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

spake.” The music, he was aware, had

begun. Very well then: now. The simple analysis, the union of

opposites which so often existed in verse, was clear enough. There was

the opposition of the Latin “Filial” and the English “God,” and of the

ideas expressed in those words—Filial, implying subordination and

obedience; Godhead—authority, finality. Something similar was true

also of “answering” and “spake.” That was elementary—but about

death…the music was getting in his way; bother the music—the words

were becoming a kind of guide to it, not to his thoughts. His thoughts

showed him the lovely and delicate manipulation of…of what? Words;

the association of words: “the Filial”—a twist and cry of the violins

broke sharply on him—“Godhead.” “Filial”—he was filial to

something; filial–the subordination of himself in the presence of

something, of godhead, the godhead this triumphant sound was speeding

through his consciousness; filial—the smooth vowels and labials, the

word that was he sliding so easily in and through the energy of the

whole line, an energy that broke out in the explosive consonants of

“Godhead.” Filial—that was to die, to be drawn down by this music

into reconciliation with something that answering spake. But it was he

that answering spake…answering, answering, answering, what but

that which spake? “Spake, spake,” the notes sang out; not saying

“spake” but sounding it; they were speaking. It—the word, the sound,

was itself speaking; “spake” was only an echo of what it said. “The

Filial Godhead answering spake”—and Roger Ingram was being left

behind, even the Roger Ingram that loved the line, for the line was

driving him down to answer it by dying and living, to be nothing but a

filial godhead. Milton was but a name for a particular form of this

immortal energy: the line was but an opportunity for knowing the

everlasting delight, the ecstasy of all those elements that combined

in its passionate joy, knowing it by being part of it. His intellect

had shown him the marvellous glories of the line, but as he passed

into it and between its glories his intellect revealed itself but as

one of the elements. A moral duty swept him on. This energy was to be

possessed, to possess him, and then—then he would have time to find

yet greater powers even than that. Power, power—“the Power so-called

through sad incompetence of human speech”; even the great poets were

but sad incompetence; nothing but the transmutation of even the energy

they gave could be an answer to the energy they took from some source

beyond them. He hung, poised, unconscious of himself repeating words

silently and very slowly, opening himself to them: “sad incompetence

of human speech”—“thus the Filial Godhead answering spake.” And the

violins descanted on it, and slowly died away; and as slowly he came

to himself and looked up to meet Philip’s welcoming and inquiring

eyes.

 

The music ceased. Considine stood up and came over to his guests. “Did

you care for it?” he asked.

 

No-one found it possible to answer immediately; at last Sir Bernard,

with a sudden movement, came to his feet. He looked at Considine, and

against the other’s majestic form his smaller figure seemed to gather

itself together. He looked, and said, in a voice not without a note of

victory, “Well, I kept my head.”

 

“You are proud of that?” Considine asked disdainfully. Sir Bernard

shrugged. “It fulfils its function,” he said. “I like to take my music

like a gentleman. What was it?”

 

“It was made by one of my friends,” Considine said. “He had overcome

all things except music, but that lured him to spend his power and he

died. We feed on what he did that we may do more than he.”

 

“But-” Roger began, arrested by something in these words, “but do you

mean—is it a waste to make music?”

 

“Mustn’t it be?” the other asked. “If you want more than sound it’s a

waste to spend power making sound, as it’s a waste to spend on the

beloved what’s meant to discover more than the beloved.”

 

“But this means the death of everything!” Roger exclaimed.

 

“And if so?” Considine asked. “Yet it isn’t so. It’s possible to make

out of the mere superfluity of power greater things than men now spend

all their power on. The dropping flames of that fire are greater than

all your pyres of splendour. And when death itself is but passion of

ecstasy, we will make music such as you couldn’t bear to hear, and we

will be the fathers of the children who shall hear it. Listen to the

prophecy.”

 

He turned and nodded to the gentleman in waiting, who had after the

music ceased again drawn the curtains, and now went out of the room.

Considine left his guests together and returned to a small table near

the curtains. The only light in the room came from a tall standard

near him, so that Sir Bernard and the others were clustered in the

shadows and not clearly to be seen.

 

Roger glanced at the African, sitting by him almost as if asleep, and

then looked back again at Considine. He stood there, an ordinary

gentleman in an ordinary dinner jacket, but the black of the clothes

and the tie, the white of the front and the cuffs, gathered into a

kind of solemn insignia. Roger saw him, against the immense and

universal sapphire of the draperies behind him, a figure in hieratic

dress, motionless, expectant, attentive, having power to give or to

withhold, as if an Emperor of Byzantium awaited between the East and

the West the approach of petitions he only could fulfil. His hands

were by his sides, his head was a little thrown back, his eyes were

withdrawn as if he meditated, and behind him the vast azure hung as if

it were a cloak some attendant had but that moment removed and still

held spread out before he folded it. Modern, contemporary—antique,

mythical—neither of these were the truth. He stood as something more

than either, being both and more than both. It was Man that stood

there, man conscious of himself and of his powers, man—powerful and

victorious, bold and serene, a culmination and a prophecy. Time and

space hung behind him, his background and his possession, themselves

no more separate but woven in a single vision, the colour of the

living background to that living domination. “Death itself but passion

of ecstasy”—death itself might well have been lying at those feet in

black, shining and pointed gear, as in delicate armour, at the

direction of the hands which fell from between the stiff, shining and

sacerdotal cuffs. The ritual of a generation was changed into a

universal ritual; so for Philip Rosamond had turned her dresses into

significance; so always and in all places have the gods when they

walked among men changed into their own permanent sacramental habits

the accidental raiment of the day.

 

Phrases of the talk rushed back into Roger’s mind—other phrases of

the proclamation of the High Executive—“moments of the exalted

imagination”: here and now was such a moment, here and now that

imagination made itself visible before him and overwhelmed him with

its epiphany.

 

The door opened. Considine turned his head. The gentleman in waiting

stood aside and said in a low clear voice: “Colonel Mottreux and Herr

Nielsen.” Two men came into the room. The first was a tall, lean,

rather hatchet-faced man, not unlike Roger himself, but with fiercer

and more hungry eyes, as Roger’s might have been had all the real

placability which his love of Isabel and his service of poetry gave

him been withdrawn. He looked like a soldier but an ambitious soldier

who doubts his future; only as he bowed abruptly to Considine he

showed a not merely military subordination; his eyes fell and did not

for a moment recover. There came after him a different figure—a man

German-built, sunburnt and weather-beaten, but still young, or young

anyhow he seemed to those who watched, though in the new spiritual air

they breathed they were aware that youth and age might have other

meanings than usual in terms of time. He bowed much more deeply than

Mottreux, and once well in the room he halted while the other went

forward.

 

“My dear Mottreux,” Considine said, not moving, but smiling and

holding out his hand. Colonel Mottreux pressed it lightly, almost

deferentially; his eyes went to the guests.

 

“These gentlemen have been dining with me,” Considine said. “I’ve

wished them to remain a little. We’ll talk of your other business

later, Mottreux. Let Herr Nielsen tell me his purpose first.”

 

Mottreux stood aside and motioned to Nielsen who came forward and

halted two or three steps away.

 

Considine stretched out his hand, and the other bowed over it,

genuflecting a little at the same time as if he were in a royal or

sacerdotal presence. But he came erect again and faced his suzerain

with an air almost as august as his own. His face was ardent with a

profound resolution; to say that “his soul was in his eyes” was no

description but a definition. They burned with a purpose and

Considine’s looked back at them as if he received that purpose and

confirmed it.

 

“Why have you come to me?” he asked, gently, and as if it were a

ritual rather than a necessary interrogation.

 

“I have come to beg for the permission,” the other said.

 

“The permission is in yourself,” Considine answered. “I only hear it,

but that it’s right that I should do. Are you a child of the

Mysteries?”

 

“Since you showed them to me,” Nielsen said.

 

“That was fifty years ago,” Considine answered, and the watchers in

the shadow thrilled and trembled as they heard the calm voice, and

that which, equally calm, replied, “I’ve followed them since.”

 

“Tell me a little,” Considine said, and the other considering,

answered, “I have endured love and transmuted it. I have found, when I

was young, that the sensual desires of man can be changed into

strength of imagination and a physical burden become the bearer of the

burden. I have transmuted masculine sex into human life. I am one of

the masters of love. And I’ve done this with all things—whatever I

have loved or hated, I have poured the strength of every love and hate

into my own life and what is behind my life, and now I need love and

hate no more.”

 

He paused, and Considine said, shooting one swift glance towards his

guests: “Is this a greater or lesser thing than hate or love?”

 

“Sir, it’s strength and health beyond describing,” Nielsen said. “But

it’s now that I long to go farther.”

 

Considine turned and faced him full, asking “What will you do now?”

 

“I will go down to death and come again living,” the other said.

 

Considine’s eyes searched him long in silence: then he said slowly,

“You may not come again.”

 

“Then let me die in that moment,” the other cried out. “That’s

nothing; it doesn’t matter; if I fail, I fail. But it’s not by

dreaming of failure that the master of death shall come. Haven’t you

told us that this shall be? and it’s in my heart now to raise my body

from death. I’m not like you; I’m not necessary in this moment to the

freeing of men; let me set free the fire that’s in us; let me go to

break down the barriers of death.”

 

He flung out his hands and caught Considine’s; he poured upon his lord

the throbbing triumph of his belief and his desire. Considine’s voice,

fuller and richer than any of the hearers had known it, answered him:

“The will and the right are yours, not mine. I’m here