The Place of the Lion (12 page)

He paused and turned the pages. “I think I'll read you a few extracts,” he said. “Most of the dedication is missing; the rest is the usual magniloquence——

“‘For it may rightly be said that Your Holiness both roars as a lion and rides as an eagle, burdens as an ox, and governs as a man, all in defence of the Apostolic and Roman Church: in this singularly uniting the qualities of those great angels, so that Your Holiness is justly'—his adverbs are all over the place—‘to be called the Angel of the Church.' Well, we can miss that; probably Leo did. The beginning of the text is missing, but on page 17 we get down to it. You'll have to excuse the English; it amused me to do it in a kind of rhetoric—the Latin suggests it.

“‘These orders then we have received from antiquity, and according to the vision of seers, who nevertheless reserved something from us, that by the devotion of our hearts and the study of the Sacred Word we might ourselves follow in their footsteps and enlarge the knowledge of those secret things which are laid up in heaven. For by such means the Master in Byzantion'—that's the Greek, of course—‘expounded to us certain of the symbols and shapes whereby the Divine Celestials are expressed, but partly in riddles lest evil men work sorcery, not certainly upon those Celestials themselves—for how should the propinquity of the Serene Majesty be subject to such hellish markings and invocations?—but upon that appearance of them which, being separated from the Beatific Vision, is dragon-like flung forth into the void. As it is written:
Michael and his angels fought against the dragon and his angels, and the dragon was cast out
. Which is falsely apprehended by many of the profane vulgar, or indeed not at all, for they …'”

“Haifa second,” said Anthony. “I've a feeling for the profane vulgar. What
is
he talking about?”

“‘They',” Richardson read rapidly, “‘suppose that the said dragon is himself a creation and manifest existence, and not rather the power of the Divine Ones arrogated to themselves for sinful purpose by violent men. Now this dragon which is the power of the lion is accompanied also by a ninefold order of spectres, according to the hierarchy of the composed wonders of heaven.'”

“The what?” Anthony exclaimed.

“‘The composed wonders of heaven,'” Richardson repeated; “‘and these spectres being invoked have power upon those who adore them and transform them into their very terrible likeness, destroying them with great moanings; as they do also such as inadvisedly set themselves in the way of such powers, wandering without guide or intelligential knowledge, and being made the prey of the uncontrolled emanations.'”

“Do stop a moment,” Anthony said. “Who
are
the uncontrolled emanations?”

Richardson looked up. “The idea seems to be that the energies of these orders can exist in separation from the intelligence which is in them in heaven; and that if deliberately or accidentally you invoke the energy without the intelligence, you're likely eventually to be pretty considerably done for.”

“O!” said Anthony. “And the orders are the original Dionysian nine?”

“Right,” Richardson agreed. “Well, the next few pages are mostly cursing, and the next few are about the devotion of the Eastern doctor who found it all out. Then we get a little aesthetic theory. ‘For albeit those who paint upon parchment or in churches or make mosaic work of precious metals have designed these holy Universals in human shape, presenting them as youths of beautiful appearance, clothed in candid vestures, and this for the indoctrination of the vulgar, who are thereby more easily brought to a humble admiration of such essence and dare to invoke them worthily under the protection of the Blessed Triune, yet it is not to be held by the wise that such human masculinities are in any way even a convenient signification of their true nature; nay, these presentations do in some sense darken the true seeker and communicate confusion, and were it not written that we should have respect to the eyes of children and cast no stone of offence in the way of little ones, it would have been better that such errors should have been forbidden by the wisdom of the Church. For what can the painting of a youth show of those Celestial Benedictions, of which the first circle is that of a lion, and the second circle is that of a serpent, and the third circle is——'

“The next eight pages are missing.”

“Damn!” Anthony said heartily. “Doesn't he tell you anywhere else?”

“He doesn't,” Richardson said. “When we pick him up he has got right on to the ninth circle which is that of goodness only knows what and is attributed to the seraphim, and he dithyrambs on about the seraphim without giving any clear view of what they are or what they do or how one knows them. Then he quotes many texts about angels in general and becomes almost pious: the sort of thing that Erasmus might have thrown in to placate his enemies the monks. But there's a bit soon after which may interest you—here we are—‘written in the Apocalypse. For though these nine zones are divided into a trinity of trinities, yet after another fashion there are four without and four within, and between them is the Glory of the Eagle. For this is he who knows both himself and the others, and is their own knowledge: as it is written
We shall know as are known
—this is the knowledge of the Heavenly Ones in the place of the Heavenly Ones, and it is called the Virtue of the Celestials.'”

He stopped and looked at Anthony. “Tell me again,” he said, “how did you seem to escape from the shape this afternoon?”

“As if I were in an aeropl—— O but …” Anthony stopped. Richardson went on reading——

“‘As it is written
The Lord brought you out of Egypt on the back of a strong eagle
. And
To the woman were given two wings of a great eagle.'
That,” he added, “is what Marcellus Victorinus of Bologna thought was the key to the situation.” He shut the books and put them down. After a moment he added: “Not that that's really all,” and picked them up again.

“No,” said Anthony, “don't. Tell me yourself—it'll be simpler for me, and I want to understand.”

“I can't possibly tell you,” Richardson said, “because I don't understand it myself. Here we are—‘But also the Master hid from his pupils certain things concerning the shapes and manifestations of the Celsitudes, and spoke secretly of them. For it is said that he instructed his children in the Lord how that the knowledge of them was of different kinds, and that the days of their creation within this earth were three—that is to say, the fifth, the sixth and the seventh. And the times in which we now live are the sixth, when man has dominion over the apparitions of the Divine Universals, but there was a time before that when man was but dust in their path, so awful and so fierce were they. As it is written:
let him have dominion
but not
he has it
, and if any have no such dominion and yet seek them out he shall behold them unsubdued, aboriginal, very terrible. But the third day is the Sabbath of the Lord God, and all things have rest.'” Finally, Richardson went on, “this is his colophon—‘All these thing here have I, Marcellus Victorinus, clerk, of the University of Bologna, gathered out of the writings which remain of all that was taught by Alexander of Byzantion, concerning the Holy Angels, their qualities and appearances. And I invoke the power and authority of the Sacred Eagle, beseeching him to cover me with his wings in the time of danger and to bear me upon his wings with joy in the place of the Heavenly Ones, and to show me the balance of all things within the gates of Justice; and I offer prayer to him for all who shall read this book, beseeching them in their turn also to offer prayer for me.'”

“And how,” said Anthony after a long pause, “does one set about finding the Sacred Eagle?”

Richardson said nothing, and after another pause Anthony went on: “Besides, if this fellow were right, what harm would the Divine Universals do us? I mean, aren't the angels supposed to be rather gentle and helpful and all that?”

“You're doing what Marcellus warned you against,” Richardson said, “judging them by English pictures. All nightgowns and body and a kind of flacculent sweetness. As in cemeteries, with broken bits of marble. These are Angels—not a bit the same thing. These are the principles of the tiger and the volcano and the flaming suns of space.”

“Yes,” Anthony said, “I see. Yes. Well, to go back, what does one do about it?”

Richardson shrugged his shoulders. “I've done all I can,” he uttered, in a more remote voice. “I've told you what Marcellus said, what he thought was the only safe method of dealing with them. Myself, I think he was right.”

Anthony felt a sudden collapse threaten him. He leaned back in his chair; exhaustion seized on his body, and helplessness on his mind. Belief, against which he had been unconsciously struggling for days, flooded in upon him, as the sense of a great catastrophe will overtake a man who has endured it without realizing it. It was true then—the earth, the world, pleasant, or unpleasant, accustomed joys, habitual troubles, was the world no longer. They, this room in which he sat, the people he knew, were all on the point of passing under a new and overwhelming dominion; change was threatening them. He thought of Tighe on his knees before his butterflies; he thought of Foster crouched back like a wild animal, and Dora Wilmot's arm twisting like a serpent under his foot; and beyond them he saw in a cloud of rushing darkness the forms of terror that ruled this new creation—the lion, the soaring butterfly, the shaking ripples of the earth that were themselves the serpent. They grew before his blinded eyes moving to a kind of super-natural measure, dancing in space, intertwining on their unknown passages. And then mightier than all, sweeping down towards him, vast wings outspread, fierce beak lowered, he saw the eagle. It passed through those other forms, and came driving directly down. They still moved in a giant pattern behind it, and then it seemed to sweep them forward within its wings. It came rushing at him; he felt his lower jaw beginning to jerk uncontrollably; his eyes were shut; his heart was swelling till it must, it must, break; he was leaning sideways over his chair. But in that moment he forced himself upright; he forced open his eyes, and saw Richardson leaning against the mantelpiece and the book of Marcellus Victorinus on the table.

“The place, I think,” Richardson was saying, “is in Berringer's house. You either go or you don't; you either invoke or you don't; you either rule or you don't. But certainly in this present dispensation even the angelic universals were given to the authority of men. So far as man chooses. There is another way.”

Chapter Nine

THE FUGITIVE

Damaris had gone out for a walk, not that she wanted to, but because, as she had rather definitely told her father, it seemed the only way of getting a little peace. In general Damaris associated peace with her study, her books, and her manuscripts rather than with the sky, the hills, and the country roads; and not unjustly, since only a few devcut followers of Wordsworth can in fact find more than mere quiet in the country. The absence of noise is not in all cases the same thing as the presence of peace. Wordsworth also found morality there, and no-one is ever likely to find peace without morality of one sort or another. But Damaris had never yet received any kind of impulse from either vernal or autumnal woods to teach her more of moral evil and of good than all her sages. Certainly she had found no particular impulse that way in her sages either, but that was because she was rapidly becoming incapable of recognizing a moral impulse when she saw it, the sages from Pythagoras onwards meaning something quite different from her collocation. Peace to her was not a state to be achieved but a supposed necessary condition of her daily work, and peace therefore, as often happens, evaded her continually. She ingeminated
Peace
so often and so loudly that she inevitably frightened it still farther away, peace itself being (so far as has yet been found) a loveliness only invocable by a kind of sympathetic magic and auto-hypnotism which it never occurred to her to exercise. In a convulsive patience therefore she walked firmly out of the town, and up the rising ground that lay about it.

For the last day or two the centre of gravity of her world seemed slightly to have shifted. This had begun when she had found the attention of her audience diverted on the Wednesday evening, but it had become more marked with Mr. Foster's call on Thursday, and had really shocked her with Anthony's that Saturday morning. Except that it was silly, she would almost have supposed that those two gentlemen had found her father's odd antics more important than her own conversation. They seemed to be looking past her, at some other fact on their horizon; they were preoccupied, they diffused neglect. Her father too—he had been almost patronizing once or twice, infinitely and unconsciously superior. She was liable to find him anywhere about the house or garden—doing nothing, saying nothing, looking nothing; if she spoke to him, which she often did out of mere irritable good nature, he took a moment to collect himself before he replied. She would have been prepared to make allowances for this if he had been engaged upon his butterflies—having at least an understanding of how hobbies affected people, though this particular hobby seemed to her more silly than many. But he wasn't; he just sat or stood about. It was all very well for Mr. Foster to be so profoundly interested—Mr. Foster didn't have to live with him. As for Anthony——

She walked a little faster. Anthony's call had been at a stupid time to begin with, but its purpose—which really did seem to have been to see her father—made it wholly stupid in itself. What
could
Anthony at half-past eleven on Saturday morning want with her father? It annoyed her that she had to take a little care in dealing with Anthony—he was so persistently attached and yet at the same time apt to become troublesomely detached. She disliked the slight feeling of anxiety she had about him—of late she found herself occasionally wondering after each visit whether, when he had gone, he had gone for good. And there was at present simply no other convenient way of getting some of her articles into print. They were good articles of their kind—she and Anthony both knew that—only there weren't very many papers that would care for them. And it did—she half angrily admitted—it did help her, please, encourage, whatever the right word was, to see her name printed at the top of a column. It was a mark and reward of work done and a promise of work and reward to be. It was, in short, an objectivization of Miss Tighe to a point elsewhere at present unobtainable. Probably, though she did not think of this, Abelard,
mutatis mutandis
, felt a similar satisfaction at his lectures, with perhaps less danger owing to the watch that his confessor would have expected Abelard to keep over his conscience.