Shadows of Ecstasy Read Online Free PDF Page A

end.”
    â€œI 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?”
    â€œI may as well go back to Yorkshire,” Caithness answered doubtfully. “I’ve been all the use I can be.”
    â€œO 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?”
    â€œI 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?”
    â€œWhy, are you going?” Philip asked.
    â€œCertainly 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.”
    â€œCouldn’t he have still gone on collecting jewels?” Caithness asked scornfully.
    â€œApparently not,” Sir Bernard said mildly. “He saw them on her, you see; they existed in relation to her. And when she died they fell apart—he couldn’t find a centre for them. They were useless, and so he was useless. At least I suspect that’s what happened. You didn’t see her, so you won’t understand.”
    Caithness gave a short laugh. “A noble aim,” he said.
    â€œWell, it was his,” Sir Bernard remonstrated, still mildly. “And really, Ian, if it comes to comparisons, I don’t know that it was worse than collecting poems, like Roger, or events, like me. I might say, or souls like you, because you do collect souls for the Church just as Rosenberg collected jewels for his wife, don’t you?”
    â€œThe Church doesn’t die,” Caithness said.
    â€œI know, I know,” Sir Bernard answered. “But that only means you’re more fortunate than Rosenberg in preferring a hypothesis to a person. At least, perhaps you are: it’s difficult to say. I’ve a good mind to ask Roger to come to the inquest too.”
    â€œIt seems rather gruesome,” Philip said, hesitating.
    â€œO my dear boy,” Sir Bernard protested, “don’t let’s be adjectival. Here’s a rich man shot himself because of a difficulty with life. Is it really gruesome to want to know what that difficulty is and how much like the rest of our difficulties it was? But at your age you daren’t trust your own motives, and you’re probably right. At mine one has to trust