Shadows of Ecstasy, Charles Williams [e ink epub reader .txt] 📗

of the Zulu chieftain’s own strength and conviction. By

virtue of that wide reading which both she and her husband loved, she

had felt a shadow of it at times; in the superb lines of Marlowe or

Shakespeare, in the rolling titles heard on ceremonial occasions at

Church or in local celebrations: “The King’s Most Excellent Majesty,”

“His Majesty the King-Emperor,” “The Government of His Britannic

Majesty.” But on Rosamond unprepared by such imaginative experience

the sudden consciousness of this energy and richness—believing so

greatly in itself and operating so near her—had come with a shock of

dismay. Besides, when all had been said, they were all on edge with

the African news, and to have an African in your own rooms

overwhelming you with himself—No, she didn’t like it, Rosamond was

right.

 

The single bliss and sole felicity,

The sweet fruition of an earthly crown.

 

The divine lines came riding back into her memory. “It isn’t”, Roger

had said once at one of his “popular” lectures, “what poetry says, it

is what poetry is.” These lines described kingship, but that wasn’t

their strength. They invoked kingship, they grew by their very sound

into something of the same enormous royalty which the Zulu had for a

moment worn; they were the safe possession in themselves of that sense

of single bliss and sole felicity which they affected to describe. In

them it was apart from her, to be enjoyed and endured only as she

chose, it was hers. But if it went abroad, moving in the world not at

her decision or the decision of those like her, but in its own right

and power, the energy which was royalty and poetry dominating and

using her by means of hands and voices and eyes…

 

Rosamond came back from the window to the fire, and Isabel remembered

that she hadn’t replied to her sister’s question. She said: “No, they

won’t come here.”

 

Rosamond answered: “You won’t see him again?”

 

“Who—the king?” Isabel asked. “I don’t suppose so.”

 

“I don’t think you ought to,” Rosamond said. “It’s not very patriotic,

is it? Why ever did you let Roger bring him in?”

 

Isabel stiffened a little. “My dear little girl,” she answered, “I

don’t ‘let’ Roger. If there’s any letting done,” she went on,

relaxing, “he does it. But I don’t think he quite knows it.”

 

Rosamond’s face suggested that Philip would be “let” or not, fairly

often. Isabel added: “Would you rather we’d ‘let’ the crowd get at

him?”

 

“Yes,” her sister answered. “You don’t know how I hate him. He’s…

abominable.”

 

“Don’t be silly, Rosamond,” Isabel said. “You let things upset you so,

though you do seem such a sedate little creature. I don’t suppose

you’ll see him again, and if you do what difference does it make?”

 

Rosamond moved uneasily. “Why isn’t Philip stronger?” she said. “He

needn’t have gone tonight.”

 

Isabel broke into a laugh. “You want Philip to be the world’s strong

man led by a woman’s hair,” she said. “You can’t have it, darling.

Philip’s no caveman.”

 

“I don’t want a caveman,” Rosamond cried out. “I hate him anyhow. He

looks like Roger does when he quotes that beastly poetry. It isn’t

decent. It’s like those horrible people on the Heath.”

 

“What on earth do you mean? What horrible people?” Isabel asked,

really bewildered.

 

“Disgusting beasts,” Rosamond went on. “You know what I mean—all

those brutes lying about at night. They make everything so…so

loathsome. Why can’t people be nice and behave properly?”

 

“And not quote poetry or be kings of the Zulus,” Isabel murmured. “You

do hate a good many things, don’t you? You’re not going to marry

Philip, I hope, because you hate him rather less than the other young

men you know? I don’t think he’d be entirely satisfied with that.”

 

“Philip!” Rosamond uttered, in a tone so unlike her usual deceitfully

soft voice that Isabel looked at her in alarm. There had been in that

one word scorn and hate and fear, almost as if Philip rather than the

Zulu stood for everything that Rosamond most detested, as if she were

aware now for the first time that the world was not simply Rosamond

Murchison’s oyster, that indeed it was a great deal more like an

octopus, the tentacles of which she had seen waving at a distance in

the night. The king—Philip—poetry—people on the Heath—African

proclamations—certainly there was a huge something whose form lay

hidden in the darkness and the distance without; something Rosamond

had always avoided, unless occasionally…Isabel remembered how her

small sister, who had always carried herself as if she pretended to

disdain chocolates, had once secretly and greedily devoured a whole

boxful. It had been an unpleasant episode, made worse by an ignored

but definite attempt on Rosamond’s part to make Isabel herself the

culprit; only appalling physical results had made innocence certain.

Rosamond perhaps hated an octopus that lay not merely without. Isabel,

bending her brows at the fire, and trying to be lucid and loving at

once, was not altogether sorry when Rosamond said suddenly: “I’m

tired: I’m going to bed. Say goodnight to Philip for me,” and

vanished.

 

Roger, meanwhile, was walking with the others towards the house where

Inkamasi lived, at one end of the line of four, with Philip at the

other, and Sir Bernard and the Zulu discussing stomachs in between. It

occurred to Ingram with a slight feeling of shame, as he heard the

older man explaining and assenting, that although in the past Sir

Bernard had always been able and willing to discuss literature, he

himself had never been either able or willing to discuss stomachs. He

had liked and admired the specialist, but he had assumed as a matter

of course that his own specialization was a more public, even a more

important, thing. To justify himself he allowed the suggestion to

arise that Sir Bernard had been perhaps a little too easy-going, too

disinclined to press his own interests. After all, it was in a

different way a note of his son’s character also. Philip was a nice

creature, but he never imposed himself; he was graver and more solemn

than his father but equally swept on the current of conversation. That

Sir Bernard had now for many years been able unnoticed to direct any

conversation to any end he wished, but that all ends seemed to him

equally interesting, naturally did not occur to the younger

specialist. Ingram was himself so devoted to his own subject and

neglectful of others that he inevitably assumed a similar devotion and

neglect in his friends, and explained their behaviour on this

hypothesis. As he glanced sidelong at the disputants therefore he saw

in Sir Bernard an example of a man a little ill-treated by society,

and made up his mind to read the famous book at the first opportunity.

Nor could he refrain, as his eye caught the Zulu’s face in the light

of a lamp, from reflecting upon how differently this stranger had

dominated their emotions. The sudden crisis had tricked him into what

was almost an absurdity. But in fact, he reflected, the sudden crisis

was not separate from Inkamasi; it was Inkamasi. It was a human force

that had overthrown him. His emotions, caught unguarded by his

self-attentive mind, had moved him, and his emotions themselves had

been moved by a stronger emotion issuing from the stranger. Rhythm had

followed rhythm. “God damn and blast rhythm!” he thought angrily, “I

will not use their malodorous slang.” But the word had started his

associations; half a dozen lines leapt into his mind flushed with war

and royalty, from “My nightingale, We have beat them to their beds,”

down to “stunned of heaven or stricken pale Before the face of the

King.” Perhaps there was something in rhythm after all; perhaps Milton

meant something profounder than was usually thought by saying that the

great poet should himself be a poem; perhaps—

 

“Don’t you think so, Roger?” Sir Bernard asked.

 

Ingram came back with a shock. “I beg your pardon,” he said, “I wasn’t

listening. Don’t I think what?”

 

“Don’t you think that the king had better not go on living alone?”

 

“Are you alone in the house?” Ingram asked the Zulu.

 

“I am the only sub-tenant,” Inkamasi said gravely. “There is a

landlady.”

 

“Then of course you mustn’t,” Ingram said. “Is this it?” They had

stopped outside a house in one of the smaller apartment-letting roads

bordering the Heath. “You could be attacked and done in here quite

nicely—from back and front. You’d better come and stop with us as I

told you.”

 

Inkamasi shook his head. “That is very kind of you, Mr. Ingram,” he

answered, “but I couldn’t expose Mrs. Ingram to any unpleasantness.”

 

“Nonsense,” said Roger. “She won’t-”

 

Sir Bernard laid a hand on his arm. “A moment, Roger,” he said. “I

speak as a snob, but so did Saint Paul on occasion, I seem to

remember, and I also am an Apostle. Or at least I know the Home

Secretary. Now in two or three days the Government will be driven to

arrest and intern all the Africans in London. No, of course, it won’t

want to, but it won’t be able to let them be done to death one by one.

I suggest it will be much more to the point if the king is staying

with me, because my word will probably be taken for him. And he can

walk in the garden and study digestion theoretically and practically.”

 

“You mean they’ll let him alone there?” Roger said. “Yes, I suppose

that’s true. Well, we’d better look for a taxi then.”

 

“Stop a minute, Mr. Ingram,” the Zulu said. “Sir Bernard, this is

extraordinarily kind of you. But it would make it a little difficult

for me perhaps, if I may say so. If I came to stay with you, I should

be committed to neutrality, if not to friendship. And supposing I

wanted to help my people?”

 

A car came softly along the street towards them. Sir Bernard said

dubiously, “It would necessitate, I suppose, an implied parole. But

would you be worse off? You can’t do much for them now; and if you’re

attacked and killed-”

 

He paused; behind them the car also stopped. Roger, glancing over his

shoulder as he heard the king say, “I mustn’t pledge myself; I mustn’t

be bound,” saw Nigel Considine spring out. He gave a quick exclamation

and his companions also looked round.

 

“Why, Mr. Ingram,” Considine said, and saluted Sir Bernard and Philip,

“this is a happy meeting. I didn’t know you were friends of my

friend.”

 

“Through the introduction of a London crowd,” Roger answered. “So we

just strolled home with him.”

 

“I was afraid of that,” Considine answered, “so I’ve come to carry him

off.” He smiled at Inkamasi, and Philip wondered why he and his father

and Roger should suddenly seem so small standing around those two

other figures. Sir Bernard said, “I was just suggesting that the king

should stay with me.” But the African and Considine were gazing at

each other, and neither of them answered.

 

“I must be free,” Inkamasi said suddenly. “I must do what I choose.”

 

“You shall be free; you shall do what you choose,” the other answered.

“But you will come with me now, and presently I will set you free.” He

broke suddenly into a stream of unrecognizable syllables which the

others supposed were Zulu, and still he held Inkamasi’s eyes with his

own, and the African stammered and began to speak and ceased, and the

urgent commanding voice flowed on. Inkamasi put out his hand suddenly

towards Sir Bernard, who was next him, and took his arm.