Shadows of Ecstasy (3 page)

“Photographs!” Sir Bernard exclaimed suddenly. “It was—of course, it was. My mind would have done it, Ian, but thank you for helping it.” He got up and went across the room to a drawer in the lower part of one of the bookcases, whence he returned carrying a number of old yellowish photographic prints. Out of these as he turned them over he selected one, and sat down again.

“Of course,” he said, “I was looking through these a day or two ago: that was what fidgeted me all the time Considine was telling us about old men and children. And if that isn't Considine … he's got his fingers curved in exactly the same way that he had to-night.”

Philip moved round and looked over his father's shoulder. The photograph showed two men, one of about seventy, the other some twenty years or so younger, sitting in basket chairs on a lawn with the corner of a verandah showing behind them. The clothes were late Victorian; the whole picture was Victorianly idyllic. Philip saw nothing surprising about it.

“Which is your Mr. Considine?” he asked.

“The one on the right,” Sir Bernard answered. “It's an an exact likeness. When he was speaking to-night he had his head up and his fingers out and coiled just like that. And he wasn't a day older.”

“Who's the other man?” Philip asked.

“The other man,” Sir Bernard answered, leaning back in his chair and looking thoughtfully at the photograph, “is my grandfather. My grandfather died in 1886.”

“Um!” said Philip. “Then of course it can't be your Mr. Considine. He looks about fifty there, which would make him over a hundred now. His father, I suppose.”

“It's the most unusual likeness I ever saw, if it's his father, or his grandfather, or his great-uncle, or his first, second, third or fourth cousin,” Sir Bernard protested.

“But it must be,” Philip said. “You don't suggest that this
is
Considine, do you?”

“The probabilities against it are heavy,” his father allowed. “But aren't the probabilities against two men looking so much alike also heavy?”

Philip smiled. “But where one thing's impossible the other must be true,” he said.

“And which is impossible?” Sir Bernard asked perversely.

“O come,” Philip protested. “If the other figure here is your grandfather this photograph must have been taken before 1886. So it's impossible—or very, very unlikely that the other man is still alive, and he certainly wouldn't be speaking at a dinner. Is it likely? Do you know who took the photograph, by the way?”

“I took it myself,” the other said. “With my own little camera. Given me on my twelfth birthday. By my grandfather. I was staying with him for the summer.”

“You don't remember who this other man was?”

Sir Bernard shook his head. “I remember being very pleased with the camera. And I remember that various people stayed at the house. And I photographed every one I could. But what he called himself then I couldn't say.”

“But if it was Considine then he'd be a hundred or more by now! Did he look it?”

“If he looked it,” said Sir Bernard, “I shouldn't be staring at this photograph. No, Philip, you're right of course. But it's unusual.”

“It must have been,” Philip agreed.

“Though if a man's nerves and stomach were sound,” his father went on, “and if he kept himself fit, and had no accidents—on my word,
mightn't
he look fifty when he was really a hundred? Perhaps he's found the elixir of life in the swamps of the Zambesi.”

Philip felt the conversation was becoming absurd. “If you take it that it's his father and that there's a strong family likeness, I don't see that there's any difficulty,” he said.

“I know,” Sir Bernard answered. “But I want there to be a difficulty. So I want that photograph to be a photograph of him and not of his wife's maiden aunt or whatever you suggested. You needn't look superior. It's exactly the way most people come to believe in religion. And if most people think like that, there must be something in it, Cogitatio populi, cogitatio Dei——, and so forth. O well, I shall go to bed. Perhaps I shall meet Mr. Considine again one day and be able to ask him. Good-night, Philip, good-night, Ian. Wake me if the Africans come.”

Chapter Two

SUICIDE WHILE OF UNSOUND MIND

Philip was down the next morning before his father or his godfather, urged by a very strong anxiety to see the papers. Trouble in Africa, as it happened, was possibly going to affect not merely high national and political affairs but his own personal arrangements. Africa, of course, was a large place, and the Christian missions had been established, he had gathered, somewhere in the centre; he wasn't much disturbed over them. But what his father had called “the pressure on Egypt” was another matter. Philip's own job was engineering, and he had not long before come to an arrangement with a business company known as “The North African Rivers Development Syndicate,” by which he was to go out to whatever North African Rivers were to be developed as assistant constructing engineer. His chief, a man named Munro, was already out there, somewhere in Nigeria, and in a couple of months Philip was to join him. Meanwhile he was putting in some time at the London offices of the Syndicate, which was run by two brothers named Stuyvesant. But though these were the official heads it was generally understood in the City that the real force behind the company was a much richer man, a certain Simon Rosenberg, who, among his interests in railways and periodicals and fisheries and dyeworks, in South African diamonds and Persian oils and Chinese silks, in textiles and cereals and patent-medicines, rubber and coffee and wool, among all these had cast a careless eye on African rivers. In that side of the business Philip wasn't very interested. Sir Bernard had satisfied himself that the company was as sound as could reasonably be expected, and a year's work—or perhaps even two years—would give Philip a start in his profession. Then he would, all being well, come home and marry Rosamond, and see what jobs were going at home. Munro was a fairly big man and if Munro gave him a good word.…

It was consequently something of a shock to him, when he opened the paper, to find two huge headlines competing. On the left a three-column space announced “Multi-millionaire Found Dead; Rosenberg Shot”; “Terrible Discovery in Rich Man's Library.” On the right a similar space was filled with: “Africans Still Advancing”; “Hordes in Nile Valley”; “Rumours of Trouble in South Africa”; “French Defeat in Tangier.” Philip goggled at the thick type, and instinctively tried to read both accounts at once. He was still immersed when Caithness came in, just preceding Sir Bernard.

“I say,” Philip cried to them, “Rosenberg's shot himself.”

“Rosenberg!” Sir Bernard exclaimed. “Whatever for?”

“It doesn't say,” Philip answered. “He was found in the study of his house late last night by the butler, who thought he heard a noise and went to see.”

“And found he had,” Sir Bernard said. “Nasty for the butler.” He picked up his own paper, and opened it so that he and Caithness could look at it together. But the priest's eyes went first to the columns of African news, and after his first glance Sir Bernard's followed them. They read the brief obscure telegrams, the explanatory comments, the geographical addenda. It seemed that something very unusual was happening in Africa. To begin with, all communication with the interior had completely ceased. Telegraphs had ceased to function, railways had been cut, roads had been blocked. By such roads as had not been blocked there were emerging against all the outer districts hostile bodies of natives, some so small as to be less than a raid, some so large as to mean an invasion, and at that, wherever they appeared, a victorious invasion. The Egyptian army, which had for some weeks been moving leisurely south in order to suppress trouble in the southeast, was now retiring in considerable disorder and even more considerable haste. The French had “suffered a set-back”; the Spaniards had fallen back towards the coast. Communications with Kenya, with Nigeria, with Abyssinia, with Zanzibar, had ceased. Raids had taken place on the English territories in the South. Air-investigation was being undertaken. The Powers were in touch and were taking necessary steps.

“But what,” Caithness said, “has happened to the air-investigation of the last month?”

“It hasn't come back,” Sir Bernard answered. “I was talking to a man in the War Office the other night, and he told me that they've sent out aeroplanes by the score, and hardly any have returned. Some have, I suppose, but what they reported is being kept dark. Philip, I think the African Rivers look like being in too much spate for your engineering.”

“But what about Rosenberg?” Philip asked. “Do you suppose that's what made him kill himself?”

“Did he kill himself?” Sir Bernard said, turning to the other columns. “‘Butler hears shot … letter for the Coroner … police satisfied. Financial comment on page 10'; yes, well, we can wait till after breakfast for that. Curious, I wonder what decided him. Let's just see whether the Archbishop said anything.”

It appeared that the previous day had been agitated in both Houses. In the Commons the Prime Minister had announced that forces were being dispatched immediately to punish the various tribes guilty of the abominable massacres at the mission stations. Asked by half a dozen members of the Opposition at once whether he could promise that these expeditions should not develop into costly Imperialistic wars, and whether the action taken was by request of the ecclesiastical authorities, the Prime Minister said that the Archbishop had naturally deprecated further bloodshed but that he and other ecclesiastical authorities had recognized the right of the State to protect its citizens. Asked whether he would undertake that no further territory would be seized, he said that no annexations would be made except by mandate from the League of Nations. Asked whether other Governments were taking action, he said that the House should have all information as soon as he received it.

This had been in the afternoon. In the evening the Archbishop had asked the Lord Chancellor for permission to make a statement, and had then said that—in consultation with such other Bishops as happened to be in London—he had written at once that morning to the Prime Minister, definitely stating that the ecclesiastical authorities were entirely opposed to the dispatch of punitive expeditions, and begging that none should be sent. The Bishops were of the opinion that no secular action should be taken to avenge the martyrdom of the slaughtered missionaries and converts, and wished to dissociate themselves from any such action. A noble and indignant peer—a lately returned Governor-General—asked the Archbishop whether he realized that natives understood nothing but force, and whether he meant that war and the use of force was a sin; whether in short the Archbishop were disloyal or merely stupid. The Archbishop had referred the noble peer to the theologians for discussions and determinations of the use of force. The use of force was an act which was neither good nor evil in itself; the use of force in circumstances like the present appeared to himself and his colleagues a breach of Christian principles. Another peer demanded whether, if the Government were to dispatch punitive expeditions, the Archbishop would seriously accuse them of acting in an unchristian manner? The Archbishop said that the noble peer would remember that Christianity assumed a readiness for martyrdom as a mere preliminary to any serious work, and that he was sure no noble lord who happened to hear him and was a Christian would be unwilling to suffer tortures and death without wishing a moment's pain to his enemies. He apologized to the House for reminding them of what might be called the first steps in a religion of which many of his hearers were distinguished professors. The House rose at nine minutes past seven.

“Dear me,” said Sir Bernard, putting down his paper.

Philip looked up from his own with a faint but perplexed smile. “Is this you, sir?” he said to Caithness.

“No,” Caithness answered, “I don't think so. It seems pretty obvious, after all.”

“I had no idea the Archbishop was so venomous,” Sir Bernard said: “I think he certainly must believe in God. Mythology always heightens the style.”

Caithness said, rather sombrely, “Of course the Prime Minister will win in the end.”

“I should think it most likely,” Sir Bernard said. “What was it Gibbon said—‘all religions are equally useful to the statesman'!—Still, you've done your best. What do you want to do to-day?”

“I may as well go back to Yorkshire,” Caithness answered doubtfully. “I've been all the use I can be.”

“O nonsense,” Sir Bernard said. “Stay a little, Ian; we see precious little of you anyhow. Stay till the African army lands at Dover, and then we'll all go to Yorkshire together—you and I, and Philip and Rosamond, and Roger and Isabel.”

Philip winced. His father's remark struck him as merely being in bad taste. It was too remote even to be a joke. He said coldly “I suppose I'd better go to the office?”

“I think you should,” Sir Bernard assented. “You'll be perfectly useless, of course. If it's a case of Africa for the Africans, they'll want to develop their own rivers, and as the Syndicate depended on Rosenberg it may not be able to develop itself. But you can find out the immediate prospects. The inquest will be to-morrow. What about coming to the inquest?”

“Why, are you going?” Philip asked.

“Certainly I am going,” Sir Bernard answered. “I met Rosenberg quite a number of times, and I've always wondered about him. His wife died a couple of years ago, and I fancy he's been going to pieces ever since. No, Ian,
not
because of monogamy; no, Philip,
not
because of love. I'm sorry; I apologize to both of you, but it wasn't. It was because he'd developed a mania for making, for her, the most wonderful collection of jewels in the world. He had them too—marvellous! Tiaras and bracelets and necklaces and pendants and earrings and so on. I met
her
occasionally—not so often as him, but sometimes, and she looked not merely like the sun, the moon, and the eleven stars, but like the other eleven million that Joseph didn't know about. She was a magnificent creature, tall and rather large and dark, and she carried them off magnificently. In fact, she was a creation in terms of jewellery, the New Jerusalem turned upside down so that the foundations showed. And then she died.”