Shadows of Ecstasy (9 page)

“Don't you think so, Roger?” Sir Bernard asked.

Ingram came back with a shock. “I beg your pardon,” he said, “I wasn't listening. Don't I think what?”

“Don't you think that the king had better not go on living alone?”

“Are you alone in the house?” Ingram asked the Zulu.

“I am the only sub-tenant,” Inkamasi said gravely. “There is a landlady.”

“Then of course you mustn't,” Ingram said. “Is this it?” They had stopped outside a house in one of the smaller apartment-letting roads bordering the Heath. “You could be attacked and done in here quite nicely—from back and front. You'd better come and stop with us as I told you.”

Inkamasi shook his head. “That is very kind of you, Mr. Ingram,” he answered, “but I couldn't expose Mrs. Ingram to any unpleasantness.”

“Nonsense,” said Roger. “She won't——”

Sir Bernard laid a hand on his arm. “A moment, Roger,” he said. “I speak as a snob, but so did Saint Paul on occasion, I seem to remember, and I also am an Apostle. Or at least I know the Home Secretary. Now in two or three days the Government will be driven to arrest and intern all the Africans in London. No, of course, it won't want to, but it won't be able to let them be done to death one by one. I suggest it will be much more to the point if the king is staying with me, because my word will probably be taken for him. And he can walk in the garden and study digestion theoretically and practically.”

“You mean they'll let him alone there?” Roger said. “Yes, I suppose that's true. Well, we'd better look for a taxi then.”

“Stop a minute, Mr. Ingram,” the Zulu said. “Sir Bernard, this is extraordinarily kind of you. But it would make it a little difficult for me perhaps, if I may say so. If I came to stay with you, I should be committed to neutrality, if not to friendship. And supposing I wanted to help my people?”

A car came softly along the street towards them. Sir Bernard said dubiously, “It would necessitate, I suppose, an implied parole. But would you be worse off? You can't do much for them now; and if you're attacked and killed——”

He paused; behind them the car also stopped. Roger, glancing over his shoulder as he heard the king say, “I mustn't pledge myself; I mustn't be bound,” saw Nigel Considine spring out. He gave a quick exclamation and his companions also looked round.

“Why, Mr. Ingram,” Considine said, and saluted Sir Bernard and Philip, “this is a happy meeting. I didn't know you were friends of my friend.”

“Through the introduction of a London crowd,” Roger answered. “So we just strolled home with him.”

“I was afraid of that,” Considine answered, “so I've come to carry him off.” He smiled at Inkamasi, and Philip wondered why he and his father and Roger should suddenly seem so small standing around those two other figures. Sir Bernard said, “I was just suggesting that the king should stay with me.” But the African and Considine were gazing at each other, and neither of them answered.

“I must be free,” Inkamasi said suddenly. “I must do what I choose.”

“You shall be free; you shall do what you choose,” the other answered. “But you will come with me now, and presently I will set you free.” He broke suddenly into a stream of unrecognizable syllables which the others supposed were Zulu, and still he held Inkamasi's eyes with his own, and the African stammered and began to speak and ceased, and the urgent commanding voice flowed on. Inkamasi put out his hand suddenly towards Sir Bernard, who was next him, and took his arm. He cried out suddenly in English, “But I do not wish—I do not choose——” then his whole figure sagged and his hand drew itself away. Considine said something to him even more sharply; he moved forward, and slowly, almost as if moving in his sleep, got into the car. Considine, following him, paused by the door and turned.

“Sir Bernard,” he said, “in a very few days I shall be leaving England. But I've written to you to-day to ask if you will dine with me to-morrow. I apologize for the short notice. If you would—and perhaps these gentlemen too? Let's discuss verse once more, Mr. Ingram, before I go.”

“Must you go?” Roger, to his surprise, heard himself saying.

“All that's mine remains,” Considine said, “even if embalmed or diluted——” he smiled, and there was victory in his face. He looked back at Sir Bernard, who said only, “Thank you very much!”

“At eight to-morrow then,” Considine said. “Good-night.” He leapt into the car and at once it slid away. The three stood staring after it. At last—

“Well,” Sir Bernard said, “I do want to ask him about the photograph. And lots of people talk rather big. But if Mr. Considine can bully a Zulu prince who could bully us …”

“I don't see anything in him particularly,” Philip said. “But I was surprised the king let himself be persuaded.”

Sir Bernard began to walk away. “‘Persuaded,' Philip? Do you think ‘persuaded' was the word?” he said.

“I don't think the king wanted to go,” Philip said. “But of course I don't know what Considine said in Zulu, if it was Zulu.”

“Nor do I,” said Sir Bernard. “But I know what I should say in that tone. I should say, “Come on, you fool! It's me telling you.” When I was in practice I kept that voice for telling American millionaires to eat less. There are moments when I wonder whether I really like Mr. Considine.”

Chapter Five

THE NEOPHYTE OF DEATH

The five of them were sitting at a round table—Considine at the head, Sir Bernard on his right, Roger on his left, Inkamasi next Roger, and Philip between the king and Sir Bernard. They were served by two men who, Sir Bernard remarked at once, were evidently not of the usual servant type. They were much more like young men of his own class, but they were adept at their work; only they waited with an air of condescension and if they had occasion to speak they never said “sir” except indeed to Considine and the king. Considine's own manner towards them was that of an equal who accepts by right some special service; there existed between them a grave courtesy. Occasionally, while the dinner proceeded, one of these gentlemen in waiting would go to the door in answer to a discreet knock, receive a message, return to whisper it in Considine's ear, and take back a softly murmured answer. But such secret interruptions did not interfere with the general conversation, which turned at first upon the Rosenberg crisis.

“You have talked to the legatees?” Sir Bernard said.

“Why, yes,” Considine smiled, “and they have taken a stand which might have been foreseen, which I did foresee. The solicitor and I—you remember Mr. Patton?—met them and the Chief Rabbi, and showed them the will. We had to go to them; they would not come to us. When I saw them I did not wonder at it. Their whole minds were given to other things. They are concerned—as how should they not be?—with one chief matter, the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem.”

“Are they though?” Roger said. “And what will they do with the money?”

“What do you think?” Considine said. “What do
you
think, Sir Bernard? Remember that they are fanatical in their vision and desire.”

“Take it,” Sir Bernard answered, “and spend all that comes from it in Jerusalem.”

“Refuse it,” Philip said, as Considine lifted friendly eyebrows at him before looking at Roger, who considered, his head on one side.

“I don't know them, of course,” he said, “but you encourage me to hope that the others are wrong. Take it—refuse it—something else. Take it and not take it.… I know—take it and withdraw it, sell everything, and keep the result.”

“Exactly,” Considine answered. “They insist on selling out all the Rosenberg properties, and what they have from that—however large or small—they will spend on building the Temple again.”

“But the loss——?” Sir Bernard exclaimed. “It will take years, won't it?”

“They are too old to spend years in patience,” Considine said. “They will have it done immediately, for fear they should die before the work is begun.”

“But can't you stop them?” Philip said.

“Believing what I do believe,” Considine answered, “why should I stop them? It is a great act of creation; they prepare for Messias.”

“And the jewels?” Roger asked. “Are they to be sold too?”

“No,” Considine said; “those they will take as they are, ‘an oblation to the Holy of Holies, a recompense for iniquity and for that one of their house who has touched the unclean thing.' I repeat their words.”

“If they ever get them to Jerusalem——” Roger suggested.

“That may be part of the executor's business,” Considine answered. “I shall do my best for them while I've the time.”

“It'll cause a good deal of disturbance,” Sir Bernard said thoughtfully. “Rosenberg was interested in a great deal, wasn't he?”

“A great deal,” Considine agreed, adding with a faint smile, “Perhaps it was a little unfortunate that Patton, intending the best, pointed out that Rosenberg had religious interests which would be upset by such an action. He instanced a concern called the Anglo-Catholic Church and Home Adornment Society, which manufactured crucifixes and pictures of saints. Somehow Rosenberg was mixed up in it. It didn't placate them.”

“Patton, I suppose,” Sir Bernard said, “felt that all religions meant the same?”

“I was sorry for him,” Considine said, again smiling faintly. “Even the Chief Rabbi could hardly quieten them. Yes, Sir Bernard. I don't say that Patton's wrong, but there remains the question of what religion all the religions mean.”

“Perhaps that's what the African proclamations are trying to tell us,” Roger said. “Do you believe in them, Mr. Considine?”

“In what sense—believe?” Considine asked.

“D'you think they're authentic?” Roger elaborated. “And if authentic, d'you think they mean anything?”

“Yes and yes,” Considine answered. “I see no reason why they shouldn't be authentic—and if they are then I think they mean something definite. It is a gospel, perhaps a crusade, which is approaching.”

“Jolly for us,” Roger said. He shifted his eyes to Inkamasi, and said, “And what do you think?” thanking his gods that the other was next to him and that vocatives of address could therefore be avoided. How did one speak to a Zulu king?

Inkamasi looked up heavily. The last twenty-four hours, Sir Bernard thought, seemed to have dulled the young African. His eyes went to Considine, who said, “Yes; let the king tell us if he thinks this gospel has meaning.”

Why did Considine, he wondered, speak so, with such high gravity in his voice? He waited with interest for Inkamasi's answer but when it came it took them but little farther. He answered the question, but no more. “Yes, I think it has a meaning,” he said, and his eyes fell again to his plate.

Sir Bernard looked back at Considine, who was (he noticed) eating very little, a few fragments of each course, a few sips of wine, and that with an air rather of courtesy than of interest or desire. He was behaving as a gracious host should, but what host was this who was waited on by gentlemen, who spoke of gospels and crusades, who seemed to dominate from his seat the visitors he permitted to speak freely? Sir Bernard said: “It's a little cheap, isn't it? ‘The conquest of death'?”

“You don't desire the conquest of death?” Considine asked.

“I find a difficulty in understanding it here,” Sir Bernard said.

“Why?” Considine asked again.

Sir Bernard hesitated, and Roger broke in swiftly, “Because we've never heard of it happening, and because we've never noticed that reading poetry and being in love led to anything that looked like the conquest of death. At least, I can't think of any other reason. What does it
mean
?”

“There are two things it might mean,” Considine said, “living for ever or dying and living again. And will you”—he leaned a little forward—“will
you
tell me, Mr. Ingram, that you haven't felt one or both of these when you deal with great verse?”

Philip saw Roger's face change. He was looking steadily at Considine, and he continued to look for more than a minute before he answered. In that time the sardonic and almost bitter humour which often showed in him, as if he were weary of fighting that stupidity against which “the gods themselves contend in vain,” and as if he despised himself both for strife and weariness—that half-angry mockery vanished, and it was with a sudden passionate sincerity that he said, “No, no; you're right. One dies and lives in it, but I can't tell how.”

“Only because you haven't looked that way,” Considine said, with an illuminating smile. “You handle the stuff of the experiment, the stuff which the poets made, but they made it out of what is common to us all, and there are things which they, even they, never knew. And as for love, is there any one of us, since we are men and have loved, who doesn't know that there is within the first moments of that divine delight some actuality of the conquest of death?”

Half by chance, his eyes rested on Philip, who, as if called by that commanding gaze from his habitual shyness and dislike of speech, stammered out: “Yes, but what is there to do? It's like that, but what can I do?”

“You can know your joy and direct it,” Considine answered. “When your manhood's aflame with love you will burn down with it the barriers that separate us from immortality. You waste yourselves, all of you, looking outwards; you give yourselves to the world. But the business of man is to assume the world into himself. He shall draw strength from everything that he may govern everything. But can you do this by doubting and dividing and contemplating? by intellect and official science? It is greater labour than you need.”