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

well; that’s settled.”

 

Unfortunately for this delicate workmanship, the two or three

other young creatures who had shared, with Adela, Hugh, and

Pauline, the coffee and culture of Wentworth’s house, were also

deflected from it on that Thursday by tennis or the play;

unfortunately, because the incidents of the Saturday had left him

more acutely conscious at once of his need for Adela and of his

need for flattery. He did not fully admit either; he rather

defended himself mentally against Hugh’s offensiveness that

surrendered to his knowledge of his desire. Even so he refused

to admit that he was engaged in a battle. He demanded at once

security and victory, a habit not common to those great masters

whose campaigns he studied. He remembered the past-the few

intimate talks with Adela, the lingering hands, the exchanged

eyes. Rather like Pompey, he refused to take measures against

the threat on the other side the Rubicon; he faintly admitted

that there was a Rubicon, but certainly not that there might be a

Caesar. He assumed that the Rome which had, he thought, admired

him so much and so long, was still his, and he desired it to make

his ownership clear. He was prepared to overlook that Saturday

as not being Adela’s fault as soon as the Thursday should bring

him Adela’s accustomed propinquity; perhaps, for compensation’s

sake and for promise of a veiled conclusion, a little more than

propinquity. It was the more shattering for him that her note

only reached him by the late post an hour or so before his guests

usually arrived.

 

She had had, she said, to go to town that day to see about the

stuff for her costume; things would be rushed, and she hadn’t

liked to make difficulties. She was dreadfully distressed; she

might well be, he thought, with a greater flush of anger than he

knew. He glanced at another note of excuse almost with

indifference. But he was still ruffled when Pauline arrived, and

it was with a certain abruptness that he told her he expected no

one else but Prescott.

 

When, ten minutes later, the telephone bell rang, and he heard

Prescott’s voice offering his own regrets and explaining that

absolutely unavoidable work kept him at the office: would Mr.

Wentworth be so good as to apologize to Adela?—he was not sure

if he were glad or sorry. It saved him from Prescott, but it

left him tiresomely alone with Pauline. Pauline had a recurrent

tendency to lose the finer point of military strategy in. an

unnecessary discussion of the sufferings of the rank and file;

neither of them knew that it was the comfort of his house and his

chairs—not to reckon her companionship with men in grief—which

incited her. He did not think he wanted to have to talk to

Pauline, but he was pleased to think he need not carry Hugh’s

message to Adela. He could not, of course, know that Adela was

then squeezed into the same telephone box as Hugh. She had

objected at first, but Hugh had pleasantly overpersuaded her, and

it was true she did want to know exactly what he said-so as to

know. And it was attractive to hear him telephone apologies to

her when she was close at his side, to listen to the cool

formality with which he dispatched ambassadorial messages to

phantom ears, so that her actual ears received the chill while

her actual eyes sparkled and kindled at his as he stood with the

receiver at his ear. He said-as Wentworth only realized when he

had put down his own receiver-“and would you be kind enough to

make my apologies to Adela?” She mouthed “and the others” at him,

but he shook his head ever so little, and when, as he put back

the receiver, she said, “But you ought to have sent your message

to Pauline at least,” he answered, “Wentworth’Il see to that; I

wasn’t going to mix you up.” She said, “But supposing he doesn’t,

it’ll look so rude,” expecting him to answer that he didn’t care.

Instead of which, as they emerged from the call-box, he said,

“Wentworth’ll see to it; he won’t like not to.” She sat down to

dinner infinitely more his accomplice than she had been when she

had met him first that evening.

 

In effect he was right. Wentworth had received a slight shock

when the single name reached his ears, but it was only on his way

back to the study that he realized that he was being invited to

assist Prescott’s approach towards Adela. He must, of course,

enlarge the apology, especially since Adela anyhow wasn’t there,

as he hadn’t troubled to explain. Prescott could find that out

for himself. Since he didn’t know—a throb of new suspicion held

him rigid outside his study door. It was incredible, because

Prescott wouldn’t have sent the message, or any message, if he

and Adela had been together. But they were both away, and that

(his startled nerves reported to his brain) meant that they were

together. His brain properly reminded him that it meant nothing

of the sort. But of that saving intelligence his now vibrating

nervous system took no notice whatever. It had never had a

chance to disseminate anarchy before, and now it took its chance.

Fifty years of security dissolved before one minute of invasion;

Caesar was over the Rubicon and Pompey was flying from Rome.

Wentworth strode back into the study and looked at Pauline much

as Pompey might have looked at a peculiarly unattractive senator.

 

He said: “Prescott can’t come either. He sends you his

apologies,” and with an extreme impatience waited to hear whether

she had any comment to make upon this, which might show what and

how much, if anything, she knew. She only said, “I’m sorry. Is

he working late?”

 

It was exactly what Wentworth wanted to know. He went back to

his usual seat at the corner of his large table, and put down his

cigar. He said, “So he says. It’s unfortunate, isn’t it, just

the evening Adela couldn’t come?” He then found himself pausing,

and added, “But we can go on talking, can’t we? Though I’m afraid

it will be duller for you.”

 

He hoped she would deny this at once; on the other hand he didn’t

want her to stop. He wanted her to want to stop, but to be

compelled to go by some necessary event; so that her longing and

disappointment could partly compensate him for Adela’s apparently

volitional absence, but without forcing him to talk. He wished

her grandmother could be taken worse suddenly. But she made no

sign of going, nor did she offer him any vivid tribute. She sat

for a minute with her eyes on the floor, then she looked at him

and said:

 

“There was something I thought of asking you.”

 

“Yes?” Wentworth said. After all, Prescott probably was at his

office, and Adela probably-wherever she had to be.

 

Pauline had not formally intended to speak. But Lawrence

Wentworth was the only person she knew who might be aware of…

what these things were and what they demanded. And since they

were thus left together, she consented to come so far as to ask.

She disdained herself a little, but she went on, her disdain

almost audible in her voice: “Did you ever come across”—she

found she had to pause to draw equable breath; it was difficult

even to hint—“did you ever read of any tale of people meeting

themselves?”

 

Momentarily distracted, Wentworth said: “Meeting themselves?

What, in dreams?”

 

“Not dreams,” Pauline said, “meeting themselves… in the

street… or anywhere.” She wished now she hadn’t begun, for to

speak seemed to invite its presence, as if it were likely to

hover outside, if not inside the house; and she would have to go

home by herself tonight the whole way…. Or, since she had

betrayed its privacy, supposing it followed up her betrayal and

came now….

 

“There’s a picture of Rossetti’s,” Wentworth said; “were you

thinking of that?”

 

“Not a picture,” Pauline said; “I mean, have you ever read of its

happening? Shelley says it happened to Zoroaster.”

 

“Indeed,” Wentworth said. “I don’t remember that. Of course

I’ve heard of it as a superstition. Where have you come across

it? Has anyone you know been seeing themselves?”

 

His mind was drifting back to Adela; the question rang hard.

Pauline felt the obstruction and stayed. She said, “I knew a

girl who thought she did. But don’t let me bother you.”

 

“You aren’t bothering me,” Wentworth said by force of habit. “On

the contrary. I never remember to have come across anything of

the sort, though I’ve a notion it was supposed to foretell death.

But then almost any unusual incident is supposed to foretell

death by the savage-or let’s say the uncivilized-mind. Death,

you see, is inevitably the most unusual incident, and so—by

correspondence—the lesser is related to the greater.

Anthropology is very instructive in that way. The uneducated

mind is generally known by its haste to see likeness where no

likeness exists. It evaluates its emotions in terms of

fortuitous circumstance. It objectifies its concerns through its

imagination. Probably your friend was a very self-centred.

individual.”

 

Pauline said coldly, “I don’t know that she was,” while Wentworth

wondered if Adela and Prescott had finished the supper they were

not, of course, having together. Their absence was a fortuitous

circumstance. He evaluated his emotions in its terms, and (like

any barbarian chief) objectified his concerns by his imagination.

She could find out the difference between Prescott and himself.

But he didn’t mind; he didn’t mind. He curvetted on that

particular horse for a while, and while curvetting he took no

notice of Pauline’s remark until the silence startled his steed

into nearly throwing him. Still just remaining seated, he said,

“O, she isn’t, isn’t she?” and thought how lank, compared to

Adela, Pauline was-lank and blank. She had no capacity. Exactly

what capacity she lacked he did not carefully consider, assuming

it to be intellectual: the look, not the eyes; the gesture, not

the hand. It was Adela’s mental alertness which he knew he would

have grudged Prescott, if he could grudge anybody anything. This

conversation about people seeing themselves was the dullest he

had ever known; he looked covertly at the clock on the

mantelpiece; at the same moment Pauline, also covertly, looked at

her wrist-watch. She had been a fool to say anything; the only

result was to expose her more consciously to that other approach.

She had better get home, somehow, before she did anything

sillier. She said, “Thank you”, and couldn’t think of anything

else. $he got up therefore, and said the only thing left.

 

“My grandmother’s not been so well to-day. Would you forgive me

if I deserted you too? We’re treating you shockingly, aren’t we?”

 

Wentworth got up alertly. “Not a bit,” he said. “I’m sorry.

I’m sorry you feel you ought to go.” It occurred to him that,

later on, he might walk down toward the station. If he met them

together, he would at least be justified. They might have met at

Marylebone, of course, even if he did meet them; and if he

didn’t, they might be coming by a later train. He might wait for

the next. Perhaps it would be wiser not to go; he couldn’t, in

his position, hang about for ever and ever. People chattered.

But he would decide about that when this superfluous being had

been dismissed. He went with her to the door, was genial and

bright, said good night, snarled at the time she took getting to

the gate, and at last was free to make up his mind.

 

He could not do it. He was driven by his hunger as the dead