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

she was somehow different from what he had expected. But so, he thought at the same minute, was Foster. There was something about the man that was more determined—almost more brutal—than had been before; the gaze that met his was almost fierce in its…its arrogance-that was the only word. The woman puzzled him; she was, in the queerest manner, gathered up in her chair—her eyes were half closed—her head every now and then swayed slightly. Nothing seemed to him less like what he had supposed the “good simple” creature of Mrs. Rockbotham’s eulogy would be. But she said: “And what can we tell you, Mr. Durrant?” and he wondered if the question was, or was not, inflected with mockery.

“And why should we tell you, Mr. Durrant?” Foster said, sinking his head a little and raising his shoulders, as if the question sprang out of him with a sudden leap.

Anthony, sitting on a chair almost equidistant from both, said, “It seems more and more to be a matter of general importance.”

“Ha!” Foster said, “you think that now, do you?”

“I think I never denied it,” Anthony answered. “But I’m willing to admit that I’m much more inclined to accept your hypothesis than I was.”

“Hypothesis!” Foster deeply exclaimed, and at the same time Miss Wilmot laughed, a little laugh of quiet amusement, which made Anthony move uneasily. Whatever the joke was he hadn’t begun to see it. He suspected that he was the joke; well perhaps he was. Only he said, almost sharply: “But I believe in my own.”

“And that is?” Miss Wilmot said softly.

“I believe”, Anthony answered, looking straight at her, “that I must try myself against these things.”

“And if they are in you how will you do it?” she asked, moving her head a little. “Will you set yourself against yourself? For without us you could not be, and if you struggle against us what shall triumph? Are you quite sure that you have anything which we can’t take away? I think though you haven’t gone far in your studies, Mr. Anthony Durrant, you would be very wise to ceas—s—se.”

The last word indescribably prolonged itself in the twilight; the sound ran round the walls as if the very room were alive with sibilants. But the noise was lost in the deep voice with which Foster, momently seen more darkly as a hunched shape against the open window, said: “Very wise.”

Anthony jumped to his feet. “And what do you mean by that?” he said, staying himself from adding more by an interior warning against rhetoric or futility. So that, as if they waited for more, they did not for a moment answer him, and the three were suspended in expectation. As the pause lengthened Anthony felt a nervous anxiety grow in him, a longing to say something before anything could be said against him, to break into a braggadocio which would betray the weakness it pretended to hide. He bit his lip; h is hands behind him drove the edge of Mistresses of Majesty into his back; he moved his feet farther apart to take a firmer stand. And then he met Dora Wilmot’s eyes.

They were gazing at him as if they were following the helpless scurry of some escaping creature—a rabbit perhaps, and he felt the cunning of his restraint laid open to them. She knew all about him, all his ideas, his intentions, his efforts. His defiance was no subtlety but a mere silliness; his intellect acknowledged a greater power of intellect—or rather a something which passed through intellect. He felt like a student who paused before an expert, and in sheer hopelessness began to relax. The slight movement forward which Foster made escaped him; so did the other’s slow raising of his hands till they came up almost level with the shoulders, and the elbows went back and the body crouched a little deeper—all this passed unseen. Anthony knew himself for a fool; he could do nothing; a cold shudder caught his ankles, his knees, and seized his whole body, till in that sudden trembling his hands opened and the book he carried fell with a thud to the floor. The shock of noise went through them all—Dora Wilmot leaned swiftly aside, Foster jerked himself back, and Anthony, violently released, brought his feet together and threw out his arms.

In that movement they were upon him. Quicker than he to recover, swifter than he to realize his escape, drawing more easily on the Powers they knew, they came at him while he still drew the first deep breath of release. The woman slid in one involved movement from the chair in which she had sat half-coiled, and from where she lay on the floor at his feet her arms went up, her hands clutching at his legs, and twisted themselves round his waist. At the same time the man sprang forward and upward, hands seizin g Anthony’s shoulders, head thrust forward as if in design upon his throat. Anthony was aware of their attack just before it caught him, hardly in time, yet just in time, to throw himself forward to meet it. His rising forearm struck the man’s jaw with sufficient force to divert the head whose mouth champed viciously at him, but the woman’s fast hold on his body prevented him from shaking himself free of the fingers that drove into his shoulders like claws. He heaved mightily forward, and drove upward again with his forearm, but their bodies were too close for him to get any force into the blow. His foot struck, stumbled, and as he freed and lifted it, trod on a rounded shape that writhed beneath it. All round him in the room were noises of hissing and snarling, and as he staggered aside in the effort to regain his footing the hot breath of one adversary panted into his face, so that it seemed to him as if he struggled in the bottom of some loathly pit where foul creatures fought for their prey. And he was their prey, unless…He felt himself falling, and cried out; the tightening pressure round his body choked the cry in mid-utterance, and something slid yet higher round his chest. In a tumultuous conflict he crashed to the ground, but sideways, so that as he lay he was able to twist himself face downwards and save his throat. He felt his collar wrenched off and nails tearing at his neck; a twisting weight writhed over him from his shoulders downwards. For a second he lay defeated, then all his spirit within him cried out “No,” and thrust itself in that single syllable from his mouth. His arms at least had been freed in his fall; he pressed his hands against the floor and with a terrific effort half raised himself. The man creature, at this abandoning its tearing at his neck, came at him again from one side. Anthony put all the energy he had left into one tremendous outward sweep of his arm, rather as if he flung a great wing sideways. He felt his enemy give before it and heard the crash that marked the collapse of an unstable balance. His own balance was barely maintained, but his hand in its swift return touched the hair of the woman’s head, and caught it and fiercely pulled and wrenched till the clasping arms released their hold and for a moment his body was free. In that moment he came to his feet, and lightly as some wheeling bird turned and poised for any new attack. But his enemies lay still, their shining eyes fixed upon him, their hands scrabbling on the floor. The hissing and snarling which all this while had been in his ears ceased gradually; he became aware, as he stepped watchfully backward, of the sedate room in which that horrible struggle had gone on. He took another cautious step away, and bumped into the chair on which he had been sitting, and the jerk restored him to his ordinary self. He looked, and saw Miss Wilmot sitting, half-coiled up, on a rug, and Mr. Foster, her visitor, on one knee near to her, as if he were about to pick up a book that lay not far off. With alert eyes on them Anthony suddenly swooped and lifted it. He remembered what it was without looking.

“I was wrong,” he said aloud, and smiling, “it’s perfectly up-to-date. So sorry to be a nuisance, but I still stick to my own hypothesis. You might think it over. Goodnight, Miss Wilmot, I’ll see myself out. Goodnight, Foster, give my love to the lion.”

He backed carefully to the door, opened it, slipped through, and found the maid hovering in the little hall. She gazed at him doubtfully, and he, still rather watchfully, looked back. Then he saw her expression change into entire amazement and remembered his collar.

“O sir!” she exclaimed.

“Quite,” Anthony said. “But Ephesus, you know—”

“Ephesus, sir?” she asked, more doubtfully still, as he laid his hand on the door.

“My dear,” he said, “I’m sorry I can’t give you the reference, but your mistress will. It was where St. Paul had trouble with the wild beasts. Go and ask her. Goodnight.”