Shadows of Ecstasy - Charles Williams (electric book reader .txt) 📗
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of the Christian missionaries would have been fatal to such a demand,
but the recalcitrant attitude of the Archbishop hampered the more
violent patriots. Rumours got about of the appearance of hostile
aeroplanes over the Mediterranean and the coastline of Southern
Europe. Negroes in London and other large towns were mobbed in the
streets. Roger reported to Isabel that not only negroes but
comparatively harmless Indians had disappeared from his classes. It
was evident that the Government would be driven to some measure of
internment.
It was so driven, more quickly than had been expected, when the news
came of the sinking of a transport crowded with Indian troops which
were being rushed to South Africa. That the African armies should be
able to operate destructively by sea as well as by land was a shock
even to instructed opinion, and, among the uninstructed, crowds began
to parade the streets, booing and cheering and chasing any
dark-skinned stranger who showed himself. Even one or two Southern
Italians had, for a few minutes, an uneasy time. The crowds were of
course dissolved by the police, but they came together again like
drops of water till the evening’s amusement was done and they
reluctantly went home.
The reaction of all these events on the money market was considerable,
and it was not eased by the uncertainty which still existed on the
situation of the late Mr. Rosenberg’s affairs. Nothing definite was
known, since the Chief Rabbi and Mr. Considine persisted in their
silence, as did the two legatees. But an uneasy feeling manifested
itself, both in the streets around the brothers’ house and in the
wider circles of finance. It could not be said that anything unusual
was going on, for nothing at all seemed to be going on. But the
stillness was alarming. No-one could believe that the two aged and
devoted students of Kabbalistic doctrine were fit persons to control
the vast interests of the Rosenberg estate. But no-one could prevent
their doing whatever they liked with it. Nehemiah and Ezekiel came out
to the synagogue and went home again, and went nowhere else, though
well-dressed strangers in cars descended on Houndsditch, and were
engaged with them over long periods. In Houndsditch itself strange
tales of the jewels began to spread, following vivid accounts of them
in the papers. The thrill of the jewels and the thrill of the Africans
contended; hungry eyes followed the Jews as hostile eyes followed such
rare negroes as could still be seen in the East End. A sullen
excitement began to work around them, a breathless and vulgar
imitation of the exalted imagination which the High Executive had
declared to be the true path to desirable knowledge.
A more natural excitement, though perhaps equally crude from the point
of view of the High Executive and that other High Executive
represented among others by the Archbishops, affected innumerable
suburban homes when the selling began. Gradually but steadily the
prices of shares in the Rosenberg concerns began to fall. It was said
that someone knew something and was standing from under. A shiver of
panic touched finance, allied to that other panic which had already
touched the extreme villages of Southern Europe. Nervous voices made
inquiries over telephones in England as nervous eyes watched
aeroplanes over the Mediterranean. From each background of silence a
thin mist of fear crept out and was blown over many minds. Something
shook civilization, as it had been shaken a hundred times before, but
that something loomed now in half-fancied forms of alien powers, of
negroes flying through the air and Jews withdrawing their gold. Day by
day the tremors quickened. Neglected expositors of the Apocalypse in
Tonbridge or Cheltenham, old ladies, retired military men, and an
eccentric clergyman or two, began to say boldly that it was the end of
the world. At Birmingham a man ran naked through the streets crying
that he saw fire from heaven, and leaping on to the railway lines was
killed by an express train before the police could catch him. “Second
Adventist goes mad at Birmingham,” said the evening papers. The
Churches found that growing crowds attended them. The Government
unofficially suggested to the Archbishops that they should discourage
people coming to church. The Archbishops issued a Pastoral Letter from
which they naturally could not exclude some of their irritation with
the Government; and of which therefore the first part, which was
addressed to the new converts, tended towards a scornful and minatory
tone. This, if anything, made matters worse, the converts naturally
arguing that if the Church could afford to use that voice the Church
must feel itself very safe indeed; and this feeling was strengthened
by the second part which was addressed to the faithful in language
that in normal times would have been ordinary enough. “And you, little
children, love one another,” it began and continued on the same theme,
ending with another quotation, “My peace I give unto you; not as the
world giveth give I unto you.” The idea that these incantations
contained a magical safety found more and more believers; and Sir
Bernard congratulated Caithness on a greater spread of the Faith in
ten days than in ten years previously. On a world already thus
agitated fell the second communication of the High Executive. This,
after the earlier formal invocation of “things willed and fated,”
“gods many and one,” went on in something of a high style of distress
to lament that the Powers of Europe had not thought well even to
answer the earlier message, much less apparently to prepare themselves
for any negotiations. They had instead, by all means at their command,
increased their armies and strengthened the war. “Some check”, the
message went on, “the African armies have administered to this
gathering defiance, but the High Executive has felt compelled to
advise its august Sovereigns that mere measures of defence will no
longer be sufficient. If the Powers of Europe are determined to force
war upon Africa, then Africa will be compelled to open war upon
Europe. The gospel which is the birthright of the African peoples and
which they offer as a message of hope even to the degraded and outworn
nations of the white race carries no maxim which they are unwilling to
practise. With a profound but unrecognised truth the Christians of
Europe have declared that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the
Church. This maxim Africa knows, understands, obeys. In the high
mysteries of birth and death, not only physical generation or physical
destruction, but those spiritual experiences of which these are but
types, Africa has learnt the secret duties of man. Her peoples offer
themselves in exaltation to the bed of death as to the bed of love.
With an ecstasy born of their ecstasy, with a communication to its
children of that which they first communicated to it, the High
Executive summons them to what is at present the final devotion of
conscious being. They and it are alike indifferent to the result, if
the armies of Europe destroy them they will but find in death a
greater thing than their conquerors know. But the armies of Europe
will not destroy them, for the Second Evolution of man has begun.
Their leaders and prophets, and the High Executive which is their
voice and act, address themselves no longer to the children of
intellect and science and learning. They turn to their own peoples.
Daughters and Sons of Africa, you are called to the everlasting
sacrifice. Victim or priest at that altar, it matters not whether you
inflict or endure the pang. Come, for the cycles are accomplished and
the knowledge that was of old returns. Come, for this is the hour of
death that alternates for ever with the hour of love. Come, for
without the knowledge of both the knowledge of one shall fail. Come,
ye blessed, inherit the things laid up for you from the foundations of
the world.”
On the evening of the day when this invocation appeared, the crowds in
the streets were thicker than ever. The first death was reported in a
special edition of the papers; a negro had been literally hunted over
Hampstead Heath and afterwards (not quite intentionally, it was
thought), killed. Sir Bernard rang up Isabel.
“Nothing,” he said, when she answered, “except that you once said that
Hampstead was the negro quarter of London, and I thought I’d like to
know whether there was any trouble up there.”
“Not to say trouble,” Isabel said. “There was a little friction at the
gate, and we’ve got a coloured gentleman in the house at present.”
“Have you indeed?” Sir Bernard exclaimed. “Was it you or Roger who
brought him in?”
“Both of us,” Isabel explained. “We heard a noise in the street and we
looked out, and there was a negro—at least, he was a black man; a
negro’s something technical, isn’t it?—against our gate, and the most
unpleasant lot of whites you ever saw all round him, cursing. Roger
went out and talked to them, but that was no good. He said something
about behaving like Englishmen, and I suppose they did; at least they
began to throw stones and hit out with their sticks. So Roger got him
through the gate, and I got them through the front door, and here he
is.”
“You’re not hurt, Isabel?” Sir Bernard said sharply. “What about the
crowd?”
“O they threw things at the house and smashed a window, and presently
the police came and they went away,” Isabel answered. “No, thank you,
I’m perfectly all right. I’m just going to make coffee. Come and have
some.”
“Where’s your visitor?” Sir Bernard asked.
“Talking African love songs and tribal poetry with Roger in his room,”
Isabel said. “They agree wonderfully on everything but the effect of
the adverb. Roger’s evolving a theory that adverbs have no place in
great poetry—I don’t understand why.”
“I should like to hear him,” Sir Bernard said. “Thanks, Isabel; I’ll
come up if I may.”
“Do,” said Isabel, “and I’ll postpone the coffee for half-an-hour.
Till then.”
For once Sir Bernard took a taxi; as a general rule he avoided them,
preferring the more actively contemplative life of buses and tubes,
and preferring also never to be in anything like a hurry. When he
arrived he found Philip and Rosamond, who had been dining out, sitting
side by side on the kitchen table, watching Isabel make the coffee.
“Come in here, Sir Bernard, won’t you?” she said when she had let him
in, “and you shall see the refugee soon. He’s in the only room with a
fire, and as Rosamond is terrified to death of him we have to linger
in the kitchen to keep comfortably warm. ‘October nights are chill,’
as someone said. No, don’t tell me.”
“Isabel,” her sister protested, “I’m not terrified of him, but I don’t
think it’s quite nice of him to stop here. Why doesn’t he go home?”
“With mobs prowling round the garden gate?” Isabel asked. “And Roger
still making noises to show the union of accent and quantity? My dear
Rosamond, when you’re married you won’t want Philip’s friends to go
home until he’s thoroughly tired out. Otherwise he’ll barge into your
room at midnight and go on with the conversation with you. And as
you’re asleep to begin with, and as you don’t know what the
conversation was about, and as you don’t know whether he wants you to
agree or disagree though you’d do either for peace, you’ll find it
very difficult to be nice to him. I have never”, Isabel went on,
pouring milk into a saucepan, “really quarrelled with Roger…”
“Isabel!” Sir Bernard murmured.
“Not really,” Isabel persisted, “except once,
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