Shadows of Ecstasy by Charles Williams (that summer book txt) 📕

>party which demanded “Africa for the Africans.” Normally the massacre

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,