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

they stood so near, Roger was surprised to find

himself taken aback by the other’s face and bearing. He was not as a

rule easily impressed by those he met; he had far too good an opinion

of himself. But here…He saw a man of apparently about fifty, tall,

well-proportioned, clean-shaven, with a good forehead and a good

chin. But it was neither forehead nor chin that held Ingram; it was

the eyes. He thought of the word “smouldering,” and almost as quickly

cursed himself for thinking of it; it was such a hateful word, only it

was the most accurate. Something, repressed and controlled but vivid,

was living in them; they corresponded, in their flickering intensity,

to a voice that vibrated with some similar controlled ardour. The word

“darkness” as it was uttered called to him as it did in the lines he

had quoted; he felt as if he were looking at the thing itself. He

began to speak, stammered on a syllable, and at last said helplessly:

“I? darkness?”

 

“You spoke of it familiarly,” the other said. “You used her language.”

 

Roger pulled himself together; he answered with a slight hostility.

“If you mean my one Shakespearean quotation-”

 

“Isn’t that just darkness making itself known?” Considine asked. “Or

do you use apposite quotation merely as a social convenience?”

 

Roger felt ridiculously helpless, as if a believer accustomed to

infidels were suddenly confronted by a fanatic of his own creed. But

the implied sneer stung him, and he said sharply, “I don’t quote.”

 

“I believe that—because of your voice,” the other answered. “You must

forgive me if I was offensive; could I help wondering if you really

made that rapturous cry your own?”

 

He allowed the attendant to help him on with his coat as he spoke.

Roger’s own things lay neglected on the counter, and the other

attendant waited by them. Roger himself was absurdly conscious of the

presence of those two auditors. He had often talked highly in similar

circumstances before, not theatrically certainly but with a sardonic

consciousness that the subservient listeners probably thought him a

little mad, with the slight enjoyment of being too much for them, with

an equally slight but equally definite and continuous despair that

words which meant so much to him meant so little to others. But

Considine was speaking perfectly naturally, only always with that

sounding depth of significance in his voice.

 

“I am glad you liked it,” Roger said foolishly.

 

Considine said nothing at all to this, and Roger became instantly

conscious of the fatuity of the words. “Rapturous cry”…“glad you

liked it.” Ass! “No, really,” he said very hastily, “I mean…I did

really mean it. I mean I do like poetry. Good God!” he thought to

himself, “if my classes could hear me now.”

 

Hatted and gloved, Considine turned to him. “You are a little afraid

of it, I think,” he said. “Or else you have spoken your beliefs very

little.”

 

“Nobody cares about it,” Roger said, “and I mock at myself, God

forgive me, because there’s nothing else to do.”

 

They were moving together out of the cloakroom.

 

“There’s much else to do,” Considine answered, “and I think you

believe that; I think you dare encounter darkness.”

 

He raised his hand in salutation. Isabel was ready waiting with Sir

Bernard, but before he joined them Roger stood still watching

Considine going towards the door, and when at last he came to them he

was still troubled.

 

“Darling, what’s the matter?” Isabel said. “You’re looking very

gloomy.”

 

“Mr. Considine’s been talking of the fakirs,” Sir Bernard said, “and

Roger’s wondering if he’s one.”

 

Roger regarded them for a moment and then made an effort to recover

himself. “I don’t mind telling you,” he answered, “that Mr. Considine

has played me entirely off my own stage in my own play, and I didn’t

think there was a man living who could do that.”

 

“Elucidate,” Sir Bernard said.

 

“I shan’t elucidate,” Ingram answered. “I don’t see why I should be

the only fellow to encounter darkness. D’you want a taxi, Sir

Bernard?”

 

Sir Bernard did, and after having parted from the Ingrams and entered

it, he lay back and tried once more to remember where he had seen

Considine. It was quite recently, and yet he had a vague feeling that

it wasn’t recently. An idea of yesterday and an idea of many years ago

conflicted in his mind—a man with his hand a little lifted, almost as

if it contained and controlled power, a hand of energy in rest.

Perhaps, he thought, it was the theme of the speeches which had misled

him; they had been listening to talk about distant places, and perhaps

his mind had transferred that distance to time. It must have been

yesterday or he wouldn’t remember so clearly. It couldn’t have been

long ago or Considine, who was obviously younger than his own sixty

odd years, would have changed. His gesture mightn’t have changed, all

the same—well, it didn’t matter. As he got out at his Kensington

house he reflected that it would come back, of course; sooner or later

the pattern of his knowledge would bring that little detail to his

mind. The intellect hardly ever failed one eventually, if one

fulfilled the conditions it imposed. But it did perhaps rather ignore

the immediate necessities of ordinary life; in its own pure life it

overlooked the “Now and here” of one’s daily wishes. Still, his own

was very good to him; with a happy gratitude to it he came into the

library, where he found his son reading letters.

 

“Hullo, Philip!” he said. “Had a good evening? How’s Rosamond?”

 

“Very fit, thanks,” Philip answered. “Did you have a good time?”

 

Sir Bernard nodded, and sat down leisurely. “Roger told us how he

liked poetry,” he said, “and the explorer told us how he liked

himself, and Mr. Nigel Considine told us how he disliked the

University.”

 

“Not in so many words?” Philip asked.

 

“Contrapuntal,” Sir Bernard said. “When you’ve heard as many speeches

as I have, you’ll find that’s the only interest in them: the

intermingling of the theme proposed and the theme actual.”

 

“I can never make out whether Roger’s serious,” Philip said. “He seems

to be getting at one the whole time. Rosamond feels it too.”

 

Sir Bernard thought it very likely. Rosamond Murchison was Isabel’s

sister and Roger’s sister-in-law, but only in law. Rosamond privately

felt that Roger was conceited and not quite nice; Roger, less

privately, felt that Rosamond was stuckup and not quite intelligent.

When, as at present, she was staying with the Ingrams in Hampstead, it

was only by Isabel’s embracing sympathy that tolerable relations were

maintained. Sir Bernard almost wished that Philip could have got

engaged to someone else. He was very fond of his son, and he was

afraid that the approaching marriage would make, at the times when he

visited them, an atmosphere in which, but for brief intervals, he

would find it impossible to breathe. Philip’s mind by itself was at

present earnest and persevering, if a trifle slow. But Philip’s mind

surrounded and closed in by Rosamond’s promised, so far as he could

see, to become merely static. He looked over at his son.

 

“Roger’s serious enough,” he said. “But he still expects to get direct

results instead of indirect. He never realizes that the real result of

anything is always round the corner.”

 

“What corner?” Philip asked.

 

“The universal corner”, Sir Bernard said, “around which we are always

on the point of turning—into a street where there are all the numbers

except that of the house we’re looking for. Good heavens, I’m becoming

philosophical. That’s the result of University dinners.”

 

“I don’t think I quite follow you,” Philip said.

 

“It doesn’t at all matter,” Sir Bernard answered. “I only meant that I

should like you to believe that Roger’s quite serious, and a little

unhappy.”

 

“Unhappy!” Philip exclaimed. “Roger!”

 

“Certainly unhappy,” Sir Bernard said. “He’s fanatic enough to believe

passionately and not sufficiently fanatical to believe that other

people ought to believe. Naturally also, being young, he thinks his

own belief is the only real way of salvation, though he’d deny that if

you asked him. So he’s in a continual unsuccessful emotional conflict,

and therefore he’s unhappy.”

 

“But I don’t understand,” Philip said. “Roger never goes to church.

What does he believe in?”

 

“Poetry,” Sir Bernard answered, and “O—poetry!” Philip exclaimed; “I

thought you meant something religious. I don’t see why poetry should

make him unhappy.”

 

“Try living in a world where everyone says to you, quite insincerely,

‘O isn’t Miss Murchison charming!’” his father said drily. “Or

alternatively, ‘I can’t think what you see in her.’ And then-”

 

He was interrupted by the entrance of a third person.

 

“Hullo, Ian,” he broke off; “how’s the Archbishop?”

 

Ian Caithness was the vicar of a Yorkshire parish and Philip’s

godfather. He was a tall man of about Sir Bernard’s age and looked

like an ascetic priest, which was more by good luck than by merit, for

he practised no extreme austerities. But he took life seriously, and

(as often happens) attributed his temperament to his religion. He was

therefore not entirely comfortable with other people of different

temperaments who did the same thing, and a lifelong friendship with

Sir Bernard had probably survived because the other remained

delicately poised in a philosophy outside the Church. As a Christian

Sir Bernard would have probably irritated his friend intolerably; he

soothed him as a—it was difficult to say what; Sir Bernard

occasionally alluded to himself as a neo-Christian, “meaning,” he

said, “like most neos, one who takes the advantages without the

disadvantages. As Neo-Platonist, neo-Thomist, and neolithic too, for

all I know.” On the rare occasions when Caithness came to London he

always stopped in Kensington; on the still rarer when Sir Bernard went

to Yorkshire he always went to church.

 

“Rather bothered,” Caithness said in answer to his friend’s greeting.

“The Government papers are making capital out of the massacres of the

missions, and demanding expeditions.”

 

“What massacres?” Philip asked in surprise. “Being down in Dorset for

a couple of weeks has cut away the papers.”

 

“There’ve been a number of simultaneous native risings in the interior

of Africa,” Caithness answered absently, “and so far as we can hear

the Christian missionaries have been killed. The Archbishop’s very

anxious that the Government shan’t use that as a reason for military

operations.”

 

“Why ever not?” Philip said staring.

 

Caithness made an abrupt gesture with his hand. “Because it is their

duty, their honour, to die, if necessary,” he said; “it is a condition

of their calling. Because the martyrs of the Church must not be

avenged by secular arms.”

 

“A very unusual view for the Church to take,” Sir Bernard murmured.

“Normally…It’s a curious business altogether. I was told this

afternoon that the Khedive has left Cairo for a British warship.

Roger’s anthropological idols getting active, I suppose.”

 

“The pressure on Egypt must be pretty bad, then,” Caithness said.

“Well, that isn’t our business. We can’t, of course, object to any

steps the Government think it wise to take in their own interests, so

long as they don’t use the missions as a reason. The Archbishop has

intimated to the Societies who sent them out that no material ought to

be given to the papers—photographs or what not.”

 

“Photographs!” Sir Bernard exclaimed suddenly. “It was—of course, it

was. My mind would have done it, Ian, but thank you for helping it.”

He got up and went across the room to a drawer in the lower part of

one of the bookcases, whence he returned carrying