Shadows of Ecstasy Read online

  He paused, and Considine said, shooting one swift glance towards his guests: “Is this a greater or lesser thing than hate or love?”

  “Sir, it’s strength and health beyond describing,” Nielsen said. “But it’s now that I long to go farther.”

  Considine turned and faced him full, asking “What will you do now?”

  “I will go down to death and come again living,” the other said.

  Considine’s eyes searched him long in silence: then he said slowly, “You may not come again.”

  “Then let me die in that moment,” the other cried out. “That’s nothing; it doesn’t matter; if I fail, I fail. But it’s not by dreaming of failure that the master of death shall come. Haven’t you told us that this shall be? and it’s in my heart now to raise my body from death. I’m not like you; I’m not necessary in this moment to the freeing of men; let me set free the fire that’s in us; let me go to break down the barriers of death.”

  He flung out his hands and caught Considine’s; he poured upon his lord the throbbing triumph of his belief and his desire. Considine’s voice, fuller and richer than any of the hearers had known it, answered him: “The will and the right are yours, not mine. I’m here only to purge, not to forbid. There must be those who make the effort and some may never come again, but one at any moment shall. Go, if you will; master corruption and the grave; make mortal imagination more than immortal; die and live.”

  Nielsen dropped on a knee, but his face was turned upwards to Considine’s who, stooping, laid his hands on the other’s shoulders. Behind the two exalted figures the deep blue of the curtains seemed to be troubled as if distance itself were shaken with the cry and the command. The splendour of colour quivered with the neighbourhood of the ecstasy of man imagining the truth of his being, and creating colour by the mere movements of his imagination. The two were alone, alone in a profound depth of azure distance, so greatly did their passion communicate itself to the things that had been made out of like passion. The woven colour and the woven music had been made at some similar depth of devotion, and all that mingled intensity swept through and filled the room, so that the imaginations of Roger and Philip felt and moved in it, and Philip, panting almost with terror, felt the music he had heard and the colour he saw and the figures before him gather and lose themselves in one piercing consciousness of Rosamond, which yet was not Rosamond but that of which Rosamond was a shape and a name; and Roger felt phrases, words, half-lines, pressing on him, and yet not words or lines but that which they defined and conveyed—and before them Considine cried again to the ardent postulant of transmuted energy: “Die then, die, exult and live.”

  Only the Zulu king lay back as if asleep in his chair, and in his Sir Bernard, freed from the temptation of music, watched and savoured and keenly enjoyed every moment of the incredibly multitudinous and changing fantasy which was mankind. He wouldn’t deny that he was looking at a man two hundred years old telling a man of, say, seventy to die and live again; it might be—it was unusual but it might be. He couldn’t imagine himself wanting to die and live, because that (it seemed to him) would be to spoil the whole point of death. The worst of death was that it was the kind of experience it was very difficult to appreciate in the detached mood of the spectator, let alone the connoisseur. But he had done his best in his own case by rehearsing to himself—and occasionally to Philip—all the ironies which the approach of death often releases on a man. “I may babble obscenities or make a pious confession to Caithness,” he had said. “Or I may just lie about and cry for days. One never knows. Try and enjoy it for me, Philip, if I’m past it. I should like to feel that somebody did, and death so often undoes all one’s own hypotheses, even the hypothesis that one isn’t important.” But he feared that Philip wouldn’t find it easy to enjoy.

  He thought of this for a moment as he watched Nielsen rising slowly to his feet; he thought of it as he looked at the benediction which Considine’s face shed on the new adventurer. They were still speaking to each other but he couldn’t hear what was being said; he saw Mottreux come forward, and then he saw the Colonel and Nielsen bowing and going to the door. He drew a deep breath and lay back in his chair, but he was immediately distracted by Philip who said in a low voice, “I can’t stand any more of this; I’m going.”

  On the other side Roger also moved. “It’s true,” he said. “He’s right.”

  Sir Bernard, a little startled, looked at him. Was Roger becoming a convert to this new gospel? He said, “You believe in him?”

  “No,” Roger said, “but I believe he knows what poetry is, and I’ve never met a man before who did.”

  Before Sir Bernard could answer Considine came over to them, and instinctively, in fear or hostility or homage, they all rose. “You see,” he said, “there are those who will try the experiment.”

  “Must I really believe,” Sir Bernard said, “that that friend of yours is going to commit suicide with the idea of animating his body all over again?”

  “Exactly that,” Considine said.

  Sir Bernard sighed a little. “It is a religion,” he said. “And I hoped that man was becoming sane. I think I should dislike you, Mr. Considine, if dislike were ever really worth while.”

  “And I should have despised you once, Sir Bernard,” Considine answered, “but not now. Before you die you shall know that the world is being made anew.”

  He had hardly spoken when they heard without, as if it echoed, applauded, and proclaimed his words, a sound distant indeed but recognizable, though for a moment they doubted. It was the noise of guns firing. Faint and certain it reached them. Philip and Roger jumped, and even Sir Bernard turned his head towards the window. Considine, watching them, smiled. “Can it be the African planes?” he asked ironically. “Has intellect failed to guard its capital?”

  A shout or two came up to them from without, the noise of running feet, a whistle, several cars passing at great speed. Sir Bernard looked back at Considine. “Are you bombing London then?” he asked politely.

  “I,” Considine laughed at him. “Am I the High Executive? Ask the Jews who believe in Messias, or Mr. Ingram who believes in poetry, or your son who (I think) believes in love, or the king who believes in kingship, ask them what power threatens London to-night. And ask them if they think glory can be defeated by gunpowder.”

  “I should think it might, if glory is making use of petrol,” Sir Bernard said. “I’m sorry that in the circumstances perhaps we’d better go. If your friend’s blown to bits by a bomb he’ll find it a trifle difficult to revivify his body, won’t he?”

  “The Christian Church for a considerable time believed it could be done,” Considine said. “But I forget that you’re not even a Christian.”

  Roger broke in. “My God!” he said, harshly, “are you bombing London?”

  Considine changed in an instant from mockery to seriousness. “Be at ease,” he said. “Mrs. Ingram’s perfectly safe—except indeed from the mobs whom alone your wise brains have left to be the degraded servants of ecstasy. The only deaths to-night will be sacrifices of devotion.”

  Sir Bernard walked towards the door; a white and bewildered Philip went along with him. Roger lingered a moment.

  “I don’t know whether I hate or adore you,” he said, “and I don’t know whether you’re mad or I. But——”

  “But either way,” Considine interrupted, “there is more in verse than talk about similes and metres, and you know it. Hark, hark, there is triumph speaking to man.”

  The guns sounded again and Roger ran after his friends.

  Chapter Six

  THE MASS AT LAMBETH

  Before Sir Bernard and Philip reached Colindale Square, peace had again filled the night. The raid, if raid it had been, seemed to have been driven off, although the house, when they reached it, was awake and vocal. Caithness was waiting for them in the library, anxious but not perturbed. He knew nothing more than they did, the guns had been sounding, at intervals and at a distance, for s
omething under an hour, then they had ceased. The police had been hastily instructed to spread the news that all was clear, and (in less loud tones) that no damage whatever had been done. Materially this might be true, but not mentally. The agitation which shook London was as much worse than that which the German raids had caused as the fear of negro barbarism was more fundamental than that of the Prussian. London hid and trembled; the jungles were threatening it and the horrors that dwelled in them. It was but for a few minutes—less than an hour—but it had happened. The morning would perhaps increase the fear when it was uttered; for the moment darkness and separation made it private.

  Caithness listened with profound attention to the account Sir Bernard gave him. But he showed a distant tendency to discuss it in language which, though hostile, was far too like Considine’s to please his friend or reassure Philip. He seemed to find most difficulty in accepting the possibility of Considine’s age—which, as Sir Bernard pointed out, was due to the fact that he disapproved of Considine’s ideas. “If you thought he was a saint—your kind of saint—you’d think it might be a miracle,” he complained. “You will fall back on the supernatural to explain the unusual. But that doesn’t matter: the real problem is whether he’s the High Executive.”

  “You say he talked as if he was,” Caithness said.

  “Yes, but this magniloquent kind of rhetoric can never be trusted,” Sir Bernard said. “He might be merely mad. And if he is there’s no sense in talking to the Prime Minister about him. Even if I do he won’t be there, of course.”

  “The man I’m thinking about,” Caithness said, “is the Zulu. You told me last night he said he was a Christian.”

  “In a parenthesis, while we were talking stomach,” Sir Bernard said. “To explain the strength of his digestion, no doubt.”

  “And to-night,” Caithness went on, unheeding the last remark, “to-night he was different?”

  “My dear Ian, you haven’t begun to understand Mr. Considine,” Sir Bernard answered. “Every one was different. Roger went off plunged in a reverie, which is very unlike Roger. And——” he glanced at his son and changed the sentence—“and I was quite incapable of connected thought. And the king—as everybody calls him, so let’s—the king was comatose.”

  Caithness began walking up and down the room. “I don’t like it,” he said. “I don’t like the sound of any of it. And especially I don’t like a Christian to be under this man’s influence or in his power. If he can affect you——”

  “What on earth harm——” Sir Bernard began, and was interrupted by the priest.

  “He evidently thinks he’s got hold of some infernal power,” Caithness went on, “and if—if by the wildest possibility he were mixed up with this African delirium—are we to leave one of the Faith exposed to his control? He’s done it harm enough already. God knows what he may be doing to him. He may have hypnotized him into obedience.”

  “Literally,” Sir Bernard asked, “or metaphorically?”

  “What does it matter which?” Caithness threw back. “D’you suppose one’s worse than the other? Are we to have a Christian spiritually martyred here among us?”

  “Certainly not,” Sir Bernard said. “St. Iago, and charge, Spain! Where?”

  But Caithness took no notice; he stood still and silent for a minute, and Sir Bernard observed, with interest, that he was praying. Caithness, he reflected, had always been a little inclined to call up his own spiritual reserves under such a quite honest pretence of invoking direction, though he was always rather careful to keep the command in his own hands: Sir Bernard couldn’t remember that God had ever been known to disagree with Ian, anyhow in ecclesiastical affairs. It was therefore with a sense of gratified accuracy that he heard the priest say, “Well, I’m going up there.”

  “What, now?” he asked curiously.

  “Certainly,” Caithness answered. “And if this Zulu is still there I shall insist on seeing him.”

  “And supposing Mr. Considine refuses?” Sir Bernard asked.

  Caithness looked at him abstractedly. “O I don’t think he’ll refuse,” he said. “He either won’t care to or he won’t dare to. Will you come and show me the house?”

  “Anything for a quiet life,” his friend answered. “Even to conducting a Christian lion to a Zulu victim. What a world! And Rosenberg found it uninteresting. But I dare say he didn’t know many Christians. I warn you, Ian,” he went on as they left the room, “that if Considine’s there I shall pretend I don’t know you, and that I’ve come back for a cigarette case presented to me by grateful patients. Because if he isn’t the High Executive——”

  “And if he is?” Caithness asked. “If he is?”

  “That,” Sir Bernard said, “is my only hope of an excuse for driving you. O no, no taxis, thank you. If I have to help abduct a king, let me do it in my own car, so as to have a right to put up a gold plate: ‘In this car His Majesty the King of the Zulus once fled from the conquest of death.’ Why don’t you like the conquest of death, Ian?”

  “That’s all been done,” Caithness said, and Sir Bernard, as they came to the garage, gave a little moan. “Not in Considine’s sense it hasn’t,” he said. “You’re just confused. O well—but I think you’d probably like Considine if you could ever get to know him. Get in, and we’ll try.”

  It was a little after midnight when they ran through Hampstead. Sir Bernard stopped the car at the corner of the road, and the two of them walked up it. There were more windows lit up than was usual, owing to the raid, but Considine’s house was in darkness. They went up the steps and Caithness rang. In a few minutes he rang again, and again.

  “He’s probably directing the raid,” Sir Bernard said. “Or flying up to meet the planes. Levitation, I think they call it; some of your saints used to do it. Similar to the odour of sanctity.”

  Caithness said: “We shall have to find a window.”

  Sir Bernard sighed happily. “What a night we’re having!” he said, following his friend. “No, Ian, not that one: it’s too near the road. Somewhere away at the back. One takes off one’s coat, I believe, and presses it against the glass before striking a sharp blow in the centre. We ought really to have treacle and brown paper. You wouldn’t care to wait while I went and knocked up the nearest grocer for some golden syrup? We could use the rest of the tin as an excuse for calling. I wonder if at his age Considine can eat golden syrup without getting himself all sticky? That’d almost be worth living for.”

  But since at the back of the house there was at least one window a little open there was no need to resort to these more uncertain methods. The two gentlemen pushed it up, very quietly, and entered. Sir Bernard, scrambling in, thought to himself, “‘I will encounter darkness as a bride,’ I hope she likes me.” Within all was silent. They found their way cautiously along, and emerged at last in the hall, where Sir Bernard assumed direction. Either the house was for the time empty or everyone was asleep. The second alternative was so unlikely that they permitted themselves to assume the first.

  They did not, however, relax their caution until they came at last to the room where they had heard the music and seen Nielsen, and left the king in his sleep and Considine in his triumph. Sir Bernard felt that they were not treading so delicately but that one heard them; he seemed to see Considine standing far off, his head a little turned, listening to them, and he wondered if there would be some sudden interference in some unknown manner. But though the suspense endured it did not increase, and in the light of the room they saw Inkamasi still sitting in his chair.

  Caithness went quietly across the room towards the Zulu, Sir Bernard paused by the door, listening for footsteps, and watching what went on. The priest kneeled down by the chair, and, after studying the African’s face for a few minutes, said in a low voice of energy, “Inkamasi, what are you doing here?”

  The Zulu stirred under that intense regard and intense voice and answered, “Inkamasi waits for him who caused sleep.”

  Sir Bernard je
rked suddenly, for the voice was more like Considine’s own than the Zulu’s, yet fainter than either, as if from a distance the master of substitution interposed between the priest and the sleeper. Caithness said, “Do you sleep by your own will?”

  “I watch by the will of him that rules me,” the other answered monotonously. “Inkamasi is hidden within me. It’s I yet not I that sleep.”

  “In the name of the Maker of Inkamasi,” Caithness said with superb and deep confidence, “in the Name of the Eternal and Everlasting, in the Name of Immanuel, I bid you awake.”

  “I do not know them,” the sleeper answered, “and I keep their sound from Inkamasi lest he hear.”

  “By the virtue in created life, by the union of Man with God, by the Mother of God in the world and in the soul, I command you to wake,” Caithness said.

  “I do not know them, and I keep their sound from Inkamasi lest he hear,” the sleeper answered.

  “In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, be silent and go out of him,” Caithness exclaimed, making the sign of the cross over the Zulu. “Inkamasi, Inkamasi, by the faith you hold, by the baptism and the Body of Christ, I bid you wake.”

  The sleeper did not answer but he did not move. As if some closed powers hung, poised and equal, over or within him he lay silent. Sir Bernard remembered how, but a little before, he had seen Considine standing in front of the azure profundity of the curtain, which still hung there, as in the depth of space, and it seemed to him as if from the spectral image of that figure and from the kneeling priest two separate currents of command impinged upon the king and in the moment of meeting neutralized their strength. The central heart of the Zulu beat beyond those conflicting and equal intensities, in oblivion of the outer world yet perhaps in liberty. He waited to see what more Caithness could do. But though the priest concentrated his will and intention, though he tried once or twice to speak, the stillness was prolonged. He had silenced the speaker in Inkamasi, but the very effort held him also silent. He strove to impose his determination upon the Zulu, but he could not pass beyond the gate which he had succeeded in reaching; he could not call the other back through it. He knelt praying by the chair and the minutes went by.