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

business; but he

had been subtly encouraged to give free play to his own individual

phenomena. A thing might not be true because it appeared so to him,

but it was no less likely to be true because everyone else denied it.

The eyes of Rosamond might or might not hold the secret origin of day

and night, but if they apparently did then they apparently did, and it

would be silly to deny it and equally silly not to relish it. Sir

Bernard had never said this in so many words. But the atmosphere which

he created was one in which such spiritual truths could thrive

unhindered, and their growth depended upon their own instinctive

strength.

 

Serenely unconscious of what he owed, Philip felt his own serious

growth wiser than that cool air of gracious scepticism. He thought his

passion was hidden from it as from the sun, when in fact it throve in

it as in the soft rains. He said nothing of Rosamond’s eyes—which

certainly were not, to Sir Bernard, anything remarkable—to his

father, and supposed that the unformulated gospel they taught him was

also a secret. He said nothing of them to anyone indeed, not having,

nor caring to have, that tendency towards talk which marked his future

brother-in-law. Roger, out of sheer interest, had given him every

opportunity, and was rather disappointed that not one was taken. “I’m

sure I talked enough about you,” he complained to Isabel.

 

“You’re more interested in metaphysics,” she said. “Philip’s just a

believer; you’re a theologian.”

 

“I’ve a more complex matter to study,” he said. “If I were a poet I

would make the Matter of Isabel equal to the Matter of France and the

Matter of Britain.”

 

“My honour wars with my credulity,” she answered. “I’m not really more

interesting than Rosamond but I like to think I am.”

 

“I don’t think Sir Bernard approves of Rosamond,” Roger said

meditatively. “Why not, do you suppose? Can he really not think her

good enough? Does he secretly adore Philip? My son, my son, and all

that?”

 

Isabel was silent for a minute; then she said: “I’m awfully tempted to

tell you, Roger, but perhaps I won’t. I do think I know what he feels,

but it’d be rather hard on Rosamond to talk of it, wouldn’t it?”

 

“Devil!” said Roger. “You’d see your husband die of an insatiable

curiosity rather than sully your integrity by giving him a crust of

fact. You’re as bad as the other Isabella—the one in Measure for

Measure; you’re avaricious of chastity. I don’t want to be nice; I

want to be malign and malevolent and omniscient. Very well; have it

your own way. I shall now go and lecture on Pure Women in Literature,

with sub-sardonic allusions to you, Shakespeare’s Isabella, and Mr.

Richardson’s Pamela. And I shall be back, in a bad temper, to tea.”

 

It was to tea on the same day that, when he did return, he found

Philip had invited himself, having abandoned the distracted office for

an hour with Rosamond. Isabel had come in from an afternoon’s walk,

and when they all met in the drawing-room it was she who said: “Roger,

you’re looking very serious. What’s the matter, darling? Didn’t they

remember who Pamela was, or did they think she was nice, or what?”

 

Ingram stretched himself in an armchair. “Have any of you”, he asked,

“seen an evening paper?”

 

“Not since two o’clock,” Philip said. “Is there something important?”

 

“That”, Roger answered, “depends on what you think important. There’s

an African proclamation.”

 

“What!” Philip was so surprised that his eyes left Rosamond’s hair to

rest on the newspaper that Roger was holding. “Is there really? What

does it say?”

 

“It says that the Socratic method is done for,” Roger said seriously.

A small frown appeared on Rosamond’s face and went away again. Philip,

without frowning, conveyed the impression of a frown and said: “Do be

serious. It’s important to me to know. What does it say?”

 

“It says exactly what I’ve told you,” Roger said, more sardonically.

“It says you think too much, Philip, and it says your father is just

the last kind of mistake. It’s no use blaming me. I didn’t write it.

I’m not even sure that I know what it means.”

 

Isabel, taking a sandwich, said: “Read it, Roger. The Socratic method

doesn’t really help one to choose a frock. I know because I tried it

once. I said, ‘Must not a colour which suits me, and a cut that I

admire, be desirable? It would seem so, Socrates.’ And yet it wasn’t.

Do read it.”

 

Philip, having thus been defrauded of his protest, waited in the

silence of injured decency to hear more. Rosamond looked at him

sympathetically. Roger dropped two of his papers, opened the third,

and read.

 

“Alleged Statement by African Leaders. Document received by Foreign

Office and Press. Where is the High Executive? African Aims Reported

to be Disclosed. By the mid-day post a document was received at the

offices of all the London newspapers which is, with all reserves in

regard to its authenticity, given below. The editors of the London

papers have been in communication with the Foreign Office, and learn

that a precisely similar document has been received there. Not only

so, but the Foreign Offices and the Press of other European countries

have also been communicated with in the same way. In Paris and Madrid

this alleged manifesto has already been published, and the British

Government, after consultation with the editors, has raised no

objection to its publication here. If it is genuine—a question which

is being investigated—it pretends to offer some kind of explanation

of the late remarkable events in Africa. The manifesto, or

proclamation, as it might be called, is as follows:

 

“‘In the name of the things that have been and are to be, willed and

fated, in the name of the gods many and one, the Allied Supremacies of

Africa, acting by the will and speaking by the voice of the High

Executive, desire to communicate to the rest of the world the doctrine

and purpose of the cause in which they are engaged. They announce

their immediate purpose to be the freeing of the African continent

from the government and occupation of the white race; their farther

purpose to be the restoration to mankind of powers which have been

forgotten or neglected, and their direction to ends which have

hitherto been unproclaimed. They announce their profound belief that,

as to the European peoples in the past, so to themselves in the future

the conscious leadership of mankind belongs. It is not an imposed but

an emerging leadership, superior to its disciples as to its enemies

because of the conscious potentialities which exist in it. The

potentialities of that superiority do not attempt to deny the

capacities of Europe in their own proper achievements. The High

Executive of the African Allies desires, in its first public summons

to the creative powers of the world, to honour the immortal finalities

of the past. It salutes the intellect, the philosophies, the science,

the innumerable patterns of Europe. But it asserts that the great age

of intellect is done, nor was the intellect ever that power which its

disciples have been encouraged to believe. The prophets of Africa, who

are not found only among its own peoples but include many of other

races both in the past and in the present—the prophets of Africa have

seen that mankind must advance in the future by paths which the white

peoples have neglected and to ends which they have not understood.

Assured that at this time the whole process of change in mankind,

generally known as evolution, is at a higher crisis than any since

mankind first emerged from among the great beasts and knew himself;

assured that by an equal emergence from intellectual preoccupations,

the adepts of the new way have it in their power to lead, and all

mankind has it in its power to follow, not certainly by the old habits

of reason but by profounder experiments of passion, to the conquest of

death in the renewed ecstasy of vivid experience; assured of these

things the Allied Supremacies appeal to the whole world for belief and

discipleship and devotion.’”

 

Roger paused and looked up. Rosamond, again frowning a little, was

eating cake. Philip was listening with his mouth open and his eyes

staring. Isabel was attending with a serious and serene care. Roger

grinned at her and resumed.

 

“‘The peoples of Africa appear before the world in arms, in order to

claim from the sovereign authorities of Europe that freedom which is

their due and their necessity on the one hand; on the other their

privilege and opportunity, They will and they are fated to achieve

that freedom. But their arms are of defence and not of aggression.

They are willing to concede all possible time and convenience to the

Powers of Europe. They no more desire to waste their energies and

those of their opponents on war than on any other lower exterior

imitation of heroic interior conquest. They are not anxious that the

discipleship of the European imagination should be made more difficult

by the mundane stupidities of dispute and battle. But the

administration of Africa by the white race is now a thing of the

past—to be remembered only as intellectual sovereignty will be

remembered, a necessary moment that was willed and was fated and has

ceased.

 

“‘To those among the peoples of Europe who know that their lives have

origin and nourishment in the great moments of the exalted

imagination, the High Executive offers salute and recognition’”—

Roger’s voice began to linger over the words—“‘to all who owe their

devotion to music, to poetry, to painting and sculpture, to the

servants of every more than rational energy; greater than those and

more numerous, to all who at this present moment exist in the

exchanged or unexchanged adoration of love, it calls more especially.

There, perhaps more surely and swiftly than in any other state of

being outside the transmuting Way, can the labour of exploration be

begun; there is the knowledge, the capacity, the herald apprehension

of victory. These visionaries are already initiate; they know in

themselves the prophecy of the conquest of death. To all such the High

Executive appeals, with ardour and conviction. Believe, imagine, live.

Know exaltation and feed on it; in the strength of such food man shall

enter into his kingdom.

 

“‘The High Executive permits itself to offer to the Christian Churches

its congratulations on the courage and devotion of those their

servants who have sustained death by martyrdom. Convinced as it is

that the Churches have, almost from the beginning, been misled by an

erring principle, it nevertheless honours those martyrs as sublime if

misguided instances of that imagination which it is its purpose to

make known to mankind and which the rites and dogmas of the Christian

religion dimly proclaim. It is assured by its belief in man and by the

exalted courage of those martyrs that they would have desired no other

end, and it takes full responsibility for having advised its august

sovereigns that they could bestow on Christian missionaries no more

perfect gift.

 

“‘The High Executive will be prepared to send representatives at any

time to any place fixed by the Powers of Europe or by any of them; or

to enter into negotiations in any other way that the Powers may

desire. It will assume the fixing of such time and place or the

opening of such negotiations to be a guarantee of safe-conduct for its

representatives, and it will be prepared to suspend as soon as

possible the military, naval, and aerial operations upon which it is

engaged.

 

“‘Given in London, by