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

me free from a power that has been about me since I was a

boy.”

 

Roger turned his head. “You mean Considine!” he asked.

 

“I mean Considine,” the African answered. “Something I can tell you

perhaps that you don’t know. It’s true—what he says. He is a

hundred—two hundred years old—I do not know how old. He was known to

my grandfather as the Deathless, and to his grandfather again, and

others before that. He has been a power among the chieftains and the

witch-doctors, but not always to their liking. For many of them had

become conjurers, debased things, frogs sitting in the swamp, losing

knowledge as you of the West have lost knowledge, and these he

defeated and sometimes killed, till from the Niger to the Zambesi the

rest feared and obeyed him. Sometimes he went away for long periods—

then, I suppose, he was in Europe or elsewhere—but he always

returned, and his return went before him into the villages and then

those who had sold their magic for gifts were very greatly afraid.”

 

Sir Bernard with the slightest disdain said as the other paused:

“Magic! Did Mr. Considine draw circles with a thigh-bone and make

love-philtres from banana-trees?”

 

Inkamasi smiled back at him. “Is there any certain reason why a

love-philtre couldn’t be made from a banana? But he wasn’t concerned

with that kind of magic. He desired a greater mastery, and that I

think he found. Most men waste their energies, even at their best they

waste them, on fantastic dreams and worthless actions. Above all they

waste this power which you call love but we have called lordship. It

is said among some of us that the high Spring is the time of lordship.

This power and lordship Considine and his schools have sought to use.

They have sought to restore its strength to the royal imagination from

which in the beginning it came. Mysteriously, yet by methods which

they say are open to all, they have learnt to arouse and restrain and

direct the exaltation of love to such purposes as they choose. They

have learnt by the contemplation of beauty in man or woman to fill

themselves with a wonderful and delighted excitement, and to turn that

excitement to deliberate ends. But the first of these ends is life,

that other ends may be reached in turn. Whether any before Considine

has done this thing, I do not know; but I believe that he has done it.

He has so filled the uttermost reaches of his being with the

imagination and consciousness of life that his body, renewed so from

time to time, when it is unusually weary, let us say, is impervious to

time and decay and sickness. Accident might destroy him. But this

mastery and transformation of love and sex is but a beginning. Have

you not asked yourselves what is the death which spreads through

creation, so that all things live by the death of others? Men and

animals, we live by destruction. But these diverse schools have asked

themselves whether indeed this is the whole secret, or whether it is

so far but a substitution—a lesser thing taking the place of a

greater. If man can descend into death, may he not find that what

awaits him is an incredible ecstasy of descent and return? Considine

is seeking to find that way. To be the food on which one feeds, to be

free from any accident of death, to know the ecstasy of being at once

priest and victim—all these ends are in his search.”

 

He paused considering, and Caithness said: “Do you speak of this from

your own knowledge?”

 

The king answered: “Not of my own experience, for my father turned

from the ways of his father, and brought me up in the Faith and sent

me to England to learn the ways of the mind. Nor would he let me be

initiated into the ways of the assemblies, though my grandfather and

the other wise men of his generation belonged to them. But when I was

only a child the Deathless One came and persuaded my father—I cannot

guess with what words—and I was given into his hands. He bound my

will and my thought lest a day should come when he should need me. I

think he bound all the sons of the kings of Africa. So he would

sometimes talk when I was there, because he held me so that I could

not speak without leave.”

 

“But you came to England,” Sir Bernard said.

 

“Yes,” the king said, “only he knew where I was and what I was doing,

and when the time had come he called me and I came.”

 

“What do you think he really wants?” Roger said abruptly. “Why is he

making war?”

 

“I think he wants what he says,” the king answered, “the freedom of

Africa. I don’t think he minds about destroying or even defeating

Europe, he only needs a continent where the schools may flourish, and

the gospel of ecstasy be born.”

 

“The defeat of Europe on that scale”, Sir Bernard said, “sounds rather

like a moment of unusually exalted and not specially reliable

imagination.”

 

Inkamasi leant forward with a quick fierce movement.

 

“Take care,” he said, almost angrily, and his eyes burned at them,

“take care you don’t underrate him or despise him. Ever since he

determined to do this he has made his preparations—he has chosen and

trained his men and armed them. He has wealth—are aeroplanes and

submarines, yes and guns, so difficult to buy and have shipped in

parts as provisions or cotton or iron rails or Bibles or machinery to

appointed harbours? Then there was the War—who had time to bother

about the interior of Africa during the War?”

 

“One way and another”, Sir Bernard protested, “there are a large

number of Europeans in the interior of Africa, watching it and doing

things to it.”

 

“Yes,” Inkamasi answered, “and how many of your Europeans themselves

are in it? How much of the white Administration belongs to the

Mysteries? Has no conqueror ever been civilized by the nation he

ruled? A white general may lead the attack on London yet; the Devotees

themselves are often white.”

 

“The what?” Sir Bernard asked.

 

“The Devotees,” the Zulu answered. “It’s a high circle of those who

having achieved much choose to render their lives wholly into the will

of the Deathless One that he may use them as he pleases. Didn’t you

see that of the aeronauts in last night’s raid the few who lived after

they came down shot themselves before they could be taken? They were

of the Devotees. Most of them”, he added, “are women.”

 

An abrupt movement swept the circle. “Women!” Caithness exclaimed.

“Does he depend on the devotion of women?”

 

“And look here,” Philip said rather desperately, “do you mean to say

that the white officers could be mixed up in the African armies?”

 

“As to the women,” Sir Bernard said, “the early Church, if I remember

rightly, depended largely on women.”

 

“And as to the white officers,” Roger said abruptly, “Mr. Caithness

will applaud a similar precedent of Jew and Gentile.”

 

Caithness took no notice, except by a nod. He said: “This sleep—is it

hypnotic?”

 

Inkamasi made a movement with his hands. “Call it so if you like,” he

answered, “but I think rather that hypnotism is a reflection of it. He

is able to establish a control on all the consciousness, except the

secret centre of a man’s being and the mere exterior apprehensions of

the world. He can suspend thought and will—until he or a greater than

he restores it.”

 

“Well,” Sir Bernard said, “the immediate point is—have I enough

reasonable (if you can call it reasonable) stuff to send to the Home

Secretary or the Public Prosecutor or the Elder Brethren of the

Trinity?—who sound the kind of people that ought to be looking after

the Deathless One. What do you say, Isabel?”

 

Isabel was looking at Roger and did not for a moment answer. Then she

said, “I think so—yes. Whether they’ll believe it…”

 

“I once put the Prime Minister’s stomach right,” Sir Bernard said

thoughtfully. “Perhaps I’d better go to him. What d’you think?” he

added to Inkamasi.

 

“If you can seize Considine,” the king said,—“I say, if you can—it

will not be easy. For the greatest energy is in him, he and he alone

is the centre of all the schools; it is he who holds power, either by

the initiation or by the sleep, over the royalties of Africa; he is

the union of their armies; without him the energies of the adepts will

be divided, the generals will quarrel, the armies will fight. I tell

you this, because you have saved me twice, and because I do not think

mankind can be saved without intellect and without God.”

 

“It must be almost the first time in the history of the world that

those powers have been united,” said Sir Bernard. “But what of you?”

 

The king looked at the floor. “I indeed can do nothing,” he said, “for

I cannot get to my people: I do not know where they are fighting. And

I do not want to help Considine, though I long for Africa to be free.

I am neither of one side nor of the other, neither of Europe nor

Africa. I am an outcast and an exile.”

 

“You are the citizen of another country,” the priest said, “that is, a

heavenly.”

 

“Also, I am the king,” Inkamasi exclaimed, “and there shall be no

peace between this man and me. He laid his power upon me when I was a

child, he has made me his puppet since, and for that I will kill him,

though my spirit goes down with his into hell.”

 

“It was not for this that Christ redeemed you,” Caithness cried to

him.

 

“I am the king,” Inkamasi said, “and I will put my foot upon his

mouth; I, Inkamasi, the king.”

 

Rosamond gave a little choked cry. Philip leant forward quickly and

put his hand on hers, but she pulled it away. “It’s all right,” she

said. “I just felt…it’s all right, Philip.”

 

Sir Bernard got up, an eye on his prospective daughter-in-law. “Well,

if you are all agreed-”

 

Roger pushed his chair back a trifle, and said, more sharply than

before, “It won’t stop you, but—no, we’re not.”

 

There was a dead silence. Roger was looking at his wife; the others

looked at him. Philip buried his head in his hands. Sir Bernard began

to speak when Caithness broke in: “What d’you mean, Roger? Surely

there can’t be two opinions about letting the authorities know about

this charlatan?”

 

“It may be your duty,” Roger said, “I’m pretty certain it isn’t mine.

You haven’t met him.”

 

“Sir Bernard has and Sir Bernard agrees,” Caithness answered.

 

“Sir Bernard and I don’t believe in the same things,” Roger said. “I

can’t stop him but I won’t have anything to do with it.”

 

Philip got up-for him violently. “Roger,” he cried out, “what are you

talking about? Are you on this man’s side?”

 

“Yes, I am,” Roger said. “At least I can’t go against him. He knows

there’s something in it, and which of you all does that?”

 

“I know it very well,” Inkamasi said, sitting rigid. “And I will kill

him because of it.”

 

“You’ve a right to do as you please,” Roger answered, “but I haven’t.

I’ve no right except to follow what I know when I find it.” He looked

over at his wife. “Aren’t I right?” he exclaimed to her.

 

Isabel also stood up, and met his eyes full. “Yes,