Shadows of Ecstasy - Charles Williams (electric book reader .txt) 📗

darling,” she said

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,