The Place of the Lion by Charles Williams (best desktop ebook reader txt) 📖

Quentin moved suddenly, “O let’s get away!”

Anthony’s hand closed on his arm. “No,” he said, though his voice shook, “we’re going up that road to meet it. Or else I shall never be able to speak of ideas and truths again. Come along.”

“I daren’t,” Quentin muttered shrinking.

“But what’s lucidity then?” Anthony asked. “Let’s be as quick as we can. For if that is what is in me, then I may be able to control it; and if not—”

“Yes, if not—” Quentin cried out.

“Then we will see what a Service revolver will do,” Anthony answered, putting his hand in the pocket of his loose coat. “One way or the other. Come on.”

Quentin moved unhappily, but he did not refuse. Their eyes still set on the monster, they left the gate and went on along the road; and up on the ridge it continued its own steady progress. The trees however after a few minutes shut it out of their sight, and even when they came round the curve in the road and began to move up the gentle rise they did not again see it. This added to the strain of expectation they both felt, and as they stepped on Quentin exclaimed suddenly: “Even if it’s what you say, how d o you know you were meant to see it? We’re only men—how should we be meant to look at—these things?”

“The face of God…” Anthony murmured. “Well, even now perhaps I’d as soon die that way as any. But Tighe didn’t die when he saw the butterfly, nor we when we saw it before.”

“But it’s madness to go like this and look for it,” Quentin said. “I daren’t, that’s the truth, if you want it. I daren’t. I can’t.” He stood still, trembling violently.

“I don’t know that I dare exactly,” Anthony said, also pausing. “But I shall. What the devil’s that?”

It was not the form of the lion but the road some little distance in front of them at which he was staring. For across it, almost where it topped the rise and disappeared down the other side, there passed a continuous steady ripple. It seemed to be moving crosswise; wave after gentle wave followed each other from the fields on one side to the fields opposite; they could see the disturbed dust shaken off and up, and settling again only to be again disturbed. The movement did not stop at the road-side, it see med to pass on into the fields, and be there lost to sight. The two young men stood staring.

“The damn road’s moving!” Anthony exclaimed, as if’ driven to unwilling assent.

Quentin began to laugh, as he had laughed that other evening, hysterically, madly. “Quite right,” he shrieked in the midst of his laughter, “quite right, Anthony. The road’s moving: didn’t you know it would? It’s scratching its own back or something. Let’s help it, shall we?”

“Don’t be a bloody fool,” Anthony cried to him. “Stop it, Quentin, before I knock you silly.”

“Ha!” said Quentin with another shriek, “I’ll show you what’s silly. It isn’t us! it’s the world! The earth’s mad, didn’t you know? All mad underneath. It pretends to behave properly, like you and me, but really it’s as mad as we are! And now it’s beginning to break out. Look, Anthony, we’re the first to see the earth going quite, quite mad. That’s your bright idea, that’s what you’re running uphill to see. Wait till you feel it in you!”

He had run a few steps on as he talked, and now paused with his head tossed up, his feet pirouetting, his mouth emitting fresh outbursts of laughter. Anthony felt his own steadiness beginning to give way. He looked up at the sky and the strong afternoon sun—in that at least there was as yet no change. High above him some winged thing went through the air; he could not tell what it was but he felt comforted to see it. He was not entirely alone, it seemed; the pure balance of that distant flight entered into him as if it had been salvation. It was incredible that life should sustain itself by such equipoise, so lightly, so dangerously, but it did, and darted onward to its purpose so. His mind and body rose to the challenging revelation; the bird, whatever it was, disappeared in the blue sky in a moment, and Anthony, curiously calmed, looked back at the earth in front of him. Across the road the movement was still passing, but it seemed smaller, and even while he looked it had ceased. Still and motionless the road stretched in front of him, and though his blood was running cold his eyes were quiet as he turned them on his friend.

Quentin jerked his head. “You think it’s stopped, don’t you?” he jeered. “You great fool, wait, only wait! I haven’t told you, but I’ve known it a long time. I’ve heard it when I lay awake at night, the earth chuckling away at its imbecile jokes. It’s slobbering over us now. O you’re going to find out things soon! Wait till it scratches you. Haven’t you felt it scratching you when you thought about that woman, you fool? When you can’t sleep for thinking of her? and the earth scratches you again? Ho, and you didn’t know what it was. But I know.”

Anthony looked at him long and equably. “You know, Quentin,” he said, “you do have the most marvellous notions. When I think that I really know you I get almost proud. The beauty of it is that for all I know you’re right, only if you are there’s nothing for us to discuss. And though I don’t say there is, I insist on behaving as if there was. Because I will not believe in a world where you and I can’t talk.” He came a step nearer and added: “Will you? It’ll be an awful nuisance for me if you do.”

Quentin had stopped pirouetting and was swinging to and fro on his toes. “Talk!” he said uncertainly. “What’s the good of talking when the earth’s mad?”

“It supports the wings in the air,” Anthony answered. “Come along and support.”

He tucked his arm into his friend’s. “But perhaps for this afternoon—” he began, and paused, arrested by the other’s face. Quentin had looked back over his shoulder, and his eyes were growing blind with terror. Sense and intelligence deserted them; Anthony saw and swung round. By the side of the road, almost where the ripple had seemed to pass over, there appeared the creature they had set out to seek. It was larger and mightier than when they had seen it before—and, comparatively close as they now were, they fell back appalled by the mere effluence of strength that issued from it. It was moving like a walled city, like the siege-towers raised against Nineveh or Jerusalem; each terrible paw, as it set it down, sank into the firm ground as if into mud, but was plucked forth without effort; the movement of its mane, whenever it mightily turned its head, sent reverberations of energy through the air, which was shaken into wind by that tossed hair. Anthony’s hand rested helplessly on his revolver, but he could not use it—whether this were mortal lion or no, he must take his chance, its being to his exposed being. He had challenged the encounter, and now it was upon him, and all the strength of his body was flowing out of him: he was beginning to tremble and gasp. He no longer had hold of Quentin, nor was indeed aware of him; a faintness was taking him—perhaps this was death, he thought, and then was suddenly recalled to something like consciousness by hearing a shot at his side.

Quentin had snatched the revolver from him and was firing madly at the lion, screaming, “There! there! there!” as he did so, screaming in a weakness that seemed to lay him appallingly open to the advance of that great god—for it looked no less—whenever it should choose to crush him. The noise sounded as futile as the bullets obviously proved, and the futility of the outrage awoke in Anthony a quick protest.

“Don’t!” he cried out, “you’re giving in. That’s not the way to rule; that’s not within you.” To keep himself steady, to know somehow within himself what was happening, to find the capacity of his manhood even here—some desire of such an obscure nature stirred-in him as he spoke. He felt as if he were riding against some terrific wind; he was balancing upon the instinctive powers of his spirit; he did not fight this awful opposition but poised himself within and above it. He heard vaguely the sound of running feet and knew that Quentin had fled, but he himself could not move. It was impossible now to help others; the overbearing pressure was seizing and stifling his breath; and still as the striving force caught him he refused to fall and strove again to overpass it by rising into the balance of adjusted movement. “If this is in me I reach beyond it,” he cried to himself again, and felt a new-come freedom answer his cry. A memory—of all insane things—awoke in him of the flying he had done in the last year of the war; it seemed as if again he looked down on a wide stretch of land and sea, but no human habitations were there, only forest, and plain, and river, and huge saurians creeping slowly up from the waters, and here and there other giant beasts coming into sight for a moment and then disappearing. Another flying thing went past below him—a hideous shape that was a mockery of the clear air in which he was riding, riding in a machine that, without his control, was now sweeping down towards the ground. He was plunging towards a prehistoric world; a lumbering vastidity went over an open space far in front, and behind it his own world broke again into being through that other. There was a wild minute in which the two were mingled; mammoths and dinotheria wandered among hedges of English fields, and in that confused vision he felt the machine make easy landing, run, and come to a stop. Yet it couldn’t have been a machine, for he was no longer in it; he hadn’t got out, but he was somehow lying on the ground, drawing deep breaths of mingled terror and gratitude and salvation at last. In a recovered peace he moved, and found that he was actually stretched at the side of the road; he moved again and sat up.

There was no sign of the lion, nor of Quentin. He got to his feet; all the countryside lay still and empty, only high above him a winged something still disported itself in the full blaze of the sun.