Shadows of Ecstasy by Charles Williams (best books to read txt) 📖

Chapter Five - THE NEOPHYTE OF DEATH

The five of them were sitting at a round table—Considine at the head,

Sir Bernard on his right, Roger on his left, Inkamasi next Roger, and

Philip between the king and Sir Bernard. They were served by two men

who, Sir Bernard remarked at once, were evidently not of the usual

servant type. They were much more like young men of his own class, but

they were adept at their work; only they waited with an air of

condescension and if they had occasion to speak they never said “sir”

except indeed to Considine and the king. Considine’s own manner

towards them was that of an equal who accepts by right some special

service; there existed between them a grave courtesy. Occasionally,

while the dinner proceeded, one of these gentlemen in waiting would go

to the door in answer to a discreet knock, receive a message, return

to whisper it in Considine’s ear, and take back a softly murmured

answer. But such secret interruptions did not interfere with the

general conversation, which turned at first upon the Rosenberg crisis.

 

“You have talked to the legatees?” Sir Bernard said.

 

“Why, yes,” Considine smiled, “and they have taken a stand which might

have been foreseen, which I did foresee. The solicitor and I—you

remember Mr. Patton?—met them and the Chief Rabbi, and showed them

the will. We had to go to them; they would not come to us. When I saw

them I did not wonder at it. Their whole minds were given to other

things. They are concerned—as how should they not be?—with one chief

matter, the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem.”

 

“Are they though?” Roger said. “And what will they do with the money?”

 

“What do you think?” Considine said. “What do you think, Sir Bernard?

Remember that they are fanatical in their vision and desire.”

 

“Take it,” Sir Bernard answered, “and spend all that comes from it in

Jerusalem.”

 

“Refuse it,” Philip said, as Considine lifted friendly eyebrows at him

before looking at Roger, who considered, his head on one side.

 

“I don’t know them, of course,” he said, “but you encourage me to hope

that the others are wrong. Take it—refuse it—something else. Take it

and not take it…I know—take it and withdraw it, sell everything,

and keep the result.”

 

“Exactly,” Considine answered. “They insist on selling out all the

Rosenberg properties, and what they have from that—however large or

small—they will spend on building the Temple again.”

 

“But the loss-?” Sir Bernard exclaimed. “It will take years, won’t

it?”

 

“They are too old to spend years in patience,” Considine said. “They

will have it done immediately, for fear they should die before the

work is begun.”

 

“But can’t you stop them?” Philip said.

 

“Believing what I do believe,” Considine answered, “why should I stop

them? It is a great act of creation; they prepare for Messias.”

 

“And the jewels?” Roger asked. “Are they to be sold too?”

 

“No,” Considine said; “those they will take as they are, ‘an oblation

to the Holy of Holies, a recompense for iniquity and for that one of

their house who has touched the unclean thing.’ I repeat their words.”

 

“If they ever get them to Jerusalem-” Roger suggested.

 

“That may be part of the executor’s business,” Considine answered. “I

shall do my best for them while I’ve the time.”

 

“It’ll cause a good deal of disturbance,” Sir Bernard said

thoughtfully. “Rosenberg was interested in a great deal, wasn’t he?”

 

“A great deal,” Considine agreed, adding with a faint smile, “Perhaps

it was a little unfortunate that Patton, intending the best, pointed

out that Rosenberg had religious interests which would be upset by

such an action. He instanced a concern called the Anglo-Catholic

Church and Home Adornment Society, which manufactured crucifixes and

pictures of saints. Somehow Rosenberg was mixed up in it. It didn’t

placate them.”

 

“Patton, I suppose,” Sir Bernard said, “felt that all religions meant

the same?”

 

“I was sorry for him,” Considine said, again smiling faintly. “Even

the Chief Rabbi could hardly quieten them. Yes, Sir Bernard. I don’t

say that Patton’s wrong, but there remains the question of what

religion all the religions mean.”

 

“Perhaps that’s what the African proclamations are trying to tell us,”

Roger said. “Do you believe in them, Mr. Considine?”

 

“In what sense—believe?” Considine asked.

 

“D’you think they’re authentic?” Roger elaborated. “And if authentic,

d’you think they mean anything?”

 

“Yes and yes,” Considine answered. “I see no reason why they shouldn’t

be authentic—and if they are then I think they mean something

definite. It is a gospel, perhaps a crusade, which is approaching.”

 

“Jolly for us,” Roger said. He shifted his eyes to Inkamasi, and said,

“And what do you think?” thanking his gods that the other was next to

him and that vocatives of address could therefore be avoided. How did

one speak to a Zulu king?

 

Inkamasi looked up heavily. The last twenty-four hours, Sir Bernard

thought, seemed to have dulled the young African. His eyes went to

Considine, who said, “Yes; let the king tell us if he thinks this

gospel has meaning.”

 

Why did Considine, he wondered, speak so, with such high gravity in

his voice? He waited with interest for Inkamasi’s answer but when it

came it took them but little farther. He answered the question, but no

more. “Yes, I think it has a meaning,” he said, and his eyes fell

again to his plate.

 

Sir Bernard looked back at Considine, who was (he noticed) eating very

little, a few fragments of each course, a few sips of wine, and that

with an air rather of courtesy than of interest or desire. He was

behaving as a gracious host should, but what host was this who was

waited on by gentlemen, who spoke of gospels and crusades, who seemed

to dominate from his seat the visitors he permitted to speak freely?

Sir Bernard said: “It’s a little cheap, isn’t it? ‘The conquest of

death’?”

 

“You don’t desire the conquest of death?” Considine asked.

 

“I find a difficulty in understanding it here,” Sir Bernard said.

 

“Why?” Considine asked again.

 

Sir Bernard hesitated, and Roger broke in swiftly, “Because we’ve

never heard of it happening, and because we’ve never noticed that

reading poetry and being in love led to anything that looked like the

conquest of death. At least, I can’t think of any other reason. What

does it mean?”

 

“There are two things it might mean,” Considine said, “living for ever

or dying and living again. And will you”—he leaned a little

forward—“will you tell me, Mr. Ingram, that you haven’t felt one or

both of these when you deal with great verse?”

 

Philip saw Roger’s face change. He was looking steadily at Considine,

and he continued to look for more than a minute before he answered. In

that time the sardonic and almost bitter humour which often showed in

him, as if he were weary of fighting that stupidity against which “the

gods themselves contend in vain”, and as if he despised himself both

for strife and weariness—that half-angry mockery vanished, and it

was with a sudden passionate sincerity that he said, “No, no; you’re

right. One dies and lives in it, but I can’t tell how.”

 

“Only because you haven’t looked that way,” Considine said, with an

illuminating smile. “You handle the stuff of the experiment, the stuff

which the poets made, but they made it out of what is common to us

all, and there are things which they, even they, never knew. And as

for love, is there any one of us, since we are men and have loved, who

doesn’t know that there is within the first moments of that divine

delight some actuality of the conquest of death?”

 

Half by chance, his eyes rested on Philip, who, as if called by that

commanding gaze from his habitual shyness and dislike of speech,

stammered out: “Yes, but what is there to do? It’s like that, but what

can I do?”

 

“You can know your joy and direct it,” Considine answered. “When your

manhood’s aflame with love you will burn down with it the barriers

that separate us from immortality. You waste yourselves, all of you,

looking outwards; you give yourselves to the world. But the business

of man is to assume the world into himself. He shall draw strength

from everything that he may govern everything. But can you do this by

doubting and dividing and contemplating? by intellect and official

science? It is greater labour than you need.”

 

“Govern?” Sir Bernard put in. “What do you mean by governing the

world? Ruling it, like Caesar?”

 

“Caesar”, Considine answered, “knew of it. I am sure he did. This man

who had so many lovers, who could bear all hardships and use all

comfort, who was not athlete or lover or general or statesman or

writer, but only those because he was Caesar, who founded not a

dynasty but a civilization, whose children we are, who dreamed of

travelling to the sources of the Nile and sailed out to the strange

island whither the Gallic boatmen rowed the souls of the dead, who was

lord of all minds and natures, didn’t he dream of the sources of other

waters and set sail living for a land where the spirits of other men

are but helplessly driven? Rule the world? He was the world; he

mastered it; the power that is in it burned in him and he knew it, he

was one with it.”

 

“Caesar died,” Sir Bernard said.

 

“He was killed, he was destroyed, but he was not beaten and he did not

die,” Considine