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

silent, followed his example, the sharp injury ceased, and a throb of relief and content took its place. In the virtue of that healing silence he got into the car and sat down.

“The thunder’s still sounding,” the doctor said as they started.

“Is it?” Anthony said. It did not strike him as particularly curious that he could not hear it, though with a certain amusement he reflected that if the servants of the Immortals were blind and deaf to the sights and sounds ordinary people noticed it might be slightly inconvenient. Perhaps that, in the past, was why so many of them came to violent and painful ends. But the thunder—which was not thunder, he knew, but the utterance of the guardian of the angelical world—he certainly could not hear. He almost felt as if he might if he gave his whole attention to it, but why give his whole attention to it, unless it would please anyone very much? And he didn’t think Dr. Rockbotham was interested enough to want that.

During the ride he looked at the country. Things were not yet clear to him; but communication was going on within him. As they ran past the first few scattered houses of the town, he thought he saw once more the shape of the lion, but he noticed it with awe certainly but now with no fear. The strength that had once overthrown him had now no power upon him; he was within it, and under the protection of another of the great Ideas, that Wisdom which knew the rest and itself also, the very tradition of the Ideas and the Angelicals being but a feather dropped from its everlasting and effectual wing.

Dr. Rockbotham said: “Did you happen to try and lift his hand?

“Curious, very curious,” the doctor ran on. “It’s almost impossible, so heavy, so impossible to move. I’ve never known a case quite like this. If there’s no change tomorrow I shall certainly get another opinion.”

How could one move the gate of the universals? pull up the columns through which they passed? But Rockbotham was a good man; he was serving to the best of his power, innocent, devoted, mild, surrendered to the intention of some one of these Authorities which had yet not become manifest. He would go safely among outer wonders until the place of goodness was reached, and then—if that assumption were still proceeding—be gently received into his ruling Idea. Happy were those who found so simple and easy a passing! For others, for those who were given up to the dragon and not to the angel, it might be a more difficult way. From such destruction at least he believed Damaris to be, by her very ignorance and unmalicious childishness, secure.

He refused an invitation to lunch, parted from his companion at the door of his hotel, and after a solitary meal went to his room, and there fell asleep. He slept without disturbance and without dreams till late in the evening, and woke at peace. In the same inner quiet he rose, changed, and set out for Richardson’s. What took him there he could hardly tell, and did not indeed trouble to inquire. In that profound sleep, something seemed to have been lost; the little goblin of self-consciousness which always, deride it as he would, and derision in fact only nourished and magnified it, danced a saraband in his mind—that goblin had faded and was gone. He moved, though he did not know it, with a new simplicity, and his very walk through the streets had in it a quality of intention which it had never before possessed. He rang in the same way, with no doubt whether Richardson was at home; if Richardson had not been at home he would not have been there, he knew. When he was admitted he shook hands with a joyous smile.

Richardson, when they were settled, sat back and studied him. Anthony, at amused leisure, noticed this and waited for the other to speak.

At last—“You’re there then?” Richardson said.

“There?” Anthony asked. “If you mean the house, I’ve been there.”

“Do you know how bright your eyes are?” the other irrelevantly asked.

Anthony broke into a laugh, the first time he had laughed wholeheartedly for several days. “Well, that’s jolly!” he said. “I hope they’ll impress Damaris that way.” But he offered no explanation of the name and Richardson courteously ignored it. Instead, he said, thoughtfully, “So you’ve been to the house? And what do you know of things now?”

Anthony found himself a little unwilling to speak, not because he mistrusted Richardson, but because to recount his own experience would take them no farther. It was no use saying to another soul, “I did—I saw—I was—this, that, or the other,” because what applied to him couldn’t apply to anyone else, not to anyone else at all in the whole community of mankind. Some more general, some ceremonial utterance was needed. Now, if ever, he needed the ritual of words arranged and shaped for that end. He saw t he De Angelis on the table, leaned forward, and picked it up, looking over at Richardson as he did so.

“How can I tell you?” he said. “We don’t know Victorinus; let’s see if he can be the mouthpiece of the gods. Shall I?”

“Do as you like,” the other answered. “Perhaps you’re right; if the symbols are there ready why bother to make fresh?”

Anthony considered this for a few seconds, as if it held some meaning of which he was uncertain. But presently he opened the book, and slowly turned the pages, reading aloud a sentence here and there, and translating as he read. To a certain extent he had always kept up his own Latin, but it was not merely that knowledge which now enabled him to understand so easily the antique habit of the tongue; his perseverance did but open the way to a larger certainty.

“‘As it is written Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the world? and this is the place of the foundations, out of which there arise all kinds of men compact of powers; and therefore it was that when the Lord would rebuke Job he demanded of him concerning the said foundations, saying Doth the eagle mount up at thy command? and She dwelleth on the crag of the rock and the strong place…

“‘But the names that are given are of one kind, as when it is said among the wise that there is strength or beauty, or humility, meaning that certain men are strong or beautiful or humble, which certain heretics wrenched to their destruction, saying that these names were no more than words used for many like things and had in themselves no meaning; and the shapes which are seen are of another, as the lion and the eagle and the unicorn and the lamb…Nor is either made sufficient, but as a foreknowledge of the revelation that shall be.’…

“‘Also they have power in death, and woe unto him that is given up to them and torn aside between them, having no authority over the Mighty Ones because he is cast out from salvation and hath never governed them in himself.’…

“‘For there is a mystery of the earth and the air, and of the water and the air, and the Divine Ones manifest themselves in both according to their natures; so that the circle of the lion is that of leviathan, and of the others accordingly: as it is written There is one flesh of beasts and another of fish: and They that go down to the sea in ships these see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the great deep…’”

Anthony stopped reading, and Richardson said briefly: “But there is something beyond them all.”

“It may be,” the other said, “and that I suppose we shall discover in time. Meanwhile—”

“There is no meanwhile at all,” Richardson interrupted. “I think that this fellow was quite right, and I believe you’ve seen and known something. But for myself I will go straight to the end.”

Anthony swayed the book slowly in his hand. “Isn’t there an order”, he said, “in everything? If one has to find balance, and a kind of movement in balance…I mean, to act here where we are….”

“But I don’t want to act where we are,” the other cried out sharply. “Why should one act?”

“Other people, perhaps,” Anthony almost shyly suggested. “If by any chance…”

He stopped abruptly, and listened. Then he stood up, put down the book, and said, “Open the window.” The words were not exactly a command nor a request; they came to Richardson rather as a statement of something he was about to do; they passed on into the outer world a thing which was already preordained. But though he moved to obey he was already too late; Anthony had crossed the room, pushed the window up, and was leaning out. Richardson came up behind him and also listened.

The Sunday evening was very quiet. A few noises, wheels, footsteps, a door shutting, broke the stillness, and from some distance off the last hymn of the evening service at some church. That died away, and for a few minutes there was utter silence. In that silence there came to Anthony, distant but shrill, the sound of a woman’s terrified scream. He pulled himself back, shut the window, said to Richardson, “I’m sorry, I must go. That was Damaris,” and moved with extreme lightness and extreme quickness to the front door, gathering his hat and stick in one movement as he passed. Richardson called out something which he did not catch; he waved his hand, took a leap down the steps, and ran along the street at top speed.

He was happily aware, as he went, of how easy, how lovely, it was to run like this; he was, more deeply and even more happily, aware that the moment for which he had long waited was come. But he was not aware of himself as bringing any help; it was his business to run because by that some sort of help could reach Damaris; what he could no more tell than he could tell what danger had threatened her and had wrung from her that scream which some interior faculty of his soul had caught. He came to the corner an d turned it.

Richardson, startled out of his contemplations by Anthony’s movement, had at first hesitated, and then, half-involuntarily, followed, as if drawn in the other’s train. But when he in turn came to the corner he stopped. He saw Anthony before him but he saw something else too.

In the middle of the street was a horse and cart.. Or there had been. It had been jogging along peacefully enough when suddenly its sleeping driver felt the reins torn from his hand, heard a crash and a rending, awoke from his doze, and saw the horse tearing itself free of cart and harness. Its white coat gleamed silver; it grew larger and burst the leather bands that held it; it tossed its head, and the absurd blinkers fell off; it swept its tail round and the shafts snapped and fell. The horse made one final plunge and stood free. The frightened driver, cursing, began to clamber out of the cart. As he did so, he saw a young man running down the street at a tremendous speed, and shouted to him to get hold of the horse’s head. The young man swerved, apparently to obey, came up to the horse, leapt with the full force of his run, and with one hand to its neck so sat astride. The driver, half-way between his seat and the ground, cried out again wit h greater oaths, and fell gapingly silent. For the young man, now settling