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

>The body of Nielsen had been removed; on the low couch, supported by

cushions, the Zulu lay. Considine genuflected as he entered, and

moving to one side made a sign to Caithness. The priest ran forward,

threw something round his neck, and drew a crucifix from near his

heart. He kneeled by the couch; Inkamasi leaned his head towards him

and they murmured between themselves. Considine, waiting, looked

round, and made a sign to Roger to come to his side. He slipped his

arm into the young man’s and said: “This is a gift of the universe to

you; deal wisely with it. Be strong, exult, and live.”

 

The two of them were together, a little distance from the head of the

couch; opposite them, at a greater distance from the foot, four others

had gathered. Mottreux was by the door with a clear space between him

and the Zulu. So set, they waited till the speech between the priest

and the king died; while the two yet remained in close and silent

prayer Considine said in a low voice to the others: “Enlarge in you

the imagination by which man lives; this is perhaps the moment of

fulfilment. The work shall be accomplished tonight without ritual or

ceremony such as we are used to, in your contemplation alone.” He took

a step towards Caithness and touched him on the shoulder, saying:

“Have you spoken with the king?”

 

“You’re committing wickedness,” the priest exclaimed and ceased,

broken either by his own passion or by the concentration of the

other’s power.

 

“Back, then,” Considine gently said, and when Caithness had risen and

moved a step or two away, he in turn knelt by the couch.

 

“Majesty,” he said, “are you willing to restore your kingship through

us to that of which it is a shadow?”

 

“Yes,” Inkamasi said, “for though I hold you for my own enemies and

for misguided men I think you are the only servants of the kingship

that is more than the king.”

 

“Majesty,” Considine said again, “we are the king’s servants and his

greatest friends. Farewell.” He touched Inkamasi’s hand with his lips

and rising signed to Roger to follow him. The young man went forward,

knelt, and said, “I’m sorry if this happened through me.”

 

“Don’t be,” Inkamasi said; “it’s better to die here than under the

feet of a London crowd—if there’s any difference. Thank you, and

good-bye.”

 

Roger touched his hand with his lips and went back. The rest, one by

one, followed him, ending with Mottreux and Vereker. As Mottreux in

turn moved back towards the door Caithness felt a hand press his arm

and heard a soft whisper, “Come back and wait by me.” The order

reached him in his anguish; with a hope that even now something might

interpose, he obeyed and slowly withdrew till he also stood by the

door.

 

Meanwhile, his obeisance done, Vereker had brought to Considine a

chalice that had been standing, filled with wine, on a carved table at

the side of the room. His master poured into it the contents of a

small phial; then he took the chalice in his hands, and turned towards

the couch. The silence in the room grew so deep, the absorbed

attention of the watchers so intense, that Roger felt as if the

terrific moment must break in some new astonishing revelation. Regret

and sorrow, bewilderment and antagonism, which had mingled in his

heart, were swept away; an awful harmony began to exist. So, in other

far-off lives, lesser or greater he could not tell, he had waited for

Isabel when they were young and happy, and indeed he had chosen

necessity; so he had submitted his obedience to the authority of

Milton or Wordsworth, waiting for the august plenitude of their poetry

to be manifested within him. Till now he had believed that sense of

harmony to be all they—Isabel or Paradise Lost—had to offer, but he

had begun to learn that to pause there was to be too easily content.

The harmony itself was but a prelude to some enrichment of his whole

being, which in its turn must be experienced in every detail—made

familiar that new powers might arise. He gave himself, freely and

wholly, to the moment; he was to live the more completely through the

king’s death. It was no good being distressed or ashamed; his business

was to live by it, as if necessary it would be the business of others

to live by his death. He gave himself to the moment, and in the moment

to the whole charged imagination of man. It was no lie; the mind of

man—not his mind or Inkamasi’s but man’s—was exalted above all the

power of things, “of quality and fabric more divine,” and yet his own

was never nearer or more useful to man’s than when he was most

intensely aware of all things in himself. He gave himself to the

moment.

 

“Drink, Majesty,” Considine said, and gave the chalice into Inkamasi’s

hands. The king took it, raised it to his lips, and drank. Even as it

left his lips, his grip relaxed, his face changed, he sank heavily on

to the cushions behind him.

 

But before the dropped chalice reached the floor, before the sound of

its fall could strike their ears, a violent explosion shattered them.

Roger, fixed in his surrender, saw Considine jerk his arms up and fall

crashing across the litter. Almost before the king’s body had sunk

lifeless his destroyer lay slain over him. For they saw, as soon as

their startled senses acted, that two lives, not one, had been taken.

The violence against which Considine had never pretended to be secure,

but which had avoided him so long, had struck him at last. The bullet

had pierced his skull; the blood streamed over the dead Zulu. And

Mottreux dragged Caithness from the room, and shut and locked the

door. He held the priest’s arm; he rushed him through the house,

making for the hall. Caithness ran, and listened to hasty orders: “Go

straight to the car in front of the door…get in…I’ll come. Can

you drive?”

 

“Yes,” he gasped.

 

“Get in the driver’s seat.” They reached the hall; Mottreux looking

frantically round rushed him to the front door, paused less than a

second to see that the priest was actually scrambling into the car,

pushed the door almost shut, lest by chance the other should see him,

and sent another mad glance around the hall.

 

By so small a chance he was defeated. The old Jew, when he was left

alone with the casket, had, by some trick of the mind, gone back to

the room where he and his companions had spent most of the day. He was

sitting there, lost in his meditations, when Mottreux broke in on him,

and in one wild dash caught the case in one hand. But Rosenberg held

to the trust which the God of his fathers had imposed on him. He was

dragged violently from his chair, but he clung to the sacred treasure;

he heard a voice yelling oaths, but though he was shaken to and fro he

said nothing. His face, as he lifted it, was full of a scorn deeper

than time, the scorn of his God for the spoilers of the holy places.

He saw the distorted face of a greedy Gentile above him, and before

the bullet searched his brain he spat at it once.

 

But by now the revolvers of the other servants of the Deathless One

had blown the lock of their prison from the door, and the momentary

prisoners had already nearly reached the hall. In a wild confusion and

anger they came; Mottreux heard them, and ran to the glass doors on to

the drive. These were fastened, and he was again delayed. By the time

he had got them open and was outside, Vereker and the Egyptian were

out by the car. He was seen; he fired once and ran along the wall of

the house. The shot probably saved Caithness’s life, for none of the

pursuers were in a state to distinguish between the responsibility of

the fugitives for the crime. But Vereker was unarmed, and the Egyptian

was distracted by Mottreux’s appearance. He left the priest to his

companion, and ran after Mottreux, circling widely out so as to

command the corner as he approached it. In the darkness it could only

dimly be seen.

 

Voices were calling from doors and windows. There were men in the room

where the dead Jew lay. Roger, borne along in the general rush, was

there also. He wondered afterwards why no-one had shot him down out of

hand, and attributed his salvation to the fact that Considine had

treated him familiarly. He tried to order his thoughts, but they only

repeated themselves: “Considine is dead; is he dead?” Was he dead? or

would he, first again in the great experiment, achieve the work he had

desired? The question beat at his brain as he ran. He saw the body of

the Jew as he came into the room, and paused by it. Without, from the

darkness, there came more shots. Roger pulled himself together; he’d

better look for Caithness. If Considine were dead, the two of them

would be in a very dubious position; he went as far as the glass

doors. There he listened; presently, away round the side of the house,

he heard another shot. He slipped out and along to the car, whose

lights shone steadily as they had done when last he looked at it

before he had walked in the verandah and talked. This was the kind of

thing that remained; the imagination of man was blown out in a moment

but the light of his mechanical invention remained. He cursed deeply,

and saw Caithness, who in a restless uncertainty had got out of the

car. Roger walked up to him, but for a few seconds neither of them

spoke.

 

At last Caithness said: “What had we better do?”

 

Roger answered: “I should think you’d better get away. Inkamasi’s

dead, so I don’t see much point in your staying.” Caithness looked

round, and tried to see something in the darkness. He failed, and

presently asked, “What’s happened to Mottreux?”

 

“How the hell do I know?” Roger asked. “Why did you bolt with him?” A

sudden thought struck him, and he added: “Did you—by God, did you

arrange for him to shoot?”

 

“No,” the priest answered, “but I promised to do what I could for him

if…if he needed it.”

 

“I see,” Roger said, and walked a few steps away. He couldn’t trust

himself to speak. That this dreamer, this master of vision should have

been destroyed by—by a traitor and a clergyman. He walked back

abruptly and said: “I hope you paid him better than Caiaphas did? Even

at half-crowns it would only come to three pounds fifteen.”

 

Caithness began quietly, “Don’t be unfair, Ingram-” but Roger pursued

his own thoughts. “And did you promise him as much for Rosenberg?”

 

“Rosenberg!” Caithness cried out, startled. “He can’t have killed

Rosenberg?”

 

“Can’t he?” Roger said. “What do you think he wanted? Go and look;

Rosenberg’s dead and the jewels are gone.”

 

The priest stared at him in something like horror. He had believed

Mottreux to be sincere, and yet now—words overheard between the

traitor and Rosenberg rushed back, the likelihood that so great a

personal desire rather than a conversion of thought should have

alienated him, his turning away at the last moment, the shot heard in

the room close at hand, the old man slain (for he believed Roger at

once), the seizure of the jewels by a covetous hand. Roger saw him

flinch and said, with a touch of