Shadows of Ecstasy (26 page)

The colonel was coming slowly along; his face was pale and wrenched. As he saw Caithness he paused, and the priest instinctively stood still also. So for a few moments they waited, duellists uncertain of what was to come. Mottreux said at last—as if it were not what he meant: “You're going to the king?”

“And if so?” Caithness asked. Something in Mottreux's voice puzzled him. It seemed to wish to delay him; it hesitated; he could have believed that it inquired about something which had not been mentioned.

Mottreux said abruptly: “I suppose you think we're all wrong?”

Caithness very shortly said he did, but the other did not step away. He added: “I suppose you—want us to fail?”

Caithness, again shortly, agreed. Mottreux came close up to him, looked round, began to whisper, and was suddenly taken by a spasmodic shudder. He caught the priest's arm and then let it go sharply, as if he had touched something hateful. He said in a low voice, “If one could …” and his voice died away.

In the tone of a director of souls Caithness said: “Could?”

“If one could—make peace,” Mottreux whispered. “Would there—would there be room for a man who could make peace?”

He was close up against Caithness, and the priest, feeling his agitation and shaken by it, dropped his voice to an equal whisper, “But how can—we shan't take his terms.”

Mottreux said, “But without his terms?”

“How can you make peace without him?” Caithness asked.

“He isn't human,” Mottreux jerked out. “If … if one caught a mad ape.…”

The truth flashed into Caithness's mind—the possible truth, and the possibility possessed him. In this strange house, amid strange inhabitants, had come the strangest whisper of all, a whisper of antagonism in the very heart of the enemy. His brain ran before him, forgetting everything but this impossible chance. He leaned a little closer yet, and said, “If you can't cage it——”

Mottreux answered, “You know the Prime Minister?”

“My friend does,” Caithness said.

“If the ape were chained and caged?” Mottreux said. “If he were quite helpless?”

“If one were very sure,” Caithness said, and dared not stop to ask what he meant.

There was an almost breathless stillness, then Mottreux said again, “He's not human; he's monstrous. He robs us of everything—of our souls!”

“He robs you of everything, of your souls most of all,” the priest said, not knowing after what mingled mass of colour the other's spirit panted. Mottreux's face took on a sudden cunning, as if he plunged that secret deeper into his heart and veiled it there more securely. He said, “If anything should happen——”

“It would be a fortunate thing for the world,” the priest said. “But,” he added, “that's in the hands of God.”

“Aye—God,” the other answered. “But he behaves like God. If anything happened, would your friend——”

Caithness paused. He thought of Sir Bernard, and ironically with the thought there came the memory of his own visit to London, of his talk with the Archbishop, of his insistence that the Church must not use the secular arm. Yes—but he wasn't then in this house, so close against this mad dreamer; he hadn't seen the African horde dancing round the upright figure whom it worshipped, he hadn't heard of this blasphemy of the conquest of death. Never as an ordinary rule—never but when—never but, for this once,
now
—never afterwards, for this couldn't happen twice. And even now it wasn't he or his friends or the Church; it was the man's own follower. And the Zulu Christian would be saved from captivity, and Roger from delusion, and men from a lie. Now—just now—if this whisperer so close to him chose.…

“Anyone who saved England,” he said, “anyone who did would be a friend to all men.”

“You'd see that he was safe?” Mottreux urged. “You'd speak to Suydler? you'd keep me secret till it was right to have it known?”

“Of course,” Caithness answered. “You should be with me till all was agreed; it would be easy.…”

There was a voice in the hall below; a door opened and shut. Someone came to the foot of the stairs. Mottreux nodded and stepped away, breathing only “Be ready then. I can't tell when it may be.” He disappeared down the staircase, and Caithness after a few moments went slowly on to join the king.

Chapter Thirteen

THE MEETING OF THE ADEPTS

It was already dark. The sea was lost, and the drive in front of the house. Roger was alone, for Caithness had not returned from the king, and Rosenberg, though it was but late afternoon, had with a few muttered words gone back to his own room. No-one of the others had come in. Roger had read a little in one or other of the books scattered about—they were mostly what are called the “classics” of various times and languages. They were all in “privately printed” editions, exquisitely done with types he did not recognize and bindings whose colours were strange and beautiful combinations. There was one volume of the fragments of Sappho, another of the Song of Solomon, an Æschylus, a
Gallic War
, a
Macbeth;
there were one or two Chinese texts, and one or two which Roger supposed must be African—at least, the characters were altogether strange to him. There was a manuscript book, half filled with delicate mysterious writing, also in strange characters. He had read in some and looked at others; he had tried to search in them for the power which reposed there, and of which those Greek or English or unknown characters were sacramental symbols. And when he ceased and for a while half abandoned the search he was aware that he did not abandon it, as so often before, to return to an outer world of things different from the secret paths he had been following. Sometimes when he had been reading at home he had looked up to feel the rooms, the furniture—tolerable and even pleasant as it all was—in some sense alien to the sacred syllables. His own writing-table, comfortable and useful, blinked rather awkwardly at him when he returned from the visit of Satan to Eden or the nightingale in the embalmèd darkness. But here there was no such difficulty or distinction; all was natural. As a result of that most fortunate combination of mental and visible or audible things, the tiredness which often seized him in those moments was absent. For it was never great things in their own medium which wearied him; they—he had always known and now more than ever knew—were strength and refreshment; it was the change from one medium to another, the passing from their clear darkness to the fog of daily experience. But here there was no need to return; all was one.

He walked to the window, and looked out. But he could see nothing except the lights of a car standing in front of the door; he turned back into the room, and after hesitating for a minute or two went across it and out into the hall. There he saw a group of men, gathered round Considine. They were breaking up even while he glanced; each of them went off as on separate business. Considine stood alone. He stretched himself easily, smiled at Roger, and walked towards him.

“All's done,” he said. “They've communicated from Africa. Your people are in touch with mine. I knew they would begin soon.”

Roger, still struggling with a scepticism in political things which he had abandoned in spiritual, said: “It can't be possible that …”

“It's certain,” Considine answered. “Suydler—what can Suydler do against us? He won't trust himself to flog the English on, nor to cheat the Powers that will want to cheat him. South Africa I will leave for fifty years or so; at the end of that time they'll be begging to come in. Let's go outside, shall we?”

They went out on to the verandah, and, as the coldness of the evening took them, veils seemed to fall away from Considine. Roger felt himself in the presence of maturity and power beyond his thought, perhaps something of that power into which he had been experimentally searching. The man by his side threw off the habitual disguise of years and behaviour which he wore; he moved like a “giant form,” and though his eyes, when they rested on Roger, were friendly, their friendliness was tremendous and wise and, as it might have been, archangelic. He walked lightly, pacing the verandah, and seemed not to depend on the floor to support him; Roger felt clumsy and awkward beside him, earth and a child of earth beside earth purified, infused and transmuted.

Considine said: “We shall go to-night. I've got one more thing to do here, and there's time enough for that.”

“You always seem to have time to spare,” Roger answered.

“Why not?” the other asked. “Every second is an infinity, once you can enter it. But man's mind sits outside its doors moaning, and leaves his activity to run about the world in a fever of excitement. You will leave that presently.”

“How did you set out on this?” Roger asked diffidently. The impetuous angry Roger of London had disappeared; he walked as a child and as a child referred to his adults.

In the darkness Considine smiled. “This morning,” he said, “a girl jilted a boy, and the boy said, ‘Why do I suffer helplessly? This also is I—all this unutterable pain is I, and I grow everywhere through it into myself.' I could show you the street where it happened—they haven't yet pulled it down—where the boy said, ‘If this pain were itself power …” So he imagined it as himself and himself as it, and because it was greater than himself he knew that he also was greater than himself, and as old and as strong as he chose. The girl's dead long ago; she was a pretty baby.”

“But then?” Roger asked.

“Then—a little later—before noon,” the voice answered, “the boy found another girl and loved her. But as that love spread through him he remembered the vastness of his pain and what had seemed to him possible because of it, and he asked himself whether love were not meant for something more than wantonness and child-bearing and the future that closes in death. He taught himself how this also was to charge his knowledge of what man could be, and he poured physical desire and mental passion into his determination of life. Then he was free.”

Roger said: “But why Africa?”

“My father was a surgeon,” the other answered, “though not a poor man, and he went on a ship, taking me with him. The ship was wrecked—it wasn't unusual then—but he and I were saved, and came to shore. I've told you that my father knew something of the old magical traditions—things I haven't much concerned myself with; such as are of value are natural properties of the developing and unstunted nature of man, and the rest are of no value—but by such tricks he made himself feared by the sorcerers. We went far into the inland before he died, and there I found that things which I'd discovered with pain were taught to the priestly initiates. But they held them secret and were afraid of them, and I knew they were for the world when the time should come. And now it has come.”

“And the end,” Roger cried out in a sudden access of desperation and hope, “what is the end?”

The other turned to confront him, but in the darkness Roger, full of cloudy memories and fiery prophecies, was uncertain what he faced. There had been in the movement something of Isabel, but it was not Isabel; he wondered whether it were not rather the lofty head of Milton, doctrinal yet mysterious, at which he was looking, but the eyes were not Milton's, for Milton was blind, and these eyes were shining at him in the night. It was rather—this figure—something that had to do with the sea the sound of which came to him still, the sea that had come up from its borders and been talking with him though he had not known it for what it was. So it was not eyes, it was light under the sea which he saw, and he was being swept away from human beings into the ocean gulfs and currents. He struck out as if he were swimming, but that did not ease the choking in his throat and nostrils nor the clamour in his ears. With all his power he drove upwards, and it seemed that his head broke out from the waves and beheld not very far off a shore on which his friends walked. He saw Sir Bernard looking ironically out over the waters in which he struggled, looking ironically at him, as if with a smile to see how the rash fool who has sailed on such a voyage now agonized for one plank to cling to. He saw Rosamond, her arm in Philip's, bending him away from the foam, and drawing him safely towards the highroads beyond. He saw Isabel, and her dress was drenched with spray, her dress and her hair, and she had stretched one firm arm towards the sea, and stood on the extreme edge of the land; but her eyes did not see him, and he could not tread water—he was whirled down again as if into the noise of a roaring dance, and again he choked and agonized and sprang upward through a thousand fathoms of water and emerged to see them again, but small, very small. As he gazed a tiny distant bell rang in his ears and called him—a bell far, far below: “ding dong bell, ding dong bell.” Hark! now he heard it. It was not now those on the shore who neglected him; it was he who had to leave them on their shore. “Ding dong bell”; they were ringing for him, a knell and a summons at once. Because there was no other hope, he obeyed; he forced himself to cease from struggling, and from feet to lifted hands one direct line he shot downwards, down, down, to where the dead men lay. The noise in his ears might have been the shouting of many voices, crowds and armies, about their lord, or it might have been the sea uttering itself, its voice heard not in its own words but in a tremendous echo, sovereign for those who heard it, shaped into words: “Thus the Filial Godhead answering spake.” The thunder of the speech crashed through him as he, assenting to it and to the sea which spoke it, dropped down through the speed of the depth. It was agony to let himself sink so, to release all that he loved, to fall through this alien element by which they walked; it was pain, indescribable … indescribable … what?—not pain but something else, an exquisiteness of pain which was, now he realized it, not pain at all but delight. How many there were, far away on that shore beyond him, who fancied themselves in pain, and, could they know it, carried all delight in their hearts! Man, through most of his poor ignorant years, did not truly know what he felt; he was so habituated to the past that he sighed when he should have laughed and laughed when he should have sighed. The great passions swept through him unrecognized till far off he saw the glory of their departure, and cried out, “That was I.” But in rare moments he knew, and then what power was his! And, could a man's body be always impregnated with this salt, as his own was now, and infiltrated with this sea, he might always know! His experience would always be new, for newness was the quality of this everlasting and universal life. He knew delight and named it; unafraid, he summoned it, and it came. He rejoiced in an ecstasy that controlled itself in great tidal breaths. He was no longer sinking but walking on the sand at the great sea's bottom, only the sea was no longer there; he was himself the sea and he walked in the sun over the yellow sands. “Come unto these yellow sands.” He himself—ocean calling to ocean; to other seas that danced in a flooding splendour. Ecstasy was no more a bewilderment; only those who had not known it were afraid of it, for it was man's natural life. In the stormy waters of the surface there was danger and death, but, for those who would not fly from the depths and the distances, those very depths and distances were found to be part of their nature. Every step that he took was delight; he sent out the cry of the released spirit: “Merrily, merrily shall I live now.”