Descent into Hell - Charles Williams (an ebook reader txt) 📗
- Author: Charles Williams
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He was afraid, this martyr of her house, and she knew what to do.
There was no doubt about it at all. She knew that the horror of
the fire had overcome him. He was in the trap in which she had
been but now; the universe had caught him. His teacher, his
texts, his gospel had been its bars, and his judges and
executioners were springing it; and the Lord God himself was, in
that desperate hour, nothing but the spring that would press him
into the torment. Once the Lord had been something else; perhaps
still…. He was praying passionately: “Make me believe; make me
believe.” The choice was first in her; Omnipotence waited her
decision.
She knew what she must do. But she felt, as she stood, that she
could no more do it than he. She could never bear that fear. The
knowledge of being burnt alive, of the flames, of the faces, of
the prolongation of pain. She knew what she must do. She opened
her mouth and could not speak. In front of her, alone in his foul
Marian prison, unaware of the secret means the Lord he worshipped
was working swiftly for his peace, believing and unbelieving, her
ancestor stood centuries off in his spiritual desolation and
preluding agony of sweat. He could not see beyond the years the
child of his house who strove with herself behind and before him.
The morning was coming; his heart was drained. Another spasm
shook him; even now he might recant. Pauline could not see the
prison, but she saw him. She tried to choose and to speak.
Behind her, her own voice said: “Give it to me, John Struther.” He
heard it, in his cell and chains, as the first dawn of the day of
his martyrdom broke beyond the prison. It spoke and sprang in his
drained heart; and drove the riotous blood again through his
veins: “Give it to me, give it to me, John Struther.” He stretched
out his arms again: he called: “Lord, Lord!” It was a devotion and
an adoration; it accepted and thanked. Pauline heard it,
trembling, for she knew what stood behind her and spoke. It said
again: “Give”. He fell on his knees, and in a great roar of
triumph he called out: “I have seen the salvation of my God.”
Pauline sighed deeply with her joy. This then, after so long, was
their meeting and their reconciliation: their perfect
reconciliation, for this other had done what she had desired, and
yet not the other, but she, for it was she who had all her life
carried a fear which was not her fear but another’s, until in the
end it had become for her in turn not hers but another’s. Her
heart was warm, as if the very fire her ancestor had feared was
a comfort to her now. The voice behind her sang, repeating the
voice in front, “I have seen the salvation of my God.”
Pauline turned. She thought afterwards that she had had no choice
then, but it was not so. It was a movement as swift, as
instinctive, as that with which one hand flies to balance the
other, but it was deliberate. She whirled on the thing she had so
long avoided, and the glorious creature looked past her at the
shouting martyr beyond. She was giddy with the still violence of
this last evening; she shut her eyes and swayed, but she was
sustained by the air about her and did not fall. She opened her
eyes again; there—as a thousand times in her looking-glass—
there! The ruffled brown hair, the long nose, the firm compressed
mouth, the taut body, the long arms, her dress, her gesture. It
wore no supernatural splendour of aureole, but its rich nature
burned and glowed before her, bright as if mortal flesh had indeed
become what all lovers know it to be. Its colour bewildered by
its beauty; its voice was Pauline’s, as she had wished it to be
for pronouncing the imagination of the grand art. But no verse,
not Stanhope’s, not Shakespeare’s, not Dante’s, could rival the
original, and this was the original, and the verse was but the
best translation of a certain manner of its life. The glory of
poetry could not outshine the clear glory of the certain fact, and
not any poetry could hold as many meanings as the fact. One
element coordinated original and translation; that element was
joy. joy had filled her that afternoon, and it was in the power of
such joy that she had been brought to this closest propinquity to
herself. It had been her incapacity for joy, nothing else, that
had till now turned the vision of herself aside; her incapacity
for joy had admitted fear, and fear had imposed separation. She
knew now that all acts of love are the measure of capacity for
joy; its measure and its preparation, whether the joy comes or
delays.
Her manifested joy whirled on her with her own habitual movement.
She sprang back from that immortality; no fear but a moment’s
truce of wonder and bodily tremor. She looked in her own eyes and
laboured to speak; a shout was in her. She wished to assent to
the choice her beatitude had made. The shout sank within her and
rose without; she had assented, then or that afternoon or before
this life began. She had offered her joy to her betrayed
ancestor; she heard now, though she saw nothing but those
brilliant and lucid eyes, the noise of his victorious going. The
unseen crowd poured and roared past her. Her debt was paid, and
now only she might know why and when she had incurred it. The
sacrifice had been accepted. His voice was shouting in her ears,
as Foxe said he had shouted, To him that hath shall be given. He
had had; she had been given to him. She had lived without joy
that he might die in joy, but when she lived she had not known and
when she offered she had not guessed that the sacrificial victim
had died before the sacrificial act was accomplished; that now the
act was for resurrection in death. Receding voices called still;
they poured onwards to the martyrdom. The confusion that was
round him was her own confusion of hostile horror at the fact of
glory: her world’s order contending with distraction-what
distraction!
One called: What of him that hath not? but who could be that had
not? so universal, in itself and through its means, was the
sublime honour of substituted love; what wretch so poor that all
time and place would not yield a vicar for his distress, beyond
time and place the pure vicariate of salvation? She heard the
question, in that union of the centuries, with her mortal ears, as
she heard excited voices round her, and the noise of feet, and the
rattle at a distance of chains. She saw nothing, except the
streets of the Hill and herself standing on the Hill. She felt no
grief or fear; that was still to come or else it had been,
according to choice of chronology. Her other self, or the image
in which she saw both those choices in one vision, still stood
opposite her, nor was its glory dimmed though and as her own
intensity absorbed it.
After the shouted question she did not hear a reply, other sounds
covered it. The scuffling, the rattling, the harsh alien voices
went on; then the voice she had heard calling on the Lord cried:
The ends of the earth be upon me. The roads had been doubled and
twisted so that she could meet him there; as wherever exchange was
needed. She knew it now from the abundant grace of the Hill or
the hour: but exchange might be made between many mortal hearts
and none know what work was done in the moment’s divine kingdom.
There was a pause, ominous down all the years; a suspense of
silence. Then suddenly she smelt burning wood; the fire was lit,
he in it. She heard the voice once more: I have seen the
salvation of my God.
He stood in the fire; he saw around him the uniforms—O uniforms
of the Grand Duke’s Guard—the mounted gentlemen, the couple of
friars, the executioners—O the woodcutter’s son singing in the
grand art!—the crowd, men and women of his village. The heat
scorched and blinded and choked him. He looked up through the
smoke and flame that closed upon him, and saw, after his manner,
as she after hers, what might be monstrous shapes of cherubim and
seraphim exchanging powers, and among them the face of his
daughter’s aeviternity. She only among all his children and
descendants had run by a sacrifice of heart to ease and carry his
agony. He blessed her, thinking her some angel, and in his
blessing her aeviternity was released to her, and down his
blessing beatitude ran to greet her, a terrible good. The ends of
the world were on them. He dead and she living were made one with
peace. Her way was haunted no more.
She heard the cry, and the sky over her was red with the glow of
fire, its smell in her nostrils. It did not last. Her beatitude
leant forward to her, as if to embrace. The rich presence
enveloped her; out of a broken and contrite heart she sighed with
joy. On the inhaled breath her splendour glowed again; on the
exhaled it passed. She stood alone, at peace. Dawn was in the
air; eccc omnia nova facio.
Soon after, as she came back to the house, she saw Stanhope
approaching. She waited, outside her gate. He came up, saying
with a smile: “Awake, lute and harp”—he made a gesture of
apology—“I myself will awake right early.” She put out her hand.
“I owe you this,” she said. “I owe you this for ever.”
He looked at her. “It’s done then?” he asked, and she: “It’s
done. I can’t tell you now, but it’s done.”
He was silent, studying her, then he answered slowly: “Arise,
shine; your light is come; the glory of the Lord is risen upon
you.” His voice quickened: “And you’ll do it well, taking prettily
and giving prettily, but the Lord’s glory, Periel, will manage to
keep up with you, and I shall try.”
“Oh, you!” she said, pressing and releasing his hand-. “but
you’ve got such a start!”
He shook his head. “No,” he said, “our handicaps are all
different, and the race is equal. The Pharisees can even catch up
the woman with the mites. Those who do not insist on Gomorrah.”
She said: “Gomorrah?” and ‘the chill of the word struck even
through her contemplation. She remembered the unanswered question
of her vision: What of them that have not? As if the answer had
been reserved for these lower circles, he gave it. He said: “The
Lord’s glory fell on the cities of the plain, of Sodom and
another. We know all about Sodom nowadays, but perhaps we know
the other even better. Men can be in love with men, and women
with women, and still be in love and make sounds and speeches, but
don’t you know how quiet the streets of Gomorrah are? haven’t you
seen the pools that everlastingly reflect the faces of those who
walk with their own phantasms, but the phantasms aren’t reflected,
and can’t be. The lovers of Gomorrah are quite contented, Periel;
they don’t have to put up with our difficulties. They aren’t
bothered by alteration, at least till the rain of the fire of the
Glory at the end, for they lose the capacity for change, except
for the fear of hell. They’re monogamous enough! and they’ve no
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