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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to hate-it disturbed him too much; and now he knew he did not. He need
not resent the grossness of the world; enough if, by flight, he rejected
it. He had his own living medicament for all trouble, and distaste and
oblivion for everything else-most of all for his noisome parody of his
peace.
Adela said, modulating her voice: “Have you got a headache? what a shame!
it’s good of you to turn out, but we do want to be sure everything’s all
right. I mean, if we must have uniforms. Personally…”
Wentworth said, in a voice of exhaustion: “Oh, please!” In this
stridency, as it seemed to him, there was a suggestion of another
disastrous noise-the nightmare of a groan, tearing up the abyss, setting
the rope swinging. The dull, heavy, plain thing opposite him became
identified to his pained sense with that dreadful break-up of his
dream, and now he could not hide. He could not say to the hills of those
comforting breasts: “Cover me”. The sound sang to his excruciated body,
as the sight oppressed it. The two imprisoned and split him: they held
him and searched his entrails. They wanted something of him. He refused
to want anything but what he wanted.
While Adela stared, half offended by his curious moan, he withdrew
himself into his recesses, and refused to be wanted. Like the dead man
on his flight down the hill, he declined communion. But he, to whom more
room and beauty in life had been given, chances of clarity and devotion,
was not now made frightening to himself. He had not known fear, nor did
he find fear, nor was fear the instrument of salvation. He had what he
had. There were presented to him the uniforms of the Grand Ducal Guard.
A voice as loud but less devastating than Adela’s, for it recalled no
unheard melodies, said behind him: “Mr. Wentworth! at last! we’re all
ready for you. Pauline, the Guard are over by the beeches: take Mr.
Wentworth across. I’ll be there in a minute.” Mrs. Parry, having said
this, did not trouble to watch them do it. She went on.
Pauline smiled at Wentworth’s dazed and Adela’s irritated face. She
said: “I suppose we’d better. Would you, Mr. Wentworth?”
He turned to her with relief. The sound of her voice was quieter than
the rest. He had never before thought so, but now certainly it was. He
said, “Yes, yes; let’s get away.”
Pauline saw Adela as they turned from her, a Gorgon of incredulity. Her
heart laughed, and they went. As they passed over the grass, she said:
“I do hope you haven’t a headache? They’re so trying.”
He answered, a little relieved to be away from the dull shouting
oppression of Adela: “People are so noisy. Of course… anything I can
do… but I can’t stop long.”
“I shouldn’t think it would take more than a few minutes,” Pauline said.
“You’ll only have to say yes or no—practically. And,” she added,
looking round at the whole chaos of glory, and instinctively discerning
Stanhope in the distance, “as it’s far too late for anything else, you
might be so very kind as to enjoy us for what we are, and say yes.”
Hugh Prescott, grand-ducally splendid and dramatically middle-aged, ran
after them. He said, as he caught them up: “Hallo, Mr. Wentworth! I hope
my Guard’ll be correct.”
Wentworth had been soothed by Pauline’s voice. It had to his mind, after
Adela’s, something of that quality he desired. It mingled with him; it
attracted him; it carried him almost to that moment he knew so well,
when, as the desire that expressed his need awoke and grew in him, there
came a point of abandonment to his desire. He did not exactly will, but
he refused to avoid. Why, indeed, he had once asked himself, swiftly,
almost thoughtlessly, should he avoid? He asked himself no more; he
sighed, and as it were, nestled back into himself, and then it would
somehow be there-coming from behind, or speaking in his ear, or perhaps
not even that, but a breath mingling with his, almost dividing from his
to mingle with it, so that there were two where there had been one, and
then the breath seemed to wander away into his palm where his hand lay
half-closed, and became a hand in his own hand, and then a slow arm grew
against his, and so, a tender coil against him or a swift energy of
hunger, as his mood was, it was there, and when the form was felt, it
could at last be seen, and he sank into its deep inviting eyes. As he
listened to Pauline he suddenly knew all this, as he had never known it
before; he almost saw it happen as a thing presented. Her voice created,
but it separated. It brought him almost to his moment, and coiled away,
with him in its toil. It directed him to the Guard; it said, with an
intensity that Pauline had never uttered, but he in his crisis heard:
“Take us as we are, and say yes; say yes or no… we are… we are…
say yes…” and another voice, “Is the Grand Duke’s Guard correct?”
They became, as he paused before the displayed magnificence, a chorus
swinging and singing: “We are… we are… we are…. Is the
Guard correct?… Say, say, O say… is the Guard, is the Guard
correct?”
It was not. In one flash he saw it. In spite of his diagrams and
descriptions, they had got the shoulder-knots all wrong. The eighteenth
century had never known that sort of thing. He looked at them, for the
first moment almost with the pure satisfaction of the specialist. He
almost, somewhere in him, joined in that insane jangle: “No, no, no; the
Guard is wrong—O, wrong. Say… I say… He looked, and he swung,
as if on his rope, as if at a point of decision—to go on or to climb up.
He walked slowly along the line, round the back, negligent of remarks
and questions, outwardly gazing, inwardly swinging. After that first
glance, he saw nothing else clearly. “Say yes or no. The shoulder-knots
could be altered easily enough, all twelve, in an hour or so’s work. Or
pass them—“take us as we are… say yes.” They could be defended, then
and there, with half a dozen reasons; they were no more of a jumble than
Stanhope’s verse. But he was something of a purist; he did not like
them. His housekeeper, for that matter, could alter them that evening
under his direction, and save the costume-makers any further trouble.
“Is the Guard, is the Grand Duke’s Guard, correct?”
A voice penetrated him. Hugh was saying: “One must have one’s
subordinates exact, mustn’t one?” There was the slightest stress on
“subordinates”-or was there? Wentworth looked askance at him; he was
strolling superb by his side. Pauline said: “We could alter some things,
of course.” His silence had made her anxious. He stood away, and
surveyed the backs of the Guard. He could, if he chose, satisfy and
complete everything. He could have the coats left at his house after the
rehearsal; he could do what the honour of his scholarship commanded; he
could have them returned. It meant only his being busy with them that
one evening, and concerning himself with something different from his
closed garden. He smelt the garden.
Mrs. Parry’s voice said: “Is the Guard correct?” He said: “Yes.” It was
over; he could go.
He had decided. The jingle was in his ears no more. Everything was
quite quiet. The very colours were still. Then from a distance movement
began again. His future was secure, both proximate and ultimate. But his
present was decided for him; he was not allowed to go. The devil, for
that afternoon, promptly swindled him. He had cheated; he was at once
cheated. Mrs. Parry expected him to stop for the rehearsal and oversee
the movement of the Guard wherever, in its odd progress about the play,
it marched on or marched off. She made it clear. He chattered a
protest, to which she paid no attention. She took him to a chair, saw
him in it, and went off. He had no energy to oppose her. No one had.
Over all that field of actors and spectators-over Stanhope and Pauline,
over Adela and Hugh, over poetry and possession and sacred possession the
capacity of one really capable woman imposed itself. The moment was
hers, and in view of her determination the moment became itself. As
efficient in her kind as Margaret Anstruther in hers, Catherine Parry
mastered creation, and told it what to do. She had taken on her job, and
the determination to fulfil her job controlled the utterance of the
poetry of Stanhope and delayed the operation of the drugs of Lilith.
Wentworth struggled and was defeated, Adela writhed but obeyed, Peter
Stanhope laughed and enjoyed and assented. It was not perhaps the least
achievement of his art that it had given to his personal spirit the
willingness to fulfil the moment as the moment, so that, reserving his
own apprehension of all that his own particular business meant to him, he
willingly subordinated it to the business of others at their proper time.
He seconded Mrs. Parry as far as and in every way that he could. He ran
errands, he took messages, he rehearsed odd speeches, he fastened hooks
and held weapons. But he only seconded her. The efficiency was hers;
and the Kingdom of God which fulfilled itself in the remote recesses of
his spacious universe fulfilled itself also in her effective supremacy.
She stood in the middle of the field and looked around her. The few
spectators were seated; the actors were gathering. Stanhope stood by her
side. The Prologue, with his trumpet, ran hastily across the stage to
the trees which formed the background. Mrs. Parry said: “I think we’re
ready?” Stanhope agreed. They retired to their chairs, and Mrs. Parry
nodded vigorously to the Prologue. The rehearsal began.
Wentworth, sitting near to Stanhope, secluded himself from it as much as
possible, reaching backward and forward with closed eyes into his own
secrecies. At the extreme other end of activity, Pauline, waiting with
the Chorus for the Woodcutter’s Son’s speech, upon which, as he fed the
flames, the first omnipotent song was to break, also gave herself up to
delight. If the heavens had opened, it was not for her to deny them, or
even too closely to question or examine them. She carried, in her
degree, Peter Stanhope and his fortunes-not for audience or other
publicity but for the achievement of the verse and the play itself. It
was all very well for Stanhope to say it was an entertainment and not a
play, and to be charmingly and happily altruistic about her, and since he
preferred her to fall in with Mrs. Parry’s instructions she did it, for
everyone’s sake including her own. But he was used, anyhow in his
imagination, to greater things; this was the greatest she had known or
perhaps was ever likely to know. If the apparition she had so long
dreaded came across the field she would look at it with joy. If it would
sit down till the rehearsal was over…. She smiled to herself at the
fantasy and laughed to think that she could smile. The Woodcutter’s Son
from beside her went forward, carrying his burden of twigs. His voice
rose in the sublime speculations of fire and glory which the poet’s
reckless generosity had given him. He spoke and paused, and Pauline and
all the Chorus, moving so that their own verdure showed among the trees,
broke into an answering song.
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