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

“But—I’m not saying you’re wrong—but why?” Anthony asked: “Isn’t fire an image too?”

“That perhaps,” the other answered. “But all this—” he touched his clothes and himself, and his eyes grew dark with a sudden passion of desire—“has to go somehow; and if the fire that will destroy the world is here already, it isn’t I that will keep from it.”

Anthony looked at him a little ruefully. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’d hoped we might have talked more. And—you know best—but you’re quite sure you’re right? I can’t see but what the images have their place. Ex umbris perhaps, but the noon has to drive the shadows away naturally, hasn’t it?”

The other shrugged. “O I know,” he said. “It’s all been argued a hundred times, Jensenist and Jesuit, the monk and the married man, mystic and sacramentalist. But all I know is that I must make for the End when and as soon as I see it. Perhaps that’s why I am alone. But since that’s so—I’d like you, if you will, and if restoration comes, to give this book back to Berringer if he’s alive, and to keep it if he isn’t. What,” he added, “what you call alive.”

Anthony took the little parcel. “I will do it,” he said. “But I only call it alive because the images must communicate, and communication is such a jolly thing. However, I’m keeping you and I mustn’t do that…as we sacramentalists say.”

They shook hands. Then Anthony broke out again. “I do wish you weren’t—No; no, I don’t. Go with God.”

“Go with God,” the other’s more sombre voice answered. They stood for a moment, then they stepped apart, their hands went up in mutual courteous farewell, and they went their separate ways.

No-one saw the young bookseller’s assistant again; no-one thought of him, except his employer and his landlady, and each of them, grumbling first, afterwards filled his place and forgot him. Alone and unnoticed he went along the country road to his secret end. Only Anthony, as he went swiftly to Damaris, commended the other’s soul to the Maker and Destroyer of images.

Damaris herself opened the door to him when he came. She was about to speak when he prevented her by saying happily: “So you found him?” “He’s asleep upstairs now,” she answered. “And you?” He pulled her closer to him. “Why, that I’ll tell you presently,” he said. “Tell me first. How beautifully you seem to do your job!”

“The doctor’s here,” she said. “I managed to get him round earlier in the day, and he said he’d come again before night. Come and see him.”

“Is it Rockbotham?” Anthony asked, moving with her up the stairs. “He’s a good creature.”

“I used to think he was rather a dull sort of fool,” Damaris said. “But to-day he was quite strong and wise. O Anthony”—she checked at the door of the bedroom—“don’t hate me, will you?”

“When I hate you,” he answered, “the place of the angels will be desolate and our necessity will forget itself.”

“What is our necessity?” she asked, looking up at him as they passed.

“It’s just to be, I suppose,” Anthony answered slowly. “I mean, the simpler one is the nearer one is to loving. If the pattern’s arranged in me, what can I do but let myself be the pattern? I can see to it that I don’t hate, but after that Love must do his own business. But let’s go on now, may we? And talk of this another day.”

“Tell me just one thing first,” Damaris said. “Do you think—I’ve been wondering this afternoon—do you think it’s wrong of me to work at Abelard?”

“Darling, how can intelligence be wrong?” he answered. “I should think you knew more about him than anyone else in the world, and it’s a perfectly sound idea to make a beautiful thing of what you know. So long as you don’t neglect me in order to do it.”

“And is that being impersonal?” she mocked him.

“Why, yes,” he said, “for that’s your job too. And all your job is impersonal and one. Or personal and one—it doesn’t matter which you say. They’re only debating words really. Come on, let’s go in.”

As Anthony looked at Dr. Rockbotham he felt that Damaris was right. The first glance had been for his friend, but Quentin seemed to be sleeping quietly, and the doctor was on the point of coming towards the door. He had never been a particularly notable figure until now, but now indeed, in the hackneyed but convincing phrase, Anthony saw him for the first time. The lines of his face were unaltered, but it was moulded in a great strength and confidence; the eyes were deep and wise; the mouth closed firmly as if on the oath of Hippocrates—the seal of silence and the knowledge of discretion. “Aesculapius,” Anthony thought to himself, and remembered the snake that was the symbol of Aesculapius. “We sneer at medicine,” he thought, “but after all we do know more—not much, but a little. We sneer at progress, but we do, in a way, progress; the gods haven’t abandoned man.” For a moment he dreamed of a white-robed bearded figure, with a great serpent coiled by him, where in some remote temple of Epidaurus or Pergam us the child of Phoebus Apollo laboured to heal men by the art that he had learned from the two-formed Cheiron, the master of herbs. Zeus had destroyed him by lightning at last, since by his wisdom the dead were recalled to life, and the sacred order of the world was in danger of being broken. But the serpent-wreathed rod was still outstretched and still the servants of the art were sent out by their father on missions of health. He shook hands gravely, as if in ritual.

“I think he’ll do very well,” the doctor was saying, and the vowels of the simple words came to Anthony’s ears heavy with the harmonies of Greek. “Exhaustion—absolute exhaustion: he must have been struck by a kind of panic. But sleep, and quiet, and food, will put him right. The proper kind of food.”

“Ah that!” Anthony exclaimed.

“But whether you can manage him here for a day or two,” the doctor went on to Damaris, “in the circumstances. He could of course be moved—”

“I don’t think there’s any need,” she answered, and then in answer to Anthony’s eyebrows, “My father died this afternoon.”

Anthony nodded; it was no more than he had expected.

“There isn’t any need to sit up with him,” the doctor went on, “and twenty-four hours’ entire rest would make a great difference. Still, it’s perhaps rather hard on you, Miss Tighe—”

Damaris put out her hand. “Ah, no!” she said. “Certainly he must be here. He is Anthony’s friend and mine. I am very, very glad he is here,” and her other hand caught Anthony’s and with an intense pressure told him all that that sentence meant of restoration and joy. After a little more conversation the doctor went, and Damaris and Anthony looked at each other in the hall.

“I won’t say I’m sorry about your father,” he said. “I think he had ended his business,” and as she smiled in a profound assent, he went on, “and now I must get on with mine.”

She looked at him anxiously, but said nothing for a minute, while he waited: then she asked, “You will let me come—wherever it is?”

“Come,” he said, and held out his hand, and so without any delay they went out of the front door and along the street together. The town was caught in the terror; the street lay empty before them. A profound stillness was all round them, except that in some house near at hand a baby was wailing. The sound was the only audible sign of humanity; it was humanity. All man’s courage and knowledge came to this in the end—Damaris, listening, remembered having read somewhere that the god who had given his name to the building which was the home of the greatest bishop in the world, the centre of the Roman Church, the shrine (it was said) of infallible authority, was Vaticanus, and the office of Vaticanus was to preside over the new-born child’s first cry. That was all; that was all that the Vatican itself could do, and all that the Vatican held. Here the spirit of man could but reach that far—and as she pondered it, the thunder crashed out again. What she had called thunder, but it was clearer now; it was the roar of a living creature. She heard it, and heard it answered. At her side Anthony had paused, thrown up his head, and sent out another cry upon the night. It was an incomprehensible call, and it broke out right in the midst of that other reverberating roar and checked and silenced it. It was a sound as of a single word, but not English, nor Latin, nor Greek. Hebrew it might have been or something older than Hebrew, some incantation whereby the prediluvian magicians had controlled contentions among spirits or the language in which our father Adam named the beasts of the garden. The roar ceased on the moment, and then as at Anthony’s movement they began again to walk on, there rose about them a little breeze. It was very light, hardly more than a ruffling of the air, but it stirred her hair, and breathed on her face, and even gently shook the light silk sleeves of her frock. She stole a glance at Anthony, and met his eyes. He was smiling and she broke into an answering smile. But it was not until they ha d gone so me way farther that she spoke.

“Where are we going?” she said.

“I think we are going to the field where you found Quentin,” he answered. “Do you remember what you saw there?”

She nodded. “And—?” she said, waiting for him to go on. But he did not, only after some minutes he said softly, “It was good of you to look for Quentin.”

“Good!” she exclaimed. “Good! O Anthony!”

“Well, so it was,” he answered. “Or good in you. How accurate one has to be with one’s prepositions! Perhaps it was a preposition wrong that set the whole world awry.”

“It was”, she said, “a preposition that helped to divide the Church.”

“Sweetest of theologians,” he answered, “I will make it my chief business always to be accurate in my prepositions about you. It shall be good in you always, and good of you never.”

“Not even for a treat?” she asked.

“O for a treat,” he answered, “you shall be the good in itself, the rose-garden of the saints. Will you meet me there tomorrow evening?”

“So soon?” she said. “Will the saints expect me?”

“Image of sanctity,” he answered, “they will look in you as a mirror to see the glory of God that is about them, by so much will your soul be clearer than theirs.”

“I suppose that’s what you mean by a treat,” she said. “It sounds to me like several at once.”

“But for a treat to me you must believe it,” he said, “for as long as it takes your finger to mark the line of life on your hand.”

“Supposing I believed it too long?” she said, half-seriously.

“Why, for fear of that,” he answered, “you will remember that what is seen in you is present in all, and that the beauty of every other living creature is as bright as yours.”

“And that”, she said, “sounds like the morning after the party.”

“It is the present given at the party,” he said, “and perhaps what the party itself was for.”

They were out of the town, and coming to the stile where Damaris had been twice with Quentin. The time had