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

dead,

one’s dead, and that’s all there is to it.”

 

Hugh said, “Yes, but what’s all there is to it? I’m that old-fashioned

thing, an agnostic; I don’t know. I like to be clear on what I know

and what I don’t know, and I don’t like day-dreams, either nice or

nasty, or neither.”

 

“O, nor do I,” said Adela. “But you must sometimes think how nice

it would be if something particular happened. I call that common

sense.”

 

“Within limits,” Hugh said, putting his arm over her shoulders.

“I sometimes let myself think, for a certain time, or a definite

distance-say, from here to your house-how pleasant something would

behaving fifty thousand pounds a year, say. But when I come to

your house, or wherever it is, I stop.”

 

“Do you?” said Adela, more impressed than she admitted to herself.

 

“Always,” said Hugh. “And then—O, concentrate on making another

fifty. Day-dreaming without limits is silly.”

 

Adela shook her head. “I suppose I imagine rather intensely,” she

said. “I seem to see things obliquely, if you know what I mean.

They’re alongside the actual thing, a sort of tangent. I think

really that’s what all art is-tangential.” The word had hardly

left her lips when a voice, tangential to her ear, said: “Do let

me persuade you, Miss Hunt.”

 

Adela, with a jump, looked round, and saw Lily Sammile. There

was, at that part of the cemetery wall, a lean-to erection of

boards, a kind of narrow shelter, almost a man’s height, and

having a rough swinging door at the nearer end. It had been there

before anyone could remember, and it stayed there because no one

could remember to have it taken away. It was very old and very

weather-stained. It was almost a toolshed, but then the necessary

tools were, more conveniently, kept elsewhere. Everyone supposed

that someone else used it. At the door of this shed, close to the

cemetery railing, stood the woman who had spoken. She was leaning

forward, towards Adela, and holding on to a bar of the gate. Now

she put a hand on Adela’s bare arm. It was gritty to the skin,

which felt as if a handful of rough dust was pressed down, and

pricked and rubbed it. The voice was rough too; it mumbled

through a mouthful of dust. Adela pulled her arm away; she could

not answer; she thrust closer to Hugh.

 

The woman said, after a pause during which they stared at her, and

saw her dishevelled, hatless, hair of grey ashes, and cheeks

almost as grey—“Come and get away. Dust—that’s what you want;

dust.”

 

Hugh said easily: “Not a bit, Mrs. Sammile. We both want a great

deal more.”

 

The woman answered: “You may, but she doesn’t. She’s a—”

 

They could not catch the word, her voice so muffled it. Adela

took two steps back, and said in a little squeak: “Hugh!”

 

Hugh slipped his arm round her. He said firmly, though less

easily than before: “Well, we must be getting on. Come along,

darling.”

 

Lily Sammile began to cry. The tears ran down her face and left

streaks in the greyness, as if they crept through and over grime.

She said miserably: “You’ll wish you had; O, you’ll wish you had.”

She was standing with her back to the gate, leaning against it,

and as she ceased to speak she became rigid suddenly, as if she

listened. Her eyes widened; her nose came out over an indrawn

lip; her cheeks hollowed in her effort. There was no need for the

effort. They could hear the sound that held her; a faint rustle,

a dry patter. It came from beyond her, and she twisted her head

round-only her head and looked. So, distracted by the movement,

did the other two. They saw movement in the graves.

 

Most were quiet enough; their inhabitants had passed beyond any

recall or return, and what influence they had on the Hill was by

infection rather than by motion. But the estate was still new,

and the neat ranks of sepulchres did not reach far into the

enclosure. They lay along the middle path mostly; the farthest

away was the mound that covered Margaret Anstruther. That too was

quiet: its spirit could not conceive return. It was between the

earlier graves and hers that the disclosure began, as if the

enclosed space was turning itself over. The earth heaved; they

felt, where they stood, no quiver. It was local, but they saw-there, and again there the mounds swell and sway and fall in a

cascade of mould, flung over the green grass. Three or four in

all, dark slits in the ground, and beyond each a wide layer of

dust. It did not stop there. The earth was heaving out of the

dark openings; it came in bursts and rushes-in a spasmodic

momentum, soon exhausted, always renewed. It hung sometimes in

the air, little clouds that threatened to fall back, and never

did, for they drifted slowly to one side, and sank again on what

had earlier dropped. Gravitation was reversed; the slowness and

uncertainty of the movement exposed the earth’s own initiation of

it. The law of material things turned; somewhere in that walled

receptacle of the dead activity was twisted upon itself. The

backward movement of things capable of backward movement had

begun. The earth continued to rise in fountains, flung up from

below; and always at their height, their little height above the

ground, the tops of those fountains swayed, and hurled themselves

sideways, and dropped, and the rest fell back into the hidden

depth of the openings, until it flung itself up once more.

The gentle low patter of rough earth on gravel paths floated over

the gates to the ears of the three who were still standing there.

 

There was a more deathly silence without the gates than within.

The old woman, with twisted head, her body almost a pattern of

faintly covered bones against the iron bars, was rigid; so were

Adela and Hugh. They stood staring; incredulous, they gazed at

the exhibited fact. So incredible was it that they did not think

of the dead; ghosts and resurrections would have been easier to

their minds, if more horrible, than this obvious insanity,

insanity obvious in its definite existence. They were held; then,

to instinctive terror, the frantic cause presented itself. Adela

screamed, and as the dead man’s moan had been answered in the

mountain her scream was caught and prolonged in the other woman’s

wailing shriek. The shriek was not human; it was the wind rushing

up a great hollow funnel in a mountain, and issuing in a wild

shrill yell. It tore itself out of the muffled mouth, and swept

over the Hill, a rising portent of coming storm. Myrtle Fox heard

it in her long night of wakefulness, and her body sickened.

Pauline heard it, and felt more intensely the peace that held her.

Stanhope heard it, and prayed. Before the sound had died, Lily

Sammile had jerked from the gate, and thrown herself at the dark

shed, and disappeared within, and the swinging door fell to behind

her.

 

As she sprang, Adela sprang also. She screamed again and ran.

She ran wildly up the road, so fast that Hugh, who followed, was

outdistanced. He called after her. He shouted: “Adela, it’s

nothing. The earth was loose and the wind was blowing. Stop.”

She did not stop. He kept up the pursuit down a street or two,

but his own action offended him. Much though the vision had for

the moment affected him, he was, as soon as he began to move, more

immediately affected and angered by his situation. There might

be explanations enough of what he thought he had seen-he spared a

curse for Lily Sammile-but more certain than what he thought he

had seen was what he knew Adela was doing. She was, faster than

he, running and screaming over Battle Hill. He was angry; suppose

someone met her! He raised in his own mind no reasonable pretext

for abandoning her, nor did he disguise his intention from

himself, but after a corner or two he simply stopped running.

“Perfectly ridiculous!” he said angrily. “The earth was loose,

and the wind was blowing.” He was free as Pauline herself from

Lilith, but without joy. There was, between the group to which

his soul belonged and hers, no difference, except only that of

love and joy, things which now were never to be separated in her

any more.

 

Adela ran. She had soon no breath for screaming. She ran. She

did not know where she was going. She ran. She heard a voice

calling behind her: “The earth’s loose and the wind’s blowing”,

and she ran more wildly. Her flesh felt the touch of a gritty

hand; a voice kept calling after her and round her: “The earth’s

loose; the wind’s blowing.” She ran wildly and absurdly, her

full mouth open, her plump arms spasmodically working, tears of

terror in her eyes. She desired above all things immediate

safety-in some place and with someone she knew. Hugh had

disappeared. She ran over the Hill, and through a twisted blur of

tears and fear recognized by a mere instinct Lawrence Wentworth’s

house. She rushed through the gate; here lived someone who could

restore her. to her own valuation of herself. Hugh’s shouted

orders had been based on no assent of hers to authority; however

much she had played at sensual and sentimental imitations of

obedience, she hated the thing itself in any and every mode. She

wanted something to condone and console her fear. There was a

light in the study; she made for it; reached the window, and

hammered on the glass, hammered again and again, till Wentworth at

last heard and reluctantly drew himself from the stupor of his

preoccupation, came slowly across the room and drew back the

curtain.

 

They confronted each other through the glass. Wentworth

took a minute or two to recognize whose was the working and

mottled face that confronted him, and when he recognized it, he

made a motion to pull the curtain again and to go away. But as

she saw the movement she struck so violently at the glass that

even in his obsession he was terrified of others hearing, and

slowly and almost painfully he pushed the window up and stood

staring at her. She put her hands on the sill and leant inwards.

She said- “Lawrence, Lawrence, something’s about!”

 

He still stood there, looking at her now with a heavy distaste,

but he said nothing, and when she tried to catch his hand he moved

it away. She looked up at him, and a deeper fear struck at her-that here was no refuge for her. Gomorrah closed itself against

her; she stood in the outer wind of the plain. It was cold

and frightful; she beat, literally, on the wall. She sobbed;

“Lawrence, help me.”

 

He said: “I don’t know you,” and she fell back, astounded. She

cried out: “Lawrence, it’s me, it’s me, Adela. You know me; of

course you do. Here I am-I’ve come to you. There’s something

dreadful happening and I’ve come to you.”

 

He said dully: “I don’t want to know you. Go away; you’re

disturbing me.” And he moved to shut the window down.

 

At this she leant right forward and stared up at his eyes, for her

fear desired very strongly to find that he was only defending

himself against her. But his eyes did not change; they gazed

dully back, so dully and so long that she was driven to turn her

own away. And as she did so, sending a wild glance around

the room, so urgently had she sought to find out his real desire

and so strong was, his