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

Chapter Twelve

BEYOND GOMORRAH

 

“Then this”, Stanhope said, “is a last visit?”

 

“Yes,” Pauline said. “I’m going up to London tomorrow morning.”

 

“You’ll like the work,” Stanhope went on. “Odd-to know that when

you don’t know what it is. You do know that?”

 

“Under the Mercy,” she said. “I’m to see my uncle’s man tomorrow

at twelve, and if he approves me I shall start work at once. So

then, my uncle says, I can stay with them for a few days till I’ve

found rooms or a room.”

 

“You’ll send me the address?” he asked.

 

She answered: “Of course. You’ll stop here still?”

 

He nodded, and for the minute there was silence. Then she added:

“Most people seem to be trying to move.”

 

“Most,” he said, “but some won’t and some can’t and some needn’t.

You must, of course. But I think I might as well stop. There are

flowers, and fruit, and books, and if anyone wants me,

conversation, and so on-till the plague stops.”

 

She asked, looking at him: “Do you know how long it will last?”

 

He shrugged a little: “If it’s what my grandmother would have

called it,” he said, “one of the vials of the Apocalypse—why,

perhaps a thousand years, those of the millennium before the

judgment. On the other hand, since that kind of thousand years is

asserted to be a day, perhaps till tomorrow morning. We’re like

the Elizabethan drama, living in at least two time schemes.”

 

She said: “It is that?”

 

“As a thief in the night’,” he answered. “Could you have a better

description? Something is stealing from us our dreams and

deceptions and everything but actuality.”

 

“Will they die?” she asked.

 

“I don’t think anyone will die,” he said, “unless—and God redeem

us all!—into the second death. But I think the plague will

spread. The dead were very thick here; perhaps that was why it

began here.”

 

“And Adela?” she asked, and Myrtle?”

 

“Why, that is for them,” he answered.

 

But she opened on him a smile of serenity, saying: “And for you.”

 

“I will talk Nature to Miss Fox,” he said, “and Art to Miss Hunt.

If they wish. But I think Prescott may be better for Miss Hunt; he’s

an almost brutal realist, and I shall remain a little Augustan,

even in heaven.”

 

“And I?” she asked, “I?”

 

“Incipit vita nova,” he answered. “You-by the way, what train are

you catching tomorrow? I’ll come and see you off.”

 

“Half-past ten,” she said, and he nodded and went on: “You’ll

find your job and do it and keep it-in the City of our God, even

in the City of the Great King, and… and how do I, any more

than you, know what the details of Salem will be like?”

 

She stood up, luxuriously stretching. “No,” she said, “perhaps

not. I suppose poets are superfluous in Salem?”

 

“I have wondered myself,” he admitted. “But you needn’t realize

it so quickly. If the redeemed sing, presumably someone must

write the songs. Well-I’ll see you at the station tomorrow?”

 

“Yes, please,” she said, as they moved to the door, and then

silently down the drive under a night blazing with stars. At the

gate she gave him her hand. “It seems so funny to be talking

about trains in the easier circles of…” As she hesitated

he laughed at her.

 

“Are you afraid to name it?” he asked, and with a blush she said

hastily: “… heaven. O good night.” “Till tomorrow and good

night,” he said. “Go with God.”

 

She took two steps, paused and looked back. “Thank you for

heaven,” she said. “Good night.”

 

The next morning they were on the platform together, chatting of

her prospects and capacities, when as they turned in their walk

Pauline said: “Peter, look-there’s Mr. Wentworth. Is he coming to

London too? He looks ill, doesn’t he?”

 

“Very ill,” Stanhope said gravely. “Shall we speak?” They moved

down the platform, and as Wentworth turned his head in her

direction Pauline smiled and waved. He looked at her vaguely,

waggled a hand, and ceased. They came to him.

 

“Good morning, Mr. Wentworth,” Pauline said. “Are you going to

London too?”

 

He looked away from them with an action as deliberate as if he had

looked at them. He said in a low mumble: “Must excuse me… bad

chill… bones feel it… can’t remember bones… faces…

bones of faces, I mean.”

 

Stanhope said- “Wentworth! Wentworth!… stop here.”

 

The voice seemed to penetrate Wentworth’s mind. His eyes crawled

back along the platform, up to Stanhope’s face; there they rested

on the mouth as if they could not get farther than the place of

the voice, they could not connect voice and eyes. He said: “Can’t

stop… must get to…” There,” exhausted, he stopped.

 

Pauline heard their train coming. She said: “May I travel with

you, Mr. Wentworth?”

 

At that he came awake; he looked at her, and then again away. He

said in a tone of alarm: “No, no. Told you Guard was right.

Travelling with a lady. Goodbye, goodbye,” and hastily and

clumsily made off up the platform as the train drew in. He

scrambled into a distant compartment. Pauline sprang into her

own, and turning looked at Stanhope.

 

“O Peter!” she said, “what’s wrong

 

He had been gazing after Wentworth; he turned back to her. “I

think he has seen the Gorgon’s head that was hidden from Dante in

Dis,” he said. “Well…. Pray for him, and for me, and for all.

You will write?”

 

She stretched her hand from the window. “Will I write?” she said.

“Goodbye. But, Peter, ought I to do anything?”

 

“You can’t do anything unless he chooses,” he answered. “If he

doesn’t choose…. Pray. Goodbye. Go in peace,”

 

His eyes challenged her on the word; this time she did not pause.

“Go in peace,” she said, “and thank you still.” The train began to

move; he waved to her till she was out of sight, and then went out

of the station to walk in the streets and sit by the beds of

Battle Hill.

 

Wentworth sat in his corner. He felt he had forgotten something,

and slowly and laboriously he went over in his mind all that he

ought to possess. He found it difficult to remember why he had

left his house at all. His servants had refused to stay; they had

all gone that morning; so he had had to go. He couldn’t take the

trouble to get others; he hadn’t enough energy. He would come to

London, to an hotel; there he would be quiet, and not see any

ghosts. A horrible screaming ghost had looked in through his

window, a ghost that had fallen down in a fit, and he had had to

go out and drag it away so that other ghosts could find it. He

had been afraid of them since, and of those two just now who had

made mouths at him, calling him by a strange word. He was going

somewhere too. He was going to a supper. He had his evening

things with him in his bag. It would be necessary to dress for

the supper, the supper of scholars, of historical scholars, and he

was an historical scholar. He remembered what he was, if not who

he was. It was true he had said the Grand Duke’s Guard was

correct though it wasn’t, but he was an historical

scholar, and he was going to his own kind of people, to Aston

Moffatt.

 

As the name came to him, Wentworth sat up in his corner and became

almost his own man again. He hated Aston Moffatt. Hate still

lived in him a little, and hate might almost have saved him,

though nothing else could, had he hated with a scholar’s hate.

He did not; his hate and his grudge were personal and obscene. In

its excitement nevertheless he remembered what he had left behind—his

watch. He had overwound it weeks ago, on some day when he

had seen a bad play, and had put it by to have it mended. But it

was too much trouble, and now he had left it in his drawer, and

couldn’t tell the time. There would be clocks in London, clocks

all round him, all going very quickly, because time went very

quickly. It went quickly because it was unending, and it was

always trying to get to its own end. There was only one point in

it with which he had any concern-the time of the last supper. It

would be the last supper; he would not go and meet Aston Moffatt

again. But he would go tonight because he had accepted and had

his clothes, and to show he was not afraid of Moffatt. That was

the only time he wanted to know, the time of his last supper.

Afterwards, everything would look after itself. He slept in his

corner, his last sleep.

 

The train stopped at Marylebone, and he woke. He muddled on, with

the help of a porter, to the Railway Hotel. He had thought of

that in the train; it would save bother. He usually went to some

other, but he couldn’t remember which. The ordinary habits of his

body carried him on, and the automatic habit of his mind,

including his historic automatic. History was his hobby, his

habit; it had never been more. Its austerity was as far from him

now as the Eucharists offered in the Church of St. Mary la Bonne,

or the duties of the dead, or the ceremonies of substituted love.

He automatically booked a room, ate some lunch, and then lay down.

This time he did not sleep; the noise of London kept him awake;

besides he was alone. The creature that had been with him so long

was with him no more. It had gone upstairs with him for the last

time two nights before, and had his former faculties lived he

would have seen how different it was. After the passage of the

dead man it had never quite regained its own illusive apparition;

senility and youth had mingled in its face, and in their mingling

found a third degree of corruption. At the hour of the falling in

of the shed of Lilith it had thinned to a shape of twilight.

Meaning and apparent power had gone out of it. it was a thing the

dead man might have met under his own pallid sky, and less even

than that. In the ghostly night that fell on the ruins of

Gomorrah it had tottered round its father and paramour, who did

not yet know through what destruction they went. His eyes were

dimmed. Those who look, in Stanhope’s Dantean phrase, on the head

of the Gorgon in Dis, do not know, until Virgil has left them,