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

Chapter Fourteen - SEA-CHANGE

Some time next morning, after wandering long on foot and finding at

last in an unknown town a small garage where they hired a car that

took them to Winchester, and coming thence by train to London, they

reached again the house in Kensington, from which less than

forty-eight hours earlier they had been swept away. The streets were

still full of wanderers, though it had been known for hours that

safety had returned, and the wild intrusion been destroyed. The mob by

then had fallen into a waking stupor, not unlike the sleep in which

Rosamond still lay; it moved somnambulistically, and the civil

authorities, by the use of police and military, by commandeering

transport, by supplying food and drink as best they could, managed at

last to control and direct it. Laden motor-buses carried the fugitives

back towards their houses; taxis, lorries, and all other possible

vehicles were put in service for the same purpose. Roger and Caithness

made a slow way by the Tubes, now gradually freeing themselves from

their invasion, to Colindale Square. They came to it shivering in the

bleak noon—as chilled bathers might stumble up a stony beach, while

behind them a deserted and disconsolate sea moaned. Sir Bernard came

hastily to meet them, deserting for the time being the medley of

fugitives who filled his kitchen and overflowed into the other rooms,

and for whom conveyances had not yet been found. Roger nodded to him

but could not speak; he left explanations to Caithness. In a moment

Isabel came also; to her he turned, and with her he shut himself away.

Once safe he said to her with no accent in his voice: “He’s dead.”

 

“Dead!” she exclaimed. “Roger, my dear!”

 

He had perhaps never entirely trusted her before, for all their sweet

friendship. But his defences were down, and he lay exposed, terribly

sensitive to her looks and words. She neither sympathized nor

condoled; in the deep practice of her love her heart was struck

equally with his. She suffered his desolation as she had his desire;

the trust of his spiritual necessity with which she had charged

herself knew this union also. He realized at that moment the vast

experience of love which she had undergone, and accepted it. But he

only said with a faint smile, implicitly recognizing her vicarious

grief, “Yet you didn’t believe in him.”

 

She sat down, wide eyes on his, and ignoring the comment, said in a

hushed voice of awe, “Tell me. Can he be-?”

 

He told her as clearly as he could, what had happened. And at the end

she said, “But, Roger, mightn’t he…” She couldn’t finish; her own

personal nature fainted before the intensity with which it felt

another’s hope.

 

“I don’t know,” he answered. “If so…It may be, but I daren’t think

of it. Isabel, Isabel, to think what killed him!”

 

At that moment Caithness was talking swiftly to Sir Bernard

downstairs. “So, when I went back for our coats, I saw them,” he said;

“they were all ready there, all three packets and I brought them with

me.” He pointed at the table on which three thick envelopes lay which

he had extracted from his coat-pocket. “He must have meant to take

them with him, or else they were directions for the others. They were

on a chest in the hall, waiting till we—till he—came back. Don’t you

think they ought to go to the Prime Minister?”

 

“I hate telling the Prime Minister anything,” Sir Bernard said. “It’s

like feeding a gorilla without a body; he can’t digest words. I don’t

know which is worse for civilized man, Suydler or Considine.”

 

“Considine’s dead,” Caithness said.

 

Sir Bernard lifted a packet distastefully. “I wish I were a

Christian,” he murmured, “then I should feel I ought to. As it is—I

suppose Considine is dead?”

 

“Of course he is,” Caithness said impatiently. “Mottreux shot him;

I’ve just told you. I’d no notion he wanted the jewels. And even if he

weren’t—Considine, I mean—that would only make it more urgent that

Suydler should have the papers. They may be of use or they mayn’t. But

he ought to have them.”

 

“They’ll all be in cipher, I should think,” Sir Bernard said, with a

good deal of satisfaction. “Suydler can have a jolly time guessing it.

But I don’t like it, in spite of Mr. Considine’s obscene and

pernicious gospel. I don’t like giving any gospel to Suydler. Yes, all

right, I suppose I must. Portrait of Gallio presenting the manuscript

of the Evangelists to the Missing Link. You’ll have to come too; then

you can tell him all about the house.”

 

When as a consequence the house by the sea was approached, late the

same day, with great force and much circumspection, the results were a

little disappointing. The body of Inkamasi still lay on its royal

couch, but the body of the master of the adepts had disappeared. No

living person was there; no car in the drive nor submarine in the bay.

But behind the house lay Mottreux, a knife-wound in his throat, and

sprawled over him, a bullet in his chest, the body of a negro, whom

Caithness recognized as one of those that had followed Considine to

the king’s death. Further away lay the Egyptian, also shot. Vereker

and the Arab were not to be found.

 

But the extent of the catastrophe which the traitor had brought upon

the headship of the cause became clear, as the days passed. Considine

and three of the closest members of his personal staff had been

destroyed, and the great movement was checked. There were no more

messages from the High Executive. What tale reached the various

headquarters of the African armies the European Governments never

knew. But the labouring and anxious generals of their forces began to

telegraph the most cheering news. In one or two districts something

like panic broke out among the enemy, a great noise of wailing and

disorderly firing and then flight. In others the negro forces began to

retire, and as they were pressed by the pursuit gave way and were

overwhelmed.

 

The papers Caithness had seized, which after a great deal of trouble

were at least partially decoded—only partially; some of them

remained mysteries even to the most ingenious cipher-expert—

contained sufficient allusions in detail to make the task of the

uncovering of Considine’s bases—houses in Europe and headquarters in

Africa—a much easier business than had been feared. An encouraging

but slightly vague account appeared in the Press of how a British

patriot, who preferred his Imperial citizenship to his Zulu

birthright, had shot Considine while being pressed to join him. It was

understood that he had deliberately sacrificed himself in order to

help England, and a good deal of quiet (and not too quiet) pride was

felt that it was an English subject, or at least a Dominion subject,

who had acted so. No Senegalese had done as much, nor the native of

any district administered by other European countries. Such was the

spirit produced by the British occupation. A rather acrimonious

correspondence opened between the British Government and the other

Powers on the subject of Considine’s own nationality. The French,

Italian, Spanish, and Belgian ambassadors presented Notes which

pointed out that the late Nigel Considine being a British subject the

respective Governments had in equity a claim to be indemnified by his

Britannic Majesty’s Government for the expense to which they had been

put. His Britannic Majesty replied through the High Executive of Mr.

Raymond Suydler’s Foreign Minister (the Earl of Basingstoke) to the

effect that there were nine mutually destructive reasons why the claim

should either not be admitted or should be set against still heavier

amounts due to his Britannic Majesty for damage suffered. Mr. Suydler

made a great speech at an Albert Hall Meeting, and was cheered wildly

when he announced that the European Governments had determined to sign

no formal terms of peace with an enemy who had no business to be there

at all, but to hold a conference in Madeira to decide on the future

settlement of Africa, the terms of which would afterwards be submitted

to the League of Nations, thus confirming the passionate belief of the

Powers in democratic control. Mr. Suydler was also loudly applauded in

the course of his witty and brilliant remarks upon the attempts of the

madman who had been responsible for all the trouble to turn his

megalomaniac nonsense into philosophical nonsense. “Guess: what can

you do but guess? We guessed—and we guessed right!” Terrific cheers.

 

Sir Bernard read it and smiled a little sadly. Philip read it and let

it slip by; he was engaged with a recovered Rosamond and his career.

Roger did not read it. Sir Bernard asked Philip whether, at