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

of demented London, no desire of return as

there was no chance of return; within and without the passionate

terror hurled them on. Farther and farther east they poured; not

merely the Thames but great reservoirs and docks and small tributaries

of small rivers, swallowed those who were pushed aside; and there were

puddles in the street which were not water where someone had striven

to guard his belongings, and heaps that were a dreadful hindrance to

those who came behind. A pestilence of the spirit walked in the night

and slew its victims as it went.

 

It hovered in the streets; it rested in churches and such public

buildings as had been readily and benevolently opened. For in the

early hours of the exodus men had supposed that it would, however

serious and tragic, still be quiet and controlled. Certain authorities

therefore had hoped that the buildings in their charge would be of use

to exhausted fugitives. St. Paul’s, in a holy goodwill, was so opened.

The crowd entered, increased, filled it, flowed over the rails of the

sanctuary, clambered upon the altars, and within its walls suffered

and inflicted horror. The windows of public-houses, as of

eating-houses and gunsmiths, had been smashed, and bottles of drink

obtained, and the strongest men made use of their strength. On the

High Altar a drunken woman smashed a bottle over the head of a

vociferating assailant, and was shot by his companion before the

victim had died. The kingship which Inkamasi so proudly held had here

its apish rival in savage might or dextrous cunning; yet that kingship

was unstained, as all lovely things are unstained by their detestable

imitations, since beauty cannot be manifested unless the mind assents.

Without that assent, beauty itself must be tyranny; but with that

grave acceptance there is no government that is not beautiful, for

love is not only the fulfilling but the beginning of the law.

 

In Kensington all that night Sir Bernard watched, as if on a rocky

island—one of a scattered archipelago of such islands—a lingering

child of a lost race watched the sea overwhelm his city. After the

departure of Considine with his guests or prisoners—no-one was quite

sure which they were—Sir Bernard had gone back with Isabel and Philip

to the library. He stood there with his back to the fire, surveying

the room, the stains of blood on the carpet and the divan, the empty

chairs round the card-table, and the dropped cards, the general

disarray that had meant companionship and now meant desertion. He

looked at Isabel, now enduring a separation deeper than his own—at

least, presumably; everyone would say it was. Even in that moment he

found himself wondering whether Isabel or he would miss Roger the

most; it was so difficult to compare these things. Isabel had lost her

husband; and he had lost—a friend who lived mostly in Yorkshire, and

a younger friend whom he saw perhaps three or four times a month for

an hour or two, and a barbarian chief whom he’d only known a few days.

O and a Jewish mystic whom he didn’t know at all. They didn’t, all of

them put together, sound intimate beside Isabel’s loss, and yet…It

wasn’t whom you lost; it was what you lost, what centre of what

concern or quality of yourself was torn away, so that your own

capacity moved helplessly in the void. Something very like stability

had been torn from under him. He looked at Isabel again and wondered.

Was it merely her youth that made her seem, in that house of

desertion, the least deserted of them all? He was old; he’d outlived

his time; he was living on his memories. There went through him a rare

flash of envy; Isabel hadn’t to live on her memories, Isabel—

 

Sir Bernard recaptured a sense of proportion. “No-one who’s just in

the throes of seeing Considine go off with a Zulu, a Jew, a clergyman,

and an expert in the poets ought to talk of living on his memories,”

he said to himself. He said to Isabel as tenderly as possible: “Why

did you tell Roger to go?”

 

“Because I wanted him to, since he wanted to,” she said. “More; for I

wanted him to even more than he did, since I hadn’t myself to think of

and he had.”

 

Sir Bernard blinked. “I see,” he said. “But—I only ask—isn’t it a

little risky…deciding what other people want?”

 

“Dear Sir Bernard, I wasn’t deciding,” she said, “I was wanting. It

isn’t quite the same thing. I want it—whatever he wants. I don’t want

it unselfishly, or so that he may be happy, or because I ought to, or

for any reason at all. I just want it. And then, since I haven’t

myself to think of, I’m not divided or disturbed in wanting, so I can

save him trouble. That’s all.”

 

“O quite, quite,” Sir Bernard said. “That would be all. And is that

what you call quiet affection?”

 

Isabel looked a trifle perplexed. “I don’t call it anything,” she

said. “There isn’t anything to call it. It’s the way things happen, if

you love anyone.”

 

“Of course,” Sir Bernard said. “Too much excitement has made me dull

tonight. Of course, it’s the way things happen. The whole round world

has noticed it. So you wanted Roger to go?”

 

Isabel said, a little unhappily: “When you put it like that it sounds

somehow as if I didn’t really, or only because he wanted to. Don’t you

see I couldn’t want it because of him? He—somehow he wanted it in me.

O I don’t know. I’m not as intelligent as you, but I know it was the

one thing I had to have to make me happy.”

 

Sir Bernard looked at her again, very steadily. “And does it make you

happy?”

 

“Utterly,” Isabel said. “O of course it’s dreadfully painful,

but—yes, utterly.”

 

On that rich and final word they fell into silence. Irony, even loving

irony, could say no more. The mind accepted a fact which was a

contradiction in terms, and knew itself defeated by that triumphant

contradiction. Sir Bernard wished he could have heard Considine and

Isabel arguing—not that Isabel would or could have argued. So far as

he could see, she was saying exactly the opposite of Considine, and

yet they curiously agreed. They were both beyond the places of logic

and compromise, even amused compromise. They were both utterly,

utterly—well, they were both utterly, and that was that. It was no

wonder Isabel didn’t want to go to Africa.

 

It was Philip who presently, wandering restlessly about the house,

brought them news of the number of fugitives who were beginning to

hurry along Kensington High Street. Sir Bernard, hearing, frowned.

“This,” he said, “if it’s happening everywhere, may mean pure hell

before long. Let’s go and look from upstairs.” There was an attic

window which commanded the High Street, and from it they surveyed the

increasing crowd. A few of the fugitives, turning aside, hurried

through the square in which the house stood, but not many; most of

them pressed frantically onwards.

 

“I’d better make sure the front door’s fastened up,” Philip said

suddenly. “We don’t want any of them pushing in.” He added, more

carefully, “I suppose actually there’s no danger.”

 

“Of course not,” Isabel said. “Mr. Considine said he wasn’t going to

hurt London.”

 

“I don’t really see,” Sir Bernard said, “how one can be expected to

believe Mr. Considine. You can’t refuse your mind and yet have people

accept your word, can you?”

 

“But surely you do believe him?” Isabel said. “He said so.”

 

“I know he said so,” Sir Bernard patiently explained. “What I’m

trying—O very well. Besides, you’re right. I do believe him, but I

can’t think why I should. The Second Evolution of Man, I suppose.

Considine at the bottom of a well—and what a well!”

 

“That man’s very tired,” Isabel said, watching a party of five; a

woman carrying one child, a man with two, who had just turned into the

square, and were stopping even in their haste for a necessary minute.

“He oughtn’t to go on—nor ought she. Sir Bernard, don’t you think-”

 

“Yes,” Sir Bernard said. “I suppose you want to rest, too. Good God,

you do! And feed?”

 

“Well,” Isabel said, blushing slightly, “I was thinking, if you’d got

any milk, the children…I could just go and speak to them.”

 

“Then Philip will go too,” Sir Bernard said. “Ecstasy has very curious

forms sometimes, especially if it happens to be attacking anyone who

isn’t.”

 

“Isn’t what?” asked Isabel. “I thought you were talking about me.”

 

Sir Bernard took her arm. “Come down,” he said. “Philip, go and open

the door,” and as the young man obeyed, “Is that true?” he asked.

 

She turned clear eyes upon him. “I’m no good at words,” she said, “and

I’m a fool at knowing things, but when there’s something in you that

has its way, and when Roger’s doing what he must do, and I too—O every

fibre of me’s aching for him and I could sing for joy all through

me. Isn’t that all the ecstasy that I could bear? Come and

let’s do something before it breaks my heart to be alive.”