Shadows of Ecstasy, Charles Williams [e ink epub reader .txt] 📗
- Author: Charles Williams
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woke me up by calling out to me very late one night, ‘Isabel, what is
there in verse which is the equivalent of the principle of the arch?’
I really was angry then, but he only kept murmuring lines of poetry
and trying to see if they were like an arch. All that because a friend
of his who had been to dinner had gone away at half-past eleven
instead of half-past one. Always remember, Rosamond my child, that a
man needs you to get away from.”
“You mean needs to get away from me, don’t you?” Rosamond asked,
looking possessively at Philip.
“No,” Isabel said, “Sir Bernard, the milk’s boiling…thank you so
much. No, Rosamond, I don’t. I mean exactly what I said. A man must
have you-”
“I wish you wouldn’t keep saying ‘a man,’ Isabel,” Philip
remonstrated.
“Very well—give me a spoon, Philip—Philip then must have you there
in order to be able to get away. If you weren’t there he wouldn’t be
able to get away.”
Rosamond looked uninterested. Philip reflected what a curious thing it
was that so many people he knew should want to chatter like this. His
father did it, Ingram did it, Isabel did it. Sometimes he understood
it, sometimes he didn’t. But he never understood it as now, suddenly,
he understood Rosamond’s arm when she leant forward to pass a plate to
her sister; somehow that arm always made him think of the Downs
against the sky. There was a line, a curved beauty, a thing that spoke
to both mind and heart; a thing that was there for ever. And Rosamond?
Rosamond was like them, she was there for ever. It occurred to him
that, if she was, then her occasional slowness when he was trying to
explain something was there for ever. Well, after all, Rosamond was
only human; she couldn’t be absolutely perfect. And then as she
stretched out her arm again he cried out that she was perfect, she was
more than perfect; the movement of her arm was something frightfully
important, and now it was gone. He had seen the verge of a great
conclusion of mortal things and then it had vanished. Over that white
curve he had looked into incredible space; abysses of intelligence lay
beyond it. And in a moment all that lay beyond it was the bright
kitchen, and Sir Bernard standing up to go into the other room. He
jumped to his feet and with a movement almost of terror took the
loaded coffee tray from Isabel.
“Quietly,” Isabel said as they came to the door of the nondescript
room where the Ingrams habitually, alone or with their intimates,
passed their time. “Quietly; let’s hear what the rescued captive and
his saviour are talking about.”
She opened the door gently, and Ingram’s voice came out to them. “O
rhythm!” he was saying, “rhythm is the cheap pseudo-metaphysical slang
of our day. At least it was; it’s dying now. Everyone explained
everything by talking about rhythm. It’s a curious thing that people
who will sneer at a man for doing nothing all his life but making
words sound lovely and full of meaning will be quite happy over life
so long as they can explain it in words that are almost meaningless. I
sometimes think the nearest we can get to meaning is to feel as if
there was meaning.”
“Yet at least rhythm’s distinctly felt,” said another voice, a rich
strange voice; “so far they attempt to discover a knowledge of the
whole.”
“O so far!” Ingram said, and jumped off the table on which he was
sitting as Isabel pushed the door right open and came into the room.
After a table had been found for the tray, introductions took place;
at least Ingram began to say, “O Rosamond”—he stopped suddenly; “By
God,” he said, “I don’t know your name.”
The stranger, a tall magnificent young creature, darkly bronze, bowed
to Rosamond: “My name is Inkamasi,” he said. “At least,” he added, a
trifle scornfully, Sir Bernard thought, “that is the simplest form of
it.”
“Quite,” Roger said brightly. “Miss Murchison, Mr. Travers—hallo, Sir
Bernard, I didn’t know you were here—Sir Bernard Travers, the
Belly-King.”
It was a name with which his intimates had teased Sir Bernard in the
days of his practice. Philip frowned, forgetting that though the
black—if you could strictly call him black—was to him an entirely
new and not very desirable acquaintance, the occurrences of the last
two hours had put him on terms of intimacy with the Ingrams. Rosamond,
rather nervously, kept close to his side. Roger sat down again on top
of his large knee-hole writing-table, and took the coffee Philip
handed him.
“We were talking—” he began.
“Yes, darling, we heard you,” Isabel said. “Don’t trouble to repeat it
just at once. And I hope that doesn’t sound too rude,” she added to
the stranger, “only when Roger’s got more than two people to listen to
him he always begins to lecture.”
“I ought to have gone long ago,” the other said. “But your husband
kept me, talking of poetry and song and the principles of being.”
“But”, Isabel said, “must you go yet? I mean, will it be wise?” She
looked at Roger.
“O quite,” the African said. “The police will have cleared the
streets, and I don’t live far away.”
Roger looked at the clock. “Twenty to ten,” he said, “better wait a
little. I didn’t quite get the hang of what you were saying about
Homer. I’ll walk round with you presently. Sir Bernard’ll be
interested in Homer; he had a line from him on the title-page of his
book, opposite the peculiarly loathsome diagram that formed the
frontispiece.”
“I didn’t even know you’d looked so far into it,” Sir Bernard said.
“I generally give the title-page a fair chance,” Roger said. “One
can’t always judge books merely by the cover. It’s a book on the
stomach,” he explained to Inkamasi, “with nine full-page photographs
and about fifty more illustrations, each more abominable than the
others. When it was published Sir Bernard gave copies to all his
friends, because he knew they wouldn’t read it and wanted to hear them
explaining why. Brave men cut him afterwards.”
“I should like to see it,” the African voice said. “I did a little
medical work before I took up law.”
“Well, it’s buried under Rabelais, Swift, and Ulysses at the moment,”
Ingram grinned at Sir Bernard ,“but I’ll get it out for you before you
come again. ‘Lend it you I will for half a hundred years.’ But not
give it. I retain it to keep me humble.”
“I think I’ll go now,” Inkamasi said, putting down his cup. “Thank
you, Mrs. Ingram, for being so kind.”
“O well, if you will,” said Roger. “Coming, Philip?”
“Yes, rather,” Philip answered, with a momentary private hope that he
wouldn’t have to help defend this black man against even an unpleasant
white.
“Philip,” Rosamond whispered to him, with a soft pounce, “don’t go. I
don’t like him.”
“Must,” he whispered back. “Shan’t be long, dearest.”
“We’ll all go,” Sir Bernard said. “The streets aren’t too quiet. I’m
not at all sure, Mr. Inkamasi, that you wouldn’t be wise to take
advantage of the Government’s offer to remove friendly aliens. If
you’re living alone-”
The African dilated where he stood. “I will go alone,” he said. “They
will not attack me twice.”
“No, of course not,” Roger said. “Never attack the same man twice is a
well-known rule of mobs. Nonsense, man, no one knows who’s about. I
think you ought to stop here; you can, you know. We told you that
before.”
“Do,” Isabel put in.
Inkamasi seemed to hesitate, then he said rather vaguely, “No, I’m
sorry, I must go. There are reasons…”
“Are they really vicious, Roger?” Sir Bernard asked.
“Nasty little things,” Roger answered. “The usual kind. I believe
they’d have bolted before if Inkamasi and I had rushed them. He nearly
scattered them by himself but there were just enough to feel safe.”
“I know them,” the African said disdainfully. “There are others like
them in my country—they would run from a lion.”
“As bad as that, are they?” Roger asked gravely. “Good heavens, many’s
the time I’ve chased a lion or two down Haverstock Hill by just
shouting at them. Like you were doing when we came out. By the way,
what were you shouting?”
The African drew himself up and his magnificent form seemed to expand
before the young man’s eyes. He cried out: “They asked me my name and
I told them. I am Inkamasi of the Zulus, I am the chief of the sons of
Chaka, I am the master of the impis, I am Inkamasi the chieftain and
the king.”
There was a dead silence; and then suddenly Roger, almost as if some
challenge in the other’s voice had stirred him to motion and speech,
answered in the voice he had for verse. He threw up his right arm; he
cried out, “Bayate!”; he held the Zulu rigid by the unexpected salute.
And then someone else moved, and Roger dropped his arm and grinned and
said: “Rider Haggard. But it’s true, isn’t it?”
“It is true,” the king said. “It is the royal salute that you give,
though I’ve only heard it once or twice in my life before. But I
thought in England you’d forgotten royalty.”
“Well, in a kind of way we have,” Roger said. “And then again in a
kind of way we haven’t. And anyhow I didn’t know you really kept it in
Africa.”
“There are those among you who would like us to forget,” the Zulu
answered. “But it isn’t easy to forget Chaka. Have you forgotten
Caesar?”
He seemed to expect no answer; he turned again to Isabel, but this
time with a greater air. “Goodnight, Mrs. Ingram,” he said. “Your
husband will be back soon. They shan’t come far. Goodnight, Miss
Murchison. Sir Bernard, will you tell me one thing I have always meant
to look up about the stomach?”
Isabel came back from the front door to Rosamond with a bewildered
air. “Tell me,” she said, “are those three taking care of him or is he
taking care of them?”
“I think it’s perfectly horrible,” Rosamond said. “How could you let
him come into the house, Isabel?—everything smells of him. The king,
indeed! It’s almost profane.”
Isabel raised her eyebrows. “What, calling himself a king?” she asked.
“It was the way he talked, looking like a god,” Rosamond said, almost
hysterically. “I hate him to look like that.”
Isabel looked at the coffee cups. “Shall I clear them away?” she said,
“or shall I leave them for Muriel? Roger won’t call her Muriel, he
says it makes him feel unclean. So awkward, because he always has to
go and find her if he happens to want anything. He can’t just call out
‘Hi!’ Don’t worry, Rosamond, I don’t suppose you’ll see him again.”
“I hate him,” Rosamond repeated. “Why didn’t he stop in Africa?” She
walked to the window. “Isabel, they won’t come here, will they?”
Isabel looked at the fire, herself a little shaken. In spite of her
mockery of her sister she knew quite well what Rosamond had meant by
calling Inkamasi “profane.” It was a wild protest against the sudden
intrusion of a new energy, the making violently real of a thing that
had become less than a word. For a few moments royalty—a dark alien
royalty—had appeared in the room, imposed upon all of them by the
mere intensity
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