Shadows of Ecstasy Read online

  “Almighty God,” the Archbishop said again, “make us to know thee through thy Love who hath redeemed us, and bestoweth through the operations of the Church militant upon earth grace and aid upon all that are in adversity. Establish in us, and especially at this time upon our brother here present, a perfect knowledge of thee, overcome all errors and tyrannies, and as thou only art holy, so be thou only the Lord, through Jesus Christ our Saviour.”

  Before the “Amen” had ceased, he rose, genuflected, turned, and came down the steps of the altar to Inkamasi. He set his hands on the Zulu’s head, paused, and went on: “By the power of Immanuel who only is perfect Man, by his power committed unto us, we recall all powers in thee to their natural obedience, making whole all things that are sick, and destroying all things that are contrary to his will. Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee life. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.”

  As his voice sounded through the chapel Philip saw the hands of the king come together, saw them fold themselves, saw his head move, heard him sigh. Caithness moved an arm behind him, but it was not needed. Inkamasi glanced round swiftly, and as he did so the Archbishop as swiftly went back to the altar, genuflected, and returned, bearing the Sacred Gifts. He communicated them to Caithness first, and then, as if in the ritual of his office, to the king; only again his voice lingered on and intensified the formula of two thousand years, the formula by which Christendom has defined, commanded and assisted the resurrection of man in God. As naturally as in any other service of his life, the king received the Mystery; afterwards he moved as if to rise, but Caithness with a smile touched him on the shoulder and made a quiet signal of restraint, and he desisted. They remained in their places till the Rite was done. The Archbishop and the chaplain passed out, and in due time the others also rose and made their way to the door.

  The chaplain met them there; he and Caithness exchanged a few murmured sentences, and then the three went back to the car.

  There Caithness said: “I’ll drive this time; you two get in together.” Inkamasi hesitated a moment but he obeyed, and the priest added hastily to Philip. “He knows you; better tell him everything he wants to hear——”

  “Yes, but look here,” Philip began, a little startled. “I’m not clear what——”

  “No, but never mind,” Caithness said, rather more like the vicar for the moment than the godfather or even the priest, “you’re able to explain what’s happened, aren’t you? He’s met you and he hasn’t met me—that’s why you’ll do it better. In you get.”

  In accordingly Philip got. But he didn’t quite see how to open the conversation. Did one just say engagingly, “You must be surprised to find yourself here?” or apologetically, “I hope you don’t mind our having carried you away?” Or could one risk saying, with an air of relief, “That was a near thing?” And then supposing he said, “What?” or “How?” What had it been near to? and how? Philip began to wish that his father was in the car. But before he had found the exact words, the African turned to him and said, “Will you tell me, Mr. Travers, what has been happening?”

  Philip tried to, and thought he failed badly. But apparently enough became clear to satisfy Inkamasi, who listened intently, and then said, “You’ve done me a greater service than I quite know, I think. It’s very good of you.”

  “Not at all,” said Philip. “My father didn’t like leaving you there. Perhaps we ought to apologize … but …”

  “No,” Inkamasi said, “no, I don’t think you ought to apologize. If you’ve made my life clear to me, that doesn’t seem a thing to apologize for.” He stared in front of him. “But that we shall see,” he added, and relapsed into silence.

  Philip, looking at him, thought that he wasn’t looking very friendly, and that he was looking rather African, in fact rather—savage. Savage was a word which might here, in fact, have a stronger meaning than it generally had. Inkamasi’s head was thrust forward, his jaw was set; his hand moved, slowly and relentlessly, along his leg to his knee, as if with purpose, and not a pleasant purpose. “I hope he isn’t annoyed with us,” Philip thought. “My father must have meant it for the best.” But before they reached Kensington the king relaxed; only there was still about him something high and strange, something apart and reserved, something almost (but quite impersonally) exalted—in short, something like a chieftain who knows that he is a chieftain and is instinctively living up to his knowledge. When they reached Colindale Square, Philip, being on the near side, got out first, and half-held the car door for the stranger. Inkamasi got out and smiled his thanks. But he didn’t utter them, and Philip was suddenly aware that he had expected him to. As it was, Inkamasi seemed to have relegated him to the position of an upper servant, yet without being discourteous. Sir Bernard met them in the hall.

  Chapter Seven

  THE OPENING OF SCHISM

  That evening after dinner they were all in the library. Sir Bernard was sitting on the right of the fireplace, with Caithness next to him; opposite him was Isabel, with Rosamond between her and Philip. Roger lay in a chair next to the priest, and pushed a little back from the circle. In the centre, between Roger and Philip, opposite the fire, was the African. Roger looked at him, looked at the rest, and muttered to Caithness: “‘On him each courtier’s eye was bent, to him each lady’s look was lent, and Hampstead’s refugee was Colindale Square’s king’.” He looked at Rosamond: “She doesn’t look happy, does she?” he said. “Why doesn’t she go and plan food for her first dinner-party or practise giving the housemaid notice?” He became aware that Sir Bernard was speaking and stopped.

  “… evidence,” Sir Bernard was saying. “It’s a silly word in the circumstances, but it’s the only one we’ve got. Is there enough evidence to persuade the authorities—or us either for that matter—that Nigel Considine has anything to do with the High Executive? I’ve drawn up a statement of what happened last night, and I think I’ll read it to you; and if I’ve forgotten anything or the king can tell us any more——”

  They sat silent, and he began. Actually, except for the two women, they all knew the substance of it before, but they were very willing to hear it again compacted after this little lapse of time.

  Everything was there—the photograph, the music, the other visitors, the guns, the king’s sleep—and against that background ran the summaries of Considine’s monologues, conversation, and claim. As they listened that river of broad pretension flowed faster and deeper at their feet; they stood on its brink and wondered. Was the source indeed two hundred years off in the past? was it flowing towards an ocean of infinite experience till now undiscovered, unimagined—undiscovered because unimagined? Across that river their disturbed fancies saw the African forests, and shapes—both white and black—emerging and disappearing, and from among those high palms and falling creepers, that curtain of green profusion, came the sound of strings and the roar of guns. The dark face of Inkamasi, whatever he himself might be, grew terrible to them, not merely because of his negro kindred but because of the terrifying exaltation which so darkly hinted at itself in the words they heard, and when suddenly the delicate voice that was reading ceased, it was of Inkamasi’s figure that they were all chiefly aware, whether they looked towards it as Caithness did or away from it into the fire at which Rosamond Murchison stared.

  Sir Bernard put down his paper, and looked for a cigarette. For once, among all his friends, no-one forestalled him. He found one, lit it, and sat back, reluctant to spoil his story with any bathos of comment. In a minute Inkamasi moved.

  “I’ve thanked you already, Sir Bernard,” he said, and suddenly Isabel felt Rosamond’s arm quiver, as it lay in her own, “and I’ll thank you once more. You and Mr. Caithness have done a great thing for me. You’ve set me free from a power that has been about me since I was a boy.”

  Roger turned his head. “You mean Considine!” he asked.

  “I mean Considine,” the African answered. “Some
thing I can tell you perhaps that you don’t know. It’s true—what he says. He is a hundred—two hundred years old—I do not know how old. He was known to my grandfather as the Deathless, and to his grandfather again, and others before that. He has been a power among the chieftains and the witch-doctors, but not always to their liking. For many of them had become conjurers, debased things, frogs sitting in the swamp, losing knowledge as you of the West have lost knowledge, and these he defeated and sometimes killed, till from the Niger to the Zambesi the rest feared and obeyed him. Sometimes he went away for long periods—then, I suppose, he was in Europe or elsewhere—but he always returned, and his return went before him into the villages and then those who had sold their magic for gifts were very greatly afraid.”

  Sir Bernard with the slightest disdain said as the other paused: “Magic! Did Mr. Considine draw circles with a thigh-bone and make love-philtres from banana-trees?”

  Inkamasi smiled back at him. “Is there any certain reason why a love-philtre couldn’t be made from a banana? But he wasn’t concerned with that kind of magic. He desired a greater mastery, and that I think he found. Most men waste their energies, even at their best they waste them, on fantastic dreams and worthless actions. Above all they waste this power which you call love but we have called lordship. It is said among some of us that the high Spring is the time of lordship. This power and lordship Considine and his schools have sought to use. They have sought to restore its strength to the royal imagination from which in the beginning it came. Mysteriously, yet by methods which they say are open to all, they have learnt to arouse and restrain and direct the exaltation of love to such purposes as they choose. They have learnt by the contemplation of beauty in man or woman to fill themselves with a wonderful and delighted excitement, and to turn that excitement to deliberate ends. But the first of these ends is life, that other ends may be reached in turn. Whether any before Considine has done this thing, I do not know; but I believe that he has done it. He has so filled the uttermost reaches of his being with the imagination and consciousness of life that his body, renewed so from time to time, when it is unusually weary, let us say, is impervious to time and decay and sickness. Accident might destroy him. But this mastery and transformation of love and sex is but a beginning. Have you not asked yourselves what is the death which spreads through creation, so that all things live by the death of others? Men and animals, we live by destruction. But these diverse schools have asked themselves whether indeed this is the whole secret, or whether it is so far but a substitution—a lesser thing taking the place of a greater. If man can descend into death, may he not find that what awaits him is an incredible ecstasy of descent and return? Considine is seeking to find that way. To be the food on which one feeds, to be free from any accident of death, to know the ecstasy of being at once priest and victim—all these ends are in his search.”

  He paused considering, and Caithness said: “Do you speak of this from your own knowledge?”

  The king answered: “Not of my own experience, for my father turned from the ways of his father, and brought me up in the Faith and sent me to England to learn the ways of the mind. Nor would he let me be initiated into the ways of the assemblies, though my grandfather and the other wise men of his generation belonged to them. But when I was only a child the Deathless One came and persuaded my father—I cannot guess with what words—and I was given into his hands. He bound my will and my thought lest a day should come when he should need me. I think he bound all the sons of the kings of Africa. So he would sometimes talk when I was there, because he held me so that I could not speak without leave.”

  “But you came to England,” Sir Bernard said.

  “Yes,” the king said, “only he knew where I was and what I was doing, and when the time had come he called me and I came.”

  “What do you think he really wants?” Roger said abruptly.—“Why is he making war?”

  “I think he wants what he says,” the king answered, “the freedom of Africa. I don’t think he minds about destroying or even defeating Europe, he only needs a continent where the schools may flourish, and the gospel of ecstasy be born.”

  “The defeat of Europe on that scale,” Sir Bernard said, “sounds rather like a moment of unusually exalted and not specially reliable imagination.”

  Inkamasi leant forward with a quick fierce movement.

  “Take care,” he said, almost angrily, and his eyes burned at them, “take care you don’t underrate him or despise him. Ever since he determined to do this he has made his preparations—he has chosen and trained his men and armed them. He has wealth—are aeroplanes and submarines, yes and guns, so difficult to buy and have shipped in parts as provisions or cotton or iron rails or Bibles or machinery to appointed harbours? Then there was the War—who had time to bother about the interior of Africa during the War?——”

  “One way and another,” Sir Bernard protested, “there are a large number of Europeans in the interior of Africa, watching it and doing things to it.”

  “Yes,” Inkamasi answered, “and how many of your Europeans themselves are in it? How much of the white Administration belongs to the Mysteries? Has no conqueror ever been civilized by the nation he ruled? A white general may lead the attack on London yet; the Devotees themselves are often white.”

  “The what?” Sir Bernard asked.

  “The Devotees,” the Zulu answered. “It’s a high circle of those who having achieved much choose to render their lives wholly into the will of the Deathless One that he may use them as he pleases. Didn’t you see that of the aeronauts in last night’s raid the few who lived after they came down shot themselves before they could be taken? They were of the Devotees. Most of them,” he added, “are women.”

  An abrupt movement swept the circle. “Women!” Caithness exclaimed. “Does he depend on the devotion of women?”

  “And look here,” Philip said rather desperately, “do you mean to say that the white officers could be mixed up in the African armies?”

  “As to the women,” Sir Bernard said, “the early Church, if I remember rightly, depended largely on women.”

  “And as to the white officers,” Roger said abruptly, “Mr. Caithness will applaud a similar precedent of Jew and Gentile.”

  Caithness took no notice, except by a nod. He said: “This sleep—is it hypnotic?”

  Inkamasi made a movement with his hands. “Call it so if you like,” he answered, “but I think rather that hypnotism is a reflection of it. He is able to establish a control on all the consciousness, except the secret centre of a man’s being and the mere exterior apprehensions of the world. He can suspend thought and will—until he or a greater than he restores it.”

  “Well,” Sir Bernard said, “the immediate point is—have I enough reasonable (if you can call it reasonable) stuff to send to the Home Secretary or the Public Prosecutor or the Elder Brethren of the Trinity?—who sound the kind of people that ought to be looking after the Deathless One. What do you say, Isabel?”

  Isabel was looking at Roger and did not for a moment answer. Then she said, “I think so—yes. Whether they’ll believe it.…”

  “I once put the Prime Minister’s stomach right,” Sir Bernard said thoughtfully. “Perhaps I’d better go to him. What d’you think?” he added to Inkamasi.

  “If you can seize Considine,” the king said,—“I say, if you can—it will not be easy. For the greatest energy is in him, he and he alone is the centre of all the schools; it is he who holds power, either by the initiation or by the sleep, over the royalties of Africa; he is the union of their armies; without him the energies of the adepts will be divided, the generals will quarrel, the armies will fight. I tell you this, because you have saved me twice, and because I do not think mankind can be saved without intellect and without God.”

  “It must be almost the first time in the history of the world that those powers have been united,” said Sir Bernard. “But what of you?”

  The king looked at the
floor. “I indeed can do nothing,” he said, “for I cannot get to my people: I do not know where they are fighting. And I do not want to help Considine, though I long for Africa to be free. I am neither of one side nor of the other, neither of Europe nor Africa. I am an outcast and an exile.”

  “You are the citizen of another country,” the priest said, “that is, a heavenly.”

  “Also, I am the king,” Inkamasi exclaimed, “and there shall be no peace between this man and me. He laid his power upon me when I was a child, he has made me his puppet since, and for that I will kill him, though my spirit goes down with his into hell.”

  “It was not for this that Christ redeemed you,” Caithness cried to him.

  “I am the king,” Inkamasi said, “and I will put my foot upon his mouth; I, Inkamasi, the king.”

  Rosamond gave a little choked cry. Philip leant forward quickly and put his hand on hers, but she pulled it away. “It’s all right,” she said. “I just felt … it’s all right, Philip.”

  Sir Bernard got up, an eye on his prospective daughter-in-law. “Well, if you are all agreed——”

  Roger pushed his chair back a trifle, and said, more sharply than before, “It won’t stop you, but—no, we’re not.”

  There was a dead silence. Roger was looking at his wife; the others looked at him. Philip buried his head in his hands. Sir Bernard began to speak when Caithness broke in: “What d’you mean, Roger? Surely there can’t be two opinions about letting the authorities know about this charlatan?”