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

down with him. I really

don’t feel capable of undressing a Zulu king; we haven’t the stuff to

do the grand coucher properly. Why is royalty so impressive?”

 

“It’s the concentration of political energy in a person,” Caithness

said thoughtfully, “the making visible of hierarchic freedom, a

presented moment of obedience and rule.”

 

“I think I prefer the Republic,” Sir Bernard said; “it’s the more

abstract dream. But I’m too tired to discuss it. Let’s settle as well

as we can. Will you have the divan?”

 

Neither of them slept much—indeed Caithness remained wakeful in his

chair, except when for change of comfort he walked up and down a

little. Sir Bernard, having slipped away for a few minutes to change,

locked the door, took the key with him, and stretched himself on the

divan, but only to feel himself revolving the events of the evening.

Once his mind was relaxed it became conscious that it was more

distressed than it had known. The impact of these high, strange, and

violent ideas, the circumstances of colour, music, and ceremonial with

which they had been accompanied, the dim suggestion of vivid

personalities accepting and serving them and ringing around

Considine’s own exalted figure, the dimmer but not negligible

possibility that here in London moved the mysterious High Executive of

the African declarations, the great intention of Nielsen’s voice, the

threat and anger of the guns answering some threat hurled from the

hidden places of the negro nations, the obedience of Inkamasi to some

distant control, the passion of Ian Caithness-all these things shook

his sedate and happily ironical brain. This was an irony which his

habits found it difficult to bear, for it struck at the root of his

own irony. And one nearer thing troubled him yet more closely. There

had been five of them at dinner that night, and three of them had gone

together, and of those three how many had come away? Roger and Philip

had gone with him, but it was not the same Roger that had parted from

him afterwards, and Philip was labouring under some unaccustomed

burden. He felt obscurely alone—his own house, his own friends, were

grown alien to him; nowhere in all the world was there one intimate

with whom he could mock at the monstrous apparitions that loomed on

the outskirts of his mind, closing round the slender spires and

delicate gardens, in which of late its chosen civilization had moved.

Not so much the facts, though they were grotesque enough, but the

manner of the facts, disturbed him—the triumph, the fanaticism, the

shadows of ecstasy. Other memories forced themselves on him—an insane

political hot-gospeller in Hyde Park, Caithness vestmented in an

ecclesiastical ceremony, the antique faces of the Jews in the crude

reproductions of the papers, a look in Philip’s eyes as he watched

Rosamond, the silly raucous voices of the crowd in the streets: where

was detachment, where was contemplation there? Amidst all the gracious

achievements of the mind what wild rites of self-immolation were

again to be practised? the rich blue of those curtains was marvellous

in its beauty, but in what depth of rapturous experience had it been

woven? and was that rapture, with all that must accompany it of danger

and terror, indeed desirable for man? Someone had cried out somewhere

lately—“I will encounter darkness as a bride”—“She comes…the

sable throne behold”…to encounter that as a bride; the words meant

to him something far beyond his nature. Darkness was to be exiled, not

embraced; and when, as in the hour of death, it could no longer be

exiled, it should be received with a proud and courteous if

constrained hostility. It was Roger who had cried: Roger who loved

some mysterious energy that he himself had never found, or finding had

mistrusted and banished. He looked from his couch on the shaded room,

the dark face of the African chieftain, the pacing figure of the

priest of crucifixion; he listened to find if he should again hear the

sound of the guns that warned him of a crusade which had spies and

devotees in the city where he lay, in the friends by whom he was

surrounded, nay, in the very spirit which moved in his obscure self.

 

Nevertheless, he rose early the next morning with a mind still

determined to enjoy its stand against enemies within and without, and

gravely put his telephone at Ian’s disposal in order that the priest

might speak to Lambeth. It seemed to Sir Bernard very unlikely that

the Archbishop would be up, but either he was or he was caused to be.

After a prolonged conversation Caithness came back to say merely that

all had been arranged. Philip, who apparently had also had very little

sleep, offered to drive, more for the sake of doing something, his

father suspected, than because he was very clear what was supposed to

be happening. But it was a perfectly good idea, Sir Bernard thought;

he himself had done all, and rather more than all, that could be

thought reasonable, and if Caithness’s Deity were going to fight Nigel

Considine for the soul of the Zulu king, he would himself maintain

towards such fantastic spiritual warfare a beautiful neutrality. He

liked Inkamasi as an individual; he sympathized with him as an

African; he was prepared to be interested in him as a king. But he was

certainly not prepared to help decide whether he should turn out a

fervent Christian or a submissive Considinian; the powers concerned

could settle that between them. He saw the others off, and returned

first to have breakfast and then to ring up Roger and urge on him the

advisability of removing himself, Isabel and Rosamond to Colindale

Square in case of further air-raids. Roger made some objection about

correspondence, but a long discussion conducted between Sir Bernard at

one end and sometimes Roger, sometimes Isabel, sometimes both of them

at the other, and sometimes merely between themselves, ended in their

accepting his offer. “I had thought of leaving London,” Sir Bernard

said, “but if we decide to go, we can all go together. It’ll be kinder

to Philip for you to come here, and I have the finest sort of cellar

if it’s needed.”

 

Meanwhile, Philip at the steering-wheel was trying to order his own

distracted mind. He certainly hadn’t had much sleep; the evening had

shaken him far too much. That curious music, so closely allied to

Rosamond yet ever avoiding her, calling and driving him to look for

something that seemed to hide in her yet had to be found for its own

sake not for hers, that music would by itself have prevented sleep.

And when to it was added the obscure talk of Considine’s—and talk

that meant something. The moment of vision in Isabel’s kitchen, when

Rosamond’s arm had lain like a bar of firmamental power across the

whole created universe, dividing and reconciling at once, had stirred

in him something more than masculinity, and whatever had been stirred

had recognized its own kingdom in Considine’s voice when he had spoken

of the divine delight which foretells and communicates the conquest of

death. Philip was not much concerned with the conquest of death as

such in the future, but he was vitally concerned with its immediate

presence. He became dimly aware that though Rosamond would die the

thing he had seen in Rosamond not merely could not die but had nothing

whatever to do with death. Even if it passed—though of course it

couldn’t pass—but even if it did pass, still its passing had got

nothing whatever to do with it. Its presence, he toiled laboriously at

an undefined thought, had got nothing to do with its absence. Was it

so very surprising then that men could determine not to die? He rather

wondered whether he could manage to discuss this with Rosamond, only

she was always impatient of his slow mind, and he wouldn’t be able to

find words for it. Also, probably, she wouldn’t care about it; she’d

feel it was disagreeable and a trifle obscene, and perhaps she was

right. She and Considine wouldn’t get on very well; only then—far off

a single unmistakable note sounded and ceased—only then which of

them…Shocked, as such lovers are, by the implied disloyalty, when

first some alien fate separates itself from the hitherto universal

fate which is the beloved, he put it hastily out of his mind. He had

not understood, in his confusion, the accusation which his father had

flung at Considine, and Sir Bernard considerately had not pressed it

on him. The High Executive was something to do with negroes, and

Considine was a man in London with whom he had dined. The conquest of

death itself would have been an easier matter to Philip than the union

of those two thoughts in a single idea. But the two experiences ran

closely parallel in his troubled heart.

 

At Lambeth he followed the others, Caithness gently guiding the Zulu

by a hand on his arm. Philip, without exactly professing and calling

himself a Christian, had a general idea that he disagreed with the

people who disagreed with Christianity. His father’s own disagreement

slightly accentuated this, because in the usual reflux of the

generations he tended to assume that his father’s mind was

insufficient. And anyhow any mere mental and argumentative

disagreement was past bothering him at the moment. He couldn’t

possibly have sat in the car while the others went wherever they were

going; and if the king had really been put to sleep, he thought the

king ought to be wakened. But even the relation of Considine with the

king did not cause him to suspect whose determination had challenged

England in the strange and piercing notes of the Allied Suzerainties

of Africa. So he went on.

 

One of the Archbishop’s chaplains met them and brought them to the

private chapel. Caithness led Inkamasi to the rails of the sanctuary

and there caused him to kneel, kneeling himself by his side. Philip

slipped behind a chair. The Archbishop, vested in the ordinary

chasuble, and the chaplain, acting as server, made their entrance.

Murmured sentences were exchanged and the Archbishop went up to the

altar.

 

Philip had long ago lost touch with the ritual of the Mysteries, and

the opening prayers brought back to him only a confused memory of

uninteresting moments in boyhood and youth. The Archbishop, with a

swift intense movement, wheeled towards the kneeling four and began

the Commandments. Caithness turned his gaze on to Inkamasi, and seemed

to concentrate it, as the celebrant uttered, almost as if in an

incantation and with his look also fixed on the Zulu, “Thou shalt have

none other gods but me.” The chaplain answered softly, and the beating

series of directions went on. The Archbishop turned again to the

altar, murmured a longer prayer, another, and came to the Epistle.

 

Of the Epistle and Gospel Philip, unused, to the phrasing and tone,

understood very little. A phrase here and there struck him. “Greater

is he that is in you than he that is in the world.” “This sickness is

not unto death.” “I am the resurrection and the life.” “Lazarus, come

forth.” He was aware of a rising tide of passion, swelled suddenly as

the Archbishop broke into the Creed by the strong voice of Caithness.

The tones of the three priests mingled and achieved the Profession,

and ceased; and for some minutes Philip again heard only the single

voice of the celebrant, with an occasional murmur from the chaplain.

Nevertheless, as he knelt listening, the Rite ordered his mind. He

forgot to try and reconcile; he was moved by reconciliation. There

rose in him a feeling kindred to that with which sometimes he had

waited for Rosamond—entire expectation yet mingled with complete

repose and certainty. The face of Caithness, when he saw