The Place of the Lion (26 page)

Anthony—Adam—whatever giant stood before her between the trees of an aboriginal forest—was calling as he had called in the streets of the town. But now he uttered not one word but many, pausing between each, and again giving to each the same strong summons. He called and he commanded; nature lay expectant about him. She was aware then that the forest all round was in movement; living creatures showed themselves on its edge, or hurried through the grass. At each word that he cried, new life gathered, and still the litany of invocation and command went on. By the names that were the Ideas he called them, and the Ideas who are the Principles of everlasting creation heard him, the Principles of everlasting creation who are the Cherubim and Seraphim of the Eternal. In their animal manifestations, duly obedient to the single animal who was lord of the animals, they came. She saw the horse pushing its head over his shoulder; she saw the serpent rearing itself and lightly coiling round his body. Only, but now motionless, the eagle sat on his shoulder, observant of all things, as philosophical knowledge studies the natures and activities of men.

They were returning, summoned by the authority of man from their incursion into the world of man. She thought of the town behind her from which the terror was now withdrawing; she thought of the world which had not known what was approaching and now might sleep on in peace. She thought of Quentin and of her father, the one rescued from his fear, the other absorbed by his content. And as she thought, crouched by the stile that seemed as if it were the way into the Garden, only unguarded for this single night by the fire which was its central heart—as she crouched and thought, she wondered with a sharp pain if he who had gone from her was ever to return. Was she to lose that others might gain? was she to be deprived of her lover that Quentin Sabot might be saved from madness? Where anyhow was Anthony? what was this nightmare in which she was held? Out of a sepulchre of death the old Damaris rushed up into the new; anger began to swell within her. Either this was all a horrid dream or eke Anthony had lured her into some insane midnight expedition. It was always the same—no-one ever considered her; no-one thought about her. Her father had died at a most inconvenient moment; there would be all the business of what small capital he had. No-one, no-one, ever considered her, and the work she was trying unselfishly to do as a contribution to the history of philosophical thought.

Something, however, still held. As, in the renewed and full pseudo-realization of what she was and what she was doing by her work—hers, hers, the darling hers!—she moved to rise (even in a nightmare she needn't crouch), something for one second held her down. It held her—that slender ligature of unrealized devotion—for the second that the old hateful thing took to flood her and a little to recede. The years of selfish toil had had at any rate this good—they had been years of toil; she had not easily abandoned any search because of difficulty, and that habit of intention, by its own power of good, offered her salvation then. The full flood receded; she remembered herself, and her young soul struggled to reach the bright shore beyond the gloomy waters that tossed it. The thing that was the opposite of the pterodactyl, the thing that had been the purpose of the search of Abelard, the thing that was Anthony and yet wasn't Anthony—that. She knew it; as she did so she felt her own name called, and cried out in agony “Yes, yes.” If Anthony must go, then he must go. He—it—knew; she didn't. Her limbs were released; she sprang up, the older energies renewed almost to fierceness in her determination to discover that other thing. She would be savage with herself, royal in daring, a lioness in hunger and in the hunt. Of that thing itself, she knew little but that it was blessed, innocent and joyous; it was a marvel of white knowledge, as much of earth as any tender creature of the fields, yet bound to its heavenly origin by hypostatic union of experience. A fierce conquest, an innocent obedience—these were to be her signs.

The sound of her name still echoed through her spirit when, recovered from her inner struggle, she looked again upon the glade of the garden where the image of Adam named the beasts, and naming ruled them. But now he was farther from her, nearer to those twin mysterious trees in the centre. Among the shapes that pressed about him she could not at first well discern one from another, but as she leaned and strained to see she beheld them gathering into two companies. There fell over the whole scene a strange and lovely clearness, shed from the wings of a soaring wonder that left the shoulder where it had reposed and flew, scattering light. The intermingled foliage of the trees of knowledge and of life—if indeed they were separate—received it; amid those branches the eagle which was the living act of science sank and rested. But far below the human figure stood and on either side of it were the shapes of the lion and the lamb. His hand rested on the head of the one; the other paused by him. In and for that exalted moment all acts of peace that then had being through the world were deepened and knew their own nature more clearly; away in villages and towns such spirits as the country doctor in Smetham received a measure of content in their work. Friendships grew closer; intentions of love possessed their right fulfilment. Terrors of malice and envy and jealousy faded; disordered beauty everywhere recognized again the sacred laws that governed it. Man dreamed of himself in the place of his creation.

The vision passed from them, and from the woman who watched as Eve might have watched the movements of her companion. He looked on the beasts and seemed to speak to them, and slowly they withdrew. Slowly, each after its own habit, they moved along the glade, and suddenly the lamb was lost to her sight under the massed heaviness of those trees from which they had come. On the very edge of the mystery the lion looked back, half turned towards the way it had gone. Its eyes met those of the man who faced it, but he came no farther. His just concern was still with the world of men and women, and with his gaze he bade the angelical pass back and close the breach. It broke into one final roar—the woman heard and trembled, and heard the roar cease as the Adam answered and quelled it with the sound of its own name. She saw it turn again and move away, and on the very instant the human figure itself turned and at full speed ran towards her. The earth shook under her; from the place of the trees there broke again the pillar of flame, as if between the sky and earth a fiery sword were shaken, itself “with dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms.” The guard that protected earth was set again; the interposition of the Mercy veiled the destroying energies from the weakness of men.

One of the firemen who, late at night, and ignorant of the aspect under which Damaris from the ridge beheld that supernaturally deepened valley, still attempted to subdue the fire which raged in the house, said afterwards, when his wife spoke to him of the wild rumours that had till midnight possessed the town, that he also had thought that he saw, as he faced the ridge, a great shape of a lion leap from the field straight into the flames. It was directly afterwards that their prolonged efforts were unexpectedly successful; the fire dwindled, sank, and in a short time expired. It was the same man who had thought that, earlier in the evening, he had seen a young man slip past his comrades towards the pyre, but since he had seen no more of him he concluded it could not have been so. The house itself, and the bodies of the owner and the housekeeper, had been reduced to the finest ash; there was, when the fire died out, nothing but a layer of ash spread over the earth. It was, in short, one of the worst fires he had ever known, and the heat and blaze had at moments evidently dazed him.

But Damaris, when from the glade that behind him became once more nothing but the English fields she received the flying figure of Anthony, did not think she had been dazed. He leapt the stile, stretching out his hand to her as she came, and she caught it, and was swung across the road before he could stop himself. Panting from his rush he smiled at her; panting from her intense vigil she breathed all herself back. Then their hands fell apart, and after a little they began to walk slowly on.

In a minute he looked at her. “I say, you're not cold, are you?” he asked. “I wish you'd got a coat or something.”

“It's not very far,” she answered. “No, I'm not cold.”

About the Author

Charles Williams (1886–1945) was a British author and longtime editor at Oxford University Press. He was one of the three most prominent members of the literary group known as the Inklings—the other two being C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. Williams wrote poetry, drama, biography, literary criticism, and more, but is best known for his novels, which explored the primal conflict between good and evil. T. S. Eliot, who wrote an introduction to Williams's
All Hallows' Eve
, praised the author's “profound insight into … the heights of Heaven and the depths of Hell, which provides both the immediate thrill, and the permanent message of his novels,” and
Time
magazine called him “one of the most gifted and influential Christian writers England has produced this century.”

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1931 by Charles Williams

Cover design by Kat Lee

ISBN: 978-1-5040-0666-8

This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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New York, NY 10014

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