The Place of the Lion by Charles Williams (i can read book club .txt) 📕

and apparently the service was not yet over. Richardson, casually attracted, looked at his watch: nearly nine. He paused on the pavement and looked in. It must, he thought, be some kind of after-service, and, after a few moments’ search, the notice-board confirmed the idea. On the third Sunday in the month there was apparently the Breaking of Bread. It must, he thought, be a rather out-of-date place; most of the Nonconforming Churches had adopted the words “Holy Communion.” Besides, this building still called itself “Zion,” which was surely a rather old-fashioned title. But perhaps he was wrong; he didn’t pretend to be an expert in ecclesiology. All that sort of thing was very well for the minds that could use it; he couldn’t use it, neither the small dull gatherings of the Evangelicals or the large gaudy assemblies of the Catholics. “The flight of the alone to the Alone.” But no doubt this was proper to them—if it increased their speed upon the Way. Speed, speed, and always speed! His mind remembered that wild careering herd; so, and swifter than so, he desired the Return. He seemed to hear the beating hooves again, and while for a moment he attended to that interior echo something huge and rapid drove past him and into the church. Certainly he had felt it, though there was nothing visible, but he h ad felt the movement of a body and heard the sound of hooves. Within him his chief concern renewed itself in a burst of imperious ardour; he burned towards the—no, not fire; no, not darkness; no words, no thought, nothing but…nothing but…well, but—that which was when all other “buts” had been removed, and all hindrances abolished. For a moment he felt a premonition; something wholly new and exquisite touched him and was gone.

He was standing in front of the church and looking into it. There didn’t seem to be many there; one or two figures were moving at the upper end; a few more were scattered about the small building. They were seated as if waiting—perhaps for the Breaking of Bread; and as he gazed a gleam of extreme brightness struck through the building and vanished, for the lights within had flashed upon something moving that caught and reflected their radiance in one shining curve as if a sword had been swung right across the church. Blinded by its intensity he took a step back, then he recovered and looked again. This time—and his spirit livened again with his habitual desire—he saw it. It was standing at the other end of Zion; it was something like a horse in shape and size, but of a dazzling whiteness, and from the middle of its forehead there grew a single horn. He recognized the myth of poems and pictures; he saw the Divine Unicorn gently sustaining itself in that obscure and remote settlement of the faithful. He recognized the myth, but he recognized something else too, only he could not put a name to it. The thing moved, pure and stately, a few paces down the aisle, and as it did so he was transported within himself a million miles upon his way. It moved with the beauty of swiftness, however small the distance was that it went; it lowered and tossed its head, and again that gleaming horn caught all the light in Zion, and gathered it, and flashed it back in a dazzling curve of purity. As the brightness passed he saw that within they were still intent upon the service; the deacons were bearing the Bread of the Communion to the few who were there, and as they did so it seemed to the watcher that the unicorn moved its head gently in the direction of each, nay, that some eidolon of itself, though it remained unchanged in the centre, went very swiftly to each, and then he lost sight of the images. Only now he was aware—and only aware—of a sensation of rushing speed passing through his being; it was not for him to ad or e the unicorn; he was the unicorn. He and those within, and others—who and when and where he did not know, but others—a great multitude whom no man could number—they went swiftly, they were hastening to an end. And again the shining horn flung back the earthly lights around it, and in that reflection the seeker knew himself speeding to his doom. So slow, so slow, the Way had seemed; so swiftly, so swiftly, through aeons and universes, the Principle, the Angel of man’s concern, went onwards in unfailing strength. Yet it had not moved; it stood there still, showing itself, as if in a moment’s dream, to the fellows of devotion, so that each beheld and supposing it to be a second’s fantasy determined not to speak of it. But pure and high the ardour burned in every soul, as Zion shone in Zion, and time hastened to its conclusion in them. The minister gave out a hymn; the voices began it; the great beast of revelation that stood there moved again, and as Richardson unconsciously moved also he felt his arm caught from behind.

Startled and constraining himself, he turned his head. Behind him, a little to his left, clutching his arm, and staring at him with fierce bloodshot eyes, stood Foster. For a few seconds Richardson did not take in the fact; the two remained staring. Then, he could not have told why, he broke into a little laugh; Foster snarled at him, and the hand that was on the other’s arm seemed to clutch and drag at it. Richardson took a step or two backward, his eyes going once more to the aisle as he did so. But this time he could see nothing unusual; indeed, he felt doubtful already of what he had seen, only he knew that there was working within him a swiftness more than he had ever dreamed. The hesitations and sloths that had often hampered him had vanished; he looked at Foster from a distance, down a precipice from the forest of the unicorn to the plain of the lion.

Foster said, “It’s here.”

“It’s always here,” the younger man answered, “but we have to go a long way to find it.”

“Have you got the strength?” Foster asked. He was speaking thickly and with difficulty; the voice blurred itself in the middle of the sentence, and the last word came out almost booming. His face was red, and his shoulders heaving; when he ceased to speak Richardson noticed that his breath was coming in great pants, as if he were struggling against some oppression at his heart. The sight brought back the other’s attention; he looked at Foster and gently disengaged himself, saying quietly, “What’s the strength to you or me? was that what we went in to it for? Speed now, and at that only the right speed.”

“Speed enough too,” Foster answered deeply. “Speed to hunt, strength to kill. Are you for them or are you like that other jackanapes that thought he could stand in the way—in the way of the lion?” The voice rose into a roar and he scrabbled with his feet on the pavement.

Richardson, now completely watchful, said, “It seems that you’re with them entirely now.”

“I’m looking for him,” Foster said, “for him, and”—he began to snarl, “and—and others. There’s—ah! ah!-there’s a man in my off-off-office,” he barely achieved the word, “that I hate, I hate his face, I’ll look after him. The strength’ll be on him. Look, look for him, I’ll look.”

He turned his eyes about him; his mouth opened and his lips curled back over his teeth. Then he seemed to make an effort towards control, and began to mutter something to himself. “Not much yet, lord god!” Richardson heard. “Slowly, lord, slowly! I’ll make sacrifice—the blood of the sacrifice,” and at that a sudden impatient anger caught the young man.

“Fool,” he cried out, “there’s only one sacrifice, and the God of gods makes it, not you.”

Foster did not seem to hear, and Richardson almost at once regretted the outburst. Something in it offended him; it was a pit laid for the silver hooves of an immaculate and solitary virtue that was galloping away, away in the cool light of the stars, amid rivers of chastity, to gardens high up among the snows. There? there—it would find its lair and sleep alone among the trees of Eden before man had fallen and…

Images, images, he caught his mind back, abolishing them; beyond images, beyond any created shape or invented fable lay the union of the end. He was lost in his intensity and woke to awareness again to hear Foster saying,

“…the chosen. The chosen are few. Even the woman…if I knew…knew. The gods know; the gods are here. Here!”

The word went up in a roar up the street. Richardson heard a startled exclamation behind him. He looked round—the worshippers were coming out of Zion, and one of them, an old gentleman with his wife, had jumped violently at the noise. A dismayed voice exclaimed, “Really, really!” A more indignant feminine voice said, “Disgusting! It’s enough to deafen anyone.”

But the bleating of an innocent mortality had no effect on the possessed being before them. He glared round him, then he threw up his head, and began to sniff softly and horribly, as if he were seeking to find a trail. The old gentleman stared, then he said to Richardson, in a voice not quite steady, “Ill, is he?”

“O if he’s ill,” the old lady said in a tone of pity. “Would he like to come in and sit down for a few minutes? We live close by.”

“Yes, do,” the old gentleman added. “A little rest—when my wife comes over faint Well, Martha dear, you do sometimes come over faint.”

“There’s ways of being bad besides coming over faint,” the old lady, now rather pink, but still sweetly anxious to help, said, “Do come in.”

“Thank you very much indeed,” Richardson said gravely, “but I’m afraid it wouldn’t help.” And then, by an irresistible impulse, “I hope you had a happy service?”

They both looked at him with delight. “Now that’s very kind,” the old gentleman said. “Thank you, sir, it was a very beautiful service.”

“Beautiful,” the old lady said. She hesitated, fumbling with her umbrella; then, taking sudden courage, she took a step towards Richardson and went on, “You’ll excuse me, sir, I know it’s old-fashioned, and you quite a stranger, but—are you saved?”

Richardson answered her as seriously as she had spoken, “I believe salvation is for all who will have it,” he said, “and I will have it by the only possible means.”

“Ah, that’s good, that’s good,” the old gentleman said. “Bless God for it, young man.”

“I know you’ll pardon me, sir,” the old lady added, “you being a stranger as I said, and strangers often not liking to talk about it. Though what else there is to talk about…”

“What indeed?” Richardson agreed, and again through the evening there struck upon his ears the noise of galloping hooves, and for a moment the whole earth upon which he stood seemed to be a charging beast upon which he rode, faster than ever his own haste could carry him. But the sound, if it were a sound, struck at the same time on that other creature, half-transfigured, who stood in front of him still. It sprang up, it bellowed out some half-formed word, then it broke off and went leaping down the street; and amazed or meditative the three watched it go.

“Dear me,” the old lady said; and the old gentleman, “He’s behaving very strangely, isn’t he?”

Richardson nodded. “Very strangely. I’m afraid, but—” he sought a phrase at once mutually comprehensible, comforting, and true-“but he’s in the hands of God.”

“Still—” the old gentleman said dubiously.