Shadows of Ecstasy - Charles Williams (electric book reader .txt) 📗
- Author: Charles Williams
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himself taken aback by the other’s face and bearing. He was not as a
rule easily impressed by those he met; he had far too good an opinion
of himself. But here…He saw a man of apparently about fifty, tall,
well-proportioned, clean-shaven, with a good forehead and a good
chin. But it was neither forehead nor chin that held Ingram; it was
the eyes. He thought of the word “smouldering,” and almost as quickly
cursed himself for thinking of it; it was such a hateful word, only it
was the most accurate. Something, repressed and controlled but vivid,
was living in them; they corresponded, in their flickering intensity,
to a voice that vibrated with some similar controlled ardour. The word
“darkness” as it was uttered called to him as it did in the lines he
had quoted; he felt as if he were looking at the thing itself. He
began to speak, stammered on a syllable, and at last said helplessly:
“I? darkness?”
“You spoke of it familiarly,” the other said. “You used her language.”
Roger pulled himself together; he answered with a slight hostility.
“If you mean my one Shakespearean quotation-”
“Isn’t that just darkness making itself known?” Considine asked. “Or
do you use apposite quotation merely as a social convenience?”
Roger felt ridiculously helpless, as if a believer accustomed to
infidels were suddenly confronted by a fanatic of his own creed. But
the implied sneer stung him, and he said sharply, “I don’t quote.”
“I believe that—because of your voice,” the other answered. “You must
forgive me if I was offensive; could I help wondering if you really
made that rapturous cry your own?”
He allowed the attendant to help him on with his coat as he spoke.
Roger’s own things lay neglected on the counter, and the other
attendant waited by them. Roger himself was absurdly conscious of the
presence of those two auditors. He had often talked highly in similar
circumstances before, not theatrically certainly but with a sardonic
consciousness that the subservient listeners probably thought him a
little mad, with the slight enjoyment of being too much for them, with
an equally slight but equally definite and continuous despair that
words which meant so much to him meant so little to others. But
Considine was speaking perfectly naturally, only always with that
sounding depth of significance in his voice.
“I am glad you liked it,” Roger said foolishly.
Considine said nothing at all to this, and Roger became instantly
conscious of the fatuity of the words. “Rapturous cry”…“glad you
liked it.” Ass! “No, really,” he said very hastily, “I mean…I did
really mean it. I mean I do like poetry. Good God!” he thought to
himself, “if my classes could hear me now.”
Hatted and gloved, Considine turned to him. “You are a little afraid
of it, I think,” he said. “Or else you have spoken your beliefs very
little.”
“Nobody cares about it,” Roger said, “and I mock at myself, God
forgive me, because there’s nothing else to do.”
They were moving together out of the cloakroom.
“There’s much else to do,” Considine answered, “and I think you
believe that; I think you dare encounter darkness.”
He raised his hand in salutation. Isabel was ready waiting with Sir
Bernard, but before he joined them Roger stood still watching
Considine going towards the door, and when at last he came to them he
was still troubled.
“Darling, what’s the matter?” Isabel said. “You’re looking very
gloomy.”
“Mr. Considine’s been talking of the fakirs,” Sir Bernard said, “and
Roger’s wondering if he’s one.”
Roger regarded them for a moment and then made an effort to recover
himself. “I don’t mind telling you,” he answered, “that Mr. Considine
has played me entirely off my own stage in my own play, and I didn’t
think there was a man living who could do that.”
“Elucidate,” Sir Bernard said.
“I shan’t elucidate,” Ingram answered. “I don’t see why I should be
the only fellow to encounter darkness. D’you want a taxi, Sir
Bernard?”
Sir Bernard did, and after having parted from the Ingrams and entered
it, he lay back and tried once more to remember where he had seen
Considine. It was quite recently, and yet he had a vague feeling that
it wasn’t recently. An idea of yesterday and an idea of many years ago
conflicted in his mind—a man with his hand a little lifted, almost as
if it contained and controlled power, a hand of energy in rest.
Perhaps, he thought, it was the theme of the speeches which had misled
him; they had been listening to talk about distant places, and perhaps
his mind had transferred that distance to time. It must have been
yesterday or he wouldn’t remember so clearly. It couldn’t have been
long ago or Considine, who was obviously younger than his own sixty
odd years, would have changed. His gesture mightn’t have changed, all
the same—well, it didn’t matter. As he got out at his Kensington
house he reflected that it would come back, of course; sooner or later
the pattern of his knowledge would bring that little detail to his
mind. The intellect hardly ever failed one eventually, if one
fulfilled the conditions it imposed. But it did perhaps rather ignore
the immediate necessities of ordinary life; in its own pure life it
overlooked the “Now and here” of one’s daily wishes. Still, his own
was very good to him; with a happy gratitude to it he came into the
library, where he found his son reading letters.
“Hullo, Philip!” he said. “Had a good evening? How’s Rosamond?”
“Very fit, thanks,” Philip answered. “Did you have a good time?”
Sir Bernard nodded, and sat down leisurely. “Roger told us how he
liked poetry,” he said, “and the explorer told us how he liked
himself, and Mr. Nigel Considine told us how he disliked the
University.”
“Not in so many words?” Philip asked.
“Contrapuntal,” Sir Bernard said. “When you’ve heard as many speeches
as I have, you’ll find that’s the only interest in them: the
intermingling of the theme proposed and the theme actual.”
“I can never make out whether Roger’s serious,” Philip said. “He seems
to be getting at one the whole time. Rosamond feels it too.”
Sir Bernard thought it very likely. Rosamond Murchison was Isabel’s
sister and Roger’s sister-in-law, but only in law. Rosamond privately
felt that Roger was conceited and not quite nice; Roger, less
privately, felt that Rosamond was stuckup and not quite intelligent.
When, as at present, she was staying with the Ingrams in Hampstead, it
was only by Isabel’s embracing sympathy that tolerable relations were
maintained. Sir Bernard almost wished that Philip could have got
engaged to someone else. He was very fond of his son, and he was
afraid that the approaching marriage would make, at the times when he
visited them, an atmosphere in which, but for brief intervals, he
would find it impossible to breathe. Philip’s mind by itself was at
present earnest and persevering, if a trifle slow. But Philip’s mind
surrounded and closed in by Rosamond’s promised, so far as he could
see, to become merely static. He looked over at his son.
“Roger’s serious enough,” he said. “But he still expects to get direct
results instead of indirect. He never realizes that the real result of
anything is always round the corner.”
“What corner?” Philip asked.
“The universal corner”, Sir Bernard said, “around which we are always
on the point of turning—into a street where there are all the numbers
except that of the house we’re looking for. Good heavens, I’m becoming
philosophical. That’s the result of University dinners.”
“I don’t think I quite follow you,” Philip said.
“It doesn’t at all matter,” Sir Bernard answered. “I only meant that I
should like you to believe that Roger’s quite serious, and a little
unhappy.”
“Unhappy!” Philip exclaimed. “Roger!”
“Certainly unhappy,” Sir Bernard said. “He’s fanatic enough to believe
passionately and not sufficiently fanatical to believe that other
people ought to believe. Naturally also, being young, he thinks his
own belief is the only real way of salvation, though he’d deny that if
you asked him. So he’s in a continual unsuccessful emotional conflict,
and therefore he’s unhappy.”
“But I don’t understand,” Philip said. “Roger never goes to church.
What does he believe in?”
“Poetry,” Sir Bernard answered, and “O—poetry!” Philip exclaimed; “I
thought you meant something religious. I don’t see why poetry should
make him unhappy.”
“Try living in a world where everyone says to you, quite insincerely,
‘O isn’t Miss Murchison charming!’” his father said drily. “Or
alternatively, ‘I can’t think what you see in her.’ And then-”
He was interrupted by the entrance of a third person.
“Hullo, Ian,” he broke off; “how’s the Archbishop?”
Ian Caithness was the vicar of a Yorkshire parish and Philip’s
godfather. He was a tall man of about Sir Bernard’s age and looked
like an ascetic priest, which was more by good luck than by merit, for
he practised no extreme austerities. But he took life seriously, and
(as often happens) attributed his temperament to his religion. He was
therefore not entirely comfortable with other people of different
temperaments who did the same thing, and a lifelong friendship with
Sir Bernard had probably survived because the other remained
delicately poised in a philosophy outside the Church. As a Christian
Sir Bernard would have probably irritated his friend intolerably; he
soothed him as a—it was difficult to say what; Sir Bernard
occasionally alluded to himself as a neo-Christian, “meaning,” he
said, “like most neos, one who takes the advantages without the
disadvantages. As Neo-Platonist, neo-Thomist, and neolithic too, for
all I know.” On the rare occasions when Caithness came to London he
always stopped in Kensington; on the still rarer when Sir Bernard went
to Yorkshire he always went to church.
“Rather bothered,” Caithness said in answer to his friend’s greeting.
“The Government papers are making capital out of the massacres of the
missions, and demanding expeditions.”
“What massacres?” Philip asked in surprise. “Being down in Dorset for
a couple of weeks has cut away the papers.”
“There’ve been a number of simultaneous native risings in the interior
of Africa,” Caithness answered absently, “and so far as we can hear
the Christian missionaries have been killed. The Archbishop’s very
anxious that the Government shan’t use that as a reason for military
operations.”
“Why ever not?” Philip said staring.
Caithness made an abrupt gesture with his hand. “Because it is their
duty, their honour, to die, if necessary,” he said; “it is a condition
of their calling. Because the martyrs of the Church must not be
avenged by secular arms.”
“A very unusual view for the Church to take,” Sir Bernard murmured.
“Normally…It’s a curious business altogether. I was told this
afternoon that the Khedive has left Cairo for a British warship.
Roger’s anthropological idols getting active, I suppose.”
“The pressure on Egypt must be pretty bad, then,” Caithness said.
“Well, that isn’t our business. We can’t, of course, object to any
steps the Government think it wise to take in their own interests, so
long as they don’t use the missions as a reason. The Archbishop has
intimated to the Societies who sent them out that no material ought to
be given to the papers—photographs or what not.”
“Photographs!” Sir Bernard exclaimed suddenly. “It was—of course, it
was. My mind would have done it, Ian, but thank you for helping it.”
He got up and went across the room to a drawer in the lower part of
one of the bookcases, whence he returned carrying
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