Descent into Hell Read online

  Margaret Anstruther was buried on the next day but one, to the sound of that apostolic trumpet which calls on all its hearers to rise from the dead, and proclaims the creation on earth of celestial bodies, “sown in corruption, raised in incorruption; sown in dishonour, raised in glory; sown in weakness, raised in power”. “Be steadfast, unmovable … your labour is not in vain in the Lord.” Pauline heard with a new attention; these were no longer promises, but facts. She dared not use the awful phrases for herself; only, shyly, she hoped that perhaps, used by some other heavenly knowledge, they might not be altogether inapplicable to herself. The epigram of experience which is in all dogma hinted itself within her. But more than these passages another stranger imagination struck her heart: “Why are they then baptized for the dead?” There, rooted in the heart of the Church at its freshest, was the same strong thrust of interchange. Bear for others; be baptized for others; and, rising as her new vision of the world had done once and again, an even more fiery mystery of exchange rolled through her horizons, turning and glancing on her like the eyed and winged wheels of the prophet. The central mystery of Christendom, the terrible fundamental substitution on which so much learning had been spent and about which so much blood had been shed, showed not as a miraculous exception, but as the root of a universal rule… “behold, I shew you a mystery,” as supernatural as that Sacrifice, as natural as carrying a bag. She flexed her fingers by her side as if she thought of picking one up.

  The funeral over, her uncle hastened action. The moment for which they had all been waiting had arrived; his mother was dead. So now they could clear things up. The house could be sold, and most of the furniture. Pauline could have a room in a London hostel, which he would find her, and a job in a London office, which he had already found her. They discussed her capacities; he hinted that it was a pity she hadn’t made more of the last few years. She might have learned German while sitting with Margaret, and Spanish instead of taking part in plays. She would have to be brisker and livelier. Pauline, suppressing a tendency to point out that for years he had wished her to be not brisk or lively, but obedient and loving, said she would remember. She added that she would have a little money, enough to buy her bread. Her uncle said that a woman couldn’t live on bread, and anyhow a job was a good thing; he didn’t wish his niece to waste her time and energy. Pauline, thinking that Stanhope had said the same thing differently, agreed. Her uncle, having put everything he could into somebody’s hands, left her to live for a few days in the house with the maid, and rushed back to London with his wife, whose conversation had been confined to assuring Pauline that she would get over it presently.

  Pauline might have believed this if she had been clear what it was that she was expected to get over. Of one thing it was true; she no longer expected to see the haunting figure of her childhood’s acquaintance and youthful fear. She remembered it now as one remembers a dream, a vivid dream of separation and search. She had been, it seemed, looking for a long while for someone, or perhaps some place, that was necessary to her. She had been looking for someone who was astray, and at the same time she had been sought. In the dream she had played hide-and-seek with herself in a maze made up of the roads of Battle Hill, and the roads were filled with many figures who hated—neither her nor any other definite person, but hated. They could not find anything they could spend their hate on, for they slipped and slithered and slid from and through each other, since it was their hate which separated them. It was no half-self-mocking hate, nor even an immoral but half-justified hate, certainly not the terrible, enjoyable, and angry hate of ordinary men and women. It was the hate of those men and women who had lost humanity in their extreme love of themselves amongst humanity. They had been found in their streets by the icy air of those mountain peaks of which she had once heard her grandmother speak, and their spirits had frozen in them. Among them she also had gone about, and the only thing that had distinguished her from them was her fear lest they should notice her. And while she hurried she had changed, in her bygone dream, and she was searching for some poor shadow of herself that fled into the houses to escape her. The dream had been long, for the houses had opened up, as that shadow entered, into long corridors and high empty rooms, and there was one dreadful room which was all mirrors, or what was worse than mirrors, for the reflections in those mirrors were living, though they hid for a while and had no being till the shadow at last came speeding into the room, but then they were seen, and came floating out of their flickering cells, and danced the shadow into some unintelligible dissolution among them. It was from that end that she sought to save the miserable fugitive. When in her memory she reached that point, when the shadow was fleeing deeper into Gomorrah, and she fled after it on feet that were so much swifter than its own and yet in those infinite halls and corridors could never overtake it while it fled—when the moment of approach down the last long corridor to the last utter manifestation of allusion drew near, she heard far off a trumpet, and she could remember nothing more but that she woke. She remembered that she woke swiftly, as if a voice called her, but however hard she tried she could not well recollect whose voice it was; perhaps that also was part of the dream, or perhaps it was the nurse’s voice that had called her on the morning her grandmother had died. Perhaps; perhaps not. Under all the ceremonies of the days, under the companionship of her people, under her solitude, under her gradual preparations for departure and her practice of studies which were to make her more efficient in whatever job her uncle and the operation of the Immortals should find her, under sun and moon alike, she waited. She waited, and remembered only as a dream the division between herself and the glorious image by which the other was to be utterly ensouled.

  It was observable, however, on the Hill, how many of the inhabitants were unwell. Mrs. Sammile had fainted, and had not been seen about since. Someone had offered to take her home in a car, but she had declined, declaring that she was all right, and had disappeared. Myrtle Fox, though she had got through the performance, had gone home crying, and had been in bed ever since. She could not sleep; a doctor had been called in, but he did not help her. She took this and that, and nothing did good. She would doze a little, and wake crying and sobbing. “It’s all this excitement,” her mother said severely, and opinion began to blame the play for Myrtle’s illness. Lawrence Wentworth remained shut in his house; even his servants hardly saw him, and the curtains of his study were generally drawn. “It isn’t human,” his parlourmaid said to next door’s parlour-maid. Some of the actors and some of the audience were also affected by what was generally called the local influenza epidemic. The excitement of the play or the brightness of the summer or the cold winds that even under such a sun swept the Hill, or some infection more subtle than these, struck the inhabitants down.

  Neither Adela nor Hugh were among them. Hugh, like Mrs. Parry, went on efficiently dealing with the moment. Adela suffered, from the heat, from the thunder, from suppressed anxiety, but she did not go to bed. Pauline, even had she been free from her family, could not have carried out her promise, for immediately after the performance Stanhope disappeared for a few days; it was understood he had gone away for a change. Pauline could do no more than assure Adela that, as soon as he returned, she would look for an opportunity. “But I can’t,” she said, “do more than that. I can’t butt in on him with a club, Adela. If it’s for all of us, why not do it yourself? If it was for you personally, of course you might feel awkward, but as it isn’t.…” Adela said it certainly wasn’t, and went off peevishly.

  As a result the management of Hugh had to be postponed. He had not, in fact, made that formal proposal which was necessary if Adela was to feel, as she wished, that she had a right and a duty to manage him. In order not to thwart him, Adela controlled herself more than was her habit when they were together. Obedience and revolt being both out of the question, she compromised temporarily that she might manage permanently. It was in such a compromise that they had been walking one evening on the Hill two or three
days after Margaret Anstruther’s burial. By accident, on their return, they took a road which led past the gates of the cemetery, and as they came by Hugh said idly: “I suppose Pauline’ll be going now her grandmother’s dead.”

  Adela had not thought of this. She said immediately: “O, I shouldn’t wonder if she stopped—moved to a smaller house or something. She can’t go yet.”

  Hugh said: “You didn’t go to the funeral, darling?”

  “Of course not,” Adela answered. “I hate being morbid.” As if to prove it she lingered to look through the gates. “There are so many of them,” she added.

  “Yes,” Hugh said, with what faintly struck Adela as unnecessary obtuseness, “you can’t get round death with any kind of adjective, can you?”

  “I don’t want to get round anything with adjectives,” Adela almost snarled. “Thank God we’ve got away from any pretence. It’s so unimportant when one doesn’t pretend. When one’s dead, one’s dead, and that’s all there is to it.”

  Hugh said, “Yes, but what’s all there is to it? I’m that old-fashioned thing, an agnostic; I don’t know. I like to be clear on what I know and what I don’t know, and I don’t like daydreams, either nice or nasty, or neither.”

  “O, nor do I,” said Adela. “But you must sometimes think how nice it would be if something particular happened. I call that common sense.”

  “Within limits,” Hugh said, putting his arm over her shoulders. “I sometimes let myself think, for a certain time, or a definite distance—say, from here to your house—how pleasant something would be—having fifty thousand pounds a year, say. But when I come to your house, or wherever it is, I stop.”

  “Do you?” said Adela, more impressed than she admitted to herself.

  “Always,” said Hugh. “And then—O, concentrate on making another fifty. Day-dreaming without limits is silly.”

  Adela shook her head. “I suppose I imagine rather intensely,” she said. “I seem to see things obliquely, if you know what I mean. They’re alongside the actual thing, a sort of tangent. I think really that’s what all art is—tangential.”

  The word had hardly left her lips when a voice, tangential to her ear, said: “Do let me persuade you, Miss Hunt.”

  Adela, with a jump, looked round, and saw Lily Sammile. There was, at that part of the cemetery wall, a lean-to erection of boards, a kind of narrow shelter, almost a man’s height, and having a rough swinging door at the nearer end. It had been there before anyone could remember, and it stayed there because no one could remember to have it taken away. It was very old and very weather-stained. It was almost a tool-shed, but then the necessary tools were, more conveniently, kept elsewhere. Everyone supposed that someone else used it. At the door of this shed, close to the cemetery railing, stood the woman who had spoken. She was leaning forward, towards Adela, and holding on to a bar of the gate. Now she put a hand on Adela’s bare arm. It was gritty to the skin, which felt as if a handful of rough dust was pressed down, and pricked and rubbed it. The voice was rough too; it mumbled through a mouthful of dust. Adela pulled her arm away; she could not answer; she thrust closer to Hugh.

  The woman said, after a pause during which they stared at her, and saw her dishevelled, hatless, hair of grey ashes, and cheeks almost as grey: “Come and get away. Dust—that’s what you want; dust.”

  Hugh said easily: “Not a bit, Mrs. Sammile. We both want a great deal more.”

  The woman answered: “You may, but she doesn’t. She’s a——”

  They could not catch the word, her voice so muffled it. Adela cook two steps back, and said in a little squeak: “Hugh!”

  Hugh slipped his arm round her. He said firmly, though less easily than before: “Well, we must be getting on. Come along, darling.”

  Lily Sammile began to cry. The tears ran down her face and left streaks in the greyness, as if they crept through and over grime. She said miserably: “You’ll wish you had; O, you’ll wish you had.” She was standing with her back to the gate, leaning against it, and as she ceased to speak she became rigid suddenly, as if she listened. Her eyes widened; her nose came out over an indrawn lip; her cheeks hollowed in her effort. There was no need for the effort. They could hear the sound that held her; a faint rustle, a dry patter. It came from beyond her, and she twisted her head round—only her head—and looked. So, distracted by the movement, did the other two. They saw movement in the graves.

  Most were quiet enough; their inhabitants had passed beyond any recall or return, and what influence they had on the Hill was by infection rather than by motion. But the estate was still new, and the neat ranks of sepulchres did not reach far into the enclosure. They lay along the middle path mostly; the farthest away was the mound that covered Margaret Anstruther. That too was quiet: its spirit could not conceive return. It was between the earlier graves and hers that the disclosure began, as if the enclosed space was turning itself over. The earth heaved; they felt, where they stood, no quiver. It was local, but they saw—there, and again there—the mounds swell and sway and fall in a cascade of mould, flung over the green grass. Three or four in all, dark slits in the ground, and beyond each a wide layer of dust. It did not stop there. The earth was heaving out of the dark openings; it came in bursts and rushes—in a spasmodic momentum, soon exhausted, always renewed. It hung sometimes in the air, little clouds that threatened to fall back, and never did, for they drifted slowly to one side, and sank again on what had earlier dropped. Gravitation was reversed; the slowness and uncertainty of the movement exposed the earth’s own initiation of it. The law of material things turned; somewhere in that walled receptacle of the dead activity was twisted upon itself. The backward movement of things capable of backward movement had begun. The earth continued to rise in fountains, flung up from below; and always at their height, their little height above the ground, the tops of those fountains swayed, and hurled themselves sideways, and dropped, and the rest fell back into the hidden depth of the openings, until it flung itself up once more. The gentle low patter of rough earth on gravel paths floated over the gates to the ears of the three who were still standing there.

  There was a more deathly silence without the gates than within. The old woman, with twisted head, her body almost a pattern of faintly covered bones against the iron bars, was rigid; so were Adela and Hugh. They stood staring; incredulous, they gazed at the exhibited fact. So incredible was it that they did not think of the dead; ghosts and resurrections would have been easier to their minds, if more horrible, than this obvious insanity, insanity obvious in its definite existence. They were held; then, to instinctive terror, the frantic cause presented itself. Adela screamed, and as the dead man’s moan had been answered in the mountain her scream was caught and prolonged in the other woman’s wailing shriek. The shriek was not human; it was the wind rushing up a great hollow funnel in a mountain, and issuing in a wild shrill yell. It tore itself out of the muffled mouth, and swept over the Hill, a rising portent of coming storm. Myrtle Fox heard it in her long night of wakefulness, and her body sickened. Pauline heard it, and felt more intensely the peace that held her. Stanhope heard it, and prayed. Before the sound had died, Lily Sammile had jerked from the gate, and thrown herself at the dark shed, and disappeared within, and the swinging door fell to behind her.

  As she sprang, Adela sprang also. She screamed again and ran. She ran wildly up the road, so fast that Hugh, who followed, was outdistanced. He called after her. He shouted: “Adela, it’s nothing. The earth was loose and the wind was blowing. Stop.” She did not stop. He kept up the pursuit down a street or two, but his own action offended him. Much though the vision had for the moment affected him, he was, as soon as he began to move, more immediately affected and angered by his situation. There might be explanations enough of what he thought he had seen—he spared a curse for Lily Sammile—but more certain than what he thought he had seen was what he knew Adela was doing. She was, faster than he, running and screaming over Battle Hill. He was angry; suppose someo
ne met her! He raised in his own mind no reasonable pretext for abandoning her, nor did he disguise his intention from himself, but after a corner or two he simply stopped running. “Perfectly ridiculous!” he said angrily. “The earth was loose, and the wind was blowing.” He was free as Pauline herself from Lilith, but without joy. There was, between the group to which his soul belonged and hers, no difference, except only that of love and joy, things which now were never to be separated in her any more.

  Adela ran. She had soon no breath for screaming. She ran. She did not know where she was going. She ran. She heard a voice calling behind her: “The earth’s loose and the wind’s blowing,” and she ran more wildly. Her flesh felt the touch of a gritty hand; a voice kept calling after her and round her: “The earth’s loose; the wind’s blowing.” She ran wildly and absurdly, her full mouth open, her plump arms spasmodically working, tears of terror in her eyes. She desired above all things immediate safety—in some place and with someone she knew. Hugh had disappeared. She ran over the Hill, and through a twisted blur of tears and fear recognized by a mere instinct Lawrence Wentworth’s house. She rushed through the gate; here lived someone who could restore her to her own valuation of herself. Hugh’s shouted orders had been based on no assent of hers to authority; however much she had played at sensual and sentimental imitations of obedience, she hated the thing itself in any and every mode. She wanted something to condone and console her fear. There was a light in the study; she made for it; reached the window, and hammered on the glass, hammered again and again, till Wentworth at last heard and reluctantly drew himself from the stupor of his preoccupation, came slowly across the room and drew back the curtain.

  They confronted each other through the glass. Wentworth took a minute or two to recognize whose was the working and mottled face that confronted him, and when he recognized it, he made a motion to pull the curtain again and to go away. But as she saw the movement she struck so violently at the glass that even in his obsession he was terrified of others hearing, and slowly and almost painfully he pushed the window up and stood staring at her. She put her hands on the sill and leant inwards.