Descent into Hell - Charles Williams (an ebook reader txt) 📗
- Author: Charles Williams
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designs. Under them were his first drafts; he tore them instead.
The evening wore into night. He could not bring himself to go to
bed. He walked about the room; he worked a little and walked, and
walked a little and worked. He thought of going to bed, but then
he thought also of his dream, and the smooth strange rope. He had
never so much revolted against it as now; he had never, waking,
been so strongly aware of it as now. It might have been
coiled in some corner of the room, were it not that he knew he was
on it, in the dream. Physically and emotionally weary, he still
walked, and a somnambulism of scratched images closed on him. His
body twitched jerkily; the back of his eyes ached as if he stared
interiorly from the rope into a backward abysm. He stood
irritably still.
His eyes stared interiorly; exteriorly they glanced down and saw
the morning paper, which, by an accident, he had not opened. His
hands took it up, and turned the pages. In the middle he saw a
headline: “Birthday Honours”, and a smaller headline: “Knighthood
for Historian”. His heart deserted him: his puppet-eyes stared.
They found the item by the name in black type for their
convenience: “Aston Moffatt”.
There was presented to him at once and clearly an opportunity for
joy—casual, accidental joy, but joy. If he could not manage joy,
at least he might have managed the intention of joy, or (if that
also were too much) an effort towards the intention of joy. The
infinity of-grace could have been contented and invoked by a mere
mental refusal of anything but such an effort. He knew his duty—he
was no fool—he knew that the fantastic recognition would please
and amuse the innocent soul of Sir Aston, not so much for himself
as in some unselfish way for the honour of history. Such honours
meant nothing, but they were part of the absurd dance of the
world, and to be enjoyed as such. Wentworth knew he could share
that pleasure. He could enjoy; at least he could refuse not to
enjoy. He could refuse and reject damnation.
With a perfectly clear, if instantaneous, knowledge of what he
did, he rejected joy instead. He instantaneously preferred anger,
and at once it came; he invoked envy, and it obliged him. He
crushed the paper in a rage, then he tore it open, and looked
again and again-there it still was. He knew that his rival had
not only succeeded, but succeeded at his own expense; what chance
was there of another historical knighthood for years? Till that
moment he had never thought of such a thing. The possibility had
been created and withdrawn simultaneously, leaving the present
fact to mock him. The other possibility—of joy in that present
fact—receded as fast. He had determined, then and for ever, for
ever, for ever, that he would hate the fact, and therefore facts.
He walked, unknowing, to the window, and stared out. He loomed
behind the glass, a heavy bulk of monstrous greed. His hate so
swelled that he felt it choking his throat, and by a swift act
transferred it; he felt his rival choking and staggering, he hoped
and willed it. He stared passionately into death, and saw before
him a body twisting at the end of a rope. Sir Aston Moffatt…
Sir Aston Moffatt…. He stared at the faint ghost of the dead
man’s death, in that half-haunted house, and did not see it. The
dead man walked on his own Hill, but that Hill was not to be
Wentworth’s. Wentworth preferred another death; he was offered
it.
As he stood there, imagining death, close to the world of the
first death, refusing all joy of facts, and having for long
refused all unselfish agony of facts, he heard at last the
footsteps for which he had listened. It was the one thing which
could abolish his anger; it did. He forgot, in his excitement,
all about Aston Moffatt; he lost sight, exteriorly and
interiorly, of the dangling figure. He stood breathless,
listening. Patter, patter; they were coming up the road.
Patter-patter; they stopped at the gate. He heard the faint
clang. The footsteps, softer now, came in. He stared intently
down the drive. A little way up it stood a woman’s figure. The
thing he had known must happen had happened. She had come.
He pushed the window up—careful, even so, not to seem to go fast,
not to seem to want her. He leaned out and spoke softly. He
said: “Is that you?” The answer startled him, for it was Adela’s
voice and yet something more than Adela’s, fuller, richer, more
satisfying. It said “I’m here.” He could only just hear the
words, but that was right, for it was after midnight, and she was
beckoning with her hand. The single pair of feet drawn from the
double, the hand waving to him. He motioned to her to come, but
she did not stir, and at last, driven by his necessity, he climbed
through the window; it was easy enough, even for him-and went down
to meet her. As he came nearer he was puzzled again, as he had
been by the voice. It was Adela, yet it was not. It was her
height, and had her movement. The likeness appeased him, yet he
did not understand the faint unlikeness. For a moment he thought
it was someone else, a woman of the Hill, someone he had seen,
whose name he did not remember. He was up to her now, and he knew
it could not be Adela, for even Adela had never been so like Adela
as this. That truth which is the vision of romantic love, in
which the beloved becomes supremely her own adorable and eternal
self, the glory and splendour of her own existence, and her own
existence no longer felt or thought as hers but of and from
another, that was aped for him then. The thing could not astonish
him, nor could it be adored. It perplexed. He hesitated.
The woman said: “You’ve been so long.”
He answered roughly: “Who are you? You’re not Adela.”
The voice said: “Adela!” and Wentworth understood that Adela was
not enough, that Adela must be something different. even from
Adela if she were to be satisfactory to him, something closer to
his own mind and farther from hers. She had been in relation with
Hugh, and his Adela could never be in relation with Hugh. He had
never understood that simplicity before. It was so clear now. He
looked at the woman opposite and felt a stirring of freedom in
him.
He said: “You waved?” and she: “Or didn’t you wave to me?”
He said, under her eyes: “I didn’t think you’d be any use to me.”
She laughed: the laugh was a little like Adela’s, only better.
Fuller; more amused. Adela hardly ever laughed as if she were
really amused; she had always a small condescension. He said:
“How could I know?”
“You don’t think about yourself enough,” she said; the words were
tender and grateful to him, and he knew they were true. He had
never thought enough about himself. He had wanted to be kind. He
had wanted to be kind to Adela; it was Adela’s obstinate folly
which now outraged him. He had wanted to give himself to Adela
out of kindness. He was greatly relieved by this woman’s words,
almost as much as if he had given himself. He went on giving. He
said: “If I thought more of myself?”
“You wouldn’t have much difficulty in finding it,” she answered.
“Let’s walk.”
He didn’t understand the first phrase, but he turned and went by
her side, silent while he heard the words. Much difficulty in
finding what? in finding it? the it that could be found if he
thought of himself more; that was what he had said or she had
said, whichever had said that the thing was to be found, as if
Adela had said it, Adela in her real self, by no means the self
that went with Hugh; no, but the true, the true Adela who was
apart and his; for that was the difficulty all the while, that she
was truly his, and wouldn’t be, but if he thought more of her
truly being, and not of her being untruly away, on whatever way,
for the way that went away was not the way she truly went, but if
they did away with the way she went away, then
Hugh could be untrue and she true, then he would know themselves,
two, true and two, on the way he was going, and the peace in
himself, and the scent of her in him, and the her, meant for him,
in him; that was the she he knew, and he must think the more of
himself. A faint mist grew round them as they walked, and he was
under the broad boughs of trees, the trees of the Hill, going up
the Hill, up to the Adela he kept in himself, where the cunning
woman who walked by his side was taking him, and talking in
taking. He had been slow, slow, very slow not to see that this
was true, that to get away from Hugh’s Adela was to find somewhere
and somehow the true Adela, the Adela that was his, since what he
wanted was always and everywhere his; he had always known that,
yet that had been his hardship, for he must know it was so, and
yet it hadn’t seemed so. But here in the mists under the trees,
with this woman, it was all clear. The mist made everything
clear.
She said: “In here.” He went in; a wooden door swung before and
behind him.
It was quite dark. He stood. A hand slipped into his hand. and
pressed it gently. It drew him forward, and a little to one side.
He said aloud: “Where are we?” but there was no answer, only he
thought he heard the sound of water running, gently, a lulling and
a lapping. It was not worth while, against that sound, asking
again where he was. The darkness was quiet; his heart ceased to
burn, though he could hear its beating, in time with the lapping
and lulling waters. He had never heard his heart beating so
loudly; almost as if he were inside his own body, listening to it
there. It would be louder then, he thought, unless his senses
were lulled and dulled. Likely enough that if he were inside his
own body his senses would be lulled, though how he got there or
how he would get out…. If he wanted to get out. Why? Why
fly from that shelter, the surest shelter of all, though he could
not be quite there yet because of the hand that guided him, round
and round in some twisting path. He knew that there were hundreds
of yards, or was it millions, of tubes or pipes or paths or ropes
or something, coiled, many coils, in his body; he would not want
to catch his foot in them or be twisted up in them; that was why
the hand was leading him. He pressed it, for acknowledgment; it
replied. They were going downhill now, it seemed, he and his
guide, though he thought he could smell Adela, or if not Adela,
something like Adela, some growth like Adela, and the image of a
growth spread in his brain to trees and their great heavy boughs;
it was not a lapping but a rustling; he had come out of himself
into a wood, unless he was himself and a wood at the same time.
Could he be
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