Shadows of Ecstasy by Charles Williams

Author:Charles Williams
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
ISBN: 9781504006675
Publisher: Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Chapter Eight

PASSING THROUGH THE MIDST OF THEM

There followed a few days of uneasy quiet. The news from Africa was vague, but more cheerfully vague. It was generally understood that organized naval measures were being taken to overcome the submarine forces of the enemy, which had succeeded in making the African coasts so dangerous and had proceeded so far afield that until such measures had been concerted and carried out the landing of fresh troops had become impossible. It was even rumoured that attacks had been made on certain European harbours, but if this were so the Government concerned saw to it that no hint was allowed to appear in the Press. Energetic operations had been planned; the more energetic movements of the enemy seemed to have ceased, though the clearance of white troops from North Africa appeared to be proceeding slowly but systematically.

The financial panic had also been stayed to some extent by Government action. For the Prime Minister had announced that, as the simplest means of meeting the emergency, the Administration had decided to make loans to the federated control of any particular industry which was seriously affected. Conditions of application, examination, payment and repayment were to be settled by a Commission set up for the purpose; the immediate affair was to steady the markets, and dazed directors of innumerable companies found themselves offered millions in order to buy up shares in their own concerns. Unfederated companies rushed to federate; all newspapers, for example, found themselves part of one large business, controlled by a common Board which immediately borrowed or was offered a subsidy of some millions, with which it repurchased the shares which Nehemiah and Ezekiel Rosenberg were throwing before the world. It looked therefore as if these devoted believers would secure their money as well as their jewels; and the coming of Messias or the building of the Temple be prepared for by the English in a general increase of taxation. Sir Bernard, as he contemplated the world, foresaw a possibility that the whole business, military and financial, would gradually expire, having ruined a great number of small shareholders, increased the financial strength of the larger, cost a great deal in armaments, and probably massacred a host of Africans in circumstances of more or less equal fighting.

“I had some expectation,” he said to Caithness as they turned into the Square, after an early afternoon walk, “of becoming a travelling doctor in my old age—probably with a donkey cart; and going from village to village, curing indigestion and collecting sixpences. You know the kind of thing—‘Travers’s Pills make Stomachs Tractable’—‘Dainty Digestions Decently Doctored.’ You might have joined me, and we would have put stomachs and souls right together. ‘Stomachs on the right; souls on the left: Advice free: only real cures paid for.’ But I should have stipulated for no miracles.”

“Then you’d have wanted an unfair advantage,” Caithness said. “I should have to send quite a number of my patients to you; lots of them think it’s their conscience when actually it’s their stomachs.

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