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

>what might be called the first steps in a religion of which many of

his hearers were distinguished professors. The House rose at nine

minutes past seven.

 

“Dear me,” said Sir Bernard, putting down his paper.

 

Philip looked up from his own with a faint but perplexed smile. “Is

this you, sir?” he said to Caithness.

 

“No”, Caithness answered, “I don’t think so. It seems pretty obvious,

after all.”

 

“I had no idea the Archbishop was so venomous,” Sir Bernard said: “I

think he certainly must believe in God. Mythology always heightens the

style.”

 

Caithness said, rather sombrely, “Of course the Prime Minister will

win in the end.”

 

“I should think it most likely,” Sir Bernard said. “What was it Gibbon

said-‘all religions are equally useful to the statesman’!—Still,

you’ve done your best. What do you want to do to-day?”

 

“I may as well go back to Yorkshire,” Caithness answered doubtfully.

“I’ve been all the use I can be.”

 

“O nonsense,” Sir Bernard said. “Stay a little, Ian; we see precious

little of you anyhow. Stay till the African army lands at Dover, and

then we’ll all go to Yorkshire together—you and I, and Philip and

Rosamond, and Roger and Isabel.”

 

Philip winced. His father’s remark struck him as merely being in bad

taste. It was too remote even to be a joke. He said coldly “I suppose

I’d better go to the office?”

 

“I think you should,” Sir Bernard assented. “You’ll be perfectly

useless, of course. If it’s a case of Africa for the Africans, they’ll

want to develop their own rivers, and as the Syndicate depended on

Rosenberg it may not be able to develop itself. But you can find out

the immediate prospects. The inquest will be tomorrow. What about

coming to the inquest?”

 

“Why, are you going?” Philip asked.

 

“Certainly I am going,” Sir Bernard answered. “I met Rosenberg quite a

number of times, and I’ve always wondered about him. His wife died a

couple of years ago, and I fancy he’s been going to pieces ever since.

No, Ian, not because of monogamy; no, Philip, not because of love. I’m

sorry; I apologize to both of you, but it wasn’t. It was because he’d

developed a mania for making, for her, the most wonderful collection

of jewels in the world. He had them too—marvellous! Tiaras and

bracelets and necklaces and pendants and earrings and so on. I met her

occasionally—not so often as him, but sometimes, and she looked not

merely like the sun, the moon, and the eleven stars, but like the

other eleven million that Joseph didn’t know about. She was a

magnificent creature, tall and rather large and dark, and she carried

them off magnificently. In fact, she was a creation in terms of

jewellery, the New Jerusalem turned upside down so that the

foundations showed. And then she died.”

 

“Couldn’t he have still gone on collecting jewels?” Caithness asked

scornfully.

 

“Apparently not,” Sir Bernard said mildly. “He saw them on her, you

see; they existed in relation to her. And when she died they fell

apart—he couldn’t find a centre for them. They were useless, and so

he was useless. At least I suspect that’s what happened. You didn’t

see her, so you won’t understand.”

 

Caithness gave a short laugh. “A noble aim,” he said.

 

“Well, it was his,” Sir Bernard remonstrated, still mildly. “And

really, Ian, if it comes to comparisons, I don’t know that it was

worse than collecting poems, like Roger, or events, like me. I might

say, or souls like you, because you do collect souls for the Church

just as Rosenberg collected jewels for his wife, don’t you?”

 

“The Church doesn’t die,” Caithness said.

 

“I know, I know,” Sir Bernard answered. “But that only means you’re

more fortunate than Rosenberg in preferring a hypothesis to a person.

At least, perhaps you are: it’s difficult to say. I’ve a good mind to

ask Roger to come to the inquest too.”

 

“It seems rather gruesome,” Philip said, hesitating.

 

“O my dear boy,” Sir Bernard protested, “don’t let’s be adjectival.

Here’s a rich man shot himself because of a difficulty with life. Is

it really gruesome to want to know what that difficulty is and how

much like the rest of our difficulties it was? But at your age you

daren’t trust your own motives, and you’re probably right. At mine one

has to trust them or one couldn’t enjoy them, and there’s not much

opportunity to do anything else.”

 

Persuaded either by such maxims or from motives of equal potency both

Philip and Roger did actually accompany Sir Bernard the next day,

though Caithness refused. The court was certainly crowded but they

managed, through some diplomatic work by Sir Bernard, to get in. The

coroner, a short hairy official, dealt with everyone in the same

sympathetic manner.

 

The evidence was brief and explicit. The butler who had found the body

and summoned the police was called. His master (he said) had had one

visitor that evening, a Mr. Considine (Sir Bernard looked at Roger,

who sat up sharply). After Mr. Considine’s departure, about twelve,

his master had called him in to witness his signature to a document,

and had then dismissed him. It had been about a quarter of an hour

later when he had thought he heard the sound of a shot in the study.

He had gone there…and so on through the difficult time that

followed. The police described their arrival, their examination.

Doctors described the nature of the wound.

 

Mr. Considine was called.

 

Sir Bernard lay back in his seat and studied the witness, mentally

comparing him to the photograph. It was absurd that they should be so

much alike, he thought, when they must of course, be different. He

gazed at him with an inexplicable curiosity that seemed strangely to

become even more vivid when by chance Considine’s eyes, passing over

the court, as he moved to the witness-box, met his. Roger was leaning

eagerly forward, and a glance of recognition went between him and

Considine. Philip felt and showed no particular interest.

 

Considine explained the reason for his visit. He had been on his way

home after a dinner and had passed the deceased’s house; on an impulse

he had determined to call, chiefly because he had been for some

time…disturbed…about his state of mind. Deceased had, as people

said; “lost hold”; he had no hope and no desire. He had lost interest

alike in his business and in his amusements.

 

“Can you suggest what caused this breakdown?” the coroner interrupted.

“His health—the doctor has told us—was quite good?”

 

“His health was good,” Considine answered, “but his health had no

purpose, or rather that purpose had been destroyed. He had made for

himself an image, and that image had been removed. His wife while she

lived had been the centre of that image; the jewels in which he

clothed her completed it. She died; he had no children, and he had not

enough energy to discover some other woman whom he could display in a

like manner. He had externalized in that adorned figure all his power

and possession; it was his visible power, his acknowledged possession.

The jewels themselves, magnificent as they were, were not sufficient.

Also I think there returned on him something of a childish fear; he

was terrified of the destruction that haunts life.”

 

“You tried to cheer him up?” the coroner said.

 

Considine paused for a moment. “I tried,” he said slowly, “to persuade

him to live by his own power rather than by what could be at best only

properties of it. I tried to persuade him to live from the depth of

his wound rather than to pine away in the pain of it; to make the

extent of his desolation the extent of his kingdom. But I failed.”

 

“I see—yes,” said the coroner vaguely. “You thought he needed

bringing out of himself?”

 

Considine considered again, a longer pause. “I thought he needed to

find himself,” he said at last, “and all of which himself was capable.

But I could not work on him.”

 

“Quite, quite,” said the coroner. “I’m sure the sympathy of the Court

is with you, Mr. Considine, in your regrets that your efforts were

unavailing. I’ve no doubt that you did all that you could, but there

it is—if a man won’t or can’t bestir himself, mere talk won’t help

him. Thank you, Mr. Considine.”

 

“Good heavens!” Sir Bernard said to Roger in a smothered voice, “mere

talk! Mere—”

 

The letter for the coroner was now produced, but carried things little

further. It stated simply that Simon Rosenberg took all responsibility

for the act of suicide, to which he had been driven by the full

realization of the entire worthlessness of human existence. “We may, I

think,” the coroner interrupted himself to say, “mark that sentence as

evidence of a very abnormal state of mind.” Unconscious of the

lowering glare which Roger turned on him, he went on: “There is

enclosed with this brief letter another document which purports to be

the deceased’s last will and testament. I have had the opportunity of

submitting it to the deceased’s solicitors, Messrs. Patton &

Fotheringay, and in order that you may have all the evidence possible

on deceased’s state of mind before you I shall now read it.”

 

He proceeded to do so. It began normally enough, followed up this

opening with a few legacies to servants, clerks, and acquaintances,

and then in one magnificent clause left “the whole of the rest of the

estate, real and personal, shares, jewels, houses, lands, and

everything else from the smallest salt-cellar in the farthest

shooting-lodge to the largest folio in the London library, to two

second cousins, Ezekiel and Nehemiah Rosenberg, defined with all

necessary exactitude as the grandchildren of the deceased’s

grandfather’s younger brother Jacob Rosenberg.

 

“And I do this,” the strange document ran on, “because they have

followed in the way of our fathers, and kept the Law of the Lord God

of Israel, and because though I do not know whether there is any such

God to be invoked or any such way to be trodden, yet I know that

everything else is despair. If this wealth belongs to their God let

him take it, and if not let them do what they choose and let it die.”

Nigel Considine and the Grand Rabbi were named as executors, with a

hope that though they had not been consulted they would not refuse to

act.

 

There was a prolonged silence in court. Roger Ingram thought of

several verses in Deuteronomy, a line or two of Milton, and a poem of

Mangan’s. Sir Bernard wished he knew Nehemiah and Ezekiel Rosenberg.

Philip thought it was a very peculiar way of making a will. The

coroner proceeded to explain to the jury the difference between

felo-de-se and suicide while of unsound mind, with a definite leaning

towards the second, of which (he suggested) “despair—to use the word

chosen by the deceased—was, anyhow when carried to such an abnormal

extent as the letter and will together seem to indicate, perhaps in no

small measure a proof.” The jury, after a merely formal consultation,

in the rather uncertain voice of their foreman agreed. The court rose.

 

On the steps outside, Sir Bernard and Roger instinctively delayed a

little and were rewarded by seeing Considine come out. He was

listening to a round-faced man who was probably either Mr. Patton or

Mr. Fotheringay, but in a moment he noticed Roger, waved to him, and

presently, parting from his companion, came across.

 

“So, Mr. Ingram,” he said, as he shook hands, “I didn’t expect to see

you here.”

 

“No,” Roger