The Place of the Lion (16 page)

Anthony stopped reading, and Richardson said briefly: “But there is something beyond them all.”

“It may be,” the other said, “and that I suppose we shall discover in time. Meanwhile——”

“There is no meanwhile at all,” Richardson interrupted. “I think that this fellow was quite right, and I believe you've seen and known something. But for myself I will go straight to the end.”

Anthony swayed the book slowly in his hand. “Isn't there an order,” he said, “in everything? If one has to find balance, and a kind of movement in balance … I mean, to act here where we are.…”

“But I don't want to act where we are,” the other cried out sharply. “Why should one act?”

“Other people, perhaps,” Anthony almost shyly suggested. “If by any chance …”

He stopped abruptly, and listened. Then he stood up, put down the book, and said, “Open the window.” The words were not exactly a command nor a request; they came to Richardson rather as a statement of something he was about to do; they passed on into the outer world a thing which was already preordained. But though he moved to obey he was already too late; Anthony had crossed the room, pushed the window up, and was leaning out. Richardson came up behind him and also listened.

The Sunday evening was very quiet. A few noises, wheels, footsteps, a door shutting, broke the stillness, and from some distance off the last hymn of the evening service at some church. That died away, and for a few minutes there was utter silence. In that silence there came to Anthony, distant but shrill, the sound of a woman's terrified scream. He pulled himself back, shut the window, said to Richardson, “I'm sorry, I must go. That was Damaris,” and moved with extreme lightness and extreme quickness to the front door, gathering his hat and stick in one movement as he passed. Richardson called out something which he did not catch; he waved his hand, took a leap down the steps, and ran along the street at top speed.

He was happily aware, as he went, of how easy, how lovely, it was to run like this; he was, more deeply and even more happily, aware that the moment for which he had long waited was come. But he was not aware of himself as bringing any help; it was his business to run because by that some sort of help could reach Damaris; what he could no more tell than he could tell what danger had threatened her and had wrung from her that scream which some interior faculty of his soul had caught. He came to the corner and turned it.

Richardson, startled out of his contemplations by Anthony's movement, had at first hesitated, and then, half-involuntarily, followed, as if drawn in the other's train. But when he in turn came to the corner he stopped. He saw Anthony before him but he saw something else too.

In the middle of the street was a horse and cart. Or there had been. It had been jogging along peacefully enough when suddenly its sleeping driver felt the reins torn from his hand, heard a crash and a rending, awoke from his doze, and saw the horse tearing itself free of cart and harness. Its white coat gleamed silver; it grew larger and burst the leather bands that held it; it tossed its head, and the absurd blinkers fell off; it swept its tail round and the shafts snapped and fell. The horse made one final plunge and stood free. The frightened driver, cursing, began to clamber out of the cart. As he did so, he saw a young man running down the street at a tremendous speed, and shouted to him to get hold of the horse's head. The young man swerved, apparently to obey, came up to the horse, leapt with the full force of his run, and with one hand to its neck so sat astride. The driver, half-way between his seat and the ground, cried out again with greater oaths, and fell gapingly silent. For the young man, now settling himself, turned the horse with his heel, and both against the sinking sun faced the terrified man. They were, he dimly realized, startlingly magnificent; they loomed before him, and then the horse was in motion and they were both flying down the street.

From the corner Richardson, standing still, watched them go, seeing, for the first time in this new world of appearances, the union of high powers for high ends. Where they were going he could not tell, but they went with glory scattered about them and the noise of music. There seemed to him, as he watched, to be not one horse but many horses charging away from him down the street, herds from the pampas and the steppes, a thundering army, riotous and untamed. Here and there amid those tossing manes he saw riders, but their shape and aspect he could not see, only far beyond that wild expanse of haunches and backs and necks, he saw Anthony, sitting easily upright, leading them, directing them, by virtue of the steed he rode. Down that provincial street all the horses of the world seemed pouring, but he realized that what he saw was only the reflection of the single Idea. One form, and only one, was galloping away from him: these other myriads were its symbols and exhalations. They were not there, not yet, how uneasily soever in stables and streets the horses of that neighbourhood stirred and stamped, and already kicked at gates and carts in order to break free. They were not yet there, although far away on Eastern and Western plains, the uneasy herds started, and threw up their heads and snuffled at the air, and whinnied, and broke into quick charges, feeling already upon the wind the message of that which they were. ‘The huntsmen in Persia' soothed their steeds; Chinese squadrons on the march or at bivouac were thrown into disorder; the grooms of the Son of Heaven in Tokio and Kioto ran in alarm to their charges. Out on the Pacific other keepers watched anxiously in scattered ships the restless stamping of sea-borne steeds; farmers in America left their work, and small Mexican figures whispered together as they felt the frenzy rising in many a corral. But the premonition passed, and the wild gallop faded from Richardson's eyes as the distant Anthony wheeled into another road. He sighed and turned and went back to his rooms, while his own thoughts went out again in a perpetual aspiration beyond even the Celestials to That which created the Celestials.

In a spirit of less devotion, but shattered by—for him—wilder and less tolerable vision, the abandoned driver was leaning against his broken cart, holding it with the intensity almost of madness, and crying out perpetually—“My God! O my God!”

Chapter Eleven

THE CONVERSION OF DAMARIS TIGHE

It was not the least among the vexations which interfered with Damaris Tighe's exposition of culture that building had begun at the back of her house. For years, indeed ever since they had come to live at Smetham, their garden had looked out over a lane and fields beyond. But quite recently the fields had been bought as a desirable building estate, and a number of villas were to be put up—villas in which it seemed probable that a very different class of people would live from collators of MSS. and students of philosophy. Or so Damaris, who knew very little about people, assumed. They would play tennis, not for an amusement but for a business; they would give parties on lawns; they would talk the jargon of motor-cars and wireless and the gossip of commerce and love. And they would shut her in on every side.

Some of them would be pleasant enough, perhaps here and there one of them would almost have a mind. But even so it probably wouldn't be the kind that would be any use to her. If it were, she could very well make use of a little help in copying and arranging and so on. But probably that was too much to hope for.

It was going on for eight on that Sunday evening when Damaris shut her books and reluctantly decided that she would call her father to supper. If he would have any; he had been eating less and less for the last day or two, and had entirely declined the cold chicken they had had for lunch, contenting himself with a little fruit. Damaris had decided that he must be ill, and she proposed to tell him at supper that she would send for the doctor on Monday. More trouble, she thought; he was probably going to have influenza, and that would mean more work for the maid, and possibly more dislocation of her already dislocated hours. Perhaps she could get him to go away for a few days; if he was going to be ill he had better be ill in a seaside hotel than at home. It would be more convenient for her, and make no particular difference to him. People could be ill anywhere, and they couldn't study bygone cultures anywhere, nor accurately plot out the graph of human thought. There was to be a graph of human thought as an appendix—three graphs actually, from 500
B.C.
to
A
.
D
. 1200, showing respectively the relation of official thought, cultural thought, and popular thought to the ideas of personalized and depersonalized supernatural powers. By looking at the graph it would be quite easy to see what attitude an Athenian citizen of the age of Thucydides, an Alexandrian friend of Plotinus, or a Burgundian peasant of the Middle Ages had towards this personification. All the graphs had additional little curves running out of them, marked with certain great names. Eusebius of Caesarea, who had identified Platonic ideas with the thoughts of the Christian God, had one; so had Synesius of Cyrene—only she had mislaid her note on Synesius, and couldn't at the moment remember why he was distinguished in that way; so had William of Occam, Albert, and of course Abelard. Personification was in itself evidence of a rather low cultural state; she had called it somewhere “The mind's habit of consoling itself with ideographs.” As education developed so a sense of abstraction grew up, and it became more possible to believe that the North Wind was a passage of air, and not an individual, or that St. Michael was a low-class synonym for—probably for just warfare, and justice pure and simple. Which was why he weighed the souls of mankind at Chartres. It was a good graph, and she was proud of it. There would be six appendices in all, but this and the new one on the Creation would be the most important.

She settled her papers. As she did so the air was suddenly shaken by a number of heavy thuds, accompanied by a rain of minor noises. Things at a distance were falling—a great number of things. She went quickly over to the window, and saw to her great astonishment that the newly built houses opposite her were falling in. Falling right down, rather: she stood and stared. The whole row of houses was in a state of increasing collapse. Some were already almost down, and the one nearest her even as she looked began to waver. It sagged inward, a row of bricks came slipping out of the wall, and dropped bumping to the earth. The chimney pots fairly dissolved; it was as if the whole strength of the house was melting. Damaris shrugged; she had said often enough how shameful all this modern jerry-building was, and here was her statement absolutely proved. She remained looking at it in a state of mild complacency. The inefficiency was disgusting; the thing had no backbone to it—no … no … for a moment she fought a consciousness of the word “guts” and substituted “real knowledge.” It was after all the reality of one's knowledge that mattered. She
knew
—a sudden terrific crash as the roof fell in distracted and for a moment deafened her. She turned back into the room. “It's fortunate,” she thought idly, “that there was no one living in them.”

It was five minutes to eight. She thought abruptly, as she very often did, “O I must get it.” Doctor of Philosophy—how hard she had worked for it! The … O the smell!

In full strength it took her, so violently that she stepped backward and made an involuntary gesture outward. The horror of it nearly made her faint. It must, she thought, be something to do with these new houses; some corrupt material had been used. The smell was corruption. Something would have to be done; the Council Surveyor must be called in. Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad downstairs. Her window faced the fallen houses; the dining-room looked the other way. She would go down and see.

As she moved the sunlight that was over her papers, except for the light shadow that she herself cast, was totally obscured. A heavy blackness obliterated it in an instant; the papers, the table, all that part of the room lay in gloom. The change was so immediate that even Damaris's attention was caught, and, still wrinkling her nose at the appalling smell, she glanced half round to see what dark cloud had suddenly filled the sky. And then she did come much nearer to fainting than ever before in her life.

Outside the window something was … was. That was the only certainty her startled senses conveyed. There was a terrific beak protruding through the open window into the room, there was the most appalling body she had ever conceived possible; there were two huge flapping wings; there were two horrible red eyes. And there was the smell. Damaris stood stock still, gasping at it, thinking desperately, “I'm dreaming.” The beastly apparition remained. It seemed to be perched there, on the window-sill or the pear-tree or something. Its eyes held her; its wings moved, as if uncertainly opening; its whole repulsive body shook and stirred; its beak—not three yards distant—jerked at her, as if the thing were stabbing; then it opened. She had a vision of great teeth; incapable of thought, she stumbled backward against the table, and remained fixed. Something in her said, “It can't be”; something else said, “It is.” She'd been overworking; that must be it. It was … it was like spots before the eyes. It wasn't; it was detestably different. It—O God, the thing was moving. It was coming … it wasn't … it was, it was coming in. She couldn't see how; whether the window broke or melted or what, but it was certainly nearer. The beak was not much more than a yard off now; the huge leathern-like wings were opening out within the room, or partly within it. She couldn't in the fœtid darkness which was spreading round her see which was room and which was horror, but she flung herself wildly back, scrambling and scrabbling somehow across her table. Her papers went flying before her, her books, her pen—everything fell from it as Damaris Tighe, unconscious of her work for the first time for years, got herself on the table, and pushed herself somehow across it. The thing stayed still watching her; only the wings furled and unfurled themselves slowly, as if there were no hurry—no hurry at all, but what it had to do. She was half on her feet again, crouching, sliding, getting sideways towards the door, feeling for the handle, praying wildly to Anthony, to her father, to Abelard and Pythagoras, to Anthony again. If only Anthony were here! She got hold of the handle; of course that beak, those eyes, that smell—O that sickening and stupendous
smell
!—were all dreams. She was asleep; in a minute she would be outside the door, then she would wake up. In a few seconds. The little eyes gleamed greed at her. She
was
outside; she banged the door.