Descent into Hell - Charles Williams (an ebook reader txt) 📗
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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
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