XII
Hell was supposed to be very hot, very red, full of pugnacious demons. Educated people do not believe in it any more. It is curious how ignorant educated people have become. Hell is an actual plane, less vivid than was formerly imagined, not hot but cold, grey rather than red, but amply provided with demons, with the devils of self-accusation, with the fiends of insoluble queries. Very real and very actual, it is surprising how many educated people are there. The oddity of that is increased by the fact that they regard it as a private establishment. They regard their hell as unique. Perhaps the idea flatters them. Yet sooner or later everybody enters it. Hell may seem private. It is universal.
Headlong into it, Margaret's letter precipitated Lennox. Being a man, he struggled up. But not out. In hell there are no signposts. It takes time to find one's way. It takes more, it takes resignation. When both have been acquired, the walls part of themselves. The aspect of life has altered, but you are free.
Lennox, in struggling up, encountered the demons of enigmatic riddles. Each word of Margaret's letter they converted into a Why? They thrust it at him, demanding an answer. But the answer her heart alone possessed. That heart had been his. It was his no longer. The heart that she had given him, she had taken away. Nothing could be simpler and nothing more mysterious. The mystification was complete, but not the suffering. Suffering is never complete. However deep the hell, there is always a deeper one.
From the letter he looked at the walls. They were dumb. There was no answer for the demons there, not anywhere, perhaps, except among werewolves, basilisks and Mrs. Austens. These monsters did not occur to him. The monstrous letter sufficed. But Margaret was still too near, her vows were too recent for him to credit it, and the fact that he could not disclosed itself in those words which all have uttered, all at least before whom the inexplicable has sprung.
"It is impossible!"
Yet there it was. Yet there too was something else. But what? At once he was back again in the issueless circle of infernal questions.
The day before he had known that something was amiss. The attitude of Mrs. Austen had been too assured, too venomous, too smiling, for him to doubt it. But though he did not doubt that, not for a second did he doubt Margaret either. Always aware of the woman's hostility, he had been equally aware that it could not influence the girl. Not for a moment therefore had he accepted the statement that the engagement was broken. At the time he had thought that when next he had a word with Margaret it would all be explained. But all what? His life was as clean as his face. It was not that then. On the other hand he was not rich. By the same token, Margaret's only idea of money was to help others with it. It was not that then either. Nor was it that she had not loved him. She had loved him. He could have sworn it and not out of vanity, for he had none, but because never could she have promised herself to him if she had not. None the less, she could not see him again. She had thought it over. She was not suited to him. He was told to forget her. Why?
That Why, repeating itself, forced him deeper into the circles of which hell is made.