. Pauline could do no more than

assure Adela that, as soon as he returned, she would

look for an opportunity. “But I can’t,” she said, “do more than

that. I can’t butt in on him with a club, Adela. If it’s for all

of us, why not do it yourself? If it was for you personally, of

course you might feel awkward, but as it isn’t….” Adela said

it certainly wasn’t, and went off peevishly.

 

As a result the management of Hugh had to be postponed. He had

not, in fact, made that formal proposal which was necessary if

Adela was to feel, as she wished, that she had a right and a duty

to manage him, In order not to thwart him, Adela controlled

herself more than was her habit when they were together.

Obedience and revolt being both out of the question, she

compromised temporarily that she might manage permanently. It was

in such a compromise that they had been walking one evening on the

Hill two or three days after Margaret Anstruther’s burial. By

accident, on their return, they took a road which led past the

gates of the cemetery, and as they came by Hugh said idly: “I

suppose Pauline’ll be going now her grandmother’s dead.”

 

Adela had not thought of this. She said immediately: “O, I

shouldn’t wonder if she stopped—moved to a smaller house or

something. She can’t go yet.”

 

Hugh said: “You didn’t go to the funeral, darling?”

 

“Of course not,” Adela answered. “I hate being morbid.” As if to

prove it she lingered to look through the gates. “There are so

many of them,” she added.

 

“Yes,” Hugh said, with what faintly struck Adela as unnecessary

obtuseness, “you can’t get round death with any kind of adjective,

can you?”

 

“I don’t want to get round anything with adjectives,” Adela

almost snarled. “Thank God we’ve got away from any pretence.

It’s so unimportant when one doesn’t pretend. When one’s