Shadows of Ecstasy, Charles Williams [e ink epub reader .txt] 📗
- Author: Charles Williams
- Performer: -
Book online «Shadows of Ecstasy, Charles Williams [e ink epub reader .txt] 📗». Author Charles Williams
worn him out. And what was the good of trying to defend the intellect
in this place of the death of the intellect? Witch-doctors were
invading Europe, and he had gone running to an ape for help…
“—absurd talk about possible reasons,” the Prime Minister was saying.
“The whole thing’s an example of the failure of organized thought.
No-one can find out the root of the trouble.”
“I wonder you ask them,” Sir Bernard said.
“I don’t; they tell me,” Suydler answered. “There was a man
yesterday—an ex-Governor—was talking to me. I had a kind of bet with
myself how many synonyms he’d use for guess—I think it was about
twenty-four. We may assume—not improbable—very likely—may it not
be—reasonable assumption—working hypothesis—possible surmise—news
suggests—my opinion is—better theory—never a plain straightforward
guess. Never used the word once.”
“It’s not a favourite, except with children; they love it,” Sir
Bernard said. “Perhaps”, he added, struck by a sudden thought, “that’s
why they’re nearer the kingdom of heaven. They’re more sincere.
However, I came here to say that I’m not certain that I didn’t dine
yesterday with the High Executive. I mean—I guess I did.”
“That’s fair, anyhow,” Suydler answered. “Who did you guess he was?
And—not that I mind, but as a concession to the Permanent
Officials—why did you guess him?”
Sir Bernard held out his papers. “It’s all there,” he said.
Suydler put out an enormous hand—its shadow on the carpet stretched
out, black and even more enormous-and took them. “How tidy you are,”
he said, grinning, “but you always were, weren’t you? Your operations
were always miracles of conciseness. If you’ve extracted the truth
now, that’ll be another miracle. Excuse me while I look at them.”
He didn’t take long over it; then he chuckled, put them down, and
leaned back. “And you’ve got this Zulu king of yours?” he asked.
“Ready to testify and identify and all that?”
“Certainly,” Sir Bernard said.
Suydler linked his fingers and stretched his arms out. “Well,” he
said, “if you like—though I’ve met Considine a few times—but if you
like to make a pattern with him in, I’m not sure that I won’t go with
you. It’ll look awfully well…‘Government discover High Executive.’
Why, as of minor interest, didn’t you come before?”
“Because, until I’d got the king’s opinion—guess, if you like, I
couldn’t,” Sir Bernard explained. “And he went off into a real stupor
the minute he reached Kensington—as if he had to get his own
faculties into order.”
“Two hundred years-” Suydler said. “But what a price to pay! No women,
no fun, no excitements. All, if I’ve got it right, squeezed back into
yourself.” He pressed a bell. “It isn’t fair to let him go on
suppressing himself and misleading others, is it? ‘A long life and a
dull one’—that’s the end of all you theorists.”
Sir Bernard stood up. “Well,” he said, “if you think I’m right I’ll
go.”
A secretary came in, but Suydler kept him waiting. “Right!” he said,
“no, I don’t think you’re right. I think your mind and his may
have—what shall I say?—coincided by chance. But there’s no such
thing as ‘right.’ It’s all a question of preferring a particular
momentary pattern of phenomena. There’s nothing more anywhere. How can
there be? At this moment the past doesn’t exist, the future doesn’t
exist, and we know nothing much about the present!”
Avoiding any immediate discussion of the nature of existence, Sir
Bernard got away. Walking down Downing Street he considered the
Minister. “Considine and he both look into the abyss,” he thought,
“but Considine sees it beating with passion, and Suydler sees nothing.
A chaos or a void? Black men, or men who are no longer white?” He saw
the intellect and logical reason of man no longer as a sedate and
necessary thing, but rather a narrow silver bridge passing over an
immense depth, around the high guarded entrance of which thronged
clouds of angry and malign presences. Often mistaking the causes and
often misjudging the effects of all mortal sequences, this capacity of
knowing cause and effect presented itself nevertheless to him as the
last stability of man. Always approaching truth, it could never, he
knew, be truth, for nothing can be truth till it has become one with
its object, and such union it was not given to the intellect to
achieve without losing its own nature. But in its divine and abstract
reflection of the world, its passionless mirror of the holy law that
governed the world, not in experiments or ecstasies or guesses, the
supreme perfection of mortality moved. He saluted it as its child and
servant, and dedicated himself again to it, for what remained to him
of life, praying it to turn the light of its awful integrity upon him,
and to preserve him from self-deception and greediness and infidelity
and fear. “If A is the same as B,” he said, “and B is the same as C,
then A is the same as C. Other things may be true; for all I know,
they may be different at the same time; but this at least is true. And
Considine will have to hypnotize me myself before I deny it. Suydler
is wrong—a guess may be true once and twice and a thousand times, for
man has known abstraction, and no gorilla of a politician can take it
away from him.”
Chapter Eight - PASSING THROUGH THE MIDST OF THEM
There followed a few days of uneasy quiet. The news from Africa was
vague, but more cheerfully vague. It was generally understood that
organized naval measures were being taken to overcome the submarine
forces of the enemy, which had succeeded in making the African coasts
so dangerous and had proceeded so far afield that until such measures
had been concerted and carried out the landing of fresh troops had
become impossible. It was even rumoured that attacks had been made on
certain European harbours, but if this were so the Government
concerned saw to it that no hint was allowed to appear in the Press.
Energetic operations had been planned; the more energetic movements of
the enemy seemed to have ceased, though the clearance of white troops
from North Africa appeared to be proceeding slowly but systematically.
The financial panic had also been stayed to some extent by Government
action. For the Prime Minister had announced that, as the simplest
means of meeting the emergency, the Administration had decided to make
loans to the federated control of any particular industry which was
seriously affected. Conditions of application, examination, payment
and repayment were to be settled by a Commission set up for the
purpose; the immediate affair was to steady the markets, and dazed
directors of innumerable companies found themselves offered millions
in order to buy up shares in their own concerns. Unfederated companies
rushed to federate; all newspapers, for example, found themselves part
of one large business, controlled by a common Board which immediately
borrowed or was offered a subsidy of some millions, with which it
repurchased the shares which Nehemiah and Ezekiel Rosenberg were
throwing before the world. It looked therefore as if these devoted
believers would secure their money as well as their jewels; and the
coming of Messias or the building of the Temple be prepared for by the
English in a general increase of taxation. Sir Bernard, as he
contemplated the world, foresaw a possibility that the whole business,
military and financial, would gradually expire, having ruined a great
number of small shareholders, increased the financial strength of the
larger, cost a great deal in armaments, and probably massacred a host
of Africans in circumstances of more or less equal fighting.
“I had some expectation,” he said to Caithness as they turned into the
Square, after an early afternoon walk, “of becoming a travelling
doctor in my old age—probably with a donkey cart; and going from
village to village, curing indigestion and collecting sixpences.
You know the kind of thing—‘Travers’s Pills make Stomachs
Tractable’—‘Dainty Digestions Decently Doctored.’ You might have
joined me, and we would have put stomachs and souls right together.
‘Stomachs on the right; souls on the left: Advice free: only real
cures paid for.’ But I should have stipulated for no miracles.”
“Then you’d have wanted an unfair advantage,” Caithness said. “I
should have to send quite a number of my patients to you; lots of them
think it’s their conscience when actually it’s their stomachs.”
“Still on your theory the soul’s wrong anyhow,” Sir Bernard pointed
out.
“Quite,” Caithness answered. “But they have to understand that, not
merely moan over their pains. However, the question isn’t likely to
arise. Things do seem to be a bit quieter now.”
The exertions of the Government and (presumably) of the police did
not, however, succeed in tracing either Nigel Considine or his
friends. Justified by several different kinds of warrants, an
examination of the Hampstead house was carried out but with no
results. Whatever staff or whatever servants had occupied it had
disappeared as completely as its master. Inkamasi was examined and
re-examined, but though his story was given in fuller detail, the
details did not much help. It was clear that the High Executive had
done no more than preserve him in case he should be wanted; the Zulus
themselves, who were apparently taking an active part in the war, were
(so far as news could be obtained) under the headship of another of
their race, a cousin of Inkamasi’s, less directly but still closely
connected with the great chieftain and hero, Chaka. The king was
allowed to remain in seclusion at Sir Bernard’s house, where he spent
his days reading, brooding, and talking sometimes to his host and to
Caithness. Philip rather avoided him.
Philip indeed had his own troubles. Apart from the complete wreck of
his purposes which the war had brought about, apart from the
agitations which his new experiences had introduced into his inner
mind, he suddenly found himself on the most extraordinarily difficult
terms with Rosamond. She refused to come near Colindale Square, she
occasionally even refused to see him when he went to Hampstead, and
when she did see him she was in a nervous and irritable mood which was
quite unlike the normal Rosamond. Philip’s own meditations on the
relations between love and Rosamond were thwarted and upset by the
discovery that Rosamond, to all intents and purposes, wasn’t there for
love to have relations with. She had always kept love in its proper
place, and had never displayed any particular interest in its more
corporeal manifestations, suggesting by her manner that such things
were a trifle silly. If he tried to explain something of the marvel
which she seemed to him, she had listened placidly and with good
humour, but without much gratification and with no kind of exaltation
at all. His own exaltation, however, had not been exactly forbidden to
thrive—until now. But now she would not have it; she shrank from and
repelled it. She wouldn’t be touched; she wouldn’t be approached.
Isabel told him that her sister was sleeping badly. But what Isabel
didn’t tell him was the dubious and unhappy cause of that broken
sleep.
Roger, coming in early one evening, found his wife alone. He kissed
her and flung himself down, and a silence gathered them up. Presently
Isabel stirred: “Well, darling?” she said, “what do you think about it
all?”
Roger said nothing at first, then he uttered, “I’ve done what I can.
I’ve thrown over a course on the probable sources of the minor
comedies of the early nineteenth century, and where Mrs. Inchbald
found her plots—Mrs. Inchbald—I ask you, Isabel! Where did Mrs.
Hemans get hers?—and I’ve talked to them for all I’m worth
Comments (0)