The Place of the Lion, Charles Williams [top 100 books of all time checklist .txt] 📗

Anthony shook his head reproachfully at Damaris over the coffee cups.

“You know,” he said, “if I were a sub-editor on anything but a distinguished literary paper, I should say you were playing with me—playing fast and loose.”

“Don’t be absurd, Anthony,” Damaris answered.

“I come and I go,” Anthony went on, “and you will and you won’t. And—”

“But I’ve told you what I will,” Damaris said. “I’m not sure whether you and I could make a success of marriage. And anyhow I won’t think about anything of the kind till I’ve got my degree. Of course, if you think more of yourself than of me—”

“Well, naturally I do,” Anthony interrupted. “Who doesn’t? Am I a saint or an Alexandrian Gnostic? Don’t let’s ask rhetorical questions, darling.”

“I’m not doing anything of the kind,” Damaris said, coldly. “But you must be willing to wait a little while. I’m not sure of myself.”

“It’s all you are sure of—besides Abelard,” Anthony said. “And with you, that covers everything else.”

“I think you’re rather unkind,” Damaris answered. “We both like each other—”

“Dearest, I don’t like you a bit,” Anthony interrupted again. “I think you’re a very detestable, selfish pig and prig. But I’m often wildly in love with you, and so I see you’re not. But I’m sure your only chance of salvation is to marry me.”

“Really, Anthony!” Damaris got up from the table. “Chance of salvation, indeed! And from what, I should like to know?”

“Nobody else”, Anthony went on, “sees you as you are. Nobody else will give you such a difficult and unpleasant time as I do. You’ll never be comfortable, but you may be glorious. You’d better think over it.”

Damaris said nothing. Anthony, it was clear, was in one of his difficult fits; and if it hadn’t been for The Two Camps—. There was a short silence, then he too stood up.

“Well,” he said, “you’ve not been eaten by the lion, and I’ve been mauled by the lioness. I think I will now go and look for the other lioness.”

Damaris half-turned and smiled at him over her shoulder.

“Do I maul you?” she asked. “Am I a pig and a prig—just because I like my work?”

Anthony gazed at her solemnly. “You are the Sherbet of Allah, and the gold cup he drinks it out of,” he said slowly. “You are the Night of Repose and the Day of Illumination. You are, incidentally, a night with a good deal of rain and a day with a nasty cold wind. But that may be merely Allah’s little game.”

“I hate being bad friends with you,” Damaris said, with perfect truth, and gave him her hand.

“But!”, said Anthony, as he kissed it, “hate being good friends. Besides, I don’t think you could be.”

“What, a bad friend?”

“No, a good one,” Anthony said, almost sadly. “It’s all right, I suppose; it isn’t your fault—or at least it wasn’t. You were made like it by the Invisibles that created you.”

“Why are you always so rude to me, Anthony?” she asked, as wistfully as she thought desirable, but keeping rather on the side of intellectual curiosity than of hurt tenderness.

“I shall be ruder to the other lioness,” he said. “It’s only a way of saying, ‘Hear thou my protestation’—and making quite sure you do.”

“But what do you mean—look for the lioness?” Damaris asked. “You’re not anxious to find it, are you?”

Anthony smiled at her. “Well, you want to work,” he said, “and I could do with a walk. And so, one way and another—” He drew her a little closer to him, but as she moved they both suddenly paused. There struck momentarily into their nostrils—what Damaris recognized and Anthony didn’t—a waft of the horrible stench that had assailed her on the previous night in the house where Mr. Berringer lay insensible. It was gone in a second or two, but to each of them it was obvious that the other had smelt it.

“My God!” Anthony said involuntarily, as Damaris shuddered and threw back her head. “What’s the matter with your drains?”

“Nothing,” Damaris said sharply. “But what—did you smell something?”

“Smell,” Anthony exclaimed. “It was like a corpse walking. Or a beast out of a jungle. What on earth is it?” He sniffed experimentally. “No, it’s gone. It must be your drains.”

“It isn’t our drains,” Damaris said crossly. “I smelt it at that house last night, only not nearly so strongly; but how it got here! It can’t be the frock—I wasn’t wearing it. How horrible!”

They were standing staring at one another, and she shook herself abruptly, then, recovering her normal remoteness, “I shall go and have a bath,” she said. It occurred to her that the smell might be, in some way, clinging to her hair, but she wasn’t going to admit to Anthony that anything about her could be even remotely undesirable, so she ended—“It makes one feel to need it.”

“It does,” Anthony said. “I suppose the lioness—”

“In a town—unseen? My dear Anthony!”

He looked out of the window at the street and the houses opposite. People were going by; a car stopped; a policeman came into sight. “Why, no,” he said, “I suppose not. Well—it’s funny. Anyhow, I’m off now. Goodbye, and do think about salvation.”

“Goodbye,” she said. “Thank you for coming, and if I ever seem to need it I will. But I’ve read a good deal about salvation, you know, in all those tiresome texts of one sort and another.”

“Yes,” Anthony answered, as they came into the hall. “Reading isn’t perhaps—the texts are not quite the ritual. Send for me if you want me at any time. I love you. Goodbye.”

He came into the street, frowning, though at what he hardly knew. It was usually at Damaris. He was on these visits provoked by her ignorance of his intelligence; he was provoked even more deeply by her ignorance of his authority over himself. Walking slowly away, he had often asked himself whether—in that momentary opportunity of choice which recurrently presented itself to his mind—he ought not so to exercise it as to turn his preoccupation from her. Only he did not see what good would be done, assuming that he could and did. She thought herself so intellectual and scholarly and capable—and so she was. But she was also an absurd, tender, uncertain little thing, with childish faults of greediness and conceit, and Anthony felt strongly that no one except himself was likely to recognize the childishness. They all took her at her own valuation, and some liked her and some disliked her. But to him she so often seemed like a child with its face against the window-pane, looking for the rain to stop so that t he desired satisfaction might arrive. Her learning, her articles, her doctorate—and the picnic would be ended, and she would be fortunate if she were not, like most people, tired and cross and unhappy before the end of the day. Perhaps then he could be really of use—good. And if he chose to do it, it was his business. So on the whole he thought that Authority—which meant his decision—was on the side of going on. Only then Authority must control his own mental and physical irritations a little better. Self-reverence was absurd, self-knowledge was hopeless; self-control—perhaps a little more….

He switched his thoughts on to another track. For the past forty hours Quentin and he had discussed, whenever they had been together in the rooms they shared in Notting Hill, little but the mysterious business of Tuesday night. They had gone over every incident without result. Lionesses didn’t change into lions; nor did lions appear on small country lawns. But then what had happened? Had they been under some sort of hypnotism? Who was this very odd Mr. Berringer, in whose garden lions leapt out of nothing and who (he had gathered from Damaris) went off into reputed trances? Quentin had been almost terrified ever since, poor fellow! He seemed to think one or other of the beasts was on his track. And now this tale of a woman’s hysterics and a crowned snake; and this horrible smell that had penetrated into the Tighes’ dining room. Of course, that a woman should be upset—of course, that the drains should go wrong But it was the other thing that held his concern. He had felt, it seemed to him now, a curious fascination as he gazed at that immense and royal beast—not terror at all; he had for an instant been almost inclined to go out and meet it. But what about the lioness? Well—there was no getting away from it—the lioness had just vanished, whatever people with guns might say. Vanished.

Revolving alternately the possibility of a lioness being changed into a lion, and of Damaris being converted to humility and love, he walked on along the road into which he and Quentin had turned two days earlier, until he had passed the cross-roads and drawn near to the house of the meeting. Why he was going here he wasn’t a bit clear, unless—which seemed silly—it were on the chance of seeing the lion again. His mind recalled it as it had stood there: majestic, awful, complete, gazing directly in front of it, with august eyes. And huge—huger than any lion Anthony had ever seen or dreamt of. The lions he had seen had been a kind of unsatisfactory yellow, but this in spite of the moonlight had been more like gold, with a terrific and ruddy mane covering its neck and shoulders. A mythical, an archetypal lion.

By the gate, when he reached the house, were two men; a car stood by. One of the men was Mr. Tighe, complete with the paraphernalia of active entomology; the other was a stranger who, as Anthony came up, got into his car and drove off. Mr. Tighe exclaimed with pleasure as he recognized Anthony, and shook hands.

“And what brings you down this way?” he asked happily.

“O—things!” Anthony answered. He