Read Online Shadows of Ecstasy by Charles Williams - Free Book Online Page B

sacrifice. Victim or priest at that altar, it matters not whether you inflict or endure the pang. Come, for the cycles are accomplished and the knowledge that was of old returns. Come, for this is the hour of death that alternates for ever with the hour of love. Come, for without the knowledge of both the knowledge of one shall fail. Come, ye blessed, inherit the things laid up for you from the foundations of the world.”
    On the evening of the day when this invocation appeared, the crowds in the streets were thicker than ever. The first death was reported in a special edition of the papers; a negro had been literally hunted over Hampstead Heath and afterwards (not quite intentionally, it was thought), killed. Sir Bernard rang up Isabel.
    â€œNothing,” he said, when she answered, “except that you once said that Hampstead was the negro quarter of London, and I thought I’d like to know whether there was any trouble up there.”
    â€œNot to say trouble ,” Isabel said. “There was a little friction at the gate, and we’ve got a coloured gentleman in the house at present.”
    â€œHave you indeed?” Sir Bernard exclaimed. “Was it you or Roger who brought him in?”
    â€œBoth of us,” Isabel explained. “We heard a noise in the street and we looked out, and there was a negro—at least, he was a black man; a negro’s something technical, isn’t it?—against our gate, and the most unpleasant lot of whites you ever saw all round him, cursing. Roger went out and talked to them, but that was no good. He said something about behaving like Englishmen, and I suppose they did; at least they began to throw stones and hit out with their sticks. So Roger got him through the gate, and I got them through the front door, and here he is.”
    â€œYou’re not hurt, Isabel?” Sir Bernard said sharply. “What about the crowd?”
    â€œO they threw things at the house and smashed a window, and presently the police came and they went away,” Isabel answered. “No, thank you, I’m perfectly all right. I’m just going to make coffee. Come and have some.”
    â€œWhere’s your visitor?” Sir Bernard asked.
    â€œTalking African love songs and tribal poetry with Roger in his room,” Isabel said. “They agree wonderfully on everything but the effect of the adverb. Roger’s evolving a theory that adverbs have no place in great poetry—I don’t understand why.”
    â€œI should like to hear him,” Sir Bernard said. “Thanks, Isabel; I’ll come up if I may.”
    â€œDo,” said Isabel, “and I’ll postpone the coffee for half-an-hour. Till then.”
    For once Sir Bernard took a taxi; as a general rule he avoided them, preferring the more actively contemplative life of buses and tubes, and preferring also never to be in anything like a hurry. When he arrived he found Philip and Rosamond, who had been dining out, sitting side by side on the kitchen table, watching Isabel make the coffee.
    â€œCome in here, Sir Bernard, won’t you?” she said when she had let him in, “and you shall see the refugee soon. He’s in the only room with a fire, and as Rosamond is terrified to death of him we have to linger in the kitchen to keep comfortably warm. ‘October nights are chill,’ as someone said. No, don’t tell me.”
    â€œIsabel,” her sister protested, “I’m not terrified of him, but I don’t think it’s quite nice of him to stop here. Why doesn’t he go home?”
    â€œWith mobs prowling round the garden gate?” Isabel asked. “And Roger still making noises to show the union of accent and quantity? My dear Rosamond, when you’re married you won’t want Philip’s friends to go home until he’s thoroughly tired out. Otherwise he’ll barge into your room at midnight and go on with the conversation with