Descent into Hell by Charles Williams (ereader iphone .TXT) đź“•
However, Stanhope was, in the politest language, declining to have anything of the sort. "Call it the Chorus," he said, "or if you like I'll try and find a name for the leader, and the rest can just dance and sing. But I'm afraid 'Leaf-Spirits' would be misleading."
"What about'Chorus of Nature-Powers'?" asked Miss Fox, but Stanhope only said, smiling, "You will try and make the trees friendly," which no one quite understood, and shook his head again.
Prescott asked: "Incidentally, I suppose they will be women?"
Mrs. Parry had said, "O, of course, Mr. Prescott," before the question reached her brain. When it did, she added, "At least...I naturally took it for granted.... They are feminine, aren't they?"
Still hankering after mass, Adela said, "It sounds
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alteration of a summer evening; she moved to go and turn on the
electric fire, for fear her grandmother should feel the chill, and
that natural act, in her new good will, was no less than any high
offer of goodness and grace. But Margaret knew the other natural
atmosphere of the icy mountain, where earthly air was thin in the
life of solitude and peak. It was the sharp promise of fruition—her
prerogative was to enter that transforming chill. The dead
man also felt it, and tried to speak, to be grateful, to adore, to
say he would wait for it and for the light. He only moaned a
little, a moan not quite of pain, but of intention and the first
faint wellings of recognized obedience and love. All his past
efforts of good temper and kindness were in it; they had seemed to
be lost; and they lived.
But that moan was not only his. As if the sound released
something greater than itself, another moan answered it. The
silence groaned. They heard it. The supernatural mountain on
which they stood shook and there went through Battle Hill itself
the slightest vibration from that other quaking, so that all over
it china tinkled, and papers moved, and an occasional ill-balanced
ornament fell. Pauline stood still and straight. Margaret shut
her eyes and sank more deeply into her pillow.
@The dead man felt it and was drawn back away from that window
into his own world of being, where also something suffered and was
free. The groan was at once dereliction of power and creation of
power. In it, far off, beyond vision in the depths of all the
worlds, a god, unamenable to death, awhile endured and died.
DRESS REHEARSAL
Among the many individualized forms, dead or living, upon the Hill, there
was one neither dead nor living. It was the creature which had lingered
outside the illusion of Eden for the man who had consented to its
company. It had neither intellect nor imagination; it could not
criticize or create, for the life of its substance was only the magical
apparition of its father’s desires. It is said in the old tales that the
devil longs to become incarnate that he may challenge the Divine Word in
his own chosen house of flesh and that he therefore once desired and
overshadowed a maid. But even at the moment of conception a mystical
baptism fell on the child, and the devil was cast out of his progeny at
the moment of entrance. He who was born of that purified intercourse
with angelic sacrilege was Merlin, who, wisest of magicians, prophesied
and prefigured the Grail-quest, and built a chapel to serve the Table
till Logres came to an end, and the Merciful Child Galahad discovered the
union in a Mass of the Holy Ghost which was sung by Messias among a great
company of angels. Since that frustrating transubstantiation the devil
has never come near to dominion over a mortal woman. His incubi and
succubi which tempt and torment the piety of anchorites, are phantasms,
evoked from and clouded and thickened with the dust of the earth or the
sweat of the body or the shed seed of man or the water of ocean, so as to
bewilder and deceive longing eyes and eager hands.
The shape of Lawrence Wentworth’s desire had emerged from the power of
his body. He had assented to that making, and again, outside the garden
of satisfied dreams, he had assented to the company of the shape which
could not be except by his will and was imperceptibly to possess his
will. Image without incarnation, it was the delight of his incarnation
for it was without any of the things that troubled him in the incarnation
of the beloved. He could exercise upon it all arts but one; he could not
ever discover by it or practise towards it the freedom of love. A man
cannot love himself, he can only idolize it, and over the idol
delightfully tyrannize without purpose. The great gift which this simple
idolatry of self gives is lack of further purpose; it is, the saints tell
us, a somewhat similar thing that exists in those wholly possessed by
their End; it is, human experience shows, the most exquisite delight in
the interchanges of romantic love. But in all loves but one there are
counterpointing times of purposes; in this only there are none.
They had gone down the hill together, the man and that creature of
illusion which had grown like the flowers of Eastern magic between the
covering and uncovering of a seed. The feminine offspring of his
masculinity clung to him, pressing her shoulder against him, turning eyes
of adoration on him, stroking his fingers with her own. The seeming
trance prolonged itself in her in proportion as it passed from his own
senses; he could plunge again into its content whenever the creature
looked at or spoke to him. Their betrothal had been celebrated thus
before they began to walk down the hill, and in that betrothal a fraction
of his intelligence had slept never to wake. During the slow walk his
child dallied with his senses and had an exquisite perception of his
needs. Adela walked by him and cajoled him-in the prettiest way-to love
her. He was approached, appeased, flattered, entreated. There flowed
into him from the creature by his side the sensation of his absolute
power to satisfy her. It was what he had vehemently and in secret
desired-to have his own way under the pretext of giving her hers. This
was the seed which grew in his spirit and from which in turn his spirit
grew-the core of the fruit and also the fruit of the core. The vagrant
of matter murmured to him; it surrounded him with devotion, as very well
it could, seeing what the only reality of its devotion was. He did not
need to say much, nor himself to initiate approach. It took all that
activity upon itself; and the sweet reproaches which its mouth offered
him for having misunderstood and neglected and hurt it were balm to his
mind. He had hurt her—then he had not been hurt or she did not know
it. He was wanted—then he need not trouble to want or to know he
wanted. He was entreated by physical endearments-in languorous joy he
consented to gratify the awful ambiguity of his desire.
At his own gate they had paused. There, for a little, he almost
recovered himself; his habitual caution leapt into action. He thought
for himself. “Suppose anyone saw us?” and looked anxiously up at the
windows. They were dark; his servants were asleep in their own rooms at
the back of the house. He glanced up and down the road; no one was
about. But his caution, having struck one note, passed to another; he
looked down at the creature who stood opposite him. It was Adela in
every point, every member and article: its hair, its round ears, its full
face, its plump hands, its square nails, its pink palms, its gestures,
its glances. Only that appealing softness was new, and by that same
appealing softness he knew clearly for an instant that it was not Adela
who had returned by his side.
He stared at it and a shudder seized him; he took a half-step away, and
the first chance of escape was offered. He wondered, desperately,
perhaps in a little hope, if it would say good-night and go away. His
hand was on the latch of the gate, yet he hesitated to do anything so
certain as to go sharply through. He looked up and down the street;
perhaps someone would come. He had never before wanted to see Hugh
Prescott; now he did. If Hugh would come and slip his arm through
Adela’s and take her away! But Hugh could not save him unless he wanted
the thing that was Hugh’s, and not this other thing. The thought of Hugh
had done all it could when it reminded him of the difference between the
real and the unreal Adela. He must face jealousy, deprival, loss, if he
would be saved. He fled from that offer, and with a sudden snarl
clutched his companion by the arm. It leaned closer to him, and
otherwise circumstance lay still. It yearned to him as @if it feared to
be disappointed, which indeed at the bottom of his heart he infinitely
did. It put one hand upon his heart. It said, in a breathless whisper:
“You won’t send me away?” Adela and his refusal to know Adela in
relation to Hugh rose in him; sensuality and jealousy twined. He swung
open the gate. It said: “Be kind to me, be whatever you want, but don’t
send me away.” He had never been able to dream of a voice so full of
passion and passion for him. The hand that smoothed his heart was the
hand that had lain in Hugh’s, yet it was not; he crushed it in his own,
relieved from agony and released to a pretended vengeance. His mind
became giddy. He caught the whole form tighter, lest indeed Hugh should
come striding out of the night, tall as a house, and stretch out a huge
animal hand, and pull her from his arm. He moved to the threshold; as if
it swooned against him it drooped there with all its weight upon his
heart and side. He muttered thickly: “Come on, come on,” but it seemed
past movement. Its voice still murmured incoherent passion, but its
limbs were without strength to take the step. He said: “Must I carry
you?” and the head fell back, and the voice in a trance of abandonment
answered: “Carry me, carry me.” He gathered it to his arms and lifted it;
it lay there, no more than an easy weight.
As he moved, his mind spoke, or more than his mind. The whole air of the
Hill said in his ear, with a crisp intelligence: “You fool, that’s not
Adela; you couldn’t carry Adela. What do you think you’ll get out of
anything that isn’t Adela?” He recognized well enough that the real Adela
might have given him considerable trouble to lift, but his whole
damnation was that he would not choose the trouble to lift the real
Adela. This thing was light in his arms, though solid to his heart, and
his brain was dazed by its whispers. He came over the threshold and
when they had entered the garden it found its feet again, and went along
with him to the complacency of his dream.
Since that night it had come to him often, as on that night it had been
all he could desire. it had been an ape of love’s vitality, and a parody
also of its morality. It possessed a semblance of initiative, and it had
appeased, as is all lovers’ duty, the fantasies of his heart; it had
fawned on him and provoked him. He had no need of the devices against
fertility which, wisely or unwisely, the terrible dilemmas of men drive
them to use, for he consummated a marriage whose infertility was assured.
This, which it made clear to him for his satisfaction, a little troubled
him, for it reminded him, until he managed to forget, of its true nature.
He was outraging his intelligence with this invited deceit, and he did
not wish to know it. But it passed, for he was given good measure after
his kind. There was no lack of invention and pleasure, for the other
forming of sterile growth from sterile root was far off, lying in the
necessity of the stir of distant leaves on the side of the mountain where
he had no thought to
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