Shadows of Ecstasy, Charles Williams [e ink epub reader .txt] 📗
- Author: Charles Williams
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simply.
“Roger,” Sir Bernard said dulcetly, “is it Mr. Considine’s feeling
about poetry that affects you so much? Because the unfortunate white
race has not been entirely silent. Was Dante a Bantu or Shakespeare a
Hottentot? A few of us read it still.”
“O read it!” Roger said contemptuously. “God knows I don’t want to
live for ever, but I tell you this fellow knows. So do I—a little
bit, and I believe it’s important. More important than anything else
on earth. And I won’t help you to shut it up in a refrigerator when I
ought to be helping to keep it alive.”
“Can’t you leave that to God?” Caithness flung out.
“No”, said Roger, “I damn well can’t, when he’s left it to me. I know
your argument—it’s all been done, death has been conquered, and so as
nothing ever dies somewhere else, we needn’t worry about it’s dying
here. Well, thank you very much, but I do. What are you worrying
about? I know I can’t stop you, but I won’t have a hand in it.”
“I see”, Sir Bernard said, “that the white administration in Africa
may easily have been absorbed. I’m sorry, Roger.”
“Don’t be,” Roger said. “It’s not a thing to be sorry about.” He swept
suddenly round. “What about it, Philip?” he cried. “Are you with
them?”
Philip, trying to keep his footing, said, “Don’t be a fool, Roger, we
can’t not fight the Africans.”
“We can ‘not fight’ them perfectly well,” Roger said, and it seemed to
Isabel that his tall insolent figure dominated all the room except for
the carven and royal darkness of the seated Zulu, “and you know it.
Love and poetry are powers, and these people—will you deny it too?”
“Really, Roger,” Sir Bernard put in, “must you dichotomize in this
appalling way? It’s so barbarian; it went out with the Victorians. If
you feel you’re betraying the Ode to the Nightingale or something by
agreeing to my call on the Prime Minister, must you insist that your
emotions are universal? Keep them private, my dear boy, or they’ll be
merely provincial; and the provincial is the ruin of the public and
the private at once.”
He knew he was talking at random, but the whole room was filled with
uncertainty and defiance and distress. A man had come out into the
open from behind the fronds and leaves and it was Roger. A trumpet had
answered the horns and drums that were crying to the world from the
jungle of man’s being; and the trumpet was Roger’s voice. Was Africa
then within? was all the war, were the armies and munitions and the
transports but the shadow of the repression by which man held down his
more natural energies? but images of the strong refusal which Europe
had laid on capacities it had so long ruled that it had nearly
forgotten their independent life? But things forgotten could rise; and
old things did not always die.
Poland—Ireland—Judah—man. Roger knew something; the voice that had
discussed and lectured and gibed and repeated verse now cried its
sworn loyalty: a schism was opening in civilization. Sir Bernard
looked at Isabel, but she said nothing. She leaned on the mantelpiece
and looked into the fire, and her face was very still. Roger relaxed
slightly; he liked Sir Bernard, and they had often gently mocked each
other. He said, “Yes, I know I can’t do anything. I think I’ll say
goodnight and get back to Hampstead. Coming, Isabel?”
She turned her head towards him. “It’ll be very awkward, dearest,” she
said. “The milkman’s been told not to call, and what shall we do for
breakfast?” She spoke quite seriously, but her lips smiled; only a
deeper seriousness and sadness grew in her eyes, and his own were sad
as they encountered hers. She stood upright, as if to move, and yet
lingered a little on that silent interchange.
“I know, I know,” Roger said, answering her smile, “it’ll be most
inconvenient, but can I stop here?” He looked round at them all and
flung out his hands. “O you’re charming, you’re lovely, all of you,
but how much do you care what the great ones are doing? And in these
centuries you’ve nearly killed it, with your appreciations and your
fastidious judgements, and your lives of this man and your studies in
that. What do you know about ‘huge and mighty forms that do not
live/Like living men’? Power, power, it’s dying in you, and you don’t
hunger to feel it live. What’s Milton, what’s Shakespeare, to you?”
“If this is just a literary discussion—” Caithness began.
“What d’you mean just a literary discussion?” Roger said, his temper
leaping. “D’you call Islam a mere theological distinction? Can’t you
understand any other gospel than your own damned dogmas?”
“Roger, Roger,” Sir Bernard murmured.
“I beg your pardon,” Roger said, “and yours too, Sir Bernard. But I
can’t stay here tonight. I know it seems silly, but I can’t.” He
looked back at his wife. “But I shall be all right, darling,” he said,
“if you’d rather stop. I can even go and buy a bottle of milk!”
Isabel smiled at him. “I think I’ll come tonight,” she said.
“Tonight anyhow.” She looked down at her sister. “Rosamond, you might
as well stop here, mightn’t you?”
Rosamond looked up with a jerk. “Stop,” she exclaimed. “What, are you
going back? O I can’t, I can’t. I’ll come.”
They all stared at her. “I wasn’t just listening,” she went on
hastily. “I was thinking of something else. Are you going at once,
Isabel? I’ll get my things.” She was on her feet, when Philip’s hand
took hold of her arm. She jerked it away. “Let me alone,” she cried
out. “Aren’t you going with them?”
Philip, in spite of his opposition to Roger, hadn’t been at all
certain; or rather, he was extremely troubled about being certain. He
couldn’t begin to imagine himself on the side of Considine and the
Africans, but he had a curiously empty feeling somewhere when he
thought of denying them. It was all so muddled, and he had hitherto
thought that moral divisions, though painful, were clear: such as not
cheating, and not telling lies except for urgent reasons, and being on
your country’s side, and being polite to your inferiors, and in short
playing the game. But this game was quite unlike any other he’d ever
played; what with the piercing music that called him still, and the
song Considine’s talk of love sent through his blood, and the urgent
appeal to him to do what he so much wanted to do, to exult and live.
But of course when Rosamond put it like that—no, he wasn’t. He was
going to be on the side of his country and his duty and his fianc��e.
He said so.
She said: “I thought not,” almost snapping at him. “Then leave me
alone. I thought you wouldn’t.”
The king at this moment stood up. He had been silent, concerned with
his own thought of vengeance, while the breach between Roger and the
rest had widened, and now he thrust himself up in the midst of them,
an ally and yet a hostility, a dark whirlwind of confusion in their
thoughts and in their midst. He came to his feet, and Rosamond, as if
by the force of his rising, seemed flung against her sister. She clung
to Isabel, and Isabel said, speaking of ordinary things in her own
extraordinarily lovely voice: “Very well, darling, we’ll all go.
Perhaps Sir Bernard will give us a loaf of bread.”
Sir Bernard, almost disliking Rosamond—he hadn’t wanted her there at
all, but she’d insisted on coming, and without being rude to Philip he
could hardly refuse—said: “Also the jug of wine, if it’s any good.
The Sahara will no doubt presently serve for Paradise. Ian, will you
come with me as far as Downing Street?”
The breach widened indeed, but he was more aware of it than Roger, and
as he became aware of it he refused and bridged it in his mind. He had
been very nearly irritated, and irritation inflamed all the exquisite
contemplative mind: he turned the cool spray of medicinal irony on
himself till he was able to smile at Roger and say, “Well, if you will
go—But let me be in at the death, won’t you? While gospels exist,
let’s enjoy them as best we can. Goodnight.”
A little later he and Caithness, having telephoned for an appointment,
came to Downing Street, where, parting from the priest, he was after
some slight delay carried in to see Raymond Suydler himself; which
attention and privilege he owed to the Prime Minister’s gratitude for
a restored stomach.
It was a long time since Sir Bernard had seen him; his attention to
his stomach had been paid during the Prime Minister’s first
administration, and this was his second. He was a man who had made not
merely an opportunity but a political triumph out of the very loss of
public belief in politics which afflicted the country. He had carried
realism to its extreme, declaring publicly that the best any statesman
could do was to guess at the solution of his various problems, and
that his guesses had a habit of being right. In private he dropped
only the last half of this statement, which left him fifty per cent of
sincerity, and thus gave him an almost absurd advantage over most of
his colleagues and opponents. It had taken some time certainly for his
own party to reconcile themselves to the enormous placards “Guess with
Suydler” which at the General Election out-flamed the more
argumentative shows of the other side. But the country, half mocking,
half understanding, had laughed and followed, in that mingling of
utter despair and wild faith which conceals itself behind the sedate
appearance of the English. Chance, no doubt, had helped him by giving
him an occasional opportunity of lowering taxation at home and
increasing prestige abroad, but his denial of reason had done more. It
was not cynicism; it was, and it was felt to be, truth, as Suydler saw
it, and as most of the country did. In any state of things, the
facts—all the facts—were unknown; circumstances were continually
changing; instability and uncertainty were the only assured things.
What was the use of rational discussion or fixed principles or
far-sighted demonstrations? “Guess—guess with Suydler.” He was
reported to have said that the English had only had one inspired fool
as Prime Minister—Pitt; and two intelligent men—Melbourne and
Disraeli, who were hampered by believing, one in a class, the other in
a race. “I would rather guess with Pitt, if you’ll guess with me.”
Sir Bernard remembered all this as he shook hands, and observed with a
slight shock Suydler’s large, ungainly form. The one cartoon which had
really succeeded against him had been called “The Guessing Gorilla,”
and Sir Bernard recollected with pleasure that it was not his own
obsession with Africa which had remarked the likeness. The ugly face,
the long hanging arms, the curled fingers, the lumbering step, had a
strange likeness to a great ape plunging about the room. He shook
hands, and his visitor was quite glad not to feel those huge arms
clutching him. There was, he thought, altogether too much Africa
about, and he almost wondered for a moment whether indeed Suydler were
preferable to Considine. But he reminded himself that it wasn’t
personalities but abstract states of existence with which he was
concerned, and he took the chair the Prime Minister offered. The huge
bulk swelled before him, loomed over him, was talking…
talking…Sir Bernard felt a great weariness come over him. The
excitement, the incredibilities,
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