Shadows of Ecstasy, Charles Williams [e ink epub reader .txt] 📗
- Author: Charles Williams
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suddenly in English, “But I do not wish—I do not choose-” then his
whole figure sagged and his hand drew itself away. Considine said
something to him even more sharply; he moved forward, and slowly,
almost as if moving in his sleep, got into the car. Considine,
following him, paused by the door and turned.
“Sir Bernard,” he said, “in a very few days I shall be leaving
England. But I’ve written to you to-day to ask if you will dine with
me tomorrow. I apologize for the short notice. If you would—and
perhaps these gentlemen too? Let’s discuss verse once more, Mr.
Ingram, before I go.”
“Must you go?” Roger, to his surprise, heard himself saying.
“All that’s mine remains,” Considine said, “even if embalmed or
diluted—” he smiled, and there was victory in his face. He looked
back at Sir Bernard, who said only, “Thank you very much!”
“At eight tomorrow then,” Considine said. “Goodnight.” He leapt into
the car and at once it slid away. The three stood staring after it. At
last—
“Well,” Sir Bernard said, “I do want to ask him about the photograph.
And lots of people talk rather big. But if Mr. Considine can bully a
Zulu prince who could bully us…”
“I don’t see anything in him particularly,” Philip said. “But I was
surprised the king let himself be persuaded.”
Sir Bernard began to walk away. “‘Persuaded,’ Philip? Do you think
‘persuaded’ was the word?” he said.
“I don’t think the king wanted to go,” Philip said. “But of course I
don’t know what Considine said in Zulu, if it was Zulu.”
“Nor do I,” said Sir Bernard. “But I know what I should say in that
tone. I should say, ‘Come on, you fool! It’s me telling you.’ When I
was in practice I kept that voice for telling American millionaires to
eat less. There are moments when I wonder whether I really like Mr.
Considine.”
The five of them were sitting at a round table—Considine at the head,
Sir Bernard on his right, Roger on his left, Inkamasi next Roger, and
Philip between the king and Sir Bernard. They were served by two men
who, Sir Bernard remarked at once, were evidently not of the usual
servant type. They were much more like young men of his own class, but
they were adept at their work; only they waited with an air of
condescension and if they had occasion to speak they never said “sir”
except indeed to Considine and the king. Considine’s own manner
towards them was that of an equal who accepts by right some special
service; there existed between them a grave courtesy. Occasionally,
while the dinner proceeded, one of these gentlemen in waiting would go
to the door in answer to a discreet knock, receive a message, return
to whisper it in Considine’s ear, and take back a softly murmured
answer. But such secret interruptions did not interfere with the
general conversation, which turned at first upon the Rosenberg crisis.
“You have talked to the legatees?” Sir Bernard said.
“Why, yes,” Considine smiled, “and they have taken a stand which might
have been foreseen, which I did foresee. The solicitor and I—you
remember Mr. Patton?—met them and the Chief Rabbi, and showed them
the will. We had to go to them; they would not come to us. When I saw
them I did not wonder at it. Their whole minds were given to other
things. They are concerned—as how should they not be?—with one chief
matter, the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem.”
“Are they though?” Roger said. “And what will they do with the money?”
“What do you think?” Considine said. “What do you think, Sir Bernard?
Remember that they are fanatical in their vision and desire.”
“Take it,” Sir Bernard answered, “and spend all that comes from it in
Jerusalem.”
“Refuse it,” Philip said, as Considine lifted friendly eyebrows at him
before looking at Roger, who considered, his head on one side.
“I don’t know them, of course,” he said, “but you encourage me to hope
that the others are wrong. Take it—refuse it—something else. Take it
and not take it…I know—take it and withdraw it, sell everything,
and keep the result.”
“Exactly,” Considine answered. “They insist on selling out all the
Rosenberg properties, and what they have from that—however large or
small—they will spend on building the Temple again.”
“But the loss-?” Sir Bernard exclaimed. “It will take years, won’t
it?”
“They are too old to spend years in patience,” Considine said. “They
will have it done immediately, for fear they should die before the
work is begun.”
“But can’t you stop them?” Philip said.
“Believing what I do believe,” Considine answered, “why should I stop
them? It is a great act of creation; they prepare for Messias.”
“And the jewels?” Roger asked. “Are they to be sold too?”
“No,” Considine said; “those they will take as they are, ‘an oblation
to the Holy of Holies, a recompense for iniquity and for that one of
their house who has touched the unclean thing.’ I repeat their words.”
“If they ever get them to Jerusalem-” Roger suggested.
“That may be part of the executor’s business,” Considine answered. “I
shall do my best for them while I’ve the time.”
“It’ll cause a good deal of disturbance,” Sir Bernard said
thoughtfully. “Rosenberg was interested in a great deal, wasn’t he?”
“A great deal,” Considine agreed, adding with a faint smile, “Perhaps
it was a little unfortunate that Patton, intending the best, pointed
out that Rosenberg had religious interests which would be upset by
such an action. He instanced a concern called the Anglo-Catholic
Church and Home Adornment Society, which manufactured crucifixes and
pictures of saints. Somehow Rosenberg was mixed up in it. It didn’t
placate them.”
“Patton, I suppose,” Sir Bernard said, “felt that all religions meant
the same?”
“I was sorry for him,” Considine said, again smiling faintly. “Even
the Chief Rabbi could hardly quieten them. Yes, Sir Bernard. I don’t
say that Patton’s wrong, but there remains the question of what
religion all the religions mean.”
“Perhaps that’s what the African proclamations are trying to tell us,”
Roger said. “Do you believe in them, Mr. Considine?”
“In what sense—believe?” Considine asked.
“D’you think they’re authentic?” Roger elaborated. “And if authentic,
d’you think they mean anything?”
“Yes and yes,” Considine answered. “I see no reason why they shouldn’t
be authentic—and if they are then I think they mean something
definite. It is a gospel, perhaps a crusade, which is approaching.”
“Jolly for us,” Roger said. He shifted his eyes to Inkamasi, and said,
“And what do you think?” thanking his gods that the other was next to
him and that vocatives of address could therefore be avoided. How did
one speak to a Zulu king?
Inkamasi looked up heavily. The last twenty-four hours, Sir Bernard
thought, seemed to have dulled the young African. His eyes went to
Considine, who said, “Yes; let the king tell us if he thinks this
gospel has meaning.”
Why did Considine, he wondered, speak so, with such high gravity in
his voice? He waited with interest for Inkamasi’s answer but when it
came it took them but little farther. He answered the question, but no
more. “Yes, I think it has a meaning,” he said, and his eyes fell
again to his plate.
Sir Bernard looked back at Considine, who was (he noticed) eating very
little, a few fragments of each course, a few sips of wine, and that
with an air rather of courtesy than of interest or desire. He was
behaving as a gracious host should, but what host was this who was
waited on by gentlemen, who spoke of gospels and crusades, who seemed
to dominate from his seat the visitors he permitted to speak freely?
Sir Bernard said: “It’s a little cheap, isn’t it? ‘The conquest of
death’?”
“You don’t desire the conquest of death?” Considine asked.
“I find a difficulty in understanding it here,” Sir Bernard said.
“Why?” Considine asked again.
Sir Bernard hesitated, and Roger broke in swiftly, “Because we’ve
never heard of it happening, and because we’ve never noticed that
reading poetry and being in love led to anything that looked like the
conquest of death. At least, I can’t think of any other reason. What
does it mean?”
“There are two things it might mean,” Considine said, “living for ever
or dying and living again. And will you”—he leaned a little
forward—“will you tell me, Mr. Ingram, that you haven’t felt one or
both of these when you deal with great verse?”
Philip saw Roger’s face change. He was looking steadily at Considine,
and he continued to look for more than a minute before he answered. In
that time the sardonic and almost bitter humour which often showed in
him, as if he were weary of fighting that stupidity against which “the
gods themselves contend in vain”, and as if he despised himself both
for strife and weariness—that half-angry mockery vanished, and it
was with a sudden passionate sincerity that he said, “No, no; you’re
right. One dies and lives in it, but I can’t tell how.”
“Only because you haven’t looked that way,” Considine said, with an
illuminating smile. “You handle the stuff of the experiment, the stuff
which the poets made, but they made it out of what is common to us
all, and there are things which they, even they, never knew. And as
for love, is there any one of us, since we are men and have loved, who
doesn’t know that there is within the first moments of that divine
delight some actuality of the conquest of death?”
Half by chance, his eyes rested on Philip, who, as if called by that
commanding gaze from his habitual shyness and dislike of speech,
stammered out: “Yes, but what is there to do? It’s like that, but what
can I do?”
“You can know your joy and direct it,” Considine answered. “When your
manhood’s aflame with love you will burn down with it the barriers
that separate us from immortality. You waste yourselves, all of you,
looking outwards; you give yourselves to the world. But the business
of man is to assume the world into himself. He shall draw strength
from everything that he may govern everything. But can you do this by
doubting and dividing and contemplating? by intellect and official
science? It is greater labour than you need.”
“Govern?” Sir Bernard put in. “What do you mean by governing the
world? Ruling it, like Caesar?”
“Caesar”, Considine answered, “knew of it. I am sure he did. This man
who had so many lovers, who could bear all hardships and use all
comfort, who was not athlete or lover or general or statesman or
writer, but only those because he was Caesar, who founded not a
dynasty but a civilization, whose children we are, who dreamed of
travelling to the sources of the Nile and sailed out to the strange
island whither the Gallic boatmen rowed the souls of the dead, who was
lord of all minds and natures, didn’t he dream of the sources of other
waters and set sail living for a land where the spirits of other men
are but helplessly driven? Rule the world? He was the world; he
mastered it; the power that is in it burned in him and he knew it, he
was one with it.”
“Caesar died,” Sir Bernard said.
“He was killed, he was destroyed, but he was not beaten and he did not
die,” Considine
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