Shadows of Ecstasy

by Charles Williams

  But he hesitated as he looked at Ezekiel. “What about Mr. Rosenberg? Hadn’t he better come with me? I’m sure my father would be glad,” he said, and was permitted to propose it.

  Ezekiel nodded gravely. “A burden is laid upon me,” he said. “I shall go alone to the land of my fathers.”

  “If you’ve got any money or jewels here, Mr. Rosenberg,” the Inspector said, “you’d better let us take charge of them.”

  “We never had any,” Ezekiel answered; “they are in safe keeping.” He turned again to the body, intoned over it a Hebrew prayer, and, while the last great syllables echoed from the ceiling and walls, indicated to Philip that he was ready. Two constables were to come with them till they had found a taxi; the four went silently downstairs, and, as they came out into the street, heard, remote but unmistakable, the sound of the guns.

  In Kensington Sir Bernard and three of his guests were playing bridge—Caithness, Isabel and Roger. The king, as usual, was shut in his room. Rosamond was where Isabel had hardly dared to hope Sir Bernard would succeed in getting her—in bed and asleep. It was a Tuesday evening, and very often on Tuesday evenings, because Roger was generally free then, the Ingrams did visit their friend. Sometimes they played—if Philip or Rosamond or some other visitor would join them; sometimes they talked; sometimes they went to the theatre. Sometimes they even stopped the night; Sir Bernard was very fond of them, and between him and them existed that happy state by which fathers and children who are no relations may enjoy relationship rarely achieved by fathers and children who are. Sir Bernard all but understood Roger; Roger all but envied Sir Bernard. And what they did not understand and envy salted their talk with agreeable mystery. The evening therefore bore a bearable similarity to the past. The tact which Sir Bernard and Isabel possessed in common soothed over the fact of Rosamond’s hysteria, and in effect combined in finding her a bed and putting her there. Once in the house indeed, from exhaustion or cunning or content or fear, she grew docile, and was content to be managed. Sir Bernard’s forty years of practice had made him an adept at managing people. Roger had begun, from a sense of decency, to try to explain why they were there, or why he was there. But Sir Bernard refused to hear.

  “I’m quite sure you don’t want to tell me,” he said, “and being told things—there’s nothing I like better, but a sense of duty destroys the satisfaction. Like the people who refuse to be loved by a sense of duty. At my age one’s only too grateful to be loved—loved, mark you—at all. Let’s pretend nothing ever happened.”

  Hampered in this by the fact that the guns began almost immediately, they nevertheless did make the evening rather like one of their old enjoyments. It had been announced by Authority, after the last raid, that, in the event of another, official bulletins of the progress of the raid would be delivered to the wireless at regular intervals and announced by that means to the public. Arranged entertainments would, so far as possible, proceed as usual; and it was hoped that all listeners-in would follow their ordinary custom, and lessen the chance of panic, at creating which (as had been discovered in the Great War) all air-raids over such places as London were directed. If the experiment were found unsuccessful it would be discontinued after the trial.

  “We shan’t want the entertainment,” Sir Bernard said, “but we may as well know what’s happening, so far as the Government will tell us.”

  “I’m not sure of that,” Isabel said. “Suppose the thing says, ‘Great aeroplane dropping fiery bombs directly over Colindale Square’.”

  “It won’t,” Caithness said. “I’ll bet you a dozen pairs of gloves, Isabel, that if we’re all blown to heaven the last thing we hear is: ‘No aeroplane has yet reached London; the raid is being effectively repulsed.’”

  “Done,” said Isabel.

  “An anthropomorphic heaven,” Sir Bernard said, and picked up the cards.

  For some time the game and the entertainment proceeded. Then the first announcement was heard.

  “The first Government communiqué has just been received,” the loud speaker announced. “‘Raiders have attempted to approach London from all sides, but have entirely failed. Four enemy planes have already been brought down. A number of bombs have been dropped, but all in uninhabited districts. The O.C. London Air Defence announces that no losses have been sustained by our forces’.”

  “I hope they’ll use imagination,” Sir Bernard said. “One or two planes destroyed on our side would make the bulletins credible.”

  “I do wish you wouldn’t say ‘imagination’,” Roger complained. “It isn’t, you know; only the lowest kind of cunning fancy.”

  “I’ve never been clear that Coleridge was right there,” Caithness said meditatively. “Surely it’s the same faculty—the adaptation of the world to an idea of the world.”

  “Well, if the O.C. London Air Defence has an idea of the world,” Roger said, “you may be right. But is an idea a pattern?”

  “O surely!” Caithness interrupted. “If an idea isn’t a pattern what good is it?”

  “If we’re playing bridge,” Isabel said forbearingly, “could you manage to forget your ideas for a moment? Thank you so much.”

  A new voice, after a quarter of an hour, took up the tale. “Latest communiqué,” the loud speaker reported. “‘Enemy planes continue to be sighted. It is supposed that in all some eight hundred are engaged in the raid. None have appeared over London. Five villages have been destroyed. African troops have been landed from giant airships, and have occupied the ridge of Hampstead and Richmond Park. Other airships have appeared on the western side. Posts of Government troops have been overwhelmed in the north and south’.”

  “The devil they have!” Roger exclaimed.

  There was a short pause, then the loud speaker continued, with another variation of tone: “‘In the name of the things that have been and are to be, willed and fated, in the name of the gods many and one …’”

  Isabel laid down her cards, Caithness jumped to his feet, Roger sat upright in his chair. Sir Bernard, leaning back in his own, said in a voice of considerable interest, “Mr. Considine, I believe.”

  “‘… the High Executive of the African Sovereigns warns the English of the folly of defiance. It is reluctant to make a difference in belief a reason for the destruction of London, and it does not propose, even under the provocations of the Government, to endanger the city to-night. But it is compelled to display the ardent and unconquerable forces at its disposal, and from the centre of the white race it seriously warns them that the forces now in action shall be multiplied a thousand times to effect the ends upon which it is determined—the freedom of the black peoples and the restoration of Africa. It exhibits something of the strength of its armies and the devotion of its martyrs, and it asserts firmly that, if a third raid upon London becomes necessary, then London shall be destroyed. It urges the English to consider carefully what they are fighting, and if any among them believe that in love and art and death rather than in logic and science the kingdom of man lies, it entreats them, not to any transfer of allegiance, for it recognizes in the folly of patriotism a means of obedience to the same passionate imagination, but to a demonstration on behalf of peace. In the name of their own loyalties it appeals to the children of passion and imagination; in the name of a vaster strength than their own it threatens the children of pedantry and reason—in this first proclamation made at London in the first year of the Second Evolution of Man’.”

  “Then,” Sir Bernard said, “with more adequate assurance than Drake had, we can go on with the game.”

  But Roger and Caithness were both on their feet. Caithness said, “I wouldn’t trust him too far.”

  Isabel, still looking at her cards, murmured, “I don’t think you need worry, Mr. Caithness. He told us the same thing this afternoon.”

  “You’ve seen him?” Caithness incredulously exclaimed.

  “Yes,” Isabel said. “In fact, we made a kind of appointment with him.”

  “You did
?” Caithness said, still more astonished.

  “Well—I did for Roger,” Isabel said, and lifted her eyes. “He’d never have done it himself. I hope you didn’t mind, Sir Bernard?”

  “Almost thou persuadest me to be a monogamist,” Sir Bernard said, but there was unusual tenderness in his voice. “Here, do you mean? Because, if so, perhaps that’s him.”

  It was not; it was Philip and the Jew. They came into the room accompanied by Inkamasi who had descended from his to discover the progress of the raid. Philip introduced Ezekiel to Sir Bernard and in a low voice gave him the brief tale of the evening.

  “I’m very glad you’re here, Mr. Rosenberg,” Sir Bernard said, in quite a different tone from his usual placidity. “I’m your servant in everything. You’ll use us as you will. Ring, Philip.”

  But even as Philip’s finger touched the bell there was a louder ring in the hall. Sir Bernard paused and glanced swiftly at Isabel, who sat down by the card-table. In the minute that it took the feet of the maid to go to the front door she looked up at Roger and said: “Be good to me, my darling, and find out everything you can.” Roger, more shaken than she, did not answer except by his gaze. There were voices and footsteps; then the door was thrown wide open and Considine stood in the entrance of the room. Behind him was Mottreux, and behind him again two or three others—in whose faces, so far as he could see them, Sir Bernard thought he recognized the gentlemen who had waited on them during the dinner at Hampstead. But he had no time to consider; he looked back, where everyone else was looking, at the High Executive who stood in the entrance.

  “A good meeting,” Considine said, “but I mustn’t wait. Who will come with me?”

  In the immediate silence Roger heard himself say, “I.”

  “The king also,” Considine said.

  “Fool,” the Zulu cried. “You’ve come to me now, and do you think you’ll get away? You’re mine, you’re mine.”

  He was standing almost on the other side of the room, nine or ten feet away. But as he ended, he crouched low, and in one terrific movement leapt—right across the intervening space, sending himself forward and upward, so that he crashed down on Considine as a thunderbolt might strike from the sky. His hands were at the other’s throat, and before that descent of angry vengeance even Considine for a moment staggered and seemed likely to fall. But before he could either fall or recover, in the second after the onslaught fell, Mottreux sprang forward. The others saw the revolver in his hand and cried out; their voices were overwhelmed by the shot. Inkamasi reeled and crashed, his hand to his thigh where the blood showed. Considine recovered himself and glanced at his friend.

  “Mottreux, Mottreux, is it necessary?” he murmured. “Am I afraid of his hands? Well, it’s done; let Vereker see to him. It’s only a flesh wound.”

  He moved a step aside, so that another of his companions could come forward and do what he could with Isabel’s help and with improvised bandages for the wounded man. After a few minutes Considine went on: “Mr. Ingram and the king; Mr. Rosenberg, I have your cousin’s jewels, and others I have bought for you. Come with me; there’s no place for you here.” He cast a glance around. “Is there any of you beside for whom that’s true?”

  “If you take the king you shall take me,” Caithness cried out. “I demand that you——”

  “Why demand?” Considine’s laugh answered him. “I invite you, I entreat you, to come. Sir Bernard?”

  “No,” Sir Bernard said. “We’ve come out of the jungle and I for one am not going back.”

  “The king, Mr. Caithness, Mr. Rosenberg, Mr. Ingram,” Considine said. “Very well. Mrs. Ingram?”

  “No,” Isabel said. “Africa’s near enough here.”

  “You are perhaps a wise woman,” Considine said, “but if you are you shall be a centre of our wisdom in London, and all the women of England shall learn from you what it is they do. Your husband shall come back to you with victory. Good-night then. Good-night, Sir Bernard; I leave you to the sauces that you prefer to food. Come, my friends; come, my enemies. Mottreux, you and Vereker shall make the king as comfortable as you can in the first car. The others will come with me in the second.”

  He swept them with him out to the door, to the large cars that waited for them. Roger, obeying a gesture, got in and sat down with his back to the engine; Caithness sat by him. Opposite the priest was the Jew. Considine occupied the other seat. Figures moved about the other car; from the doorway Isabel and Sir Bernard silently watched. Considine raised a hand to them, and as the car slid away he said to Roger, “There is defeat defeated. But you may be at ease; there is again to-night no danger to them from my people. And to-morrow, or if not to-morrow then the day after, the Government will ask for peace.”

  “Surely they won’t dare,” Roger said. “And if you’re not hurting London, what are you doing?”

  “I’m teaching London to feel,” Considine said, “to feel terribly. It will know panic to-night such as it has never known. It will know the depths which it has never dared to find. Blame its sterile hopelessness for its suffering.”

  “Is that why you bring the African armies here?” Caithness asked.

  “Armies?” Considine laughed. “O I know I caused that tale to be spread. But those of my people who are here are entering into their greatest moment, and I give them the sacrifice they desire. Wait; you shall see them.” He picked up the speaking-tube and said something to the driver. The car ran swiftly northward, went round by Regent’s Park, into St. John’s Wood, and came out at last round Primrose Hill on to Haverstock Hill somewhere below Belsize Park Station. But a few minutes showed that this way was impossible. The road was full of people pressing downward, less thick below the station because of the mob that surged round the entrance, which no vehicle could get through. Beyond and above it the Hill was a noisy tumult of refugees, and beyond in the midnight sky was a red glare, above which again the useless searchlights crossed and wavered. Hysterical shrieks, curses, the noise of many separate scuffles came to them. Near them two wheelbarrows laden with bundles had come into collision, and the owners were fighting wildly in the midst of their scattered goods. Here and there a woman lay in a dead faint; in places the white robes and black cloaks of the Dominicans of the Priory showed as they laboured to create some sort of order. (“No doubt,” Considine murmured to Caithness, “the Anglican clergy are somewhere about too. But of course they haven’t the same advantage in dress.”) More and more fugitives were hurrying from the side turnings. Even as the car slowed down, to turn down one of these and escape, two young men scrambled on to the driver’s seat. “This car is going to take us,” one said drunkenly; the other hung on to the wheel. Roger glanced at Considine, who, observant but motionless, was lying back in his corner. The driver abandoned the wheel, and with what seemed but a light blow knocked one sprawling into the road; the other let go the wheel to protect himself, was dexterously flung overboard also, and the car backed a little way down the Hill. Considine took up the tube again. “Go round as far as is necessary,” he said. “I must come to the top.”

  Eventually, after many pauses and very long detours, the thing was done. They came back from the north on to the Hampstead ridge, and heard beyond them a noise quite different to anything that had passed before. “I will have the car opened,” Considine said to the driver. “Go slowly till you come near Highgate and then bend away to the stopping-place.”

  The glare by now had become much stronger, and Roger saw Considine suddenly stand up. Almost at the same moment a great cry in a strange tongue roared out beyond them. A black soldier appeared running and shouting beside the car, and another, and then, rushing towards them, a whole group. He heard the steady beating of drums, and a cry resolving itself into English: “Deathless! Deathless! Glory to the Deathless One!” Considine, raising his right hand, made with it, high in the air, a sudden gesture; the cry beat all round them and ceased and broke out yet more wildly: “Glory to the Master of Love! Glory to the Deathless
One!” Negroes ran by the car, rushing up to it, to touch it and fall back exhausted; they leapt and twisted at it.

  He felt a sudden lurch and guessed insanely what the obstacle was they had passed over. The cries, now in African, now in English, made an arch of sound: “Death for the Deathless One!” he heard. “Glory to the Lord of Death!” They were passing now between blazing fires each with its own dance of whirling figures, which broke and hurled themselves at the car, or flung themselves prostrate in adoration as it rolled by. Opposite him the figure of Considine seemed to dilate in the red glare; again and again he made the high mysterious gesture with his right hand; every now and then he cried out in a great voice and a strange tongue. Roger tore his eyes away and looked out over the Heath, but beyond the light of the watch-fires it lay in darkness, a darkness which seemed to him to be continually resolving itself into these leaping, shrieking figures. Caithness was leaning back in his corner, his eyes shut, his lips moving in swift murmured prayer.

  Roger looked back as the car suddenly stopped and Considine, signing for silence, began to speak. What he said Roger could not tell, but as he ended and the car moved on again, a shout greater than any before went up. He knew instinctively the meaning—it was that whereof the rhythm leapt into the former English: “Death for the Deathless.”

  But whatever the cries, Death itself began to accompany them on their passage, for there was heard suddenly a revolver shot, and then another, and as Roger, supposing for a moment that the English had begun an attack, looked round him, he saw one of the running foaming figures by the car stabbing at himself with a bayonet, and saw the madness spreading to others, saw the steel glinting and crimson-streaked faces in the light of the fires. Many of the negroes had torn off their tunics, and some were already naked from head to foot; among whom appeared here and there a yet wilder form in skins of various kinds and high plumes of feathers, leading some eddy of the general dance. Close by him two great negroes caught and held and stabbed at each other with broad knives and more shots sounded around them. Again and again he felt a horrid jerk and lurch of the car, and still through it all Considine stood upright opposite him, and with an exalted but unmoved face considered the revelry he had bidden to be.