Shadows of Ecstasy by Charles Williams (best books to read txt) 📖

till

at a sudden last weariness struck him and he got on a bus. The heavens

beyond that firmamental arm had been pouring anger and distraction and

hatred down on him, and he didn’t understand it at all. He had been

trying to please Rosamond—which, unlike most people who use similar

phrases, he actually had. He sat on the bus and thought so for a long

time, until he became aware that someone was speaking to him.

 

The conductor had come up and was standing by him, peering out through

the front of the bus, and saying something. Philip roused himself to

attention, and heard him say: “There’s something up; can’t you hear

it, sir?”

 

Philip listened and looked round. The night was clear and he

recognized in a mass that lay on his left Liverpool Street Station.

The bus was going slowly, for it was interrupted and hampered by a

number of people running down the road in the same direction. There

was a sound in the distance which resolved itself, as he listened,

into the noise of shouting.

 

“What the devil is up?” he said.

 

The conductor—a short rather gloomy fellow—gave a sinister smile. “I

shouldn’t wonder but what I could guess,” he said. “I thought it’d

happen sooner or later. I said it was a silly business, letting it be

known all over the place that they’d millions and millions worth of

jewels in the house. ‘Jewels to the Jews,’ I called it, when it got

about. Everything gets about. And if it wasn’t jewels—and some say it

wasn’t—it was money. Hark at that!”

 

Another shout, nearer now as the bus moved on, brought Philip to his

feet. “Is it the Rosenbergs?” he said. “But they can’t have got them

here.”

 

The bus, as he spoke, turned into Bishopsgate and was brought almost

to a stop by an accumulating crowd. Philip jumped off and allowed

himself to be carried in the steady stream that set towards one of the

side turnings. He caught fragments of talk: “Say they’re going to

bribe the negroes”; “know all about those bloody niggers”; “great

jewels like turnips, been buying them for months”; “lowsy old Jews”;

“Christ Almighty”; “bloody Jews.” But what had roused the crowd he

wasn’t yet at all clear. His coat buttoned, and his collar turned up,

his stick firmly grasped, he was carried round one corner after

another. In the darkness he was aware of continually changing

neighbours, among whom were certainly some of his own class and

standing. He saw a brown lean face which he thought he recognized; a

large fat face with an open mouth from which issued stridently a

continual and monotonous cry of “Dirty Jews!”; a happy excited

face—two or three of them all in a knot together. He was thrust

backwards, sideways; the crowd lurched diversely and pinned him

against some railings. A few feet ahead, it seemed to him, so far as

he could judge in the darkness, that the crowd centred before a

particular gate and house. There the shouting rose loudest, and sticks

were rattled on the railings. He saw the helmets of two policemen

within the gate and before the front door. Another call went up: “Come

out, you bloody Jews!” “Come out and bring us the jewels!” “Come out

and we’ll show you what we’ll do to the niggers!” He caught fresh

fragments of the talk round him. A woman of sixty near by said with a

sensuous shudder to her neighbour: “They do say that Jews eat babies,”

“Ah,” said the neighbour, “foreigners’ll do anything,” and in a minute

or two passed the information on in turn. Soon after, someone in front

of the house shouted: “When did you eat the last baby?” and though a

roar of laughter answered it, it was laughter with a hint of madness.

Philip managed to edge a little farther towards the house, in the

garden of which he now saw two or three hats and caps as well as the

helmets. The police, however, at this made a sudden move, one man was

flung sideways into the next narrow garden where he fell with a crash,

another scrambled hastily the other way, and a third dropped flat on

the ground. In the recoil that followed, Philip achieved the front of

the house. “All right,” he said hurriedly to the police. “I’m with

you. Let me in.” They took one comprehensive look at him, decided on

the risk, and as the crowd swayed back he slipped through and turned

to face it.

 

“Who the hell are you?” half a dozen asked him. “Another baby-eater?”

 

“Come to get the jewels,” another voice answered. “Come on, there’s

only three of them.” Nevertheless Philip’s stick and the truncheons of

the police held the front rank yet a little doubtful.

 

In the pause a window opened over their heads and a voice said: “Why

are you here?” A roar of laughter and abuse followed. “Hand out the

jewels! Come out and meet us! Who’s afraid of the niggers? Who’s doing

a bunk? Jew! Jew! Jew!”

 

The voice said coldly: “Sons of abomination, what have we to do with

you? Defilers of yourselves, who are you to come against the Holy One

of Israel?”

 

The laughter and abuse grew more violent. “‘Ark at him,” said a thin

hungry-looking man near Philip. “O my Gawd; the ‘Oly one of Hisrael!”

 

“You may destroy the house and all that is within it,” Rosenberg said,

“and you shall be smitten with fire and pestilence and all the plagues

of Egypt. But the jewels, even if they were here, you should not touch

or see, for they are holy to the Lord. They are for the Temple of Zion

and for Messias that shall be revealed.”

 

“‘Im and ‘is Messias,” said a stout woman. “I ‘opes Messias isn’t in a

‘urry for them jewels!”

 

A stone flew through the air, and at the same time a huge fellow

pushed to the gate, where he looked up and spoke: “Look ‘ere,” he

said, “are you Rosenberg?”

 

“I am Nehemiah Rosenberg,” the voice said.

 

“Then you look ‘ere. We ‘appen to know that you’ve been in with the

Government and the capitalists to get all this money out of the

working classes and get away with it to the niggers as like as not.

And we don’t ‘old with it. Now we don’t want to ‘urt you but we don’t

let a lot of bloody Sheenies get away with our money to those blasted

niggers, not much we don’t. Give us them jewels and I’ll see they’re

put in safe keeping: I swear I will. And if you don’t I’ll damn well

put a light to the house myself.”

 

A roar of applause answered him, though the stout woman, who appeared

to Philip to preserve an attitude of detachment worthy of Sir Bernard,

said generally: “Ah, I don’t ‘old with Socialism,” and one of the

policemen added agreeably: “You keep your mouth shut, Mike Cummings.”

 

“Thank Gawd,” Mr. Cummings said, “I never could keep my mouth shut

while honest men are being put on.”

 

Rosenberg leaned out of the window. “I tell you,” he said, “the Lord

shall avenge Himself upon His enemies. In the morning you shall say,

‘Would God it were night,’ and in the evening you shall say, ‘Would

God it were day’; and His anger shall be with you in your secret

chamber…”

 

Something flew through the air, struck the wall, and dropped at

Philip’s feet; something smashed the glass of the window above him. He

clutched at his stick, and at the same time saw one of the policemen

dragged sideways and clubs and belts appearing around him. He was back

against the front door, and heard it creaking as the rush of the crowd

in a storm of shrieks, curses, and yells came against him. Something

hit his shoulder, a large dirty chin came close to his eyes, and an

elbow or a stick drove into his side. At the same moment the door gave

and they all crashed into the narrow passage together. The first in

were past him and up the stairs; the next few in their haste ignored

him; and then it was all darkness and pandemonium. He heard a loud

voice upstairs, overwhelmed by the louder tumult of the crowd, a

sudden silence above, noticeable in a momentary cessation of the

uproar without, and then a cry: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the

Lord is One.” Chaos beyond anything he had known earlier in the riot

broke out again, chaos of voices, but also now chaos of movement—part

of the crowd in the house trying to get out, part trying to get

upstairs, part uncertain and confused. Shouts of “the police” were

heard from the street, the pressure round Philip lightened, and he

found one of his former allies next to him again, trying to force a

way upstairs. Exclamations of terror broke out, the crowd thinned, and

when at last they entered the upper room, they were only in time to

prevent the demonstrative Mr. Cummings from slipping away. Him the

constable seized, while Philip, taking in the appearance of the room,

with a taut rope stretched across it and out of the window, ran across

to join Ezekiel who, torn and bleeding, was leaning out of it. He knew

before he looked out what he would find, nor was it till he had helped

to pull up the hanging body of Nehemiah that he found time to wonder

why the crowd had so swiftly destroyed their prey. But as Ezekiel and

he undid the cord, and laid and arranged the body on the table he

gathered from Cummings’ persistent babble that nothing of the sort had

been intended. The Jews were to be frightened into betraying the

hiding-place of the money or the jewels, and the rope—meant for one

of the packed boxes of luggage that stood by the wall—had been

adjusted with that idea. And then Nehemiah had struggled, and the rope

had slipped, and so “help me God” no-one was more surprised than he to

hear that the Jew was dead.

 

“Is it likely I’d mean to kill him? Me that’s never hurt a canary!

It’s all a mistake…”

 

“The Lord gave,” Ezekiel said, standing up and looking at the body,

“and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

 

By this time more police were in the room, some of them with

prisoners. Philip explained his presence to the officer in charge, and

when this was confirmed by the two original constables and he had

given his address it was suggested that he might prefer to make his

way home.

 

But he hesitated as he looked at Ezekiel. “What about Mr. Rosenberg?

Hadn’t he better come with me? I’m sure my father would be glad,” he

said, and was permitted to propose it.

 

Ezekiel nodded gravely. “A burden is laid upon me,” he said. “I shall

go alone to the land of my fathers.”

 

“If you’ve got any money or jewels here, Mr. Rosenberg,” the Inspector

said, “you’d better let us take charge of them.”

 

“We never had any,” Ezekiel answered; “they are in safe keeping.” He

turned again to the body, intoned over it a Hebrew prayer, and, while

the last great syllables echoed from the ceiling and walls, indicated

to Philip that he was ready. Two constables were to come with them

till they had found a taxi; the four went silently downstairs, and, as

they came out into the street, heard, remote but unmistakable, the

sound of the guns.

 

In Kensington Sir Bernard and three of his guests were playing

bridge—Caithness, Isabel and Roger. The king, as usual, was